I said it seemed a contradiction, and yet only seemed so. It is because I am sure your sufferings have been _in spite_ of your homes, not because of any _lack_ of them. Standing the other day on a mountain-side in New Hampshire, with a matchless view stretching out before me, I said to my friend, the good rector and faithful pastor of the parish: “Here everybody must surely be good. How can they help it?”
He looked at me sadly and said, pointing to the scattered farms lying so peacefully in the landscape: “If you could go with me into those homes and see the things I see in too many of them you would quit your Mulberry Bend and transfer your battle with the slum to our hillsides.”
I think, if you will permit me to say it, that your great and splendid city has been I am almost tempted to say pauperized in its citizenship by great wealth and perilous prosperity; by a pampered prosperity that is not good for anybody in the long run. However, that is politics, which I shall not discuss. The President of the United States says that my opinion in that quarter is no good at all, and you are free to adopt his view. I will endorse his views—most of them—anywhere. I seek in mine an explanation of the civic apathy that has betrayed your town, as it has mine, into the grasp of a boss and of boss politics. It may be that I am mistaken. It may be that I put too much of the blame on the piggeries. I used to say that a man cannot be expected to live like a pig and vote like a man, and I had reference to the tenements, some of which surely deserve to be called by no other name. I was very sure of my ground until the industrial troubles of the last summer seemed to cut it partly from under me; for then I had people who were well-to-do, educated, and who ought to know better, right in my own town, come and upbraid me for always fighting the battle with the slum. “What is the use?” they said; “they won’t be content.” Since that time I have thought that perhaps there may be pigs in parlors, too. No, thank God, they will _not_ be content. Let me say right here, so that we may understand one another, that the whole of my manhood’s life has been given and what remains of it will be given, please God, to fighting the things, _all of them_, that go to debase and degrade manhood and womanhood; so I understand a Christian’s duty.