Money is the motive power of the world. In executive capacity, it is an angel or devil. By it civilization must be measured, and all accomplishment wrought. A material blessing, it is the parent, too, of such an amount of spiritual comfort as may not be reckoned. Money will buy everything but health and affection; and, through its aid, the one is protected and the other provoked. No marvel that men worship money; it is the strongest of secular deities, the firmest of supporters, and the staunchest of friends. Nobody can live without it; it is life itself. Every one must and will have it in certain quantity, either by fair means or foul. Every community is composed of borrowers and lenders, and the former are always in stupendous majority. They who have most lend least; and, consequently, borrowers are brought to depend on the class widely removed from prosperity.
The number of men who subsist upon others by persistent fleecing can scarcely be estimated. They abound in this country, especially in New York, which may well be called the haven of the hard-up, and the blissful seat of the professional borrower. All roads lead to New York; all swindlers and adventurers journey thither in expectation of finding victims. Their anticipations are generally realized, and they bless the stars which have guided them to monetary Manhattan. They come by every boat and train, from every state and nation, with devices, plans, and pretexts for genteelly defrauding that colossal goose known as the Public.
Fortunes are so much more easily and quickly made here than in any other city, that the borrower, whatever his calling or his clime, is tempted to visit us because confident of his reward. Europeans often wonder at the carelessness of Americans in respect to money, and are astounded when told that, in this Western land, the chief requirements for procuring loans without security are falsehood and effrontery. They cannot understand how it is possible for hundreds and thousands of men to live by politely robbing others, and yet keep up an assumption of honesty and respectability. Aware that such things could not be in the old world capitals, they are surprised at the opposite order of affairs over here.
THE METROPOLIS AS A FIELD FOR SWINDLERS.
It would be extremely interesting to know the amount that this community is swindled out of annually, not only by its own citizens and people, but by foreigners of every grade. I venture to affirm, that there are almost always here from twenty to twenty-five thousand persons whose principal business it is to filch from the purse of whomsoever they can. Borrowing is their exclusive profession. They have reduced it to a science, and arranged it as an art. They have a certain genius for imposition, a dramatic power of misrepresentation, a fecundity of invention which would have inured to their great advantage in some honest calling. But of honesty they will have none; preferring to wheedle, falsify, and plunder by the niceties of manipulation and the subtleties of deception. These professional borrowers are of divers degrees and countless types, though their end is continuously and persistently the same.
The normal mind would suppose that borrowing is the hardest way to get money; that earnest and honest work of any kind would be much the easier of the two. But the mind of the professional borrower is abnormal. Having no clear conception of truth, justice, or advantage, it sees life at an extremely obtuse angle. It may have been healthful at first, but it becomes diseased by continued violation of integrity, and finally ceases to have cognizance of its own operations.
Money is often called, and generally seems to be, a vulgar commodity, which generous souls ought to be above considering. The mere possession of money may not be, and indeed it very rarely is, either refining or ennobling; but to be without it, begets unhappiness, opens the door to temptation, provokes a tendency to disesteem, if not to degradation. Nothing is so demoralizing as to be under material obligations that cannot be discharged; and when these obligations are voluntarily and continually assumed, he who assumes them grows to be, ere long, a sycophant and a slave.
BEWARE OF DEBTS.
“Beware of debts!” is an excellent motto for secular guidance, and its conscientious follower will, in the long run, thank his stars for its adoption. To owe is to be owned, to surrender individuality, to lose independence, to forfeit self-respect. The debtor soon parts with his sensibility, and waxes callous. His course winds downward; at every turn he is forced to do greater violence to his natural self and the cause of truth. Eventually, he becomes a worse offender than those the laws punish; for he is an enemy to society whom society has no power to confine.
THE CLASSES OF BORROWERS.