He begins his pamphlet on 'Human Submission' with a series
of city reporter's items from newspapers (suicides, deaths from
starvation and the like) as specimens of our civilized regime. For
instance:
"'After trudging through the snow from one end of the city to the
other in the vain hope of securing employment, and with his wife and
six children without food and ordered to leave their home in an
upper east side tenement house because of non-payment of rent, John
Corcoran, a clerk, to-day ended his life by drinking carbolic acid.
Corcoran lost his position three weeks ago through illness, and
during the period of idleness his scanty savings disappeared.
Yesterday he obtained work with a gang of city snow shovelers, but
he was too weak from illness and was forced to quit after an hour's
trial with the shovel. Then the weary task of looking for employment
was again resumed. Thoroughly discouraged, Corcoran returned to his
home late last night to find his wife and children without food and
the notice of dispossession on the door.' On the following morning
he drank the poison.
"The records of many more such cases lie before me [Mr. Swift goes
on]; an encyclopedia might easily be filled with their kind.
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