"Ring in the valiant man and free,The larger heart, the kindlier hand;Ring out the darkness of the land,Ring in the Christ that is to be."
—ALFRED TENNYSON:In Memoriam.
The greatest claim Job ever makes for himself is that in the days of his prosperity, when everybody knew him and was obsequious to him as a rich man, he was not only kind to the poor, but exhibited for them a genuine sympathy which was illustrated in his carefully searching out the causes of their troubles.
There is a good deal that passes for kindness and sympathy, in these days, that is nothing more than lazy good-nature. Ignorant or indifferent charity is often as mischievous in its results as the wicked greed of the skinflint and the miser. Sympathy, to be worth any thing, must be incarnated, as in Job's case, so that it becomes feet to the lame and eyes to the blind. Frances Power Cobbe declares that the most Christ-like thing she ever heard from human lips, was from the "Good Earl" of Shaftesbury:—
"The friend of all the friendless 'neath the sun;Whose hand had wiped away a thousand tears;Whose eloquent lips and clear, strong brain have doneGod's holy service through his fourscore years."
When he was speaking to her one day, in his study, of the wrongs of young girls, which he had just been investigating, the tears came to his eyes and his voice trembled. After a pause, he added, "When I feel how old I am, and know I must soon die, I hope it is not wrong, but I feel I cannot bear to go and leave the world with all the misery in it."
People who have no genuine sympathy for their fellows, oftentimes grow harder-hearted at a revelation of the miseries of the oppressed, which stirs nobler souls to their profoundest depths and awakens them to all manner of helpful benevolence. There is an old legend of St. Hilary Loricatus, who scourged himself so perpetually that his skin became like the hide of a rhinoceros. So, acquaintance with the sorrows and woes of the poor and unfortunate, acquired out of a morbid curiosity, or a hunger for that kind of emotion experienced by the reader of sensational novels, will result only in marring and hardening us.
Very different is the result of such knowledge when obtained through an earnest sympathy and a holy ambition to assuage the sorrows of the distressed. Shelley never wrote anything more beautiful, perhaps, than this:—
"In sacred Athens, near the faneOf Wisdom, Pity's altar stood;Serve not the unknown God in vain,But pay that broken shrine again,Love for hate, and tears for blood."
I put this emphasis on the need of searching out the wrongs of the poor, because I am satisfied that one of the greatest factors in the present tenement-house situation is the ignorance and indifference of the people as to the condition of things in the slum tenement house. I am sure that nothing but good can come from an honest attempt to "let in the light of day upon the landlordism of the slums, as you have let it in upon Mormonism, and other hateful things that prefer darkness rather than light."
We need to bear in mind constantly, in considering this question, that society is a whole, and that an evil in one class of our citizenship cannot help but have its vicious influence, in a greater or less degree, upon every other portion of society. We must also remember that the bad tenement house is the birthplace and cradle, and to a large extent the schoolroom, of multitudes of boys and girls who are to exert their influence on every phase of our city life in the near future. Modern scientists have pursued the study of disease microbes with such diligence, that they claim to be able to recognize beyond mistake the germs of certain diseases. They find them in the atmosphere almost everywhere, and they prove that these microbes are real germs of disease, by their experiments with the lower animals.
The soil under our feet is full of these micro-organisms. The smallest quantity of earth put in water reveals, through the microscope, besides the organic and mineral matter, a mass of beings more or less complex, moving more or less rapidly. A German author, Mr. Reimers, has calculated that every cubic centimetre of earth may contain several million germs.
[Illustration: EXTERIOR OF A NORTH END TENEMENT HOUSE.]
Among these microbes some have not been studied, and the part they play in the economy of life is not known to us, while certain others have functions which have been well determined. Carbuncle, for instance, is one of the most terrible maladies which can attack cattle, and sometimes even men. Now-a-days, thanks to the labors of the scientists, this malady had become quite rare, and tends more and more to disappear. For a long time it has been known that carbuncle has been due to a particular microbe, but it was not known how it was propagated. M. Pasteur has demonstrated that this propagation was due, in part at least, to the longevity of the germs.
Thus it is, if you bury the dead body of an animal which has died of carbuncle, in a ditch five or six feet deep, and cover it with earth, the carbuncle bacteria will be found in the neighboring soil several years after the interment. We can understand, then, that cattle put to graze on this land, or fed by provender from it, may contract the disease. So when the cause of this malady was unknown, it is not to be wondered at that superstitious country people called these places "cursed fields."
There are social microbes no less potent and mischievous than those with which Pasteur deals. Some of those who are infected with the contagion are put away in pest-houses or in prisons; many more walk the streets, and spread their dangerous infection through the social, business, and home life of the people. My claim is that the bad tenement house in Boston, as everywhere else where people are herded together in crowded filthy quarters, where sanitary laws are neglected or defied either by landlords or tenants, or both, furnishes a breeding-place for the microbes of nearly every sin and vice that infest our modern society. The editor of the PortlandOregonian, commenting on General Booth's scheme for the rescue of the London poor, says: "Its most hopeful features are those which propose to provide the lowly with means to help themselves, in the building and maintenance of homes. Thousands of women belonging to the 'submerged tenth' need almost as much instruction in the simple acts of housewifely thrift and neatness, as the squaws belonging to the North American Indian tribes.
[Illustration: WIDOW AND TWO CHILDREN IN UNDER-GROUND TENEMENT.]
"Homes, in the civilized sense of the term, they have never had to keep, and their squalid abiding-places, overrun with wretched and quarrelsome half-clad children, and bare of the commonest comforts of life, have offered very unattractive fields for womanly originality and painstaking endeavor. A cheerful, quiet home, wherein the laborer is always sure of warmth and light and wholesome food, has in it a saving grace which all the creeds in Christendom cannot compass without its auxiliary aid."
The power of the liquor traffic, and all the other kindred vices that cluster about it, is constantly re-enforced by the social conditions of the neglected tenement house. Temptation enters as largely into drunkenness as into any other vice; and in the foul and fetid courts of the North End, the West End, South Boston, and the Cove, temptation to vice of every kind is ever present. The words of George R. Simms, in his earnest study of life in the homes of the London poor, apply with equal force to such sections in Boston: "The complete lack of home comforts, the necessity of dulling every finer sense in order to endure the surrounding horrors, the absence of anything to enter into competition with the light and glitter of the gin palace, and the cheapness of the drink in comparison with food, all these contribute to make the poor easy victims to intemperance. Among the poor, the constant war with fate, the harassing conditions of daily life, and the apparent hopelessness of trying to improve their condition, do undoubtedly tend to make them 'drown their sorrows' and rush for relief to the fiery waters of that Lethe which the publican dispenses at so much a glass. Ask any of the temperance workers in the viler districts, and they will tell you how they have watched hundreds of decent folk come into a bad neighborhood, and gradually sink under the degrading influences of their surroundings. There are a few men who have worked to keep their brethen from the clutches of the drink fiend who would not gladly hail the advent of air, light, and cleanliness, and the enforcement of sanitary laws, as the best weapons with which to do doughty deeds in their combats with intemperance among the poor."
One of the hardest things to deal with, in an attempt to arouse good people who are well-to-do and steadily prosperous to a serious study of the troubles of the poor, is to shake them out of the erroneous conviction that it is always the fault of the poor that they are in financial straits and compelled to resort to such places of dwelling. Put yourself in your brother's place, and listen to this true story of New England life enacted during the past year.
There lived, until a little over a year ago, in Western New York, a family which we will call Simmons,—far removed from the real name. The family consisted of the husband and wife, each about thirty-five years of age, and four children,—the eldest ten. Mr. Simmons was a confectioner by trade, but for some years had been travelling for a wholesale grocer's house in New York. He was a man of good address, and was fairly successful until, in some of the competitions of trade, the New York house determined to withdraw from that section, and he was thrown out of business. After casting about for several weeks in a vain attempt to get employment, he decided to bring his family with him to New England. They removed to Worcester, where for months he sought employment, but was unable to find anything except short jobs for a day or two at a time. Mrs. Simmons, who was an educated and refilled woman, and a most worthy lady in every respect, did what she could to assist her husband; but as a fifth child was born to them in the autumn, she was so weakened by sickness and the care of her children, that she could do little besides looking after them. As the months passed, they were compelled to resort to the pawnshop—the bank of the unfortunate. First went their silverware, which was mostly wedding presents, an anguish to part with to people of their history and character. Then followed their best clothing, and some splendid books out of a well-selected library—for remember that these were educated, intelligent people, with all the instincts and tastes of good breeding. Finally, discouraged with Worcester, they removed, with what they had left, to Boston. Again for weary days, stretching into weeks, went on the disheartening search for work. Mr. Simmons says in those days the very iron entered into his soul. To see his refined, cultivated wife sick and wasting away, his children improperly clothed and hungry, and compelled, day by day, to return to the tenement house on the filthy street whither his condition had forced him, with a feeling of utter helplessness, he declares that nothing but the religious convictions of his youth, and the sense of the cowardice of the act, saved him from the death of the suicide.
[Illustration: THE BANK OF THE UNFORTUNATE.]
During the winter they were compelled to sell their excellent cooking-range, which they had brought with them from New York, and procure a cheaper one. All the books that were left followed; then the bedsteads and other furniture went, until there was only one bedstead left, and that was rented through the day to a man who worked nights. Many days they had nothing to eat but bread or crackers—and often that was of a stale quality and a scant allowance. The eldest, a little boy, attended the Sunday-school of a Boston church; he has one of the truest, noblest, and most interesting faces I have ever seen. On missing him for a couple of Sundays, the superintendent of the school went in search of him, and for the first time knew of the condition of the family.
[Illustration: OUT OF WORK.]
The Sunday-school superintendent found his little scholar lying in a dry-goods box,—for there was no bed in the daytime,—sick from lack of food and clothing. He made inquiries of the mother, and at last, with sobs and tears, she told their story. Their necessities were relieved, and through the sympathetic interest of a number of Christian men the husband now has steady employment. Now, it is easy to say that he should have gone to the church, or the charities, with the story of his condition—and I think that is true; but, on the other hand, you can see that it was the very worthiness of the family, their very nobility, that made that course seem more bitter than starvation. Bear in mind that these people were not dissipated, that they were strictly moral and religious, and that both father and mother were of prepossessing appearance. This man did not drink, or smoke, or chew, and was intensely anxious to take care of his family; he was willing to do the humblest work, and preferred death to begging or dishonor.
Only a few weeks since, I called, with a brother minister, on a family of Maine people in a miserable tenement house in the North End. The husband and father had been sick and out of work for a good while. A short time before my visit, however, he had shipped on a coaster from Hyannis to Philadelphia. He had arranged for a little credit for his family to keep them from starving, until his expected return; but the winds had been contrary, and he was several days overdue. The wife and four children were in despair. They had had nothing since the morning of the day before, and then only bread and water, except a little broth which a neighbor, not much better off, brought in to one of the children—a beautiful little girl, sick with what would be "la grippe" on Beacon Hill, but is only "grip" down in the slums. The mother had a little babe, and was in such delicate health that it was impossible for her to go out to wash or scrub. Her two narrow little rooms were scrupulously neat and clean, as were her children; but the tears ran down her cheeks as, in answer to our questions, she confessed, as if she had been admitting a crime, poor soul, that they had had nothing to eat all day.
I give you these instances to show you how false is the idea that poverty and enforced residence in a miserable tenement house are a badge of sin or wrong-doing. But think of the agony of fathers and mothers, who love their children as well as you love yours, and have ambitions for them as holy and pure, who are compelled to see their loved ones deteriorating under their eyes, and through the contamination of the poisonous moral atmosphere which they breathe, dropping slowly, but certainly, down to a level with the brutality which surrounds them.
[Illustration: A CHEAP LODGING-HOUSE.]
Well, you ask, what is the remedy for all this? My main purpose, in this series of discourses, was to place the facts of the situation before the people. But I have some plain, practical, common-sense suggestions to make. In the first place, we want an almostinfinitelybetter system of inspection of tenement houses. Every tenement house in the city, having as many as eight families in it, ought to be inspected carefully, at least once a month—and once a week would be better—by an officer who holds his place under civil-service rules, entirely independent of politics, and who is held to a strict responsibility for the performance of his duties.
As to the tenement-house sweat-shop, I am convinced that a very simple law, which ought to be passed by the next legislature, requiring every manufacturer, of any kind, to file with the inspector of factories a list of the names and addresses of the people who work for him, would work wonders. It may be that there are some firms as low down as the one whose superintendent remarked the other day, when asked what the effect would be in their business if it were known that their goods were manufactured in filthy tenement houses: "It would make no difference at all; our customers would buy of us just the same, no matter where our garments were made." This firm, I am sure, would find itself mistaken, and, with a great many others, would break off its connection with the sweating-business if the law forced it to make that relation public.
Yet I am sure that nothing promises so much for reform as a revival of conscientious landlordism. The landlord is now, too often, as one well says, "an enormous wealthy estate, with heirs scattered here and there, who hire an agent, as their Southern brothers hired an overseer, irresponsible, unsympathetic, caring only to please his patrons, by showing a large balance of profit. And the poorer the tenement, the larger the balance. No repairs, no janitor, no supervision to pay for; accommodations so wretched that only the very wretched, who will expect to be crowded and miserable, will apply for it. O landlord! or 'estate!' too busy to collect your own rents, be not too indolent to require of your agent a strict account when he brings you twenty per cent instead of six! You would quickly bring him to book if he were suddenly to hand you six instead of twenty, but the time to question him is when it is twenty."
Mrs. Alice Wellington Rollins says in theForum, speaking of New York: "Nothing is more astonishing, in investigating the slums, than the discovery of the enormous prices the poor are paying for the most wretched accommodations. One man boasts that he draws thirty-three per cent on his tenement investments." The same writer wisely says, farther: "The landlord is not to be a philanthropist, willing to sacrifice himself for the good of others; he is to be an intelligent capitalist, putting in his money purely as an investment, and philanthropic only to the degree of being satisfied with six per cent returns, of hiring a janitor to be on hand day and night, of being his own agent, or keeping a sharp lookout on the one he may have to employ, and of urging his wife to collect the rents. But individual landlordism need not necessarily be confined to individual persons. Individual corporations can become landlords. Why should not some of the insurance companies that complain of being unable to find suitable investments for their immense funds, take hold of the tenement question? A life-insurance company of Boston, complaining of the low rates of interest obtainable, announce that they never expect over five per cent, and find it difficult at times to get four.
"Half of the trouble is caused by the wilful cruelty, but half by the thoughtlessness, of the landlords. A wise writer has said recently: 'Often you don't need to say to a man, "Whydo you do so?" If you can show himwhathe is doing, it is often enough to rouse him to reform.' I have faith enough in human nature to believe that if we could organize a procession of landlords and compel them to walk through the tenement districts, they would begin the reform themselves."
Let me relate to you a very interesting experiment that has indeed long since passed the era of experiment. In 1879 Mrs. Alice N. Lincoln and a young lady friend were so wrought upon by the filth and misery which they saw in certain tenement houses visited by them, in connection with the Associated Charities, that they determined to do something to better the condition of these poor people. They hired a large house on the corner of Chardon and Merrimac Streets. It contained twenty-seven tenements, and the rent agreed upon with the owner was one thousand dollars a year, though since the first year they have paid twelve hundred. The house had the worst possible reputation morally, and had been under the ban of the police for a long time.
It was, at the time they took it, half empty, because of the degraded character of the occupants. Its entries and corridors were blackened with smoke, and dingy and uninviting. The sinks were in dark corners, and were foul and disease-breeding. The stairways were innocent of water or broom, and throughout the entire house, from top to bottom, ceilings, walls, stairways—everything was dirty and neglected. It was surely not an attractive task to attempt to bring cleanliness and order out of such chaos, but these resolute young reformers deliberately set themselves to perform the seemingly impossible. The interior was painted, improved means of lighting and ventilating the sinks were ordered, and wood and coal closets arranged for each tenement on its own landing.
[Illustration: THE "GOOD LUCK" TENEMENT HOUSE.]
Previously the tenants had to keep their fuel in the cellar. The mouldy wall-paper was removed from the entries, and a fresh surface of plastering was put on. A few of the worst tenants had to be removed, but the majority, pleased with the new administration of things, were willing to accept its rules and remain. Tenants were soon found for every room; and this house, which had been regarded as very unhealthy, and had been a regular hive for fevers under the oldregimeof carelessness and greed, that did not care how dirty the tenants were so long as they paid their rent, under the new rule of cleanliness became so healthy that disease was almost unknown, and was, and is to this day, known by the tenants and the neighborhood generally as the "Good Luck House." The ladies collected their own rents, and kept everything well under their own supervision. A close account was kept of all receipts and expenditures, and at the end of the first year the balance of cash in hand was $111.67, or more than eleven per cent on the investment. The second year it was still more profitable, the net sum at the end of the year being $157.47. Mrs. Lincoln still carries on the administration of the "Good Luck House," and no queen was ever treated with more genuine respect than she is there. She is regarded as a most practical sort of patron saint to the institution. Yet there is no element of charity suggested in her dealings with her tenants. It is simply Christian justice. She seeks with great care to help them retain their self-respect, and treats them as fully her equal in personal responsibility. The rent is required to be paid regularly. One rigid rule enforced upon all tenants is cleanliness. She pays for the weekly scrubbing of the halls and stairways, but the tenants are required to sweep them every day, in turn. The sinks and drains are kept clean. All this has a marvellous effect on the home habits of the inmates; and I have seen as clean and tidy rooms in the "Good Luck" tenement house as I have seen anywhere, and that, too, on days when they were caught unawares, it not being the regular rent day, when they expect the landlady. All above six per cent has been put in the bank as an emergency fund, and, from time to time, the tenants have been permitted to share some unexpected pleasure from this. Once a splendid entertainment was given the tenants, in a public hall, with stereopticon views; at another time, it took a more material method of expression, and a good blanket, a pitcher and basin for each family, came out of this fund. In every way the tenants are made to know that their interests are in perfect harmony with those of the landlady. To encourage them to use more room, where they are able to pay for it, a discount is made on each additional room taken, and ten cents a week is deducted for payment in advance. A majority of them avail themselves of this privilege.
If he who makes a tree to grow where none grew before, is a public benefactor, surely she who has made it possible for many family-trees to grow and thrive, yielding their fragrance and their fruit in a pure home and social life, is a benefactress in the highest sense.
Let us encourage on every side the transformation of filthy, neglected tenements into "Good Luck" houses.
[Illustration: THE SAND GARDEN.]
A little wise thoughtfulness may vastly improve the childhood of the slums. Boys' clubs and girls' clubs are steps in the right direction. They awaken an interest in innocent games, afford a glimpse of beautiful pictures, and give zest to the intellectual appetite for fresh, wholesome books. The "sand garden" is also a happy thought. Think of thousands of children reared in the narrowest, filthiest quarters, who have never had a chance to make even a mud-pie out in the pure air of heaven. It may seem a small thing to some, but it is a tragedy to me. When I remember my own happy childhood over in the Oregon woods, where I ran as free and untrammelled as a young colt in the pasture, and made mud-pies beside the brook that had its home in a great bubbling spring on the hillside, breathing the air fragrant with the perfume of wild lilies, while robins and bobolinks and meadow larks sported and sang without fear, on every side—when I contrast a childhood like that with the child-life in the Boston slums, I am heart-broken. There is nothing so sad as this "murder of the innocents" that is going on in all our great cities. Marianne Farningham sings their dirge:—
"Such sights there are in the great sin-soiled city,As might compel an angel into pity;But none more sad in all the world of care,Than a young child driven to black despair!"
Surely, trumpet blast never called men and women to a holier crusade than this rescue of the lost childhood of the slums.
"There is a poor blind Samson in this land,Shorn of his strength and bound in bonds of steel,Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand,And shake the pillars of this Commonweal,Till the vast temple of our libertiesA shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies."
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:The Warning.
Travellers tell us that in some parts of the ocean, when the waves are still and the water is perfectly quiet, the curious eye may look down through the clear depths and see, rising out of the ocean's bed, the gnarled and broken trunks of forest trees. Once this ocean-bed was above the water-line, and these trees grew in the sunshine and stretched their branches upward to the blue sky of heaven. But, as the result of some strange convulsion of the earth, the coast-line has sunk down and down, until the incoming tide of the salt sea has swept over it, and schools of porpoises and fishes swim among the branches of old forest trees that in the former time were accustomed to the chatter of squirrels and songs of birds.
Any one studying the older and more historic sections of Boston will see many relics of a past civilization by which he will be impressed in very much the same way as is the sailor who looks on the remains of an ancient forest in the ocean's bed. Standing in the North End, in front of the "Copp's Hill Burying-ground," and looking up at the tower of Christ Church where the famous signal lanterns were hung, one can almost hear the old church appropriating the words of the poet:—
"By time's highway—a milestone gray—I watch the world march by;An endless stream of moving menRolls on beneath mine eye.Still, still they go; where, none can know;And when one wave is gone,Another and another yetCome ever surging on."
It seems strange indeed to go up and down some of these old historic streets, and yet never in the course of one's walk hear spoken the language of the country. In the course of my investigations during the past few months, I have found it impossible to do anything practical without an interpreter, sometimes in one language, and again in another. Often in entering an old rear tenement house, where filth and misery held riot, I have been astonished at the splendidly carved ornaments over the doorways, and the still-to-be-traced carving on the balustrade. Once these old rear tenements were the abodes of Boston's wealthiest and most cultivated citizens; but the Old World tide has come in, and house after house, block after block, and street upon street, have been overwhelmed by the waves of people who speak other languages, and whose habits of life are more foreign than their speech.
[Illustration: CHRIST CHURCH TOWER.]
I have no sympathy with those people who are crying out against all foreigners, yet it seems to me that no serious student of the signs of the times can take other than a sober view of the submerging tide of foreign immigration which has come into this country, of which the North End of Boston is a suggestive illustration. The consideration which causes the most sober thought among earnest men to-day, is the entirely different class of immigration coming to us now from that of former times. In the earlier days of American history it was the intelligent, self-reliant part of the European communities who dared the expense and hardship of the long sea voyage by a sailing-vessel, and faced the exigencies of the New World. The immigrants of those days were mostly farmers and skilled mechanics, who brought with them the habit and prestige of success. But under the new order of things, with the great steam ferries which make a passage to America only a brief holiday trip of a week, with reduced rates, and controlled by companies who scour every European city, by aid of their agents, to gather in their human cargoes from the poorest and most ignorant of all the labor classes, it becomes a very different question.
[Illustration: ON THE CUNARDER.]
The motives that impel people to this country now, are very different from what they used to be. The San FranciscoAltawell says: "The time was when the majority of foreign immigrants came because of an intelligent devotion to free government. Ninety-nine per cent of them were free from merely material motives. They were not urged by starvation, they did not come in the squalid steerage, they did not, on landing, feel compelled to invent servile occupations, before unknown in this country, merely to get the crusts and scraps that would keep them alive. Their motive was intellectual more than material. Their descendants are found in every State, of good report, foremost among the fibres that make up American character. Their blood may have been in the beginning English, Irish, Scotch, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Scandinavian, or Slav. No matter: they are now Americans, because the expatriation of their ancestors was real, and not unreal. Its motive was ethical, and not material. At present ninety-nine per cent of all immigrants come for material reasons only. Their decision to migrate to the United States is not for lack of liberty, but for lack of bread. The purpose is animal entirely. Every old emigrant from any country in Europe knows this to be so. The Italian who genuinely expatriated himself, who believed in Joseph Mazzini, and sought liberty for its own sake, finds no fraternity in the Italian immigration that has poured upon us since the suppression of the murder guilds of Sicily, and the decline of the industry of assassination in that country."
[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO THE RABBI.]
I think it is indeed one of the hopeful features of the situation that nearly all our adopted citizens, who are themselves thoroughly Americanized, share strongly in this view. Indeed, many of them seem to realize the danger more keenly than do the native-born citizens. I was very much interested, at the New England Chautauqua the other day, to hear Mr. John M. Langston, the colored orator of Virginia, read a letter from a leading Hebrew of Washington City, in which he reminded Mr. Langston that he had often pleaded the cause of the Negro, and appealed to him in turn to plead the cause of the Hebrew, by arousing public sentiment against the too rapid influx of Russian Jews.
[Illustration: PASSING THE QUARANTINE DOCTOR.]
The swift incoming of these Old World tides has very close relation to the wages of laboring people. Large numbers of the alien laborers who are coming now, are little better than "slaves of contractors, steamship lines, and the professional European jobbers in pauper labor. The large proportion of those engaged in our mines and on public works have been secured through these sources, either in direct defiance of our laws or by the evasion of the laws. They come in direct competition with the native-born and the worthy foreign immigrant, who comes here for the purpose of applying for citizenship and securing a home. They not only come into competition with every worthy class of laborers, but they are, for the most part, too ignorant to comprehend American institutions, and have no broader idea of liberty than to insist that it includes license. At every point of contact with our labor system, they debase it."
An illustration of this class of labor may be found in the fact that a year or two ago forty-seven alien miners employed in phosphate mines near Waterboro, S.C., were imprisoned because they refused to fulfil the contract under which they had been employed. Their story was that they had been met at Castle Garden by labor agents who induced them to sign a paper which they did not understand, but which proved to be a contract to work for one and two dollars a week in the phosphate mines, and board themselves. When they learned, on their first payday, of the trick which had been played upon them, they revolted. A few days in jail, however, induced them to return to work on the old terms.
The ChicagoAmerica, commenting on the incident, says this picture is a startling contrast to the prate of demagogues concerning the dignity of American labor. While they scheme to get the votes of intelligent workingmen, labor in many parts of this country is being enslaved by means of the hordes of foreigners who are imported in violation of law and right. Mr. Powderly tells, in theNorth American Review, of a visit which he paid to a mining-camp to investigate the condition of the men who were imported to take the places of American workmen who had demanded higher wages for labor done. These men lived in huge barracks. Their dining-room, smoking-room, sitting-room, kitchen, and bedchamber were one. There were five rows of bunks, three deep, each one thirty inches in width and seventy-eight inches long—the first bunk eighteen inches from the floor, the next, supported by rough hemlock posts, but two feet above it, and a third two feet above the second one. Each bunk was filled with straw, and covered with coarse coffee-sack material for bed-clothing. Two rows of hemlock boards, each one twenty feet in length by three feet in width, constituted the tables. The men came in from the mines while he was present, and, before washing face or hands, sat down to their supper of salt pork, meal, and water. One hundred and five men lived in a building one hundred and sixty feet in length by thirty feet in width. He found no one to answer him in the English tongue. When it was bedtime they lay down without divesting themselves of a single article of clothing; some of them took off their shoes, but the majority did not even do that. These men took the places of American workmen who were receiving from two dollars to two dollars and a half per day. The compensation allowed them was but seventy-five cents a day, and board. As a careful investigation proved that fifteen and three-eighths cents would provide the food furnished each man, the outlay was but ninety and three-eighths cents a day. It is getting to be quite a common custom on railroads and in mines and other places where this class of laborers are employed, to attach to the waistband of each man a leather strap fastened to a large brass check, similar to a baggage check. Every check bears a number, and the man who carries it, or to whom it is fastened, is known by the number on his check. Mr. Powderly grimly comments: "Fancy the future of the American laborer, whose name is forgotten, and whose only means of identification rests with a brass check, which may be substituted for another while he sleeps." If this is not white slavery, what is it?
These Old World tides have also close relation to the health of our cities. Large numbers of these people have been accustomed to live in crowded quarters, on insufficient food, and without any regard for cleanliness, in their native country. They come here, bringing all their filthy habits, bred in them sometimes for generations. I have no doubt that some of my critics tell the truth when they say that the squalid tenements occupied by the Russian Jews and Italians in Boston are better than the homes whence they came. So far as these foreigners themselves are concerned, even these wretched conditions are perhaps an upward step in evolution. But if we are going to have Naples in Boston, we must expect to have Neapolitan cholera epidemics as well.
[Illustration: SURGICAL THEOLOGY.]
These Old World tides have also a very close relation to the morals of our people. An overwhelming majority of all the criminals who figure in our police courts, and are supported in our jails and penitentiaries, were born abroad. This is very easy to understand when one investigates a little the methods used to encourage emigration to this country. The investigation made by the Ford Congressional committee revealed the enormous extent to which steamship companies are drumming Europe for human freight, to be dumped on our shores. "To those unscrupulous 'fishers of men' everything that walks or crawls is acceptable. Quantity, not quality, is the desideratum. The worse the specimen, the more effective, usually, is the emigration prize offered, and the less the opposition interposed by government officials. In a word, a drag-net has been thrown over nearly the entire European continent, with the result of having recently collected for shipment to this country a class of humanity, which, wherever it may be, is a menace to good order and a tax upon the police and charity departments of the country."
One who speaks with the highest authority on questions of political economy puts the immigration problem in a strong light when he says: "We are now draining off great stagnant pools of population which no current of intellectual or moral activity has stirred for ages. Thousands and hundreds of thousands of those who represent the very lowest stage of degradation to which human beings can be reduced by hopelessness, hunger, squalor, and superstition, are found among the new citizens whom the last decade has brought into the Republic." It is known beyond doubt that prisoners' aid societies in various European countries have been steadily shipping convicts to the United States. Neither has it been an uncommon thing for criminals to be let off by the courts, on condition of their emigrating to America. It is folly for us to expect to take this great criminal class, who were born to crime in the purlieus of European cities, who have been thieves from their cradles, and who come to us fresh from jails and prisons, and change them into useful citizens. They will not only continue to be criminals themselves, but they will spread their vile and wicked contagion wherever they go. There is not a single cause of reform or progress in this country that is not constantly discouraged and postponed by these Old World tides of ignorance and vice.
[Illustration: BUILDING USED BY THE BRITISH AS A HOSPITAL.]
There can be no doubt that there is a rising tide of public sentiment in this country in favor of a careful and wise examination of every emigrant who offers himself as a candidate for American citizenship in the future. I think, in view of the fact that we are getting a very large and increasing proportion of our immigration from Southern Europe, which is the most illiterate portion of the Old World—in Southern Italy, for instance, seventy-nine out of every one hundred are illiterate—there ought to be an educational test. There is certainly no wisdom in our adding hundreds of thousands a year to the number of illiterates already here, who are unable to read the Declaration of Independence, and have not the faintest conception of the principles of our Constitution. The examination of emigrants ought to be on the other side of the water. We have had many recent illustrations in Boston of the manifest hardships experienced under the present arrangement. Every person intending to emigrate to America ought to be required to give notice of that desire through the nearest American Consul, and furnish a clean bill of health, both moral and physical; and no one should be permitted to sail without a certificate of such investigation and satisfactory finding. This would not shut out any one who would be of value to American institutions, but it would require European countries to care for the criminals and paupers which their own social system has bred.
But what shall we do with these multitudes of foreigners who are already living in our midst? In the first place, we must cease to regard them as foreigners or aliens, and set to work with a definite purpose to Americanize them as quickly as possible. We must not, for a moment, be satisfied to let them herd together in the filth and squalor to which they may have been accustomed at home. We cannot afford to hand them over to the greedy tyranny of the sweater. Nothing will help us more than the abolition of the neglected tenement house, and the provision for a healthier, cleaner shelter for the people.
[Illustration: VICTORIA SQUARE.]
Some of our public-spirited men of wealth cannot do better than to look in this direction as a field in which to make their mark upon the uplift of their race and their time. There is a far greater demand for this class of benevolent investments than there is for added colleges or universities. If some of the vile and unhealthy tenements that have been described recently, not only by myself but by the reporters and the daily press, could be replaced by such buildings as the Victoria Square building in Liverpool, it would be a great public benefaction. On the former site of Victoria Square were miserable tenement houses. To-day a magnificent structure stands there, built around a hollow square, the larger portion of which is given up for a healthful play-ground for the children. "The halls and stairways of the building are broad, light, and airy; the ventilation and sanitary arrangements, perfect. The apartments are divided into one, two, and three rooms each. No room is smaller than thirteen by eight feet six inches; most of them are twelve by thirteen feet four inches.
"All the ceilings are nine feet high. A superintendent looks after the building. The tenants are expected to be orderly, and keep their apartments clean. The roomy character of halls and chambers may be inferred from the fact that there are only two hundred and seventy-five apartments in the entire building. The returns on the total expenditure on the building, which was three hundred and thirty-eight thousand eight hundred dollars, it is estimated will be at least four and a half per cent." The rents will seem miraculous to those of you who have been following the prices given in this series of discourses. In this beautiful Victoria Square dwelling, with its large, shrub-encircled play-ground for children attached, light, airy, three-room tenements are furnished for one dollar and forty-four cents per week. For those containing two large rooms one dollar and eight cents a week is charged; while the one-room quarters are let at fifty-four cents a week.
Who among our rich men will lead off in some grand crusade of this sort? Another thing we want to do to Americanize these people, is to furnish them employment under conditions consistent with health, intelligence, and morality. Instead of the crowded sweat-shop, the moral atmosphere of which is as filthy as the physical, we must have factories conducted in the spirit of Christian civilization.
Let me tell you of a vision I had the other day as I sat meditating and dreaming in my study chair. I dreamed I was walking down the streets of an American city when I saw a large brick building which I might have thought was a factory except that there were white curtains at every window in the house. As I neared the door, I asked a passer-by what it was, and he astonished me by saying, "This is the great Christian factory." Being a little anxious to see what life in a really Christian factory would be like, I went in on a tour of investigation. There were several hundred employees in the factory, most of whom were young women. To my astonishment, I found bath-tubs in this factory, with an abundance of hot and cold water, linen towels, and toilet soap. Did one ever hear of such luxuries in a factory of any sort? In the girls' bath-room there were rugs under foot, the finishing was done in oak, the trimmings were nickel-plated, the sanitary arrangements were perfect, and everything was as bright and clean as it was possible to make it. Each employee was allowed thirty minutes for a bath, and if one was so fastidious as to need three-quarters of an hour, no comments were made. The structure was commodious and convenient, substantially built, and heated, lighted, and ventilated throughout according to the most improved system. Even the cellar was attractive in its completeness, from the steam-engine that operated the machinery of the building, to the culinary department where those who desired could purchase a noon-day lunch at actual cost of material. The cook in charge of the kitchen devoted her entire time to the work. Every day, tea, with milk and sugar, was supplied by the firm free of charge; oaten meal was furnished three days in the week at the same rate. Delicious soup was served at three cents a bowl. The entire floor was carefully cemented; it was light, warm, and clean, and there were tables and benches for those who lunched in the building. An hour was allowed at noon, and while all were expected to be on hand promptly at one o'clock, the girls living at a distance from the factory were thoughtfully permitted to leave a few minutes before twelve o'clock.
On the main floor goods were stored in the centre of the room, the remaining space being reserved for the pleasure and convenience of the employees. At one end of this spacious floor there was an improvised music-room, with a piano and window garden, where the girls could sing and sun themselves every noon. Opposite was an enclosed sanctum, divided into a reading and reception-room. Bright, soft rugs were scattered about. The reading-table was as well stocked with current literature as a club man's library table. The papers and periodicals were reserved for the exclusive use of the girls. An open fireplace was one of the attractive features of the reception-room, and there was a mantel-mirror, too—that means of grace so dear to the gentler sex.
The two upper floors contained the work-tables and machines. On entering these work-rooms one was struck by the neatness of the place. Everything seemed to have a white lining. The atmosphere was not only clean, but fresh and sweet. There were no rags, no dust, no fluff, no smell of dripping grease from over-hanging machinery. A special staff of men was constantly employed to look after the premises, and their vigilance was such as to anticipate the wear and tear. The abundance of light and sunshine would astonish and delight not only business people, but school commissioners as well. Each work-shop was the size of an entire floor, so that light was admitted from four sides of the building, the windows almost adjoining one another. The white curtains, which softened the light, gave the place a homelike appearance which was very pleasing. Another charm was the love of flowers. There were potted plants on every floor, and they were as green and lovely as if nourished by a practical florist. On making some inquiries, I found that Friday was pay-day, and that indirectly much good resulted from this thoughtful system. Not only did it give the hundreds of families the benefit of the early Saturday markets, but in a great measure did away with the credit-books, and, best of all, was instrumental in keeping the girls off the street Saturday night. No charges were imposed upon the operators. They did not have to buy thread, pay machine-rent, or replace broken needles. If an attachment was displaced, it was restored by the firm, and even the girls' scissors were kept sharpened at the expense of the employer. Hot and cold water, mirrors, towels, and soap were among the conveniences. Posted over the stationary wash basins was this request: "Please help with your forethought to keep things clean and nice. Any attention will oblige." This was signed by the firm. The work was so systematized, and the training so thorough, that the tyrannical forewoman and domineering foreman had no place in the establishment. The manager was the only person to whom the hands were accountable. Adjoining the factory was a pretty garden containing a pear-orchard, with arbors and seats, where the girls lunched in fine weather. Women as a class show the effects of good keeping, and these workers were not an exception. There were a great many pretty faces among them, and not one that betrayed "boss-fright" or time-terror. As a class they looked more like normal college students than factory hands. Compared with overworked, nerve-strained, anxious-faced girls in the sweat-shops, and indeed in most shops and factories, these trim, tidy-looking, cheerful and contented women seemed to me the verynoblesseof the industrial world.
Ah! you may say, that is only an idle and visionary dream; and no doubt my critic of a few weeks ago, who thought I belonged to the most dangerous class in the community when I was describing the misery of the "white slaves of the Boston sweaters," would be ready to say that I am engaged in a scarcely less dangerous task in putting such ideal and impossible dreams into the heads of working-girls. But, dear sceptical friend, what I have been telling you is not a dream at all, but a heavenly reality that is going on in this modern work-a-day world, in the city of Newark, N. J., and I have merely been summarizing for you the report of Nell Nelson in the New YorkWorld, giving an account of the Christian experiment of Ferris Brothers' factory for the making of corset waists. I was at this point in my discourse on Thursday at half-past one o'clock, when I said to myself, "Isn't it a little hazardous to take all this for fact, even on the authority of a newspaper reporter? Will not a great many of your audience say it is only a pleasing fancy of a reporter's imagination?" So at three o'clock I was on the train for New York, and at eleven that evening I was in bed in a hotel in Newark.
Friday morning, at half-past seven, I was going through Ferris Brothers' factory, It is with great pleasure that I tell you that, on returning, I did not have to strike out a single word I had written. On every side were evidences of thoughtfulness; for instance, a large portion of the girls employed live in a section of the city to the rear of the factory. In order to save the extra walk of a block or two, three hundred additional keys have been made to the orchard gate, so that they can come and go that way. A large number of umbrellas are kept in the office. If a girl is caught at the factory in an unexpected shower, she finds an umbrella waiting to be loaned in just such an emergency.
With the manager I went through the culinary department. They make ice-cream now every day, and sell large plates to the girls for three cents. A careful account is kept of the cost, and the manager said he thought he should be able to reduce the cream to two cents a plate. I looked through the reading-room and over the carefully selected lists of papers. The manager said that among the girls were some excellent musicians, and others with good literary abilities, and told me, I thought with a pardonable degree of pride, that a few months since, when some desirable positions in the Newark Public Library were open to competition, the two young ladies from the Ferris Brothers' factory who were successful, scored ninety-five points out of a possible hundred in their literary examination. No employee works more than nine and one-quarter hours a day, and Saturday afternoon is free. The average wages, including beginners and help girls, is seven dollars a week, and a good worker makes twelve dollars.
You may say that many of these things that I have mentioned are insignificant and only trifles, but, after all, it is such things as these that in a large degree make or unmake our human lives; and a human life is no trifle. But lest some hard-headed business man shall shake his head and say, "The fools will bankrupt themselves," I must add, that aside from the beauty and grace of this thoughtful business philanthropy, the enterprise has been entirely satisfactory from a commercial stand-point, the firm agreeing that not only have their employees done more, but better, work than ever before. One of the firm assured me that, while there were, of course, many discouraging things and occasionally an employee who showed little appreciation, on the whole there had been a steady improvement during their three years' experience in this factory, and under no circumstances would they be willing to go back to the old factoryregime.
To contrast a factory like this with some of the sweat-shops I have visited, is like contrasting heaven with hell. There may be, and I doubt not are, many other factories where the same Christian thoughtfulness is exercised in the treatment of employees, as here. Upon all such may the benediction of Heaven rest! May their numbers be multiplied!
The Church, too—I mean the great Catholic Church, formed of all the branches of our Christianity "who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity"—must open its arms with a heartier tone of welcome and brotherhood to the tried and disheartened working-people. Nothing in recent art has stirred me so deeply as a dim copy of Hacker's "Christ and the Magdalene," reproduced by Mr. Stead in theReview of Reviews. The Christ is standing with coarse clothing and toil-worn hands by the work-bench in the carpenter-shop at Nazareth. The shavings are heaped in piles around, him on the otherwise bare floor, while kneeling at his feet in penitence and trust is the Magdalene. Brothers, it is this carpenter Christ, as Frances Willard aptly puts it, "the Monday Christ," for whom the toil-worn world hungers, and will welcome when it sees Him manifested in us, in the shop, the factory, and the counting-room, as well as in the church.
Zoe Dana Underhill sings, inHarper's Magazine, a song the modern Church needs to learn, until its great heart shall throb with its spirit.
"The Master called to His reapers,'Make scythe and sickle keen,And bring me the grain from the uplands,And the grass from the meadows green,And from off the mist-clad marshes,Where the salt waves fret and foam,Ye shall gather the rustling sedges,To furnish the harvest-home.
Then the laborers cried, 'O Master,We will bring Thee the yellow grainThat waves on the windy hillside,And the tender grass from the plain;But that which springs on the marshesIs dry and harsh and thin,Unlike the sweet field-grasses,So we will not gather it in.'
But the Master said, 'O foolish!For many a weary day,Through storm and drought, ye have laboredFor the grain and the fragrant hay.The generous earth is fruitful,And breezes of summer blowWhere these, in the sun and the dews of heaven,Have ripened soft and slow.
'But out on the wide, bleak marshlandHath never a plough been set,And with rapine and rage of hungry wavesThe shivering soil is wet.There flower the pale green sedges,And the tides that ebb and flow,And the biting breath of the sea-windAre the only care they know.
'They have drunken of bitter waters,Their food hath been sharp sea-sand;And yet they have yielded a harvestUnto the Master's hand.So shall ye all, O reapers,Honor them now the more,And garner in gladness, with songs of praise,The grass from the desolate shore.'"
"And Sir Launfal said, 'I behold in thee,An image of Him who died on the tree;* * * * *Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me;Behold, through Him, I give to thee!'"
—James Russell Lowell:Sir Launfal.
"Now there was a certain rich man and he was clothed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day: and a certain beggar named Lazarus was laid at his gate full of sores."
"Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto Me."
These two views of poverty ever stand over against each other. They are the same to-day as when so graphically described by Jesus of Nazareth. The one looks on poverty with contempt; it is the view of selfishness. The other looks upon it with sympathetic brotherhood; the view of humanity at its highest attainment, or from the standpoint of Jesus Christ. Both these scriptures, however, agree in teaching us the solemnity of our relation to our neighbors who are in trouble or poverty. Mrs. Catherwood, in her story of "The Lady of Fort St. John," in the AugustAtlantic Monthly—a tale of the early French settlements in this country, illustrates one of the old superstitions by a weird tale of an old Hollander who had married a very young wife who, when he came to die, was still only a girl; and the cunning old Dutchman endeavored to maintain his supremacy over her after his death by grimly providing in his will that his right hand should be severed from his body, and, preserved by some rare chemical process, should always remain in the possession of his widow as her most sacred treasure; for if she lost or destroyed it, or failed to look on it once a month, nameless and weird calamities, foreseen by the dying man, must light not only on her, but on those who loved her best. And so, long after he was in his grave, that horrible memento of the past held this poor woman in the clasp of its skeleton fingers, and guided her course across the oceans, and into distant lands. This was the grip of a superstition only; but there is a real grip of the "dead hand," of which this ghostly story is only a faint intimation—the grip of yesterday on to-day—of to-day on to-morrow—the grip of my duty toward my neighbor that cannot be shaken off, which even death itself does not loosen.
There is, perhaps, no keener test of the standing of a person or a city in the scale of civilization, than their treatment of the sick or helpless poor dependent upon them. Dives, the barbarian, whether in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, or in Boston to-day, lets the poor lie at his gate in indifference, at the mercy of every scavenger that may prey upon them. The "Good Samaritan," whether on the road to Jericho, or at Rainsford Island, stops with sympathetic eye, a helpful hand, and open purse to share his best with the victim of misfortune or wrong.
We come this morning to examine into the attitude of Boston toward her paupers who are cared for in the two institutions at Long Island and Rainsford Island. I have made repeated visits to these islands, and approach this discussion only after many weeks of reflection, and a careful sifting of the information received. I have hesitated about treating the subject at all, because a criticism of a public institution is supposed by so many people to mean a personal accusation or attack upon the parties in charge of it. I wish to say, in the beginning, that so far as I have been able to see, the officers immediately in charge of these institutions are kind-hearted and humane, and are endeavoring to do the best they can, with the means at their disposal. After saying that, I propose, without any regard as to whom it may please or displease, to point out candidly what seems to me inexcusable thoughtlessness and grievous errors in the treatment of the paupers in these institutions.
The largest and best building is on Long Island. Here the men are kept. There are about three hundred on the average, but this is increased to between four and five hundred in the winter. And right here is a wrong that ought to be righted.
[Illustration: TRAMPS.]
The excuse for careless and indifferent treatment of the really deserving pauper men who are on Long Island is that every winter the place is crowded with "bummers" who come to Long Island in the winter for free quarters, and as soon as the weather is fine for out-door tramping in the summer, they go away to escape work in the institution, coming back again in cold weather, It would certainly be very easy to devise a law to make this impossible. No able-bodied person who is able to work, ought under any circumstances to be sent to the almshouse. People who are able to work and support themselves, and do not do so under their own direction, ought to be sent to the work-house, and compelled to do so under the direction of a proper officer. This would take away from Long Island a lot of drunken tramps who congregate there in the winter. The same remark applies to women. The intemperate and vicious woman ought not to be sent to the almshouse; it should be sacredly kept as "a refuge and a home where the respectable poor, the sick, and the old—those who have outlived their children, or have broken down in the race of life—may find shelter and care." But the honest cases ought not, and need not, suffer in order to punish these frauds. At Long Island, on one of my visits, there were ninety-two men on the sick-roll, and only one nurse, and he not a trained nurse. I am also satisfied that the food is insufficient either for sick or well. A reporter of the BostonPostmanaged to interrogate an old man who was able to sit up by the side of his little cot. In answer to a question, this sick old man said they did not get any milk; and yet there is a large farm attached to the institution, and there is no excuse for not having plenty of milk provided at very little expense for these infirm old people. The old man said they had meat three times a week—remember that means three meals out of twenty-one; and when asked by the reporter, "What kind of meat?" he answered pathetically, "It wouldn't do any good for me to tell you, sir, but it's mighty poor stuff." Permit me to quote in full a little article in the BostonHeraldof a few weeks since, under the title, "Some Harbor Policemen Overpowered by Long Island Hospitality:"—
"There is a little joke which is causing considerable merriment at the Harbor police station at the present time, and the key to it is contained in the words, 'Long Island hospitality.' A few days ago the police-boat 'Protector' was ordered to take to Long Island a party of surveyors, who were to lay out grounds for the proposed new hospital.
"The work of the boat's passengers occupied an unexpectedly long time, and as no provision had been made for dinner, the party invoked the hospitality of the almshouse on the island. The surveyors and officers of the boat were assigned to one part of the institution, while the crew were invited into the large dining-hall, usually occupied by the inmates. It is this last-named party which is bearing the brunt of the joke. The feast of which they were invited to partake consisted of a lot of potatoes with their jackets on, without the formality of a platter, a plate of what the boys termed 'soup-meat,' a soup-dish minus the soup, knives and forks, and empty mugs. Grace was omitted; the men spent the time in gazing first at the 'feast,' and then at each other. A common thought seemed to occupy the minds of all, for without a word they simultaneously arose from the table and left the room.
"They waited at the boat until the surveyors' work had been completed, and then came back to Boston. It was then time to make the regular afternoon trip, and with empty stomachs they started out again and finished the day. It was the intention of the victims to keep the matter 'shady;' but the joke leaked out, as such things will, and it is worse than shaking a red rag at a bull to say 'Long Island hospitality' to certain blue-coats who labor on the water." And yet they were there at one of the three lucky meals out of twenty-one, when there was "soup-meat."
Among the men in this institution was pointed out to me a marble-cutter, who was a thoroughly respectable, self-supporting workman. He was hurt while at work by the falling of a stone, and so disabled by an injury of the spine that he was unable to continue employment. As soon as sickness had used up what money he had, having no relatives who could help him, there was nothing left for him but to come here. One of the officers spoke of him in the highest terms, and told me how, without direction from any one else, he sought by many daily circuits of the building to strengthen his spine. I was assured by the same officer that many others who were inmates were there purely through misfortune which was from no fault of their own, but from such accidents as are likely to happen to any honest laboring-man. Now I maintain that such men ought to be treated with a decent regard for their self-respect, and given a comfortable home. It is an outrage that this marble-cutter, and others like him, are fed more shabbily than if they had been convicted of a crime.
In addition to the men on Long Island, there is one ward in the hospital used for women. There were fifty-two sick women crowded into this ward at the time of my visit. There was only one nurse, an excellent woman, but with no special education for her duties. The night helper is a woman who is hired for fifty cents a day. For this ward of fifty-two sick women there was no bath-room at all. The nurse's own room was situated at the other end of the building from her ward, and she had to go across the men's ward to get to her patients at night, if she went. There was no place for insane or refractory patients, or for the dying, except in the general ward. Sometimes their cries and groans are very distressing to the other patients. In a recent case of death from mania, the whole ward was disturbed for several nights.
Most of the women are kept at Rainsford Island, and there are many more reasons for criticism there than on Long Island. The only hospital there is an old smallpox hospital, more than three-score years old. This is crowded beyond all thought of the requirements of sanitary science. Think of a room for confinement cases only seven feet wide and less than twelve feet long. In the annual report of Public Institutions for 1889 we find the following statement by the then resident physician: "It is remarkable that a building which was a small-pox hospital fifty-seven years ago, and which since then has undergone no material improvement, should up to the present time be the only hospital connected with our pauper institutions." The doctor might have added that this building was abandoned a quarter of a century ago by the State, as unfit for sick persons. It is certainly no extravagance to say that these arrangements for the care of the sick on Rainsford Island are more than half a century behind the times. The only thing modern I saw was the keen-eyed physician.
There is about the entire institution a lack of careful thoughtfulness for the comfort of the inmates, that is exceedingly painful to a thoughtful observer. For example, the island is very beautifully situated, and there are many fine trees in the shade of which, with comfortable arrangements, it would be a most healthful and delightful experience for hundreds of these infirm and aged women to sit on summer days; but, although I searched carefully throughout the grounds, I found only two benches under the trees anywhere, and a half-dozen more, perhaps, around on the sea-front, and not one of them with a back to it. Think of arranging for the comfort of your own grandmother, eighty years old, in that way!
The food here, too, is insufficient. For instance, the matron told me that only those who worked were allowed butter on their bread. These old women are set down to bread and tea for one meal, and bread and soup for another; they, too, have a little meat of some kind three times a week, and potatoes at dinner. Again I repeat that, with the large farm attached to Long Island, there is no reason why these old women, as well as the old men, should not have an abundant quantity and an appetizing variety of vegetables, as well as plenty of nourishing milk. And I maintain that it is a shame and disgrace that the Boston which less than five years ago could spend more than twenty thousand dollars in feasting and wining a Hawaiian woman who came to visit us, expending four thousand dollars for flowers alone, cannot afford to furnish a little butter to spread on the bread of the helpless old women on Rainsford Island, even if they are unable to work. Think of the stolid indifference, or thoughtlessness—to hunt for charitable words—of an institution having several hundreds of people to care for, and yet making no difference in its hospital diet. No matter what the disease, it is to eat up to the cast-iron programme, or starve. Who that has been ill or has watched anxiously with their own dear ones, but has noticed the capriciousness of a sick person's appetite, the longing for little delicacies, for just a taste of some rare and unusual dish or drink? Such things are not expensive; they only mean that somebody shall invest a little genuine sympathy and thoughtfulness in the matter. Throughout this entire institution, hospital and all, having over four hundred women, there is not a single trained nurse! In this day of enlightenment it ought to be a crime for any hospital to be carried on without trained nurses. There is no night watchman on the whole island, and, after eight o'clock in the evening, nobody who is responsible at all. In the main institution on Rainsford Island the attic is crowded with beds to such an extent as to make a healthful atmosphere impossible.
You must remember that many people here are paupers through no fault of their own. Many of them are victims of incurable disease; and, as against such cases the Boston hospitals are closed, the almshouse is for them the only open door. Public sentiment must be aroused to demand, with Florence Nightingale, that "work-house sick shall not be work-house inmates, but they shall be poor sick, cared for as sick who are to be cured if possible, and treated as becomes a Christian country if they cannot be cured." We people who are followers of Him who confessed, "The foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head," cannot afford to treat people who are, through misfortune, in the same condition to-day as though they were some species of criminal, rather than as the hostages of our Christ. Perhaps you say these people are not appreciative, are not refined, do not have fine feelings—how do you know that? That is doubtless true about some of them, but about many of them nothing could be more false. People do not lose their powers of appreciation when they lose their money, and I doubt not that these people would average, in the essential characteristics of manly and womanly character, with the same number of people of the same age you could gather from the homes along your street. Last Christmas some kind-hearted women went down to Rainsford with some gifts for the sick poor. One of them, writing about their reception, says: "It was very touching to see the happiness our little gifts conferred. The first was a poor old woman, more than eighty, nearly blind from cataracts over her eyes. She is called 'Welsh Ann' because she is from Wales. My friend told her I had been in Wales. She seemed so glad to shake hands with one who had been in her own country, and her voice choked with tears as she thanked me and took my gift. But she brushed the tears away from her poor sightless eyes while my friend repeated to her the Twenty-third Psalm, and then at her request knelt and prayed. The apron which I gave her has quite a history. A girl who earns her own living, hearing I was making these aprons, sent me this one which she bought. It was worked across the bottom, and I thought, as poor Ann rubbed her hands over the work she could not see, but only touch, how cheered the young lady would be when she heard of the joy her gift gave. I was asked to give one pretty apron to another Ann—one they called 'Greenland Ann,' because she is so very fond of hearing them sing 'From Greenland's icy mountains.'" And surely that spirit of the Christ, which is warm enough to impel men to dare the frost of "Greenland's icy mountains" in order to comfort with His blessed Gospel their Esquimau brother, ought to prompt us to deal thoughtfully and tenderly with the dear old soul that likes to hear Him sung about on Rainsford Island.
I shall never forget the impression made upon me by Mark Guy Pearse, one of the greatest of the English preachers, in his story of how he was ordained a preacher. He said: "It was no bishop or presbytery that consecrated me, but a saintly Cornish woman, whom we children called old Rosie, and who was, indeed, my right reverend mother in God.
"So far as I can recollect, it was always sun-shiny when we visited old Rosie, though of course it must have rained sometimes. She had a single room in a tiny little cottage squeezed behind the rest. A narrow strip led to the door, and there was no room for any window in front, except the one right above the door, peering out from under the heavy thatch. There is no one to answer if we knock, so we push our fingers through the door and lift the wooden latch. My father, who goes with us almost every Sunday, has to stoop his head in climbing the narrow stair, and of course the little lad of six and his sisters stoop their heads too; there are four of the girls and one of me. Rosie welcomes us with her beaming smile. She is sitting up in bed, as she has done for eleven long years. She is a hundred and five years old, and her hair is snowy white, yet there is not a wrinkle on her brow, and her cheeks have the rosy brightness from which she gets the familiar name. All her relations are gone, and she is now a pauper with only two or three shillings a week from the parish.