Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 54:215 (Jul 1897)
Article: Improved Homes For Wage-Earners
Author: James Gibson Johnson

BSac 54:215 (July 1897) p. 513

Improved Homes For Wage-Earners

Rev. James Gibson Johnson

One of the most serious among the many problems of the city is that of the housing of the poor. It is a matter that cannot be left to take care of itself. The natural drift is of the poorer people to the poorer houses, the poorest people to the poorest houses, until we have the slums. No one can have an idea of the horror of the slums until he has either visited them, or studied the subject in the light of the proper information. The subject has so forced itself upon the attention of the intelligent politician, the guardians of the public health, the patriot and the philanthropist, that investigation has been thorough, and reports have been exhaustive and graphic. No one of us need be ignorant to-day of “how the other half lives.” And yet, though the publications are many and detailed, they are not read, and many a citizen to-day fails to realize the condition and the need. But they are forcing themselves upon attention, both because of the persistent and increasing cry of the poor, and because of an intelligent regard for the sanitary and moral condition of the city. Poverty breeds crime. Men are not only where they are because of what they are—they remain what they are because of where they are. That “the destruction of the poor is their poverty,” was the crystallized wisdom of men in the days of Solomon.

Methods of relief of every kind have been tried; and if we have learned anything from experience, it is that to give the poor man a little money to relieve his present

BSac 54:215 (July 1897) p. 514

wants in no way serves to solve the problem. The aid we give him, to be effective, must be in getting him on his feet and in helping him to earn his daily bread. Unqualified almsgiving usually perpetuates the condition which it seeks to relieve.

This principle applies as surely to securing homes for the poor as in securing means to sustain life. Statements concerning the condition of the slums in our great cities, and one city is very like another, are so common that I hardly need quote from them. General Booth’s “Darkest England,” Jacob Riis’ “How the Other Half Lives,” are familiar and easily found descriptions of the slums, by which multitudes have been roused to greater energy for their amelioration. The City Council of Chicago as late as last December instructed the Board of Health to inquire into “the exceptionally large amount of sickness now prevailing in the nineteenth ward.” That report, dated December 14th, was in part as follows: —

“There are between seven and eight miles of streets and alleys which have never been paved at all, or from which every foot of paving has been worn away or has been carr...