The Irish standard., 1905-06-10
Gould a General Level of Possessions Be
Brought About Many Of the Most
Serviceab'e Virtues Could
Neither Be Acquired Nor Praeticed, Says
Bishop Spalding, Most Noted
Authority Upon the Subject.

liz luS uudl OuICOllC, uOWCNCl LuC Uul-
ance may turn in the varying con-
fiicts, must inevitably be the ruin of
both, involving that of the general
welfare and of the happiness of
mi..lons.
Ii capital and organized labor will
but learn to act in harmony, no harm
will happen to any class, for employ
ers and wage earners can live in
peace only when they are Influenced
and controlled by sentiments of JUS
tice and humanity, and by concern
for the good of all.
Laws and contrivances cannot COM
pose the strife between capital and
labor for the causes from which it
springs are elemental and as deep as
human nature, and only what raises
the mind and touches the heart can
reach the fountain head of the evil
Our industrialism and machinery
have wrought marvels, but they have
not made us wiser or more unselfish.
On the contrary, they have promoted
the formation Of vast centers of popu-
lation, in which life, physical and
moral, degenerates; and consequent
ly, they are menace to the highest
interests of humanity. Towns of fifty
or hundred thousand inhabitants are
Indispensable. Without them there
can be no class with leisure to devote
themselves to science and art, to the
more important functions of govern
ment and to the refinements and ele-
gancies of life; but the massing of
millions OF human beings at single
point makes it the most fitting cul-
ture for every kind of infectious
germ, nursery of vice, and a breed
ing-ground for crime. Were it not for
these conglomerate masses made in
capable Of right perception by greed
and lust, enervated by dissipation and
excessive or unwholesome labor,
drawn together like insects by the
light which lures them to ruin, it
would be possible to find remedies
for the evils which beset us. 1t is in
these Babylons that political thievery
and robbery, prostitution, drunken
ness, gambling and every form of per-
versity and depravity are epidemic
and will continue to lay waste despite
attempts at reform and moral sani-
tation. If the test of peoples worth
is the quality of it's manhood and
womanhood, the great cities of whose
marvellous growth we love to boast
are curse and calamity. To them
are drawn criminals, adventures,
idlers, those who have failed in
smaller places, those who crave for
the license of indulgence which is
given where one sinks like rain drop
into the seething waters of a turbu-
lent ocean. Here is every provoca-
tion of passion, every promise of i'm
munity. Hither come from a thou
sand villages and towns, from innu-
merable farm houses, those who,
grown weary of virtue, crave for op-
pOrtunity to defile themselves in the
mire of debauchery, without risk of
discovery and infamy, and so the
leprous contagion spreads throughout
the. land. Here, as in a vast whisper
ing gallery, the murmurs of all the
horrors, atrocities, murders, suicides,
and inhumanities circulate cease
lessly to be caught up from hour to
hour and borne on the wings of the
press to countless homes where only
innocence, peace and love should be
known. Here women are offered for
shambles of the slave driver; here
children wander homeless through
crowded streets and the haunts of
vice, or are taken and confined in
asylums and reformatories where it
often happens that corruption fosters.
Here anarchists, agitators and all the
contrivers of mischief congregate and
find their work waiting.
But why insist? These centers ex-
ist. Their population is increasing,
and will continue to increase; and
'.st = 80! =