THE SAD RESULTS by G.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 25, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 12.

THE SAD RESULTS.

By G.

The abandoning of agriculture as a calling, and the country as a place of residence, is bearing its terrible fruit in greater quantity every year. God designed men to till the soil for a living, and discouraged city building in its very incipiency (Genesis 11); but in these last days, the prosperity of a country is reckoned by the growth of its cities and the wealth of its corporations. But this false estimate is continually enticing people—especially the youth—away from the honorable pursuit of agriculture and its auxiliary enterprises to the uncertain, dependent occupations of the cities. Most of these are in competition with one another for subservient positions, and this condition, together with the temptations to debauchery and the commission of crime, deprives many of employment, when they suddenly find themselves stranded, helpless, discouraged, and utterly unfitted for any independent course of life. The results, to be seen to a greater or less extent in every city, are thus portrayed by a London correspondent of the Philadelphia Press:—

Since the first of January every day at dawn the great army of London's unemployed has taken the road and displayed itself along Mile End Street and Battersea and in Hyde Park. From the last named rendezvous they have gone forth toward evening to file through the brilliantly lit streets of the city, dragging slowly, gloomily through Trafalgar Square and the Strand. All ages of men walk in the ranks, healthy men and men who still bear the marks of diseases brought from the Transvaal. It has not been a pleasing sight in London, nor one of which she could be proud. On the flanks of the column as it marches walk men collecting alms from the passersby. They carry small market baskets, empty cigar boxes, battered hats, anything and everything into which pennies may be dropped. When the line halts from time to time these men gather along the curbs, carrying their petitions to the curious and the charitable alike, who have stopped to see this peculiarly twentieth century procession.

There has been much prospective boasting for the twentieth century, but so far as the condition and prospects of those in the common walks of life are concerned, retrogression and depression are strongly indicated. Criminality is increasing, the oppressors are becoming more oppressive, and the poor are becoming more dependent. And it is all because of departing from the plan devised by the Creator for the maintenance of the race, and departing from His wise, expedient law, to “love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and thy neighbor as thyself.”