The Churchill county standard. (Fallon, Nev.) 1908-1920, 1912-01-10

f0N 1HE other day there died at Vir-
ginia City-in the county hos
2S~S:z, n pital, as the newspapers men
Ez-.es9 toned two old miners of the
Comstock bonanza days. Both were
old men, and each had labored for years
in the heated depths of the mother lode
to increase the worlds wealth toied
until advancing years, bringing failure
of yigor and strength, compelled them
to seek other employment, if any they
could find which they could perform.
The fact that these two superannu-
ated workers were ineloriously buried
in pauper's graves after weary life of
sacrifice and toll, consigned to their
last resting places, We must believe,
with but scant ceremony, prompts the
inevitable conclusion that they must
have gained for themselves but an in
finitesimal part of the wealth they had
produced by their toil-at least not
enough to provide even for these last
mortuary expenses. And let US waive,
for once, the stock arguments about
man improvidence.
But the men for whom they slayed
and delved, the men Tor whom these
two cid workers had given the best
years of their lives the men who, un-
der a property system which had its
genesis in the selfish ignorance of The
race, town" these mines-what Of
them? 1t is not recorded that they par
tiiioned some of these. riches Won for
them by other hands TO ease the last
moments of these worn gray in their
service-that they eontribcted even a
shroud to enwrap the dead. But the
fortunes which these poor workers piled
up for them yearly grows larger and
larger by accretion, insuring TO their
children and TO their children's children
the same useless, wasteful lives fol-
lowed by their sires. No danger of a
pauper's burial unwept, unhonored
and unsung-for theml Instead the
costly mausoleum craven with the lying
inscription which their unjustly amassed
wealth has bought
Is all this fair? With all our preach
ment of the humanities, our flaunt and
parade of the banner of Him who taught
we should give our coat to our brother
if the need be, must we, after all, ad-
nit we are today just where we were
six thousand years ago when the ill-fed
toiieIs sweated under t1e not EGYPTIAN
sun, whipped by their brutal taskmas
ters that they might produce the more
wealth for their exaeting overlord! In
those days the rich grew richer and the
poor grew poorer-just as they DO To.
day. Why, even back IN the relgns OF
Thotmes and Rameses land no one Will
ever know how much further back than
that there was a land-holding class
and a tenant class the il lie rich and the
Shaving poor as there is today IN view
of the palace of the prince were always
the novels of the destitute. And then,
as now, there was one law for the rich
man and another for the poor.
And so we ask-in the things of the
greatest moment to the race-the CIV
ing of equal opportunities to all, the
granting of exact justice to every man
have we advanced very far, after all!
Are we forced to the conclusion that all
our present-day philosophy of life, tine
tured as it is with the Sermon on the
Mount, while professei on all occasions
is never to be really praeticed?
When Sir Thomas More wrote Utopia
he dreamed of different world. when
the relations of man to man should be
readjusted when no man should have
more than one man 5 share OF the assets
of our civilization. But Sir Thomas
was laughed at as a dreamer.
That was several hundred years ago.
Ard as time rolls on the dream seems
to be further from fulillment than
ever. And the laugh is still in evidence!