The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-02-07

tins alIeviated, employment given at fair
wages TO those willing TO work, If the classes
blessed with riches and the many en-
ployeTs of labor would wake to the inn
portance OF their responsibility towards
their less-favored feilow-men. and be made
TO feel and realize the extent of existing
poverty. But, alas alienation and aboli-
ton are quite different matters
All schemes End plans which aim at the
sweeping away of existing misery without
the renovation of the miserable themselves
seem to those OF Us who have lived and
worked among them in their haunts aud
homes Utopian and disappointing. You
can cleanse the slums, | have no doubt,
providing you have wealth and power
enough 10 pull down the rotten tene-
ments, building in their place model lodg-
lighthouses, turning every saloon into a
coffee palace, closing every house OF dis
repute and washing away the filth and in
lection. But that will but be a change IN
bricks and MORTAR renovating of the
locality. What of the people-the teem-
ing humanity of the slums-those thieves,
drunkards, ex-couvicts. loafers, saloon
Keepers, brothel-keepers, and ell the
women and children they also represent?
What of them? They will have gone
ike mighty dock of rocks to make
reokery elsewhere. You will but have
moved on the slums, not have abolished
them Surprising, however, that you in
tended to allow the same tenants back
again into the renovated quarters where
better homes and more fortunate circum-
stances awaited them. In some cases they
might appreciate the change, and rising
from their misery shake OF the despair
that had formerly made them give UP try
ing, and make an effort to retrieve them
selves. But, alas, those of us who know
the outcast poor by personal contact have
learned that which makes US believe that
the majority would sink back into the old
poverty. SINS, vices and wretchedness, and
that before many months filth, squalor,
disorder and misery would reign in your
improved slums.
Laws! Yes, very good. so far as they go.
when properly enforced. Laws can re-
strain, but they cannot reform. You can
punish the man who misuses his wife and
staryes his children, and throw him into
Jail for a long term, but meanwhile the
starving process goes on at home. You
can compel the criminal, when you have
caught him IN crime, to break stones
build roads, make shoes and in many WAYS
utilize the weary hours OF his term at hon
est labor, but that does not send him out
into the world any less one of the outcast
poor.
There are many good suggestions that
should undoubtedly be put intos force TO
amellorate the appalling state of things
now existing. | have myself been into
IarllIleS
huddled together. l have visited courts,
alleys and tenements where sanitary laws
were utterly disregarded and the very air
breathed pestilence. / have seen hun
dreds of people who had no place of
shelter during the cold OF a wintry night
but some entryway or doorstep; and [
have heard that cry which no woman's
heart can ever forget-the cry of starving
children.
Regulations should be enforced to pre-
vent the terrible overcrowding in the tene-
ments. The sanitary condition of things
should be improved and it would indeed
be boon if work could be provided for
the many who are anxious but unable TO
procure employment. The awful number
of saloons should certainly be lessened,
and the houses of in-fame, which are now
tolerated, should be closed. Suitable
night lodgings. such as those provided in
our shelter brigade, for the many who are
now homeless and penniless. would save,
ali. how MANY men from reckless despair
and women from shame. Yet, when | say
that all these things will only lessen the
evil and not remove the cause. | do not
wish it inferred that they should be left
undone. Far from it. The sooner they
are done the better for the fair name of
our country. But when they are accom-
plished there will still be the same ques-
ton to ask and answer: "How shall we
abolish poyerty?"
The answer of the Salvation Army and
the answer of the Bible. as [ read it; the
answer of Chris: our Saviour is this Be-
gin at the heart of humanity, purify the
spring and the waters will be clean. Bring
the living, vital religion of Jesus Christ;
not In books and tracts and sermons, but
lived out in pure, self-sacriicing lives, to
bear upon the people.
Your bread is for their body your edu-
cation for their homes, your homes for
their living, but it is Christ's divine touch
to their hearts that will change them and
alone enable them to profit by these other
advantages.
We, in the Salvation Army. are sending
people 10 live among them, who are deal
ing hand to hand and heart to heart with
them; and II is such practical devotion as
this which proves to them that there is.a
power in religion that can transform the
life and the environment of their circum-
stances.
We have proved in the case of thousands
of individuals that the change of heart
was followed by change of life, ambitions.
circums tanCes-in fact, transforming the
outcasts into good citizens and Christ
honoring servants. II this can be achieved
III individual cases, multiply the agency
sufficiently and it can be accomplished for
the whole. Poverty would then be driven
out, selfshness and sin, with all their
attendant curses, would disappear, being
abolished by the reign of Christ, and
millennium would dawn.