98

MRS, PETTIE IN BEBUTTAL
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Just a Word or Two in Passing
Concerning the Society
Question.
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The Poor and How to Help Them----The
'Problem of' Poverty Fashionable
Charity------Little and Big Things.
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The few remarks I made about a part of
Omaha soolety the other day have aroused
must comment. This may have been because
these remarks were just or because
they were unjust. It does not much matter.
I could have retored with personalities,
but that would have been disagreeable.
And life is so short it is surely not
worth while to be disagreeable unless there
is something to accomplish by being so. I
know what the facts were that prompted
me to make the crictcim I did. The reply
of Mr. Chase in Exceisor was an
expression of his views, to which he was
entited, and as the editor of the journal of
society in this town if was proper that he
should do what he did. Life said he thought
one way I said I thought another.
That's all there is to it. Concerning
the critisim of myself in the Bee-- an
anonoymous criticism----I can only say that
it was very amusing. I've wirter accuses
me of settting my information from two
papers of unsavory reputation, which I
have never held in my hand, nor even seen,
and which I would not wilngly see. He
says my article was prompted by pique because
I cannot get in Omaha society, He
might as well say that my criticsms upon
train robbers were inspired by my inability
to join the ranke of the train robbing
entry. I dare say I would not be invited
to join any sort of society. I certainly
never clamined to have had any such opportunity.
I have a few friends, it is true,
some of whom I know and some of whom
I do not, but they are my friends all the
same, and give comfort to me, as I hope I
do to them. Some of these friends of mine
live in houses with frescoing on the
walls, and some of them in
houses where the walls are
covered with patches of old newspapers.
I move in human socitey, I beileve, But
not by invitation. No one asked me to.
Futher than I can lay he claims to
social distinction, But I have become so accustomed
to this state of things, it having
existed from my birth, that I really cannot
plead guilty to pique. And it must really
be admitted that in this controversy society
has had the best of me, because I had to
arraign it generally, and as a body,
whereas it could put me straight up in a
public pullory and hurl arrows at me. But
they were not poisned arrows, and I am
none of the worse, thank you, and have been
quite exhilarated at the commotion. And I
feel almost proud of myself when I think
of thing I might have said---and
haven't. But enough of this. Let's
"move on," as the consrrative gentlemen
of the city want the men at Rescue hall
to do.
* * * * * * *
Those men at liesue that are, by the
way, the graphic presentaion of a problem
that hitherto has presented itself in a
detached and vague sort of way. There
they are----storng, healthy, wiling to work,
or to they any----and here we are, eager to
give them work, and with none to offer.
Meantime the men lay along the floor like
soldiers in blvonac, wrapped in their old
quilts. And comfortable folks who have
beds and furnaces, and breakfasts, and
other appuriancess of moder civilization
come in look at them. Oddly enough the
men on the floor don't like it. They smile
shame-facedly, or cover their heads with
their blankets, or dart angry and proud
glances at these vistors. I suppose they
feel like a job lot--lying there altogether
in a rough classication, with no particular
individuality, at least to the prosperous
persons who come to stare at them.
Now in peniterataries, and in work houses,
and in gamgs on railroads, or digging
ditches, must all I suppose, feel
like job lots. And I can imagine
nothing more annoying. I do not wonder
all that some men are starving here today
and wearing a smilling face, and saying
that they are maaging very well, when
is reaity they are fainting with hunger.
Would not you do that, too, rather than be
marshaled with a gang of other two-legged
animals to be filled up in a soup kitchen,
or looked over like a car of cattle dumped
at the stock yard gates? I tell you, there
are those who prefer death to being in a
job lot.
* * * * * * * *
Dr. Duryea says it is very difficult to get
at the real condition of many of the most
needy in town. We have pauperized a
good many hundred, by our careless charity,
and they come around cheerfuly when
they need anything, and ask for it. But
there are combaines of workingmen and
women in this city who are resorting to
every device rather than ask for charity.
The double up and crowd into the small
houses, two or three familles of them together,
to save coal. They are facing
their necessity with the calm reason of
heroes, and abortion rations to their families,
and live on one meal a day. It's astoniding
how little a person can live on,
for a while. And while I want these men
and their wives and children relieved, I
shudder when I find they have really been
persuaded to take assistance from the relief
furnished them this winter. For I
fear that in some cases their self-respect
may go with it. Only a few natures are
strong enough and philosophic enough to
take privation as an episode, and to accept
the division of property as a right, and to
accept it without humiliation. I am bound
to say I wouldn't be that philosophic myself.

The Western Laborer said the other day
that I did not dare face what all this discrepancy
in our social system meant. Confession
is good for the soul. I do not dare
face it. I do not dare say what I think.
I would not willingly put in words all that
I fear. I must not let my lips say how
awful the iniquity of hungry working men
seems to me here in our America, which
was going to give us all liberty.

And some of us, it seems, have not even
liberty to live.

The Caliphs of Morocco, in the
ancient times, met the same problem
we are now struggling with- met it
and overcame it. Away back in the
days of the Cid, these wise governors projected
a system of public works of vast
scope and importance. This included hundreds
of massive bridges, miles of aquaducts
two and three tiers high, fortresses,
city walls, storehouses, thousands of miles
of level roadway, prisons, palaces, galleries,
quays and residences. They did not
try to build these all at once or continuously.
They did not attempt to carry on
the work in times of prosperity. It was
only when work in trades was ''slack,"
when there were many unemployed,
when shopkeepers compisined of
business and there was a scarcity of
circulating medium, that they recommend
to labor. As to wages, the price was fixed
at a figure below what was commonly paid
to stone masons, day laborers, etc., in order
that men ight not be tempted to remain
at public work when times bettered and
business in their own trades improved.
This government work, was necessary, but
not imperative, and the Caliphs were thus
enabled to kill two birds with one stone.
They got their public work done and kept
the people from becoming public charges
on the government. They also prevented
discontent and penury from undermining
public loyalty. The example of the
Caliphs of Morocco can be emulated in
America. Some of our laws might have
to be amended, but that would do no harm.
We might, however, have plenty of funds
for public improvements in times like this
if our assessments were properly made.
This is the idea of the "minimum point,
concerning which Mr. H. Andrews of this
city has often written.

I am told a great many remedies for the
social disturbance." One man says land is
at the bottom of all our trouble. He tells
me that Henry George is the philosopher
of basic truth. My friend who tells me
this is a cobbler, with a beautiful smile,
and a perfect trust is the ultimate happiness
of mankind. He thinks we would all
be free if we all owned land, and if we
bald but one tac and that on land. Another
friend says money is the trouble,
and that if we had money enough to pay
for the earnings of man, no one would be
hungry, and men could not then speculate
in money and acquire wealth at the expense
of others. Some tell me that whisky
enslaves us, and that intemperance
in this and other directions is
what is at the bottom of our woes.
There are those who think that the practical
disappearance of handwork and the
introduction of machinery is to blame for
much of the speculation in the labor of
men's hands, and the consequent inequality
in the distribution of profits, and I even
met a man the other day who said he
thought the stress and distress of these
days was due to the invention of electric
lights. Of course everyone says we need
socialism. And it is that fact that I suppose
the Western Laborer thinks I am
afraid to face. And I am, God knows we
all are. For the woes that would come of
it are as terrible, surely, as any we have
now.

"Now understand me well- it is provided
in the essence of things that from any
fruition of success, no matter what, shall
come forth something to make a greater
struggle necessary."

That's what Walt Whitman said, and
what he thinks. But Hamlin Garland
thinks and says constantly that the day
will come when all men will be free - when
none will be at the bidding of the other.

There are certainly enough opinions
about what we ought to do to be saved. We
are all conscious one way and another of
the insidious means which some men employ
to rob other ment of the results of their
labor. But we make strange prescriptions
for the cure, and we diagnose the social
disease in eccentric ways. Perhaps this
confusion comes partly from the fact that
none of us are willing to be veritists. We
exaggerate conditions. We make them
wrose than they are, or else we idealize
them. We decide that all well-bred people
are kind people, when as a matter of fact
the best bred and most delightful gentlemen
we know may be grinding the face of
the poor. And while he compliments us
in elegant phrase, he may be driving some
other women to shame from the miserable
wages he pays her for her service in his
store or factory. Or we decide that
the poor are all deserving, that they are
languishing for work, and that they are
crushed by society. Whereas, it may be
that the oen we most pitied would run from
work as from the plague, and, so far from
being a victim of society, is, and always
will be, a prey upon it. It is the constant
taking ti cognizance of these things that
makes charity come at last to its scientific
basis and gives it the statistical aspect
which is so offensive to our sensibilities yet
which we all admit is a necessity of our
present conditions.

A man well known in this city in "labor
circles," as the newspapers say, wrote
me the other day, and, in the course of his
letter, spoke with much impatience of the
fad for charitable work which the fashionable,
were now amusing themselves with.
I think he under-estimated the
purity of motive which prompts most
of those women in their work. We
have all been tellings them they ought to
divide their surplus with the needy, and
they are trying to do it the best way they
know how. They have given of their surplus;
they have also given of their time,
and of themselves. I don't say that it may
not have filled some of them with virtuous
self-gratification. Or that it may not have
served to lull into temporary peace a heart
much troubled with private griefs, or that
somewhat perfunctory giving of goodness
in which some women indulge themselves.
But what of it? Women have a right to
their consolations. If they want to use all
opiate for a broken heart, or fill
idle hours, or deliberately add to
their good acts, they surely have
the right. No one can escape from
selfishness. For, finally, everything is
selfish. But to be selfish in that sense is
no sin-- it is quite the opposite. We are
born to make the most of self- to do that
is selfishness, or at least, it is selfish.

This much good has come of the dread
year of 1893 - we are all trying to look
more closely at the fabric of society which
each one of us assists in weaving. We are
noticing, for the first time, how gigantic
and impressive is the pattern. We are astonished
to find how gray and dun the
whole things looks, and how startling those
splashes of red in it are. Whether we he
on the floor of Rescue hall, rolled in an old
blanket, or under elderdown in a perfumed
chamber, we are troubled with inquiries
which will not let us rest, but which din at
us with imperative voices, and ask us for
how much of this suffering we have been
personally responsible.

"The times," said a well-known lady of
Omaha, the other day, in a meeting of
women assembled to consider the need for
systematic relief measuress, "are revolutionary
or evolutionary, and I defy anyone
to tell me which." No one ventured a reply.

ELIA W. PEATTIE.

THE "BAG OF GOLD CASE."

Brooks R. Johnson, who figured in the
rather novel case where the Nebraska National
bank applied to a count of equity to
have certain property owned by Johnson
turned over to it on the ground that the
property was purchased with money which
had disappeared from the bank while Johnson
was janitor of the building, has filed
his bond for an appeal to the supreme
court.

The money which mysteriously disappeared
from the cashier's cage was $5,000
in gold coin and was in one of the canvas
sacks used by banks for specie. The case
is known among attorneys as the "bag of
gold case," and is chielly, remarkable because,
though the bank officials went into
court and obtained an order to have the
property of Johnson transferred to them
by a dead of trust, there was never any
criminal proceedings.