The greater the city, the greater the sore.
It necessarily follows that New York, being the greatest city in the union, is the vilest sore on our body politic.
If any one doubts it, let him live in New York awhile and keep his eyes and ears open.
The trouble about great cities is not that they have any impetus or influence especially their own, but that every one, from the vilest all the way up to the best, is compelled by circumstances of city life to often conduct his own daily walk and conversation on lines which are not entirely natural, and which never can be made so.
It would be useless to deny that in every large city may be found a number of the best men and women that humanity has been able to evolve. In the great cities are found many of our wisest statesmen, our greatest theologians, our best business men, and a host of lesser, but perhaps not less important individuals, whose influence{482} for good upon the world is known and recognized everywhere. Nevertheless, these are exceptions to the rule. They are not what they are because of the city; they are in the city simply because it gives them a better centre and starting-place for whatever work may be incumbent upon them.
The first deadening influence of the city is that no one knows any one else. Of course every one has some acquaintances, and some people are said to be in the best society and to know everybody, but “everybody” is a relative term, and it never means as much in the largest city as it does in a village of a thousand people. The postman knows everybody by name, and so does the tax-collector and the man who brings you your gas bill, but individual acquaintance—the touch of elbow—the touch of nature that makes the world akin, must not be looked for in any large city in the union, least of all in New York, which in spite of two hundred and fifty years of existence, is still so new comparatively that almost all of its prominent citizens were born somewhere else. The names of prominent Americans who reside in New York will naturally occur to any one, yet it is quite safe to say that not one of these gentlemen know by sight and name, let alone by personal acquaintance, more than one person in five who reside within a two-minute walk of his house.
An ex-cabinet officer, a gentleman whose varied{483} abilities have made him known throughout the civilized world, was once asked who was his neighbor on the right. The houses of the two men touched each other, as two houses must, in the city of New York, but the wise and largely acquainted gentleman was obliged to say that he did not know. When the questioner informed him that the person occupying the adjoining house was a notorious thief for whom the police had been long in search, he was astonished and shocked. Nevertheless, when he a few months afterward had his house robbed and drove about violently in a cab in search of the police captain of his precinct, it took him an hour to discover that the said police official resided next door to him on the left. Afterward he was teased about his lack of knowledge of his neighbors, and he admitted frankly that, although he was a man without “airs,” and had always made it a custom to fraternize freely with his fellow-men, he knew but two individuals who resided on the same block with himself, and one of these was his own grocer, who occupied a store on the corner.
“If this is so with the green tree, what must it be with the dry?” Men whose sole business is to earn their daily living are glad to find a decent roof over their heads anywhere in a large city and drop into the best place they can find, regardless of who may be their neighbors, and utterly unable to devote any time to their neighbors,{484} even should they be fortunate enough to become acquainted with them. Neighborhood feeling and sentiment, which is of incalculable benefit in all communities not thickly settled, has no influence whatever in a large city. A man may not only live in a house between two people of whom he knows nothing, but the great value of ground in the city of New York and the limited area has compelled the erection of a number of buildings known as “flat” and “apartment” and “tenement” houses, and very few men know the people who live under the same roof with themselves.
An amusing story is told of a couple of editors, who were questioned about each other and each replied that he had not the honor of the other’s acquaintance. The answer seemed to puzzle those who heard it, and the subsequent remarks elicited a demand for an explanation, when it was learned that these two men, members of the same profession, and both entirely reputable citizens, had been residing in the same building for six months; but as one was at home only by daylight, and the other only at night, they had never chanced to meet under their own roof.
Of course, if such ignorance may come in the ordinary course of events regarding entirely respectable people, cities must form an admirable hiding-place for disreputable and dangerous characters of all sorts. The time was when a{485} man detected in crime thought it advisable to run away from a large city. But nowadays he knows better. He stays as near home as possible, knowing that there are numberless opportunities for keeping himself entirely out of sight and out of mind of every one who ever knew him. Defaulters who have a great deal of money in their pockets, and also those who have none at all, occasionally find it desirable to go to Canada or Europe, but the rogue who has two or three thousand dollars to spare knows perfectly well that by keeping in-doors in New York he can absolutely escape detection. The police may know him by sight, but the keepers of boarding-houses do not, neither do their servants; and so long as he will remain in his room, have his meals sent to him, and take his exercise and outings only after dark in such disguise as any one can improvise at very short notice, he is entirely safe from detection. One of the bank defaulters who ranks as one of the most successful in the annals of such crime in the city of New York, was looked for in Canada and all over Europe for eight months, and finally by accident was discovered in a boarding-house only two squares away from his original place of residence.
Criminals when not actually plying their vocation generally go to large cities, for two reasons; first, to spend their ill-gotten gains in pleasure,{486} and secondly, that as a rule cities are the best hiding-places.
For the same reason that causes desperate criminals to hide in the larger cities, all persons who have in their lives any features which they wish to conceal, find the cities preferable places of residence. One man of large property and some national prominence died a few years ago in the city in which he had been doing business for thirty years, and after he died it was discovered that he had nine wives living, from no one of whom had he ever separated through the formality of a divorce. Each of these nine women imagined herself his one and only wife. Any man, who has formed an undesirable alliance in business or in love or otherwise, knows that with very little trouble he can hide all traces of his mischief by going to a large city to live.
An inevitable consequence is that the number of able but undesirable characters who exist in the cities, having left other places for the good of those who are left behind, have a depressing influence upon the moral atmosphere of other classes of residents. Men meet men whom they never saw before, and whom they are obliged to judge entirely by appearance and professions. It is the same in business as it is in society. Not a year passes in which some adventurer does not impose himself for a time upon the best society of New York and of other cities. And{487} although it would seem that his antecedents might easily be discovered upon the basis of such information as he may feel obliged to give about himself, the fact remains that society is “taken in” quite as often as banks and business men and private individuals. Several years ago a notorious scamp, who had been in several State-prisons, came to New York, organized a business firm, took a large store, was discovered in the course of time to be carrying on operations closely akin to stealing, and when his record was thoroughly searched and sifted by the police, it was discovered that his victims were principally the largest wholesale establishments in the city of New York—establishments which employed a number of men for the sole purpose of investigating the character and resources of any one applying to them for credit or for any business relations beyond ordinary purchases for cash.
These smart scamps, who are a hundred times as numerous as the newspaper disclosures would lead the public to imagine, have a terribly demoralizing influence upon the young men who flock to the city from all parts of the rural districts as well as upon those who are brought up in the city. To see a rascal succeed has a bad effect upon any one. Even the most righteous man will mournfully quote from Scripture that “the wicked shall flourish as the green bay tree;” that “their eyes stand out with fatness;{488} they have more than heart can wish,” where the respectable man has to lie awake nights to devise ways and means of paying his coal-bill and avoiding trouble with his landlord. Business enterprises containing any amount of promise are organized, forced upon the public by smart schemers of whom no one knows anything, and all of them succeed in obtaining a great deal of money. When discovery comes, as of course it must come sooner or later, the villain never makes restitution to any extent and is never adequately punished for his crime. So, the citizen who pretends to be respectable, but always has an eye out for the main chance, is moved by such examples to see whether he cannot do something sharp himself, and get away before the crash comes.
Society in large cities is said to be exclusive. It must be, for its own protection. It cannot possibly be too exclusive. People with and without letters of introduction succeed in forming acquaintances, becoming part of one or another social set, even get into the churches, open bank accounts, go into business, and a year or two afterward are discovered to have antecedents which would make a person of ordinary respectability hold up his hands in horror. Such occurrences have been so common, and the individuals concerned have so often been not only men but women, that the exclusiveness of city society{489} extends even to the churches and school-rooms. The half-grown child attending a public or private school is warned against making any acquaintances whatever except with the children of families whom its parents already know. The member of a church may have a stranger shown into his pew again and again on Sundays, and extend to him the courtesy of an open prayer-book or hymnal, but in self-defence he is compelled to stop at that. The cordiality, freedom of speech, and general recognition, which is the custom in small towns and in rural districts throughout the world, is denied the prudent inhabitant of a city, no matter how hearty his inclination may be to extend a welcoming hand to every one whom he may meet. Young men entering society, young women seen for the first time in some social circle, are at first regarded very much as a stranger entering a mining town in the West, where it is supposed no one goes unless he has good reason to get away from his original home.
Nowhere in the world are there more charitable hearts with plenty of money behind them than in large cities, yet nowhere else is there more suffering. Your next-door neighbor may be starving to death and you not know anything about it. You know nothing of his comings and nothing of his goings; he knows nothing of you, and if he has any spirit whatever, and any{490} respect for himself, he would rather apply to the police or to the authorities in charge of the poor than to the people living nearest to him. Whenever the newspapers of a city make some startling disclosure of destitution and suffering a number of purses open instantly, and frequently some of the sufferers have received gifts from their own landlords, who actually did not know of the name and existence of the tenant. A judge of the Supreme Court of the city of New York has long been known as a frequent and prompt visitor in person to all individuals reported as in destitute condition and deserving of immediate assistance, yet he said once to his own pastor, and to his own physician also, who chanced to be present, that the great sorrow of his life was, that he was utterly incapacitated by the conditions of city life from discovering for himself the whereabouts of individuals whom he would gladly assist with his pocket and his counsel.
As nobody knows anybody in the large cities, what is called the floating population have everything their own way, each one for himself. Business wrongs that would not be tolerated for an instant in a smaller community are perpetrated with entire impunity in the large cities. The poorer classes have no strong friend or acquaintance to complain to. Were they in a smaller place they would know some one; probably they would know everybody of any consequence, and{491} also be known, and could quickly bring public sentiment to their aid, but in a large city there is no such opportunity. The only hope of the oppressed is in the courts, which always are overcrowded with business, and can give very little time to any one, and in the press, which is also overcrowded with work, and should not be charged with this sort of responsibility.
Temptation will exist wherever humanity is found, but for a concentration of all temptations, graded to suit all capacities of human weakness, the great city stands pre-eminent. There is no vice that cannot be committed in it—committed with reasonable assurance that it will not be discovered. A man whose habits are apparently correct, who has no known vices, whose daily manner with his fellow-men seems all that it should be, may with entire safety change his manner at night, and re-enact the drama of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It is worse than that. He not only may, but in a great many instances he does. Any man whose business compels him to know a number of persons by sight, and whose hours of duty keep him out-of-doors in the “wee sma’ hours,” occasionally sees things which stagger him. He sees citizens of good repute in company which any village loafer would be ashamed to be seen in by his own acquaintances. He sees policemen taking charge of men who by daylight the police of their own locality regard{492} with extreme respect. He sees the high and the low mingle on the same level, and from their manners he would not be able to know one from the other. Newspapers are sometimes blamed for publishing sensational stories, which reminds me of a remark once made by the famous Parson Brownlow, of East Tennessee. He was called to account one day for using profane language, he being a minister of the gospel. “If you knew,” said he, “how many cuss words I hold in, you would not blame me for the few I let out.” If the newspapers were to print all the sensational stories which come to them they would have to double the size of their sheets, and still they would have no room for any decent news whatever.
I repeat it, great cities are great sores, and it is to the interest of every one that they should in some way be extracted from the body politic and be allowed and compelled to maintain a separate existence. I know that the parallel is not exact, but such things have been done in some cases. The city is a millstone about the neck of the State in almost all cases. Whatever may be the political preference of the reader, he must admit the fact that the single city of New York politically dominates the State, although containing only about one-fourth of the population, and that the expressed will and intention of a large majority of the voters of the State outside the metropolis{493} is steadily neutralized by a great majority composed principally of ignorant persons who infest a great city. The evil has impressed itself strongly upon the minds of publicists and journalists of all degrees to such an extent that the suggestion has often been made that the city should be allowed a separate organization by and in itself, somewhat analogous to the position once held by the free cities of Germany. In such case, whatever may be the ultimate political results, the fact would remain that each portion of the divided community would have its own will distinctly expressed, whereas at present one neutralizes the other. New York has been making the attempt for years by a series of special governments by commission, the origin being in special enactments by the legislature at Albany. The results have not been successful, but the trouble was not lack of principle in the enactments, but in the individuals selected to carry on the experiment. The suggestion however continues to be made. Similar plans have been mentioned regarding some other large cities of the United States. And it is not impossible that all of them may be granted “home rule” in the strictest sense, and that the States at large will thus escape the city rule to which at present they are being subjected.{494}
THE DARKER SIDE.
What already has been said about the evils of city life and influence may seem bad enough, but there is another side that is worse. Crime and license affect the human mind strongly when brought before it as the cause of a large amount of irregularity, but the public heart is more quickly and firmly impressed by the knowledge of suffering.
The amount of suffering that exists in all large cities merely through enforced conditions of life passes power of expression. No one has ever yet been able to do the subject justice. Many who have worked among the poor have lost life and hope, and mind itself, in contemplation of the suffering and sorrow which they have witnessed and been unable to relieve. To attempt to care for the poor of a large city affects one very much like an effort to pour water into a sieve; the demand is continual, yet nothing seems to be effected.
Almost everywhere outside of the cities it is assumed at the beginning that those who suffer through their poverty in large cities are either indolent or vicious. A more cruel mistake could not possibly be made. There are many idlers in any large city, as a matter of course, but the great majority of the people work hard to keep soul and body together. The largest gathering{495} of idlers that any occurrence can bring together does not equal in numbers the procession which one may see in five minutes’ time on any thoroughfare during regular hours of going to work or returning home.
Join or Log In!
You need to log in to continue reading
(Left Keyword <-) Previous:
CHAPTER XIX. BANKS AND BANKING.
Back
Next:
CHAPTER XXI. RELIGION.
(Right Keyword:->)