The class of which I write has lost them in its very birth. The mother of a boy in the middle class looks forward with delight to the day when that boy will go forth into the world to battle against circumstances. From his earliest childhood onward he learns the necessity of labour, he comes to regard it as his birthright. With eagerness he prepares for it. The little triumphs of boyhood, the trivial victories of college days, are joy unbounded to his mind, because they are but steps in that long climb toward greatness, renown and wealth, that are his birthright; and when at last he goes forth from college halls, from labour on the farm, from some little clerical position that he has held in his adolescence, to strike out for himself into the great open world, to blaze out paths of his own choosing, his life is filled in its every moment with new thrills of excitement, of happiness, of accomplishment--of life, real life, not imitation. Look at the other side. Think of the boy born, as they say, with a golden spoon in his mouth. Perhaps, in his infancy, he does not know that he can have everything in the world for which he asks. Perhaps his parents are humanly wise--for many of the wealthy are; yet, even in his very tender boyhood, the truth will come home to him. He will learn before he is ten years old that there is a difference between him and other boys whom he sees at play in the park. He will discover that the difference is money. He will discover that his parents can get whatever they like, spend as much as they please, waste fortunes on their pleasures, throw gold away as though it were dross. He will learn, on the other hand, that the children of the poor can have no expensive toys like his, that they cannot be dressed as he is dressed, that their parents must win every dollar that they spend by some hard work, while his own parents, apparently, receive as much as they want and more without any labour whatever. That boy will be more than human if, by the time he is a young man, he has not passed the entrance to the paths where the true happiness of life is to be found. Either money will mean nothing to him, and he will have settled down to be one of the idle rich, simply taking what the gods send him and doing his best to enjoy it, or else a most unholy lust for gold will have taken possession of his soul. Eliminate the necessity for struggle, and you remove from money all its true value. It becomes either dross, to be thrown away for other things better worth while, or it becomes an idol, a god, the very sum and substance of the world’s desire.