The Price of a Soul

by William Jennings Bryan

If a man gets too big a house it becomes a burden to him, and some have had this experience. Not infrequently a young couple will start out poor and struggle along in a little house, looking forward to the time when they can build a big house. After a while the time arrives and they build a big house, larger, possibly, than they intended to and it nearly always costs more than they thought it would, and then they struggle along the rest of their lives looking back to the time when they lived in a little house.

We speak of people being independently rich. That is a mistake; they are dependently rich. The richer a man is the more dependent he is—the more people he depends upon to help him collect his income, and the more people he depends upon to help him spend his income. Sometimes a couple will start out doing their own work—the wife doing the work inside the house and the man outside; but they prosper, and after a while they are able to afford help. They get a girl to help the wife inside and a man to help the husband outside; then they prosper more—and they get two girls to help inside and two men to help outside, then three girls inside and three men outside. Finally they have so many girls helping inside and so many men helping outside that they can not leave the house—they have to stay at home and look after the establishment. And this is not a new condition. One of the Latin poets complained of “the cares that hover about the fretted ceilings of the rich,” and it was this condition that inspired Charles Wagner to write his little book entitled “The Simple Life,” in which he entered an eloquent protest against the materialism which makes man the slave of his possessions and presented an earnest plea for the raising of the spiritual above the purely physical. I repeat, there is a limit to the amount a man can wisely spend upon a home.

But a man can give his money away. Yes, and no one who has ever tried it will deny that more pleasure is to be derived from the giving of money to a cause in which one's heart is interested, than can be obtained from the expenditure of the same amount in selfish indulgence. But if one is going to give largely he must spend a great deal of time in investigating and in comparing the merits of the different enterprises, and I am persuaded that there is a better life than the life led by those who spend nearly all the time accumulating beyond their needs and then employ the last few days in giving it away. What the world needs is not a few men of great wealth, doling out their money in anticipation of death—what the world needs is that these men shall link themselves in sympathetic interest with struggling humanity and help to solve the problems of to-day, instead of creating problems for the next generation to solve.

But you say, a man can leave his money to his children? He can, if he dares. But a large fortune, in anticipation, has ruined more sons than it has ever helped. If a young man has so much money coming to him that he knows he will never have to work, the chances are that it will sap his energy, even if it does not undermine his character, and leave him a curse rather than a blessing to those who brought him into the world. And it is scarcely safer to leave the money to a daughter. For if a young woman has a prospective inheritance so large that, when a young man calls upon her, she can not tell whether he is calling upon her or her father, it is embarrassing—especially so if she finds after marriage that he married the wrong member of the family. And, I may add, that the daughters of the very rich are usually hedged about by a social environment which prevents their making the acquaintance of the best young men. The men who, twenty-five years from now, will be the leaders in business, in society, in government, and in the church, are not the pampered sons of the rich, but the young men who, with good health and good habits, with high ideals and strong ambition, are, under the spur of necessity, laying the foundation for future achievements, and these young men do not have a chance to become acquainted with the daughters of the very rich. Even if they did know them they might hesitate to enter upon the scale of expenditure to which these daughters are accustomed.

I have spoken at length in regard to these limitations, altho we all know of them or should. The ministers tell us about these things Sunday after Sunday, or should, and yet we find men chasing the almighty dollar until they fall exhausted into the grave. A few years ago I read a sermon by Dr. Talmage on this subject; he said a man who wore himself out getting money that he did not need would finally drop dead, and that his pastor would tell a group of sorrowing friends that, by a mysterious dispensation of Providence, the good man had been cut off in his prime. Dr. Talmage said that Providence had nothing to do with it, and that the minister ought to tell the truth about it and say that the man had been kicked to death by the golden calf.

A few weeks ago I read a story by Tolstoy, and I did not notice until I had completed it that the title of the story was, “What shall it profit?” The great Russian graphically presented the very thought that I have been trying to impress upon your minds. He told of a Russian peasant who had land hunger—who added farm to farm and land to land, but could never get enough. After a while he heard of a place where land was cheaper and he sold his land and went and bought more land. But he had no more than settled there until he heard of another place among a half civilized people where land was cheaper still. He took a servant and went into this distant country and hunted up the head man of the tribe, who offered him all the land he could walk around in a day for a thousand rubles—told him he could put the money down on any spot and walk in any direction as far and as fast as he would, and that if he was back by sunset he could have all the land he could encompass during the day. He put the money down upon the ground and started at sunrise to get, at last, enough land. He started leisurely, but as he looked upon the land it looked so good that he hurried a little—and then he hurried more, and then he went faster still. Before he turned he had gone further in that direction than he had intended, but he spurred himself on and started on the second side. Before he turned again the sun had crossed the meridian and he had two sides yet to cover. As the sun was slowly sinking in the west he constantly accelerated his pace, alarmed at last for fear he might have undertaken too much and might lose it all. He reached the starting point, however, just as the sun went down, but he had overtaxed his strength and fell dead upon the spot. Then his servant dug a grave for him and he only needed six feet of ground then, the same that others needed—and the rest of the land was of no use to him. Thus far Tolstoy told the story of many a life—not the life of the very rich only, but the story of every life in which the love of money is the controlling force and in which the desire for gain shrivels the soul and leaves the life a failure at last.

I desire to show you how practical this subject is. If time permitted I could take up every occupation, every avocation, every profession and every calling, and show you that no matter which way we turn—no matter what we do—we are always and everywhere weighing the Soul.

In the brief time that it is proper for me to occupy, I shall apply the thought to those departments of human activity in which the sale of a soul affects others largely as well as the individual who makes the bargain.

Take the occupation in which I am engaged, journalism. It presents a great field—a growing field; in fact, there are few fields so large. The journalist is both a news gatherer and a molder of thought. He informs his readers as to what is going on, and he points out the relation between cause and effect—interprets current history. Public opinion is the controlling force in a republic, and the newspaper gives to the journalist, beyond every one else, the opportunity to affect public opinion. Others reach the readers of a newspaper through the courtesy of the owner of the paper, but he has full access to his own columns, and does not fear the blue pencil. The journalist occupies the position of a watchman upon a tower. He is often able to see dangers which are not observed by the general public, and because he can see these dangers he is in a position of greater responsibility. Is he discharging the duty which superior opportunity imposes upon him? I might mention a number of temptations which come to the journalist, but I shall content myself with a few. First, there is the temptation to conceal the name of the real owner of the paper. The proprietor of a paper should be known, but his identity is not always disclosed. The corporate entity which plays so large a part in the business world has entered the newspaper field. The names of the stockholders are not published and we do not always know what individuality directs the paper's policy. Year by year the disclosures are bringing to light the fact that the predatory interests are using the newspapers and even some magazines for the defense of commercial iniquity and for the purpose of attacking those who lift their voices against favoritism and privilege. A financial magnate interested in the exploitation of the public secures control of a paper; he employs business managers, managing editors, and a reportorial staff. He does not act openly or in the daylight but through a group of employes who are the visible but not the real directors. The reporters are instructed to bring in the kind of news which will advance the enterprises owned by the man who stands back of the paper, and if the news brought in is not entirely satisfactory it is doctored in the office. The columns of the paper are filled with matter, written not for the purpose of presenting facts as they exist, but for the purpose of distorting facts and misleading the public. The editorial writers, whose names are generally unknown to the public, are told what to say and what subjects to avoid. They are instructed to extol the merits of those who are subservient to the interests represented by the paper, and to misrepresent and traduce those who dare to criticize or oppose the plans of those who hide behind the paper. Such journalists are members of a kind of “Blackhand society”; they are assassins, hiding in ambush and striking in the dark; and the worst of it is that the readers have no way of knowing when a change takes place in the ownership of such a paper. Editorial poison, like other poisons, can be administered more successfully if the victim is in ignorance as to who administers it.

There are degrees of culpability and some are disposed to hold an editorial writer guiltless even when they visit condemnation upon the secret director of the paper's policy. I present to you a different—and I believe higher—ideal of journalism. If we are going to make any progress in morals we must abandon the idea that morals are defined by the statutes; we must recognize that there is a wide margin between that which the law prohibits and that which an enlightened conscience can approve. We do not legislate against the man who uses the printed page for the purpose of deception but, viewed from the standpoint of morals, the man who, whether voluntarily or under instructions, writes what he knows to be untrue or purposely misleads his readers as to the character of a proposition upon which they have to act, is as guilty of wrong-doing as the man who assists in any other swindling transaction.