York a certain ruling social element, the native aristocracy,
composed of old families whose wealth, originating in fraud, had
become respectable by age, took no pains to conceal their opinion of
him as a parvenu, and drew about their sacred persons an amusing
circle of exclusiveness into the rare precincts of which he might not
enter.

Vanderbilt now proceeded to buy social and religious grace as he had
bought laws. The purchase of absolution has ever been a convenient
and cheap method of obtaining society's condonation of theft. In
medieval centuries it took a religious form; it has become transposed
to a social traffic in these superior days. Let a man steal in
colossal ways and then surrender a small part of it in charitable,
religious and educational donations; he at once ceases being a thief
and straightway becomes a noble benefactor. Vanderbilt now shed his
life-long irreverence, and gave to Deems, a minister of the
Presbyterian Church, as a gift, the Church of the Strangers on Mercer
street, and he donated $1,000,000 for the founding of the Vanderbilt
University at Nashville, Tenn. The press, the church and the
educational world thereupon upon hailed him as a marvel of saintly
charity and liberality.


THE SERMONIZING OF THE "BEST CLASSES."

One section of the social organization declined to accept the views
of the class above it. This was the working class. Superimposed upon
the working class, draining the life blood of the workers to provide
them with wealth, luxuries and power, were those upper strata of
society known as the "best classes." These "best classes," with a