Visit the parks of any cities, towns or small villages and you can find
sitting on the benches man after man who is unable to solve the problem
of an honest existence. There he is, honest, clean, and worthy of good
citizenship, unable to find labor that will keep him an honor to
society. What will become of him in this land of boasted opportunity and
liberty? Plenty for all; but monopolized and organized until the
laboring man is almost ostracized. Look at his countenance, clear cut,
manly and open, haggard, yes, but from what? From worry, loss of sleep,
lack of food, responsibility of a family without funds, etc. But withal
you find no look of dissipation, no odor of liquor, no foul language,
and still with all these excellent qualities of meritorious citizenship
he is sinking. How long will he stand it?
Were you ever in a condition of this kind when any way you turned you
were outfigured. How long can a man have a thorn like this continually
getting deeper and deeper into his flesh before he will make a grasp for
it, and endeavor to release the pain? Where is the cause? What is wrong
with our wide heralded economic system? This condition being true of the
man with a family how alarming to the young man of today without a
family? Show me any incentive or inducement for the common ordinary man
of today without funds to cause him to establish a home and rear a
family under the grand old Stars and Stripes, and I’ll show you a man
that loses worse than a bankrupt in the finer sense of the word.
Without the establishment of homes this nation can not stand. No matter
how frugal a man is, no matter how economical his habits you can give
him the most promising part and he can not marry and rear a family
because at every angle he is beaten. What is he going to do? Free land
is almost gone, food stuffs are high, all his needs are expensive; how
can he make it? Every line he wishes to enter is crowded! Reason for
yourself and see if this is not true.
When you talk of large families, who raises them but the poor people and
this will soon be eliminated. If the poor man raises one child he is
doing more than his duty to society than the rich man. The expense is
such a night-mare and horror to a common, ordinary and honest man to
provide the necessaries of life for his family that I sometimes shudder
and feel sorry that I caused children to be born, fought for a home,
paid my debts, and lived clean. I wouldn’t want to do it again for my
country, and I love her as I do the man of Galilee.
I fear America is no longer another word for opportunity as was said by
the beloved Emerson, unless she helps him to establish homes on the
public domain by loaning him money at a low rate on long time periods
and keep him at work and help him along and not foreclose when he is
doing his best to win. He’ll win, give him a chance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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