supplanted the religious. Even the very admonition
given by pastors to the poor, "Be content with your lot," was a
preachment entirely in harmony with the aims of the trading class which,
in order to make money, necessarily had to have a multitude of workers
to work for it and from whose labor the money, in its finality, had to
come. In the very same breath that they advised the poverty-stricken to
reverence their superiors and to expect their reward in heaven, the
ministers glorified the aggrandizing merchants as God's chosen men who
were called upon to do His work.[50]

Since the laws favored the propertied interests, it was correspondingly
easy for them to get direct control of government functions and
personally exercise them. In New England rich shipowners rose at once to
powerful elective and appointive officers. Likewise in New York rich
landowners, and in the South, plantation men were selected for high
offices. Law-making bodies, from Congress down, were filled with
merchants, landowners, plantation men and lawyers, which last class was
trained, as a rule, by association and self-interest to take the views
of the propertied class and vote with, and for, it. A puissant
politico-commercial aristocracy developed which, at all times, was
perfectly conscious of its best interests. The worker was regaled with
flattering commendations of the dignity of labor and sonorous
generalizations and promises, but the ruling class took care of the
laws.

By means of these partial laws, the propertied interests early began to
get tremendously valuable special privileges. Banking rights, canal
construction, trade privileges, government favors, public franchises all
came in succession.

THE RIGORS OF LAW ON THE POOR.

At the same time that laws were enacted or were twisted to suit the will
of property, other laws were long in force oppressing the poor to a
terrifying degree.

Poor debtors could be thrown in jail indefinitely, no matter how small a
sum they owned. In law, the laborer was accorded few rights. It was easy
to defraud him of his meager wages, since he had no lien upon the
products of his labor. His labor power was all that he had to sell, and
the value of this power was not safeguarded by law. But the products
created by his labor power in the form of property were fortified by the
severest laws. For the laborer to be in debt was equal to a crime, in
fact, in its results, worse than a crime. The burglar or pic