Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1890 — Evils of Civilization. [ARTICLE]

Evils of Civilization.

Civilization abounds in artificial, abnormal conditions, many of which must be more or less unfavorable to health. To some extent, the same thing is true of the lower animals and even of the vegetables. The domesticated horse is far more delicate than his wild progenitor, and the wild potato probably has no such tendency to rot as is manifested by the cultivated progeny. Modern civilization makes all the nations neighbors—shares not only of each other’s blessings, but of each other’s vices and disease?. Yellow fever, dengue, cholera, typhus fever and la grippe all reached us from abroad. Meantime the progress of the United States as a nation is not without its bad side. Young men abandon the quiet and invigorating life of the farm for the excitiDg and in some respects demoralizing and enfeebling life of the city. The young women leave the normal and healthful work of the home for the exhausting toil of the workshop and the beggarly life of the boarding-house. If manufactures give us cheaper goods, they do so at a large expenditure of human health and life. At the same time they crowd the great centers with a population hard to assimilate and pervaded with its own unhealthy and vicious tendencies. Even our schools, of which we are justly so proud, greatly aid in propagating the diseases of childhood, besides producing a general tendency to defective vision, and a letting down of the general health. The increasingly minute division of labor, so beneficial in some respects, must have a belittling effeot upon the laborer. As one said many years ago, the manufacture of a pin bv"the divided labor of several* different persons gives us excellent pins, but poor mechanics, and worse yet, poor men and women. Among other ills of civilization are overworked brains; various forms of nervous exhaustion; the worries of domestic and social life; the ruinous greed of wealth; the disastrous results of excessive business competition; the diseases and vices naturally attendant upon luxury; the crowding together of the ignorant and depraved in large cities. Let every one do his best to guard himself and help his brother against the evils of humanity at its best estate. — Youth’s Companion. “When you and your wife make any call,” said a department clerk, who had agreed to supervise the social enterprises of a friend who had some proclivities in a sporting way, “you will want cards. Are you provided in this respect?” “Oh, I should sav so,” was the confident assurance. “I got threa now packs day before yesterday,”