The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1877-02-07
THE CITY POOR.
Wretehedness i'm Cities and the Need of
Earnest Work.

This nation now has one.fifth of its popu-
latiOn in cities. What are we to do with
the social barriers which allow great city
to be not only a great world, but ten great
worlds, in which one world does not care at
all for what the other worlds are doing? In
every great town there are six or ten strata
in society; and it is, one would think, an
hundred miles from the fashionable to the
questionable side of single brick in a
wall. Superf1uity and sdualor know abso-
lutely nothing OF each other, such as the ut
ter negligence of the duty of visiting the
poor-in any other than by agents. / do
not undervalue these, nor any part of the
great charities OF our times; but there is no
complete theory for the permanent relief for
the poor without personal visitation. Go
from street to street with the city mission
airy or the best of police; but sometimes go
all alone, and with your own eyes see the
poor in the attics, and study the absolutely
unspeakable conditions of their daily lives.
Not long ago | was in a suffocated tenement
house where five or six points on which
could put my hand were in boldest viola
ton of the laws which it is the business of
the board of health in this city to see
executed. The death rate of Boston
in summer in the north end is often above
thirty in the thousand. The registrar general
of England says that any deaths above sew
enteen in a thousand are unnecessary. Live
one day where the children of the perishing
poor live, and ask what it is to live there al
ways. / know a scholar of heroic temper
and of exquisite culture, who recently re-
solved to live with the poor in a sitting part
of this city, and who, after repeated and des-
perate illness, was obliged TO move his home
off the ground in order to avoid the necessity
of putting his body underground You can
not understand the poor by newspapers, nor
even by novels.
Our distant lavender touches of the miser-
able show the barbaric blood yet in our
veins. Going about from house to house
doing good is great Christian measure per-
manently instituted by typical example,
which in better age may be remembered
and be the foundation of a nobility not vet
visible on the planet There was One who
washed His disciples feet, and in that act
founded an order of nobility, but his second
symbolic act seems not to be apprehended
even vet by some good Samaritans-in
glovesl The way from Jerusalem to Jeri-
cho lies now through the city slums; and,
for many an age to come, there will be the
spot where men oftenest will be left stripped
and sore and half dead. We want all good
influences of the parlor and press, from lit
erature and the interior church of the
church, to work upon the problem of saving
the perishing and dangerous classes in great
cities"
Poor naked wretches wheresoe'ver you are,
That bide the pelting of this pittiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed
sides,
Your looped and windowed raggedness defend
From seasons such as this? Take physic,
pomp;
That thou mayst shake the superfiux to them
And show the heavens more just.
i Lear, scene ".