Page:Carl Sandburg - You and Your Job (1910).pdf/16

16 and be tossed to the dogs as a loser. He thought it all over, and as he looked down at the softly plashing waters, the black waves fascinated him—it would be so easy to slip down and have all the bitterness and weariness done with and over—forever. He recovered himself and fought away the despair. But if a daring and resourceful fighting man, such as Jacob Riis has proven himself, could even for a moment be tempted to give up the struggle for existence, how about the millions of others not so young, not so hardy and enduring, not so rich with hope and health?

I believe in men. I believe if you give men a decent chance they will do the decent thing. A man will generally go the right way if he isn't pushed and pulled in wrong directions by forces he can't control. When I see millions of men out of work, and more tramps and criminals coming on every year, I know better than to blame the men. I know there is a plan, a system of forces back of it all, acting as a cause. The Socialist says, "Remove the cause."

Bill, I'm going to quote some figures to you, and I ask you to be patient through the figures, and then I'll quote some poetry. One per cent of the people in this country own fifty-four per cent of the wealth. Fifty per cent have no property at all. And ten millions are sunken and mired in a poverty rotten and beastly, where hope sickens and the password is a curse. An officer of the Indiana state, board of health says that sixty-five per cent of the deaths of infants below two years of age are due to poisoned and adulterated food. Ninety per cent of