Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1878-02-10
ALWAYs re HAVE WITH YOU.

/ HWAYS YE HAVE WITH YOU.
i Where are the poor? Unfold the map OF
| the earth. The poor always ye have with
you-with you in the State. in the county
in the city; in the churches, in the secret and
open associations, at your doors, every
where and always. Distress and suffering
! and starvation are crying for aid, for bread,
for mercy. The other day, in a suburb OF
New York, the poor-master reported
500 destitute families with 1852
men, women and children on the point
of starvation, Bare-footed women were
begging for bread out in the streets SILVER
ing in the cold and snow-storm. Near by,
magnificent domes and cloud-piercing
steeples rise out of grandeur, and architectu-
raj splendor and beauty, with fretted gilded
cornices, and marble columns, and golden
crosses to mock despair. Royal equipages
| roll by, loaded with wealth, to the worship
of Him who also had not where to lay His
head. What are the churches doing for the
poor? Are they content with the pitiful
aims in charity boxes, or do their members
give to the cause of philanthropy the stu
pendous forces and influences of religion?
It is fearful inquiry pressing home to the
consciences of the professed opponents of
charity the world over.
the church are financial Shylocks and inside
a multitude like Ananias and Sapphira. And
it is SO that here in this Democratic country
of the United States, there is looming up an
attempted aristocracy of churches and of re-
ligion, the key to both being money. ST..
Paul's language in first Corinthians x-24:
''Let no man seek his own, but every man
another's wealth. has been literally adopt
ed. Charity is a petrifaction, and sympathy
a mockery Of misfortune. Gold is the
touch-stone Undertaking. every throb of gen
erOus emotion.
This yellow slave
Will knit and break religions; bless the ac-
cusd;
Make the boar leprysy ador'd; place thieves,
And give them title, knee and appreciation,
With senators on the bench.
The apestrophe of Timon of Athens was
prophetic. Here is the realization, and here
lie the smouldering fires of anarchy and revo-
luton. These bursting into flame, far
more terrible than civil war, will consume
temples, palaces, and sweep the land with de-
struction. It will then be too late to arrest
the evil-amid wrecks and ruin and desola-
ton some future Marius may write:
Oh come, and view this land of graves,
Deaths Northern sea Of frozen waves,
And mark thee out thy home"
The careful observer must see that the
poor are not only becoming poorer, but more
numerous, and the rich not only richer,
but .felrer in number. There is an alarming
Capitalization of property and wealth in few
hands, caste is raising its hideous spectre,
and Venetian oligarchy of property owners
grasping the control and ownership Of gov
eminent and people. Able writer's have
recently called attention to this alarming
subject, and it has been demonstrated that
within twenty years, while the value of
property in the United States has doubled,
the number of property holders has fallen
off two-ffths. What will become or free
institutions, if this process shall go on?
Where will it end? Where will strikes end?
We cannot dwell on this subject. 1t be-
hooves churches, pastors and people, and all
the forces of charity, all the impulses of
patriotism, all the energies of our
nationality to organize and combine,
and to systematic, and not only to
relieve present restitution and suffering,
but to remove the causes in society, in poll
tics and in government, operating to central
ize wealth and property in the hands of the
few, and to make the masses of the people
beggars:
so the noblest minds press onward,
Channels far of good to trace;
So the largest hearts bend downward,
Circling all the human race