Newspaper Page Text
Banks County Gazette.
YOL. n.--NO. 50.
A SWEATER’S HEN.
BOY’S KNEE PANTS MADE
FOR 35 PER DOZEN.
Seven Hundred and Fifty of
These Sweater Shops in New
York City.
To those whoj believe the state
ments of the New York Press and
other papers that there are no pauper
laborers in America—that all are well
fed, well clothed and well boused—
we ask a careful reading of the follow
ing article by Rev. Madison C. Pe
ters. These statements are not ex
agerated or overdrawn, but indispu
table facts.
“I had read so much in the daily
papers about the ‘sweating system'
on the east side in New York City,
that I determined to spe for myself
if these things were true. In com
pany with a labor agitator and a
newspaper man, both of whom knew
the system thoroughly, I started on
iny trip of investigation. ‘The King
of the Gloakmakers’ introduced the
reporter and the writer to the con
tractors as factory inspectors. That
the contractors did not know that we
were not factory inspectors proves
that the inspectors do not inspect.
I saw human beings almost heaped
upon one another and buried out of
sight in masses of materials, which
smelled as powerfully and as poison
onslv as the wretched toilers them
selves.
The factories are out-01-the-way
places, bed-rooms, rear lofts and sub
cellars. In many instances the em
ployed live, work and sleep huddled
together in these shops. No wonder
tho death rate iu Hester street is
forty per cent higher than the aver
age made by the plague in Brazil.
Ton years ago there ere only ten
sweater’s shops in New York, but
now there are 750, and the work that
brought $5 and $6 then, realizes only
$1.50 now. Hardly anyone will be
lieve the truth unless he has seen it.
If the philanthropic people of this
city could visit these places, they
would soon band together for their
abolition. These people have suffered
so long, they have borne so much,
that the wonder is that they are as
moderate as they are. Can you im
agine the feelings of a man who his
to work eighty or ninety hours a
week for $4 ? There are 16,000 oper
ators in garments for women and
operators in cloaks for children; there
are 24,000 clothing makers.
The contractors are generally men
from the ranks of the immigrants.
They hire a loft or two bare rooms,
for about $lB per month, get a pile of
clothing from the manufacturer, who
tells the price he will pay for each
completed garment, and then they
hire their hands. The market is over
stocked with lalior, and hundreds are
ready to take the place at any price.
Nowadays the cloak is the product of
fifteen poor refugees (each making a
part), huddled together under the
foulest physical conditions, working
from fifteen to eighteen hours a day
as fast as their feet and bauds cun go.
I don't think that I found among the
sweaters’ employes an operatoi forty
years old. They die or are struck
down by disease long before that time.
But you must now take a trip with
me to a sweater’s den on Mulberry
street. The entrance is narrow and
squalid, up three flight of ladder-like
stairs, through a door, rickety and
grimy. Taking us for officers, we
were hailed, ‘Vat you vanta?' ‘These
gentlemen,’ said our spokesman, ‘are
factory inspectors. You mustanswer
any question they put to you.’ We
are in a small, poorly ventilated loft.
The windows are black with dirt from
poisonous fluff from garments. The
air is stifling, the ceiling low, the heat
intense. To work as prisoners for
crime would have been a respite for
these sad-faced foreigners. Knee
pants are made here for thirty-five
cents a dozen, for which the contiac
*9r gets sixty-five cents from the man
ufacturer. As I thought of the joy-
ons childhood up town filled with in
nocent pleasure, and then contem
plated these slaves of the needle, work
ing from twelve to eighteen hours a
day in a miserable hovel for $1.50 to
$4 a week, and then to sleep in a
room with a dozen men and women,
herding together like cattle, I said,
what a subject for tears of compas
sion ! This ir justice, oppression, and
suffering. What a theme for the
reformer or the novelist! These in
humanly long hours! These starva
tion wages!
How shall this injustice continue
upon these helpless foreigners, giving
the lie to American freedom ? Out
upon this corrupting farce! Down
with this entirely abominable system!
Let our factory law be so amended as
to strike directly at tenament facto
ries, and make anew law forbidding
the toiler to labor fifteen to eighteen
hours a day for the wages of a day,
and a blow will be struck at this sys
tem from which it will never recover.
—Boston Labor Leader.
The president’s message was a very
able production, touching every vital
point in reference to the well being
of this great republic, except the most
important. The question of the drink
habit receives no attention from our
good Presbyterian president. No
matter how many of our sons and
daughters are offered up on the altar
of Bacchus. No matter how much of
our nation’s wealth may be squander
ed on this fearful evil, it is not politic
to mention it iu a presidential mes
sage.—Temperance Advocate.
Let’s See?
Are yon a democrat? Do you bo
lieve in the free coinage of silver ?
Have you believed that the democrat
ic party was a free coinage party ? If
go, what do you think now ? The
democrats have 150 majority iu con
gress. Tho democrats with the free
silver republicans have a majority in
the United States senate. What was
to hinder the passage of the free coin
age measure and throw the responsi
bility on the president? Nothing but
democrats. Eighty-two democrats
and sixty-six republicans voted to
tabic the measure and kill it. Only
129 democrats voted against tabling.
Eleven republicans and the nine
people’s party congressmen voted
with them and tied the vote. The
speaker voted against tabling and de
layed the death of the bill.
The democratic party claims to
voice popular sentiment. Organiza
tions with 6,000,000 voters demand
free silver. The whole south and
west is for it. The democrats admit
the necessity of an increase in the
circulating medium. They do not
forget to denounce the monetary
policy ot the republican party in bitter
language, neither do they, under the
whip and spur of Wall street, forget
to vote to sustain that selfsame policy.
What excuse is given for not pass
ing a free coinage measure at this
time? That it would be impolitic to
put Senator Gorman and David Ben
net Hill on recoru on the silver quc-s'
tion iu the face of a presidential cam
paign. A measure of immediate in
terest to the whole people must be
killed lest it blast the presidential
aspirations of a couplo of ambitious
politicians. These aspiring states
men (?) are between two fires. On
one hand are the people, three-fourths
of whom demand an increase of
money. On the other hand are the
Wall street sharks who furnish the
“stuff” to defeat or elect candidates.
The latter must not be displeased
or they will not furnish the money to
use in torchlight processions and
other means of stirring up lagging
enthusiasm.
“We must have the offices,” say the
politicians. “In getting the offices we
must stand by the fellows who will
pay us best for our services.” We
can’t afford to waste our time serving
a crowd who will do nothing for us
except allow us to draw our salary.”
“To get the offices we must have
votes; to get votes w r e must have the
means of running a campaign; there
fore we must stand by the fellows
IIOMER, BANKS COUNTY, GEORGIA: ABRIL 19, 1892.
who will furnish the money, and hood
wink the fellows who have the votes.
W e can give Wall street the wink
and invent plausible excuses to de
ceive the people.
What do you think of a candidate
for the presidency that dare not go
on record on an important public
question ? What do you think of a
party that pl3ys shuttlecock and bat
tledore with a principle ? What trust
can you place in a party that delays
necessary legislation in the interest of
office-getting schemes? How can
you support a party that is all things
to all men, not for the glory of God,
but for the revenue there is in it?
Why should you continue to place
your confidence in a party that has
one eye on the main chance and the
other on the collaterals and is ready
to sacrifice principle to secure both or
either ?
Public necessity calls for decisive
action right now. No party car, he
the servant of tho people and the
henchman of monopoly at the same
time. No pjtrty can serve the people
well while its sentiment is divided by
lines of latitude or longitude. Unity
of sentiment means unity of action,
and unity of action means the accom
plishment of a purpose. The people’s
party stands for something. Its lead
ors are not afraid to announce their
position. They have fought steadily
for a principle whether it brought
success or defeat. The party is
united from Maine to California.
When you find a member of the
people's party you know what he be
lieves. lie does not change his prin
ciples to suit locality. He stands for
reform on the questions of land, trans
portation, and finance. The people’s
party will fight to a finish those par
ties that stand for the usurers, specu
lators, land grabbers, etc., against the
honest hand and brain toiler, l’ara
sites must go. The triumph of the
people’s party means the triuihph of
honest labor and legitimate business
and tho downfall of speculation and
monopoly.—Cincinnati Herald.
Tli© Crystal Palace.
At ono period during the building
of the Crystal Palace some 7, 000 work
men were engaged in its erection,
and some idea of its vastness may bo
obtained from the fact that 9,012
tons of irofl were used in the frame
work, besides 173 tons of bolts and
rivets and 103 tons of nails. Were it
passible to place the panes of glass
employed end to end, they would be
found to extend 242 miles. For heat
ing purposes alone there are fifty
miles of piping under the floor and
ten miles more of pipes carrying the
water supply to the fountains. When
the complete fountain system is in
full go, as many as 11,788 jets are
playing and throwing 120,000 gallons
into the air every minute. One great
display consumes 6,000,000 gallons of
water. —London Tit-Bits.
Copper Came from Cyprus.
The word copper is generally ad
mitted to bo derived from Cyprus, as
it was from that island that the
ancient Romans first procured their
sujjplies. In those remote days
Cyprus and Rhodes were the great
copper districts; and even in our own
day new discoveries of copper ore,
especially the beautiful blue and
green ores—from which the metal is
so much more easily obtained than
from the copper pyrites and other
sulphuretted ores of Cornwall—are
being made nearly every year in the
islands of the Mediterranean. —Cham
bers’ Journal.
SfiortHlghtedneas.
It is a disgrace to our educational
institutions that half of our students
bring away from them myopic
shortsighted—eyes, and that, even
in our grammar schools, children
who have hardly reached their teens
become life long slaves to specta
cles, formerly regarded as the al
most exclusive badge and burden of
old age. And it must be remem
bered that short sightedness is not a
mere inconvenience, but a disorder
that tends toward ultimate visual dis
organization . —Youth's Companion.
No wonder we are called the “fool
farmers” by the smart fellows in the
grain pits and the cotton exchanges
when we work the whole year in sun
shine and in rain with all the hazards
of storm and drouth to dig a little
batch of something out of the ground
to turn over to these smart fellows at
whatever price they may see proper
to name, always the very lowest
wholesale price, to buy back again at
the very highest retail price, after
from three to a dozen profits have
been made between the leaving and
returning to their hands. For thirty
years this thing has gone on and con
tinually grows worse, right before the
eyes of the farmer, and only until
recently he has persisted in shutting
his eves to the fact, and has only been
iqade to see dimly now by the hardest
kind of knocks and bitter reverses.
The “fool farmer’’ sure enough, he is
tho only man on the green earth who
neither puts a price on what he makes
or what he buys.—Aakansas Farmer.
Latlor and Capital.
The pay accorded labor—in the
philosophy of the capitalist—is ad
justed by the laws of supply and de
mand. This is a false statement.
Labor has to contend against both
the power of capital and hunger
which drives him to seek aid. Capi
tal has “demand” to urge it to em
ploy labor—demand merely to make
more capital. Hunger or necessity,
has nothing to do with the matter
ot capital investing in labor. It is
purely a matter of desire to increase
advantages already at hand. But
toil finds itself, first settling the mat
ter with capital on the basis of two
men waiting to do the same work—
and second, the fact* that one of the
two must go hungry.
Hence, labor pronounces a law
which should govern the world in
reference to wages. That is
this:
That a man who labors to create
civilization, represented by comforts
and wealth, has an inherent right to
enough pay to feed clothe, shelter and
educate himself and family.
Tnat is that he should be able to
marry a woman, and thereby with
draw one person from the field of
competition in labor, and that he
should be able to raise children fit to
be members of society and not a prey
upon society.
Anything less than this tears down
the social organization or depraves the
social statues. And any course
which renders one toiler unfitted to
upbuild society as a whole, compels
him to become a desease—whereby
part of society is depraved while
another part becomes strong and rich
at the expense of the many.
Labor has to contend against a
savage competition from which cap
ital is free unless protected by a
barrier as to a rmnimunj wage, for
instance, let capital propose to build
a house. It takas the plans to a
carpenter who supports a wife and
five children to educate. This car
penter says lie can build the house
for not less thali $2,500 —for ho is
performing his full duty to socioty by
educating his children.
Capital takes the plans to another
carpenter who is supporting a wife
and two children. He offers to build
the house for not less than $2,200,
for he is doing a part of his duties to
socity.
Capital takes the plans to a man
who supports a wife but raises no
children. lie offers to build for
$2,000 —for he enjoys the selfish priv
ileges of society but adds nothing to
it.
Capital finally goes to a man who
takes from society all the life he lives
—supports no member thereof—the
woman he should marry is in the
field competing for support—and no
children will boar society’s burdens
when he departs. This creature
offers to build for SI,BO0 —and he
pets the job!
And thus the children of the just
are driven to the wall and are educa
ted into vice from which they go
graduates into prisou.
Labor lifts its face lo the Christ
who came to the toilers for his lieu
tenants, and cries out against the in
justice and says that the world shall
yet learn to put capital and labor on
an equal footing before the law and
cease to let necessity be well springs
of abounding poverty. Hence labor
unions put a minimum rate at which
: men should work. This minimum
1 rate provides against a great danger
although it does not provide wholly
for the competition of the selfish
man against the society upbuilder,
but the time is rapidly approach
ing when the just man shall not be
oppressed because of bis performance
of duty.—Tho Great West.
Woman’s Vote in Wyoming.
The Illinois Suffragist publishes a
letter written by Mrs. Helen M.
Warren, wife of United States Senator
Warren, of Wyoming, dated Chey
enne, January 12th, 1892, in which
she says:
You asked if woman is popular
with the best class of people both
men and woman, I answer most em
phatically, yes. I speak from an ex
perience of twenty-one years.
To-day I have been to the polls
and voted for an alderman, and the
majority of my lady friends have
done likewise. One of our cultured
ladies, one who would graco any po
sition, sat wi h the gentleman at the
polls as one of the judges of the elec
tion. All the ladies were treated a
respectfully as if they were attending
a White House reception, instead of
votiug in a carriage house. We
never recievo any other treatment.
—Demorest Times.
American Temperance Advocate:
The country rejoices over the sup
pression of the giant lottery octupus.
The secular press—except that por
tion of it that has been subsidized —
has greatly assisted in this matter.
The vigor and energy of Postmaster
General Wannatnakcr, in carrying
out the law of congress has largely
contribut'd to tliis end and wo hope
this monster evil is dead. But how
about the octupus of the drink traffic ?
Where the lottery has slain its tens of
thousands; where the Louisiana
crime has led hundreds into crime
and ruin, the crime tolerated by this
government has led hundreds of
thousands into crime andjruin. Why
then not make a crusade upon this
hydraheaded monster? Ah, it is big
ger, lias more votes, controls more
offices, owns more politicians, and has
its hand on throat of the government.
VVaere are the influential members of
the secular press that dare speak out
on this question ?
“How Long, Oil, Lord.”
Congress met the first Monday in
December. It has been in session
120 days, or one-third of a year. We
defy the best posted democrat or
republican in the nation to point out
a measure of practical benefit to the
masses that has become a law at any
time. Has anything been done to
lighten taxes, to increase the volume
of currency, to raise the wages of
working people, to supply work for
the idle, to reduce pauperism and
prostitution, to decrease child labor?
No, emphatically, no.
What has congress done? Noth
ing but scheme for the perpetration
of party power and the continuance
of the present financial system. The
farmers are losing their farms and
the small business men are falling
into bankruptcy more rapidly than
ever before. Yet the two old parties
in congress have resolved themselves
into political chess players, moving
only when it will serve the purpose
of a lot of office-getting gangsters.
Each party claims to be the friend
of people. There is scarcely a dis
cernable differerence in their position
on public questions, yet neither man
ifest any disposition to meet the other
half way for the general good. The diff
erence between the two old parties is
manufactured for the special purpose
of dividing tho masses and setting
them by the ears while the machines
get away with spoils.
These pretended divisions allow
them to lay the blame upon each
other thereby duping the rank and
file and delaying political and social
reforms. The present system suits
these political schemers. By it they
aro enabled to live on the fat of the
land, without rendering an equiv
alent. By it they can enjoy the
honor and emoluments of office while
scheming to enrich themselves at
SINGLE COPY THREE CENTS.
public expense. By it they can serve
a develish purpose in the name of
patriotism and the constitution, and
hush a popular protest in the name
of the law.
A change is rushing this way.
The people aro taking a hand in the
game. It is being played by new
rules. The new players have a hig h
er object than the glory of winning.
They'll win the game if they have to
smash the chess board. Human mis
ery inspires them to mighty effort.
Political bunco steerers better quit
the game while they aro in luck.
The stakes are up and. rest assured
the old players will not pocket them.
What are stakes? The product ol
honest effort on tho part of Lmd or
brains. The right will win.—Ctmfin*
u&ti Herald.
Mother at Prayer.
Once I suddenly opened the door
of my mother’s room, and saw her on
her knees besido her chair, and heard
her my name in prayer. I
quickly and quietly withdrew, with a
feeling of awe and reverence in my
heart. Soon I went away from
home to school, then to college, then
into life’s sterner duties. Bat I never
forgot that ono glimpse of my mother
at prayer nor the one word—my own
name which I heard her utter. Well
did I know that what I had seen was
only a glimpse of what was going on
every day in that sacred closet of
prayer and the conscience strengthend
me a thousand times in duty, in dan
ger and in struggle. When death
came at length and sealed those lips,
the sorest sense of loss that I felt was
the knowledge that no more would
my mother he praying for me. In
the seventeenth of John we hear
Christ praying for us—just onee, a
few sentences; but we know that
this is only a sample of tho interces
sions for us that goes on forever-
Nothing shall interrupt this pleading
for He ever liveth to intercede.—Dr.
J. R. Miller.
The man who for party’s sake tries
to conceal the misery and bankruptcy
of tho masses is as criminally base as
a gravedigger who for mercenary
reasons would conceal the existence
of a malignant infectious disease.—
Cincinnati Herald.
I>i<!ix’t Unflerntund.
In the days of tho old schoolship
Massachusetts a Sunday visitor once
addressed the sailor hoys on board in
what ho probably thought was an
effective maimer. Tho next day in
the school the question was asked,
“What did you learn from the re
marks of Mr. X. yesterday?” To the
surprise of the teacher one boy gave
this answer, “1 learned that ho was
talking about two things that he did
not seem to understand, sir-naviga
tion and religion, sir.”—Boston Ad
vertiser.
Six© Couldn’t Waft.
Lady—l’m sorry your mamma is
out, my pet, for I wanted very much
to see her, and I can’t remain until
she returns. Slio has gone shopping,
I presume?
Little Pet—No; she’s gone to make
sixty-five calls.
Lady—Oh, is that all. Then I’ll
wait.'
Settled at T.ast.
The old question as to whether the
upper part of a carriage wheel in mo
tion moves faster than the lower part
seems to have been definitely settled
by instantaneous xffiotograpliy, which
show’s tho top spokes indistinct, the
bottom clear cut and well defined.—
St Louis Republic.
The People: It was really mean,
but it worked. In a Hill procession
in New York the other night, that
took two hours to pass a certain point
(a beer garden) the “boys” bad in
line a monstrous transparency on
which was printed in bold letters:
WE ARE LOUD FOR IIILL. A
Cleveland painter coming down the
street, with a pot of paint in his
hand, saw the banner in front of the
beer garden approached it and made
three strokes to the right on tha
letter lin Hill. After the boys had
filled up they marched down the
street, and the thing that drew cheers
from the people was the banner,
which read, “WE ARE SOLID FOR
HELL.” Speaking from a.Biblical
standpoint, we accept, the painter’s
amendment.—Demoron t Times.