Let not the merchant profess to seek after the prosperity of the country; let him wonder not that business is dull; that labor is unemployed; that enterprise is dead, when he is doing all he can to destroy business and commercial prosperity by undermining the public confidence, which is the foundation upon which all commercial enterprise rests. Nothing is more essential to business prosperity than a confidence that prosperous, existing conditions will remain unchanged. He who is helping to destroy that confidence makes himself a stumbling block in the public highway of humanity and, as such, is a detriment to mankind. He is the greatest enemy to self that humanity can produce. He is like a vine which climbs the tree and obtains its life by sucking the life of that to which it clings. No man can be a good citizen who will wrong his fellow man simply because the laws of the country will protect him or, in other words, will not punish him for such wrongdoing. A miller or retail dealer of mixed or adulterated spices is as much a criminal as the man who has ingenuity enough to shape a coin from alloy and stamp it as a legal standard, or as one who counterfeits a bank note, for all are guilty of illegal acts to obtain wealth. The government punishes the counterfeiter of money, but the dealer in adulterated goods is allowed freedom. The government will grant a patent for the latest improvement in machinery for mixing spices, but it will not grant a patent for a die to counterfeit bank notes.