The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-12-28
Where TO Live, and How.

From the ~. Y. Tribune
We presume that not less than two hun
dred thousand persons are now within sight of
our city steeples who have no work, no real
homes, and no means which insure them
livelihood. Some of them beg or steal out
right, but larger number exc out miserable
existence by running into debt for lodging, for
board, or at groceries, or by borrowing from
week to week of whomsoever will lend them,
or by quartering themselves on reluctant
relatives or friends. When ice begins to
form on the rivers, the business of our city
suddenly and seriously contracts, throwing
tens of thousands out of work; and, Just at
this time, tens of thousands more are dis
charged from farms or country residences
closed for the winter, and drift down to our
pavements in quest of that employment
which it is morally impossible that they
should find. The net result is an aggregate
of want, squalor, misery, and degradation
fearful to contemplate. Thousands take their
first lessons in crime at this season, under the
pressure of needs which explain, though they
do not excuse, their fall.
The saddest feature of this sad business is
its hopelessness. Benevolence may somewhat
mitigate the sutferings of its victims, but only
at the cost of increasing their number. Men
and women will rush to the great cities-most
Of all, to this city-in ever-increasing num-
beTs: if there were rich philanthropists ready
ard willing to lodge and feed them all without
charge, they would be as numerous as the
leaves of the forest. Benevolence is the noblest
of virtues; we would dissuade no one from
giving; but the more you give, the more you
may in city so vast and so attractive as this
is. If hundred thousand dollars per day
were disbursed here in aims, the net result
would be steady increase in the number and
needs of the beggars.
The social disease at the base of this misery
t. fc1, f,n
Half those who crowd our cities in fruitless
quest of employment might be their own
employers if they would But he who steps
off into the unpeopled wilderness or prairie,
with an axe on his shoulder and few dollars
in his pocket, intent on making himself a
home, must work and save and endure priva-
tions for years, in the reasonable hope of en-
joyipg thereafter the fruits of his exertions
and transmitting those fruits in good part to
his children. The industrious pioneer works
four days per week for the future, only two
| for the present. He clears and breaks up,
fences, builds, makes roads, ETC., with full
knowledge that the benefits of his eXertionS
must largely be realized years hence. The
foresight and thrift herein required overtaS
the virtue of too many, who want to realize
| each Saturday night all they may have earned
during this week aud spend it before the close
of the next. Hence, men rush to the cities
where the opportunities abound for obtaining
and spending wages as fast as they are earned
and where they fancy that spice of chance
or gambling gives zest to effort. Thus are
the cities overcrowded, while the fields are
but half titled and not one new settlers cabiI
sends up a smoke where twenty should do so
What can be done to change all this for thu
bstterY
Instantly, very little. The number VIII,
prefer keeping an apple-stand on street
corner TO hOeing corn on prairie is scarcely
diminished by the notorious fact that the
former pursuit leads inevitably through lif
OF squalor to pauper's grave, while the latte
is the plain high road to modest comfort an