The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-07-26
A LESSON IN CAUSE AND EFFECT.
The Process of Making Paupers and
Then Feeding Them.

Athens had no poorhouses. Thu
reason why she had none was that she
d1d not supply the material with which
poorhouses are filed. Rome had as
many prisons, pro rata of her popu-
!atlon, as Boston, says a writer in the
June Arena. The reason why she had
as many was that she supplied the ma
terlaI with which to fill them. Rome
thought she was doing we'll when she
apprehended her criminals and put
them in the Mamertine caves; Boston
thinks so also. Rome and Boston have
both fiattered themselves with the no.
ton that they protect society," by first
producing and then caging their crimi-
nails. Paris has as many almshouses 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 reason why Paris and
New York have invented the almshouse
is because they first invented the beg
gars. 1t is no doubt a fine thing to
make paupers and then to feed them.
Observe how it works: The magnifi-
cent ladies on Fifth avenue hold a
charity fair; they put thousands Of
dollars into the Golfer to be used in
feeding the squalid wretches in their
husbands tenement houses They sleep
that night on their husbands breasts,
thirking how good they areI The great
merchants and greater gamblers or
ganize a mont-de-piete, in which the
-5oor 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 positively
romantic!
What does all this signify? 1t signifies
that certain influences dominant over
man-hfe, and certain organized powers
IN society, have come down to US from
the middle ages, and that these influen-
ceS and powers are so depraved that
they must in self-defense do something
to remedy the results of their own
abuses. They must trammel I'D the
consequences a little, to the end that
they may continue to despOiI mankind
Tbey must make a practical apology
to the human race by furnishing doubt
full antIdoteS for the very diseases with
which they have inoculated the sons.
OF men They must save their forfeited
regulations by taking up and fondling
the poor Wretches whom they them
selves have first begotten and then
disowned!
Monarchy is brute of this kind 1t
is monster that brushes down some
millions or billions of human beings.
enslaves them, robs them CT their
liberties, takes away the fruits of their
toll, consumes the residue in war and
lust-and then goes to work to make
the condition of the slaves so tolerabla
that they may still live and have
children!
A medieval church, with it's gothic
towers and marble palaces with its
swarm of On-hangers and its fat men
in fashionable raiment, is another
creature now busily engaged through
out the world in trammeling up the
consequences of its own work From
filling the world with paupers and
slaves, this splendid Renaissance of
darkness and despair now turns in
self-defense to take care of its own
progeny. The gr5at "Reminiscences ought
to do as much; for it has never been
regarded as particularly meritorious 10
feed ones own. How fine it is for the
fruitful mother of outcasts and beg
gars to give them a little counsel and
coffee.
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 drops! One drop is a library; one
is a college; one is a hospital The
library is to perpetuate the memory
of the sponge; the college is to teach
the system of political economy by
which the sponge sucked up the ocean;
the hospital is to receive the broken
bodies of those to whose families the
sponge might otherwise have had to
pay damages.