work. This truth is not recognized as it should be. Perhaps, also,
there is some, though a far lesser, failure to recognize that a living
church organization should, more than any other, be a potent force in
social uplifting. Churches are needed for all sorts and conditions of
men under every kind of circumstances; but surely the largest field of
usefulness is open to that church in which the spirit of brotherhood
is a living and vital force, and not a cold formula; in which the rich
and poor gather together to aid one another in work for a common end.
Brother can best help brother, not by almsgiving, but by joining with
him in an intelligent and resolute effort for the uplifting of all. It
is towards this that St. George’s Church, under Dr. W. S. Rainsford,
has steadily worked. The membership of St. George’s Church is in a
great majority composed of working people--and young working people
at that. It is a free church with a membership of over four thousand,
most of the members having come in by way of the Sunday-school.
Large sums of money are raised, not from a few people, but from the
many. An honest effort has been made to study the conditions of life
in the neighborhood, and through the church to remedy those which
were abnormal. One of the troubles on the East Side is the lack of
opportunity for young people, boys and girls, to meet save where the
surroundings are unfavorable to virtue. In St. George’s Church this
need is, so far as can be, met by meetings--debating societies, clubs,
social entertainments, etc., in the large parish building. Years ago
the dances needed to be policed by chosen ladies and gentlemen and
clergymen. Now the whole standard of conduct has been so raised that
the young people conduct their own entertainments as they see fit.
There is a large athletic club and industrial school, a boys’ battalion
and men’s club; there are sewing classes, cooking classes, and a
gymnasium for working girls. Dr. Rainsford’s staff includes both men
and women, the former living at the top of the parish house, the latter
in the little deaconess-house opposite. Every effort is made to keep in
close touch with wage-workers, and this not merely for their benefit,
but quite as much for the benefit of those who are brought in touch
with them.
The church is, of all places, that in which men should meet on the
basis of their common humanity under conditions of sympathy and mutual
self-respect. All must work alike in the church in order to get the
full benefit from it; but it is not the less true that we have a
peculiar right to expect systematic effort from men and women of
education and leisure. Such people should justify by their work the
conditions of society which have rendered possible their leisure, their
education, and their wealth. Money can never take the place of service,
and though here and there it is absolutely necessary to have the paid
worker, yet normally he is not an adequate substitute for the volunteer.
Of course St. George’s Church has not solved all the social problems
in the immediate neighborhood which is the field of its special
effort. But it has earnestly tried to solve some at least, and it
has achieved a very substantial measure of success towards their
solution. Perhaps, after all, the best work done has been in connection
with the development of the social side of the church organization.
Reasonable opportunities for social intercourse are an immense moral
safeguard, and young people of good character and steady habits should
be encouraged to meet under conditions which are pleasant and which
also tell for decency. The work of a down-town church in New York
City presents difficulties that are unique, but it also presents
opportunities that are unique. In the case of St. George’s Church it
is only fair to say that the difficulties have been overcome, and the
opportunities taken advantage of, to the utmost.
Aside from the various kinds of work outlined above, where the main
element is the coming together of people for the purpose of helping
one another to rise higher, there is, of course, a very large field
for charitable work proper. For such work there must be thorough
organization of the kind supplied, for instance, by the State Charities
Aid Association. Here, again, the average outsider would be simply
astounded to learn of the amount actually accomplished every year by
the association.
A peculiar and exceedingly desirable form of work, originally purely
charitable, although not now as exclusively so, is that of the Legal
Aid Society, founded by Arthur von Briesen. It was founded to try to
remedy the colossal injustice which was so often encountered by the
poorest and most ignorant immigrants; it has been extended to shield
every class, native and foreign. There are always among the poor and
needy thousands of helpless individuals who are preyed upon by sharpers
of different degrees. If very poor, they may have no means whatever
of obtaining redress; and, especially if they are foreigners ignorant
of the language, they may also be absolutely ignorant as to what
steps should be taken in order to right the wrong that has been done
them. The injuries that are done may seem trivial; but they are not
trivial to the sufferers, and the aggregate amount of misery caused
is enormous. The Legal Aid Society has made it its business to take
up these cases and secure justice. Every conceivable variety of case
is attended to. The woman who has been deserted or maltreated by her
husband, the poor serving-maid who has been swindled out of her wages,
the ignorant immigrant who has fallen a victim to some sharper, the
man of no knowledge of our language or laws who has been arrested for
doing something which he supposed was entirely proper--all these and
countless others like them apply for relief, and have it granted in
tens of thousands of cases every year. It should be remembered that
the good done is not merely to the sufferers themselves, it is also a
good done to society, for it leaves in the mind of the newcomer to our
shores, not the rankling memory of wrong and injustice, but the feeling
that, after all, here in the New World, where he has come to seek his
fortune, there are disinterested men who endeavor to see that the right
prevails.
Some men can do their best work in an organization. Some, though they
occasionally work in an organization, can do best by themselves.
Recently a man well qualified to pass judgment alluded to Mr. Jacob A.
Riis as “the most useful citizen of New York.” Those fellow-citizens
of Mr. Riis who best know his work will be most apt to agree with this
statement. The countless evils which lurk in the dark corners of our
civic institutions, which stalk abroad in the slums, and have their
permanent abode in the crowded tenement houses, have met in Mr. Riis
the most formidable opponent ever encountered by them in New York City.
Many earnest men and earnest women have been stirred to the depths by
the want and misery and foul crime which are bred in the crowded blocks
of tenement rookeries. These men and women have planned and worked,
intelligently and resolutely, to overcome the evils. But to Mr. Riis
was given, in addition to earnestness and zeal, the great gift of
expression, the great gift of making others see what he saw and feel
what he felt. His book, _How the Other Half Lives_, did really go a
long way toward removing the ignorance in which one half of the world
of New York dwelt concerning the life of the other half. Moreover, Mr.
Riis possessed the further great advantage of having himself passed
through not a few of the experiences of which he had to tell. Landing
here, a young Danish lad, he had for years gone through the hard
struggle that so often attends even the bravest and best when they go
out without money to seek their fortunes in a strange and alien land.
The horror of the police lodging-houses struck deep in his soul, for
he himself had lodged in them. The brutality of some of the police he
had himself experienced. He had been mishandled, and had seen the stray
dog which was his only friend killed for trying in dumb friendship to
take his part. He had known what it was to sleep on door-steps and go
days in succession without food. All these things he remembered, and
his work as a reporter on the New York _Sun_ has enabled him in the
exercise of his profession to add to his knowledge. There are certain
qualities the reformer must have if he is to be a real reformer and
not merely a faddist; for of course every reformer is in continual
danger of slipping into the mass of well-meaning people who in their
advocacy of the impracticable do more harm than good. He must possess
high courage, disinterested desire to do good, and sane, wholesome
common-sense. These qualities he must have, and it is furthermore much
to his benefit if he also possesses a sound sense of humor. All four
traits are possessed by Jacob Riis. No rebuff, no seeming failure, has
ever caused him to lose faith. The memory of his own trials never
soured him. His keen sense of the sufferings of others never clouded
his judgment, never led him into hysterical or sentimental excess, the
pit into which not a few men are drawn by the very keenness of their
sympathies; and which some other men avoid, not because they are wise,
but because they are cold-hearted. He ever advocates mercy, but he
ever recognizes the need of justice. The mob leader, the bomb-thrower,
have no sympathy from him. No man has ever insisted more on the danger
which comes to the community from the lawbreaker. He sets himself to
kill the living evil, and small is his kinship with the dreamers who
seek the impossible, the men who _talk_ of reconstituting the entire
social order, but who do not _work_ to lighten the burden of mankind
by so much as a feather’s weight. Every man who strives, be it ever so
feebly, to do good according to the light that is in him, can count on
the aid of Jacob Riis if the chance comes. Whether the man is a public
official, like Colonel Waring, seeking to raise some one branch of the
city government; whether he is interested in a boys’ club up in the
country; or in a scheme for creating small parks in the city; or in an
effort to better the conditions of tenement-house life--no matter what
his work is, so long as his work is useful, he can count on the aid of
the man who perhaps more than any other knows the needs of the varied
people who make up the great bulk of New York’s population.
Half a dozen men have been mentioned, each only as a type of those who
in the seething life of the great city do, in their several ways and
according to their strength and varying capacities, strive to do their
duty to their neighbor. No hard-and-fast rule can be laid down as to
the way in which such work must be done; but most certainly every man,
whatever his position, should strive to do it in some way and to some
degree. If he strives earnestly he will benefit himself probably quite
as much as he benefits others, and he will inevitably learn a great
deal. At first it may be an effort to him to cast off certain rigid
conventions, but real work of any kind is a great educator, and soon
helps any man to single out the important from the unimportant. If such
a worker has the right stuff in him he soon grows to accept without
effort each man on his worth as a man, and to disregard his means, and
what is called his social position; to care little whether he is a
Catholic or Protestant, a Jew or a Gentile; to be utterly indifferent
whether he was born here or in Ireland, in Germany or in Scandinavia;
provided only that he has in him the spirit of sturdy common-sense and
the resolute purpose to strive after the light as it is given him to
see the light.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Reprinted, by permission, from _McClure’s Magazine_. Copyright,
1901, S. S. McClure Co.
THE WORKS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT
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American Orations
FROM THE COLONIAL PERIOD TO THE PRESENT TIME
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Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation errors and omissions have been silently corrected.
Page 23: “we have produed” changed to “we have produced”
Page 26: “German or Irshman” changed to “German or Irishman”
Page 105: “of ther own” changed to “of their own”
Page 114: “as a politican” changed to “as a politician”
Page 128: “Picnic Assotion” changed to “Picnic Association”
Page 148: “Frst Assistant” changed to “First Assistant”
Page 199: “in the Repubican party” changed to “in the Republican party”
Page 204: “woolly rhinocerous” changed to “woolly rhinoceros”
Page 228: “the Venezulan” changed to “the Venezuelan”
Page 266: “a a fleet of” changed to “a fleet of”
Page 269: “instance of sefishness” changed to “instance of selfishness”
Page 280: “dur-the last” changed to “during the last”
Page 282: “untimately absorbed” changed to “ultimately absorbed”
Page 311: “the unselfihnsess” changed to “the unselfishnsess”