"My country, 'tis of thee!" / Or, the United States of America; past, present and future. A philosophic view of American history and of our present status, to be seen in the Columbian exhibition.

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

It would be useless to deny that in every large city may be found a number of the best men and women that humanity has been able to evolve. In the great cities are found many of our wisest statesmen, our greatest theologians, our best business men, and a host of lesser, but perhaps not less important individuals, whose influence for good upon the world is known and recognized everywhere. Nevertheless, these are exceptions to the rule. They are not what they are because of the city; they are in the city simply because it gives them a better centre and starting-place for whatever work may be incumbent upon them.

The first deadening influence of the city is that no one knows any one else. Of course every one has some acquaintances, and some people are said to be in the best society and to know everybody, but “everybody” is a relative term, and it never means as much in the largest city as it does in a village of a thousand people. The postman knows everybody by name, and so does the tax-collector and the man who brings you your gas bill, but individual acquaintance—the touch of elbow—the touch of nature that makes the world akin, must not be looked for in any large city in the Union, least of all in New York, which in spite of two hundred and fifty years of existence, is still so new comparatively that almost all of its prominent citizens were born somewhere else. The names of prominent Americans who reside in New York will naturally occur to any one, yet it is quite safe to say that not one of these gentlemen know by sight and name, let alone by personal acquaintance, more than one person in five who reside within a two-minute walk of his house.

An ex-cabinet officer, a gentleman whose varied abilities have made him known throughout the civilized world, was once asked who was his neighbor on the right. The houses of the two men touched each other, as two houses must, in the city of New York, but the wise and largely acquainted gentleman was obliged to say that he did not know. When the questioner informed him that the person occupying the adjoining house was a notorious thief for whom the police had been long in search, he was astonished and shocked. Nevertheless, when he a few months afterward had his house robbed and drove about violently in a cab in search of the police captain of his precinct, it took him an hour to discover that the said police official resided next door to him on the left. Afterward he was teased about his lack of knowledge of his neighbors, and he admitted frankly that, although he was a man without “airs,” and had always made it a custom to fraternize freely with his fellow-men, he knew but two individuals who resided on the same block with himself, and one of these was his own grocer, who occupied a store on the corner.

“If this is so with the green tree, what must it be with the dry?” Men whose sole business is to earn their daily living are glad to find a decent roof over their heads anywhere in a large city and drop into the best place they can find, regardless of who may be their neighbors, and utterly unable to devote any time to their neighbors, even should they be fortunate enough to become acquainted with them. Neighborhood feeling and sentiment, which is of incalculable benefit in all communities not thickly settled, has no influence whatever in a large city. A man may not only live in a house between two people of whom he knows nothing, but the great value of ground in the city of New York and the limited area has compelled the erection of a number of buildings known as “flat” and “apartment” and “tenement” houses, and very few men know the people who live under the same roof with themselves.

An amusing story is told of a couple of editors, who were questioned about each other and each replied that he had not the honor of the other’s acquaintance. The answer seemed to puzzle those who heard it, and the subsequent remarks elicited a demand for an explanation, when it was learned that these two men, members of the same profession, and both entirely reputable citizens, had been residing in the same building for six months; but as one was at home only by daylight, and the other only at night, they had never chanced to meet under their own roof.

Of course, if such ignorance may come in the ordinary course of events regarding entirely respectable people, cities must form an admirable hiding-place for disreputable and dangerous characters of all sorts. The time was when a man detected in crime thought it advisable to run away from a large city. But nowadays he knows better. He stays as near home as possible, knowing that there are numberless opportunities for keeping himself entirely out of sight and out of mind of every one who ever knew him. Defaulters who have a great deal of money in their pockets, and also those who have none at all, occasionally find it desirable to go to Canada or Europe, but the rogue who has two or three thousand dollars to spare knows perfectly well that by keeping in-doors in New York he can absolutely escape detection. The police may know him by sight, but the keepers of boarding-houses do not, neither do their servants; and so long as he will remain in his room, have his meals sent to him, and take his exercise and outings only after dark in such disguise as any one can improvise at very short notice, he is entirely safe from detection. One of the bank defaulters who ranks as one of the most successful in the annals of such crime in the city of New York, was looked for in Canada and all over Europe for eight months, and finally by accident was discovered in a boarding-house only two squares away from his original place of residence.

Criminals when not actually plying their vocation generally go to large cities, for two reasons; first, to spend their ill-gotten gains in pleasure, and secondly, that as a rule cities are the best hiding-places.

For the same reason that causes desperate criminals to hide in the larger cities, all persons who have in their lives any features which they wish to conceal, find the cities preferable places of residence. One man of large property and some national prominence died a few years ago in the city in which he had been doing business for thirty years, and after he died it was discovered that he had nine wives living, from no one of whom had he ever separated through the formality of a divorce. Each of these nine women imagined herself his one and only wife. Any man, who has formed an undesirable alliance in business or in love or otherwise, knows that with very little trouble he can hide all traces of his mischief by going to a large city to live.

An inevitable consequence is that the number of able but undesirable characters who exist in the cities, having left other places for the good of those who are left behind, have a depressing influence upon the moral atmosphere of other classes of residents. Men meet men whom they never saw before, and whom they are obliged to judge entirely by appearance and professions. It is the same in business as it is in society. Not a year passes in which some adventurer does not impose himself for a time upon the best society of New York and of other cities. And although it would seem that his antecedents might easily be discovered upon the basis of such information as he may feel obliged to give about himself, the fact remains that society is “taken in” quite as often as banks and business men and private individuals. Several years ago a notorious scamp, who had been in several State-prisons, came to New York, organized a business firm, took a large store, was discovered in the course of time to be carrying on operations closely akin to stealing, and when his record was thoroughly searched and sifted by the police, it was discovered that his victims were principally the largest wholesale establishments in the city of New York—establishments which employed a number of men for the sole purpose of investigating the character and resources of any one applying to them for credit or for any business relations beyond ordinary purchases for cash.

These smart scamps, who are a hundred times as numerous as the newspaper disclosures would lead the public to imagine, have a terribly demoralizing influence upon the young men who flock to the city from all parts of the rural districts as well as upon those who are brought up in the city. To see a rascal succeed has a bad effect upon any one. Even the most righteous man will mournfully quote from Scripture that “the wicked shall flourish as the green bay tree;” that “their eyes stand out with fatness; they have more than heart can wish,” where the respectable man has to lie awake nights to devise ways and means of paying his coal-bill and avoiding trouble with his landlord. Business enterprises containing any amount of promise are organized, forced upon the public by smart schemers of whom no one knows anything, and all of them succeed in obtaining a great deal of money. When discovery comes, as of course it must come sooner or later, the villain never makes restitution to any extent and is never adequately punished for his crime. So, the citizen who pretends to be respectable, but always has an eye out for the main chance, is moved by such examples to see whether he cannot do something sharp himself, and get away before the crash comes.