lace in any corporation or manufacturing company. The young man may go
in at the bottom, but he will shoot up to the top in a year or two, with
surprising agility, over the heads of a couple of thousand other and
better men. The rich man can defy the law and scoff at justice; while
the poor man, who cannot pay lawyers for delay, goes to prison. These
are the veriest platitudes of demagogy, but they are true--absolutely
and undeniably true.

We know all this and we act accordingly, and our children imbibe a like
knowledge with their mother's or whatever other properly sterilized milk
we give them as a substitute. We, they and everybody else know that if
enough money can be accumulated the possessor will be on Easy Street for
the rest of his life--not merely the Easy Street of luxury and comfort,
but of security, privilege and power; and because we like Easy Street
rather than the Narrow Path we devote ourselves to getting there in the
quickest possible way.

We take no chances on getting our reward in the next world. We want it
here and now, while we are sure of it--on Broadway, at Newport or in
Paris. We do not fool ourselves any longer into thinking that by
self-sacrifice here we shall win happiness in the hereafter. That is all
right for the poor, wretched and disgruntled. Even the clergy are prone
to find heaven and hell in this world rather than in the life after
death; and the decay of faith leads us to feel that a purse of gold in
the hand is better than a crown of the same metal in the by-and-by. We
are after happiness, and to most of us money spells it.

The man of wealth is protected on every side from the dangers that beset
the poor. He can buy health and immunity from anxiety, and he can
install his children in the same impregnable position. The dust of his
motor chokes the citizen trudging home from work. He soars through life
on a cushioned seat, with shock absorbers to alleviate all the bumps. No
wonder we trust in money! We worship the golden calf far more than ever
did the Israelites beneath the crags of Sinai. The real Money Trust is
the tacit conspiracy by which those who have the money endeavor to hang
on to it and keep it among themselves. Neither at the present time do
great fortunes tend to dissolve as inevitably as formerly.

Oliver Wendell Holmes somewhere analyzes the rapid disintegration of the
substantial fortunes of his day and shows how it is, in fact, but "three
generations from shirtsle