FORETOKENS OF OUR LORD'S RETURN
By George W. Rine
THE LAP OF PENURY VERSUS THE LAP OF LUXURY.
DURING the past half-dozen years nothing has been more insistently talked about, or more extensively written about, than has the mountain-like tidal wave of economic prosperity that has swept over our country since 1898. Optimists of the secular and utilitarian school are glorying in the fact that we are living in the age of multimillionaires, in an age of bursting money-vaults, in an age of unprecedented capitalistic power and daring. And it must be confessed that never before did the world groan under such a burden of material wealth. It is also true that more of the sons and daughters of Dame Fortune are to-day dandled upon the soft lap of voluptuous Ease and nursed at the breast of Luxury, than ever before. As in the days of Lot, "fulness of bread and abundance of idleness" are everywhere conspicuously in evidence. Yet it was never more true than it is to-day that one (fortunate) half of the race does not know how the other (unfortunate) half lives. Never before were there so many luckless souls slowly starving in the hovels and tenements of Penury. The following statement, recently made by Dr. Washington Gladden, is significantly true: "It is probable that if the facts [regarding the prevalence of poverty] were known, the optimistic ideas of many of our enthusiastic Americans respecting the universal welfare of our people would suffer chastening." Dr. Gladden and all other serious thinkers believe that, of all social problems, the problem of poverty is the most portentous. How startling the social paradox of our day!—vastly greater wealth than ever before, yet vastly deeper and more far-reaching destitution than ever before; more millionaires, yet more paupers; some so rich that they do not know how to spend their income, some so desperately poor that they know not how to procure a crust for the next meal! Is it not an appalling statement which we find in recent discussions—that fully 10,000,000, or one-eighth of the entire population of the United States, are in poverty? This does not mean that all these are paupers or subjects of charity. It is true that many of them are. It does mean, however, that none of this multitude is able to get more than a bare sustenance, that none is able to procure "those necessities which will permit them to maintain a state of physical efficiency." In every industrial nation there is a correspondingly large class who are on the verge of distress. Mr. Robert Hunter, after years of investigation, concludes that about one-sixth to one-eighth of the people in all the nations of Christendom receive too little of the common necessities of life to keep themselves at their best physically. Poverty's Grip on the Cities' Multitudes.
There is in the city of New York an appalling multitude of victims to poverty. As the result of the most thorough and methodical investigation, it has been definitely ascertained that twenty-five per cent. of the population of Greater New York suffer from more or less acute want. It is painfully true that every tenth person who dies in America's chief city is buried in the Potter's Field. Strange, is it not, in the very face of the fact that this same great city is, in point of wealth, second to no other city on earth? From an officer of one of the organized bodies for charitable ends, comes an estimate that 50,000 children in New York City took their seats in school every morning without having had any breakfast. Later Mr. Robert Hunter, a specialist in social-betterment work, affirmed that as many as 70,000 children, of that city, go to school hungry every day. Superintendent of Schools Maxwell published a statement to the effect that Mr. Hunter had "unusual opportunity for forming a judgment in the matter," and that Mr. Hunter would be more likely to underestimate than to overestimate the number. In all large cities there are thousands of school children who, because of insufficient nourishment, are actually so anemic that they are unable to exert more than half the mental effort that is exerted by the pupils who are adequately fed and clothed. There are, on the other hand, scores of affluent families in New York and other large cities who think nothing of paying out $300,000 a year as ordinary family expenses. To some it may seem incredible that the yearly running expenses of one family could swell to so vast a total. But, Mr. Incredulous, here is the evidence—a typical itemized account as given by an authority on society affairs, in the February (1905) number of Success: Wages and salaries to, say, twenty-five helpers, with food, wines, etc., but no special entertaining, $30,000. Expenses of entertaining, brilliant balls, fetes, flowers, etc., $50,000. Expenses incident to running a palatial yacht, $50,000. Cost of keeping up stables and stud farm, with wages of thirty men, $40,000. Grounds, greenhouses, with wages of twenty men, $20,000. Expense of maintaining two additional homes, one at the seaside and the other in the mountains, $20,000. Clothes, $20,000. Pocket money for the several members of the family, $50,000. Automobiles, $10,000. Traveling expenses with private cars, suites on steamers, at hotels, etc., $10,000. Total, $300,000. This enormous total does not include the cost of gifts, the service of physicians and nurses, of new horses and automobiles, of jewelry, of pet dogs with fur-trimmed coats, of talking dolls in lace dresses at one hundred dollars each, etc., not to omit gambling with thousands of dollars risked by the ladies at "bridge," and tens of thousands by the men at faro, roulette, and baccarat. The original cost of Mr. J. P. Morgan's pleasure yacht was a half-million dollars. The running expense of so magnificent a craft is $20,000 a month. The writer in Success adds: "No doubt ambitious people with only a thousand dollars a day to spend, feel poor when they see rivals spending two or three thousand dollars a day, for such there are, and some who might spend $10,000 a day and keep within their incomes. Perhaps they, too, will soon be complaining that it is impossible to live properly on $10,000 a day!" Is it not heart-rending to think of such pitiful contrasts of grinding want and overflowing riches, of suffering and prodigality? Coming back to our study of poverty's reign, we are informed by Mr. Hunter that in our boasted center of scholastic refinement and culture, Boston, 136,000 persons were compelled to receive charitable aid during the year 1903, when our country was in the plenitude of its industrial prosperity. This number equaled twenty per cent. of Boston's population. In his recent address at Boston, the same gentleman averred that there are 5,000 persons in the Chicago stock-yards who are on the verge of pauperism. The average wage for the common laborers there is five dollars a week. Many of the employees are in practical slavery. "I have seen children ten years old, working all day among the vats of blood," he added. So unhealthful is their employment that they invariably become the victims of incurable rheumatism before reaching the age of twenty-five. Tuberculosis among these children is extremely prevalent. He said further: "They have nothing to look forward to but death. When a girl is made an incurable consumptive, contracted in J. Ogden Armour's service, under the guise of charity, she is presented with five dollars. Just think of it—five dollars for a lost life!" The San Francisco Wasp, of date April 8, reports that a knot of rich women, a few days since, were discussing fashion, in the grill-room of the Hotel St. Francis. The wife of a New York capitalist, who was touring California, was telling her San Francisco sisters of the profusion of Easter hats that some of her townswomen order at that season. "Why," said she, "many of them get as many as ten hats just before Easter!" "Ten!" exclaimed a San Francisco woman.
"Yes, ten; sometimes even a dozen. Doesn't it astonish you?" "Not at all," said the native daughter. I am surprised rather, that that number should be considered remarkable. Why, there's a lady right here in this hotel who has ordered sixteen hats for the present Easter, and all beauties, too."
"Really? Who is she?" meekly asked the New Yorker. The "Wasp" scribe then adds: "The Easterner rose from the lunch table pretty well convinced that our fashionable women have very little to learn in lavish expenditure on personal adornment from the most dashing of their Gotham sisters." It should be remembered that the sort of hats which this lady denominated "beauties" range in cost from $25 to $125. This instance is simply a type of many thousands of such wicked and shameful follies. Did not the prophet speak truly when he said to the rich of this age, "Ye have been WANTON, and taken your pleasure"? London's Famished Multitude.
One of the most indefatigable and disinterested workers in behalf of London's poor, is Rev. Mr. C. E. Walters. He has recently declared through the press that poverty in the world's metropolis is more hopeless than9anywhere else. In London 1,300,000 persons are comprised in the class commonly referred to as the "very poor." Nearly one-fifth of the people one meets in the metropolis will die in the workhouse, the insane asylum, or in some other eleemosynary institution. It is difficult to believe that in one East End parish more than half of its human denizens are destined to be buried in pauper's graves. Mr. Walters most emphatically asserts that the chief reason for this awful sway of poverty is that 1,000,000 persons in that city control more than twice as much wealth as do the 26,000,000 English people who form the manual workers. The conditions which make this inequality possible "form a strong comment, surely, on our boasted civilization; not only that but a strange comment upon our religion." "Religious people will say," he continues, "'Here is a slum—let us start a soup-kitchen.' It is very kind. . . . But the true method would be to say, 'Here is a slum—let us sweep it off the face of the earth.'" Of course, he means that by putting into practise the principles of social and economic justice, the occasion for the existence of slums could no longer obtain. For years it has been known that in London, as in New York, starvation haunts the schools as it haunts the homes. The New Age, a London weekly journal, puts the case strongly, saying: That in this land where riches and luxury unsurpassed in the world's history abound, . . . these thousands of hungry, half-clad children should be trudging wearily every day to school to sit in misery unspeakable for several hours, too starved in body for the brain to do its work—there is the shameful thing, the most shameful thing among all the evils of our day and generation. Strange, indeed, that the world's great centers of wealth and culture, of Christian (?) civilization, should complacently tolerate the existence in the midst of thousands upon thousands of wretched and famishing children—children redeemed with the life-blood of Him who founded our most holy religion, while fortunes are positively wasted on One of the most dashing leaders of New York's "high social caste" has admitted to a regular contributor to a popular magazine that many of her "set" do not hesitate to pay as much as $5,000 for an "engaging" pet dog. The original cost of a "pug" is by no means the chief part of the money required to indulge one's penchant for so refined (!) a luxury. There are not a few women in New York, each of whom spends a thousand dollars a year for clothes for their poodles. The "precious" pug must have a house coat, a walking coat, a duster, a sweater, at least one coat lined with ermine at a cost of $200, an automobile coat with hood and goggles, and each coat fitted with a pocket for the poodle's handkerchief of fine linen or even lace! These women also buy for these currish pets boots of different colors to match the coats, etc., and they cost from five to eight dollars a pair. A half-dozen pairs is the usual number bought at a time. Furthermore, they buy collars, set with pearls, rubies, or diamonds, at several hundred dollars each. A merchant who makes a specialty of such collars, recently told a newspaper reporter of a woman who imported from Paris a complete outfit for her poodle costing $2,000. Another lady had a house built for her dog, the exact model of a Queen Anne cottage, with rooms papered and carpeted and the windows adorned with lace curtains. Every morning the dog governess calls to bathe, comb, curl, and perfume the "little darling," and then to take him out for his airing. The pet feasts and drinks from silver dishes, and if his feasting costs him a stomach ache, a specialist is hastily summoned. Can you believe that each large city has its fashionable dog doctors, who get ten dollars a visit and sleep with a telephone at their bedside for night calls? But it is true! Last season a lady summoned a specialist from New York to Newport and kept him there for an entire week at $100 a day, because her poodle was indisposed! Yes, and during that same week, in the Eastside tenement district, a score of babies died immediately at birth because the wretched mothers were too poor to afford the services of a physician. "Hundreds of tenement infants die every week for the want of pure milk," declares a famous writer on social subjects. Were instances of heartless extravagance of this sort only sporadic, they might be excused, but, instead, they are the rule with our modern society Nabobs. Millions Squandered on Golf.
A conservative weekly, of San Francisco, reports that nearly $50,000,000 is expended yearly on the game of golf, in Great Britain and the United States. On each of the 3,000 golf links there has been sunk $15,000, showing a total permanent investment of $45,000,000. Each of these links costs $20,000 a year to run. The 750,000 golf players spend $15,000,000 yearly for clubs alone, while they fritter away an additional $13,000,000 on balls. Now, by way of contrast I append the following from Mr. Robert Hunter. In reference to the vast multitudes who toil like galley slaves, in the large cities, for the pittance necessary to maintain a bare existence, he says: "The heavy brooding men, tired, anxious women, frail, joyless little children, are toiling fiercely, monotonously, in the dull struggle against want." It is remarkable how many of the most noted thinkers of our day are repeatedly declaring their conviction that no deserving man, woman, or child, in the world, could be a victim to the harrowing ills of poverty if the principle of exact justice were everywhere to hold sway. Under the caption, "Justice, Not Alms," the editor of the Saturday Evening Post writes: A young man from Harvard, put at the head of a great corporation, proceeded to try sundry schemes for uplifting the workingmen. After a few years he abandoned them in disgust and left the "ungrateful" toiler to his fate. "They appreciate nothing one does for them," said he. "All they can think of is higher wages." How sad! Instead of humbly thanking the young man for graciously bending to help them up to his level they put themselves on the lofty ground of American manhood and looked down at him and said: "Justice, not alms! Give us our due, and let us use it as we think best." No doubt these ingrates would prefer to the "Harvard plan" the plan of shrewd old John Rockefeller who has always paid a little above the market rate of wages and so has never had a strike or even a serious "kick." The inspired forecast of present-day conditions in the social and industrial realm, as given in James 5, entirely justifies these thinkers in the judgment they so insistently iterate. The divine Spirit directly charges the "rich men" with keeping back by fraud a just compensation for the services of those who reap their fields. Read the fourth verse, and to complete the antithesis read the fifth verse. Again, in Mal. 3: 5, our Lord foretold that just prior to the final judgment, there would be those "that OPPRESS THE HIRELING IN HIS WAGES." For He says, "I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness . . . against those that oppress the hireling in his wages." Note, please, that this prophetic warning applies to precisely the same time as that given through James; and do they not prove to even the most skeptical that "in the last days," in these days, the common toilers are systematically oppressed, defrauded, by their rapacious masters? All the noted philanthropists never tire of telling us that this regrettable fact is notoriously TRUE to-day; and the Spirit of God, as we have seen, centuries ago declared that it WOULD be true. In respect to these prophetic warnings we need not walk by faith merely to-day, but by the testimony of sight as well. In closing, I am constrained to add the following incisive words from Dr. Gladden, so pertinent to this phase of the theme: "It is idle to think of meeting the demands of humanity by imaginable systems of relief, while these mills of cruelty and greed are grinding out their fearful grist of destitution and helplessness." May the Spirit of divine Wisdom enable us to read the history of present-day society in the white light of divine Revelation!