Litchfield enquirer., 1874-05-28
Crab.

beyond middle age, and perhaps most died violent deaths. In those days the Law of Grab appeared in all it's undis- guised deformity. When at last Euro pean civilization began, it was found that the kings, the nobles, and the church had grabbed nearly all that was worth having. But with civilization has come reaction against this law. The church is reform cd, the nobility are losing their privileges, and the power of the crown is limited by parliaments. In one of the greatest coun- tries of Europe the people rose, overthfew crown, church, and nobility, and succeed ed in making to certain extent redivis- ion oftheproperty the church, the crown, and the nobility had grabbed in the dark ages. Still the great inequalities of con- dition that characterized the era of uni versal robbery continue in the main to make the lot of the average European that of subjectlon and i'll requited toil. The priveleged classes continue to seize on the fruits of the poor mans labor and he gets little more than bare subsistence. The great improvements in agriculture, science ana the mechanic arts, have tend ed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, rather than to any more equal dis tribution of labor, ,and of the profits of la- bor, among the whole population.
 Still, with the refinement of better times have come many ameliorations of the Law of Grab. In the first place the indifference to human suffering that char acterized earlier times has made way for better feeling. The recreation of the feu- dal baron was found in the taking of ani- nal life; his serious employment, in the taking of human life. War, famine and plague thinned the race, while harsh man. ners, ,legalized torture, and bloody perse- cution, contributed to make the sum of human suffering something awful to con- template. With the decline of bigotry,
 with the abolition of torture, and with re- finement of manners, have come kinder feelings of man towards man. The Law of Grab has been mitigated by the Law of Charity. The rich man gives the tenth of his grabbings for the relief of the poor. Hospitals are founded; poor-houses are no longer houses of torture; criminals are no longer herded in pestiferous jails; and society tries to reform as well as to pun ish. Still the fundamental injustice con- tinues. A few hundred men own the soil of Great Britain and the millions of her population exist as it were on sufferance, living lives of constant toll and often dy- ing in the workhouse. No wonder the la- borers in such country strike for better wages, and sympathize with Communism, become dangerous" and atheistic, and hate form of society that makes no suit ablo provision for them. and church that breaches nothing but patience. If they cannot have justice they will at least institute 8 new Grab, such as occurred across the channel eighty years since.
 Many of the evils of the prevalent sys- tenn Amerca is spared. We have no priv ileged classes, no standing armies, no es- tablished hierarchy, above all no monopo- ly of land. Still the great Struggle for Existence" is nowhere fiercer than with us. With larger means have come larger wants, and the average American, with vastly keener wits than the average Euro pean, is nevertheless as near the end of them to make his income meet his outgo as his duller brother across the water. No nation earns as much and no nation spends as much as ours. In none is the competition of merchant with merchant, of manufacturer with manufacturer. of railroad with railroad, so thoroughly z POutrance. In every business, in every profession, there is an irrepressible con- fict; the strong are very successful and the weak very unsuccessful; and there is, no doubt, the final survival of the fit- test" Unfortunately the ''fittest" are few and the unfit had best never have been born. Of late has come on us the burden of great war and depreciated currency. All of sudden every man found his ex- penses doubled and the necessity on him of doubling his income also. To some this was easy; to some dificult;to some impos- sible. Never before these late years, in America even, has the struggle for exist ence been so desperate. Wo to the man whose conscience is keener than his wits!
 Men grab just as furiously as they did i've centuries since, only they grab withs Tn instead of without the law. A few suc- cessful business men manage to monopo- lize all the wealth of our cities, just as a few hard. d.headed fighters managed to mo- nopolize all the land of Europe. Some of them build churches, endow colleges. and give their names to theological semi naries, as of old. But the great prizes in the lottery of business are few and the
 failures many and deplorable. A New
 York lawyer who recently advertised for a clerk, says the Tribune, received in one
 day more than an hundred applications
 for the place. All the applicants seemed well qualified; some were attornies ad- mitted to practice, some graduates of col leges. and several accomplished stenogra- phers,. Yet the wages they asked were less than those of the hodmen at work on the new Tribune building.
 Will universal suffrage, the absence of entails. the general diffusion of knowedge.
 and the political predominance of the masses. eventually correct these inequal-
 ities of fortune, and will they, somehow
 or other or sometime or other, mitigate
 the ferceness of the Americans struggle
 for existence? Let us hope so; but it is
 the plain duty of the statesman to dis
 courage monopoly and exorbitant accu-
 mutations of property, by all just means.
 He should remember that next to the tyr-