The first building we entered faced a narrow street. The hallway was as dark as the air was foul or the walls filthy. Not a ray or shimmer of light fell through transoms or skylight. The stairs were narrow and worn. By the aid of matches we were able to grope our way along, and also to observe more than was pleasant to behold. It was apparent that the hallways or stairs were seldom surprised by water, while pure, fresh air was evidently as much a stranger as fresh paint. After ascending several flights, we entered a room of undreamed-of wretchedness. On the floor lay a sick man.[2] He was rather fine-looking, with an intelligent face, bright eyes, and countenance indicative of force of character. No sign of dissipation, but an expression of sadness, or rather a look of dumb resignation peered from his expressive eyes. For more than two years he has been paralyzed in his lower limbs, and also affected with dropsy. The spectacle of a strong man, with the organs of locomotion dead, is always pathetic; but when the victim of such misfortune is in the depths of abject poverty, his case assumes a tragic hue. There for two years he had lain on a wretched pallet of rags, seeing day by day and hour by hour his faithful wife tirelessly sewing, and knowing full well that health, life, and hope were hourly slipping from her. This poor woman supports the invalid husband, her two children, and herself, by making pants at twelve cents a pair. No rest, no surcease, a perpetual grind from early dawn often till far into the night; and what is more appalling, outraged nature has rebelled; the long months of semi-starvation and lack of sleep have brought on rheumatism, which has settled in the joints of her fingers, so that every stitch means a throb of pain. The afternoon we called, she was completing an enormous pair of custom-made pants of very fine blue cloth, for one of the largest clothing houses in Boston. The suit would probably bring sixty or sixty-five dollars, yet her employer graciously informed his poor white slave that as the garment was so large, he would give her an extra cent. Thirteen cents for fine custom-made pants, manufactured for a wealthy firm, which repeatedly asserts that its clothing is not made in tenement houses! Thus with one of the most painful diseases enthroned in that part of the body which must move incessantly from dawn till midnight, with two small dependent children and a husband who is utterly powerless to help her, this poor woman struggles bravely and uncomplainingly, confronted ever by a nameless dread of impending misfortune. Eviction, sickness, starvation,—such are the ever-present spectres, while every year marks the steady encroachment of disease, and the lowering of the register of vitality. Moreover, from the window of her soul falls the light of no star athwart the pathway of life.

[2] NOTE ON PICTURE OF INVALID IN CHAIR. The picture given in this issue of this apartment represents the poor invalid placed by some friends on a chair while his bed could be made. Our artist preferred to take it this way, knowing that it would bring out the strong face better than if taken on his pallet on the floor, where for two years he has lain. Through The Arena Relief Fund, we have been enabled to greatly relieve the hard lot of this as well as many other families of unfortunates. Now the invalid is provided with a comfortable bedstead, with a deep, soft mattress, and furnished with many other things which contribute to life's comfort. When the bed, mattress, and other articles were being brought into this apartment, the tears of gratitude and joy flowed almost in rivers from the eyes of the patient wife, who felt that even in their obscure den some one in the great world yet cared for them.



The next place we visited was in the attic of a tenement building even more wretched than the one just described. The general aspects of these houses, however, are all much the same, the chief difference being in degrees of filth and squalor present. Here in an attic lives a poor widow with three children, a little boy and two little girls, Constance and Maggie.[3] They live by making pants at twelve cents a pair. Since the youngest child was two and a half years old she has been daily engaged in overcasting the long seams of the garments made by her mother. When we first called she had just passed her fourth birthday, and now overcasts from three to four pairs of pants every day. There seated on a little stool she sat, her fingers moving as rapidly and in as unerring manner as an old experienced needlewoman. These three children are fine looking, as are most of the little Portuguese I visited. Their large heads and brilliant eyes seem to indicate capacity to enjoy in an unusual degree the matchless delight springing from intellectual and spiritual development. Yet the wretched walls of their little apartment practically mark the limit of their world; the needle their inseparable companion; their moral and mental natures hopelessly dwarfed; a world of wonderful possibilities denied them by an inexorable fate over which they have no control and for which they are in no way responsible. We often hear it said that these children of the slums are perfectly happy; that not knowing what they miss life is as enjoyable to them as the young in more favorable quarters. I am satisfied, however, that this is true only in a limited sense. The little children I have just described are already practically machines; day by day they engage in the same work with much the monotony of an automatic instrument propelled by a blind force. When given oranges and cakes, a momentary smile illumined their countenances, a liquid brightness shot from their eyes, only to be replaced by the solemn, almost stolid, expression which has become habitual even on faces so young. This conclusion was still more impressively emphasized by the following touching remark of a child of twelve years in another apartment, who was with her mother busily sewing. "I am forty-three years old to-day," remarked the mother, and said Mr. English, "I shall be forty-two next week." "Oh, dear," broke in the child, "I should think people would grow SO TIRED of living so MANY YEARS." Was utterance ever more pathetic? She spoke in tones of mingled sadness and weariness, revealing in one breath all the pent-up bitterness of a young life condemned to a slavery intolerable to any refined or sensitive nature. Is it strange that people here take to drink? To me it is far more surprising that so many are sober. I am convinced that, in the slums, far more drunkenness is caused by abject poverty and inability to obtain work, than want is produced by drink. Here the physical system, half starved and often chilled, calls for stimulants. Here the horrors of nightmare, which we sometimes suffer during our sleep, are present during every waking hour. An oppressive fear weighs forever on the mind. Drink offers a temporary relief and satisfies the craving of the system, besides the environment invites dissipation and human nature at best is frail. I marvel that there is not more drunkenness exhibited in the poverty spots of our cities.

[3] NOTE ON PICTURE OF CONSTANCE AND MAGGIE. When Mr. Swaffield first visited this little family he found them in the most abject want; a pot of boiling water, in which the mother was stirring a handful of meal, constituting their only food. Their clothing was thin and worn almost to shreds; their apartment but slightly heated; half of all they could earn, even when all were well and work good, had to go for their rent, leaving only one dollar and twenty-five cents a week to feed and clothe four persons. The day we first called they were poorly clothed, with sorry apologies for dresses and shoes laughing at the toes. In the picture we reproduce, they are neatly dressed and well shod from money contributed by liberal-hearted friends to The Arena Relief Fund.



Among the places we visited were a number of cellars or burrows. We descended several steps into dark, narrow passage-ways,[4] leading to cold, damp rooms, in many of which no direct ray of sunshine ever creeps. We entered a room filled with a bed, cooking stove, rack of dirty clothes and numerous chairs, of which the most one could say was that their backs were still sound and which probably had been donated by persons who could no longer use them. On the bed lay a man who has been ill for three months with rheumatism. This family consists of father, mother, and a large daughter, all of whom are compelled to occupy one bed. They eat, cook, live, and sleep in this wretched cellar and pay over fifty dollars a year rent. This is a typical illustration of life in this underground world.

[4] NOTE ON ILLUSTRATION OF CELLARWAY LEADING INTO PARTIALLY UNDERGROUND APARTMENT. This passage-way is several steps down from the court or alley-way, and leads to the apartment seen in accompanying picture. There are many of these dark cellarways leading to underground tenements.

NOTE ON PICTURE OF A SICK MAN IN UNDERGROUND TENEMENT. Leading off the cellar-way shown above, is a tenement shown in this illustration. It consists of one room, over the bed the ceiling slants toward the street, and above the ceiling are the steps leading to the tenements above. In this one room lives the sick man, who for a long time, has been confined to his bed with rheumatism; his wife and a daughter are compelled to occupy the one bed with him, while the small sunless room is their only kitchen, laundry, living room, parlor, and bedroom.

NOTE ON PORTUGUESE FAMILY, WIDOW, TWO DAUGHTERS, AND LITTLE BOY. This illustration is a fair type of a number of lodgings. The photograph does not begin to reveal the extent of the wretchedness of the tenement. A little cubby-hole leads off from this room, large enough for a three quarters bed, in which the entire family of four sleep. The girls are remarkably bright and lady-like in their behavior, carrying with them an air of refinement one would not expect to find in such a place. They make their living by sewing; their rent is two dollars a week.

NOTE ON WIDOW AND TWO CHILDREN IN UNDERGROUND TENEMENT. This picture of a squalid underground apartment is typical of numbers of tenements in this part of the city. The widow sews and does any other kind of work she can to meet rent and living expenses; the children sew on pants.

NOTE ON PICTURE OF EXTERIOR OF TENEMENT HOUSE. This picture is from a photograph of one of the many tenements in the North End which front upon blind alleys. The illustration gives the front of the house and the only entrance to it. In this building dwell twenty families. The interior is even more dilapidated and horrible than the entrance. Here children are born, and here characters are moulded; here the fate of future members of the Commonwealth is stamped. Taxes on such a building are relatively low under our present system so the landlord realizes a princely revenue, and while such a condition remains, it is not probable that he will tear down the wretched old and erect a commodious new building, on which he would be compelled to pay double or triple the present taxes, merely for the comfort and moral and physical health of his tenants.



In another similar cellar or burrow[5] we found a mother and seven boys and girls, some of them quite large, all sleeping in two medium-sized beds in one room; this room is also their kitchen. The other room is a storehouse for kindling wood the children gather and sell, a little store and living room combined. Their rent is two dollars a week. The cellar was damp and cold; the air stifling. Nothing can be imagined more favorable to contagion both physical and moral than such dens as these. Ethical exaltation or spiritual growth is impossible with such environment. It is not strange that the slums breed criminals, which require vast sums yearly to punish after evil has been accomplished; but to me it is an ever-increasing source of wonder that society should be so short-sighted and neglectful of the condition of its exiles, when an outlay of a much smaller sum would ensure a prevention of a large proportion of the crime that emenates from the slums; while at the same time it would mean a new world of life, happiness, and measureless possibilities for the thousands who now exist in hopeless gloom.

[5] NOTE ON ILLUSTRATION OF UNDERGROUND TENEMENT WITH TWO BEDS. These miserable quarters are four steps down from the street. There are two small rooms, one a shop in which kindling wood is stowed, which is gathered up by the children, split and tied in bundles. The mother also sells peanuts and candy. The back room contains a range and two beds which take almost the entire area of the room. In these two rooms several people sleep. One can readily see how unfortunate such a life is from an ethical, no less than social point of view.



In a small room fronting an interior court we found a man[6] whose face bore the stamp of that "hope long deferred which maketh the heart sick." He is, I am informed, a strictly temperate, honest, and industrious workman. Up to the time of his wife's illness and death, which occurred last summer, the family lived in a reasonably comfortable manner, as the husband found no difficulty in securing work on the sea. When the wife died, however, circumstances changed. She left six little children, one almost an infant. The father could not go to sea, leaving his little flock without a protector, to fall the victims of starvation, and since then he has worked whenever he could get employment loading vessels, or at anything he could find. For the past six weeks he has been practically without work, and the numerous family of little ones have suffered for life's necessities. His rent is two dollars and a quarter a week.

[6] NOTE ON ILLUSTRATION OUT OF WORK. The young man photographed in his dismal lodging is a widower with six small children; he is strictly sober, an American by birth, but parents were Scotch and Irish. Until the illness and death of the wife last summer, everything went reasonably well. The husband and father followed the sea and managed to provide for his family, even saving a little. The wife's sickness and burial expenses ate up all and more than he had saved, while being left with so many little children and no one to look after them, he found it impossible to engage in sea voyages; he was compelled to seek work which would enable him to be home at night. This winter, work has been very slack; for six weeks he has only been able to obtain employment for a few days; meantime his rent, which is two dollars and a quarter a week, has eaten up almost all the man could earn. Through the aid of the Baptist Bethel Mission and The Arena Relief Fund, this family has been provided with food and clothes.



In the attic in another tenement we found a widow[7] weeping and working by the side of a little cradle where lay a sick child, whose large luminous eyes shone with almost phosphorescent brilliancy from great cavernous sockets, as they wandered from one to another, with a wistful, soul-querying gaze. Its forehead was large and prominent, so much so that looking at the upper part of the head one would little imagine how terrible the emaciation of the body, which was little more than skin and bones, speaking more eloquently than words of the ravages of slow starvation and wasting disease. The immediate cause of the poor woman's tears was explained to us in broken English, substantially as follows: She had just returned from the dispensary where she had been unsuccessful in her effort to have a physician visit her child, owing to her inability to pay the quarter of a dollar demanded for the visit. After describing as best she could the condition of the invalid, the doctor had given her two bottles of medicine and a prescription blank on which he had written directions for her to get a truss that would cost her two dollars and a half at the drug store. She had explained to the physician that owing to the illness of her child she had fallen a week and a half in arrears in rent; that the agent for the tenement had notified her that if one week's rent was not paid on Saturday she would be evicted, which meant death to her child, so she could not buy the truss. To which the doctor replied, "You must get the truss and put it on before giving anything from either bottle, or the medicine will kill your child." "If I give the medicine," she repeated showing us the bottles, "before I put the truss on, he says it will kill my child," and the tears ran swiftly down her sad but intelligent face. The child was so emaciated that the support would inevitably have produced terrible sores in a short time. I am satisfied that had the physician seen its condition, he would not have had a heart to order it.

[7] NOTE ON ILLUSTRATION OF PORTUGUESE WIDOW IN ATTIC. In an attic with slanting roof and skylight window lives a poor widow with her little family of four, a full description of which is given elsewhere. The long-continued sickness of the little child has made the struggle for rent and bread very terrible, and had it not been for assistance rendered at intervals, eviction or starvation, or both, must have resulted. This woman and her children are sober, industrious, and intelligent. Cases like this are by no means rare in this city which claims to be practically free from poverty.

I thought as I studied the anxious and sorrowful countenance of that mother, how hard, indeed, is the lot of the very poor. They have to buy coal by the basketful and pay almost double price, likewise food and all life's necessities. They are compelled to live in frightful disease-fostering quarters, and pay exorbitant rents for the accommodations they receive. When sick they are not always free from imposition, even when they receive aid in the name of charity, and sometimes theology under the cloak of religion oppresses them. This last thought had been suggested by seeing in our rounds some half-starved women dropping pennies into the hands of Sisters of Charity, who were even here in the midst of terrible want, exacting from the starving money for a church whose coffers groan with wealth. O religion, ineffably radiant and exalting in thy pure influence, how thou art often debased by thy professed followers! How much injustice is meted out to the very poor, and how many crimes are still committed under thy cloak and in thy holy name! Even this poor widow had bitterly suffered through priests who belong to a great communion, claiming to follow Him who cried, "Come unto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest," as will be seen by the following, related to me by Rev. Walter Swaffield, who was personally cognizant of the facts. The husband of this widow was out of work for a time; being too ill to engage in steady work, he found it impossible to pay the required ten cents for seats in the church to which he belonged, and was consequently excluded from his sitting. Shortly after he fell sick, his wife sought the priest, imploring him to administer the sacrament, and later extreme unction, which he positively refused, leaving the poor man to die without the consolation of the Church he had from infancy been taught to love and revere.

It is not strange that many in this world of misery become embittered against society; that they sometimes learn to hate all who live in comfort, and who represent the established order of things, and from the rank of the patient, uncomplaining struggler descend to a lower zone, where the moral nature is eclipsed by degradation and crime, and life takes on a deeper shade of horror. This class of people exist on the brink of a precipice. Socially, they may be likened to the physical condition of Victor Hugo's Claude Frollo after Quasimodo had hurled him from the tower of Notre Dame. You remember the sickening sensation produced by that wonderful piece of descriptive work, depicting the false priest hanging to the eaves, vainly striving to ascend, feeling the leaden gutter to which he was holding slowly giving away. His hands send momentary messages to the brain, warning it that endurance is almost exhausted. Below he sees the sharp formidable spires of Saint-Jean-de-Ronde, and immediately under him, two hundred feet from where he hangs, are the hard pavement, where men appear like pigmies. Above stands the avenging hunchback ready to hurl him back if he succeed in climbing over the eaves. So these poor people have ever below them starvation, eviction, and sickness. Above stands Quasimodo in the form of a three-headed monster: a soulless landlord, the slave master who pays only starvation wages, and disease, the natural complement of the wretched squalor permitted by the one, and the slow starvation necessarily incident to the prices paid by the other. Their lot is even more terrible when it is remembered that their fall carries with it the fate of their loved ones. In addition to the multitude who are condemned to suffer through uninvited poverty, with no hopeful outlook before them, there is another class who are constantly on the brink of real distress, and who are liable at any time, to suffer bitterly because they are proud-spirited and will almost starve to death before they ask for aid. Space prevents me from citing more than one illustration of this character. In an apartment house we found an American woman with a babe two weeks old and a little girl. The place was scrupulously clean, something very rare in this zone of life. The woman, of course, was weak from illness and, as yet, unable to take in any work to speak of. Her husband has been out of employment for a few weeks, but had just shipped on board a sailing vessel for a cruise of several months. The woman did not intimate that they were in great need, as she hoped to soon be enabled to make some money, and the portion of her husband's wages she was allowed to draw, paid the rent. A week ago, however, the little girl came to the Bethel Mission asking for a loaf of bread. "We have had nothing to eat since Monday morning," she said, "and the little baby cries all the time because mamma can give it no milk." It was Wednesday evening when the child visited the Mission. An investigation substantiated the truth of the child's words. The mother, too proud to beg, struggled with fate, hoping and praying to be able to succeed without asking for aid, but seeing her babe starving to death, she yielded. This case finds many counterparts where a little aid bridges over a period of frightful want, after which the unfortunate are able, in a measure, to take care of themselves.

I find it impossible in this paper to touch upon other cases I desired to describe. The above illustrations however, typical of the life and environment of hundreds of families, are sufficient to emphasize a condition which exists in our midst and which is yearly growing, both in extent and in intensity of bitterness; a condition that is little understood by those who are not actually brought in contact with the circumstances as they exist, a condition at once revolting and appalling to every sense of humanity and justice. We cannot afford to remain ignorant of the real status of life in our midst, any more than we can afford to sacrifice truth to optimism. It has become a habit with some to make light of these grim and terrible facts, to minify the suffering experienced, or to try and impute the terrible condition to drink. This may be pleasant but it will never alter conditions or aid the cause of reform. It is our duty to honestly face the deplorable conditions, and courageously set to work to ameliorate the suffering, and bring about radical reformatory measures calculated to invest life with a rich, new significance for this multitude so long exiles from joy, gladness, and comfort.

We now come to the practical question, What is to be done? But before viewing the problem in its larger and more far-reaching aspects, I wish to say a word in regard to the direct measures for immediate relief which it is fashionable among many reformers to dismiss as unworthy of consideration. It is very necessary in a discussion of this character to view the problem in all its bearings, and adjust the mental vision so as to recognize the utility of the various plans advanced by sincere reformers. I have frequently heard it urged that these palliative measures tend to retard the great radical reformative movements, which are now taking hold of the public mind. This view, however comfortable to those who prefer theorizing and agitation to putting their shoulder to the wheel in a practical way, is, nevertheless, erroneous. There is no way in which people can be so thoroughly aroused to the urgent necessity of radical economic changes as by bringing them into such intimate relations with the submerged millions that they hear the throbbing of misery's heart. The lethargy of the moral instincts of the people is unquestionably due to lack of knowledge more than anything else. The people do not begin to realize the true condition of life in the ever-widening field of abject want. When they know and are sufficiently interested to personally investigate the problem and aid the suffering, they will appreciate as never before the absolute necessity for radical economic changes, which contemplate a greater meed of justice and happiness than any measures yet devised. But aside from this we must not forget the fact that we have a duty to perform to the living no less than to the generations yet unborn. The commonwealth of to-day as well as that of to-morrow demands our aid. Millions are in the quicksands: yearly, monthly, daily, hourly they are sinking deeper and deeper. We can save them while the bridges are being built. To withhold the planks upon which life and happiness depend is no less criminal than to refuse to face the question in its broader aspects and labor for fundamental economic changes. A great work of real, practical, and enduring value, however, is being wrought each year by those in charge of local missions work in the slums and by individuals who mingle with and study the actual condition of the very poor. The extent of good accomplished by these few who are giving their lives to uplifting society's exiles is little understood, because it is quiet and unostentatious; yet through the instrumentality of the silent workers, thousands of persons are annually kept from starvation and crime, while for many of them new, broad, and hopeful horizons are constantly coming in view.[8]

[8] The extent and character of this work will be more readily understood by noting the labor accomplished by the Bethel Mission in the North End, which is doing more than any other single organization in that section of the city for the dwellers of the slums. Here under the efficient management of the Rev. Walter Swaffield, assisted by Rev. W. J. English, work is intelligently pushed with untiring zeal, and in a perfectly systematic manner. From a social and humanitarian point of view, their work may be principally summed up in the following classifications: [1.] Looking after the temporal and immediate wants of those who are really suffering. Here cases are quietly and sympathetically investigated. Food is often purchased; the rents are sometimes paid; old clothes are distributed where they are most needed, and in many ways the temporal wants are looked after while kind, friendly visitation of between one and two hundred very needy families comprise a portion of each month's work. [2]. The sailors' boarding house. A large, clean, homelike building is fitted up for sailors. Every American vessel that comes into port is visited by a member of the Mission, who invites the sailors to remain at this model home for seamen. In this way hundreds yearly escape the dreadful atmosphere of the wretched sailors' boarding houses of this part of the city, or, what is still more important, avoid undreamed-of vice, degradation, and disease by going with companions to vile dens of infamy. [3]. Securing comfortable homes and good positions for the young who are thus enabled to rise out of the night and oppression of this terrible existence. This, it is needless to add, is a very difficult task, owing to the fact that society shrinks from its exiles; few persons will give any one a chance who is known to have belonged to the slums. Nevertheless good positions are yearly secured for several of these children of adversity. [4]. The children's free industrial school in which the young are taught useful trades, occupations, and means of employment. In this training school the little girls are taught to make themselves garments. The material is furnished them free and when they have completed the garment it is given them. [5]. Summer vacations in the country for the little ones are provided for several hundred children; some for a day, some a week, some two weeks as the exigencies of the case require and the limited funds permit. These little oases in the children's dreary routine life are looked forward to with even greater anticipations of joy than is Christmas in the homes of the rich. I have cited the work of this Mission because I have personally investigated its work, and have seen the immense good that is being done with the very limited funds at the command of the Mission, and also to show by an illustration how much may be accomplished for the immediate relief of the sufferers. A grand palliative work requiring labor and money. It is not enough for those who live in our great cities to contribute to such work, they should visit these quarters and see for themselves. This would change many who to-day are indifferent into active missionaries.

Let us now examine a broader aspect of this problem. So long as the wretched, filthy dens of dirt, vermin, and disease stand as the only shelter for the children of the scum, so long will moral and physical contagion flourish and send forth death-dealing germs; so long will crime and degradation increase, demanding more policemen, more numerous judiciary, and larger prisons. No great permanent or far-reaching reformation can be brought about until the habitations of the people are radically improved. The recognition of this fact has already led to a practical palliative measure for relief that must challenge the admiration of all thoughtful persons interested in the welfare of society's exiles. It is a step in the direction of justice. It is not merely a work of charity; it is, I think, the most feasible immediate measure that can be employed which will change the whole aspect of life for tens of thousands, making existence mean something, and giving a wonderful significance to the now meaningless word home. I refer to the erection of model tenement apartments in our overcrowded sections, such, for example, as the Victoria Square dwelling of Liverpool. Here, on the former site of miserable tenement houses, sheltering more than a thousand people, stands to-day a palatial structure built around a hollow square, the major part of which is utilized as a large shrub-encircled playground for the children. The halls and stairways of the building are broad, light, and airy; the ventilation and sanitary arrangements perfect. The apartments are divided into one, two, and three rooms each. No room is smaller than 13 x 8 feet 6 inches; most of them are 12 x 13 feet 4 inches. All the ceilings are 9 feet high. A superintendent looks after the building. The tenants are expected to be orderly, and to keep their apartments clean. The roomy character of halls and chambers may be inferred from the fact that there are only two hundred and seventy-five apartments in the entire building. The returns on the total expenditure of the building, which was $338,800.00, it is estimated will be at least 4-1/2 per cent, while the rents are as follows: $1.44 per week for the three-room tenement, $1.08 per week for those containing two large rooms, and 54 cents for the one-room quarters. In Boston, the rents for the dreadful one-room cellar are $1.00 a week; for the two-room tenements above the cellars, the rent, so far as I heard, ranged from $1.50 to $2.50; three rooms were, of course, much higher. The rooms also are far smaller here than those in the beautiful, healthful, and inviting Victoria Square apartments. Yet it will be observed that the Shylock landlords receive more than double the rental paid in this building for dens which would be a disgrace to barbarism. A similar experiment, in many respects even more remarkable than that recently inaugurated by the Liverpool co-operation, is exhibited in the Peabody dwellings in London. These apartments have been in successful operation for so many years, while the results attending them have been so marked and salutary, that no discussion of this subject would be complete that failed to give some of the most important facts relating to them. I know of no single act of philanthropy that towers so nobly above the sordid greed of the struggling multitude of millionaires, as does this splendid work of George Peabody, by which to-day twenty thousand people, who but for him would be in the depths of the slums, are fronting a bright future, and with souls full of hope are struggling into a higher civilization. It will be remembered that Mr. Peabody donated at intervals extending over a period of eleven years, or from 1862 to 1873, L500,000 or $2,500,000 to this project of relieving the poor. He specified that his purpose was to ameliorate the condition of the poor and needy of London, and promote their comfort and happiness, making only the following conditions:—

"First and foremost amongst them is the limitation of its uses, absolutely and, exclusively, to such purposes as may be calculated directly to ameliorate the condition and augment the comforts of the poor, who, either by birth or established residence, form a recognized portion of the population of London.

"Secondly, it is my intention that now, and for all time, there shall be a rigid exclusion from the management of this fund, of any influences calculated to impart to it a character either sectarian as regards religion, or exclusive in relation to party politics.

"Thirdly, it is my wish that the sole qualification for a participation in the benefits of the fund shall be an ascertained and continued condition of life, such as brings the individual within the description (in the ordinary sense of the word) of the poor of London: combined with moral character, and good conduct as a member of society."



Realizing that little could be hoped for from individuals or their offspring, who were condemned to a life in vile dens, where the squalor and wretchedness was only equalled by the poisonous, disease-breeding atmosphere and the general filth which characterized the tenement districts, the trustees Mr. Peabody selected to carry forward his work, engaged in the erection of a large building accommodating over two hundred, at a cost of $136,500. This apartment house, which is substantially uniform with the seventeen additional buildings since constructed from the Peabody fund, is five stories high, built around a hollow square, thus giving plenty of fresh air and sunshine to the rear as well as the front of the entire building. The square affords a large playground for the children where they are in no danger of being run over by vehicles, and where they are under the immediate eye of many of the parents. The building is divided into tenements of one, two, and three room apartments, according to the requirements of the occupant. There are also nine stores on the ground floor, which bring a rental of something over $1,500 a year for each of the buildings. By careful, honest, and conscientious business management, the original sum of $2,500,000 has been almost doubled, while comfortable, healthful homes have been procured for an army of over 20,000 persons. Some of the apartments contain four rooms, many three, some two, others one. The average rent is about $1.15 for an apartment. The average price for three-room apartments in the wretched tenements of London, is from $1.45 a week. In the Peabody dwellings, the death rate is .96 per one thousand below the average in London. Thus it will be seen that while large, healthful, airy, and cheerful homes have been provided for over 20,000 at a lower figure than the wretched disease-fostering and crime-breeding tenements of soulless Shylocks, the Peabody fund has, since 1862, grown to nearly $5,000,000, or almost twice the sum given for the work by the great philanthropist. No words can adequately describe the magnitude of this splendid work, any more than we can measure the good it has accomplished, the crime prevented, or the lives that through it have grown to ornament and bless society. In the Liverpool experiment, the work has been prosecuted by the municipal government. In the Peabody dwellings, it has, of course, been the work of an individual, carried on by a board of high-minded, honorable, and philanthropic gentlemen. To my mind, it seems far more practicable for philanthropic, monied men to prosecute this work as a business investment, specifying in their wills that rents shall not rise above a figure necessary to insure a fair interest on the money, rather than leave it for city governments, as in the latter case it would be in great danger of becoming an additional stronghold for unscrupulous city officials to use for political purposes. I know of no field where men with millions can so bless the race as by following Mr. Peabody's example in our great cities. If, instead of willing every year princely sums to old, rich, and conservative educational institutions, which already possess far more money than they require,—wealthy persons would bequeath sums for the erection of buildings after the manner of the Victoria Square or the Peabody Dwellings, a wonderful transformation would soon appear in our cities. Crime would diminish, life would rise to a higher level, and from the hearts and brains of tens of thousands, a great and terrible load would be lifted. Yet noble and praiseworthy as is this work, we must not lose sight of the fact, that at best it is only a palliative measure: a grand, noble, beneficent work which challenges our admiration, and should receive our cordial support; still it is only a palliative.

There is a broader aspect still, a nobler work to be accomplished. As long as speculation continues in that great gift of God to man, land, the problem will be unsettled. So long as the landlords find that the more wretched, filthy, rickety, and loathsome a building is, the lower will be the taxes, he will continue to make some of the ever-increasing army of bread winners dwell in his foul, disease-impregnated dens.

The present economic system is being rapidly outgrown. Man's increasing intelligence, sense of justice, and the humanitarian spirit of the age, demand radical changes, which will come immeasurably nearer securing equal opportunities for all persons than the past dreamed possible. No sudden or rash measure calculated to convulse business and work great suffering should be entertained, but our future action should rest on a broad, settled policy founded upon justice, tempered by moderation, keeping in view the great work of banishing uninvited poverty, and elevating to a higher level the great struggling millions without for a moment sacrificing individualism. Indeed, a truer democracy in which a higher interpretation of justice, and a broader conception of individual freedom, and a more sacred regard for liberty, should be the watchword of the future.



EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY.

BY PROF. JAS. T. BIXBY, PH. D.

In the life and letters of Charles Darwin there is a memorandum, copied from his pocket note-book of 1837, to this effect:—"In July, opened first notebook on Transmutation of Species. Had been greatly struck with the character of the South American fossils and the species on Galapagos Archipelago."

These facts, he says, were the origin of all his epoch-making views as to the development of life and the work of natural selection in evolving species.

His suspicions that species were not immutable and made at one cast, directly by the fiat of the Creator, seemed to him, at first, he says, almost like murder.

To the greater part of the church, when in 1859, after twenty years of work in accumulating the proofs of his theory, he at last gave it to the world, it seemed quite as bad as murder.

It is very interesting now to look back upon the history and career of the Darwinian theory in the last thirty years; to recall, first the fierce outcry and denunciation it elicited, then the gradual accumulation of corroboratory evidence from all quarters in its favor; the accession of one scientific authority after another to the new views; the softening, little by little, of ecclesiastical opposition; its gradual acceptance by the broad-minded alike in theological and scientific circles; then, in these recent years, the exaltation of the new theory into a scientific and philosophic creed, wherein matter, force, and evolution constitute the new trinity, which, unless the modern man piously believes, he becomes anathematized and excommunicated by all the priests of the new dogmatism.

In the field of science, undoubtedly, evolution has won the day. Nevertheless, in religious circles, old time prejudices and slow conservatism, clinging to its creeds, as the hermit crab clings to the cast-off shell of oyster or clam, still resist it. The great body of the Christian laity looks askance on it. And even in progressive America, one of the largest and most liberal of American denominations has recently formally tried and condemned one of its clergy for heresy, for the publication of a book in which the principles of Evolution are frankly adopted and applied to Christianity. For a man to call himself a Christian Evolutionist is (we have been told by high Orthodox authority) a contradiction in terms.

I think it is safe to say to-day that Evolution has come to stay. It is too late to turn it out of the mansions of modern thought. And it is, therefore, a vital question, "Can belief in God, and the soul, and divine revelation abide under the same roof with evolution in peace? Or must Christianity vacate the realm of modern thought and leave it to the chilling frosts of materialism and scepticism?"

Now, if I have been able to understand the issue and its grounds, there is no such alternative, no such incompatibility between Evolution and Christianity.

There is, I know, a form of Evolution and a form of Christianity, which are mutually contradictory.

There is a form of Evolution which is narrowly materialistic. It dogmatically asserts that there is nothing in existence but matter and physical forces, and the iron laws according to which they develop. Life, according to this school, is only a product of the happy combination of the atoms; feeling and thought are but the iridescence of the brain tissues; conscience but a transmuted form of ancestral fears and expediences. Soul, revelation, providence, nothing but illusions of the childish fancy of humanity's infancy. Opposed to it, fighting with all the intensity of those who fight for their very life, stands a school of Christians who maintain that unless the special creation of species by divine fiat and the frequent intervention of God and His angels in the world be admitted, religion has received its death wound. According to this school, unless the world was created in six days, and Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and it obeyed, and Hezekiah turned the solar shadow back on the dial, and Jesus was born without human father, and unless some new miracle will interfere with the regular course of law, of rain and dew, of sickness and health, of cause and effect, whenever a believer lifts up his voice in prayer, why then, the very foundations of religion are destroyed.

Now, of course, between a Christianity and an Evolutionism of this sort, there is an irreconcilable conflict. But it is because neither of them is a fair, rational, or true form of thought.

When the principle of Evolution is properly comprehended and expounded; when Christianity is interpreted in the light that history and philosophy require,—the two will be found to have no difficulty in joining hands.

Though a purely naturalistic Evolutionism may ignore God; and a purely supernatural religion may leave no room for Evolution, a natural religion and a rational Evolutionism may yet harmoniously unite in a higher and more fruitful marriage.

Let us only recognize Evolution by the divine spirit, as the process of God's working in the world, and we have then a theory which has a place and a function, at once for all that the newest science has to teach and the most venerable faith needs to retain.

In the first place, Evolution is not itself a cause. It is no force in itself. It has no originating power. It is simply a method and law of the occurrence of things. Evolution shows that all things proceed, little by little, without breach of continuity; that the higher ever proceeds from the lower; the more complex ever unfolds from the more simple. For every species or form, it points out some ancestor or natural antecedent, from which by gradual modification, it has been derived. And in natural selection, the influence of the environment, sexual selection, use and disuse, sterility, and the variability of the organism, Science shows us some of the secondary factors or conditions of this development. But none of these are supposed by it to be first causes or originating powers. What these are, science itself does not claim the right as yet to declare.

Now, it is true that this unbroken course of development, this omnipresent reign of law, is inconsistent with the theological theories of supernatural intervention that have so often claimed a monopoly of faith. But independent of all scientific reasons, on religious and philosophical grounds themselves, this dogmatic view is no longer to be accepted. For if God be the God of all-seeing wisdom and foresight that reverence conceives him to be, his work should be too perfect from the outset to demand such changes of plan and order of working. The great miracle of miracles, as Isaac Taylor used to say, is that Providence needs no miracles to carry out its all-perfect plans.

But if, I hear it asked, the huge machine of the universe thus grinds on and has ever ground on, without interruption; if every event is closely bound to its physical antecedent, life to the cell, mind to brain, man to his animal ancestry and bodily conditions,—what other result will there be than an inevitable surrender to materialism? When Laplace was asked by Napoleon, on presenting to him his famous essay on the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the stellar universe, "Why do I see here no mention of the Deity?" the French astronomer proudly replied: "Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis."

Is not that the natural lesson of Evolutionism, to say that God is a hypothesis, no longer needed by science and which progressive thought, therefore, better dismiss?

I do not think so. Old time materialism dismissed the idea of God because it dismissed the idea of a beginning. The forces and phenomena of the world were supposed eternal; and therefore a Creator was unnecessary. But the conception of Evolution is radically different. It is a movement that demands a motor force behind it. It is a movement, moreover, that according to the testimony of modern science cannot have been eternal. The modern theory of heat and the dissipation of energy requires that our solar system and the nebula from which it sprang should have had a beginning in some finite period of time. The evolutionary process cannot have been going on forever; for the amount of heat and the number of degrees of temperature and the rate of cooling, are all finite, calculable quantities, and therefore the process cannot have been going on for more than a certain finite number of years, more or less millions, say. Moreover, if the original fire-mist was perfectly homogeneous, and not impelled into motion by any external force, it would never have begun to rotate and evolve into planets and worlds. If perfectly homogeneous, it would have remained, always balanced and always immobile. To start it on its course of rotation and evolution, there must have been either some external impelling power, or else some original differentiation of forces or conditions; for which, again, some other cause than itself must be supposed. For the well-known law of inertia forbids that any material system that is in absolute equilibrium should spontaneously start itself into motion. As John Stuart Mill has admitted, "the laws of nature can give no account of their own origin."

In the second place, notice that the materialistic interpretation of Evolution fails to account for that which is most characteristic in the process, the steady progress it reveals. Were Evolution an aimless, fruitless motion, rising and falling alternately, or moving round and round in an endless circle, the reference of these motions to the blind forces of matter might have, perhaps, a certain plausibility. But the movements of the evolution process are of quite a different character. They are not chaotic; no barren, useless circlings back to the same point, again and again; but they are progressive; and if often they seem to return to their point of departure, we see, on close examination, that the return is always on a higher plane. The motion is a spiral one, ever advancing to loftier and loftier ranges. Now this progressive motion is something that no accidental play of the atoms will account for. For chance builds no such rational structures. Chance writes no such intelligent dramas, with orderly beginning, crescendo, and climax. Or if some day, chance builds a structure with some show of order in it, to-morrow it pulls it down. It does not move steadily forward with permanent constructiveness.

The further Science penetrates into the secrets of the universe the more regular seems the march of thought presented there; the more harmonious the various parts; the more rational the grand system that is discovered. "How the one force of the universe should have pursued the pathway of Evolution through the lapse of millions of ages, leaving traces so legible by intelligence to-day, unless from beginning to end the whole process had been dominated by intelligence," this is something, as Francis Abbot well says, that passes the limits of conjecture. The all-luminous intelligibility of the universe is the all-sufficient proof of the intelligence of the cause that produced it. In the annals of science there is nothing more curious than the prophetic power which those savans have gained who have grasped this secret of nature—the rationality of the universe. It was by this confidence in finding in the hitherto unexplored domains of nature what reason demanded, that Goethe, from the analogies of the mammalian skeleton, discovered the intermaxillary bone in man; and Sir William Hamilton, from the mathematical consequences of the undulation of light, led the way to the discovery of conical refraction. A similar story is told of Prof. Agassiz and Prof. Pierce, the one the great zooelogist, the other the great mathematician, of Cambridge. Agassiz, having studied the formation of radiate animals, and having found them all referable to three different plans of structure, asked Prof. Pierce, without informing him of his discovery, how to execute all the variations possible, conformed to the fundamental idea of a radiated structure around a central axis. Prof. Pierce, although quite ignorant of natural history, at once devised the very three plans discovered by Agassiz, as the only fundamental plans which could be framed in accordance with the given elements. How significantly do such correspondences speak of the working of mind in nature, moulding it in conformity with ideas of reason. Thus to see the laws of thought exhibiting themselves as also the laws of being seems to me a fact sufficient of itself to prove the presence of an over-ruling mind in nature.

Is there any way of escaping this obvious conclusion? The only method that has been suggested has been to refer these harmonies of nature back to the original regularity of the atoms. As the drops of frozen moisture on the window pane build up the symmetrical frost-forms without design or reason, by virtue of the original similarity of the component parts, so do the similar atoms, without any more reason or plan, build up the harmonious forms of nature.

But this answer brings us face to face with a third still more significant problem, a still greater obstacle to materialism. Why are the atoms of nature thus regular, thus similar, one to another? Here are millions on millions of atoms of gold, each like its fellow atom. Millions and millions of atoms of oxygen, each with the same velocity of movement, same weight and chemical properties. All the millions on millions on millions of atoms on the globe are not of infinitely varied shape, weight, size, quality; but there are only some seventy different kinds, and all the millions of one kind, just as like one another as bullets out of the same mould, so that each new atom of oxygen that comes to a burning flame does the same work and acts in precisely the same way as its fellows. Did you ever think of that? If you have ever realized what it means, you must recognize this uniformity of the atoms, billions and billions of them as like one another as if run out of the same mould—as the most astonishing thing in nature.

Now, among the atoms, there can have been no birth, no death, no struggle for existence, no natural selection to account for this. What other explanation, then, in reason is there, than to say, as those great men of science, Sir John Herschel and Clerk Maxwell, who have, in our day, most deeply pondered this curious fact, have said, that this division of all the infinity of atoms in nature into a very limited number of groups, all the billions of members in each group substantially alike in their mechanical and chemical properties, "gives to each of the atoms the essential characters at once of a manufactured article and a subordinate agent."

Evolution cannot, then, be justly charged with materialism. On the contrary, it especially demands a divine creative force as the starter of its processes and the endower of the atoms with their peculiar properties. The foundation of that scientific system which the greatest of modern expositors of Evolution has built up about that principle (Herbert Spencer's synthetic philosophy) is the persistence of an infinite, eternal, and indestructible force, of which all things that we see are the manifestations.

To suppose, as many of the camp-followers of the evolution philosophy do, that the processes of successive change and gradual modification, which have been so clearly traced out in nature, relieve us from the need or right of asking for any anterior and higher cause of these processes; or that because the higher and finer always unfolds from the lower and coarser, therefore there was really nothing else in existence, either at the beginning or at present, than these crude elements which alone disclose themselves at first; and that these gross, sensuous facts are the only source and explanation of all that has followed them,—this is a most superficial and inadequate view. For this explanation, as we have already noticed, furnishes no fountain-head of power to maintain the constant upward-mounting of the waters in the world's conduits. It furnishes no intelligent directions of these streams into ever wise and ordered channels. To explain the higher life that comes out of these low beginnings, we must suppose the existence of spiritual powers, unseen at first, and disclosing themselves only in the fuller, later results, the moral and spiritual phenomena that are the crowning flower and fruit of the long process. When a thing has grown from a lower to a higher form, its real rank in nature is not shown by what it began in, but by what it has become. Though chemistry has grown out of alchemy, and astronomy out of astrology, this does not empty them of present truth or impair at all their authority and trustworthiness to-day. Though man's mind has grown out of the sensations of brutish ancestors, that does not take away the fact that he has now risen to a height from which he overlooks all these mists and sees the light which never was on sea or land. The real beginning of a statue is not in the rough outline in which it first appears, but in the creative idea of the perfect work which regulates its whole progress. The real nature of a tree is not to be discovered in the first swellings of the acorn, or the first out-pushing of its rootlets, but rather are acorn and rootlet themselves parts of that generic idea, that evolutive potentiality, which is only to be understood when manifested in its completer form in the full-grown monarch of the forest. So to discern the real character and motor-power of the world's evolution, we must look, not to its beginnings, but to its end, and see in the latest stages, and its highest moral and spiritual forms and forces, not disguises of its earlier stages, but ampler manifestations of that Divine power and purpose which is the ever-active agent, working through all the varied levels of creation.

The evolution theory is, also, it must be acknowledged, hostile to that phase of theology which conceives of God as a being outside of nature; which regarded the universe as a dead lump, a mechanical fabric where the Creator once worked, at the immensely remote dawn of creation; and to which again, for a few short moments, this transcendental Power stooped from His celestial throne, when the successive species of living beings were called into being in brief exertions of supernatural energy. But this mechanical view of God who, as Goethe said, "only from without should drive and twirl the universe about," what a poor conception of God, after all, was that; not undeserving the ridicule of the great German.

Certainly, the idea of God which Wordsworth has given us, as a Power not indefinitely remote, but ever present and infinitely near,

"A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts, And rolls through all things,"

is a much more inspiring and venerable thought. This is the conception of God that Paul has given us, "the God in whom we live and move and have our being;" this is the conception that the book of Wisdom gives us, "as the Divine Spirit who filleth the world."

And to this conception of God, Evolution has no antagonism, but on the contrary, throws its immense weight in its favor. Evolution, in fact, instead of removing the Deity from us, brings him close about us; sets us face to face with his daily activities. The universe is but the body of which God is the soul; "the Interior Artist," as Giordano Bruno used to say, who from within moulds his living shapes of beauty and power. What else, in fact, is Evolution but the secular name for the Divine Indwelling; the scientific alias for the growth and progressive revelation of the Holy Spirit, daily putting off the old and putting on the new; constantly busy from the beginning of time to this very day moulding and forwarding his work?

Not long ago I came across the mental experience of a working geologist which well illustrates this. "Once in early boyhood," says Mr. James E. Mills, "I left a lumberman's camp at night to go to the brook for water. It was a clear, cold, moonlight night and very still, except the distant murmuring of the Penobscot at some falls. A sense of the grandeur of the forest and rivers, the hills, and sky, and stars came over the boy, and he stood and looked around. An owl hooted, and the hooting was not a cheerful sound. The men were all asleep, and the conditions were lonely enough. But there was no feeling of loneliness; for with the sense of the grandeur of creation, came the sense, very real and strong, of the Creator's presence. In boyish imagination, I could see His almighty hand shaping the hills and scooping out the valleys, spreading the sky overhead, and making trees, animals, and men. Thirty years later I camped alone in the open air on the bank of the Gila. It was a clear, cold, moonlight night. The camp-fire was low, for the Apaches were on the warpath. An owl again hooted; but again all loneliness was dispelled by a sense of the Creator's presence, and the night of long ago by the Penobscot came into my mind, and with it the question: What is the difference to my mind between the Creator's presence now and then? To the heart, it was very like, but to the mind very different. Now, no great hand was shaping things from without. But God was everywhere, reaching down through long lines of forces, and shaping and sustaining things from within. I had been travelling all day by mountains of lava which had cooled long ages ago, and over grounds which the sea, now far off, had left on its beaches; and with the geologist's habit recalled the lava still glowing and flowing, and the sea still rolling its pebbles on the beaches. But now I knew it was by forces within the earth that the lava was poured out, and that the waves which rolled the pebbles were driven by the wind and the wind by the sun's heat. And the forces within the earth and the heat within the sun come from still further within. Inward, always inward, the search for the original energy and law carried my mind, for He whose will is the source of all force, and whose thought is the source of all law is on the inside of the universe. The kingdom of God is within you."

"Now this change from the boyish idea of God creating things from without, to the manhood's view of God creating and sustaining all things from within," is indeed as this working geologist so well says, "the essential change which modern science has wrought in the habit of religious thought. From Copernicus to Darwin, every important step in the development of science has cost the giving up of some idea of a God creating things as man shapes them from without, and has illustrated the higher idea of God reaching His works from within. Every step has led toward the truth that life and force come to the forms in which they are clothed from God by the inner way; and by the same way, their law comes with them; and that the forms are the effects of the force and life, acting according to the law."

This is certainly a most noble, uplifting conception of the world. But how, perhaps it will be asked, can we find justification for such a view of the Divine Spirit as indwelling in nature? It is a question worth dwelling upon, and when we carefully ponder it, we find that one of the phases of the evolution philosophy that has been a chief source of alarm is precisely the one that lends signal support to this doctrine of Divine Indwelling.

Evolution is especially shrunk from, because it connects man so closely with nature; our souls are traced back to an animal origin; consciousness to instinct, instinct to sensibility, and this to lower laws and properties of force. By the law of the correlation of forces, our mental and spiritual powers are regarded as but transformed phases of physical forces, conditioned as they are on our bodily states and changes; and the soul, it is said, is but a child of nature, who is most literally its mother.

To many minds this is appalling. But let us look it candidly in the face and see its full bearing. We will recall in the first place, the scientific law, no life but from proceeding life. Let us recollect next the dictum of mechanics, no fountain can rise higher than its source. The natural corollary and consequence of this is "no evolution without preceding involution." If mind and consciousness come out of nature, they must first have been enveloped in nature, resident within its depths. If the spirit within our hearts is one with the force that stirs the sense and grows in the plant, then that sea of energy that envelops us is also spirit.

When we come to examine the idea of force, we find that there is only one form in which we get any direct knowledge of it, only one place in which we come into contact with it, and that is, in our own conscious experiences, in the efforts of our own will. According to the scientific rule, always to interpret the unknown by the known, not the known by the unknown, it is only the rational conclusion that force elsewhere is also will. Through this personal experience of energy, we get, just once, an inside view of the universal energy, and we find it to be spiritual; the will-force of the Infinite Spirit dwelling in all things. That the encircling force of the universe can best be understood through the analogy of our own sense of effort, and therefore is a form of will, of Spirit, is a conclusion endorsed by the most eminent men of science,—Huxley, Herschel, Carpenter, and Le Conte. There is, therefore, no real efficient force but Spirit. The various energies of nature are but different forms or special currents of this Omnipresent Divine Power; the laws of nature, but the wise and regular habits of this active Divine will; physical phenomena but projections of God's thought on the screen of space; and Evolution but the slow, gradual unrolling of the panorama on the great stage of time.

In geology and paleontology, as is admitted, Evolution is not directly observed, but only inferred. The process is too slow; the stage too grand for direct observation. There is one field and only one where it has been directly observed. This is in the case of domestic animals and plants under man's charge. Now as here, where alone we see Evolution going on, it is under the guidance of superintending mind, it is a justifiable inference that in nature, also, it goes on under similar intelligent guidance. Now, it is the observation of distinguished men of science that we see precisely such guidance in nature. There is nothing in the Darwinian theory, as I said, that would conduct species upward rather than downward. To account for the steady upward progress we must resort to a higher Cause. We must say with Asa Gray, "Variation has been led along certain beneficial lines, like a stream along definite and useful lines of irrigation." We must say with Prof. Owen, "A purposive route of development and change, of correlation and inter-dependence, manifesting intelligent will, is as determinable in the succession of races as in the development and organization of the individual. Generations do not vary accidentally in any and every direction, but in pre-ordained, definite, and correlated courses." This judgment is one which Prof. Carpenter has also substantially agreed with, declaring that the history of Evolution is that of a consistent advance along definite lines of progress, and can only be explained as the work of a mind in nature.

The old argument from Design, it has been frequently said of late, is quite overthrown by Evolution. In one sense it is: i.e. the old idea of a special purpose and a separate creation of each part of nature. But the divine agency is not dispensed with, by Evolution; only shifted to a different point of application; transferred from the particular to the general; from the fact to the law. Paley compared the eye to a watch; and said it must have been made by a divine hand. The modern scientist objects that the eye has been found to be no hand-work; it is the last result of a complicated combination of forces; the mighty machine of nature, which has been grinding at the work for thousands of years. Very well; but the modern watch is not made by hand, either, but by a score of different machines. But does it require less, or not more intelligence to make the watch in this way? Or if some watch should be discovered that was not put together by human hand, but formed by another watch, not quite so perfect as itself, and this by another watch, further back, would the wonder, the demand for a superior intelligence as the origin of the process be any the less? It strikes me that it would be but the greater. The farther back you go, and the more general, and invariable, and simple the fundamental laws that brought all things into their present form, then, it seems to me, the more marvellous becomes the miracle of the eye, the ear, each bodily organ, when recognized as a climax to whose consummation each successive stage of the world has contributed. How much more significant of purposive intelligence than any special creation is this related whole, this host of co-ordinated molecules, this complex system of countless interwoven laws and movements, all driven forward, straight to their mark, down the vistas of the ages, to the grand world consummation of to-day? What else but omniscience is equal to this?

All law, then, we should regard as a divine operation; and all divine operation, conversely, obeys law. Whatever phenomena we consider as specially divine ought, then, to be most orderly and true to nature. Religion, as far as it is genuine, must, therefore, be natural. It should be no exotic, no foreign graft, as it is often regarded, but the normal outgrowth of our native instincts. Evolution does not banish revelation from our belief. Recognizing in man's spirit a spark of the divine energy, "individuated to the power of self-consciousness and recognition of God," as Le Conte aptly phrases it; tracing the development of the spirit-embryo through all geologic time till it came to birth and independent life in man, and humanity recognized itself as a child of God, the communion of the finite spirit with the infinite is perfectly natural. This direct influence of the spirit of God on the spirit of man, in conscience speaking to him of the moral law, through prophet and apostle declaring to us the great laws of spiritual life and the beauty of holiness,—this is what we call revelation. The laws which it observes are superior laws, quite above the plane of material things. But the work of revelation is not, therefore, infallible or outside the sphere of Evolution. On the contrary, one of the most noticeable features of revelation is its progressive character. In the beginning, it is imperfect, dim in its vision of truth, often gross in its forms of expression. But from age to age it gains in clearness and elevation. In religion, as in secular matters,—it is the lesson of the ages, that "the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."

How short-sighted, then, are they who seek to compress the broadening vision of modern days within the narrow loopholes of mediaeval creeds. "There is still more light to break from the words of Scripture," was the brave protest of Robinson to the bigots of his day. And as we say Amen to that, we may add: "Yes, and more light still to come from the whole heavens and the whole earth." If we wish to see that light and receive the richest rewards of God's revealing word, we must face the sun of truth and follow bravely forward.

As we look back upon the long path of Evolution up which God's hand has already led humanity; as we see from what lowliness and imperfection, from what darkness and grossness God has led us to our present heritage of truth and spiritual life, can we doubt, that, if we go forward obediently, loyal to reason, we shall not find a new heavens and more glorious, above our head, a new earth and a nobler field of work beneath our feet?



THE IRRIGATION PROBLEM IN THE NORTHWEST.

BY JAMES REALF, JR.

Unless artesian irrigation is introduced extensively in the central part of both Dakotas, their future, unlike their skies, will be heavily clouded. True, the valley of the Sioux, a strip about seventy-five miles wide from the eastern border, of which Sioux Falls is the chief city, and the valley of the lower Missouri about the same extent south of this, of which Yankton is the metropolis, have never had a crop failure. Also, the Red River Valley in North Dakota, about ten thousand square miles, which contains the famous Dalrymple farm and produces the best wheat in the world, has the same unblemished record as an agricultural area. But these fertile and fortunate sections suffer from the general effect on the country of the drouths in the Jim Valley adjacent, which have been severe for four years and are increasing in severity. In the James or Jim Valley, as it is generally called, the year 1887 showed a partial crop failure, 1888 a little more, 1889 and 1890, a total loss.

Of course, every country is liable to crop failure at times, and must be till man makes his own weather, which will, no doubt, some day be done to an extent now unguessed. Nor is the record of three grievous years out of ten in the agricultural history of a section so very bad, except just in the way it has happened here, with a continuous and cumulative effect. But the central Dakotans have been disheartened, and the cumulative and often, perhaps, exaggerative, reports of their condition spread over the country have checked immigration into the States for the past two years, and thus retarded the growth of the fortunate valleys.

This deplorable condition lately attracted the attention of a young Yale graduate, who is editing an evening paper in Sioux Falls, and he began to collect the views of experts on the question of artesian irrigation.

Mr. Tomlinson, of the Argus Leader, had, probably, no idea of the mass of literature with which the theme was potential, and the way the papers, even outside the State, have followed his lead must be flattering to him both as an editor and public-spirited citizen. My indebtedness to Mr. Tomlinson for some of my facts being thus cheerfully acknowledged, let me plunge in medias res into the turbid waters of the irrigation problem.

Shall we make it "rain from the earth, when the sky fails"? is now, thanks to an editor, the great Dakotan question. It is a question of many facets. What does it cost, will it pay, is it safe, or must it ultimately poison the ground by sowing the land with salt like a vandal conqueror, and creating a Sahara for immediate posterity? Finally, if it is to be done on a proper scale, how shall the burden of the introduction be borne; by the township, the county, the State, the nation, or by private enterprise? Let us take up these points seriatum. Professor Upham, of the United States Geologic Survey, a man of unquestionable honesty and no mean authority generally, thinks that the cost alone demonstrates the futility of attempting the artesian system. He bases his opinion on the Jamestown well, which cost $7,000. Yet if, as there seems to be no doubt, irrigation will increase the wheat crop by at least ten bushels an acre, even this large expense would be warranted by the increase in land value. But it is probably not known to Professor Upham that wells between Jamestown and Huron are being sunk now for half, in some cases one-third, and in a few cases one-tenth of his reckoning. So with this change of former figures, the question of cost may be said to cut no figure. But will it pay permanently, and to what extent? Prof. G. E. Culver answers this question with great ability. He says positively that it will not materially change climate nor by attraction increase appreciably the annual rainfall, though he thinks it may tend to equalize the distribution of the rainfall. As to climate one might be inclined to disagree with him. There has certainly been a great change in the climate of Utah since irrigation was begun there, and an appreciable change in some parts of Southern California, though not in Colorado, as far as can be learned. It is a well-known fact that rain storms follow the course of streams, and as a system of irrigation multiplies universally the evaporation of a region, besides multiplying small streams and enlarging others, and as hollows would often be ponded by the waste water, an increase in the area watered by local showers is naturally to be expected. Moreover, the burning winds that so often scorch the crops will be somewhat softened by traversing so much moist ground and so many streams. Trees, too, grow more readily in the moistened land, and in turn protect the land from the hot winds. Given a proper system of irrigation in operation for twenty-five years, and the epithet, treeless, need not be applied to Dakota.

Let us consider irrigation a moment historically. Certainly half of the world's population depend on it to-day. Modern Egypt has the most extensive system ever known, except the one recently unearthed in India, so massive in construction and vast in stretch that one writer has declared it would take the entire wealth of the British Empire to put it again in order. The Egyptian system cost $200,000,000, and two, sometimes three crops, are raised for one of former times.

No division of the United States has a better credit in commercial circles than Utah, and this is not due to the peculiar institution of polygamy, but to the perfect system of irrigation. The careful husbanding of the waters that come down the Wahsatch Range on mountains, has transmuted a dreary desert of sand and sage brush into what most travellers regard as a garden, and what possibly to the faithful appears symbolically a Paradise.

Senator Stewart, of the United States Irrigation Committee, stated that he had inspected nearly every irrigated region of the world, and knew of no place supplied by so vast a reservoir of water, with either the volume or the pressure of the artesian belt of Dakota. Much of the land in the Jim River Valley is comparatively level and susceptible of sub soil irrigation. It would take from two to three years to put the land in prime condition and to make each acre that is now valued at from three to ten dollars, worth fifty, at least, and probably seventy-five.

Now, $5,000,000 would more than cover the cost of the suggested irrigation in the Northwest—a mere trifle, if the certainty of crops is thereby guaranteed. Nor is the certainty of crops the only object to be considered. According to dealers in Sioux City, Iowa, the quality of cattle, shipped from some places in Clay and Yankton Counties since the introduction of irrigation, has increased twenty-five per cent., which appears not improbable when we note the difference between the warm, sweet flow of artesian water and the icy, brackish stuff of a prairie slough.

The next and really the most important question—for man should not work for the present and immediate future without the keenest regard to the rights of posterity—is whether, under Dakotan conditions, artesian irrigation is safe; whether there is not danger of its poisoning the ground. Professor Upham unhesitatingly declares that on account of the alkaline and saline properties in these artesian waters a continued use of them for many years would render the land worthless. The assertion is a rounder one than scientific men generally make, and must be received with caution, though emanating from so high a source, for many samples of South Dakotan waters, tested at Brookings, have shown no alkaline reaction at all, and the professor's reasoning seems to rest chiefly upon the North Dakotan waters, which for some reason show larger saline percentages than the South. Then, too, he proceeds on the theory that a yearly supply of one foot of water is necessary, whereas half that amount during the dryest year, supplied through the five growing months, would insure good crops. Four inches last July would have saved the harvest. But anyway the entire amount of saline matter in South Dakotan waters, according to Prof. Lewis McLouth, does not, on the average, exceed one fifth of one per cent. after substracting all inert substances, such as sand, clay, limestone, and iron ores; so that, if six inches of water were applied to the lands, and all evaporated on the surface, the salty crust would be one 1/160 of an inch thick. But as a part of the water would run off into the streams, and much of it, diluted with rain-water, would soak into the ground, the salty ingredients would be mixed at once with at least a foot of the surface earth, and would form less than one fifteenth of one per cent. of the weight of that soil. These ingredients are salts of lime, magnesia, potash, and soda. Now Dr. Bruckner, in an analysis of some soil in Holland, which he pronounces remarkably rich, says that it contains over fifteen per cent. of these same ingredients, or two hundred and twenty-five times as much as six inches of artesian water would give to a foot of Dakotan soil within a year. So it would take two hundred and twenty-five years for this soil to acquire as much of these saline ingredients as the rich soil of Holland already possesses.

We might go further into this subject and show that every ingredient of these artesian well salts is a necessary food for many plant tissues; but even if the accumulation of salty substances were thought dangerous, it is to be remembered that during five of the ten years since the settlement of the Jim Valley, the rainfall has been ample, and if this average should continue, the land could be allowed to rest from irrigation for one half of the time so that the floods of rain-water would wash away the surplus saline matter.

Enough has now been said to show that in South Dakota, at least, no harm is likely to accrue to the soil under five hundred years, if South Dakota chemists are to be trusted. By that time chemistry will have advanced from an analytic to a creative science, and if what was once ignorantly termed "The Great American Desert" should suddenly lapse into a saline state, a speedy cure for that condition may be counted on with confidence.

Dismissing, then, this danger as something too dim in the distance to be regarded even as ultimately certain, we are confronted with a really grave question—a question fraught with serious immediate peril, if answered practically in the way it seems likely to be, unless patriotic Dakotans cooeperate to prevent it. How shall the burden of the cost be borne? The farmers individually are mostly too poor, and in the Northwest, which the oppressions of the railroads and the teachings of Donelly have honeycombed with tendencies to State socialism, the first answer is, "By the State, of course." But the need of action in this matter is pressing, and the State of South Dakota certainly is too poor at present, for her debt-limit, under her constitution, is already reached.

For the counties to attempt it would be equally difficult, for many persons not directly benefited would be forced to share the expense, and under the pressure of continued hard times an irrigation rebellion might result and most certainly dissatisfaction as to the location of the wells would ensue. There is another plan against which none of these objections can be raised. A bill has been introduced in the legislature, providing that when thirty voters shall so petition, the State engineer of irrigation shall select proper sites for nine six-inch or sixteen four and one half inch wells. An election shall then be held to vote bonds of the township. If they carry, the supervisors shall have these wells sunk, and shall rent the water to such farmers as wish it, at a sum in no case exceeding a pro-rata share of seven per cent. of the value of the bonds, the title to the water to go with the title to the land so long as the rent is paid.

The details of the bill are carefully worked out, and it would seem that this plan is feasible. It will enable the present owners to retain their land, and to water it at reasonable cost, while those benefited will bear the expense.

But the great danger is that what is known as private enterprise, which in the West has been as a rule simply the legal twin of highway robbery, will seize the situation which this irrigation problem so temptingly presents. Some of the investment companies are already becoming aware of the possibilities, and are taking advantage of the farmers by buying their land at a nominal price, and it is not improbable that speculators within a year will appropriate ("convey" the wise it call) vast stretches in the Jim Valley, crowding out the present owners and keeping the land comparatively idle for years. This is the peculiar peril of the Dakotas, and the Farmers' Alliance would do well to spend some of their superfluous energy on a co-operative plan of introducing irrigation, else they will be at the mercy of a greedy crowd of embryo Jay Goulds. There is, indeed, no reason why the nation, if it can appropriate money for river and harbor bills, should not appropriate so small a sum as $5,000,000 to an enterprise of such moment as this, and if the Republican party had a dying glimmer of their olden shrewdness, they would have tightened their relaxing hold on the affections of the Dakotans by a measure of this kind. But so cumbersome is our present system of republican government, that it would take too long in this case to set governmental aid in motion. So, as it is, the Dakotas are between the devil of drouth and the deep sea of further capitalistic oppression, their only hope of a fair solution lying in the township scheme.

Before parting with this theme, as indicative of what might be done with the drouth belt of the Dakotas, the following table deserves a comparative glance. It consists of the tax lists of several California counties before and after the application of irrigation.

COUNTIES. 1879. 1889.

Fresno $6,354,596 $25,387,173 Los Angeles 16,368,649 84,376,310 Merced 5,208,245 14,146,845 Orange 2,817,700 9,270,767 San Bernardino 2,576,973 23,267,955 San Diego 8,525,253 31,560,918 Stanislaus 6,232,368 15,594,003 Solano 2,651,367 6,966,007 Tulare 5,204,777 24,343,013 ————— —————— Total $55,939,928 $234,912,991

A few words more on the first question of cost, which is one a practical mind is always asking and re-asking. The Aberdeen Daily News, which ought to know, for there are several wells in its neighborhood easy to study, states that a six-inch well can be put down for less than $2,300, and that any of the principal wells at Aberdeen, Hitchcock, Redfield, Woonsocket, Huron, or Yankton will irrigate six hundred and forty acres, which would bring the cost to less than $4.00 per acre for twelve inches of depth during the growing season. Mr. Hinds, of the Hinds ranch, has been charging adjacent farmers, however, only $1.00 per acre for water from his well, and considers it a paying investment. I cannot resist the temptation of closing this brief inquiry into and commentary upon this most important question by citing a picturesque passage from the Aberdeen Daily News:—

"The power of these wells is almost inconceivable. An iron bar eight feet long and two inches in diameter was accidentally dropped into the tubing of one of them, decreasing the flow for a short time, but it was soon ejected by the water with such force as to break the elbow of a strong iron pipe. When the well at Huron was first put down, no make of water mains was strong enough to withstand the full pressure of the water. The same may be said of nearly all the wells. The fact is that the artesian wells of this valley furnish the mechanical power of the world. This power requires no fuel, no engines, no repairs, no extra insurance. It never freezes up, nor blows up, nor dries up. It can be managed by a girl baby; $1,500 will furnish everlasting fifty horse-power. The wonder is that all the woolen, cotton, silk, and linen mills of the world do not rush to take possession of it. It is a Niagara Falls already harnessed for use. All the textile fabrics could be manufactured here cheaper than in any other part of the universe. The time will come when this will be recognized, and natural gas will be extinguished by the giant gushing wells in Dakota."

This vivid writing, this rhetoric of artesian force, may be the result of an editorial fancy that has long bestridden a western boom, instead of tame old Pegasus; but, leaving out the manufacturing prospectus, there can be no gainsay of the statement that, with a million acres of the opulent Dakotan soil under the brilliant Dakotan sun, tended by two thousand artesian wells, the great drouth belt of the Northwest would be the richest agricultural area in the world.



REVOLUTIONARY MEASURES AND NEGLECTED CRIMES.

BY PROF. JOSEPH RODES BUCHANAN.

There is a crime which has run in wild unbridled career around the globe, from the most ancient recorded time, beginning in barbaric tyranny and robbery of the toiler, advancing with the power and wealth of nations, and flourishing unchecked in modern civilization, sapping the strength of nations, paralyzing the conscience of humanity, impoverishing the spirit and power of benevolence, stimulating with alcoholic energy the mad rush for wealth and power, and making abortive the greater part of what saints, heroes, and martyrs might achieve for human redemption. But alas! such has been its insinuating and blinding power, that it has never been opposed by legislation, and never arrested by the Church, which assumes to obey the sinless martyr of Jerusalem, and to war against all sins, yet has never made war upon this giant sin, but has fondled and caressed it so kindly that the pious and conscientious, believing it no sin or crime, have lost all conception of its enormity, and may never realize it until an enlightened people shall pour their hot indignation upon the crime and the unconscious criminals.

This crime which the world's dazzled intellect and torpid conscience has so long tolerated without resistance, and which antiquity admired in its despotic rulers, splendid in proportion to the people's misery, is that misleading form of intense and heartless selfishness, which grasps the elements of life and happiness, the wealth of a nation, to squander and destroy it in that OSTENTATION which has no other purpose than to uplift the man of wealth and humiliate his humbler brother. That purpose is a crime; a crime incompatible with genuine Christianity; a crime which was once checked by the religious fervor of Wesley, but checked only for a time. Its criminality is not so much in the heartless motive as in its wanton destruction of happiness and life to achieve a selfish purpose.

This feature of social ostentation, its absolute cruelty, has not attracted the investigation of moralists and pietists. On the contrary, the crime is cherished in the higher ranks of the clergy, and an eminent divine in Cincinnati occupying an absurdly expensive church, actually preached a sermon in vindication of LUXURY—defending it on the audacious assumption that it was right because some men had very expensive tastes and it was proper that such tastes should be gratified. A private interview with John Wesley would have been very edifying to that clergyman, as the more remote example of the founder of Christianity had been forgotten.

That squandering wealth in ostentation and luxury is a crime becomes very apparent by a close examination of the act. There would be no harm in building a $700,000 stable for his horses, like a Syracuse millionaire, or in placing a $50,000 service on the dinner table, like a New York Astor, if money were as free as air and water; but every dollar represents an average day's labor, for there are more toilers who receive less than a dollar than there are who receive more.[9] Hence the $700,000 stable represents the labor of a thousand men for two years and four months. It also represents seven hundred lives; for a thousand dollars would meet the cost of the first ten years of a child, and the cost of the second ten years would be fully repaid by his labor. The fancy stable, therefore, represents the physical basis of seven hundred lives, and affirms that the owner values it more highly, or is willing that seven hundred should die, that his vanity may be gratified.

[9] According to J. R. Dodge, there are five million agricultural laborers in this country whose wages do not average over $194 a year.

This is not an imaginative estimate. A thousand dollars would save not one but many lives in the Irish famine. It would save more than a score of lives in New York, if diligently used among those who are approaching the Potter's Field, which annually receives eight thousand of the dead of New York. It would establish, if invested at seven per cent., an institution that would permanently sustain educating to a virtuous manhood, two hundred and fifty of the waifs gathered in from the pollution of the streets, sending forth fifty redeemed ones every year. When $700,000 is squandered, such is the amount of human life destroyed, by destroying that for want of which the benevolent are unable to stay the march of disease, of crime, and of death.

The thought of snatching food from the starving, or turning out half-clad men and women to perish in the wintry snow, excites our horror, but which is the greater criminal, he who for avarice thus destroys one family, or he who in riotous ostentation destroys the means that would save a hundred lives? Does the fact that they are not in his presence, or may be a mile or two away, change the nature or results of his act? And does his accidental possession of the basis of life authorize him to destroy it?

It is not unreasonable to say that every thousand dollars wantonly wasted, represents the destruction of the one human life that it would have saved, and while this slaughter of the innocents proceeds, society is cursed with the presence of over 100,000 criminals, paupers, tramps, and vagrants in the State of New York, who might have been reared into respectable citizenship with a small fragment of the wealth that is squandered in the hurtful ostentation that panders to a vicious taste. While poor women in New York are fighting hunger at arm's length, or looking through ash barrels and offal buckets, their wealthy sisters think nothing of spending ten, twenty, or thirty thousand dollars on their toilet, or wearing a $130,000 necklace, or half a million in diamonds in a Washington court circle,—all of which I hope to see in time condemned by a purer taste as tawdry and offensive vulgarity, even if it were not done in the presence of misery as it is. "Twenty-four hours in the slums" (says Julia H. Percy, in the New York World)—"just a night and a day—yet into them were crowded such revelations of misery, and depravity, and degradation as having once been gazed upon, life can never be the same afterwards." Such is life in New York. What it is in "Darkest England," as portrayed by General Booth, is too wretched and loathsome to be reproduced here. But we must not fail to understand that five sixths of the people of the millionaire's metropolis, New York, live in the tenement-house region, a breeding centre of intemperance, pestilence, crime, and future mobs, where wretched life is crushed to deeper wretchedness by the avaricious exaction of unfeeling landlords[10] worse than those against whom the Irish rebel. Is not the splendor of such a city like the hectic flush on the consumptive's cheek? The statistics of the past year reveal the startling fact that New York is a decaying city; that its population has no natural growth, but had 853 more deaths than births.