man goes into politics in a practical and not in a dilettante fashion.
He speedily finds that the quality of successful management, the power
to handle men and secure results, may exist in seemingly unlikely
persons. If he intends to carry a caucus or primary, or elect a given
candidate, or secure a certain piece of legislation or administration,
he will have to find out and work with innumerable allies, and make
use of innumerable subordinates. Given that he and they have a common
object, the one test that he must apply to them is as to their ability
to help in achieving that object. The result is that in a very short
time the men whose purposes are the same forget about all differences,
save in capacity to carry out the purpose. The banker who is interested
in seeing a certain nomination made or a certain election carried
forgets everything but his community of interest with the retail
butcher who is a leader along his section of the avenue, or the starter
who can control a considerable number of the motormen; and in return
the butcher and the starter accept the banker quite naturally as an
ally whom they may follow or lead, as circumstances dictate. In other
words, all three grow to feel in common on certain important subjects,
and this fellow-feeling has results as far-reaching as they are healthy.
Good thus follows from mere ordinary political affiliation. A man
who has taken an active part in the political life of a great city
possesses an incalculable advantage over his fellow-citizens who have
not so taken part, because normally he has more understanding than they
can possibly have of the attitude of mind, the passions, prejudices,
hopes, and animosities of his fellow-citizens, with whom he would not
ordinarily be brought into business or social contact. Of course there
are plenty of exceptions to this rule. A man who is drawn into politics
from absolutely selfish reasons, and especially a rich man who merely
desires to buy political promotion, may know absolutely nothing that is
of value as to any but the basest side of the human nature with which
his sphere of contact has been enlarged; and, on the other hand, a
wise employer of labor, or a philanthropist in whom zeal and judgment
balance each other, may know far more than most politicians. But the
fact remains that the effect of political life, and of the associations
that it brings, is of very great benefit in producing a better
understanding and a keener fellow-feeling among men who otherwise
would know one another not at all, or else as members of alien bodies
or classes.
This being the case, how much more is it true if the same habit of
association for a common purpose can be applied where the purpose
is really of the highest! Much is accomplished in this way by the
university settlements and similar associations. Wherever these
associations are entered into in a healthy and sane spirit, the good
they do is incalculable, from the simple fact that they bring together
in pursuit of a worthy common object men of excellent character, who
would never otherwise meet. It is of just as much importance to the
one as to the other that the man from Hester Street or the Bowery or
Avenue B, and the man from the Riverside Drive or Fifth Avenue, should
have some meeting-ground where they can grow to understand one another
as an incident of working for a common end. Of course if, on the one
hand, the work is entered into in a patronizing spirit, no good will
result; and, on the other hand, if the zealous enthusiast loses his
sanity, only harm will follow. There is much dreadful misery in a great
city, and a high-spirited, generous young man, when first brought into
contact with it, has his sympathies so excited that he is very apt
to become a socialist, or turn to the advocacy of any wild scheme,
courting a plunge from bad to worse, exactly as do too many of the
leaders of the discontent around him. His sanity and cool-headedness
will be thoroughly tried, and if he loses them his power for good will
vanish.
But this is merely to state one form of a general truth. If a man
permits largeness of heart to degenerate into softness of head, he
inevitably becomes a nuisance in any relation of life. If sympathy
becomes distorted and morbid, it hampers instead of helping the effort
toward social betterment. Yet without sympathy, without fellow-feeling,
no permanent good can be accomplished. In any healthy community there
must be a solidarity of sentiment and a knowledge of solidarity of
interest among the different members. Where this solidarity ceases
to exist, where there is no fellow-feeling, the community is ripe
for disaster. Of course the fellow-feeling may be of value much in
proportion as it is unconscious. A sentiment that is easy and natural
is far better than one which has to be artificially stimulated. But
the artificial stimulus is better than none, and with fellow-feeling,
as with all other emotions, what is started artificially may become
quite natural in its continuance. With most men courage is largely
an acquired habit, and on the first occasions when it is called for
it necessitates the exercise of will-power and self-control; but by
exercise it gradually becomes almost automatic.
So it is with fellow-feeling. A man who conscientiously endeavors to
throw in his lot with those about him, to make his interests theirs,
to put himself in a position where he and they have a common object,
will at first feel a little self-conscious, will realize too plainly
his own aims. But with exercise this will pass off. He will speedily
find that the fellow-feeling which at first he had to stimulate was
really existent, though latent, and is capable of a very healthy
growth. It can, of course, become normal only when the man himself
becomes genuinely interested in the object which he and his fellows
are striving to attain. It is therefore obviously desirable that this
object should possess a real and vital interest for every one. Such is
the case with a proper political association.
Much has been done, not merely by the ordinary political associations,
but by the city clubs, civic federations, and the like, and very much
more can be done. Of course there is danger of any such association
being perverted either by knavery or folly. When a partisan political
organization becomes merely an association for purposes of plunder and
patronage, it may be a menace instead of a help to a community; and
when a non-partisan political organization falls under the control of
the fantastic extremists always attracted to such movements, in its
turn it becomes either useless or noxious. But if these organizations,
partisan or non-partisan, are conducted along the lines of sanity and
honesty, they produce a good more far-reaching than their promoters
suppose, and achieve results of greater importance than those
immediately aimed at.
It is an excellent thing to win a triumph for good government at a
given election; but it is a far better thing gradually to build up that
spirit of fellow-feeling among American citizens, which, in the long
run, is absolutely necessary if we are to see the principles of virile
honesty and robust common-sense triumph in our civic life.
CIVIC HELPFULNESS
PUBLISHED IN THE “CENTURY,” OCTOBER, 1900
In Mr. Lecky’s profoundly suggestive book, “The Map of Life,” referred
to by me in a former article, he emphasizes the change that has been
gradually coming over the religious attitude of the world because of
the growing importance laid upon conduct as compared with dogma. In
this country we are long past the stage of regarding it as any part of
the State’s duty to enforce a particular religious dogma; and more and
more the professors of the different creeds themselves are beginning
tacitly to acknowledge that the prime worth of a creed is to be gauged
by the standard of conduct it exacts among its followers toward their
fellows. The creed which each man in his heart believes to be essential
to his own salvation is for him alone to determine; but we have a right
to pass judgment upon his actions toward those about him.
Tried by this standard, the religious teachers of the community
stand most honorably high. It is probable that no other class of our
citizens do anything like the amount of disinterested labor for
their fellow-men. To those who are associated with them at close
quarters this statement will seem so obviously a truism as to rank
among the platitudes. But there is a far from inconsiderable body of
public opinion which, to judge by the speeches, writings, and jests
in which it delights, has no conception of this state of things. If
such people would but take the trouble to follow out the actual life
of a hard-worked clergyman or priest, I think they would become a
little ashamed of the tone of flippancy they are so prone to adopt when
speaking about them.
In the country districts the minister of the gospel is normally the
associate and leader of his congregation and in close personal touch
with them. He shares in and partially directs their intellectual
and moral life, and is responsive to their spiritual needs. If they
are prosperous, he is prosperous. If the community be poor and
hard-working, he shares the poverty and works as hard as any one.
As fine a figure as I can call to mind is that of one such country
clergyman in a poor farming community not far from the capital of the
State of New York—a vigorous old man, who works on his farm six days
in the week, and on the seventh preaches what he himself has been
practicing. The farm work does not occupy all of the week-days, for
there is not a spiritual need of his parishioners that he neglects. He
visits them, looks after them if they are sick, baptizes the children,
comforts those in sorrow, and is ready with shrewd advice for those
who need aid; in short, shows himself from week’s end to week’s end
a thoroughly sincere, earnest, hard-working old Christian. This is
perhaps the healthiest type. It is in keeping with the surroundings,
for in the country districts the quality of self-help is very highly
developed, and there is little use for the great organized charities.
Neighbors know one another. The poorest and the richest are more or
less in touch, and charitable feelings find a natural and simple
expression in the homely methods of performing charitable duties. This
does not mean that there is not room for an immense amount of work in
country communities and in villages and small towns. Every now and
then, in traveling over the State, one comes upon a public library, a
Young Men’s Christian Association building, or some similar structure
which has been put up by a man born in the place, who has made his
money elsewhere, and feels he would like to have some memorial in his
old home. Such a gift is of far-reaching benefit. Almost better is what
is done in the way of circulating libraries and the like by the united
action of those men and women who appreciate clearly the intellectual
needs of the people who live far from the great centres of our rather
feverish modern civilization; for in country life it is necessary to
guard, not against mental fever, but against lack of mental stimulus
and interests.
In cities the conditions are very different, both as regards the needs
and as regards the way it is possible to meet these needs. There is
much less feeling of essential community of interest, and poverty of
the body is lamentably visible among great masses. There are districts
populated to the point of congestion, where hardly any one is above
the level of poverty, though this poverty does not by any means always
imply misery. Where it does mean misery it must be met by organization,
and, above all, by the disinterested, endless labor of those who,
by choice, and to do good, live in the midst of it, temporarily or
permanently. Very many men and women spend part of their lives or do
part of their life-work under such circumstances, and conspicuous among
them are clergymen and priests.
Only those who have seen something of such work at close quarters
realize how much of it goes on quietly and without the slightest
outside show, and how much it represents to many lives that else would
be passed in gray squalor. It is not necessary to give the names of
the living, or I could enumerate among my personal acquaintance fifty
clergymen and priests, men of every church, of every degree of wealth,
each of whom cheerfully and quietly, year in and year out, does his
share, and more than his share, of the unending work which he feels
is imposed upon him alike by Christianity and by that form of applied
Christianity which we call good citizenship. Far more than that number
of women, in and out of religious bodies, who do to the full as much
work, could be mentioned. Of course, for every one thus mentioned there
would be a hundred, or many hundreds, unmentioned. Perhaps there is no
harm in alluding to one man who is dead. Very early in my career as a
police commissioner of the City of New York I was brought in contact
with Father Casserly of the Paulist Fathers. After he had made up his
mind that I was really trying to get things decent in the department,
and to see that law and order prevailed, and that crime and vice were
warred against in practical fashion, he became very intimate with
me, helping me in every way, and unconsciously giving me an insight
into his own work and his own character. Continually, in one way and
another, I came across what Father Casserly was doing, always in the
way of showing the intense human sympathy and interest he was taking
in the lives about him. If one of the boys of a family was wild, it
was Father Casserly who planned methods of steadying him. If, on the
other hand, a steady boy met with some misfortune,—lost his place, or
something of the kind,—it was Father Casserly who went and stated
the facts to the employer. The Paulist Fathers had always been among
the most efficient foes of the abuses of the liquor traffic. They
never hesitated to interfere with saloons, dance-houses, and the like.
One secret of their influence with our Police Board was that, as they
continually went about among their people and knew them all, and as
they were entirely disinterested, they could be trusted to tell who
did right and who did wrong among the instruments of the law. One of
the perplexing matters in dealing with policemen is that, as they are
always in hostile contact with criminals and would-be criminals, who
are sure to lie about them, it is next to impossible to tell when
accusations against them are false and when they are true; for the
good man who does his duty is certain to have scoundrelly foes, and
the bad man who blackmails these same scoundrels usually has nothing
but the same evidence against him. But Father Casserly and the rest of
his order knew the policemen personally, and we found we could trust
them implicitly to tell exactly who was good and who was not. Whether
the man were Protestant, Catholic, or Jew, if he was a faithful public
servant they would so report him; and if he was unfaithful he would
be reported as such wholly without regard to his creed. We had this
experience with an honorably large number of priests and clergymen.
Once in the same batch of promotions from sergeant to captain there
was a Protestant to whom our attention had been drawn by the earnest
praise of Fathers Casserly and Doyle, and a Catholic who had first been
brought to our notice by the advocacy of Bishop Potter.
There were other ways in which clergymen helped our Police Board. We
wanted at one time to get plenty of strong, honest young men for the
police force, and did not want to draw them from among the ordinary
types of ward heeler. Two fertile recruiting-grounds proved to be, one
a Catholic church and the other a Methodist church. The rector of the
former, Dr. Wall, had a temperance lyceum for the young men of his
parish; the pastor of the latter had a congregation made out of a bit
of old native America suddenly overlapped by the growth of the city,
and his wheelwrights, ship-carpenters, baymen, and coasting-sailors
gave us the same good type of officer that we got from among the
mechanics, motormen, and blacksmiths who came from Dr. Wall’s lyceum.
Among our other close friends was another Methodist preacher, who had
once been a reporter, but who had felt stirred by an irresistible
impulse to leave his profession and devote his life to the East Side,
where he ministered to the wants of those who would not go to the
fashionable churches, and for whom no other church was especially
prepared. In connection with his work, one of the things that was
especially pleasing was the way in which he had gone in not only with
the rest of the Protestant clergy and the non-sectarian philanthropic
workers of the district, but with the Catholic clergy, joining hands in
the fight against the seething evils of the slum. One of his Catholic
allies, by the way, a certain Brother A——, was doing an immense
amount for the Italian children of his parish. He had a large parochial
school, originally attended by the children of Irish parents. Gradually
the Irish had moved uptown, and had been supplanted by the Italians. It
was his life-work to lift these little Italians over the first painful
steps on the road toward American citizenship.
Again, let me call to mind an institution, not in New York, but in
Albany, where the sisters of a religious organization devote their
entire lives to helping girls who either have slipped, and would go
down to be trampled under foot in the blackest mire if they were not
helped, or who, by force of their surroundings, would surely slip if
the hand were not held out to them in time. It is the kind of work
the doing of which is of infinite importance both from the standpoint
of the state and from the standpoint of the individual; yet it is a
work which, to be successful, must emphatically be a labor of love.
Most men and women, even among those who appreciate the need of the
work and who are not wholly insensible to the demands made upon them
by the spirit of brotherly love for mankind, lack either the time,
the opportunity, or the moral and mental qualities to succeed in such
work; and to very many the sheer distaste of it would prevent their
doing it well. There is nothing attractive in it save for those who are
entirely earnest and disinterested. There is no reputation, there is
not even any notoriety, to be gained from it. Surely people who realize
that such work ought to be done, and who realize also how exceedingly
distasteful it would be for them to do it, ought to feel a sense of the
most profound gratitude to those who with whole-hearted sincerity have
undertaken it, and should support them in every way. This particular
institution is under the management of a creed not my own, but few
things gave me greater pleasure than to sign a bill increasing its
power and usefulness. Compared with the vital necessity of reclaiming
these poor hunted creatures to paths of womanliness and wholesome
living, it is of infinitesimal importance along the lines of which
creed these paths lead.
Undoubtedly the best type of philanthropic work is that which helps
men and women who are willing and able to help themselves; for
fundamentally this aid is simply what each of us should be all the
time both giving and receiving. Every man and woman in the land ought
to prize above almost every other quality the capacity for self-help;
and yet every man and woman in the land will at some time or other
be sorely in need of the help of others, and at some time or other
will find that he or she can in turn give help even to the strongest.
The quality of self-help is so splendid a quality that nothing can
compensate for its loss; yet, like every virtue, it can be twisted into
a fault, and it becomes a fault if carried to the point of cold-hearted
arrogance, of inability to understand that now and then the strongest
may be in need of aid, and that for this reason alone, if for no other,
the strong should always be glad of the chance in turn to aid the weak.
The Young Men’s Christian Associations and the Young Women’s
Christian Associations, which have now spread over all the country,
are invaluable because they can reach every one. I am certainly a
beneficiary myself, having not infrequently used them as clubs or
reading-rooms when I was in some city in which I had but little or no
personal acquaintance. In part they develop the good qualities of those
who join them; in part they do what is even more valuable, that is,
simply give opportunity for the men or women to develop the qualities
themselves. In most cases they provide reading-rooms and gymnasiums,
and therefore furnish a means for a man or woman to pass his or her
leisure hours in profit or amusement as seems best. The average
individual will not spend the hours in which he is not working in doing
something that is unpleasant, and absolutely the only way permanently
to draw average men or women from occupations and amusements that
are unhealthy for soul or body is to furnish an alternative which
they will accept. To forbid all amusements, or to treat innocent and
vicious amusements as on the same plane, simply ensures recruits for
the vicious amusements. The Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian
Associations would have demonstrated their value a hundredfold over
if they had done nothing more than furnish reading-rooms, gymnasiums,
and places where, especially after nightfall, those without homes,
or without attractive homes, could go without receiving injury. They
furnish meeting-grounds for many young men who otherwise would be
driven, perhaps to the saloon, or if not, then to some cigar-store or
other lounging-place, where at the best the conversation would not
be elevating, and at the worst companionships might be formed which
would lead to future disaster. In addition to this the associations
give every opportunity for self-improvement to those who care to
take advantage of the opportunity, and an astonishing number do take
advantage of it.
Mention was made above of some of the sources from which at times
we drew policemen while engaged in managing the New York Police
Department. Several came from Young Men’s Christian Associations. One
of them whom we got from the Bowery Branch of the Young Men’s Christian
Association I remember particularly. I had gone around there one night,
and the secretary mentioned to me that they had a young man who had
just rescued a woman from a burning building, showing great strength,
coolness, and courage. The story interested me, and I asked him to
send for the young fellow. When he turned up he proved to be a Jew,
Otto R——, who, when very young, had come over with his people from
Russia at the time of one of the waves of persecution in that country.
He was evidently physically of the right type, and as he had been
studying in the association classes for some time he was also mentally
fit, while his feat at the fire showed he had good moral qualities. We
were going to hold the examinations in a few days, and I told him to
try them. Sure enough, he passed and was appointed. He made one of the
best policemen we put on. As a result of his appointment, which meant
tripling the salary he had been earning, and making an immense bound in
social standing, he was able to keep his mother and old grandmother in
comfort, and see to the starting of his small brothers and sisters in
life; for he was already a good son and brother, so that it was not
surprising that he made a good policeman.
I have not dwelt on the work of the State charitable institutions, or
of those who are paid to do charitable work as officers and otherwise.
But it is bare justice to point out that the great majority of those
thus paid have gone into the work, not for the sake of the money, but
for the sake of the work itself, though, being dependent upon their own
exertions for a livelihood, they are obliged to receive some recompense
for their services.