Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 19, No. 11, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 16, 1899 Page: 1 of 16
sixteen pages : ill. ; page 15 x 11 in. Digitized from 35 mm. microfilm.View a full description of this newspaper.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
VoLXIX No, U.
DALLAS, TEXAS, THURSDAY, MARCH 16 1899.
$1 Per Annum*
an age op pauperism.
'1
A
The march of civilization has
wrought some wonderful changes in
the constitution and complexion of
civilized man, the history of the last
one hundred years being replete with
evidences of this fact. The invention
of machinery has revolutionized ec-
onomic life, whereas the ideas of lib-
ery and equality, embodied in the right
of popular suffrage, have wrought no
less a signal change in the political
organization and life of men. A wider
recognition of these rights and a larger
conquest of nature—who will deny
that these are material elements and
evidences of progress? By the aid of
machinery our productive power has
been enormously increased, and when
we consider that mechanical applianc-
es have been introduced into almost
every field of human endeavor, and
that the process of invention is still
going forward, with no apparent lim-
it to its progress, it would seem that
we have made immense economic
strides.
But, while this is true, has our so
cial progress kept pace with these rad-
ical industrial changes? Is it easier
for men to live well and be better for
these inci'eased facilities for producing
the necessaries and comforts of life?
The honest, conscientious student of
human affairs will answer no. No oth-
er deduction is open to him. After
scanning the industrial field and mak-
ing due note of the changes therein
wrought, he will be forced to admit
that the struggle for existence has
been made harder for the great ma-
jority of our fellow men.
Under the conditions of modern in-
dustrial and economic life, the hours
of the laborer are less his own than
they ever were; he is still the slave of
the treadmill, while the danger and
distress of his work amid the whir and
rattle of machinery, has been increas-
ed a hundred fold.
The artisan of half a century ago
exists no longer; he has been trans-
formed into a mere industrial automa
ton, and has become a part of the ma-
chine at which he toils. His chidren,
driven by the exigencies of existence,
to enter the industrial field at an early
age, are deprived of all opportunities
of education, and a free and full de
velopment of their minds and per30Qs;
and his wife and daughters taken from
the home and its duties, are often
forced into the unwholesome and Im-
moral atmosphere of the factory or the
sweat sop, to help keep the wolf ol
hunger from the door.
The wage earner is forced, by hard
and unrelenting conditions, to work
for a pittance, a minimum return for
his labor, and even then he must lie
glad to be employed at all; for there
are times when, with the best of In-
tentions and earnest effort, hundreds
and thousands can find no work.
Our age has been designated as one
of industrialism. It should be more
fitttingly called one of pauperism, in
as much as the economic causes over
which they have no control, force the
masses of men to live in a state o'
uncertainty and destitution, are pe
culiar to our age.
One of the most eminent writers
on sociology gives it as his delib-
erate opinion that the industrial ord
er under which we live necessitates a
consumption of human beings, a sac
rifice of the working energies in the
interest of capital which, by its ab-
sorption of the vital forces of individ-
uals, by the debilitation of entire gen-
erations, by a dissolution of the fam-
ily, a degradation of morals, and a
destruction of a desire to work, may
prove a menace to our entire civiliza-
tion. It would be needless to detail
the mass of facts which confirm this
opinion, for we can see it borne out
without the assurance of official statis-
tics in every large community of our
own land and the civilized world. Here
is this strange spectacle to which ev
ery intelligent man can bear witness.
We live in an age in which the feeble
arm of man is supplanted by untiring
iron sinews, by mechanical contrivan-
ces which transcend his strength and
skill, a hundred, yea, a thousand fold,
and yet it is a fact that those who la-
bor waste much faster than in the
most primitive days of the technical
sciences, because they are forced to
work under a continual strain, in uu
wholesome surroundings, and for an
insufficient pay. There are thousands
who would be glad to produce, with
their own hands, the things they need,
but in this age of mechanism they find
no opportunity, and we live face to
face with the dire and cruel fact that
at a time when our warehouses are
creaking under the load of fabrics,
and our granaries are bursting with
the produce of the field, the largest
number of workmen are suffering the
greatest want; when most is produced,
the most have least to consume. We
do not despair of the ultimate outcome
of the present condition, but, as yet,
we see no such improvement in the
lower strata of society, no such ten-
dency toward a higher standard of
living, as to justify us to speak of so
cial progress.
The age of teuaausm and personal
vassalage is past, and has given way
to that of industrial slavery, in which
we now live.
The middle classes, those who are
possessed of the modest yet independ-
ent means, enabling them to do bus
iness upon their own account, those
who constitute the strength and back-
bone of every country, are growing
less and less; they are forced from
their position of independence and
are crowding and glutting the labor
market. The small tradesmen and
producers are being crushed under the
juggernaut of capitalistic competition
We see this movement going on un-
der our very eyes; every day, almost
every hour, furnishes us with frerh
proofs of this process of transforma
tion which we are undergoing in this
age of mechanical industrialism, nor do
we see, if the present economic sys-
tem continues, where the forces are
to come from which shall check it,
or correct the evils which spring from
it.
What becomes of the enormous
wealth which is created by the im-
proved technical agencies of our
times? It is being concentrated nnd
massed in the hands of a compara-
tively small number of individuals who
by combining are gradually getting
control, not only of the chief business
enterprises of the land, but who, by
the gigantic power which they wield,
and which reaches out in every direc-
tion, are making themselves felt at
the seat of government and in the
che councils of the nation. It is al-
most an open secret that the money
magnates of the land are shaping the
present policy of our country. We do
not compain of the wonderful develop-
ment of the technical and mechanical
agencies which distinguish our age,
and which have multiplied the wealth
of the nations, nor would we, if we
could, return to the more simple and
primitive condition of our ancestors,
but we do deplore the fact that the im-
mense resources of wealth, are so un-
equally and unjustly distributed in the
world; we lament a condition of things
in which it is possible for a few to
amass fabulous millions, whereby they
can - ontrol the very sources of life,
while millions of human beings must
live In a state of actual need and
starvation, and must at all times be
beholden and subservient to money-
bags for the miserable pittance to keep
body and soul to get her.
We have yet to learn the all-import-
ant lesson of the solidarity of the hu-
man race. We have yet to heed and
practice the principle of ethics and re-
ligion that men are not mere machin-
es; that they are our brothers, and
that we have no right 10 buy and sell
their labor, as we wou'd a horse or
a cow, at the very lovest market price.
The ethics of the r3iif,'i ;.i of the Naz-
arene are pre-eminently of a social
character, .and It is tin crowning dis-
tinction of the earlier Christianity that
it aimed at rearing human society up-
on a basis of justice and equity, so
that every child of God might have
his share of the common patrimony,
and,being free from the house of boud-
age, from the shackle? of want and
misei'y, might bring to the worship of
his Maker the love and homage of a
free man's soul. One of the ancients
said that he accounted himself hap-
py that he was not Adam, for the bib-
lical first man had to chic for all his
own wants, whereas a hundred busy
hands brought to him his daily ncfcds.
and another regarded the fact that av
ery man had his daily bread as a
greater miracle and a more convincing
proof of the omnipotence of God than
the dividing the waters of the Rod Sea.
These ancient sages had grasped the
principle of co-operation, and under-
stood its Importance in the upbuilding
and maintenance of human society.
We have forgotten this simple and
fundamental truth, and have given
ourselves, tooth and nail to the oppo-
site doctrine of a cruel, grasping, ruin-
ous competition.
Let us consider for a moment. An
individual of himself produces noth-
ing. He can lay hold of things which
he finds ready to hand in the realms of
nature; he can hunt game and catch
fish, and if he does nothing else, he Is
a savage and nothing more. But in
a civililled state every product of an
individual is at the same time the pro-
duct of the community and of its en-
tire history, if for no other reason
than that every person, every moral
agent owes his development to the
society in which he has grown up.
If, as John Stuart Mill has shown, and
everyone may see for himself an end-
less number of people must co-operate
in bringing about the conditions by
which a loaf of bread is produced, we
can readily see that that which we call
national wealth must be the product
of the combined efforts, not only of
all the individuals constituting a na-
tion, but of all the people in the world
with whom we live in any sort of a
relationship. Take the greatest ge-
nius imaginable, the man with a ca-
pacity for any kind of labor and put
him all by himself on a lonely island
or a sandy waste, and he will not only
not produce anything, or seek any-
thing beyond his own immediate
wants, but even those talents and ca-
pacities which he had acquired and
which he owes to his association with
his fellowman, will soon go to waste.
Thus we can be nothing, and we can
accomplish nothing, either of the low
est or of the highest functions of hu-
man civilized life, without the contin-
uous co-operation of our feUowmen.
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Newspaper.
Park, Milton. Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 19, No. 11, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 16, 1899, newspaper, March 16, 1899; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth185794/m1/1/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .