Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1897 — BENEATH THE CITIES [ARTICLE]

BENEATH THE CITIES

TALMAGE ON THE MENACE OF THE CRIMINAL CLASSES. The Dynamite that Threatens Society —A Plea for Better Prisons and the Reclamation of the Vicions The Menace of the Idle. Our Weekly Sermon. In this sermon Dr. Talmage in a starttine way speaks of the dangers threatening our great towns and cities and shows bow the slumbering fires may be put out. His text is Psalm Ixxx, 13, “The boar out •f the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it.” By this homely but expressive figure David sets forth the bad influences which in olden time broke in upon God’s heritage, as with swine's foot tramping and as with swine’s snout uprooting the wineyards of prosperity. What was true then is true now. There have been enough trees of righteousness planted to overshadow the whole earth had it not been for the ax men who hewed ‘ them down. The temple of truth would long ago have been completed had it not been for the iconoclasts who defaced the walls and battered down the pillars. The whole •earth would have been an Eschol of ripened clusters had it not been that “the boar has wasted it and the wild beast of the field devoured it.” I propose to point out to you those whom I consider to be the destructive classes of ■society. First, the public criminals. You ■ought not to be surprised that these people make up a large proportion of many communities. In 1860 of the 49,000 people who were incarcerated in the prisons ■of the country 32,000 were of foreign birth. Many of them were the very desperadoes of society, oozing into the slums •of our cities, waiting for an opportunity to riot and steal and debauch, joining the large gang of American thugs and cutthroats. There are in our cities people

whose entire business in life is to commit crime. That is as much their business as jurisprudence or medicine or merchandise is your business. To it they bring all their energies of body, mind and soul, and they look upon the interregnums which they spend in prison as so much unfortunate loss of time, just as you look upon an attack of influenza or rheumatism which fastens you in the house for a few •days. It is their lifetime business to pick pockets, and blow up safes, and shoplift, ■and ply the panel game, and they have as much pride of skill in their business as you have in yours when you upset the argument of an opposing counsel, or cure a gunshot fracture which other- surgeons have given up, or foresee a turn in the market so you buy goods just before they go up 20 per cent. It is their business to commit crime, and I do not suppose that once in a year the thought of the immorality strikes them. Added to these professional criminals, American and foreign, there is a large class of men who are more or less industrious in crime. Drunkenness is responsible for much of ■the theft, since it confuses a man’s ideas of property, and he gets his hands on things that do not belong to him. Rum is responsible for much of the assault and battery, inspiring men to sudden bravery, which they must demonstrate, though it be on the face of the next gentleman.

. Reclaim the Criminal. Ton help to pay the board of every criminal, from the sneak thief who snatches a spool of cotton up to some man ■who enacts a “Black Friday.” More than that, it touches your heart in the moral depression of the community. You might as well think to stand in a closely confined room where there are fifty people and yet not breathe the vitiated air as to stand in a community where there are so many of the depraved without somewhat being contaminated. What is the fire that burns your store down compared with the conflagration which consumes your morals? What is the theft of the gold and silver from your money safe compared with the theft of your children’s virtue? We a r e all ready to arraign criminals. We shout at. the top of our voice, “Stop thief!” and when the police get on the track we cdnle out hatless and in our slippers and assist Sn the arrest. We come round the bawling ruffian and hustle him off to justice, and when ho gets in prison what do we do for him? With great gusto we put on the; handcuffs and the hopples, but what preparation are we making for the day when the handcuffs and hopples come off? Society seems to say to these criminals, ■“Villain, go in there and rot!” when it ought to say. “You are an offender against the law, but we mean to give you an opportunity to repent; we mean to help yon. Here are Bibles and tracts and Christian influences. Christ died for you. Txx>k and live.” Vast improvements have hcen made by introducing industry into the prison, but we want something more than hammers and shoe lasts to reclaim these people. Aye, we want more than sermons on the Sabbath day. Society must impress these' men with the fact that it does not enjoy their suffering and that it is attempting to reform and elevate them. The majority of criminals suppose that society has a grudge against them, and they in turn have a grudge against society.

Why 80 Many Go Back. They are harder in heart and more infuriate when they come out of jail than when they went in. Many people who go to prison go again and again and again. Some years ago, of 1,500 prisoners who during the year hnd been in Sing Sing 4(H) trad been there before. In a house of correction in the country, where during a certain reach of time there hnd been 5,000 people, more than 3,000 had been there trcfore. So. in one case the prison nnd in the other case the house of correction left them just as bad as they were before. I hare no sympathy with that executive clemency which would let crime run loose or which would sit in the gallery of a court room weeping because some hard hearted wretch is brought to justice, but I do say that the safety and life of the community demand more potential influences m behalf of these offenders. I stepped into one of the prisons of one of our great cities and the air was like that of the Black Hole of Calcutta. As the air swept through the wicket it alcnoet knocked me down. No sunlight. Young men who had committed their first crime crowded in among old offenders. I caw there one woman, with a child almost blind, who had been arrested for the crime of poverty, who was waiting until the slow law could take her to the almshouse, where she rightfully belonged, but she > was thnwt in there with her child, amid the most abandoned wretches of the town. Beery hoar these jails stand they challeace the Lord Almighty to smite the

cities. I call upon the people to rise in their wrath and demand a reformation. I call upon the judges of our courts to expose the infamy. I demand, in behalf of those incarcerated prisoners, fresh air and clear sunlight, and, in the name of him who had not where to lay his head, a couch to rest on at night. Bad Men in Places of Power. In this class of uprooting and devouring population are untrustworthy officials. “Woe unto thee, O land, when thy king is a child and thy princes drink in the morning!” It is a great calamity to a city when bad men get into public authority. Why was it that in New York there was such unparalleled crime between 1866 and 1871 ? It was because the judges of police in that city for the most part were as corrupt as the vagabonds that came before them for trial. Those were the days of high carnival for election frauds, assassination and forgery. We had the “whisky ring,” and the “Tammany ring,” and the “Erie ring.” There was one man during those years that got $128,000 in one year for serving the public. In a few years it was estimated that there were $50,000,000 of public treasure squandered. In those times the criminal had only to wink to the judge, or his lawyer would wink for him, and the'question was decided for the defendant. Of the 8,000 people arrested in that city in one year only 3,000 were punished. These little matters were “fixed up,” while the interests of society were “fixed down.” Let it be known in this country that crime will have no quarter; that the detectives are after it; that the police club is being brandished; that the iron door of the prison is being opened; that the judge is ready to call the case. Too great leniency to criminals is too great severity to society.

The Menace of the Idle. Among the uprooting and devouring classes in our midst are the idle. Of course I do not refer to the people who are getting old or to the sick or to those who cannot get work, but I tell you to look out for those athletic men and women who will not work. When the French nobleman was asked why he kept busy when he had so large a property, he said: “I keep on engraving so I may not hang myself.” J do not care who the man is, he cannot afford to be idle. It is from the idle classes that the criminal passes are made up. Character, like watpt, gets putrid if it stands still too long. Who can wonder that in this world, where there is so much to do and all the hosts of earth and heaven and hell are plunging into the conflict and angels are flying and God is at work and the universe is a-quake with the marching and countermarching, God lets his indignation fall upon a man who chooses idleness? I have watched these do-nothings who spend their time stroking their beard and retouching their toilet and criticising industrious people and pass their days and nights in barrooms and club houses, lounging and smoking and chewing and card playing. They are not only useless, but they are dangerous. How hard it is for them to while away the hours!

Alas, for them! If they do not know how to while away an hour, what will they do when they have all eternity on their hands? These men for awhile smoke the best cigars and wear the best broadcloth and move in the highest spheres, but I have noticed that very soon they come down to the prison, the almshouse or stop at the gallows. The police stations of two of our cities furnish annually 200,000 lodgings. For the most part, these 200,000 lodgings are furnished to able-bodied men and women —people as able to work as you and I are. When they are received no longer at one police station, because they are “repeaters,” they go to some other station, and so they keep moving around. They get their food nt house doors, stealing what they can lay their hands on in the front basement while the servant is spreading the bread in the back basement. They will not work. Time and again, Tn the country districts, they have wanted hundreds and thousands of laborers. These men will not go. They do not want to work. I have tried them. I have set them to sawing wood in my cellar, to see whether they wanted to work. I offered to pay them well for it. I have heard the saw going for about three minutes, and'then I went down, and 10, the wood, but no saw!

Two Million Loafers. They are the pest of society, and they stand in the way of the Lord’s poor, who ought to be helped, and will be helped. While there are thousands of industrious men who cannot get any work, these men who do not want any work come in and make that plea at night at public expense in the station house; during the day, getting their food at your doorstep. Imprisonment does not scare them. They would like it. Blackwell’s Island or Moyamensing prison would be a comfortable home for them. They would have no objection to the almshouse, for they like thin soup, if they cannot get mock turtle. I like for that class of people the scant bill of fare that Paul wrote out for the Thessalonian loafers, “If any work not, neither should he eat.” By what law of God or man is it right that you and I should toil day in and day out until our hands are blistered and our arms ache and our brain gets numb, and then be called upon to support what in the United States are about 2,000,000 loafers? They are a very dangerous class. Let the public authorities keep their eyes on them. Among the uprooting classes I place the oppressed poor. Poverty to a certain extent is chastening. But after that, when it drives a man to the wall and he hears his children cry in yain for bread, it sometimes makes him desperate. I think that there are thousands of honest men lacerated into vagabondism. There are men crushed under burdens for which they are not half paid. While there is no excuse for criminality, even in oppression, I state it as a simple "net that much of the scoundrelism of th community is consequent upon ill treatment. There are many men and women battered and bruised, and stung until the hour of despair has come, and they stand with the ferocity of a wild beast which, pursued until it can run no longer, turns round, forming and bleeding, to fight the hounds. There is a vast underground city life that is appalling and shameful. It wallows and steams with putrefaction. You go down the stairs, which are wet and decayed with filth, and at the bottom you find the poor victims on the floor cold, sick, three-fourths dead, slinking into a still darker corner under the gleam of the lantern of the police. There has not been a breath of fresh air in that room for five years literally. There they are—men, women, children; blacks, whites; Mary Magdalene without her repentance and Lazarus without his God. These are the “dives” into which the pickpockets and the thieves go, as well as a great many I who would like n different life, but cannot

get it. These places are the sores of the rity which bleed perpetual corruption. They are the underlying volcano that threatens us with a Caracas earthquake. It rolls and roars and surges and heaves and rocks and blasphemes and dies. And there are only two outlets for it—the police court and the potter’s field. In other words, they must either go to prison Or to hell. Oh, you never saw it, you say! You never will see it until on the day when these staggering wretches shall come up in the light of the judgment throne and while all hearts are being revealed God will ask you what you did to help them. The Honest Poor. There is another layer of poverty and destitution —not so squalid, but admost-as helpless. You hear their incessant wailing for bread and clothes and fire. Their eyes are sunken. Their cheek bones stand out. Their hands are damp with slow consumption. Their flesh is puffed up with dropsies. Their breath is like that of a charnel house. They hear the roar of the wheels of fashion overhead and the gay laughter of men and maidens and wonder why God gave to others so much and to them so little; some of them thrust into an infidelity like that of the poor German girl who, when told jn the midst of her wretchedness that God was good, she said: “No; no good God. Just look at me. No good God.”

In these American cities, whose cry of want I interpret, there are hundreds and thousands of honest poor who are dependent upon individual, city and State charities. If all their voices could come up at once, it would be a groan that would shake the foundations of the city and bring all earth and heaven to the rescue. But. for the most part, it suffers unexpressed. It sits in silence, gnashing its teeth and sucking the blood of its own arteries, waiting for the judgment day. Oh, I should not wonder if on that day it would be found out that some of us had some things that belonged to them, some extra garment which might have made them comfortable on cold days; some bread thrust into the ash barrel that might have appeased their hunger for a little while; some wasted candle or gas jet that might have kindled up their sickness; some fresco on the ceiling that would have given them a roof; some jewel which, brought to that orphan girl in time, might have kept her from being crowded off the precipices of an unclean life; some New Testament that would have told them of him who “came to seek and to save that which was lost!” Oh, this wave of vagrancy and hunger and nakedness that dashes against our front doorstep. I wonder if you hear it and see it as much as I hear it and see it! I have been almost frenzied with the perpetual cry for help from all classes and from all nations, knocking, knocking, ringing, ringing. If the roofs of all the houses of destitution could be lifted so we could look down into them just as God looks, whose nerves would be strong enough to stand it? And yet there they are.

The Highest Seats. The sewing women, some of them in hunger and cold, working night after night, until sometimes the blood spurts from nostril and lip—how well their grief was voiced by that despairing woman who stood by her invalid husband and invalid child and said to the city missionary: “I am downhearted. Everything’s against us, and then there are other things.” “What other things?” said the city missionary. “Oh,” she replied, “my sin.” “What do you mean by that?” “Well,” she said, “I never hear or see anything good. It’s work from Monday morning to Saturday night, and then when Sunday comes I can’t go out, and I walk the floor, and it makes me tremble to think that I have got to meet God. Oh, sir, it’s so hard for us. We have to work so, and then we have so much trouble, and then we are getting along so poorly, and see this wee little thing growing weaker and weaker, and then to think we are getting no nearer to God, but floating away from him—oh, sir, I do wish I was ready to die!” I should not wonder if they had a good deal better time than we in the future to make up for the fact that they had such a bad time here. It would be just like Jesus to soy: “Come up and take the highest seats. You suffered with me on earth. Now be glorified with me in heaven.” O thou weeping One of Bethany! O thou dying One of the cross!. Have mercy on the starving, freezing, homeless poor of these great cities! A Holier Baptism. I want you to know who are the uprooting classes of society. I want you to be more discriminating in your charities. I want your hearts open with generosity and your hands open with charity. I want you to be made the sworn friends of all city evangelism, and all newsboys’ lodging houses, and all children’s aid societies. Aye, I want you to send the Dorcas Society all the cast-off clothing, that under the skillful manipulation of the wives and mothers and sisters and daughters these garments may be fitted on the cold, bare feet tnd on the shivering limbs of the destitute. I should not wonder if that hat that you give should come back a jeweled coronet, or that garment that you this week hand out from your wardrobe should mysteriously be whitened and somehow wrought into the Saviour’s own robe, so in the last day he would run his hand over it and say, “I was naked and ye clothed me.” That would be putting your garments to glorious uses.

Besides all this, I want you to appreciate in the contrast how very kindly God has dealt with you in your comfortable homes, at your well filled tables and at the warm registers, and to have you look at the round faces of your children and then at the review of God’s goodness to you go to your room and lock the door and kneel down and say: “O Lord, I have been an ingrate! Make me thy child. O Lord, there are so many hungry and unclad and unsheltered to-day, I thank thee that all my life thou hast taken such good care of me! O Lord, there are so many sick and crippled children to-day, I thank thee mine are well, some of them on earth, some of them in heaven! Thy goodness, O Lord, breaks me down! Take me once and forever. Sprinkled as I was many years ago at the altar, while my mother held me, now I consecrate my soul to thee in a holier baptism of repenting tears. “For sinners. Lord, thou cam'st to bleed, And I’m a sinner vile indeed. Lord, I believe thy grace is free. Oh, magnify that grace in me!” Copyright. 1887. The Crowd.—ln the rural populations, the individual is the chief factor, in the city “the crowd.” There need be no conflict between these two elements If there be sincere efforts to recognize them. Indeed, there can not be, for the individual is also a part of “the” crowd, or of some crowd.—Rev. W- M. Lawrenty Baptist, Chicago, HL