The Progress., 1893-06-10
in MODERN BABYLON.
THE CURSE OF POVERTY IN A CITY OF
TO-DAY.

NEw York, Juno i.-Rev. Thoma,
Dixon. Jr.. preached today the seventh
of the series of sermons on the Gates oi
He'll In Modern Babylon" The subject
Poverty In the Modern City" The text
chosen was from Proverbs xxx. x. 9
Give me neither poverty nor riches
feed me with the food that is necdful foI
me, lest ! be full. and deny thee, and say
Who is the Lord? or lest be poor, and
steal. and use profanely the name of my
God"
There is poverty that is respectable.
There is II poverty that is the mother OF
greatness. IL is not of this poverty that
speak today. The cradles of the poor
have been those that have rocked the
greatest men of 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 td
keep the cold from the body. Poverty
that means hunger and cold and naked
ness and rags is n curse and only curse
Ii 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 millionaircs in
all that constitutes life as compared
with the poor of the city.
II is a continuous amazement 10 me
that people should leave the country and
crowd into the city. the city which Car.
lyle graphically described, The great.
foul city, rattling, crawling. smoking.
sinking, 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
regions' The only possible explanation
is that they are ignorant They do not
know the city. They do not know what
II is. They do not understand until it is
too late to retrace their steps II 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 poUerty Of the city is an open door
10 The deepest he'll. and through IL daay
cro,cd countless thousands.
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 Ian
guage of man. The poor 1.-Two in den.
They exist in a tenement, and the tene-
ment life, with its attendant horrors, is
Constantly on the increase in our great
cities. lpNew York city it has swallow
ed up all the other life practically. The
tenement has, like huge monster, de-
voured the home. II may be said that
New York city lives in the tenement;
e.slat New York city lives in the second
aud third class tenemcnts. 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
ton. People who live in separate houses
are not of the people; they are the ca
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 2i6,0O0
families packed together. In this quarter
il goes without saying that the death
rate reaches its 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
well nigh resistless. Give me not pow
ertyr' cries the ancient seer. lest |
steal" How hundreds and thousands of
people in the cities. with their wages,
can keep from stealing is a miracle. Peo-
pie are entitled to bread. A man is GER
taiuly entitled to existence He is en-
titled to bread to eat. He is entitled to
enough clothes to keep him from freez-
ing He is entitled to IA house to cover
his head, and he has a right to work.
But these things are denied hundreds
and thousands Of people today in the
city. A woman was discovered the other
day who had starved to death. Men
commit crime daily that they may get
the comforts of n penitentiary. the lux
ury of a stay on Blackwell's 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 y to 13 hours day
many of them in Easements lighted by
gas and electricity la the crowded sea-
sons they put on blue glasses. The only
<.r,,fort fl,.,x, hava - tho fnef chat