The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1894-08-02
JERSEY CITY NEWS,
No. Isl Washington ST.,

istic of m~ultitudes Of our people. and have
much to do with our present Strengthened
circumstances .,s
"a third cause is drunkenness. We spend
in this land for alcoholic drinks of all kinds,
some 5000, 900, 900 a year. This is enough to
give each family in the land an annual pres
emit of $50. The rich by no means spend the
bulk of this enormous sum-. On the contrary
it comes from the pockets of the men who
complain of low wages. l know of some
families who regularly spend from ST to 50
a week upon beer. One dollar a week in the
savings bank for ten years is 800. The use
of alcohol is, l believe, not a sin, but for a
poor man it is a folly. 1t does not muster
strength, and it raises the spirits up only to
depress them. Tea is better to cheer a man,
and a glass Of cold milk on warm days
makes a lunch worth five schooners Of lager.
Talk no more to me Of poverty while we
throw 5000, 900, 900 a year into beer kegs and
wine cellars.
EXTRAVAGANZA.
ga fourth cause is the general extrava-
gance which characterizes the whole nation.
| have referred already to private luxury
and waste. But it is not confined to indi-
viduals. Our hotels are absurdly and wildly
magnificent, our methods of travel far too
costly, our dresses bewildering tangles of in
discriminate elegance, our private Offices
have a splendor which belongs to Kings. The
famous barber shop of Chicago, where the
floor was partly paved with silver dollars, is
an example of our contempt for simplicity
and our undemocratic delight in baubles and
fine feathers. Our legislators catch the
spirit of prodigality and vie with each other
in giving away our lands and squandering
our savings. and some one. my friends, has
to pay for all this.
ga fifth and potent cause of the hard
feeling of today IS the unreasoning way in
which many men lump all capitalists to-
gether as hard hearted n greedy tyrants.
This is unwise, as it is wrong, and | want to
insist once more that before the working
man can win the full sympathy of the peo-
pie he must learn to be just.
"a sixth cause of the present unrest is the
way in which labor has been depressed by
foreign immigration. We have for many
years been protecting American industries,
as it is humorously called, and by giving
bounties to certain favored individuals
which the mass OF the people nave paid,
nave enabled those individuals to keep out
cheaper articles from abroad and acquire
fortunes. But, at the same time, we have
allowed these very men to import free and
cheap labor, and our poor working man has
thus had his candle burned at both ends.
II COUNTRY CHANGED.
"a seventh cause of the present trouble is
found in the rapidly changing conditions of
the country. Formerly the workingman
was everything, now you replace q dozen
men easier thai you can a piece OF machin-
cry. As man himself falls his wage fall.
But this is the fault of -FOUR civilization not
of capital. Al eighth caus. of yoar trouble
is the competition OF capital with capital
Mr.. Stoddard. after giving MANY lilustra-
-tions of his claims, came down to the discus
sion OF remedies of the existing evils as he
had presented them. He does not think
strikes a remedy, FOR he said a strike
was a boomerang and always came tack
on him who used It. lie tanks that if the
workinsmen were to properly organize they
would do much 10 atfeliorate the existing
evils. He does not leiiese in cd-opcration
as too mans cooks are apt To sI,nii the hi eth.
He blolgat forward statistics TO show that