Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 April 1890 — WAGE SYSTEM ATTACKED. [ARTICLE]

WAGE SYSTEM ATTACKED.

Indication that Dr. Lyman Abbott has Imbibed Rome of Bellamy’s Views, Dr. Lyman Abbott, the successor of Henry Ward Beecher in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, made a notable address to a good sized audience at Chicago Monday night. Dr. Abbott squarely attacked the existing wage system. The audience wildly applauded, time and again. “It is a system full of inherent evils,” said he, “a system that denies the laborer either a chance of profits or a chance of work. I don’t know how you live in Chicago, but in New York there are many who are denied even those three God-free gifts—pure air, clear sunshine, fresh water—and as for the ownership of the land, why, that is a dream u» them uutheught of. The wage system is a system that diffuses poverty, makes a coffin of the cradle and a bier of the bed. It is time for us to learn no longer to make wealth, but how to distribute it. We have developed in our midst a plutocraty, and the worst possible government on earth. Let it not go down to our shame that we do not know or care to know that such facts exist and need reforming.” The Doctor closed with an eloquent appeal for the universal brotherhood of man—for mu industrial government, wealth for the people, of the people, by the p^ople,