world. But if we think He has, it cannot be irrational to take His
word and believe it; it cannot be absurd to trust a Divine message,
when we are every day trusting human messages. And one thing further.
When we trust a friend's report, we do not make our previous ideas of
what is probable, a test of how much we shall believe of what he says.
If we were already competent to say what happened, we should not go to
him for information. Unless it is impossible, or against all the laws
of probability, we assent to what he says, however much it may
surprise, or startle, or alarm us; if we cannot do this, we have not
real trust. But trusting it is irrational "to pick and choose;" to say
this we will accept and that we will reject, according as it seems
antecedently likely or not. Surely this must be also true of divine
testimony. If God, the perfect, the unerring intelligence, speaks, we
are at least to give Him the same respect we should show to a
fellow-man; we are not to say, "this is credible and I accept it; that
is strange, mysterious, and I must reject it." If we knew beforehand
what was true, to what end would God give the revelation? And if we do
thus sit in judgment, we simply show (unless we are dishonest) that we
do not believe that God has spoken. Hence, what is called the
submission of reason, which, in the large sense of the word, it is
only rational to give, if God has indeed given a message to the world.
Protestants so submit to the teachings of the Bible; Catholics do to
the teachings of the Church. If God really speaks in either, it is as
rational to do so as it is to trust Stanley's reports of the lakes and
jungles, the weird forests and strange inhabitants of Central
Africa--yes, as much more so as Stanley is a man, and God is God. Most
simply and frankly does Newman say, in speaking of early converts,
"The Church was their teacher; they did not come to argue, to examine,
to pick and choose, but to accept whatever was put before them." This
attitude of arguing, examining, picking, and choosing in relation to
things of which we really know nothing, and can know nothing, in our
mortal state (though supposedly God knows and has given a certain
amount of light) Newman calls Rationalism; and if God has spoken,
surely such Rationalism is irrational. The doctrine that there is no
positive truth in religion, that one creed is as good as another, and
that all is opinion, Newman calls Liberalism; but if God has revealed
the truth such Liberalism is false.
In writing of Newman as I have, I have been moved by old attachment
and personal veneration. But if I have incidentally contributed to
show that a Catholic need not necessarily be either a weak man or a
dishonest one, as is sometimes taken for granted among Liberals, I
shall not be sorry. My opinion is that Newman differed from the stock
Protestantism of his day, largely because he sought out light and
sought it with a mind which for eagerness, keenness, subtlety, depth,
has rarely been surpassed; that he left the Church of England because
it was neither fish nor fowl--and rationality and consistency were not
in it; that he went to Rome, because, taking his premises for granted,
reason pointed that way. And yet the guarded way in which I have
spoken has probably been noticed by my readers. I have not said that
reason, abstractly speaking, was on his side, but that starting from
his premises his course was reasonable--his premises being those to
which most Christians hold. The difference was that he took them
seriously and they became living principles, germs of ample growth in
his mind, while others held them unthinkingly; that he had the rare
power of realizing his ideas, while others took them as mechanically
as we often take the stars at night--points of light they are to us
and nothing more. But whether his premises were really sound is
another question. My mature judgment is that they were not; had I been
able to hold my Christian faith as I once held it, could I have
resisted the solvents that science, and criticism, and philosophy were
bringing to bear upon it, I should have gone I know not where; as it
is, I am a Liberal (though not in Newman's sense). The ordinary idea
of God I cannot hold, nor does it seem likely that I shall ever hold
an idea of God with which the idea of a special revelation would be
congruous; and even were the ordinary idea of God a true one, I think
that the matter-of-fact evidence of a revelation through Jesus is
insufficient. Reluctant as I was to admit it, struggle as I might
against it, the share of Jesus in the errors and illusions of his time
(the sense of which grew upon me) made it impossible for me at last to
absolutely trust his consciousness; however great, however sublime a
figure he was, it appeared that he belonged after all to our fallible
humanity. Hence in my view we were thrown back on ourselves; we may
have great and consoling beliefs about life and its purpose, about
death and what lies beyond, about the fathomless Power from which we
come and on whose bosom we rest; but a revelation we have not; they
are beliefs which we ourselves form and do not receive from without.
Rationalism, though not in the sense in which Newman used it, becomes
the only method; and Liberalism, in the sense that whatever creed one
may hold none can claim to be infallible, or of exclusive divine
authority, and that good men of different creeds should respect and
tolerate one another, becomes at once a necessity and a duty.
Newman has taken his way; other men, let us trust, with the root of
piety in them as truly as it was in him, have taken theirs; the ways
are far apart--which is truer, time, the future, perhaps the ages
alone can tell. But we are bound not to revile him, as he in sober
truth never reviled us.
INTER-MIGRATION.
BY RABBI SOLOMON SCHINDLER.
The immigration problem, which I have been discussing in previous
numbers of THE ARENA, cannot be unravelled without considering one
important thread which adds to the entanglement. I shall apply to it
the term "Inter-migration," a word not found in the dictionary,
because it is freshly coined for the purpose. Let me try to define its
meaning.
A person is said to migrate when he leaves his native land, seeking a
new home in some other country. Around the word emigrant or immigrant
hovers always the idea of an exchange of habits, customs, and language
of one country with those of another. The immigrant, when he arrives
at the place which he has chosen for his new settlement, appears by
his dress, his language, his manners, yea, even by his features, a
stranger; one who has apparently no right to press himself upon the
community; one who must not feel offended if he is mistrusted, until
he has shown that his arrival will not prove dangerous to the old
settlers. Around the word emigrant hovers the idea of distance; he
comes from far-off countries, from a place which cannot be easily
reached, or from which information concerning himself cannot be
readily obtained. We call a person an immigrant who comes to us from a
distance of at least a few thousand miles, and from a country that
differs from ours in the forms of government as well as in customs and
manners. We would surely not call a person an immigrant who comes from
a village of Maine or New Hampshire to Boston, nor even if he should
come from the far South or from the extreme West.
Yet, what is the difference? He is a person who has left his native
home, who is as much a stranger among us as the one who comes across
the ocean. His manners may be as different from ours, his features may
show at a glance, whether he is a southerner, a western man, or
whether he comes from down east; even his language may be strange on
account of the peculiar accent which he gives his words, and the
idioms which he uses. It may frequently happen that two people, who
both think they speak the English language will be unable to
understand each other, on account of the difference in dialect. The
new-comer may prove to be as much, or even more, of an undesirable
element among us, as the one who comes from Ireland or China; his
presence in the labor market may tend as well to reduce the rates of
wages as if he had come from Hungaria or Bulgaria. There is no denying
the fact that a locomotion has taken place, that an individual has
transplanted himself from one place to the other, either on account of
the urging of his venturesome spirit, or for the sake of finding a
better market for his abilities, or driven out by force of adverse
conditions. There is little difference whether a person leaves Russia
on account of his dissatisfaction with the government, or an arbitrary
legislation which deprives him of his opportunities; or whether he
leaves a village in Nebraska because he finds he is unable longer to
withstand the grinding process of the land sharks, or the sweating
system of the factory owners. His intentions are to better his
condition; precisely the same as are those of him who crosses the
Atlantic. The one will sell his all to pay his passage on the steamer,
the other to pay for his railroad ticket, and both will arrive
penniless. Yet the one is called an emigrant or immigrant, and the
other is not, although the distance from which the latter comes may be
the same or even greater than that from which the former hails.
In order to distinguish between these two classes of migration, I call
this latter one "Inter-migration," and desire the term to stand for a
change of habitation occurring within the boundaries of a land that is
under the same government.
Inter-migration, although it has never before reached the development
to which it has risen in the present, is not a new form of the
migratory habit of peoples. Ancient records tell us that a forced
inter-migration has frequently taken place. The conquerors of old,
desirous of making one nation out of the many peoples they subdued by
their valiant sword, would transplant large numbers of individuals
from one province to another distant one, giving their land and their
possessions in exchange to settlers, whom they drew from some other
country. Their scheme, however, rarely succeeded, because the
difficulties of a long journey made it impossible for them to
transplant a sufficiently large number of people; the masses remained
undisturbed, the few new-comers were soon absorbed by them, and the
desired change of sentiment was not produced. The moment the
government was attacked by a new conqueror, all provinces would at
once rise in revolt, and thus hasten the downfall of empires, such as
was, for instance, the Persian, before the onslaught of so small an
army as that with which Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont.
The golden era of the Roman Empire, and the prosperity and the culture
which then prevailed, were made possible solely through the facilities
which were given to inter-migration. Good roads connected the ends and
dissected the width and breadth of the great Roman Empire. Travel was
well protected. A well-drilled army suppressed highway robbery, and an
excellent navy put down piracy. A resident of Gaul could with ease
settle in Syria, while the Syrian, if he so desired, could find with
ease a home in Gaul. The residents of Brittania and Greece could with
comparative ease inter-migrate, and had not the floods of barbarians
which deluged the Roman Empire put an end to civilization, and with it
the possibilities of inter-migration, we might stand to-day on a much
higher round of culture, and our knowledge might have been much
greater than it is.
If the inventions of the nineteenth century have made possible
emigration to such an extent to-day as never before existed, it has
still more facilitated inter-migration. It has almost destroyed the
equilibrium between the centripetal and centrifugal forces, giving the
advantages to the latter. The facilities of locomotion have made
people restless; the times have passed by when grandchildren would
live in the same house in which their grandparents lived or when they
consider it a hardship and misfortune to move out of such a
habitation, or to see it change owners; time has been, when only the
adventurer left his native place, and when it was considered dangerous
to go into the world, which at that time could be circumscribed by a
radius of a few miles; time has been, when people lived for
generations in the same house, in the same street, in the same village
or town, when even the household furniture became venerable on account
of its antiquity and the remembrances connected with it. What boy or
girl in our day plays around the chair which their great-grandfather
used to occupy? To sell one house and move into another; to leave one
city and seek settlement in another, is now the rule and not the
exception; and it is mainly this inter-migration, stirring up the
masses, to which is due our increased prosperity and our progress in
all branches of knowledge. Inter-migration keeps us from stagnation;
it removes shyness and fear at the sight of a stranger, accustoms us
to an intercourse with different people, removes prejudices and
superstitions, and facilitates the exchange of thoughts and ideas.
On the other hand, it cannot be denied that intermigration has also
its drawbacks; that it will easily flood the labor market so as to
screw down wages; it will foster the venturesome spirit, induce people
to risk a certainty for an uncertainty, and especially has it tended
to draw people from the rural districts to the large cities.
All the complaints heard against immigration, and all the pressure
that is brought to bear upon the government to restrict it, do not
come from the rural districts, but from the large cities; and it is
generally overlooked that the competition, which presses down the
compensation for labor to such a degree that the wages earned for hard
work are sometimes not sufficient to support one person, and far less
a family, is not brought about solely by the immigrant who comes from
abroad, but is, to a very great extent, the consequence of
inter-migration, of the influx of villagers into the cities. While in
country places there is a scarcity of labor, thus in New England, for
example, while many farms are vacant, there are people starving in the
cities, unable to obtain work. The increase of large cities and of
their population is beyond the proportion in which it formerly stood
to that of the country. This has aroused the thoughts of many
long-headed people, and investigations are being made on every hand,
especially because some people are moved by fear that city life will
corrupt morality. They take it for granted that country people are
virtuous, and that vice finds its domicile only in the large centres
of population, and having established these premises, they argue that
the tendency of country people to move into cities shows a degeneracy
on their part, or that the abnormal growth of cities is a sure token
of the moral depravity which has taken hold of the people. This,
however, is not true. There is as much iniquity in proportion in small
communities as in large ones, and not unfrequently wickedness and
viciousness are attributed to actions which, after all, are neither
wicked nor vicious, but merely strange to one who is not accustomed to
them. The tide of inter-migration, which swells the population of the
cities, has its natural causes, of which moral corruption is the
least.
The philosophers of the individualistic school will take exception,
when I name as the first cause of the tendency to leave the village
for the city, the fact that the more society becomes organized, the
more each individual becomes a part of a system, the easier it is to
obtain comfort, and that, having found the proper place, one can more
easily excel in that sphere of life. True, a man living in a village
may be able to secure for himself, without excessive labor, food that
would keep him from starvation, and raiment and fuel to protect him
against the inclemency of the weather; but man needs more than bread
and meat, a coat and a pair of shoes. There are a thousand other
things which bring cheer to him and make his life worth living, that
he cannot obtain in rural solitude. He claims a right to these
comforts, and tries to obtain them by seeking them where they are to
be found. If simple support, which rustic life insures, was preferable
to the insecurity of earning a livelihood in the city; if plenty of
coarse food and the healthier habitation which the village offers,
were sufficient to induce the over-worked, half-starved, and
ill-tenanted city laborer to give up for them the other comforts which
city life offers him, we should soon behold an exodus from the city to
country places, instead of observing the growth of the centres of
population. It is the tendency to work in a system and with a system
which increases as the human being rises in culture and civilization.
This is the magnet which draws people to large cities, and holds them
there, despite the many drawbacks which naturally adhere to it.
The facility of locomotion and of transportation have made possible an
interchange of commodities which has never been so before. The world
has become one marketplace, upon which the commodities are thrown, and
in which he who is able to sell an article of the same quality at the
lowest rate will have most customers. When grain can be produced in
large quantities in the West, so that it can be sold at a lower rate
in the East than the cost of its production would be there, it is
quite natural that the Eastern farmer must go to the wall, and it is
no wonder he deserts his farm. The less the raw material can be used
in its natural state, and the more our refinement demands a long
process of converting it into a commodity, the more does it require
systematic, organized, skilled labor to perform that conversion. With
sufficient land a few people can raise such an abundance of raw
material that the labor of thousands of people will be called for to
change it into useful articles. It is the system, the developed social
organization, which draws the villager to the city, and as an
illustration I shall point to the sudden and unparelleled growth of
the city of Berlin.
Twenty-five years ago Berlin was not quite as large in population as
is Boston to-day, and its area was much smaller. Berlin is situated in
a sandy, sterile country; so to say, in a desert. There is no
navigable river to connect it with the ocean, nor are minerals or coal
found in its immediate neighborhood. When Berlin was made the seat of
the German government, the first result was that thousands of
government officials were removed from other places to this city; then
the garrison was enlarged. More commodious roads were built to connect
the capital with the provinces. This attracted business men, as well
as thousands whose services in all branches of life were required. The
manufacturer soon followed, and Berlin became in a short time a
commercial centre. Leipsic lost its prestige and Nuremberg its renown.
The organized net-work of labor makes it possible now for a million
and a half of people to live and prosper on that sterile ground. Let
Berlin cease to be the capital of Germany, through any unforeseen
event, and its population will melt away at once. Like iron filings
hanging on a magnet, in which one particle attracts and holds the
other, thus are people attracted to and held in places where society,
and with it labor, is organized.
Another and weighty reason to account for inter-migration, and
especially for the increase of population in cities, is that
agriculture, too, has undergone a change. The inventive genius of our
age, which keeps on creating labor-saving machinery, has not left this
branch of occupation untouched. As the mechanic had to go in order to
be replaced by the factory owner, thus the small farmer can no longer
exist beside a syndicate which will systematically cultivate large
tracts of land. The tendency of the time is to apply system also to
agricultural pursuits, to take that art out of the sphere of instinct
and to transplant it into the sphere of science.
In this paper I have merely sought to bring before the mind of the
reader important facts which are usually overlooked in the discussion
of the problem under consideration, believing it to be necessary to
adduce all the important evidence which bears upon the subject in
order that he may form a just and enlightened opinion on a great
living question of the first magnitude, as a frank statement of a
problem is of far greater value to the honest investigator than any
amount of ingenious reasonings from a narrow or distorted point of
view.
HE CAME AND WENT AGAIN.
BY WILL N. HARBEN.
He was the humblest man in the world. He wore ragged clothing and
lived in the filthiest tenement-house in New York. He was unlettered,
had never opened a book, and seemed to know little of the ways of men.
His hair and beard were long, and like golden silk; his eyes held the
blue of infinite space.
When wealthy people passed him they shook their heads and said, "He is
demented;" but the poor, who knew him, lowered their voices when he
was near and whispered that he belonged to a better world, for in his
eyes they saw a strange light of eternal kindness.
"Why are you so good to me?" the poor would ask, marvelling over his
tears of sympathy.
"Because I love you," he would answer, "and love is the mother of all
that is good. If you will love men as I do your way of life will be
strewn with roses from heaven and your vision know no end."
He had never been in a church nor heard one word in the Bible, and
yet, with a far-away light in his eyes, he used to talk of immortality
and infinite love. "Love is everlasting life," he would say, "love is
eternal."
His poor old mother did not understand him, and she was often troubled
on his behalf. She used to plead with him to stay with her more and
not to give up his life so completely to others.
"Why," she would argue plaintively, "even the great clergymen who
preach in the grand churches, and who are said to be the best of men,
do not risk their lives and love others as you do. They seldom come
here where everybody is so poor." Once he asked her to tell him what
the clergymen taught, and when she tried to explain the creeds of the
different denominations, he shook his head and turned pale with
perplexity and pain.
"I cannot understand," he said sorrowfully. "It all makes my heart
ache. It seems to me that the church-members, too, are in the dark.
Love is food for the soul and they are starving. People everywhere are
dying in crime and pain and no one offers to help them."
One day, after he had been laboring for a week without sufficient food
and sleep among the fever-stricken poor, he fell ill, and his mother
thought he was about to die. She ran, her gray locks streaming in the
wind, to the parsonage of a little church near by and inquired for the
minister, but was told by his wife that he had been gone for several
weeks to a watering place in the mountains. The old woman ran on
further, till she came to a great church whose majestic spire seemed
to touch the clouds. A stately rectory was near. Soft music, mingled
with merry voices, came out to her through the open doors. Awkwardly
and tremblingly she went up the polished marble steps and rang. A
servant in livery told her gruffly that his master was dining with his
bishop and other distinguished personages, and that she would have to
wait.
She replied with a groan that she feared her son was dying. The man
went to his master and came back saying, "He cannot see you now."
She sat down in the great hall and tried to pray. Before her hung a
costly painting representing Jesus with a child in his arms, a lamb at
his side. She smelt the fragrance of flowers, and heard the clinking
of wine-glasses, the tinkling of silver and rare china, short speeches
and laughter.
"The dean, it seems," she heard the bishop say, "was reproving one of
the young clergymen for becoming intoxicated. The young scamp's reply
quite took the dean off his feet. 'If I mistake not, sir,' said the
young priest, 'the liquor I drank came from your celebrated
art-gallery and bar-room.'"
This story was greeted by hearty laughter, and then the old woman
heard the bishop giving a description of a new yacht which he had just
bought. By and by the rector came out. His cheeks were slightly
flushed, his manner betrayed impatience."
"Well," said he to her, "what is it? I am very busy."
"I am afraid my son is dying," she said timidly, abashed by the
splendor of his dress and abrupt manner. "I thought some minister
ought to see him."
"Where do you attend church?" he asked, looking down at her tattered
attire.
"I do not go to any," she faltered.
"I have as much as I can attend to in my own parish," he frowned;
"besides my bishop is here as my guest; there is a young theological
student with me who will go." And he went back to the dining-room and
sent a young man out to her.
"Show me the way," said the student, and he shrugged his shoulders,
and blushed because the footman seemed to comprehend the situation.
Without a word she led him through the squalid streets to the house,
and up the narrow stairs to her miserable room. The sick man lay alone
on a hard couch.
"What can I do for you?" asked the visitor.
A look of hope came into the pallid features of the one addressed. His
voice was low and eager when he replied:--
"A poor woman downstairs has fallen and broken her spine. I fear she
is without attention, I was trying to reach her when I fell ill.
Perhaps you will go to see her; I need nothing."
"His mind is wandering," said the student, turning to the mother. "He
could not comprehend anything I might read or say now. He needs
medical treatment. You should apply to the public charities." And he
went away, brushing the sleeve of his coat which had caught a cobweb.
At her son's request the mother went below. Presently she returned
with the information that the injured woman's needs had been attended
to. Then she got a Bible and began to read to him for the first time
in life. When she had read a few passages he asked her what it was,
and she replied:--