Living the Radiant Life: A Personal Narrative

by George Wharton James

The emptiness of ages in their face,

And on their back the burden of the world.

What if, now that "whirlwinds of rebellion" are shaking the world and these hitherto "dumb terrors" have found, or are finding, a voice, they speak a little too loudly, or too harshly, or ask more than they ought? Whose fault is it? Who has kept them in bondage so long? They will learn, by and by, to speak more rationally, but this will come only by speaking, so I hail with delight the fact that "the rulers and lords of all lands" are recognizing their right to be heard, and are more or less respectfully listening to what they have to say.

It is another grand sign of universal progress that the owners and landlords of vile tenement houses, of the horrible kennels in which human beings in the past used to be penned as in pigsties, are no longer allowed to reap monetary rewards from such abominable and cursed holes. Boards of health, civic improvement bodies, tenement reform associations are taking upon themselves the work of protecting the poor, helpless, and often unfortunate dwellers in these plague spots and compelling that they be made decent, healthful, and sanitary—often seeing that they are razed and entirely removed. What though oftentimes the people who dwell in these places are brought thither by their own misconduct? Are men, women, and innocent children to be "damned" on this earth—as well as in the future—because morally they have been weak and unfortunate? The greater the weakness and the lower the fall, the greater the cry and need for help. Jacob Riis was a brave and heroic leader in New York, William Booth and his gallant army in London and the thousand and one other cities of the world, and the day is dawning when there will be no "slums" in any decent, self-respecting city, when such books as How the Other Half Lives, The Submerged Tenth, If Christ Came to Chicago, and The People of the Abyss can no longer be written, for the true-hearted, loving, brotherly, and sisterly, will have been aroused to do their plain, simple, and manifest duty and "slums," "abysses," and "plague spots" will cease to exist.

There are many other excellent things I might comment upon that help bring content to the soul. They betoken a glorious and blessed improvement upon the "days of things as they were" and they should lead every man to get into line, to find the step and keep it, marching on with this vanguard of human progress, which seeks the best possible condition of body, mind, and soul for all men.

Yet, in spite of this large-hearted contentment with things as they are, and with the way the world generally is progressing, which I would radiate, I would equally radiate a great discontent with many things as they are. When I look at my own faults and failings, my inadequacies and incompetencies, my blindness and stupidity, my ignorance and willfulness, I find much of my content disappear like the airy visions of a dream. I certainly do not want to be content with these things and so I call up as often as I can a mighty discontent which is a constant urge to the higher, nobler, truer, better life. I am as self-willed as other men, and yet I well know that human will is both ignorant and blind, and that only when it is made subject to the Great Controlling Will of the Universe will it lead me aright and in the paths of ultimate, permanent success. And by success, I do not mean the paltry thing most men regard as success. I certainly wish to radiate discontent with what men generally regard as success. Mere money, fame, honor, social distinction, count for little unless character, divine sympathy with one's needy fellows, and an enlarged conception of the brotherhood of men accompany them.

And how can I do other than radiate a large and tremendous discontent at the suffering and woe of the unfortunates of life? It is little or nothing to me what causes their misfortune. I have learned that the judgment of sociologists, theologists, and reformers generally is of little account in interpreting the causes of things. As a rule, they look only on the surface and see nothing of the hidden springs of action and therefore know little of the movement of hearts of men and women whose condition they so complacently and conceitedly imagine they can change.

Some years ago, Jack London wrote a book entitled, The People of the Abyss. It was severely censured and criticised and some critics went so far as to assert that it was full of untruths. It told of the dismal lives of London's poor, who daily find themselves with nothing but one meal, two meals, three meals between themselves and starvation—poor wretches to whom the "wolf at the door" is an ever present reality, and who tremble every time their employers look towards them with a frown or speak with a voice that threatens dismissal. What a frightful, pitiable, pathetic position for men and women—my brothers and sisters—to be in. I certainly do not wish to radiate contentment at the fact of their unfortunate condition. I want somehow to take some of their burdens upon my life. I want to realize something of the spirit that led Walt Whitman to exclaim, "I will take nothing for myself that cannot be given upon equal terms to all men."

When I read the stories of child labor and learn of the many cruelties practiced upon helpless little ones, in the name of business; when I see those boys and girls of tender age in the cotton mills of the South, owned by wealthy men of the North, plodding back and forth, hour by hour, behind the whirling spindles; when I see them, as I have often done, so utterly weary that when the noon hour came, they would stretch out on the bare floor and try to gain a little snatch of forgetfulness of their weariness in sleep, rather than eat their inadequate lunch, I have certainly felt, as I now feel, that I wish to radiate a tremendous amount of discontent that such inhuman facts can exist. When I see the private palace car owned by the many-times millionaire, and catch glimpses of the extravagant and wasteful luxury in which he and his family live, and realize that this prodigal wastefulness is made possible by the life-destroying labor of poor, anæmic children in the glass-blowing factories of New Jersey, I wish I had the power to send a great wail of discontent through the country that would thrill the hearts, awaken the senses, and arouse the consciences of every man and woman in the nation.

When I realize the inadequacies of our legal system to do justice alike to all men and women, the poor as well as the rich, the innocent and confiding as well as the crafty and cunning, I feel nothing but discontent and long for the time to come when justice and mercy shall be of higher value in the courts of our land than precedent and legal procedure.