Criminal Recklessness by San Jose Mercury

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 4, 1879

Criminal Recklessness.

By San Jose Mercury

THE cry of hard times will never be silenced until the great majority of the industrial classes change their habits. They may say as much as they please about high taxes, land grabbers, monopolies and all the rest of the oppressions and oppressors with which they are burdened; but until they themselves learn to make better use of their earnings, the industrial millenium will fail to appear. Millions are even now bemoaning their lack of work and want of necessaries, yet these same millions the moment they earn a dollar, will rush off to spend it in some foolish and wasteful manner—for beer and tobacco, and other equally unnecessary things. There are probably hundreds of men in this city living from hand to mouth—generally on credit—who when they do work fail lamentably in turning their earnings to good account. It is no use talking. We must reduce our expenses for mere luxuries, before our condition as a people can be improved. We must spend less for beer and tobacco—and in gambling and other dissipations. Superfluous wants must be got rid of; unnecessary expenses must be curtailed, and everybody must live within their means. The miseries and impoverishment of the masses are mainly due to their own follies and excesses. Unnatural appetites and unruly passions have far more of the present industrial distress to answer for than bad government or bad laws. And every man must be his own reformer, or the general reformation will never be effected.—San Jose Mercury.