The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1885-08-21

/ 80 -oNt' ~ ~-t'~i anu S1o"4u5 up ,'-Unoo.o
proper education, without proper sur
roundings and without any advantages.
There come before her visions of her
tour boys, all sneered at by the neigh
bors as drunkards boys, and almost
certain to go the way their wretched
father has gone; of the three girls, who.
Ignorant and debased by the example
that is always before them, will finally
drift off into that current of vice from
which there is no return. She knows
their fate, and there is no sleep for her.
She rises always more tired and more
dragged out than when she sought her
pillow. No wonder she writes:
Their father will drink. am so heart
What is there in life for her? Moth
ing, or rather worse than nothing. Bet
ter for her that she should die and find
that peace in the grave that the brew
ers will never give her in life. She
lives only because there is in her mind
some sort of hope that something, she
knows not what, may yet save her hus-
band. But the outlook is dreary
enough, and, as she says, her troubles are
greater than can be described in print.
What is there for herP Rags hunger,
cold, desolation, despair, death. Moth
ing in life for her and worse than moth
ing for her children when she leaves
them. Clothes! She has had none for
twenty years. Food! Warmth! She
has neither. She has none of the lux
uries of life and falls far short of the
necessities. There are no carpets on her
floors, no curtains to the windows, if in
deed she has glass in them; only the
barest of the commonest necessities of
life. She and her children do not live.
they exist. There are good things in
life, but they are not for her There
are pleasant surroundings, there are
comforts, there are Injuries, but
they are not for her. The brewer and
his lieutenant, the beer-shop keeper,
have a mortgage on her husband S earn
ings, and even on hers, and they take
all the good to themselves. Their
houses are well furnished, and why
should they not be? Her husband,
and the husbands of a score or more
like her, are contributing all they have
to their use and behoof
'"Their father will drink. am SO heart
broken"
She conceals her trouble from her
children as best she can, for should she
give up what would become of them?
The sodden father, debased beyond
help, caring nothing for the woman
whom he swore to cherish and protect,
o1.iy1 1nfb I'M II, ho1., ~,
he brought into the world, chained to
habit which has complete control of
him, is worse than nothing to them.
The best thing she can do with him is
to keep him out of their sight, and so
she is glad when he leaves the wretched
home, and sorry when he returns. She
is compelled, for the. sake of the chill
dren, to keep them away from their
father, and so she has to carry her own
load and his, too, his being trebled in
weight by the debasing influences that
have possession of him. What is there
in life for her? A dreary journey day
by day, bare-footed, over sharp rocks,
with the certainty that at the end she
shall fall and perish, leaving those she
loves behind her, helpless and hopeless.
Their father will irink. j am so heart
broken"
And all this zine the brewer brews
and the seller sells. There is profit of
one dollar and fifty cents on each bar
rel to the brewer, and nine dollars to
the retailer. What care they that the
money the poor wretch pays down upon
the bar is bread taken from the mouths
ST children and clothes from their backs?
What difference does it make to them
that this Internal appetite is not only
dragging down the father to death and
a hell afterward, but is killing mother
and making thieves of four boys and
outcasts of three girls? What differ
ence does it make to them that the COM
munity must in time bury the poor
mother, and bear the expense of the
criminality of the seven children Not |
a whit. There is the brewers dollar !
and a halt, and the miserable retailers |