The Meridian times. (Meridian, Idaho) 1909-1938, 1920-03-05

dren to work or gtarve AS these
men grew older their families grew In
size and demand, while their ability
TO earn decreased. The tragedy reg.
lstered in their pay envelopes. They
We're being ground between growing
needs and diminishing wages. The
grinding not only hurt their bodies, it
furrowed their brain.
Ihey lived in dread of poverty. II
mad been their nurse, they feared 1t
would be their pallbearer. Poverty
mad taken its revenge upon them.
Ihey were resolving that if they could
help 1t it would not put its lash upon
their children. They knew poverty
intimately. 1t wasn't word, a name,
II was a living hateful, cruel compan-
ION. 1t was the devil that recruited
the Marys of Scarlet Hall, the Magda-
lens OF the slums, and always the
army was modified from the shanties
Oh the poor. Children who had been
ROBBED of their youth, who had never
owned flower, poorly fed and mis-
erably clad, dragged out of bed by
alarm clocks, sounding the call to toll
#hen they should have been answer
ing the school bell, children physical
ly unfit for the breadwinner's strug-
gle' children without the moral en-
durance necessary for the fight. were
driven into No Woman's land, the
rotten scum under the world.
Light in Education.
Before the war men were broodfng
on these things, papers, books. maya
zines mirroring life, pictured these
horrors. They Were the subject of
public discussion and debate. Men re-
turning from hard days work talked
these things over with their wives aft
er the children had gone to bed. and
many man left his supper table to
peek through the half-closed door into
the room where his kiddies were Sleep
ing, tiptoeing back, only to look into
the eyes of mother. and see reflected
there the fears he felt.
The invention of the typesetting ma
chine, the cheap manufacture of paper,
the growth of public school systems.
and public libraries, brought light to
the dark minds of the workmen. In
that light they saw more clearly their
needs and more completely realized
their rights. 1t is the natural ambition
of man to climb. He wants to get on
and up. Ignorance had kept him from
climbing. Ignorance is darkness. Men
stumble when they try to go forward
in the dark. Education is the light in
the road. They sought to make haste,
to make up for the lost time. Education
taught them to want things for them
selves and their families that their
fathers and mothers never thought of
wanting. The homes which satisfied
their parents depressed and irritated
them. The bathtub and tooth brush are
acquired habits. The desire to straight |
en- the back that has been bent in toll !
too long, is put there by education
One thing stood in the way-it OBJ |
the path upward to decent |
living. They saw the barrier clearly |
and distinctly-poverty. They saw this |
obstacle was made out of |
poor wages. They saw more. They saw
that poor wages built the poorhouses
and filled them, organized the bread |
lines, introduced the soup house. Out |
of their thoughts, in their experience,
they carved a truth, "As long as some
people have more than they can pos
sibly use, while others through no
fault of their own have less than they
absolutely need, something is wrong"
and when the call to arms came these
thoughts were living in the mass mind
Of the world. Many not concerned with
the problem of the other seven-eighths,
nothing of what was happen
ing in the minds of the men and
of toll, and caring less, they
did not know that these men were
Uniting and planning to tear down the
wall of poverty.
Copyright, 1920. Western Newspaper Union)
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