The Washington times., 1903-08-23
(lTHE PERIL AND THE PRESER-
VATIoN OF THE HOME" by

Jacob A. Riis. is a small book
made up of a series of lectures deliv-
cred by him in Philadelphia during the
current year. under the name of the
William L. Bull Lectures, William Bull,
Of Spokane, Wash. having founded
the lectureship In the Philadelphia Di-
vinity School. Much OF the matter in
this book is similar 10 that of Mr. Riis'
other books. but he is not one of those
who rehash old material indefinitely, and
the lectures are we'll worth reading even
by those familiar with the subject. There
are numerous illustrations from photo
graphs.
No one can read a paragraph OF Riis'
writing without seeing at once that he
whoIe-souIed. energetic, talented man
who hits from the shoulder, and is in
deadly earnest on questions OF civic
morality. as. indeed, on every other
question. There is no frivolity in his
makeup. Yet he is never tiresome in
his strenuousness, but breezy, fresh, and
inspiring
II is generally admitted now, though
for years nobody dared say 1t aloud, that
the richest and strongest church cor
porations were in many ways the worst
obstacles to genuine reform work. They
were so because they were conservative,
and opposed to any experiments; and
reform is always an experiment more or
less. Mr.. Riis refers In this book to a
story which he says he hopes will soon
be forgotten; but so long as the spirit of
that church is abroad IN the land per-
haps IT is just as we'll for the story to
be remembered. He says
"The church corporation was a tene-
ment house owner, one of the largest, IL
not. indeed. the largest In the city, and
its buildings were old and bad. It
suited its purposes to let them be bad,
because they were downtown, where the
land was rapidly getting valuable for
warehouse purposes, and the tenements
were all to be torn down by and by.
And so it was that IL achieved the repm-
tation OF being the worst of landlords,
hardly a name TO attract the people to
its pews. We had got to the point in
our fight where We had made good the
claim OF the tenant to at least a full
supply of water In his house, though
light and air were yet denied him by
the builder. when that church corpora
tion chose to contest the law ordering
II TO supply water In its houses, and
won. for the time being. on the plea
that the law was arbitrary and auto
cratic. They are all autocratic, the laws
that are made for the protection of the
poor man; they have TO be while the
purpose to hinder rather than help lives
In his brother. We trembled on the
edge OF a general collapse of all our
remedial laws, until the court of last
resort decided that any such claim was
contrary to public policy and therefore
inadmissible
ut was not long after that that a
distinguished body of churchmen in my
city invited me to speak to them OF
slum evils. And showed them pictures
of the little children from the gutter,
until at last some unthinking brother
made the comment, oh. we'll, they
wouldn't wash. II you gave them the
chance Perhaps you can imagine the
result. I would not have missed that
opportunity for a good deal"
One feels certain that verbal fire.
works of a brilliant kind followed the
characteristic and typical remark OF one
OF these modern Pharisees