163. The Age of Swindle

The Age of Swindle

Job_8:14 : ’93Whose trust shall be a spider’92s web.’94

The most skilful architects in all the world are the bee and the spider. The one puts up a sugar manufactory, and the other builds a slaughter-house for flies. On a bright summer morning, when the sun comes out and shines upon the spider’92s web, bedecked with dew, the gossamer structure seems bright enough for a suspension bridge for supernatural beings to cross on. But alas for the poor fly! which, in the latter part of the day, ventures on it, and is caught and dungeoned and destroyed. The fly was informed that it was a free bridge, and would cost nothing, but at the other end of the bridge the toll paid was its own life. The next day there comes down a strong wind, and away goes the web, and the marauding spider, and all that is left of the victimized fly. Most cruel as well as most ingenious is the spider. A prisoner in the Bastile, France, had one so trained that at the sound of a violin it every day came for its meal of flies. Job, the author of my text, and the leading scientist of his day, had, no doubt, watched the voracious process of this one insect with another, and saw spider and fly swept down with the same broom, or scattered by the same wind. Alas, that the world has so many designing spiders and victimized flies! There has not been a time when the utter and black irresponsibility of many men, having the financial interests of others in charge, has been more evident than in the last quarter of a century. The unroofing of banks, and disappearance of administrators with the funds of large estates, and the disorder amid post-office accounts and deficits amid United States officials, have made a pestilence of crime that solemnizes every thoughtful man and woman, and leads every philanthropist and Christian to ask: ’93What shall be done to stay the plague?’94 There is a monsoon abroad, a typhoon, a sirocco. I sometimes ask myself if it would not be better for men making wills to bequeath the property directly to the executors and officers of the court, and appoint the widows and orphans a committee to see that the former got all that did not belong to them.

The simple fact is that there are a large number of men sailing yachts and driving fast horses and members of expensive club-houses and controlling country-seats who would not be worth a dollar if they surrendered to its proper owners the property that they are using. Under some sudden reverse they fail, and with afflicted air seem to retire from the world, and seem almost ready for monastic life; when in two or three years they blossom out again, having compromised with their creditors’97that is, paid them nothing but regrets’97and the only difference between the second chapter of prosperity and the first is that their pictures are Murillos instead of Kensetts, and their horses go a mile in twenty seconds less than their predecessors, and instead of one country-seat they have two. I have watched and have noticed that nine out of ten of those who fail in what is called high life, have more means after than before the failure, and in many of the cases failure is only a stratagem to escape the payment of honest debts and put the world off the track while they practise a large swindle. There is something woefully wrong in the fact that these things are possible.

First of all, I charge the blame on careless, indifferent bank directors and boards having in charge great financial institutions. It ought not to be possible for a president or cashier or prominent officer of a banking institution to swindle it year after year without detection. I will undertake to say that if these frauds are carried on for two or three years without detection, either the directors are partners in the infamy and pocketed part of the theft, or they are guilty of a culpable neglect of duty, for which God will hold them as responsible as he holds the acknowledged defaulters. What right have prominent business men to allow their names to be published as directors in a financial institution, so that unsophisticated people are thereby induced to deposit their money in or buy the scrip thereof, when they, the published directors, are doing nothing for the safety of the institution? It is a case of deception most reprehensible. Many people with a surplus of money, not needed for immediate use, although it may be a little further on indispensable, are without friends competent to advise them, and they are guided solely by the character of the men whose names are associated with the institution. When the crash comes, and with the overthrow of the banks go the small earnings and limited fortunes of widows and orphans, and the helplessly aged, the directors stand with idiotic stare, and to the inquiry of the frenzied depositors and stockholders who have lost their all, and to the arraignment of an indignant public, have nothing to say except: ’93We thought it was all right. We did not know there was anything wrong going on.’94 It was their duty to know. They stood in a position which deluded the people with the idea that they were carefully observant. Calling themselves directors, they did not direct. They had opportunity of auditing accounts and inspecting the books. No time to do so? Then they had no business to accept the position. It seems to be the pride of some moneyed men to be directors in a great many institutions, and all they know is whether or not they get their dividends regularly; and their names are used as decoy ducks to bring others near enough to be made game of. What, first of all, is needed is that about five thousand bank directors and insurance company directors resign or attend to their business as directors. The business world will be full of fraud just as long as fraud is so easy. When you arrest the president and cashier of a bank for an embezzlement carried on for many years, have plenty of sheriffs out the same day to arrest all the directors. They are guilty either of neglect or complicity.

’93Oh,’94 some one will say, ’93better preach the Gospel and let business matters alone.’94 I reply: ’93If your Gospel does not inspire common honesty in the dealings of men, the sooner you close up your Gospel and pitch it into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean the better.’94 An orthodox swindler is worse than a heterodox swindler. The recitation of all the cathechisms and creeds ever written, and drinking from all the communion chalices that ever glittered in the churches of Christendom, will never save your soul unless your business character corresponds with your religious profession. Some of the worst scoundrels in America have been members of churches, and they got fat on sermons about heaven, when they most needed to have the pulpits preach that which would either bring them to repentance or thunder them out of the holy communion, where their presence was a sacrilege and an infamy.

We must especially deplore the misfortune of banks in various parts of this country, in that they damage the banking institution, which is the great convenience of the century, and indispensable to commerce and the advance of nations. With one hand it blesses the lender, and with the other it blesses the borrower. The bank was born of the world’92s necessities, and is venerable with the marks of thousands of years. Two hundred years ’93before Christ the Bank of Ilium existed, and paid its depositors ten per cent. The Bank of Venice was established in 1157, and was of such high credit that its bills were at a premium above coins, which were frequently clipped; Bank of Geneva, founded in 1345; Bank of Barcelona, 1401; Bank of Amsterdam, 1599; Bank of Hamburg, founded 1619, its circulation based on great silver bars kept in the vaults; Bank of England, started by William Patterson, in 1642, up to this day managing the stupendous debt of England; Bank of Scotland, founded in 1695; Bank of Ireland, 1783; Bank of North America, planned by Robert Morris, 1771, without whose financial help all the bravery of our grandfathers would not have achieved independence.

But now we have banks in all our cities and towns, thousands and thousands. On their shoulders are the interests of private individuals and great corporations. In them are the great arteries through which run the currents of the nation’92s life. They have been the resources of thousands of financiers in days of business exigency. They stand for accommodation, for facility; for individual, State and national relief. At their head and in their management there is as much interest and moral worth as in any class of men’97perhaps more. How nefarious, then, the behavior of those who bring disrepute upon this venerable, benignant and God-honored institution!

We also deplore the abuse of trust funds, because they fly in the face of that Divine goodness which seems determined to bless this land. We are having the eighth year of unexampled national harvest. The wheat gamblers get hold of the wheat, and the corn gamblers get hold of the corn. The full tide of God’92s mercy towards this land is put back by those great dykes of dishonest resistance. When God provides enough food and clothing to feed and apparel this whole nation like princes, the scrabble of dishonest men to get more than their share, and get it at all hazards, keeps everything shaking with uncertainty and everybody asking, ’93What next?’94 Every week makes new revelations. How many more bank presidents and bank cashiers have been speculating with other people’92s money, and how many more bank directors are in imbecile silence, letting the perfidy go on, the great and patient God only knows!

My opinion is that we have got near the bottom. The wind has been picked from the great bubble of American speculation. The men who thought that the Judgment Day was at least five thousand years off, have found it in 1888, 1887, 1886 and this nation has been taught that men must keep their hands out of other people’92s pockets. Great businesses built on borrowed capital have been obliterated, and men who had nothing, lost all they had. I believe we are started on a higher career of prosperity than this land has ever seen, if, and if, and if.

If, in the first place, men, and especially Christian men, will learn never to speculate upon borrowed capital. If you have a mind to take your own money and turn it all into kites, to fly them over every commons in the United States, you do society no wrong, except when you tumble your helpless children into the poorhouse for the public to take care of. But you have no right to take the money of others and turn it into kites. There is one word that has deluded more people into bankruptcy and State prison and perdition than any other word in commercial life, and that is the word ’93borrow;’94 that one word is responsible for all the defalcations and embezzlements and financial consternations of the last twenty years. When executors conclude to speculate with the funds of an estate committed to their charge, they do not purloin, they say they only borrow; when a banker makes an overdraught upon his institution, he does not commit a theft, he only borrows. When the officer of a company, by flaming advertisement in some religious papers, and gilt certificate of stock, gets a multitude of country people to put their small earnings into an enterprise for carrying on some undeveloped nothing, he does not fraudulently take their money, he only borrows. When a young man with easy access to his employer’92s money-drawer, or the confidential clerk by close propinquity to the account-books, takes a few dollars for a Wall street excursion, he expects to put it back; he will put it all back; he will put it all back very soon. He only borrows. What is needed is some man of gigantic limb to take his place at the curbstone in front of Trinity Church and when that word ’93borrow’94 comes bounding along, kick it clean through to Wall street ferry-boat, and if, striking on that, it bounds clear over till it strikes Brooklyn Heights or Brooklyn hill, it will be well for the City of Churches.

Why, when you are going to do wrong, pronounce so long a word as ’93borrow,’94 a word of six letters, when you can get a shorter word more descriptive of the reality, a word of only five letters, the word ’93steal?’94 There are times when we all borrow, and borrow legitimately, and borrow with the Divine blessing, for Christ, in his Sermon on the Mount, enjoins ’93from him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away.’94 A young man rightly borrows money to get his education. Purchasing a house and not able to pay all down in cash, the purchaser rightly borrows it on mortgage. Crises come in business when it would be wrong for a man not to borrow. But I roll this warning through all these aisles, over the backs of all these pews: never borrow to speculate; not a dollar, not a cent, not a farthing! Young men, young men, I warn you by your worldly prospects and the value of your immortal souls, do not do it! If I had only a worldly weapon to use on this subject I would give you the fact fresh from the highest authority, that ninety per cent. of those who go into speculation in Wall street lose all; but I have a better warning than a worldly warning. From the place where men have perished’97body, mind and soul’97stand off, stand off! Abstract pulpit discussion must step aside on this question. Faith and repentance are absolutely necessary, but faith and repentance are no more doctrines of the Bible than commercial integrity. Render to all their dues. Owe no man anything. And while I mean to preach faith and repentance, more and more to preach them, I do not mean to spend any time in chasing the Hittites and Jebusites and Girgashites of Bible times, when there are so many evils right around us destroying men and women for time and eternity. The greatest evangelistic preacher the world ever saw, a man who died for his evangelism’97the peerless Paul’97wrote to the Romans: ’93Provide things honest in the sight of all men;’94 wrote to the Corinthians, ’93Do that which is honest;’94 wrote to the Philippians, ’93Whatsoever things are honest;’94 wrote to the Hebrews, ’93Willing in all things to live honestly.’94 The Bible says, that faith without works is dead; which, being literally translated, means that if your business life does not correspond with your profession, your religion is a humbug.

Here is something that needs to be sounded into the ears of all the young men of America, and iterated and reiterated, if this country is ever to be delivered from its calamities, and commercial prosperity is to be established and perpetuated.

I have the highest commercial authority for saying, that when the memorable trouble broke out in Wall street four years ago, there were two hundred and twenty-five million dollars in suspense, which had already been spent. Spend no more than you make. And let us adjust all our business and our homes by the principles of the Christian religion. Our religion ought to mean just as much on Saturday and Monday as on the day between, and not be a mere periphrasis of sanctity. Our religion ought to first clean our hearts, and then it ought to clean our lives. Religion is not, as some seem to think, a sort of church delectation, a kind of confectionery, a sort of spiritual caramel or holy gum drop, or sanctified peppermint, or theological an’e6sthetic. It is an omnipotent principle, all-controlling, all-conquering. You may get along with something less than that, and you may deceive yourself with it; but you cannot deceive God, and you cannot deceive the world.

The keen business man will put on his spectacles, and he will look clear through to the back of your head, and see whether your religion is a fiction or a fact. And you cannot hide your samples of sugar or rice or tea or coffee if they are false; you cannot hide them under the cloth of a communion-table. All your prayers go for nothing so long as you misrepresent your banking institution, and in the amount of resources you put down more specie and more fractional currency and more clearing-house certificates and more legal-tender notes and more loans and more discounts than there really are, and when you give an account of your liabilities you do not mention all the unpaid dividends, and the United States bank-notes outstanding, and the individual deposits, and the obligations to other banks and bankers. An authority more scrutinizing than that of any bank examiner will go through and through your business.

I stand this morning before many who have trust funds. It is a compliment to you that you have been so entrusted; but I charge you, in the presence of God and the world, be careful, be as careful of the property of others as you are careful of your own. Above all, keep your own private account at the bank separate from your account as trustee of an estate, or trustee of an institution. That is the point at which thousands of people make shipwreck. They get the property of others mixed up with their own property, they put it into investment, and away it all goes, and they cannot return that which they borrowed. Then comes the explosion, and the money market is shaken, and the press denounces, and the church thunders expulsion. You have no right to use the property of others, except for. their advantage, nor without consent, unless they are minors. If with their consent you invest their property as well as you can, and it is all lost, you are not to blame; you did the best you could, but do not come into the delusion which has ruined so many men, of thinking because a thing is in their possession, therefore it is theirs. You have a solemn trust that God has given you.

In this vast assemblage there may be some who have misappropriated trust funds. Put them back, or, if you have so hopelessly involved them that you cannot put them back, confess the whole thing to those whom you have wronged, and you will sleep better nights, and you will have the better chance for your soul. If all the trust funds that have been misappropriated should suddenly fly to their owners, and all the property that has been purloined should suddenly go back to its owners, it would crush into ruin every city in America.

Let me say in the most emphatic manner to all young men, dishonesty will never pay. An abbot wanted to buy a piece of ground, and the owner would not sell it, but the owner finally consented to let it to him until he could raise one crop, and the abbot sowed acorns’97a crop of two hundred years! And I tell you, young man, that the dishonesties which you plant in your heart and life may seem to be very insignificant, but they will grow up until they will overshadow all time and all eternity. It will not be a crop for two hundred years, but a crop for everlasting ages.

I have also a word of comfort for all who suffer from the malfeasance of others, and every honest man, woman and child does suffer from what goes on in financial scampdom. Society is so bound together that all the misfortunes which good people suffer in business matters come from the misdeeds of others. Bear up under distress, strong in God. He will see you through, though your misfortunes should be centupled. Philosophers tell us that a column of air forty-five miles in height rests on every man’92s head and shoulders. But that is nothing compared with the pressure that business life has put upon many of you. God made up his mind long ago how many or how few dollars it would be best for you to have. Trust to his appointment. The door will soon open to let you up. What shock of delight for men who for thirty years have been in business anxiety, when they shall suddenly awake in everlasting holiday!

On the maps of the Arctic regions there are two places whose names are remarkable, given I suppose, on some Polar expedition: ’93Cape Farewell’94 and ’93Thank God Harbor.’94 At this last the Polaris wintered in 1871, and the Tigress in 1873. Some ships have passed the Cape, yet never reached the Harbor. But from what I know of many of you, I have concluded that though your voyage of life may be very rough, run into by icebergs on this side and icebergs on that, you will in due time reach Cape Farewell, and there bid good-by to all annoyances, and soon after drop anchor in the calm and imperturbable waters of Thank God Harbor’97’94Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage