The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1893-07-14
QUESTIONS OF THE DAY.
The Day of the Plutocrat.


terrors of the Slavery question, Jeffer-
sons vision beheld the horrors of
Plutocracy.
Among the shadows of the uncer-
toin future of his country, he saw the
tremendous inequalities of wealth, the
rise of the untaxed millionaire, the
colossal fortune of the National Banker,
and the protected" manufacturer.
His prophetic eyes saw the vision, of
which We have made a reality-the
regal splendors of Fifth Avenue and
the abject misery of Five Points the
splendid hospital for pet dogs, and the
pestilential tenement rattle,trap for
ragged, hungry, outcast humanity the
gorgeous yacht and parlor car for sue
cessful plumbers like Gould and Hunt.
ingdon and Stanford and Rockefeller !;
and the rock pile, the coal mine, the
ball and the chain of horrible convict
life for the awkward rascals who steal
a loaf to eat, coat to wear, or cup OF
milk to drink. The upper terrace of
life where vicious laws, like rowing
Corsairs, have stored all the fruits of
modern legalized piracy, and where the
gilded rascals of high society enjoyed
all the spoils Of special privilege. The
lower plane where the struggle of
existence goes on like terrific battle
every day with it thousands of killed,
wounded and missing with its dreadful
choice between hunger and crime,
between virtue and vice.
Upon the one hand a charmed region
where all is light and music and festiv-
ity where the banquet board rivals the
splendid waste of a Roman Emperor !;
where the gorgeous apparel, flashing
with gems, represents the spoliation Of
a thousand homes, and where every
note of joy, rising as it does from the
pride Of i'll gotten gains, has its deep
counterpart in the groans of the
wretched, from whom their subsistence
was taken that it might be squandered
in plutocratic debauchery.
On the other hand, what have we :?
Numberless unhappy mortals, brothers
and sisters to US, crowded like brutes in
sitting huts and cellars and garrets-
almost unclothed, we'll nigh unfed !;
their gaunt fingers always outstretched
in the mute plea of want; their bed a
stone in the street, or a corner in the
alley knowing the law only as their
enemy; knowing the government only
as the partner of victorious robbers who
despoiled them; knowing the church
principally by its dignifed ministry
and magnificent temples ministry
which shuns the contamination of their
touch, and church whose velvet pews
they are not expected to soil-these are
the people and these are the human
slums which are the legitimate off
springs of our infamous system. These
are the quarters we make for crime.
These are the ctadels we furnish vice,
Couched in these lairs are all the
evils civilization abhors and creates!
1t is here that the rum shop finds a
stability nothing can shake; immortality
an impulse nothing can check crime a
seed bed nothing can sterilize; pesti-
lence a source which nothing can
exhaust; religion barrier which
nothing can level
All honor to such men as Booth, and
his Salvation Army; all honor to the
Sisters of Mercy of the Catholic church;
all honor to Evangelists like Sam
Jones, and Sam Small, and Moody, and
Parkhurst
But I venture, here, this deliberate
prediction Emanuel's Kingdom will
never float its standards, in complete
triumph, over the lives Of men until
some of the glorious doctrines in behalf
of common humanity, some of the
warm hearted democracy of Jesus
Christ, finds place in the laws of his
protested disciples!
What was the remedy which Jeffer-
son proposed for this threatened evil !?
First, and most essential, to have no
class legislation.
Second, to have system of taxation
which would exempt. altogether, the
small property, while it taxed the large
fortune, on a graduated scale, which
was to make the tax increasingly heavy
as she fortune grew increasingly large.
These are his words:
"Another means of silently lessening
the inequalities of property is to exempt
all from taxation below a certain point,
and to tax the higher portions of