Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1892-02-18
Women of the Age Tell What to
Do with the Poor.
Mrs. BaIlington Booth Wants Religion In
the slums-Miss Frances Wizards
views-BelVa Lockwood Rec
ommends Legislation.

How can poverty be abolished9 Ny answer
would be- Strike at the core, and remember
that that which is superficial and proves but
palliative, while it may Danish the question for
awhile win never answer it. You can give OPT
ates 70 soothe the pain and benumb the feeling
Of the victim of cancer, but that could not save
him. Nothing but the radical exseetion OF the
cancer can stop its ravsges. Divide up the
wealth Of the world tomorrow, giving to every
man an equal share, and by the end OF 1892 there
would be again vast number Of destitute,
homeless, starving, suffering roor. The vicious,
dissolnte, criminal and drunken classes viii IL
ways be poor, and, alasl with them viii suffer
the innocent victims OF their neglect or cruelty.
Poverty can be ameliorated in many ways, the
suffering OF innocent victims alleviated, employ
ment given at fair wages 20 those willing 10
work, IL the classes blessed with riches and the
many employers Of labor would wake TO the i'm
portance OF their responsibility towards their
less favored fellow-men, and be made to feel
and realize the extent of existing poverty. But,
alasl alienation and abolition are quite differ
ent matters.
All schemes and plans that aim at the sweep
ing away Of existing misery without the renova-
ton Of the miserable themselves seem to those
Of US who have lived and worked among them
In their haunts and homes utopan and disap-
pointing You can cleanse the slums l have no
doubt, providing you have wealth and power
enough to pull down the rotten tenements,
building in their places model lodging-hOuses,
turning every saloon into a cofee-palace, closing
every house of disrepute and washing away the
filth and infection. But that Will but be a
change in bricks and Inortar-a renovation Of
the locality. What of the people-the teeming
humanity Of the sluns-those thieves, drunk
ards, ex-convicts, loafers, saloonkeepers, broth
el-keepers and all the women and children they
also representa-
The answer OF the Salvation Army and the
answer OF the Bible as l read it; the answer of
Christ our Saviour, is this: Begin at the heart
OF humanity purify the spring and the waters
viii be clean. Bring the living vital religion OF
Jesus Christ, not In books and tracts and SER
MONS but lived out in pure, self-sacrdeing lives,
10 bear upon the people
Your bread is for their body, your education
for their homes, your homes for their living, bat
It is Christs Divine touch TO their hearts that
will change them and alone enable them 10
profit by these other advantages.
We, IN the Salvation Army, are sending peo-
pie to live among them who are dealing hand to
hand and heart to heart with them and it is
such practical devotion as this which proves to
them that there is power in religion that can
transform the life and the environment OF their
wretched circumstances.
We have proved in the case OF thousands OF
individuals that the change OF heart was fol-
lowed by change Of life, ambitions, circum-
stances-in fact, Transforming the outeasts into
good citizens and Christ-honoring servants. If
this can be achieved in individual cases multi
ply the agency sufficiently and it can be accom-
pilshed for the whole. Poverty would then be
driven out, selhshness and sin, with all their at
tendant curses, would disappear, being abol-
ished ~ the reign OF Christ and a millennium
would dawn MAUD B. BOOTH.