request is that I believe the present matron to be inefficient. She has
had no previous hospital training to fit her for her duties, and
certainly the hospital and its patients, when I last saw them, bore
evidences of neglect. The beds were not clean, and the patients showed
a lack of personal cleanliness and care. When I first visited the
hospital the floors were dirty and the closets were unwashed, but there
has been an improvement in those respects. I was present when dinner
was served to thirty patients in one ward--or, indeed, to seventy
inmates of the hospital--and the matron took no charge of the food,
which was put before the patients in a most uninviting manner--a great
contrast to the neat wooden trays which are in use at Tewksbury.
Moreover, I discerned a want of interest in the patients, to which the
matron herself bore testimony when she said that she never washed a
wound, and was engaged as a matron--not as a nurse.
"These, then, were the grounds upon which I asked for the appointment
of another nurse or matron, and fortunately one has applied for the
position entirely without my knowledge or solicitation. One of the
commissioners doubted whether a trained hospital emergency nurse could
be found to go to the islands; but this offer seems to set that
question at rest, and it is to be hoped her application may be
considered favorably.
"I also had the honor to lay before the commissioners the report of one
of my former tenants, who was an inmate of Rainsford Island a little
more than a year ago.
"She was a young woman who went down there because of a lump in her
breast, taking her baby with her. But for the baby she would have been
admitted to the City Hospital: but she did not like to leave her child,
and her husband, who was absent, was unable to care for it.
Consequently, she became for the time an inmate of the Rainsford Island
Hospital.
"She complained first of the indignity of having to strip in the
presence of others, no screen or curtain being provided as a shelter to
the necessary bath, which is the first step on entrance to an
institution.
"During her stay of three weeks she had no towel given to her, and only
one clean sheet was furnished.
"She was expected to cook all the food for her baby, and to make and
clean her own bed, although she was partly incapacitated by the lump in
her breast, which affected one arm.
"The food was very poor and unsatisfactory; and when she complained
that the porridge was sour, the matron told her if she did not like it
she could leave it.
"Worse than all, her baby fell ill on a Wednesday; she could obtain no
medicine for it until Sunday (though she asked for it repeatedly), and
on Monday the baby died.
"The mother left the institution the next day. She speaks in the
highest terms of the physician in charge and of the assistant, Miss
McDonald, at Rainsford Island; but she says the matron never did
anything for her and was not with her when the baby died; also, that
the milk and other food ordered for the patients is often not received
by them. And in this respect her statement is corroborated by the
remarks of another woman, also my tenant, who was an inmate of Long
Island when it was first opened for women several years ago. This woman
told me, with bated breath, that the food was miserable--it was killing
her; and, indeed, she died soon after, though I think grief hastened
her end."
[Illustration: GETTING A BREATH OF FRESH AIR.]
"It is because I have seen these people in their own homes that I feel
such sympathy for them as paupers. They have known the comfort and
independence of their own surroundings, and if by reason of old age or
sickness--through no fault of their own--they become paupers, they
should at least be treated with clue consideration and nursed with all
tenderness. I am entering no plea for the lazy and idle and intemperate
class who seek the refuge of an almshouse, and for whom, as Dr. Banks
says, the work-house is the proper place; but I do say that old or sick
people, even if paupers, are entitled to the very best care. We do not
begrudge it to them in our City Hospital or our State almshouse;
therefore, why is it too much to require it of the city of Boston's
pauper hospitals?
"No wonder that an attack such as has been made by Dr. Banks meets with
violent opposition and denial. He is attacking institutions whose
officials depend for their bread and butter on the positions which they
fill. But Dr. Banks and I have no 'axe to grind,' and he is only
stating the truth when he says that the pauper institutions at
Rainsford Island are overcrowded (so overcrowded that nearly fifty old
women sleep in a close and stifling attic, under the roof), and that
the fare, especially for the old and sick, is not what it should be."
The _Boston Herald_ of August 30 begins an exhaustive article, more
than five columns long, by saying:--
"For some time there has been an earnest and vigorous agitation going
on regarding the management and condition of Boston's pauper
institutions at Long and Rainsford Islands. Heretofore this agitation
has been out of the sight of the general public, with the exception of
a few letters which have appeared from time to time in the papers;
consequently, the sermon of Rev. Louis Albert Banks last Sunday on the
subject came like a revelation to many.
"The _Herald_ had been making a thorough investigation of the charges
brought, previous to Mr. Banks' utterances, and this has been continued
up to the present time, in order that the people of Boston may know
accurately and to the fullest the precise condition of its pauper
institutions and their inmates. As a result of that investigation, it
may be boldly said that the criticisms which have been made public do
not give an adequate idea of the disgraceful condition in which the
institutions are at present, nor the treatment which the paupers
receive and under which they exist rather than live.
"This statement is a strong one, but it can be borne out by facts which
are indisputable."
In the course of this long article, which fully sustains all statements
set forth in my discourse, the _Herald_ reporter, commenting on the
crowded condition of the buildings on Rainsford Island, says:--
"It is in the main building at Rainsford that the greatest lack of even
decent surroundings prevails, and where the condition of the inmates is
the worst. Here the fault seems to lie not only with the commissioners,
but with the matrons in charge, for there is no system discernible in
the housekeeping arrangements whatever. The infirmary is occupied by
those women who are not able to get about; and the rooms composing that
part of the building are pleasant and airy of themselves, but they are
spoiled by their keeping. There is no classification of inmates, and
old and young are all together, as well as the vicious and the
unfortunate.
"Another classification which might be made was suggested by the
presence of two women who were so unfortunate as to be afflicted in
such a manner that the whole air of the room was contaminated on their
account. This was through no fault of their own, and they should not be
made to suffer for it; but it seems hardly fair that all the other
women should be compelled to breathe the air made foul by their
presence. Add to this detriment to health and decent living the bad
sanitary arrangements, and the result is, indeed, open to criticism.
"This building is so old and antiquated that it originally had no place
provided inside for water-closets and bath-rooms. In putting these in
they were built directly in the corners of the rooms; and these corners
were then partitioned off, but for some unknown reason the partitions
were not continued up to the ceilings, the result being that the
closets were practically left in the room and a screen put around.
Owing to the fact that there is no water on the island, it all being
brought in tanks by steamer, there is not that abundance used in
flushing out the bowls which otherwise might be the case, and which
would go so far toward removing the horrible odor which is so prevalent
in every part of the building. Aside from the discomfort in being
obliged to smell this odor continually, the danger to the health of the
inmates is a serious thing.
"Throughout the wards in this building there is considerable
overcrowding, although not to the extent that is to be seen in another
part. The beds are all cared for by the women themselves, and
conversation with the matron showed that there was a regular time for
changing the bed linen, although that time was not the same in any two
rooms, and the writer, after continued questioning and asking for
explanation, failed to discover that there was any regularity whatever
about it.
"A few beds were taken at random and stripped to see their condition.
Invariably the sheets were dirty, very dirty; but this was explained by
one of the inmates who was in charge of this ward by the statement that
it was time they were changed, according to their usual practice, but
for some reason, not given, it had not been done this week. On nearly
all the sheets were plainly seen the marks of dead bed-bugs and other
vermin, some of it dried on and looking as though it had been there for
a long time."
[Illustration: ATTIC AT RAINSFORD ISLAND.]
[Footnote: Cut shows one wing. Another crosses it at right angles and
is partly occupied. Thirty women occupy this room, allowing about 320
cubic feet of air-space per person. The only ventilation is through
windows jutting out on the roof, each one being 2 feet 10 inches by 4
feet 8 inches in size.]
"It is in the attic of the main building, however, that one should go
to realize some of Dickens' pictures of pauper life, for there is a
picture here that needs no exaggeration to make it appear on a par with
those in fiction. In this attic live the older women, and they pass
their sleeping hours and many of their waking ones under the eaves of
this old house.
"Throughout this attic the peak is so low that it can be touched by the
hand of a man of ordinary height while standing, and the roof pitches
until it comes to within two feet of the floor. Under the caves here
are placed the beds of these old women, their heads close under the
roof, and extending in a line down the length of the building.
"The width of this attic is eighteen feet, and its length is that of
the building; but it is divided up into several apartments. In one of
these apartments were thirty beds, all occupied at night. The total
air-space of this room allowed about three hundred and twenty cubic
feet to each person, where a thousand are considered necessary with
good ventilation, according to Mr. Commissioner Newell. The only light
and ventilation that this attic gets is through a few small windows let
into the roof, not large enough to furnish ventilation for rooms which
are not overcrowded, and certainly not large enough to purify rooms
where the air is made foul by being breathed by at least three times
too many persons.
"Moreover, these old women are required to rise every morning at 5:00
o'clock, and are compelled to remain up until 8 o'clock in the evening.
They are not allowed to lie down during the day without a special
permit from the doctor, as, they say, it would cause disorder. This
permit lie says he is always willing to grant, but they seldom come for
it. This seems perfectly natural, as one hardly can expect that the old
women would take pains to hunt up the doctor every time they wanted to
take a short nap.
"Not only are they not allowed to lie down for a nap without this
special permit, but comfortable chairs are not furnished them. By each
bed is a single ordinary wooden chair of the cheapest kind, and this is
allotted to the one occupying the bed. Now and then a rocking-chair may
be seen, but they are few and far between."
[Illustration: MARINERS' HOME.]
"Some time ago a benevolent and kind-hearted lady visiting the island
was struck with this lack of comfort, and sent to the institution a
number of rocking-chairs for use in the old women's ward. They arrived
on July 16, but an active search for them failed to disclose their
whereabouts. It was plain that the women for whom they were intended
were not getting the benefit of them, and inquiry was made. Nobody
seemed to know where they were. Several believed that something of the
kind had been sent down, but knew nothing more. Finally, after an
energetic search by Dr. Harkins, the chairs were discovered in a
store-house, or paint-shop, where they had been put when they lauded on
the wharf so long ago. Two days later these chairs had been taken out
and placed in the wards, and there were two hundred women eager for the
six comfortable rockers.
"Another criticism which might be made is that the paupers are provided
with no regular religious service. At Deer Island there is a paid
chaplain, and although his duties do not call him to the almshouse, he
sometimes goes over. There is a large room called the chapel, and here
religious services are held when there is any one to lead them. A
Catholic priest goes down twice a week to minister to the wants of the
Catholics, who are in the majority; something like ninety-five per cent
being of that persuasion. The fact remains, however, that the city of
Boston does not give its paupers the benefit of any religious service
or guidance. As was said by one lady on hearing the facts: 'In the eyes
of the city it is a greater crime to be a pauper than a criminal.'"
Rev. Dr. Frederick B. Allen, of the Episcopal City Mission of Boston,
writing in the Herald of August 31, says:--
"In the management of human beings, especially the aged, the infirm,
the insane, and the sick, there is needed a wise and tender
consideration which sheer business management is apt to miss.
"The sociological problems of pauperism and crime, the study of
successful methods in other cities and other lands, the deep sense of
the sacredness of our humanity, even in its weakest and most
unfortunate members,--these make their demand for the aid of men and
women to whom these questions of human life and death are at least as
controlling as the reduction of the city tax rate.
"Were there any such board of advisers to do in our city institutions
what the State Charities Aid Society has done for New York State, we
should not have been confronted, as we now are, with poorly planned,
inadequate, and badly managed buildings, lack of discrimination in
those permitted to occupy them, insufficient and untrained nurses for
the sick, lack of proper ventilation and food, and everywhere the
absence of devoted personal, human, moral oversight and control.
"I second most positively Dr. Banks' assertion that 'an advisory board
of leading citizens, on which are three or four level-headed and humane
women, would work the revolution that is needed in the treatment of"
our brothers and sisters, the Boston paupers."'"
XII.
THE GOLD GOD OF MODERN SOCIETY.
"When wealth no mere shall rest in mounded heaps.
But smit with freer light shall slowly melt
In many streams to fatten lower lands,
And light shall spread, and man be liker man
Thro' all the seasons of the golden year."
No one who is in touch with the throbbing life of this time can fail to
perceive that this is an age peculiarly given up to the worship of
Mammon. The literature of our day bears certain evidence of this fact.
_Scribner's Magazine_ of last year contained, under the title of
"Jerry," a painfully realistic and comprehensive story, dealing with
the debauch of a noble character by the fascination of gold. Jerry
belonged to the "poor white trash" of the Cumberland Mountains, and on
the death of his mother, being cruelly treated at home, he ran away to
the West. After many wanderings, the little wayfarer, tired out and
almost dead, fell into the hands of a quaint old miner who was digging
and hoarding up gold in his cabin in the Northwestern Mountains. In the
midst of this wild region, educated by a kind-hearted physician, Jerry
grew up to be a young man of peculiarly noble and heroic character. He
remembered with painful distinctness that he belonged to the poorest of
the common people, and the ambition of his life was to uplift his own
class.
The fearful tragedy of the story begins when the miserly old
miner--who, all the time unknown to Jerry, is hoarding up gold for his
young ward--discovers, to his great astonishment, that gold has no
fascination for this strange young man, and fears that with his lofty
ideals all his toil for him will be in vain and unappreciated. So the
shrewd old man plans to send him to the East, where his eyes may be
dazzled with the brilliancy of fashionable life, and where may be
revealed to him the power gold gives to its possessor. Sitting in his
old log cabin on the mountain side, the old miner would rub his hands
back on his stubbly gray hair and reason with himself: "If Jerry only
knew gold; if Jerry could only see what gold could get, could only
spend gold; then he would be willing to take all he could get and never
ask where it came from." So the old miner determined that "Jerry must
learn to spend money, must learn to love it, and then all will go
well." And then the story goes on to tell of the deterioration of this
noble young soul--how that gradually he becomes dominated with the
passion for gold, until he is not only willing to work for it, but
murder for it, if only he may have gold and the power that it brings.
In another field Mr. Charles Dudley Warner gives us the same warning,
in his story of "A Little Journey in the World." In this Mr. Warner
tells us of one of the sweetest and purest of young women, who has the
highest ideals, and whose standards of morality are of the noblest, who
is married to an unprincipled young speculator on Wall Street, New
York; and under the influence of her husband, and the society into
which she is drawn by his business relations, in which he gathers
millions of money, all her holy and lofty ideals are overthrown, and
she becomes simply a material, worldly woman. This is the way he
reasons about it: "But we, I say, who loved her, and knew so well the
noble possibilities of her royal nature, under circumstances favorable
to its development, felt more and more her departure from her own
ideals. Her life in its spreading prosperity seemed more and more
shallow. I do not say she was heartless; I do not say she was
uncharitable; I do not say that in all the externals of worldly and
religious observance she was wanting; I do not say that the more she
was assimilated to the serenely worldly nature of her husband, she did
not love him, or that she was unlovely in the worldliness that ingulfed
her and bore her onward. I do not know that there is anything singular
in her history. But the pain of it to us was in the certainty--and it
seemed so near--that in the decay of her higher life, in the hardening
process of a material existence, in the transfer of all her interest to
the trivial and sensuous gratifications--time, mind, heart, ambition,
all fixed on them--we should never regain our Margaret. What I saw in a
vision of her future was a _dead soul_--a beautiful woman in all the
success of envied prosperity, with a dead soul."
[Illustration: CHILDREN PLAYING IN COPP'S HILL BURYING GROUND.]
If we turn away from these revelations of the worm at the heart of our
social life, that are made fascinating by the art in which they are
clothed, to the rude happenings of every-day observation, the same
danger is everywhere apparent. The associated press despatches from San
Jose, Cal., a few weeks since, bore this burden: "One of the best-known
men in California died yesterday in a squalid hut on Colfax Street. He
was Prof. Herman Kottinger, who at one time was the leading violinist
on the Pacific Coast, and well known as a writer of prose and poetry,
of 'A World's History,' and also of text-books on free thought. He was
worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, acquired by a lifetime of
miserly frugality. At the time of his death sixteen hundred dollars in
gold coin was found secreted in his bed. But one child, William
Kottinger, a farmer, was present at the death. When the old man in his
death-throes raised himself up in bed, the son rushed to his side. His
father, mistaking the act, with a frenzied yell waved him back, and
clutching at the bedclothes, pulled them back, disclosing to view the
gold. He made a grab at it with both hands, and with the bright pieces
in his fingers fell back with a gasp and expired.
"Prof. Kottinger was once a doctor in Heidelberg University, and was
ninety years old. He was so wasted by hunger that his body weighed less
than forty pounds, and was in a disgusting condition. His bed and
clothes were reeking with filth. Over the head of the bed hung a violin
of great value. So miserly was the old professor that fifteen years ago
he drove his wife and all his children from home, saying that it cost
too much to feed and clothe them. From that day until yesterday, when
the end was approaching, not one of his relatives had come near him.
Two big fierce Danish mastiffs, half starved, have for years been the
old man's only companions, and they guarded the shanty so well that not
even a tax-collector could approach. They had to be killed yesterday
before the undertaker could get into the house. When it was learned
that Kottinger was dead, a number of his relatives hastened to his hut.
There has been a shameful neglect of the dead shown, and indecent haste
in ransacking the place in search of the gold and other treasures known
to be hidden."
All these show the destructive power of gold upon its worshippers. But
these are by no means the only victims of this worship of the gold god.
For every one who is hoarding up his millions, and who is dominated by
the love of gold for its very shine and glitter, there are hundreds and
thousands who are toiling for insufficient wages, and are suffering in
poverty and want, that this lordly worshipper may pay his devotions to
the money god.
[Illustration: DIGGING IN THE ASH-BARRELS IN WINTER.]
If some of these money kings who have made their millions by the
oppression of the poor, in mines, and mills, and factories, were
suddenly called to face the bones of the dead who have gone to their
graves from weary, unrequited slavery, in order for their financial
triumph, they would stand back aghast at the price of their own
success.
It is this worship of the gold god which is at the bottom of all the
wrongs which have been pointed out in this series of discourses. The
wealthy merchant who pays the poor widow one cent apiece for making
white aprons, and by his avarice and his lust induces the young women
who sell them to eke out their scanty wages by the sale of their honor,
is a worshipper of the gold god. The sweater who parcels out his work
through the miserable tenement houses, grinding the face of the poor to
the very last degree possible with physical existence,--indeed, many
times beyond the possibility of existence, except when helped by
charity,--is an obsequious devotee at the altar of Mammon. The
chattel-mortgage shark, who watches all the necessities of the poor as
anxiously as ever a hawk watched over a helpless or crippled bird, and
the liquor-seller, who fills his coffers by a traffic which injures and
destroys the health, the intelligence, and the morality of all the
people whom he can draw into his net, investing all his cunning in
methods to entrap the unwary, and gloating over the increasing appetite
and the devilish passion for strong drink in his victims, are only
brothers to the others who gather to pay their devotions to the god of
gold.
[Illustration: FOUR SHINERS.]