The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1892-09-22
TEMPERANCE NOTES.
RUINED ~ SALOONS.

SHARES for tho Ruin OF Unemployed Work.
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:
"1'm sorry, Mrs. Blank, and I would
give credit as long as you need it. if l
were not so poor myself But I have
come to the end of all can do at pres
ent." All that he had done was to fur
nish flour, 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
steady and expert workman. He was
a carpenter by trade, and lost his lob"
on a public school building at the end
of the summer. From September 6 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-tiv years and be no better
off for it; he could not face life sober
without work.
Then poverty reached it's deepest
depths. The wife made suspenders at
fifteen cents dozen, buying the sew
ing silk herself. The bread and mo-
lasses grew scarcer than ever, the chill
dren fell ill, 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 were foully filthy, and he might
we'll have been emp Dyed upon them
every day. There were fifty-seven
thous and children in the city without
school accommodations, and this car
penter 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
well employed in housing them. There
were thousands of children in the
mills, doing labor unfit for any child,
| while an abel bodied man searched
vainly day by dry, month after month,
for work, and at the end sought forget.
| fulness in rum.
Alas! There was no immediate profit
for any capitalist in doing any or all
of these beneticant things; for the com.
mon profit. we have not yet learned
to work. Until we organize our activi
ties so wisely that our streets shall be
cleaned under civil service rules, oul
children sent to school and not to the
shop and the factory and the sweaters
den. we need not hope that the mer
unemployed can be kept from seeking
o oblivion in drink. We may deplore anc
repreherd their action as we will, mer
whose babies cry with hunger will
drink to escape the haunting sight ant
sound
When the great cities make provision
for the employment of the une employed
providing winter work and shortening
the hours Of work in order to spreat
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 the
sad plight of his wife.
The wife has worked with will al
these twenty years. She has reared
and helped and started five well-cared
for children into school and now he,
one complaint is not against the selfish
ness of the man who leaves her to face
what he fees before, seeking refuge ir
artificial forgetfulness. No, her one
lamrntation is this HE worked sc
steady so many Years, and now it is not
the work but the want of work tina
has broken his will and made hin
drink himself mad
Surely every woman who faces thu
practical difficulties OF temperance
work soon meets the need of study O
the economic conditions which produce
an army of the unemployed to fall
ready victims of the saloon. But d.
we study as faithfully as we might:
Have we looked up the remedies which
the wage-earners themselves sngges
for their difficulties? They are the vas
ma jority of our American republic
! these men and women who live by tn,
sweat of their brow, and until we gair
their sympathy by effectively givine
them ours, we can never win the day
Are we doing this?-Florence Kelley
in Union Signal.