OUT OF EMPLOYMENT

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 5, 1877

OUT OF EMPLOYMENT.

It appears from the following paragraph which we clip from an article in The Library Table, of June 21, 1877, that we enter upon our second century with as many persons reduced to idleness with all its prospective want and crime, as constituted the entire population of the country when our independence was declared. The rest is told in the paragraph itself:—

“In this first year of our second century of national existence there are said to be three millions of unemployed persons in the United States.

“Who can tell us why or how this appalling situation arose? Who can set forth in colors sufficiently vivid the degradation and demoralization it is bringing upon the sufferers and upon our country? We are dealing with wide-spread effects; let us search into their causes. Are these the ripened fruits of our boasted civilization? Or is this crisis an ordeal through which every nation must pass? Now, if ever, is the time for our legislatures, our political economists, and our social-science reformers, to exert themselves for the benefit of a bankrupt people.”