[11] In a simpler state master and man,
neighbor and neighbor, know each other, and
there is that touch of the
elbow which, in times
of danger, enables
society to rally. But present tendencies
are to the loss of this. In London, dwellers in one house do not
know those
in the next;
the tenants
of adjoining
rooms are utter strangers to each other.
Let civil
conflict break or paralyze the authority that preserves
order and the
vast population
would
become a
terror-stricken mob, without point of
rally or principle
of cohesion, and your London would be sacked
and burned by an army of thieves.
London is only
the greatest of great cities. What is
true of London is true of New York, and in
the same measure true of
the many cities
whose hundreds
of thousands
are steadily growing toward millions.
These vast
aggregations of humanity, where he who seeks isolation
may
find it more
truly than
in the desert;
where wealth and poverty touch and jostle;
where one revels and another starves
within a few feet of each other, yet
separated by as great a gulf as that fixed
between Dives in Hell
and Lazarus in Abraham's
bosom — they
are centers and types of our civilization.
Let jar or shock dislocate the complex
and delicate organization, let the policeman's
club be thrown down or wrested from him,
and the fountains of the
great deep
are opened,
and
quicker than
ever before chaos comes again. Strong
as it may seem,
our civilization is evolving destructive
forces. Not desert and forest,
but city
slums and country
roadsides are nursing the barbarians
who may be to the new what Hun and Vandal
were
to the old.
[21] The intelligence required for the solving of social problems
is not a thing of the mere intellect. It must be animated with the
religious sentiment
and warm with sympathy for human suffering. It must stretch out beyond self-interest,
whether it be the self-interest of the few or of the many. It must seek justice.
For at the bottom of every social problem we will find a social wrong. ...
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