DON'T FEED THE ANIMALS

I was reading an article written by the Department of Fish and Game in California, which educates humans on not feeding wild animals and the reasons behind it. As I was reading this article it occurred to me that we, in the human world could learn a lesson from this article. See, it is widely distributed throughout national parks and such that humans are not to feed the wild animals. There are various reasons for this. Wild animals, when given food handouts by humans, will tend to stay in that area and become increasingly more dependent on the free food. They will begin to lose their instinct to go hunt food for themselves. They will even, over time, become increasingly aggressive about trying to take food from their human providers. After a period of time the population may become almost entirely dependent on the handouts, and unable to survive without them.

This same behavior can be seen in the socialized programs of welfare and unemployment compensation started by the "New Deal", which continues to encourage a large number of Americans to "lose their instinct to go hunt food for themselves." The government being the humans providing the free handout, compliments of working Americans tax dollars. I purchased the book, "Letters of a Nation" which contain great letters that have been retrieved dealing indifferent era's of American history. I highly recommend this book by the way, and I wish to share one letter from this book, as it deals with the topic at hand. The letter is from Minnie A. Hardin to first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Ms. Hardin, as well as many other Americans knew early on, what a huge mistake the government had made with the socialist concepts employed in the "NewDeal." What is shared in this letter is the outrage that came from these programs by Americans who worked for a living, while others made a living from their work. The statists successfully counted on the fact, that we, as humans, tend to have short term memories and our anger seems to fade over time when injustice occurs. For an example of this look no further than debates we're having about releasing terrorists and prosecuting the heroes who interrogated them, merely seven years after 9/11, but I don't want to get off-topic. Ms. Hardin puts the injustices of these programs in better words than I could possibly consider writing. It is a long letter but well worth the read, so without further adieau:

Mrs. Roosevelt:

I suppose from your point of view the work relief, old age pensions, slum clearance and all the rest seems like a perfect remedy for all the ills of this country,but I would like for you to see the results, as the other half see them. We have always had a shiftless, never-do-well class of people whose one and only aim in life is to live without work. I have been rubbing elbows with this class for nearly sixty years and have tried to help some of the most promising and have seen others try to help them, but it can't be done. We cannot help those who will not try to help themselves and if they do try, a square deal is all they need, and by the way that is all this country needs or ever has needed: a square deal for all and then, let each paddle their own canoe, or sink. There has never been any necessity for any one who is able to work, being on relief in this locality, but there have been many eating the bread of charity and they have lived better than ever before. I have had tax payers tell me that their children came from school and asked why they couldn't have nice lunches like the children on relief. The women and children around here have had to work at the fields to help save the crops and several women fainted while at work and at the same time we couldn't go up or down the road without stumbling over some of the reliefers, moping around carrying dirt from one side of the road to the other and back again, or else asleep. I live alone on a farm and have not raised any crops for the last two years as there was no help to be had. I am feeding the stock and have been cutting the wood to keep my home fires burning. There are several reliefers around here now who have been kicked off relief but they refuse to work unless they can get relief hours and wages, but they are so worthless no one can afford to hire them. As for the clearance of the real slums, it can't be done as long as their inhabitants are allowed to reproduce their kind. I would like for you to see what a family of that class can do to a decent house in a short time. Such a family moved into an almost new, neat, four-room house near here last winter. They even cut down some of the shade trees for fuel, after they had burned everything they could pry loose. There were two big idle boys in the family and they could get all the fuel they wanted, just for the cutting, but the shade trees were closer and it was taking a great amount of fuel, for they had broken out several windows and they had but very little bedding. There were two women there all the time and three part of the time and there was enough good clothing tramped in the mud around the yard to have made all the bedclothes they needed. It was clothing that had been given them and they had worn it until it was too filthy to wear any longer without washing, so they threw it out and begged more. I will not try to describe their filth for you would not believe me. They paid no rent while there and left between two suns owing everyone from whom they could get a nickels worth of anything. They are just a fair sample of the class of people on whom so much of our hard earned tax money is being squandered and on whom so much sympathy is being wasted. As for the old people on beggars' allowances: the taxpayers have provided homes for all the old people who never liked to work, where they will be neither cold nor hungry: much better homes than most of them have ever tried to provide for themselves. They have lived many years through the most prosperous times of our country and had an opportunity to prepare for old age, but they spent their lives in idleness or worse and now they expect those who have worked like slaves, to provide a living for them and all their worthless descendants. Some of them are asking for from thirty to sixty dollars a month when I have known them to live on a dollar a week rather than go to work. There is many a little child doing without butter on its bread, so that some old sot can have his booze and tobacco: some old sot who spent his working years loafing around pool rooms and saloons, boasting that the world owed him a living. Even the child welfare has become a racket. The parents of large families are getting divorces, so that the mothers and children can qualify for aid. The children have to join the ranks of the "unemployed" as they grow up, for no child that has been raised on charity in this community has ever amounted to anything. You people who have plenty of this worlds goods and whose money comes easy, have no idea of the heart-breaking toil and self-denial which is the lot of the working people who are trying to make an honest living, and then to have to shoulder all these unjust burdens seems like the last straw. During the worst of the depression many of the farmers had to deny their families butter, eggs, meat, etc. and sell it to pay their taxes and then had to stand by and see the dead-beats carry it home to their families by the arm load, and they knew their tax money was helping pay for it. One woman saw a man carry out eight pounds of butter at one time. The crookedness, selfishness, greed and graft of the crooked politicians is making one gigantic racket out of the new deal, and it is making this a nation of dead-beats and beggars and if it continues the people who will work will soon be nothing but slaves for the pampered poverty rats and I am afraid these human parasites are going to become a menace to the country unless they are disfranchised. No one should have the right to vote theirself a living at the expense of the taxpayers. They learned their strength at the last election and also learned that they can get just about what they want by "voting right." They have had a taste of their coveted life of idleness, and at the rate they are increasing, they will soon control the country. The twentieth child arrived in the home of one chronic reliefer near here some time ago. Is it any wonder the taxpayers are discouraged by all this penalizing of thrift and industry to reward shiftlessness, or that the whole country is on the brink of chaos?

Sound familiar??? History does repeat itself when we refuse to learn from it. Even the Department of Fish and Game tells us, "Don't Feed The Animals!"