A valiant battler with the slum. Norwood Press J. So many things have happened in these three, the fighting has been so general all along the line and has so held public attention, that this seems the proper time to pass it all in review once more.
That I have tried to do in this book, retaining all that still applied of the old volume and adding as much more. The "stories" were printed in the Century Magazine. They are fact, not fiction. If the latter, they would have no place here. Not in the thirty years before did we advance as in these three, though Tammany blocked the way most of the time.
It is great to have lived in a day that sees such things done. The slum is as old as civilization. Civilization implies a race to get ahead. In a race there are usually some who for one cause or another cannot keep up, or are thrust out from among their fellows. They fall behind, and when they have been left far in the rear they lose hope and ambition, and give up. Thenceforward, if left to their own resources, they are the victims, not the masters, of their environment; and it is a bad master.
They drag one another always farther down. The bad environment becomes the heredity of the next generation. Then, given the crowd, you have the slum ready-made. The battle with the slum began the day civilization recognized in it her enemy. It was a losing fight until conscience joined forces with fear and self-interest against it. When common sense and the golden rule obtain among men as a rule of practice, it will be over.
The two have not always been classed together, but here they are plainly p. Justice to the individual is accepted in theory as the only safe groundwork of the commonwealth. When it is practised in dealing with the slum, there will shortly be no slum. We need not wait for the millennium, to get rid of it.
