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 POVERTY'S FACTORY 
 
 OR 
 
 THE CURSE, CAUSE, AND CURE 
 
 OF ABNORMAL WEALTH 
 
 BY 
 
 STANLEY L. KREBS, M.A. 
 
 A plain statement of the social and economic sins of the day, 
 with the method of their minimization through a modified 
 system of representation. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 ARENA PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 COPLEY SQUARE 
 1895
 
 COPYRIGHTED, 1895, 
 
 BV 
 
 STANLEY L. KREBS. 
 
 All Rights Reserved. 
 
 ARENA PRINT.
 
 TO 
 
 ALL WHO ARE 
 EARNESTLY SEEKING A 
 
 PRACTICABLE REMEDY FOR EXISTING EXTREMES 
 AND THEIR RESULTANT EVILS, 
 
 THIS LITTLE VOLUME 
 IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED, 
 
 AS A 
 SUGGESTION. 
 
 READING, May o, 1895. 
 
 1383779
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION AND FACTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The seven spheres The body physical and 
 economic Equal versus equitable distribu- 
 tion Christ and the rich and poor Ex- 
 amples of enormous wealth Normal versus 
 abnormal wealth 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CURSE. 
 
 Trampism The relation of the saloon to pov- 
 erty usually misunderstood Child labor 
 The " Sweating system " Prostitution 
 Estrangement of the masses from the 
 Church Dishonesty and fraud The de- 
 cline of patriotism The breaking down of 
 home life 26 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 The rich invest their money and thus give em- 
 ployment to thousands One versus many 
 stockholders The central tenet of modern 
 Socialism reviewed 61 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 INEFFECTIVE CURES. 
 
 Strikes Their pathos, bravery, and folly 
 Arbitration Conciliation Various forms 
 of co-operation 69
 
 6 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE CAUSE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Unjust laws The Senate's "rule of courtesy" 
 Failure to enforce or abolish the Sabbath 
 laws An insufficient land tax How to use 
 vacant lots to advantage Unfair assess- 
 ments Local events a type of all Dispro- 
 portionate or inequitable tariff protection 
 Inflation of credit The laws not always 
 right The Jewish social and economic 
 system 81 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE CURE. 
 
 The final cure The immediate attainable 
 remedy Industrial and professional repre- 
 sentation Advantages Events in the 
 Pennsylvania state legislature and in Eng- 
 land The ballot No use to abuse wealthy 
 individuals 126 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A LIMIT TO ALL, THIXGS. 
 
 Forces of destruction at work Significant 
 signs Historical precedents " Tekel " . . . 156 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH AND THE CLERGY. 
 
 Attitude of infallibility Religious indiffer- 
 ence to the social problem Purpose of 
 Christ and the duty of Christianity 
 Preachers as prophet-reformers Ministers 
 as citizens Power of the primaries The 
 legacy of citizen Phillips Brooks 164
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION AND FACTS. 
 
 IF it be tenable, on the basis of 
 Scripture revelation, to divide the 
 spirit-world into seven circles or 
 spheres, then the Swedenborgian 
 doctrine of " correspondences" seems 
 verified in the present economic 
 condition of the nations of earth. 
 There is the lowest "pit," the dark 
 Tartarus of absolute penury, despair, 
 starvation, friendlessness, suicide ; 
 next, the "hell" of poverty, drudg- 
 ery, semi-starvation, and slavery ; 
 then the " Hades " of laboriously 
 making a fairly comfortable living ; 
 fourth, the "Paradise" of possessing
 
 8 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 a satisfactory income ; fifth, the 
 "first heaven "of ability to live on 
 the interest of one's investments ; 
 sixth, the " second heaven " of a sur- 
 plus and constantly accumulating 
 interest ; and, lastly, the " third 
 heaven" where the Chicago trinity 
 dwelleth, the heaven where the streets 
 are of gold, the avenues paved with 
 stocks, bonds, and mortgages return- 
 ing from 8 to 30 per cent interest, 
 and where the palaces are built of 
 precious stones galore. 
 
 In the human body at any given 
 time there is a definite and measur- 
 able amount of blood. Congestion 
 at one point involves abstraction, de- 
 pletion, or anemia at others. .Fever 
 and feebleness are the result. The 
 stronger or keener the congestion, 
 the more dangerous the disease. 
 
 In the body economic there is at 
 any given date a definite and meas-
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 9 
 
 arable amount of money and wealth. 
 An engorgement of it at one point 
 necessarily synchronizes with a de- 
 pletion at others ; an enormous accu- 
 mulation of power and possession in 
 the hands of a few involves the 
 abstraction of them from the hands 
 of the many. Fever, disease, and 
 restlessness are the inevitable result, 
 and the stronger or more extreme 
 the congestion, i. e., the greater the 
 extremes of wealth and poverty, 
 the higher the national fever and 
 restlessness. This is precisely the 
 condition of things to-day. 
 
 We shall not plead for an equal 
 distribution of wealth, either free or 
 enforced by law. It would be folly 
 to bewail the fact that the hand or 
 foot has less blood than the arm or 
 head. We are not infatuated with 
 the dram of the Communist, nor are 
 we pursuing the mathematical will-
 
 10 POVESTY'8 FACTORY. 
 
 o'-the-wisp of the Fourierist, nor do 
 we feel fascinated with the towering 
 air-castles of the St. Simonist ; 
 neither do we subscribe to the charm- 
 ing creed of the transcendentalist 
 nor render homage to the plausible 
 and attractive chimeras of the out- 
 and-out Nationalist. We do not pine 
 to turn the world or even this nation 
 into one huge phalanstery. No. 
 Nevertheless, we do feel convinced 
 that there ought to be effected, not 
 an equal, but a more equitable distri- 
 bution of wealth ; that every organ 
 in the healthy human body should 
 possess its proportionate share of 
 blood and nourishment, and that 
 every business and avocation in the 
 body economic should be given as it 
 is now not given a chance, a free- 
 dom, a possibility, to obtain its rel- 
 ative portion of legal or legislative 
 support ; and that comprehensive
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. H 
 
 representation in legislative bodies, 
 municipal, state, and national, can 
 and should powerfully assist in 
 effecting such a desirable, just, and 
 necessary readjustment. 
 
 In contemplating the present com- 
 plexity of extremes and sufferings I 
 have sometimes felt tempted to wish 
 that this great economic sore of ab- 
 normal wealth massed in the hands 
 of the few might concentrate still 
 more and come to a head in one per- 
 son, some giant, omnivorous money- 
 king or American Rothschild, to the 
 end that all men would be forced to 
 see and feel the awful power lodged 
 in that one person, and compel the 
 government to use the knife, i. e., 
 to confiscate his so-called " property," 
 pensioning him and his for life, and 
 thus to restore to healthy and general 
 use the vital substance so unjustly 
 and perilously congested.
 
 12 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 If majorities rule, then, as things 
 are and men think noiv, this is the 
 age of the deification of mammon and 
 the damnation of men. 
 
 I shall be obliged to say many 
 things in this paper which may lead 
 the reader to the mistaken inference 
 that my sympathies are all one-sided, 
 and that I am trying to swell the 
 howl of the average labor agitator. 
 But the fact is, as I know from a bit 
 or two of personal experience, that 
 when you get alongside of the aver- 
 age "labor leaders," if you don't be- 
 come as one of a pack of coyotes 
 and howl in perfect unison with the 
 pack, you are at once set down 
 as currying favor of the wealthy 
 classes, as being subsidized by the 
 money power, etc. , etc. , ad nauseam. 
 My sympathies, like the reader's, are 
 
 divided between the rich and the 
 
 
 
 poor, the capitalist and the laborer.
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 13 
 
 Both have their respective burdens, a 
 fact which each should recognize and 
 respect in the other. I love both ; I 
 blame both ; but for different reasons. 
 1 .<hall say therefore whatever com- 
 mends itself to my reason as worth 
 saying, and say it without the fear 
 or the favor either of rich or poor. 
 
 "The poor ye have always with 
 you." I believe the Master. But I 
 do hope and pray we shall not have 
 as many or as poor as we have now. 
 
 " Woe unto the rich." I believe 
 the Master. The day is dawning 
 when excessive riches, abnormal 
 wealth, will be judged as a social sin, 
 and will be rendered impossible by 
 the nature of the laws. ' ' Sell all 
 that thou hast and give to the poor," 
 was the startling command of the 
 Xazarene to the rich young ruler, a 
 man "who had great possessions," 
 i.e., was abnormally rich. Was this
 
 14 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 command to distribute his wealth 
 right or wrong ? Was it just or un- 
 just to the young millionaire ? How 
 could a man of such extreme wealth 
 congenially enter the brotherhood of 
 carpenters and fishermen ? Extremes 
 kill brotherhood and quench frater- 
 nal love. The Master's order there- 
 fore was : ' ' Distribute. " 
 
 In this paper I do not intend to dis- 
 cuss theories, but simply, 1st, to 
 present facts that are well authenti- 
 cated ; 2dly, to seek the underlying 
 cause ; and lastly, to suggest a rem- 
 edy for those forms of evil and injus- 
 tice which are palpable and gross. 
 Let us proceed at once, therefore, to 
 collate 
 
 THE FACTS 
 
 in the case, which will prove beyond 
 a peradventure the enormously in- 
 equitable distribution of wealth ob-
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 15 
 
 taining in this country at the present 
 day.* 
 
 We have 35,000 millionaires, 50 
 multi-millionaires, and TO estates 
 which average $35,000,000 each. 
 The average annual income of the 
 richest 100 Americans is estimated to 
 be not less than $1,200,000 apiece. 
 One Miss is worth $60,000,000 ; her 
 neighbor is put down at $40,000,000 ; 
 but no one seems to know just where 
 to locate the limit of probability in the 
 case of two well-known New York 
 families and the "Chicago trinity." 
 
 *The statistical and personal facts given in 
 this paper have been taken from the public 
 press and current literature. They are already, 
 therefore, the property of the public. It would 
 have been easy indeed to give the names of the 
 individuals and families alluded to. But I have 
 purposely withheld them, for the reason that I 
 am anxious to raise the discussion or agitation 
 of the social problem from the plane of person- 
 alities to that of principles.
 
 16 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 The line is so far off that it is lost in 
 the shadowy perspective of hundreds 
 of millions, and even billions. A 
 young lady member of one of these 
 families, recently married, it has 
 been charitably hoped can manage to 
 scrape together enough to live from 
 the interest on a principal of ten mil- 
 lions, especially if she is economical 
 and does not lose the world-famous 
 Esterhazy diamond and the Marie- 
 Antoinette ropes of pearls and the 
 tiara of diamonds which would have 
 paid a king's ransom, and the almost 
 priceless treasures of rubies, sapphires, 
 and amethysts, all of which she re- 
 ceived as wedding-presents purchased 
 with the pocket-money and loose 
 change of her brother and sister. 
 
 As to the wealth of the second of 
 the families above-mentioned we may 
 catch a stray glimpse in the fact that 
 the young adventuress who is said
 
 PO VER TY ' ti FA CTOR Y. 17 
 
 to be the darling of another woman's 
 fabulously rich husband and the 
 cause of his family troubles, and upon 
 whom he is said to lavish his financial 
 superfluities, travels whithersoever 
 she pleases up and down the world, al- 
 ways takes suites at the most expen- 
 sive hotels, dresses better than any 
 woman in the city, wears thousands 
 of dollars' worth of diamonds, and 
 spends money as lavishly as if she 
 owned a letter of unlimited credit on 
 the United States, and whenever it 
 begins to give out, always returns to 
 New York for more, occasionally the 
 while depositing a baby in the land of 
 the living, a la the mistress of the 
 notorious Kentucky ex-congressman. 
 We know that the wife of one of 
 the Chicago Triumvirate, finding that 
 city too dull for her, takes up resi- 
 dence in Washington, where she gives 
 banquets costing from three to five
 
 18 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 thousand dollars a single evening ; 
 whilst our ex-postmaster-general was 
 happy to vacate his office for the rea- 
 son, among others, that it cost him 
 $30,000 a year to live in "Washington 
 with his family. 
 
 Within limits, people can and will 
 do what they please with their money. 
 We do not criticise them. We are 
 simply showing that a few persons 
 own and control a prodigiously ab- 
 normal amount of it. 
 
 Mr. Chauncey M. Depew said two 
 years ago: "Fifty men in these 
 United States have it in their power, 
 by reason of the wealth which they 
 control, to come together within 
 twenty-four hours, and arrive at an 
 understanding by which every wheel 
 of trade and commerce may be 
 stopped from revolving, every avenue 
 of trade blocked, and every electric 
 key struck dumb. Those fifty men
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 19 
 
 can paralyze the whole country, for 
 they can control the circulation of the 
 currency and create a panic whenever 
 they will." 
 
 Hon. William Windom, late U. S. 
 Senator and Secretary of the Treas- 
 ury, said a short while before his 
 death : "I repeat to-day in substance 
 words uttered seven years ago, that 
 there are in this country four men 
 who, in the matter of taxation, pos- 
 sess and frequently exercise powers 
 which, if exercised in Great Britain, 
 would shake the throne to the found- 
 ation. These men may at any time, 
 and for reasons satisfactory to them- 
 selves, by a stroke of the pen, reduce 
 the value of property in the United 
 States by hundreds of millions. 
 They may at their own will and 
 pleasure, embarrass business, depress 
 one city or locality and build up an- 
 other, enrich one individual and ruin
 
 20 POVER TY ' 8 FA CTOR T. 
 
 his competitors, and when complaint 
 is made coolly reply, ' What are you 
 going to do about it ? " 
 
 Such enormous wealth as has now 
 been described is slowly but surely 
 falling under the ban of sound 
 thinkers, of public and liberal-minded 
 men. Says Hon. Judge Gaynor : 
 " It is wealth got by this means and 
 by that, by trick and device, but all 
 the while according to law, which is 
 coming under the ban of the splendid 
 intelligence and moral sense of the 
 people of this country. " For this rea- 
 son and others, I have often wondered 
 whether the conscience of some of 
 these modern Croesuses did not give 
 them some trouble. I believe it 
 does at times. In making returns 
 of incomes under the recent " Income 
 Tax " law, a number of instances are 
 recorded in New York city and else- 
 where of requests to the officials made
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 21 
 
 by the very wealthy to withhold their 
 names from the public. The act 
 itself made it a misdemeanor for any 
 revenue officer to make public the 
 contents of returns made under that 
 act. But why this anxiety to hide 
 names ? Why hide, if their wealth 
 is normal and their incomes honest, 
 right, and just ? Men are proud of 
 honorable success, and he whose 
 deeds are right " seeketh the light 
 that his deeds may become manifest 
 that they are wrought in God." 
 
 Excessive wealth is coming to be 
 considered positively abnormal, and 
 this fact suggests the great impor- 
 tance, for purposes of safe and sound 
 reasoning, to discriminate clearly be- 
 tween 
 
 NORMAL AND ABNORMAL WEALTH. 
 
 Normal wealth is that amount of 
 property which a man can honorably
 
 22 POVER TY ' S FA CTOB Y. 
 
 earn and save in a lifetime, starting 
 with little or nothing. How much is 
 that ? In the nature of things this 
 limit cannot be definitely fixed. But 
 taking everything that it is possible 
 to take into the complex problem, 
 and in order to avoid circumlocution 
 in treating the subject before us, we 
 may adopt the limit which business 
 men have independently reckoned 
 out and stated at $500,000. This 
 line may be considered arbitrary. 
 But the limit is somewhere in this 
 neighborhood. Laborers and profes- 
 sional men can, by the exercise of 
 honesty, industry, sobriety, and econ- 
 omy, honorably amass that amount ; 
 and wealth so obtained, i. e. normal 
 wealth, is, as a rule, beneficent both 
 to the public and to the character of 
 the individual possessor. It is the 
 well-earned result of intelligence, 
 energy, perseverance, and talent ; and
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY, 23 
 
 in the hands of the wise and generous 
 becomes the means of incalculable 
 good. Against wealth so obtained 
 and employed let no tongue dare to 
 speak. It is the main support of our 
 public charities and churches, and the 
 fountain of national and industrial 
 progress. 
 
 But the moment this limit is passed 
 and especially the million line, the in- 
 dividual enters the region where dark 
 and grave doubts naturally arise as 
 to the honesty and honorableness of 
 his methods, past and present. Of 
 course no one can deny that the man 
 who has obtained normal wealth may 
 have resorted to as much dishonesty 
 and fraud, or taken as shrewd an ad- 
 vantage of existing legislation, as the 
 millionaire or the multi-millionaire. 
 But it is not likely, and even if he 
 has, the damage to society is not 
 nearly so great.
 
 24 POVERTY ' 
 
 If, therefore, the recognized limit 
 of normal and beneficent wealth be 
 below the million line, what shall be 
 said of the enormous abnormalities 
 referred to in preceding paragraphs 
 of this paper ? Simply and briefly 
 this : that it is utterly impossible, 
 without the powerful aid of legisla- 
 tive force, juggling and chicanery, 
 favoritism or fraud, to amass such 
 prodigious fortunes. Josiah Strong, 
 in his startling book, " The New 
 Era," says : " If 100 workingmen earn 
 each $1,000 a year, they would have 
 to work 1,200 or 1,500 years to earn 
 as much as the annual income of the 
 richest Americans. And if a work- 
 ingman could earn $1,000 per day he 
 would have to work until he was 
 547 years old, and never take a day 
 off, before he could earn as much as 
 some Americans are worth." 
 
 Such enormous abnormal wealth as
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 25 
 
 here alluded to, massed in the hands 
 of a moneyed aristocracy, is, beyond 
 the shadow of a doubt, an ugly ex- 
 crescence on the body social and eco- 
 nomic, and an infallible symptom of 
 virus and disease lurking in the body 
 politic. And of course the worst 
 feature of this whole system is seen 
 in its constant pressure and resistless 
 tendency to social disintegration and 
 industrial slavery, and that the inno- 
 cent and defenceless many must 
 suffer for the fortunes of the few. 
 For let us now turn from this fi- 
 nancial Olympus to "Civilization's 
 Inferno " and glance briefly at some 
 of the results or curses, direct and 
 indirect, entailed upon a feverish 
 and sickened society by abnormal 
 wealth.
 
 26 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CURSE. 
 
 First, Trampism and Extreme 
 Poverty. That this striking sign of 
 the times is the direct shadow of ab- 
 normal wealth, of its monopolization 
 by the few and consequent abstrac- 
 tion from a more equitable distribu- 
 tion among the many, is indicated 
 by the fact that in 1860 there were 
 but two millionaires in the United 
 States and no tramps. To-day we 
 have the honor of claiming 35,000 
 millionaires and 1,500,000 tramps ! 
 Each millionaire sun attended by 43 
 satellite tramps ! A beautiful, ex- 
 hilarating, and Alpine variety of ex- 
 tremes quite complimentary to the
 
 POVERTY* K FACTORY. 27 
 
 society which permits it ! And when 
 Coxey and his bedraggled Common- 
 wealers, who powerfully felt the 
 wrong, clearly saw the source from 
 whence to seek redress, but very un- 
 wisely chose a sensational instead of 
 a sound method, came to the nation's 
 centre, they were arrested and locked 
 up for accidentally one day, for a few 
 minutes, getting their weary and 
 half -shod feet on a national grass- 
 plat arrested for this to vindicate 
 the majesty of the law ! While the 
 wealthy, law- favored few who were 
 mainly, though perhaps uncon- 
 sciously, responsible for their poverty, 
 were all the while ruthlessly treading 
 on much holier ground, the Sabbath 
 laws of the land, and no civil hand 
 was stretched forth to arrest and to 
 " vindicate the majesty of the law ! " 
 And all the while, too, were com- 
 pelling thousands of their industrial
 
 28 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 slaves on railroads, street cars, in 
 furnaces and factories, to trample on 
 the same sacred soil, and all with ut- 
 ter impunity ! consistency, verily 
 thou art a gem ! 
 
 $50,000,000,000 to $60,000,000,000 
 is said to represent the wealth of the 
 United States, which is the wealthiest 
 country in the world. If this were 
 equally divided, every man, woman, 
 and child would own from $800 to 
 $1,000 worth of property, and all 
 families would be well-to-do and 
 happy. But alas ! it is all prodig- 
 iously unequally divided ; for TO per- 
 sons own $2,450,000,000 of the fifty 
 billions, and 1,500,000 own absolutely 
 nothing of it. You say the latter 
 have themselves to blame. All ad- 
 mit that the slothful, ignorant, and 
 inconsiderate under any system must 
 suffer for their folly. The thriftless 
 and the shiftless deserve nothing,
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 29 
 
 and they usually get it. No sensible 
 man ought to help the slothful to 
 pull a single weed out of his neglected 
 garden, nor give him, out of maudlin 
 charity (pseudo-charity), even so 
 much as a crust of bread to stave off 
 actual starvation, for divine author- 
 ity asserts that ' ' If any man will not 
 work, neither let him eat " (II Thes. 
 3 : 10). And we all know that the 
 false doctrine which inculcates the 
 idea that ' ' the world owes every man 
 a living" has swelled the army of the 
 tramps, and that the unsound teach- 
 ings and unsuccessful strikes of 
 Trades Unions have contributed their 
 share. But all this is, nevertheless, 
 not sufficient to explain the paradoxi- 
 cal situation confronting us to-day, 
 which is enormous poverty right in 
 the midst of enormous wealth ; star- 
 vation or semi-starvation when sur- 
 rounded by plenty ; the wonderful
 
 30 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 increase of general or national wealth 
 paralleled by an equally striking in- 
 crease of poverty and trampism. The 
 only rational explanation is that the 
 increase of wealth has been flowing 
 into the hands of the few and has 
 been deflected from the hands of the 
 many, who have contributed in some 
 ways, at least, to its production, but 
 have not shared in its distribution. 
 
 Nor do we in this connection ignore 
 the power of the saloon. But we are 
 coming to see and believe that this 
 power in its relation to poverty has 
 been generally misunderstood. Its 
 relation, we now believe, is not causal 
 or primary, but reactionary and in- 
 tensive. The saloon reacts upon and 
 thereby deepens and broadens general 
 poverty, but does not cause it in 
 the first place, though there are, of 
 course, cases of individuals spending 
 their all on drink. But poverty first
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 31 
 
 exists, then the saloon. During the 
 recent financial depression, when 
 many men were out of work and 
 rendered poor, 47 more applications 
 for saloon licenses were made in this 
 county (Berks, Pa.) than ever before. 
 This statement was made in our dai- 
 lies and not contradicted. Poverty 
 supports the saloon, and the saloon in- 
 creases poverty. Both increase to- 
 gether. Poverty is the soil in which 
 the weed thrives. Fungi always grow 
 in spots of low vitality. With Editors 
 W. T. Stead and B. 0. Flower, two of 
 our most energetic leaders in progres- 
 sive sociology, we agree in looking 
 upon the saloon not as the poor man's 
 factory, nor chiefly as his multiplica 
 tion table, but as his social club, a re- 
 fuge, a place of retreat, from the mis- 
 eries of his threadbare home, wife, 
 children, and prospects, a place well 
 heated, well lighted, well provided
 
 6-A POVERTY ''S FACTORY. 
 
 with companions in misery, well 
 furnished with papers and magazines 
 and often with music, where he can 
 pass a happy hour or two and enjoy 
 a brief " surcease from sorrow" in 
 the oblivion of beer and congenial 
 friends. 
 
 Let us beware of the cruelty of 
 scoffing at his low moral and sesthet- 
 ical condition. Eemember St. Peter. 
 Before he got down among the people 
 as they were he frowned down upon 
 the very thing he afterward looked 
 up to as his refuge, viz., denial of 
 Christ. If we should put ourselves 
 in the place of the poor man, his 
 social, mental, and moral surround- 
 ings, I doubt not in the least we 
 should be astounded to discover that, 
 instead of looking down upon the 
 saloon as a curse, we should actually 
 look up to it as a refuge and a treat. 
 Of course, this is not as things ought
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 33 
 
 to be, but as they are. Back of the 
 poor man's love for the saloon is the 
 pressure of his poverty, with its at- 
 tendant miseries ; and back of his 
 poverty is the monopoly of enormous 
 and abnormal wealth. 
 
 Second, Child labor. The poverty 
 of parents drives the children to 
 work, while the progress of invention 
 invites them and provides the possi- 
 bility and the job. Thus the tender 
 child is actually thrown into com- 
 petition with its own father and 
 mother, who are forced by pinching 
 exigency to accept the inevitable and 
 are gradually hardened to it. Thus 
 their children must work and neglect 
 school, not for the love of it, but for 
 the life of it ; and so eager for a job 
 does threatened starvation or sup- 
 posed dishonor among their equals 
 make them, that parents will actu- 
 ally take false oaths as to the age of 
 3
 
 34 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 their little boy or girl, and even teach 
 them to lie, simply to circumvent the 
 state laws, and all in order that they 
 may enjoy the happiness of prolong- 
 ing their delightful (?) existence in 
 this glorious "land of the free and 
 home of the brave ! " 1,120,000 child 
 laborers in the United States to-day ! 
 Child labor, being thus established, 
 at once begins to entail all its awful 
 curses upon the innocent victims. 
 These are horribly familiar to all 
 observing minds. At the very mo- 
 ment when the halcyon days of youth 
 are just dawning and youthful hopes, 
 bright and happy, budding, comes this 
 incubus of daily drudgery or mo- 
 notonous labor in confined and un- 
 healthy factories. Education, moral 
 culture, and physical health are 
 subordinated to the one end of eking 
 out an existence, or are neglected 
 altogether ; and when the poor
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 35 
 
 victims attain to adult age the most 
 of them are discharged to make room 
 for children at children's wages, and 
 come forth mental, moral, and 
 usually physical imbeciles, entirely 
 unfit for life's struggle and especially 
 for the sacred duty and solemn privi- 
 lege of parentage. What but damn- 
 ing in the extreme must be the pre- 
 natal influence on babes born of such 
 parents? And now comes the sad 
 requiem of this whole child tragedy ; 
 for, beneath child labor lies poverty, 
 and beneath poverty, the omnivorous 
 monopoly of enormous and abnormal 
 wealth. 
 
 Third, The Sweating System. It 
 makes one's nerves shudder with 
 horror to think that the " sweating " 
 or industrial roasting of human 
 beings alive on the red-hot arms of 
 the Moloch of modern greed should 
 have actually solidified into a "sys-
 
 36 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 tern." It is an awful commentary 
 on the disjointed condition of the 
 age. Think of it ! whole families 
 of five to nine members crowded 
 together in one or at most two 
 rooms of city tenements, sleeping, 
 eating, working, washing, sickening, 
 dying there, sewing on vests, panta- 
 loons, children's suits, shirts, wax- 
 flowers, etc., etc., stitch, stitch, 
 stitch, from morning to night, and 
 often late into the latter too, and 
 earning thereby the right royal 
 emolument of 24 to 70 cents per 
 day ! And from this they must pay a 
 proportionately enormous rent and 
 feed, clothe, and warm their families ! 
 (When travelling in Algeria, Africa, 
 I met Kabyles who managed to live 
 comfortably on 2i cents per day. 
 But that is a feat of economics 
 altogether impossible over here in 
 America, even to " sweat-shop "
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 37 
 
 workers.) While down in the dark 
 and filthy cellar, water and offal from 
 a defective sewer lie stagnant and 
 putrefying, breeding the miasmatic 
 germs of disease and death which 
 the patient victims above are forced 
 to inhale. 3,000 "sweat-shop" 
 workers in Philadelphia alone ! 70,- 
 000 in New York City ! Think of 
 Chicago! Think of Brooklyn ! Think 
 of the country ! Think of the world ! 
 A few observant philanthropists 
 stand aghast at the death-rate of 
 tenement-house and sweat-shop chil- 
 dren ; but the still greater horror to 
 my mind is their birth-rate. 
 
 The cause of all these frightful 
 horrors in " Civilization's Inferno " 
 is the constant pressure exerted by 
 the highest or wealthiest class on all 
 beneath them. In the hands of the 
 abnormally rich is concentrated such 
 an enormous bulk of the nation's
 
 38 PO VER TY ' S FA CTOR Y. 
 
 wealth and actual cash circulation, 
 that it is necessarily abstracted in 
 large quantities from the middle 
 classes, who with the small sums 
 left them feel their inability to buy 
 higher grades of goods, or pay more 
 for what they do buy, and so the cry 
 has quite generally gone out, " Give 
 us cheaper articles ! cheaper ! cheap- 
 er !" The poor employers, who are 
 after all simply middlemen, must 
 cater and yield to this popular de- 
 mand, or else perish too, and thus 
 they are compelled to take advantage 
 of the misfortunes of still poorer 
 classes, and the " Sweating System " 
 is the inevitable and deplorable re- 
 sult. Eemember this all of you who 
 pay two or three dollars for your 
 pantaloons. There is such a thing 
 as a sin of cheapness. 
 
 Once let loose and more equitably 
 and naturally and less artificially
 
 POVERTY 1 S FACTORY. 39 
 
 and partially distribute the enormous 
 wealth dammed up in apoplectic 
 purses, and all classes and all lines 
 of industry would be eased up and 
 purified. 
 
 Meanwhile the sweat-shop reaps 
 a frightful revenge. For no one 
 knows how many children and adults 
 have been swept out of existence by 
 the dissemination of disease through 
 contaminated articles made in these 
 dreadful pest-holes. The great Eng- 
 lish statesman, Sir Robert Peel, on 
 the eighteenth birthday of his be- 
 loved daughter, gave her a superb 
 riding-habit, and proudly rode by 
 her side in the park as she wore it. 
 But now mark the awful sequel. As 
 soon as she came home from that 
 ride, she sickened and in a few days 
 Was a corpse. The poor seamstress 
 who had wrought the embroidery of 
 that garment lived in a sweat-shop
 
 40 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 in the London slums. Her husband 
 was dying of the worst form of 
 typhus contracted on the filthy spot, 
 and during the intervals of fever, 
 when he shook with the chills, she 
 threw over him the riding-habit she 
 was working ; and thus the microbes 
 of the dread scourge were borne from 
 the hovel of the poor to the palace of 
 the peer. 
 
 Humanity is a unit. All classes 
 get into touch with each other, when 
 there takes place an electric exchange 
 of weal or woe, and Nemesis slum- 
 bers again in dreamy satisfaction. 
 
 Fourth, Prostitution. Is it a 
 marvel to be wondered at that 
 women and girls reared in sweat- 
 shops prefer life in brothels, where 
 they have good food, good clothes, 
 leisure, and plenty of all ? The de- 
 tails of this growing and fearfully 
 demoralizing evil are vividly por-
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 41 
 
 trayed in General Booth's " Darkest 
 England," Mr. Stead's "If Christ 
 Came to Chicago," B. O. Flower's 
 " Civilization's Inferno," and the cur- 
 rent articles in the Arena magazine 
 and North American Review. Girls 
 of reputable families hired as clerks 
 or saleswomen in large stores or as 
 hands in factories, and receiving but 
 a half living wage, are besieged week 
 after week and day after day with 
 the satanic whispered recommen- 
 dation to be "courteous" to their 
 employers or fellow-clerks or "out- 
 side friend," and in this way, they 
 are told, they will soon be able to 
 munificently supplement their sala- 
 ries. This diabolical persecution, and 
 their own poverty and inability to 
 keep up in the race, much less improve 
 their condition, finally, after a more 
 or less prolonged period of mental 
 and physical suffering, combine to
 
 42 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 force a resort to what their souls 
 loath, and they barter their chastity 
 in secret immorality or in public 
 brothels. When, after days and 
 even weeks of hopeless, friendless 
 wandering, they are finally confronted 
 with the alternatives of starvation, 
 suicide, or shame, is it any wonder 
 that they choose the last ? For we 
 must remember that they are taught 
 to believe that the act of suicide has 
 no forgiveness and no chance of it, 
 but that sensuality offers at least an 
 opportunity for repentance, and has 
 been known to obtain forgiveness, if 
 not of the Pharisees of society, never- 
 theless of the Saviour. 
 
 They do not thus degrade them- 
 selves for love, nor for lust, nor even 
 for lucre ; but for life. Poverty is 
 the causal root of it. But this pov- 
 erty or semi-poverty is but another 
 name for that general abstraction or
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 43 
 
 widespread minimization of personal 
 property caused by the unfair and 
 criminal concentration of enormous 
 and abnormal riches in the hands of 
 the few. 
 
 Fifth, Estrangement of the masses 
 from the Church. This lamentable 
 paradox is not to be accounted for, 
 as some would have us believe, by the 
 indifference and pride of the church. 
 In fact the interest the large major- 
 ity of the churches manifest in the 
 amelioration and salvation of the so- 
 called " masses " costs them many a 
 dollar, many a tear, many a prayer, 
 and many a consecrated life. The 
 great burden of guilt, I feel more and 
 more convinced, lies upon quite dif- 
 ferent shoulders. For the masses 
 hold aloof from the church, not 
 because they have examined her 
 doctrines and dislike them ; not 
 because they disbelieve in religion or
 
 44 POVER TY ' 5 FA CTOB F. 
 
 in Christ ; not because they do not 
 care for human or divine love ; but 
 simply because they do not own 
 clothes good enough to come to 
 church and sit there beside their 
 more fortunate brethren. Their 
 natural human instinct rebels against 
 making themselves a mark for crit- 
 ical eyes and perhaps unkindly re- 
 marks, issuing from well-dressed 
 ladies and gentlemen about them in 
 the congregation. 
 
 But even if they have clothes good 
 enough, their wages are not suffi- 
 cient to enable them to keep up their 
 church dues, and then, when they 
 fall behind, a keen sense of mingled 
 shame and honor drives them away 
 again. Thus they don't come, not 
 because they won't, but because they 
 can't. Their poverty unchurches 
 them. 
 
 I do not wish to be misunderstood
 
 POVERTY 1 S FACTORY. 45 
 
 as maintaining that poverty is the 
 only factor in unchurching the 
 masses. There are others, and 
 among them religious indifference is 
 prime and mighty. When one pauses 
 to contemplate the widespread spirit- 
 ual apathy of the lower classes, one 
 is appalled, and feels like exclaiming 
 with Francis Xavier when he stood 
 before the Walled Kingdom and felt 
 the power of its adamantine uncon- 
 cern, ' ' Oh rock ! rock ! when wilt 
 thou open to my Master ? " We do 
 not, then, overlook the force of relig- 
 ious unconcern as a powerful factor 
 in the problem before us. But we 
 ask : May not the poverty of the 
 people have a direct causal bearing 
 on their indifference ? Would not 
 you and I naturally manifest an 
 indifference to any interest which 
 stands so far above the reach of 
 our pockets and position, as the
 
 46 POVERTY^ S FACTORY. 
 
 lower classes feel in reference to the 
 church ? "The simple fact which 
 we have to face to-day is this," says 
 Prof. Francis G. Peabody, "that the 
 working classes have, as a rule, 
 practically abandoned the churches 
 and left them to be the resorts of the 
 prosperous." 
 
 A poor member of my church 
 whom I observed timidly enter and 
 seek out the remotest seat on the 
 gallery, said to me afterwards, "Oh, 
 pastor, I wanted to come to the 
 Communion Table last Sunday, but 
 was really ashamed of my clothes." 
 I looked at his clothes. My mouth 
 was mute. Another said to me when 
 I pressed him for his reason for non- 
 attendance, ' ' I am ashamed to come 
 to church when I know I owe dues. 
 But indeed I must first feed and 
 clothe my children and pay the house 
 rent." I thought exactly as he did,
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 47 
 
 and could simply assure him of a 
 warm welcome, whether his dues 
 were paid or not. These men were 
 not mere excuse-makers. They were 
 sincere. Their past records show 
 that. 
 
 This is pitiful and pathetic, and I 
 for one cannot find it in my heart to 
 condemn them, and methinks I hear 
 the echo of the Saviour's words, 
 ' ' Neither do I condemn them. " The 
 Saviour said, " Blessed are the poor 
 in spirit," but He never said, " Blessed 
 are the poor in cash," and it is this 
 kind of poverty, financial poverty, 
 which is the chief and potent factor 
 in estranging the masses from the 
 church to-day. And back of this 
 widespread poverty, as its main cause, 
 lies the omnivorous monopoly of enor- 
 mous and abnormal wealth. Many 
 of these multi-millionaires do not en- 
 ter the church themselves, and they
 
 48 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 unwittingly keep out many that 
 would enter. A more equitable dis- 
 tribution of wealth would fill our 
 churches to overflowing with a happy, 
 devout, and sympathetic people. 
 
 Might it be true, therefore, that 
 the church to-day, as it gathers its 
 cultured and well-to-do members, 
 Sunday after Sunday, to enjoy its 
 solemn services and reap the bene- 
 fits, while it neglects to attack with 
 the power of God the oppressors and 
 the wickedness in the high places, 
 may be tithing mint and anise 
 and cummin, but leaving undone 
 the weightier matters of the law, 
 among which Jesus Christ Himself 
 placed judgment prime ? (Mat. 23 : 
 23). Is it probable that the church 
 to-day can be charged with that form 
 of selfish dereliction of solemn duty 
 against which the inspired thunders 
 of the son of Amoz were hurled in
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 49 
 
 his generation ? " Bring no more 
 vain oblations ; incense is an abomi- 
 nation to me ; new moon and Sab- 
 bath, the calling of assemblies ; it is 
 iniquity, even the solemn meeting; 
 for when ye spread forth your hands, 
 I will hide mine eyes from you ; yea, 
 when ye make many prayers I will 
 not hear ; cease to do evil ; learn to 
 do well ; seek judgment ; relieve the 
 oppressed " (or, as it is better trans- 
 lated, " set right the oppressor "), 
 " judge the fatherless, plead for 
 the widow." It is sad indeed that 
 scientific and impartial observers are 
 compelled to say that " the working 
 classes have, as a rule, practically 
 abandoned the churches and left 
 them to be the resorts of the pros- 
 perous." 
 
 Sixth, Dishonesty and Fraud. The 
 omnipresence of this subtle and per- 
 vasive sin in almost every avenue of 
 4
 
 50 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 modern activity is one of the most 
 startling and ominous signs of the 
 times, and one of the direct curses 
 of the amassing of enormous and 
 abnormal wealth, which, as before 
 shown, can be done only by methods 
 that will not, squeeze them as you 
 may, quadrate with strict justice, 
 much less with Christian righteous- 
 ness. False ideals are honored and 
 aimed at to-day. Money kings and 
 plutocrats are the beau-ideals of our 
 youth, and a young man, soon find 
 ing that wealth is the royal road to 
 applause, power, and position, strains 
 every nerve, ruins health, resorts to 
 any means, foul or fair, to win the 
 golden meed and buy entrance into 
 the second or third economic heaven 
 and the charmed society of pluto- 
 cratic demigods. The most startling 
 and discouraging feature about the 
 whole situation is, not that legislative
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 51 
 
 and financial juggling is on the in- 
 crease, but that the public conscience 
 in reference to it is slowly but surely 
 losing its edge, and that public opin- 
 ion, at least a very, very large por- 
 tion of it otherwise honorable, is 
 not only conniving at successful dis- 
 honesty and indirect theft, but is 
 actually honoring and rewarding it. 
 Who or what force is mainly respon- 
 sible for this alarming prostitution 
 of the public conscience ? I think 
 the answer is plain, viz., none other 
 than the almost worshipped mono- 
 polists of enormous and abnormal 
 wealth, who are powerful enough 
 to snap their fingers in scornful in- 
 difference at the rest of us and say, 
 " What are you going to do about 
 it?" 
 
 Most pertinently does Herbert 
 Spencer say : " When that abhor- 
 rence which society now shows to
 
 52 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 direct theft is shown to theft of all 
 degrees of indirectness; when wealth 
 obtained by illegitimate means in- 
 variably brings nothing but disgrace ; 
 then may we be sure that the morals 
 of trade will be greatly purified, and 
 mercantile vices disappear." But, 
 alas ! to-day the money king of ab- 
 normal wealth is not only the ideal 
 but the idol, pet and precious, to the 
 heart of every ambitious American 
 youth. The days of mythology, 
 heathen altars, and human sacrifices 
 have not all passed by. 
 
 Seventh, The Decline of Patriot- 
 ism. The ground of patriotism is 
 the ground. The soul of patriotism 
 is the soil. The life of patriotism is 
 the land. On land a man builds his 
 home, erects his factory and store, 
 and from land he reaps his harvest. 
 Once rob any man of this funda- 
 mental possession or its equivalent,
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 53 
 
 and the only point of attachment be- 
 tween him and his country instantly 
 ceases, and he becomes either a tramp 
 or a foreigner. What love will such 
 a man or class of men have for their 
 country which permits them to be 
 thus robbed of natural rights, and 
 allows this refined cruelty and crime 
 under the sacred name of law ? But 
 the startling fact is that in these 
 United States, as was quite recently 
 shown in the arguments before the 
 Supreme Court in reference to the 
 constitutionality of the Income Tax, 
 2 per cent of the total population 
 owns 90 per cent of the total taxable 
 property ! leaving only 10 per cent 
 of the property in the hands of 98 
 per cent of the population ! 
 
 Is it amazing that large bodies of 
 people who live in habitations in the 
 like of which a rich man would 
 scarce compel his pet dog to dwell ;
 
 54 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 that fathers and mothers with fami- 
 lies who stay in so-called homes and 
 have such a precarious hold upon 
 them that the slightest misfortune 
 causes the landlord to evict them ; 
 that men and women who have no 
 homes at all except shelters which 
 chance or charity offers them ; is it 
 amazing, I ask, that such patient 
 victims of a vicious system should at 
 last begin to cool off somewhat in 
 their patriotic enthusiasm for the 
 land that fosters it, a land which 
 they are farcically taught to ' ' fondly 
 call their own," and for which they 
 are told it is their duty in times of 
 peril to fight or to die ? Shall true 
 sons of America be called unpatriotic 
 ingrates and other hard names when 
 they complain of their government 
 permitting 5,500,000 acres, or ^ 7 of 
 our entire acreage, to be fenced off 
 from their use and held for mere
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 55 
 
 purposes of speculation by a foreign 
 syndicate with headquarters in Lon- 
 don ? Is it any wonder that the long- 
 suffering and practically expatriated 
 people, oppressed by the power of 
 enormous and abnormal wealth, 
 driven away from the soil, or nailed 
 down to it as slaves, by soulless 
 syndicates and selfish speculators, 
 should at last begin to feel the fires 
 of patriotism dying out in their 
 hearts, and should sing, with feebler 
 and still feebler ring, 
 
 " I love thy rocks and rills, 
 Thy woods and templed hills ; 
 My heart with rapture thrills ! " 
 
 Oh ! it's a lie ! And yet the poor 
 things sing every fourth of July and 
 Memorial day ! 
 
 "Men of Rome," cried Tiberius 
 Gracchus centuries ago, "you are 
 called the lords of the world, yet you 
 hold not a square foot of its soil !
 
 56 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 The wild beasts have their dens, but 
 the soldiers of Italy have only water 
 and air ! " 
 
 Eighth, The Breaking Down of 
 Home Life. This perhaps is one of 
 the saddest of the signs of the truth. 
 The home is gradually being sup- 
 planted by the club, saloon, low 
 theatre, and beer-garden. 
 
 In the first place the very rich 
 man is so preoccupied with the in- 
 numerable concerns of his enormous 
 investments, enterprises, specula- 
 tions, and risks, that his perplexed 
 and active mind is little disposed to 
 enjoy the amenities of home life ; or, 
 if he is desirous of doing this, he has 
 precious little time left for it; no. 
 time for wife and children. Instead, 
 he hies him to his Metropolitan, 
 Union League, or fashionable Lotos 
 Club, where he can continue to dis- 
 cuss business interests with fellow
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 57 
 
 business men, at least if he wants to. 
 The wife and mother has numerous 
 social engagements : dances, charity 
 balls, assemblies, teas, receptions, 
 etc., etc. ; and they are now organ- 
 izing women's clubs to compete, 
 counteract, or offset the men's clubs ; 
 so that the care and training of the 
 children is almost if not entirely 
 handed over to well-paid nurses, 
 governesses, tutors, and art teachers. 
 The children of the rich often grow 
 to love nurse or governess more 
 than mother or father. Thus the 
 home becomes simply a house where 
 the elders meet to eat, sleep, and 
 snarl. They have magnificent 
 houses, but not magnificent homes. 
 On the other hand the poor are 
 not able to furnish a home, and to 
 render it attractive with comfort- 
 able furniture, games and play- 
 things for the children, papers and
 
 58 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 illustrated magazines, musical in- 
 struments and teachers for the same. 
 Consequently the father and hus- 
 band spends his leisure moments and 
 evenings in the well- furnished apart- 
 ments of his secret order or the 
 saloon, while their sons follow their 
 example, and, chipping together, 
 organize a "Wild Duck," "Ivy 
 Leaf," or " Hell Club," where they 
 waste their time, talents, and soul on 
 cards, pool, gambling, Police Ga- 
 zettes, dime novels, and beer, and 
 where they graduate with honor in 
 the arts of cursing, swearing, and 
 fighting. The poor have miserable 
 houses and miserable homes. 
 
 Thus extreme wealth and extreme 
 poverty tend to disintegrate the home. 
 Extremes are pernicious. " Ne quid 
 nimis" cried the Latin philosopher, 
 "Not anything too much." "Give 
 me neither riches nor poverty,"
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 59 
 
 solemnly and thoughtfully said the 
 wise man of old. In fact, it is only 
 in the middle-classes that many real 
 homes are to be found, homes of 
 the Washington and Lincoln type, 
 cheery, happy paradises on the earth, 
 homes where old and young mingle 
 in evening pastimes, in reading, in 
 sympathy, all gathered around a 
 central table or a glowing hearth, 
 homes such as inspired the chaste 
 and classical pen of Washington 
 Irving. But alas ! the club poison is 
 invading even these sacred circles ; 
 for many of the middle-classes are 
 commencing to mimic the wealthy 
 and the aristocratic, and the club 
 craze is converting scores of hitherto 
 tender and sound home-lovers into 
 clubomaniacs. 
 
 Query. Does not this splitting up 
 of the home circle, this segmenting 
 of one of the most sacred of God's
 
 60 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 institutions, and this substituting for 
 it of an artificial man-made com- 
 munion, largely explain that sad and 
 startling paradox, viz., the growing 
 indifference of parents for their chil- 
 dren's spiritual and mental interests ? 
 This parental apathy is something 
 grossly unnatural and really astound- 
 ing. But when children and parents 
 walk in diverse paths and take their 
 chief pleasure each in their respective 
 clubs and separate orders, and the 
 community of interests, pastimes, 
 sympathy, and joy which the word 
 "home" enshrines is thus nullified and 
 dissipated, what else can be expected 
 but the sad denouement of indiffer- 
 ence alluded to above ? This is, 
 therefore, one of those indirect and 
 remote curses consequent upon the 
 monopoly of enormous and abnormal 
 wealth resident in the gilt hands of 
 the few.
 
 PO VEB TY ' 8 FACTOR Y. 61 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 IT has been said in justification 
 of enormous wealth that it is not 
 hoarded but invested, and thus gives 
 employment to thousands of people. 
 This is true. An investing million- 
 aire is infinitely to be preferred to a 
 miser. Having tricked the people 
 into poverty and dependence through 
 the agency of class legislation, as we 
 shall clearly see later on, it would be 
 an unutterably hellish crime for the 
 enormously wealthy to horde their 
 ill-gotten gains. An investing mil- 
 lionaire is, therefore, infinitely to be 
 preferred to a miser. He makes
 
 62 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 some return to the victims whose 
 lamb-like non-resistance to injustice 
 and imposition has enabled him to 
 batten financially. 
 
 But is anyone so blind as not to 
 see that the increment or profit made 
 from these gigantic investments 
 flows continually into the pocket of 
 the money-king, whilst the laborers 
 who helped to produce it for him do 
 not share it, but are nailed down to a 
 fixed wage, which does not, except in 
 rare cases, increase with the profits 
 or in any just proportion to them ? 
 On the other hand, if the enterprise 
 threatens to prove disastrous, the 
 laborers must suffer first, whilst 
 the money-king saves himself by 
 resorting to one or more of the four 
 following alternatives : he discharges 
 a certain number of his employees ; 
 or runs on half time ; or reduces 
 wages for all ; or shuts down alto-
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 63 
 
 gether during periods of depression, 
 just when the wage- earner can least 
 afford idleness. Thus, whatever be- 
 tide, the advantage lies on the side 
 of the capitalist, for he holds the 
 reins and whip, and can drive as he 
 pleases, unless he gets holds of a 
 refractory horse. But even this 
 dilemma will cause him more annoy- 
 ance and unwelcome criticism than 
 actual financial loss, although of 
 course it entails a degree of the 
 latter too, but an incomparably far 
 less degree than the poor stubborn 
 animal entails upon himself. 
 
 Henry Wood, in a chapter on " The 
 Unequal Distribution of Wealth," 
 says, " Every laborer gets as much 
 as if the property (or business) 
 belonged to ten thousand stock- 
 holders instead of largely to one." 
 True. But although it makes no dif- 
 ference in the amount of the wage, it
 
 64 POVERTY' 8 FACTORY. 
 
 does make a great difference in many 
 other respects, the same difference 
 indeed which exists between a mon- 
 archy and a democracy, and which 
 works itself out in countless chan- 
 nels, great and small. A mon- 
 archy is the best form of govern- 
 ment, provided the monarch be con- 
 scientious and public-spirited ; but if 
 he is not, it is the worst. All things 
 considered, therefore, we hold that 
 the democratic or republican form of 
 government is preferable. So in busi- 
 ness. The more thoroughly demo- 
 cratic it can be made, i.e., the more 
 completely every human unit can 
 be made financially interested and 
 placed under responsibility, the more 
 nearly ideal and perfect the balance 
 and equipoise of results. If, there- 
 fore, the profits are divided among 
 ten thousand stockholders instead of 
 monopolized by one, this is a great
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 65 
 
 step toward the ideal method of con- 
 ducting business, which we are com- 
 ing more and more clearly to see is 
 that form of co-operation called profit 
 and loss sharing, or some modifica- 
 tion or adjustment of it. Further- 
 more, the distribution of the profits 
 among ten thousand stockholders 
 minimizes the financial and conse- 
 quently also, to a large degree, the 
 educational and social disparity be- 
 tween them and the wage-earners ; 
 whereas the absorption of those ten 
 thousand stockholders in the person 
 of one would but accentuate this 
 disparity, kill brotherhood, and even- 
 tually produce that enormous and 
 abnormal inequity which is the hot- 
 bed of the vices and evils briefly 
 portrayed in preceding paragraphs. 
 
 It will not be inapropos at this 
 point to glance at the central tenet 
 of modern Socialism, which is thus 
 5
 
 66 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 stated: " All wealth is created by 
 labor, and, therefore, belongs to the 
 laborers who have produced it. " This 
 proposition is positively impregnable. 
 It is sound and logical. But every- 
 thing depends upon its interpretation. 
 The Socialists mean muscular or 
 manual labor. They seem to know 
 nothing of mental labor. They ignore 
 the mind altogether. And yet the 
 mental labor required in the joint 
 production of wealth is as great and 
 valuable, aye, by natural law, greater 
 and more valuable, than the physical. 
 Is not the marble statue far more 
 the production of the artist who 
 creates and directs, than of the 
 artizans who handle the chisel, ths 
 mall, and the sandpaper ? Power's 
 "Greek Slave" is Power's. Is not 
 the finished edifice as much the work 
 of the architect as of the contractor, 
 the mason, and the carpenter ? Does
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 67 
 
 not the capitalist who invests his 
 money in an enterprise, plans the 
 details of the business, passes anxious, 
 sleepless nights in thought, telegraphs 
 to distant points, watches the fluctu- 
 ations of the market, studies hard 
 in order to calculate the effect of 
 changes in statute laws, takes account 
 of new inventions, deals with com- 
 petitors, prepares for seasons of de- 
 pression, at such times tries to devise 
 plans to run his business in order to 
 keep the machinery from rusting and 
 give his men work, etc. , do far more 
 real life- wearing labor than the men 
 who come regularly to work ? And 
 for employees, on account of a neces- 
 sary slight reduction in wages during 
 hard times, or to gratify the vanity 
 and pseudo-wisdom of walking dele- 
 gates, or from sympathy with in- 
 jured men under other employers' 
 control, to rebel and strike against a
 
 68 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 firm or a man who thus worries and 
 works in order, among other reasons, 
 to provide them with work, is in- 
 gratitude and stupidity of so pro- 
 nounced and deep a dye as to richly 
 merit the profoundest condemnation 
 of all sensible citizens. 
 
 Henry Wood pertinently asks, 
 "Does not a student, clergyman, 
 merchant, or an inventor labor ? On 
 the supposition that wealth is the 
 product of physical labor only,- some 
 machines would have a very large 
 value as measured by man power." 
 The Socialists, therefore, are ex- 
 tremely one-sided. If Socialistic one- 
 sidedness were to prevail it would in- 
 evitably work itself out in class legis- 
 lation and eventually produce a set 
 of men as abnormally and enormously 
 wealthy as another set is now. Cur- 
 rent Socialism is not the cure for 
 current evils.
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 69 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 INEFFECTIVE CURES. 
 
 WE pass on now to search for the 
 true remedy. By a process of ab- 
 straction I think we shall exhaust the 
 list of proposed cures, and be led very 
 close to the true one, or the most 
 practical remedy for the crying evils 
 before enumerated. First, then, let 
 us briefly review the ineffective cures 
 that have been proposed, tried, and 
 have failed. 
 
 All through the century-long his- 
 tory of labor troubles (for these, 
 alas ! are nothing new or unique), 
 resort has been had to,
 
 70 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 1ST, THE STRIKE 
 
 as a means of redress and of compel- 
 ling a more equitable distribution of 
 wealth. The history of strikes is a 
 chronicle of failures. From the first 
 one on record, which, Livy tell us, 
 broke out 310 B. c. among the flute- 
 players at the public sacrifices ; from 
 the first one in this country, which 
 occurred among the sailors of New 
 York in 1803, on down to the great 
 strikes of the year last past ; only an 
 infinitesimal number of the long and 
 dreary list were successful. And of 
 all the follies of foolish men the " sym- 
 pathetic strike " foots the class as the 
 grandest booby of all. The strike 
 has not only been a failure, but it has 
 always recoiled with double force 
 upon the strikers themselves. The 
 strike is an industrial boomerang. 
 Strikers hurt themselves more than
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 71 
 
 anybody else, and what is far worse, 
 damage their own cause by their ex- 
 cesses, even when that cause is just 
 and right. If, as Henry George 
 says, the strike is the " necessary 
 weapon" of trades unions, they had 
 better bury it out of sight. And in 
 fact this is what they are actually 
 preparing to do. All persons will 
 rejoice to observe that the laborers 
 themselves are wakening up to the 
 consciousness that the strike is not 
 only ineffective but positively detri- 
 mental. At the national convention 
 of Mine Workers held last February 
 the following resolution was adopted, 
 which I give verbatim, "Resolved, 
 that strikes have proven failures." 
 
 And yet there is a pathos about the 
 strike. Men instinctively and plainly 
 feel some wrong done them, and 
 blindly "strike" to redress it. I 
 must therefore reluctantly disagree
 
 72 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 with so high an authority as Lord 
 Macaulay, who says, in reference to 
 this subject : " A little turbulence is, 
 as it were, the rainbow of the state ; 
 it shows indeed that there is a pass- 
 ing shower ; but it is a pledge that 
 there shall be no deluge." I cannot 
 see the beauty of the rainbow in the 
 turbulence, lawlessness, and losses of 
 property and human life which are 
 coming to be the common accompa- 
 niments of strikes, and I cannot look 
 upon them as pledges of future peace. 
 I rather believe they are just the re- 
 verse, viz. , the chills of economic 
 fever, the premonitory spasms of 
 delirium and revolutionary madness. 
 I cannot resist the temptation to 
 state here that there is one character- 
 istic about strikers which I have often 
 admired, and that is their courage. 
 It takes courage for men to stake 
 their all and face the powerful op-
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 73 
 
 ponent which strikers have to face. 
 You may not choose to call it cour- 
 age ; you may prefer to club it igno- 
 rance, foolhardiness, audacity. But 
 by whatever name the moral quality 
 be known, to me the spectacle of men, 
 whether ignorant or educated, risk- 
 ing their very bread and meat, jeop- 
 ardizing their home and happiness 
 and that of helpless wives and chil- 
 dren, in a struggle to throw off the 
 wrongs they feel, whether real or 
 fancied, is courageous and heroic, 
 especially when the poor things have 
 nothing but failure to hope for. 
 Keen indeed must be the privations, 
 the injustice, and the oppression that 
 compel it. 
 
 I am not alone in this opinion. So 
 high an authority as Mr. Clarence S. 
 Darrow, who argued before the Su- 
 preme Court the contempt case of the 
 A. R. U., said, in reference even to
 
 74 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 sympathetic strikes : " When 100,000 
 men lay down the tools of their trade, 
 not because any right of their own 
 has been invaded or is in peril, but 
 simply because of their fellow- work- 
 men, we have no right to say that 
 they are criminals for that. We may 
 not be able to put ourselves in their 
 places. If we could we might feel 
 far differently in regard to their ac- 
 tions ; but let us not condemn them 
 who act from the highest and holiest 
 motives," viz., to support and encour- 
 age their brethren, whom they deem 
 to be wronged by a power greater 
 than they. 
 
 But though in this sense heroic, it 
 is all misguided and foolish, and for 
 it walking delegates are largely, very 
 largely, responsible. It is these con- 
 temptible fellows who very frequent- 
 ly are the sole factors or agents in 
 making the men restless and firing
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 75 
 
 them to strike, often when there is 
 not the shadow of a justifiable reason 
 for it whatever. But these delegates 
 must do something to keep things 
 moving and induce the men to believe 
 they are of service sufficient to war- 
 rant the continuance of their salaries. 
 And so the men strike, first, simply 
 to eke revenge out of their supposed 
 enemy by embarrassing his business 
 as much as possible ; secondly, to 
 make a self-flattering display of their 
 own power, which they like to see 
 simply to prove to themselves that 
 they still possess it ; and thirdly, of 
 course, decoyed by the ignis fatuus 
 of possible success. Such groundless 
 and senseless strikes have all, with- 
 out a single exception, proved miser- 
 able failures, as they richly deserved. 
 Thus the whole system of strikes, 
 justifiable and otherwise, is a pro- 
 digious failure, and simply because
 
 76 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 it is a misguided effort. But if ever 
 the flood-gates of war are to be 
 opened, the bolts will doubtless be 
 drawn by some monster strike or 
 popular insurrection of the Wat 
 Tyler type. Sings Longfellow in 
 prophetic and mournful strain : 
 
 " There is a poor blind Samson in our land, 
 Shorn of his strength and bound with bonds 
 
 of steel, 
 
 Who may in some grim revel raise his head 
 And shake the pillars of the commonweal." 
 
 2DLY, ARBITRATION 
 
 has failed. When our millionaires 
 and corporations insist that they have 
 nothing to arbitrate, and when 
 workmen and trades unionists enter 
 the convention hall predetermined 
 not to recede from certain fixed de- 
 mands, the unfortunate arbitrators 
 are rendered absolutely powerless to
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 77 
 
 win mutual concessions or effect a 
 satisfactory compromise. 
 
 Compulsory arbitration is out of 
 the question. The very terms are 
 contradictory. We agree heartily 
 with what the New York Independent 
 said last year : " Compulsory arbitra- 
 tion is not to be thought of. It would 
 imply an invasion of the rights of 
 both capital and labor. It goes on 
 the assumption that workmen have 
 a right to insist on employment, 
 and that owners have a right to 
 insist on service. Capital must be 
 free to employ labor on the best 
 terms it can make ; labor must 
 be free to engage itself where it can 
 get the best rates. Labor must be 
 free ; capital must be free. If the 
 problem raised by strikes is solved it 
 must be done on the basis of liberty." 
 The terms of settlement of the recent 
 great strike in the boot and shoe
 
 78 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 trade in England include a feature 
 which is not unworthy of careful 
 study. The settlement provides 
 financial guarantees for carrying out 
 the terms of the agreement, and both 
 parties have agreed to forfeit a sub- 
 stantial sum if either party breaks 
 the compact. But this is a very 
 different thing from the compulsory 
 arbitration schemes so strongly 
 championed by some American 
 writers. 
 
 3DLY, CONCILIATION 
 
 has failed. Arbitration requires 
 three parties, conciliation two. It is 
 an effort on the part of capital and 
 labor to adjust a satisfactory modus 
 vivendi, or distribution of earned 
 increments, without the intervention 
 of a mediator. Conciliation has 
 miserably failed. The distrust and 
 animosity between the two parties,
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 79 
 
 who ought to be brothers, has in- 
 creased rather than decreased. The 
 house of industry is divided against 
 itself. The day of conciliation has 
 gone by. The force of law or the 
 law of force seem to be the only 
 alternatives of the future. For 
 
 4THLY, CO-OPERATION 
 
 has failed. Productive co-operation 
 has been practically abandoned, 
 chiefly, it seems, because the asso- 
 ciated workmen could not find or 
 failed to elect experienced and effi- 
 cient men to superintend the busi- 
 ness. Distributive co-operation has 
 had a similar history and fate. The 
 third form of co-operation known as 
 profit-and-loss-sharing has been more 
 successful. In fact in almost every 
 case (49 in France, 12 in Switzerland, 
 at least 10 in America, etc.) where it
 
 80 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 has been impartially tried, it has met 
 with flattering success, and it seems 
 to bear promise of greater blessings 
 to come. Ideally, it approximates 
 perfection. But it has failed to ease 
 the general situation simply for lack 
 of general adoption and trial ; and 
 this has not been done because both 
 parties lack courage to try new 
 ventures, confidence in each other, 
 and information as to the practical 
 details of the scheme. 
 
 Strikes, arbitration, conciliation, 
 co-operation all have failed to effect 
 a more equitable distribution of 
 wealth. Where then shall the true 
 remedy be sought ? Physicians tell 
 us that the first important step in 
 preparing to prescribe for a disease 
 consists in correctly diagnosing the 
 nature and cause of it. What then 
 is the underlying cause of the in- 
 equalities obtaining to-day ?
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 81 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE CAUSE. 
 
 Is the hidden virus discoverable ? 
 We are not alone in thinking that it 
 is. The fact is it has been practically 
 discovered already, and the great 
 work now is to get all voters and 
 citizens to see it. 
 
 We have before alluded to the bale- 
 ful curses of enormous and abnormal 
 wealth. But whilst this great evil 
 is the fountain from which flow the 
 other evils mentioned, nevertheless 
 there lies hidden a still deeper source 
 for it. Abnormal wealth is itself the 
 effect of an underlying cause ; is the 
 natural product of antecedent forces,
 
 82 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 And that ultimate traceable causal 
 force is the dark nexus of 
 
 UNJUST LAWS 
 
 existing in this country at the 
 present time. It becomes our duty 
 to specify. This unfortunately is 
 not difficult to do. 
 
 First. There obtains a rule in our 
 Senate which does not permit the 
 previous question to be called. The 
 majority in consequence is rendered 
 powerless to bring the purely ob- 
 structive tactics of the minority to 
 an end, so that a mere handful of 
 unscrupulous filibusters are clothed 
 with the tremendous power of delay- 
 ing and, as has been time and again 
 proved, of defeating the best and 
 most necessary legislation. Witness 
 the notorious example in the recent 
 financial depression when the passage
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 83 
 
 of remedial legislation proposed by 
 the president, endorsed by Secretary 
 Carlisle, and approved by congress 
 and the best business judgment of the 
 country, was blocked for so long and 
 anxious a period, and eventually de- 
 feated by Senators Wolcott, Peffer, 
 Vest, and Gorman, by employing the 
 force concentrated in this noxious 
 and plainly unjust rule of the Senate. 
 Whatever may have been the rea- 
 sons for the origin of this rule in the 
 early history of the country, they are 
 certainly invalid now. It is not a 
 marvel then that the editor of the 
 Philadelphia Ledger calls that " rule 
 of courtesy" a "piece of supreme 
 folly and public wrong." Long ago 
 it ought to have been relegated to 
 the category and catafalque of the 
 obsolete and the useless. 
 
 With so pernicious a parliamentary 
 technicality still in force, the will of
 
 84 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 the many will not cease in the future 
 to be baffled by the selfish or obstinate 
 few, and general contentment and 
 prosperity be rendered as uncertain 
 and problematical as ever. I am not 
 surprised, therefore, to hear the cry 
 "Away with the Senate! Abolish 
 the Upper House ! " It is not merely 
 an echo of the transatlantic cry, 
 " Away with the House of Lords ! " 
 but arises naturally from existing 
 circumstances on this side of the 
 water. W. D. McCrackan does not 
 hesitate to say that " The very smart- 
 ness of our House of Eepresentatives 
 and the much vaunted respectability 
 of our Senate seem empty shams, 
 unfit for freemen to acknowledge, 
 much less to admire. For it is only 
 in uncertain accents and with falter- 
 ing purpose that the will of the sov- 
 ereign people is made known in those 
 imposing but deceptive bodies."
 
 POVERTY^S FACTORY. 85 
 
 Secondly, TJie failure to enforce 
 a uniform observance or permit a 
 uniform non-observance of the Sab- 
 bath laws is patent injustice, entail- 
 ing galling inequalities in privilege, 
 and consequently also in profit and 
 pleasure. Why 2,000,000 citizens 
 should be bound in industrial slavery 
 and be given no rest-day, while the 
 tens of millions are free to enjoy 
 their Sundays as they may, and why 
 popular sentiment tacitly justifies, 
 and government openly permits, this 
 condition of things, is difficult for an 
 ordinary mind to comprehend. That 
 railroads, traction companies, fur- 
 naces, and other corporations and even 
 the government itself are allowed to 
 violate the laws and to conduct their 
 business with impunity on Sunday, 
 while the grocer, confectioner, 
 merchant, saloon-keeper, mechanic, 
 etc., are held to account and often
 
 86 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 proceeded against, is a piece of un- 
 fair discrimination which we confess 
 we cannot understand. " Equal 
 privileges to all " is a beautiful al- 
 truistic sentiment. But that's all it 
 is. "All men are created equal," 
 solemnly declares the Declaration of 
 Independence. But this does not 
 make them so. If it is meant, how- 
 ever, that all men are born equal, we 
 may, perhaps, consent to the proposi- 
 tion. But granting that they are 
 born equal, the equality ends there. 
 It terminates where it began. These 
 two million industrial slaves beget 
 children predestinated, as it were, to 
 their parents' ideas and lot. 
 
 Justice and humanity alike demand 
 that the government should uniform- 
 ly and indiscriminately enforce the 
 Sabbath laws, or else incontinently 
 abolish them. Christianity, science, 
 and experience strongly and unitedly
 
 PO VERTY ' S FA CTOll Y. 87 
 
 commend the former alternative. 
 Every wheel should be stopped, every 
 whistle silenced, one day out of seven. 
 The church and the world would 
 soon adapt themselves to the new 
 order of things. But so long as the 
 present injustice of Sabbath privilege 
 on the one hand and Sabbath slavery 
 on the other continues, so long will it 
 have its baleful effect in feeding the 
 present inequalities, feverishness, 
 restlessness, and discontent, and in 
 breeding more of them in many 
 ramified channels in the future. 
 
 The King of kings and the Lord 
 of lords tenderly cared and legislated 
 for the manservant and the maid- 
 servant ; but the iron lord, and the 
 bond lord, and the corporate lord, 
 and the other gods of modern myth- 
 ology sit in the house of lords and 
 legislate for themselves, or in the 
 House of the Lord and patriotically
 
 88 POVERTY'S FACTORT. 
 
 sing, " The powers that be are or- 
 dained of God " ! 
 
 Thirdly, The injustice of an in- 
 sufficient land tax. We do not in- 
 tend now to advocate the doctrine of 
 Single Tax in toto, for we differ from 
 that economic creed in our convic- 
 tion that other forms of real estate, 
 such as buildings and other improve- 
 ments, should be taxed by the state 
 in return for the protection it gives. 
 But we do hold with our Single-Tax 
 brethren that it can be clearly per- 
 ceived by any unprejudiced mind 
 that lands or lots in or near great 
 centres of population do not begin 
 to make a fair return in tax to the 
 growing community which has really 
 created their value. The just maxim 
 that the joint producers should share 
 profits is continually being violated 
 and that according to law by land- 
 owners whose empty and idle lots
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 89 
 
 are assessed at less and often far less 
 than 50 per cent of their selling and 
 actual value. The value created, 
 not by the individual owner or by 
 a stroke of work he does, but by the 
 public, passes not into the public 
 treasury, where it rightly belongs, but 
 into his own private pocket, when- 
 ever he chooses to sell the property. 
 
 Thus enormous wealth can accu- 
 mulate in the hands of those who do 
 little or nothing to produce it, unless 
 waiting for the growth of population 
 be considered work. In this way, 
 for example, a noted family in New 
 York City were made enormously 
 rich. Inequalities are continually 
 multiplying and augmenting from 
 the same constant cause. The pres- 
 ent system of land taxation favors 
 the fortunate few and deepens in- 
 stead of relieves the misfortunes 
 of the unfortunate many. Men of
 
 90 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 shrewd sagacity will take advantage 
 of this lack of law on the subject 
 of land taxation as long as the law 
 offers the chance. We don't blame 
 the Astors and the Astoroids. But 
 we do blame the people, of whom we 
 ourselves are part, for longer per- 
 mitting this unjust privilege. The 
 people must suffer and are suffering 
 for their sins of neglect and igno- 
 rance. 
 
 If taxes on lots were proportion- 
 atetely raised to anywhere near their 
 actual value, it would be unprofit- 
 able for land monopolists such as 
 foreign syndicates and individual 
 landlords to hold land long for pur- 
 poses of mere speculation, to grow 
 financially fat on the labors, priva- 
 tions, and risks of others. They 
 would unload their land, and hold 
 only that portion which they could 
 profitably use themselves. Thou-
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 91 
 
 sands would buy and possess them- 
 selves of a home which they could 
 " fondly call their own." Capital 
 would be loosened from land and 
 seek other channels of investment ; 
 enterprises of various kinds would 
 thus be stimulated, and the army of 
 the unemployed would be reduced by 
 thousands. This is not a Utopian 
 dream of impractical idealists, but 
 a plan of taxation which has been 
 practically applied in New Zealand, 
 and which has contributed so largely 
 to the phenomenal progress and pros- 
 perity observable in that fortunate 
 and progressive country. It is being 
 tried also in so old and staid a realm 
 as "Bonny England," for the Y,000 
 Parish Councils recently created pos- 
 sess large powers and can assess and 
 levy enhanced taxes on land at the 
 expense of the owners for the benefit 
 of the working people.
 
 92 PO VER TY ' 8 FA CTOIi Y. 
 
 If one man in this country should 
 own the entire acreage, apart from 
 all improvements in or on it, he 
 would, according to the existing rate 
 of taxation, return to the govern- 
 ment, i. e., to the people, but a 
 microscopic compensation for the 
 sweeping privilege possessed. Never- 
 theless it seems to me, one man 
 should so own the entire acreage of 
 this country, and that one man 
 should be the government. The 
 state should own the land, and in- 
 stead of selling it to syndicates and 
 foreigners, should hold it for the 
 people, and let it out to individual 
 proprietors (not owners), exacting 
 in return a rental or land tax graded 
 according to the value of the plot 
 of ground selected, an acre in the 
 centre of New York city bringing 
 in exactly as much larger an income 
 over an acre in the Bad Lands or
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 93 
 
 Florida Everglades as the one is more 
 valuable than the other. On this 
 particular point of the government 
 ownership of land, Single Tax and 
 Nationalism are one, and thus far we 
 heartily subscribe to both. 
 
 Meanwhile, or until land taxation 
 is increased to the point of unprofit- 
 able long tenure, something ought to 
 be done in the name of simple justice, 
 in God's name, for the relief of those 
 poor victims of a vicious economic 
 system who are crowded together in 
 the tenement -houses of cities, and 
 who for years and centuries have 
 been legally robbed of property rights. 
 I know we all breathe more freely 
 in our consciences to observe a move- 
 ment in philanthropic Philadelphia, 
 promoted by the Culture Extension 
 League, to induce landowners to 
 grant the use of vacant lots as play- 
 grounds, breathing spaces for these,
 
 94 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 unfortunate people and especially for 
 their little ones, who never or rarely 
 saw a grass-blade wave or a wild- 
 flower bloom. But we rejoice still 
 more to see that the plan of turning 
 such vacant lots into vegetable 
 farms, to be worked by poor families, 
 is ready to be put into operation by 
 the New York Society for Improving 
 the Condition of the Poor. This plan 
 is not a new one. It has been experi- 
 mented with before, and has proved 
 an abundant and a grateful success. 
 Mayor Pingree of Detroit tried it last 
 year in that city, and although at 
 the outset it was ridiculed by the 
 mayor's many opponents, its success 
 soon showed that it was a great help 
 to the poor. One thousand families 
 in part supported themselves in this 
 manner last year, the value of the 
 crops they raised being estimated at 
 $14,000. The land at their disposal
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 95 
 
 was 430 otherwise idle acres, or about 
 YOOO city lots ! 
 
 In this connection I need scarcely 
 remind the reader that the Income 
 Tax, to more justly equalize the 
 burden of taxation by levying di- 
 rectly on land rentals and bond in- 
 terest, has been wrested, split, and 
 mangled until, as it stands now, it is 
 one of the worst and most outrageous 
 pieces of egregious class legislation 
 ever enacted by a civilized legislature. 
 Its unfair discriminations and patent 
 injustice are galling, humiliating, 
 and appalling. It exempts from 
 taxation the income of landlords 
 and bond lords, home and foreign, 
 individual and corporate, the very 
 ones best able to pay it, and 
 settles the burden on lower finan- 
 cial classes, the hard workers and 
 middle classes who already sus- 
 tain the heaviest load. The very
 
 96 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 game, the big game, the Populists 
 were gunning for, has not been hit. 
 The very rich are made richer, and 
 the poor poorer ! The Income Tax 
 is but a patent specimen of other 
 laws equally unjust but less open, 
 and therefore less obnoxious to the 
 people in their operation. It is not 
 a marvel that some impulsive and 
 passionate people begin to feel that 
 this country might get along better 
 without any legislatures at all.* 
 
 Fourthly, Unfair Assessments. 
 The fact of their existence is notori- 
 ous and easily proved. The proper- 
 ties of the wealthy are assessed at 
 from 55 to 70 per cent of their value, 
 
 * Since the above was penned, the Supreme 
 Court lias declared the Income Tax law both con- 
 stitutional and unconstitutional ! In each official 
 deliverance there was a majority of one ! Con- 
 sequently we have the very best of authority for 
 permitting the above paragraph to remain where 
 and as it is.
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 97 
 
 while those of the poorer classes are 
 rated at from 75 to 90 per cent. 
 
 A friend kindly furnished me with 
 the following statement prepared 
 after a careful examination of the 
 registry books at our court-house 
 and of the assessor's books at city 
 hall. The facts here stated are not 
 simply of local interest. They are 
 typical of the situation in all cities : 
 
 26 vacant lots sold at a total of 
 $74,815, and were assessed at $33,525, 
 or 44 per cent of selling value. 
 
 26 improved properties, worth over 
 $5,000 each, brought $452,900, and 
 were assessed at $264,750, or 58 per 
 cent of selling value. 
 
 20 improved properties, worth 
 from $2, 500 to $5,000 each, sold for 
 $57,505, assessed at $39,150, or 68 
 per cent of full value. 
 
 36 improved properties, worth less 
 than $2,500 each, brought $59,070, 
 7
 
 98 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 assessed $42,650, or 72 per cent of 
 selling value. 
 
 Thus you perceive the astonishing 
 rule : the less the value, the heavier 
 the assessment and the tax ; the 
 greater the value, the less the assess- 
 ment and tax ! 
 
 This gross inequity is the result of 
 influence exerted upon the assessors 
 or the board of appeal in ways bad 
 and indifferent by the wealthy, and of 
 the fact that valuable properties are 
 naturally more difficult to estimate. 
 But this last point simply emphasizes 
 the necessity of some simpler, safer, 
 easier method, such as suggested by 
 the Single Tax. The result of the 
 present system is, that from those 
 who are the least able to pay it and 
 who receive less recognition and in- 
 dulgence before civil courts and 
 boards of appeals, from 20 to 35 per 
 cent more tax is exacted than from
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 99 
 
 those who could better afford to 
 render it and who can command 
 recognition and pay for indulgent 
 interpretations and concessions. 
 The tendency and outworkings of 
 such an unfair system verify the 
 paradoxical prophecy of the Master : 
 "To him that hath shall be given, 
 and from him that hath not shall be 
 taken even that which he seemeth to 
 have." 
 
 If anyone is disposed to doubt the 
 statement here made in reference to 
 the gross injustice of our present sys- 
 tem of assessing properties, let me 
 remind him that Jay Gould's " head- 
 swimming " estate of $70,000,000 
 was, during his lifetime, assessed at 
 the paltry bagatelle of only $500,000 ! 
 and his heirs but last month (April 
 1st, 1895) were seeking in the pro- 
 bate court of New York to set aside 
 the present assessment of $10,000,000,
 
 100 POVERTY 1 S FACTORY. 
 
 which is only one-seventh of that 
 known part of the immense estate 
 whose total value it is impossible 
 definitely to ascertain or calculate. 
 
 And to gaze long at some of the 
 quite recent proceedings of our Bead- 
 ing councilmanic Board of Appeals 
 makes a man really sick with dis- 
 gust and sad that such things are 
 permitted and possible. When the 
 president of a large and powerful 
 corporation appeared before that 
 board to make his appeal he was 
 received with marked and unusual 
 deference. The force of his argu- 
 ments appears in the fact that the 
 board reduced the company's assess- 
 ment $38,000, or over 50 per cent 
 less than the fair and just amount 
 agreed upon by the assessors. 
 Another gentleman's assessment was 
 reduced $27,000. " During the con- 
 sideration of this man's appeal,"
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 101 
 
 says one of the assessors, "he was 
 allowed to remain in the room, 
 which was entirely illegal and with- 
 out precedent. The chairman moved 
 that he be requested to retire, but 
 the motion was voted down," to the 
 chairman's intense disgust. Some 
 light may be thrown on this enigma 
 by the fact that the superintendent 
 of the works of the gentleman ben- 
 efited was a leading member of the 
 board of appeals. 
 
 " We assessors," continues the one 
 above quoted, " conducted our labors 
 with fairness to all, the valuation of a 
 foot front in any part of the city being 
 on the same basis, and that thousands 
 should be taken from one property 
 while the adjoining real estate is not 
 considered at all, is a matter of gross 
 injustice." 
 
 We think the assessor is too modest 
 in his words. For such palpable dis-
 
 102 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 crimination is galling and outrageous 
 injustice. The Philadelphia Times 
 took notice of it and called it ' ' start- 
 ling." But the thing is done every- 
 where, and not only in our fair city 
 of Eeading, and there is none in the 
 state fairer "for situation." It is 
 a sign of the rottenn ess of the age. A 
 gentleman who is a very experienced 
 man in assessment matters in this 
 city is of the opinion that a great 
 many men in councils are indebted 
 for councilmanic existence "to corp- 
 oration fatherhood ; that corporations 
 get such men into councils for the 
 purpose, among others, of reducing 
 their assessments ; " and by way of 
 illustration said that when he was 
 assessor, " councilmen cut down the 
 assessments on certain breweries just 
 one-half. He also drew attention to 
 the large real estate of a local com- 
 pany. To the best of his recollection
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 103 
 
 he assessed it at $85,000. Their rep- 
 resentative argued hard and long 
 with him for some alleged legal 
 reasons to remove the assessment 
 from the books. He refused to do 
 so. He could not see why a poor 
 mechanic's house should be assessed 
 up to the highest notch, while a 
 great big corporation is exempted 
 from all taxation on $85,000. The 
 company have not paid this tax up 
 to this day." 
 
 Fifth, Disproportionate or Ine- 
 quitable Tariff Protection. The ef- 
 fect of tariffs on imported articles is 
 and is intended to be that of an in- 
 direct tax paid by the people to the 
 government. This is right, good, 
 and necessary. On home manufac- 
 tures, however, this tax goes into the 
 pockets of the " protected " manufac- 
 turers and corporations, who do not 
 in turn, as one would expect, remit
 
 104 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 it to the " protecting " government, 
 but keep it themselves. The Ways 
 and Means Committee is the heaven 
 for all who seek class legislation, that 
 is, special privileges. Events like 
 the following are continually occur- 
 ring, and have become so common as 
 to lose their awful significance to the 
 public conscience. 
 
 ' 'When the coal operators ap- 
 peared before the Ways and Means 
 Committee (in 1894), in order to 
 secure a duty of seventy- five cents 
 per ton on coal, it was given out to 
 the country that they only wanted a 
 tariff high enough to cover the dif- 
 ference in wages to labor in this 
 country and that paid in other coun- 
 tries ; yet we see that the price which 
 the men afterwards struck against 
 was but thirty-five cents per ton, or 
 forty cents less than the tariff duty. 
 And further the average day's wages
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 105 
 
 of soft-coal miners in this country is 
 but $1.75, while the average wages of 
 the miners of Nova Scotia, against 
 whom we demand protection, is $2. 75 
 to $3.00 per day, with steady work." 
 Is anyone so credulous as to be- 
 lieve the above philanthropic protes- 
 tations of those coal operators, and 
 that they took time and trouble to 
 obtain a hearing before the Ways 
 and Means Committee solely or 
 chiefly out of tender regard for the 
 interests of their wage-earners, who 
 were not represented before that 
 committee ? Is there anyone any- 
 where so simple-minded as not to 
 perceive that, whereas a part of 
 this tariff duty (which afterwards 
 appeared in the enhanced price 
 of coal) may have gone to the 
 miners (although even this is ex- 
 ceedingly problem etical, inasmuch 
 as they received $1.00 less per day
 
 106 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 than miners who were "unpro- 
 tected "), the largest part of that 
 tariff which was intended "to cover 
 the difference of wages" went into 
 the private purses of the operators 
 themselves or of those whom they 
 represented ? And if operators and 
 manufacturers are to be thus privi- 
 leged and paternally "protected," 
 why not the laborers too ? Why not, 
 let us ask, have a tariff on laborers 
 high enough to be truly ' ' protect- 
 ive," i. e., prohibitory, and check im- 
 migration altogether, and thus re- 
 duce competition in the labor market 
 for the benefit of the laborers already 
 American ? Or, if not prohibitory, 
 at least impose a tax of so much per 
 head on immigrants, and let the poor 
 things (who ought to be very grate- 
 ful for such "protection") make it 
 up or get it back by charging propor- 
 tionately more for their labor, of any
 
 POVERTY 1 8 FACTORY. 107 
 
 employer who might chance to en- 
 gage them ? The very proposition is 
 ridiculous, and simply shows on 
 which side of the beam of justice the 
 balance of power and privilege at 
 present lies. 
 
 Congressman M'Gann says: " One 
 thing seems to have been established 
 by this tariff debate that capital 
 never accords to labor more than the 
 lowest wages it is compelled to pay. 
 Interference of the government has 
 always been in behalf of capital. 
 Labor has never sought bounties. It 
 is only capital that comes here when 
 profits are not sufficient and sues for 
 aid to carry on business. After it is 
 secured, capital never shares with 
 labor except as it is compelled to." 
 
 You say, brains, intelligence, 
 capital, shrewdness, deserve greater 
 rewards than mere brawn and igno- 
 rant honesty. No one will rise to dis-
 
 108 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 pute this proposition. It is undoubt- 
 edly true, simply because it is based 
 on a natural principle. But are 
 brains forever to take a lion's share 
 instead of a man's ? Is mind to be 
 brutal in the exercise of its superior 
 power, instead of human? I thank 
 God that He is sublimely just as well 
 as divinely powerful. But in Amer- 
 ican economics is might forever to 
 be right ? Shall the abnormally rich 
 and powerful exercise their potencies 
 with an eye single to their own in- 
 terests, and a long-suffering Christian 
 public argue and compel themselves 
 to believe that it is gloriously con- 
 sistent with the spirit of Christianity ? 
 Shall all of us applaud when a very 
 rich man, who has legally robbed a 
 thousand or more of poor, or semi- 
 poor, people, turns around and gener- 
 ously regales their manhood and in- 
 dependence with large contributions
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 109 
 
 to soup funds and Eelief Societies ? 
 Surely better the charities than 
 nothing at all. Far better. But 
 better still, not the original legal 
 robbery. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. I 
 do not argue against tariffs per se. 
 Whether a tariff or free- trade policy 
 for this country would be best, who 
 can decide ? But I believe any unprej- 
 udiced mind can see that a fair and 
 comprehensive tariff, though strictly 
 selfish, would undoubtedly, for the 
 present at least, work wonders for 
 this country and for all its interests. 
 But a fair and comprehensive tariff 
 is well-nigh an impossibility, owing 
 to the numerous and complex in- 
 terests involved. Therefore we say 
 of the tariff or "protective" policy 
 what we said of the Sabbath law : 
 Either make it fair and just to abso- 
 lutely all avocations, or abolish it in
 
 110 POVEE TY ' S FA UTOU Y. 
 
 toto and give natural instead of arti- 
 ficial or statute law a chance to work 
 out its own ends. Natural law is of 
 God.* 
 
 Sixth, Unrestrained Stock Inflation 
 of Corporations. The modus oper- 
 andi of this sweeping scheme to coin 
 fortunes is not the abstruse subject 
 some interested parties want us to 
 
 * Not only the tariff, but prices, rents, manu- 
 factures, and everything else, especially credit, 
 have experienced an excessive inflation since 
 the civil war. This unnatural condition of affairs 
 cannot last, even with the tariff crutch to lean 
 on. Birds cannot fly high all the time. They 
 must come to roost on terra firma some day. 
 So our soaring country must relapse into a less 
 artificial and strained and a more natural and 
 healthy economic and industrial condition. 
 Happiness will come hand in hand with health, 
 and health will come with obedience to nature's 
 laws, for natural law is of God. And one of 
 the most important steps in this obedience is, 
 as will be seen in Chapter VI, comprehensive 
 representation in legislative bodies.
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. HI 
 
 believe it to be. On the contrary it 
 is quite simple and easily under- 
 stood. The officers or board of di- 
 rectors of a corporation or syndicate, 
 by a mere vote in session assembled 
 and by means of a printing press and 
 some paper, double or even triple the 
 bonded indebtedness and stock or. 
 paper capital. These shares are 
 quietly boomed by interested and 
 shrewd holders, agents of the direct- 
 ors or sub-agents, who are usually 
 men of supposed integrity and of 
 prominence in a community. Honest 
 and industrious citizens, hard brain- 
 and brawn-workers, widows and 
 orphans, who have small sums and 
 savings to invest, naturally seek out 
 and consult their supposed superiors 
 in reference to good and safe places 
 for bestowing their money. They 
 are told that the paper of the com- 
 pany is "good," "first class," "gilt-
 
 112 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 edged," etc., and thus these fictitious 
 bonds and stocks are unloaded at or 
 above par upon the innocent and 
 confiding victims. 
 
 The company or corporation, which 
 now has an indebtedness far exceed- 
 ing the value of its real estate and 
 assets, may be able to pay interest 
 and declare dividends for a time ; 
 but when even the slightest financial 
 disturbance arrives, it is quite suf- 
 ficient to prick and burst the glorious 
 bubble, which immediately collapses 
 in some form or other, and the result 
 is that the poor deluded stock-buyers 
 lose all, or nearly all, while the 
 scoundrel stock " inflators " walk off 
 with their thousands and hundreds 
 of thousands, and often with the 
 books of the concern, too, in order to 
 forestall legal pursuit. Witness the 
 notorious examples afforded by the 
 history of some of our western trans-
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 113 
 
 continental railroad lines, and the 
 quite recent scandal of the Brooklyn 
 City Street Railway Company. Yet 
 all these transactions are in strictest 
 accordance with statute laws. 
 
 Another deplorable and inevitable 
 result of such inflation is, the em- 
 ployees of a corporation burdened 
 with an enormous paper capital are 
 always ground down to the lowest 
 possible notch, in order that divi- 
 dends and interest may be made and 
 paid on that portion of the watered 
 stock already sold, to the end that 
 the confidence of the public may be 
 thereby secured, and the value of the 
 shares rise, when the scheming 
 holders rapidly dispose of all the 
 shares they have remaining, grow- 
 ing rich at a jump by the sale of 
 mere paper, without doing a stroke 
 of real work, and, like vampires, 
 fattened financially on the life-blood, 
 8
 
 114 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 on the wreck and the ruin of the 
 honest, the confiding, the industri 
 ous. 
 
 Stock inflation is a most damnable 
 economic sin, most damnable be- 
 cause so tempting, so common, so 
 fraudulent, so legal ; a sin, an eco- 
 nomic opportunity afforded by legal 
 laxness or lack of law, which contrib- 
 utes more, perhaps, than any other 
 one cause towards rendering the un- 
 scrupulous rich richer, and the inno- 
 cent poor poorer, thus directly pro- 
 ducing the abnormal extremes which 
 constitute the burden resting like an 
 awful incubus on the nation's heart 
 and life to-day. 
 
 The wary and well-informed are 
 intelligent enough to defend them- 
 selves by simply declining to buy 
 stock. But those humble and honest 
 souls who are ignorant of the serpen- 
 tine twistings and cobra-like infla-
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 115 
 
 tions of unscrupulous corporations, 
 can be protected in only one way, 
 as far at least as we can see, and 
 that is by legislation limiting the 
 issuance and sale of stock to a fixed 
 per cent beyond the value of the 
 property controlled by the corpora- 
 tion. But as long as soulless cor- 
 porations control legislatures hope 
 for the passage of such legislation 
 is worse than vain. Actual history 
 bears out this statement. The de- 
 fenceless and the injured must, 
 therefore, enjoy the opportunity of 
 defending themselves. Under ex- 
 isting circumstances this can be 
 afforded only by the method sug- 
 gested in Chapter VI. 
 
 Seventh, The Prostitution of Leg- 
 islatures by Monopolistic Selfishness 
 and Corporate Greed. The terms 
 applied to the sin of stock inflation 
 apply with equal pertinency and force
 
 116 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 to this. The prostitution of legisla- 
 tive bodies by companies and com- 
 bines is a most damnable sin because 
 so tempting, so common, so success- 
 ful, so legal, so iniquitous. By mild 
 or sweeping bribery in one form or 
 another presidents and agents of 
 corporations seduce senators, repre- 
 sentatives, and city councilmen, and 
 thereby secure for themselves fran- 
 chises and monopolies which at once 
 put them in a position to compel 
 millions of hard-working people of 
 the middle and lower classes to pay 
 small increments on the price of the 
 monopolized article or on the fran- 
 chise granted, the mingled streams 
 of which soon make the ringleaders 
 enormously wealthy, and gradually 
 impoverish the defenceless victims. 
 Statute laws of favoritism always 
 start a process of universal suction 
 on the one hand, and of individual
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 117 
 
 financial battening on the other. 
 Events in our own state constitute 
 a pretty clear mirror wherein every 
 state can see itself and the iniquitous 
 tendency of these degenerate times. 
 
 Is it an evidence of unselfish pub- 
 lic spirit that the Standard Oil Co. 
 labored steadily and persistently for 
 so long a period as eleven years to 
 have the Marshall Pipe Line Con- 
 solidation Bill become a law ? With- 
 in thirty days after the governor 
 signed that bill the price of kerosene 
 or coal oil made two forward jumps, 
 which in a few weeks sent millions 
 of dollars rattling into the com- 
 panies' coffers. 
 
 Electric light, heat, power, and 
 traction companies, railroads, trusts, 
 and combines, by the glitter and 
 gleam of the ghoul of gold, are pros- 
 tituting the people's sworn represent- 
 atives, guardians, and law-makers,
 
 118 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 in city councils, state legislatures, 
 congress, and everywhere. (Since 
 penning the above our state legisla- 
 ture has passed two bills relating to 
 electric-light companies which, if 
 signed by the governor, will launch 
 upon the long-suffering public one of 
 the most unconditioned and sweep- 
 ing monopolies of modern times, 
 from the snaky coils of which the 
 people of our cities will struggle in 
 vain to free themselves. The coun- 
 try members in the legislature, hav- 
 ing no interest in the bills inasmuch 
 as they do not affect country dis- 
 tricts, did not exert any opposition, 
 and those who would have fought 
 those obnoxious bills tooth and nail 
 were not on the floor to do so. This 
 again but emphasizes the unques- 
 tioned necessity for all classes of 
 citizens to be represented where laws 
 are made so vitally affecting all.)
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 119 
 
 The miasma of this Satanic sin 
 steals even into the sacred (?) pre- 
 cincts of congressional preserves. 
 The history here is a long and a 
 nauseating one. It will be sufficient 
 to mention but two words, "Sugar 
 Trust," to attract a legion of demons 
 from the same pit. We do not mean 
 to affirm that trusts and combines, 
 when formed on a purely business 
 basis by the free agreement of busi- 
 ness men, and when kept apart from 
 special state aid or government 
 favoritism, are wrong per se. We 
 do not think they are. In union 
 there is strength. In organization 
 reside efficiency, economy, and prog- 
 ress. But when such an organiza- 
 tion interviews senators, representa- 
 tives, and councilmen, and secures by 
 direct or indirect bribery the passage 
 of a tariff bill or the gift of a city 
 or state franchise, not for public but
 
 120 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 for private gain ; not for the benefit 
 of the public treasury, but for the 
 benefit of the trust, for the over- 
 whelming advantage of capital, and 
 to the actual injury of labor through 
 increase of cost to consumers and by 
 throwing out of work 6,500 men 
 who, as in the case of the sugar 
 trust, were employed in refineries 
 before the combination was effected ; 
 then, I assert, the most "rapacious 
 and exacting " of all monopolies act- 
 ually becomes a law of the land, the 
 people become the prey of a monster 
 engine of selfishness, the crushed 
 victims of legal tyranny, and the 
 slaves of a legislative power which 
 they themselves create and sustain. 
 
 I see no real remedy within reach 
 save that which is stated in Chapter 
 VI. 
 
 We have now briefly touched upon 
 the seven leading laws or legalized
 
 PO VER TT ' 8 FA CTOB T. 121 
 
 economic conditions which, we be- 
 lieve, constitute the hidden root from 
 which grows the enormous weed of 
 abnormal wealth. By the action of 
 one or more, or by the interaction of 
 all of them, the production of enor- 
 mous wealth is rendered possible and 
 is stimulated, and consequently also 
 abnormal poverty. These are the 
 seven great wheels in poverty's 
 factory, huge, powerful, grinding 
 ceaselessly day and night, unheard, 
 unseen, resistless, awful, iniquitous, 
 tyrannical, oiled with the sacred 
 unction of law, and rapidly multi- 
 plying their two characteristic and 
 protected products, abnormal wealth 
 and abnormal poverty. 
 
 Nor do we in this connection over- 
 look the smaller wheel of individual- 
 ism. It is a wheel and a wheel of 
 force in poverty's factory. Its influ- 
 ence we have already touched upon
 
 122 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 in the paragraphs on thriftlessness 
 and intemperance. But it must be 
 said of it, first, that it is not made 
 and protected by law, and secondly, 
 of itself it would not produce wide- 
 spread economic extremes, that is, 
 general poverty and abnormal wealth. 
 Every one of the immensely rich 
 men in this country has become so 
 through special privileges conferred 
 by legislation positively or negative- 
 ly, or by taking privileges with im- 
 punity in direct violation of law. 
 The opinion still largely prevails in 
 many quarters that these men ac- 
 quired riches on the principle that 
 mites make millions and bits billions. 
 I deny this. No man in the period 
 of one lifetime ever made a billion 
 or even a million in that way. It is 
 mathematically impossible. It was 
 done by sweeps, by leaps, by wind- 
 falls, and by giant speculations fos-
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 123 
 
 tered by law. It came by bulks and 
 not by bits. And yet all by legal 
 permission. 
 
 "But is the law always right in 
 what it permits ? " pertinently asks 
 Hon. W. J. Gaynor, Justice of the 
 Supreme Court of Brooklyn. " If 
 that were so we would never need 
 to change. Jesus was tried in an 
 august court and convicted accord- 
 ing to law, and in our own day and 
 generation the poor fugitive slave, 
 Dred Scott, was taken and remanded 
 back into human slavery by the 
 Supreme Court of the United States 
 in strictest conformity to law." 
 
 Says Prof. E^y : " The Jewish 
 social and economic law was to the 
 weak a bulwark ; to the oppressed, a 
 stronghold ; to assaulted feebleness, 
 a fortress ; for all, in times of dis- 
 tress, a refuge. It was thus that 
 Israel found the law 'a delight,'
 
 124 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 and rapturously i meditated in it 
 day and night.' ' 
 
 But I respectfully ask : With all 
 our boasted "progress" and " cul- 
 ture," can this glowing tribute be 
 conscientiously paid to the existing 
 system of our laws and courts of law 
 to-day ? Are they a bulwark for 
 " the weak," a stronghold for the 
 oppressed, and a fortress for as- 
 saulted feebleness ? Do we medi- 
 tate upon our laws to-day with de- 
 light ? Do we lay awake nights to 
 enjoy the spectacle of our ravishingly 
 beautiful legal Arcadia ? ' Nay, it 
 seems to me Isaiah's scathing denun- 
 ciation of the nation's leaders in his 
 age will apply now. "Thy princes 
 are rebellious, and companions of 
 thieves ; every one loveth gifts and 
 followeth after rewards ; they judge 
 not the fatherless, neither doth the 
 cause of the widow come unto them."
 
 POVERTY'S FACTOR Y. 125 
 
 "The human race," continues 
 Judge Gay nor, " must move forward 
 by making laws and conditions bet- 
 ter. To say that a thing is done 
 according to law or that there is no 
 law forbidding it, does not always 
 relieve it from moral odium. Crooked 
 transactions are to be found in nearly 
 every locality in the country. They 
 have come to be the order of the day. 
 In place of being checked by laws, they 
 are often fostered by laws. If this 
 condition were to continue, what the 
 end would be no one who has studied 
 over causes and effects can fail to per- 
 ceive with clear vision. The prime 
 object of government is " [would that 
 the world might hear his word and 
 believe !] "to promote distributive 
 justice, and thereby make the gov- 
 erned stable and content, and no gov- 
 ernment which does not do this may, 
 in the nature of things, long endure."
 
 126 PO VER TY ' S FA CTOR Y. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE CURE. 
 
 I DESIRE to preface what I shall 
 have to say with the unqualified as- 
 sertion that the final cure for all 
 forms of evil both gross and refined 
 io the Scriptural one, " En Kurio," 
 individual regeneration (not merely 
 reformation) by the power and opera- 
 tion of the Holy Spirit through the 
 God-ordained means of grace, and 
 thus the establishment of the king- 
 dom of God on earth. This is the 
 ultimate and loftiest ideal after 
 which we must all ceaselessly strive. 
 But I feel ready to claim that much 
 can be done in certain directions to 
 accelerate this glorious end. "Pre-
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 127 
 
 pare ye the way of the Lord." Men 
 are to prepare the way for the com- 
 ing of the kingdom. I now proceed 
 to indicate certain definite lines along 
 which preparation should be made, 
 and that as soon as possible, and 
 how the Church of Christ can, if 
 she is in earnest, labor practically 
 for the sublime cause of human bet- 
 terment. 
 
 We now put the question, Whence 
 is the immediate alleviation to come ? 
 Where and what is the cure ? 
 
 Candidly, we do not see in the 
 Swiss Initiative and Referendum all 
 the blessings its admirers claim for 
 it. One of its most enthusiastic ad- 
 vocates, Mr. W. D. McCrackan, is 
 cautious and candid enough in his 
 estimate to admit that "it is not a 
 cure-all for social and economic ills. 
 It does not affect the production and 
 distribution of wealth. It will not
 
 128 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 banish the tramp at one end of the 
 social scale, or the millionaire at the 
 other." Nevertheless, if nothing else 
 is attempted soon, we should like to 
 see the system tried on American 
 soil. It is not the Swiss plan, how- 
 ever, which I desire to call your at- 
 tention to in this paper, but quite a 
 different method of cure. 
 
 Medically I am a homeopathist, a 
 firm believer in the beneficence of the 
 law of similars, " Similia similibus 
 curantur." If, therefore, legislation 
 has produced the disease, legislation 
 will remove it. Yea, I will go so far 
 even as to grant that if class legisla- 
 tion, partiality, and favoritism is the 
 cause, class legislation, partiality, 
 and favoritism for a while in behalf 
 of the other side, of the hitherto op- 
 pressed, of those who never beg 
 bounties before the Ways and Means 
 Committee, will prove the cure, or,
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 12J 
 
 at least, tend to restore the true bal- 
 ance of power and privilege. If there 
 must be favoritism let's have a little 
 of it on the neglected side for a while. 
 But such class legislation or legisla- 
 tive doctoring must continue only for 
 a time, only so long as the present 
 extremes last, only until the economic 
 congestion is counteracted, when 
 all further heroic treatment must 
 cease.* 
 
 But since the principle of selfish- 
 ness reigns and rules in legislatures 
 as it does generally everywhere else, 
 this legislative counteraction for the 
 neglected and oppressed can be ef- 
 fected only by them. They them- 
 selves must be on the floor to conserve 
 their own interests. It is sheer non- 
 
 * The Income tax in its original form would, 
 doubtless, have acted as a temporary corrective 
 or emollient ; but in its actual mangled shape, 
 as an irritant of the worst kind. 
 9
 
 130 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 sense and maudlin sentimentalism to 
 expect their enemies and oppressors 
 to do this for them. Consequently 
 
 COMPREHENSIVE REPRESENTATION 
 
 is, it seems perfectly clear to me, the 
 practical and attainable goal towards 
 which the middle and lower classes 
 should patiently and unwaveringly 
 push forward. In one word, com- 
 prehensive representation is the 
 panacea I have to propose for 
 the economic diseases of the day. 
 Comprehensive representation would 
 produce comprehensive legislation, 
 and that is undoubtedly the great 
 need of the hour. Let our represen- 
 tation in Congress be more truly 
 representative. To effect this let 
 the present geographical basis of 
 representation be paralleled or sup- 
 plemented by
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 131 
 
 AN INDUSTRIAL AND PROFESSIONAL 
 BASIS ; 
 
 i. e., instead of having merely elec- 
 toral districts consisting of geograph- 
 ical sections embracing political 
 parties composed of a promiscuous 
 medley of industries and professions, 
 let every recognized profession, 
 trade, and avocation existing within 
 these geographical or electoral dis- 
 tricts separate!}' organize, and send 
 its proportionate number of delegates 
 to the convention of the next higher 
 or larger district or section, and so 
 on until the state and national legis- 
 latures are reached. If it is true, 
 for example, that the fanners 
 number three-fourths of our total 
 population, then they ought to have, 
 approximately at least, three-fourthn 
 of the total number of congressmen. 
 Merchants, mechanics, laborers,
 
 132 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 manufacturers, publishers, ministers, 
 lawyers, and so on to the end of the 
 list, should be entitled and com- 
 manded to organize and send their 
 ratio of representatives to Congress, 
 to the state legislatures, and to 
 municipal councils. 
 
 This plan would not be as difficult 
 to inaugurate and carry out as one 
 might at first thought of it suspect. 
 Nearly all kinds of tradesmen, labor- 
 ers, manufacturers, and professional 
 men, voters in the land, are already 
 severally organized. There are the 
 trades unions, state and national 
 brotherhoods, leagues, manufac- 
 turers' clubs, medical societies, legal 
 fraternities, and, among the clergy, 
 synods, assemblies, and conferences. 
 These existing organizations could 
 easily be utilized as bases or nuclei and 
 be severally perfected, and then be 
 divided into state, congressional dis-
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 133 
 
 trict, county, township, municipal, and 
 ward divisions, and be empowered with 
 electoral prerogatives and accorded 
 representation in municipal, county, 
 state, and national legislative bodies 
 based on a fixed ratio to member- 
 ship. In case the three rival schools 
 of medicine or the three grand divi- 
 sions of theism (Protestants, Catholics, 
 and Jews) could not harmoniously 
 co-operate in their respective electoral 
 bodies or unite on some modus 
 agendi, they might each organize 
 independently, and, failing in this, 
 be dropped out of the list altogether. 
 For if any set could not organize 
 themselves, they would not be fit to 
 make or change laws either for them- 
 selves or for others. In the case of 
 small interests, too small to have the 
 number required to entitle them to 
 even one representative, they could 
 join together, or unite with a larger
 
 134 POVEETY^S FACTORY. 
 
 body industrially or professionally 
 near of kin. 
 
 Let us briefly tabulate the benefits 
 and advantages of industrial and 
 professional representation. 
 
 1. Every avocation having a being 
 in this country would have a fair 
 chance to make its wants and needs 
 felt at the legislative fountain or 
 factory where laws are framed affect- 
 ing every avocation. 
 
 2. All lines of activity would be 
 represented according to their rela- 
 tive importance or numerical promi- 
 nence in the land. 
 
 3. The best elements in our com- 
 munities would appear at the pri- 
 maries, for all would be sure of meet- 
 ing there none but their own 
 industrial or professional associates ; 
 and, moreover, the places for holding 
 their respective primaries would be 
 selected according to- the tastes and
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 135 
 
 wishes of each organization. Saloon 
 men, for example, could continue to 
 meet in saloons, but could not compel 
 others to do so. 
 
 4. Better men would be sent to 
 councils, to the state legislatures, and 
 to congress for the simple reason that 
 each industrial and professional or- 
 ganization would be more familiarly 
 acquainted with the men who are 
 prominent and trustworthy in their 
 respective lines of labor than with 
 men in other lines. We would all 
 know more about the true character 
 and capacities of our candidates and 
 officers than we do or can know 
 under the present system. 
 
 5. There would be more real in- 
 terest taken in and more earnest 
 study devoted to the business and 
 requirements of sound government 
 by everybody, for all would feel them- 
 selves directly needed and concerned.
 
 136 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 Government would be lifted out of 
 the political sphere into the business 
 realm where we think it belongs. 
 Statesmanship is not politics, but 
 business, and should so be considered 
 by one and all. But under the pres- 
 ent system we supinely permit the 
 saloon power and political bosses, 
 fully as corrupt and venal and selfish, 
 to name candidates suitable to them- 
 selves, and after we have manfully (?) 
 and patriotically (?) deposited our lit- 
 tle vote for the political puppets thus 
 created, we go home and sweetly 
 dream that government will take care 
 of itself and prosper, and that justice 
 will be done to all ! 
 
 6. If injustice should be done to 
 any interest we would all know just 
 where to put the blame, viz., upon 
 its own representatives on the floor, 
 whose inactivity, lack of vigilance, 
 wisdom, or tactics, laid them open to
 
 POVERTY'S FACTO nr. 137 
 
 imposition or defeat. But at present 
 all avocations and interests have not 
 the chance even (or at least a very 
 remote, indirect, and small chance) to 
 make their voice heard and to defend 
 themselves. 
 
 7. Vote-purchase, bribery, and the 
 prostitution of the law-making 
 power on the part of unscrupulous 
 trusts and selfish combines and cor- 
 porations would be rendered so diffi- 
 cult, owing to the large number of 
 electoral bodies sending their repre- 
 sentatives to councils, state legisla- 
 tures, and congress, that this subtle 
 and satanic sin would be practically 
 eliminated from the political and 
 economic arena. It would require 
 too much money, in the first place, to 
 reach and influence the large number 
 of organized industries and profes- 
 sions ; and, in the second place, many 
 of these would be morally far above
 
 138 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 the reach of bribes ; and, thirdly, many 
 more would be intellectually too sharp 
 for the specious wool-pulling pretexts 
 of golden-tongued combine presidents 
 and silver-lined trust agents. But 
 under the present system all they 
 have to do is to pay the leader or 
 leaders of the party in power. To 
 him or them they go as the head of 
 political and legislative authority. 
 But industrial and professional repre- 
 sentation would make too many heads 
 for bribers to attend to. They simply 
 could not get and keep this refractory 
 medley of representative heads in 
 line. 
 
 " It may still be necessary, in that 
 stage of political development which 
 the world has reached, that one-half 
 plus one of the members of a legisla- 
 ture should have power to pass bills 
 over the objections of one-half minus 
 one of their colleagues, but it is
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 139 
 
 eminently unjust that the party or 
 parties in opposition should not have 
 their fair share of representatives to 
 discuss those bills. In the federal 
 election of congressmen in 1892 
 twelve million votes were polled in 
 round numbers, six and one-half 
 million secured representation, and 
 five and one-half million were un- 
 successful. But these five and one- 
 half million continue to pay taxes, 
 although unrepresented. We can go 
 even further, and say that not only 
 are these same tax-paying citizens un- 
 represented, they are actually mis- 
 represented by their opponents, 
 elected from their districts. This is 
 not a good showing for a nation 
 which once waged war against the 
 injustice of ' taxation without repre- 
 sentation,' and has always boasted 
 of the blessings of majority rule. If 
 there be a political prophecy which it
 
 140 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 is safe to make at this time, it is that 
 our representative system cannot re- 
 main in its present form for another 
 decade, if the republic is to endure." 
 (W. D. McCrackan in "Swiss Solu- 
 tions".) 
 
 Some one here objects and says 
 that if industrial and professional rep- 
 resentation were the law, brainless 
 men would get to councils, to the 
 state legislatures, and to congress. I 
 reply, and the public press has no 
 hesitancy in telling us, that we have 
 some there now. But even if it 
 should happen, as happen it would 
 not, that blockheads might at any 
 time be in the majority, they would 
 act well, nevertheless, viz., as a 
 wholesome, natural, and representa- 
 tive block to the selfish and class 
 legislation of brainy and grasping 
 monopolists or idle proteges. 
 
 As a miniature of the larger body,
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 141 
 
 look at the beneficent operation of 
 even approximately comprehensive 
 representation in our state legislature 
 now in session. The rural members 
 hold the balance of power. Their 
 superior numbers in the state make 
 their superiority in the state legis- 
 lature a matter of plain and natural 
 justice. Their power was shown by 
 the defeat of the bill to establish a 
 state game commission. The bill 
 provided for the appointment of ten 
 game protectors, among whom over 
 $10,000 was to be annually distrib- 
 uted, or $1,000 apiece, and travel- 
 ling expenses, simply for gadding 
 over the state, making free with the 
 lands (and perhaps the ladies) of the 
 farmers, and enjoying themselves 
 generally as free and jolly good 
 huntsmen. Over $10,000 of your 
 taxes and mine and the farmers', to 
 furnish ten idle but shrewd fellows
 
 142 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 with a prolonged picnic ! But the 
 farmers were on the floor and in fair- 
 ly proportionate numbers to defeat 
 this obnoxious bill. All glory to the 
 country lads ! Hurrah for the agra- 
 rians ! The defeat of this bill 
 alarmed, it is publicly reported, 
 many of the city members of the 
 house, and they soon became willing 
 for the first time this session to make 
 terms with the grangers ! And now, 
 thank God ! these same sound and 
 solid rustics are turning their atten- 
 tion to the liquor men, and instead 
 of making up the deficit in the state 
 treasury by withholding or reducing 
 the appropriations for education, they 
 want to do it by increasing the taxes 
 on the bibulous brethren. Hurrah 
 for the aggressive agrarians ! It 
 would be a celestial blessing for this 
 country if some of the good, conserv- 
 ative, sound, common sense of our
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 143 
 
 patriotic and level-headed farmers 
 could have an opportunity to air it- 
 self in our national legislative halls, 
 and with its fresh country breezes 
 drive out certain noxious vapors 
 therein and ventilate those stuffy and 
 stifling apartments. 
 
 Industrial and professional repre- 
 sentation would certainly be more 
 comprehensive and equitable. It 
 would absolutely abolish gerryman- 
 dering and all possibility of it. It 
 would render possible the enactment 
 of laws for curbing stock inflation by 
 corporations. It would strike a tell- 
 ing blow at the omnivorous greed 
 and shameless bribery of trusts and 
 combines. It would, in the most nat- 
 ural manner, provide for the adequate 
 representation of minorities, which, 
 says John Stuart Mill, " 'is an essen- 
 tial part of democracy, for no real 
 democracy, nothing but a false show
 
 144 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 of democracy, is possible without it." 
 Industrial and professional represen- 
 tation would logically result in more 
 equitable and comprehensive legisla- 
 tion. In short, industrial and profes- 
 sional representation would be a Nem- 
 esis to oppressors and the " sword of 
 the Lord and of Gideon " to the op- 
 pressed. 
 
 The wronged, therefore, have it in 
 their own power to right their wrongs, 
 and their most effective weapon is not 
 the strike, nor the bullet, but 
 
 THE BALLOT. 
 
 If walking delegates would but urge 
 this legal and lawful means of redress 
 and abandon their contemptible and 
 sensational strike and rebellion 
 schemes, incalculable good would be 
 accomplished. Or, if workmen would 
 only close their ears to the anarchistic
 
 POVERTY 1 S FACTORY. 145 
 
 incendiarism of their pseudo- friends 
 and listen to the sound advice of true 
 and broad-minded labor-leaders, such 
 as U. S. Stephens and Mr. Powderly, 
 the same end would be reached. 
 
 At one of the most important in- 
 dustrial congresses, held at Rochester, 
 N. Y., in 1874, a resolution was 
 adopted which recognized in the bal- 
 lot-box the great agency through 
 which economic wrongs can be re- 
 dressed. One of the last injunctions 
 of Grand Master Workman Stephens, 
 in his farewell address to the Knights 
 of Labor, in 1879, strongly endorsed 
 the ballot-box and scored the strike. 
 Mr. Powderly always strove hard to 
 adhere to the principles laid down by 
 him in 1883. " I will never advocate 
 a strike unless it be a strike at the 
 ballot-box," said he, " or such an one 
 as was proclaimed to the world 
 by the unmistakable sound of the 
 
 10
 
 146 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 strikers' guns on the field of Lexing- 
 ton. 'But the necessity for such a 
 strike as the latter does not exist at 
 present. The men who made the 
 name of Lexington famous in the 
 world's history were forced to adopt 
 the bullet because they did not then 
 possess the ballot. We have the 
 latter ; and if the money of the mo- 
 nopolists can influence us to deposit 
 our ballot in favor of our enemies, if 
 we cannot be depended on to go 
 quietly to the polling booth and sum- 
 mon to our aid moral courage enough 
 to deposit a little piece of paper in 
 our own interest, how can it be ex- 
 pected of us to summon physical 
 courage enough to do battle for our 
 rights, as did our fathers at Lexing- 
 ton ? " 
 
 Workingmen have the ballot ; but, 
 as Mr. Powderly suggests, and he 
 ought to know, they do not have the
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 147 
 
 independence, wisdom, manhood, and 
 courage to use it against their-shrewd 
 and powerful oppressors. ' ' That re- 
 forms sought by labor can be secured 
 through legislation " is the private 
 conviction and public teaching of 
 Grand Master Workman Sovereign, 
 to which we trust he will always 
 consistently adhere, it should be 
 a source of devout gratulation 
 to all law-abiding citizens that 
 the working classes are coming to 
 view the situation and its demands 
 in this light. I consider such expres- 
 sions, issuing from the lips of labor- 
 leaders, far more of a rainbow of 
 promise than the turbulence which 
 stirs Lord Macaulay's poetical ad- 
 miration. "If workingmen would 
 strike and strike hard just one day at 
 the ballot-box, it would do more good 
 than a whole year's strike by refusing 
 to work," says the Chicago Sentinel,
 
 148 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 an organ of their own. The toilers 
 have good friends who give good ad- 
 vice, but they do not take it, apply it, 
 or gain by it. 
 
 Oh " would some power the giftie 
 gie" them to look and learn from 
 recent events. Indeed, we can all 
 learn a lesson and take courage from 
 what has been accomplished in Eng- 
 land by the creation of Parish Coun- 
 cils secured through control of the 
 London County Council, a control 
 which resides in more comprehensive 
 representation gained by the ballot. 
 This Parish Council deserves more 
 than a mere passing word of mention. 
 There are in England over 7,000 of 
 these councils, which are really local 
 governments. The first election took 
 place last December (1894), and the 
 results, as stated in a recent number 
 of the Contemporary Review, show 
 that about 15,000 of that class of per-
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 149 
 
 sons who are engaged in various 
 forms of labor have actually entered 
 into authority. Farm hands, mechan- 
 ics, small storekeepers, and farmers 
 have swept the field. "Certainly," 
 comments the editor of the Philadel- 
 phia Ledger, " the recent English leg- 
 islation and elections have worked a 
 peaceful revolution in English local 
 government, which cannot fail to 
 make itself felt in increasing the labor 
 and working element in Parliament, 
 and quickening the growing demand 
 for further legislation in favor of the 
 working classes at the expense of 
 property and vested interests. The 
 new Parish Councils can assess and 
 levy taxes at the expense of the owners 
 of the land for the benefit of the work- 
 ing people. The schemes on foot for 
 making still further inroads by en- 
 hanced taxation of land and houses in 
 London may yet be enacted into law,
 
 150 PO VER TY'8 FA CTOB Y. 
 
 and then the revolution, which is 
 still confined to the rural districts, 
 will be on trial in the great me- 
 tropolis, which is just about making 
 a new experiment in local govern- 
 ment." 
 
 I say, therefore, standing on the 
 heights of recent events both in Eng- 
 land and in our own state legisla- 
 ture, we can catch a glimpse of the 
 Promised Land, the land of more 
 equitable distribution, a condition 
 where official positions of legislative 
 power, and of wealth regulated and 
 controlled thereby, will be more 
 justly and evenly distributed. Com- 
 prehensive representation effected by 
 the ballot in the hands of industrial 
 and professional electoral bodies is 
 both practicable and attainable, and 
 will bring, must bring, the blessings 
 for which reformers and all good 
 people wait and pray and labor.
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 151 
 
 As a logical deduction of the fore- 
 going, we can easily see that it is all 
 
 WASTE TIME AND ENERGY TO ABUSE 
 WEALTHY INDIVIDUALS 
 
 for the hard times, sufferings, in- 
 equalities, and injustice regnant to- 
 day. It is the economic system or 
 complexity of laws which has made 
 such a condition possible that we 
 should attack. I really cannot so 
 much blame the Goulds, Rockefellers, 
 Fields, Vauderbilts, Pullmans, 
 Sages, Greens, Armours, Astors, 
 Stewarts, etc., for taking advantage 
 of the situation as they found it, or 
 for striving by shrewdness and wire- 
 pulling to perpetuate it. If they had 
 not done so, others would. Circum- 
 stanced as they were, you and I 
 doubtless would have done precisely 
 the same, and, like them, we should
 
 152 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 not now be found urging any change 
 in the present economic system. 
 What else could be expected of self- 
 ish human nature ? The economic 
 agitation and searching investigation 
 of this age do not arise from the 
 money- and landlords. People cry 
 only when they are hurt. Worms 
 twist only when trampled on. The 
 favored few would, if they could, 
 continue the present regime un- 
 changed until doomsday. Their 
 opinions in reference to the present 
 social and industrial problems are 
 worth, therefore, very little. It's 
 the system, consequently, and not 
 its darlings that should be the main 
 point of attack. "The existing 
 system is far from being ideal," 
 says the Kev. Washington Gladden, 
 D. D. "To every one according to 
 his power is the underlying prin- 
 ciple of the present system of dis-
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 153 
 
 tribution. Such a system cannot 
 be in accordance with the will of 
 a Father to whom the poor and 
 needy are the especial objects of 
 care." 
 
 Indeed it is amazing that the mid- 
 dle classes will permit the continu- 
 ance of a system which invites and 
 compels law-breaking and other im- 
 moralities, both at the top and at the 
 bottom, in the highest and lowest 
 strata. We have seen how it pro- 
 duces these evils at the favored top. 
 Now glance into the depths. Is it 
 indeed not a queer condition of 
 affairs which obliges an honest man, 
 who would work and wants work, to 
 wander chilled, hungry, and home- 
 less in the streets at night, yet fur- 
 nishes him with warmth, lodging, 
 food, and clothing the moment he 
 becomes a criminal ? The New York 
 papers published an item of how,
 
 154 POVERTY 1 S FACTORY. 
 
 "having sought relief and work in 
 vain from organizations and individ- 
 uals, on Sunday night " (in February, 
 1895) " a poor devil broke a $75 plate- 
 glass window in the shop of a Nassau 
 Street tailor, from which he stole 
 $20 worth of clothing. For this he 
 was arrested and locked up in the 
 station-house, and there thanked 
 God that at last he could be thawed 
 out and have his stomach full of 
 relishable food." If the present sys- 
 tem of society and civilization makes 
 it impossible for an honest man to 
 support himself, society must do it 
 for him. For a living he must and 
 will have. Society" certainly does 
 owe a man a living, if society has 
 previously robbed him of it or per- 
 mitted him to be robbed, and much 
 more so if the robbery be legal 
 robbery. 
 
 Comprehensive representation
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 155 
 
 would result in comprehensive legis- 
 lation, and comprehensive legisla- 
 tion, in comprehensive labor, i. e., 
 steady work for one and all.
 
 156 PO VER TY ' S FA CTOR Y. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A LIMIT TO ALL THINGS. 
 
 " THE most glaring sign of our 
 national corruption is the rapid 
 growth of economic inequality. Even 
 under a monarchical form of govern- 
 ment the concentration of powers 
 into the hands of a few is considered 
 dangerous, but in a democracy it is 
 far more dangerous ; it is fatal to the 
 very existence of the state." So 
 says the brainy author of " The Eise 
 of the Swiss Republic." 
 
 If the forces which create these 
 abnormal extremes of wealth and 
 poverty are allowed to work on un- 
 checked, blind, ignorant, or preju- 
 diced indeed must be he who cannot
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 157 
 
 foresee the inevitable and disastrous 
 result to society and the nation. If 
 laws continue to be of the few, for 
 the few, and by the few, the time will 
 arrive when the limit of endurance 
 will be reached ; when patience on 
 the part of the oppressed will cease 
 to be a virtue ; when civilization and 
 society will become top-heavy, an 
 immense mass of gold at the top, air 
 and water at the bottom ; and when 
 in short it will collapse and enter the 
 horrors and throes of a revolutionary 
 new birth. If the disintegrating 
 forces at present at work are not 
 checked by the ballot, they must and 
 will be by the bullet. We are surely 
 and steadily approaching either a ref- 
 ormation or a revolution. The pres- 
 ent creation of extremes will, if not 
 counteracted, go forward until a ratio 
 is reached which will be in the very 
 nature of things intolerable. To this,
 
 158 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 common sense, reason, and history 
 alike bear abundant testimony. 
 
 "When Rome went down 1,800 
 men owned all the world. When 
 Babylon went down two per cent 
 of her population owned all the 
 wealth. Already in the United States 
 three-fifths of the entire wealth is 
 owned by 31,000 persons," and, as 
 stated in the Supreme Court, two per 
 cent of our citizens have secured con- 
 trol of ninety per cent of the earning 
 capacities of all the rest. In fact, so 
 sensitive has the general status be- 
 come, that so high an authority as 
 Mr. Justice Brown of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States expressed 
 the fear that the decision against the 
 constitutionality of the Income Tax 
 might " prove the first step towards 
 the submergence of the liberties of 
 .the people in a sordid despotism of 
 wealth, and is fraught with immeas-
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 159 
 
 urable danger to the future of the 
 country," and led his colleague, Mr. 
 Justice White, to speak of "the red 
 spectre of revolution shaking the 
 foundations of the Union," and elic- 
 ited the solemn strictures of Mr. 
 Justice Harlan of the same high 
 tribunal when he put the forcible 
 question, " Is a given body of people 
 in one corner of the United States, 
 although owning vast properties, 
 from which uncounted millions are 
 regularly derived, of more conse- 
 quence in the eye of the constitution 
 and of the judicial tribunals of the 
 land than the like number of people 
 in other parts of the country who do 
 not enjoy the same prosperity ? Are 
 those in whose behalf arguments are 
 made" (i. e., the very wealthy) " that 
 rest upon favoritism, by the law- 
 making power, to .mere property and 
 to particular sections of the country,
 
 160 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 aware that they are provoking a con- 
 test which, in some countries, has 
 swept away, in a tempest of frenzy 
 and passion, existing social organiza- 
 tions and put in peril all that was 
 dear to the friends of law and order ?" 
 
 Let the reader ever rememher that 
 these are not the groundless utter- 
 ances of anarchists, communists, or 
 revolutionary lahor-leaders of the 
 Eugene V. Debs stripe ; but the in- 
 telligent convictions and deliberate 
 declarations of cool and calm thinkers 
 who enjoy the honor of surveying 
 the situation from the heights of one 
 of the most dispassionate judicial 
 rostra on earth. 
 
 I repeat the words of the Hon. W. 
 J. Gaynor : "The prime object of 
 government is to promote distrib- 
 utive justice, and thereby render 
 the governed stable and content, and 
 no government which does not do
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 161 
 
 this may, in the nature of things, 
 long endure." "The freest govern- 
 ment cannot long endure," said 
 Daniel Webster, " where the tend- 
 ency of the law is to create a rapid 
 accumulation of property in the hands 
 of a few, and to render the masses of 
 people poor and dependent." 
 
 As long therefore as we permit 
 such concentration of wealth and 
 consequent impoverishment to con- 
 tinue, so long we are, though perhaps 
 unconsciously but none the less really, 
 swinging a cycle of historical same- 
 ness, and treading in the footsteps 
 of Egypt, Babylon, and Eome, in the 
 ruins of whose once glorious palaces 
 and seemingly impregnable fortresses 
 the lizard now makes his home and 
 the serpent crawls betimes as king. 
 
 To my mind one of the most signifi- 
 cant and serious signs of the times 
 
 is the fact that labor unions are 
 it
 
 162 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 strongly urging their men to with- 
 draw membership from the National 
 Guard. Such a startling resolution 
 without explanation attached was 
 unanimously passed February 15th, 
 1895, by the United Mine Workers in 
 national convention assembled, under 
 the spirited leadership of Pres. John 
 McBride. This action seems to be 
 nothing less than a quiet, prophetic 
 preparation for some impending 
 denoiiement, a taking of sides in ad- 
 A^ance for some approaching struggle. 
 Else, why withdraw from so patriotic 
 an organization as the National 
 Guard ? 
 
 All these potent signs of the times, 
 the growing discontent, the increas- 
 ing perplexity, the general feverish- 
 ness, the silent but steady exertion of 
 opposing parties, plainly tell us that 
 forces of destruction "swifter and 
 more terrible than those that have
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 103 
 
 shattered every preceding civilization 
 are already menacing ours ; that if 
 it does not quickly rise to a higher 
 moral level ; if it does not in deed as 
 in word become a Christian civiliza- 
 tion," the handwriting of Omnip- 
 otent Justice must sooner or later 
 flame out the awful word " TEKEL," 
 "Thou art weighed in the balances 
 and art found wanting."
 
 164 POVEETY' S FACTOR T. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE DUTY OP THE CHURCH AND THE 
 CLERGY. 
 
 WHAT shall be the attitude of the 
 Christian Church to the issues at 
 present and consequent ? 
 
 First. It should not be an attitude 
 of proud infallibility. It is humili- 
 ating indeed to contemplate the fal- 
 libility, not of the Master's Christian- 
 ity, but of that of His professed fol- 
 lowers. Col. T. W. Higginson rings 
 the changes on this subject when he 
 says : ' ' With the seething problems 
 of social reform penetrating all our 
 community and raising the question 
 whether one day the whole system of 
 competition under which we live may
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 165 
 
 not be swept away as absolutely as 
 the feudal system disappeared before 
 it ; with the questions of drunkenness 
 and prostitution in our cities ; with 
 the mortgaged farms in our agricul- 
 tural sections ; with all these things 
 pressing upon us, it is hardly time 
 for us to assume the attitude of in- 
 fallibility before the descendants of 
 Plato or the disciples of Gautama 
 Buddha." 
 
 Secondly. The Church should not 
 swing from one extreme of proud in- 
 fallibility to the other of selfish indif- 
 ference. Prof. Francis G. Peabody 
 says that "to-day the centre of in- 
 terest lies in what we call the social 
 question, the needs and hopes of so- 
 ciety, its inequalities of condition, 
 its industrial conflicts, its dreams of 
 a better order. With a great sud- 
 denness there has spread through all 
 the civilized countries a startling
 
 1 66 POVERTY ' S FA CTOR Y. 
 
 gospel of discontent, a new restless- 
 ness, a new conception of philan- 
 thropy. The inevitable reaction 
 from the too common religious 
 avoidance of the social question has 
 come. If the Christian Church is 
 to have no interest in the social dis- 
 tresses and problems of the time, then 
 those who are most concerned ivith 
 such problems and distresses will 
 have no interest in the Christian 
 Church." "A new era is even now 
 dawning upon civilized nations, in 
 which mere international questions 
 will be overshadowed by the great 
 economic and social problems " (Mc- 
 Crackan). 
 
 Prof. Richard T. Ely, one of the 
 most celebrated modern writers on 
 economic- and social questions, says : 
 "Judaism was a social force, and its 
 aim was to establish an ideal com- 
 monwealth in which neither pauper-
 
 FACTORY. 167 
 
 ism nor plutocracy should be known. 
 But we may go even further and say 
 that it was the avowed aim that 
 Israel should be kept from both pov- 
 erty and riches. The prayer of Agur 
 is simply an expression of a national 
 ideal never fully attained, but never 
 forgotten by noble souls in Israel. 
 Every revival of pure religion meant 
 an effort to reach this ideal of na- 
 tional life. The prophets were great 
 social reformers who voiced the 
 yearning cry of the nation for right- 
 eous social conditions" 
 
 "Jesus came," continues Prof. 
 Ely, " with an avowed determination 
 to do two things to break down 
 the ceremonial law, which confined 
 within narrow limits the circle of 
 brotherhood, rendering it merely na- 
 tional, and, on the other hand, to 
 extend to universality the benefits of 
 the social law of Moses. And it was
 
 168 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 of this law He said not one jot or 
 tittle should pass away until all 
 should be fulfilled. 
 
 "Christianity then as a social 
 force seeks to universalize the socio- 
 economic institutions of the Jews. 
 The exact law of Moses, however, 
 respecting land and interest, for 
 example, cannot be reproduced in 
 modern society. But all who profess 
 allegiance to Jesus Christ must en- 
 deavor to universalize their spirit. 
 The church is a universal anti-poverty 
 society, or else she is false to her 
 founder. It is hoped that I will not 
 be misunderstood," begs Prof. Ely, 
 " in saying that she also stands for 
 anti-millionairism, because extremes 
 are subversive of brotherhood." 
 
 "Christianity," he concludes, 
 "means a mighty transformation 
 and turning of things upside down, 
 and while it seeks to bring about the
 
 POVERTY ' FACTORY. 169 
 
 most radical changes in peace, it has 
 forces within it which nothing can 
 withstand, and resistance to which is 
 sure to result in revolutionary vio- 
 lence." 
 
 It is certainly coming to be felt 
 by all progressive people that the 
 Church should arouse her mighty 
 but slumbering potencies, and should 
 now step forth from both positions, 
 that of indifference and that of in- 
 fallibility. Thinking men believe 
 that the time has come not only for 
 earnest study of the great questions 
 involved, but for practical action on 
 the part of Christ's Church. 
 
 What then, brethren,* are we, as 
 Christian preachers and embassadors 
 of the truth-loving and error-destroy- 
 ing Son of God, to do in the present 
 
 * This paper was read before the Reformed 
 Ministerium of Reading, Pa., and the author 
 was urged to IIPVP it published.
 
 170 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 deplorable state of things ? Are we 
 to convene and with solemn faces and 
 sanctimonious sighs pass resolutions 
 deeply deploring the situation? 
 While we go on deploring, the devil 
 goes on damning. What are we to 
 do? Are we to investigate condi- 
 tions, discover the gigantic and 
 strongly entrenched evils, expose 
 them publicly, and thus warn, in- 
 struct, educate, and arouse the peo- 
 ple ? Surely so. That is one power- 
 ful push the ministry can give 
 towards hastening the coming re- 
 formation or reconstruction. 
 
 But is that all we can do ? No, 
 certainly not. We can all personally, 
 as citizens, leap down from our 
 pulpits and come forth from the 
 quiet and congenial seclusion of our 
 studies, and enter right into the midst 
 of the existing muddle and take a 
 hand in the fray ourselves. Says the
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 171 
 
 Eev. Dr. Parkhurst, unquestionably 
 the foremost living authority on the 
 question of the preacher's place in 
 politics :" Men are not only under 
 obligations to stand up and declare 
 what ought to be done, and what the 
 collective character of the community 
 ought to be, but they are bound to 
 stand forth in the midst of the com- 
 munity as men of God, to become the 
 channels that shall make the attain- 
 ment of our civic destiny a realized 
 fact." The author of " Swiss Solu- 
 tions of American Problems" calls 
 attention to the fact that "Zwingli 
 began his work as a political re- 
 former ; his first efforts were directed 
 against political abuses, and some of 
 his noblest words were spoken in the 
 cause of pure government. It was 
 not till he found all his exertions in 
 this field baffled by ecclesiastical in- 
 trigues that he began to attack cer-
 
 172 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 tain doctrines of the Church." And 
 Zwingli was a Reformed preacher. 
 The great reformation commenced in 
 the political sphere. 
 
 When lives are to be saved from 
 shipwreck, the life-savers don't carry 
 a baby organ or brass band down to 
 the beach, and all sitting around it 
 feelingly sing, " Rescue the perish- 
 ing, care for the dying. " No. With 
 proper appliances they plunge into 
 the raging surf themselves and seek 
 to save the lost, hand to hand. Simi- 
 larly, when the Divine One yearned 
 to save a perishing race, He didn't 
 mass the celestial choirs, harpists, 
 elders, and countless myriads of 
 angels on the walls of heaven, and 
 directing them to gaze down and be- 
 hold the suffering sons of men sink- 
 ing and seething in sin, command 
 them to strike up the same stirring 
 song. No, no ! He came to seek and
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 173 
 
 to save the lost. He came! He 
 came ! He didn't, cowardlike, seek a 
 substitute or organize a society to do 
 this work for Him, so as to keep His 
 own hands clean and His dignity un- 
 compromised ! No. He came ! Came 
 ri<jlit clown into the miserable mud- 
 dle, and fought and bled and died 
 there ! 
 
 Duty, love, courage, country, con- 
 sistency, Christ, demand that, until 
 industrial and professional represen- 
 tation is a verity in this land, 
 preachers should go down as or- 
 dinary citizens to do an ordinary cit- 
 izen's duty, and should appear at the 
 primaries as well as at the polls. 
 If it is not dishonorable to vote for 
 political minions at the polls, it is 
 certainly not dishonorable to fight 
 against them at the primaries. The 
 need of the hour is the Christianiza- 
 tion of politics and the destruction of
 
 174 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 mere partisanship. Preachers at the 
 primaries would largely contribute 
 to purify politics, especially if they 
 can induce their leading laymen to 
 go along, and all pull together, not 
 for party, but for principle. The 
 primaries are the primaries. Until 
 something better can be done, purify 
 these little fountains, and the great 
 stream of their commingling will 
 purify itself. 
 
 In 1861 President Lincoln issued 
 his famous proclamation appointing 
 a day for solemn fasting and prayer. 
 That proclamation had no small 
 effect in rousing the clergy to their 
 duty in the then dreadful impending 
 crisis. To-day the country mutely 
 appeals again. In the impending 
 crisis men are instinctively turning 
 to the Church and asking, ' ' Is there 
 no help in Zion ? Is there no balm in 
 Gilead?" Should not the ministry
 
 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 175 
 
 be a fearless voice in the wilderness, 
 and a speaking conscience in the 
 land ? Should not Christian preach- 
 ers more heroically take the place 
 of the Old Testament prophets, and 
 voice, ceaselessly voice, the yearning 
 cry of the nation's millions for right- 
 eous social conditions ? Would to 
 God they would do this, even this ! 
 But they ought to do something 
 more, viz., an average citizen's duty. 
 This they will do if they have any 
 affectionate regard whatever for 
 their municipality, their state, their 
 country, and their children. 
 
 No more fitting words can be 
 found with which to close this paper 
 than those uttered shortly before his 
 untimely death by that conscientious, 
 progressive, and thoroughly Chris- 
 tian brother of ours, Dr., or I should 
 rather say, citizen Phillips Brooks. 
 He was addressing intelligent lay-
 
 176 POVERTY'S FACTORY. 
 
 men, but I shall apply his burning 
 words to the Christian ministry at 
 large. This then is that consecrated 
 man's last verbal legacy to us : 
 
 "I plead with you for all that 
 makes strong citizens. First, clear 
 convictions, deep, careful, patient 
 study of the government under 
 which we live. And then a clear 
 conscience, as much ashamed of 
 public as of private sin, as ready to 
 hate and rebuke and vote down cor- 
 ruption in the state, in your own 
 party, as you would be in your own 
 church ; as ready to bring the one as 
 the other to the judgment of a living 
 God. And then unselfishness ; an 
 earnest and exalted sense that you 
 are for the land, and not alone 
 the land for you ; something of the 
 self-sacrifice which they showed who 
 died for us from '61 to '65. And 
 then activity ; the readiness to wake
 
 PO VER TY'S FA CTOR Y. 177 
 
 and watch and do a citizen 'a work 
 untiringly, counting it as base not 
 to vote at an election, not to vorl- 
 ayainst a bad official, or to u'orTc for 
 a good one, as it would have been to 
 shirk a battle in the war. Such 
 strong citizenship let there be among 
 tis ; such knightly doing of our 
 duties on the field of peace." 
 
 12
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed. 
 
 OCT 2 3 1989' 
 
 RFC'D Ln-!)Rl 
 
 NOV 9
 
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