People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1896 — Loss of Employment a Crime. [ARTICLE]

Loss of Employment a Crime.

Harry Reed, a printer was fined and sentenced to the workhouse for neglecting to support his family. Sentence was suspended for a few' days to enable the prisoner to mend his ways. If Reed can find no boss to give him employment then he will be imprisoned for his atrocious crime. He must beg for work (and begging is against the law, too) in order to get God’s pure air of freedom. Reed is a sober man and after having spent the greater portion of his- life, ill his modest way, in benefiting society, he is hauled before the bar of justice in his old age and treated like a brute. This poor man has been driven from his trade, like scores of others, by machinery. In which direction shall he turn? A few old monopolists won all the land, which no man made, and all the tools of production and distribution, which they did not make, The state protects tjiese property rights; the Reeds are denied access to them, and all the God-given blood-purchased human rights in civilization seem to be outbalanced by vested rights. To sum up, the state, society, makes paupers and criminals out of men, and then punishes them for being such. It is a beastly (with apologies to the beasts), unnatural condition, and don’t forget that old Mother Nature has a habit of punishing those who disobey her wise and just laws.—Cleveland Citizen.