In considering the proposition that the creation and preservation of property is a primary duty of citizenship, we must realize the absolute essentiality of accumulated property in the scheme of civilization. We all know the value of money, but we are generally loath to formally acknowledge its importance. There is a prevalent affectation of indifference towards it, assumed by vain fools as a mark of superiority, and by spendthrift fools to excuse their stupid poverty. This affectation is encouraged by the writers of the popular magazines and newspapers and other cheap literature which is published for the masses, who are supposed to be poor and to like to be flattered by being told that their poverty, instead of being a mark of inferiority as it really is, is a sign of superior goodness. This sort of writing misleads many thoughtless people to their detriment. Civilization can only be expressed in terms of property; and property is its token, its manifestation, its note, its unfailing indication, its hall mark. There is not a quality, a circumstance, a feature of civilization which is not represented in some way by property, either by being due to property, derived from property, originating in property, or sustained by property. The desire for property is an attribute of man; denied to the lower animals and dormant in savages, such as the North American Indians who when discovered, had no permanent property, not even a year’s provisions to live on in times of scarcity, and had created nothing for posterity. A pauperized people is on the direct road to barbarism. On the other hand, the higher the grade of civilization the greater the wealth of the country; so that to attain the very highest grade we must pass far beyond the period of aggregation of merely useful things and reach a point of great luxury, where men can spend lives and millions in the service of the high arts and refinements of life, and where in an atmosphere enriched by the artistic emanations of centuries, are produced operas costing $10,000 a day, and palaces and cathedrals at an expenditure of the time of generations of men and of hundreds of millions of dollars in money.