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Show 03 : Ui Can You Beat It? j Have we rread somewhere, "They make broad their phylacteries, phylac-teries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, and love the uppermost roorhs at feasts"? For some reason this came into our mind when we read what Bill Spofford, secretary of the Church League for Industrial Democracy, said in the Witness about a great philanthropist. ( Bill had just been reading a letter from Miss Elinor Kellogg, working among striking miners in Tennessee for the Church Emergency Committee. "Never have- I seen people in a more wretched, distressing state than these people up there," she wrote, "Barefooted, ragged, sick, and above all t hungry. Babies are dying of the bloody flux to the right and to the left. People are ill with pellagra on every side. 2 With no money how can the people buy either medicine or gas? So the .babies perish. And not only the - babies." And much more of the same sort. Then but let Bill tell the story: With this story fresh in mind I pick up the morning newspaper and read a column story headed, "John Markel Philanthropist, Coal Man, Die$." The story states that "in the test years of his life Mr. Markel was known for the immense volume of hie philanthropy," philan-thropy," with' gifts to unmerous churches predominating. Indeed his-philanthropieS-were so- great the newspaper states, that many people forget the embattled coal operator of eaj-ly days, the man who stated that "he would rather fight than eat"- and who combat-ted combat-ted strikes and arbitration with troops to deal with strikers but called upon the" state to furnish equally bitter pertinacity. He persistently refused the government's govern-ment's request that disputes be arbitrated, always contending for "the inalienable right of man to sell his labor at what price he desires." The workers, selling their labor under this' "inalienable "inalien-able right," have been reduced to circumstances that are described so graphically by 'Miss Kellogg. On the other hand, the newspaper in eulogizing Mr. Markel, saw fit to' descrbe the apartment in which he lived alone in New York "His apartment, which cost a million dollars to arrange and equip, covers two floors, with a frontage of 100 feet on Fifth Avenue Ave-nue and 200 feet on Eighth- second sec-ond Street. It has eighteen servants' serv-ants' rooms, twenty-four baths, three kitchens, four ; elevators, and twenty-six telephones."- Babies Bab-ies of miners dying of bloody flux. A coal baron who devotes his life to fighting the workers, dies alone in his million dollar apartment in New York City surrounded by twenty-four baths and twenty-six telephones. No wonder there are communists. No wonder, indeed! But, unfortunately, unfort-unately, it's an old old story. And it will take a good many "new. deals" to change it. The social prophets have been trying it a long time and once a Man died on Calvary in the attemp. The Churchman |
