Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1903-01-24
ACITAT0R VS.. REF0RMER.

AcITATOR VS.. REF0RmER.
Daily Newspapers Denounce Rich Men
While UNFOLDING System That
X Gives Power For Evii.
= When President Mckinley fell q
victim to crazed anarchist, the plu-
:tocratic papers made an effort to
fasten the blame on those who had
for years labored to create q senti-
ment in favor of more equitable laws.
Populists, Bryanities and socialists
were denounced in upmeasured term
as breeders of envy and discomfort
But now that some of the dangers fore
told by these reformers have confront
ed the people some of those sheets
have become far more rabid in STIR
ring up hatred for the coal barons than
any of the hated "agitators" ever
were. The St. Paul Dispatch of anu
ary 81 contains an editorial that
might have emanated from the brain
of Emma Goldman. Under the cap
tain of "D- the Poor Man" it says:
It has been most erroneously sup
posed that the poor we we're to have
always with us. The higher criticism
of the Coal Combine teaches different.
There is finally no place for the poor
man in the economy of things. His
own economy is no longer of any avail
to him. Who is he, that he should
scrimp and save to exc out bare, ex-
1stence, that he should be permitted to
marry q wife to halve this bare exis-
tence, that he should be permi ted to
bring children into the world to fur
ther cOmpl1cate matters? Away with
him. He has become q drug on the
market, since the invention of achin-
cry; he has no part in the divine order
OF things since Baer, of the Reading,
became vice regent of God on earth
and in the Pennsylvania coal mines.
The rich ruleth over the poor-it is q
condition cOuntenanced and justified
since the beginning of time. And now
the time is ripe to put in operation
that further command of the Levites,
s'Thou shalt not countenance the poor
man in his cause. Too long has the
rich tolerated the poor, too long has
he let fall crumbs from bis Dives table
that these crawling minions, this
spawn OF pauperism, might be enabled
to keep skeleton and soul together.
twas an offense. Let them separate.
The poor mar! He represents inca
pacity, impotency, inopportunity. He
has not been first to squat in SC We reign
ty on the coal fields, the oil fields, the
coke fields. He does not possess the
divine right OF the millionaire. He
may, by scrimpiDg and saving and
boarding, by nceasing industry, by
pitiless toll, gather together enough
in summer months to endure the win
ter adversity. The rich man has fool
ishly ly2permitted this excess of the char
>ity. He may have been able to pay
SO rs for. anthracite, or 81. SO for coke,
or cents for oil. Zounds! Shall he
be permitted always to cumber the
earth with his loathsome person, ill.,
clad, ill-fed, ill-housed? Out upon
him! Let US run anthracite up to 500,
coke up to SO, oil to 13 cents. Let us
even refuse him sawdust unless he pay
for it in two figures. The poor man
has no rights we are bound to respect.
He is no. millionaire. He is not
an agent of God. Here on eufferar ce
poor man. pitible, unaccommodated
man. Let US to limbo with him. He
belongs to vanishing race. Let him
vanish. The world exists for the rich,
ard Mr.. Baer has enlarged the need
les eye. The earth is the rich mans
and the ful1ness thereof. He has his
bank account where moth doth not
corrupt and where the poor man can
not break through and steal. The
poor man! Annihilation. D. the
poor man!
The above is, of course, not to be
taken as the opinion of the editor but
as the view of the rich man in regard
to the poor. It presents the subject in
the most hopeless way, in the way
which will cause men to forget reason
and turn to brute force as the only
means Of getting revenge, if not JUS
tice. That is the way anarchists are
created.
The position of the reform forces is
entirely different. They may call at
tenticn to injustices and inequalities in