Hard Times by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 24, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 24.

Hard Times.

By Editor

This expression is, we know, a common one in all times of mere commercial dulness. But times are now more than "dull"—they are hard. Never, we believe, since the financial troubles began five years ago has business been worse in California than at present. Many large private firms are running light, and some of the largest private business houses are closing. Promised "prosperity" has not come. Men put off its advent from spring to autumn, and from autumn to spring, but the sound of its coming is yet delayed. And yet the great trusts flourish. In some respects luxuriousness and extravagance were never more manifest. There is no question that if the money expended for mere sensuous pleasure, for drink, for intemperate living in various forms, was used economically for the necessities and comforts of life, there would be much less want and distress. With all the oppression and grasping avarice of the great controlling trusts in impoverishing a people, the drink and tobacco traffics are worse than all of them put together. As an individual a man may be far from both, and his freedom will materially assist in freeing his brother-man.

Inhumanity.

Worse than old-time slavery exists in the State of Georgia in the way that commonwealth treats its prisoners. It lets them out to brutal contractors in the chain-gang, and these contractors use them in digging ditches, draining swamps, etc. Sometimes the convicts are beaten inhumanly, and deaths have occurred from this cause. The Independent has the following:—

"A negro girl, as we learn from the Atlanta Constitution, by the name of Lizzie Boatright, was convicted a few weeks ago of burglary and recommended to mercy. She was sentenced to six months in the chain-gang. She was sent to Griffin Brothers' camp, in Wilkes County. There she was dressed in men's clothes and made to work along with the other convicts, digging ditches with a shovel, and treated as if she were a man. For failing to do what it was thought she ought to do, she was stripped and unmercifully whipped by a guard, who has since been convicted of whipping a man to death. The governor released her in order to relieve her sufferings."

Of another convict, named Buster Tucker, the Solicitor-General says:—

"He is of a very low order of intellect and has been awfully treated by the guards. His body is a mass of sores from the severe and cruel whippings he has received. He is too weak to work, and the punishment he has had is awful to contemplate."

This convict was also pardoned by Governor Atkinson, who says that the State has no jurisdiction over these convict camps. This is parallelism to Georgia's Sunday law. Both usages had their origin in the barbarism of past centuries.

A Tax on Churches.

The Roman Catholics are complaining of the Dingley Tariff Bill, because of its duty of 45 to 60 per cent. on statuary, laces, and embroidery used for clerical vestments. The Catholic Home Journal of New York, edited by "Father" Xavier, is reported as saying:—

"It seems Mr. Dingley and his committee have let nothing escape taxation that is in the vocabulary of things material, and it further appears that their greedy hands have been stretched out to lay heavy burdens on some things spiritual—that is, on ecclesiastical furnishings, and other articles of church service. No State we know of has gone so far as to tax church property. The house of God has been left free of official visits from the tax-gatherer, and a man has been allowed to hear the Gospel preached in temples untainted by the presence of the money-changers."

Well, California taxes church property directly, houses and lands, and the churches prosper. But, really, why should not the priests who wish to wear millinery, flowers, and laces, be as willing to pay for them as the ladies? "Things spiritual"! There has been a federal duty on Bibles for years, but we never heard a protest before. Why should Bibles be taxed and laces exempt? Then, too, the priests wear wool clothing, and there is a duty on that. Well, it would be a strange tariff bill which would suit all. The Gospel is free to all.

SUPERSTITION is not confined to the lowly, nor is Satanic delusion confined to the unlearned. The wife of the czar of Russia has given birth to a second daughter, and the czar has about despaired of having an heir to the throne. And to add to his discomfiture, his aunt, the wife of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovitch, has consulted a Gipsy fortune-teller, who has informed her that one of her sons will yet sit upon the throne.