The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1896-02-26
SOME OF DEBS' VIEWS.
THE CHEAPEST COMMODITY.
Have you ever given a serious though

Have you ever gwen serious thought
to the condition of the man out of employ
ment and expecting to find it? Have you
ever put yourself in his place? Take a
man with a good situation; he loses his
place through no fault of his own; he
looks all about Cleveland; he goes up and
down the street and can nes find work; |;
no one will give him an instant's atten-
tion. For in these latter years of the
Nineteenh Century the commodity of the
world is human flesh and blood. (Ap-
plause.) He leaves Cleveland, goes to the
nearest place and does not succeed and
before he realizes it he is 500 miles away
from home, his last dollar IS gone; he is
stranger amongst strangers; his clothes
become seedy. At long range he can see
his little cottage home, his wife in dis
tress, his children crying for bread; he
becomes embittered against society and
rankles in his breast, and in that mood it
is but a few stoeps until he becomes a
tramp by choice and from there on it is
but few steps into crime.
Il have made the contention that 80
per cent of the criminals of this cOun
try could under proper conditions be re-
deemed. (Applause) Most of them
find their way to Jail because they are
poor. (Applause) Poverty is made to
bear all of the burdens; if they had mon
ey they could employ lawyer, the law
yer would make defense, they would
not be convicted. (Applause) l don't
hesitate to declare that in some of our
courts justice is a purchaseable guam
tity. (Applause) Not long ago Judge
Dundas sent a tramp who assaulted
mail carrier and took cent from him to
~ l,a
Judge sent Mason, the Lincoln (Neb)
bank wrecker, who robbed his depositors
of 81, 100000, to the penitentiary for two
years. (Applause.) What was the differ
erce? A million dollars. (Applause)
FIFTY CENTS A DAY.
II met James Gist at Chicago the other
day. This gentleman is very familiar
with machine work and gives much at
tent;on to these matters. He had just re-
turned from Kalamazoo, where he had
made some investigation of large fur
niture factory. He found that men were
at work who had worked there for ten
years, and six days a week for $50
cents a day. Just think of "a man work.
ing ten hours day for so cents and hav-
ing a wife and three or four children de-
pending on him for support! He said he
went through the factory and saw girls
working at some of the machines 10
years of age, and on some of their hands
there were four of the fingers missing.
Oh. what a state of affairs in commune
ty! What a vile calumny upon our Chris
tian civilizations!
"The struggle is fierce enough and
sharp enough if child is equipped for
the battle of life. But just think OF the
children of these men out of employment,
or these men who have employment at
SO cents day who are compelled to grow
up without education. They do not have
the home John Bright once said that
the nation should live in cottage. 1t
should be so, but it is no longer so in
this section of the country. They can
not I've in the home; they can not live
in the home they inhabit; it is not fit for
dog to inhabit, the children are reared
with such environment No education
no moral influence, and after they get old
enough and drift into crime, as some OF
them inevitably do, because we are all
creatures Of circumstances, then society
imprisons them or hangs them.
"Now, 1 have made the declaration
that wealth dominates every depart
ment of our affairs-great aggregation Of
wealth. Even the man of ordinary means
is being forced to the wall. Dun's re-
ports show that last year we had n this
country over $4,000 commercial collapses,
aggregating more than $172,000,OO0. In
this mornings dispatches read Dun's re-
port for last week of 1886 failures. The
failures going forward in the United
States at the rate of 66 day. Just think
of what this means! Think of this bank
ruptcy, ruin. disaster, suicide, if not un-
natural condition
FEELING THE PRESSURE.
''But the process of Capitalization IS
going steadily forward. The middle