The advocate and Topeka tribune., 1893-11-15

I
and shoveling as best they can. It be-
ing impossible to eat lunch In such
quarters; they take only cup Of cold
tea or bit Of bread and butter and work
on until time to leave the pit" Thatmen
who rise at 8 In the morning to 20 to
such work are ''queer in the legs" from
young manhood and broken down at 90
ia not strange. Eighty thousand of these
wretches struck in the spring Of 1892
against 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, once
prosperous, but ruined in the panic Of
1878, who works II hours day on q
street railway, He had Sunday off 10
months ago and chopped he might get an
other in five or six months"
My church is helping to keep woman
from starvation whose business is to
make coats at Is cents each. This wom-
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 80 pound are regularly
In stock. In winter Strawberries and as
paragus at $3s box or bunch. First Flor
ida berries, 18 in q cup, "a 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 In slavery slavery they
maintain that is worse that chattel slay-
cry, because the master is not held re-
sponsible even for food and clothes and
shelter. Is this true2 It is said that
during the winter months of q recent
year in 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 2S,60S
families comprising not less than 10000
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 a 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
to eat for at least 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, q
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 farsway
poets dream. It 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 Of
madness called anarchy. An
archy is insanity-criminal insanity. It
had its birth in the prison vomit of the
asst century. This stream of deadiest
pOisons has been pouring unheeded into
,ur social order for the past hundred
7ears. The progeny of crime are pris-
'ners for life. The hope of liberty be-
zones madness. It is a madness that
s contagious when brought into con-
act with hopeless, if respectable, pow
rty. Here lies the danger Of the threat
~ unorcbv Haro ia tho daDOar Doint ~