The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-04-26
A Tariff=Made City.
What it Does For Its Workmen.

! tionS are pointed out to them:-"We 1 don't want to go into the housing busi- ness. We are manufacturers, not real estate dealers. We may be forced to | build houses in certain new districts | in order to attract and hold labor, but 1 in an old, settled community let the | laboring men take care of himself. 1 We don't believe in paternalism.'
 They have had no more interest in preserving the lives of the men who do the terrible toll necessary to their l housing. For years the death rate from typhoid fever in Pittsburg has
 been the highest of any city in the civ iliZed world. Everybody knew it. Every body knew why. There was no l supply of pure drinking water. A fil- tration plant was needed. Did any Pfttsburg millionaire offer to build it insist that the industries which call
 burg should build it? No. they lest a corrupted city government to fight over the appropriations for the work and scattered in endowments and in States. many times the five millions needed in Pittsburg to save the lives of the workmen. They hold up to the world for admiration their love of with the American people that their skill in solving these problems is a good and sufficient reason for continu- ing general taxation in their favor But a problem which worked out would benefit nobody but the humble two-dollar-a-day man who sweats out his life in the heat of their profita ple furnaces does not interest them. It might savor of paternaliSIn!
 Not even the child has touched them. The conditions under which the chill dren of the poor are brought up in PittSburg are such that babies die like flies. Of those along the river. a set clement worker told Samuel Hopkins Adams when he working health conditions for the Survey: Mot one child in ten comes to us from the river bottom section without a blood or skin disease, usually of long stand ing. Not one out of ten comes to us physically up to the normal for his or her age. Worse than that, few of them are up to the mental standard, and an increasing percentage are i1nbecile.
 As to the schools here is what an authority says: ''The school buildings are in many cases crowded, dark. dirty, often of three stories, and bad fire risks. The condition of the children in these schools good and bad, rich and poor, may be known by the large proportion having defective. teeth, re- duced hearing. imperfect vision An excessively large number of them are they are unable to breathe through their noses in the smoky air of Pitts burg. and a very considerable number are below the stature and the weight
 
 a large percentage, the defects of teeth, nose and throat bring them below the physical normal. These are the chil- dren that wear out in childhood"
 Is it a wonder that this gentleman suggested:
 Ought not the Pittsburg schools to be closed and the children repaired?"
 This Pittsburg Survey is the most awful arraignment of an American in stitution and it's resulting class pro- nounced since the days of slavery. It puts upon the Pittsburg millionaire the awful stamp of Greed, of Stupid ity and of heartless Pride. But what should we expect of him? He is the creature of a Special Privilege which for years he has not needed. He has fought it because he fattened on it. at him and look at his laborer and be- lieve him if you can.
 Justice takes a terrible revenge on those who thrive by privilege. She blinds their eyes until they no longer see human misery. She dulls their hearts until they no longer beat with She benumbs their senses l until they respond only to the narrow | horizon of what they can individually | possess. touch. feel. She makes, as she has in Pittsburg, generation of i men and women who day by day can 1 pass hundreds of tumbled down and filthy homes, in which the men and women who make their wealth live, and feel no shock; who can know that deadly levers and diseases which are are wiping out hundreds ,f those who do their tasks, and raise 10 hand. Little children may die or grow up stunted and evil within their tight and no penny of their wealth. no lour of their leisure is given them. may pass hours of incessant oil and die, broken and unhonored within their sight, and they raise no land. Wealth which comes by Privi1- ege kills. The curse of Justice on hose who will not recognize injustice s the sodden mind. the dulled vision, he unfeeling heart.
 I. NJ. T.