for permitting this state of things to come to pass? It is inconsistent
to condemn the liquor-seller and honor the city which licenses him to
do his damnable work. It is impossible to condemn the sweater and
retain your respect for the public which permits him to carry on his
nefarious business. The spirit of avarice is in the very air, until
society has been poisoned by its breath. Dr. Howard Crosby, writing in
the _Forum_ a few years since, says: "The healthiest form of human
society is where the many are equally independent in their management
of their affairs, where professions and trades are represented by
individual thinking minds, and where those engaged in any one branch of
industry stand on a level with one another. This condition of things
promotes invention, activity, interest, manliness, and good
citizenship. Now the gold-hunt system is directly antagonistic to all
this. It seeks to destroy the many independent tradesmen, and to make
them servants in a gigantic monopoly. The happy homes of freemen become
the pinched quarters of serfs. The lords of trade have their hundreds
and thousands of humble subordinates over whom they rule, often with a
rod of iron. They may be turned away from work and wages at any moment,
by any whim of the selfish employer. Hence, through fear of this, they
lose their manhood, and dare not assert even a decision of their
conscience. There is no more melancholy sight to my eyes than that
which I often see nowadays--the former happy possessor of a shop or
store, who has lived comfortably and with the true nobility of a
citizen, and whose family have felt the dignity of the home, now made a
clerk and drudge in a huge establishment that, by its relentless use of
millions, has undermined and overthrown all the independent stores of a
large district, while his family are thrust into the unsavory communism
of a tenement house, and lose all the delicate refinements of a quiet
home. It is easy to say that this is but the natural law of trade. So
to devour men is the natural law of tigers. But this truth will not
reconcile us to the process. If we are to stop men from stealing
directly, we can stop them from stealing indirectly. If natural law
works evil to the community, we are to make statute law, which will act
as supernatural law, and control the offensive principle. Unless we
wish our social equality destroyed, and a system of practical serfdom
to take its place, we must put a limit to the acts of greed, and so
preserve the independence of our citizens."
[Illustration: SOUTH BOSTON RAG-PICKERS.]
Every thoughtful observer of the "signs of the times" knows that the
deepest problem of our age is the amicable solution of the struggle
between labor and capital. Some of the ablest work done in literature,
in our time, has been produced out of an earnest desire to abolish the
more recent types of this white slavery, which has, in one form or
another, threatened the masses since the days of old John Ball of early
England. Perhaps the strongest portrayal, yet, of many phases of the
question, especially those relating to the city, maybe found in Mr.
Howells' story, "A Hazard of New Fortunes." For the country, if one
really wants to see what is behind the great upheaval in the West,
which has its outward manifestation in the Farmers' Alliance, he only
needs to read Mr. Hamlin Garland's "Main Travelled Roads."
In the meantime most of us are asking, "What is the way out?" As for
myself, I confess to being only a student. I have no word of sneer or
scoff for any mail's honest thinking, who is sincerely trying to uplift
his brothers and sisters; and yet I must say that, as yet, I have not
been able to become a disciple of any of the new systems that have been
presented. I feel something like the man who says, "There are good
things to be said in praise of Socialism or Nationalism, as compared
with the crushing and wearing methods of competition; but what the
world is waiting for is the thinker who shall either show us how to
reconcile the new system with human liberty, or else convince us that
we can do without liberty." In the mean-time I believe in God, in His
wise purpose in the creation of the world, in His providential care
over it, and that under His grace there shall come the triumph of
righteousness in it. I believe in Jesus Christ. To my mind,
Christianity stands to-day very much as it did nearly two thousand
years ago, when Jesus hung upon the cross between two thieves. The
anarchy which, atheistic and reckless, would destroy all law and all
property, is one of the thieves, and the devotee of the gold god of our
time, who clutches his money-bags and says, "I have a right to get all
the money I can, and do with it what I please," is the other thief.
Christianity stands between them; her mission is to change them both,
and bring them with a regenerated purpose into brotherhood and
fellowship.
George Macdonald says: "The world will change only as the heart of man
changes. Growing intellect, growing civilization, will heal man's
wounds only to cause the deeper ill to break out afresh in new forms,
nor can they satisfy one longing of the human soul. Its desires are
deeper than that soul itself, whence it groans with the groanings that
cannot be uttered. As much in times of civilization as in those of
barbarity, the soul needs an external presence to make its life good to
it." The Christianity of to-day must set itself, as did Jesus, to make
men brothers, by bringing them to a recognition of the fact that they
are all alike the children of one God and Father over all. Such a
Christianity will necessarily be at war with the gold god of our time.
The clear-cut declaration of Jesus, "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon,"
is as true now as when He uttered it. I do not remember to have seen
this issue put as clearly anywhere else as by Henry D. Lloyd in an
article in the _North American Review_ entitled, "The New Conscience."
He says: Let us listen while a delegation from the Money-power
remonstrates with the New Conscience for its unreasonable sentiments
and ideas. Here they come, one by one, and range themselves about.
First speaks--
THE MERCHANT PRINCE: I have a right to buy where I can buy cheapest.
CONSCIENCE: See these little stunted, hollow-eyed girls coming out of
that factory.
LAWYER: Wages are settled by contract.
CONSCIENCE: Where can I find white-haired workingmen?
CAPITALIST: Every man has a right to do what he will with his own.
CONSCIENCE: What is the price of a senatorship to-day?
STATISTICIAN: Never were food, fuel, and clothing so cheap.
CONSCIENCE: Little Mary Mitchell works in Waterbury's ropeworks five
days a week from six in the evening till six in the morning.
RAILROAD KING: Every man makes his own career. I was a workingman
myself twenty years ago, and now I keep a carriage, a butler, and
several judges and legislators, in four States, and--
CONSCIENCE: That tired-looking man is a railway conductor of a company
owned by half a dozen men worth three hundred millions of dollars,
which is not enough for them, so they squeeze a few more dollars a
month out of him by making him, on every alternate trip, do
twenty-eight and a half hours' work without sleep.
BANKER: Our wealth is increasing one billion dollars a year. We have
boards of trades, the best railroads in the world, and packing-houses
that can kill ten thousand hogs.
CONSCIENCE: The sickening stench, the blistered air, the foul sights of
the tenements, and the motherhood and the childhood choking there.
CONSERVATIVE: This is the best government in the world. America is good
enough for me.
CONSCIENCE: Listen to that "tramp, tramp, tramp" of a million of men
out of work.
MANUFACTURER: Without this system of industry the subjugation of North
America to civilization would have been impossible; we could never have
shown the world the magnificent spectacle of--
CONSCIENCE: There is a little boy standing ten hours a day up to his
ankles in the water in a coal-mine.
COAL MONOPOLIST: I have a statistician who can prove--he can prove
anything--that the workingman is a great deal better off than he ever
was, that he makes more than I do, that small incomes are increasing
and large ones decreasing, that there is no involuntary poverty, and
that the workingmen could live on twenty-five cents each a day and buy
up the United States with their savings, and--
CONSCIENCE: How long shall it be cheaper to run over workingmen and
women at the railroad crossings in the cities than to put up gates?
CLERGYMAN: The poor we are to have with us always.
CONSCIENCE: That sewing-woman you see pawning her shawl has lived this
winter with her two children in a room without fire. Are you wearing
one of the shirts she finished?
STATESMAN: The workingman has the ballot and the newspapers. He is a
free citizen.
CONSCIENCE: As the nights grow colder see how the number of girls on
the street increases.
It is this new conscience, the conscience of Jesus Christ, that
appraises a hungry child to be of more value than ten thousand palaces,
that must animate and dominate the church that is called by His name,
in its war against the gold god of modern society.
You may find this conscience throbbing in Ella Wheeler Wilcox's plea
for "Justice, not Charity."
"All hail the dawn of a new day breaking,
When a strong armed nation shall take away
The weary burden from backs that are aching
With maximum work and minimum pay.
When no man is honored who hoards his millions,
When no man feasts on another's toil,
And God's poor, suffering, starving billions
Shall share His riches of sun and soil.
There is gold for all in the world's broad bosom.
There is food for all in the world's great store;
Enough is provided if rightly divided,
Let each man take what he needs--no more.
Shame on the miser with unused riches,
Who robs the toiler to swell his hoard,
Who beats down the wage of the digger of ditches,
And steals the bread from the poor man's board!
Shame on the owner of mines whose cruel
And selfish measures have brought him wealth!
While the ragged wretches who dig his fuel
Are robbed of comfort, and hope, and health.
Shame on the ruler who rides in his carriage,
Bought by the labor of half-paid men--
Men who are shut out of home and marriage,
And are herded like sheep in a hovel pen."
There must be no doubt about the attitude of the church in a time like
this. Against the gold god and all his oppressions the Christian Church
must stand with an unflinching front. Our God is the same who spoke
through the voice of Amos of old, saying, "Hear this, oh ye that
swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail,
saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? And the
sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the
shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? That we may buy
the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell
the refuse of the wheat?" Ah! how much that sounds like the things that
are going on at the present time! Yet listen to the oath of the
Almighty as He looks on such things: "The Lord hath sworn by the
excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works.
Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth
therein?... And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God,
that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the
earth in a clear day: and I will turn your feasts into mourning, and
all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sack-cloth upon
all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the
mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day."
It is the mission of our blessed Christianity to save the world from
that bitter day by so changing and transforming it that it will no
longer deserve bitterness, but peace, at the hand of God. Although I
have felt compelled, in this series of discourses, to uncover many dark
and loathsome places in our social system, yet I am no pessimist, and I
do not despair. Jesus Christ, our Captain, saw "Satan fallen as
lightning from heaven;" and when we are as devoted to God, and as
thoroughly consecrated to our mission of curing the world's heartache
as was He, we, too, shall live in sight of the same glorious triumph.
When we are imbued with this faith, and exalted into fellowship with
Him, we will not dare to say that the sweatshop, or the neglected
tenement house, or the noisome liquor saloon, is a necessary contingent
of human life. And we will know that whatever is good enough to be
true, may be and shall be true to the sons and daughters of God. In
that faith we shall be able to sing with the poet:--
"'Tis coming up the steeps of time,
And this old world is growing brighter;
We may not see its dawn sublime,
Yet high hopes make the heart throb lighter!
We may be sleeping in the ground,
When it awakes the peoples' wonder;
But we have felt it gathering round,
And heard its voice of living thunder;
Christ's reign, ah, yes, 'tis coming!
Aye, it _must_ come! the Tyrant's throne
Is crumbling, with men's hot tears rusted;
The sword earth's mighty have leant upon
Is cankered, with men's hearts' blood crusted!
Room! for the man of love make way!
Ye selfish great ones, pause no longer;
Ye cannot stay the opening day,
The world rolls on, the light grows stronger--
The Master's advent's coming!"