The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1897-09-18
THE CRY OF THE POOR
Goes Up From Every City and
. Hamlet in Every
Cline,
a Stirring Article in the Arena
by John Clark Ridpath, the
Noted Author.

The air is burdened with the half.
smothered cry of the poor. Their lines
have gone out to the end of the earth
there is no speech nor. language where
their voice is not heard. From every
land and nation, from every cline and
kindred, there comes up, as if from the
abyss, what Lord Byron, in one of the
powerful passages OF Childe Harold, de.
ecribes as
long. low distant murmer of dread sound
In an old Oriental classic something
is said to the effect that the poor we
have always with U.s.. This day is that
saying fulfilled in the presence of us all
The poor we have with US; and we are
ourselves poor. It is our own cry then,
that we hear echoing around the CULTS
and coasts of the world. So be it. But
let US reason together little about this
awful condition of poverty among man
kind. a.. -
We say mankind, because the disease
of poverty is universal. The world is
smitten with it as with an epidemic.
The Eastern races are nearly all in a
state bordering on pauperism. Ever
and anon they pass the line and perish
by thousands and millions. Whoever
will put his ear to the earth may hear
the moan of the dying. Oh, 1t is pitiful!
The great regions Of Asia are strown
with the decaying carcasses of the
wretched beings that have died before
thoir day from sheer want of the means
of living longer. Beggary and semi
starvation are the estate of more than
four hundred millions Of Asiatics "a
number six times as great as the entire
population of the United States. The
teeming islands of the sea, beautiful and
fertile, are little more than pauper sep
ulchres that have swallowed up
emaciated humanity until the very earth
is cake of man mold, rimy and poison
GUS. Strange to remark that there is
less starvation in Africa than in either
Asia or Europe. Stranger still, that the
portent of pauperism is already on the
horizon Of America. Unless the baneful
forces that are now rampant in our civ
ilization can be reversed; our, land also
will become-aye, it is becoming "a. RS
ceptacle for millions of famished dead.
The onfall of general poverty in the
United States was not to have been an
ticipated. No such thing was appre-
hended by the strong forefathers who
laid the foundations of our estate. We
had here at the first clean landscape
and an open opportunity. Ours was a
virgin world, as our ancestors saw it,
rising dewy and sunlit from the waters.
They found it and entered it, and made
covenant that it should be the home
of freedom-and if of freedom, then the
home also of abundance and hope for
ever. For poverty is the concomitant
shadow of slavery-the premonition OF
it in every age and nation. "
Boundless were the resources of glebe
and valley, of field and hillside, of lake
and forest, when our mighty pioneers
began to build us into colony and state
and nation. Nothing more bountiful
ever offered itself to the cheerful hopes
and ennobling ambitions of men than
was revealed to the sober, industrious
and frugal people who came here out Of
smothered Europe and began, in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to
occupy this glorious and prophetic
land. 1t was the new Atlantis. Popu.
lation came on like a sunrise. >Intelli-
gence abounded. Just before the Revo-
! luton there was not native adult in
all New England who could not read
and write. We got on we'll. Poverty
was not known. Like patriot Titans we
shook ourselves out of the Old World
condition and began an auspicious
career of peace and plenty. We aban.
doned the past. We abolished primo.
geniture. We sent entail into the limbo
by the moon. We mocked at Del
eyatia as an absurd delusion of antiquity
We declared three inalienable rights OF
man; namely, life, liberty, and the pur.
suit of happiness. We ought to have
added the free possession of land.
Under such auspices why should pow
erty have ever supervened in the United
States? Why should the voice of the
poor ever be heard rising like a wall
from plantation, hamlet and cityful!
Why should there be- seen standing al
the door of the homes of the American
people the gaunt spectre-WANT. L.
Poverty in the United States has
come not suddenly, but by stages. Al
the close, of the first quarter of the i een
tury it, bad scarcely appeared af all
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