Life Insurance^ Savings Banks, Etc. • 27 



We are pretty careful to teach the rich that thej are to regard 

 themselves as stewards, and sometimes to take a little risk to help 

 struggling worth upon its feet, 



Ilow far down the scale shall we come in pressing this duty ? 

 If a man has five thousand dollars to loan shall he have the 

 moral responsibility of helpfulness loaded on him, while he who 

 has five dollars only to lend shall think only of his own safety ? 



The truth is, the poor can help the poor as well as the rich, or 

 the rich the poor, and they ought so to help one another. 



The men of humble means ought not to be relieved from the 

 responsibility of helping their fellows in the struggle for exist- 

 ence as they have opportunity. 



The poor are on the war paih against capital. What h'ive they 

 done wiih their own little surpluses? The chances are that in 

 the scramble for safety they have shut their hands and their 

 hearts against some humble enterprise, which might have been 

 saved from ruin, in order that their little sums might lurther in- 

 flate the balloon of s"ime rascal who ostentatiously paraded him- 

 self as a great capitalist. 



We are wondering when "easy times ' are to come again. 

 They ought not and probably will not recur till "judgment 

 begins at the house of God ; " till the poor begin to be willing to 

 help the poor; till ihey ceane to regard safety lo themselves as the 

 ultimate good ; till they are inspired to help others as well as to 

 protect themselves. 



When the poor have canonized selfishness by looking only for 

 the safety of their own means, is it any wonder that a selGshness 

 of bi'oader grasp has confiscated all they have put in iis posses- 

 sion? The game has been, " keep what you have and catch what 

 you can," and at that the dozen directors have beaten the forty 

 thousand depositors. 



Life insurance takes its place in the savings bank system, and 

 in the same way in respect to it the people have gone crazy. 



The legitimacy of life insurance, under certain exigencies, and 

 within certain rational limi's, I should not wish to deny, I s^hould 

 even want to assert it. But the claim has been made that life in- 

 surance was the best form in which men could lay up property ; 



