p. 16 | Down to the Slum by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 28, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 13.

Down to the Slum

By Editor

We commend to the well-fed, easy-going optimist, the man who believes that everything is going on swimmingly in "this land of peace and plenty," the soul-stirring article in the World's Work for March, entitled "Down to the Slum," in which the story of a family typical of thousands of others is told, the husband and father of which "lost his job." The writer, Henry Oyen, draws a vivid and true picture of these slum plague-spots in our cities, in which "one tenth of our city population" are crowded together. "Breeding like rabbits and dying like rats, they create a miasma that spreads and seeps into most of the corners of city life and leaves its taint and poison." Single rooms in which the sun has not shone for thirty years occupied by five; beds continually occupied with different sets of sleepers night and day; a house of 52 rooms, arranged nominally for 18 families, sometimes having 40 families and over 200 persons! How can men with uncounted millions see such things go on? How can decent municipal governments permit such plague-spots in their midst? Well has God's Word told us that creation is groaning for His home-coming, for the manifestation of that power which will change the old earth, and sweep away all the blights and curses of sin.