There is a Chinese belief that stagnant water carries the bodies of
whatever may be drowned in it in continual suspense, never floating
them upon the surface, neither allowing them to sink to the bottom.
These putrid pools are never drained and the water is never disturbed,
simply through fear of the ghastly consequences. It is believed also
that the enveloping putridity prevents natural decomposition, and for
a human being to be drawn to this death by any means is evidence of
some horrible secret sin.
* * * * *
Citizens of Chicago are too familiar with the Chicago River, which
separates its several sections, not to realize that the ooze which
crawls back and forth in its channel under the bridges and over the
tunnels is an abomination of filth and putridity.
According to the Chinese legend, the bodies of cats and dogs and even
children that are engulfed by this ooze are never recovered. They
cannot float on the surface and they cannot sink to the bottom;
neither do they disappear by the ordinary processes of decay. In a
bloated, water-logged condition they are destined to remain a part of
the ooze forever, or until the waters of Lake Michigan, coursing
through the new drainage canal toward the Gulf of Mexico, shall
deliver them to the natural elements of pure water and pure air, in
which to dissolve back to original particles and gases.
There are stagnant pools in the centers of Chinese cities that have
attained sufficiently fetid conditions to warrant legends such as the
foregoing. These abominations of far-off Cathay are noisome indeed,
but we, who have seen and otherwise sensed both the Chinese putrid
pools and the Chicago River, assert that the latter is the worst of
all.
* * * * *
During the World's Columbian Exposition there convened in Chicago a
congress of humanitarians under the name of The World's Parliament of
Religions. By its membership and its accomplishments it earned the
unqualified respect of the civilized world, and the eminent teacher
and scholar, Professor, Doctor Max Müller, proclaimed it the most
important event in civilization of the Nineteenth Century.
Suppose, for illustration, that the members of this humanitarian
congress were to be gathered upon one of the bridges that span the
Chicago River and were to witness, standing upon the deck of an
excursion steamer, a group of well dressed women and well fed men
engaged in watching the frantic efforts of a multitude of children of
all ages who had been cast into the ooze of the river, and were either
settling deeper and deeper into the slime, or vainly trying to climb
up the slippery piles to the wharves. Suppose that also there should
be seen along the banks of the river a number of policemen whose only
duty seemed to be not to allow the innocents to escape, or, if
escaping, to prevent their rubbing against people in the streets for
fear of soiling immaculate toilets with the filth in which they had
been wallowing. Suppose that no one hastened to the assistance of the
little ones or offered them ropes or ladders of escape, but, on the
contrary, some should occasionally push one who had almost reached the
brink back into the stench as children sometimes thoughtlessly torment
rats that are trying to escape drowning.
Suppose again that the scene of our illustration were advanced five
years from the time of the Columbian Celebration to the time following
the Dewey, Hobson and Santiago incidents of the war for the liberation
of suffering Cuba, when patriotic sympathy for Spain's abused
colonists, as described in a former chapter, was at the zenith of its
flight. Would it not call for a cry of protest from the humanitarians?
Would it not touch a chord of pity that would create a wave of
compassion, covering the civilized world, for the hopelessly condemned
innocents of Chicago, and, by its horror, compel the formation of an
army of relief recruited from every civilized land? Would not this
contrast put to shame the American goddess of charity for her far-away
search for a mission while countenancing such hideous cruelty and
neglect at home? Would not the hearts of men hang heavy with the
responsibility of neglect until no more wards of society should be
condemned by the chance of birth to be littered and kenneled in
conditions of degraded animalism teeming with filth, sensuality and
crime?
* * * * *
There will be ready reply to our illustration and simila.
"It is an exaggerated supposition."
"Such indifference and inhumanity could not be."
"Civilization has passed beyond such a possibility."
"Poverty and even neglect there may be, but nothing inhuman like
that."
* * * * *
But in the face of all assertions to the contrary, worse neglect and
cruelty than those given in the illustration _do exist_ in all the
large cities of England and the United States, which are within the
field of our personal observation, unnoticed, because they are
commonplace, unchampioned because they are too near home.
* * * * *
Fortunately, indeed, this seeming indifference is not evidence of
hopeless moral turpitude in the nation or in the race, as would seem
to be the cowardice and selfishness displayed at the Charity Bazaar
fire in Paris, or the beastly inhumanity and unchivalry let loose
among the animals who beat back women and children from chances of
escape on board the ill-fated _La Bourgogne_, but it arises from
false conceptions of the responsibilities of individuals toward the
correction of unwholesome civic conditions, and from the false and
pernicious assumption that there must always and everywhere be a
certain amount of unredeemable depravity in every generation and in
every community.
In England there is in vogue an expression, attributed, we believe, to
the founder of the Salvation Army, to the effect that there must
always be a class of criminals, wantons and loafers in every
community, and which has been classified as "The hopelessly submerged
ten per cent. stratum of society." We repeat this statement because of
the enormity of the evil that lurks in the assumption of the
condemnation.
Nothing could be more of an obstruction to progress than to condemn
ten per cent., or any percentage, of the people to such an assumption.
In the first place, it is a lie, and proven to be a lie by the
contemporaneous history of communities no better equipped for ideal
citizenship than the Anglo-Saxon, but better protected by systems of
social quarantine. Although such may always have been the case in the
common experience of English and American cities, it has no more
reason to be assumed, as an hypothesis, than that all mankind is and
must be totally depraved. It can be only the assumption of ignorance
when we know that it is possible to create a social atmosphere
elsewhere wherein none of the people need be depraved, and wherein
there are none who are vicious, as is largely the case in practically
all the German cities that we have studied, and as is general in the
Empire of Japan.
Blinded by this assumption of necessary depravity, persons who are
full of altruistic impulses may overlook men, women, and even
children, wallowing in moral conditions more noisome than the stench
of the Chicago River, in the belief that they are of the
"Have-to-bes"--of the "Hopelessly condemned ten per cent. stratum of
society."
* * * * *
We have interpolated this explanation and excuse in order to show that
the presence of unwholesome civic conditions may not be due to
hopeless moral blindness, but to a traditional astigmatism, caused by
hypotheses that are now out of date, and which belong to periods of an
uncivilized past.
Neither do we lay blame to the policeman who said, "ter hell wid you!"
to our waif, nor to the authorities above him, nor to the people who
choose the officers to wrestle with lawlessness. Christ would have
said of the policeman and the people, "Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do." But we lay all blame to the conditions that
must exist wherever there is lack of Perfect Social Quarantine.
* * * * *
But let us proceed with our task of turning searchlights on the
inconsistencies that are the result of this social astigmatism, in
hope that they may be the means of clearing the vision of individual
duty and responsibility and of effecting a cure.
* * * * *
The American people entered upon the Spanish war in the face of an
estimated cost of a million of dollars a day until the last Spaniard
had laid down his arms in recognition of the principle of universal
freedom from cruelty or neglect, and of the duty of the strong to
protect the weak within whatever family, municipal or national
inclosure they may be found. One million of dollars is one and
one-third cents for each citizen of the United States. If collected by
equal per capita assessment it would not be much of a hardship to any,
even if it were all wasted in burned coal and in exploded ammunition,
but, on the contrary, much of the money went immediately back to the
people, giving employment to those who would otherwise be unemployed
and stimulating trade and industry.
The loss of life that is liable to occur in war is not so great as is
sacrificed to such worrying controversies as that between gold and
silver or that between free trade and a protective tariff. The
excitement of speculation and the fever of politics are much more
deadly than war, while a season of extended national business
depression is more disastrous to life and more destructive of
happiness than any armed controversy that has ever occurred in the
annals of warfare.
None of these causes, however, is so murderous as the infanticide
resulting from neglect of irresponsible childhood.
In the hands of well matched contestants, as seemed to be the case in
the beginning of the Spanish war, war may be a terribly destructive
thing, as it has proven to be for Spain, and it was this possibility
that was faced by the United States when she threw down the gauntlet
for suffering Cuba.