The needy shall not always be forgotten;
the expectation of the poor
shall not forever perish.
-Psalm 9:18
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Hellraisers Journal, Monday August 1, 1898
From Commonwealth, Georgia – George Howard Gibson Speaks
From the Appeal to Reason of July 30, 1898:
[Part I of article by George Howard Gibson]
“When a man finds himself going down and down, without power to mend things, freezing, hungering and dying by inches, he’s sure to get desperate, In the last week I’ve been an atheist, anarchist and devil. I’ve sat here and cried out that there was no God except for the rich. I’ve said that if I could get down stairs I’d burn and kill. I’ve looked at my wife and children with murder In my heart.”
Those words were spoken to a reporter for the New York World by a sick man, living with his wife and children in a dingy room on the third floor of a miserable tenement house in New York City. There are millions in like circumstances, landless, homeless, destitute—and they are wealth producers. They are workers, but they must beg for a job and pay tribute for each day’s work when men choose to hire them.
When products cannot be sold at a net profit, the workers can get nothing to do and have no income to live on.
Read another item clipped from a New York paper of about the same date:
At a dinner party given in New York the other day to thirty-three persons, the bill was $6,500, or $200 a plate.
Are these news items, concerning two classes, correlated facts? Is there a discoverable necessary connection between poverty and luxury? The intelligent poor in great numbers have found that poverty is the cost of luxury, that net profits for some are always exactly equaled by net losses from others, and that increase without labor necessitates labor without increase. They are shouting this truth across the continents and around the world to each other. Every last one of the workers soon will either know it or believe it. And then—what?
Take notice, the war spirit is being cultivated in this country. “Remember the Maine,” is the cry. In the name of God, go and fight for the starving—in Cuba-says almost the entire press, both religious and secular.
But why in Cuba and not in America? men reason. According to the 1890 census fifty-one per cent of our people are landless, homeless, dependent on landlords and capitalists for shelter and employment. Therefore this is not their country—is it? Do not expect to perpetuate patriotism in this growing majority. The Spanish “Old Glory” has come to be hated by the hungry; and so shall it be with any flag that floats over oppression.
[To be continued.]
———-
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SOURCE & IMAGE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-July 30, 1898
https://www.newspapers.com/image/66970764/
See also:
The Social Gospel.
Commonwealth, GA – 1898-1901
(Commonwealth, Georgia)
Vol. 1, No. 6-July 1898
“Published Monthly by The Christian Commonwealth”
Editors:
George Howard Gibson & Ralph Albertson.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.ah3rr4;view=2up;seq=166
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.ah3rr4;view=2up;seq=168
“The Cry of the Poor” by G. H. G.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.ah3rr4;view=2up;seq=172
Historical Dictionary of Utopianism
-by Toby Widdicombe, James M. Morris, Andrea Kross
Rowman & Littlefield, Jun 21, 2017
(search: “George Howard Gibson”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=LQolDwAAQBAJ
Note: this bio states that little is known about the life of GHG after 1900. In fact, he appears as “George Howard Gibson” many times in Newspapers.com searches from 1892-1910. His book “The People’s Hour” was published in 1909 and advertised in newspapers across the nation.
The People’s Hour: And Other Themes
-by George Howard Gibson
Englewood Publishing House, 1909
https://books.google.com/books?id=0MYtAAAAMAAJ
“Remember the Maine!”
http://www.ushistory.org/us/44c.asp
Tag: Cuban Reconcentrados
https://weneverforget.org/tag/cuban-reconcentrados/
Tag: Spanish American War of 1898
https://weneverforget.org/tag/spanish-american-war-of-1898/
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