He looked at me sadly and said, pointing to the scattered farms lying so peacefully in the landscape: “If you could go with me into those homes and see the things I see in too many of them you would quit your Mulberry Bend and transfer your battle with the slum to our hillsides.” I think, if you will permit me to say it, that your great and splendid city has been I am almost tempted to say pauperized in its citizenship by great wealth and perilous prosperity; by a pampered prosperity that is not good for anybody in the long run. However, that is politics, which I shall not discuss. The President of the United States says that my opinion in that quarter is no good at all, and you are free to adopt his view. I will endorse his views—most of them—anywhere. I seek in mine an explanation of the civic apathy that has betrayed your town, as it has mine, into the grasp of a boss and of boss politics. It may be that I am mistaken. It may be that I put too much of the blame on the piggeries. I used to say that a man cannot be expected to live like a pig and vote like a man, and I had reference to the tenements, some of which surely deserve to be called by no other name. I was very sure of my ground until the industrial troubles of the last summer seemed to cut it partly from under me; for then I had people who were well-to-do, educated, and who ought to know better, right in my own town, come and upbraid me for always fighting the battle with the slum. “What is the use?” they said; “they won’t be content.” Since that time I have thought that perhaps there may be pigs in parlors, too. No, thank God, they will _not_ be content. Let me say right here, so that we may understand one another, that the whole of my manhood’s life has been given and what remains of it will be given, please God, to fighting the things, _all of them_, that go to debase and degrade manhood and womanhood; so I understand a Christian’s duty. In that I know I have not erred. If I have laid too much stress on the piggeries, it but proves that the peril of the home is not the only one that besets our Republic, and that we need be up and doing. But still I believe that the home is the mainstay; that it rather proves the home to be beset with perils not in the cities only. All the more am I convinced that around it only can the fight be waged successfully; and I have full faith that just because you have preserved the home better than have we, when the day of waking comes, you will throw off the nightmare that has plagued your dreams with such a jolt as will warn it off for good and all and tempt it to return no more. Of that I am sure. God speed you in the fight!