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Show The Unemployed MR. GOMPERS says there are 2,000,000 men of the labor unions who were employed (i two years ago, who are now walking the i streets. We think that Is a mistake. Wo think quite half that number went to Europe Eu-rope when the depression and crash came a year and a half ago; but whether that is true or not, there are too many idle men in this coun- try, and that fact ought to be a concernment to the Federal government and every "state govern nient, for enforced idleness is the most dangerous menace to free institutions. When a man is willing will-ing to work and cannot get work, if long enough Continued the man, according to his nature be- 'r comes either an enemy of society or, his fibre & broken down, a willing mendicant. Let a proud man be forced to beg for a few months and he is wont to conclude, his pride being broken, that it Is easier to beg than to work, or, in shame and desperation, he is liable to assume that justice is dead, and that it is right for man to prey upon his fellow man. The government of course is only expected to clear obstructions from the path of the citizen, but in times of great depression, when the "great" financiers, through their manipulations, manip-ulations, have brought panic and stagnation to 1 . business, then the thought of how the destitute ones can be provided foi !s, or should be, the foremost question of the government. There is plenty of work to be done which is needed. The nation's defenses are not nearly perfect; there are millions of acres of swamp lands which engineers engi-neers say could easily be converted into fruitful fields; there are rivers which should be canalized and made navigable to relieve railroads from their overburden of freight, and to reduce the cost of transportation, and these needed works should be rushed now while poor mjen need employment. em-ployment. If necessary, the money to meet the cost should be raised by issuing bonds. Let the bonds draw 2 per cent and make them of the size , of a gold note, to be redeemed In gold twenty years hence, and let them pass from hand to hand as money. The people would be glad to accept ac-cept them. The tendency of the land is for the money interests to run to combines, to make each combine a rolling snowball to gather all the snow ' near, and the very poor have no chance. When these rolling snowballs become avalanches then 8 devastation follows, and the poor are stranded. s The thing to do is to increase general taxation, to establish an income tax and make it progres- sive, light on a thousand dollars, heavy on a mil lion, and keep the men who are willing to work employed. We hear much about conserving natural resources, re-sources, is there any resource so sacred and so rich as the labor of strong arms? Is there any other one thing so necessary as to keep every J strong arm possible in productive work? 'U And speaking of labor and those who need work, there is another class which does not work, I but which ought to. ' Wo refer to the idle rich, to those who not i being driven on by necessity, spend their days in Idleness, and the pursuit of pleasure. This idle ness is a most serious loss to the country and the world, for the lives -of such p'eople amount lo little more to the world, than the lives of pet animals. Longfellow and Emerson might have lived in Idleness, had a good time and by this time would have been forgotten. They would have missed the fame that is now theirs, but they would have missed also the joys which came of their work, compared with which all the pleasures that wealth can buy, are but Dead Sea apples. The loss to the country would have been measureless. Take away the inspiration and the incentive to try which these writings have given and will for all time to come give to the youth of this country, and who can measure the loss. Grant and Sherman had each tried business and both had failed. When the war came on one was a clerk in a tannery, the other teaching a military school. Both were at work, but neither was doing his best. The war brought to them the necessity of doing their best and 10, the result! re-sult! We suspeot they both gave up their mill lary studies when they left West Point, but then neither of them craved any military honors savo in defense of their country. If they had we should have heard of them in some foreign land. Von Motke got leave of absence, went to Turkey and organized and put in fighting form the army of the sultan. He was there a dozen years. In thai time he had reduced war to an exact science, so when under him the Prussian army struck first Schleswig-Holstein, and again Austria, I triumphed In a few week In the first war, in a day in the second, and was already for the war with France. We see all around us men who are not doing their best, and the loss to themselves and the country cannot be estimated. Gray wrote: "Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstacy the living lyre." But though he was a marvelous scholar In his own and half a dozen other tongues, all he left as a claim to ommirtal memory were a couple of fahort poems. "He died with more than half his sweetness In him." Contrast him with Milton, his eye sight gone, but still in his darkness dictating Paradise Lost! "Suppose all Americans wore doing their very best, what a land and race ours would be. |