AN EVIDENT DANGER

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 9, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 10.

AN EVIDENT DANGER.

THE General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church at its last meeting appointed a committee of thirteen on home mission work. A circular issued by the committee presents several dangers which, in their opinion, menace the moral well-being of this country. The fifth specification is as follows:—

"And even more alarming and pressing is the problem of our modern cities. In 1800 our entire population, except some three per cent., was rural. In 1850 twelve per cent. lived in cities, and now a quarter of our citizenship. In 2000 A. D. one-third of our population will be civic. Commerce, manufactures, railroads, sanitary reform, and infrequency of wars have made it possible for enormous masses of men and women to swarm at certain centers. Social congestion and disease result. Poverty becomes the grievance of hundreds of thousands, vice abounds, and Socialism and Anarchism arise to mock at wealth and culture and to assail society. Thus in New York nearly one million of human beings dwell in

tenement houses; and the prevalent social depravity, which, like physical contagion, flourishes nowhere so virulently as in crowds, bids fair to rival the common personal discomfort and discontent. From these overcrowded retreats of human misery, churches and all self-supporting institutions of social or religious culture flee away. In 1840 there was in New York one Protestant church to two thousand of population; now there is one to four thousand. A like fate seems to impend over all our great or growing cities. And these misbegotten, unfed, untaught, and unhappy multitudes are American citizens, and, at the ballot-box, peers of the most eminent of our voters; their political freedom, a perilous privilege for them, is a fearful menace to us. It is no exaggeration whatever to say that all our institutions and our very civilization are challenged and threatened by facts so colossal and portentous."