MANUFACTURER: Without this system of industry the subjugation of North America to civilization would have been impossible; we could never have shown the world the magnificent spectacle of—
CONSCIENCE: There is a little boy standing ten hours a day up to his ankles in the water in a coal-mine.
COAL MONOPOLIST: I have a statistician who can prove—he can prove anything—that the workingman is a great deal better off than he ever was, that he makes more than I do, that small incomes are increasing and large ones decreasing, that there is no involuntary poverty, and that the workingmen could live on twenty-five cents each a day and buy up the United States with their savings, and—
CONSCIENCE: How long shall it be cheaper to run over workingmen and women at the railroad crossings in the cities than to put up gates?
CLERGYMAN: The poor we are to have with us always.
CONSCIENCE: That sewing-woman you see pawning her shawl has lived this winter with her two children in a room without fire. Are you wearing one of the shirts she finished?
STATESMAN: The workingman has the ballot and the newspapers. He is a free citizen.
CONSCIENCE: As the nights grow colder see how the number of girls on the street increases.
It is this new conscience, the conscience of Jesus Christ, that appraises a hungry child to be of more value than ten thousand palaces, that must animate and dominate the church that is called by His name, in its war against the gold god of modern society.
You may find this conscience throbbing in Ella Wheeler Wilcox's plea for "Justice, not Charity."