Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 January 1894 — POVERTY'S PAINS. [ARTICLE]

POVERTY'S PAINS.

Dr. Talmage Grows Humorous on the Tariff Question. rhe Causes of Poverty—Tariff Discussion, D ulnkrnnesa, Improvidence,-Sick-ness—An Insurance Company ... —„ That. Never Fails. .. ....... . Rev. Dr. Talmage, last week, at Brooklyn, gave as his personal contribution to a food distribution 3,000 founds of meat and 2,-000 loaves of bread. Sunday, at the Tabernacle, he preached from the text: Matthew xxvi, 11—“ For ye have the poor always with you.” He said:

For 6,000 years the bread question has been the active and absorbing question. Witness the people crowding up to Joseph’s storehouse in Egypt. Witness the famine in Samaria and Jerusalem. Witness the 7,000 hungry people for whom Christ multiplied the loaves. Witness the uncounted millions of people now living who, I believe, have never yet had one full meal of healthful and nutritious food in all their lives. Think of the 354 great families in England. Think of the 25,000 people under the hoof of hunger year before last in Russia.

The first reason we have always the poor with us is because of the perpetual overhauling of the tariff question, or, as I shall call it, the tariffic controversy. There is need for such a word, and so I take the responsibility of manufacturing it. There are millions of people who are expecting that the present Congress of the United States will do something one way or another to end this discussion. But it will never end. W hen I was five years of age I remember hearing my father and his neighbors in vehement discussion of this very question. It was high tariff or low tariff or no tariff at all. When your great-grandchild dies at ninety years of age it will probably be from overexertion in discussing the tariff. On the day the world is destroyed there will bejthree men standing on the postoffice steps— one a high tariff man, another a low tariff man and the other a free-trade man — each one red in the face from excited argument on the subject. Other questions may get quieted—the Mormon question, the silver question, the pension question, the civil-serv-ice question. All questions of annexation may come to a peaceable settlement by the annexation of islands two weeks’ voyage away, and the heat of their volcanoes conveyed through pipes under the sea, made useful in warming our continent, or annexation of the moon, dethroning the queen of the night who is said to be dissolute, and bringing the lunar populations under the influence of our free institutions, yea, all other questions, national and international, may be settled—but this tariffic question, never.

It will not only never be settled, but it can never be moderately quiet for more than three years ata time, -ach party getting into power taking one of the four years to fix it up, ind then the next party will fix it Sown. Our finances cannot get well because of too many doctors. It is with sick nations as with sick individuals. Here is aynan terribly disordered as to his body. A doctor is jailed in and he administers a febrifuge, a spoonful every hour. But recovery is postponed and the anxious friends call in another doctor and he says “What this patient needs is blood letting; now roll up your sleeve,” and the lancet flashes. But still recovery is postponed and a homoepathic doctor is called in and he administers some small pellets and says, “all the patient wants is rest.” Recovery is still postponed, the family say that such small pellets cannot amount to much anyhow, and an allopathic doctor is called in and he says, “What this patient wants is calomel and jalap." Recovery still postponed,a hydropathic doctor is called in and he says, “What this patient wants is hot and cold baths, and he must have them right away. Turn on the faucet and get ready the shower baths.” Recovery still postponed, an eclectic doctor is called in, and he brings all the schools to bear upon the poor sufferer, and the patient, after a brave struggle for life expires. What killed him? Too many doctors. And that is what is killing our national finances. This tariffic controversy keeps business struck through with uncertainty, and that uncertainty results in poverty and wretchedness for a vast multitude of people. If eternal gab on this subject could have been fashioned into loaves of bread, there would not be a hungry man or wo.man or child on all the planet. To the end oLtime the words of the text will be kept true by the tariffic controversy —“Ye have the poor always with you.” Another cause of perpetual poverty is the cause alcoholic, The victim does not last long. He soon crouches into the drunkard’s grave. But what about his wife and children? She takes in washing, when she can get it, or goes out working on small wages, because sorrow and privation have left her incapacitated to do a srong woman’s work. The children are thin-blooded and gaunt and pale and weak, standing around in cold rooms, or pitching pennies on the street corner, and munching a slice of Unbuttoned bread when they can get it, sworn at by passers by because they do not get out of the way, kicked onward toward manhood or wouianbuod, for which they have no

preparation except a depraved appeal to and frail constitution■,cand id al es for almhouse and penitentiary. With its red sword of flame that liquor power marshals its procession and they move on in ranks long enough to girdle the earth, and the procession is headed by the nose blocthed, nerve shattered, rheum eyed, lip bloated, soul scorched inebriates, followed by the women, who, though’ brought up4n—comfortable homes, now go limping past with aches and pains and pallor and hunger and woe, followed by their children, barefoot, uncombed, freezings and with a wretchedness of time and eternity seemingly compressed in the agonized features, “Forward, march!” cries the liquor business to that army without banners. Keep that influence moving on, and you will have the poor with you. Report comes from one of the cities, where the majority of the inhabitants are out of work and dependent on charity, yet last year they spent more in that city for rum than they

did for clothing and groceries. Another warranty that my text will prove true in the perpetual poverty of the world is the wicked spirit of improvidence. A vast number of people have such small incomes that they cannot lay by in savings bank or life insurance i cent a year. It takes every farthing they can earn to spread the table, and clothe the family, and educate the children, and if you blame such people for improvidence you enact a cruelty. On such a salary as many clerks and employes and many ministers of re 1 ligion live, and on such wages as many workmen receive, they cannot in twenty years lay up twenty cents. But you know and I know many who have competent incomes and could provide somewhat for the future who live up to every dollar, and when they die their children go to. the poor-house or on the street. Just as certainly are the savingsbanks and the life insurance companies divine institutions. As out of evil good often comes, so out of the doctrine of probabilities, calculated by Prof. Hugens and Prof. Pascal for games of chance, came the calculation of the probabilities of human life as used by life insurance companies, and no business on earth is more stable and honorable, and no mightier mercy for the human race has been born since Christ was born. Bored beyond endurance for my signature to papers of all ; sorts, there is one sort of paper that I always sign with a feeling of gladness and triumph, and that is a paper which the life insurance company requires from the clergyman after a decease in his congregation, in order to insure the payment of the policy to the bereft household. I have known men who have had an income of $3,000, $4,000 and $5,000 a year who did not leave one farthing to the surviving household. I Now. that man’s death is a defalca- 1 tion, an outrage, a swindle. He did { not die; he absconded. There are i 100,000 people in America to-day a- i hungered through the sin of improvi- ; dence. “But,” say some, “my income is so small I cannot afford to pay the premium on a life insurance. ” ! Are you sure about that? If you ; are sure, then you have a right to I depend upon the promise in Jere- { miah xlix, 11: “Leave thy fatherless : children. I will preserve them alive, and let thy widows trust in me.” But, if you are able to, remember that you have no right to ask God to do for your household that which you can do for them yourself. Another fact that you may depend upon for perpetual poverty is the incapacity of many to achieve h livelihood. You can go through any community and find good people, with more than usual mental caliber, who never have been able to support themselves and their house- , holds. They are a mystery to us, ! and we say, “I do not know what is the matter with them, but there is a screw loose somewhere.” Some of these persons have more brain than thousands who make a splendid success. Some are too sanguine of temperament, and they see bargains i where there are none. A common minnow is to them a goldfish, and a quail a flamingo, and a blind mule on a towpath a Bucephalus. They buy when things are highest and sell when things are lowest. What an overwhelming statistic would be the story of men and women and children impoverished by sicknesses! Then the cyclones. Then the Mississippi and Ohio freshets. Then the stopping of factories. Then the curculios among the peach I trees. Then the insectile devasta- I tion of the potato patches and the I wheat fields. Then the epizootics ' among the horses and the hollow 1 horn among the herds. Then the [ rains that drotfn out everything and I the droughts that burn up half a j continent. Then the coal strikes and the iron strikes and the mechanics’ strikes, which all strike labor harder than they strike capital. Then the ' yellow fever at Brunswick and Jacksonville and Shreveport. Then the cholera at the Narrows, threatening to land in New York. Then the Charleston earthquake. Then the Johnstown flood. Then hurricanes | sweeping from Caribbean sea to j Newfoundland. Then there are the j great monopolies that sully the earth with their oppressions. Then there are the necessities of buying coal by the scuttle instead of the ton, and flour by the pound instead of the barrel, and so the injustices aro multiplied. In the wake of all these are overwhelming illustrations of the truth of my text, “Ye have the poor always with you.” Remember a fact that no one emphasizes—a fact, nevertheless, upon which I want to put the weight of an eternity of tonnage—that the best

way of insuring yourself and your children nnd your grandchildren against poverty and all other troubles is by helping others. I am an agent of the oldest insurance comi pany that was ever established. It jis near 3,000 years old. It has the I advantage of all the other plans of whole life policies, en- ; dowment, joint life and survivorship ; policies, ascending and descending {-scales of premium and tontine 1 { it pays up while you live and it pays j up after you are dead. Other life insuiance companies may fail, but this Celestial life insurance company never. The Lord j God Almighty is at the head of it, i and all the angels of heaven are in r its board of direction, and its assets ' are all tlje worlds, and all the char- ■ itable of earth and heaven are the • beneficiaries. “But.” says someone, ! “I do not like a tontine policy so ! well, and that which you offer is i more like tontine and to be chiefly • paid in this life.” “Blessed is he that considereth the poor. The Lord ; wid deliver him in time of trouble.” Well, if you prefer the old fashi ioned policy of life insurance, which is not paid till after death, you can be accommodated. That will he., given you in the day of judgment, and will be handed you by the right I hand, the pierced hand of our Lord himself, and all you do in the right spirit for the poor is payment on the premium of that life insurance policy: “Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, ‘Come ye blessed of my Father, for I was hungered and ye gave me meat, I was thirsty and ye gave me drink, I was a stranger and ye took me in, naked and ye clothed me.”’ In the last conflagration the fire insurance companies of the world will fail, for how could they make appraisement of the loss on a universal fire? Then all the inhabitants of the round world will surrender their mortal existence, and how could life insurance companies pay for depopulated hemispheres? But our celestial life insurance will not be harmed by that, continental wreck, or that hemispheric accident, or that planetary catastrophe. Blow it out like a candle—the noonday sun! Tear it down like wornout upholstery—the last sunset! Toss it from God’s finger like a dewdrop from the anther of the water lily—the ocean! Scatter them like thistledown before a school boy’s breath the worlds! That will not disturb, the omnipotence, or the love of that*’ Christ who said it once on earth,and will say it again in heaven to all those who have been helpful to the downtrodden and the cold, and the hungry, and the houseless, and the lost, “Inasmuch as ye did it to them, ye did to me.”