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Source: Church History Vol. 3 Chapter 34 Page: 670 (~1872)

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670 dwindled away by improvidence, waste, and consumption.

The usual features of them one and all may be confidently told. They were almost invariably an attempt to make any given number of poor men rich, by the aggregation of their poverty; as suppose, one thousand men propose a stock company, and subscribe ten dollars each to the capital stock, there is the aggregate of the nice little sum of ten thousand dollars. This seems large, and it would be for one man; but when we reflect that there are one thousand persons holding interests, we can easily perceive that they are not individually richer, as they own but ten dollars each. Now, if five hundred stockholders draw out for daily consumption twenty dollars each, the whole sum is exhausted, and five hundred stockholders are defrauded out of their whole stock; if two hundred and fifty draw out forty dollars each, the stock is exhausted, and seven hundred and fifty stockholders are left minus their stock-the fact is, we believe that nine out of every ten joint stock companies, organized among the saints, died of 'home consumption.' Instead of being stockholders, the members of them became stock-consumers; and those organizations instead of being 'fat and well favored,' were 'lean and ill favored.' The very means which should have made the people rich, an aggregation of labor and capital, was made a means of robbery and extortion, until to call an associational 'joint stock' was to condemn it. This should not have been the case. We do not defend the men who were the founders of those schemes, we do not condemn them personally, for we do not know them, at least not many of them, but the principle of the association of labor and capital is a measure of policy and sound wisdom, we believe. Many instances may be cited of what may be done by unity of labor; the most striking one occurring to our memory of late occurrence is that of a beautiful stone church, standing not far from the south end of Grand Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri, built by an order of Catholic priests; and when it is stated that these men, although few in number, are prohibited from asking alms, and have done all the work on their building, quarrying, cutting, and laying the stone, together

(page 670)

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