The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-11-14
CITIZEN SUNDAY IN LONDON.

Gospel of Municipal Responsibility
 and Rcform-The Work of the Lon
 don Reform Union-English Preach
 ing in High Places.
 London, Nov. G.
 To the Editor of the Journal and Courier:
 A Sunday of extraordinary interest X has just passed in London, and that
 which marked it out from other Sun days shows in a striking way how ac-
 tive is the spirit of reform in this great < city and how splendldly the churches here are adapting themselves to the Y popular demand for Gospel of health # and bread and butter, not one occupied 50 much with the other world as with \ the conditions of happiness in this world
 It was Citizen Sunday, day first ob- < served in '93, and which, naturally, at
 first was observed on a small scale and in the face of many pious protests
 There are still living in all countries
 those who hold that when Christ said
 AThe poor we have always with you,"
 he Intended to sanctify poverty and ! make the slum a sort of Established
 church. Many think that if you go on
 improving the condition of the poorer classes you will soon throw Christian people out of business by depriving Z them of all opportunities for benevo
 lence. There are those, too, who sol X emnly insist that the one duty of the \ church is to get souls converted; she X must not dabble in politics nor meddle
 with municipal life, and silly talk of tfis kind, with the narrow spirit un-
 derlying 1t, was what the London Re H form Union met when eight years ago < it asked the London pulpits to leave out of sight for one Sunday in the year
 the City of the New Jerusalem, where the many mansions are, and consider
 what could be done for this city on the
 Thames which, in gruesome contrast
 with the mansions which adorn 1t, has
 still, alas, wide stretches of over
 crowded tenements and slum life so .insanitary and vicious that it beggars
 description.
 Feeble the response at first, but af- Ster eight years of steady progress ezsCitizen Sunday" has become so popu-
 lar feature of the church life of Lon
 don that upon its recurrence week
 6g0 one might have gone to four hum
 dred metropolitan churches, and In all Sofs them he would have heard nothing
 but the Gospel of municipal responsi- aAbility and reform. In arranging for
 this Sunday the London Reform Union
 fSfAsses into service a committee of cler-
 Kyrnen, representative of all the large X sdenominations, and by this committee \ a circular is sent to the London clergy
 4n general The favorable responses this year exceed by fifty those of year { ago. which is one of the best evidences that the movement has vitality and en- ftuslasr1l behind it. Undoubtedly many clergymen preached on the sub- R7dect without paying the trouble to say that they would, but of the four hun dred who were under promise to sig nalize the last Sunday in October by a < vernon on municipal life, about two \ hundred belonged to the Church of England. the other two hundred being ministers of other churches, of which latter the list included sixty-eight Con- gregafionalists sixty Methodists, twen- ty-seven Baptists thirteen Unitarian, peven Presbyterian, and the rest great { " scattered.
 #f4f luf1 lOIIlOIl EtClOl Niiioh i'eA' hCA many years been vigorously at work to Improve the government of the city and t5 better the conditions of it's working class citizens. It doesn't tackle direct sly the question of public morality, yet { ff1 all 1t does to improve the material Aaituation of poorly-paid and wretched- sIy-houeed workers it unquestionably < tends to promote public morality. It is S6xtremely solicitous in behalf of bet ter home life for the masses, it's con- fefition being that the housing problem Sis connected vitally with every other sproblem. This question it never allows stO rest In recent pamphlet it is ifiaintained by this London Reform Union that inadequate housing drives neIlNto the public-house, for nothing but drink makes people forget the hell they live in," and the writer further says. s'What profits it, though we have the finest educational system in the world if we allow the child to pass daily from the school to surroundings which forter all that is bad and stitte Eall that is good? Why demand shorter hours of labor if the factory is but ex- for the fetid slum? Other na- lions press us harder and harded for | Industrial supremacy, but in calcula- ting the causes which endanger our po- seition we do not sufficiently consider | the physical and mental degeneration l produced in the worker by insanitary | md yer-crowded conditions of home l life"
 Housing conditions have improved | somewhat since General Booth startled l the world with his book on Darkest | sIondon,' but it is only the fringe that | has been reached after all Comment Ing editorially upon the observance of | Citizen Sunday the Daily News" says: :.Iondon is still far from being either s0ber of clean The London multitudes ftre still far from being housed as they should be. There are vast spaces in London where air and light, the two prime requisites of life, are known rather in the desire than the possession Much has been done, but much more remains to be done" The latest statis- ties available show that in this great | and wealthy city there are nearly four hundred thousand people whose only conception of home life is limited to a airele room in some tenement Of this number three hundred and twenty-five thousand live two or more in room, and eighteen thousand six in room, while in each of eight hundred and