If the Millionaire Does Not Give, He is
"Stingy;" if He Does Give, He
is Called a "Briber."
Dr. Emil G. Hirsch, the distinguished Chicago rabbi, says that "charity,
as the word is known to-day, is only a bribe of moneyed men to make a
community forget the wrongs heaped upon it." The New York _Globe_ catches
at the text, and brings out the fact that present-day critics are leaving
the rich no refuge at all. The rich man is the common target.
Heretofore the poor man has had the world's sympathy as the
under dog. Now he is becoming supercanine and the rich man
subcanine. Does the rich man not give? He is stingy. Does he
give? He is a briber--passes from negative to positive
crime.
If he would get rid of superfluous wealth his only chance is
to buy edifices and burn them down uninsured. Even then he
might be arrested for arson and accused of maliciously
overworking the poor firemen; or hygienists would say he was
dirtying the air with smoke, and thus murdering those
compelled to breathe it.
Instead of settlements for the neglected poor--such
institutions as grew up in East London after Sir Walter
Besant wrote "All Sorts and Conditions of Men"--there should
be settlements for the neglected rich.
As things are now they have no chance--their best is
necessarily a worst. Victims of society, equally condemned
whether they do or don't do, no option seems open but to
journey to the extreme edge of space and jump off into
nothingness.
A favorite doctrine of Calvinistic New England was that a
man was not saved unless entirely and absolutely willing to
be damned for the glory of God; with a similar inexorable
logic our new moralists have established the doctrine of
unescapable taint--that if a man have and keep he is stewed
in iniquity; that if he does not keep, adding would-be
bribery to his other sins, he scatters his own corruption
among the innocent.
Ground between upper and nether stones, fenced in all
directions, the life of the rich is necessarily an ethical
tragedy. Whatever he does or doesn't do, the rich man is a
traitor to the kingdom, a puller down of the temple.
It is obvious that the only thing feasible is to abolish
wealth and go back to the tree-climbing days, to that period
of primitive apehood when each plucked his own cocoanut and
had no thought of ownership, tainted or untainted.