The record-union., 1894-04-21
HAS STARVATION CEASED TO BE
PITIFUL?

@N-~~@Sf
Mardi Gras masquerade costumes used in
this year of grace to celebrate the annual
festival which for many years has shared
with the yellow fever the Office of max
ing the Crescent City notorious. It is to
be hoped that no microbes of the yellow
fever came to San Francisco with the
costumes. The pageant, as its projectors
lovingly mlsnamed the tatterdemalion
parade, landed from ''royal barge'i and
Of few carriages containing men with
horrid masks. One carriage, drawn by
six horses. contained the masquerading
character called ''Rex." Some four or five
carriages following contained masquer-
aders in exceedingly cheap costumes;
and following these. some thirty-five or
forty mounted Mamelukes, with cheese
cloth capes and cloaks, the faces of the
wsarers being obscured by dark, be-
whiskered masks. These Mamelukes
were mounted upon street-car horses, for
the most part of the worn-out variety.
And this beggarly, pitiful abortion of
pageantry, witless in conception and
tame in execution, constituted the great
Mardi Gras festival, which had been the
recipient of so much free advertising and
fake bloviating.
The universal testimony of the spec
tators was that it was failure OF degree
something worse than disappointment,
and If there was Californian in the throng
who witnessed it, possessed of dignity of
character and respect for republican in
stitutions, that Californian felt mortifca-
ton. shame and chagrin that the Gov
ernor Of the State of California rode at the
head of this procession, followed by his
staff. The procession was an alleged
joke. Is the Governor jest or jester
There are those who believe that the
bull fighting soon to take place at the
Coronado fiesta, the bear and lion fight
advertised to come off in Boone's arena
at the Midwinter Fair and the grotesque
absurdities of merry makers have their
use in the world. As to bull fighting,
there is no difference of opinion among
right-thinking people that it belongs to
an age Of barbarism, or at least to an un-
developed stage of civilization. There is
q consensus of opinion among civilized
men that the spectacle of fight between
a grizzly bear and lion is brutalizing in
the extreme. As to the value of merry
making, there may be some ground for
difference of opinion.
There are millions of men out of en-
ployment in the United States to-day.
They are marching upon the National
Capital with no well-defned purpose.
Their marching is an expression Of popu-
lar discomfort which to the philosophic
mind has its somber aspect. The initial
stages Of revolution seldom have defini-
ton of purpose. The starving labor
element of the country is playing the role
of blind Samson cropping for the pillars
Of society.
The beginnings of revolutionary move
ments are, in the nature of things, de-
structive and negative. They become
constructive and affirmative as they pro-
ceed, and revolutions never 60 backward.
Newspaper wits are attempting to
laugh Coxey and his army out of exist
ence, but behind this march upon the
National Capital there are conditions of
which 1t is an expression, and the con-
temptation of which is calculated to make
serious men thoughtful. Has hunger
ceased to be pitiful2
This vast army of ragamuffins ex-
presses the deep-seated discomfort of the
laboring masses with existing conditions.
They are the swarms of blowhies indi-
eating the decay of commercial and in
dustrial prosperity. The men composing
the Army of the Commonweal belong to
the strata of human society in which all
spontaneous anarchy first appears.
The initial movements of revolutionary
action to which all nations have been sub
ject are aimIess. The leaders of such
movements have capacity only to voice
the discomfort of which they are the ex-
ternal expression; but as they acquire
force and momentum, leaders of CON-
structive capacity and thought appear.
For the past half century in the history
of this Nation, its wealth has been con-
gesting in the hands of few. The ex-
tremes of reaction from the crest of pros
perity to the trough of adversely become
more widely separated with each succeed
ing wave. Each wave of prosperity rises
higher than its predecessors and each
trough of adversely descsnds to 9 greater
depth; and each succeeding period of ad-
versity discloses more plainly the great
disparity existing between those who live
in the realm of production and those
who belong to the realm of accumulation.
For the past five years the vicissitudes
of national life have generated the condi-
tions which disclose this disparity to
mora al vi -