The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-11-27
Poverty in Big Cities.


What have 1 myself seen IN the past
few years, / have been Mortified at
the slums of New York and have seen
children scramble over the contents of
the garbage barrel l have seen on a
great square in New York on a cold
night when the streets were covered
with snow, long line of men stamping
I to keep warm, making their slow way
to a wagon there to receive a huge
sandwich. I have seen troops standing
guard to protect property in a strike.
And as to men in high Office, who, in
stead of being the best, have been the
most faithless and constituencies of
their kind.
Why do [ speak of these things? Be-
cause they are the proofs that things
can not save men from the evils which
our ancestors believed would never
come to a land of free men with vast
resources. During our forty years, our
three hundred years, since jamestown
was founded, God has led us to learn
the old lesson that man can not live
by bread alone. Never before had ma
terialism such fair field as in Amer
lea. In Europe, so those of the school
of the French Revolution taught, man
had been prevented by conditions from
proving what he could do if he were
free and had lands and room for ex-
pansion. Humanity did not need God,
they said, but if men would get rid of
kings and mobiles and privileged classes
and have plenty to eat and drink,
abundance in a material way, that then
mankind would be righteous, govern
ment just, legislators incorrupt. Here
in America with a virgin soil, with free
men, the sin and poverty and discon-
tent of the old world would not appear
Men would be honest because they
could have work, women would be
chaste because they would not feel the
grind of poverty.
Teaching of Forty Years.
Our forty years have taught us that
bread alone viii not keep men clean
and righteous. They have learned
that laws and political platforms and
freedom do not prevent the coming up
of the old difficulties with which ma
tions have grappled in ages past. They
have learned that human society in
America. with all its material advan-
tages. has all the old vices of Egypt
Britain, and that plenty of bread and
abundance of possessions do not make
men good or society safe.
Our forty years have proved to us
that Justice and freedom depend not
upon well-fed people. but upon a peo-
pie with spiritual ideals resting upon
the Eternal God Our national life
proves the necessity Of religion for the
preservation of the country. and I take
it that it is this fact which the Pres
ident has in mind when he calls US to
give God thanks on this day.
As we thank God for our material
blessings. let us recognize from the
depths of our hearts that these things
do not of themselves make a better
race of men or better national eondi-
tions.
1 am tired of this measure of prog
ress by material standards. One would
think that the only desire of many
people was to increase the number of
people in their city. That increase in
population was of itself a great and
most desirable matter. If man from
Mars were to come to the ordinary city
he would be told of its rapid growth,
of the number of cattle and hogs kill
ed for its packing houses. of its high
buildings. its railroads, etc. IF the
stranger began to ask as to the char
acter of the peOnle, the unselfshness of
its council, of the self-sacrifce of its
aldermen. of the purity of its govern
ment, of the chaste family life of its