The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1891-04-21
afford TO be idle. II is from the idle

a. " btauuS btii 700 iouy. VINO q won
der that in this world, where there Is so
much TO do, and all the hosts OF earth
and heaven and he'll are plunging into
the conflict, and angels are flying, and
God is at work, and the universe Is
aquake with the marching and counter
marching, that God lets his Indignation
fall upon a man who chooses idlepess?
L have watched these do-nothlngs who
| spend their lime stroking thei; beard,
and retouching their .oilet, and c~riticiz-
ing Industrious people, and pass their
days and nights IN barrooms and club
houses, loungiDg and shocking and chew
ing and card-playing. They are not
only useless, but they are dangerous.
How hard it is for them to while away
the hours! Alas for them! If they do
not know how to while away an hour,
what will they do when they have all
eternity on their hands? These men for
awhile smoke the best cigars, and wear
the best clothes, and move In the high
est spheres; but / have noticed that very
soon they come down to the prison, the
almsh0use, or stop at the gallows.
The police stations of this cluster of
cities furnish annually between two and
three hundred thousand lodgings. For
the most part these two and three hum
dred thousand lodgings are furnished to
a~ble-bodied men and women-people as
,bie to work as you and 1 are. When
they are received no longer at one police
station, because they are ''%repeaters,"
they go to some other station, and so
they keep moving around. They get
their food at house doors, stealing what
they can lay their hands on in the front
bas ement while the servant is spreading
the bread in the back basement. They
Will not work. Time and again, in the
country districts, they have wanted hum
drcds and thousands of laborers. These
men will not go. They do not want to
work. l have tried them. L have set
them to saving wood in my cellar to see
whether they wanted to work. / offered
to pay them well for It. 1 have heard
the saw going for about three minutes,
and then I went down, and %, the wood,
but no saw! They are the pest of socie-
ty, and they stand in the way of the
Lords poor, who ought to be helped,
and must be helped, aud will be helped.
While there are thousands of Industrious
men who cannot get any work, these
men who do not want any work come in
and make that plea. 1 am in favor of
the restoration of the old-fashioned
whipping-post for just this one class of
men who will not work; sleeping at night
at public expense in the station house;
during the day, getting their food at your
scare them. They would like it. Black.
wells Island or Sing Sing would be a
comfortable home for them. They
would have no sbiebtion to the aims
house, for they like thin soup, If they
cannot get mockturtle. I propose this
for them; on one side of them put some
healthy work; ON the other side put a
rawhide, and let them take their choice.
L like for that class OF people the scant
bill of fare that Paul wrote out for the
Thessalohian ~loafers: t'Ifany work not,
neither should he eat" BY what law
of God or nan is it right that you should
toll day in and day out, until our hands
are blistered and our arms ache and our
brains get numb, and then be called
upon to support what in the United
States are about two million loafers!
They are a very dangerous class. Let
the public authorities keep their eyes OF
them.
Again: Among the uprooting classes
/ place the oppressed poor. Poverty to
a certain extent is Christening; but after
that, when it drives a man to the wall,
and he hears his children cry in vain for
bread, il some times makes him des per-
ate. / think that there are thousands of
honest men lacerated into vagabondism.
There are men crushed under burdens
for which they are not half While
there Is no excuse for erimlnality even
in oppression, state it as q simple fact
that much OF the scoundrelism of the
community is consequent upon ill-treat-
ment. There are many men and women
battered and bruised and stung until the
hour of despair has come, and they stand
with the feroclty of q wild beast which,
pursued until it can run no longer, turns
round, foaming and bleeding, to fight the
hounds.
aud Brooklyn life that is appalling and
putrefaction. You go down the stairs
and at the bottom you find the poor VIC
TINS ON the floor, cold, sick, three-fourths
dead, Sinking into q still darker corner
under the CLEAN of the lantern of the
police. There has not been q breath of
fresh air in that Dom for five years,
literally. The broken empties
It's contents upon then, and they lie at
nightin the swimming filth. There they
are, men, women, children; blacks,
whites; Mary Magdalen without here re-
pentance, and Lazarus without his God.
These are ''the dives" into which the
pick-pocket and the thieves go, as we'll
as a great many who would like a differ
cnt life but cannot get it. These places
are the sores of the city, which bleed
perpetual corruption. They are the un-
DERIVING volcano that threatens us with
a Caracas earthquake. 1t rolls and
roars and surges and hoaves and rocks
and blasphemes and dies. Aud there
arc only two outlets for it: the police
court and the potter's fieled. In other
words, they must either go tn prison or
to hell. Oh, you lever saw 1T, you say.
You never will see 1t until on the day
when those staggering wretches shall
come up in the light Of the judment
throne, and while all hearts are being
revealed, God will ask you what you did
to help them.
There is another" layer of povertr and
restitution, not so squalid but almost as
helpless. You hear the incesssant wall
ing for bread and clothes and fire, Their
eyes are sunken. Their cheek-bones
stand out. Their hsnds are damp with
slow consumption. Their aeshis pulled
up with drOpsies. Their breath Is like