The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1897-10-06

tJohn Clark Ridpath in September Arena)
The air is burdened with the half
smOthered cry of the poor. Their lines
have gone out to the end of the earth.
There is no speech or language where
their voice is not heard. From every
land and nation, from every cline and
kindred, there comes up, as if from the
abyss, what Lord Byron, in one of the
powerful passages of "Childe Harold
describes as
In an old oriental classic something
is said to the effect that the poor we
have always with us. This day is that
saying fulfilled in the presence of us
all. The poor we have with us, and we
are ourselves the poor 1t is our own
cry, then, that we hear echOing around
the CULTS and coasts of the world. SO
be it; but let us reason together little
about this awful condition of poverty
among mankind.
We say mankind because the disease
of poverty is universal. The world is
smitten with it as with an epidemic.
The eastern races are nearly all in
state bordering on pauperism. Ever and
anon they pass the line and perish by
thousands and millions. Whoever will
put his ear to the earth may hear The
moan of the dying. Oh it is pitiful!
The great regions of Asia are streWn
with the decaying carcasses of the
wretched beings that have died before
their day from sheer want Of the means
of living longer. Beggary and semi
starvation are the estate of more than
400, ,000, 900 of Asiatics, a number six
times as great as the entire population
of the United States. The teeming is
lands of the sea, beautiful and fertile,
are little more than pauper sepulchers
that have swallowed up emaciated hui
manity until the very earth is a cake Of
man mold, rimy and poisonous. Strange
to remark that there is less starvation
in Africa than in either Asia or Europe;
stranger still that the portent of pau
perism is already on the horizon Of
America Unless the baneful forces that
are now rampant in our civilization
can be reversed, our land also will be-
come-aye, it is becoming-a receptacle
for millions of famished dead.
The onfall of general poverty in the
United States was not to have been an
ticipated. No such thing was appre-
yI,>
laid the foundation of our estate. We
had here at the first clean landscape
and an open opportunity. Ours was a
virgin world, as our ancestors saw it.,
rising dewy and sunlit from the waters.
They found it and entered it and made
a covenant that it should be the home
of freedom, and, If of freedom, then The
home also of abundance and hope for
ever for poverty is the noncommittant
shadow Of slavery, the premonition Of
1t in every age and nation
Boundless were the resources of gleDe
and valley, of field and hillside, of lake
and forest, when our mighty pioneers
began to build us into colony and state
and nation. NOunlng more DOuntl1ul
ever offered itself to the cheerful hopes
and ennobling ambitions Of men an
was revealed to the sober, Industrious
and frugal people who came here out Of
smothered Europe and began, in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
to occupy this glorious and prophetic
land. 1t was the new Atlantis. Pop
ulation came on like a sunrise. Intelli-
gence abounded. Just before the RevO-
luton there was not native adult m
all New England who could not read
and write. We got on we'll. Poverty
was unknown. Like patriot Titans, we
shook ourselves out OF the old world
condition and began an auspicious ca
reer of peace and plenty. We aban-
doned the past. We abolished primo
geniture. We sent entail into the limbo
by the moon. We Knocked at Del gratia
as an absurd delusion of antiquity. We
declared three inalienable rignIs of man
namely, life, liberty and the pursuit
Of happiness. We ought to have added
the free possession of land
Under such auspices why should pow
erty have ever supervened in the Unit
ed States? Why should the voice of the
poor ever be heard rising like a wall
from plantation, hamlet and cityful
Why should there be seen standing at
the door of the homes Of the American
people the gaunt specter. want?