and healthy basis.
Evidently business wants an impoverished re -
sident trade for they do not give any assistance
in alleviating the peonage system. And because
of the crass ignorance and bull-headed prejudice,
they themselves suffer. If they are satisfied with
that condition, they should not blame any admin
istration. They should take responsibility for their
own refusal to help eradicate the evils.
-x
WHAT SHALL WE SAY OF SUCH A SYSTEM
Amend the Declaration of Indepence to in
clude the right to work as one of the inalienable
privileges of mankind was a demand voiced by
President William Green at the recent conten
tion of the American Federation of Labor in Van
couver, British Columbia.
Said President Green: “The right to work is a
sacred right that every government, no matter
what its form, must guarantee if it is to endure ”
He rebuked the national Money Bags for fail
ins to find a solution for the prsent economic cle
presion and he declared that by joining witn la
bor in its program to relieve the existing condition,
the financial system will be able to eliminate the
possibility of similar crises in the future
“We are meeting in the midst of a great in -
temational emergency,” he said. “Distress and
suffering prevail throughout the world. The dis
location of cur economic structure is so pronounc
ed that we are beginning to wonder if the system
itself has tailed.
“What shall we say of a system that relegates
men at the prime of life to the human scrap heap
and that knows no remedy for the situation than
a reduction in the standard of living?
“We cannot lift ourselves out of the misery
of depression by the reduction of wages, which
can only add to the depression.
“The economic situation must be so changed
that every man and woman may have an oppor
tunity to share in the work that is available. Me
chanical progress has made it impossible for this
to be done * * * .
“I warn the people who are exploiting the
workers that they can only drive them so far be
fore they will turn on them and destroy them.
They are taking no account of the history of na
tions in which governments have been overturned.
Revolutions grow out of the depths of hunger.”
-x
HAVE WE MADE PROGRESS?
-X
More than fifty years ago Henry George wrote
"Progress and Poverty/* Reading the following pa
tttgraphs we are bound to ask have we made any
progress:
“From all parts of the civilized world come
complaints of industrial depression; of labor con
demned to involuntary idleness; of capital massed
and wasting; of pecuniary distress among busi
ness men; of want and suffering and,anxiety
among the working classes.
“All the dull, deadening pain, all the keen,
maddening anguish, that to great masses of men
are involved in the words “hard times” afflict the
world today.
“This state of things, common to communities
differing so widely in situation, in political insti
tutions, in fiscal and financial systems, in density
of population, and in social organization, can
hardly be accounted for by local causes.
“There is distress where large standing armies
are maintained, but there is also distress where
the standing armies are nominal; there is distress
where protective tariffs stupidly and wastefully
hamper trade, but there is distress where trade
is nearly free; there is distress where autocratic
government yet prevails, but there is also distress
where political power is wholly in the hands of the
people; in countries where paper is money and in
countries where gold and silver are the only cur
rency.
“Evidently, beneath all such things as these,
we must infer a common cause.”
-x-—
POVERTY AND CRIME
-X
Students of political economy and of civil
government are agreed that poverty, misery and
crime go hand in hand. One is forced to admit
that most of the general cussedness of mankind
would evaporate if economic conditions were im
proved.
A health council investigating a representa
tive American city reported that 90,000 people of
that city live in its “submerged tenth”—that part
of the city which is dubbed the “economic grave
yard.’
Ten percent of the inhabitants of that city
live in 6 per cent of its area; it contributes 11 ppr
cent of the city’s births, but only 6 per cent the
hospital births; infant mortality reaches 16 per
cent, unemployed takes 18 per cent and it con- (
tributes 24 per cent of the city’s charity cases; 17
per cent of the city’s illigitimate births come from
that “Hell’s Kitchen, 20 per cent of juvenile delin
quency, 35 per cent of its murders and 49 per cent
of its houses of prostitution come from that bit of
Hell’s Half Acre.
Vice, crime, misfortune and unhappiness arc