The fate of the daughters of the poor is yet worse. Many of them are doomed to destruction by the lust of men, their natural guardians and protectors. Think of an able, "respectable" man, comfortable, educated and "Christian," helping debase a woman, degrade her in his eyes, her eyes, the eyes of the world! Why it is bad enough to enslave a man, but thus to enslave a woman—I have no words to speak of that. The crime and sin, foul, polluting and debasing all it touches, has come here to curse man and woman, the married and the single, and the babe unborn! It seems to me as if I saw the Genius of this city stand before God, lifting his hands in agony to heaven, crying for mercy on woman, insulted and trodden down, for vengeance on man, who treads her thus infamously into the dust. The vengeance comes, not the mercy. Misery in woman is the strongest inducement to crime. Where self-respect is not fostered; where severe toil hardly holds her soul and body together amid the temptations of a city, and its heated life, it is no marvel to me that this sin should slay its victims, finding woman an easy prey.
Let me follow the children of the poor a step further—I mean to the jail. Few men seem aware of the frightful extent of crime amongst us, and the extent of the remedy, more awful yet. In less than one year, namely, from the 9th of June, 1845, to the 2d of June, 1846, there were committed to your House of Correction, in this city, 1,228 persons, a little more than one out of every fifty-six in the whole population that is more than ten years old. Of these 377 were women; 851 men. Five were sentenced for an indefinite period, and forty-seven for an additional period of solitary imprisonment. In what follows, I make no account of that. But the whole remaining period of their sentences amounts to more than 544 years, or 198,568 days. In addition to this, in the year ending with June 9, 1846, we sent from Boston to the State Prison, thirty-five more, and for a period of 18,595 days, of which 205 were solitary. Thus it appears that the illegal and convicted crime of Boston, in one year, was punished by imprisonment for 217,163 days. Now as Boston contains but 114,366 persons of all ages, and only 69,112 that are over ten years of age, it follows that the imprisonment of citizens of Boston for crime in one year, amounts to more than one day and twenty-one hours, for each man, woman, and child, or to more than three days and three hours, for each one over ten years of age. This seems beyond belief, yet in making the estimate, I have not included the time spent in jail before sentence; I have left out the solitary imprisonment in the House of Correction; I have said nothing of the 169 children, sentenced for crime to the House of Reformation in the same period.
What is the effect of this punishment on society at large? I will not now attempt to answer that question. What is it on the criminals themselves? Let the jail-books answer. Of the whole number, 202 were sentenced for the second time; 131 for the third; 101 for the fourth; thirty-eight for the fifth; forty for the sixth; twenty-nine for the seventh; twenty-three for the eighth; twelve for the ninth; fifty for the tenth time, or more; and of the criminals punished for the tenth time, thirty-one were women! Of the thirty-five sent to the State Prison, fourteen had been there before; of the 1,228 sent to the House of Correction, only 626 were sent for the first time.
There are two classes, the victims of society, and the foes of society, the men that organize its sins, and then tell us nobody is to blame. May God deal mercifully with the foes; I had rather take my part with the victims. Yet is there one who wishes to be a foe to mankind?
Here are the sons of the poor, vagrant in your streets, shut out by their misery from the culture of the age; growing up to fill your jails, to be fathers of a race like themselves, and to be huddled into an infamous grave. Here are the daughters of the poor, cast out and abandoned, the pariahs of our civilization, training up for a life of shame and pollution, and coming early to a miserable end. Here are the poor, daughters and sons, excluded from the refining influences of modern life, shut out of the very churches by that bar of gold, ignorant, squalid, hungry and hopeless, wallowing in their death! Are these the results of modern civilization; this in the midst of the nineteenth century, in a Christian city full of churches and gold; this in Boston, which adds $13,000,000 a year to her actual wealth? Is that the will of God? Tell it not in China; whisper it not in New Holland, lest the heathen turn pale with horror, and send back your missionaries, fearing they shall pollute the land!
There is yet another class of little ones. I mean the intemperate. Within the last few years it seems that drunkenness has increased. I know this is sometimes doubted. But if this fact is not shown by the increased number of legal convictions for the crime, it is by the sight of drunken men in public and not arrested. I think I have not visited the city five times in the last ten months without seeing more or less men drunk in the streets. The cause of this increase it seems to me is not difficult to discover. All great movements go forward by undulations, as the waves of the rising tide come up the beach. Now comes a great wave reaching far up the shore, and then recedes. The next, and the next, and the next falls short of the highest mark; yet the tide is coming in all the while. You see this same undulation in other popular movements; for example, in politics. Once the great wave of democracy broke over the central power, washing it clean. Now the water lies submissive beneath that rock, and humbly licks its feet. In some other day the popular wave shall break with purifying roar clean over that haughty stone and wash off the lazy barnacles, heaps of corrupting drift-weed, and deadly monsters of the deep. By such seemingly unsteady movements do popular affairs get forward. The reformed drunkards, it is said, were violent, ill-bred, theatrical, and only touched the surface. Many respectable men withdrew from the work soon as the Washingtonians came to it. It was a pity they did so; but they did. I think the conscience of New England did not trust the reformed men; that also is a pity. They seem now to have relaxed their efforts in a great measure, perhaps discouraged at the coldness with which they have in some quarters been treated. I know not why it is, but they do not continue so ably the work they once begun. Besides, the State, it was thought, favored intemperance. It was for a long time doubted if the license-laws were constitutional; so they were openly set at nought, for wicked men seize on doubtful opportunities. Then, too, temperance had gone, a few years ago, as far as it could be expected to go until certain great obstacles were removed. Many leading men in the land were practically hostile to temperance, and, with some remarkable exceptions, still are. The sons of the pilgrims, last Forefathers' day, could not honor the self-denial of the Puritans without wine! The Alumni of Harvard University could never, till this season, keep their holidays without strong drink.[18] If rich men continue to drink without need, the poor will long continue to be drunk. Vices, like decayed furniture, go down. They keep their shape, but become more frightful. In this way the refined man who often drinks, but is never drunk, corrupts hundreds of men whom he never saw, and without intending it becomes a foe to society.
Then, too, some of our influential temperance men aid us no longer. Beecher is not here; Channing and Ware have gone to their reward. That other man,[19] benevolent and indefatigable, where is he? He trod the worm of the still under his feet, but the worm of the pulpit stung him, and he too is gone; that champion of temperance, that old man eloquent, driven out of Boston. Why should I not tell an open secret?—driven out by rum and the Unitarian clergy of Boston.
Whatsoever the causes may be, I think you see proofs enough of the fact, that drunkenness has increased within the last few years. You see it in the men drunken in the streets, in the numerous shops built to gratify the intemperate man. Some of these are elegant and costly, only for the rich; others so mean and dirty, that one must be low indeed to wallow therein. But the same thing is there in both, rum, poison-drink. Many of these latter are kept by poor men, and the spider's web of the law now and then catches one of them, though latterly but seldom here. Sometimes they are kept, and, perhaps, generally owned, by rich men who drive through the net. I know how hard it is to see through a dollar, though misery stand behind it, if the dollar be your own, and the misery belong to your brother. I feel pity for the man who helps ruin his race, who scatters firebrands and death throughout society, scathing the heads of rich and poor, and old and young. I would speak charitably of such an one as of a fellow-sinner. How he can excuse it to his own conscience is his affair, not mine. I speak only of the fact. For a poor man there may be some excuse; he has no other calling whereby to gain his bread; he would not see his own children beg, nor starve, nor steal! To see his neighbor go to ruin and drag thither his children and wife, was not so hard. But it is not the shops of the poor men that do most harm! Had there been none but these, they had long ago been shut, and intemperance done with. It is not poor men that manufacture this poison; nor they who import it, or sell by the wholesale. If there were no rich men in this trade there would soon be no poor ones! But how does the rich man reconcile it to his conscience? I cannot answer that.
It is difficult to find out the number of drink-shops in the city. The assessors say there are eight hundred and fifty; another authority makes the number twelve hundred. Let us suppose there are but one thousand. I think that much below the real number, for the assistant assessors found three hundred in a single ward! These shops are open morning and night. More is sold on Sunday, it is said, than any other day in the week! While you are here to worship your Father, some of your brothers are making themselves as beasts; yes, lower. You shall probably see them at the doors of these shops as you go home; drunk in the streets this day! To my mind, the retailers are committing a great offence. I am no man's judge, and cannot condemn even them. There is one that judgeth. I cannot stand in the place of any man's conscience. I know well enough what is sin; God, only, who is a sinner. Yet I cannot think the poor man that retails, half so bad as the rich man who distils, imports, or sells by wholesale the infamous drug. He knew better, and cannot plead poverty as the excuse of his crime.