The Wrangell sentinel., 1920-04-08

 men grew older their families grew in size and demand, while their ability to earn decreas sed. 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. Ii had been their nurse. they feared It would be their pallbearer. Poverty had taken its revenge upon them. They were resolving that if they could help it it would not put its lash upon their children. They knew poverty intimately. IL wasn't a word, a name. 1t was living hateful, cruel compan- ion. It was the devil that recruited the Marys of Scarlet Hall. the Mazda lens. of the slums and always the army was mobilized from the shantie, of the poor. Children who had been robbed of their youth. who had never owned a flower. poorly fed and mis' erably clad. dragged out of bed by
 
 when they should have been answer ing the school bell, children physical ly unfit for the hreadwinner's arug- 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 breeding on these things, papers. books. maga. zines mirroring life, pictured these horrors. They were the subject of public discussion and debate Men re. turning from q hard days work talked these things over with their wives aft. CT the children had gone to bed and many a 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 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 to the dark minds of the workmen. In that light they saw more clearly their needs and more completely realized their rights. It 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 Ob- structed the path upward to decent living. They saw the barrier clearly and distinctly-poverty. They saw this impassable 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 i 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 i the problem of the other seven-eghths knowing nothing of what was happen ing in the minds of the men and women of toll, and caring less, they ! did not know that these men were uniting and planning to tear down the wall of poverty.
 i Copyright. 1920. Western Newspaper Union)