Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/698

 h does not

limit others in their gratifications. He may come and go, he may buy and sell, he may marry, preach, or develop a mine, and in all this legitimately better his condition, provided he does not make worse the condition of those, or any of them, with whom he comes in contact.

The true theory of business is that traffic which does not result in reciprocal advantages to buyer and seller is illegitimate, or at least abnormal. Let it be reofistered in men's minds that he who accumulates wealth to the loss of another is a bad man following a bad business. He is a swindler, and should be punished as one.

In this way men may build railroads; but they must not employ the power thus acquired in impositions upon the people, subsidizing competition to keep up iniquitous prices, buying legislators, and corrupting morals and society, building up or ruining this man or that town or industry, and exercising a hateful tyranny over a long-suffering and pusillanimous people. Men may buy and sell wheat, but they may not so ' corner ' it as by their trickery to make consumers pay twice or thrice its value. Men may in good faith develop mines; but the manipulation of mining stocks as practised by brokers and bonanza chiefs is worse than ordinary gambling and stealing — being more on a par with three-card monte, and like cheatino" and confidence games.

We all know the evils of gambling; how it dissatisfies society in its daily occupations, absorbs thought, dissipates energy, and renders men unfit for that steady application and reasonable economy which alone make a community prosperous. It destroys the finer qualities both of mind and feeling; it makes men moody and nervous, makes them live a life of extremes, now exhilarated by success, now despondent through failure. What folly! Some play for money, but with the percentage against them they should know that in the end they are sure to lose. Some