380. The Poor Always

The Poor Always

Mat_26:11 : ’93Ye have the poor always with you.’94

Who said that? The Christ who never owned anything during His earthly stay. His cradle and His grave were borrowed. Every fig He ate was from some one else’92s tree. Every drop of water He drank was from sone one else’92s well. To pay His personal tax which was very small, only thirty-one and a quarter cents, He ’93had to perform a miracle and make a fish pay it. All the heights and depths and lengths and breadths of poverty Christ measured in His earthly experience, and when He comes to speak of destitution, He always speaks sympathetically, and what He said then is as true now: ’93Ye have the poor always with you.’94

For six thousand years the bread question has been the active and absorbing question. Witness the people crowding up to Joseph’92s storehouse in Egypt. Witness the famine in Samaria and Jerusalem. Witness the five thousand hungry people for whom Christ multiplied the loaves. Witness the uncounted millions of people now living, who, I believe, have never yet had one full meal of healthful and nutritious food in all their lives. Think of the three hundred and fifty-four great famines in England. Think of the twenty-five million people under the hoof of hunger in 1892 in Russia. The failure of the Nile to overflow for seven years in the eleventh century left those regions depopulated. Plague of insects in England. Plague of rats in, Madras Presidency. Plague of mice in Essex. Plague of locusts in China. Plague of grasshoppers in America. Devastation wrought by drought, by deluge, by frost, by war, by hurricane, by earthquake, by comets flying too near the earth, by change in the management of national finances, by baleful causes innumerable. I proceed to give you three or four reasons why my text is markedly and graphically true in this year 1894.

The first reason we have always the poor with us, is because of the perpetual overhauling of the tariff question, or, as I shall call it, the Tariffic controversy. There is a need for such a word, and so I take the responsibility of manufacturing it. There are millions of people who are expecting that the present Congress of the United States will do something one way or the other to end this discussion. But it will never end. When I was five years of age I remember hearing my father and his neighbors in vehement discussion of this very question. It was high tariff or low tariff or no tariff at all. When your great-grandchild dies at ninety years of age, it will probably be from overexertion in discussing the tariff. On the day the world is destroyed, there will be three men standing on the post-office steps’97one a high tariff man, another a low tariff man, and the other a free trade man’97each one red in the face from excited argument on this subject. Other questions may get quieted, the Mormon question, the Silver question, the Pension question, the Civil Service question. All questions of annexation may come to peaceful settlement by the annexation of islands two weeks voyage away, and the heat of their volcanoes, conveyed through pipes under the sea, made useful in warming our continent; or by annexation of the moon, dethroning the Queen of Night, who is said to be dissolute, and bringing the lunar populations under the free influence of our free institutions; yea, all other questions, national and international, may be settled, but this Tariffic question, never. It will not only never be settled, but it can never be moderately quiet for more than three years at a time, each party getting into power taking one of the four years to fix it up, and then the next party will fix it down. Our finances cannot get well because of too many doctors.

It is with sick nations as with sick individuals. Here is a man terribly disordered as to his body. A doctor is called in, and he administers a febrifuge, a spoonful every hour. But recovery is postponed, and the anxious friends call in another doctor, and he says: ’93What this patient needs is blood-letting; now roll up your sleeve!’94 and the lancet flashes. But still recovery is postponed, and a homoeopathic doctor is called in, and he administers some small pellets, and says: ’93All the patient wants is rest.’94 Recovery still postponed, the family say that such small pellets cannot amount to much anyhow, and an allopathic doctor is called in, and he says: ’93What this patient wants is calomel and jalap.’94 Recovery still postponed, a hydropathic doctor is called in, and he says: ’93What this patient wants is hot and cold baths, and he must have them right away. Turn on the faucet and get ready the showerbaths.’94 Recovery still postponed, an eclectic doctor is called in, and he brings all the schools to bear upon the poor sufferer, and the patient, after a brave struggle for life, expires. What killed him? Too many doctors. And that is what is killing our national finances. My personal friends, Cleveland and Harrison and Carlisle and McKinley and Sherman, as talented and splendid men as ever walked the earth, all good doctors, but their treatment of our languishing finances so different that none of their methods has a full opportunity, and under the constant changes it is simply wonderful that the nation still lives. The tariff question will never be settled because of the fact’97which I have never heard any one recognize, but, nevertheless, the fact’97that high tariff is best for some people, and free trade is best for others. This Tariffic controversy keeps business struck through with uncertainty, and that uncertainty results in poverty and wretchedness for a vast multitude of people. If the eternal gab on this subject could have been fashioned into loaves of bread, there would not be a hungry man or woman or child on all the planet. To the end of time, the words of the text will be kept true by the Tariffic controversy: ’93Ye have the poor always with you.’94

Another cause of perpetual poverty is the cause alcoholic. The victim does not last long. He soon crouches into the drunkard’92s grave; But what about his wife and children? She takes in washing when she can get it, or goes out working on small wages, because sorrow and privation have left her incapacitated to do a strong woman’92s work. The children are thin-blooded and gaunt and pale and weak, standing around in cold rooms, or pitching pennies on the street corner, and munching a slice of unbuttered bread when they get it, sworn at by passers-by because they do not get out of the way, kicked onward toward manhood or womanhood, for which they have no preparation, except a depraved appetite and frail constitution, candidates for almshouse and penitentiary. Whatever other causes of poverty may fail, the saloon may be depended on to furnish an ever-increasing throng of paupers.

Oh, ye grog-shops of Brooklyn and New York and of all the cities! Ye mouths of hell! when will ye cease to crouch and devour? There is no danger of this liquor business failing. All other styles of business at times fail. Dry goods stores go under. Hardware stores go under. Grocery stores go under. Harness makers fail, druggists fail, bankers fail, butchers fail, bakers fail, confectioners fail, but the liquor dealers never. It is the only secure business I know of. Why the permanence of the alcoholic trade? Because, in the first place, the men in that business, if tight up for money, only have to put into large quantities of water more strychnine and logwood and nux vomica and vitriol and other congenial concomitants for adulteration. One quart of the real genuine pandemoniac elixir will do to mix up with several gallons of milder damnation. Beside that, these dealers can depend on an increase of demand on the part of their customers. The more of that stuff they drink, the thirstier they are. Hard times, which stop other businesses, only increase that business, for men go there to drown their troubles. They take the spirits down to keep their spirits up.

There is an inclined plane down which alcoholism slides its victims. Claret, champagne, port, cognac, whiskey, Tom and Jerry, sour mash, on down until it is a sort of mixture of kerosene oil, turpentine, toadstools, swill, essence of the horse blankets and general nastiness. With its red sword of flame, that liquor power marshals its procession in ranks long enough to girdle the earth, and the procession is headed by the nose-blotched, nerve-shattered, rheum-eyed, lip-bloated, soul-scorched inebriates, followed by the women who, though brought up in comfortable homes, now go limping past with aches and pains and pallor and hunger and woe, followed by their children, barefoot, uncombed, freezing, and with a wretchedness of time and eternity seemingly compressed in their agonized features. ’93Forward, march!’94 cries the liquor business to that army without banners. Keep that influence moving on and you will have the poor always with you. Report comes from one of the cities where the majority of the inhabitants are out of work and dependent on charity, yet last year they spent more in that city for rum than they did for clothing and groceries.

Another warranty that my text will prove true in the perpetual poverty of the world is the wicked spirit of improvidence. A vast number of people have such small income that they cannot lay by in savings bank or life insurance one cent a year. It takes every farthing they can earn to spread the table and clothe the family and educate the children, and if you blame such people for improvidence, you enact a cruelty. On such a salary as many clerks and employes and many ministers of religion live, and on such wages as many workmen receive, they cannot, in twenty years, lay up twenty cents. But you know and I know many who have competent income and could provide somewhat for the future, who use up every dollar, and when they die, their children go to the poorhouse or on the street. By the time the wife gets the husband buried, she is in debt to the undertaker and the gravedigger for that which she can never pay. While the man lived he had his wine parties and fairly stunk with tobacco, and then expired, leaving his family upon the charities of the world. Do not send for me to come and conduct the obsequies and read over such a carcass the beautiful liturgy: ’93Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord,’94 for, instead of that, I will turn over the leaves of the Bible to First Timothy, fifth chapter, eighteenth verse, where it says: ’93If any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel,’94 or I will turn to Jeremiah, twenty-second chapter, nineteenth verse, where it says: ’93He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem.’94

I cannot imagine any more unfair or meaner thing than for a man to get his sins pardoned at the last minute, and then go to heaven and live in a mansion, and go riding about in a golden chariot over the golden streets, while his wife and children, whom he might have provided for, are begging for cold victuals at the basement doors of an earthly city. It seems to me there ought to be a poor-house somewhere on the outskirts of heaven, where those guilty of such improvidence should be kept for a while on thin soup and gristle, instead of sitting down at the King’92s banquet.

It is said that the church is a divine institution, and I believe it. Just as certainly are the savings banks and life insurance companies divine institutions. As out of evil good often comes, so out of the doctrine of probabilities, calculated by Professor Hugens and Professor Pascal for games of chance, came the calculation of the probabilities of human life as used by life insurance companies, and no business on earth is more stable or honorable, and no mightier mercy for the human race has been born since Christ was born. Bored beyond endurance for my signature to papers of all sorts, there is one style of paper that I always sign with a feeling of gladness and triumph, and that is a paper which the life insurance company requires from the clergyman after a decease in the congregation, in order to the payment of the policy to the bereft household. I always write my name then so they can read it. I cannot help but say to myself: ’93Good for that man to have looked after his wife and children after earthly departure. May he have one of the best seats in heaven!’94 Young man! The day before or the day after you get married, go to a life insurance company of established reputation and get the medical examiner to put the stethoscope to your lungs and his ear close up to your heart, with your vest off, and have signed, sealed and delivered to you a document that will, in the case of your sudden departure, make for that lovely girl the difference between a queen and a pauper. I have known men who have had an income of three thousand dollars, four thousand dollars, five thousand dollars a year, who did not leave one farthing to the surviving household. Now that man’92s death is a defalcation, an outrage, a swindle.

There are a hundred thousand people in America to-day a-hungered through the sin of improvidence. ’93But,’94 say some, ’93my income is so small I cannot afford to pay the premium on a life insurance.’94 And are you sure about that? If you are sure, then you have a right to depend on the promise in Jeremiah, forty-ninth chapter, eleventh verse: ’93Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive, and let thy widows trust in me.’94 But remember you have no right to ask God to do for your household that which you can do for them yourself.

Another fact that you may depend upon for perpetual poverty is the incapacity of many to achieve a livelihood. You can go through any community and find good people with more than usual mental calibre, who never have been able to support themselves and their households. They are a mystery to us, and we say: ’93I do not know what is the matter with them, but there is a screw loose somewhere.’94 Some of these persons have more brain than thousands who make a splendid success. Some are too sanguine of temperament, and they see bargains where there are none. A common minnow is to them a gold fish, and a quail a flamingo, and a blind mule on a tow-path a Bucephalus. They buy when things are highest and sell when things are lowest. Some one tells them of city lots out West, where the foundation of the first house has not been laid. They say: ’93What an opportunity!’94 and they put down the hard cash for an ornamented deed for ten lots under water. They hear of a new silver mine opened in Nevada, and they say: ’93What a chance!’94 and they take the little money they have in the savings bank and pay it out for as beautiful a certificate of mining stock as ever was printed, and the only thing they will ever get out of the investment is the aforesaid illuminated lithograph. They are honest, brilliant failures. They die poor, and leave nothing to their families but a model of some invention that would not work, and whole portfolios of diagrams of things impossible. I cannot help but like them, because they are so cheerful with great expectations. But their children are a bequest to the Bureau of City Charities. Others administer to the crop of the world’92s misfortune by being too unsuspecting. Honest themselves, they believe all others are honest. They are fleeced and scalped and vivisected by the sharpers in all styles of business, and cheated out of everything between cradle and grave, and those two exceptions only because they have nothing to do in buying either of them.

Others are retained for misfortune by inopportune sickness. Just as that lawyer was to make the plea that would have put him among the strong men of the profession, neuralgia stung him. Just as that physician was to prove his skill in an epidemic, his own poor health imprisoned him. Just as that merchant must be at the store for some decisive and introductory bargain, he sits with a rheumatic joint on a pillow, the room redolent with liniment. What an overwhelming statistic would be the story of men and women and children impoverished by sicknesses. Then the cyclones. Then the Mississippi and Ohio freshets. Then the stopping of the factories. Then the curculios among the peach trees. Then the insectile devastation of potato patches and wheat fields. Then the epizootics among the horses and the hollow horn among the herds. Then the rains that drown out everything and the droughts that burn up half a continent. Then the orange groves die under the white teeth of the hoar frost. Then the coal strikes and the iron strikes and the mechanics’92 strikes, which all strike labor harder than they strike capital. Then the yellow fever at Brunswick and Jacksonville and Shreveport. Then the cholera at the Narrows, threatening to land in New York. Then the Charleston earthquake. Then the Johnstown flood. Then hurricanes sweeping from Caribbean Sea to Newfoundland. Then there are the great monopolies that gulley the earth with their oppressions. Then there are the necessities of buying coal by the scuttle instead of the ton, and flour by the pound instead of the barrel, and so the injustices are multiplied. In the wake of all these are overwhelming illustrations of the truth of my text: ’93Ye have the poor always with you.’94

Remember a fact that no one emphasizes, a fact, nevertheless, upon which I want to put the weight of an eternity of tonnage, that the best way of insuring yourself and your children and your grandchildren against poverty and all other troubles is by helping others. I am an agent of the oldest insurance company that was ever established. It is near three thousand years old. It has the advantage of all the other plans of insurance’97Whole Life policy, Endowment and Tontine’97and it pays up while you live and pays up after you are dead. Every cent you give in a Christian spirit to a poor man or woman, every shoe you give to a barefoot, every stick of wood or lump of coal you give to a fireless hearth, every drop of medicine you give to a poor invalid, every star of hope you make to shine over unfortunate maternity, every mitten you knit for cold fingers, is a payment on the premium of that policy. I hand about five hundred million policies to all who will go forth and aid the unfortunate. There are only two or three lines in this policy of Life Insurance. Psa_41:1, ’93Blessed is he that considereth the poor; the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.’94 Other life insurance companies may fail, but this Celestial Life Insurance Company never. The Lord God Almighty is at the head of it, and all the angels of heaven are in its Board of Direction, and its assets are all worlds, and all the charitable of earth and heaven are the beneficiaries. ’93But,’94 says some one, ’93I do not like a Tontine policy so well, and that which you offer is more like a Tontine and to be chiefly paid in this life.’94 ’93Blessed is he that considereth the poor; the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.’94 Well, if you prefer the old-fashioned policy of life insurance, which is not paid till after death, you can be accommodated. That will be given you in the day of judgment, and will be handed you by the right hand, the pierced hand, of our Lord Himself, and all you do in the right spirit for the poor is payment on the premium of that life insurance policy. I read you a paragraph of that policy: ’93Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, ’91Come, ye blessed of my Father, for I was hungered and ye gave me meat, I was thirsty and ye gave me drink, I was a stranger and ye took me in, naked and ye clothed me.’92’93 In various colors of ink other insurance policies are written. This one I have just shown you is written in only one kind of ink, and that red ink, the blood of the cross. Blessed be God, that is a ’93Paid-Up-Policy,’94 paid for by the pangs of the Son of God, and all we add to it in the way of our own good deeds will augment the sum of eternal felicities.

The time will come when the banks of the largest capital stock will all go down, and the fire insurance companies will all go down, and the life insurance companies will all go down. In the last great earthquake all the cities will be prostrated, and as a consequence all banks will forever suspend payment. In the last conflagration the fire insurance companies of the earth will fail, for how could they make appraisement of the loss on a universal fire? Then all the inhabitants of the round world will surrender their mortal existence, and how could life insurance companies pay for depopulated hemispheres? But our Celestial Life Insurance will not be harmed by that continental wreck, or that hemispheric accident, or that planetary catastrophe. Blow it out like a candle’97the noon-day sun! Tear it down like worn-out upholstery’97the last sunset! Toss it from God’92s finger like a dewdrop from the anther of a water lily’97the ocean! Scatter them like thistledown before a schoolboy’92s breath’97the worlds! That will not disturb the omnipotence or the composure or the sympathy or the love of that Christ who said it once on earth, and will say it again in heaven to all those who have been helpful to the downtrodden and the cold and the hungry and the houseless and the lost: ’93Inasmuch as ye did it to them, ye did it to me!’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage