Every worn-out, pasty-
faced pauper, every blind man, every prison babe, every man, woman, and
child whose belly is gnawing with hunger pangs, is hungry because the
funds have been misappropriated by the management.
Nor can one member of this managing class plead not guilty before the
judgment bar of Man. "The living in their houses, and in their graves
the dead," are challenged by every babe that dies of innutrition, by
every girl that flees the sweater's den to the nightly promenade of
Piccadilly, by every worked-out toiler that plunges into the canal. The
food this managing class eats, the wine it drinks, the shows it makes,
and the fine clothes it wears, are challenged by eight million mouths
which have never had enough to fill them, and by twice eight million
bodies which have never been sufficiently clothed and housed.
There can be no mistake. Civilisation has increased man's producing
power an hundred-fold, and through mismanagement the men of Civilisation
live worse than the beasts, and have less to eat and wear and protect
them from the elements than the savage Innuit in a frigid climate who
lives to-day as he lived in the stone age ten thousand years ago.
CHALLENGE
I have a vague remembrance
Of a story that is told
In some ancient Spanish legend
Or chronicle of old.
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