The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1906-04-20
SOME SOCIAL EVILS.


an appalling magnitude. from the dis
eases due entirely to the unsanitary
condition in which the people of the
poorer classes live.
This will be no new story, for it is
told every year, and the repetition has
deprived the conditions of many of
their honors.
The saddest feature of this harvest
of death is that the victims are most
ly children. These die like flies in
November during the hot months
when the sultry heat is added to the
other unhealthy conditions.
Whole families live in one squalid
room where the purifying rays OF the
sun never enters, and where the air
is foul and reelling with the germs
of filth and disease.
The heat from the sun-heated build
ing makes the atmosphere as though
it were the breath of a furnace. No
breeze is there TO cool the fevered
brow or give vitality to the poisoned
blood.
1t is one long and incessant fight
with a demon that knows no master
When the system is already poison
ed with the germs of disease that null
tiply in the filthy surroundings in which
the people live, the heat soon makes
disease the victor in the battle with
health, and u new mound is made in
an unmarked part of the cemetery
The poverty OF the people prevent
them from procuring any of the lux
uries that to some extent alleviate the
terrors of the heat. Ice is unknown
to them. while proper ventilation is
an impossibility. There is nothing to
do but Swelter in the mimic inferno
until the frail body can no longer re-
sist the tortures. and death comes TOO
often as a welcome release.
Charitable institutions work heroic
ally to relieve these conditions, and
while the effect is improved the cause
remains. There will always be suf-
fering in the large cities SO long as
they are overcrowded and so long as
poverty and starvation are the portion
nf l,r
ton
The whole question of relief for
these conditions is one Of smaller
communities and more employment
The nearer the poorer classes can get
to the soil the farther removed are
they from want and starvation.
The miserable condition of the poor
in the cities and their inability to
earn even pittance is one of the
great evils of our social conditions
that must be remedied in the near flu
ture. else we shall be face to face
with one worse than India has ever
known.
Strange that with all the sensation
al efforts of the Jealous space writer's
who are awakening the echoes of the
world with their clamors for reforms
have left such great work as the re-
lief of these conditions to such in
situations as the Salvation Army,
while they have sought to make the
public believe that the nation is 60
ing to destruction if not stayed by
their clamor. True. these conditions
cannot be relieved by legislation. but
they are far more important than
much of the stuff that is filing the
pages of the red magazines.
Before relief from the present in
tolerable conditions that now exist
in the large cities can come. there
must be a change of economic condi-
tons. Instead of great armies of peo-
pie being congregated in few large
VaIACos wACIS TIC Supply VI ldUOl 10
far greater than the demand. Relief
must come through the building up
of smaller industrial centers, and a
general equalizing of labor and help.
Many of the people who suffer and
die in the cities would find immediate
relief were they located in the coun-
try where they could turn their labor
into livelihood through the medium
Of the soil. They would have more
than a livelihood. They could breathe
the pure air of heaven untainted by
contact with the evidences of poverty.
They could battle in the sunshine and
not suffer the hideous torture of it's
sweltering effects.
They would know the life that
means health and happiness.