The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1894-02-08
THE NATIONS POOR.
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage Discourses
on Poverty.
There Are Many Causes Conspiring to keeI
Men Poor, and They Are National
as Well as Individual to
Large Extent.

in the Brooklyn tabernacle, being based
on the text:
aye have the poor always with you.-Matthew,
XVI. II.
Who said that? The Christ, who
never owned anything during His
earthly stay. His cradle and His grave
We're borrowed. Every fig He ate was
from some one else's tree. Every drop
of water He drank was from some one
else's well. To pay His personal tax,
which was very small, only thirty-one
and one-quarter cents, He had to per-
form a miracle and make a fish pay it.
All the heights and depths and lengths
and breadths of poverty Christ meas
tired in His earthly experience, and
when He comes to speak of restitution
He always speaks sympathetically,
and what He said then is as true now:
Eye have the poor always with you"
For six thousand years the bread
question has been the active and alb
sorbing question. Witness the people
crowding up to Joseph's store-house in
Egypt Witness she famine in Samaria
and Jerusalem. Witness the seven
thousand hungry people for whom
Christ multiplied the loaves. Witness
the uncounted millions of people now
living, who, l believe, have never yet
had one full meal of healthful and nu-
tritious food in all their lives. Think
of the three hundred and fifty-four
great famines in England. Think of
the twenty-five million people under the
hoof of hunger year before last in Rus
STA. The failure of the Nile to overflow
for the seven years in the eleventh
century left those regions depopulated.
Plague of insects in England. Plague
of rats in Madras Presidency. Plague
of mice in Essex Plague of locusts in
China. Plague of grasshoppers in
America. Devastation wrought by
draught, by deluge, by frost, by war,
by hurricane, by earthquake, by
comets flying too near the earth, by
change in the management of national
finances, baleful causes innumerable.
/ proceed to give you three or four
reasons why my text is markedly and
graphically true in this year 1894.
The first reason we have always the
poor with us is because of the perpet-
ual overhauling of the tariff question,
or, as l shall call it, the tariffic con-
troversy. There is need for such
word, and so l take the responsibility
of manufacturing it. There are mil
lions of people who are expecting that
the present congress of the United
States will do something one way or
the other to end this discussion. But
it will never end. When | was five
years of age | remember hearing my
father and his neighbors in vehement
discussion of this very question. 1t
was high tariff or low tariff, or no tariff
ut all. When your grandchild dies
at ninety years of age it will prob
ably be from overexertion in discuss
ing the tariff. On the day the world
is destroyed there will be three men
standing on the post office steps-one
a high tariff man, another low tariff
man and the third free trade man
each one red in the face from excited
argument on this subject. Other ques-
tions may get settled, the Mormon
question, the silver question, the pen
sion question, the civil-service uues-
ton. All questions of annexation may
come to peaceful settlement by the
annexation of islands two weeks
voyage away and the heat of
their volcanoes conveyed, through
pipes under the sea, made useful in
warming our continent, or annexation
of the moon, dethroning the Queen of
Night, who is said to be dissolute, and
bringing the populations under the in
fiuence of our free institutions; yea, all
other institutions, national and in
ternational, may be settled. But this
taritfic question, never. It will not
only never be settled, but it can never
be moderately quiet for more than
three years at time. each party get
ting into power taking one of the four
years to fix it up, and the next party
will fix it down.
Our finances can not get we'll because
of too many doctors. 1t is with sick
nations as with sick individuals. Here
is man terribly disordered as to his
body. doctor is called in and he ad-
ministers febrifuge, a spoonful every
hour. But recovery is postponed, and
the anxious friends call in another
doctor, and he says: What this pa
tient needs is blood-letting; now roll
up your sleeve!" and the lancet flashes.
But still recovery is postponed, and a
homeopathic doctor is called in, and he
administers some small pellets, and
says: "All the patient wants is rest. y
Recovery still postponed, the family
says that small pellets can not amount
to much anyhow, and an allopathie
doctor is called in, and he say: ''What
this patient, wants is calomel and
jalap." Recovery still postponed, g
hydropathic doctor is called in, and he
says: What this patients wants is
hot and cold baths, and he must have
them right away. Turn on the faucet
and get ready the shower baths" Re
covery still postponed, an electric doc
tor is called in, and he brings all the
schools to bear upon the poor sufferer
and the patient, after brave struggle
for life, expires. What qkilled him.
Too many doctors. And that is wha-
is killing our national finances. My
peasonal friends, Cleveland and Harri
son and Carlyle and Mckinley ant
&o1n