CROWING BETTER.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 25, 28 January 1913, Page 4

CROWING BETTER.

Whiting in the ‘World’s Work’ recently, Mr. L. Beecher Stowe expresses the confident opinion that the world really is growing better, and points out as evidence that the trusts and monopolies which are to-day alleged to bo increasing the cost ol living ate not half as rapacious as the monopolists who controlled under rights ceded by the Crown practically every article of domestic consumption in the days of Charles I. Nor is the position worse to-day in regard to political corruption than in bygone years, for as late as 1852 election frauds were perpetrated in New York on a scale it is considered would he quite impossible in these days. Again, in the year 1776 about one-sixth of the population of the United States were slaves, not counting white indentured servants and redemptioners, who were practically bond slaves. America’s criminal code was infinitely more drastic a hundred years ago than it is today, and in some States there v.ere twenty-seven crimes for which capital punishment was the penalty. Anyone found guilty of being a pauper was flogged and stood in the pillory, and Ids wife and children had to wear the letter “P” on their clothing. There were no paved streets even in New York till after 1750, and goats and pigs were allowed to wander on the city streets as late as 1810. Heavy drinking was universal amongst all classes a hundred years ago. Altogether, Mr. Stowe makes out a good case and looks with kindly optimism on tho world of to-day.