The Irish standard., 1897-01-30
RIGHT FROM THE SHOULDER,
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ward; but the foregoing is true pen
picture OF the condition of vast major
ity of those Americans who work for
wages.
With SO large a contingent lowering
ever on the verge of starvation's hell,
and the farmers sympathiZing openly
with the strikers who defy the laws,
wreck property and destroy life. were it
not we'll to treat the sphinx seriously
and cast about earnestly for an answer?
1t is customary to rely unon general edu-
cation as the preseryatiye power par ex-
cellence: so we proceed to fill mems
heads with clear conception of their
power and their hearts with inhibition,
then expect them to be patient with emp
,ty bellies-to remain ..docile" under the
whips of want while idleness osten-
tatiously wastes! BY public education
we continually increase the furnace fires;
by making the battle of labor more bitter
we augment the weight on the safety
valve, then calmly assume that we have
made explosion impossible! Only an ig-
norant people like those of Mexico, India
or Persia, will patiently suffer the pangs
of abject poverty in the midst of plenty.
Our public school system is the sulphur
our hard industrial conditions the nitre
of that social gunpowder to which the
cstentation of our multimillionaires is
applying the match. Suppose that the
"era of progress and prosperity" promis-
ed by the Republicans should fail to ma
terialize, and 1897 be an exacerbation Of
1893: Could we depend on the <'docility'
of more than Z million idle and desperate
age-workers-the farmers meanwhile
asserting that they would burst no blood
vessels hurrying to the defense of Dives?
Suppose that Debs is supplanted by a
Danton in our Faubourgs St. Antoine,
that Little Corporal succeeds Coxey?
Of course will be called an <'alarnist''-
such was the fate of John the Baptist,
who declared that the baptism of water
would be followed by one of fire. It was
the fate of those who advised the ran
tankerous abolitionists that they were
forcing this nation into a civil war that
would cost more treasure, blood and
tears than all the d--n niggers from Ham
to Ida Wells were worth: of those who
told the impudent French aristrocrats
that they were dancing on mine Of dy-
Mantle which would assuredly slam them
against the shrinking face of the silver
moon. 1t is the goose-gabble which Of
tends the ear of every man who sees
little further into the future than doea
the eminently conservative" jackassicus
who goes about with his eyes shut, pro-
claiming that thers can be no upheaval
Of the neither fires so long as he is here
to keep the universe in order. trust
that every Industrial promise made by
our friends the enemy will be fulfilled;
but we must not suffer ourselves to be
misled by temporary spasms of prospe-
ity into the belief that the sphinx has
winged her way elsewhere. She has pro-
pounded her fateful problem, enounced
the penalty, and while she may be sooth-
ed to slumber for a. time by a periodical
business revival, sooner or later she will
enforce her edict.
How can we secure more equitable
division between capital and labor of the
annual increment Of wealth, and assure
to every able-bodied individual in this
land an opportunity to earn an honest
living?
That is the most important problem
submitted to the arbitrament of human
wisdom since the beginning st the world.
It is mighty interrogation point thrown
up by human progress, and cannot be an:
sWerable from the musty tome of prece-
dent, for in all history present Industrial
conditions have no parallel. Solve it,
and pauperism vii practically disappear.
The giant spectre off crime will shrink as:
tl1s sent the