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Peck's Sunshine, a fiction by George W. Peck |
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Dogs And Human Beings |
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_ Lorillard, the New York tobacco man, had a poodle dog stolen, and has offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the arrest of the thief, and he informs a reporter that he will spend $10,000, if necessary, for the capture and conviction of the thief. [Applause.] The applause marked in there will be from human skye terriers, who have forgotten that only a few weeks ago several hundred girls, who had been working in Lorillard's factory, went on a strike because, as they allege, they were treated like dogs. We doubt if they were treated as well as this poodle was treated. We doubt, in case one of these poor, virtuous girls was kidnapped, if the great Lorillard would have offered as big a reward for the conviction of the human thief, as he has for the conviction of the person who has eloped with his poodle. We hope that the aristocracy of this country will never get to valuing a dog higher than it does a human being. When it gets so that a rich person would not permit a poodle to do the work in a tobacco factory that a poor girl does to support a sick mother, hell had better be opened for summer boarders. When girls work ten hours a day stripping nasty tobacco, and find at the end of the week that the fines for speaking are larger than the wages, and the fines go for the conviction of thieves who steal the girls' master's dog, no one need come around here lecturing at a dollar a head and telling us there is no hell. When a poor girl, who has gone creeping to her work at daylight, looks out of the window at noon to see her master's carriage go by, in which there is a five hundred dollar dog with a hundred dollar blanket on, and a collar set with diamonds, lolling on satin cushions, and the girl is fined ten cents for looking out of the window, you don't want to fool away any time trying to get us to go to a heaven where such heartless employers are expected. It is seldom the _Sun_ gets on its ear, but it can say with great fervency, "Damn a man that will work poor girls like slaves, and pay them next to nothing, and spend ten thousand dollars to catch a dog-thief!" If these sentiments are sinful, and for expressing them we are a candidate for fire and brimstone, it is all right, and the devil can stoke up and make up our bunk when he hears that we are on the through train. It seems now--though we may change our mind the first day at the fire--as though we had rather be in hades with a hundred million people who have always done the square thing, than to be in any heaven that will pass a man in who has starved the poor and paid ten thousand dollars to catch a dog-thief. We could have a confounded sight better time, even if we had our ulster all burned off. It would be worth the price of admission to stand with our back to the fire, and as we began to smell woolen burning near the pistol pocket, to make up faces at the ten-thousand-dollar-dog millionaires that were putting on style at the other place.
If the men would gather the waists carefully and not squeeze so like blazes, they would not be worn so much. Some men go to work gathering a waist just as they would go to work washing sheep, or raking and binding. They ought to gather as though it was eggs done up in a funnel-shaped brown paper at a grocery. The Black River Falls Independent says: "If you have any old pants to give to the poor, take or send them to the Ladies' Relief Society." Well, we have got plenty of them; but, bless you, we doubt if any member of the Ladies' Relief Society could wear them. They don't hook up. _ |
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