The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1897-10-06
Poverty in the United States has

l.
come not suddenly, but by stages. At
the close of the first quarter of the cen
tury 1t had scarcely appeared at all.
When the venerable Lafayette was in
Boston in 1925, he made a speech from
the balcony of an old house, stli4 stand
ing, at the corner of Park and Beacon
streets. Looking round over the we'll
ordered multitude of free men VINO
blocked all the open spaces, the honored
guest said: Where are your poor?" lie
repeated it: Where are your poor? In
this assembly 1 see them not. Why have
they not come also?" Some one said.
er." Lafayette replied: mo, the poor
are not here. They are not anywhere in
America. They are in Europe" And
that makes the difference between an
assembly of free men in 1925 and an
| assembly of inchoate paupers in 1897.
Down to the middle of this century,
the condition of equality, Of common
| happiness, of free industrial pursuits,
| Of fairly equal distribution of wealth,
with plethora for none and poverty for
none, still prevailed in our country.
! Men now in middle life can we'll recall
| that happy and free condition of ambi-
tiOus citizenship which existed in all
parts of'the United States as late as the
outbreak of the civil war; The cry Of
the poor was nowhere heard. Even in
| the great valleys of the Ohio and Mis-
sissippi and around the farstretching
frontier of civilization no wall of dis
tress from want came up to vex the soul
of philanthropy. The humble homes of
the common people abounded with the
| essentials of, human happiness. One
must needs have seen in his bOyhoOd,
as the writer saw and is now contem-
plating with fearful remembrance, the
| plenty of the old fashioned country
homes, around which young fathers
! cleared new fields, and young mothers,
the angels of the wilderness-God bless
| their memory!-rocked the cradles in
which fat boy babies, with the spirit of
the gods upon them, slept or crowed as
| the swelling ripple of life flowed
| through their healthy souls
1t was only after our great struggle,
after our day of battle and devastation,
, after the sad estrangement of the south
| and north, after the chasm had opened
with dreadful animosity to close with
| indivisible reunion, that the condition
of poverty in the United States appear
| ed. Indeed, it was not in the first period
after the war that this condition came.
that a full decade-nearly two deca les
| passed after the day of peace before
the coming of the day of poverty.
Nothing is more manifest than that
this condition, this return Of the old
European and Asiatic fate to our Amer
can shores, was the result of some un-
toward and fatal break in the remedial
methods by which we set about to re
store ourselves after the civil war. Had
there been nothing abnormal, nothing
criminal, in these methods, we should
have got we'll again. After the storm
the calm would have supervened. Our
wounds would have healed. The grass
would have grown green over the hal
lowed graves Of our Union and Confed-
crate dead. After the wreckage and tur-
moil the elements would have subsidized
and the people would have been more
free, more cheerful and hopeful in their
subsequent abundance than in their
preceding plenty
1t was the destruction of natural con-
ditions that sent out woe upon us. 1t
was the malevoleut genius of man at
work among the then silent forces OF
our forward movement that in the sew
enties and eighties brought about the
conditions which we are ROW obliged
to face There were men-a large group
nation was asleep. They began to IN
trigue before the smoke of battle had
cleared away. They got hold Of the in
dustrial, economic and financial forces
turned them from the course of nature
and justice to the course of injustice
and iniquity They purchased the war
debt of the United States and cunning
ly converted it into an instrument with
which to torment the people by para
lying their power to pay. They invent
ed method by which to make impos-
sible the payment Of that debt. They
transformed it into a fanged desmodont.
They tampered with the contract exist
ing between themselves and the nation.
They made a fraudulent law in their
own interest. They inserted a false
counter into the money system of the
United States by which, when the peo-
pie paid, they paid nothing; by which,
when they paid one half, the other half
was greater than the whole; by which,
when the robbers had extorted more
than $4,000 100000 from the hard earn
ings of the people and had stored the
treasure in their own vaults, the NAV
of the debt beast was more Unsuitable
than ever!
Not satisfied with it's store, the ogre
wealth then began to organize and /,
} concentrate it's forces. It contrived one
scheme after another by which to DOS
sess itself Of more-mOre. Producing
| nothing itself it devised methods hv