"Ox-like, Limp and Leaden-eyed"

I wonder who I had in mind when (at about age 24) I copied out this:

Let not young souls be smothered out before
They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride.
It is the world’s one crime its babes grow dull,
Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed.
Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly;
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap;
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve;
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.

—Vachel Lindsay, “The Leaden-Eyed”

Who Are the Payday Borrowers?

I haven’t seen the paper yet but Newsweek (and apparently, some blogs) are showcasing a new study by a couple of Catholic U profs showing that payday loans are heaviest in states with high Christian(or Mormon) populations (link). The authors identify (it says here)

a correlation between high concentrations of Christians in states with a proliferation of payday lenders. [The authors are] quick to disclaim any causal effect of one group begetting the other … The boring numbers show a state such as Illinois with an estimated 10.6 per cent Mormon and Evangelical population has .625 payday lenders per 10,000 people; while neighboring Missouri with 2.5 times as many Christians as Illinois has almost 4 times the payday lenders per 10,000 of population. [They] found the highest concentrations of payday lenders in the Mormon mountain West and the Bible belt.

Like I say, I haven’t seen the original and I don’t know what the original authors make of it (internet meta-note: I think I am now reporting the story at fourth hand). But I offer this: the data seem to be all of a piece with other data showing that heartland evangelicals in general are having a tougher time: struggling to maintain respectability on limited means against big challenges--and in a mood of growing disappointment and perplexity. It’s a topic that Anatol Lieven addressed with great sensitivity in America: Right or Wrong (2004). The whole book rewards patient (re)reading, and it doesn’t excerpt easily, so let me content myself with repeating the poem that Lieven deploys to introduce is chapter on “The Embittered Heartland”:

Defeat of the aspen groves of Colorado valleys,
The blue bells of the Rockies,
And the blue bonnets of old Texas,
By the Pittsburg alleys
Defeat of the alfalfa and the Mariposa lily.
Defeat of the Pacific and the long Mississippi,
Defeat of the young by the old and silly,
Defeat of tornadoes by the poison vats supreme.
Defeat of my boyhood, defeat of my dream.

—Vachel Lindsay, “Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan,”
on the defeat of William Jennings Bryan’s populist campaign for president, 1896)

H/T: Marcus Reed.

Update: This one sounds right to me also.