Page:Carl Sandburg - You and Your Job (1910).pdf/19

Rh class who cannot furnish a good excuse for being on earth. The Goulds, Vanderbilts and Astors, for instance, live in luxury and do no useful work at all. They pass out pittances tor charity, "the great bluff of our time," as John Graham Brooks calls it. But, in the main, they are leading voluptuous, lascivious lives that stain and corrupt all who come near them or even see them. At present we are leading to a point where some petted and delicate woman like Marie Antoinette, on being told that the mob in the streets has no bread, will ask, "Well, why don’t they eat cake, then?" The extremes of wealth and poverty in America are as sad and serious as those of Europe. Stables for blooded race horses are fitted with mahogany and marble, and each horse has his special groom; a few miles away men jostle each other to get room to sleep on the filthy floor of an insanitary 5-cent lodging house. A woman takes her poodle with her to the opera to hear Caruso sing; babies die in the slums for lack of food. A bulldog of specialized type sells for $8,000; at foundling asylums infants may be had for the asking. Small families live in large houses; large families live in small houses.

All these things trace back finally to the industrial and political worlds for causes. If nobody gets too much everybody will get enough. Modern society is mob at the top and mob at the bottom. The rich have their gilded hells and folly; the poor have their slums and vice. Between the two, as the only saving force in modern civilization, stands the working class