Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-09-25

made up of recital of evils, most, If not all of which must be acknowledg- ed. What 1t says about the unem- ployed, the divorces, and alas! the number of women prostituting both body and soul Is, fear, only too true. Indeed I think l would have painted some of the features in dark CT dye than did the committee. That capitalism is responsible for many, especially of the economic evils, only fool will deny. That 1t Is respon- sible for the immoral condition of so many l cannot admit. Low wages and hard conditions do not compel any woman to sell her body for grati- fication of lust and l can name scores of our girls here in Waterbury whose conditions are not favorable and yet whose lives are models of purity. The fact that many who are in affiuent circumstances and yet are the devotees of lust is evidence that wealth of itself will not lead to purity. In fact if we read history, as this committee recommends us to do, we find that nations became immoral when they reached the very height of their material prosperity. As far as material conditions are concerned women stand higher to-day than they ever did. The inclination to feed the flesh and serve the devil does not de- pend upon economic conditions and abundant wealth is no guarantee against the yielding to that inclina- tion. Otherwise our upper ten so- ciety wound not so often be mixed up with the scenes that disgrace our courts. Women are not chaste be- cause they are rich, neither are they immoral because they are poor. They are either the one or the other be- cause they cherish or do not cherish
 as the case may be, the inherent claims of pure womanhood. A de- sire for style and fashion and high life may drive the poor girl to life of shame and these are too often the elements that beckon her down the gilded path of vice to life of degra- dation.
 That the fact of women and chil- dren competing with men is one of the ills of our day no unbiased mind will deny. But how will the social ist remedy the evil? It must be done by legislation for we can hard ly conceive even a sOcialistic state without legislation. We'll, 1t can be remedied now by legislation as child labor is in several of our states, and here there is one very important fact that the average socialist does not seem pleased to dwell upon, viz: that an appreciable portion of the miseries of the working class are those of their own making. If we take into consideration that $500,- 000,000 was spent in drink in one year by the wage earners of the United States we have a clue to a considerable portion of the poor man E misery. So good an authority as Carroll D. Wright testified as the re- suit of a special investigation in a very poor district: "So far as my own observation goes drunkenness was at the bottom of the misery and not the industrial conditions" And I we'll remember that a few years back when MT Adler and some other rich Jews endeavored to better the conditions of their co-religionists, the attempt proved failure because oi the indisposition to profit by their well-meant efforts. Again, laziness lack of thrift and foresight is re- sponsible for much of the existing misery. It is on record that in the hard times of '93 that of 2,000 who in Chicago applied for help only 45C were willing to accept work. Gay. lord Wiltshire, revolutionary social. ist, tells in his magazine (Nov, 1903) that as result of his investigations in European countries he found "the European laborer getting low wages and paying high prices for food still
 keeping himself and family in as good, if not better physical condition than the American, who with twice of three times the wages has practi- cally no margin for saving"
 l give the quotation for what it is worth while personally acknowledg- ing that 1 am somewhat sceptical about the entire truth of it. At any rate the making of the law and the selection of officers is still in our own hands and when the community at large decree that correction shall be made it has the means at hand to make it's will effective.
 But what connection have these in- dustrial ends with the phase of socialism that I was considering. maintained and do still, that one of the direct objects of socialism is the destruction of the monogametic state of the family. The committee states that no socialist convention has talk en stand on the question of mar riage. The Tours programme of 1902 classes all religions and dogmas as superstition and declares it's inten- tion to combat "all religion. dogmas and churches" Now marriage is an institution of religion and has SC been considered since the days Christ brought 1t back to the pristine state by re-declaring that they shall be two in one flesh," and hence this Tours programme in declaring wal upon religion implicitly at least, de- clares war also upon the present con- dition of Christian marriage And the Chicago socialist convention put 1t. self in line by pledging unreservedly fidelity to the principles of in- ternational socialism as embodied fin the united thought and action of the socialists of all nations" have al ready related in another article how that convention side-stepped the di. rect question put to it on that very