Love of Gain
The Americans are proverbially fond of gain – and many anecdotes are told of the unscrupulous avidity with which they pursue any path which leads to riches. – But it is a well established fact, that unprincipled beings may be found of all nations, who will be induced by the hope of gain to pursue with glee the most disgusting employment – employments, which are revolting and disgraceful to human nature. And how many thousands, nay, millions, of human beings, not only gain their very subsistence from, but fatten on the miseries of others.
Acquisitiveness Becomes the Ruling Passion
For the Voice of Industry
…
Why is it that, with very few exceptions, you have the world of wealth arranged against you? Why have you to wage, almost exclusively the unequal conflict of poverty against riches? This I think an important question; and to form a proper judgment upon the subject, we must very closely examine the process of society in the accumulation of wealth. If we do this, we shall find that riches possess according to influence on the finer or sympathetic feelings of the human mind and eventually leave little else but the animal passions, making a total wreck of everything noble, generous or philanthropic.
Acquisitiveness becomes the ruling passion, conscientiousness having become prostrate; and dollars are the only joyous sounds that strike upon the ear — they are the only objects of sincere worship.
Whatever outward professions the fashion of the world may force upon the man, gold is still his god, the object of his adoration; and O what sacrifices have been made in the obtaining this idol! What struggles with the best feelings of humanity! Stern justice had to be conquered, merely had to be banished, and benevolence to be trampled upon; and even these, dreadful as they may appear, are nothing when compared with other sacrifices which have been made to the yellow God. Ask the toil worn laborer, “upon whom that glorious, invigorating luminary is scarce ever permitted to shed its genial rays, “how it is that be is still compelled to toil on in his declining years; and if be understood his position be would answer, “I am the slave of wealth.”
Ask that pale, emaciated girl, who is wending her way with a faltering step to rattle boxes, why she has become a mere wreck of humanity, and she will tell you she is “the slave of wealth.” Nay, ask our mother earth why she receives such numbers of the human family prematurely into her bosom, and universal nature cries, “they were the victims of wealth.” Thus thousand upon thousands perish to glut their grandeur. These are no fanciful images, but real and stubborn facts.
In what does our boasted freedom consist? Are we not continually practising the oppressions and cruelties of the old monarchies? For what did our father fight and die? Was it only to leave to their posterity the empty name of freemen, without any tangible advantage in a social point of view. Then, indeed, their blood was shed in vain; and their sons may see in the proud monument of the Bunker Hill, another link in the chain of oppression.
Americans! There is a greater tyrant than old, mad George III to conquer. Cornwallis was nothing, compared with Gold; his power is universal and, under present circumstances, as oppressive as it is extensive, it has created and established false systems which must be attacked and destroyed, before mankind can boast of freedom or be happy.
Where are the spiritual teachers of the people? Is their moral and social welfare nothing to these men? Do they never deal in substantial realities? Never tell the people that if labor has its duties, there are also rights belonging to it? “No, no; “they are the slaves of wealth.”
Where are the men of science, who teach mankind the power and capabilities of nature, when directed by labor, to increase the happiness of the human family - who have unravelled the mysteries of by-gone ages - who have taught mankind philosophic and eternal truths as it regards their connection with the universe or which they form a part? Why do not they contend for for the natural rights of man? They, too, “are the slaves of wealth.” But I must conclude my scribbling and if you insert this may try again.
I am, sir,
—An Observer
