The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-06-08
SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.
EDITORIAL OPINIONS OF THE LEADING JOURNALS
UPON CURRENT ToPIos-ooMPILKD EVERY
DAY FOR THE EVENING TELEGRAPH.
COMMUNISTS IN NEW YORK.

From the N. Y. Times.
1t has been said that the barbarians who
threaten modern civilization are within its
boundaries, not outside. 1t is no longer the
savaees from some distant and half mythical
Scythia, or the warlike barbarians of Scan
dinavia, who threaten the Empires and States
of modern times The dangerous enemies of
every modern State are in her large cities.
Few who are not conversant with the ''dan-
gerous classes can have conception what a
thin crust, in all countries, separates the ele-
CANT and comfortable world from the barba-
ric and savage forces working among dense
masses of ignorant human beings.
Public writer's and preachers are inclined
to look at this social explosion in Paris as
something abnormal and horrible, and pecu-
liar to France alone. 1t has indeed its pecu-
liarly French horrors, but the dangerous and
seething materials which give it its power
are to be found in every large capital. In
London, to-day, there is an immense multi
tude of human beings, ignorant, degraded,
struggling eternslly only to keep themselves
above the black waves of misery about
them, burrowing in all kinds of wretched
dens and holes, full of envy toward the rich,
easy to be infamed by socialist agitators
against the classes who for ages have had
all the blessings of life, while to them we're
left its curses-a dark boiling, explosive
mass Of population, which would only need
an opportunity, such as the siege gave the
Paris pT0letdireS, to burst ont with terrific vio-
lence against property, Government, and the
Church itself. A similar, though less nume-
rous, class exists in every capital of Europe.
Are we in the New World free from it? Let
any of our readers make a tour through the
cellars and slums Of single ward in this city,
say the Fourth, or let him pass among the
crowded tenement houses of the Twelfth or
Seventeenth wards, and note the thousands
of wretched creatures who hide in attics and
cellars, poor, slovenly, and hard d-pressed; the
thousands who are more or less ia
volVed in criminal occupations; the tens of
thousands who labor year after year, and
never grasp one of the rich rewards of
toll which hang in gilded display all around
them. Let them talk with these people, and
find how many believe that the poor and the
laborers have never had fair chance in the
world while capital has reaped all the bless
ings of existence; and then recall what vast
multitude of persons there are in this city
who either have no home at all, or who
scamp" here and there for few nights, or
who depend on each days earnings for the
days bread, and he will be convinced that
New York, like Paris, has beneath its brilliant
and busy surface volcano of deep passions
and explosive social forces.
Only once in the history of the city did
this terrible proletaire class show its revolu.
tionary head. For few days in 1868 New
York seemed like Paris under the Reds in
1870. Our mob, in place of sacking churches,
burned orphan asylums and plundered the
houses of the benefactors of the white poo
and the colored race. The cruelties inflicted
by our 'Reds" on the unhappy negroes
quite equaled in atrocity anything that the
French Reds perpetrated on their priests
Our Communists" had already begun tc
move towards the houses of the rich, and the
cry of war to property was already heard
when the spirited assistance of the United
States soldiery enabled the better classes tt
put down the disturbance. But had the
rioters been able to hold their own a weel
longer, had they plundered the banks, ant
begun to enjoy the luxuries of the rich, ant
been permitted to arm and organize them
selves, we should have seen communlsti'
explosion in New York which would probabl.
have left this city in ashes and blood. Ever.
great city has within it the communistic ele
ments of a revolution.
Our cities are in less danger than European
cities, because there is no pressure on thi
pr0Letdire class beyond the necessary inequali
ties of life. The American ''0u0T5er" alway
hopes to be capitalist. Then our educationa
and reformatory movements are always reach
ing down, and gradually improving ''the dan
gerous classes. The public school is the bes
preventive VI ToVOluIlOu 1uo luuuolllo
school and the children's charities are trans
forming the youthful Communists into indus
trious, law-abiding, property earning citizens
All the influences of American life are cor
tinually tending to give the prOIetaireS pei
manent interest in the social order. Thes
have only to be cherished and extended t
gradually carry away the explosive forces bt
meath the surface of society, and make Ne
York like our villages in one respsct-tha
every citizen may have pride and interes
in its prosperity and its property.
PENSION PAUPERS.