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reports of these Settlements state that they never have a dull evening, no matter what the weather; the "Poor Man's Lawyer" meets his clients, rain, hail, or shine. In many reported instances wrongs have been redressed. For example:

"One poor fellow injured his foot by slipping into a copper of molten lead which was not properly protected. He was consequently incapacitated for work for months. At the end of a few weeks he was asked to sign a paper in receipt for the wages paid up to then, and to repudiate all further claim upon his employers. He consulted the Poor Man's Lawyer and we wrote a respectful letter urging a claim, on two doctors' certificates, for a more substantial amount. Fifty dollars, in addition to wages which had already been paid, was offered in settlement, which we urged our client to refuse, advising him to threaten proceedings if a larger amount was not offered. The end of it was that he received in all $100 and a promise of work. » #

It will be sufficient in this connection to point out four ways in which the social problem is being aided by such organizations as those briefly described: (1) They tend to mitigate the class suspicion which exists between the "higher" and "lower" strata of society; (2) they create a better spirit in the local political life; (3) they assist by undertaking the statistical study of the condition of labor in small areas; and (4) they contribute by the examples of wisdom and temperance which are afforded in the character of the workers.

1. The University Settlement tends to mitigate class distinctions. The rich and the poor are suspicious of one another. The poor man suspects the philanthropy of the rich man, and when it comes to a matter of votes he thinks that he is wanted only that the "boss" may get a place for himself. The rich, on their side, suspect the poor; they dare not provoke them for fear that they may revolt; they read the newspapers and view with alarm the growth of poor men's organizations. And this habit of suspicion is deep-seated. Wherever it exists there is a slumbering volcano, of which strikes are the premonitory symptoms.

The Social Settlement has shaken the force of this fact, to some extent, by its very method. It is, to begin with, nonpartisan and knows no color. In politics each man does what he thinks is right; union is in the essentials of good govern

* Report of Mansfield House and Browning Hall, London.

ment. In religion all the Settlements, or nearly all, are unsectarian, and in this way the dogmatic odium which is the curse of theological polemics is entirely lacking. Thus these organizations escape the three great sources of corruption,partisan zeal, religious rancor, and color. This must make for peace. Republicans and Democrats receive new ideas of politics and of religion from such a sight as the activities of a University Settlement affords. It should not be inferred, however, that these organizations are indifferent. The secretary of the Citizens' Union, which ran Seth Low for mayor of New York, was Mr. J. B. Reynolds, director of the New York University Settlement, and the influence of this Settlement in that memorable election cannot be understood as resting on anything but intense devotion to politics,- but not party politics.

But not only in these broad relations is suspicion mitigated, but also in the friendly relations of the workers and the community. There is an increase of good will to be expected as a result of the very candid way rich men and poor mingle in meetings which are free from cant or the goody-goody at these Settlements. The men who direct these institutions are in many cases men of wealth and always men of high scholarship. The fact that they live among the poor, share their life, and help them share theirs, is in itself a proof of good will; for it cannot be supposed that these men and women live in the slums of their own will, but in obedience to the great principle, "Not money, but yourselves." It is not, of course, to be expected that results will be startling; but it is obvious that if the social question is to be solved, the first step is a more perfect understanding between the extremes of the social scale. To this work the University Settlement is contributing in a positive way as I have shown.

2. They create a better spirit in local politics. They have helped forward the reaction against the machine in its extreme forms, than which I suppose there is no greater foe of freedom in politics, especially local politics. For the so-called sacredness of party is often synonymous with the supremacy of the machine, and this in turn means the control of the boss. In the poorer parts of our great cities the corruption is necessarily greater, owing to the greater need and the facility of bribery. Of course we cannot get along

in politics without parties, machines, and bosses; but when the emphasis is placed upon these and not upon the great work of raising society, it is time to call a halt. Now it is the method of the Settlement always to coöperate with local government boards and their officials, though disclaiming any adherence to their political standpoint; in this way they directly influence them for good.

In London, Toynbee and her numerous progeny have done a great work in raising the tone of local government. They have in many instances put up their own candidate for election to school boards, boards of guardians, and boards of trade, and in scores of cases they have succeeded in securing his or her election. This means, as suggested above, definite work in securing obedience to existing law and agitating the poor man's demands for reform. In New York the Citizens' Union was served by the University Settlement and its secretary, and no one can say that a cleaner, more straightforward canvass was ever conducted in this country than that of Seth Low and the committees who had his prospects in charge. Through efforts like these good results come about, which even the evildoer shares. In Whitechapel, London, the London County Council has been moved to establish a library. A library in Whitechapel! Political parties have been induced to adopt social reforms; the police have been compelled to enforce order in back streets; the rights of women and children have been defended, by the members of the University Settlements. These devoted men do what machinery - because it is machinery — cannot do. They exert personal force; they look at supply and demand directly and not through the medium of taxes; they adapt themselves to changing circumstances; they are not afraid of the bugbear of "consistency;" they follow truth in its application to momentary need; they give themselves to the social problem.

This cannot but result in the elevation of politics out of the sordid condition into which it often falls, and in lifting it into the light of a great crusade. The social question is a political question; that is, it is a matter of legislation. If these Settlements are creating a better atmosphere by their attitude toward politics, surely they are making a valuable contribution toward the coming of the better time and are therefore deserving of support and admiration.

3. But it is more especially in connection with the industrial aspect of the social question that these institutions may be favorably regarded. In this work there are three ways that social Settlements are contributing. (1) The workers at these places are, as the reader has already learned, interested students of the social question. I have shown that the University Settlement came into existence as a result of the economic teaching of Arnold Toynbee, and since his day the work attempted has always owed its inspiration to social conditions. They are thus placed in circumstances favorable to the study of the condition of labor. The men, by collecting facts and by observing the actual lives of workingmen, are contributing at first hand to the solution we all desire to see. The limitation of the area operated is in favor of this work. The smaller the area the more easily it is thoroughly mastered. These settlements may thus, by collecting data, become valued servants of the government, and certainly every layman would be grateful for statistics carefully prepared on "how the other half lives;"> for our feelings are easily aroused by harrowing details; but we need conviction, and this can spring only from ordered knowledge, from science. (2) The settlement is a kind of Investigation Bureau where such questions as the following may be most advantageously studied. (a) The housing of the people; overcrowding; unsanitary conditions; evasion of law as to proper condition of tenements. I suppose that there are few questions so fundamental in the social problem as the question of where the people live. Industrial progress cannot be expected to come if the worker is not housed better than a dog or a cab-horse. (b) Periodic and chronic unemployment, the facts and their causes, is another problem profitably investigated at the Settlement. Hundreds and thousands ("General" Booth says millions) are affected by the phenomena in question; but no one seems to know why it is that this problem exists, our information being neither reliable nor systematic. (c) The worker at a Settlement has a splendid chance of making studies of particular local industries which are suffering from adverse conditions. These should be studied in their details and on laboratory methods; as the results need to be reliable and scientific. For this work, it is obvious, only trained students are competent, and

they should have the best-equipped methods and be kept in the closest contact with labor organizations and with the bureaus of statistics. Much has been done by the University Settlement; but it is feared that the hold of sentiment upon the workers is often too strong for the scientific spirit. One invaluable result of such work would be its importance for the Settlement worker himself. (3) In less direct and formal ways than the above, the Settlement will be able to serve the labor movement, for example, by cultivating the acquaintance of the best representatives of labor and promoting their election in the particular districts which fall under their notice. It is not too much to say that the ordinary labor candidate does not possess, or profess to possess, extraordinary political wisdom or virtue, and the consequence is that voters are as often duped by these people as served. Trade unions, friendly and mutual-benefit societies, should utilize the service offered by the Settlement, as it is a direct gain in the important work of self-government, and in this way good men may be selected and elected to responsible positions in local political life. I have already shown that a large place in the educational work of the Settlement is given to social questions. It should be vastly increased. Shakespeare said, "There is no darkness but ignorance," and ignorance is most dangerous where there is only a little knowledge. The workingpeople need enlightenment on their own life. With this, many of the evils of their condition will be effectively overcome.

4. It remains to mention the example of wise and temperate spirit which is shown by the workers of the Settlement. This is no small contribution toward the practical solution of the social question. The ordinary political and economic student is necessarily indifferent to feeling, since his interest in the question is intellectual. Such students are not always wise or even temperate. But the social worker, by reason of the character of the inspiration upon which he relies, touches men on their intrinsic side. One writer has said that the Settlement worker has shown us that the social question is a spiritual movement, involving sympathy and service as well as politics. "The labor movement has too often been hindered by the hasty partisanship of those who should have given strong and impartial counsel."

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The social worker is above this evil. is, as Sir Walter Besant said in the address referred to, a modern, up-to-date Franciscan. Like the order of St. Francis, the University Settlement is pledged to organized work, to self-consecration, and to a large extent to celibacy. Thus equipped, they live their life among the poorest and most miserable people. Their motto, preached six hundred years ago, and revived in Carlyle and " Alton Locke," is "Not money, but yourselves," and this is the true spirit in which social regeneration is to be attempted. For the examples of devotion, self-denial, and practical wisdom afforded by the social Settlement work, we cannot be too grateful. One enthusiastic admirer went so far as to say that if Christ were living on the earth today He would have been a social Settlement worker. Exaggerated as this may be, no higher tribute could have been paid the organization.

The keenest observers of things social are rapidly coming to the view that social reorganization needs the religious inspiration; that discontent is but the natural reaction against materialism; and that the newer synthesis into which we are coming must secure, for basis, the life that is built on faith and service. are undoubtedly on the eve of a great religio-social revival. Men of all shades of belief cannot bear the idea of society growing without faith in the eternal light. This is the underlying and sustaining faith of the University Settlement work.

We

It is by cultivating the broadest sympathy with the new methods whereby the spirit of man is seeking self-realization that our own life grows more rich and true-seeing. If this article shall have contributed to this end it will have accomplished its purpose. Society is still an Inferno; but every clear voice, of poet, philosopher, and prophet, bids us look ahead, not back, to the "life the undiminished man demands." It is only of the future that we can say in the glowing words of Lowell, the singer of true socialism:

"What man would live coffined with brick and stone,

Imprisoned from the influences of air,

And cramped with selfish landmarks everywhere,

When all before him stretches, furrowless and lone,

The unmapped prairie none can fence or own?"

YALE UNIVERSITY.

(The Pioneer.) HENRY DAVIES.

A

FEW months ago the entire English

speaking literary world was rapturously discussing a little poem containing only thirty lines. It was the famous "Recessional."

Many ballads and poems had been written by the same author, but nothing possessing such qualities of style and thought as the "Recessional." Its diction is faultless; its versification is regular and musical; its theme and its sentiment are majestic and reverential.

While the Queen's official poet and a host of ambitious performers were filling the public prints with rhymes flattering to royalty and sensational to the minds of the throngs that were gathering for the celebration of Victoria's Jubilee, Rudyard Kipling - alone fitly moved by the tremendous possibilities of the occasion and by the history of the past - was unostentatiously penning a poem that touched the hearts of nations, taught them a lesson in morality, and will live in the literary history of England.

The poem, in the form of a plea to God, is an admonition to his country that in the day of her might and power England shall not forget to be modest, just, and unselfish.

The first rounds of applause for the "Recessional" had not died away when an American magazine published, and others reprinted, another poem which has attracted its full share of attention,— "The White Man's Burden." But if the latter production attracted as much attention, it certainly did not meet the same universal admiration and heartfelt approval among all classes of men. Whatever attention and interest it won was chiefly due to attendant political and international crises; while the lack of approval is due to the deficiency of the poem in true poetical qualities.

The most vital element-the golden rule-of poetry is sympathy. Enduring poetry must possess it. All rules of critical art are included in this, as all of the Ten Commandments are included in the one commandment to love God and our neighbor. Effort to make poetry without it will fail, however much other rules may be followed. Without it, verses may be made, but their artificiality will fail to meet the requirements for lasting appreciation. Human sympathy is an essential

quality of the best poetry. The world's great satires are poetical in form and in some other features, but are little known as compared with the poems that are pervaded by a spirit of affection and of human interest. Love of men; pity for men; the desire to help men to live and be happy; justice, peace, and truth, these are the things that the poet was born to sing. Patriotism in the large sense-not that national bigotry which exults in triumph irrespective of right or wrong, but that higher patriotism which would maintain national dignity and perpetuity by maintaining national justice,- this is preëminently a poet's theme.

Even poems of nature, seemingly without a mention or trace of the human eleNament in them, conform to this rule. ture is visited, and studied, and loved, and sung by the poet because of her generous responsiveness to human feeling and needs; because of her reflection of human thought and fancy; because of her moods of sympathy.

"For his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings with a mild
And healing sympathy that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware.»

The great study for man is man and his correlations with the universe. The devotee of science and nature who affects to despise or openly disparages the study of literature, languages, and history,—even he, upon a closer analysis of his own work, can find only one reason for his devotion, namely, that the natural world is somehow indissolubly bound up with the fate, the well-being, the interests of humanity.

It is because of this universal sympathy, this absence of narrow selfishness, this tenderness of heart that bled for human sorrows and weaknesses, and encouraged aspirations for freedom, that the great poems have lived. And it is precisely because "The White Man's Burden" is deficient in this respect that its receptionparticularly in America — has not been so hearty as that given to the "Recessional.» We feel that unintentionally perhaps it voices a limited interest; that in the sacred garb of poetry it robes the theory of tyranny.

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There is little in the poem that is American. And this happens because the

author is not American. He is an imperialist, born and reared in the atmosphere of monarchical domination and not of individual freedom. He was never habituated to the theory of human equality as the genuine American understands that theory. This is not a fault in Mr. Kipling, for he is certainly an advocate of higher things than he ever found in his native environment, but if that environment had been in democratic America he would hardly have written "The White Man's Burden." It bears, throughout, the tone of aristocracy and falls far below the American ideal. Yet we must admit that the American practice is somewhat below its 'ideal.

If we look for the message of the poem its apparent meaning is all in the first four lines:

Take up the white man's burden
Send forth the best ye breed -
Go bind your sons to exile,

To serve your captives' need."

The entire poem is an elaboration of this one idea. The white nations are to go out with the force of sword and gun, conquer the colored and heathen races, and then hold them in captivity till they are healed of disease, relieved from famine, and led out of ignorance. In spite of these benevolent deeds of ours, the poet tells us, these captives will "hate" us and will be "silent" and "sullen."

Against the theory and the real purpose of this poem a protest must be entered. It is contrary to the facts of history, philosophy, and religion. It is simply the voice of monarchy, centuries old, somewhat euphemized. The Stuarts, with that egotism which characterizes tyranny, believed that the will of the king was fraught with good to the people ultimately. But the humane instincts and the discernment of a poet ought to debar him from using his art to make the theories of tyranny more savory.

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This poem is gratefully accepted as true philosophy at least as convenient philosophy by the advocates of civilization through slaughter. Men who defended slavery deemed bondage a good thing for the slaves. Men who are looking into the islands of the sea for purposes of profit and power chant The White Man's Burden >>> as a vindication of their resort to force and subjugation.

If Mr. Kipling had been reared under other influences than the opinions of

monarchical and commercial institutions, if the genial current of his poet's nature had not been stagnated, he would surely have seen the heartlessness and the falseness of any such theory; and he would have refrained from putting under the guise of truth a theory that is, to speak gently, a cruel sophism. He no doubt has a good heart and lofty purposes; but it is the trouble with most of us that our hearts are touched through the perception of facts, and that our perception of facts is sometimes dimmed by the mists thrown around us by the prevailing ideas and institutions of our locality.

There are a few noteworthy phrases in the poem:

Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

The phrase "new-caught" was an unfortunate one for the poet's purpose, but it is very true as to fact. Is there a people

on earth that will not be "sullen" if "caught?" Even the birds of the air are so! It may be there is a "half-child" nature in the aboriginals, but certainly, in most cases, the "half-devil" entered after the advent of the white man with his deceit, his greed, his vices, and his liquor. In the second stanza are the lines

By open speech and simple,

An hundred times made plain,
To seek another's profit,

And work another's gain."

That, indeed, when isolated, is a generous sentiment. But not often has the white man done such a thing. When he has, almost never has it failed that the "open speech and simple » won the affection and allegiance of the new people and brought legitimate profit to both parties.

But the idea is carried farther:

"Take up the white man's burden,
No iron rule of kings;
But toil of serf and sweeper,
The tale of common things."

Now if the poet were advising the powerful white man to proceed along this benevolent line, the proposition could be accepted with consistency and with fervor. But, judging from the context, we feel that he means to say that such has been the white man's method. Opposed to this is the historical fact that almost invariably the "inferior" races have been made the victims of our heartless commercial ideas, and have been reduced literally to the condition of "toil of serf and sweeper" for the white man.

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