BY P. H. S.
I love the gentle music of the brook,Its solitary, meditative song.On every hillSome stream has birth,Some lyric rill,To wake the selfish earth,And smile and toss the heavens their shining look,Repeat and every flash of life prolong.In spite of play,Along its cheerful wayIt turns to rest beneath some sheltering treeIn richer beauty;Or at call of dutyLeaps forth into a cry of ecstacy,And sings that work is best,In brighter colors drestRuns on its way,Nor longer wills to stayThan but to see itself that it is fair,—Thou happy brook, true brother to the air.I fear the steady death-roar of the sea,Its sullen, never-changing undertone;Round all the landIt clasps its heavy strength,A liquid bandOf world-unending length,And ever chants a wild monotony,A change between a low cry and a moan.The earth is glad,The sea alone is sad;Its swelling surge it rolls against the shoreIn mammoth anger;Or, in weary languor,Beaten, it whines that it can rage no more,And sinks to treacherous rest,While from the happy westThe sun is glad;The sea alone is sad.Its voice has messages nor words for me,All, all is pitched in one low minor key.Then take my heart upon thy dancing stream,O tiny brook, thou bearest my heart away.Run gently pastThe breaking of the stones,Nor yet too fast;And on thy perfect tonesBear thou my discord life that I may seemA harmony for one short hour to-day.Why wilt thou, brook,Not check thy forward look?Why wilt thou, brook, not make my heart thine own?The wild commotionOf the frantic oceanWill madden thee and drown thy sorry moan,And none will hear the cry;Then run more slowly by—Nay, for this nookWas made for thee, my brook,Stay with me here beneath this silver shadeAnd think this day for thee and me was made.Thy present sweetness will be turned to brine;Thou’lt hardly make one petty, paltry wave.Lovest thou the sun?He will not know thee there.Is’t sweet to run,Know thine own whence and where?’Tis here thy joy, thy love, thy life are thine;There thou wilt neither be, nor do, nor have.The mighty seaWill blindly number theeTo bear the ships, send thee to shape the shoreThat thou art scorning;Or some awful morning,Set thee to pluck some sailor from his oarAnd drink his weary life;O fear this chance of strife!Or what may beElse, dead monotony.Give o’er thy headlong haste, dwell here with me,Why lose thyself in the vast, hungry sea?These thoughts I cast into the wiser stream,And lay and heard it run the hours away;And then aboveThe beauty and the peace,It sang of love;And in that glad releaseI knew my thoughts had run beyond my dream,Had seen the laboring river and the bay.“’Tis joy to run!Else life would ne’er be done,I ne’er should know the triumphing of death,Nor its revealing;Nor the eager feelingOf fuller life, the promise of the breathThat fleets the open sea:All this was given to meOnce as I wonMy first great leap; the sunI knew my king, and laughed, and since that dayI run and sing; he wills, and I obey.”
I love the gentle music of the brook,Its solitary, meditative song.On every hillSome stream has birth,Some lyric rill,To wake the selfish earth,And smile and toss the heavens their shining look,Repeat and every flash of life prolong.In spite of play,Along its cheerful wayIt turns to rest beneath some sheltering treeIn richer beauty;Or at call of dutyLeaps forth into a cry of ecstacy,And sings that work is best,In brighter colors drestRuns on its way,Nor longer wills to stayThan but to see itself that it is fair,—Thou happy brook, true brother to the air.
I love the gentle music of the brook,
Its solitary, meditative song.
On every hill
Some stream has birth,
Some lyric rill,
To wake the selfish earth,
And smile and toss the heavens their shining look,
Repeat and every flash of life prolong.
In spite of play,
Along its cheerful way
It turns to rest beneath some sheltering tree
In richer beauty;
Or at call of duty
Leaps forth into a cry of ecstacy,
And sings that work is best,
In brighter colors drest
Runs on its way,
Nor longer wills to stay
Than but to see itself that it is fair,—
Thou happy brook, true brother to the air.
I fear the steady death-roar of the sea,Its sullen, never-changing undertone;Round all the landIt clasps its heavy strength,A liquid bandOf world-unending length,And ever chants a wild monotony,A change between a low cry and a moan.The earth is glad,The sea alone is sad;Its swelling surge it rolls against the shoreIn mammoth anger;Or, in weary languor,Beaten, it whines that it can rage no more,And sinks to treacherous rest,While from the happy westThe sun is glad;The sea alone is sad.Its voice has messages nor words for me,All, all is pitched in one low minor key.
I fear the steady death-roar of the sea,
Its sullen, never-changing undertone;
Round all the land
It clasps its heavy strength,
A liquid band
Of world-unending length,
And ever chants a wild monotony,
A change between a low cry and a moan.
The earth is glad,
The sea alone is sad;
Its swelling surge it rolls against the shore
In mammoth anger;
Or, in weary languor,
Beaten, it whines that it can rage no more,
And sinks to treacherous rest,
While from the happy west
The sun is glad;
The sea alone is sad.
Its voice has messages nor words for me,
All, all is pitched in one low minor key.
Then take my heart upon thy dancing stream,O tiny brook, thou bearest my heart away.Run gently pastThe breaking of the stones,Nor yet too fast;And on thy perfect tonesBear thou my discord life that I may seemA harmony for one short hour to-day.Why wilt thou, brook,Not check thy forward look?Why wilt thou, brook, not make my heart thine own?The wild commotionOf the frantic oceanWill madden thee and drown thy sorry moan,And none will hear the cry;Then run more slowly by—Nay, for this nookWas made for thee, my brook,Stay with me here beneath this silver shadeAnd think this day for thee and me was made.
Then take my heart upon thy dancing stream,
O tiny brook, thou bearest my heart away.
Run gently past
The breaking of the stones,
Nor yet too fast;
And on thy perfect tones
Bear thou my discord life that I may seem
A harmony for one short hour to-day.
Why wilt thou, brook,
Not check thy forward look?
Why wilt thou, brook, not make my heart thine own?
The wild commotion
Of the frantic ocean
Will madden thee and drown thy sorry moan,
And none will hear the cry;
Then run more slowly by—
Nay, for this nook
Was made for thee, my brook,
Stay with me here beneath this silver shade
And think this day for thee and me was made.
Thy present sweetness will be turned to brine;Thou’lt hardly make one petty, paltry wave.Lovest thou the sun?He will not know thee there.Is’t sweet to run,Know thine own whence and where?’Tis here thy joy, thy love, thy life are thine;There thou wilt neither be, nor do, nor have.The mighty seaWill blindly number theeTo bear the ships, send thee to shape the shoreThat thou art scorning;Or some awful morning,Set thee to pluck some sailor from his oarAnd drink his weary life;O fear this chance of strife!Or what may beElse, dead monotony.Give o’er thy headlong haste, dwell here with me,Why lose thyself in the vast, hungry sea?
Thy present sweetness will be turned to brine;
Thou’lt hardly make one petty, paltry wave.
Lovest thou the sun?
He will not know thee there.
Is’t sweet to run,
Know thine own whence and where?
’Tis here thy joy, thy love, thy life are thine;
There thou wilt neither be, nor do, nor have.
The mighty sea
Will blindly number thee
To bear the ships, send thee to shape the shore
That thou art scorning;
Or some awful morning,
Set thee to pluck some sailor from his oar
And drink his weary life;
O fear this chance of strife!
Or what may be
Else, dead monotony.
Give o’er thy headlong haste, dwell here with me,
Why lose thyself in the vast, hungry sea?
These thoughts I cast into the wiser stream,And lay and heard it run the hours away;And then aboveThe beauty and the peace,It sang of love;And in that glad releaseI knew my thoughts had run beyond my dream,Had seen the laboring river and the bay.“’Tis joy to run!Else life would ne’er be done,I ne’er should know the triumphing of death,Nor its revealing;Nor the eager feelingOf fuller life, the promise of the breathThat fleets the open sea:All this was given to meOnce as I wonMy first great leap; the sunI knew my king, and laughed, and since that dayI run and sing; he wills, and I obey.”
These thoughts I cast into the wiser stream,
And lay and heard it run the hours away;
And then above
The beauty and the peace,
It sang of love;
And in that glad release
I knew my thoughts had run beyond my dream,
Had seen the laboring river and the bay.
“’Tis joy to run!
Else life would ne’er be done,
I ne’er should know the triumphing of death,
Nor its revealing;
Nor the eager feeling
Of fuller life, the promise of the breath
That fleets the open sea:
All this was given to me
Once as I won
My first great leap; the sun
I knew my king, and laughed, and since that day
I run and sing; he wills, and I obey.”
Much has been written of late about the pessimistic spirit pervading modern reformative literature. When an earnest writer presents a gloomy picture of life as it really is, he is frequently judged by that most shallow of all standards, “Is it pleasing or amusing?” His fidelity to the ideal of truth is often overlooked or dismissed with a flippant word. We all know that great and dangerous evils exist and menace our civilization. They are growing under the fostering influence of the “conspiracy of silence”; yet we are seriously informed that we must not expose them to view; that there is so much tragedy in real life that society should not be annoyed by sombre pictures in fiction or the drama. “Prophesy to us smooth things or hold thy peace,” is the tenor of much of the criticism of the hour. Optimism is at present a popular Shibboleth, hence many thoughtlessly echo the cry against every exposure of growing evils. Writers who are popularly known as optimists belong mainly to three classes. Those who after a general survey of life become thorough pessimists, believing that the social, economic, religious, and ethical problems can never be justly or equitably solved; that in the weary age long struggle of right against might, of justice against greed, of liberty against slavery, of truth against error, the baser will win the battle, because there is more evil than good present in the world, and therefore, it being useless to break with the established order, assume a cheerful tone, crying down all efforts to unmask the widespread and ever-increasing evils which are festering under the cover of silence, and in substance urge us to eat, drink, and be merry, taking no thought for the morrow or for the generations which are to follow us.
A second class, comparing the ignorance, superstition, brutality, and inhumanity of the past with life to-day, arrive at the conclusion that the nineteenth century is the flower of all the preceding ages, which is true. That the present, registering the high-tide water-mark of the centuries, is to be extolled rather than assaulted, and all efforts to create discontent are unwise, and should be frowned upon. The mistake of these individuals lies in the fact that they fail to see that the chief cause of humanity’s triumphs is found in the works performed by those thinkers who in all ages have corresponded to the persons flippantly characterized pessimists at the present time: they who have assailed the existing order of things, who have thrown into the congregation of the people the shells of doubt; who have confronted the priests and potentates of conventionalism with a disturbing “Why”;who have compelled the people to think.
A third class of writers who pitch their thoughts in a hopeful key, appreciate the injustice of much that is accepted by conventional thought as right, or which is tolerated by virtue of its antiquity, but seeing the profound agitation which a thoughtful and earnest presentation of the evils of the hour produces in the public mind, they have become alarmed, fearing lest the rising tide of angry discontent sweep away much that is good, true, and beautiful, in its blind attempt to right existing wrongs, and inaugurate an era of justice. Old institutions, ancient and revered thought, accepted lines of policy, even when palpably unjust, are safer, they urge, than the sudden blinding light of justice, the instantaneous widening of the horizon of popular thought. The strong light of a new era thrown suddenly upon the foul, monstrous and iniquitous systems in vogue, the awakening of the public mind to the enormity of the injustice, hypocrisy, and immorality of respectable conservatism of to-day will turn the brain of the people—they will become mad; a second French Revolution will ensue—such is their fear, and from a superficial view their apprehensions seem reasonable. Their error lies in the fact that the horrors of the French Revolution were the legitimate result of a policy exactly analogous to what they are pursuing. It arose fromjustice long deferred; from wrongs endured for generations. It was the concentrated wrathof the people who for many decades had been oppressed by Church, by nobility, and by the crown. Though the motives are entirely different, these writers, in striving to procrastinate the feud of justice against entrenched power and established customs, are acting on the lines of Louis XV., who, when told that a revolution would burst forth in France, inquired, “How many years hence?” “Fifteen or twenty, sire,” was the reply. “Well, I shall be dead then; let my successor look out for that.” So in seeking to put off just and rightful demands, these short-sighted philosophers lose sight of the fact that the longer justice is exiled from the throne of power, the more terrible will be the reckoning when it comes. Yet history teaches no lesson more impressively, unless it be that a question involving justice once raised will never be settled until right has been vindicated.
Those reformers, on the other hand, who have been popularly credited with sounding a pessimistic note in all their writings, by virtue of their fidelity to actual conditions and prevailing customs, are chiefly optimists in the truest sense of the word. They are men and women who believe profoundly in the triumph of right, liberty, and justice. Their faces are set toward the morning. The glorious ideals that float before and beyond the present have beamed upon their earnest gaze. They have traced the ascent of humanity through the ages; they have noted the slow march, the weary struggle from age to age of the old against the new, of dawn against night, of progress against conservatism, but they have also seen that the trend has been onward and upward, and what is far more important, they have noted that the prophets, sages, andreformers,—in a word, the advance guard, who have blazed the pathway and opened the vista to broader and nobler conceptions of justice and liberty, have been those who have assailed the popular conventionality of their times; who have been denounced as enemies to social order, as dangerous pessimists and wreckers of civilization. But they have also observed that these honest and far-sighted spirits have set in motion the thought that has borne humanity upward into a more radiant estate. Furthermore, they realize that only by a fearless denunciation of existing evils, by faithful though gloomy pictures of lifeas it is, by raising the interrogation point after every wrong or unjust condition sanctioned by virtue of its antiquity and conservatism and by appealing to the reason and conscience of the people has humanity been elevated. They have studied the problem of human progress profoundly; they have strong faith in the triumph of justice, but they realize that victory can never be attained as long as conventionalism lulls to sleep the public conscience. They know that only by bringing the truth effectively before the people, only by raising questions and stimulating the mind can reforms be inaugurated. The present calls for honest thought, for true pictures, for brave and earnest agitators. Give us these, and humanity will soon take another of those great epoch making strides which at intervals have marked the ascent of man.
Much of the best thought of to-day necessarily takes on a gloomy cast, because the most wise and earnest reformers keenly realize the giant wrongs that oppress humanity. They see the splendid possibilities floating before mankind, even within the grasp of the rising generation, if the heralds of the coming day are courageous and persistent; if they sink all hope of popularity, all thought of self-interest; if they are loyal to their highest impulses, regardless of what may follow.
The era of the questioner has arrived.Soon mankind will refuse to accept anything simply because others believed it. Traditions and ancient thought, though weighed down with credentials of past ages or dead civilizations, will be cast aside. All problems will be weighed in the scales of the broader conception of justice which is daily growing in the mind of man. The twilight is passing, the dawn is upon us, and to-morrow will be indebted chiefly to these true brave men and women whom the superficial call pessimists, for the glorious heritage which will fall to humanity; for they are related to the manifold reforms which crowd upon the present, as were Copernicus and Galileo related to the science of astronomy, as Luther was to the Reformation, Jefferson to modern Democracy, as Wilberforce in England and Garrison in America to the overthrow of black slavery. They denounce the iniquity of the present hour; they unmask the carefully concealed evils which are undermining public morals; they demand a higher standardof life. If they aim to destroy the old wooden building, it is because they see around them not only the quarried stone, the mortar and iron beams, but a million hands waiting to erect upon the ruins of the old a nobler structure than humanity has yet beheld.
FootnotesThe Doubs is a stream after which one of the Eastern Departments of France is named. Its principal city is Besançon, the birthplace of Victor Hugo.Return to textNote on Picture of Invalid in Chair.The picture given in this issue of this apartment represents the poor invalid placed by some friends on a chair while his bed could be made. Our artist preferred to take it this way, knowing that it would bring out the strong face better than if taken on his pallet on the floor, where for two years he has lain. Through The Arena Relief Fund, we have been enabled to greatly relieve the hard lot of this as well as many other families of unfortunates. Now the invalid is provided with a comfortable bedstead, with a deep, soft mattress, and furnished with many other things which contribute to life’s comfort. When the bed, mattress, and other articles were being brought into this apartment, the tears of gratitude and joy flowed almost in rivers from the eyes of the patient wife, who felt that even in their obscure den some one in the great world yet cared for them.Return to pictureReturn to textNote on Picture of Constance and Maggie.When Mr. Swaffield first visited this little family he found them in the most abject want; a pot of boiling water, in which the mother was stirring a handful of meal, constituting their only food. Their clothing was thin and worn almost to shreds; their apartment but slightly heated; half of all they could earn, even when all were well and work good, had to go for their rent, leaving only one dollar and twenty-five cents a week to feed and clothe four persons. The day we first called they were poorly clothed, with sorry apologies for dresses and shoes laughing at the toes. In the picture we reproduce, they are neatly dressed and well shod from money contributed by liberal-hearted friends to The Arena Relief Fund.Return to pictureReturn to textNote on Illustration of Cellarway Leading into Partially Underground Apartment.This passage-way is several steps down from the court or alley-way, and leads to the apartment seen in accompanying picture. There are many of these dark cellarways leading to underground tenements.Return to pictureReturn to textNote on Picture of a Sick Man in Underground Tenement.Leading off the cellar-way shown above, is a tenement shown in this illustration. It consists of one room, over the bed the ceiling slants toward the street, and above the ceiling are the steps leading to the tenements above. In this one room lives the sick man, who for a long time, has been confined to his bed with rheumatism; his wife and a daughter are compelled to occupy the one bed with him, while the small sunless room is their only kitchen, laundry, living room, parlor, and bedroom.Return to pictureReturn to textNote on Portuguese Family, Widow, Two Daughters, and Little Boy.This illustration is a fair type of a number of lodgings. The photograph does not begin to reveal the extent of the wretchedness of the tenement. A little cubby-hole leads off from this room, large enough for a three quarters bed, in which the entire family of four sleep. The girls are remarkably bright and lady-like in their behavior, carrying with them an air of refinement one would not expect to find in such a place. They make their living by sewing; their rent is two dollars a week.Return to pictureReturn to textNote on Widow and Two Children in Underground Tenement.This picture of a squalid underground apartment is typical of numbers of tenements in this part of the city. The widow sews and does any other kind of work she can to meet rent and living expenses; the children sew on pants.Return to pictureReturn to textNote on Picture of Exterior of Tenement House.This picture is from a photograph of one of the many tenements in the North End which front upon blind alleys. The illustration gives the front of the house and the only entrance to it. In this building dwell twenty families. The interior is even more dilapidated and horrible than the entrance. Here children are born, and here characters are moulded; here the fate of future members of the Commonwealth is stamped. Taxes on such a building are relatively low under our present system so the landlord realizes a princely revenue, and while such a condition remains, it is not probable that he will tear down the wretched old and erect a commodious new building, on which he would be compelled to pay double or triple the present taxes, merely for the comfort and moral and physical health of his tenants.Return to pictureReturn to textNote on Illustration of Underground Tenement with Two Beds.These miserable quarters are four steps down from the street. There are two small rooms, one a shop in which kindling wood is stowed, which is gathered up by the children, split and tied in bundles. The mother also sells peanuts and candy. The back room contains a range and two beds which take almost the entire area of the room. In these two rooms several people sleep. One can readily see how unfortunate such a life is from an ethical, no less than social point of view.Return to pictureReturn to textNote on Illustration Out of Work.The young man photographed in his dismal lodging is a widower with six small children; he is strictly sober, an American by birth, but parents were Scotch and Irish. Until the illness and death of the wife last summer, everything went reasonably well. The husband and father followed the sea and managed to provide for his family, even saving a little. The wife’s sickness and burial expenses ate up all and more than he had saved, while being left with so many little children and no one to look after them, he found it impossible to engage in sea voyages; he was compelled to seek work which would enable him to be home at night. This winter, work has been very slack; for six weeks he has only been able to obtain employment for a few days; meantime his rent, which is two dollars and a quarter a week, has eaten up almost all the man could earn. Through the aid of the Baptist Bethel Mission and The Arena Relief Fund, this family has been provided with food and clothes.Return to pictureReturn to textNote on Illustration of Portuguese Widow in Attic.In an attic with slanting roof and skylight window lives a poor widow with her little family of four, a full description of which is given elsewhere. The long-continued sickness of the little child has made the struggle for rent and bread very terrible, and had it not been for assistance rendered at intervals, eviction or starvation, or both, must have resulted. This woman and her children are sober, industrious, and intelligent. Cases like this are by no means rare in this city which claims to be practically free from poverty.Return to pictureReturn to textThe extent and character of this work will be more readily understood by noting the labor accomplished by the Bethel Mission in the North End, which is doing more than any other single organization in that section of the city for the dwellers of the slums. Here under the efficient management of the Rev. Walter Swaffield, assisted by Rev. W. J. English, work is intelligently pushed with untiring zeal, and in a perfectly systematic manner. From a social and humanitarian point of view, their work may be principally summed up in the following classifications: [1.]Looking after the temporal and immediate wants of those who are really suffering.Here cases are quietly and sympathetically investigated. Food is often purchased; the rents are sometimes paid; old clothes are distributed where they are most needed, and in many ways the temporal wants are looked after while kind, friendly visitation of between one and two hundred very needy families comprise a portion of each month’s work. [2].The sailors’ boarding house.A large, clean, homelike building is fitted up for sailors. Every American vessel that comes into port is visited by a member of the Mission, who invites the sailors to remain at this model home for seamen. In this way hundreds yearly escape the dreadful atmosphere of the wretched sailors’ boarding houses of this part of the city, or, what is still more important, avoid undreamed-of vice, degradation, and disease by going with companions to vile dens of infamy. [3].Securing comfortable homes and good positions for the young who are thus enabled to rise out of the night and oppression of this terrible existence.This, it is needless to add, is a very difficult task, owing to the fact that society shrinks from its exiles; few persons will give any one a chance who is known to have belonged to the slums. Nevertheless good positions are yearly secured for several of these children of adversity. [4].The children’s free industrial school in which the young are taught useful trades, occupations, and means of employment.In this training school the little girls are taught to make themselves garments. The material is furnished them free and when they have completed the garment it is given them. [5].Summer vacations in the country for the little onesare provided for several hundred children; some for a day, some a week, some two weeks as the exigencies of the case require and the limited funds permit. These little oases in the children’s dreary routine life are looked forward to with even greater anticipations of joy than is Christmas in the homes of the rich. I have cited the work of this Mission because I have personally investigated its work, and have seen the immense good that is being done with the very limited funds at the command of the Mission, and also to show by an illustration how much may be accomplished for the immediate relief of the sufferers. A grand palliative work requiring labor and money. It is not enough for those who live in our great cities to contribute to such work, they should visit these quarters and see for themselves. This would change many who to-day are indifferent into active missionaries.Return to textAccording to J. R. Dodge, there are five million agricultural laborers in this country whose wages do not average over $194 a year.Return to textFifteen to forty per cent. is the usual profit exacted on tenement-house property, according to witnesses before a Senate Committee,—forty per cent. being common. Is not this the plunder of poverty by wealth? Has Ireland anything approaching this or resembling the horrid conditions in New York? “All previous accounts and descriptions” (says Ballington Booth) “became obliterated from my memory by the surprise and horror I experienced when passing through some of the foul haunts and vicious hotbeds which make up the labyrinth of this modern Sodom.” “How powerless” (said Mr. Booth) “are lips to describe or pens to write scenes which baffle description, and which no ink is black enough to show in their true colors.”Return to textThis love of ostentation has much to do with the degradation of India. The silver money which should be in circulation is hoarded up or used for silver ornaments. A wedding in that country is not marked by proper preparation for the duties and expenses of conjugal life, but by a display of jewelry and silver. A thousand rupees’ worth must be furnished by the bride, and two thousand by the bridegroom, if they are able to raise so much, and sometimes they raise it by going in debt beyond their ability to pay. This love of ostentation marks an inferior type of human development.Return to textThese suggestions are not offered in a hostile spirit. The writer fully realizes the large amount of moral sentiment and fervent piety assembled in the Church to uplift society in this country, but he deeply regrets that it is not more enlightened in ethics and in doctrine, and that the Church has never got rid of its ancient taint, mentioned by the Apostle James, that the brethren paid more respect to the man with a gold ring than a man in cheap clothing.Return to textThe salary that was sufficient for the commanding dignity and ability of Washington is not sufficient for the third-rate politician who occupies the White House to-day. The numerous allowances which are added to his $50,000 salary raise it to $114,865. But why should he have any salary at all? Would any man require the bribe of salary to induce him to accept the Presidency? The honor of the office would be more than sufficient pay for the third-rate men that are accidentally chosen to a far higher rank than nature gave them. We have too many ideas and fashions inherited from old-world kingdoms, and the ridiculous rules and etiquette of precedence and punctilio are as carefully enforced in the court circle of Washington as in the old world which still rules our fashions. But far worse than they, we have the criminal ostentation of a funeral for a Congressman, costing from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars, which is simply an unconstitutional and shameful robbery of the people to imitate the style of royalty.Return to textThe writer once started a society upon this principle, to be called theBrotherhood of Justice. Its principle was the abnegation of selfishness by strictly limiting the expenditure of every member to the amount really necessary to his comfort, dedicating the rest to humanity. It did not appear difficult to gather members, and an able apostle of this principle would be a world’s benefactor.Return to textIt is not only in the strong language of many political meetings, conventions, and the independent press, that this danger is recognized, but in that wealthy and conservative body, the United States Senate, it is distinctly recognized and frequently expressed; the language of Senators Ingalls, Stewart, Call, Gorman, Vest, Berry, and others, shows that they are alarmed and would warn their colleagues.Senator Call, of Florida, said:—“It is well for the people to form some idea of the extent to which the powers of the government are becoming subject to the control of a very small number of people, and the extent to which these powers are becoming absolute, despotic, monarchical, almost as much so as the Czar of Russia.“The present system places the control of the wealth of this country in the hands of a very small number of persons, an almost infinitesimal portion of the people; gives them money to buy those who represent the people.”Senator Berry said:—“So much injustice has been done to the people, so many wrongs have been perpetrated in the interests of wealth and capital by the passage of unjust laws, that the people are in open revolt to-day, and they have a right to be; they have determined to have relief, and they are entitled to it.”Senator Stewart said:—“If there is no reason nor humanity in the possessors of accumulated capital there is power in revolution.”Senator Gorman, the Democratic leader in the Senate, said:—“We stand to-day, Mr. President, upon a financial volcano. The labor of the country appeals through every channel it can to this administration and this Congress to stay the awful wreck that is threatened.”The eloquent address of Senator Ingalls presented still more forcibly and fully the evils of plutocracy, which is “threatening the safety if it does not endanger the existence of the republic,” by “the tyranny of combined, concentrated, centralized, and incorporated capital.” “The conscience of the nation is shocked at the injustice of modern society. The moral sentiment of mankind has been aroused at the unequal distribution of wealth, at the unequal diffusion of the burdens, the benefits, and the privileges of society.” “At this time there are many scores of men, of estates, and of corporations, in this country, whose annual income exceeds, and there has been one man whose monthly revenue since that period exceeds the entire accumulations of the wealthiest citizen of the United States at the end of the last century.” “By some means, some device, some machination, some incantation, honest or otherwise, some process that cannot be defined, less than a two-thousandth part of our population have obtained possession and have kept out of the penitentiary, in spite of the means they have adopted to acquire it, of more than one half of the entire accumulated wealth of the country. That is not the worst, Mr. President. It has been chiefly acquired by men who have contributed little to the material welfare of the country, and by processes that I do not care in appropriate terms to describe.” “The people of this country are generous and just, they are jealous also, and when discontent changes to resentment, and resentment passes into exasperation, one volume of a nation’s history is closed and another will be opened.”This feeling of resentment must arise in a community which is deeply in debt, and is not prospering. The last census shows in Iowa a mortgage indebtedness equivalent to over five hundred dollars upon every head of a family.Return to textAnd society is still organized to ensure the perpetuation of this poverty, no matter what the bounties of nature, or what the increase of wealth by art and invention. The army of the dissatisfied, the hungry, and the demoralized, continually grows and becomes more dangerous. The President of the National Home Association at Washington stated a few months since that there weresixty thousand boy trampsin the United States.Return to textNob Hill, in San Francisco, is crowned with five huge buildings in imitation of foreign palaces, utterly unfit for private residences, which may possibly sometime be utilized for public purposes. They but illustrate the crazy ostentation of selfish wealth. Can it be possible, as stated by the St. JosephHerald, that “George Vanderbilt is building a genuine old-fashioned mediæval baronial castle at Asheville, N. C., at a cost of $10,000,000”?Return to text
The Doubs is a stream after which one of the Eastern Departments of France is named. Its principal city is Besançon, the birthplace of Victor Hugo.Return to text
Note on Picture of Invalid in Chair.The picture given in this issue of this apartment represents the poor invalid placed by some friends on a chair while his bed could be made. Our artist preferred to take it this way, knowing that it would bring out the strong face better than if taken on his pallet on the floor, where for two years he has lain. Through The Arena Relief Fund, we have been enabled to greatly relieve the hard lot of this as well as many other families of unfortunates. Now the invalid is provided with a comfortable bedstead, with a deep, soft mattress, and furnished with many other things which contribute to life’s comfort. When the bed, mattress, and other articles were being brought into this apartment, the tears of gratitude and joy flowed almost in rivers from the eyes of the patient wife, who felt that even in their obscure den some one in the great world yet cared for them.Return to pictureReturn to text
Note on Picture of Constance and Maggie.When Mr. Swaffield first visited this little family he found them in the most abject want; a pot of boiling water, in which the mother was stirring a handful of meal, constituting their only food. Their clothing was thin and worn almost to shreds; their apartment but slightly heated; half of all they could earn, even when all were well and work good, had to go for their rent, leaving only one dollar and twenty-five cents a week to feed and clothe four persons. The day we first called they were poorly clothed, with sorry apologies for dresses and shoes laughing at the toes. In the picture we reproduce, they are neatly dressed and well shod from money contributed by liberal-hearted friends to The Arena Relief Fund.Return to pictureReturn to text
Note on Illustration of Cellarway Leading into Partially Underground Apartment.This passage-way is several steps down from the court or alley-way, and leads to the apartment seen in accompanying picture. There are many of these dark cellarways leading to underground tenements.Return to pictureReturn to text
Note on Picture of a Sick Man in Underground Tenement.Leading off the cellar-way shown above, is a tenement shown in this illustration. It consists of one room, over the bed the ceiling slants toward the street, and above the ceiling are the steps leading to the tenements above. In this one room lives the sick man, who for a long time, has been confined to his bed with rheumatism; his wife and a daughter are compelled to occupy the one bed with him, while the small sunless room is their only kitchen, laundry, living room, parlor, and bedroom.Return to pictureReturn to text
Note on Portuguese Family, Widow, Two Daughters, and Little Boy.This illustration is a fair type of a number of lodgings. The photograph does not begin to reveal the extent of the wretchedness of the tenement. A little cubby-hole leads off from this room, large enough for a three quarters bed, in which the entire family of four sleep. The girls are remarkably bright and lady-like in their behavior, carrying with them an air of refinement one would not expect to find in such a place. They make their living by sewing; their rent is two dollars a week.Return to pictureReturn to text
Note on Widow and Two Children in Underground Tenement.This picture of a squalid underground apartment is typical of numbers of tenements in this part of the city. The widow sews and does any other kind of work she can to meet rent and living expenses; the children sew on pants.Return to pictureReturn to text
Note on Picture of Exterior of Tenement House.This picture is from a photograph of one of the many tenements in the North End which front upon blind alleys. The illustration gives the front of the house and the only entrance to it. In this building dwell twenty families. The interior is even more dilapidated and horrible than the entrance. Here children are born, and here characters are moulded; here the fate of future members of the Commonwealth is stamped. Taxes on such a building are relatively low under our present system so the landlord realizes a princely revenue, and while such a condition remains, it is not probable that he will tear down the wretched old and erect a commodious new building, on which he would be compelled to pay double or triple the present taxes, merely for the comfort and moral and physical health of his tenants.Return to pictureReturn to text
Note on Illustration of Underground Tenement with Two Beds.These miserable quarters are four steps down from the street. There are two small rooms, one a shop in which kindling wood is stowed, which is gathered up by the children, split and tied in bundles. The mother also sells peanuts and candy. The back room contains a range and two beds which take almost the entire area of the room. In these two rooms several people sleep. One can readily see how unfortunate such a life is from an ethical, no less than social point of view.Return to pictureReturn to text
Note on Illustration Out of Work.The young man photographed in his dismal lodging is a widower with six small children; he is strictly sober, an American by birth, but parents were Scotch and Irish. Until the illness and death of the wife last summer, everything went reasonably well. The husband and father followed the sea and managed to provide for his family, even saving a little. The wife’s sickness and burial expenses ate up all and more than he had saved, while being left with so many little children and no one to look after them, he found it impossible to engage in sea voyages; he was compelled to seek work which would enable him to be home at night. This winter, work has been very slack; for six weeks he has only been able to obtain employment for a few days; meantime his rent, which is two dollars and a quarter a week, has eaten up almost all the man could earn. Through the aid of the Baptist Bethel Mission and The Arena Relief Fund, this family has been provided with food and clothes.Return to pictureReturn to text
Note on Illustration of Portuguese Widow in Attic.In an attic with slanting roof and skylight window lives a poor widow with her little family of four, a full description of which is given elsewhere. The long-continued sickness of the little child has made the struggle for rent and bread very terrible, and had it not been for assistance rendered at intervals, eviction or starvation, or both, must have resulted. This woman and her children are sober, industrious, and intelligent. Cases like this are by no means rare in this city which claims to be practically free from poverty.Return to pictureReturn to text
The extent and character of this work will be more readily understood by noting the labor accomplished by the Bethel Mission in the North End, which is doing more than any other single organization in that section of the city for the dwellers of the slums. Here under the efficient management of the Rev. Walter Swaffield, assisted by Rev. W. J. English, work is intelligently pushed with untiring zeal, and in a perfectly systematic manner. From a social and humanitarian point of view, their work may be principally summed up in the following classifications: [1.]Looking after the temporal and immediate wants of those who are really suffering.Here cases are quietly and sympathetically investigated. Food is often purchased; the rents are sometimes paid; old clothes are distributed where they are most needed, and in many ways the temporal wants are looked after while kind, friendly visitation of between one and two hundred very needy families comprise a portion of each month’s work. [2].The sailors’ boarding house.A large, clean, homelike building is fitted up for sailors. Every American vessel that comes into port is visited by a member of the Mission, who invites the sailors to remain at this model home for seamen. In this way hundreds yearly escape the dreadful atmosphere of the wretched sailors’ boarding houses of this part of the city, or, what is still more important, avoid undreamed-of vice, degradation, and disease by going with companions to vile dens of infamy. [3].Securing comfortable homes and good positions for the young who are thus enabled to rise out of the night and oppression of this terrible existence.This, it is needless to add, is a very difficult task, owing to the fact that society shrinks from its exiles; few persons will give any one a chance who is known to have belonged to the slums. Nevertheless good positions are yearly secured for several of these children of adversity. [4].The children’s free industrial school in which the young are taught useful trades, occupations, and means of employment.In this training school the little girls are taught to make themselves garments. The material is furnished them free and when they have completed the garment it is given them. [5].Summer vacations in the country for the little onesare provided for several hundred children; some for a day, some a week, some two weeks as the exigencies of the case require and the limited funds permit. These little oases in the children’s dreary routine life are looked forward to with even greater anticipations of joy than is Christmas in the homes of the rich. I have cited the work of this Mission because I have personally investigated its work, and have seen the immense good that is being done with the very limited funds at the command of the Mission, and also to show by an illustration how much may be accomplished for the immediate relief of the sufferers. A grand palliative work requiring labor and money. It is not enough for those who live in our great cities to contribute to such work, they should visit these quarters and see for themselves. This would change many who to-day are indifferent into active missionaries.Return to text
According to J. R. Dodge, there are five million agricultural laborers in this country whose wages do not average over $194 a year.Return to text
Fifteen to forty per cent. is the usual profit exacted on tenement-house property, according to witnesses before a Senate Committee,—forty per cent. being common. Is not this the plunder of poverty by wealth? Has Ireland anything approaching this or resembling the horrid conditions in New York? “All previous accounts and descriptions” (says Ballington Booth) “became obliterated from my memory by the surprise and horror I experienced when passing through some of the foul haunts and vicious hotbeds which make up the labyrinth of this modern Sodom.” “How powerless” (said Mr. Booth) “are lips to describe or pens to write scenes which baffle description, and which no ink is black enough to show in their true colors.”Return to text
This love of ostentation has much to do with the degradation of India. The silver money which should be in circulation is hoarded up or used for silver ornaments. A wedding in that country is not marked by proper preparation for the duties and expenses of conjugal life, but by a display of jewelry and silver. A thousand rupees’ worth must be furnished by the bride, and two thousand by the bridegroom, if they are able to raise so much, and sometimes they raise it by going in debt beyond their ability to pay. This love of ostentation marks an inferior type of human development.Return to text
These suggestions are not offered in a hostile spirit. The writer fully realizes the large amount of moral sentiment and fervent piety assembled in the Church to uplift society in this country, but he deeply regrets that it is not more enlightened in ethics and in doctrine, and that the Church has never got rid of its ancient taint, mentioned by the Apostle James, that the brethren paid more respect to the man with a gold ring than a man in cheap clothing.Return to text
The salary that was sufficient for the commanding dignity and ability of Washington is not sufficient for the third-rate politician who occupies the White House to-day. The numerous allowances which are added to his $50,000 salary raise it to $114,865. But why should he have any salary at all? Would any man require the bribe of salary to induce him to accept the Presidency? The honor of the office would be more than sufficient pay for the third-rate men that are accidentally chosen to a far higher rank than nature gave them. We have too many ideas and fashions inherited from old-world kingdoms, and the ridiculous rules and etiquette of precedence and punctilio are as carefully enforced in the court circle of Washington as in the old world which still rules our fashions. But far worse than they, we have the criminal ostentation of a funeral for a Congressman, costing from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars, which is simply an unconstitutional and shameful robbery of the people to imitate the style of royalty.Return to text
The writer once started a society upon this principle, to be called theBrotherhood of Justice. Its principle was the abnegation of selfishness by strictly limiting the expenditure of every member to the amount really necessary to his comfort, dedicating the rest to humanity. It did not appear difficult to gather members, and an able apostle of this principle would be a world’s benefactor.Return to text
It is not only in the strong language of many political meetings, conventions, and the independent press, that this danger is recognized, but in that wealthy and conservative body, the United States Senate, it is distinctly recognized and frequently expressed; the language of Senators Ingalls, Stewart, Call, Gorman, Vest, Berry, and others, shows that they are alarmed and would warn their colleagues.
Senator Call, of Florida, said:—“It is well for the people to form some idea of the extent to which the powers of the government are becoming subject to the control of a very small number of people, and the extent to which these powers are becoming absolute, despotic, monarchical, almost as much so as the Czar of Russia.
“The present system places the control of the wealth of this country in the hands of a very small number of persons, an almost infinitesimal portion of the people; gives them money to buy those who represent the people.”
Senator Berry said:—“So much injustice has been done to the people, so many wrongs have been perpetrated in the interests of wealth and capital by the passage of unjust laws, that the people are in open revolt to-day, and they have a right to be; they have determined to have relief, and they are entitled to it.”
Senator Stewart said:—“If there is no reason nor humanity in the possessors of accumulated capital there is power in revolution.”
Senator Gorman, the Democratic leader in the Senate, said:—“We stand to-day, Mr. President, upon a financial volcano. The labor of the country appeals through every channel it can to this administration and this Congress to stay the awful wreck that is threatened.”
The eloquent address of Senator Ingalls presented still more forcibly and fully the evils of plutocracy, which is “threatening the safety if it does not endanger the existence of the republic,” by “the tyranny of combined, concentrated, centralized, and incorporated capital.” “The conscience of the nation is shocked at the injustice of modern society. The moral sentiment of mankind has been aroused at the unequal distribution of wealth, at the unequal diffusion of the burdens, the benefits, and the privileges of society.” “At this time there are many scores of men, of estates, and of corporations, in this country, whose annual income exceeds, and there has been one man whose monthly revenue since that period exceeds the entire accumulations of the wealthiest citizen of the United States at the end of the last century.” “By some means, some device, some machination, some incantation, honest or otherwise, some process that cannot be defined, less than a two-thousandth part of our population have obtained possession and have kept out of the penitentiary, in spite of the means they have adopted to acquire it, of more than one half of the entire accumulated wealth of the country. That is not the worst, Mr. President. It has been chiefly acquired by men who have contributed little to the material welfare of the country, and by processes that I do not care in appropriate terms to describe.” “The people of this country are generous and just, they are jealous also, and when discontent changes to resentment, and resentment passes into exasperation, one volume of a nation’s history is closed and another will be opened.”
This feeling of resentment must arise in a community which is deeply in debt, and is not prospering. The last census shows in Iowa a mortgage indebtedness equivalent to over five hundred dollars upon every head of a family.Return to text
And society is still organized to ensure the perpetuation of this poverty, no matter what the bounties of nature, or what the increase of wealth by art and invention. The army of the dissatisfied, the hungry, and the demoralized, continually grows and becomes more dangerous. The President of the National Home Association at Washington stated a few months since that there weresixty thousand boy trampsin the United States.Return to text
Nob Hill, in San Francisco, is crowned with five huge buildings in imitation of foreign palaces, utterly unfit for private residences, which may possibly sometime be utilized for public purposes. They but illustrate the crazy ostentation of selfish wealth. Can it be possible, as stated by the St. JosephHerald, that “George Vanderbilt is building a genuine old-fashioned mediæval baronial castle at Asheville, N. C., at a cost of $10,000,000”?Return to text
Transcriber’s Note: The page numbers in the Table of Contents have been converted to issues in the following way:IssuePagesJune, 18911-128July, 1891129-256August, 1891257-384September, 1891385-512October, 1891513-640November, 1891641-768Index to 4th Volume769-771Please note that the November issue’s Contents are as printed, although the issue does have more articles than stated.Also, the illustrations are shown in the correct issue, but may be in a slightly different order than that listed.
Transcriber’s Note: The page numbers in the Table of Contents have been converted to issues in the following way:
Please note that the November issue’s Contents are as printed, although the issue does have more articles than stated.
Also, the illustrations are shown in the correct issue, but may be in a slightly different order than that listed.