The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1897-09-18
The CRY OF THE POOR
[Continued from first page.]

| CONTINUED from first page
which to absorb the producing energies
of the whole people. It scrupled not to
lay far-reaching and dangerous schemes,
the cords of which were gradually
frightened, until after more than a de-
cade the sense of suffocation began to
arouse the people to the fact that an
incubus had settled upon them-that a
vampire was draining the blood and
breath of our national life.
Well-known is the nature of the vari-
GUS enterprises which have been Matched
| in the last quarter of a century in the
heavy but fertile brain of consolidated
veal h. To say that when wealth ac-
cumulates men decay is only to repeat
an aphorism good since the days of
Goldsmith, and now unhappily verified
in the United States. The reason is
that the excessive accumulation of
wealth is always effected from sources
and resources other than it's own. In
proportion as the resources produced by
labor are taken away and given to those
who labor not, to that extent the laborer
is discouraged and rendered hopeless.
To that extent his arm is paralyzed and
his heart darkened. To that extent his
producing power is smitten with palsy
and the soul of him begins to sink. He
loses the spirit of the free man and re-
cedes toward the howell. Instead of
supporting free schools he pays rent and
interest to his masters. With that,
poverty falls on him like a blight, and
the outcome is either the enslavement
or the open rebellion of the masses.
This state, so unexpected and 80 por:
tentous, has come to pass in the United
States. The great mass of the Ameri-
can people are slipping back from their
vantage, like jaded beasts toiling on the
apron of treadmill--slipping back into
lower and still lower industrial, Geo.
nomic, and political conditions. AS
they are borne back and down by the
pressure that is upon them and even by
their own inert weight, they moan and
sigh. That is their only sign; and I say
it is the most pitiful wall of human
history! Whoever has the heart Of hui
mainly in him will hear as he goes
about from city to country seat, from
office to village, from field to distant
station, the half-smothered cry of the
poor.-Let us note for moment in
what manner the appeal of them who
are in want, or who are bordering on
want, is; received by the upper powers
of society. !!
Whenever the dolorous condition Of
poverty begins to be pointed out by the
friends of humanity, the enemies OF
humanity pick up the complaint and
say three things in answer. First, they
say that it is lie; second, that it was
always 80; and third, that the good God
loves his poor children and will take
care of them! In this attitude towards
the poor stands the high-up and power
full world today; and in this attitude
stands in particular the parvenu Ameri!
can aristocracy. ..s.. i
When confronted with the poverty Of
the masses, our aristocracy, our gildeds>
clan, declares, in the first place. that we
have no poor in the United States. I'M;
the second place, it declares that the,
poor have always been, and always will.
be. And, in the third place, it declares.
that the good God, whose servants we
are, whose churches we build, and
whose priests and preachers we feed,
will take care of his poor children the
meaning being that we are not respon-
sible for it, that the estate Of poverty is
natural, and that the cry of the poor is
only a false murmer of discomfort Let
US look at this casuistical answer of
wealth to the complaint of philan-
thropy. ~ -
In the first place, they say that there
are no poor. They say this for the
reason that the poor may be avoided
and not seen. The millionaire may
build his house SO that the unpleasirg
aspect of poverty may not shadow: the
halls or be seen through the shutters.
The walls are thick and the windows
are high, and the spiked-bronze fence
around is sufficient for the abatis of a
fort. Within such a keep the cry of the
poor will not be heard. He who lives
there may say that there are no poor
since he does not hear them. And if
the philanthropist, working his way by
some kindly strategem along the cor
ridors, manages to meet the baron OF
the castle and asks him if he does not
hear the cry of the down trodden mil
lions, he only answers that there are no
poor in this country. Everybody" says
he lis we'll and happy in this glorious
land. I read only this morning in the
Metropolitan Hypocrite that the happy
laborers are all at work again, and that
living was never before SO good and
:,