THE TRAMP AND STRIKE QUESTIONS: _Part of a Lecture proposed, (never
deliver'd)_
Two grim and spectral dangers--dangerous to peace, to health,
to social security, to progress--long known in concrete to the
governments of the Old World, and there eventuating, more than once or
twice, in dynastic overturns, bloodshed, days, months, of terror--seem
of late years to be nearing the New World, nay, to be gradually
establishing themselves among us. What mean these phantoms here? (I
personify them in fictitious shapes, but they are very real.) Is the
fresh and broad demesne of America destined also to give them foothold
and lodgment, permanent domicile?
Beneath the whole political world, what most presses and perplexes
to-day, sending vastest results affecting the future, is not
the abstract question of democracy, but of social and economic
organization, the treatment of working-people by employers, and all
that goes along with it--not only the wages-payment part, but a
certain spirit and principle, to vivify anew these relations; all
the questions of progress, strength, tariffs, finance, &c., really
evolving themselves more or less directly out of the Poverty Question,
("the Science of Wealth," and a dozen other names are given it, but I
prefer the severe one just used.) I will begin by calling the reader's
attention to a thought upon the matter which may not have struck you
before--the wealth of the civilized world, as contrasted with its
poverty--what does it derivatively stand for, and represent? A rich
person ought to have a strong stomach.
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