Whoso stoppeth his ears
at the cry of the poor,
he also shall cry himself,
but shall not be heard.
-Proverbs 21:13
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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday August 2, 1898
From Commonwealth, Georgia – George Howard Gibson Speaks
From the Appeal to Reason of July 30, 1898:
[Part II of article by George Howard Gibson]
In Italy the bread riots in the last few weeks have been almost general and desperate enough to cast down the throne and government. The uprising in many portions of Italy took the form of looting the homes and business places of the wealthy. A millionaire miller in Minervino named Bantella was killed in a brutal manner after he had offered the mob a fortune for his life. His wife also was reported killed. From his window he scattered a thousand francs among the mob, but they could no longer be placated by charity. They destroyed his warehouses and littered the whole country around with his cornered grain.
They also corner wheat and sugar and oil and coal and lumber and houses and land and everything in America. And the masses here love liberty and their inalienable rights.
Force is no remedy. The torch and bomb may destroy the rich, but they can never emancipate the poor. “All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword”—the rich and poor together. Christ-love, brotherhood, unselfish voluntary association is the only way of salvation for both rich and poor. This is the word of prophecy, of warning, of entreaty which we send out today to all classes. Be brothers, live in peace, love one another; or be economic enemies and expect increasing selfishness and poverty that shall ultimate in awful war. It must be the feast of love (Rev. 19:7-9); or the feast of vultures (Rev. 19:17-18).
We must accept brotherhood, or barbarism. Human decrees and standards will not be reverenced when it is found that they oppress the poor. All men love liberty. All desire comfort, security, happiness. And who can forever stand between them,and God’s free earthy? The poor were not made to be beasts of burden for the idle rich. They were not intended by their Creator to be the dependent slaves of lordly capitalists. Be sure that increasing oppression and poverty will arouse resistance, and that the poor will yet fight desperately for liberty.
More and more of the landless are learning that but for unjust laws they would have been born with equal divine rights in the earth, with equal opportunities and privileges. Why should they be obliged to beg for a place to work? Why must they sell their labor for less than it produces? Who forged the name of God and signed the deeds to disinherit them? Is not God’s curse upon those “who join house to house and lay field to field till there be no place?” Has He not made ample natural provision for all whom He has created, and planned for each a place where he may work to satisfy his needs? Who then are these who hold the keys of earth and stand with legal despotic power between it and the workers?
Nine out of ten of the people, the worried, the anxious, the overburdened, as well as the out of work and hungry, are thinking, studying, questioning. Why should not working and enjoying be inseparably united? How can the idle be rich and respectable? If all men are created equal, none have a right to enslave them. If each has an “inalienable right” to “life and liberty,” each must have a God-given title to an equal share of the earth and its forces, so that he may sustain life and gratify his legitimate desires. The natural resources must be equally possessed at birth, and none may be disinherited. Monopoly is robbery.
In God’s name let idle, avaricious profit-seekers stand aside from the mines’ mouths and the factories’ doors and let the willing workers have steady employment. Make every man a worker, or brand him as a sinner. Tell those not working to consume what they with previous toil produced, instead of living as leeches, fastened to the weary muscles and sucking the life blood of those who still must work. Harness Job’s modern steeds to the flying car, to the whirring wheels, to tireless lever arms and iron fingers to the common load of productive labor, and shorten and lighten the necessary work of each toiler an equal amount.
So the poor workers are reasoning, questioning, demanding; and shall not their voice be beard?
[Psalm 9:18]
The needy shall not always be forgotten; the expectation of the poor shall not forever perish.
[Proverbs 21:13]
Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard.
———-
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SOURCE & IMAGE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-July 30, 1898
https://www.newspapers.com/image/66970764/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal, Monday August 1, 1898
From Commonwealth, Georgia – George Howard Gibson Speaks
From the Appeal to Reason: Part I-“The Cry of the Poor” from Social Gospel
Bava-Beccaris Massacre of 1898
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bava-Beccaris_massacre
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