HNUuuuimnaMwnqunmm^v AMELIORATION E SHARP yPROBLEMSSfKlE- ■■(>MiiiiiiBwiiiiiii:ww»4»»cgiwwtwy : THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES ^- CITY LIFE AND ITS AMELIORATION BY GEORGE SHARP BOSTON: RICHARD G. BADGER THE COPP CLARK CO., LIMITED, TORONTO (copyright, 1915, by Richard G. Badger All Rights Reserved Thb Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. r PREFACE This little book is not so ambitious as its title might imply. Its affirmations are founded, for the most part, upon observations and experiences of the author during an aggregate period of twen- ty years spent in many of our large cities from the Atlantic to the Pacific. After a discussion of the limitations of life in the city, suggestions are made looking to the amelioration of the harsh condi- tions of that life. It is hoped that in some slight degree the effort may help to usher in that better day for which patient humanity ever longs. For the rest let the book speak for itself. George Sharp. Boston, January, 19 15. CONTENTS Chapter Page I. Preliminary Considerations 9 II. What is it to Live? 23 III. Superficiality and Frivolity 36 IV. Childhood in the City 51 V. Public Manners 68 VI. Publicity: Good and Bad 86 VII. Fellowship 102 CITY LIFE AND ITS AMELIORATION CITY LIFE AND ITS AMELIORATION CHAPTER I Preliminary Considerations OUR cities have grown so rapidly, the methods of doing business in them have changed so radically, and the gulf be- tween the rich and the poor has wid- ened so far, that our old-time Jelifersonian ideas of the proper limits of governmental activity are be- ing abandoned, or, at least. greatly modified. We are realizing (to use a hackneyed expression) that it is "a condition and not a theory that confronts us;" that the city, the State, the general govern- ment, as organisms, must evolve and exercise pow- ers undreamed of in our earlier history. Now the policy we have been pursuing, both in national and city affairs, has been paradoxical. Professing dislike and even fear of governmental aggression, we have nevertheless enacted a wilder- ness of laws. Mr. Bryce, in his learned work, "The American Commonwealth," has devoted a short chapter to the doctrine of laisscz faire as practised in America. With his usual breadth of view he is careful, after remarking on the dominant 9 lo CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION desire of the American "to be let alone, to do as he pleases, Indulge his Impulses, follow out his projects," — to call attention to some Institutional laws, State and Federal, which, he declares, go quite as far In the direction of state action as do the laws of the Old World countries. What Mr. Bryce Is pleased to denominate one of the five "ground Ideas," or dogmas, that prevail In the United States, he sets forth In the following felici- tous words: "The less of government the better; that Is to say, the fewer occasions for Interfering with the Individual citizens are allowed to officials, and the less time citizens have to spend In looking after their officials, so much the more will the citi- zens and the community prosper. The functions of government must be kept at their minimum." To this statement of the American's attitude toward his government no exception, It seems to me, can be taken, for It Is both comprehensive and just; although It was more true twenty-five years ago when Mr. Bryce wrote his book than It Is now. It is when this learned expositor of our Institutions seeks to show the other side of the picture, to pre- sent evidence of a great curtailment by governmen- tal action of this Individual, this e very-man- for- hlmself policy, that his success Is more apparent than real. He classifies Intervention under the fol- lowing heads : — "Prohibition to Individuals to do acts which are not, In the ordinary sense of the word, criminal (e. g. to sell intoxicating liquors, to employ a laborer PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS ii for more than so many hours in a day) . "Directions to individuals to do things which it is not obviously wrong to omit (e. g. to provide seats for shop-women, to publish the accounts of a railway company). "Interferences with the ordinary course of law in order to protect individuals from the conse- quences of their own acts (e. g. the annulment of contracts between employer and workmen making the former not liable for accidental injuries to the latter, the exemption of homesteads, or of a cer- tain amount of personal property, from the claims of creditors, the prohibition of more than a cer- tain rate of interest on money). "In every one of these kinds of legislative inter- ference the Americans, or at least the Western States, seem to have gone further than the Eng- lish Parliament. The restrictions on the liquor traffic have been more sweeping; those upon the labor of women and children, and of persons em- ployed by the State, not less so. Moral duties are more frequently enforced by legal penalties than in England. Railroads, insurance and banking companies, and other corporations are, in most States, strictly regulated." Certainly these specifications of laws enacted would seem to give government in America a good bill of character; and, to a reader unfamiliar with the way "business" is done here, they might con- vey the impression that the activity of the individ- ual is very much hampered by the statutes. But it 1 2 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION would be hard to imagine anything further from the truth. The statutes, those legislative enact- ments designed to supplement the old common law, prolific as they are — the annual out-put being far greater here than in Europe, as was pointed out in a learned address by the Hon. Alton B. Parker be- fore the American Bar Association — are, for the most part, local laws; and the objection to them is directed against their enactment by the legislature instead of by the county and city departments rather than against their intrinsic qualities. Laws that have to do with the ministrant functions of government, as distinguished from the constituent functions, have been few enough. When contrast- ed with the institutional laws that have given near- ly every other civilized people on earth the own- ership and operation of railroads, telegraphs, tramways and express carriage, together with local public utilities in general, the paucity here is marked. In respect to such laws the attitude of our "business man," the dominant force in Amer- ica, is well expressed by Mr. N. P. Oilman when he says in his "Socialism and the American Spirit:" "The American is always ready to receive help from the State in starting a railway or a steamship line (the old flag and an appropriation), but he is not at all inclined to consider the Government a proper agent for the management or ownership of either." But quite aside from the consideration either of the number or the kind of laws on the statute PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS 13 bo(3ks as affecting the question how far govern- ment has gone in America in restricting and re- straining the individual, there is one consideration which Mr. Bryce seems to have overlooked, at least in his chapter on laissez faire, and which throws a very different light on the whole subject. I refer to the evasion and violation of the laws by the individual and to their non-enforcement by the government. In no respect more than in this does the real situation reveal itself; in nothing is it more effectually shown how slight has been the governmental interference in our land, how com- plete, on the contrary, has been the reign of the individual. Mr. Bryce mentions our laws regu- lating the sale of intoxicating beverages. But what single law, excepting the one providing for the payment of a license to do business, — what single law in reference to the whole liquor traffic — is complied with? From the adulteration of the drink to its sale to minors, the law is every- where trampled and spat upon. Some of our laws do provide for an eight-hour work day on govern- ment work. But recent investigation showed that no pretense of a compliance with the law was ever made by contractors with the government. It was only after the most persistent demands by the la- bor organizations that it was agreed and an- nounced through a megaphone (just before an election) that the law would be enforced. Again, it is true we have laws prohibiting the charging of excessive interest on money. Such laws have long 14 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION been in existence in every State, but we all know how impotent they are. Every money-lender knows how to get around them. The recent ex- posures of the inhumanity of the "loan-sharks" in New York and Boston, in defiant violation of law, causing, in many cases, nervous break-down and even the suicide of their poor victims, show a state of things that makes our boasted civilization look like savage barbarism. We have laws, too, against child labor; but they have been practically dead letters. Every now and then the public is duly hor- rified to learn that a million children are being un- lawfully employed in the mines and factories of our country. There has been quite as marked a contrast be- tween the law and its observance in the case of some of the railroad , insurance, and banking com- panies, — institutions the magnitude of whose bus- iness in this country dwarfs the total fiscal opera- tions of many of the governments of the earth. Railroads, by means of discriminating rates and service have torn down the fortunes of one man and built up those of another, and have even built up one city at the expense of another; while out of the public lands unlawfully appropriated by them a State could be formed, so far as the extent of domain is concerned. We have seen the oflicials of insurance and banking companies creating out of the policy holders' money "yellow dog" funds (presumably because the law was silent on the sub- ject of yellow dogs) and with them corrupting PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS 15 legislatures and contributing campaign funds to a political party with which to debauch elections. How many more kinds of irregularities, to put it mildly, the officers of these and other corporations have indulged in, first and last, will never be known. It is said that nine-tenths of an ice-berg is under water, and therefore never seen; so it may be with the operations of the railroad, insur- ance and banking companies. Thus we have an explanation of the paradox of large personal lib- erty in a network of law. If the reader insists that the word liberty as here used should have quotation marks around it, that, in fact, it means license, I will not quarrel with him, for I am of the same opinion. What are we doing about it? That in law en- forcement and progressive legislation lie the safe- ty and well-being of society the people are begin- ning to realize. Just now the echoes of righteous complaints, stifled some years ago, are causing a stir in the land. Every reader of the newspapers knows this, though it is a pity he has not felt the good effects as yet in his market-basket, in the hon- esty of the goods he buys, in shorter hours of la- bor, and in some other things that have to do with his existence. Whether this movement for better conditions is an awakening, as some enthusiastic people believe, or merely a turning over in our sleep, time will tell. We had an experience similar in many re- spects to the present more than a generation ago. 1 6 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION At that time the air was thick with scandals grow- ing out of eight years of malfeasance in office. Then, as now, the people were aroused, and by a great popular majority they chose a reformer to be their president. But a thimblerigging Elector- al Commission, wholly unauthorized by the Con- stitution, counted him out of office, and the people were deprived of a chance to have a house-clean- ing. Let us hope there will be no relapse in the move- ment now in progress. There is at least a show of earnestness about it. Men high in official posi- tion, — governors, congressmen, mayors and pros- ecutors, who in the past were never suspected of being disloyal to the "interests" that put them in office, are just now doing strange things, remind- ing one of the rat-killing feat of the Pied Piper. And after each act they stride across the stage of public notice, acknowledging with bows and smiles the plaudits of the people for sticking their spears into the Trust Dragons. We even have the amus- ing spectacle of constables and councilmen shaking their fists (through press interviews) at John D. Rockefeller. Occasionally a promoter of the trusts themselves, a federal judge, whose decisions have provoked resentment, a prominent lawyer, whose business it has been to defend employers against their employees, kick up their heels and announce their purpose to serve the people hence- forth. At a meeting of governors in New Jersey approval was given to doctrines and measures PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS 17 which a few years ago were looked upon as the wild-eyed vagaries of irresponsible agitators, which no man high in office would have dared to cham- pion, even if he had bothered his head about them. Quite as noticeable is the change in the tone of our periodicals. Twenty-five years ago magazines were few, compared with the present number, and were published for the educated and leisure classes. They were transcendental rather than empirical; mundane matters were viewed at arm's length; to get down into the "mire of politics" was in bad form. But how different it is today ! Dignity is cast to the winds. It is circulation that counts, and "muck-raking" has become the order of the day. And it is a good thing it has, too. The exposure of inefficiency, waste and dishon- esty is having a needful effect upon the voter. He is getting his eyes open. He is beginning to cast off party ties, even as he dropped out of torch- light processions thirty years ago. He is begin- ning to regard the office holder as his servant rath- er than his master; albeit, he manifests an astonish- ing degree of whimsicality in giving his orders. Will the initiative and recall sober him into stabil- ity, or will they make him even more fickle? Some fifteen years ago a writer made the bold assertion, very much ridiculed at the time, that there had not been a real statesman in office since the Civil War. While such a declaration was some- what hyperbolic, yet in the light of what has since taken place, considering, that is, the change of 1 8 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION front of our office-holders and aspirants for office all along the line, there was much truth in the as- sertion. Looking back over years not so long gone by, we now see that men high in official position whom we called statesmen, were simply politi- cians; their chief concern was to retain, rather than to acceptably fill, office. Politics was a game to be played like chess, and the most skilful politician or party won. The great mass of voters being sunk in stupid partisanship, prejudices were more potent than principles. It is safe to say that, dur- ing the last quarter of a century, four out of five intelligent men of all parties have really been in favor of certain reforms, — the reasonable reduc- tion of the tariff, an income tax, the election of United States Senators by popular vote, and a doz- en other reforms; yet, at the behest of the powers that be in their respective parties, because of par- tisanship, in other words, they have been fighting each other on these very issues. Had men disfran- chised themselves, they could scarcely hav^e done more to perpetuate abuses and obstruct reforms than they have done by a blind adherence to party. Such being the attitude of the electorate, no new things of vital importance were considered by the office-holders. Afraid to grapple with the real is- sues of the day, they made a virtue of cowardice and boasted of being "stand-patters." Their speeches were of the "spread-eagle" sort, consist- ing of "glittering generalities" that pointed out no remedy. If anybody did rise to demand a specific PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS 19 remedy for wrongs, he and his followers were ridi- culed and caricatured till they became discouraged and disgusted, and quit. Witness the fate of the Populists. Here was a body of men who had suf- fered and thought, and who had ideas about reme- dies. But they were charged, forsooth, with wear- ing whiskers, and so every cunning politician in the land that held office by grace of the "interests" clapped his hands and set the sycophants, together with the great amoeba class of voters, yelping after these Populists. And thus "safe and sane" politics prevailed, and "national honor" triumphed. Even at a much later time, in the face of a popular de- mand for action on the tariff. Congress voted to await the report of a committee of non-members and adjourned! It is still the proper strategy for an administration, the party in power, when the people clamor too loudly for relief, to hang the matter up in some such commission. Thus, having been neither qualified nor obliged to take definite and summary action on problems that press for solution, our official class, especially in national politics, have learned little that is new. It is really amusing to see how some of our "states- men" are taking hold of the real issues that con- front the American people. How wildly they rush to the writings of the radicals to learn the very meaning of the terms initiative, referendum, recall and proportional representation! In this matter of statesmanship we are destined, if I mistake not, to recast our ideas very material- 20 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION ly. At the present time, as already intimated, we are demanding that our office-holders actually do something for the good of the people, and in our impatience we are, in some parts of the country, taking matters into our own hands through the ini- tiative and referendum. The keen intellect of Sam- uel J. Tilden was never more clearly manifested than in his masterful letter accepting the nomina- tion to the presidency. In that letter he used the following language: "There is no necromancy in the operations of government. The homely max- ims of every-day life are the best standards of its conduct." How true it is that there is no necrom- ancy in government becomes evident upon reflec- tion. The service of the people through common sense rules, — what more is there to it? In its practical conduct government is simply a matter of business. As that great mind, Thomas A. Edi- son, in a recent interview said, "Governments are just huge business concerns." While for the high- est offices greater abilities are, as a rule, though not always, needed than for the lower ones, yet no oc- cult or magic powers are required for the conduct of any office. Given an official imbued with a pur- pose to serve the people, and he will be required to exercise few powers that would not be called into play in the conduct of a business enterprise. Some years ago Battling Nelson, the pugilist, as- pired to be mayor of his home town in Illinois, and he outlined a platform of principles on which he would conduct the office. That platform, in its PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS 21 answer to the needs of his city, would compare favorably with any that a so-called statesman might draft. Considering the fighting qualities of the Dane, it is very probable that had he become may- or he would have gone far in applying his plat- form. But there is a further stage in the evolution of political ideas which will, when attained, make of- fice-holding statesmanship seem rudimentary. So accustomed have we become to associating the idea of statesmanship with the incumbency of a high office that we have not as yet conceived of the le- gitimate scope of the term. Is not a state's man any one who serves his state in a political capacity? Are not the publicist and the orator who discuss political questions and advocate the application of sound principles in government, though they may never hold office, just as truly statesmen as is a United States Senator? Who will deny the appel- lation of statesman to the late Edward M. Shep- ard or to Louis Brandeis? A metropolitan news- paper refers to a former member of the United States Senate as an "ex-statesman;" and this not- withstanding that he continues to devote much of his time to the public welfare. I submit that this man is as truly a statesman today as when he was a Senator. Some men only become true statesmen after they have quit office and have no ambition to return; for then they see public questions in a different light and discuss them with more freedom and honesty. 22 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION Pursuing this idea further, we will yet realize that not even great names, in or out of office, are alone to be coupled with statesmanship. And there will come a time when cities and towns will have their local statesmen. In a little city in Ohio there is a young woman who, though she has never held office, is yet an authority on the powers and duties of municipal officers, and is frequently consulted by them. Moreover, she is at the head of a civics study club, organized by her efforts; and she has settled more than one strike. Shall we not call this lady a stateswoman? CHAPTER II What is it to Live? CITY life ! We hear this expression every day, but what a misnomer, what a mock- ery the phrase is! As if there could be any life where everything is objective and nothing subjective; where the individual is swallowed up in the mass; where automatic mo- tion takes the place of individual action; where personal traits are not to be looked for, because of the atrophy, through non-use, of the powers needed to develop them. Considerable attention has been paid in recent years to the evils, the dangers, of the city; to its intemperance, its immorality and its crime; to the concentration of its wealth, and the prevalence of its poverty; to the corruption of its politics and to its lawlessness. These phases all constitute press- ing problems, some of which will be considered in subsequent pages of this volume. But I wish here to notice the one distinguishing evil of the city, an evil that is nothing less than a blight. In propor- tion to its importance, the attention given to it has been slight. Far worse, because more pervasive, more paralyzing and more hopeless than the Mis- eries of Paris, the evils set forth in Darkest Eng- 23 24 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION land, the Shame of the Cities, or the poverty that explains How the Other Half Lives, is the absence of any real life by the automatons conventionally called men and women who make up the city's population. What Is life, and what is it to live? An eminent biologist has likened the human organism to a machine, that is, "a system in which chemical af- finities, especially the union of the oxygen of the air with the materials of alimentation, produce heat, electrity and muscular work." And Virchow calls life "a particular kind of mechanics." These are excellent definitions, from the purely physical point of view, and, together, they would almost describe the city people and their motions. But man is, or should be, something more than a com- bination of chemical elements; and life is, or should be, more than mechanical motion. If this is not so, then biography is a fable, and history a waste of words. The truth is, that, as applied to man, the highest part and product of nature, it is personality that counts. Personality is that which makes us say, of the object of the remark, "Here is this or that kind of man." Personality is that without which there is no real man. It is the em- bodiment of character and of charm, of reputa- tion and of aspiration; and to live is to possess and develop all these attributes. Personality is man's greatest asset, for it is nothing less than the man himself. Take from man his personality and he loses his identity. WHAT IS IT TO LIVE? 25 Now personality depends upon individuality, with which idea, in a secondary sense, it is synony- mous. But how much of individuality do you find in a big city? Very little. When applied to the men of the city how much truth there is in the assertion of Jules Payot that "there is hardly one man in a thousand who has real personality. Nearly all men in their general conduct, as well as in their particular actions, are like marionettes drawn together by a combination of forces which are infinitely more powerful than their own. They no more live an individual life than does a piece of wood which is tossed into the torrent, and which is carried away without know- ing either how or why." Much the same thought is expressed by Dr. Julia Seton Sears who, in her admirable little book, "Concentration," says: "It is interesting to notice how few there are who are really in control of their own minds. The field of consciousness is open to every kind of ran- dom, drifting thought forms; and many carry around minds which are ready to receive every negative thing that is projected into them either by individuals or conditions." How could it be oth- erwise when so much time is spent amid the roar and buzz and everchanging scenes of a big city? Some time ago, under the caption "Burievl Alive," Collier's Weekly had this to say, in pait, of a very general type of city man : "From earliest youth he has worked in offices, and twenty years of that atmosphere have subdued 26 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION him. Those trailing years have enriched him with a sHghtly venomous human interest in those about, the timidity born of routine indoor work, the ser- vility to those in authority, the scorn of those who work in ways a little more menial than that of his own clerical rut. He is now middle-aged, mature, perfected. He has become pussy footed, has ac- quired a soft voice, a purring, apologetic manner. He walks around as if on tiptoe, peering over desks, gently intruding wherever he scents the faint beginnings of an office scandal. In his soothing, low pitched voice he drops venom into each wait- ing ear as he goes up and down the office. In his work there is little to which he looks back with pride. A thousand weeks of filing cards, hammer- ing typewriters, adding up columns of figures, have not left him with blithe memories of something accomplished, something done. One thing for him they have done; they have thoroughly tamed his spirit. There are no adventurous quests in him. There is never an evening when his spirit will an- noy him by yearning to do impossible things. Bet- ter than an animal cage of thick iron bars, or a prison cell where the pads are fat and impenetra- ble, is the modern office for taming the roving blood and reducing to orderliness the leaping joy of hfe." Quite another type than this subdued man, to whose credit it may at least be said that he earns his daily bread, is that smart fellow, the "four- flusher." He fares much better than the tamed of- WHAT IS IT TO LIVE? 27 fice man, in fact, waxes fat — until he oversteps the line between unconscionable and unlawful and gets into the hands of the federal authorities. He flourished in increasing numbers from the time of his advent some twenty years ago down to a recent time, since which period the aforesaid federal au- thorities have thinned his ranks somewhat. He is, generally speaking, a well-dressed, round, smooth- faced chap with fishy, impersonal eyes, and a turn- down mouth, expressive of cynicism. He is by na- ture an Ishmaelite and a freebooter, and is quite impartial with respect to his victims; all is fish that comes to his net. He is not a human being in the sense that Abraham Lincoln was a human being, for he has no heart. His whole stock in trade is bluff, on which, as Eva Tanguay sings, "half the world is run." Of course, bluff or "front," is not limited to practitioners such as the one just described; nor is it confined entirely to the city, but is to be found wherever men are sailing under false colors. Its most common employment, however, in this com- mercial age, is in reference to one's wealth. "If you have not a virtue, assume it," has many fol- lowers along this line, these days. If there were as many millionaires as men who contrive to be so considered, they would be as numerous as spar- rows. If I were to frame a new definition of mil- lionaire it would be: A person worth $30,000 and who runs a bluff at a million. A few more years of bluff and this term millionaire will become 2 8 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION cheap and lose its meaning, as many another brave word which started out well has lost its meaning. If we take the newspapers for it, about the only people of the city who possess an individuality are multi-millionaires, star ball-players and champion pugilists, together (in a minor degree) with the higher city officials. All other citizens are on a dead level, with respect to the figure they cut; you rarely hear of them unless as victims of a holo- caust, as persons charged with crime, or as parties to a salacious scandal. Yet it would be a mistake to make individuality depend upon either fame or fortune. If it did so depend, most of us would be doomed to remain nonentities, no matter where we pass our days. It is not because people are poor that they lack indi- viduality. Many a man in the country or village that possesses no more property than does the av- erage city man has a pronounced, even picturesque, personality. He is known and duly appreciated in a wide circle for his integrity, his sound judg- ment, his wit, or for his eccentricities, and his fund of good stories. And the local weekly paper takes note of his comings and goings. No, neither fame nor fortune should be considered essential to in- dividuality. But individuality and real living do imply being counted, being taken note of — being somebody, in short — by reason of distinct traits of character. It is through the exercise and influence of his traits of character that a man should im- press himself upon the community in which he WHAT IS IT TO LIVE? 29 lives. Without these qualities, or if they be in an atrophied condition, he is nothing. If you would make a man a dog, treat him like a dog. We do not like to take note of blanks, either in lotteries or in lives, but if we will be at the pains of looking into lives that are but types of thousands of other lives, we will understand why there are so many human dogs in a big city — and stray dogs at that. Do they not receive much the same consideration, or, rather, lack of consider- ation, accorded to stray dogs? Who knows your citizen, the vaunted product of civilization? Who cares for him? What does he amount to? And what does he get out of life? When a man re- ceives no attention, and is of no interest to his fel- low men, his personal relations of necessity cease, or are greatly curtailed. He feels his loneliness; he realizes his insignificance; all individuality is starved out of him, and he drops out of sight. He virtually becomes an outcast. With him it is sheer neglect that represses "noble rage" and freezes "the genial current of the soul." So far as the sentiment of commiseration is concerned the poet of today could find far greater inspiration for an elegy in a city cemetery than in a country church- yard. Says Luther Burbank, the plant-wizard: "When the cactus had to contend with hungry beasts and the heat of the desert, it developed spines and a thick hide. Underfed, underpaid, ig- norant and helpless folk, peopling the deserts of our cities, go through identically the same read- 30 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION justment. They develop barbed, suspicious, embit- tered natures." Your citizen has a right to vote, and is flattered, near election time, by smiling of- fice-seekers. Newspapers sometimes tickle his vani- ty by referring to him (in the abstract, however), as the "sovereign voter." But all this is cold com- fort; he feels himself a cipher notwithstanding. Like the despairing cry. "Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink," could well be the city man's wail, "People, people, everywhere, nor any one I know." For it is scarce- ly an exaggeration to say that outside his family (if he has a family) he really knows no one, and if a business man, he only half knows his family, because of blunted sensibilities or diverted thoughts. Someone has well said that no man can be a good husband or father who is absorbed in money-making. His business associates he knows in a merely diplomatic way. The ordinary citizen is almost a stranger among the half million or more of his fellow beings. He has, sometimes, a nominal acquaintance with a small circle, but even such an acquaintance is more circumscribed than that of the average village resident in his native town. With only such a shallow acquaintance with one's fellow man, is it any wonder that no distin- guishing traits of character are to be discovered, WHAT IS IT TO LIVE? 31 or even expected in city men; that all are, like the derby hats they wear, very much the same? When an individual, the man from the country or small town, appears on the scene, he is apt to be consid- ered a "character;" and when contrasted with the standardized beings about him, he is a character. Spend an hour at an Inter-urban station observing the people who get off the cars, and you will under- stand. Note the smack of individuality about them. Their clothes may be of the style of the early seventies, but you do not doubt the import- ance of these people "back home." They may be "Rubes," but they get more of real life out of one month than the city man gets out of a year. And they differ one from another, too; you can com- pare them. But suppose the city man should un- dertake to compare the characters of his neigh- bors, if he be so fortunate as to know the name of those who live three doors from him. What a farce the whole proceeding! It would be like com- paring one blank piece of paper with another. The fact is, the city man does not know his neighbors in any real sense. There is an indescrib- able something, perhaps it is the vastness and the vagueness of a big city, that not only minimizes the individual, but shrouds him a veil of incompre- hensibility. There is a bewilderment in numbers. As, while watching the simultaneous perform- ances taking place in a three-ringed circus, we get but a confused impression of what each performer is doing, so, in looking at the kaleidoscopic move- 3 2 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION ments of the men and women who make up a big city, we focus little attention on individuals. Or, again, in the sense of mass, the city is the or- ganism of which the citizen is but a cell. In this sense also, a forest may well illustrate the city, and the tree the individual. As the forest robs the tree of attention, so the city takes the attention from the citizen, the man. Hence it is that in a city one does not know his neighbor, and, if an old resident, the chances are he does not care to know him; if he did, he could not. Any attempt in a city to become acquainted with one's neighbor seems to be in bad taste. City people, even professing Christians, seldom speak without the formality of an introduction. To do so, unless at a Rescue Mission, would be a breach of etiquette; yet in a nearby church the clergyman stands Sunday after Sunday, conventionally preach- ing the brotherhood of man. Occasionally a young clergyman — generally one recently from a small town — inwardly astonished at the coldness and in- difference of city people and at their lack of fellow- ship, will hire a large tent, and, pitching it on a vacant lot, seek by sheer novelty to enthuse his au- dience. Vain effort, and one speedily abandoned. The exhorter soon finds that he is dealing with a class of people very different from those he swayed in the little town he came from. Deprived of that influence which in a smaller community he could exert, and of the importance resulting therefrom, the cit}'^ man loses not only WHAT IS IT TO LIVE? 33 the picturesqueness of individuality, but all charm of personality. He becomes a mere shuttle-mov- ing, by the force of necessity, to and fro between home and worshop, store or office. And it mat- ters little whether it be one or the other. Except for his better clothes, his more prosperous appear- ance, and a little more elbow-room, the office man who takes a late car down town differs but little from the sad-eyed, sullen factory hand, who, hav- ing to take an earlier car, is packed against his fellow toilers like a sardine in a box. In either case there is the same dumb nobody. Do not try to start a conversation with one of these better dressed men. You will be considered "fresh" if you do. Should you so far forget your- self and the eternal proprieties as to try to con- verse with one of these conventional human atoms, you will receive no notice. You might as well have addressed a post. Should you persist in your effort to be sociable and make a second remark, look out! for the probabilities are you will get a reply so gruff and short as to make you feel that you have committed an unpardonable offense. No Reuben, come to town, ever evinced greater out- ward signs of distrust toward a would-be conge- nial stranger than do these presumably sophisti- cated denizens of the city. It is only just to the manual toiler — a term that has come, though improperly, to be synonymous with working man — to say that the foregoing strictures do not apply so fully to him. The labor- 34 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION. Ing classes, so-called, are the only city beings who approach the country and small-town people in re- spect to sociability and sincerity. The factory worker (unless he be one of those chaps who is ob- sessed with "class consciousness," in which case he Is apt to be rather grouchy, for he hates the world and himself thrown in) will very frequently re- spond to a stranger's adv^ances, and be friendly, and that without reserve. Not so with the soft- handed business man, bank, store, or office clerk. He stands on what he mistakes for dignity, and be- fore a stranger can get his attention, he must show his credentials, — good clothes, and at least an as- sumption of equality in the business world. If the reader is here prompted to excuse the business man on the ground of his "busy-ness," I reply that while this may partially account for his lack of sociabil- ity and politeness, it does not deny it. The fact remains just the same; this is all that I contend, which is enough. The naturalist tells us of fish that lose their eyes because they live in the waters of caverns where all is dark; the physiologist affirms that all one need do to lose the use of an arm Is to carry it in a sling for a long time; and the evolutionist emphasizes the part played by environment In the development of all life. It Is the violation of this law of exer- cise, this law which says to us: "Use or lose," that accounts for the loss to the city man of very much that history and biography, as well as the noblest ideals of our common humanity, teach us should WHAT IS IT TO LIVE? 35 characterize the real man. Indeed, if one were to accept the unique theory of the late Henry Drum- inond concerning the nature of the human soul, as propounded in his "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," he would find much to convince him that the seasoned city man has no soul; that his soul died of starvation. "Then hit the trail and follow it adown the western slope ; This city life may be all right for those whose eyes are blind, Or those who never see beyond the daily, dulling grind. But herding round a snubbing post from eight till half past five. Has never kept the outdoor heart of vagabonds alive. Here every man is for himself, the devil for them all; And few have pity for the weak who by the wayside fall, They're branded with the city's iron, in body, heart and soul ; On every hand I see them strive, with money for their goal But outward where the sun goes down is room for you and me. And there the men are what their God intended they should be. This old corral is far too small for my six feet of brawn, So I shall take the Western trail before another dawn. And all I ask of future years is that my feet may stray Along some sun-kissed range until the final round-up day." — Helen Washer. CHAPTER III Superficiality and Frivolity IN an address delivered a year or two ago be- fore a graduating class a distinguished states- man deplored the superficiality of the times. It was a seasonable theme. For there has never been a time in our history when serious study and sober thought were so demanded of all our people as they are today. Insidious evils are prey- ing upon the moral body of society — grievous ills, relating, for example, to "the lowering of the ideals of marriage and the substitution of a tem- porary contract for that permanent union which is necessary, to take no higher ground for the nurture and education of the next generation; the commer- cial employment of married women, resulting to a serious extent, in the neglect and disruption of family life and the displacement and unemploy- ment of men; the uncontrolled multiplication of the degenerate, who threaten to swamp in a few generations, the purer elements of our race . . . the prevalence of vice, the increase of insanity and feeble-mindedness, and their exhaustless drain up- on free-flowing charity and the national purse; the wide circulation of debasing books and papers which imply the existence, to a deplorable extent, 36 SUPERFICIALITY AND FRIVOLITY 37 of low ideals amongst a multitude of readers; and some of the manifold evils of our industrial sys- tem which cause the hideous congestion of slum- dom with its irreparable loss of the finer sensibili- ties, of beauty, sweetness and light." Nor is careful thought less called for in the con- sideration of remedies. Political innovators, sen- sible of the wrongs in "present conditions," to use a current platitude, and aware that the people do not get a "square deal," but unmindful of the fact that under our form of go\'ernmcnt it is their own fault, in the long run, if they do not, are pro- posing to make the horse drink by means of the Initiative, Referendum and Recall. A New Na- tionalism and a New Democracy also are being preached. And now, more portentous than all else, the spectre of a capital-labor war, which for forty years has occasionally appeared to disturb our complacency, is assuming the flesh and blood aspect of reality, and is standing over us with threatening mien, an apparition that seems half anarchistic, half socialistic. But is not our Nero strumming the lyre while Rome is burning? Wliat indication is there in the absorption of men and women in chewing gum, ex- changing comic picture-cards, crowding moving picture shows, attending card clubs and reading inane novels whose sole reason for existence is the author's need of money — just as a shoddy suit of clothes is made to sell — what indication is there that we have any problems to solve? Yet are not 38 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION these and similar avocations, the rule rather than the exception in our great cities today? While it is true that many books on reform are published now-a-days, besides magazines that are full of the "literature of exposure," yet for every one such publication read there are scores of the other kind, as inquiry at the bookstore and the library will dis- close. If it be thought that a civilization in which flourished a James Whitcomb Riley, a William D. Howells, a Thomas Edison, and many men of like eminence, can not be in a very bad way, it should be remembered that it was in the decadent days of old Greece and Rome that some of the best examples of literature, philosophy and art were given to the world. But we need not go back to ancient times nor to foreign lands for illustra- tion of this truth. Right here in Boston today one side of the city is writing and painting, while the other side is writhing and panting. Indeed, Bos- ton, in her history, is a composite Athens and Rome in all their glory and in much of their de- generacy. The superficiality of the city is owing, primarily, to the lack of real life there. The man who really lives, is, in the main, a serious man; his thoughts and his conversation are worth while. Not so with automatons; not so with butterflies. Shut out from responsibilities in large affairs, realizing his impotence, conscious of the lack of weight of his opinions on matters of moment, the city dweller descends to trivial things. His consciousness of SUPERFICIALITY AND FRIVOLITY 39 his own littleness finds expression in his conversa- tion, however much he may stri\c, by mock digni- ty and austerity, to "run a bluti" at importance. And what are tl;e topics of his conversation? Lit- tle things. For instance, where you hear one citi- zen talking intelligently, and as one Iiaving thouglitful views, on the fundamental (|uestions of human welfare, you will hear twenty indulging in frivolous talk, and this whether it he on the street or in the home, th.e latest peril of Pauline being a favorite topic in the latter place. As for wit, we had a current specimen of it a year or two ago in the brilliant changes that were run on "skiddoo," "twenty-three," and "stung." Of the topics of conversation in society, when on parade, Mr. Ralph Pulitzer has this to say: "Plays are touched on, but acting is ignored; operas are discussed, but only for the personal performances of celebrated singers, not for the music of the operas themselves. Politics are discussed only so far as they aliect the Stock Exchange or the race- track. Politicians are, of course, beneath discus- sion, save in the rare cases of male members of so- ciety who have answered the call for gentlemen to enter politics for their purification, and who have invariably turned out the most pointedly practical politicians of the lot. Painting is discussed only to the extent of the latest fashionable foreign artist's portrait of the latest fashionable native society woman. Literature is less fortunate, being con- siderably talked about in the shape ol the latest fie- 40 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION tion; but all the talk confines itself to the plot and the character; the style is left severely to itself. Science is discussed only as represented by the mer- its of competing types of automobiles. States- manship figures in the conversation only as mani- fested in the iniquities of a tariff system which makes possible the New York Customs inspection; and the most effective methods of nullifying this system (being also touched on) . . . The market is the one inspiration that can transmute general loquacity into general eloquence. It is not merely that the future of a stock is like the future of the soul, a subject on which any one man's guess is as tenable as any other man's theory. But prac- tically every man present has learned his stock quo- tations at his mother's knee. He knows 'The Street,' its traditions, its whole history, a great deal better than he knows the history of his coun- try." Your citizen seems to be characterized by petty curiosity as well as by petty conversation. He is curious over the manner of applying pitch to the pavement; the size of the new numbers being placed on houses; the newest kind of lamps on au- tomobiles; and it is not an uncommon sight to see a dozen citizens critically inspecting some new-fan- gled contrivance on one of these machines, making momentous observations the while. Who has not had to take to the curb to get by a crowd of men monopolizing the sidewalk just to see some adver- tising youth inside a store window seesaw a neck- SUPERFICIALITY AND FRIVOLITY 41 tie around his collar? llie fellow who designed that diagram on the package of the Inner Seal food preparations must have had in mind this mouse-like curiosity of the city people. Enduring a hopeless from-hand-to-mouth ex- istence, calloused by the stereotyped scenes of ar- tificial creation, and shut out from the inspiration of nature's works, cynicism comes all too often, to take the place of idealism in the city man's mind. Who can fail to understand Hepworth when, in his "Brown Studies," he says: "I am not the same man that I was in New York. I lived so long among all sorts of creatures there that I found my- self growing cynical; but since I have slept in the woods, where everything is honest, loyal to its des- tiny, and true to the high purpose for which it was created, I notice that the simplicity and trust- fulness and buoyancv of my boyhood are coming back." Of course, "simplicity and trustfulness and buoyancy" will come back when they are given a chance, since they are our primal inheritance. No- tice the change, after a year or two, in the char- acter of the man who retires from business, quits the city, and goes to his country home. With the city dweller, however, the case is very different. Anything for him but the crime of appearing "green." What remnant of naturalness is still left to him out of his inheritance from country-born ancestors is shut in by a sort of storm-door of bluff, through which his fellow man is rarely permitted 42 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION to enter. To betray emotion is to invite a derisive smile from the man at his elbow. For instance, to show sympathy for the messenger boy who has fallen from his wheel, and especially to start to his assistance, would be chicken-hearted. If you are a true city man, you will stand by and grin. It is so comical, you know, to see a fellow plunge over his wheel on to the stone pavement. And that ragged, half-starved, man sitting on the park bench or lounging in the shelter-house, during the mo- mentary absence of the policeman — who of the city's hurrying throng ever stops to minister to him? Were one to do so, the recipient of the at- tention would think himself dreaming, so amazing would be such an instance of Christian concern. Yet a goodly per cent, of the passers-by are "Christians." Even the Salvation Army, that unique organization at first looked at askance by dignified clergymen, and then welcomed by them as just the thing to look after the offal of human- ity, while they themselves courted the well-to-do, — even the Salvation Army has now too much red tape about it to bother very much with such un- fortunates. There are more love songs sung, more love ser- mons preached and less true love in the world to- day than there has been in a hundred years before. And all because men and women have been flocking more and more to the city, where there is no time for love, where there are too many distractions, and where simulation and synicism take its place. SUPERFICIALITY AND FRIVOLITY 43 No sooner is a new sentimental song sung than its parody chases it across the continent. It was cer- tainly a city chap who changed "All the world loves a lover" into "All the world laughs at a lover." There is, to be sure, a sort of charity for Jesus' sake, a calculating, or at best, sense-of-duty kind; but little enough of innate, spontaneous, no-re- ward-expected, kindliness. Even among women, especially educated women, of the rising genera- tion, this absence of heart is noticeable. A ladies' magazine recently deplored, with much evidence adduced, the cold, artificial, and unsympathetic natures of the young women who come home from college. The increasing attention giv'en to dress and es- pecially to amusements — the fondness for the lat- ter fast becoming a craze — also emphasizes the city's renunciation of serious purposes, that is, in the making of men and women, and its abandon- ment to the superficial and the ephemeral. While we are fond of saying that money does not make the man, we must all admit that in our land today it is the one thing that differentiates man from man, the possession most prized, even if not most praised; and when, though thus esteemed, its ac- cumulation is abandoned as hopeless, recklessness is apt to follow. "What is the use of trying to save money?" reasons the citizen in ordinary cir- cumstances. "No investment can be made with what little I may, by rigid self-denial, accumulate." 44 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION Where a front foot of residence property costs more than a whole acre of farm land in the coun- try, and where the ownership of a business calls for the investment of a fortune, the method em- ployed in bygone days of getting rich by saving is impossible. The most the average city man may hope to do is to provide for a "rainy day," which has come to mean a short period of idleness or sickness. But few of us like to think of "rainy days." So the money goes: for necessary house- hold expenses first, and then, more and more for fine clothes and amusements. The foregoing re- marks apply almost wholly to the so-called pros- perous classes, that is, to those who are making a comfortable hving. In the case of the very poor, the order of expenses is likely to be rev^ersed — amusements and pie and cake coming first, and flour and meat second. In the matter of dress, as in everything else, the conventional attitude is taken. Little or no thought is given to what cut or color of raiment best be- comes the wearer. To insist on wearing what real- ly becomes one, regardless of the prevailing style, would smack of an individuality, which, as we have seen, the city resident does not, as a rule, possess. Men and women are governed by one iron rule, namely, the rule imposed by a clique of fashion- makers in New York and Paris, for whose finan- cial interest it is, of course, to make radical changes, at least in the ear-marks of clothing, from year to year. And how these dictators of style must laugh SUPERFICIALITY AND FRIVOLITY 45 at some of the effects they produce! For the young man who prides himself on being in "the swim" to he seen wearing a sack coat, though it be in good condition, that is an inch or two shorter than the New York fashion maker has decreed he should wear, or for the young (or middle-aged?) woman to go out with a hat, that, however becoming, is of last year's style, would almost amount to a dis- grace. It would be a source of humiliation, at all events. The impression is not here intended to be given that all city people are thus weak votaries of the fashion plate; but it is undeniably true that nearly all who have the money to follow the er- ratic decrees of fashion do so. Occasionally society people will assert a purpose to throw off the yoke and dress as becomes them. My paper publishes an account of a movement by Chicago society women against a uniform style of dress, sought to be imposed on them by the Chica- go Dressmakers' Club. They say that "women arc meant to be pretty and are going to be." Much power to them ! But I am afraid the dressmakers will win the battle. In the line of literature and of amusements, plays, shows, and the like, we find the parodox of a craving for the exciting, sensational, and fantastic, along with a state of mind that takes the most as- tonishing things as a matter of course, and is not surprised into admiring anything. The portrayal of human nature, that feature which makes the classics, whether plays or books, so valued, finds 46 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION little expression in the stuff that sells in the city today, notwithstanding that many of these produc- tions are advertised to possess "human interest," as the catchy phrase puts it. The sensational and the dramatic — how the papers glare with the words ! — the improbable and the impossible, is the style of presentation that pleases. It is by these traits that the novels of the day win popularity. The mix-up (one can hardly call it plot) of the story abounds in the improbable and sensational — a guess and a thrill on every page. Still, it will probably be a relief to the reading public when the last precious stone stolen from a Hindu Raja has been restored, and when the last instance of love- making and marriage of first cousins shall have been recorded. Let us hope, too, that melodra- matic players will soon understand that profanity on the stage is not wit, but only a lumber-Jack's substitute for It. All honor to the memory of the late Ezra Kendall whose boast it was that he never resorted to profanity to win a laugh. This craze for the unreal, the fantastic, may be attributed, in the main, to two causes, one local, the other general; one incident to the city, the oth- er to the century. First, it is undoubtedly true that the stern realities of existence in a city where, as a rule, all must work or starve, together with the hopeless, tread-mill, grind which the vast majority of toilers are forced through, year in and year out, seem to call for a relaxation just as opposite to their experience as their imagination can conceive. SUPERFICIALITY AND FRIVOLITY 47 These people, therefore, crave the exhilaration, the ccstacy, that comes of seeing, and of reading about, the spectacular and unreal. Secondly, the wonder- ful inventions and discoveries in this generation, all of which have been stepping-stones to others quite as important, have rendered us very credu- lous. Nothing startles us now; on the contrary, everything is accepted as a matter of course. The whole spectacle of man's achievements tends to convert our minds into a sort of dreamland where- in everything becomes possible. Nature sets no limitations, we may do what we please. Wise-acres have pronounced the boat unsinkable, so "on with the dance." It is on a public thus deluded that get-rich-quick fakirs fatten; that "electric" and "magnetic" heal- ers flourish; and that scamps who advertise to grow hair on a bald head, or to raise the dying, thrive. How many millions of dollars have been taken from the pockets of the too credulous by these rascals during the last twenty-five years! It is with a public thus deluded, too, that mere notoriety so frequently wins over solid worth in politics. The masses today are "easy-marks" for the advertising politician. Formerly an office- seeker who bragged and blustered was not taken seriously; he was regarded as a barking dog that never bites. But now the successful candidate is almost as much an advertised product as is a break- fast food. And how many voters are really influ- enced, though unconsciously, by a name that sounds 48 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION good to them ! Politicians have not yet, like many stage people, adopted attractive names, but fortu- nate is the candidate in a big city whose name is Tip Tyler, or Nick Kik. He is sure to win over Henry Smith or George White. Better public ser- vants will be chosen when the voters make it their business, through committees, or associations, to know something of the character and qualifications of a candidate, and insist, where the office is pecu- liarly political, that he tell in black and white what he stands for. Finally, it is to a public thus deluded that effec- tive appeals are made by madly ambitious men who, like Cleon of old, go up and down the land flattering the people and shouting their own vir- tures, real or assumed, from the house-tops, while they misrepresent the records of more worthy men in office; who loudly demand that the people should rule when it is the last thing in the world they really want the people to do ; who vehemently declare for righteousness in politics, but who, when in office, violate nearly every principle of honor. Of this kind of cry that the people should rule, an independent paper sagaciously remarks that it has "fooled many nations, and it is fooling Americans. It is the biggest tickler the world has ever manu- factured. It flatters everybody, and in the exulta- tion of that flattery, the many fall down and wor- ship the howler, rub their foreheads in the dust and sing the chorus into the ground, and call them- selves blessed because of the coming of so great a SUPERFICIALITY AND FRIVOLITY 49 prophet, one able and willing to read their minds and kind enough to tell them that they must rule, through him." Have we not much evidence in present day politics of the truth of Barnum's say- ing that "the American people love to be hum- bugged?" But, as for Lincoln's dictum that "you can fool part of the people all the time, and all the people part of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time" — it sounds fine, and is true; but does it amount to much in practice? As a mat- ter of fact, the demagogue does not find it at all necessary to fool all the people all the time; a ma- jority will serve his purpose, and it need not be made up of the same people that were fooled be- fore, either. I can find no more pertinent thought in conclud- ing this chapter than that of Frederick Denison Maurice when, in comparing our own times with the degenerate days of Athens, he said: "The pas- sion for novelty had eaten up all other and bet- ter passionss in them (the Athenians) — all rever- ence, all faith, all freedom. It is a very awful les- son. We are not one-half as clever as the Athen- ians were. But men have lived among us, and deeds have been done among us as noble as any they could boast of. We have been a more practi- cal people than they were; perhaps less prone to speculation, but more successful in hard, tough business. Depend upon it, all qualities are in the greatest danger of perishing; depend upon it we shall become petty and frivolous, and stupid with- 50 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION al, as we learn to spend our time as the Athenians spent theirs. There are men among us who do. They go about from club to club, and house to house, and street to street, saying 'What now? What is the last, the very newest thing? Who can tell us? That which was heard two or three days, or two or three hours ago is stale. We must have something fresh. That is what we are hunting for." Such men are the most miserable creatures that this earth brings forth. The past is nothing to them, nor the future. They live in the moment that is passing. Their life is absorbed into that. And do not let any of us say that we are not in dan- ger of becoming such men as these. We are all in danger of it; men of all parties and professions, men whose language sounds most serious, as well as those who never speak of any world but this." CHAPTER IV Childhood in the City THE greater number of our large cities are so new, at least in their vastness, that comparatively few of the older res- idents thereof are in all essentials com- plete products of the city; and even those who are partially so have been influenced in some measure by contact with the constant accretions from the country. But what of the myriad of boys and girls that are today wholly a product of the city, especially of the big city? Born, reared and cooped up within the walls of apartment houses, or at best in dwell- ings without yards in which they can play their games, as is the case with an ever-increasing num- ber, their whole lives spent in the city, what sort of men and women will they become? This is one of the most momentous questions that our civiliza- tion must answer. That there is a difference be- tween these children and country bred children ad- mits of no doubt. That the clothes of city chil- dren of well-to-do parents are of better appear- ance and that their wits are keener than were those of their grandparents in their youth is beyond question. But is the fibre of their character as 51 52 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION strong, as reliable? Will they become as real men and women? It might sound like a harsh judgment to decide in the negative, for until per- haps one or two more generations of city life have given their additional evidence, judgment would be premature ; and yet there is not wanting strong evidence on the subject even in our day. In his thoughtful book "The Future Citizen," F. A. Myers quotes a London scientist as saying that "life in a big city makes children quick but not intelligent, hastening the development of the brain unnaturally. They become superficial, alert, but not observant, constructive and reasoning; excita- ble but devoid of enthusiasm, chances destroyed for being clever; blase, fickle, discontented, bird- witted, and, properly speaking, seeing nothing, for time is not permitted to delve, bewildered at the multitude of things. In fact, life in a city is essen- tially dangerous to the child-boy — corrupting, so prone is a boy to be led off. The city attractions interfere with his best intellectual development as it does with his physical progress, leading off his attention from his best efforts. The tendency is to put temptations in his way that lead him down rather than help him up." The almost uniform testimony of parents whose experience has been such as to qualify them for an intelligent opinion is that "the city is a poor place in which to bring up children," Unless we are ready to admit that the painting is more real than the scene it represents, that the artificial is superior CHILDHOOD IN THE CITY 53 to the natural, we must deny that children who are so much the creatures of an artilicial atmosphere as are city children, can become the real men and women that country children can. It is not im- plied here that children should grow up wild, their characters to be left like a neglected garden in which weeds may choke out the fruits; but simply that contact with nature should be allowed in order that, like apples kissed into ripened perfection by the life-giving sun, they may develop into real men and women. The truth is, we are far more creatures of cir- cumstances than architects of our own fortunes, "inspirational books," however well meaning, to the contrary notwithstanding. I cannot forbear at this point, because of its relevancy to my whole theme, a somewhat lengthy quotation from "Force and Matter," that profound work of Ludwig Biichner, a pioneer, with Darwin and Wallace, in the field of evolutionary discoveries. Biichner says: "Now just as nations as a whole are dependent for their history and characteristics on external conditions of Nature and the internal ones of so- ciety under which they have grown up, thus is the individual man no less a product and sum total of external natural forces, not merely in his entire physical and moral being, but also in each single department of his activity. This activity depends first and foremost on his whole mental individual- ity and special charactedstics. I.at: what is this 54 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION individuality which acts so decisively on man, and in each single instance quite apart from additional external forces, fixes his line of conduct within such narrow bounds as only to leave an exceedingly small scope for the exercise of his free will? What is this individuality but the necessary product of in- nate physical and mental qualities, in connection with training, teaching, example, custom, rank, fortune, sex, nationality, climate, soil, conditions of time and living, and so on? Man is subject to the same law as every plant and every animal — a law with the clearly defined features of which we have already met in the primitive world. As the plant depends for its existence, its size, its form and beauty upon the ground in which it is rooted; as the animal, great or small or large, wild or domes- ticated, beautiful or hideous, is the creature of the external conditions under which it has grown up; as an entozoon ever changes as it passes into the interior of another animal; thus each man is no less a product of similar external circumstances, ac- cidents, and arrangements, and can therefore by no means be set down as such a mentally independ- ent being endowed with a free will, as moralists and philosophers are in the habit of presenting him. He who brings with him into the world an innate tendency to benevolence, compassion, con- scientiousness, love of justice, and so on, is in most instances cut out for a good moralist, supposing that bad training or adverse conditions of life do not forcibly subdue that tendency; whilst on the CHILDHOOD IN THE CITY 55 other hand a congenital proclivity to melancholy, or indolence, or frivolity, or vanity, or arrogance, or avarice, or sensuality, or intemperance, or gam- bling, or violence, can, as a rule, be neither con- trolled nor checked by any kind of will or imagi- nation." Perhaps Biichner goes too far when he denies the power of the will to at least check con- genital or inborn evil propensities, but the prepon- derating influence of heredity and environment over mere will seems clear. So far as parental influence goes, a child is, gen- erally speaking, either doubly blessed or doubly cursed. If his parents are honest, sober, sensible and thrifty, they not only endow him with good blood, but with a good home as well, and train him in the way he should go. If, on the other hand, the parents are vicious, ignorant and shiftless, they not only taint the child's blood but neglect his wel- fare also. The fundamental evil, not of society, not of the state merely, but of the human race which builds society and the state, is "bad human protoplasm," producing "scrub-stock." And the great work of the race, if it is to advance, is its own regeneration through all those means which produce "a more healthy, more vigorous, more able humanity." But a discussion of those means would lead us into the field of what is known to this generation as Eu- genics. How different must be the human being that passes his life, from the cradle to the grave, in a 56 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION great city from one that thus lives in the country! Marked as is the countenance of the country man from that of the city man, his modes of thought and traits of character are scarcely less so. These distinguishing peculiarities begin to mani- fest themselves in childhood. That varieties exist even among city children, that they are not all cast in the same mold, though more and more they ap- proach a uniform type, is conceded. Some are the children of rich parents, some are the offspring of moral and cultured parents; others are the prog- eny of ignorant and depraved parents. If, as Dr. Holmes said, the training of a child should begin with its grandparents, we need not doubt the in- fluence of parental circumstances on a child's des- tiny. Allowing, therefore, for differences grow- ing out of the financial, intellectual and moral stat- us of his parents, we first note the artificial cast of the city child's mind, his propensity to talk only of the mechanical things about him. Nearly every- thing he sees or has to do with is man-made. He is a stranger to the works of nature, because he sees little or nothing of them. Of actual contact with food plants and with animals he has had no ex- perience; and consequently he knows nothing of their inception, growth and culture. Not having them about him, the property of his par- ents, he does not have them to look after, and so misses an early and valuable lesson in industry. "Books are not the only agency of intellectual de- velopment; there is the experience of industry CHILDHOOD IN THE CITY 57 The comradeship of nature on a farm, the sense of strict faithfulness and loyalty, are gained in the country, and the work there is a training of hands and heart and brain — to plan, to will, to work, to execute." Shut out from the real, even though unconscious communion with nature in her moods that change with the seasons, the city child loses something that no daily view of tall buildings, however stately and ornate, can compensate for; and that some- thing is a sense of the sublimity of nature, the con- templation of which deepens, while it makes more sincere, the characters of men. The solemn for- est, the babbling brook, the expanse of meadow, the golden grain, and solitude for contemplation of them all, are not of the city. But in their stead is a desert of crowded houses and business blocks, around which swirl the sickening smell of automo- biles and the choking fumes of factories. Even the birds of the city have come to be only those dull-colored, songless, pugnacious sparrows that so typify all the rest of what takes the place of life there. The storm-door of bluff and bluster, referred to in a former chapter, is early erected in front of the city child's character. A manifestation of this is to be seen, or rather heard, in the tone of the lan- guage he uses. This speech, a combination of Irish brogue with Bowery tough, has within recent years become so common as to threaten the very sound of our language. Formerly confined to the 58 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION confab of street gamins, among whom it seemed natural and was amusing, this tone has now be- come so common as to be nauseating. It habit- ually characterizes the speech of many of the younger mechanics, salesmen and even bank clerks, while it is not altogether absent from the voice of young women. The use of this debased form of speech seems to proceed partly from moral cow- ardice born of a fear of being natural and partly from a silly belief that it makes the user of it ap- pear worldly-wise — the same feeling that swells the chest of a boy of fourteen when he is seen (though not by his father!) smoking a cigar. To be simple and natural in speech is thought befit- ting only to the clodhopper. With no playground near the house on which to engage in sports, and with no routine of chores to do, the city boy, especially during school vaca- tions, is sorely tried for proper amusement or oc- cupation. My city reader, if you are the parent of a boy, how often you have heard that boy go through the house distractedly wailing, "What can I do, what can I do?" The movement for public playgrounds in the city, while very worthy, will necessarily fall short of expectations; for not only must the playgrounds always be pitifully inade- quate in number and size to accommodate the thousands of city children, but even where the play- ground is nearby, there is that happy-go-lucky trait in human nature that prompts ten children to play in the dirty and noisy streets to one that goes CHILDHOOD IN THE CITY 59 to the decorous playground. For lack of suitable pastime the boy, whether schoolboy or factory boy, is too frequently lured into vice, crime and extravagance; evils which in after life he must conquer, if he is to amount to anything. Of this want of proper recreation and its effect upon a certain class of young factory workers in Chicago, Jane Addams says: "This inveterate deniand of youth that life shall afford a large element of excitement is in a measure well- founded. We know of course that it is necessary to accept excitement as an inevitable part of recrea- tion, that the first step in recreation is 'that excite- ment which stirs the worn or sleeping centers of a man's body and mind.' It is only when it is fol- lowed by nothing else that it defeats its own end, that it uses up strength and does not create it. In the actual experience of these boys the excitement has demoralized them and led them into law- breaking. When, however, they seek legitimate pleasure, and say with great pride that they are 'ready to pay for it,' what they find is legal but scarcely more wholesome, — it is still merely ex- citement. 'Looping the loop' amid shrieks of sim- ulated terror and dancing in disorderly saloon halls, are perhaps the natural reactions of a day spent in noisy factories and in trolley cars through the distracting streets, but the city which permits them to become the acme of pleasure and recrea- tion to its young people, commits a grievous mis- take. 6o CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION "May we not assume that this love of excite- ment, this desire for adventure, is basic, and will be evinced by each generation of city boys as a chal- lenge to their elders? And yet those of us who live in Chicago are obliged to confess that last year there were arrested and brought into court fifteen thousand young people under the age of twenty, who had failed to keep even the common law of the land. Most of these young people had broken the law in their blundering efforts to find adventure and response to the old impulse for self- expression. It is said indeed that practically the whole machinery of the grand jury and of the criminal courts is maintained and operated for the benefit of youths between the ages of thirteen and twenty-five. "Possibly these fifteen thousand youths were brought to grief because the adult population as- sumed that the young would be able to grasp only that which is presented in the form of sensation; as if they believed that youth could thus early be- come absorbed in a hand to mouth existence, and so entangled in materialism that there would be no reaction against it. It is as though we were deaf to the appeal of these young creatures, claiming their share of the joy of life flinging out into the dingy city their desires and aspirations after un- known realities, their unutterable longings for companionship and pleasure. Their very demand for excitement is a protest against the dulness of life, to which we ourselves instinctively respond." CHILDHOOD IN THE CITY 6i If the city is responsible for the perplexities and dangers of boyhood, it is not less so for those of girlhood; for the old-time modesty which distin- guished girls in general is a thing of the past, and sports and vices are now scarcely determined by sex. City conv-eniences — the laundry, the bakery, the dressmaker's establishment — often combine to force the city girl, at least the daughter of well- to-do parents, into a life of idleness, incompetency and finicality. And the daughters of the poor, the girls who have to go into the store, the factory or the restaurant, are confronted in the matter of rec- reation, by dangers even greater than those which face their sisters because of ennui. Says the au- thor just quoted: "Never before in civilization have such numbers of young girls been suddenly released from the protection of the home and per- mitted to walk unattended upon city streets and to work under alien roofs; for the first time they are being prized more for their labor power than for their innocence, their tender beauty, their ephe- meral gaiety. Society cares more for the products they manufacture than for their immemorial abil- ity to reaffirm the charm of existence. "In every city arise so-called 'palaces' — 'gin pal- aces' they are called in fiction; in Chicago we euphemistically say merely 'places,' — in which al- cohol is dispensed, not to allay thirst, but, ostensi- bly to stimulate gaiety; it is sold in order to empty pockets. Huge dance halls are opened to which hundreds of young people are attracted, many of 62 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION whom stand wistfully outside a roped circle, for it requires five cents to procure within it for five minutes the sense of allurement and intoxication which is sold in lieu of innocent pleasure. These coarse and illicit merrymakings remind one of the unrestrained jollities of Restoration London, and they are indeed their direct descendants, properly commercialized, still confusing joy with lust, and gaiety with debauchery. Since the soldiers of Cromwell shut up the people's playhouses and de- stroyed their pleasure fields, the Anglo-Saxon city has turned over the provision for public recreation to the most evil-minded and the most unscrupulous members of the community. We see thousands of girls walking up and down the streets on a pleas- ant ev^ening with no chance to catch a sight of pleasure even through a lighted windov/, save as these lurid places provide it. Apparently the mod- ern city sees in these girls only two possibilities, both of them commercial; first, a chance to utilize by day their new and tender labor in its factories and shops, and then another chance in the evening to extract from them their petty wages by pander- ing to their love of pleasure." Of the demoralizing influence of the modern dance, or rather the acrobatics and contortions that go by that name, there is scarcely a paper or a pulpit that does not give warning. In a sermon on the situation in New York, the Rev. Charles A. Eaton said: "This dancing craze is nothing but another form of hysteria. It is not difficult to CHILDHOOD IN THE CITY 63 remember back to the time when everyone was bridge crazy. These things follow one after the other. I do not wish to appear as alarmist, nor do I wish to appear so narrow minded as not to recog- nize the need and the right of the people of our times to have amusements and recreations, but I do believe that the hysterical pursuit of pleasure through which we are now passing has not been equaled in this world since the days of ancient Rome, when the people paraded the streets and begged only for bread and play. What was the result in ancient Rome may be the result in modern New York." The present European war was even foreshad- owed by the universal craze for dancing, accord- ing to a Norwegian writer, who says, in part: "When a certain period of culture nears its termi- nation for lack of new ideas, then humanity in its search for a fresh path to follow will undergo cer- tain psychological symptoms, which a careful ob- server will recognize as precursors of a new cul- tured epoch. These symptoms are of a more or less epidemical character and spread over smaller or larger parts of the world. "To dance is nothing abnormal in itself is the conclusion drawn, but when all the world is as in a frenzy, when there is dancing on all the stages, in every society, and serious business men at their old age start to learn new steps, there must be something wrong, there must be some mental de- fect in humanity which forms a grave symptom of 64 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION an impending social decline." On the outskirts of a village in northern Michi- gan in which it has been my good fortune to spend a few weeks each year, for a decade past, there dwells a happy family. The father and mother are of the common people. The children — two boys and two girls — range from a modest, win- some little girl of eight to a manly boy of fifteen. Opposite the humble home of this family is a large green pasture, dappled with dandelions, where roam the cows of the villagers; and beyond the pasture is a little swamp, dark with the foliage of ash and cedar, mysterious with strange shrubs, small animal life and croakings and bubbles — just the kind of a place a child's imagination loves to convert into an African jungle. In the distance, to the right, rise high hills that are covered with for- est trees and blackberry bushes; while along their base flows a swift and sparkling trout stream. What a contrast is childhood in that little Mi- chigan town with childhood here in Boston — or in any other big city! On nearly every avenue in many sections of this motley city saloons, whose business is always rushing, spew out their human wrecks, to reel, tattered and blear-eyed, among these same little children. It is no exaggeration to say that in some populous quarters of the city drunkards, loafers and brawlers are practically the only grown people these children of the street come in contact with during the day. What will the harvest be? How will these children turn out? CHILDHOOD IN THE CITY 65 That disorder, violence and crime, especially homicide, are on a rapid increase in all our large cities, well informed persons are aware. Said Po- lice Commissioner Woods in an address before the Harvard Union but recently: "The strange thing recently is that the greatest amount of crime has been committed by small boys, the second genera- tion of foreigners. We are trying to study what makes these boys go wrong. It seems to be that the young immigrants outgrow their parents, learn with rapidity new speech and customs, laugh at their fathers' long beards, and the strange customs of their homes, and plunge right in for what they consider the essence of American life — to get money." A New York paper in a recent discussion of a new and alarming form of lawlessness said: "Gang warfare in New York has now regularly assumed the aspect of pitched battles fought out in the streets with bomb and revolver and with cas- ualties as heavy as in many a Mexican or Cuban engagement. The evolution of the gang system has proceeded rapidly. There may be people to whom the name still connotes a fortuitous gather- ing of idle youth whose main occupation of hang- ing about the corner saloons was varied by incur- sions into high-spirited rowdyism. But that stage has been long outgrown. Even as the gang weapon has changed from the convenient cobble-stone and beer-bottle to fire-arms and dynamite, the activi- ties of the gang have become professionalized. To 66 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION be sure, the political functions of the gang have been seriously abated. The 'gorilla' as a factor in doubtful districts on election day is a vanishing type. But in place of this intermittent occupation, with its correspondingly low opportunities of prof- it, there has been developed an entire class of gang activities in the economic field to which it is high time that the authorities gave their complete at- tention. "The gangs of today are profitably engaged in the white-slave traffic and in many varieties of blackmail, in addition to the ancient and honora- ble occupations of burglary and highway robbery. The profits of the trade are important enough for rival gangs to engage in armed warfare for con- trol of the business, and for the ambitious to fight for leadership within the gang. The methods vary with the locality. On the East Side, for example, the blackmailing of tradesmen flourishes to an ex- traordinary extent. Horse-poisoning is a favor- ite occupation, and heavy amounts are annually ex- torted from business men and livery men for im- munity. The sinister feature is that the victims are fast coming to accept the situation as inevita- ble." Whence come the members of these marauding gangs which, together with an ever-increasing num- ber of lawless "strike-sympathizers," openly chal- lenge the constituted authorities, as they did last year in Boston, and threaten the destruction of so- ciety itself? What was the childhood environ- CHILDHOOD IN THE CITY 67 ment of these hoodlums and anarchists? It was not of the country or the village, but of the city streets. CHAPTER V Public Manners IT is related that once upon a time a man dropped into a certain newspaper office in Cleveland and informed the editor of his pur- pose to write two volumes — one on the Cus- toms, and the other on the Manners, of Cleveland. A year or so thereafter, the story goes, this am- bitious writer again made his appearance in the editor's sanctum with the first volume of his work. "There," he proudly said, "is the book." "But," exclaimed the editor, "where is the other volume you were to write, the one on the manners of Clevelanders?" "Well," ruefully replied the au- thor, "I found there was a lack of material.' While it is not true that "all cities are alike," that all are equally delinquent in respect to their manners, it is emphatically true that in none of them does politeness in public even approach the requirements of a twentieth century civilization. When contrasted with our achievements in art, in science and in mechanics, embodied in the handi- work of the day and to be seen all about us in per- fection and splendor, our manners verge on the barbarous. It was Henry George who said many years ago 68 PUBLIC MANNERS 69 that although our material advancement had made possible the Brooklyn Bridge, our political pro- gress had not enabled us to prevent dishonesty in its construction. May we not likewise say that, although we have in most cities fine street cars, our manners in them are often execrable; that, while we take a just pride in our modern thoroughfares, our behavior on them is almost universally rude, — from the lack of courtesy toward others on the walk to the running down of our fellows by auto- mobiles in the roadway? And in the tiieatre we have produced stage effects that are marvelous in their beauty and realism; while the orchestra mu- sic leaves nothing to be desired, — unless by the poor snare drummer, whose ever- increasing stunts he might well wish were done by machinery, — but theatre manners are bad. All through our history, the persistent criticism of American manners by foreign visitors and Eu- ropeanized Americans has naturally led to fre- quent comparisons of our social usages with those of other countries. For a long time we suffered by the comparison. American travelers abroad, mingling, for the most part, only with the well bred people of the higher circles, "would contrast the civilities practiced in those circles with the un- polished habits of the common people at home. Then, European travelers of the privileged classes, humiliated at not finding any lackeys over here, gave us an unfavorable reputation. Many exam- ples of this kind of criticism are to be found in 70 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION Mr, John Graham Brooks' entertaining volume, "As Others See us." Again, the respectful deport- ment of the early immigrants to our shores, espec- ially during the first months of their stay, made u favorable impression upon us. We no longer get such people, the Anglo-Saxons, in any considerable number. Instead, we are being deluged with un- assimilable semi-Asiatics from the despotic coun- tries of southern Europe. May we check this im- migration before it is too late! Within recent years there has been a change of opinion in the matter of comparative manners. Any candid and observing American that has trav- eled through Europe within the last ten years will wonder at criticism from tiiat quarter. Such a person will likely agree with Brander Matthews in saying: "The more familiar and impartial the observer may be with the social usages and habits of Great Britain and the continent of Europe, the less emphatic will be his feeling that the foreign standard is really superior to the American." For any practical purpose, however, the superi- ority or the inferiority of foreign manners should count for little with the patriotic American citizen. It is neither a clumsy nor a spread-eagle use that is here made of the word patriotic; the term is used advisedly. For a patriot is not one who merely flaunts the flag and who rises in the church or the theatre when The Star Spangled Banner is sung, glorious as is the flag and inspiring as is the song. A patriot is simply one who loves and serves his PUBLIC MANNERS 71 country, that is, his fellow citizens who compose his country. Nor, as the world of to-day is be- ginning to realize, is it only in war that a patriot can serve his country. In fact, the statesman who averts a war, where principle is not sacrificed, is a truer patriot than the general who wins victories on the field of battle. But to return to the thought, the comparative politeness of nations is not of particular moment. Nor is it of importance whether the manners of the city or those of the country are the better. There is little basis for comparison, since the ele- ment of numbers largely determines the proper conduct of t!ie individual. He who has plenty of elbow-room may act accordingly. 7he rights of the man who occupies a bed alone are very differ- ent from those of the fellow who is unfortunate enough to be one of the proverbial "three in a bed." In the country a man is a law unto himself. He can take the middle of the road; and he can indulge to his heart's content in whistling or sing- ing along the way. He can eat garlic or onions without offending, for he is not going from his dinner table into a crowded theatre. Thus, rural rules of etiquette do not and need not coincide with urban rules. And yet how small a percentage of the people of the city habitually act in public as though they knew they were among hundreds or thousands of their fellow beings, each one of whom has mani- fold rights! Do we not daily encounter the ecu- 72 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION pie, and often the trio, of dolts who, oblivious of their surroundings and of the convenience of pass- ers-by, stand and carry on a conversation in our pathway as we would step from the street-crossing to a crowded sidewalk? And these obstructers are not in the main, country people, innocently indulg- ing in country customs, nor are they always the un- educated, paradoxical as the term dolt as applied to them here may seem; on the contrary they com- prise all classes of citizens. One would suppose that after suffering, themselves, from this sort of nuisance day after day for perhaps half a lifetime, these people that block the way would learn some- thing. It should be the duty of policemen who stand at street-crossings to abate this nuisance as much as possible, though seldom, if ever, do we see an officer clear the sidewalk at the approach to a crossing. Until the police do take action in this matter, perhaps as effective a means as any of teaching manners is to bump the obstructers out of the way in Everett True fashion, instead of meek- ly walking out into the gutter to get by them. Pos- sibly they might then learn that sidewalks are meant primarily to walk on and not to stand on. A more common breach of good manners Is the utter disregard of the law that pedestrians must keep to their right. Possibly there can be no hard and fast rule about this while walking through the crowded shopping districts; for experience has shown that it is not always expedient or even pos- sible in such situations to keep to the right, since PUBLIC MANNERS 73 streams of people are nearly always entering or leaving the stores along the way. But on the street- crossings it is imperatively demanded that we keep to the right. Lo do otherwise, to compel our fel- lows to dodge this way and that, is not only dis- concerting but frequently leads to accidents in these days of swift-moving cars and automobiles. On a crowded street-crossing there should be the dis- cipline of the army, not the disorder of the mob. The deadly work of the automobile in our city streets is at last forcing officials to enact and en- force more stringent laws for the protection of pe- destrians. A statement recently addressed to the Governor of New York by the Secretary of State says that in eleven months of the year 19 13 there were 967 persons killed and 6,107 persons serious- ly injured by automobiles in the State of New York! Just now a "Safety First" campaign is be- ing waged in the city newspapers. But for one suggestion looking to the curbing of the automo- bile, there are a dozen admonishing the citizen to look out for it. Had the automobile been the ne- cessity of the poor instead of the pleasure of the rich, it would have been driven from crowded streets long ago. Observe the course that was tak- en with the bicycle, the convenience of the poor, for example. Even in the days when reforms moved slowly, the bicycle was made to get off the sidewalk and take to the street. This was a very proper ruling, to be sure; but if the bicycle should be forbidden the sidewalk, how much more ought 74 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION the ponderous, death-dealing automobile be barred from the crowded city streets ! Sometime, possibly, the people of the city, grown tired of the Court's slap on the wrist admin- istered to "speed-maniacs," will rise up and de- mand this very thing, namely, that the automobile, the modern car of Juggernaut, be banished from the down-town streets. It had no right there in the first place ; and that it should longer be allowed in our crowded shopping districts, a menace to life, is a reproach on municipal gov^ernment. In the meantime, one of several conspicuous placards by which the city fathers might inculcate good man- ners, and, in this instance, wise precaution, should read: "Keep to your Right." The bill for these signs might be met by stiff fines imposed on the heathen who spit on the walk. Of all public places, the church is preeminently the one where good manners should be looked for. The people who congregate in religious edifices are presumably people who really love one another, and who, therefore, would do nothing that could interfere with the enjoyment of the service by their fellow-worshippers. But all is not smooth even here. From the nuisance of much whisper- ing, through the gamut of falling hymn-books, the crackling of programs and other papers, to women's hats that hide the preacher from view, a great deal of offense is given. We often hear the question raised why men do not attend church ; oc- casionally the discussion takes the form of a long- PUBLIC MANNERS 75 winded symposium. Passing by doctrinal consid- erations, which have no place here, it might be ventured that if the church would pattern after the theatre in having sloping aisles and in requir- ing women to remove their large hats, more men would attend the services. The time has passed, if it ever existed, when men care to turn a religious service into a penance. Suppose some public spirited city newspaper address a request to the clergymen of its city to require women to sit with their hats oft in church. Perhaps, for obvious rea- sons, an exception might be made on Easter Sun- day. It is in the theatre, undoubtedly, that the most common and the most exasperating, if not the most serious, violation of good manners is to be found. The theatre is open every day — we are just begin- ning to wonder why the church is not. For one person who attends church ten go to the theatre. Whether or not this is a healthy social sign, the fact itself will not be disputed. People go to the theatre for relaxation and entertainment. Fur- thermore, they pay for these benefits, many of them a no inconsiderable part of theif income. Is it not important, then, that they should be per- mitted to enjoy the program undisturbed? It is not only important but in all moderation it may be said to be imperative. But what do we find the situation to be in near- ly every theatre today? Needless annoyance of many kinds. The following excerpt from an arti- 76 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION cle by Betty Bradeen is a mild criticism of some of these annoyances: "There is considerable com- plaint from theatre lovers against those who talk during a performance — they say with justice that intermissions are sufficiently frequent to permit all necessary conversation. Silence should be the rule at such places for the sake of those who go for en- joyment of the play and for no other reason — and the number of men and women belonging to the first class is sufficient to attract attention at least if they choose to assert their right. I have often wondered why people spend their money where they are sure to find rudeness. I wonder why more do not take the straightforward course of complaint against those who care noth- ing for the complaint of others. I sat in front of a woman at the theatre who never came on time and never ceased talking for the entire evening, and sat there one night each week for a whole year. I did not want to incur her enmity. Finally, I managed to have my seat changed and her neighbors made it so uncomfortable for her that she was glad to keep quiet. It was a man who brought her to her senses, a man with a clear idea of his own rights and no fear of consequences." A similar testimony was given by a theatre-goer not long since. "I was scarcely seated," he says, "when two fellows took seats in the row behind me and at once began to keep time to the music with their feet. Of course, the rattle of their feet on the floor was very soothing to my nerves and PUBLIC MANNERS 77 helped me to appreciate the music. When they finally got tired keeping time, they lay back in their seats, one of them bracing his knees against the back of my seat, and shifting about just often enough to make me feel joyous. Then when the curtain rose they related to each other, as if all alone in the house, their impressions of the per- formers and of the play." Now, this patron's rights were clearly violated, just as yours are, reader, in every theatre. But there is more to this, for this particular man did not do as most of us would have done, that is "let it go," for he had some spirit along with a sense of Iiis rights; so, at last, when he realized that he was likely to be robbed of his entertainment, he turned and addressed his tormentors thus: "See here, I paid fifty cents to enjoy this show. Now you put your feet on the floor, keep them still and stop talking or I will have you put out." "Well," he continues, "they flushed up, but after a minute or two, resumed their antics, at the same time making sarcastic remarks about finical people. I said nothing further to them, but got up and went back to one of the ushers and told him what was going on. Now this usher was a young man after my own heart; for, upon my pointing out the two of- fenders, he gave them to understand that a contin- uation of the annoyance would insure them a swift if not graceful exit from the house. They were as quiet as proverbial church mice during the re- mainder of the performance." 78 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION Here the offenders were men. But observation will show that women are quite as unmindful of the rights of those around them. If they are not as noisy with their feet they make up for it with their tongues. Indeed, it seems as if the chief ob- ject of some women in going to the theatre is to visit. Possibly their telephones are out of order. In this discussion of manners, let us not be mis- understood. The curtailment of no one's liberty is here advocated, for it is no one's liberty to in- terfere with any one else's rights. It would be well could the ancient idea of the term civility be revived; for it implied "a state of society in which the relations and duties of a citizen are recognized and obeyed." This question of liberty and rights is sometimes sadly confused. We have all heard, but are often unmindful, of the experience of the Irishman who, upon landing in America, stretched out his arms in appreciation of his liberty. One of his hands accidentally came in contact with an- other man's nose. Pat's explanation that he thought this was a free country did not avail, for his victim replied: "This is a free country, but your freedom ends where my nose begins." Speaking again of the theatre, it may be said that the three great reforms in this generation have been the substitution of fellow players in the pre- ceding act for the audience as targets for ridicule; the adoption, only after a terrible lesson, of the asbestos curtain, together with the ample provision for ?xit ii) case of iire; and the order for the re- PUBLIC MANNERS 79 moval of women's hats during the performance. It is doubtful which of these three reforms is the most appreciated by the public. Though the first-mentioned is a recent innovation, let us hope that it is a permanent acquisition, not a passing fad. It is such a boon that we scarcely know whether to thank, the theatrical manager for it, or to condemn him for not bringing it about long ago. No more outrageous breach of good manners could be per- petrated on a patron who had paid his money os- tensibly for entertainment (only to cite one form of offense) than the old custom of making the man whom nature had deprived of hair the butt of coarse stage jokes. Of the second reform it may be said that it was imperatively demanded. All places of public as- sembly should insure safety. But what was the use of going to the theatre if one could not see the stage? When we think of what our theatre- going fathers put up with out of a false sense of politeness to women, we cannot but believe that right then they atoned for many of their short- comings. We feel thankful for a dispensation by virtue of which we may sit in a theatre of hatless heads. Still, if our fathers could not see what was tak- ing place on the stage they could at least listen to real singing; while we have had to endure the bel- lowing tremolo, — and just because some silly girl discovered she could sing while shaking in a chill — (this account of the origin of the tremolo will 8o CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION do as well as any other.) Oh, how we have yearned for the sweet notes of the olden days! What enthusiastic applause we have all given the occasional singer who, having an appreciation of the melody in the human voice, actually sang ! And now when the corrugated tremolo is going out of fashion, or is subsiding into a faint trill, the reci- tative song is coming in. Well may we exclaim : "Are we never to hear vocal musk! May some bold manager rise up and administer a quietus to this new abomination — even as a discriminating publisher did some time ago to the dialect story. The modern spoken song, with its awkward tran- sition from talking to singing, is a species of vocal slops, and is, it is safe to say, a bore to every mu- sic lover who is compelled to listen to it. Novel- ty is not always improvement. But let us be just. Have not the folk on the stage a good cause to complain of a cold-blooded audience, an audience that sits unmoved through a worthy performance? That there are such au- diences theatrical people agree, Mr, William H. Crane, than whom no one is better qualified to judge, has made some interesting comparisons of different audiences. He says "Clevelanders smile where Cincinnatians chuckle, Chicagoans hee-haw and Milwaukeeans roar." It would be of interest to learn his opinion of a Boston audience whose re- peated encores often materially lengthen the per- formance. It is Mr, Crane's opinion, too, that a cold audience cheats itself, since "players who are PUBLIC MANNERS 8i not encouraged by laughs or hands lose interest themselves and play perfunctorily." Not only is unnecessary annoyance caused by the ill manners of individuals, but it often results from thoughtlessness in the construction or arrange- ment of public buildings. When we consider the attention that is given to details in our manufac- turing and business concerns that all may run smoothly, it is astonishing to note the entire lack of such attention when profits are not at stake, when just every-day human welfare is concerned. It was ten years before the owners of an arcade building in a certain city had sense enough to put the words "In" and "Out" on the doors through which people passed all day. Of course, had every- one that went in and out been thoughtful enough to keep to the right, no trouble would have result- ed; but as it was, people were constantly running into one another in the doorways. A short time ago a citizen who had been trying to write a postcard on a shelf designed for such purpose in a city post-office, but who had been bothered by one of those dunces who think the only way to put a stamp on an envelope is to pound it on with the fist, stepped into the postmaster's private office and stated his grievance, politely add- ing a suggestion that a placard be posted on the wall above the shelf forbidding pounding on stamps. But that august official, with the true in- stincts of a politician, answered that the people had rights and that he was not the man to take them 82 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION away. It was In vain that the citizen insisted that he himself was one of the people and had a right to use the shelf for the purpose for which it was intended, undisturbed by pile-drivers who were using it for a purpose for which it was not intend- ed. He also pointed out that such a placard would save many pens and holders which the pounding caused to roll on to the floor. But the postmaster was not concerned about that. The loss did not come out of his pocket. It is to be feared there are too many such patriots in the public service of our country, some of them higher up than post- master. Manifestly, any consideration herein of the con- ventionalities of etiquette would be out of place. Doubtless it is desirable for all of us to know and to practice the usages of polite society; — to say "thank you" instead of "thanks;" to say "beg par- don," instead of "what?" in reply to a remark we did not catch; to abstain from pointing at objects along the street; to hold our forks in the correct position, and eat "wet dishes" with a spoon. For these, and countless other regulations that insure "good form," there are reasons. But a noncon- formity with any of these observances, while it may offend the fastidious, cannot be considered an infringement of anyone's rights. Indeed, the per- son who would call the transgressor's attention to a lapse from one of these forms of decorum would himself commit the greater offense. No, It is not the politeness demanded by the hyp- PUBLIC MANNERS 83 ercritic that is called for to ameliorate the harsh conditions imposed by the vast numbers that con- gregate or that cross one another's path in the city. It is just an applied respect for the rights of our fellow men; that is all. It has been the part of a good-natured philoso- phy to condone the ill-manners of Americans, just as it has been a part of that same philosophy to excuse every other shortcoming that is American. One writer of prominence, voicing the spirit of this philosophy, says: "In America, bad manners are caused by want of thought; they are the result of carelessness rather than wilfulness. The Amer- ican is so busy minding his own business that he has no time to be as regardful of the rights of others as he ought to be." With the truth of this statement, few will find fault. Though partly an apology and partly a justification, it aptly characterizes the conduct of the American as it has always been. But is not the time come to cast aside, or greatly modify, this old pattern, to cease being "so busy minding our own business that we have no time to be regardful of the rights of others?" There are more than ten times as many people in this country today as there were a century ago. In our great cities a tnan comes in contact with a hundred of his fellov/ be- ings where his forefathers met but one of theirs. Furthermore, these hurrying hundreds that he jos- tles in the street and in other public places are, for the most part, strangers who cannot be expected 84 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION to overlook a rudeness as would the friends or acquaintances of the olden time. "In America bad manners are caused by want of thought," — but this excuse will not restore an eye that has been poked out by an umbrella carelessly handled. Want of thought where the rights of others are concerned is a kind of selfishness which it behooves us all to be on our guard against. Strictly speak- ing, even where one is not called upon, in the cause of good manners, to do things in the serv- ice of his fellow man, how gracious an act it is to do them ! "A man stoops to pick a banana peeling from the sidewalk and throw it in the gutter, and his companion comments : 'You are not paid to do that.' Nor is he, neither is he paid for care- fully depositing rubbish of his own in the box pro- vided for that purpose. Nor does the traveler who turns off the light when he leaves his hotel room find his bill reduced." Nevertheless, such a regard for the welfare of others is real patriotism. There is no gold lace about it, no fife and drum, by the magic music of which even the poltroon is often galvanized into a hero. But in these days the habitual regard for the rights, even the minor rights, of our fellow citizens is the kind of patriot- ism that is most needed. We have all become familiar, through widely published statistics, with the fact that insanity and nervous breakdown are rapidly increasing in our country, especially in our large cities. "We live too fast," the medical men tell us. Doubtless the PUBLIC MANNERS 85 strain of ever increasing competition in business, on the one hand, and the dissipations in which re- lief from it is sought, on the other, are the pri- mary causes of this degeneracy. But everything that discommodes, that irritates and vexes, occa- sions friction and increases the wear and tear of body and mind; and tells, in the long run, on the health. Our city authorities, in recognition of this fact, are now following the lead of the old-world cities in taking action to suppress needless noises, such as screeching car-wheels, raucous automobile horns, excessive blowing of locomotive whistles, and cries of street vendors. Even the church bell, the subject of many a lyric in the olden time, is challenged of its right to ring. All of these pro- hibitions are proposed in the cause of public health. Can it not likewise be urged, in the light of the discussion in this chapter, that the ill manners of the many whom the city dweller meets day after day have a hurtful effect on his health? Unfortu- nately, it is not possible in most cases to prohibit rudeness by law. But the man or the woman who, in a public place, respects the rights of others is, to that extent, a conservator of human health. CHAPTER VI Publicity: Good and Bad DURING the last decade of our history there has been both an insistent de- mand for, and a persistent practice of pubhcity. But there are many kinds of pubhcity, and the kind that has been demanded has been furnished grudgingly, while the sort vol- unteered has been supplied ad nauseam. Of the publicity demanded — by the press, by magazine writers and by politicians seeking favor with the voters, — it may be said that it has chiefly concerned private and quasi-public corporations. These corporations are, of course, conducted pri- marily for profits. When we read in Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" the doubt expressed as to the success of the corporate, as compared with the individual and partnership form of enter- prise, we smile, just as we smile when we think of that early nineteenth century scientist's assertion that it would not be possible for a steamship to cross the Atlantic, as the weight of the coal neces- sary to furnish steam would sink it; or again as we do, when we read the conclusion of one of our early statesmen that the "Great American Desert" would never be fit for cultivation. Any doubt as 86 PUBLICITY : GOOD AND BAD 87 to the prowess of the corporation vanished long ago. The last forty years have witnessed an in- \asion of tlie institution into every branch of busi- ness, Irom railroading down to shoe polishing, and today, corporate enterprise in everything ex- cept agriculture, is the rule, private and partner- ship undertakings being the exception. It is esti- mated that more than fifty per cent, of the wealth of the country (placed by the World Almanac for 19 14 at $130,000,000,000) is owned by corpor- ations. Eliminating agricultural property, the es- timate of the wealth so owned is over eighty per cent. Thus far, however, it has not been the large profits of the corporation that have prompted the demand for publicity concerning its operations; or, perhaps, it would be more correct to say that this consideration has not generally been the cause of the demand. An exception exists in the case of public-service corporations, especially where there has been a marked sentiment in favor of municipal ownership. There the demand for a statement of profits, with a view to securing lower rates, has been quite insistent. But the corrupting of the law-making bodies, municipal, state and national, by corporations, resulting on the one hand in a violation of the sanctions of government and on the other in giving such corporations great advan- tages over the individual, was the first occasion for the light of publicity upon them. The creation of values by watering stocks and the over-issue of 88 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION stocks, next received attention. Then the search- light was directed upon the discrimination in freight rates by railroads, the issue of passes and the bestowal of other benefits upon the favored few. As a consequence of the disclosures resulting from this kind of publicity, stringent legislation has within recent years been enacted in nearly all the states affecting the chartering and operations of corporations. The Secretaries of State, the Rail- road, Insurance and Public Service Commis- sioners, have been given wide inquisitorial powers concerning them; and detailed reports of their status must now be made by them. In fact, so drastic are the laws and supervision in some of the states as virtually to place a corporation in a strait- jacket. One can appreciate the feelings of that Mississippi banker who notified the depositors to come and get their money, as the bank was going out of business for fear the legislature then in ses- sion would make it a criminal offense to do a bank- ing business. But while the bright light of pub- licity may cause the officers of corporations to blink, the people at large can look on with satis- faction, feeling that by the aid of that light they may see what is wrong and learn how to right it. A few words now concerning a form of public- ity that is as new as is scientific advertising. It is, in fact, a species of advertising. I refer to the politician's exploitation of the public's attention, allusion to which propensity was made in the earlier PUBLICITY : GOOD AND BAD 89 pages of this book. This art of self-advertising has given rise to a remark which may be said to have already acquired the force of an axiom: "Toot your own horn or it will remain untooted." And what an ever- increasing blare and din of horns there has been throughout the land during the last fourteen years, or since the new century be- gan ! The old fashioned statesman, so quiet and dignified, with his charming sense of modesty, has disappeared, together with the high hat and long- tailed coat he wore. A new set of men have come to the front. They wear derby hats and business suits, and in their quest of office they pursue busi- ness methods. Prosaic in appearance, they are nevertheless born actors, and actors of the melo- dramatic type. How boldly they rush on to the ice — after it has been found to be safe ! How they "thunder in the index" of "glittering generalities," their vague cries for "humanity" and "human rights" alternating with self-glorification over what they have done or will do for the dear people 1 In every campaign, and between campaigns, the office seeker "toots his own horn," in speeches, in ar- ranged interviews, and, (if he is big enough) in editorials of papers owned or controlled by him- self. Personal publicity bureaus and carloads of boosting reporters! Whoever heard of these things in the days of Grant and Tilden and Sher- man and Thurman? But advertising pays, and so, at least until the general public becomes more discerning, and can 90 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION tell shoddy from wool, the advertising politician will be with us. In any city, the politician who keeps his name in the papers is the successful one. People think they know him because of his ubiqui- tous name, whereas, they do not really know him at all. The masses — and they cast the great ma- jority of the votes — do not draw the line very closely between fame and notoriety. They are too absorbed in getting a living to inquire into the of- fice-seeker's character and qualifications, and so they readily take a candidate's own estimate of himself. They go further and become enthusi- astic over this self-advertised product; and in the case of an advertising executive, especially, wheth- er mayor, governor or president, they will go any length with him in his efforts (very common just now) to be "the whole thing." But this opens the question of executive encroachment, vital enough for a volume, but foreign to our present purpose. A former president of the United States, a gen- tleman and statesman of the old school, at least so far as modesty and ability go, laments, in a magazine article, his lack of advertising qualifi- cations, which lack he modestly ascribes to his ju- dicial training, instead of to his high sense of pro- priety. But whatever the reason for the lack, thinking people with long memories are thankful for it. A distinction should be made between the preaching and the boasting politician. The form- PUBLICITY: GOOD AND BAD 91 er may be of some service to his country, while the latter is a bore at best. There is little danger from an excess of political preaching, provided it does not teach anarchy. For in this sordid world po- litical ideals — ideals of economic and social jus- tice — are a proper accompaniment of the spiritual ideals proclaimed from the pulpit. The more we have of it the better it will be for us. Of all the agencies of publicity, the press is, of course, the most far-reaching and prolific. It is difficult, indeed, for the modern mind to conceive of any considerable degree of publicity, or even of civilization, without it. And yet but three or four generations ago the press cut a comparatively small figure in the dissemination of news; for in the opening days of the republic, when we were a ru- ral people, newspapers were few. In fact, there were at that time only three or four daily papers and but two score weekly, semi-weekly and month- ly publications in the entire country. The hap- penings of most communities were made known by the village gossip, and the news of distant places was carried by the stage-driver or the sea- captain. To the citizen of today whose "breakfast is not complete" without the morning paper with its luminous account of a world's daily doings, the newspaper of his forefathers would be a curiosity. He would look in vain through its four small pages for matter such as now greets his eye in any daily paper. No startling headlines would ap- 92 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION prize him of a fresh intrigue in Europe or of a horrible crime committed the day before in some distant city in his own country; for such news would be from three days to three months old be- fore it became known to him. And what items the paper might contain would appear in an almost unintelligible form, no pains being taken to present it in an orderly manner. In the place of news by telegraphic dispatch, would be found letters from friends who were visiting in some other town, or roughing it in what was then the far West. In- stead of crisp editorial squibs would be found pro- lix moralizing on the evils of gossip, theatre going, card playing, and intemperance. In the field of politics the tone of the press of that early period was as coarse and abusive as the press of a century later was cynical and time-serving. Within the last twenty years the press has be- come more independent in politics than ever be- fore, many of the most influential papers having no afiiliation whatever with any party. And yet, however much such non-partisan papers are to be commended for their independence in politics, it is almost precisely this element of the press that is the worst offender in what constitutes the chief faults of the press today. The staid party organs, for the most part, have a dignity and self-respect that forbids sensationalism. The independent papers, on the other hand, are neither owned nor controlled by men interested in party success, but by men who are primarily after profits; and a PUBLICITY : GOOD AND BAD 93 large circulation being essential to large profits, they cater to the curiosity and imagination, to put it mildly, of the masses to insure that circulation. Now what are the chief faults of tiie press to- day? The first and foremost is undoubtedly the ruthless invasion of private rights and the sanctity of family relations. In the village no one is so contemptible and so detested as the scandal-mon- gering gossip. Now what such a pest is to the vil- lage community, many a newspaper is to the city — it is a pity that condemnation is not likewise general. No sooner is a divorce suit filed, espec- ially where prominent people are parties to it, than these jackals send reporters to the house of trouble and there the insinuating threat is often conveyed that unless the facts are given to this emissary they will be obtained anyhow. Once ob- tained, they, the secret, if not sacred, things of the family life which in no way concern, nor should interest, the public, are published broadcast. Of- ten a twist is given to the facts that changes the whole aspect of the case, and serves to embitter or humiliate those concerned. This impertinent prying into private affairs is carried into many other personal matters as well; and it is not alone the one who is in trouble that is subject to unpleas- ant notoriety, but if he be prominently connected, his relatives must be brought in also. The only circumstance in mitigation of the harm done by such publicity is that in the city one's circle of acquaintances is narrow. Not so many people as 94 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION in a village stare at him because of the news- paper's zeal in publishing "news." Of this fault of the press, the veteran editor, Col. Henry Watterson, in an address before news- paper men some time ago, used the following vig- orous language : "Pretending to be the especial defenders of liberty, we are becoming the invad- ers of private right. No household seems any longer safe against intrusion. Our reporters are being turned into detectives. As surely as this be not checked we shall grow to be objects of fear and hatred, instead of trust and respect. Some one," he goes on to say, "ought to organize an intelligent and definite movement toward the bet- tering of what has reached alarming propor- tions. I say this in your interest as well as the in- terest of the public and the profession, for I am sure that you are gentlemen and want to be con- sidered so, whereas the work you are often set to do is the reverse of gentlemanly. It subjects you to aversion and contempt — brings you and a high and mighty calling into disrepute by confusing the purpose and function of the newspaper with those of the police and the scavenger." These are strong words; had they been uttered by a layman, doubt- less they would have been treated by the press in a jocose spirit. Smart editors would have had much sport with the man who was so ignorant of the proper functions of journalism. If the invasion of private right ranks first among the faults of the press, misrepresentation PUBLICITY : GOOD AND BAD 95 closely follows. We are all familiar with the saying, "You can't believe what you see in the papers," a dictum which is too sweeping, per- haps, hut which has much evidence to justify it. Who has not often read a "write-up" of some person or of some occurrence that he knew to be almost pure fiction? Newspaper men are, of course, only human and so are liable to make mis- takes in spite of the best intentions. Where no person or cause is injured by the publication of an incorrect report, little harm is done. But is sufficient care and conscience exercised in cases where a person, or a cause may be injured by such perversion of truth? It cannot be said that there is. The effort to be sensational and thus increase the circulation of the paper seems almost to pre- clude this. Of "yellow journalism" Major J. C. Hemp- hill, another veteran editor of the chivalrous Southland, in an address at Yale College, spoke as follows : "The press in these abundant times, speaking generally, is in the business for the money there is in it. The most potent force in shaping and di- recting the thought and sentiment of the country, it is yet a beggar at the door of patronage. Little or no independence is actually possessed by the journalists who preach independence. It must be said, however, to the credit or discredit, as you please, of the public, that it reflects largely the character of the newspapers by which it is served. 96 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION "The yellow streak runs not less through the press than through the people. The shame of the press is that it has catered to the worst tendencies of a corrupt and malodorous age. Its mission ought to be the elevation of the public; instead it advertises its degradation; fairly shrieking against any restriction upon its liberty, it converts liberty into license. "Broadly speaking, the most sensational and irresponsible newspapers make the most money and there has been noted for years the gradual de- gradation of the American press to the American level. "There is no profession so exacting, none re- quiring so extensive and accurate knowledge of history and philosophy and political economy, none calling for so great patience of opposition, such clearness and firmness of judgment, such courage of conviction, and such careful regard for the rights of others. That is why, in my opinion, the newspaper should be, in fact, the judge and jury and not the swift witness or the paid counsel- lor in the case on trial before the people * * *. That newspaper is unworthy which for personal profit or political gain for itself or its party, mis- represents the position of a professional or politi- cal rival; that follows any particular course be- cause it is popular; that joins in the defamation of any man because there is something to be made out of it whether in the way of Increased circula- tion or adventitious importance." PUBLICITY : GOOD AND BAD 97 Perhaps if the kind of newspaper here described would practice the Golden Rule instead of the fan- cied rule of business, it would, in the long run, discover that the Golden Rule is the real rule of business. A form of publicity that is of service to a city, but which has not received sufficient encourage- ment, is the People's Column, the Forum, the Edi- tor's Mail, &c., as communications of newspaper readers are variously styled. A generation ago let- ters from the reader to the editor of a paper were few. And they were expected to indorse the edi- tor's views. Woe to the writer who dared to dis- sent, especially if his letter was faulty in grammar or diction, for the chances were that he would be so lampooned as to deter him and others of his kind from making any further expressions of opin- ion. Today communications of readers receive respectful consideration and are generally pub- lished as a matter of course. I know of but three or four metropolitan papers where, judging from the monotonous adulation of the contributions, a writer is expected to indorse the paper's views. It is not, however, of letters in criticism of the paper's views that I would speak, but of those that deal with matters of concern to the citizen, with lo- cal abuses and reforms, which the editor and the reporter fail to discuss — for these functionaries, Argus-eyed though they be, cannot sec everything of interest that is going on; nor are they omni- scient. 98 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION I have said that the writing of letters is not sufficiently encouraged. But, in justice to the newspaper, it may be said that the paucity of com- munications has another explanation, at least in part. Now it is true that we seldom see an urgent invitation to the reader to send in anything — un- less on the society page he is invited to try his hand at defining a true lady or a perfect gentleman for the dollar prize, or else, on the fiction page, he is urged, in competition for another dollar prize, to write the concluding chapter of the thril- ling drama, "The Eavetroughs of New York," — everything else in that city having already been dramatized. But is there not something wrong with the public spirit of a city of a million people when in none of its papers are found more than a half dozen letters from the readers? Are there not hundreds, yes, thousands, of bright men and women in such a vast city that could offer, in a few lines, suggestions founded on their observation or experience, that would make for the welfare of the city? And is it not their patriotic duty to do so? Many a nuisance might be abated, many a graft exposed, many a reform brought about, if citizens would tell the public through the news- paper what they know of specific cases. A citizen of Boston notices, day after day, that horses fall on a certain steep thoroughfare in that city. He writes to one of the papers about it, suggesting that something be put on that highway that will prevent the horses from falling. A few days af- PUBLICITY : GOOD AND BAD 99 terward this is done; and the newspaper frankly gives the citizen the credit for the service. A lady in another city calls attention to the tobacco juice expectorated on the steps of the street car by the motorman, much to the damage of women's skirts; and an investigation is made. A citizen of another city writes in condemnation of the practice of mer- chants in using excessive quantities of salt to melt the snow on the sidewalk, whereby the shoes of pedestrians are ruined. The girls employed in an office building of still another city tell, in a news- paper communication, what they propose to do to make thoughtless or selfish men move back in the elevator, so the girls can get in without a struggle. I have a friend, quite a traveler, who makes it his business, if he sees a city derelict in any particular, to write the leading newspaper of that city about it. He believes that seed thus sown will strike root. There is a great field of civic usefulness in these letters from the habitual or occasional reader; and the People's Column should be expanded into a page. Those ill manners which, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, rob polite people of their rights, might, in a great measure, be corrected by publicity. In the chapter referred to, the barbar- ous manners in the average theatre were discussed. Some of them are of such long standing as to seem as a heritage from the past, and, like the principle of monarchy in old China, everlasting. But the loo CITY LIFE, ITS AxMELIO RATION world waked up one morning to find China a full-fledged republic; and so it may happen that theatre-goers will soon enter a theatre as suddenly made the place of good manners, where all may enjoy the play undisturbed. The theatre management should take measures to enforce decorum. Within recent years a few timorous attempts have been made in many play- houses. Babies have been barred from the house and late arrivals forbidden to take their seats dur- ing an act. But a much more drastic policy is called for. Those unesthetic advertisements of toilet powders and creams and chewing gum that are to be seen on many a stage curtain should give place to a big-lettered proclamation something like this: Rules of This Theatre. Patrons must not annoy those around them. They must keep their feet on the floor and keep them still. They must not indulge in conversation during an act. No one is allowed to occupy more than one seat, nor use but one arm-rest. Persons with the fumes of liquor on their breaths or with foul-smelling pipes in their clothes are not allowed in this house. An infraction of these rules will receive ade- quate attention on complaint of any patron. By the publication and enforcement of some PUBLICITY : GOOD AND BAD loi such rules as these, the play would be much more enjoyable, and delinquents taught lessons that they would be likely to carry into other places of public assembly. Railroad and street-car companies might also adopt this form of publicity, much to the comfort of the traveling public. To the lonely notice not to spit on the floor they might well add several others looking to the welfare of their patrons. For example, the passenger on a railroad train might be warned against occupying more than one seat for any purpose. Such a notice might have some effect on the fellow (we have all met him) who has far more to do with the seat in front of him than he has with his own, throwing his wraps over the back of it, leaning his arms upon it, loll- ing in the faces of its occupants and poking his knees into the back of it. Another posted rule, for all kinds of public con- veyances, might forbid whistling. Is there any criminal worse than the fellow who, having you at his mercy for perhaps a three hours' ride, per- sists in whistling, generally in that blood-curdling tremolo, — and always something that nobody, himself included, ever heard before! Why should this nuisance be permitted to choose such a time and place in which to compose his music? This idea and practice of publicity might pro- fitably be carried into many other situations where the rights of the public are now being invaded. CHAPTER VII Fellowship URGING fellowship upon the people of a city may seem like Indulging In the proverbial "hollow mockery." What with the dwarfing of the individual Into Insignificance by sheer force of numbers, the Iron relation, In factory and store, of master and ser- vant, even If softened by name Into employer and employee, the absorbing pursuit of wealth by the former and the painful struggle for a decent living by the latter, all resulting In a sordid, dollar and dime, grind, the preachmg of fellowship would seem at least a waste of time. Said Bishop Spald- ing in a sermon some time ago: "Christian apolo- gists from early days have claimed that Christian- ity has destroyed caste, and phrases like 'the broth- erhood of man' are used as If they were all true and meant the same thing. In reality, there never was a time when society was so divided into so many unsympathetic and even antagonistic groups — we have white and black, capitalist and laborer, plutocrat and proletarian, mistress and maid and many others which designate opposed interests." Real fellowship, let us bear in mind, is comrade- ship, and comradeship is not based upon consid- I02 FELLOWSHIP 103 eratlons of service or of success, but upon an un- selfish interest in one another. Much has been written of hitc upon civics aiul sociology in their specific relation to the city. Most of the books and articles treating of these subjects are almost exclusively devoted to discussions of street, park and playground systems, sanitation, public service corporations, modern conveniences and the like. These questions have a proper place in any consideration of municipalities, and the im- proxements demanded in respect to the matters handled are certainly desirable; but a city may be a veritable "spotless town" and provide all possi- ble conveniences besides, and still be an undesir- able place to live in, still be but a swept and gar- nished pen, where greed and selfishness reign. As for city conveniences, they are not unalloyed bless- ings; for instance, the street car and automobile have caused many a business man to give up walk- ing, much to the impairment of his health. Where the real life of the people has been writ- ten about, it has frequently been misleading by rea- son of its glowing optimism. Were one to take the word of some of the social settlement litera- ture — much of it written or inspired by paid agents of the various welfare associations — one would almost conclude that every house in the city is visited and every inmate looked after; that there is, in conse(]uence, no need unsatisfied, no grief un- assuaged, that, in short, in the language of the poet- philosopher seated in his easy chair "All's right 104 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION with the world." Occasionally, though, we un- expectedly hear discordant notes in the battle for human welfare, as, for instance, when, following the optimistic sermon of the preacher, with its as- surance that Christianity is sweeping on to victory, we listen to the heart-rending appeal of the mission worker from the same pulpit, that we bestir our- selves to save a lost world. Verily, much depends upon the point of view. We all remember the controversy that was waged some years ago over the question whether we are a Christian nation. The newspapers and the religious publications gave considerable space, for a time, to this discussion. It is well that the question was raised and that it should be raised from time to time. The introspection it compels is good for us. We thus take stock of ourselves and ascertain (if we are fair) how our practices accord with our professions. The comparison should be of perennial interest. Leaving out of consideration the question whether the world is growing worse (Billy Sun- day says it is and Ferrero says it is not), what is the situation in our land today with reference to applied Christianity? Nominally there are, ac- cording to the World's Almanac, 75,000,000 Christians out of a population of nearly 100,000,- 000. But how many real Christians are there? How many that not only fully believe the doctrines of Christianity but habitually practice the precepts of Christ? How many live as though they real- FELLOWSHIP 165 ized that "Faith without works is dead?" Not to apply the extreme test of turning the other cheek, or of giving the cloak also, it may be per- tinently asked how many of these 75,000,000 make their neighbors feel that they love them as they love themselves? How many habitually give — not merely to the Salvation Army kettle at Christ- mas time — to them that ask? How many love their enemies, or do good to those that hate them? Again, how many take no thought of what they shall eat or what they shall wear? Finally, how many make us feel that they are trying to lay up treasure in heaven instead of on earth? Precious few. i Froude said: "Show me a people where trade is dishonest and I will show you a people where religion is a sham." It Is well known that in our country during the last ten years the departments of justice in city, state and nation have been busy with cases involving the sale of fictitious mining stocks, the adulteration of foods and the use of short weights and measures. And a Boston paper, anent the soaring prices of food-stuffs in the face of record-breaking crops at home and practically no market abroad, felt called upon recently to urge, among many don'ts, the following: "Don't be afraid of the shop-keeper. Don't let him weigh the paper, twine, tray or any other container and charge you for It. It is against the law. Don't let the butcher rest his finger on the projecting bone and don't let him press his body io6 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION against the scale. Don't forget to weigh every- thing at home. Don't send children to the stores if you can help it." A great railroad system, mindful of the white- slave traffic, so-called, recently caused a placard to be posted in many of its stations warning girls traveling alone against speaking to strangers, or going to an address given to them by a stranger; going to the assistance of a woman who apparent- ly faints on the street; accepting candy, food or a glass of water, or smelling flowers offered to them by a stranger. In the light of these things, of the state of society with respect to honesty and moral- ity that they imply, is it not idle, at least, to call ourselves a Christian nation? The chief trouble with the Christianity of today is that while one part of its devotees are serving mammon, the other part are so religious, so ab- sorbed with matters of doctrine, and apparently so fearful of contamination, that they do very little practical good in the world, and so are only negatively good themselves. It was the former kind of Christians, it seems to me, that Professor Ely had in mind when, in his straight-from-the- shoulder little book. Social Aspects of Christian- ity, he said: "Nothing is more difficult, nothing more re- quires divine grace, than the constant manifesta- tion of love to our fellows in all our daily acts, in our buying, selling, getting gain. People still want to substitute all sorts of beliefs and obser- FELLOWSHIP 107 vances in place of this, for it implies a totally different purpose from that which animates this world. It is when men attempt to regulate their lives seven days in the week by the Golden Rule that they begin to perceive that they can not serve God and mammon; for the ruling motive of the one service — egotism, selfishness, — is the opposite of the ruling motive of the other — altruism, de- votion to others, consecration of heart, soul and intellect to the service of others." And again: "When one visits the leading churches of New York and Boston, when one forms acquaintance- ship with their members, with the very best will, it is simply impossible to believe that they are try- ing to place the needs of others on a par with their own needs. Self comes first, and there is little apparent effort to obey, in their expenditures of money, the precept that love for others should hold equal place with love for self. The more seriously one reflects upon this, the longer one turns it over in one's mind, the more shocking ap- pears the divergence between profession and prac- tice. The average Christian is of the world, and is governed by its motives in his expenditures. To get on in life, to enjoy the pleasures of wealth, to be spoken well of by those high in the ranks of fashion — all this is the dominating motive." It seems, likewise, that the same writer had in mind the latter kind of Christians, the theological kind, when in the same book he said: "I believe it a common impression that Christianity is con- io8 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION cerned primarily with a future state of existence." And again : "We go to the Bible with the notion that we are to learn about heaven rather than about earth, and so we make things apply to a future existence which were intended for this world," Finally, to all professing Christians the Professor applies the "acid test" when he puts the searching question: "Did it ever occur to you that a man who claimed to be a Christian, and was not at the same time a philanthropist, was a hypocrite and a liar? Yet, if Christ speaks true, this is un- doubted. Select one of the gospels, and read therein the words of Christ, and you will see how Christ comes back again and again to our social duties." Professor Ely might well have presented the correlative side of the case in a proposition something like this, namely: If the 75,000,000 professing Christians of our country were real Christians, there would be no involuntary idleness, and there would not be a hungry woman or child in the land. Nay, even more : Such good influ- ences would be thrown around the erring ones as soon in truth to make this a Christian land — if not in faith, at least in works. No institution is broad enough to compass the kind of fellowship needed in the big city. The church is not adequate; for, even if it were more sincere, more democratic and more zealous in its ministrations than it is today, the age-long ques- tion of creed would still block the way. The com- municant must subscribe to a creed, or else he is FELLOWSHIP 109 a hypocrite; and hypocrites are not desirable com- panions. That a man is moral and kind and char- itable does not count in the orthodox church, if be be known to disbelieve the cardinal doctrines of that body, be they ever so absurd, as deter- mined by the same reasoning that every intelligent person apph'es to other problems. That this is true, is abundantly proved in the not infrequent heresy trials. It is as rare a sight to see a Chris- tion working hand in hand with an unbeliever in a charitable cause as it is to see a Protestant and a Catholic so engaged. Creeds have undergone changes, it is true, and they will continue to undergo changes, for "the thoughts of men widen with the process of the suns." Judged by beliefs considered by the Pil- grim Fathers essential to salvation, whole congre- gations of professing Christians of today would be lost. And who doubts the fate of Christians a hundred years hence, if they are to be weighed by the orthodox balances of the present day? What with the industry of the higher critics, the unearthing of illuminating tablets in old Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, and the rise of non-theo- logical cults, like the New Thought, that satisfy both spiritual and temporal needs, the outlook for stability in theology is not promising. This is not denying the vital value of the principles enunciated in the Decalogue, the Sermon on the Mount, and especially the Golden Rule. Many equally exalted moral precepts are to be found, as scholars well I lo CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION know, in the teachings of Krishna, of Zoroaster, of Lao-tsze, of Confucius, of Buddha, and even in the Confession of the soul before the tribunal of Osiris, the god of ancient Egypt. Beside the observance and practice of such principles, insur- ing right conduct and noble character, all merely theological doctrine is at best but a fifth wheel to the wagon of salvation. I do not underrate the importance of an abiding faith in a kind but just God, whose laws automatically and inexorably reward virtue and punish vice. Fortunate, indeed, is the person who possesses this faith, and lives accordingly, for he is wise. As long, however, as acceptance of any creed is made necessary to church membership, the church cannot extend the hand of fellowship to all men. An honest and independent thinker can have no place in an or- thodox church body. Again, worldly success, either in terms of fame or of fortune, cannot be a bond of helpful fellow- ship; rather is it the reverse, for it is precisely along this line that there is the greatest cleavage, that there is the most marked separation of classes in society today. The successful are praised, courted, honored and endowed with virtues they never possessed, as to kings in ancient times was accorded the dignity of descent from the gods; the unsuccessful are denied the possession of any exalted traits, contemptuously treated or entirely ignored. And yet to the enlightened, how absurd are these distinctions ! How many successful men FELLOWSHIP III are themselves the principal factors in achieving their success? And how many are worthy of it? Not all, surely. The ways of success are mysteri- ous. An analysis of the careers of successful men, where the real facts are known, will show how little many of those men had to do with their own success, or at least how little of work they did to win it. Such an analysis will confirm us in the belief that "some are born great" and "some have greatness thrust upon 'em." Circumstances have much to do in deciding whether one's life is to be successful or unsuccessful. This truth was partly expressed by the immortal bard who says, again: "There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and miseries." Occasionally we see a man so obsessed with the notion that he alone is responsible for his success, that he openly claims credit for creating his op- portunities. The only hope for such a man, ex- cept in a hard fall from his pedestal — and some have so fallen — is that he may happen to see in the dictionary the definition of the word oppor- tunity. Opportunities come; they are not made. Observing persons have all wondered at the phe- nomenal success of some men — men that "toil not, neither do they spin," yet gather the shekels in. And right here the observations of the brilliant and versatile Arnold Bennett, who, by the way, has the good sense to write thin instead of thick 112 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION books, are apropos: "Most writers on success are, through sheer goodness of heart, wickedly dis- ingenuous. For the basis of their argument is that nearly anyone who gives his mind to it can achieve success. . . . Having boldly stated that success is not, and can not be, within the grasp of the many, I now proceed to state, as regards the minority, that they do not achieve it in the manner in which they are commonly supposed to achieve it. . . . "No one is a worse guide to success than your typical successful man. He seldom understands the reasons of his own success; and when he is asked by a popular magazine to give his exper- iences for the benefit of the youth of a whole na- tion, it is impossible for him to be neutral and sincere. He knows the kind of thing that is ex- pected from him, and if he didn't come to London with half a crown in his pocket he probably did something equally silly, and he puts that down, and the note of the article or interview is struck, and good-bye to truth I . . . Are success- ful men more industrious, frugal and intelligent than men who are not successful? I maintain that they are not, and I have studied successful men at close quarters. One of the commonest character- istics of the successful man is his idleness, his im- mense capacity for wasting time. I stoutly assert that as a rule successful men are by habit compara- tively idle. As for frugality, it is practically un- known among the successful classes: This state- FELLOWSHIP 113 ment applies with particular force to financiers. As for intelligence, I have over and over again been startled by the lack of intelligence in success- ful men. They are, indeed, capable of stupidities that would be the ruin of a plain clerk. Another point : Successful men seldom succeed as a result of an ordered arrangement of their lives; they arc the least methodical of creatures. Naturally when they have 'arrived' they amuse themselves and impress the majority by being convinced that right from the start, with a steady eye on the goal, they had carefully planned every foot of the route," With Mr. Bennett's Insight, no observing per- son will find fault, for its correctness is confirmed in real life all about us. In the pursuit of wealth, it is probably true that a hundred work hard and fail, to one who succeeds by hard work. And in the various positions of employment the hardest workers are almost uniformly the poorest paid — from the baggage-man or the clerk in a busy store up to the secretary of a railroad president or an Assistant Postmaster General. As for correct per- ception being a requisite for success, we have the exclamation of Carlyle : **Fie on your man of logic; he never succeeds 1" No, success is more likely to be with the blunderbuss who vehemently contends that two and two make five. The phi- losophy of this fact is well expressed in the dic- tum: *'It is not ideas that move and transform the world, but passions; and a passion, even if it be absurd, is a thousand times more powerful than a 1 14 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION wise idea." There is a kind of success, too, sometimes a bril- liant success, that comes of appropriating the un- acknowledged help or ideas of others. Many an empty-headed lord has got through life very pas- sably, thanks to the brains of his valet. Many a lazy or absentee Congressman has got credit for efficiency, through the industry of his private sec- retary. Sometimes a man still higher in office re- ceives the plaudits of the people by appropriating the bright idea of some minor Department Chief, as witness the movement for the conservation of the nation's resources. Again, it is related that the day after President Cleveland ordered the re- turn of the Confederate flags, an old Union sol- dier, then a guard in a certain State Capitol, was reading of this order in the morning paper. The Governor, happening to pass by, the old guard read the order to him, remarking with some warmth that if he were Governor of that State he would telegraph the President that he would see him in purgatory before he would return the flags. The Governor seized the idea, sent the President some such message as the old guard had formulated and got much glory out of it. Even so great a thing as our fundamental law, the Constitution of the United States, it now appears, has been credited to the wrong men. The pamphlet of a comparatively unknown, though educated and thoughtful citizen of Connecticut, Peletiah Webster, published in FELLOWSHIP 115 1783, four years before the Constitutional Con- vention assembled, contained the scheme of that great instrument. Hamilton, Madison, Wilson and others of the convention used this pamphlet without so much as a thank you; and history has given them the glory — another illustration that, as Napoleon said: "History is fable agreed upon." It is well that Congress has taken notice of Web- ster in the form of a bill to erect a memorial to the real author of the Constitution. My readers can doubtless recall instances within their own ob- servation where credit went to the wrong per- son. As Lessing truly says : "Some people obtain fame, and others deserve it." Where worldly success is really won by the man himself, as we say, it is often through the most reprehensible methods, ranging from nig- gardly parsimony to downright dishonesty. In either case there is nothing to admire about it. Two residents of a certain city were one day rid- ing down town in a street car, and as they passed by a spacious tract of land with an old brick house in the center, one remarked to the other: "I ad- mire the old fellow that lives in that house." "Why so?" asked the other. "Well, he came to this city a poor young man, and by working hard and saving his money he is now worth a million dollars. He gets down to his dry- goods store in the morning before his clerks do and he stays until they are gone. He tends right to his busi- ness." As he finished this encomium, his com- 1 16 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION panion asked: "Is that all?" "Why, isn't that enough?" was the reply. "Not for me," came the rejoinder. "You have simply described a human hog, a being that lives only for self. Before I can join in your admiration of the man you must show me what he has done for his fellow-man other than perhaps being a convenience as a dealer in dry-goods." In the ranksof the "self-made" there are far too many like this dry-goods merchant. Of fame, it may be said with that writer of sensible things. Dr. Frank Crane, that it is "a gambling affair." "There are no known laws for becoming noted," says Dr. Crane, "if your card turns up you win; if the little ball stops on your number you arc it! That's all." He then cites the case of the hard-working lawyer, William A. Butler, who, though a worthy person, never won fame in his profession, but who in a leisure mo- ment wrote "Nothing to Wear," which he sold to Harper's Weekly for $50. The poem caught the fancy of the public, and we all know the rest; the writer of "a few pages of society verse," became famous. Take the case of the English author whose book had no better success than Thoreau's "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers." Now it happened that Gladstone had his portrait painted with a copy of the volume in his hand. That was enough; the book soon found its way into the hands of everybody. "To feed a child's mind upon the motive of being famous some day is immoral," again says Dr. Crane. "He certain- FELLOWSHIP 117 ly can be useful, great and strong some day, if he will, ( ?) but guessing which of the three shells the pea is under is hardly a worthy life's busi- ness." Says Schopenhauer: "He who deserves fame without getting it, possesses by far the more important element of happiness, which should console him for the loss of the other. It is not that a man is thought to be great by the masses of incompetent and often infatuated people, but that he really is great which should move us to envy his position; and his happiness lies, not in the fact that posterity will hear of him, but that he is the creator of thoughts worthy to be treasured up and studied for hundreds of years." Since both fame and fortune are so often un- earned, or go to the unworthy; since the only thing that can be truly said of successful or famous men is that they are fortunate, how little should success be considered in estimating men 1 That it should be made a fetish, as it is today, is idolatry; that it should be a barrier, as it also is, between men, is snobbery. The fellowship that is needed in the city today is as broad as citizenship, and as deep as kind hearts can feel. How false are tests of creeds and of worldly success as solvents of social problems when put beside the touchstone of universal kind- ness I "So many books, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind — When all this old world rcallv .lecds Is iust the art of being kind. " 1 18 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION As was shown in an earlier chapter, charitable and philanthropic organizations have been increas- ing rapidly in our cities during the last few years. While some of these societies are voluntary, being formed by men and women with a practical love for mankind in their hearts, most of them are in- stitutions established by the city; and they are the subject of municipal budgets, the same as are the various departments of government. Some per- sons believe that all philanthropic and charitable work should be the "job of the city;" and many an unreasoning diatribe against large philanthro- pies by the rich have we seen in the editorial columns of radical newspapers. "Why leave to the kindly impulses of the conscience-stricken rich the task of caring for sick babies, over-worked mothers, soul-hungry folk of every age marooned by poverty in the crowded cities?" exclaims one organ. With the cry of justice, not charity, these people would discourage the kindness of heart which prompts the fortunate (not necessarily the conscience-stricken) to relieve the distress of the unfortunate, while at the same time they would make the poor ever more dependent upon charity as a settled policy of municipal government. Thus would the city become ever more attractive to the poor than would the country, the source of food supplies — the very thing that, as the philosophical historian, Ferrero, points out, was one of the chief causes of the ruin of ancient Rome. No one worth listening to advocates the sub- FELLOWSHIP 119 stitution of charity for justice. Some day, per- liaps, we will carry the idea of brotherhood so lar as to conceive society as being only a big fam- ily, and, as at no family table would one member be allowed to gather all the lood around his plate, so neither will any member of society, especially in a democracy, be allowed to own and control an excessively large fortune. As an equalizing meas- ure this limitation of wealth would have a decided advantage over the income tax, which the rich can indirectly collect from the poor. We will then go Mr. Carnegie one better and declare that in- stead of it being a disgrace for a man to die rich, it will be a disgrace for a nation to permit a man to possess millions of dollars while millions of men go hungry. But this is a far look into the future; and besides, the most perfect dispensation of justice will not insure against misfortune, and so there will always be a Held for individual help- fulness. We are living in the present, and Heaven knows "the harvest truly is plenteous;" let not the laborers be few. In a recent article on poverty in the United States, Professor Todd, of the Uni- versity of Illinois said : "It may shock our national vanity, but it is true, nevertheless, that from 10 to 20 per cent, of our fellow Americans are in real distress; that 20 to 30 per cent, are living con- stantly below a physical efficiency minimum, and that even a higher percentage do not receive an income sufficient to maintain either economic or social efficiency." 120 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION So far from public Institutions being all-suffic- ient as an uplifting force in society, they are fre- quently a stumbling-block, in the way of the un- fortunate, and a hardener of the hearts of the well-to-do. It may be laid down as a rule, I think, that In the field of philanthropy public institutions are, to the extent of their establishment, destruc- tive of individual effort In the same field. Too much reliance is placed by the citizen upon the wel- fare departments of the city. Many a man has found an excuse for withholding aid and comfort from the distressed in the thought: "Oh, well, the city has a place for the down and out. Let them apply to the Board of Charities. What do I pay taxes for, anyway?" In these days there are not wanting writers, who, saturated with academic notions about "scien- tific philanthropy," decry all giving by the individ- ual to the needy, thus overruling Christ himself, who said: "Give to him that asketh thee." "Indis- criminate," "wasteful," and "demoralizing" char- ity are favorite words with these writers. But are the charitable institutions of State and city always wisely managed? Not if former Governor Foss spoke truly. In a message to the Legislature he said: "Public money is being poured out with- out any businesslike and adequate safeguard;" and he mentioned many charitable institutions where there is no adequate accounting. It Is said on good authority that It costs the average city three dollars to give away five. As I write these lines, FELLOWSHIP 121 my morning paper notes a resolution introduced in the City Council of Boston in its session yes- terday, asking for an investigation of a charitable organization of which the mover said: "Their own reports show that it cost $48,000 to give away about half that sum." So much for red tape, and high salaried officers, even if not some- thing worse. Again, the optimistic and often highly colored newspaper accounts of the charitableness of a city cause kindly disposed persons to take too much for granted, and think that enough good things are already provided. About the time one news- paper in a certain city was going into ecstasies over a "Community Christmas" — a lean tree in the public square, covered with tinsel and filled with gewgaws and surrounded by a curious crowd from the downtown district — another paper was testing out the fellowship spirit in a different way. It sent out a reporter, disguised in threadbare clothes, to see just how much of the "milk of hu- man kindness" there was in that city. In a whole afternoon on the streets the reporter found but two persons out of twenty-five who were willing to help him. The sum total of the relief was thirty- five cents; and the donor of the quarter fumbled through all his pockets in search of a dime in- stead. This tells the whole story, and always will. The person that is unwilling to stop and listen to one in distress (but not drunk) and help him if possible, has little of the charity- teachings of 122 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION Christ in him; and in a city made up of such peo- ple a "Community Christmas',' with all its allitera- tive larrup, is but sounding brass and tinkling cym- bal . Charity only on Christmas day is off the same piece as piety only on the Sabbath day. Within recent years many voluntary organiza- tions have been formed in various parts of the country to aid the poor or friendless. Such is, among others, the Big Brother lodge of the Elks, by which each member constitutes himself a broth- er to one or more boys in need of a friend; and the resulting friendship finds expression in mater- ial aid and moral influence. Within one year af- ter it was organized, this beneficent department of the B. P. O. E. had established nine hundred lodges, and assisted five thousand boys. What a power for practical good this society may become ! The Gideons, now numbering fifteen thousand out of more than half a million traveling men, though not as young an organization, may be mentioned as another force for good among the lonely men and women of a big city. It is this organization that puts the Bible in every guest room in the hotels of our country and does other good deeds. Many are the men — and women too — whom the Gideons claim to have saved from lives of shame or from suicide. Of purely local societies that are organized to extend the hand of fellowship to the stranger and to the derelict, nearly every large city can now boast one or more. May they greatly multiply! FELLOWSHIP 123 But, after all, the individual must be the unit of true fellowship. Just as the threads must be new and strong to insure strength in the fabric, just as the ingredients must be pure to insure a wholesome dish, so must the individual be friendly to insure the fellowship that is sadly needed in so- ciety today; for in society, as in nature, a stream will rise no higher than its source. All about us, in the big city, are men and women hungering for fellowship as the destitute hunger for bread; and it is the duty of every good citizen who is fairly fortunate in having friends to chum a little with those in need of friends. Several years ago a president of the United States became convinced that the farmer was lonely, so he ap- pointed a commission to provide ways and means of amusing him. Of course, the farmer and his wife, with their grange meetings, their sewing cir- cles and other bees, their picnics and their revival meetings, laughed at this, just as the wage-earner in the city laughed at the same official's innocent counsel to have a large family. This socializing commission had hardly got to work when it was realized that it was the people of the crowded city, paradoxical as it would seem, instead of the farmers, that were lonely. Accordingly, since the city of Rochester, a few years ago, threw open the doors of its public schools to the people of the various neighborhoods for night meetings, school houses in many cities have become social centers where next door neighbors may become ac- 124 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION quainted ! We hear much of Christian brotherhood. But we see very little of any kind of brotherhood in the city today. Why, men never even speak unless they are acquainted, but pass one another like the beasts of the jungle, silent and intent on their prey. A strange sort of brotherhood, this. A few kind words every day, a disposition to be friendly, — how many a poor soul might have risen instead of fallen had he received this little attention! In a certain town in the West lived a mechanic who was at the same time a musician of consider- able talent, but this man had a very common weak- ness ; he would drink. The habit finally threatened to work his utter ruin. He lost job after job until, although in the prime of life, he gave up looking for work and became a street loafer. Every re- spectable person shunned him. No, not everyone. One man there was, a blunt though kind-hearted manufacturer, who had known the derelict in his better days. Now this good man did not avoid the unfortunate, nor did he go to him with a sanc- timonious air and remonstrate with him. But he went up to him and, in the same offhand manner he had with everyone, extended his hand and said; "John, I need a skilled man in the die-room and I want you to come to work tomorrow morning? Will you come?" John went to work, and he has often told, during the many years of a sober and industrious life he has since lived, how it was his boss's manner on that eventful day that reformed FELLOWSHIP 125 him. There was no condescension and no con- tempt, but the manifestation of confidence that restored the man's self-respect and nerved him for a better life. We have not all jobs to offer the unfortunate, nor, it may sometimes happen, money to bestow, but we all do have something of ourselves to give; and in many cases that is the thing most needed. Of such a gift, as of mercy, it may be said: "It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." Among the advantages that accrue to him that thus gives himself to others, did you ever fully appreciate, my readers, the enlarged and clarified knowledge of human nature? This kind of knowl- edge is perhaps the most important of all, and well has the poet said: "The proper study of man- kind is man." We often hear people speak of learning human nature from Shakespeare or Schopenhauer; but you can no more learn human nature from books than you can learn to harness a horse from them. Contact with men is as es- sential in the one case as contact with a horse is In the other. In the characters in books we simply recognize traits which we have already found in men and women by personal and intimate acquaint- ance with them; that is all. What knowledge of human nature would one have who should shut himself up in his library and disdain to mingle with men? It would be very much like that Eng- lish scholar's knowledge of French which he had gained from books only. When he went to Paris 126 CITY LIFE, ITS AMELIORATION and undertook to use his French he found that no- body understood him. Another thing we learn by this gift of ourselves in fellowship with men, be they ever so lowly, is, that there are diamonds in the rough which need only to be polished by friendly contact to shine with luster. In the city, more than anywhere else, superior worth may lie latent and buried for want of an opportune circumstance to evoke it. "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air." We often read in the daily press of the man who has won a Carnegie medal for some heroic act. His name, it may be, is on every tongue. And, quick to turn his fame into fortune — no mere sprig of laurel goes in these money-mad days — he closes a contract with a vaudeville manager. On the day before the heroic act, the hero was a mere nobody, so far as reputation went. And yet, all the while, he had in his make-up the qualities of a hero; it needed only the occasion to call them into action. Among the men that pass us every day on the street are many such. Opportunity — a runaway, the cry of "a man overboard," or a frantic woman at the window of a burning build- ing — is the only thing necessary to convert these prosaic men into lauded heroes. And there are heroes whose heroism never gets into the limelight. Such are the fathers and moth- ers who, on a small income, for which they drudge FELLOWSHIP 127 unceasingly, and at a sacrifice of themselves, not only manage to keep the wolf from the door, but rear children into educated and upright men and women. Such, again, are the little newsboys who, no matter what the weather may be, are out on the dirty and noisy streets all day and often far into the night. that their accumulated pennies may help support the home, in which perhaps there is a drunken or invalid father. And such, lastly, are those shop girls who, perchance alone in the world, on a sum smaller than a club man spends for cigars, manage to keep body and soul together and in the state of purity that God meant for them. 1 hese are the souls with whom we may possibly have fellowship, if we will but take the pains to look around us. And they are immeasurably more worthy than are many whose favor we court — more worthy on their own account and on ours as well. It is not possible to know people as well in the big city as in the small town, and for reasons al- ready set forth in this book, but by such an ac- quaintance with them as is possible, we may at least ameliorate their condition and our own. Then let us have more of good cheer, more of kindly interest and more of praise for efforts well meant, to the end that life in the sordid city may not be as soulless as it is today. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 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