What can we do to make things better?
I have so recently spoken of poverty that I shall say little now. A great change will doubtless take place before many years in the relations between capital and labor; a great change in the spirit of society. I do not believe the disparity now existing between the wealth of men has its origin in human nature, and therefore is to last for ever; I do not believe it is just and right that less than one twentieth of the people in the nation should own more than ten twentieths of the property of the nation, unless by their own head, or hands, or heart, they do actually create and earn that amount. I am not now blaming any class of men; only stating a fact. There is a profound conviction in the hearts of many good men, rich as well as poor, that things are wrong; that there is an ideal right for the actual wrong; but I think no man yet has risen up with ability to point out for us the remedy of these evils, and deliver us from what has not badly been named the Feudalism of Capital. Still, without waiting for the great man to arise, we can do something with our littleness even now; the truant children may be snatched from vagrancy, beggary, and ruin; tenements can be built for the poor, and rented at a reasonable rate. It seems to me that something more can be done in the way of providing employment for the poor, or helping them to employment.
In regard to intemperance, I will not say we can end it by direct efforts. So long as there is misery there will be continued provocation to that vice, if the means thereof are within reach. I do not believe there will be much more intemperance amongst well-bred men; among the poor and wretched it will doubtless long continue. But if we cannot end, we can diminish it, fast as we will. If rich men did not manufacture, nor import, nor sell; if they would not rent their buildings for the sale of intoxicating liquor for improper uses; if they did not by their example favor the improper use thereof, how long do you think your police would arrest and punish one thousand drunkards in the year? how long would twelve hundred rum-shops disgrace your town? Boston is far more sober, at least in appearance, than other large cities of America, but it is still the headquarters of intemperance for the State of Massachusetts. In arresting intemperance, two thirds of the poverty, three fourths of the crime of this city would end at once, and an amount of misery and sin which I have not the skill to calculate. Do you say we cannot diminish intemperance, neither by law, nor by righteous efforts without law? Oh, fie upon such talk. Come, let us be honest, and say we do not wish to, not that we cannot. It is plain that in sixteen years we can build seven great railroads radiating out of Boston, three or four hundred miles long; that we can conquer the Connecticut and the Merrimack, and all the lesser streams of New England; can build up Lowell, and Chicopee, and Lawrence; why, in four years Massachusetts can invest eight and fifty millions of dollars in railroads and manufactures, and cannot prevent intemperance; cannot diminish it in Boston! So there are no able men in this town! I am amazed at such talk, in such a place, full of such men, surrounded by such trophies of their work! When the churches preach and men believe that Mammon is not the only God we are practically to serve; that it is more reputable to keep men sober, temperate, comfortable, intelligent, and thriving, than it is to make money out of other men's misery; more Christian, than to sell and manufacture rum, to rent houses for the making of drunkards and criminals, then we shall set about this business with the energy that shows we are in earnest, and by a method which will do the work.
In the matter of crime, something can be done to give efficiency to the laws. No doubt a thorough change must be made in the idea of criminal legislation; vengeance must give way to justice, policemen become moral missionaries, and jails moral hospitals, that discharge no criminal until he is cured. It will take long to get the idea into men's minds. You must encounter many a doubt, many a sneer, and expect many a failure, too. Men who think they "know the world," because they know that most men are selfish, will not believe you. We must wait for new facts to convince such men. After the idea is established, it will take long to organize it fittingly.
Much can be done for juvenile offenders, much for discharged convicts, even now. We can pull down the gallows, and with it that loathsome theological idea on which it rests,—the idea of a vindictive God. A remorseless court, and careful police, can do much to hinder crime;[44] but they cannot remove the causes thereof.
Last year, a good man, to whom the State was deeply indebted before, suggested that a moral police should be appointed to look after offenders; to see why they committed their crime; and if only necessity compelled them, to seek out for them some employment, and so remove the causes of crime in detail. The thought was worthy of the age, and of the man. In the hands of a practical man, this thought might lead to good results. A beginning has already been made in the right direction, by establishing the State Reform School for Boys. It will be easy to improve on this experiment, and conduct prisons for men on the same scheme of correction and cure, not merely of punishment, in the name of vengeance. But, after all, so long as poverty, misery, intemperance, and ignorance continue, no civil police, no moral police, can keep such causes from creating crime. What keeps you from a course of crime? Your morality, your religion? Is it? Take away your property, your home, your friends, the respect of respectable men; take away what you have received from education, intellectual, moral, and religious, and how much better would the best of us be than the men who will to-morrow be huddled off to jail, for crimes committed in a dram-shop to-day? The circumstances which have kept you temperate, industrious, respectable, would have made nine tenths of the men in jail as good men as you are.
It is not pleasant to think that there are no amusements which lie level to the poor, in this country. In Paris, Naples, Rome, Vienna, Berlin, there are cheap pleasures for poor men, which yet are not low pleasures. Here there are amusements for the comfortable and the rich, not too numerous, rather too rare, perhaps, but none for the poor, save only the vice of drunkenness; that is hideously cheap; the inward temptation powerful; the outward occasion always at hand. Last summer, some benevolent men treated the poor children of the city to a day of sunshine, fresh air, and frolic in the fields. Once a year the children, gathered together by another benevolent man, have a floral procession in the streets; some of them have charitably been taught to dance. These things are beautiful to think of; signs of our progress, from "The good old times," and omens of a brighter day, when Christianity shall bear more abundantly flowers and fruit even yet more fair.
The morals of the current literature, of the daily press—you can change when you will. If there is not in us a demand for low morals, there will be no supply. The morals of trade, and of politics, the handmaid thereof, we can make better soon as we wish.
It has been my aim to give suggestions, rather than propose distinct plans of action; I do not know that I am capable of that. But some of you are rich men, some able men; many of you, I think, are good men. I appeal to you to do something to raise the moral character of this town. All that has been done in fifty years, or a hundred and fifty, seems very little, while so much still remains to do; only a hint and an encouragement. You cannot do much, nor I much: that is true. But, after all, every thing must begin with individual men and women. You can at least give the example of what a good man ought to be and to do, to-day; to-morrow you will yourself be the better man for it. So far as that goes, you will have done something to mend the morals of Boston. You can tell of actual evils, and tell of your remedy for them; can keep clear from committing the evils yourself: that also is something.