The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1897-11-02
ALEssoN IN CAUSE AND EFFECT

Athens had no poorhouses. The
reason why she had none was that she
did not supply the material with which
poorhouses are filed. Rome had as
many prisons, pro rata of her popula.
tion as Boston. The reason why she
had as many was that she supplied
the material with which to fill them.
Rome thought she was doing we'll when
she apprehended her criminals and put
them in the MamcrtiIe caves; Boston
thinks so also. Rome and Boston have
both hattered themselves with the
notion that they prospect society" by
first producing and then caging their
criminals. Paris has as many aims
houses as New York, and both Paris
and New York have made the Wretches
who cry at the doors or drift in shoals
along the streets. The reasons why
Paris and New York have invented the
almshouse is because the first invented
the beggars. It is no doubt a fine thing
to make paupers and then to feed
them!
Observe how it works: The magni-
fcent ladies of Fifth Avenue hold a
charity fair; they put thousands of
dollars into the ccff9r, to be used in
(. eding the equalid wretches in their
husbands tenement houses. They
sleep might on their Observation-Disclosures
thinking how good they are! The
great merchants and greater gamblers
organic a mount depiete in which the
poor and half starved bankrupts may
pawn their goods in order to get the
money to pay rent to the very men
who invented the big shop. I know
of nothing more beautiful; it is posi-
lively romantic!
What does all this signifyG It signi
fes that certain influences dominant
over man life, and certain organized
powers in society, have come to US
from the Middle Ages, and that thse
Influences and powers are so depraved
that they must, in self-defence do
something to remedy the results of
their own abuses. They must traZnmel
up the consequences a little to the end
that they may continue to despoil
mankind. They must make q practi
cal apology to the human rac by
furnishing doubtful antidotes for the
very diseases with which they have
inoculated the sons of m9n. They
must save their forfeited regulations
Oy taking up and fondling the poor
wretches whom they themselves have
first begotten and then disowned!
Monarch is a brute of this kind,
1t is a monster that brushes down some
millions or billions of human beings,
enelaves them, robs them of their lib
critics, takes awey the fruits of their
toll consumes tie residue in war and
lust-and then goes to work to make
the condition of. the slaves sc tolerable
that they may still live n have
children.
A m8di@ val church, with it's gothic
towers and marble palaces, with it's
swarm of on-hangers and it's fat men
in fashionable raiment, is another crea-
ture now busily engaged throughout
the world in trammelling up conse-
quences of it's own work. From fill
ing the world with paupers and slaves
this splendid "Reminiscences of darkness
and despair now turns in self defence
to take care Of its own progeny. The
great "Reminiscences ought to do as much
for it has never been regarded as par
ticularly meritorious to feed ones own.
How fine it is for the fruitful mother
of outcasts and beggars to give them
a little counsel and 1feel
Plutocracy that snatches the wealth
Of the world from the hands of them
that produce it is another such mon
ster-plutocracy that sponges up the
ocean in order to water Sahara with
six dropsl One drop is a library; enc
is a college; one is a hospital. The Ii
brary is to p~erpetuate the memory of
the sponge; the college is to teach the
system of political economy by which
the spongue sucked up the ocnen; the
hospital is to receive the broken bodies
of those to whose families the sponge
might otherwise have had to pay dam
ages.-John Clark Ridpath, in the
Arena.
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