OUR CITIES.
A great city is a great sore--a sore which never can be cured.
The greater the city, the greater the sore.
It necessarily follows that New York, being the greatest city in the
Union, is the vilest sore on our body politic.
If any one doubts it, let him live in New York awhile and keep his eyes
and ears open.
The trouble about great cities is not that they have any impetus or
influence especially their own, but that every one, from the vilest all
the way up to the best, is compelled by circumstances of city life to
often conduct his own daily walk and conversation on lines which are not
entirely natural, and which never can be made so.
It would be useless to deny that in every large city may be found a
number of the best men and women that humanity has been able to evolve.
In the great cities are found many of our wisest statesmen, our greatest
theologians, our best business men, and a host of lesser, but perhaps
not less important individuals, whose influence for good upon the world
is known and recognized everywhere. Nevertheless, these are exceptions
to the rule. They are not what they are because of the city; they are in
the city simply because it gives them a better centre and starting-place
for whatever work may be incumbent upon them.
The first deadening influence of the city is that no one knows any one
else. Of course every one has some acquaintances, and some people are
said to be in the best society and to know everybody, but “everybody” is
a relative term, and it never means as much in the largest city as it
does in a village of a thousand people. The postman knows everybody by
name, and so does the tax-collector and the man who brings you your gas
bill, but individual acquaintance--the touch of elbow--the touch of
nature that makes the world akin, must not be looked for in any large
city in the Union, least of all in New York, which in spite of two
hundred and fifty years of existence, is still so new comparatively that
almost all of its prominent citizens were born somewhere else. The names
of prominent Americans who reside in New York will naturally occur to
any one, yet it is quite safe to say that not one of these gentlemen
know by sight and name, let alone by personal acquaintance, more than
one person in five who reside within a two-minute walk of his house.
An ex-cabinet officer, a gentleman whose varied abilities have made him
known throughout the civilized world, was once asked who was his
neighbor on the right. The houses of the two men touched each other, as
two houses must, in the city of New York, but the wise and largely
acquainted gentleman was obliged to say that he did not know. When the
questioner informed him that the person occupying the adjoining house
was a notorious thief for whom the police had been long in search, he
was astonished and shocked. Nevertheless, when he a few months afterward
had his house robbed and drove about violently in a cab in search of the
police captain of his precinct, it took him an hour to discover that the
said police official resided next door to him on the left. Afterward he
was teased about his lack of knowledge of his neighbors, and he admitted
frankly that, although he was a man without “airs,” and had always made
it a custom to fraternize freely with his fellow-men, he knew but two
individuals who resided on the same block with himself, and one of these
was his own grocer, who occupied a store on the corner.
“If this is so with the green tree, what must it be with the dry?” Men
whose sole business is to earn their daily living are glad to find a
decent roof over their heads anywhere in a large city and drop into the
best place they can find, regardless of who may be their neighbors, and
utterly unable to devote any time to their neighbors, even should they
be fortunate enough to become acquainted with them. Neighborhood feeling
and sentiment, which is of incalculable benefit in all communities not
thickly settled, has no influence whatever in a large city. A man may
not only live in a house between two people of whom he knows nothing,
but the great value of ground in the city of New York and the limited
area has compelled the erection of a number of buildings known as “flat”
and “apartment” and “tenement” houses, and very few men know the people
who live under the same roof with themselves.
An amusing story is told of a couple of editors, who were questioned
about each other and each replied that he had not the honor of the
other’s acquaintance. The answer seemed to puzzle those who heard it,
and the subsequent remarks elicited a demand for an explanation, when it
was learned that these two men, members of the same profession, and both
entirely reputable citizens, had been residing in the same building for
six months; but as one was at home only by daylight, and the other only
at night, they had never chanced to meet under their own roof.
Of course, if such ignorance may come in the ordinary course of events
regarding entirely respectable people, cities must form an admirable
hiding-place for disreputable and dangerous characters of all sorts. The
time was when a man detected in crime thought it advisable to run away
from a large city. But nowadays he knows better. He stays as near home
as possible, knowing that there are numberless opportunities for keeping
himself entirely out of sight and out of mind of every one who ever knew
him. Defaulters who have a great deal of money in their pockets, and
also those who have none at all, occasionally find it desirable to go to
Canada or Europe, but the rogue who has two or three thousand dollars to
spare knows perfectly well that by keeping in-doors in New York he can
absolutely escape detection. The police may know him by sight, but the
keepers of boarding-houses do not, neither do their servants; and so
long as he will remain in his room, have his meals sent to him, and take
his exercise and outings only after dark in such disguise as any one can
improvise at very short notice, he is entirely safe from detection. One
of the bank defaulters who ranks as one of the most successful in the
annals of such crime in the city of New York, was looked for in Canada
and all over Europe for eight months, and finally by accident was
discovered in a boarding-house only two squares away from his original
place of residence.
Criminals when not actually plying their vocation generally go to large
cities, for two reasons; first, to spend their ill-gotten gains in
pleasure, and secondly, that as a rule cities are the best
hiding-places.
For the same reason that causes desperate criminals to hide in the
larger cities, all persons who have in their lives any features which
they wish to conceal, find the cities preferable places of residence.
One man of large property and some national prominence died a few years
ago in the city in which he had been doing business for thirty years,
and after he died it was discovered that he had nine wives living, from
no one of whom had he ever separated through the formality of a divorce.
Each of these nine women imagined herself his one and only wife. Any
man, who has formed an undesirable alliance in business or in love or
otherwise, knows that with very little trouble he can hide all traces of
his mischief by going to a large city to live.
An inevitable consequence is that the number of able but undesirable
characters who exist in the cities, having left other places for the
good of those who are left behind, have a depressing influence upon the
moral atmosphere of other classes of residents. Men meet men whom they
never saw before, and whom they are obliged to judge entirely by
appearance and professions. It is the same in business as it is in
society. Not a year passes in which some adventurer does not impose
himself for a time upon the best society of New York and of other
cities. And although it would seem that his antecedents might easily be
discovered upon the basis of such information as he may feel obliged to
give about himself, the fact remains that society is “taken in” quite as
often as banks and business men and private individuals. Several years
ago a notorious scamp, who had been in several State-prisons, came to
New York, organized a business firm, took a large store, was discovered
in the course of time to be carrying on operations closely akin to
stealing, and when his record was thoroughly searched and sifted by the
police, it was discovered that his victims were principally the largest
wholesale establishments in the city of New York--establishments which
employed a number of men for the sole purpose of investigating the
character and resources of any one applying to them for credit or for
any business relations beyond ordinary purchases for cash.
These smart scamps, who are a hundred times as numerous as the newspaper
disclosures would lead the public to imagine, have a terribly
demoralizing influence upon the young men who flock to the city from all
parts of the rural districts as well as upon those who are brought up in
the city. To see a rascal succeed has a bad effect upon any one. Even
the most righteous man will mournfully quote from Scripture that “the
wicked shall flourish as the green bay tree;” that “their eyes stand out
with fatness; they have more than heart can wish,” where the
respectable man has to lie awake nights to devise ways and means of
paying his coal-bill and avoiding trouble with his landlord. Business
enterprises containing any amount of promise are organized, forced upon
the public by smart schemers of whom no one knows anything, and all of
them succeed in obtaining a great deal of money. When discovery comes,
as of course it must come sooner or later, the villain never makes
restitution to any extent and is never adequately punished for his
crime. So, the citizen who pretends to be respectable, but always has an
eye out for the main chance, is moved by such examples to see whether he
cannot do something sharp himself, and get away before the crash comes.
Society in large cities is said to be exclusive. It must be, for its own
protection. It cannot possibly be too exclusive. People with and without
letters of introduction succeed in forming acquaintances, becoming part
of one or another social set, even get into the churches, open bank
accounts, go into business, and a year or two afterward are discovered
to have antecedents which would make a person of ordinary respectability
hold up his hands in horror. Such occurrences have been so common, and
the individuals concerned have so often been not only men but women,
that the exclusiveness of city society extends even to the churches and
school-rooms. The half-grown child attending a public or private school
is warned against making any acquaintances whatever except with the
children of families whom its parents already know. The member of a
church may have a stranger shown into his pew again and again on
Sundays, and extend to him the courtesy of an open prayer-book or
hymnal, but in self-defence he is compelled to stop at that. The
cordiality, freedom of speech, and general recognition, which is the
custom in small towns and in rural districts throughout the world, is
denied the prudent inhabitant of a city, no matter how hearty his
inclination may be to extend a welcoming hand to every one whom he may
meet. Young men entering society, young women seen for the first time in
some social circle, are at first regarded very much as a stranger
entering a mining town in the West, where it is supposed no one goes
unless he has good reason to get away from his original home.
Nowhere in the world are there more charitable hearts with plenty of
money behind them than in large cities, yet nowhere else is there more
suffering. Your next-door neighbor may be starving to death and you not
know anything about it. You know nothing of his comings and nothing of
his goings; he knows nothing of you, and if he has any spirit whatever,
and any respect for himself, he would rather apply to the police or to
the authorities in charge of the poor than to the people living nearest
to him. Whenever the newspapers of a city make some startling disclosure
of destitution and suffering a number of purses open instantly, and
frequently some of the sufferers have received gifts from their own
landlords, who actually did not know of the name and existence of the
tenant. A judge of the Supreme Court of the city of New York has long
been known as a frequent and prompt visitor in person to all individuals
reported as in destitute condition and deserving of immediate
assistance, yet he said once to his own pastor, and to his own physician
also, who chanced to be present, that the great sorrow of his life was,
that he was utterly incapacitated by the conditions of city life from
discovering for himself the whereabouts of individuals whom he would
gladly assist with his pocket and his counsel.
As nobody knows anybody in the large cities, what is called the floating
population have everything their own way, each one for himself. Business
wrongs that would not be tolerated for an instant in a smaller community
are perpetrated with entire impunity in the large cities. The poorer
classes have no strong friend or acquaintance to complain to. Were they
in a smaller place they would know some one; probably they would know
everybody of any consequence, and also be known, and could quickly
bring public sentiment to their aid, but in a large city there is no
such opportunity. The only hope of the oppressed is in the courts, which
always are overcrowded with business, and can give very little time to
any one, and in the press, which is also overcrowded with work, and
should not be charged with this sort of responsibility.
Temptation will exist wherever humanity is found, but for a
concentration of all temptations, graded to suit all capacities of human
weakness, the great city stands pre-eminent. There is no vice that
cannot be committed in it--committed with reasonable assurance that it
will not be discovered. A man whose habits are apparently correct, who
has no known vices, whose daily manner with his fellow-men seems all
that it should be, may with entire safety change his manner at night,
and re-enact the drama of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It is worse than
that. He not only may, but in a great many instances he does. Any man
whose business compels him to know a number of persons by sight, and
whose hours of duty keep him out-of-doors in the “wee sma’ hours,”
occasionally sees things which stagger him. He sees citizens of good
repute in company which any village loafer would be ashamed to be seen
in by his own acquaintances. He sees policemen taking charge of men who
by daylight the police of their own locality regard with extreme
respect. He sees the high and the low mingle on the same level, and from
their manners he would not be able to know one from the other.
Newspapers are sometimes blamed for publishing sensational stories,
which reminds me of a remark once made by the famous Parson Brownlow, of
East Tennessee. He was called to account one day for using profane
language, he being a minister of the gospel. “If you knew,” said he,
“how many cuss words I hold in, you would not blame me for the few I let
out.” If the newspapers were to print all the sensational stories which
come to them they would have to double the size of their sheets, and
still they would have no room for any decent news whatever.
I repeat it, great cities are great sores, and it is to the interest of
every one that they should in some way be extracted from the body
politic and be allowed and compelled to maintain a separate existence. I
know that the parallel is not exact, but such things have been done in
some cases. The city is a millstone about the neck of the State in
almost all cases. Whatever may be the political preference of the
reader, he must admit the fact that the single city of New York
politically dominates the State, although containing only about
one-fourth of the population, and that the expressed will and intention
of a large majority of the voters of the State outside the metropolis
is steadily neutralized by a great majority composed principally of
ignorant persons who infest a great city. The evil has impressed itself
strongly upon the minds of publicists and journalists of all degrees to
such an extent that the suggestion has often been made that the city
should be allowed a separate organization by and in itself, somewhat
analogous to the position once held by the free cities of Germany. In
such case, whatever may be the ultimate political results, the fact
would remain that each portion of the divided community would have its
own will distinctly expressed, whereas at present one neutralizes the
other. New York has been making the attempt for years by a series of
special governments by commission, the origin being in special
enactments by the legislature at Albany. The results have not been
successful, but the trouble was not lack of principle in the enactments,
but in the individuals selected to carry on the experiment. The
suggestion however continues to be made. Similar plans have been
mentioned regarding some other large cities of the United States. And it
is not impossible that all of them may be granted “home rule” in the
strictest sense, and that the States at large will thus escape the city
rule to which at present they are being subjected.
THE DARKER SIDE.
What already has been said about the evils of city life and influence
may seem bad enough, but there is another side that is worse. Crime and
license affect the human mind strongly when brought before it as the
cause of a large amount of irregularity, but the public heart is more
quickly and firmly impressed by the knowledge of suffering.
The amount of suffering that exists in all large cities merely through
enforced conditions of life passes power of expression. No one has ever
yet been able to do the subject justice. Many who have worked among the
poor have lost life and hope, and mind itself, in contemplation of the
suffering and sorrow which they have witnessed and been unable to
relieve. To attempt to care for the poor of a large city affects one
very much like an effort to pour water into a sieve; the demand is
continual, yet nothing seems to be effected.
Almost everywhere outside of the cities it is assumed at the beginning
that those who suffer through their poverty in large cities are either
indolent or vicious. A more cruel mistake could not possibly be made.
There are many idlers in any large city, as a matter of course, but the
great majority of the people work hard to keep soul and body together.
The largest gathering of idlers that any occurrence can bring together
does not equal in numbers the procession which one may see in five
minutes’ time on any thoroughfare during regular hours of going to work
or returning home.
A full half of the population of the largest city in the Union reside in
tenement houses. The tenement house at best is unfit for human residence
if the people who inhabit it expect to enjoy good health, and if the
children who are part of almost every family are expected to grow and
develop properly in body and soul. Yet the bald fact is that more than
half a million of the inhabitants of this country live on several square
miles of land in one single city. Land is costly, builders’ work is
expensive; the cheapest-built houses cost a great deal of money, and
consequently the space in them must be divided and subdivided with great
skill and detail if the poorer classes are to find habitation at all.
Almost all of this half million people are honest, hard workers. The
heads of families are among the first to go to work in the morning and
among the last to go to their homes at night. They are those who work
for the smallest wages and do the hardest work. They and their families
need just as much food to support life as any of the well-to-do portion
of the population. But in any large city the necessities of life are
costly, and they are particularly so in our largest city. The wages of
an ordinary mechanic or workingman will barely pay the rent of the
cheapest apartment and buy food for five people. Clothing must be left
to chance, luxury must be unthought-of, and the only possible relaxation
is that to be found in the streets or at places where entertainment is
free.
More heroism is displayed in some of these humble homes than ever was
witnessed on any battle-field of which the world has knowledge. The wolf
at the door is a thousand times worse foe than the enemy on the
frontier. The soldier always has glory to look to in case he dies. The
suffering laborer dies, if die he must, in abject misery at the thought
of his family’s future. Whatever his health, however numerous his
discomforts, however small his pay, he must work and go on working, or
his family must starve. He has no friends who are rich or influential;
if he had, he would not be a poor working-man; his only friends are
those of his own kind, and while almost any of them would in time of
necessity share their last loaf with him, there are times when the most
friendly of them have no loaf to share. A day or two of sickness of the
head of the family imposes a stern chase which lasts long and costs
frightfully. The death of a member of their family means absolute ruin.
This would seem bad enough, but there is worse behind it. The necessity
of sending the remains of the
[Illustration: WOMAN’S BUILDING.]
loved one to the burial ground of the paupers is one of the terrible
experiences which are very common in large cities. Some of them cannot
afford even the small time necessary to do that much; so, with many
tears and prayers, perhaps sometimes with many curses upon the hard luck
to which fate or fortune has reduced them, the remains are quietly
carried to the river-side at night and there dropped from sight, though
not from memory. A few years ago a newspaper attaché, attending one of
the large excursions given by charitable persons to children of the
poor, overheard a mother and daughter talking about a sick babe which
the daughter was to carry on board the boat. The mother could not go.
She had to work or the family must starve. She took her child in her
arms, again and again kissed it, cried over it, and then began a skilful
conversation with her daughter leading up to the possibility and
advisability, in case of death during the trip, of dropping the little
darling’s remains overboard, saying that the deep, clean sea was a
cleaner burial place than the dark ground in the cemetery. The child
listened with wondering face and finally agreed with her mother. As for
the reporter, he was so horrified that he was utterly unfit for work for
a year after, although he imagined himself hardened to scenes of
suffering.
The wildest imagination cannot possibly exceed some actual facts of
tenement-house life. The story has been told again and again, until
there is no novelty in it, of families crowded together so closely that
all the decencies of life were forgotten, because it was impossible to
observe them, of bad associations formed, of children wilting and
weakening unto death because the air they breathed was unfit to support
life, of food purchased at cheaper and cheaper prices until that finally
used was little better than poison to those who ate it, of poverty
induced by payments deferred, of the wretchedness and semi-starvation
that exist through some of the long strikes of some of the laboring
classes; but none of it fully equals the truth. There are happy,
virtuous, well-fed, well-clothed families in tenement houses, and it is
probably fair to say that these are perhaps in the majority, but the
minority is so numerous that the heart is appalled at contemplating it.
Out of their wretched homes these people cannot go. There is no other
place for them. While a man and his wife are young and before they have
children, they may roam about if they choose as tramps in pleasant
summer weather, until some happy chance finds work for one or the other
in the rural districts. But once anchored in the city by a family of
children, and the opportunities of the laboring man of small income to
ever change his condition are almost nothing. Some men say that the
influence of religion is declining. The strongest refutation, and an
absolute one, of this statement is that the miserable people in large
cities do not arise in frenzied mobs and destroy everything which they
cannot steal. The long, patient and then despairing struggle against the
inevitable is enough to reduce any man to frenzy, were it not, as
Longfellow says, that poverty
“Crushes into dumb despair
One-half the human race.”
It nevertheless is true that as large a proportion of these people as of
any other class in the city are religious by instinct, training and
practice. The churches which they attend are more crowded on Sundays
than those of the better classes, and the painter who wishes to find
models of patience and resignation and determination can find them
better at the doors of these churches than anywhere else in the world.
Still the misery goes on. It increases. The tenement-house population
grows larger and larger every year. The accommodations become smaller
because the tendency of the rents of such property is steadily upward.
There is no way of escape. Little by little the parents of the family of
young children prevail upon themselves to allow children to help support
the family. There is no cruelty about it in the intention of the
parents. The children have little enough to interest them. Their
parents are too busy to talk with them or answer any of their questions.
During the day the children are in the way, and to the father and mother
comes the suggestion that if the entire family were at work together
there might be a closer family life. The children are quite willing to
take part in whatever their parents are doing. Indeed, it is hard to
keep them from doing so. So the transition for children from utter
indolence to child labor is very short and easy.
There are a great many businesses in a large city in which children may
help their parents. Among these, the most prominent probably will be
found among the clothing manufacturers and the makers of that
much-abused article, the tenement-house cigar. It isn’t necessary for
the reader to be frightened at the idea that cigars are made in
tenement-houses, because a respectable man or woman with their children
are less likely to have any habits or surroundings which will make the
tobacco leaf deleterious than the workman in any famous factory in
Havana. There are diseases among the operatives in Cuban cigar factories
of which the less said the better. Whatever other ailments there may be
in tenement-house life, these particular diseases are not to be found
there. Nevertheless the idea of a man and woman and several children
working ten or twelve or fourteen hours a day in a room ten feet square
with a lot of decaying vegetable matter--which is exactly what leaf
tobacco in the course of manufacture really is--to pollute the
atmosphere about them, is not a pleasant thing. Tobacco has powerful
medicinal qualities, most of which are of a poisonous nature. A small
amount of nicotine, the essential principle of tobacco, has been
powerfully effective either as a narcotic, or stimulant, or a germicide.
The effect upon persons who handle it incessantly during a full half of
every day can consequently be imagined. Every one in the room becomes
irritable unless the food supply is abundant and carefully selected;
every one finally becomes extremely nervous. Men and women do not well
endure the life of tobacco manufacturers. To children the constant
handling of the leaf is frequently poisonous. Nevertheless, a certain
amount of money ought to be earned every day by the family; the father
and mother are not able to do it; the children help; the family earnings
are as much for the child’s sake as for the parents, and so the work
goes on.
In the manufacture of clothing the details, so far as they affect human
life, are not so injurious. But one commercial result is always
perceptible in a short time. Those operatives who can avail themselves
of child labor are enabled to underbid their associates, who are also
their competitors. Consequently it is a very short time before the
income of the family is no larger than it already had been, while the
number of persons occupied in earning it has doubled and perhaps
trebled.
Just think a moment what all this really implies. A number of people are
excluded from all possibility of exercise or recreation and exciting
themselves to the utmost to accomplish a given amount of work in a
specified time. Children are quicker than grown people to respond to any
exciting influence, and the most enthusiastic workers in tenement-house
rooms will always be found to be the children. Sometimes this amuses the
parents, occasionally it interests them, but more often it is extremely
pathetic. To see a child at an early age absorbed in the details of the
battle of life would horrify any one of us, yet 100,000 children of this
kind can be found in the city of New York, and a large number of them
can be found in any one of forty or fifty specified blocks.
There is only one end to this sort of thing. Persistent stimulation and
entire lack of recreation or exercise must have a debasing and dangerous
effect upon any physique. Much more must this be the case regarding
children. Boys and girls are not driven to work as they were in England
forty or fifty years ago. They are not flogged if they do not accomplish
a certain amount of work in a given time, as they used to be under the
good old English customs. But they are just as thoroughly destroyed,
physically and mentally, as if they were under taskmasters who were not
their own parents.
Children in the country frequently work very hard. A farmer’s life is
hard at best, and between necessity and sympathy his children early
learn to take part in their father’s endeavors. They rise early in the
morning and work perhaps quite late in the night, but they are in pure
air even while they are at work. They have an abundance of food and they
always see something before them, just as their parents do. Perhaps it
is that there is a war abroad and the price of wheat will probably go up
a few cents a bushel. Or a railroad is coming in the vicinity of the
farm, and acres which have been devoted to common crops and pasture are
expected suddenly to attain to the dignity of town lots. There are
evening festivities in which all the children take part, and there is
also the great and comforting and uplifting American sentiment that each
one of them is as good as any one of their richest neighbors, and the
fact that they may live in a poorly-built house and not wear quite as
good clothes on Sunday as some of their associates can always be
overlooked in view of the possibilities of the near future. But before
the children of the poor in the large cities there is no prospect
whatever of advancement or pleasure or recreation. The old dull grind
goes on day by day. While every one is well and every one is at work,
the family probably has enough to eat and has a roof over its head; and
to that extent it can congratulate itself, for some of their
acquaintances and neighbors are not so well off. But the first day that
sickness comes into the family the entire aspect of things changes. The
work must go on or there will be nothing to live on at the end of the
week. The invalid may be put to bed in one of the little closets which
are dignified by the name of rooms, but the adult members of the family
must continue to work, and so must all who are old enough to assist. If
there is a sewing-machine in the room it must go on clicking, no matter
if some member of the family is dying. There is no lack of sympathy, no
lack of affection, no lack of longing; but all these put together do not
take the place of proper medical attendance, pure air and good food. If
in any single town of the United States the death rate were as large as
it is in the city of New York, the best citizens would pack up their
things and run away, no matter at what cost. But New York can lose
thirty or forty of every thousand of its inhabitants every year, and the
only comment of those who know best about it is that it is a mercy of
heaven that the loss is no greater.
The customary way of city people, in avoiding responsibility and deep
thought on this subject, consists in saying that the people who live in
this way are of low organizations any way, and that they can exist and
flourish and grow fat amid surroundings which would kill any decent
person. There is some truth in this so far as certain low organizations
are concerned. Unfortunately, however, there is no race, sex,
nationality or creed among the very poor in the large city. All of them
are people who either were born very poor or who, having been reduced to
poverty, are endeavoring to make the best of their lot. There are
Americans of good name and good family now serving in the commoner
mechanical capacities in the city of New York, and only a little while
ago it was discovered that the wife of a gallant Major-General, who
served the United States faithfully during the late unpleasantness, was
“living out” as a domestic servant. It is not a result of poverty,
misfortune, sickness or anything of the kind. All those horrors are the
results, first of all, of city life, of living where no one knows his
own neighbors and where the person who falls into embarrassments or is
overwhelmed by misfortune has no one to whom to turn, and takes to
anything at short notice and in utter desperation, to keep the wolf from
the door.
Cities should be suppressed, but that is impossible. They should be
properly policed by persons competent to discover and report those most
in need of assistance; but that also seems impossible. The only chance
left seems to be that the larger the city the greater shall be the
missionary work done in it by all denominations. When Jesus was alive
and was anxious to secure the attention of the people, he did not bemoan
their sad condition, but on one occasion, when some thousands of them
followed him, he himself supplied them with food. The servant is not
greater than the master, and religious people, regardless of differences
of creed, can find no better work in large cities than to search out the
needy and endeavor to lift their feet out of the mire and put them in a
dry place, to quote from the inspired psalmist in one of his most
eloquent passages.
One good and pressing reason--though a selfish one--for closer and more
sympathetic attention to the poor of large cities, is that the great
mass of criminals come from the poorer classes, and that when criminals
are once made it is hard to unmake them. The famous Inspector Byrne, of
New York, the man most feared by wrongdoers everywhere, spends annually
a great deal of his hard-earned money in trying to persuade criminals
not to drop back into their old ways, but he believes that he only
retards their return to crime--not that he effects any reformations. The
following words from a man of his stern experience and sympathetic
nature are terrible in their warning against neglect of the class from
which most criminals spring:
“My personal opinion is that it is utterly impossible to reform
criminals. There are certain fancy measures pursued in this city for the
reformation of criminals, but they are all bosh; they do not reform the
outlaws. To some extent such efforts are made for the purpose of public
notoriety. I know people in this city who claim that they want to reform
thieves. They get hold of notorious scoundrels when they come out of
state-prison, and so long as the thief is a good ‘star-actor,’ and goes
from place to place and tells all sorts of things that are villanous and
bad about himself (no matter whether they be lies or the truth), he is
lauded around by these people as a great attraction. The moment he
discontinues that kind of performance they throw him out in the street
because he is of no use to them; he doesn’t ‘draw.’
“So far as the efforts of religious people are concerned in this matter
of criminal reformation, I say that their efforts are laudable. They
certainly mean well. They devote time and money to the work; but they
have no practical experience with criminals, and their efforts count for
very little. It is sometimes claimed that, under the influence of
prayers and preaching, the criminal’s heart is touched, he sees the
error of his ways, he is converted; I do not believe it. As the word
‘reformation’ is ordinarily used, I know there is no such experience
among thieves.”
It will not do to dispose of the subject by saying that there must be
criminals in the world, and that we pay policemen to take care of them.
No police force can entirely suppress crime; there are too many
evil-doers to be watched, and each has his own style. Inspector
Williams, of New York, an officer almost as widely known as Inspector
Byrne, and who has had charge of the most dangerous precincts in the
city, wrote recently:
“The general public, who look upon criminals as a class by themselves,
are apt to think that one criminal is very much like another. This is
not a fact. I have been a policeman for nearly a quarter of a century,
and I have never seen two criminals who were very nearly alike in
character. A Siamese-twinship in the annals of crime is unknown. When we
enter the criminal world and seek to deal with its members from any
point of view, we must look upon them individually, not collectively.”
All of which means that the only way to lessen the number of criminals
is to see to it that wretchedness of the masses of population in our
large cities shall not be allowed to send new recruits to the ranks.