The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1920-03-12

drsn to work or starve. As these
men grew older their families grew In
size and demand, while their ability
to earn decreased. The tragedy reg
istered In their pay envelopes. They
were being ground between growing
needs and diminishing wages. The
grinding not only hurt their bodies, It
furrowed their brain.
They lived in dread Of poverty. 1t
had been their nurse, they feared 1t
would be their pallbearer. Poverty
had taken its revenge upon them.
They were resolving that If they could
help 1t 1t would not put Its lash upon
their children. They knew poverty
intimately. 1t wasn't word, name,
1t was 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 shantles
of the poor. Children who had been
robbed of their youth, who had never
owned q flower, poorly fed and mis-
| erabIy clad, dragged out of bed by
alarm clocks. sounding the call to toll,
when they should have been answer
ing the school bell, children physical
ly unfit for the breadwlnner'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 we're brooding
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
err the children ha1 gone to bed, and
many q man left his supper table TO
peek through the half-closed door into
the room where his kiddies were sleep
ing, tiptoeng back, only to look into
the eyes of a 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 tc
the darl: minds of the workmen. In
that light they saw more clearly then
needs and more completely realized
their rights II is the natural ambition
of man to climb. He wants to get OF
and up. Ignorance had kept him iron
climbing. Ignorance Is darkness. Mel
stumble when they try to go forward
in the dark. Education is the light II
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 thei
fathers and mothers never thought o
wanting. The homes which satisfies
their parents depressed and irritate
/. them, The bathtub and tooth brush ar
!. acquired habits. The desire to straight
; en- the back that has been bent In to
t too long, is put there by education.
4 One thing stood in the way--it oil
v structed the path upward to decef
q living. They saw the barrier clearl
and distlnctly-poverty. They saw tn
e impossible obstacle was made out
4 poor wages. They saw more. They sa
$ that poor wages built the poorhouse
, and filed them, organized the brea
: lines, introduced the soup house. o.
:. of their thoughts, in their experience
t they carved a truth, "As long as som
= people have more than they can pc
n sibiy use, while others through n
!, fault of their own have less than the
e absolutely need, something Is wrong
:. and when the call to arms came thes
S thoughts were living in the mass mir
e of the world. Many not concerned VII
l. the problem of the other seven-eighth
e knowing nothing of what was happe
e ing in the minds Of the men ar
IS women of toll, and caring less, thu
d did not know that these men we
n uniting and planning to tear down Il
n wall of poverty.
e Copyright. 1890. Western Newspaper Unto