THE RIGHTS OF THE POOR.
By Editor
THE following question and answer are from the Territorial Enterprise, of Virginia, Nevada. It is worth the reading and consideration of every working man:— “Virginia, March 13, 1880.
“Editor Enterprise:—Will you please answer this question, where there seems to be a good deal of doubt. Has a poor man got any rights that a rich man is bound to respect, according to your views?’ “Such a letter as the foregoing is entitled to a frank reply. A poor man here has the right to work for better wages, and, with his earnings, to buy better clothes and food than the poor men of any other country on the face of the earth enjoy. He has a perfect right to lay by the product of a few months' work, and with it buy a team, and go to Mason's Valley, or Surprise Valley, or Pitt River Valley, or any of a thousand other valleys, and take up 160 acres of land which is richer than the best valleys of the Eastern or Middle States, and to own it absolutely for himself and his heirs. He has a right with one month's earnings, to buy himself a pick, shovel, hammer, three pair of blankets and three months' food, and to go out into the desert prospecting. And if he finds a mine as rich as the Eberhardt or the Eureka Consolidated, it will be his, and the laws of the United States will guarantee it to him. He has all the waters of the Union to fish in, all the forests of the Republic to hunt in; he has precisely the same protection that John Mackay had when he came here, and more than John Mackay now has, while his opportunities are 500 per cent. greater than those of the men that settled up the United States between the Atlantic and the Mississippi. There is full protection for him to do any legitimate thing; there are free schools for his children; all the offices of the country are open to him; he can engage in any occupation that suits him; the taxes are so light that they are no burden, and the laws impose no restraint to prevent his doing anything he pleases, so long as he does not interfere with the rights of his neighbors. If, after a few years of toil and frugality he makes for himself a home on a farm or in the city, if by his industry and sagacity he secures a valuable mine, he will be so protected that no man can interfere with him. The law will enable him to say to the man who has gambled in stocks and lost, and who wants him to divide: ‘I worked honestly for what I have, and it is mine.’ To the American-born loafer, who has spent his years around the beer saloons and free-lunch establishments of the cities, and who wants help he can say: ‘While you were idle I was at work, and what I have is for myself and my children.’ To the man who says, ‘My youth was passed in hardships, under a foreign despotism, and in this country I know it is not right for you to have a competence while I am still poor,’ he can answer: ‘This country gives to every comer here land as free as it does air and water; it secures good wages to the laborer, and throws no obstacle in the way of the laboring man. He may aspire to anything he pleases, do any rightful thing he may please to do; but it cannot give a man a disposition to work, or be prudent, or wise, or honest, or grateful for the blessings around him. It can, however, and will, protect honest accumulations against the covetousness of the lawless, against the lust of the canaille, and so far, at least, it will not justify the loafer in his demand for a division, any more than it will the more honorable robber who, with his life in his hands, demands, on the highway, the purse of the traveler.” We trust our correspondent will see the point, and that instead of writing any more complaining letters, he will try the experiment of earning an honest dollar by honest work, and see how sweet is the bread that such a dollar will buy.”