Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-12-20

principles OF modesty forbade them from
kissing the railway employees at every sta
tion, during a journey taken for the pur-
pose of giving them a summer holiday.
Women and children habitually frequent
the gin shop and the long bars, and often
mothers in these places not to give tea
spoonfuls of spirits to the babies they had
in their arms.
Bad Influence of the Barmaid.
This, coupled with the fact that all our
saloons are almost invariably served BY
young girls, has almost hopelessly lowered
the standard of women among our poorer
classes, nor is this evil confined to the rag
ged, sodden, slatternly denizen of our slums;
the trim, dainty little servant maid or en-
ploye in the second-class shop who walks
out on Sunday with her tall, red coated
soldier lover, although she holds herself to
be a most respectable maiden, thinks it no
harm to swing open the door of the public
house, and, surrounded by half dozen
men, to stand slipping her grog or ale.
The absence of all women in the saloons
of New York, save those to whom fair fame
and good name are only memories, is GER
tainly very striking, and although under
stand that the saloon attached to the tene-
ment house supplies perhaps an almost
of those dwellings, the very fact that public
opinion is still respected and an outward
show of respectability preserved, is, while
it lasts, of untold value. And indeed un-
derstand that drunkenness among Ameri-
can women is everywhere uncommon.
The Hebrew quarter in London presents
almost the same features as in New York
the sweating dens, with their densely' packed
occupants existing on starvation wages and
eking out a bare sustenance, are az heart
rending with US as here in America. be-
lieve that earnest purpose and untiring
effort will vet show us the thread that shall
guide us out of the labyrinth of this diff
Guilty, but as vet the mazes seem as winding
and tortuous as ever.
High Rents an Aggravation of Misery.
There is, however, one aggravation OF this
misery in New York which renders it even
more grimly terrible than in London, and
that Is the greater rent demanded out OF
their wretched earnings by the landlords, q
fact which reduces their condition to one of
even more hopelessly chronic destitution
than in London.
In the cellar of one wretched tenement
house into which went, approached by a
rickety stairway dripping with water, three
men were sleeping on beds composed of
boards laid on the tops of barrels containing
the fruit sold in the streets. The floor was
so damp that the water stood in small pud-
dies, and for this shelter each man was pay
ing 35 cents a weck-one shilling and six
pence in our English money.
AS stood in that room felt truly that
those evils in the old country which have
made it necessary for General Booth to ap-
peal to the pity of the public to provide for
men that which is considered bare neces-
sity for the beasts that draw our hack cabs
are no greater than the evils in this. Still
1 confess it strikes a chill into ones heart
to find in this new country, with all its
real and great aspirations toward the uni
versal brotherhood of men, and under the
very shadow of the new made millionsires
of this great city, such destitution, such ap-
palling, abject misery as does already
exist.
Evil of Lax Emigration Laws.
That is undoubtedly plausibls answer
which tells us that the Old World has given
to America its sne'er-do-weels and vagrants,
mitted them will have to be eIpiated by the
wise philanthropy that deals with the e1-
listing evil without ignoring its magnitude,
and with a firm determination to profit in
the future by the experience of the past.
London has cleared her Seven Dials, New
York her Five Points. London is at last
awake to her defects and keenly anxious to
remedy them; no fatuous optimism now
blinds her as to her danger. God grant
that the newer nation may profit ere it is
too late by the bitter experience of the
mother country!
Christianity to-day has ceased to be re-
ligion of creeds. The ethics of the Sermon
on the Mount are counted as applicable to
the social problems of the nineteenth GEN.
tury as they were to the intricaces Of Ju-
dean politics under the rule Of Rome
We have ceased to look to politicians to
teach men brotherhood and equal rights.
But thev are the commonplaces of Chris
tians, and to the Christ-taught man the ac-
necessity of personal salvation
is not more sacred than the exercise of that
large souled charity which shall provide
healthy existence for his fellow men and
lift the weaker brethren from surroundings
which are in themselves school of immor-
atty and vice. ISABEL SOMERSET.