THE THIRST FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS
Even as we pass by the joy and beauty of youth on the streets without
dreaming it is there, so we may hurry past the very presence of august
things without recognition. We may easily fail to sense those
spiritual realities, which, in every age, have haunted youth and
called to him without ceasing. Historians tell us that the
extraordinary advances in human progress have been made in those times
when "the ideals of freedom and law, of youth and beauty, of knowledge
and virtue, of humanity and religion, high things, the conflicts
between which have caused most of the disruptions and despondences of
human society, seem for a generation or two to lie in the same
direction."
Are we perhaps at least twice in life's journey dimly conscious of the
needlessness of this disruption and of the futility of the
despondency? Do we feel it first when young ourselves we long to
interrogate the "transfigured few" among our elders whom we believe to
be carrying forward affairs of gravest import? Failing to accomplish
this are we, for the second time, dogged by a sense of lost
opportunity, of needless waste and perplexity, when we too, as adults,
see again the dreams of youth in conflict with the efforts of our own
contemporaries? We see idealistic endeavor on the one hand lost in
ugly friction; the heat and burden of the day borne by mature men and
women on the other hand, increased by their consciousness of youth's
misunderstanding and high scorn. It may relieve the mind to break
forth in moments of irritation against "the folly of the coming
generation," but whoso pauses on his plodding way to call even his
youngest and rashest brother a fool, ruins thereby the joy of his
journey,--for youth is so vivid an element in life that unless it is
cherished, all the rest is spoiled. The most praiseworthy journey
grows dull and leaden unless companioned by youth's iridescent dreams.
Not only that, but the mature of each generation run a grave risk of
putting their efforts in a futile direction, in a blind alley as it
were, unless they can keep in touch with the youth of their own day
and know at least the trend in which eager dreams are driving
them--those dreams that fairly buffet our faces as we walk the city
streets.
At times every one possessed with a concern for social progress is
discouraged by the formless and unsubdued modern city, as he looks
upon that complicated life which drives men almost without their own
volition, that life of ingenuous enterprises, great ambitions,
political jealousies, where men tend to become mere "slaves of
possessions." Doubtless these striving men are full of weakness and
sensitiveness even when they rend each other, and are but caught in
the coils of circumstance; nevertheless, a serious attempt to ennoble
and enrich the content of city life that it may really fill the ample
space their ruthless wills have provided, means that we must call upon
energies other than theirs. When we count over the resources which are
at work "to make order out of casualty, beauty out of confusion,
justice, kindliness and mercy out of cruelty and inconsiderate
pressure," we find ourselves appealing to the confident spirit of
youth. We know that it is crude and filled with conflicting hopes,
some of them unworthy and most of them doomed to disappointment, yet
these young people have the advantage of "morning in their hearts";
they have such power of direct action, such ability to stand free from
fear, to break through life's trammelings, that in spite of ourselves
we become convinced that
"They to the disappointed earth shall give
The lives we meant to live."
That this solace comes to us only in fugitive moments, and is easily
misleading, may be urged as an excuse for our blindness and
insensitiveness to the august moral resources which the youth of each
city offers to those who are in the midst of the city's turmoil. A
further excuse is afforded in the fact that the form of the dreams for
beauty and righteousness change with each generation and that while it
is always difficult for the fathers to understand the sons, at those
periods when the demand of the young is one of social reconstruction,
the misunderstanding easily grows into bitterness.
The old desire to achieve, to improve the world, seizes the ardent
youth to-day with a stern command to bring about juster social
conditions. Youth's divine impatience with the world's inheritance of
wrong and injustice makes him scornful of "rose water for the plague"
prescriptions, and he insists upon something strenuous and vital.
One can find innumerable illustrations of this idealistic impatience
with existing conditions among the many Russian subjects found in the
foreign quarters of every American city. The idealism of these young
people might be utilized to a modification of our general culture and
point of view, somewhat as the influence of the young Germans who came
to America in the early fifties, bringing with them the hopes and
aspirations embodied in the revolutions of 1848, made a profound
impression upon the social and political institutions of America. Long
before they emigrated, thousands of Russian young people had been
caught up into the excitements and hopes of the Russian revolution in
Finland, in Poland, in the Russian cities, in the university towns.
Life had become intensified by the consciousness of the suffering and
starvation of millions of their fellow subjects. They had been living
with a sense of discipline and of preparation for a coming struggle
which, although grave in import, was vivid and adventurous. Their
minds had been seized by the first crude forms of social theory and
they had cherished a vague belief that they were the direct
instruments of a final and ideal social reconstruction. When they come
to America they sadly miss this sense of importance and participation
in a great and glorious conflict against a recognized enemy. Life
suddenly grows stale and unprofitable; the very spirit of tolerance
which characterizes American cities is that which strikes most
unbearably upon their ardent spirits. They look upon the indifference
all about them with an amazement which rapidly changes to irritation.
Some of them in a short time lose their ardor, others with incredible
rapidity make the adaptation between American conditions and their
store of enthusiasm, but hundreds of them remain restless and ill at
ease. Their only consolation, almost their only real companionship,
is when they meet in small groups for discussion or in larger groups
to welcome a well known revolutionist who brings them direct news from
the conflict, or when they arrange for a demonstration in memory of
"The Red Sunday" or the death of Gershuni. Such demonstrations,
however, are held in honor of men whose sense of justice was obliged
to seek an expression quite outside the regular channels of
established government. Knowing that Russia has forced thousands of
her subjects into this position, one would imagine that patriotic
teachers in America would be most desirous to turn into governmental
channels all that insatiable desire for juster relations in industrial
and political affairs. A distinct and well directed campaign is
necessary if this gallant enthusiasm is ever to be made part of that
old and still incomplete effort to embody in law--"the law that abides
and falters not, ages long"--the highest aspirations for justice.
Unfortunately, we do little or nothing with this splendid store of
youthful ardor and creative enthusiasm. Through its very isolation it
tends to intensify and turn in upon itself, and no direct effort is
made to moralize it, to discipline it, to make it operative upon the
life of the city. And yet it is, perhaps, what American cities need
above all else, for it is but too true that Democracy--"a people
ruling"--the very name of which the Greeks considered so beautiful, no
longer stirs the blood of the American youth, and that the real
enthusiasm for self-government must be found among the groups of young
immigrants who bring over with every ship a new cargo of democratic
aspirations. That many of these young men look for a consummation of
these aspirations to a social order of the future in which the
industrial system as well as government shall embody democratic
relations, simply shows that the doctrine of Democracy like any other
of the living faiths of men, is so essentially mystical that it
continually demands new formulation. To fail to recognize it in a new
form, to call it hard names, to refuse to receive it, may mean to
reject that which our fathers cherished and handed on as an
inheritance not only to be preserved but also to be developed.
We allow a great deal of this precious stuff--this _Welt-Schmerz_ of
which each generation has need--not only to go unutilized, but to work
havoc among the young people themselves. One of the saddest
illustrations of this, in my personal knowledge, was that of a young
Russian girl who lived with a group of her compatriots on the west
side of Chicago. She recently committed suicide at the same time that
several others in the group tried it and failed. One of these latter,
who afterwards talked freely of the motives which led her to this act,
said that there were no great issues at stake in this country; that
America was wholly commercial in its interests and absorbed in money
making; that Americans were not held together by any historic bonds
nor great mutual hopes, and were totally ignorant of the stirring
social and philosophic movements of Europe; that her life here had
been a long, dreary, economic struggle, unrelieved by any of the
higher interests; that she was tired of getting seventy-five cents for
trimming a hat that sold for twelve dollars and was to be put upon the
empty head of some one who had no concern for the welfare of the woman
who made it. The statement doubtless reflected something of "The
Sorrows of Werther," but the entire tone was nobler and more highly
socialized.
It is difficult to illustrate what might be accomplished by reducing
to action the ardor of those youths who so bitterly arraign our
present industrial order. While no part of the social system can be
changed rapidly, we would all admit that the present industrial
arrangements in America might be vastly improved and that we are
failing to meet the requirements of our industrial life with courage
and success simply because we do not realize that unless we establish
that humane legislation which has its roots in a consideration for
human life, our industrialism itself will suffer from inbreeding,
growing ever more unrestrained and ruthless. It would seem obvious
that in order to secure relief in a community dominated by industrial
ideals, an appeal must be made to the old spiritual sanctions for
human conduct, that we must reach motives more substantial and
enduring than the mere fleeting experiences of one phase of modern
industry which vainly imagines that its growth would be curtailed if
the welfare of its employees were guarded by the state. It would be an
interesting attempt to turn that youthful enthusiasm to the aid of one
of the most conservative of the present social efforts, the almost
world-wide movement to secure protective legislation for women and
children in industry, in which America is so behind the other nations.
Fourteen of the great European powers protect women from all night
work, from excessive labor by day, because paternalistic governments
prize the strength of women for the bearing and rearing of healthy
children to the state. And yet in a republic it is the citizens
themselves who must be convinced of the need of this protection unless
they would permit industry to maim the very mothers of the future.
In one year in the German Empire one hundred thousand children were
cared for through money paid from the State Insurance fund to their
widowed mothers or to their invalided fathers. And yet in the American
states it seems impossible to pass a most rudimentary employers'
liability act, which would be but the first step towards that code of
beneficent legislation which protects "the widow and fatherless" in
Germany and England. Certainly we shall have to bestir ourselves if we
would care for the victims of the industrial order as well as do other
nations. We shall be obliged speedily to realize that in order to
secure protective legislation from a governmental body in which the
most powerful interests represented are those of the producers and
transporters of manufactured goods, it will be necessary to exhort to
a care for the defenseless from the religious point of view. To take
even the non-commercial point of view would be to assert that
evolutionary progress assumes that a sound physique is the only secure
basis of life, and to guard the mothers of the race is simple sanity.
And yet from lack of preaching we do not unite for action because we
are not stirred to act at all, and protective legislation in America
is shamefully inadequate. Because it is always difficult to put the
championship of the oppressed above the counsels of prudence, we say
in despair sometimes that we are a people who hold such varied creeds
that there are not enough of one religious faith to secure anything,
but the truth is that it is easy to unite for action people whose
hearts have once been filled by the fervor of that willing devotion
which may easily be generated in the youthful breast. It is
comparatively easy to enlarge a moral concept, but extremely difficult
to give it to an adult for the first time. And yet when we attempt to
appeal to the old sanctions for disinterested conduct, the conclusion
is often forced upon us that they have not been engrained into
character, that they cannot be relied upon when they are brought into
contact with the arguments of industrialism, that the colors of the
flag flying over the fort of our spiritual resources wash out and
disappear when the storm actually breaks. It is because the ardor of
youth has not been attracted to the long effort to modify the
ruthlessness of industry by humane enactments, that we sadly miss
their resourceful enthusiasm and that at the same time groups of young
people who hunger and thirst after social righteousness are breaking
their hearts because the social reform is so long delayed and an
unsympathetic and hardhearted society frustrates all their hopes. And
yet these ardent young people who obscure the issue by their crying
and striving and looking in the wrong place, might be of inestimable
value if so-called political leaders were in any sense social
philosophers. To permit these young people to separate themselves from
the contemporaneous efforts of ameliorating society and to turn their
vague hopes solely toward an ideal commonwealth of the future, is to
withdraw from an experimental self-government founded in enthusiasm,
the very stores of enthusiasm which are needed to sustain it. The
championship of the oppressed came to be a spiritual passion with the
Hebrew prophets. They saw the promises of religion, not for
individuals but in the broad reaches of national affairs and in the
establishment of social justice. It is quite possible that such a
spiritual passion is again to be found among the ardent young souls of
our cities. They see a vision, not of a purified nation but of a
regenerated and a reorganized society. Shall we throw all this into
the future, into the futile prophecy of those who talk because they
cannot achieve, or shall we commingle their ardor, their overmastering
desire for social justice, with that more sober effort to modify
existing conditions? Are we once more forced to appeal to the
educators? Is it so difficult to utilize this ardor because educators
have failed to apprehend the spiritual quality of their task?
It would seem a golden opportunity for those to whom is committed the
task of spiritual instruction, for to preach and seek justice in human
affairs is one of the oldest obligations of religion and morality. All
that would be necessary would be to attach this teaching to the
contemporary world in such wise that the eager youth might feel a tug
upon his faculties, and a sense of participation in the moral life
about him. To leave it unattached to actual social movements means
that the moralist is speaking in incomprehensible terms. Without this
connection, the religious teachers may have conscientiously carried
out their traditional duties and yet have failed utterly to stir the
fires of spiritual enthusiasm.
Each generation of moralists and educators find themselves facing an
inevitable dilemma; first, to keep the young committed to their charge
"unspotted from the world," and, second, to connect the young with the
ruthless and materialistic world all about them in such wise that they
may make it the arena for their spiritual endeavor. It is fortunate
for these teachers that sometime during "The Golden Age" the most
prosaic youth is seized by a new interest in remote and universal
ends, and that if but given a clue by which he may connect his lofty
aims with his daily living, he himself will drag the very heavens into
the most sordid tenement. The perpetual difficulty consists in finding
the clue for him and placing it in his hands, for, if the teaching is
too detached from life, it does not result in any psychic impulsion at
all. I remember as an illustration of the saving power of this
definite connection, a tale told me by a distinguished labor leader in
England. His affections had been starved, even as a child, for he
knew nothing of his parents, his earliest memories being associated
with a wretched old woman who took the most casual care of him. When
he was nine years old he ran away to sea and for the next seven years
led the rough life of a dock laborer, until he became much interested
in a little crippled boy, who by the death of his father had been left
solitary on a freight boat. My English friend promptly adopted the
child as his own and all the questionings of life centered about his
young protégé. He was constantly driven to attend evening meetings
where he heard discussed those social conditions which bear so hard
upon the weak and sick. The crippled boy lived until he was fifteen
and by that time the regeneration of his foster father was complete,
the young docker was committed for life to the bettering of social
conditions. It is doubtful whether any abstract moral appeal could
have reached such a roving nature. Certainly no attempt to incite his
ambition would have succeeded. Only a pull upon his deepest sympathies
and affections, his desire to protect and cherish a weaker thing,
could possibly have stimulated him and connected him with the forces
making for moral and social progress.
This, of course, has ever been the task of religion, to make the sense
of obligation personal, to touch morality with enthusiasm, to bathe
the world in affection--and on all sides we are challenging the
teachers of religion to perform this task for the youth of the city.
For thousands of years definite religious instruction has been given
by authorized agents to the youth of all nations, emphasized through
tribal ceremonials, the assumption of the Roman toga, the Barmitzvah
of the Jews, the First Communion of thousands of children in Catholic
Europe, the Sunday Schools of even the least formal of the evangelical
sects. It is as if men had always felt that this expanding period of
human life must be seized upon for spiritual ends, that the tender
tissue and newly awakened emotions must be made the repository for the
historic ideals and dogmas which are, after all, the most precious
possessions of the race. How has it come about that so many of the
city youth are not given their share in our common inheritance of
life's best goods? Why are their tender feet so often ensnared even
when they are going about youth's legitimate business? One would
suppose that in such an age as ours moral teachers would be put upon
their mettle, that moral authority would be forced to speak with no
uncertain sound if only to be heard above the din of machinery and the
roar of industrialism; that it would have exerted itself as never
before to convince the youth of the reality of the spiritual life.
Affrighted as the moralists must be by the sudden new emphasis placed
upon wealth, despairing of the older men and women who are already
caught by its rewards, one would say that they would have seized upon
the multitude of young people whose minds are busied with issues which
lie beyond the portals of life, as the only resource which might save
the city from the fate of those who perish through lack of vision.
Yet because this inheritance has not been attached to conduct, the
youth of Jewish birth may have been taught that prophets and statesmen
for three thousand years declared Jehovah to be a God of Justice who
hated oppression and desired righteousness, but there is no real
appeal to his spirit of moral adventure unless he is told that the
most stirring attempts to translate justice into the modern social
order have been inaugurated and carried forward by men of his own
race, and that until he joins in the contemporary manifestations of
that attempt he is recreant to his highest traditions and obligations.
The Christian youth may have been taught that man's heartbreaking
adventure to find justice in the order of the universe moved the God
of Heaven himself to send a Mediator in order that the justice man
craves and the mercy by which alone he can endure his weakness might
be reconciled, but he will not make the doctrine his own until he
reduces it to action and tries to translate the spirit of his Master
into social terms.
The youth who calls himself an "Evolutionist"--it is rather hard to
find a name for this youth, but there are thousands of him and a fine
fellow he often is--has read of that struggle beginning with the
earliest tribal effort to establish just relations between man and
man, but he still needs to be told that after all justice can only be
worked out upon this earth by those who will not tolerate a wrong to
the feeblest member of the community, and that it will become a social
force only in proportion as men steadfastly strive to establish it.
If these young people who are subjected to varied religious
instruction are also stirred to action, or rather, if the instruction
is given validity because it is attached to conduct, then it may be
comparatively easy to bring about certain social reforms so sorely
needed in our industrial cities. We are at times obliged to admit,
however, that both the school and the church have failed to perform
this office, and are indicted by the young people themselves.
Thousands of young people in every great city are either frankly
hedonistic, or are vainly attempting to work out for themselves a
satisfactory code of morals. They cast about in all directions for the
clue which shall connect their loftiest hopes with their actual
living.
Several years ago a committee of lads came to see me in order to
complain of a certain high school principal because "He never talks
to us about life." When urged to make a clearer statement, they added,
"He never asks us what we are going to be; we can't get a word out of
him, excepting lessons and keeping quiet in the halls."
Of the dozens of young women who have begged me to make a connection
for them between their dreams of social usefulness and their actual
living, I recall one of the many whom I had sent back to her
clergyman, returning with this remark: "His only suggestion was that I
should be responsible every Sunday for fresh flowers upon the altar. I
did that when I was fifteen and liked it then, but when you have come
back from college and are twenty-two years old, it doesn't quite fit
in with the vigorous efforts you have been told are necessary in order
to make our social relations more Christian."
All of us forget how very early we are in the experiment of founding
self-government in this trying climate of America, and that we are
making the experiment in the most materialistic period of all history,
having as our court of last appeal against that materialism only the
wonderful and inexplicable instinct for justice which resides in the
hearts of men,--which is never so irresistible as when the heart is
young. We may cultivate this most precious possession, or we may
disregard it. We may listen to the young voices rising--clear above
the roar of industrialism and the prudent councils of commerce, or we
may become hypnotized by the sudden new emphasis placed upon wealth
and power, and forget the supremacy of spiritual forces in men's
affairs. It is as if we ignored a wistful, over-confident creature who
walked through our city streets calling out, "I am the spirit of
Youth! With me, all things are possible!" We fail to understand what
he wants or even to see his doings, although his acts are pregnant
with meaning, and we may either translate them into a sordid chronicle
of petty vice or turn them into a solemn school for civic
righteousness.
We may either smother the divine fire of youth or we may feed it. We
may either stand stupidly staring as it sinks into a murky fire of
crime and flares into the intermittent blaze of folly or we may tend
it into a lambent flame with power to make clean and bright our dingy
city streets.
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Printed in the United States of America.