The Progress., 1893-10-28

/ ing Impossible 10 eat n lunCn III SuCl
quarte,s: they take only cup of colo
tea or bit of bread and butter and worl
on until time to leave the pit" That mel
who rise at 3 in the morning to go tC
such work are "queer in the legs from
young manhood and broken down at q
is not strange. Eighty thousand Of thesC
wretches struck in the spring of 1S9,
against a reduction of wages. Can any
man dare to say they were not striking
for life2
CASES OF EXTREME HARDSHIP.
We read of man GO years old, ono,
prosperous, but ruined i'll the panic OF
1873, who works II sours day on q
street railway. He had a Sunday off rs
months ago and ''hoped he might get an
other in five or six months"
My church is helping to keep woman
from starvation whose business is tC
make coats at 10 cents each. This WON.
an is the representative of hundreds OF
thousands whose right to life is involved
in the hoped for reformation of society
Alongside this fight for life we read of a
fruit market (which has existed for 80
years upon the whims of the rich. Ham.
burg grapes at 81 a pound are regularly
in stock. Iii winter Strawberries and as
paragus at $3a box or bunch. First Flor.
ida berries, 13 in a cup, 81 a cup, and
parties supplied at that rate"
Second-These people believe that their
liberty is at stake. They believe that
they are in slavery and their children
being borne i'll slavery-a slavery they
maintain that is worse that chattel slav-
cry, because the master is not held re-
sponsible even for food and clothes and
shelter. Is this true? Ii is said that
during the winter months of recent
year III three judicial districts in New
York city over 81 900 men, women and
children were evicted for nonpayment
of rent, and in the course of the %, ,S9j
families comprising not less than 10, ,OOJ
persons were evicted in like manner
A young man who attends my church
services and who is clerk in one of the
firms which does this work told me the
other day that hardly day passed over
his head that his soul was not made sick
at what he saw. He says that the pow
erty and suffering of these poor families
are SO intense that after he has executed
his orders and turned them out he fire.
quently takes a dollar out of his own
small earnings, gives the mother to buy
something to eat for at least a day or
two for herself and her children. He
told me that the world would be amazed
to know how many big tenement build
ings with imposing fronts and apparent
ly prosperous tenants hide freless, emp
ty rooms. with one old, broken chair.
mattress or pile of rags as the only
furniture.
THE VERY PoOR CANNOT BE FREE.
1t is useless to tell these people they
are free. Liberty is to them faraway
poets dream. 1t is not in their world.
The trouble is that this mass of despair
ing manhood and womanhood fall easy
victims in such hours to the spell %
criminal madness called anarchy. An
archy is insanity-criminal insanity. 1t
had its birth in the prison vomit of tho
last century. This stream of deadliest
poisons has been pouring unheeded into
our social order for the past hundred
years. The progeny of crime are pris-
oners for life. The hope of liberty be-
comes a madness 1t is madness that
Is contagious when brought into con-
tact with hopeless, if respectable, pow
erty. Here lies the danger of the threat
of anarchy. Here is the danger point of
the future. The poor rankle under the
fancied or real sense of injustice. Out
of work and the victim of despair, no
may go mad. Will we have the love
broad and deep enough to meet this is
sue for him in seeing that sane life is
at least made possible?
a writer in the Hartford Courant tells
us how Lord Lytton of England behaved
when such an appeal was made to him.
A laborer on the estate of the elder Bull
wer did a certain hard job. The bailiff
refused to pay what he demanded for tho
work. The man insisted. The bailiff
discharged him and prosecuted him, un-
til finally he drove him almost pauper
from the estate and from the neighbor-
hood. He kept telling his friends that
some day he would get what was due
him from the Bulwer-Lytton estate. |
When Owen Meredith came to the title
and was home on leave of absence as
English ambassador to France, this
laborer met him on the road one day.
You are Lord Lytton, believe" he
said respectfully.
YES"
Then, if you please, should like you
to pay an account which has been due
me for long time"
Lord Lytton looked at the account, and
at his request the man told the whole
story. The poet was very much affected
and disturbed. Then he said:
"Well, | will do what can to make it
up to YOU"
He was as good as his word. He built
a house at the gates of the park, put the
man and his family into it and gave it to
them, rent free, with other perquisites,
SO that he was entirely comfortable for