The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1899-10-27

1t is a mockery to tell the people in
times like these that they are pros
porous. With employment agencies
overrun with applicants vainly hunt
ing for work; with an army of able
bodied and intelligent men eager for
a chance to labor hard for a weekly
p%ittance of ten dollars; with skilled
mechanics glad of opportunities to
earn only fifteen dollars a week; with
school children grinding away their
young lives in stores and factories to
exc out the meager incomes of in
dustrious but impoverished parents;
with underpaid women displacing men,
and men going into private kitchens
as household servants; with hosts Of
small merchants passing out of indie
pendent business and into the over
crowded ranks of hired clerks, and
travelling statesmen aghast at their mar
rowing opportunities; with freehold
farmers giving way to a rapidly grow
ing class of agricultural tenantry;
with vice-breeding slums in every city
and sturdy tramps upon every high
way; with a thousand other manifesto
lions of social maladjustment and mis-
cry, the whole eliminating in a uni
versal fear Of loss of employment or
business, a %paralyzing dread of pow
erty-with such facts thrusting them
selves hourly upon public attention,
thoughtful men are in no mood to
listen patiently to silly jabber about
our wonderful prosperity"
That there Is prosperity in spots no
one denies, says Louis F. Post, in the
Public. Monopolists are prosperous.
and have been for two years. They
were never so prosperous in all the
previous history Of the country. But
their prosperity does not imply general
prosperity.
It is likewise conceded that some
hired men are comparatively prosper
GUS. Their prosperity, that Of even
the luckiest of them, is not thrilling
enough to account for the ecstasies
into which it has thrown republican
organs, but it does exist. They are in
greater demand, and their wages are a
tritle higher.
With by far the larger proportion
of hired men, however, and with near
Nv all business men who control no
monopoly, prosperity has taken the
form OF increase OF work without in
crease Of pay. Business Is brisker. but
competitive profits are lower. There
is a strong demand and relatively
smaller supply Of workmen. but as it
is still easier for employers to get men
than for men to get jobs, wages are
slow to advance.
Besides conceding prosperity in
spots, it may be fairly assumed that.
as compared with the so-called hard
times" conditions are on the whole
improving. That is to say, the hard
times" period Of the COS is being SUI
perseded by what for distinction we
are accustomed to call good tines or
prosperity" But this change is only
a swing Of the pendulum. Succeeding
periods Of good times" and dad
times" follow each other with a regu-
larity that suggests the working OF
some law. If we are now enjoying
good times" it is because the pendu-
1um swings in that direction. But it
will swing back again to hard times
as certainly as it has done SO once in
about every ten years since the be-
ginning Of the century.
To attribute this temporary pros
perity' to the present American adj
ministration is to prove oneself either