“_I TAKE_ reproof to myself,” said Mr. Dinneford. “As one of your board
of managers, I ought to have regarded my position as more than a nominal
one. I understand better now what you said about the ten or twenty of
our rich and influential men who, if they could be induced to look away
for a brief period from their great enterprises, and concentrate thought
and effort upon the social evils, abuse of justice, violations of law,
poverty and suffering that exist here and in other parts of our city,
would inaugurate reforms and set beneficent agencies at work that would
soon produce marvelous changes for good.”
“Ah, yes,” sighed Mr. Paulding. “If we had for just a little while the
help of our strong men--the men of brains and will and money, the men
who are used to commanding success, whose business it is to organize
forces and set impediments at defiance, the men whose word is a kind
of law to the people--how quickly, and as if by magic, would all this
change!
“But we cannot now hope to get this great diversion in our favor. Until
we do we must stand in the breach, small in numbers and weak though we
are--must go on doing our best and helping when we may. Help is help and
good is good, be it ever so small. If I am able to rescue but a single
life where many are drowning, I make just so much head against death and
destruction. Shall I stand off and refuse to put forth my hand because I
cannot save a score?
“Take heart, Mr. Dinneford. Our work is not in vain. Its fruits may be
seen all around. Bad as you find everything, it is not so bad as it was.
When our day-school was opened, the stench from the filthy children who
were gathered in was so great that the teachers were nauseated. They
were dirty in person as well as dirty in their clothing. This would
not do. There was no hope of moral purity while such physical impurity
existed. So the mission set up baths, and made every child go in and
thoroughly wash his body. Then they got children's clothing--new and
old--from all possible sources, and put clean garments on their little
scholars. From the moment they were washed and cleanly clad, a new and
better spirit came upon them. They were more orderly and obedient, and
more teachable. There was, or seemed to be, a tenderer quality in their
voices as they sang their hymns of praise.”
Just then there came a sudden outcry and a confusion of voices from
the street. Mr. Dinneford arose quickly and went to the window. A man,
apparently drunk and in a rage, was holding a boy tightly gripped by the
collar with one hand and cuffing him about the head and face with the
other.
“It's that miserable Blind Jake!” said Mr. Paulding.
In great excitement, Mr. Dinneford threw up the window and called for
the police. At this the man stopped beating the boy, but swore at
him terribly, his sightless eyes rolling and his face distorted in a
frightful way. A policeman who was not far off came now upon the scene.
“What's all this about?” he asked, sternly.
“Jake's drunk again, that's the row,” answered a voice.
“Lock him up, lock him up!” cried two or three from the crowd.
An expression of savage defiance came into the face of the blind man,
and he moved his arms and clenched his fist like one who was bent on
desperate resistance. He was large and muscular, and, now that he was
excited by drink and bad passions, had a look that was dangerous.
“Go home and behave yourself,” said the policeman, not caring to have a
single-handed tussle with the human savage, whose strength and desperate
character he well knew.
Blind Jake, as he was called, stood for a few moments half defiant,
growling and distorting his face until it looked more like a wild
animal's than a man's, then jerked out the words,
“Where's that Pete?” with a sound like the crack of a whip.
The boy he had been beating in his drunken fury, and who did not seem to
be much hurt, came forward from the crowd, and taking him by the hand,
led him away.
“Who is this blind man? I have seen him before,” said Mr. Dinneford.
“You may see him any day standing at the street corners, begging, a
miserable-looking object, exciting the pity of the humane, and gathering
in money to spend in drunken debauchery at night. He has been known to
bring in some days as high as ten and some fifteen dollars, all of which
is wasted in riot before the next morning. He lives just over the way,
and night after night I can hear his howls and curses and laughter
mingled with those of the vile women with whom he herds.”
“Surely this cannot be?” said Mr. Dinneford.
“Surely it is,” was replied. “I know of what I speak. There is hardly a
viler wretch in all our city than this man, who draws hundreds--I
might say, without exaggeration, thousands--of dollars from weak and
tender-hearted people every year to be spent as I have said; and he
is not the only one. Out of this district go hundreds of thieves and
beggars every day, spreading themselves over the city and gathering in
their harvests from our people. I see them at the street corners, coming
out of yards and alley-gates, skulking near unguarded premises and
studying shop-windows. They are all impostors or thieves. Not one of
them is deserving of charity. He who gives to them wastes his money and
encourages thieving and vagrancy. One half of the successful burglaries
committed on dwelling-houses are in consequence of information gained by
beggars. Servant-girls are lured away by old women who come in the guise
of alms-seekers, and by well-feigned poverty and a seeming spirit
of humble thankfulness--often of pious trust in God--win upon their
sympathy and confidence. Many a poor weak girl has thus been led to
visit one of these poor women in the hope of doing her some good,
and many a one has thus been drawn into evil ways. If the people only
understood this matter as I understand it, they would shut hearts and
hands against all beggars. I add beggary as a vice to drinking and
policy-buying as the next most active agency in the work of making
paupers and criminals.”
“But there are deserving poor,” said Dinneford. “We cannot shut our
hearts against all who seek for help.”
“The deserving poor,” replied Mr. Paulding, “are never common
beggars--never those who solicit in the street or importune from house
to house. They try always to help themselves, and ask for aid only when
in great extremity. They rarely force themselves on your attention; they
suffer and die often in dumb despair. We find them in these dreary and
desolate cellars and garrets, sick and starving and silent, often dying,
and minister to them as best we can. If the money given daily to idle
and vicious beggars could be gathered into a fund and dispensed with a
wise Christian charity, it would do a vast amount of good; now it does
only evil.”
“You are doubtless right in this,” returned Mr. Dinneford. “Some one has
said that to help the evil is to hurt the good, and I guess his saying
is near the truth.”
“If you help the vicious and the idle,” was answered, “you simply
encourage vice and idleness, and these never exist without doing a hurt
to society. Withhold aid, and they will be forced to work, and so not
only do something for the common good, but be kept out of the evil ways
into which idleness always leads.
“So you see, sir, how wrong it is to give alms to the vast crew of
beggars that infest our cities, and especially to the children who are
sent out daily to beg or steal as opportunity offers.
“But there is another view of the case,” continued Mr. Paulding, “that
few consider, and which would, I am sure, arouse the people to immediate
action if they understood it as I do. We compare the nation to a great
man. We call it a 'body politic.' We speak of its head, its brain, its
hands, its feet, its arteries and vital forces. We know that no part
of the nation can be hurt without all the other parts feeling in some
degree the shock and sharing the loss or suffering. What is true of the
great man of the nation is true of our smaller communities, our States
and cities and towns. Each is an aggregate man, and the health and
well-being of this man depend on the individual men and the groups
and societies of men by which it is constituted. There cannot be an
unhealthy organ in the human system without a communication of disease
to the whole body. A diseased liver or heart or lung, a useless hand
or foot, an ulcer or local obstruction, cannot exist without injury and
impediment to the whole. In the case of a malignant ulcer, how soon the
blood gets poisoned!
“Now, here is a malignant ulcer in the body politic of our city. Is it
possible, do you think, for it to exist, and in the virulent condition
we find it, and not poison the blood of our whole community? Moral and
spiritual laws are as unvarying in their action, out of natural sight
though they be, as physical laws. Evil and good are as positive entities
as fire, and destroy or consume as surely. As certainly as an ulcer
poisons with its malignant ichor this blood that visits every part of
the body, so surely is this ulcer poisoning every part of our community.
Any one who reflects for a moment will see that it cannot be otherwise.
From this moral ulcer there flows out daily and nightly an ichor as
destructive as that from a cancer. Here theft and robbery and murder
have birth, nurture and growth until full formed and organized, and then
go forth to plunder and destroy. The life and property of no citizen is
safe so long as this community exists. It has its schools of instruction
for thieves and housebreakers, where even little children are educated
to the business of stealing and robbery. Out from it go daily hundreds
of men and women, boys and girls, on their business of beggary, theft
and the enticement of the weak and unwary into crime. In it congregate
human vultures and harpies who absorb most of the plunder that is gained
outside, and render more brutal and desperate the wretches they rob in
comparative safety.
“Let me show you how this is done. A man or a woman thirsting for liquor
will steal anything to get money for whisky. The article stolen may be
a coat, a pair of boots or a dress--something worth from five to twenty
dollars. It is taken to one of these harpies, and sold for fifty cents
or a dollar--anything to get enough for a drunken spree. I am speaking
only of what I know. Then, again, a man or a woman gets stupidly drunk
in one of the whisky-shops. Before he or she is thrown out upon the
street, the thrifty liquor-seller 'goes through' the pockets of the
insensible wretch, and confiscates all he finds. Again, a vile woman has
robbed one of her visitors, and with the money in her pocket goes to a
dram-shop. The sum may be ten dollars or it may be two hundred. A glass
or so unlooses her tongue; she boasts of her exploit, and perhaps shows
her booty. Not once in a dozen times will she take this booty away.
If there are only a few women in the shop, the liquor-seller will most
likely pounce on her at once and get the money by force. There is no
redress. To inform the police is to give information against herself. He
may give her back a little to keep her quiet or he may not, just as he
feels about it. If he does not resort to direct force, he will manage in
some other way to get the money. I could take you to the dram-shop of a
man scarcely a stone's throw from this place who came out of the State's
prison less than four years ago and set up his vile trap where it now
stands. He is known to be worth fifty thousand dollars to-day. How did
he make this large sum? By the profits of his bar? No one believes this.
It has been by robbing his drunken and criminal customers whenever he
could get them in his power.”
“I am oppressed by all this,” said Mr. Dinneford. “I never dreamed of
such a state of things.”
“Nor does one in a hundred of our good citizens, who live in quiet
unconcern with this pest-house of crime and disease in their midst. And
speaking of disease, let me give you another fact that should be widely
known. Every obnoxious epidemic with which our city has been visited in
the last twenty years has originated here--ship fever, relapsing fever
and small-pox--and so, getting a lodgment in the body politic, have
poured their malignant poisons into the blood and diseased the whole.
Death has found his way into the homes of hundreds of our best citizens
through the door opened for him here.”
“Can this be so?” exclaimed Mr. Dinneford.
“It is just as I have said,” was replied. “And how could it be
otherwise? Whether men take heed or not, the evil they permit to lie at
their doors will surely do them harm. Ignorance of a statute, a moral
or a physical law gives no immunity from consequence if the law be
transgressed--a fact that thousands learn every year to their sorrow.
There are those who would call this spread of disease, originating here,
all over our city, a judgment from God, to punish the people for that
neglect and indifference which has left such a hell as this in their
midst. I do not so read it. God has no pleasure in punishments and
retributions. The evil comes not from him. It enters through the door
we have left open, just as a thief enters our dwellings, invited through
our neglect to make the fastenings sure. It comes under the operations
of a law as unvarying as any law in physics. And so long as we have this
epidemic-breeding district in the very heart of our city, we must expect
to reap our periodical harvests of disease and death. What it is to be
next year, or the next, none can tell.”
“Does not your perpetual contact with all this give your mind an
unhealthy tone--a disposition to magnify its disastrous consequences?”
said Mr. Dinneford.
The missionary dropped his eyes. The flush and animation went out of his
face.
“I leave you to judge for yourself,” he answered, after a brief silence,
and in a voice that betrayed a feeling of disappointment. “You have the
fact before you in the board of health, prison, almshouse, police, house
of refuge, mission and other reports that are made every year to the
people. If they hear not these, neither will they believe, though one
rose from the dead.”
“All is too dreadfully palpable for unbelief,” returned Mr. Dinneford.
“I only expressed a passing thought.”
“My mind may take an unhealthy tone--does often, without doubt,” said
Mr. Paulding. “I wonder, sometimes, that I can keep my head clear and my
purposes steady amid all this moral and physical disorder and suffering.
But exaggeration of either this evil or its consequences is impossible.
The half can never be told.”
Mr. Dinneford rose to go. As he did so, two little Italian children, a
boy and a girl, not over eight years of age, tired, hungry, pinched and
starved-looking little creatures, the boy with a harp slung over his
shoulder, and the girl carrying a violin, went past on the other side.
“Where in the world do all of these little wretches come from?” asked
Mr. Dinneford. “They are swarming our streets of late. Yesterday I saw
a child who could not be over two years of age tinkling her triangle,
while an older boy and girl were playing on a harp and violin. She
seemed so cold and tired that it made me sad to look at her. There is
something wrong about this.”
“Something very wrong,” answered the missionary. “Doubtless you think
these children are brought here by their parents or near relatives. No
such thing. Most of them are slaves. I speak advisedly. The slave-trade
is not yet dead. Its abolition on the coast of Africa did not abolish
the cupidity that gave it birth. And the 'coolie' trade, one of its new
forms, is not confined to the East.”
“I am at a loss for your meaning,” said Mr. Dinneford.
“I am not surprised. The new slave-trade, which has been carried on
with a secresy that is only now beginning to attract attention, has its
source of supply in Southern Italy, from which large numbers of children
are drawn every year and brought to this country.
“The headquarters of this trade--cruel enough in some of its features
to bear comparison with the African slave-trade itself--are in New York.
From this city agents are sent out to Southern Italy every year, where
little intelligence and great poverty exist. These agents tell grand
stories of the brilliant prospects offered to the young in America. Let
me now read to you from the published testimony of one who has made a
thorough investigation of this nefarious business, so that you may get a
clear comprehension of its extent and iniquity.
“He says: 'One of these agents will approach the father of a family, and
after commenting upon the beauty of his children, will tell him that his
boys “should be sent at once to America, where they must in time become
rich.” “There are no poor in America.” “The children should go when
young, so that they may grow up with the people and the better acquire
the language.” “None are too young or too old to go to America.” The
father, of course, has not the means to go himself or to send his
children to this delightful country. The agent then offers to take the
children to America, and to pay forty or fifty dollars to the father
upon his signing an indenture abandoning all claims upon them. He often,
also, promises to pay a hundred or more at the end of a year, but, of
course, never does it.
“'After the agent has collected a sufficient number of children, they
are all supplied with musical instruments, and the trip on foot through
Switzerland and France begins. They are generally shipped to Genoa,
and often to Marseilles, and accomplish the remainder of the journey to
Havre or Calais by easy stages from village to village. Thus they
become a paying investment from the beginning. This journey occupies
the greater portion of the summer months; and after a long trip in the
steerage of a sailing-vessel, the unfortunate children land at Castle
Garden. As the parents never hear from them again, they do not know
whether they are doing well or not.
“'They are too young and ignorant to know how to get themselves
delivered from oppression; they do not speak our language, and find
little or no sympathy among the people whom they annoy. They are
thus left to the mercy of their masters, who treat them brutally, and
apparently without fear of the law or any of its officers. They are
crowded into small, ill-ventilated, uncarpeted rooms, eighteen or twenty
in each, and pass the night on the floor, with only a blanket to protect
them from the severity of the weather. In the mornings they are fed by
their temporary guardian with maccaroni, served in the filthiest manner
in a large open dish in the centre of the room, after which they are
turned out into the streets to beg or steal until late at night.
“'More than all this, when the miserable little outcasts return to their
cheerless quarters, they are required to deliver every cent which they
have gathered during the day; and if the same be deemed insufficient,
the children are carefully searched and soundly beaten.
“'The children are put through a kind of training in the arts of
producing discords on their instruments, and of begging, in the whole of
which the cruelty of the masters and the stolid submission of the pupils
are the predominant features. The worst part of all is that the children
become utterly unfitted for any occupation except vagrancy and theft.'
“You have the answer to your question, 'Where do all these little
wretches come from?'” said the missionary as he laid aside the paper
from which he had been reading. “Poor little slaves!”