The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1895-08-27
CHARITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS.

is as much misdirected as any other
act Of man.. If I should cheat a poor
widow or a poor orphan out Of their
house and home, and afterwards, hud-
ing them in sore distress and need, and
should extend to them q helping hand
in a small kindly way, this would be
called charity; the cheating and de
frauding, business. When plutocracy
defrauds the people Of this nation out
of a billion dollars of value q year
through any law, it is business, and
when they establish soup houses and
extend a helping hand in organized
charity working by scientific system,
it is charity. When wealth builds It's
mansions the most gorgeous and stately,
sordid poverty has its howell the lowest
and meanest. When wealth blooms
under the law, manhood and human
rights wither.
We often blush on reading many
good papers and speeches, appealing
in behalf of the poor, and urging the
poor to better manners, to stop drunk
and debauchery, go to Sunday SCHOOL
and attend church, but not a Word
said concerning those conditions, laws
and persons who have for an untold
series of years brought this poor, with
loss of manhood, to the threshold OF
degradation. Why do they dole out a
pittance to the widow and orphan, and
saw naught of the fraud by which they
came to need? Why do they build
soup houses and organize systems IN
the name of religion, and do not dis
cuss those conditions in our political
fabric, and those vicious laws which
made this charity n~ecessary2 The rea-
son is clear-becauFe they will offend
that very class of men who upholds
the salaries of the preachers and con-
tribute their pittance to benevJlence
and charity. In this class are those
whom law made rich by special priv
Ieges. In this class are those WHO have
defrauded the widow and orphan.
This is quite a serious state of affairs,
to have our religion and spontaneous
charity in a great measure dependent
upon frauds, cheats, vicious laws, plu
tocracy and hypocrisy, for its mainte-
nance. This is the very reason the
French, in 1889, dethroned religion in
France. They found the church and
tyranny in fond embrace. For the re-
ligion of a country to fall in sympathy
with the wealth of a country is very
natural, and the more so, when this
religion is supported by gratuity but
in such ar apostacy, it throws off its
brightest robe of Christian boldness
and integrity, and makes rather poor
amends by passing over and c%ondoning
the crimes of the rich mans laws and
frauds, by an appeal in behalf of the
victims of these things.
OF all things in this world l hate
slavery. like to see a free man, even
if he is a bad man, and | don't like to
see a slave, even if he is a good man,
and I mOurn the conditions and cir,
cumstAnces by which many good men
r surrounded, by which, il they
should come out in behalf of human
rights against the privileges of the dol
lar, these men themselves Nigh be boy
cotted and brought to beggary.
The man, no matter how low he may
be, calls for justice and right; the dol
lar, no matter in whose hands it may
fell, calls for s~ubserviency and submits
sion, and when that dollar gains power
enough, men, parties, governments are
brought under subsection. This is the
verified truth of all history. Abraham
Lincoln saw this when he looked with
dreadful apprehensions on the increase
OF h money power. Daniel Webster
Knew this when he spoke of pe~rnicious
laws making the few rich and the
many poor. More than a hundred men,
both great and good, bear witness to
this truth.
Ny God, is it not enough that the
base Office seeker, at the command of
Grover Cleveland, should crock the
pregnant hinges of the knee that thrift
may follow faWning-that man, hith-
erto for the rights of man against the
privileges of the dollar, should become
the aVoWed agents of tyranny, but the
horizon becomes dark and a gloom set,
ties on the hills. when our churches
and charitits dare not speak, and the
Democratic and Republican nartins
dare not speak, for fear of ~loosing place
and Doodle, AID the Peoples party
must be organized for this xpress pur-
pose.
IL seems that the two old parties will
agree on issues The tariff and mig,
nnr c.nrnr IN hn tho him tknA III l.