The speaker and his kind of social students mean well. They are right in arousing the rich to a deeper sense of duty to mankind. But they think so intently upon their pet theory that they lose their point of view. They exaggerate to hysteria the importance of the rich. They are infected with the dollar-worshiping craze which they profess to abhor. They vastly over-estimate concentrated wealth as a factor in human progress. They erect money into a powerful deity, just as do all other worshipers of the dollar. The difference is that they wish to make it a benevolent deity. It is an excellent thing that the rich should be aroused. A rich man who does nothing for his brother-man is a contemptible fellow--almost as contemptible as a poor man who does nothing for his brother-man. The selfish rich man can plead in extenuation that temptations, beyond human nature’s power to combat, have narrowed and chilled and withered him. But, save ignorance, what excuse has the poor man for selfishness? However, if by chance the selfish rich man become aroused and give--give manlily, democratically--of his riches, he must not be excited about the importance to others of what he has done. Its main importance is purely personal. He is a better man for doing it and has a stronger title to self-respect. But if he had not done it, the poor, old, stupid, blundering human race would have managed to stagger along somehow. By all means let the rich give. For their own self-respect, for their own self-satisfaction, they ought to give largely and intelligently. Let the honest rich give in sympathy--let the dishonest give in humility. But we must remember that all such gifts put together are as a mere drop in the ocean so far as the effect upon civilization is concerned. We have not reached our present estate through the generosity of any class of men. And we shall not advance to our destined higher estate because of the generosity and benevolence of any class. The benevolence of the rich may earn for them an honorable place in the procession of humanity ever toiling upward, and may enable laggards or the too heavily handicapped to keep in line. But this procession, that has marched on over kings and emperors, over tyrants and oppressors and false teachers, that has met and swept away army after army of embattled wrong, is not to be perceptibly retarded or accelerated by the errors or the virtues of a class of men who are merely rich.