“Let us take an illustration,” he went on. “A very urgent problem in our city just now is that of ‘the unemployed.’ Certain of the newspapers have made a careful investigation in the last few weeks, and the result of their inquiry shows that, within the city limits to-day, there are at least thirty thousand men out of work. There may be fifty thousand, but the first estimate is well within the truth. “It is a matter primarily of supply and demand. Among these idle men there may be many inefficients and many chronic loafers, and many who, from one cause and another, are incapable of effective work. But the nature of the present status is unaffected by these considerations. It means, in its last analysis, that the local labor market is overstocked to the extent of thirty thousand men. However willing to work, and however efficient as workmen they might be, these men, or their equivalent in number, under existing conditions, would invariably find themselves unemployed. “And how does the Christian Church among us hold itself in relation to this problem? Its members profess themselves the disciples of ‘the meek and lowly Jesus,’ whom they call ‘divine.’ He said of Himself that ‘He had not where to lay His head,’ and He was the first Socialist in His teaching of universal brotherhood. “His followers build gorgeous temples to His worship in our city, and out of the fear, apparently, that some of the shelterless waifs, whom He taught them to know as brothers and who are in the very plight their Master was, should lay their weary heads upon the cushioned seats, they keep the churches tight locked through six days of the week, and then open them on one day for the exclusive purpose of praising that Master’s name! “Nor is this condition truer of Chicago than it is of any large industrial centre in this country, or even in all Christendom,” he went on, warming to his theme as the intently listening company hailed vociferously the name of the Redeemer as the first teacher of Socialism. “Only last week news came from London that the unemployed there had grown to an army of one hundred thousand men. Picture the horror of it, and the suffering, and the awful degradation, not in these men alone, but among the women and children whom they represent! Cold, and hunger, and the ravages of disease were bad enough, in the ferocity of this inclement winter; but imagine, if you can, the pitiless despair which is eating the hearts out of these our brothers, and then tell me whether we have not here a fairly good imitation of the hell where ‘the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.’