Increase of Labor-Saving Machinery an Injury to the Race
By Editor
We have before pointed this out with respect to this country. This increase makes the laborer the part of a great machine; it makes him a dependent on some great manufacturing establishment; it fosters trusts, and it widens the breach between employer and employee. And it has worked the same way in Europe; it is working the same way in Japan. A writer in the June Far East, an English edition of an able Japanese monthly magazine, the Kokumin-no-Tomo (published at Tokyo), incidentally states the same thing, tho writing on a different subject—“Strikes in Japan.” The writer says:—
“Since the introduction of machinery into this country, the factory system has been fast replacing the home manufactories, and it has now become an indispensable part of our industrial organization. With this development of the factory system, the relation of employers and employees has undergone a great change. Compassion, benevolence, faith, and fealty—in a word, all that were connecting links of masters and hands, have been swept away, and what now remains?—Perfidy and contempt on one hand; stern insolence and perfect indifference on the other. Under this strained relation, laborers, who are always the weakest of the two, get worsted, abused, annoyed, and persecuted. Wretchedness, misery, and poverty is their lot.”
In it all the writer sees great possible strife and trouble. It is one of the signs of the rapidly-living and degenerate (because unnatural) life of the nineteenth century, which is hastening the disintegration of our present “high” civilization.
Worse Than Sodom.
The acts of licentiousness are probably no worse in these days than they were in Sodom of old, perhaps not as bad, but the resultant diseases are probably worse than the world ever knew. Among the men who offer themselves for service in the English army for India but five per cent. are afflicted by diseases resulting from vice, but of the 13,000 which return yearly over sixty per cent. have contracted some form of such disease, often in its worst phase, causing destruction of features and loss of one or more of the senses, oftentimes spreading the fearful and vicious plague among the innocent. It is suggested that the “contagious disease act” be renewed, so that women be examined by women, and men be subjected to examination also, both sexes quarantined as would be done with smallpox or cholera. The condition is deplorable, and vice and its fearful consequences are everywhere increasing. Law will cause it to hide; only the power of God can check the evil. Let Christians pray and teach.
Tuberculosis and the Possibility of Recovery
"The Great White Plague."—Such is the name which the late Dr. O. W. Holmes, we believe, applied to tuberculosis. It is truly a dread disease. For instance, in the report of the Sanitary Bureau Health Department, of New York City, on Contagious Diseases, for the week ending July 3, 1897, of the 154 deaths reported, 91 are from tuberculosis. Diphtheria comes second, with 25, and measles third, with 11. Of the 141 deaths reported in the week ending July 24, 97 were from tuberculosis. Diphtheria comes second with 22, and typhoid fever third, with 9. In the week ending July 31, of the 141 deaths, tuberculosis claims 85, diphtheria 21, and measles 10. These statistics, which run so evenly from week to week, we get from that excellent journal, the New York Medical Record. It is said that, the world over, 10,000 human beings die of tuberculosis every twenty-four hours. And yet it is possible so to live as to escape it, or, having it, to recover.
Heat in the East
Heat in the East.—The New York Medical Press and Circular of July 14 reported that up to that date, in the State of New York alone, 2,000 cases of severe heat prostration had been reported, and 350 deaths. This excessive heat is unusual, paralleled only by last year.