The cost of opulence: Who pays the ultimate price for concentrated wealth?

“ Thus all about us is the moving and shifting spectacle of riches and poverty, side by side, inextricable.
The human mind, lost in a maze of inequalities that it cannot explain and evils that it cannot, singly, remedy, must adapt itself as best it can. An acquired indifference to the ills of others is the price at which we live. A certain dole of sympathy, a casual mite of personal relief is the mere drop that any one of us alone can cast into the vast ocean of human misery. Beyond that we must harden ourselves lest we too perish. We feed well while others starve. ”

“ The merit of their beauty is greatly enhanced by their scarcity. With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches; which, in their eye, is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves. ”

“ Society is to blame, with its inane traditions, and, along with it, the senseless passion for inflicting slight and pain upon those in an inferior position which besets so many women in their own homes. And so, not wishing to be treated as servants, without any proper status or dignity, the superior women, who would make the best governesses, seek more independent and congenial occupation; and the training of girls at home falls into the hands of hopeless mediocrities, who have little knowledge and less manners, whose point of view is squalid and shabby and personal. ”

“ Alas we want the justice which prevents causes no less than the charity which palliates effects. See yet the unnatural disparity in man's condition: bloated opulence and starving penury in the some street! See the pauperism, want, licentiousness, intemperance and crime, in the midst of us; see the havoc made of woman; see the poor deserted by their elder brother, while it is their sweat which enriches your ground, builds your railroads, and piles up your costly houses. The tall gallows stands in tho back-ground of society, overlooking it all ”

“ The poor in spirit are perforce mere cattle, fit flesh for slavery and for suffering. As long as there shall be a multitude of the poor in spirit, so will there be a multitude of wretched beings, mere beasts of burden, exploited, preyed upon by an infinitesimal minority of thieves and bandits. The happy people will one day be that which is possessed of knowledge and will. ”

“ Could one not see the inevitable necessity of proceeding to a fresh apportionment of wealth? Such iniquity, in which on the one hand one beheld idleness gorged with possession, and on the other pain-racked labour, agonising in misery, had made man wolfish towards man.
Instead of uniting to conquer and domesticate the forces of nature, men wolfishly devoured one another. Their barbarous social system cast them to hatred and error and madness; infants and aged beings were abandoned, and woman was crushed down, to become a beast of burden for some, and a mere instrument of pleasure for others. ”

“ I have remarked that nuns resemble her astonishingly in all their material relations with the world: the same implacable hardness, the same smiling austerity, the same lack of honesty or of consideration for others, the same resolute determination to get the best of outsiders in the matter of labour or bargains, to give as little and obtain as much as possible in all transactions, to underfeed, underpay, and overwork,—and all with the same high air of self-approval and righteousness. ”

“ The rich man, the man who has time and money at command, he surely, if any, is the man to consume it litigiously and frivolously. No wonder however, if to a superficial glance, the poor should appear more litigious than he. There are more of the poor than of the rich: and to the eye of unreflecting opulence, the causes of the poor are all trivial ones.
We think of the poor in the way of charity, for to deal out charity gratifies not only benevolence, but pride. We think much of them in the way of charity, but we think little of them in the way of justice. ”

“ The Cardinal shrank from nothing. Many of the details of his projected work were never carried out, and it has been well said that he was a more successful statesman abroad than at home, where a mass of privileges and vested interests, with the growing necessity for heavy taxes, were millstones hung round a financial reformer’s neck. Richelieu’s success in crushing the great nobles brought no benefit to the common people; it was all for the advantage of the King. Among his early dreams were those of encouraging agriculture and manufactures after the example of Henry IV. and Sully ”

“ When we are in want of necessaries, we must part with all superfluities, of which the value, as it rises in times of opulence and prosperity, so it sinks in times of poverty and distress. It is otherwise with necessaries. Their real price, the quantity of labour which they can purchase or command, rises in times of poverty and distress, and sinks in times of opulence and prosperity, which are always times of great abundance; for they could not otherwise be times of opulence and prosperity [Pg 81] Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity. ”

“ One circumstance I must record in passing as being well worthy of notice. As soon as it was evident that [64] the vessel was hopelessly lost, the seamen forrard, though perfectly well behaved, insisted that every drop of intoxicating liquor should be thrown overboard, and, in order that it should be done thoroughly, themselves carried it out. As the giant breakers destroyed the upper works of the ship, much useful wreckage came ashore, and one calm day a visit was paid to her, which was rewarded by the salvage of several sails and a quantity of cordage. ”

“ Drake grinned at the humor of that situation—a scalawag crew trying to steal aboard the ship they had abandoned, Morris and his fellows somewhere out there in the dark, himself battling for the salvage like a dog for a bone, and all the time, down there in the hold, the sea cocks flooding the sinking ship.
The number of his assailants increased. They were urged on by the leader in a hoarse mutter:
“He’s alone. He must be alone, because no one else comes. Down him! Down him, because he’s probably got a boat coming!” ”

“ How many riots, how many hangings, how many special commissions we can trace back, all proceeding from the delusions of the public press! How many persons have lost their lives for plundering, pulling down, and burning the property of millers, butchers, and bakers; how much blood has been spilt, every drop of which blood may be fairly placed at the door of those who urged these poor fellows on, and instigated them to acts of violence against those classes of persons, by falsely accusing them of being the cause of the high price of provisions. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the seller endeavours to transmit the burden to the purchaser, and the purchaser places it upon the consumer as opportunity may occur in relation to the general market situation all over the world. ”

“ As the one mode of expense is more favorable than the other to the opulence of an individual, so is it likewise to that of a nation. The houses, the furniture, the clothing of the rich, in a little time, become useful to the inferior and middling ranks of people. They are able to purchase them when their superiors grow weary of them, and the general accommodation of the whole people is thus gradually improved, when this mode of expense becomes universal among men of fortune. ”

“ Shall we ask in bitterness if the great aim of Christians the world over is—or has been—to feed them, or give them ample opportunity to provide themselves with food, to see that they are clothed and given abundant opportunity for useful self-expression? Myriads of Christians do have such a desire, but profit is the great end of life for most people—even nominal Christians—profit too often at the expense of others. We produce goods for scarcity in order to make prices high. We seek to extend our markets all over the world for the sake of private profit. ”

“ Of all those expensive and uncertain projects, however, which bring bankruptcy upon the greater part of the people who engage in them, there is none, perhaps, more perfectly ruinous than the search after new silver and gold mines. It is, perhaps, the most disadvantageous lottery in the world, or the one in which the gain of those who draw the prizes bears the least proportion to the loss of those who draw the blanks; for though the prizes are few, and the blanks many, the common price of a ticket is the whole fortune of a very rich man. ”

“ Crime, like a leprous cancer, spreads from individuals to nations. It should be the duty, therefore, of a Christian to oppose everything which tends to corrupt morals and promote licentiousness. History, with her grave and solemn countenance, constantly admonishes us, that, whatever may have been the immediate cause of national calamities, licentiousness of morals has always preceded and precipitated the catastrophe. The political revolutions which have most afflicted mankind were introduced by an era of national profligacy. ”