Echoes from the Page: We Were Warned—Are We Ready to Listen?
✊What a 127-Year-Old Newspaper Taught Me About America’s Broken System
(Note: In trying to remember to post on my blog and here— this one was missed, some of the details about current events have since evolved, originally posted 2025/06/30)
I found it by accident… or maybe it found me.
Back in October 2023, I was scrolling through old newspaper archives online—partly researching my ancestors, partly just following my curiosity. I clipped stories that stood out, not just for the names but for the way they captured the tone of the times. Glimpses into daily life. Grief and grit, tucked into headlines. That’s when I stumbled onto Living Issues, a small radical newspaper out of Salt Lake City dated December 24, 1897.
One page in particular hit me like a gut punch. I clipped it instantly and kept coming back to it again and again. I brought it up in conversations with people who probably weren’t expecting a deep dive into 19th-century class politics. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The insight. The urgency. The way someone had put words to injustice and published it, only for it to disappear into the folds of forgotten history.
That first spark became the foundation for a series of posts I’ve now written on economic power and empathy, as I've been unpacking all that is happening.
Now, as the Senate engages in the Vote-a-Rama on the Big Beautiful Bill—an attempt to highlight the harmful parts of this bill with the goal of reversing some of the economic violence inflicted by the 2017 tax overhaul—I returned to this paper and am reminded that so little has changed. It makes me wonder if the authors of these pages could even fathom how the GOP is framing this ridiculous idea that billionaires need more.
The quote that first grabbed me:
“When the time of dissolution comes and the poor devils look back over the fitful dream, their life has been a dreary waste… All they have been permitted to enjoy has been about as much food, clothes and miserable shelter as a chattel slave. And all this that a system might be maintained under which the vice of greed could develop and expand.”
The Two Methods: Debt for the Many, Control for the Few
That quote wasn’t written by a modern-day critic of Wall Street. It came from the front page of Living Issues, a Populist newspaper speaking directly to working-class Americans who were sick of being squeezed by landlords, politicians, and the ruling class. It was Christmas Eve, and instead of publishing a warm holiday story, they dropped a raw indictment of capitalism and the way it robs people of their lives.
One of the lead articles, “The Two Methods,” compared two major buildings in Salt Lake City: the Mormon Temple, built through church-controlled labor and internal scrip, and the City & County Building, financed through public debt and interest-bearing bonds.
The paper wasn’t glorifying the Church—it was drawing attention to the exploitative trap of compound interest, especially when it’s strapped to the backs of taxpayers. And while that building may have been debt-free, it came at the cost of centralized control and submission to ecclesiastical authority—a structure that has since evolved into one of the wealthiest institutions on the planet.
“At the end of twenty years, the county will have paid $420,000 in interest and will still owe $420,000.”
Here’s the bitter irony: the same Church that once bypassed traditional finance to build its Temple has since hoarded over $300 billion, hiding its assets in secret shell companies while continuing to demand tithes from struggling members. It now prioritizes real estate and ornate buildings over humanitarian aid—sitting on a fortune that could eliminate the very poverty it once claimed to protect its people from.
So this comparison wasn’t about choosing sides. It was about naming systems—and who benefits from them. What a shocking warning in the context of their wealth today.
A Rage You Can Still Feel
Once I started reading past the opening editorial, I realized that this paper wasn’t just angry—it was laser-focused. It wasn’t aimless rage. It was informed, targeted, and deeply personal.
Page 1 is full of raw, unfiltered grief for the working class. One line in particular ripped through me:
“Every time we see one of these little ones looking with longing eyes on beauties they are not permitted to enjoy, we wonder to ourselves—if there be a God of justice in heaven, what is he doing?”
This wasn’t performative moralizing. It was a direct callout of the cruelty baked into an economic system that parades luxury in front of hungry children while preaching self-reliance to their parents.
In that same issue, the writers speak about the “dreary waste” of a working person’s life—how most people are granted only enough to survive, never enough to rest, recover, or dream. It reminded me of the exhaustion I see (and feel) today: in friends, in family, in strangers online who work two or three jobs and still can't cover rent or dental care.
That ache hasn’t gone away. It’s just been dressed in new language—productivity, flexibility, individual responsibility—but it still grinds people down the same way.
And here we are, more than a century later, watching billionaires lobby for tax breaks while teachers sell plasma and disabled people crowdfund for medical devices. The writers of Living Issues didn’t have TikTok or a Substack or campaign donation links, but they knew the same truth so many of us are still shouting:
This system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed—and it’s designed to keep us poor.
Who Wrote This, and Why?
Living Issues wasn’t a mainstream paper. It wasn’t backed by capital or driven by party elites. It was the mouthpiece of a radical movement—the People’s Party, also known as the Populists. These were farmers, miners, laborers, and working-class thinkers fed up with the economic chokehold of railroads, banks, and monopolies. And in Utah, they had a unique vantage point: stuck between the authority of the Mormon Church and the unchecked greed of national capital.
The paper was edited and published by Willard Foster, operating out of a small room in the Hooper Block in downtown Salt Lake City. Foster wasn’t subtle. His editorials burned with class anger and economic analysis, not because he wanted clicks—but because he was watching his neighbors suffer. He saw that hard work didn’t lead to stability. It led to debt, sickness, silence, and shame.
Foster and his contributors weren't afraid to name names or systems. In this single issue, they call out:
The gold standard, for locking the country into scarcity.
Compound interest, for turning public buildings into generational debt traps.
Railroad monopolies, for crushing local economies.
The church, for hoarding wealth under the guise of sacrifice.
And both major political parties, for selling working people out to serve capital.
They quoted thinkers like Henry George and ran columns reprinted from national leftist papers like Appeal to Reason and The Commoner. It was part local commentary, part national call to arms.
And it wasn’t just what they said—it was how they said it. These weren’t polite essays begging elites to do better. They were fire-breathing truths aimed at anyone who claimed that poverty was the result of laziness.
“All the ills that affect the human family… can be traced directly to one root: private property for profit.”
The paper doesn’t come across as strictly Marxist or ideologically doctrinaire—it’s not quoting Das Kapital or pushing for revolution by the proletariat. But the tone is unmistakably anti-corporate, anti-elite, and deeply democratic. The demands are for public control of essential goods, freedom from debt, and a government that serves the people, not capital.
In that way, Living Issues feels like part of the historic foundation of today’s economic justice movements. Its values are deeply aligned with what we now call democratic socialism, even if it used a different vocabulary.
And while the original People’s Party dissolved more than a century ago—absorbed and diluted by the Democrats of the early 20th century—its ideals live on in labor movements, mutual aid efforts, and calls to tax the rich, cancel debt, and reclaim public power. (For clarity: there's a small modern group calling itself the People's Party today, but it has no connection to the 1890s movement or this paper.)
Inside the Other Pages: So Much Still Resonates
Reading the rest of the December 24, 1897 issue was like opening a time capsule that somehow understands 2025 better than most political pundits on TV. It wasn’t just one powerful quote or one angry editorial—it was page after page of economic clarity, political fire, and deep compassion for the working class.
Every article, every jab, every statistic carried a clear message:
This system is rigged—and we can name the people rigging it.
On Page 1, they mourn the cruelty of children staring longingly at holiday displays they’ll never afford. On Page 2, they tear into government waste, banking corruption, and the absurdity of civil service appointments handed out like prizes to party loyalists. Elsewhere in the issue:
They report on workers starving to death while the government denies them pensions.
They call out the cannibalistic nature of capitalism, saying it doesn’t need to boil the poor alive—just slowly strip them of their energy, dignity, and time.
They mock the rise of monopolists like the Vanderbilts, who planned to eliminate middlemen, automate labor, and control prices from mine to consumer.
And just like today, they see how people are gaslit into blaming themselves. One line that stuck with me:
“The lives of nearly every one is a round of work, sleep, eat, work, sleep, eat… their life has been a dreary waste… And all this that a system might be maintained under which the vice of greed could develop and expand.”
It’s not all analysis—it’s action. There are clear demands and unflinching values: abolish interest-based public debt, reclaim land and natural resources for the public, build systems that meet people’s needs instead of extracting from them. These aren’t relics of the past—they’re still unfinished business.
And then I came across this:
“Of course we don’t eat up our fellow-citizens actually and literally; but we do it indirectly, by a roundabout method, with great ceremony and much red tape… To grind down the poor in the mill of industrial slavery and rob them of nearly all they produce is just as surely cannibalism, as to boil them up in a big kettle and eat them actually. The difference is, it takes longer to pick their bones and they are expected to consent to the operation with cheerfulness.”
— The New Dispensation, reprinted in Living Issues
That’s not hyperbole. That’s someone naming the truth with clarity and guts—refusing to sugarcoat what capitalism does to poor and working people. It reminded me that even the metaphors we still use today—burnout, chewed up, drained, bled dry—have roots in this long tradition of refusal.
It’s honestly kind of devastating to realize how many of the exact same fights are still happening. But it’s also strangely comforting. Because this paper proves something important:
We’re not crazy. We’re not alone.
And we’re not the first people to see through the lies.
We just might be the first to have the tools to do something lasting about it.
The Big Beautiful Bill: A Moment of Reckoning
It’s surreal reading an 1897 newspaper that could just as easily be written about right now—while watching the Senate tear through the Vote-a-Rama process for the Big Beautiful Bill.
For those just tuning in, the Big Beautiful Bill—H.R.1—isn’t some harmless tax policy. It’s a deliberate attempt to make the Trump-era 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent. That bill slashed corporate tax rates, handed massive windfalls to billionaires, and set the stage for record-breaking wealth inequality—all under the illusion that it would “trickle down.”
Now, instead of correcting that mistake, this bill doubles down. It demands that social programs be gutted to “pay for” permanent tax breaks that overwhelmingly benefit the ultra-wealthy. It’s an economic strategy that relies—explicitly—on the idea that billionaires will somehow “do the right thing” with their windfall.
When I first revisited Living Issues earlier this week, I asked myself:
Could the authors of these pages even fathom how the GOP is framing this ridiculous idea that billionaires need more?
And then came the moment that made it all impossible to ignore.
On June 29, 2025, Democratic lawmakers invoked a procedural right and demanded that the bill be read in full—all 940 pages of it—on the Senate floor. It took nearly 12 hours. Twelve hours of budget language, tax loophole reinforcements, cuts to food assistance, Medicaid reductions, and line after line ensuring the wealthy won’t be touched while everyday people are squeezed even harder.
This wasn’t just a stall tactic. It was a symbolic stand. A way of saying:
If you’re going to pass a bill that sacrifices millions of people on the altar of corporate greed, then every word of that harm must be heard aloud.
And it was.
Let’s be clear: the ultra-rich do not need more.
Working people, disabled people, caregivers, and retirees do.
But this bill enshrines the opposite.
This bill doesn’t just rewrite tax code—it reaffirms a reality where the rich are protected and the rest of us are left to hustle for scraps. It cements tax rates that let corporations and dynastic families hoard unimaginable wealth, while stripping away the few safety nets that keep vulnerable people from drowning; gutting programs like Medicaid, food assistance, housing aid, public education. It extends a brutal cycle we’ve already been forced to live inside: where people must crowdfund insulin, dental surgery, or funeral costs. Where survival depends not on dignity or need, but on storytelling and how well you can pitch your suffering, how many followers you have, how “deserving” you appear. It reads like an episode of Black Mirror, except it's not fiction. It’s policy. And the stakes are real: we either keep walking this road of sanctioned abandonment, or we turn and demand something else.
The rhetoric in 1897 warned of this very setup. And now, in 2025, we’re watching it play out again, this time with more zeros and a glossier spin.
“The lives of nearly every one is a round of work, sleep, eat… their life has been a dreary waste… and all this that a system might be maintained under which the vice of greed could develop and expand.”
That wasn’t just a complaint. It was a warning.
And this bill proves we haven’t learned it.
What They Fought For, What We’re Still Fighting For
From what I’ve read, the writers of Living Issues weren’t just angry—they were strategic, visionary, and relentless. They didn’t want pity. They wanted economic democracy, public control of land and labor, and a future where people weren’t punished for being born into families or communities trapped in systems that had already failed them.
What’s wild is that we’re still fighting for the same damn things—and still being misunderstood in the same familiar ways.
Back then, they wanted:
Public infrastructure free from debt servitude.
Fair pay for labor, without being told to wait for the “trickle.”
Education not tied to party loyalty.
Land that wasn’t monopolized by the powerful.
A government not owned by banks, trusts, and railroads.
Now, we want:
Housing that doesn’t bankrupt us.
Healthcare that doesn’t depend on whether we’re employed.
A tax system that actually taxes the rich.
An economy that values life over profit margins.
They wrote with ink and indignation. We write posts, share threads, show up to town halls, call our senators, and film TikToks in our cars after another ten-hour shift. The medium has changed, but the soul of the fight is the same.
And now we’re standing in a moment—right now—when that fight matters more than ever. Because the Big Beautiful Bill isn’t just a budget battle. It’s a referendum on who this country is built to serve.
The billionaires hiding their fortunes in shell companies?
Or the rest of us, just trying to sleep through the night without dreading a check engine light, a trip and fall, or a mystery illness we can’t afford to diagnose?
This Isn’t Just History. It’s a Warning.
Reading Living Issues didn’t feel like reading history. It felt like someone reached through time, grabbed me by the shoulders, and said, You’re not imagining this. You’re not alone. And you’re not the first to feel this angry, this tired, this betrayed.
What they wrote in 1897 is what we’re still shouting today:
That systems built to serve the wealthy will always tell the poor to wait.
That economic cruelty dressed up as policy is still cruelty.
That people deserve more than survival.
It’s easy to believe that things are too far gone. That nothing we do will matter. That the machine is too big, too slick, too embedded. But that’s what they thought back then too. And still—they wrote. They organized. They resisted. And even though the People’s Party didn’t survive, their ideas did.
They live on in every worker who demands a raise.
Every renter who organizes for fair housing.
Every parent who refuses to let their child be forgotten.
Every creator who turns grief into truth and truth into action.
We inherit more than struggle—we inherit their fire.
This isn’t just history. It’s a warning.
But it’s also a torch.
Final Thought: What We Still Don’t Understand
When I said earlier that we're being misunderstood in the same ways they were—I think it's also worth admitting that we've misunderstood some things too.
They believed that if they just exposed the truth, people would wake up. That if they could name the corruption, the theft, the injustice—then surely, things would change. But what they didn’t fully account for—and what we still wrestle with today—is how deeply rooted this system is. How it doesn’t just exploit labor or hoard wealth. It rewires how people think. It trains the public to blame the poor, to worship the rich, to distrust their own neighbors and communities.
It convinces us that reform depends on the empathy of billionaires, rather than the power of collective action.
Even now, with this bill threatening to strip the last threads of our safety net, the argument isn’t about justice. It’s about whether the ultra-rich will choose to be generous. That framing is the trap. And we keep falling into it.
But here's what I’m learning:
They weren’t wrong to hope. And we’re not wrong to fight.
But the change we need doesn’t come from asking.
It comes from organizing, resisting, and reclaiming.
We’re not powerless. We’re just scattered.
And the people in power are counting on that.
Want to Join the Fight?
Here’s where you can learn more, contact your reps, and connect with organizations pushing back against the Big Beautiful Bill and the systems behind it:
📞 Contact Your Senators
Call or email your U.S. Senators directly. Use https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
Ask them to oppose H.R.1 (The Big Beautiful Bill) and protect programs that keep working-class people alive.
🧰 Rapid Response Tools
Resistbot (text RESIST to 50409): Sends faxes, letters, or calls to your lawmakers in under 2 minutes.
5 Calls (
https://5calls.org
): Scripts + contact info based on your zip code and the issue you care about.
🛡️ Legal and Advocacy Orgs That Will Fight This
ACLU –
https://aclu.org
Economic Policy Institute –
https://epi.org
Center for Budget and Policy Priorities –
https://cbpp.org
Public Citizen –
https://citizen.org
Americans for Tax Fairness –
https://americansfortaxfairness.org
🤝 Join or Support Grassroots Movements
DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) –
https://dsausa.org
People’s Action –
https://peoplesaction.org
Tax March –
https://taxmarch.org
Poor People’s Campaign –
https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org
📚 Keep Reading & Keep Questioning
This is just one part of an ongoing series where I’m unpacking the economic history that got us here—and exploring how we build something better.
I’m nobody special in the grand scheme of things. But this—this moment, this fight—has me thinking deeper. And when I think, I write. When I write, I learn what I don’t know. And that learning pulls me down rabbit holes I can’t ignore.
This project has pushed me beyond my usual topics. It’s lit a fire. And I hope you’ll come with me—while I trace the socioeconomic roots of where we are, and use what we know now to imagine something more just, more honest, more human.
This isn’t about waiting for the elite class to wake up.
It’s about showing them we already understand how they got there—and that we’re paying attention to what happens if we let them keep going unchecked.
No threats. Just facts.
The game of monopoly always ends the same way.
But we don’t have to play it out like that.
We can choose a different ending—one where we all get to live full lives, where we learn, grow, and heal from what came before.
One where the world we build actually lets all of us thrive.
Start with Part 1 to trace where this rabbit hole of connections all began.
If this resonated with you, please share it.
Share the ideas, the questions, the frustration.
Do your own research. Challenge it. Critique it.
The only way we move forward is by thinking, learning, and building—together.
If you want to follow me you can find me @anOriginalCreation on TikTok, Instagram, and Substack.
Read the newspaper here.