Democratic messenger., 1881-11-12

prosperous is the country, so good are
the times, that, at the last Presidential
election, the determining argument was
that we could not afford to take the
chance of disturbing so much material
prosperity by political change.
Nevertheless, prosperous as are these
times, citizens of the United States beg
you on the streets for ten cents and five
cents, and although you know that there
are in N. Y. City two hundred charitable
societies, although you realize that on
general principles to give money in this
way is to do evil rather than good, you
are afraid to refuse them when you read
of men in that great city freezing to
death and starving to death. Prosper
Gus as are these times, women are max
ing overalls for sixty cents dozen, and
you can hire citizens for trivial sums to
parade up and down the streets all day
with advertising placards on their backs.
I get on horse-car and ride with the
driver. He is evidently a sober, steady
man, as intelligent as man can be who
drives a horse-car all the time he is not
asleep or eating his meals. He tells me
he has wife and four children. He
gets home (f couple of rooms can be
called home) at two o'clock in the
morning he has to be back on his car
at nine. Sunday he has a couple of
hours more, which he has to put III
sleep, else, he says, he would utterly
break down. His children he never
sees, save when one of them comes at
noon or supper-time to the horse-car
route with something for him to eat in
tin pail. He gets one dollar and seventy
five cents per day (that will buy at Del
monico's beefsteak and cup of coffee).
to pay rent and keep six persons on one
dollar and seventy five cents day. He
says it is that he had been trying for a
month to get enough ahead to buy a
new pair of shoes, but he hasn't yet sue
ceeded. I ask why he does not leave
such job. He says, "What can do?
There are thousand men ready to step
into my place !" And so, in this time
of prosperity, he is chained to his car.
The horses that he drives are changed
six times during his workingda They
have lots of time to stretch themselves
and rest themselves and eat in peace
their plentiful meals, for they are worth
from one to two hundred dollars each,
and it would be loss to the company
for them to fall i'll. But this driver, this
citizen of the United States, he may fall
i'll or drop dead, and the company would
not lose cent. To Judge between him
and the beasts he drives, [ am inclined
to think that this most prosperous era is
more prosperous for horses than for
men.
Our Nopoleon of Wall street, our
Charlemagne of railroads, who cIme to
N. Y. City with nothing but a new kind
of mouse-trap in mahogany box, but
who now, though yet in the vigor of his
prime, counts his wealth by hundreds of
millions, if it can be counted at all, is in
terviewed by reporter Just as he is
a grand combination expedition into the
Southwest. He descants upon the ser
vices he is rendering in Welding into one
big machine lot of smaller machines,
in uniting into one vast railroad empire
the separated railroad kingdoms. He
likewise descants upon the great pros
perity of the whole country. Everybody
is prosperous and coptented, he says ::
there is, of course, q good deal of misery
in the big cities, but, then, there always
is!
But not alone in the great cities. I
ride on the Hudson River Railroad on a
bitter cold day, and from one of the
pretty towns with Dutch names gets in
a constable with prisoner, whom he is
to take to an Albany prison. In this
case justice has been swift enough, for
the crime, the taking of q shovel, has
only been committed a few hours be-
fore. Such coat as the man has he
keeps buttoned up, even in the hot car,
for, the constable says, he has no under
clothes at all. He stole the shovel to
get to the penitentiary, where it is warm.
The constable says that they have lots
of such cases, and that even in these
good times these pretty country towns
are infested with such tramps. With all
our vast organizing, our developing of
productive powers and cheapening of
transportation, we are yet creating a
class of utter pariahs. And they are to
be found not merely in the great cities,
but wherever the locomotive runs.
Is it real advance in civilization which,
on the other hand, produces these great
captains of industry, and, on the other,
these social outcasts?
1t is the year of grace, 1881, and of
the Republic the 105th. The girl who
has brought in coal for my fire is
twenty years old. She was born in
New York, and can neither read nor
write. To me, when l heard 1t, this
seemed sin and shame, and l got her
spelling book. She is trying what
she can, but it is uphill work. She has
really no time. Last night when came
in, at eleven, she was not through
scrubbing the halls. She gets four dol
lars month. Her shoes cost two dol.
lars pair. She says she can sew; but
I guess it is about as I can. In the
natural course of things, this girl will
be mother of citizens of the Republic.
Underneath are girls who can sew;
they run sewing machines with their
feet all day. have seen girls in Asia
carrying water jugs on their heads and
young women in South America bear
ing burdens. They we're 1.-the and
strong and symmetrical but to turn
young women into motive power for a
sewing machine is to weaken and iniure
her physically. And these girls are to
rear, or ought to rear, citizens of the
Republic.
But there is worse and worse than
this. Go out into the streets at night,
and you will find them filled with girls
who will never be mothers. To the