In our cities we meet countless men, women and children with pale faces, who are starving for want of sunshine, pure air and out-door exercise. Thousands of industrious persons are forced idlers. Thousands are living in hovels and garrets unfit for a human abode. Thousands are paupers and tramps. A countless army of men, women and children are mere machines, working a long, toilsome day in a mill, factory, or workshop. A large class of women, in order to make a livelihood, are selling themselves into marriage, or for other vile purposes. Our farmers are largely spending their lives in country solitudes, toiling principally for the capitalist and landlord. A vast multitude, in fact nearly all of our so-called laborers, are toiling so hard and so long daily, for their mere material subsistence that little, if any, energy is left for personal cleanliness and mental culture. Our land tenure monopolizes the earth’s surface. Our medium of exchange which is rapidly concentrating wealth offers special privileges to the rich. Our system of education is largely cruel, unnatural and otherwise injurious. Husband and wife, parent and child, often quarrel and fight and sometimes kill each other and commit suicide. Our government is largely invasive and despotic, and principally run by politicians, who are grossly ignorant of the psychological principles of human nature. Children, on the one hand, are neglected and starving, both physically and mentally; and, on the other hand, they are tyrants and little more than grown-up babies. Care and sorrow are stamped upon nearly every brow one meets. Mothers, as a rule, are maternal slaves, feeble and care-worn. Strife, revenge and jealousy are absorbing a large share of our best energies. Much of our labor is unproductive and destructive, and most of our machinery, tools and means of transportation are manipulated in the interest of the rich. Paternalism stunts individuality, and monopoly prevents the masses from becoming prosperous. It is a well-known fact that a stupid, ignorant person, unlike an intelligent one, can bear most any burden without being galled by it. Hence all our present agitations, dissatisfactions and utterances of discontent are only so many tongues that are beginning to speak by the force of a rising intelligence and an increasing sensibility, which causes the victims slowly to become conscious of their unjust burdens.