LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
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 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 AND THE PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
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 DALLAS ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
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 TORONTO
 
 THE 
 
 GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 AND 
 
 The Problems of Democracy 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY C. VEDDER 
 
 v \ 
 
 PROFESSOR OF CHURCH HISTORY IN CROZER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 AND AUTHOR OF "SOCIALISM AND THE ETHICS OF JESUS," 
 "THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY," ETC. 
 
 orfe 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1914
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1914 
 BY- THE MACMTLLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1914
 
 TO 
 THE MILLIONS WHO TOIL 
 
 WITHOUT HOPE 
 
 THAT THE THOUSANDS MAY ENJOY 
 WITHOUT THOUGHT
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE man who to-day proclaims the Gospel of Jesus 
 in the spirit of his Master must expect misunderstand- 
 ing, abuse and perhaps persecution. Why not ? Shall 
 the disciple be above his Master? 
 
 Still in heaven's name the deeds of hell are done: 
 Still on the high-road, 'neath the noonday sun 
 The fires of hate are lit for them who dare 
 Follow their Lord along the untrodden way. 
 
 I am not suprised or disquieted, therefore, that I 
 am accused of being a dangerous heretic. And it is 
 with no expectation of getting rid of that reputation 
 that I here protest that I have no quarrel with ortho- 
 doxy. The kernel of it I believe to be truth, as 
 firmly as the most orthodox. I find nothing false in 
 it, save that kind of falsity which results from a lay- 
 ing of the emphasis in the wrong place. The change 
 of emphasis that I urge, from the metaphysics of 
 Paul to the ethics of Jesus, involves such a difference 
 of perspective, such a readjustment of magnitudes and 
 values, as appears like heresy to the more conservative. 
 But after a time they will learn to make the adjust- 
 ment, and will perceive that nothing valued by the 
 old orthodoxy has been lost, though its form may have 
 been not a little altered. 
 
 vii
 
 Vlll PREFACE 
 
 We need a reconstructed theology. The theology 
 of all Churches has been dominated by monarchical 
 ideas : it needs to be recast in the mould of democracy. 
 It has been permeated with ideas of special privilege, 
 such as were unavoidable when aristocracy ruled the 
 world ; it needs to be restated in terms of equal rights. 
 As my critics kindly remind me, I am no theologian; 
 nevertheless I have endeavored to make a modest con- 
 tribution to such restatement. 
 
 Some readers will detect an inconsistency. They 
 will say, at least to themselves : "Here is a man who 
 advocates one thing and does another. He condemns 
 the wage system, yet works for a salary. He is strong 
 against monopolies, yet copyrights his book. He de- 
 clares all dividends and interest immoral, yet is sup- 
 ported from the income of endowments invested in 
 stocks, bonds and mortgages." All of which is a true 
 bill. And therefore here is a good place to emphasize 
 a thing that should never be overlooked in our dis- 
 cussion of social evils : the individual is powerless in 
 the grip of the social system. He has to live his life 
 under social conditions as they are, not as he thinks 
 they should be, not as he hopes they will be. This is 
 just as true of the millionaire as of the wage earner. 
 The individual is powerless, except (and note the ex- 
 ception, for it is a large one) that he is morally bound, 
 while reluctantly accepting facts as they are, to protest 
 against them with all his power, and strive as best 
 he may to amend them. Inconsistency will become a 
 serious charge when the individual has the power to 
 be consistent. In present social conditions, only that
 
 PREFACE IX 
 
 man is to be esteemed ethically culpable who acquiesces 
 in a social system that he knows to be iniquitous and 
 eagerly uses its iniquities to advance his own interests. 
 Some readers of my "Socialism and the Ethics of 
 Jesus," while commending certain features of it, re- 
 marked that it was too much given to glittering gen- 
 eralities, and afforded too little help to those who hon- 
 estly wish to do something toward the betterment of 
 the social order, but do not know where or how to 
 begin. Something more "practical," it was intimated, 
 was a desideratum. In this book I have tried to be 
 practical.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAFIKt PAGE 
 
 I. THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH . . I 
 
 II. THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 48 
 
 III. THE WOMAN PROBLEM 85 
 
 IV. THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD . .... .108 
 
 V. THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 148 
 
 VI. THE PROBLEM OF VICE . . , : . .182 
 
 VII. THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 216 
 
 VIII. THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 250 
 
 IX. THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY . . . . . 282 
 
 X. THE PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS .... 332 
 
 APPENDIX: A. BIBLIOGRAPHY; B. PROGRAMS FOR 
 SOCIAL REFORM ....... 377
 
 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 AND THE PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY
 
 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 "!N the fulness of the times, God sent forth his 
 Son," said Paul. However wide scope may be given 
 to these words by an interpreter, they cannot be taken 
 to mean less than a process of social and religious 
 development among the Hebrew people, of which the 
 Gospel was the culmination. It follows that the Gos- 
 pel cannot be adequately understood, if studied apart 
 from the conditions out of which it sprang. 
 
 Before their entrance into Canaan the Hebrews had 
 been a collection of tribes or clans, twelve in number, 
 according to their unbroken and uncontradicted tradi- 
 tion. They believed themselves to be descendants of 
 a common ancestor, and hence bound together by those 
 ties of kinship that have always been so powerful 
 among primitive peoples. They had been nomads, but 
 in their new home a part became cultivators of the 
 
 i
 
 2 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 soil, while another part dwelt in towns and were for 
 the first time made acquainted with civilization, the 
 art of living together in cities, with all that such life 
 implies, whether of virtue or of vice. Private prop- 
 erty in land now developed among them, as it usually 
 does when a nomadic people becomes agricultural. A 
 careful study of the book of Judges discloses these 
 social changes among the Hebrews of that period. 
 
 Then came the period of the kings. The Hebrew 
 kingdom, like all Oriental monarchies, was a military 
 despotism, maintained by a standing army, the nucleus 
 of which was a small body of foreign mercenaries. 1 
 The throne also relied on a landed aristocracy, which 
 owed its special privileges to royal favor and in turn 
 gave its support to its benefactor. Samuel had 
 warned the people that such would be their experience : 
 
 "And he [the king] will take your fields and your vine- 
 yards and your olive-yards, the best of them, and give 
 them to his servants; and he will take the tenth of your 
 seed and of your vineyards, and give to his officers and 
 to his servants ; and your male and female slaves and 
 your goodliest young men and your asses, he will take 
 and put to his work; he will take the tenth of your sheep; 
 and ye shall be his servants." (i Sam. 8:15-17.) 
 
 'The Gittites and their leader Ittai (2 Sam. 15:18-22) seem 
 to have been such a band. Benaiah is later mentioned as com- 
 mander of similar forces (2 Sam. 20:23). The "mighty men" 
 of David (2 Sam. 23:8) were probably officers of such troops. 
 It was Benaiah who secured Solomon his throne (i K, 1:8-11, 
 32-34, 44-46). These gibborim, as the main instruments of the 
 kings in maintaining their supremacy and doing injustice, were 
 hated by the prophets (Hos. 10: 13, 14; Am. 2: 14-16; Is. 3: 1-3).
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 3 
 
 By such means David and Solomon came to the 
 throne; by such means they were kept in power 
 no wonder there was a revolution after the latter's 
 death. But the revolution did not improve matters 
 much. The history of the Hebrews down to the cap- 
 tivity is a story of the growth of royal and aristocratic 
 power at the expense of the people. The great landed 
 estates increased rapidly, and the peasant- farmers 
 were reduced to poverty, the status of "hired ser- 
 vants," or slavery (2 K. 4: i). 1 
 
 This gave occasion for a social struggle the traces 
 of which are clearly marked in the writings of the 
 prophets. Ahab's seizing of Naboth's vineyard may 
 be regarded as no unusual outrage, unless that it was 
 unusually conspicuous (i K. 21). The prophets bit- 
 terly denounced this oppression: 
 
 Woe to those who devise mischief 
 And work out evil on their beds ! . . . 
 And they covet fields and seize them ; 
 And houses and take them away: 
 And they oppress a man and his house, 
 Even a man and his heritage (Mi. 3: i, 2). 
 
 1 The tenth commandment is an unimpeachable witness to the 
 antiquity of slavery among the Hebrews. The words "man 
 servant" and "maid servant" in our English version translate 
 the Hebrew words for male and female slaves. They could 
 be "coveted" only because they were property. The same is 
 true of the wife. The form of the commandment is only pos- 
 sible in a patriarchal society, where the wife was a man's prop- 
 erty equally with his chattels and slaves.
 
 4 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Jehovah enters into judgment with the elders of his 
 
 people 
 
 And with the princes thereof: 
 "It is ye that have devoured the vineyard; 
 The plunder of the poor is in your houses" (Is. 3: 14). 
 Woe unto those who join house to house, 
 Who add field to field until there is no room, 
 And ye are made to dwell alone in the midst of the land 
 
 (Is. 5:8). 
 
 Ezekiel rebukes the ruling class for their greed : 
 "And the prince shall not take of the people's inher- 
 itance by oppression to eject them from their pos- 
 session; he shall give an inheritance to his sons out of 
 his own possession; that my people be not scattered 
 every man from his possession" (46: 18). Even kin- 
 ship did not prevent exploitation (Mi. 7:2; Is. 9: 19; 
 Jer. 9:4). An interesting incident in the struggle is 
 the protest against private property in land made by 
 the Rechabites, the significance of whose prolonged 
 separate existence has been curiously missed by 
 Christian students of the Bible. It is a pity to spoil 
 the thousands of temperance sermons that have been 
 preached from Jer. 35 : 6-10, but the story has nothing 
 whatever to do with temperance, and everything to 
 do with this agrarian struggle among the Jews. Jona- 
 dab, the son of Rechab, gave this command to his 
 children : 
 
 Ye shall not drink wine, neither ye nor your sons for- 
 ever ; neither shall ye build house, nor sow seed, nor plant 
 vineyards, nor shall ye possess any; but all your days
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 5 
 
 shall ye dwell in tents ; that ye may live many days in the 
 land where ye sojourn. 
 
 The injunction to drink no wine, as is clear from 
 the accompanying injunction, was based solely on the 
 idea that the drinking of wine was a recognition of 
 the right to plant vineyards, which again was insepa- 
 rable from owning land. For the same reason the 
 Rechabites might not sow seed or build house, since 
 these equally implied recognition of property in land. 
 They were to revert to the nomad life of their fore- 
 fathers, and renounce ownership of the soil, even right 
 of occupation and use. 
 
 We better appreciate the intensity of feeling shown 
 by the prophets when we realize that they came from 
 the exploited class. Elijah came from the hill country 
 of Gilead, Elisha from a village of Ephraim, Amos 
 from Tekoa in Judah, and Micah and Jeremiah from 
 villages of the same region. They represented the 
 peasantry, the tillers of the soil, the keepers of the 
 sheep, the class that was suffering most from the exac- 
 tions of the rich and powerful land-owning nobles. It 
 is this "class-consciousness," as it is the fashion now 
 to call it, which puts the caloric into these words of 
 Isaiah : 
 
 Ye shall no longer trample my courts to bring oblations ; 
 Vain is incense, it is an abomination to me. . . . 
 Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul 
 
 hates. . . . 
 
 Wash you, make you clean; 
 Put away the evil of your doings from mine eyes ;
 
 6 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Cease to do evil. 
 
 Learn to do good, 
 
 Seek out justice, 
 
 Set right the oppressor. 
 
 Judge the orphan, 
 
 Plead for the widow (i :n-i7). 
 
 And these like words from Amos : 
 
 I hate, I despise your feasts, 
 And I take no delight in your festivals. . . . 
 Take away from me the noise of thy songs, 
 For I will not hear the melody of thy harps. 
 But let justice roll down like waters, 
 And righteousness like an unfailing stream (5:21, 23, 
 24). 
 
 And Micah is "very bold" when he says: 
 
 With what shall I come before Jehovah, 
 
 And bow myself before God on high? 
 
 Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, 
 
 With calves of a year old? 
 
 Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, 
 
 Or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? 
 
 Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, 
 
 The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 
 
 He has told thee, O man, what is good; 
 
 And what does Jehovah require of thee, 
 
 But to do justice, and to love mercy, 
 
 And to walk humbly with thy God? (6:6-8). 
 
 The two great words of the prophetic literature of 
 the Hebrews are "justice" and "righteousness," and
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 7 
 
 the prophets insist with endless iteration that formal 
 piety is no substitute for these in the eyes of Jehovah. 
 Both are social words; both have to do with social 
 relations; together they inculcate on the son of Israel 
 such conduct as is due from him to his blood brother, 
 son of a common father, according to the old ethics of 
 the clan. 
 
 Along with this social struggle went the religious: 
 the contest between the exclusive worship of Jehovah, 
 and the coordinate worship of the Baalim, or gods of 
 the region before the Hebrew invasion. The royal 
 house and the aristocracy were inclined to a "liberal" 
 policy ; they made frequent alliances, political and mat- 
 rimonial, with the heathen, the result of which was 
 to admit the worship of Baalim as subordinate gods > 
 to establish, in fact, a Hebrew pantheon in which 
 Jehovah should hold some such position as Zeus and 
 Jupiter held in the Greek and Roman systems. The 
 wronged peasant- farmer class was, as a whole, faith- 
 ful to Jehovah and his exclusive worship. Hence 
 the prophets mingle, in almost equal proportions, de- 
 nunciations of the idolatry of the ruling class and of 
 their social injustice. In both they are sinning against 
 Jehovah. In the prophetic literature, the identifica- 
 tion of the social and the religious struggle is nearly 
 complete, if not quite. 
 
 The positive side of the prophetic teaching was the 
 announcement of a twofold message: first, Jehovah 
 would punish this double iniquity of the rich and 
 powerful. The monarchy would disappear, and Jeru- 
 salem would be destroyed, unless the rulers returned
 
 8 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 to Jehovah and caused justice to prevail. The cap- 
 tivity fulfilled this prediction and brought the fierce 
 social and religious struggle to an end. The second 
 element in the prophetic message was that a Deliverer 
 would arise, a Prince who would reign according to 
 the will of Jehovah ; and glowing pictures were drawn 
 of the glory, righteousness, peace and prosperity that 
 all should experience in this new kingdom. From this 
 point we trace the development of that Messianic hope, 
 that idea of Redemption, which is the unique fea- 
 ture of Judaism, differentiating it unmistakably from 
 all other ancient religious systems. 'The Bible is the 
 history of Redemption and the Gospel is the culmina- 
 tion of the story Saviour is the distinctive Christian 
 word, and salvation the distinctive Christian idea. 
 
 The prophetic idea of Redemption is two-sided : the 
 individual is to be redeemed from sin to righteous- 
 ness, and society is to be redeemed from injustice and 
 oppression to social righteousness. But of these two 
 ideas, no reader of the prophets can deny that the 
 latter is made incomparably the more vivid nd em- 
 phatic. Yet when the Jews came back from captivity 
 to rebuild Jerusalem, the prophets and their teachings 
 no longer swayed their minds. They came back con- 
 vinced monotheists, indeed, loyal to Jehovah as the 
 only God, but they came aristocrats also. The proph- 
 ets were thenceforth relegated to second place among 
 their religious writings, the first place of authority 
 being given to the Thorah, or law, which established 
 the privileges and prerogatives of the priesthood on a 
 secure foundation. Thenceforth a priestly caste ruled
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 9 
 
 the nation. An intellectual basis for their growing 
 encroachments was furnished by the rise of the 
 Rabbis, the teachers and interpreters of the law; and 
 was further completed by the synagogue, designed pri- 
 marily for the teaching of the law in every Jewish 
 community. 
 
 The farmer-peasants had probably never been de- 
 ported in large numbers, especially from Galilee; and 
 there was now a recrudescence of the social struggle. 
 There is a moving picture of the social distress of the 
 people in Nehemiah V, and of the effort at reform 
 made by him, which probably had only a temporary 
 effect. We lack full materials for the study of this 
 struggle, but the clear-eyed can discern plain evidence 
 of its continuance in the Jewish apocryphal books, es- 
 pecially Maccabees and the Wisdom of Sirach. The 
 growing doctrine of Messianism among the Jews dur- 
 ing this period is testimony, both to the bitterness of 
 the struggle and to the encouragement given to the 
 oppressed by this hope. In Galilee, among the peas- 
 antry, the Messianic idea seems to have taken the 
 form mainly of hope of social deliverance. In Jeru- 
 salem, among the aristocracy, especially after the loss 
 of independence and subjection to Rome, the Mes- 
 sianic hope assumed a political form and was intensely 
 anti-Roman. 
 
 The limitations of these ideas that we have been 
 tracing, as they prevailed among the Jews in the time 
 of Jesus, must also be understood if we would get a 
 full comprehension of the Gospel. Jehovah was the 
 Father of Israel, but only the creator of other men.
 
 IO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 The Jews were a chosen people, having a relation to 
 Jehovah that no other people could possibly sustain. 
 Redemption, whether of the individual or of society, 
 was for Jews alone. Messiah would sway his scepter 
 over all the nations, but to break them in pieces and 
 make them subject to the Jew. 1 Social justice was 
 justice owed from Jew to Jew, because all Jews were 
 brothers by descent from Abraham. It is the old 
 clan idea of justice, essentially unmodified, that we 
 find throughout the Old Testament. This explains 
 what would otherwise be incomprehensible ethics. 
 The Jew might not take interest from his "neighbor," 
 that is, another Jew, but might lend at interest to a for- 
 eigner (Deut. 23: 19, 20; Ex. 22:25-27). Jews must 
 not eat anything that died of itself, but might give it 
 to a stranger in the gates or sell it to a foreigner 
 (Deut. 14:21). Jews must not hold each other in 
 slavery, at most after six years a Jewish slave must 
 be freed (Ex. 21 : 2), but they might buy of foreigners 
 and hold them slaves forever (Lev. 25 : 44-46). Jere- 
 miah stresses this principle heavily, and clearly implies 
 that violation of such brotherly rights was one of the 
 crying sins of his times (34:8, 9). 
 
 No ideas of God sustaining equal relations to all 
 men, of a Redemption for the whole world, of human 
 rights apart from clan rights, can be found in the 
 Judaism in which Jesus was bred. 
 
 1 Ps. 2:8, 9 ; Dan. 2 : 44 ; Ps. 47 : 2-4. There are occasional 
 glimpses of wider outlook in the prophets (Is. 19: 19-25; Zech. 
 8:22, 23), but they never became popular, never were embodied 
 in the system that we know as Judaism.
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH II 
 
 II 
 
 Into such a nation as this, himself bred under the 
 influence of such ideas, came Jesus proclaiming the 
 Good News of a deliverance for all men. Of the vari- 
 ous ideas contained in his Gospel, the fundamental 
 thing was the ideal of God that he made known. God 
 is the one Being who is good, the fountain of all good- 
 ness. And "good" means the same when Jesus predi- 
 cates it of God, as when we ascribe goodness to man 
 that is, it is the same in quality; God's goodness 
 differs from man's only in degree, in extent. When 
 we have formed our highest ideal of goodness, God 
 corresponds to that ideal, yet exceeds it. He has 
 every excellence that we can conceive, without any 
 alloy of evil, in the highest possible energy. 
 
 All accounts of Jesus make it plain that he was 
 conscious of perfect moral integrity; he challenged his 
 opponents to point out any defect in character or con- 
 duct. That on one occasion he refused to be called 
 "good" (Mark 10: 18), may argue that he was con- 
 scious of being temptable, and therefore of needing 
 prayer and communion with God such as would keep 
 him ever in accord with his Father's will, but is in no 
 way incompatible with an unclouded consciousness 
 that his loyal allegiance was in fact unbroken. Jesus 
 makes the sweeping claim that he, he alone, has com- 
 plete knowledge of the Father (Luke 10: 21-24), that 
 he alone is capable of imparting such knowledge to 
 those willing to receive it. This is his claim to su-
 
 12 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 premacy as religious teacher, and the ground of the 
 demand that he makes for trust in him, or faith. To 
 confess him or to deny him is a matter of transcendent 
 importance, because it determines a man's moral 
 standing (Luke 12 : 8). This is also why a loyal fol- 
 lower of Jesus can admit no other to be his equal in 
 spiritual authority, can place the words of no other 
 teacher on a level with his. 
 
 Jesus proclaimed God a Being whose nature can be 
 best expressed in the one phrase, "holy love," and can 
 be made clearest to us under the figure of Fatherhood. 
 Greek philosophy made men acquainted with a meta- 
 physical Deity; Jesus introduced men to a Heavenly 
 Father. He first taught us to call God "Our Father 
 who art in Heaven." This Father in Heaven he did 
 not hesitate to explain by representing an earthly 
 father at his best, as in the parable of the Prodigal 
 Son. There is no room in that parable for the idea 
 of a God who is angry with the wicked and hates 
 them, or a forgiveness of sins that depends on the 
 propitiation of a stern Judge by a vicarious bearing 
 of the punishment due. These things may be con- 
 ceived of a metaphysical Deity, not of a Father-God. 
 
 Jesus taught his disciples to pray to this Father in 
 Heaven, "Thy will be done, as in heaven so on earth." 
 But what is God's will? Fantastic answers have been 
 given to that question by speculative theologians, but 
 in the light of the teaching of Jesus about his Father 
 the one possible reply is : the will of a Being whose 
 nature is holy love can be nothing else than to make 
 and keep all his creatures like himself. It is the will
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 13 
 
 of God that his goodness shall prevail in earth as in 
 Heaven. Hence the salvation that Jesus came to give 
 men must consist, not in deliverance from a penalty, 
 not in appeasing a Judge, but in helping men to be- 
 come good, to become like their Father in Heaven. 
 It is not attainment of formal "justification," but im- 
 partation of new character, the power of an endless 
 life. This is the heart of the Good News that Jesus 
 proclaimed and that he sent his disciples out into the 
 world to teach in his name. 
 
 But as Jesus revealed God under the figure of Fa- 
 therhood, so he described his own mission under a 
 figure: he said to men, "The kingdom of God is at 
 hand." He declared that he was the anointed (Mes- 
 siah) of God for the purpose of establishing this king- 
 dom. And in discourses and parables, by word and 
 deed, he made clear to his disciples what he meant 
 by this kingdom, what sort of men were to be its 
 subjects, and what it was fitted to accomplish in the 
 world. If we would know what the Gospel of Jesus 
 really means, therefore, we must study his teachings 
 regarding the kingdom. 
 
 Jesus taught that his kingdom is both spiritual and 
 material, both visible and invisible; it comes first in 
 the hearts of men, but it becomes manifest in their 
 lives. It is so different from the kingdoms of this 
 world, so contrary to the ordinary desires and instincts 
 of men, as to demand entire reconstruction of charac- 
 ter, complete reversal of thought and purpose. And 
 this Jesus again describes under a figure: such a 
 change is tantamount to new birth. This must come
 
 14 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 from above; man cannot effect so great an alteration 
 in himself; a Power not himself 'that makes for right- 
 eousness must establish in him this love of righteous- 
 ness. Hence Jesus adds, only the meek, the teachable, 
 the childlike in spirit can enter the kingdom; the 
 proud, the wise in their own conceit, the self-centered 
 are not excluded from the kingdom they exclude 
 themselves. This new life, this new character, is the 
 beginning of God-likeness; it is the first step in the 
 process of growing into the Father's goodness; and 
 this possibility of goodness, this approach to the char- 
 acter of the one perfectly good Being, constitutes sal- 
 vation. It is the only way in which man can be de- 
 livered from the power of evil. 
 
 'Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as in heaven, 
 so on earth." When we utter these words we pray 
 for the coming of a society of all those who seek the 
 doing of God's will, a society all of whose institutions 
 shall be ordered according to the will of God. Fun- 
 damental in that will is the doing of justice between 
 man and man. The distinction between sins against 
 our brother and sins against God is possible only in 
 thought, and perhaps should be considered impossible 
 even there ; in fact, a sin against our brother is a sin 
 against God. That basic truth invalidates most of 
 our current ethics, and quite as much of our current 
 theology. It entirely discredits the evangelism of the 
 past, and calls for a new evangel. Men used to be 
 converted to God alone, and think it quite sufficient; 
 now they must be converted to God and their fellows, 
 or we can no longer recognize them as converted.
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 1 5 
 
 And half of those who call themselves Christians 
 and this is speaking very moderately have never been 
 converted to their fellows. This is righteous judg- 
 ment, because the same who said, "Judge not, that ye 
 be not judged," said also, "Therefore by their fruits 
 ye shall know them." 
 
 In his teaching regarding the kingdom Jesus there- 
 fore proclaimed a social revolution, but not by vio- 
 lence. The acceptance of his precepts would now as 
 then lead to a complete overturning and reconstruc- 
 tion of social institutions, but peacefully and in the 
 spirit of mutual good will. This teaching of revolu- 
 tion and rejection of force explains why Jesus was 
 popular in Galilee and hated in Judea the Messianic 
 ideas of these two regions greatly differed. The wis- 
 dom of his program was vindicated by the later his- 
 tory of the Jews : it was a violent attempt at revolu- 
 tion that caused the destruction of Jerusalem and the 
 scattering of the Jewish nation. His teaching has also 
 been vindicated by the uncounted attempts of his mis- 
 guided disciples to set up by violence the kingdom 
 whose essence is righteousness and peace and inward 
 joy. In all such cases men have found that they who 
 take the sword will perish by the sword. 
 
 Neither his own age nor any of the ages that fol- 
 lowed could comprehend such a Gospel as Jesus 
 taught. Even the faith of the prophet who first saw 
 in Jesus the Hope of Israel seems to have wavered, for 
 he sent messengers to ask, "Art thou he that should 
 come, or look we for another?" The reply of Jesus 
 has been criticized as an evasion of John's question
 
 l6 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 (Luke 7: 19-23), and such it may seem to the care- 
 less reader. In view of all the circumstances it was 
 equivalent to saying : "I am not the political Messiah 
 whom many expect, but my works show that I am the 
 Servant of Jehovah whom his most spiritual prophet 
 described. Happy the man who can see me for what 
 I am, and is not disturbed because I do not correspond 
 to his preconceived ideal." What answer could have 
 been more to the point, or more comforting to the 
 imprisoned Baptist? We must recollect that the Ori- 
 ental habit is to reply to a query indirectly, not in the 
 blunt, direct Western fashion. 
 
 The spirit of the Gospel was never set forth more 
 clearly, even by Jesus himself, than in his address in 
 the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4: 18, 19). The 
 lesson of the day was from Isaiah, 61 :i, 2: 
 
 The Spirit of Jehovah is upon me, 
 
 Because he anointed me to preach good news to the poor ; 
 
 He has sent me to proclaim deliverance to captives, 
 
 And recovering of sight to blind men, 
 
 To send crushed ones away free, 
 
 To proclaim an acceptable year of Jehovah. 
 
 "To-day," said Jesus, "has this Scripture been ful- 
 filled in your ears." The Gospel means liberty, it is 
 glad tidings to the poor, it is deliverance of all who 
 are in bondage. A Christianity that does not mean 
 this has become divorced from the teaching of its 
 Founder, and no longer is worthy of his name. } Jesus 
 refused to have his Glad Tidings, his joyous, hopeful 
 message of deliverance, wrapped in the swaddling-
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH I? 
 
 clothes of rabbinic ceremonialism. Fasting and sad- 
 ness were as incompatible with his work and procla- 
 mation of new truth as they would be at a bridal feast. 
 There was nothing in common between the old legal- 
 istic system and the new ideas of God and life that he 
 taught. 
 
 Freedom, equality, brotherhood, are the watchwords 
 of the new faith, yet the disciples of Jesus have ill 
 learned this, while others have not perceived it at 
 all, or have perceived only to reject with scorn. 
 Among the latter is Nietzsche. "Christianity," said 
 he, "is the revolt of all that creeps upon the ground 
 against what is elevated." Precisely: it is the revolt 
 of democracy against aristocracy. Christianity as 
 Jesus taught it, the Gospel as he declared it, is just 
 that, and what the small-souled philosopher thought 
 its disgrace is its glory. But Christianity as practiced 
 to-day is something vastly different; if it has not gone 
 over to the aristocracy, as some charge, it has trimmed 
 between the two, ashamed to desert democracy alto- 
 gether, while its heart has been in the opposite camp. 
 Or, to change the figure, the Church has been trying 
 to ride two horses, and as democracy and aristocracy 
 get further apart every day, pretty soon something 
 is going to drop. 
 
 Brotherhood is on the whole the greatest of the 
 Gospel watchwords. Jesus taught that the members 
 of the kingdom are brothers, because they are all 
 children of one Father. He who cannot see in other 
 men his brothers has no warrant from Jesus to call 
 God his Father. The two things are inseparable. All
 
 1 8 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 men are, actually or potentially, brothers to a disciple 
 of Jesus. That a man is "saved" means that he has 
 begun to see a brother in every other man, that he is 
 beginning to love his fellows as God loves them; and 
 in practice that means that he give to every other man 
 the treatment of a brother. This is the very heart of 
 the Gospel, as Jesus expressed it in his twin precept, 
 "Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart" and 
 "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
 
 And how searching a test of the reality of this love 
 Jesus gives us : "If thou art offering thy gift at the 
 altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath 
 aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the 
 altar and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother, 
 and then come and offer thy gift." That is a simple 
 but decisive method by which any one may decide 
 whether he is possessed by the spirit of love that Jesus 
 taught : Am I more disturbed by the wrong that I do 
 my fellow than by the wrong that I suffer from him ? 
 If my brother has aught against me, if I have done 
 him a wrong, I must make myself right with him 
 before I try to get right with God, says Jesus. The 
 process cannot be reversed. How different this is 
 from the spirit of paganism, which regarded it as the 
 highest eulogy of a dead man to say of him that none 
 had done more good to his friends or harm to his foes. 
 "But I say unto you," said Jesus, "love your enemies, 
 do good to them that hate you." 
 
 Love requires not only that we right the wrongs 
 we have done, but that we forgive the wrongs done 
 us. Jesus taught his disciples to pray, "Forgive us
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 19 
 
 our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors." God's 
 forgiveness is not mere remission of penalty, but ad- 
 mission to a new experience of his love; and this is 
 impossible until the spirit of love takes possession of 
 our hearts and rules us. This duty of forgiveness is 
 put in its most striking form in the parable of the two 
 servants he who will receive forgiveness must be- 
 stow forgiveness. And yet, one of the saddest things 
 about moral evil is that we cannot always forgive our 
 brother : the possibility of forgiveness is limited by 
 the receptiveness of others. The heart so calloused by 
 wrong-doing that it has lost its susceptibility, and no 
 longer responds to the voice of love, cannot be for- 
 given, because it has become incapable of receiving 
 forgiveness. If men will not accept love it cannot be 
 forced upon them, and there is no way in which an 
 offense may be blotted out so long as the offender 
 will not let it go. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The Gospel on its practical side is brotherhood. 
 The content of this idea is large, but it cannot be 
 supposed to mean less than these four things: equal 
 rights for all, the supremacy of the common good, 
 mutual dependence and service, and active good will 
 to all. 
 
 Equal rights for all. The Gospel of Jesus is pure 
 democracy. Jesus trusted the people as completely as 
 the greater part of those who teach in his name dis- 
 trust them. Many fancy themselves democrats be-
 
 2O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 cause, as they say, they believe in "the rule of the peo- 
 ple"; but these are half-hearted democrats who, on 
 cross-examination, avow their belief in the rule of the 
 people, not by the people themselves, but "by a repre- 
 sentative part of the people," wiser and better fitted 
 to rule than the whole people. A genuine democrat 
 is one who believes heartily in the whole people and 
 rejoices that he is one of them. If there was a "lower 
 class" in the day of Jesus, he belonged to it; if there 
 were any "common people," he was one of them. The 
 true disciple of Jesus offers the Pharisee's prayer, 
 with the negative omitted : "O God, I thank thee that 
 I am as other men are." He gladly shares the com- 
 mon lot. 
 
 One of Abraham Lincoln's truest sayings was : "No 
 man is good enough to govern another man without 
 that man's consent." It is easier, as all human experi- 
 ence shows, to educate a democracy to govern itself, 
 than to train a "better class" to rule the rest of the 
 people. Power is corrupting except when diffused. 
 When everybody has as much power as anybody, tyr- 
 anny and corruption vanish together. It is no ques- 
 tion of a vicious aristocracy every class is vicious. 
 The working class is no more righteous, no more 
 worthy to bear rule, than any other, and only flatterers 
 and deceivers tell the working class otherwise. The 
 three-cornered struggle now in progress between or- 
 ganizations, each claiming to represent the true inter- 
 ests of the workers, is testimony irrefutable that the 
 workers yield to the temptations of class selfishness 
 as quickly as any other class. The trades unions of
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 21 
 
 the American Federation of Labor are a labor aris- 
 tocracy that looks with disdain on the interests of the 
 unskilled labor of the Industrial Workers of the 
 World, while the Socialist Party claims to have at 
 heart the interests of both, but is in imminent danger 
 of failing to gain the confidence of either. There is 
 no way out of the labyrinth but the way of Jesus: 
 the Gospel of brotherhood and equal rights. 
 
 "Democracy is a failure," cry some faint-hearted 
 Americans. Pseudo-democracy or semi-democracy 
 has failed, beyond a doubt. When our Federal Con- 
 stitution was adopted, of a population of three mil- 
 lions about one hundred and twenty thousand were 
 qualified voters. Democracy indeed! Real democ- 
 racy, real political democracy even, has never yet had 
 existence in America, much less trial, though it is 
 now beginning to prevail; and industrial democracy 
 is still only a dream of the time to be. But pseudo- 
 democracy, failure though it is, has accomplished 
 everything of value, everything that will endure, in 
 the development of America. What may we not ex- 
 pect from a century of real democracy, equal rights 
 for all? 
 
 The supremacy of the common good. This nega- 
 tives all selfish striving, all merely personal ambition. 
 It strikes at the root of all modern business enter- 
 prise, the end of which is personal profit without 
 regard to the common good. Jesus called the concen- 
 trated wealth of his time Mammon, and said plainly 
 to those who would be his disciples, "You cannot 
 serve God and Mammon." But his Church to-dsv
 
 22 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 knows better; it serves both God with the lip, Mam- 
 mon with the heart. It cannot be denied : that bastard, 
 cringing, sycophantic thing that our age calls Chris- 
 tianity is nothing else than the organized worship of 
 Mammon. Mammon is the god of this present world, 
 and all who desire to increase their material posses- 
 sions rather than their spiritual, all who are actuated 
 by ambition rather than by love, all who would be 
 greatest rather than least, rule rather than serve, are 
 his willing worshipers and slaves. Righteousness, 
 truth and love are foolishness to Mammon; they are 
 an impractical ideal; there is no profit in them. But 
 in the sight of Jesus they are the whole of life, all 
 that makes life worth living. Mammon urges men 
 to multiply their possessions; Jesus urges men to en- 
 rich their souls. Mammon is property, and that the 
 world may move forward and upward Mammon must 
 fall. For Mammon is the parent of typhoid and tuber- 
 culosis; Mammon drives our daughters into prostitu- 
 tion and our sons into prison; Mammon builds the 
 slum and populates it ; Mammon permits some to feast 
 sumptuously and to play, while it compels others to 
 toil and sweat and gnaw crusts; Mammon creates the 
 conflict of classes and prepares revolutions; Mammon 
 is the arch-enemy of God and man. 
 
 How futile, in view of this teaching of Jesus, is 
 most of what passes for religion. "To such a pass 
 has the Church come that it fights under the banner 
 of Jesus against his Gospel. It wields the sword of 
 the spirit to quench all that is spiritual. It uses the 
 word of God in order to falsify the divine. It is
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 2$ 
 
 pious, but its piety is godlessness." * The man who 
 piously trusts in the blood of Jesus to save him, 2 but 
 owns a tenement on which there is no fire escape, will 
 find that the blood of Jesus was shed in vain, so far 
 as he is concerned, if that house burns and destroys 
 the lives of its inmates. For that man is nothing less 
 than a murderer, and a far greater criminal than the 
 man who in passion takes the life of his fellow, for 
 he slays in cold blood and for mere sordidness. That 
 sort of faith without works is the deadest of all things 
 that profess to be spiritual. The Christianity of our 
 day is mainly of that type; it is a Christianity of 
 ostentatious orthodoxy, of large professions, that 
 scorns the real Gospel of Jesus. The hard self-right- 
 eousness of the Christian world rules it out of the 
 kingdom of brotherhood. Now, as of old, it is easier 
 to bring the Prodigal home than to soften the proud 
 elder son and make him a true child of his gracious 
 Father. 
 
 Mutual dependence and service. Jesus could not 
 grant their mother's prayer for the sons of Zebedee, 
 and place them on his right hand and his left in the 
 
 Gutter, "They Must," p. 53. 
 
 * The late J. Pierpont Morgan inserted in his will the fol- 
 lowing profession of faith : "I commit my soul into the hands 
 of my Saviour, in full confidence that, having redeemed it and 
 washed it in His most precious blood, He will present it faultless 
 before the throne of my Heavenly Father; and I entreat my 
 children to maintain and defend, at all hazard, and at any cost 
 of personal sacrifice, the blessed doctrine of complete atonement 
 of sin through the blood of Jesus Christ once offered, and 
 through that alone." This was hailed by the orthodox religious 
 press as "a wonderful testimony." It was.
 
 24 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 kingdom, because these seats were not to be given 
 away as a favor, being reserved as a reward for 
 service. The high places are for those who seek the 
 good of others, not their own for those who drink 
 their Master's cup of sacrifice, for those who are bap- 
 tized with the baptism of his vicarious suffering. 
 
 This is what Jesus meant by his teaching regarding 
 stewardship. He taught men that they do not own, 
 but owe ; that their rights are far less important than 
 their duties. Power, wealth, learning, are not means 
 of ministering to one's selfishness, but opportunities 
 for the service of one's fellows. Those who have 
 most must serve most. The greatest in the kingdom 
 is he that makes fullest and wisest use of his oppor- 
 tunities and rises to eminence as servant of all. Stew- 
 ardship is the exact opposite of exploitation, the sel- 
 fish using of one's fellows to advance one's own inter- 
 est and increase one's own wealth. Stewardship is 
 as exactly opposed also to the selfishness of the idle 
 rich, who devote all their energies to "pleasure" and 
 secure only their own boredom. 
 
 Brotherhood does not imply that all men shall serve 
 in the same way, or that the service of all is equally 
 valuable; but brotherhood does imply that all shall 
 serve. The man who refuses to serve denies his 
 brotherhood and puts himself outside the pale of 
 human society. There is no place for such a man in 
 a rightly ordered world. He is the true outlaw, and 
 by his own act. This is the teaching of Jesus. His 
 disciples must proclaim and exemplify it, and let
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 2$ 
 
 Nietzsche rage and Bernard Shaw imagine a vain 
 thing. 
 
 Active good-will to all. This is the "altruism," of 
 which Comte and all whom he has influenced have 
 had so much to say. But Paul long anticipated Comte, 
 when he said, "Let every man look not upon his 
 own things, but also upon the things of others." And 
 Jesus was before Paul, declaring, as the highest ideal 
 of men in their social relations, "Whatsoever things 
 ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even 
 so unto them." The ideal of brotherhood is not merely 
 to abstain from doing evil to men, but actively to do 
 them good. And the Gospel of Jesus inflexibly main- 
 tains this as the practical side of religion, without 
 which no piety is of least avail. "For if a man love 
 not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love 
 God whom he hath not seen?" The principle is as 
 sweeping as it obviously is true. And here is one 
 application of it that every man should heed: If a 
 man does not realize, abominate, repent and forsake 
 his sins against his brother whom he has seen, how 
 can he have any genuine realization of sin against a 
 God whom he has not seen; and how can he repent 
 sin unrealized? 
 
 IV 
 
 But why call this a new Gospel? Has not this al- 
 ways been understood to be the teaching of Jesus, 
 and has it not always been preached? The words 
 have indeed been declared, but the declaration has
 
 26 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 been accompanied by explanations and exceptions 
 that have practically evacuated them of all meaning. 
 There has been formal profession of belief in the 
 teachings of Jesus, while Christians have shown by 
 their conduct that they have never understood his 
 precepts, and so far as they have understood have 
 made but the feeblest attempt to obey them. The new 
 idea of the Gospel is to press home the duty of full 
 obedience. 
 
 For Jesus shows plainly in his kingdom teaching 
 that he did not have in mind merely or chiefly the 
 salvation of individuals, but a social ideal. He com- 
 prehended, as his followers have not comprehended 
 until lately, that salvation of the individual is all 
 but impossible, so long as he is dealt with merely as 
 an individual; and that a Gospel that deals with men 
 as individuals accomplishes only a partial salvation. 
 The Christianity of Jesus, with its fundamental con- 
 ception of a Heavenly Father, and all men brothers 
 in his great family, is a social religion. The Christian- 
 ity that has prevailed for centuries, enthroning a Sov- 
 ereign in the heavens, who rules according to law, 
 imposes penalties for disobedience and deals with men 
 as individual violators of law, is a religion not only 
 quite different from that of Jesus, but utterly incom- 
 patible with his. 
 
 And Jesus understood, just as we are coming to 
 understand, that his idea of universal brotherhood, 
 wherever it operates and just so far as it operates, 
 effects the transformation of human relations, and 
 therefore of social institutions. As men progress in
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 2/ 
 
 goodness, that is, in likeness to God, the desire to 
 sacrifice self for others will take larger place in their 
 lives, selfishness will be driven out, and those social 
 institutions that rest on selfishness will give place to 
 relations that rest on unselfish love and are inspired 
 by mutual good-will. The Gospel of Jesus declares 
 in no uncertain sound that, until a man begins to show 
 this divine spirit in his daily life, he does not know 
 the meaning of salvation. And to say that the honest 
 acceptance of this Gospel by the professed followers 
 of Jesus would transform society is not speaking 
 lightly or unadvisedly. "It is useless to nurse any 
 illusions," says Pouget; "the day when it would be 
 tried to introduce into social relations, in all their 
 strata, a strict honesty and a scrupulous good will, 
 nothing would remain standing neither industry nor 
 commerce nor finance absolutely nothing." x The 
 bona fide application of the Golden Rule for a week 
 by everybody would so change the world that it would 
 be simply unrecognizable. But we do not live under 
 the Golden Rule; we live under the rule of gold. 
 
 The current Christianity is not consistent even in its 
 individualism. The Gospel of Jesus has much to 
 teach it regarding the worth of the individual man, 
 and thereby takes issue anew with modern industrial- 
 ism and certain dachshund 2 economists. "How much 
 then is a man of more value than a sheep," said Jesus. 
 
 1 "Sabotage," p. 87. 
 
 2 The dachshund has been described as "a dog-and-a-half long 
 and half-a-dog high," which irresistibly suggests those econo- 
 mists whose extent of knowledge about things material so mark- 
 edly exceeds their moral height.
 
 28 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 But the modern capitalist knows better ; he says, "How 
 much then is a man of less value than a mule," and 
 in his mines he takes good care of his mules, while 
 he is reckless of human lives. The Gospel of uni- 
 versal brotherhood is the only demulcent for such 
 social brutalities. 
 
 What does the regeneration of society mean? is one 
 of the most frequent questions from those who lend 
 incredulous ears to the new Gospel. The very putting 
 of the question shows that beneath it lies an utter 
 incomprehension of what society is. Society is not 
 an aggregation of atoms, a heap of human sand, so 
 to speak. When the student of social phenomena has 
 counted all the separate facts and events about men 
 he has not accounted for society; just as the human 
 body is something more than an assemblage of arms, 
 legs, eyes and other organs, and that something is 
 life. Regeneration of society means therefore a 
 transformation of life, a complete change; it means 
 that a new spirit must take possession of the social 
 group, so that it will of necessity live a new life. 
 Society implies institutions, and those institutions ex- 
 press an idea. What is the all-prevailing idea of 
 present social institutions? Selfishness. What would 
 be the idea prevailing throughout a truly Christian soci- 
 ety? Love, brotherhood, service. This is what is 
 meant by social regeneration. The regeneration of 
 individuals will never produce the regeneration of so- 
 ciety, until these regenerated individuals pour their 
 regenerate life into social institutions and transform 
 them. This they have never attempted to do, have
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 29 
 
 never dreamed of doing, have never considered possi- 
 ble, until very recently. And even now it is an ideal 
 vehemently opposed by the Christianity that lives in 
 the past. Father Vaughn says, "Socialism makes for 
 a Paradise beneath the moon, Christianity leads to a 
 Heaven beyond the stars." * But the Gospel of Jesus 
 regards these aims, not as antithetical, but as comple- 
 mentary. The true disciple of Jesus chooses both: 
 with the socialist he strives to make this world a Para- 
 dise beneath the moon, while with the Catholic he 
 also hopes for the Heaven beyond the stars. 
 
 A new Gospel yes, but it might quite as truly be 
 called the old Gospel, which, after long eclipse, is 
 again beginning to be proclaimed with power. It is 
 true that what has been called a gospel has always 
 been proclaimed; for ages the great effort of those 
 who called themselves Christians has been to win the 
 rest of the world to their Christianity. And we are 
 still told by many that to continue this effort will 
 prove not only a better but a quicker solution of all 
 social problems and a more effectual redress of all 
 social wrongs than direct effort at social reform. It 
 is one of those cases in which a flank movement is 
 more effective than a frontal attack. But reflection 
 brings doubts. We recall that this method has now 
 been tried for nineteen centuries and our social prob- 
 lems are little affected. The world might be filled 
 with such Christians as we have to-day speaking of 
 them "by and large" and admitting a notable minority 
 of whom this is not true with very slight result to 
 
 1 "Socialism from a Christian Standpoint," p. 236.
 
 3O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 social evils. For our present-day Christians are little 
 instructed in the social teachings of Jesus and in con- 
 sequence make no appreciable attempt to apply his 
 teachings to social facts. The multiplication of such 
 Christians to any conceivable extent would only re- 
 sult in adding to the present socially ineffective 
 churches an indefinite mass of useless, amorphous 
 piety. 
 
 The Church does not make a successful appeal to 
 many high-minded people to-day, because it has be- 
 come an object of service, not a means of rendering 
 service. Instead of seeking first the kingdom of God, 
 it has sought first its own extension, wealth and 
 power. Its energies are absorbed in holding meetings 
 and raising money. The Church that spends all its 
 energies in merely keeping alive is already virtually 
 dead. The people who are estranged from the Church 
 have become estranged because they are ethically in 
 advance of the Church. The Gospel of Jesus is mainly 
 believed, preached and lived by those outside of the 
 churches. Within the churches there is a vast quan- 
 tity of piety, but very little of the religion that Jesus 
 taught. A gospel is believed and proclaimed by the 
 churches, and passably lived, but it is not the Gospel 
 of Jesus. 
 
 What has for ages been proclaimed as gospel, and 
 is still heard from the great majority of Christian 
 pulpits, is that salvation consists in man's release from 
 a legal penalty. Man has violated the just law of a 
 holy God, and in consequence the wrath of God rests 
 on him, entailing suffering in this world and endless
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 3! 
 
 misery in the life to come. God sent his Son to 
 pay this penalty, which he did in his death on the 
 cross; and those who believe in him, and those only, 
 are delivered from the penalty that he has borne in 
 their behalf. It is not the preachers alone who thus 
 conceive the gospel; the laymen wish this sort of thing, 
 and only this, to be preached to them. Ministers are 
 more open to new ideas about religion than laymen. 
 The mental spissitude of the average business man 
 makes it almost impossible for him to adjust himself 
 to a new religious idea or a new method. The minds 
 of such men become muscle bound, so to speak; their 
 wits get "charley horse." 
 
 Not long ago a distinguished layman, addressing a 
 great denominational gathering, made a plea for the 
 preaching of what he called "the pure and simple 
 gospel." And he denned his meaning in words 
 quoted from an orthodox preacher : "We should con- 
 stantly hold up Sinai and Calvary to mankind. The 
 vicarious atonement should be emphasized. The sac- 
 rifice of Christ should be presented daily. His deity 
 and mediatorial work should be constantly kept be- 
 fore the people. The whole gospel and nothing but 
 the gospel should be preached." Would it be possible 
 in the same space to state anything more widely dif- 
 fering from the Gospel that Jesus proclaimed? It 
 might be daring to say that Jesus knew nothing of 
 such a gospel, but he certainly proclaimed something 
 absolutely foreign to this, if the New Testament re- 
 ports him truly. It follows then that, if Jesus knew
 
 32 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 what his Gospel is, the modern preacher does not 
 know. 
 
 A new Gospel we must have, and we are beginning 
 to hear it. It is nothing else than proclamation of 
 the message of Jesus, "The Kingdom of God is at 
 hand." This is assertion of the possibility of a 
 transformed society, in which every department of 
 man's activity politics, science, art, education, busi- 
 ness, no less than religion shall be inspired and con- 
 trolled by the ethics of Jesus. The Master did not 
 summon his disciples to prepare themselves for an- 
 other world, but to remake this world. For nineteen 
 centuries those who have borne the name of Christ 
 have, with few exceptions; misread his message and 
 consequently have neglected their duty. The new 
 social awakening that is the most characteristic thing 
 about our generation has led naturally and inevitably 
 to an awakening of the Church, new understanding 
 of the Gospel, and will lead to new alignment of all 
 Christian forces. 
 
 This is evident in the new idea that is coming to 
 be entertained of the mission of Christianity and the 
 function of the Church. "Missions" a generation ago 
 meant exclusively the giving of the gospel to the 
 heathen, and the heathen were attractive to most 
 Christians in inverse ratio to their nearness. The 
 Church is more missionary than ever to-day, but it 
 has a larger conception of its mission. Despite all
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 33 
 
 satire, Boorrioboola-Gha is still an object of Christian 
 effort and a subject of Christian hope, but not to the 
 exclusion of the heathen around the corner. And it 
 is becoming clearer every day that the chief obstacle 
 to all Christian propaganda, at home or abroad, is the 
 sinister fact that Christians do not believe and make 
 but feeble attempts to practice the truth that they 
 invite others to embrace. The character of the aver- 
 age "Christian" in Asia, as the least intelligent hea- 
 then easily perceives, is little influenced by Christian 
 ideals. And the more intelligent heathen can as eas- 
 ily perceive that even the Christian missionaries, while 
 free from the vices of others, are but half-hearted in 
 their acceptance of the teaching of Jesus. 
 
 The Church has been the greatest witness to human 
 brotherhood, but in all the ages what she has testified 
 in word she has almost invariably denied in deed. 
 She denies to-day. But her eyes are opening; she 
 is beginning to see that word and deed must be made 
 to correspond and become one witness, and that the 
 Church which fails to bear this witness is no Church 
 of Jesus Christ. Christian sentiments are not suffi- 
 cient; conduct, character corresponding to the ethics 
 of Jesus, is what the world needs conduct and char- 
 acter corresponding to the actual teachings of Jesus, 
 and not to some conventional standard far removed 
 from his teachings. Men are coming to apprehend 
 more clearly the great value of the Gospel of Jesus, 
 in its conformity to reality, in its essential practicality. 
 The defect of our social activities at present is that 
 a host of well-intentioned people are engaged, with
 
 34 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 lavish expenditure of time and energy and money, in 
 doing perfectly futile things and even harmful things. 
 There are giants to be fought, dragons to be slain, 
 captives to be released, as in the brave days of old; 
 and the social reformer goes against them with armor 
 of pasteboard and sword of lath. So much misdi- 
 rected effort is really tragic. It is not enough to 
 mean well in this matter of social amelioration. It 
 is above all necessary to see clearly and to think 
 straight in order to do the right thing. 
 
 It is well for the Church that her awakening has 
 come, even if vision is still clouded and effort largely 
 wasted. It is her only hope of salvation. A healthy 
 and vigorous religion can no more result from the 
 conditions of economic restraint and social wrong 
 that are the foundation of our American civilization 
 than grapes can be gathered from thorns or figs from 
 thistles. And what is true of the great institution for 
 spiritual culture is equally true of its twin institution 
 for the culture of mind, the university. The scholar 
 must choose between his cloistered pursuit of pure 
 science and social welfare, or lose his hold upon his 
 age. The University of Wisconsin has shown all 
 schools of higher learning how such institutions must 
 hereafter relate themselves to the everyday affairs of 
 the entire community. Both the Church and the uni- 
 versity must realize that their office is not merely edu- 
 cational, or inspirational, but one of practical leader- 
 ship. They have been too long content with being 
 teachers of the world. It is not denied that they have 
 discharged this function well : they have together fur-
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 35 
 
 nished the basis of knowledge and experience for 
 every forward movement of the race. The ethics 
 taught by both have saturated literature and law, 
 have determined the policies of nations and have 
 shaped social ideals. But they have been content to 
 let the actual work of social regeneration be accom- 
 plished by other agencies. 
 
 It is quite true, as has been pointed out to weari- 
 ness, that the leaders of social reform, with very few 
 exceptions, owe their training to Christian Churches 
 and schools, and that their work could not be suc- 
 cessfully carried on save with Christian aid and in 
 Christian atmosphere. But now the Church espe- 
 cially is called to do more than train leaders and cre- 
 ate an atmosphere: it must do no less than take the 
 active leadership in social reform. And the univer- 
 sity must keep step. A certain type of Church is 
 obsolete: the Church content with orthodoxy and 
 careless about the kingdom, the Church that thinks 
 right but never acts, the Church that in place of a 
 power-house maintains a cold storage plant. Chris- 
 tianity means everything to the world or it means 
 nothing. We must either practice during the week 
 what we pray and sing on Sunday or give over alto- 
 gether our Sunday singing and praying. 
 
 This requires of us, of course, greatly enlarged 
 conception of the field of Christian activities, a break 
 with conventional ideas that is schocking to not a 
 few excellent Christian people. But to be shocked 
 is not infrequently good for people, it is often in- 
 dispensable stimulus. We need a new religious ter-
 
 36 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 minology, and while this is making we must contrive 
 as best we may to put a new content into the old 
 words. To use the religious vocabulary of our 
 grandfathers, from which all real meaning has evap- 
 orated, is cant. We must vitalize words again or 
 drop them. In the old days the convert was re- 
 quired to "renounce the devil and all his works." 
 The requirement may remain, but we must get a new 
 conception of the devil's "works." While the Church 
 slept he has captured the world of business, and has 
 fashioned it into a fine specimen of his handicraft. 
 The twentieth-century Christian must not merely "re- 
 nounce" this work, he must actively combat it. The 
 Church has always required Christians to separate 
 themselves from the "world" some Churches have 
 been more urgent than others about this, but all have 
 made it at least a nominal requirement but the 
 twentieth-century Christian must see that the "world" 
 is something more and something more deadly than 
 fine dress, jewels and a few tabooed amusements. 
 Our "world" is organized evil, and Christians are 
 so far from having renounced that, that most of 
 them are busily engaged at this moment in extending 
 and completing this evil organization. 
 
 And so we need a new definition of "sin"; we 
 must put into this dead word a new living content 
 that corresponds to present fact. In the past this 
 word has suggested almost exclusively the relations 
 of men to God. It is now imperatively necessary 
 that we think more of our relations to our fellows 
 and the ways in which we are all sinning together.
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 37 
 
 There is crying need of deeper realization on the 
 part of "good" people of those social sins that are 
 more heinous than any individual transgressions, and 
 more earnest seeking after that social righteousness 
 which is the thing just now most urgently demanded 
 among us. The chief obstacle to immediate social 
 progress is the satisfaction of "good" people with 
 the old individualistic standards of goodness, and 
 their refusal to see that such a type of goodness is 
 now hardly distinguishable from badness. And yet 
 we have the word of Jesus himself for it, that to 
 keep one's own skirts clean and pass by on the other 
 side is highly culpable. We need a new "conviction 
 of sin," not less acute than the older type, and far 
 more practical. It is the sins that men commit in 
 their corporate associations, as citizens and as men of 
 business, and in the innumerable and all-influential 
 social relations, such as were unknown to past ages, 
 that are to-day most lethal and that call loudest for 
 repentance. The Church has long had a list of seven 
 deadly sins; we need a new list for our time, and 
 it would run somewhat like this: exploitation, profit, 
 special privilege, graft, parasitism, waste, inefficiency. 
 And we have great need to join in the Litany, "From 
 these and all other like sins against our kind, good 
 Lord, deliver us." 
 
 With this new idea of sin as socialized transgres- 
 sion will go of necessity a new idea of deliverance 
 from sin, or salvation. It will not be deliverance 
 from penalty, not merely transformation of character, 
 but radically different social conduct. This will in-
 
 38 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 volve a new standard of conversion. A man who 
 professes that he has become a Christian must be 
 expected to do something more than relate an "ex- 
 perience" that indicates his coming into new relations 
 with God. We have assumed, in defiance of our 
 experience, that when a man gets right with God 
 (or thinks he has) he will as a consequence get right 
 with his fellow-men. As matter of fact, we have no 
 means of knowing whether a convert has got right 
 with God, but we do know beyond a peradventure 
 that most converts have never got right with their 
 fellows. The good, pious Christian people who fill 
 our churches every Sunday are, for the most part, 
 utterly indifferent about their relations to their fel- 
 lows. It is not their fault. They have all their 
 lives been taught that "sin" is sin against God, and 
 that the remedy for sin is to seek pardon of God, 
 and this once obtained the sin is washed away. They 
 have no idea of social sins. 
 
 Is it not, then, too evident to require argument 
 that we sorely need conversions that will change men's 
 entire social relations and activities? Homely coun- 
 try people used to say of a stingy church member 
 that "when he was baptized he left his pocketbook at 
 home." The ledger of the modern business man has 
 not yet been baptized. More than any other conver- 
 sion to-day is demanded conversion of the factory, 
 the counting-room and the bank. Greed for gain, 
 and lack of scruple as to means, have together made 
 of the world of affairs an Inferno surpassing the 
 highest flights of Dante's imagination. Honored
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 39 
 
 Christian philanthropists get their money for the en- 
 dowment of universities and charities from the blood 
 and bones of their brothers; lovely and cultured 
 Christian women derive the incomes on which their 
 womanhood is nourished from the tears and groans 
 of their sisters, and from the forced labor of little 
 children. Monstrous! incredible! chorus the "good" 
 Christian people. A writer is most culpable to spread 
 such slanders! And just there is the most hopeless 
 feature of the social situation: the "good" people 
 will not believe the facts, will not listen to them if 
 they can help it, shut eyes and ears and will not be 
 informed about our social problems. Their cry is, 
 "Preach the simple Gospel." 
 
 But this is the simple Gospel. This is the Gospel 
 of Jesus. Nobody can seriously study His words 
 and have the least doubt about it. The Christian 
 preacher may still determine, as Paul did at Corinth, 
 not to know anything among men save Jesus Christ, 
 and him crucified. But the social Gospel gives new 
 significance to the cross. The "preaching of the 
 cross" has too often meant the preaching of some 
 mechanical doctrine of the atonement, and such 
 preaching has lost whatever power it may once have 
 had. The cross, as Jesus and Paul proclaimed it, 
 means self-immolation. The cross saves no man until 
 he has himself been nailed to it. Not till we have 
 learned from Jesus the secret of sacrificial love, and 
 have ourselves practiced it, has the cross any meaning 
 or efficacy for us. Vicarious sacrifice is sacrifice of 
 ourselves for others, and only so does Christ's sacri-
 
 4O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 fice in our behalf become operative. It has been 
 well said: "It is the uncrucified Christianity that 
 speaks in the modern pulpit and sits in the church 
 pew that is driving the passion for humanity into 
 other channels than the Church." 
 
 Our enlarged idea of salvation is leading us to 
 comprehend that no deliverance of men can be per- 
 manent that does not include a saved environment. 
 The physician who should cure a man of typhoid and 
 then advise or permit him to adopt a diet of typhoid 
 germs would be regarded as insane, even though one 
 who has had typhoid is presumed to be immune to 
 a second attack. The percentage of those who are 
 not immune is large enough to prohibit such a risk. 
 But we turn our "saved" people back to their old 
 environment and expect the new life to survive. Even 
 those Christians who have been fortunate enough al- 
 ways to have an environment favorable to all the 
 virtues often confess that the maintenance of a Chris- 
 tian character is not too easy a task. But many who 
 are rescued in an environment in which there is 
 only incitement to evil, without being taken out of 
 the environment, after a little time of desperate 
 struggle go under again. We cannot accept as our 
 ideal anything less than a saved soul in a saved body 
 living in a saved community. Short of that we have 
 an incomplete and uncertain deliverance, with no 
 promise of permanence. The old method of hand- 
 picked-fruit evangelism no longer meets modern so- 
 cial conditions and needs. To get a man to profess 
 himself saved, and then turn him loose in the com-
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 4! 
 
 munity with a "God bless you, brother," is not mak- 
 ing headway against the powers of evil. It need not 
 be abandoned by those who are wedded to it, but it 
 must be supplemented by those who are more awake 
 to modern conditions and modern needs. To hasten 
 the coming of the kingdom and promote the uplift 
 of mankind is a man's job; it is the biggest game that 
 men of brains and brawn can play. The smallest 
 game in the world is the money game. 
 
 This awakening of the Church will bring us a new 
 ethic. We have had ethics made by the rich for 
 the poor, by the strong for the weak; we are on the 
 way toward ethics for all. "Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself" has been hitherto interpreted 
 as a precept to govern individuals in their mutual 
 conduct; we are learning to give it a social inter- 
 pretation. The result of the old individualism has 
 proved to be that men believe they are keeping Christ's 
 words while they are gigantic sinners in their social 
 deeds. There are men among us not a few, rich 
 beyond the dreams of avarice, who are full of the 
 milk of human kindness toward poor John Doe, and 
 will do almost anything to help the individual sufferer 
 from disease or poverty, who have yet done more 
 than any thousand men of any other generation to 
 make men poor and keep men poor. As theirs is a 
 socialized sin against the neighbor, there must be a 
 socialized love of neighbor before the precept of Jesus 
 can be obeyed. Many a man still unctuously repeats, 
 "The wages of sin is death," thinking meanwhile of 
 his brother's drunkenness or lechery or lying or thiev-
 
 42 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 ery, but never for a moment giving thought to his 
 own rapacity and greed, the sins whose wages are 
 paid in the death of those whom he daily crushes 
 into deeper poverty and woe. 
 
 The old ethics borrowed its favorite ideas from 
 monarchy and aristocracy. Men were exhorted to 
 be content "in the sphere where God had placed 
 them." But we now understand that "spheres" are 
 man-made, not God-ordained, and they are passing 
 away. These ideas of conduct we are replacing by 
 ethics founded on human brotherhood, which again 
 rests on a common divine sonship. And so, com- 
 mands like "Thou shalt not kill" are seen to have 
 been inadequately understood. "Thou shalt not steal" 
 applies to those who possess, as well as to those who 
 take, property. The stealing of capitalism must be 
 recognized, repented and renounced. The murder of 
 war and industrialism must be made as repulsive to 
 the conscience as individual homicide. We now send 
 the murderer of one to the gallows, or the electric 
 chair; we enroll the killer of hundreds among our 
 "best citizens"; while the slayer of thousands we 
 exalt to the presidency. 
 
 Many deprecate the present interest in social re- 
 ligion ; they fear that it is a dangerous tendency. The 
 function of the Church, they remind us, may be com- 
 pared to an electric dynamo: it is the function of 
 generating moral and spiritual energy. If the Church 
 takes the lead in social reforms, it must choose be- 
 tween political programs, and eventually it will be 
 drawn into that entangling alliance with the State
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 43 
 
 from which it has only lately been freed after ages 
 of struggle. But the risk must be run, if there 
 really is a risk, for a dynamo is a useless thing until 
 it has been connected up to machinery by which its 
 power may be utilized in doing some of the world's 
 work. The Church has too long been an unconnected 
 dynamo; it has generated vast quantities of power 
 that has never been utilized for the improvement of 
 society; its problem now is to get its power turned 
 on to the social machinery. 
 
 This is only to say in other words that the Church 
 has been too blind to see fact and truth, too slow to 
 take up the work to which its divine Founder called 
 it; and the work of social regeneration has been 
 undertaken, and thus far has been carried forward, 
 in independence of the Church, and to an increasing 
 degree by men in scant sympathy with the Church. 
 If this purblind policy continues, if the Church is 
 to be ruled by stupid conservatism, men who desire 
 the progress of humanity, and feel called of God to 
 devote their lives to that purpose, will have to forsake 
 their Church though not their religion. Conserva- 
 tism, in the present condition of society, says Pro- 
 fessor Ross, is "like setting the brake on a loaded 
 wagon being hauled up the bare western slope of a 
 sandy hill on a July afternoon." 1 If we do anything 
 we shall doubtless make some mistakes, but if we 
 do nothing we shall die in our sins. Society is an 
 organism and to reform it is an operation in surgery; 
 diseased tissue must be removed and nature must 
 
 t "Sin and Society," p. 85.
 
 44 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 be encouraged to make healthy tissue in its place. 
 Has the organism vitality enough to survive the opera- 
 tion, or will it die on the operating-table from shock 
 and loss of blood? Only the event can answer, but 
 if the patient may die of the operation he certainly 
 will die without it the knife is the only hope. 
 
 Christianity has been and is the religion of the 
 possessing class. Christian teachers teach capitalistic 
 ethics as an inseparable part of their religion. Capital- 
 ism has long used Christianity as a means of con- 
 trolling the workers, by making them satisfied with 
 their lot. Nobody who knows the facts ought to 
 be surprised at the bitterness of the reaction against 
 Christianity among the workers of the world. The 
 changed, or at least changing, attitude of Christians 
 will in time produce its due effect and make possible 
 a better understanding between the Church and the 
 workers. The real affinity between the Gospel of 
 Jesus and the advanced social propaganda forbids 
 that the two great forces for the amelioration of 
 society should be permanently opposed to each other. 
 
 For a generation now the Church has made no 
 appreciable numerical advance, though it has poured 
 out money like water and spent effort more freely 
 than in any previous generation of its history. In 
 1880 there were twenty members of churches in 
 every hundred of the population; in 1910 there were 
 only twenty- four; and during the decade just past 
 the population and the church membership both in- 
 creased twenty-one per cent. The Church is just 
 holding its own; it is marking time, not marching to
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 4$ 
 
 conquest. Only one conclusion is possible : the Church 
 has ceased to meet the wants of the age. It makes 
 no successful appeal to the people at large. It must 
 change its policy radically or lose even more in the 
 coming decades of the century. The Church that 
 busies itself with the things that former generations 
 thought so important questions of polities and sacra- 
 ments and liturgies and creeds while great move- 
 ments in reform of social institutions and redressing 
 of social wrongs are calling on it for leadership, 
 the Church that with face toward the past stands 
 discussing ancient questions of theology while weighty 
 ethical and spiritual problems press for an answer, 
 will soon be buried along with that past to which it 
 clings with obstinacy so blind. 
 
 The future progress of the Church depends largely, 
 perhaps mainly, on the ability and readiness of the 
 ministry to read these signs of the times and become 
 wise and progressive leaders. Hitherto, the average 
 minister has been too busy teaching others their duty 
 to learn anything about his own. Hence the greater 
 part of the clergy are still blind leaders of the blind. 
 The crying need of the ministry is a larger measure 
 of the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of unselfishness, the 
 willingness to jeopard personal interests for the com- 
 mon good. The charge of insincerity so often made 
 against the clergy is, however, absurd to one who has 
 any wide acquaintance with ministers. It is not 
 merely unjust, it is foolish. Precisely because the 
 clergy are so sincere, the case of 30 many of them 
 seems hopeless; their desperate sincerity in holding
 
 46 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 fast to the old prevents them from learning anything 
 new. 
 
 The most distressing element of the situation is 
 the lack of sympathy with the workers that is evi- 
 dent among the clergy. With exceptions few and 
 rare, they may always be counted on to side with 
 the exploiting class. In the strike of the silk workers 
 in Pater son, New Jersey, in the summer of 1913, 
 the ministers of that city were arrayed in solid pha- 
 lanx on the side of the employers. Not one voice 
 was raised in behalf of the workers. Not even was 
 a protest made against the anarchic lawlessness of 
 police and local courts. And this is typical; it hap- 
 pens whenever and wherever there is a clash between 
 labor and capital. This attitude of the clergy can be 
 explained only on the ground of their economic de- 
 pendence upon the privileged classes. They are the 
 hirelings of capitalism, and, to do them justice, they 
 earn their wages. As a plain business proposition, 
 the Christian churches of America could not be 
 maintained to-day without the gifts of men who are 
 daily exploiting their brothers. In fact, they are so 
 maintained. Is it necessary to go further for an 
 explanation of the attitude of the clergy, or for the 
 attitude of the workers? Are we astonished that 
 there is a widening gap between the workers and the 
 Church? Surprise does small credit to our intelli- 
 gence. The workers cannot be rationally expected 
 to love such a Church, to believe in it, to attend its 
 services and make sacrifices for its support. Will the 
 Church continue to be such?
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 47 
 
 It is evident that much remains to be done before 
 the waking Church becomes the awakened Church. 
 A long process of education will be required before 
 the enlarged conception of the kingdom, the Gospel 
 and Christian ethics is generally accepted. But there 
 is nothing to do save to press the good work of 
 awakening and enlightenment, until all the preachers 
 are converted to Christianity and all the churches to 
 religion.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 
 
 AUTHENTIC history goes back about five thousand 
 years. We have had fifty centuries of agriculture, 
 and men are still starving ; thousands are to-day shiver- 
 ing with cold, after fifty centuries of manufacturing; 
 for fifty centuries we have been building, and have 
 not yet learned to house all our people. There may 
 have been a time when these things were unavoidable : 
 the combined industry of the race did not produce 
 enough to feed, clothe and house everybody, and 
 somebody had to come short of enough. But within 
 a century the introduction of machinery has changed 
 all that; enough is now produced to support in com- 
 fort every member of the race. We have conquered 
 nature, but we have not conquered poverty. 
 
 Because it is a comparatively new country, with 
 a sparse population, yet possessing immense resources, 
 America should not yet have felt the social problems 
 of the Old World. The continent of Europe, with 
 an area exceeding that of the United States by less 
 than 200,000 square miles, has a population of 
 400,000,000, who must be sustained from incompar- 
 ably smaller resources. Think of China, with its 400,- 
 000,000 or more, wresting a living from an area 
 
 48
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 49 
 
 less than half the size of the United States. 1 For a 
 long time to come we should have been free from 
 the economic pressure that in fact we feel so keenly. 
 No nation faces social distress in more acute form, 
 or is more acutely conscious of its social problems. 
 Why? Our colossal American fortunes, the greatest 
 in the world, are the answer. The vast wealth of 
 America has been "cornered" by a few men, and 
 profits the great majority not a whit. Our poor are 
 as poor as the poorest of Europe. 
 
 It was hoped and believed for generations, and was 
 the proud boast of Americans, that our democracy 
 would prevent the inequalities of fortune that aris- 
 tocracy has produced and established in Europe. Per- 
 haps it would, if we really had a democracy. Our 
 pride in America as the world's leader in democracy 
 has had a sad fall, as we have slowly come to per- 
 ceive that the hard facts are irreconcilable with our 
 bookish theories. America the leader of the nations 
 in democracy? It is falling far behind those nations 
 that we have so long sneered at as "effete." Our 
 working class is treated with a brutality that finds 
 no parallel in any other great capitalist country. 
 
 The reason is not far to seek. For two generations 
 the men of greatest physical vigor and mental power 
 in America have sought a career, not in politics but 
 in business. The unexampled rapidity of our ma- 
 
 1 According to the "Statesman's Year-Book," the area of China 
 proper is 1,532,420 square miles, and the estimated population 
 407,253,000. The area of the United States (not including terri- 
 tories) is 3,616484 square miles, population 91,972,267.
 
 5O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 terial development, without precedent or parallel in 
 the entire history of the world, has stimulated to a 
 degree hitherto undreamt the passion for gain. The 
 possibility that the poorest boy might die the richest 
 man of his generation, actually realized in Rock- 
 efeller and Carnegie, has stimulated to the utmost 
 the normal desire to get on, and turned it into an 
 insane frenzy for wealth. Politics have ceased to 
 be politics, and have become business, usually a very 
 sordid and disgraceful business. Neither justice nor 
 intelligence inspires our legislation, but desire for 
 greater wealth; and all our law-making bodies have 
 fallen under the control of the forces that make for 
 wealth. Administrative and judicial departments of 
 government have followed the same course, and cor- 
 ruption honeycombs every part of the conduct of 
 public affairs. Hitherto, as Professor Zueblin well 
 says, "The American public has betrayed its price, 
 as unmistakably as a cheap grafting politician; the 
 price is prosperity, which, unaccompanied by justice, 
 makes a nation of grafters." l Our workingmen have 
 for many years been exhorted to vote, not for a 
 principle or for rights, but for "a full dinner pail," 
 and the greater number of them have justified the 
 estimate of their character held by the cheap poli- 
 ticians who devised the slogan. 
 
 "Triumphant democracy" is no longer the synonym 
 
 of the United States. The oppressed peoples of the 
 
 Old World once looked to us for ideals, instruction 
 
 and inspiring example. And so, in our complacency, 
 
 * "Democracy and the Overman," p. 70.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 5! 
 
 we went to sleep, and the world has run by us. The 
 old fable of the hare and the tortoise has a new 
 illustration at our expense. "Free and enlightened" 
 America is the slowest country in the world to re- 
 spond to the reform sentiment, the slowest country 
 to do justice to the workers. England repealed her 
 conspiracy laws against workingmen in 1825, but in 
 1836 the Supreme Court of New York declared trades 
 unions illegal; and it was not until 1884 that Mary- 
 land repealed her conspiracy laws the last State in 
 the Union to do so. The secret of our discomfiture 
 lies in the fact that we have understood democracy 
 to be concerned with political institutions only, and 
 to imply merely that all men should have the equal 
 power expressed by a vote. We have been the slow- 
 est of civilized peoples to learn that real democracy 
 means the equal sharing of all men in the gifts of 
 nature, the product of labor and the opportunities 
 of development. Democracy means adequate life 
 for all. 
 
 On the whole, there has been steady progress in 
 all quarters of the globe, through several generations, 
 not to say through all the centuries, toward political 
 democracy. A survey of the field of history shows 
 despotism yielding to oligarchy, oligarchy giving place 
 to aristocracy, aristocracy gradually transformed into 
 democracy. But while this has been true of insti- 
 tutions, in life there has been no such progress. As 
 truly as five thousand years ago, everywhere on earth 
 the millions toil that the thousands may enjoy. One 
 who, in these conditions, permits himself to wax elo-
 
 52 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 quent over "democracy," "equal rights," "justice, " 
 "freedom" and the like is become as sounding brass 
 and a tinkling cymbal. This may shock those who 
 are still living in the paleolithic age, it may even cause 
 them acute pain, but that cannot be helped. The 
 easy, safe, normal way is to repeat what others say, 
 especially what the majority say. Some men get 
 quite a reputation for wisdom by just doing that all 
 their lives. One cannot contradict the majority and 
 expect to be enrolled among the Seven Sages of 
 America. . 
 
 In spite of the industrious efforts of our rulers 
 to create a contrary impression, hard and disagreeable 
 fact compels the conclusion that we have under the 
 forms of democracy a country ruled by an aristoc- 
 racy, based on industrial wealth. The old aristocracy, 
 founded on the possession of land, acknowledged du- 
 ties to the land and did much to help elevate their ten- 
 antry. The new aristocracy of wealth acknowledges 
 duties to nobody. "Is it not lawful for me to do what 
 I will with mine own?" is its motto. It is the most 
 tyrannous, the most cruel and the most ignorant aris- 
 tocracy the world ever saw. 1 This aristocracy of 
 wealth can be displaced only by a democracy of mind. 
 The few will always win while the many are ignorant, 
 and he who would see the triumph of democracy must 
 do his utmost to promote knowledge. None are fit to 
 
 1 "I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men 
 into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions 
 ready saddled and bridled to be ridden." Richard Rumbold, 
 1685. No wonder they hanged him!
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 53 
 
 govern but the wise and good, and a democracy of the 
 foolish and evil of all possible governments would be 
 the worst. The hope of democracy lies in the capacity 
 of all men to grow in goodness and wisdom. He who 
 does not believe in such capacity has faith neither in 
 God nor in man. 
 
 Jesus is the loftiest prophet of true democracy. A 
 democracy that is no more than an enlightened animal- 
 ism is not a worthy goal of effort, even if it be a pos- 
 sible achievement. Jesus saw this, and therefore he 
 said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its right- 
 eousness." If the sayings of Jesus about the king- 
 dom are not profoundest wisdom, they are most arrant 
 nonsense. Only an ethical democracy can be a trium- 
 phant democracy. That is why "Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself" sums up the whole duty of man 
 to man. The decisive reason why one should love his 
 neighbor and seek his good is that no man can hate 
 his neighbor and do him injury without also injuring 
 himself. Selfishness is a boomerang. Service of our 
 fellows is the only way to benefit ourselves. This is 
 a plain, hard, business proposition, founded on experi- 
 ence of life. It happens also to be morals and re- 
 ligion. 
 
 This prevailing condition among us of real aristoc- 
 racy with nominal democracy, of practical monopoly 
 with theoretical freedom of competition, of hopeless 
 slavery for the many while we hypocritically pretend 
 that there is hope of advancement for all, is the deadly 
 foe of human liberty and indicts our civilization as a 
 failure. Every court, every crime, every prison is a
 
 54 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 proof of failure; every saloon, every prostitute upon 
 our streets, every asylum and hospital helps to roll up 
 the vast total of evidence against the present order 
 of things; every debt, every defalcation, every bank- 
 ruptcy, every law-suit accumulates testimony to the 
 failure of our civilization. For the end of civilization 
 is the peace, harmony, happiness and moral uplift of 
 humanity. 
 
 The great underlying evil of society as now or- 
 ganized, stated in terms of politics or government, is 
 that it vests public functions in private hands in 
 hands irresponsible. The power of taxation is funda- 
 mental in government, and taxation is justifiable only 
 on the ground of the public good. Every dollar taken 
 from a citizen that is not used for the public good 
 is robbery. Individual monopoly puts into irresponsi- 
 ble hands power to tax for private gain, which is 
 nothing less than stealing under form of law. The 
 price the monopolist can charge is limited only by 
 "what the traffic will bear." At a certain point, which 
 can be determined only by experiment, increase of 
 price will mean diminution of profit ; and for his own 
 sake the monopolist will stop there, or return to that 
 point if he has inadvertently exceeded it. When he' 
 compares what he has actually done with what he has 
 power to do, no doubt the monopolist is often aston- 
 ished at his own moderation. 
 
 The history of governments and peoples discloses 
 many instances of the operation of a general law of 
 social development. There is first necessary a cen- 
 tralization of power, to bring order out of chaos, and
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 55 
 
 provide the protection and cooperation that are the 
 basic conditions of social progress. For a time this 
 centralized power is beneficent in the main, then it be- 
 comes intolerable, and a struggle begins for decentrali- 
 zation and distribution of power. With the political 
 applications of this law all educated people are fa- 
 miliar; the text-books of our school days began our 
 enlightenment, and subsequent reading and observation 
 have completed it. We are now coming to compre- 
 hend that this law applies to economics as well as to 
 politics, to the world of industry and commerce 
 equally with the domain of government. For a cen- 
 tury or two a process of centralization of industrial 
 wealth and social power has been going on, and the 
 last generation has seen it rapidly accelerated. We 
 see its fruits, we experience its intolerable evils, as 
 our ancestors experienced the evils of political des- 
 potism. It has become plain to us that the time has 
 come for decentralization and distribution of indus- 
 trial power among the whole people, if democracy is 
 to be realized and further progress in civilization is 
 to be possible. America may be still corrupt, but 
 she is no longer corrupt and contented. 
 
 II 
 
 Our ship of State is about to sail uncharted seas. 
 We modern Jasons have begun a quest for something 
 more precious, as well as more difficult of attainment, 
 than the Golden Fleece: we are in search of social
 
 56 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 justice. There must be something wrong in our social 
 arrangements; no rational man can doubt it. Why 
 have we these extremes of wealth and poverty that 
 we cannot lift our eyes without seeing? Evidently 
 because the best minds of the centuries have not been 
 given to the solution of social problems. Men have 
 been too intent on producing wealth, securing power 
 and promoting knowledge, to take much thought about 
 securing social justice. It has been taken for granted 
 that, with progress of civilization, social justice would 
 come about of itself. But now the best minds are 
 awakening to the actual condition of society. A civi- 
 lization so defective in social justice as ours is seen 
 to be a thing of which we should be ashamed, not 
 proud. Henceforth these problems are to receive the 
 serious attention of Americans who are leaders of 
 thought and enterprise. We feel that we must do 
 something to make the conditions of life better for 
 those who come after us. For, in spite of the Irish 
 orator's famous protest, posterity has done much for 
 us, in giving us the greatest of all gifts, an oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 The demand for social justice is not only insistent 
 but general. From one end of our land to the other, 
 and in every class, there is a growing conviction that 
 something is wrong. As a consequence there is also 
 a growing resolution that something must and shall 
 be done about it. We are an aroused, a determined, 
 almost an angry people, as yet doubting just what to 
 do. This period of doubt will not long endure. Now 
 is the psychological moment to make changes in our
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 57 
 
 system with least trouble, radical enough to avert revo- 
 lution, before revolutionary methods are demanded 
 and adopted. 
 
 Analysis of this discontent will convince any in- 
 quirer that its source is violation by our social order 
 of two fundamental principles of human life. The 
 first of these is, that the soil, the sole source of the 
 means of life and the physical basis of liberty and 
 happiness, is the common property of the race. This 
 fundamental human right society denies. The earth 
 is the Lord's, say the Scriptures ; the earth is the land- 
 lord's, say our laws. God gave the earth to man for 
 use, to all men equally, again say the Scriptures ; but a 
 few men have stolen the earth from their fellows and 
 claim it as their private possession. This is the first 
 great injustice, and the second is like unto it: the 
 sole means by which wealth may be obtained from the 
 soil is labor, which is the common lot of the race. This 
 fundamental human duty society denies ; it permits and 
 even encourages spoliation of the hard-working many 
 by the idle few. Our laws say that some must work 
 while others may live luxuriously from their product. 
 For no man can live without work; if he does not 
 work for himself, somebody else must work for him. 
 But an honest man cannot live on the fruits of an- 
 other's toil, unless he is also doing something of use 
 to society; he must either be a direct producer of 
 wealth, or else a helper of the workers and so an 
 indirect producer. If he neither directly nor indi- 
 rectly produces, he has no right to existence he is a 
 mere parasite on society. These are the two funda-
 
 58 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 mental principles of life; they stand every economic, 
 ethical and practical test. Their truth cannot be con- 
 troverted or evaded. Their denial in practice is the 
 source of all our social evils. 
 
 The other day a young man in New York became 
 the absolute owner of property said to be worth $70,- 
 000,000, which he had done nothing to earn but to 
 be the son of his father. His father before him, and 
 so on to the fourth generation, had done no more. 
 All that this family has had to do is to sit tight and 
 let their fellow residents of Manhattan pile up mil- 
 lions for them. One scion of the family has shaken 
 the dust of America from his feet, and become a 
 British subject. Americans are not fit for him to live 
 with; they are only fit to pay him an annual tribute 
 of many millions, which they continue meekly to do. 
 Meanwhile, every week scores of children are born 
 in Manhattan with no heritage but poverty and misery. 
 
 This is an extreme case, but so long as the world 
 holds one starving child and one millionaire, the mil- 
 lionaire is bound to justify his existence. Christians 
 cannot believe that their Father in Heaven ever in- 
 tended his children to fare so unequally. Atheists and 
 agnostics cannot believe that members of the same 
 race can equitably be so different in fortune. So long 
 as men believed that God sent the plague and cholera, 
 and all the other ills that flesh is heir to, they sub- 
 mitted with what resignation they could to the divine 
 will. But when they learned the nature and causes 
 of disease, they ceased to talk about "mysterious dis- 
 pensations of Providence" and began a vigorous fight
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 59 
 
 against microbes and mosquitoes. And while men 
 believed that God pleased to set some men in high 
 station and some in low, that he had given to this 
 man wealth and to that poverty, some tried to be con- 
 tent in the station to which divine wisdom had as- 
 signed them, while those who strove against their lot 
 were stigmatized as rebels against God. Now we all 
 know that our fellows, not God, have made and main- 
 tain human inequality; content has disappeared, and a 
 smoldering anger has taken its place, which will burst 
 into a flame of revolution if something is not done 
 speedily to redress our great social wrongs. 
 
 Even if the continuance of present conditions were 
 possible, they would be deadly to the race. Some men 
 are so busy in accumulating surplus means~6"f" living 
 that they forget to live. Others are so occupied with 
 attempts to gain the absolutely necessary means of liv- 
 ing that they have no chance to live. Only a few live ; 
 most men merely exist. It is imperative that this be 
 changed. We must have the possibility of life, lib- 
 erty, happiness, for all. We want the earth, the whole 
 earth, for all men not to own, but to possess, to use, 
 to enjoy. We need not wonder at the resentment of 
 those who have learned how they have been robbed 
 of their heritage. Machiavelli said that men in gen- 
 eral will forgive the murder of their parents more 
 easily than the spoliation of their property. The cyn- 
 ical remark was founded on a wide observation of 
 human nature ; and it helps us to measure the retribu- 
 tion that will one day be exacted from the robbers by 
 the robbed, if voluntary restitution is not made.
 
 60 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Recognition of social wrongs and demand for so- 
 cial justice, while general, are by no means universal. 
 A very considerable part of society, including some of 
 its most influential members, elects the ostrich policy: 
 hides its head and refuses to see either present evils 
 or the coming storm. Many will recognize nothing 
 but an unreasonable dissatisfaction on the part of 
 those whose failure to get on is due to their own 
 idleness, dissipation and general thriftlessness. Indus- 
 try and thrift would solve all social problems; every 
 man might gain a competence if he would. Thrift! 
 Have those who so confidently commend this remedy 
 for social ills ever troubled themselves to think the 
 matter through and discover what thrift signifies so- 
 cially? Thrift means that if you and I slave and save 
 all our lives, our children may be idle with impunity. 
 It means that one generation shall be workers and the 
 next loafers. Why does not society let one generation 
 transmit to the next the right to murder with impu- 
 nity ? It would be equally logical and quite as ethical. 
 
 The ostrich plan includes not merely the ignoring 
 but the denial of patent social facts. "I object to the 
 word 'class'; there are no classes in America," said a 
 talented and cultivated woman lately in a public in- 
 quiry. Could anything be said that would show 
 greater blindness to existing facts? We have classes 
 as well marked as those of any European country, 
 but the distinctions with us depend less on birth, fam- 
 ily, gentility. Our classes are purely economic classes ; 
 the line of demarcation is one of wealth, or rather of 
 income. The late Ward McAllister once expressed
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 6l 
 
 the opinion that about four hundred families consti- 
 tuted the "society" of New York. He may have been 
 inaccurate in his figures the exact number is of no 
 moment but he was quite right in principle ; in every 
 city and town, down to the smallest village, there are 
 certain families, a number larger or smaller according 
 to the size and wealth of the place, who constitute 
 "society," and their decisions fix the social status of 
 every newcomer, whether he shall be in "society" or 
 not Fifty years ago we aped the aristocracies of 
 Europe and affected to make birth the chief qualifica- 
 tion. The would-be entrant to "society" was asked, 
 Who was your grandfather? Of late we have had the 
 courage to set up a standard of our own, or, rather, 
 to recognize frankly what has always been our real 
 standard, and the question now is, What is your in- 
 come? Not that the question is asked in quite this 
 bald, blunt fashion, but that this is the accepted test 
 of social fitness. And below the Four Hundred, in 
 which few can maintain themselves who do not pos- 
 sess millions, are other groups united on the same 
 principle of possessing approximately the same in- 
 comes and therefore being able to do the same social 
 "stunts." There is, too, a degree of fitness in the 
 standard, for self-respecting persons cannot long re- 
 main with comfort in a social circle where the finan- 
 cial pace is too hot for them they cannot entertain in 
 the style of richer people, and their pride forbids them 
 to be continually accepting favors that they cannot 
 return. And there we reach the ultimate fact: The 
 amount of income finally decides the social question, to
 
 62 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 what class a man belongs. It is no use to blink the 
 fact, and pretend that we have no classes. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The world's workers, who produce the world's 
 wealth, are now demanding access to the soil and 
 their rightful share of the product of their industry, 
 so long withheld from them. If we do not give, it 
 will not be long before they take. Theirs is the power 
 to take. They have only to realize their strength and 
 act together, and all present institutions of the world 
 would disappear in a day in one common ruin. It is 
 time that the owners of vast wealth realized that they 
 hold their property only on the sufferance of those 
 who are so cruelly wronged by present social arrange- 
 ments, and that sufferance will not last indefinitely. 
 
 It has been estimated, on the basis of the best data 
 obtainable, that nine-tenths of the wealth of America 
 is owned by one-tenth of the people. What 80,000,- 
 ooo possess would not make spending-money for the 
 other 10,000,000. The estimate is no doubt crude, be- 
 cause the data on which it is based are crude. The 
 art of collecting and collating social statistics has only 
 begun to be practiced ; but the error is negligible for 
 our purpose. That the estimate is roughly just is 
 proved by other available facts. For example: the 
 average annual product of the individual worker is 
 calculated from the census returns to be $2,400; while 
 the average annual wage of the producer is $780. Of
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 63 
 
 each worker's product, therefore, $1,600, or more than 
 two-thirds, goes to those who have produced nothing. 
 The monstrous injustice of this admits of no denial 
 or palliation. Still, there are persons who seem to 
 reason (let us call it that) that, inasmuch as the cap- 
 italistic class is satisfied with what it steals from 
 workers, the workers are or should be satisfied with 
 what is not stolen from them. If employers are 
 happy in their palaces, laborers should be contented 
 in their slums. Strangely, the worker no longer ap- 
 proves that sort of logic. 
 
 When the laborer goes to the market place to sell 
 his labor, he finds that sellers are many and buyers 
 few. When he goes to buy food and clothing and 
 shelter, he finds that buyers are many and sellers few. 
 Hence he gets low wages and pays high prices. 
 Reader, how do you appraise the system? Just? hu- 
 mane? promotive of human welfare? encouraging to 
 civilization? The employer sells his goods, the em- 
 ployee sells his life; we have given every protection 
 to the former and denied all protection to the latter, 
 thus proclaiming to the world our conviction that life 
 is of less worth than steel rails or woolen cloth. Are 
 we really less brutal and material than our laws? 
 Have we done ourselves injustice? How can we pre- 
 tend so, while we tolerate a social system in which 
 the proletarian swings like a pendulum between a con-" 
 dition of dependence when times are good and vaga- 
 bondage when times are bad ? Work, the opportunity 
 to gain a livelihood, is not recognized as his right,
 
 64 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 but a favor granted by a boss, like a bone thrown to 
 a dog. Often there is no bone. Ought not the great 
 majority of working men be called rather working 
 animals, that they submit one day longer to such a 
 system? So long as they get fodder and a stall, they 
 manifest a bovine content with their life. Add thereto 
 a mate, and it is a difficult thing to awaken their in- 
 telligence and rouse them to make an effort to better 
 themselves. Deprive them of fodder and stall, and 
 they seem unable to do more than bellow and paw 
 the ground. 
 
 At least, this has been their history up to now. 
 Hitherto the capitalist has been able, if not to satisfy, 
 at least to quiet the laborer by paying him a pittance 
 and adding a draft on the bank of Heaven. Is it 
 strange that the worker has become dissatisfied? He 
 does not discover any unseemly eagerness on the part 
 of his employer to take his profits in that currency. 
 Wall Street quotes no rates on that kind of paper. 
 The magnates of High Finance when off duty, so to 
 speak, may address Sunday schools and advise their 
 hearers to lay up their treasures in Heaven, but in 
 business hours what they understand is cent per cent, 
 here below. Hope of the life to come is indeed a 
 precious possession for the laborer, but it does not 
 clothe and feed his family or pay his rent The 
 worker is just human enough to wish for a larger 
 proportion of his pay now, and in material things, 
 without denying the value of the spiritual. For 
 though he has an immortal soul which clamors for its
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 65 
 
 rights, he is just now an immortal soul housed in a 
 mortal body, that cries out against hunger and cold 
 and nakedness. And the body often cries so insist- 
 ently that the cry of the soul is unheard. It was not 
 for nothing that the ancients held the bowels to be the 
 seat of the affections and will. The hungry man will 
 hear the call of his stomach, when the still small voice 
 of conscience falls on deaf ears. 
 
 The preachers who insist that man's chief duty is 
 to consider the welfare of his soul to the last man 
 look wonderfully well after their bodies. Not one of 
 them omits his three meals a day for fear of hurting 
 his soul. It is ever the well-fed man who piously 
 insists that "Man cannot live by bread alone" ; the ill- 
 fed man is acutely conscious that without bread man 
 cannot live at all. In spite of Mr. Lincoln, it is very 
 easy to fool people; it is still easier to fool oneself. 
 The preacher has no need to worry about bread, be- 
 cause some other man is working to feed him. He 
 can keep his hands soft and white, because some other 
 man wears callouses and grime for his sake. The 
 preacher may deserve his immunity, but the least he 
 can do in return for it is to recognize the situation 
 and stop talking nonsense to the man whose labor sup- 
 plies his bread. 
 
 It is often objected to current proposals for social 
 reform that they would really promote greater social 
 injustice than they seek to remedy. It is charged that 
 social reform practically amounts to taking from one 
 man that which is his and giving it to another who
 
 66 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 has not earned it. 1 It would not be possible to mis- 
 understand and misstate the case more completely. 
 What is proposed is to take from one man who has 
 not earned it property that he merely calls "his" but 
 to which he has no moral title, and give it to the men 
 who really earned it. The horror that conservative 
 people feel or affect at such proposals might be not 
 a little lessened if they would consider the historic 
 origin of present "vested rights." Communal prop- 
 erty preceded private; the latter is a comparatively 
 recent growth and has progressed chiefly by the usur- 
 pations of the strong and aggressive few and the pas- 
 sive surrender of the great majority. The ethical 
 right of the majority to reverse the process, whenever 
 it can and as far as it pleases, will be questioned by 
 few who judge human institutions in the light of their 
 origin and growth. Thus far the majority propose 
 only a slight modification of the system of private 
 
 1 "How are the inequalities in society to be wiped out ? How is 
 government to insure happiness to the individual? Is it by an 
 equal distribution of property? Is it by taking from one man 
 that which is his and giving it to another who has not earned 
 it? I submit that this is the ultimate result of a thorough anal- 
 ysis of all the theories advanced by the Progressive party. It 
 is easily seen that under the progressive program the whole 
 machinery that has been so carefully built up by the older 
 statesmen of this country and of England to save to the indi- 
 vidual and the minority, freedom, equality before the law, the 
 right of property and the right to pursue happiness, is to be 
 taken apart and thrown into a junk heap." Speech of William 
 Howard Taft in New York, January 4, 1913. Of this farrago 
 of nonsense, the last five words only betray some comprehen- 
 sion of fact. The junk heap is where most of the "machinery" 
 belongs.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 67 
 
 property : the claim of the State to the "unearned in- 
 crement," the value added to land, not by anything 
 that the private owner does, but by the growth of the 
 community, is by many conceded to be just. 
 
 Society has a clear ethical right to take for the 
 common good value which society alone confers. 
 Every form of wealth save land value is produced by 
 labor. Every other form of wealth is consumed or 
 deteriorates and must be replaced by new labor. Land 
 values grow with the growth of population, without 
 labor, and continue as long as the population remains, 
 and no longer. We speak of "land values," because 
 that is the accepted phrase, but land values are not 
 properly values : they are merely the landowners' 
 power to levy tribute (called rent) upon other forms 
 of wealth. The landowner is a parasite : he produces 
 no more wealth than any other thief. There was a 
 time when the whole of Manhattan Island sold for 
 $25 ; now much of it is worth $500 a foot front, some 
 of it even more. The difference between the two 
 values is due solely to the fact that the inhabitants have 
 increased from a few Indians to nearly two and a half 
 millions of people. Nobody who owns a foot of soil 
 on Manhattan Island has done anything by his own 
 labor or skill to add one dollar of value to his pos- 
 session; the community has done all; the community 
 may take what it has given. 
 
 Testamentary rights are of still more recent origin, 
 of little ethical weight and of more than doubtful 
 social value. The right of a man "to do what he will 
 with his own," even during his lifetime, has been con-
 
 68 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 siderably limited by law and should be limited much 
 more strictly. When he dies his property no longer 
 belongs to him, but to those that come after him. 
 All of a man's possible ethical rights of property end 
 with his own life; he has no moral claim to bind the 
 future generations. Each generation in turn has a 
 right to the earth and the fulness thereof. The power 
 to dispose of property by will is ethically indefensible, 
 and ought to be abrogated. Every estate should be 
 settled by law, in accordance with acknowledged prin- 
 ciples of equity, as is now done in cases of intestacy. 
 Social justice can be satisfied with no less. 
 
 IV 
 
 What has the Gospel of Jesus to do with all this? 
 Some say, Nothing. The view of the Gospel that 
 many hold to be the only orthodoxy is, that if we 
 can save a man's soul from a future hell of which we 
 know nothing, not even that it exists, we may without 
 compunction leave his body in a present hell of which 
 we know only too much. Our age needs a very dif- 
 ferent view of the Gospel from that, and is rapidly 
 getting it. We must have a Gospel that is concerned 
 with men's bodies as well as with their souls, because 
 it is a Gospel for this life as well as for the life to 
 come. It is a Gospel that sets itself the task of trans- 
 forming this world into the kingdom of God. 
 
 Such a Gospel demands of its votaries first of all 
 that they see clearly and think straight. Men and 
 women of sensitive social conscience are vainly trying
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 69 
 
 to-day to make the Gospel practical by applying charity 
 to the consequences of social evil, instead of applying 
 justice to the causes of social evil. By so doing they 
 perhaps succeed in solacing an uneasy conscience, but 
 they accomplish nothing of social value. What is 
 called Christian charity, or simply philanthropy, con- 
 cerns itself only with effects, and in consequence it so 
 directs its well-intended efforts as to increase social 
 evils rather than remedy them. To individuals it has 
 done much good, but society as a whole has been 
 more injured by charity than benefited. None will 
 deny that it has failed to diminish appreciably the 
 vast total of social suffering. We may expect some- 
 thing worth while to be done only when Christian men 
 and women come to see that the Gospel does not per- 
 mit a man to live at the expense of his fellows 
 when all forms of profit, and especially rent, dividends 
 and interest, will be recognized as profoundly immoral, 
 since all alike violate the law, "Thou shalt not steal." 
 The Gospel of Jesus cannot tolerate two sorts of 
 ethics: one for the working class, another for the 
 capitalistic. For example: the workers are severely 
 criticized for sabotage, even of the milder sort, by the 
 very capitalists who constantly form "gentlemen's 
 agreements" or other combinations to limit output and 
 maintain prices criticized by the very commission 
 merchants who destroy food products rather than per- 
 mit prices to be lowered. The Steel Trust, fixing the 
 output of each concern included in the organization, 
 and the price at which every pound of product shall 
 be sold, cuts a sorry figure when it denounces workers
 
 7O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 for a policy of "ca' canny." The Gospel of Jesus 
 cannot tolerate one standard of ethics for individuals 
 and another for corporations. "Corporations have no 
 souls," said Blackstone, and the saying has proved to 
 be true in a far different sense from that he intended. 
 There is a certain hardness and ruthlessness in cor- 
 porate management that is not found in business enter- 
 prises conducted by an individual or a firm. A man 
 may be haughty, insolent or vindictive in business, but 
 he cannot practice the passionless cruelty, the imper- 
 sonal brutality, of a corporation. A man may have 
 many motives in conducting his business; a corpora- 
 tion has one sole motive: dividends. 
 
 Those who believe the Gospel of Jesus will try to 
 understand the ethics of the workers before pronounc- 
 ing condemnation. The right to life and liberty is 
 meaningless, unless it means a right to employment. 
 "You do take away my life, when you take away 
 the means by which I live," said Shy lock, and it re- 
 mains true even if he did say it. The workers in a 
 great industrial enterprise have an equity in the busi- 
 ness that thinking employers are beginning to recog- 
 nize. Hence, in the vocabulary of the worker, "Thou 
 shalt not steal" translates into "Thou shalt not scab." 
 Likewise, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's 
 house," under modern conditions means, "Thou 
 shalt not covet thy neighbor's job." People 
 outside of the working class find it difficult to 
 comprehend this simple ethical principle, and wonder 
 why the worker feels so bitter toward the "scab." 
 Can people of the North who lived through the civil
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE Jl 
 
 war remember how they once felt toward a "copper- 
 head"? Are we patriots enough to comprehend our 
 fathers' execration of Benedict Arnold? Are we 
 Christian enough to understand what our New Testa- 
 ment says about Judas? To the worker, a "scab" is 
 Benedict Arnold in industry ; he is Judas reincarnated ; 
 he is both thief and traitor. 
 
 It must be confessed that the attempt to apply the 
 Gospel of Jesus to the solution of social problems is 
 less successful than we have a right to expect. This 
 is because the attempt is but half-hearted, in the first 
 place, and because it is opposed by the very persons 
 who ought heartily to forward it. A large part of 
 the clergy are openly indifferent or secretly hostile. 
 Many publicly declare that social service and social 
 justice are but "fads," notions of a day, and unworthy 
 of serious consideration. Of the Christian laymen of 
 intelligence and high ideals, but a small proportion 
 are sufficiently enlightened to perceive that social in- 
 justice harms not only the class that suffers from it 
 but even more the class that profits by it. The men 
 who have succeeded, the men who are comfortable, 
 the men for whom life is relatively easy, cannot be 
 aroused to take interest in the abolition of privilege 
 and the redress of social grievances. It is their selfish 
 satisfaction with their own lot, their indolent refusal 
 to think seriously of social problems, that is mainly 
 responsible for the slowness of social progress. 
 
 It is not a little discouraging to know that, after 
 half a century of energetic wrestling by a few with 
 the problem of crime, there is more crime than ever
 
 72 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 among us: that millions have been spent in the fight 
 against disease, and tuberculosis and typhoid slay more 
 victims every year; that society has been contending 
 vigorously against vice for generations, and that the 
 saloon and the brothel were never so flourishing ; that 
 peace societies have been propagating their principles 
 for generations, arbitration treaties have been con- 
 cluded and The Hague tribunal established, yet every 
 year all nations are increasing their armaments and 
 one of the bloodiest wars of history has been raging 
 within a twelve-month in the Balkans. Evidently one 
 of two things must be true : either the forces aiming 
 at social reform are all too weak, or the efforts made 
 are misdirected and futile. Possibly we may see rea- 
 son to conclude that both are true, but the error of 
 method is the really serious thing. 
 
 Napoleon's ideal, La carriere ouverte aux talents, 
 has been highly praised by some who have imagined 
 that social justice lies that way. But this is only to 
 substitute an aristocracy of intellect for an aristoc- 
 racy of birth or wealth. What of the poor without 
 talents? No talents, no rights, is the only corollary 
 from the Napoleonic formula. But we must have so- 
 cial justice for all, not opportunity for a few to ex- 
 ploit the less gifted of their generation. The United 
 States has for a century offered a large career for 
 talent, and we are by no means satisfied with the 
 social results. The despised Middle Ages were, in 
 many respects, marked by a social justice superior to 
 our own. Society then tried to prevent unfair com- 
 petition, to give every man a chance in his own rank.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 73 
 
 Rising capitalism was from the beginning impatient 
 of all such restraints, and insisted that they should 
 be removed, so that competition might be made free 
 and every man might find his level. It proved strong 
 enough to carry its point; restraints were removed; 
 competition was without limit. What followed? We 
 have but to look about us and see. 
 
 Men get in this world about what they deserve, some 
 complacent social philosophers tell us. It is a specious 
 saying, but untrue, and also irrelevant. Nothing is 
 more idle than to consider the character of rich and 
 poor as individuals. Beautiful souls are found in the 
 slum and in the mansion, and ugly souls are found 
 in both; and the relative proportions it is as unprofit- 
 able to discuss as difficult to ascertain. What the 
 poor "deserve" is not the question; the question is, 
 What are we bound to give them? The goodness 
 of this or that rich man is not the question ; the ques- 
 tion is, What effect is unearned wealth likely to have 
 on character? Nothing can be a clearer proposition 
 than that unearned wealth in the hands of one man 
 can only mean that earned wealth has been wrested 
 from the hands of another. 
 
 Our problem, looked at in a practical way, is to 
 translate the laws of industrial production into terms 
 of human happiness and virtue. The solution of the 
 problem may be expected when as much time, study, 
 intelligence and religion have been expended in secur- 
 ing the due reward of labor as have been ex- 
 pended on the making of profit; when the welfare 
 of the laborer is deemed as worthy of consideration
 
 74 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 as equipment, efficiency and selling ; when the man be- 
 hind the machine is held to be of greater importance 
 than the machine. In a word, when the good of hu- 
 manity is the impelling social motive. 
 
 Scientific efficiency, of which we hear a great deal 
 in these days, means among many other things and 
 this is really its most important meaning, though few 
 recognize it that men and women are not to be per- 
 mitted to work beyond their powers. It is not so- 
 cially profitable to allow overstrain, fatigue beyond the 
 point that the daily and weekly rest will suffice fully 
 to overcome. To tax the future by exacting too heavy 
 tasks now may fill an employer's purse, but it will 
 bankrupt society. The struggle for an eight-hour 
 working day, and for one day's rest in seven, is an 
 attempt to secure recognition of the worker's right to 
 leisure. Leisure is good for man; much leisure is 
 indispensable to the best humanity; but complete 
 leisure is the worst thing man can have. A leisure 
 class is always an idle class, a vicious class, an anti- 
 social class. The curse of unearned wealth is the 
 power that it gives to some men to be idle while 
 others must work to keep them in their idleness. It 
 is as unjust and unethical a system for the idler as 
 for the worker it corrupts both. The worker's leis- 
 ure is now mainly involuntary, and takes the form of 
 unemployment. Some is voluntary and takes the 
 form of vagrancy. Not less than higher wages the 
 worker needs more leisure, regular leisure, that he 
 may have opportunity to develop a higher manhood. 
 Some of them will misuse their leisure? Quite likely,
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 75 
 
 until they learn how to use it better. But "there is 
 no cure for the evils of liberty but more liberty." 
 
 Max Nordau tells us that the natural or zoological 
 morality affirms rest to be the supreme merit, and does 
 not define labor as pleasant and glorious except as it 
 is indispensable to material existence. Pouget, follow- 
 ing Nordau, denounces the usual ideas of the duty of 
 labor and the dignity of labor as bourgeois morality. 
 The premise of such reasoning is faulty and so the 
 conclusion is invalid. Nordau does not correctly state 
 the zoological morality. Man must work and incur 
 fatigue in order to rest, just as he must be hungry 
 in order to eat. Merely to masticate and swallow 
 food is not eating; it is only the mechanical process 
 that accompanies eating. Eating is the enjoyment of 
 food, and for that hunger is indispensable. Doing 
 nothing is not resting; no man can rest until he is 
 tired. Labor is zoological morality, as a precedent to 
 rest. 
 
 Nordau's error probably arises from the fact that 
 "labor" connotes two different ideas, for which we re- 
 quire and fortunately possess two different words. 
 "Labor" may be accurately defined as the pleasurable 
 exercise of our faculties, physical or mental, in the 
 accomplishment of a useful task. For the other idea 
 commonly associated with "labor," we may take the 
 word "toil," and define it as the irksome use of our 
 faculties, mainly physical, in the accomplishment of 
 a necessary or imposed task. The difference is the 
 difference between voluntary exertion and compulsory, 
 between the pleasurable and the irksome. Toil, en-
 
 76 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 forced labor, is slavery. Whether the laborer is 
 driven by the whip of a master or the whip of neces- 
 sity matters little to him. The chattel slavery of the 
 field has given place to the new wage slavery of the 
 factory, with a great theoretic increase of liberty, but 
 with little substantial betterment of the worker. Many 
 object to "wage slavery" and "wage slave" as exag- 
 gerated terms. Judge Pitney, now of the United 
 States Supreme Court, in a decision while judge in 
 New Jersey, held that picketing was robbery, on the 
 ground that, "The relation of master and servant being 
 established, then the services of the employee became 
 a property right." A picket, striving to persuade a 
 worker to stop giving his labor as "servant" to his 
 "master," is trying to rob the latter of a property 
 right ! What is the difference between this and chattel 
 slavery ? 
 
 One of our chief national characteristics is that we 
 are a wasteful people. We have burned up more of 
 our forests than we have used. The deer and bison, 
 the fur-bearing animals, the fish and wild fowl, once 
 so plentiful, we have nearly or quite exterminated. 
 We build houses and factories of flimsy materials, let 
 them burn and rebuild them of the same over and 
 over, at a cost many times greater than to build well 
 once for all. It is estimated that $1,500,000,000 is 
 spent by the business world every year in advertising, 
 of which every cent is economic waste, though un-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 77 
 
 avoidable under our present system, and the people 
 pay for it in the advanced cost of living. 
 
 One of our magazines recently called attention to 
 the weak spot in our present business methods : all 
 effort is concentrated on cheapening the cost of pro- 
 duction, and practically no attention is given to the 
 excessive waste in selling. This is probably because 
 it is easy to pass on the cost of selling to the buyer. 
 The result is that it costs from two to five times as 
 much to sell as it does to manufacture. As an illus- 
 tration of how the buyer is made to pay, it is related 
 that the United States government lately bought 
 12,000 typewriters in one lot (of a grade that usually 
 sells for $100) for $14 each; and, at that, there was 
 a profit for the maker of a dollar on each machine. 1 
 What does it cost to make a $3,000 automobile? No- 
 body but the maker knows, and he will not tell; but 
 probably not over $500. A generation ago, as every- 
 body knows, a high-grade sewing-machine could not 
 be bought for less than $60; now department stores 
 are selling better built machines of the same makes 
 for $20 or less. While the bicycle craze lasted, the 
 better class of wheels were kept at $150; and perhaps 
 some readers have not yet forgotten how it transpired 
 in a law suit that it cost less than $20 to make them. 
 It may not be as bad as this in all forms of manu- 
 facture, but it is only a question of degree; every- 
 
 1 The manufacturers have recently explained that there was 
 additional profit derived from the resale of old machines taken 
 in exchange; and that this accounts for the low price. It ac- 
 counts only for a small part of the margin ($86) between the 
 usual price and the price to the government.
 
 78 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 where the cost of selling is excessive, and the buyer 
 pays not only for his goods, but whatever is expended 
 in inducing him to buy. 
 
 The defenders of the capitalistic system have long 
 been accustomed to claim that, with all its defects, 
 some of which they admit, it transacts the world's 
 business with great efficiency. When the system is 
 analyzed, however, it proves guilty of such prodigal 
 and reckless waste that one wonders how it can keep 
 on going. A conservative estimate, supported at every 
 point by the best statistical data obtainable, makes this 
 waste amount to the stupendous sum of a hundred 
 billion dollars a year a sum that, if saved under a 
 scientifically managed social and industrial system, 
 would give each family of the United States an in- 
 come of $6,000, or ten times the average wage-earn- 
 er's income to-day. We have not even the consola- 
 tion, such as it would be, of knowing that this loss 
 of the producer is the capitalist's gain it is abso- 
 lute, irrecoverable loss. 1 
 
 We are not only wasteful of our wealth, but of 
 human life. We waste life by disease, by accident, by 
 overwork, all preventable. A half million people die 
 every year quite unnecessarily, and subtract just so 
 much from our potential wealth. We are slowly learn- 
 ing that men are more valuable than property, and 
 
 *A. M. Simons, "Wasting Human Life," Girard, Kansas, 1912. 
 Similar figures are given in Koester's "The Price of Ineffi- 
 ciency." Koester is a civil engineer, educated in Germany; his 
 thoroughness of investigation and his aloof impartiality give his 
 conclusions great weight.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 79 
 
 that the greatest of all our extravagances is this reck- 
 less sacrifice of human life. A revolution would not 
 cost more in blood and lives than the present indus- 
 trial system is costing; 45,000 workers are killed every 
 year by criminal negligence; one miner of every hun- 
 dred dies, because his employer cares less for the lives 
 of his men than he does for his mules. Nor have 
 we completed our indictment, when we have counted 
 those killed out-and-out by the system; those who die 
 by inches, years before their natural time, are also to 
 be charged to its account. In England employees work 
 on the average 55.2 hours a week, but one-half of 
 our steel workers are compelled to work 72 hours a 
 week, about a third work more than 72 hours, while 
 a fourth work twelve hours a day for seven days of 
 the week, with an occasional 24-hour work-day. Such 
 labor cannot but result in early death, and in the de- 
 generation of the race, physically, intellectually and 
 morally. No demand for social justice is more insist- 
 ent, or appeals more strongly to the conscience, than 
 the demand that this needless sacrifice of human life 
 shall cease. 
 
 The great advance made within a few generations 
 in productiveness of labor, through multiplication of 
 machinery, has been of slight benefit to the laborer, 
 though of vast profit to the capitalist. The old tools 
 were merely aids to the hands and all labor was man- 
 ual; the new tools, machines, have almost eliminated 
 the hand. The machine now produces results of 
 power, dexterity, complexity and even delicacy that 
 no hand ever equaled. But "labor-saving" machines
 
 8O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 belie their name; they have saved the employer cost 
 of labor, but they have not made the worker's toil 
 lighter nor added appreciably to his wage. And the 
 employer has, for the most part, been able to see 
 nothing but the benefit to himself ; the just claim of the 
 worker to a share in this increased production has been 
 either denied or ignored. He has not been intelligent 
 enough, in most cases, to see what his own highest 
 interests demanded that the greatest ultimate profit 
 is not to be made by forcing wages down to the lowest 
 level of subsistence for the workers. Mr. Redfield, 
 the Secretary of Commerce in Mr. Wilson's cabinet, 
 sums up his experience as a manufacturer and his con- 
 clusions as a student of economics in these words: 
 "Given the scientific spirit in management, constant 
 and careful study of operations and details of cost, 
 modern buildings and equipment, proper arrangement 
 of plant and proper material, ample power, space and 
 light, a high wage rate means inevitably a low labor 
 cost per unit of product and the minimum of labor 
 cost." * Swinish selfishness invariably defeats its own 
 purpose. Only social justice can produce social pros- 
 perity. 
 
 One difficulty in the attainment of social justice 
 is that many among us hold so obstinately to a po- 
 litical philosophy that experience has shown to be with- 
 out foundation in reality. This is a theory of the 
 limited functions of the State, out of which grew the 
 
 *"The New Industrial Day," p. 121. Mr. Redfield considers 
 this summary of a long argument so important that he prints 
 it in italics.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 8l 
 
 practical maxim, laissez faire, let things alone, inter- 
 fere as little as possible with the "natural laws" of 
 society. Those who entertain this theory believe that 
 the State has done its full duty when it has applied 
 the Marquis of Queensbury rules to industry and com- 
 merce, and insured victory to the man who has the 
 strongest "punch." This appears to be still the ideal 
 of most economists, that the victory belongs to the 
 strong. "The big company has a right to beat the 
 little one in an honest race for cheapness in making 
 and selling goods; but it has no right to foul and 
 disable its competitor." J What right has the big com- 
 pany to beat except the right of bigness ? That quota- 
 tion helps us to comprehend the cause of the popular 
 prejudice against the great capitalistic concerns. The 
 mere size of corporations is not a bad thing, but it is 
 a dangerous thing. For size means great resources, 
 and that means great power, and power is dangerous. 
 Power is nearly always used for selfish purposes, with- 
 out regard to the good of society. The people are 
 right, therefore, in regarding great corporations as a 
 menace; the burden of proof is upon the corporation 
 to show conclusively that it is promoting the public 
 interest, not preying on the public. The presumption 
 is invariably against it. 
 
 The protection of the weak is, or should be, quite 
 as much a function of the State as giving opportunity 
 to the strong. The strong need no aid; they can 
 
 X J. B. Clark, "Control of Trusts," New York, 1912, revised 
 ed., p. 28.
 
 82 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 always look out for themselves and their own inter- 
 ests; if government fails to protect the weak it has 
 little social justification for existence. And the Gos- 
 pel of Jesus certainly enjoins protection of the weak 
 as the first duty of the strong. The Gospel, therefore, 
 can never be adjusted to either competition or mo- 
 nopoly twin forms of industrial piracy, both of 
 which fly the black flag and cut every rival's throat. 
 Plato taught that the end of the State is to make 
 men virtuous; the modern view is that the end of the 
 State is to make men comfortable; but why may not 
 men be made both virtuous and comfortable? Is the 
 highest virtue attainable without a certain measure of 
 comfort? Surely the two ends are not incompatible, 
 much less antithetic. The ideal of the State should 
 be to secure such organization of society as will give 
 to every person opportunity to live the largest life. 
 This is also the idea of the Gospel of Jesus, for that is 
 what the kingdom of God means. 
 
 When we are told, then, by Herbert Spencer and 
 others that the best government is that which governs 
 least, our reply is, Yes, if it is despotism, oligarchy, 
 aristocracy, using the machinery of government to 
 plunder and oppress the people. It was under such 
 experience that the maxim was developed. But if the 
 State is a democracy, a people governing themselves 
 for the common good, all the government that will 
 promote the common good is desirable, and that will 
 be matter for experimentation, not for a priori deci- 
 sion. Men decry the demand for more legislation, as
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 83 
 
 merely the attempt to cure evils of law by more laws. 
 But law is only the orderly means by which men act 
 together in society and enforce a common will and 
 purpose. More and more legislation is inseparable 
 from democracy. May it also be increasingly wise 
 legislation! The alternatives are despotism or the 
 mob. 
 
 Another obstacle to progress toward social justice 
 is belief that men cannot be made righteous by 
 environment. But is it not quite as true to insist that 
 men cannot become righteous without suitable environ- 
 ment? If we interrogate our own personal experience, 
 most of us will find cause to acknowledge how potent 
 environment has been in our case. We can easily 
 conceive a world in which it would be as easy for men 
 to do right as it now is hard, because we have been 
 fortunate enough to live in such a world. That is to 
 say, our environment has always made it easy for us 
 to do right and hard to do wrong. We have lived in 
 surroundings and companionship full of incitement to 
 virtue and almost free from incitements to evil. Our 
 chief temptations have been temptations to be good 
 and to do good. To do wrong has always meant for 
 us that we must overcome all sorts of restraints and 
 obstacles placed in our way by our conditions of life. 
 Goodness, service of our fellows and brotherly love 
 have been normal results of our surroundings; and so 
 far as we have failed to realize such ideals, we have 
 been opposed to our environment, not in harmony 
 with it. It ought to be easy, it is easy, for us to
 
 84 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 imagine a society in which not merely little groups 
 shall furnish their members such environment, but the 
 whole should be like this. Nothing less is demanded 
 by social justice. Nothing else is contemplated by 
 the Gospel of Jesus.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE WOMAN PROBLEM 
 
 FAR be it from the writer even to seem to imply 
 that woman's nature is so incomposite, her relations 
 to society so uncomplicated, as to present but one 
 problem for solution. The definite article in the title 
 of this chapter is emphatic. It is intended to signify 
 no more than that a single woman's problem, the 
 economic, is what immediately concerns our discussion. 
 Some would perhaps prefer to call this a group of 
 problems, rather than one problem; yet it will be 
 found, on careful examination, that the problems con- 
 stituting the group all grow out of the economic in- 
 equality of woman, and that to secure her economic 
 equality is to solve all of them at once. 
 
 "Woman's rights" has too long been synonymous 
 with the ballot. A marked change in public sentiment 
 has taken place within a decade regarding equal suf- 
 frage. The conviction has been rapidly growing that 
 there is one conclusive argument for woman suffrage : 
 women want it. There are no arguments against it, 
 
 85
 
 86 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 only prejudices. The adoption of woman suffrage as 
 a plank in the Progressive party's platform in 1912 
 no doubt means that this question has been practically 
 settled that it is only a question of time, and no 
 long time at that, when the ballot will be given to 
 women in all the States, as it has already been given 
 in many of the newer States of the West. Some hard 
 righting will, no doubt, yet be necessary before the 
 end is reached, for prejudice everywhere dies hard, 
 but the goal is in sight. 
 
 But equal suffrage is only one of the demands of 
 that remarkable modern movement for which the name 
 Feminism * has been devised ; in some respects it is the 
 least important demand. Feminism demands for 
 woman not merely equality at the polls, but equality 
 everywhere equality, be it observed, not identity. 
 Feminism demands that whatever woman does shall 
 be judged as work, not as the work of woman; and 
 it demands that she be free to do any work that she 
 cares to undertake. In other words, that the sex 
 question shall be eliminated from practical affairs as 
 far as is humanly possible. Wifehood and mother- 
 hood will always be, as they are now, the highest 
 calling of woman, but not every woman is called to 
 be wife and mother, any more than every man is called 
 
 *An anonymous writer in the Century, for April, 1914, thus 
 defines Feminism : "To meet life untainted : to labor, to suc- 
 ceed or fail, as human individuals only; to feel handicapped by 
 nature only, not by men; to seek their own success in self- 
 chosen appropriate paths unhampered by laws or conventions 
 from which men are exempt." The "square deal" for their sex, 
 in short.
 
 THE WOMAN PROBLEM 8/ 
 
 to be preacher or poet. Feminism merely demands 
 that all other callings shall be open to woman on equal 
 terms, and that the only question of her entering them 
 shall be the question of her fitness. That can be de- 
 termined, as in man's case, only by experiment. 
 
 So long as woman's "wrongs" were conceived to be 
 chiefly or wholly her exclusion from political affairs, 
 so long as the "rights" demanded for her consisted 
 of the right to vote and hold office, the agitation in 
 behalf of women made not the slightest dent in the 
 armor of conceit worn by the average male of the 
 species. When orators declaimed about "down-trod- 
 den woman," men merely grinned. They knew that in 
 the majority of homes woman rules despotically. 
 They knew that the laws laws made and administered 
 by men are on the whole more favorable to women 
 than to men. Even the average policeman will not 
 club a woman as quickly or as brutally as a man 
 he remembers mother and sister and wife. The police- 
 man who clubs a woman while in uniform is probably 
 a wife-beater out of uniform. A jury in any State 
 will acquit a woman on evidence that would convict a 
 man. 1 It is well-nigh impossible to get a verdict of 
 guilty on a capital charge against a woman ; and when 
 she is condemned, almost always some expedient is 
 
 1 In three years, thirteen women charged with murder were 
 acquitted in Chicago (Cook County), and only one convicted, 
 who died in jail. The State's Attorney said: "The blame is 
 on jurors, who seem ready to bring a verdict of acquittal when- 
 ever a woman is fairly goodlooking, or is able to turn on the 
 floodgates of her tears, or exhibits a capacity for fainting." 
 Associated Press dispatch, March 16, 1914.
 
 88 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 found to save her life. Whatever the statutes may 
 say, the men who administer them have practically 
 abolished capital punishment for women. In one 
 State, a woman convicted of murder on the clearest 
 evidence remained unexecuted for thirteen years, be- 
 cause one governor after another refused to set a day 
 for her execution ; and she was finally pardoned. The 
 property laws of most States favor women at the 
 expense of men so far favor them as at times to be 
 unjust. A husband is legally bound to support his 
 wife, according to his ability and station, and if he 
 fails she may herself buy whatever is necessary and 
 he is liable for the debt. This obligation holds, even 
 if she has money of her own, while he cannot touch 
 a dollar of her property but by her free gift, nor is 
 she liable for his debts. 
 
 What has wrought the great change in men's atti- 
 tude toward the agitation for woman's rights has been 
 the enlarged conception of those rights on the part of 
 women themselves. The social disabilities of women, 
 rather than their political and legal grievances, have 
 roused men to a new way of thinking. This is no 
 doubt part of the general awakening regarding social 
 conditions that is characteristic of society as a whole. 
 Women have come to see also that they are contend- 
 ing, not merely against artificial discriminations be- 
 cause of their sex, but against wrongs rooted in eco- 
 nomic conditions with which sex is only remotely re- 
 lated, if related at all. This has given to twentieth 
 century Feminism both a breadth and a depth that 
 were absent from the Woman's Rights movement of
 
 THE WOMAN PROBLEM 89 
 
 the nineteenth century. Men who were indifferent or 
 hostile to the political aspirations of women are acces- 
 sible to ideas regarding the economic wrongs of 
 women. Men engaged in commerce or industry have 
 practical knowledge of these wrongs, and already have 
 latent ethical ideas regarding them that need only to 
 be stimulated in order to rise to the region of con- 
 scious thought and action. Such men, for the most 
 part, acknowledge the obligations of Christian ethics, 
 so far as they understand what these obligations re- 
 quire. 
 
 It is the office of the Gospel of Jesus to arouse these 
 latent ideas and to clarify them, so that their ethical 
 bearings will be definitely apprehended. It has long 
 been the boast of apologists that Christianity has been 
 the chief agent in the uplifting of woman. This claim 
 has been sharply challenged of late, and some have 
 even maintained that Christianity has actually retarded 
 the emancipation of woman. A Feminist writer not 
 long ago urged it as a reproach against the Christian 
 attitude to her sex that women are classed with chat- 
 tels and domestic animals in the tenth commandment. 
 It might, of course, be pointed out that the tenth com- 
 mandment is of Jewish origin, not Christian; but, 
 apart from that, the objection would lose force if those 
 who urge it would reflect a moment on the difference 
 between an enumeration and a classification. 
 
 II 
 
 We have already seen that one of the greatest bless- 
 ings of civilization, and a prime condition of social
 
 90 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 progress, is leisure ; a reasonable proportion of time to 
 be used in rest, recreation, and culture. No one at 
 present profits less by leisure and money than those 
 who have most of both. They have come into their 
 kingdom recently, for the most part, and have as yet 
 not the least idea how to rule it. "Painting the town 
 red," scattering money lavishly up and down the Great 
 White Way, is the one means they can devise, in their 
 poverty of intellect and imagination, to get rid of their 
 surplus. It is quite as true of American women as of 
 American men that they fall into two classes: those 
 who have no leisure and those who have too much. 
 It is even truer of women than of men, for the wives 
 and daughters of a large proportion of men who work 
 belong to the leisure class. What will they do with 
 it? is one of the most important of present-day ques- 
 tions. Will these favored women choose the life of 
 idleness, of luxury, of self-indulgence, or the life of 
 social service? Much of our future welfare depends 
 on that decision. As Ferrero has pointed out in his 
 "Women of the Caesars," the decay of the Roman em- 
 pire was in no small degree due to the fact that the 
 women of Rome's upper classes chose the self-indul- 
 gent life. 
 
 On the other hand, the working-woman has little 
 or no leisure, and this is consequently one of her great- 
 est needs. She needs sorely not the leisure of idleness, 
 but the leisure of congenial occupation. This is the 
 more necessary the more mechanical and dull her work. 
 And, as machinery takes an ever larger place in in- 
 dustry, all labor will tend to become mechanical and
 
 THE WOMAN PROBLEM 9! 
 
 deadening. The greater need then of leisure, of pur- 
 suits that will be a genuine re-creation, of systematic 
 culture of body and mind. Women need such leisure 
 more than men, for their more acute sensibilities suf- 
 fer greater harm from monotony and mechanism. 
 
 The whole spirit of modern industrialism is opposed 
 to such sentiments, and the capitalistic system is incom- 
 patible with progress in this direction. The spirit of 
 industrialism is to extract from the worker the last 
 ounce of effort of which he is capable; and the capital- 
 istic system takes from the worker the fruits of his 
 labor, beyond the barest subsistence, and gives them to 
 the fortunate few. No class feels so keenly the effects 
 of this social injustice as women who must work for 
 a living. No class has profited less by the great indus- 
 trial and commercial development of the past century. 
 It was a long step forward for society as a whole when 
 steam was harnessed, new machinery was invented, 
 and the factory resulted. One worker could then pro- 
 duce as much as ten, fifty, a hundred, had produced 
 before. So great an increase in wealth should have 
 meant a general increase in social well being. But who 
 got the increased product? There was another great 
 social advance when the railway and the steamboat 
 supplemented the factory, and stimulated production 
 by simplifying distribution. But, again, who got the 
 increased product? Still another tremendous impulse 
 has been given during our own day to all forms of in- 
 dustry, as the manifold applications of electricity came 
 to be discovered. But who got the increased product ? 
 It was divided as an old salt said prize money is di-
 
 92 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 vided in the navy : they sift it through a ladder, said 
 he, and what sticks goes to the enlisted men, the rest 
 goes to the officers. About the same proportion of the 
 increased product of industry fell to the share of the 
 producers; the non-producers got nearly all. And of 
 all workers the women got least. 
 
 In 1900 there were 5,319,397 women engaged in 
 gainful occupations out of a population of 28,246,384 
 over ten years of age. Nearly one woman in five is a 
 wage earner. And of these wage earners, 1,312,668 
 were in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits. This 
 is the largest proportion of women workers to popula- 
 tion in the world, and makes our problems more acute 
 than those of any other land. We have done less 
 toward the regulation of this form of labor, less for 
 the protection of our women workers, than any other 
 country. Even Russia has more humane laws for the 
 protection of women than some of our American 
 States. Pennsylvania, second among our common- 
 wealths in population, wealth, and industries, ranks 
 twenty-sixth in her labor legislation for women and 
 children. Ponder it well, men of America : we are the 
 most backward country on earth, that pretends to the 
 possession of a Christian civilization, in the protection 
 of womanhood. And, when you have thought well of 
 it, be proud, if you can, that you are an American citi- 
 zen! And a Christian! 
 
 A people who are careless of their women and chil- 
 dren offend against a fundamental social instinct, for 
 women and children are the future of the race. What- 
 ever harms them attacks society at its most vulnerable
 
 THE WOMAN PROBLEM 93 
 
 point. To bear and rear healthy children is the most 
 important of race functions, and society cannot afford 
 to permit women who are or should be engaged in the 
 work of maternity at the same time to do exhausting 
 work, in factories or anywhere else. Every industry 
 must be judged by this test. The New York clothing 
 trade has made a few millionaires and thousands of 
 consumptives. But what do the millionaires care about 
 that? It is "one of the incidents of the trade." The 
 employer may look on a woman as merely a means of 
 producing wealth, but the community ought to take a 
 different view of the matter, and assign her a higher 
 grade in the scale of being. It is the function of the 
 Gospel of Jesus to inspire this higher ethical note in 
 industry, but what is the gospel actually proclaimed 
 accomplishing ? The clothing workers have been strik- 
 ing repeatedly in recent years to better their condi- 
 tions, among other things to abolish tenement-house 
 work ; the employers have been fighting hard to retain 
 all the old abuses, especially work in tenements. Now, 
 it is notorious that this particular form of industry is 
 exceedingly hard on women and children. But in their 
 contests how many expressions of sympathy have the 
 strikers received from Christian sources ? How many 
 discussions of the issues, indicating even an intelligent 
 grasp of their side of the question, did we read in re- 
 ligious newspapers or hear from Christian pulpits ? 
 
 The conditions of women workers are perhaps worst 
 in the textile industries. Attention has been directed 
 to these conditions within a year or so by the strikes at 
 Lawrence, Massachusetts : at Little Falls, New York,
 
 94 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 and at Paterson, New Jersey. A shocking state of 
 affairs, dimly suspected perhaps before, but not defi- 
 nitely known, has been forced on the attention of the 
 entire nation. Nobody can hereafter plead ignorance. 
 The fact has been disclosed that girls have been earn- 
 ing from $2.50 to $5.00 a week, few of them attaining 
 the higher figure. Women have been working sixty- 
 five hours a week for $3.00 (and part of this "over- 
 time" work, so as to increase the pittance a little) ; 
 some have worked as many as eighty- four hours a 
 week for a maximum wage of $7.00, but more often 
 $5.00. Such labor is continuous ; the workers do not 
 leave their machines even for luncheon, eating what 
 they can snatch as they work, so as to lose no time. 
 And often such labor is performed in extremely un- 
 sanitary conditions, while, of course, the workers must 
 live in crowded rooms, amid all sorts of disease-breed- 
 ing surroundings. 
 
 While these are cases of extreme hardship, perhaps, 
 the condition of women workers generally is little bet- 
 ter. Sanitary surroundings may sometimes be better, 
 but the economic return for labor is much the same in 
 all forms of industry, and in all localities. The Social 
 Service Commission of the Inter-Church Federation of 
 Philadelphia issued a public warning in 1912 to girls 
 of rural Pennsylvania not to come to that city for work 
 unless they have prospect of a situation that will pay 
 them at least $8.00 a week, that being the minimum 
 on which a girl can support herself there respectably. 
 At the same time they stated that in nine of eleven 
 textile industries of the city the maximum wage falls
 
 THE WOMAN PROBLEM 95 
 
 below this minimum requirement. According to sta- 
 tistics furnished by the Federal government, the aver- 
 age earnings of women and girls in factories is $4.62 
 for the first year and $5.34 for the second. After ten 
 years they attain the magnificent wage of $8.48 ; but of 
 the total number employed the average pay of 40 per 
 cent, is under $6.00. 
 
 Nor is the case any better when we turn to women 
 employed in stores. In the three great cities of New 
 York, Philadelphia, and Chicago there are nearly 36,- 
 ooo women employed in the department stores that 
 are so great a feature of our American social and busi- 
 ness life. Their average weekly wage is $6.13. The 
 average girl must work eight years before she can re- 
 ceive $8.00, the least sum that will support her re- 
 spectably in Philadelphia, and inadequate in either New 
 York or Chicago. Other cities are no better. Miss 
 Butler's careful investigation in Baltimore * brought 
 her to the conclusion that there are twice as many 
 earning less than $5.00 as there are earning more than 
 $6.00. The minimum cost of living in Baltimore is 
 estimated by Miss Butler as $6.70, which certainly does 
 not err by excess ; yet of the employees of stores in that 
 city 54 per cent, are paid less than the cost of board 
 and clothes. 
 
 In the spring of 1913 an investigation was under- 
 taken by a committee of the Illinois State Senate that 
 disclosed results briefly summarized above ; and, while 
 this investigation was in progress, and Chicago em- 
 ployers were contending that $8.00 a week was a gen- 
 * "Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores," New York, 1912.
 
 96 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 erous salary for a working girl and quite enough for 
 her to live on, the guardian of a fifteen-year-old girl 
 came into a New York court and declared that his 
 ward found it impossible to get along on an allowance 
 of $12,000 a year. As her estate produces an income 
 of $50,000 a year, the surrogate obligingly increased 
 her scanty allowance to $20,000. Is any comment nec- 
 essary ? 
 
 Some may be inclined to think that the conditions 
 in the smaller towns are better than in these large 
 cities. The only difference appears to be a quantitative 
 one : there are fewer industries and fewer workers in 
 the small city than in the large. An investigation of 
 the smaller cities of Pennsylvania resulted in the con- 
 clusion that no working woman could be properly 
 maintained in these towns for less than a weekly wage 
 of $6.80; and this included nothing for amusement, 
 only the absolute necessities were taken into account. 
 In these cities the average pay of girls is rather below 
 than above $5.oo. 1 
 
 What possibility of leisure, what possibility of cul- 
 ture, what possibility of physical well-being, what 
 probability of continuance in virtue, can the student of 
 the woman problem find in such facts? Has anybody 
 the hardihood to say that such facts accord with the 
 
 1 The case is little different in England. In Birmingham there 
 are said to be 116,000 working women, and 14 shillings is esti- 
 mated to be the lowest wage that will keep a woman worker 
 respectable and healthy. The average wages for unskilled labor 
 for women over seventeen are barely 10 shillings.
 
 THE WOMAN PROBLEM 97 
 
 Gospel of Jesus, the gospel of equality, of brotherhood, 
 of deliverance? 
 
 Ill 
 
 What are the causes of this economic deficiency of 
 women, and are they removable? The causes are, in 
 part, general, as is shown by the fact that the defi- 
 ciency is general, not confined to any one branch of 
 industry or commerce. Careful investigation shows 
 that one great cause is the relative inefficiency of 
 women's labor. It is not a fact, as many women have 
 charged and still believe, that women are generally 
 paid lower wages than men for the same work. There 
 is sometimes sex discrimination, but not generally. 
 The real fact is that women and men are generally 
 employed in different kinds of labor, and women are 
 paid lower wages for less efficient service. There is 
 little sentiment in business; employers, as a rule, no 
 more discriminate against women than they discrimi- 
 nate in their favor. Male and female employees are 
 alike machines for production, and it is purely a ques- 
 tion of the best machine. It will be impossible to per- 
 suade many women that such is the case, but investiga- 
 tors of their own sex have come to this conclusion. 1 
 That women's wages are not determined by sex con- 
 siderations is proved, among other ways, by the fact 
 that their wages have at times increased in higher per- 
 centage than those of men. 
 
 1 For example, Edith Abbot in "Women in Industry," pp. 313- 
 315.
 
 98 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Assuming as a fact this relative inefficiency of wom- 
 en's work, can a good reason or good reasons be as- 
 signed for it? It has been suggested that girls show 
 a greater tendency than boys to drift into employment 
 by the route of least resistance, rather than prepare for 
 a well-chosen line of work. There are fewer trades 
 and skilled occupations for them, and they take the 
 first work that offers, through ignorance and inertia. 
 Woman's expectation of marriage makes her less ef- 
 ficient; she takes her work less seriously; likewise 
 hers is a shorter working life. 
 
 One of the chief factors in the problem, therefore, 
 is to increase the efficiency of women workers. We 
 must begin back of the time when they seek employ- 
 ment in the schools and secure for them a better 
 training. This will be discussed more thoroughly in 
 the chapter on "The Problem of the Child," but just 
 here one aspect of the question demands attention: 
 In all the discussions and experiments regarding man- 
 ual training and vocational schools attention has been 
 paid chiefly, if not entirely, to the needs of boys. The 
 training of girls for industrial life has been compara- 
 tively neglected, in spite of the fact that their need is 
 really greatest. We shall never see the efficiency of 
 women workers greatly increased until this defect in 
 our educational scheme is remedied. So long as men 
 enter on their callings on the whole better prepared 
 for efficient service than women, nothing can give her 
 economic equality. No determination of society, no 
 fairness of employers, no legislation can give validity 
 to the equation 2=3.
 
 THE WOMAN PROBLEM 99 
 
 But all competent investigators are agreed that inef- 
 ficiency is not the only cause of low wages for women. 
 It is not even the chief cause. The chief cause is the 
 modern revolution in industry, the effect of which has 
 been felt in the home as everywhere else. The intro- 
 duction of factory-made clothing, food, and furnish- 
 ings has set a host of women free from the tasks of 
 their grandmothers, and they have turned to other 
 work. Girls go into factories and stores and offices, in 
 many cases, because the combined earnings of the fam- 
 ily are none too large for the family's support. In 
 other cases they seek work rather than sit idly at home 
 and be supported by the labor of father and brothers. 
 In either case, it is much to their 'credit that they have 
 responded to the call of duty, or have chosen the useful 
 life in preference to the ornamental. But the inevit- 
 able result has been such an increase in the body of 
 women workers as to cause keen competition for 
 work, and the consequent forcing of wages to the low- 
 est sum that the most needy or most eager workers are 
 willing to accept. Inasmuch as a large part of women 
 workers live at home, and only partially support them- 
 selves, their competition for employment has forced 
 wages below the subsistence point for those who lack 
 this advantage. Many department stores will employ 
 only girls who sign a statement that they live at home ; 
 and justify the low wages paid by this fact, and its im- 
 plication that their employees do not depend entirely 
 on their wages for a living. 
 
 Another serious factor in producing low wages for
 
 TOO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 women is that the employer is able to deal with them 
 as units; there is great lack of organization and co- 
 operation among them, as compared with men. It is 
 not true that women lack the faculty of organization. 
 Every church has long known how efficiently women 
 can organize and conduct enterprises, and that they 
 often show superior business skill in such work. It 
 is true that their efforts have been mainly confined to 
 things that are in themselves trivial and not worth 
 their while: bazaars, fairs, and festivals. But, in 
 larger and more important enterprises, such as wom- 
 en's missionary societies, the Women's Christian 
 Temperance Union, the various suffrage organizations, 
 they have been uniformly successful. Women's clubs 
 and leagues in great variety have sprung up in the past 
 two decades, and hardly one of them has been a prac- 
 tical failure. There are now even trades unions of 
 women. Still, it remains true that this spirit of co- 
 operation is a very recent thing, and that in all forms 
 of industry women are still far behind men in effective 
 organization. The centuries-long subjection of wom- 
 en has repressed initiative and made cooperation 
 difficult for them. But they are learning the trick, and 
 already they are beginning to teach men lessons in 
 what we have fondly persuaded ourselves was our ex- 
 clusive game. The greater subserviency of women 
 to custom has made them slow to adopt the principle of 
 cooperation. But they are fast learning that only the 
 weak fear and obey customs ; the strong make customs. 
 And women are coming to realize their strength.
 
 THE WOMAN PROBLEM IOI 
 
 A favorite explanation of women's low wages, and 
 one that has been much insisted on by the wealthier 
 classes, is the distaste for domestic service among 
 American-born white girls. Of the 1,124,383 domestic 
 servants returned in the census of 1900, less than thir- 
 teen per cent, were native born of native parents, while 
 nearly seventy per cent, were foreign born or negroes. 
 Domestic service was once the chief resort of the un- 
 trained woman; now scores of factories and stores 
 offer her employment at starvation wages, to be sure, 
 but on terms so much more satisfactory to her than 
 the position and work of "servant" that she will no 
 longer accept the latter at any price. In industry or 
 commerce a woman's hours may be long, but they are 
 fixed, and her evenings, Sundays, and holidays are hers 
 to spend as she wills. This greatly enlarged leisure, 
 and the fact that she is not a "servant," but may re- 
 gard herself as a "lady," give her such a sense of free- 
 dom and dignity that domestic service in comparison 
 seems to her a status of slavery. No wages or comfort 
 will be regarded by women bred in a democracy as suf- 
 ficient compensation for the confinement and humilia- 
 tion of domestic service. Servility, in name or spirit, 
 is incompatible with democracy. The servant problem 
 is already acute, and will become increasingly so, as 
 long as the aristocratic spirit that demands "servants" 
 lingers. If people living in a democracy insist on 
 maintaining artistocratic institutions, they can do it 
 for a time by importing their "servants" from foreign 
 nations where real aristocracy exists.
 
 IO2 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 IV 
 
 The ultimate solution of the problem of women's 
 wages must be postponed until we consider the general 
 problem of poverty. For a complete solution must be 
 something radical, something that goes to the very 
 bottom of our social evils and deals with primary 
 causes. But there are two important measures pro- 
 posed for immediate adoption that profess nothing 
 more than relief at the points of greatest pressure: 
 a minimum wage for women and an eight-hour work- 
 ing day. The ignorance of our public men about such 
 measures is both discouraging and disgraceful. When- 
 ever statutes of this sort are proposed and discussed, 
 the articles in our newspapers, the speeches in our leg- 
 islatures, and other forms of public debate invariably 
 proceed on the tacit assumption that these are the 
 crude proposals of theorists, experiments in legislation 
 now to be made for the first time, propositions that 
 we undertake a pioneer work in social reform. Where- 
 as the fact is, as every public man who pretends to 
 intelligence should know, that every measure of social 
 justice proposed in the United States in recent years 
 has a counterpart in European countries that has been 
 in successful operation for years, sometimes for a gen- 
 eration. 
 
 A minimum wage bill, for example, was passed in 
 England in 1906, and not for women only. England 
 had been shown the way by one of her Australian colo- 
 nies. Victoria adopted the minimum wage for work-
 
 THE WOMAN PROBLEM 103 
 
 ers of both sexes in 1896. At first it applied only to 
 five "sweated" trades: the making of shoes, bread, 
 clothing, underwear, and furniture. Its operation was 
 so successful, and so won the approval of both em- 
 ployers and employed, that, by 1910, virtually all the 
 industries had been included in its scope. Experience 
 confirmed economic theory, and both showed that a 
 minimum wage tends to increase production, by in- 
 creasing the efficiency of both workers and establish- 
 ments. The latter is accomplished by the elimination 
 of those concerns that can be maintained only by levy- 
 ing a tax on the community to make good their own 
 defects. Those concerns that are most favorably situ- 
 ated, best equipped, and managed with most ability 
 get the business, and society profits by the elimination 
 of costly production of goods by the unfit and in- 
 capable. 
 
 The proposition to ensure to women workers such 
 compensation as will maintain them in comfort and 
 decency is nothing else than the principle of economy 
 translated into the terms of modern business and social 
 life. "Conservation" is one of the watchwords of our 
 time. Conservation is too often narrowly interpreted 
 to mean only material things: our forests, mines, 
 water-power, and the like. This narrow commercial 
 interpretation is inadequate ; the most needed conserva- 
 tion is the conservation of human beings. The law 
 of the sea must become the law of the land: women 
 and children first. 
 
 Employers oppose a minimum wage law on the plea 
 that, if they were compelled to pay the wage indicated,
 
 IO4 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 they could no longer conduct their enterprises, and 
 must either become bankrupt or go out of business. 
 The sufficient reply to this plea is : Any business that 
 cannot be maintained, save by paying women a wage 
 below a fair living standard, is a business that ought 
 not to continue. There are probably fewer such than 
 many suppose, far fewer than interested employers 
 assert, but there ought to be none. This is not a 
 harsh judgment founded on vague, impractical senti- 
 ment, but what it is now the fashion to call "a cold 
 business proposition." For such a business, instead of 
 contributing to the wealth of the community, is a tax 
 on the community's resources. Society has to make 
 good the deficiency of wages ; in some form and in the 
 long run the deficient income must be supplied. If the 
 underpaid worker lives at home, her family must con- 
 tribute to her support, and that contribution is their 
 tax paid to keep going an unprofitable business. If she 
 does not live at home, soon or late the deficiency must 
 be made good by some form of "charity." The em- 
 ployee becomes ill and must be treated free of charge 
 in some hospital or dispensary ; or she becomes a pau- 
 per and must be wholly supported at public expense; 
 or she contracts tuberculosis and must be sent to a 
 State sanatorium; or she goes on the street. In any 
 case, the community ultimately pays the tax. People 
 must live, people do live, and, if their wage will not 
 maintain them, the burden of their maintenance in the 
 end falls on the public. It is as certain as mathe- 
 matics. 
 
 Society has thus far elected to maintain at great
 
 THE WOMAN PROBLEM IO5 
 
 cost public and private charitable institutions to care 
 for the workers who have been insufficiently paid, 
 rather than compel employers to do justice. If it 
 wishes, it can continue that practice, but, to say the 
 least of it, it is hardly economical. Millions are ex- 
 pended to-day in charities that ought to go into the 
 pay envelopes of the workers; and, if they did go 
 there, small need would be felt of the charities. It is 
 thus, on one side, merely a problem of economics, 
 while, on the other, it is a problem of humanity, of 
 justice, of the practical application of the Gospel of 
 Jesus. 
 
 We must not, however, blink the fact that the 
 minimum wage and the eight-hour working day are 
 merely palliatives. It is even a question if they would 
 long palliate. The serious economic criticism is 
 made of the minimum wage that its effect would be 
 only temporary. It would immediately produce non- 
 employment of those women whose labor cannot be 
 made profitable at the minimum fixed by law; and 
 they would either become a tax on society in some 
 form, or would seek employment in other indus- 
 tries only to lower wages in them. Or, even 
 supposing that this difficulty could be surmounted, 
 and that all women workers can be given em- 
 ployment and paid as the law directs, cost of produc- 
 tion will be increased, prices must be raised, the cost 
 of living rises, the minimum wage becomes inade- 
 quate, and the last state of the woman worker is at 
 least no better than the first. Under the wage system 
 and industrial competition there must ever be the same
 
 IO6 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 vicious circle : higher cost of living leads to a demand 
 for higher wages, and, this gained, there follows 
 greater cost of production, higher prices, and increased 
 cost of living again. There is no end to the process, 
 and no real relief for the workers in it anywhere. 
 Nevertheless, as temporary palliatives, the minimum 
 wage and the shortened working day are worth try- 
 ing. The wisest economists, though they may guess, 
 cannot know how they will work until they are tried. 
 
 It is the same problem that must be faced in some 
 form by all organizations and reformers that are ex- 
 perimenting with palliatives, because they lack either 
 insight or courage to attempt a radical remedy. The 
 trades unions are meeting the same difficulty. What 
 has the workingman accomplished through his unions 
 in the way of social betterment? In some cases, not 
 in all, he has won an increase of wages. But if he 
 must pay the amount of this increase and more in 
 higher cost of living, wherein is he helped? And the 
 undeniable fact is that cost of living has increased 
 much faster than wages for two decades, and the proc- 
 ess seems likely to go on indefinitely. 
 
 Next to the ignorance of men who lead public opin- 
 ion, and of the legislators who enact public opinion 
 into law, the greatest obstacle to progress in dealing 
 with this economic problem is our courts. We call 
 them courts of justice, but they have too often proved 
 courts of injustice. For our sins we are afflicted with 
 a lot of Bourbon judges, who have neither learned any- 
 thing nor forgotten anything in a lifetime of legal 
 practice, who have stood stock still intellectually and
 
 THE WOMAN PROBLEM lO? 
 
 ethically while the world has run by them. In their 
 devotion to precedents that have come down to them 
 from a different social order, they cannot see the de- 
 mands of the present. Our courts are standing to-day 
 as a serious obstacle, and often as an impassable bar- 
 rier, to social reform. They have decided, for ex- 
 ample, that a statute prescribing shorter hours of labor 
 for women is unconstitutional, because it abridged 
 women's freedom of contract! How well such a de- 
 cision accords with the favorite maxim of lawyers, 
 that the law is the perfection of reason! 
 
 Worst obstacle of all to progress is, no doubt, the 
 indifference of well-to-do people in general, who are 
 in no way personally affected by the wrongs and suf- 
 ferings of working women. If society at large does 
 not advocate the present iniquities, it at least tacitly 
 acquiesces in them; to a large degree it profits by 
 them; and it has hitherto refused to face the problem, 
 but has taken refuge in cowardly silence. At critical 
 moments it fails to speak the decisive word in favor of 
 justice and progress. We call ourselves a Christian 
 nation; we profess some respect for the teachings of 
 Jesus, for the Golden Rule, for the Beatitudes. Ac- 
 tions speak louder than words, and by our actions we 
 give the lie direct to every such profession. By our 
 fruits we are known, and all our conduct gives em- 
 phatic approval, not to the social ethics of Jesus, but to 
 such beatitudes as this : Blessed are the exploiters, the 
 sweaters, the oppressors of women, for theirs is the 
 Kingdom of Profit.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 
 
 To inspire men to perform their social duties is a 
 prime object of the Gospel of Jesus. That is the way 
 of salvation for the individual and for society a way 
 by which the one is delivered from sin and the other 
 from misery. Of all the social duties, none can take 
 precedence of duty to the child. A Bill of Rights for 
 childhood, that has been widely adopted as a basis for 
 social work, declares that every child has an inalien- 
 able right : To be born right ; To be loved ; To have 
 his individuality respected; To be trained wisely in 
 body, mind, and spirit ; To be protected from evil per- 
 sons and influences; To have a fair chance in life. 
 These rights of the child impose corresponding duties 
 of parenthood. But duties of parents are duties of so- 
 ciety also, which is bound, for its own present welfare 
 and future happiness, to supplement the performance 
 of parents wherever that is deficient. 
 
 These inalienable rights of the child are violated at 
 almost every turn, and by every class of society. Nat- 
 urally, each class has its own pet methods of violation. 
 Among the well-to-do the tendency is toward the hurt- 
 ful indulgence of children. The American spoiled 
 
 108
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 1 09 
 
 child is the marvel and the disgust of intelligent for?- 
 eign observers. Among the poor the tendency is 
 toward inhuman abuse of children, partly in the way 
 of actual physical violence, partly in loading them 
 with tasks too heavy for their years. The ethical re- 
 sults, though quite different, are about equally injuri- 
 ous to social welfare, but the economic results are 
 worst in the case of the poor child. According to El- 
 len Key, this is the century of the child. As one looks 
 about him one can hardly escape the conviction that 
 this is expression of a hope rather than statement of 
 fact. May achievement speedily make good this pro- 
 phetic title! 
 
 What is the century thus far doing for the child? 
 It is still permitting him to be exploited by a system 
 of child labor that is but a euphemism for child slavery 
 and child murder a system compact of woeful waste 
 and brutal savagery. Of the male children reported 
 by the census of 1900 between the ages of ten and 
 fourteen (4,083,041) there were 875,640 wage-earn- 
 ers; and of the 3,997,193 female children 321,982 were 
 workers. In all, 1,197,324 of the nation's children 
 were earning their bread and helping to support their 
 families. Not a single one of them should have been 
 at work. Thousands of children of still tenderer 
 years are engaged in daily labor. Little tots that ought 
 to be in kindergarten are working for thirty cents a 
 day. Children all over our land are hopelessly toiling 
 in the treadmill of industry who ought to be going 
 with shining morning faces to school and filling the
 
 IIO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 playgrounds with their joyous laughter. Many of our 
 "good" people cannot believe that such statements are 
 anything but a hideous slander. It seems like treason 
 to one's country to believe that a system so full of 
 cruelty and iniquity can exist among us. It is the ig- 
 norance, the incredulity, the supineness of the "good" 
 that keep such a system in existence. It would be so 
 disagreeable to believe that these things are true, for 
 then we should be compelled to do something about it ; 
 our consciences would not let us rest; so it is much 
 more comfortable to disbelieve. 
 
 What kind of a people must we be to permit such 
 things and feign a convenient ignorance of them ? For, 
 of course, no one is really ignorant. No one can pos- 
 sibly shut eyes and ears tight enough to keep himself 
 from knowing. For several years the newspapers have 
 been full of evidence, that not even the careful editing 
 of the slaves of capitalism could evacuate of all their 
 significance. Did Christian men and women see and 
 ponder the testimony printed in the summer and fall 
 of 1912 concerning child labor in the canning factories 
 of the great Empire State? It was shown that 1,259 
 children under sixteen were employed in the canneries 
 investigated; 141 less than ten years and 14 less than 
 six. Mere babes were kept at work shelling pease and 
 stringing beans until their fingers cracked open and 
 had to be done up in rags. Surely an aroused and 
 militant conscience will do something to end such 
 abuses, or we shall soon have to take lessons in human- 
 ity from Turkey and China.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD III 
 
 Of all forms of social waste, child labor is the 
 least excusable, because it is so patently foolish. The 
 child is the embodied future. We can never have good 
 citizenship without protected childhood. Premature 
 work means premature decay of physical energy and 
 moral fiber. A long and well-trained youth means full 
 development of human powers and a long, productive 
 life. A short youth means imperfect development of 
 body and mind, and, as a necessary consequence, a 
 short and comparatively unproductive life. Child labor 
 is a process of squandering future wealth to satisfy 
 a present need that is to say, it would be that, were 
 there any present need, as to which something will be 
 said later. Child labor denies the child proper educa- 
 tion, demands of immature bodies and minds what 
 only maturity can safely attempt to give. It places 
 the child at the most plastic period of life under con- 
 ditions that not only fail to develop him into a normal 
 human being, but stunt his body and stupefy his mind 
 and give a wrong twist to his moral nature. An ex- 
 perienced manufacturer has said: "You can protect 
 a machine, you can guard the buzz-saw, but no law 
 that you can enact can in a large industry protect the 
 heart and soul of a child." 
 
 Books like "The Bobbin Boy," in which boys of a 
 former generation were told about the early life of 
 Nathaniel P. Banks, and similar tales of the rise of 
 poor boys to distinction or wealth, while they may
 
 112 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 have done something to stimulate the ambition of the 
 young, have accomplished untold harm by encouraging 
 the impression that going to work at a tender age is, 
 on the whole, favorable to achievement. Physiological 
 science is absolutely and irrevocably opposed to such a 
 conclusion. It maintains that child labor is a costly 
 method of discounting the future, which inevitably 
 curtails the total contribution of the individual to the 
 wealth of the world and makes society just that much 
 poorer. Men are not so foolish in the treatment of 
 domestic animals as they show themselves in the treat- 
 ment of the young of their own species. What farmer 
 would work a young colt ? And, when the farmer does 
 begin to work his colt, does he set him to plowing 
 from sunrise to sunset? Any farmer who did that 
 would be promptly suspected of insanity by all his 
 neighbors. But a child, even at fourteen, is still a 
 "colt." Is a two-legged colt worth less than the four- 
 legged? That he is seems to be the judgment of 
 thousands who possess both, if we may infer their 
 mental processes from their actions. 
 
 The right of the child to his childhood, and the duty 
 of society to protect childhood, are ethical principles 
 that do not require to be argued or proved. Merely 
 to be stated is sufficient to secure assent to them from 
 any normal man or woman. But the man engaged in 
 business, especially in manufacturing, is not a normal 
 man. He has become so wonted to some abuses that 
 he does not see them; he cannot even see them when 
 they are pointed out to him. We must appeal from 
 him, therefore, to the larger public. Society at large
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 113 
 
 suffers more than the child himself from neglect to 
 give him adequate protection. For the child is our 
 most valuable national asset ; and to waste this source 
 of wealth, or even to fail to make the most of it, is 
 criminal folly. 
 
 Socially speaking, the worst use to which we can 
 put a child is to put him to work. Play should be 
 the only work of a child. To be sure, this is flat con- 
 tradiction of the theory by which most of us were 
 bred ; for in our childhood we were taught that "work 
 is good for us," and various more or less disagreeable 
 tasks were exacted of us by our parents, on the princi- 
 ple that the more disagreeable the task the more valu- 
 able as discipline. But modern psychology has proved 
 conclusively that such a theory of child training is 
 altogether wrong. Play, in the sense of the agreeable 
 exercise of our faculties, is the way by which they 
 develop most rapidly and normally. Play is not only 
 the best means of developing body and mind, but has 
 equal ethical possibilities, and is the most effective of 
 all preventives of juvenile delinquency. The child who 
 is not taught to play as well as permitted to play is 
 not only deprived of his birthright but is subjected to 
 a direct course of preparation for the penitentiary. 
 
 Not enough attention has been as yet directed to 
 the fact that play is a great school of ethics. The first 
 requirement of all childhood games is to "play fair," 
 and to learn that rule thoroughly is the foundation of 
 subsequent character. Possibly some of us can recol- 
 lect among our schoolmates boys who never learned 
 fairness on the playground. If we have watched them
 
 114 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 in their later career we have also noticed that they have 
 never played fair in business or profession; the habit 
 of taking an unfair advantage that they acquired as 
 children has stayed by them all their lives. If the 
 history of men who have built up great industries and 
 fortunes by secret rebates and other unfair advantages 
 could be investigated, the chances are ten to one that 
 it would be found that as schoolboys they were 
 "cheats" and "snitches." The boy who defrauds his 
 playmates at "one-old-cat" and "duck-on-the-rock" is 
 the future trust magnate. For the children's rule of 
 fair play in games is just the Golden Rule applied to 
 the affairs of the playground; and all our social ills 
 are merely failure to apply that same rule in the great 
 game of life. 
 
 The freshness and spontaneity that are so valuable 
 gifts in every serious pursuit rand so rare are de- 
 veloped in the child by play. It is no small part of 
 the tragedy of life that these qualities are gradually 
 crushed out of the man. Even the infrequent cases 
 in which they survive would probably not exist but 
 for a joyous childhood. Society's problem, one of the 
 gravest of problems, is to make these cases less rare, to 
 increase freshness and spontaneity everywhere and 
 make life better worth living for all. This can be done 
 only by wise training during the tender and formative 
 years, and for this reason the child's right to his child- 
 hood must be asserted and protected. Such protection 
 will increase the productive power of labor indefinitely. 
 Everybody knows that a man does his best work when 
 he is interested in his task, and that there cannot be a
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 115 
 
 better recipe for poor work than to set a man at a task 
 in which he takes no interest. When men bring to 
 industry more of the child's freshness their work will 
 become play, a pleasurable exercise of their faculties. 
 From the viewpoint of ultimate efficiency, therefore, 
 child labor becomes an obstacle to progress that so- 
 ciety cannot afford. 
 
 II 
 
 Child labor is socially unnecessary. The social sur- 
 plus of wealth is already very great and is increasing 
 rapidly from year to year. Individuals may need the 
 labor of the child, society does not. Arguments in 
 favor of child labor on economic grounds that are 
 often put forth by interested manufacturers are found 
 on analysis to be unfounded. No legitimate business 
 will suffer from giving adequate protection to children. 
 But even if the contrary were true, and it were demon- 
 strated that certain industries would suffer by shorten- 
 ing the hours of child labor and raising the age limit, 
 the answer of society must be: let them suffer. So- 
 ciety cannot afford to maintain industries by such a tax 
 on its resources as child labor involves. If an industry 
 cannot stand on its own feet, without this form of 
 subsidy from society, let it perish. Such an industry 
 is not a necessity, but a luxury far too costly. 
 
 As matter of fact, wherever additional protection 
 has been given to children, not only has industry not 
 suffered, but the output has been increased and em- 
 ployment has been given to a larger number of per-
 
 Il6 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 sons. Experience has convinced manufacturers, who, 
 before experience, were opposed to the legislation, that 
 protection of children is a benefit to industry. It could 
 not be otherwise. Economic theory, founded on ob- 
 servation, maintains that child labor is unprofitable 
 for two reasons. The first is that, while it seems 
 cheap, it is the dearest labor in the long run dearest 
 because least efficient. It is a short-sighted industrial 
 finance that looks only at the pay-rolls instead of scan- 
 ning the quantity and quality of the output. Employ- 
 ing inefficient labor, even at low cost, entails a loss on 
 any manufacturing business. The man who cannot 
 see that is not fit to be in business, and probably will 
 not be long, if he has shrewd competitors. Child labor 
 is not only future waste but present loss. A second 
 economic objection to child labor is that it lowers 
 the standard of wages and of working and living con- 
 ditions, and so lessens the efficiency of all labor. The 
 child is a competitor of adult laborers, even of his 
 own parents, whom he and they fancy that he is help- 
 ing. Child labor tends to lower sanitary standards, 
 for the child will submit to conditions against which 
 adults would revolt. Thus industries that make large 
 use of child labor become parasites on society, for they 
 must be supported by what is in effect a tax on other 
 more economically conducted enterprises. 
 
 The laws that have thus far been enacted, and many 
 of those now proposed for enactment, fail to promise 
 any considerable betterment, partly because of feeble 
 enforcement, partly because the advocates of reform 
 have been and are too timid to ask for laws with teeth
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 
 
 in them. Child labor must not only be regulated in 
 all industries, but should be prohibited in some : in all 
 those that tend to destroy health and retard growth. 
 It is bad enough that adults must be employed in such 
 institutions; it is intolerable that children should be 
 admitted to them. The age of employment is too low ; 
 fourteen years is the highest we have had courage yet 
 to demand ; it should be sixteen, or even higher. But 
 the whole principle of an exclusive age limit is wrong; 
 fitness, not age, should be the test of individual em- 
 ployment. Aside from a convincing certificate of the 
 required age and thousands of certificates now issued 
 are fraudulent two other qualifications should be re- 
 quired : First, the child offering himself for employ- 
 ment should be required to present a certificate of 
 graduation from a grammar school, an honorable com- 
 pletion of the entire eight grades. Second, there 
 should be a physical test ; the child should be examined 
 by a proper medical officer, appointed and paid by the 
 State for the purpose, and should be required to pre- 
 sent to the employer this officer's certificate of physical 
 fitness for labor. No child ought to be employed until 
 it is certain that he will not suffer irreparable injury 
 from his labor. A New York statute that took effect 
 October I, 1912, requires such a physical examination 
 by the medical officer of the Board of Health before 
 "working papers" are issued. It cannot be doubted 
 that every State will soon have such a law; it is the 
 very minimum of rational regulation of child labor. 
 The first and greatest cause of the increase of child 
 labor is the industrial revolution that has resulted in
 
 Il8 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 the socialization of labor in the modern factory sys- 
 tem. The machine and the factory first made child 
 labor profitable on a large scale immediately profit- 
 able, not economically and, in the long run, profitable. 
 The opportunity has stimulated greed to the utmost. 
 The greed of parents leads them to sacrifice the ulti- 
 mate interests of their children for immediate gain; 
 and this is true of any parents who are not compelled 
 by actual want to put their children to work, yet do it. 
 But more effective as a cause is the greed of capitalists, 
 who, to make a profit for themselves, are willing to ex- 
 ploit children simply because their wages are lowest. 
 There is also the greed of the children themselves, 
 anxious to begin to make money, and not intelligent 
 enough to perceive ultimate consequences. And per- 
 haps most reprehensible of all is the greed of society 
 at large, ever clamoring for cheap goods and caring 
 nothing at what cost cheapness is attained. 
 
 Next to this cause, and often barely distinguishable 
 from it, is the poverty of the working class. The high 
 cost of living of late years has made the problem of 
 subsistence an acute one for all workers, but especially 
 for the unskilled or little skilled, whose wages are low- 
 est of all, but whose need of food, clothing, and shel- 
 ter is as great as anyone's. Many parents are em- 
 ployed at wages that enable them to make "just too 
 much to die and not enough to live." The average 
 workingman would no doubt prefer to see his children 
 growing up under the best conditions for producing 
 health, intelligence, and character, instead of compet- 
 ing with him in industry and lowering his wages be-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 119 
 
 low a decent standard of living. But the immediate 
 questions for him are: What shall we eat? and, 
 Wherewithal shall we be clothed? These questions 
 cannot be postponed; their immediate solution is ur- 
 gently demanded ; and to the workingman the only pos- 
 sible solution seems to be that his children shall be- 
 gin at the earliest time the law will permit (and often 
 considerably earlier) to contribute their earnings to 
 the family fund. When the question of present hun- 
 ger and cold is pressing, what use of urging on men 
 that their future interests will be injured by the only 
 conduct that promises to keep them alive? 
 
 It is, however, not merely the ultimate, but the im- 
 mediate, interests of the workers that are threatened 
 by child labor. Of this they are conscious; at least, 
 they recognize effects, if they do not clearly perceive 
 causes. The effect of child labor is destructive to 
 family life. One of the most frequently urged ob- 
 jections to socialism is that it would break up the home. 
 Those who raise that objection should look more care- 
 fully at what the existing system has already done 
 and is daily doing to destroy the home. Child labor 
 is especially disintegrating, in that it results in the in- 
 dependence of the child before he is fitted for it. He 
 is earning his own living and knows it, and that makes 
 him impatient of parental discipline and control. He 
 has been compelled to play a man's part before he 
 became a man, and he demands, in turn, a man's priv- 
 ileges. In many cases the children are the chief sup- 
 port of the home ; the father is dead or worse, and the 
 mother dare not restrain her children for fear of los-
 
 I2O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 ing their earnings. This is particularly harmful in 
 the case of young girls. To give a child independence 
 before he is mature enough to use it properly is as 
 rational as to give a baby a loaded revolver for a play- 
 thing. Moreover, children thus deprived of oversight 
 and training, even if they do not go wrong, receive no 
 preparation for life. When they marry and attempt 
 to establish homes of their own, the factory-bred boy 
 lacks sense of responsibility and too often deserts his 
 family in a crisis of its fortunes, while the factory-bred 
 girl knows nothing of homekeeping and the inevitable 
 result is matrimonial unhappiness and domestic ship- 
 wreck. In every way the home is sufferer, and must 
 be sufferer so long as the present system continues, and 
 particularly so long as child labor is permitted. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The problem of the child is not solely an industrial 
 problem; it is even more an educational problem. To 
 prohibit the child from working is therefore only the 
 first step toward solution ; quite as much as to be saved 
 from premature labor, he needs to be prepared for in- 
 telligent and efficient labor when he reaches the proper 
 age. No one, probably, would maintain that such is 
 now the case. Among our social reforms, reform of 
 education is one of the most pressing. 
 
 No educational reforms are worthy of serious con- 
 sideration that are not based on study of real condi- 
 tions. More than twenty million children are attending
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 121 
 
 primary schools of the United States, the vast majority 
 of them in public schools. We spend $450,000,000 on 
 these schools, nearly as much as for automobiles, a 
 little more than a third of our tobacco bill, and not 
 much more than one-fifth of what is worse than wasted 
 in drink. Even so, we have not schoolhouses adequate 
 to contain this great school population. In New York 
 City alone, over 100,000 pupils are attending school 
 but half the time because of lack of room. If the 
 truant laws and labor laws were adequately enforced 
 hardly a city in the Union would find its schoolroom 
 adequate. Our parsimony is disgraceful. Until lately 
 much of the ancient patriarchal idea survived in our 
 laws and customs: the child was the property of his 
 father. The father, therefore, could give the child 
 such an education as it pleased him to give, take him 
 out of school and put him to work at as early an age 
 as he chose and keep the child's wages until his ma- 
 jority. The latter is still his legal right, but the other 
 privileges we have taken from him by laws of compul- 
 sory education and truancy. Having assumed the 
 obligation to educate the child, it is our plain duty to 
 fulfil it. 
 
 For this ridiculously inadequate expenditure of ours 
 we are getting more than we deserve, but far less than 
 we need, in the way of education. We were long ac- 
 customed to consider ourselves the most intelligent and 
 progressive nation in the world; our Fourth of July 
 orators told us so every year, and we believed them. 
 But in 1880 the official report of the Commissioner of 
 Education rudely awakened us. Our percentage of il-
 
 122 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 literacy in that year was 22.15, while that of England 
 and Wales was 10.55, Scotland 6.46, and Prussia 4.21. 
 We have improved considerably since then, so that our 
 percentage has been reduced to 7.7, but we are still 
 far behind Germany, considerably behind Scotland, and 
 probably not in advance of England. 1 In Germany, 
 where the whole male population of full age is obliged 
 to do military service, only three men in a thousand 
 are found to be illiterate when they join the colors. 
 
 The whole blame of illiteracy is obviously not to be 
 placed on the schools. Almost any American would 
 say instantly that foreign immigration is chiefly re- 
 sponsible for our large percentage, and next to that 
 the element of negroes and Indians in the census. But 
 we must not be too complacent in thus laying the blame 
 on the foreigner. The immigrants who come to us, if 
 themselves illiterate, are more eager to have their chil- 
 dren educated than the older American stocks. The 
 census figures, when analyzed, show a greater percent- 
 age of illiteracy among native whites of native parent- 
 age than among native whites of foreign parentage. 
 The proportion of children from five to fourteen years 
 attending school is greater among those of foreign 
 
 1 There is a difficulty in making accurate comparisons because 
 the methods of gathering the facts are diverse. The test of il- 
 literacy in Great Britain is inability to sign the marriage regis- 
 ters. In most of the Continental countries, where compulsory 
 military service obtains, the test is the ability of army recruits 
 to read and write. Only France and Italy, like the United 
 States, make an educational census of the whole population 
 over ten years of age.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 123 
 
 parentage and foreign birth than among native Ameri- 
 cans of two or more generations. 1 
 
 Fact is worth more than theory in education, but 
 we must have a theory. That something must be 
 wrong about the American theory seems to be indicated 
 by these facts. It would perhaps be more strictly ac- 
 curate to say that we have had and still have two 
 theories of education. One is, that education should 
 be chiefly cultural, and has as its end the unfolding 
 and perfecting of the human spirit. The other theory 
 is that education should be chiefly practical, and its 
 end the disciplining of human faculties into a perfect 
 tool. The one sort of education would fit the child 
 to make a living ; the other, it is said, makes him fit to 
 live. One or other of these theories is held by most 
 teachers with so much of conviction as to imply sus- 
 picion of the other and often open hostility to it. 
 Neither theory can be said to have been carried out 
 consistently anywhere. 
 
 The reason may be that the inherent good sense of 
 the average American community has felt, if it has 
 not clearly perceived, that the unflinching carrying out 
 of either theory is undesirable. Culture, pursued as an 
 exclusive aim, too often becomes an intellectual drug 
 habit, which unfits its devotee to face life and see 
 things as they are. There may be place in an aristoc- 
 racy for a man so highly cultivated that he does not 
 know how to earn an honest dollar, but not in a democ- 
 racy. On the other hand, the "practical" ideal, thor- 
 
 1 The illiteracy of native whites, born of native parents, is 
 5.7; of native whites, born of foreign parents, 1.6.
 
 124 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 oughly enforced and measurably realized, would make 
 us a nation of Gradgrinds and altogether eliminate 
 spiritual progress. But if it is undesirable to follow 
 either ideal exclusively, neither is it necessary to ar- 
 range some weak and ineffectual compromise between 
 them. They are not so much contradictory theories as 
 complementary. In our discussions we are too prone 
 to forget that the "practical" subjects may be made 
 "cultural," while most of the subjects supposed to be 
 purely "cultural" may be so taught as to be "prac- 
 tical" also. The distinction, when not merely verbal, 
 is one of emphasis and method. 
 
 On one thing we can surely all agree, and in the 
 end we shall be found to agree: any subject that is not 
 directly connected with life has no proper place in 
 primary education. The high school and the university 
 exist for the cultural subjects, with less regard to their 
 severe practicality, and primarily considering what will 
 most promote symmetrical development. The common 
 school exists to give the elementary education needed 
 by every citizen, and, while all its aims should be prac- 
 tical, the cultural element should not be, need not be, 
 and, in fact, is not excluded. 
 
 If, in the light of what has been said, we look 
 farther into the conduct of our public schools, we shall 
 probably come to the conclusion that their greatest 
 fault has thus far been that they have been organized 
 on an assumption totally divorced from reality. It has 
 been assumed by educators that a single type of educa- 
 tion is adequate, that all children can and should have 
 the same training ; that a single type of training will fit
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 12$ 
 
 them for callings the most diverse. Nothing could well 
 be more at variance with the facts of life. The conse- 
 quence of this assumption has been that our public 
 schools have been organized for the needs of the well- 
 to-do and the rich. They have provided a fairly ade- 
 quate training for children a large proportion of whom 
 develop a taste for higher education, and are of an 
 economic grade able to afford it, or have sufficient per- 
 sonal initiative and aggressiveness to secure it against 
 all obstacles. But for such as do not desire the higher 
 education, or cannot obtain it, our schools offer oppor- 
 tunities so vastly inferior that one may almost say they 
 offer no opportunity at all. There is, in other words, 
 no adequate provision for the education of that vast 
 majority of children who must earn their living by the 
 labor of their hands. The public school curriculum is 
 dominated by the high school, and the high school by 
 the university. We have the anomaly of a school sys- 
 tem avowedly democratic, but really aristocratic. 
 While the democracy "pays the freight" the freight is 
 too often delivered at the wrong address. 
 
 How serious this failure of our schools is probably 
 few of our people really appreciate. We have so long 
 been accustomed to flatter ourselves that we have the 
 best school system in the world that we listen with a 
 certain impatience to anybody who questions the ac- 
 curacy of this notion, and so the facts filter but slowly 
 into our minds through this layer of conceit. An ex- 
 amination of schools in fifty-two cities, representing 
 with fairness the entire United States, shows that the 
 majority of the children who enter complete only the
 
 126 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 fifth grade; only half of those entering are carried to 
 the final elementary grade (eighth), and one in ten to 
 the final year of the high school. Or, to put it in other 
 figures that may be even more impressive: of 1,000 
 children of school age, only 120 graduate from the 
 grammar school and six from the high school. 
 
 Why do so many children begin to get an education 
 and fall by the way? Investigation shows that rela- 
 tively few children leave school because of failure in 
 studies, at least as the direct cause. The majority 
 leave in order to go to work. Poor health or sickness 
 in the family is assigned as a reason by a large num- 
 ber, some of whom may really have left because of 
 failure. An intensive study of 300 pupils showed that 
 not over twenty per cent, left school at the age of four- 
 teen because of real economic pressure. But, on the 
 other hand, more than two-thirds of the children and 
 three-fourths of the parents did not believe that it was 
 worth while to spend more time in school. Their con- 
 viction was that the school was teaching them nothing 
 of real value to them; and the probability is that they 
 were right. But a school system that, by its repressive 
 discipline and its unpractical curriculum, contrives to 
 make children hate school rather than love it, to make 
 children glad of any excuse to leave and go to work, 
 instead of imparting a thirst for further learning, must 
 so far be reckoned a failure, must it not? A system 
 that miserably fails to accomplish its avowed purposes 
 is not an object to which we can point with pride, but 
 something of which we ought to be bitterly ashamed. 
 
 No public school system can be called even tolerably
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 127 
 
 satisfactory so long as it does not carry the majority 
 of entering children through at least the eight elemen- 
 tary grades. With better teaching this might be done 
 even now, for the majority of children spend sufficient 
 time in school to complete the eight grades. The 
 schools are not efficient enough to get the best results 
 possible in the time now available. Consequently the 
 defects of the schools that call for immediate remedy 
 are those known as retardation and repeating : the fail- 
 ure of so large a proportion of pupils to obtain promo- 
 tion at the end of the year, and their consequent obli- 
 gation to take the work of a grade a second and even 
 a third time. It is estimated that $27,000,000 is spent 
 annually in the instruction of "repeaters." Or, in 
 other figures, one-fifth of the school money is devoted 
 to educating one-twentieth of the children which, to 
 say the least of it, is bad business. 
 
 The causes of retardation are complex, including 
 factors so diverse as truancy, ill-health, dulness, and 
 laziness. The chief cause, however, is none of these, 
 but curriculum and instruction adapted, not to the slow 
 child, or even to the average child, but to the unusually 
 bright child ; and next to this unquestionably comes ir- 
 regularity of attendance. When three-fourths of the 
 children are present less than three-fourths of the 
 school year, a school cannot reasonably be expected to 
 produce satisfactory results. Conceding this difficulty 
 to be beyond the scope of school authority, and to be 
 in the sphere of parents and the law, it remains true 
 that the school can and must do much to prevent re- 
 tardation.
 
 128 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 In days to come we shall look back with amazement 
 on the whole present machinery of grades, examina- 
 tions, marks, and promotions, and wonder how it ever 
 came to be called an educational system. We shall 
 think it the strangest thing that children could ever 
 have been trained according to the absurd ideal of 
 "making marks." We shall wonder why the best pupil 
 was supposed to be he who most nearly approximated 
 the intelligence of a parrot. We shall be unable to 
 understand why schools did not train pupils for power, 
 and make the test of their efficiency not the ability to 
 remember, but the ability to think and to do things 
 worth doing. At present the best we can hope is the 
 abatement of some of the rigors of the system. 
 
 Schools have already found advantage in making 
 promotions oftener than once or twice a year; term 
 promotions, at least, should become the rule. The fre- 
 quent reclassification of pupils encourages the bright 
 and does not discourage the dull, by trying to force a 
 pace too rapid for them. Promotion of qualified in- 
 dividuals, rather than of whole classes, promotion by 
 subjects rather than by grades, would solve a large part 
 of the problem. 
 
 Combined with this method many schools have 
 found great advantage in giving more attention to in- 
 dividual instruction, special attention to the dull and 
 slow. This has been found possible without increasing 
 the teaching force, but if it necessitates smaller classes 
 and more teachers, let them be employed. The effi- 
 ciency of the schools is the first thing to be considered ; 
 expense is decidedly a secondary consideration. The
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD I2Q 
 
 one thing in their public expenditure of which Ameri- 
 cans never complain is the amount spent on schools 
 unless it may be an occasional grumble, for which there 
 is only too good ground, that they get so little for their 
 money. 
 
 The true theory and practice of education we owe 
 to Froebel (who, of course, built on the labors of his 
 predecessors, particularly Komenius, Rousseau, and 
 Pestalozzi), and he merely applied the Gospel of Jesus 
 to the school. The whole idea of the Gospel is freedom 
 from the bondage of law and enjoyment of the liberty 
 of grace. A Christian life is the free and spontaneous 
 doing of the will of God, not because God drives us 
 with a whip of obligation whose lash is the fear of hell. 
 The Gospel ideal is nature corrected and directed by 
 grace. Whether Froebel understood this ideal or no, 
 consciously or unconsciously he applied the principle to 
 education. He threw aside the notion that it is good 
 discipline for a child to be forced, or to force himself, 
 to perform distasteful mental tasks which is nothing 
 less than our old foe, asceticism, under the new face 
 of education. It is a notion wholly pagan, not Chris- 
 tian. Froebel saw that a child's mind and a child's 
 body should be developed through pleasure, not 
 through pain, by being trained to do delightful things, 
 not things repulsive. Hence the kindergarten, with its 
 fundamental principle that all work should be made 
 play. 
 
 But as the child develops the reverse is equally true : 
 all his play should become work. That is to say, the 
 pleasurable employment of faculties should no longer
 
 I3O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 be an end sufficient in itself, but become a means of 
 accomplishing useful things. Yet the distinction be- 
 tween play and work should never become entirely 
 clear to a normal man or woman. Mark Twain hit 
 the fundamental philosophy of social activity, when 
 in "Tom Sawyer" he defined play as work you don't 
 have to do. The difference between play and work is 
 not the amount of physical exertion respectively in- 
 volved men play themselves to an exhaustion as utter 
 as is ever produced by work but the sense of obliga- 
 tion to do. Take away that burdensome sense, some- 
 how make all work inviting, and it becomes play. The 
 greatest of all social problems lies just there : how to 
 annihilate work. The school can do this now ; society 
 may do it by-and-by. 
 
 Dr. Montessori has made the first real advance in 
 education since Froebel. Since all our knowledge is 
 obtained through the senses, it would appear obvious 
 that education ought to begin with the training of the 
 senses and proceed to the training of the mind. But, 
 instead of doing this obvious thing, education has for 
 several thousand years been devoted to training the 
 mind, leaving the senses to be trained by the experi- 
 ences of life in any chance way. And, even as to train- 
 ing the mind, attention has been directed mainly to 
 cultivating the one faculty of memory, with little or no 
 attention to apperception, reasoning, imagination. Ed- 
 ucators have inexplicably ignored the fact that nobody 
 has ever seen a mind apart from a body. The funda- 
 mental fact of pedagogy is that the mind can be 
 reached and developed only through the body.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 
 
 The value of the Montessori method is that it begins 
 with the training of the senses, teaching the hands of 
 the child and through these the mind. She is applying 
 to normal children the methods devised and found 
 effective in the case of the abnormal and defective. 
 She is availing herself of the newer psychological 
 knowledge to modernize the methods of Froebel. 
 With him she recognizes the principle of free develop- 
 ment; no constraint is put on the child to learn what 
 the teacher thinks it best for him to know, but his own 
 faculties are given free course. The play instinct is 
 seized upon and utilized as much as possible, and edu- 
 cation is made a process of pleasurable exercise of his 
 faculties by the child according to his own impulses. 
 No wonder the progress made under this method aston- 
 ishes all beholders by its rapidity and solidity. No 
 wonder that even "weak-minded" children respond 
 readily to it, for these have senses as capable of train- 
 ing as the strong-minded. It is the first rational, scien- 
 tific and really practical system of education ever de- 
 vised, and it is all these because it follows the method 
 of nature. 
 
 Yet even Dr. Montessori has not given us the last 
 word. Educators have learned, albeit slowly and un- 
 willingly, that whatever the child is taught must be 
 made to interest the child ; but they still shy at the con- 
 verse principle that whatever interests the child must 
 be taught. But the two principles must go together if 
 we are to have a wholly rational system of education, 
 and even Montessori has only arrived at the first re-
 
 132 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 discovered what Froebel and others had taught before 
 her, and that Froebel at least had embodied in a work- 
 able system. 
 
 It is easy, much too easy, to over-stress the objec- 
 tion to our schools that they are not "practical." They 
 must not be made too practical. Industry has as its 
 aim production, and insistently demands an education 
 that will make school graduates better producers. Edu- 
 cation must aim at the unfolding of human powers, not 
 for production solely, but for life, with due regard to 
 the fact that people must earn a living, but not forget- 
 ful that "the life is more than the meat." One kind of 
 training is in the sphere of the useful, the other of the 
 ideal. But, again let it be said, this does not imply in- 
 compatibility, still less hostility, between them. Use- 
 ful activities may be modified if not directed by the 
 ideal, and the ideal may keep in view the practical as 
 at least one of its ends. 
 
 IV 
 
 The years devoted to the training of the child are 
 all too short, as well as ineffective. The compulsory 
 school age should be raised to sixteen and all labor 
 should be forbidden before that age. The primary 
 schools should be so improved that the average child 
 will graduate from them at twelve. For the interven- 
 ing four years a new system of training should be 
 devised, or a great expansion and improvement of one
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 133 
 
 already in partial operation, and made so attractive and 
 helpful that, instead of one in a hundred graduating 
 from our secondary schools, as now, 75 per cent, or 
 more should be graduates. This is not too high an 
 aim and is by no means an impossible result. 
 
 As a preparation for this secondary instruction, 
 manual training should be introduced and made ef- 
 fective in all primary schools and continued through 
 all the grades. It should be genuine manual training, 
 a continuation of the Montessori principle through the 
 later years of instruction, adjusted to the growing intel- 
 ligence and information of the child. Genuine manual 
 training, one says emphatically, something not synony- 
 mous with industrial training, indeed quite different. 
 Real manual training is part of education; industrial 
 training is a device of business. The value of manual 
 training in the primary school is not practical but cul- 
 tural. The use of the hands is an indispensable part 
 of development of the mind, as the new psychology 
 has taught us. It enlarges the child's material for 
 thinking and trains him in its use ; that is, in more ac- 
 curate thinking. Education without manual training 
 imparts words and ideas, great things, priceless things 
 indeed, but of no use until brought to the test of reality. 
 Until his world of thought is made to conform to the 
 world of fact a child wanders in a maze of dreams. 
 One of the worst features of our education at present 
 is that the child is taught in school a theory of life 
 that all his experience of home and street contradicts, 
 and presently, when he enters shop or store, it is
 
 134 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 shattered to bits, and there is no Omar to teach him 
 to remold it nearer to the heart's desire. 1 
 
 Because of its cultural value manual training should 
 be given to every child, without regard to social stand- 
 ing or probable calling. A boy should learn to use 
 ordinary tools, not because he is to be a carpenter or 
 a plumber, but because he will very likely be a lawyer, 
 and a better lawyer for such training. No man is edu- 
 cated until he can do as well as know. Girls should be 
 taught as well as boys, but perhaps in a different way. 
 A chief value of manual training is its effect in vitaliz- 
 ing all the other school w.ork ; it puts new meaning into 
 arithmetic, for example, for a child to discover its use 
 in measuring and calculating his work. A psycholo- 
 gist would predict this; the experience of the class- 
 room proves it. Manual training interests children 
 who are not interested in routine school work, and 
 causes the teacher to revise hasty judgments of the 
 intelligence and capacity of pupils that have been 
 founded on bookwork only. 
 
 That this is the right way in education has been 
 discovered by the negro race before the white. As 
 teachers we should all take off our hats to Booker Wash- 
 ington. There was not a white man in America who 
 had the sense to establish Tuskeegee Institute. When, 
 
 1 This is recognized by some of our foremost educators. Dr. 
 James Russell, head of the Teachers' College at Columbia Uni- 
 versity, is reported in a public address to have said: "The 
 greatest peril of our education to-day is that it promises an 
 open door to every boy and girl up to the age of fourteen, and 
 then turns them ruthlessly into the world to find most doors 
 not only closed but locked against them."
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 135 
 
 after the civil war, the white race wished to do some- 
 thing for the uplift of the negroes, we established col- 
 leges in which they were instructed in Latin, Greek, 
 and higher mathematics; and theological schools in 
 which they were given courses in Hebrew, Greek exe- 
 gesis, Church history, and systematic theology. That 
 was the measure of our sense : a determination that 
 the negro should have just as good instruction, just as 
 lofty educational ideals, as the white. But Mr. Wash- 
 ington saw that his race must be taught to make a liv- 
 ing, as the indispensable foundation for making a life 
 that economic independence was the way of salva- 
 tion for the negro. And so he established Tuskeegee, 
 where negro boys and girls are given a plain English 
 education without frills, and are at the same time 
 taught how to earn an honest and comfortable liveli- 
 hood. In the process they are given all the culture that 
 as individuals they are capable of absorbing, all that in 
 the present economic conditions of their race is of 
 value. 
 
 In secondary schools, attention may be properly 
 given to the probable future of pupils. The present 
 high school is well adapted to the needs of the class 
 that attend it. But alongside of the present high 
 schools, which are too literary and exclusively cultural 
 for the needs of the majority, should be established 
 schools of equal grade of the industrial and technical 
 kind, frankly devoted to the preparation of children 
 for various forms of manual labor, and others to pre- 
 pare for "business," the various clerical and semi-pro- 
 fessional callings. Excellent private schools make part
 
 136 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 of this provision now, and graduate annually thou- 
 sands of students; but all forms of secondary instruc- 
 tion should be a public charge, not one kind merely. 
 Every argument that can be advanced for the high 
 school applies with equal force to the other classes of 
 secondary schools. And besides there is this further 
 argument, surely not lacking in force : they are more 
 needed. 
 
 For the present, until public opinion will not merely 
 support but compel the raising of the school age to 
 sixteen and the provision of such secondary schools as 
 have been indicated, much might be done for those 
 compelled to go to work at fourteen by the establish- 
 ment of continuation schools, where they may acquire 
 the theory of what they learn in practice in the shop, 
 so as not to be all their lives at the mercy of rule o' 
 thumb. Employees should be taught how much it is 
 to their interest to gain such education, because it 
 will promote their efficiency and add to their earnings. 
 Employers should be taught how much it is to their 
 interest to have their workmen made more intelligent 
 and efficient, so that the cooperation of the employing 
 class may be secured for these schools. A few schools 
 of this class have already been established, and em- 
 ployers have sent their apprentices with continued pay 
 for half a day or a day a week. The results have 
 been so excellent that, while at first employers merely 
 permitted attendance on the part of their apprentices, 
 they now require attendance. But for those who can 
 remain in school until sixteen or after, industrial and 
 technical high schools, of grade fully equal to the pres-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 137 
 
 ent high schools, ought to be provided without delay. 
 As a temporary provision, courses might be established 
 in the present high schools in mathematics, physics, 
 chemistry, and drawing, as they apply to trades and 
 industries of our day. 
 
 All this may seem visionary to those who encounter 
 these ideas for the first time. Such incredulous per- 
 sons will perhaps be astonished to hear that Germany 
 has had this method in practical operation for a gen- 
 eration. There are eleven fully equipped technical 
 high schools, with a teaching staff of nearly eight hun- 
 dred, and 16,570 students, of whom 2,000 are women. 
 There are four agricultural high schools, besides 
 agricultural institutes at eight universities, and 67 
 other agricultural schools of lower grade, not to men- 
 tion 195 similar schools that are maintained only in 
 the winter. Other technical schools are : 15 schools of 
 mining; 15 of architecture and building; 5 academies 
 of forestry; 27 schools of art and art industry; 429 
 commercial schools; 100 schools of textile manufac- 
 tures; 12 for special metal industries; 12 for wood 
 working ; four for ceramics ; 1 1 for naval architecture 
 and engineering; 19 for navigation; and n music 
 schools. 1 
 
 The success of the system goes far to explain the 
 great strides forward that have placed Germany at the 
 head of the industrial nations of the world. The boy 
 or girl in the primary schools is assisted by the teacher 
 to make choice of occupations for which they are best 
 
 1 These facts are given on the authority of the "Statesman's 
 Year-Book."
 
 138 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 fitted, and psychology is invoked to give aid in this 
 matter. All this is in marked contrast to the Ameri- 
 can boy's headlong fashion of going to work, taking 
 the first job he can get, and trying one thing after 
 another until, if he has sufficient good luck, he finally 
 discovers something for which he is not too unfitted 
 to get along after a sort. The German teacher then 
 makes it his business to see that the pupils get the 
 supplementary training that will best fit them for the 
 work chosen. Employers are compelled by law to 
 excuse their child workers for instruction without loss 
 of pay, and also to pay the tuition fees. These, how- 
 ever, are said to be merely nominal, the chief expense 
 of the schools being borne by the municipality and the 
 State. The result of a generation's working of the 
 system is that practically all the manual laborers of 
 Germany, excluding agriculture, are skilled workmen, 
 and the rough work to which unskilled labor is ade- 
 quate is now done almost wholly by foreigners. 
 
 After all, is not the greatest defect of our school 
 system that it still makes no adequate provision, in 
 most cases no provision whatever, for the physical cul- 
 ture of the child? Obviously, this is quite as impor- 
 tant as his mental culture, but educational theory has 
 hitherto been that care of the child's health and physi- 
 cal development belongs to the parent and the home, 
 not to the school. And perhaps an ideal division of
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 139 
 
 responsibility and work would be that. But the school 
 must face facts, the school must get results; and its 
 methods must be adapted to existing fact and desired 
 result. It is incontrovertible fact that the parent and 
 the home do not care adequately for the physical de- 
 velopment and health of the child. It is equally in- 
 controvertible that a child in poor health, or with a 
 body imperfectly developed, cannot do his school work 
 properly. Systematic medical inspection and syste- 
 matic physical training are, therefore, an indispensable 
 part of a school system. For a few children of the 
 well-to-do these may be superfluous things, but for the 
 great majority of school children, even from the well- 
 to-do classes, it is the condition of normal proficiency 
 in study. 
 
 A modern school might as rationally be left with- 
 out desks, text-books, and blackboards as without 
 gymnastic apparatus and a playground. And a play- 
 ground is not a mere vacant lot to run about in, but 
 should have the fittings of an athletic field. Games 
 and exercises should be taught as carefully as the other 
 school subjects, and proficiency here should count for 
 as much as proficiency in class. The calisthenics intro- 
 duced into the schools a generation ago were an excel- 
 lent thing of their kind, a welcome relief to muscles 
 and nerves tired by ordinary school tasks, but they are 
 quite useless for physical culture. Manual training 
 would, of course, do something for the bodily develop- 
 ment of pupils, but the chief reliance must be on the 
 gymnasium and the playground, where regular work 
 is done under a competent instructor. Such work
 
 I4O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 would be directed to the removal of physical defects 
 and the securing of a symmetrical physical growth. 
 The remarkable results obtained in many colleges by 
 compulsory physical exercise under competent direc- 
 tion both shows the practicability of the proposal as 
 applied to the public schools and warrants the hope of 
 great improvement in national physique and national 
 health. Let the advocates of the new and much talked 
 of eugenics direct their efforts to this point and they 
 will be able to free their movement from some of its 
 present absurdities. If for a generation we should 
 bestow on the bodies of our children half the atten- 
 tion that we now give to their minds, we should be- 
 come the admiration of the world. 
 
 Investigation of our schools shows that no small 
 part of the failure of the pupils to do their work prop- 
 erly is due to the fact that they are not sufficiently 
 nourished. It is impossible for a growing child to 
 study well on little breakfast and less luncheon. It 
 is true that the children of European immigrants are 
 generally accustomed to a light breakfast; but that 
 should be followed by a hearty luncheon, and this is 
 seldom the case. Their parents are often at work, and, 
 in lieu of a home meal, five cents or less is given them 
 to buy luncheon, which as often as not is spent for 
 candy instead of more nourishing food. To provide 
 a good midday meal for the children, that will enable 
 them to do their work without physical exhaustion, has 
 already been found essential in certain quarters of 
 some cities, and will ere long be regarded as much a
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 14! 
 
 matter of course as any other kind of school equip- 
 ment. 1 
 
 These ideas about physical culture in the schools will 
 appear to many people mere fads, so far removed 
 from the sphere of the practical as to be worthy of no 
 serious consideration. Let such ponder a few plain 
 facts. A few years ago forty children in a Cleveland 
 school were organized into a special class to try the 
 effects of mouth-hygiene. They were first submitted 
 to various mental tests; then their teeth were put in 
 order by a dentist, and each was provided with a tooth- 
 brush and pledged to use it regularly. Twenty-seven 
 of them had persistence enough to maintain the ex- 
 periment for a year, at the end of which time the men- 
 tal tests were repeated, and showed a gain of 99.8 per 
 cent. When we consider that 75 per cent, of our 
 school children have physical defects at least as serious 
 as bad teeth, and what might be accomplished by syste- 
 matic medical inspection and physical culture in over- 
 coming these defects, how can anybody question the 
 importance of this matter? 
 
 As regards the matter of practicability, an experi- 
 ment in four of the public schools of Philadelphia is 
 decisive. Mr. Charles Keen Taylor, a former instruc- 
 tor in psychology in the University of Pennsylvania, 
 organized a club for boys by the simple process of 
 showing schoolboys photographs of boys of their own 
 age who were well developed. All were naturally 
 
 1 England passed a statute known as a Provision of Meals 
 Act, in 1906, and a Medical Inspection Act in 1907. "Report of 
 the Commissioner of Education for 1912," vol. I, p. 495.
 
 142 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 eager to attain a like development. Each boy was 
 given a physical examination; if his physique was first- 
 class and his class standing good he was given a first- 
 class button; fairly good physique and standing en- 
 titled him to a second-class button ; while any boy who 
 joined the club was entitled to a third-class button. 
 Some special privileges were given to all members of 
 the league, but every boy wanted to get into the first 
 class as quickly as possible. They were given advice 
 as to the exercises to take to remedy their defects, and, 
 as promotion depended on their success, they did as 
 they were told. A regular diet was advised as requi- 
 site to the best physical progress, and an early bedtime, 
 and they were warned that smoking was especially 
 detrimental. 
 
 Tests at the end of a year showed surprising prog- 
 ress. Over 80 per cent, of the boys who had smoked 
 before entering the club had stopped, and the physical 
 progress of all was highly gratifying. Inasmuch as 
 the experiment has been conducted at practically no 
 cost, without apparatus or playgrounds, the fact that 
 the weaklings of this club were started in a single year 
 on the road to strength, while the more fit developed a 
 high degree of muscular power and endurance, makes 
 this one of the most effective object lessons of the 
 value and practicability of physical culture for school 
 children. 
 
 But it will be of no avail to improve the schools un- 
 less the children are free to take advantage of what
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 143 
 
 they offer. The ignorance and greed of parents, and 
 the intelligence and greed of employers, must not be 
 permitted to continue the exploitation of the child. 
 The root of the chief evils that constitute the prob- 
 lem of the child is Profit. The moment it ceases to be 
 profitable to exploit the child he will be given a fair 
 chance to enjoy his childhood. There is a very simple 
 expedient, that has already been tried in a small way, 
 which will dispose of the worst of these evils at a 
 blow and with an ease all but ridiculous. A Federal 
 statute forbidding the shipping into any other State of 
 any goods manufactured by the labor of children un- 
 der fourteen or sixteen years would be immediately 
 effective. Few factories find profit in manufacturing 
 goods to be sold within the State where they are made 
 that is too small a market in these days. The United 
 States Supreme Court has passed several times on the 
 constitutionality of this principle in legislation, de- 
 claring that Congress has the sole right to regulate 
 interstate commerce, and any regulations it makes are 
 within its discretion and not a matter for judicial in- 
 terference. 
 
 But child exploitation in factories is not the only 
 way in which the welfare of the child is menaced and 
 his rights abridged. In domestic, agricultural, and 
 street labor there are abuses quite as great as in fac- 
 tories, and thus far there has been little done to regu- 
 late them. The need of regulation is shown by the 
 census statistics, which make it clear that 75 per cent, 
 of child workers fall into these classes, while only 16 
 per cent, are in factories. Children of three and four
 
 144 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 years work by the side of their mothers in hundreds 
 of tenements; and children of school age are kept 
 from school and employed in tasks beyond their 
 strength on thousands of farms. The "bound" boy 
 or girl, taken from some charitable institution or from 
 the poorhouse, and often treated with less considera- 
 tion than the dumb animals, is a feature of many a 
 farm. These evils are more delicate to deal with and 
 more difficult to cure than the factory, where massing 
 of workers together, if it creates some special difficul- 
 ties, at least makes the problem of control simpler. 
 No suggestion that seems sufficiently practicable has 
 yet been made for effectually dealing with domestic 
 and agricultural child labor. 
 
 Child labor in the streets is in many respects a worse 
 evil than labor in factories. It is hardly less detri- 
 mental to health, and far more detrimental to morals. 
 It is the more difficult to deal with, because many of 
 the workers are not employees, but work directly for 
 themselves or their families. This is the case with 
 newsboys and, until lately, was the case with boot- 
 blacks. 1 Street labor trains these children in all forms 
 of mendicancy, dishonesty, and vice. Many of them 
 are not so much impelled by need as allured by the lib- 
 erty and opportunity for self-indulgence made possible 
 through their gains. The economical and ethical de- 
 
 1 Bootblacking is ceasing to be a street industry, but is be- 
 coming something even worse through the infamous padrone 
 system. Boys (mostly Greeks) are imported for this work, 
 and others (mostly Italians) are obtained from the slum dis- 
 tricts and exploited by these padrones. In all our large cities 
 this is now one of the worst forms of child labor.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 145 
 
 fects of this form of child labor are almost innumer- 
 able, and of the most serious nature. Street labor 
 breeds distaste for any regular work, because all street 
 occupations are casual and occasional, most of them 
 therefore uncertain and all without oversight or disci- 
 pline. No training could be worse for children at 
 their most susceptible and plastic age. Street occupa- 
 tions lead nowhither. The boy grows into the man 
 and finds no opening into a man's career; he has, in 
 fact, ceased to be a boy without becoming a man. 
 
 Owing to its occasional character, street labor in- 
 volves excessive fatigue at times, while it offers exces- 
 sive leisure at others; these are conditions favorable 
 to dissipation and immorality of many kinds. It com- 
 pels exposure to bad weather and so favors resort 
 to stimulants. It compels familiarity with vice of 
 every kind at an age when ignorance is both bliss and 
 safety. A natural result is that a large proportion 
 of street workers become vicious and are afflicted with 
 venereal diseases, thus becoming centers of infection 
 to the whole community. Many become recruits of 
 the habitual criminal class, and in later years fill our 
 jails and prisons, not to say our asylums and hos- 
 pitals. 1 If there were no ethical objections to child 
 labor in the streets the economic cost is too high. 
 
 It is objected that the work done by children in the 
 streets if done by adults would prove too costly that 
 child labor is an economic necessity. Experience 
 
 *As to what is now attempted for the cure of juvenile delin- 
 quency, there is no better source of information than the group 
 of reports in the number of the "Survey" for February 5, 1910.
 
 146 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 shows, however, that newspapers can be profitably dis- 
 tributed by adults, especially by utilizing the services 
 of old men and cripples. To do this on a larger scale 
 would be to "kill two birds with one stone," not only 
 eliminating the objectionable child labor, but furnish- 
 ing profitable employment for a needy class. Experi- 
 ence has also shown that men can be profitably em- 
 ployed as messengers, instead of boys, and that they 
 are more prompt and efficient. The economic argu- 
 ment for child labor is but a pretext, and a very weak 
 one at that. 
 
 Few States have as yet made any attempt to regu- 
 late this form of child labor. New York has a stat- 
 ute, but Pennsylvania has none; Massachusetts and 
 New Hampshire alone among the New England States 
 have acted ; and Wisconsin is the only one among the 
 older Western communities to attack this problem; 
 no Southern State has done anything. The newer 
 States, where the need is least, have done most : Okla- 
 homa, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada have the best laws. 
 The older commonwealths and the richer should blush 
 to find themselves surpassed by Utah and Nevada in 
 anything that relates to human welfare. Utah and 
 Wisconsin alone make the age for street labor as high 
 as twelve years; other States content themselves with 
 prohibiting boys under ten from engaging in street 
 occupations. Practically all make the age limit for 
 girls sixteen years, which is more praiseworthy. Still, 
 it is apparent that much remains to be done, even in 
 States that have done something, before regulation of
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 147 
 
 this form of child labor can be said to be at all satis- 
 factory. 
 
 It is charged by some that what has already been 
 done in the way of legislation has made the lot of the 
 child rather worse than better that our zeal is so 
 little according to knowledge as to make reformers 
 more dangerous as friends than employers are as ene- 
 mies. It may be so. It almost certainly will be so, 
 if reforms are suffered to go singly. Other measures 
 of social justice, like a minimum wage for the head of 
 the family, compulsory insurance from accident and 
 unemployment, and old age pensions, must go hand in 
 hand with abolition of child labor, as well as the bet- 
 ter provisions for education already outlined, or we 
 shall take the child out of the streets and factories 
 only to thrust him into the jails and almshouses. We 
 must guard lest we attempt to be kind only to be 
 cruel. There is grave danger, and we shall do well 
 to recognize it, that society, in a blind attempt at re- 
 form, may come to practice a brutality greater than 
 it now reprehends in the capitalist.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 
 
 THE slum is the problem of great cities, but it is 
 not the problem of all great cities. New York and 
 Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia, have slums; Lon- 
 don has slums; but the cities of continental Europe 
 for the most part have no slums. European cities have 
 a housing problem to solve, but not a slum problem. 
 The slum is a social disease that may be named Amer- 
 icanitis. 
 
 This is an acute problem in American cities for 
 many reasons. We have felt to the full the universal 
 modern tendency toward urban concentration of popu- 
 lation. Immigration has also produced a congestion 
 of foreign population in all our large cities, especially 
 those on or near the Atlantic seaboard. There has 
 been no efficient planning of our cities ; their extension 
 into the original suburbs has been the haphazard proc- 
 ess of profitable speculation, complicated by all sorts 
 of municipal "graft." Until recently, all our cities 
 have permitted their people to erect any sort of build- 
 ings anywhere, of all kinds of materials, and to main- 
 tain for occupation buildings that long since ought to 
 have been condemned and torn down. Only our 
 larger cities now place any effective restrictions on 
 building, and these restrictions are nowhere such as 
 
 148
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 149 
 
 they should be. It is our lack of thought and foresight 
 that are chiefly responsible for the existence of the 
 slum. Our municipalities live from hand to mouth 
 and to educate them to any other method is a slow 
 and painful process. 
 
 New York is, of course, the city in which Ameri- 
 canitis is most severe. Of the 3,437,202 people in 
 Greater New York in 1900, more than two-thirds of 
 the whole, or 2,372,079 lived in tenement houses. The 
 figures for 1910 when available will certainly show 
 larger numbers, and may show a larger proportion, of 
 tenement-dwellers. In 1900 there were 82,652 tene- 
 ments in Manhattan and 33,771 in Brooklyn. Of 
 course, a large proportion of these, perhaps half, were 
 more or less pretentious "apartments" outside of the 
 slums, occupied by the rich and well-to-do. Though 
 many of these are far from ideal from the sanitary 
 point of view, they are occupied by a class who are 
 able to look out for themselves, and may be trusted 
 to insist on a certain standard of cleanliness and 
 health fulness, even if that standard be not always the 
 highest. It is the other half, whose poverty compels 
 them to take what they can get in the way of habita- 
 tions, who must be housed in the slums or not at all, 
 whose plight calls for our sympathy and help. What 
 is thus true of New York is true in varying degrees of 
 all our large cities, and may become true of the small. 
 
 I 
 
 After all, the slum problem, though exceedingly 
 grave, is comparatively simple. The slum as it exists
 
 I5O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 is a complicated affair it is true, and its existence com- 
 plicates or intensifies almost every other social problem 
 of the great cities, but it has a single cause and may 
 be the most easily and quickly cured of all our great 
 social ills. For the slum is purely and simply the re- 
 sult of bad housing, and the slum may be forever 
 eradicated by good housing. On the theoretic side it 
 is a problem in engineering and architecture; on the 
 practical side it is a problem in finance. There is noth- 
 ing mysterious, nothing even difficult, in the terms of 
 our problem; we understand it perfectly; further in- 
 vestigation or study will increase our knowledge in 
 detail, but are not needed for action ; we have come to 
 the point where the only requisite is to do something, 
 and to do it quickly and well. It is a problem of the 
 practical type with which the American genius is pe- 
 culiarly fitted to cope. It is, in a word, a business 
 man's problem, and the everlasting wonder is that 
 Christian business men do not tackle it and get it out 
 of the way. If Christianity meant anything to them 
 in their business life they surely would. 
 
 The slum has become a moral condition, but it has 
 a purely physical cause. Hence we are wasting our 
 present efforts to combat it with moral remedies. The 
 effective remedy must be, like the cause, physical. 
 When we analyze the facts of the slum we come to 
 this at the bottom of all : The evils of the slum are 
 all traceable to the attempt to house a large population 
 in dwellings intended to house a small population. If 
 the number of dwellers were limited to the number for 
 which the building was planned, there might be un-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 
 
 sanitary quarters and unwholesome houses, but not 
 the slum. It is the combination of bad housing and 
 overcrowding that constitutes the evil, which is thus 
 physical in its base, moral in its results. "Five into 
 one you can't" we used to be told in the arithmetic 
 class, but the modern landlord is superior to mathe- 
 matics. "Five into one I can" he says, and he does 
 it puts five families into a building constructed for 
 but one family. When this is done through a large 
 section of a city, the inevitable result is a slum. Dirt, 
 degradation, vice, crime find a congenial residence and 
 a safe shelter in the slum. Poverty lives there because 
 it has no choice; disease flourishes there because it 
 finds ample material to work on and conditions just 
 made for it ; vice and crime run to cover there because 
 it is an ideal hiding place for those who love darkness 
 because their deeds are evil. 
 
 Let us, however, be just to the landlord ; not all the 
 evils of the slum, not even all its overcrowding, are 
 justly chargeable to him. His reckless and inhuman 
 greed is responsible for only part of the overcrowding 
 of the slums ; the people of the slums ably second his 
 efforts. The greed of the landlord is paralleled by 
 the greed of his tenants, who sublet their rooms or 
 small apartments to lodgers. This is especially true 
 of some of our foreign populations, who thus receive 
 from lodgers almost or quite enough to pay their own 
 rent. Inspectors have found incredible numbers of 
 people, of both sexes and all ages, occupying a single 
 room. In one home reported, not only was all the 
 floor space occupied, but three men slept on the piano !
 
 T52 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 In another three girls, earning an average of $10 a 
 week, slept on the floor of a dark closet. The result 
 always to the health, and often to the morals, of those 
 herded together in this indecent and unsanitary man- 
 ner hardly needs to be enlarged upon. That such prac- 
 tices should be made not only unlawful but impossible 
 cannot be regarded as a question for argument. 
 
 When one says that the slum may be easily de- 
 stroyed by providing good housing, one should not be 
 understood to say that all the things found in the pres- 
 ent slums will immediately disappear. Poverty, for 
 instance, has a much deeper cause than overcrowding, 
 and will be far more difficult to cure. The destruction 
 of the slum will greatly decrease vice and crime, but 
 they will still remain problems to be dealt with. Dis- 
 ease would probably be lessened fifty per cent, by the 
 removal of the slums, but disease will still present a 
 knotty social problem when the slum is gone. As the 
 slum is not the sole social evil, or the sole cause of so- 
 cial evils, we are to expect progress, not victory, as 
 the result of its elimination. It is important that we 
 have a clear understanding of what it is fair to ex- 
 pect as the result of a successful campaign against the 
 slum, or inevitable disappointment awaits us. 
 
 This matter of good housing must be regarded as 
 fundamental among our social reforms. Children 
 growing up in dark, ill-ventilated, filthy houses cannot 
 be expected to reach normal physical development. 
 Healthy bodies are possible only amid healthy sur- 
 roundings. The school problems that we have already 
 had occasion to note are greatly aggravated, if not
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 153 
 
 wholly caused, by the slum. Pupils cannot do their 
 school work properly if their vitality is sapped by their 
 environment; and they are graduated from the school 
 to begin the serious business of life with the double 
 handicap of weak body and undeveloped mind. The 
 slum is, therefore, an economic blunder of the first 
 magnitude. If no ethical considerations were in- 
 volved, simply as a matter of dollars and cents, solely 
 as a question of industrial efficiency, society cannot af- 
 ford so expensive a luxury. The slum diminishes the 
 productive capacity of its inhabitants by fully fifty per 
 cent. Even America, loudly as we boast of our na- 
 tional wealth, is not rich enough to dismiss as trifling 
 such a drain on her resources as this. 
 
 There is great danger that anything like adequate 
 statements regarding the slum will be looked upon as 
 exaggeration by those who have given no attention to 
 the matter. And one difficulty in dealing with the sub- 
 ject is lack of those precise figures that are so convinc- 
 ing to minds of a certain type. The physical effects of 
 overcrowding have not been scientifically investigated 
 in America, but a careful study has been made in some 
 foreign cities, notably in Berlin. It was found there 
 that there was a death rate of 163.5 P er i>ooo families 
 occupying a single room, 22.5 for families occupying 
 two rooms, 7.5 for those who had three rooms, and 5.4 
 for those having four or more. That rapidly descend- 
 ing scale tells its own story. And yet not all of this 
 tremendous difference in death rates can be justly as- 
 cribed to the one cause of overcrowding. No small 
 part must, of course, be assigned to the general eco-
 
 154 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 nomic differences between the families investigated. 
 A family able to occupy three rooms and pay the rent 
 for them would also be able to afford more nourish- 
 ing and more abundant food, more and better cloth- 
 ing, and probably better nursing and medical care of 
 its sick members than a family so poor as to be com- 
 pelled to live in one room. Nevertheless, that over- 
 crowding vastly increases the death rate, in an inverse 
 geometrical ratio to the rooms occupied, is a conclu- 
 sion that such figures absolutely compel. 
 
 We should begin the work of housing reform with 
 a conviction that housing evils are not necessary. The 
 slum is not rooted in the nature of things, inseparable 
 from dwelling together in cities. Our present evil 
 plight is due to a combination of ignorance, neglect, 
 and greed. Even fifty years ago nobody could have 
 foreseen the growth of our American cities. Most 
 people have heard the story of the city hall in New 
 York, and how the wise city fathers voted to have the 
 rear walls built of brick, while the rest was of white 
 marble, on the ground that the city would never ex- 
 tend above that point and so the material of the rear 
 wall did not matter. Nobody, therefore, thought of 
 the housing problem as a problem; the simple thing 
 was to build houses as fast as they were wanted, and, 
 as that had always been done, everybody thought that 
 always would be done, if he took the trouble to think 
 anything about it. And when the matter began to be 
 a problem people were too busy and had too little civic 
 conscience to do anything about it until the evils be- 
 came great and crying. Then, the horse having been
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 155 
 
 stolen, we carefully locked the stable door, after our 
 usual habit. 
 
 The slum problem would be much easier of solution 
 but for a false civic pride that devotes its energies, 
 not to learning facts and applying remedies, but to 
 concealing facts and discouraging investigation, on the 
 ground that publicity will hurt the town. Things can- 
 not be harmful if they are kept hidden, is the con- 
 cealed premise of those who thus reason and act. But 
 any sound reasoning and policy must be based on an 
 exactly contrary premise: that nothing evil can be 
 made less evil by concealment, and that publicity is the 
 first step toward a remedy. 1 Next to this false civic 
 sentiment the most serious obstacle to better housing 
 conditions is the apathy of the well-to-do, who, because 
 they are comfortable, cannot be roused to the helping 
 of others. 
 
 The encouraging feature of the present situation is 
 that ignorance is passing away; that apathy and ne- 
 glect are giving place to intelligent interest; and that 
 greed, if it cannot be shamed into decency, is about to 
 be restrained by law. 
 
 II 
 
 In theory, at least, the problem of good housing is 
 not complicated. We are sufficiently familiar with bad 
 
 1 Housing surveys and reports now accessible to the public 
 have been made in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Kan- 
 sas City (Missouri), Louisville, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San 
 Francisco.
 
 156 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 housing: those ill-ventilated, ill-lighted, damp build- 
 ings miscalled houses, with foul courts and fouler cel- 
 lars, with little plumbing and that bad, insufficiently 
 supplied with water, with toilet conveniences wholly 
 inadequate and often dangerous to the public health, 
 reeking with filth and infested with vermin and disease 
 germs, which constitute the tenements of our large 
 cities. Such buildings are directly or indirectly re- 
 sponsible for the major part of industrial inefficiency, 
 inebriety, disease, vice, crime, juvenile delinquency, de- 
 based citizenship, and race degeneration that afflict 
 American society to-day. Why do we tolerate such 
 moral pest-houses? Why do we not make it possible 
 for even the poorest family to have something worthy 
 to be called a home : an apartment suitable to its means 
 and size in a well-constructed, well-lighted, well-venti- 
 lated building, clean and sanitary, securing to them 
 reasonable comfort and privacy, with courts in the 
 rear in which there shall be grass and flower-beds and 
 playgrounds for the children? 
 
 Some will doubtless reply that one might as well 
 expect to see the New Jerusalem come down to earth, 
 that those who demand such things are amusing them- 
 selves with Utopias that can never have objective 
 existence. But the above is a literal, exact descrip- 
 tion of what Berlin to-day offers working people. 
 Large numbers of model tenements have been erected 
 in that city within the last generation, some by munici- 
 pal enterprise, some by private, containing no fewer 
 than 10,000 apartments. The enterprise has given so 
 high satisfaction that it is growing in importance every
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 157 
 
 year. Many of the privately built tenements are co- 
 operative, and the tenants own their apartments for 
 life and for the lives of their children. These new 
 houses are built with sound-proof floors and double 
 windows, and each group of apartments is provided 
 with cafe, library, assembly-room, and kindergarten. 
 Only half of a lot may be occupied by a building, which 
 ensures a large central court, with grass-plots, trees, 
 sand piles for children, bars, swings and so on. Apart- 
 ments are of various sizes, adapted to large families 
 or small, and the number of persons that may occupy 
 each is strictly limited by law. There is poverty in 
 these tenements to be sure, but it is a well-darned, 
 well-brushed, well-scrubbed poverty very different 
 from that of the slum. And there is very little of vice 
 or crime, while disease is reduced to a minimum. Shall 
 we go on saying that what is actual in European cit- 
 ies is chimerical when proposed for our own? 
 
 It is a condition of good housing in our cities that 
 nobody should be permitted to build in the central 
 space of its squares; every house should front on a 
 street and have assurance of plentiful light and air. 
 The back-yard house, or rear tenement, is one of the 
 great menaces to public health and morals. Investiga- 
 tion of the children brought into the juvenile courts of 
 Philadelphia has shown that ninety per cent, of the 
 children came from houses of this kind. 1 In the sum- 
 mer the temperature is 16 degrees higher in such courts 
 
 1 This statement is made on the authority of Mr. Bernard J. 
 Newman, Secretary of the Philadelphia Housing Commission, 
 who has specially investigated the question.
 
 158 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 than on the streets. The effect of these conditions 
 on the health of the inmates does not need to be de- 
 scribed. The unfortunate tenants pay the price in sick- 
 ness and death for these defects in housing. The com- 
 munity does not realize what a tax the community as 
 a whole is paying in order that a few property owners 
 may have the privilege of maintaining such conditions. 
 
 True, one of our chief housing experts, Mr. Law- 
 rence Veiller, pronounces the general opinion that rear 
 tenements are in themselves bad "an interesting fal- 
 lacy," and declares that "there is nothing in the fact 
 that the building is located in the rear away from the 
 street which makes the house bad in itself." But even 
 the opinion of an expert cannot set aside hard facts 
 like those quoted above. Mr. Veiller is doubtless right 
 in saying that some of the existing rear tenements are 
 better habitations than some of those fronting on the 
 street. But this does not affect the reason why all 
 such buildings should be abolished as soon as possible 
 and no more should be built: that it is impossible to 
 erect buildings within the squares of our American 
 cities and secure to them sufficient light and air to 
 make them sanitary. It is true that in many European 
 cities it is common to erect buildings in central courts, 
 and that many of these are excellent in sanitary char- 
 acter. But the squares or "blocks" of these cities are 
 larger than ours, and consequently European cities can 
 permit what we must forbid. 
 
 About forty years ago, though there was no general 
 awakening on the subject, a few people began to per- 
 ceive the importance of housing reform, and conceived
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 159 
 
 the idea that private enterprise was quite adequate to 
 secure the necessary changes. Their fundamental idea 
 was sounder than their method. The old notion had 
 been : Make men good and they will better their sur- 
 roundings. The new idea was : Better the surround- 
 ings and it will be easier to make men good. Both 
 ideas are true, and neither is the whole truth. We 
 approximate the whole truth, not when we regard our- 
 selves as compelled to choose between the two as hos- 
 tile alternatives, but when we conceive them as com- 
 plementary. Yet here again experience has taught 
 us not to expect too much. Model buildings will not 
 of themselves make tenants clean in body and mind, 
 though model buildings decidedly encourage cleanli- 
 ness. The unclean and immoral tenant will still be an 
 object of instruction in better ways, and of legal dis- 
 cipline if he refuses to reform. 
 
 It was soon discovered that private enterprise was 
 not adequate. Not a few of the experiments in model 
 buildings were failures from every point of view. 
 Some were badly planned, some were extravagantly 
 built, some were unwisely managed. On the other 
 hand, some were from the first successful, like the 
 block of model tenements built by Mr. Alfred T. 
 White in Brooklyn, in 1877. In 1896 the City and 
 Suburban Homes Company built tenements in New 
 York that were entirely successful and paid five per 
 cent, on the investment from the beginning. It turned 
 out, however, that these object lessons of what might 
 be done had little or no influence on the building enter- 
 prises of New York and Brooklyn. The ordinary
 
 l6o THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 commercial builder continued to ask himself, not if 
 model tenements were feasible, but if they were as 
 profitable as other less costly buildings. Object les- 
 sons count for little with those whose end is profit, 
 unless it be an object lesson in making money. And 
 to the rich men of New York, even those of benevolent 
 impulses, "philanthropy and five per cent." did not 
 prove an attractive bait. 
 
 In forty years of private enterprise slight progress 
 was made toward solution of the housing problem in 
 New York. In that time 89 houses were built on the 
 "model tenement" plan, with accommodations for 17,- 
 940 persons, while during the same time commercial 
 builders erected 27,100 tenements, which house 1,267,- 
 550 people. It would require a long time, proceeding 
 at that rate, to solve the housing problem by private 
 enterprise. But in 1901 the legislature passed the first 
 statute enacted in the State of New York that exacted 
 of builders a fair standard of tenement construction. 
 For the first time a sufficiency of light and air was 
 prescribed, adequate sanitary arrangements, and suit- 
 able precautions against fire, including fireproof stair- 
 cases and halls, as well as fire-escapes. In essential 
 particulars the houses erected under this act are 
 "model" tenements; and since its enactment ordinary 
 building enterprise has provided 21,761 houses, with 
 room for 1,266,275 people. The experience of New 
 York seems to point out to other cities the way in 
 which best results may be expected under present con- 
 ditions : a statute that will virtually say to builders : 
 "You shall not build a house in which people ought not
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM l6l 
 
 to live." Should there be in years to come a marked 
 change in the terms on which land is held and im- 
 proved, the case might be altered. 
 
 Ill 
 
 We have learned then what we need to do and how 
 not to do it. Our chief reliance for housing reform 
 must be on wise legislation. Two things must be 
 aimed at : abolition of existing buildings unfit for hab- 
 itation, and prevention of inadequate building for the 
 future. The latter is incomparably the easier task. 
 Any city will find it comparatively a simple matter to 
 establish building regulations such as will ensure the 
 erection of "model" houses for the time to come ; and 
 exceedingly difficult to undo the mistakes of the past. 
 The sooner, therefore, the future is taken in hand and 
 made reasonably secure the better for all concerned. 
 As a rule, our cities have not sufficient authority to 
 enact proper measures for themselves, but must have 
 recourse to the legislatures of their States. Here, 
 then, is the first objective of effort at reform. 
 
 In several States efforts have been repeatedly made 
 to secure a good building law, and their successes and 
 failures are instructive for others. The tenement 
 problem first pressed in New York, and in 1877 that 
 city secured from the State legislature a bill which was 
 believed to be a solution of the problem. But, owing 
 to the inexperience of those who drafted the statute, 
 this law opened the way to some of the worst abuses
 
 1 62 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 and errors of housing that have ever been known. The 
 notorious "dumb-bell" tenements were planned by 
 builders so as to comply with the provisions of the 
 law but to be more promotive of disease, vice, and 
 crime than any of the older "rookeries" that they dis- 
 placed. In round numbers 10,000 of these tenements 
 were built in New York, containing over 100,000 dark 
 rooms, including rooms opening into so-called "air- 
 shafts" which admit little air and less light. These 
 rooms, into which sunlight can never enter and where 
 fresh air is almost unknown, are surcharged with dis- 
 ease, and are the abodes of the vicious and the criminal 
 as well as of the virtuous and unfortunate poor. They 
 send a stream of sick to our hospitals and of criminals 
 to our jails and prisons. The respectable and self-re- 
 specting workers must live side by side with the vicious 
 and the diseased. We have here most effective dem- 
 onstration of what has been previously said, that good 
 intentions are not sufficient equipment for the would- 
 be reformer, that expert knowledge of actual condi- 
 tions and effective remedies is indispensable. Legis- 
 latures do not possess this; many "reformers" do not 
 possess it. Statutes will be worse than useless, they 
 are likely to be positively harmful, unless they are 
 drawn with help of the best expert aid. 
 
 For the most part, existing statutes are far too lax, 
 and, such as they are, they are inadequately enforced. 
 In particular, almost nothing is attempted toward the 
 demolition of the older and more unsuitable buildings. 
 That this is a task beset with many difficulties has al- 
 ready been recognized, but that a thing is difficult is
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 163 
 
 no reason for utter failure to attempt it. As in the 
 matter of erecting new buildings, the demolition of 
 the old has been left to private enterprise. The ob- 
 stacle that prevents progress by this method is the 
 same that we encounter when we analyze any of our 
 social ills Profit. The old building is the most lucra- 
 tive form of real estate investment, returning often an 
 income of fifteen to twenty per cent., while a building 
 up to modern requirements would be so comparatively 
 costly that the net income would certainly be less than 
 ten per cent, and perhaps not over five. The average 
 owner cannot be expected to improve his property 
 under such circumstances ; it would not be "good busi- 
 ness." The moral sentiment of the community, ex- 
 pressed in statute, must compel him to act. Such 
 statute should not be too drastic. It should prescribe 
 a reasonable limit of time within which the improve- 
 ment must be made. Recognizing that it has hitherto 
 acquiesced in the wrong and so has become a partner 
 in the guilt, the city should, in some cases, bear a part 
 of the expense or grant a temporary relief from taxa- 
 tion that would counterbalance the expense thrown 
 on the owner. 
 
 A single type of statute will not serve for all cities, 
 because the terms of the housing problem are dif- 
 ferent in the small city from those of the large, and 
 are by no means the same even in the large cities. New 
 York is unique ; it stands in a class by itself. Its physi- 
 cal conditions doom it to the tenement house forever, 
 because it can house its immense population in no other 
 way. But other American cities not only have a small-
 
 164 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 er population to house, but have practically unlimited 
 opportunity to spread in all directions. Given good 
 transit facilities, they can distribute their population 
 over a wide territory. Hence, in most cities realiza- 
 tion of ideal housing is a possibility, and that ideal is 
 a separate house for every family. The detached, or 
 semi-detached house, in which the greater part of the 
 working people of Philadelphia live, for example, is 
 duplicated in a large number of American cities and 
 should be characteristic of all. There is no difficulty 
 in building such houses, in ample numbers to supply 
 the demand, by private enterprise; and, for the most 
 part, there is little fault to be found with their sani- 
 tary condition. Their rents also, though probably 
 higher than they should be, are not exorbitant. 
 Through the aid of building and loan cooperative so- 
 cieties many thousands of workers have been able to 
 buy their houses and be their own landlords. 
 
 It is, therefore, a clear municipal duty to provide 
 rapid transit to suburbs, or at least to see that it is 
 provided. Without such provision the ideal solution 
 of the housing problem cannot be regarded as within 
 the bounds of possibility. The worker must live near 
 his work ; we must accept that as one absolute datum 
 of our problem. But nearness has come to be a mat- 
 ter of time rather than of space. For the rich man 
 with his automobile, the suburb is to-day nearer his 
 office than his city house used to be ; and the result is 
 that, more and more, the rich are living in the suburbs 
 and deserting the cities. Rapid transit puts the poor 
 man on a level with the rich in this access to his work,
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 165 
 
 and so the poor man can also live in a suburb. What- 
 ever may be the policy of society in the future toward 
 all means of transportation, its present attitude toward 
 city and suburban railways should no longer be doubt- 
 ful. Whatever private enterprise is unable or unwill- 
 ing to undertake, our municipalities must supply. This 
 is no more than organized society owes to the units 
 that compose it. And if our present municipal ma- 
 chinery lacks either courage or intelligence to attack 
 this problem and deal with it successfully it must be 
 swept out of existence and something more effective 
 must be devised and put in its place. For this slum 
 problem is literally a question of life or death; the 
 cities must conquer the slums or the slums will con- 
 quer the cities. 
 
 In cities where tenement houses, few or many, must 
 be built, a few general principles should control their 
 erection. The health and safety of the dwellers should 
 be the first consideration. It would be injudicious to 
 accept the suggestion of some and require all such 
 buildings to be of fireproof construction. If building 
 is made too costly it will cease altogether and, as a re- 
 sult, the housing problem will become more acute than 
 ever. Slow-burning construction would suffice, all 
 halls and staircases to be of iron and stone or brick, 
 with adequate fire escapes as an additional security 
 against fire. A minimum size of rooms should be pre- 
 scribed ; every room should have a window opening 
 either on the street or on an open court of prescribed 
 size. The plumbing should be of the best, the water 
 supply abundant, and toilet facilities adequate for
 
 1 66 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 cleanliness and decency. Experience shows that not 
 all desirable details need be prescribed. Though the 
 New York tenement law of 1901 prescribed only a 
 private toilet for each apartment, 85 per cent, of the 
 houses built under that act provide a bathroom also. 
 Overcrowding should be prevented by a limitation of 
 the number that may occupy each room and apart- 
 ment. The cost and labor of inspection, in order to 
 enforce all these details, may, in large part, be reduced 
 by throwing responsibility on the landlords. They and 
 their agents know better than anybody else whether 
 the legal requirements are observed in their houses, 
 and a suitable penalty for violation would stimulate 
 them to considerable vigilance. 
 
 Inasmuch as the back yard has practically disap- 
 peared from our large cities, the question of housing 
 reform is directly connected with another important 
 municipal question : the providing of suitable and ade- 
 quate parks and playgrounds. Both children and 
 adults need such provision, but the children most of 
 all. Chicago has lately spent $13,000,000 on play- 
 grounds, and that city never made a better investment 
 in its history. More than 18,000 of the youth of the 
 town are organized in athletic clubs, and the results 
 to the health of the city and the productive power of 
 the people are out of all proportion to the amount of 
 the investment. 
 
 IV 
 
 We must by no means pass by suggestions and plans 
 for the relief of congested population in our cities,
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 167 
 
 which would, of course, greatly simplify the slum 
 problem. Our newer Western communities, where the 
 problem is less urgent, might well go to school to 
 Australia and learn how to do it. Several years ago 
 a world-wide competition for designs of a proposed 
 new capital city was instituted, and in 1912 the first 
 award was given to a Chicago architect and landscape 
 gardener. This is of itself guarantee that we have 
 brains and skill available to solve all our problems. 
 The new Australian capital is to be located in a fed- 
 eral tract of 900 square miles, much like our District 
 of Columbia. The plan adopted was evidently sug- 
 gested by Major L'Enf ant's design for the city of 
 Washington, but modified to suit the conditions. The 
 city will be built around two lakes, connected by an 
 ornamental waterway, the whole forming an irregular 
 body of water some eight miles long and from a quar- 
 ter of a mile to two miles wide. Four distinct quar- 
 ters or districts are set off: for a government center, 
 a residential section, a manufacturing section, and a 
 suburban or semi-agricultural district. Each of these 
 has its own center a park and public buildings with 
 avenues radiating thence like spokes from a hub, and 
 streets of parallelogram arrangement. Nothing could 
 make a stronger appeal at once to the eye and to the 
 imagination. In such a city congestion and over- 
 crowding will forever be impossible. In the matter of 
 the slum, an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of 
 cure. 
 
 As to the older cities, the Honorable James T. 
 Bryce it does not seem right to call him viscount
 
 1 68 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 former ambassador from England, one of the most 
 profound students of things American, in an address 
 delivered not long before his departure from our 
 shores, made a suggestion of much value. He de- 
 clared the true municipal ideal to be cities of 150,000 
 people. He said the country would be more prosper- 
 ous and happy if the manufacturer with a plant to 
 erect would take it away from the great centers and 
 place it in the heart of the country, where a garden 
 city would form around it, and where workers and 
 all classes of individuals could lead a normal and 
 healthful life. 
 
 Mr. Bryce probably meant that much more should 
 be done than has been done along this line; for he 
 could not be ignorant of the fact that some experi- 
 ments have been made, though not with the most en- 
 couraging results. The town of Pullman, on the out- 
 skirts of Chicago, was established on precisely Mr. 
 Bryce's principle by the corporation of that name. It 
 was and is a model town, a veritable garden city, with 
 broad streets, beautiful parks, perfectly built and ap- 
 pointed houses a place, in short, 
 
 Where every prospect pleases 
 And only man is vile. 
 
 In fact, man was very vile there. The exorbitant 
 rents charged by the corporation for houses, the 
 equally exorbitant prices exacted by the corporation 
 stores, and the generally tyrannical management of the 
 property, first provoked one of the greatest strikes of
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 169 
 
 our history and later led to the incorporation of the 
 town into the city of Chicago. Its people preferred 
 the disadvantages of one of the most corrupt city gov- 
 ernments in the world to longer endurance of the pa- 
 ternal kindness of the Pullman corporation. 1 
 
 The Krupps have established a similar town in con- 
 nection with their great works at Essen, the Pittsburgh 
 of Germany. The streets are wide and clean, parks and 
 trees abound, and this firm has had enough enlightened 
 selfishness to build a sufficient number of one-family 
 houses to provide for the workers, and to charge them 
 a lower rent than private landlords at Essen formerly 
 demanded. A garden colony, named Altenhoff, has 
 also been established, in which the retired and infirm 
 workers live free of rent. There are, in addition, hos- 
 pitals, sanatoriums, and other helpful institutions. 
 
 But possibly Mr. Bryce's suggestion was prompted 
 less by what he may have seen or read in the United 
 States or Germany than by the experience of his own 
 country. Lever Brothers, makers of soap, have es- 
 tablished a garden city as a suburb of Liverpool. Port 
 Sunlight occupies an area of 230 acres and was 
 planned by an expert, who made skilful use of the 
 natural features of the location. Roads, parks, and 
 public buildings are the best of their kind. The cot- 
 tages for workers, instead of the usual monotony, dis- 
 
 1 The United Steel Corporation is in process of establishing a 
 model town at Gary, Ind., but, though several pictorial and 
 laudatory accounts of its progress have been published, there 
 is a singular lack of any vital information. It is impossible, at 
 present, to form any intelligent opinion regarding what has been 
 accomplished for the well-being of the workers.
 
 I7O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 play considerable diversity of style. Ample play- 
 grounds and athletic facilities are as prominent fea- 
 tures of the city as church, library, or art gallery. The 
 rents charged are merely sufficient to keep the property 
 in good repair and maintain the community institu- 
 tions, the company making no profit from an invest- 
 ment of $2,500,000, finding its sufficient returns in the 
 increased welfare and efficiency of its workers. They 
 recognize that "business cannot be carried on by physi- 
 cally deficient employees any more than war can be 
 successfully waged by physically deficient soldiers." 
 This is one of the most enlightened enterprises of its 
 kind anywhere in the world. 
 
 But this is so wholly exceptional a garden city, be- 
 cause of the exceptional social intelligence of its 
 founders, as to weaken very slightly the conclusion that 
 private enterprise cannot be expected to make a con- 
 tribution of much value to the housing problem. Port 
 Sunlight is almost solitary among proprietary cities 
 in being what it pretends to be. Most towns of the 
 kind, under pretense of philanthropy, have been a mere 
 means of skinning the workers. Not content with ex- 
 ploiting them in the factory, corporations have made 
 their towns an additional means of exploitation, in 
 rent, food and everything they could control. With an 
 ingenuity almost more than human, that may without 
 prejudice be called diabolical, they have made these 
 fair-seeming enterprises the means of stealing from 
 helpless workers the last possible percentage of their 
 product, all the while with unctuous hypocrisy making 
 loud pretenses of benevolence and goodwill. Long
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 171 
 
 before capitalists as a class could be raised to the plane 
 of mental and ethical eminence of Lever Brothers, 
 capitalism will have ceased to be. 
 
 The most hopeful results, up to the present, both in 
 England and in Germany, have been reached where 
 the garden city has not been a humanitarian enterprise, 
 but has been established on ordinary business princi- 
 ples. Of several such towns a good representative is 
 Letchworth, near London. It is a cooperative affair, 
 the profits being limited to five per cent. It occupies 
 a tract of nearly 4,000 acres, and has grown in a few 
 years to a population of 7,000. It is laid out on the 
 plan of an English country village ; streets and houses 
 are of great variety; generous provision has been made 
 for athletic sports and numerous community buildings 
 are provided. 
 
 Little has been done as yet in England by direct 
 municipal action toward the establishment of garden 
 cities, but much has been done in Germany, within a 
 very short time. The first city of the kind was Hel- 
 lerau, begun in 1909 as a private enterprise, and now 
 cooperative under municipal oversight. It occupies a 
 tract of 345 acres near Dresden, and its growth from 
 the beginning has been remarkable. The city is care- 
 fully laid out with regard to artistic effect, and the 
 carrying out of the idea is secured by having a com- 
 mission pass on all architects' plans. The success of 
 Hellerau has stimulated other cities to undertake like 
 suburbs, among them Niirnberg and Munich. The 
 German ideal of a garden city is a suburban town sys- 
 tematically planned, either now or ultimately to be
 
 172 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 owned by the municipality. This discourages specula- 
 tion in land and ensures that the increment of value 
 shall accrue to the community. 
 
 The garden city naturally commends itself to those 
 who look for quick results, because it is indisputably 
 an easier project than remaking an old city. But, 
 while the new suburban town may thus be made to 
 do something of value in providing for the housing of 
 thousands, other thousands must still remain in the 
 great cities. The garden city is a palliative, very use- 
 ful, quite hopeful, but at best only palliative; it is no 
 cure for the slum. The larger cities will continue to 
 exist; in all probability they will grow even larger, 
 and we must learn how to live under these conditions. 
 The city must be rebuilt ; the slum must go. 
 
 It is just here that another experience of Germany 
 becomes of great value for us. 1 We have not entirely 
 outgrown that arrogance of spirit which led an Ameri- 
 can Senator of a past generation to ask : "What have 
 we to do with 'abroad'?" We no longer flatly deny 
 that Europe can teach us, but we are not yet very 
 eager to learn lessons from that quarter. Nevertheless, 
 it will be well for us to realize that some European 
 countries have anticipated us in dealing with social 
 
 * For many of the facts in IV and V of this chapter I am 
 indebted to Howe's "European Cities at Work," but personal 
 observation confirms the facts related under V.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 173 
 
 problems, and in particular have so treated the slum 
 that it is rapidly vanishing. 
 
 Up to 1870 there was no country more backward 
 than Germany in treatment of the slum problem. 
 Nothing had been done since the Middle Ages to im- 
 prove German cities. They had certain advantages 
 over us, however, for dealing with the housing of their 
 people. The very age of their towns guaranteed the 
 existence of a civic pride that we have not had time 
 to develop. Their governments and citizens were 
 more accustomed to a paternal policy than ours. Ac- 
 cordingly, the leading citizens and men of business 
 took the matter in hand and have continued to manage 
 it. What would have happened had any American 
 city been turned over to its bankers and merchants 
 and manufacturers to do with it as they chose? They 
 would have grabbed every franchise in sight, stolen 
 everything not nailed down, and generally exploited 
 their fellow-citizens to the utmost, to swell their own 
 private fortunes. That is precisely what they have 
 done, so far as they were able, so far as they could 
 control city governments. But the business men of 
 German cities did differently ; under their management 
 a policy of municipal socialism has been pushed far. 
 They have reversed the American method, which is 
 for the community to keep and operate all enterprises 
 that are unprofitable and onerous, and turn over to pri- 
 vate parties for exploitation everything that is profit- 
 able. The German cities keep the profitable enterprises 
 for the community, if they concern the community. 
 
 The housing question was regarded as an insepa-
 
 174 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 rable part of the development of a German city. And 
 so it was not left, as among us, to private enterprise 
 and haphazard municipal ordinances. In every case 
 they have done what only a single American city has 
 even contemplated of course, only Washington can 
 be meant and planned the town for generations to 
 come. It will be an easy task in future years to pro- 
 ject these plans to any desired extent and preserve 
 the unity of design as the town grows. Washington 
 is the one really beautiful city in America, but Ger- 
 many abounds in beautiful towns. Usually a publit 
 competition has preceded the adoption of a plan, to 
 which the best engineers and architects have contrib- 
 uted their ideas. Once a choice has been made it has 
 been adhered to, with only such modifications as ex- 
 perience has suggested. 
 
 As already intimated, a generation ago German cit- 
 ies were no more ready than other towns to house the 
 people who began to pour into them. But they awoke 
 to the situation ; American cities continued to sleep. 
 German cities, with hardly an exception, were still con- 
 tained within the old mediaeval walls ; the streets were 
 narrow, the houses small and unsanitary. The walls 
 were razed, save here and there portions preserved 
 for historic association or picturesque effect ; the moats 
 were filled; and these spaces were turned into boule- 
 vards, parks, and walks. In the old city many build- 
 ings have been torn down and rebuilt, scrupulous care 
 being taken to preserve the ancient architectural 
 forms ; some streets have been widened, and the whole 
 much improved. But, of course, the greatest effect
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 175 
 
 has been obtained in the extension of the city beyond 
 the old walls on the new plans adopted. 
 
 While private enterprise has been permitted and en- 
 couraged to undertake as much as it chose, there has 
 been no hesitation to make the city itself the leader 
 in this movement. Ulm, a city of 56,000 people in 
 Wurttemberg, has bought up land so extensively that 
 it now owns 80 per cent, of the area of the town and 
 suburb's, amounting to nearly 5,000 acres. Out of 
 this a large woodland has been reserved for recreation. 
 Industries are confined to certain districts something 
 that no American city has even attempted to do. The 
 city itself has built 175 houses, and leases ground for 
 others to build for seventy years, agreeing to buy back 
 the houses at the expiration of the lease for 80 per 
 cent, of their cost. As municipal ordinances strictly 
 control the type of house to be erected, this is a safe 
 offer to make. Nor is Ulm alone in such enterprise; 
 Munich owns 23.7 per cent, of the property within 
 its limits, Leipzig 23.3 per cent, Strassburg 33.2, Han- 
 nover, 37.7. Outside the city limits most towns own 
 much more land than within; Berlin, for example, 
 owns in the suburbs more than twice the whole city 
 area, and Strassburg almost three times. 
 
 Frank furt-am-Main is one of the most progressive 
 cities of Germany, and by consequence one of the most 
 beautiful. The municipality owns one-half of the area 
 within its limits, and 3,800 acres outside, making a 
 total of 16,600 acres. Its broad streets, scrupulously 
 clean, its numerous well-kept parks, make it an ex- 
 ceedingly attractive town. The city owns and oper-
 
 176 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 ates its street railways, electric light and water works, 
 leaving the gas supply to private enterprise. It was 
 the first German city to tax the unearned increment, 
 but most other cities followed its example and in 1911 
 the principle was adopted in imperial taxation. The 
 problem of municipal finance hardly exists for Frank- 
 furt, or any of the German cities. What is not pro- 
 duced by regular revenue for improvements they have 
 had no difficulty in borrowing on bonds at a low inter- 
 est rate. Like all other German towns situated on 
 rivers or seaports, Frankfurt owns its docks and har- 
 bor facilities, managed in harmony with the imperial 
 government, which controls the means of transporta- 
 tion. 
 
 Dusseldorf may be taken as an example of the 
 smaller cities of Germany, not so much visited by 
 tourists, and of no great industrial or commercial im- 
 portance. This town operates practically all municipal 
 enterprises : gas, electric light, street railways, water. 
 Lighting, either by gas or electricity, costs less than 
 in most German towns, yet a handsome revenue is de- 
 rived from this source for public purposes. The street 
 railways charge a fare just half that of American 
 lines, and are profitable at that. Cars are provided 
 that resemble a pullman coach, or a magnate's private 
 car, more than the miserable contraptions that we 
 Americans submit to be carried in. The city has un- 
 dertaken large operations in land, in order to check 
 private speculation and keep down prices. It not only 
 erects houses for workingmen, but has established a 
 municipal bank and pawnshop for their benefit, and
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM IJJ 
 
 maintains a system of insurance against sickness, acci- 
 dent, and old age. Many of these things have no 
 immediate relation to the matter we are considering, 
 the housing problem. They are interesting, however, 
 as showing that, in the experience of Diisseldorf, the 
 attempt to accomplish one kind of social betterment 
 is very likely to lead to another. The housing prob- 
 lem and the beautifying of the city mark the begin- 
 ning, not the end, of the modern municipal activity of 
 Diisseldorf. It has done somewhat less than some 
 others in constructing garden cities in the suburbs, 
 because the whole town has been transformed into 
 what well deserves to be given that name. There is 
 not another more beautiful city in Europe to-day. 
 
 With straighter streets, wider streets, streets less 
 crowded and better policed, German cities have better 
 transit facilities than American. The cars make less 
 frequent stops and run much faster with more safety 
 to the people than with us. The parcels post also 
 gives great aid to the solution of the housing prob- 
 lem, and quite as much to reduce the high cost of liv- 
 ing. The middleman is largely eliminated : direct 
 from producer to consumer is more and more the rule, 
 especially with food products. The public market 
 does the rest. The butcher shop and the grocery store 
 fill a small place in the life of a German town; one 
 may travel miles, especially in the suburbs, and never 
 see either. Germany has entirely solved neither the 
 housing problem nor the living problem, but she has 
 attacked both with a vigor and intelligence that con- 
 trast painfully with our sleepy stupidity, and she is in
 
 178 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 a fair way to reach passable solutions before we get 
 waked up enough to make any real effort. 
 
 One item in Germany's procedure is instructive, as 
 a lesson in regard to the way in which social questions 
 are interlocked; so that to do anything of value has 
 more than one good effect. A generation ago Bis- 
 marck devised a system of workingmen's insurances 
 and pensions, as he openly avowed, to "dish" the 
 Socialists. He effectually dished, not the Socialists, 
 but himself, for the Socialist vote increased thereafter 
 more rapidly than before. But the system was not 
 half bad; it was, of course, a palliative, and slight at 
 that, but it was better than nothing, and so far as it 
 went the Socialists could not and did not object to it 
 on principle. But, after thirty years or so, the funds 
 accumulated for that purpose became an embarrass- 
 ment; it was necessary to find some safe and moder- 
 ately profitable investment for them. There is no 
 safer investment than real estate, and so these funds 
 have been freely used to solve the housing problem. 
 Model tenements have been erected by their aid and 
 pay a fair interest on the capital invested in them, 
 which can be used to pay the insurances and pensions 
 that fall due. It is said that one of our insurance cor- 
 porations, the Metropolitan Life, has adopted a simi- 
 lar method of investment, advancing money for erect- 
 ing tenements, controlling the type of building and 
 regulating its occupation, thus supplying excellent 
 homes at moderate cost. If more of the funds of life 
 insurance companies were invested in similar manner, 
 instead of loaned for gambling on the stock exchange,
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 179 
 
 there would be less complaint of the companies and 
 marked advance toward solution of the housing prob- 
 lem. 
 
 VI 
 
 It has already been pointed out that the slum ques- 
 tion is at bottom a question of finance, and a hint has 
 also been given of the method by which the problem 
 may easily be solved. German cities have shown us; 
 some of the newer Canadian communities have shown 
 us. So long as the chief burden of taxation falls on 
 improvements, building will be delayed and land spec- 
 ulation will be encouraged. An owner of an unim- 
 proved city lot can now hold it, while the city builds 
 walks and sewers and paves streets, for which he usu- 
 ally pays only a relatively small tax, until the rise in 
 value of his property satisfies his greed and he is will- 
 ing to sell to some one who will erect a building upon 
 it. When the building is erected, a relatively heavy 
 tax is levied on it, and the better the building the 
 heavier the tax. We thus offer a high inducement to 
 owners and builders to build in the cheapest and flim- 
 siest manner possible, and to maintain an old building 
 as long as it will stand, rather than pull it down and 
 erect a better. When we become socially intelligent 
 enough to remove our taxes from buildings and levy 
 them on land values, we shall no longer be guilty of 
 selecting out the most enterprising and thrifty of the 
 people and fining them for every contribution they 
 make to our progress and general welfare.
 
 ISO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Taxing the unearned increment, besides being ethi- 
 cally just, is, therefore, socially wise. 1 As this incre- 
 ment is more and more taken for public use, other 
 forms of taxation will be found unnecessary. Land 
 speculation will be first lessened, then destroyed, as 
 the motive for holding unimproved land becomes in- 
 operative. The builder being no longer penalized for 
 his enterprise, more beautiful and durable construction 
 can be afforded and the quality of buildings, both pub- 
 lic and private, may be expected to rise rapidly. It 
 will probably be advisable to prescribe a minimum 
 standard of construction, but builders in general will 
 often, if not always, find it profitable to exceed this. 
 
 The slum is generally regarded as a problem of large 
 cities only; and for convenience it has been so treated 
 in this discussion; but the discussion should not close 
 without at least an intimation that this assumption 
 does not altogether correspond with fact. Cities of 
 the second and third classes already have this prob- 
 lem to deal with, and their future growth is likely to 
 make it pressing. Even towns of 25,000 population 
 and under are not so free from the slum problem as 
 they may complacently think themselves to be. Not 
 a few of the smaller towns have had a painful awaken- 
 
 1 The objection that it would be impossible to value land 
 with sufficient accuracy to afford a basis for equitable taxation 
 is shown by experience to be, like so many objections to so- 
 cially progressive measures, quite unfounded. So far from dif- 
 ficult to estimate accurately, land values are the easiest of all 
 values to ascertain with accuracy. The census of 1900 separately 
 valued farm lands and improvements. New York, Boston and 
 other cities have made valuations of the land within their limits.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM l8l 
 
 ing of late to realization that there are shameful hous- 
 ing conditions within their limits. They are awaken- 
 ing to the fact that unless they face these conditions 
 and at once provide better housing they will soon have 
 to contend with all the evils of the great cities, on a 
 smaller scale to be sure, but the same in quality. Wise 
 action in New York in 1830, or even in 1850, would 
 have prevented that city's difficulties. To-day is the 
 day of salvation for the smaller towns. 
 
 There is no social problem in which Christian people 
 ought to be more deeply interested than the slum prob- 
 lem. There is no problem to which the Gospel of 
 Jesus is more vitally related. For the home is the 
 foundation of society, and in the slum we see what 
 capitalism has done to the home. The progress of the 
 Gospel is inseparably bound up with the maintenance 
 of the home. A Christian society is under straitest 
 obligation, for its own preservation and progress, to 
 see that the homes of all its members, poor as well as 
 rich, so long as there must be poor and rich, are made 
 habitable. To neglect this is social suicide.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 
 
 "THE oldest profession in the world" is no longer 
 a profession but a business. It has always been pur- 
 sued for gain, of course, but the gains were once 
 small and accrued to the scarlet woman herself. Now 
 vice has felt the influence of the age and has become 
 commercialized; and, finally, it has succumbed to the 
 irresistible tendency and has become a trust. We 
 call this form of vice the "social evil" and we do 
 well, for it is the sin of society, not of the individual 
 alone. "The wages of prostitution," says George 
 Bernard Shaw to the people of England, "are stitched 
 into your buttonholes and into your blouse, pasted into 
 your matchboxes and your boxes of pins, stuffed into 
 your mattress, mixed with the paint on your walls, 
 and stuck between the joints of your water pipes. The 
 very glaze on your basin and teacup has in it the lead 
 poison that you offer to the decent woman as the re- 
 ward of honest labor, while the procuress is offering 
 chicken and champagne." 
 
 We call these poor creatures that walk our streets 
 offering themselves for sale "fallen women," but the 
 
 182
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 183 
 
 truth is that the whole community has fallen with 
 them. We who sit smug and self-satisfied at our vir- 
 tuous firesides are partners in this traffic; we are en- 
 joying the rewards of a system of which they are an 
 inseparable part. They have been ground into the 
 dirt in order that our womenfolk may be kept spot- 
 less. It is for us, therefore, as well as for them, to 
 weep and repent our fault, and go and sin no more. 
 
 There are people who will deeply resent these words 
 as they read them, and the depth of their resentment 
 measures the necessity for speaking such words, and 
 even harsher. For the criminal hypocrisy of the moral 
 part of the comumnity is responsible for the great ex- 
 tent of this frightful evil. Among the good and re- 
 ligious people of this world there is a vast quantity 
 of what Dickens named Podsnappery. Mr. Podsnap, 
 it will be remembered, had a way of disposing of dis- 
 agreeable facts by a flourish of his arm, sweeping 
 them behind him, with : "I don't want to know about 
 it; I don't choose to discuss it; I don't admit it." The 
 "good" men and women, and even the bad men and 
 women who would be thought good, have insisted that 
 this matter should never be mentioned above a whis- 
 per. Not a word must be openly spoken or written 
 about it veiled allusions and decorous phrases were 
 the utmost admissible. It is only recently that it has 
 been discovered to be possible to discuss the problem of 
 vice with all necessary plainness, yet without coarse- 
 ness. 
 
 This policy of finger-on-lip and sh-h-h-h! has been 
 tried long and has proved a complete failure. The no-
 
 184 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 tion that women and young people must be kept in a 
 state of blessed innocence (by which we really mean 
 a state of ignorance that is often far from blessed) 
 and permit only men, and "men of the world" at that, 
 to know the facts, is so at variance with reality as to 
 be absurd beyond words. When our women and our 
 young people cannot go upon our streets, cannot read 
 a daily newspaper, without having the facts in their 
 grossest form thrust upon them, why keep up this 
 vain pretense of "innocence" ? Our conduct is mere 
 prudishness, and has become one of the chief obstacles 
 in the way of solution of our problem. It is also one 
 of the things upon which the people of the underworld 
 chiefly rely, and not in vain. This very ignorance, mis- 
 called innocence, is one cause of the fall of thousands 
 of young women every year. If they knew the pitfalls 
 that surround them they would be on guard. Turn 
 on the light, then; only vice itself has anything to fear 
 from it. 
 
 But it is not merely the hypocrisy of prudishness, 
 it is the hypocrisy of fear, that strives to put the ta- 
 boo on discussion. Nearly every social ill from 
 which we suffer is discovered to have its roots in capi- 
 talism. If investigation and discussion should make 
 it clear that vice is nothing else than a part of the price 
 that the great multitudes of toilers are paying to main- 
 tain in luxury an exploiting class, a tremendous impulse 
 will be given to the demand that capitalism shall cease. 
 Realizing this, the capitalistic class and all its adhe- 
 rents strive to hide from view the Fores of society for 
 which it is responsible, and so far as possible to deny
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 185 
 
 their very existence. And often a red herring is drawn 
 across the trail by fussy "investigations" by "commis- 
 sions" that do not investigate, and elaborate "reports" 
 that carefully avoid telling anything but surface facts. 
 One of the richest of our younger multi-millionaires 
 has financed a pretentious "scientific" investigation; 
 and every now and then the laboring mountains bring 
 forth a ridiculous mouse. 
 
 If the inevitable penalties of vice fell only upon the 
 guilty we might possibly continue to look on with self- 
 ish equanimity and see the guilty suffer. But society 
 has awakened to the truth of the Gospel that no man 
 liveth to himself, that if one member suffers all the 
 members suffer with him. Science confirms Scripture 
 that the sins of the guilty are often visited on the 
 innocent. Not only the women who voluntarily 
 choose vice instead of virtue are dragged down to hell, 
 but the daughters of our sheltered homes become the 
 victims of those foul beasts of prey, the recruiting of- 
 ficers of the underworld. Nobody can longer be sure 
 that his own family is immune from this frightful 
 curse. Not only do men who love impurity more than 
 purity pay the cost of their indulgence in venereal dis- 
 ease, but they become sources of infection to innocent 
 women and children. Not only is the underworld 
 putrid with these diseases, but it is rapidly passing on 
 the infection to the upper world. Careful examina- 
 tions and estimates by the best qualified men of science 
 warrant the belief that twelve per cent, of the entire 
 population of London and Berlin are afflicted with 
 syphilis, and fifteen per cent, of the population of
 
 1 86 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Paris. Our great cities are probably no better and pos- 
 sibly worse. In sheer self-defense, if it would avoid 
 universal contamination of blood, society is now 
 forced to deal with this problem more effectively than 
 it has ever yet dreamed of doing. 
 
 Our governments, Federal and State, expend mil- 
 lions every year in exterminating insect pests that 
 threaten the farmer's crop, and other millions in the 
 prevention and cure of diseases that attack the farm- 
 er's stock. Research stations and agricultural colleges 
 are studying these problems and are rapidly finding so- 
 lutions for them. This is part of our campaign of con- 
 servation, and is mentioned by way of praise, not of 
 criticism. Criticism should be directed to another 
 point: for this problem of vice that vitally concerns 
 the interests of society, that attacks the very root of 
 social institutions, the family, that threatens the life 
 and happiness of millions of our people for this gov- 
 ernments have no thought, spend no money. What 
 has been accomplished thus far has been due to private 
 enterprise ; and, naturally, it has only skimmed the sur- 
 face of things. Investigations financed by the very 
 class that maintains the evil cannot be expected to 
 bring forth truth, at least not the whole truth. Yet, 
 superficial as the investigations have been, and feebly 
 palliative as are the remedies proposed, we have 
 learned much all that we really need to know for 
 immediate effective action. 
 
 We have learned, to begin with, that the condition 
 society has to face is this: Vice of all kinds, and 
 especially sexual vice, the most formidable of all, is
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 1 87 
 
 a great commercial system, in which large capital is 
 invested, and from which immense revenues are de- 
 rived. It is not only vice but greed that we have to 
 fight. Mr. Samuel H. London, a government vice in- 
 vestigator, estimates that there are 63,000 white slaves, 
 whose "earnings" are $188,000,000 annually. The 
 Rockefeller Bureau of Social Hygiene, in its first re- 
 port of its work during 1912, gives, as a conservative 
 estimate of the number of prostitutes in the borough 
 of Manhattan, 15,000; and says that a large number 
 of resorts are operated as a trust or "combine," con- 
 trolled by a group of about fifteen men. The same 
 facts, on a smaller scale, would be discovered by sim- 
 ilar investigation of any of our large cities, and to a 
 considerable degree they exist in our smaller towns. 
 We need no exact, scientific statistics to convince us 
 of the extent and enormity of the evil. 
 
 We have also learned that in every American city 
 of any considerable size, and in most of the smaller 
 towns as well, there is a secret league between the 
 municipal authorities and those who conduct this vile 
 business. Vice is under the ban of the law, and it 
 is the duty of the police to suppress it. Instead of 
 making any effort to do so they give the business their 
 protection, in return for a regular tax levied by them 
 and as regularly paid. From this "graft" police of- 
 ficials heap up fortunes, while a considerable part goes 
 to maintain the corrupt political machines of our great 
 cities. Gambling, another form of vice, is commercial- 
 ized in a similar way and receives like protection. The 
 saloon owes its ability to violate with impunity all
 
 1 88 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 license laws to the same source. All these forces of 
 evil are so interlocked and so intrenched within our 
 present municipal systems and laws as to be impreg- 
 nable for the present. Society is powerless to deal 
 with them until it can effect fundamental reforms in 
 government. Every little while there is an "exposure" 
 with great display of "scare heads" in the newspapers; 
 but it exposes nothing that every intelligent person did 
 not know before, and it leads to nothing. Once in a 
 decade or so there is some notorious crime, like the 
 Rosenthal murder, which brings the underworld into 
 the lime light for a few weeks, and may lead to a 
 brief moral spasm in the community, and may even 
 result in the conviction of a criminal or two. But none 
 of these things affects vice in any appreciable degree. 
 It does not make a dent in the system. Men may 
 come and men may go, but the system goes on forever. 
 And it will go on forever, unless society which 
 means all of us ceases its fooling with the symptoms 
 of this social disease and goes to the root of the mat- 
 ter, seeks out the cause and removes it. This is a per- 
 fectly simple thing to do, though very difficult. For 
 there is practical unanimity among investigators of our 
 social conditions, so far as they have courage to speak 
 out, that poverty is the great cause of sexual vice, as 
 it exists among us to-day. Young girls are not in- 
 herently vicious, and very few of them choose this 
 life of shame because they love it. They are literally 
 driven to it, or tempted beyond their power of re- 
 sistance, or decoyed and forced into it. The greed 
 of those who have commercialized the business and
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 189 
 
 the need of those who enter it are the two grand fac- 
 tors of our problem, beside which any others are 
 negligible. 
 
 II 
 
 Possibly it is too cavalier a disposal of the question 
 of the cause of vice to attribute it so exclusively to 
 poverty. There is no intent to deny that other causes 
 contribute to swell an evil of which poverty is the 
 fundamental cause. Ignorance ranks high among 
 these contributory causes, and its ill effects are not 
 limited to the encouragement that it gives to all forms 
 of harmful indulgence. The price that society is pay- 
 ing for ignorance is even greater than the price paid 
 for vice. On the theory that it is not "nice" or 
 "proper" for young people to know the fundamental 
 facts of sex, the origin of life, the dangers of vice, 
 they have been kept in as much ignorance as possible. 
 It has not been possible to keep them in total igno- 
 rance, but much of the knowledge that they manage 
 surreptitiously to acquire is warped and misleading. 
 In our anxiety that they should not be given right 
 information we have brought it about that they have 
 obtained much misinformation. We ought to be proud 
 of our achievement! 
 
 On the contrary, we are becoming somewhat 
 ashamed of it, and are beginning to recognize the 
 necessity of sex education and sex hygiene. As a 
 consequence of this awakening it has been seriously 
 proposed that elementary instruction should be given
 
 THE GOSPEL OP JESUS 
 
 in our public schools, and a few tentative experiments 
 have been made in that direction. The ideal thing 
 would, of course, be instruction by parents; but since 
 so many parents are restrained by a false sense of 
 shame from performing this duty, and since so many 
 others are incompetent to perform it, and since in any 
 case so many children will certainly fail to receive any 
 parental instruction, some provision will eventually 
 have to be made in public education. The difficulty 
 at present is that few teachers have knowledge and 
 training that fit them to give such instruction. And 
 in country districts, where teachers are mainly girls 
 only just out of school themselves, it can hardly be 
 considered desirable that they should undertake such 
 work. It cannot be said that any satisfactory solution 
 of this part of our problem is yet in sight, but we shall 
 doubtless find one if we search with determination to 
 find. 
 
 Another contributing cause of the extensive preva- 
 lence of vice is the double standard of morals. Dr. 
 Homer Clark Bennett has put this very cleverly in 
 some verses, which, if not great poetry, are great 
 sense : 
 
 If the prodigal boy had been a girl, 
 
 How would the story have run? 
 Would the fatted calf have been killed as quick 
 
 For the daughter as for the son? 
 Would the welcome back have been the same; 
 
 Would the ring and shoes and all, 
 With the robe, been given a daughter 
 
 Had she been the one to fall?
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 1 9! 
 
 The Prodigal Son is not only a parable with a deep 
 religious teaching, but it is a story true to life in every 
 detail. Not even Jesus could have told such a story of 
 a Prodigal Daughter, for there never was an age in 
 which it would have been true to life. But this is 
 not to say that Jesus would not have approved the 
 same treatment for the daughter as for the son; and 
 in giving different treatment to the sexes we set at 
 naught the spirit, if not the letter, of all his ethical 
 teaching. But it is not so much the abstract ethical 
 character of our double standard with which we are 
 just now concerned as with its social consequences. 
 Our double standard, with its stern penalties for wom- 
 en and its easy condoning of the sins of men, does 
 little to restrain women, but much to encourage men to 
 vice. A tremendous obstacle to any real progress in 
 social purity is the eagerness of "good" mothers to 
 secure as husbands for their daughters young men 
 who are known to be vicious, and the willingness of 
 fathers to stand by and see such sacrifice without pro- 
 test. The social ostracism of the vicious of both sexes 
 would be a deadly weapon against the powers of the 
 underworld. We need a social ethic that will no more 
 tolerate "sowing of wild oats" by a young man than 
 by a young woman. It is not a double standard of 
 morality that now proclaims the contrary, but a double 
 standard of immorality. 
 
 But, after recognizing all these contributory causes, 
 we still come back to poverty as the prime cause of 
 vice. "Poverty" is, to be sure, a term of indefinite 
 connotations. If it is limited to actual suffering to
 
 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 real, acute hunger and cold and nakedness it could 
 not be said to be the chief cause of anything. Com- 
 paratively few are led or driven into a vicious or 
 criminal life by the pressure of bitter want. "Poverty" 
 may be defined in social terms as a return for one's 
 utmost service as a worker that is insufficient for a 
 decent and comfortable living. So long as those who 
 organize the business of prostitution pay high wages, 
 while those who organize ordinary "respectable" busi- 
 ness pay low wages, there will exist a social condition 
 making prostitution inevitable. What is true in the 
 large is equally true of individual cases. The poor 
 young girl, working hard for a pittance, longing for 
 the leisure, the finery, the pleasure of her more fortu- 
 nate sisters, and the rich young man ready to give her 
 all these things in exchange for herself, are a combina- 
 tion fatal to womanly virtue and social well-being. 
 Every form of vice and most forms of crime depend 
 on the presentation to a weak individual of a strong 
 temptation, to him practically irresistible, by some one 
 who profits personally or financially through the main- 
 tenance of that temptation. Vice could not exist with- 
 out constantly new recruits; the saloon could not be 
 maintained but by the continual creation of new appe- 
 tite for drink. We have been attempting to solve the 
 problem by dealing with the weak individual who falls, 
 by trying to reform magdalens and drunkards. We 
 must resolutely attack the man or the organization that 
 maintains the temptation if we expect any valuable 
 social results. 
 
 The relation of wages to living is therefore funda-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 193 
 
 mental in this problem. Recent investigations have 
 done much to establish the facts beyond reasonable 
 question. According to the Consumers' League of 
 New York, a girl who must support herself in that 
 city cannot do so decently on a wage less than $9 a 
 week. 1 The Philadelphia League names $8 as the 
 standard for that city. The great majority of workers 
 in factories and department stores in these two cities 
 receive a maximum wage less than this minimum sum ; 
 77 per cent, of workers in department stores receive 
 less than $8 a week; and the average pay of women 
 in factories is $4.62 for the first year and $5.34 the 
 second, while 40 per cent, receive less than $6. It 
 takes eight years for the average store employee to 
 reach a living wage, and ten years for a factory em- 
 ployee. These figures have been published far and 
 wide and never challenged ; so their correctness may be 
 taken as established. It follows, therefore, that, unless 
 they live at home and only partly support themselves, 
 the wages of women workers are below a decent living 
 standard. The majority receive little more than half 
 a living wage, and are consequently in a condition of 
 constant poverty. 
 
 Nothing has done more, probably, to open the eyes 
 of the American people to the real condition of women 
 workers than the investigation into the Chicago de- 
 partment stores conducted by the committee of the 
 
 1 Mrs. Frederick Nathan, of the New York Consumers' 
 League, is authority for the statement that 60 per cent, of the 
 saleswomen over sixteen years of age in New York stores re- 
 ceive less than $6.50 a week.
 
 194 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Illinois Senate in the spring in 1913. These stores 
 are among the largest and best managed in our coun- 
 try. They are owned and conducted by men who have 
 considerable repute as "philanthropists" they are lib- 
 eral contributors to local charities, to investigations of 
 the "white slave" traffic, and the like. That they and 
 their business methods had any relation to social prob- 
 lems seems never to have occurred to them. The Com- 
 mittee did not probe far without discovering that these 
 department and mail order stores were making enor- 
 mous profits, yet paid many of their girl employees 
 less than a living wage. The head of one of the 
 largest establishments admitted that the profits of his 
 business amounted to $12,000,000 the preceding year, 
 and also admitted that he employed 119 girls at $5 a 
 week, but added that 1,465 received not less than $8 a 
 week. Of course he could see no relation between low 
 wages and prostitution. 
 
 Another store owner, who refused to state his prof- 
 its but virtually admitted that they ran into millions, 
 scouted the suggestion that low wages could have any 
 relation to vice. He maintained that $8 a week was 
 ample to support a girl in comfort in Chicago, but on 
 being given pencil and paper and asked to make out 
 a budget this was the best that he could produce: 
 Outer clothing, $i ; shoes, hats, underwear, $i ; laun- 
 dry, 25 cents; room and board, $4; car fare, 60 cents; 
 luncheon, 70 cents; physician and dentist, 60 cents; 
 church, 10 cents total $8.25. A little thought will 
 show anybody how absurd is the idea that a girl who 
 has this liberal wage could be tempted by the induce-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 195 
 
 ments offered by a vicious life, its specious promise 
 of ease and luxury. Think of the palatial apartment 
 and sumptuous meals she can enjoy for $4 a week, 
 and the luxurious luncheons she can have for 70 cents 
 a week, not to mention the magnificent clothes and 
 glittering jewels that she can buy for $i ! How ridic- 
 ulous that she should think of surrendering all this, 
 together with the privilege of standing every day be- 
 hind a counter, where she is scolded by impatient buy- 
 ers and lordly floor-walkers, and ogled by silly dudes 
 and fined by the head of her department for the slight- 
 est offense, until her nominal pay of $8 becomes $6.42 
 in her pay envelope. Why should she listen to the 
 siren voice? Why, indeed! 
 
 Ill 
 
 That the causes of vice are mainly economic and 
 therefore demand an economic remedy is sufficiently 
 obvious. The one that has been suggested, the only 
 one that may be said to be under immediate considera- 
 tion, is the minimum wage, the probable effect of 
 which measure on women's economic status has al- 
 ready been discussed. We need only repeat that this 
 is at best a slight palliative, a mere tinkering with sur- 
 face facts. The Evening Post of New York said not 
 long ago with regard to such experimentation with 
 partial remedies : "If the fact of gross inequality of 
 fortune, the fact that the rich might easily part with 
 their superfluity and give it to the poor, were to be
 
 196 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 accepted as a reason for compelling such redistribu- 
 tion, the process could not stop with a little thing like 
 a pitiful minimum wage for women. It would neces- 
 sarily mean a complete reconstruction of the whole 
 economic and social system." This is quite correct. 
 Nothing less than such a reconstruction of our social 
 and economic system as will secure the abolition of 
 poverty can be reasonably expected to cure any of our 
 social evils, and especially the evil of prostitution. 
 Critics of socialism often pronounce it an immoral sys- 
 tem, but it should be given the praise of seeking to 
 stop the greatest immorality in existence, the sale of 
 women's bodies, by making women economically in- 
 dependent. It is capitalism that is immoral, in that 
 it makes this cruel and wicked business inevitable. 
 
 The fair-minded employer should welcome every 
 step toward economic justice to women, such as the 
 minimum wage law. In the present system, wages are 
 adjusted, not to the earning power of women, but to 
 the least wage upon which life can be supported. The 
 wage-scale in any line of business is practically fixed 
 by the meanest, least scrupulous competitor. What he 
 pays others must pay or be undersold, though they 
 might gladly pay more. The minimum wage makes 
 this extreme exploitation unlawful, and compels the 
 unscrupulous employer to act as if he had some de- 
 cent scruples. This gives the better employers their 
 chance to treat their workers with a greater measure 
 of justice and yet not incur danger of bankruptcy. 
 
 No one can study the conditions in which the girl 
 workers of our cities live and labor without an increas-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 197 
 
 ing sense of the fact that the cure of poverty must 
 precede the cure of vice. Here is where the problem 
 of the slum impinges on the problem of vice. Many 
 forms of industry are carried on in tenement houses, 
 besides those that the law has undertaken to prevent. 
 The manufacture of artificial flowers is one of these, 
 and young girls often work far into the night at this 
 occupation. In the crowded tenements it is difficult to 
 observe the decencies of life; and their bare, cheerless 
 life of incessant labor becomes abhorrent to such girls. 
 Their amusements are few, the dance hall and the 
 moving picture show have few rivals. These are the 
 recruiting places of vice, the haunts of cadets and pro- 
 curesses, and the result can be easily foreseen. Pov- 
 erty and the life that it compels have weakened the 
 moral fiber of many young girls, and the allurements 
 of a life that is speciously presented to them as one of 
 ease and pleasure prove too great for their powers of 
 resistance. Even so, many of them do resist, and have 
 to be drugged or otherwise forced into a life that they 
 would never voluntarily enter. 
 
 The cure of poverty will depend to a great extent 
 on the raising of the standard of efficiency among girl 
 workers. At present 49 per cent, of girls who are com- 
 pelled to work go into factories, and only one per cent, 
 into skilled trades. Employers who can see beyond 
 the weekly pay roll are now aware that the low wages 
 paid to inexperienced and unskilled are the highest 
 wages of all, measured by the sales cost, which is the 
 only scientific measurement. The cheapest wages are 
 the highest. Employers are looking for a way to elimi-
 
 198 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 nate inefficient workers ; the surest, as well as the most 
 profitable, way to eliminate the inefficient is to make 
 all workers efficient. We are now revolving in a vi- 
 cious circle, from which the capitalistic system offers 
 no way of escape : inefficiency produces poverty and 
 poverty in turn produces greater inefficiency. 
 
 But would the abolition of poverty be really effective 
 as a remedy for social vice? Does it not, after all, 
 depend for its existence on a human passion and a 
 human weakness quite unconnected with poverty ? No 
 doubt poverty is not the sole cause of sexual immo- 
 rality, for that has existed in all forms of society for 
 ages, and will probably continue in some form for ages 
 to come. The abolition of poverty would not abolish 
 sexual immorality. It would reduce sexual immorality 
 to sporadic cases, individual moral aberrations such 
 as are found, for example, in a rural community where 
 all the people are substantially on the same economic 
 level ; such as are found among the rich, who are like- 
 wise economic equals. The difference would be this: 
 women would continue sometimes to give themselves 
 to those whom they loved, without the sanction of 
 legal marriage, but they would not sell themselves 
 promiscuously. Sexual immorality would continue, 
 but prostitution would disappear, especially the com- 
 mercial forms of prostitution. Vice would be a per- 
 sonal error, it would no longer be a great commercial 
 enterprise. 
 
 The sexual impulse is undoubtedly one of the 
 strongest factors of human nature, and any scheme 
 of social reform that ignores it is doomed to failure.
 
 tHE PROBLEM OF VICE 
 
 But marriage, whether we regard it as a divine insti- 
 tution or as merely human and social, is the normal 
 provision and the sufficient provision for satisfaction 
 of the sexual impulse, in its highest forms equally 
 with the lowest. Vice is the perverted satisfaction of 
 the lowest. This perversion is powerfully stimulated 
 by anything that prevents normal satisfaction. Pov- 
 erty, which forbids many thousands of adult men and 
 women to marry, and compels other thousands to post- 
 pone marriage until middle age, is a direct stimulus 
 to vice the force of which can hardly be exaggerated. 
 A standing army and navy is a standing invitation to 
 vice. Enlisted men are practically all celibates, and 
 the teaching of history is plain that celibacy on a large 
 scale means sexual vice to an alarming degree. Part 
 of the price we pay for our army and navy is the 
 degradation of American womanhood. A monastery, 
 or any organization that forbids marriage or makes 
 it practically impossible, has always been a hot-bed of 
 vice. A society in which there are many thousands of 
 men and women debarred by poverty from marriage 
 as inevitably produces prostitution as a match pro- 
 duces a blaze. The demand creates a supply, and the 
 supply stimulates the demand, and so the evil grows, 
 even without any commercialization. An economic 
 state that would make early marriage possible is the 
 first condition of eradicating vice; the effort is hope- 
 less otherwise. 
 
 But even before the abolition of poverty and the 
 relative abolition of vice we can do a great deal toward 
 reducing 1 this social evil to much smaller dimensions.
 
 2OO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 It is the system, the commercialization of vice, the 
 Trust, that greatly aggravates the evil. An ethical 
 evil must be opposed by ethical means; an economic 
 condition demands an economic remedy; but a busi- 
 ness organization may be destroyed by law. We must 
 adapt our remedies to the things to be reformed or 
 abolished. We cannot break up a vice trust by ethical 
 measures, and economic remedies are too slow-acting. 
 We need, and we have a right to expect, some immedi- 
 ate results. 
 
 This is why the remedy hitherto attempted by the 
 "good" element of the community has been so ineffec- 
 tive. Christians have applied the old individual idea 
 of the Gospel to this problem, and, in rescue work, 
 Magdalens' Homes, and missions in the slums have 
 sought to reclaim these fallen women. The work has 
 been successful in this sense, that thousands have been 
 reclaimed; and, if there is joy in heaven among the 
 angels over one sinner that repents, this work must 
 have caused great joy in heaven. But it has produced 
 little result on earth. For every soul rescued, a dozen, 
 a hundred, fresh recruits have been added to the ranks 
 of the fallen. If firemen were playing on a fire with 
 one stream of water while a dozen streams of oil 
 were turned on by others, how long would it take to 
 put out the fire ? Does it not become plainer every day 
 that this work of rescuing individuals is to approach 
 the problem of vice from the wrong side and to waste 
 effort in a labor beside which that of Sisyphus was 
 pleasant exercise? The only hope of solution lies, not
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 2OI 
 
 in rescuing women after they have fallen, but in pre- 
 venting their fall. 
 
 Not all of the vice that poverty causes goes by that 
 name ; much of it is dignified by the title of Christian 
 marriage. When a woman sells herself, not to many 
 men, but to one man, for the sake of a home, of sup- 
 port, of ease and luxury, not the grace of holy altar 
 and the blessing of priest and book can make the trans- 
 action anything else than unethical and vicious. Yet 
 this kind of sale, this form of vice, society pronounces 
 perfectly "respectable." Our social arrangements vir- 
 tually compel the majority of women to trade on their 
 sex, and to make the best bargain for themselves pos- 
 sible. A woman is said to have married well when 
 she gets a good price for herself, in money and what 
 money will bring. But where this is the sole motive, 
 as it so often is, a woman does not become a man's 
 wife she becomes his mistress, in a way that law and 
 social custom approve. 
 
 All our terminology of marriage reflects this vicious 
 and degrading fact. The law says that a man must 
 "support" his wife, and when a woman marries she 
 expects to be "supported." No idea of an equal part- 
 nership, to which the woman contributes as much as 
 the man, is recognized either in law or in our verbal 
 usage. The woman is an economic dependent on the 
 man she marries, as she has been on her father before 
 marriage; and in the vast majority of cases the law 
 and the language correspond to the fact. Because of 
 this economic dependence, women have for generations 
 been compelled to develop to the utmost and to make
 
 2O2 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 most skilful use of their sexual attractions, to induce 
 some man to desire some woman enough to under- 
 take her support. That explains the provocativeness 
 of dress and manner found so widely among women 
 of all classes ; this is their trade, the only one to which 
 most of them have ever been bred : to catch a husband. 
 It is horrible and vicious and depraved and "virtuous." 
 I am writing almost coarsely about this thing ; I ad- 
 mit it; I deplore it; for I am choosing as decorous 
 words as I can find to describe a thing so essentially 
 coarse that it is a wonder the very ink does not blush. 
 And yet who will venture to deny that the thing de- 
 scribed is of daily occurrence, and who will accuse me 
 of incorrectly describing it? So long as her sex con- 
 tinues to be her one commercial asset a woman cannot 
 fairly be blamed for making the most of it. It is so- 
 ciety that must shoulder the blame of keeping her in 
 this state of economic dependence. It is society that 
 must undertake to make impossible such unions as 
 are now so common, by assuring women such eco- 
 nomic independence as will make it possible for every 
 woman to give herself to the man whom she loves, 
 and unnecessary to sell herself to a man whom she 
 does not love. At present the so-called "good" woman 
 is driven by the same economic necessity as her 
 "fallen" sister to trade on her sex. 
 
 Ill 
 
 There are three practical ways of dealing with so- 
 cial vice. The first is indifference, the method of the
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 2O3 
 
 Greco-Roman world and of the heathen world to-day. 
 This is practically our method also, since for the most 
 part we simply let things drift, shut our eyes to fact, 
 occasionally making some spasmodic attempt at re- 
 pression, but refusing to make thorough study of con- 
 ditions and find a cure. Raids and arrests, and long 
 intervals of doing nothing, will never rid us of vice; 
 it has been tried for three thousand years without the 
 slightest result. This method will not even destroy 
 the commercial system; it only makes it a little more 
 difficult and expensive to do business. We can never 
 cleanse the river at the mouth while allowing sewage 
 to be discharged into it along its hundreds of miles of 
 length. To cure bad results we must get at sources. 
 
 A second method is that which has been advocated 
 in this discussion: an intelligent attempt to seek the 
 cause and to apply the cure there, in the only place 
 where it can be effective. When every girl receives 
 a wage sufficient for her comfortable support, when 
 every young man receives a wage sufficient to enable 
 him to marry, we shall see an end to social vice. 
 When women no longer need to sell themselves no 
 man -can buy them. 
 
 But we must in fairness consider a third method in 
 which many profess confidence, namely, segregation. 
 Sexual vice is illegal, but it is proposed practically to 
 legalize it by setting apart a district in each city in 
 which the law may be violated. We must recognize 
 facts, say those who propose this method; and it is 
 a fact that the evil exists and we are not able to eradi- 
 cate it; let us therefore restrain it within limits, as the
 
 2O4 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 best that we can do, instead of permitting it to pol- 
 lute the whole city. 
 
 Let us recognize facts by all means, but there are 
 two ways of doing it: to recognize and accept, or to 
 recognize and war against the facts. Segregation pro- 
 poses to recognize and accept the facts of social vice 
 as inevitable, incurable, inescapable. That is pre- 
 cisely what the moral sentiment of America has thus 
 far sturdily refused to do, and so far it is a healthy 
 moral sentiment. It has thus far lacked sufficient vigor 
 of health to war against the facts intelligently and 
 persistently. That the facts are here we all see; that 
 they are inevitable, in the sense that they are the neces- 
 sary result of our present economic system, is becom- 
 ing clearer every day ; that they are incurable, that we 
 have not the intelligence and the power to solve this 
 problem, provided we have the will, is precisely what 
 most of us refuse to believe. 
 
 Because segregation is a plan, not to cure social evil 
 but to make it permanent, it fails to command ethical 
 support. Outside of the vice system and its patrons 
 and secret friends it has few advocates. Where it has 
 been tried in our communities, as in Chicago, its ef- 
 fect has been to increase the worst evils of the system. 
 It has stimulated the "white slave" traffic, the entrap- 
 ping and forcible detention of young girls, which is 
 perhaps the most cruel and shameful feature of the 
 whole shameful and cruel business, but necessary for 
 its profitable continuance, since not even poverty will 
 force girls in sufficient numbers to choose the vicious 
 life, and so fraud and force must be employed.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 2C>5 
 
 Two years' study of the whole subject in Europe 
 convinced one competent investigator, Dr. Abraham 
 Flexner, that there segregation fails to segregate, 
 regulation does not regulate or control, and medical 
 examination of a fraction of prostitutes is no protec- 
 tion to society against disease. His negative results 
 are valuable; more courage would have made Dr. 
 Flexner's constructive work of equal value. He dis- 
 covers the economic significance of European prosti- 
 tution; there is practically but one source of supply 
 for the vice, "the lower working classes and mainly 
 the unmarried women of these classes." The daugh- 
 ters of the poor are, in Europe as here, the victims 
 of the system, with only here and there one from 
 the educated and well-to-do. Surely, the conclusion is 
 so obvious that no man with rudimentary reasoning 
 powers could fail to draw it : the way to fight prosti- 
 tution and end it, the only way, is to increase the intel- 
 ligence and economic well-being of the lower classes. 
 Instead, however, of drawing this obvious conclusion, 
 Dr. Flexner slips adroitly aside and indulges in 
 meaningless fine writing: "Civilization has stripped 
 for a life and death wrestle with tuberculosis, alcohol 
 and other plagues. It is on the verge of a similar 
 struggle with the crasser forms of commercialized 
 vice. Sooner or later, it must fling down the gauntlet 
 to the whole horrible thing. That will be a real con- 
 test a contest that will tax the courage, the self-de- 
 nial, the faith, the resources of humanity to their ut- 
 most." This again emphasizes the lesson that one 
 great obstacle to social progress to-day is the cow-
 
 2O6 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 ardice of those men who should be leaders, but are 
 afraid to speak the whole truth. 
 
 One argument often heard in favor of segregation 
 is that any attempt to repress vice without segregation 
 will result in scattering the vicious throughout the 
 community; they will invade the good residential dis- 
 tricts and annoy the rich and well-to-do. Let them 
 scatter; let them invade. The poor have had to tol- 
 erate them long enough. It is the rich whose profits 
 cause the system; it is the rich whose money main- 
 tains it; let the rich then reap the full fruits of what 
 they have done and are doing. It might and probably 
 would rouse them to do something effective for the 
 lessening of the evil, if not for its cure. 
 
 But the chief objection to segregation is that tol- 
 erated vice becomes by imperceptible degrees approved 
 vice. Toleration destroys the sense of right and 
 wrong in a community to an astonishing degree. The 
 houses that are rented for this vile business bring the 
 highest rents; and, tempted by this opportunity for 
 gain, people of the highest respectability and social 
 standing rent their property to the members of the 
 "system." It may be that in some cases they are 
 ignorant of the fact, that agents acting for them are 
 responsible; but it may well be suspected that so long 
 as income is large they take good care to keep them- 
 selves ignorant of such details. A faithful preaching 
 of the Gospel of Jesus ought to produce an ethical 
 condition in Christian churches incompatible with such 
 things. At present this left-handed partnership with 
 vice is no bar to church membership. It was at one
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 2O/ 
 
 time proposed in Chicago to put a placard on each 
 house let for immoral purposes with the name and ad- 
 dress of the owner. The very proposal led to a sud- 
 den cleaning up of one of the worst districts of the 
 city. The example is to be commended to other cities ; 
 there can be no doubt of its effectiveness in stimu- 
 lating dormant consciences into active life. 
 
 In December, 1913, the president of a Realty Com- 
 pany and manager of an apartment house in New 
 York was convicted of renting a flat to be kept as a 
 disorderly house. Justice Collins inflicted the maxi- 
 mum fine of $500, but remarked that this was inade- 
 quate as a penalty and therefore also imposed a sen- 
 tence of twenty-five days' imprisonment. The Court 
 added that this conviction of a person of prominence 
 and wealth for this offense was the first in a long 
 number of years. But the offense is without doubt 
 frequently committed, and if such convictions were 
 more frequent people of wealth and respectability 
 would derive less income from this filthy source. 
 
 It should be recognized that something can be done 
 to reduce the extent of vice and suppress some of its 
 crying abuses, by the general reform and cleaning 
 up of our political system in which we Americans 
 are now engaged. All those changes of method that 
 give the people more direct control of government, in- 
 cluding the initiative, referendum and recall, are helps 
 toward solution of this problem. Those experiments 
 in better municipal government, originating in the 
 West and rapidly making their way eastward, will 
 work in the same direction. Whatever changes in our
 
 2O8 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 system make for more real democracy will be effective 
 in dealing with the second great factor in the system 
 of commercialized vice, the greed that actuates it, fhe 
 profit that makes it possible and keeps it going. 
 Democracy will make a quick end of the alliance with 
 the underworld that the police of our cities have so 
 long maintained. No sober man will deny that the 
 problem is a tremendous and many-sided one, nor will 
 he maintain that striking improvement is to be hoped 
 for in a day. But now that we are getting a better 
 idea of the terms of the problem, what we have to do 
 and how to do it, steady progress may be reasonably 
 hoped for. 
 
 It has been a great surprise to Americans of the 
 better class to discover how intimate is the connection 
 between vice and politics, and even yet they are hardly 
 able to believe the facts thrust upon them from all 
 sides. Yet the facts are too well attested to be dis- 
 believed. Men have only begun to suspect the tie 
 that exists between vice and capitalism. As we have 
 seen, one great obstacle to the suppression of vice is 
 found in the fact that the property interests of our 
 "best citizens" lead them to give the system effective 
 if secret support. But this is not the only, or even 
 the chief, connection between men of wealth and vice. 
 The existence of a large class of the vicious and 
 criminal, the pimps and thugs of the underworld, is 
 useful to capitalists in fact, is indispensable. It fur- 
 nishes the gangs of "guards" and "strike-breakers" 
 employed against the workers in every great strike. 
 It is the reserve militia of ihe employing class, and is
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 2OQ 
 
 promptly called out whenever there are labor troubles, 
 when it does effectively what it is hired to do. 
 
 This sort of thing is work very congenial to the 
 people of the underworld. It permits them 'to go 
 armed and to indulge their liking for violence, while 
 it supplies them with money for the indulgence of 
 their appetites. It offers them facility for commit- 
 ting all sorts of minor crimes with impunity, for the 
 testimony of their victims will not be received against 
 theirs in any court. If the strikers are women, it 
 offers a golden opportunity to do their favorite work 
 as panders ; for when working women are out of work, 
 hungry and desperate, is the very time when they can 
 best be persuaded to exchange the factory for the 
 brothel. The police know these things, but it is their 
 interest also to side with the employing class. The 
 capitalists know the facts, but so long as strikes are 
 broken they care for nothing else. So our cities have 
 a large class of gunmen and "crooks," and when 
 there is no other outlet for their activities they occa- 
 sionally kill a policeman. Then we have a great ex- 
 citement for a few days, and matters go on as before. 
 
 Even when the police are honest and try to break 
 tip the commercialized system of vice, they are greatly 
 handicapped by the law and the courts. It is exceed- 
 ingly difficult to obtain evidence that will convict of- 
 fenders. Officers in plain clothes are often forbidden 
 to enter illegal resorts to get evidence against them, 
 and to send an officer in uniform is "to hunt ducks 
 with a brass band." The law, as interpreted by the 
 courts, requires corroboration, in case a briber turns
 
 2IO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 state's evidence, and the transaction being conducted 
 in private there is never any third party available to 
 furnish the corroboration. It actually seems as if the 
 law and its administration were carefully contrived 
 for the protection of the law-breaker, not of society. 
 And so there is little improvement in a state of things 
 that places heavy stress of temptation upon those who 
 are little able to bear it, at the same time furnishing 
 very inadequate protection for the weak. The only 
 ray of hope is a growing sense of social and per- 
 sonal responsibility for such conditions, since this 
 promises for the future a closer brotherhood and a 
 higher morality. 
 
 Something may be done by better legislation to 
 lessen vice, even though the value of this remedy is 
 greatly overestimated by hosts of good people. The 
 Mann Act is an excellent specimen of what may at 
 present be accomplished by this method. It is directed 
 specifically against the "white slave" traffic, and pro- 
 vides imprisonment up to five years and a fine up to 
 $i ,000 for inveigling a woman into a house of prosti- 
 tution or detaining her there against her will. Des- 
 perate efforts were made by the interests involved to 
 break this statute, by inducing the Supreme Court of 
 the United States to declare it unconstitutional. The 
 Attorney General did society good service, upholding 
 the statute vigorously, and as it turned out success- 
 fully. He argued that since the Supreme Court had 
 upheld the constitutionality of the law against the 
 transportation in interstate commerce of diseased cat- 
 tle, it ought to be humane enough and wise enough to
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 211 
 
 regard women as at least of equal importance with 
 cattle. "Will it be said," he argued, "that Congress, 
 if it chooses to act, cannot protect the people of the 
 several States against the wrongful transportation of 
 women and girls that the law affords greater secur- 
 ity to cattle than it does to persons?" The decision 
 handed down in February, 1913, sustained the statute. 
 The law went into effect in July, 1910; and in two 
 years following the Federal courts secured 337 con- 
 victions, with sentences totaling 607 years and fines 
 aggregating $66,605. There were only 35 acquittals 
 of those indicted and tried. 
 
 Vi 
 
 What has been said applies in most particulars also 
 to that other great vice and social evil, the drink 
 habit. Men have used alcoholic beverages from prehis- 
 toric times, and drunkenness has always been a social 
 evil of most races. But only within the last century 
 has the evil been so commercialized and extended as to 
 become a world menace. The saloon is merely the 
 local manifestation of a great capitalistic enterprise. 
 As with all forms of Big Business, no restraint of 
 law, morality or religion is permitted to stand in the 
 way of Profit. Not only is every effort to limit the 
 sale of liquor fought to the last ditch, but there is a 
 constant and successful effort to stimulate the demand 
 for liquor and so to increase its sale. "Successful," 
 one says, because, notwithstanding the remarkable
 
 212 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 growth of "dry" territory in recent years, there has 
 been a large increase in the per capita consumption 
 of alcoholics. 
 
 These facts are not so well known as they should 
 be, so it is perhaps pardonable to dwell upon them a 
 little. In the fiscal year of 1913 the people of this 
 country consumed 143,300,000 gallons of distilled 
 liquors, an increase of 7,500,000 gallons over the pre- 
 vious year, and breaking all former records. They 
 poured down their throats during the same year 64,- 
 500,000 barrels of beer, exceeding any previous year 
 by more than a million barrels. Incidentally it may 
 be mentioned that they smoked during the same time 
 7,707,000,000 cigars and over 14,012,000,000 cigar- 
 ettes. These, as a Kentucky "colonel" might say, are 
 the necessaries of life. What was left out of their 
 incomes the people spent for food, clothing, rent, and 
 other luxuries. 
 
 So completely is the business commercialized that 
 the independent saloon hardly exists. There is a 
 Brewers' Trust and a Distillers' Trust, and between 
 them they not only manufacture the great bulk of 
 liquor made, but control the retail trade. Most saloons 
 have an ostensible owner, but the Trust has a chattel 
 mortgage that fully covers the value of furniture and 
 stock, and the "owner" is in reality only the hireling 
 of the Trust. And when legal means of sale fail 
 them, when lawful weapons of resistance to society 
 prove ineffective, the Trusts never hesitate to resort 
 to illegal assassination and arson have marked the 
 progress of temperance in every State where it has
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 213 
 
 progressed. The "blind tiger" and the "bootlegger" 
 would, of course, be impossible institutions if dis- 
 tillers and brewers would sell only to reputable per- 
 sons and through legal agencies. Licit or illicit is all 
 one to them, so the stuff is sold and the great god 
 Profit remains on his throne. In my haste I have done 
 them injustice, and I hasten to admit it: they would 
 prefer, no doubt, to sell under the law, but when they 
 cannot they are determined to sell against the law. 
 
 So long as this great business of making a profit 
 from the sale of alcohol in its various forms con- 
 tinues, attempting the reform of individual victims is 
 an absolutely futile method of dealing with it. Not 
 only will the present volume of the traffic continue, 
 but the ingenuity of men and the power of money 
 will be exhausted in attempts to create more appetite 
 and extend the business. And experience shows that 
 the attempts will not be in vain. Prohibition does 
 not prohibit, in any real or effective way. The Church 
 and the various anti-saloon agitations, in spite of their 
 local victories, are making no impression on the traffic 
 as a whole. In spite of all yet accomplished by the 
 forces hitherto arrayed against the saloon, a greater 
 volume of liquor pours forth every year. We must 
 learn to strike at the root of the evil, and not at a 
 small branch here and there. And the roots of the 
 liquor traffic are Profit and Poverty. Anything that 
 improves the economic condition of the whole people 
 will tend powerfully to reduce the consumption of 
 liquor. But the quickest and surest results may be at-
 
 214 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 tained by eliminating the element of profit. There is 
 one certain means of doing this, and that is to socialize 
 the business, take it out of the hands of individuals 
 and subject it to State control. 
 
 It will be urged that nation-wide prohibition would 
 be equally effective and ethically better. Let us not 
 dispute over a name. What I am calling State con- 
 trol is exactly what is usually called prohibition, which 
 is not prohibition at all. The name is not honest, 
 and that is why I prefer not to use it. In those 
 States where a so-called prohibition law prevails, 
 Maine for example, there is a State dispensary in every 
 town where liquor may be bought, the buyer signing 
 his name in a register and stating the purpose for 
 which it is bought. Manufacture and sale of liquor 
 are prohibited to individuals, but the State sells liquor 
 in the so-called prohibition States. The Maine kind 
 of "prohibition" is what I advocate for all our States, 
 under the more honest term of State control. 
 
 This would effectively dispose of one root of the 
 evil, Profit. The business would not be conducted 
 for a profit ; it would be minimized as far as possible ; 
 and whatever profit there was would be for the benefit 
 of us all, not for the enrichment of a few. In a very 
 short time the sale would be reduced to small propor- 
 tions, and in a generation might be expected virtually 
 to cease. Especially would this be the case if the 
 progress of society should eliminate the other root, 
 Poverty. Sociologists are more and more coming to 
 the conclusion that the drink habit is less a cause of
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 21$ 
 
 poverty than an effect. If we accept their opinion, we 
 come by another way to the conviction that we have 
 here a social evil for which an effective cure can be 
 found only by the abolition of poverty.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 
 
 CRIME is one of the costliest luxuries that society 
 permits itself to enjoy. We worship efficiency, forget- 
 ting that the efficiency of the social order is meas- 
 ured by its degree of success in eliminating crime and 
 other unnecessary costs. The more perfectly organized 
 the society, the fewer the criminals. A high ratio of 
 crime is an indictment of a people's civilization. The 
 United States has a high ratio of crime. We have, 
 it is true, elaborate and costly machinery for the de- 
 tection and punishment of criminals, and thousands 
 are detected and punished every year. There is no 
 reason to question the excellence of the machinery; 
 it is good of its kind. Yet that it is ineffective hardly 
 demands argument or proof. We know perfectly well 
 that we are engaged in the foolishly wasteful process 
 of making criminals by thousands and reforming them 
 by hundreds. Why not try to stop the making? 
 
 If there are some who will demand proof of the 
 ineffectiveness of our present system, let us take the 
 prevalence of homicide throughout the United States, 
 and especially in our cities. The average ratio of 
 homicides in England is .9 per 100,000, while in thirty 
 
 216
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 217 
 
 of our large cities the average ratio in the years 1901- 
 1910 was 6.9 and in 1911 it rose to 8.3. We should 
 probably select Russia as the least civilized of Euro- 
 pean States, the country of "pogroms" and Nihilists, 
 yet in our large cities as many people are murdered 
 each year as in the whole of Russia. 1 On the other 
 hand, the number of legal executions from 1909 to 1912 
 was 400. With an average number of 2,439 yearly 
 homicides during the last ten years, there was an 
 average number of yearly executions of about 100. 
 No wonder the Hon. Andrew D. White declares that 
 "we lead the civilized world, with the exception, per- 
 haps, of lower Italy and Sicily, in murders, and espe- 
 cially in unpunished murders." What is the necessity 
 of agitating for abolition of capital punishment? a 
 sarcastic critic of our institutions might ask. It is 
 already virtually abolished. And its substitute, im- 
 prisonment for life, is also practically abolished. The 
 average "life" sentence is proved by our prison records 
 to be about six years; and the worst cases are fre- 
 quently pardoned after a year or two of confinement. 
 Society has at present no protection worth mentioning 
 against the crime of murder. 
 
 Our system is as costly as it is ineffective. A 
 rough estimate is that crime costs us as much as edu- 
 cation, but the fact is that we have no statistics of 
 crime worthy of being called scientific, and so any con- 
 clusions must be tentative. But enough is known to 
 
 1 The exact figures are: homicides in Russia, 1907-1911, 7,716; 
 in American cities, 1905-1909, 12,198. The correspondence of 
 years is not exact, but this is immaterial.
 
 2l8 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 warrant the statement that to protect itself against 
 crime and punish criminals costs society the equiva- 
 lent of every bale of cotton and every bushel of wheat 
 raised in the United States. Governor Foss told the 
 American Prison Association that Massachusetts in 
 1912 spent $7,000,000 for police, courts and prisons, 
 and less than $25,000 for the restoration of criminals 
 to good citizenship. Massachusetts has always been 
 considered one of our most intelligent and progressive 
 commonwealths, yet it spends $280 for the punish- 
 ment of crime for every dollar that is spent for the 
 cure of crime. Naturally, we get for such expendi- 
 ture more criminals and more crime. Four million 
 dollars a day are worse than wasted because society 
 is not willing to adopt curative measures, but prefers 
 palliatives, and the least effective of palliatives at that. 
 Not only are we constantly manufacturing fresh crim- 
 inals, but the older stock are degenerated rather than 
 regenerated by our system. 
 
 One reason doubtless why our machinery fails to 
 accomplish the desired result is that it violates men's 
 ethical sense at every turn. To begin with, it is so 
 bunglingly devised and so blindly and partially admin- 
 istered. A man steals a railroad, a factory or some 
 other valuable property, in Wall street, by means that 
 we all understand. What do we, what does society, 
 to him? Most of us admire and envy him; the rest 
 condone his fault, especially if he is a good fellow or 
 benevolent. Another man breaks into the first man's 
 house and steals some property, silverware or jew- 
 elry. What does society to him? If he can be
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 219 
 
 caught, he is sent to prison for a term of years, usu- 
 ally a long one. In such case, the man robbed has no 
 better ethical title to his property than the man who 
 robs it is a case of one thief taking from another 
 thief. But there is a vast social difference between 
 the two offenses, identical as they are in ethical qual- 
 ity: the law permits and custom makes respectable 
 one sort of thieving, while both condemn the other. 
 But "Thou shalt not steal," if it has any validity, 
 applies to both men and to both offenses. 
 
 The differences between the crimes of the upper 
 classes and those of the lower correspond very closely 
 in the main to their economic differences that is to 
 say, their crimes differ more in degree than in kind. 
 The poor man is a little criminal, the rich man a big. 
 One sins at retail, so to speak, the other at wholesale. 
 There is something impressive about the rich man's 
 crime; often its very audacity takes the breath away 
 and makes one almost admire; while the poor man's 
 offense often seems less wrong than mean and sordid. 
 Among the upper classes the devil has learned to en- 
 case his cloven hoofs in spats and patent leathers; 
 he hides his tail under a dress suit, and a silk hat of 
 the latest shape covers his horns. Among the poor he 
 stalks in the old form, finding no disguise necessary. 1 
 
 In both higher and lower classes crime has an eco- 
 nomic cause,' the same economic cause in truth. Crime 
 is inseparable from the capitalistic system of industry. 
 Poverty incites the worker, greed impels the employer, 
 
 s, "Sin and Society," especially the chapter on New Va- 
 rieties of Sin.
 
 22O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 to those acts that we call criminal. Take a single 
 class of such acts as an example: Fire Commissioner 
 Johnson, of New York, is responsible for the asser- 
 tion that one fire of every four is of incendiary origin. 
 Men deliberately start fires, and other men even more 
 deliberately hire fires to be started, in order to collect 
 insurance. There was a regular system in New York 
 a few years ago, and may be still, and the like doubt- 
 less exists in other cities, whereby a dishonest busi- 
 ness man could hire professional "firebugs" to set 
 fire to his premises. The insurance companies, in 
 their greed for premiums, permitted such reckless over- 
 insurance of property as in itself constituted a bribe 
 to every dishonest man to commit this form of crime. 
 If there were no fire insurance, fires would be dimin- 
 ished fully 25 per cent. Thus it comes about that a 
 business designed to protect the community against 
 fire results is increasing the danger of the community 
 from fire. This costly form of crime is one of the 
 elements of the high cost of living; for, of course, the 
 cost of premiums and all loss by fire is ultimately 
 assessed on society, in the form of enhanced prices. 
 Another consequence is that the class ordinarily de- 
 scribed as law-abiding and conservative, the "business 
 men" of the community, destroy more property than 
 the class ordinarily described as criminal. This ex- 
 traordinary state of affairs never before existed in 
 any nation or society ; it is the product of our modern 
 industrial system and of unlimited competition in the 
 insurance business.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 221 
 
 II 
 
 One great difficulty in our dealing with the problem 
 of crime is that we have no consistent system of 
 penology. Our laws are founded on several different, 
 it not contradictory, principles, some of which are no 
 longer tenable. Punishments have been imposed by 
 statute on the principle that certain offenses must be 
 expiated by a certain penalty. But the idea of expia- 
 tion is philosophically absurd and socially impossible. 
 To "make the punishment fit the crime" seems easy 
 until it is tried. Nobody can tell just what degree 
 of moral turpitude is involved in a wrong act, and 
 nobody can know the degree of suffering involved in 
 a given penalty. Any algebraist will assure us that 
 an equation containing two unknown quantities is in- 
 soluble. Expiation could not be accomplished even 
 with the values of both unknown quantities given, for 
 evil cannot be expiated with evil. If, for example, a 
 man has taken life, for society to take his life does 
 not constitute expiation of the crime it is merely an- 
 other crime, murder added to murder. 
 
 The new idea of God that Jesus has given us as- 
 sures us that He does nothing to man save in love. 
 We can no longer believe in a hell to which a venge- 
 ful Deity condemns men to suffer endlessly, as the fit 
 reward of the evil they have done here. If we believe 
 now in future retribution, it is suffering that men 
 bring on themselves by refusing a Father's forgive- 
 ness and scorning a Father's love. That is the only
 
 222 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 idea of God and of retribution that Jesus permits a 
 follower of his to entertain. If, as the theologians 
 have for ages been asserting, human law at its best 
 is but a transcript of the divine, then every act of 
 society in dealing with crime, not prompted by the 
 desire to protect itself by bettering the criminal, is 
 itself criminal. 
 
 If the principle of expiation cannot be admitted, as 
 a foundation for criminal law, still less can revenge. 
 Jesus forever ruled that out of the conduct of his 
 disciples. He forbade to his followers the revenge ap- 
 proved by Jewish law, and commanded in its stead 
 the law of love, active good-will toward all : "But I 
 say unto you, Love your enemies and pray for them 
 that persecute you." But in spite of these words, the 
 spirit of legislation has been for nineteen centuries, and 
 still is : "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, 
 foot for foot, burning for burning, stripe for stripe" 
 (Ex. 21:24). Still is, one says, for not long ago, 
 in one of our American courts, a judge 1 addressed 
 one whom he was sentencing to imprisonment for life 
 in these words : 
 
 "You are to receive a sterner punishment than death. 
 You will die a hundred times. There will be for you 
 only the hopeless painful years from day to day, from 
 month to month, stretching out forever, and in agony. 
 You will be wiped out from human knowledge. You will 
 not be permitted to lift a hand or whisper a word. In 
 four or five years the eternal solitude and silence will 
 
 1 Judge Marcus Kavanagh, of the Superior Court of Cook 
 County, Illinois, as reported in the Chicago papers.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 223 
 
 begin to crush in upon you like an iron weight. You hear 
 that street-car bell ringing now ; you will remember it in 
 after years as the most exquisite music. It will mean 
 hurrying crowds that go where they like and do as they 
 please; it will mean the greatest of all pleasures free- 
 dom. You can only dream of it by day and by night and 
 your dream will be torture unspeakable. In the summer 
 you will guess there are cool rivers running somewhere 
 under green trees and you will long for the sight of even 
 a green leaf with an aching you never thought you could 
 experience. In a few weeks the holidays with their lights 
 and festivities and happiness will be here, and many a 
 Christmas will roll over you in your iron cage and high 
 stone wall, but you will never hear a child laugh again. 
 The law has taken its full and ample revenge upon you." 
 
 If revenge could be admitted as a valid principle in 
 law, then there are many who would say that a judge 
 who could deliver such an inhuman and malignantly 
 cruel tirade to a prisoner ought himself to be sent to 
 prison for a long term of years. But even a judge 
 capable of such deliberate and cold-blooded ferocity 
 ought not to be punished in a spirit of revenge. He 
 illustrates anew, what history testifies on every page, 
 that bitter personal hate could not have devised more 
 cruel and vindictive punishments than have been ad- 
 ministered under sanction of law and in the name of 
 justice. 
 
 It is pleaded in behalf of laws framed on this prin- 
 ciple that they satisfy a natural sentiment of man- 
 kind, which demands retribution and will be content 
 with nothing less. There is no question that the senti- 
 ment of revenge is "natural," in the sense that it exists
 
 224 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 and is common ; but the question is, Is revenge ethical ? 
 Is retribution justifiable? And the answer is that re- 
 venge is both irreligious and anti-social. Irreligious 
 we have already seen it to be, flatly opposed to the 
 teaching of Jesus. Is is as clearly anti-social, for all 
 are agreed that only active good-will from all to all 
 is compatible with social happiness and social progress. 
 Revenge is the annihilation of good-will. The pres- 
 ent degree of peace and order of society has been at- 
 tained only by suppression of this "natural" desire 
 for revenge. Individuals are no longer permitted 
 to avenge their own wrongs; society has undertaken 
 to see that each man is protected in his rights. So- 
 ciety must not do what it has forbidden the individual 
 to do. And, besides, a system of retributive punish- 
 ment will break down of its own absurdities. Some 
 offenses, as treason, cannot be returned in kind to the 
 offender. Let us ponder a remark of Seneca's, 1 as 
 wise as it is witty "Would any one think himself to 
 be in his perfect mind if he were to return kicks to a 
 mule or bites to a dog?" 
 
 The only ground on which society can make good 
 its right to punish the criminal is the principle of self- 
 protection. Society has the same right as the indi- 
 vidual to repel attacks on itself and to use so much 
 force as may be necessary. But society has no more 
 right than the individual to use more force than is 
 necessary for self -protection. This must be regarded 
 as the ethical foundation of penology. Several things 
 follow from this principle. If crime has a social cause 
 
 1 Seneca, De Ira, iii, 26.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 225 
 
 or social causes, punishment of the individual is an 
 ineffective means of self -protection, because it leaves 
 the cause untouched, to go on producing crime. Real 
 self -protect ion consists in removal of the social con- 
 ditions that impel men to crime. It also follows that 
 the real guilt of what we call crime is its anti-social 
 character. The criminal is a man who refuses to 
 accept the ethical standards of society, especially those 
 that relate to property. Some of these standards are 
 artificial and indefensible, but society insists that even 
 these must be respected while they exist and must be 
 modified in an orderly social way. Any other con- 
 duct, even if it has behind it a true ethical principle, is 
 selfish and anti-social. 
 
 Crimes may be traced to the preponderance in many 
 individuals of the selfish instinct over the social. The 
 great majority of men have been brought by ages of 
 discipline to the point where their social instinct is 
 strong, and they hesitate to perform any act that 
 promises to be injurious to the community of which 
 they are members. No treatment of crime can make 
 any claim to be considered scientific unless its aim 
 is to develop the social instinct in the criminal and 
 so eradicate crime by extinguishing the criminal mo- 
 tive. In other words, the sole adequate protection 
 of society from crime is the reformation of the 
 criminal. 
 
 If self -protection is the ethical ground of society's 
 right to restrain the criminal, it follows that what- 
 ever is prescribed for him must not be penalty for 
 what he has done, but discipline to influence what he
 
 226 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 will henceforth do. This is fatal to the whole idea of 
 "punishment" for crime, even as a deterrent. The 
 saying ascribed to an English judge is often quoted 
 with approval. In the good old days when men were 
 hanged for stealing anything above a shilling's worth, 
 a man was convicted of stealing a sheep, and in sen- 
 tencing him the judge said : "You are hanged, not 
 because you have stolen a sheep, but in order that 
 sheep may not be stolen." But even conservative Eng- 
 land finally became convinced that hanging was no 
 real deterrent of theft, and did not secure its pro- 
 fessed end, the protection of society in the enjoyment 
 of property. Sheep-stealing went merrily on in spite 
 of frequent hangings, and it was found better to let 
 the thief live and do what was possible to transform 
 him into an honest man. Now we are finding the 
 principle of equality of sentences to be erroneous. 
 They are indefensible on the theory of expiatory or 
 retributive or deterrent punishment, because they can- 
 not be adjusted to individual guilt. And if penalty 
 is to be corrective, equal sentences are utterly absurd, 
 for the nature and duration of corrective treatment 
 must be adjusted to the character of the criminal and 
 not to the supposed heinousness of his crime. 
 
 There has been a great change in the general hu- 
 maneness of civilized nations in the treatment of 
 crime, but no great advance in principle. In 1837 the 
 death penalty was repealed in England in the case of 
 about two hundred crimes, without any appreciable in- 
 crease in criminality. Public whippings, brandings, 
 mutilations, once common, are now practically un-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 227 
 
 known. Cruel executions, such as breaking on the 
 wheel, drawing asunder with horses, and the penalty 
 for treason, familiar to every reader of English his- 
 tory, of being "hanged, drawn and quartered," are 
 now totally disused. The punishments that were se- 
 vere to brutality were proved by experience to be no 
 more deterrent than the milder. Indeed, it seems to 
 be fairly well established that petty crimes were pro- 
 portionally commoner when they were punished by 
 hanging than now when the penalty is brief imprison- 
 ment. Men reasoned a priori that heavy penalties 
 would deter; but the fact proved to be that the more 
 rigorous the penalty the less the restraint. The way 
 of effectual protection of society from crime is to 
 eliminate the criminal. Since we have decided not to 
 eliminate him by death, the only method left to us is 
 to eliminate him by reform. He must be changed 
 into an honest man. 
 
 In other words, everything that we have learned 
 about criminals and crime points to the conclusion 
 that direct attempts to suppress and punish crime are 
 doomed to failure, and that progress is to be made in 
 an altogether different direction from that in which 
 we have been proceeding. We can do much to pro- 
 tect society from crime by a rational treatment of the 
 criminal, concerning which more will presently be said. 
 But effective protection of society must begin back of 
 the crime, in an endeavor to remove its causes. If it 
 is true that crime has a social cause, punishing or re- 
 forming the individual is no real remedy. If we per- 
 mit large numbers of men to be assailed by what are
 
 228 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 to them irresistible temptations to commit crimes, and 
 do nothing toward removal of such temptations, we 
 ourselves are the real criminals. When we analyze 
 any collection of statistics of crime, we come imme- 
 diately to this fact : offenses against property are three 
 times as numerous as offenses against the person. Of 
 course there must be a reason for this, and it is not 
 hard to find. The present distribution of wealth offers 
 a constant inducement to large numbers of men and 
 women to acquire from others with little exertion 
 property that could normally be acquired only by great 
 exertion. Hence those among us whose selfish in- 
 stincts are stronger than the social in other words, 
 those who are not restrained by usual ethical principles 
 and social habits choose this short and easy way. 
 Crime was the original get-rich-quick scheme, and is 
 still the most popular. But crime of that sort is pos- 
 sible only in a society where property is very un- 
 equally distributed, so unequally that the moral sense 
 of the propertyless is outraged by the conditions, and 
 respect for property rights correspondingly weakened. 
 If every man had or might have enough for his needs, 
 what inducement would there be to take from his 
 neighbor? The normal man would have little or no 
 motive to steal or defraud, if he were not in need or 
 did not expect to be in need. As all roads lead to 
 Rome, so all investigation of our social problems leads 
 us, by one path or another, to poverty as the under- 
 lying cause or aggravation of them all. We may 
 safely conclude that, with poverty, most crimes against 
 property would disappear; and there would remain
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 229 
 
 only those committed by the abnormal, and crimes of 
 violence and passion, which are relatively few in 
 number. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It must of course be recognized that for a long 
 time to come we shall have to face the practical neces- 
 sity of dealing with crime and criminals. This will 
 be true no matter how rapid progress we make 
 toward social justice and economic equality. What 
 has the Gospel of Jesus to say about our attitude 
 toward the criminal? The whole Christian idea of 
 penology, as we have seen, is summed up in the pre- 
 cept, "Love your enemies." The criminal is the enemy 
 of society; very well, love him, show him active good 
 will, do to him whatsoever things we would have done 
 to us, were the case reversed. We should recognize 
 that the criminal is either born a criminal or made a 
 criminal. He is entitled to our pity as a man diseased 
 or a man deformed : in either case a man needing to 
 be cured, not deserving to be punished. Crime is 
 pathological, and its effective treatment must be a 
 system of ethical therapeutics. We may still call our 
 civil tribunals "courts of justice" if we can persuade 
 ourselves that they deserve the name; but, for our 
 courts that deal with crime, we should invent another 
 title better descriptive of their intent. Possibly 
 "courts of correction" would answer our purpose. 
 Let us, as Mr. Howells has well said, "be very careful 
 how we try to do justice in this world, and mostly
 
 230 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 leave retribution of all kinds to God, who really knows 
 about things; and content ourselves as much as pos- 
 sible with mercy, whose mistakes are not so irrepa- 
 rable." 
 
 Merely to send a criminal to prison is a pitiful ex- 
 pedient for the protection of society; he should be 
 kept there until there is reason to believe that, if re- 
 leased, he will no longer commit crime. Our present 
 practice operates merely as an interruption of his 
 criminal career, not to mention that his imprisonment 
 has only fixed his character and quite possibly per- 
 fected his education as a criminal. To release a crim- 
 inal unre formed is as irrational as it would be to turn 
 loose a beast of prey after a brief confinement. It is 
 even more irrational, for while the leopard cannot 
 change his spots the mind of a criminal can be 
 changed. In the small percentage of cases in which 
 reform is found to be impossible, after due trial, the 
 only adequate protection of society will be the life- 
 long detention of such. And, since life imprisonment 
 in such cases is socially necessary, it is justifiable. 
 
 The indeterminate sentence is therefore the first 
 step in a rational and Christian penology. If the ob- 
 ject of society were to punish, on any of the theories 
 of the value of punishment, there might be some jus- 
 tification of fixed sentences. To suit so much punish- 
 ment to such a grade of crime would in any case be 
 crude justice, but it would not be unjust in principle. 
 If, on the contrary, society has in view the good of 
 the criminal, and believes that the surest protection for 
 itself is lifting him to a better manhood, then there
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 23! 
 
 is no sense whatever in the definite sentence. Men 
 so differ in present character, and in response to re- 
 formative influences, that a term of detention and dis- 
 cipline quite sufficient for one would be altogether in- 
 adequate for another. Detention should cease when 
 the object has been attained namely, hopeful recla- 
 mation of the offender and not before. In leaving 
 discretion to the judge to impose a longer or shorter 
 sentence, the laws of most of our States have virtu- 
 ally adopted the principle of the indeterminate sen- 
 tence ; but the judge is not the person to be invested by 
 law with this discretion, because he can only estimate 
 the gravity of the offense, not the effect of discipline 
 on the offender ; and so, with the best intentions in the 
 world, he is more likely than not to make a blunder. 
 The officer to whom the prisoner is given in charge 
 for detention and discipline can best judge the effect 
 and decide when the prisoner is fit to be released. Or, 
 if this is thought too great and too easily abused power 
 to be intrusted to a single officer, his recommendations 
 may be made to a Board which shall have power of 
 final action. 
 
 Joined to the indeterminate sentence, of which it 
 should be regarded as a sort of Siamese twin, should 
 be a generous parole system. When a prisoner has 
 given satisfactory evidence under detention and dis- 
 cipline that he is fit to be set at liberty, he should be 
 released on parole. The objection usually made to a 
 reformatory penology is that it promotes hypocrisy 
 rather than reform; that any prisoner will profess 
 penitence, and will behave well for a time, if this
 
 232 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 promises to secure his release. The objection is theo- 
 retically grave, and no doubt does constitute a prac- 
 tical difficulty, but it is a priori reasoning and must be 
 tested by experience. The parole system is already 
 in use in several States, has been tried long enough 
 to give it a fair testing, and has had the happiest 
 results. The released prisoner is of course required 
 for a certain period, varying with offenses and per- 
 sons, to report himself and his doings to the proper 
 officer at fixed intervals. An unsatisfactory report, or 
 failure to report, is cause for rearrest and recom- 
 mittal to prison. There are few failures. It is more 
 difficult to follow the cases after final release from 
 surveillance, but those who have had experience with 
 the system believe that fully sixty per cent, do not 
 again commit crime. In time we may hope for much 
 better results than this, but surely even this is mak- 
 ing great progress. 
 
 Another important change in the treatment of crime 
 is such modification in our penal laws as would per- 
 mit more lenity to first offenders, especially when the 
 offense is comparatively slight and the accused has 
 previously borne a good character. The shame of 
 arrest, trial and conviction is enough penalty in most 
 cases of this kind to deter from a second offense. It 
 would therefore be socially safe to give the court 
 power to suspend sentence during good behavior for 
 all first offenses, save those of the gravest character. 
 This would result, in a multitude of cases, in the per- 
 manent establishment in good character of those who, 
 if sent to prison, may be turned into habitual crim-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 233 
 
 inals. The greatest blunder of our criminal laws, 
 and that is saying much, is the sending of first offend- 
 ers to the common compost-heap of our prisons. 
 France is wiser than we. Its criminal code provides 
 that for first offenses the judge may suspend sentence 
 on parole for three years; if a second offense is com- 
 mitted within that time the penalty is doubled. 
 Our newspapers are full of cases that illustrate the 
 comparative defect of the laws of most of our States, 
 especially in dealing with young offenders. A ten- 
 year-old boy in Georgia stole a bottle of pop, valued 
 at five cents, and for this heinous crime was sentenced 
 to confinement in the reformatory until his majority, 
 or eleven years. A six-year-old criminal in Wisconsin 
 was committed to the State industrial school, also to 
 remain to the age of twenty-one. On the other hand, 
 a boy in Cleveland stole from his employer $1,400 to 
 go to Oxford and get an education. For several years 
 he had spent all his evenings in study and devoted 
 every cent he could save to the purchase of books. Be- 
 ing sent to deposit this large sum of money in the bank 
 the temptation was overwhelming, and he took the 
 first train for New York and engaged passage on the 
 Mauretania. The vice-president of the corporation by 
 which he was employed, when he learned of the cir- 
 cumstances, made the public announcement: "If he 
 wants higher education and has the mental qualifica- 
 tions, I'll see that he gets it." In former times this 
 would have been called encouraging crime, and some 
 may still take that view of the case, but to a fast-
 
 234 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 growing number it will seem rather to be encourag- 
 ing honesty. 
 
 Of course, if reform of the criminal is the object 
 of society, capital punishment must go. No one was 
 ever reformed by hanging, or even by electrocution. 
 The death penalty, at least as at present administered, 
 has little deterrent power. Facts already cited the 
 large percentages of homicides and the low ratio of 
 executions to killings testify to that unmistakably. 
 We shall soon have to choose between the two horns 
 of a logical dilemma : If capital punishment is to be 
 regarded as just and so to be retained, it involves re- 
 jection of the theory of reformation as the sole end 
 of penalty; if reformation is made the sole end of 
 penalty, capital punishment must be abandoned as not 
 only ineffective but indefensible. Society must of 
 course protect itself against homicide, and at present 
 it has no protection worthy of the name. Most homi- 
 cides are of a nature that warrants expectation of no 
 repetition; society would be safe in releasing such 
 offenders after a period of confinement and discipline 
 in short, the principle of the indeterminate sentence 
 could safely be applied to the majority of cases of 
 this crime. A small minority of cases would require 
 detention for life, in order to secure adequate protec- 
 tion to society ; and a second offense should always be 
 treated in that manner. 
 
 IV 
 
 The thing that cries loudest for immediate reform 
 in our penal system is the management of our prisons.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 235 
 
 With a few honorable exceptions, they are at present 
 criminal universities, in which men are trained to go 
 forth and prey on society. They are officered, in 
 large part, by men who are themselves criminals in 
 spirit, and too often in act, for they violate the law 
 every day in the discharge of their duties. The only 
 difference between them and the men over whom they 
 misuse the authority of society is that they have man- 
 aged thus far to escape conviction. Not only is the 
 personnel of our prisons almost the worst possible, 
 but the management of most of them is as corrupt 
 and dishonest as it is stupid. It is not extravagant to 
 say that two-thirds of the men in charge of crim- 
 inals, if they received their deserts under existing laws, 
 would themselves be wearing stripes. 
 
 Society at large shares the shame of these facts, be- 
 cause it looks on these abuses with apathy and does 
 not care about them enough to seek a remedy. It is 
 shared by the legislators who made the present system 
 and those who fail to modify it. Bills for the better- 
 ment of the system fail at session after session of Con- 
 gress and our legislatures, because of the indifference 
 of the great majority of lawmakers and the opposition 
 of a few who are interested in maintaining present 
 evil conditions. 
 
 Criminals must be sent to prison, as a place of de- 
 tention, but it ought to be a sanitary building; the 
 health of prisoners should be a first consideration, and 
 humane treatment should be strictly required. How 
 few of our prisons to-day answer these elementary re- 
 quirements probably few people suspect, but all experts
 
 236 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 know too well. Most of the jails, penitentiaries and 
 prisons of America are a disgrace to a civilized peo- 
 ple. Many of them are nurseries of tuberculosis and 
 other contagious diseases. 
 
 Even if these defects were removed, our penal sys- 
 tem would still be fundamentally unjust. A man 
 who commits crime must be detained under discipline 
 for a time, for his own good and for protection of 
 society. This is just and he has no cause of com- 
 plaint so far. But his family have not been guilty, 
 and why should they suffer for his fault? We treat 
 both the criminal and his family with hideous injus- 
 tice, and his resentment of our treatment embitters 
 him and makes permanent the enmity that he already 
 feels against society. Let us put the thief in prison, 
 since this must be so, but let him be there employed in 
 some useful and remunerative labor at regular wages, 
 his earnings to be paid to his family. If he is a single 
 man, let his wages accumulate, and at his release on 
 parole he will have a sum that will effectually help him 
 to begin his new life. 
 
 This would be rational ; this would be humane. But, 
 instead of this, what do we? We hire out our pris- 
 oners to contractors (in most States, not in all), and 
 their interest is to get from the workers as much 
 profit as possible; and we employ all the resources of 
 prison discipline to drive these men like cattle, that 
 the contractor's gains may be as large as possible. 
 And the contractor, paying much smaller wages than 
 for free labor, can undersell manufacturers who must 
 depend on free labor, and so floods the market with
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 237 
 
 cheap goods. The tendency is, and often the result, to 
 reduce the wages of the outside workers to the level 
 of prison prices. Thus a double wrong is done by 
 the system, which has not even the poor excuse of 
 being profitable to the taxpayer, for it usually results 
 in a heavy deficit in the prison accounts, which must 
 be met by taxation. Oh, the offense of this is rank; 
 it smells to heaven! Society is itself a greater crim- 
 inal than the criminal whom it punishes so cruelly. 
 
 There are signs that the public is becoming aroused. 
 In March, 1913, Arkansas abolished the lease system, 
 after a spectacular campaign lasting several years, one 
 incident of which was the pardoning of three hundred 
 and sixty convicts at once by the governor, on the 
 ground that "the penitentiary was not designed for a 
 revengeful hell." Henceforth the convicts are to be 
 worked on a State farm, which is believed to interfere 
 less with free labor than other lines of production, 
 and also prepares men when released to secure em- 
 ployment more easily than in trades. 
 
 The contract system was in force in 1913 in the 
 States of Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, 
 Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, 
 Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New 
 Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, South Caro- 
 lina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, 
 Wisconsin and South Dakota. It is in our older com- 
 monwealths, the States of the Atlantic seaboard and 
 the middle West, that the abuse still lingers; with a 
 single exception, the newer States of the far West 
 have never adopted the practice or have discarded it.
 
 238 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Even in the States east of the Mississippi in which 
 the State prisons are free from the contract system, 
 it still is found in the county workhouses or peniten- 
 tiaries and in so-called "reformatories." No interest 
 is promoted by this system but the interest of the con- 
 tractor. He indeed greatly profits by a system that 
 permits him to treat prisoners as slaves, and to offer 
 goods so manufactured at prices with which free labor 
 cannot compete, save at the penalty of starvation, vice 
 and crime a system that sends prisoners out at the 
 end of their terms weakened in body and perverted in 
 mind, a permanent addition to the burden of disease 
 and criminality that the community must carry. A 
 fearful price, this, to pay for a system that accom- 
 plishes nothing for society but the enrichment of a 
 few men. 
 
 The initial mistake in our thinking about a penal 
 system has perhaps been the assumption that crim- 
 inals must be confined within four high walls, and can 
 be employed only in manufactures. The South taught 
 us the fallacy of this assumption (had we been willing 
 to learn) when it hired out its convicts to contractors 
 to work in the fields and on the roads; but the chain- 
 gang was in no other respect better than the prison 
 shop ; the brutality was as great, possibly greater, and 
 while the health of the convicts may have been bettered 
 by an outdoor life, nothing was accomplished for their 
 reformation. The South at length became conscious 
 of this fact and took the next step forward : the estab- 
 lishment of penal farms. The management of these, 
 however, still leaves much to be desired; some of the
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 239 
 
 worst brutalities in the history of American penology 
 have been disclosed in these penal farms. Certain 
 Northern States adopted the idea and made their 
 farms not merely penal but reformatory. The guards 
 with loaded rifles were dispensed with and the honor 
 system was substituted : each convict admitted to the 
 farm is required to sign a pledge of good conduct. 
 Honor among convicts? Impossible, preposterous! 
 will be the sneering comment of many readers. But 
 at the Ohio penal farm, at Mansfield, during a trial of 
 ten years, out of 2,600 prisoners only 18 ever at- 
 tempted to escape. The superintendent has no means 
 of tracing all the men after their release, but he be- 
 lieves that fully 65 per cent, live thereafter honest 
 lives. At Canon City, Colorado, and Great Meadow, 
 New York, similar conditions prevail, with similar 
 results. The prisoners are not required to work all the 
 time; they are encouraged to play baseball and foot- 
 ball, and live a normal life in clean surroundings. 
 Treat convicts as beasts and they will become beasts, 
 as the chain-gang and the prison-shop show; treat 
 convicts like men and they will become men. Nearly 
 every State in the Union possesses large tracts of 
 waste land which through the labor of its convicts 
 might be made to blossom as the rose, while the ma- 
 jority of the workers would be reclaimed to lives of 
 honesty and productiveness. 
 
 Employment of convicts on road work is equally 
 possible and perhaps even more desirable. It will 
 naturally be argued by many that convicts employed 
 in such labor, unrestrained by guards and loaded rifles,
 
 24O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 would promptly make their escape, and would con- 
 stitute a serious menace to the surrounding commu- 
 nity. Experience shows that a few will escape, but 
 that the great majority will be faithful to their pledge 
 of honor. Oregon had, a few years ago, one of the 
 worst prison-contract systems in America. The sys- 
 tem was abolished and the convicts were employed 
 in road-building. The new system was efficient in its 
 purpose, and has been equally efficient in men-build- 
 ing. Moreover, it has been profitable: formerly the 
 convicts required from the State treasury $40,000 a 
 year for their support ; to-day they are self-supporting, 
 the prisoners are earning wages for themselves and 
 their families, miles of good roads contribute to the 
 wealth of the State, and a large proportion of the con- 
 victs on their release seek and obtain honest employ- 
 ment. It is becoming recognized that one of the most 
 urgent needs of the people of the United States is 
 good roads. Here is a means of obtaining them, not 
 only without expense, but with great incidental profit 
 to the whole community. How long shall we permit 
 the evils of our prison system to continue unabated, 
 when the remedy has been put into our very hands? 
 If men will not hear the call of humanity, will they 
 forever be insensible to the promptings of greed? If 
 they cannot see their fellow man in a convict, can 
 they not see the dollar in his labor the dollar that 
 they might enjoy, instead of the contractor? 
 
 The Washington State Reformatory is another il- 
 lustration of the fact that the far West is taking 
 the lead in penology. This institution is conducted
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 24! 
 
 less like a prison than a school, and its success has 
 won for it the title of the University of Another 
 Chance. The indeterminate sentence, manual training, 
 corrective discipline, and the parole are its chief fea- 
 tures nothing novel in theory or practice, but still 
 unusual. Firms and corporations throughout the 
 State are said to be willing to give employment to the 
 "graduates" of this school, most of whom continue to 
 give good account of themselves. The connection be- 
 tween crime and ignorance is so close, and has so often 
 been commented on, as itself to suggest that to in- 
 crease the intelligence of criminals is the best way to 
 weaken the criminal impulse. When the former crim- 
 inal has been fitted by training of mind and hand to 
 do some honest and productive work for society, more 
 than half the inducement to crime has been taken 
 from him forever. 
 
 One is not ignorant of, nor does he ignore, the 
 fact that a prison is not a Sunday school or a kinder- 
 garten; that discipline must be maintained (but what 
 sort of discipline ?) ; that prisons should as far as 
 possible be made to pay expenses and not be a burden 
 on the taxpayer; that it is difficult to get men of high 
 mental and moral tone to serve as wardens and officers 
 of a prison; or any other piffling objections that may 
 be made to prison reform. But surely Christian civili- 
 zation is equal to the task of devising a better system 
 than we now have, and of finding men to work it. 
 One cannot argue with defenders of the present sys- 
 tem; they are too ignorant of the Gospel of Jesus, or
 
 242 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 believe it too little, to find a common meeting-point 
 with those who believe that Gospel. 
 
 If men will endure our brutal and inhuman meth- 
 ods, women will not; and we may confidently expect 
 one of the earliest beneficent effects of woman suffrage 
 to be the amelioration of our methods with criminals. 
 When we think of our filthy jails in which uncon- 
 demned and in many cases innocent persons are con- 
 fined; of our prisons with their crowded unsanitary 
 cells and their slave-pen workshops; of our courts 
 which savagely send a man to prison for thirty years 
 for the theft of a scarf-pin, or a boy for stealing a 
 five-cent soft drink, or a labor leader for leading a 
 street parade; we may well hope with fervency for 
 the day when the American woman may be heard in 
 our legislatures, and even in the holy Congress and 
 possibly on the sacrosanct judicial bench. 
 
 In the present state of civilization, the crime of 
 crimes is war. There was not a war during the nine- 
 teenth century that was not wholly unnecessary and 
 indefensible. This is not equivalent to saying that 
 none of the warring nations had a real grievance, or 
 it may be an unselfish purpose. To say that war is 
 unnecessary is not to say that it is wanton and cause- 
 less; it is to say that peaceful solution of the diffi- 
 culties was possible, and that failure to seek and find 
 peaceful solution in these days is inexcusable. No
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 243 
 
 difficulties can arise between civilized, not to say 
 Christian, nations that cannot be solved peaceably, any 
 more than difficulties can arise between two civilized 
 men that cannot be peacefully settled. We insist, as a 
 fundamental postulate of civilization, that all difficul- 
 ties between individuals shall be submitted to the deci- 
 sion of courts, not fought out as in former ages by 
 personal combat. The duel is no more obsolete in 
 civilization than war. War is merely a relic of bar- 
 barism. 
 
 The ideas commonly connoted by words and 
 phrases like "patriotism," "national dignity," "national 
 rights," are as obsolete, barbaric and criminal as war 
 itself. Their prevalence among the people is one of 
 the chief reasons why war is still possible. Our 
 schools are doing great mischief in still propagating 
 these ideas, under the wrong-headed conviction that 
 this is the way to make good citizens. Much of the 
 cheap sentiment of newspapers and political speeches 
 about "Old Glory" belongs in the same category. 
 There is a real patriotism, and there is a genuine 
 honor for our country's symbol, differing widely from 
 these shams ; and they inspire love of peace, hatred of 
 war. Real patriotism wishes our country to be leader 
 among the nations in promoting peace and justice 
 throughout the world, so that the flag will stand for 
 something more than power, and will be honored 
 wherever it flies. 
 
 Armaments are unnecessary and inexcusable in our 
 state of civilization as inexcusable as the carrying of 
 arms by private citizens. A man walking the streets
 
 244 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 of our cities has exactly the same justification for 
 going armed to the teeth that any nation has for main- 
 taining standing armies and navies. His excuse would 
 be that some other men carry weapons, and that occa- 
 sionally one of them shoots somebody, and he must 
 therefore be prepared to defend himself. It is quite 
 true that hardly a day passes in which somebody is 
 not shot in New York, but few citizens regard that 
 fact as sufficient reason for carrying a rifle and a brace 
 of revolvers down Broadway. Yet in spite of the 
 patent folly of the thing, the nations of Europe are 
 engaged in a mad race to be first in the matter of 
 preparedness for war, until their enormous armaments 
 threaten them with universal bankruptcy. 
 
 And we are urged to join this lunacy. Our maga- 
 zines and newspapers abound in articles inciting our 
 government to adopt a policy of this kind. Even 
 as it is, our appropriations for war and its results 
 form a larger proportion of our annual national ex- 
 penditure than can be paralleled in the budget of any 
 European nation, but this does not satisfy the Hob- 
 sons. There is probably not a professional soldier or 
 sailor who is not more or less obsessed by this notion 
 of imminent danger to the United States from attack 
 by some foreign power. Now it is Japan, now it is 
 Germany, that is said to be our secret and deadly foe ; 
 and horrible are the descriptions of the defeat and suf- 
 fering that would certainly be ours should such an at- 
 tack be made upon us in our present well-nigh de- 
 fenseless state. On us civilians who have retained our 
 sanity, and can estimate this rhodomontade as it de-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 245 
 
 serves, these professional advocates of war look with 
 pity not quite unmixed with contempt. 
 
 That there is method in this madness we have be- 
 gun to suspect and even to know. We may acquit 
 the professional soldier of anything worse than a bias 
 resulting from his education and calling, but the 
 civilian advocate of armaments is too often the agent 
 of corruption. It has been made clear in many ways 
 that the creation of a great navy is the inspiration of 
 "graft." The Steel Trust and its allies are those 
 who profit chiefly by the building of these enormously 
 expensive ships of war; just as in Germany it has 
 lately been proved that the great Krupp works have 
 been engaged in the propaganda of warlike sentiment, 
 to stimulate the demand for their immense and costly 
 guns. Ambition and greed the ambition of rulers 
 and statesmen and generals, and the greed of capital- 
 ists are together responsible for wars and arma- 
 ments. If these two forces could be eliminated or con- 
 trolled, there would never be another war. 
 
 The workers have lately awakened to these facts. 
 They are expected to furnish food for the powder that 
 the ruling class manufactures to fight and shed their 
 blood that ruler and statesman and general may be 
 called great and capitalist may become richer. This 
 is the real meaning of modern war, however deftly 
 that meaning may be wrapped up in patriotic phrases. 
 And the working man is very tired of playing "goat," 
 of being the silent and unresisting victim of this abom- 
 inable system. The workers of Europe have begun to 
 manifest a new spirit and to exercise a decisive influ-
 
 246 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 ence in the affairs of nations, by serving formal no- 
 tice that they will endure this no longer. They have 
 virtually declared a general strike against war. When 
 the conflict broke out in the Balkans, in November, 
 1912, a general European war was feared. It had 
 long been predicted that, in such an event, the jealousy 
 of the chief European nations regarding the division 
 of the "sick man's" estate would inevitably precipi- 
 tate a conflict. And for a time it looked as if the 
 prediction were certain of fulfilment. Austria and 
 Germany and Russia began to arm themselves and to 
 send ultimatums, and the clash of arms was expected 
 to come to us on every breeze. Then something hap- 
 pened. On November 17, vast numbers of workmen 
 met in every capital of Europe, save St. Petersburg, 
 and protested against war. Paris, Berlin and London 
 each saw gatherings of nearly a hundred thousand 
 men. A few weeks later came a meeting of the Inter- 
 national Socialist Congress at Berne, where the great 
 Cathedral was filled with a shouting multitude listen- 
 ing to speeches and resolutions that proclaimed the 
 gospel of peace and good will to all the world. 
 
 There was sudden change in the atmosphere of 
 Europe. The war-clouds dissolved and the sun of 
 peace shone again in the heavens. Statesmen who had 
 been threatening the strong and bullying the weak sud- 
 denly began to roar as gently as a sucking dove. The 
 real power of Europe had spoken the power that 
 usually works and suffers and is silent the power 
 that produces the world's wealth and is the pillar of 
 kings' thrones and the maker of dukes' coronets, de-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 247 
 
 spised and spat upon by the great, but irresistible when 
 it makes its will known. This is the effective war 
 against war. How are battles to be fought and vic- 
 tories to be gained, if the workers will not fight? For 
 reasons that will be obvious to the dullest, the capi- 
 talistic press made only the most perfunctory refer- 
 ence to this event, the most significant of the twen- 
 tieth century thus far, and not one of them had the 
 insight and courage to point out its significance. It 
 would be very bad policy to do anything to develop 
 the consciousness of power among the masses. But 
 what was then done has been thoroughly apprehended 
 by the working classes; and in spite of the silence of 
 the professed leaders and instructors of public opinion 
 the workers are gaining some realization, albeit yet 
 but dim, of their real power and how it may be ef- 
 fectively used. 
 
 The ruling ideas of any age or people are the ideas 
 of its ruling class. The classes that have hitherto 
 ruled the world, the aristocracy of birth and the aris- 
 tocracy of wealth, are giving place to democracy. The 
 world's workers, the producers of wealth, have no in- 
 terest in wars and armaments; on the contrary, all 
 their interests are on the side of universal peace. The 
 idea that wars are necessary, indeed inevitable, has 
 been carefully fostered and is still industriously propa- 
 gated by the capitalistic class and its literary hirelings, 
 because in wars and armaments they find immense 
 profits. A great financier over whom the nation lately 
 shed abundant crocodile tears, is said to have got his 
 first start on his career as philanthropist and art con-
 
 248 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 noisseur by himself remaining at home during the 
 civil war and selling the government guns that would 
 not shoot. On the whole, capitalists find greater 
 profits in armaments than in wars, but occasional wars 
 are necessary to justify the armaments, as well as use- 
 ful in providing additional territory for exploitation. 
 The story has been often told, and is generally be- 
 lieved to be substantially true, that an American capi- 
 talist, who is also a journalist or, more accurately, 
 an owner of newspapers was the real cause of the 
 war with Spain. So confident was he of his ability to 
 provoke a conflict, that, when an employee whom he 
 had sent to Cuba to report the war, telegraphed to his 
 chief, "I can't find any war here; I had better come 
 home," he sent in reply the message, now classic in 
 journalistic circles, "You furnish the news, and I will 
 furnish the war." 
 
 How capitalistic greed inspires wars, the recent his- 
 tory of Mexico illustrates. President Diaz was kept 
 in power for many years through the power of cap- 
 ital, which found this course to its interest, as it 
 meant great "concessions" and profits. At length, one 
 dissatisfied clique of capitalists financed a "revolu- 
 tion." Diaz was overthrown and Madero succeeded. 
 Presently, another clique precipitated a second "revo- 
 lution" and Huerta came into power. Incidentally, 
 Madero lost his life, which was, from the capitalistic 
 point of view, unfortunate, but he took a gambler's 
 chance and lost. Ever since these capital- fomented 
 troubles began in Mexico, the capitalistic cliques have 
 been doing their utmost, through the usual channels
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 2149 
 
 of diplomacy and the press, to induce our government 
 to interfere. After maintaining a policy of "watchful 
 waiting" for months, President Wilson sent a naval 
 and military force to occupy Vera Cruz. The media- 
 tion of the South American republics was then of- 
 fered and accepted, and seems likely to be successful 
 in restoring peace to Mexico, at least for a time. But, 
 as this volume goes to press, the American people are 
 still uncertain whether they are to be forced into a 
 bloody and costly war, merely to serve the purposes 
 of a band of greedy plunderers. 
 
 War was once a necessity; it was the only means 
 nations had of settling their differences and righting 
 their wrongs. Generations ago war became a crime. 
 War is now an insanity.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 
 
 "Be ye perfect," said Jesus to his disciples. If it 
 be conceded that ethical perfection only was in his 
 thought (of which none can be certain), it still fol- 
 lows that ethical perfection is for most men impos- 
 sible without a certain measure of physical well-be- 
 ing. According to the story of Eden, God made man 
 in full bodily vigor and supplied all his wants before 
 he laid upon him any commandment. The Gospel 
 demands of every man that he live a full, rich, noble 
 life, that he become the man God planned him to be. 
 Redemption of the body and the spirit is the goal 
 of a Christian Christianity. 
 
 But this implies of necessity the opportunity for 
 every man to live such a life, and our social order 
 denies such opportunity to the great majority. The 
 disciples of Jesus cannot propose to themselves any- 
 thing less than a perfect human society. That society 
 should be ethically perfect will perhaps be granted 
 without argument to be a fitting ideal, even by those 
 who have no faith that such a society may be attained, 
 or even approximated. We must recognize the teach- 
 
 250
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 
 
 ing of experience, that ethical perfection implies also 
 physical conditions approaching the perfect. To ex- 
 pect high ethical life amid low economic conditions is 
 to expect flowers to bloom on a bare rock. 
 
 "Since the second century," says Ritschl, "nothing 
 has guided the Church less in its efforts for social 
 amelioration than the ideal of the kingdom of God 
 on earth, in the sense in which Christ and his apostles 
 used the term." A glance the most cursory at our 
 social conditions finds ample justification for this state- 
 ment as applied to our own age, and a quick flitting 
 through the pages of history brings forth a like re- 
 sult regarding the past. Disease, misery, poverty have 
 always bound men as with chains and fetters, and 
 men will be helpless to rise until these bonds have 
 been stricken from them. These things are here in 
 the world, not by will of God, but by act of man. 
 It is for man to rid himself of them, and to cease 
 praying to God for deliverance from what man brings 
 on himself. The farmer might as wisely sit on the 
 fence and pray for a crop, as for us to beseech God 
 to rid us of pestilence. Yet most Christian people 
 would laugh or pity if they saw such a farmer, while 
 they will regard as irreligious the suggestion that 
 prayer is no remedy for disease. And yet they would 
 probably assent to the abstract proposition that God 
 will not do for us what we are quite capable of doing 
 for ourselves. 
 
 The new idea of the Gospel is not hostile to prayer 
 and does not belittle divine help; but it does lay in- 
 creasing emphasis on self-help, and it does try to put
 
 252 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 prayer in its proper place, as a supplement to human 
 effort, not a substitute for it. Above all, it recog- 
 nizes that to form is better than to reform, that pre- 
 vention is better than cure; or, to use medical terms, 
 prophylaxis is more important, because more effica- 
 cious/ than therapeutics. Much disease may easily be 
 prevented ; cure is always uncertain. The time is com- 
 ing when the test of a people's civilization will be 
 freedom from disease. For we have now reached a 
 point where smallpox, malaria, yellow fever and ty- 
 phoid are no longer diseases they are crimes. Tuber- 
 culosis and syphilis are not diseases they are penal- 
 ties. Accordingly, we have now a new ideal of philan- 
 thropy : the old nursed the victims of fever and plague; 
 the new exterminates mosquitoes and rats. Father 
 Damien was the typical saint of the old ideal ; Captain 
 Lazear is the typical saint of the new. 
 
 Economic reasons urge us to attempt the conquest 
 of disease, quite as strongly as philanthropic. Disease 
 is one of the heaviest taxes on production. The esti- 
 mated economic cost of sickness each year in the 
 United States is $792,892,000. 1 This is almost cer- 
 tainly an underestimate. Even so, it exceeds the en- 
 tire cotton crop of 1911, which was valued at $732,- 
 420,000 the largest crop ever grown. The imagina- 
 
 1 The experience of Germany is that 40 per cent, of employees 
 will be sick an average of 8.5 days per annum. Estimating the 
 loss of wages at an average of $1.50 a day, the cost of medical 
 attendance at $1.00 a day, and the economic loss at 50 cents 
 a day, the total cost of sickness among the 33,500,000 workers 
 of the United States in 1910 was over $792,000,000. Rubinow, 
 "Social Insurance," p. 214.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 253 
 
 tion is easily impressed by the proposition to destroy 
 the whole of our greatest crop of cotton. We can 
 figure to ourselves something of the widespread misery 
 and ruin that would result, and also comprehend how 
 every one of us would ultimately feel that loss, in the 
 enhanced cost of cotton goods. We find it more diffi- 
 cult to realize that each year an equivalent tax for 
 sickness is assessed on us, and that we pay in that 
 cost of living about which we grumble. Nothing can 
 be more certain than that eventually it is we who pay 
 for our neighbor's sickness. To play the priest and 
 Levite, and pass by on the other side, is only a tem- 
 porary evasion of our responsibility; the bill for the 
 sick and wounded stranger will one day be presented 
 to us in such wise that we cannot refuse to pay. It 
 will be cheaper for us, as well as more humane and 
 more Christian, to play the Good Samaritan and take 
 out our two pence at once. 
 
 The great scourges of the past are under control, 
 some are disappearing and none are now a great men- 
 ace to America, though they may for some time con- 
 tinue to afflict other parts of the earth. The Great 
 White Plague, the Great Black Plague, anaemia and 
 alcoholism are the chief scourges of the race to-day. 
 Once we subdue these four great enemies, we may 
 count the victory over disease virtually won. There 
 will remain, not great campaigns to be fought, but a 
 guerrilla warfare to be waged, until, band by band, 
 all the foes will be subdued. That task will be annoy- 
 ing, and perhaps long-drawn-out, but it will be noth-
 
 254 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 ing in comparison to our present difficulties and dan- 
 gers. 
 
 II 
 
 As yet we are only feeling our way to better meth- 
 ods ; old ideas and old methods still hold the great ma- 
 jority in their grip. Our confused thinking, the natural 
 result of this transition, makes us uncertain in both 
 aim and procedure, so we fumble and fail. When we 
 first became aroused to the ravages of tuberculosis 
 and the possibility of curing the great majority of 
 cases in the initial stage of the disease, we had a 
 national spasm of zeal for the establishment of sana- 
 toriums and camps for the open-air cure. Enormous 
 sums, each year growing in actual and proportional 
 amount, are expended in this hopeless and futile effort. 
 In the year 1912 nearly $19,000,000 (so it is esti- 
 mated by the national society for the cure of tuber- 
 culosis) was spent in the United States in this way. 
 There are no figures available for the sum spent in 
 prevention, but it was doubtless trifling in comparison. 
 And probably nobody, certainly nobody of authority, 
 would maintain that any impression worth mentioning 
 was made on the Great White Plague by this immense 
 expenditure. There were unquestionably more new 
 cases than cures during the year. 
 
 Even with our imperfect methods of registration, 
 it is known that 180,000 persons died of this disease 
 in 1912, and the real number was probably in excess 
 of 200,000. In some classes the mortality is excep-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 255 
 
 tionally high : 90 per cent, of the deaths of employees 
 in the textile industries are from tuberculosis, most 
 of which are easily preventable. The shuttles used in 
 many mills are known as "suction shuttles" : in thread- 
 ing them the weaver sucks the thread or yarn through 
 an opening, incidentally filling his throat and lungs 
 with lint, promoting bronchial troubles and inhaling 
 tuberculosis germs deposited by a diseased worker. 
 Shuttles used thus by tubercular operatives and well 
 alike, become direct causes of infection. Attempts to 
 prohibit their use have been stoutly opposed by em- 
 ployers. Capitalists would rather kill off a large per- 
 centage of their workers every year than go to the 
 expense of new equipment. Human life is cheaper 
 than machinery. 
 
 Tuberculosis is, for reasons not yet understood, a 
 greater menace to some races than to others. Poles, 
 Italians and members of the numerous Slav races are 
 comparatively immune; while the Irish are peculiarly 
 susceptible, especially in the second generation on 
 American soil, and native-born Americans of all ori- 
 gins contract this disease far more easily than immi- 
 grants. We cannot dismiss this as a problem that only 
 remotely concerns us there is none more intimate or 
 pressing. At the same time, it is not a problem of 
 America alone ; 40 per cent, of the deaths from disease 
 in Germany are from tuberculosis. And there, as 
 here, money is spent too exclusively on cure of indi- 
 viduals. It is said that $60,000,000 have been spent in 
 recent years in building workingmen's homes and
 
 256 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 $20,000,000 for hospitals and sanatoriums, in the vain 
 hope of coping with the scourge. 
 
 Socially speaking, the only way to cure tuberculosis 
 is to prevent it. And this is not difficult, because we 
 now know that the real cause of this disease is mal- 
 nutrition, underfeeding. The bacilli or "germs'* of 
 tuberculosis are practically omnipresent in the air, and 
 every person takes them into his system. The only 
 reason why we do not all of us fall victims to this 
 disease, apart from constitutional immunity of some, 
 is that most of us are able to maintain well-nourished 
 and vigorous bodies. The bacilli cannot effect lodg- 
 ment in a healthy body ; we breathe them in, and they 
 attempt to make a home in our throats and lungs and 
 our bodies rally their forces and kill them before 
 they can do any damage. But when bacilli enter a 
 body weakened by underfeeding, or lodge in throats 
 and lungs inflamed by dust or poisonous gases, they 
 find a fertile soil for growth. Tuberculosis is a disease 
 of tenements and factories, in the main, and flourishes 
 among the poor. Comparatively few of the well-to-do 
 are attacked, and among them the disease is curable in 
 the majority of cases, if taken in hand in time, by 
 giving the body what it has lacked, plenty of nour- 
 ishing food and fresh air. These expensive luxuries 
 are quite beyond the reach of the poor, so they die. 
 
 A large proportion of working people, using that 
 term in its usual sense of manual workers, suffer from 
 anaemia, or poverty of the blood, because they are con- 
 tinually underfed. This does not mean that they do 
 not have "enough to eat" in the ordinary usage of
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 257 
 
 those words; it means that they do not have enough 
 nourishing food to keep their bodies up to a fair 
 standard of efficiency. It is one thing to silence the 
 cravings of hunger; it is quite a different thing to 
 satisfy the needs of the body. To gratify the appe- 
 tite is not necessarily to be fed. Malnutrition includes 
 not merely underfeeding, in the sense of insufficient 
 quantity of food, but improper feeding, the giving of 
 unfit and contaminated food. Malnutrition in this 
 sense is the cause of the frightful infant mortality that 
 prevails throughout our country, especially in our 
 cities. Three hundred thousand infants under a year 
 old die every year in the United States. One calls this 
 mortality frightful, because it is believed that, while 
 malnutrition is responsible for the death of 50 per 
 cent, of people of all ages, it causes 85 per cent, of 
 infant mortality. That this high rate is due to easily 
 preventable causes is necessary inference from the fact 
 that in the poor quarters of our cities 373 infants of 
 every thousand die before completing their first year, 
 while in the better residence districts the mortality is 
 156 in the thousand. And that even this is extrava- 
 gantly high is proved by the fact that in New Zea- 
 land infant mortality is sixty-eight to the thousand. 
 We have only recently begun to think of New Zealand 
 as a civilized country, but it has surpassed us greatly 
 in one of the prime essentials of civilization, providing 
 security for human life. 
 
 Cure of malnutrition is therefore sor.v thing more 
 and other than insuring more food and cheaper food 
 for all people : it also means good food. Much of that
 
 258 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 sold in the markets, even that bought at high prices 
 by the rich, is not good food. The campaign for 
 pure-food laws has brought to light many adultera- 
 tions and substitutions that are hurtful, as well as 
 some that are merely dishonest; and enforcement of 
 such laws as we have has done something to improve 
 the quality of our foods. But in many cases the law 
 does not attempt to prevent some of the most serious 
 impairments of our daily foods. This is especially 
 true of the cereals that form so large a part of our 
 diet. All cereals have an outer husk, composed mainly 
 of mineral matter and of no food value. But imme- 
 diately inside of this husk is a thin, dark-colored layer, 
 which contains phosphates and organic substances that 
 constitute an essential part of cereal food value. One 
 of these constituents is a crystalline organic base, to 
 which the name "vitamine" has been given. The vita- 
 mines are found in all cereals and their presence in 
 food is necessary to proper metabolism. Their ab- 
 sence causes progressive degeneration of the nervous 
 system, culminating in fatal disease. 
 
 In the Orient, where rice is the staple cereal, and 
 with many people the chief food, the preparation of 
 this grain for market removes the whole of this brown 
 outer envelope, leaving the polished, glistening white 
 rice with which all are familiar. There is little nutri- 
 ment in this but starch. The result of an exclusive 
 diet of this rice is the disease known as beri-beri, a 
 polyneuritis that finally manifests itself in disorders as 
 apparently different as paralysis, hypertrophy of the 
 heart and dropsy. Since rice is less used among us,
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 259 
 
 the danger of our contracting beri-beri is slight; but 
 the same (or, at all events, a similar) disease is caused 
 by an exclusive diet of bread made from the ordinary 
 white wheat flour of commerce, which is the staple of 
 diet in many families. Thousands of poor people 
 make two meals every day of bread and tea exclu- 
 sively, and their bread is made from white flour. The 
 process of making our ordinary white flour inge- 
 niously removes from it every trace of the vitamines 
 whose presence is essential to health. When Sylves- 
 ter Graham taught our grandmothers to make bread 
 of flour composed of the whole wheat berry, he was 
 on the right track, though he did not have the cor- 
 rect scientific basis for his teaching. Still better than 
 the "graham" flour of commerce is a "whole wheat" 
 flour, that eliminates the silicate husk, while it retains 
 the phosphates and vitamines so essential to nutrition. 
 People who have a varied diet are not seriously 
 harmed by the absence of vitamines in their bread; 
 other articles of food supply the missing ingredient. 
 But people who rely on bread as a chief food should 
 by all means choose that made of whole wheat flour. 1 
 Ignorance, as we see from this, may be the cause 
 of malnutrition, no less than poverty. No doubt the 
 infant mortality of the tenements is much increased 
 by ignorance. When medical inspectors find mothers 
 giving such viands as sausage and cabbage to infants 
 
 1 As this is not a treatise on dietetics, these sample Instances 
 must suffice. For further particulars, readers are referred to 
 "Starving America," an excellent popular discussion of dietetics, 
 from the commercial as well as the hygienic point of view.
 
 26O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 * 
 
 of a few weeks, it is evident that more food and bet- 
 ter food is not the only need of such people; they also 
 need elementary instruction in the care of infants. It 
 is the greater intelligence of the well-to-do, no less 
 than their ability to provide better food, that decreases 
 the death-rate among their children. And so any pro- 
 gram for the prevention of disease must include, as 
 one of its most prominent features, systematic pop- 
 ular lectures, illustrated with the lantern and the mov- 
 ing picture, that will teach the poor how to care for 
 their children. Good housing and a living wage will 
 come near completing the list of things to be done, so 
 far as the homes of the poor enter into the problem. 
 
 The establishment, with the opening of the year 
 1913, of a Children's Bureau in the Department of 
 Commerce and Labor will accomplish much, by sys- 
 tematic study of the facts and collection of them into 
 trustworthy statistics, toward solution of our prob- 
 lem. The first report, made in January, 1914, by the 
 chief of this new Bureau, Julia C. Lathrop, is not only 
 the first document of the kind printed by our Federal 
 government, but one of unusual significance in itself. 
 It takes as its starting point the figures of the Census 
 Bureau, that 300,000 infants die annually in the 
 United States, of whom at least half would live if 
 known measures of hygiene and sanitation were ap- 
 plied in our communities. Subjects for immediate in- 
 quiry by the Bureau are said to be : infant mortality, 
 birth rate, orphanage, juvenile courts, desertion, dan- 
 gerous occupations, accidents and diseases of chil- 
 dren, employment, and legislation affecting chil-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 26l 
 
 dren. Not all of these are directly connected with the 
 problem of disease, but all are connected with social 
 problems that we are greatly interested to understand 
 and solve. We have reason to congratulate ourselves 
 that Uncle Sam, at our urgent bidding, has at last 
 undertaken to do as much for our children as he long 
 ago did for our cattle and hogs. 1 
 
 It is not popular ignorance, perhaps, that is the 
 greatest bar to progress in dealing with disease. Quite 
 as general, and far more disgraceful, is the ignorance 
 of our legislators, journalists, ministers, and the rest 
 of our educated class who lead and express public 
 opinion. Not only are they densely ignorant of the 
 problem as a whole, but they are not in the least aware 
 of what has been done to make its solution possible 
 both in theory and in practice. They do not know, and 
 they are reluctant to believe when told, what has actu- 
 ally been done here and there to cope successfully with 
 disease. It is almost a wilful ignorance on their part, 
 for knowledge is so easily accessible. There is already 
 a literature of public hygiene almost as large as the 
 literature of bridge or golf. And yet, each time a 
 remedial measure is suggested it is received and de- 
 bated as if it were an absolutely new and untried idea, 
 and our most intelligent citizens will gravely pro- 
 nounce absurd and impracticable that which European 
 countries have had in successful operation for more 
 
 1 This is not quite exact. Last year (1913) Uncle Sam spent 
 $7,699,191 on the Bureaus devoted to the welfare of animals 
 and crops, and a beggarly $31,000 for children. Chief Lathrop 
 asks for $165,000 for 1914.
 
 262 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 than a generation. This is one of the most discourag- 
 ing features of the situation and is possibly the chief 
 cause of our slow progress. 
 
 In order to lessen ignorance, popular or otherwise, 
 States and municipalities should provide suitable liter- 
 ature for general circulation, and supplement this with 
 illustrated lectures about personal health and home 
 sanitation. The sooner this is done on a large scale, 
 systematically, persistently, the better will become the 
 prospect of overcoming disease. Much of this instruc- 
 tion could be given in factories and stores. Instruc- 
 tion in first aid should be given to all workers, and 
 every workshop where machinery is used should be 
 required by law to keep at hand all appliances neces- 
 sary to treat accidents. Increased efficiency of work- 
 ers would repay all costs. The trades unions might 
 be encouraged also to have such instruction given at 
 their meetings. Boards of health should be empow- 
 ered to inspect all places where people are employed, 
 not merely as now to see that the premises are kept in 
 good sanitary condition, but to have general oversight 
 of the health of the workers. This would imply that 
 power should be intrusted to them to require those 
 likely to become ill or incapacitated, and in conse- 
 quence to become a burden to family or community, 
 to undergo suitable medical or surgical treatment. In 
 short, to keep men well is more economical than to cure 
 them after they have become sick. 
 
 Conditions of workers and buildings are often a 
 disgrace to our present means of caring for the pub- 
 lic health. It is not necessary to go at length into
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 263 
 
 loathsome and sickening particulars, that have been 
 discovered by inspectors, official and volunteer, and 
 published where all might read them who would. It 
 is enough to say that in canneries and other factories 
 for preparation of foods, workers have been found 
 in large numbers who suffer from virulent eye, skin, 
 and scalp diseases ; while buildings were overrun with 
 fleas, rats, and other vermin. We may be certain 
 that if people realized the conditions under which their 
 foods are often prepared, they would not only refuse 
 to buy and eat them, but would make such emphatic 
 protest that something would be speedily done by negli- 
 gent or corrupt officials who now wink at such a state 
 of things. Our national carelessness in such things is 
 really astounding. The objections that both employ- 
 ers and employed almost always make to any improve- 
 ment in such conditions invariably disappear as both 
 become assured that this is part of that increase of 
 efficiency that society is now seeking, and finds so 
 profitable whenever it is attained. 
 
 Next to underfeeding, overcrowding stands as the 
 great cause of disease, and the bad ventilation, or no 
 ventilation, that invariably accompanies overcrowding. 
 This is especially manifest in most of the "occupa- 
 tional diseases," which might be reduced to negligible 
 proportions by requiring decent sanitation of all work- 
 shops and stores, admission of abundant light, free 
 use of water, and scientific ventilation to remove dust 
 and poisonous gases, as well as to admit fresh air. The 
 gravity of occupational diseases is not rightly appre- 
 hended, because the total number of victims to each
 
 264 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 disorder seems small ; yet, in proportion to the number 
 of workers, deaths or total disabilities are often 
 alarmingly large. Some of these diseases are as old 
 as trades themselves. So long as there have been 
 tailors and shoemakers, certain diseases have attacked 
 workers of these trades, in consequence of their seden- 
 tary and stooping labor. But rise of new industries 
 and new conditions of work has been occasion for 
 many new diseases and aggravation of many old. 
 
 Authorities on occupational diseases have suggested 
 their division into four classes: Those due to dust, 
 to chemical poisons, to germ infections, and to the 
 physical conditions of labor. 
 
 Diseases of the respiratory organs are caused or 
 aggravated by dust. An inflamed condition of the 
 mucous membranes results from constant breathing of 
 dust-laden air, which favorably disposes workers to 
 contract tuberculosis, bronchitis, pneumonia. Dyspep- 
 sia and diseases of the digestive tract come next. The 
 metal polisher lives on the average only fifteen years 
 after learning his trade. The stone-cutter's trade is 
 most hazardous of all, his chance of death being much 
 greater than that of the soldier in battle. An average 
 mortality of about 25 in 1,000 in the dusty trades 
 from tuberculosis alone, and of about 300 from all 
 diseases, speaks eloquently of the dangers faced by 
 those who practice them. Most of this mortality could 
 be prevented by use of fans and scientific ventilation. 
 
 Chemical poisoning is quite as dangerous and 
 equally preventable. All workers in lead are subject 
 to this danger, and the number of trades in which
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 265 
 
 lead is used in some form is legion. Lead poisoning 
 is the more dangerous because it is so insidious and 
 is cumulative, not immediate. For months or even 
 years the worker notices nothing, when suddenly the 
 cumulative force of the poison in the system asserts 
 itself and he collapses. Indigestion, lack of appetite 
 and other symptoms may give him warning ; or paraly- 
 sis may suddenly disable him entirely. Transient or 
 temporary blindness, deafness, loss of taste and smell, 
 are some of the other results. Lead poisoning does 
 not kill so many outright as some other forms of oc- 
 cupational diseases, but the damage it does to gen- 
 eral health and efficiency is often more serious eco- 
 nomically than death would be. In this case air and 
 water are the great preventives. If shops and fac- 
 tories where lead is used were properly ventilated, and 
 if workers were not only encouraged but compelled to 
 practice frequent ablutions, absorption of lead would 
 be greatly reduced and the health of workers much 
 benefited. A certain amount of danger is inseparable 
 from use of poisons in manufactures, but care will 
 eliminate the greater part of the risk. 
 
 Trades in which mercury and phosphorus are used 
 are more dangerous than the lead trades, as these poi- 
 sons act more quickly and are more rapidly absorbed. 
 Mercury is absorbed through the skin, and also as 
 dust and vapor through the lungs. Its effects are 
 manifested in "salivation" and loss of teeth, and later 
 by ulcerations on the body or in the internal organs. 
 It is much more likely to be fatal than lead poisoning. 
 The fumes of phosphorus are inhaled by match
 
 266 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 workers, and a frequent effect is what is known in the 
 trade as "fossy" jaw, ulceration of the teeth and decay 
 of the jaw bone, accompanied with great suffering and 
 often terminating in death. It seems impossible to 
 take sufficient precautions to make phosphorus safe 
 to handle, and the only course is to use some other 
 substance in the making of matches. 1 This has now 
 been done by some manufacturers, and should be re- 
 quired from all. People can help by refusing to buy 
 the ordinary cheap "parlor" match. No matter how 
 cheaply the phosphorus match of commerce can be 
 made and sold, any article is too dear whose making 
 requires the needless sacrifice of human life. 
 
 Many occupations bring workers incidentally or ac- 
 cidentally in contact with infected materials, from 
 which they contract diseases. This is inseparable 
 from certain occupations, and cannot be minimized by 
 any known process. This is true of tanners and fur- 
 riers; the skins that form the raw material of their 
 trades come from animals in all parts of the world, 
 and contain germs of various diseases. Any process 
 of disinfection would injure the skin or fur or both, 
 and the workers have to take their chance. Anthrax 
 and tetanus are among the diseases thus contracted; 
 fortunately the cases are infrequent, for they are gen- 
 erally fatal. Those in the woolen, shoddy, and paper 
 industries, in which the sorting over of old rags is 
 part of the work, often acquire diseases from infected 
 rags. These, however, are almost entirely preventable 
 
 1 On phosphorus poisoning in industries, see a valuable paper 
 in the Bulletins of the Bureau of Labor, Vol. XX, pp. 31 seq.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 267 
 
 through disinfection by live steam, and diseases of this 
 kind should be classified henceforth under the head of 
 criminal negligence. 
 
 There remain the diseases caused by physical condi- 
 tions of labor, including the various forms of over- 
 exertion. These are most numerous of all, and if it 
 were necessary for our purpose they might be sub- 
 divided into several sections. Some of these diseases 
 are relatively new. There is caisson disease, which at- 
 tacks those who labor in laying foundations to our 
 modern skyscrapers, and building tunnels under rivers, 
 requiring them to spend some hours each day in com- 
 pressed air. The transition from normal air pressure 
 to that of several atmospheres in the caisson, and vice 
 versa, is each time a strain on the body, which after 
 a while results in dizziness, neuralgic pains, and a form 
 of paralysis known among workers as "the bends," 
 which usually terminates in death. New York now 
 limits work under air pressure of over twenty-eight 
 pounds to three hours a period, with at least an hour's 
 intermission. Great heat and rapid changes of tem- 
 perature among glass workers, iron workers, and 
 paper makers are fruitful causes of disease. Precau- 
 tions easily taken would greatly reduce these dangers. 
 Overwork is possible anywhere and occurs almost 
 everywhere. It may be defined as incurring more 
 fatigue in any one day than can be made good by the 
 night's rest. Where this habitually takes place, there 
 must be regular physical degeneration, until the point 
 of breakdown is reached. The remedy for this is the 
 introduction of all labor-saving methods and devices
 
 268 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 possible (not so-called labor-saving machinery, be it 
 noted), and the shortening of the hours of labor as 
 rapidly as possible. 
 
 With regard to most of these occupational diseases, 
 proper statutes regulating sanitation of stores and fac- 
 tories, drawn by sanitary experts, and based on in- 
 vestigations already made by government experts, pro- 
 viding for effective inspection by boards of health, 
 with power to close any building until it is made to 
 comply with the law, must be our chief reliance. Such 
 statutes in all our States would work wonders toward 
 prevention of this form of disease, and advancement 
 of public health. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Only the parsimony and indifference of the people, 
 first of all, and the corruption and inefficiency of the 
 men they have chosen as legislators in the second 
 place, prevent the speedy eradication of several dis- 
 eases that now scourge the American people. More of 
 our people die every year of typhoid than were slain 
 in the war between Japan and Russia ; more die every 
 week than went down with the Titanic. Every one 
 of these deaths is preventable with our present knowl- 
 edge of the disease. In fact, they should not be called 
 deaths, but murders. With a pure water supply most 
 cases could never occur ; reasonable precautions would 
 prevent the carrying of contagion by other means. But 
 inoculation with anti-typhoid serum is a practically 
 complete preventive. This has been absolutely proved
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 269 
 
 by the experience of our Army and Navy in the past 
 few years. In 1911 there were 222 cases of typhoid 
 in the Navy. In 1912 the requirement of inoculation 
 became operative and among the 26,000 persons in 
 the service there was but one case of typhoid, and that 
 was very mild and issued in speedy recovery. A cir- 
 cular of the War Department, issued in February, 
 1913, says that in the war of 1898, among 120,000 
 soldiers, there were 20,730 cases of typhoid and 1,590 
 deaths. In 1912 among 61,405 officers and men in 
 the United States proper there were 18 cases of ty- 
 phoid. The ratio decreased from 6.74 in 1901 to .376 
 in the first six months of 1912. The difference that 
 has taken place in little more than a decade is strik- 
 ingly shown in this comparison: in 1898, among 10,- 
 759 men encamped at Jacksonville, Florida, there were 
 1,729 cases; in 1911, in a similar encampment at San 
 Antonio, Texas, 62,801 were gathered with only a 
 single case. Could there be a more effective demon- 
 stration that typhoid is preventable, aud that the multi- 
 tudes who die of it every year are a totally unneces- 
 sary sacrifice? 
 
 Yet there are among us, unfortunately, thousands 
 of poor deluded fools who continue to protest against 
 all forms of inoculation and vaccination, and anti- 
 toxins and serums, and oppose with even more vehe- 
 mence the vivisection by means of which these reme- 
 dies have been discovered and made available. It is, 
 indeed, well for the prospects of the race and social 
 improvement in the coming years that these uncon- 
 scious enemies of their kind are as uninfluential as they
 
 2JO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 are relatively few. And yet they are both sufficiently 
 numerous and sufficiently successful in affecting the 
 attitude of many toward medical progress to justify 
 us in recalling what vivisection has done, and what 
 we may therefore hope it will do in future. Vivisec- 
 tion, in its technical meaning, includes any and every 
 experiment made upon the living body. When Cap- 
 tain Lazear offered himself as the subject of an experi- 
 ment to determine whether the bite of a mosquito 
 would convey yellow fever, he was engaged in the 
 horrible practice of vivisection in its most horrible 
 form experimentation on a human being. But he 
 offered himself for this purpose because determination 
 of a scientific fact, on which the welfare and safety 
 of mankind greatly depended, could be reached in no 
 other way. He lost his life and we honor him as a 
 hero, but if that point could as well have been deter- 
 mined by having a mosquito bite a rabbit his fitting 
 epitaph would be, "Died as the fool dieth." 
 
 That men have the right to use the lower animals in 
 any way that will advance the interests of mankind is 
 an ethical principle that the great majority will not 
 question for ages to come, if ever. Denial of this 
 principle is too sublimated ethics for a race that con- 
 sumes animal food daily. We shall do well for a few 
 centuries to come if we approximate more nearly the 
 ethics of Jesus, who said to his disciples: "Ye are of 
 more value than many sparrows," and "Of how much 
 more value then is a man than a sheep ?" Unnecessary 
 cruelty is quite another matter, and no reasonable per- 
 son would deny that experimentation with animals
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 
 
 should be restricted to experts conducting scientific re- 
 search, and that everything should be done to make 
 such experimentation as humane as possible. This 
 comes far short indeed of a sweeping denial of the 
 right of vivisection. 
 
 That medicine is to-day in any sense a science and 
 has progressed beyond the mediaeval empiricism is due 
 almost wholly to vivisection. Every time that we call 
 in a physician we experience the benefits of such in- 
 vestigation and participate in the discoveries made. A 
 list was prepared some years ago by Dr. W. W. Keen, 
 of Philadelphia, one of the foremost surgeons of 
 America, briefly setting forth the progress of medical 
 science by this means. It deserves the most careful 
 reading and even pondering: 
 
 1. The discovery and development of the antiseptic 
 method which has made possible all the wonderful results 
 of modern surgery. 
 
 2. The practical development of modern abdominal 
 surgery, including operations on the stomach, intestines, 
 appendix, liver, gall stones, pancreas, spleen, kidneys, etc. 
 
 3. The development of the modern surgery of the 
 brain. 
 
 4. The new surgery of the chest, including the sur- 
 gery of the heart, lungs, aorta, esophagus, etc. 
 
 5. The almost complete preventing of lockjaw after 
 operations and even after accidents. 
 
 6. The reduction of the death rate after compound 
 fractures from two out of three, i. e., sixty-six in a hun- 
 dred, to less than one in a hundred. 
 
 7. The reduction of the death rate of ovariotomy
 
 272 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 from two out of three, or sixty-six in a hundred, to two 
 or three out of a hundred. 
 
 8. The reduction of the death rate after operations 
 like hernia, amputation of the breast and of most tumors 
 so that it is now almost a negligible factor. 
 
 9. The abolition wherever the proper measures are 
 taken, in this country and the canal zone, of yellow fever. 
 
 10. An enormous diminution of the ravages of ma- 
 laria, and, in some places, its total abolition. 
 
 11. The reduction of the death rate of hydrophobia 
 from 12 to 14 per cent, of persons bitten to 0.77 per cent. 
 
 12. The development of a method of direct transfu- 
 sion of blood which has already saved very many lives. 
 
 13. The reduction through the use of antitoxin of 
 the death rate of diphtheria all over the civilized world. 
 This reduction shows a change from a mortality of 79.9 
 deaths per 100,000 of population in 1894, to 19 deaths 
 per 100,000 in 1905. 
 
 14. The reduction of the mortality of epidemic cere- 
 bro-spinal meningitis from 75 or even cp-odd per cent, 
 in the absence of serum treatment, to 20 per cent, and 
 less when the specific serum is used. 
 
 15. The cutting down of the death rate of tubercu- 
 losis by from 30 to 50 per cent. This is due not to treat- 
 ment by serum or vaccines, but to methods of prevention 
 based on the knowledge of the cause of tuberculosis. 
 
 16. In the British army and navy Malta fever has 
 been abolished. In 1905, before the successful researches 
 on this disease, it attacked nearly 1,300 soldiers and sail- 
 ors. In 1907 the army had only eleven cases; in 1908, 
 five cases; in 1909, one case. 
 
 17. The almost complete abolition of childbed fever, 
 the chief former peril of maternity. Its mortality has
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 273 
 
 been reduced from five to ten up even to fifty-seven in 
 every hundred mothers to one in 1,250 mothers. 
 
 1 8. The discovery of a remedy (Salvarsan), which 
 bids fair to protect innocent wives and unborn children, 
 besides many others in the community at large, from the 
 horrible curse of syphilis. 
 
 19. The discovery of a vaccine against typhoid fever; 
 which in the recent army maneuvers on the Mexican 
 border prevented the development of typhoid among the 
 soldiers, which in hospitals has greatly reduced its inci- 
 dence among nurses, and which is now coming into 
 general use in all places where infection is possible. 
 The improved sanitation, which has helped to reduce 
 the typhoid death rate in this country, is itself largely 
 the result of bacteriologic experimentation. 
 
 20. Many recent activities indicate that we are grad- 
 ually nearing the discovery of the cause, and then we 
 hope of the cure, of several of the dreadful scourges of 
 humanity: as cancer, infantile paralysis, pellagra; and 
 that diseases of the tropics, such as sleeping sickness, etc., 
 are about to come under man's control. 
 
 21. Finally, it may be pointed out that animals them- 
 selves have been enormously benefited, for by discover- 
 ing the causes, and in many cases the means of prevent- 
 ing tuberculosis, rinderpest, anthrax, glanders, hog 
 cholera, chicken cholera, lumpy jaw, distemper and other 
 diseases of animals, animal suffering has been greatly 
 diminished. 
 
 Any one who can study this list of discoveries made 
 through experimentation on animals, nearly every one 
 of which would have been impossible by any other 
 means, and is capable of weighing the vast good to
 
 274 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 mankind that will for all time to come result from 
 these advances in knowledge, and can still oppose vivi- 
 section, convicts himself of incapacity to comprehend 
 scientific proof or of culpable indifference to the wel- 
 fare of humanity. He must be treated like any other 
 enemy of society: ignored so far as he is harmless, 
 suppressed when he becomes dangerous. When his 
 opposition to the good of his fellows becomes a men- 
 ace to public health there is no way but to apply force. 
 The right of the community to protect itself is supe- 
 rior to the right of the individual to refuse or neglect 
 necessary precautions against disease, and superior to 
 the ethical crotchets of a small minority. 
 
 IV 
 
 In the meantime, though we are making steady 
 progress toward the prevention of disease, we must 
 do more and not less for the relief of the sick. No 
 word that has been written is intended to discourage 
 or condemn curative measures, only to direct atten- 
 tion to the more important as well as more neglected 
 work of prevention. We may well be proud of the 
 work of our boards of health. Considering their limi- 
 tations, by insufficient laws and inadequate financial 
 support, and often lax or hostile public opinion, they 
 have accomplished marvels, and have been more free 
 from "graft" and corruption than almost any other 
 of our public institutions. We should strengthen their 
 hands and praise their efforts much more freely. They
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 275 
 
 will not do their duty any less faithfully for a little 
 generous and well-timed applause. 
 
 At the same time we must remember that a hos- 
 pital, an asylum, founded and supported by the rich, 
 is not a thing to which society can point with pride as 
 some worthy achievement; it is rather a badge of 
 shame, a confession of failure. Charity is not a solu- 
 tion of the problem of poverty, but an evasion; not 
 a forsaking of social sins, but an attempt to compound 
 for them. In great, rich America there ought to be 
 no poverty, no charitable institutions, because every 
 one ought to have sufficient for his needs. Whatever 
 provision in a social way is found to be necessary for 
 the treatment of disease should be made by society as 
 a whole should be no charity, but a common enter- 
 prise for mutual good. 
 
 Some kind of insurance of wage earners against 
 sickness, however, is a greatly needed step forward, 
 a form of social justice that cannot long be denied, es- 
 pecially where the sickness is caused by occupation. 
 Of course, what the worker chiefly wants is not sick 
 benefits, but health. It is good when sick to know 
 that the whole family are not to suffer from hunger 
 and cold because the breadwinner is disabled, but it is 
 still better when the breadwinner is able to work and 
 earn steady wages. Nevertheless, while bending all 
 energies to the prevention of disease, society should not 
 neglect provision for those who meanwhile become its 
 victims. Society cannot escape this obligation, because 
 society is chiefly blameworthy for the continuance of 
 disease.
 
 276 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Insurance against accident is as important as insur- 
 ance against disease. The business, not the individ- 
 ual, should bear this burden, which will be passed on 
 to society in price of product. In the matter of 
 compensating workmen for accidents Wisconsin is a 
 pioneer State, as in so many other economic and 
 social reforms. A compensation act has been in 
 force about two years, and up to January i, 1914, 
 there had been 6,894 claims under the act for compen- 
 sation. Of these all but 156 were settled automati- 
 cally; the smaller number required arbitration by the 
 Industrial Commission. The injured workmen were 
 paid $396,354.73, which went to the injured persons 
 direct. Hitherto, the courts have awarded each year 
 about $220,000 as damages for injuries, only a small 
 part of which ever reached the workmen, the greater 
 part being absorbed in the expenses of litigation. In- 
 terests hitherto conflicting have cooperated in promot- 
 ing safety, and this has reduced the number of acci- 
 dents greatly. A certain percentage of accidents is 
 inevitable, but there is no doubt that this percentage 
 may be reduced, by proper carefulness, to an almost 
 vanishing point ; and that whatever remains should be 
 treated as part of the cost of production. 
 
 The United States Steel Corporation claims to 
 spend every year $5,000,000 for the welfare of its 30,- 
 ooo workers, of which $2,000,000 is for the sick and 
 injured. It has made "safety first" the motto every- 
 where, and in six years $2,500,000 has been spent to 
 prevent accidents, while $750,000 is now devoted each 
 year to maintaining and improving such devices. In
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 277 
 
 addition to these things, an old-age pension fund of 
 nearly $12,000,000 has been established. I cannot 
 vouch for the correctness of these figures, but the mere 
 fact that this great corporation thinks it worth while 
 to make public such claims shows how the importance 
 of social welfare has increased within a decade. At 
 the same time, it must be recognized that there is a 
 prejudice among workers against benefit funds of a 
 private character. It is freely charged and widely be- 
 lieved that certain firms and corporations which have 
 made much of their philanthropic work for their em- 
 ployees so administer benefit funds (mostly composed 
 of sums withheld from wages) as to swell their own 
 profits and make the "benefits" to employees illusory. 
 Only a public system, administered by State officials, 
 can ever be free from suspicion of some ulterior object. 
 It has been previously pointed out that social better- 
 ments, as well as social evils, are interlocked, like the 
 directorates of some of our great financial institutions. 
 It therefore follows that betterment in one direction 
 almost of necessity leads to other betterments. In 
 Germany, for example, the State provision against 
 sickness has greatly stimulated the crusade against dis- 
 ease, in hope of reducing sickness to the minimum and 
 so decreasing the burden of sick benefits. Sana- 
 toriums for tuberculous patients, hospitals for the 
 treatment of many other forms of disease, convalescent 
 homes, and like public and private institutions, have 
 sprung up in large numbers all over Germany. In- 
 deed, it is agreed among those who have studied the 
 operation of social insurance in Germany that the
 
 278 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 chief result of the system, at any rate its most valuable 
 result, has not been the direct monetary benefits to 
 the workers, but the immense educative influence it 
 has had. Benefits, or any other form of financial re- 
 lief, can only minimize and palliate industrial evils; 
 education tends to remove them. The worker is not 
 slow to learn that better than insurance is to need no 
 insurance; to have possession and free use of all the 
 powers of body and mind is much more to his interest 
 than any sort of compensation for their loss. Given 
 health, employment, and fair wages, insurance is only 
 an anchor to windward in desperate cases, the main 
 value of which is to give a sense of security to the 
 workers that greatly promotes their happiness aud 
 efficiency. 
 
 The experience of Germany shows another thing: 
 one valuable result of social insurance is marked 
 stimulus to the progress of medicine and surgery. The 
 medical profession has been put on its mettle by the 
 increased social demand for the best treatment and 
 the quickest results, and in consequence there have 
 been remarkable discoveries. Progress in surgery has 
 perhaps been most remarkable, at least it is most spec- 
 tacular. Photographs lately published show wonder- 
 ful results in the surgical treatment of cases of indus- 
 trial accidents. One series shows a man horribly mu- 
 tilated, having lost the greater part of both arms and 
 both legs; a trunk and four stumps was what the 
 surgeons had to work upon. Such a man would, only 
 a few years ago, have been regarded as a hopeless 
 cripple, condemned for the rest of his life to be a
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 2/9 
 
 burden to himself and his family, or to society. The 
 next view shows the man fitted with artificial arms 
 and legs, and finally he is pictured at a bench in a 
 factory, again earning his living like any other work- 
 man no, unlike any other, but still earning it. There 
 seems no limit this side of the grave to what modern 
 science and ingenuity can accomplish, and through the 
 pulmotor it has even succeeded in restoring the 
 dead to life. Many of the things that are now every- 
 day matters would have been hailed as undoubted 
 miracles in any past age, and there is no reason to 
 question that still more wonderful things will be 
 achieved in the future. 
 
 One of the names that the followers of Jesus have 
 delighted to give him is the Great Physician. The 
 record tells us that he went about the towns of Galilee 
 "proclaiming the Good News of the kingdom and 
 healing all manner of disease." No idea of the Gospel 
 can leave out the healing of the sick and the preven- 
 tion of disease without leaving out the Christ him- 
 self. 
 
 The new science of eugenics, so highly lauded and so 
 often ridiculed, is intended as the ultimate solution of 
 the problem of disease. It promises at least to dis- 
 pose of those diseases that occur by transmission 
 from one generation to another, including mere ten- 
 dency to disease, or constitutional weakness. The 
 State will ultimately be compelled, in self-defense, to
 
 280 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 set some limits to the marriage of the unfit. The ad- 
 vance in medicine and surgery, the multiplication of 
 charities, and the growth of philanthropic sentiment 
 are now preserving thousands of lives that in former 
 times were extinguished by the stern law of the sur- 
 vival of the fittest. We are thus carefully preserving 
 the mentally and physically degenerate folk who used 
 to perish miserably, and they are propagating their 
 kind faster than the normal population increases. The 
 descendants of such people constitute an increasing 
 reservoir of disease, vice, and crime, and especially of 
 prostitution. This cannot be suffered to continue un- 
 checked without danger, nay, certainty of general race 
 degeneration. 
 
 Since the State undertakes now to regulate mar- 
 riage, and issues marriage licenses, it has already as- 
 sumed the right to say who shall and who shall not 
 be united in lawful wedlock. It is but a step further 
 in principle for the State, as the organ of society, to 
 require a physician's certificate of sound mental and 
 bodily condition, before a license will be issued. No 
 man or woman affected by a contagious or transmissi- 
 ble disease, such as tuberculosis or syphilis, is fit to 
 marry; and to ensure its own protection society has 
 right as well as power to say that the unfit shall not 
 marry. It is right in principle to do all this, but at 
 present inexpedient, as the example of Wisconsin has 
 shown. That State took the lead in requiring presen- 
 tation of a medical certificate of fitness at the license 
 bureau, with the double result of driving thousands 
 out of the State for the performance of the marriage
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 28 1 
 
 ceremony, and the forming of many illicit unions by 
 those too poor or too something else to take this 
 trouble. In other words, the law is evaded or defied, 
 because it has not behind it a sufficient public senti- 
 ment. A long process of popular education will be 
 necessary before such a statute will be effective. 
 
 Nevertheless, by whatever means may be necessary, 
 the principle must be applied. It may be necessary 
 to take more stringent measures to prevent illicit 
 unions of the unfit who are debarred from legal mar- 
 riage, even to the extent of compulsory sterilization of 
 such persons. This would be comparatively easy in 
 the case of such as are gathered in institutions. So- 
 ciety cannot long evade the compulsion of facts, and 
 will find itself constrained to put an effectual end to 
 this means of race degeneration. It is only an un- 
 ethical squeamishness that prevents us from looking 
 the problem fairly in the face, discussing it thoroughly 
 until all the conditions are understood, and then 
 adopting with intelligent firmness the one sovereign 
 remedy.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 
 
 IN our survey of social ills we have found poverty 
 at the bottom of all, as sole cause, chief cause, or ag- 
 gravating cause. For several years past we have had 
 to face this social condition : the greatest crops in the 
 history of our nation gathered in (valued in 1913 at 
 $10,000,000,000 in round numbers), abundance of 
 food for our own people and a large surplus for other 
 countries less fortunate, and the highest prices for 
 food that our people have ever paid. Something 
 wrong? Who can doubt it? What is wrong? Who 
 can doubt that! 
 
 "The rich man must work to get an appetite for his 
 dinner; the poor man must work to get a dinner for 
 his appetite." The old jest is true, though it is no 
 jesting matter. But there is this further important 
 difference: When both have done their work, the 
 rich man has too much dinner and the poor man not 
 enough. At one end of the social scale men are dying 
 of starvation, at the other end of surfeit. God said to 
 Adam: "By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat 
 bread," but Mammon says to his subjects: "By the 
 sweat of another's face shalt thou eat pie." Dives 
 still fares sumptuously every day, while Lazarus sits at 
 his pate and numbly asks to be fed with the crumbs 
 
 282
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 283 
 
 that fall from his table. The thing that is wrong is 
 that the product of the earth is so unequally divided 
 that the many live in misery and the few in luxury. 
 Even before we begin to search for cause and cure, 
 the very existence of the fact outrages our sense of 
 justice, rouses to protest all the finer instincts of our 
 humanity. 
 
 It is well to face at the outset the staggering pro- 
 portions of our problem. Mr. Robert Hunter, one 
 of the highest authorities on the subject, declares that 
 not fewer than 10,000,000 persons in the United 
 States live in poverty that is to say, in actual desti- 
 tution and suffering. The number of persons in acute 
 distress is variable, from not less than 14 per cent in 
 prosperous times to 20 per cent, in bad times. There 
 is another great element of our population that con- 
 tinually lives in a condition that may also be described 
 as poverty, inasmuch as they never have quite enough 
 for their wants. It is not merely that their desires 
 are unsatisfied when it comes to that none of us have 
 all that we desire but they lack food, shelter, and 
 clothing sufficient to keep them in good health and 
 economic efficiency. Three-fourths of our male wage- 
 earners receive less than $750 a year, the lowest sum 
 on which a normal family can live a normal life. Half 
 of the women wage-earners, as we have already seen, 
 fail to receive a living wage. 
 
 I 
 
 Poverty is as unnecessary as disease, is as curable 
 as disease, and for the same reason : we now know the
 
 284 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 cause and hence we know just where to apply the 
 cure. And, as with disease, the only cure is preven- 
 tion. 
 
 The cause of poverty may be stated in a single word, 
 EXPLOITATION. Exploitation is the power of man to 
 use his fellow man for his own profit. It runs the 
 whole gamut from chattel slavery through serfdom to 
 wage slavery. Exploitation enables a man to enjoy 
 what he has not earned, by robbing his brother of what 
 the latter has earned. This produces the wealth of the 
 few and the poverty of the many. There may be con- 
 tributing causes, but this is fundamental and chief. 
 
 But how did exploitation come to be ? It developed 
 gradually out of a simpler and juster system. In a 
 primitive state of society, where all are trying to get 
 a living and succeeding indifferently, let us imagine 
 two men, A and B. A has a weaker body or is less 
 inclined to physical exertion, but is intelligent, while 
 B has strong muscles and not much else. A proposes 
 that they join forces, A contributing his wit and skill 
 and B doing most of the work. The result is that the 
 two, working thus, produce considerably more than 
 they had both produced working separately. It is a 
 good arrangement for both, so good that C and 
 D ask or are asked after a time to join. The scheme 
 works perfectly, so long as each man plays fair and 
 the product is equally shared ; and all are equally satis- 
 fied. In some such way originated the prehistoric 
 communistic groups. 
 
 But after a time A sets that bright mind of his at 
 work on the problem how to get more than an equal
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 285 
 
 share. First he devises a way by which land, instead 
 of being held in common, is allotted in parcels to each 
 one of the tribe or group, and in process of time the 
 principle of private ownership of land is established. 
 Then he engages E, F, and G to work for him, and by 
 way of inducement offers them a fixed amount of 
 product, instead of an equal share of product. They 
 accept, and, after paying them, he has a surplus which 
 he exchanges for other commodities and rapidly in- 
 creases in wealth. Later he hires H, I, and J, who 
 have in some way lost possession of land, at a lower 
 wage; and, if they are dissatisfied, lets them go and 
 hires others for still less, until finally the share of the 
 workers in the product, instead of being equal, is only 
 enough to give them a bare subsistence. This is the 
 capitalistic system, exploitation, profit. 
 
 But, as time passes on, E, F, G and the rest of 
 their alphabetical brothers become more intelligent; 
 they at length comprehend the situation; and one fine 
 day they announce to capitalist A : "We are going to 
 end this way of doing business. You have used your 
 superior intelligence to defraud us of the larger part 
 of our product. We are tired of working to make 
 you wealthy. We propose to use the accumulated tools 
 and experience of the race in production, but to re- 
 turn to the original method of sharing alike in the 
 product. If you wish to work and share with us, 
 very well, but if not, go your ways." That is social 
 reform in a nutshell. The coming revolution is to be, 
 as Hyndman well puts it, "a complete economic and 
 ethical and social transformation, from competition to
 
 286 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 cooperation, from domination to equality, from slavery 
 to freedom." Socializing industry means that every 
 man will be guaranteed the product of his own labor. 
 Nobody can object to this, save one who is bent on 
 seizing the product of another's labor. But few 
 among us can see these things as they are, for the 
 wealthy class look at everything through colored spec- 
 tacles whose name is Greed, while over the eyes of the 
 working class is a bandage whose name is Ignorance. 
 
 Exploitation became successful first of all because 
 a portion of society was able to appropriate to itself 
 the land that was the heritage of all. Life, liberty, and 
 the pursuit of happiness are inalienable human rights. 
 Every American is taught that and most Ameri- 
 cans profess to believe it. Every human being has 
 the same right to live as every other, no more, no less. 
 That necessarily includes the principle that every man 
 has the same right as every other to gain the means 
 of living, and that again implies equal access to the 
 earth from which alone a living can be secured. Land, 
 like air, water, and light, is nature's gift to the race; 
 the Gospel of Jesus is emphatic on that point. It be- 
 longs to everybody and can be the exclusive possession 
 of nobody. Custom or statute can give to individuals 
 a legal title to exclusive ownership of land, but nothing 
 can give an ethical title. Ethically, the ownership of 
 land is robbery of the many by the few, and because of 
 that robbery we have a civilization spoiled by wealth 
 at the top and by poverty at the bottom. 
 
 Those who have seized upon the common heritage 
 of all men and now claim exclusive ownership of it
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 287 
 
 are simply robbers of their fellows. This use of the 
 word "robbers" and "robbery" is intended as the true 
 description of the ethical character of the transaction, 
 not its legal or recognized character. This particular 
 form of robbery has been legalized in many nations 
 for centuries, and has therefore become socially re- 
 spectable, without, however, changing the essential 
 character of the action. Slavery once had behind it 
 centuries of legal authority and social approval, but 
 nothing could give an ethical character to the hold- 
 ing in bondage of one man by another. But this legal- 
 izing and social sanction does greatly affect the ques- 
 tion of personal guilt. The extreme abolitionists of 
 the last century were wrong in declaring that every 
 slaveholder was guilty of the unpardonable sin, and 
 the social reformer of to-day would be equally wrong 
 in declaring every landowner to be a thief. The work- 
 ing man who has invested his painfully saved dollars 
 in a bit of land that he may build a house wherein he 
 and his may have a home of their own is a very dif- 
 ferent person from a burglar or a footpad. It is the 
 system that is wrong, not the individual. 
 
 We can understand now what has caused the sudden 
 prominence in the United States of social and eco- 
 nomic problems, so that the man in the street is talk- 
 ing about subjects that two decades ago were dis- 
 cussed only by a few experts. The safety-valve has 
 been tied down and the steam-pressure has risen dan- 
 gerously near the bursting point. There is no outlet 
 to-day for surplus laborers to flow toward unoccu- 
 pied land. The old song is no longer true, Uncle Sam
 
 288 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 is not rich enough to give us all a farm. Little land 
 that can be profitably worked practically none is 
 available for settlers. Not even cheap land is any 
 longer to be bought, save that which is arid or ex- 
 hausted or far from any possible market. The peo- 
 ple's land has all been stolen. A favorite exhortation 
 of some to the workless laborer of the East has been, 
 Go West and take up a farm. It would be as sensible 
 to exhort a Western laborer who is out of work to 
 go East and take up a factory. The one is as feasible 
 as the other, for in these days either demands capital 
 the one thing that the workless man has not and 
 cannot get. 
 
 It is quite true, as the Secretary of Agriculture has 
 pointed out, that less than half the arable land is 
 actually tilled or approximately 400,000,000 out of 
 935,000,000 acres. But this vast area is kept from 
 cultivation by private ownership, and is held in this 
 unproductive state until the time comes when it will 
 be profitable to cultivate it. 
 
 Beginning with and resting upon this misappropria- 
 tion of land, a great system of exploitation has been 
 built up. Those who found themselves without land 
 were compelled to labor for those who did possess it; 
 and thus a class of hired laborers came into existence. 
 The land was not sufficient to furnish all of them 
 employment as their numbers grew, and some became 
 domestic servants. As commerce and handicrafts in- 
 creased, larger numbers were demanded as helpers in 
 these new activities. When the new era of machinery 
 and the factory began, there was a tremendous in-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 289 
 
 crease of those who worked for a wage. Now society 
 is divided into two great classes, the employers of 
 labor and those who are employed. The growth of 
 the system, once started, was almost automatic, cer- 
 tainly normal. We can trace each stage of its prog- 
 ress clearly. 
 
 And throughout the system the one feature runs 
 and constitutes its characteristic: exploitation, the 
 gaining of profit. Men no longer have equal right 
 to live. There is nothing to prevent, at the present 
 rate of advance, a few hundred men, or even a single 
 man, from ultimately owning the entire resources of 
 America, while the rest of the 90,000,000 or the 
 200,000,000, as they probably would be by that time 
 would lie completely at their mercy, dependent upon 
 them for their very life. That is to say, there is noth- 
 ing in our present laws or economic system to prevent 
 the reduction of our social system to this ultimate ab- 
 surdity; but long before such result could be reached 
 revolution would put summary stop to the process. 
 Yet to any sober thinker the present social order is 
 precisely as indefensible on any principles of justice as 
 one-man ownership would be. 
 
 Business professes above all things to be practical; 
 its boast is that it takes things as it finds them. But 
 this, which it regards as justification for all things, is 
 its sentence of condemnation. It is man's task not to 
 take the world as he finds it, in the sense of being 
 complacently satisfied with whatever is, but to make 
 the world that he finds a better world to live and work 
 in. But modern business has contented itself with
 
 29O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 devising machinery to make profits to pile up capital 
 to make more profits to pile up more capital and so 
 on ad infi-nitum. This is not progress; it is swinging 
 around a circle and getting nowhere. Modern indus- 
 trialism has as its noble end the employment of the 
 smallest possible number of workers, at the least pos- 
 sible wage, for the longest possible work day, at the 
 hardest possible toil, to make the largest possible profit. 1 
 Hence profit always and of necessity involves getting 
 more than one gives. It is appropriating labor power 
 or its product without giving an equivalent. When 
 the highwayman does this with violence we call it 
 robbery; when the confidence man does it by a trick 
 we call it swindling; when the manufacturer or mer- 
 chant does it we call it business. All three take ad- 
 vantage of human weakness, ignorance, or necessity. 
 The ethical quality of highway robbery, selling "gold" 
 bricks, and business is precisely the same. Our social 
 ethics make a distinction, but there is no difference. 
 
 Yes, there is one important practical difference: 
 profit is an eminently respectable form of theft. It 
 supports thousands of pious people; it maintains 
 churches and foreign missions; it endows schools; it 
 makes possible (and necessary) all our hospitals and 
 asylums and sanatoriums. But it remains theft, for it 
 is the taking of product from those who have pro- 
 duced it and giving it to others who have produced 
 nothing. This is done under process of law and in the 
 most seemly ways, but it violates the law "Thou shalt 
 not steal." It is the guilt of society, not of the indi- 
 
 1 Henderson, "Pay-Day," p. 49.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 29! 
 
 vidual, and when society becomes awake to the essen- 
 tially unethical nature of business it will be not far 
 from the kingdom of God. 
 
 I once thought and said may God forgive! that 
 it was the duty of some men to get rich and use their 
 wealth for the kingdom of God. Many still hold that 
 view, little understanding what "getting rich" means 
 and how impossible it is that the kingdom which is 
 righteousness, joy, and peace can be forwarded by 
 the unrighteous Mammon. "Business enterprise" is 
 the euphonious name of all manner of rottenness and 
 wickedness, and "business success" involves violation 
 of every law, human or divine, that stands in the way, 
 by men of steel-wire nerves and asbestos morals. Said 
 Charles S. Mellen in his testimony before the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission, May 14, 1914: "All I 
 was after was results for the New Haven road, and I 
 would have done business with the devil himself had 
 it been necessary." The only exceptional thing about 
 this declaration is its cynical frankness. Getting rich 
 is possible only by robbery of one's brother, spoliation 
 of the helpless, exploitation of the weak. One under- 
 stands sometimes too late that the money one makes is 
 the price of innocent blood, and knows something of 
 the horror of Judas as he contemplates his gains. Not 
 many of the capitalistic class, however, have come as 
 yet to join the late Joseph Fels, who said, "I purpose 
 to use my fortune in overthrowing the damnable sys- 
 tem which enables me to acquire it." In the day of 
 Jehovah's faithfulness the prophet tells us that "Holi- 
 ness to Jehovah" was to be engraved on the bells of
 
 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 the horses, and every household pot should be as holy 
 as those in the Temple. In our day "Exploitation of 
 the weak" may be read by the discerning eye on every 
 product of man; all things are involved in a common 
 degradation. It is woven into every yard of cloth, it 
 is watermarked on every sheet of paper, it is chiseled 
 on the portal of every building, it is cast into every 
 tool, it is the tag-mark of every piece of merchandise. 
 
 What does our favorite American word "succeed" 
 mean, conjugated in all its moods and tenses? Clever 
 exploitation, nothing more. Mr. John D. Rockefeller, 
 in one of his autobiographic contributions, said that 
 the foundation of his fortune was the saving of $50 
 and loaning it to a farmer at interest. He thus made 
 the great discovery, as he put it, that "he could make 
 his money work for him." What he really discovered 
 was, of course, that he could make the farmer work 
 for him money never works and he was quite cor- 
 rect in saying that is the origin of his fortune. He 
 has been making men work for him ever since. That 
 is the story of all fortunes, large or small. Anybody 
 who possesses a dollar or a dollar's worth beyond the 
 product of his own labor has acquired the product of 
 some other man's labor. 
 
 Karl Marx defined wealth as the accumulation of 
 commodities. It was that in primitive times, perhaps 
 it still should be that, but it is that no longer. Most 
 of what is now called "wealth" is not wealth at all. 
 Real wealth is something that has been dug out of 
 the earth anu shaped by human labor into something 
 useful. Real wealth may be touched and weighed and
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 293 
 
 measured. A few millions only of the vast fortune 
 credited to Mr. Rockefeller are visible to the eye, but 
 the great bulk of his "wealth" does not consist in so 
 many barrels of oil, so many tons of copper and coal, 
 so many buildings and acres, but in his ability to pro- 
 duce through the labor of others indefinite quantities 
 of oil and copper in years to come. In other words, 
 the larger part of his wealth does not really exist: it 
 is merely a mortgage on the future, command of the 
 services of other men, power to assess a tax on wealth 
 yet to be produced. This "wealth" consists of pieces 
 of paper, called "stocks," on which dividends are to 
 be paid out of future earnings; and other pieces of 
 paper, called "bonds," on which interest must be paid 
 out of the products of industry. 
 
 The "wealth" of this great captain of industry 
 turns out, therefore, on analysis, to consist mainly of 
 two elements : first, the power he has under the law to 
 diminish the real wealth of the coming generation; 
 second, ability to control the labor of other men 
 through his ownership of the means of production. It 
 is inevitable that there should be serious inquiry into 
 the ethical foundations of such privilege. What right 
 can any man plead to the possession of such power? 
 Men talk of the "sacredness of property." But in 
 what sense is there sacredness in the right to tax the 
 industry of the future? In the various enterprises 
 that this single man controls there are employed a 
 great host of men, whose life and happiness and that 
 of their families are dependent on him. He wields 
 a power greater than that which we usually describe
 
 294 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 as "despotic" and less subject to checks, over a num- 
 ber of men, women, and children larger than the popu- 
 lation of entire States. And the question now before 
 the house is, whether such power shall be permitted to 
 continue whether it is founded on any equitable 
 principle in the first place, and whether it is a safe 
 power in a democracy. Or, to go even closer to the 
 root of things, whether a democracy is possible where 
 such economic despotism exists. 
 
 If any human right deserves to be called "inalien- 
 able" it is the right to work, for the right to work is 
 synonymous with the right to live. But under capi- 
 talism work is not a right but a favor, to be granted 
 or withheld at the will of an employer, who will give 
 work only to so many and under such conditions as 
 will promise him profit. It is no exaggeration, there- 
 fore, but precise statement of fact, to say that under 
 our present industrial system all outside of the capi- 
 talist class are living on sufferance. If they were de- 
 nied opportunity of work, any of them could continue 
 to live only until they had consumed their present small 
 possessions. This is complete perversion of the so- 
 cial function of wealth or property. The true func- 
 tion of property is to support life; it is a reserve of 
 society, like a sum in the savings bank, to be drawn 
 on at need or to establish a new enterprise. The capi- 
 talistic system has turned property into the deadliest 
 foe of life. Every consideration of safety, of com- 
 fort, of improvement in the arts of living, is sacrificed 
 to the great god Profit. 
 
 Every invention that could increase or cheapen pro-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 295 
 
 duction has been eagerly seized by capitalists, pro- 
 vided only profit could be foreseen; if it were more 
 profitable to suppress an invention than to use it, that 
 has been done; but inventions and improvements de- 
 signed merely to make life safer and labor easier have 
 been introduced only by the strong arm of law, and 
 after a hard struggle. Why not? Great is Profit of 
 the capitalists. Fifty years ago John Stuart Mill 
 wrote : "It is questionable if all the mechanical inven- 
 tions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any 
 human being." It is even more doubtful to-day than 
 when these words were written. As a result of this 
 system capitalized wealth has been increasing in geo- 
 metric ratios. The accumulations of each generation 
 are laid by capitalism as an additional burden on the 
 productive energies of the generation to come. The 
 system must break down of its own weight; the time 
 will come, if it has not come already, when men can 
 no longer pay this tax and live. 
 
 "Capital," says Professor Small, "is as different 
 from capitalism as water from drowning." 1 Society 
 needs capital; the capitalist lags superfluous on the 
 stage. A few rich individuals and groups now con- 
 trol the land, mines, timber, water-power and other 
 natural resources of the country, and are in a fair 
 way to own the arable soil also; and have added to 
 these the factories, machinery, and other means of 
 production. All the sources of wealth are either in 
 their possession, or rapidly tending thither. Great 
 wealth grows like the small boy's snow ball, only it 
 1 "Between Two Eras," p. 329.
 
 296 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 needs nobody to turn it over. The chief evils of so- 
 ciety grow out of this condition of things, and the 
 others are greatly aggravated by it. The remedy is 
 as simple as the condition: take ownership of natural 
 resources and tools of production from the few and 
 give these things to the many, the workers whose labor 
 alone now makes them or can ever make them produc- 
 tive. Until every man has the right to work, oppor- 
 tunity to convert his labor power into means of living, 
 and to enjoy what he produces, there will be poverty, 
 there will be disease, there will be vice, there will be 
 crime in ever-increasing mass. 
 
 The great fortunes have been justified by econo- 
 mists and moralists on the ground that exceptional in- 
 dustrial and financial genius deserves an exceptional 
 reward; and society can well afford to pay such re- 
 ward, because possibility of capturing so great a prize 
 is continual stimulus to ability. But some facts are 
 hard to reconcile with this attempted defense. The 
 late J. Pierpont Morgan was entitled, we are assured, 
 to his hundred millions (more or less) because he was 
 the one great financial genius of his generation. But 
 one day Mr. Morgan dies and nothing happens. If 
 his eulogists were correct the loss of the one great 
 financial genius of the age ought to produce something 
 like a cataclysm in High Finance, but, as matter of 
 fact, the death of one of his thousand-dollar-a-year 
 clerks would have made quite as much trouble. In- 
 deed, it might have been harder to find another good 
 clerk than to find a successor to Mr. Morgan. The 
 necessity of the Morgans to society has been much ex-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 
 
 aggerated the black- whiskered pirate of that name 
 two centuries ago was as much needed as the great 
 financier. 
 
 Indeed, the banker and the pirate have much more 
 in common than a name. Men of Wall Street are 
 often spoken of by those who should have more sense 
 as if they had done great things in building up our 
 railways and developing our great industries. The 
 fact is just the contrary. The Morgans never produce 
 a dollar's equivalent of wealth in all their baleful his- 
 tory. All the railways, all the great industries, have 
 been developed by the capital, the sacrifices, and the 
 labors of others. The Morgans do nothing but manip- 
 ulate pieces of paper, and gather into their coffers the 
 wealth that others have produced. When enterprises 
 have been advanced by others to a point where they 
 see an opportunity, they step in and by "reorganiza- 
 tions" and "consolidations," involving much "water- 
 ing" of stocks and "cutting of melons," they get to 
 themselves great wealth and incidentally they often 
 ruin the property. This is piracy made respectable, 
 but piracy still. 
 
 II 
 
 Exploitation is the guilt, not of individuals, but of 
 an industrial system which operates automatically, 
 without reference to the will or character of indi- 
 viduals. The income of one of our great industrial 
 nobles is said this year to be $70,000,000. He may go 
 to Europe for a year it would be the least harmful
 
 298 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 thing he could do, possibly he may even die, but next 
 year his income, or that of his estate, will be $80,000,- 
 ooo. A great fortune can no longer be dissipated by 
 spendthrift heirs if it could, some of the Vanderbilts 
 and Goulds would now be looking for jobs they can 
 only spend the income, and that with difficulty. "From 
 shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves" no longer describes a so- 
 cial fact. And what is the source of this vast income ? 
 Nothing that this great noble does; he has ceased to 
 work; "his money works for him" that is, compels 
 other men to work for him. This income of his is 
 interest, dividends, profit, paid out of the annual prod- 
 uct of labor. Every wage-earner is taxed that this 
 income may be paid. It must be paid, first of all, like 
 all other income; and the laborer will be paid out of 
 what may be left. There are about 35,000,000 pro- 
 ductive workers in the United States, and each of 
 them paid this man last year two dollars out of his 
 hard earnings. For what? 
 
 The greater the amount of capital, real or fictitious 
 (and the larger part is fictitious), that such men as 
 this have "invested" in various enterprises, the more 
 workers must pay them out of their product, and the 
 smaller will be the amount left for those whose labor 
 produces all the wealth of the nation. Will anybody 
 look at these facts soberly and say that this is a ra- 
 tional system, defensible by any person possessed of 
 sound reason ? Will anybody look at them in the light 
 of ethics and say that this system is not inherently 
 wicked, that it is not a plain breach of the command- 
 ment, "Thou shalt not steal" ?
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 2Q9 
 
 It is true that there was exploitation before the in- 
 dustrial revolution. None of our social ills are new; 
 most of them are of hoary antiquity; but steam and 
 machinery have caused them to grow like Alice in 
 Wonderland after she tasted the mushroom. In a few 
 decades moderate evils have become colossal. All so- 
 cial organization is reversal of the law of nature. In 
 nature there is fierce struggle for existence in which 
 the fittest survive; social organization is limiting the 
 power of the strong and clever to exploit the weak. 
 Civilization is enforcement of artificial equality in 
 place of natural inequality. Our present industrial 
 system is barbarism, pure and simple, not civilization, 
 because it permits rule of the strong and compels 
 slavery of the weak. Progress requires a more com- 
 plete socialization of industrial forces, and is possible 
 on no other terms. 
 
 Capitalism aims only at making the largest possible 
 margin of profit, even if thereby it makes the smallest 
 possible margin of life. The humane and Christian 
 character of some capitalists may do something to 
 ameliorate the system, but can do little or nothing to 
 modify its essential inhumanity. On the other hand, 
 there is often exhibition by the working class of 
 solidarity and spirit of sacrifice for the common good, 
 that even the Christian Church, with all its preaching 
 of brotherhood and inculcation of sacrifice, cannot 
 parallel. For too often the preaching of the Church 
 is "just preaching." In church men profess the creed 
 of brotherhood; they repeat together the command- 
 ment of Jesus to love one another. They go next day
 
 3OO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 to business, and in every word and act profess the 
 creed of hatred : the strong trample the weaker under 
 foot, the shrewd strips the less shrewd of his last dol- 
 lar. And the worst of it is that men do not see this 
 hypocrisy; they are quite unconscious of this intel- 
 lectual contradiction and moral suicide ; they talk with 
 straight face of "carrying their Christianity into busi- 
 ness" ! 
 
 As we have seen, individual ownership of the soil is 
 one great pillar of exploitation, while ownership of 
 tools is the other. Man is the only animal who can 
 use tools, and the progress of civilization may be ac- 
 curately traced by the invention of new and more ef- 
 ficient tools. So long as these were simple and inex- 
 pensive no harm was done by permitting private own- 
 ership of them. But in these latter days the simple 
 tool has been replaced in industry by the complex and 
 expensive machine. A generation ago even, a few 
 days (or, at most, a few weeks) of labor would supply 
 any worker with a set of tools for his trade ; now not 
 a lifetime's labor would make a poor man the owner 
 of the machine by which he gets his bread. This cost- 
 liness of tools throws all production into the hands of 
 the capitalist class. The poor man, robbed, on the one 
 hand, of his access to the soil, and, on the other, of 
 ownership of his tools, is the veritable slave of the 
 tool-and-land-owning employer a wage slave, to be 
 sure, not a chattel slave, but slave nevertheless; for 
 the essence of slavery is dependence on the will of 
 another for means of life. 
 
 Consider what this means to the worker. Tele-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 30 1 
 
 graph operators receive from $25 to $80 a month. 
 Two operators working a wire between New York and 
 Philadelphia can handle 500 messages in a nine-hour 
 day. At 25 cents a message the company receives for 
 this service $125, of which it pays the operators from 
 $2 to $3 each, and has $120 profit. What person of 
 any sanity will defend the equity of such a transac- 
 tion? Consider what it means to the public. The 
 Bureau of Labor, in its report to Congress March 3, 
 1913, showed that, while under the last agreement 
 miners' wages had been increased $4,000,000, the op- 
 erating companies had increased prices of coal, os- 
 tensibly to recoup this loss, but really to the amount of 
 $17,450,000. The companies, therefore, gained $13,- 
 450,000 by a transaction that, in advance, they pro- 
 tested would be utterly ruinous to them, pocketing an 
 additional $3 for every $i paid in increased wages 
 and the consumer of coal pays all. Under cloak of 
 doing justice to the poor miner, albeit a justice wrung 
 from them by an aroused public opinion, the opera- 
 tors commit a new robbery. 
 
 Exploitation is just as indefensible on principles 
 of the Gospel as it is on economic principles. It is 
 the great immorality, the fundamental evil of society, 
 not only because of its observed anti-social effects, but 
 because it is a breach of the command of Jesus, "Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." For no man 
 would submit to be exploited if he had any means of 
 self-defense. The exploiter's attempts at partial rec- 
 ompense in the various forms of charity, philanthropy, 
 pensions, and profit-sharing are confession, but not
 
 3O2 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 restitution. They neither imply repentance nor prom- 
 ise amendment. "Most philanthropy," says Professor 
 Ward, "is mere temporary patchwork which has to 
 be done over and over again. It does not aim or 
 desire to do the kind of good that will prevent the 
 recurrence of the conditions that have made it neces- 
 sary. It is static, not dynamic." 1 The United Chari- 
 ties Society of Chicago found that 70,000 persons ap- 
 plied for aid in that city in 1912. The cases were 
 carefully investigated, and the following causes are 
 given for the poverty of 17,000 cases: 
 
 Unemployment, 4,620; acute illness, 4,311 ; insufficient 
 earnings, 1,576; chronic physical disability, 1,443; tuber- 
 culosis, 1,361; maternity, 1,285; intemperance, 1,205; ac ~ 
 cident, 674; old age, 634; moral deficiency, 468; impris- 
 onment, 388; idleness, 360; bad housing, 318; begging 
 tendency, 272; subnormal mind, 239; insanity, 237; 
 venereal disease, 202 ; industrial accident, 188 ; immigrant 
 within three years, 177; incompetence, 157; epilepsy, 140; 
 occupational disease, 46. 
 
 The list should be attentively pondered by those ex- 
 cellent persons in our churches who still insist that 
 poverty is due to defective character, and can be com- 
 pletely cured by the practice of industry, sobriety, and 
 economy. The italicized cases are the only ones that 
 can with any plausibility be attributed to defects of 
 character; all the rest, and perhaps these also, should 
 be charged to remediable social conditions, remediable 
 because poverty is the root of all. No individual char- 
 
 1 "Applied Sociology," p. 29.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 303 
 
 acter can overcome these unfavorable social conditions 
 under all circumstances; and organized charity has 
 about as much effect on them as it has on the revolu- 
 tions of Jupiter's moons. 
 
 It is growing perception of these facts among the 
 working class that so embitters them, and inclines 
 them at times to the use of forcible means of redress. 
 How many who read the newspapers have reflected 
 that men in the midst of a Christian civilization are 
 not moved to undertake crimes like those of the Mc- 
 Namaras and their associates, until there has been 
 bred in them an overmastering sense of wrong and 
 injustice, for which the laws provide no remedy 
 which society, indeed, refuses seriously to consider? 
 But, in all the mass of comment on such crimes, how 
 many influential voices have been lifted up to urge 
 inquiry into the cause of this sense of injustice? How 
 many have asked whether American workingmen have 
 wrongs for which redress is impossible under our so- 
 cial system? And, if it should turn out on inquiry 
 that they have such wrongs, could we expect them to 
 submit to them without violent protest? 
 
 If we will not consider the justice of our attitude, 
 perhaps we may be more accessible to ideas of its ex- 
 pensiveness. It was publicly stated that the trial of 
 the McNamaras and their associates, thirty-eight men 
 in all, cost the government a million dollars. But not 
 one dollar was expended by the government to find 
 out what caused the crime, and if the cause is remov- 
 able. Does this strike the thoughtful taxpayer as good 
 economy? Is this the best return he can expect for
 
 304 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 his money? Our lavish charities are just so much 
 money thrown away. If an equivalent sum were 
 burned every year, quite as much would be accom- 
 plished in the way of decreasing- human misery. The 
 exploiter turns out more nakedness in a day than Dor- 
 cas can clothe in a year, causes more disease in a 
 week than St. Francis can relieve in a lifetime, drives 
 more men and women into vice and crime in a year 
 than the Salvation Army can rescue in a century. 
 And we are only just beginning 1 to question whether 
 this exploiter, if he gives sterilized milk to a few 
 babies, may not be the highest type of character and 
 citizenship ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 The fundamental condition of physical life is suf- 
 ficiency of food, sufficient not only in quantity to sat- 
 isfy hunger, but in quality to nourish the body. Many 
 have "enough to eat" and yet are unfed, because they 
 lack what is known in dietetics as "a well-balanced 
 ration." Enough is produced to feed all our people. 
 Why, then, do they lack food? Why this high cost 
 of living, which one of our American multi-million- 
 aires gravely assures us is really the cost of high liv- 
 ing? Is it true that the poor are not really poor, but 
 only extravagant? Deficiency of food is far more 
 serious than deficiency of clothing or bad housing. A 
 well-nourished body may be subjected to cold and dirt 
 and bad air and feel them as hardships perhaps, buf 
 not as dangers. In the past two decades the cost of
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 305 
 
 living has risen twice as fast as wages, and, though 
 wages have risen slowly, what does it profit a man to 
 have his wages increased ten per cent, and his cost 
 of living twenty per cent. ? Perhaps he may comfort 
 himself with the reflection that he is better off than his 
 fellow whose wages have not been raised at all, and 
 still better off than his other fellow who is out of 
 work and has no wages, but that is cold comfort. 
 When one is hungry he cannot chuckle much because 
 his neighbor is hungrier still, and perhaps half -frozen 
 to boot. 
 
 Here is one "why." The value of the food products 
 of the United States, estimated on the basis of the 
 official returns, is $6,000,000,000, while their cost to 
 consumers is not far from $13,000,000,000. The dif- 
 ference, considerably more than 100 per cent., is the 
 necessary cost of transportation and handling, plus 
 the unnecessary dividends on watered stocks and the 
 profits of middlemen. The consumer has it in his 
 power largely to eliminate the middleman, especially 
 with the aid of the parcels post, and if he continues 
 to suffer from this source it will be his own fault. The 
 ease, safety, and profitableness of cooperative buying 
 has been so fully demonstrated by European combina- 
 tions of consumers that there remains nothing to say 
 on the subject; all that is lacking is action. In collo- 
 quial phrase, this matter is now "up to" the consumer 
 himself. 
 
 But the cost of transportation and handling is an- 
 other matter. Watered stocks are beyond the con- 
 sumer's reach. We are only beginning to appreciate
 
 306 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 the scandalous things that have been done by our great 
 financiers, who are said to be so indispensable to us. 
 The Adams Express Company began business with 
 a valise as its total assets, and was capitalized out of 
 its earnings. Its capital stock to-day represents no 
 investment whatever by stockholders, but only sums 
 that have been skilfully extracted from the people's 
 pockets without getting the thieves put in jail. In 
 some corporations dividends- are paid on "water," but 
 the Adams Express dividends are paid on air. The 
 same is true in the main of all the other express com- 
 panies; investments, if any, have been so small as to 
 be negligible; capitalization represents earning power, 
 not investment; and the public is still paying to these 
 buccaneering corporations a heavy annual tax on its 
 willingness to let the companies continue their rob- 
 bery. 
 
 The railways are a little better, but not so much in 
 principle as in degree. A physical valuation of the 
 railways in the State of Kansas was undertaken a 
 few years ago, with this result as to the Union Pacific : 
 Actual cost value per mile, $27,297; could be repro- 
 duced for $36,976 per mile ; is taxed at a valuation of 
 $40,860 per mile; is capitalized at $146,391 per mile. 
 It has, therefore, to earn dividends on over $100,000 
 per mile of pure "water," so-called investments that 
 represent no payment of money in the past and no 
 value of any kind in the present. And, of course, 
 the Union Pacific has been clamoring, with other rail- 
 ways, that it must have higher rates for freight or it 
 could not live!
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 307 
 
 It is now seriously proposed that a physical valua- 
 tion of all railways shall be undertaken as a prelimi- 
 nary to possible acquisition of them by the govern- 
 ment and the substitution of public for private owner- 
 ship. This means, of course, the ultimate squeezing 
 from their capitalization of the enormous quantity of 
 "water" or fictitious value. This proposition has 
 awakened once more those who on such occasions be- 
 wail the hardship to innocent owners that would nec- 
 essarily result. However unethical the original trans- 
 actions, it is said, the stocks have passed into other 
 hands; people have bought in good faith and paid 
 good money for them. Now the truth is, as a little 
 reflection will show any one, that this wail about 
 widows and orphans and other innocents has no foun- 
 dation in fact. When the squeezing process begins 
 there will be no innocent owners. The facts about 
 fictitious capitalization have been published far and 
 wide. No person intelligent enough to get possession 
 of a sum of money to invest in railway stocks can be 
 rationally presumed to be ignorant of these facts. If 
 he hereafter buys, or hereafter retains ownership of 
 these securities, he does it with full knowledge of their 
 origin and nature, and of the possibility of govern- 
 ment action in the matter, and he is taking a gambler's 
 chance on their future value. If he loses, he should 
 bear his loss when it comes, as gamblers say, "like a 
 dead game sport." 
 
 Mr. Thomas W. Lawson's writings on High Fi- 
 nance have had a wide circulation, and have been de- 
 scribed as a "howling success" three parts howl to one
 
 308 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 of success, no doubt. The author may be as big a hum- 
 bug as many people believe him to be, but his knowl- 
 edge of finance and practical acquaintance with "se- 
 curities" of all kinds are unquestioned. His figures 
 have not been questioned by the world of High Fi- 
 nance, and may, therefore, be accepted as substan- 
 tially correct. He tells us that of the $60,000,000,000 
 of stocks on the American market $40,000,000,000 
 represents pure "water" ; nevertheless $2,000,000,000 
 is paid on this fictitious value each year in dividends. 
 This is pure theft and robbery, if there ever was such 
 a thing. This is exploitation in its highest flower. 
 It is a tax paid each year to the rich by the poor, nearly 
 equal to the entire national debt. 1 One can imagine 
 with what a cry of protest the country would receive 
 the proposition to pay off the national debt in a single 
 year, yet this would lay a burden of taxation on the 
 people hardly greater than this annual tribute that we 
 pay to a band of men in comparison with whom the 
 pirates and condottieri of former ages were babes. 
 This tribute is paid in the form of an enhanced price 
 of every article of food or clothing or household use 
 that the poor man buys. Is it any wonder that cost of 
 living is so high, and need we search further for one 
 of the great causes of social distress ? 
 
 If one at first suspects Mr. Lawson of gross exag- 
 geration, as soon as he begins to look at specific in- 
 stances he makes discoveries in the light of which any 
 
 1 The "World Almanac" gives the gross national debt, October 
 I, 1913, as $2,342,926,174.66, and the net debt, after deducting 
 cash in the Treasury, as $1,048,645,985.64.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 309 
 
 assertion seems credible. Here is a single case out of 
 scores. In six years the capital of the New York, 
 New Haven and Hartford railway was inflated by 
 various feats of re-Morganization from $85,000,000 
 to $350,000,000. It was such transactions as these, 
 no doubt, that President Wilson had in mind when, 
 in one of his campaign speeches, he said : "The bank- 
 ing system of the country doesn't need to be indicted ; 
 it is convicted." Involuntarily we have all been part- 
 ners in this business silent partners, who have re- 
 ceived no share of the profits. Every dollar we have 
 deposited in a bank has inevitably found its way to 
 Wall Street, and has been a part of the resources of 
 High Finance in its piratical enterprises. 
 
 There has been much controversy of late over the 
 question whether a Money Trust exists. The answer 
 seems to depend chiefly on a definition. The term may 
 be admitted to be a metaphor rather than a scientific 
 description. Nobody who uses the phrase supposes 
 that there is a charter and stockholders and directors, 
 such as a trust implies. What people mean is that 
 there is an actual controlling combination of the great 
 financial interests. There is, in other words, "an es- 
 tablished identity and community of interest between 
 a few leaders of finance, which has been created and 
 is held together through stockholdings, interlocking 
 directorates, and other forms of domination over 
 banks, trust companies, railroads, public service and 
 industrial corporations, which has resulted in vast and 
 growing concentration and control of money and 
 credit in the hands of a comparatively few men." If
 
 3IO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 such a condition exists, Money Trust is by no means a 
 bad name for it. 
 
 Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, in the Pujo investigation, 
 denied that there was a Money Trust or that such a 
 thing could possibly be under our legal and economic 
 system. But specific testimony in the same investiga- 
 tion showed that, by a system of interlocking direc- 
 torates, about 1 80 men, directors and partners in eigh- 
 teen firms, banks, and trust companies, actually con- 
 trolled $25,000,000,000 of capital. Among these men 
 three were acknowledged leaders. The total banking 
 power of the United States was said by the Comptrol- 
 ler of the Currency to be $23,000,000,000 in 1913. 
 This Wall Street group, which three men can swing 
 as a unit, controls a money interest more than equal 
 to all the banking capital, reserves, and banknotes in 
 circulation. And yet men presumably intelligent ex- 
 pect others who are reputed to be intelligent to believe 
 them when they declare on honor, and sometimes on 
 oath, that there is no Money Trust. 
 
 Mr. George F. Baker, head of the First National 
 Bank of New York, one of the greatest financial insti- 
 tutions of the country, and himself one of the three 
 Wall Street leaders, admitted that there is such con- 
 trol of financial resources by a few men as is de- 
 scribed above. Such control, he said, "might not be 
 dangerous, but still it has gone about far enough. In 
 good hands I do not say that it would do any harm. 
 If it got into bad hands it would be very bad." By 
 "good hands" Mr. Baker naturally means his own 
 hands, the Morgan group. But to the people at large
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 
 
 it seems that any hands are "bad hands'/ 
 so vast and irresponsible power as this. Nor 
 man who really thinks be surprised that American so- 
 ciety is seething with the spirit of revolution as these 
 facts become understood by the masses who toil in 
 hopeless bondage that the Morgans may pile up mil- 
 lions. 
 
 And the new banking law, enacted in 1914, was so 
 manipulated during its passage, with the full approval 
 of President Wilson, that it has delivered over the 
 financial resources of the nation more completely than 
 ever to the "interests." When the organization of 
 the regional banks has been completed, and the system 
 is in full working order, people will comprehend how 
 they have been betrayed by the men who were pre- 
 tending to serve them. They will awaken to the fact 
 that the Money Trust, instead of being curbed, has 
 been given greatly increased powers. That, through 
 its control of credit, it has every commercial enter- 
 prise by the throat, and can compel it to obey or 
 strangle it. When the people once understand what 
 has been done, what they will do to the politicians 
 who enacted this law will be something well worth 
 witnessing. 
 
 But even if these facts are true, and there is a 
 Money Trust, it is said that nothing can be done about 
 it. The conditions have come about as a natural de- 
 velopment and cannot be altered by legislation as 
 well try to keep back the tides by statute as resist the 
 sweep of economic events. "How can you unscramble 
 eggs ?" asked Mr. Morgan on one occasion. When he
 
 312 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 said it, this was regarded as not only a good joke 
 but unanswerable argument by Big Business, and as 
 something of a puzzler by others. But the house of 
 Morgan has unscrambled one basket of eggs since his 
 death by retiring from twenty-seven interlocking di- 
 rectorates. It announced that it did this as a mere 
 beginning, 1 and in deference to what it recognized as 
 a strong public sentiment. The New York, New 
 Haven and Hartford railway, which had been brought 
 into virtual bankruptcy by the Morgan policies, has 
 likewise found no difficulty in relinquishing its control 
 of the Boston and Maine railway, the Eastern Steam- 
 ship Company, and about a score of other corpora- 
 tions larger or smaller. It has also been found pos- 
 sible to undo the reorganization of the Rock Island 
 system in 1902, by which $140,000,000 of "water" 
 was injected into its stock. This was accomplished by 
 the now familiar device of organizing a "holding com- 
 pany/' a railway that existed on paper only. It is 
 a simple matter to reverse the process and revive the 
 original corporations and managements. Some eggs 
 have been unscrambled; therefore all can be; such is 
 the reasoning of people not obfuscated by the ideas 
 and methods of High Finance. The reasoning may 
 be hasty, the logic faulty, and the facts otherwise. 
 But in this matter we are all citizens of Missouri ; we 
 insist on being shown. 
 
 How could such a state of things have come about 
 in a "free" country? Because our country never has 
 been really free. Because our conception of freedom 
 
 firm still held fifty directorates in forty-two companies.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 313 
 
 has been liberty of the individual to do anything in 
 the realm of economics that he chose to do. We have 
 limited freedom to matters within the scope of gov- 
 ernment, to civic rights and privileges. Our indiffer- 
 ence to economic freedom, until the shoe began to 
 pinch our tender corns, has permitted economic an- 
 archy, and this has brought about in a natural way 
 union among exploiters and disorganization among 
 the exploited. "The wolves hunt in packs, while the 
 watchdogs snap at one another," says Professor Ross. 
 And our present plight is also largely due to the fact 
 that a great proportion of our Christian people are 
 still wasting their time in little skirmishes with the 
 lesser social evils, and never get into the big battle at 
 all. They still, like their forebears, place personal 
 righteousness above social welfare, and cannot see that 
 the great sins of our day, the unforgivable sins, are 
 social transgressions. 
 
 IV 
 
 New Zealand has given countries of older civiliza- 
 tion a lesson in the possibility of decreasing exploita- 
 tion, with the prospect of one day ending it altogether. 
 It is a country with an area of 104,751 square miles 
 a little more than that of the Middle States with a 
 population of 1,108,468 (in 1911), fewer by 100,000 
 than Connecticut had in 1910. A generation ago it 
 seemed certain that the country would be divided into 
 great landed estates. Large areas were bought up 
 and held for speculative purposes. All the evils of
 
 314 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 the older civilization seemed about to be produced in 
 an aggravated form. This process of land spoliation 
 was checked in 1871 by a graduated tax, and in 1891 
 by a compulsory purchase act. The government has 
 retained and acquired land, until it controls the larger 
 and better part, which is let on perpetual lease, with 
 revaluation every twenty-one years. No one is to 
 have over 320 acres. Under this policy the number of 
 farms has doubled. 
 
 In like manner the State has taken control of in- 
 dustrial affairs. Compulsory arbitration was enacted 
 in 1894, in a broad statute that applied to all register- 
 ing associations of workers or employers. Strikes and 
 lockouts are prohibited : in case of a dispute arising, a 
 local board of conciliation may be called by either 
 party to undertake a settlement. If this board fails, 
 the case is tried by an arbitration court, consisting of 
 two members chosen by the workers, two by registered 
 associations of employers, and one supreme court 
 judge appointed by the government. Disobedience of 
 the decision of this court is punishable as contempt. 
 Varying accounts are given of the operation of this 
 system, because those who have written about it have 
 found in it what they looked for; it cannot be said 
 to have had dispassionate, scientific study. It seems 
 clear, however, that it is better than the former system 
 of industrial war. Naturally, it has failed to give 
 complete satisfaction to either employers or employees, 
 but, as most strikes and lockouts end in a compromise, 
 compulsory arbitration on the whole may be said to 
 work fairly. That neither party is satisfied with a
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 315 
 
 decision in a labor controversy, so far from proving 
 the decision to be unjust, is presumptive evidence of 
 its substantial justice; for experience shows that each 
 party demands more than is just. 
 
 In other social experiments New Zealand has also 
 led the way. It has had a system of old-age pensions 
 for fourteen years ; it has had seventeen years of wom- 
 an suffrage. Voters of both sexes must use their 
 right of suffrage or lose it. Government loans are 
 made to settlers and farmers at low rate of interest; 
 government savings banks and government life in- 
 surance at cost have been provided. Of course, the 
 State has taken ownership of all natural monopolies : 
 coal mines, railways, telegraphs, and telephones. In- 
 cidentally it may be remarked that a telephone costs 
 $15 a year or less, and that more telegraph messages 
 per capita are transmitted in New Zealand than in any 
 country in the world the reason being that the cheap- 
 ness, celerity, and secrecy of the service are nowhere 
 else equaled. 
 
 But New Zealand is only on the way toward aboli- 
 tion of exploitation : the goal is yet hardly in sight. 
 This is because the wage system is still retained as 
 the basis of industrialism. Wages and exploitation 
 are inseparable. Wages can never rise so high as to 
 abolish exploitation, because the moment wages reach 
 a point where no profit remains to the capitalist, it is 
 for his interest to give up his business rather than con- 
 tinue it. He may temporarily continue without profit, 
 and even at a loss, but it must be with a rational hope 
 of recouping his losses by future profits. Wages can
 
 316 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 never equal the value of the product of labor under 
 capitalism ; on the contrary, they must be much lower 
 as a rule, because of the deductions necessary under 
 the present system. The margin between product of 
 labor and payment of wages must not only cover the 
 net profits of the employer, but many other things 
 that are usually charged to cost of production. It 
 covers, for instance, rent, interest on loans, salaries, 
 advertising, taxes. All these have to be subtracted 
 from surplus value, that is, the excess of value of 
 product over wages of the workers. It is clear that* 
 wages cannot rise high enough to be even approxi- 
 mately equal to value of product. The capitalistic sys- 
 tem means under all possible circumstances exploita- 
 tion of wage-workers. It is impossible to abolish this 
 exploitation without abolishing the system itself. It 
 is impossible greatly to lessen the exploitation, which 
 does not rest on the will of the employer, but on the 
 industrial system. 
 
 The indirect social effects of many of these items 
 in the account of exploitation are quite as important 
 as their direct economic significance. For instance, the 
 great place that advertising has come to take in the 
 system has had an effect on the press that nobody 
 could have anticipated a generation ago. Newspapers 
 and magazines have come under the domination of 
 capitalism by a necessary process, and, as a result, 
 have become means of spreading ignorance rather 
 than intelligence. Between their suppression of un- 
 welcome truth and their perversion of fact they would 
 be an even more serious menace to popular welfare
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 317 
 
 than they are, if the people were not generally aware 
 of their habitual untruthfulness. A single newspaper 
 in New York receives from a large department store 
 the sum of $300,000 a year for advertising. Would it 
 be possible to procure the publication in that news- 
 paper of any matter disagreeable to the management 
 of that department store? Only a remarkably credu- 
 lous person would believe that such a thing could be 
 done. Advertisers may be guilty of disgraceful 
 crimes, they may be prosecuted by the government for 
 customs frauds, and no whisper of the facts will be 
 permitted to reach the public through the newspapers 
 that they subsidize. The slimy trail of capitalism is 
 over every social institution. 
 
 The complaint against the ancient Jeshurun was 
 that he waxed fat and kicked ; the modern Jeshurun is 
 too fat to kick, but he is suffering from the same dis- 
 ease, an overdose of prosperity. The Christian re- 
 ligion is being smothered in comfort, and, because of 
 its decline, America is fast going the way of the great 
 Roman empire, in which the cynical and inhuman ex- 
 ploitation of other classes by the aristocracy finally de- 
 pleted the resources of the Mediterranean nations, to 
 the degree that made them an easy prey to the Teu- 
 ton. Still exploitation continues among us, exploita- 
 tion of those already poor, for the enrichment of those 
 already rich. It is still true that to him that hath
 
 318 THE GOSPEL OF JESU.S 
 
 shall be given and he shall have abundance, while 
 from him that hath not even that which he hath shall 
 be taken away. Will the people who profess to believe 
 the Gospel of Jesus continue to let this go on without 
 protest, without seeking a remedy? 
 
 A remedy ? The exploiter is prompt with his reply : 
 There is no remedy; we need no remedy; the natural 
 laws of society may be trusted in the long run to 
 give every man all that is justly his. If we meddle 
 with those laws we are more likely to do harm than 
 good. Shall we accept this as sufficient? Then let 
 us bow down before the god of Things As They Are 
 and do all in our power to keep them so. Let every- 
 thing, even the law, perish rather than make any 
 change in the industrial system. In words that are 
 now classic, "What's a little thing like the Constitu- 
 tion between friends?" Sternly repress every symp- 
 tom of dissatisfaction among the workers. If the 
 laborer troubles you, and particularly if he has the 
 impudence to strike, have a policeman smash him 
 over the head and then put him in jail. If the regu- 
 lar policeman is not "on the job," hire some thugs to 
 do his work for him. Let us go further and restore 
 the good old English law of pious young Edward VI, 
 of fragrant Protestant memory, and, if any man re- 
 fuses longer to work at the same wages that formerly 
 satisfied him, brand him in the forehead with the 
 letter F (which they say stood for Falsity). If treat- 
 ment of these effective sorts had been administered to 
 the strikers at Lawrence and Little Falls and Pater- 
 son (to all is, of course, meant; it was given to some
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 319 
 
 without much effect), they would have been "taught 
 their place" and would have gone meekly back to 
 work for what their employers chose to give them. 
 We lack the courage to apply such measures ruth- 
 lessly, but we are visibly improving every year, and 
 we shall become quite perfect in time. So screw down 
 the safety-valve; pile on the coal; make Big Business 
 hum! And by and by, when we all go skyward to- 
 gether, we can spend the abundant leisure of eternity 
 in wondering how it happened. 
 
 But there is another answer heard, the answer to 
 which our discussion has led by an inexorable logic: 
 destroy exploitation. Make the wage system impos- 
 sible. Transform capitalism into cooperative produc- 
 tion. Make workers once more owners of the means 
 of production, so that they may be certain of receiv- 
 ing the full product of their labor less the small de- 
 duction that must always be made for the good of 
 society. Death and taxes will continue to be the great 
 certainties of this world so long as men live. The 
 product is already large enough for the needs of all; 
 it is capable of indefinite increase; and there are 
 wastes that we might eliminate and thus double the 
 present available wealth. There is no reason why 
 poverty should continue. 
 
 As to the details of this change, by precisely what 
 steps we shall proceed and what form of industrial 
 and social organization will result, there is much 
 theorizing but no knowledge. A learned and wise 
 friend used to say that he liked to hear people proph- 
 esy, for then he at least knew what would not take
 
 32O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 place. Society and industrialism were not made to 
 order to fit theories, and they will not be remade to 
 fit theories. They grew into their present forms and 
 they will grow into new forms. All speculation about 
 the future is worse than wasted time and energy. 
 What we need to bend every energy toward is imme- 
 diate improvement of present conditions of living. 
 The first steps are plain enough. It will aid to abolish 
 exploitation if we, first of all, decide upon common 
 ownership of common natural resources : including, at 
 the very least, the forests, mines, and water power. 
 It will be a second step if we conclude to assert com- 
 mon ownership of all means of transportation, as we 
 have already of roads and waterways. This will make 
 all railways and canals and steamship lines and the air- 
 ships of the future public property, to be operated at 
 public cost and public profit. It will be a further step 
 if we resolve to make all means of communication 
 public property, as we now do the post. This will 
 mean common ownership of telegraphs, telephones, 
 ocean cables, wireless systems. 
 
 The doing of these things promises to keep us busy 
 for some years to come, and they would be just a neat 
 beginning. The next step would be common owner- 
 ship of the great industrial enterprises. We shall have 
 government control of these within a decade, and 
 from that to government ownership would be no long 
 step. It may even be taken before some of the others ; 
 for this is an attempt to show logical methods of 
 procedure, not the actual chronology, which may be 
 quite different. When the Steel Trust and the Oil
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 321 
 
 Trust and the Sugar Trust and the Woolen Trust and 
 the Whiskey Trust and a few others have been taken 
 over by the government and are operated for the 
 public good instead of private profit, we shall have 
 proceeded far enough on the road toward cooperative 
 production and the elimination of exploitation to know 
 just what to do next. 1 Nobody now living need be 
 ashamed to confess that he does not know. If any- 
 body says otherwise he is either self -deceived or a 
 deceiver. 
 
 VI 
 
 But may not profit-sharing be a solution of the in- 
 dustrial problem? Fresh attention has been directed 
 to this solution by the proposal of the head of the 
 Ford Automobile Company to distribute $10,000,000 
 of profits among the workers during the year 1914. 
 Mr. Ford has been a workingman, and, now that he is 
 a capitalist, he has still some bowels of compassion 
 for the class from which he rose. He knows that men 
 who work for wages do not desire charity or philan- 
 thropy, but justice; and he professes it as his belief 
 
 1 Besides the industrial changes, certain fiscal reforms would 
 go far to lessen exploitation, by turning some of its accumula- 
 tions into the common fund : a progressive land tax, gradually 
 increased until the full rental value is taken; a graduated in- 
 come tax, increasing rapidly for all incomes over $100,000; a 
 graduated inheritance tax, on the same principle. These three 
 sources of revenue would be ample for all public purposes, and 
 leave the entire product of labor to be enjoyed by the producers.
 
 322 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 that this is a measure of justice the workers have 
 earned this $10,000,000 and it equitably belongs to 
 them. The men will henceforth work in three eight- 
 hour shifts, so that a larger number than before will 
 be employed. The minimum wage paid will be $5 a 
 day, and some workers will receive more than twice 
 that. Earnings varying from $1,599 to $3> a vear 
 in this factory will contrast remarkably with the less 
 than $500, which is said to be the average annual earn- 
 ings of workers. 
 
 The comments and discussion on Mr. Ford's pro- 
 posal may be classified under two heads : objections on 
 the part of capitalists and their defenders that Mr. 
 Ford's undertaking is unwise and that he has prom- 
 ised too much; objections on the part of workers and 
 their friends that Mr. Ford's offer, generous as it is, 
 promises too little. 
 
 The head of a large rolling mill makes a typical 
 spokesman of the former class. 1 He is much afraid 
 that the Ford enterprise will be misunderstood and 
 do great harm, by arousing hopes impossible of ful- 
 filment and making labor organizations more unrea- 
 sonable in their demands. He argues that the Ford 
 Company has conducted so exceptional a business, and 
 has enjoyed profits so extraordinary, that it has no 
 parallel among American industries. Few concerns 
 can pay six per cent, on their capital. "We must, 
 therefore, understand that this is a magic proposition 
 
 * George M. Verity, president of the American Rolling Mill 
 Company, Middletown, Ohio, in the "Outlook" of March 21, 
 1914-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 323 
 
 that cannot be duplicated once in ten thousand times, 
 if at all." 
 
 It is, indeed, improbable that the proposition will 
 be duplicated, but not for the reason given. Why is 
 the business of the Ford Company so exceptional? It 
 is well known that as keen competition exists in the 
 automobile industry as in any other form of manu- 
 facture. These profits do not represent any monopoly 
 or unfair advantage, resulting from natural resources 
 controlled or from undue favoritism on the part of 
 railroads. Has there been a moment, from their be- 
 ginning until now, when the oil and steel industries 
 could say as much? The capitalists will have to try 
 again that argument will convince nobody. It is well 
 known that enormous dividends have been earned and 
 declared (though sometimes partially concealed by 
 bonuses of stock or bonds) by many great industrial 
 and commercial enterprises. 
 
 It is quite right, however, to say that the Ford Com- 
 pany is exceptional; in one respect it is absolutely 
 unique. It was incorporated with $2,000,000 capital 
 stock, actual cash investment. Last year it paid profits 
 of $29,000,000 (another statement says $25,000,000, 
 but we need not bother about a trifling discrepancy of 
 $4,000,000). Now it is an accepted principle of High 
 Finance that a going concern should be capitalized, 
 not on the actual investment, but on earning capacity. 
 And so, if Mr. Ford had been a great financier, and 
 not a mere manufacturer with a sense of justice, he 
 would have proceeded promptly to capitalize his com- 
 pany on this basis of earnings, in which case he could
 
 324 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 have issued from $400,000,000 to $500,000,000 of ad- 
 ditional stock, on which a dividend of four to six per 
 cent, could be paid out of earnings. At one stroke 
 he might thus have put himself in the Rockefeller- 
 Carnegie class and made the second-rate fortunes of 
 such as the Morgans look like the proverbial thirty 
 cents. He could thenceforth have done as other finan- 
 cier-manufacturers do he could have resisted every 
 demand of his employees for better wages, on the 
 ground that if wages were raised dividends could not 
 be paid to stockholders. And he could have pulled out 
 the tremolo stop and talked about those poor widows 
 and orphans. But he did none of these things. Mr. 
 Ford has proved himself to be a good manufacturer, 
 and some are like to think him a good man, but no- 
 body will ever accuse him of being a good financier. 
 He missed the Great Opportunity Of His Life. 
 
 The real reason why this is a "magic proposition 
 that cannot be duplicated once in ten thousand times" 
 is, not that there are not hundreds of concerns quite 
 as "exceptional" as the Ford Company, but because, 
 among all of our captains of industry, there is thus far 
 only one Ford but this one man who has been able to 
 resist the temptation to make a quick fortune through 
 dishonest capitalization; only one man who, having 
 risen from the ranks of the workers, has had the grace 
 to remember the pit whence he was digged. The rest 
 have forgotten their origin as quickly as possible and 
 have gone to live on Fifth Avenue and marry their 
 daughter to a duke. When we recall the early lives 
 of nearly all our American millionaires, and behold
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 325 
 
 their unsympathetic attitude toward the toilers, they 
 become at once difficult to comprehend and impossible 
 to forgive. There is no reason whatever, save greed 
 and flint-hearted selfishness, why similar profit-shar- 
 ing could not be adopted in scores of our larger indus- 
 tries, and still leave fair profits on the actual invest- 
 ment. The obstacles are not industrial, but human 
 and "financial." 
 
 The second class of objections are in part captious 
 and ungrateful, and in part theoretic. To the theoretic 
 objections it should be obvious to reply that Mr. Ford 
 has not undertaken to remake the whole social order 
 and establish his business on an ideal basis. He has 
 only undertaken the practical problem of managing 
 a single business in accord with his own sense of jus- 
 tice and to promote the welfare of his own employees. 
 There are soap-box orators on every corner who will 
 undertake to settle the affairs of the whole world on 
 five minutes' notice. Let us not be ungrateful to the 
 one man who has shown some insight and some hu- 
 man feeling in trying to solve his own personal prob- 
 lem. 
 
 At the same time it is proper to recognize that real 
 criticism of Mr. Ford's experiment has been and will 
 be directed at this point : granting its personal gener- 
 osity, and conceding the doubtful point that it is likely 
 to be followed on a considerable scale, the net result of 
 profit-sharing can only be to prolong the life of the 
 present industrial system. It retains the wage system 
 and exploitation, while it considerably reduces the 
 evils of exploitation in those industries where it ob-
 
 326 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 tains. If profit-sharing- of this kind became at all gen- 
 eral in the large industries, it would tend to make the 
 fortunate workers who received its benefits callous to 
 the ills under which the larger part of the workers 
 would still groan. It would build up a little aristoc- 
 racy of workers who would form a class by them- 
 selves, and so far weaken the solidarity that labor is 
 now slowly gaining. Workmen who enjoyed incomes 
 of $1,500 to $3,000 a year might well be so content 
 with their own lot as to take little interest in improv- 
 ing the lot of others. But, as there is little prospect 
 that the Ford experiment will be imitated, the hope 
 of the workers will be strengthened to demand a more 
 radical measure of industrial reform and social re- 
 adjustment. 
 
 Some of our Churches and ministers shrink from 
 all radical measures. They are not attempting any- 
 thing for the real solution of the problem of poverty, 
 or of any other social problem, but are occupying 
 themselves with what they call social service. They 
 wonder that they accomplish so little, but they are 
 really doing all that a puling, piddling thing can be 
 expected to accomplish. What goes under the name 
 of social service is as valuable as most milk-and-water 
 reforms. It is a house of refuge for people whose 
 consciences are troubled about existing conditions, but 
 who lack intelligence or courage to recognize and ap- 
 ply the cure. Until all things that men need in com- 
 mon and use in common shall be owned in common ; 
 until all men work at some productive labor and en-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 327 
 
 joy the fruits of their labor; we shall have poverty 
 and crime and vice and disease. 
 
 But you are promoting class feeling, objects some 
 horrified reader, and how do you reconcile that with 
 the Gospel of Jesus? It really seems to me that, so 
 long as one class robs another, one may try to rouse 
 the robbed to struggle against the robber and over- 
 come him, without any impairment of the message of 
 Jesus. But let us remember always that the class con- 
 sciousness of the worker is feeble as compared to the 
 class consciousness of exploiters and dividend-hunt- 
 ers. The worker is slowly becoming conscious that 
 he has been robbed, that he is oppressed and denied 
 justice; but the exploiting class has long been held 
 together as a unit by the cohesive force of plunder. 
 The remedy for class feeling, if any really deplore 
 it, is to stop the robbery of one class by another and 
 see to it that justice is done. This will not be atone- 
 ment for the past, but it will be some security for the 
 future. The descendants of the men who spilled the 
 tea into Boston harbor and gathered on the green at 
 Lexington will never tamely submit to injustice. They 
 will seek redress, by peaceable means if possible, by 
 violent means if they must, but submit never! 
 
 The great bulk of the working class have proved 
 themselves exceedingly slow in the acquirement of 
 class consciousness, and still slower in ability to com- 
 bine in common action. They have proved over and 
 over again that they cannot get the most elementary 
 ideas about their own welfare into their heads without 
 a surgical operation. But to be clubbed over the head
 
 328 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 by a brutal policeman, or one of the thugs called spe 7 
 cial officers that are so great favorites in these days 
 with the employing class, is a very good substitute for 
 surgical operations. It has knocked into many a head 
 the idea that the interests of capital and labor are 
 opposed and irreconcilable, instead of identical, as it 
 has been the fashion of economists to assert. This is 
 no new experience, however; all social reforms have 
 to be carried against the determined opposition of 
 those who are most to benefit from them. The aver- 
 age worker would as soon vote against his own in- 
 terests as eat, and would rather die than think. 
 
 The workers organized into trades unions and rep- 
 resented by the American Federation of Labor pro- 
 claim in no uncertain terms that they have no quarrel 
 with the present system of exploitation, no desire to 
 do away with the legalized robbery of the weak by the 
 strong called profit. No, what they demand is merely 
 a larger share of the swag. Their past and present 
 portion of the plunder is too small to please them; 
 give them a greater percentage and the plundering 
 may go on forever, for them. Admirable ethics ! 
 
 The objection to class feeling, however, grows out 
 of entire misapprehension of its origin and nature. 
 A few words ought to make this much beclouded mat- 
 ter clear. By far the largest part of the activities of 
 any society, and of all its individual members, are 
 concerned with the production and distribution of the 
 necessaries of life : the majority of mankind are never 
 emancipated from the daily struggle to procure food, 
 clothing and shelter. These are determining factors
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 329 
 
 of life. The psychological processes of men are 
 mainly controlled by this physical necessity. Every 
 man's mental state, what we call his stock of ideas, 
 is the product of the constantly repeated experiences 
 of this struggle for existence, and the sense percep- 
 tions that come to him during the struggle. Class dis- 
 tinctions, class psychology, and, therefore, class con- 
 sciousness become possible, nay inescapable, the mo- 
 ment the original conditions of life become modified 
 through common effort whenever the accumulated 
 wealth of the community makes it possible for the 
 stronger, physically and mentally, to exploit the 
 weaker. Class feeling is the result of exploitation, and 
 the only way to eradicate it from society is to elimi- 
 nate exploitation. 
 
 To abolish poverty has been declared by the Fed- 
 eration of Christian Churches to be the goal of Chris- 
 tian effort. It may well be doubted if those who 
 framed this declaration, or those who have welcomed 
 it, have any real apprehension of its meaning. But 
 at all events, the Churches have undertaken a man's 
 job, one that may well enlist all the energies and rouse 
 all the enthusiasm of Christians. It is a goal that their 
 Master would have heartily approved. It is making 
 the Gospel of Jesus mean something to an unbelieving 
 and justly incredulous world. For the Church has 
 hitherto been playing with the problem, not seriously 
 trying to solve it. The Church has been too long con- 
 tent to enact the Good Samaritan, to pour oil and wine 
 on the wounds made by brigands, but it is now sum- 
 moned to clean up the road to Jericho and put down
 
 330 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 brigandage. The Church still gives quinine and can- 
 not be induced to undertake the drainage of the 
 swamps. "Millions for charity, but not a cent for jus- 
 tice" has been well said to be her motto. 
 
 And we cannot wonder. The Church has always 
 been in an alliance, more or less unconscious, with 
 the powers that prey. The exploiter and the priest 
 have been twin brothers; capitalism and the Church 
 are to-day twin forces. How long? "Issachar is a 
 strong ass, couching between two burdens" is a text 
 that might have been taken to describe the laborer of 
 a former generation ; but the laborer of to-day is tired 
 of his burdens and he no longer couches. He has risen ; 
 he has shaken himself; he is beginning to feel his 
 strength, though as yet he has used it with all the in- 
 telligence of the ass. But he is learning. And the 
 time is approaching, it may be almost here, when, if 
 the wrongs of society are not set right by those who 
 have caused them and those who have profited by 
 them, they will be set right by those who have suf- 
 fered from them. Woe worth the day! By terrible 
 things in righteousness will God answer us, if we delay 
 to do justice. 
 
 The Church will ere long have to make its ultimate 
 choice between exploiters and exploited, between those 
 who do and those who suffer wrong, between those 
 who try to do justice and those who make justice a 
 mockery. Some say the Church has already chosen, 
 and chosen the side of the oppressor. There are facts 
 that point that way, sinister facts, deplorable facts. 
 But one cannot believe that organized Christianity has
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 33! 
 
 deliberately made up its mind to turn the back on the 
 teachings of the Nazarene. One cannot believe that 
 it has committed the great apostacy and denied the 
 Gospel of Jesus yet. But the final choice cannot be 
 long postponed. The Church cannot serve God and 
 Mammon, and already the voice comes, "Choose ye 
 this day whom ye will serve." The day has passed 
 when the clergy can dine with the rich and preach 
 at the poor. A be-content-with-your-lot religion and 
 a beyond-the-stars Heaven can no longer be used as a 
 soothing syrup to silence the cries of the oppressed. 
 Some of these words will be thought irreverent by 
 some readers, but reverence for reality is more relig- 
 ious than reverence for the past. Those Christians 
 who hope to resist the sweep of the world toward 
 righteousness by accusations of "heresy" and thun- 
 dering anathemas are as wise as those Boxers who 
 withstood modern artillery by beating gongs. When 
 the first railway trains ran across the Western plains 
 the Indians thought to lasso the locomotive and pull 
 it from the track. The result was disastrous for 
 the Indians. But lassoing a locomotive is a wholly 
 practicable thing compared to stopping the drift of so- 
 ciety toward universal justice, peace, and prosperity. 
 Upon the wall of any Church that opposes triumphant 
 democracy may already be seen the TEKEL, UPHARSIN.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 
 
 WE hear much about the "lawlessness" of the 
 American people ; much in the way of outcry and de- 
 nunciation, little in the way of analysis and search 
 for cause and remedy. Few pause in their denuncia- 
 tions to inquire, Is this lawlessness a symptom of 
 disease or an evidence of health? Let us lay aside 
 our reverence for venerable phrases and seek for 
 truth. What is "law and order"? Why should we 
 respect it? Nothing can be long respected unless it is 
 respectable; and the question therefore assumes this 
 form : Is the system that we call law and order worthy 
 of respect? 
 
 To answer this, we must examine the system. Law 
 and order is the body of rules and regulations designed 
 to protect and preserve existing social arrangements. 
 Sociology establishes the principle that government 
 and laws will always represent the interests strong 
 enough to control. When organization of the social 
 group takes the form of a landed aristocracy, govern- 
 ment will embody in legislation and enforce with all 
 its civil and military powers ethical ideas peculiar to 
 a landed aristocracy. This is why in England crimes 
 against property have for ages been punished with 
 more severity than crimes against the person, murder 
 
 332
 
 THE PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS 333 
 
 alone excepted. The laws against poaching are an 
 excellent illustration of the influence of aristocratic 
 ethics on law. 
 
 In all civilized lands to-day the dominant social 
 order is capitalistic; the old aristocracy and the new 
 industrial princes have joined forces; money rules 
 the world. Law and order is, therefore, a system de- 
 signed to protect and preserve capitalism. Any system 
 must be judged by its purpose. Law and order, then, 
 must be held to be as respectable as capitalism, and no 
 more so. The controlling interests secure the election 
 of lawmakers who will do their bidding. If that is 
 not representative government, what would be? The 
 lawmakers represent those who really elect them, not 
 those who meekly vote for them. 
 
 Defenders of the present system will attempt in 
 vain, therefore, to invest law and order with any sac- 
 rosanct character. It is like the source from which 
 it sprang, tainted with injustice and unethical princi- 
 ples in every part. It is worthy of respect only as a 
 barrier against social chaos. Most of us approve 
 law and order, merely because we are not anarchists. 
 For a long time to come the meek and unselfish and 
 weak will need protection against the strong and self- 
 ish and brutal. But that protection should be com- 
 posed of a maximum of justice and a minimum of 
 force, whereas, as our closer examination will show 
 us, existing law and order may be not unfairly de- 
 scribed as a minimum of justice and a maximum of 
 force. 
 
 To be sure, law has always professed as its end the
 
 334 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 securing of justice between man and man. But in 
 practice, law is of necessity the expression of the ideas 
 of justice entertained by the ruling class. One man 
 cannot be trusted to be just in his conduct toward 
 others, else there would be no need of law; no more 
 can one class be trusted to be just to another class. 
 But law is the way in which the capitalistic class 
 thinks other classes ought to conduct themselves, and 
 how capitalists should treat other classes. Order is 
 the compulsion of the other classes by the capitalistic 
 class to accept this definition of conduct and rights. 
 Order means that the policeman with his club, and the 
 soldier with rifle and bayonet and cannon, will com- 
 pel the other classes to do what the capitalistic class 
 thinks they ought to do. When analyzed to the bot- 
 tom, do law and order mean anything else than 
 this? Capital says to labor: Be law-abiding: we 
 make, interpret, and administer the law. Can such a 
 system, in the nature of things, be any close approxi- 
 mation to justice? And if not, is it respectable? 
 
 Again, law professes to have as its end the greatest 
 good of the greatest number. It is a fine-sounding 
 maxim that has deceived generations. Because every 
 ruling class, in making the law, interprets this maxim 
 to mean that the greatest number is Number One. In 
 other words, the ruling class looks out for its own 
 interests first of all. Only when it believes these to be 
 secured does it turn its attention to the interests of 
 others, and it never really cares much for any inter- 
 ests save its own. Its benevolence and philanthropy 
 are languid, spasmodic and lukewarm; its selfishness
 
 THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 335 
 
 is active, continuous and powerful. The capitalistic 
 ideal of law and order is the creation and maintenance, 
 by statutes, courts, and physical force, of those condi- 
 tions under which exploitation of the worker can be 
 conducted without interference or interruption. Any 
 who presume to interfere or interrupt are to be sup- 
 pressed with neatness and dispatch. 
 
 The whole legal system of the United States is 
 therefore established on an indefensible basis, is funda- 
 mentally unjust and certain to be defective in detail. 
 To illustrate this adequately would require a large 
 volume, and in the pages here available only a few 
 instances can be given. 
 
 Two great classes of abuses should be carefully con- 
 sidered by any who would comprehend the nature and 
 social effects of the present system. The first of these 
 is procedure by injunction, together with its supple- 
 ment : the power of the court to punish for contempt. 
 Workers are justified in maintaining that this branch 
 of the law is generally used for their oppression. The 
 injunction has been used by courts with utmost reck- 
 lessness of constitutional and statute rights of work- 
 ers, with respect for nothing but wishes of employers. 
 In the great steel strike workers were enjoined "from 
 peaceably discussing the merits of their claim with the 
 men that were at work, even though the latter might 
 raise no objection." In a similar case peaceful picket-
 
 336 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 ing was declared illegal by English courts, and Parlia- 
 ment promptly passed a statute making it legal. But 
 Congress and legislatures have done nothing for the 
 relief of American workingmen. Why? In the case 
 of the Sun Printing Company the Supreme Court of 
 New York in 1899 enjoined the striking printers from 
 giving their side of the controversy to the public, 
 while the Sun was free to print whatever it chose. 
 In 1900 the Cigarmakers International Union were en- 
 joined from approaching their former employers, even 
 for the purpose of securing an amicable settlement; 
 and from paying money to the strikers to support 
 their families during the strike. Could tyranny go 
 further in Russia? What becomes of our constitu- 
 tional guarantees of personal liberty and freedom of 
 speech under such decisions? 
 
 And if such tyrannical interference of the courts 
 is disobeyed the courts claim and exercise the right to 
 punish the disobedience as contempt, inflicting fines 
 and imprisonments at their pleasure. Thus the citizen 
 is deprived of his constitutional right of trial by jury, 
 and a judicial despotism is created that would be in- 
 tolerable in any country, but is peculiarly intolerable 
 when it is found to exist only in a country that pro- 
 fesses to secure to every man his inalienable right to 
 life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 
 
 The plea on which such injunctions are justified is 
 that they are necessary to protect property rights, so 
 endangered that a less summary method might result 
 in irreparable loss. The injunction is granted on an 
 ex parte affidavit which recites facts that are alleged
 
 THE PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS 337 
 
 to justify action. But the court never takes into ac- 
 count this : that, if the facts recited in the affidavit do 
 not exist, or if other facts not cited would wholly 
 alter the complexion of the case, an irreparable hurt 
 may be done to the party against whom the injunction 
 is issued. This is precisely what usually happens. For 
 the affidavits are always partisan, and not infrequently 
 stuffed with perjury; their object is merely to deceive 
 the court, which nevertheless could not be deceived 
 were it not a willing party tc the deception. The ob- 
 ject for which the injunction is issued in a labor con- 
 troversy, as every citizen knows but the judge, is not 
 to protect property or rights of person, but to defeat 
 the strike. The injunction happens to be the most 
 powerful weapon that the law just now puts into the 
 hand of the capitalist, and courts devoted to his inter- 
 ests obligingly hand out this weapon to him whenever 
 he demands it. 
 
 All have read about the tyranny of Charles I and 
 the revolution that it provoked in England. But to 
 how many readers has it occurred that an exactly 
 similar tyranny is in process of establishment in our 
 own country? Let us remind ourselves of the judicial 
 machinery by which the Stuart tyranny was upheld 
 and exercised the courts of the Star Chamber and 
 High Commission how by ingenious construction of 
 Acts of Parliament and gradually stretching their pre- 
 rogatives these courts finally threatened to make a new 
 system of law by judicial decision, to overthrow the 
 ancient laws of England and so deprive Englishmen 
 of the right secured to them by Magna Charta, that
 
 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 no man should be deprived of liberty or property save 
 by verdict of a jury of his peers. Under the rule of 
 Laud and Strafford, the chief ministers of Charles, 
 Englishmen were tried without jury, denied privilege 
 of counsel, refused subpoena of witnesses; and these 
 courts proceeded by summary action against alleged 
 offenders and inflicted on them every penalty except 
 death. 
 
 This is the exact process in which our courts are 
 engaged to-day, and they have already gone far to 
 parallel the most high-handed outrages of the Star 
 Chamber and High Commission. Under pretext of 
 protecting endangered property rights, they violate 
 fundamental human rights, issuing injunctions that 
 forbid such free speech and action as Englishmen and 
 Americans have enjoyed from time immemorial; and 
 then, under further pretext of preserving their own 
 dignity and authority, they punish disobedience to 
 their commands by fine and imprisonment at their 
 pleasure, without trial by jury. In time to come, 
 Samuel Gompers and John Mitchell will be lauded as 
 patriots like John Hampden for courageously resist- 
 ing such judicial tyranny, while the judges who prac- 
 tice it will stand in the pillory of history alongside 
 of Laud and Strafford and the judges who upheld 
 the legality of ship-money. The parallel may yet go 
 further: Laud and Strafford and their royal master 
 lost their heads in the revolution they provoked. 
 
 Preachers of the Gospel of Jesus should clear their 
 minds of cant, and no longer exhort men to respect 
 that which is not respectable, no longer call justice
 
 THE PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS 339 
 
 that which is the essence of tyranny, no longer praise 
 conduct that is criminal. For there is no form of 
 criminality so deeply heinous, so deadly in its social 
 consequences as that of the judge whose function is 
 to administer justice, but who sets himself deliberately 
 to administer injustice. How would it do for the 
 clergy to preach a few sermons on such texts as 
 "Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the 
 stranger, fatherless, and widow, and all the people 
 shall say, Amen" ? 1 
 
 This judicial tyranny is the more remarkable in a 
 "free" country, because it is a relic of absolute mon- 
 archy. In ancient theory, the king was the fountain 
 of all justice and judges were but his deputies. An 
 insult offered them was an insult to the king; dis- 
 obedience to their mandates was equivalent to trea- 
 son. Punishment for contempt was inflicted for of- 
 fenses committed in the presence of the court. Later 
 courts of equity assumed the same character and pow- 
 ers. In their present form contempt proceedings are 
 of recent origin, though based on this ancient prece- 
 dent. The injunction was also until recently granted 
 sparingly, and only in real emergencies. The great 
 extension of these powers, assumed from the first by 
 courts without authority of law, and stretched to the 
 breaking point and beyond within the last few decades, 
 recalls to mind that such powers never were conferred 
 on courts by the people, through any constitution or 
 statute. Now that these usurped powers are con- 
 stantly and notoriously abused, inquiry into their f oun- 
 
 *Deut. 27:19.
 
 34O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 dation becomes necessary and inevitable. And such in- 
 quiry makes it plain to the layman, however the law- 
 yer may deceive himself, that the judge is himself a 
 lawbreaker whenever he punishes any man for any of- 
 fense (except perhaps flagrant misbehavior in the 
 court room) without trial by jury and a verdict of 
 guilt. The law under which the judge acts is a law 
 made by judges, and never sanctioned by the people, 
 save by their silence a silence of ignorance. 
 
 What is called "law and order" too often means, 
 therefore, simply the lawlessness of judges. The law- 
 lessness of a judge is no more respectable than the 
 lawlessness of a mob indeed, it is less respectable. 
 The mob nearly always has the purpose to execute 
 what we commonly call justice, and it often does ex- 
 ecute "justice," in an irregular and unlawful manner 
 doing what judge and jury and sheriff might and 
 should do in the premises. The danger of mob-law is 
 that the mob is peculiarly liable to be wrong as to 
 the fact, and so to punish an innocent person. A 
 judge is certain to be more accurately informed as to 
 the fact, but the danger of judge-law is that the judge 
 often has no intention to do justice, or entirely mis- 
 understands what justice is. Now, if we were com- 
 pelled to choose between the two forms of lawlessness : 
 the mob, intending justice, but liable to be wrong as 
 to fact, and the judge, right as to fact but intending 
 injustice, many considerations might lead us to say: 
 Give us mob-law rather than judge-law. But we are 
 not yet compelled to make this choice. An old maxim 
 says, Of two evils choose the less; but a better rule
 
 THE PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS" 34! 
 
 is, Of two evils choose neither. We can reform our 
 judicial system and take from judges the power to 
 make law. We can and must see to it that the power 
 of courts to grant injunctions is very strictly limited, 
 and that their power to punish for contempt, other 
 than misbehavior in court, is wholly abolished. Any 
 man who is accused of disobeying the mandate of a 
 court should be indicted and tried by a jury in another 
 court, as for any other crime. When a judge proceeds 
 summarily for alleged contempt, he violates the funda- 
 mental maxim of equity that forbids a judge to sit in a 
 case in which he is personally interested. Judges have 
 proved to a demonstration that they cannot be trusted 
 with either of these powers, and that their present use 
 of them is incompatible with the institutions of a free 
 country. 
 
 These are the views of a layman in the law, but 
 they have the support of the best professional au- 
 thority. In an address delivered in New York, in 
 January, 1914, Chief Justice Walter Clark, of the 
 North Carolina Supreme Court, said that all the pow- 
 ers of government, both Federal and State, lie at the 
 feet of a judicial oligarchy. "The overwhelming pre- 
 ponderance of the judiciary," he declared, is "without 
 a line in the constitution to authorize it." We may 
 fairly set this against the amazing pronouncement of 
 the Supreme Court of Idaho that "the inherent power 
 of the court to punish for contempt cannot be inter- 
 fered with or abridged by the legislature." We shall 
 see what the people will do to this doctrine of "in- 
 herent power" of the courts they have created to ad-
 
 342 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 minister justice, how they will treat this new notion 
 of judicial divine right. Americans are still fully per- 
 suaded that, if there is any "divine right" that will 
 bear inspection, it is the right of the people to rule 
 themselves, not to be ruled by kings, legislators, or 
 judges. 
 
 Only a decade ago it was still the general belief that 
 our courts were the one institution left us that was 
 worthy of entire respect, untouched by corruption, ad- 
 ministering justice with even hand to poor and rich 
 alike. Our political education has proceeded so rapidly 
 that almost our last vestige of respect for our courts 
 has vanished. We see our judges as they are: the 
 poor creatures of the predatory corporations and the 
 venal bosses. Even those among them who are tech- 
 nically "honest" are constitutionally and professionally 
 disposed to favor wealth and privilege against man- 
 hood and equal rights. And when they are disposed 
 to do justice they are so bound hand and foot by 
 precedents and rules of procedure that they are utterly 
 unable to see the real equity of a case. 1 
 
 II 
 
 The second great abuse in the present system of 
 "law and order" is the power usurped by the courts of 
 
 1 President Taft said, in a now famous speech, "I love courts ; 
 I love judges. They are my ideals on earth that typify what we 
 shall meet in heaven under a just God." We may or may not 
 hope to meet Mr. Taft in such a heaven as he conceives, but 
 some of us hope one day to appear before a very different God.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS 343 
 
 declaring statutes unconstitutional. Let Chief Justice 
 Clark be heard again: "The overwhelming prepon- 
 derance of the judiciary was unexpectedly created in 
 1803 by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United 
 States, without a line of the Constitution to authorize 
 it, when that body assumed the right to veto any act 
 of Congress it chose to hold unconstitutional . . . 
 This doctrine was promptly seized upon as a boon 
 by the special interests and by all who believed at 
 heart in the government of the many for the benefit 
 of the few. It has virtually made the courts the 
 dominant power in every State in the Union. When- 
 ever any progressive statute has not been in accord 
 with the economic views entertained by the courts, 
 they have generally exercised their power to declare 
 such statute unconstitutional, because it was not 'due 
 process of law.' ' 
 
 The Federal Constitution gives to the Supreme 
 Court created under that instrument the power to de- 
 clare invalid any law enacted by a State that is incon- 
 sistent with the national Constitution or the statutes 
 of Congress and treaties. Such a power it was neces- 
 sary to vest in the Federal court in order to prevent 
 endless conflict and confusion. But the Federal Con- 
 stitution did not give to the Supreme Court power to 
 invalidate a statute of Congress, nor does any State 
 Constitution give to its courts power to invalidate a 
 statute of the legislature. This is power assumed by 
 the courts, another great stretch of judicial preroga- 
 tive. Inasmuch as a fundamental principle of con- 
 stitutions is that all powers not conferred are reserved
 
 344 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 to the people, the declaring of statutes unconstitutional 
 is itself unconstitutional. It is pure judicial usurpa- 
 tion, and the power, while sometimes wisely exercised, 
 is so much more often abused to frustrate the peo- 
 ple's will, that it must be taken from the courts. 
 Judges have themselves raised the issue whether their 
 will or the will of the people shall be the law of the 
 land, and they have no right to complain if, in con- 
 sequence, the people regard them as enemies. 
 
 When a layman speaks bold words like these, the 
 conservative element among us lift hands of holy hor- 
 ror and exclaim. But does anything said above go 
 further than these words from the late Justice Har- 
 lan, of the United States Supreme Court : "When 
 the American people come to the conclusion that the 
 judiciary of this land is usurping to itself the func- 
 tions of the legislative department of the govern- 
 ment we will find trouble. Ninety millions of people 
 all sorts of people are not going to submit to the 
 usurpation by the judiciary of the functions of other 
 parts of the government and the power on its part to 
 declare what is the public policy of the United 
 States." 1 
 
 Whenever this question is raised somebody is sure 
 to urge the importance of preserving an "independent 
 judiciary." Independent judges in a democracy? In- 
 dependent of whom? If by that is meant that judges 
 are to be independent of the people there is an end of 
 
 1 Much more to the same effect will be found in Justice Har- 
 lan's remarkable dissenting opinion in the Standard Oil Com- 
 pany versus United States, 221 U. S. Reports.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS 345 
 
 democracy in that case we have judicial oligarchy. 
 Are we willing to submit to that? Are we ready to 
 be ruled by judges as our ancestors were by kings? 
 By their strained interpretations, which not infre- 
 quently reverse the intended meaning of a statute, by 
 their reckless declarations that this or that statute 
 which judges do not approve is unconstitutional, our 
 courts have finally landed us in this ridiculous situa- 
 tion : Despotic Russia and semi-despotic Germany and 
 Austria, together with monarchic Great Britain and 
 Italy and even Spain, may have liberal laws for the 
 righting of social wrongs, but democratic United 
 States, "free America," may not have such laws. The 
 sacred bench forbids. The will of the people, the de- 
 cisions of their representatives, are not to count. Our 
 constitutions are no longer charts of progress; they 
 have been made by courts the shield of privilege and 
 social wrong, unsurmountable barriers to the people's 
 demand for reform. And this is the political system, 
 this is the government that we have boasted for these 
 generations to be the most liberal, the most enlight- 
 ened and the most free in the world! 
 
 Behold and admire then, dearly beloved, this "law 
 and order" which we are exhorted, in the name of lib- 
 erty and the interests of society, even in the name of 
 morality and religion, to respect and uphold. It is 
 not to be denied by one who coolly surveys the whole 
 matter that our courts, judges, lawyers, police, jails, 
 prisons the whole system of law and order consti- 
 tute together what deserves to be named a system for 
 administration of injustice and defense of oppression.
 
 346 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 It becomes a fair question for debate whether they do 
 not oftener prevent justice than promote justice. 
 While professing to secure liberty, they are doing 
 their utmost to destroy liberty. No appeal to the char- 
 acter of individuals will affect this conviction. For 
 this is no question between "good" judges and "bad" 
 judges comparatively few of our judges have been 
 "bad." It is a question between enlightened and un- 
 enlightened judges, between men who are in bondage 
 to precedents and outworn principles and men who are 
 in sympathy with their own times and share the high- 
 est ethical and social ideals of their fellows. It is not 
 a question of "good law" (as lawyers understand that 
 phrase) versus "bad law." The decisions that do so 
 much wrong to the people are nearly all "good law." 
 That is just the trouble; for in these cases the better 
 the law the greater the injustice. The precise need is 
 that the law be changed. 
 
 Here is where not only the judiciary, but substan- 
 tially the whole legal profession, fails to comprehend. 
 The evolution of production from hand manufacture 
 to machine, from simple tools to complex, from the 
 little shop to the great factory has made a revolution 
 in the status of the laborer. It has changed him from 
 a condition of independence to a condition of depend- 
 ence, from freeman into wage-slave. The old legal 
 maxims and rules no longer apply. But our courts 
 are blind to this great change. The highest court of 
 our greatest State not long ago used this language: 
 "It cannot be conceived how the cigarmaker is to be 
 improved in his health or his morals by forcing him
 
 THE PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS 347 
 
 from his home and its hallowed associations and be- 
 neficent influences to ply his trade elsewhere." If the 
 learned judge who wrote this opinion knows anything 
 about a New York tenement his words are nauseous 
 cant; if not, he displays ignorance of commonest so- 
 cial facts for which a child ought to blush. 
 
 This is the sin of our judges, that they have failed 
 to understand their own social order. They have 
 not yet discovered that the old saws of Coke and 
 Blackstone no longer fit modern facts. They are en- 
 gaged in applying a collection of legal precedents, ac- 
 cumulated through the experience of a society that has 
 passed away, to a society with unprecedented condi- 
 tions. They have gained no glimpse of the fact that 
 there has been a greater change in economic and social 
 conditions in the last hundred years than in any thou- 
 sand years of the world's previous history that there 
 is more change now in every decade than in any cen- 
 tury previous to the eighteenth. Laws and institutions 
 of a century ago, not to say several centuries old, are 
 no more applicable to the world in which we are liv- 
 ing than to the planet Mars. The law must bend to 
 the new conditions or it must break. 
 
 Again, lest this be thought the extravagance of an 
 uninstructed layman, let us hear from one of the fore- 
 most lawyers of the United States, Frederic R. Cou- 
 dert, of New York : "In this last generation economic 
 changes have so modified actual human relations that 
 the American law of to-day reflects the views of the 
 dead rather than of the living, and is in many re-
 
 348 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 spects far behind that of England, France or Ger- 
 many." x 
 
 Nor is it any reply to Mr. Coudert's tremendous 
 indictment to say that our judges are honest, if mis- 
 taken. It is true that capitalism does not bribe judges 
 as a rule; the Archbald case proved that it some- 
 times does not because it is too virtuous, however, 
 but because it has no need. The interests of the legal 
 profession are mainly with capitalism; lawyers would 
 starve if they depended on the poor for a living; and 
 from the ranks of men so biased by economic interest 
 and lifelong habit judges must perforce be selected. 
 Men elected or appointed to judicial positions are al- 
 most wholly lawyers whose practice has been as coun- 
 sel of -corporations and other "malefactors of great 
 wealth," and whose experiences, sympathies and whole 
 view of law and of life are on the side of the capital- 
 ist. Why waste money in bribery of one who is al- 
 ready the creature of capitalism, devoted to its inter- 
 ests, thinking only its thoughts? The little brothers 
 of the rich may be confidently trusted to decide all 
 questions "right." 
 
 Ill 
 
 Possibly the deepest grievance against "law and 
 order" cherished by the working class is the convic- 
 tion that the system is so unfairly administered. Even 
 with all its defects, it might be borne with more pa- 
 tience, if there was one law for all. But the small 
 
 1 "Certainty and Justice," p. 305.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS 349 
 
 thief is sent to jail; the big thief is sent to Congress. 
 Before a judge, afterwards impeached for corruption, 
 two smugglers were brought on the same day. One 
 was a poor Greek, consumptive, without friends, who 
 had committed a slight technical offense, and he was 
 sent to prison for long months. Another was a rich 
 merchant, who had been systematically defrauding 
 the government for years, to the amount of at least 
 a million dollars, and perhaps many times that ; he 
 was let off with a fine of $25,000, notwithstanding the 
 district attorney pressed for a jail sentence as the 
 only effective penalty. And these two cases are typi- 
 cal of the everyday working of the whole system: 
 one law for the rich, another for the poor ; a maximum 
 of protection for property, a minimum of protection 
 for the person. 
 
 The virtuous denunciations of the McNamaras and 
 other criminals of the working class, with which press 
 and pulpit ring from time to time, are more loud than 
 convincing. Our ethical instructors presume on the 
 short memory of the public. But some have not for- 
 gotten that, not so many years ago, the heads of the 
 Standard Oil Trust were indicted and tried for the 
 crime of conspiring to blow up a rival refinery. It 
 was lawless destruction of property quite as flagrant 
 as anything of which the McNamaras were guilty. 
 But there was this significant difference between the 
 two cases: the millionaires were not convicted. No 
 Detective Burns was employed by the State to pro- 
 cure evidence against them. More recently, the head 
 of the Woolen Trust was indicted and tried for con-
 
 35 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 spiracy to plant dynamite in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 
 in order to discredit the striking employees of his 
 mills. No evidence was found in either case directly 
 to connect the eminently respectable men at the head 
 of these trusts with a disgraceful crime. We should 
 be foolish to expect such evidence. Men like these 
 are wise in their day and generation. They call their 
 henchmen, put a large sum of money into their hands, 
 and say something like this: "You need not account 
 for this money; don't tell me what you do I don't 
 want to know but get results." And the law holds 
 them guiltless, since the law is not made for the 
 Rockefellers and Woods, but is made by the Rocke- 
 fellers and Woods for the McNamaras. 
 
 A leader of public opinion and a professed teacher 
 of Christian ethics, the Outlook, approves the ac- 
 quittal of Wood, on the ground that paying out a 
 large sum of money not to be accounted for is a very 
 different thing from a criminal conspiracy. This is 
 probably law, but it is not sense or justice. On the 
 contrary, if law is to correspond with equity, it must 
 be held that such an act is the very essence of the 
 conspiracy, to which the money is indispensable. 
 While statutes, courts and Christian moralists take 
 their present view of the matter, the chief offender in 
 a criminal conspiracy, the man who makes criminal 
 outrages possible by financing them the man who 
 hires crimes to be committed, to speak without dis- 
 guise will escape legal responsibility and almost all 
 public contumely, provided he takes pains to keep 
 himself ignorant of the details. So long as such
 
 THE PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS 35! 
 
 ethics are taught by Christian teachers of high stand- 
 ing, so long will Christianity be a scoff and a mock 
 on the lips of the workers. And deservedly so, for 
 such teachers have turned their backs on the Master 
 who commanded his followers to "judge righteous 
 judgment." 
 
 Why do Christian teachers vie with the hirelings 
 of the kept press in defending capitalist ethics? Be- 
 cause they are themselves beneficiaries' of capitalism 
 and biased in its favor. 1 Whether the bias is con- 
 scious or unconscious it is not necessary to consider; 
 the effect is that they become partners in all forms 
 of social guilt. Every dividend paid by an Ameri- 
 can railway represents swindling and manslaughter: 
 every dollar reeks with fraud and drips with blood. 
 Every dividend paid by the Steel Trust is the product 
 of theft and the price of human lives. In less degree 
 this is true of all the profits of industrialism. When 
 a preacher, an editor, a president of a university, 
 whose pockets bulge with money so gained, shrieks 
 about the crimes committed by workingmen and deals 
 out high moral advice concerning the preservation of 
 law and order that is, the maintenance of the pres- 
 ent system of rascality and murder he affords a 
 sight to provoke men to laughter and angels to tears. 
 
 1 The assertion that the press and the university and the Church 
 are subsidized and controlled by Capitalism is sometimes denied 
 and oftener doubted. But Mr. Mellen testified that the New 
 Haven Railway employed Professor Bruce Wyman, of Harvard, 
 at $10,000 a year to deliver lectures in the interest of his road; 
 and admitted that a thousand New England newspapers were 
 practically in its pay through a "campaign for publicity."
 
 35 2 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 It must be apparent to the most careless observer 
 that the mass of American people are fast losing con- 
 fidence in their laws, their leaders and their govern- 
 ment. Is there any other cause for this than their 
 perception that the laws are unjust and oppressive, 
 their leaders insincere and rascally and the govern- 
 ment weak and ineffective for good, though all too 
 effective for evil? But there is still another serious 
 complaint against the law : it fails to secure justice 
 between man and man. It is not true, as some say, 
 that the poor man can no longer obtain justice ; often 
 he can and does; his grievance is that he has no cer- 
 tainty of getting justice. The chances are at least a 
 hundred to one against him. Nearly every State in 
 the Union has in its fundamental law an assertion of 
 equal rights for all citizens: that every man is en- 
 titled to equal protection of person and property, to 
 equal redress of injuries through legal process, "jus- 
 tice equally and without denial, promptly and with- 
 out delay." Beautiful sentiments! But the facts? 
 
 Suppose a rich man wrongs a poor man; suppose 
 the employee of a great corporation is wronged ; what 
 is his chance of redress? Poor men do win verdicts 
 in such cases sometimes but usually only to have 
 them set aside on appeal again and again, until, if 
 they finally win, the costs eat up the verdict and the 
 net result is denial of redress. A poor Irish workman 
 lost his sight by a delayed explosion in a stone quarry. 
 This happened in 1897 ; and in 1900 a jury gave him 
 a verdict of $20,000 which the higher court set aside. 
 The case dragged on, and in 1913 a jury again found
 
 THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 353 
 
 a verdict of $10,000, and at last accounts the case 
 was still dragging along. The court records are full 
 of cases like this. Law and order means that every 
 disadvantage and obstacle will be thrown in the way 
 of the poor man, if he asks for justice, and that every 
 advantage and assistance will be given to his adver- 
 sary, the rich man or rich corporation. This has be- 
 come so notorious a fact that even President Taft 
 acknowledged it, in an address delivered at Chicago, 
 September 16, 1909 : "We must make it so that the 
 poor man will have as nearly as possible an equal op- 
 portunity in litigating with the rich man; and under 
 present conditions, ashamed as we may be of it, this 
 is not the fact." 
 
 Mr. Frederick W. Taylor, in an examination as 
 witness before the Industrial Relations Commission at 
 Washington (April, 1914) maintained that, as be- 
 tween employer and employee, "in 999 times out of 
 1,000 justice is done. If it were not so this would be 
 a horrible world to live in." But the number daily in- 
 creases of those who believe the fact to be that barely 
 once in a thousand times is justice done and that con- 
 sequently this is a horrible world to live in. 
 
 IV 
 
 In the struggle between capital and labor the courts 
 have upheld capital with a uniformity that becomes 
 monotonous when one examines the record. In doing 
 this, judges have often cast consistency and reason
 
 354 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 to the winds. For example, the Supreme Court of 
 the United States has declared the blacklist legal and 
 the boycott illegal, notwithstanding the fact that they 
 are essentially the same. For when the workers de- 
 clare a boycott, they blacklist employers; and when 
 employers blacklist employees they declare a boycott 
 on labor. But when it comes to "law and order," 
 sauce for goose is not sauce for gander. In the case 
 of Boyer versus Western Union Telegraph Company, 
 the court held : "An employer having discharged em- 
 ployees belonging to a labor union has the right to 
 keep a book containing their names, and showing the 
 reason of their discharge, and to invite inspection 
 thereof by other employers, even though the latter 
 therefore refuse to hire the discharged employees." 
 But in the case of Gompers, Mitchell and Morrison 
 versus Bucks Stove and Range Company, the court 
 held that it was an unlawful conspiracy for workers 
 to print in their papers such statements as "unfair" or 
 "we don't patronize," because these were verbal acts 
 against property. 1 
 
 The law of this "free" country, therefore, is that 
 employers may make it impossible for a man to sell 
 his labor anywhere, and so turn him into a pauper 
 or a tramp, but if he and his fellow workers attempt 
 to prevent employers from selling their product such 
 workers become criminals. When the employers do 
 a thing, it is "combination" and legal ; when employees 
 
 1 The courts of twenty- five States have also decided that th 
 boycott is illegal. Laidler, "Boycotts and the Labor Problem," 
 p. 236.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 355 
 
 do precisely the same thing, it is "conspiracy" and a 
 crime. And this is no abstract question of law; for 
 under this decision Gompers and Mitchell and Mor- 
 rison have been sentenced to nine months' imprison- 
 ment and a heavy fine. A higher court may relieve 
 them from this sentence on appeal, but it is an in- 
 effaceable stigma on "law and order" that it should 
 ever have been imposed. 1 Under the same decision a 
 jury has rendered a verdict of $80,000 against the 
 hat-makers of Danbury, Connecticut, which under the 
 Sherman act must be multiplied by three, and with 
 added costs amounts to a quarter million dollars' pen- 
 alty assessed on these working men for doing what 
 the plaintiff in the suit, the manufacturing hatters, 
 might do with the full approval of the court. 2 Is 
 anybody, not hopelessly biased by his economic inter- 
 ests, so lost to all sense of fairness and decency as to 
 call this justice? 
 
 And the injustice of these blowing-hot-and-cold 
 decisions becomes harder to bear when we consider 
 how this came to be law : it is the result of a forced 
 construction by the courts of the Sherman act. Now, 
 the Sherman act, as everybody knows, was passed by 
 
 1 In June, 1914, the United States Supreme Court reversed this 
 decision of the lower court on a technicality (holding that the 
 statute of limitations invalidated the sentence) without express- 
 ing any opinion on the merits of the case. It is still uncertain, 
 therefore, whether these men would have been lawfully convicted 
 had action been taken sooner. 
 
 *On December 18, 1913, the United States Circuit Court of 
 Appeals affirmed the verdict given in the District Court of Con- 
 necticut, October n, 1912. The case has, of course, been ap- 
 pealed to the Supreme Court.
 
 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Congress in obedience to an imperative popular de- 
 mand that something be done to limit corporate power. 
 It was the first of those measures designed to "bust 
 the Trusts." Under it numerous suits and prosecu- 
 tions have been begun, and some have been ended, 
 against great corporations, all of which have. failed 
 to produce any result worth mentioning. The last 
 tooth of the Sherman act, as regards the Trusts, was 
 pulled by the Supreme Court when it read into the 
 statute the word "reasonable," l which Congress had 
 refused to insert by amendment, a thing that Presi- 
 dent Taft had said in a message the court had no 
 right to do, and which the court in a previous de- 
 cision had itself declared would be an assumption on 
 its part of legislative powers. Nevertheless, it cheer- 
 fully assumed these powers, and so amended the Sher- 
 man act as to make it quite innocuous to Trusts. But 
 the same court supplied the act with a full set of 
 teeth as regards workingmen, who were never in the 
 minds of the lawmakers when they enacted the statute. 
 Under pretext that the proceedings of labor organiza- 
 tions affect inter-State commerce, they have been 
 brought under jurisdiction of this act, and on this 
 strained and far-fetched interpretation the boycott 
 
 1 The Supreme Court followed up its doctrine of "reasonable" 
 restraint of trade, with a twin doctrine of reasonable adultera- 
 tion, in interpreting the pure food law. It held that it is not 
 unlawful to use poisonous substances in preparing food, and 
 even to leave them in the food, unless it can be proved that 
 poison is present in sufficient quantities to endanger health. 
 Thus, instead of putting on the manufacturer the burden of 
 proving that his food is good, on the public is thrown the bur- 
 den of proving it to be bad.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 357 
 
 has been condemned in the Federal courts and is pun- 
 ishable under contempt proceedings. This is a fair 
 instance of the ways numberless in which the courts 
 are to-day encroaching on our liberties. Laws in- 
 tended for protection of the people are turned by 
 courts into laws for oppression of the people. And in 
 the sacred name of "law and order" we are bidden 
 tamely to submit or be regarded as enemies of so- 
 ciety. 
 
 But it is not the courts alone that we have to con- 
 sider in this matter; it is the whole auxiliary machin- 
 ery of "law and order." How is this machinery used ? 
 In any even-handed way between rich and poor, be- 
 tween workers and employers? It is used exactly as 
 courts are used, uniformly to uphold the interests of 
 capitalism. There is no variation in the facts, in 
 whatever community there may be controversy be- 
 tween employers and employed. The police are in- 
 variably employed in the interest of employers, nomi- 
 nally to preserve law and order, really to break the 
 strike. Invariably? No, there has been a single re- 
 corded exception. The mayor of Indianapolis, in 1913, 
 refused to permit use of the police of that city in 
 this manner, but he was speedily forced to resign, and 
 under his successor the good old game of skull-crack- 
 ing and wanton arrests went merrily on. Everywhere 
 the official preservers of law and order are guilty of 
 brutal violence, make unlawful arrests, and in other 
 ways demonstrate their ability to bring forth from 
 labor troubles a sanguinary peace.
 
 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 They are invariably supported in their proceedings 
 by the approval of our "best citizens," that is, mem- 
 bers of the capitalistic class who wish the revolt of 
 wage-slaves against the system that oppresses them 
 to be subdued at any sacrifice. Not infrequently, in- 
 deed generally, the pulpit is also loud in approval of 
 the police and in disapproval of the strikers. And in 
 times of industrial peace, ministers who thus range 
 themselves against the workers are often heard to won- 
 der why the American workingman has lost his in- 
 terest in religion and can no longer be induced to 
 come to church. 
 
 Law and order must be judged by their fruits. So 
 judged, the conclusion is unavoidable that they are 
 intended to keep down the lower classes, not to re- 
 strain the higher, who by their conduct declare that 
 they hold themselves to be above law. Respect such 
 law and order? Who can, except those whose inter- 
 ests it promotes and is intended to promote? Until 
 such things as we have been considering cease to be, 
 until law is so reformed and its administration so 
 improved that they cannot be, it will remain true that 
 in this country of theoretical equal rights there is one 
 law for the rich and another for the poor. This is 
 not, as we teach our children to sing, "the land of the 
 free and the home of the brave," but the land of the 
 rich and the home of the slave. We must insist on 
 one law for all, or we shall soon have law for none. 
 If there is not reform, and that right speedily, there 
 will be revolution.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS 359 
 
 Greatest grievance of all is the fact that, whenever 
 the system they have themselves established fails at 
 any point to achieve its purpose of protecting the 
 present social order, the beneficiaries and representa- 
 tives of that order never hesitate to violate their own 
 system and fall back on pure brute force without 
 color of law. They are like a gambler who insists 
 on playing with loaded dice, and when, in spite of 
 that advantage, he sees himself about to lose, sweeps 
 all the stakes from the table and pockets them, and 
 draws his pistol on any player who objects. 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt, who professes to be the friend 
 of the poor laborer, said in a Decoration Day speech, 
 in 1911, that he was hated because men knew that he 
 wouldn't let the Constitution stand in the way of pun- 
 ishing them if they did wrong. Let that sink into 
 your consciousness, reader: when Mr. Roosevelt de- 
 cides and of course his decision is infallible and irre- 
 formable that certain men deserve to be punished, 
 he will not let a little obstacle like the Constitution 
 stand in his way. The importance of this declaration 
 consists mainly in the fact that Mr. Roosevelt is the 
 enfant terrible of American politics; he has blurted 
 out what the entire capitalistic class thinks and does. 
 The history of the past few years is full of instances 
 in which those who held in their hands power to pun- 
 ish have not let the Constitution stand in their way. 
 And thus far the men who have power are represen-
 
 360 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 tatives of the capitalistic order, and they have pun- 
 ished men who were misguided enough, criminal 
 enough (from their point of view) to challenge that 
 order and oppose it. One sometimes wonders if they 
 ever think, and, if they do, whether it never occurs 
 to them that they are furnishing terrible precedents 
 for revolutionaries? For the only party that has 
 much to lose by the subversion of law and order is 
 the capitalistic. The workers, as Marx and Engels 
 long ago reminded them, have nothing to lose but their 
 chains. 
 
 A few recent cases, in which the dominant order 
 has shown its contempt for law, will better enable us 
 to comprehend the principles and procedure of capital- 
 ism. One case was the strike of the workers in the 
 woolen mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, the main 
 facts of which the subsidized press did not succeed 
 entirely in suppressing thanks, not to the press, but 
 to a Congressional investigation. People have not yet 
 had time to forget the brutality of police and militia 
 during that strike. They have not forgotten how a 
 chief of police overrode all laws, and even all constitu- 
 tional guarantees, and prevented parents from sending 
 their starving children where they might be fed. And 
 probably they have not forgotten the burst of indig- 
 nation from the whole country, nor the haste with 
 which that particular injustice was revoked. Nor will 
 people soon forget the attempt to fasten the crime of 
 constructive murder upon two of the leaders of the 
 strike, Ettor and Giovanetti, and the keeping them in 
 jail eight months without bail, when their only real
 
 THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 361 
 
 offense, as every intelligent citizen in the United 
 States knew, was that they had led a successful strike, 
 which made known to the whole nation the practical 
 operation of "Schedule K," and the conditions under 
 which a great body of workingmen were compelled 
 to labor and live. Because a woman was killed during 
 the street disturbances (as many still believe, by a 
 policeman), these men were to be sent to the electric 
 chair, if the beneficiaries of Schedule K could compass 
 it. But during the same troubles one of the brave 
 militia who had been called in to preserve "law and 
 order" bayoneted a young boy in the back, inflicting 
 a wound from which he died, and no attempt was 
 ever made to hold anybody responsible for that cow- 
 ardly murder. 
 
 A second case was on the other side of the conti- 
 nent, in San Diego, California. Some of the so- 
 called best citizens of that town organized a band 
 of vigilantes, who patrolled the streets under arms, 
 and seized and beat and drove from town every man 
 suspected of connection with the Industrial Workers 
 of the World. One would naturally suppose that the 
 members of this organization had been guilty of some 
 great outrage to provoke such action that they had 
 blown up some building and killed its inmates, per- 
 haps. Nothing of the kind : their only offense was 
 that they had been conducting a vigorous and suc- 
 cessful propaganda, by holding meetings on the street 
 corners, and insisted on exercising their rights as 
 American citizens to free assembly and free speech. 
 The citizens determined to crush out the society. In
 
 362 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 doing this they were guilty of outrages that would 
 put an Apache Indian to the blush. One victim was 
 covered with hot tar, rolled in the sand, and then the 
 vigilantes branded his back with the letters I. W. W., 
 using for the purpose the tips of their lighted cigars. 
 A man was arrested and beaten nearly to death for 
 the heinous crime of wearing a red necktie. One man 
 was arrested for reading the Bible aloud, and another 
 for reading the Declaration of Independence. 1 One 
 can understand these two arrests : The very mention 
 of the Bible and the Declaration in such a place as 
 San Diego had become would be such condemnation 
 of the town as could not be tolerated by any self- 
 respecting vigilantes or police. They even turned the 
 fire hose on citizens engaged in peaceful religious 
 meetings ! 
 
 A third case came from Louisiana, where the Lum- 
 ber Trust for weeks waged civil war, not only against 
 their striking employees, but the people at large. All 
 pretense of lawful government was abandoned in sev- 
 eral counties; troops and armed mercenaries marched 
 and countermarched through the towns and country 
 roads, shooting and marauding at their pleasure. 
 Men were arrested and imprisoned daily, without war- 
 
 1 Over 300 persons were arrested and imprisoned during this 
 reign of terror at San Diego, 989 were assaulted and beaten, two 
 were killed outright, and 55 were illegally exiled. And- our sub- 
 sidized newspapers told their readers almost nothing about this. 
 Several of the persons arrested were convicted of alleged of- 
 fenses, but the proceedings were so disgracefully unjust that 
 Governor Johnson promptly pardoned them. Most of the per- 
 sons arrested were set at liberty without trial, or even any 
 formal charge against them.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 363 
 
 rant, bail or counsel. And, after these minions of the 
 Trust had killed several members of the brotherhood 
 of timber workers, forty other members were lodged 
 in jail on the charge of having caused the death of 
 their fellows. It is indeed a pity that the power of 
 Trusts ends with the grave, otherwise the shades of 
 the men whom they had done to death would doubt- 
 less have been arrested and charged with their own 
 murder ! 
 
 The annals of Stuart tyranny will be searched in 
 vain for a parallel to what the capitalistic order did 
 in the strike of the coal miners of West Virginia. 
 The owners of the mines were also owners of the 
 houses in which the miners lived. The striking min- 
 ers were evicted from their houses and compelled to 
 live during the rigors of winter in tents and huts on 
 the hillsides. Having been unable, even with the aid 
 of the powers of nature, to subdue these men and 
 force them to return to work without redress of griev- 
 ances, the owners prevailed on the governor to de- 
 clare martial law, under the pretext that the strike 
 was an "insurrection" under the meaning of the law 
 a palpable lie from which neither the capitalists nor 
 their tools in office shrank for a moment. The Labor 
 Argus, a newspaper of Charleston, criticized the gov- 
 ernor and the courts and militia for their methods. 
 Governor Hatfield ordered the paper suppressed, and 
 its plant was confiscated and its editors imprisoned. 
 The governor had the assurance to announce that he 
 did this in the interest of "law and order." This sub- 
 limity of impudence holds the record for the pres-
 
 364 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 ent, and so far surpasses any previous achievement 
 that it is almost worthy of admiration. 
 
 Miners were arrested on various charges, tried by 
 courts martial, with such rights to calling of witnesses 
 and counsel as it pleased the court to give them, and 
 without verdict of jury. Among those arrested was 
 "Mother" Jones, a woman over eighty years of age, 
 whose services to miners have gained her a national 
 repute. She and others obtained a writ of habeas 
 corpus and were brought before the Supreme Court 
 of the State. February 28, 1913, that court rendered 
 its decision, through presiding Judge Poffenberger, in 
 these words : "We think that, inasmuch as the statute 
 says the Governor may arrest and detain certain per- 
 sons who are aiding and abetting insurrection until 
 the insurrection is suppressed and order restored, it 
 authorizes him to do so in such cases as this, and 
 there is not a violation of the constitutional provis- 
 ion against the preservation [deprivation?] of life, 
 liberty and property without due process of law." 
 
 The language of the learned judge is somewhat 
 incoherent, as is not infrequently the case in judicial 
 opinions; but one gathers without difficulty that "due 
 process of law," which has done so much to preserve 
 property from interference, is but a barrier of straw 
 against invasion of liberty and life. Against the 
 greed of employers it interposes no obstacle, but when 
 an eight hour day for women or some other measure 
 for the benefit of workers is in question, it becomes a 
 wall of adamant. 
 
 If it were possible to outdo these proceedings in
 
 THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 365 
 
 West Virginia, Paterson, New Jersey, is entitled to 
 that honor. The strike of the silk workers there in 
 the spring of 1913 was the signal for the suspension 
 of all statutes and constitutions by Chief of Police 
 Bimson and the local courts. Among the hundreds 
 of illegal acts, the arrest of Messrs. Hayward, Lessig 
 and Tresca, the three most prominent leaders of the 
 workers, is preeminent. They were charged with un- 
 lawful assemb 1 age and sentenced to six months in 
 jail by Recorder Carroll. The following November 
 the Supreme Court of the State set aside the convic- 
 tion, in an opinion of Chief Justice Bergen, in which 
 he severely scored the court below, declaring that the 
 record contained not one particle of testimony war- 
 ranting the conviction. 
 
 But the general sentiment in Paterson was that 
 "the I. W. W. must go," and with this the "best citi- 
 zens" and the clergy entirely sympathized. Not one 
 voice was raised in pulpit or press against these arbi- 
 trary and illegal and brutal proceedings. The Indus- 
 trial Workers of the World were charged with being 
 an anarchistic organization, practicers of violence and 
 lawlessness : therefore to suppress them by anarchy, 
 violence and lawlessness was quite proper. Probably 
 the clergy of Paterson are now wondering why the 
 workers hate ministers and will not come to church. 
 
 Patrick Quinlan, a labor leader not a citizen of 
 Paterson, was convicted and received a jail sentence 
 for addressing a meeting that he did not attend and 
 for saying words that he never uttered. This added 
 a touch of opera bouffe to otherwise somber doings.
 
 366 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Released on bail, he was again arrested and con- 
 victed for making a remark derogatory to the chief 
 of police. Those not afraid to speak evil of dignities 
 fared badly in Paterson in those days. Time and 
 space would fail to tell of the brutal clubbings, the 
 wanton arrests, the interference with meetings, that 
 marked the course of the strike. Against law ? Bim- 
 son was the law. 
 
 If we were dependent for knowledge of these facts 
 on newspaper reports, we might well refuse them 
 credence; but they have been abundantly established 
 by testimony in a semi- judicial inquiry, conducted by 
 the Federal Commission on Industrial Relations. The 
 editor of the leading Paterson newspaper admitted the 
 writing of editorials during the strike in which he 
 advocated the driving of the Industrial Workers of 
 the World out of Paterson, by violence if necessary. 
 "Business men" of high standing, after the passions 
 aroused by the strike had had a year to subside, testi- 
 fied that they believed the I. W. W. to be "not for 
 the good of the community," and that it was there- 
 fore the duty of the police to drive them out of the 
 city. They admitted that this would be "technically 
 illegal," that it would be a violation of his oath for a 
 policeman to take such action; but that the officer 
 would be justified in violating law and oath, "if there- 
 by he could serve the interests of the community," 
 that is, the interests of employers and "business men." 
 Since that is the idea of "law and order" that is held 
 by prominent citizens of Paterson, nobody should be 
 surprised by what occurred there. But when the Me-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 367 
 
 Namaras violate law, what a commotion these same 
 "business men" then make! 
 
 Having suppressed, at least temporarily, free assem- 
 blage and free speech, the authorities of Paterson re- 
 solved also to suppress freedom of the press. Alex- 
 ander Scott edited and published a socialistic paper 
 called the Weekly Issue, at Passaic, several miles from 
 Paterson. He criticized the doings in Paterson, and 
 chief Bimson as head doer, in an editorial of which 
 the New York Tribune said : "We have read as severe 
 criticisms of municipal administration and of their 
 police as those of Scott in many papers published in 
 many places." On the charge of attempting to sub- 
 vert government, Scott was tried and convicted, and 
 received an indeterminate sentence of from one to 
 fifteen years in prison. The Supreme Court has not 
 yet passed upon his case, but in the meantime these 
 words from Collier's are worth considering : "We do 
 not believe any court in America will sustain this law 
 or the sentence of this editor. The passage of the 
 law itself in the form in which it was passed is a 
 shining example of legislative incompetence, and the 
 trial of Scott is a piece of judicial folly." 1 
 
 A year ago we should have thought and said that 
 
 1 In April, 1914, the Supreme Court of New Jersey reversed 
 the conviction of Scott. Justice Kalish, in his decision, severely 
 criticized Judge Klenert, the trial judge, for not quashing the 
 indictment or ordering a verdict of acquittal. He affirmed in 
 strong terms the right of free speech and freedom of the press. 
 The character of the "courts of justice" in Paterson during the 
 strike is shown by the fact that every conviction, save one, has 
 been reversed, and the one exception is still pending in the 
 courts.
 
 368 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 nothing could surpass the lawlessness of Paterson or 
 the brutality of West Virginia, but the spring of 
 1914 gave the American people a new object-lesson 
 of the exploitation of the class that works by the 
 class that shirks. Almost simultaneous strikes oc- 
 curred among the workers in the copper mines of 
 Michigan and the coal mines of Colorado. There was 
 nothing new or specially instructive in the Michigan 
 strike, where, after a long struggle, the miners were 
 compelled to return to work on the employers' terms. 
 Nothing need be said regarding this matter, beyond 
 the comment of the New York World: 
 
 "What the employers do as a matter of course, it is 
 unlawful for the employees to do. The employers 
 combine; they monopolize; they set aside law; they 
 hire fighting men; they make war. Because the em- 
 ployers have had these advantages and have refused 
 to arbitrate, they have won a famous victory over a 
 naturally industrious and peaceable population, which 
 has not been worn out so much as it has been starved 
 out. Some triumphs are worth while and some are 
 not. In this country injustice and hunger never yet 
 made a conquest that endured." 
 
 The facts about the Colorado struggle were for a 
 time difficult to learn, owing to manipulation of 
 the news by almost the whole of the American press; 
 and so far as possible the facts have been kept from 
 the people until now. But some things have been ad- 
 mitted or established under oath. The strikers made 
 seven demands, five of which had been granted by acts 
 of legislature, but persistently refused by the mine
 
 THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS*' 369 
 
 owners. That these grievances of the miners were not 
 imaginary, is fully established by this report of a Fed- 
 eral grand jury, in September, 1913: "That State 
 laws have not been enforced so as to give all persons 
 concerned benefits which are derivable therefrom; that 
 coal companies have nominated, elected and controlled 
 county officers; that county officers elected by the 
 coal companies have shown undue activity in control- 
 ling elections, having in one instance changed the pre- 
 cinct boundaries, presumably to eliminate unfavorable 
 votes of the miners, and have thus aroused not only 
 political but social dissatisfaction; that many camp 
 marshals, whose appointments and salaries are con- 
 trolled by coal companies, have exercised a system of 
 espionage and have resorted to arbitrary powers of 
 police control, acting as judge and jury and passing 
 sentence; that camp marshals have brutally assaulted 
 miners; that miners cannot complain of real griev- 
 ances without being discharged; that the scrip sys- 
 tem is still in effect ; that miners feel under an unjust 
 obligation to trade at the company stores because of 
 the attitude of mine superintendents; that check 
 weighmen have been denied the miners." a 
 
 When the strike began, the usual tactics were em- 
 ployed by the operators : Guards were hired and 
 armed, strike-breakers were brought in, and the gov- 
 ernor was persuaded to call out the militia. The pri- 
 vate guards were enrolled and uniformed as members 
 
 1 Speech of the Hon. Edward Keating, representative from 
 Southern Colorado, in the House of Representatives, May 30, 
 1914.
 
 370 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 of the militia and machine guns were added to their 
 equipment. At this stage a Congressional Committee 
 began an investigation, and among the witnesses called 
 was Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., as the representa- 
 tive of his father, who owns a controlling interest in 
 one of the largest corporations involved in the strike. 
 Mr. Rockefeller said, among other things: "I have 
 done what I regard as best in the interests of the 
 employees and the large investment I represent. We 
 have put the best men obtainable in charge, and are 
 relying on their judgment. My conscience entirely 
 acquits me. We would rather that the unfortunate 
 conditions should continue and that we should lose 
 all the millions invested than that American work- 
 men should be deprived of their right to work for 
 whom they please. That is the great principle at 
 stake. It is a national issue." 
 
 In a later public statement Mr. Rockefeller said that 
 less than ten per cent, of his employees are union men. 
 The other 90 per cent., he affects to believe, are in 
 such fear of their lives from this small minority, and 
 so apprehensive that they may be compelled to work 
 for shorter hours and higher wages than he offers 
 them, that they have most unwillingly joined the 
 strike. And he is nobly determined to protect them, 
 if it costs a considerable part of his great fortune! 
 There is, indeed, a principle at stake in this matter, 
 but it is quite other than that stated by Mr. Rockefel- 
 ler : it is the right of the employer to compel the miner 
 to work the longest possible number of hours at the 
 smallest possible wage, and to resist the union through
 
 THE PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS" 37! 
 
 which alone the miner can deal collectively and there- 
 fore effectively with his employer. 
 
 Fifteen days after the capitalists had thus an- 
 nounced their ultimatum through Mr. Rockefeller, the 
 "militia" opened fire on the tent-colony of miners at 
 Ludlow. To escape the hail of bullets, the women 
 and children crawled into pits that had been dug for 
 shelter; but the canvas tents caught fire, and twenty- 
 nine persons perished there including two women 
 and eleven little children, some of them babes in arms. 
 Nothing but the prompt sending of Federal troops 
 to Colorado by President Wilson prevented a bloody 
 civil war. That the entire nation was horrified is 
 no exaggeration. It brought home to many people, 
 as nothing had ever done, as perhaps nothing else 
 could ever have done, the fact that the ruling class 
 of our country, the great capitalists, will stick at 
 nothing: they are ready to exterminate all who op- 
 pose them, rather than have labor controversies set- 
 tled on principles of justice and humanity. 
 
 The courts of Colorado, military or civil, will do 
 nothing, or worse than nothing. Military tribunals 
 have been busy ever since with "trials" that are a 
 travesty of justice. Most of the guilty have been 
 exonerated. One case was too flagrant for that: 
 Lieutenant Linderfelt, of the militia, killed a Greek 
 miner most obnoxious to the operators as one of 
 the leaders of the strike, by beating him over the 
 head with a rifle while he was under protection of 
 a flag of truce. He admitted his act, and the court 
 could do no less than find a verdict accordingly; but
 
 372 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 as a penalty sentenced him to be reduced five files in 
 rank! How well this compares with the sentences 
 of the McNamaras! 
 
 One thing has been made clear by these events. 
 At once and for all time to come, the right to employ 
 armed guards must be taken from private persons 
 and corporations. The maintenance of peace is a 
 function of government ; the State alone has the right 
 to use force, and that only as a last resort. We have 
 gone back to the private warfare of the Middle Ages. 
 The new feudal nobles, called capitalists, have their 
 condottieri and use them with as little scruple as 
 marked the older feudalism. This is not law and or- 
 der, but anarchy. At any cost, this private warfare 
 must be suppressed. It is the negation of civilization 
 and a reversion to barbarism. Let us say nothing 
 more of the backwardness of Mexico in the ways of 
 civilization and peace, until we have successfully 
 solved this problem. In the meantime what has the 
 Christian press and the Christian pulpit been saying 
 about this matter? How has it been applying the 
 Gospel of Jesus to this problem? There has been 
 silence that might be felt! 
 
 VI 
 
 But are not the workers also violent and lawless? 
 When forcible resistance is made to the social order, 
 can society sit idly by and let things take their course ? 
 The question is pertinent, and there can be only one
 
 THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 373 
 
 reply. Those who proclaim the Gospel of Jesus must 
 oppose all efforts to better social conditions by vio- 
 lence. They are servants of One who counsels sub- 
 mission to wrong- rather than forcible redress. So- 
 cialism speaks with the same voice as religion on 
 this point, though not with the same motive. The 
 socialist perceives the teaching of history and experi- 
 ence to be clear, that violence always reacts against 
 the cause it is intended to promote. 
 
 Let the advocates of the Gospel, however, take more 
 care to insist that the principle be applied impartially 
 to all classes of society. The minister of Christ 
 should condemn cruel beatings and the shooting down 
 of unarmed men and women and the bayoneting of 
 boys, whether this is done by those who would destroy 
 "law and order" or by those who think by such meth- 
 ods to uphold it. One ethical measuring-wand must 
 be applied to all men, rich or poor. And of the two 
 kinds of violence, disciples of the Carpenter of Galilee 
 would do well to be more lenient in judgment of the 
 violence of workers goaded to desperation by their 
 wrongs, and striking out blindly against they know 
 not whom or what, than of the coldly calculated vio- 
 lence of those who are striving to perpetuate these 
 wrongs. Let teachers of Christian ethics reprobate 
 the brutality of the servants of the law as strongly 
 as the brutality of those whom they call the lawless. 
 The followers of the poor and lowly Jesus ought to 
 be found ranged with the oppressed, not with the 
 oppressors. They should be able to see that murder 
 is the same crime in the sight of God when done by
 
 374 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 the rich and powerful as when done by the poor and 
 ignorant. The clergy should proclaim from the house- 
 tops that the possession of wealth and intelligence 
 and power lays a heavy burden of obligation on the 
 possessors to do justly and to love mercy, and that 
 to pretend to walk humbly with God is no excuse for 
 lack of these qualities. Piety is not a substitute for 
 righteousness. In short, what is demanded is a prac- 
 tical reversal of the ethics taught in the average 
 Christian pulpit to-day. Christianize "law and or- 
 der," and it will be respected and there will be no 
 violence to suppress. 
 
 Until such ethical principles as have been thus indi- 
 cated are accepted and proclaimed, as an inseparable 
 part of the Gospel of Jesus, there will remain a great 
 gulf fixed between the workers and the Church. 
 Until such ethics are embodied in law and order, let 
 nobody expect to see law and order greeted with 
 anything but derision and revolt by the workers. 
 What many call "lawlessness" is a symptom of social 
 health, not of social disease ; it is a barometer of social 
 evils. Resistance to injustice shows that the spirit of 
 manhood is still alive. When a man or a class gets 
 to the point where it takes abuse lying down, it has 
 hardly manhood enough to be distinguished from the 
 brutes. As Americans, we still boast that this is the 
 one country under heaven in which the people will 
 not remain supine under oppression and tamely sub- 
 mit to organized injustice. 
 
 In most of our American communities, we are com- 
 pelled to conclude, there is no longer anything that
 
 it 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS 375 
 
 deserves the name of law or order. There is power, 
 brutal force, but no law. Corporate power has shown 
 its ability to break down every barrier that the civiliza- 
 tion of five thousand years had succeeded in throwing 
 about life and liberty. It has proceeded to suspend 
 constitutions, nullify statutes, usurp all the functions 
 of government, proclaim martial law and put men 
 to death, banish them or imprison them at pleasure, 
 without process of law. Corporate power has not 
 merely done this once, it has done it in at least seven 
 different States within the past five years, and has 
 proved that it can and will do the like anywhere and 
 as often as may be necessary. Could there be better 
 preparation for a violent revolution than vast power 
 thus lodged in the hands of an irresponsible few, 
 power used without reference to law, controlling all 
 the machinery of justice, and using police and courts 
 in reckless oppression of all who stand in their way 
 or oppose their will ? Can men see their dearest liber- 
 ties contemptuously denied, ruthlessly overridden, and 
 avoid the conclusion that peaceful methods of agita- 
 tion are useless, that the only possible redress left 
 them is appeal to force? 
 
 "Law and order" has thus far been the Gibraltar 
 of capitalism this power to make, interpret and en- 
 force laws. The class that possesses such power 
 controls society. But continuance of the system de- 
 pends on respect for it by capitalists themselves; and 
 at present they are doing their very best to shatter it 
 to bits. Nothing is so fatal to the existence of a law- 
 abiding sentiment in any community as the well-
 
 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 founded conviction that the law itself is unjust and 
 its administration unfair. The supremacy of capital- 
 ism thus far has been due to its combination of wealth 
 and intelligence. The worker has no wealth and has 
 hitherto been also deficient in intelligence, but there 
 has been a great awakening on his part and he is 
 learning that his deliverance lies in concerted political 
 action, which will take from the capitalistic class con- 
 trol of law. When the intelligence of the workers 
 generally becomes equal to establishing a solidarity 
 comparable to that of their oppressors, their battle 
 will be virtually won. They can then make law cor- 
 respond in fact to the ideal, make order signify justice 
 and not injustice. Then law and order will be re- 
 spected, because they will be worthy of respect. They 
 will rest on the will of a free people, and will express 
 their convictions of the rights of man. Let us pray 
 that the twentieth century will witness the passing of 
 the old world this world in which the poor starve 
 while the rich die of surfeit; this world where thou- 
 sands laugh while millions weep; this world where 
 the great masses toil without hope that the favored 
 few may play without joy. Let us pray and labor 
 that the twentieth century may witness the coming 
 of a new world in which righteousness shall dwell 
 a world distinguished by a new religion and a new 
 social order: the religion of Jesus and the Kingdom, 
 and the human brotherhood that He came to establish. 
 The Gospel of Jesus in the twentieth century is 
 the same as in the first: "The Kingdom of God is 
 at hand : repent and believe the Glad Tidings."
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 A. BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Royce, Josiah, The Problem of Christianity, 2 vols., New 
 York, 1913. 
 
 Smith, G. B., Social Idealism and the Changing Theol- 
 ogy, New York, 1913. 
 
 Smith, Samuel G., Democracy and the Church, New 
 York, 1912. 
 
 Rauschenbusch, Walter, Christianizing the Social Order, 
 New York, 1913. 
 
 Howerton, J. R., The Church and Social Reform, New 
 York, 1913. 
 
 Sims, P. M., What Must the Church Do to Be Saved? 
 New York, 1913. 
 
 Kutter, Hermann, They Must; or, God and the Social 
 Democracy, Chicago, 1913. 
 
 Womer, P. P., The Church and the Labor Conflict, New 
 York, 1913. 
 
 Trawick, A. M., The City Church and Its Social Mission, 
 New York, 1912. 
 
 The Country Church and Community Cooperation, New 
 York, 1912. 
 
 Gill, C. O., and Pinchot, Gifford, The Country Church, 
 New York, 1913. 
 
 Holmes, J. H., The Revolutionary Function of the Mod- 
 ern Church, New York, 1912. 
 377
 
 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Ross, E. A., Sin and Society, New York, 1913. 
 
 Fiske, G. W., The Challenge of the Country, New York, 
 
 1912. 
 Wallis, Louis, Sociological Study of the Bible, Chicago, 
 
 1912. 
 Hall, T. C, Social Solutions in the Light of Christian 
 
 Ethics, New York, 1910. 
 Euchen, Rudolf, Can We Still Be Christians ? New York, 
 
 1914. 
 Mann, J. E. R, and others, The Real Democracy, New 
 
 York, 1913. 
 Adams, Brooks, The Theory of Social Revolutions, New 
 
 York, 1914. 
 
 Nearing, Scott, Social Sanity, New York, 1913. 
 Downes, L., The New Democracy, Boston, 1910. 
 Coffin, J. H., The Socialized Conscience, Baltimore, 1914. 
 Schell, Hermann, The New Ideals in the Gospel, New 
 
 York, 1914. 
 Zueblin, Charles, Democracy and the Overman, New 
 
 York, 1910. 
 The Church, the People and the Age, edited by Robert 
 
 Scott and George William Gilmore, New York, 1914. 
 Ward, H. F., The Social Creed of the Churches, New 
 
 York, 1914. 
 
 Tyler, J. M., The Place of the Church in Evolution, Bos- 
 ton, 1914. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Small, Albion W., Between Eras: from Capitalism to 
 
 Democracy, Kansas City, Mo., 1913. 
 Devine, Edward T., The Spirit of Social Work, New 
 
 York, 1911.
 
 APPENDIX 379 
 
 Tolman, W. H., and Kendall, L. B., Safety: Methods 
 
 for Preventing Occupational and Other Accidents, 
 
 New York, 1913. 
 
 Ellwood, Charles A., Sociology in Its Psychological As- 
 pects, New York, 1912. 
 Le Bon, Gustave, The Psychology of Revolution, New 
 
 York, 1913. 
 Boyd, J. H., Workmen's Compensation and Industrial 
 
 Insurance, 2 vols., Indianapolis, 1913. 
 Pouget, mile, Sabotage (translated by Arturo Giovan- 
 
 itti), Chicago, 1913. 
 
 Quick, Herbert, On Board the Good Ship Earth, Indian- 
 apolis, 1913. 
 Wallace, Alfred Russel, Social Environment and Moral 
 
 Progress, New York, 1913. 
 Clark, J. B., Social Justice Without Socialism, Boston, 
 
 1914. 
 Rubinow, I. M., Social Insurance, with Special Reference 
 
 to American Conditions, New York, 1913. 
 Hobson, John A., Evolution of Modern Capitalism, New 
 
 York, 1894. 
 Fisher, Irving, Why Is the Dollar Shrinking? New York, 
 
 1914. 
 Lusk, Hugh N., Social Welfare in New Zealand, New 
 
 York, 1913. 
 Roberts, Elmer, Monarchical Socialism in Germany, New 
 
 York, 1913. 
 Goldmark, Josephine, Fatigue and Efficiency, New York, 
 
 1912. 
 
 Skeels, Isaiah, Cost and Price, Cleveland, 1914. 
 Martin, F. T., The Passing of the Idle Rich, New York, 
 
 1911. 
 Foster, W. T., The Social Emergency, Boston, 1914.
 
 380 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Walling, W. E., Progressivism and After, New York, 
 1914. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Mill, J. S., The Subjection of Women. Many editions. 
 Densmore, E., Sex Equality, New York, 1907. 
 Schreiner, O., Woman and Labor, New York, 1911. 
 U. S. Labor Bureau, Bulletin 73 : Laws Relative to Em- 
 
 ployment of Women and Children, Washington, 
 
 1907. 
 Fawcett, M., Woman's Suffrage a short history of a 
 
 great movement, New York, 1912. 
 Squire, Belle, The Woman Movement in America, New 
 
 York, 1911. 
 Rembaugh, Bertha, Political Status of Women in the 
 
 United States, New York, 1911. 
 White, F., Laws on Marriage, Divorce and Property 
 
 Rights of Women of All States, New York, 1910. 
 Dorr, Rheta, What Eight Million Women Want, New 
 
 York, 1910. 
 George, W. L., Woman and To-Morrow, New York, 
 
 Floyd, Dell, Women and World Builders, Chicago, 1913. 
 Key, Ellen, Love and Marriage, New York, 1911. 
 
 The Woman Movement, New York, 1912. 
 Abbot, Edith, Women in Industry, New York, 1910. 
 Van Kleeck, Ellen, Women in the Bookbinding Trade, 
 
 New York, 1913. 
 Butler, Elizabeth B., Women and the Trades (Pitts- 
 
 burgh Survey), New York, 1909. 
 
 Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores, New York, 1912. 
 Martin, Edward Sanford, The Unrest of Women, New 
 
 York, 1913.
 
 APPENDIX 381 
 
 Goldmark, J. C, Handbook of Laws Regulating Women's 
 
 Labor, New York, 1912. 
 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, Women and Economics, New 
 
 York, 1898. 
 Morley, Edith J., Women Workers in Seven Professions, 
 
 New York, 1914. 
 Van Vorst, Mrs. John and Marie, The Woman Who 
 
 Toils, New York, 1903. 
 Cadbury, Edward, and others, Women's Work and 
 
 Wages, New York, 1907. 
 Bosworth, L. M., The Living Wage of Women Workers, 
 
 New York, 1911. 
 
 Nearing, Scott, and N. M. S., Woman and Social Prog- 
 ress, New York, 1912. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Nearing, Scott, The Solution of the Problem of the 
 
 Child, New York, 1911. 
 Keeling, Frederic, Child Labour in the United Kingdom, 
 
 London, 1914. 
 Engel, Sigmund, The Elements of Child Protection, 
 
 translated from the German by Dr. Eden Paul, New 
 
 York, 1912. 
 Flexner and Baldwin, Juvenile Courts and Probation, 
 
 New York, 1914. 
 Clopper, Edward, Child Labor in City Streets, New 
 
 York, 1912. 
 Key, Ellen, The Century of the Child, New York, 1909. 
 
 The Education of the Child, New York, 1910. 
 Henderson, C. Hanford, Pay-Day, Boston, 1911. 
 
 Education and the Larger Life, Boston, 1902. 
 
 What Is It to be Educated ? Boston, 1914.
 
 382 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Montessori, Maria, The Montessori Method, translated 
 
 by Anna E. George, New York, 1912. 
 Stevens, Ellen Yale, A Guide to the Montessori Method, 
 
 New York, 1913. 
 Smith, Anna Tolman, The Montessori Method of Edu- 
 
 cation, U. S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin 17, 1912. 
 Report of Commissioner of Education for 1912, 2 vols., 
 
 Washington, 1913. 
 King, Irving, Education for Social Efficiency, New 
 
 York, 1913. 
 Ferrer, Francisco, The Origin and Ideals of the Mod- 
 
 ern School, New York, 1913. 
 Weeks, Arland D., The Education of To-Morrow, New 
 
 York, 1913. 
 Eggleston and Bruere, The Work of the Rural School, 
 
 New York, 1913. 
 
 Antin, Mary, The Promised Land, Boston, 1912. 
 Ayres, Leonard, Laggards in Our Schools, New York, 
 
 Holmes, William H., School Organization and the Indus- 
 
 trial Child, Worcester, Mass., 1912. 
 Snedden, David, Problems of Educational Readjustment, 
 
 Boston, 1913. 
 Best, R. N., and Ogden, C K., The Problem of the Con- 
 
 tinuation School and Its Successful Solution in Ger- 
 
 many, London, 1914. 
 Leake, Albert H., Industrial Education: Its Problems, 
 
 Methods and Dangers, Boston, 1913. 
 Riis, Jacob, Children of the Tenements, New York, 1902. 
 Addams, Jane, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, 
 
 New York, 1912. 
 Bancroft, J. H., Games for the Playground, Home, 
 
 School and Gymnasium, New York, 1909.
 
 APPENDIX 383 
 
 Fisher, H. W., Making Life Worth While, New York, 
 
 1910. 
 
 Groos, Karl, The Play of Man, New York, 1901. 
 Gulick, L. H., The Efficient Life, New York, 1907. 
 Groves, F. P., A History of Education in Modern Times, 
 
 New York, 1913. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 De Forest and Veiller, The Tenement House Prob- 
 lem, 2 vols., New York, 1903. 
 
 Veiller, Lawrence, Housing Reform, New York, 1910. 
 
 Nettlefold, J. S., Practical Housing, Letchworth, Eng., 
 1908. 
 
 Koester, Frank, Modern City Planning and Maintenance, 
 New York, 1914. 
 
 Howe, Frederick C, European Cities at Work, New 
 York, 1913. 
 
 Riis, Jacob, The Battle with the Slum, New York, 1902. 
 How the Other Half Lives, New York, 1890. 
 
 Wilcox, D. F., Municipal Franchises, 2 vols., New York, 
 1914. 
 
 Crawford, W. H., Church and Slum, New York, 1908. 
 
 Slums of Baltimore, New York, Chicago and Philadel- 
 phia, U. S. Labor Bureau, Washington, 1894. 
 
 U. S. Bureau of Labor, Bulletin 54: Housing of the 
 Working People by Employers, Washington, 1904. 
 Many titles under Chapters VI and VII will also be 
 found to contain pertinent matter. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Social Evil in Chicago, a Study of Existing Condi- 
 tions with Recommendations by the Vice Commis- 
 sion of Chicago, Chicago, 1911.
 
 384 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Report of the Vice Commission of Chicago, New York, 
 
 1912. 
 Kneeland, G. J., Commercialized Prostitution in New 
 
 York City, with an Introduction by John D. Rocke- 
 feller, Jr., New York, 1912. 
 
 Philadelphia Vice Commission Report, New York, 1913. 
 Janney, O. Edward, The White Slave Traffic, New York, 
 
 1911. 
 Bell, E. A., War on the White Slave Trade, New York, 
 
 1909. 
 
 Seligman, E. E. A., The Social Evil, New York, 1912. 
 Addams, Jane, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, 
 
 New York, 1912. 
 Flexner, Abraham, Prostitution in Europe, New York, 
 
 1914. 
 Kauffman, R. W., The House of Bondage, New York, 
 
 1910. 
 Gordon, Ernest, The Anti-Alcohol Movement in Europe, 
 
 New York, 1914. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 An Open Letter to Society from Convict 1776, New 
 York, 1911. 
 
 Berkman, Alexander, Memoirs of an Anarchist, New 
 York, 1912. 
 
 Aschaffenburg, Gustav, Crime and Its Repression, Bos- 
 ton, 1913. 
 
 Bonger, W. A., Criminality and Economic Conditions, 
 Boston, 1913. 
 
 Ferri, Enrico, Criminal Sociology, New York, 1912. 
 
 Jones, George, A History of Penal Methods, London, 
 1914.
 
 APPENDIX 385 
 
 Hopkins, Tighe, Wards of the State : an Unofficial View 
 of Prison and the Prisoners, Boston, 1913. 
 
 Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and 
 Correction, Annual. 
 
 Gross, Hans, Criminal Psychology, Boston, 1911. 
 
 Lombroso, Cesare, Crime, Its Causes and Remedies, Bos- 
 ton, 1911. 
 
 McConnell, R. M., Criminal Responsibility and Social 
 Constraint, New York, 1912. 
 
 Tarde, Gabriel, Penal Philosophy, Boston, 1912. 
 
 Booth, Maud Ballington; After Prison What? New 
 York, 1903. 
 
 Devon, J., The Criminal and the Community, New York, 
 1911. 
 
 Life in Sing Sing, by Number 1500, Indianapolis, 1904. 
 
 De Lacy, W. H., Treatment of Criminals by Probation, 
 59th Congress, second session, Senate Document 12, 
 Washington, 1906. 
 
 Wines, F. H., Punishment and Reformation, New York, 
 1910. 
 
 Correction and Prevention, 4 vols., Russell Sage Founda- 
 tion, 1913. 
 
 Proceedings of the Annual Congress of the American 
 Prison Association, Annual. 
 
 Garofalo, Raffaele, Criminology, Boston, 1914. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Moore, B., Dawn of the Health Age, London, 1911. 
 Hutchinson, Woods, Preventable Diseases, Boston, 1909. 
 
 Conquest of Consumption, Boston, 1910. 
 M'Vail, J. C, Prevention of Infectious Diseases, New 
 
 York, 1907.
 
 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Behring, E. A., Suppression of Tuberculosis, New York, 
 1904. 
 
 Otis, E. O., Tuberculosis Its Cause, Cure and Preven- 
 tion, New York, 1914. 
 
 Russell, F. H., Control of Typhoid in the Army, Wash- 
 ington, 1911. 
 
 Abbott, A. C, Hygiene of Transmissible Diseases, Phila- 
 delphia, 1901. 
 
 Doty, A. H., Prevention of Infectious Diseases, New 
 York, 1911. 
 
 National Association for Study and Prevention of Tu- 
 berculosis, Proceedings. 
 
 International Congress on Tuberculosis, Transactions. 
 
 Henry Phipps Institute, Annual Reports of, Philadelphia. 
 
 Salesby, Parenthood and Race Culture, New York, 1912. 
 
 Davenport, C. B., Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, New 
 York, 1913. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Koester, Frank, The Price of Inefficiency, New York, 
 
 La Fargue, Paul, The Right to Be Lazy, Chicago, 1907. 
 McCann, A. W., Starving America, New York, 1913. 
 Hunter, Robert, Poverty, New York, 1904. 
 Devine, E. T., Misery and Its Causes, New York, 1909. 
 Haggard, H. Rider, Regeneration, New York, 1910. 
 Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, Prevention of Destitution, 
 
 London, 1911. 
 Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and 
 
 Correction, Annual. 
 Wallis, Graham, The Great Society, New York, 1914.
 
 APPENDIX 387 
 
 U. S. Labor Bulletin, 53 and 54: Cost of Living and 
 Retail Prices in the U. S., Washington, 1904. 
 Bulletin 64 : Conditions of Living Among the Poor, 
 1906. 
 
 Barnett, S. A. and H. O., Toward Social Reform, New 
 York, 1909. 
 
 Besant, Walter, and others, Poor in Great Cities, New 
 York, 1900. 
 
 Henderson, C. R., Introduction to the Study of Depen- 
 dent, Defective and Delinquent Classes, Chicago, 1901. 
 
 Rowntree, B. S., Land and Labor: Lessons from Bel- 
 gium, New York, 1910. 
 
 Beveridge, W. H., Unemployment, New York, 1909. 
 
 Nearing, Scott, Financing the Wage-Earner's Family, 
 New York, 1913. 
 
 Reducing the Cost of Living, New York, 1914. 
 
 Brandeis, Louis D., Other People's Money, and How 
 the Bankers Use It, New York, 1914. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Beard, Charles A., An Economic Interpretation of the 
 
 Constitution, New York, 1913. 
 Farrand, Max, The Framing of the Constitution, New 
 
 Haven, 1913. 
 Countryman, Edwin, The Supreme Court of the United 
 
 States, Albany, 1913. 
 Judson, F. N., The Judiciary and the People, New 
 
 Haven, 1913. 
 Moore, B. F., The Supreme Court and Unconstitutional 
 
 Legislation, New York, 1913. 
 
 Abbot. E. V., Justice and the Modern Law, Boston, 1913. 
 Cleveland, F. A., Organized Democracy, New York, 1913. 
 Coudert, F. R., Certainty and Justice, New York, 1913.
 
 388 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 Haines, C. G., The American Doctrine of Judicial Su- 
 premacy, New York, 1914. 
 
 Laidler, H. W., Boycotts and the Labor Struggle, New 
 York, 1914. 
 
 Bulletins of the Labor Bureau, Washington, 1905-1914 ; 
 contain full and accurate digests of statutes and de- 
 cisions of courts pertaining to workers and indus- 
 trial questions. 
 
 Mitchell, John, Organized Labor, Philadelphia, 1913. 
 
 Reform in the Administration of Justice, Baltimore, 
 1914. 
 
 Hunter, Robert, Violence and the Labor Movement, New 
 York, 1914. 
 
 B. PROGRAMS FOR SOCIAL REFORM 
 
 THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY 
 
 Social and Industrial Reform. Effective legislation 
 looking to the prevention of industrial accidents, occupa- 
 tional diseases, overwork, involuntary unemployment, 
 and other injurious effects incident to modern industry. 
 
 The fixing of minimum safety and health standards 
 for the various occupations, and the exercise of the pub- 
 lic authority of State and Nation, including the Federal 
 control over interstate commerce and the taxing power, 
 to maintain such standards. 
 
 The prohibition of child labor. 
 
 Minimum wage standards for working women, to pro- 
 vide a "living scale" in all industrial occupations. 
 
 The prohibition of night work for women and the 
 establishment of an eight-hour day for women and young 
 persons.
 
 APPENDIX 389 
 
 One day's rest in seven for all wage workers. 
 
 The eight-hour day in continuous twenty- four hour 
 industries. 
 
 The abolition of the convict contract labor system; 
 substituting a system of prison production for govern- 
 mental consumption only, and the application of prison- 
 ers' earnings to the support of their dependent families. 
 
 Publicity as to wages, hours and conditions ol labor ; 
 full reports upon industrial accidents and diseases, and 
 the opening to public inspection of all tallies, weights, 
 measures and check systems on labor products. 
 
 Standards of compensation for death by industrial ac- 
 cident and injury and trade diseases, which will transfer 
 the burden of lost earnings from the families of work- 
 ing people to the industry, and thus to the community. 
 
 The protection of home life against the hazards of 
 sickness, irregular employment and old age, through the 
 adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to 
 American use. 
 
 The development of the creative labor power of Amer- 
 ica by lifting the last load of illiteracy from American 
 youth, and establishing continuation schools for indus- 
 trial education under public control and encouraging agri- 
 cultural education and demonstration in rural schools. 
 
 The establishment of industrial research laboratories 
 to put the methods and discoveries of science at the 
 service of American producers. 
 
 Political. 1 Direct primaries for the nomination of 
 State and National officers, nation-wide preferential 
 primaries for candidates for the presidency, direct elec- 
 tion of United States Senators by the people. Urge on 
 
 1 Most of the so-called "political" reforms in this platform and 
 in that of the Socialists have a plain social bearing.
 
 39 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 all States the short ballot, with responsibility to the 
 people secured by the initiative, referendum and recall. 
 
 Remaining forests, coal and oil lands, water powers 
 and other natural resources . . . are more likely to be 
 wisely conserved and utilized for the general welfare if 
 held in the public hands. 
 
 The Progressive party, believing that no people can 
 justly claim to be a true democracy which denies political 
 rights on account of sex, pledges itself to the task of 
 securing equal suffrage to men and women alike. 
 
 Restriction of the power of courts: 
 
 First, when an act passed under the police power of 
 the State is held unconstitutional under the State consti- 
 tution by the courts, the people, after an ample interval 
 for deliberation, shall have an opportunity to vote on the 
 question whether they desire the act to become a law, 
 notwithstanding such decision. 
 
 Second, every decision of the highest Appellate Court 
 of a State declaring an act of the Legislature unconsti- 
 tutional on the ground of its violation of the Federal 
 Constitution, shall be subject to the same review by the 
 Supreme Court of the United States as is now accorded 
 to decisions sustaining such legislation. 
 
 A graduated inheritance tax as a means of equalizing 
 the obligations of holders of property to government. 
 
 THE SOCIALIST PARTY 
 
 Collective Ownership. First, the collective ownership 
 and democratic management of railroads, wire and wire- 
 less telegraphs and telephones, express service, steamboat 
 lines and all other social means of transportation and 
 communication and of all large-scale industries.
 
 APPENDIX 391 
 
 Second, the immediate acquirement by the municipal- 
 ities, the States or the Federal Government of all grain 
 elevators, stockyards, storage warehouses and other dis- 
 tributing agencies, in order to reduce the present extor- 
 tionate cost of living. 
 
 Third, the extension of the public domain to include 
 mines, quarries, oil wells, forests and water power. 
 
 Fourth, the further conservation and development of 
 natural resources for the use and benefit of all the peo- 
 ple: 
 
 (a) By scientific forestation and timber protection. 
 
 (b) By the reclamation of arid and swamp tracts. 
 
 (c) By the storage of flood waters and the utilization 
 
 of water power. 
 
 (d) By the stoppage of the present extravagant waste 
 
 of the soil and of the products of mines and oil 
 wells. 
 
 (e) By the development of highway and waterway 
 
 systems. 
 
 Fifth, the collective ownership of land wherever prac- 
 ticable and, in cases where such ownership is imprac- 
 ticable, the appropriation by taxation of the annual rental 
 value of all land held for speculation or exploitation. 
 
 Sixth, the collective ownership and democratic man- 
 agement of the banking and currency system. 
 
 Unemployment. The immediate Government relief of 
 the unemployed by the extension of all useful public 
 works. All persons employed on such works to be en- 
 gaged directly by the Government under a work day of 
 not more than eight hours and at not less than the pre- 
 vailing union wages. The Government also to establish 
 employment bureaus ; to lend money to States and mu- 
 nicipalities, without interest, for the purpose of carrying 
 on public works, and to take such other measures within
 
 392 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 its power as will lessen the widespread misery of the 
 workers caused by the misrule of the capitalist class. 
 
 Industrial Demands. The conservation of human re- 
 sources, particularly of the lives and well-being of the 
 workers and their families: 
 
 First, by shortening the workday in keeping with the 
 increased productiveness of machinery. 
 
 Second, by securing to every worker a rest period of 
 not less than a day and a half in each week. 
 
 Third, by securing a more effective inspection of work- 
 shops, factories and mines. 
 
 Fourth, by forbidding the employment of children un- 
 der sixteen years of age. 
 
 Fifth, by abolishing the brutal exploitation of convicts 
 under the contract system, and prohibiting the sale of 
 goods so produced in competition with other labor. 
 
 Sixth, by forbidding the interstate transportation of 
 the products of child labor and of all uninspected fac- 
 tories and mines. 
 
 Seventh, by abolishing the profit system in government 
 work, and substituting either the direct hire of labor or 
 the awarding of contracts to cooperative groups of work- 
 ers. 
 
 Eighth, by establishing minimum wage scales. 
 
 Ninth, by abolishing official charity and substituting a 
 non-contributory system of old-age pensions, a general 
 system of insurance by the State of all its members 
 against unemployment and invalidism and a system of 
 compulsory insurance by employers of their workers, 
 without cost to the latter, against industrial diseases, acci- 
 dents and death. 
 
 Political Demands. First, absolute fredom of press, 
 speech and assemblage. 
 
 Second, the adoption of a graduated income tax, the
 
 APPENDIX 393 
 
 increase of the rates of the present corporation tax and 
 the extension of inheritance taxes, graduated in propor- 
 tion to the value of the estate and to nearness of kin 
 the proceeds of these taxes to be employed in the social- 
 ization of industry. 
 
 Third, the gradual reduction of all tariff duties, par- 
 ticularly those on the necessaries of life. The Govern- 
 ment to guarantee the reemployment of wage-earners 
 who may be disemployed by reason of changes in taritt 
 schedules. 
 
 Fourth, the abolition of the monopoly ownership of 
 patents and the substitution of collective ownership, with 
 direct rewards to inventors by premiums or royalties. 
 
 Fifth, unrestricted and equal suffrage for men and 
 women. 
 
 Sixth, the adoption of the initiative, referendum and 
 recall and of proportional representation, nationally as 
 well as locally. 
 
 Seventh, the abolition of the Senate and of the veto 
 power of the President. 
 
 Eighth, the election of the President and Vice-Presi- 
 dent by direct vote of the people. 
 
 Ninth, the abolition of the power usurped by the Su- 
 preme Court of the United States to pass upon the con- 
 stitutionality of the legislation enacted by Congress. 
 National laws to be repealed only by act of Congress or 
 by a referendum vote of the whole people. 
 
 Tenth, the abolition of the present restrictions upon 
 the amendment of the Constitution, so that that instru- 
 ment may be amendable by a majority of the voters in a 
 majority of the States. 
 
 Eleventh, the granting of the right of suffrage in the 
 District of Columbia, with representation in Congress
 
 394 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 and a democratic form of municipal government for 
 purely local affairs. 
 
 Twelfth, the extension of democratic government to 
 all United States territory. 
 
 Thirteenth, the enactment of further measures for gen- 
 eral education and particularly for vocational education 
 in useful pursuits. The Bureau of Education to be 
 made a department. 
 
 Fourteenth, the enactment of further measures for the 
 conservation of health. The creation of an independent 
 Bureau of Health, with such restrictions as will secure 
 full liberty to all schools of practice. 
 
 Fifteenth, the separation of the present Bureau of 
 Labor from the Department of Commerce and Labor 
 and its elevation to the rank of a department. 1 
 
 Sixteenth, abolition of all Federal District Courts and 
 the United States Circuit Courts of Appeals. State 
 courts to have jurisdiction in all cases arising between 
 citizens of the several States and foreign corporations. 
 The election of all judges for short terms. 
 
 Seventeenth, the immediate curbing of the power of 
 the courts to issue injunctions. 
 
 Eighteenth, the free administration of justice. 
 
 Nineteenth, the calling of a convention for the revision 
 of the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 FEDERATION OF THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN AMERICA 
 
 We deem it the duty of all Christian people to concern 
 themselves directly with certain practical industrial prob- 
 
 1 This has now been done. William Banchop Wilson, of Penn- 
 sylvania, was nominated by President Woodrow Wilson the first 
 Secretary of Labor and was duly confirmed by the Senate.
 
 APPENDIX 395 
 
 lems. To us it seems that the churches must stand 
 
 For equal rights and complete justice for all men in all 
 stations of life. 
 
 For the right of all men to the opportunity of self- 
 maintenance, a right ever to be wisely and strongly safe- 
 guarded against encroachments of every kind. 
 
 For the right of workers to some protection against 
 the hardships often resulting from the swift crises of 
 industrial change. 
 
 For the principle of conciliation and arbitration in 
 industrial dissensions. 
 
 For the protection of the worker from dangerous ma- 
 chinery, occupational disease, injuries and mortality. 
 
 For the abolition of child labor. 
 
 For such regulations of the conditions of toil for 
 women as shall safeguard the physical and moral health 
 of the community. 
 
 For the suppression of the "sweating system." 
 
 For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours 
 of labor to the lowest practicable point, and for that 
 degree of leisure for all which is a condtiion of the 
 highest human life. 
 
 For a release from employment one day in seven. 
 
 For a living wage as a minimum in every industry, 
 and for the highest wage that each industry can afford. 
 
 For the most equitable division of the products of 
 industry that can be ultimately devised. 
 
 For suitable provision for the old age of the workers 
 and for those incapacitated by injury. 
 
 For the abolition of poverty.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Accident, insurance against, 
 
 276; surgical treatment of, 
 
 278. 
 
 Adams Express Company, 306. 
 Advertising, economic waste 
 
 of, 76; effect on freedom of 
 
 the press, 317. 
 Ahab and Naboth's vineyard, 
 
 3. 
 
 Alice in Wonderland, 299. 
 
 Altenhoff, garden city of, 169. 
 
 Altruism, of Comte, 25. 
 
 American Federation of La- 
 bor, 21, 328. 
 
 America, resources of, 48; not 
 the leader of democracy, 49, 
 51; following the Roman 
 Empire, 317. 
 
 American Prison Association, 
 218. 
 
 Americanitis, the slum disease, 
 148. 
 
 Amos, origin of, 5 ; cited, 6. 
 
 Anaemia, cause of, 256. 
 
 Armaments, fallacy of, 243. 
 
 Arbitration, in New Zealand, 
 
 314. 
 
 Archbald case, 348. 
 Aristocracy, among Hebrews, 
 
 3-7; versus democracy, 17; 
 
 the new, of wealth, 52. 
 Arkansas, and the contract 
 
 system, 237. 
 Arnold, Benedict, 71. 
 
 Army and Navy, effect of 
 standing, 199; typhoid in, 
 269. 
 
 Australia, new capital of, 167. 
 
 Automobile, and housing prob- 
 lem, 164. 
 
 Baker, George F., quoted, 310. 
 
 Baltimore, department stores 
 of, 95- 
 
 Banks, Nathaniel P., in. 
 
 Beatitudes, pretended respect 
 for, 107. 
 
 Bennett, Homer Clark, quoted, 
 190. 
 
 Berlin, death-rate in, 153; 
 model tenements of, 156; 
 and city planning, 175 ; syph- 
 ilis in, 185; anti-war demon- 
 stration in, 246. 
 
 Berne, Socialist congress in, 
 246. 
 
 "Best citizens," ethics of, 358, 
 365, 366. 
 
 Bimson, chief of police, 365, 
 366. 
 
 Blacklist, declared legal, 354. 
 
 Blackstone, cited, 70, 347. 
 
 "Bobbin Boy," in. 
 
 Boards of health, and child la- 
 bor, 117; power of, 262, 274. 
 
 Boorrioboola Gha, 33. 
 
 Boston and Maine railway, 
 "unscrambled," 312. 
 
 397
 
 398 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Boston "tea party," 337. 
 
 Boycott, declared illegal, 354. 
 
 Brotherhood, in teachings of 
 Jesus, 17; implications of, 
 19 seq.; and service, 24; 
 among workers, 209. 
 
 Bryce, Viscount, on garden 
 cities, 168. 
 
 Bucks Stove & Range Com- 
 pany, 354. 
 
 Burns, detective, 349. 
 
 Business, ethical character of, 
 290, 300. 
 
 Caisson disease, 267. 
 Capital punishment, abolished 
 for women, 88; indefensible, 
 234- 
 
 Capitalism, waste of, 78; pre- 
 vents progress, 91 ; and pros- 
 titution, 184; vicious circle 
 of, 198; maintains vice, 209; 
 founded on exploitation, 
 285 ; its use of inventions, 
 295; debases journalism, 316; 
 opposed to labor, 328; domi- 
 nant in society, 333; resorts 
 to brute force, 359 seq.; 
 ruthlessness of, 370, 371 ; de- 
 fiant of law, 375. 
 
 Capitalist, unnecessary, 295. 
 
 Celibacy, encourages vice, 199. 
 
 Charity, futility of, 69; tax on 
 industry, 104, 105; social sig- 
 nificance of, 275, 302, 304. 
 
 Charles I, and his tyranny, 
 337- 
 
 Chicago, department stores of, 
 95, 194; slums of, 148; its 
 playgrounds, 166 ; absorbs 
 
 Pullman, 169; segregation 
 in, 204; poverty in, 302. 
 Child, Bill of Rights of, 108; 
 need of protecting, in; ex- 
 ploitation of, 109. 
 Child Labor, in canning fac- 
 tories, no; too costly, 112; 
 and play, 113; socially un- 
 necessary, 115; unprofitable, 
 116; legislation on, 117; due 
 to greed, 118, 143; and fam- 
 ily life, 119; and education, 
 120 seq.; domestic and agri- 
 cultural, 143; in streets, 144; 
 regulation of, 146. 
 Children's Bureau, 260. 
 Church, leaning to aristocracy, 
 17; opposes true Gospel, 22; 
 an object of service, 30; ne- 
 cessity of awakening, 34; 
 must be leader, 35 ; a dynamo, 
 42 ; not advancing, 44 ; main- 
 tained by capitalists, 46; 
 (inasi partnership with vice, 
 206; preaching brotherhood, 
 299; wasting power, 313; 
 shrinks from radical meas- 
 ures, 326; alliance with capi- 
 talism, 330; its future atti- 
 tude, 331; workers' hatred 
 of, 374- 
 Cigar Makers' International 
 
 Union, 336. 
 City planning, in Australia, 
 
 167; in Germany, 174, 175. 
 Civic pride, false, 155; in Ger- 
 many, 173. 
 
 Civilization, failure of, 54. 
 Clark, Chief Justice Walter, 
 quoted, 341.
 
 INDEX 
 
 399 
 
 Clans, the Hebrew, I ; ethics 
 
 of, 10. 
 
 Classes, reason for, 60. 
 Class consciousness, nature of, 
 
 327. 
 
 Coal mines, and exploitation, 
 301. 
 
 Colorado, penal farm of, 239 ; 
 miners' strike in, 368; Fed- 
 eral grand jury's report, 
 369; courts of, 371. 
 
 Collins, Justice, cited, 207. 
 
 Collier's, on Scott case, 367. 
 
 Combination, or conspiracy, 355. 
 
 Commissioner of . Education, 
 report of, 121. 
 
 Commission on Industrial Re- 
 lations, 366. 
 
 Competition, opposed to Gos- 
 pel, 82. 
 
 Comptroller of Currency, 310. 
 
 Comte, and altruism, 25. 
 
 Conservation, what it implies, 
 103. 
 
 Conservatism, Professor Ross 
 on, 43 ; of judges, 106, 342. 
 
 Constitution, Federal, and Su- 
 preme Court, 343; Mr. 
 Roosevelt on, 359; over- 
 ridden by capitalists, 360 seq. 
 
 Consumers' League, on living 
 wage, 193. 
 
 Contempt proceedings, origin 
 of, 339; should be abolished, 
 34L 
 
 Contract system, in prisons, 
 236 seq.; Southern experi- 
 ence with, 238; in Oregon, 
 240. 
 
 Conversion, kind needed, 14, 
 38. 
 
 Corporations, Blackstone on, 
 
 70; size of, a menace, 81. 
 Cost of living, 118, 305. 
 Coudert, Frederic R., quoted, 
 
 347 
 
 Courts, obstacles to social 
 progress, 106; juvenile, in 
 Philadelphia, 157; abuse of 
 injunction law, 335 seq.; de- 
 crease of respect for, 342; 
 powers of, 343; administer 
 injustice, 345 ; uphold capi- 
 talism, 353; of Colorado, 
 
 371- 
 
 Courts, decisions cited, 51, 76, 
 143, 210, 336, 341, 364. 
 
 Crime, cost of, 216 seq.; homi- 
 cidal, 217, 234; among rich 
 and poor, 219; caused by 
 poverty, 220, 228; cannot be 
 expiated, 222; nor avenged, 
 222, 223; cure for, 225, 227; 
 punishment fails to prevent, 
 226; more humane treat- 
 ment of, 227; indeterminate 
 sentences for, 230; parole 
 system and, 231 ; first offend- 
 ers and, 232; and capital 
 punishment, 234; and pris- 
 ons, 234 seq.; and women, 
 242; war the greatest, 242. 
 
 Cross, social significance of, 39. 
 
 Damien, Father, 252. 
 Danbury, hatters of, 355. 
 David, and Hebrew monarchy, 
 
 3- 
 Death-rate, in slums, 153; of 
 
 infants, 257, 260. 
 Declaration of Independence, 
 
 in San Diego, 362.
 
 4OO 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Democracy, in teaching of 
 Jesus, 17, 19, 53; as yet un- 
 tried, 20, 21 ; America not the 
 leader in, 49; industrial, 52, 
 55 ; hope of, 53; and legisla- 
 tion, 83 ; and vice, 208 ; op- 
 posed to war, 247 ; and inde- 
 pendent judges, 344. 
 
 Department Stores, women in, 
 95. 99; and the press, 317. 
 
 Despotism, among the He- 
 brews, 2 ; industrial, 55 ; ju- 
 dicial, 336, 345 ; economic, 
 52, 55, 76, 293, 300, 334. 
 
 Diaz, President of Mexico, 248. 
 
 Dickens, on Podsnappery, 183. 
 
 Disease, God not author of, 
 58, 251 ; the act of man, 251 ; 
 economic significance of, 
 252; tuberculosis, 254 seq.; 
 beri beri, 258; and ignor- 
 ance, 260, 261 ; occupational, 
 263 seq.; typhoid, 268 seq.; 
 and vivisection, 270 seq.; in- 
 surance against, 275. 
 
 Dives and Lazarus, 282. 
 
 ''Divine right," of judges, 342. 
 
 Dorcas, 304, 
 
 Dresden, and her garden city, 
 171. 
 
 'Due process of law," 364. 
 
 Diisseldorf, and city planning, 
 176. 
 
 Education, cost of, 121 ; and 
 illiteracy, 122; theories of, 
 123; practical vs. cultural, 
 124; in public schools, 125 
 seq. ; Froebel's contribution 
 to, 129, 131 ; Montessori 
 
 method in, 130; aim of, 132; 
 secondary, 133 seq.; Booker 
 Washington and, 134; and 
 technical schools, 135 ; and 
 physical culture, 138 seq.; 
 and food, 140; and housing, 
 153; in hygiene, 260, 262. 
 
 Edward VI, labor laws of, 318. 
 
 Efficiency, forbids overstrain, 
 74; Secretary Redfield on, 
 80 ; and minimum wage, 103 ; 
 opposed to child labor, 115; 
 among girl workers, 198 ; and 
 education, 262; and occupa- 
 tional disease, 265. 
 
 Elijah, prophet, 5. 
 
 Elisha, prophet, 5. 
 
 England, repeals conspiracy 
 laws, 51 ; adopts minimum 
 wage, 102 ; illiteracy in, 122 ; 
 treatment of criminals in, 
 226; picketing legalized in, 
 336; social legislation of, 
 345- 
 
 Environment, a saved, 40; and 
 character, 83, 250. 
 
 Essen, garden city of Krupps, 
 169. 
 
 Ethics, defects of current, 14; 
 new, 41; capitalistic, 44; 
 double standard of, 190; 
 and environment, 83, 250; 
 and wealth, 291; capitalist, 
 defended, 351; should make 
 distinctions, 373. 
 
 Eugenics, 280 seq. 
 
 Europe, segregation in, 205. 
 
 Evangelism, new and old, 14. 
 
 Evening Post, quoted, 195. 
 
 Expiation, and criminal law, 
 222.
 
 INDEX 
 
 401 
 
 Exploitation, opposed to stew- 
 ardship, 24; and the child, 
 109; origin of, 284; founded 
 on property in land, 286 seq.; 
 not guilt of individuals, 297; 
 of telegraphers, 301 ; by ex- 
 press companies, 306; and 
 freedom, 313; New Zea- 
 land's lesson on, 313 seq.; in- 
 separable from wage sys- 
 tem, 315; indirect effects of, 
 316; see Profit. 
 
 Factories, earnings of women 
 in, 95; tuberculosis in, 256; 
 sanitation of, 263. 
 
 Fatherhood of God, in Old 
 Testament, 9; Jesus on, n- 
 13; means brotherhood of 
 man, 18. 
 
 Federation of Churches, on 
 poverty, 329. 
 
 Fels, Joseph, quoted, 291. 
 
 Feminism, defined, 86. 
 
 Ferrero, quoted, 90. 
 
 Flexner, Abraham, quoted, 
 205. 
 
 Food, deficiency of, 257; high 
 prices of, 282. See Malnu- 
 trition. 
 
 Ford Automobile Company, 
 321 seq. 
 
 Foss, Governor, quoted, 218. 
 
 France, first offenders in, 
 233. 
 
 Froebel, and education, 129. 
 
 Gambling, commercialized, 187. 
 
 Garden cities, 168 seq. Pull- 
 man, 168. Altenhoff, 169; 
 Port Sunlight, 169; Letch- 
 worth, 171; Hellerau, 171. 
 
 Georgia, and juvenile crime,233. 
 
 Germany, illiteracy in, 122; 
 secondary instruction in, 
 J 37; garden cities of, 171; 
 and the slum problem, 172 
 seq.; municipal enterprises 
 in, 176; and war scares, 244, 
 245 ; effect of social insur 
 ance on, 277. 
 
 God, ideal of, taught by Jesus, 
 n, 221; not author of social 
 injustice, 58; does not will 
 disease, 58, 251. 
 
 Golden Rule, 27, 107, 114. 
 
 Gompers, Samuel, 338. 
 
 Good Roads, how obtainable, 
 240. 
 
 Good Samaritan, 253, 329. 
 
 Gospel of Jesus, heart of, 13; 
 means liberty, 16; on altru- 
 ism, 25; new or old, 26; 
 orthodox idea of, 68; for- 
 bids exploitation, 69, 301 ; 
 forbids two ethical stand- 
 ards, 70; why socially in- 
 effective, 71 ; condemns com- 
 petition and monopoly, 82; 
 relation to women, 89, 97: 
 and social duties, 108; and 
 schools, 129 ; and slums, 181 ; 
 and vice, 206; and prayer, 
 251; and vivisection, 270; 
 and disease, 279; and social 
 ills, 318; making it mean 
 something, 329; and labor 
 problems, 372 ; condemns 
 violence, 373; in twentieth 
 century, 376. 
 
 Graham, Sylvester, 259. 
 
 Greed, and social evils, 151 ; 
 see Exploitation, Profit.
 
 4O2 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hague, tribunal of, 72. 
 Harlan, Justice, quoted, 344. 
 Hatfield, Governor, 363. 
 Hebrew, clans of, i ; monarchy 
 
 among, 2 ; slavery among, 3 ; 
 
 and social struggle, 3, 7, 9; 
 
 their prophets, 5; clan 
 
 ethics of, IO. 
 
 Hellerau, garden city, 169. 
 High Commission, tyranny of, 
 
 337, 338. 
 
 High Finance, and the Mor- 
 gans, 296, 297; and T. W. 
 
 Lawson, 307; its exploits, 
 
 309; and Money Trust, 309 
 
 seq.; and Ford, 323. 
 Homicides, comparative ratios 
 
 of, 217; protection against, 
 
 234- 
 
 Housing, good, 156; and pri- 
 vate enterprise, 159; prob- 
 lem of, in Philadelphia, 164; 
 see Slum. 
 
 Howells, William D., quoted, 
 229. 
 
 Huerta, and revolution in 
 Mexico, 248. 
 
 Humaneness, progress in, 226. 
 
 Hunter, Robert, on poverty, 
 283. 
 
 Hygiene, sex, 190. 
 
 Hyndman (H. M.) on revo- 
 lution, 285. 
 
 Idaho, Supreme Court of, 341. 
 
 Ignorance, cause of vice, 184, 
 189; of public men, 261; and 
 infant mortality, 260; see 
 Illiteracy. 
 
 Illinois, State Senate, investi- 
 gation by, 95. 
 
 , Illiteracy, in various countries, 
 
 122. 
 
 Immigration, effect on illiter- 
 acy, 122; on slums, 148. 
 
 "Inalienable rights," 294. 
 
 Indianapolis, mayor of, 357. 
 
 Individualism, failure of, 26. 
 
 Industry, and education of 
 girls, 98; effect of technical 
 schools of Germany on, 138; 
 socialization of, 286, 296, 319 
 seq.; and profit-sharing, 321 
 seq. 
 
 Industrialism, end of, 290. 
 
 Industrial Workers of the 
 World, 21, 361, 365, 366. 
 
 Inefficiency, deadly sin, 37; of 
 capitalism, 78; and over- 
 work, 74, 267. 
 
 Infant mortality, 257, 260. 
 
 Injunction, abuse of by courts, 
 335 seq.; justification of, 336; 
 real object of, 337; should 
 be limited, 341. 
 
 Injustice, society refuses to 
 consider, 303; see Justice, 
 social. 
 
 Insurance, fire, cause of crime, 
 220; social, 275. 
 
 Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion, 291. 
 
 Invention and capitalism, 
 295. 
 
 Investigations, Illinois State 
 Senate, 95; futility of, 186; 
 Congressional at Lawrence, 
 360. 
 
 Isaiah, prophet, 4, 5. 
 
 Italy, social legislation of, 
 345-
 
 INDEX 
 
 403 
 
 Japan, and war scares, 244. 
 Jehovah, exclusive worship of, 
 
 7, 8. 
 
 Jeshurun, ancient and mod- 
 ern, 317. 
 
 Jesus, his idea of God, 11-13; 
 his teaching revolutionary, 
 15, 26; on brotherhood, 17; 
 love and forgiveness, 18, 19; 
 on stewardship, 24 ; on altru- 
 ism, 25 ; prophet of democ- 
 racy, 53; Great Physician, 
 279. 
 
 Jones, "Mother," 364. 
 
 John (Baptist), questions 
 Jesus, 15. 
 
 Johnson, fire commissioner, 
 220. 
 
 Judas, 71, 291. 
 
 Judges, Bourbon, 106; crimin- 
 ality of, 339; "divine right" 
 of, 341 ; W. H. Taf t on, 342 ; 
 "independence" of, 344; fail 
 to comprehend their time, 
 346; slaves of precedent, 
 342; little brothers of the 
 rich, 348. 
 
 Jury, right of trial by, 337. 
 
 Juvenile offenders, in Phila- 
 delphia, 157; in Georgia, 
 233; in Wisconsin, 233. 
 
 Kavanagh, Judge Marcus, 
 quoted, 222. 
 
 Keen, Dr. W. W., on vivisec- 
 tion, 271. 
 
 Key, Ellen, quoted, 109. 
 
 Kindergarten, 129. 
 
 Kingdom, Jesus' teaching on, 
 13 ; means social transfor- 
 mation, 32; Ritschl on, 251. 
 
 Krupps, their garden city, 169, 
 
 and war scares, 245. 
 Kutter, Hermann, quoted, 22. 
 
 Labor, defined, 75 ; vs. play, 
 130. 
 
 Labor Argus, suppressed, 363. 
 
 Laissez faire, doctrine of, 81. 
 
 Land, private property in, 
 among Hebrews, 2-5; cause 
 of discontent, 57; exploita- 
 tion founded on, 286; and 
 ethics, 287. 
 
 Land tax, in New Zealand, 
 314- 
 
 Laud (Archbishop), 338. 
 
 Law, teaching of Hebrew, 9; 
 administration of criminal, 
 218; defined, 332 seq.; made 
 for and by whom, 350; does 
 not secure justice, 352; 
 President Taf t on, 353 ; "due 
 process of," 364. 
 
 "Law and order," defined, 332 
 seq.; unfair administration 
 of, 348 seq.; judged by 
 fruits, 358; does not really 
 exist, 375; must be Chris- 
 tianized, 376. 
 
 Lawlessness, case of McNa- 
 maras, 303, 349, 367, 372 ; de- 
 nunciations of, 332; of 
 judges, 340; a symptom of 
 health, 374. 
 
 Lawrence, strike at, 93, 318, 
 350, 360 seq. 
 
 Lawson, Thomas W., quoted, 
 
 307- 
 
 Lazear, Captain, 252, 270. 
 Lathrop, Julia C, report of, 
 
 260.
 
 404 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Lead poisoning, 265. 
 
 Legislation, on child labor, 
 117, 143, 147; on housing re- 
 form, 160, 161, 1 66; against 
 vice trust, 200, 210; on pub- 
 lic health, 268. 
 
 Leipzig, and housing problem, 
 
 I7S. 
 
 Leisure, social value of, 74; 
 women's need of, 90. 
 
 L'Enfant, Major, plan of 
 Washington, 167. 
 
 Letchworth, garden city, 169. 
 
 Lever Brothers, establish gar- 
 den city, 169. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 20, 65. 
 
 Lindenfelt, Lieutenant, crime 
 of, 371. 
 
 Liquor, increasing consumption 
 of, 212; solution of problem, 
 214. 
 
 Little Falls, strike at, 93, 318. 
 
 Living wage, 193; see Wage. 
 
 London, slums of, 148; syph- 
 ilis in, 185; and anti-war 
 demonstration, 246. 
 
 London, Samuel H., cited, 187. 
 
 Louisiana, timber strike in, 
 362. 
 
 Ludlow, massacre at, 371. 
 
 Maccabees, and the social 
 
 struggle, 9. 
 
 Machiavelli, quoted, 59. 
 McNamaras, case of, 303, 349, 
 
 367, 372. 
 Machinery, "labor-saving," 80; 
 
 fails to profit workers, 91. 
 Madero, and revolution in 
 
 Mexico, 248. 
 Magna Charta, 337. 
 
 Maine, prohibition in, 214. 
 
 Malnutrition, effects of, 257; 
 extent of, 304. 
 
 Mammon, worship of, 21, 22, 
 282, 291, 331. 
 
 Manhattan, land in, 67; prosti- 
 tutes of, 187. 
 
 Mann act, 210. 
 
 Manual training, 133. 
 
 Marriage, antidote to vice, 
 199 ; "virtuous," 201 ; state 
 regulation of, 280. 
 
 Marx, Karl, definition of 
 wealth, 292; and Engels. 
 360. 
 
 Maryland, repeals conspiracy 
 laws, 51. 
 
 Massachusetts, and child la- 
 bor, 146; cost of crime in, 
 218. 
 
 Mellen, Charles S., quoted, 
 291. 
 
 Mercury poisoning, 265. 
 
 Messiah, Hebrew ideal of, 8; 
 in time of Jesus, 9, 15 ; limi- 
 tations of, 10. 
 
 Metropolitan Life Insurance 
 Company, and model tene- 
 ments, 178. 
 
 Mexico, recent troubles in, 
 248; backwardness of, 372. 
 
 Micah, prophet, 3, 5, 6. 
 
 Michigan, copper strike in, 
 368. 
 
 Middle Ages, and social jus- 
 tice, 72. 
 
 Middleman, elimination of, 
 305- 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, quoted, 295. 
 
 Minimum wage, for women, 
 102; in Victoria, 103; em-
 
 INDEX 
 
 405 
 
 ploycs and, 104, 196; eco- 
 nomic criticism of, 105 ; and 
 child labor, 147; palliative 
 only, 195. 
 
 Ministers, teach capitalistic 
 ethics, 44; attitude to work- 
 ers, 41, 65, 93, 358, 373- 
 
 Missions, new significance of, 
 32. 
 
 Mitchell, John, 338. 
 
 Mob, rule of, 340. 
 
 Monopoly, and prices, 54; op- 
 posed to Gospel, 82 ; govern- 
 ment ownership of, 315. 
 
 Morgan, J. P., his profession 
 of faith, 23, 80; social ser- 
 vice of, 296, 297; on Money 
 Trust, 310; on "unscram- 
 bling of eggs," 311. 
 
 Mouth-hygiene, effect of, 141. 
 
 Municipalities, and rapid tran- 
 sit, 164; enterprises of Ger- 
 man, 176. 
 
 Munich, and garden cities, 171, 
 175- 
 
 Naboth's vineyard, 3. 
 
 Napoleon, quoted, 72. 
 
 Nazareth, Jesus in synagogue 
 of, id. 
 
 Nehemiah, and the social 
 struggle, 9. 
 
 Nevada, and child labor, 146. 
 
 New Hampshire, and child la- 
 bor, 146. 
 
 New York (State) and trades 
 unions, 51 ; canning factor- 
 ies of, no; and physical ex- 
 amination of children, 117; 
 and child labor, 146; penal 
 farm of, 239. 
 
 New York (City) department 
 stores of, 95; slums of, 148, 
 149; housing problem in, 
 160; living wage in, 193; in- 
 cendiary fires in, 220; homi- 
 cides in, 3>n 
 
 New York, New Haven & 
 Hartford railway, 309, 312. 
 
 New Zealand, infant mortality 
 in, 257; social experiments 
 in, 313 seq, 
 
 Newspapers, affected by ex- 
 ploitation, 316; and advertis- 
 ing, 317. 
 
 Nietzsche, scorn of Christian- 
 ity, 17. 
 
 Nomads, Hebrews originally, 
 i ; the Rechabites, 4. 
 
 Nordau, Max, quoted, 75. 
 
 Nurnberg, and garden cities, 
 171. 
 
 Ohio, penal farm of, 239. 
 Oklahoma, and child labor, 
 
 146. 
 
 Oligarchy, judicial, 345. 
 Oregon, and penal system, 240. 
 Overwork, effects of, 74, 267. 
 
 Palliatives, futility of, 326. 
 
 Paris, syphilis in, 185; anti- 
 war demonstration in, 246. 
 
 Parole system, 231. 
 
 Paterson, strike at, 46, 93, 318, 
 365; investigation of, 366. 
 
 Patriotism, false and true, 
 243. 
 
 Penology, false, 221 seq.; true, 
 224, 229; and prisons, 236. 
 
 Pensions, old age in New Zea- 
 land, 315.
 
 406 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Pennsylvania, and women 
 workers, 92; smaller cities 
 of, 96; and child labor, 146. 
 
 Philadelphia, department 
 stores of, 95; slums of, 148; 
 juvenile courts in, 157; and 
 housing problem, 164; living 
 wage in, 193. 
 
 Philanthropy, social value of, 
 302. 
 
 Phosphorus poisoning, 265. 
 
 Picketing, in England and 
 America, 336. 
 
 Pitney, Judge, quoted, 76. 
 
 Plague, Great Black, see Syph- 
 ilis. 
 
 Plague, Great White, see Tu- 
 berculosis. 
 
 Plato, on end of State, 82, 
 
 Play, value of, 113. 
 
 Podsnap and Podsnappery, 
 183. 
 
 Poffenberger, Judge, quoted, 
 
 364- 
 
 Police, compact with vice, 187; 
 uphold capitalism, 357. 
 
 Port Sunlight, garden city, 
 169. 
 
 Pouget, on social ethics, 27; 
 cited, 75. 
 
 Poverty, and slum, 152; in 
 Berlin tenements, 157; cause 
 of sexual vice, 188, 198; de- 
 fined in social terms, 192; 
 and crime, 220, 228; charity 
 no cure for, 275; cause of 
 all social ills, 282; Robert 
 Hunter on, 283; and exploi- 
 tation, 284; and socialization 
 of industry, 296; investiga- 
 tion of, 302; sovereign cure 
 
 of, 319; and profit-sharing, 
 321 seq.; Federation of 
 Churches on, 329. 
 
 Prayer, Gospel idea of, 251. 
 
 Prisons, defects of, 235; re- 
 forms in, 236 seq. 
 
 Prodigal Son, parable of, 12, 
 191. 
 
 Profit, and child labor, 143; 
 and housing problem, 163 ; 
 and the saloon, 211; is theft, 
 290; everything sacrificed to, 
 294; see Exploitation. 
 
 Profit-sharing, possibilities of, 
 321 seq. 
 
 Prohibition, fails to prohibit, 
 213. 
 
 Property, origin of private, 
 66; offenses against, 228; 
 "sacredness" of, 293; true 
 function of, 294. 
 
 Prostitution, commercializa- 
 tion of, 182, 187; the sin of 
 society, 183 ; and capitalism, 
 184; inevitable, 192; relation 
 to wages, 193-195; futile 
 remedies for, 200, 202 seq.; 
 Dr. Flexner on, 205 ; and 
 property, 206. 
 
 Prussia, illiteracy in, 122. 
 
 Pullman, town of, 168. 
 
 Punishment, no cure for 
 crime, 226. 
 
 Queensbury, Marquis of, and 
 
 industry, 81. 
 Quinlan, Patrick, case of, 365. 
 
 Rapid transit, and municipali- 
 ties, 164. 
 Rechabites, 4.
 
 INDEX 
 
 407 
 
 Redemption, in Old Testa- 
 ment, 8, 10. 
 
 Redfield, Secretary, on labor 
 costs, 80. 
 
 Rent, nature of, 67. 
 
 Retardation in schools, causes 
 and cure of, 127 seq. 
 
 Retribution, Gospel idea of, 
 221. 
 
 Revenge, forbidden by Jesus, 
 222; anti-social, 224. 
 
 Revolution, proclaimed by 
 Jesus, 15; Hyndman on the 
 corning, 285; stages of, 320; 
 in industry, 346, 347. 
 
 Ritschl, Albrecht, quoted, 251. 
 
 Rockefeller, John D., rise to 
 wealth, 50; origin of for- 
 tune, 292; nature of his 
 wealth, 293. 
 
 Rockefeller, John D., jr., tes- 
 timony on Colorado strike, 
 370. 
 
 Rockefeller Bureau of Social 
 Hygiene, 187. 
 
 Rock Island railway, "un- 
 scrambled," 312. 
 
 Roman Empire and its decay, 
 90. 
 
 Ross, Professor E. A., quoted, 
 
 43, 313- 
 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, and the 
 Constitution, 359. 
 
 Rosenthal murder, 188. 
 
 Russell, Dr. James, quoted, 134. 
 
 Russia, laws protecting wom- 
 en, 92; homicides in, 217; 
 social legislation of, 345. 
 
 Sabotage, criticisms of, 69. 
 St. Francis, 304. 
 
 Saloon, secret of its immunity, 
 187; commercialization, 212; 
 how to banish, 213. 
 
 Salvation, what it is, 13; or- 
 thodox doctrine of, 30; new 
 ideal of, 38, 40. 
 
 Salvation Army, 304, 
 
 Samaritan, Good, 253, 329. 
 
 San Diego and the I. W. W., 
 361, 362. 
 
 Sanatoriums, 254, 256. 
 
 Sanitation of factories, 263, 
 268. 
 
 "Scab," ethical status of, 70. 
 
 Schedule K and its beauties, 
 361. 
 
 Schools, failure of public, 125 
 seq.; industrial and techni- 
 cal, 135 ; continuation, 136. 
 
 Scotland, illiteracy in, 122. 
 
 Scott, Alexander, case of, 367. 
 
 Selling, waste in, 77. 
 
 Seneca, quoted, 224. 
 
 Sentences, equal, 226; indeter- 
 minate, 230. 
 
 Segregation, and social vice, 
 203-205. 
 
 Shaw, George Bernard, 
 quoted, 182. 
 
 Sherman Act, effect of, 355, 
 356. 
 
 Sin, false distinctions about, 
 14; new definition of, 36; 
 deadly, 37; social, 313. 
 
 Slavery, among Hebrews, 3; 
 chattel and wage, 76; social 
 foundation of, 287; essence 
 of, 300. 
 
 Slum, in Europe, 149; and 
 greed, 151 ; and death-rate, 
 153; not necessary, 154; and
 
 4 o8 
 
 INDEX 
 
 health, 158; and private en- 
 terprise, 159; and play- 
 grounds, 1 66; problem in 
 Germany, 172 scq.; in small- 
 er cities, 180; and Gospel of 
 Jesus, 181; and vice, 197. 
 
 Small, Professor, quoted, 295. 
 
 Social justice, futility of many 
 efforts at, 34; and the land, 
 57, 62, 67; and inheritance, 
 68; in Middle Ages, 72; dif- 
 ficulty in attaining, 80; and 
 ignorance, 102, no; and in- 
 difference, 107; and good 
 housing, 152. 
 
 Social Service Commission, 
 
 94- 
 
 Socialism, morality of, 196; 
 Bismarck and, 178; and war, 
 246. 
 
 Society, regeneration of, 28; 
 how constituted, 61. 
 
 Solomon, and Hebrew mon- 
 archy, 3. 
 
 Spain, war with, 248; social 
 legislation of, 345. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, on govern- 
 ment, 82. 
 
 Star Chamber, Court of, 337, 
 338. 
 
 State, Plato on, 82. 
 
 Steel Trust, on sabotage, 69; 
 interest of in war, 245; re- 
 lief work of, 276; favors to, 
 
 351. 
 
 Sterilization, compulsory, 281. 
 
 Stewardship, Jesus on, 24. 
 
 Stocks, "watering" of, 306 seq. 
 
 Strafford, 338. 
 
 Strassburg, and housing prob- 
 lem, 175- 
 
 Strikes, and injunctions, 337; 
 at Lawrence, 93, 318, 350, 
 360 seq.; at Little Falls, 93, 
 318; in Louisiana, 362; at 
 Paterson, 46, 93, 318, 365, 
 366; in Michigan, 368; in 
 Colorado, 368 seq. 
 
 Stuart tyranny, and America, 
 363. 
 
 Suffrage, women, 86; in New 
 Zealand, 315. 
 
 Sun Printing Company, case 
 of, 336. 
 
 Surgery, stimulated by social 
 insurance, 278; and vivisec- 
 tion, 270 seq. 
 
 Syphilis, a penalty, 252; and 
 eugenics, 280. 
 
 Taft, William Howard, on so- 
 cial justice, 66; on judges, 
 342 ; on law, 353. 
 
 Talent, career open to, 72. 
 
 Taxation, by private persons, 
 54; of society by industries, 
 115; power of, 293. 
 
 Taylor, Charles Keen, and 
 physical culture, 141. 
 
 Taylor, Frederick W., quoted, 
 353- 
 
 Telegraphs, in New Zealand, 
 315; exploitation of opera- 
 tors, 301. 
 
 Tenements, rear, 157, 158; 
 model, 159 seq.; defined, 165 ; 
 "dumb bell," 162; how fi- 
 nanced in Germany, 178; 
 manufactures in, 198. 
 
 Testamentary rights, 67. 
 
 Thrift, meaning of, 60. 
 
 Toil, defined, 75.
 
 INDEX 
 
 409 
 
 Tools, private ownership of, 
 300. 
 
 Trades unions, 20, 51. 
 
 Tribune, New York, on Pater- 
 son troubles, 367. 
 
 Trusts, Brewers', 212; Money, 
 309 seq.; socialization of, 321 ; 
 Standard Oil, 349; Woolen, 
 and Sherman Act, 356; 
 Lumber, 362. 
 
 Tuberculosis, a penalty, 252; 
 cost of "cures," 254; preva- 
 lence of, 255; cause of, 256; 
 in certain trades, 264; and 
 eugenics, 280. 
 
 Tuskegee Institute, 134. 
 
 Typhoid, scourge of, 268; pre- 
 vention of, 269. 
 
 Unearned increment, 58, 67, 
 
 179. 
 United Charities Society, on 
 
 poverty, 302. 
 University, of Wisconsin, 34; 
 
 exists for culture, 124. 
 Utah, and child labor, 146. 
 
 Vaughn, Father, quoted, 29. 
 
 Veiller, Lawrence, quoted, 
 158. 
 
 Venereal disease, prevalence 
 of, 185 ; see Syphilis. 
 
 Vera Cruz, occupation of, 249. 
 
 Vicarious suffering, 12. 
 
 Vice, and the police, 187; and 
 poverty, 188 ; economic 
 causes of, 195; in guise of 
 marriage, 201 ; segregation 
 no remedy for, 203-205 ; and 
 politics, 207, 208; and capi- 
 talism, 209: and the law, 210. 
 
 Victoria, and the minimum 
 
 wage, 103. 
 Violence, forbidden by Jesus, 
 
 15; two kinds of, 373. 
 Vitamines, and food values, 
 
 258. 
 Vivisection, value of, 270 seq. 
 
 Wage, a living, 193; child 
 earners, 109; minimum, 102, 
 103, 104, 105, 147, 195, 196. 
 
 Wage system, and progress, 
 106; and exploitation, 315. 
 
 Wall Street, men of, 297; 
 leaders in, 310. 
 
 War, crime of, 242; and ar- 
 maments, 243 ; professional 
 obsession about, 244; war 
 against, by workers, 246; 
 private, by capitalism, 372. 
 
 Ward, Professor, on philan- 
 thropy, 302. 
 
 Washington (State) reforma- 
 tory of, 240. 
 
 Washington (City), plan of, 
 167, 174. 
 
 Washington, Booker, and edu- 
 cation, 134. 
 
 Waste, of capitalism, 78; of 
 human life, 79. 
 
 "Water" (fictitious value) 306 
 seq. 
 
 Wealth, ethical significance of. 
 291 ; nature of modern, 293 ; 
 see Mammon. 
 
 Weekly Issue, and Paterson 
 strike, 367. 
 
 West Virginia, and coal 
 strike, 363. 
 
 Western Union Telegraph 
 Company, 354.
 
 4io 
 
 INDEX 
 
 White, Alfred T., and model 
 tenements, 159. 
 
 White, Andrew D., quoted, 
 217. 
 
 Wilson, President, and Mex- 
 ican troubles, 309; on bank- 
 ing system, 309; surrender 
 to Money Trust, 311. 
 
 Wisconsin, university of, 34; 
 and child labor, 146; and ju- 
 venile offenders, 233 ; and 
 accident insurance, 276; and 
 eugenics, 280. 
 
 Wisdom of Sirach, 9. 
 
 Women, "wrongs" of, 87; 
 laws favorable to, 88; in in- 
 dustry, 92, 93; wages of, 94, 
 95 ; causes of economic de- 
 ficiency of, 97; competition 
 among, 99; lack of organi- 
 zation, 100; and domestic 
 service, 101 ; minimum wage 
 
 for, 102; effect of economic 
 dependence on, 20:. 
 
 Wood, W. M., of Woolen 
 Trust, 349, 35<>. 
 
 Work, universal duty of, 57; 
 right of all, 63; zoological 
 morality of, 75. 
 
 Workers, not ethically su- 
 perior, 20; and "a full din- 
 ner pail," 50; their demands, 
 62; their needs, 64; ethics 
 of, 70; women, 92; in cloth- 
 ing trades, 93; strike of, 
 against war, 246; insurance 
 of, 275, 276; taxed for non- 
 workers, 298; slaves of capi- 
 talism, 300. 
 
 World, New York, on Michi- 
 gan strike, 368. 
 
 "World," new idea of, 36. 
 
 Zebedee, sons of, 23. 
 Zueblin, Professor, quoted, 50.
 
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