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 THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 AMERICAN 
 PROBLEMS 
 
 JOSEPH A. VANCE 
 
 Pastor of 
 
 Hyde Park Presbyterian Church 
 
 Chicago 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 THE WINONA PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 1904
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1904, 
 
 BY 
 
 THE WINONA PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 February.
 
 (p^^ 
 
 
 TO A LITTLE BOY, 
 
 WHOSE EARTHLY LIFE, BEGUN IN STURDI- 
 NESS AND JOY, WAS ENDED IN A FEW SHORT 
 DAYS THAT WERE FULL OF PAIN, BY THE 
 FOUL AIR OF A CITY OF CESSPOOLS ; BUT 
 WHOSE COMING WAS FROM GOD, AND WHOSE 
 TAKING MADE HEARTS TENDERER FOR THE 
 MANY LITTLE SUFFERERS THAT PERISH TO- 
 DAY AMID THE FILTH AND VICE OF MIS- 
 GOVERNED CITIES, 
 THIS BOOK IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED. 

 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Foreword , . , . , . i i 
 
 The Negro ..... 21 
 
 The Labor Question . . . . 55 
 
 The Liquor Problem . , , , 123 
 
 Municipal Government . , , 171 
 
 The Problem of Vice . . , 209 
 
 The Double Need .... 247
 
 FOREWORD
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 The twentieth century has brought to 
 the American people four great problems. 
 
 One of them is the Negro. The ques- 
 tion of what to do with the black man is 
 no realer problem nor more pressing to-day 
 than it was a quarter of a century ago. It 
 has simply become, from the scattering of 
 the Negro over our entire country, more 
 wide-spread. The people of the North 
 and West are just awakening to a problem 
 which has confronted the people of the 
 South for over a generation. The problem 
 has now become national, and the difficulty 
 of securing justice for the black man and 
 of making the black man worthy of 
 1 1
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 companionship because worthful in our 
 social order, is now recognized by both the 
 opinionated Northern philanthropist and 
 the prejudiced Southern planter as simply 
 enormous. If the South has done the 
 Negro a gross injustice by attempting to 
 condemn him forever to the place of a 
 servant to the white man, the North, how- 
 ever unintentionally, has put a most ef- 
 fective stumbling block in his way by 
 attempting to lift him from fetish worship 
 and savagery with lessons in Latin and 
 Greek, and, even more, by diverting him 
 from industry and thrift with visions of 
 social and political prestige. 
 
 The Labor question has locked up in it 
 the industrial future of America, and there- 
 by her international position in general. 
 The utter failure of those directly concerned 
 to deal with the question thus far from 
 anything like a Christian point of view has 
 
 12
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 made the whole thing largely a matter of 
 greed and grab. 
 
 Our industrial world is in sore need of 
 the spirit of human brotherhood. 
 
 The Liquor problem has been our de- 
 spair; and, unless some solution is found 
 which will destroy the blighting influence 
 of the saloon, and meet the present in- 
 creasing evils of social drinking, the 
 whiskey barrel and the beer keg may one 
 day represent our nation more truly than 
 will the Stars and Stripes. 
 
 The rule of the great city is peculiarly 
 a twentieth century problem, and unless 
 the men of mature business experience and 
 moral worth are put at its head, the city will 
 become in our national life as great a curse 
 as Babylon and Rome were to their empires. 
 
 In addition to these four, another prob- 
 lem has found discussion here. Because 
 of its bearing on all the rest, and because 
 13
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 its solution is essential to right dealing 
 with the others, the problem of Vice is 
 here considered. 
 
 In dealing with such practical questions 
 as these, two extreme parties are always 
 developed ; and the failure to unite them 
 on it is the doom of any measure. One 
 of them is the idealist and the other is the 
 opportunist. One of them determines his 
 policies by the achievements of to-day, the 
 other by those of a century. One of them 
 is Esau bargaining his birthright to-day 
 for a mess of pottage, and the other is 
 Jacob, sacrificing everything to-day that 
 he may one day have a race like the sands 
 on the seashore for number. The oppor- 
 tunist will sacrifice his ideal for a little 
 betterment of his present condition ; the 
 idealest will take nothing unless it measures 
 up to his ideal. Booker T. Washington, in 
 counseling the Negro to give up building 
 H
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 air castles and social and political ambitions, 
 and in the exercise of manual labor, and 
 especially the ownership and tillage of the 
 soil, cultivate industry, thrift and economy, 
 has been called an opportunist ; while such 
 a man as William E. B. Du Bois, who is 
 perhaps the most highly educated Negro 
 in America, and urges all black men to be 
 content with no lower culture for them- 
 selves, is without doubt a thorough-going 
 idealist. 
 
 Especially has this been true in dealing 
 with the Liquor problem. The out-and- 
 out prohibitionist has been often fanatical 
 in denouncing the advocate of any measure 
 short of this, even calling the advocates of 
 high license " murderers " ; while the op- 
 portunist would take any betterment of 
 present conditions which might offer itself 
 
 Now, manifestly, in any successful effort 
 to solve these problems, these two parties 
 
 IS
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 must find a place where they can work to- 
 gether. It ought not to be difficult. It 
 means simply for the opportunist to keep 
 ever before him the standard of the idealist 
 as his ultimate aim, and it means for the 
 idealist to come down out of the clouds, 
 and in securing any betterment of present 
 conditions, take the first step in a series 
 of opportunists' victories it may be, to- 
 wards securing his highest ideal. 
 
 It is high time for the two parties to 
 cease their bickerings. It is one of the 
 most deplorable things about our national 
 history that they have wrestled with each 
 other for dictation of reform policy, while 
 vice was corrupting their youth and boo- 
 dlers were ruling their city. When the 
 Puritan awakened to the fact that his un- 
 compromising idealism was joining hands 
 with Tammany to make New York a city 
 of "graft and boodle," the tiger was caged 
 |6
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 and the city made better. It is often said 
 that the best combination in religion is the 
 backbone of a Presbyterian and the fervor 
 of a Methodist. Certainly the best com- 
 bination for the solution of our problems 
 is a union of the opportunist and the 
 idealist, for the doer of deeds and the 
 dreamer of dreams to join hands and be- 
 come another Joseph. 
 
 It should also be said that these chapters 
 have been prepared for the layman. The 
 writer will be glad for the considerate 
 reading which they may receive from any 
 quarter ; but they are sent forth with the 
 hope that they may be of special interest 
 to that large and growing class of conscien- 
 tious and intelligent men and women of 
 our nation whose busy lives do not permit a " 
 detailed study of these problems, but with- 
 out whose personal interest and intelligent 
 help, these problems can never be solved. 
 B 17
 
 THE NEGRO
 
 " This is a people robbed and spoiled ; 
 they are all of them snared in holes, and they 
 are hid in prison houses ; they are for a prey, 
 and none delivereth ; for a spoil, and none 
 saith. Restore. Who among you will give 
 ear to this? Who will hearken and hear 
 for the time to come ? " — Isaiah.
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO 
 
 Unimpassioned discussion of the Negro 
 problem has never been easy. Race an- 
 tagonism has always affected it; for whether 
 it was in equatorial Africa or in the cotton 
 fields of the United States, the Negro and 
 the white man have never worked well as 
 yoke-fellows. Sectional prejudice has 
 greatly added to the difficulty with us in 
 America; for about no question that has 
 ever arisen in our land has feeling been
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 more bitter than about the act of the North 
 in forcing the South to set free their slaves. 
 But the Civil War is far away, and its 
 wounds have had time to heal; and the 
 white man has no reason to fear Negro 
 domination. It is time for us to discuss 
 calmly and reach a right conclusion about 
 how to deal with the ten millions of 
 Negroes which are a part of our body na- 
 tional. For whether they shall be a curse 
 or a blessing in our national life depends 
 largely on the patience and wisdom with 
 which the white man discusses and works 
 out the Negro problem. 
 
 Because the majority of the Negroes are 
 in the South, it has been common to re- 
 gard the problem as local ; but events are 
 ever coming to our attention which show 
 it to be distinctly national. Colorado and 
 Ohio have had their lynchings for the 
 Negro's nameless but decreasing crime, as
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO 
 
 well as Virginia, Mississippi and Texas. 
 Illinois and New York have had their race 
 riots, and as murderous and fierce as those 
 of Alabama and Georgia, and the inborn 
 race antagonism comes to the surface where- 
 ever white and black men meet in serious 
 labor rivalry, whether it be as section 
 hands in the South, or domestic serv- 
 ants in the East, or mechanics in the 
 West. 
 
 It is also a national question in the 
 matter of responsibility. The New Eng- 
 land Puritan and the Southern Cavalier 
 are alike responsible for both the Negro's 
 presence in the United States and the in- 
 stitution of slavery. The Southern planter 
 furnished a buyer and a field of labor in 
 which to use him, and the New Englander 
 did a paying business as his importer and 
 jobber, and with characteristic business 
 sense the latter worked off all of his goods 
 23
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 before President Lincoln's proclamation 
 knocked the bottom out of the market. 
 
 Facing this fact, it is becoming for us to 
 cease sectional abuse, and share as a nation 
 the responsibility for whatever curse or 
 blessing the Negro has gotten from his 
 slavery to the Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 Though holding him in slavery, the 
 American cannot be charged with having 
 been utterly indifferent to the Negro's 
 need. Self-interest, if he was lacking in 
 the milk of human kindness, led the slave- 
 master to take good care of his slave's 
 body, to feed him on wholesome food, to 
 surround him with good sanitation, to 
 nurse him in sickness. Christian philan- 
 throphy also caused the master to give the 
 slave in many cases a religious nurture, and 
 the fruit of this work was apparent in the 
 fact that when the Civil War closed there 
 were scores of thousands of intelligent and 
 24
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO 
 
 devoted Christians and church members 
 among the slaves. 
 
 When the conscience of our nation was 
 awakened to the wrong of slavery, the 
 Negro's freedom was biDught with some of 
 our people's most precious life-blood. 
 
 Then an attempt was made to atone for 
 the wrong of slavery by honoring him 
 with the gift of the franchise, but the zeal 
 was mistaken, and bad politics throve on 
 the venture at the cost of the Negro's 
 added degradation, for the franchise was a 
 responsibility for which he was unprepared. 
 
 In the stormy years that followed, some 
 of the most talented and cultured men and 
 women of our land devoted their lives 
 to the Negro's uplifting, and millions of 
 dollars have been spent on him by both 
 North and South. 
 
 How have the efforts fruited ? What 
 has been the answer to it all ? Isolated 
 
 25
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 cases of remarkable ability, like Frederick 
 Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Paul 
 Lawrence Dunbar, William Sheppard, 
 William E. B. Du Bois and Bishop Arnot 
 have arisen ; and the ambition of the slug- 
 gislh race has been stirred in many quarters. 
 But after all these years the Negro is still 
 a benighted race, intellectually and mor- 
 ally, a burden instead of a blessing in the 
 economic and religious world, a. menacing 
 problem in our national life. 
 
 It was a pitiful cry that Harriet Beecher 
 Stowe uttered In her Uncle T'oms Cabin 
 years ago for the helpless slave dragging 
 his ball and chain under the slave-driver's 
 whip ; and God be thanked that even her 
 over-colored and unjust picture was used 
 by an all-wise Providence to sweep the 
 horrors and disgrace of human slavery from 
 our land. Would to God a second Har- 
 riet Beecher Stowe were raised up, to utter, 
 26
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO 
 
 not In exaggeration, but even justly, the 
 pitiful cry of the Negro's need to-day. 
 For there are not a few things that would 
 force one to the conclusion that the Negro 
 is worse off to-day in America than when 
 he was a slave. The following facts, based 
 on the United States census for 1890, 
 from which they may be verified, were re- 
 cently brought out in two notable address- 
 es. One of them was by Dr. W. H. 
 Wilcox, a native of Massachusetts, a pro- 
 fessor in Cornell University, and at that 
 time detailed as chief statistician of the 
 census at Washington, before the Amer- 
 ican Social Science Association, at Saratoga. 
 The other was by Dr. George T, Winston, 
 a native of North Carolina, formerly 
 President of the University of Texas, and 
 then President of the North Carolina 
 Agricultural and Mechanical College, be- 
 fore the National Prison Association, of 
 27
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 Austin, Texas. They are six in number 
 and are full of significance : 
 
 1. The Negro is much the most crim- 
 inal element of our population. 
 
 2. The Negro is constantly increasing 
 in criminality, being more criminal as a 
 free man than he was as a slave, and one- 
 third more criminal in 1890 than he was 
 in 1880. 
 
 3. More than seven-tenths of the Negro 
 criminals are under thirty years of age. 
 
 4. The Negro is nearly three times as 
 criminal in the Northeast and three and 
 one-half times as criminal in th-e North- 
 west as in the South. 
 
 5. The Negro is three times as criminal 
 as the native white and one and one-half 
 times as criminal as the foreign white, an 
 element which is largely made up to-day 
 of the scum of Europe and Asia. 
 
 6. The Negroes who can read and write
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO 
 
 furnish a larger percentage of criminals 
 than the illiterate, a thing which is true of 
 no other element of our population, or of 
 any other people on earth of whom we 
 have criminal statistics. 
 
 However, these things may be mitigated 
 by qualifications which may occur to the 
 reader, it is plain that we have not 
 made a very brilliant success in dealing 
 with the Negro in the past. 
 
 THE negro's future 
 
 What is to be the negro's future? It 
 has been pointed out repeatedly by histo- 
 rians that whenever an inferior and a 
 superior race have come together, one of 
 three things has always taken place: 
 
 I. The two races have amalgamated. 
 Illustrations of this are found in the hybrid 
 population in the Philippine Islands, and 
 in the half-breed population of Mexico and 
 much of South America. 
 
 29
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 2. Or, as a second alternative, the 
 stronger has reduced the weaker to political 
 or even manual slavery, as the Anglo- 
 Saxon and Teuton have done with the 
 black man in South Africa and North 
 America. 
 
 3. Or, failing both of these, the weaker 
 race has become extinct, a process which 
 is actually taking place before aur eyes 
 in the gradual extinction of the Indian 
 in North America, and of the native in the 
 Hawaiian Islands, before the march of the 
 white man. Which of these shall be the 
 fate of the Negro ? Who would have the 
 first ? The Negro does not dare to ask 
 it, and the white man who would seek it 
 would do so in the face of nature's mani- 
 fest laws,^ and bring down on him from 
 the men of his own race the curse of a 
 
 1 The mulattoes, or Negroes of mixed white btood, are as a 
 class weak physically, and the easiest prey to disease. 
 
 30
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO 
 
 low-bred renegade. Must It be one of 
 the other two ? We have declared he 
 shall not be held in manual slavery in the 
 United States. Shall we hold him In po- 
 litical servitude and industrial Impotence, 
 or let vice and lynching kill him out ? 
 Has America nothing better to offer the 
 Negro ? By the grace of God let us make 
 a new bit of history in the realm of anthro- 
 pology. If past generations have been 
 to the Negro the priest and Levite who 
 passed by on the other side, or came near 
 only to add another bruise to his hurts, 
 may not this generation become a Good 
 Samaritan to him ? That is Christianity's 
 mission to the Negro — to the universe — 
 to say, not that the future shall be as the 
 past, but better ; to show how the strong 
 can help the weak, as a race as well as in 
 individual cases. Is It not possible, and 
 therefore obligatory, for the stronger arm 
 31
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 of the white man to bring to the Negro in 
 America, not political subjection, not a 
 weak rival's extinction, but such paternal 
 care and wise help to self-help as will lead 
 him to grow out of the weakness of igno- 
 rance and vice into the strength of virtue 
 and a Christian manhood ? 
 
 IS THE NEGRO SAVABLE ? 
 
 But can this be done, and if it can, how ? 
 
 Since i860, we have been attempting to 
 do it by giving the Negro a few scraps 
 of social privileges and a classical educa- 
 tion. Proceeding on the supposition that 
 the Negro was simply a white man with a 
 black skin, it was argued that all the Negro 
 needed was a white man's higher education 
 and social privileges. Those who knew 
 the Negro most intimately were quite 
 skeptical about this, but many monied 
 philanthropists insisted on it strenuously, 
 and so we took to it as a nation. 
 32
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO 
 
 The effort was made magnificently. 
 According to the reports of Commissicfner 
 Harris for 1896-7, the South since 1870 
 has spent one hundred million dollars of 
 its tax money on the Negro's education, 
 and Northern philanthropists and the 
 United States government have together 
 spent an equal amount since 1861. But 
 with what results ? We reduced the Ne- 
 gro's illiteracy, but we allowed him to in- 
 crease in crime, and he remained morally 
 and spiritually a benighted Negro still, 
 " an eminently religious animal," to use 
 the language of a Northern philanthropist, 
 "utterly devoid of morality." In his 
 veins, like tainted blood, African fetish 
 worship still ran riot, and he could well 
 say to his would-be helpers in the language 
 of Andres to Don Quixote : " For the 
 love of God, Signor Knight- Errant, if ever 
 you meet me again, though you see me 
 c 33
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 beaten to pieces, do not come to my help, 
 but leave me to my fate, which cannot be 
 so bad but that it will be made worse by 
 your worship." 
 
 SEND THE NEGRO NORTH 
 
 Another plan proposed has been the 
 distribution of the Negroes among the 
 Northern States, where, it was claimed, 
 there was less race antagonism, where the 
 Negro would be given kinder treatment 
 in social life and find a better chance to 
 get an education or work at his trade. It 
 took but a little experience, however, to 
 show the error of this opinion. Race an- 
 tagonism was found to be as strong in the 
 North as in the South, when the Negroes 
 began to come in large numbers, and they 
 were more thoroughly shut out from the 
 organized trades than in the South they 
 had been from the white schools. The 
 fact is, the South will always be the home 
 34
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO 
 
 of the Negro. It suits him as to climate, 
 and it alone fosters the temperament of a 
 master who can be patient with him as a 
 laborer. 
 
 Students of the problem are generally 
 agreed that there is no future for the Negro 
 as a race in the North. Capital employs 
 him only when it can get nothing else, and 
 housekeepers find it difficult to bear with 
 the Negro servant's untidiness and waste- 
 fulness. In the South almost every avenue 
 to labor is open to the Negro, from that 
 of the cotton field hand to the skilled 
 metal worker or stone mason; but the door 
 to the trades is tightly shut against him 
 throughout the North, and promises to 
 remain so. 
 
 COLONIZATION 
 
 Another remedy, strenuously advocated 
 by some, is foreign colonization. In the 
 presence of the superior talent and culture 
 35
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 and large numbers of the white man, the 
 Negro, it has been argued, is cowed. 
 Self-distrust is fostered by the unequal 
 competition, and ambition for bettering 
 his condition is choked out. The Negro 
 needs a field of his own, free from the 
 white man's intervention and competition, 
 where he would have full field to govern 
 and develop himself. 
 
 A notable response to this appeal was 
 the colonization scheme in Liberia, the re- 
 sult of which was prophesied at its incep- 
 tion by those most intimately acquainted 
 with the Negro's traits. Instead of im- 
 proving the colonists, there has been a 
 constant tendency toward degeneration. 
 It should be borne in mind that this 
 colonization scheme brings to the Negro 
 just what he had for centuries in his life 
 in Africa; and when he was placed in a 
 land of his own, apart from the white 
 36
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO 
 
 man's influence, he began at once to 
 revert to the original type. 
 
 Colonization schemes, whether carried 
 out in Liberia or attempted on a smaller 
 scale in the swamps of Kansas and the 
 deserted residence sections of our large 
 cities, have only added little Africas to the 
 Black Continent from which the Negro 
 first came. 
 
 The colonization of the Negro in some 
 isolated section of the United States, has 
 no more feasibility nor effectiveness than 
 his colonization abroad. The problem 
 can be solved by none of these. The 
 same law which keeps water from rising 
 above its source, which demands the help- 
 ing hand from the vegetable to lift a 
 mineral into the vegetable world, and the 
 ministry of a power from the animal world 
 to translate a vegetable into it, calls for a 
 helping hand from the white man if the 
 37
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 Negro is ever to be freed from the 
 shackles of vice and fetish worship, and 
 become the peer of the white race. 
 
 THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 Our first step in solving the problem 
 will be to cease theorizing and deal with 
 the actual condition. Gail Hamilton said: 
 "If God made the white man white, the 
 yellow man yellow, and the black man 
 black, He intended for the white man to 
 remain white, and the yellow man to re- 
 main yellow, and the black man to remain 
 black." 
 
 We may not agree with the full signifi- 
 cance of this statement, but we must 
 recognize that in dealing with the Negro, 
 we are not dealing with a white man with 
 the mere difference of a black skin. The 
 black man is a Negro. Back of this 
 black race are centuries of benighted and 
 barbarous existence, the influences of 
 
 38
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO 
 
 which will be eliminated, if at all, little 
 less rapidly than his present degradation 
 has come. The Negro's present condi- 
 tion is not the result of his slavery to the 
 white man. That was a vast step upward 
 in his moral and intellectual development 
 over what preceded it. The Negro's 
 present condition roots itself back through 
 centuries of racial degeneration in the 
 jungles of Africa. We cannot reverse 
 this process in a day. A little four or 
 eight years course of classical education 
 will not uproot the ancestral inheritance 
 of a millennium of barbarity. The Anglo- 
 Saxon himself leaped by no such sudden- 
 ness to his present supremacy. The very 
 skull of the Negro would have pointed us 
 to this lesson, had we stopped to let the 
 scientist show us the thickness of it and 
 the early age at which its sutures hardened. 
 The Negro race is thick-headed in more 
 39
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 ways than one; and this sluggishness, in 
 reference to every upward step, must be 
 kept in mind. 
 
 Along with this we must recognize the 
 Negro's moral condition. No race on 
 earth is so susceptible to religious emo- 
 tion; but no race on earth is so blind to 
 the religious obligations of morality. 
 
 It is very easy for a newspaper reporter 
 to visit the white and black quarters of a 
 city like New Orleans, and because on 
 the one night of his visit, he found things 
 so, to write up the white quarters as more 
 vicious than the black, a thing which was 
 recently done in a Chicago daily; but sta- 
 tistics tell a very different tale; and sta- 
 tistics gathered by government experts 
 are certainly more to be rehed on than 
 one night's observation of even a keen- 
 eyed reporter. It has already been 
 pointed out that the United States statis- 
 40
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO 
 
 tics show that the Negro is more criminal 
 than even our foreign-born population, 
 largely made up today of the worst classes 
 of Europe and Asia. An examination of 
 the actual conditions of Negro life em- 
 phasizes the deductions from these sta- 
 tistics. Time after time, judges of 
 criminal courts in our large cities have 
 called attention to the great menace which 
 the young Negroes are increasingly be- 
 coming to the peace and safety of the 
 city. The greatest cause of this is un- 
 doubtedly the lack of moral nurture in 
 the average Negro home. The immorality 
 of the Negro is appalling. Statistics 
 show that twenty-five per cent, of the 
 Negroes born in Washington city are 
 illegitimate.^ 
 
 In one county in Mississippi three 
 
 ^ Washington, from the standpoint of social and educational 
 privileges, is to the Negro the most attractive city in the United 
 States. 
 
 41
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 hundred marriage licenses were issued 
 in one year for the whites. Accord- 
 ing to the population over twelve 
 hundred should have been issued for the 
 Negroes. As a matter of fact there were 
 but three. 
 
 Our first step in the uplifting of the 
 Negro will deal with this. The Negro 
 girl must be taught to value her chastity 
 above her life, and the Negro man to die 
 for the sanctity of his conjugal relation. 
 The one-room log cabin must give way 
 to a house in which virtue and chastity 
 will be served by the hand maidens of 
 privacy and cleanliness. Then ideas of 
 morality will have a chance; and as pic- 
 tures find a place on the walls, where 
 privacy has gotten a chance in the room, 
 lime and paint will cleanse and beautify, 
 and the rotten couch of incest will be 
 burned on the funeral pyre of disease 
 42
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO 
 
 and filth. For so long as Negro children 
 are bred and fattened as hogs in a pen, 
 the filth of the swine will be in their 
 nature and the curse of their immorality 
 in our social order. Not only must we 
 take the Negro as he is if we are to do 
 him any good, but we must consider his 
 environment. Race antagonism handi- 
 caps the Negro to-day politically, indus- 
 trially, socially; and all our efforts will be 
 futile unless this inborn hostility between 
 the races is recognized. The Negro will 
 have to live this hostility down, and the 
 white man must help him do it. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 
 
 I. In view of these facts, the first thing 
 which the Negro needs is to recognize the 
 worth and dignity of manual labor. The 
 Negro in Africa is a failure because he 
 detests manual toil. He despises the use 
 of tools, and so he has never been either 
 
 43
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 the inventor or user of them. This 
 antipathy to work which he inherited 
 from his African ancestor has been fos- 
 tered in the American Negro by the 
 example of the slave-owner. Here lies the 
 secret of the Negro's benighted condition. 
 He has never been as a race the inventor 
 and user of tools, the two things which 
 have ever measured human progress. 
 
 It is only the user of tools who minis- 
 ters helpfully to his own and his brother's 
 need. Work is the chisel that shapes 
 character and sharpens wit, while idleness 
 is the mother of vice. 
 
 The Negro's first great need, then, is 
 to take his place in the army of toilers. 
 To make out of himself what he ought to 
 be, to put a capable ministry in his hand, 
 to sharpen his wit, to purify his heart, 
 and to make a place for himself in our 
 social and industrial order, where he will 
 
 44
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO 
 
 be valued, not as an object of philan- 
 thropy or a dummy in politics, but for 
 what he is worth, the Negro must go to 
 work. 
 
 This calls for two things: 
 
 (i.) An industrial education for the Ne- 
 gro himself. Hand training must ever 
 precede intellectual culture. No race has 
 ever founded universities and built art 
 galleries and mothered poets and orators, 
 till it had learned to cut down trees and 
 till the soil and build homes and sail 
 ships. Human progress has ever rooted 
 itself in the mastery and tillage of the 
 soil. 
 
 Our nation was lavish with its millions 
 to teach the Negro Latin and Greek 
 when he was not ready for it. Experience 
 has shown us our mistake. The blun- 
 der, however costly to the white man and 
 the Negro, will have been well made if it 
 45
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 will only spur us to a like expenditure to 
 teach the Negro to work with his hands, 
 to give him an industrial education. 
 
 To teach the black man how to make 
 brick and build them into solid and 
 stately walls, how to forge iron and build it 
 into strong and labor-saving machinery, 
 how to till the soil and take a pride in its 
 cultivation and ownership, how to build a 
 house and create in it a home where love 
 is pure and the conjugal bed inviolable, 
 and the trust of childhood sacred, — here 
 lies our first step in the solution of the 
 Negro problem. 
 
 (2.) But consider the second one. The 
 Negro must be taught the dignity of 
 labor and how to labor; but he must also 
 be given a chance to labor. Open to 
 him the door of the trades, and then give 
 him a chance to work at his trade. 
 
 Next to the curse of an immoral home 
 46
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO 
 
 for his childhood nurture, the Negro's 
 greatest handicap to-day meets him in 
 the labor world. The black man is 
 barred from most of the trades to-day by 
 the ban of the labor union. As a slave, 
 the Negro was allowed to work at any 
 trade for which he showed an aptitude, 
 but even the places of freight-handler and 
 brick-mason and teamster and carpenter, 
 as well as the crafts of finer workmanship, 
 are closed against him in most places to- 
 day by the ban of the union. It is an 
 unrighteous ban. What body of preach- 
 ers would forbid a capable black man 
 from preaching, or lawyers from his 
 practicing law, or physicians from his 
 practicing medicine. 
 
 If the Negro's first step to enlightened 
 manhood is to get and live by an indus- 
 trial education, the white men of the 
 United States must see to it that there is 
 
 47
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 written for him a full bill of rights in the 
 labor world. 
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 2. But the Negro needs more than an 
 industrial education to lift him to peerage 
 with the white man. This will but lay 
 the foundation of his progress. As Indus- 
 trial education proceeds, multiplied cases 
 will be developed that are worthy of some- 
 thing higher. These must have an open 
 door to the higher education for which they 
 show themselves fitted. It would be as 
 great a crime to blight the body of a babe 
 with poison as to kill the poetical genius 
 which God puts in a Paul Lawrence 
 Dunbar or the scholarly ability in a 
 Wilham Du Bois or the masterly quali- 
 ties in a Booker T. Washington, by shut- 
 ting against them the door of the college 
 and university. 
 
 It is a minor matter whether the blacks 
 48
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO 
 
 and whites go to the same educational 
 institution, but it is a vital matter that the 
 white man see that the Negro who is 
 capable of receiving it should be given 
 opportunities of education equal to those 
 of any white boy. 
 
 The same sense of right which calls for 
 a higher education for the Negro who is 
 capable of receiving it, should also deter- 
 mine the matter of entrusting the Negro 
 with the franchise, and a host of other 
 questions of a similar character. If it was 
 a wrong to our country and to the Negro 
 himself to put the franchise in the Negro's 
 hands before he was ready to exercise it, it 
 would be an even greater wrong, both to our 
 country and the Negro, to withhold it from 
 him when he is capable of using it wisely. 
 
 THE BLACK MAn's RJELIGION 
 
 3. The third great need of the Negro 
 deals directly with his religious life. The 
 D 49
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 black man is religious by nature, but his 
 religion spends itself in emotionalism. 
 The Ten Commandments are not a part 
 of his creed when it comes to daily life. 
 The Negro preacher, who is always the 
 most influential leader among the Negroes, 
 is not seldom notoriously immoral. This 
 condition of things must be changed be- 
 fore high regard for morality can be incul- 
 cated in the Negro as a race. So long as 
 their religious natures are swayed by men 
 who take to preaching to escape the cotton 
 field, for which they are better fitted; and 
 so long as many Negro preachers live no- 
 toriously immoral lives and even use their 
 pastoral relations for immoral purposes, 
 we can never expect to inculcate a high 
 moral standard in the race. To overcome 
 this difficulty, the white denominations 
 must establish and control the schools for 
 training Negro preachers and themselves 
 so
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO 
 
 carefully select the candidates accepted. 
 The training of this ministry should begin 
 in childhood, and lay the foundations of 
 industrial education for the classical and 
 theological, so that when they go forth to 
 preach, they will be capable of a leader- 
 ship such as the race needs. 
 
 These are the lines along which both 
 past experience and the voices of the great 
 leaders of the race itself are calling us. 
 Mutual recrimination and sectional dis- 
 trust have crippled us too much in the 
 past. The time has come for emotional- 
 ism and hysteria and sectional abuse to 
 be put aside, for us to be honest and 
 considerate of each other, and fair to the 
 Negro. 
 
 As the years of this new century roll by, 
 
 may this great problem of to-day find a 
 
 happy and full solution; and may the 
 
 closing years of this twentieth century 
 
 51
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 find a generation standing in our places, 
 to whom the Negro has become a blessing 
 instead of a burden, and who can look 
 back and see in us a generation of their 
 forefathers who solved one of the century's 
 hardest problems by doing a Christian's 
 duty to " our brother in black." 
 
 52
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION
 
 " One monster there is in this worlds the 
 
 idle man! " 
 
 Thomas Carlyle.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF LABOR AND CAPITAL 
 
 The United States to-day is practically 
 in a state of industrial insurrection. 
 Chicago, with its enormous foreign and 
 industrial population, giving birth to some 
 new labor trouble every morning, and 
 seldom passing through a week which 
 does not see thousands of laborers go on 
 a " strike," may be the storm center; but 
 from every quarter of our land come tid- 
 ings of trouble, often acute, between the 
 laborer and his employer, and often it is 
 accompanied with brutal violence and 
 bloodshed. Even staid old Philadelphia 
 55
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 has joined the ranks; for there but recently 
 nearly one hundred thousand textile 
 workers went out with demands which 
 the operators declared they would stay 
 closed for years before they would grant. 
 We are prone to think of this situation as 
 peculiar to our times, and as largely caused 
 by the organization of Labor unions and 
 the fomenting of discontent among labor- 
 ers by walking delegates, who do it to 
 keep an easy job. 
 
 Whatever may be the cause, industrial 
 troubles are as old as organized Labor; 
 and organized Labor flourished in New 
 Testament days under Roman rule, as 
 truly as now. Artisans of that day when 
 the Apostle Paul was a tent-maker were 
 closely affiliated under different guilds, 
 and even sat together in their places of 
 worship. 
 
 56
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 THE INTERESTED PARTIES 
 
 The solution of these troubles, it may 
 seem at first glance, should be left to the 
 parties directly interested, the discon- 
 tented laborer and the capitalist who 
 employs him. But consider what 
 interests are involved and what parties are 
 affected by Labor troubles. 
 
 First, they tend to injure the particular 
 industry concerned. A strike produced 
 by general discontent and unrest in a 
 given industry makes outside capital wary 
 of investing in it, decreases the output, 
 and often introduces the consumer of it to 
 a temporary substitute which takes' its 
 place permanently. Without doubt, for 
 example, the recent strike in anthracite coal 
 mining led thousands to discontinue per- 
 manently the use of anthracite coal, because 
 necessity led them to a good substitute in 
 certain grades of bituminous coal. 
 57
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 Second, they tend to injure the opera- 
 tor of the industry. His capital lies idle 
 and unproductive. His trade goes to 
 other places. His working force, gath- 
 ered in many cases after years of careful 
 selection and training, is disintegrated, 
 often irrecoverably scattered. His plant, 
 erected perhaps at enormous expenditure, 
 by lying idle and often through the vio- 
 lence of strikers and their sympathizers, 
 suffers a ruinous damage. 
 
 Third, they tend to injure the laboring 
 man. His loss of wages is always the 
 largest financial damage connected with a 
 strike; and the burden of it falls most on 
 his already hard-worked wife and hungry 
 children. If the housewives went on a 
 strike when the Labor unions voted one, 
 and if the picture of pale-faced children, 
 and mortgaged cottages and pawned keep- 
 sakes and evicted families could be kept 
 
 58
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 before those interested, the strike would 
 seldom be voted. 
 
 But worse than this financial loss, and 
 the poverty and hunger which it means, 
 are the habits of discontent and dissipa- 
 tion into which days of idleness and 
 brooding over real or fancied wrongs 
 cause the Laboring man to drift. 
 
 But fourth, and worst, because most 
 unjust to all, it plays havoc with the 
 interests of the suffering public. Things 
 have reached such a stage that we are 
 often uncertain whether we live in a land 
 of peace and liberty or in a state of bar- 
 barity. The commonest services of 
 everyday life are often absolutely refused, 
 or done with such a surly spirit that the 
 day is robbed of its serenity. A team- 
 ster brings a box to the home of two 
 old ladies and sets it on the doorstep. 
 " Will you please set it inside out of the 
 59
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 wet for us," they ask him= "No, Miss, 
 we counts this a delivery." "But will 
 you not set it in for us? We have no 
 man about the house to do it." " Very 
 sorry, Miss, but the union don't allow 
 it." 
 
 And when we enquire into the matter, 
 we find that when Albert Young, the 
 president of the Teamsters' union, was a 
 teamster, many a business proprietor 
 would refuse him help in unloading his 
 boxes, though they sometimes weighed 
 eight hundred pounds. So the union has 
 put up its guard, and the public must 
 pay for it. 
 
 It has come to such a pass in Chicago, 
 for example, that one cannot be sure 
 of a clean shirt for the next day or of 
 tidy bed-linen for the night; or whether 
 the butcher can send you the meat for 
 dinner or the cook be found in the 
 60
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 kitchen and the gas in the range to 
 cook it; when the mother cannot be sure 
 her boy will get the Thanksgiving or 
 Christmas box from home because it 
 must await the uncertain ministry of the 
 freight handlers. 
 
 Thus Labor troubles have involved all 
 of us, and a solution of them is not only 
 of universal interest but is something 
 which an outraged and long-abused pub- 
 lic is beginning to demand. 
 
 THE SEARCH FOR A SOLUTION 
 
 Where shall we find a solution for this 
 problem? What good angel of light will 
 take us by the hand and lead us out of 
 this valley of violence and hatred, of 
 strife and bloodshed, into the fair fields of 
 industry and peace and fraternal pros- 
 perity? 
 
 The answer will be found in a word of 
 Jesus of Nazareth. Our industrial world 
 6i
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 must take up the cry of our religious 
 thinkers, "Back to Christ!" Sitting at 
 the feet of Him who spoke with authority 
 to Gadarene devils and stilled with a word 
 the raging of the sea, we shall hear a mes- 
 sage, sufficient in wisdom and power and 
 eminently just and fair, for our troubled 
 world of industry. 
 
 This is the message of Christ, the King 
 of the Labor world: 
 
 "As YE WOULD THAT MEN SHOUD DO 
 TO YOU, DO YE ALSO TO THEM LIKEWISE." 
 
 This is His word for both laborer and 
 capitalist. Put yourself in the other 
 man's place, and treat him as you would 
 like for him to treat you. 
 
 Capitalist, think of yourself as penni- 
 less, and dependent on your daily wage 
 for your own and your children's bread; 
 and treat your laborer as you would wish 
 to be treated. 
 
 62
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 Laboring man, put yourself in the 
 place of your employer. Try to realize 
 the burden of responsibility that presses 
 on the head of a great industry; of how 
 he must make profit for investors, give 
 employment to his laborers, make a suc- 
 cess of his business; and be fair. Deal 
 with him as you would be dealt by. 
 
 THE MESSAGE OF THE LABOR KING 
 
 In the light of this great sociological 
 principle of the Carpenter of Nazareth, 
 let us face our present industrial condition 
 and draw up a "Bill of Rights" and a 
 "Bill of Wrongs." 
 
 THE BILL OF RIGHTS 
 
 If this is a free country, and we are a 
 Christian people, the following rights 
 must be accorded: 
 
 I. The right of every man to earn his 
 living by honest labor and of every em- 
 ployer to get his laborers for an honest 
 63
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 wage, regardless of their relation to other 
 organizations. 
 
 2. The right of thrift, industry, skill, 
 integrity to rise above shiftlessness, waste, 
 dishonesty, intemperance. We recognize 
 as a good law of nature that a sound tree 
 has a better right to live than a rotten 
 one, that a diseased body has a right to 
 less of life than a sound one. It is but 
 the same law in another sphere that de- 
 mands for the honest, hard working, 
 frugal laborer the right to rise in the scale 
 of wages and being above those who are 
 ruled by the opposite vices. 
 
 3. The right of laborers to organize for 
 their mutual profit, and the right of cap- 
 italists to do the same, provided they 
 preserve a due regard for the rights of 
 each other and of the outside public. 
 
 4. The right of laborers to refuse to 
 work for an employer who will not com- 
 
 64
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 ply with reasonable demands as to hours, 
 wages and sanitary conditions; and their 
 right, if they so desire, to do this con- 
 certedly. 
 
 5. The right of every owner of a busi- 
 ness to conduct it as he sees fit, within 
 the laws of the state. 
 
 6. The right of those who participate 
 in making profits to share in their divis- 
 ion. 
 
 THE BILL OF WRONGS 
 
 On the other hand, if this is a free 
 country and we are a Christian people, the 
 following things are wrong: 
 
 I. It is wrong to refuse to let another 
 man work under certain conditions because 
 you are unwilling to work there yourself. 
 But this recognizes the right of the "strike- 
 breaker," it will at once be objected, the 
 most execrated of all things to the Labor 
 union. Without a doubt; but consider 
 E 65
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 what it means. It is only the right of 
 every man to go into the market of the 
 world and get his labor or his laborers, as 
 we claim the right to go into a town 
 market and buy where we choose our 
 meats and vegetables. The opposite posi- 
 tion nullifies all liberty. Let us illustrate 
 it with the case of a church seeking a 
 pastor. The church calls a man, but he 
 demands a salary of ten thousand dollars. 
 The preachers are organized into a union. 
 The church says, "We cannot pay that 
 salary; it strains us to pay less than half 
 that much." The Preacher's Union 
 answers, "You must take this man and 
 pay him what we say, or you can have no 
 preacher at all." Would we put up with 
 that method in our ecclesiastical affairs? 
 
 Or suppose the physicians had a union, 
 and when your child fell desperately ill, 
 the physician to whom you applied, would 
 66
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 answer, "You must pay me fifty dollars 
 or I will not go to see your child?" and 
 suppose the Physicians' Union should 
 say, " You must take this doctor and meet 
 his price, or go without a doctor." Would 
 we put up with such conduct in our 
 physicians? 
 
 The wrong is no less iniquitous when 
 it comes to the matter of Labor. 
 
 Turn the thing around, say that the 
 employer has the right to set arbitrarily 
 the price of labor and say to the laboring 
 man, "You must work for this price and 
 for me or you cannot work at any price 
 for any other employer? " That would be 
 confiscation of Labor. The other is con- 
 fiscation of capital; and one is as bad as 
 the other. 
 
 2. It is wrong for an employer to dis- 
 criminate against a laborer simply because 
 he is a member of a Labor union. Sub- 
 67
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 stitute racial affinity or the color of his skin 
 for membership in the union, and the 
 wrong of it at once appears. 
 
 Of course, if it can be shown that the 
 influence of the union militates against 
 his efficiency as a workman, it becomes 
 another matter. But personal character 
 and ability should determine a workman's 
 acceptability to an employer, and nothing 
 else. 
 
 3. It is wrong to demand that the in- 
 dustrious and skilled worker shall get no 
 better wages from his employer and no 
 better appreciation from his union, than 
 the worthless and lazy, or even the indif- 
 ferent. 
 
 4. It is wrong to seek to injure the 
 person or to persuade others to damage 
 the business or property of a man because 
 he employs organized or unorganized 
 Labor. The union man who tries to in- 
 
 68
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 jure the non-union plant by boycott or 
 otherwise is sinning against the brother- 
 hood of man and the justice of God. 
 Turn it around. Suppose that most 
 plants and their laborers were non-union, 
 and the non-union majority tried to des- 
 troy the union plant and its workmen, 
 would it be right? 
 
 5. It is wrong to withhold from Labor 
 a fair proportion of the profits which it 
 helps to make. It is confessedly because 
 of real or fancied injustice here that most 
 strikes occur. They abound in periods 
 of prosperity when the Laborer feels he is 
 not getting his share of the increased 
 profits. 
 
 6. It is wrong to set wages above either 
 work or character. The laborer who is ■ 
 so engrossed with the amount of his wage 
 that he loses pride in the quality of his 
 work, and the employer who regards and 
 
 69
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 treats his laborers only as so many 
 "hands," so much "man power" which 
 he buys, are both wrong. 
 
 Few things are more needed in the 
 Labor world than a better understanding 
 and a more intimate relation between the 
 laborer and his employer. At present 
 they are arrayed against each other, in 
 many cases in bitter hostility. They live 
 in different localities, have no social or 
 religious contact, cherish no interest in 
 each other's personal welfare. There is 
 usually to be found a striking contrast be- 
 tween the feeling of the manual laborers 
 of an industry and that of the clerical force 
 for the heads of the concern. The latter 
 speak of it as " our firm," and take more 
 or less pride in its success and reputation. 
 The laboring men look on it, often with 
 bitterness, as a vampire which is sucking 
 out their life-blood. It is a common 
 70
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 thing for the clerical force in some of the 
 big packing houses of Chicago voluntarily 
 to take the places of the lusty packers 
 who have gone on a strike, to help their 
 house get out some pressing orders. The 
 difference of feeling has invariably been 
 found to be due to the difference in the 
 personal relations which the heads of the 
 firm sustain towards the two classes. 
 
 TWO INDICTMENTS 
 
 If these "rights" and "wrongs" be 
 recognized as a basis on which to proceed, 
 we must draw up two indictments. 
 
 First of all, we must indict the em- 
 ployer, and there will be three counts in 
 his indictment. 
 
 I. For discriminating against union 
 Labor. Few business concerns have 
 failed to do it, until the union became so 
 strong that they had to recognize it. It 
 is notorious that for years the union man 
 71
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 was the special object of his employer's 
 hostility, and the organization of the 
 laborers of an industry was fought by the 
 heads of it, at times by measures that 
 were drastic. This hostility must be put 
 aside if the employer is ever to win the 
 confidence of Labor. The most ignorant 
 laborer has found that there is strength in 
 union, and he can see no other purpose 
 in the employer's hostility to the union 
 than to "divide and destroy." 
 
 2. For withholding from their laborers, 
 until held up for it by a threatened or 
 actual strike, a fair share in their increased 
 profits. Wages have been raised, as a 
 rule, only when demanded by the wage- 
 earners, and often after long controversies 
 and strikes. There have been some 
 notable exceptions to this; and it is strange 
 that the influence on his workmen of an 
 employer voluntarily increasing their 
 72
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 wages has not caused more employers to 
 win their workmen's confidence and 
 esteem this way. 
 
 3. They have uniformly and woefully 
 failed to take any personal interest in the 
 social and religious betterment of their 
 employees. There have been some no- 
 table exceptions to this. Chief among 
 which has been the work of many rail- 
 roads in providing quarters for the work 
 of the Young Men's Christian Association 
 among their employees. The ease with 
 which arbitration of disputes became suc- 
 cessful is so co-existent with this move- 
 ment as to give to it the credit, as much 
 as to that splendid leader among railroad 
 men, Mr. P. M. Arthur. 
 
 Many employers fail of their ditty here 
 
 simply because they do not know how to 
 
 go about it, or have seen the disastrous 
 
 failure of some who have attempted it in 
 
 73
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 a blundering, patronizing way. But it 
 can be done, and most successfully, as 
 some notable instances will show. 
 
 One of the most famous of these is con- 
 nected with the Krupp foundries, at 
 Essen, in Rhenish, Prussia. The erec- 
 tion of model dwellings for the employees 
 began as early as 1861, and with the fund 
 of two and one-half per cent, which has 
 been their net income, other buildings are 
 being constantly erected. The co-opera- 
 tive store is managed by the firm, but the 
 profits are distributed among the pur- 
 chasers in proportion to their purchases. 
 The unmarried employees have a board- 
 ing establishment for their convenience, 
 and the health of the workmen is cared 
 for with a hospital, a bath-house, and a 
 corps of regularly employed physicians. 
 
 A notable instance of the employer 
 winning his workmen's confidence by his 
 7+
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 personal interest in them may be found 
 in our own country in the National Cash 
 Register Factory, at Dayton, Ohio. The 
 moving motive in the matter was to make 
 such conditions as would produce the very 
 best type of workmen. The men were 
 put on a day of nine and one-half hours, 
 but the women's day was only eight hours, 
 not only allowing for the woman's lesser 
 endurance, but enabling them to avoid 
 the crowd of men in reaching and leaving 
 the factory. The women were also al- 
 lowed a recess of ten minutes in the morn- 
 ing and afternoon. It is not surprising to 
 find that the girls who work in the factory 
 are of a very intelligent type, and ad- 
 ditions are now made to the working force 
 only from graduates of the High School. 
 No attempt is made to control the dwell- 
 ing-places of the workmen, but great 
 stress is put on cleanliness. Even the work- 
 75
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 rooms of the foundry are made attractive. 
 Not only are free baths provided, but 
 each employee is allowed twenty minutes 
 out of the company's time to make use of 
 them. The company also provides a 
 library and reading room, a lunchroom 
 and bicycle sheds, and a rest room for the 
 girls. The beautifying of the homes is 
 most effectively accomplished by offering 
 two hundred and fifty dollars in prizes for 
 the best front yards, the best back yards, 
 the finest examples of vine-planting, and 
 the best vegetable garden which has been 
 cultivated by a boy. Special instructions 
 given in cooking and domestic science, 
 and literary, musical, and social organiza- 
 tions are also carried on by both the men 
 and women of the factory. In spite of all 
 these things, the operatives organized 
 themselves, and Mr. Patterson found a 
 strike on his hands. From their point of 
 76
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 view, these things were of minor impor- 
 tance. Mr. Patterson calmly considered 
 the matter, and instead of growing sore 
 over the ingratitude of his workmen, and 
 entering into a stubborn fight with them, 
 he recognized that the Labor union was 
 inevitable and went about to make the 
 best of it. This he did by creating a 
 Labor department and committing to it 
 the investigation of any complaints from 
 the men, and to take up with the work- 
 men all such subjects as the restriction of 
 output, the discharge of inefficient work- 
 men, unjust wage demands, and opposi- 
 tion to improved machinery. The result 
 of the whole has been such an increase of 
 mutual confidence and common interest 
 between the employer and his workmen 
 as most heartily to commend his spirit 
 and method. 
 
 n
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 THE PULLMAN FIASCO 
 
 In Striking contrast with this experience 
 of Mr. Patterson at Dayton, was the case 
 of Mr. Pullman in the establishment of 
 his town near Chicago. There, on a plat 
 of five hundred acres, the sleeping car 
 magnate erected not only the Pullman 
 shops, but a hotel, churches, a library, an 
 arcade and brick tenement houses. The 
 company also provided for the employees 
 a water supply, a system of sewers, and 
 even an athletic field. When, in spite of 
 all this, the residents of "Pullman" voted 
 annexation to Chicago and went out on 
 their famous strike, Mr. Pullman 
 thought them grossly ungrateful, and the 
 public was pointed to the town as another 
 instance of the futility of an employer at- 
 tempting to win the devotion and confi- 
 dence of his workmen by kindness. 
 
 But an investigation showed up the 
 78
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 matter in a different light. It was found 
 that the company always charged the men 
 the ruling prices for the use of any privi- 
 leges, often a little more; the very streets 
 of the town were owned in fee simple by 
 the company; many workmen preferred 
 to live outside of the town to being 
 under the iron hand of the company in 
 one of its tenement houses; and even the 
 churches and parsonages were found lying 
 idle because worshippers were not found 
 who were willing to pay the rental. The 
 only apparent philanthropy about the 
 matter, was when the state authorities 
 issued a mandate for the Pullman Com- 
 pany to go out of the real estate business, 
 a thing which is now in course of execution. 
 With these two object lessons before 
 us, it is very easy for the average em- 
 ployer who wishes to win the conjfidence 
 and devotion of his workmen by personal 
 
 79
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 Interest in their welfare and betterment, to 
 ponder the ways of Mr. Patterson and 
 Mr. Pullman and learn how. 
 
 THE INDICTMENT AGAINST LABOR 
 
 But in the majestic presence of these 
 rights and wrongs, we must also draw up 
 an indictment against the Labor organiza- 
 tion; and there will be three counts in it: 
 
 First, for its attempt to prevent a 
 non-union laborer from working under 
 conditions which the union refuses. The 
 violence and even the lawless brutality of 
 many of these attempts are not only the 
 greatest reproach to the Labor organiza- 
 tion, but one of the most disgraceful 
 chapters in our national history. 
 
 MR. GOMPERS' BLARNEY 
 
 Samuel Gompers, President of the 
 American Federation of Labor, in a recent 
 address at Buffalo, New Yo'rk, made this 
 declaration: 
 
 80
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 "Labor organizations are conducted 
 upon as high and as honorable a plane of 
 morality and justice and fair dealing and 
 equity as are any institutions on earth, and 
 1 do not except any one." 
 
 The remoteness of this statement from 
 the truth indicates either a stupidity un- 
 paralleled or a mendacity that is profes- 
 sional. There is need to cite but a few 
 instances to justify the sharpness of this 
 characterization. Mr. George Mulberry, 
 Third Vice President of the International 
 Machinists^ Union^ closes his December 
 report in the Journal of January, 1903, 
 with the following significant words about 
 their strike against the Union Pacific 
 Railway: 
 
 "I wish to state that this climate is not 
 productive to the health o>f scabs, as quite 
 a few have been sent back home very ill." 
 
 The nature of this illness is learned 
 
 F 81
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 when we turn to the report of the fourth 
 vice-president of this same union, dated 
 at Omaha, December 13, 1902, in which 
 he says: 
 
 "The hospitals are full of scabs that 
 got hurt at work and in fights between 
 themselves. Four have died at Cheyenne, 
 and one was killed at Omaha in a fight, 
 while three or four others have been killed 
 in the shop. The picket duty is done in 
 a very systematic manner, and we are keep- 
 ing tab on the scabs day and night. There 
 is not a scab on the line that is not known 
 to us now. The professionals are the 
 only ones that st?iy ^and you can do only one 
 thing with them,^^ 
 
 One of the commonest examples of this 
 brutality of Labor unions was brought be- 
 fore the public in the trial and conviction 
 of the executive board and business agent 
 of Brass Molders' Local, No. 86, of 
 82
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 Chicago. "These officers employed 
 thugs to beat up, incapacitate, assault and 
 murder men who dared assert their right 
 to work upon the terms the.y pleased. 
 The compensation for this brutal service 
 ranged from three dollars to seventy-five 
 dollars, according to the degree of injury 
 done; and the money with which to pay 
 the heavy fines and costs imposed upon 
 them is raised among the unions of 
 Chicago." 
 
 Another example of this brutality was a 
 murderous assault which was made on 
 Calvin Phoebus and his son, at Dayton, 
 Ohio, by members of the iron molders' 
 local. "Five men, whose names the cir- 
 cumstances in the case show clearly were 
 drawn by lot, hired a team of horses and a 
 furniture van, and at six o'clock in the 
 morning proceeded to the Phoebus home, 
 just outside the city limits, backed the van 
 83
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 up to the curb in front of the next house; 
 and when the father and son started for 
 work, these five human devils jumped 
 from the van in which they were secreted 
 and pounced upon the two old and faith- 
 ful employees of the Callahan Company, 
 beating them nearly to death. Detection 
 resulted from one of the villains being 
 shot by the elder Phoebus." These men 
 were tried and convicted in the Court of 
 Common Pleas. They were sentenced to 
 heavy fines and costs, and to four months' 
 imprisonment in the workhouse. The 
 fines were paid by their union, a part of 
 the high and honorable constituency of 
 Mr. Gompers. The chief capital of a 
 Labor union is pubhc sympathy; and up 
 to recent months, the sympathy of the 
 general pubhc has undoubtedly been on 
 their side. But these lawless methods 
 have about murdered it; for however 
 84
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 violently the Labor union may denounce 
 the "scab" and ostracize his family and 
 hoot his children and even take his life, 
 the public recognizes not only his right 
 to existence, but is going, in some way or 
 other, to safe-guard his person and secure 
 to him his rights. Unless such insincere 
 utterances as these of Mr. Gompers are 
 replaced by a thorough-going rectification 
 of Labor union methods in dealing with 
 non-union plants and men, the sympathy 
 of a public, already sorely tried, will be 
 utterly destroyed; and worst of all, the 
 cause of labor itself will receive an incur- 
 able hurt. 
 
 2. The second count in this indictment 
 against Labor is for its attempt to injure 
 not only the person of the non-union 
 laborer but the business and property of 
 the employer. The embodiment of this 
 attempt is the boycott, a thing of devilish 
 85
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 origin/ and justly denounced to-day by 
 the fair minded public at large. But 
 wherever you find the Labor union to- 
 day, you find more or less of the attempt 
 to boycott. In a recent hearing before 
 Vice-Chancellor Pitney, of New Jer- 
 sey, he uttered these words from the 
 bench: 
 
 "Wherever you see a Labor union, 
 you expect boycotting. The Labor unions 
 have two methods of enforcing their 
 demands — the boycott and the Violence. 
 Do you suppose that man would have 
 been murdered at Waterbury yesterday if 
 it had not been for the influence of a 
 Labor union? Nobody believes the 
 unions when they disclaim responsibility. 
 
 'Our first mention of the boycott is in Revelation 13:16, 17, 
 as one of the methods of the Beast that came up from the pit: 
 "And he. causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free 
 and bond, to receive a marie in their right hand, or in their fore- 
 heads: and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the 
 mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. ' ' 
 
 86
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 Nobody believed Mr. Mitchell, out in 
 Pennsylvania, when he said that the 
 miners' organization was not responsible 
 for the violence there. They laugh in 
 their sleeves at such statements." Dur- 
 ing these mining troubles, Mr. Albert 
 Young, President of the Teamsters' 
 Union, took the presidents of twenty 
 teamsters' locals and called on Mayor 
 Harrison, of Chicago. They demanded 
 that the city buy nothing but union mined 
 coal, hauled by union team drivers, or 
 they would tie up immovably every piece 
 of freight in the city; and the Mayor sub- 
 mitted. 
 
 One of the most reprehensible cases of 
 this was the boycott recently attempted 
 against the Los Angeles Times for its per- 
 sistent opposition to organized Labor. 
 The International Typographical Union 
 and the American Federation of Labor, 
 87
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 with its two millions of members, appro- 
 priated twenty-five thousand dollars to 
 carry out the boycott. No member of 
 either organization was to purchase an 
 article from any manufacturer or dealer 
 who advertised in this paper, and the 
 members were to use all their influence to 
 persuade their friends to do the same. 
 A circular letter, reciting this fact, was 
 sent broadcast over our country. Warn- 
 ing all men against advertising in this 
 paper.* 
 
 It is true that the boycott is miserably 
 ineffective. Even the families of the 
 Labor unions do not live up to it. One 
 of the most boycotted concerns in our 
 country, to judge from the resolutions of 
 unions, is the National Biscuit Company; 
 
 ' One of these letters was sent to Geo. P. Bent, Manufacturer 
 of the Crown Piano, at Chicago, and by him was shown to the 
 writer. Mr. Bent at once replied that though he had not been an 
 advertiser in the Times, he would take particular pains hereafter to 
 do so, and added his denunciation of the boycott method. 
 
 88
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 but the sale of their stuff goes on to 
 laborer and capitaHst as ever. 
 
 But this opposition goes even further, 
 and has frequently destroyed the prop- 
 erty and even taken the life of the em- 
 ployer. Instances of this are too com- 
 mon to need citation. The Labor 
 troubles in Chicago abound with them. 
 The Laboring man cannot hold the 
 sympathy of the public and supjwrt his 
 strike by the stones of the rioter ajid the 
 torch of the incendiary. 
 
 The claim that this damage to property 
 is not done by members of the union has 
 been found over and over again to be 
 untrue. The toughs and thugs of the 
 city are always among the ranks, but the 
 strikers themselves are always found 
 forming the backbone of the mob and 
 breathing its spirit. The moment the 
 powers in authority assert themselves, and 
 89
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 the striking laborers stay at home and 
 conduct themselves as law-abiding citizens, 
 the disorder ceases. A notable instance 
 of this was the recent disorder con- 
 nected with the strike at the Kellogg 
 Switch-Board Company, of Chicago. 
 The moment the mayor listened to the 
 protests of the business men of the city 
 and issued his proclamation, the strikers 
 went to their homes and the disgraceful 
 lawlessness ceased. 
 
 3. The third count in this indictment 
 against organized labor is for limiting the 
 number of apprentices in a trade and. fail- 
 ing to classify its members according to 
 their ability. In the first respect of this 
 count, the union is made the destroyer 
 of the commonest rights of human liberty 
 and becomes a blight on the manhood of 
 the children of its own members; and in 
 the second respect, the union becomes 
 90
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 guilty of the oft-repeated charge of "level- 
 ing down" its members. 
 
 That both of the charges are true, it is 
 easy to show. Mr. Henry White, 
 national secretary of the Garment Work- 
 ers, of New York, makes the following 
 statement:* "The limitation of appren- 
 tices can be defended for economic rea- 
 sons wherever there are enough to per- 
 form the work, as those already in the 
 trade have a right to protect their stand- 
 ard from being lowered through an influx 
 of other workmen tempted by higher 
 wages which they have upheld." It is 
 rather surprising to find this limitation 
 defended by Rev. Graham Taylor, who 
 is not only at the head of Chicago Com- 
 mons, but a professor in the Congrega- 
 tional Theological Seminary of Chicago. 
 He is thus quoted in the Daily News, of 
 
 ^ In Public Policy, Apr. 4, 1 90 3. 
 
 91
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 Chicago, March 12, 1903. "Labor 
 unions have as much right to restrict the 
 number of apprentices in a trade as you 
 believers in protection have in placing a 
 protective tariff upon imported goods; or, 
 the size of families now being a question 
 before the public, as a man has in limiting 
 the size of his family. Like the protect- 
 ive tariff, it restricts competition, and, 
 like the small family, it permits the few 
 to enjoy privileges and luxuries that 
 would be beyond the reach of a larger 
 number." 
 
 Without dwelling on the unhappiness 
 of Prof. Taylor's Comparisons, it is 
 enough simply to note the grounds on 
 which such a brutality as forbidding a boy 
 to learn a trade for which he is adapted is 
 attempted. One of them is economic, 
 that wages may not be lowered through 
 the influx of more workmen; and the 
 92
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 other is personal, that the workman 
 may not be bothered with teaching an 
 apprentice, and enjoy the privileges and 
 luxuries that would be beyond the reach 
 of a larger number." The first of these 
 is utterly sordid, puts bread and butter 
 above manhood; and the second is the 
 same selfish sensuality that makes a mar- 
 ried woman prefer a pet dog to a baby. 
 With both of them God and the interests 
 of humanity are at outs; and it is in the 
 interests of organized labor, and all of its 
 friends should plainly understand, that 
 this brutal wrong, which would be visited 
 chiefly on the working man's own children, 
 is a hurt to the rights of man which the 
 American public will not allow. 
 
 In answer to the charge that the union 
 levels down its members by putting all of 
 them on the same wage scale, the claim is 
 made that what the union demands is a 
 
 93.
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 minimum wage, and that any member is 
 allowed to make all possible over this. 
 But the employer answers that this min- 
 imum wage is always the maximum wage 
 that he can pay and keep his business going; 
 and when men are put on piece work, the 
 union steps in and limits the amount of 
 work which a man shall do. This latter 
 statement has been denied, but proof of 
 it is abundant. The Outlook of March 
 28, 1903, published the replies of seven 
 prominent trades-union officials to the 
 question whether their orga'nizations fixed 
 either a maximum wage or a maximum 
 output for their members. All replied 
 that every member of their unions could 
 get as high wages as he could bargain for, 
 and all but one denied any limit to a 
 workman's output during the working 
 day. The same paper, of May 30, 1903, 
 published some noteworthy answers. One 
 
 94
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 writer quotes Article X from the pub- 
 lished by-laws of Iron-Molders' union 
 No. 8, of Albany, N. Y., Section i: 
 "No member of this association working 
 by the piece shall be allowed to mold more 
 than four dollars' worth in any one day 
 or cast, and no member working by the 
 day shall be allowed to work for less than 
 three dollars. . . . Sec. 3. Any 
 member convicted of violating any of the 
 provisions of this article, shall be fined 
 two dollars for the first offense, and not 
 less than five dollars for each violation 
 thereafter." 
 
 Another writer quotes from section 7 
 of the wage scale of the International Ty- 
 pographical Union, 190, for 1896: "No 
 operator of a machine shall be permitted 
 to work more than five days or nights 
 in any one week. Provided, however, 
 that this section shall not be in force 
 95
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 during the six weeks of their apprentice- 
 ship." 
 
 This limitation of output has been a 
 common thing for some time with British 
 trades-unions. It is of a piece with their 
 common failure to classify workmen; and 
 this, perhaps, most of all has caused the 
 degeneracy of the British workmen to a 
 third-rate place in the industrial world. 
 Its operation, if persisted in, will cause as 
 sure a degeneration of the American 
 workmen. It is a penny-wise and pound 
 foolish policy, which leads a workman to 
 sell his enthusiasm and all stimulus to 
 superior achievement for an increase in 
 the size of his loaf of bread and a piece of 
 white cake. It is as wrong for a union to 
 shut the door of apprenticeship against a 
 young man as it would be for a carpenter 
 to refuse to teach his trade to his own son; 
 and the restriction of a workingman's 
 96
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 voluntary output is as foolish as to try to 
 limit the number of barrels of corn which 
 one of God's rich acres of Illinois land can 
 yield. The friends of Labor owe it to 
 the laboring man and his oifspring to per- 
 suade the union to get rid of both of 
 these characteristics. 
 
 THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 In view of these things, there are at 
 least three lines along which we are to 
 find the solution of the Labor problem, 
 all of which must be pursued in the spirit 
 of these words of the Carpenter of Naz- 
 areth, already emblazoned as our motto. 
 
 I. The incorporation of the Labor union 
 and the enactment of laws governing its 
 conduct. 
 
 The friends of the Labor union are 
 divided on this matter. Mr. Clarence S. 
 Darrow, of Chicago, who acted as the at- 
 torney for the United Mine Workers in the 
 G 97
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 anthracite coal strike, hotly denounces it: 
 "The demand for the incorporation of 
 trade unions is the last trench of those 
 who oppose organized Labor. It is im- 
 pudent and persumptuous. No friend of 
 trades-unionism ever believed in it or ad- 
 vocated it, or called for it. It is de- 
 manded to-day by those interests and 
 those enemies who have used every means 
 at their command to oppose unionism, to 
 counteract its influence and destroy it. 
 How the Labor organizations shall man- 
 age their own affairs is not the business of 
 the corporations, or the employers. This 
 new demand for the incorporation of 
 Labor unions is not only unjust and un- 
 reasonable, but it is impudent and insult- 
 ing to the last degree." Now why does 
 Mr. Darrow become so red in the face 
 over this suggestion? He is a lawyer, and 
 he knows that the incorporation of a
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 union makes its members amenable as 
 such to law, and makes its treasury as well 
 as the property of its members liable for 
 damages to property and for violation of 
 contracts. Is it "impudent" and "out- 
 rageous" and "insulting to the last degree" 
 in the public to make such a demand? 
 What is the word of a Labor union worth 
 otherwise? Take it on its honor? A 
 man who is ruled by honor never objects 
 to placing himself also under the reach of 
 just law. The law is a terror only to the 
 doer of evil. And so the matter appears 
 to not a few of the friends of Labor. Mr. 
 E. E. Clark, Grand Chief of the Order of 
 Railway Conductors, recently made the 
 following statement before the Industrial 
 Commission: 
 
 "I think perhaps it will be some time 
 before the idea will be generally accepted. 
 At the same time it looks to me as if the 
 99
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 logical conclusion is the incorporation of 
 the trade unions and Labor organizations 
 under conditions which place them on a 
 fair basis as compared with corporations 
 that are for a pecuniary profit or the in- 
 corporations by which the men are em- 
 ployed." 
 
 Before the same body, the following 
 statement was made by Mr. G. W. 
 Perkins, President of the Cigar Makers' 
 International Union: 
 
 " I beheve they should be incorporated. 
 In the first place, trades-unions have 
 nothing to hide; they are not violators of 
 the law. ... If incorporated, it 
 would give us many advantages. 
 I favor being incorporated, first, because 
 it would legalize us; second, give us more 
 standing in the courts. We are willing to 
 be brought into court any minute." 
 
 Add to this the testimony of the Presi- 
 
 lOO
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 dent of the Amalgamated Association of 
 Iron, Steel and Tin Workers: 
 
 "I hope the time will come when the 
 Amalgamated Association will be able to 
 take out letters of incorporation and be- 
 come a chartered institution. . . . // 
 will obviate the necessity for strikes; do 
 away with the strike entirely. It would 
 bring the manufacturer and his employe 
 close together, into more friendly rela- 
 tions. It would enable them to see that 
 as one prospers, the other prospers; as 
 one suffers, the other necessarily suffers 
 also." And then he pathetically adds 
 what Mr. Darrow plainly showed, "Our 
 people are not ready for it. They are not 
 educated up to the point yet."^ 
 
 At this point it is worth while to note 
 also the opinion on this subject of the 
 
 ^Cf. Report of Industrial Commission, Vol. IV. , p. 1 1 6, and 
 Vol. VII., pp. 8,171-2, 387-8. 
 
 lOI
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 man, who, perhaps, most of all is fitted by 
 ability and vocation to utter the wise 
 word in the matter. This is the recent 
 statement of Carroll D. Wright, the Fed- 
 eral Commissioner of Labor:^ 
 
 "I believe, if you will allow me to ex- 
 press an opinion, that trade unionism will 
 take a very great stride in securing the 
 respect and co-operation of the public 
 when it desires to incorporate. There 
 are cases where incorporation would result 
 in success, when the acts of voluntary as- 
 sociations would result in failure. It 
 would dignify the whole business, to say 
 the least, and protect the funds and pro- 
 tect the members." 
 
 In view of these, and other like state- 
 ments, it is hard to find any sanity in the 
 hot words of Mr. Darrow. They must 
 
 ^Cf. Report of Industrial Commission, Vol. IV., p. ii6, and 
 Vol. VII., pp. 8, 171-2, 387-8. 
 
 lOZ
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 be due either to those personal idiosyn- 
 crasies that have made him an extremist 
 generally, or to a mind overheated with a 
 passion for playing to the gallery of that 
 lawless hoodlum element which still dis- 
 graces the Labor union. 
 
 The fact is, the incorporation of the 
 Labor union looks inevitable. It is 
 demanded by the employer. If he must 
 deal with it in making contracts, by every 
 law of justice, It should be made legally and 
 financially responsible for the performance 
 of them. Contracts with a union may be 
 and many are to-day broken with Impun- 
 ity. Financial responsibility Is essential 
 to the worth of any contract. 
 
 It Is demanded even more strongly 
 by the Interests of the laboring men 
 themselves. Time and again, as they 
 have not the least doubt, their leaders 
 have sold them out and betrayed their in- 
 103
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 terests, and scores more of them should be 
 behind the bars with Lawrence Murphy. 
 That they may be managed in the in- 
 terest of their members, their funds be 
 protected, their leadership lie in responsible 
 and worthy hands, their negotiations be 
 carried on with dignity and effectiveness, 
 and the unions themselves have some 
 standing in both the great court of 
 humanity as well as the lesser civil court, 
 the union should be incorporated and 
 carefully controlled by law. 
 
 It is demanded by the general public. 
 Perhaps on no other one thing does 
 public sentiment seem to be more crystal- 
 lized. For the public has grown weary of 
 the irresponsible Labor leader, who calls 
 a strike on or off to keep his job or fat- 
 ten his purse, and of a body of even 
 laboring men whom a strike converts into 
 a lawless and brutal mob. 
 104
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 The Labor union Is here to stay. It is 
 to be hoped so, at least. With all of its 
 handicaps, and seldom if ever was a move- 
 ment more handicapped, It has brought 
 vast benefits to the laboring man. The 
 greatest mistake of the employer has been 
 to fight Its existence; for his opposition to 
 what the public recognizes as but the 
 workingman's commonest right, has not 
 only destroyed the workingman's confi- 
 dence in his employer's sense of fairness, 
 but put the conduct of the union under 
 control of the worst element of Labor. 
 This mistake will best be retrieved by the 
 employer's giving all possible assistance 
 In placing the union on a respectable legal 
 and financial footing and placing the best 
 element of Labor at its head. No fair- 
 minded employer has much to fear from 
 the union that is dominated by the spirit 
 of such men as the late P. M. Arthur. 
 105
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 ARBITRATION 
 
 1. The second line along which our 
 problem must be worked out deals with 
 the matter of arbitration. What place 
 should arbitration have in the settlement 
 of Labor troubles? And should the arbi- 
 tration be voluntary or compulsory? 
 
 The first question will not need argu- 
 ment. Arbitration should have always 
 the first place. There are only three pos- 
 sible solutions for a Labor dispute: The 
 military, public ownership, or arbitration. 
 Experience shows that the first two go to- 
 gether where the second is attempted; for 
 it takes the presence of the army to keep 
 order during strikes on government rail- 
 ways in Holland, as well as on private 
 railroads in the United States. The only 
 sensible thing for any dispute is the apos- 
 tolic way, to arbitrate it. But, face the 
 second question, Should this arbitration be 
 1 06
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 compulsory and the decision of the arbi- 
 trators final? Voluntary arbitration which 
 settles the dispute is the ideal solution; 
 but suppose one of the parties is dissatis- 
 fied with the decision and refuses to abide 
 by it? Make him abide by it? Shall we 
 establish In our land, either one court, or a 
 series of courts of appeal, which shall have 
 the power to say to a stonemason, "You 
 must lay stone for so much a day, or you 
 cannot lay it at all?" Or to the owner of 
 a team, "You must pay so much to your 
 driver, or you must drive It yourself?" 
 
 Compulsory arbitration looks fascina- 
 ting at first glance; but its principle is 
 rotten at heart, and its application to In- 
 dustry is so artificial as to bring about 
 paralysis. It is the confiscation of both 
 the Labor and the capital arbitrated on, 
 and It substitutes artificiality for natural- 
 ness in the adjustment of Industrial rela- 
 107
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 tlons. An illustration of compulsory 
 arbitration is to be found in New Zealand, 
 and we may do well to study it there. 
 The courts of arbitration set the prices of 
 Labor, and the employer must pay these 
 prices or go out of the manufacturing 
 business, and the laborer must work for 
 these wages or find work in some other 
 country. The result has been, not the 
 increase of wages, but the death of the 
 manufacturing business in New Zealand. 
 The manufacturers discovered that they 
 could import the product of their factory 
 at less cost than they could manufacture 
 it and pay the wages fixed by the arbitra- 
 tion court; so they closed down their 
 plants, ceased manufacturing, and became 
 jobbers. This has taken place in factory 
 after factory in New Zealand, till the 
 sales-agent in New Zealand of an Ameri- 
 can house recently said, in speaking of the 
 io8
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 country: " It is a very good place to 
 raise sheep, but as for manufacturing, it is 
 as dead as a stinking mackerel, and pros- 
 pects of its ever being anything else are 
 forever blasted." An illustration of this 
 took place last March in the furniture 
 business in Auckland. The Arbitration 
 court gave a decision increasing the wages 
 of certain cabinet makers. The em- 
 ployers found themselves unable to pay 
 the wage and simply locked their doors. 
 Following this came the significant cable 
 in the London Times that the furniture 
 dealers of Auckland "would in the future 
 import all the furniture required;" and 
 the tragedy back of it is the death of the 
 manufacture of furniture in Auckland. 
 Suppose in the infancy of the industry, 
 Grand Rapids and the furniture business 
 of America had been handicapped with 
 such a decision! 
 
 109
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 But there is a place for arbitration. 
 The pubHc has the right to demand that 
 time contracts should be made between 
 the employer and his men, and that all 
 disputes over these contracts must be set- 
 tled by arbitration; and that no strikes 
 shall take place during the time which 
 these contracts cover. In addition to this, 
 arbitration should always be the court of 
 first resort for all disputes, and the find- 
 ings of it should be disregarded only 
 when the conditions imposed are un- 
 bearable. 
 
 PROFIT SHARING 
 
 3. But manifestly, however diligently 
 and sincerely both capitalist and laborer 
 may take to voluntary arbitration to settle 
 their differences, there will arise in the 
 future, as have arisen in the past, cases 
 which defy all attempts at arbitration. 
 However sincerely both sides may attempt 
 1 10
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 to apply this great teaching of the Car- 
 penter of Nazareth, so long as human 
 nature remains what it is, these instances 
 will arise. And the acutest troubles, 
 arousing the deepest bitterness and accom- 
 panied with most brutality and lawlessness, 
 will always be exactly those which arbitra- 
 tion cannot reach. Can these be reached 
 at all? or, in such cases, must the two 
 parties be allowed to go down into the 
 cock-pit and fight to the finish, while the 
 suffering public goes without its breakfast 
 and sits up at night to guard its prop- 
 erty ? 
 
 An inseparable basis of happy relations 
 between Labor and capital is the mutual 
 recognition of their partnership, and im- 
 plicit confidence in each other's fairness 
 and honesty. The identity of the work- 
 ing man's interests with his employer's 
 has been rubbed in so faithfully of late 
 III
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 that the most stupid laborer has doubtless 
 heard of it. Laboring men, in general, 
 recognize that only as their employer 
 prospers can they prosper. But not a few 
 of them are firmly convinced that they are 
 not coming in for a fair share of the pros- 
 perity. Without any doubt this convic- 
 tion is at the bottom of nearly all Labor 
 troubles. The thing which will remove 
 this feeling from the heart of the laboring 
 man will put an end to "strikes." 
 
 How can it be done? In one and only 
 one way, by the principle of profit-shar- 
 ing. "If you and I are partners," says 
 the laborer to his employer, "let us divide 
 the profits. And if you are willing to do 
 the square thing, we will be exact about it 
 and strike the balance each year in dollars 
 and cents." The refusal to do this puts 
 suspicion on the employer and makes all 
 his talk about the identity of their interests 
 
 I iz
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 and his willingness to give Labor its fair 
 share of profits, hypocritical cant. 
 
 WHAT IS PROFIT SHARING? 
 
 But what do we mean by profit sharing? 
 Not a little goes on under this name that 
 is really farcical. Profit sharing does not 
 mean the Christmas gift of a turkey or 
 even of a hundred dollars to each of the 
 workmen when the year has been specially 
 prosperous. It means an exact distribu- 
 tion of profits, upon a previously agreed 
 upon principle, and carried out according 
 to exact mathematical calculation. The 
 capital invested gets first its fair percent- 
 age of the earnings and the laborers their 
 living wage and the officials their fair 
 salary. Any profits left are to be divided 
 proportionably between the capital and 
 Labor. A very just principle of the dis- 
 tribution Is that adopted, for example, by 
 the A. S. Baker Company, near Evans- 
 
 H 113
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 ville, Wisconsin. The salary of a laborer 
 is looked on as the interest on so much 
 capital which he has in the business; so if 
 the percentage which the capitalist's in- 
 vestment should have is six per cent., a 
 laborer who receives six hundred dollars a 
 year is calculated for ten thousand dollars 
 capital when it comes to the distribution 
 of the surplus profits; and so with the 
 salaried officials. The influence of this 
 on the workman has been an inspiration, 
 and the prosperity of the business, which 
 was about to be foreclosed in 1875, ^^^ 
 been remarkable. 
 
 The details, however, of this principle 
 are something which each concern must 
 determine for itself; but undoubtedly it is 
 the feasible and fair thing for all industries. 
 The prosperity of the concerns which have 
 tried it and the manifest fairness and 
 justice of the principle to all concerned, 
 114
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 should commend it for speedy and uni- 
 versal adoption in the industrial world.* 
 In some cases, like the United States 
 Steel Company and the N. O. Nelson 
 Company, at LeClaire, Ills., inducements 
 are offered the men to accept their bonus 
 in stocks. Should this be compulsory, 
 the stock should be the company's pre- 
 ferred creditor, or become a first-mortgage 
 bond. 
 
 BUT IF INDUSTRIES LOSE MONEY? 
 
 This principle may operate successfully, 
 It may be answered, in times of prosperity; 
 but what will you do when the concern is 
 losing money? During such seasons of 
 depression there will be no profits to 
 divide; the workmen will be all the more 
 willing to have their wages reduced till 
 
 iSome of the prominent concerns in this country which have 
 adopted the principle and carried it out successfully are: The Pillsbury 
 Flour Mills, Minneapolis, Procter & Gamble Soap Works, at Cin- 
 cinnati, Yale & Towne Lock Company, at Stamford, Conn., 
 Bourne Cotton Mill, Fall River, Mass.
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 the concern can make money; and In all 
 cases all money lost must be remade be- 
 fore any surplus profits can be calculated. 
 
 THE FRENCH METHOD 
 
 Certainly this is the direction in which 
 the successful portion of the industrial 
 world is moving to-day. It is now in the 
 hands of the captains of industry to take 
 it up and establish it. If this is not done, 
 the prospects are that, barring socialism 
 and municipal or government ownership 
 (from both of which we may well pray at 
 present to be delivered), the laboring men 
 will take the matter into their own hands, 
 and organize their industries, perhaps, 
 along the same lines as many of them are 
 now organized in France. There the 
 artisans of the different industries organize 
 themselves into "societies," of which there 
 are over two thousand in France, and 
 which control their respective industries, 
 ii6
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 sharing the profits of an industry among 
 the members of that special "society." 
 They elect one of their members director 
 of the industry, and a president, who is 
 not always chosen from the working class. 
 The distinguished sociologist and man of 
 letters, Leopold Mabilleau, for example, 
 is now president of the "Jean Le Claire 
 society of Co-operation," of Paris, in 
 which are organized the house and sign 
 painters of that city. The director and 
 president receive a salary, fixed by the 
 Society. The peculiar characteristic of 
 all is the principle of profit-sharing, and 
 the following is an example of its opera- 
 tion. Every three months the director 
 reckons the profits for the quarter of the 
 year just passed. One-half of this 
 amount is set aside to be distributed 
 among the working men, the portion 
 which each receives amounting to from 
 117
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 twenty to twenty-four per cent, of his 
 wages during the period. One-fourth of 
 the profits goes to the chief of the indus- 
 try and his collaborators in recognition of 
 the experience and intelligence required to 
 manage a large business. The disposition 
 of the fourth part is a unique feature to 
 which, the president of this society claims, 
 is due much of the success of the whole 
 venture. It goes to a cash insurance fund 
 for the workmen against illness, accident, 
 premature death and old ^ge. In the 
 sixty years of this society's existence, this 
 fund has grown to the sum of twenty-five 
 million francs, and now the interest on 
 this fund is sufficient to pay the insurance 
 benefits as needed. 
 
 Whatever may be the details of 
 the plan, along this line of fair profit- 
 sharing will be found the only com- 
 plete and final solution of our Labor 
 ii8
 
 THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 troubles. The wage question can be 
 settled permanently in no other way, be- 
 cause anything short of this lays the em- 
 ployer open to suspicion; and this means 
 industrial trouble. Increase of wages is 
 but a temporary appeasement, like throw- 
 ing morsels to a pack of pursuing wolves 
 sometimes, if the laboring man will for- 
 give the comparison; for it only serves to 
 whet his appetite for more, and convinces 
 him that there is something more where 
 this came from. Even brothers will fall 
 out over the division of dollars if they 
 have not absolute confidence in each 
 other's fairness and honesty. Let the 
 employer take the laboring man into his 
 confidence, let the partnership be carried 
 out on the books as well as in name, let 
 identity of interests be a working principle 
 instead of a soothing syrup; and the peace 
 which has ever come along with prosperity 
 119
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 and vigor to the life that is ruled by the 
 word of Jesus, will soon steal over our 
 troubled world of industry. 
 
 Let us enthrone the spirit of Jesus 
 Christ in our industrial world, and do to 
 each other as we would be" done by. It 
 boots us little joy to change war for peace, 
 to beat our swords into plough-shares and 
 our spears into pruning-hooks, if Vv^e use 
 the plough-shares to break each other's 
 skulls and maim one another with the 
 pruning-hooks. Let us learn to treat each 
 other fairly in this matter; and He whose 
 word stilled the raging sea will still the 
 strife and violence that fill out great cities. 
 The Industrial world shall be full of«^His 
 peace, and the fruits of its prosperity, at 
 whose heart there will be no worm of bit- 
 terness, shall fill the homes and gladden 
 the lives of the millions who toil by either 
 brain or hand. 
 
 1 20
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM
 
 ^^The land^ through which we have gone 
 to search it^ is a land that eateth up the in- 
 habitants thereof y 
 
 The Scouts of Israel.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 The Liquor question is a problem of 
 vital interest to every nation, from the 
 drunkards of Belgium and the reckless 
 absinthe drinkers of Paris to the abstemi- 
 ous Turk. But, if for no other reason, 
 because of climatic influences and the 
 nervous temperament produced thereby, 
 it is most of all a serious problem to this 
 strenuous American nation. No tempera- 
 ment is so nervous and no life is so stren- 
 uous as the American; and because of this 
 very fineness of his nervous fibre and his 
 hot pace of life, there is no physical tem- 
 123
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 perament so prone to over indulgence 
 when the drink habit is once begun, and 
 there is no wreck so complete and pitiful 
 as the American drunkard. 
 
 However vitally the Liquor problem 
 may concern other nations, it is pre-emi- 
 nently a problem of deepest concern with 
 the people of America. 
 
 When we come to consider the Liquor 
 problem, there are two things that appal 
 us. One is the ruin which the drink 
 habit brings to the individual who forms 
 it, and the other is the far-reaching and 
 blighting effects of the Liquor interests 
 on the welfare of our social order. 
 
 The evil effects of intemperance in the 
 individual do not need to be retold. The 
 picture is too common in experience for 
 us to forget it, and to describe the wreck 
 which it makes of the moral and spiritual 
 nature, as well as of body and mind, has 
 124
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 exhausted the speech of our orators and 
 the pathos of our poets. The intemperate 
 use of Liquor makes of even our goodly 
 land of plenty and liberty "a land that 
 eateth up the inhabitants thereof."^ It 
 would be but a waste of words to picture 
 with even true vividness the deadly blight 
 which drink has brought to our firesides 
 and social circles; the wreckage is piled up 
 too high before our very eyes to need 
 words to prove that it is there. One 
 father out of every five in our land fur- 
 nishes a son for a drunkard's grave. The 
 dark picture already fills us with unutter- 
 able sadness; and it is safe to say that our 
 present inactivity in the matter is not due 
 to indifference, but to that despair of bet- 
 tering conditions which has come on us 
 from the failure of past efforts to better 
 conditions. To-day it looks as if the 
 
 1 Numbers 13 : 32. 
 
 125
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 majority of even Christian people had 
 given over the matter to fanatics and 
 cranks; and the fear of faUing on the tire- 
 some abuse of those who disagree with 
 them appears to make most circles avoid 
 even a discussion of the subject. " What 
 can't be cured, must be endured," is their 
 solacing proverb; and when they see a man 
 go down in the maelstrom of drink, they 
 say, " Well, if a man will make a fool of 
 himself, he must pay the penalty." 
 
 The second thing which so appals us is 
 the far-reaching and blighting effects of 
 this liquor business on the welfare of our 
 social order. 
 
 The politics of our country, both city 
 and state are largely controlled by the 
 liquor interests, who are ever dictating 
 both what legislation shall be enacted and 
 to what extent enacted legislation shall be 
 enforced. Wendell Philhps said not long 
 126
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 before his death: "The large cities of 
 this country are governed by the saloons 
 in their own interests;" and Lord Rose- 
 berry, ex-premier of Great Britain, said in 
 a recent speech: "If the nation does not 
 soon control the liquor traffic, the liquor 
 traffic will control the nation." When 
 the saloon is robbed of its power, a 
 mighty stride will have been taken in the 
 purification of politics. 
 
 An evil under which especially our 
 urban population is groaning today is the 
 burden of enormous taxation; and the 
 attempted evasion of it by the wealthy 
 has become one of the moral disgraces of 
 our urban life. This enormous taxation 
 is required somewhat for material improve- 
 ments, but the bulk of it goes to protect 
 property, to support penitentiaries and 
 jails, and to maintain criminal courts. 
 The prevention of an intemperate use of 
 127
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 liquor promises to remove the bulk of 
 this burden; for according to the statistics 
 of Hon. Carroll D.. Wright, the highest 
 authority in our land on this subject, 
 "ninety-two per cent, of our crime is the 
 result of intoxicating liquors." 
 
 It is also the mother of most of the 
 vice that curses our land. It directly 
 furnishes our asylums with twenty-five 
 per cent, of our insane, and fifty per cent, 
 of all our idiots and imbeciles are the 
 offispring of drunkards. 
 
 It is of supreme moment in determin- 
 ing the longevity of life. Ever and anon 
 we are hearing of the octogenarian who 
 has been an inveterate user of tobacco and 
 whiskey from youth. Most of them are 
 run down as newspaper canards, but some 
 of them are real. Statistics indicate that 
 the real cases might have been nonagena- 
 rians or centenarians had they left whisky 
 128
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 and tobacco alone. The British Registrar- 
 General has published a table of the com- 
 parative mortality of men, from twenty- 
 five to sixty-five years of age, the inquiry 
 covering a period of three years. The 
 standard of one hundred was taken as the 
 lowest death-rate, the most healthful class, 
 and these are his results: Inn-keepers 
 and liquor dealers represented a mortality 
 of 274; inn or hotel service, 397; and 
 brewers, 245; while farmers are put down 
 at 114, gardeners at 108, and ministers at 
 100. Between 1880 and 1890, there 
 were in the United States 21,384 deaths 
 from yellow fever, and 650,000 deaths 
 from alcohol; yet we license alcohol and 
 quarantine yellow fever. 
 
 Then there is the great problem of 
 
 every age, the problem of poverty and 
 
 the unemployed. What is the great 
 
 cause of poverty, as well as of crime? 
 
 I 129
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 What keeps the laboring man poor? 
 The drink bill of Great Britain last 
 year was nearly nine hundred millions 
 of dollars, and that of the United States 
 was in the neighborhood of one and a 
 quarter billions of dollars. Belgium has 
 a liquor shop for every thirty-nine of its 
 inhabitants. Now the larger part of this 
 is paid out of the scant earnings of those 
 who, from the very nature of their occu- 
 pation, are the unemployed during a large 
 portion of the year. Dr. E. R. L. Gould 
 has published statistics which show that 
 the saloon keepers receive from the 
 laboring classes in the five leading 
 countries of the world three-fifths as much 
 as the landlords. The poverty of the 
 laboring classes is largely the product of 
 drink. What should be saved to set up a 
 business of his own he foolishly carries to 
 the till of the saloon keeper. Eighteen 
 130
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 thousand men marched through the 
 streets of Chicago one day, and on a ban- 
 ner at the head of their procession was 
 this sad and startling inscription, "Our 
 children cry for bread!" The proces- 
 sion, after its march through the city, 
 moved to a grove where it rested — and 
 drank fourteen hundred kegs of beer! 
 No wonder "Our children cry for bread." 
 Doubtless there are many inequalities 
 in our present social and industrial order 
 which need to be righted, but one of the first 
 steps will be taken toward securing peace in 
 the industrial world when the liquor shop 
 is closed and the laboring man spends 
 his leisure hours with his wife and chil- 
 dren, and saves a part of his wages. The 
 vital difference to-day is not between the 
 man who receives high wages and the man 
 who is paid too little, but between the man 
 who has earned his money and laid it up,
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 in savings banks or a home, and the man 
 who has earned his money and might have 
 laid it up, but chose to spend it for 
 whisky and tobacco. 
 
 In the face of these things, it is not to 
 be wondered at that this problem looms 
 up so big before the eyes of philanthro- 
 pists and social reformers, that they often 
 lose sight of other questions and their 
 ardor for the abolition of the whiskey 
 traffic becomes fanatical. 
 
 Lord Wolseley did not speak too 
 strongly in his famous address to the 
 Soldiers' Good Templars' Lodge in Bel- 
 fast garrison: "There are yet some great 
 battles to be fought, some great enemies 
 to be encountered, by the United King- 
 dom, but the most pressing enemy is 
 drink. It kills more than all our newest 
 weapons of warfare, and not only destroys 
 the body, but the mind and soul." 
 132
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 But the most discouraging thing about 
 the problem is the seemingly utter inabil- 
 ity of the students of it to agree on a cure 
 for the trouble. It is the most fruitful of 
 all themes for a newspaper symposium, 
 for every writer differs from every other, 
 and the whole has a kaleidoscopic variety 
 that dazzles the vision and defies classifi- 
 cation. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 The history of the temperance ques- 
 tion, like the history of all other progress 
 which man has made, shows a series of 
 blunders and corrections, a process of edu- 
 cation through experience. 
 
 When the evil of intemperance first 
 began to be felt, the watchword of 
 Christian men was moderation. Drunken- 
 ness Is disgraceful. Be able to walk to 
 bed on your own legs and keep yourself 
 out of the gutter. It brought a great 
 133
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 advance on the disgraceful order of glut- 
 tonness and wine-bibbing which preceded 
 it, but it did not touch the root of the 
 evil. The traveling preacher still carried 
 his bottle in his saddle bags, the children 
 of the household got their first lessons in 
 drunkenness from the bottom of their 
 father's mint-julep glass, and the great 
 army of hopeless drunkards continued to 
 be constantly recruited from the ranks of 
 the moderate drinkers. 
 
 Then followed the noble crusade of the 
 teetotalers. Moderate drinking could 
 never cure the evil, for few men were able 
 to preserve the moderation; so they went 
 at the awful curse with moral suasion and 
 the pledge of total abstinence. It was a 
 day of noble service and grand eloquence, 
 one of the great periods in our nation's 
 history. Such men as John B. Gough 
 brought the pledge to the front and made 
 
 134
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 the welkin ring with the manly word of 
 the apostle, "If meat make my brother to 
 offend, I will eat no meat while the world 
 stands." But even the moral suasion of 
 a torn and bleeding world, pictured in the 
 moving eloquence of the world's most 
 gifted orators, and accompanied with the 
 plaintive cries of broken-hearted wives 
 and starving children and wrecked 
 manhood, failed to uproot the curse. 
 It put on the brakes, but it could 
 not throw the demon of destruction 
 from the track. Topers signed the 
 pledge, and many of them sacredly kept 
 it, but, as some one put it, "Toper facto- 
 ries still prospered." The reformers 
 spent their time in tossing life-preservers 
 to the drowning victims of intemperance, 
 but the dram shops, entrenched further 
 up the river behind the earth-works of 
 civil protection, were throwing in fresh 
 
 135
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 victims faster than the reformers could 
 rescue them. 
 
 Then came the important step of re- 
 pressive legislation, and the friends of 
 temperance set about securing the enact- 
 ment of laws which would make it pos- 
 sible to abolish the manufacture and sale 
 of Liquor. The Liquor interests met 
 this with the cry, "You cannot make 
 people moral by law," and fought the 
 legislation as an infraction of the con- 
 stitution. The friends of temperance 
 answered, "You can protect society by 
 law," and their victory in the civil courts 
 established the constitutionality of a law 
 which gave the community itself the right 
 to say whether Liquor should be sold in it. 
 So the principle of prohibition, however 
 men regarded its practicability, gained its 
 right to existence both in the court of 
 public opinion and before the civil court. 
 136
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 Then came the grreatest blunder, 
 perhaps, which the friends of temperance 
 ever made, the identification of the 
 principle of extermination with a political 
 party. It was a very natural blunder, but 
 it was no less fatal, handicapping the solu- 
 tion of this question with a multitude of 
 other questions about which men will al- 
 ways differ, from protective tariff and 
 female suffrage to questions of currency, 
 and taking up the cudgel against the In- 
 dividual's innate devotion to his political 
 party. Since that ill-fated hour, the cause 
 of righteousness against the Liquor traffic 
 has steadily lost ground; and to-day it is 
 the firm conviction of the average Chris- 
 tian man that the work of routing the 
 Liquor traffic through the organization 
 known as the "Prohibition Party" is as 
 hopeless as battering down Gibraltar with 
 a child's toy pistol. 
 
 137
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 SOME PROPOSED REMEDIES 
 
 Keeping this history in mind, let us 
 consider some of the remedies which are 
 proposed. 
 
 PROHIBITION 
 
 I. The first, and the most natural 
 answer, is Prohibition. If Liquor brings 
 such a brood of curses to our land, let us 
 cast it out. It may be useful in the arts, 
 good for medicine, and may be safely used 
 by many in moderation. But if it curses 
 our land thus, we pay too highly for it. 
 Abolish both its sale and manufacture. 
 
 This is the position of a majority of the 
 voters in some of our states, and so we 
 have seen for over a quarter of a century 
 State Prohibition on trial. The result, 
 though stoutly defended by many of the 
 friends of temperance, has not been a 
 marked success. The sentiment has never 
 been so overwhelmingly in favor of the law 
 138
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 and so permeative of the whole state, as to 
 make the law thoroughly operative. The 
 traveller in any prohibition state who 
 wants whiskey boasts that he can get it; 
 and the evasions of the law are winked at 
 by even a large class of those who are not 
 consumers of whiskey. Prohibition can 
 never be a success in a state, or in any 
 large territory, until public sentiment is 
 overwhelmingly and ardently in favor 
 of it. The history of the movement does 
 not show that such has been the case in 
 our country. This weakness of public 
 sentiment cannot be charged, it seems, to 
 either ignorance or depravity, but to a 
 feeling that the principle of prohibition is 
 not in accord with the spirit of Christian 
 civilization. Character must be built up 
 through the exercise of free choice; and to 
 get a man to do right, in this or any other 
 matter, because of external necessity, be- 
 
 139
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 cause a power outside of him takes away 
 even the opportunity of doing wrong, 
 while needful in the training of children, 
 can never be looked on as the ideal condi- 
 tions for producing a sturdy manhood. 
 Righteousness is this much stronger than 
 innocence. The individual is never safe 
 till the innocence of childhood has devel- 
 oped into the righteous character of 
 mature life, and this comes to the sons of 
 men, as it came to the Son of Man, in 
 that severe school of choice which we call 
 temptation. 
 
 If it be argued that the very need of 
 our nation is something to protect our 
 children from the fascinations of the 
 saloon, and something that will remove 
 temptation from the way of those who 
 though of maturer years are yet so weak 
 that it is the duty of the stronger to see 
 that they are not tempted, it may be 
 140
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 answered that this may be found in some 
 method more feasible and successful than 
 the past has shown State Prohibition to be. 
 
 HIGH LICENSE 
 
 Another solution which is in great favor 
 with the rank and file to-day is High 
 License,especially when this is accompanied 
 with legislation which limits the saloon to 
 a certain number of inhabitants. With- 
 out doubt "High License" has a number of 
 commendable features. A model law of 
 this kind was enacted twenty years ago in 
 the state of Illinois, and the betterment 
 which it brought to that state has caused 
 the enactment of the same or a similar law 
 in Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, 
 Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Texas, 
 Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, 
 New York, Massachusetts and New 
 Jersey. What these commendable fea- 
 tures are may be seen in a recent article 
 141
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 by William H. Harper, author of the 
 lUinois High License Law. He claims 
 that this twenty years* test of the law 
 shows the following results: 
 
 "Saved the city of Chicago from bank- 
 ruptcy. 
 
 "Added nearly $50,000,000 to the 
 treasury funds of Chicago. 
 
 "Collected over $100,000,000 from the 
 saloons to pave, light, police, and improve 
 Chicago and other Illinois cities and 
 towns. 
 
 " Drove thousands of the worst saloons 
 in the state out of business. 
 
 " Killed the saloon question as a politi- 
 cal issue." 
 
 These results are of two kinds, financial 
 and political. If the saloon has been 
 killed in Chicago, or elsewhere in the 
 United States, as a political issue, it 
 certainly is a lively corpse. 
 142
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 As to the financial side of the results, 
 the law, which permits any community to 
 fix the price of a license as high as it sees 
 fit (it was raised in Chicago from ^52 to 
 I500 per year), naturally had the effect of 
 reducing the number of saloons and of in- 
 creasing the city's income from licenses; 
 but over against the 1 5 2,000,000 which 
 the saloon has brought into the city's 
 treasury, we must put the 1 50,000,000 
 which the city has spent on its police, and 
 the even larger amount which it has spent 
 on its criminal courts and jails; for we 
 must not forget that statistics show that 
 ninety-two per cent of our crime is the 
 direct result of intoxicating liquors. High 
 License and the restriction of the number 
 of saloons is far ahead of low license, but 
 it is only mildly repressive at best, and, 
 as Mr. Harper boasts, gives the Liquor 
 business a sort of semi-respectability. 
 H3
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 That it has to any extent "solved the 
 Liquor problem," either in Chicago or in 
 any other place that has tried it, not even 
 its most partisan advocate would dare to 
 claim. As a repressive or palliative 
 measure, it cannot be compared with Pro- 
 hibition even in those states which have 
 most winked at the law's infraction. 
 
 FREE WHISKEY 
 
 At the other extreme from high license 
 is "Free Whiskey." Remove all tax on 
 its manufacture and all restrictions as to 
 its sale, make whiskey as free as water, 
 and you have done the most that can be 
 done, it is argued, to rob it of its baneful 
 influence. The prohibitory measures with 
 which its manufacture and sale are sur- 
 rounded only add to its fascination, 
 especially to that outlawed class of our 
 social order with whom its use becomes 
 most pernicious. Take the money out of 
 144
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 it, and you have removed all inducement 
 for men to traffic in it; and, gradually, it 
 will take its place with coffee or morphine 
 on the shelf of grocer and druggist, and 
 the excesses of its use will disappear. 
 What "Free Whiskey" would mean may 
 be seen in the alarming tendency to 
 cocaine and morphine habits when the 
 sale of these drugs is unrestricted. The 
 same thing which makes us cage lions, 
 and keep razors and poisons out of the 
 reach of children and lunatics, warns us 
 to throw safeguards of some kind about 
 the manufacture and sale of Liquors. 
 
 LOCAL OPTION 
 
 One of the most popular remedies, and 
 one of the most effective in certain local- 
 ities, is Local Option. It is prohibition' 
 in a small territory. A precinct, township, 
 county or town, or even part of a great 
 city, is given the right to say by a major- 
 J 145
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 ity vote whether or not Liquor shall be sold 
 there. The effectiveness of this, which is 
 due to the smaller territory covered, 
 making it possible not only to have a 
 sentiment overwhelmingly in favor of the 
 law, but to detect, through individual 
 alertness of the citizens themselves even 
 more than by paid police, attempted 
 infraction of the law, has given it wide 
 commendation. While the method has 
 been a failure in many small towns, due 
 to weakness of sentiment in its favor, it 
 has been a pronounced success in rural 
 districts and even in residence sections of 
 large cities. A notable example of the 
 latter is to be found in Hyde Park, a 
 favorite residence section now in the 
 heart of Chicago, and covering a thickly 
 populated area, about three miles long 
 and one mile wide, where the prohibition 
 of the sale of Liquor is effectively enforced. 
 146
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 Local option has made rapid headway of 
 late in the South. One hundred and 
 thirty counties in Texas have lately voted 
 in favor of total prohibition, and fifty-nine 
 for partial prohibition, leaving only fifty- 
 seven counties in the state where Liquor 
 is sold withovit restriction. In Tennes- 
 see, out of 5,500 cities and towns, only 
 eight have the unrestricted sale of Liquor. 
 In Virginia, Richmond and Norfolk are 
 the only important cities without prohi- 
 bition. In Georgia, one hundred and 
 three out of one hundred and thirty-seven 
 counties are prohibition. The move- 
 ment is also sweeping over North Carolina. 
 So rapidly has local option spread over 
 the South that to-day it is claimed there 
 are more saloons in the one state of New 
 York than in all the states south of 
 the Ohio river, including Arkansas and 
 Louisiana, the figures being thirty-four 
 H7
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 thousand as against twenty-seven thou- 
 sand. 
 
 The significance of this is unmistak- 
 able. It shows the success of local op- 
 tion, or of prohibition for small sections of 
 territory, for the township and the small 
 town. It is the ideal and the only way 
 in which to make an effective prohibition 
 state; capture the territory first by small 
 parcels through the use of local option. 
 
 LOCAL OPTION FAILS IN THE CITY 
 
 But what shall be done in those large 
 towns and in our great cities like New 
 York and Chicago and Philadelphia and 
 St. Louis, where local option has been an 
 utter failure, where the population have 
 always had Liquor shops and are deter- 
 mined, whatever laws may be enacted by 
 the state legislature, still to have them? 
 We attempt the creation of a temperance 
 sentiment in vain, for the population is in 
 148
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 most cases too shifting, or, because of its 
 foreign character, too isolated, to allow 
 the influence to be exerted. 
 
 STATE CONTROL 
 
 The answer is to be found in state con- 
 trol^ and the details of the method are to 
 be had in a combination of the Gothen- 
 burg system, now working so effectively 
 in Norway and Sweden, and the Dispen- 
 sary Law of South Carolina. 
 
 The Gothenburg system may be briefly 
 described thus: 
 
 A company of philanthropic persons, 
 who are the friends of temperance, is 
 given a monopoly of the Liquor business 
 in the municipality adopting the system. 
 It pays for license double the amount 
 paid by individual saloon keepers form- 
 erly, and takes out not more than one 
 license to every two thousand people (the 
 limitation at present, in Massachusetts, 
 . H9
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 for example, is one to five hundred in 
 Boston and one to one thousand else- 
 where). This company receives as profits 
 only four per cent, on the money actually 
 invested. All additional profits are to be 
 applied to objects of public utility, 
 libraries, reading and smoking and loung- 
 ing rooms, social halls where Liquor is 
 not sold, and the like. 
 
 This company's object shall be to sell 
 as little Liquor as possible, operating 
 under legislation which limits the hours, 
 prevents sale to minors and drunkards, 
 allows no Liquor to be drunk on the 
 premises, and sells only the purest of 
 Liquors. 
 
 This law which began operation in 
 Sweden in 1865, though handicapped by 
 the fact that there were many inn-keepers 
 through the country who possessed irre- 
 vocable life-tenure licenses, and also that 
 150
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 the law excepted wine, beer and ale from 
 its operation, wrought a revolution in that 
 land in the amount of drunkenness, and is 
 to-day operating as an untold blessing to 
 a land which forty years ago rivalled even 
 Belgium in its drunkenness. Learning from 
 their experience, the friends of the system 
 are extending its scope to include wine, 
 beer and ale, in which an enormous 
 trade has sprung up, and to which most 
 of the present drunkenness in the land is 
 attributed. When these milder liquors 
 are put under control of the "Samlags," 
 the system will multiply in effectiveness. 
 
 THE DISPENSARY SYSTEM 
 
 To not a few of the good people of our 
 country. South Carolina is not regarded 
 as the best of states to foster good govern- 
 ment; but she is without doubt setting the 
 world a splendid object lesson in her 
 Dispensary System. The adoption of it 
 151
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 was a great surprise to the people them- 
 selves, for it was put up merely as a bait 
 by one of the political parties, to catch 
 the temperance vote. 
 
 The system may be briefly described as 
 follows: 
 
 The state itself takes entire control of 
 all whiskey sold in it. This control may 
 also be extended to the manufacture of 
 Liquors. The General Assembly of the 
 State, in joint session, elects a Board of 
 Directors, consisting of three members, 
 who must be of "good moral character, 
 not addicted to the use of intoxicating 
 Liquors as a beverage," who take entire 
 control of the sale of Liquor within the 
 state. A Dispensary Commissioner, with 
 a salary of three thousand dollars a year, 
 is elected in the same manner, as their 
 executive officer. The latter is removable 
 for cause by the Governor, whose reasons 
 152
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 for removal, however, are subject to review 
 by the General Assembly. A dispensary 
 for the sale of Liquor In any community 
 can be had by one-fourth of the qualified 
 voters petitioning for it and the casting of 
 a majority of the votes in favor of it at a 
 special election which this petition causes 
 to be called. The dispensaries are open 
 only from sunrise to sunset. The officer 
 in charge of it is placed under bond not 
 to sell out of hours, not to allow Liquor 
 to be consumed on the premises, not to 
 sell to minors nor drunkards, and for sale 
 to the latter his bondsmen are liable for 
 damages. All Liquors are sold only in 
 sealed packages, and must bear the stamp 
 of the state chemist, who guarantees their 
 purity. Each purchaser must sign an 
 application for the Liquors which he 
 purchases, and this is filed by the officer 
 in charge of the Dispensary. The profits 
 153
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 of the business, of course, all go into the 
 state treasury, to be used for various 
 purposes. Fraudulent representations to 
 obtain Liquor are punishable with heavy 
 fines or imprisonment. The operation of 
 this law has revolutionized the Liquor 
 business in South Carolina, though its in- 
 ception aroused such violent opposition 
 from the saloon keepers as to bring about 
 for a time almost a civil war. 
 
 The following letter to the writer speaks 
 for itself: 
 
 My Dear Sir: 
 
 Your communication, addressed to 
 Hon. B. R. Tillman, has been referred to 
 me for reply. 
 
 I take pleasure in mailing to you under 
 separate cover a copy of our Dispensary 
 Law, and also a copy of our last Annual 
 Report just issued. 
 
 '54
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 In addition, I beg to say that the Dis- 
 pensary System is the only solution of the 
 Liquor problem. We have tried it and 
 it has proven successful in our state. 
 You can scarcely see a drunken man at 
 anytime, and it is steadily growing in 
 favor, even with our bitterest enemies. 
 We are very proud of our great institution^ 
 and hope to see other states follow, or at 
 least introduce such a system. 
 
 Hoping that the literature sent will 
 prove interesting to you, I am, 
 (Diet.) Yours very truly, 
 
 (Copy) H. H. Crum. 
 
 Commissioner. 
 
 THE EVILS OF THE SALOON 
 
 The Liquor business, as conducted at 
 present, has three features which the solu- 
 tion of our problem must eliminate. 
 
 I. The first of these is the element of 
 »55
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 private profit. Men go into the Liquor 
 business, not because of their innate 
 devilish propensities, nor because they 
 want to injure their fellowmen. Many 
 saloon-keepers, the writer can say from 
 personal acquaintance, are men of good 
 moral habits and upright lives in other 
 respects, and who, if engaged in some 
 other business, would be looked on as 
 valuable members of the community. 
 Men go into the ostracized business be- 
 cause of the money there is to be made in 
 it. Think of the enormous drink bill of 
 our nation, nearly one and one-quarter 
 billions of dollars, and remember that the 
 profits shared by manufacturer, jobber and 
 retail saloon-keeper are from three hun- 
 dred to eight hundred per cent., and we 
 can see why brewers and distillers become 
 so wealthy, and why thrifty, industrious 
 saloon-keepers become large property 
 156
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 holders. The laboring men of the five 
 leading nations of the world, as we have 
 already noticed, pay to the saloon keepers 
 for Liquors three-fifths as much as they pay 
 to their landlords for house-rent. 
 
 1. The second feature is to be found 
 in the present accompaniments of its sale. 
 These persuade men to increased con- 
 sumption, and make the saloon both the 
 rendezvous and promoter of all forms of 
 vice. 
 
 The social habit, by which each man 
 of, perhaps, a dozen who line up before 
 the bar for drinks, must set up drinks for 
 all the rest before they leave the bar, 
 causes a man to drink from two to twelve 
 times as much as he would otherwise. 
 
 The night saloon is the gathering place 
 for the vicious of all kinds. The gam- 
 blers are always over or behind or nearby 
 a saloon. The thugs who live by high- 
 »57
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 way robbery and assassination make it 
 their meeting place. It is the spot where 
 the bedizened courtezan entraps the un- 
 wary, and most of the prostitutes of every 
 city begin their downward career in some 
 saloon-keeper's dance hall or private wine- 
 room. 
 
 3. The third feature is to be found in 
 its power in politics. Many of the lead- 
 ing politicians in any city or community 
 at present are personally interested, in 
 some way or other, in the Liquor busi- 
 ness. Saloon-keepers are never in the 
 majority, in even the worst of districts, 
 but they often have such a large following 
 as to dictate both the nominations of a 
 caucus and the enactments of a legislature. 
 Even the enforcement of enacted legisla- 
 tion is often a matter of their dictation. 
 This is what Lord Rosebery referred to 
 in his statement already quoted, "If the 
 is8
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 nation does not soon control the Liquor 
 traffic, the Liquor traffic will control the 
 nation." The fact is the saloon has so 
 largely debauched the civic conscience of a 
 great many of our city population that 
 they expect it to take a leading part in 
 politics. 
 
 A moment's consideration will show 
 that the solution, to any satisfactory extent, 
 of the Liquor problem must take away 
 from the business these three features. It 
 must take private profit out of it, so men 
 will no longer have inducement to enlarge 
 the sales and consumption of it. It must 
 rob it of its power for social evil, both as 
 to the "treating" habit and as the promo- 
 ter of vice. It must destroy the Liquor 
 interest as a political power. 
 
 THE CURE AT WORK 
 
 Consider, then, how a combination of 
 the Dispensary System and the Gothen- 
 159
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 burg System may accomplish these re- 
 sults. 
 
 I. State control entirely eliminates the 
 element of private profit. The price of 
 Liquor may be reduced so as to bring 
 from its sale only such profit as any other 
 goods bring, or the price may be kept as 
 high as now. In either case, the dispen- 
 sary ofiicer is on a salary. No profit 
 goes to any individual, for all of it is ex- 
 pended on works of public philanthropy. 
 There is absolutely no inducement what- 
 ever to the seller of it to make large sales. 
 The license of the saloon has just the op- 
 posite effect. The saloon-keeper not only 
 has the inducement of any other merchant 
 to sell large quantities, but we lay on him 
 the license tax and say, "you must sell 
 enough to pay that, too. Adulterate your 
 Liquors as much as you see fit, and get 
 all the profit you can, but you must pay 
 1 60
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 us our license fees as well as pay for your 
 goods and your running expenses." No 
 wonder that under the present system, we 
 find it difficult to prevent sale to minors 
 and drunkards, and to make the saloons 
 close at night, for every dealer is under 
 pressure to sell all he can and at big 
 profit. By the state system the profits of 
 the business can be used for all kinds of 
 public improvements. "Make the busi- 
 ness pay its own way," of course; but if 
 the profits are all turned into the state 
 treasury, hospitals will be built from them, 
 public libraries and reading rooms estab- 
 lished, social-halls and play grounds and 
 parks can be paid for with what now goes 
 to strengthen the worst foe that our 
 nation has to conquer, the vicious Liquor 
 power. 
 
 2. State control robs the liquor business 
 of its social attractions. No Liquor can be 
 K i6i
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 drunk on the premises. That sweeps 
 away the "treating" habit with one 
 stroke. No side-rooms or back-rooms 
 or upper-rooms or back-doors are al- 
 lowed. No loafing about the Dispensary 
 is permissible, and the saloon closes from 
 sundown to sunrise. What a revolution 
 it will work when the city thug has no 
 saloon in which to take refuge; when the 
 courtesan has no dance-hall, whose at- 
 mosphere is foul with liquor and tobacco, 
 in which to debauch the youth; when the 
 sale of Liquor is as completely divorced 
 from all forms of vice, as the purchase of 
 a dozen of oranges now is at a fruit stand. 
 No screens are before the windows and 
 doors, and the Liquors sold are pure 
 Liquors, examined and sealed by the state 
 chemist. 
 
 3. And no less effectively does state 
 control remove the Liquor business from
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 politics. The control of the business 
 throughout the state is in the hands of 
 three men who must be of good "moral 
 character, not addicted to the use of intox- 
 icating liquors as a beverage." These 
 men might well be appointed or elected 
 by the judges of our Supreme Court, 
 guaranteeing their personal character be- 
 yond doubt. How completely the system 
 does destroy the political influence of the 
 Liquor interests may be seen in its prac- 
 tical working in South Carolina. As a 
 political factor it has simply been buried. 
 No longer does the Liquor magnate step 
 in on a political caucus and dictate the 
 nomination and platform. State control 
 has left him without a job, and he no 
 longer chirps.^ 
 
 ^ It is claimed that while the saloon-keeper is no longer a con- 
 trolling factor in politics in South Carolina, the Dispensary System 
 is " full of politics." If this is the case, it is due to the fact that 
 the Governor appoints the Dispensary Commission. Make this 
 commission appointable by the Supreme Court and this defect will 
 be removed. 
 
 163
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE SCHEME 
 
 Can the scheme be put into execution? 
 Without any doubt. No scheme more 
 workable was ever invented. The most 
 commendable thing about it is that it is a 
 practicable measure. It is not ideal. The 
 ideal condition for any state is the com- 
 plete extermination of the Liquor busi- 
 ness. This is a scheme to use where that 
 cannot at present be accomplished. 
 
 The operation of this system of state 
 control can be secured the moment we 
 unite on it. The Liquor interests are not 
 in the majority. Those who would do 
 away with it could outvote them at the 
 polls in any county in our land, and they 
 will do it as soon as they agree on some 
 practicable scheme. It is a noteworthy 
 fact that the bitterest opposition to state 
 control has come from two extremes, from 
 the Liquor men, on the one hand, who 
 164
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 would be put out of business, and the ex- 
 treme temperance party, on the other 
 hand, who will have nothing to do with 
 any palliative legislation that does not 
 utterly prohibit the sale of Liquor in any 
 form. So the man with a puritan con- 
 science, who ought to be the back bone of 
 every movement for man's moral and 
 religious betterment, because he could not 
 get his complete ideal all at once, has 
 been joining hands with his own worst foe 
 to make stronger the shackles of our 
 nation's worst slavery to vice. To them 
 especially, let this word be addressed. Be- 
 fore you, for the great cities and towns of 
 our land, are these two schemes, for the 
 control of the Liquor business, the Saloon 
 and the Dispensary. Ponder the two. 
 Neither is your ideal; but which is nearest 
 to it? Consider the present destructive 
 work of the saloon and how your refusal 
 165
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 to unite with the great masses of the 
 pubHc on what they consider a practicable 
 scheme is fastening the saloon on us more 
 firmly and aggravating each day its vicious 
 influences, and ponder the call to join 
 your hands here to replace the saloon with 
 the Dispensary. We have had enough of 
 suffering from the stubbornness of conflict- 
 ing theories. Plere is one already at 
 work, a vast improvement over anything 
 put at work elsewhere. It is high time 
 for the idealist and the opportunist to join 
 hands here. As heaven cannot be gained 
 at a single leap, so ideal conditions in our 
 social order cannot be realized in a day. 
 But here opens a path to the betterment 
 of present conditions; and only as we live 
 up to our present light have we the right 
 to expect that we shall ever realize our 
 ideal, a state free from crime, a home free 
 from poverty, a people free from vice. 
 1 66
 
 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 
 
 The day when we exchange the Saloon for 
 the Dispensary will lift us to another hill- 
 top in this climb. 
 
 167
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT
 
 'The growth of the great city is the phe- 
 nomenon of history^ and its redemption will 
 usher in the Kingdom of God. Its gates to- 
 day are ruled by prejudice and greed, and 
 blackened with the smoke of toil and themarks 
 of vice; but they will one day change to 
 swinging pearls that bar no comer but he 
 who works abomination and makes a lie. Its 
 streets to-day are full of deceit and violence 
 and the slaughtered souls of men ; but one 
 day they will change to gold^ and be crowded 
 with the glory and honor of the nations. 
 
 Who will be one of the ^^ righteous" men, 
 that will save the city?
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE CITY 
 
 The growth of the modern city has 
 been one of the most striking things about 
 the past century. The United States one 
 hundred years ago had only six cities of 
 eight thousand inhabitants and over. Now 
 it has over five hundred of that size, and 
 they contain from one-fourth to one-third 
 of our entire population. 
 
 It took New York one hundred and 
 seventy-five years, from its founding in 
 1 6 14, to gain thirty-three thousand in- 
 habitants, but in the twenty years follow- 
 ing 1870, it gained nearly one million; and 
 171
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 the growth of Chicago and New York in 
 population during the past thirty years has 
 been one of the wonders of human history. 
 We are accustomed to account for this 
 rapid growth of our large cities by the for- 
 eign immigration which has poured into 
 them from the old world. This tide has 
 been enormous, and the foreign-born or 
 children of foreign-born are the big ma- 
 jority in our largest cities. But the question 
 would still remain, even were the growth 
 due to this, why have these immigrants 
 flocked to the cities instead of settling on 
 the rich farming land that was open to them 
 at such low prices or even to be worked 
 on shares? The fact is, this is not the 
 cause of the growth, for this marvelous in- 
 crease is not confined to the cities of the 
 New World. While the population of 
 France as a whole shows signs of decrease, 
 Paris is four times as large as it was in 
 172
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 1800 and during the past ten years has 
 grown eighteen per cent. London is 
 probably two thousand years old, yet four- 
 fifths of its growth took place in the nine- 
 teenth century, and it has grown twenty 
 per cent, in the past ten years. St. Peters- 
 burg has nearly trebled its population in 
 the last seventy-five years, and Berlin for 
 the sixty years preceding 1 900 outstripped 
 the growth of New York. Odessa is one 
 thousand years old, but nineteen-twentieths 
 of its population was gained during the 
 past century, and the population of Cal- 
 cutta has increased nearly five hundred 
 per cent, in the past seventy-five years. 
 
 The following table of statistics shows 
 the growth in population of the leading 
 
 cities of the world from 1890 to 1900: 
 
 1890 1900 
 
 Chicago 1, 191,922 i>838,735 
 
 New York proper 1,441,216 1,850,093 
 
 Greater New York 2,799,242 3j 8 34,999 
 
 ^73
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 1890 1900 
 
 Philadelphia 1,005,277 1,369,632 
 
 St. Petersburg 954,400(1897) 1,132,667 
 
 Vienna (1894) 1,480,572 (1899) 1,639,811 
 
 Berlin (1893) 1,640,994 1,884,157 
 
 Paris (1896) 3,308,007 3>599.99i 
 
 London (1891) 5,663,806 6,652,145 
 
 The rate of increase for the decade has 
 been for London twenty per cent. ; Greater 
 New York, thirty-seven per cent.; Paris, 
 eighteen per cent.; Berlin, twelve per cent.; 
 Philadelphia, twenty-three per cent.; St. 
 Petersburg, fifteen and five-tenths per 
 cent.; Vienna, eleven per cent.; and Chi- 
 cago, fifty-four per cent. The population 
 of Chicago is growing twice as rapidly as 
 that of any city in the world, except Greater 
 New York. 
 
 THE CAUSES OF THE CITY 
 
 The growth of the modern city is not 
 due to foreign immigration, but, as has 
 been pointed out by Josiah Strong and 
 
 174
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 other writers on this subject, to causes that 
 are rooted in the very heart of our mod- 
 ern civiHzation. 
 
 The first of these is the application of 
 machinery to agriculture. This has made 
 it possible for one man to do the work on 
 a farm which once taxed the energies of 
 four men. The consequence is that three 
 out of every four boys who once remained 
 to work the farm now go to the city to find 
 a means of livelihood. 
 
 The second is the application of ma- 
 chinery to manufacturing. The shoes of 
 a community are no longer made by the 
 village shoemakers ; the enormous shoe 
 factories, massing thousands of operatives 
 and all kinds of improved machinery under 
 one roof, has left the village shoemaker 
 nothing but "mending" to do. The "fac- 
 tory" can make as good a product as 
 the individual and at far less cost, because 
 ^7S
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 of the massing of men and raw material at 
 one place, the improved machinery used, 
 and the large output which is handled. 
 
 Now, it is a remarkable fact that while 
 the application of machinery to agriculture 
 has decreased the number of people en- 
 gaged in it, the application of machinery 
 to manufacturing has enormously increased 
 the number engaged in it. But a moment's 
 consideration will show the reason for it. 
 There is a natural limit to the amount of 
 agricultural products which the nation can 
 consume, but there is no limit practically 
 to the number and variety of manufactured 
 articles which one may consume. Our 
 generation consumes no more food than 
 did our grandfathers, in many cases, be- 
 cause of differences of vocation and phys- 
 ical endowment, far less ; but a comparison 
 of the houses of the two generations, their 
 clothing, and the commodities of life with 
 176
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 which they surround themselves will show 
 a vast difference. Indeed, a German in- 
 vestigator of this subject has published 
 statistics which show that as a man increases 
 in wealth and culture of mind, the propor- 
 tion of his income which he spends on his 
 food decreases and that which he spends 
 on the furnishings of life, house, bric-a- 
 brac, furniture, jewelry, et cetera^ increases. 
 Then the application of machinery to man- 
 ufacturing has greatly decreased the cost of 
 manufactured products, and this always 
 stimulates consumption. 
 
 The third cause, without which neither 
 of these would have been effective, was 
 the application of steam and electricity to 
 transportation. Only in this way was 
 it possible, not only to center workmen 
 and raw material on which to employ them 
 about one common plant, but also, what is 
 of more importance, to bring to the thou- 
 L 177
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 sands thus massed together the products 
 of farm and dairy for their subsistence. 
 The greatest factor in producing the mod- 
 ern city is, without doubt, the modern 
 railroad. Industrial centers are converg- 
 ing points of great trunk lines of railroad; 
 and the growth of a city has usually been 
 measured by the number and importance 
 of the transportation lines converging 
 there. 
 
 THE CITY HERE TO STAY" 
 
 These causes are plainly as permanent 
 as is our very civilization ; and being 
 caused by these things, the city is here to 
 stay. Whatever of evil or good the mod- 
 ern city has, it is not ephemeral. Its con- 
 gested life and bad sanitation, its hotbeds 
 of vice and its fields and forces of philan- 
 thropy and virtue, its industrial and social 
 disorders, are not things which the mere 
 process of time will remove. Time will 
 178
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 no more cure the evil influences of the city 
 than time will eradicate weeds and briars 
 from a field or drain a deadly marsh. The 
 city has come to stay ; and left to itself 
 it will become increasingly a hotbed of vice, 
 a breeder of moral and physical death. 
 
 THE MENACE OF TOMORROW 
 
 Still worse: unless the evils of the city 
 are speedily met in our land, not only will 
 they become more aggravated, but they 
 will bring under their baneful sweep the 
 control of the entire country. The in- 
 fluence of the city is already enormous ; 
 but it is little to-day compared with 
 what it may become. Our country is a 
 republic, which means not only that our 
 government is carried on through the 
 people's chosen representatives, but that 
 the majority of the voters determine who 
 these representatives shall be. To-day 
 our cities of eight thousand inhabitants 
 179
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 and over contain less than one-third of 
 our entire population. The inhabitants 
 of the smaller towns and the country are 
 in the majority. Our state legislatures 
 to-day can control our cities, direct munic- 
 ipal legislation, check extravagance, expose 
 corruption, uproot evil, transform the 
 entire government of a city.^ 
 
 But if the recent growth and movement 
 of our population city-ward continues till 
 1920, and there is every reason to suppose 
 it will, the cities of eight thousand and 
 over will then contain ten millions more 
 of people than the rest of the country. 
 The tables will then be reversed, and the 
 city's representatives in state legislatures, 
 notoriously the easiest to bribe, and the 
 poorest in legislative ability, will dictate 
 the legislation of the entire state. And 
 the same will be true in the United States 
 
 ^As the legislature of Pennsylvania recently did in the city of 
 Pittsburg. 
 
 180
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 Congress. The difficulty of the city 
 problem under that condition will almost 
 defy solution. In view of this, the 
 problem of the city is one which calls for 
 speedy and radical action. 
 
 WHAT IS THE "cITY" PROBLEM? 
 
 But let us understand what we mean by 
 "the problem of the city." The city is 
 the industrial center today, but the indus- 
 trial problem has its separate consideration 
 under the head of the "Labor Problem." 
 The city is especially the home of the 
 saloon, but we consider that under the 
 "Liquor Problem". In fact, because life 
 there is at its intensest, the city has pre- 
 eminently all the problems connected with 
 our twentieth century civilization. But 
 the problem of the city, as it is to be 
 discussed here, is the problem of city 
 government. Not only is it impossible to 
 make any headway in working out a solu-
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 tion of the many other problems of the 
 city till we have worked out this one; but 
 the working out of this will make com- 
 paratively easy the solution of the rest. 
 The housing problem, urban transporta- 
 tion, the social evil, gambling and high- 
 way robbery, pure food, the smoke 
 nuisance, the water supply, — the proper 
 handling of all these and their like hangs 
 on the question of municipal government. 
 Our country has had two eminent 
 foreigners visit it and write upon its insti- 
 tutions works that have become classics 
 in our study of government. One of 
 them was a Frenchman and the other an 
 Englisman. It is a fact for us to ponder 
 that both M. de Tocqueville, who visited 
 our country a hundred years ago, and Mr. 
 James Bryce, M. P., who has studied 
 our country and written one of the finest 
 commentaries extant on our constitution, 
 182
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 both look on the American city as the 
 greatest peril to the American republic. 
 Let us neither forget nor ignore the fact 
 that the municipal government of our 
 large cities is notoriously the weakest spot 
 and greatest menace in our national life. 
 No serious minded lover of his country 
 will shut his eyes to the danger-signals. 
 
 THE CITY AS IT IS 
 
 The present conditions are not only a 
 menace; in many cases they are a deep 
 disgrace. It is very easy for club-mem- 
 bers to gather around a banquet table, 
 and amid the clink of glasses and the 
 gurgle of champagne, let city officials per- 
 suade them that there is nothing to be 
 wrought up over; but a glance at the 
 daily the next morning, and the testimony 
 of the all night reporter, and the investi- 
 gations of a conscientious prosecutor, tell 
 a very different story. 
 183
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 Each city has its own disgrace. St. 
 Louis has her gang of boodlers and her 
 "prominent citizens" directing her great 
 corporations who are glad to make use of 
 them. New York has her Tammany, 
 caged for a season, only to be let loose 
 when the tiger's appetite has been whetted 
 by a short retirement. Chicago's scepter 
 is so completely wielded by the brewers 
 and saloon-keepers, that it is the favored 
 city of the thug and thief and gambler, a 
 "wide-open" town because it has a Mayor 
 who listens to the crowd that makes the 
 loudest clamor. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF GOOD GOVERNMENT 
 
 First of all, then, let us understand ex- 
 actly the problem that is before us. Our 
 task is to wrest the control of the city 
 from the saloon-keeper and boodler, from 
 the man who is in politics for the money 
 he can get out of it; and place at its head 
 184
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 the best type of our citizenship, who will 
 administer its affairs economically and 
 honestly, as a purely business concern, 
 for the common welfare of all its people. 
 
 THE QUESTION OF THE HOUR 
 
 How can this be done? The blindest 
 of us must see that the great city in our 
 country to-day is full of violence and 
 strife. That day and night thug and thief 
 go about it, making often times its police, 
 who should be its wall of defence, their 
 helpers in crime and the sharers of their 
 booty. Wickedness is in the midst of it, 
 and deceit and guile depart not from its 
 streets.^ Even the most self-satisfied of 
 us must feel the need of a better order, 
 but how shall we get it? Who will bring 
 us into the strong city?^ 
 
 First of all, let a word be said about 
 how it will not come. It will not come 
 
 ' Cf. Psalm 55:9-11. 
 2Cf. Ps. 60:9. 
 
 185
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 by multiplying the number or increasing 
 the individual avoirdupois of our police 
 force. As crime and graft increase in a 
 great city, the first thought of its average 
 resident is that we need more policemen. 
 In times of extreme disorder, we turn to 
 the military. This is the method of a 
 monarchy, to quell disorder by military 
 force; but the effort to get a well-governed 
 city by the intimidating presence of the 
 military has always been futile, and it al- 
 ways will be. Though we multiplied the 
 number of our policemen till we could 
 even find one when we needed him, and 
 increased their individual bulk till each 
 was as big as Edward Martini,^ our effort 
 would be futile in securing a well gov- 
 erned city. The thing will not come 
 through dressing men in blue cloth and 
 
 'Chicago's famous big policeman, who died In 1902, and was 
 known as " The biggest policeman in the world." He weighed 
 about 400 pounds, and was nearly 6^ feet high, 
 
 186
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 brass buttons, and arming them with either 
 batons or "Winchester rifles. The larger 
 the number of poHcemen or miHtary that 
 a city must have to enforce law or keep 
 order, the poorer does it thereby confess 
 its government to be, and the less ability 
 does it show to govern itself. 
 
 Nor shall we get a well governed city 
 by tinkering with the city charter. Our 
 large cities have tried a division of power 
 between an upper and lower house and a 
 chief executive ; they have tried dividing it 
 between one house of aldermen and the 
 chief executive, and they have tried the 
 centralization of power in one man, the 
 mayor, and the results have all had one 
 striking and common characteristic — bad. 
 Whatever the form of the city charter, the 
 government of the city has speedily fallen 
 into the hands of the "old gang" or a new 
 gang as thoroughly depraved and more 
 187
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 keen witted; and the reign of vice and th.. 
 waste of the people's money, and the mis- 
 management of the city's pubHc utilities 
 have continued. The latest proposition is 
 to replace the present mayor and city 
 council with a body of three or five com- 
 missioners, elected by the people, or the 
 members of the supreme court, or ap- 
 pointed by the Governor of the State, and 
 give over the entire government of the 
 city into their hands. Undoubtedly the 
 best governed city in the United States is 
 governed in this way,^ and the experiment 
 as now being tried by Galveston, Texas, 
 gives great promise. But either this or 
 any other form of government which re- 
 lies upon the machinery itself to produce 
 good city government, will meet with fail- 
 ure. The best of guns will fall into the 
 
 ' The city of Washington, D. C, which is governed by the 
 District Commissioners, elected by the U. S. Senate. 
 
 i88
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 hands of poor marksmen, and the best of 
 city charters have a way of dove-tailing in 
 with the methods of the demagogue and the 
 boodler. 
 
 Nor will relief come through the en- 
 abling acts of increased legislation. Some 
 cities may need more liberal charters, but 
 increase of liberty often serves only to sup- 
 ply the needed rope with which the city 
 either hangs or binds to a worse slavery 
 the little minority of public-spirited men 
 who are laboring for better conditions. We 
 are spending much discussion these days 
 on public ownership and the referendum, 
 and the wisdom of giving cities absolute 
 self government. The ill or good in these 
 measures is dependent entirely on the 
 character of the city's population. Being 
 what it is to-day, the city could hardly 
 fall on a worse fate than to secure these 
 things. The population of the average 
 189
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 city is still a child in both wisdom of choice 
 and the exercise of self-control; and in 
 not a few cases vice, unmasked and hid- 
 eous, is one of the most influential forces 
 in shaping conduct. 
 
 THE NEED OF THE CITY 
 
 What can be done to save the munici- 
 pal government of our cities? What do 
 we need to do? 
 
 First, we need to divorce municipal 
 government from party politics, and treat 
 it as a purely business affair. 
 
 One of the most stupid and disastrous 
 blunders in our national history has been 
 the persistent alignment of the voters in 
 the city along party lines on purely 
 municipal questions. Why should party 
 poHtics have anything whatever to do 
 with our choice of municipal officials? 
 What has the tariff, or the gold standard 
 and free silver, or imperialism, or states 
 190
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 rights, or the income tax, to do with the 
 local government of a city ? 
 
 To maintain a public school system and 
 courts of justice, to provide an ample and 
 excellent water supply and a good light- 
 ing system, to give clean and well-paved 
 streets and the best of intra-rural transpor- 
 tation, to preserve law and order, for the 
 common good of all its people, — this is 
 the work of a municipal government. 
 What more should party politics have to 
 do with these things than with the man- 
 agement of your church or the domestic 
 affairs of your home? The conduct of a 
 city's government is a purely business 
 affair, and so we must build a strong and 
 efficient city government just as we build 
 up any other business. What difference 
 does it make to a corporation whether its 
 treasurer is a democrat or a republican, 
 provided he keeps his books accurately 
 191
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 and does not steal the company's money? 
 Party politics should have just as little to 
 do in deciding who shall be our mayor or 
 representative in the city council. 
 
 Our best city officials are always picked 
 business men. Our mayor should be 
 chosen, not for oratorical gifts, much less 
 for his political or social prominence, but 
 solely for his integrity of character and 
 business ability. The man who can effi- 
 ciently conduct the government of a great 
 city is not, as a rule, the professional man, 
 whether he be lawyer, teacher, or preacher; 
 but a practical business man, who can 
 master the intricate details of a great en- 
 terprise, and deal with actual conditions, 
 such a man as can conduct successfully a 
 great industrial concern or department 
 store. When we cease putting in our 
 municipal offices the leaders or tools of a 
 political party, and seek for our representa- 
 192
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 tives among the ranks of successful busi- 
 ness men, one mighty stride will have 
 been made towards a well governed city. 
 
 A CIVIC CONSCIENCE 
 
 In the second place, the redemption of 
 the city from bad government calls for the 
 creation in the individual citizen of a civic 
 conscience. That is something which 
 most "reputable" citizens of the average 
 city do not possess. We have a con- 
 science. We would not steal a horse, 
 some of us would not steal a railroad, and 
 some of us would not even beat our way 
 on the street car or tell a lie about our 
 tax assessment; but the moral perceptions 
 of most of us are very obtuse when it 
 comes to our civic duties. Even in so 
 important a matter as the choice of a 
 judiciary, the man who feels a real remorse 
 over his failure to vote at the primary 
 would be an attraction for a museum. It 
 M 193
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 is seldom the average citizen to-day seeks 
 any voice in choosing the candidates for 
 city offices, or is at any pains to acquaint 
 himself with their different characteristics 
 after they are nominated. In many cases, 
 the voter does not exercise his franchise at 
 all; and in many more he votes for the 
 candidates of whom some political ac- 
 quaintance or friend is an ardent supporter. 
 When corruption and mal-administration 
 come to light in the official career of the 
 successful candidate, this "reputable" 
 citizen grows eloquent in denouncing the 
 "corruption in politics" and the "rotten- 
 ness" at the City Hall, forgetting that 
 those conditions are largely due to the 
 neglect of him and his like to exercise an 
 intelligent franchise. 
 
 If the misgovernment of our American 
 cities is ever to end, this civic conscience 
 must be developed in our reputable 
 194
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 citizens. They must be brought to feel 
 a personal responsibility for any corrup- 
 tion or mismanagement in their city's 
 government; and that it is just as deep 
 a disgrace to have in their city council 
 such men as "Hinky-Dink" Kenna and 
 "Johnnie" Powers, and "Eddie" Novak 
 and "dear-midnight-of-love" Coughlan, 
 as to have them directors of the trust 
 company to whom they entrust their 
 estates for their children or trustees of the 
 church in which they worship God. The 
 redemption of our cities from misrule 
 waits for a generation of men whose civic 
 conscience will measure up to their civic 
 responsibilities. 
 
 In the third place, to rescue our cities 
 from misgovernment, we must determine 
 that the ideals which we seek to realize in 
 our municipal life shall rise above the 
 desires of the rabble. It is a common 
 195
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 thing to-day for the city executive to yield 
 to the people that make the most noise. 
 Indeed the mayor of one of the largest 
 cities in the United States has given this 
 out as his distinct policy. Great pride is 
 expressed by certain classes of men over 
 their city being a "cosmopolitan" city, 
 and with an air of much self-importance, 
 they announce that such a great city 
 should not be run along the narrow 
 policies of a provincial town. "We have 
 an enormous foreign population. They 
 come to us from all parts of the world, 
 and have not been accustomed to many of 
 our puritanical notions. It is the business 
 of the city officials to take this into 
 account and give to these elements of our 
 population the things to which they have 
 been accustomed." 
 
 The folly of this plea is self-evident, 
 but the force of it with the average city 
 196
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 official is as great as its folly; for the vote 
 of the most ignorant naturalized foreigner 
 counts as much for his election as that of 
 the most ardent supporter of American 
 institutions. It needs to be clearly under- 
 stood that the duty of any official in a 
 republic, whether he be city, state, or 
 national, is to give his constituency what 
 they ought to have, rather than what they 
 want; and his being in that official posi- 
 tion is due to the fact that he is better 
 able to decide what measures will make 
 for the public good than the people them- 
 selves in popular assembly would be able 
 to do. 
 
 It is the cry of the political demagogue 
 to "give the people what they want;" and 
 to allow in a city Sunday beer-gardens 
 and prize-fights, immoral street fairs and 
 gambling dives, opium joints and the all- 
 night saloon, to run a "wide open town," 
 197
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 such as New York always is under Tam- 
 many or as Chicago well nigh is under 
 Mayor Harrison, simply because the 
 people who are making the most 
 noise clamor for it, is pandering to 
 the base passions of the rabble instead 
 of striving for the high ideals of the best. 
 Just as we shall never get the ideal public 
 school till we cease taking our ideals from 
 the people that have fewest ideas; so we 
 shall never get a well governed city till 
 we cease taking our standards from the 
 people of lowest morals. It is not the 
 mission of the cities of America to repeat 
 the blunders and perpetuate the immoral- 
 ities and vices of the cities of the old 
 world. It is the mission of the American 
 city to realize the American ideal. The 
 highest civil authority in our land has 
 declared that by our very constitution 
 this is a Christian nation, and every 
 198
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 citizen has a right to demand that the 
 officials of his city conduct its affairs on 
 Christian principles. Not what the rabble 
 wants, but what the people need should 
 be the aim of every government. 
 
 "the men behind the guns" 
 Last, and perhaps most important of 
 all, the redemption of our American cities 
 from misrule calls for the entrance into 
 municipal politics of our men of mature 
 business experience and irreproachable 
 character. The misrule of our cities is a 
 thing which many men have long pon- 
 dered; and the conviction is happily grow- 
 ing on the general public that the secret 
 of it lies after all in the type of men who 
 control the "poHtical machine" and the 
 character of those whom they put into 
 office. A "political machine" may be a 
 necessary evil, as the politicians claim; but 
 certainly it is not necessary that this 
 199
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 machine should be continuously worked 
 by those least capable of it from the stand- 
 point of either morals or business ability. 
 We need better men in control of the 
 city government, men of business ability 
 and irreproachable moral character, men 
 who will be faithful to their duties, men of 
 honor who will neither lie nor steal. It 
 has been repeatedly intimated that the best 
 way in which to secure this is to increase 
 the salary of the city officials. So far as 
 salary affects the matter, the experience in 
 America goes to show that the higher the 
 salary attached to the office, the greater 
 the rascal who finally gets into it, and the 
 experience of Great Britain shows that the 
 best of all policies is to attach no salary 
 whatever to these offices. The salary is 
 the bait in America which draws a greedy 
 and corrupt officiary. 
 
 Before the municipal problem can be
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 solved, we must choose our officials from 
 the best Instead of, as is frequently the 
 case now, from the worst element of our 
 population. Here is to be found the 
 most striking difference between the cities 
 of America and those of Great Britain. 
 The Lord Mayor of London who 
 welcomed Lord Roberts on his triumphal 
 return from South Africa, was one of 
 Great Britain's most prominent manufac- 
 turers; and he carried to the Executive 
 chair of his city not only the business 
 ability which had made him one of his 
 country's most successful masters of in- 
 dustry, but a technical training in the 
 details of city government which he had 
 gained in his continuous service in the 
 city council. 
 
 Think what it will mean for the cities 
 of America when their great leaders in in- 
 dustry and business are willing to sacrifice 
 
 20I
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 their personal financial interests to have 
 the honor of thus serving their city, even 
 without salary. 
 
 To secure this, calls not only for the 
 willingness of such men to fill these public 
 offices as places of highest honor, but the 
 active participation in political affairs of a 
 constituency who will appreciate their 
 services. One of the best things that 
 could come to the city of Chicago, for ex- 
 ample, would be to place such a man as 
 Cyrus H. McCormick in the Mayor's 
 chair; but not even the most visionary 
 would dare to hope that, even should Mr. 
 McCormick be willing to make the per- 
 sonal sacrifice, he could receive enough 
 votes, as Chicago's municipal politics are 
 now conducted, to elect him to that posi- 
 tion. 
 
 The need of the hour is not only for 
 our prominent business men to forego a
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 few years of money-making and give their 
 mature business experience to the rule of 
 our cities, but the active participation of 
 the rank and file of our best citizens in the 
 control of the political machine. Past ex- 
 perience and present indications point to 
 the wisdom of making all purely adminis- 
 trative municipal offices, such as Mayor 
 and aldermen, as well as school commis- 
 sioners and all executive boards, without 
 any salary whatever. The honor of the 
 office would be its sole attraction; and just 
 as this alone secured the best commanding 
 generaP our nation ever had, so it would 
 doubtless work here; and the city would 
 secure men to conduct public affairs 
 who had already shown their ability by 
 making a success of their private business. 
 These four things are not all that the 
 
 ' George Washington accepted the position of Commander-in- 
 Chief of the American army in the Revolutionary War on con- 
 dition that no salary whatever should be attached to the office. 
 
 203
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 American city needs to-day ; but they blaze 
 a way to redemption from misrule which 
 will lead us, if faithfully followed, to an 
 ideal city. 
 
 Spasmodic efforts at reform leave the 
 root of the matter untouched, and pass 
 away soon to leave conditions aggravated 
 and deeper despair of permanent better- 
 ment. We m.ust have a civic awakening 
 that does not depend on the hortatory re- 
 marks of the political orator or the per- 
 sistent attention of party whips, but 
 springs from the creation of a strong civic 
 conscience in the individual. 
 
 Let us learn to feel both responsibility 
 for present conditions and civic pride in 
 our city's development. Let us find some 
 other use for our city and its teeming 
 thousands than merely as a place in which 
 to make money. Let us enlist, not 
 simply for an approaching election, but for 
 204
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 good and all in the ranks of civic right- 
 eousness, to drive deceit and violence out of 
 our city, the thug and thief from our 
 streets, and the boodler and saloon-keeper 
 from our legislative halls and executive 
 chair; and, by and by, we shall see, if not 
 a city with gates of pearl and streets of 
 gold, at least a city that can boast of more 
 than bigness, clean and well-paved in its 
 streets, honest in its administration, teem- 
 ing with a happy as well as a prosperous 
 people, and something to be proud of in 
 the type of its citizenship and the men 
 who bear its rule. 
 
 205
 
 VICE
 
 A few years ago the people of Chicago 
 discovered that the continuous flow of the 
 city s sewage into Lake Michigan was 
 hopelessly polluting their water supply. 
 With characteristic energy and darings and 
 at a cost of over ten millions of dollar s^ they 
 dug an immense ditch westward from the 
 city and reversed the flow of the Chicago 
 riverj into which the city's sewers empty. 
 The sewerage is thus carried into the Illinois 
 river, and finally, by nature s ministry of 
 flowing water, disappears entirely; and the 
 water supply of the Great Lakes is protected 
 from contamination. 
 
 Such a work is needed for the hearts of 
 men; and the man who will not only show 
 to the sons of men what the Pure Life is; 
 hut will, by a more than Titanic arm, turn 
 the flow of man s nature from the cesspools 
 of vice, upward to the fair fields of virtue, 
 is rightly deemed the Saviour of the Race.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF VICE 
 
 One problem of our series remains. 
 It is peculiar neither to America nor the 
 twentieth century. It belongs to the ages 
 in point of time and to the world in its 
 locality. It has branded the sons of every 
 generation with its mark, and has smitten 
 every land v/ith its blight. It is the old 
 problem of Vice. 
 
 It finds a place for discussion in con- 
 nection with these more ephemeral prob- 
 lems for several reasons. 
 
 First of all, universal and ageless as it 
 is, the problem of vice confronts the men 
 
 N 209
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 and women of the twentieth century in a 
 more aggravated form than it has, perhaps, 
 ever known before. Life has never be- 
 fore reached such intensity as it has to- 
 day; and this has brought to the opening 
 of the twentieth century not only the 
 finest types of manhood and womanhood, 
 the most robust virtue and saintHest 
 sympathies, but also the deepest degrada- 
 tions and intensest forms of vice. 
 
 Another reason is to be found in the 
 peculiar sphere of this problem. It is 
 universal in its influence ultimately, but 
 primarily it concerns the individual. Our 
 age is intensely individualistic. The dis- 
 covery and development of the individual 
 is the heart passion of our generation. 
 All history of the past and all forces in 
 the present, both scientific and philosoph- 
 ical, take on significance and worth 
 with us to-day because of the place which 
 
 2IO
 
 VICE 
 
 they occupy or fail to occupy in the 
 development of individual character. The 
 problem of vice vitally concerns this, as 
 does no other problem of our age. 
 
 Yet another reason for the discussion of 
 vice in this connection is to be found in 
 its bearing on these other problems. 
 Not only does it make an atmosphere in 
 which these other troubles grow in aggra- 
 vation and intensity, but it furnishes in 
 the individuals of our social order a deadly 
 toxin which is ever breaking out in forms 
 of injustice and personal hatred. Its 
 presence makes it needful not only to 
 show a wrong-doer how to do right; but, 
 what is often infinitely harder, persuade 
 him to give up wrong and do right. 
 Thus existing at the root of all these 
 other problems, from that of our dealing 
 with the Negro to how we shall handle 
 the Liquor question, it not only deserves 
 
 ZII
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 discussion here because of association; but, 
 as we may see in the course of its consid- 
 eration, any dealing with these other 
 problems which does not at the same time 
 seek a full solution of this underlying 
 problem of vice will be but temporizing 
 with the others. 
 
 THE VITAL QUESTION 
 
 The problem of vice is, after ail, the 
 vital question. It is the supreme question 
 with the statesman, who is ever finding 
 himself opposed and thwarted by vicious 
 men from realizing his dreams of the ideal 
 state. It is the dark riddle for the phil- 
 anthropist and reformer, for the persistent 
 and pernicious activity of moral evil in the 
 human race is his despair. The educator 
 finds it an insuperable barrier, for he is ever 
 seeing vicious minds barricade themselves 
 against the angels of knowledge; and to 
 the preacher of righteousness, vice is the 
 
 2IZ
 
 VICE 
 
 arch-fiend in human form, the satanic pro- 
 tagonist with whom he wrestles for the 
 souls of men. With even the most selfish 
 of men, vice is the supreme question; for 
 vice means reflexive evil and is the foe of 
 his own self-interest. 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EVIL 
 
 The relation of the divine will to the 
 presence of moral evil in the universe 
 has always been to the human mind an in- 
 soluble mystery. Why a sovereign and 
 almighty God allowed evil to enter his 
 world, or having let it enter allows 
 it to remain and work such hurt to His 
 children, is a question which still waits for 
 a satisfactory answer. 
 
 Still we are beginning to see something 
 of the mission of evil in the world. We 
 may still doubt whether the presence of 
 moral evil is necessary under our present 
 order to change innocence into righteous- 
 213
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 ness, but it is certain that such a result is 
 being accomphshed in this way before our 
 very eyes; and neither experience nor 
 philosophy can tell us of any other way to 
 grow strength of character and voluntary 
 choice of the good save under the stress 
 of temptation to choose the wrong. But 
 a still different question is before us 
 here. It is the question of why a man in 
 the enjoyment of his freedom of choice 
 will yield to the craving of an appetite and 
 will do a thing which will hurt himself. 
 
 SIN, CRIME, VICE 
 
 A wrong act viewed from the stand- 
 point of God is a sin. The biblical ac- 
 count of its origin attributes it to self-will, 
 and characterizes it as disobedience against 
 God. 
 
 A wrong act considered from the stand- 
 point of the state is a crime. The causes 
 of crime are manifold. A prominent prose- 
 214
 
 VICE 
 
 cuting attorney in one of our largest 
 cities recently gave, out of his wide ex- 
 perience, the following as, in his opinion, 
 the chief causes of crime: Foreign popu- 
 lation, poverty, the saloon, heredity, lack 
 of parental control. These present a most 
 attractive field to the reformer and philan- 
 thropist; and it is doubtless with these 
 phases of the question that the public is 
 most deeply interested, and that most ef- 
 forts to meet the influence of evil are 
 exerted. 
 
 But we must go yet deeper if we would 
 get at the real root of wrongdoing. Awrong 
 act considered from the standpoint of him 
 who does it is a vice, a self-hurtful act. 
 Here we are to find the real causes of 
 evil, in the personality of the man who 
 commits it. Not only is vice the root of 
 all other wrong, but it is, as a class, com- 
 prehensive of the rest. All vice is sin, for 
 215
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 every hurt which man gives to his own 
 high form is an injury to the handiwork of 
 God; and "he who sinneth against God 
 wrongeth his own soul." While the state 
 does not take cognizance of all vice as a 
 crime against the body politic, it being 
 recognized that there are some vices whose 
 hurts are so self-circumscribed that the 
 state should take no account of them on 
 the ground of personal liberty; it must be 
 confessed that all crime is vice, for he who 
 hurts his body politic hurts also himself 
 
 THE CAUSES OF VICE 
 
 The task before us then is to ask first. 
 What are the causes that persuade a man to 
 the moral suicide of a vicious life ? Vice 
 has three causes, each of which has had its 
 sponsor in the great triad of Greek philos- 
 ophers. 
 
 216
 
 VICE 
 THE HUMAN ANIMAL 
 
 The first cause to be mentioned is the 
 predominance in us of the animal. Men 
 differ to-day materially in their opinions 
 about our animal origin. We may believe 
 that our bodies had their origin in a divine 
 creative act as sudden as that which 
 breathed into these bodies a living soul ; 
 or we may believe that both souls and 
 bodies came into existence through long 
 processes of development from lower or- 
 ders. We may differ widely about the 
 moral qualities of these bodies at that par- 
 ticular time when they became the habita- 
 tion of human souls. But all of us will 
 agree that about the average man of to- 
 day, whether it survives as a part of his 
 past animal existence or is the result of his 
 " fall " in Eden, there is a large per cent, 
 of the animal. Just as a foreigner brings 
 with him to our shores, in his dress and 
 217
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 speech and social customs and even the 
 furniture of his house, as well as in his folk- 
 lore and religion, relics and characteristics 
 of his former life; so man has brought 
 even to the doorway of twentieth century 
 culture and civilization survivals of the 
 animal, what the apostle calls " the old 
 man, who is corrupt according to his de- 
 ceitful lusts." We find on the human 
 skeleton to-day such bones as in the lower 
 animals have attached to them the muscles 
 which erect the ears and wag the tail. 
 Some skilled youthful practitioners have 
 even been known to develop and use the 
 muscles connected with the ears. And of 
 deeper moment, we carry in our bodies 
 survivals of the old animal appetites. 
 
 Now, in the exercise and abuse of these 
 
 animal appetites, we find one of the most 
 
 fruitful causes of vice, indulging them till 
 
 they become perverted and gross, and at 
 
 218
 
 VICE 
 
 last remorseless tyrants who enslave their 
 poor victims in the foulest of pits. We 
 feed to the point of gluttonness and drink 
 to the depths of drunkenness. We take 
 to stimulants and opiates which even an 
 animal will not touch, and indulge our 
 animal appetites till we have outanimaled 
 the animal. It was a cutting satire, but 
 too true, when the witty Frenchman said, 
 " Man is the only animal who eats when 
 he is not hungry, and makes love at all 
 seasons." 
 
 This is the cause of vice for which old 
 Plato stood sponsor; and his picture of 
 the black horse of Passion and the white 
 horse of Love harnessed to the chariot of 
 life, with Reason as the charioteer, is not 
 only one of the most pathetic but one of 
 the truest pictures of human experience. 
 Happy indeed is the man, and rare, who 
 can finish the race of life with Reason 
 
 2 I 9
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 master of his team, and the good white 
 steed unhurt by the savage teeth and iron- 
 shod hoofs of his vicious yoke-fellow. 
 
 THE IGNORANT REASON 
 
 The second cause is one on which Plato's 
 great master, wise old Socrates, laid his 
 hand. Standing back there under the 
 shadow of heathen temples whose very acts 
 of worship were a base prostitution of their 
 bodies, surrounded with a generation of 
 gay devotees of sensual pleasure, whose 
 very pleasures were so grossly abusive of 
 even the animal that nature made them 
 into scourging vices for their punishment, 
 the old philosopher's heart was moved 
 with infinite pity. For to him their vices 
 were born of their ignorant reason. They 
 plucked the poisonous flower of their sen- 
 sual appetites, lay down under the deadly 
 upas tree of passion, because they knew 
 of nothing better. They had never caught
 
 VICE 
 
 a glimpse of the higher soul-life, the infi- 
 nite calm and peace and joy of him who 
 has mastered the animal and entered into 
 the higher life of the soul. 
 
 Most of us have seen something of this, 
 and would that it might fill the hearts of all 
 of us who see it with a pity as profound as 
 that of Socrates. The ignorant reason is 
 the cause of so much vice. The young 
 girl who was seduced through the wine- 
 room and its companionship to a life of 
 shame would never have gone from her 
 home that night could she have looked 
 through those coming years of vice and 
 seen the wretched, heart-broken outcast 
 which she at last became. The tyrannical 
 ruler would never have ground his iron 
 heel into the neck of his people could he 
 have seen the culture of brutality which he 
 was working in his own nature and the 
 awful vengeance which a nation of anarch-
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 ists, of his own making, would one day- 
 wreak on his offspring and their govern- 
 ment. The greed for gold, till honor 
 and honesty have been sacrificed to get it, 
 and all domestic joy and soul culture 
 hopelessly foregone, indulgence in strong 
 drink and the fascination of gambling on 
 stocks or horse-races, — these and their 
 like would have little fascination, if in 
 some way the reason of man were not 
 blindfolded, and the soul shut out from 
 the exercise of its faculties. The animal 
 life appeals to men because they are igno- 
 rant of the sweeter and abiding joys of the 
 soul life. 
 
 THE PERVERTED WILL 
 
 But not until the third of this brilliant 
 galaxy of Greek philosophers arose was 
 the deep root of vice revealed. That was 
 done when Aristotle pointed men to the 
 perverted human will. Brutality, sheer
 
 VICE 
 
 animalism causes much vice; an ignorant 
 reason causes more; but the main root of 
 the trouble is in man's perversity. Con- 
 sider that, the mulish element in man, the 
 wrong-doer's resentfulness of authority, 
 the provocation to evil by merely forbid- 
 ding it; for here we find, deep seated in 
 the wrong-doer himself, an irrational pro- 
 pensity to back into self-hurtful vice when 
 the voice of his Maker, the law of his 
 state, and his own self-interest call him 
 away from it. It is not enough to dis- 
 cover and master the animal; it is not 
 enough even to hold it in subjection and 
 learn to find one's motives and aims of 
 existence in the higher sphere of the soul- 
 life; to master viciousness, the very bent 
 of one's will must be mastered and turned. 
 The current of the stream of life must be 
 reversed. 
 
 Not only do we find vice resulting from 
 
 223
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 each of these three causes, but it is com- 
 mon to find them conspiring to produce 
 a vicious character. The animal appetites 
 furnish the first suggestion, the ignorant 
 reason prevents the disastrous results from 
 being seen, the full significance of the act 
 from being known at its inception, and 
 the stubborn perversity of the will leads 
 to persistence in the vicious course even 
 after the danger signals are in view. 
 
 A striking instance of this is to be 
 found in Judas Iscariot. His animal 
 greed for gain doubtless led him into the 
 ranks of the apostles and secured the 
 place of treasurer, and it was in feeding 
 this greed that his first steps in wrong 
 were probably taken. His ignorance of 
 who Jesus really was and of the signifi- 
 cance of his acts both in their bearing on 
 his own moral character and on the career 
 of Jesus, kept him from seeing things 
 224
 
 VICE 
 
 which might well have made him prefer 
 an earlier suicide to such a career. But 
 his moral perversity led him to persist in 
 this course of wrong doing even in the 
 face of Christ's warning that it were better 
 had he never been born than to do it. 
 Thus they united to make of an intimate 
 associate of even Jesus of Nazareth the 
 moral renegade of history; and the experi- 
 ence of every day life shows thev are no 
 less deadly to-day. 
 
 Not only do they operate thus in in- 
 dividuals, but one of the most alarming 
 types, because so ineradicable, is the way 
 in which these forces have intrenched 
 themselves in the government of a state 
 and the customs of society, and even in 
 the creeds and ceremonies of religion. 
 There they fortify themselves behind 
 man's natural conservatism and perpetuate 
 wrong-doing through the very atmosphere 
 o 225
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 of youth and the mother's nurture of her 
 child. So customs and governments, 
 philosophical systems and even religions 
 become handmaidens of vice, Delilahs who 
 soothe to moral torpor for the club of the 
 Philistine of vice those whom they exist 
 to cherish and protect. 
 
 THE PAULINE DIAGNOSIS 
 
 This is the diagnosis of vice by pagan- 
 dom's most gifted philosophers. They 
 pointed out the hurt at the heart of 
 humanity, and laid their hand on its 
 causes. They could go no further. They 
 could show, but could in no wise heal, the 
 hurt. 
 
 It may be worth our while, at this point 
 to see how the apostle Paul agrees with 
 their diagnosis. To heal the hurt was 
 the passion of his life, and if we will turn 
 to his words, we shall find both how 
 thoroughly he had studied the matter and 
 
 2Z6
 
 VICE 
 
 how fully he agreed with the Greek phil- 
 osophers as to its causes. 
 
 We shall find some very significant 
 words in this connection in his epistle to 
 the Ephesians. It is his exhortation to 
 men to give up the vicious and lead a 
 virtuous life. 
 
 "That ye put off concerning the former 
 conversation the old man, who is corrupt 
 according to the deceitful lusts; and be 
 renewed in the spirit of your mind; and 
 that ye put on the new man, which after 
 God is created in righteousness and true 
 holiness."^ 
 
 The "old man" of Paul is the "animal" 
 of Plato; the "deceitful lusts" are the "ig- 
 norant reason" of Socrates; and the former 
 conversation of the old man who is "cor- 
 rupt" is the perverted will of Aristotle. 
 
 Brutality, ignorance, perversity of will — 
 
 * £ph. 4 : 22-24. 
 
 227
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 these are the forces that make men de- 
 grade their own highborn manhood, till it is 
 baser than the animal, and turn what God 
 meant for an Eden of joy and love into a 
 bear-pit, where men devour each other. 
 So that picture of the mob, which crucified 
 Jesus and set loose Barabbas, becomes 
 a miniature of all history. 
 
 CAN VICE BE CURED? 
 
 If these be the causes of vice, is it pos- 
 sible to cure it? The desire for moral 
 betterment has never been absolutely dead 
 in the human race. Even in the days of 
 man's deepest degradation, when moral 
 darkness was over all the earth, when 
 women were base and men were glad to 
 have them so, noble men and women have 
 arisen and called on the race to leave the 
 dens of vice and seek a destiny worthy of 
 their endowment; but the generations had 
 ever a way of forgetting their forefathers' 
 228
 
 VICE 
 
 virtues and refining on their vices, till 
 much of the race even to-day has grown 
 cynical, and their thought about the prob- 
 lem of vice is a little more hopeful than 
 the words of Pope: 
 
 " Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, 
 As, to be hated, needs but to be seen ; 
 Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
 We first endure, then pity, then embrace. " 
 
 Despite all this, vice, even in its deepest, 
 most hurtful form can be cured, has been 
 cured. But how? 
 
 The weakest of all ways to cure vice is 
 to deny its reality, to look on it as only a 
 lower stage in the natural development of 
 the individual, a condition which should 
 be and will be outgrown with the passing 
 years and the natural evolution of our 
 social order. While from one point of 
 view it is to be deplored, the victim of it 
 is in no sense to be personally censured, 
 much less punished. No more blame 
 229
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 should attach to it than to the savage for 
 his ignorance of the classics or to the lion 
 for his appetite for raw meat. It is simply 
 a natural condition which he must, by a 
 gradual transformation or uplifting of 
 tastes, be led to outgrow. 
 
 This view of vice is both pernicious and 
 false. Its falsehood is shown by the re- 
 peated cases of degeneracy into vicious- 
 ness which we find not only in a cultured 
 and educated generation, but even among 
 the children of cultured and virtuous par- 
 ents. It is pernicious because it ignores a 
 deadly malady which should have imme- 
 diate and drastic treatment. 
 
 Another futile method is that which 
 Lyman Beecher favored for the treatment 
 of heretics, — give vice plenty of rope and 
 let it hang itself. Give vice enough license, 
 it is claimed, and it will destroy itself. In 
 one sense, this is true. Vice does possess 
 230
 
 VICE 
 
 a self-destroying power for the individual. 
 The vicious soul shall die is only another 
 way of putting the scriptural statement, 
 " The soul that sinneth, it shall die." It 
 is one of nature's remorseless laws that the 
 man who yields to vice destroys himself. 
 Vice is an automatic executioner. 
 
 But in proposing this as a remedy for 
 vice in the world, we are losing sight of 
 the fresh material on which vice seizes. 
 While the victim of vice is destroying 
 himself, he influences often a company of 
 fresh victims to take up the same career. 
 The vagabond tramp who takes to a life 
 of wandering vagrancy and drunkenness 
 will not curse the world with much of an 
 offspring, but he will, perhaps, teach a 
 dozen or more of the children of others to 
 enter this vicious life. The same is true 
 with the prostitute and gambler and often 
 with the drunkard. 
 
 231
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 On the other hand, there are cases 
 where the victims of vice are multiplied 
 by direct generation. There is a case on 
 record in this country, in which among 
 the offspring of one vagabond prostitute 
 in New York, nearly one hundred vicious 
 criminals have developed. 
 
 Putting these things and their like to- 
 gether, self-extinction is no more effective 
 for vice than it is for smallpox and yellow 
 fever. 
 
 REPRESSIVE LEGISLATION 
 
 The cure to which most of us are prone 
 to turn is repressive legislation. Lions 
 had best be caged, or when that is impos- 
 sible, killed; and vicious men had best be 
 intimidated with the penalty of prohibi- 
 tory law, and this failing to make them 
 virtuous, they had best be put behind the 
 bars or locked up in reformatories. With- 
 out doubt, a vast amount of good is to be 
 232
 
 VICE 
 
 accomplished by repressive legislation, as 
 courts of justice and penal institutions 
 throughout the history of civilization bear 
 witness; and the faith of men in their 
 effectiveness is attested by the vast amounts 
 of money which are spent on them. Now 
 and then a man arises and denounces the 
 legal prevention of vice and crime. " You 
 cannot make men virtuous by law," they 
 cry; "and all your efforts at it provoke the 
 vicious to be worse. If men will gamble 
 and drink and women will be immoral, 
 give them license to do it; for the enact- 
 ment of law against it will but add the 
 crime of law-breaking to their career of 
 vice." But experience shows that repres- 
 sive legislation does repress. It is only 
 external treatment for an internal malady, 
 it is true ; but wherever the majority of 
 men and women in a community are de- 
 termined on a righteous code and a virtu- 
 233
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 ous social order, the arm of the law Is 
 mighty to close the haunts of vice and at 
 least drive into obscurity the persistently 
 vicious. 
 
 You can repress; but repression does 
 not cure. It stanches the flow, but does 
 not cure the wound. 
 
 educate! 
 
 The favorite method with another most 
 respected clement looks on it as purely an 
 educational problem. They emphasize 
 the ignorant reason as its cause, and ap- 
 peal to man's tendency to self-preserva- 
 tion. Show a man that vice is self-hurtful 
 and he will avoid it as a burnt child will 
 avoid fire. Let the great teacher open up 
 to them the realms of thought and imagi- 
 nation, the kingdoms of mind and soul 
 culture, introduce them to the fair lands 
 of human well-being, where the deadly 
 marshes of vice and the thorn bushes of 
 234
 
 VICE 
 
 passion are left behind, where fountains 
 break forth for the cure of the body's ills, 
 and the sweet pure air of life blows on 
 their faces from the Gardens of Immortal- 
 ity, where the soul learns to love and 
 aspire as the mind grows the wings of 
 mighty thought, where they company with 
 the great and good of all ages, where life 
 throbs in a work which never tires or fails 
 to fruit and the soul is happy in a love 
 whose growing pains are the bliss of exist- 
 ence; and it will be easy to leave vice be- 
 hind. Show men the soul-life of which 
 old Socrates spoke to the Greeks, and they 
 will be glad to give up the animal life. 
 
 All this looks rational, and so it is ; but 
 vice is irrational. The ignorant reason is 
 but one of its causes. Experience shows 
 that education has not solved the prob- 
 lem, and points to the conclusion that it 
 never will. It creates an atmosphere 
 235
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 which moves mightily against vice, but the 
 malady calls for more than an atmosphere. 
 One of the most deplorable things about 
 our problem is the large percentage of the 
 victims of vice which come from the 
 ranks of the educated. The prevalence of 
 gambling and drunkenness among certain 
 classes of the educated and cultured, the 
 thievery to which many a man resorts in 
 business, the immorality and drunkenness 
 of even not a few college graduates, musi- 
 cians, poets, and scientific men, — all these, 
 instances of which abound in the acquaint- 
 ance of all, show that the cure of vice calls 
 for more than the enlightenment of man's 
 ignorant reason. 
 
 THE CURE OF VICE 
 
 The cure of vice will not be found till 
 
 we get something that will go to the root 
 
 of the trouble, the perverted human will. 
 
 The only thorough-going cure for vice 
 
 236
 
 VICE 
 
 which the world has ever seen is the 
 remedy proposed and used so successfully 
 by the Apostle Paul. Old Socrates tried 
 to win the Greeks away from vice with 
 pictures of the higher soul-life, but his 
 countrymen made the great philosopher 
 drink the poison hemlock for "corrupting 
 their youth." The Apostle Paul went 
 among them with a message which not 
 only won them from vice, but captured 
 and cleansed their very language as the 
 voice through which this cure was to speak 
 to the coming ages. This Jew of Tarsus 
 had looked on vice in its most degrading 
 forms; his mind had been opened to see 
 the wounds which the claws of the animal 
 made in the high form of man; and with 
 all the passion of a great soul he had set 
 about the mastery of the brute. He went 
 into the arena and fought out the battle 
 in his own experience. He tried repres- 
 237
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 sion of the animal, and became a Pharisee 
 of the Pharisees in his ardor for legalism. 
 He tried enlightening the ignorant reason, 
 and became a Greek in learning and cul- 
 ture. And yet, after sitting at the feet of 
 Gamaliel for law and companioning with 
 Greek philosophers for truth and culture, 
 we still find him saying, "Wo is me! 
 The good which I would, that I do not, 
 and the evil which I would not, that I do! 
 Who shall deliver me from the body of 
 this death?" The answer came to him, 
 he tells us, on the road to Damascus, 
 where he learned to yield the control of 
 his perverted will to Jesus Christ. The 
 Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only hope 
 for the victims of vice. 
 
 THE METHOD OF THE CURE 
 
 Let us see how the cure is effected. 
 We have seen that vice is due to three 
 causes, the animal in man, the ignorant 
 238
 
 VICE 
 
 reason, and the perverted will. How are 
 these causes reached? 
 
 The death of the animal is "the putting 
 off of the old man;" the ignorant reason 
 is enligtened by his being "renewed in the 
 spirit of his mind;" and the perverted will 
 is righted by "putting on the new man."* 
 
 This is what the Apostle calls "learning 
 the truth as it is in Jesus." The accept- 
 ance of Christ as a Saviour brings these 
 three things: 
 
 1. The change of one's nature, the 
 new heart, in which animal desires are in 
 some cases at once and in others gradually 
 destroyed. 
 
 2. The enlightenment of the mind by 
 the Spirit of Christ, by which one becomes 
 "spiritually-minded," able to see what 
 things are "pure and lovely and without 
 reproach." 
 
 • Cf. Eph. 4:22-24. 
 
 239
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 3. The enthronement of the will of 
 Jesus as the law of all life. This takes 
 the will captive, willingly, let us remem- 
 ber, through the change of nature which 
 is wrought in the new birth, and turns the 
 current of life toward virtue and away 
 from vice. 
 
 This, of course, is simply the old mes- 
 sage of the Gospel; and the moment it is 
 announced as our boasted claim for vice, 
 impatience and cynicism may come over 
 the reader. "Have not preachers and 
 church-members and even one of Jesus' 
 own apostles turned out to be vicious 
 characters? How can the Gospel, in the 
 face of this, which adds hypocrisy to fail- 
 ure, be lauded as a cure for vice?" 
 
 These cases, however numerous they 
 
 might be, do not offset the claim. The 
 
 Gospel of Jesus is not to be blamed for 
 
 failure where it has not been tried. The 
 
 240
 
 VICE 
 
 hypocrite in Christianity is the man who 
 makes a pretence at using the Gospel of 
 Christ to cure his vice. It is really a mere 
 cloak with which to cover his indulgence in 
 it. An honest trial of the Gospel is some- 
 thing which he did not even attempt. For 
 these failures we are not to blame the 
 Gospel, but that vicious nature in man 
 which adds hypocrisy to his other vices. 
 
 The efficiency of the Man of Nazareth 
 to cure vice has been attested throughout 
 the ages since he walked among men. The 
 witnesses that rise up and call Him 
 "blessed" for delivering them from this 
 "man of hell" are countless and irrefut-. 
 able, from the Apostle Paul and the im- 
 petuous "Son of Thunder" to Jere Mc- 
 Auley and "Billy" Sunday. The great- 
 est blunder of our age is our ignoring his 
 matchless work. He is the specialist of 
 vice; and this suffering race of self-hurt 
 p 241
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 men and women is waiting for a generation 
 of apostles and reformers who will point 
 their blood-shot eyes to Jesus as their De- 
 liverer, and put on their fever-smitten lips 
 the song of Moses and the Lamb. 
 
 We stand on this black, seething cess- 
 pool of the world's vice, sickened with the 
 stench, heart broken as we see loved ones 
 slipping into its insatiable muck and laugh- 
 ing at our warning cries as they elude the 
 friendly grasp that would hold them back; 
 and we grow frantic with the pain or cal- 
 lous under it. How can this foul and 
 greedy pit of sin and crime and vice be 
 blotted from our earth, and the sons and 
 daughters of our race be saved from its 
 blight? 
 
 The gift of God's Son is God's answer; 
 and every man of the countless millions 
 whom He has saved is God's commenda- 
 tion of it to us. This is God's way, and 
 242
 
 VICE 
 
 it works. May we give it full sway in our 
 own lives, and with an earnestness born 
 of our own experience, God help us to 
 press it lovingly home on men. Thus, 
 and thus alone, can we hasten that great 
 day, pictured by prophet, sung of by poet, 
 and hungered for by a suffering world, 
 when they shall no longer hurt nor destroy 
 in all God's holy mountain, when the na- 
 tions shall not learn war any more, when 
 the sucking child can play on the hole of 
 the asp, because the knowledge of the Lord 
 has filled the whole earth, and every tongue 
 confesses and every heart possesses Jesus 
 Christ as Lord. 
 
 243
 
 THE DOUBLE NEED
 
 God give us men ! A time like this de- 
 mands 
 Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and 
 
 ready hands ; 
 Men whom the lust of office does not kill; 
 
 Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; 
 Men who possess opinions and a will; 
 Men who have honor; men who will 
 not lie ; 
 Men who can stand before a demagogue 
 And damn his treacherons flatteries 
 without winking; 
 Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the 
 
 M 
 In public duty and in private thinking. 
 For while the rabble with their thumb- 
 worn creeds, 
 'Their large profession and their little deeds. 
 Mingle in selfish strife, lo ! Freedom weeps. 
 Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice 
 
 sleeps.'^ 
 
 J. G. Holland.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE DOUBLE NEED 
 
 To THE reader who has patiently fol- 
 lowed this consideration of America's 
 present-day problems, one thing must 
 have been apparent, — that the writer has 
 been attempting to study and solve them 
 from what may be called the Christian 
 point of view. Whatever may be our at- 
 titude towards Christ himself, one fact 
 stands in need of no further proof, — the 
 beneficent influences which have always 
 attended the rule of Christianity in the 
 state and social life of a nation. Progress 
 and culture, virtue and liberty have been 
 247
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 measured by the extent to which the life 
 of Jesus has furnished the example for the 
 individual and his teachings have been 
 made the rule of the social order. If one 
 will take a map of the world and mark 
 the stages of culture and influence for 
 progress and well-being of the different 
 nations by shadings of color, it will be 
 found that these shadings will exactly cor- 
 respond to the place which the rule of 
 Christ has in the lives of their peoples. 
 The kingdom of God, which Jesus came 
 to found, and of which he proved himself 
 the worthy King by first showing himself 
 to be the ideal citizen, is a perfect social 
 order, in which all problems are solved. 
 The application of these principles to the 
 problems that to-day confront us is the 
 only hope of salvation for our nation. 
 Neither our free institutions nor our ma- 
 terial resources can atone for degeneration
 
 THE DOUBLE NEED 
 
 of the individual. When patriotism is 
 honeycombed with commerciahsm, when 
 greed fattens on the hunger and poverty 
 of the common people, and those who 
 could prevent it let it be so, when the 
 statesman has become but a politician and 
 the prophet a dreamer, the day of our un- 
 doing is not far away. The strength of a 
 nation is the average of its citizenship ; no 
 more. 
 
 The great need in all of these problems, 
 whether it be the redemption of the black 
 man or the cleansing of the city, is the 
 transformation of the individual. This is 
 the work of Jesus Christ, and of him 
 alone. 
 
 The making of the perfect man has 
 waited for two things. One of them is 
 vision and the other is power. To see 
 the good has been possible to a pagan, to 
 Socrates and to Confucius, to Laotsze and 
 249
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 the Buddha; but here the best of them 
 had to stop. To get both the desire and 
 the power to achieve the good, only the 
 risen Christ has ever been able to breathe 
 this into men. 
 
 No path to the best is easy, but we 
 have gone far afield from the straight and 
 narrow way by making little of Jesus, the 
 King of Kings. "I can do all things 
 through Christ, who strengtheneth me" 
 is the glad cry of a man whose ambition 
 for the best was ever being baffled till he 
 received into his individual life the rule of 
 the personal Christ; and, "Ye are com- 
 plete in him," is the message which this 
 great Apostle, who, "being dead, yet 
 speaketh," is sounding in the ears of our 
 nation to-day. 
 
 The solution of America's problems 
 waits on a generation of men who will sit 
 at the feet of Jesus till they see the vision 
 250
 
 THE DOUBLE NEED 
 
 of His kingdom, and who will then go 
 forth and in His Spirit and by His power 
 realize the vision. 
 
 In view of these things, the writer has 
 no apology to make for preaching Jesus 
 Christ and His rule for the solution of 
 America's problems. He is still "foolish- 
 ness" to many who think that "they are 
 the people and wisdom will die with 
 them," as he was with people of this 
 type of old; and He is still a "stum- 
 bhng block" to some who are wedded 
 to a way of their own making, as He 
 has been in time past; but to everyone 
 that believeth, whether individual or na- 
 tion, Jesus is still "the power of God 
 unto salvation." 
 
 The "fatherhood of God" and the 
 
 "brotherhood of man" stand for the two 
 
 most precious possessions of our race, but 
 
 both of them are empty bombast or ex- 
 
 251
 
 AMERICAN PROBLEMS 
 
 ecrable subterfuges without the "saviour- 
 hood of Jesus." 
 
 He came unto his own, and his own 
 received him not; but as many as re- 
 ceived him, to them gave he power 
 to become the sons of god. 
 
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