INTRODUCTION. 399 



productive industry languishes ; tramps and idlers are 

 becoming more abundant and our children are clothed in 

 rags. L/abor is oppressed on every hand, debts increasing 

 with fearful rapidity, notes maturing, mortgages being 

 closed and the people rendered homeless. From every 

 quarter comes the cry of distress, and hope has almost 

 gone down in the depths of despair. 



These evils are not mitigated by the constant efforts 

 of a subsidized press and dishonest politicians to make 

 them appear imaginary or to conceal the real cause. To 

 apply a false theory as to their real nature or the cause of 

 their existence is but to aggravate the trouble by delaying 

 the remedy. 



Our condition, like that of the French, has become a 

 festering sore upon the body politic and is preying upon 

 the vitals of our whole social structure and undermining 

 the foundations of constitutional liberty. It can not be 

 explained away. It is here; and it has come to stay until 

 the proper remedy is applied. It makes no difference how 

 the people may differ as to the causes, they all agree that 

 the condition the effect, is real. To those who have 

 suffered and toiled under the conditions which we have 

 described it would be useless to add any further testimony 

 than a mere recital of their wrongs. They realize the 

 truth of their existence by coming in daily contact with 

 their baneful effects. But there is a certain class who, 

 from the peculiar position they occupy and surrounded by 

 circumstances adverse to a clear comprehension of the 

 actual condition of the poorer classes of our people and the 

 real causes thereof, whose attention we desire to enlist on 

 the side of suffering humanity. We refer to all those who, 

 though not engaged in productive industries, are following 

 vocations so directly and intimately connected with the 

 success of these enterprises that their own weal or woe 

 depends upon their rise or fall. 



