ce around them,
contending that the poor victims have only themselves to blame for
their destitute and painful condition, and, therefore, are not
entitled to the sympathy or charity of their more fortunate
brethren--unmindful that the great Master, judging by the false laws
of men, declared that "the poor ye have always with you;" while the
very rich are held up as monsters of selfishness, rapacity and the
most loathsome of social vices. It is, therefore, hardly to be
expected that this class of persons would find anything good in the
nature of the lately enslaved black man, or any improvement in his
condition since a generous Government had made him an ignorant voter
and a confirmed pauper--the victim of his former master, to be robbed
outright by designing and unscrupulous harpies of trade, and to be
defrauded of his franchise by blatant demagogues or by outlaws, to
whom I will not apply the term "assassins" for fear of using bad
English.

When the American Government conferred upon the black man the boon of
freedom and the burden of the franchise, it added four million men to
the already vast army of men who appear to be specially created to
labor for the enrichment of vast corporations, which have no souls,
and for individuals, whom our government have made a privileged class,
by permitting them to usurp or monopolize, through the accepted
channel of barter and trade, the soil, from which the masses, the
laboring masses, must obtain a subsistence, and without the privilege
of cultivating which they must faint and die.[7] It also added four
millions of souls to what have been termed, in the refinement of
sarcasm, "the dangerous classes"[8]--meaning by which the vast army of
men and women who, while willing and anxious to make an honest living
by the labor of their hands, and who--when speculators cry
"over-production," "glutted market," and other clap-trap--threaten to
take by force from society that which society prevents them from
making honestly.

When a society fosters as much crime and destitution as ours, with
ample resources to meet the actual necessities of every one, there
must be something radically wrong, not in the society but in the
foundation upon which society is reared. Where is this ulcer located?
Is it to be found in the dead-weight of illiteracy which we carry? The
masses of few countries are more intelligent than ours. Is it to be
found in burdensome taxation or ill-adjusted tariff regulations?