Society in large cities is said to be exclusive. It must be, for its own protection. It cannot possibly be too exclusive. People with and without letters of introduction succeed in forming acquaintances, becoming part of one or another social set, even get into the churches, open bank accounts, go into business, and a year or two afterward are discovered to have antecedents which would make a person of ordinary respectability hold up his hands in horror. Such occurrences have been so common, and the individuals concerned have so often been not only men but women, that the exclusiveness of city society extends even to the churches and school-rooms. The half-grown child attending a public or private school is warned against making any acquaintances whatever except with the children of families whom its parents already know. The member of a church may have a stranger shown into his pew again and again on Sundays, and extend to him the courtesy of an open prayer-book or hymnal, but in self-defence he is compelled to stop at that. The cordiality, freedom of speech, and general recognition, which is the custom in small towns and in rural districts throughout the world, is denied the prudent inhabitant of a city, no matter how hearty his inclination may be to extend a welcoming hand to every one whom he may meet. Young men entering society, young women seen for the first time in some social circle, are at first regarded very much as a stranger entering a mining town in the West, where it is supposed no one goes unless he has good reason to get away from his original home.
Nowhere in the world are there more charitable hearts with plenty of money behind them than in large cities, yet nowhere else is there more suffering. Your next-door neighbor may be starving to death and you not know anything about it. You know nothing of his comings and nothing of his goings; he knows nothing of you, and if he has any spirit whatever, and any respect for himself, he would rather apply to the police or to the authorities in charge of the poor than to the people living nearest to him. Whenever the newspapers of a city make some startling disclosure of destitution and suffering a number of purses open instantly, and frequently some of the sufferers have received gifts from their own landlords, who actually did not know of the name and existence of the tenant. A judge of the Supreme Court of the city of New York has long been known as a frequent and prompt visitor in person to all individuals reported as in destitute condition and deserving of immediate assistance, yet he said once to his own pastor, and to his own physician also, who chanced to be present, that the great sorrow of his life was, that he was utterly incapacitated by the conditions of city life from discovering for himself the whereabouts of individuals whom he would gladly assist with his pocket and his counsel.
As nobody knows anybody in the large cities, what is called the floating population have everything their own way, each one for himself. Business wrongs that would not be tolerated for an instant in a smaller community are perpetrated with entire impunity in the large cities. The poorer classes have no strong friend or acquaintance to complain to. Were they in a smaller place they would know some one; probably they would know everybody of any consequence, and also be known, and could quickly bring public sentiment to their aid, but in a large city there is no such opportunity. The only hope of the oppressed is in the courts, which always are overcrowded with business, and can give very little time to any one, and in the press, which is also overcrowded with work, and should not be charged with this sort of responsibility.
Temptation will exist wherever humanity is found, but for a concentration of all temptations, graded to suit all capacities of human weakness, the great city stands pre-eminent. There is no vice that cannot be committed in it—committed with reasonable assurance that it will not be discovered. A man whose habits are apparently correct, who has no known vices, whose daily manner with his fellow-men seems all that it should be, may with entire safety change his manner at night, and re-enact the drama of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It is worse than that. He not only may, but in a great many instances he does. Any man whose business compels him to know a number of persons by sight, and whose hours of duty keep him out-of-doors in the “wee sma’ hours,” occasionally sees things which stagger him. He sees citizens of good repute in company which any village loafer would be ashamed to be seen in by his own acquaintances. He sees policemen taking charge of men who by daylight the police of their own locality regard with extreme respect. He sees the high and the low mingle on the same level, and from their manners he would not be able to know one from the other. Newspapers are sometimes blamed for publishing sensational stories, which reminds me of a remark once made by the famous Parson Brownlow, of East Tennessee. He was called to account one day for using profane language, he being a minister of the gospel. “If you knew,” said he, “how many cuss words I hold in, you would not blame me for the few I let out.” If the newspapers were to print all the sensational stories which come to them they would have to double the size of their sheets, and still they would have no room for any decent news whatever.
I repeat it, great cities are great sores, and it is to the interest of every one that they should in some way be extracted from the body politic and be allowed and compelled to maintain a separate existence. I know that the parallel is not exact, but such things have been done in some cases. The city is a millstone about the neck of the State in almost all cases. Whatever may be the political preference of the reader, he must admit the fact that the single city of New York politically dominates the State, although containing only about one-fourth of the population, and that the expressed will and intention of a large majority of the voters of the State outside the metropolis is steadily neutralized by a great majority composed principally of ignorant persons who infest a great city. The evil has impressed itself strongly upon the minds of publicists and journalists of all degrees to such an extent that the suggestion has often been made that the city should be allowed a separate organization by and in itself, somewhat analogous to the position once held by the free cities of Germany. In such case, whatever may be the ultimate political results, the fact would remain that each portion of the divided community would have its own will distinctly expressed, whereas at present one neutralizes the other. New York has been making the attempt for years by a series of special governments by commission, the origin being in special enactments by the legislature at Albany. The results have not been successful, but the trouble was not lack of principle in the enactments, but in the individuals selected to carry on the experiment. The suggestion however continues to be made. Similar plans have been mentioned regarding some other large cities of the United States. And it is not impossible that all of them may be granted “home rule” in the strictest sense, and that the States at large will thus escape the city rule to which at present they are being subjected.
THE DARKER SIDE.
What already has been said about the evils of city life and influence may seem bad enough, but there is another side that is worse. Crime and license affect the human mind strongly when brought before it as the cause of a large amount of irregularity, but the public heart is more quickly and firmly impressed by the knowledge of suffering.
The amount of suffering that exists in all large cities merely through enforced conditions of life passes power of expression. No one has ever yet been able to do the subject justice. Many who have worked among the poor have lost life and hope, and mind itself, in contemplation of the suffering and sorrow which they have witnessed and been unable to relieve. To attempt to care for the poor of a large city affects one very much like an effort to pour water into a sieve; the demand is continual, yet nothing seems to be effected.
Almost everywhere outside of the cities it is assumed at the beginning that those who suffer through their poverty in large cities are either indolent or vicious. A more cruel mistake could not possibly be made. There are many idlers in any large city, as a matter of course, but the great majority of the people work hard to keep soul and body together. The largest gathering of idlers that any occurrence can bring together does not equal in numbers the procession which one may see in five minutes’ time on any thoroughfare during regular hours of going to work or returning home.
A full half of the population of the largest city in the Union reside in tenement houses. The tenement house at best is unfit for human residence if the people who inhabit it expect to enjoy good health, and if the children who are part of almost every family are expected to grow and develop properly in body and soul. Yet the bald fact is that more than half a million of the inhabitants of this country live on several square miles of land in one single city. Land is costly, builders’ work is expensive; the cheapest-built houses cost a great deal of money, and consequently the space in them must be divided and subdivided with great skill and detail if the poorer classes are to find habitation at all.