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diff --git a/old/64056-0.txt b/old/64056-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index c0b3f08..0000000 --- a/old/64056-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3418 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Peril and the Preservation of the Home, -by Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: The Peril and the Preservation of the Home - Being the William L. Bull Lectures for the Year 1903 - - -Author: Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis - - - -Release Date: December 16, 2020 [eBook #64056] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PERIL AND THE PRESERVATION OF -THE HOME*** - - -E-text prepared by ellinora, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made -available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - - - -Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this - file which includes the original illustrations. - See 64056-h.htm or 64056-h.zip: - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/64056/64056-h/64056-h.htm) - or - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/64056/64056-h.zip) - - - Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - https://archive.org/details/perilpreservatio00riisrich - - -Transcriber’s Note: - - Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). - - - - - -THE PERIL AND THE PRESERVATION OF THE HOME - -Being the William L. Bull Lectures for the Year 1903 - -by - -JACOB A. RIIS - -Author of “The Making of an American,” “The Battle with the Slum,” etc. - - -[Illustration: Publisher’s Logo] - - - - - - -Philadelphia -George W. Jacobs & Co. -Publishers - -Copyright, 1903, by -George W. Jacobs & Company, -Published May, 1903 - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - The Letter Establishing the Lectureship - - -For many years, it has been my earnest desire to found a Lectureship on -Christian Sociology, meaning thereby the application of Christian -principles to the social, industrial, and economic problems of the time, -in my alma mater, the Philadelphia Divinity School. My object in -founding this Lectureship is to secure the free, frank, and full -consideration of these subjects with special reference to the Christian -aspects of the questions involved, which have heretofore, in my opinion, -been too much neglected in such discussion. It would seem that the time -is now ripe and the moment an auspicious one for the establishment of -this Lectureship, at least tentatively. - -I therefore make the following offer to continue for at least a period -of three years, with the hope that these lectures may excite such an -interest, particularly among the undergraduates of the Divinity School, -that I shall be justified, with the approval of the authorities of the -Divinity School, in placing the Lectureship on a more permanent -foundation. - -I herewith pledge myself to contribute the sum of six hundred dollars -annually, for a period of three years, to the payment of a lecturer on -Christian Sociology, whose duty it shall be to deliver a course of not -less than four lectures to the students of the Divinity School, either -at the school or elsewhere, as may be deemed most advisable, on the -application of Christian principles to the social, industrial, and -economic problems and needs of the times; the said lecturer to be -appointed annually by a committee of five members: the Bishop of the -Diocese of Pennsylvania; the Dean of the Divinity School; a member of -the Board of Overseers; and two of the Associate Alumni, one of whom -shall be chosen by the Alumni Association, and the other to be myself. - -Furthermore, if it shall be deemed desirable that the lectures shall be -published, I pledge myself to the additional payment of from one to two -hundred dollars for such purpose. - -To secure the full, frank, and free consideration of the questions -involved, it is my desire that the opportunity shall be given from time -to time to the representatives of each school of economic thought to -express their views in these lectures. - -The only restriction I wish placed on the lecturer is that he shall be a -believer in the moral teachings and principles of the Christian religion -as the true solvent of our social, industrial, and economic problems. Of -course, it is my intention that a new lecturer shall be appointed by the -committee each year, who shall deliver the course of lectures for the -ensuing year. - - WILLIAM L. BULL. - - All Saints’ Cathedral, - - Spokane, Washington, - - January 1, 1901. - - -The Committee: - - O. W. WHITAKER, Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania. - WILLIAM M. GROTON, Dean of the Philadelphia Divinity School. - J. DEWOLF PERRY, - LYMAN P. POWELL, - WILLIAM L. BULL. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - Contents - - - I. OUR SINS IN THE PAST 11 - - II. OUR FIGHT FOR THE HOME 65 - - III. OUR PLIGHT IN THE PRESENT 117 - - IV. OUR GRIP ON THE TO-MORROW 155 - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - List of Illustrations - - - LECTURE II - - - At the Old Five Points 90 - - The “Old Church Tenements” 92 - - Gotham Court 94 - - Midnight in Gotham Court 94 - - The Alderman’s Tenements 96 - - Little Susie 98 - - Tenement Where a Home was Murdered 100 - - A “Drunken” Flat 102 - - In a Baxter Street Yard 104 - - Shanty Dwellings in a Tenement Yard 104 - - Washing in an Italian Flat; the Tea 106 - Kettle Used as a Wash Boiler - - Pietro and his Father 108 - - Sister Irene and her Little Ones 110 - - The Open Trench in the Potter’s Field 112 - - “The Way Out”—Bedtime in the Five Points 114 - House of Industry Nursery - - - LECTURE III - - - A Typical Tenement House Block 126 - - The Only Bathtub in the Block 128 - - The Riverside Tenements 130 - - Lodgers at “Five Cents a Spot” 132 - - They “Lived Nowhere” 136 - - Joining “the Club” 138 - - Hell on Earth 140 - - The City and Suburban Homes Company’s 142 - Model Tenements; The Alfred Corning - Clark Block - - The “To-morrow” 144 - - It is Five Years Since the Bend Became a 146 - Park - - In the Public School of To-day 150 - - Saluting the Flag 152 - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - I - - OUR SINS IN THE PAST - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - I - - OUR SINS IN THE PAST - - -AT the very outset of my discussion of the peril and the preservation of -the American home, I am confronted with an apparent contradiction that -would seem to deny my premises, my contention that upon the preservation -of the home depends the vitality of our Republic; that, if the home were -gone, we should be fighting against overwhelming odds in the battle to -maintain it and would as surely lose. But I think you will find that the -contradiction is only apparent. I refer to the fact—let me state it -right here and have the enemy all in front, I like it that way—that, -whereas in my own great city I attribute to our unhappy housing -conditions (those conditions which have given to New York the bad name -of “the homeless city,”) most of the troubles that have made our -municipal government a by-word in the past and raised doubts in the -minds of some as to the fitness of our people, of any people, to govern -themselves rightly; yet in this city of yours to which I have come to -make the arraignment, the one among all our great communities that has -the distinction of having preserved the home ideal most nearly, you are, -as far as any one can make out, no better off than we. It has sometimes -seemed that you were even worse off. You have your fight, as we have -ours. But do not let it discourage you if, for the time being, you are -outnumbered. The point is that there are more to help every time. -Looking back now on the many battles in my city, I can see that every -defeat we suffered was really a victory; it showed us how to do better -next time. So is defeat always gain in the cause of right, if we would -only see it. We grow to the stature of men under it. Is it not, when it -comes to that, just a question whether you believe firmly enough in your -own cause? Faith can move mountains of indifference, even here in -Pennsylvania. - -I said it seemed a contradiction, and yet only seemed so. It is because -I am sure your sufferings have been _in spite_ of your homes, not -because of any _lack_ of them. Standing the other day on a mountain-side -in New Hampshire, with a matchless view stretching out before me, I said -to my friend, the good rector and faithful pastor of the parish: “Here -everybody must surely be good. How can they help it?” - -He looked at me sadly and said, pointing to the scattered farms lying so -peacefully in the landscape: “If you could go with me into those homes -and see the things I see in too many of them you would quit your -Mulberry Bend and transfer your battle with the slum to our hillsides.” - -I think, if you will permit me to say it, that your great and splendid -city has been I am almost tempted to say pauperized in its citizenship -by great wealth and perilous prosperity; by a pampered prosperity that -is not good for anybody in the long run. However, that is politics, -which I shall not discuss. The President of the United States says that -my opinion in that quarter is no good at all, and you are free to adopt -his view. I will endorse his views—most of them—anywhere. I seek in mine -an explanation of the civic apathy that has betrayed your town, as it -has mine, into the grasp of a boss and of boss politics. It may be that -I am mistaken. It may be that I put too much of the blame on the -piggeries. I used to say that a man cannot be expected to live like a -pig and vote like a man, and I had reference to the tenements, some of -which surely deserve to be called by no other name. I was very sure of -my ground until the industrial troubles of the last summer seemed to cut -it partly from under me; for then I had people who were well-to-do, -educated, and who ought to know better, right in my own town, come and -upbraid me for always fighting the battle with the slum. “What is the -use?” they said; “they won’t be content.” Since that time I have thought -that perhaps there may be pigs in parlors, too. No, thank God, they will -_not_ be content. Let me say right here, so that we may understand one -another, that the whole of my manhood’s life has been given and what -remains of it will be given, please God, to fighting the things, _all of -them_, that go to debase and degrade manhood and womanhood; so I -understand a Christian’s duty. - -In that I know I have not erred. If I have laid too much stress on the -piggeries, it but proves that the peril of the home is not the only one -that besets our Republic, and that we need be up and doing. But still I -believe that the home is the mainstay; that it rather proves the home to -be beset with perils not in the cities only. All the more am I convinced -that around it only can the fight be waged successfully; and I have full -faith that just because you have preserved the home better than have we, -when the day of waking comes, you will throw off the nightmare that has -plagued your dreams with such a jolt as will warn it off for good and -all and tempt it to return no more. Of that I am sure. God speed you in -the fight! - -I shall not in this place have to enter into a protracted argument to -prove that the home is the pivot of all and why it is so. We _know_ that -it is so, that it has been so in all ages; that the home-loving peoples -have been the strong peoples in all time, those that have left a lasting -impression on the world. Stable government is but the protection the law -throws around the home, and the law itself is the outgrowth of the -effort to preserve it. The Romans, whose heirs we are in most matters -pertaining to the larger community life, and whose law our courts are -expounding yet, set their altars and their firesides together,—_pro aris -et pro foces_; and their holiest oaths were by their household gods. I -have always thought that in that lay the secret of their strength, and -that in the separation of the fireside and the altar lies the great -peril of our day. When for the fireside we got a hole in the floor and a -hot air register, we lost not only the lodestone that drew the scattered -members of the family to a common focus, but with it went too often the -old and holy sense of home: “I and my house, we will serve the Lord.” -Rome perished when most of her people became propertyless—homeless. -Whenever I think of it there comes to my mind a significant passage in -the testimony of the secretary of the Prison Association in my city -before a legislative committee appointed to investigate the draft riots -of 1863. The mob, he said, came, as did eighty per cent. of the crime in -the metropolis, from the element in the population “whose homes had -ceased to be sufficiently separate, decent and desirable to afford what -are regarded as ordinary wholesome influences of home and family.” The -household god of the slum tenement is too apt to be the boss with his -corruption of the neighbor ideal into utter selfishness. On that road -lies destruction. - -In France, many years ago, a voice was raised in warning: “Kill the home -and you destroy family, manhood, patriotism.” The warning was vain, and -the home-loving Germans won easily over the people in whose language -there is not even a word to describe What we express in the word “home.” - -How much of the strength of the old New England home went into the -making of our Republic you know as well as I. It is that thought which -makes me pause when I remember that in their day one in twenty-five of -the people lived in cities, whereas now the showing is one in three, -with all of the influences of the city seeming to push against the chief -prop of the State, the home. Is it not the chief prop? Imagine a nation -of homeless men, a nation deserving the epithet, “the homeless people”; -what would it have to preserve, what to fight for? And however given to -peace we all may be, in the last analysis the test of a nation’s fitness -to live is that it will fight for its life. No! wipe out the home and -the whole structure totters and falls. Even if it hang together yet a -while, it is not worth preserving, not worth fighting for. - -If we had any doubt about it, we have had some information upon the -subject given us in recent years, in my state and in yours. It was here -in your city that the Children’s Aid Society demonstrated, in a way that -did us all good through and through, that the old plan of bringing up -children in squads, which had been tried until it sickened them and us, -was bad, and that placing them out in families made all the difference -in the world. We knew it before, but we needed to be told it in just -that way. We had the experience over again in New York; they had it in -Boston; they have had it everywhere. But very lately we have had a piece -of testimony to that effect that ought to settle the matter. It was an -old scandal in our city that practically all the babies in the Foundling -Hospital died there; none lived to grow up. I say scandal, not in the -sense that any one was to blame. They tried hard enough. Men are not -monsters to see a defenseless baby die without trying to help it. In the -worst Tammany days, we had herds of Jersey cows on Randall’s Island, -kept expressly for those waifs. Everything was done that pity and -experience could suggest, but nothing availed. The babies died, and -there was no help for it. Until four years ago, when a joint committee -of the State Charities’ Aid Association and the New York Association for -Improving the Condition of the Poor, took them off the hands of the city -authorities and put them in homes. The first year after that the -mortality among them fell to a little over _fifty_ per cent., the second -year it was just beyond _thirty_ per cent. and the fourth, which was -last year, it had fallen to _ten and seven-tenths_ per cent., a figure -quite below the mortality among all the children under two years of age -in the whole city. And the experience in Brooklyn was just the same. - -What did it mean? It meant this, and nothing less, that these children -had come at last to their rights; that every baby is entitled to one -pair of mother’s arms around its neck; that its God-given right is a -home,—a _home_; and that, when man robs it of that right, it will not -stay. And small blame to it! It shows that even foundling babies have -good sense. They stayed, these, in such numbers—their death rate fell -below the ordinary death rate of all the children of their age—because -they were _picked_ homes they were put into. It meant, friends, that God -puts a little child in a home because He wants it to grow up with that -as its most precious heritage, its spark of heaven that ever beckons it -to its true home beyond. It means that you cannot herd human beings in -battalions and expect them to develop the qualities of individuality, of -character, that make citizenship upon which to build the Republic that -shall be the hope of to-morrow as well as the shelter of to-day. We -tried that with the “communities” that wiped out the family and -substituted the barrack for the home. But happily they wiped out -themselves. No, brethren, upon the home rests our moral character; our -civic and political liberties are grounded there; virtue, manhood, -citizenship grow there. We forget it to our peril. For American -citizenship in the long run, will be, _must be_, what the American home -is. - -And this home, how does it look to me? The ideal, always in my mind, is -that of a man with his feet upon the soil and his children growing up -there. So, it seems to me, we should have responsible citizenship by the -surest road. But that ideal is unattainable in our cities. We must find -another there. And I ask, as the minimum standard, less than which I -will not take, isolation enough in the teeming crowds to secure the -privacy without which individuality cannot grow and character is -fearfully handicapped. I ask light and air, at least as plentiful and as -good as they have it in the great cattle barns I have seen in my own old -home, where their cows are their most precious possession, because -through them the people make their living. I ask an environment in which -a man may think himself a respectable citizen, an environment that has -no suggestion of the pigsty. You have no business to try to persuade an -American citizen that that is his place. It is treason against the -republic. I ask, above all, the mother who makes the home; I want the -mother. Without her, home is but an empty name. - -What, then, of the barrack that destroys privacy, whose crowds make life -loathsome, whose restricted and narrow quarters compel the use of the -family room only for eating and sleeping; not the latter even when the -summer heats come and the people, to live, must sleep on the roof or out -on the fire-escape? What of those things which send the children to the -street, there to grow such character as they can; that smother in them -even the instinct for the open, for the fields and the woods that is -like the last open window for the soul; rob them of those resources of -mind and heart that make them respond quickly to the robin’s and the -daisy’s appeal and make them at home in God’s nature; that give them the -gutter for a playground, and the saloon, as they grow, for their natural -meeting-place,—their only one, indeed; for it is only just beginning to -dawn upon us that in neglecting that function of the public school, we -have been guilty of a fearful and wicked waste. - -What of these; and what of the need—the need of making the rent—that -sends the mother to the factory, leaving perhaps the little ones behind, -locked in as the only alternative of the street? Locked in and left to -the chance, the awful chance, of a fire in that tenement with the -children helpless to get out and no one knowing of their plight. I say -it with a shudder, for I have had to record as a reporter too many—oh! -God! too many by far—of these things which wring the heart of a man. -What of the grinding need that sends the mother to the shop and so -knocks the big and the strong prop from under the home? - -Or, perhaps, the children go along. Then there is no home; for I do not -call the cheerless room to which they return for their evening meal, -tired and worn and spiritless, to sleep but not to play—I do not call -that home. - -We know the curse of child labor. We know it to our sorrow and loss. -Experience has taught us that it is loss, all loss, ever tending -downward; that, however we figure it, the result is always the same: -where men alone work, they earn the support of the family; where men and -women work, they together earn the support, with nothing to spare; and -where men, women and children work, they do that and no more; so that -nothing is gained and everything is lost. Child-life and citizenship are -lost; for the children of to-day are the men of to-morrow. We know it to -our cost, and you have the lesson before you, though you do not seem to -have learned it. When you do, you will find the cost appalling. - -What else was the meaning of the testimony given before the Coal Strike -Commission, that moved its members to tears and anger by turns? And why -in the twelfth census has Pennsylvania fallen from the sixteenth to the -twentieth place on the list of states that send their children to -school? It is true that there has been no absolute retrogression, for -while in 1890 there were over two per cent. of your children between the -ages of ten and fourteen years who could neither read nor write, in 1900 -the illiterates numbered barely over one in a hundred. But that one is -one too many, and why is he there? Because, according to the showing of -the factory inspectors—and the factory inspectors are always -optimists—there were thirty-five thousand of your children at work, who -should have been in school, not counting the breaker-boys in your mines. -As to them, the coal operators owned up to thirty thousand being in the -mines who never should have been there. - -So we are not alone in our sins against childhood. New York is first -among the great industrial states, Pennsylvania is second, and this is -the showing we make as toward the citizenship of to-morrow: New York -fourteenth, Pennsylvania twentieth. Even South Dakota and Wyoming are -ahead of Pennsylvania, and Utah a long way ahead of New York. Industrial -States! The industrial supremacy that is bought at the expense of -childhood’s rights tends directly to man’s enslavement. It is too dearly -bought. Sins against childhood are sins against the home, are cheating -the world of its to-morrow. And you salve your consciences in vain with -the thought that those illiterate ones are the children of foreigners. -_You_ let them in, to be your Americans of the day that is coming;—you -sent for them, your critics say, to underbid the labor that sought a -higher wage because they wanted American homes,—and it is your business -to see to it that they, or their children, at all events, fit into the -state of which you have made them part. Or woe to that state! - -You need not marvel that in the commonwealth that forgets its duty to -the home even to that extent, you have a heavy contract on your hands to -redeem its greatest city. It is the same conscience that is asleep -there. It is all of a piece. Every once in awhile I hear some one growl -against foreign missions because the money and the strength put into -them are needed at home. I did it myself when I did not know better, God -forgive me. I know better now; and I will tell you how I found out. I -became interested in a strong religious awakening in my own old city of -Copenhagen, and I set about investigating it. It was then that I learned -what others have learned before me, and what was the fact there, that -for every dollar you give away to convert the heathen abroad, God gives -you ten dollars’ worth of purpose to deal with your heathen at home. So, -as you set about crushing out selfishness, greed and evil in the state, -you step on the snake’s head at home,—in your own city. - -You do not need the city tenement as a monument of civic folly in -wrecking the home. There are other ways of doing it, and none surer or -quicker than by forcing the children to labor when they should be at -play. The city crowds have no monopoly of the slum, though they have the -lion’s share of it. It thrives wherever ignorance and helpless poverty -are, and child labor is the shortest road to both. - -The city tenements are the crowded highway. Listen to this description -of them in my own city: - -“The tenement districts of New York are places in which thousands of -people are living in the smallest space in which it is possible for -human beings to exist—crowded together in dark, ill-ventilated rooms, in -many of which the sunlight never enters, and in most of which fresh air -is unknown. They are centres of disease, poverty, vice and crime, where -it is a marvel—not that children grow up to be thieves, drunkards and -prostitutes, but that so many should ever grow up to be decent and -self-respecting. All the conditions which surround childhood, youth and -womanhood in New York’s crowded tenement quarters make for -unrighteousness. They also make for disease. There is hardly a tenement -house in which there has not been at least one case of pulmonary -tuberculosis within the last five years, and in some houses there have -been as great a number as twenty-two different cases of this terrible -disease. From the tenements there comes a stream of sick, helpless -people to our hospitals and dispensaries—from them also comes a host of -paupers and charity seekers. The most terrible of all the features of -tenement-house life in New York, however, is the indiscriminate herding -of all kinds of people in close contact; the fact that, mingled with the -drunken, the dissolute, the improvident, the diseased, dwell the great -mass of the respectable workingmen of the city with their families.” - -I am not quoting newspaper condemnation. The newspapers have not always -been found on that side of the line. I am not quoting from my own -writings, these many years, on this subject. The paragraph is from the -official report of the Tenement House Commission of 1900, of which I was -not a member; nor is it alone in its condemnation. “They,” said the -Tenement House Committee of 1894, speaking of the tenements, “interfere -with the separateness and sacredness of the home, and ... conduce to the -corruption of the young.” There you have it in a nutshell. They destroy -the home and corrupt youth! But think of it! “All the conditions make -for unrighteousness”—in a city of soon four million souls, half of whom -come under that ban! And all the cities in the land copying after and -tending the same way,—with yours, thank God! bringing up the rear. Keep -Philadelphia there, brethren, as you value your civic life. With the -tenement added to the rest you will never work out from under it. Keep -it out, under whatever name it comes, whether as a French flat, an -apartment house, or what not. It all means the destruction of the home -ideal. Flats are but showy tenements. There is not one of them with a -chimney big enough to let in Santa Claus, and you might as well give up -at once as to have him excluded. There are few enough of them that, were -the watchful eye of the sanitary policeman taken off them for six -months, would not turn out as bad as the worst. And he has got one eye -on the district leader now. Keep out the tenement; it is the enemy of -the commonwealth. And ever hold in high honor the men who fight that -fight for you, whether they be Jewish rabbis, Christian ministers, or -lay brethren laboring for the good of their kind. They fight for your -very life. - -I shall have much to say about these tenements hereafter. I will try to -show in pictures that will help you to the understanding of it, how they -injure the social fabric. Here I wish to remind you that that injury is -yours as well as ours. An injury to one _is_ the concern of all in a -democracy like ours. You cannot have citizenship tainted at one end of -the line and expect to keep it untainted at the other end. It works -mischief both ways. Ignorance hurts the state in the man who groans -under it, and in the man who enslaved his mind, who permitted and was -responsible for the outrage. It is of no use to shut our eyes to it. The -slum is a cancer that has long roots reaching the avenue as well as the -alley. The consciousness, however vague, of having betrayed his brother, -breeds hardness of heart in the betrayer, for which alms-giving does not -atone. - - “Forgiveness to the injured doth belong, - He never forgives who did the wrong.” - -Watch and you will find that, when the slum vote is most in evidence, -careless wealth goes shooting on election day and lets the Republic go -to the dogs. Well may the president make the slum an issue in his -message! He is right, for citizenship is murdered there. And well may -the Church put the redemption of the slum increasingly into its -preaching and into its practice! It is angling for living men, not for -dead ones. I spoke of pigsties. Tell me, what sense is there in a man’s -sitting comfortably in his pew of a Sunday, inviting his soul with a -view of the beautiful mansion he has engaged on high, and letting his -brother below wallow in his slough the while? Do you think that bargain -will stand? I do not. I think he runs a very excellent chance, when his -race is over, of having to take _his_ turn in the sty. We are brothers -whether we own it or not, and you and I together have to carry the load -which is of our making. Try you ever so hard, you cannot lay down your -end, and neither can I, mine. - -Is it not the old, old story of human selfishness that tries ever to get -the easy end at the expense of the toiling brother? The woman who shuts -her eyes to the fact that “women’s wages have no lowest limit, since the -paths of shame are always open to them,”[1] and joins in the rush at the -bargain counter, the pennies she saves literally, _literally_ the -life-drops of her sister, body and soul! the selfish man who says: “What -is it to me?” the labor leader who, for personal gain, sacrifices his -cause, which is the cause of human progress, “the effort of men, being -men, to live like men”—these are they who are selling the American home -in our cities into slavery. If anything could make me believe in -purgatory, it is the existence of their kind. We all need making over, -but they seem to need purging by fire to turn the demon of selfishness -out of them, that the spirit of brotherhood may enter. I do not know—I -am not a prophet—but I think I can make out that we are on the eve of -great social changes, for which our democracy was meant to prepare us, -but for which it finds us even now unfit. And all because of that one -thing, the great obstacle! - -Footnote 1: - - Report of Working Women’s Society in New York City. - -The blindness of them, not to see it! Whichever way we turn, where the -selfishness crops out that is where the mistake is made that forfeits -public sympathy, while it holds up the cause of human progress. Capital -earns its fair reward. Promptly it seeks to crush out its neighbor—calls -it protecting its own interests, as though we were so many beasts of -prey whose appetites were the one thing we had in common; proclaims from -the house-tops the age-old doctrine of privilege—God-given -privilege!—from which the world has been trying for centuries to get -away; calls the President of the United States, when he tries to make -peace, a tinkering politician; and sits in the high seat of the -constitution, as if it were made for the protection of property only and -had nothing whatever to do with the people! I yield to no man in my -respect for the constitution of our land. It is so great and so real -that I object to having it worked up into either a sceptre to coerce -men, or a fetish to cajole them, as much as I object to having the Bible -used that way. I take the constitution to be a human document, the -record of action taken by wise and patriotic men to meet emergencies -that arose in their day. Unless we are to assume that wisdom died with -them; that human experience was completed and bound in volumes to file -away on dusty shelves, with nothing more ever to happen that requires -judgment or action; or unless we are to confess ourselves unable to take -such action when the time comes, we shall be wise to drop the fetish -business and to deal with the constitution as men capable of defending -their lives and their liberties, including the right to work, and the -right not to be frozen to death at the dictation of a half dozen coal -kings, upon any plane upon which those liberties may be attacked. This -intense regard for the constitution, that is wont to develop in men and -newspapers in exact ratio as their love of the brother dies, always -suggests to me the fatal ritualism that is akin to the letter that -killeth. Something has to make up for that which has been lost; but -nothing ever can. - -The wrongs of wealth! We all know them. “It is the denial of them,” said -Theodore Roosevelt to me the other day, “that has confronted the world -with the challenge that ‘property is theft.’” And he was right. But -capital has no monopoly of wrong. Labor organizes its multitudes and -instantly raises a club to keep out the man who does not think as the -next man does, with violence if he will not go willingly. The shallow -self-seeking of its advocates, the ignorant blundering of their -followers, is often enough to make one sick at heart. We have to look -beyond them to the real claims of the cause of labor to having served -the world by making homes out of hovels, by making free men out of -slaves, by giving back to man his self-respect. We have to take the -long-range view to forget the immediate injury and put things right. -Organized labor, with all its mistakes, has put us heavily into its -debt, for it is true that “only a self-respecting people can remain a -free people.” Wrongs there are on both sides. If capital sought but its -just reward, it would find it compatible with giving labor its fair -share. If labor thought of the rights of the employer with its own; if -the fight were ever for the good of the race as it was meant to be; if -the union label always guaranteed honest work, a living wage, no -sweat-shop or child labor, a clean shop and a fair observance of the -factory laws, its cause would be irresistible. - -That is it. You know it and I know it. The right, when it appears -stripped of all self-seeking, _is_ irresistible. Hence our fight is -never hopeless or vain. - -The employer who says that he will not treat with his men, that they -must obey or get out, forfeits public sympathy and loses his case in our -day. The self-seeking union that betrays its cause has no standing in -the court of public opinion. It means that appeal can be made to the -good in men, can be made with more success than ever. I am warned to -beware of a false optimism that digs pitfalls for our feet by making us -think there is nothing more to mend. I know that danger; but that the -warning should be uttered is in itself the greatest endorsement of my -faith in the better day that is dawning. There was little enough to tie -that faith to in the days when I wrote “How the Other Half Lives”; but -there is enough now for us all to see, and I, in turn, warn him who will -not see it, against the pessimism that is both false and disabling. No, -thank God, you can at last make your appeal to the consciences of men, -and that is why I make it here. I want the church to back it. It is from -that quarter that I expect the strong blows to be struck for the home, -the blows that will tell. “All the conditions which surround childhood, -youth and womanhood” in the crowded tenements of New York City, of the -metropolis, “make for unrighteousness.” Is not the call to the Church of -God? - -Yes! and it has heard the call and is heeding it. I have before me the -record of the social activities of one church, St. George’s, of which my -friend, Dr. Rainsford, whom you know, is the rector. The year books of -Grace Church, of St. Bartholomew’s, of Calvary, of scores of churches in -New York, would have like stories to tell. This grocery department, this -sewing school, this employment society, these helping hands, -kindergartens, cooking schools and mothers’ clubs—they all mean one -thing, the determination to reclaim the home that is in peril; they mean -that the men and women struggling there shall have backing; that they -shall not be permitted “to be content” as they are, for when a man lies -down under the slum he is lost. It means that war is declared against -the slum, and is to be fought to the bitter end. The Church is coming to -the rescue, and I am glad to bear witness that mine is in the van in -generous rivalry with its neighbors. - -Shall I tell you how I came to be an Episcopalian? I had long been -tempted by my friendship for the rector whose church I attended in my -own town, though I was not a member of his flock. I had been a Lutheran, -a Methodist, a Congregationalist in my day; I would be a Roman Catholic -rather than be nothing at all, though that would go hard with me. -Denominational fetters ever sat lightly upon me, perhaps too lightly. So -that I marched under the flag, I cared less what regimental badge I -wore. But one day, I read in my newspaper a growl from the East-side -about Bishop Potter’s Mission, the Pro-cathedral in Stanton Street. -“Their services,” wrote the man who did me this favor, “are of the -kindergarten class: clubs, gymnastics, mothers’ meetings, girls’ -dress-making classes—and they call _that_ religion!” Ah! I thought, is -that what they are doing over there? and I waited for the answer that -was not long in coming. - -“Yes,” wrote the priest in charge, “we call it that; and, furthermore, -it is our belief that a love of God that does not forthwith seek to run -itself into some kindly deed to man is not worth having.” That was their -creed—I called it ever after “the Bishop’s creed,”—and I told Bishop -Potter then and there that if that was the creed of his church I would -join, and I did. - -I shall have occasion to show you how the church missed its great -opportunity once; how it slept through its chance in the days that are -gone, and in its sleep did grievous wrong to the people’s homes, which -it ought to have defended. Those are of the sins of the past, and they -have to be atoned for; but, please God, we shall not sin thus again. The -home that is in peril shall appeal, does appeal to-day to the Christian -conscience—appeals from the rule of gold to the golden rule, from the -rule of might to that of right; and no longer does it appeal in vain. -There was a time, even in my memory, when it was said with more show of -reason than I care to think of, that the greatest church corporation in -the land was the worst tenement-house landlord in New York City. But -to-day our appeal is to the churches. They aroused our consciences to -action twenty years ago; they and the Christian men and women who sit in -them head every movement in our great city towards the redemption of the -home; they led in the fights for reform, for decent living conditions -for the people, that wrested victory from the slum twice in the last -half dozen years. You all remember those fights and the share that this -same Pro-cathedral with the Bishop’s creed bore in the last one. - -There was never such an arraignment of a city government as that made by -the Bishop of New York in his letter to the mayor, calling upon him, “in -the name of these little ones, these weak and defenseless ones, -Christian and Hebrew alike, of many races and tongues, but from homes in -which God is feared and His law revered,” to save the people from a -“living hell” of vice and corruption; and never was there such a -response of an aroused city as to that summons. The heart of the people -is all right; it is on the side of the Lord and His hosts, all doubting -Thomases to the contrary notwithstanding. Let us be glad! - -I remember a cry for help that came from over on that East-side, of -which we hear so much. It was a good many years ago when I was a -reporter in Mulberry Street, and it came from a church in a letter to -the Police Board asking for protection against the boys who played in -the street in front of it and disturbed the Sunday worship. The captain -of the precinct retorted that they had no other place in which to play -and no other time for it, and that the minister of that church had -better be about getting them a playground. That was in the days of -little sense, and the result was that other cry that went up and made -itself heard at a great meeting of all the churches: “How shall we lay -hold of this great multitude that has forsaken our altars?” They have -learned since to lay hold of it with gymnastics, kindergartens and boys’ -clubs, and the little handful of discouraged communicants has grown into -hundreds that throng about the altar rail of St. George’s and the other -churches every Sunday. We have come into the days of good sense. I shall -not be charged with false optimism in this; for I remember the day when -the families on the register of St. George’s could be counted in one -short breath, whereas now the communicants number more than eight -thousand, the vast majority of them from the East-side tenements—with -the mayor of the city teaching the Bible class in the Sunday-school and -the president of the Citizens’ Union and the greatest financier of any -day among the strong backers of the rector and his work. I am but -stating the facts in which I rejoice. My eyes are not shut to the -troubles that are ahead in the changing populations over there; but I am -not afraid of losing the Lord’s fight, and neither are those in charge -of St. George’s. I speak of it as typical of all the rest of the -parishes in New York who are enlisted in that war. It is the men who are -not afraid who win battles. But first you must plan them. - -Right here, I want to point out to you young men, who are going to take -a hand in it, one of the weak spots, if not _the_ weak spot, in your -campaign for the home—that home which all the influences of the modern -day combine to put in peril. I mean the disappearance of the family -altar. Hand to hand with the crowding of the home to the wall, has gone -the crowding out of the things that make it the representative of heaven -on earth; until now one seldom hears of the old family worship, so -seldom that it almost gives one a start to be asked to join in family -prayer. And I am not referring to the homes of working men especially, -but to those of the rich and prosperous as well. The causes of it? They -are many and complex in the setting forth of them, I suspect: the hurry -of our modern life, the new freedom that makes little minds think -themselves bigger than their maker, the _de_-moralization of the public -school, the pressure of business,—it is hard to get the family -together—which is merely setting up the fact of the scattering of the -home in the defense of it. The causes are many, but the result is one: -the wreck of the home. I said it before, of child labor, that it was -dearly paid for. So also the business prosperity which makes us forget -God is bought at a price no man can afford to pay. It is my cherished -privilege sometimes to break bread with a pious Jewish friend, and when -I see the family gathered about his board giving thanks, a blush comes -to my cheek, a blush for my own people. Whence the abiding strength of -that marvelous people through all the centuries of persecution in the -name of the Prince of Peace, but from the fact that they still hold to -the God of their fathers in their homes? I have been told of the -experience of a friend in a town not far from mine, who asked his pastor -on the occasion of a friendly evening visit to his house, to remain and -pray with the family. The good man’s face lighted up with pleased -surprise, as he said: “I have been in this parish more than a year and -this is the first time I have been asked to pray with any of my people -in their homes.” Is it any occasion for wonder that they have been -vainly trying for more than a dozen years in that place to build a new -and very much needed church? They have never been able to raise the -money, though their own houses are particularly nice; there is not a -poor man in the parish in the sense of his wanting any of the -necessities of life. But why should they build a house for the Lord when -they have put Him out of their own homes? What sense would there be in -that? - -I say to you young men preparing for the priesthood, if you want strong -churches and strong men and women in them, go worship with your -parishioners in their homes. Take my word for it that you will be -surprised at the result. We have filled the hungry mouths in our land of -plenty, but there are more starving hearts than you know of all about -you. Build up the family altar, and the home will come back of itself. -Do not bother yourselves about “God in the Constitution,” if you have -Him installed in the people’s homes. If God is feared in the home, -_there_ is written the Constitution which will never need amendment. The -greatest peril that besets the American home to-day is its godlessness. -Put back the family altar and let there be written over it the old stout -challenge to the devil and his hordes: “As for me and my house, we will -serve the Lord;” and even the slum tenement shall seek to attack it in -vain. - -In the town of which I spoke, there have in the last half dozen years -grown up two clubs, one for the men, the other for the women, and I am -told that practically they all belong. The result has been the -disappearance of pretty nearly all of the pleasant neighborhood life of -that day when a man gave his arm to his wife after supper and they went -together for a social call upon some neighbor, for a chat, a little -music, going home in good season for bed, telling one another that they -had had a good time. There are no good times in that town any more—not -of that kind at all events. The men spend the evenings bowling at the -club; the women meet in committees to plan public improvements. The old -time supper has become a later dinner and it is the rarest of all things -to find a neighbor “dropping in” unannounced—so rare that one feels that -it somehow is not good form any longer. The family firesides are cold. -And the young—I am told that there is a disproportionate number of them -growing up idle and useless, if not worse. They have lost their hold, -though they do not know it. I am no enemy of clubs, although I know -little of them; but, as a substitute for the altar, I will fight them -until I die. And I am a great backer of woman’s influence in public -affairs—it has been good always and everywhere in my sight; but I say to -you now that I would rather see, we could better afford, that every club -and organization in the land should cease to exist, and every ten-pin -alley stand silent and deserted, than that the old home life which -centred about the family hearth should go from among us. With it goes -that which nothing, no commercial gain, no advance in science, or -government or human knowledge, can replace. - -“But they are gone,” I hear some one say, “the old patriarchal days, and -you can’t call them back.” I wish there was no such word in the language -as “can’t.” It has made more mischief than all the rest of them -together. But in the last sifting the world is run by the men who _can_, -while those who can’t stand and look on. Who says you cannot do the -thing that is right? That is what we are here for. Our business is to -make out the right and then go ahead and do it. The Lord has all the -time and all the resources that there are, and, if we do our best, we -can leave Him to attend to the rest. Can’t! If the Church says to-day -that it cannot restore the old faith, that it cannot rekindle the altar -fires that have grown cold, it had better go out of the business; it has -become an unfaithful steward. - -But as a matter of fact, it not only can, but nothing is easier. We are -fighting wind-mills of the devil’s making. He put them there to frighten -us off. In so far as we have lost our grip, it is because we Christians -have been untrue to our mission, have failed to discern it. I see in all -the social unrest and longings of the day the yearning heart of the -world, which doctrine and ceremony and printed prayers have left and -ever will leave cold. It is the praying _life_ it cries out for. The -very infidel owns the perfect man in our Christ; and he turns upon our -faith in anger because he feels that he has been cheated of the love -that must be _lived_ by His followers to be felt. Only so can the world -be made to see God in man. It was never more impatient for the sight -than it is to-day. - -When the century drew to a close, in common with many others, I looked -for a great revival that should sweep over men and set their minds -toward the things on high; and, when it did not come, when the new -century came in without it, I was disappointed. Until one day there came -a letter to me from a friend whom I had known in all the years to be -ever busy among His poor, toiling early and late in the Master’s steps; -a letter that expressed the same thought, the same disappointment. “When -will it ever come,” she wrote. And all at once it flashed through my -mind that it had come, so silently, so gently,—even as He Himself came -into the world, unheralded except by the angels’ song to the shepherds -in the field—that we knew it not until it had passed and become history. -What else is the mighty philanthropic movement of the last twenty years -that has swayed the minds and hearts of men; that has given us the -social settlement; that goes into the byways and the hedges searching -for the lost neighbor and compels him to come in? What else is that but -a revival of our faith on the lines Christ Himself laid down: binding up -the wounds, caring for the sick and the stricken, helping him over the -hard places, even paying his rent if he is helpless and poor? - -“And on the morrow when he departed he took out twopence and gave them -to the host and said unto him ‘take care of him and whatsoever thou -spendest more, when I come again I will repay thee.’” - -Showing mercy! That is the badge of the neighborly spirit. “Go thou and -do likewise.” That the world is coming back to Him by the door which the -Saviour Himself pointed out, and which we shut, perhaps that is a rebuke -to us for our luke-warmness, for our little faith and understanding. Let -us learn the lesson, then, in humility and repentance, but let us never -again be found saying “can’t” in His fight. - -I spoke of the _de_-moralization of the public school. Observe that I -did not say demoralization; I think we are working out of that. What I -was thinking of was that, in our sectarian zeal to see that no heresy -got in, we have, perhaps, come perilously near shutting the door against -both reverence and truth, and so helped on worse mischief. It is a -matter that has caused me a good deal of uneasiness. I am troubled about -it, and yet I do not know how to help it. Is it a sign that the school, -too, is coming around to the neighborhood goal? that we have all, -unknowingly, been helping to haul it around that way—this, I mean, that -the ideal is growing which would have the school be the neighborhood -_soul_, no longer the barren mind, merely? I like to think that it is, -and that this was the thought which moved the Methodist ministers to -promise me last summer to join heartily in the effort to get the public -schools in my city opened for Sunday concerts. The “Lord’s Day” stood in -the way no longer—rather, it was what decided them. It had too long been -the devil’s day among those East-side multitudes. - -I marked out for myself a straight talk, when you asked me to come to -you,—and no preaching. The Lord knew what He was about when He made me a -reporter, a gatherer of facts, and not a preacher: He makes no mistakes. -But brethren! If it had been different—if I had been worthy——Oh! when I -look upon you young men preparing to take up His work in the world—what -can you not do if you but believe that your cause is His! What is there -you cannot do? In my day, I have seen the merest handful of men and -women, fewer in number than you can count upon the fingers of your two -hands, but standing firmly for the right, pull my city upward, upward -towards the light,—even in the worst of its bad days, and in spite of -them. I tell you now that if all of you here, going out to your work as -you believe with the apostolic charge upon you, were to go determined to -follow in the apostles’ steps, looking neither to the right nor to the -left—to the living that is to keep you, nor to what expediency -whispers—never losing hope, never hanging your heads, not being afraid -of being called optimists—Christ was the great optimist of all ages; He -never lost hope even of us—what could you not do? I learned something -when I was last in Denmark, where they make butter for a living and -where they have two kinds of Christians, the happy Christians, as they -are called, and the “hell preachers”; I learned there that, if you want -good butter, you must buy it of the happy Christians; they make the -best. So it is in all things in the world; the happy Christians made it -go round. I tell you, brethren, that if all of you here now, or the half -of you, or the fourth of you, were to go out to your work in that -spirit, in the spirit of a dear old Lutheran woman I once knew who said -on her deathbed, “I know but Him and Him crucified; if there is anything -else I should know I am afraid I don’t,”—if you were to go forth to your -work in that spirit, letting all else go, Christian unity would come on -the wave of an irresistible flood; so does the world hunger for the -message you carry. - -Suppose you do not live to see it come? We have so little time that we -are always in a hurry, but _He_ has all the time there is. Why should I -let the fact discourage me that wrongs are not all righted at once? It -is nineteen hundred years since Christ came to a sin-ridden world to -free it from bondage, and it is sin-ridden yet. Why should I think that -I should be able to do better in my little time? I have a friend who, -for many years, was connected with the naval observatory in Washington. -A couple of years ago, when he was retired, I said to him that I always -looked upon an astronomer with a kind of awe,—he seemed to me to be so -near to the Almighty, at his elbow seeing Him work, as it were; and my -friend smiled. - -“I have not looked through a telescope at a star in a dozen years,” he -said. “All the years I have been in the service I have been carrying on -certain calculations that were begun before I was a man and that will go -on years after I am dead. When they are finished at last, we shall know -something worth knowing. Meanwhile, I and the rest of us have been but -links in the long chain upon whose trusty work depends the final value -of it all. That I have tried to do my part faithfully must be my -reward.” - -What greater reward could any man ask than this—to be a link, however -humble, in the chain which links our world of men with God’s kingdom on -high and helps prepare this earth for His coming in His own good time? - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - II - - OUR FIGHT FOR THE HOME - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - II - - OUR FIGHT FOR THE HOME - - -WHEN I was preparing these lectures, it happened that I went out of town -and, returning, crossed the river to New York in the morning before -sunrise. I stood at the bow of the ferry-boat and looked at the city, -lying wrapped in gloom, indistinguishable except for a light in some big -building, itself unseen, piercing it here and there. But, over and -beyond the gloom, the ruddy glow of the morning that was breaking grew -steadily as I looked. I knew that soon it would be bright daylight. As I -stood and watched it and as one after another the outlines of the old -landmarks came out and took shape, I thought that so, at last, the dawn -is breaking upon us in this fight for the home upon which all hinges. It -is no longer an uphill fight _all_ the time. - -The other day, I spoke of discouragements that beset the way. They are -there in plenty, but there has come into the fight a new note, that was -missing before. We know now what the fight means. From other quarters, -too, help is coming. Let me sound this note of hope right here; there is -enough of the gloom. The critics of my books complain that I am -unsystematic, that I “put things in” as I think of them. Perhaps so. I -find it somehow easier to put them in when I think of them than when I -don’t think of them. Even while I am about to show you how deep we fell, -let me remember the forces that are coming to help us out. I think that -not only have we turned upon our track and seen the necessity of making -the most of this city civilization with its unsolved problems, which is -the order of the day; but I believe that we have reached the divide, the -point where the population shall be turned back to the soil which it has -been deserting. - -Many things seem to me to tend that way. The isolation of the farm is -disappearing. The telephone; the free rural delivery of mails, which -brings good roads, daily newspapers and the bicycle; the concentration -of rural schools; a better grasp of the obstacles in the way of keeping -the boy on the farm—these at one end. At the other, the harnessing of -new forces capable of transmitting power away from the centres of steam -energy, and the scattering of the congested populations to the suburbs; -means of transportation that we knew not of a dozen years ago. It seems -as if the very century, the stamp of which is combination, -concentration, so far as we are yet able to make it out, might have in -store for us as its big surprise the reversal of the process that -characterized its predecessor and bred our perplexities: the drift of -the population everywhere to the cities. So that when it seemed in -extremest peril, the rescue of the home may be made easier than we -thought. I would that in this I might be a true prophet! We can face the -other problems of our day with confidence, if the _home_ be safe; for -_there_ we have backing. - -And now let me take you to my own city, to the metropolis, as typical of -most of the large cities of our country. We struggle with the same evils -in Boston, in Chicago, in New York, in Buffalo, in St. Louis, in -Washington. It was only the other day that I looked upon some alleys in -the national capital, under the very shadow of the big gray dome, in -which the crowding was as vile and as wicked as it ever was in the -one-room houses of Glasgow. Though you boast of less crowding upon the -land here in Philadelphia, yet we have the testimony of your -public-spirited men and women that the sanitary condition of your alleys -is far from good. That means darkness and dirt. In other words, you are -no stranger to the pigsty of which I spoke as being the enemy of the -home and of American citizenship. How came it about? What brought us to -the brink, where, looking over, we see “all the conditions” under which -the people live “making for unrighteousness”? - -I said it before; but let the public records speak. In 1865, the Council -of Hygiene, pointing to the tenement slum, said, “Its evils and the -perils that surround it are the necessary result of a forgetfulness of -the poor.” “Evils,” was putting it mildly. They came in the last -analysis to murder, child murder. The undertaker and the slum landlord -divided the profits between them. “Not intemperance, ignorance or -destitution alone causes the increase of crime,” was the report of a -committee come down from Albany in the fifties to see what was the -matter with New York; “together they, with municipal and popular -neglect, find their soil in the tenements and thrive and develop -virulence.” The remedy, as the committee saw it, was to “_furnish every -man with a clean and comfortable home_.” - -Tell me, what think you of “homes” where men and women “crowded beneath -moldering, water-rotted roofs or burrowed among the rats of clammy -cellars”? I quote that from a report of the Association for the -Improvement of the Condition of the Poor, one of the most conservative -and one of the wisest of our public charities, which, with unerring -instinct, saw that the way to improve the condition, the morals, of the -people was to give them decent homes. What do you think of cellar -“homes” in which the children had to stay in bed till the tide fell; of -homes where children died, “smothered by the foul air of an -un-ventilated room,” a windowless room[2] which the light of day never -entered! That was the burden of a death certificate registered in the -Health Department in those old, indifferent days. What think you of a -city one-quarter of whose children never grew up to lisp the sacred name -of mother, one-third of whose babies never reached their third year, and -one-half never manhood or womanhood! That was the record; and, when -decency came, the death rate came down with it. Child murder ceased to -be the fashion. In thirty-five years, the mortality in my city, while -the population grew and grew, was reduced one-half. I mean, of course, -the percentage of deaths upon the population. In the last dozen years, -reform has saved enough lives in New York City alone annually to people -a city of no mean proportions. - -Footnote 2: - - Since these lectures were delivered the struggle to preserve the - tenement-house law has developed the fact that after thirty-seven - years there are still over 300,000 windowless, dark rooms in the - tenements of the Greater New York! - -I must refer those who wish to get at the statistical facts to the -reports of the successive Tenement House Commissions, or to my own -record of the “Battle with the Slum,” in which I have tried to gather -them all. Only let me mention here that the death rate of New York came -down from 26.32 per 1,000 inhabitants, in 1887, to 19.53 in 1897. It had -been known to run as high as 45 in 1,000 in bad seasons of the bad past; -and in individual instances much higher than that. - -What think you of “homes,” a hundred under one roof—a hundred families, -mind you, not a hundred tenants—under the roof of a barrack stamped -officially by the Health Board as a “den of death”? I will tell you what -that Senate Investigation Committee of 1857 thought of them: “The -conclusion forced itself upon the reflections of all that certain -conditions and associations of life and habitation are the prolific -parents of corresponding habits and morals.” Aye, they were. In that -Sixth Ward slum grew up the Five Points. Out of it came the pigsty -voters that voted Tweed and his thieves into possession of the city -government, and the treasure, for which we had paid such a price, out of -the pockets of the taxpayers, while the thieves mocked us and demanded -what we were going to do about it. We had made money our idol, and it -put its foot upon our necks and trod hard. - -For that was it. The only question that had been asked till then was: -What would they bring, those tenements? The tenant must “pay the rent or -get out.” Indifference—popular neglect—that was the time for pulling it -mildly; for men of standing, of influence in the community, drew the pay -that was the price of selling the brother into slavery. Listen to this -from the report of the Council of Hygiene: “Some of them,” meaning the -owners of slum tenements, “are persons of the highest character, but -they fail to appreciate the responsibility that rests upon them.” They -did. They failed so signally that, when called to account by the health -inspectors in the years that followed, they “urged the filthy habits of -their tenants as an excuse for the condition of their property.” You -will hear that plea, if you listen long enough and closely enough, even -in our day. And whenever you hear it, stop right there and think who is -to blame for the cultivation of those habits. The health inspector of -whom I spoke had no doubts upon the subject. The owners, he said, are -_entirely_ to blame. A pigsty, in time, will make a pig even of man who -is made in the image of God. You can degrade him to that level if you -try hard enough and are willing to pay the price. - -They failed to appreciate their responsibility, those men of the highest -character. They did not fail to collect the rents that sometimes went as -high as forty per cent. upon the value of their property. No, but let us -give them their due-an agent collected the rents, they did not. _They_ -traveled abroad; perhaps they never saw the dens upon the proceeds of -which they lived at their ease. Do you see what I am driving at? Do you -see how it all, here as everywhere, is just a question of gold that will -buy _ease_ for ourselves! For gold we sold the black man into slavery, -and for gold we let his white brother perish in his slum. We were in a -hurry to get rich and we forgot all else besides; forgot the brotherhood -in our worship of the golden calf. Men have done it in all times, and -the slum is as old as is organized society. “The destruction of the poor -is their poverty.” Whatever else was the matter with those houses, they -paid. - -I will tell you one thing that was the matter with that slum where the -home had ceased to be sacred, where the family ideal was tortured to -death and character smothered, where children were damned rather than -born into the world until the very shock of the discovery that one in -five was killed by the worst of the dens came almost as a relief. When -the Church finally roused itself to the doing of its duty it put a -long-belated finger upon the sore spot of it all: - -“In this ward,” said the Federation of Churches after a house-to-house -canvass, “the churches, clubs, schools, educational and helpful agencies -of every kind make a front of 756 running feet on the street, while the -saloons, put side by side, stretch themselves over nearly a mile; so -that ideals of citizenship are minting themselves upon the minds of the -people at the rate of seven saloon thoughts to one educational thought.” -The devil had it in that ward, seven to one. Out of such an environment -comes the Lost Tenth, the helpless and the hopeless, that levy tribute -on our strength and our life. Comptroller Coler showed that eleven and -one-half per cent. of all the money raised by taxation in New York went -to support poverty and, largely, pauperism, with the burden all the time -increasing. The poverty maps at our Tenement House Exhibition showed few -enough tenements that were free from the taint of alms-seeking, but some -from which, in five years, seventy-five different families had asked -public relief. That is one thing that is the matter with the slum—it -makes its own heredity. The sum of the bad environment of to-day and of -yesterday becomes the heredity of to-morrow, becomes the citizenship of -to-morrow. The lowered vitality, the poor workmanship, the inefficiency, -the loss of hope—they all enter in and make an endless chain upon which -the curse of the slum is handed down through the generations. Our task -is to break that chain, unless we want it to break us. We accepted the -legacy in the charter of a people’s rights: life, liberty and the -pursuit of happiness; and we must find the way to secure them, or accept -the alternative. Freedom means justice to the people or it means -nothing; and justice, like true charity, must begin at home—with the -home. - -We have made that out in our day; and we say rightly that the housing -question holds the key to most of the civic problems that beset us. It -does; but at bottom it is because it is a much bigger question than of -citizenship, even. It is a moral question—not a question of “morals,” -merely, which is akin to manners, though on that score we have made -headway since “men of the highest character” have abandoned the owning -of slum tenements for profit—but the moral question whether I shall love -my neighbor or kill him; whether I shall stand idly by and see my -brother’s soul stunted, smothered in the slum of my making, of my tacit -consent at any rate, or put in all upon rescuing him. Brethren, we shall -never rescue our city, you will never rescue yours, until we understand -that that is what it all harks back to, that all these things mean one -and the same thing: _that I am my brother’s keeper for good or for -evil_. No man liveth unto himself alone. A moral, a profoundly religious -question bound up inseparably with our faith, if by it we mean something -which is alive; and it is only the living faith _here_ that has claim -upon life in the hereafter. No man who, unmoved, sees his brother perish -on earth, need expect a welcoming hand to be reached out to him from the -skies, if I read my Bible aright. - -It is hard to understand the attitude of the church, through all those -weary years, towards the people it was meant to shepherd, except upon -the assumption, which was a fact, that it, too, had been seized and -carried away by the prevailing craze, taking the thing for the soul of -the thing. Handsome church edifices went up, with brown stone and marble -and carvings without stint, further and further from the people’s homes; -though not always as the record shows. In the rear of Trinity Church and -“overlooked by the stained-glass windows of that beautiful edifice,” the -legislative committee, of which I spoke, pointed, with a scorn it hardly -made an attempt to conceal, to a tenement containing fourteen families -in which “filth and want of ventilation were enough to infect the very -walls with disease.” As a matter of fact, two epidemics of yellow fever -and of cholera had started in that row. But whether the churches were -near or far, the people kept aloof from them. _That_ is not hard to -understand, when I recall the dive in William Street, with two stories -of vileness underground, that was known in the Health Department to -belong to a New Jersey church corporation! The profits were the devil’s -wages and they went to pay for what some Christians called God’s work! I -suppose they persuaded themselves—men can persuade themselves to almost -anything if they want to—that that was the reason they were not willing -to give them up, and they fought stubbornly the efforts of the -authorities to break up the dive where unspeakable debauchery held high -carnival most of the day and all of the night. It is not hard to -understand, when there comes to mind the congregation of Christians that -moved up-town from Mulberry Street and sold their old house of worship -to speculating builders, who converted it into a rear tenement, put a -brick building in front and into these barracks piled a hundred -families, a total of three hundred and sixty persons. What kind of home -altars were there, think you? That was at the Five Points where the -dives were particularly vile, but I will warrant that there was nothing -in the saloon in the front basement one-half as bad as in the flats in -the rear, where men and women had once sat and worshiped their God, to -whose service they had dedicated that house. - -In 1868, the death rate in the “Old Church Tenements,” as they were -called until for very shame we destroyed them, was _seventy-five per -thousand_, counting only those who died in the houses, not those whose -end came in the hospitals to which those tenements were “among the -largest contributors.” - -Hard to understand that men fell away from the church? They must have -thought that the Lord had forgotten them; but it was only the men who -professed His name that had forgotten. _He_ remembered. The day will -come, I hope,—I think it is on the way now,—when we shall be permitted -to forget the greatest wrong of all; that it was a church corporation, -the strongest and wealthiest, and alas! our own, that, for its temporal -advantage and to save a paltry few hundred dollars, took up the cudgel -for the enemy we were battling with and all but succeeded in upsetting -the whole structure of tenement-house law we had built up with such -weary toil in our effort to help the man to a level where he might own -himself a man. You know the story of that and how bitterly it has -rankled these many years. The church corporation was a tenement-house -owner, one of the largest, if not, indeed the largest in the city, and -its buildings were old and bad. It suited its purposes to let them be -bad, because they were down-town where the land was rapidly getting -valuable for warehouse purposes, and the tenements were all to be torn -down by and by. And so it was that it achieved the reputation of being -the worst of landlords, hardly a name to attract the people to its pews. -We had got to the point in our fight where we had made good the claim of -the tenant to at least a full supply of water in his house, though light -and air were yet denied him by the builder, when that church corporation -chose to contest the law ordering it to supply water in its houses, and -won, for the time being, on the plea that the law was arbitrary and -autocratic. They are all autocratic, the laws that are made for the -protection of the poor man; they have to be while the purpose to hinder -rather than help lives in his brother. We trembled on the edge of a -general collapse of all our remedial laws, until the court of last -resort decided that any such claim was contrary to public policy and -therefore inadmissible. - -It was not long after that, that a distinguished body of churchmen in my -city invited me to speak to them of slum evils. And I showed them -pictures of the little children from the gutter, until at last some -unthinking brother made the comment: “Oh, well, they wouldn’t wash, if -you gave them the chance.” Perhaps you can imagine the result. I would -not have missed that opportunity for a good deal. - -I am not telling you these things to rake up forgotten sins; I am trying -to show you whence came the deadly apathy that was to blame for our -plight. Our conscience was asleep and the Church that should have kept -it awake slept, too. We cannot afford to forget it yet, for that -conscience of ours is none too robust, or else it is singularly drowsy -in spells. I am thinking of the time, only a little while ago, when -Theodore Roosevelt was Police Commissioner in New York, and of his -astonished look when churchmen, citizens from whom he should have -expected support, and did expect it, for his appeal was to them direct, -came to him daily to plead for “discretion” in the enforcement of the -laws he was sworn to carry out. Not all of them did this—he had many -strong backers among the clergy and lay-brethren—but too many. You -should have been with me in those days and you would have understood -what that fight was. The saloon was the enemy, and, in a single week -during that struggle, it wrecked eight homes by tragedies, with which I, -as a police reporter, was called to deal. I am not speaking now of the -numberless tragedies that drag their slow lengths through the years, but -of those that reached the acute stage in my sight that week. Four -desperate wives were driven to suicide and two were murdered by drunken -husbands. One aged woman was beaten to death by her beastly son when she -refused him money to continue his debauch. And a policeman was killed in -the street by drunken marauders. That was the showing; and it was for -discretion in dealing with that enemy those people strove, calling the -President of the Police Board “hasty.” They were “men of the highest -character, but they failed to appreciate the responsibility” which that -character imposed upon them. - -They called Roosevelt hasty. It was time that some one got up some speed -in New York. More than a hundred years ago (to be exact, in 1797) the -legislature of New York prohibited soap factories on Manhattan Island, -south of Grand Street, in the interest of the public good. Within seven -weeks after the order was issued, the same legislature amended its act, -giving the Health Board discretion in the premises; and the biggest soap -factory in the land is below Grand Street to-day. The power of soap is -great. - -Do you know that article of discretion in Philadelphia? In my town, it -has built up tenement blocks almost solid, ninety-three per cent. -covered with brick and mortar; it has penned tenants in burning -tenements with stairs of wood that should have been fireproof; it has -filled the pockets of the builder and wrung the heart of the tenant, -until, in despair, he refused to believe in either God or man. That is -what “discretion” has come to with us. Oh! for red blood in the veins of -Christians, for a muscular faith that, rather than stand by and see such -things done, will fight till—till some one dies. That is the kind of -faith that moves the world, mountains and all, and fills the churches! -Not sermons, but service! So we win victories that tell. - -Now do you wonder that the common people, so deserted by their best -friend, took the first proffered hand held out to help? To this -multitude, toiling for their daily bread until it fills the landscape to -the exclusion of all else, until time and chance are lost to them to -lift up their heads and get the wider view—to them, disheartened and -sore, comes the boss with his self-seeking and says: “I am your friend.” -And he proves it: he gets Pat a job, gets Jim on the force, looks after -John who broke his leg and gets him into the hospital that was full; -attends to Dan when he gets into trouble with the police. What more -natural than that they should give him their votes and their support? -The more powerful he, the better able to help. Anyway, is he not their -friend? Observe, that it all proceeds on the neighborly principle, -debased to suit the slum; but it is still the idea of the neighbor: -binding up the wounds, taking the man who has fallen among thieves to -the inn and leaving money to have him tended. They knew the plan better -than did we, they whom we deserted, churchmen and Christians though we -were. - -What if the boss robs the city! The poor man, going home to his -tenement, overhears the well-dressed citizen comment upon it with -qualified displeasure: “Say what you will, he may be a great rascal, but -he gets there, you’ll own. And he’s got the dough.” It is every one for -himself in his sight. Is it hard to understand that he, too, falls in -with the scheme? - -[Illustration: - - AT THE OLD FIVE POINTS - From “The Battle with the Slum.” - Copyright, 1901, by the Macmillan Company.] - -And now, that I have put the blame where it belongs, let us turn and -look at the other side of it, at the day of awakening. It was a long -day, for our sleep had been deep, and it was not easy to stay awake long -at a time for a considerable period after we had tumbled out. The Five -Points first aroused us. The slum there had got to the point where it -was no longer to be borne. Dickens’s pen had pricked us, and the -warnings of Charles Loring Brace and his contemporaries began to make us -listen. There followed the period of good intentions, but little sense, -that gave us Gotham Court and the Big Flat. They were built as model -tenements—heaven save the mark! by men who meant well and did badly. -They are the kind to keep your eye on. The Big Flat became a thieves’ -runway, because, unconsciously, the builders had furnished the chance by -making it reach through the block, opening upon both streets, in a -neighborhood where such a convenience to a man fleeing from the police -was a regular windfall. Before its final destruction, it achieved the -reputation of being the worst tenement in New York. Gotham Court was a -close second. In some other important respects that concerned the home -life of the people, it was easily first. A sanitary official counted 146 -cases of sickness among its thousand tenants in 1862, among them all -kinds of infectious disease, from measles to smallpox. It harbored one -of the most notorious gangs that ever made lower New York unsafe. Time -after time, before it was torn down, less than half a dozen years ago, -it was posted as hopeless and fit for nothing else. Yet it was built as -a model tenement by a Quaker of good intentions. He certainly did his -part in the paving of that infernal door-yard that is said to be laid -with good intentions not backed by good sense or hard work. - -[Illustration: - - THE “OLD CHURCH TENEMENTS” - From “The Battle with the Slum.” - Copyright, 1901, by the Macmillan Company.] - -This Quaker had a brother who also built houses for the poor, and, it is -recorded, meant well, too; but the milk of human kindness was soured in -him when his neighbor, the alderman, knocked him down in a quarrel over -the dividing line between their lots. It was against the Quaker’s -principles to fight, but he found a way of paying off his enemy that is -a whole volume of commentaries on graceless human nature: he built a -tenement upon his own lot right on the line and with a big dead wall so -close to his neighbor’s windows that his tenants could get neither sun -nor air. They lived in darkness ever after. The fact that, for want of -access, his house was useless and stood idle for years, did not stay his -revenge. That old Quaker was a hater from way back. His “wall of wrath,” -as I used to call it, killed more innocent babes and cursed more lives -than any other work of man I ever heard of. One wonders what that man’s -dreams were at night. The mere thought of it used to give me the -shivers, and I never slept so sweetly as the night when I had seen that -wall laid low by wreckers whom I had set on. - -Yet it did not die in its sins. I like to think of that. Before the end -came to Gotham Court, we had grown a real conscience. The canker that -had crept in and was eating out the home and the heart of the people was -arraigned in the churches, as it should have been a long while -before—not in this church or in that church, but in _the churches_. -Christian men took hold of the Court and did the most and the best with -it that could be done,—which makes me think that only yesterday I had a -letter from the son of one of those two brothers, young Bayard Cutting, -pleading for support for the work of Bishop Brent out in the -Philippines; and it was as I would have expected. You see, as I said, it -is all one thing. These men are among the strongest of the backers of -the movement to provide homes for the poor of New York, and have been -for years; and for that very reason they are the natural supporters of -such a work as that which the good Bishop is doing on that far foreign -shore. - -[Illustration: - - GOTHAM COURT - From “How the Other Half Lives.” - Copyright, 1890, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.] - -[Illustration: - - MIDNIGHT IN GOTHAM COURT - From “The Battle with the Slum.” - Copyright, 1901, by the Macmillan Company.] - -But, as I said, they did the best with the Court that could be done. The -best was bad, and therefore it had to go. Yet, in comparison with what -it had been, life even in Double Alley had become comparatively decent -before the wreckers boarded up the entrance to it. There were homes in -that alley where the word had been as a mockery before. I knew of some; -I will tell you the story of Susie Rocco and her home. And we had -learned something there; we had added to good intentions the knowledge -of the facts, which is the first and most important ingredient in good -sense when you come to deal with things. I am going now to show you some -of the pictures I promised you, and you shall have more hereafter. Think -not that any of them are irrelevant because they are of things that -were. Those things are but shadows of what may come again, if we lose -our grip and once more let our conscience fall asleep, believing we have -done so much that all is well. To avoid that, keep ever a firm grasp of -the facts. You will fight in vain for the people’s homes till you know -what afflicts them. The glory of our present-day Christianity is that at -last it plants itself squarely on the facts—seeks them out first and -then applies the remedy. Never fear them. If they clash in any way with -scholastic theory or even theology, make sure that they _are_ the facts, -then seek the fault in your theory. And always remember that human souls -live in bodies. If you want to reach the soul, you must reckon with the -man in the body; or your preaching will be vain. - -[Illustration: - - THE ALDERMAN’S TENEMENTS] - -Here, now, is one of the Five Points in the day of its worst disgrace -(see illustration facing page 90), but the Point itself was by no means -the worst of that neighborhood. These adjoining buildings, I suppose you -would call them shanties, and I do not know that I should object to the -term, give a general idea of the character of that vicious slum. They -were houses surviving from a much earlier day, built for the occupation -of one family, and no doubt in that day there were homes in them as good -as might be found anywhere. It was when they came to contain from ten to -twenty families each that the slum moved in. With four families keeping -house in one room—that was the record made by a missionary who had that -district in charge—short work was made of the home. I used to laugh at -that missionary’s story of how, when he asked in hopeless bewilderment -how they managed to get along, one of the tenants said, “Well enough -until one of the other three took a boarder, then trouble began.” - -But there was little enough to laugh at; less still, when the big -buildings sprang up that you see behind the shanties. They are the -double-deckers of to-day. They were supposed to be a “way out,” for at -least they had room for the teeming populations; but it turned out the -other way. They gave the home the hardest blow of all, and to-day they -are the curse that cleaves to us for our sins of the past, and with -which we will have to struggle while we live. I have said a good deal so -far, and shall have more to say before I am done, about murder. It is -not a nice word, but right here is an instance of what I mean. The -particular houses that show in the picture were built by one Buddensiek, -whose name we all came to know in the after years. I heard of it first -when I went with the health inspector to investigate a complaint of foul -stenches that was made by the tenants in those houses. The explanation -proved simple. The builder had merely run the soil-pipe three feet or so -into the ground without connecting it with the sewer. That time he -escaped indictment. It is somehow not so easy to bring a man to book who -poisons his tenants with bad plumbing as the one who sticks a knife into -his neighbor. Some years after when, grown bold, he neglected to put -lime in his mortar and his tenements fell down and killed his workmen -before the tenants got into them, the jail claimed him at last on a -charge of manslaughter. - -[Illustration: - - LITTLE SUSIE - From “The Children of the Poor.” - Copyright, 1892, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.] - -And now here are the “old church tenements” I spoke of (see illustration -facing page 92); upon the records of the Health Department “among the -largest contributors to the hospitals” in the city. The cellar, where -the tenants paid two and three dollars a month,—that was before the day -when the whole population of “cave-dwellers,” more than five thousand in -number, was dragged out upon the street by the police and not allowed to -go back—was the old vault in which the sexton stored corpses in the days -when the building was a church. Do you wonder, when you come to think of -it, that the church lost its grip upon the people of that day, and that -some of the feeling of that still survives? Do you wonder that these -people were not attracted by a scheme of salvation that meant damnation -in this life, so far as they could see? I do not. Bear in mind the old -church for a little while; I shall have more to tell you of that. That, -too, was atoned for, thank God! - -[Illustration: - - TENEMENT WHERE A HOME WAS MURDERED] - -This is Gotham Court (see illustration facing page 94), that stood, -until three or four years ago, almost on the identical spot where George -Washington lived when he was the first President of this Republic. His -house was directly across the street, and in his day it was of course as -fine a neighborhood as there was in the city. Within sixty years after -his death, the slum had moved in. That tells the story of the mighty -strides New York took towards metropolitan greatness, and of the perils -that hedged in our path in the race for sudden wealth. For that was the -time when we forgot. When I made a census of the Court some years before -it was demolished, I found one hundred and forty-two families there. It -happened that just half of them were Italians and the other half the -original Irish, except that there were two German families there. -Perhaps you can imagine the kind of time those two German families were -having. The process of displacing the Hibernian element with the Italian -is not altogether a peaceful one, as the constant presence of the -policemen in the alley bore witness. It was an Irishman, of course, who -told me, when I asked him why the policeman was there, that it was “all -on account of them two Dutch families in the alley; they make so much -trouble that no one can stand it.” Nobody else would have thought of it. -I shall not try to describe to you in detail what life meant in that -place, for it is gone now and I am glad. One Christmas when I was Santa -Claus in the alley for the King’s Daughters, two hundred little girls -came out of it and claimed dolls from me. They might have told you. Do -you see the “wall of wrath” of which I spoke? Wait till I will give you -a better view of it. There, now, are the Alderman’s tenements (see -illustration facing page 96) that were cursed by it, as were his tenants -all the days of their lives. But the wall, too, is gone. It went one -Christmas, and in its fall it was to me as if I heard again the chorus -of angels’ voices singing, “Peace on earth, good-will towards men.” I -had never heard any angels’ voices in that alley before. - -[Illustration: - - A “DRUNKEN” FLAT - From “How the Other Half Lives.” - Copyright, 1890, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.] - -Here is one of the little girls who got my dolls (see illustration -facing page 98), little Susie Rocco, whose story I promised to tell you. -Susie was as good a girl as you can find in Philadelphia, search where -you may. Perhaps she was not very well instructed in the higher ethics -of things. It may be that Mrs. Carrie Nation would not have approved of -her, because the work she did and by which she helped her mother run the -household was pasting covers on pocket-flasks, whiskey flasks, which, I -suppose, come under the ban entirely. Susie did not, I know. She was not -concerned about that; she was concerned about helping her mother, and, -though I am no champion of the whiskey flask, I stand with Susie. Her -father was a loafer and when he ran away at last and the mother fell ill -and Susie’s work gave out, the evil days came that are never far away in -a slum alley. Everything went to the pawnshop, last of all the mother’s -wedding ring. I should have sent that first, but she was a woman; I am a -man. She had to go to the hospital then; the doctor said so. It was the -only place where she could be properly cared for. - -Susie wept. She was afraid of the hospital. You know it, all of you who -have had any dealings with the poor, that one of their very real -hardships is that, when most they need that friend, they are afraid of -him. Susie could not bear the thought. She cast about in the house for -something that was yet of value enough to take to the pawnshop, so that -she might stay the evil day, and she found my doll. It was not a nice -doll by that time; it was very much in need of the hospital itself. But -to Susie it was precious beyond compare, for was it not her doll baby? -She did it up in a newspaper and carried it to the pawnshop with tears, -for she was bringing the greatest sacrifice of all. And that bad man, -when he unrolled the bundle and saw what it held, smashed the doll -angrily against the stove and put little Susie out into the street. -There she stood and wept, as if she would cry her eyes out, and there -one of the King’s Daughters found her; and that was how I came to know -Susie and her story. - -Better days came for her and her mother, for the ladies took them up and -cared for them. They were made happy and I ought to have been, but I was -not. Let me confess it right here and have done with it. I am no -scrapper; I have too much else to do to go around picking quarrels with -everybody. I try hard to do as the Apostle says: “live peaceably with -all men as far as in me lies”; but how can it lie very far in anybody -with that kind of a pawnbroker in the landscape? I own that the notion -of having one little round with that man, just one little one, has -charms that I cannot get around. - -[Illustration: - - IN A BAXTER STREET YARD] - -[Illustration: - - SHANTY DWELLINGS IN A TENEMENT YARD - From “The Battle with the Slum.” - Copyright, 1901, by the Macmillan Company.] - -To this tenement (see illustration facing page 100) my business as a -police reporter led me. A home had been murdered there: a drunken -husband had killed his wife. I know it is a common belief that -drunkenness accounts for pretty nearly all the poverty there is. I do -not find it so. It did in this case and there are enough such and to -spare; but I think the verdict of the Association for Improving the -Condition of the Poor, once upon a time, came nearer the truth, namely, -that forty per cent. of the helpless poverty was due to drunkenness, or -the drunkenness due to the poverty. I forget the exact way they put it, -but that was the sense of it, and it was good sense. Suppose you had to -live in such a place as this! (See illustration facing page 102.) Do you -think human life would seem especially precious or sacred, and don’t you -think you would run to the saloon as, by comparison, far the more decent -and human spot in that place? I know I would; and I think that one of -our worst offenses against the brother is, after letting him be robbed -of his home to leave him at the mercy of the saloon as the one place of -human companionship for him, the one humanly decent spot in all his -environment. I said “letting him be robbed.” There lies on my table a -report of the Health Department of the year 1869, and it opens at the -page upon which is recorded the result of a tour of the Sanitary -Committee through the tenement-house districts that year. They found -that the landlords kept those houses “as a business and generally as a -speculation. He was seeking a certain percentage on his outlay, and that -percentage very rarely fell below fifteen per cent. and frequently -exceeded thirty—the complaint was universal among the tenants that _they -were entirely uncared for_—the agent’s instructions were simple but -emphatic: collect the rents in advance, or, failing, eject the -occupant.” You see the scheme of the robbery. It is plain enough. - -[Illustration: - - WASHING IN AN ITALIAN FLAT; THE TEA KETTLE USED AS A WASH BOILER] - -Out of such conditions came little Antonia Candia, stripped by an -inhuman stepmother and beaten with a red-hot poker until her body was -one mass of burns and bruises. That stepmother went to jail a long while -since, but we have need still of the services of the Children’s Society -that has thrown a strong and watchful arm around more than one hundred -thousand little ones in the slum where the home had been wrecked. They -are the ones that need our care, if only because (I have said it before -and I shall have yet to say it many times) they are our own to-morrow. I -remember the case of a bright little lad in an East-side tenement whose -home had given him up to the street, as do those homes right along. All -day he carried the growler from the shop where his father worked to the -saloon on the corner, and when evening came he was missing. It was -Saturday and he did not come home that night. They sought him all day -Sunday in vain. Monday morning when they opened the shop, they found him -in the cellar where he had crept after drinking of the beer, and where -the rats had found _him_. Not even his mother could recognize him. - -These are the ones to look out for; and the aged and helpless. Nor need -we marvel much if those whose lives have been spent in the crowds turn -their backs upon the country, upon the woods and the fields, when we -offer them a refuge there. The tenement has robbed them of their -resources, of the individuality that makes a man good company for -himself. It is only a man who can think that is at home in the fields. -The slum never thinks; it is all the time trying to forget. There is -nothing good to think of, nothing worth remembering. - -[Illustration: - - PIETRO AND HIS FATHER - From “The Children of the Poor.” - Copyright, 1892, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.] - -These are ours to care for. The tramp, the lazy man, is entitled only to -be locked up. Only the other day, I was invited to come to Boston and -join in a discussion of the tramp problem before a distinguished body -there; and I refused. I do not think there is a tramp problem which hard -labor behind strong bars cannot solve. It is just a question of human -laziness. Save the young, and lock up the old man who will not work. A -fellow whom I found sitting in a Baxter Street yard, smoking his pipe -contentedly, gave me points on that. (See illustration facing page 104.) -He was willing to be photographed for ten cents; but, before I could -train my camera on him, his mind had evolved possibilities not to be -neglected. He was smoking a clay pipe that had, perhaps, cost a cent, -but I suppose it was an effort to hold it between his teeth while I made -ready, for he made a demand for twenty-five cents if he was to be -photographed in character, pipe and all. - -In that yard were habitations built of old boards and discarded roof -tin, in which lived men, women and children that had been crowded out of -the tenements. (See illustration facing page 104.) The rent collector -did not miss them, however. They paid regularly for their piggeries. I -feel almost like apologizing to the pig; no pig would have been content -to live in such a place without a loud outcry. - -Though the flats in the tenements were not much better. How strong do -you think the home feeling can be in a place where the family tea kettle -does weekly duty on Mondays as a wash-boiler? That was a condition I -actually found there. (See illustration facing page 106.) Think of the -attraction such a place must have for father and the boys when they come -home from work in the evening! We shall cry out against the saloon in -vain until we give them something better. And a better substitute for -the saloon was never offered than in that old legislative committee’s -prescription: “To prevent drunkenness give every man a clean and -comfortable home.” - -[Illustration: - - SISTER IRENE AND HER LITTLE ONES] - -They are worth it, too. Pietro and his father may be ignorant, may be -Italians (see illustration facing page 108); but they are here by our -permission, dead set on becoming American citizens, and tremendously -impressed with the privileges of that citizenship. So anxious are they -to become citizens that, if they can get there by a shorter cut than the -law allows, you need not wonder at their taking the chance. The slum -teaches them nothing that discovers a moral offense in that. But not -even the slum can wipe out in me the memory of little Pietro, who sat -writing and writing with his maimed hand, trying to learn the letters of -the alphabet and how to put them together in words, so that he might be -the link of communication between his people and the old home in Italy. -He was a poor little maimed boy with a sober face, and it wrings my -heart now, the recollection of the look he gave me when I plumped out: -“Pietro, do you ever laugh?” - -“I did wonst,” he said. - -The sweaters’ fruitful soil is here: poverty, over-time and under-pay, -all the conditions that go to make child labor and to break up the home. -But these also are our own, if they came from a foreign land. The -Chinaman we have banished because he would not make his home with us, -but remained ever a stranger. That was the reason, and it was a good -reason. But what sense is there in refusing one immigrant entry because -he will not accept an American home, and giving to the one who will -accept it the slum tenement—to his undoing and to ours? - -[Illustration: - - THE OPEN TRENCH IN THE POTTER’S FIELD] - -The children are the ones to look out for while it is yet time: the -young and the helpless. I spoke of the foundling babies that come from -no one knows where. The city could not keep them, try as it might; but -there was one whose great heart found a way. Long years ago she sent -them by hundreds to the homes far and near where open hearts were -yearning to receive them. It is one of the things that make a man -believe in human nature, that make him see God in it in spite of all, -the fact that there are so many homes of that kind. Not in a single -instance since the joint committee of the two charitable societies in -New York, of whose great work I have already spoken, began that work, -has a child in their care passed the age of two years without being -permanently provided for. And they take no chances, but insist upon the -child’s being a whole year in its new home before they permit its -adoption. Sister Irene was the one with the great heart. There she -stands among her little ones. (See illustration facing page 110.) She -was a Roman Catholic, and I was born a Lutheran. We could not very well -be farther apart on this earth; but, if the heaven upon which my gaze is -fixed has not room for both of us—if I shall not find her there with my -sainted mother, why, it is not the place I am looking for, and I do not -want to go. - -I have preached my sermon to the text of the wrecked home. I know of no -more pitiful spot on earth than the almshouse on Blackwell’s Island -where, when last I was there, I saw seventeen hundred old women, -homeless and hopeless in their great age, waiting for their last ride up -the Sound in the “charity boat” to the grave that was waiting for them -in the Potter’s Field. I know of nothing more hopeless, to all human -sight, unless it be that open trench itself. (See illustration facing -page 112.) Thank God that there is the Christian’s hope. Even the -trench, with its darkness and gloom and surrender, cannot keep that -which is born in heaven and which, despite the slum and its vauntings, -is at home there with God. - -I showed you the Five Points in its old iniquity and told you to bear it -in mind, that I would come back to it. I showed you the “old church -tenements” and told you what they stood for. Yet, in its disgrace, it -was that wicked slum, it was the outrage of that bad day, that showed us -the way out. Where those tenements stood, to-day the doors of the Five -Points Mission swing daily to let in nearly one thousand children who -are taught the better way there. (See illustration facing page 114.) The -Point itself has become Paradise Park, a playground for the children; -and across the park another mission, the Five Points House of Industry, -has registered the self-sacrificing labors of Christian men and women -for fifty years. So that on earth there is hope, too. That is the way -out. Wherever the Gospel and the sunlight go hand in hand in the battle -with the slum, there it is already won; there is an end of it at once. - -[Illustration: - - “THE WAY OUT”—BED-TIME IN THE FIVE POINTS HOUSE OF INDUSTRY NURSERY - From “How the Other Half Lives.” - Copyright, 1890, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.] - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - III - - OUR PLIGHT IN THE PRESENT - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - III - - OUR PLIGHT IN THE PRESENT - - -IN our last talk, I brought you to the point, the turning point, where -our conscience awoke in the defense of the imperiled home in the -metropolis. We had had one or two false starts before we finally got -there; as, for instance, when a cholera invasion was threatened just -after the war. It was that which brought the Council of Hygiene into -existence. There was the human disposition to lie down under the -“visitation of God” and groan, which simply means that we are all as -lazy as circumstances will let us be. For utter uselessness, commend me -to the man who sits and prays to the Lord to avert the mischief and -never lends a hand himself. I used to laugh at an old deacon out in my -town on Long Island, who had borne a masterful hand in dealing with the -law-breakers there in the early days, and who when he got excited over -the recollection of the wickedness of the past said, “but then me and -the Lord we took hold;” but the good deacon was all right on the record. -He did his part, stoutly maintaining that it was the Lord’s work. I -would rather have one such around than a thousand of the other kind. The -Council of Hygiene told these people bluntly that just then was a time -to pray, broom in hand; and the cholera danger was met. - -The real awakening came a quarter of a century ago, when the churches -came to the rescue in a body. Out of that movement grew the first -genuine model tenement building company and the plan of “philanthropy -and five per cent.”—that plan which must ever be the way out. In the -business of building homes for your brother there must be no taint of -the alms-giving that is miscalled charity, more is the pity. It must be -an honest business between man and man, if it is to succeed. Out of that -movement came our Octavia Hill, Miss Ellen Collins, who planted homes, -in the true sense of the word, in the very slum of slums, down in Water -Street, where the word home had not been heard for so long that the -children had fairly forgotten it—planted them, too, right in the very -devil’s preserves, and beat him out of sight—brothel, dance-hall, dive, -and all—single-minded and whole-hearted little woman that she is! “An -outlay of thought,” she told the Tenement House Committee of 1894, “pays -better than an outlay of money.” She gave her thought freely, and her -heart into the bargain; and when, the other day, the longing for rest -came to her and she thought of letting some one else take her place, -there came a deputation from Water Street, from that benighted -neighborhood that was, and begged her to stay, which was a whole volume -of cheer on our way; for it showed that hearts throbbed there in -response and that Water Street had a soul, the slum to the contrary -notwithstanding. A deputation that recalled that other one, of which -Colonel Kilbourne told at the National Conference of Employer and -Employee, held last fall in Minneapolis. The Colonel is the manager of a -company “between which and its employees no disagreement of any kind has -ever arisen.” It was in the dark days of the panic of 1893 that a -deputation of workmen, with serious looks on their faces, filed into -Colonel Kilbourne’s office and asked to have a word with him. And this -was their errand, as put by the spokesman: - -“We know that times are bad. We know that your warehouses are filling up -with goods which you cannot sell, and that you cannot get your pay for -the goods you have sold. And yet you keep us at work. We do not know -what your circumstances are, but you have stood by us and we have come -to stand by you. Some of us have been here a few years, some of us many. -We have had good pay; we have been able to save up some money, and here -it is. It is all yours to do with as you please, if you need it in the -business.” - -Who, brethren, gave you and me the right to sit in judgment on these, or -to despair of them? When you hear men prate wisely about “the poor -coming up to their opportunities,” ask Miss Collins what she thinks -about it and hear what she will say. The Water Street houses had been a -veritable hell before she took hold there. The dark halls were a -favorite hiding-place for criminals when chased by the police. It used -to be said that if a thief once got into the hallways of these buildings -there was no use of further effort to catch him. The buildings were -unspeakably filthy. The saloon on the ground floor had finally been -closed after one of the bloody fights that were the rule of the -neighborhood. Yet practically the same tenants are there to-day and have -been these twenty years. It was the landlord who was changed and -furnished opportunities for the tenants to come up to. Miss Collins -brought back the home, and her houses became good and decent; the whole -neighborhood took a turn for the better, tried to come up to the ideal -that she set before it. Miss Collins came out of that awakening, and she -is a mile-post forever on the road out of the slum. - -St. George’s came out of it, with broken towers it is true, but with -that which is better than spires pointing skyward: the out-and-out -declaration that they might stay broken forever while there were men and -women to be saved. “All the money we can gather, for flesh and blood; -not a dollar, for brick and mortar!” Out of it came that call for men -and women that has stirred our city and the whole country from end to -end and has given us in New York forty social settlements where then -there was not one. - -The movements for better schools, for neighborhood service, for decent -tenements, for playgrounds for the children, are ripples of that great -awakening. New York became a harder town to die in and a better town to -live in. We hear no more of fashionable women giving Christmas parties -to their lap dogs; and the day is at hand when no tenement mother shall -need to bemoan the birth of a daughter because of the perils and the -shame that await her. That was the cry that came to us from that -East-side a year ago; and that was why we fought to win; for it was that -or perish. Out of that awakening came the new day that reckons with the -tenants as “souls,” and which in a score of years has wrought a change -with us, in spite of the odds we are battling against, that caused an -eastern newspaper to say truly the other day that “New York is teaching -her sister cities by her old tenements how not to build, and by her new -how to build.” It all began there, the fight for the people’s homes; and -now let us look and see how the battle goes to-day. - -Here let me show you a tenement house block on the East-side to-day, -typical of a hundred such and more. (See illustration facing page 126.) -There were two thousand seven hundred and eighty-one persons living in -it when a census was made of it two years ago, four hundred and -sixty-six of them babies in arms. There were four hundred and forty-one -dark rooms with no windows at all and six hundred and thirty-five rooms -that opened upon the air-shaft. An army of mendicants was marching forth -from that block: in five years six hundred and sixty different families -in it had applied for public relief. In that time it had harbored -thirty-two reported cases of tuberculosis and probably at least three -times as many more in all stages that were not reported. The year -before, the Health Department had recorded thirteen cases of diphtheria -there. However, the rent roll was all right, it amounted to $113,964 a -year. - -[Illustration: - - A TYPICAL TENEMENT HOUSE BLOCK] - -I tell you these things that you may understand the setting of the home -in the greatest of American cities. Two millions of people in New York -live in such tenements. Do you see those narrow slits in the roof? They -are the air-shafts, two feet four inches wide, sixty or seventy feet -deep, through which light and air are supposed, in the landlord’s -theory, to come down to the tenants. We have just upset that theory and -forbidden those double-deckers with that kind of air-shaft. There are to -be courts, hereafter, so that the tenant may have light enough within -the house, to make out his neighbor. You will look in vain for a yard -for the children to play in, and I was going to say you will look in -vain for a bath-tub in that block, but I was wrong there. There is one -and I will show it to you. It is remarkable enough to make a note of. - -It is upon such tenements as these that the sweat-shop got its grip, -that grip which we have been trying with such effort to shake off, for -the protection of home and of childhood. Directly across the street from -there, I found a sick man using for his pillow a bundle of half-finished -trousers that were being made in the flat. The man had scarlet fever. -The label on the trousers showed that they came from the shop of a -Broadway clothier, upon whose counters, but for our coming, they would -have been displayed without warning that the death warrant of the -purchaser or of some little child in his family was basted in the -lining. We _are_ brothers, whether we own it or not, we of the avenue -and they of the alley. - -Here hangs the bath-tub I spoke of. (See illustration facing page 128.) -The landlord did not provide it; it was brought in by a tenant with -ambitions, an immigrant, who thought to find here the equality of man -with man, of which he had heard. He found the air-shaft in the slum -tenement. Suppose now he grows political ideals to correspond with it; -who is to blame? - -[Illustration: - - THE ONLY BATHTUB IN THE BLOCK - From “The Battle with the Slum.” - Copyright, 1901, by the Macmillan Company.] - -It was in one of the after swells of the great awakening that a man -stood up in a meeting of church people of all denominations, gathered to -find an answer to the question how to bring those multitudes back to the -old altars, and cried: “How shall these people understand the love of -God you speak of, when all about them they see only the greed of man?” -He was a builder, a Christian builder, and he forthwith set about -erecting in Brooklyn a row of tenements such as a Christian man could -build with a clear conscience. The Riverside tenements stand there -to-day unrivaled. (See illustration facing page 130.) It is much better -to live on the yard there than in front, because you have a garden and -you have flowers and even a band-stand where the band plays sometimes at -the landlord’s expense. The tenants are happy and contented. So is the -landlord. He told me himself that he has had six and six and a half and -even as high as seven per cent. on his investment, and he said with -scorn that the talk about the tenants “coming up to their opportunities” -was the veriest humbug. “They are there now,” he said, “a long way ahead -of the landlord.” Seven per cent. is good interest on any investment. It -almost looks, does it not, as if it were a question then whether a man -will take seven per cent. in providing for his brother and save his -soul, or twenty-five per cent. and lose it? It is odd that there should -be people willing to make the latter bargain; but, since there are such, -you might almost say that our fight with the slum is a kind of -missionary effort to compel them to take seven per cent. and save their -souls in spite of themselves. - -[Illustration: - - THE RIVERSIDE TENEMENTS - From “The Battle with the Slum.” - Copyright, 1901, by the Macmillan Company.] - -Alfred T. White’s tenants have homes: he has made it possible for them. -Humble homes to be sure, but furniture and show do not make the home of -which I am thinking, the home that is the prop of the Republic. Look, -now, upon this flat in an East-side block and tell me if you think that -that is a proper setting for American citizenship. (See illustration -facing.) That is one of the piggeries I have spoken of, and there are -too many of them. Thirteen persons slept in that room where the law -allowed only three. In that neighborhood I counted forty-three families -in a tenement where the original builder had made room for seventeen. Do -you think that is safe? And what must be the effect upon the growing -generation of such an environment as that? - -One day I found two boys in a back yard—for a wonder there was a back -yard—practicing their writing lesson on the fence, and this is what they -wrote: “Keep off the grass.” I was thinking the other day when I read -about Pompeii and Martinique that who knows but that some time this -boasted civilization of ours may be engulfed in such a catastrophe. -Then, perhaps a couple of thousand years hence, when the scientific men -of that day are digging down to our buried city, they will come upon one -of those signs and fetch it up; and they will put their heads together -and consult and expound, and then they will turn to the waiting world -and announce that “the men of that day worshipped grass”; and they will -not be so far out of the way, either. I have seen, in my day, the grass -held to be tremendously sacred, while no one cared about the boy. A -little more of that, and the slum will have set a stamp upon those -children which it will be hard work to wipe out. - -[Illustration: - - LODGERS AT “FIVE CENTS A SPOT” - From “How the Other Half Lives.” - Copyright, 1890, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.] - -As yet you can do it with soap and water and patience. Take them out -into the open, set them among the daisies, and see the change. When they -return, it is as if windows had been opened for their souls, through -which they could look out and see God. They could not before. That is -the offense of the slum which kills the home, that it will not let -either the one Who is in it or the one who built it see God. Windows for -their souls! No need of wondering at that if you saw the window giving -upon the dark air-shaft through which those children looked out all the -days of their lives when they were at home! When I stood there with that -harassed mother, I asked thoughtlessly if the five children I saw about -me were all she had. She reddened a little and there was a sob in her -voice as she said: “Yes, all but Mary; she doesn’t like to sleep home.” -Mary was seventeen. You would not have wondered that she did not like to -“sleep home” if you had been there. What does that tell us of one of the -horrid problems with which we have to do in our cities? It all comes to -the wreck of the home. - -Poverty Gap was one of the black spots that stand out as I look back -over twenty-five years of wrestling with the slum. I have seldom seen a -more hopeless place. It was there that “the gang” murdered the one “good -boy” there was in the block, for the offense of earning an honest -living. Yet the hope there _was_ in it all, was with these very -children. There came a kindergarten that way and opened our eyes. That -is one of the functions of the kindergarten, you know. It is the great -miracle-worker of our day; it has power to move mountains of -indifference, of sloth and wretchedness, of human inefficiency and -despair, for it is backed by the eternal forces of faith and hope and -love, however much they may look to you or to me like soap and water and -toilsome effort. The kindergarten came that way and, when we saw the Gap -through its eyes, we were ashamed and set about tearing it down. It was -then that an inspiration came to a good woman who had happened upon a -pile of sand in the neighborhood. She had it brought in and put upon the -site of the old Gap, with wheelbarrows and pails and shovels for the -boys and swings for the girls, and the children on the West-side got -their first playground. “The gang” went out of business that summer and -the Gap that had been violent became orderly. - -Its steam had been penned up before and that is bad. What would you -think of a yard as wide as an ordinary bedroom, with signs in it -forbidding the boys to play ball there and giving warning that “all boys -caught in this yard will be delt with accordin’ to law”? I can show you -such yards, and wherever they are, gang violence breaks out, for the -street is the only alternative. There are no homes in such slums as -those. - -I went up the dark stairs in one of those tenements and there I trod -upon a baby. It is the regular means of introduction to a tenement house -baby in the old dark houses, but I never have been able to get used to -it. I went off and got my camera and photographed that baby standing -with its back against the public sink in a pool of filth that overflowed -on the floor. I do not marvel much at the showing of the Gilder Tenement -House Committee that one in five of the children in the rear tenements -into which the sunlight never comes was killed by the house. It seemed -strange, rather, that any survived. But they do, and as soon as they are -able, they take to the street, which is thenceforward their training -ground. - -Some years ago, the Gerry Society picked up two boys that “lived -nowhere,” so they said. (See illustration facing page 136.) They were -brothers with a drunken father and no mother. Some one was curious -enough to try to find out their moral and religious status. The older of -the two had heard of the Lord’s Prayer as something that it was lucky to -say over at night before one went to sleep, so as to have good luck the -next day pitching pennies; his younger brother knew the name of the -Saviour as something to swear by. These were our home heathen, growing -up in the Christian city of New York. That is one way of looking at it. -There is another for which we have to wait only a few years: then these -lads come to the polls with their ballots, and there develops the -citizen equality over which their father puzzled in his air-shaft. Ask -yourself the question again, is it safe? - -[Illustration: - - THEY “LIVED NOWHERE” - From “How the Other Half Lives.” - Copyright, 1890, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.] - -These boys belong to the street and they learn its lessons: gambling, -pilfering, and by and by robbery. A little further along on the road -they are traveling are the Rogues’ Gallery and the jail. At thirteen, -fourteen, fifteen and sixteen they are thieves, little and big, -house-breakers, and highway robbers. One year when I kept a census of -the child criminals I had to deal with in Mulberry Street, I found them -beginning their careers at four and six years. The very little ones were -useful to their elders to “crawl through a hole” into the place that was -to be robbed. - -Was that good sense? No, it was not. That came later when a man came -into Mulberry Street, where “the gang” was beginning to make serious -trouble, and wanted to know if the boys would join a club he was -forming. Would they join, those boys? They fell over one another to get -there. The whole block joined with a rush. That was the good sense of -the new day that lets the boys in, instead of forever warning them off -from everything and everywhere. His club was a marching club (see -illustration facing page 138) and with their wooden guns on their -shoulders, that man could lead those boys where and how far he chose; -they would go with him wherever he went. Just remember that it is one of -two things, a gun on the shoulder or stripes on the back, where the home -interposes no barrier. It is because of the killing off of that home -that our jails are filled with young men from the big cities. - -[Illustration: - - JOINING “THE CLUB”] - -From alleys where “the sunlight never enters” comes that growing -procession that fills our prisons; where the sunlight does not enter, -deeds of darkness naturally belong. When at last we fully understood -this, we began to tear down the worst of the rookeries that had murdered -the home. Nearly the worst of them all was the Mott Street barracks. -There were some six hundred Italians living in that row when it was at -its worst, and it was one of the few places I have known in which the -rent actually rose as you went up-stairs. There was a little sunlight up -there, but only darkness and dirt down below. The yard between the front -and rear tenement—think of calling such a crack a yard—was five feet, -ten inches wide. I remember that well. Theodore Roosevelt held one end -of the tape line when we measured it, and I the other. By the time we -had got up indignation enough to settle with the barracks, he had come -into the municipal government of our city and made things go. The -showing upon which we arraigned the barracks was, that during a season -when we watched it, one-third of the babies there had died, killed by -the house. So we tore down the rear tenements, and when we did we found -that the mortgage on the property, with its awful baby death rate, was -held by a cemetery corporation! - -To me the barracks seemed as nearly hell on earth as could be; but let -me give you a glimpse of the veritable hell here below. Whatever you may -think of the one hereafter, you need not doubt its existence here. One -night, when I went through one of the worst dives I ever knew, my camera -caught and held this scene that I set before you. (See illustration -facing page 140.) When I look upon that unhappy girl’s face, I think -that the grace of God can reach that “lost woman” in her sins; but what -about the man who made a profit on the slum that gave her up to the -street? She _did not sleep home_, that was where the mischief began. -What about us who let that slum grow unchallenged, and who took from -those in it, with the home on earth the hope of heaven? _We_ need the -grace of God, if any one does. That is our fight—for the home in which -the girl may sleep securely, in which she will want to stay; thank God! -we are winning it at last. - -[Illustration: - - HELL ON EARTH - From “The Battle with the Slum.” - Copyright, 1901, by the Macmillan Company.] - -For see: these tenements have homes in them. (See illustration facing -page 142.) They were built by the City and Suburban Homes Company with -money subscribed by Christian men and women. Foremost among them all -that good woman to whom we owe so much in this new day of ours, the wife -of Bishop Potter. They are called the Alfred Corning Clark Buildings, -and stand in West 68th and 69th Streets, in that neighborhood where the -“social ideals minted themselves upon the lives of the people at the -rate of seven saloon thoughts to one educational thought.” The plan of -the City and Suburban Homes Company is that of philanthropy and five per -cent. They limit their income to five per cent., and have so far -received four. Their tenants are happy, as well they may be, and the -owners have good cause to be the same. They have done us a very notable -service in their work; since those houses were built, others have been -added and provision made for some fifteen or sixteen hundred families. -Four per cent. on such an investment is enough to settle it in the sight -of us all that real homes _can_ be provided for the multitude even on -Manhattan Island, and therefore must be; also, that the slum landlord -must stop building houses that kill his tenants; that murder is murder, -whether it is done with an axe or with a house. - -[Illustration: - - THE CITY AND SUBURBAN HOMES COMPANY’S MODEL TENEMENTS THE ALFRED - CORNING CLARK BLOCK - From “The Battle with the Slum.” - Copyright, 1901, by the Macmillan Company.] - -I should like to tell you of that godless municipal “charity” which -herded old thieves and old tramps and young homeless lads, who were -adrift in the great city, in those vile dens called police station -lodging rooms, and of the war upon it that was won at last; but I have -written so much and so often about it, and about my own experience in -one of those dens, where I was beaten and robbed, and where my little -dog was killed, when I was a homeless boy myself, and I have not the -time to repeat it. You have fought that same fight in Philadelphia and -won it, too. Our battle went dead against us, until that man with honest -purpose came among us and set things right. I shall never forget the -night he and I spent in touring the police stations together until we -brought up in the Church Street station, where the thing happened of -which I have just spoken. Standing there, I told him my story and he -cried angrily, “Did they do that to you? I’ll smash them to-morrow.” And -he did. And so that foul disgrace came to an end. Thank God for Theodore -Roosevelt! - -There remained the awful nuisance of the cheap lodging houses in the -Bowery, where thieves recruit their broken-up gangs among the young men -who are stranded there, coming from everywhere out in the country. They -have a standing army of lodgers, from thirteen to sixteen thousand -homeless men and lads; and we knew not what to do with them, until there -arose among us a philanthropist who gave of his fortune to solve this -problem also. He gave a million or more, and gave so wisely that his -work, the great Mills houses, have become one of the real benefactions -of to-day. There are two of them and they shelter a constant population -of twenty-six hundred lodgers. They are so well managed that they return -a profit, even a very good profit, upon the investment. So they are free -from the taint of alms-giving and the man who lives in them can and does -keep his self-respect. Mr. D. O. Mills deserves a place among the real -benefactors of our day. - -[Illustration: - - THE “TO-MORROW” - From “The Children of the Poor.” - Copyright, 1892, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.] - -I am to speak to you next of the to-morrow. Here it sits in a wagon, two -of the children of the poor whose only playground is their father’s -truck. (See illustration facing page 144.) “Was” I should have said. I -took their picture before the day of Colonel Waring, and when they -stepped out of the truck they landed in a street where the mud was over -half a foot in depth. You never saw anything like it, and pray that you -never may. We solaced ourselves with the belief in those days that no -one could clean our streets, that it was an impossible job. That was the -day of the man who “can’t,” or rather who won’t. When one of the other -kind came with his broom, he gave the children their first playground, -though it was not a good one, and his broom swept some of the cobwebs -out of our heads at the same time. “A man instead of a voter behind -every broom,” that was his watch-word, and it cleaned our streets and -cleaned our politics for a season. Just remember it; it applies to other -kinds of dirt than that which lies in the street. - -The children got a playground, but not the kind they needed. We had to -put our hands deep into our pockets to give them that. Over on that -East-side, where three hundred and twenty-four thousand persons were -penned up upon seven hundred and eleven acres of land, out of reach and -out of sight of a green spot, we tore down block after block of old -buildings, paying a million dollars for each block, and making the best -bargain of our lives in doing it. It was marvelous how long it took us -to see that this was good sense, and we were not alone in that, either. -A year ago, when I spoke in this city about children and their rights, I -was shown a square that had been laid out as a playground for the little -ones, but that was wholly neglected and gone to wreck. That was not good -sense. I looked for better among the people of Philadelphia where -Benjamin Franklin lived; and I expect to find it, too. - -The Mulberry Bend we laid by the heels; that was the worst pigsty of -all, and here again let me hark back to the murder I have spoken of so -often. I do not believe that there was a week in all the twenty years I -had to do with the den, as a police reporter, in which I was not called -to record there a stabbing or shooting affair, some act of violence. It -is now five years since the Bend became a park (see illustration facing -page 146), and the police reporter has not had business there once -during that time; not once has a shot been fired or a knife been drawn. -That is what it means to let the sunlight in and give the boys their -rights in a slum like that! - -[Illustration: - - IT IS FIVE YEARS SINCE THE BEND BECAME A PARK - From “The Making of an American.” - Copyright, 1901, by the Macmillan Company.] - -Of this boy of the slum we shall speak together further. He is just what -you let him be: good, if you give him the chance; bad, if you will have -none of him. Take the home out of his life, and you handicap him forever -and mortgage your own future with the heaviest of mortgages. It is since -that understanding began to dawn upon us that we have seized playgrounds -right and left, wherever we had the chance. I have in mind one which we -got away from a corporation on the West-side—it goes a little hard with -me to own that it was a church corporation, because by that time the -church ought to have had better sense. It was an old burial ground where -some of the old-time New Yorkers lay who, in their day, neglected their -boys and gave us the heritage of the slum. I hope that they have seen -their mistake: I am sure they have, and that their ears are rejoiced by -the patter of little children’s feet where once there was the silence; -for they are echoing the better to-morrow, those little feet. - -I wish I had time to tell you the whole story of what we have learned as -to that in these last ten years, but it is too long. Let it be enough to -say that, wherever we have destroyed the slum that killed the home and -given the children a chance, there order has moved in where violence and -gang rule were before, and the police are having a vacation. We are -extending that program of ours right and left. Seven years ago we had -not one school playground in New York; now we have a law which says that -never another public school shall be built without an outdoor playground -for the children. And we have been building more than three-score new -and splendid schools since then. Some of these schools have the -playgrounds on the street, and some on the roof, and in the latter, last -year, Mayor Low’s Board of Education put brass bands in the summer -evenings during the long vacation, and invited in the neighborhood. If -you have any doubts about the millennium’s coming nearer, you should -have been there then. It seemed to me when I saw three thousand children -dancing to the tune of “Sunday Afternoon” on top of the school that had -been used so long as a kind of jail in which to lock them up for the -convenience of some one who wanted to get rid of them—it seemed to me -then, as if we had put on seven league boots in the race to distance the -slum and the janitor. Both of them lost their grip on those children -then and there, and for all time; though the janitor strove hard against -fate. He tried to drive them away with a club when we were not looking; -and when he was caught at that, he reported that those roof playgrounds -were no good: they were too hot in summer and too cold in winter. So, it -would appear, is most of the rest of the earth. - -However, his day is past and the children’s is coming. The school of the -new day is “built beautiful,” quite like a palace, and our women hang -the walls of the class-rooms with handsome pictures that open windows -for the souls of the little ones, who sit and look on. There are still -some growlers who think that the money put into handsome stone and -wrought iron and polished wood is wasted. They are wrong; we never made -a better investment, unless it be in the playgrounds which are part of -those schools. All these things help to restore ideals. What is the -matter with the slum is that it lacks ideals. Where _they_ are made to -grow, there comes the irresistible demand for the home that is the -essence of good, and then we are on the home stretch. - -[Illustration: - - IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL OF TO-DAY] - -Our vacation schools gather in the boys, to teach them sloyd and how to -handle useful tools (see illustration facing page 150), and the girls to -teach them cooking; and, on alternate days, the men and boys and the -women and girls are taught swimming at our public baths. Over on the -West-side, where one of our neighborhood parks is being laid out, the -Park Department even went into teaching the young lads truck-farming -last summer. From that sort of school no one “plays hookey.” We shall -shortly have no truant question at all, or, if we do, we shall be in a -position to deal with it easily, for there need be no quibbling about -the proper disposal of the lad who deserts the school of the new -dispensation. - -I once found a little fellow picking bones and rags under an ash dump, -the only home he knew being a vile shed under that pile of rubbish. That -dump was in the identical spot where now one of our new recreation piers -extends into the North River. If he had been left there, to grow up as -he could—and he could neither read nor write—he would have grown -naturally into the tough who says that the world owes him a living, -which he is bound to collect as easily as he can, especially without any -work. It is a lie; the world owes no man a living. It is like a bank -upon which you draw according to the amount of work you put into it and -no more. But the boy was not left there, and, as I said, the dump that -cursed his life has been replaced by a park and a play-pier. The band -comes there in the evening and the crowds from the tenements, young and -old; and, on the long summer days in the vacation season, the -kindergartner comes and gathers her class, and there in the open they -study with one another the first lessons of the new political science -that shall draw us closer together and restore to us the neighborly -feeling, and the lost home with it. - -When we build our altar on that ground, we shall hear no more of empty -churches. The life has come back. How great was the yearning for it, -none of us may ever know. The other day, a little lad, watching the -lighted Christmas tree in a settlement in my city, whispered anxiously -to the head-worker when the distribution of presents began: “Shall we -not worship the tree?” No, but we shall worship together, they and we, -God in the hearts that were at last opened to let them in—to let the -lost neighbor in—in His name. - -[Illustration: - - SALUTING THE FLAG - From “The Children of the Poor.” - Copyright, 1892, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.] - -Here they come, an army with banners to help us win the fight for the -home! They are the children of the very poor, sometimes too ragged to -attend the public school, and sometimes kept out because they do not -know our language. They are the children of foreigners who brought them -here that they might live in a free land, at once the only and the -greatest heritage they could leave them. If you doubt that they are on -our side in the fight, go and hear them salute the flag in the morning -(see illustration facing page 152), promising “our hearts, our heads and -our hands to our country—one country, one language, one flag!” And never -doubt or distrust them again, for to do so is to distrust God, whose -children they are, even if we rejected them, and to reject the republic -which is to be His means of bringing us together again. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - IV - - OUR GRIP ON THE TO-MORROW - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - IV - - OUR GRIP ON THE TO-MORROW - - -IN concluding these lectures, I wish first of all to extend to -Philadelphia my hearty thanks for the ready and patient hearing she has -given to this fight for the American home, upon which all depends. The -great audiences that have attended, whether in church or hall, are in -themselves the best guarantee that the fight will be won, that the -to-morrow is safe. There is needed only the strong and informed public -opinion that sees clearly the peril, to set a barrier against the -inroads of the slum. Without that we fight in vain. If Philadelphia or -Boston or Connecticut were to be deaf to the evils of sweating, we -should be powerless against them in New York, or vice versa. If, on the -other hand, public opinion from the Mississippi to the Hudson condemns -tenement-made goods, their market will be gone and our fight won. The -protest of Oshkosh against the home conditions that degrade manhood and -womanhood in New York is registered at Albany in a hundred echoes from -my own state and makes our annual struggle with the selfish interests, -that for profit seek to sacrifice the home, so much easier. We shall -win, I know it; for, in my own time, I have seen this protest against -the abandonment of the brother swell from scattered voices here and -there to an angry chorus, that first shamed decent men, who did not -know, out of the owning of slum tenements, and afterwards drove -Christian men, who did know and who cared, too, into it with the result -that we have seen. We shall win the fight—indeed! I have spoken to -little purpose if you do not see with me that we _must_ win the fight -for the people’s homes, if we would live as a nation. - -And now this to-morrow! Let me bring you face to face with it as it -confronted me one day, years ago, in East 16th Street directly opposite -St. George’s Church. It stood there in the person of a ragamuffin, -typical, in his rags and dirt, of his kind and quite in the character; -for he was engaged in slinging mud. He dug it out of the gutter by the -fistful and distributed it impartially all over the church across the -way. Why the church, I wondered as I watched him. He, the boy, had no -stouter friend than its stalwart rector. Why then throw mud at his -church? I went up to ask and for once he was taken unawares. I was upon -him before he saw me and put my hand upon his shoulder! and that moment -I knew what I wanted to know, what ailed the lad. The years that have -passed have added many details to the record of his case, but nothing of -the first importance. It was all clear to me that instant; for he turned -like a hunted wild beast, his fistful of mud gripped tight, to confront -the enemy—it could be nothing else. In all his dreary little life no -hand had ever been laid upon his shoulder in kindness. That was the -story. That _is_ the story too often yet. Every man’s hand raised -against him, his was raised against the world that would have none of -him. It was self-defense. I saw it and was dumb. - -Presently I remembered that I had started to interview him, and asked -questions. He did not answer them, but his looks were more eloquent than -words; and, at the hard places, another street Arab, a degree less dirty -and less spiteful than he, ventured responses that let in the light. -Read and write he could not, never went to school. I stared at that; -visions of truant officers, of compulsory education laws, rose up before -me. I little knew then the true condition of things—it was years after -that that our first school census showed us fifty thousand children in -the street who should have been on the school-benches, but were shut out -for lack of room. What did he know? Nothing. But, said I impatiently, -what can he do, what does he do? - -“He?” said the other boy with a contempt for my lack of understanding, -which he made no effort to conceal, “He throws stones!” And mud. That -was all, all we had taught him in his apprenticeship of the street, his -preparation for the citizenship that was to come. That was _our_ end of -the story. - -We have been busy since making inquiries concerning this lad who is our -to-morrow. We have been at work among the underpinnings to see how fared -the props upon which we build character, citizenship—the same thing in -the end. When the test comes, they are convertible terms. And the props -were not there—they were gone! What had become of them? I have shown you -how beset is the home whence came the boy who throws the mud. There is -no stronger prop under the character that forms in the growing boy than -his home. The tenement is a destroyer of home and of character, of the -individuality that makes character tell. A homeless city—a city without -civic pride, without citizen virtue, a despoiler of children, a -destroyer of the to-morrow. - -Did I tell you of my friend whose house stands in a garden with a -sand-heap in which the children dig and romp with their cat and the -kittens and the terrier dog? Of how the dog _will_ try to smother a -kitten now and then in an opportune sand-hole, with the children ever on -the watch to avert the threatened catastrophe? And of how they did avert -it, until one unlucky day they found a dead kitten in the sand-heap. -Whereupon the little girl rushed into her mother’s presence with it in -her apron and cried out indignantly: - -“There, mamma, a perfectly good cat spoiled!” - -Just so with these children of the tenement. Perfectly good, as good as -any on the avenue with the brown stone mansions, they are spoiled in the -tenement house slum, and the loss is ours, an irreparable loss. The -chief prop under the character of the growing boy is gone. Nothing can -replace it; nothing ever does. - -The school is another. How about the lad’s school? The census of which I -spoke told us that story seven years ago; and we were surprised. It -would have been more to the point had there been no cause for surprise. -Two chief props of the to-morrow, of the state—the home and the -school—and both neglected! Fifty thousand children in the street who -should have been in school! Where the prop had not been knocked out, -what had our neglect made of it? - -I remember my efforts to catechize a sewing class of girls, all out of -the public school, on the subject of Napoleon, of whom there was a big -picture on a poster just across the street. Not one of them knew who he -was. They thought the picture was of some wild west show character, -Buffalo Bill perhaps. Yes, there was one who “believed she had heard of -the gentleman before.” She said it timidly and was evidently not sure -that she might not be doing an injury to some innocent citizen who might -rise and object. This was what she had heard “that he had two wives.” -Not that he was a great general, not that he was a soldier, a lawgiver, -a ruler, a leader of men; but that he had two wives. It was Napoleon -scaled down to the level of the slum. - -We found out what our neglect had made of the public school when three -applicants for appointment as policemen under Theodore Roosevelt wrote -in their examination papers that five of the thirteen states that formed -the union were, “England, Ireland, Wales, Belfast, and Cork”! Another -wrote that Lincoln was murdered by Ballington Booth! We had made our -public schools into stuffing machines. Where they should have taught the -young to think, they jammed them full of all sorts of things that made -manikins of them—not men. And the “truants” we made by slamming the -school-doors in their faces, we took and locked up in a jail behind iron -bars, with burglars and thieves and bad boys of every kind, and divided -them there—not into the good and the bad; not into the sheep and the -goats, remembering that in mingling them there was fearful danger, for -how should the young burglar, bursting with pride in his exploit, keep -from bragging of it to his admiring side-partner?—not that way were they -classified, with a sense of the peril of such a contact, but into squads -according to height: four feet, four feet seven, and over four feet -seven! That was how we ran our school machinery, without sense or soul; -and, where there is neither, character does not grow. That prop—the -school—was gone, knocked out from under the boy, the to-morrow. - -However, we have done our best to put it back since we made out how -badly off we were, for we understand at last the peril of that. Our -schools are every day getting nearer to the ideal school that turns out -men and women who think, to do the work of the world. The reformatory I -spoke of is no longer guilty of such outrages upon common sense. It is -to-day leading the way in an attempt to restore, as nearly as possible, -family life and family training in home groups, instead of the deadening -institution life, to the children whose greatest misfortune was that -they never knew home in the saving sense while they—and we—could so -easily have been saved. - -And now here is a prop which, certainly during a most critical period of -the boy’s life, should stand ahead even of the school. I mean his play. -Froebel, the great kindergartner who gave us the best legacy of the -nineteenth century to its successor, said that play is “the normal -occupation of the child through which he first perceives moral -relations.” Upon this truth and the other, that the child “learns by -doing,” he built his whole common sense system, which we now know to be -the right beginning of all education, whether of rich or poor. How have -we dealt with this strong bulwark? As sacredly should it be guarded as -the right of habeas corpus; the one is not of greater moment to the -commonwealth than the other. You cannot make a good citizen out of the -lad whom you denied a chance to kick a ball across lots when that was -his ambition and his right. I have said it before: it takes a whole boy -to make a whole man. - -How did we guard this bulwark of play? In the chief city of the land, up -to half a dozen years ago, the lad had not one place where he might -play, safe from the policeman. Not a single playground was there, even -on that East-side where half a million tenants were pent up in the big -barracks, out of sight and reach of a green spot. Not a school was there -with a playground belonging to it. Yes! there was one; over behind the -public school in First Street was a little patch in the middle of the -block that had once been a graveyard, but had become a mere litter of -tin cans and ash-heaps. It took three years and, I think, as many -legislative bills to obtain this sorry boon for the living; but, when it -was at last made into a playground, the “gang” in that block went out of -business. What became of it? Where did it go? To school, probably. That -school became the most popular one on the East-side, and the most -orderly. - -For all that, however, this playground long remained the only one. It -took years to make us see what a clear-headed man across the sea had -made out many years before; namely, that crime in our large cities is, -to an unsuspected extent, a question of athletics merely—of giving the -boys a chance to play when that is what they need. Boys are like steam -boilers with steam always up: the steam has to have a safe outlet, or it -will find an unsafe one. Boilers have safety-valves with which it is -best not to meddle. The boy’s safety-valve is his play. Let the landlord -hang up his sign in the yard that he will have no ball playing there, -and let the policeman refuse the lad the chance to play in the street, -which is a bad place to play at best—let these two sit on the boy’s -safety-valve, and you need not marvel at the explosion you will hear. -You can read of it in the papers every day: such and such a “gang” -waylaid the policeman on their beat last night and beat him with his own -club. It is nothing to marvel at, no special depravity; it was just the -boiler that went bang. - -That was the way we safeguarded that prop under the boy, who is father -to the man, and we reaped as our reward crooked citizenship. New York is -but the type of the rest of our cities in this as in so much else. We -are at last taking the kindergarten seriously; here and there -“play-schools” are being opened in the long summer vacations. In New -York, we have built half a dozen play-piers out into the river, where -the little ones dance to the music of brass bands in the evening. I told -you how we put brass bands up on the schoolhouse roofs and invited the -neighborhood in. Boston has “play-rooms” for indoor fun in crowded -neighborhoods. We shall yet have “play-houses” for the children’s use as -well as for the grown folk; but it is still a running fight. Twice in -the past year have I been appealed to to help save the kindergarten from -ignorant town boards, who could not see what good there was in it that -the people should be taxed for its support. The dawn of common sense has -set in, but it will be sometime yet to the broad daylight. - -There are other props which we have hardly recognized as such. There is -the respect for law that means respect for the majesty of the -commonwealth, of the state. What have we made of that? Of the compulsory -education law, until within the last half dozen years, we made a -laughing stock. Of the factory law, said a legislative committee that -looked us over, we made a mess of perjury and child labor. The excise -law became a vehicle of blackmail and corruption. This is how we tended -that prop, forgetting that to bring contempt upon the law is the -shortest cut to civic cynicism, which is a death-blow to the republic: -it lives but in the people’s hopes and high ideals. - -The very enforcement of law has sometimes seemed a travesty: the boy who -steals fifty cents is sent to the house of correction; the man who -steals a railroad goes free. So the lad, robbed of every chance and with -the fact dinned into his ears unceasingly by those who would make -capital of his plight, takes to the street and throws stones and mud at -the order of society that gave him no show; at the church, with its -pride and pomp; at the citizen in a good coat and a silk hat; at the -policeman, when his back is turned and he is far enough away; at -anything that stands for the order of society in which he was allowed no -place. - -Need we wonder at it? Need we cavil at this lad who clutches at the very -last straw in vain—the father’s help and counsel that means so much to -the growing boy? Too often relations between father and son are -reversed, and the father must depend on the boy for communication with -the strange world around him. He is and remains a stranger, never even -learning the language; the boy is born to it and to the new ways that -prove a stumbling-block to his father. He, the father, is an Italian, a -Greek, a refugee Jew—he is “Dutch.” That sums it all up. He is “Dutch” -and he is “slow,” and, in the inevitable conflict between the old and -the new, the boy escapes to the street and to the gang. - -Come now with me to the reformatory and look at their records. -Three-fourths of the young men who land there are “without moral sense” -yet “of average mental capacity,” which is to say that they had the -common sense to benefit by their opportunities had we put any in their -way; but we did not. See how all but eight or nine in a hundred had bad -homes, or homes which, at all events, had no influence for good upon -their lives. But in this it is emphatically true that that which is not -for is against. Unless the home is a saving influence in the lad’s life, -the door has been opened for all that is bad and corrupting. More than -ninety per cent. were adrift at the age when character is formed. And -only one in a hundred escaped bad company![3] The street has no other -kind of company and the street is the alternative of the home. - -Footnote 3: - - See Year Book of Elmira Reformatory. - -There is your heredity made to order for you—to _your_ order—the -heredity of the slum; for the heredity, under which we groan, ever ready -to give up, to lay the blame on the Almighty for our shortsightedness, -our selfishness and love of ease,—this heredity is, in ninety-nine cases -out of a hundred, just the sum of the bad environment which it was in -our power to mend if we had but minded it while it was time. The -hundredth case we can leave to the Lord, who punishes the sins of the -fathers upon their children only in them that _hate_ Him. To those who -would do His bidding, His work in the world, He is ever ready to show a -way out. The way is to keep His commandments, the old, and the new that -sums up all the rest. Loving our brother, we shall not have the heart to -leave him in the slough; we shall be wanting to fight all the things -that drag him down, and so we shall be mending not only his chances in -the to-day, but we shall be cutting off the heritage of sin and sorrow -and failure that would blight the to-morrow. We shall have lifted the -curse that was laid upon man for forgetting his brother—for whoso -forgets his brother hateth Him, that is what it means—and shall have -helped the kingdom to come upon earth, even as it is in heaven above. By -helping men to live the life of men, we shall bring them nearer to Him -whose children we are. That is our heredity, the only real one: that we -are children of God! With that backing, who can falter? What is there -that you and I cannot do? And how dare we refuse to do it? - -“Weakness is what ails the young criminal, not wickedness,” say the -prison superintendent, the prison chaplain, every one who knows. Lack of -character, that is. How could he grow a character in such a setting as -his? And for this setting we, not he, are responsible. He could not help -himself. Think what it was we wasted! Only the other day the head-worker -of one of the social settlements in New York told me of a little Jewish -boy in her care, a little chap of eight, whose home is in a tenement -where the father works early and late to make ends meet, his darling -ambition that his boy shall some day be a rabbi; but the little fellow -threw consternation into that household by declaring that he would not -be a rabbi when he grew up, and why? “Because,” he told my friend, “I do -not believe I could ever think of words beautiful enough to speak to God -in.” Out of a slum tenement! How you would cherish it forever if your -little one were to lift his soul and yours up to God with such a speech! -Diamonds in the dust, truly. - -I remember the “Kid” they brought to police headquarters handcuffed to -two policemen whom he had tried to kill when they came upon him robbing -a store. If ever there was a tough, he was one. And yet when they -brought him out from the detective office, where he had had his pedigree -taken and been photographed and hung in the Rogues’ Gallery as the first -stop on his way to the jail and to the gallows, there was something -underneath the hard crust that spoke to me of the image of God in which -he was made. Overlaid by the slum, yes! hopelessly, you might have said; -but there is no such thing as hopelessness where the spark of His life -is. It may be quickened at any moment. It needs only the right thing to -strike fire, and that thing is always the same. Love of God? He did not -know what it was. He would have spurned you away had you come to him -with it on your lips. But when, five minutes later, a cry of horror went -up on Broadway where a little toddling baby had strayed out upon the -railroad track with a runaway car not ten feet from the child, who -crowed with delight at the sound of the bell which the gripman banged, -sick with dread, for he was powerless to stay the car—when we stood -frozen to stone with the despairing shriek of that mother whom men were -holding back while they turned their heads away, with her cries ringing -the doom of the child in our ears—when there seemed no help on earth, -then it was the “Kid” who tore himself from the grasp of the policemen -and sprang upon the car-track, saving the child at the risk of his own -life a thousand times over! Thief, tough, indexed and hung in the -Rogues’ Gallery; started fair for the jail and the gallows, he did not -hesitate. The peril of the innocent child struck the spark, and the -image came out which the slum had tried to smother. Plenty there are -who, had they seen him, would not have thought it was there; for there -are other things beside the slum that bury it deep, too deep for the -spark to struggle through: too good a time, over-indulgence, -selfishness, for instance. It is not the first time that men have sought -the Lord in the high places in vain. The wise men found Him cradled in -the stable with the dumb beasts, and they worshiped Him there. - -There was Fighting Mary. She earned her name; that tells the story. A -pupil on occasion in the Industrial School of the Children’s Aid Society -on Seventh Avenue, she had acquired such a reputation as a battler with -the gangs of the neighborhood, that it seemed like putting a premium on -bad conduct, I suppose, to bid her to the Thanksgiving dinner; but -better counsel prevailed, and she was allowed to come. And when she saw -the little mince pie at her plate—a whole pie, the first and only one in -her desolate life, though nothing was farther from her mind than -thoughts of desolation, with several unsettled scores on hand—her whole -childish soul went out to it. She caressed it tenderly, felt of it, -sniffed its sweet fragrance, and, when every sense was satisfied except -the one that the children all about her were gorging, she crammed it, as -carefully as she might, all warm and pulpy as it was, into her dress -pocket. The boys saw it and, encouraged by the presence of strangers, -jeered a little; not very loudly, for they knew the penalty well; but -she heard it and, with one of the looks before which the “gang” had -quailed before, she said just this: “For mother.” - -That was all; but it brought the tears of penitence, of sorrow and of -gladness to the eyes of the good women who thought once of shutting her -out as quite beyond hope. Before that day’s sun set, they did what they -could to undo the wrong by adopting a resolution that has since stood -upon the records of all the twenty schools and more of the Children’s -Aid Society: that occasions of mince pie shall carry double rations -always, one for Mary and one for mother! - -These are the children whose backs we have been loading with the -heredity of the slum, of ignorance, of homelessness. There came to me -the other day a letter asking me to be present at the fiftieth annual -meeting of that Children’s Aid Society, which has in all these years -been trying to break the bonds of the slum by taking the children from -it and planting them out on the Western fields where they may grow in -the sunlight. And grow they did; at the meeting to which I was invited, -three governors were to be present, two elected by the people in their -states and one territorial governor appointed by the president; and all -three of them were once bare-legged little raggamuffins taken from the -slum of New York! - -No hope? No, there will be none for _us_, unless our eyes are opened -speedily; for it does not end here. We can choose whether we will make -of the lad in the slum a governor or a thief; and we shall have to foot -the bill here, if we choose the bad end. But there is another reckoning -coming for smothering God’s image in a human soul. Somebody has got to -foot that bill, too, and it will not be the boy. He was the victim. - -The boy sees the choice we are making. He sees us building jails when we -should have built schools, though the schools are many times cheaper any -way one looks at it. If he has heard that I am my brother’s keeper, he -must conclude upon the evidence that it means jail-keeper; and, in -disgust and derision at our lack of sense, he throws stones and mud. And -who shall blame him? Not I. I joined him long ago, only I throw ink; but -the idea is the same. The boy has been foully dealt with. - -And foolishly! Where it would have been—is—so easy to _form_ character, -we have been laboring with such infinite toil to _reform_ it. It would -have formed itself had we left the boy the home, for that is where -character grows. The loss of it thrust a hundred problems upon us of -finding props to take its place. All the labor of forty years has been -directed to that end. - -The fresh air holidays are one, and how strong a one, how sadly needed, -he may know who hears the child cry out upon his first sight of God’s -open fields, “How blue the sky is, and how much there is of it!” Not -much in his slum alley! “The fresh air holiday,” said a woman doctor who -has labored all her life among the poor in my city, “is a strong plaster -for our social ills.” And so it is. Some day, I hope to see the touch -from my old home, the neighborly Danish touch, added to it for the good -of us all. There they exchange; the boys from the city go out to the -country to be made over, and the lads from the farms are taken to town -by their teachers to see its wonders and to come nearer to the history -of their country that is written there. So they feel more like what they -are in fact, neighbors who can pull together all the better because they -are no longer strangers. They have been introduced to one another. That -idea is worth considering. In our great country, we need to pull -together in the days that are coming even more than in the past. There -is enough to pull us apart. - -The boys’ club is another prop. It is the key to the boy that heads off -the “gang” and the reformatory that lurks behind it. In the beginning, -it grew out of a missionary’s great heart, and wherever there is heart -in it one boys’ club is worth a thousand policemen’s clubs in the fight -with the slum. The boys were breaking the windows of the mission house -in Tompkins’ Square and the police could not drive them off. The -missionary’s wife knew a plan, however: she invited them in to have -coffee and cakes. That was the gospel in practical form for Tompkins’ -Square, and the first boys’ club that grew out of that meeting has -to-day an army of members which no building is big enough to house; and -Tompkins’ Square, that was once given over to rioting, to “bread or -blood” processions, has become orderly and peaceful. The last of the -anarchists over there has taken to keeping a beer saloon and -accumulating property. We have grafted the boys’ club upon the public -school and we never did anything better. - -The kindergarten is such a prop, and the cooking class is another—never -a stronger in the fight with intemperance, that thrives upon bad cooking -at home as upon nothing else. The whole reformed school is building new -underpinnings for the lad who has so long been left to himself. We have -replaced the three R’s with the three H’s—the head, the heart, and the -hand. We are at last teaching the children to think. We are nearly where -we can vote six millions of dollars for public schools as readily as for -a battleship. When we get to where we can do it without a tremor, we -shall be fairly on the home stretch. As yet we shudder at the great -sums; but they are the opportunities of our greatness, over which we -must learn to rejoice more than over fine ships, mighty railroads, vast -wheat-fields, territorial expansion and a full treasury; because, if -they are not heeded, these other things are but so many temptations and -traps for our stumbling feet. - -The social settlement is of all the substitute props the strongest. It -takes all the rest into its plan to help; and it goes to the home, which -is the kernel of all, and tries to help there with neighborly touch. -That is the cure. Greed and selfishness killed the home; human sympathy -only can bring it back. “My brother” is the word that has healing for -all our social ills. The settlement has been compared to a bridge upon -which men go over, not down, from the mansion to the tenement; for a -bridge must be level to be good. There was a time when men went down to -that work, or shot down their coal and their groceries, as if through a -coal chute, in contemptuous settlement of brotherhood arrears. That did -not work. The crop we raised from that was hatred and helplessness. But -the personal touch can redeem even free soup; and if there is anything -more hopeless than that I do not know it. I am told that here in -Philadelphia, where it unaccountably survives, it is coupled, after all, -with kindly inquiry and personal interest, serves as a means of opening -the door merely. It is a bad key; but, if that is the use it is put to, -as I am told by a venerable Quaker who confronted me sternly with the -question, “Jacob, why did thee say in thy book that in Philadelphia -common sense appears to be drowned in soup?”—if that is the way of it, I -am willing to condone even free soup, otherwise outlawed as hopeless. It -was never the way in my city. - -So, whichever way we turn, we come back to the commandment: “My -children, love one another.” Doing that, we can leave the results with -Him who said it. But we can make them out even now. We can see how -things are beginning to tend back towards the home where love grows -naturally in the family. The neighborhood idea, that is the heart of the -settlement movement, rouses civic pride, rouses ideals that were dead, -restores to the neighborhood individuality and to the family dignity. -The mothers’ club, what does it mean, what does it discuss, but -home-making? The home library brings the visitor to the home, picks it -out and gives it separate existence, and ties the children to it with a -new loyalty. The boys’ club belongs there in its ultimate development -and will yet go there for its meetings, and the girls’ club too. That -must be the ultimate aim of the settlement, which is now preparing the -ground for it. Everywhere, consciously or unconsciously, the movement is -in the air, and growing, to rescue the home from neglect, to put a stop -to child labor and to home-work that would exclude the family life; the -movement to send mother and children back to the home where they are -safe. - -You, in Philadelphia, have your Octavia Hill Association, that has shown -us how to redeem a whole street. I have told you of our efforts in our -worse slum. It is so everywhere. I _am_ my brother’s keeper, and I am -ashamed at last not to own it. That is the key-note of the whole modern -reform movement, the new charity, the new school, the social settlement -and all; and thank God for it! - -How long we were finding out that we were neighbors! A year or two ago, -I went to a suburb of New York to speak of these things, even as I am -now speaking to you. And when that evening I sat at the family board -with my host, who was a clergyman, a secretary in a foreign mission -board, he said, looking around upon his little ones, that, if I could -find him a poor widow in the city with five children of their ages, whom -they could go along with and help as they grew, I would be doing a good -thing for them and a better thing for his children. And I promised, for -that was ideal charity, neighbor with neighbor. - -But it was not easy. Weeks passed before I found a family in an -East-side tenement that just filled the requirements. It was Christmas -Eve, and, while I stayed to look them over, I came to love them, the -good children and the brave little woman fighting her fight all unaided. -She told me that she was a scrub-woman in a public building; but it was -not until I had gone half way over to the office, to tell my friend on -the telephone that I had found what he sought, that I thought of asking -Where she scrubbed. I went back to ask her. - -And where was it, do you think? In the mission building, on his floor! -Between them was just the thickness of the oaken door, all the time she -had been needing him as he did her, and neither knew where to find the -other. They were neighbors in very truth, and they did not know it. - -It may be that your neighbor lives as near to you, in want of much that -you can give, your love and friendship first and last. Go and seek him. -And when you have found him, bind up his wounds, help him and care for -him; and, when you must depart on the morrow, leave of your substance -that he may be cared for until you come that way again. That was -neighborliness as the Good Samaritan saw it. - -“Go,” said the Saviour, “go, and do thou likewise.” - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - -Transcriber’s note: - - ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. - - ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. - - ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only - when a predominant form was found in this book. - - ○ The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in - the public domain. - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PERIL AND THE PRESERVATION OF -THE HOME*** - - -******* This file should be named 64056-0.txt or 64056-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/4/0/5/64056 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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