Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1875-05-27
The Mental Effect of Pecuniary Pres
sure.

TENSION is, we believe, the secret of
the insanity SO often produced by pecun-
larry trouble, but the inquiry must still
be pushed one step further back. Why
is the tension so extreme? Why do
men, and especially men just outside the
limit of poverty, fear poverty so much
more, especially for others, than they
fear still graver evils? Why, for in
stance, will father, halfmaddened by
the idea that his daughter will be re-
duced to manual labor, remain compare
lively tranquil when informed that all
the symptoms which indicate cancer are
present in the object of his affections?
The popular answer that poverty, in our
artificial state of society, involves all
miseries, hunger, OverWOrk, humiliation,
is scarcely sufficient, for human beings
able to judge would choose them all in
preference to cancer. We believe the
causes for this overweening horror of
poverty, which certainly exists, and with
many classes in this country furnishes
an overpowering motive in life, are two,
both of them easy to be explained. The
first cause undoubtedly is that men fear
most those future troubles which they
most clearly realize, and that they real
lie very few. The majority of mankind,
fortunately for themselves, have very
little imagination, and that imagination
is most easily stirred upon it's hopeful
side. Every man must die, and how
very few think often Of that greatest of
events 1t is the hardest thing in the
world to induce men even to expect
pain, and the man who knows perfect
ly well that a burst of temper will
bring on angina pectoris, or that
glass of sherry will renew the torture
of govt, still INDUCES his anger or
his taste without any serious fear. The
best argument against transportation as
punishment is that criminals have such
difficulty in realizing it's meaning-sol-
diers, for instance, in India, often try to
be transported-and it is the same want
of imagination which, even in countries
where the population have a horror of
suffering, makes universal CONSUMPTION
possible. People do, however, realize
poverty, realize it thoroughly and pain
fully, and dread it, therefore, as they
never dread very much worse evils.
They know what it is TO have no money,
and the prospect of having none affects
them as keenly as if they were already
destitute.
The second cause we believe to be the
sense of injustice which enters into this
peculiar form of suffering. Men submit
TO evils visibly dealt out to them by
heaven or fate with a resignation they
are often unable to display under evils in
which human will is an operating cause.
We take it, the man who commits suicide
from pecuniary pressure will always be
found to be man who has worked, and
who has ragged secretly or openly at the
apparent injustice involved in work
bringing no return. Nothing overtlrns
the balance of the mind so quickly as
long-continued sense of injustice, and
nothing, especially in the army and mer-
chant navy, is SO frequent cause for
suicide.-LO7ad0n Spectator.
Machine shop surgery is not the most
delicate nor least painful, though men
herolcaily undergo it rather than stand
the loss of time due to an infamed eye
or festered finger. Iron filings have a
way of imbedding themselves in the eye
which defies almost every ordinary
means for their extraction. For their
removal, small, blunt, pointed bar of
steel, well magnetized, will be found ex-
cellent, and we should recommend that
workmen liable to such injuries keep
such an instrument about them. 1t
would be good plan to insert such
bar in penknife, in a manner similar
to blade.-Scieatitic american.