San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1891-12-21
The Daily Eight.
MONDAY, DECEMBER q, 1891.
The Poor You Always Have.


Editor LIGHT:
The LIGHT, only a few days past,
copied short article from Brook
lyn, n. Y. paper, which expressed
no small surprise at the Circumstance
that people should starve to death in
the city of New York. The Brooklyn
paper may possess 8 scholarly and
able editor and staff OF wide
awake reporters, but its very express
sion of surprise at an almost daily oc-
currence in New York, shows littls
familiarity with the crowded hauntr
of poverty, reekipg with filth, unde.
it's nose.
The larger the city, the greater is
the poverty, pauperism, want and
suffering. Employment and work
are more difficult of obtainment, on
account of the multitude needing
work, and this very circum-
stance reduces the rate Of
wages to a pitiful stiPende
Unfortunately, wage workers have no
account in bank and no property to
mortgage, when the wolf crosses the
threshold of their rented novels. A
spell of sickness-a broken limb from
any accident, or loss of work, brings
them face to face with want in it's
grimest aspect, because they had
no great store of provisions to fall
back upon-no money and no credit.
Once they fall behindhand, they can
, seldom get out OF debt as 1t requires
ali their scant earnings to pay rent
and ia provide coal and food.
Here in San Antonio, there is a
vast deal of actual want and suffer-
ing OF which, the rich and we'll to
do know nothing at all. The self.re-
speeding poor are not destitute of de-
cent and allowable pride-they are
willing and anxious to earn their
daily bread" in the sweat of their
faces-they are willing to seek
work OF any sort and they
will endeavor to procure small
loans or to obtain credit for
small sums, but they shrink from
publicly advertising their object pow
erty and putting themselves in the
attitude of beggars, soliciting aims.
Nor are they to be blamed for show
ing this spark, of honest pride. Real
ly, it does them honor.
A poor man asks a small loan of
Gripeall, who is worth an hundred
thousand dollars, and is CURLY told
he is very hard up and cannot accom-
modate him-he sneaKs up to Skin
ner, another rich fellow, and asks for
small loan, and for answer is told to
get work and not be bothering people.
He goes through the entire gamut of
off and denied by all of them with
10 ~ hlonI 70 hai
in their veins. When ne is at the
point of starvation the press will pro-
claim the fact and charity will be
doled out to him in driblets.
A poor woman goes around timidly
seeking work, or possibly q small
loan, bnt everybody is devilisn hard
run, Or has q note to pay or has just
paid his taxes or his water rates
but several of these very hard run
gentlemen God save the markn will
probably offer to purchase her virtue,
self.respect and character.
This Is not the picture of teeming
fancy, heated by the desire to make a
sensation. On the contrary, it is the
sad and painful experience ola num-
Der of men and women in San An
tonic who are neither tramps nor beg
CARS, neither loafers nor dead beats,
but who would gladly be bread-win,
ners if they could only obtain work.
When they are about to starve to
death, charity will 60 forth
with brass band and drum up aims
for them, and the names of the aims
givers will he published in the papers
with flourish of trumpets, and they
will forthwith set up for saints and
byast of their charitable deeds.
Charity in 1892 is humbug and a
pompous parade. 1t sleeps and slum-
bers till people are reduced to gnaw-
ing bones and then doles out it's help
and sdvertises what it gives in the
papers. Ben.