SCRIPTURE STUDIES

VOLUME FOUR - THE BATTLE OF ARMAGEDDON

 STUDY VII

THE NATIONS ASSEMBLED AND THE PREPARATION 

OF THE ELEMENTS FOR THE 

GREAT FIRE OF GOD’S INDIGNATION

How and Why the Nations are Assembled — The Social Elements Preparing for the Fire — The Heaping of Treasures — The Increase of Poverty — Social Friction Nearing Combustion — A Word from the President of the American Federation of Labor — The Rich sometimes too Severely Condemned — Selfishness and Liberty in Combination — Independence as Viewed by the Rich and by the Poor — Why Present Conditions Cannot Continue — Machinery an Important Factor in Preparing for the Great Fire — Female Competition — Labor’s View of the Situation, Reasonable and Unreasonable — The Law of Supply and Demand Inexorable upon all — The Outlook for Foreign Industrial Competition apalling — Mr. Justin McCarthy’s Fears for England — Kier Hardie, M.P., on the Labor Outlook in England — Hon. Jos. Chamberlain’s Prophetic Words to British Workmen — National Aggression as   Related to Industrial Interests — Herr Liebknecht on the Social and Industrial War in Germany — Resolutions of the International Trades Union Congress — Giants in These Days — List of Trusts and Combines — Barbaric Slavery vs. Civilized Bondage — The Masses Between the Upper and Nether Millstones — The Conditions Universal and Beyond Human Power to Regulate.

            WAIT ye upon me, saith the Lord, until the day that I rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger; for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy [wrath].  For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent.” Zeph. 3:8,9 [page 270] 

          The gathering of the nations in these last days, in fulfilment of the above prophecy, is very notable.  Modern discovery and invention have indeed made the remotest ends of the earth neighbors to each other.  Travel, mailing facilities, the telegraph, the telephone, commerce, the multiplication of books and newspapers, etc., have brought all the world to a considerable extent into a community of thought and action hitherto unknown.  This condition of things has already made necessary international laws and regulations that each of the nations must respect.  Their representatives meet in Councils, and each nation has in every other nation its ministers or representatives.  International Exhibitions have also been called forth as results of this neighboring of nations.  There can no more be that exclusiveness on the part of any nation which would bar every other nation from its ports.  The gates of all are necessarily thrown open, and must remain so; and even the barriers of diverse languages are being easily surmounted.

          The civilized peoples are no longer strangers in any part of the earth.  Their splendid sea equipments carry their business representatives, their political envoys and their curious pleasure-seekers to the remotest quarters with ease and comfort.  Magnificent railway coaches introduce them to the interior lands, and they return home laden with information, and with new ideas, and awakened to new projects and enterprises.  Even the dull heathen nations are arousing themselves from the dreams of centuries and looking with wonder and amazement at their visitors from abroad and learning of their marvelous achievements.  And they in turn are now sending their representatives abroad that they may profit by their new acquaintances. 

          In the days of Solomon it was thought a marvelous thing that the queen of Sheba should come about five hundred miles to hear the wisdom and behold the grandeur of Solomon; [page 271] but now numbers even of the untitled travel over the whole world, a great portion of which was then unknown, to see its accumulated wealth and to learn of its progress; and the circuit of the world can now be made with comfort and even luxury in less than eighty days. 

          Truly, the nations are “assembled” in a manner not expected, yet in the only manner in which they could be assembled; viz., in common interest and activity; but alas! not in brotherly love, for selfishness marks every step of this progress.  The spirit of enterprise, of which selfishness is the motive power, has prompted the construction of the railways, the steamships, the telegraphs, the cables, the telephones; selfishness regulates the commerce and the international comity, and every other energy and enterprise, except the preaching of the gospel and the establishment of benevolent institutions: and even in these it is to be feared that much that is done is inspired by motives other than pure love for God and humanity.  Selfishness has gathered the nations and has been steadily preparing them for the predicted, and now fast approaching, retribution—anarchy—which is so graphically described as the “fire of God’s jealousy” or anger, which is about to consume utterly the present social order—the world that now is. (2 Pet. 3:7) Yet this is speaking only from the human standpoint; for the Prophet ascribes this gathering of the nations to God. But both are true; for while man is permitted the exercise of his free agency, God, by his overruling providence, is shaping human affairs for the accomplishment of his own wise purposes. And therefore, while men and their works and ways are the agents and agencies, God is the great Commander who now gathers the nations and assembles the kingdoms from one end of the earth to the other, preparatory to the transfer of earth’s dominion to him “whose right it is,” Immanuel. [page 272]

          The Prophet tells us why the Lord thus gathers the nations, saying—“That I may pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger; for the whole earth [the entire social fabric] shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy.”  This message would bring us sorrow and anguish only, were it not for the assurance that the results shall work good to the world, overthrowing the reign of selfishness and establishing, through Christ’s Millennial Kingdom, the reign of righteousness referred to in the words of the prophet—“Then will I turn unto the people a pure language [Their communications with each other shall no longer be selfish, but pure, truthful and loving, to the intent] that they may all call upon the name of the Lord to serve him with one consent.” 

          The “gathering of the nations” will not only contribute to the severity of the judgment, but it will also make it impossible for any to escape it; and it will thus make the great tribulation a short, as well as a decisive, conflict, as it is written: “A short work will the Lord make upon the earth.” Rom. 9:28; Isa. 28:22

          Looking about us we see the “elements” preparing for the fire of this day—the fire of God’s wrath.  Selfishness, knowledge, wealth, ambition, hope, discontent, fear and despair are the ingredients whose friction will shortly set aflame the angry passions of the world and cause its various social “elements” to melt in the fervent heat.  Looking out over the world, note what changes have taken place in respect to these passions during the past century, and especially during the past forty years.  The satisfied contentment of the past is gone from all classes—rich and poor, male and female, educated and ignorant.  All are dissatisfied.  All are selfishly and increasingly grasping for “rights” or bemoaning [page 273]  “wrongs.”  True, there are wrongs, grievous wrongs, which should be righted, and rights that should be enjoyed and respected; but the tendency of our time, with its increase of knowledge and independence, is to look only at the side of questions closest to self-interest, and to fail to appreciate the opposite side.  The effect foretold by the prophets will be ultimately to set every man’s hand against his neighbor, which will be the immediate cause of the great final catastrophe.  God’s Word and providence and the lessons of the past are forgotten under the strong convictions of personal rights, etc., which hinder people of every class from choosing the wiser, moderate course, which they cannot even see because selfishness blinds them to everything out of accord with their own prejudices.  Each class fails to consider with impartiality the welfare and rights of the other.  The golden rule is generally ignored; and the lack of wisdom as well as the injustice of this course will soon be made manifest to all classes, for all classes will suffer terribly in this trouble.  But the rich, the Scriptures inform us, will suffer most. 

          While the rich are diligently heaping up fabulous treasure for these last days, tearing down their storehouses and building greater, and saying to themselves and their posterity, “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; eat, drink and be merry,” God, through the prophets, is saying, “Thou fool! this night thy soul shall be required of thee.  Then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?” Luke 12:15-20

          Yes, the dark night predicted (Isa. 21:12; 28:12,13,21,22; John 9:4) is fast approaching; and, as a snare, it shall overtake the whole world.  Then, indeed, whose shall these hoarded treasures be, when, in the distress of the hour, “they shall cast their silver in the streets and their gold shall be removed?”  “Their silver and their gold shall not be able [page 274] to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord:...because it is the stumbling block of their iniquity.” Ezek. 7:19

The Heaping of Treasure

          It is evident that we are in a time pre-eminent above all others for the accumulation of wealth, and for “wanton” or extravagant living on the part of the rich. (James 5:3,5)  Let us hear some testimony from current literature.  If the point is conclusively proved, it becomes another evidence that we are in the “last days” of the present dispensation and nearing the great trouble which shall eventually wreck the present order of the world and usher in the new order of things under the Kingdom of God. 

          The Hon. Wm. E. Gladstone, in a speech widely reported, after referring to the present as a “wealth-producing age,” said:

          “There are gentlemen before me who have witnessed a greater accumulation of wealth within the period of their lives than has been seen in all preceding times since the days of Julius Caesar.” 

          Note this statement by one of the best informed men in the world.  This fact, so difficult for us to comprehend—that more wealth has been produced and accumulated during the past fifty years than during the previous nineteen centuries—is nevertheless shown by statistics to be a very conservative estimate, and the new conditions thus produced are destined to play an important part in the readjustment of the social order of the world now impending. 

          The Boston Globe, some years ago, gave the following account of some of the wealthy men of the United States:

          “The twenty-one railroad magnates who met in New York on Monday, to discuss the question of railroad competition, represented $3,000,000,000 of capital.  Men now living can remember when there were not half a dozen millionaires [page 275] in the land.  There are now numbered 4,600 millionaires and several whose yearly income is said to be over a million. 

          “There are in New York City, at a conservative calculation, the surprising number of 1,157 individuals and estates that are each worth $1,000,000.  There are in Brooklyn 162 individuals and estates each worth at least $1,000,000. In the two cities there are then 1,319 millionaires, but many of these are worth much more than $1,000,000—they are multi-millionaires, and the nature of these great fortunes is different, and they therefore yield different incomes.  The rates of interest which some of the more conspicuous ones draw are reckoned in round numbers, thus: John D. Rockefeller’s 6 per cent; William Waldorf Astor’s, 7 per cent; Jay Gould’s estate, which, being wrapped up in corporations, is still practically undivided, 4 per cent; Cornelius Vanderbilt’s, 5 per cent and William K. Vanderbilt’s, 5 per cent. 

          “Calculating at the foregoing rates and compounding interest semi-annually, to allow for reinvestment, the yearly and daily incomes of the four individuals and of the estates named are as follows: 

          The above is evidently a conservative estimate, for even sixteen years ago it was noted that Mr. Rockefeller’s quarterly dividend on Standard Oil Company’s stock, of which he is one of the principal holders, was represented by a check for four millions of dollars; and the same holdings today yield a far greater income. 

          The Niagara Falls Review even before the dawn of the present century sounded the following warning note:

[page 276]

          “One of the greatest dangers which now menace the stability of American institutions is the increase of individual millionaires, and the consequent concentration of property and money in single hands.  A recent article in a prominent paper of New York State gives figures which must serve to draw general attention to the evolution of this difficulty. The following are said to be the nine greatest fortunes in the United States:

           “Estimating the yield from these immense sums in accordance with the average interest obtained upon other similar investments, the following would be the proceeds:

           “Nearly all these men live in a comparatively simple style, and it is obviously impossible for them to spend more than a portion of their immense daily and yearly revenues. The surplus consequently becomes capital, and helps to build still higher the fortunes of these individuals.  Now the Vanderbilt family possess the following immense sums:

(The past few years have increased some of these figures greatly.) [page 277]

          “Still more wonderful are the accumulations made through the great Standard Oil trust, which has just been dissolved—succeeded by the Standard Oil Company.  The fortunes from it were as follows:

          “It took just twenty years to combine this wealth in the hands of eight or nine men.  Here, then, is the danger.  In the hands of Gould, the Vanderbilts and Huntington are the great railroads of the United States.  In the possession of Sage, the Astors and others, rest great blocks of New York land, which are constantly increasing in value.  United and by natural accumulation, the fortunes of these nine families would amount in twenty-five years to $2,754,000,000.  William Waldorf Astor himself, by pure force of accumulation, will probably be worth a thousand millions before he dies; and this money, like that of the Vanderbilts, will descend in his family as in others, and create an aristocracy of wealth extremely dangerous to the commonwealth, and forming a curious commentary upon that aristocracy of birth or talent which Americans consider to be so injurious in Great Britain. [page 278]

          “Other great fortunes are in existence or rising, a few only of which may be given:

          “Thus we see capital in almost inconceivable sums being vested in a few, and necessarily taken from [the opportunity of] the many.  There is no power in man to peaceably settle this vexed question.  It will go on from bad to worse.”

 Some American Millionaires
and How They Got Their Millions

          The Editor of the Review of Reviews gives what he terms “a few excerpts from a most instructive and entertaining paper, the one fault of which is its optimistic view of the plutocratic octopus,” in these words:

          “An American who writes from intimate personal knowledge, but who prefers to remain anonymous, tells in Cornhill Magazine with much sympathy the story of several of the millionaires of the giant Republic.  He claims that even if the four thousand millionaires own among them forty billion dollars out of the seventy-six billions which form the total national wealth, still the balance leaves every citizen $500 per head as against $330 per head forty-five years ago. He argues that millionaires have grown by making other classes not poorer but richer. [page 279]

          “‘Commodore Vanderbilt, who made the first Vanderbilt millions, was born just a century ago.  His capital was the traditional bare feet, empty pocket and belief in his luck—the foundation of so many American fortunes.  Hard work, from six years of age to sixteen, furnished him with a second and more tangible capital, namely, one hundred dollars in cash.  This money he invested in a small boat; and with that boat he opened a business of his own—the transportation of vegetables to New York.  At twenty years of age he married, and man and wife both turned money-makers. He ran his boat.  She kept a hotel.  Three years later he was worth ten thousand dollars.  After that his money came rapidly—so rapidly that when the civil war broke out, the boy, who had started with one boat, worth one hundred dollars, was able to present to the nation one of his boats, value eight hundred thousand dollars, and yet feel easy about his finances and his fleet.  At seventy years of age he was credited with a fortune of seventy millions. 

          “‘The Astor fortune owes its existence to the brains of one man and the natural growth of a great nation, John Jacob Astor being the only man in four generations who was a real money-maker.  The money he made, as he made it, was invested in New York City property; the amount of such property is limited, as the city stands upon an island.  Consequently the growth of New York City, which was due to the growth of the Republic, made this small fortune of the eighteenth century the largest American fortune of the nineteenth century.  The first and last Astor worthy of study as a master of millions was therefore John Jacob Astor who, tiring of his work as helper in his father’s butcher shop in Waldorf, went, about one hundred and ten years ago, to try his luck in the new world.  On the ship he really, in one sense, made his whole fortune.  He met an old fur-trader who posted him in the tricks of Indian fur-trading.  This trade he took up and made money at.  Then he married Sarah Todd, a shrewd, energetic young woman.  Sarah and John Jacob dropped into the homely habit of passing all their evenings in their shop sorting pelts...In fifteen years John Jacob and Sarah his wife had accumulated twenty-five [page 280] hundred thousand dollars...A lucky speculation in United States bonds, then very low in price, doubled John Jacob’s fortune; and this wealth all went into real estate, where it has since remained. 

          “‘Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins and Collis P. Huntington went to California in the gold fever of 1849.  When the trans-continental railway was mooted these four ‘saw millions in it,’ and contracted to make the Union Pacific.  The four men, penniless in 1850, are today credited with a combined fortune of $200,000,000. 

          “‘One of them, Leland Stanford, had designed to found a family; but ten years ago his only son died, and he then decided to establish a university in memory of that son. And he did it in princely fashion, for while yet ‘in the flesh’ he ‘deeded’ to trustees three farms containing 86,000 acres, and, owing to their splendid vineyards, worth $6,000,000. To this he added $14,000,000 worth of securities, and at his death left the university a legacy of $2,500,000—a total gift by one man, to one institution of learning of $22,500,000, which is said to be a ‘world’s record.’  His wife has announced her intention to leave her fortune, some $10,000,000, to the university.’ 

          “The most remarkable instance of money-making shown in the history of American millions is that furnished by the Standard Oil Trust: 

          “‘Thirty years ago five young men, most of them living in the small city of Cleveland (State of Ohio), and all comparatively poor (probably the whole party could not boast of $50,000), saw monetary possibilities in petroleum.  In the emphatic language of the old river pilot, ‘They went for it thar and then,’ and they got it.  Today that same party of five men is worth $600,000,000...John D. Rockefeller, the brain and ‘nerve’ of this great ‘trust,’ is a ruddy-faced man with eye so mild and manner so genial that it is very hard to call him a ‘grasping monopolist.’  His ‘hobby’ now is education, and he rides this hobby in robust, manly fashion. He has taken the University of Chicago under his wing, and already the sum of seven million dollars has passed [page 281] from his pockets to the treasury of the new seat of learning in the second city of the Republic.’”

          In an article in the Forum Mr. Thomas G. Shearman, a New York statistician, gave the names of seventy Americans whose aggregate wealth is $2,700,000,000, an average of $38,500,000 each; and declares that a list of ten persons could be made whose wealth would average $100,000,000 each; and another list of one hundred persons whose wealth would average $25,000,000 each; and that “the average annual income of the richest hundred Americans cannot be less [each] than $1,200,000, and probably exceeds $1,500,000.”

          Commenting on this last statement, an able writer (Rev. Josiah Strong) says:

          “If one hundred workmen could earn each $1,000 a year, they would have to work twelve hundred or fifteen hundred years to earn as much as the annual income of these one hundred richest Americans.  And if a workman could earn $100 a day he would have to work until he would be five hundred and forty-seven years old, and never take a day off, before he could earn as much as some Americans are worth.”

          The following table compares the wealth of the four richest nations of the world in 1830 and 1893; and shows how riches are being “heaped together” nationally in these “last days” of this age of almost fabulous accumulation.

          That the reader may have an idea as to how statisticians arrive at their conclusions on so vast a subject, we give the following as an approximate classified estimate of the wealth of the United States:

[page 282]

          It was noted some years ago that the wealth of the United States was increasing at the rate of forty million dollars per week, or two billion dollars per year. 

          (The total indebtedness of the people of the United States, public and private, was then estimated to be twenty billion dollars.) 

          This heaping together of treasures for the last days, here noted, relates specially to these United States, but the same is true of the whole civilized world.  Great Britain is per capita richer than the United States—the richest nation on earth. And even in China and Japan there are millionaires of recent development.  The defeat of China in 1894 by the Japanese is charged as chiefly due to the avarice of the government officers, who are said to have supplied inferior and even imitation cannon and cannon-balls, although paid a large price for the genuine. [page 283]

          Of course only a minority of those who seek wealth find it.  The rush and strife for wealth is not always rewarded. The bane of selfishness extends far beyond the successful, and, as the Apostle said, “They that will be rich [who are determined to be rich at all hazards] fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful desires which drown men in destruction and perdition; for the love of money [wealth] is a root of all evil.” (1 Tim. 6:9,10)  The majority, inexperienced, take the risks and find disappointment and loss: the few, worldly-wise and keen, take few risks and reap most of the gains.  Thus, for instance, the “South-African gold fever” which once spread over Great Britain, France and Germany, actually transferred from the pockets and bank accounts of the middle class to those of the wealthy capitalists and bankers, who take little risk, hundreds of millions of dollars.  The result was undoubtedly a great loss to said middle class so anxious for sudden riches that they risk their all.  The tendency of this is to make many of this usually conservative class discontented and ready in a few years for any Socialistic scheme which promises to be to their advantage.

The Increase of Poverty

          But is it true that there are poor and needy people in this land of plenty, in which so many are heaping together such fabulous wealth?  Is it not his or her own fault if any healthy man or woman cannot get along comfortably?  Would it not tend to cultivate pauperism and dependence if the “well-to-do” should undertake to paddle the canoes of the poorer classes?  Thus the subject is regarded by many of the wealthy, who in many instances were poor themselves twenty-five years ago, and who remember that then all who were able and willing to work could find plenty to do.  They do not realize what great changes have taken place since [page 284] then, and that while their fortunes have improved wonderfully, the condition of the masses has retrograded, especially during the last seven years.  True, wages, at the present moment, are generally fair, being maintained by Unions, etc.; but many cannot obtain work, while many of those who have situations have work only about half time, and often less, and are barely able by strict economy to live decently and honestly. 

          When special depressions come, as in 1893-6, many of these out of work are thrown upon the charity of their friends who are illy able to sustain this additional pressure; and those who have no friends are forced upon public charities, which at such times are wholly inadequate. 

          The depression of 1893 passed like a wave over the whole world, and its heavy pressure is still widely felt; though to some a breathing spell of recuperation has come.  But, as the Scriptures point out, this trouble comes in waves or spasms—“as travail upon a woman” (1 Thess. 5:3)—and each succeeding spasm will probably be more severe—until the final one.  The wealthy and comfortable often find it difficult to realize the destitution of the poorest class, which is rapidly becoming more numerous.  The fact is that even among those of the middle and wealthy classes who do think and feel for the distresses of the very poor there is the realization of the utter impossibility of so changing the present social order as to bring any permanent relief to them; and so each does what little he thinks to be his ability and duty for those nearest to him, and tries to discredit or forget the reports of misery which reach his eyes and ears. 

          The following extracts from the daily press will call to mind the conditions which obtained in 1893, and which before very long will probably be duplicated with interest. The California Advocate said: [page 285]

          “The assembling of the unemployed masses in our great cities in multitudinous thousands is a most gruesome spectacle, and their piteous cry for work or bread is being heard all over the land.  It is the old unsolved problem of poverty, intensified by the unprecedented depression of business.  Involuntary idleness is a constantly growing evil coincident with civilization.  It is the dark shadow that steadily creeps after civilization, increasing in dimensions and intensity as civilization advances.  Things are certainly in an abnormal condition when men are willing to work, want to work, and yet cannot find work to do, while their very life depends upon work.  There is no truth in the old saying that ‘the world owes every man a living.’  But it is true that the world owes every man a chance to earn his living.  Many theories have been advanced and many efforts have been made to secure inalienable ‘right to work’ to every one willing to work; but all such attempts have hitherto ended in gloomy failure.  He will indeed be a benefactor to mankind who shall successfully solve the problem how to secure to every willing worker some work to do, and thus rid mankind of the curse of involuntary idleness.” 

          Another account describes how, in Chicago, a crowd of over four hundred unemployed men marched through the downtown streets, headed by one of their number carrying a pasteboard sign on which was scrawled the grim legend, “We Want Work.”  The next day they marched with many banners bearing the following inscriptions: “Live and Let Live,” “We Want a Chance to Support Our Families.” “Work or Bread,” etc.  An army of unemployed marched through San Francisco with banners on which were inscribed, “Thousands of Houses to Rent, and Thousands of People Homeless,” “Hungry and Destitute,” “Driven by the Lash of Hunger to Beg,” “Get Off Our Backs and We Will Help Ourselves,” etc. 

          Another clipping read:

[page 286]

          “NEWARK, N.J., August 21—Unemployed workingmen held a large parade today.  At the head of the line marched a man with a large black flag, upon which in white letters were the words: ‘Signs of the Times—I Am Starving Because He is Fat.’  Beneath was a picture of a large, well-fed man with a high hat, and beside him a starving workman.”

          Another journal, referring to the English coal-miners’ strike, said:

          “The stories of actual distress, and even of starvation, are multiplying painfully throughout England, and the cessation of industries and the derangement of railways are assuming proportions of grave national calamity...As might be expected, the real cause consists in the huge royalties that lessees have to pay for the ground to the landlords from whom they lease the mines.  A considerable number of millionaires, whose coal royalties hang like millstones around the neck of the mining industries, are also prominent peers, and angry public consciousness puts the two things together with a snap...Radical papers are compiling portentous lists of lords not unlike the lists of trusts in America, showing in their figures their monstrous levies on the earnings of the property of the country. 

          “The cry for bread goes up from the city.  It is deeper, hoarser, broader than it has ever been.  It comes from gnawing stomachs and weakened frames.  It comes from men who tramp the streets searching for work.  It comes from women sitting hopeless in bare rooms.  It comes from children.

          “In the city of New York the poor have reached straits of destitution that have never before been known.  Probably no living person understands how awful is the suffering, how terrible the poverty.  No one person can see it all.  No one’s imagination can grasp it.

          “Few persons who will read this can understand what it means to be without food.  It is one of those things so frightful that it cannot be brought home to them.  They say, ‘Surely people can get something to eat somewhere, enough to support life; they can go to their friends.’  For the stricken [page 287] ones there is no ‘somewhere.’  Their friends are as destitute as themselves.  There are men so weakened from lack of food that they cannot work if work is offered to them.”

          An editorial in the San Francisco Examiner said:

          “How is this?  We have so much to eat that the farmers are complaining that they can get nothing for it.  We have so much to wear that cotton and woolen mills are closing down because there is nobody to buy their products.  We have so much coal that the railroads that carry it are going into the hands of receivers.  We have so many houses that the builders are out of work.  All the necessities and comforts of life are as plentiful as ever they were in the most prosperous years of our history.  When the country has enough food, clothing, fuel and shelter for everybody, why are times hard?  Evidently nature is not to blame.  Who or what, then, is? 

          “The problem of the unemployed is one of the most serious that face the United States.  According to the statistics collected by Bradstreet’s there were at the opening of the year something over 801,000 wage-earners out of employment in the first 119 cities of the United States, and the number of persons dependent upon these for support was over 2,000,000.  If the 119 cities gave a fair average for the country the total of wage-earners wanting employment on the first of the year would run above 4,000,000 persons, representing a dependent population of 10,000,000.  As the unemployed seek the cities it is safe to deduct one-fourth from these figures.  But even with this deduction the number of wage-workers out of employment is an enormous, heart-rending total. 

          “The hard road of poverty whose end is pauperism has been traveled so long in Europe that the authorities of the Old World know better how to deal with it than the comparatively prosperous community on this side of the water. The wages of Europe are so low that in many States the end of life must be the poorhouse.  No amount of industry and frugality can enable the laborer to lay by a competence for old age.  The margin between income and expenses is so small that a few days’ sickness or lack of employment reduces [page 288] the laborer to destitution.  Government there has been forced to deal with it more or less scientifically instead of in the happy-go-lucky method familiar to America, where tramps flourish without work and the self-respecting man who falls into need must suffer hunger.” 

          The editor of The Arena says in his CIVILIZATION INFERNO:

          “The Dead Sea of want is enlarging its borders in every populous centre.  The mutterings of angry discontent grow more ominous with each succeeding year.  Justice denied the weak through the power of avarice has brought us face to face with a formidable crisis which may yet be averted if we have the wisdom to be just and humane; but the problem cannot longer be sneered at as inconsequential.  It is no longer local; it affects and threatens the entire body politic. A few years ago one of the most eminent divines in America declared that there was no poverty to speak of in this Republic. Today no thoughtful person denies that this problem is of great magnitude.  A short time since I employed a gentleman in New York to personally investigate the court records of the city that he might ascertain the exact number of warrants for evictions issued in twelve months.  What was the result?  The records showed the appalling fact that during the twelve months ending September 1, 1892, twenty-nine thousand seven hundred and twenty warrants for eviction were issued in the city of New York. 

          “In a paper in the Forum of December, 1892, by Mr. Jacob Riis, on the special needs of the poor in New York, he says: ‘For many years it has been true of New York that one-tenth of all who die in this great and wealthy city are buried in the pottersfield.  Of the 382,530 interments recorded in the past decade, 37,966 were in the pottersfield,’ and Mr. Riis proceeds to hint at the fact known to all students of social conditions who personally investigate poverty in the great cities, that this pottersfield gauge, terribly significant though it be, is no adequate measure by which to estimate the poverty problem of a great city.  On this point he continues: 

          “‘Those who have had any personal experience with the poor, and know with what agony of fear they struggle against this crowning misery, how they plan and plot and [page 289] pinch for the poor privilege of being laid to rest in a grave that is theirs to keep, though in life they never owned a shed to call their own, will agree with me that it is putting it low to assume that where one falls, in spite of it all, into this dread trench, at least two or three must be hovering on the edge of it.  And with this estimate of from twenty to thirty per cent of our population always struggling to keep the wolf from the door, with the issue in grievous doubt, all the known, if scattered, facts of charity management in New York agree well enough.’ 

          “In 1890 there were two hundred and thirty-nine suicides officially reported in New York City.  The court records are burdened as never before with cases of attempted self-slaughter.  ‘You,’ said Recorder Smyth, addressing a poor creature who had sought death by leaping into the East River, ‘are the second case of attempted suicide that has been up in this court this morning; and,’ he continued, ‘I have never known so many attempted suicides as during the past few months.’ 

          “The night is slowly but surely settling around hundreds and thousands of our people, the night of poverty and despair. They are conscious of its approach but feel powerless to check its advance.  ‘Rents get higher and work cheaper every year, and what can we do about it?’ said a laborer recently while talking about the outlook.  ‘I do not see any way out of it,’ he added bitterly, and it must be confessed that the outlook is dark if no radical economic changes are at hand, for the supply is yearly increasing far more rapidly than the demand for labor.  ‘Ten women for every place no matter how poor,’ is the dispassionate statement of an official who has recently made the question of female labor a special study.  ‘Hundreds of girls,’ continues this writer, ‘wreck their future every year and destroy their health in the stuffy, ill-ventilated stores and shops, and yet scores of recruits arrive from the country and small towns every week to fill the places vacated.’  And let us not imagine that these conditions are peculiar to New York.  What is true of the metropolis is to a certain extent true of every great city in America.  Within cannon-shot of Beacon Hill, Boston, where proudly rises the golden dome of the Capitol, are [page 290] hundreds of families slowly starving and stifling; families who are bravely battling for life’s barest necessities, while year by year the conditions are becoming more hopeless, the struggle for bread fiercer, and the outlook more dismal. In conversation with one of these toilers, he said, with a certain pathos and dejection, which indicated hopelessness or perhaps a deadened perception which prevented his fully grasping the grim import of his words, ‘I once heard of a man who was put in an iron cage by a tyrant, and every day he found the walls had come closer and closer to him.  At last the walls came so close together that every day they squeezed out a part of his life, and somehow,’ he said, ‘it seems to me that we are just like that man, and when I see the little boxes carried out every day, I sometimes say to my wife, There’s a little more life squeezed out; some day we will go, too.’ 

          “I recently visited more than a score of tenement houses where life was battling with death; where, with a patient heroism far grander than deeds of daring won amid the exulting shouts of the battlefield, mothers and daughters were ceaselessly plying the needle.  In several homes I noticed bedridden invalids whose sunken eyes and emaciated faces told plainly the story of months, and perhaps years, of slow starvation amid the squalor, the sickening odor, and the almost universal filth of the social cellar.  Here one becomes painfully conscious of specters of hunger and fear ever present.  A lifelong dread presses upon the hearts of these exiles with crushing weight.  The landlord, standing with a writ of dispossession, is continually before their mind’s eye.  Dread of sickness haunts every waking moment, for to them sickness means inability to provide the scant nourishment which life demands.  The despair of the probable future not infrequently torments their rest.  Such is the common lot of the patient toiler in the slums of our great cities today.  On most of their faces one notes an expression of gloomy sadness and dumb resignation. 

          “Sometimes a fitful light flashes from cavernous sockets, a baleful gleam suggesting smouldering fires fed by an ever-present consciousness of wrongs endured.  They feel in a dumb way that the lot of the beast of the field is happier far than their fate.  Even though they struggle from dawn far [page 291] into the night for bread and a wretched room, they know that the window of hope is closing for them in the great throbbing centers of Christendom.  Sad, indeed, is the thought that, at the present time, when our land is decked as never before with stately temples dedicated to the great Nazarene, who devoted his life to a ministry among the poor, degraded and outcast, we find the tide of misery rising; we find uninvited poverty becoming the inevitable fate of added thousands of lives every year.  Never was the altruistic sentiment more generally upon the lips of man. Never has the human heart yearned as now for a true manifestation of human brotherhood.  Never has the whole civilized world been so profoundly moved by the persistent dream of the ages—the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.  And yet, strange anomaly!  The cry of innocence, of outraged justice, the cry of the millions under the wheel, rises today from every civilized land as never before. The voice of Russia mingles with the cry of Ireland. Outcast London joins with the exiles of all great continental and American cities in one mighty, earth-thrilling demand for justice.

          “In London alone there are more than three hundred thousand persons on the very brink of the abyss, whose every heart-beat thrills with fear, whose life-long nightmare is the dread that the little den they call home may be taken from them.  Beneath them, at the door of starvation, are over two hundred thousand lives; still further down we find three hundred thousand in the stratum of the starving, in the realm where hunger gnaws night and day, where every second of every minute, of every hour of every day, is crowded with agony.  Below the starving are the homeless—they who have nothing with which to procure a lodging even in the worst quarters; they who sleep without shelter the year round, hundreds of whom may be found any night on the cold stone slabs along the Thames embankment. Some have a newspaper between themselves