Connecticut western news., 1893-06-08
IN MODERN BABYLON.
THE CURSE or POVERTY IN A CITY OF
 TODAY.

of the Present Time-Men and Women
 Dead to Hope.
 NEW YORK, June 4.-Rev. Thomas Dixon, Jr., preached today the seventh of the series of sermons on the "Gates of Hell In Modern Babylon" The subject of today's sermon was "The Curse e Poverty In the Modern City" The text chosen was from Proverbs xxx, 8, g.: "Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lordp or lest I be poor, and steal, and use profanely the name of my God"
 There is poverty that is respectable. There is poverty that is the mother of greatness. It is not of this poverty that I speak today. The cradles of the poor have been those that have rocked the greatest men 8 the earth. But by this we mean decent poverty in which there has been coarse food and coarse cloth ing and yet food enough to keep hun ger from the door, clothes enough to Keep the cold from the body. Poverty that means hunger and cold and naked ness and rags is a curse and only curse. It is this shadow that falls across the streets of the city as nowhere else on the earth today. There are poor people in the country, but they are millionaires in all that constitutes life as compared with the poor of the city.
 It is continuous amazement to me that people should leave the country and crowd into the city, the city which Car lyle graphically described, 1.-The great, foul city, rattling, crawling, smoking, stinking, a ghastly heat of fermented brick work, pouring out poison at every pore" And yet they come in tens, in hundreds, in thousands, in tens of thou sands every year, crowding the already crowded trades, crowding the already crowded dens in which human beings live like beasts. They leave clear skies. They leave pure air. They leave kindly friends, sympathetic neighbors. They leave earth, in other words, for hell, and still they come.
 Could not some kind angel whisper to them when they make up their minds to leave the old country home that they are taking their departure from earth and hope and descending to the lower regionss The only possible explanation Is that they are ignorant. They do not know the city. They do not know what 1t Is. They do not understand until it is too late to retrace their steps. It is sim- ply impossible with language to ade- Quately convey to the average mind the facts in the condition of the life of the thousands who live in our cities. Their poverty Is indescribable; their wretched- ness something unthinkable.
 The poverty of the city is da open door to the deepest hell, and through tt daily crotUd countless thousdnds.
 First Because poverty in the city means loss of home. There is no home life among the poor of the great city. The word home is stricken from the lan- guage of man. The poor live in den. They exist in tenement, and the tene- ment life, with it's attendant horrors, is constantly on the increase in our great cities. In New York city it has swallow ed up all the other life practically. The tenement has, like huge monster, de- voured the home. It may be said that New York city lives in the tenement; that New York city lives in the second and third class tenements. One million three hundred thousand people in this city exist in second and third class ten ements. This constitutes the people. The landlords are an insignificant fac tion. People who live in separate houses gre not of the people; they are the ex- ception. To every so called house in the city of New York there is an average of 10 dwellers. London averages seven. In what is known as the tenement house district there are no fewer than 276, ,000 families packed together. In this quarter 1t goes without saying that the death rate reaches it's most horrible height, and public morality touches depth of degradation before which philanthro- pists and Christians and evangelists stand aghast. Poverty and disease and crime are the portion of these people.
 Second-Such poverty is the open door to theft because the wages are so low that the temptation to wrongdoing is we'll nigh resistless. 'Give me not pov- OA1Ob tAO dACk0At bCcIy lQbb l steal" How hundreds and thousands of people in the cities, with their wages, can keep from stealing is miracle. Peo- pie are entitled to bread. A man is cer- tainly entitled to existence. He is en- titled to breaA to eat. He is entitled to enough clothes to keep him from freez- ing. He is entitled to house to cover his head, and he has right to work. But these things are denied hundreds and thousands of people today in the city. Awoman was discovered the other day who had starved to death. Men commit crime daily that they may get the comforts of penitentiary, the lux ury of stay on Blackwells island.
 Shopgirls enter their life full of vain hopes. They do not expect to be drudges all their lives. They work during the leisure season from to IS hours day many of them in basements lighted by gas and electricity. In the crowded sea, sons they put on blue glasses. The only comfort they have is the fact that they have company in their misery. During the busy season they work regularly il and 12 hours, and during the rush till 1( and Il o'clock at night. The shopgirPt income is barely enough to furnish food It is not enough to furnish clothes. She does her best to initiate the rich whom she sees. The fine lady who bends ovel the counter is studied with minute care She has read the stories of working girls marrying rich nobles. She dreams oi meeting this man of paper and being lifted from her poverty and grind.
 HELEN CAMPBELL.
 As Mrs. Campbell has so truthfully said, she knows far better what consti tutes the life of the rich than the ricf ever know of the life of the poor. Sh, initiates where she can. Her cheap sho, has French heel, her neck it's tin dog collar. Gilt rings, bracelets and ban gles, frizzled bangs, cheap trimmings O every order swallow up her earnings.
 is an age of cheat and swindle-it is al
 age of imitation. She knows 1t ant
 knows it's power. She buys an oper; glass and sports manicure set. Sh'
 knows that even Queen Victoria's horses
 A~1- A. II.