The free press. (Poplarville, Miss.) 1890-19??, 1902-02-27

Other cities have taken up the cry
and Bouen and Dunkirk show a larger
death rate Of infants than Paris, and
now they say no wonder the popula.
ton Of France is decreasing instead
OF increasing. We are poisoning three
fourths of all the children before they
are year old and half the remainder
die soon after. Seine water, microbes
and bicarbonate Of soda!
This exposure comes from late Off
clal sources and is no doubt the truth
or very near 1t. Just think Of it and
shudder-1S,oo0 innocent, helpless
babes murdered in one year in one
city. Tom Hood wrote a song about
all London. II he were alive in Paris
now what a pitiful subject he would
have for another song. What shame
upon our sex, for it is not women who
do these things, but men and boys.
The mothers suffer in giving them
birth. They nurse and cherish and
clasp the little things to their bosom
and love and hope and pray, but the
destroyer comes and then all she can
do is to grieye and weep. England
slaughtering the Beers and France her
innocent children. What next?
A graphic writer in The New York
Press describes a different Kind Of nor
ror that we know not OF, but is liY-
ing, breathing, seething thing that is
not new, but has come to stay and
grows bigger and more horrible as ths
years move en-. He says: 1T would
have been unnecessary for Gustav
Dore to follow Dante for text in or
der to picture the horrors CT he'll" The
government has established free baths
at Hot Springs, where thousands Of the
most miserable Of all Gods creatures
congregate and battle for relief and a
cure from their loathsome diseases.
These wreches leave their rags upon
the cemented floors which are an inch
deep in water, then stagger or reel or
crawl naked as the fends in the cham
bers of hell. From thence they crowd
into third room, where the water and
the air is up to 10, and the stencil OF
foul odors is horrible. In this room
are two large pools like watts in a tan
yard, and the victims tumble into
them like hogs into a mud puddle. No
doctor, no soap, no towels, no attend
ants, and they are soon hurried out to
make room for more, for seven hun
dred day is the maximum. Ten, fif-
teen or twenty at a time soak their
loathsome infirmities in the nasty
filthy, hot healing waters, and then
reclothe themselves with their wet rags
and go somewhere to dry. All are ben
Gifted and 10 per cent are cured. What
picture! Their lives, such as they
have made them, are not worth saving,
but they cling to them and live in hope
and defy despair. One hundred and
seventy eight thousand 0: these human
beings passed through the free baths
last year. One bath room is for white
men, one for white women. one for
negro men and one for negro women.
Not far away is a magnificent hotel
and there is fashionable ball going
on. The rich, the gay, the elite are
there. One moment a man is waltzing
with his wife, the next with some other
mans wife, the nett with somebody's
mistress, and the next with his own
mistress. Everything goes, and all is
hell. A famous physician took his
daughter there this season, but sent
her home quickly to keep her from the
company of wealthy and diseased para
sites. Almost every one who goes
there registers under an assumed
name and plays incognito during his
stay. A southern judge was recently
called upon for a toast at hotel ban
quet and said: Here's to the name
we left behind u.s." But the half has
not been told-some of it is too bad to
tell. Every night the poker rooms
are in blast and thousands won and
can such things be in this Christian
land, and in this Gods country. Yer
lily, the humble and the poor who live
around us on the hills and in the val.
legs or down in the piney woods should
be thankful for the health and morality
that comes from poverty. Burns new
er wrote truer verse than that which
says:
"And l know by the smoke that so
gracefully curled
From among the dark elms that
cottage was near,
And L said to myself, if there's peace
in this world,
The Heart that is humble might
hope for it here"
Bill Arp in Atlanta Constitution.