Oppressors, Beware! by R. V. Lawrence

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 13, 1870

Oppressors, Beware!

By R. V. Lawrence

“And so I returned and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun.”

Man has always had a disposition to oppress his fellow-man. Magna-Chartas have been wrung from the hands of tyrannical kings; despotisms have been overthrown by the indignant people; systems of slavery have been destroyed at the cost of rivers of blood—but still, oppressions “are done under the sun.” A race of monied tyrants has sprung into existence in this land, and slaves yet toil for naught.

It came to light lately, that a man has, for eighteen years, driven a New York omnibus, for the sum of one dollar and fifty cents a day. To find cheap rent, he located his family in Brooklyn, miles away from his scene of labor. Consequently, it is one o'clock before he can get home, get his supper, and retire to rest. At four o'clock, his wife calls him up, he eats hurriedly, and hastens off to his work. So for eighteen years, he has had to steal one or two dollars a day from his employers, in order to get bread for himself and family. “Why don't he leave, and get more remunerative employment?” For a hundred miles around New York, the labor supply is greater than the demand; and the poor man, for eighteen years, has not had money enough above his daily wants, to move his family to a locality where labor is plenty and wages good. But God keeps a day-book between employer and employee. The curse of a just God is on the money extorted from that oppressed family.

There are domestics, too, in many a so-called religious family, who never know what Sunday is. Hot dinners must be served up, though the servants never hear a sermon. The gourmandizers must be satisfied, though the souls of the domestics starve.

The writer knows of a church—a splendid, respectable, aristocratic, ritualistic, Methodist (!) church—whose members fancy, doubtless, that they are on the through-line for Heaven. Go out, on Sunday morning during the sermon, to the rear of this church, and you will see some dozen splendid barouches, with their drivers sitting on the boxes, smoking, reading New York Sunday papers, or joking; while their masters within are humbly listening, or intoning the lesson. One of these drivers says Sunday is his hardest day. Is the gospel plan such, that in order to get these rich men to Heaven, these poor drivers must be sent to hell? Not exactly. Does God see these oppressions that “are done under the sun”?

There are great clothing establishments, owned and conducted by Christian (!) men, that give out work to sewing women, paying thirty, or forty, or fifty cents for making a coat, a vest, or other garment, and receive for the same work, from their customers, two, and sometimes three, dollars. These merchants get rich in a few years, and retire, to eat, drink, dress, and ride, while the poor women stitch on wearily, day and night, allowing themselves but a few hours' rest—hardly getting bread enough to keep soul and body together, until they break down and die. Slaves in fact, but not in name. Does God know anything about these wrongs?

Grain speculators, too—some of them leading men in our churches—get control of the grain market, and up go the prices. True, God made bread plenty, but men make it scarce. And now, all these men and women, that are building up colossal fortunes for men that have not heart enough to pay more than forty cents where they ought to pay a dollar, have to pinch and stint themselves and children—and perhaps, under temptation, steal—in order that grain speculators may grow rich and build lordly palaces on our avenues, on commanding points along our rivers and bays, and cottages at fashionable watering-places.

Does God see all this? Yes; and he is coming, after a little, to adjust these accounts. A great deal of the money earned by these poor people, has been put in with the bricks into the above-named splendid palaces, and lavished on the dresses and turn-outs of these oppressors, and God will come ere long to rectify the matter. The poor and oppressed, if they live in the fear of God, will be paid, if not in money, in the enjoyments of religion here and hereafter. But what of the ill-gotten fortunes? Let the history of the Southern slaveholders answer. God has been down into the South some eight years, settling the accounts of the oppressors and the oppressed. It is a very old account—been running some two hundred years—and is not easily adjusted. In searching for the earnings of the oppressed, kept back so long by fraud, God has had to tear down, burn, and destroy with shot and shell, many houses, towns, and cities. A million or so of lives have also, in one way or another, been demanded to make the account balance; and, judging by the disturbances in the land, and the crushing debt still hovering over us, the God of eternal justice is not yet fully satisfied.

Let oppressors everywhere know that God has pledged himself to stand by the humble poor. If you are ready for a fight with Omnipotence, then let the lash fall on the poor.—R. V. LAWRENCE, in Earnest Christian.