Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1878-02-20
SUFFERING - BONDHOLDERH IN
MONEY CHANGERS.

Suffering excites sympathy. Having suf-
fered, says the old adage, we learn to feel
for those who suffer. The saddest picture
recently brought out on the panorama of the
widespread restitution in all the cities. and
all over the land, represents the poor and
suffering bondholders, and money changers
and manufacturing monopolists appealing to
Congress for relief, for gold, for high duties
on the necessaries of life, and for a reduc-
ton of their taxes. It is painful melting
scene inscribed overhead; if you have any
tears to She'd prepare to shed them now.
1t is bold, but wonderful painting. In
the foreground, to the right, are starving
men, and shivering women, and pale faced
children, with the seal of death on their
brows. Far to the rear are desolate homes
broken affairs, dark and loathsome dens,
crowded orphan asylums, and thronged poor
houses, and jails, and penitentiaries, and a
vast multitude of houseless, homeless,
friendless human beings, with no hope in
life, nor in death, except it's eternal sleep.
Here in the centre lies vast plain extend
ing far and near, a boundless field of
graves. Broad and beaten is it's
wide and only avenue, and
on the arch of its gloomy portal are written
these words: Here lie the victims of power
ty.
Look again. On the left rise marble pal
aces and splendid blocks, and immense build
ings. 1t is the every day life of exchange
vast army of moneyed princes and clerks,
and buyers and sellers rush to and fro.
There are countless piles of gold and bonds
marked, "U. S., free from taxation and
high over head, on the walls inside
and outside of these marble
markets of wealth, may be read, "Semi-
annual dividends, ten per cent? And there
are fashionable churches and royal temples
with princely incomes, and to these roll, in
luxurious coaches, the pampered aristocrats
of wealth to enjoy the voluptuousness of
worshipping God, under the ministrations of
a clerical snob.
There is another part of this painting.
On the hill, in the background, over
shadowing these lights and shadows.
of wealth and oppression, of poverty and
misfortune, stands the capitol, as stood Tar
quin's on the Tarpeian mount, with its dome
crowned with the statue of liberty Within
it's walls, and in it's halls and corridors. and
on it's records, are the statues and paintings
and names and deeds of the architects and
preservers of free government from Wash
ington to Lincoln.
In the Luxembourg gallery, there is
painting of the decline of Rome.
It has been often described.
It is an orgy of Bacchus in the capitol.
The jewellers are the patrician mobiles, senators
and representatives. On the surrounding
pedestals stand the statues of Rome's great
heroes, writer's and statesmen with averted
gaze pointing to former grandeur and pros
perity.
The description, the painting is finished.
Every day is swelling the tide of restitution
in the country. The government, for many
years, has given no relief. Thirteen years
have passed since the war. The country has
been blessed with abundant harvests-
famlnes, no pestilence. What is the cause of
THIS distress? MEASUREMENT, and the op-
presslon OF the laboring classes by money,
ana tne grasping monopolies and corpora
lions OF the land. There must be a change
OF else the most dreadful consequences may
follow,