Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1891-04-13


plague of crime you need to consider
the idle population. OF course / do
not refer to people who are getting old,
or to the sick or to those who cannot
get work, but | tell you to look out for
those athletic men and women who
will not work When the French no.
bleman was asked why he kept busy
when he had SO large Il property he
said Il keep on engraving 50 [ may
not hang myself" I do not care who
the man is, you cannot afford to be
idle 1t is from the idle classes that
the criminal classes are made up.
Character, like water, gets putrid if it
stands still too long Who can wonder
that in this world where there is SO
much to do, and all the hosts of earth
and heaven and hell are plunging into
the conflict, and angels are flying and
God is at work and the universe is
a-quake with the marching and counter
marching, that God lets his Indignation
fall upon man who chooses idleness?
I have watched these dO-nothings who
spend their time strol1ing their beard,
and retOuching their toilet, and criti-
cising industrious people, and pass their
days and nights in barrooms and club
houses, lounging and smoking and
chewing and card playing. They are
not only useless, but they are danger
GUS 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 highest spheres, but | have
noticed that very soon they come down
to the prison, the a!mshOuse, or stop at
the gallows.
INVINCIBLE LAZINESS.
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
hundred thousand lodgings are fur
nished to able bodied men and women
people as able to work as you and
are When they are received no longer
at one police station, because they are
''repeaters," they go to some other sta
ton, and so they keep moving around.
They get their food at house doors,
stealing what they can lay their hands
on in the front basement while the ser
want is spreading the bread in the back
basement. They will not work. Time
and again, in the country districts,
they have wanted hundreds and thou
sands of laborers. These men will not
go. They do not want to work.
have tried them. I have set them to
saving wood in my cellar to see
whether they wanted to work. | Of
fered to pay them we'll for it. | have
heard the saw going for about three
minutes and then | went down, and
10, the wood but no saw! They are
the pest of society, and they stand in
the way of the Lords poor, who ought
to be helped, and must be helped, and
will be helped.
While there are thousands of indus
triOus men who cannot get any work,
these men who do not want any work
come in and make that plea. [ am in
favor of the restoration of the old
fashioned whippj1r for just this
one class Of u.-: I'll not work,
sleeping at niM.:f -- dc expense i'll
the station houst, ..ur.Hg the day get
ting their food at your doorstep. I'M
prisonment does not scare them. They
would like it, Blackwell's Island or Sing
Sing would be a comfortable home for
them They would have no objection
to the almshouse, for they like thin
soup, if they cannot get mock turtle.
/ 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. like for that class
of people the scant bill of fare that
Paul wrote out for the Thessalonian
loafers, "Ifany work not, neither should
he eat. By what law of God or man
is it right that you and l should toll
day in and day out, until our hands are
blistered and our arms ache and our
brain gets 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
on them.
Again, among the uproOting classes
| place the oppressed poor, Poverty
to q 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, it sometimes makes
him desperate. | think that there are
thousands of honest men lacerated into
vagabondism. There are men crushed
under burdens for which they are not
half paid. While there is no excuse
for criminality, even in oppression
state it as Il simple fact that much of the
scOundrelism of the community is con
sequent upon i'll treatment. There are
many men and women battered and
bruised and stung until the hour of de
spair has come, and they stand with
the ferocity of u wild beast which, pur-
sued until it can run no longer, turns
round, foaming and bleeding, to fight
the hounds.
LIFE IN THE CELLARS.
There is vast underground New
York and Brooklyn life that is appalI-
ing and shameful 1t wallows and
steams with putrefaction. You go down
the stairs, which are wet and decayed
with filth, and at the bottom you find
the poor victims on the floor. cold,
sick, three-fourths dead, Sinking into
a still darker corner under the CLEAN
of the lantern of the police. There has
not been breath of fresh air in that
room for five years, literally. The
broken sewer empties its contents upon
them, and they lie at night in the
swimming filth. There they are, men,
women, children; blacks, whites; Mary
Magdalene without her repentance
and Lazarus without his God These
are ''the dives" into which the pick
pockets and the thieves go, as well as
a great many who would like differ
ent life but cannot get it. These places
are the sores of the city, which bleed
perpetual corruption.
They are the underlying volcano
that threatens us with a Caracas
earthquake. 1t rolls and roars and
surges and heaves and rocks and bias
phemes and dies And there are only