Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1893-06-22
A GREAT QUESTION.
Ex-senator Ingalls, Discusses the
Social Malay.
The Poverty OF the Poor Not Due TO the
Wealth OF the Rich, Nor Is the
Laborer Robbed by the EN-
pIoyment of Capital
From the S. Louis Globe-Democratl

from the St Louis Globe Democratl
There is no form of power so tangible,
so substantial and palpable, SO positive
and so readily apprehended as that
| which accompanies and results from
the possession of money. The desire
| for money is the most constant and
| universal passion among men; not al
| ways-seldom, perhaps-for its own
| sake, but for its consequences, its eff
| fects, what it commands and what it
| brings. Millions care nothing for liter
| airy fame, for the rewards of ambition,
for military glory, but every body wants
| money. Manhood disregards the joys
| of youth and age sinks into apathy that
| is Indifferent alike to the pleasures OF
| love and the Civilizations of success, but
| the need of money survives the decay
| of the faculties and ends only with life.
Money intelligently employed means
cultivated leisure, books, travel, music,
| congenia1 companionship, art, agree
able occupation. the delight Of the
senses, the best food and apparel, the
comfort and happiness of those beloved,
the felicity of benevolence and charity,
the relief of suffering, the power of do
| ing good, skilled nurture in illness, con-
ISOLATION in bereavement and superiority
''Old age and poverty" says Shals-
peare, 'sare an Unmatched pair and
at any stage nothing is so melancholy.
so wretched and depressing, as hope
less and helpless poverty. The man
| whose daily bread for himself and his
family depends upon wages that an
employer may give or withhold at
pleasure is not free. The alternative
between starvation and submission to
a schedule is slavery. Liberty is some
thing more than a name. He who de-
ponds upon the will of another for
| shelter, clothing and food cannot be a
| free man in the broad, full meaning of
that word. Freedom does not consist
in definitions The declaration that
life, liberty and the pursuit of happi-
! ness are the inalienable rights of every
human being makes no man independ-
ent. The right to liberty is an empty
mocbery and delusion, unless the power
to be free exists also. Freedom is not
merely the removal of legal re-
straints, the permission to come
or 60 Added to these must be
the capacity and the opportunity
which only exemption from the
necessity of incessant daily labor can
bring. To paraphrase Shakespeare,
poverty and liberty are an Unmatched
pair. Freedom and dependence are in
compatible. The abolition of poverty
has been the dream of Missionaries and
the hope of philanthropists from the
dawn of time. The inequality of for
tunes and the obvious injustice of the
Z! unequal distribution of wealth among
men have been the perplexity of philos-
| ophers. 1t is the unsOlved enigma of
political economy. Civilization has no
paradox SO mysterious as the existence
of hunger when there is an excess of
food-of want in the midst of superfiu
ity That one man should have posses
sions beyond the capacity of extrav-
| agance to squander and another, able
and willing to work, should perish for
want of embers, rags and crust, rem
| ders society unintelligible. 1t makes
| the charter of human rights a logo
! griph. So long as such conditions con-
| tinue, the key to the cipher in which
destiny is written is not revealed-the
brotherhood of man is a phrase, justice
| is formula and the divine code is
| illegible.
The evaporation of the poor at the
| insolent ostentation of the rich has
overthrown empires. The relief of the
| human and divine. The complaints of
the wretched are the burden of history.
| Job was a millionaire. Whether that
| incompatible production bearing his
| name is parable or a biography, it is
| of profound interest, because it shows
| that the patriarch was occupied with
| the same questions that disturb us
| now He describes, like populist,
| those who take the ass of the orphan
| and the OK of the widow, remove the
| landmarks, reap the fields and gather
| the vintage of the poor, whom they de-
| prive of their garments and leave naked
| to the showers of the mountain and
| the shelter of the rocks. The He
brew prophets reserved some of their
| choicest naledictions for the eXtortions
and luxury of the rich, and Moses pre-
scribed regulations for the remission Of
debts, the redistribution of lands and
the restriction of private fortunes. In
Rome, for centuries, the ownership of
real estate was limited to about 300
acres to each citizen, and the number
of cattle and slaves restricted to the
| area cultivated. But the laws given by
the Almighty, through Moses, to the
Jews were as imperative as the codes
of Lycurgus and Licinius against the
indomitable energies OF man and the
organic conditions of his being. At
the time of Cesar 1000 plutocrats prac-
tica1ly owned the Roman empire, and
more than 800, 600 heads of families were
mendicants, supported by donations
from the public treasury. The same
struggle has continued through the
middle ages into the nineteenth CEN
fury. There is no remedy prescribed
| to-day that has not been Intellectually
| administered to innumerable patients
| before; no experiment in finance and
| political economy proposed that has
| not been repeatedly tried, with no re-
| suit but individual disaster and ma
| tional ruin.
To admit that the ignorance, wretch
F.! edness, disease, want, poverty and
degradation OF society are inevitable
! and irremediable is to impeach God.
| To repeat the vain and paltry ex-
| pedients which the experience of CEN
turies has rejected as frivolous chimeras
| and yagaries, is to acknowledge that
civilization is a failure and that mans
only refuge from the infirInities and
obstacles of his nature is in barbarism,
! the eoIIality of the savage, where all