Adeline Knapp.
San Francisco, Cal., 1894.
ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS A DAY.
A FINANCIAL EXPERIENCE.
“Yes,” said the anti-poverty orator, “what we require is an equitable distribution of the world’s wealth. The bloated bond-holder, the idle, white-handed aristocrat and the politician who rob the people, must all go. We want such a distribution of the money and wealth of the land as will make every man independent of his neighbor. Then the world will really prosper, but not until then will we see an end of poverty and misery, and the never-ending struggle that is driving men to desperation and women to perdition!”
“Time for us to go,” whispered Carroll Burton’s companion just at this juncture. “He’ll begin to wave the red flag in a minute, and then there’ll be an anarchistic powwow. This meeting always ends in a rumpus,” and together the two young men forced their way through the crowd and out upon the street.
Dale, Burton’s friend, was inclined to poke a little quiet fun at him for the attention he had given the ranting speaker. “These fellows have each an infallible scheme for setting the world straight,” he said, “and no two are alike. Between you and me, anyway,” he added, “the world’s a good deal better than the ranters would have us think. Why, give these fellows one thousand dollars a day apiece and they wouldn’t be satisfied.”
But Burton was not in the mood for laughing. His reason told him how specious were the arguments of the anti-poverty speaker and how preposterous were the ideas he advanced regarding an equitable division of the world’s wealth, but he could not tonight, as he had frequently done before, shake off the conviction that our present industrial system is out of joint.
“It don’t seem right,” he muttered to himself, as he stood waiting for his car, after bidding Dale good-night, and saw the carriage of a well-known millionaire dash along the street and nearly run down a poor little shivering wretch of a news-boy, who, hurling a curse in a shrill, piping voice after the driver of the carriage, was only answered by a stinging blow from the latter’s long lash. One or two by-standers laughed. “The young imps,” said one carelessly, “’twould be well if they were all run over and killed. They’ll only grow up into hoodlums and fill our jails later. What other chance have they?”
“It isn’t right,” Burton concluded. “We can’t have perfect equality of conditions, but such glaring inequalities as that ought not to exist in a free country;” and swinging aboard his car he was soon speeding homeward.
Next morning he was awakened much earlier than usual by the sound of unwonted cries under his window. “Have all the newsboys in town come into this one block?” he asked himself. “What are they saying, anyway?”