The burden of the city

Front matter

Class _HY-5_ao.

Book. M* Copyright^

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.

Contents

I. The Burden of the City . . 15

II. Settlement Work ..... 49

III. The Modern Church and its Methods . 83

Foreword

IT is worthy of note that the most characteristic word used in any discussion of present day conditions is problem. We have our "social problems," our "tramp problems," our "labor problems," our "problems of the poor," and a score of others.

This signifies a most encouraging frame of mind on the part of society at large. It means that the public is beginning to "take notice" — to consider — to look into the reasons of things. The only really hopeless state of mind is that in which one believes he has nothing to learn. Through the ages there have been questions relating to human life to which time and strength have been working out answers, and for which they must continue yet longer to work before a full solution of some can be reached. Religious, political and other problems have taken different forms in the different centuries. In the nineteenth and twentieth have been added social and industrial problems which are the development not only of the more complicated conditions of a rapidly progressing civilization, but also of the advancing thought of that civilization which, leading to a quickened conscience, observes these conditions and seeks relief for that which is evil.

ii

1 2 Foreword

Yes, we have our problems. Great cities are growing greater by leaps and bounds, and they harbor that which must give occasion for grave concern. Souls do not come into the kingdom at the ringing of the church bell. Poverty does not decrease by almsgiving. And from the black haunts of suffering and woe there come mutinous voices as threatening as the rumblings from the heart of a thundercloud. They threaten the safety of the rich; they set at defiance the authority of the church; they bode danger to our very civilization and our national existence.

It is not within the province of this volume to settle these problems. The reader will close it, perhaps, with a sense of unrest deeper than that with which he began. But if, with the unrest, there comes also a deeper sense of responsibility, the book will not have failed of its mission. Its problems may be problems still, but when the conscience of society is aroused regarding any wrong there is hope for its betterment.

Time is not lost in considering problems, as such. A wise professor once said in his classroom, "If I had a problem in mathematics to solve, and my life depended upon my solving it within five minutes, I should spend the first three in reading it." There has been much ecclesiastical and philanthropic tinkering with conditions of whose real meaning and cause the tinkerers were as ignorant as babes. Not until we understand something of the inter-relations of poverty, sin, ignorance and false social standards, can we

Foreword 1 3

begin to grapple with them successfully. And even past and present failures may help to such an understanding.

There is no attempt in these pages even to discuss those wider social problems whose solution demands concerted or legislative action. These must be left to the social reformers who are struggling with them, wisely or other-wisely. They are of vital importance, and all good people must feel an interest in their righteous solution; but each projected reform has its champions among the giants of thought and literature, and each has its following. These pages are dedicated nather to the good women who, with hearts anchored to home and its duties, still look out pityingly into the big, sorrowful world beyond and long to reach out helping hands to their brothers and sisters.

Leaving the deeper questions then for the masters of thought, we are to consider some of the conditions that make city missions necessary, and a few of the experiments that are being worked out with greater or less success for the improvement of that part of society variously known as the ''submerged tenth," the "masses," the "great unwashed " or the "other half."

THE CALL OF THE CITY

The fields stretch far to the rim of the day,

And afar to the rising sun, The valleys between bear lilies white

As the snood of a cloistered nun ; The winds of heaven, untrammeled and sweet,

Fan meadow and fen and fall — But ever and ever the wind fares forth

With its burden, the city's call.

The maid who dreams by the side of the brook

That flows from the niche in the hill, Heeds not that the bird on the blossoming spray

Sits mute to hear her trill The tender lilt of an old love song,

For she catches the throng's acclaim In the voice of the brook and the whispering breeze -

They bring her the message of fame.

The youth with his hand on the stubborn plow,

As furrow on furrow he turns, Bares his head to the tempter breeze

And a wondrous fire there burns In the depths of his steadfast, grave young eyes

As he stands there strong and tall — For over the hush of the fallow field

Comes stealing the city's call.

Faint and far, like a thing of dreams,

With palace and mart and spire, With the tread of a million hurrying feet,

With hope and regret and desire — The city lies and it calls with a voice

That touches men's souls with fire.

— Boston Transcript,

MANY and wise are the explanations given as to how cities came to be. That primitive man sought protection from both four-footed and two-footed foes is quite probable; also that very early the ties of a common kindred bound men together in groups or clan§. But when all is said we cannot get much farther than that there has existed and does exist a special instinct which prompts men to draw together— to seek the association of their fellows. It may be an association of love or of selfishness. One may seek the town for social companionship; another may plunge into the marts of trade for the excitement of competition and the love of supremacy. It may be merely the instinctive love of life, with which we are endowed by the Creator, prompting to seek the 11 abundant life" of the great metropolis. Its shops, its factories, its schools, its massive buildings, its prancing steeds and rushing trains, the "endless flood of humanity pouring ceaselessly up and down/' the "vague, indefinable delight at being one of a great multitude" — all this fullness of life seems like a magnet to draw the individual irresistibly into itself.

Loomis, in " Modern Cities," says: "All effort to arrest the progress of cities and to check the tide of population that continually flows into them must be fruitless. The great social movements of the age cannot be stopped." From Cain, who first "builded a city" — sinister omen — to the last farmer who has rented his fertile acres and retired to the nearest village, it is the same. There is a centripetal force in the human cosmos.

But this very inevitableness carries with it hope and courage. If this tendency be a universal law, it is of God, and therefore good. No matter what Babel of discordant voices accompanies the transition period, in the end— the far away end — discord must give place to harmony, love must conquer selfishness, and the city builded by Cain must give place to the city " whose builder and maker is God."

« BACK TO THE SOIL "

It is necessary to see and accept this truth in order to study present conditions sympathetically, and to work courageously. The farmers wife finds it impossible to secure suitable " help " in her kitchen. Yet she knows that in the city are thousands of girls earning a mere pittance in shops and factories. The farmer himself reads of the seething life of the great city, its population crowded tier on tier in sunless tenements, and then he looks over his sun-bathed, windswept acres and says, " Why do they stay there ?

Let them come out into God's country where there is room and work for all." And straightway he hardens his heart against the touch of pity. And yet the farmer himself as he becomes prosperous will rent the farm and move with his family into the nearest village, where he can daily look into the faces of his fellows and cross swords of argument with them in post-office or store. With better judgment and greater strength of purpose he is still obeying the same impulse as did the poor Irishwoman of the slums whom a charitable society tried to transplant into the country. Work and friends were found for the woman in her new environment, but within two weeks she was back again in her old haunts, ragged, dirty and wretched as ever.

" Could you not find work enough ?" she was asked.

"Yis, work a-plenty."

" Didn't you have enough to eat and to wear ? "

' 'Oh, yis, plenty to ate."

" Then what made you come back ? " was the rather impatient query.

" Paples is more coompany than sthumps," she answered with dignity, and the answer contains volumes of philosophy for the charity worker. Probably there are few persons who have actively interested themselves in the problems of the poor who have not at least once tried this same experiment of transplanting the city product "back to the soil," with like discouraging result.

It is as useless to try to overcome this centralizing impulse, or to rail at it, as to attempt to teach water to flow up hill. Yet water can, under certain conditions, be made to flow up hill, and it is well that every effort should be made to bring the city dweller in contact with nature. Whatever great and far-reaching good is being worked out by Him who counts not days nor seasons, it surely is not His will that even to-day women toil in foul, dark rooms, and children have but rat-infested passageways and filthy alleys for their playgrounds. Not bodies alone, but souls, are fettered here, and it is of God that we try to break every yoke — yokes of ignorance and weakness and soul-blindness as well as of sin; yet when failures come, as they often will, the wise laborer will not be utterly cast down, recognizing that we are in the sweep of a great world movement controlled by a power that works for good. Then, too, one can exercise the necessary patience and sympathy with perverted human nature only as he begins to understand that it is not wholly responsible for its environment and the resultant consequences upon character.

COUNTRY vs. CITY

The sweep of population to the cities, and the counter sweep of the better class of urban population from the centre to the suburbs has occupied the attention of sociologists for the past twenty-five years, and yet it is a daily marvel to the student of present day conditions. The church is fairly bewildered by it and the missionary finds that it makes his efforts, at times, seem almost fruitless. The majority of city churches have failed, thus far, in adapting themselves to the changing conditions, and have practically beat a retreat before the oncoming hordes of the down-town districts.

From whence do they come — the tumultuous horde of human beings that crowd into the manufacturing and commercial districts — those for whom the cheap tenement is built, and who fill to overflowing the deserted and decaying palaces of the rich ? How do they live ? What are their hopes arid fears ? What necessary part do they play in the great drama of life ? What becomes of them at last ?

There is no question as to where the best come from. "The city," says Emerson, "is recruited from the country. The city would have died out, rotted and exploded, long ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town day before yesterday that is city and court to-day." Sociologists tell us, "Only the agricultural class possesses permanent vitality. From its overflow the city population is formed, displaced, renewed."

This inflow from the country furnishes the city with its best fibre, physically and morally. The country boy entering the city is found after a few months in some store or office or bank, or with some railroad company. The girls enter the ranks of stenographers or become office helpers, milliners, music teachers, etc. A small proportion of these climb the ladder and are heard from in the business or social world in later years. Many — most — manage to support themselves respectably, while the weakest, those who for some inscrutable reason are always "unfortunate," sink down through the ranks of unskilled and poorly paid labor into pauperism. These young people fresh from the country, with the "strength of the hills" in their frames and the courage of youth in their hearts, are usually found in the "boarding-house district" and within reach of the prosperous churches. Blessed are those churches who consider the needs of this class at that critical point in their careers before the country bloom has vanished and they have become absorbed by the reckless materialism of the city. Thousands upon thousands of the best young people in the land are lost to the Church and to Christianity year by year because the country church sends them to the city without proper safeguards, and the city church does not bestir itself to win and to hold them.

CITIES WITHIN CITIES

Descending in the social scale to the ranks of "unskilled" or day labor, we find a rapidly increasing ratio of foreigners. In every great metropolis there are sections — cities within the city — wholly given over to a foreign population. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, has each its "Chinatown," its "Ghetto," its "Little Italy,"

its ''Bohemia." Passing through these sections one is confronted with signs upon shops, stores, churches and schools, in an unknown tongue and sometimes even in unknown characters. He hears a chatter of voices not one word of which he can understand. Dark-skinned women with shawls over their heads, or Chinamen with queues, regard him curiously, until he begins to wonder whether he be not himself the foreigner.

One hundred years ago we were a people of 4,000,000 souls and were substantially of one blood. Fifty years later, when our population had increased to 32,000,000, we were still practically an English-American people. Up to 1840 our total immigration from all quarters had not exceeded half a million.

But during the next thirty years we received in round numbers 6,000,000 foreigners. Dr. Clark, in " Leavening the Nation," says: "Driven, on the one hand, by famines and oppressions at home; drawn, on the other, by the demands of labor in a new and rapidly developing country, by liberal homestead laws and cheap transportation, they came and continued coming — every comer making himself an agent to bring others — often sending home money for the passage — until for continuous years at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New Orleans, immigrants were arriving at a rate of from five hundred to a thousand a day. They were mostly Catholics from Ireland, and the burden thus suddenly thrown upon the American Catholic Church was greater than it could well carry. Upon the immigrants the sudden lifting of old world restraints was so relaxing in its effects that thousands of good Catholics were at this time lost to the church, which was not ready then, as it became at a later period, to . . . shepherd them. "

It should be remarked in passing that the Catholic Church, despite its own dissatisfaction with itself, can give points to most Protestant churches in the matter of "shepherding "itsown as well as gathering in those outside the fold. With its magnificent organization, its hundreds of institutions for the care of the children, the aged and the sick, and a devoted sisterhood consecrating life and fortune to the cause, it holds the fort in the down-town districts and has good grounds for asserting its claim to be called the "working man's church/'

Next in volume to this first flood of immigration from Ireland was the German invasion, which, so far as it possessed any faith at all, was chiefly Lutheran, largely intermingled with infidelity and irreligion.

With the virile progressiveness of the Saxon and Celtic races, these Irish and German invasions, with a large Swedish contingent, pushed on, seeking openings and opportunities in the great West, largely along agricultural lines.

Since 1885, the tides of immigration have set in from southern Europe and have become most serious and threatening. In March, 1904, over 10,000 immigrants were landed at Ellis Island,

New York, in a single day. The next day 15,000 more arrived on seven steamers. During the entire month, 31,000 were received in New York alone, and in the month of May, 70,417.

These immigrants are mostly Poles, Russians, Italians, Austrians and Hungarians. They bring with them poverty, illiteracy and low ideals. Instead of projecting themselves through the country, mingling with other peoples and acquiring our language and civilization, they tend to huddle together by nationalities in the great cities, oftenest near the seaboard.

The best students of social conditions assert that undfcr present tendencies the close of this quarter-century will see the bulk of our population in our great cities. This means that the cities will be the controlling power in the nation. How essential, then, that the dominant power within them should "make for righteousness! "

SOUTHERN CITIES

In the South the sudden and overwhelming growth of the modern city was not so marked as to attract serious attention until it was disclosed by the census of 1900. Since that time the South has shared with the North in the great migratory sweep of population West and South, converging in the cities. There is, however, this difference, advantageous to the southern cities, that the migration into the southern seaboard states consists largely of native-born Americans who have been, in a sense, crowded out of the East and North by the flood of foreigners. The most important effect of this fact from the missionary standpoint is that there is less of the Roman Catholic element to contend with than in the North. A leading minister of the South says in a public address on "The Problems of the Home Field," "There is one decidedly hopeful feature in connection with this problem as it affects the South. By the census of 1900 nearly fifty per cent, of the voters of the South were members of the Protestant Church, while in the northern states there was only twenty-two per cent. In the state of South Carolina seventy per cent, of the voters were members of the Protestant Church, whereas in the State of Maine there was a drop to eighteen per cent. With the stronger allegiance to the Church in our section of the country, and by taking time by the forelock, conditions are far more favorable towards a permanent entrenchment of Protestant Christianity in our manufacturing centres and in all our densely populated districts than is true of any portion of the North or West."

Often there are set in motion waves of influence which affect indirectly the movements of population. The resuming of operations upon the Panama Canal is such an event, in that it will doubtless bring new tides of immigration into the South, especially into the Gulf cities, and put them face to face with conditions possibly even more serious than those which threaten the seaboard cities of New England. Miss Helm of

Our Homes (organ of the Woman's Home Mission Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church South) says in a stirring editorial:

It is probable that Galveston, New Orleans, Mobile, Pensacola, Tampa, and possibly other towns, will become great commercial marts through which the traffic between the eastern and western worlds will pass, and hence become converging foci of the streams of immigration flowing into this country. Homes, lodging-houses, schools, churches, provisions of every kind, will be in such demand in the next two decades as to endanger the sanitary and moral condition of these cities. The overcrowded tenement houses of London and New York will be duplicated, and with the same fearful results, unless state and municipal laws are enacted that will grapple with the danger in* time.

Then, with this rush and swirl of population and trade that will be called " growth " and "prosperity," all the problems of godlessness will be intensified beyond anything we have yet seen in our southern cities. Drunkenness, debauchery, poverty, ignorance, disease, shame ! What will the Church of God do to meet these conditions ? It would be weakness and folly to wait until the forces of the enemy have possessed the land before we rally our forces to meet them. The example of other cities that have been submerged should be a frightful warning to us.

The churches should join hands in making these strategic points strongholds for Christ before it is too late. Church members must be educated to see the need and feel the responsibility. Workers must be trained ; money must be accumulated to conduct great missionary enterprises, both saving and preventive — educational and evangelistic. The down-town church, the great mission hall, the Christian settlement, rescue homes, hospitals — all will be needed.

Women's Home Missionary Societies are by their very names designated as suitable agencies to undertake this work. They should be ready to fall in line with any advance movement of the churches, or, if needs must, to take such advance step themselves. Their women should be studying the problems of city missions in all their phases ; their young women should be trained as missionaries and deaconesses, that all may work together for the saving of our cities and the defense of our homes.

SPECIAL PROBLEMS

But more distressful because more immediate, even, than this coming crisis, is the negro problem — a problem confronting the North as well as the South. "The sudden appeal of an enslaved race awaking to find its day of freedom " brings with it perils and difficulties that demand the wisest statesmanship and the most Christian forbearance. With it are associated problems that may not be solved by statecraft alone. They demand the cooperation of the Christian church, armed with the wisdom that is from above. The future of the black race as well as of the white, with whom its destinies have been so tragically interwoven, must be solved chiefly by the teacher and the missionary.

The negro slums, perplexing enough in the North, assume in the South proportions and conditions that are appalling. In every city, town, and even village there is a growing tendency to segregation that produces a community within a community, not only of a different race, but one becoming more and more alienated from the white people. As the old slaveholders and exslaves die, the ties of mutual dependence and affectionate memories drop away and prejudice and race antagonism make it more and more difficult for the white people to minister to such communities or to influence them in higher things. They prefer their own preachers, whether educated or ignorant, good or bad, to white missionaries, and as with the majority the idea of religion does not include ethics or industry, the moral condition of a negro community sinks lower and lower— the worst element dragging down the children of the better— until nearly every such community tends to become a hopeless slum.

Still the negro question, stupendous as it is, is less complicated than that of the foreign peoples. As Bishop Galloway says, "The negro speaks our language, reads our Bible, worships our God, believes in our flag, and will die for our country." The great apostle of industrial education for the black race, Booker T. Washington, before the National Educational Association in St. Louis, marshalled an impressive array of facts to prove that the negro responds readily to efforts for his improvement, and that through industrial training he is to work out his salvation, ethically as well as materially.

A TRINITY OF EVIL

Closely interwoven with the conditions already named, are the awful problems of intemperance, pauperism and crime. Saloons multiply as we pass from the outlying residence districts towards the centre, and are ever the thickest where people are poorest. This does not imply that the vice of drinking is confined to the poor and the working classes. The rich have other and less public ways of indulging their appetites, although the saloon may be banished from the boulevards. But among the poorer people, where homes are dark and crowded and club houses unknown, the saloon meets many demands besides that for drink. Room where a man may rest and smoke — cool in summer, warm in winter — a bit of "free" lunch, a free forum for the interchange of views on all subjects from the last act of Congress to the robbery next door — these attract the man as he comes wearied from the day's toil, even without the drink.

The saloon has been called the " poor man's club." It is his club under conditions which make it almost a substitute for the home. Often his home is dark, dirty, and crowded with children and tubs. The food is innutritious and unappetizing. There is the constant craving that comes from unsatisfied hunger, and it is easy and natural for the boy to become a tippler and the man a drunkard. Drink is not more a cause of poverty than it is an effect; but cause and effect are retroactive. Each tends to produce and intensify the other, while drink and poverty combined lead inevitably to either pauperism or crime; and so the awful work goes on.

The " fearful statistics " of this crime against civilization, overwhelming as they are, cannot tell the story. The missionary sees it in appalling iteration as she goes her rounds. She finds the squalid homes, the lifeless despair of the women, the neglected children, bearing in their baby faces the awful marks of degeneracy, and back of all — the visitor knows without the asking — is the old, old story, "My man, he drinks." In those words all is told — the strong form weakened and degraded, the shuffling step, the sullen temper, the frequent absences from home, sometimes prolonged into months, the terror of the absence scarcely less than the terror of the home-coming, all the terrible, swift sinking of a home into the blackness of darkness. "Didn't you know he drank when you married him?" It is the last, futile protest of the helpless helper. "Why do women marry men who drink?"

"Oh, lady, he did not drink then — not to get drunk. Of course he drank his beer ; but he didn't use to get drunk when I married him."

It is always "of course," though, recognizing the unaccountable prejudice of "church folks" against beer they keep the fact, as well as the pitcher, in the background until circumstances discover it. But this is rather a courtesy to the visitor than confession of guilt in the matter.

"My man must drink beer," said one woman defensively. "He works in the furnace room and sweats all the time. He would die if he did not drink beer." The man was a converted drunkard and was conscientiously trying, as was his wife, to live up to the church standard ; but naturally he had occasional lapses.

" Can't he drink water?"

" Water?" with a look of horror. "Seven, eight quarts every day ? Water is no good to stop the awful thirst. He would be sick to drink so much."

" Then barley water — lemonade — coffee ? " But the woman shakes her head. These things are not at hand and the beer is. Beer fulfills all requirements, and beer it must be.

"I often go into that cafe across the street," said a car conductor to his motorman, "and get a cup of their hot bouillion. It warms me up and is almost as good as a lunch."

"As good as a glass of beer?" asked the motorman innocently. Just here is the situation. From their view-point beer is cordial, food, stimulant, and, if taken in sufficient quantities, forgetfulness of troubles. It is cheap and always at hand. The truly "good" man is he who also provides a generous supply for the wife and children at home.

It is useless to attempt to analyze the relations between intemperance, pauperism and crime. It is enough that for the most part they stand or fall together, and that all have their lurking places in the city slums. It is there they must be fought with every weapon that Christian civilization can provide.

On a certain street in a great city, where the social vice reeks and festers, five, eight, and in places even eleven saloons stand side by side, and from the windows above peep brazen faces.

There are no stores in that neighborhood — only the gilt balls of the pawn-shop and a few flyinfested groceries. All the demands of life are narrowed down to drink and lust. Humanity can reach no deeper depths than this. Everywhere the open saloon marks the hurrying pace of humanity on its downward way. Banished from the protected homes on the boulevards, it tlaunts in gilded splendor where men gather in the great business centres. It multiplies as people grow poorer ; it prospers exceedingly as crime is added to poverty ; it reigns supreme where humanity has sunk into the lowest mire of beastliness.