World's Worst Affliction

When you analyze sin, and depravity you try to estimate which is worse, murder, greed covetousness, pride, gluttony, etc. I truly believe the worst affliction of mankind is the sin of selfishness. This is the first academic trauma you see in a small child. “Mine, mine, mine!” We all want to satisfy self. I have never known a wealthy person who had enough money. “More, more, more.” We are astounded everyday of our lives with news involving selfish acts. A man in California kidnapped a young girl from her school bus stop at the age of 10, keeping her couped up in the inter-courts of his back yard for 18 years, during which time she birthed two children which he fathered. Can you even imagine this horror story, the enslavement of one human being by another? Yet, it goes on in this world, someplace every day. And, some people are stupid enough to believe that an all sovereign God who flung the stars into space, who made man in His very image, is not capable of justice and the judgment of these defectors. You, if you have not submitted to His grace through faith, will spend eternity with such.

Such greed and selfishness is not just a matter of decadent individuals. It extends to entire nations and certainly to cities and countries who sit by and watch the enslavement of human beings. An example which has gnawed at my very inner being most of my life is that of the enslavement of hardworking, God fearing human beings in the slave mills and fields to the advantage of elitists. I speak of the cotton mills, in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the only source of employment, other than the farm for many people. Every town of any size, throughout the southland and most of the northern and western states had a cotton mill or some other comparable industry.

In this town, where I live, there was the Spofford Cotton Mill owned by the Davis family. The Davis family who owned a large gardens by the ocean which they sold to the county for a ridiculous price, had a home so large it had an interior tennis court. The local black population, who were not allowed to go to their gardens or even put their feet in the ocean nearby, walk in lockstep now to vote for this family when they run for political office. One hundred and seventy three houses, called “Mill Hill', surrounded the large cotton mill in the southeastern part of the city. The mill houses did not have inside plumbing. As in most mill towns, the employees were expected to buy their needs from the “company store”. The fathers, mothers and even children were workers in the mills, slaves to the elitist mill owners, such as the Davis family here in Wilmington, the Borden family in Goldsboro, the Cone family in Greensboro, and the Cannons in Kannapolis, etc. There are hundreds, too many to list, Bladenboro, Smithfield, Selma, Clayton, etc. all with the same story, poor struggling white people wearing rags, working on enormous looms, manufacturing cloth for clothing which they could never afford, working under conditions which would embarrass God Himself.

One of my aunts, suffering from severe headaches because of vision required in the mill, went to Mr. Davis, owner of the Spofford Cotton Mills and asked him to wash the windows so they would have more light to see their work. He told her, “If you don't like the windows as they are, you can go out and see if you can find another job somewhere else.” I think about this every time I hear his descendant, now Chairman of the County Commissioners talk about how much he loves the public.

Another one of these disreputable factories here in Wilmington, manufactured shirts, (Block Shirt Factory). When it became too expensive to manufacture the shirts locally, cheap shirts, manufactured by slaves in China, were brought in and the Block label was sewed into them. It is this type of obtrusive and obtuse business practice which gives American commerce such a bad name. After many years of investigation, and some correction, now the same inordinate manufacturers have moved their industries offshore to third world, more populated countries where they can pull their industrial conflagration on other slaves. How many politicians can look at themselves in the mirror, knowing they have participated in this type of debauchery or how spiritual leaders can look in the mirror and know that they have said nothing against this sin, is beyond my humble comprehension.

The sweat shop changes never reached the south. After the 1911, Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, off Washington Square in lower Manhattan killed 146 immigrant workers, most of which were from the workers jumping out of windows, the government cleaned up some of these disreputable practices particularly in employing children.

Next to the cotton mills in the south, particularly in Eastern NC, the very worst form of human slavery was that of the tenant farmer. Poor families lived in unbelievable housing conditions and worked for slave wages as tenant farmers on land holdings of wealthy “land hogs”. These elitist land hogs usually lived in the towns, owned the warehouses (auction markets) where the auctions were held for the tenants' products and treated the tenants like the “serfs” which they were. The “peasant” mentality extended from the tenant farm to the cotton mill and certainly to the court house and the church house.

The churches were strictly segregated. Poor cotton mill workers and tenant farmers would not go to the church where the elitest mill owners and farm owners worshiped. The black families, in town to buy some supplies, always had to park their cars or tie up their mules near the court house. This was the only place in town where blacks and poor people could use the toilets. The school houses were the only possible place that the poor and wealthy ever met. It was not just a matter of the segregation of the races in the south. Much more bigotry and segregation involved the economic strata of the community. Many books have been written about the strife existing not just in the minds but in the actual debilitating actions of the different levels of society and acceptance in these communities. The colleges and universities of the 19^th century were totally different from today's university system, where because of grants and scholarships, the poor and disenfranchised with better preparation now than then, can actually matriculate and expect some future measure of success. Whereas until recently, it was only the rare exception that poor whites and blacks and immigrants could excel.

Starting in 1970, poor whites, blacks and immigrants had a chance in the South. Until then, particularly the blacks always migrated north or west, to fulfill ambition. We cannot believe the ethical and racial inhumanity of the Third Reich, Hitler's great “solution”. Watch carefully! There is a revival of the dastardly, distraught doctrine of Nazism permeating our free enterprise, capitalistic democratic republic. Take a good look at Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and his bioethics philosophy. Take a good look at the philosophies of the czars and academic suckers of the Obama administration.

The world's worst affliction is selfishness. We see this in eugenics. Every sin known to man begins with pride. In the pride of depopulation through eugenics we see Satan's crowing achievement.