The Strenuous Life: The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, Volume 12 (of 14)Roosevelt, Theodore
General
The Strenuous Life: The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, Volume 12 (of 14)
Roosevelt, Theodore
United States -- Colonial question; United States -- Politics and government
In cities the conditions are very different, both as regards the needs
and as regards the way it is possible to meet these needs. There is
much less feeling of essential community of interest, and poverty of
the body is lamentably visible among great masses. There are districts
populated to the point of congestion, where hardly any one is above
the level of poverty, though this poverty does not by any means always
imply misery. Where it does mean misery it must be met by organization,
and, above all, by the disinterested, endless labor of those who,
by choice, and to do good, live in the midst of it, temporarily or
permanently. Very many men and women spend part of their lives or do
part of their life-work under such circumstances, and conspicuous among
them are clergymen and priests.
Only those who have seen something of such work at close quarters
realize how much of it goes on quietly and without the slightest
outside show, and how much it represents to many lives that else would
be passed in gray squalor. It is not necessary to give the names of
the living, or I could enumerate among my personal acquaintance fifty
clergymen and priests, men of every church, of every degree of wealth,
each of whom cheerfully and quietly, year in and year out, does his
share, and more than his share, of the unending work which he feels
is imposed upon him alike by Christianity and by that form of applied
Christianity which we call good citizenship. Far more than that number
of women, in and out of religious bodies, who do to the full as much
work, could be mentioned. Of course, for every one thus mentioned there
would be a hundred, or many hundreds, unmentioned. Perhaps there is no
harm in alluding to one man who is dead. Very early in my career as a
police commissioner of the City of New York I was brought in contact
with Father Casserly of the Paulist Fathers. After he had made up his
mind that I was really trying to get things decent in the department,
and to see that law and order prevailed, and that crime and vice were
warred against in practical fashion, he became very intimate with
me, helping me in every way, and unconsciously giving me an insight
into his own work and his own character. Continually, in one way and
another, I came across what Father Casserly was doing, always in the
way of showing the intense human sympathy and interest he was taking
in the lives about him. If one of the boys of a family was wild, it
was Father Casserly who planned methods of steadying him. If, on the
other hand, a steady boy met with some misfortune,—lost his place, or
something of the kind,—it was Father Casserly who went and stated
the facts to the employer. The Paulist Fathers had always been among
the most efficient foes of the abuses of the liquor traffic. They
never hesitated to interfere with saloons, dance-houses, and the like.
One secret of their influence with our Police Board was that, as they
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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