So, when the roll is called of those that have added to the chivalry and glory of the American press, every fellow-laborer who knew “MacGahan of Kiva and San Stefano” will salute and answer: “Dead—and glorious!”
Philogeny, the new and brilliant science that treats of the development of the human race from the animal kingdom, teaches that the history of the germ is an epitome of the history of the descent. It is equally true in journalism, that the various forms of discouragement, hope, and final success through which the individual worker in the art passes, during his progress from the reportorial egg-cell to the fully developed executive-editorial organism, is a compressed reproduction of the long series of misfortunes and interferences through which the ancestors of the American newspaper of to-day have passed. The simile is true, aye, to the supreme part played by “the struggle for existence!” Under its influence, through the “natural selection” of the public, a new and nobler species of journalism has arisen and now exists. The newspaper of to-day, evolved from rudimentary forms, is a splendid and heroic organism; and the last upholder of the dogma of its miraculous creation and infallible power is dead.
SOCIETY’S EXILES.
BY B. O. FLOWER.
It is difficult to over-estimate the gravity of the problem presented by those compelled to exist in the slums of our populous cities, even when considered from a purely economic point of view. From the midst of this commonwealth of degradation there goes forth a moral contagion, scourging society in all its ramifications, coupled with an atmosphere of physical decay—an atmosphere reeking with filth, heavy with foul odors, laden with disease. In time of any contagion the social cellar becomes the hotbed of death, sending forth myriads of fatal germs which permeate the air for miles around, causing thousands to die because society is too short-sighted to understand that the interest of its humblest member is the interest of all. The slums of our cities are the reservoirs of physical and moral death, an enormous expense to the State, a constant menace to society, a reality whose shadow is at once colossal and portentous. In time of social upheavals they will prove magazines of destruction; for while revolution will not originate in them, once let a popular uprising take form and the cellars will reinforce it in a manner more terrible than words can portray. Considered ethically, the problem is even more embarrassing and deplorable; here, as nowhere else in civilized society, thousands of our fellowmen are exiled from the enjoyments of civilization, forced into life’s lowest strata of existence, branded with that fatal word scum. If they aspire to rise, society shrinks from them; they seem of another world; they are of another world; driven into the darkness of a hopeless existence, viewed much as were lepers in olden times. Over their heads perpetually rests the dread of eviction, of sickness, and of failure to obtain sufficient work to keep life in the forms of their loved ones, making existence a perpetual nightmare, from which death alone brings release. Say not that they do not feel this; I have talked with them; I have seen the agony born of a fear that rests heavy on their souls stamped in their wrinkled faces and peering forth from great pathetic eyes. For them winter has real terror, for they possess neither clothes to keep comfortable the body, nor means with which to properly warm their miserable tenements. Summer is scarcely less frightful in their quarters, with the heat at once stifling, suffocating, almost intolerable; heat which acting on the myriad germs of disease produces fever, often ending in death, or, what is still more dreaded, chronic invalidism. Starvation, misery, and vice, trinity of despair, haunt their every step. The Golden Rule,—the foundation of true civilization, the keynote of human happiness,—reaches not their wretched quarters. Placed by society under the ban, life is one long and terrible night. But tragic as is the fate of the present generation, still more appalling is the picture when we contemplate the thousands of little waves of life yearly washed into the cellar of being; fragile, helpless innocents, responsible in no way for their presence or environment, yet condemned to a fate more frightful than the beasts of the field; human beings wandering in the dark, existing in the sewer, ever feeling the crushing weight of the gay world above, which thinks little and cares less for them. Infinitely pathetic is their lot.
The causes that have operated to produce these conditions are numerous and complex, the most apparent being the immense influx of immigration from the crowded centres of the old world; the glamor of city life, which has allured thousands from the country, fascinating them from afar much as the gaudy colors and tinsel before the footlights dazzle the vision of a child; the rapid growth of the saloon, rendered well-nigh impregnable by the wealth of the liquor power; the wonderful labor-saving inventions, which in the hands of greed and avarice, instead of mitigating the burdens of the people, have greatly augmented them, by glutting the market with labor; the opportunities given by the government through grants, special privileges, and protective measures for rapid accumulation of wealth by the few; the power which this wealth has given its possessors over the less fortunate; the spread of that fevered mental condition which subjects all finer feelings and holier aspirations to the acquisition of gold and the gratification of carnal appetites, and which is manifest in such a startling degree in the gambler’s world, which to dignify we call the realm of speculation; the desire for vulgar ostentation and luxurious indulgence, in a word the fatal fever for gold which has infested the social atmosphere, and taken possession of hundreds of thousands of our people, chilling their hearts, benumbing their conscience, choking all divine impulses and refined sensibilities; the cowardice and lethargy of the Church, which has grown rich in gold and poor in the possession of moral energy, which no longer dares to denounce the money changers, or alarm those who day by day are anæsthetizing their own souls, while adding to the misery of the world. The church has become, to a great extent, subsidized by gold, saying in effect, “I am rich and increased in goods and have need of nothing,” apparently ignorant of the fact that she “is wretched, poor, blind, and naked,” that she has signally failed in her mission of establishing on earth an ideal brotherhood. Instead of lifting her children into that lofty spiritual realm where each feels the misery of his brother, she has so far surrendered to the mammon of unrighteousness that, without the slightest fear of having their consciences disturbed, men find comfort in her soft-cushioned pews, who are wringing from ten to thirty per cent. profit from their fellowmen in the wretched tenement districts, or who refuse to pay more than twelve cents a pair for the making of pants, forty-five cents a dozen for flannel shirts, seventy-five cents a dozen for knee pants, and twenty-five cents a dozen for neckties. I refer not to the many noble exceptions, but I indict the great body of wealthy and fashionable churches, whose ministers do not know and take no steps to find out the misery that is dependent upon the avarice of their parishioners. Then again back of all this is the defective education which has developed all save character in man; education which has trained the brain but shriveled the soul. Last but by no means least is land speculation which has resulted in keeping large tracts of land idle which otherwise would have blossomed with happy homes. To these influences we must add the general ignorance of the people regarding the nature, extent, and growing proportions of the misery and want in the New World which is spreading as an Eastern plague in the filth of an oriental city.
It is not my present purpose to dwell further on the causes which have produced these conditions. I wish to bring home to the mind and heart of the reader a true conception of life in the slums, by citing typical cases illustrating a condition prevalent in every great city of the Union and increasing in its extent every year. I shall confine myself to uninvited want as found in civilized Boston, because I am personally acquainted with the condition of affairs here, and because Boston has long claimed the proud distinction of being practically free from poverty.