[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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