Work and Education
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order as children are being educated and trained in this age, to love
excitement, to glorify themselves, to follow the imagination of their
own evil hearts. Now as then, depravity, cruelty, violence, and crime
are the result.
All these things are lessons for us. Few now are really industrious
and economical. Poverty and distress are on every hand. There are
men who work hard, and obtain very little for their labor. There is
need of much more extensive knowledge in regard to the preparation
of the soil. There is not sufficient breadth of view as to what can be
realized from the earth. A narrow and unvarying routine is followed
with discouraging results. The land boom has cursed this country,
extravagant prices have been paid for lands bought on credit; then the
land must be cleared, and more money is hired; a house to be built
calls for more money, and then interest with open mouth swallows
up all the profits. Debts accumulate, and then come the closing and
failure of banks, and then the foreclosure of mortgages. Thousands
have been turned out of employment; families lose their little all, they
borrow and borrow, and then have to give up their property and come
out penniless. Much money and hard labor have been put into farms
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bought on credit, or inherited with an incumbrance. The occupants
lived in hope of becoming real owners, and it might have been so, but
for the failure of banks throughout the country.
Now the case where a man owns his place clear is a happy excep-
tion to the rule. Merchants are failing, families are suffering for food
and clothing. No work presents itself. But the holidays are just as
numerous. Their amusements are entered into as eagerly. All who can
do so will spend their hard-earned pence and shillings and pounds for
a taste of pleasure, for strong drink, or some other indulgence. The
papers that report the poverty of the people, have regular standing no-
tices of the horse races, and of the prizes presented for different kinds
of exciting sports. The shows, the theaters, and all such demoralizing
amusements, are taking the money from the country, and poverty is
continually increasing. Poor men will invest their last shilling in a
lottery, hoping to secure a prize, and then they have to beg for food to
sustain life, or go hungry. Many die of hunger, and many put an end to
their existence. The end is not yet. Men take you to their orchards of
oranges and lemons, and other fruits, and tell you that the produce does
not pay for the work done in them. It is next to impossible to make