enings of
no ultimate value whatsoever; that an Oriental dance and pantomime given
in New York by "society" women, led by Mrs. Waldorf Astor, where a rich
young woman reaped astonishment and admiration by coiling a live boa
constrictor around her neck, was one of the great events of the day,
because the newspapers devoted two columns to it, whereas scarcely any
mention was made of armies of men being out of work.

MONEY AND HUMANITY.

As it was in 1908 so was it in the decades when the capitalists of one
kind or another were first piling up wealth; they were the weighty class
of the day; their slightest doings were chronicled, and their flimsiest
sayings were construed oracularly as those of public opinion. Numberless
people sickened and died in the industrial strife and in miserable
living quarters; ubiquitous capitalism was a battle-field strewn with
countless corpses; but none of the professed expositors of morality,
religion or politics gave heed to the wounded or the dead, or to the
conditions which produced these hideous and perpetual slaughters of men,
women and children. But to the victors, no matter what their methods
were, or how much desolation and death they left in their path, the
richest material rewards were awarded; wealth, luxury, station and
power; and the Law, the majestic, exalted Law, upheld these victors in
their possessions by force of courts, police, sheriffs, and by rifles
loaded with bullets if necessary.

Thus, to recapitulate, the Astors debauched, swindled and murdered the
Indians; they defrauded the city of land and of taxes; they assisted in
corrupting legislatures; they profited from the ownership of blocks of
death-laden tenement houses; they certified to thieving administrations.
Once having wrested into their possession the results of all of these
and more fraudulent methods in the form of millions of dollars in
property, what was their strongest ally? The Law. Yes, the Law,
theoretically so impartial and so reverently indued with awe--and with
force. From fraud and force the Astor fortune came, and by force, in the
shape of law, it was fortified in their control. If a starving man had
gone into any one of the Astor houses and stolen even as much as a
silver spoon, the Law would have come to the rescue of outraged property
by sentencing him to prison. Or if, in case of a riot, the Astor
property was damaged, the Law also would have stepped in and compelled
the county to idemnify.