The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1878-10-02
THE CURsE OF rDIENEss.

America, "the land of the free and the
home of the brave" is filled with forced
idlers. Everywhere ldleness; everywhere
men and women pleading for work; every
where poverty, wretchedness rags and hun
ger. Strange, passing strange. Fact stranger
than fiction. The truth as terrible as trag-
edy. No fancy sketches now. Let tine i'm
agination rest. The reality is sufficiently
haggard. Hyperbole Is no. required, for
even exaggeration sits dumb before the
spectral picture. Food and hunger are
side by side in America. Food so cheap
that the paupers of Europe can purchase,
while American workmen endure the pangs
of hunger. Money? Listen to the Shylocks
as they pile up the figures showing the vast
amounts OF money America has in her hands.
Silver drug; g. formulating; capitalists
hiding it away in bank vaults. Alas that
with such abundance there should be multi
piled thousands of Americans without
nickel, the meanest of all coins,
with which to buy loaf of bread or a pound
of shank bones. Look, see the rotund, CLOS
sy, well fed Shylocks' pockets full of notes,
bonds, mortgages and money; the favored
class-the John Sherman pets. Look again,
see the army of idlers gsunt haggard. hun
cry; wives forlorn; children pale. skinny,
pinched, evidencing the absence of all the
comforts of life, going by steady gradations
to skeletons. These sights everywhere
in every town, village and city from
the center to the circumference of the land.
Burton wrote many years ago that ''idleness
is the bane of body and mind; the nurse of
4. 'naughtiness; the stepmother of deception;
'one of the seven deadly sins; the cushion
upon which the devil chiefly reposes" If
this is true what can be said of policy that
fills America with idleness? The simple an
nouncement that Americans can not buy
food is startling. 1t is terribly significant
1t proclaIms the existence o a mOnstrous
wrong. 1t is worse than savagery; worse
than heathenism. 1t isessentlally devilish
wrong. 1t is scourge, for idleness is pro-
ductive of crime. In England it has
been said that marriages depend upon
'the price of corn" If corn is cheap, mar
rieges are numerous; if dear, matrimonial al
hances are comparatively few. In America
corn is a drug, and still thousands of people
can not purchase it. They have been forced
into idleness, and are without means to pur-
chase corn. Idleness is the prolific parent of
crime, and it is shown by statistics that
esince 1872 the number of criminals in the
United States has increased to quite an
alarming extent. In the last number OF the
Independent Frank B. Sanborn contributes
some very interesting statistics. At the
present time the number of convicts in the
higher prisons throughout the United
States is twice as great as in 1872. In 1872
the number did not greatly exceed $4,000;
now it Is 10000. In some states the increase
has been less than in others, but the aver
age is as stated. In Georgia, where in 1871
there were less than 500 state prisoners,
there were more than 200 in 1877. In
Nevada where there were less than 30 in
1872, there are now nearly thrice that num-
her. In Tennessee the number 10 the differ
'ent prisons of the state has doubled during
the same time, and there were in Minnesota
state prisons January l. 1878. only five less
than three times the number of con-
'yicts that were there in May, 1878"
These statistics indicate in some measure the
blighting curse OF radlcalism. The fact that
it debauches like libertine, demoralizes
like vice, eats into the vitals of society like
a cancer, and poiscns the social, moral and
political currents, as the virus of the cobra
breeds death in the blood of its Victims is
placed beyond all question. The plumber
ings of its pampered thieves could
be made good By increasing the
its oItrageously despotc acts could find
some relief IN the righteousness OF their
lnaledichons; the survivors of those who