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Show TWO THOUSAND GIRLS ARE WALKING THE STREETS The Salt Lake Telegram does not like the labor agitator and offers this objection: There is a class of men, members of a society In this region whose agents here are telling the men and women who work that they are slaves, thai they do not obtain their , fpir ration of the profit which employers em-ployers realize from their toll. The first curious feature to be noted of I these evangels Is that Ihey either never themselves work, or when thv i do, their labor results In a loss to their employers. Now the truth is that the growth of Salt Lake from a pastoral village to its present proportions has been due almost entirely to the wages paid employes by capital and to the In-veslmenLs In-veslmenLs of profits in one form and another. Take the Silver King company for example The first owners were all poor, all working for wages. With the llttln money they saved, they explor ed the mountains, found and developed develop-ed the great mine; they have always paid employes the. highest wages, their profits they have in great part Invested rlht here Twenty-five 3 ears ago they were of the same class as are the men whom these agitators agita-tors are telling how wronged they are. The history of almost all the other mines In the state that have been 1 opened is the same as that of the king, as Is also that-of almost every' Industry which supplies laboring men with work Hence when men go around trying to cause poor men to give up the Idea that what they have they must earn and that there Is an easier way, they are public enemies. They had better go into the homos and teach the poor the Invincibility of honest and skilled work. Female help in this city receive better wages than did the school teachers a few years ago, but 2000 poor girls are seen on the streets dally who cannot can-not boil a potato or set a table, and female help la so scarce and much Of it so worthless that a thousand families re been driven to apart ment houses in the past three years. There is some truth In what the Telegram says and yet there is a little lit-tle too much praise for the dollar. There Is not such a vast difference In men and women as our distin guished 5TTTfr"Tnf"f editor would have u. believe. True, there are men and r women who lift themselvoe up out c ot the misery of their surroundings, r but the average person Is much tho creature of environment. If you give i a laborer S bard task and there Is held out to bim no great future, that i toller will feel that his heavy burden bur-den should b In r"irt borne by oth- ers, hut let ihat same struggler have choice of vocations with the Incen-- Incen-- tlve of say business success to cre-s cre-s ate great dream to cheer him and : ho will labor on uncomplainingly It i is all well enough for ap edllor who loves his work to drop into SCStacieS i over honest toll, but put that same editor In the gutter with a pick and shovel and send him home at night to a rented hovel and his paens of praise for the dollar aa above the man will cease. The Standard does not believe In encouraging the loafer, but It does stand for the bettering of the conditions condi-tions of our laboring people general As to the 2000 poor girls seen on the streets of Salt Lake dally who cannot boil a potato, that to us proves there Is something radically defective with our civilization and that the wrong is not entirely on the side of the girls or their parents The spirit" of childhood is one of ambition ambi-tion and there must come to the average av-erage 'child more than one dark day and one great dlsconrngement before the desire to progress has been destroyed des-troyed to such a'x extent that the cnno DecomeB as wortmess as are iho 2000 on the streets of Salt Lake, as described by our contemporary. We are, astounded, accepting that statement as true, that Salt Lake does not arouse Itself and inquire into the alarming conditions of Its girls. Two thousand cases of plague on the thoroughfares of Salt Lake could not be a greater menace to the welfare of that city than the army of girls who. sweeping through Ha streets, proclaim themselves to be unTit to be a part of any house or home. nr |