alks. The stoops, too, were crowded. What a mass of
humans! What a ganglia of living wires! As I looked on this vast
multitude, I questioned the orthodox theology that held me in its
grip. Most of these people belonged to another race. And I stood at
that moment firmly rooted in the belief that this multitude was
inevitably doomed! Let me put it frankly, even though it seems brutal:
doomed to hell!

I am unable to analyze the quick currents of thought that went through
my mind at that instant. I cannot explain how the change came. I know
that there came to me a bigger thought than any I had ever known, and
that thought so thrilled me with human feeling, with love for men,
that I said to my soul: "Soul, if this multitude is doomed to hell, be
brave; gird up your loins and go with them!"

In that tenement district people were being murdered by the tens of
thousands by tuberculosis, by defective plumbing, by new diseases born
of the herding of men and women like cattle. I made some feeble
attempt to investigate, to ascertain, to acquaint myself with the
facts, and my investigation led me to this result--a result that the
lapse of years has not altered; that the private ownership of
tenements--the private profits in housing--was not only the mother of
the great white plague, but of most of the plagues down there that
endanger health. It led me to the belief also that the struggle for
bodily health, the struggle to survive, was so fierce as to leave
little time for soul health or mental health! It was a source of
continual wonder to me that people so helpless and so neglected were
as good as they were, or as healthy as they were. It did not seem
reasonable to lay the blame at the doors of the owners of the
tenements. Many of them had a tenement only as a source of income--and
to acquire the tenement had taken long years of savings, earnings and
sacrifices. It was part of the great game of business, the game of
"live I, die you!"

The churches and synagogues are of little vital importance there,
because they ignore social conditions, or largely ignore them. And
there is a reason for this also, and the reason is that they are
supported by the people--the very people who perpetuate the evils
against which prophet, priest and pastor ought to cry out
continually. The protest against such conditions is a negligible
quantity.

There is a protest, an outcry, but it is related neither to the church
nor to the synagogue. The Eas