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Show Howe About: Poverty A Sordid Tale A Popular Rogue . Bell Symllcato.-WNU Soivice By ED HOWE T7YTRY little while I encounter li- the statement in American print that 73 per cent of citizens die, as paupers ; if not in the poor house, theu as helpless burdens on grumbling grum-bling relatives. It is a disgraceful charge to make in a country as good as this. How near true is it? And how much of the blame attaches to the unhappy unhap-py 73 per cent? The other day I attended the funeral fu-neral of a man I had known some vears. For six months he had been a charity patient at a public institution (and a very unpopular one, as he had an ugly temper). For 30 years he had a salary never below be-low $40 a week, and light and pleasant pleas-ant work, yet was never a week ahead of the hounds. Within a year of his death he took a long trip on borrowed money, in an automobile the mortgage took after the funeral. fu-neral. Mortgages also emptied his house of all the furniture worth anything. I have known him to give "parties" on money be should and might have saved to pay his funeral fu-neral expenses. He jazzed his music, his job, his life. He might have owned a shop of his own 30 years ago, but was always expecting a "raise" when a reduction was steadily more probable. prob-able. It is not an unusual case; the disturbing figures quoted may not be too high. I know an old fellow who, disposed dis-posed to do his duty to the unemployed unem-ployed the past winter, hired aD automobile driver he did not need, because the fellow had a wife and two children. In one night the man stole a car, held up a filling station, and married mar-ried a street walker, and is now in jail at the expense of overburdened tax-payers. Before the state is through with him trial, rehearing, deputies to take him to prison, officers offi-cers to guard and feed him, chaplain's chap-lain's to pray for him his cost to the public will be several thousand dollars more. It is a sordid tale, but true. What was in that man's brain cavity? Did his parents spoil him, or was it the help howling in publications and conventions, and everybody saying that civilization is a failure? I know a stout young man with excellent natural intellectual equipment equip-ment who for 20 years has been a contemptible scoundrel in all his relations re-lations with his mother. He reduced her to poverty, and she went to work, 'but he refused to ; he lives off her work, and Is mean to her. He is a disreputable loafer, yet the women say "there is nothing noth-ing vicious about the boy," and rather like him. They even severely criticize his mother for "spoiling" him, although she has done nothing except love him, and coax him with tears In her eyes to behave himself. I have had In my possession some months a book called "Bystander," by Maxim Gorky. Although Gorky is a famous writer, and he says this book of more than seven hundred pages is his final message to the world, I have taken it up and put it down, without complete reading a hundred times. I do not know what his final and most important message to the world is; I do not know what he is "driving at." Occasionally, Oc-casionally, when I pick the book up, I find a good thing the best so far on page 4S3. One of the male characters devotes eleven lines to a criticism of women, and, at the conclusion of his condemnatory remarks re-marks a woman present asks : "But more specifically, what is It you are trying to say?" In nearly everything I read I wonder what writers are trying to say. The people are gabbling constantly, con-stantly, but half the time I wonder won-der what they are trying to say; regret they do not talk less, a.nd more Intelligently, simply and effectively. ef-fectively. Half the stuff one sees In the papers is ridiculous; the percentage is larger in books and conversation, ns any Intelligent reader or listener can testify. It seems to me managers of the professional charities should Issue a card of thanks to those Americans Ameri-cans who have kept out of the bread lines, and helped a Tittle In relieving the misfortunes of others. During an exceptionally hard winter win-ter a man who maintains his family fam-ily respectably, and does not bother his neighbors for assistance Is an especially good citizen. He 'should receive an occasional kind word of appreciation, Instead of daily Insults In-sults from professional charity workers that he Is a stingy brute who does not Do His Duty. I saw an estimate the other day that the average man's world consists con-sists of eight or ten miles of scenery, and that he knows possibly a hundred people, only a dozen or two of them intimately concernin" him. ... Yet with what awesome whispers we speak of the unknown and mysterious world about which we know absolutely nothing! |