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Show Evil of Economic Inequality Is More Brutal Now Even Than in Ancient Days By MAYOR JAMES M. CURLEY ol Boaton I9 humanity in the grip of evil ? Yes, according to my interpretation as to what constitutes evil. The evil of economic inequality as it applies to the struggle for a livelihood is more brutal in our day than in ancient times because of the subtle character of its concealment. In ancient times the lash of the taskmaster made death both speedy and welcome for its victim; in our day with three-quarters of the adult male population receiving an average wage of less than $600 per annum, death is slow, but nevertheless welcome because of the inability of the workingman from his meager weekly pittance to provide the necessaries essential for the prolongation of life. Of the 300,000 infants who die annually in America more than one-half one-half are victims of malnutrition and the industrial system under which prospective and nursing mothers are obliged to toil in manufacturing and mercantile establishments at a time when they should not only be the objects of tender solicitude but the recipients of the means which, it is possible pos-sible to provide for bodily health. 1 The fact that 8,000,000 women are employed in the United States, jind that more than 50 per cent of these women are engaged in what might properly be termed manual labor, is a most powerful indictment of both our economic and social systems. Jw.w.: 1 im ........ Two million children of school age are at work in the United States, and it is not an unreasonable assertion that 10 per cent of these children upon arrival at man's estate will be of little value to the community in which they live. 1 ' A livelier patriotism than that which sheds its blood willingly for flag or country is imperative, that motherhood may receive her heritage, comfort and the necessaries of life, that children may be clothed with the armor of education to combat ignorance, that man may receive income sufficient to provide for life and not mere existence, to the end that the dread specter of misery may' not steal the sunlight in its waking hours and that poverty and pauperism may not make of his slumber a hideous nightmare. |
