Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1891-10-15
A CITY EXPERIENCE.

Protected (?) Americans who read
of the destitution and suffering of the
poorer classes in Russia need not ex-
tend all their sympathies to the foreign
land. In this great republic of the
United States there are people starving
to death every day, for want of employ
ment wherewith to earn a part of the
vast surplus of food products which We
western people have to sell. The fol-
lowing true story of New York man,
given from actual experience, will give
an idea of the condition of protected"
American workmen:
was standing On the corner, watch
ing the purchases made by tenement
house people from greengrocer, when
1 noticed ragged and hungry-looking
man hanging about. After a bit, when
the grocer had stepped inside to make
change, this man grabbed couple of
carrots and head of cabbage off the
stand and walked off up Cherry street.
No one else saw him. I overlook him
after he had gone about square, and
when 1 had come up he suddenly
stopped, took the things from under his
coat and said:
Eyes, 1 took them, and you can lock
me up for it if you want tO!"
where do you live?"
fright here-upstairS."
'Have you got a family?"
''Yes; come I'D and see."
Four flights up and two small sack
rooms under the roof. fyo,. find the
poverty of New York either below the
surface in the Easements or high up
under the roofs. LII either case it sig
nlfies rags, hunger and despair. Only
two small rooms. but they were large
enough. There was bed on the floor,
an old stove, All armful of odds and
ends. Had the secondhand man
climbed up there to fix money valua-
tion he would not have made it over a
dollar, even though be had felt to pity
the people who called that place
home
On the bed lay a woman-the mans
wife-doubled up with rheumatism.
She could crawl about. but her working
days were over. Her age was only
forty, but privation and anxiety had
turned her hair and pinched and drawn
her face until one would have guessed
her years at sixty. AS we entered the
room the husband sat down on a box
and motioned to me to take the only
chair. The woman sat up and stared
in dazed and anxious way, and finally
whispered to her huiband:
"Peter. what is it?''x
81 stole them!" he replied, holding
up the vegetables.
Ard you-you will be arrested"
"What of it?' he doggedly answered.
By and by 1 knew their story. 1t
was the same story that hundreds of
others have told-that hundreds of
others could tell. Sickness, out of
work, despair, the pawnshOp, and fin
ally conviction that christianity was
mockery and the hereafter delusion.
AS they told their story-as he sat there
with the vegetables he had stolen to
allay their hunger, and she held up her
crippled hands in an appealing way, I
thought of the good men and women
who sometimes come down into these
streets to distribute tracts and exhort
hungry and penniless husbands, wives
and children to be good and trust in
Providence! Through a long year of
wretchedness and misfortune not a
hand had been lifted to help them-not
even a penny contributed. They could
hear the church bells from their win
dows, but the churches were looking
after the heather in Africa while they
starved! One day man climed up
the stairs and told them there was a
God, and he left them bundle of
tracts; but who can blame them if they
doubted him? At intervals the notes
of Home, Sweet Home," 1oated up to
them from hand-Organ on the side
| walk below. They looked around the
dark and empty rooms and wondered if
the song was sarcasm.
And on this Saturday night there
was not a penny to purchase with. The
husband could have earned something,
but mo hands wanted" had been the
reply as he travelled up and down and
across. He had gone out to beg, but
men had rebuffed him. Then he had
rOts would stifle hunger over Sunday,
and on Monday he might end work,