White Slaves; or, the Oppression of the Worthy Poor

by Louis Albert Banks

You must remember that many people here are paupers through no fault of their own. Many of them are victims of incurable disease; and, as against such cases the Boston hospitals are closed, the almshouse is for them the only open door. Public sentiment must be aroused to demand, with Florence Nightingale, that "work-house sick shall not be work-house inmates, but they shall be poor sick, cared for as sick who are to be cured if possible, and treated as becomes a Christian country if they cannot be cured." We people who are followers of Him who confessed, "The foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head," cannot afford to treat people who are, through misfortune, in the same condition to-day as though they were some species of criminal, rather than as the hostages of our Christ. Perhaps you say these people are not appreciative, are not refined, do not have fine feelings—how do you know that? That is doubtless true about some of them, but about many of them nothing could be more false. People do not lose their powers of appreciation when they lose their money, and I doubt not that these people would average, in the essential characteristics of manly and womanly character, with the same number of people of the same age you could gather from the homes along your street. Last Christmas some kind-hearted women went down to Rainsford with some gifts for the sick poor. One of them, writing about their reception, says: "It was very touching to see the happiness our little gifts conferred. The first was a poor old woman, more than eighty, nearly blind from cataracts over her eyes. She is called 'Welsh Ann' because she is from Wales. My friend told her I had been in Wales. She seemed so glad to shake hands with one who had been in her own country, and her voice choked with tears as she thanked me and took my gift. But she brushed the tears away from her poor sightless eyes while my friend repeated to her the Twenty-third Psalm, and then at her request knelt and prayed. The apron which I gave her has quite a history. A girl who earns her own living, hearing I was making these aprons, sent me this one which she bought. It was worked across the bottom, and I thought, as poor Ann rubbed her hands over the work she could not see, but only touch, how cheered the young lady would be when she heard of the joy her gift gave. I was asked to give one pretty apron to another Ann—one they called 'Greenland Ann,' because she is so very fond of hearing them sing 'From Greenland's icy mountains.'" And surely that spirit of the Christ, which is warm enough to impel men to dare the frost of "Greenland's icy mountains" in order to comfort with His blessed Gospel their Esquimau brother, ought to prompt us to deal thoughtfully and tenderly with the dear old soul that likes to hear Him sung about on Rainsford Island.

I shall never forget the impression made upon me by Mark Guy Pearse, one of the greatest of the English preachers, in his story of how he was ordained a preacher. He said: "It was no bishop or presbytery that consecrated me, but a saintly Cornish woman, whom we children called old Rosie, and who was, indeed, my right reverend mother in God.

"So far as I can recollect, it was always sun-shiny when we visited old Rosie, though of course it must have rained sometimes. She had a single room in a tiny little cottage squeezed behind the rest. A narrow strip led to the door, and there was no room for any window in front, except the one right above the door, peering out from under the heavy thatch. There is no one to answer if we knock, so we push our fingers through the door and lift the wooden latch. My father, who goes with us almost every Sunday, has to stoop his head in climbing the narrow stair, and of course the little lad of six and his sisters stoop their heads too; there are four of the girls and one of me. Rosie welcomes us with her beaming smile. She is sitting up in bed, as she has done for eleven long years. She is a hundred and five years old, and her hair is snowy white, yet there is not a wrinkle on her brow, and her cheeks have the rosy brightness from which she gets the familiar name. All her relations are gone, and she is now a pauper with only two or three shillings a week from the parish.

"We might call her poor and lonely and bedridden, yet she is brimful of happiness. The Bible is constantly at her hand, and she is generally thanking God for all His mercies. She has lived in the light and love of the Saviour since she was eleven years old; and she has gone so long and so far in the good way, that now it is as if she were sitting just outside the golden gates, crowned with radiant beauty and clothed with white raiment, waiting until her Lord shall bid her enter.

"At dear old Rosie's bed we used to have a little service; first a chapter read from the Bible, then a hymn—'Rock of Ages' was her favorite, sung to 'Rousseau's Dream.' When the prayer was over, old Rosie would lay her thin hand on the little lad's curly head, and say as she turned her face upward, 'O Lord, bless the little lad! Bless him and make him a preacher.' I didn't like that prayer of hers, and I used to say to myself, 'I will never be a preacher; I will be a doctor, and gallop about the country visiting people.' But one Sunday, after the service and her little prayer, she said 'good-by' to us all. 'You won't see me any more; so it must be good-by for a long time now, until we meet at home.' We wondered what she meant. Two days after, she was carried home by God's angels from her lonely room. My little heart was like to break at the thought of never seeing her again; and I went out by myself to the garden and prayed, 'Please God, I don't care so much, after all, if I become a preacher, if it will make dear Rosie any happier.'"

It would be better for us that a millstone were hanged about our necks, and we were cast into the depths of the sea, than that we should be thoughtless or indifferent of one of God's poor, like old Rosie.

Well, you ask, how can it be made better? My answer is that there ought to be a radical change in the Board of Control of Public Institutions. I do not make any personal fight on the three men now in control. I make war on the whole system. As it is now, there are, in and about Boston, ten public institutions, occupied by thousands of men and women and children, carried on at an expense of nearly six hundred thousand dollars, entirely under the control of three commissioners. This is not wise. There ought to be a large advisory board made up of distinguished citizens. This should be composed of women as well as men. It is certainly a very short-sighted and thoughtless arrangement that, although there are in these institutions several hundred women and children, there is no woman who has any authorized interest in them. There is every reason why women should be on the Boards of Control of Public Institutions. The editor of the New York Nation says: "Whatever improvement there has been in the condition of Bellevue Hospital, for example, and of the hospitals of Blackwell's and Hart's Islands, during the past twenty years—and it is very great—has, as a rule, been due to women's initiative and labors."

The fact is, that everything that concerns health, education, and good morals occupies the minds of women more than it does the minds of most of their husbands and fathers; and in every department of municipal administration, where the conditions of the streets, of the sewers, of the hospitals and almshouses, and of the police, are in question, women have an equal interest with men, and in order to the public well-being and safety, ought to have an equal voice. I am sure that an advisory board of leading citizens, on which were three or four level-headed, humane women, would work the revolution that is needed in the treatment of Boston's paupers. Do not put this question aside. This is Boston's question, and you are a part of Boston. As some one sang in the Boston Transcript not long ago:—

"Lazarus lies at your gate!
O proud and prosperous city,
How long will you let him wait?
Listen and look; have pity.

Dives, oh, cannot you hear,
For the music and dance of your high land,
The moaning of misery drear
That comes from the desolate island?