II

'To achieve what man may, to bear what man must,'—since the struggle for life began, this has been the purpose and the pride of humanity. We Americans were trained from childhood to believe that while, in the final issue, each of us must answer for himself, the country—our country—gave to all scope for effort, and chance of victory.

This was not mere Fourth of July oratory, nor the fervent utterances of presidential campaigns. It was a serious and a sober faith, based upon some knowledge of the Constitution, some inheritance of experience, some element of democracy which flavored our early lives. The mere sense of space carried with it a profound and eager hopefulness. Those of us whose fathers or whose grandfathers had crossed the sea to escape from more cramping conditions, felt this atmosphere of independence keenly and consciously. Those of us whose fathers or whose grandfathers brought up their families in an alien land with decent industry and thrift, were aware, even in childhood, that the Republic had fostered our growth. Therefore am I pardonably bewildered when I hear American workmen called 'slaves' and 'prisoners of starvation,' and American employers called 'base oppressors,' and 'despots on their thrones.' This fantastic nomenclature seems immeasurably removed from the temperate language in which were formulated the temperate convictions of my youth.

The assumption that the American laborer to-day stands where the French laborer stood before the Revolution, where the English laborer stood before the passing of the first Reform Bill and the repeal of the Corn Laws, shows a lack of historical perspective. The assumption that all strikes represent an agonized protest against tyranny, an agonized appeal from injustice, is a perversion of truth. The assumption that child-labor in the United States is the blot upon civilization that it was in England seventy years ago, denies the duty of comparison. If the people who write verses about 'Labor Crucified' would make a table of the wages paid to skilled and unskilled workmen, from the Chicago carpenter to the Philadelphia street-cleaner, they might sing in a more cheerful strain. If the people who to-day echo the bitterest lines of Mrs. Browning's 'Cry of the Children' would ascertain and bear in mind the proportion of little boys and girls who are going to school in the United States, how many years they average, and how much the country pays for their education, they might spare us some violent invectives. Even Mr. Robert Hunter permits himself the use of the word 'cannibalism' when speaking of child-workers, and this in the face of legislation which every year extends its area, and grows more stringently protective.

There is a great deal of loose writing on this important theme, and it stands in the way of amendment. It is assumed that parents are seldom or never to blame for sending their children to work. The mill-owner snatches them from their mothers' arms. It is assumed that the child who works would—if there were no employment for him—be at school, or at play, happy, healthy, and well-nourished. No one even alludes to the cruel poverty of the South, which, for generations before the cotton mills were built, stunted the growth and sapped the strength of Southern children. They lived, we are told, a 'wholesome rural life,' and the greed of the capitalist is alone responsible for the blighting of their pastoral paradise.

There is no need to write like this. The question at issue is a grave and simple one. It makes its appeal to the conscience and the sense of the nation, and every year sees some measure of reform. If a baby girl in an American city, a child of three or five, is forced to toil all day, winding artificial daisy stems at a penny a hundred, let the name of her employer and the place of her employment be made public. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children can deal peremptorily with such a case. It is not even the privilege of parents to work a little child so relentlessly. If the pathetic story is not supported by facts, or is not in accord with facts, it is neither wise nor well to publish it. Why should a sober periodical, like the Child-Labor Bulletin, devoted to a good cause, print a poem called 'A Song of the Factory,' in which happy children are portrayed as sporting in beautiful meadows,

Idling among the feathery blooms,

until a sort of ogre comes along, builds a factory, drives the poor innocents into it, and compels them to

Crouch all day by the spindles, wizened, and wan, and old,

earning 'his bread.' Apparently—and this is the gist of the matter—they have no need to earn bread for themselves. The accompanying illustrations show us on one page a prettily dressed little girl sitting daisy-crowned in the fields, and, on the other page, a ragged and tattered little girl with a shawl over her head going to the work which has but too plainly impoverished her. Hansel and Gretel are not more distinctly within the boundaries of fairyland than are these entrapped children. The witch is not more distinctly a child-eating hobgoblin than is the capitalist of such fervid song.

The sickly and unreasoning tone which pervades the literature of poverty is demoralizing. There is nothing helpful in the assumption that effort is vain, resistance hopeless, and the world monstrously cruel. The dominating element of such prose and verse is a bleak despair, unmanly, unwomanly, inhuman. Out of the abundance of material before me, I quote a single poem, published in the New York Call, reprinted in the Survey, and christened mockingly,—

THE STRAIGHT ROAD
They got y', kid, they got y', just like I said they would;
You tried to walk the narrow path,
You tried, and got an awful laugh;
And laughs are all y' did get, kid, they got y' good!
They never saw the little kid,—the kid I used to know,
The little bare-legged girl back home,
The little girl that played alone,
They don't know half the things I know, kid; ain't it so?
They got y', kid, they got y',—you know they got y' right;
They waited till they saw y' limp,
Then introduced y' to the pimp,
Ah, you were down then, kid, and couldn't fight.
I guess you know what some don't know, and others know damn well,
That sweatshops don't grow angel's wings,
That working girls is easy things,
And poverty's the straightest road to hell.

And this is what our Lady Poverty, bride of Saint Francis, friend of all holiness, counsel of all perfection, has come to mean in these years of grace! She who was once the surest guide to Heaven now leads her chosen ones to Hell. She who was once beloved by the devout and honored by the just, is now a scandal and a shame, the friend of harlotry, the instigator of crime. Even a true poet like Francis Thompson laments that the poverty exalted by Christ should have been cast down from her high caste.

All men did admire
Her modest looks, her ragged, sweet attire
In which the ribboned shoe could not compete
With her clear simple feet.
But Satan, envying Thee thy one ewe-lamb,
With Wealth, World's Beauty and Felicity
Was not content, till last unthought-of she
Was his to damn.
Thine ingrate, ignorant lamb
He won from Thee; kissed, spurned, and made of her
This thing which qualms the air,
Vile, terrible, old,
Whereat the red blood of the Day runs cold.

These are the words of one to whom the London gutters were for years a home, and whose strengthless manhood lay inert under a burden of pain he had no courage to lift. Yet never was sufferer more shone upon by kindness than was Francis Thompson; never was man better fitted to testify to the goodness of a bad world. And he did bear such brave testimony again and yet again, so that the bulk of his verse is alien to pessimism,—'every stanza an act of faith, and a declaration of good will.'

The demoralizing quality of such stuff as 'The Straight Road,' which is forced upon us with increasing pertinacity, is its denial of kindness, its evading of obligation. Temptation is not only the occasion, but the justifier of sin,—a point of view which plays havoc with our common standard of morality. When a vicious young millionaire like Harry Thaw runs amuck through his crude and evil environment, we sigh and say, 'His money ruined him.' When a poor young woman abandons her weary frugalities for the questionable pleasures of prostitution, we sigh and say, 'Her poverty drove her to it.' Where then does goodness dwell? What part does honor play? The Sieur de Joinville, in his memoirs of Saint Louis, tells us that a certain man, sore beset by the pressure of temptation, sought counsel from the Bishop of Paris, 'whose Christian name was William.' And this wise William of Paris said to him: 'The castle of Montl'héry stands in the safe heart of France, and no invading hosts assail it. But the castle of La Rochelle in Poitou stands on the line of battle. Day and night it must be guarded from assault, and it has suffered grievously. Which gentleman, think you, the King holds high in favor, the governor of Montl'héry, or the governor of La Rochelle? The post of danger is the post of glory, and he who is sorely wounded in the combat is honored by God and man.'