CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION
We hear much of Christian Civilization, but we do not see so much of it. Let us consider briefly the Christian world:
Russia—Anarchy, rapine, bloodshed, pauperism and starvation.
Austro-Hungary—Disease, strife, strikes, poverty and pauperism of millions.
Italy—Overpopulation, dire poverty, with millions of the people actual beggars, excessive taxation and a practically bankrupt treasury.
England—Army of unemployed, a vast section of the population in a poverty so appalling that it makes one’s heart bleed to read the details.
Ireland—Practically a nation of paupers, not of their own volition either, but as a result of evil laws and customs which have destroyed the hopes of a gallant people.
Spain—Once the proud leader of nations, reduced to the rags and sores of Lazarus.
United States—In the grasp of graft, the people being robbed of their earnings at every turn by a lot of as conscienceless pirates as ever scuttled a ship, and a government apparently impotent.
Everywhere we find more or less the same evil conditions.
Our so-called Christian Civilization is as much like the genuine article as the Texas long-horn is like a thoroughbred Holstein.—The Commonweal, Atlanta, Ga.
I interpret Dr. Osler to mean: Young man, get a move on you if you want to amount to anything. If you are a failure at forty, you have missed your vocation; your experience may serve you to good purpose, but if you are dependent at sixty, why, “off with your head!”...
Our President says it is very wicked for the mail-carriers to organize and have a man lobby for them; still worse to organize and defeat a Congressman who was blocking their efforts to get better wages and conditions of employment. Why don’t the President call a halt on the corporation lobby (some of them having known offices in Washington with as many as ten clerks) who defeat men and measures. Let this be denied, but we do know that corporations fix nominating conventions where nominations are equivalent to election; especially naming those who say: “I am in the hands of my friends.”—Ohio Liberty Bell.
The Government issues money and loans it to the national banks at one-half of 1 per cent. per year. This is old party doctrine, for it has prevailed under the rule of both old parties. The People’s Party favors issuing the money direct to the people without the intervention of banking corporations. On this question do you agree with the Populists or old parties?—Missouri World.
Wouldn’t it be amusing if an individual owned the New York Post-Office, paying sweatshop wages to letter-carriers, working them all hours, discharging them without reason—putting girls in their places as much as possible—and charging twenty-five cents for a letter halfway across the continent?
Wouldn’t it be beautiful if a J. P. Morgan or Mr. August Belmont of the race-track could own all the industries and real estate of New York?
How nicely Mr. Morgan would capitalize such properties in Steel Trust fashion! And what a nice time Mr. Belmont would have with the labor unions! There would be plenty of work for strike-breakers.
The American people believe in public ownership of all properties actually created by the public—and public ownership they are going to have.—New York Evening Journal.
The slave-owners of today do not realize that they own slaves. And the slaves do not realize that they have owners. Formerly one man owned one, a dozen or a hundred slaves. Occasionally even more than that. Now a hundred thousand men each own a part of every slave. The great mass of the people are slaves to unjust systems, and everyone who profits by these systems is part owner of everyone who loses by them. If there could be a partition suit and every slave owner be set apart his share, the fact that there are slaves today, and millions of them, would be quite plain. It would be found that this man owns fifty slaves, that man a hundred and some as high as fifty thousand. Should the richest girl in the United States be given white girls only as her share of the slaves, she would have a thousand at least—a thousand white girl slaves. Some persons are part slave and part free, because they get a little more than the commonest kind of a living. Sixty million people in the United States are either all or part slave, and the number who are all slave is much greater than that of the black population in the days of chattel slavery. This new slavery exists because the owners do not realize that they are owners and the slaves do not realize that they are slaves. Years ago Mrs. Emery, of Lansing, Mich., wrote a little book, entitled “The Seven Financial Conspiracies Which Have Enslaved the American People.” The way to freedom is financial legislation in the interest of the people.—Missouri World.
The nation that prepares for war will sooner or later have war. We get just anything we prepare for, and we get nothing else. Everything that happens is a sequence; this happened today because you did that yesterday.—The Philistine.
In 1896 Mr. Bryan had undisputed control of the organized Democracy and was defeated.
In 1900 he still had control, and was defeated worse than before.
Now, let it be remembered that all the Western Populists, with their newspaper press—including such strong and widely circulated papers as the Nebraska Independent, supported him; and let it be further understood that now and in the future he will get no support from Populists or the Populist press; then figure out the lurid prospects Mr. Bryan has of sweeping the country in 1908.
Now, with this actual state of things confronting him, does anyone believe that Mr. Bryan has any hope of reorganizing the shattered ranks and disgraced leaders of the Democracy into a winning party in 1908?
And, if he has no such hope—and in reason he cannot have—what is his purpose putting so much into a cause that he knows is absolutely hopeless?
We can see but one reason for Mr. Bryan’s course, and that is that he intends to prevent the organization of a party that would unite the South and West, and defeat the plutocracy, thus restoring the Government to the original purpose of its great founders.
Mr. Bryan will hold in party slavery a great many Democrats who do not think—and unfortunately they are legion—and thus divide the men who ought to stand together, as it is evident they must fall together, making an easy victory for the Eastern money power.—People’s Tribune, Prescott, Ark.
“On account of insufficient laws regulating the matter, and the utter disregard of even these, hundreds of workmen, mostly foreigners, are being killed each year in the steel mills, blast furnaces and coal mines.”
Coroner Joseph G. Armstrong made this statement in addressing a jury in the case of a man killed at the plant of the American Steel and Wire Company. It was only a case of “another Hungarian killed in the mills,” as the Coroner expressed it, but Adelbert Merle, the Austro-Hungarian Consul-General in this city, backed by the Coroner, will appeal to the state, and, if necessary, to the Federal authorities, to do something to protect these men.
“During the first month of my term,” said Coroner Armstrong, “one plant alone, the Duquesne plant of the United States Steel Corporation, had twelve separate fatalities. That was the number reported to this office. How many more there were no one may ever know. I went to the officials of the corporation and entered a complaint. Then an order was issued that more care would have to be taken, and next month not a death was reported from the Duquesne plant.”
Said Consul-General Merle:
“A very large number of the Hungarians employed in the mills are American citizens, and some consideration should be given them on that account, if not on the score of humanity. It is proposed to organize the Hungarians and other foreigners who are voters and see if some action cannot be secured in the legislature to compel the mill owners to give better protection to the workmen.”
“The number of fatalities which occur in the steel mills, the blast furnaces and the coal mines in the Pittsburg district are never fully reported,” said an attaché of the consulate. “Scarcely a month goes by that we are not called upon to investigate the case of some workman who is reported to us as having ‘disappeared.’ At present we are working on two such cases. Both are identical as regards details.
“The men were stationed at the top of blast furnaces owned by the United States Steel Corporation to receive the cars of ore as they came up and dump them. There is only a small bridge for them to stand on. One misstep or awkward movement, and the man will follow the ore into the furnace. The men are not missed until it is noticed that the cars are not being dumped. No one knows what has become of them. Their coats and dinner pails await them at the bottom of the elevator, but the men never come to claim them. Then they are reported to have ‘disappeared.’ It is not known positively that they have fallen into the furnace, but there can be no other conclusion.”
The officials of the steel mills say they will do anything in their power to conduce to the safety of the men, and that the foremen in charge are mainly responsible for any dereliction.—New York World.
If a man should loan money at one-half of 1 per cent., and borrow it back at 8 per cent., and keep this up year after year, his family would have no trouble in getting him put under guardianship. The people through their Government are acting just as foolishly when they issue money to national banks....
A billion and a half of taxes. Another billion and a half of railroad charges. And a billion of interest, not counting the interest on public and railroad debts. A total of four billion dollars. This is the sum the people of the United States must pay each year whether money be scarce or plentiful. Is it any wonder times get harder when money gets scarcer?...
If the people could realize that their hard struggle to keep body and soul together and at the same time lay by a little for old age—making life a mere battle for existence—if they could realize that this struggle is made necessary by the present systems, that prosperity is the natural right of everyone who does his share of labor, they would be more easily induced to vote against monopoly rule. Populists should endeavor to dissatisfy the people with their present condition and show them that they should be getting so much more out of life.—Missouri World.