For these may be controlled and
cleansed; but the moral slum floods our legislatures and positions
of honor and trust, and invades the churches. The mental and moral
water-supply of the community is loaded with disease-germs.
The social wealth of a community is the sum total of the wealth of
its individual members. And a community is truly wealthy only when
this wealth is, to a certain extent, diffused. If there is any truth
in our argument that the sequence of functions culminates in
righteousness and unselfishness, the real social wealth of a
community consists in its moral character, not in its money, or even
in its intelligence. We may rest assured that character, resulting
in industry and economy, will bring sufficient means of subsistence,
so that all its members will be fed and housed and clothed. And art
and culture, of the most ennobling and inspiring sort, will surely
follow. And even if such literature failed as largely composes our
present _fin-de-siecle_ garbage-heap, we would not regret its
absence. That community will and must survive in which the largest
proportion of members make the accumulation of character their chief
and first aim. And to this community every rival must in time yield
its place and power, and all its acquisitions. And in every
advancing community the position of any class or profession will in
time be determined by its moral wealth.
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