10 



with which the ' hell broth ' of Macbeth's witches might be called an innocent 

 and nutritious soup." 



This is very bad, but the same kind of selfish immorality is found in every 

 walk of life. * * * You hesitate now about taking stock in any 

 company. The reason is well understood. You have lost confidence. The 

 career of the great railroad men and speculators in Europe and America, in 

 part, explains the cause. How many corporations have been wrecked, how 

 many families have been broken up, the happiness of how many individuals 

 destroyed by the speculations and the "corners" in Wall street. Such trans- 

 actions are entirely illegitimate. What is a "corner" but an attempt by men 

 who have capital, and a certain knowledge, to rob those who have capital but 

 not the knowledge. And we have "corners" in silk, "corners" in grain, 

 "corners" in coal, "corners " in the luxuries and the very necessities of life. 

 Last summer, when a yacht was wrecked off Staten Island, and a young, gener- 

 ous and wealthy merchant perished while endeavoring to rescue his wife, a 

 sentiment of profound though smothered indignation pervaded the neighbor- 

 hood for some time. Why was this ? There exists a ferry-boat monopoly 

 which oppresses the people who pass daily from Staten Island to New York, 

 and this wealthy gentleman had established an opposition line for the relief of 

 those people. It was believed that his yacht was wrecked designedly, that he, 

 in a word was assassinated, with his wife and friends, by the company which 

 he had opposed. This suspicion was undoubtedly not true. But the astonish- 

 ing thing is that it could be harbored ; that public sentiment could be in such 

 a state as to entertain such a suspicion, not deeming it improbable. 



One more observation and we have done : Alfred Wallace, one of the 

 noblest spirits of modern times spent several years among the savages of the 

 Malay Archipelago, and contrasting the moral condition of those savages with 

 the morality practised in Christian lands he freely remarks : "It is not too 

 much to say that the mass of our populations have not at all advanced beyond 

 the savage code of morals, and have in many cases sunk below it. A super- 

 ficial morality is the great blot of modern civilization and the greatest hindrance 

 to true progress. During the last century * * * our mastery over the 

 forces of nature has led to a rapid growth of population, and a vast accumula- 

 tion of wealth ; but these have brought with them such an amount of poverty 

 and crime, and have fostered the growth of so much sordid feeling and so many 

 fierce passions, that it may well be questioned whether the mental and moral 

 status of our population has not on the average been lowered, and whether the 

 evil has not overbalanced the good. Compared with our wondrous progress in 

 physical science, and its practical applications, our system of government, of 

 administering justice, of national education, and our whole social and moral 

 organization, remains in a state of barbarism. * * * And if we continue 

 to devote our chief energies to the utilizing of our knowledge of the laws of 

 nature with the view of still further extending our commerce and our wealth, 

 the evils which necessarily accompany these when too largely pursued may in- 

 crease to such gigantic dimensions as to be beyond our power to alleviate. 



* * Y Q^J. YQj&t manufacturing system, our gigantic commerce. 



