With my visit to "Spotless" Detroit, my wanderings ceased. To-day I sit in my own home. In the closet of my study hangs a suit of wornout jeans. A pair of coarse, badly-worn shoes lie on the floor. On a hook hangs a tattered hat which I may never wear again. These things hold for me a thousand sermons and a philosophy which if it could but be revealed would be as deep and beautiful as any that has ever been spoken. My arduous trials are over, but my work is not done. As long as an opportunity presents itself, as long as the breath of life is within me, I shall lift my voice in behalf of the oppressed, and our cry against laws and customs that decree damnation, against hells and influences which block progress toward a divine destiny, until our beloved Stars and Stripes, the emblem of liberty, peace and justice, which by greed, lust of gold and false ambitions have been so cruelly and pitilessly destroyed, shall speak again of union,--of union in our States, in the brotherhood of man, in the golden rule of Christ, in the love of God. CHAPTER XXXIII CONCLUSION "_The greatest city is that which has the greatest men and women. If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the world._"--WALT WHITMAN. As I put aside my pen in this my appeal for the Wandering Citizen, I see on my study table many letters, filled with questions. The following are the most frequently asked: "Is not drink the principal cause of destitution?" "Is the American police system brutal toward the homeless out-of-work man?" "What of the impostor at the Municipal Emergency Home?" Drink is not the primal cause of poverty. The first and all-important cause is industrial conditions. But the traffic in alcohol is the most powerful ally of our plutocratic industrial system--in perpetuating poverty. Despondent men drink for relief from self-consciousness, starving men for stimulation, while circumstances, fate, or the vicissitudes of life prompt many to resort to drink. The man who works ten hours a day on a meager midday lunch of bread and cheese, must drink to beat out the day, and when the day is done, do you wonder that he seeks a stimulant? The comfortable, well-to-do, honest middle class drink but little, and if at all, very moderately. The world's main consumers of alcohol are--the very poor for forgetfulness, the idle rich for pleasure. Broken hearts are found both in the palace and hovel.