صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

best, will not always praise his processes of work, however legitimate and commendable they may be, inasmuch as their light is less than his, their convictions less pungent, their loyalty more wavering. Usually he is the pioneer to mark the way in which his followers are to walk. As such he must journey far in the van, where the plaudits of men sound dim and uncertain. What conviction says-not what men say—is to be the law for him. Negatively, also, he must not fear the force of opposition. No man ever engaged in such a contest-a contest in which certain well-advertised leaders in some American cities are being tried to the uttermost-who has not been assaulted as by all the malignant forces of perdition in combined array. Such a battle is no place for cowards. Timorousness of leadership means overwhelming defeat.

But some of the positive elements of strength which the leader in this reformatory work must possess also suggest themselves for enumeration. He must be a master of men. He must be gifted with a keen knowledge of human nature in its worst and its best phases, its great strength and its incredible weakness; he must understand the foibles of humanity, and must comprehend this fundamental truth, which is for all nations and centuries, that mankind waits to be led and will ever wait supinely for a leader. To know men seems such a necessity that we are impelled to serve a warning on all the constituents of our American cities where the impulse for reform is beginning to stir the hearts of men against enlistment for service under any leader, of whatever other gifts, who lacks this prime essential. And such a man must and will be resourcefulmore able than the Israelites to make bricks without straw; self-reliant when other men feel their weakness; fertile in expedients; systematic in his methods of procedure, and far-reaching in his work. This means that he will be full of faith in the essential righteousness of his cause. Even in a smaller and less momentous contest depreciation is defeat. John, the forerunner, believed in the purity of his mission. Wilberforce felt himself in championship of a philanthropy too holy to be overthrown. Elizabeth Fry and Dorothea Lynde Dix allied themselves to the forces of the heavenly world in the reformatory work they wrought, and drew their pledge of victory from the skies. No less than they must the reformer of whom we write believe in his great mission. The salvation of our American cities, where vice flourishes as in tropic luxuriance, turns, among other things, on the leadership of those whose souls thrill with the righteousness of the cause they champion.

If such a leader, whose negative and positive virtues we have in part intimated, seems difficult to find, for that we are not responsible. We have, nevertheless, drawn the picture of the true commander, whose presence and participation will give an inestimable impulse to the reformation of American corporate life. The difficulty of finding the ideal administrator should not bar his just portrayal. And, unless our inference be wrong, there is danger from faulty leadership in the administration of the reform movement in some of our American cities. Poor command is worse than none. Not tyros, not verbose sensationalists, not upstarts

ambitious of personal fame should take the lead, for such leadership will prove the millstone to drag down the most righteous cause to ruin.

II. An aroused public conscience is another prerequisite which we would point out as necessary in the reformation of our great cities. With the better-thinking in the community is lodged, after all, the enforcement of already existing laws for the suppression of crime and the institution of new movements for the radical extermination of evil. Where the ideal leader guides whom we have sketched, an ardent, united constituency must follow. While the public conscience sleeps the reformer's hands will hang idle. And such apathy must now be charged to some degree upon the friends of morality. A wild rush for wealth in these latter days, a love of effeminate and distracting pleasures, and an accompanying indifference to the higher interests of the community are the successive steps in the process of neglect that has come upon the land. The legal provisions for the suppression of vice in our many cities and States, imperfect though they may be, are far in advance of the efforts made for their enforcement. In most of our leading American cities sensible and somewhat vigorous statutes will be found in existence, having relation, for instance, to the closing of the saloon on the Sabbath, the suppression of gambling, and the restriction of the social evil. Let the responsibility for the continuance of these monstrous evils be placed where it rightly belongs. We must charge upon the indolence of the public conscience the wretched traffic in intoxicants that is illegally going on in forbidden hours; nay, upon this indifference, the continuance in any form of the sale of accursed liquors and the perpetuation of the universal suffering which liquor brings. We must charge upon the dormancy of the public conviction the tolerance of baser social irregularities and the continuance of that towering evil in American life, the shameless lottery, with gambling in other forms. We must charge upon the lukewarmness of the better part of the community the most that it suffers from evil of every sort. The arousal of the sleeping public conscience is the first necessity in our great city reforms; and a conscience so awakened is the most resistless force on earth. As a concrete instance of what an awakened public sense may do the case of a forward movement in San Francisco, lately initiated, is to the point. A recent correspondent of the Christian Union, after describing the prevailing and great vices of that far western city, discovers the principle of reform we suggest in his narration of the uprising of indignant and consecrated workers in that needy field:

The present movement against the "dives" has taken the form of an appeal to the board of supervisors to so amend the ordinance as to leave the issuance of saloon licenses entirely in the hands of the police commissioners, thus abrogating the twelve property-owners clause. . . . A newspaper aroused the public to action, and its crusade resulted in a public mass meeting being held in Metropolitan Hall on Sunday, May 29. At this meeting there were present over two thousand clergymen and laymen, representing every creed, denomination, and religion. Eloquent speakers portrayed the monstrous evil of the "dives" and aroused the auditors to a high pitch of enthusiasm.

A committee of fifty citizens was appointed to secure signatures to a petition for presentation to the supervisors demanding the repeal of the twelve property

owners clause, and also to form an association to be called "The Citizens' League for the Suppression of the Dives of San Francisco." It was also resolved to hold mass meetings every Sunday until the last "dive" in the city closed its doors. From that meeting two thousand earnest crusaders went forth into the highways and byways and the result of their labors is that the association is several thousand strong, and is backed by the good will of every public-spirited man and woman. To this committee of fifty was added an auxiliary committee of twenty ladies. The petition, which has already been presented to the supervisors, bears nearly ten thousand signatures. In view of the fact that the conventions to nominate candidates for municipal offices will soon meet and that the present supervisors are candidates for nomination, it is not anticipated that they will dare oppose the wishes of so many citizens. One "dive," the worst of the lot, has already been closed. Its license expired two weeks ago, and the League did such energetic work among the property owners that the proprietor found it impossible to secure the twelve necessary signatures. While the good citizens have been at work the "dive" keepers have not been idle. They have formed "The Licensed Taxpayers' Association." Backed by the power of money and the influence of the wholesale liquor-dealers, they hope to baffle their enemies. On the 27th instant the "dive" question will be presented to the supervisors in open meeting of the board. It remains to be seen whether decency and right or venality and might will triumph.

Such a pertinent and stirring story carries its own moral. The persistent action of these excellent forces that have been enlisted must accomplish the purification of their great city. Nor of San Francisco alone. "Venality and might" will everywhere go down in such a struggle; "decency and right" will inevitably conquer, or there is no expulsive power in virtue and no resistless dynamic quality in righteousness. San Francisco, if the new movement in her midst be as general and enthusiastic as the correspondence indicates, sets the example for all the cities of the republic. Let the uprising be undenominational, unpolitical, general, and there is no evil so colossal upon the western continent that the aroused public conscience may not sweep from the sight of men.

III. But such a moral purification, even under the favorable conditions of right leadership and of interested public approval, is not to come anywhere in the world except by slow and laborious processes. This is the genius of the Gospel. Reformatory work must germinate. Righteousness is "first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." Whoever undertakes to fight this supreme battle for humanity needs that full endurance which great strategists always possess. The sporadic transformations on the face of society which sometimes spring up in a night are short-lived; the reforms that are deep-rooted and enduring are the growth of slow years of development. Nor is this tardy progress a matter of surprise when the combination and the endurance of the forces opposed to reform are considered. Against the workers in the attempted suppression of the liquor traffic, for illustration, are arrayed, not only the great army of drinkers, moderate or excessive, scattered throughout the land, but also the retail dealers, whose business is in jeopardy, and the bonded liquor interest, with its many directors, its defiance of public opinion, and its overflowing treasury for defense. The effort also to enforce the keeping of the Sabbath will be resisted, not only by the lawless that are American-born, but by no small proportion of immigrants who have

retained on our shores their preference for the laxity of the "continental Sunday," and who join with the antisabbatarians of the land in their cry of assault upon personal rights and their demand for free pleasures on the holy day. In recent efforts toward Sabbath improvement in the near city of Newark the presence of the large foreign and un-American element in their midst has been a great obstacle in the way of reformers. So any attempt to suppress the curse of gambling will be resisted to the bitter end by the conscienceless proprietor of every faro bank, by all lottery associations, and by every illegal speculator whose cupidity leads him to profit on the investments of the simple-minded at the expense of honor. So, again, the extermination of the brothel meets with such resistance on the part of the hordes of the unholy that the task seems more difficult of performance than the incredible labors of Hercules. It seems a hydraheaded evil that will never down. Official complicity with crime also exists to retard the progress that reform would otherwise make. No blindness can hide the sight. Politics have invaded the hall of justice. The police officials of our cities too often befriend the very criminals for whom the law is in search. The venality of some court officials is a monstrous blot on the American judicial system. The administration of law and the punishment of criminals in some of our municipal courts has become the veriest travesty. The occasional abuse of the pardoning power serves as a hindrance to the enforcement of justice and to an unqualified reverence for the sanctity of the law. Of the official alliance with vice in St. Louis the correspondent of the publication before quoted gives some pertinent and striking illustrations. Five years ago, in the First District Police Court, there were 4,606 convictions and 3,392 acquittals; in the last year there have been 2,433 convictions and 6,073 acquittals. The cases before the court have increased six per cent, while fines have decreased forty-two per cent, and the amount of money collected seventy per cent. In the higher courts a condition equally disgraceful exists. Forfeited bonds are scarcely ever paid; cases are frequently dismissed when evidence is sufficient for conviction; and criminals guilty of larger offences are permitted to plead to some trifling misdemeanor. Too common is such a story in our great American cities.

And vice, as we have suggested, is unchanging in its purposes. When virtue rests after some hard-fought battle and some real victory, straightway the evil springs up in new vigor and with stronger shouts of defiThere is nothing so untiring in the universe as sin. The zeal for purification must be equally untiring and perpetual.

ance.

We are far from undervaluing the reformatory efforts that have long been prevalent and are now being prosecuted with vigor in our chief centers. If the great cities of the land and the earth were never worse, charity and reform were never so felt in crowded human life. As for the future, also, under the conditions we have indicated they shall be the agents in reducing to the minimum the suffering of humanity and in promoting such qualities as sobriety, industry, peaceableness, and ethical regard, that make for enduring city and national prosperity.

PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION.

To speak

THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF CITIZENSHIP cannot be estimated. lightly of the obligations which corporate association imposes upon men is to belittle one of the most solemn obligations of life. Wherever around the world one finds a true citizen, though under unfavorable governmental environments, he discovers one whose sensibilities are keenly alert to the performance of public duties. Neither the paralyzing influence of oligarchies nor the enervating atmosphere of the monarchical system altogether relieves him from a sense of obligation to the state. Solon, as a fabricator of Grecian laws looking to human equality; Curtius, in the days of Roman danger; Tell, in his unfaltering consecration to the needs of suffering Switzerland; and Madison, among the continental patriots, are conspicuous examples of those civic virtues which every true freeman will show forth in his own place and time. Citizenship is a universal trust.

It is easy to catalogue some of the excellencies which the true citizen will thus exemplify. Aristotle has defined such a man as "one to whom belongs the right of taking part both in the deliberative or legislative and in the judicial proceedings of the community of which he is a member." If this definition of the great philosopher be enlarged to include also the duty of such participation, it outlines a prominent part of the responsibilities of the citizen. To interest himself in the legislative and judicial proceedings of the state, as many do not, is an unvarying obligation. Added to which service the ideal citizen will show himself a friend to public industries and improvements; will constantly lend his voice and influence for the maintenance of the moralities of the community; will prove a conservative counselor in time of public passion; will be concerned in all the philanthropic movements which are agitated for the relief of the distressed and poor; will stand as a friend of advanced education; and will maintain the institutions of Christianity in his community. For the interests of all classes he will likewise have an equal regard, the ideal citizen having been defined in this connection as one who "believes that all men are brothers and the nation is merely an extension of his family, to be loved, respected, and cared for accordingly." Without attempting to write a complete catalogue of the duties of this ideal citizen, along all the above lines he will find his obligations to constant service.

Whether the progress of men toward this lofty condition of citizenship is encouragingly rapid will be a matter for difference of opinion. The dispassionate spectator, as he looks abroad, will deplore the evil forces that seem at work throughout the commonwealth, subverting the spirit of true patriotism; will be deeply saddened by the sordid motives which actuate the average politician of the day; and will spurn the temporizing acts of many citizens of the state with whom sectional or class interests are a more impelling motive than the promotion of the abstract right. Every municipal or national election, like that through which the American people

« السابقةمتابعة »