The Crime of Caste in Our CountryDavenport, Benjamin Rush
History
The Crime of Caste in Our Country
Davenport, Benjamin Rush
Social problems; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
“‘I believe the Administration has been everything it should be;
that General Harrison has been a splendid President; that his
policy has been for the good of the people; but I don’t believe
that the best man that ever lived, if he had been a Republican
and in power, could have been elected to the Presidency of the
United States this year. Up in all this section of the country,
and throughout the State, for that matter, the man who had always
before voted the Republican ticket in an independent way cast a
Democratic ballot, more because he wanted to make an experiment
than anything else. It is funny how unreasonable people are. They
don’t sit down and calmly figure for themselves, but they jump
at conclusions, and because with some of us times are hard, they
don’t stop to think who or what is responsible. I was talking
with just such a man only the other day. He was hard up, so he
claimed, but I know he has been doing business here ever since I
can remember, and has always lived and looked and acted just about
the same as he does now. He keeps a store. As near as I could get
at it, he wanted to sell everything he had to sell at a good deal
better price than it is fetching now, but he wanted everybody else
to sell to him what stuff he wanted to buy a good deal cheaper
than what he is paying for it now. He would not listen to me when
I told him that that is what everybody else wants to do; to buy
everything cheap and sell everything dear; but I told him that if
people did not buy until they could get things at their own price,
or sell until they could sell things at their own figure, it would
take but a mighty little while for everybody to starve to death.
He said he was going to vote the Democratic ticket just to see
what would happen in the next four years.
“‘Many of the quarrymen bring their boots here to be mended. They
tell me they want more money and fewer work hours. They have not
much of an idea how they are going to get them, other than that
the Democrats have told them that if Cleveland was elected they
would get what they wanted and everybody would be happy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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