“When Reuben comes to town,He’s sure to be done brown—”
“When Reuben comes to town,He’s sure to be done brown—”
“When Reuben comes to town,He’s sure to be done brown—”
“When Reuben comes to town,
He’s sure to be done brown—”
And this lugubrious truth is treated as the richest of jokes, with utter unconsciousness of the moral degeneracy it reflects, the crime it glorifies and the indictment of capitalist society it returns in answer to theRecord-Herald’squery: “What’s the matter with Chicago”?
Besides the array of “talent” above mentioned, fostered by competitive society everywhere, the marshy metropolis by the lake may boast of a vast and flourishing gambling industry, an illimitable and progressive “levee” district, sweatshops, slums, dives, bloated men, bedraggled women, ghastly caricatures of their former selves, babies cradled in rags and filth, aged children, than which nothing could be more melancholy—all these and a thousand more, the fruit of our present social anarchy, afflict Chicago; and worst of all, our wise social philosophers, schooled in the economics of capitalist universities, preach the comforting doctrine that all these are necessary evils and at best can but be restricted within certain bounds; and this hideous libel is made a cloak that theft may continue to masquerade as philanthropy.
It is at this point that Chicago particularly prides herself upon her “charities,” hospitals and eleemosynary endowments, all breathing the sweet spirit of Christian philanthropy—utterlyignorant of the fact, designedly or otherwise, that these very institutions are manifestations of social disease and are monumental of the iniquity of the system that must rear such whited sepulchres to conceal its crimes.
I do not oppose the insane asylum—but I abhor and condemn the cut-throat system that robs man of his reason, drives him to insanity and makes the lunatic asylum an indispensable adjunct to every civilized community.
With the ten thousand “charities” that are proposed to poultice the sores and bruises of society, I have little patience.
Worst of all is the charity ball. Chicago indulges in these festering festivals on a grand scale.
Think of cavorting around in a dress suit because some poor wretch is hungry; and of indulging in a royal carousal to comfort some despairing woman on the brink of suicide; and finally, that in “fashionable society” the definition of this mixture of inanity and moral perversion is “charity.”
Fleece your fellows! That is “business,” and you are a captain of industry. Having “relieved” your victims of their pelts, dance and make merry to “relieve” their agony. This is “charity” and you are a philanthropist.
In summing up the moral assets of a great (?) city, the churches should not be overlooked. Chicago is a city of fine churches. All the denominations are copiously represented, and sermons in all languages and of all varieties are turned out in job lots and at retail to suit the market.
The churches are always numerous where vice is rampant. They seem to spring from the same soil and thrive in the same climate.
And yet the churches are supposed to wage relentless warfare upon evil. To just what extent they have checked its spread in the “Windy City” may be inferred from the probing of the press into the body social to ascertain “What is the Matter with Chicago.”
The preachers are not wholly to blame, after all, for their moral and spiritual impotency. They are wage-workers, the same as coal miners, and are just as dependent upon the capitalist class. How can they be expected to antagonize the interests of their employers and hold their jobs? The unskilledpreachers, the common laborers in the arid spots of the vineyard, are often wretchedly paid, and yet they remain unorganized and have never struck for better wages.
“What’s the matter with Chicago”? Capitalism!
What’s the cure? Socialism!
Regeneration will only come with depopulation—when Socialism has relieved the congestion and released the people and they spread out over the country and live close to the grass.
TheRecord-Heraldhas furnished the people of Chicago and Illinois with a campaign issue.
If you want to know more about “What is the matter with Chicago,” read the Socialist papers and magazines; read the platform of the Socialist party; and if you do, you will cut loose from the Republican-Democratic party, the double-headed political monstrosity of the capitalist class, and you will cast your vote for the Socialist party and your lot with the International Socialist Movement, whose mission it is to uproot and overthrow the whole system of capitalist exploitation, and put an end to the poverty and misery it entails—and that’s “What’s the matter with Chicago.”