against society; that they sometimes learn to hate all who live in
comfort, and who represent the established order of things, and from the
rank of the patient, uncomplaining struggler descend to a lower zone,
where the moral nature is eclipsed by degradation and crime, and life
takes on a deeper shade of horror. This class of people exist on the
brink of a precipice. Socially, they may be likened to the physical
condition of Victor Hugo's Claude Frollo after Quasimodo had hurled him
from the tower of Notre Dame. You remember the sickening sensation
produced by that wonderful piece of descriptive work, depicting the
false priest hanging to the eaves, vainly striving to ascend, feeling
the leaden gutter to which he was holding slowly giving away. His hands
send momentary messages to the brain, warning it that endurance is
almost exhausted. Below he sees the sharp formidable spires of
Saint-Jean-de-Ronde, and immediately under him, two hundred feet from
where he hangs, are the hard pavement, where men appear like pigmies.
Above stands the avenging hunchback ready to hurl him back if he succeed
in climbing over the eaves. So these poor people have ever below them
starvation, eviction, and sickness. Above stands Quasimodo in the form
of a three-headed monster: a soulless landlord, the slave master who
pays only starvation wages, and disease, the natural complement of the
wretched squalor permitted by the one, and the slow starvation
necessarily incident to the prices paid by the other. Their lot is even
more terrible when it is remembered that their fall carries with it the
fate of their loved ones. In addition to the multitude who are condemned
to suffer through uninvited poverty, with no hopeful outlook before
them, there is another class who are constantly on the brink of real
distress, and who are liable at any time, to suffer bitterly because
they are proud-spirited and will almost starve to death before they ask
for aid. Space prevents me from citing more than one illustration of
this character. In an apartment house we found an American woman with a
babe two weeks old and a little girl. The place was scrupulously clean,
something very rare in this zone of life. The woman, of course, was weak
from illness and, as yet, unable to take in any work to speak of. Her
husband has been out of employment for a few weeks, but had just shipped
on board a sailing vessel for a cruise of several months. The woman did
not intimate that they were in great need, as she hoped to soon be
enabled to make some money, and the portion of her husband's wages she
was allowed to draw, paid the rent. A week ago, however, the little girl
came to the Bethel Mission asking for a loaf of bread. "We have had
nothing to eat since Monday morning," she said, "and the little baby
cries all the time because mamma can give it no milk." It was Wednesday
evening when the child visited the Mission. An investigation
substantiated the truth of the child's words. The mother, too proud to
beg, struggled with fate, hoping and praying to be able to succeed
without asking for aid, but seeing her babe starving to death, she
yielded. This case finds many counterparts where a little aid bridges
over a period of frightful want, after which the unfortunate are able,
in a measure, to take care of themselves.
I find it impossible in this paper to touch upon other cases I desired
to describe. The above illustrations however, typical of the life and
environment of hundreds of families, are sufficient to emphasize a
condition which exists in our midst and which is yearly growing, both in
extent and in intensity of bitterness; a condition that is little
understood by those who are not actually brought in contact with the
circumstances as they exist, a condition at once revolting and appalling
to every sense of humanity and justice. We cannot afford to remain
ignorant of the real status of life in our midst, any more than we can
afford to sacrifice truth to optimism. It has become a habit with some
to make light of these grim and terrible facts, to minify the suffering
experienced, or to try and impute the terrible condition to drink. This
may be pleasant but it will never alter conditions or aid the cause of
reform. It is our duty to honestly face the deplorable conditions, and
courageously set to work to ameliorate the suffering, and bring about
radical reformatory measures calculated to invest life with a rich, new
significance for this multitude so long exiles from joy, gladness, and
comfort.
We now come to the practical question, What is to be done? But before
viewing the problem in its larger and more far-reaching aspects, I wish
to say a word in regard to the direct measures for immediate relief
which it is fashionable among many reformers to dismiss as unworthy of
consideration. It is very necessary in a discussion of this character to
view the problem in all its bearings, and adjust the mental vision so as
to recognize the utility of the various plans advanced by sincere
reformers. I have frequently heard it urged that these palliative
measures tend to retard the great radical reformative movements, which
are now taking hold of the public mind. This view, however comfortable
to those who prefer theorizing and agitation to putting their shoulder
to the wheel in a practical way, is, nevertheless, erroneous. There is
no way in which people can be so thoroughly aroused to the urgent
necessity of radical economic changes as by bringing them into such
intimate relations with the submerged millions that they hear the
throbbing of misery's heart. The lethargy of the moral instincts of the
people is unquestionably due to lack of knowledge more than anything
else. The people do not begin to realize the true condition of life in
the ever-widening field of abject want. When they know and are
sufficiently interested to personally investigate the problem and aid
the suffering, they will appreciate as never before the absolute
necessity for radical economic changes, which contemplate a greater meed
of justice and happiness than any measures yet devised. But aside from
this we must not forget the fact that we have a duty to perform to the
living no less than to the generations yet unborn. The commonwealth of
to-day as well as that of to-morrow demands our aid. Millions are in the
quicksands: yearly, monthly, daily, hourly they are sinking deeper and
deeper. We can save them while the bridges are being built. To withhold
the planks upon which life and happiness depend is no less criminal than
to refuse to face the question in its broader aspects and labor for
fundamental economic changes. A great work of real, practical, and
enduring value, however, is being wrought each year by those in charge
of local missions work in the slums and by individuals who mingle with
and study the actual condition of the very poor. The extent of good
accomplished by these few who are giving their lives to uplifting
society's exiles is little understood, because it is quiet and
unostentatious; yet through the instrumentality of the silent workers,
thousands of persons are annually kept from starvation and crime, while
for many of them new, broad, and hopeful horizons are constantly coming
in view.[8]
[8] The extent and character of this work will be more readily
understood by noting the labor accomplished by the Bethel
Mission in the North End, which is doing more than any
other single organization in that section of the city for
the dwellers of the slums. Here under the efficient
management of the Rev. Walter Swaffield, assisted by Rev.
W. J. English, work is intelligently pushed with untiring
zeal, and in a perfectly systematic manner. From a social
and humanitarian point of view, their work may be
principally summed up in the following classifications:
[1.] _Looking after the temporal and immediate wants of
those who are really suffering._ Here cases are quietly and
sympathetically investigated. Food is often purchased; the
rents are sometimes paid; old clothes are distributed where
they are most needed, and in many ways the temporal wants
are looked after while kind, friendly visitation of between
one and two hundred very needy families comprise a portion
of each month's work. [2]. _The sailors' boarding house._ A
large, clean, homelike building is fitted up for sailors.
Every American vessel that comes into port is visited by a
member of the Mission, who invites the sailors to remain at
this model home for seamen. In this way hundreds yearly
escape the dreadful atmosphere of the wretched sailors'
boarding houses of this part of the city, or, what is still
more important, avoid undreamed-of vice, degradation, and
disease by going with companions to vile dens of infamy.
[3]. _Securing comfortable homes and good positions for the
young who are thus enabled to rise out of the night and
oppression of this terrible existence._ This, it is
needless to add, is a very difficult task, owing to the
fact that society shrinks from its exiles; few persons will
give any one a chance who is known to have belonged to the
slums. Nevertheless good positions are yearly secured for
several of these children of adversity. [4]. _The
children's free industrial school in which the young are
taught useful trades, occupations, and means of
employment._ In this training school the little girls are
taught to make themselves garments. The material is
furnished them free and when they have completed the
garment it is given them. [5]. _Summer vacations in the
country for the little ones_ are provided for several
hundred children; some for a day, some a week, some two
weeks as the exigencies of the case require and the limited
funds permit. These little oases in the children's dreary
routine life are looked forward to with even greater
anticipations of joy than is Christmas in the homes of the
rich. I have cited the work of this Mission because I have
personally investigated its work, and have seen the immense
good that is being done with the very limited funds at the
command of the Mission, and also to show by an illustration
how much may be accomplished for the immediate relief of
the sufferers. A grand palliative work requiring labor and
money. It is not enough for those who live in our great
cities to contribute to such work, they should visit these
quarters and see for themselves. This would change many who
to-day are indifferent into active missionaries.
Let us now examine a broader aspect of this problem. So long as the
wretched, filthy dens of dirt, vermin, and disease stand as the only
shelter for the children of the scum, so long will moral and physical
contagion flourish and send forth death-dealing germs; so long will
crime and degradation increase, demanding more policemen, more numerous
judiciary, and larger prisons. No great permanent or far-reaching
reformation can be brought about until the habitations of the people are
radically improved. The recognition of this fact has already led to a
practical palliative measure for relief that must challenge the
admiration of all thoughtful persons interested in the welfare of
society's exiles. It is a step in the direction of justice. It is not
merely a work of charity; it is, I think, the most feasible immediate
measure that can be employed which will change the whole aspect of life
for tens of thousands, making existence mean something, and giving a
wonderful significance to the now meaningless word home. I refer to the
erection of model tenement apartments in our overcrowded sections, such,
for example, as the Victoria Square dwelling of Liverpool. Here, on the
former site of miserable tenement houses, sheltering more than a
thousand people, stands to-day a palatial structure built around a
hollow square, the major part of which is utilized as a large
shrub-encircled playground for the children. The halls and stairways of
the building are broad, light, and airy; the ventilation and sanitary
arrangements perfect. The apartments are divided into one, two, and
three rooms each. No room is smaller than 13 × 8 feet 6 inches; most of
them are 12 × 13 feet 4 inches. All the ceilings are 9 feet high. A
superintendent looks after the building. The tenants are expected to be
orderly, and to keep their apartments clean. The roomy character of
halls and chambers may be inferred from the fact that there are only two
hundred and seventy-five apartments in the entire building. The returns
on the total expenditure of the building, which was $338,800.00, it is
estimated will be at least 4-1/2 per cent, while the rents are as
follows: $1.44 per week for the three-room tenement, $1.08 per week for
those containing two large rooms, and 54 cents for the one-room
quarters. In Boston, the rents for the dreadful one-room cellar are
$1.00 a week; for the two-room tenements above the cellars, the rent, so
far as I heard, ranged from $1.50 to $2.50; three rooms were, of course,
much higher. The rooms also are far smaller here than those in the
beautiful, healthful, and inviting Victoria Square apartments. Yet it
will be observed that the Shylock landlords receive _more than double_
the rental paid in this building for dens which would be a disgrace to
barbarism. A similar experiment, in many respects even more remarkable
than that recently inaugurated by the Liverpool co-operation, is
exhibited in the Peabody dwellings in London. These apartments have been
in successful operation for so many years, while the results attending
them have been so marked and salutary, that no discussion of this
subject would be complete that failed to give some of the most important
facts relating to them. I know of no single act of philanthropy that
towers so nobly above the sordid greed of the struggling multitude of
millionaires, as does this splendid work of George Peabody, by which
to-day twenty thousand people, who but for him would be in the depths of
the slums, are fronting a bright future, and with souls full of hope are
struggling into a higher civilization. It will be remembered that Mr.
Peabody donated at intervals extending over a period of eleven years, or
from 1862 to 1873, £500,000 or $2,500,000 to this project of relieving
the poor. He specified that his purpose was to ameliorate the condition
of the poor and needy of London, and promote their comfort and
happiness, making only the following conditions:--
"_First_ and foremost amongst them is the limitation of its
uses, absolutely and, exclusively, to such purposes as may be
calculated directly to ameliorate the condition and augment the
comforts of the poor, who, either by birth or established
residence, form a recognized portion of the population of
London.
"_Secondly_, it is my intention that now, and for all time,
there shall be a rigid exclusion from the management of this
fund, of any influences calculated to impart to it a character
either sectarian as regards religion, or exclusive in relation
to party politics.
"_Thirdly_, it is my wish that the sole qualification for a
participation in the benefits of the fund shall be an
ascertained and continued condition of life, such as brings the
individual within the description (in the ordinary sense of the
word) of the poor of London: combined with moral character, and
good conduct as a member of society."
[Illustration: THE VICTORIA SQUARE APARTMENT HOUSE, LIVERPOOL, ENG.]
Realizing that little could be hoped for from individuals or their
offspring, who were condemned to a life in vile dens, where the squalor
and wretchedness was only equalled by the poisonous, disease-breeding
atmosphere and the general filth which characterized the tenement
districts, the trustees Mr. Peabody selected to carry forward his work,
engaged in the erection of a large building accommodating over two
hundred, at a cost of $136,500. This apartment house, which is
substantially uniform with the seventeen additional buildings since
constructed from the Peabody fund, is five stories high, built around a
hollow square, thus giving plenty of fresh air and sunshine to the rear
as well as the front of the entire building. The square affords a large
playground for the children where they are in no danger of being run
over by vehicles, and where they are under the immediate eye of many of
the parents. The building is divided into tenements of one, two, and
three room apartments, according to the requirements of the occupant.
There are also nine stores on the ground floor, which bring a rental of
something over $1,500 a year for each of the buildings. By careful,
honest, and conscientious business management, the original sum of
$2,500,000 has been almost doubled, while comfortable, healthful homes
have been procured for an army of over 20,000 persons. Some of the
apartments contain four rooms, many three, some two, others one. The
average rent is about $1.15 for an apartment. The average price for
three-room apartments in the wretched tenements of London, is from $1.45
a week. In the Peabody dwellings, the death rate is .96 per one thousand
below the average in London. Thus it will be seen that while large,
healthful, airy, and cheerful homes have been provided for over 20,000
at a lower figure than the wretched disease-fostering and crime-breeding
tenements of soulless Shylocks, the Peabody fund has, since 1862, grown
to nearly $5,000,000, or almost twice the sum given for the work by the
great philanthropist. No words can adequately describe the magnitude of
this splendid work, any more than we can measure the good it has
accomplished, the crime prevented, or the lives that through it have
grown to ornament and bless society. In the Liverpool experiment, the
work has been prosecuted by the municipal government. In the Peabody
dwellings, it has, of course, been the work of an individual, carried on
by a board of high-minded, honorable, and philanthropic gentlemen. To my
mind, it seems far more practicable for philanthropic, monied men to
prosecute this work as a business investment, specifying in their wills
that rents shall not rise above a figure necessary to insure a fair
interest on the money, rather than leave it for city governments, as in
the latter case it would be in great danger of becoming an additional
stronghold for unscrupulous city officials to use for political
purposes. I know of no field where men with millions can so bless the
race as by following Mr. Peabody's example in our great cities. If,
instead of willing every year princely sums to old, rich, and
conservative educational institutions, which already possess far more
money than they require,--wealthy persons would bequeath sums for the
erection of buildings after the manner of the Victoria Square or the
Peabody Dwellings, a wonderful transformation would soon appear in our
cities. Crime would diminish, life would rise to a higher level, and
from the hearts and brains of tens of thousands, a great and terrible
load would be lifted. Yet noble and praiseworthy as is this work, we
must not lose sight of the fact, that at best it is only a palliative
measure: a grand, noble, beneficent work which challenges our
admiration, and should receive our cordial support; still it is only a
palliative.
There is a broader aspect still, a nobler work to be accomplished. As
long as speculation continues in that great gift of God to man, _land_,
the problem will be unsettled. So long as the landlords find that the
more wretched, filthy, rickety, and loathsome a building is, the lower
will be the taxes, he will continue to make some of the ever-increasing
army of bread winners dwell in his foul, disease-impregnated dens.
The present economic system is being rapidly outgrown. Man's increasing
intelligence, sense of justice, and the humanitarian spirit of the age,
demand radical changes, which will come immeasurably nearer securing
equal opportunities for all persons than the past dreamed possible. No
sudden or rash measure calculated to convulse business and work great
suffering should be entertained, but our future action should rest on a
broad, settled policy founded upon justice, tempered by moderation,
keeping in view the great work of banishing uninvited poverty, and
elevating to a higher level the great struggling millions without for a
moment sacrificing individualism. Indeed, a truer democracy in which a
higher interpretation of justice, and a broader conception of individual
freedom, and a more sacred regard for liberty, should be the watchword
of the future.
EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY.
BY PROF. JAS. T. BIXBY, PH. D.
In the life and letters of Charles Darwin there is a memorandum, copied
from his pocket note-book of 1837, to this effect:--"In July, opened
first notebook on Transmutation of Species. Had been greatly struck with
the character of the South American fossils and the species on Galapagos
Archipelago."
These facts, he says, were the origin of all his epoch-making views as
to the development of life and the work of natural selection in evolving
species.
His suspicions that species were not immutable and made at one cast,
directly by the fiat of the Creator, seemed to him, at first, he says,
almost like murder.
To the greater part of the church, when in 1859, after twenty years of
work in accumulating the proofs of his theory, he at last gave it to the
world, it seemed quite as bad as murder.
It is very interesting now to look back upon the history and career of
the Darwinian theory in the last thirty years; to recall, first the
fierce outcry and denunciation it elicited, then the gradual
accumulation of corroboratory evidence from all quarters in its favor;
the accession of one scientific authority after another to the new
views; the softening, little by little, of ecclesiastical opposition;
its gradual acceptance by the broad-minded alike in theological and
scientific circles; then, in these recent years, the exaltation of the
new theory into a scientific and philosophic creed, wherein matter,
force, and evolution constitute the new trinity, which, unless the
modern man piously believes, he becomes anathematized and excommunicated
by all the priests of the new dogmatism.
In the field of science, undoubtedly, evolution has won the day.
Nevertheless, in religious circles, old time prejudices and slow
conservatism, clinging to its creeds, as the hermit crab clings to the
cast-off shell of oyster or clam, still resist it. The great body of the
Christian laity looks askance on it. And even in progressive America,
one of the largest and most liberal of American denominations has
recently formally tried and condemned one of its clergy for heresy, for
the publication of a book in which the principles of Evolution are
frankly adopted and applied to Christianity. For a man to call himself a
Christian Evolutionist is (we have been told by high Orthodox authority)
a contradiction in terms.
I think it is safe to say to-day that Evolution has come to stay. It is
too late to turn it out of the mansions of modern thought. And it is,
therefore, a vital question, "Can belief in God, and the soul, and
divine revelation abide under the same roof with evolution in peace? Or
must Christianity vacate the realm of modern thought and leave it to the
chilling frosts of materialism and scepticism?"
Now, if I have been able to understand the issue and its grounds, there
is no such alternative, no such incompatibility between Evolution and
Christianity.
There is, I know, a form of Evolution and a form of Christianity, which
are mutually contradictory.
There is a form of Evolution which is narrowly materialistic. It
dogmatically asserts that there is nothing in existence but matter and
physical forces, and the iron laws according to which they develop.
Life, according to this school, is only a product of the happy
combination of the atoms; feeling and thought are but the iridescence of
the brain tissues; conscience but a transmuted form of ancestral fears
and expediences. Soul, revelation, providence, nothing but illusions of
the childish fancy of humanity's infancy. Opposed to it, fighting with
all the intensity of those who fight for their very life, stands a
school of Christians who maintain that unless the special creation of
species by divine fiat and the frequent intervention of God and His
angels in the world be admitted, religion has received its death wound.
According to this school, unless the world was created in six days, and
Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and it obeyed, and Hezekiah
turned the solar shadow back on the dial, and Jesus was born without
human father, and unless some new miracle will interfere with the
regular course of law, of rain and dew, of sickness and health, of cause
and effect, whenever a believer lifts up his voice in prayer, why then,
the very foundations of religion are destroyed.
Now, of course, between a Christianity and an Evolutionism of this sort,
there is an irreconcilable conflict. But it is because neither of them
is a fair, rational, or true form of thought.
When the principle of Evolution is properly comprehended and expounded;
when Christianity is interpreted in the light that history and
philosophy require,--the two will be found to have no difficulty in
joining hands.
Though a purely naturalistic Evolutionism may ignore God; and a purely
supernatural religion may leave no room for Evolution, a natural
religion and a rational Evolutionism may yet harmoniously unite in a
higher and more fruitful marriage.
Let us only recognize _Evolution by the divine spirit, as the process of
God's working in the world_, and we have then a theory which has a place
and a function, at once for all that the newest science has to teach and
the most venerable faith needs to retain.