Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1893-03-20
Especial correspondence ]


Especial Correspondence.l
We as readers become accustomed to
appalling rows of statistical figures un-
til they come to convey to our minds no
idea of the conditions they are meant to
portray. Thus when it is stated that
$4,000 men are out of employment in
Chicago, or that 10000 people applied
for aid in one week at the county relief
offices, we may receive no realizing sense
of the actual situation. But those who
see what all this means can but carry
with them aching hearts and a despair
ing pity for the fate of humanity.
1t means that shivering men linger
about the bridges, the docks, the daily
newspaper offices, the building sites, the
doorways where the faintest suspicion of
"men wanted" turks, all bearing that
listless, hopeless, detected look which to
see on the faces of SO many human be-
ings makes one almost wish the world
would cease to exist. 1t means that the
headquarters of local charities are filed
to suffocation with men, women and
children desperate in their attempts to
tion that often ends in death before the
red tape operations of organized chari-
ties afford relief 1t means that at night
the station house cells, dirty, hard and
cold as they are, are crowded with limo,
cent, homeless men who seek even that
poor refuge from the cruelty of the
weather. 1t means that little children
are found frozen to death in Railways
and hooks into which they have crept.
1t means that families are found hud-
died together in one miserable bed with
out scrap of food or fuel in the house.
1t means that those scenes which GER
tain philanthropic people with hearts al
ways throbbing for distress in the dis
tance love to depict as occurring in effete
Europe or heather India are common
enough right here in our midst.
1t is not popular to say it in this the
most talked of city in the world that it
contains this winter most appalling
amount of poverty and suffering. 1t is
supposed to be the delight of every pa
triotic citizen to paint in glowing colors
everything pertaining to it, but we can
not be blamed if some of US yield faint
hearted responses to boasts of our pros
perity and enterprise and do not enthuse
over our prospects to any great extent.
We prefer to tell the truth.
The unusual destitution is due to vari-
Gus causes-the severity of the weather,
the heartlessness of coal combines, and,
most of all, to the fact that working peo-
pie from all over the country have been
lured here by the prospect of plenty of
work at good prices throughout the next
year. That the men are not willingly
idle and vicious is proved by the fact
that every advertisement for help want
ed is eagerly answered by hundreds of
applicants. They are crowded here, and
there is no place for them. Naturally
there is also what is called an epidemic
of crime" Never were so many depre-
dations, petty thefts, sandbaggings, bur-
glaries, committed in the same space of
time as now The timid and shallow
minded cry aloud for stricter surveil-
lance, more severe punishments, less
mercy to all arrested. The mayor and
police are prodded on to do the brutal
work of society with greater zeal. The
police courts are crowded every morn
ing; the criminal courts are months be-
hind in their calendars; the Jail is full,
the bridewell overfowing; the roads to
the penitentiaries are worn smooth; yet
there is no cessation of crime, no lessen
ing of the number of offenses against
person and property. Under such condi-
tions the methods Of dealing with those
arrested are hurried, chaotic, revenge
ful, and in consequence many innocent
people are punished-pushed violently
into downward road from which there
is little chance of escape.
There is but one society in the city
which seeks to prevent this great wrong,
and that is the Women and Childrens
Protective society, which employs an
agent to be constantly at hand where the
young and helpless are tried. The work
of this society is marvellous and deserves
whole letter, which l will soon be pre-
pared to give. But Of course one organ
ization cannot be omnipresent or omnip-
otent, and many and many homeless.
unemployed but innocent man falls into
the hands of the police and is thence
forth doomed. A term in the bridewell
is a sure preventive to respectable en-
ployment. The friendship of good peo-
pie is lost, but the unwelcome compan-
ionship of old professionals" is forever
secured.
These are appalling and momentous
statements to make, for they force upon
our minds the fact that our present proc.
esses of law manufacture criminals rather
than save them, and that something is rad
ically wrong in the manner we, through
out society, deal with each other.
But we will acknowledge that many
very many-are guilty, and we know
that depredations are daily and nightly
committed. There is close connection
between $4,000 men being unable to find
work and the presence of an epidemic
of crime" Let one imagine himself a
craftsman-a hopeful, ambitious man
who had come to Chicago expecting to
better himself, only to find every field of
employment so overcrowded that he can
notapproach it. Rent, food, coal, clothes,
are Immediately dear, and his family is
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