If Christ Came to Chicago; A Plea for the Union of All Who Love in the Service of All Who Suffer ... (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI. THE NINETEENTH PRECINCT OF THE FIRST WARD. It. is impossible to describe Chicago as a whole. It is a congeries of different nationalities, a compost of men and women of all manner of languages. It is a city of millionaires and of paupers; a great camp of soldiers of industry, rallying round the standard of the merchant princes in the campaign against poverty. This vast and heterogeneous community, which has been collected together from all quarters of the known world, knows only one common bond. Its members came here to make money. They are staying here to make money. The quest of the almighty dollar is their Holy Grail. From afar the name and the fame of Chicago have gone abroad to the poor and the distressed and the adventurous of all nations, and they have flocked and are still flocking to the place where a few men make millions and where all men can get food. A scientific study of the city as a whole would be the work of a life time, and when it was finished it would possess only a historical value. For, while the scientist was correcting his statistics and checking his analysis, the kaleidoscope would be changing, and by the time his exhaustive survey was ready for the press, a new generation would have risen up which would not recognize the scenes which he portrayed. I cannot for a moment pretend to put the whole city, or even a single ward under the microscope. But I thought it might perhaps help us to appreciate the nature of some of the tougher problems that confront the reformer in Chicago if we paid a little attention to a single precinct in one of the thirty-four wards into which the city is divided. For the purpose of this survey I have selected the nineteenth precinct of the First Ward, not because it is an...