The Money Power
1 The rich man’s wealth is his strong city: the destruction of the poor is their poverty.” — x. 15.
JERE he is describing what is, rather than prescribing what ought to be. The verse acknowledges and proclaims a prominent feature in the condition of the world. It is not a command from the law of God, but a fact from the history of men. In all ages and in all lands money has been a mighty power; and its relative importance increases with the advance of civilization. Money is one of the principal instruments by which the affairs of the world are turned; and the man who holds that instrument in his grasp, can make himself felt in his age and neighbourhood. It does not reach the divine purpose; but it controls human action. It is constrained to become God’s servant; but it makes itself the master of man.
It is an interesting and remarkable fact, that the Jews wield this power in a greater degree than any other people. Other channels of effort have been shut up from them, and consequently the main stream of the nation’s energies has turned in the direction of money. This circumstance explains at once how their position has been acquired; but the ultimate design of Providence in the riches of the Jews cannot be seen as yet. Already the germs of vast power are in possession of the Jews, but in the meantime, the want of a country of their own effectually checks its exercise. The mighty lever is in their hands, but they are comparatively powerless for want of a fulcrum to lean it on. The proposal to buy the land of Canaan has often been mooted among them. They could easily produce the price; but other difficulties interpose. The power that “letteth” may, however, be taken out of the way sooner and more suddenly than politicians deem. In those eastern countries in our own day the angel of the Lord is doing wondrously; it is our part, like Manoah and his wife, reverently to look on. All powers, and the money power among them, are in the hands of our Father; nothing can happen amiss to his dear child.
Over against this formidable power stands the counterpart weakness, — “the destruction of the poor is their poverty.” This feebleness of the body politic is as difficult to deal with as its active diseases. If pauperism be not so acute an affection as crime, it is more widely spread, and requires as much of the doctor’s care. Besides being an ailment itself, it is a predisposition to other and more dangerous evils. All questions have two sides, and so has this. On one side the rich ought to help the poor: on the other, the poor ought to help themselves. By both efforts, simultaneous and proportionate, pauperism may easily be managed: under either alone it is utterly unmanageable. It is the part of those who have strength without wealth, to labour diligently for daily bread, that those only who have neither strength nor wealth may be cast for support upon the rich. If the community are obliged to support the poor only, the exertion will be healthful; but if they are compelled to bear also the profligate, they will sink oppressed themselves beneath the load. The poor we have always with us: this is the appointment of the Lord, to support them will do us good: it is more blessed to give than to receive. The vicious we have also with us, but to support them is pernicious both to them and us. We should correct and train them. But let it be known and reverenced as a providential law, that no possible amount of rates or contributions can relieve the poverty that is caused by idleness and intemperance among the population. The disease is in its own nature incurable by that species of appliance. All such appliances feed the disease, and nourish it into strength. Though all the wealth of the nation were thrown into the jaws of this monster, it would not be satisfied: the lean kine would eat up all the fat ones, and be themselves no fatter. To supply the children by increased poor-rates, while every enticement is offered to the wretched parents to spend their wages in dissipation, is like pouring water into a cistern which has not a bottom, and wondering why it is never filled. When you have poured in all your substance, it will be as empty as when you began.
We are under law to God. The wheels of his providence are
Ligh and dreadful. If we presumptuously or ignorantly stand in their way, they will crush us by their mighty movements. We must set ourselves, by social arrangements, to diminish temptations, and by moral appliances to reclaim the vicious, if we expect to thrive, or even to exist as a community. Vice, positively cherished by erroneous legislation, and neglected by a lukewarm religion, threatens to produce a poverty, such in magnitude and kind as will involve rich and poor in one common destruction. Money answereth all things in its own legitimate province of material supply; but when beyond its province you ask it to stop the gaps which vice is making, it is a dumb idol — it has no answer to give at alL
The struggle between manufacturers and mechanics in the form of strikes, a kind of intermittent fever to which this country is eminently subject, offers a luminous commentary on this text. In these conflicts, the rich man’s wealth is his strong city, and the destruction of the poor is their poverty. The masters have most money, and fewest mouths to fill; therefore they hold longer out, and generally gain the victory, as the Russian army captured Kars, by starving the garrison. The men have little capital, and many thousand hungry wives and children. Poverty makes them weak, and the weak go to the wall. Their defeat is a great calamity: perhaps their victory would have been a greater.
A large proportion of the penniless are in a greater or less degree reckless. Partly their recklessness has made them poor; and partly their poverty has made them reckless. There is a reciprocal action in the process which enhances the result. When a multitude, who are all poor, combine for united action, rash and regardless spirits gain influence and direct the course. Such a spirit, powerful by the numbers whom it wields, is dangerous to every interest of the community. In this country, working men might take possession of the strong city as well as their masters; they might make this “unrighteous mammon” their own friend. Money, though a bad master, is a good servant. Money to the working men would answer all the ends which the strike contemplates, if each, by patient industry and temperance, would save a portion for himself. If a thousand men, of a district or a class, possessed on an average a free capital of fifty pounds each, the fruit of their own savings, they could maintain their own ground <7> 12 in a conflict with employers. Their success would be sure, as fai as their claim might be legitimate; and their success would be salutary, both to themselves and their neighbours.
Any great community of men is like a body; all members have not the same office, but each is useful — each is necessary in its own place. In virtue of their union, if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it. Thus, by the constitution of things, each has an interest in the welfare of all. In arranging the laws of his universe, the Creator has given a bounty on the exercise of charity, and imposed heavy taxes for the discouragement of quarrels between man and man, or between class and class.
The whole community of rich and poor, linked together in their various relations, may be likened to a living body. Suppose it to be the body of a swimmer in the water. The limbs and arms are underneath, toiling incessant to keep the head above the surface; and the head, so supported, keeps a look-out for the interests of the whole. If the head be kept comfortably above the water, and no more, the labour of the limbs will not be oppressive; but if a disagreement occur, and one member plot against another, damage will accrue to all.
If the head thoughtlessly and proudly attempt to lift itself too high, thereby and immediately a double effort is entailed upon the labouring limbs, — such an effort as they cannot long sustain. Wearied with the unnatural exertion, they soon begin to slacken their strokes, and, as a consequence, the head that unwisely sought to tower above its proper height sinks down beneath it. On the other hand, if the limbs beneath, jealous of the easy and honourable and elevated position of the head, should intermit their strokes of set purpose to bring it down to their own level, they would certainly accomplish their object. When the limbs beneath cease to strike out, the head helplessly sinks beneath the water. The head would indeed suffer, but the limbs which inflicted the suffering would have nothing to boast of. When the head came down, the breathing ceased, and the blood got no renewing. The heart no longer, by its strong pulsations, sent the life blood through its secret channels to the distant limbs, and a cold cramp came creeping over them. Glad were they therefore, if it were not too late, to strike forth again in order to raise the head above the surface, as the only means of preserving their own life
The promiscuous mass of human beings that are welded together by their necessities and interests in this island is like a strong swimmer in the sea; and, alas! it is too often like “a strong swimmer in his agony.” Easily might the huge but well-proportioned body lie on the water in a calm, and successfully buffet the waves when a storm comes on, if all the parts were willing to work in harmony. We have the knowledge and the power, and the material means, sufficient to maintain in comfort the whole population, without turning any into slaves; but half our productive capacity is lost by the want of concert and co-operation. The head — and here we mean by that term merely those who have wealth and superior position — the head, in selfishness or silliness, unduly exalts itself. There is a competition in costly luxuries which throws heavier toil down on the labouring class. In the shape of long hours, and night-work, and diminished wages, it entails an agony in those members of the body which minister to its demands: in some poor garret, or in some dark cellar, the racking strain is felt, and the inmates know not whose weight has brought it on. In like manner, when the derangement begins below, the hurt is quickly thrown up to the head, and thence reverberates down to its sources, working reduplicated sorrow there. Head and members are all on the water; and a great deep yawns beneath. Moderate exertion, if it be steady and uniform, will keep every part comfortably buoyant; but mutual animosities work common ruin. The stoppage of labour which brings down the head will soon paralyze the members: the inordinate uplifting of the head, which overtasks the toiling limbs, will rebound from the sufferings of the multitude a stroke of vengeance to lay the lofty low.
Two truths stand conspicuously out from all this confusion; — the world has a righteous Ruler, and the Ruler has a dislocated world to deal with. They speak of the progress and the perfection of the species: we are far from the goal as yet, even if we be in the way to it. The sign from heaven that most surely marks its neighbourhood is, One is our Master, even Christ, and all we are brethren: when we see that beauteous bud swelling and bursting and blooming all over our land, we may safely conclude that her millennial summer is nigh.