Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1909-08-05
Do You Wish this Condition in
America?

Ia last weeks East Emporium Inde-
pendent Editor Golden Hockey said:
'The whole cussed tariff fabric is a
farce and an imposition on the Ameri-
can Masses" England, the champion
free trade country of the world has for
many years sought to sow seeds Of
trouble in this country, it's Golden
Club sending emissaries into this coun-
try to undermine our protective sys-
tenn. Samuel Gompers, president Of
Federation of Labor, now in England,
writes to the Pittsburg Sunday Gazette
Times that what impressed him most
in London was the awful distitution to
be seen on every hand. He was de-
pressed by the evidences of actual suf-
fering on the part of men, women and
children who were literally starving.
Park benches are filed with ragged
men who simply cannot find work to
do. Unemployment is generally ac-
cepted as 'the chronic feature of Eng
lands industrial and social life."
Hosts of human derelicts are simply
unable to work for lack of energy.
Through long periods of enforced idle
ness they have become incurably shift
less. "From time to time those num-
bers of demoralized, degraded objects,
which ought to be men and women,
have since formed in my minds eye
procession, moving along together
past me, mournful, hopeless, repellant,
a disgrace to our boasted civilization"
All visitors to England are struck by
the same sad conditions, although they
may not be able to present such Il
graphic description Of them as does
Mr.. Gompers. With all his paternal-
istic schemes, such rs old age pensions.
government employment bureaus and
poor relief funds, JOHN BULL makes
little apparent progress toward alievi-
ating the evils Of the widc3pread di7-
ease Of poverty. 1t may be said that
the poor we have always with us, and
that poverty exists in every country.
That is true. But the sordid, grinding,
sickening poverty in evidence in Great
Britain has few parallels elsewhere.
it is comparatively rare occurrence
i'll au American city for n prosperous
looking individual to be accosted by
street beggar. Certainly even in times
OF greatest business depression one
may walk our streets and not be held
up in every block by piteous appeals
for assistance. English cities swarm
with beggars at all times. It is surpris-
ing that England should always be
harassed by the fear Of invasion by
foreign foe and yet seemingly be obliv-
ious to the greater foe within. The
best thought ofthe nation is engaged
in formulating means of defense against
Germany. In the meantime more
serious menace stalks at home. With
conditions in the summer time such as
Mr. Gompers describes, one hates to
think of what the coming season of
cold may bring forth. British states
men cannot have forgotten the riotous
scenes of last winter in which crowds
of the unemployed participated.
There is every indication that ''the
worst is yet to come"
Do you wish America and American
homes placed on level with the free
trade countries? We imagine none
would howl more loudly than the
editor of the Independent were the
laborers and their wives and children
ground down to the low level of
Europe. God forbid