American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1876-08-26

I6 1S generally aQmltted fact thai
there never was q time in the history d
the United States when greater
amount of misery, poverty, and wretch
edness existed than at the present mo-
ment. New York is full of want. Every
third store you come to in, Broadway is
closed up. Workingmen are parading
the streets publicly setting forth their
sufferings and calling for relief. In
Boston things are. n-any thing, worse;
and a similar state of affairs exists in
all the large cities of the United States.
One of the most unhappy phases of this
universal depression is the number of
educated and refined persons who are
ont NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. graduates,
professional men. clerks, and the like
men whose training has not fitted
them for physical labor, and whose
feelings will not permit them to resort
to beggary or crime. 1t is no uncom-
mon thing for employers in want of as
sistancs to receive from one up ito five
hundred answers from all sorts of needy
men. The Mayor of Boston recently
received a perfect avalanche of appli-
cations from Harvard graduates,
broken-down lawyers, doctors, and men
of education, for vacant place in
the police force, Nor is this depressing
state of affairs confined to the East. In
Chicago to-day there are hundreds of
well born, well bred and well informed
men walking the steets without cent,
without the knowledge of where to get
a dinner or bed. How these poor un-
fortunates live is best known to them
selves. An empty stomach sharpens
the wits, and few cents to the initiated
go long way. Weary men tramp the
streets day after day seeking employ
rnent, returning at night, faint and foot
sore. perhaps to tramp again till morn
ing or to lie down upon some friendly
bench or by the margin of the lake.
Week after week the same weary round
goes on, until the clothes of the once
respectable and well clad man are seedy,
and his general appearance sickly and
unpromising. Can we wonder if the
victim of circumstances becomes thief,
or browns his sorrows in the cold, dark
waters!, The general impression is that
no man can sink to the lowest
depth of poverty and despair ex-
cept through his own folly, idle
ness or dissipation, but such is not
always the case. At the present time
nine-tenths of the cases of restitution
Il, ,,,r MIDI OF have or:en,, f,o,.,
over which the poor out
cast had no control, the ups and downs
of business, overcrowded professions,
the failures of others to meet obliga-
tions, the fall in the value of real estate,
family sorfows, and other causes. Only
q day or two ago respectable man
presented himself before the police of
this city and said with tears in his eyes
that he was starving. He is not the |
only one who to-day is starving in the |
midst of plenty. There is a want in
Chicago of a charitable asylum for
these needy ones, a place where the
may find bed, wash, and |
a breakfast, enough to enable them to |
keep up their hearts, and to nerve them
for the praiseworthy task of seeking to
earn an honest living. Such home is
needed. 1t has been partially tried in
New Yorkrwith success. Will not the
aides, ever foremost in works of chart
y, take this matter in handp A tenn
,orary shelter is all that respectable
poverty asks, surely there is sufficient
charity in our midst to provide it,
chicago Inter- Ocean. q