p. 114 | A SAD REPORT

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 11, 1877

A SAD REPORT.

The plain, unvarnished tale supplied by our special correspondent now among the Pennsylvania miners, cannot be read with indifference by any just or humane man. We speak of “hard times” when it becomes necessary to forego some luxury, to deny ourselves some familiar pleasure, and to reduce our general standard of expenditure. We complain when pinched to keep up appearances, and repine at the hardship which invades our comfort. In and around the coal fields of an adjoining State, however, are tens of thousands of working men, who, with their families, are on the verge of starvation. A large proportion are unemployed; those that have work are paid so scantily that what they earn barely keeps soul and body together. The picture of squalor and wretchedness, of hunger and nakedness, is shocking enough to touch the hardest heart. It is made more painful by the fact that some of the companies add to the miseries of their people by the enforcement of the truck system. There may be reasons for suspending work in some cases, and for reducing wages in others, but the greed which prompts employers of labor to squeeze out of it the beggarly pittance through the agency of store-pay, admits of no excuse. It is an infamy which the law in other countries has suppressed.—New York Times.