We appeal to New York for capital with which to develop our resources; and New York has it in abundance— countless millions she is eager to let out at usury; yet it is estimated that ten thousand children perish in that city every year of the world for lack of food—and how many are kept alive by the bitter bread of a contemptuous charity God only knows. In one year 3,000 children were debarred from the public schools of Chicago because of lack of clothing to cover their nakedness—and Chicago boasts herself "the typical American city." The despised Salvation Army trying to feed a thousand homeless and hungry men on the sandlots of San Francisco proves that already the curse has travelled across the continent.
And people who are not only permitted to run at large, but actually elected to office, prattle of "overproduction" —while people are starving in nakedness; proposes to eliminate pauperism and inaugurate the industrial millennium by placing fiddle-strings on the free-list or increasing the tariff-tax on toothpicks—to relieve the country of the commercial jim-jams by means of the gold cure. And the fool-killer still procrastinates!
. . .
The American citizen is called a sovereign—by those patriots who are preparing to sacrifice themselves on the altar of a nice fat office. And perhaps he is; but I'm free.
We are frequently told that the condition of labor is better to-day than a century ago. That is half a truth, yet wholly a falsehood. A century ago the workman knew naught of many comforts and conveniences he now enjoys —when he happens to have a job; but that was one age, this quite another. Progress gives no man new wants, and the luxuries of one generation become the necessities of the next. To deny this—to limit the laborer to actual necessaries as measured by a former age—were to relegate him back to barbarism, to nomadism and nakedness. If we should be content with what our fathers had, then they should have been satisfied with the comforts enjoyed by THEIR progenitors, and so on back until man digs roots with his finger nails, attires himself in a streak of red paint for winter overcoat and a few freckles for summer ulster. It is by comparison with his fellows and not with his fathers that man determines whether he's fortunate or unfortunate—whether he's receiving his proper proportion of the world's increase of wealth. A century ago there was no such glaring inequality as now exists. There were no fifty million dollar fortunes and no free-soup joints. If the workman's piano was a jews-harp and his Pullman car a spavined cayuse, his employer was not erecting palaces in which to stable his blood stock, nor purchasing dissolute princes for his daughters to play at marriage and divorce with. If the farmer's wife wore linsey-woolsey and went barefoot to save her shoes, her neighbor did not import $5,000 gowns from "Paree" and put jeweled collars on her pet cur. The difference in the condition of Dives and Lazarus is more sharply defined than ever before. It is not so much the pitiful poverty of the many as the enormous wealth of the few that is fostering discontent. Pride dallying with Sin begot Death; willful waste is breeding Anarchy in the Womb of Want. The lords and ladies of the house of Have revel in luxury such as Lucullus never knew, while within sound of their feasting gaunt children fight like famished beasts for that which the breakfast garbage barrels afford. Private fortunes make the famed wealth of Lydia's ancient kings appear but a beggar's patrimony, while brawny giants must beg or steal and starving mothers give the withered breast to dying babes.
Labor now seeks employment, not as a right, but as a privilege. It has come to such a pitiful pass in this "land of liberty," this "refuge of the world's oppressed," that to afford a man an opportunity to employ his strength or skill in the creation of wealth, a portion of which he may retain for his own support, is regarded rather as a privilege than a free contract between American Sovereigns —an act of charity, for which the recipient should be duly grateful.
No man can be a freeman while dependent upon the good will of an other for his bread and butter. He may be a Sovereign dejure, but he's a Slave defacto. And under present conditions the more labor-saving machinery he invents, the tighter he rivets his chains.
We had hoped and believed that human ingenuity was about to lift the curse laid on Adam by his angry Lord; the angel of Intellect to reimparadise the poor slave, place his fetters on nature's tireless forces and declare that never again should bread be eaten in the sweat of the brow; but man proposes—and is sued for breach of promise.
Were a man to declare labor-saving machinery and the general development of the country a curse to the poor, he would be branded as a "moss-back" or budding candidate for Bedlam; yet it is unquestionably true that the further the average individual gets from the so-called blessings of civilization—the less he is affected by our boasted industrial system—the smaller his danger of starving to death.
Many of us can remember when we had little labor- saving machinery in Texas; when railways were scarce as consistent Christians at a colored camp-meeting, goods were carried down from coast on the backs of burros and a full-dress suit consisted chiefly of buckskin breeches and a brace of angel makers. And we remember also that a pauper was a curiosity; that the very cowboys played poker at $10 ante with the sky for limit, the common laborer carried coin in his belt and the merchant had money to burn. Texas has developed wonderfully during the last few decades. We now have improved machinery —and extensive poor-farms; railways—and political rings; a $3,000,000 capitol—and an army of unemployed. We have built fine schools and finer churches, made the black man our political brother and bought his vote. We have exchanged our buckskin for broadcloth, our hair- raising profanity for the hypocrite's whine, straight corn- juice for the champagne-jag and the hip-pocket court for the jackass verdict of the petit jury. But the cowboy now plays penny-ante on credit or shoots craps for small coin; the common laborer carries in his belt only a robust appetite, while the merchant who dodges bankruptcy for a dozen years considers himself the special favorite of fortune.