The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1892-09-23
TEMPERANCE NOTES.
VICTIMS OF THE SALOON.
SHARES for the Ruin of Unemployed Work
men.

men.
A woman started out in search of
work the other day. The house that
she left was neat as hands could make
it, the five children were in school,
their worn clothing patched to the ut
most limit
The grocer had said in the morning:
'Im sorry, Mrs. Blank, and | would
give credit as long as you need it, if
were not so poor myself. But | have
come to the end of all can do at pres
emit" All that he had done was to fur
nish -four, yeast and molasses for seven
months, for father, mother and chill
dren had lived all the winter on bread
and molasses.
The moral of the tale is brief, but
the problem that it enfolds is the prob
lem of our whole civilization. The IA
Their had been for five and twenty years
Il steady and expert workman. He was
carpenter by trade, and lost his Job"
on public school building at the end
of the summer. From September to
February Is he tramped in search of
whatever work might offer. Finding
none, disguised with life, he drank to
the point of oblivion, and, recovering
his senses, returned to his wife, saying
that he meant to stay drunk till he
died, for it did no good to work stead
lily twenty-five years and be no better
off for it; he could not face life sober
without work.
Then poverty reached its deepest
depths. The wife made suspendcrs at
fifteen cents a dozen, buying the sew
ing silk herself. The bread and mo-
lasses grew scarcer than ever. the chill
dren fell i'll, and one died. The father
was well-nigh mad, whenever he
emerged from his oblivion.
Yet all that winter the streets of the
great city in which that workman
lived We're foully filthy, and he might
well have been employed upon them
every day. There were fifty-seven
thousand children in the city without
school accommodations, and this car
pcnter might we'll have been at work
throughout the months of his despair
building schoolhouses. There were
swarms OF families dwelling in quarters
unfit for human habitation. and an
army of carpenters could have been
wcll employed in housing them. There
We're thousands of children in the
mills doing labor unfit for any child,
while an able bodied man searched
vainly day by day, month after month,
for work. and at the end sought forget
fitness in rum.
Alasi There was no immediate profit
for any capitalist in doing any or all
of these beneficent things: for the com
mon profit. we have not yet learned
to work. Until we organize our activi-
ties 50 wisely that our streets shall be
cleaned under civil service rules, our
children sent to school and not to the
shop and the factory and the sweaters
den, we need not hope that the men
unemployed can be kept from seeking
oblivion in drink. We may deplore and
rcprehend their action as we WILL men
whose babies cry with hunger will
drink 20 escape the haunting sight and
sound
When the great cities make provision
for the employment of the unemployed,
providing winter work and shortening
tho hours of work in order to spread
what is done in the year over as much
of the year as possible, there will be
fewer men in the position of our friend
the carpenter, and fewer women in tire
sad plight OF his wife.
The wife has worked with "A will all
these twenty years. She has reared
and helped and started five well-cared-
for children into school, and now her
one complaint is not against the selfish
ness Of the man who leaves her to face
what he fees before, seeking refuge in
artificial forgetfulness. No, her one
lamentaton is this: ''IIe worked so
steady so many years, and now it is not
the work but the want of work that
has broken his will and made him
drink himself mad"
Surely every woman who faces the
practical difficulties Of temperance
work soon meets the need of study of
the economic conditions which produce
an army of the unemployed to fall
ready victims of the saloon. But do
we study as faithfully as we might?
Have we looked up the remedies which
thc wage-eainers themselves suggest
for their difficulties? They are the vast
majority of our American republic,
these men and women who live by the
sweat of their brow. and until we gain
their sympathy by effectively giving
them ours we can never win the dav.
Are we doing this?-Florence Keller,
in Union Signal.