Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1888-08-23
COMPLAINT OF THE POOR.
Martins Article on the Small Farm.
J. - er's FIXTURE.

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NEW YORK, July 29.-James Marlin,
of Bloomington, Indiana, gives the In
dependent the Complaint ofthe Poor, !"
and his article is additionally interest
ing because, as he says, it is an express
sion from one Of the poor themselves.
The word "pOor" in this case applies
not to the INDECENT but to the indus
trious. 1.-THE complaint of the indi-
gent, the paupers, the wretchedly
poor" says Marlin, ''is scarcely worth
considering; their poverty comes chief
ly from vice. That vice may, indeed,
be the result Of generations of oppres-
sion. Society may, as q whole, be re-
sponsible for the kind of beings its in
justice has produced; but that does not
alter the fact that the complaint of
such beings is worthless and their suf-
ferings the result of their own conduct.
Ages have evolved the race of them; it
will take ages to get that race back to
where that evolution started FROM"
Marlin, being farmer, speaks spec
tally of that class: "The entire yearly
income Of the average farmer is not
nearly $500. By this l do not mean
that farmers who own several farms
and employ the labor of Others cannot
get S400 a year, but mean that the
small farmer lin this section of Indiana
at least) who owns and tills with his
own hands his farm of so or 100 acres
cannot, after paying his taxes and re-
pairing his buildings, give himself a
salary of $400 a year. And observe I
include in that salary all produce con-
sumed at home by his family. If there
be a railroad superintendent or any
other useful man who can by superior
efficiency do work worth 100000 year,
let him have it. If Prof. Bemis or any
other man can render to society intel
lectual services worth, say So, 700, while
l work manfully for $500 a year, do
not complain. The complaint of the
poor is not that superior talent gets
higher wages, but their complaint is
precisely the reverse of this; it is that
income is not guaged by talent. Our
complaint is against the power of mon
ey to command and control, not only
money but men. The rich men make
no pretensions to superior skill of hand
or talent of brain, except it be the abil-
| ity to fortell the state of the markets
and so are able to buy cheap and sell
dear to their own advantage; these are
they of whom We complain. Their
talent is not one whit more useful to So
ciety than was the talent of Jesse
James. Their incomes are not the re-
suit of services to, society or of any
estimate society may place upon their
services The elder Vanderbilts in
accumulating, and the younger Van
derbilts in maintaining there immense
fortunes may have accidentally serv-
ed society to some extent; but to say
that their income is wages received
from society for service is nonsense
Or take the above mentioned individu-
al who is supposed to earn $4,000
year; we have no complaint to make
against him, but we do complain Of the
fact that with his money he can and
often does endow his inefficient and in
capable son with such an amount in
seven per cent. mortgages on improved
Kansas farms that he can command in
interest, without the use of any talent
at all the entire surplus earnings of so
small farmers, any one of whom is
more talented, more efficient, more USE
full than himself; so that he can send
his daughters flirting to the watering
places, while the daughters of his debt
ors grow course and unwomanly with
endless drudgery. We, the poor, do in
some instances rise above the level of
mere selfish grumbling and take note
of the fact that the mortal injury to
those so flirting at Long Branch may
be greater than that of those drudging
in Kansas, so that our complaint ought
to become the complaint of everybody"
"Our complaint, then, is not that
efficiency makes money, but that mon
ey makes money. Money counts for
more than either brains or manhood
in the effort to win money. When we
see man in the possession of wealth
we do not conclude that he has been
more than other men useful in serving
society; but we conclude that he in
herited a good start or that he has
embraced salvation by meanness' or
salvation by rascality. Every effort to
make it appear that the poor mans
complaint is a mere grudge against the
superior wages of those more skillful
than himself only tends to conceal the
real issue. The master evil of the pres
ent age is the power of mere money to
accumulate money. 1t is the direct
ouu lCSltillldtc SuCCGSSOE. vi LIl0 slave
power of other times. Usury (interest)
was forbidden to the Jew by the law of
Moses. If 1t could be forbidden now,
money would cease to win money, and
skill, brain, efficiency, would have a
fair chance in the race and would
always win. 1t has been demonstrated
that the mortgaged Indebtedness of the
farming class is constantly increasing.
The Independent only lately called at
tention to the fact that nearly fifty per
cent. of the farms in Michigan are
heavily mortgaged. These mortgages
are not being lifted, and in other States
are as numerous as in Michigan. They
are surely, and not very slowly, sinking
the class of independent small farmers
out of sight. This class, conservative,
moral, reliable, is doomed to perish,
through the workings of the power of
usury. It has been at all times the
glory and the security of our republic.
Will we be better off when it has ceased
to exist? 1t does seem to me that our
institutions will be forever better Sc
cured if we preserve an independent
class of peasant proprietors' than if We
let it perish.
'"The complaint of us farmers is that
we are perishing."