p. 11 | A Russian on New York

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · May 29, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 22.

A Russian on New York

A Russian on New York.—Maxim Gorki, the sensational Russian agitator who has described so vividly some of the evils of Russian life finds a field in New York City which seems to arouse within him equal abhorrence. He describes New York seen from afar as "a great maw with uneven, black teeth. On entering you feel that you have changed into a belly of stone and iron, into a stomach which has engulfed millions, and which crunches and digests them, and yearly waits for more and more." In its poorest quarters he finds horrors which eclipse all that he has seen in Russia. He says: "I have seen much beggardom: its green, bloodless, bone-stretched face I am acquainted with. Its eyes, dim with hunger and burning with avidity, cunning and revengeful, or slavishly submissive, and always inhuman, everywhere I have seen, yet the horrors of the East Side are blacker than anything known to me. In these streets, packed with people as a sack with grain, children seek eagerly in the garbage-pails which stand upon the footway for rotten vegetables, and devour them, mildew and all, on the spot, amid the acrid dust and exhalations. When they discover a crust of rotten bread it arouses fierce enmity among them; seized by the wish to devour it, they fight like small dogs."