Part 11 (2/2)

He must be touched by an integrating force, a dynamic power, capable of revealing and developing the inherent best in him and contributing to him of the essential best in America.

”Religion alone answers this need in fullest measure. It is the great quickening power which can resolve ancient inheritance of personal and race antagonisms and hatreds into a struggle for higher individual and community welfare.”

Eternally true are the Master's words, ”Man cannot live by bread alone”; he must have the spiritual communion which can give to him and to society the uplifting conception of the Fatherhood of G.o.d and the brotherhood of man. This is the great integrating, harmonizing power that the church of Christ must bring to the solving of America's insistent immigrant problem.

Before taking up in detail the study of what Home Missions is actually accomplis.h.i.+ng as an integrating force, let us turn briefly to consider some of the powerful disintegrating factors operative among immigrants and their children.

Second to the great fact of labor and its demands in our cities is the need and demand for recreation. The reaction from the monotony of factory life, with its exacting, fatiguing tension of machine-tending, and the crowdedness of the tenement home, sends the laboring mult.i.tudes into the streets at night seeking diversion and amus.e.m.e.nt. This is pre-eminently true of the young, who find commercialism waiting at night to ”extract from them their petty wages by pandering to their love of pleasure” after having utilized their undeveloped labor power in its factories and shops by day.

Jane Addams says, ”The whole apparatus for supplying pleasure is wretchedly inadequate and full of danger to whomsoever may approach it.

”Who is responsible for its inadequacy and dangers? We certainly cannot expect the fathers and mothers who have come to the city from farms or who have immigrated from other lands to appreciate or rectify these dangers of the city.

”We cannot expect the young people themselves to cling to conventions which are totally unsuited to modern city conditions, nor yet to be equal to the task of forming new conventions through which this more agglomerate social life may express itself.

”The ma.s.s of these young people are possessed of good intentions and would respond to amus.e.m.e.nts less demoralizing and dangerous, if such were available at no greater cost than those now offered.

”Our att.i.tude toward music is typical of our carelessness toward all these things which make for common joy.”

The vicious, sensuous music of the dance hall, with accompanying words, often indecent and full of vulgar, suggestive appeal, are permitted a vogue throughout the entire country.

No diagnosing of the immigrant city problem or understanding of the task of securing civic righteousness can be obtained by Home Mission women without realizing the place and influence of amus.e.m.e.nts upon the lives of the young people of our land.

A noted English playwright stated that ”the theatre is literally making the minds of our urban population to-day. It is a huge factory of sentiment, of character, of points of honor, of conception, of conduct, of everything that finally determines the destiny of a nation.”

Hundreds, yes, thousands of young people attend the five-cent theatres every night, including Sunday, receiving the constant effect of vulgar music and a debased and often vulgar and suggestive dramatic art.

”Many immigrant parents,” says Jane Addams, ”are absolutely bewildered by the keen absorption of their children in the cheap theatres.

”One Sunday evening recently an investigation was made of four hundred and sixty-six theatres in the city of Chicago, and it was discovered that in the majority of them the leading theme was revenge, the lover following his rival, the outraged husband seeking his wife's paramour, or similar themes. It was estimated that one-sixth of the entire population of the city had attended the theatres on that day.”

The same would generally be true of other large cities.

Nor is this low and vicious standard of cheap amus.e.m.e.nts confined to large cities; it is bound to prevail also where our backward people come into contact with white villages and communities. The c.o.c.k fights and other demoralizing amus.e.m.e.nts of Spanish-speaking peoples and the dances of the Indians must be superseded by entertainment that is wholesome and helpful.

Through its own agencies and as it co-operates with others for betterment Home Missions must take into account the urgent demand for wholesome amus.e.m.e.nt for those who, on account of the conditions of their environment, are so much in need of the cheer and joy of attractive and elevating forms of entertainment.

Home Missions responds to the cry of the city's need through the ministry of the deaconess, who in turn is nurse, or visitor, or leader of kindergarten, day nursery, rescue home, or orphanage.

A gentle-voiced Italian mother it was whose ten children filled to overflowing the three-room tenement home, one room of which was without means of light or air. She lifted to her arms the youngest child of less than a year, clad in one ragged little garment, while she seated herself to tell in broken English and with many gestures her story to the deaconess who came to see if she could help about the oldest boy, who was giving trouble. The woman said she had been married in Italy when only fourteen years of age and was now thirty-one.

She had come to America when her second child was a baby. Her husband was a longsh.o.r.eman and earned twelve dollars a week for the support of the family of twelve. They were looking forward soon to the help of the earnings of the oldest child, a boy not quite fourteen. This boy was the problem! To escape the uproar and confusion of the crowded rooms he spent his time when he could escape from school, on the street. A gang adopted him. He was ill-nourished, and his teachers suspected him of receiving and using cocaine. Poor little sc.r.a.p of humanity! with a hungry, craving body and no room for soul, mind or body to develop but the corrupting street, with its saloons and its gangs! From such a childhood he is destined soon to join the ranks of labor. Will he add to the number of America's criminals or can he possibly enter the ranks of good citizens.h.i.+p? If he were simply an individual case it would still be inexpressibly sad, but, alas, he stands for thousands in our land.

The deaconess will do her utmost for his rescue, but we cannot wonder at her feeling that great fundamental, preventive measures must be taken by the church and society to wipe out the city slums and all that they stand for of pestilential evil.

Of great significance are the disintegrating efforts of certain groups of socialists and anarchists who by means of Sunday-schools gather children of immigrants largely to inculcate in them the peculiar principles and doctrines of anarchism and their brand of socialism, as well as to crush out of their thought all idea of G.o.d and love and obedience to Him. These Sunday-schools, so destructive of all that is best and highest in the child soul, flourish in New York, Brooklyn, Chicago and other large cities.

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