The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1898-11-30
A CHRISTIAN DUTY.
Miss Frances e. willard Was One Of
Those Dangerous Socialists.


Miss Frances e. willard Was One Of
Those Dangerous Socialists.
To those who call themselves Chris
tians and still uphold the present in
dustrial system, which is grinding out
paupers and thieves at the rate of
thousands every year. and at the same
time creating millionaires by hundreds
and adding rapidly to the fortunes of
those already counting their millions
by from two to three figures, we COM
mend careful reading OF the following
item from the late Frances E. Willard
the greatest woman America ever pro-
duced
Poverty and dependence are the
curse of women and all the world. It is
the hunger that cries for bread and the
cowardice that cannot cope with death,
which lead women to that awful COM
MERGE so much worse than death could
be. which is the fountain of disease and
diabolism to men and women both. as
they find out: and which is far worse
even than that awful blight of African
slavery, which was characterized by
DR.. Livingstone as the great open sore
of the world
For this reason have become an adj
vocate of such change in social condi-
lions as shall stamp out the disease and
contagion of poverty even as medical
science is stamping out leprosy small
pox and cholera: and I believe the age
in which we live will yet be character
lied as one of those dark, dismal and
damning ages when some people were
so dead to the love of their kind that
they left them in poverty without a
heartache or blush.
Poverty is a disease; It is degrade.
ton; it has no right to be; and when
men and women wake out of sleep and
see themselves as the criminals they
are, nothing in the world will be SO
sure of an actual determination as that
cursed thing called poverty-the cradle
of misery. In the past we have COM
forted ourselves with looking upon it as
the effect of wrong doing, but now we
have aroused ourselves to the study of
it as cause. We are determined to burn
out to it's last infectious atom the
stencil of the slums and the supreme
temptation to bad life with which
poverty haunts the dreams of baby
hood, handicaps the pursuit of youth,
enthralls the life of manhood
And yet full we'll l, know that ma
jority of those who read these lines will
first of all call me a crank. and then
will leap to their lips 'hfs words who
said, The poor We Rave always with
you'll By such evasiohs is Christ BIAS
phemed, who stated to the people at
that time one of the blacklist facts in
their hypocritical record, but whose
gospel is the gunpoWdef of poverty;
and one of the ground principles Of
whose early church, God7made, was
this, that they had ali things in com
mon.' For some reason 1 have never
heard sermon from these words: it
would not suit the wealthy pews. and
community of goods is honestly believed
by good men and women to have been
an impracticable result of that first
glow, which died away ard was follow
ell by more rational method of pro-
cedure
But the time is coming, nay, it is
at the door-when not only the little
group of prosecuted followers, but the
great friendly fireside of nations. shall
have all things in common The Col
den Rule calls on us for nothing less.
If we do not find this in it, our plum
met line is short indeed.
For myself, Fl years of study and Oh
servation have convinced me that pow
erty is the prime cause of intemperance
and that misery is the mother, and he
reditary appetite the father of the drink
hallucination
"To the labor reformers l have 10 say,
you have united for home projections;
so have we; you will bring it about by
standing together at the ballot box; so
shall We"