!liPi*ill':-'' lii'i 11 ill! iP!''!i''t f j I #1 l!|i|i:f; ml SOCIAL RELIGION XOTT NEARING -iMilii III;!;:! : iii'iif ■ ■111'-' ■'ill ' :|!:illi!r:iv *l ll .1:' :. :!Hii!||;|iili||f:r'' 'it i;l!ii)n||l' III! il II .111 f I ' nil! t II iiiiiii li,i. liil' • *q A ?.»('.;•:•! p<^ SOCIAL RELIGION THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO.. Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO SOCIAL RELIGION AN INTERPRETATION OF CHRISTIANITY IN TERMS OF MODERN LIFE BY SCOTT NEARING, PhD Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Author of " Social Adjustment," " The Super Race," etc. From an address delivered before the Friends' General Conference, Ocean Grove, New Jersey, July 7, 1910. iSeto 3^orfe THE MACMII.LAN COMPANY 1913 ^ ic. '6 9 O Copyright, 1913, bt THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1913 Priated by J. J. Little & Ives Co., New York Uh I J ^ n To LYMAN P. POWELL A MINISTER WHO TEACHES AND LIVES SOCIAL RELIGION PREFACE While misery remains in the land; while men are condemned to underpay and over- work; while women are forced into prosti- tution, and children are compelled to labor, there will be need for a Social Religion. Boundless wealth is appalled by the squalor grovelling at its doors. Along the avenue rushes Twentieth Century Civilization snugly ensconced in a motor; in the adjacent alley. Terror, in the semblance of a wolf, hunts with lolling tongue and hungry w^hine. Such so- cial injustice — hideous in a barbaric society, grotesque in the United States — constitutes one of the problems of Social Religion. The wretched gamble for pennies; the well- fed for forests, mines, dignities, offices. Ig- norance and graft — twin shadows of degen- eracy — stalk through every higliway of the land. Unless the pall of ignorance can be lifted; unless the tentacles of graft can be cut awav; men and women will continue to [vii] PREFACE live and to die with the possibihties of their lives still unfulfilled. Where there is no vision, the people perish. It is the function of Social Rehgion to abolish ignorance and graft, and to provide a vision of normal manhood and adjusted life toward which society may strive. [ viii ] INTivODuL^iiON gs. 6 3 :^ i? Accepting the definition of religion given by Jesus — a belief in God, shown by the love of one's neighbor — it may be fairly asserted that the religious spirit is omnipresent in the United States. One prominent clergyman even goes so far as to say "The passion for altruism was never so deep nor so widely dis- tributed." Perhaps he overstates the matter, yet the fact remains that, on every hand, men and women are earnestly seeking through phi- lanthropy, education, political and social re- form, and even through revolution, to express their intense desire to serve their fellows. Hardly less noticeable than this prevalence of altruism is the falling off in the influence of the established church. "It is losing in many ways," writes Charles D. Williams, Bishop of Michigan. "It is losing in num- bers." "It is losing ground." "It is losing hold on the masses and classes alike." "It is losing influence. The voice of the Church [ ix 1 INTRODUCTION does not speak to-day with its old-time accent of authorit}^" "It is frequently ignored, sometimes even wnn contempt. The minis- try no longer attracts young men as it once did." "She preaches, for the most part, a narrow and petty round of ethics, the minor moralities of purely personal conduct, respec- tabilities, good form, technical pieties and ec- clesiastical proprieties, while the age is seek- ing the larger righteousness of the Kingdom of God which is 'human society organized ac- cording to the will of God.' " ^ The church is judged by its fruit, and so often is that fruit tainted with the bitterness of theological dogma instead of being permeated by the transcendent power of love, that the average layman looks askance at organized religion. He has held the church before the bar of his soul, constituting himself a jury of one, and he has rendered a verdict of "guilty of neglect- ing those higher things — Justice, Mercy, Faith." This lay-verdict against the church is strengthened by such ministers as Walter *The Conflict Between Religion and the Church. American Magazine, June, 1911, Vol. 1-2, pp. 147-149. [x] INTRODUCTION Kauschenbusch, who in his "Christianity and the Social Crisis" points out very clearly the extent to which the church has failed to ful- fill its mission. Together with the progressive wing in every ministerial group, he is insist- ing that faith without works is dead; that a theory of brotherhood which eventuates in a practice of industrial exploitation and social robbery is a calamitous failure; that since Jesus meant what He said, if the Christian church is to be Christian, it must keep His sayings in spirit and truth. When even the rulers and high priests speak their minds thus openly, it is small wonder that the laymen doubt. In Jesus' time people were ignorant, sick, poor and vicious. He taught, healed, preached, comforted and associated with the hapless ones. "They that be whole need not a physi- cian" were his biting words. "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." To the fault-finding lawyer, and to the hypo- critical scribes and Pharisees, he told a tale of need and succor, exclaiming, "Go and do thou likewise." If ignorance, sickness, pov- erty and vice exist in America to-day, perhaps [xi] INTRODUCTION the "Go and do thou likewise" command still holds good. Nay, perhaps, it is the function of the successful churcli to see tliat the Father's business is attended to and that, even though there be ninety and nine just persons, needing no repentance, the one who wanders on the barren foot-hills of ignorance and sin is rescued and brought back into the fold. Do ignorance, sickness, poverty and vice still exist? Is there a need for the great Physi- cian? Does America present opportunities for loving service similar to those which Jesus found in Palestine? Those are the questions which the Managers of the Friends' Confer- ence wished to have answered. "Tell us the facts. We are ignorant of social conditions. Wake us up." Such was the character of their request — and in pursuance of that request the material embraced in this book was collected. It seemed desirable to show three things. 1. That in the United States there are ig- norance, poverty and vice inviting the touch of the Good Samaritan. 2. That these things are preventable. 3. That, if the church wishes to live up [xii] INTRODUCTION • to the ideals of its Founder, it must cease dogmatizing and, in pursuance I of Jesus' example, it must preach, heal and teach. I went before the Conference as an econo- mist, not as one versed in theology. Yet, I had studied the New Testament with great care, because I believed it to be one of the most valuable books within the reach of the social scientist. Therefore, I placed the re- sult of that study before the Conference, con- trasting the spirit of the Gospels with the con- ditions of American life, and asking the mem- bers present to judge whether there was not some need for a new birth in religion. The address throughout is a statement of fact rather than a formulation of theory. The need must be established before action is pos- sible. INIost of the facts presented are already thoroughly familiar to social students, but their presentation engendered a storm of pro- test. People received them incredulously, or else regarded them as gross overstatements of the truth. Those members of the Conference who came from rural districts were especially [ xiii ] INTRODUCTION obdurate in their refusal to believe the state- ments. Unless these facts are facts, there is obviously no need for remedy. Yet, there the facts stand, stubborn — awful in some cases — awaiting a solution. Careful investigation by the best experts has verified their authenticity and repeated attempts to sneer them aside have proved futile. * Confronted by certain facts, Jesus said and did certain things. His followers, if con- fronted^ by similar facts, should, if they be what they profess to be, imitate His words and deeds. Such imitation would constitute, for the Christian, a Social Religion. As the address was delivered, low stan- dards and the subjection of women alone were emphasized. Child labor, congestion, over- work, unemployment, accidents and prema- ture death were merely mentioned in pass- ing. In preparing the material for this book, the whole address has been revised, and a dis- cussion of these last topics has been added. The work throughout has been left in its spoken form. It is in many places rough- hewn, and the language is rugged, but that is due to the fact that it has been taken from [xiv] INTRODUCTION spoken discourse where the hest effect is pro- duced by earnest, direct rhetoric. In this revision, the sequence of the thought is exactly as it appeared in its original form, namely : 1. That men at bottom are worth wliile. 2. That the vast majority of people will be normal and virtuous if given an opportunity to lead decent lives. 3. That the provision of that opportu- nity was the function of the Social Religion which Jesus preached two thousand years ago, and that it is still the function of a Social Rehgion to-day. The church may be slow to accept this state- ment. Entrenched behind great ramparts of theological dogma, it may continue to ignore the facts of life ; may continue to speak in an- cient formulas ; may give tithes of mint, anise and cummin; may make clean and sweet the outside of the cup and the platter; but with- out its walls, known to every human being who sees and thinks and feels, are these puls- ing clamorous facts of life. We have seen [xv] INTRODUCTION tlicm. We know them, and, having seen and known, we are tlirilled with the will to do. Apart from any theological consideration, the spirit of religion dominates the American people. We long to serve. We wait, impa- tiently, for some force to direct our altruistic impulses. We are seeking, seeking earnestly, for a Social Religion — a religion that will meet the demands of to-day — a religion that, like the teachings of Jesus, will be gladly listened to by the common people. We desire, as never before, to be taught the way that we should go. So we stand without the walls of the church, and cry aloud for guidance in the con- duct of our lives. Individual ignorance vies with social injustice. We would be freed from both. Will the church hear our voices? [ xvi I CONTEXTS CHAPTER PAQB I. The Social Viewpoint of Jesu3 1 II. America — ^The Land of Plenty 16 III. The Haggard Man 30 IV. The Motherless Girl 53 V. The Factory Child 73 VI. Devouring Widows' Houses 89 VII. The Long Day 104 VIII. The Curse of Enforced Idleness 124 IX. Human Sacrifice 138 X. Reaping the Young Grain 158 XI. The Silver Lining 167 XII. SocL\L Religion in Theory 185 XIII. Social Religion in Practice 200 XIV. The Social Responsibility OF THE Christian Church 214 SOCIAL RELIGION SOCIAL RELIGION CHAPTER I THE SOCIAL A^IEWPOINT OF JESUS AT all times men seem to have failed in their actions to attain to their ideals, so that between profession and practice a great gulf is fixed. One age is nearer to its ideal, another is farther from it ; yet always the deed lags behind the world until the saying "It is a good divine that follows his own instruction" is as true to-day as it was in the Elizabethan Age. If this gulf between profession and practice is so wide that even the divines can- not cross it, what can one expect of the con- gregations? It is small wonder, where the shepherds hesitate and stumble, that the sheep draw back affrighted. There is, in this discrepancy between pre- cept and example, no real cause for despond- [1] SOCIAL RELIGION ency. If all who hitched their chariots to stars were really dragged in the mud, we might well ponder. It is because some have succeeded in rising above the sky-line that we press forward with enthusiastic resolve. Enthusiasm alone, however, will not suffice. In all things some guiding principle must exist, and the enthu- siasm of man must be leavened by judgment. Nearly two thousand years ago, there came out of Nazareth a man who spoke in exalted speech; who breathed an atmosphere of in- spiration ; who prophesied of a time which was to come when mankind would rise to higher standards of nobility. This man was called Jesus, the Christ, and those who believe His precepts, and seek to regulate their conduct by His teachings, call themselves Christians — Christ-like. What did Jesus believe? What did He say? What did He do? What was the spirit of His gospel to the world ? The concept of human brotherhood and of social welfare which dominates the religions of the western world was made an essential part of religion by Jesus in far-off Galilee, for it was He who said, " Ye have heard that it [2] SOCIAL VIEWPOINT OF JESUS hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth I for a tooth. But I say unto you, that ye I resist not evil, but overcome evil with good." Again, "Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine , enemy. But I say unto you, love your ene- i mies." And yet again, "Whatsoever ye would j that men should do to you, do ye even so to ; them." It is in vain that the modern philosopher enunciates the savage precept, "Do or be done." It is in vain that the successful busi- ness man preaches the barbaric doctrine of "every man for himself and the devil get the hindermost." Society has progressed ; man has moved forward; we have ceased to fight over our prey like hyenas, or to tear one another to pieces like wolves. Our religion requires that each be for all, and all for each, and if we would but follow this doctrine the devil's business would be insolvent. Let us examine the social teachings of Jesus; let us ask ourselves what thoughts un- derlie His Social Religion? One Sunday, Plis disciples, passing through a cornfield, picked and ate some of the grain, for thejr were [31 SOCIAL RELIGION hungiy. The fault-finding scribes and Phar- isees, at this breach of their Sabbatherian Law, hurried to Jesus, demanding, "Why do Thy disciples do that which is not lawful on the Sabbath day?" Jesus, in His reply, pointed out the inconsistency of Judaism. "Which of you," He asked, "that had an ox or a sheep fall into a pit on the Sabbath would not lay hold on it and draw it out? How much better is a man than a sheep!" Then, turning from His illustration, He spoke that memorable phrase which summarized His whole religious doctrine, "The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath." The Sabbath was ordained to give man a day of rest, but the scribes and Pharisees had made it a day of wearisome obedience to meaningless rules and traditions. Applied in a larger sense this doctrine means that religion was made for man and not man for religion. The church should be the serv- ant, not the master of men. Jesus taught that, if you are to maintain a Social Religion, you must stop sacrificing mankind on the altars of your iron-bound creeds ; cease your demand for human service and serve humanity, for it [4] SOCIAL VIEWPOINT OF JESUS is onty by social service that the church can hold its own. If you would fully understand Jesus' Social Religion, recollect His attitude toward social problems. The smug, self-satisfied conceit of a superior social class is an abomination to Him. "Two men went up into the Temple to pray, the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee praj^ed thus with him- self, 'Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, adulterers, unjust even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.' The pub- lican standing afar off would not so much as lift up his eyes unto Heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner.' 'I say unto you,' said Jesus, 'that this man went down justified rather than the other, for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased, but he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.' " Listen to His arraignment of those scribes and Pharisees who, engrossed in selfish piu'- suits and satiated with their traditional righteousness, were playing havoc with tlie lives of human beings over whom they had [51 SOCIAL RELIGION acquired or inherited power. "They bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they them- selves will not move them with one of their fingers." "Woe unto you, scribes and Phari- sees, hypocrites ! for ye devour wddows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers: there- fore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypo- crites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier mat- ters of the law, justice, mercy and faith: these ought ye to have done and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the plat- ter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous [6] SOCIAL VIEWPOINT OF JESUS unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" Strong words? Aye, truly, and richly mer- ited, for these men, the horn leaders of God's chosen people, had betrayed their trust; had cast aside their obligations to the society of which they formed so essential a part; and, in riotous living, and meaningless word bandy- ings, squandered the substance of the nation on the one hand, and debased its religion on the other. Jesus plays fierce havoc with their pretended righteousness. It is thus that He always condemned those who, hav- ing received ten talents of opportimity and power, failed to return ten talents of service. You that trust in riclies are not sure of Heaven, for gold and jewels and fine raiment must alike be left behind when you begin your journey thither, and whether you be rich or poor, bond or free, you must stand naked before your God. Your social position in life will be forgotten, and you will be judged as a man. In that dav "what shall it profit a *[7] SOCIAL RELIGION man if lie shall gain tHe wHole world and lose Ills own soul?" There was one dramatic incident in the career of Jesus which stands out above all the others in its portrayal of His patience and love and understanding. They brought to Him an object of contempt and abhorrence, a woman taken in adultery, and said to Him, "This woman was taken in adultery. Now Moses commanded that such should be stoned, but what sayest Thou?" This they said sneer- ingly — ^tempting him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote with His finger in the sand. When they continued questioning Him, He stood up and said, "He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her," and then He stooped down again. Ashamed of their hypocrisy, the woman's accusers turned and went out, leaving her alone with Jesus. When He arose, seeing that they had all departed. He asked gently, "Where are these thine ac- cusers? Hath no man condemned thee?" She answered, "No man, Lord." Then said Jesus unto her, "Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more." America reeks with prostitution to-day ; girls [8] SOCIAL VIEWPOINT OF JESUS are led, pushed and dragged down into an inferno that beggars description; yet society and the Church draw up the hem of their gar- ments and pass by with pitying contempt, for- getting that Jesus said to such a one "Neither do I condemn thee." Have you judged? Have you condemned ? "With what j udgment ye judge, ye shall be judged and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again" — good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over. You may, indeed, be one of the ninety and nine within the fold, but you may not, even for that reason, drive the one away from the gates, back into the deserts of life. Jesus ate dinner with publicans and sinners and when He was rebuked for His presump- tion. He replied, "They that are whole need not a physician, but the}?^ that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to re- pentance." Perhaps if Jesus were on Earth to-day, He would pass by your sin-free house, living His days and niglits with those social outcasts who are not even worthy to eat of the ci-umbs that fall from your sumptuous table. The world is full of unfortunates. Do you [9] SOCIAL RELIGION remember Jesus' doctrine regarding them? A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment and wounded him, and de- parted, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed bj'^ on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was; and when he saw him he had compassion on him. And went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And on the moiTow when he departed he took out two pence and gave them to the host and said unto him, take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more when I come again I will repay thee. "Which now of these three," asked Jesus, "thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves?" The lawj^er answered, "He that showed mercy on him." Then said Jesus unto him, '^go and do thou likewise." "Go and do thou likewise." Do you think [10] SOCIAL VIEWPOINT OF JESUS that injunction was meant to apply only to Jerusalem and Jericho, or might it also apply to New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis? Jesus gave that command to the Jewish lawyer. He gave it also to the manufacturer, the stone mason and the minister in twentieth century America. On one occasion a lawyer came and asked Him, "Which is the first and greatest com- mandment?" And Jesus replied, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," and "the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thj'^self." Thus does Jesus clearly describe the foundation stone of his religion — love of God and of humanity, expressed through service to one's fellowmen. Upon such a foundation He could establish nothing less than a Social Re- ligion — a religion of love, fellowship, broth- erhood and social service. Jesus taught a social doctrine. We profess to follow His teachings. In how far have we obeyed His command, "Go and do thou like- wise" to all unfortunates? Suppose that Jesus should come to America to-night — to one of our great cities — to New York, or Chi- cago, or Baltimore. Would He enter the [11] SOCIAL RELIGION sumptuous chu relies? AVoukl He teach? Would He preach? Would He heal? AVould He love? Beautiful buildings, exquisite win- dows, divine singing — but how was that church built? Who gave the windows? Who pays the salaries? There are men working twelve hours a day, seven days a week in the steel mills of Pittsburg. Are you a stockholder of United States Steel? Did you drop an offer- ing into the collection box ? You thought that you were dropping in silver or gold, but it was the bloody sweat of a fellow being, labor- ing hopelessly beside the roar of the blast fur- nace — sacrificed on the altar of industrial progress. There are silk mills near Scranton working all night, where at midnight the children, boys and girls, are sent out together into the darkness to "freshen up" for the next six hours of toil. Do you hold silk mill bonds ? They are children's bodies and children's souls that you clip with your coupons, and your tithe to the house of God reeks \^dth the degra- dation of future generations. There are ten- ements in every city of the land, broken, squalid, without sanitation, air or sunlight. Are you a landlord ? Has that fire-escape been [12] SOCIAL VIEWPOINT OF JESUS repaired? That drainage improved? Are the cellars still overflowing with filth and disease? Then perhaps it was you who placed the angels on that window — angels whose very wings are hesmirched with the misery of men and women and little children. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypo- crites, which devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore, ye shall receive the greater damnation." v Beautiful buildings, exquisite windows, di- vine singing, but Charles Rann Kennedy very pertinently asks, "Do you think any blessing is going to fall upon a church whose every stone is reeking with the bloody sweat and an- guish of the human creatures whom the wealth of men like that has driven to despair? Shall we base God's altar on the bones of harlots, plaster it up wdth the slime of sweating dens and slums, give it over for a gaming table to the dice of gamblers and of thieves?" We can- not erect Christian churches on overworked, human misery. We cannot found a Social Re- ligion on the proceeds of social injustice. Suppose that Jesus should come to-night and enter such a Christian church. What [13] SOCIAL RELIGION would be His sensations ? A Friend once tried to picture them. Listen to this parable writ- ten by a gentle, unflinching champion of hu- man brotherhood, James Russell Lowell : A PARABLE Said Christ our Lord, "I will go and see How the men, my brethren, believe in Me." He passed not again through the gate of birth. But made himself known to the children of earth. Then said the chief priests, and rulers, and kings, "Behold, now, the Giver of all good things; Go to, let us welcome with pomp and state Him who alone is mighty and great." Great organs surged through arches dim Their jubilant floods in praise of Him; And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall. He saw His image high over all. But still, wherever His steps they led. The Lord in sorrow bent down His head. And from under the heavy foundation stones The son of Mary heard bitter groans. [14] SOCIAL VIEWPOINT OF JESUS And in cliurch, and palace^ and judgment-hall. He marked great fissures that rent the wall. And opened wider and yet more wide As the living foundation heaved and sighed. "Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then, On the bodies and souls of living men? And think ye that building shall endure. Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor? "With gates of silver and bars of gold Ye have fenced My sheep from their Father's fold; I have heard the dropping of their tears In heaven these eighteen hundred years." "O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt. We build but as our fathers built; Behold thine images, how they stand, Sovereign and sole, through all our land." Then Christ sought out an artisan, A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin Pushed from her faintly want and sin. There sat He in the midst of them, And as they drew back their garment hem. For fear of defilement, "Lo, here," said He, "The images ye have made of Me!" [15] CHAPTER II AMERICA— THE LAND OF PLENTY Jesus sought out a low-browed, stunted, haggard workingman and a motherless girl who was making her fight for decency and bread, and, setting them in the midst, said, "These are the products of your Christian civ- ilization — the images you have made of Me." But is it not idle to talk in such a strain? This is a prosperous nation! Our factories create eight billions of wealth each year, and our mines two billions more. Does not our foreign commerce include fifty million tons? We raise ten million bales of cotton, and even our chickens help to augment pros- perity by contributing annually ten thousand millions of eggs. Each year our farmers grow three billion bushels of corn and a billion bushels of oats. Each twelvemonth witnesses the production of twenty-five million tons of steel, six billion gallons of petroleum and four [16] AMERICA— THE LAND OF PLENTY hundred trillion cubic feet of natural gas. We are destroying the boll weevil in the South, wiping out hog-cholera in the West, and con- serving the lobster crop of jNIaine for the in- digestion of future generations. Our national wealth is represented bj^ one hundred and twenty billions of d: liars. Surely this is a prosperous nation! Yet even tliis aj^parent prosperity will bear analysis, for it recalls the conversation in Dickens' "Hard Times" between Mr. Mc- Choakumchild, the schoolmaster, and Sissy Jupe, the circus rider's daughter. Mr. ]Mc- Choakumchild, who is giving a lesson in polit- ical economy, says: "Now this school room is a nation, and in this nation are fifty millions of money. Girl number twenty, isn't this a prosperous nation, and ain't you in a thriving state?" And girl number twenty, who has grown up on woefully short rations, hesitat- ingly replies that she cannot tell whether it is a prosperovis nation or whether she is in a thriving state until slie knows who has the money and whether any of it is hers. Truly the point is well made. It may not indeed be applicable to the United States, for [17] SOCIAL RELIGION an analysis of conditions may show that Sissy Jupe, together with her milhons of boy and girl friends, is receiving a generous share in national prosperity. Yet national prosperity cannot be measured in terms of steel rails and pig iron, since it depends ultimately upon the prosperity of the individuals constituting the nation. It is true that the United States is a pros- perous country; a land flowing with milk and honey; a billion-dollar country; a land of plenty. Tell us, girl number twenty, Httle undernourished Sissy Jupe, isn't this a pros- perous nation and ain't you in a thriving state? There is plenty of everything in this big coun- try of yours — plenty of ability; plenty of ge- nius; plenty of natural resources — land, coal, oil, water-power; plenty of factories; plenty of money; plenty of opportunities; plenty of leisure; plenty of enjoyment; plenty of child labor; plenty of sweat shops; plenty of over- work; plenty of unemployment; j)lenty of poverty; plenty of vice; plenty of misery. The United States is a land of great plenty, but an analysis of this plenty reveals startling incongruities. [18] AMERICA— THE LAND OF PLENTY First — Ability and genius are distributed rather evenly through all classes of the popu- lation. Thus has nature provided, in her laws of heredity, that each new generation shall start with a new standard of qualities and virtues. Second — The natural resources, factories, opportunities, leisure and enjoyment are the possessions of the few. Here man has en- tered the field, enacting property laws, and laws of inheritance, which permit one man to group together, under his own control, great quantities of nature's gifts, and, after using them until he can use them no more, to hand them on to his children — to be their possessions so long as the world shall endure. Third — Child labor, overwork, unemploy- ment, povertj^ vice and misery are the pos- sessions of the many. They are endured by the fathers and handed by them to the chil- dren. Here and there a genius arises, and, despite the fell grip of circumstance in which he was born, pushes forward to success, raising his entire family out of the class of the many, into the class of the few. Generallv speak- SOCIAL RELIGION ing, however, the children assume the burdens of their fathers. Fourth — And here hes the answer to all those who prate of American plenty — The people who have plenty of natural resources, opportunities and leisure have no child labor, poverty and misery, and, on the other hand, the people who have child labor, poverty and misery have no resources, opportunities and leisure. Fifth — We maj^ therefore, summarize the situation by saying that in the United States plenty exists everywhere. Nature has scat- tered plenty of ability and genius through all elements of the population. Man has im- proved upon nature, and in his distribution of economic goods has carefully discriminated, giving to one class plenty of heaven, and to another plenty of hell; and he has founded the heaven of natural resources, opportunity and leisure — the heritage of the rich — upon the hell of overwork, poverty and misery — the lot of the poor. Side by side these things exist; side by side stand the mansions of Fifth Avenue, adorned beautifully; and the tenements of Hester [20] AMERICA— THE LAND OF PLENTY Street, squalid, insanitary, hideous. Side by side are women striving hopelessly to make the hours run — riding, driving, bridging, vis- iting, dressing, buying, squandering, travel- ing — leading lives of aimless, helpless ease; and women with seamed faces and gnarled hands rising in the twilight of the morning, at the screech of a factory whistle, toiling all of the weary day, living, striving, saving, stinting — stretching a tiny income that it may, perchance, fill a great gulf of expense. Side by side are the children — this one fed, clothed, housed, educated, sent to college, to Europe, and finally started in business with a strong body, a trained mind, and a social position that will enable him to push forward to the highest pinnacle of business success; that one, born into parsimony and misery, undernourished, half clothed, ^v^Tetchedly housed, indifferently educated, and at the age of fourteen stood before a machine in a steaming cotton fac- tory — without sunlight, or air, or play, or even exercise — and told to do his little part in the creation of national prosperity. These things / exist side by side, and you, in luxury, never think of misery; you, on the bright side, never [21 1 SOCIAL RELIGION learn of the blackness of the dark side; you, in the sunlight, never dream of the shadow; you cannot know — j^ou cannot conceive what is just behind you — if you could know, if you could secure but an inkling of the real world, perhaps you might look about and see that, because you are in the light, you cast a shadow, and that, because you take more than your share of the light, others must be con- tent with darkness. Nay, you might even come, in time, to see that others are dwelling in the shadow which you cast. Meanwhile, you condemn those who, dwelling in darkness, bear the stamp of the darkness upon their faces and their souls. You who have made that darkness; are not its products hideous? How absurd! You cry. We do not cast shadows — like the less fortunate, we live. Let them come to the light, if they wish it. We do not grudge them a share of it! Is it our fault that they suffer? Is it? Who shall say! Perhaps you know John Ruskin's analysis of dress, in which he touches on this point. If you are not acquainted with it, you should be, for it is one of the classics of literature. [22] AMERICA— THE LAND OF PLENTY "Granted," he -writes, "that, whenever we spend money for whatever pnrposc, we set people to work; and, passing by, for the mo- ment, the question v,hether the work we set them to is all equally healthy and good for them, we will assmiie that whenever we spend a guinea we provide an equal number of people with healthy maintenance for a given time. But, by the way in which we spend it, we entirely direct the labor of those people during that given time. We become their masters or mistresses, and we compel them to produce, within a certain period, a certain ar- ticle. Now, that article may be a useful and lasting one, or it may be a useless and perish- able one — it may be one useful to the whole communit3% or useful only to ourselves. And our selfishness and folly, or our virtue and prudence, are shown, not by our spending money, but by our spending it for the wrong or the right thing; and we are wise and kind, not in maintaining a certain number of people for a given period, but only in requiring them to produce, during that period, the kind of things which shall be useful to society, instead of those which are only useful to ourselves. [23] SOCIAL RELIGION "Thus, for instance: if you are a young lady, and emj^loy a certain number of semp- stresses for a given time, in making a given number of simple and serviceable dresses, sup- pose, seven; of which you can wear one your- self for half the winter, and give six away to poor girls who have none, you are spending your money unselfishly. But if you employ the same number of sempstresses for the same number of days, in making four, or five, or six beautiful flounces for your own ball-dress — flounces which will clothe no one but your- self, and which you will j^ourself be unable to wear at more than one ball — ^j^ou are em- ploying your money selfishly. You have maintained, indeed, in each case, the same num- ber of people; but in the one case you have directed their labor to the service of the com- munity; in the other case you have consumed it wholly upon yom'self . I don't say you are never to do so ; I don't say you ought not some- times to think of yourselves only, and to make yourselves as pretty as you can; only do not confuse coquettishness with benevolence, nor cheat yourselves into thinking that all the fin- ery you can wear is so much put into the [24] AMERICA— THE LAND OF PLENTY hungry mouths of those beneath you ; it is not so ; it is what you yourselves, whether you will or no, must sometimes instinctively feel it to be — it is what those who stand shivering in the streets, forming a line to watch you as you step out of your carriages, know it to be ; those fine dresses do not mean that so much has been put into their mouths, but that so much has been taken out of their mouths. The real po- litical-economical signification of every one of those beautiful toilettes is just this; that you have had a certain number of peoj)le put for a certain number of days wholly under your authorit}^ by the sternest of slave-masters — hunger and cold; and you have said to them, 'I will feed you, indeed, and clothe you, and give you fuel for so many days; but during those days you shall work for me only; your little brothers need clothes, but j'ou shall make none for them: your sick friend needs clothes, but you shall make none for her: you yourself will soon need another, and a warmer, dress, but you shall make none for yourself. You shall make nothing but lace and roses for me; for this fortnight to come, you shall work at the patterns and petals, and then I wiU crush [25] SOCIAL RELIGION and consume them away in an hour.' You will perhaps answer — *It may not be particu- larly benevolent to do this, and we won't call it so; but at any rate we do no wrong in tak- ing their labor when we pay them their wages : if we pay for their work we have a right to it.' No — a thousand times no. The labor which you have paid for does indeed become, by the act of purchase, your own labor; you have bought the hands and the time of those workers; they are, by right and justice, your own hands, your own time. But, have you a right to spend your own time, to work with your own hands, only for your own advan- tage — much more, when, by purchase, you have invested your own person with the strength of others; and added to your own life a part of the life of others? You may, indeed, to a certain extent, use their labor for your delight : remember, I am making no gen- eral assertions against splendor of dress, or pomp of accessories of life; on the contrary, there are many reasons for thinking that we do not at present attach enough importance to beautiful dress, as one of the means of influ- encing general taste and character. But I do [26] AMERICA— THE LAND OF PLENTY say that you must weigh the vakie of what you ask these workers to produce for you in its own distinct balance ; tliat on its own worth- iness or desirableness rests the question of your kindness, and not merely on the fact of your having employed people in producing it: and I say, farther, that as long as there are cold and nakedness in the land around you, so long there can be no question at all but that splen- dor of dress is a crime. In due time, when we have nothing better to set people to work at, it may be right to let them make lace and cut jewels; but, as long as there are any who have no blankets for their beds, and no rags for their bodies; so long it is blanket-making and tailoring we must set people to work at — not lace. "And it would be strange, if at any great assembly which, while it dazzled the young and the thoughtless, beguiled the gentler hearts that beat beneath the embroidery, with a placid sensation of luxurious benevolence as if, by all that they wore in waywardness of beauty, comfort had been first given to the distressed, and aid to the indigent; it would be strange, I say, if, for a moment, the spirits of Truth and [27] SOCIAL RELIGION of Terror, which walk invisibly among the masques of the earth, Avoiild lift the dimness from our erring thoughts, and show us how — inasmuch as the sums exhausted for that mag- nificence would have given back the failing breath to many an unsheltered outcast on moor and street — they who wear it have literally en- tered into partnership with Death ; and dressed themselves in his spoils. Yes, if the veil could be lifted not only from your thoughts, but from your human sight, you would see — the angels do see — on those gay white dresses of yours, strange dark spots, and crimson pat- terns that you knew not of — spots of the in- extinguishable red that all the seas cannot wash away ; yes, and among the pleasant flowers that crown your fair heads, and glow on your wreathed hair, you would see that one weed was always twisted which no one thought of — the grass that grows on graves." ^ On this side is the bright light: on that the shadow. Dwellers in the sunshine, how black is the darkness which you help to make! Do you consider these statements extreme — you who believe in the Fatherhood of God, 1 Unto This Last. [28] AMERICA— THE LAND OF PLENTY and the Brotherhood of INIan? Do yovi scoiF at the very suggestion that such conditions exist in the richest country of the world, in the Twentieth Century that has passed since Jesus taught His followers love and fellow- ship, and that you reap their fruits and are re- sponsible for their continuation ? Despite your scoffing, these statements are true — true in all their blackness. They mock at us from the rostrums of our colleges, and the shelves of our libraries ; they grimace at us out of the alleys and courts that surround our splendid Houses of God ; they scowl at us from our fac- tories and mills; they curse us from our jails and penitentiaries. They are the product of our Christian Civilization — they will be, they must be, made known in order that some step may be taken to remove them forever. Let me try to explain some of the things which prevent haggard men, motherless girls, and little undeveloped Sissy Jupes from leading normal joyous lives. [29 1 CHAPTER III THE HAGGARD MAN There is no one economic factor which more accurately measures a civilization than its stand- ard of living, for nothing will make men low-browed, stunted and haggard more quickly than insufficient food, clothing and shelter. Last year our farmers harvested $10,000,000,- 000 worth of agricultural products, yet in every industrial center of the land people are starving. They do not starve to death. That is the insidious part of it. If they died of starvation the nation would instantly abolish conditions which produced such results — but the men visit the saloons to satisfy their crav- ings for food, and in filthy hovels to which, perhaps, your rent checks owe their origin, women bring into the world children who grow up low-browed, stunted and haggard, to per- petuate the inefficiency, squalor and wi'etched- ness of their parents. [30] THE HAGGARD :MAN Tens of thousands of families in the United States are underfed because their incomes are too small to permit of decent living. Children are being raised on standards that can under no circumstances produce full-blooded men and women. An appeal to the official docu- ments will show that these conditions exist on every side. The authorities of some of the larger cities have been examining school children and, where a child has appeared to be suffering from malnutrition, investigating the home con- ditions. There were two children in one city school, a brother and sister. They looked ansemic, badly nourished; they were in the early stages of what would be the low-browed, stunted form later in life. Their mother, who ^vas a widow, earned six or seven dollars a week by scrubbing saloons. She was a good manager, a hard-working, sober woman. This is the menu of that family for one ^veek : Sunday. Breakfast, bread and tea (no milk). Dinner, soup (from soup bone) and potatoes; bread. Supper, bread and tea (no milk). [31] SOCIAL RELIGION Monday. Breakfast, bread and tea (no milk). Dinner, fried potatoes (lard) and gravy (made from left-over soup). Supper, bread and tea (condensed milk in tea). Tuesday. Breakfast, bread and tea (condensed milk in tea). Dinner, boiled rice with tomatoes (canned). Supper, bread and tea (condensed milk in tea). Wednesday. Breakfast, bread and tea (condensed milk in tea). Dinner, boiled potatoes and stewed tomatoes (canned). Supper, bread and tea (condensed milk in tea). Thursday. Breakfast, bread and tea (no milk). Dinner, bread and molasses (mother out work- ing). Supper, boiled cabbage. Friday. Breakfast, bread and tea (no milk). Dinner, boiled cabbage. Supper, bread and molasses. Saturday. Breakfast, bread and tea (no milk). Dinner, boiled potatoes. Supper, bread and tea (no milk). Bread and tea, no milk; boiled cabbage; bread and molasses; bread and tea, no milk. The menu reads rather monotonously, and that monotony, eight days of it, cost one dol- lar and fifty cents. Three meals a day for three people for eight days — seventy-two meals for a dollar and a half. You will say that this woman was a widow and therefore not a fair example, but six dol- [32] THE HAGGARD MAN lars for a woman and two children averages more than nine dollars for a man, wife and three children, and nine dollars is the standard common labor wage, while a man, wife and three children, nnder fourteen, is the standard family. Three years ago a number of New York experts were asked to name a minimum amount upon which a family consisting of a man, wife and three children, under fourteen, could maintain a decent living. Sixteen ex- perts made calculations, their figures ranging from $768 to $1,449, and centering at $950. The social workers were aghast. "What," they exclaimed, "nine hundred and fifty dol- lars ; why, that is over three dollars a working day!" An investigation alone would establish the facts, and a careful investigation was made. The results of this statistical studj^ were thus announced. "An income of nine hundred dol- lars or over probably permits the maintenance of a normal standard, at least so far as the physical man is concerned." "Whether an income between eight hundred dollars and nine hundred dollars can be made to suffice [ 33 ] SOCIAL RELIGION is a question to which oitr data do not war- rant a dogmatic answer." ^ Nine hundred dol- lars a year is three dollars for each working day. Any man on the Island of Manhattan who is earning less than three dollars per working day and who has a wife and three children is probably living below a normal standard of living. Data from other cities is very inadequate, but such facts as are available indicate that it costs as much to live in Pittsburg as it does in New York; that in Baltimore the minimum is seven hundred and fifty dollars, and that in Philadelphia, Boston and Buffalo it is some- where between seven hundred and fifty and nine hundred dollars. A recent Federal study, published in 1911, relating to small towns, comes to the conclu- sion that, in Fall River, "The total cost of the fair standard for the English, Irish or Cana- dian French family is $731.99, and for the Portuguese, Polish or Italian family it is *The Standard of Living of Working Families in New York City, R. C. Chapin, New York, The Charities Publica- tion Com., 1909, p. 246. [34] THE HAGGARD jNIAN $690.95." ^ In Georgia and South Carolina mill to^vns, "The father must earn $600.75 in order to support himself" according to a stand- ard which "will enable him to furnish them good nourishing food and sufficient plain clothing. He can send his children to school. Unless a prolonged or serious illness befall the familj^ he can pay for medical attention. If a death should occur, insin*ance \A'ill meet the expense. He can provide some simple recrea- tion for his family, the cost not to be over $15.60 for the year. If this cotton-mill father is given employment 300 days out of the year, he must earn $2 per day to maintain this stand- ard. As the children grow older and the famil}^ increases in size the cost of living will naturally increase. The father must either earn more himself or be assisted by his young children." - It is, therefore, fair to conclude that from six to nine hundred dollars per year — two to three dollars per working day — is the mini- ' Report on Condition of Women and Child Wage-Earners in the U. S., Vol. 16, Family Budgets, Washington, Gov't Print, 1911, p. 245. 'Supra, pp. 153-153. [ 35 1 SOCIAL RELIGION mum amount necessary to enable a man, wife and three children to maintain a normal stand- ard of living in the industrial sections in the Eastern part of the United States. These figures, however, are meaningless un- less they can be supplemented by other fig- ures showing what wages are actually received. It is of no moment to us in this discussion to know that $3 per working day will maintain a decent standard for a normal family unless we know, in addition, what wages are being paid to wage workers. It may be that the great majority of wage earners receive more than $3 a day. How do wages actually com- pare with the normal standard of living? Within a stone's throw of Greater New York lies Perth Amboy, a town of 35,000 in- habitants. Most of the men work in the clay pits, so that the expense for shoes is high. Rent is lower than in New York, but food, with the exception of chickens and eggs, costs rather more than on the East Side. In 1908 there was a strike in Perth Amboy, and an investigation showed that within sight of America's Metropolis men w^ere being paid one dollar and thirty-five cents a day, while [36] THE HAGGARD JNIAN in South River, a small town near Perth Amboy, wages for the same work were from ninety-five cents to one dollar and fifteen cents a day. Writers have proclaimed American prosperity, and students have written of the American standard of work and life, but here, within sight of the center of American wealth, were bread winners struggling to maintain decency on from ninety-five cents to a dollar and thirty-five cents a day — $290 to $415 a year/ The federal government and a few states publish some wage statistics which permit of certain conclusions regarding the relation be- tween a normal standard of living and the wages paid to American workmen. A sum- mary of these available wage statistics of Massachusetts, New Jersey, Kansas and Wis- consin shows that three-quarters of the adult male wage earners employed in the industries of the New England, INIiddle and North Cen- tral States receive a wage so low that they are unable to provide the necessaries of life for a wife and three children; the wages of half ^ A Prosperity Strike — A. P. Kellogg, Charities and the Commons, Dec. 12, 1908, p. 4.10. [37] SOCIAL RELIGION of the same group will not ^^rovide a decent living for more than two children, while thirty per cent, receive a wage that will not provide adequately for more than a single child. In the face of such conditions, the average worker who wishes to furnish the necessaries of life to those dependent upon him will be unable to maintain the population. Perhaps you may think these statements ex- treme, but I believe that I can prove them. I will not cite the instance of the 166,227 anthracite coal miners in Pennsylvania, whose average wage is $503.85 annuall}', nor that of the 171,987 bituminous coal miners in the same state whose wage averages $525.79 a year; neither will I attempt to prove my con- tention by the $562.89 which goes to each of the 69,250 boot and shoe workers, and the $439.34 annual incomes of 90,935 cotton mill operatives of Massachusetts. In the first two industries foreigners, and in the last two women, compete fiercely, forcing down the wage far below a level of decent living. I will rather take my illustrations from the two leading American industries — railroading and steel making. [38] THE HAGGARD MAN It is a well-recognized fact that no great industries require on the wliole more skill and endurance than do these two, yet I 2)ro2:>ose to show that even in these t3'pieal, high-paid American industries wages are so low as thor- oughly to justify my opening statement. In fact, that these representative industries fail to pay a familj^ suhsistence wage to the vast majority of their employes. Each year the Interstate Commerce Com- mission publishes the average dailj^ wages of about a million and a half railroad employes. An analysis of these statistics for the last available year (1909) shows that of the entire number employed in that year (1,502,823) seven per cent. (114,199) received an average wage of more than $3 a day ($900 a j'ear) ; that 42 per cent. (633,674) received from $2 to $3 a day ($600 to $900 a year), and that 51 per cent. (754,950) received from $1 to $2 a day— $300 to $600 a year. The average daily wage of 210,898 "Laborers" was $1.98 per day— $600 per year, while of 320,762 trackmen the average wage was $1.38 per day, or $425.80 per year. It, therefore, appears that nine-tenths of the railroad employes of [39] SOCIAL RELIGION the United States receive less than $900 a year; that more than half receive less than $600 a year; while the laborers and trackmen, 530,000 in all, are paid less than $600 a year.^ That the relative wages in the steel indnstry are almost identical is clearh^ shown by the investigation of the Pittsburg Sm-vey (1908) and of the Federal Government into the wages in the South Bethlehem Steel Works and of the steel industry at large. The re- port on the South Bethlehem investigation includes a complete transcript of the pay-rolls for January, 1910, and covers 9,184 em- ployes. Of this number, ten per cent, received an hourly wage rate equivalent to more than $900 per year; 75 per cent, a rate equivalent to less than $750 per year; 60 per cent, re- ceived a rate equivalent to less than $600 per year, while the wages of thirty per cent, were less than $500 per year." The Federal Inves- tigation of the entire industry, made in 1911, ^ statistics of Railways — Interstate Commerce Com., Wash- ington, Gov't. Print., 1910. - Report on Strike at South Bethlehem Steel Works, 61st Congress, second session, Senate Doc. 551. [40] THE HAGGARD MAN shows identical conditions for employes in all parts of the United States.^ Thus, in both steel manufacturing and in railroading, two of the leading American in- dustries, the same proportion of workmen receive more than $900 a year and the same proportion less than $600 a year. These sta- tistics are strikinglj^^ corroborated by the wage figures published by INIassachusetts, New Jer- sey, Kansas, and Wisconsin — four states which furnish the best wage data.^ WAGES OF ADULT MALES. Cumulative Percentages. Massa- New Wis- chusetts Jersey Kansas consin Yearly Wages Per Cent. Per Cent. Per Cent. Per Cent. Less than $500 35 42 26 37 Less than 600 52 57 46 59 Less than 750 72 74 70 89 Less than 1,000 9;2 91 91 98 $1,000 and over 8 9 9 2 The available authorities are, therefore, in practical agreement. Nine-tenths of the w^orkers receive less than $900 annually; * Report on Conditions of Employment in the Iron & Steel Industry, 6:i?nd Congress, 2nd Session, Senate Doc. 301. - Wages in the V. S., Scolt Ncaring, N. Y., The Macmillan Co., 1911, p. 210. [41] SOCIAL RELIGION three-quarters less than $750 and half less than $600 per year. These wage figures cannot, however, be ac- cepted as stated. They represent the daily and hourly earnings of men paid by the day or by the hour, when they work. But at times these men do not work. In ordinarily prosperous years the average wage worker is disemployed through sickness, accident, strikes, and lack of orders, about one-fifth or one-sixth of his entire working time. Once in ten years a panic comes, with its resulting depression, so that for months together men work on half or less than half time. From the wages of railroad employes, a deduction of twenty per cent., and from those of the steel workers a deduction of twenty-five per cent, may con- servatively be made.^ Therefore, I conclude as I began: Three- quarters of the workingmen in American in- dustries cannot provide decently for more than three children; half of them cannot pro- vide for more than two; while the wage of * Unemployment in the U. S., Scott Nearing, Quarterly- Publications, American Statistical Association, September, 1909, pp. 530-535. [42] THE HAGGARD MAN one-third is so low that they can barely make / adequate provision for a single child. We "^ prate about morality; we are rich; we inveigh against vice; we are comfortable; we preach against crime; we are well fed and housed; we advocate large famihes; but we forget to pay living wages. y Need I repeat that a startling discrepancy appears between the cost of a decent living and the wages of American workmen? Need I call your attention to the opportunities here presented for the work of a good Samaritan? These abnormal conditions reflect themselves everywhere. Pittsburg, the fountain of mil- lionaires, suffers from high rents, high costs of living, and abnormally low wages. One Pittsburg family, consisting of a man, wife, his brother, and three children and four board- ers, occupied a house of four rooms, one of them dark, for which they paid fourteen dol- lars a month. This man, who had been in the country twelve years, was still earning ten dollars and eighty cents a week, or five hun- dred dollars a year. Why resort to wearisome statistics? What is your own experience? What are the wages [ 43 ] SOCIAL RELIGION of the ash-man? Two dollars a day. Of the street cleaner? One dollar and a half. Of the trolley man? Two dollars and a quarter. Of the hack-driver? Ten dollars a week. How much does the butcher's man receive? Five hundred dollars a j^ear. None of these workers receives more than two dollars and a half per day, and most of them receive less than two dollars. Reports from leading au- thorities and your own experience confirm the statement that there are tens of thousands of men struggling to support and rear families on wages that are pitifully inadequate. Men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor do underpaid parents rear normal children. If the statements just cited be true, we might expect to find the children in these low-paid families hungry. One thorough investigation of hungry chil- dren, including only the children between six and sixteen years, has been made. Here are some extracts from the official report of the investigation. "Five thousand children who attend the schools are habitually hungry,'* while ten thousand other children "do not have nourishing food." The report further states [44] THE HAGGARD MAN that "many children lack shoes and clothing. Many have no beds to sleep in. They cuddle together on hard floors. The majority of the indigent children live in damp, unclean, or overcrowded homes, that lack proper ventila- tion and sanitation. Here, in the damp, ill- smelling basements, there is only one thing re- garded as cheaper than rent, and that is the life of the child. We find that a large num- ber of children have only bread, saturated in water, for breakfast day after day; that the noon meal is bread or bananas, and an occasional luxury of soup made from pork bones; that children often frequent South Water Street, begging for dead fowl in the crates, or decayed fruit ; that others have been found searching for food in alley garbage boxes." ^ You would rather enjoy such statements about Calcutta, or Peking, or St. Petersburg. They would give an added feeling of satisfac- tion with the high standard of the American worldngman, but what do you think of them when they refer to the second largest city in * Report of Minutes, Board of Education, Chicago, Oct. 21, 1908, pp. 4-5. [45] SOCIAL RELIGION the United States — Chicago — the metropolis of the Middle West? Fifteen thousand chil- dren in Chicago between six and sixteen who do not get enough to eat! Chicago is not alone. Similar investigations in other cities reveal the same conditions of underfeeding. Louise Stevens Bryant, after an exhaustive study of the subject, states the facts regarding underfeeding in the United States. The first investigation was made in New York by John Spar go, w^ho "confined his attention to the subject of the usual break- fasts eaten by school children. He was able with the cordial cooperation of principals and teachers to gather fairly reliable information in regard to the breakfasts of 12,800 children, in sixteen different schools. "The method used was as follows. Each child w^as questioned privately by the class teacher as to what he had for breakfast that day. If he reported no breakfast, the fact was noted, and also if he reported an inade- quate breakfast. For this investigation, an inadequate breakfast was defined as one not containing any of the following articles: milk, eggs, meat, fish, cereal, butter, jam, or [46] THE HAGGARD MAN fruit; it further meant one consisting of cof- fee or tea, either alone or with bread or cake or crackers. Each teacher reported to the principal the number of children with no breakfast, and those with inadequate break- fasts, omitting", so far as possible, children of fairly good circumstances whose lack of break- fast was accidental or unusual." The inquiry revealed the following facts: "of 12,800 children, 897, or nearly 8 per cent., had no breakfast; 1,963 others, or over 15 per cent., had inadequate breakfasts. This made a total of 23 per cent, of all the children in those schools who were badly fed, so far as this might be indicated by breakfast alone." Mr. Spargo then tried to find out what sort of lunches the children had. He was assured by teachers and principals and by his own observation that many children did not go home at noon, but remained playing about the school yard, with no lunch at all. No exact figures were gathered on this point. "From questioning by the teachers, it was found that anywhere from 10 to 20 per cent, of the children were given pennies to buy their own lunches. He watched what they bought, [47] SOCIAL RELIGION and reports this special illustration as a fair example of their choice in winter: Fourteen children, eight boys and six girls, in one deli- catessen store, bought, seven of them pickles and bread, four of them pickles alone, two of them bologna and rye bread, and one pickled fish and bread. On a summer day he saw a group of nineteen buy, six of them pickles, two of them pickles and bread, six ice cream, two bananas, and three candy. Mr. Spargo found that another way the lunch pennies go is in gambling, especially among boys." "Beginning with the year 1906, medical inspectors in New York public elementary schools have recorded cases of malnutrition. During these five years, from 1906-1910, in- clusive, in a total number of 860,728 exami- nations the average percentage of cases found was five. This means that, in the proportion of one in twenty cases examined, the condition of malnutrition was so marked that it was entered on the official records as one of the physical defects of the child. "In 1907 the New York Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children found on examination of 1,400 typical New York [481 THE HAGGARD MAN school children that 140, or 10 per cent., showed marked symptoms of malnutrition, and visits to the homes showed that the daily food of many others was misatisfactory. A few months after the first examination 990 of these children were reexamined more care- fully, and of these 128, or 13 per cent., were declared to be suffering from malnutrition." "Finally, in the early part of 1910, the School Lunch Committee made a special ex- amination of 2,150 children in the lower grades of two New York schools, and found 283 of these, or 13 per cent., were marked cases of malnutrition. These children weighed on the average nine pounds less than the normal for their ages." "In Philadelphia, in 1909-1910, a special investigation of 500 children in one school in a poor district, including a medical exami- nation and a visit to the home of each child, revealed serious underfeeding in 119 cases, forming 24 per cent, of the whole. "In Boston, the routine medical inspection of all children in 1909 revealed between 5,000 and 6,000 cases of underfeeding and anemia, among a total of 80,000 children. [49] SOCIAL RELIGION "In St. Paul, in 1910, Dr. Meyerding, head of the Medical Inspection, made a special ex- amination of 3,200 children in schools frankly chosen from the poorer district. He found that 644, or 20 per cent, of the whole, showed marked underfeeding. "In Rochester, in 1910, Dr. Franklin Bock examined 15,157 children. Of these, he desig- nated 752, or 5 per cent., as showing evident lack of nutrition, and 1,285 as anemic. "As a general conclusion from these investi- gations it seems fair to place the probable number of seriously underfed school children in New York and other American cities where official inquiries have placed it in European cities — at 10 per cent, of the school popula- tion." ^ Does this long recital of statistics weary you? Think how the work of our schools must weary those hundreds of thousands of children who go there hungry, yes, hungry ! Hungry, in the richest country in the world — little chil- dren who have not had enough to eat, strug- gling to master their school problems. Would you have thought it possible? ^The Psychological Clinic, April 15, 1913, vol. 6, pp. 34-37. [50] THE HAGGARD MAN Said a Chinese sage to the Cliristian mis- \ sionary, "no food, no love. Found your gos- pel on good beefsteak." The situation is not a whit different in the United States. We cannot hope to erect a successful educational system on empty stomachs. "Ah, yes," we say, "it's too bad, but it can't be helped, for the fathers all drink." That is not true. The fathers do not all drink. Dr. Devine, basing his statements on an examina- tion of five thousand poverty-stricken families in New York City, concludes that intemper- ance is responsible for 17 per cent, of the poverty, while unemployment is responsible for 70 per cent, of it.^ But suppose Dr. De- vine is wrong. Suppose that intemperance is the cause of poverty in 100 per cent, of the cases, what matter? There are the children. At every cost they must be given a chance ; they must be taken out of contact with debauchery and temptation; thej'^ must be nourished, warmly clothed, and carefully housed, and thus permitted to lead normal, useful lives. There is one, and only one, way in whicli that can * Misery and Its Causes, E. T. Devine, N. Y., The Mac- millan Co., 1909, j). 117. [ rn ] SOCIAL RELIGION be accomplished. Their fathers must be paid living wages. What is a Hving wage? The figure agreed upon by the New York experts was three dollars a day. Shall we accept that? You may believe this figure too high or too low. Can you prove your contention? At all haz- ards, let us decide what is a living wage, and then see that every man gets it. The nation needs these children, not low-browed, stunted and haggard, but normal and full of joy. The payment of living wages lays the foundation for normal, joyous lives. What of this plenty? Plenty of American hell ! A hell of empty stomachs, if not of tor- tured souls. Do we feel the truth? Can we conceive of this black inferno of semi-starva- tion? The seventy-two meals for a dollar and a half — bread and tea, no milk; boiled cab- bage; bread and molasses; bread and tea, no milk. Here, at least, is the glimmer of an opportunity for the work of a Good Sa- maritan. [52 J CHAPTER IV THE MOTHERLESS GIRL Underfeeding is producing* low-browed men, but what of the motherless girl of whom Lowell wrote? The last census showed about five million women at work for wages, one-third of this number living away from home. What does it cost a single girl to live decently in a great city? It is hard to answer the question accu- rately, but careful estimates have been made. A girl living away from home probably needs ten dollars a week in New York and eight dollars a week in Philadelphia to provide re- spectable clothes, a decent room, nourishing food, and legitimate recreation. How do wages paid to working girls compare with this standard? What is the relation between the amount that the working girl needs to sujDport herself in decency and the amount that she really gets? [53] SOCIAL RELIGION Last year the shirtwaist makers of New York and Philadelphia struck. Some of the girls who went on the strike were earning as much as twenty-five dollars a week, and some of them were earning fifty cents a day. One little Italian girl of the latter class was ap- proached by her employer. "You won't be able to live if you stay out on strike," said he. The child's reply was terrible: "Me no live vera much on forta-nine cent-a-day." What are the average wages of women in industry? A recent report from Wisconsin covers 7,297 female employes, whose average wage was one dollar, five and a half cents per day, or six dollars and thirty-three cents a week. In one industry, the manufacture of fancj'^ articles, 215 women made an average of four dollars and thirty-six cents per week; 868 others employed in the manufacture of paper made only five dollars and seventy cents per week. In Pittsburg 80 per cent. of the women earn less than seven dollars a week. An analysis of the wages of women in IMassachusetts, New Jersey, Kansas, and Yv^isconsin shows that the average for these states is below seven dollars, while three- [54] THE MOTHERLESS GIRL fourths earn less than ten dollars, and nine- tenths earn less than twelve dollars per week.^ So illustrations might be endlessly multiplied. Common experience, however, will confirm the statistical record, and it needs no argument to convince the intelligent public that in the ma- jority of cases the weekly wage of work- ing girls in great cities is less than seven dollars. Perhaps the best recent summary of the re- lation between the pay of working women and the cost of living for them is presented by Miss Butler in a study of the saleswomen in the mercantile stores of Baltimore. After showing that wages average about seven dollars a week, Miss Butler says: "The significance of this wage grouping can be ap- parent only when considered with reference to the cost of living in Baltimore. The term *cost of living' is vague; usage has extended its meaning to cover everything from the 'sub- sistence level' to the amonnt necessary for maintaining a relatively high standard of life. As used in this connection, it means the sum * Wages in the United States, Scott Nearing, N. Y., Tlie Macmillan Co., 1911, p. 31:?. [ 55 ] SOCIAL RELIGION necessary in Baltimore to provide for an indi- vidual, lodging and sufficient food, clothing, carfare to and from vv^ork, and a small margin for sundries such as medicine, dentistry, or, on the other hand, healthful recreation." "The cost of board at its minimum must, in general, be taken to represent the cost of ob- taining lodging and sufficient food; as to de- tails, the consensus of opinion of those who have lived near the margin can be the only criterion. A tentative schedule for Baltimore might be as follows: Board and lodging, $3.00; clothing, $2.00; washing, $.50; carfare, $.60; lunches, $.60. Total, $6.70. Boarding homes for working women are few. It is not customary for women to take unfurnished rooms and prepare their own meals. Instead, they take a room and their meals with some family, and the rate in families seldom falls below $3.00 a week. "Two dollars a week for clothing is $100 a year. This may seem large, but we cannot esti- mate as though the sum were in hand and the possessor a competent seamstress. Were these two things assured, were our working- woman compact of forethought, self-restraint, [5Q] THE MOTHERLESS GIRL good management and efficiency, she miglit even manage to have her allowance for cloth- ing yield her a surplus. But she is mediocre human material, for the most part, neither very clever, nor very comj^etent, nor fore- sighted for the next season's wants. Without a first nugget, the saving of small sums is dif- ficult. From week to week, board and lodg- ing, carfare and sundries eat into the tiny capital, and prevent continuous accumulation of a portion of it. The need of to-day looms larger than that of six months from now, and $2.00 a week, if it covers this week's and this season's needs, is doing well. This implies the buying of ready-made clothing, the buying of some things by instalments — an expensive way, but apparently inevitable at times when no capital is at hand. The ordinary working girl, as has been said, is not a seamstress any more than she is a capable executive. She neither knows how to sew nor wants to spend time sewing. Her leisure is precious, her weariness extreme, and it is easier to buy things. What she could save in money (not to estimate what she would lose in buoyancy), if she made her own clothing, therefore, caimot [571 SOCIAL RELIGION modify her present budget. The facts must be recognized that she does not, as a rule, make her clothing, nor does she spend her annual allowance for clothing as a lump sum. "That some money should be spent for sun- dries is no less essential than that some money should be spent for food. This item, however, marks the difference between this budget and a budget based actually upon the cost of living at the subsistence level. In the latter case, beyond food and lodging and carfare, there could be no leeway. There could be no doc- tor's bills, no medicine ; there could be no post- age stamps and no carfare, except to and from work; above all, there could be no recreation. Life would be without social content. This is the program for home workers in sweated industries. Can it conceivably or desirably be the program for a young girl at the beginning of her life? We should welcome a generation of such vigor and admirable self-control that expenditure for illness would be unnecessary, but that generation has not yet been born in this age of the world. We would not, how- ever, seek so to limit the lives of the workers [58] THE MOTHERLESS GIRL as to eliminate recreation. Were we to at- tempt it, we should be attacking both health and efficiency. The desire for recreation is as fundamental as the necessity of work and the desire for food. A budget which in any meas- ure provides for a sane and useful existence must admit some expenditures other than those essential for the mechanical maintenance of physical life. "Admitting these premises, we may assume that $6.70 represents the minimum cost of liv- ing for a workingwoman in Baltimore. We know that some workingwomen live on less; we know, too, that more could live on less if they had more skill in doing things for them- selves, or clearer ideas of economy. Yet we cannot assume the possession of such skill and such economy, and without them this estimate approximates the minimum cost of living. Eighty-one jDer cent, of the women employes in Baltimore stores are earning less than this minimum living cost, and 10 per cent, are earning more. For an industry so impor- tant among those that employ women, an in- dustry so popular among women workers that it sometimes creates a shortage in factory I 59 ] SOCIAL RELIGION districts, opportunity for advancement seems meager." ^ Could Miss Butler have painted a clearer or a more dispassionate picture? Could she have stated the issue involved more fairly? The minimum of decent existence for a single girl in Baltimore is $6.70, and in the mercan- tile establishments four-fifths of the girls are paid less than this amount. Women are not only underpaid, but they are frequently over-worked. For example, weaving has always been done by women. In the early stages of machinery one woman man- aged one or perhaps two slowly moving looms. Then improvements gave her four or five looms to tend, and to-day, with the invention of the automatic shuttle, each woman is called upon to tend from twelve to sixteen looms. Sixteen looms cover a large floor space, and the woman must hurry from loom to loom. As a result, when night comes, she is often too exhausted to sleep. Another illustration comes from the canning industry. In the can- ning factory an automatic clutch carries cans * Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores, E. B. Butler, N. Y. Charities Pub. Co., 1912, pp. 113-118. [60] THE MOTHERLESS GIRL of baked beans past a girl who slips a small piece of pork into each can. The endless chain of clutches runs fast, and the girl must con- centrate every atom of nervous energy on the task before her or miss her can. These are but typical illustrations of the methods wliich are used to speed up workingwomen. The hours of workingwomen are long and the work is exacting. The atmosphere of fac- tory and shop is close and stifling, and the re- action from work is sharp. Did you ever do a hard day's work? You wanted to go and relax after it was over. These girls want to relax, too, but they have no opportunity to do so. The cost of decent hving is far above their wages, and the reaction from their overwork, without legitimate means of recreation, leads inevitably to the dance halls, which are the open door to the lowest forms of vice. Surrounded by your atmosphere of social re- spectability, you pity these girls; you are infi- nitely above them. How much above? Sup- pose you started to work at six-thirty every morning; stood on your feet all day, every w^orking day in the year; came home at night to a lonely attic room, fried a bit of bacon and [CI] SOCIAL RELIGION ate bread and bananas, and then retired, to start at six-tliirty and do it over again, six days a week, three hundred and seven days a year. Suppose you waited on splendidly dressed women and sweet-faced boys and girls; sup- pose, just for the sake of argument, that you were like other people and loved artistic clothes and children, and wanted recreation, expan- sion, life. When you looked at your paltry six dollars a week, what would you do? Would you go mad or would you go to the dance halls and perhaps ultimately on the street? You are above these girls, but how much? How much? That is a question which you only can answer. Recently there have been in the newspapers and magazines numerous articles on prostitu- tion and the white-slave trade. Did you ever think that there might be a connection between underpaid, overworked, motherless girls and the tens of thousands of women who patrol the streets of our great cities offering their bodies for hire? A handsome, well- formed girl of seventeen went to work in a restaurant. After a time she noticed that a flashily dressed man, who ate [62] THE MOTHERLESS GIRL daily at her table, was paying her marked at- tention. Her wages were low, her life mo- notonous, she longed for recreation, and the man offered her an opportunity. He took her to the amusement parks, and eventually intro- duced her to some fashionable friends who kept a dance hall in which were phonographs, gay music, and all the flash and glare of a city re- sort. The detail of the case is unimportant. The man kept his hold on the girl, and finally seduced her under promise of marriage. Then, for a sum of money, he transferred her to a white slaver in a neighboring city, where she was forced against her will to ply her shameful trade. Immigrant girls reach America only to be sent through employment offices or directed by paid agents to houses of prostitution. Al- though the Federal report covered only those known as public prostitutes, the numbers run into the thousands each year.^ One girl of fifteen was sent from Austria to the United States, where her relatives failed to meet her. She was, therefore, thrown upon her own re- ' Report on tlic Iiui)ortalioii of Women for Immoral Pur- poses, 61st Congress, 3nd Session, Senate Document 196. [63] SOCIAL RELIGION sources, and drifted from one position to an- other, beginning as a chambermaid in a second- class hotel, and ending as a prostitute in a low resort. A professional prostitute at 15! These two illustrations are typical. They might be duplicated a thousand times, and they clearly indicate where we place the social pre- mium. Had these girls remained virtuous they might have earned six dollars a week in a de- partment store or factory, but, by plying their illicit trade, they can, if successful, make ten or fifteen dollars in a single night. We Chris- tians of the twentieth century offer to an hon- est, hard-working girl six dollars a week, bad food, miserable lodging, and no opportunity for recreation; but to the girl who is willing to sacrifice her virtue, a splendid income for a time, with leisure, recreation, and all that money can buy. What think you of a society which places such a choice before destitute women and un- developed girls ? How many human beings in this prosperous nation are forced to face that choice ? How many make the choice that leads them to the streets ? One authority states that there are two hundred thousand professional [64] THE MOTHERLESS GIRL prostitutes in the United States. What mat- ter a few odd thousand either way? The facts are none the less hideous. Would you know the truth at first hand? Apply to any police- man or cab driver or messenger boy in the great cities and they will direct you to the near- est house of prostitution. Perhaps they will accompany you and receive the fee which comes to them for every customer they bring. The Broadway and the red light district of every city are patrolled day and night by fallen women. You cannot walk two hundred yards after nightfall along one street in the City of Brotherly Love without meeting ten or a dozen women, each of whom is for sale at a dollar and a half — an illustration that might be dupli- cated at Willi in any great city of the land. If you wish confirmation of these statements, read Jane Addams's "New Conscience and an An- cient Evil." You will be sickened and en- lightened. The letting of women's bodies for hire has become an organized trade, from which the in- vestors reap huge profits. As a vested inter- est, organized vice is in league with the police and with the political ring — sending repeaters [C5] SOCIAL RELIGION to the polls, harboring thugs and criminals, and paying hush money to the men higher up. Read G. Bernard Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Pro- fession," or Reginald Wright Kauffman's "Plouse of Bondage". Hideous, are they not? You think them overdrawn ? Then turn to the official reports made by commissions of repre- sentative citizens in all parts of the country. In Chicago thirty of the leading citizens were appointed on the Chicago Vice Commis- sion, which made a thorough inquiry into the matter, reporting conditions which are, to say the least, startling to the average complacent citizen. They found that the business of hir- ing women's bodies was "a coixunercialized business, organized to the highest point of effi- ciency, with cash registers and modern efficient bookkeeping, even with tickets, where you get $3.50 worth of service for $3.00, and have the ticket punched as the service is rendered. All sorts of business methods are used, all sorts of artificial schemes resorted to, in addition to the service rendered, to increase the income and bring in money." Walter T. Summer, a member of the Chi- cago Vice Commission, says: "We were able [66] " THE MOTHERLESS GIRL to tell the amount of service rendered in each house of prostitution by these women. We were able to tell how many men were served. We were able to get absolute figures from the records, so that I can say to you with cer- tainty that a woman in a house of prostitu- tion must render service to 15 men every 24 hours, and, in times of convention, or other large gatherings, 25, 30, 50, 75, and even 100, and, therefore, we know, the earnings range from $25 to $400 a week. We know that 5,999,000 men were rendered service in the city of Chicago by 1,108 prostitutes each year, and that through this commercialized vice there was paid $16,000,000 to these 1,108 prostitutes. This did not cover the whole 5,000 women which we considered a conservative estimate of the number who are plying their trade in this business." Glaring enough as facts, are they not? Note Dr. Summer's method of relating them to causes : "The United States Government three weeks ago gave out figures showing that the department store girl earns $6.12 a week if she lives at home, and $7.32 if she lives away from home. She must ])av $4.00 or $5.00 a 167 1 * SOCIAL RELIGION week for board alone. She comes into contact constantly with people of far greater income than her own, and she strives to keep up ap- pearances with them. She gets into the clan- destine group, considering that she can in- crease her capitalization $5,000 or $25,000, or perhaps $50,000 by giving up her virtue. She feels almost forced to do this, unless she has got what so many thousands of girls do pos- sess, thank God, a religious character, to stand up against these awful temptations. The question is not, 'Why do girls go wrong?' but rather, 'Why do not more girls go wrong?' " "I would like to say to men that I am not so enthusiastic about all the reforms that are com- ing wath woman suffrage, and yet I do believe this, that when women obtain the franchise, as I hope they are going to obtain it, they will stand up and change the situation which per- mits men to exploit women in the most vicious industry, commercialized to a point of highest business efficiency ; and they will stand up and do more than men have ever dared to do, who have followed the line of least resistance and have said, 'Put it somewhere in a segregated district; let disease of one kind be permitted, [68] THE MOTHERLESS GIRL and then forget it.' The women will do some- thing to help their own sex. A girl who goes down is very often hungry for the kind word of a friend at the right time. She falls a vic- tim of the men who have not even a stroke of sportsmanship, but go into the boarding houses deliberately intending to hunt down a defense- less girl, a child of poverty, and send her down deeper and deeper, until she gets into the house of prostitution. She is arrested from time to time, while he goes free and walks the streets as a romancer. I tell you calmly it is not just. We are never going to reach the situation until we can instil into men that standard of morals, of honor, which has been spoken of here, making them feel the in- stincts of chivalrj^ of humanity, and getting them to realize that to fight for a woman's purity is indeed the occasion for a valiant fight." ' Vice is a business. The exploitation of women's bodies is an occupation — an im- mensely lucrative occupation bringing in huge ^Quotations from a spcedi made by Dr. Summer before the City Club of Philadelphia, City Club Bulletin, April 6, 1913, vol. 5, pp. 135-138. [69] SOCIAL RELIGION returns on the investment. What do you think of it? Is there any opportunitj^ here for the good Samaritan? We draw back in horror, but do not these wretched creatures need our help? They have fallen among thieves; they are our neighbors. They may come nearer to us than that, for they will meet our untutored boys ere they have passed into the realm of manhood, and lead them into lives of debauchery, disease, and shame. Motherless girls? Yes, motherless and friendless too. Born into a progressive, Christian societj^ — into a land of prosperity and plenty; reared amid depraved surround- ings; half educated, in subjects which neither increase their efficiency nor prepare them to live their lives in the world; and then, at an early age, sent out to earn their daily bread, taking upon their girlish shoulders and narrow chests a part of the burden of an industrial civilization — working in your factories and stores; taking your starvation wages; sewing the buttons on your shirts; making your cand}^; canning your vegetables; boxing your crackers; and rolling your cigars; working [70] THE MOTHERLESS GIRL during an eleven hour day and a fiftj'^-eight hour week to heap at your feet the luxuries which you can neither appreciate nor enjoy, and then, weary of it all, throwing aside their seven dollars a week, donning ostrich plumes, fur coats, and gaudy, flimsy dresses, and going out in the street to sell the only thing which will bring them a living wage — their woman- hood. You hear in your churches of the damnation of hell ; but did you ever dream of the damna- tion of this earth? The darmiation in your own City? The damnation of that industry upon which your comfortable home is founded? You may never have heard ; you may not know ; but there, at your very feet, before your eyes, are women, in your own likeness, who have heard, and known, and experienced a damna- tion that exceeds all powers of description. You have heard these words ? Then you too know of it now. What will you do? We read of hunger and oppression in Russia, and straightway we are filled with righteous indignation and we burn with a de- sire to succor those unfortunates. We send our millions to China, to India and to Africa [71] SOCIAL RELIGION to convert and save the heathen. Conversion? Salvation? Does America offer no field? These underpaid men; that wretched woman; those starving children. Is there no opportu- nity here for conversion, for salvation? ]\Iust the Good Samaritan journey into a far coun- try to find a harvest of wretched bodies and troubled souls? I tell you, no! Here, at the very doors of our whited sepulchres, are hag- gard men and wretched women crying aloud for the oil and ^vine of brotherly assistance. We cannot refuse their appeal; we dare not take the proceeds of their exploited toil and bind up the wounds of Australian aborigines or Terra del Fuegan savages. Would we cast a mote out of our brother's eye? Behold a great black festering beam is in our own. [72] CHAPTER V THE FACTORY CHILD The fathers are "haggard," the motherless girl is pushed to the verge of misery and ruin, but that is not the full measure of our iniquity, for we do not stop until the children are forced to enter the maelstrom of industry, where they earn their daily bread in the sweat of their young faces. You see, we carry our trans- gressions even "to the least of these." You have often heard of child labor; you are opposed to it in theory, yet if you realized what it meant in practice, you would not, for an instant, tolerate its existence. Let me tell you some of the things I have seen in the world of working children. One bitter March morning the snow eddied down from the sky and swirled around the corner of a Pennsylvania silk mill near Scranton. In the lea of the corner, her thin [73] SOCIAL RELIGION shawl wrapped about her head and shoulders, stood a child who looked scarce thirteen. Her face was weary, though she had just hurried from bed into her clothes and, after gulping down her breakfast, had run to the mill, "So's not to get docked for bein' late." Half-past six came, but it might be fifteen or even twenty minutes before the doors opened to let the "night shift" depart and the "day shift" enter. She was one of 120,000 working children in Pennsylvania. I questioned her to see what her life really meant. "How old are you?" "Fourteen." "Fourteen? You look awfully small for fourteen. How long have you worked in this mill?" "Three years and a half." "Well, how old were you when you started?" "Thirteen." When she began work, this child knew that the legal limit for working children was tliir- teen ; meanwhile an act of assembly had raised the legal age to fourteen ; she knew these two facts, but her knowledge of mathematics was not sufficient to enable her to prove that thir- [74] THE FACTORY CHILD teen plus three and one-half did not make fourteen. At last the night shift "came off" and this bit of humanity, who had worked three and a half j^ears between her thirteenth and four- teenth birthdays, walked stolidly into the mill to stand for eleven hours in front of a spin- ning frame, watching the whirring machinery and the gliding threads. She was an ordinary child laborer who will one day be the mother of Pennsylvania's future citizens, and what citizens! She was but an example of the underfed children who are working in every great city of the United States. She was an "individual case" — yet to her, and to her children, if she have any, her individual case may involve ignorance, over- work and misery. You see how much child labor means to the individual child. In some parts of the anthracite regions of Pennsylvania the silk mills work night and da}^ because it is much cheaper. As one man- ufacturer said, "That way you get yoin* money for 3 per cent." One night an old man and a little boy walked out on the porch of a miner's shanty wliicli stands across the street from one [ 7o ] SOCIAL RELIGION of these mills. The old man leaned down and kissed the boy's forehead. "Good night, father," said the boy, and, taking his dinner pail from the porch, he walked across the street, and into the lighted mill. Twelve hours later he stumbled sleepily across the same street, to his bed. He had done his "turn" on the night shift, away from home, with some rough women and some rougher men. Children who work "night shift" do not participate in the duties and pleasures of home life. Hence child labor eliminates the child laborer from the life of the home. A boy of eighteen had been working for seven years in a soft coal mine. "Yes, I can wi'ite — only my name, though. Read? Sure, I read the paper most every day, but it is slow work." "Didn't you go to school!" "To school? Did I? Well I guess I did. It was in one door and out of the other. How is a feller going to school if he starts at eleven in the mines?" The school is interested in child labor, since children who go early to work seldom trouble books, and are not troubled by them. [76] THE FACTORY CHILD On a mill in eastern Pennsylvania hung two sign boards : SMALL GIBtS SMALL BOTS WANTED WANTED For years these signs hung there, while the manufacturer secured the merchandise for which he advertised. Every morning children came trooping along the streets into the mill, many of whom answered well to the descrip- tion of the sign. They were "small." Said the bargain hunter. "Is that the cheap- est grade you have?" "No'm," replied the sales girl. "These are sixteen cents." And the frail little cash girl who took the money, and the peaked sweat shop worker who finished the garments, both helped to drop the price to "sixteen cents." Tilings are not really cheap because they cost little money. Immense sums of life and joy are added to the cost of production of the goods which are made by the child laborer. When you buy "cheap goods" and "bargains" that are cheap because they are child-made, you are in part responsible fnr the sacrifice of child [77] SOCIAL RELIGION life that entered into the manufacture of those goods. Of such child workers, who have not yet reached their sixteenth birthday, there are nearly two million in the United States. Truly, Sissy Jupe, you do well to test the prosperity of this most prosperous of all nations by ask- ing who has the money and whether any of it is yours, for in its nation-wide distribution the child laborers, at least, have been neglected. Children are at w ork. There can be no doubt whatever on that score, since the facts of child labor are published in every official document which treats of factories and factory inspec- tion. Need I pause to remind you that child labor is disastrous to the child, to the society, and to the industry in which he plays a part? Perhaps these things have not been empha- sized as they should. Perhaps you still believe that it is an act of Providence which sends children into the mill at fourteen. You may say, "Oh, he's well grown, the work won't hurt him any." That is an attitude very commonly taken by people who are interested in the continuance of child labor, and by those who know very little or nothing of the subject. [78] THE FACTORY CHILD But what does "well grown" mean? If it means "partly grown" the statement is cor- rect, since children of fourteen are rapidly changing in body and mind — expanding into manhood and womanhood. What shall be their environment and inspiration during this expanding period? Enthusiasm, play, and life, or grind, monotony, and degeneration? You determine the answer to that question by your indifference or opposition to those meas- ures which are advanced for the elimination of the wrongs for w^hich child labor is responsible. You know that in most of the states chil- dren of fourteen are permitted to work for nine, ten or even eleven hours a daJ^ These children are still growing. A number of them applying for work certificates in Chicago were recently measured, with the following result: ^Tlie boys of fifteen years receiving permission to work averaged nearly a foot taller and about four pounds heavier than the boys of four- teen; and the girls of fifteen years averaged nearly one-half foot taller and about fifteen pounds heavier than the girls whose ages averaged fourteen years. So from fourteen to sixteen boys and girls [79] SOCIAL RELIGION are still growing. During this period, when the body is plastic, there are two forces constantly at work, the one calling the child to higher ideals of life and gi'owth, and the other tend- ing to brutalize him for the sake of the few dollars which his unformed hands will earn. All of his future is conditioned on that struggle; if the forces of the ideal conquer, the child will develop through proper channels into a fully rounded man; if the forces of the dollar win, the child life is set and hardened into a money-making machine. Child labor is a process of mind stunting. First the child is removed from the possibihty of an education — taken from the school and placed in the factory, where he no longer has an opportunity to learn. Then he is subjected to monotonous toil, for long hours, often all night, in unwholesome places, so that his body and mind harden into the familiar form of the unskilled workman. Entering the workroom with adults of all types of morahty and immorahty the child ceases to be a child in knowledge while it is still a child in ideas. There is no home influ- ence or school influence to ward off the [80] THE FACTORY CHILD dangers ; no mother or teacher to point out the hidden rocks. The child is pilot and captain, but how easily influenced and misguided! All factory life is not immoral and immoral- ity is not an essential element in factory life, but, under present conditions, factory life and immorality too often run hand in hand. Play is the accompaniment of youth. Man has his playtime: it is childhood. INIan has his work time: it is adult life. The cliild can- not hope to escape all work, but the greater part of its life must be devoted to play if the functions of the adult life of work are to be well fulfilled. Child labor does not necessar- ily mean stunting and degradation, but the probabilities are that child labor will mean child deterioration. So much may be said of the undesirability of transmitting to the future children stunted and worn by premature toil. There are two other ways in which child labor injures the society of the present and thus indirectly that of the future. In the first place, it helps to destroy family life, and, in the second place, it helps to promote delinquency. In some localities all of the members of the [81] SOCIAL RELIGION family work in the mill. Many such instances are furnished in the South, where industry is developing for the first time. There it is cus- tomary for the children to work with both of the parents, and if one parent remains out- side of the mill it is apt to be the father. Again and again writers on the family and home life emphasize the premature independ- ence from family control of the child wage earner. Miss Jane Addams tells of a work- ing girl who was being anxiously watched by the Hull House authorities. The girl had a good home and a hard-working, conscientious mother, but she was gradually being led into worse and worse ways by the bad company that she kept on the streets at night. Finally a pro- test was made to the girl's mother. "Why do you allow your daughter to run the streets at night? Don't you know what she is getting into?" they asked her. The mother was heart- broken, and replied that she feared to say any- thing to her daughter, because she contributed to the family income and would leave home if crossed in her wild whims. The girl's attitude was plainly expressed when she said, "^ly Ma can't say anything to me — I pay the rent." [82] THE FACTORY CHILD The standards of child work are very low, as any one who has visited industrial establish- ments will have observed. Generally, the greater the proportion of women and children in an establishment, the worse the conditions of the light, air, and sanitation. INIen rebel. Women and children seldom complain, except to one another. Thus the child laborer is gen- erally educated to be a low standard adult laborer. The standard of the community can be main- tained only bj^ maintaining a high standard of home life. The high standard of home life depends for its existence and maintenance upon the standard of the father and the mother. The father must have the capacity to earn for his children a good living ; he must likewise have the mental development and the development of character which will enable him to set for them a high standard example. The absence of these qualities in the father almost inevitably disrupts the home. But what of the mothers? The influence of the father upon family life is of the utmost importance, but it is insignificant as compared with the influence of the mother. Tlie father r 8;3 1 SOCIAL RELIGION is usually away from home, while the mother spends the greater portion of her time in the home. Hence it is with her that the children come into most intimate contact and hers is by far the most important influence upon their lives. What part does the factory play in the fu- ture lives of these home makers and home keepers? The women who enter a factory at the age of twelve and spend the years from twelve to twenty inside of four dark, dirty walls, amid whirring machines, usually have not the physi- cal stamina necessary to bring strong children into the world. As Dr. Davies of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a great woman-employing center, puts it: "These factory girls fade at an early age, and then they cannot discharge the functions of mothers and wives as they should." In the second place a girl who has spent her life in the factory is usually un- trained in the maintenance of a home. Factory life is exacting — there is always excitement — the excitement of new people, if not of new things. There is a wide difference between this high strung, factory life and the quiet [84] THE FACTORY CHILD routine of a properly conducted home, so that the change from one to the other is difficult to make. Then, too, there are a thousand things which are learned incidentally by the girls who grow up at home, but which never become a part of the education of a factory child. There are arts of cooking and of cleaning, arts of caretaking and home-making that come only from the actual contact with these problems in the home. An eleven-hour day in the factory makes impossible any proper training for home duties. The unity of family life can be maintained only by trained mothers and capable fathers; mothers who will make inhabitable homes to the extent of their means, and fathers who will use every effort to provide the means with which to make the home inhabitable. Factory work for cliildren goes far to thwart both ideals, by making of the boy an unskilled worker, incapable of earning large means, and by making of the girl a wife and mother, in- capable by knowledge or training of doing her duty by her children, her home, or her husband. On the other hand, child labor injures so- ciety by helping to promote delinquency. The [85] SOCIAL RELIGION child, particularly the boy, who is thrown out upon the world too early in life and made to face its responsibilities, is overwhelmed with its bigness and wearied by its never changing monotony. He seeks relief for his strained nervous system in some kind of activity which leads ultimately to the door of the police court. Need I proceed further? I have shown you that child labor injures the individual child besides playing a large part in the destruc- tion of home unity. Did time permit I might point out that child labor has an equally de- structive effect upon industry. But, already, enough has been said to convince you that here, indeed, is one of the thieves, who are setting upon American children, robbing them, wound- ing them, and leaving them half dead. While Jesus taught His disciples He uttered no more solemn judgment than this: "Whoso- ever shall offend one of these little ones that believeth in Me, it were better for him that a mill stone were hanged about his neck and that he were cast into the depths of the sea." Nevertheless, in defiance of His warning, we offend not one, but hundreds of thousands every working day in the year. Those little [86] THE FACTORY CHILD children who, in the words of Jesus, ''arc the kingdom of Heaven" are forced on this earth to labor for their daily bread. I have seen these children working — I have been in the breakers where the boys pick the slate from the coal in an atmosphere so filled with dust that they were forced, on a bright summer day, to w-ear lamps on their hats in order to see the coal at their feet ; I have been in the mines and seen children of twelve work- ing all day long, cut off from daylight and fresh air; I have gone into box factories at Christmas Time, where the girls began their work at seven in the morning, finishing at eight or nine in the evening; I have seen children preparing the dainty candies which attract you in beautiful store windows; I have been with the messenger boj^s all night, as they went from one house of ill- fame to the next; I have M^atched the exhausted faces of the cash-girls in our great department stores, as they hurried about in the August heat; I have seen these children laboring, picking, mining, making boxes and candy, and carrying messages and cash for you. You received the benefits — you may even have taken the dividends which these [87 1 SOCIAL RELIGION children were earning. If you did not buy the products, and take the dividends from their toil, you at least stood by while the legislature refused to enact effective laws for the protec- tion of working children. Good Samaritans, nearly two millions of America's futm-e citizens cry aloud to you for assistance. They have been set upon at the outset of life's journey, robbed of their play- time, and left to labor in their helplessness in an inferno of grinding wheels, of snapping clutches and gears. Spiritually wounded and half dead they demand your assistance in the name of the future. Will you ever heed their appeal? [88] CHAPTER VI DEVOURING WIDOWS' HOUSES Those who offended the "little ones" might better have been drowned in the depths of the sea, but those who devoured widows* houses and then for pretense made long prayers were to receive "greater damnation." Yet land speculation, mercilessly forcing up city rents, is daily devouring not widows' houses, but widows' food. The widows can no longer afford to own the houses — but as renters they must deprive themselves of the necessaries of life to meet the exacting requirements of twen- tieth century landlordism. Not only the necessaries of life, but the de- cencies of living must be dispensed with, until the wage earner's family lives crowded into a narrow room, dark, ill-ventilated — the lurking place of disease. You are a firm believer in national prosperity? What do you think of a row of houses, near one of the great steel mills [ 89 1 SOCIAL RELIGION of Pittsburg, from which such a description as the following can be secured: "In one apartment a man, his wife and baby and two boarders slept in one room, and five boarders occupied two beds in an adjoining room. . . . Not one house in the entire set- tlement had any provision for supplying drink- ing water to its tenants. . . . They went to an old pump in the mill yard — 360 steps from the farthest apartment, down seventy-five stairs. This town pump was the sole supply of drinking water within reach of ninety-one households comprising 568 persons. . . . An- other row of one-family houses had a curious wooden chute arrangement on the back porches, down which waste water was poured that ran through open drains in the rear yard to the open drain between this row of houses and the next. . . . They carried other things beside waste water — filth of every description was emptied down these chutes, for these six families and three families below on the first floor had no closet accommodations and were living like animals." ' Low wages prepare the ^ Painter's Row, Elizabeth Crowell, Charities and the Com- mons, Feb. 6, 1909, vol. 21, pp. 899-910. [90] DEVOURING WIDOWS' HOUSES ingredients, low standards mix the poison, and a civilized society strives to assimilate boys and girls who grow up in houses that are a disgrace to civilization. Such congestion — such crowding together — is not confined to Pittsburg. New York pre- sents by far the most abnormally congested conditions of any American city. In 1905 there were thirty-eight blocks on INIanhattan Island in which more than 1,000 persons were living per acre. In Chicago there is an acre density on 221 acres of 206 persons per acre, while St. Louis has forty-eight blocks averag- ing 180 persons per acre. The density of pop- ulation in the most congested of Manhattan blocks is 4,000 times greater than that of the State of New York as a whole. ^ People may conceivably live 1,000 per acre and still maintain decent conditions of exist- ence, since a stable, varied diet of good food, with light, ventilation and sanitation, might easily offset most of the bad results of such congested living. INIere congestion per acre does not present a serious problem — it is the evils accompanying acre congestion that chal- *City Planning, Benjamin C. Marsh, New York, 1909, p. G. [91] SOCIAL RELIGION lenge the attention of those interested in social reform. Men and women in the great tenements suf- fer, not because of proximity to their neigh- bors, but because the tenement construction ex- ckides adequate air supply, and prevents the entrance of sunlight into many dark corners. Have you ever seen a seven-story East Side tenement ? The front is usually inartistic ; and sometimes it is shabby. By day the fire escapes are decorated with flowers, cooking utensils, lumber and children, and by night with bedding and humanity. You pass through a narrow entrance to the back of these tenements, reach- ing a bare court paved with flags or brick and overhung by fire escapes and clothes-lines. You enter the dark, ill-smelling hallways, and pass from floor to floor — stumbling over squalid children, and making your way with difliculty to the roof, where you look over a great ex- panse of roofs and chimneys, broken at inter- vals by courts, streets and air shafts. Between each pair of tenements is a shaft, perhaps four feet wide and thirty feet long, extending to the ground. Into the shaft, the tenants, whose rooms have no other outlet, [92] DEVOURING WIDOWS' HOUSES dump their refuse. The tenement is a walled- up town, grotesque, gloomy, hideous. The overcrowding in the private houses of Pittsburg, about which I spoke a moment ago, was surpassed by the overcrowding among the single men in the Slavic lodging houses, where beds stood as close as the floor space would permit, men sleeping on the floor, two shifts using the same bed, one shift by day and an- other by night. Sometimes the beds are "double deckers" — built with one bed above and one bed below on the same frame. Any device is employed which will reduce rent, even though it involves loss of vitality or of life itself. This overcrowding among the steel workers of Pittsburg is paralleled by the congestion in New York construction camps. Bmiks are built in tiers, and men are huddled together in unventilated or ill-ventilated buildings with- out sanitary conveniences, or even sanitary necessities. "The simplest standards which military history shows are essential in hand- ling such artificial bodies of people are grossly violated." In winter fuel is expensive, so that the tene- [93] SOCIAL RELIGION ment is run on a basis of strict economy. The door is opened when necessary — the windows not at all. The air grows denser with each succeeding day until, toward spring, one un- accustomed to such atmosphere finds even a visit to the room unbearable. Summer finds the conditions even less tol- erable. Windows and doors are opened, but no air circulates. Men, women and children, huddled together, in the warm spaces, two, three, four or even five to a small room, soon exhaust the oxygen, and are then forced to breathe the polluted air. Are you surprised that tuberculosis rages? Do you wonder that these people are often idle, shiftless, ineffi- cient? Not only their food, but their hous- ing means low vitality. I spoke, a moment ago, of the air-shafts which were built into the tenements. Imagine, on a hot summer night, sleeping in a room which opened into the air-shaft five stories below the top of the shaft, ^vith no circulation. One might as well sleep in an oven. You would consider the dwellers on the air- shafts in a precarious situation. What would you say of those who were sleeping in a room [94] DEVOURING WIDOAVS' HOUSES which opened into another room, which, in turn, opened on the air-shaft and had no other means of ventilation? Yes, such rooms exist. Would you know some of the facts of the housing problem in New York — the Metrop- olis of the West? Listen to this statement by one of the leading authorities on the subject. "The conditions in New York are without parallel in the civilized world. In no city of Europe, not in Naples nor in Rome, neither in London nor in Paris, neither in Berlin, Vienna nor Buda Pesth, not in Constantinople nor in St. Petersburg, not in ancient Edin- burgh nor modern Glasgow, not in heathen Canton nor Bombay are to be found such con- ditions as prevail in modern, enlightened, twentieth century, Christian New York. "In no other city is the mass of the work- ing population housed as it is in New York, in tall tenement houses, extending up into the air fifty or sixty feet, and stretching for miles in every direction as far as the eye can reach. In no other citj' are there the same appalling conditions with regard to lack of light and air in the homes of the poor. In no other city is there so great congestion and overcrowding. [95 1 SOCIAL RELIGION In no other city do the poor so suffer from excessive rents; in no city are the conditions of city life so complex. Nowhere are the evils of modern life so varied, nowhere are the problems so difficult of solution. . . . "We have to-day the tenement house system prevalent throughout New York as the chief means of housing the great part of the city's population, over two-thirds of the people liv- ing in multiple dwellings ; we have to-day over 100,000 separate tenement houses; we have a city built up of four and five-story buildings, instead of two-story and three-story ones; we have over 10,000 tenement houses of the hope- less and discredited 'dumb-bell' type with nar- row 'air-shafts' furnishing neither sunhght nor fresh air to the thousands of people living in the rooms opening on them; w^e have over 20,000 tenement houses of the older type in which most of the rooms are without light or ventilation; we have over 100,000 dark unven- tilated rooms without even a window to an ad- joining room; we have 80,000 buildings, hous- ing nearly 3,000,000 people, so constructed as to be a standing menace to the community in the event of fire, most of them built "s^dth [96] DEVOURING WIDOWS' HOUSES wooden stairs, wooden halls and wooden floors, and thousands built entirely of wood. *'Over a million people have no bathing facilities in their homes; while even a greater number are limited to the use of sanitary con- veniences in common with other families, with- out proper privacy ; over a quarter of a million people had in the year 1900 no other sani- tary conveniences than antiquated yard priv- ies ; and even to-day 2,000 of these privy sinks still remain, many of them located in densely populated districts, a source of danger to all in the neighborhood, facilitating the spread of contagious disease tlirough the medium of the common house-fly." ^ Perhaps those facts, curtly stated in so many hundreds of thousands, surprise you — they may even prove of some interest. Could you see the things which the hundreds of thou- sands so lamely represent, neither surprise nor interest would satisfy you. You would act. A young lady came with her mother to a great Eastern city to do some shopping. Incident- ally, she intended to look at some of the social * Housing Reform, Lawrence Veiller, N. Y. Charities Pub. Co., 1910, pp. 7-11. [97] SOCIAL RELIGION conditions about which she had read. She was a sensitive girl, sincere and well meaning. She wanted to know whether the things which she had read were true, so she approached a friend — a physician — on the subject. "I should like to see the tenements, doctor," she explained. The doctor protested, but the girl insisted. At last he acquiesced. "To-morrow at ten," he said. The next day, at ten, they went to visit one of the doctor's patients. Turning from the main street, into a side street, they passed under a low arch into a court, ill-paved, and vile smelling. The girl put on a brave front, and, in spite of her qualms, went into a house, up two pairs of broken stairs, along a dark hallway to a closed door. "Are you all right?" the doctor asked. His companion nodded. The doctor turned the knob and they both entered the room, the doctor smiling and cheerful, the girl ^^ade eyed and silent. In one corner a single candle, set on a broken saucer, gave a dim, unsteady light. The room had no exit to the open air, but [98] DEVOURING WIDOWS' HOUSES there was a transom over the door into the hall- way, and another transom looking into what seemed to be a lighter room beyond. On the bed, covered by a ragged quilt, lay a mother with her three weeks old baby at her breast. In one corner huddled two children, the old- est of perhaps three years. Beside the bed there were two chairs, an old bureau on which the candle stood, an oil stove and a small table. The doctor spoke a few words to the mother, and then turned to address a remark to his companion. One look at her sufficed. He brought his visit to an abrupt close, and hur- ried her into the open air. "Two long breaths," he said encourag- ingly. For repty she turned her staring eyes to him, asking: "Do people really live that way?" "Yes," he answered. "The father has tuber- culosis so badly that he can work only two or three days a week. When the baby is a little older, the mother will work again. Then, when they have paid their debts, they can hire a better room." The tears started to the girl's eyes. She [ 01) 1 SOCIAL RELIGION dropped her veil hurriedly. "Let us go home," she begged. They went. On the way she said nothing. When they reached her hotel, and found her mother, she held out her hand to the doctor. "Good-bye," she said. "I will not do any shopping. We are going home to-morrow. If some people have to live that way, I have clothes enough." That girl, in an instant, grasped a truth of vast significance. While others lacked, she must be content with enough. Perhaps, if you had seen the thing as she saw it, in all of its loathsome surroundings, you, too, might have revolted as she did. Yes, you can see such things. In New York City alone there are 100,000 rooms which have no exit to the open air. Into these rooms the sunlight never penetrates, and the darkness which exists there furnishes a breeding place for the germs of tuberculosis and other diseases. It is in the dark, filthy corners of these tenement rooms that the disease germs most frequently lurk. Is it any wonder that investigators of social conditions have succeeded in establishing a very definite connection between congestion [100] DEVOURING WIDOWS' HOUSES and mortality? Are you surprised that in these quarters where food, sanitation, sunlight and even fresh air are lacking the death rate is sometimes five times as high as in the more healthy quarters of the city? During August, 1908, 719 babies died in Chicago from diarrhoeal diseases. A map with a dot on it for each death shows the high- est mortality rate in the wards where conges- tion is most prevalent. Congestion and infant mortality go hand in hand, though whether they be cause and effect it is impossible to de- termine, because in the same district "insani- tary plumbing and lack of health conveniences do their deadly work. It is the destination of the poorest milk sold in the city. It is where streets are cleaned least often or not at all; where stalest bread and oldest meat are sold." To these quarters, "in the dusk of evening, little children with shawls over their heads and market baskets on their arms return with their prizes from the city dumps and the garbage barrels of the market streets." ^ Here, in tliis prosperous America, we can- ^ On the Trail of the White Hearse, S. C. Kingsley, Survey, Aug. 14, 1909, p. 685. [ 101 ] SOCIAL RELIGION not tell accurately what the problem of conges- tion is, and what effects it is having, or will ultimately have, upon those who live in con- gested neighborhoods. We have not even troubled ourselves to take an accurate measure of our plenty. Suppose, in the course of the next ten years, that we discover what the con- ditions really are in congested neighborhoods. Meanwhile I can only refer you to the work that has been done across the sea — in Glasgow, Liverpool, Berlin, For years, human beings were huddled there "so many brace to the gar- ret," until their living began to tell on the size and stamina of the Army recruits. Then the governments acted. Their military was at stake! One investigation followed another, until the Parliamentarj'^ Committee on Physi- cal Deterioration presented its report to the English peoi^le in 1905, proving conclusively that there were lowered physique and vitality; that they existed in their most vii-ulent forms in the most congested districts; that an inti- mate relation could be established between con- gestion and disease, as well as between con- gestion and mortality, and that, further, the children from the congested districts seemed [102] DEVOURING WIDOWS' HOUSES to be gi'owing into anaemic men and women. Do you wonder that the European govern- ments have torn down squalid hovels and erected sanitar}- dv/ellings? Yet they have done these things because their soldiers were smaller in size. We have a few scattering facts about the effects of congestion upon the populations of American cities. In so far as comparison is possible, they confirm the European statistics, yet they are only sufficient to indicate the need of a more thorough investigation. Do you wonder that men are haggard? Are you surprised to learn that girls leave the in- conveniences and indecencies of their tenement homes to live on the street? How different would be your actions if the ugly problem were presented to you in all of its grim as- pects? You Samaritans, can you see how con- gestion sets upon these travelers who are jour- neying through the tenement sections of American cities? [ 103 1 CHAPTER VII THE LONG DAY Was industry made for man, or was man made for industry? Jesus said that the Sab- bath, an institution looked upon as sacred by the authorities of His time, was made for man : perhaps the same thing is true of modern industry. In either case, the matter is worthy of consideration. If man was made for in- dustry, then he must bow down before it, as the Aztecs bowed down before their Sun God, worshipping, sacrificing, rendering homage to a superior force which was created to dominate and to destroy. But, on the other hand, if it be true, as some are now bold enough to main- tain, that industry is not a deity but a serv- ant; if it be true that industry, the work of men's hands, should of right be the servant and not the master of men; if it be true that human welfare can be conserved through the [104] THE LONG DAYi subjection of industry to the service of man- kind, then it may finally appear that man's duty is not completed until he has subjugated industry and placed it so completely under his control that no one may suffer because of industrial tyranny. And the long day? you will ask. Yes, the long day is one of the most hideous survivals of a past age during which men regarded themselves as the servants of industrial pro- cesses, when wealth was a god, and welfare was overlooked or forgotten. There was once a time when it was neces- sary for men to work twelve hours a day be- cause in no other way could they produce wealth in sufficient quantities to maintain life. That time has past. In its stead has dawned a day of industrial achievement which throws at the feet of man a vast surplus of wealth — sufficient to maintain him against want — a sur- plus which he secures in exchange for a few hours of daily toil. TsTevertheless, the twelve- hour day still persists. Did I say twelve hours? In some of the steel mills, where men work twelve hours a day for two weeks and then twelve hours at [105] SOCIAL RELIGION night for two weeks more, each time that they change from the day to night shift they work twenty- four consecutive hours — a whole day without rest. One promising young man w^ho was engaged on this long shift did his first "turn" of twelve hours, ate his supper, and then started back to the mill for the next "turn." He had alreadj^ done a long day's ^vork, yet twelve hours more must pass be- fore he would have an opportunity to sleep. He was ambitious, young, energetic. As an electrician's helper, earning fifteen dollars a Aveek, he was succeeding, with the promise of rapid advancement. At half past seven he Avas in the mill and at eight he had climbed on an electric crane to make some repairs. When the repair M^as finished, he started along the narrow walk to a place where he could de- scend. Perhaps it was because the air was full of steam, perhaps he became a little dizzy. At all events, he reached out his hand, touched an electric wire from which the in- sulation had been removed, got a slight shock and fell thirty-five feet to the floor of the mill. If this promising j^oung industrial worker had spent six instead of twelve [106] THE LONG DAY hours in performing his duties as an electri- cian, he might not have lost his hfe so un- necessarily. Have you ever stood at night in front of some small station along a main line of rail- way, watching the night-expresses rush by? Perhaps there was a little rain falling — just enough to dim the vision, and make the beck- oning red and green lights indistinct and blurred in the darkness. As the great mass of steel and wood thundered past, did it ever occur to you what a responsibility rested on that engineer's shoulders as he grasped the throttle, peering ahead into the night? Fifty miles an hour on a dark night ! A slip of rock, a loose rail, an open switch, a careless dis- patcher, may send him and his whole train careening over an embankment or crashing into another train. Surely, though, such men are not over- worked ! Their positions involve far too much responsibilit5^ You are wrong there, for, while the en- gineers of the fast expresses have short hours, the engineers and brakemen on freights and the signal tower men work for periods which [ 107] SOCIAL RELIGION exceed in length those of any similar group of workers. The Interstate Commerce Commission re- cently issued a bulletin showing the relation between overwork and railroad wrecks. Ex- ample after example is cited in which a brake- man, who had worked fifteen, twenty, thirty, or even thirty-six hours, with practically no opportunity for rest, was sent back at night to flag an oncoming train, fell asleep on the track, and was cut to pieces by the engine, which, in another moment, crashed into the train from which the sleep-sick brakeman had been sent. In the same bulletin examples are given of signal tower operators who transmitted an order incorrectly after having stood for twelve, fourteen, or sixteen hours at their posts. Is it barbarous or ludicrous to expect men who have for days been denied normal sleep to retain the keenness and precision necessary for railroad operation? One of the most disastrous of recent pas- senger wrecks was caused by disobedience to signals. The signals were plainly set for the train to stop, yet the engineer, disregarding [108] THE LONG DAY them, continued at forty miles an hour and ran his train into a freight which stood on the track ahead of him. An investigation was made, which showed that the engineer had been asleep at his post when he ran past the last signal tower, and had, therefore, not seen the signals. Further inquiry showed that at the last station the engineer, who had been on duty for sixteen hours, had begged his super- ior to relieve him — stating that he could not keep awake. The superior had told the en- gineer to go about his business, and the disaster followed. Has the recently enacted Federal Law, lim- iting the length of the working day of rail- road employes, had any effect upon these conditions? I cannot tell you, but I do know that railroad employes are still overworked to the destruction of their own vitality and the endangering of the traveling public. Do you know how long the working people of the United States actually work? I mean the people who dig the coal which you burn, who make the shoes, hats, shirts and gloves which you wear, who carry you from city to city, or from street to street. The utmost [109] SOCIAL RELIGION which these men and women demand is eight hours : Eight hours for work. Eight hours for play. Eight hours for sleep. Make up the full day. Yet the average work day for textile mills is ten and a half, and for shoe factories ten hours, but for steel mills, Mr. John A. Fitch after a careful investigation of the Pittsburg steel district reports: "The eight-hour day- does not flourish. I could find only about one hundred and twenty eight-hour men in 1907, among the seventeen thousand employes in the three largest plants of the Carnegie Steel Mills in Allegheny County — three-quarters of one per cent." The report on the Wages and Hours in the Iron and Steel Industry in the United States thus summarizes the length of the working day in that industry:^ "During May, 1910, the period covered by this investigation, 50,000 or 29 per cent, of * Report on Conditions of Employment in Iron and Steel Industry, 62d Congress, 2d session, Senate Doc. 301, pp. 8-10. [110] THE LONG DAY the 173,000 employes of blast furnaces and steel works and rolling mills covered by this report customarily worked 7 days per week, and 20 per cent, of them worked 84 hours or more per week, which, in effect, means a 12- hour working day every day in the week, in- ** eluding Sunday. The evil of 7-day work was particularly accentuated by the fact, de- veloped in the investigation, that the 7-day working week was not confined to the blast- furnace department, where there is a metal- lurgical necessity for continuous operation, and in which department 88 per cent, of the employes worked 7 days a week; but it was also found that, to a considerable extent, in other departments where no such metallurg- ical necessity can be claimed, productive work was carried on on Sunday just as on other days of the week. For example, in some es- tablishments the Bessemer converters, the * open-hearth furnaces, and blooming, rail, and structural mills were found operating 7 days a week for commercial reasons only. "The hardship of a 12-hour day and a 7- day week is still further increased by the fact that every week or two weeks, as the case may [111] SOCIAL RELIGION be, when the employes on the day shift are transferred to the night shift, and vice versa, employes remain on duty without re- lief either 18 or 24 consecutive hours, accord- ing to the practice adopted for the change of shift. . . . "That much of the Sunday labor which has been prevalent in the steel industry is no more necessary than in other industries is shown conclusively by the fact that, at the time of the investigation made in 1910 by this Bureau into the conditions of labor in the Bethlehem Steel Works, the president of the Steel Corporation directed the rigid enforcement of a resolution adopted three years previous, cutting out a large part of Sunday work except in the blast- furnace department. Even in the blast-fur- nace department, where there is a metallurg- ical necessity for continuous operation day and night throughout 7 days of the week, there is practically nothing except the desire to economize in the expense of production that has prevented the introduction of a sys- tem that would give each employe 1 day of rest out of the 7. . • . It should not be over- looked that it is not simply the character or [ 112 ] THE LONG DAY the continuity of the work, but the fact that in the case of the 12-hour-a-day man one-half of each 24 hours — more than three-fourths of his waking hours — is spent on duty in the mills, which is of significance to the worker and his family. Nothing has been done by the manu- facturers nor have any proposals been made to lessen the proportion of men working 72 hours or more per week. This proportion re- mains unchanged, being unaffected by the plan to give the men who were working 84 hours per week one day of rest in seven. "An added significance attaches to the con- ditions of labor here described as characteristic of the iron and steel industry when we con- sider that the general tendency in other in- dustries for years past has been toward a shorter w^orking-day. Years ago the 10-hour day became almost a standard; since that time further reductions have brought the working- day to 9, and, in many cases, to 8 hours, and this reduction has been accompanied by a part holiday on Saturday. It is, therefore, in strik- ing contrast to this general tendency in other industries to find in a great basic industry, such as that part of the iron and steel industry [113] SOCIAL RELIGION covered in this report, that approximately only 14 per cent, of the 173,000 employes work less than 60 hours per week and almost 43 per cent, work 72 hours or over per week." Do you realize the meaning of a "twelve- hour day"? If a man must spend an hour going to and from work (this is below, rather than above the average) ; if he requires an hour to eat breakfast and dinner ; if he spends half an hour washing, dressing and undress- ing; if he secures eight hours of sleep, he has left in each day ninety minutes to visit his family, read, play, enjoy, live. The twelve- hour day means that the man who leaves home at half past five in the morning, and starts to work at six, quits work at six in the eve- ning, and reaches home at six-thirty. In the steel industry, at the time of this investi- gation, there were ninety thousand men doing this six days a week, and thirty-five thousand others doing it seven days a week. Such conditions persist in the face of ex- pert testimony that men work better during an eight-hour than during a twelve-hour day. In some industries, such as steel making and railroad work, long hours are maintained con- [114] THE LONG DAY tinuously throughout the year. On the other hand, many industries have "rush seasons," during which the factories work for abnor- mally long hours, and then do little or no work in the "slack season." The paper box indus- try, the candy industry at Christmas and Easter, and the clothing industry before the spring and fall seasons are typical of "rush" season trades. The hours in the steel industry are habitually long. The hours in the candy, box and clothing industries are long only dur- ing "rush" times, when overtime work is usu- ally done. Whether the long hours be contin- uous or intermittent, their result is the same. Both involve overwork. Was industry made for man, or man for industry? Is it necessary that these steel-pud- dlers or those railroad brakemen work twelve or twenty-four hours in a single day? The stability of society does not depend upon their sacrifice, because there is already enough and to spare. The strain of industrial effort upon the worker depends first upon the length of the day's work, and, second, upon its intensity. Not only are hours in American industry long, [iir>] SOCIAL RELIGION but they continue long in the face of a rapid increase in the industrial strain. Men who work the machines find them geared in such a way that they maintain a certain speed. When the machine is started, the operator must keep the pace or lose his position. One man in a group is paid an extra wage to set a pace, which all of the other workers in the same group must maintain if they are to hold their positions. Where workers are paid by the piece, the piece rate is set so low that the worker must create a very large output in order to earn a living wage. These and a score of other devices are used to speed men to their uttermost. Within the last decade hours have slightly decreased in the industrial world, but with this decrease in hours has gone an increase in speed. The girls in the recent shirt waist makers' strike in New York complained that instead of watching one needle running as needles did ten years ago, at the rate of 2,200 strokes a minute, they were now compelled to watch from two to twenty needles on the same ma- chine, some running as high as 4,400 strokes a minute. The needles break, the thread [116] THE LONG DAY catches, the material draws — a dozen things happen, and, as the work is piece work, every minute counts. While the total number of hours may be less, the total vitality expended on the work is necessarily much greater be- cause of the increased concentration and speed required. Fatigue is the j^roduct of the number of hours of work multiplied by the intensity of the work during each hour. The number of hours has decreased, somewhat, but the de- crease in hours has been more than offset by the great increase in the intensity of factory work. In the steel mills of Pittsburg, "sup- erintendent is pitted against superintendent, foreman against foreman, mill against mill. When a record is broken, it means simply that the goal to be struggled for has been set ahead. In the mills of the Carnegie Steel Company two months in each year, usually IMarch and October, are known as 'record months,' and are sacred to the breaking of records. The mills are pushed to the limit ; every possible ad- vantage is given in the way of perfect equip- ment, and all known obstacles arc removed be- forehand. Some departments are run straiglit [117] SOCIAL RELIGION through the month without an hour's stop, and all are run overtime. If records are broken, the superintendent passes the cigars. The new record has an effect, for what is done in March and October is of course possible in April and November." ^ Do not suppose that it is in Pittsburg alone that men and women overwork. Pittsburg is cited as an example because it is in Pittsburg that the best investigation of conditions has been made. But equally striking examples of overwork can be found in every great in- dustrial state of the Union. Similar condi- tions exist for example in the textile mills of New England. Years ago, a woman tended two slowly running looms. Later, as the hours of work grew less, the number of looms was increased to four and six, and now, with the Drapers, an operative is expected to look after from twelve to sixteen looms. Each new labor-saving device; each inven- tion which increases the speed at which ma- chines work, or the number of machines that *The Steel Industry and the Labor Problem, J. A. Fitch, Charities and the Commons, March 6, 1910, vol. 21, pp. 1083- 1084. [118] THE LONG DAY a man must tend, makes overwork more prob- able. Overwork is a menace to industrial, social and personal welfare, because it results in one of the most serious and far-reaching human maladies — fatigue. Fatigue, long continued, leads inevitably to exhaustion ; exhaustion leads to disease, and then, ultimately to a deatli which is due to continual, wearing, intense work. Overwork, with its attendant evils, thus becomes a problem of serious magnitude. Fatigue is the result of poison. Men and women are tired, not primarily because their muscle and nerve tissues are worn out, but be- cause the tissues are full of chemical com- pounds which make activity difficult or impos- sible. The girl working on a 2,200-stroke-a- minute sewing machine is constantly creating, in her nen^e and muscle tissues, chemical com- pounds wliich, when present in sufficient quan- tities, produce that languor which makes good work and joyous living alike impossible. The poisons created by exertion are elim- inated from the body during rest, or are neu- tralized by antitoxin, whicli the body generates for the purpose. Under normal conditions, [119] SOCIAL RELIGION the period of rest following a period of exer- tion will be long enough to permit of the re- moval or neutralization of the poisons due to exertion. If such a period is allowed, the fatigue of each day — a healthy kind of "tired feeling" — will disappear during the night and the succeeding day will witness an amount of bodily vigor equal to that of the preceding day, if not slightly superior to it. This rep- resents the normal life. If, however, the work day be unduly prolonged, Sunday be elim- inated, and no opportunity be given nature to remove or neutralize the fatigue poisons, seri- ous debility results — anemia, lassitude, indif- ference, and later nervous disorders and gen- eral nervous breakdown. The waste of fatigue is far in excess of the waste from iUness, since fatigue is directlj^ responsible for the lower efficiency of at least one-half of the population. Prof. Irving Fisher in his "National Vitality" counts fa- tigue as the leading factor involved in decreas- ing vitality and efficiency. Both in the schools and in the factories, the American people are creating more fatigue poison than the sj^stem can neutralize or remove in the hours of rest. [120] THE LONG DAY Born into our industrial societj^ gripped by the stern necessity which compels him to earn his bread, the worker enters American indus- tiy, and, caught in its levers and cogs, labors on, producing what he must, to earn what he may. There is no necessary relation between the amount of effort which he expends and the return which he receives. Society does not need the extra goods which his weary fingers shape. There is one primary factor upon which society must depend for its main- tenance — that is upon joyous, enthusiastic men and women. There is neither joy nor en- thusiasm in the victim of the long day. Was industry made for man or man for in- dustry? It is not necessary that these steel puddlers and railroad brakemen work twelve hours in the twenty-four. Social stability does not depend upon the sacrifice of their vitality. Enough goods are already produced. We are sufficientl}^ prosperous. Then let them stop! Let them stop, as they have in Australasia, at the end of eight hours. If the average worker in modern industry was engaged in an occupation of tense inter- est and broad value, eight hours might be too [1211 SOCIAL RELIGIONi few, but the average job is a dead job — mon- otonous, same, to the point of madness. Could you make the same motion four thousand times a day, and keep it up day after day, year after year, without growing weary? Eight hours is enough, unless it can be made to appear that the product of additional hours is necessary to the continuance of the human race or that men were created only to engage in industry. Men were made to live; overwork destroys life; hence overwork subverts the real purpose of life. Jesus said, "I am come that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly." What, think you, would be his comment on the twelve-hour day? Was industry made for man, or man for in- dustry? There is one possible answer to that question. "Every social institution was made for man, hence when an institution ceases to serve man, and instead demands service of him, that institution must either be reformed or abolished." Men and women need not work twelve hours a day in order to secure a livelihood for themselves and for their fam- ilies. Since this fact has been established be- [122] THE LONG DAY yond question, the Long Day has been weighed in the balance, found wanting, and condemned to abohtion. Yours, Good Samar- itans, is the task of enforcing this just sen- tence. I 123 ] CHAPTER VIII THE CURSE OF ENFORCED IDLENESS Of all the disasters that fall upon the work- ingman's home, the most fatal is unemploy- ment — enforced idleness. You know the tramp — you cartoon him, joke about him. He makes an excellent butt for your ridicule be- cause he is seeking for a chance to shovel snow in July, and to pick apples in January. You laugh at the tramp — the professional loafer, who idles because he does not want to work; but are you acquainted with the man who, lacking opportunity, would work if he could? The man who walks the streets from early until late, seeking a chance to be employed? Who sees his family hungry, threatened by an ex- acting landlord, overwhelmed with debt, and hurrying deeper and deeper into the depths of misery? That man is one of the unem- ployed. [124] CURSE OF ENFORCED IDLENESS Unemployed? Then it is not true that there is work for all ? We have been told for years that if the disemployed mechanic would go West, he might earn four dollars a day and his keep during harvest season. Overjoyed at the prospect, he eagerly seizes the opportunity, pawTis his furniture, exhausts his borrowing power, takes any means which will enable him to get thirty or forty dollars, or else, lacking such means, he joins the tramps, and rides on brake-beams, looking eagerly for the chance to work. Let me tell you the story of a man who went to the Western harvest fields. He was not poverty stricken, but an industrious mechanic, disemployed by a temporary closing of the shop in which he worked. It was summer, work in his line was scarce, he had heard the stories of fabulous opportunity in Western fields, so taking from his savings fifty dollars, he bade his family farewell, bought a ticket and started in a day coach on a three-day journey. Once in the grain belt, he began looking for work. Almost immediately, he was rewarded. A farmer, who was harvesting, offered him a position on the thresher, at two [ 125 1 SOCIAL RELIGION dollars a day. Two dollars ? He had expected at least four. "Nothing to it, young fellow," answered the farmer. "You're a green hand — I can't rely on you. Besides, I have lots of men offer- ing. I turned a dozen away last week." So the mechanic swallowed his pride and be- gan at two dollars a day. He meant to do his best, but his experience had been wholly in- doors. On the thresher, surrounded by dust, under a merciless sun, he dropped the second day, and was carried into the barn. The next morning the farmer came to him. "You see," he complained, "you greenies aren't worth your salt. You aren't used to the heat and you can't stand it." Then, more kindly, "stay close to-day, you'll be all right by day after to-morrow." So the first week ended with eight dollars and a small bill for drugs. But the mechanic persevered, and at the end of the third week the good-natured farmer raised his wages to two dollars and a half. During the fifth week the hands were clean- ing up the corners, and on Friday night threshing was over. [126] CURSE OF ENFORCED IDLENESS Light of heart, optimistic, and eager for an- other place, fifty odd dollars added to his store, the young man took the road Sunday morning. Everywhere he met with the same story. Harvesting was at an end. If he cared to go up into Oregon or down into Cali- fornia, they were sure he could get good wages at fruit picking. The car fare? Yes, it would cost him thirty dollars or so to get there. So he journeyed, picking up a day's work here and there, for four weeks. He had rid- den a little in trains, but that ate money so rapidly! He had lived from hand to mouth, and was not feeling in good trim. Four weeks had gone, and when he counted his store, he found but thirty-five of the fifty dollars with which he had quit his first job. He reflected. A letter from home decided him. The shop had resumed and the foreman had asked for him. Going to the nearest station, he pur- chased a ticket home for twenty-eight dollars exactly. "Well, I'm back," he told his wife. "I started witli fifty dollars, I've worked and walked for ten weeks, and I've got just thirty [1271 SOCIAL RELIGION dollars in my jeans. That ten weeks cost me twenty dollars, besides the keep of you and the kids. I might have been like other folks and taken my vacation at the shore." I tell this story in detail, because it is not exceptional, and because it shows how next to impossible it is for a man who loses his regular work to turn easily to something else and make a living. Brought up to one trade, the modern worker is dependent on that trade. If his trade fails him, he is in a sorry plight. Suppose that, instead of going West, this man had stayed in his own city, or gone from city to city, seeking work. He might have met with no better success. "There's lots of work, if a man really wants to do it," cries the successful business man. "These fellows don't really care whether they work or not." That trite statement is even more inaccurate than the generally accepted belief in "plenty of chance on the Western farm." In 1907 I knew an earnest hard working young fellow of thirty-five, who was earning $3.50 a day, as a skilled mechanic. No, he never drank. When the hard times came, this [128] CURSE OF ENFORCED IDLENESS man was thrown out of employment, by the closing of the factory in which he worked. For three months he tramped the streets, look- ing for a job — any kind of a job — to assist in keeping his family above the poverty line, and during these months he was denied an op- portunity to earn a livelihood. He was not alone. A want "ad." calling for five men was answered by five hundred strong-bodied workers, who had lost their onl}'- means of support — employment for wages. After an exhaustive, scholarly analysis of the causes of misery in workingmen's homes, Dr. Devine concludes that unemplo5''ment is the greatest single cause. In seventy per cent, of the 5,000 families which he had under con- sideration one or more of the members were unemployed when the families applied to the Charity Society for relief. Unemployment is the great fear of the wage worker. The unemployed man is not at fault be- cause he cannot find work. From boyhood he may have been underfed and thus rendered incapable of working efficiently; he may have fallen sick of typhoid, the product of a poison- ous milk or water supply; he may be thrown [129] SOCIAL RELIGION out of work by a strike, or through the clos- ing of the factory or mine due to lack of orders. Some or all of these causes may com- bine, and usually do combine, to create un- employment. They are causes which can be neither foreseen nor prevented by the indi- vidual worker. The wage-earner is at the mercy of modern industry, and, since even the most strong- minded captains of industry have not suc- ceeded in piloting their industrial craft past the disaster of bankruptcy, the helpless worker suffers. Individual business failure is no longer as frequent as it once was, though the bank- ruptcy of a business may still temporarily dis- employ considerable numbers of men. The real danger of unemployment lies in the indus- trial depressions which have swept over the western world with terrible regularity during the last century. Once in ten years these pan- ics visit the land, and for one, two, or even three years industry is prostrated — fac- tories close, mines shut down — and millions of men and women are thrown out of employ- ment. These great national disasters, so much [130] CURSE OF ENFORCED IDLENESS more terrible than individual failures, empha- size unemployment to an unbelievable extent. Suppose that your father, and wife, and uncles, and sisters, regularly, every decade, were prostrated by a terrible illness, lasting for months or years. Would you not take every measure to discover the cause of the sick- ness, and prevent its recurrence? When the nation is confronted with a like situation, can we do differently? Just how extensive unemployment in Amer- ica actually is we have no mea^:: of knowing. Certain things concerning it, however, we can state with certainty. For example, a study of the statistics shows that unemployment is always a factor in modern industry. In New York and Massachusetts and New Jersey, where careful figures have been kept for years, there is a continuous unemployment record. Whether from personal or industrial causes, the average worker must expect a certain pro- portion of unemployment every year. In the mines the unemployment will equal about one- third of the entire working time. In other in- dustries the average unemployment in a year will amount to perhaps one-fifth of the work- 1 VU 1 SOCIAL RELIGION ing time. But these figures are averages. During some years, when great strikes or trade depressions prevail, unemployment increases to such an extent that a man may lose one- half of the working time. During the anthra- cite strike of 1902 the mines worked only 116 days, a little over one-third of the number of normal working days in the year. Before these causes the worker is powerless. He maj", as one individual, do his part to prevent strikes, but he plays no part at all in directing these forces which take his bread from his mouth. One of the phases of unemployment which has presented the greatest difficulty to stu- dents and administrators is that involved in casual labor. For example, the dock men, who load and unload vessels, work one day this week, five days next week, and, then meeting a period of great prosperity, they wall work day and night for several days. Following this overwork will come a week with nothing to do. Dock-labor presents this aspect the world over. It is, perhaps, the greatest single class of casual labor, which has been called by Dr. Devine the "greatest of all maladjust- ments." Either because they are inefficient or [132] CURSE OF ENFORCED IDLENESS because the nature of their work renders them uncertain and indifferent, these casual laborers, described by Dr. Patten as the "peripatetics of industry," wander from one employment to another, are discharged at the first decrease in work, and leave one place as soon as another opening offers. "All of that sounds very well," you ex- claim, "but it is their fault. They might have learned a trade while they were young. There is no lack of employment among skilled men. They might, even now, study at night to pre- pare themselves for an advance in position. They might save at least a part of their earn- ings during prosperous times, and thus defend themselves against periods of unemploy- ment." Perhaps, but, if you had lived their lives, would you have done different^? Perchance they were underfed and badly housed. Per- chance they lacked initiative, and their parents, financially unable to helji them forward, sent them to work at the beginning of the adoles- cent period, or else allo\ved them to drift from one occupation to another. Then there is another pliase of this problem. [133] SOCIAL RELIGION Casual labor must be done, and if one man did not do the work, another would — and at the same wages. The demand for casual labor is in itself a maladjustment of serious magni- tude. However, granting all of the argu- ments: that these men might have learned a trade; might have maintained a higher stand- ard of thought and intelligence, thus lifting their families over the poverty line, there is still one factor which transcends all other con- siderations: the children of these men are fol- lowing in their fathers' footsteps, perpetuating a bad system. Even supposing that the fath- er's lack of earning power be due to inebriety, the children still have a right to demand pro- tection and opportunity. Whether unemploj^ment be the result of sickness and accident, of industrial depression, or of the existence of casual trades, its effects upon the unemploj^ed and his family are the same. Accustomed to regularity of living, the man who is unemployed finds himself without any definite restraints upon his ac- tivities. The result is usually some form of dissipation. Often in his attempt to secure work he uses the freight trains as a means of [ 134 ] CURSE OF ENFORCED IDLENESS getting from place to place. The life of the "hobo" proves too attractive, and the man, freed from any restraining influence, becomes a confirmed tramp. Thus the influences of unemployment are unsettling, and the unem- ployed loses one of the most desirable charac- teristics of an efficient worker — methodical regularity. At the end of a period of unemployment the average man is far less efficient and less capa- ble of taking his place in industry than he was at the beginning of the period of unemploy- ment. Unemployment and inefficiency, inef- ficiency and unemi^loyment, are two comple- mentary forces, supplementing and emphasiz- ing each other. After fifteen years' study of charitable work — in which unemployment plays so large a part — Dr. Devine thus sums up the influence of the personal element in unemployment: "From the point of view of the charitable agencies, the importance of this subject is in- dicated by the fact that in two-thirds of the families who come under the care of the Char- ity Organization Society in industrially normal times, one or more wage-earners are unem- [ 13.) ] SOCIAL RELIGION ployed at the time of their appHcation for aid." Dr. Devine reaches this conclusion after a careful analysis of the various factors involved in the problem. He bases his conclusion, pri- marily, on a study of 5,000 families which came for help to the New York Charity Or- ganization Society, in a normally prosperous year. Intemperance, laziness, vice, accident, sickness, desertion — all of these factors played some part in causing destitution, but dominat- ing all was unemployment. There is no ques- tion but that personal depravity seems in the last analysis to be due to the impossibility of finding any means by which an honest liveli- hood may be secured. The effects of unemployment extend to the family of the unemployed. The irregular life of the father communicates itself to the chil- dren, and the lack of food resulting from a lack of income means malnutrition for all. Thus the energy already expended in building up the family to a standard of efficient hving is negatived by the period of unemployment involving malnutrition and family degeneracy. You and I are members of a society in [ 136] CURSE OF EXFORCED IDLENESS which men are denied the right to make a Hv- ing for their famihes — a denial which brings untold hardship and misery. Through no fault of his own — often, indeed, through the operation of forces which are, so far as we now know, beyond human control — the bread- winner is told that he may win no more bread. When you thought that I was exaggerating the American hell, had you considered the Curse of Enforced Idleness? [137] CHAPTER IX HUMAN SACRIFICE The other day I was riding with an insur- ance man past a structural steel bridge in proc- ess of construction. In the course of the con- versation we commented upon the constant risks run by structural steel workers. "Yes," said my friend, "poor devils, the danger is so great that our company will not insure them." Think of that! An American industry in which the accident risk is so high that an insur- ance company refuses to insure the workers. Yet, with all its hazards, this industry is car- ried on, and you and I ride over the bridges and work in the office buildings in the erection of which these men lose their lives. You have often heard it said that life in America is very cheap. It is told of Rudyard Kipling that on one of his journeys to the United States he rode in an engine over a Western line. At one place they passed at great speed over a light wooden trestle which [138] HUMAN SACRIFICE swayed under the v^eight of the traui, where- upon ]Mr. Kipling protested to the engineer against the danger of such construction. The engineer, described by Mr. KiiDling as a typi- cal American, replied with a sentiment which sums up the whole of American accident phi- losophy: "You see," commented the engineer, "it's this way. When we build a bridge, we guess it's going to last forever, and sometimes we guess ourselves into the depot, and some- times we guess ourselves into hell." We are careless of life, and nowhere is our carelessness more strikingly portrayed than in our treat- ment of industrial accidents. A certain risk seems to be inevitably con- nected with some phases of modern industry. Mr. Kipling has very strikingly described this in his "Sons of Martha": "They finger death at their gloves' ends, When they piece and repiece the living wire. He rears against the gates they tend, They feed him, hungry, beside their fires. At break of day, ere men see clear, They stumble into his terrible stall. And hale him forth like a haltered steer, And goad him and turn him till evenfall." ( 139 ] SOCIAL RELIGION To such risks, which will always constitute an essential part of an industry using giant mechanical forces, there are added other risks entirely unnecessary, as a consequence of which men suffer from accidents which are wholly preventable. Such accidents are con- stantly occurring in steel mills, machine shops, and other places where nature is harnessed to do the work of man. A typical illustration of such accidents is furnished by the death of a steel worker, who was burned by hot slag in a Chicago steel mill. Ora Allen is Inquest No. 39,193 in the Cor- oner's Office in the Criminal Court Building downtown. On the twelfth of last December he was a ladleman in the North Open Hearth Mill of the Illinois Steel Company, twelve miles from downtown, in South Chicago. On the fifteenth he was a corpse in the company's private hospital. On the seventeenth his re- mains were viewed by six good and lawful men at Griesel & Son's undertaking shop at 8496 Commercial Avenue. The first witness, Newton Allen, told the gist of the story : "On the twelfth of last December Newton [140] HUMAN SACRIFICE Allen was operating overhead crane No. 3 in the North Open Hearth Mill of the Illinois Steel Company. Seated aloft in the cage of his crane, he dropped his chains and hooks to the men beneath and carried pots and ladles up and do^v^l the length of the pouring- floor. "On the twelfth of last December Newton Allen, up in the cage of his 100-ton electric crane, was requested by a ladleman from be- low to pick up a pot and carry it to another part of the floor. This pot was filled with the hot slag that is the refuse left over when the pure steel has been run oiF. "Newton Allen let down the hooks of his crane. The ladleman attached those hooks to the pot. Newton Allen started down the floor. Just as he started, one of the hooks slipped. There was no shock or jar. Newton Allen was warned of danger only by the fumes that rose toward him. He at once reversed his lever, and, when his crane had carried him to a place of safetj--, descended and hurried back to the scene of the accident. He saw a man lying on his face. He heard him screaming. He saw that he was being roasted by the slag [141] SOCIAL RELIGION that had poured out of the pot. He ran up to him and turned him over. " 'At that time,' said Newton Allen, in his testimony before the jury, 'I did not know it was my brother. It was not till I turned him over that I recognized him. Then I saw it was my brother Ora. I asked him if he was burned bad. He said, *No, not to be afraid — he was not burned as bad as I thought.' " Three days later Ora Allen died in the hos- pital of the Illinois Steel Company. He had told liis brother he wasn't "burned bad," but Ira Miltimore, the doctor who attended him, testified that his death was due to a "third- degree burn of the face, neck, arms, forearms, hands, back, right leg, right thigh, and left foot." A third degree burn is the last de- gree there is. There is no fourth degree. "But why did the hook on that slag-pot slip? Because it was attached merely to the rim of the pot, and not to the lugs. That pot had no lugs. It ought to have had them. Lugs are pieces of metal that project from the rim of the pot, like ears. They are put there for the express purpose of providing a proper and secure hold for the hooks. But [142] HUMAN SACRIFICE they had been broken off in some previous ac- cident and they had not been replaced. On the twelfth of last December the ladleman had been obliged to use the mere rim, or flange, of the pot, and with that precarious attachment the pot had been hoisted and carried. " 'Is it dangerous to carry a pot by its flange?' asked the deputy coroner. " *It is,' said Newton Allen, 'but it is the duty of the ladleman to put the hooks on the pot. I work on signal from him.' "Mike Skiba, the ladleman, being sum- moned, testified that he had attached the hooks to the pot by the flange, but that he had no orders against attaching them in that way. "John Pfister, the boss ladleman, Mike Ski- ba's superior, said, on oath : 'I have no orders not to raise the slag-pots when the lugs are broken ofl*.' "George L. Danforth, the superintendent of the North Open Hearth INlill, an expensive man, who might himself have been killed on the occasion in question, because his duties oblige him to frequent all jiarts of the mill, testified that 'pots had been raised in the man- ner described for three or i'our years and that [ 143 ] SOCIAL RELIGION this was the first time that one of them had faUen.' "What did the jury think? It thought as follows : " 'We, the jury, believe that slag-pots should not be handled without their lugs, and we recommend that the lugs be replaced before the pots are used in the future.' " ^ How unnecessary, how barbarous, is such waste of human life. Sometimes it is not the life that is lost, yet the disaster is most serious. A boy of sixteen went to work in a machine shop with the understanding that he was to do odd jobs and learn the trade. A short time after his employment he was asked by the fore- man to take charge of an intricate machine. It is cheaper to employ a boy of sixteen at $7.00 a week than a mechanic at $15.00. The boy protested, but his protest was unlieeded. The next day he went again to the foreman with the statement that the machine was broken. The foreman answered him roughly and sent him back to his place. A few min- utes later the machine did break, and when ^ Making Steel and Killing Men, William Hard, Every- body's Magazine, November, 1907, vol. 17, pp. 584-583. [144] HUMAN SACRIFICE the boy was taken home from the hospital the three middle fingers of his right hand were gone. For life this boy is rendered inefficient, his earning power is decreased and his chance of living a full life is diminished because of the carelessness or indifference of an incompe- tent foreman. The case of this boy is one among tens of thousands which is never heard of in the news- papers and which attracts no public notice, but which is, nevertheless, as serious to the boy and to his family as if it had been called to public attention on the front page of all of the great city dailies. There are accidents, however, which do re- ceive wide publicity. Take, for example, the mine disaster at Cherry, Illinois. Cherrj^ is a typical Illinois coal mining town, standing out on the dull prairie. One Saturday, in 1910, while men were at work in the second and third veins — 303 men in the second and 182 men in the third — a car containing six bales of hay was sent down the main shaft and switched around behind other cars to the air shaft. Here it was pushed back into the air passage out of the way, and the hay caught fire from [145] SOCIAL RELIGION a torch. Eventually the fire in the car was extinguished, the hay was dumped to the third vein and the fire put out, but, in the meantime, this fire had communicated itself to the air shaft — the emergency exit — which contained wooden stairs. These stairs took fire, and at once cut off the only means of exit from the mine. The engineer continued to lower and hoist the cage until all of the men who were alive had been brought to the surface. Then the entrance to the mine was closed up and sealed in an attempt to smother the fire which had spread rapidly through the mine. Those miners who were not burned were overcome by the gases which at once collected. In all, 360 men lost their lives in this disaster, because the emergency exit, made of wood instead of steel or cement, was one of the most inflam- mable things in the mine ; because there was no organized system of fire drill or alarm, which could warn the men of danger ; because of the official carelessness which permitted open torches near cars of hay ; because, finally, there was an utter lack of any adequate provisions for saving the miners in case of disaster. Mine disasters are not new. They have oc- [ 146] HUMAN SACRIFICE curred before and continue to occur with fear- ful regularity. Indeed, so frequent and so regular are the disasters that a speaker recently declared that it was a misnomer to describe them as industrial "accidents," since an acci- dent is unlooked for, while mine casualties may be predicted with a reasonable degree of cer- tainty. The disaster at Cherry was a typical "big" accident — one which occurs once in a decade and which wins wide newspaper publicity. The great majority of accidents differ essen- tially from this "disaster" type. Disasters are infrequent, and the number killed and injured in disasters is insignificant in comparison with the numbers killed and injured in individual accidents. The statement is well illustrated by the statistics of coal mine accidents in the United States in 1906. In gas, powder, and dust explosions 308 men were killed and 522 were injured, while in all other forms of ac- cidents 1,740 were killed and 4,055 were in- jured. Disasters are more fre(]uent in the mines than anyivhere else, except perhaps in railroading, yet the number of persons killed and injured in these mine disasters consti- [ 147 1 SOCIAL RELIGION tuted only one-seventh of the total deaths and injuries. Do you know that we kill a greater num- ber of miners, both in proportion to the num- ber of men employed and to the number of tons mined, than England, France, Germany, or Belgium? Do you know that, while the mine accident rate in all of these countries is decreasing, it is actually increasing in the United States? Yet many of the mines of Europe are thousands of feet below the sur- face, and the difficulties and dangers attending upon mining there are infinitely greater than the dangers encountered in the United States. This failure to protect the miners is one great challenge of the effectiveness of our civ- ilization. More than that, it is a personal chal- lenge to you and to me, for each time that we use coal, or that coal is used in keeping us warm, in transporting us or in feeding us, we are using up a commodity which is pro- duced at a wholly needless expenditure of human pain and human life. Equaling the mine accidents in fatality, but far exceeding them in extent, are the railroad accidents. Every few weeks or months the [148] HUMAN SACRIFICE papers describe, under black headlines, some awful wreck, in which Uves were sacrificed wholesale — either because a switch was left open, a coupling broke, a slip had deposited stone or dirt on the track, or because one or more of a score of minor causes had contrib- uted to the accident. A short time ago, as a heavily loaded passenger train was passing over a long trestle, the rails spread, letting two of the coaches drop forty feet into the chasm be- low. Nearly two score of men and wom- en were killed and numbers were injured. Rails should never spread on a trestle. At all such danger points special precaution should be taken to insure against accident. It may be that inspection should be more fre- quent ; it may be that the rails should be relaid every six months — whatever the remedy, some means exist for preventing such fiendish butcheries. When I say some means exist, I speak advisedly, for European countries, in spite of denser traffic, maintain a speed equal to that of our trains with but a fraction of the accidents. These great railroad disasters, like explo- [ 149 1 SOCIAL RELIGION sions in coal mines, are unusual; they consti- tute the exception — not the rule. As in coal mines, seven times as many persons are killed and injured by the minor accidents — falls of rock, jamming between cars, and the like — so in railroading the great majority of persons are killed and injured by twos and threes, swelling the total until the Interstate Com- merce Commission reports approximately a hundred thousand deaths and injuries on the railroads of the United States for each twelve months. We know little of factory accidents except that they do happen. Fingers are crushed; arms are amputated; men are caught in fly- wheels and whirled to their death ; blast furnaces are run until they burst, scattering showers of molten metal on all of the workmen within reaching distance. These are but a few of the forms in which accidents reach the factorj^ worker. Cogs may be inclosed; machines guarded; fly-wheels sheathed; and blast fur- naces repaired before the exploding point has been reached; nevertheless, when we build a blast furnace, we guess it is going to last for- ever. Sometimes we guess ourselves a thou- [ 150 ] HUMAN SACRIFICE sand tons of pig iron and sometimes an incan- descent grave. It is all a guess, and we revel in it. Consider, for a moment, the subject of street car accidents. In New York City between two and three hundred persons are killed each year by the street cars. In other American cities the number decreases in proportion to the population, until, in a city like Los An- geles, California, the number averages between sixty and eighty per year. Contrast these ap- palling totals with the number for Liverpool, England, where 4 persons are killed in a year. Why does this difference exist? Simply be- cause in Liverpool a fender has been placed on the cars which practicallj'^ rubs the street on all sides, making it impossible for anything — even a baseball — to get under the car. Liverpool is not alone in its guarding of street cars. All of the leading cities of Europe re- port street car accident rates far below those of the leading American cities. Could we not adopt similar devices in the United States? Could we not protect our citi- zens from death under street cars? Certainly, but it costs money. In the words of one street [151] SOCIAL RELIGION railroad president: "Do you think I'm going to pay $50 each for those patent fenders when I can get the ones I am using now for $7.50?" Certainly not, for remember that the street raih'oad, existing to make profits rather than to serve the pubHc, is not doing anything which does not pay. Dehberately we hold the balance. On one side are dividends; on the other human lives. The dividends are weightier : the balance sinks. Do you hear that little girl shrieking as she is rolled under the wheels by a cheap fender? Mine accidents, railroad accidents, accidents in factories, on structural work, and in miscel- laneous industries are alarmingly frequent in all parts of the United States. The best studies of the subject indicate that slightly more than half a million men and women and children are killed or injured each year by in- dustrial casualties. In the words of Mr. Arthur B. Reeve: "It is not unwarrantable to assert that we send to the hospital or the graveyard one worker every minute of the year." Such figures stagger the imagination, but they emphasize the far-reaching impor- tance of industrial accidents. [152] HUMAN SACRIFICE The death of the breadwinner is a disaster to any family. The statistics of industrial ac- cidents show that the majority of those who are killed are between twenty and thirty-five years of age. Even unmarried workers are, in most cases, supporting in part or in whole some family group, so that the industrial acci- dent, whether to married or single men, usually results in family disaster. The industrial accident comes suddenly. It is, in a measure, unforeseen. There is another group of industrial casualties, however, where the risk is deliberate. I refer to the so-called dangerous trades, which result in industrial diseases. Industrial diseases are the product of a long period of exposure to the dangers of danger- ous trades. Certain trades, such, for example, as structural iron work, grinding, polishing, work with lead, and with phosphorus, and other similar trades, are noted for the high risk which their maintenance involves. In such trades the death rate is much higher than the average death rate of the community. The man who enters a white lead works, or a paint factory, ultimately finds, if he is work- [ 153 ] SOCIAL RELIGION ing in contact with lead, that his food does not digest; that there is a blue line on his gums; that, finally, his teeth are falling out. His doctor says: "Lead poisoning. G^t another job, or you'll die." If the man stays he will die. If he leaves his position and seeks, with his decreased vitality, to find a new occupation he learns what lead poisoning really costs. In other dangerous trades similar risks exist. Coal miners contract asthma. A miner's lung tissue is often black from the fine particles of coal dust which have penetrated through the bronchial tubes. Phosphorus workers contract an insidious disease from contact with white phosphorus which results in the decay of the jaw bone. Grinders and polishers, fill- ing their lungs with tiny particles of metal, open the way for tuberculosis. On entering such a trade a workman, if he is familiar with the facts, knows well that he runs a risk higher than that of his fellow workers in other indus- tries. Yet to offset this increased risk, as a rule, wages are little higher than in other trades demanding similar skill. The burden of dangerous trades, like the burden of acci- dents, is borne by the worker and his famih'. ' [ 154 ] HUMAN SACRIFICE This is one of the most significant things in the whole discussion of industrial accidents and industrial diseases. The worker bears the bur- den. The studies recently completed in Pitts- burg and New York under the direction of JNIiss Crystal Eastman indicate beyond the shadow of a doubt that the family of a worker is the chief burden bearer in the case of the great majoritj^ of industrial accidents. There are certain trades in which accidents are expected to occur; certain industries, such as the manufacture of lead and of yellow phos- phorus matches, involve unusual industrial risks. Obviously, then, these industries should bear the burden of their own danger. If a worker enters a dangerous trade, he should be compensated for the danger which he incurs. When the public chooses to use the j^roducts of such a dangerous trade, they sliould pay for the higher wages in an increased cost of the product. Could they well do less in return for the sacrifice of health and life? What need is there for dwelling longer on this human sacrifice? INIen, women, and chil- dren, too, go down daily from Jerusalem to Jericho ; they fall among thieves who rob them [ loo 1 SOCIAL RELIGION of vitality and life; leave them sometimes wounded, sometimes dead. Meanwhile you stand by witnessing the assault ; you read daily of railroad accidents and mine explosions ; you hear of the ravages of occupational disease; yet you do not raise a finger to check the slaughter. The priest, the Levite, and the Sa- maritan came by after the thieves had finished their work. They did not see them set upon their victim. They were powerless to prevent the robbery. In Christian charity we must suppose that, had they been near at hand when the assault took place, they would have rushed to the assistance of the wayfarer. But you, two thousand years later, look on apathetically while armies of men and women are struck down on the broad highway of industrial prog- ress. Nay, you go even further, for you use the products in the manufacture of which these men and women were sacrificed. Had the priest and the Levite shared in the spoil taken by the thieves from the Good Sa- maritan, how you would scorn them! Yet each time that jou burn a ton of coal, or a white phosphorus match, you are using up hu- man health and human life. What then? Must [156] HUMAN SACRIFICE we cease to use these products? By no means, but we must throw around their manufacture the safeguards which science offers and which humanity demands. Let us stand shoulder to shoulder with the civilized nations of Europe in the suppression of accidents and the regula- tion of dangerous trades. [157] CHAPTER X REAPING THE YOUNG GRAIN If that classic saying is true, that those whom the gods love die young, the gods must have a strong affection for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are every year dj'^ing in the prime of life. Last year, of the 1,500,000 deaths in the United States, 630,000, or nearly half, were preventable — this is, they were premature. Six hundred and thirty thou- sand times in that one year we cut down a stalk of young grain — robbed ourselves through this untimely harvest of the lives of more than one-half a million human beings. Year follows year during which this waste of manhood and womanhood continues. On everj^ side, journeying through a great, pros- perous country, replete with life's possibilities, equipped to do, eager to strive, these hundreds of thousands go down before the sweep of the [158] REAPING THE YOUNG GRAIN fatal scythe. We are reaping the young grain. How shall we fare at harvest? The male white children born to American parents in American cities live, on the average, 31 years. Take the allotted span of life — three score years and ten — divide it in half, and then subtract four from the half, and j'^ou have the average length of life of white males born of native American city dwellers. Last winter there was a fire in New York. Six hundred girls were trapjied on the eighth and ninth floors of a fireproof building. Some were burned where they stood; others jumped one hundred and thirtj^ feet to the pavement — in all, one hvmdred and fifty of the six hun- dred perished. The average age of those one hundred and fifty girls was nineteen years. With life barely begun, its possibilities un- tried and unknown, these children of nineteen were "reaped at a breath." A boy of twenty-two started on his second trip as a traveling salesman. His first trip had been a great success — no salesman in the employ of the firm had ever done better work — and he started on this second venture full of [ l.VJ ] SOCIAL RELIGION the promise of a successful life. An hour had passed since he climbed into his berth on the night express. The train was late, making sixty miles an hour. A freight train on the next track was suddenly stopped, and, because of the improper air-brake equipment, the train "buckled" — that is, several of the cars in the center of the long train left the rails and rolled over on the neighboring track in front of the night express. There was a crash; en- gines, cars, splintered wood, twisted iron and human bodies heaped up in one great pile ; and the next day the body of the promising young salesman lay in his father's house. Here, in premature death, appears the prod- uct of all of the forces which I have thus far described. Low standards of living lay the foundation; child labor, overwork, accidents, insanitation, erect the superstructure; and, be- hold, a scaffold, built up of modern social con- ditions, upon which men, women, and children are ruthlessly executed by the hundreds of thousands. Suppose that to-morrow ten innocent men were hanged in Albany — the whole nation would rise in protest; newspapers and maga- [160] REAPING THE YOUNG GRAIN zines would vie with one another in their ef- forts to secure reparation; editorials would be written, sermons preached, and petitions signed; yet each week twelve thousand pre- ventable deaths occur in the United States. The reaper is at work with his keen scythe in the young grain, and we pass by on the other side, satisfied that we are still playing our own parts, content so that we are not of the vic- tims. In the Scripture we are told that our span of life is three score years and ten, yet from nation to nation, from city to city, and from one city ward to another, we find a great varia- tion in the age of death. Thus in Sweden the length of life for males is 53.9 years; in France, 45.7 years; in England and Wales, 44.1 years; in Massachusetts, 44.1 years; in Italy, 42.8 years; and in India, 23.0 years. Prof. Irving Fisher writes : "When we consider that the average duration of life in India is scarcely more than one-half that of Sweden, we must conclude that the length of human life is dependent on definite conditions and can be increased or diminished by a modification of those conditions." [161] SOCIAL RELIGION A short duration of life may be justly an- ticipated in India, where families crowd to- gether, in terror of famines and plagues ; while Sweden, with a less densely settled territory, advanced systems of government and indus- try, and stable economic conditions, might be expected to insure a longer life. A careful study shows that, generally speaking, some definite relation exists between longevity and the circumstances of life. The length of life is thus determined, not by any inherent inca- pacity in man to live, but by the social condi- tions surrounding the lives of the people. We may not, therefore, resign ourselves hopelessly before this harvest of young grain, saying plaintively: "It is the will of God." Rather must we determine that the conditions produc- ing the premature death shall be altered in this generation. Many men die because of the occupation in which they are engaged. There is a very di- rect connection between mortality and the trades in which men work. For instance, in all occupations fifteen males die each year for every thousand employed. For boot and shoe- makers the number is 9 ; for farmers and farm [ 102 ] REAPING THE YOUNG GRAIN laborers, 11; for tailors, 13; for merchants and dealers, 14; iron and steel makers, 15; textile operatives, 15; blacksmiths, 16; marble and stone workers, 17; bookkeepers and clerks, 19; brewers and distillers, 21 ; cigar and tobacco makers, 22; servants, 22; and laborers, 22. If you are employed as a laborer, you have more than twice the chance of death than you would have if you were a shoemaker. The length of life is thus a varying factor, being largely determined, not as is generally supposed, by the wearing out of the human body, but by the conditions of environment, such as climate and occupation, which surround the individual. For each 100,000 persons ten years of age in the middle income classes of the United States, insurance companies tell us that 51,000 will die before they reach their sixty-fifth year. The years of highest mor- tality are the first ten, yet even when these first ten are past, the danger to life is still so great that less than one-half of the people live to a normal age — to the allotted three score years and ten. But these figures refer to the middle classes. The available insurance sta- tistics indicate that the death rate among wage I 103 1 SOCIAL RELIGION workers is certainly 50 per cent., and perhaps 100 per cent., higher than that among the mid- dle classes. Were statistics available, showing accurately the death-rate among the lower in- come classes in the United States, they would indicate to us that perhaps thirty-five thousand of the one hundred thousand children who started the race of life at ten years would ever reach sixty-five. The best work of life should be done in the later years, after experience has been broad- ened, and judgment has been rendered stable and sure. Yet of the 100,000 who start at the age of ten only a fraction reach mature years, because their ranks have been woefully depleted by the ravages incident to modern fife. Though these conditions are unsatisfactory, they are continually improving. Life is each year lengthening. We know from our scien- tific researches that the possibilities of life are far in advance of their present realization. We know that by social cooperation we could greatly decrease our present mortality. In Prussia efforts in this direction have met with [164] REAPING THE YOUNG GRAIN such success that life is being prolonged at the rate of twenty-seven years in each century, a rate which, if maintained, wiU, in 2000 A. D., make the average length of life in Prussia nearly sixty years. Why should I emphasize this point? Why waste your time and mine in making clear an obvious proposition? Men and women have been dying, and still are unnecessarily dying, by tens of thousands. We are acquainted with the causes of their deaths ; we have determined certain remedies which need be applied to pre- vent them from dying; the way is plain, the will seems to be, I will not say, lacking, but rather inactive. It must be galvanized into life. Are you aware of the problem? Is your will among those which are reacting violently against these intolerable conditions? Are you playing the part of the priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan? The priest passed by on the other side, he was unacquainted with the facts. You are no longer on the other side, you are no longer ignorant. You have looked on the wounded man, you are, therefore, the Levite [165] SOCIAL RELIGION who saw and knew. Will you, like him, pass by on the other side, or will j^ou follow the example of the Good Samaritan and render the service which justice and humanity de- mand of you? [166] CHAPTER XI ,THE SILVER LINING 'Must these things go on forever? INIust men always be underpaid and overworked? Must &ve thousand children in a wealth}^ city be "habitually hungry"? INIust women continue to fight the losing battle that leads them to the brothel? JNIust society" always rest upon the mangled lives of motherless girls, of hag- gard men, of toiling children, of overworked and underpaid humanity? We believe not. We talk and think of a lieaven where "there shall be neither sorrow nor crying, nor any more pain"; where there will be "many mansions"; where the streets will be all golden ; where the river of the water of life runs clear as crystal; where love will be the dominant motive of life; where we shall abide forever. Yes, and more tlian tliat, for we pray "Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven." We want thy kingdom liere! [107] SOCIAL RELIGION We want heaven on earth, many mansions, golden streets, crystal water, playgrounds, joyous sunshine — opportunity to grow and worship unhampered by the bonds of social maladjustment; we want heaven on earth, and we can have it if we will. A dream! Yes, but Jesus dreamed that dream, and Plato and Paul and all of the phi- losophers and poets of the ages. They all fore- saw this millennium — this heaven on earth — and their dream is coming true. I have led you through the valley of the shadow of living death, I have shown you the night, but the night is far spent, the day is at hand and already we behold the dawning. Winter is passing ; spring is close behind. We are a wealthy nation ; we can afford to pay liv- ng wages ; we are an enlightened people ; our v'omen are ceasing to be beasts of burden; we are a far-seeing nation; we are protecting and safeguarding childhood. Corn wiU feed the hungry, and we have plenty of corn. Cot- ton and wool and lumber wiU provide clothing and shelter for the destitute, and we produce an abundance of these. Poverty is unneces- sary, destitution must cease. Modern industry [168] THE SILVER LINING has created sufficient economic goods. It is merely the archaic system of distribution which has nullified our productive triumphs, creating one class with boundless possessions and an- other with the barest necessities of animal ex- istence. Adjustment is possible, but is it worth while? We produce enough economic goods to feed, clothe, shelter, and educate every man, woman, and child in the United States, but are they capable of enhghtenment? Perhaps you beheve in the doctrine of total depravity. These boys and girls were born into wicked- ness and sin — why seek to rescue or save them? A devout old lady once said that she liked the doctrine of total depravity because it was a comfortable doctrine, but she had never known anybody who lived up to it. We are all in her class. We like the doctrine, but we never meet any one to whom it fully applies. We have changed our ideas of crime, pov- erty, and efficiency. The old view held crime to be the result of natural depravity; the new view maintains that it is the product of a dis- eased body or a bad environment. The old view described poverty and misery as the re- [169] SOCIAL RELIGION suit of personal choice. Modern investiga- tion has established beyond the possibility of doubt that the causes of poverty and misery are not personal but social. The old view classified men as efficient or inefficient, accord- ing to their birth. Modern science indicates that nine-tenths of all men born are born ap- proximately normal, and that environment and opportunity are the chief factors which de- termine whether their lives shall be efficient or otherwise. We believe in the innate goodness of men. "Now are we the sons of God." Hence, no matter how concealed, there is, in each person, that divine spark called conscience — a soul. Go among the most savage men and the most abandoned women, and you will find that when opportunity presents itself they rise to the occasion and demonstrate beyond question their nobility and manhood. There is, for in- stance, a boy in Philadelphia who is little more than fifteen, yet there is no crime in the calen- dar, with the possible exception of murder, that he would hesitate to commit. He sells newspapers on the street all night, and is fa- miliar with the worst people and the worst [170] THE SILVER LINING dives in the city. One night when he left home his dog followed him to his usual beat up- town. Twice he tried to drive her home, then, finding this impossible, he secured an old paper, and each time that he stopped in his selling, he laid this paper on the cold, damp pavement, and called the dog to a comfortable bed until the time came for them to move on again. Jacob Riis tells a splendid story of one New York criminal, a mere boy, who was a terror to the police. One day he was arrested, after a severe fight, by two sturdy policemen, and the three started together for the station house. On the way they came to a cable car track, in the middle of which stood a child gaily beckon- ing to an onrushing car, which was beyond the control of the motorman. The child's fate seemed sealed and rescue impossible. Both policemen turned away that they might not witness the catastrophe. Their grip was for a moment loosened, and their prisoner, with the agility and strength of a tiger, wrenched himself from their grasp and was gone. The policemen turned as the car rushed past, ex- pecting to see a mangled body on the tracks [171] SOCIAL RELIGION and a young desperado speeding toward safety, but, instead, there, across the street, stood the ruffian with the child in his arms. A quick eye, steady nerves, and supreme self- confidence had enabled him to save a life. Neither of these boys was bad. Each was at bottom a man, a real man, with all of man- hood's instincts; yet, on the outside, so per- verted and so seared by contact with a vicious world, that only here and there did a glimmer of real manliood appear. Here is an even better illustration of the work of environment upon a child's life. A boy born into a squalid home in a big city, playing on the streets and staying out nights, became at fourteen an expert thief and slot- machine breaker — a terror to the neighbor- hood. Eventually he was arrested and sent to a country home and in two months he had settled down to a normal life. He went to school, as he had never done in the city; he kept clean, as he could not do in his tenement home; and he was honest, for there were no overwhelming temptations thrown in his path. The boy was apparently reformed and went back to his city home. In three weeks he and [ 172 ] THE SILVER LINING his gang had perpetrated three big slot-ma- chine robberies; he had spent his nights in the streets, and was headed straight for the peni- tentiary. A decent home would have saved that boy, but his home was not decent, and be- cause of the lack of decency he was damned. This thought is well illustrated by the work of Dr. Bernardo, who took tens of thousands of boy criminals from the slums of EngHsh cities and put them on farms in Canada and Australia. One of the Canadian agents re- ports that, of 2,000 of these embryo criminals who passed through his hands, less than 2 per cent, reverted to their criminal tendencies. In their homes every temptation surrounded them. There was neither opportunity nor in- spiration for right doing, but every incentive for wrong doing which a great city can offer. Their new lives meant reformation and right living. Thomas Gray says: "Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear, Full many a flower is born to blusli unseen And waste its sweetness on tlie desert air." [ 173 ] SOCIAL RELIGION That statement is scientifically tine. Among every hundred boys who are born, whether they be born in the slums or on the right side of Commonwealth Avenue, approximately 90 are born normal. In each one hundred there are a few geniuses and a few defectives, but as far as we know the proportion does not vary from one social class to another. At birth men and women in every social class are the same. Understand, I do not say that men and women are born equal. They are born most unequal, but what I do maintain is that the ordinary viewpoint which holds that the proportion of worth-while children is greater in the middle and upper classes than it is in the lower income classes is fundamentally wrong. I have discussed the cases of a few excep- tionally bad boys, and pointed out that, when opportunity offered, they showed themselves to be men. These boj^s were wasted — the good material in them was unused because they never had an opportunity for its wise employment. You sympathize with them and commiserate them? They are but individual cases. Turn, now, with me and lament over a society which, [174] THE SILVER LINING through its failure to utilize the talent at its command, is every year sacrificing untold sources of potential achievement. We have heard of the wastes in industry, but they have become a thing of the past. The coal operator now markets the small particles of coal which were formerly throAMi upon the culm dump; the South manufactures $40,000,- 000 worth of products every year from the once useless cotton seed, and the pork packer is said to use every part of the hog but the squeal. Our business men are conserving the resources of industry. How much more should such economy be practised with the resources of society, since it is upon society's resources that industrial progress depends. The social waste resulting from a lack of opportunity may be classified under two head- ings: On the one hand is the waste of child- hood; on the other, the waste of womanhood. Three-quarters of the children born in the United States have no legitimate opportunity for utihzing whatever capacity they may pos- sess. "Surely," you exclaim, "surely you have forgotten our excellent school system!" [ 175 ] SOCIAL RELIGION By no means. I speak after a careful analy- sis of the results derived from our excellent school system; I judge that system, like any other tree, by its fruit; and by its fruit I con- demn it. Andrew S. Draper, Commissioner of Education for the State of New York, sums up the whole matter in these words: "There is something the matter with the schools." They fail to hold the children; they turn them out illiterate; they fail to prepare them for life — "There is something the mat- ter with the schools." What would you say of a factory that was turning out stoves — four-fifths of them in- complete? "Inefficient, incompetently man- aged," you reply. What else could you say of a school system in which four-fifths of the children never go beyond the grammar grades? You would condemn that likewise, would you not? Very well, but you are condemning the American public school system, for only one child in every five, who enters the first grade, reaches the end of the grammar school. The result? Illiteracy. Examine the records, and you will find that, in Germany and Scandi- [ 176 ] THE SILVER LINING navia, those who can neither read nor write form but one-thousandth of the population, while in the United States one hundred and six persons out of every thousand are wholly illiterate. There are half a million American children, between the ages of 10 and 15, who can neither read nor write their own names. No, they are not the children of immigrants, for the vast majority of them were born in the United States. The American public school system fails to hold the children, and consequently there is a high percentage of illiteracy in the United States. Further, and more seriously, how- ever, the school system fails because it does not prepare the children for life. The object of education is complete living. Therefore, no educational system is a success which does not prepare its pupils to live. What is it — this living? Intellectual gym- nastics is a small part of it; syntax and Latin occupy a tiny corner in it; geography and history have a little place there; but none of these things nor all of them together make up a life. First, there is the body, with its mul- titude of wants; then the mind, with its grasp [177] SOCIAL RELIGION of things; the soul, with its depth of feehng and sympathy; the home, in which the woman labors; the industry, which takes the waking hours of the man; and, finally, the leisure time, which men and women will either make or mar as they use or misuse it. All of these are a part of life — together they complete it. Now tell me where, in this great United States, has any school system made a definite attempt to produce such noble, virile speci- mens of physical manhood and womanhood as those who walked and created in sunny Greece, twenty centuries ago. The body is the life machine; it is the tool with which men must always do their work, yet nowhere in America has any consistent attempt been made to de- velop beautiful, perfect bodies in our school children. Hear, on the contrary, the report of the medical inspectors, that thirty per cent, of the school children in New York City are physically defective! The other seven-tenths are not physically developed or perfected — they merely escape being classed as defective. A third of the school children in America's metropolis physically defective! Is there not something the matter with the schools? [178] THE SILVER LINING Granting, for the sake of argument, that the mental training in the schools prepares the children to think — and no more absurd con- cession could be made — where, in our school system, has any consistent attempt been made to inculcate into the children ideals of beauty, sesthetic concepts? Individual teachers have tried it and done it, but it has never been a generally recognized school policy. The women of America are working in the homes; the men in the factories. The women bear and rear the children — thus performing the most important single duty in the whole range of social achievements. Where, in the public schools of the United States, has any adequate attempt been made to educate these girls for their motherhood? They sew, cook and keep house, while the men, singling out their vocations, spend their time in the fac- tories and mills ; yet, save for a few hesitating beginnings, here and there, no consistent at- tempt has as yet been made to teach the girls how to make attractive homes, or to instruct tlie boys in such a manner that they would be prepared to earn good incomes. The girls and [ 170 ] SOCIAL RELIGION boys go into the home and into industry; they spend their lives there; but the school has scarcely one word to say to them regarding their preparation for these life-long tasks. For leisure, the time in which men and women may follow their own sweet wills, doing with their time whatever they see fit, the school provides little instruction. Averaging forty pupils to a class, in charge of girls as young as nine- teen years of age, the boys and girls who are to constitute the next generation are being ground through the school system like grain through a mill — all subjected to the same processes — all emerging as nearly as possible of the same type, with souls crushed and in- dividuality marred ; thoroughly unprepared to fight the battle of life. There is something the matter with the American schools — they do not prepare for life. The children leave at an early age — il- literate, uneducated, uncultured — to take their places among the other incompetents. The ability, the genius of four-fifths of the chil- dren in the United States has no legitimate outlet — no means of development. Thus is the light hid under a bushel — thus is the "noble [180] THE SILVER LINING rage" of men and women denied any reason- able means of expression. On every side opportunities are granted to the few, and denied to the many. Poverty, mahiutrition, premature employment and bad housing complete the destructive work which the school has begun, and play havoc with youthful potentiality. Even more appalling in its magnitude is the waste of potential womanhood. Women are denied opportunities by man-made custom and tradition. Read history, and you will find that it is the record of the doings of men. Read biography. The father of a great man is minutely discussed, but it takes persistent effort to secure from a biographer the admis- sion that the average great man even had a mother. Girls are taught from their earliest youth that the place of women is the home, and the functions of women are matrimony and maternity. The achievements of art and in- dustry and science are closed to them, for they must be content to minister to the whimsical caprices of the masters of creation, to rock the cradles, wash the dishes, scrub the floors. John Burns, of England, recently made a com- [1811 SOCIAL RELIGION mencement address in which he said to the boys: "I want you to be happy craftsmen because you are trained to be healthy men." And then, turning to the girls, he said; "To keep house, cook, nurse and delight in making others happy is your mission, duty and liveli- hood." The boys are to be happy; the girls are to assist them in this pleasant task. Men are created to do the big things of life, to ex- pand and enjoy, while women are expected to drudge patiently for happy masculinity. I recently heard a well-satisfied product of mas- culine tradition summarize conditions by ex- claiming: "Man is the center of the home; woman the atmosphere." The more recent scientific investigations would seem to throw considerable discredit on this statement. Indeed, there are scientists who boldly affirm that woman is, in many re- spects, distinctly more capable than man. Leaving aside, as futile, the manifold discus- sions of the relative superiority or inferiority of men and women, one thing is obvious — women have a certain quota of capacity, which, if afforded opportunity, will show itself in achievement. In the past, women have [182] THE SILVER LINING achieved, yet not so signally as men. Queen Victoria, Rosa Bonheur, Mrs. Siddons and Mrs. Browning were women who acquired in- ternational fame for the part which they plaj^ed in progress. The vast majority of women, however, have had little or no part in making the world's history, because they have been consistently denied any opportunity for the display of their capacity. Michael Angelo, Wagner, or Lincoln, on an island in the South Pacific, would have left little impress on the history of civilization. Likewise woman, confined by rigorous custom and time honored tradition to the home, has been denied the opportunity of development. "The genial current of her soul" must content itself with a bread pan and a broom. Man's place was among the big things of life — woman's among the little. Without opportu- nity, both men and women must fail to achieve — such a failure does not indicate lack of ca- pacity, it is merely the logical outcome of tlie failure to afford opportunit}\ Women are capable. Women can achieve, and they will demonstrate their capacity by [ 183 ] SOCIAL RELIGION their achievement when opportunity is af- forded. The raw material of society — its children — and the fountain of social life — its women — are thus neglected. They are worthy, yet they have been forced to content themselves with the husks of social opportunity. Underpay, overwork, child labor, onerous social tradi- tions — all of these things have served to re- press genius, and to deny capacity its legiti- mate outlet. All of these things demand the efficient service of the Good Samaritan, and all will yield to his gentle touch, if he be organized and supported by public sentiment. [184] CHAPTER XII SOCIAL RELIGION IN THEORY The fields are white already to harvest. The opportunity for work is limitless. You need not journey to "Greenland's icy mountains" nor to "India's coral strand" in order to find an outlet for surplus energy. You are your brother's keeper, and the underpaid American workman is as much your brother as is the I'apuan aborigine or the negroid dwarf of the African jungle. Who is my neighbor? Any one needing help. How can we best serve those needing help? Let us proceed for en- lightenment to the story of the Good Samari- tan. A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves. Who were those thieves? Was their headquarters in the Temple at Jerusalem? Did tlie leaders among the scribes and Pharisees hold stock? Were they protected from molestation by the pay- r 185 1 SOCIAL RELIGION ment of a fat fee to the Roman governor? How long had they operated? Was this their only victim? Why were they thieves? Did they have opportunity to secure honest em- ployment or was this the slack season in the industrial world? Had their mothers worked out when they were babies and left them to grow up in the streets? Was the school sys- tem repulsive to them? Were they jailed with older criminals for some trifling offense and given opportunity to take a full course in high- way robbery from practical experts? The Priest and the Levite passed by on the other side. They said, it is a splendid day — how glorious to be alive in such weather! They said, the next meeting of the Sanhedrin will be very important — several vital matters are to come before the body. They said, Herod grows most arrogant — his court is voluptu- ous — his sneers and jibes unbearable. They said, as an aside. There lies a fellow who has drunk too much. He will soon get over it: let him sleep it off. Then the Good Samaritan appeared. He came from another city. He bound up the wounds of the victim, put him on his own beast [186] SOCIAL RELIGION IX THEORY and took care of him. But, as far as we know, he did not enter information against the thieves. Neither did he organize any police system to patrol the road, nor did he propose a scheme for lighting the highway, thus mak- ing it safer. In short, while the Good Samar- itan rescued one victim he took no measures to insure safety to future travelers, so that the next time he went over the road he doubt- less found another victim in the same place, in the same condition. It is not enough to bind up the wounds of one victim, for while you are caring for him two others may be receiv- ing like injuries. The system of thievery and the system which produced the thieves must both be broken up. On the following day the Samaritan took out two pence and gave them to the landlord. Where did he get the two pence? Was he a stockholder in a thieving com^iany which was at that moment operating on the roads of Samaria, or did that money rei^resent the ex- ploitation of a hundred slaves toiling endlessly for an exacting master? Was he on the way to collect rents from his unsanitary tenements in Jericho, or was this philanthropist deriv- [187] SOCIAL RELIGION ing his income from man-destroying in- dustries? Finally was the road from Jericho to Je- rusalem any safer after the Good Samaritan had departed? If it was, then his money was well spent ; but if, however, another victim lay at the same place the next day and the next and the next, then his time and effort were little better than wasted, for he struck at the effect and not at the cause. As Dr. Patten has so ably pointed out in his "New Basis of Civ- ilization," it is wiser and better to light and police a road than to bind up wounds, for, while binding up wounds gives temporary relief to one suiFerer, a road well lighted and policed insures safety to all future trav- elers. JNIodern social conditions furnish a striking confirmation of the theory that history repeats itself. We still have roads, travelers, thieves, priests, Levites, Good Samaritans, and these various groups still intermingle. Let me see if I can give you a tiTie story of child life in the form of a modern parable. A certain child in a great city began his journey from the cradle to the grave. As a [188] SOCIAL RELIGION IN THEORY baby he was fed on preserved milk and as a child he had for breakfast bread and tea with- out milk and for dinner boiled cabbage and for supper bread and tea without milk, and because of this bad diet he grew up in life low- browed and stunted. One day, while playing in the noisome alley that bordered the tene- ment house which he called home, he fell among a gang of thieves, who welcomed him heartily and told him all that they knew, so that he became an expert at robbing gum slot machines and slot gas meters. And by chance a certain minister passed by that way, who saw neither the noisome alley nor the filthy tenement, nor the gang of young thieves, for his eyes were fixed on heaven and his thoughts were of soul salvation. Besides the owner of these tenements was among the pillars of his great church and gave five thou- sand dollars a year to foreign missions. And he passed by on the other side. Likewise a lawyer came and looked on the boy as he stole lead pipe and said to him, "You little devil, you have sinned against property. You will be arrested." But it never occurred to the lawyer that the owner of the boy's tene- [189] SOCIAL RELIGION meiit home might have sinned against the child. And he passed by on the other side. And a certain big-hearted philanthropist, as he journeyed in his automobile from the ocean liner to his country home, came where the boy was and had compassion on him and gave lib- erally to the children's aid society. But by chance a social worker came by as the boy was brought into court for the twelfth time and when the lawyer, who was agent for the landlord, had called him a little devil and the Judge was about to pronounce sentence the social worker said, "Nay, let us look into the conditions surrounding this boy's family." So he investigated the conditions and found that the boy's family lived in two small rooms in a tenement house which was the property of a great landlord. He found that the boy's mother was unable to read and write her own name, and was ignorant of every art and craft of home making and child rearing. He found that the boy's father left home each morning at five o'clock, and, in return for ten dollars a week, drove a team for a prosperous employer. He found that the boy had two older sisters, both of whom were professional [190] SOCIAL RELIGION IN THEORY prostitutes, then in the House of Refuge, and two younger brothers, both of whom were mentally defective and in sj)ecial schools, and, furthermore, that the pillar of the great church and the kind-hearted philanthropist and the owner of the squalid tenement and the em- ployer of the boy's father were one and the same person. For this well-meaning man was scuttling the ship of state with one hand, while he attempted to caulk up the seams with the other. Then the social worker said to the Judge — behold, your Honor, this boy has had no legitimate opportunities. Shall we smite him or deal rigorously with the pillar-philan- thropist-landlord-employer? But the Judge answered, "I^ay not the blame on this good Christian man. He too is victim of the social system of wliich he is a part. But this child is not to blame that he has been committed to jail twelve times at the age of fifteen. The blame rather rests upon a society which per- mits his father to be underpaid and over- worked, and upon a peojile that allow a woman to grow up ignorant of reading and writing and the knowledge of ])earing and rearing children." [ 191 1 SOCIAL RELIGION It is not enough that we bind up the wounds. It is not enough that we consider the effects. The thieves must be caught. The causes must be studied; the matter must be traced to its source and there prevented. Service to one's neighbor, therefore, includes binding of his wounds, ascertaining the cause of his wounding, removing the cause, and thus preventing a recurrence of the accident. It is of no httle import to ascertain the source of the money which takes care of the man at the hospital or the charity society. What is the origin of your gift? Does your vile tenement make necessary the children's aid society to which you are a contributor? Do men go each hour of the day from your factory to the hospital which you help to support? So- ciety cannot lift itself by its boot-straps. Provide playgrounds and abolish the chil- dren's aid; prevent accidents and abandon hospitals. Here are presented unbounded fields for the w ork of you Good Samaritans : in these social conditions lies the opportunity for applying a social religion. Of what shall that religion consist? How may its purpose be defined? [ 192 ] SOCIAL RELIGION IN THEORY For convenience of statement, a social re- ligion may be analj^zed into tliree parts — I. The theory. 11. The machinery. III. The application. Each part logically follows the part preceding it — without a theory, without a goal, no ma- chinery can be erected; without an ideal and a system, the religion can never be applied. The theory of religion is sometimes called theology. The Scribes and Pharisees under- stood their theology thoroughly, and if you will read the twenty-third chapter of INIatthew you will learn what Jesus thought of it. They had cleaned the outside of the cup and the plat- ter; they were whited sepulchres; they made long praj^ers, and then cheated widows; they made liberal sacrifices, but neglected justice, mercy, and faith; tliey had the letter of the law, but not its spirit. "Ye serpents," He says to them, "ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" This condemnation of tlie Scribes and Phari- sees is not, however, a condemnation of all [193] SOCIAL RELIGION theology. Jesus laid down his doctrine in un- mistakable terms. "Love thy God," said He, "and thy neighbor as thyself." That is the extent of Jesus' religious theory. Formulated, His doctrine might appear thus: I. The Theory of Social Religion 1. Belief in God. 2. Belief in Men. How divinely simple ; how wonderfully grand ! We are to found our lives on God — good — a spirit that must be worshipped in spirit and in truth. We are to believe in God — that is, we are to believe in Good, Truth, Beauty — in all of the great beneficent forces of the universe. This, however, is not enough. God is a spirit, and man, made in His image and hke- ness, is a spirit, too. Hence, we are enjoined to love our neighbor as ourselves. We are to believe in man. Indeed, our belief in God is demonstrable only through our belief in man, for, if a man cannot love his brother, whom he has seen, how can he love God, whom he has not seen? Our faith, in short, will be tested by our works. [194] SOCIAL RELIGION IN THEORY The theory of our faith must be judged by the practice of our works. It is not enough that we beheve: we must do. How shall we do? How express this theory of religion in the practical affairs of life? Let me suggest that the things needed for putting Social Re- ligion into practice are — 1. Sympathy. 2. Inspiration. 3. Efficiency. Those men who aim to make their religion practicable, applicable to their every-day lives, must possess these three attributes : Sympathy'', Inspiration, Efficiency. It is idle to talk of the function of the church as if the church was an individual that, like Lazarus, would arise and walk. The church is an institution, the work of which must necessarily be done by men, hence it is the attributes of the men that reallj'' count in the determination of church activity. You cannot touch the hem of your neighbor's soul without sympathy — nay, with- out that quality, you cannot step across the threshold of his being. You must fill his life I 105 1 SOCIAL RELIGION and understand his view, if you are to be to him a neighbor in the truer sense. To do this, to live as a social being in a social group; to practice a social religion; to keep your soul open for belief in men, there must be that inspiration — that divine fire which animates every individual man and wom- an who is born into the world. You do — that is something. What do you do? That depends entirely upon your belief and your inspiration. How do you do it? The answer to that question determines your efficiency. To do is well; to do right is bet- ter ; but to do right in the best possible manner is best of all. No machinery can be effective unless to its inspiration and sympathy is joined efficiency. When the theory has been accepted and the machinery evolved, there yet remains the ap- plication of our social religion. We believe in God and in man; we sympathize, longing to see our fellows live rounded, noble lives; we are inspired to help them ; and we are efficient. Like the rich young man, we have kept all of the commandments. What lack we yet? We lack one thing — the power to apply our re- [196 1 SOCIAL RELIGION IN THEORY ligion. We have religion — now we must do something with it. The practice of Social Religion involves: 1. Clean Living. 2. Social Service. 3. Social Justice. There are, therefore, two elements — an indi- vidual and a social — in the practice of Social Religion. The individual has a machine -wath which he must do his work. That machine — his body and soul — must be kept in repair, cleaned, exercised, developed. "He that rul- eth his spirit is always greater than he that taketh a city." The practice of Social Re- ligion, like charity, begins at home, in the in- dividual life. When the individual life is clean, or, indeed, while it is being cleansed, it may, through So- cial Service, assist in erecting Social Justice. In the home, the street, the school, the factory, men may serve their neighbors — binding up their wounds, povu'ing in oil and wine, caring for them, and calling solicitously again to see that they have fully recovered, and are able to '[107] SOCIAL RELIGION discharge their debts. Such was the service of the Good Samaritan. Such is the service of any one who cheerfully assists in making lighter the burden of his fellow. This, however, is not the whole duty of man. "It is good that thou givest bread to the hungry, but better were it that none hungered, and that thou hadst none to give." It is well to be neighborly; it is better to be just. Not as an individual, but as a member of a pro- gressive society, the believer in Social Religion makes effective his belief by an insistence on Social Justice. Without Opportunity, men and women are born and live and die in squalor. Universal- ize and revolutionize education until it pre- pares children for life; then universalize op- portunity until every adult has a chance to show what powers lie in him. So you shall establish justice — so complete the practice of your Social Religion. I have told you of social wrong — of misery, vice, poverty. Would you assist those miser- able ones? That is well. Would you prevent misery in the future? That is better. Would you help misery in the present, at the same [ 108 ] SOCIAL RELIGION IN THEORY time striving earnestlj^ to prevent like miserj'' in the future? That, again, is best of all, for you relieve the distress, while at the same time striking at its cause. You are binding up wounds, but that does not prevent you from insisting that the road to Jericho be lighted and policed. [199] CHAPTER XIII SOCIAL RELIGION IN PRACTICE I have spoken to you in detail about some of the living and working conditions which are playing havoc wdth American manliood and womanhood. If religion is a vitalizing social force it must face and master the situa- tion. A social religion, through the theory just outlined, would prove such a force. Let me make clearer my idea of the application of Social Religion in this one field by explaining how you can secure Social Justice. Low standards of living produce anemic children, who grow up to be haggard men. These men marry and strive to support a fam- ily on the wages of unskilled labor. Such wages, as I have tried to show, are entirely insufficient to provide even the necessities of life. The low income of the father, with its resulting low standard of life, reflects itself in the low earning power of the child. He, [200] SOCIAL RELIGION IN PKACTICE too, is destined to become the head of an un- skilled laborer's family, endeavoring to win a family livelihood against frightful odds. Low incomes produce a living hell, and perpetuate it from one generation to the next. Why, then, are low incomes paid? Why is a system of distribution tolerated which fails to give to every family a living wage? You know why. It is because we do not really care to applj^ the Christian doctrine of broth- erhood to the affairs of daily life. It is entirely possible to enforce a living wage for all workers. We might follow the example of New Zealand and pass a minimum wage law, which prescribes the lowest wage that may be paid in a given industry. In New Zealand the law has been in operation for twenty years, and has succeeded admirably in raising the wages in the worst of the "sweated" industries. So salutary has been the effect of this enactment in raising industrial stand- ards, that employers as well as employes are continually invoking it in order to suppress unscrupulous competitors. So much the state may do to guarantee a normal standard of wages. On the other hand, [ 201 ] SOCIAL RELIGION it is possible to organize the workers into trade unions, as they have done in Australia, where, under the authority of law, a union can com- pel an employer to appear before a Board of Arbitration and settle any differences which may have arisen. The American trade union is the one organ- ization which stands between the American worker and a wage so low as to involve semi- starvation. Whatever its unwisdom, whatever its biased judgments and anti-social actions, the union exists as the only effective means of protest which the worker has at his command. Do you decry organizations of workmen? Do you disapprove of unions? Ensure decent working conditions and a living w^age — the cause for union activity will have been elimi- nated, and unions will cease to commit those errors which are an element in the conduct of any organization formed by fallible human be- ings. There may have been a time, in the early history of the United States, when the thin soil and the sickly industries failed to provide a living for all. If such a time ever existed, it passed away with the opening of the West [202] SOCIAL RELIGION IN PRACTICE and the expansion of modern industry. We produce enough for all, and it is time, if we are to justify our claim to enlightenment and Christianity, that we guarantee to all a living share of our industrial products. The motherless girl fights her losing fight against low incomes, social prejudice, and overwhelming traditions. She is "Only a woman." Her place is in the home. If she must needs come into industrial fields, she must take what she finds there. Yet, her father is earning low wages, her little hrothers and sis- ters wear shoes in winter and eat all the year round. Every week the landlord comes. This girl must earn. The family depends on her. So she asks for work at your store. "Yes," you agree, "I will take you on, but you must start at four-fifty a week. It is un- fortunate if that income will not support j^ou, but I am an employer with a living to make, and I can't interest myself in such matters. You're living at home? Then you haven't a gentleman friend who could help you out by paying the rent." What an application of Christian Doctrine! What a parable of the Good Samaritan ! I 203 1 SOCIAL RELIGION Whether you are an employer or an em- ploye, you owe a duty to your fellows, whether they be man or woman. This motherless girl must be protected, and the state must protect her. Men form unions and fight; women accept the conditions that are imposed upon them. The Woman's Trade Union League is feeble and its branches are few and ineffective. Through legislative action alone can adequate protection be afforded to the working girl. What shall be the nature of this protection? To be effective, it must regulate — 1. Wages. 2. Hours. 3. Working conditions. Is a minimum wage law imperative in the case of men? It is even more necessary for women, who, particularly in the unskilled trades, are defenceless against the merciless competition of their fellows. Just as a mini- mum wage should be fixed for men, so it should be fixed for women — fixed at a figure that will enable them to buy the necessities and at least a portion of the comforts of life. [204] SOCIAL RELIGION IN PRACTICE As the speed of industry increases, requiring a girl to make twenty motions each minute instead of the former ten, hours must be pro- portionately reduced to avoid disastrous fa- tigue. There are two reasonable tests which may determine the length of the day's work: 1. What length of day will produce enough goods to support the com- munity. 2. What length of day, in this particu- lar industry, will not jeopardize the health of the worker. Eight hours is a long day in most modern in- dustries — in many six would be adequate. Working conditions must be adjusted in other ways to assure the welfare of the worker. Air and sunlight are essential to health and efficiency. It may even prove, in the long run, that investments in air and sunlight pay bet- ter than many others. "You must whitewash your factory," said the Factory Inspector to the owner of a dingy building. "Whitewash this factory," stormed the own- [205] SOCIAL RELIGION er. "Why, I can't afford it, it will cost me $1,500!" "You will obey my order, or I'll swear out a warrant," said the Inspector. The building was whitewashed. On his next visit, six months later, the owner greeted the inspector cordially. "You remember the row we had about the whitewash?" "Yes, indeed." "Well, sir, that $1,500 was the best money I ever laid out. The building hadn't been touched for ten years, and the whitewash makes it look like new. It is wonderfully cheerful and bright — and the girls have done so much better work that I believe I have al- ready got my money back." The whitewash paid. So does every im- provement which makes of the factory a more livable place. Where women work the question of seats is a vitally important one. If one of your daughters, aged fifteen, was attending a school where she was forced, day after day, to stand up on a hard floor for five hours would you protest? What do you think of girls — not [206] SOCIAL RELIGION IX PRACTICE your daughters, but factory girls — standing before a machine for ten hours a day. Such a life is dangerous for a growing boy, but fatal to a growing girl. Hideous, is it not? Yet some of tlie leading industrial states per- mit growing girls to stand for ten hours a day. Though infrequent in number, factory dis- asters are glaring in their consequences. How long, think you, will it be before we learn that a fire in a tall building without j^roper fire escapes is fatal to the workers? Every year women are burned in tall factory buildings which are unprovided with a reasonable means of exit. Every year this preventable human sacrifice is made because of inadequate factory legislation. The motherless girl needs our protection, and we, through minimum wage laws and through factory legislation, which prescribes the hours and conditions of work, can protect her. As employers we can improve the con- dition of these neighbors; as citizens we can insist that adequate legislation be passed and enforced. Men must do these things, and they must go one step further; they must change, by a [207"] SOCIAL RELIGION fundamental system of education regarding biologic and social facts, the social traditions themselves which are founded on the barbaric idea of the inferiority of women to men. Women must, like all other adult citizens, be given the rights which pertain to citizenship. They, too, must vote and otherwise participate in the deliberation of a society which is based upon discussion rather than upon despotism. Thus, armed with new power through the as- sumption of civic rights, women will, in time, assert their independence of masculine domi- nance and assume their true position as one organic factor in modern society. You know that little, undeveloped children should not work. Thus far we have reached a point where the minimum age for working children is set at fourteen, but thinking men and women are looking forward to the time when the school system will be so excellent that childi'en will not care to leave school and go to work; when the parents will be guaran- teed a minimum living that will relieve them of the necessity of sending their children into the factories; when the employers themselves will see that children under sixteen do not pay; [208] SOCIAL RELIGION IN PRACTICE and when society shall insist that no under- grown child of fourteen shall be subjected to the soul-destroying monotony of factory life. No immature child, no matter what the age, should be allowed to work. Maturity and not age is, therefore, the ideal test. Since no sure test of maturity can be agreed upon, age is resorted to as the only available means of de- termining capacity to work. Let the law fix the age. Let it establish the conditions under which children shall work, and then provide adequate machinery for enforcing its provi- sions. Every civilized country of the world and some of the progressive states have enacted child labor legislation, models of which may be had from the National Child Labor Com- mittee in New York City. The passage of child labor legislation is a social responsibil- ity, and its enforcement is a social duty. No state can afford to exist, nor can it long per- sist if its future rests upon unprotected child- hood. Is your state a leader in this respect? If it is not, it is high time that you took some radi- cal steps toward protecting these "little ones." [209] SOCIAL RELIGION European cities, and, in the last few years, some cities in the United States, liave earnestly- sought to eliminate the worst features of the congestion problem. Factories have been con- fined to certain districts. The height and ex- tent of tenement houses have been restricted. A ban has been placed upon the building of dark rooms. Sanitation has been insisted upon, and, in these and a score of other direc- tions, efforts have been made to overcome con- gestion through city planning. In Europe these efforts have been crowned with phenome- nal success. For example, in Frankfort, the introduction of city planning has cut the death rate in half, while several of the garden cities which have been organized in England, France, and Germany have death rates one- half as high as those prevalent in American municipalities. City planning will eliminate the worst features of congestion, just as wise housekeeping will do away with many unde- sirable factors in domestic life. Nothing is more simple than the prevention of overwork. Australia has solved the prob- lem by the enactment of a universal eight-hour law. Already beginnings have been made in [210] SOCIAL RELIGION IN PRACTICE several of the states through legislation re- stricting the working hours of women and children. It remains for other states to emu- late the example which these pioneers have set. The problem of unemployment presents more difficulties than any thus far discussed. Free employment agencies managed, as in Germany, Belgium, and England, by the gov- ernment will do much to relieve the worst features of unemployment; the regulation of casual and seasonal trades will have its effect, but the unemployment incident to industrial depressions can only be offset by some system of government work which shall guarantee to the family of the unemployed at least a min- imum of subsistence until work can again be secured. Industrial accidents, as INIrs. Florence Kelley has so ably pointed out, are not acci- dents at all, because they have become a regu- lar part of industry. They are casualties oc- curring not spasmodically, but at j)redictable intervals. While all industrial accidents can- not be immediately eliminated, their number can be greatly reduced by providing safety [2111 SOCIAL RELIGION devices and efficient factory inspection. Where prevention of accidents seems to be impossible, compensation of workingmen for accidents is not only possible but practicable. The German system of workingmen's insur- ance, as well as the British system of working- men's compensation, have both proved useful in relieving the family of the injured or killed workingman from the most serious phases of distress to which they are still subject in most of the states. All of these things together: low standards of living, the subjection of women, child labor, congestion, overwork, unemployment, and ac- cidents, lead to a premature death, involving stupendous losses which can be prevented only by preventing the conditions wliich cause pre- mature death. For each of these adverse social conditions — these social maladjustments — a remedy exists. In no case is the field an untried one, for the countries of Europe and the states of Austra- lia have taken many steps in advance of the United States in their attempts to remedy the conditions of which I have spoken. But we in the United States do not yet know these [212] SOCIAL RELIGION IN PRACTICE things. We must still be educated up to their realization. We must learn that high stand- ards can be maintained because men are essen- tially normal and will remain so unless their environment is adverse. When we have educated people to a realiza- tion of these facts, when we have inspired them with the knowledge that social conditions are remediable through cooperative social action, then we can advance through our Social Re- ligion toward a higher type society which shall tolerate only those things which are worthy and perpetuate only the noblest and best that exists in men and women. [213] CHAPTER XIV THE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH What problem is presented to the Christian Church by modern economic and social condi- tions? What service must the church per- form? What burden of responsibility must it assume if it is to abide by the teachings of Jesus ? Jesus^reached_g^.sQciaLreligion. ^gejsaid : "j4QYe_Go(L-and_. serve thy neighbor." De- spite the wide distribution of ability and ge- nius, opportunities are so narrowed in America to-day that millions are condemned to a living hell of underpay, poverty, vice, and misery. This narrowing of opportunities cannot be ascribed to the anger of a jealous God, nor to the indiscretion or selfishness of a past genera- tion. Neither omnipotent anger nor heredi- tary defect is responsible for maladjustments. [214] SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY Thej^ are the work of men, and may be rem- edied by their creators. You and I share in the benefits of the mal- adjustments which exist in our society. We take the dividend from the man-kilhng steel works ; we accept the rent check from a squalid tenement ; we wear silk spun by an overworked child; we use white phosphorus matches when work with white phosphorus means death to the worker ; we burn hard coal that has passed through the fingers of a twelve-year old breaker boj'^; we enjoy a delicately prepared box of delicious candy upon which there is no trace of the hopeless wretchedness of the work- ers who made it. These maladjustments exist in our society — we share the benefits and we are socially re- sponsible for their continuance. The old drama is reenacted. The Lord said unto Cain: "Where is Abel, thy brother?" And he said: "I know not, am I my brother's keeper?" God walks to-daj^ in the midst of social in- justice — vile tenements; low-browed, stunted, haggard men; motherless girls; women strug- gling to support their families on bread and tea without milk; children dragging out a [ 215 ] SOCIAL RELIGION weary existence In the mills. God sees this squalor, wretchedness, and misery and asks the men and women in the middle and upper classes: "Where is thy brother, the worker?'* What shall be your answer? "He is toiling that I may enjoy; he is pro- ducing that I may consume; he is suffering from congestion and insanitation while I live in a fine house, own an automobile, belong to an exclusive club and attend a palatial church." Or, perhaps, we may sympathize with Charles Rann Kennedy's Bishop of Lancashire, who exclaims in a tone of agonized horror: "Do you mean to tell me that I've been sitting down to breakfast with a common working- man?" Or, perhaps, we may reply: "Am I my brother's keeper?" In any case, do you remember what God said to Cain? Is your church acting the part of the Good Samaritan in its deahngs with the modern un- fortunate? Let me state a concrete case. The other day I stood in a New York court, look- ing up at the six-story tenements by which the court was surrounded. On the fourth-story fire escape of one of these buildings stood a child of perhaps three years, rosy-cheeked [216] SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY and full of vitality. It held one of the bars of the fire escape in each hand and gnawed at another bar with its milk teeth as I have seen animals gnaw at the bars of their cage. Here was a typical tenement-house child play- ing behind the bars until it should be old enough to go down and play among the traf- fic of the street, and I began to wonder what would happen to that child as it grew older and became a man. I thought of the green fields, trees, flowers, birds and the freshness and spontaneity of nature which the children of the country know so well, and then I turned to this spot of desolation within the limits of the greatest city in the land, where were one scrubby tree, ash barrels, filth, refuse, drying clothes, fire escapes, brick walls, and a small patch of sky. Can any good come out of Nazareth? Have we in the twentieth century learned to gather figs of thistles? Here, per- haps within sight of the church in which you worship, was an embryo man possessed of every possibility of strong manhood, yet doomed through the lack of play facilities, and the lack of normal life, to grow into manhood dwarfed in soul, if not in body — misshapen by [2171 SOCIAL RELIGION contact with an environment in which there was no inspiration, no hope. As he grows up this boy may Hterally fall among thieves, and become one of them. What then? Shall we condemn him because he is bad? He never knew a real home, nor cul- tured surroundings. Shall we condemn his mother for her ignorance? Shall we condemn his father because he earned only ten dollars a week? Shall we condemn or reform? Is it better to maintain hospitals, or to prevent ac- cidents? Shall we revile ignorance or provide education? Shall we look to effects or seek out the causes? There is an individual application of this social religion. The religious thought of our modern churches is turned toward personal salvation. Each man seeks for his own. He praj's, "Dear Lord, save my soul, save me. Be sure that I go direct to Paradise. Provide for my future happiness and welfare." I re- cently listened to a conversation full of mean- ing to the modern Church. Two persons were talking. There was a little, lonely girl sick in the hospital. One said: "I am going to the hospital to see my little friend." The other [218] SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY answered: "I am going to Church to save my soul." If the devil was abroad that bright Sabbath morning he had at least one splendid opportunity. JNIost of us believe in a hereafter. We feel confident that there is a future life. We look forward to the great day of judgment when the books shall be opened and the people of the world shall be judged and shall be divided as the shepherd divides the sheep from the goats, and some shall be set upon the right hand among the sheep and some on the left hand among the goats. What shall determine that division? What actions will be judged? What questions will be asked? Will the ques- tions be personal? "Were you happy?" "Was love your Hfe motive?" "Have you lived up to your ideals?" "Did you observe the moral law?" "Did you take God's name in vain?" "Did you lie, steal, or kill?" Make no such fond mistake. These questions are personal questions, but the questions at the gate of Par- adise will be social ones, for St. Peter repre- sents Jesus, and Jesus preached a social gos- pel. When your fate shall tremble in the balance [210] SOCIAL RELIGION between the flock of sheep and the herd of goats, these questions will be asked you: "From what city did you come?" "From Pittsburg, Chicago, Savannah, Baltimore, Scranton, Harrisburg?" "What social conditions prevailed in your city? Were men, women, children, and board- ers crowded into small, inadequate living quar- ters? Was the school system reaching the chil- dren? Was the death-rate high or low? Were women protected? How many babies died each year because the milk was bad? "What were political conditions? Did the city councils sell franchises? Was the police department in league with vice? Was the dis- trict attorney honest and efficient? Were the streets kept clean? Were parks and play- ground facilities made as large a part of the city program as graft palaces and pergolas ? "What economic conditions existed? Were men overworked and underpaid? Have you ever heard of child labor? Did sweatshops abound? Was there any Sunday work? Were industrial accidents prevented? Did they safeguard dangerous trades? Was the work- ing life of the people long and happy?" [220] SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY What will be your reply? "I fulfilled the law. I visited the fatherless and the widows in their affliction. I kept the Commandments, and I gave to the poor. I am not sure that my tenements had fire-escapes, and the Board of Health was continually complaining that the plumbing was out of repair, but that was not my business. My agent attended to the property, for it was only a side investment. There was some complaint about the school system in our town, and I believe that the death-rate from typhoid was very high. I was too busy, however, to pay much attention to such matters. I was interested in manu- facturing, and that took most of my time. I knew very little about politics. They were controlled by an organized gang of public plunderers, against which one man was power- less. I must say I did not always vote, be- cause one vote did not really count unless you voted with the organization. Besides, it was not well to vote against the organization, since the organization stood for business interests and prosperity. I held a few good railroad stocks, and the papers did say at one time that the road in which I held stock had bought a [221] SOCIAL RELIGION city franchise. But I was very busy just then opening up some new territory in South Am- erica, and I did not pay very much attention to the report. I am absolutely uninformed as to the economic conditions. We employed about eleven hundred men, and paid them as much as seven dollars a day. To be sure, there were some who got only one dollar and a quar- ter, but thej'^ were the exception, and, besides, they were only immigrants and were accus- tomed to living on next to nothing. We did the best we could for our men, but competition was keen and we could not go too far. We worked on Sunday because our competitors did, and we worked an eleven-and-a-half-hour day in order to increase our output. Yes, there were sweatshops in town, and some child labor. We employed a few children ourselves, but only in one department. We could not use them profitably elsewhere. You see, I am not up on many of these things, because I was a busy man and could not take much time away from my own affairs." You will recollect that Jesus says: "Inas- much as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, ye did it not unto ^le," and He pro- [ 222 ] SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY nounced that judgment as He divided the sheep from the goats. Men and women all over America to-day have fallen among thieves. You must bind up their wounds; j^ou must catch the thieves, and you must break up the system which promotes thievery. But before you begin thief-catch- ing ask yourself the question: "If some one should cry, 'stop thief,' would my conscience begin to run?" Jesus told the parable of the Good Samari- tan and said, "Go and do thou likewise," and He says it to me, and He says it to you, "Go and do thou likewise." Social maladjustment offers boundless opportunities to the modern Samaritan — underj)aid men, overworked wom- en, hungry children. We are the salt of the earth, a city set upon a hill, a part of a great social movement. Love thy God; love thy neighbor; love thyself. Be fair to men; pro- tect women; give op^iortunity to children. This is the duty of the Good Samaritan: the keynote of progress; the clarion call of Social Religion. The fathers have eaten sour grapes, but the child's teeth are not set on edge. Most men are [ 223 ] SOCIAL RELIGION at birth potentially equal. Beggars, tramps, prostitutes, and criminals are made by over- work, bad housing, poor food, and unemploy- ment. Men are low-browed, stunted, and hag- gard because of the overwhelming social odds against them. The mark of the beast has been placed on their foreheads not by a jealous God or a sportive devil, but by the hideous array of maladjustments which we tolerate in our semi-barbaric Christian civilization. Maladjustment is darkness. Adjustment is light. What is darkness? It is but the ab- sence of light. Turn on the light. Teach the truth. "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Truth is the only light that can banish the darkness of maladjust- ment. Teach the truth in your churches and your schools — the truth about the appalling maladjustments which threaten the founda- tions of civilization; about cooperative in- dustry ; about progress and brotherhood in so- ciety; about the innate goodness and capacity of men ; about Social Rehgion. Tell the world that progress must be made, that progress is being made, and that you are helping to shape the future with its uncounted possibilities. [224] INDEX Accidents, Factory, 150 Mine, Character of, 147 Street, 151 Achievement, Possibilities of, 183 Addams, Jane, Quoted, 65 and 82 Baltimore, Wages of Women in, 55 Cherry, Mine Disaster at, 145 Chicago Vice Commission, Findings of, 66 Child Labor, Cost of, 77 Effects of, 79 Laws on, 209 Child Labor and Family Standards, 83 Children, Needs of, 177 Church, Activity, Possibilities of, 216 Problems of, 214 City Plannings, Effects of, 210 Congestion, Extent of, 91 Dangerous Tradea, Meaning of, 153 Depravity, Doctrine of, 169 Devine, E. T., Quoted, 132 Dickens, Charles, Quoted, 17 Dress, Responsibilities for, 23 Eastman, Crystal, Quoted, 155 Eight-Hour Day, Adequacy of, 122 Fitch, J. A., Quoted, 110 and 118 Good Samaritan, Parable of, 9 Interpreted, 185 Modem, 188 Gray, Thomas, Quoted, 173 Hard, William, Quoted, 140 Hours of Labor, Regulation of, 204 Housing, Improvement of, Abroad, 102 New York, 95 [225 INDEX Hypocrisy, Attitude of Jesus Towanl, 6 Intemperance, As a Cause of Poverty, 51 Jesus, Gospel of, 2 Social Doctrine of, 11 Social Teachings of, 3 Kennedy, Charles R., Quoted, 13 Kingsley, S. C, Quoted, 101 Kipling, Rudyard, Quoted, 138 and 139 Length of Life, Conditions of, 162 Life, Length of, 161 Lengthening of, 164 Living Conditions, Pittsburgh, 90 Living Wages, 52 Lowell, James Russell, Quoted, 14 Man, Innate Qualities of, 170 Marsh. B. C, Quoted, 81 ^Minimum Wage Laws, For Women, 207 Opportunity, Distribution of, 181 Outlook. Hopefulness of, 167 Overcrowding, Extent of, 93 Overwork, Effects of, 119 Overwork, Extent of, 105 Pittsburgh, 110 and 118 Railway Employees, 107 Steel Industry, 110 Patten, S. N., Quoted, 133 Pittsburgh, Overwork in, 110 Plenty, Distribution of, 19 Premature Death, Extent of, 163 Significance of, 159 Profession and Practice, 1 Prosperity, In the United States, 18 True Measure of, 16 Prostitution. Earnings from, 67 Economic basis for, 62 Social Religion. And Maladjustment, 200 And Social Problems, 5 Content of. xiv and 193 Machinery of, 195 Practice of, 197 Theory of, 194 Social Responsibility, And Modern Industry, 12 Railroad Wages, 39 Rauschenbush, Walter, Quoted, xi Religion, Definition of, ix Riis, Jacob, Quoted, 171 226 ] INDEX Ruskin, John, Quoted, 22 School Feeding, Eflacacy of, 175 Need of, 44 Schools, Purpose of, 177 Standard of Living, Estimates of, 34 In New York, 32 In Small Towns, 35 Importance of, 30 Perth Amboy, 36 Steel Industrj', Hours of Work in, 110 Summer, W. T., Quoted, 06 Tenements, Character of, 92 Conditions in, 93 New York, 95 Trade Unions, Function of, 202 Twelve-Hour Day, Meaning of, 114 Unemployment, Extent of, 131 Unemployment, Meaning of, 125 Remedies for, 211 Results of, 134 Veiller, L., Quoted, 95 Vice, As an Organized Business, 55 Returns from, 67 Wages, Alinimum Wage Law, 201 Summary of, 41 Wage Statistics, Extent of, 37 Railroads, 39 White Slavery, Immigrant Women and, 63 Williams, Charles D., Quoted, ix Womanhood, Waste of, 181 Women, Exploitation of, 179 Standard of Living for, 55 Wages of, 54 And White Slavery, 62 In Baltimore, 55 [227] 'TpHE following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books by the same author, and books of related interest. BY THE SAME AUTHOR Woman and Social Progress A Discussion of the Biologic, Domestic, Industrial, and Social Possibilities of American Women By SCOTT NEARING and NELLIE M. S. NEARING Clotk, $1.50 net; postpaid, $1.62 In this discussion of Woman and Social Progress, the authors are not at all concerned with the relations of woman's capacity to man's, but with the relation of her capacity to her oppor- tunities and to her achievement. The biologic, domestic, industrial, and social possibilities of American women are discussed at length. The work proves that women have capacity, and that it matters not a whit whether that capacity be equal to man's, inferior, or superior. If women have capacity, if they are capable of achievement, then they can, as individuals, play a part in the drama of life. The world abounds in work, a great deal of which will not be done at all unless it is done by women. If it can be shown that women have capacity for work, every relation of social justice and every need of social progress demand that this oppor- tunity and this capacity be correlated in such a manner as to insure women's achievement. These are the theses which are jiroposed in the early chapters of the work. Succeeding chapters contain the solution, viz.: that women's capacity, if combined with opportunity, will necessarily result in achievement; that therefore they should take their places as individuals in the vanguard of an advancing civilization. Press Comments _ " The authors cover well nish the whole field of modern opportunity, and they do it in a style so lucid and in a manner so persuasive as to insure the sustained atten- tion of the reader.— r/ie Ari^onaut." " A book whiVh. from the importance of its subject, and by virtue of its sound thought and worthy expression, ought to be in the hands of every intelligent woman in the \An<\"— Independent. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE New York By SCOTT NEARING, Ph.D. Of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Social Adjustment Cloth, 377 pages, $i.so ne^ "It is a good book, and will help any one interested in the study of present social problems." — Christian Standard. "A clear, sane gathering together of the sociological dicta of to-day. Its range is wide — education, wages, distribution and housing of population, conditions of women, home decadence, tenure of working life and causes of distress, child labor, unemployment, and remedial methods. A capital reading book for the million, a text-book for church and school, and a companion for the economist of the study desk. — Book News Monthly. Wages in the United States Cloth, i2mo, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.34 This work represents an examination of statistics offered by various states and industries in an effort to determine the average wage in the United States. 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Other Notable Works by Miss Addams A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil Cloth, i2tno, $1.00 net; by mail, $1.10 "Miss Addams's volume is painful reading, but we heartily wish that it might be read and pondered by every man and woman who to-day, in smug complacency, treat with indifference and contempt the great struggle for social purity." — The Nation. The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets Cloth, i2mo, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35 "The book should be in the hands of every preacher and laborer for humanity. I wish that parents might make it a text-book." — Rev. M.\DisoN C. Peters in The New Orleans Daily News. Newer Ideals of Peace Cloth, i2mo, leather back, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35 The editor of Collier's writes: "To us it seems the most comprehen- sive talk yet given about how to help humanity in America to-day." Democracy and Social Ethics Half leather, ix + 2Si pages, isnio, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35 "The book is startling, stimulating, and intelligent." — Philadelphia Ledger. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE New York Christianizing the Social Order By the REV. WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH Professor of Church History in Rochester Theological Seminary Author of "Christianity and the Social Crisis" Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 net Dr. Rauschenbusch's former book, "Christianity and the Social Crisis," called for a social awakening of the moral and religious forces; his new book shows that this awakening is now taking place, and to that extent is full of hopefulness. Dr. Rauschenbusch examines the present social order to determine what portions have already been Christianized and what portions have not yet sub- mitted to the revolutionizing influence of the Christian law and spirit. The process by which these unredeemed sections of modern life can be Christianized are discussed and the Christian Social Order in the process of making is exhibited. Christianity and the Social Crisis Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 net "It is of the sort to make its readers feel that the book was bravely written to free an honest man's heart; that conscientious scholar- ship and hard thinking have wrought it out and enriched it; that it is written in a clear, incisive style; that stem passion and gentle sentiment stir at times among the words, and keen wit and grim_ humor flash here and there in the turn of a sentence. It is a book to like, to learn from, and, though the theme be sad and serious, to be charmed with." — N. Y. Times' Sunday Review of Books. Social Progress in Contemporary Europe By FREDERIC AUSTIN OGG Cloth, i2mo, $1.50; postpaid, $1.62 This volume gathers up and explains with succinctness those aspects of European social development since the later eighteenth century which by common acceptation seem to possess enduring significance. Emphasis is laid upon fundamentals and Professor Ogg has made clear the principal developments by which, within the past hundred and twenty-five j'cars, the state of European society has been made what it now is. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE New York This book is DUE on the last date stamped below MARIS 1930 MAV AA 000 895 218 • ■:;;!!