Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1894-04-09

ningle in the strife.
SEEING THE sLuMs.
meet another coming down off the no.
tel steps, and say, "Whero are You 10.
ingi" You say, ~ am going with a mer-
chant OF New York who has promised TO
show mo the underground life Of the city.
am his customer and he is going TO obliEe
me very much" Stopl A business house
that tries to get or keep your custom
through such a process us that Is not wor-
thy OF You. There are business establish
monts in our cities which have for years
been sending to destruction hundreds and
thousands Of merchants They have a Sc
cret drawer in the counter, where money
is kept, and the clerk goes and gets it when
he wants to take these visitors TO the city
through the low slums Of the place
Shall l mention the names Of some Of
these great commercial establishments l
have them on my lips. Shall II Perhaps
had better leave it to tho young men who,
in thnt process, have been destroyed them
selves while they havo been destroying
others, care not how high sounding the
name of a commercial establishment II IL
proposes to get customers or TO keep them
by such process as that. Drop their &C
qualntanco. They will cheat you before
you get through They will send you a
style of goods different from that which
you bought by sample They will give you
underweight. There will be In the pack
age half dozen less pairs Of susponders
than you paid for They will rob you. Oh,
you feel in your pockets and say, SIS my
money gomez They have robbed you Of
something for which dollars and cents can
never give you compensation.
90 -. Il.
has been dragged by one Of those CONNER
cal agents through the slums OF tho
city, ho is not fit to go home. The moe
memory of what he has seen will be moral
pollution. think you had better let the
city missionary and the police attend to
the exploration of New York and under
ground life. You do not go to a small
pox hospital for the purpose of exploration.
You do not go there because you are afraid
Of contagion.
And yet you go into tho presence Of NOR
nl' leprosy that is as much more dangerous
TO you as the death Of the soul Is worse
thnn the death Of the body will under
take to say that nine-tcnths of the men
who have been ruined in our cities have
been ruined by simply going to observe
without any idea of participating
EXPLORING A cIrY's nIoU1TIEs.
The fact is that underground city life is
filthy, fuming, rocking, pestiferous depth
which blasts the eye that looks at it. In
the rclgn Of terror in 1899 in Paris peo-
pie escaping from the officers Of the law
got into the sewers Of the city and crawled
and walked through miles of that awful
labyrinth stifed with the atmosphere and
almost dead, some of them, when they came
out to the river Seine, where they washed
Themselves and again breathed the fresh
air. But have TO tell you that grent
many Of the men who 60 on tho work of
exploration through tho underground gut
tiers Of New York life never come out at
any Seine river where they can WISH oil
the pollution of tho moral sewage Stran-
ger, II one OF the representatives Of com.
mercial establishment proposes to take you
and show you the "sights" Of the town
and underground New York, say to him,
"please, sir, what part do you propose TO
show met"
About 10 years ago MS minister OF reli-
gion / felt had divine commission to
explore the iniquities of our cities did
not ask counsel Of my session, or my pres
bytery, or of the newspapers, but asking
the companionship Of three prominent POI
| lice officials and two OF the elders Of my
church l unrolled my commission, and It
said: "Son Of man. dig into the wall, and
when had digged into the wall behold
door, and he said Go In and sec the wick
ed denominations that are done here, and
went In and saw, and behold" Brought
mn in the country and surrounded by much
parental care had not until that time
seen tho haunts of inlquity. BY the grace
OF God defended, had mover sowed my
wild oats" had somehow been able to
| tell from various sources something about
the iniquities of tho great cities and to
preach against them, but l saw, in the de
struction Of q great multitude oil inc peo,
nlc that there must be an infatuation and
a termination that had never been spoken
about, and said, II will explore" l
saw thousands OF men going down, and II
there had besn spiritual percussion an
swering to the physical percussion inc
whole air would have been full OF the rum, !,
low nj