The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-12-17
PUBLIC CHARITIES.
4 SUBJECT THAT SHOULD Be or m
TEREST TO WORKlNGMEN.
Institutions and Methods That Are Dis
Eraces to Observation-Disclosures the
Hospital of Labor" - The Charitable
Catchall.
Especial Correspondence

table institutions are, in one sense, a
pretty frank confession of the sins Of
rganized society against thu working
PEOPLE. Members of organized labor are
fighting for wages and conditions of
work such as will insure to every indus
.rious man the certainty that he will
never need to make application at a
lublic hospital almshouse or any public
institution of the kind. They demand
such a return for their labor as will !
provide their families with some decent
guarantee against absolute want in case
Of their death. They are anxious to keep
their boys and girls in school till their
development, physical and mental, is
such as to give them fair chance in
life. At present they are often forced to
send them out to earn living while
they are cruelty handicapped by igno-
rance and by a too great physical imma-
turity. They wish wages that will allow
them to have in their home, or to other
wise maintain comfortably, the father or
mother whose working days are over
without feeling that the other members
of their family are deprived of necessa-
rles because Ct the presence Of that help
less old man or woman. When the
worker is striving after justice, the
phrase public charities seems almost
as bitter mockery as the void "char-
ity.
Yet our public charitable institutions
are here to stay. 1t is noteworthy that
the famous poor law of Elizabeth, the
first full official recognition of poverty
by the English government, was origi
nally passed by parliament as a mere
temporary expedient. But with all the
cruel complications of sister laws affect
ing the rate of wages and the place OF
residence of the workers, it endured in
much Of it's original shape to the year
1884, when it was replaced bya harsher
law. In this country our public chart
ties have long been we'll established
part Of our state, county or municipal
governments The working people un
doubtedly pay their share and probably
more than their share toward maintain
ing these charitable institutions. 1t is a
pity that they do not show more &C
tive interest in their condition and in
the kind of institutional housekeeping
that prevails in them. The quantity Of
paupers increases with every industrial
crisis and dirinishes with every revival
of trade. 1t is the lowest sediment OF
our (relative surplus) population that
dwells in the sphere of pauperism. But
this word is comprehensive; it covers
many classes The orphans and the pau
per children we have always with us,
and in some of our New York institu-
tions for the care Of this dependent
class these are already enrolled among
the workers not as learners of a trade,
but as competitors in the open market,
the powerful institutions being able to
underbid outside competition. One trade
much pulled down by this kind of cheap
labor is the shirtmaking trade. These
institutions are not public, however.
They draw very largely upon the public
funds, but they are essentially RESPONSE
BILE to private management 1t is vi
cious system which permits the state or
municipality thus to delegate its own
private management.
Then we find i'll the sphere Of pauper
ism the demoralized and the ragged and
those unable to work, partly people who
are incapable Of adapting themselves to
the constantly changing divisions of la
Dor, or people who have passed the nor
NAL age Of the laborer without having
been able to lay up provision against
that time. Then we have the victims OF
industry whose number increases with
the increase Of dangerous machinery, of
mines, of chemical works and similar
branches Of labor; the mutilated, the
sickly, the men never able to resume
their trade after the nervous shock Of
some accident and incapable through
lack OF pliability, or some other obstacle,
OF learning new one And besides all
these we have corroding effects of weeks
Or months of enforced idleness upon the
man who is out of work ard seeking it
in vain or else whose trade is a season
trade "Pauperism is the hospital Of
the active labor army and the dead
weight of the industrial reserve army. ;"
In countries like England, where bad
economic conditions Of one kind or an
other have prevailed for centuries, the
mass and kind Of pauperism is appalling.
We find number of families III which
pauperism is hereditary, children being
born in the workhouse and perhaps re-
ceiying public aid Of some hlnd at fire.
quent intervals during alCEg life. Mr..
Charles Booth in his DC. * on the en-