The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-11-08

| furnish annually two hundred thousand
| lodgings. For the most part, these two
| hundred thousand lodgings are furnished
! 10 able bodied men and women-people as
! able to work as you and ] are. When they
| are received no longer at one police sta
| ton, because they are "repeaters," they
| go TO some other station, and so they keep
moving around. They get their food at
house. doors, stealing what they can lay
their hands on in the front basement
while the servant is spreading the bread
in the back basement They will not work.
Time and again, in the country districts,
they have wanted hundreds and thousands
of laborers. These men will not go. They
do not want to work. l have tried them.
! have set them to saving wood in my cell
| lar, to see whether they wanted to work.
L offered to pay them well for 1t. I have
heard the saw going for about three min
utes, and then l went down, and 10, the
wood, but no saw! They are the pest of
! society, and they stand in the way of the
| Lords poor, who ought to be helped, and
! will be helped. While there are thousands
of Industrious men who cannot get any
work, these men who do not want any
work come in and make that plea. Sleep
ing at night at public expense in the sta
ton house; during the day, getting their
food at your doorstep. Imprisonment does
not scare them. They would like it. Black
wells Island or Moyamensing prison would
be a comfortable home for them. They
would have no objection to the almshouse,
for they like thin soup, if they cannot get
mock-turtle.
! like for that class Of people the scant
bill of fare that Paul wrote out for the
Thessalonian loafers: "If any work not
neither should he eat" BY what law of
God or man is 1t right that you and I
should toll day in and day out, until our
hands are blistered and our arms ache
and our brain gets numb and then be
called upon to support what in the United
States are about two million loasers! They
are a very dangerous class. Let the public
authorities keep their eyes on them.
Among the uprooting classes place the
oppressed poor. Poverty to a certain ex-
tent Is Christening; but after that, when it
drives a man to the wall, and he hears
his children cry in vain for bread, 1t some
times makes him desperate. l think that
there are thousands of honest men LAGER
ated into Vagabondism. There are men
crushed under burdens for which they are
not half paid. While there is no excuse
for criminality, even in oppression, l state
it as a simple fact that much of the
scoundrehsm of the community is conse-
quent upon ill-treatment. There are many
men and women battered and bruised and
stung until the hour of despair has come
and they stand with the feroclty of a wild
beast which, pursued until it can run no
longer, turns round, foaming and bleeding,
to fight the hounds.
There Is a vast underground city life
that is appalling and shameful. 1t wal
lows and steams with putrefaction. You
go down the stairs, which are wet and de-
cayed with filth, and at the bottom you
find the poor victims on the floor cold
sick, three-fourths dead, sinking into a
still darker corner under the CLEAN of the
lantern of the police. There has not been
a breath of fresh air in that room for five
years, literally. There they are, men, women,
children; blacks, whites; Mary Magdalene
without her repentance, and Lazarus with
out his God These are the
dives into which the p,ckpockets
and the thieves go, as well as a great
many who would like a different life but
cannot get 1t. These places are the sores
of the city, which bleed perpetual corrup-
ton. They are the underlying volcano that
threatens US with a Caracas earthquake
1t rolls and roars and surges and heaves
and rocks and blasphemes and dies. And
there are only two outlets for 1.-THE police
court and the potters field. In other words,
they must either go to prison or to hell.
Oh you never saw it, you say! You never
will see it until on the day when these
| staggering wretches shall come up in the
light of the judgment throne, and while all
hearts are being revealed, God will ask
you what you did to help them.
There is another layer of poverty and
restitution not SO squalid, but almost as
helpless You hear their incessant wailing
for bread and clothes and fire. Their eyes
are sunken. Their cheek-bones stand out.
Their hands are damp with slow consump-
ton. Their flesh is puffed up with drop
sizes. Their breath is like that of a char
mel house, They hear the roar of the
wheels of fashion overhead, and the gay
laughter of men and maidens, and wonder
why God gave to others so much and to
them so little. Some of them thrust into
an infldellty like that of the poor German
girl who when told in the midst of her
| wretchedness that God was good, she said:
NO; no good God. Just look at me. No
good God"
In these American cities, whose cry of
want l interpret, there are hundreds and
thousands of honest poor who are depend
ent upon Individual, city and state chart
ties. If all their voices could come up at
once, it would be a groan that would shake
the founda tons of the city, and bring all
earth and heaven to the rescue. But, for
the most part it suffers unexpressed. 1t
sits in silence gnashing Its teeth and suck
ing the blood of its own arteries waiting
for the Judgment day. Oh, l should not
wonder If on that day il would be found
out that some of us had some things that
| belonged to them; some extra garment
which might have made them comfortable
on cold days; some bread thrust into the
ash barrel that might have appeased their
hunger for a little while; some wasted
candle or gas jet that might have kindled
up their darkness; some fresco on the
ceiling that would have given them a roof;
some jewel which, brought to that orphan
girl in time, might have kept her from
being crowded off the precipices of an
unclean lGfe; some New Testament that
would have told them of Him who ''came
to seek and to save that which was lostv'
OH this wave of vagrancy and hunger and
snakedness that dashes against our front
doorstep; I wonder if you hear 1t and see
ii as much as hear it and see 1t? have
been almost frenzied with the perpetual
cry for help from all classes and from all
nations, knocking, knocking. ringing ring
ing. If the roofs of all the houses of des-
titution could be lifted so we could look
down into them Just as God looks, whose
nerves would be strong enough to stand
1t? And yet there they are. The sewing
women, some of them i'm hunger and cold,
working night after night, until sometimes
the blood spurts from nostril and lip. How
we'll their priaf wa voiced nv that daSrafr-