^^'^^ai?^ ?/ .• AT '. THE TOP. -■^.■''' '/^ ^<^--aper, 25 Cents; Clotti, SO Cents. "There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed." — Christ. YOUNG MENU'S ERApPb@LiSHING CO., ^ 10 ARCADE COURT, CmCAGO, ILL, 10 Arcftfte CourfT^ CHICAGO, - - ILLINOISi^ CONTENTS. Dedication ._.------.. . ..........._..._ 5 Preface ..._ 6 Apology . -_ --...... --..— 7 At the Top 15 Dying 20 Dead 32 Waste 44 Worms Beneath the Bark 57 Heredity, _ 60 Home, 64 A Secularized Sabbath, 69 The Saloon, 72 The Bagnio 80 Hope - 98 A Word to the Wise „ .- ..— 108 DEDICATION. To the Young Men's Christian Association of the United States, whose work constitutes one of the great- est movements of this great century, this Book is dedi- cated, in the hope that the facts presented in it may- stimulate its members to a still greater zeal in the re- deeming of young men to the morality and faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. J. W. Clokey. PREFACE. The original form of this work was an address de- livered before the Indiana State Sunday School Union^ at its convention in Columbus, Ind., held June 21, 22 and 23, 1887. The address, published in the proceedings of the convention, and delivered subsequently in different places, has awakened so much interest by the facts it presents, that it has been thought advisable to enlarge it, and issue it in a form for general circulation. The title, Dying at the Top, was the outgrowth of a real heart-sorrow. In my yard at home stands what is left of a favorite apricot tree. For years it had stood there, the very symbol of life and vigor. Its beautiful blossoms were among the earliest harbingers of spring, and the fruit that soon followed the falling of the bloom, was de- licious in the extreme. The tree was our pride and de- light. But one day I saw that the very topmost branches had withered; and I said, "Ah, our apricot is death-smit- ten ; it is dying at the top',' These top branches were cut off, but the next season the next highest withered. And now there is not enough life left in the tree to ma- ture what few blossoms it puts forth. On examination worms were found at the root ; they had worked their way up under the bark, and though the outside seemed firm and healthy, the tree was almost girdled by the un- seen pests, and death was inevitable. From the dying of the tree-top came the theme, and from the theme came the following pages. Before me now stands the Human Tree, and it is with a sadness approaching dejection, that I say : "// is dying at the top: APOLOGY. This little work has now been before the public for a year. The number of copies sold has not been very great, but there is evidence that those that have been sold have been widely circulated. They have gone into every State in the Union; and been everywhere in the hands of those who are best able to judge of the truth- fulness of the statements made. The author, in giving the work to the world, did it with much hesitation, knowing how liable statistics are to err; and how often the facts gathered from a few communities may not prove to be true of the country at large. At the present writing, the saddest thing about the work is that it has told the truthful story of the whole land. Not a single person has arisen to deny its cor- rectness; while from Maine to California, and from Ore- gon to Florida, letter after letter has come, saying " It is all true. " If it is all true, and true everywhere, then American society, from ocean to ocean, is suspended over an abyss, and it will require the engineering skill of the best elements in Church and State to keep us from falling into depths of distress along side of which the taxation of England, in the old colonial days, and the slavery of the South, were but baubles. The troubles growing up between nation and nation, and State and State, over their material relations, have been to a great extent the incidents of human progress, where the strong body of our national manhood has been throwing off the shackles of its old-time bondage. But corruption in the morals of our people is the incident of a deep-seated disease, whose cancerous properties will sooner or later bring us into troubles worse than war or oppression, unless we correct them. Tiii Apology, When dangers exist in our domestic or national life, it IS the duty of the true citizen to point them out. If our neighbor's property is threatened with the flames, we will be guilty of incendiarism if we do not cry " Fire ! Fire ! " If the lives of our fellow citizens are in jeopardy, we are in spirit murderers if we lift no voice of alarm; and if there is a condition of morals and manners among any classes of our people, threatening the prosperity and per- manency of the Republic, we are not patriots if we hold our peace. " Dying at the Top " is a cry of alarm. Perhaps the cry is a too noisy one for those who are accustomed to moving delicately. But is it not better for all that an alarm be raised than that we should be silent in the pres- ence of danger ? Two objections have been urged against this work, and they are noticed here in the hope that they may be removed. The first is that it touches on the social evil. But why should licentiousness be exempted from ex- posure? Is it no serious evil? Is it a social disease that will correct itself if it is let alone ? Are its dangers not to be met and mastered in the same way that other immoralities have been met and mastered ? The history of reform has shown that no iniquity has ever been subdued till the facts connected with it were torn from their secrecy and laid open to the gaze of the world. The reformation of the i6th century was made possible only because the reformers of France and Germany told to all mankind the secret doings of the papacy, in its sale of indulgences, in its inquisitions and autos-da-f(6, and in the horrible transactions of a cor- rupted priesthood in the nunneries and monasteries of the Middle Ages. The literature of three and four hun- dred years ago is full of revelations that would make the prudishly pure of our day blush, but which did their work in bringing to the knowledge of the people the dangers that underlay all European society. The history of the Reformation in England under Apology. ix the Wesleys Is the history of the exposure of the excesses of the day, and the consequent re-action against theni. One of Great Britain's noble charities is found in her " Ragged Schools." These schools originated with Dr. Guthrie, who first himself went down among the wretched haunts and homes of the poor of Edinburg, and then startled his country by relating what he discovered of the squalor and vice of masses of the people. The secret of the power of the writings of Charles Dickens lies in his opening to the sunlight the wrongs perpetrated on children and on the laboring classes in the name of education and employment. The sensitive people of this country were greatly shocked at the revelations made some time since in the Pall Mall Gazette of London, of corruptions among cer- tain of the English nobility. W. L. Stead, the editor, was thought to be a species of monster who was ready to cast upon society any obscene material, provided it would contribute to his exchequer. But after the first excitement had subsided, and we were willing to be rea- sonable in our judgment, the reading public learned two things. First, that Mr. Stead was a great philanthro- pist, and that it was in the interest of suffering humanity that he unearthed and exposed those dreadful scandals. He says of himself in '* Books which have Influenced Me ": "I have never ceased for one moment to rejoice that I was a journalist, and at the same time to feel weighed down with a sense of my utter incapacity to even approach the ideal of a journalist's mission in these later days. What is that mission ? Let Victor Hugo speak. He is describing what Gwymplaine said to himself when he accepted his position as peer: 'The people are silence. I shall be the advocate of that silence. I will speak for the dumb. I will speak of the small to the great, and of the feeble to the strong. That is the aim of my des- tiny. . . I am predestinated. I have a mission. I shall be lord of the poor. I shall speak for the despair- ing, silent ones. I shall interpret this stammering; I X Apology. shall interpret the grumblings, the murmurings, the tu- mults of the crowds, the complaints ill-pronounced, the unintelligible voices, and all these cries of beasts that, through ignorance and through suffering, man is forced to utter. ... I will be the word to the people. I will be the bleeding mouth whence the gag is snatched out. I will speak everything.'" W. L. Stead spoke " everything " for the " despairing, silent ones," and society soon learned a second thing, that the English Parliament had heard his cries and come to the relief of England's unprotected girls. To-day they are guarded by vigilant laws as they have never before been, and philanthropic women are watchini>- with re- newed vigilance to break up the once almost unnoticed and unchallenged traffic in young girls, which was car- ried on between England and the Continent of Europe. The writer of this work does not plead for the pub- lication of the minute details of any vice; only that the vice should be recognized and properly exposed from all those places where truth told can be made to prevail. The sensitiveness that takes offense at such expo- sures needs to be reconstructed. It is not a mark either of depth or purity of character. Show me an audience where the people exchange glances and shrug their shoulders, and look sour when the speaker utters his earnest words against uncleaimess of life, and I will show you a people who have a far greater experimental knowl- edge of certain nameless sins than they would dare to make pubhc. Strong men and women who are conscious of their personal integrity, and who crave to know where a vice lurks that they may the better smite it, can listen with dignity to any delicate disclosure of sin, and pass out without any sense of injury. There is a remarkable passage in the 90th Psalm : "Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance." The vices of society are " in the light of God's countenance," and instead of spending His time blushing and looking ashamed, He Apology, xi flies to our rescue in the gift of His own dear Son. And so we should consent to have the sins of the world brought into the light of our countenance and kept there, until by breaking our bodies and shedding our blood, we blot the facts of vice out of our sight by blotting out the vice itself. In giving ** Dying at the Top" to the world, the author has been called a " pessimist." A pessimist, according to the popular understanding of the word, is a man of sour and gloomy turn of mind, who seeks no sunspots in life, but gropes round among its shadows and sewers, bringing to the light of day dark and wretched doings which really have no serious bearing on social and national life, but which he thinks are omens of coming disaster. He is a mole, burrowing under the ground, unconscious of God's bright and glorious world above; a bat that shuts itself away in some corner, and flaps its wings only when night's shadows are over the world; an owl, silent in the glory of reigning day, and hooting its dismal prophesies out of the darkness. An "optimist," by the same popular interpretation, is a bright, cheerful soul, who keeps his face and his soul always in the light of God's countenance; who finds nothing but hope everywhere and in everything; who reasons that God reigns, and God knows how to run a world so as to make all things work together for the good of His crea- tures ; who turns his face away from the hidden thing of darkness, refusing to think of them or tell others of them, because there is no real danger in them. With him health alone is catching, and purity and holiness hold the key to the situation. He is a lark, up by the earliest dawn, to soar high in heaven's pure air, and to sing his sweet notes far out of and above these doleful and dismal things of earth. He is an eagle, whose eye is fixed on the sky, and which, mounting from crag to crag, from high in the air spreads its splendid wings for the bosom of the sun. A genuine pessimist is one who, after he has looked on all sides of the facts and problems of the hour, con- xii Afology, dudes that the trend of events is, on the surface and in the depths of human society, toward the darkness. He sees no reason for hope ; hence his song is a doleful one, the outcome of a soul in trouble and despair. The true optimist is one who, after taking the same general view of events, sees both in the depths and on the sur- face evidence that the world is growing better every day. He rises from the study of even the darkest pages of the day with hope. He says the Christ has proved the Master in a thousand crises and He will prove Master in this. With his face turned full on the doings of the papacy and the saloon and the anarchist ; with the full knowledge of the perils of the modern city, of emigra- tion, of the corporation and of trusts, he still says with Galileo, "The world does move." In this definition of terms, the writer is a decided optimist. On the top of that long train of freight cars, a young man is running backward, and if he keeps on running, he will plunge off the end of the train and be ruined. But the train thun- ders on; immense products thunder on with it; even the young brakesman on the top moves forward faster than he does backward, and when he falls, falls farther ahead. Human society is this moving train. Not for a moment, in the long records of the past, has its wheels ceased or turned to move backward, and whilst thousands to-day resist the power of the onward movement and become vicious in their lives, even they fall farther forward than the vicious of a hundred or a thousand years ago. The cruelties of the old Roman amphi-theatres are gone, never to return. Men and beasts are no longer fattened to slaughter one another for the amusement of fine socie- ties. Splendid paganism lives only in the ruins of its Pantheon and Parthenon. Its mythic deities are silent on Olympus, while the Cross stands in the centre of the Colosseum, and the voice and songs of the Christian missionary are heard where Jove hurled his thunder- bolts and Saturn shook the trident of the seas. In modern Europe an inquisition is impossible. The world to-day sees the thumb-screw and the stocks only in Apology. xiii some Eden Musee, where the horrors of the by-gones are exhibited in figures of plaster-of-Paris to remind the present that torture for honest convictions had ever existed. The low forms of amusement and vice that, even one hundred and fifty years ago, flung defiance before an offended public, to-day exist in concealment, and are in- dulged in, in dread of the supreme fiat of Law. Lecky,in speaking of the coarseness of manners of the eighteenth century in England, says: "Each king lived public-ly with his mistresses, and the immorality of their courts was ac- companied by nothing of that refinement or grace which has often cast a softening veil over much deeper and more general corruption." A queen like that of George II. is not possible to- day at the Court of England, who, though virtuous herself, "passed through life jesting on the vices of her husband and of his ministers, with the coarseness of a trooper, receiving from her husband the earliest and fullest accounts of every new love affair in which he was engaged, and prepared to welcome each new mistress, provided only she could herself keep the first place in his judgment and confidence." The young men of to-day, though reckless, are re- spectable in their amusements along side of those of one hundred and fifty years ago. Bull-baiting, bear- baiting and cock-fighting were the open every-day enter- tainment of the youth of all classes in society. What would we think now of such an advertisement as this,, which was common in London at the beginning of the 1 8th century? "A mad bull to be dressed up with fire- works and turned loose in the game place, a dog to be dressed up with fire-works over him, a bear to be let loose at the same time, and a cat to be tied to the bull's tail; a mad bull dressed up with fire-works to be baited." In 1 71 2, in London, young men from the nobility organized a club, and called themselves the " mohawks." Lecky says of them that " they were accustomed to sally out drunk into the streets to hunt the passers-by and to subject them in mere wantonness to the most atrocious xiv Apology. outrages. One of their favorite amusements, called *tip- ping the lion/ was to squeeze the nose of their victim flat upon his face and to bore out his eyes with their fingers. Among them were the * sweaters,* who formed a circle round their prisoner and pricked him with their swords till he sank exhausted to the ground; the 'dancing masters,* so called from their skill in making men caper by thrusting swords into their legs; the 'tumblers/ whose favorite amusement was to set women on their heads and commit various indecencies and barbarities on the limbs that were exposed. Maid-servants, as they opened their masters' doors, were waylaid, beaten, and their faces cut. Matrons, inclosed in barrels, were rolled down the steep and stony incline of Snow Hill. Watchmen were unmercifully beaten and their noses sHt.** When one reads such accounts as these, given both by Lecky and McCarthy, he turns to his own times with comfort, and even with the recklessness of our American youth before him, thanks God that his day is the best day in the history of mankind. So the author sends this little work to the world with his face towards the sunshine, assured that the forces are present with us to conquer our country for Christ, provided the facts are made known and the evils of our day exposed. The facts and figures in the following pages have been selected with the greatest possible care. None of them have been taken on mere rumor. What has been given in reference to prisons and crime has come from personal examination of documents. The figures relating to church attendance, and to the young man in the saloon and bagnio, have been furnished by Secretaries of the Young Men*s Christian Association, by pastors and physicians, all of whom are men of standino^ and reputation in the communities where they live. There has been no selection of material to make a bad case. The author has been controlled by a desire to under-estimate rather than to over-estimate. " Dying at the Top ** is an honest attempt to tell the simple truth. DYING AT THE TOP. CHAPTER I. AT THE TOP. In the progress of human affairs no character has risen higher in importance and influence than the young man. It might almost be said that he has made history what it is. What great crisis in the story of the nations has there been when he did not come to the front as soldier, statesman, or reformer? When God would change the kingdom of the Hebrews from a theocracy to a monarchy, it was Saul, "a choice young man," who was selected for the throne. When David first appeared at the Hebrew court he was addressed by the king, "Whose son art thou, thou young man ?" It was as a young man that he won the hearts of all Israel by his valor in the field, and at the age of thirty-one he ascended the throne. At eighteen, Solomon was declared king of Israel, and began that career that won him world-wide fame. He was not more than twenty-three when the Queen of Sheba visited his court and confessed, " It was a true report that I heard in mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom. Howbeit I believed not the words until I came and mine eyes had seen it; and behold the half was not told me." In the history of the divided kingdom after the death of Solomon, it is singular that in not a single instance is the age of a king of Israel given at the time of his com- 16 Dying at the Top, ing to the throne, whilst in the kingdom of J udah the ages of all her nineteen kings but two are given. Of the seventeen whose ages are mentioned, all are young men but one, Rehoboam, who ascended the throne at forty- one. Joash became king at seven years of age; Josiah at eight; Azariah at sixteen; Jehoiakin at eighteen; Ahaz at twenty. At sixteer^osiah began to seek the Lord; at twenty he began to purge J udah of idolatry, and at twenty-six repaired the temple. Hezekiah was only twenty-five when he restored the Temple of the Lord and destroyed the brazen serpent of the wilder- ness. For four hundred years J udah was ruled by her young men, and was captured and Jerusalem destroyed under Zedekiah at twenty-one years of age. Any one who has read the history of Rome and Greece with care, knows the prominent part their young men filled in their national affairs. They were the ath- letes in their games and the gladiators in their contests; they occupied positions of prominence in their religious processions ; they made up the mass of the scholars in their gardens and academies, and of the soldiers in their armies. It was their brain and brawn that made Athens and Sparta what they were in their prime, and it was the decadence of their moral principle that brought Corinth and Rome to what they were in the era of their decline. Alexander the Great was regent of his father's kingdom at nineteen ; at twenty sat on the throne of Macedon, and while yet a youth won his victories and his fame, and at thirty-two died in a drunken debauch. Mark Antony was not thirty when he distinguished himself in Egypt and Syria. At twenty-three Julius Caisar had made his mark as an orator before the Roman Senate, and at twenty-seven was chosen military tribune. Nero was but fourteen years old when he came to the Roman throne ; and was twenty-seven when, first having set fire to the city, he sat on top of a tower, and, as he watche' the flames, "amused himself with chanting to his ow*. lyre verses on the destruction of Troy." The greatest event in human annals was the begit Dvino- ai the 7^0 p. 17 ning of the Christian era; yet right in its dawn stands John the Baptist, a young man of thirty years, and rings in the new era with his" Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand ! " Christ himself was a young man, thirty years old at His baptism, and thirty-three at His death. And the probability is that all His apostles were young like Him- self. The fact that He foresaw the long journeys they would have to make and the severe hardships they would be called on to endure, would likely lead Him to choose as His messengers only those in the prime of early manhood. Of John, His beloved disciple, history states that he died A. D. 100, aged ninety-four. This would place his birth at A. D. 6. As Jesus was born four years before the year i of the Christian era, this would make John ten years younger than the Saviour, and so only twenty years old at his call as an apostle. His brother James was probably somewhat older, but not likely over twenty-five. That the great Apostle Paul was a young man at his conversion, is evident from Acts vii.. 58, where in the martyrdom of Stephen, it is said, "The witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet whose name was Saul." At twenty-seven years of age, Charlemagne was master of the whole of Gaul and of Germany. Charles V. of Germany ascended the throne of Spain at sixteen; took the government of affairs into his own hands, and at once became the most powerful ruler in Europe. At twenty he was crowned Emperor of Germany at Aix-la-Chapelle, and at twenty-five fought the important battle of Pavia. Charles XH. of Sweden was a king at fifteen; beat the Russian armies before Narva at eighteen, and at twenty-five was on his way to Moscow, with the repute of being the greatest general of his age. Louis XIV. of France became heir to the throne at five years of age; at thirteen declared himself of age and assumed the royal authority; at fifteen put an end to 18 Dying at the Top, the wars of the Fronde; at eighteen became his own Prime Minister, and by his twenty-first year made his court the center of Hterature, science and art. Napoleon I. was a Brigadier-General at twenty-five; at twenty-seven was at the head of the army of Italy; before he was twenty-eight had beaten four Austrian armies, and at thirty-three was proclaimed Consul of France for life. General Lafayette was not twenty years old when the American Congress accepted his service in the war of the Revolution, and made him a Major-General in the U. S. Army; and he was but twenty-seven when, at the mvitation of Washington, he revisited this country, and made his memorable tour of the leading cities of the new Republic. John Calvin, whom Bancroft calls " the guide of Republics," was already a thorn in the side of the Sor- bonne at Paris, at twenty. At twenty- three his sermons were publicly burnt in the streets of the capital, and at twenty-six he issued his " Institutes," which at once made him famous throughout Europe. Martin Luther at twenty-four was Professor of Philosophy at Wittenberg; at twenty-seven heard the inward voice, "The just shall live by Faith," while on his knees ascending the Scala Santa opposite the Church of St. John Lateran at Rome; and was only thirty-four when he inaugurated the Reformation by tacking his ninety-five theses on the doors of the Schloss- kirche at Wittenberg. Have I not cited enough to show that in the past, the hand of the young man has been on the Helm of Human Destiny? And who that knows anything of our country and our era does not see the same youthful hand at the helm to-day? Individuals among our young men of the present century may not rise to the unusual distinction pos- sessed by many in the past, but the masses of them enter into the movements of the day, and are giving shape to human affairs as they have never done in any Dying at the 7'op, 19 previous age of the world. At home, and in commer- cial and political affairs, they are at the top of the tree. They rise the highest in our cares and solicitations. They are our chief pride and hope. This world seems made for them and not for our daughters. Fairy hands take them up at their very birth, and Fortune, the genial goddess, showers her gifts on them from the very cradle. The Goshen spots of home are assigned them; in their education and culture everything is done for them. Parents spend years in personal self-sacrifice, that their boys may be grandly fitted for life. When they step out into the world, helping hands meet them every- where if they are worthy. Their life and energy and hopefulness are at a premium. In point of numbers, they throng wherever you turn. Our country seems to be a hive of young men. The census of 1880 reports for our whole land a male population of twenty-five and a half millions, and the one-fourth of that number are young men from eighteen to thirty years of age. Young men between these ages form one-sixth of the entire population of our thriving cities, and those from twenty- one to thirty-one almost half of our voting population. It has been estimated that there are one million five hundred thousand men employed in the railroad business of the United States, a very large majority of whom are young men. There are two hundred and fifty thousand commer- cial travelers making their tours over the land, sixty per cent, of whom are young men. A recent memorial to the Interstate Commerce Committee, from members of the amusement associations, states that there are five hundred organizations of circuses, theatrical and minstrel troupes and the like, in our country, and that, in one form or another, seventy-five thousand persons are in their employ. And who that is acquainted with these combinations does not know that young men make up their rank and file. Forepaugh's circus for the summer of 1887, employed about five hundred men, and when one of the officials was asked how many of them were 20 Dying at the Top. young men, he replied, ''All of them, and we take none under twenty-one years old." These seven million young men of our present day are to be the future husbands of our daughters, and fathers of our children. They are to bring into being twenty million of our coming population before they die. If, as Goethe said, "the destiny of any nation, at any given time, depends on the opinions of the young men who are under twenty-five years of age," these young men are to shape our politics, give color to our educa- tion and character to this mighty Republic. If all this be true, then I make a statement of momentous interest when I say that in our young men, American society is dying at the top. CHAPTER II. DYING. The national committee of the Young Men's Chris- tian Association has sent out a printed statement, in which I find that but five per cent, of the young men throughout the land are members of church ; that only fifteen out of every one hundred attend religious services with any regularity, and that seventy-five out of one hundred never attend church at all. That is, putting the number of young men at about one-eighth of the population, of the seven millions in the United States, over five millions of them are never, or practically never, inside a Christian church. Is this too low an estimate? Let us see. I have always heard it said of Pittsburg, Penn., that it is a community of worshippers. The church property of that city and Allegheny is valued at nearly six million dollars. Ever since the place was founded, religious Dying- at the Top. 21 work of the most solid kind has been carried on. Yet to-day, among the two hundred and eighty-seven thou- sand people who live in Pittsburg and Allegheny, and among the fifty thousand of their young men, only four thousand five hundred are found in all the churches, Protestant and Jewish. New Albany, Ind., where I live, is a city of churches. It has been in the hands of Christian people for more than half a century. The place in that time has grown from a village to a city of twenty-five thousand inhabit- ants. Everywhere you meet with churches. The Methodists have, in all, seven places of worship; the Presbyterians have three; the Christian, two; the Bap- tist, two; the Episcopalian, one; Lutheran, one. In all sixteen houses of worship. They are all self-supporting and doing a grand work for Christ. At present there is in the city scarcely a family of any prominence that is not identified with some Christian church. Nearly one- third of the adult population over fifteen years of age, is in the membership of the Protestant churches. At the same rate of growth, these Protestant churches should have by this time over one thousand of the thirty-five hundred young men of New Albany. Instead of that number, they had, a few months ago, by actual count, in eleven of the twelve white churches, three hundred and twenty-five In all the Protestant churches there are not over three hundred and fifty young men on their rolls. That is, of every three young men the Church should have had. she has retained one and the world has gotten two. The people of Springfield, Ohio, claim for their busy city a population of at least thirty-six thousand. Judg- ing from the census of 1880, the males from the ages of eighteen to thirty comprise a little over one-sixth of the entire population. This would give Springfield about six thousand five hundred young men. By a count made in January of this year (1889) there were in the mem- bership of the nine leading churches, four hundred and sixty-one young men of the abo\e mentioned ages. These 22 Dying at the Top. nine churches include almost the whole membership of all the protestant faith in that city. Dr. Helwig, who is now candidate for governor on the prohibition ticket in Ohio, told me that in his judgment there are not over five hundred young men in all the protestant churches of Springfield. This means that of every one hundred younjo;- men nearly ninety-three are out of the church. Of the five hundred, not one hundred and fifty take any part in the work of the churches to which they belong. The Young Men's Christian Association Watchmatt of September, 1888, contained the lollowing item : "There are four hundred and twenty-five thousand males in Mas- sachusetts and Rhode Island between the ages of fifteen and forty, and it is safe to say that not more than one- sixth of the number are members of evangelical churches." Under the auspices of the Young Men's Christian Association, a canvass was made among the churches of Evansville, Ind., taking the limits as to age at sixteen and thirty-five. The footing up showed eight hundred and sixty-five of the sixty-five hundred young men as belonging to the evangelical churches. " The estimate includes a large number of probationers of the Metho- dist and Evangelical Lutheran denominations." I. E. Brown, State Secretary of the Illinois Young Men's Christian Association, writes : " In a city of ten thousand inhabitants, whose statistics have recently been secured, it is found that less than three hundred men are in all the evangelical churches, and of these less than one hundred and twenty-five are between the ages of sixteen and forty." In a valuable communication to me, Geo. W. Cobb^ R. R. Secretary at present, of the Young Men's Christian Association at St. Louis, says: " I find in my own work that the number of young men who profess to believe in Ingersoll and spiritualism and materialism, and are sceptics, is appalling. It has been estimated that there are from sixteen thousand to eighteen thousand young men in Indianapolis, and that five to seven per cent, of Dying at the Top. 23 them are church members, and that fifteen to seventeen per cent, attend church regularly." Mr. Cobb also furnished the following : " In one city of nineteen thousand population, were three thousand five hundred young men, and eighty-five were members of Protestant churches; in another of twenty thousand, three thousand five hundred are young men, and twenty- nine were members; in another of twenty thousand, four thousand young men, and thirty-eight joined in one year; in another of seventeen thousand, three thousand young men, three hundred and fifty were church members; in another of thirty-eight thousand, six thousand young men, and three hundred attended church; in another of thirty-two thousand, five thousand young men, and one hundred and five received into twenty-one churches dur- ing the year." These, says Mr. Cobb, are from carefully collected statistics, and are "cold facts." It is not claimed for the above cities that they repre- sent the best sections of the country. They are given to show that taking the land throughout, it is not putting the per cent, too low to say that only five young men in every hundred profess Christ. Desiring the names of the above mentioned cities, I wrote Mr. Cobb, and received in reply: "Dear Brother: — I am unable to give you the names of the cities mentioned ; they are facts, however, obtained from carefully gleaned statistics, kept by our State and International Committees. In moving from Indianapolis I lost books and papers, and those referred to are among them. It is a fact that some of our pas- tors refuse to accept such statistics. I myself, in com- paring notes with two or three others, visited and counted the number of young men visiting the saloons in Madison, Ind., one Saturday evening, and also ascer- tained the number at church the next Sunday, and found that our calculations were true. More young men were found in two or three saloons than in all the churches combined. I found tlie same condition of things in 24 Dying at the Top. Atlanta, Ga., when stopping there, and if that Virginia pastor could stop in St. Louis a short time, he would be convinced that our figures do not lie. It is appalling, the number of young men and boys arrested for crime in this city. A. boy not more than nine years old set fire to my barn last week, and it was nearly burnt down. Yours sincerely, Geo. W. COBB." Rev. J. E. Gilbert, D.D., in an address on "Our Young Men," delivered at the Indiana State Sunday School Convention, June 22, 1887, asks with reference to the young men of Indiana: " I. Are they, in any considerable number, mem- bers of the church, of any church? The answer must be in the negative. In this state there are in round numbers four hundred and fifty thousand communicants in all ecclesiastical bodies. By a series of observations, carefully conducted, it has been estimated that not more than six per cent, of the whole number are males between fifteen and twenty-five years. That gives in the entire state twenty-seven thousand inside, and two hundred and twenty-three thousand outside. That is, ninety per cent, of all the class under consideration have not so much as entered their names upon the roll of any church whatever. Ten per cent, only have openly signi- fied their purpose to be religious. These facts are the more startling when it is remembered that all are of an age to understand the nature and claims of religion, and that they are more susceptible to its influences now than they ever will be at any subsequent period of their lives. This test will enable us to judge to what extent religion will be a controlling element in coming m.anhood, and also how much of that manhood will be saved and enHsted in the cause of Christ. Here is the most exact measurement of the church for the next quarter of a century. " 2. Are the young men attending our Sabbath- schools? According to the carefully prepared report of the Secretary of our State Sunday School Union, there were Dying at the Top, 25 last year three hundred and seventy thousand, in round numbers, enrolled in the various Sunday schools of the state. As his figures were, for the most part, obtained from the published records of the various denominational bodies, they may be accepted as nearly correct; if, in any degree, they are not accurate, they exceed rather than fall below the actual numbers. " For several years each Methodist pastor in the United States was required to report at Conference the number of pupils in his school fifteen years old and upward; and it was found, taking the years together, that these were about one-fifth of the entire enrollment. Reckoning on that basis, there are in the Sunday schools of our state probably seventy-five thousand persons over fifteen years. Making no allowance for the large number over twenty- five years, and assuming that the young gentlemen in Sunday school are as numerous as the young ladies, an assumption not warranted by facts, we have as a large estimate for the young men and older youth, from fifteen to twenty-five, attending Sunday school in Indiana, say thirty-eight thousand. That leaves two hundred and twelve thousand young men outside of the Sunday-school. How many of these find their way, even irregularly, to the services of the sanctuary on the Lord's day, no one can tell. But it is safe to say that not more than forty thousand hear preaching without attending Sunday school. That would leave still about one hundred and seventy thousand entirely, or nearly, beyond the influence of the church. In other words, the appointed agencies of religion are reaching probably not more than one-third, certainly not one-half, of the young men of our state. " 3. Another fact is closely related to the foregoing. There are in the state one hundred and twenty-five thousand boys between the ages of five and ten years. In the state of Maryland, by a thoroui^^h system of can- vassing, it is found that eighty-five per cent, of boys of that age are in Sunday-school. Assuming that the same proportion holds in this state, it follows that of the 26 Dying at the Top. one hundred and seventy thousand now wholly beyond the influence of the church and Sunday-school, all but about thirty-five thousand were once in our classes, receiving more or less religious instruction. In other words, the church at one time or another has had in its hands two hundred and twelve thousand out of the quarter million of young men; it has led twenty-seven thousand into nominal discipleship; it. has retained a greater or less hold upon fifty thousand more, while one hundred and thirty-five thousand, or sixty-three percent, of all committed to its care, have not only failed to accept the gospel, but have even refused longer to attend the place where it is preached and taught." All of these statistics are gathered from our older states, and from sections where young men have not only had the opportunity of church worship, but where the most of them have, at least in early life, been brought in contact with religious services. There are places in our land where church privileges are exceedingly limited, and where the proportion of young men who lead a Christian life must dwindle to almost nothing. Mr. Burford, Assistant State Secretary of the Wisconsin Young Men's Christian Association, says of the Gogebic iron range, that at the beginning of the year (1887), "there are not less than ten thousand young men scat- tered along the trend of the ore deposit and in the vicinity of the mines. The above number is likely to be doubled during the summer." Whilst the Christian church has {^\^, if any, places of worship for these young men, yet "the devil has two hundred sets of rooms open to damn the fellows, with a staft" of about one thousand paid agents and many volunteers, and money in abun- dance." Says Rev. W. F. Crafts : " I have discovered in this state (New York) a city of fifty thousand inhabit- ants — the majority of them being English-speakin^^ — v/here there has not been an English-speaking Protes- tant church for twelve 5/ears, the only church having German service. I have discovered also fifty cities of Dying at the Top. 27 ten thousand each, in this state, which have but two Protestant churches each, many of these being very small and feebly manned for lack of funds." These cities that Mr. Crafts has discovered, are down-town wards in New York City, in all of which there is said to be but one church for every two thousand and eighty-one inhabitants. At the first Convention of Christian Workers held in Chicago, June, 1886, Rev. J. W. Weddell gave statis- tics showing the population of each of the wards in Chi- cago, and the number of churches in each ward. One ward of thirty thousand had but one church; another of forty-one thousand had but three churches; another of thirty thousand had but five churches. In Dr. Strong's book, " Our Country," it is stated that one of the districts of Chicago has a population of fifty thousand, with twenty thousand children under twenty years of age, and that in this district there is Sabbath-school accom- modation for only two thousand, whilst two hundred and sixty-one saloons and dago shops are open night and day for their ruin. Dr. Strong also quotes Dr. Dorchester as saying that though the evangelical church membership in the country at large numbered in 1880 one in every five of the population of the United States, yet in Colorado it numbered but one in twenty; in Montana, one in thirty- six; in Nevada, one in forty-six; in Wyoming, one in eighty-one; in Utah, one in two hundred and twenty- four; in New Mexico, one in six hundred and fifty- seven, and in Arizona, one in six hundred and eighty-five. From such statistics as the above, which might be multiplied indefinitely, it is plain that the estimate which allows five young men out of every hundred for member- ship in the church is not too low. Indeed, it is exceed- ingly doubtful whether the proportion is that large. To the above discouraging statements must be added this other, that of the young men who are in the communion of the church, not more than one-half of 28 Dying at the Tof, them can be relied on for anything Hke active service in evangelical work. The churches over the country that have their young men neither in the prayer-meeting nor Sabbath school are legion. Their consecration to the Sabbath base-ball games is greater than to the com- munion of the Lord's Supper. The pastors of a certain city were asked the ques- tions, How many young men have you in your member- ship between eighteen and thirty years of age ? and how many of these are active workers in the church ? The replies of eleven of them footed up three hundred and twenty-five in membership, and less than one-half of them in any active work. The above city has a popula- tion of more than twenty thousand; yet Forepaughs circus, that exhibited in it in August of 1887, had three times as many young men consecrated to its amusements as have all the churches of that city in the ranks of their active workers. Said the Assistant Secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association in a city of two hundred thousand population: "We have four hundred and fifty-two active and associate members in our Asso- ciation, yet we cannot muster ten consecrated workers out of them all." Here, then, we have seventy-five out of eveiy hun- dred young men in this country who do not attend church; ninety-five out of every hundred do not belong to church, and at least ninety-seven out of every hundred who are carrying no cross and bearing no burden for the redeeming of the world to Christ and His church. In short, the young man of our day is substantially figured out as a factor in Christian evangelization, and were the whole population to come to his standard, the church would almost be figured out as a factor in the moulding influences of this great land. From the Chris- tian standpoint, this state of things is simply astounding, and will stagger the most hopeful for a speedy evangeli- zation of our country. With only three of every hundred of our own young men wearing the yoke for Christ, what Dying at the Vop. 29^ becomes of the prophecy that in one hundred years more the whole earth will have turned to the Cross ? It may be remarked that in most of the above esti- mates the Catholic church has not been mentioned, and the question be asked, Do you intend to exclude her young men from the ranks of the Christian army? By no means. When a young man is found consecrated to his Catholic worship, he is counted among Christians just as are those who are consecrated to Protestant ser- vice. In the matter of statistics, estimates cannot be made among Catholics as among Protestants. The boys are all confirmed at an early age and are regarded as church members all through life, no matter what may be their characters, and the Catholic priests are reticent on the subject, so that nothing can be determined through them. But the same agencies that are at work to estrange Protestant young men from their church, are at work among those of Catholic homes. Owing to the fact that the adherents of Catholicism are largely for- eigners, the tone of spirituality among its young men is lower than with the Protestants; hence the fact of such a large percentage of the convicts in our jails and peni- tentiaries being of Catholic persuasion. To an observer it is plain that the Catholic church has lost tens of thousands of her youth from her communion. Lapsed Catholics are found everywhere, especially among the men. They do not go over to Protestantism, but land in the world, where they retain the bias of their early education without its devoutness. It is no uncommon thing to meet young men of Catholic families who never attend any church, who utter no prayer and have never read the Scriptures. It is because Rome feels this hegira from her communion through the liberalizing influences of our country that the present system of separate Catholic schools is so rigidly enforced. It was an alarm measure growing out of the conviction that the whole fabric was in peril. I asked a member of the Catholic church : Do your 30 Dying at the Top, young men attend your religious services ? The reply was, " No, they do not. In a few of our very pious homes the boys are taken to church, and are often held there till they are twenty-one years of age ; but after that they seldom come. Our priests are continually urging their attendance just as you pastors do in the Protestant churches." As an evidence of the disintegrating influences at work among Catholic boys and young men, I quote the following from the Catholic Home: "There is not a parish in Chicago where the Sunday saloon has not been the ruin of hundreds of the most promising and the brightest boys that made their first communion in the parish church. There is not a parish priest in this city but can furnish a long catalogue of young men and married men whose loss of character, of self-respect, of faith and virtue, whose downfall and prob- able damnation, can be laid at the door of the open Sun- day saloon. Is there any Catholic father or mother who mourns the perversion of a son, any Catholic wife whose husband abandons his hiome for the Sunday saloon, but would rejoice to see these places of temptation closed ? Who are they that clamor for the open Sunday saloon ? Hard drinkers, inebriates, debauchees, and those who minister to their vices, and grow rich on the misery of wrecked lives." What is true of the young men of Protestant and Catholic homes is even more true among the Hebrews. Time-honored Jadaism is fast losing its hold on young men, and they are going almost en masse into infidelity. Thus writes Mrs. Freshman, wife of the editor of The Hebrew Christian: "The Jewish young men pay very little attention to the religion of their fathers, though on the day of atonement, the most solemn day of all the year to them, they make it a point to be present in the synagogue, but aside from this they are seldom found at their services. They are drifting towards infidelity, and if the Christian church were only aHve to her duty, many hundreds might be gathered into the fold of Christ." Dyitig at the Top. 31 There are those who think that the Jews are in some marvellous way preserved from the vicious influ- ences that degrade and destroy in other circles. I have heard it stated from my childhood that there are no Jews in jail, and it is only a i^w weeks ago that, in this city, a celebrated Kentucky evangelist challenged an audience, " Did you ever hear of a Jew being in prison? No, sir, the Hebrews look better after their own than that." Had this evangelist studied the prison reports he would have found in the Missouri Penitentiary, 1888 _. 4 Jews. Illinois Penitentiary, 1884 19 Ohio Penitentiary, 1888 _ 4 Illinois Penitentiary, 1888 12 Tennessee Penitentiary, 1S88 5 Elmira Reformatory, 1887 _ . 128 " 1888— 156 Cleveland Reformatory, 1888 8 Detroit House of Correction, 1888 3 These facts are given only to show that no homes and no creeds are exempt from the blighting influences of the day. The writer has no disposition to judge harshly those who are not in the membership of the church. He is well aware that many in it are not Christians — so is he certain that many out of it are Christ's own; yet these two things remain true, first, that it is poor personal re- ligion that under favorable circumstances does not mani- fest itself in a public profession of faith in Jesus Christ ; second, that there is no Christian life where one is prayer- less, and has respect for no kind of religious forms. If such passages as these furnish the basis of our future judgment — " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved," and "Whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after Me, cannot be My disciple," — one of the terrible scenes of the great reckoning will be the arraign- ing of our seven million young men, and the terrible announcement to almost the whole mass of them, " I never knew you ! " "I never knew you !" 32 Dying at the Top, CHAPTER III. DEAD. If our young men did no more than remain away from our churches, and would live under the control of moral principles, the case against them would not be so bad. But the truth is that vast numbers of them are being lost to even morality. They are dying at the top. All the elements that enter into ordinary manhood are being blighted within them. Their story is one of lost purity and uprightness. Their sensitiveness to truth, and home, and self has been blighted, and they are " dead in trespasses and in sin." No one who has not given attention to it, dreams of the prominence of the young man m the criminalities and corruptions of the day. It has been estimated that there are one hundred thousand tramps and vagrants in the United States who sustain themselves by begging from door to door. The vast majority of these are young men. A sheriff, when asked what proportion of the tramps he fed during the winter months are young men, replied, " All of them." A conductor spoke of the bands of vagrants he would often see from his train as he would be passing from city to city, as " camps of young men." After the murder of Jennie Bowman in Louisville, the first arrests were of tramps. Six were taken up at one time, the oldest of whom was twenty-seven, and the youngest nineteen. This last winter an organized band of tramps made their headquarters at the Coke Ovens, in Louisville. They soon became such a nuisance that the police determined to rid the city of their presence. The plans Dying at the Top. 33 were laid, and at eleven o'clock at night the rendezvous was surrounded, and not a single man escaped. "Twenty-one tramps filled the patrol wagons. No tougher looking lot ever passed through the door of Central Station than tliis collection of professional loafers. In spite of their filthy faces and tattered clothes they seemed no objects of sympathy. Ranging in years from fifteen to thirty, they were one and all stout, able-bodied fellows, well able to support them- selves if they were so inclined." Our dead-beats, and swindlers, and shovers of counterfeit money; our gamblers, and rapists, and burglars, are mostly young men. In August, 1887, at Salt Lake City, Fred Hopt was shot to death for murder, the laws of Utah Territory permitting the condemned a choice between hanging and shooting. " He sat with a cigar in his mouth, a rosette pinned over his heart as a target, and posing as if for a photograph while the firing squad of five aimed and fired." He was a young man. L. I. Wilson, the letter thief of Kansas City, who punctured letters with a bodkin, and by a microscope ex- amined the contents, was twenty-three years old. Daniel Miller married a widow near Newport, Tenn. She had four children, a home, and two thousand dollars in bank. He persuaded his wife to sell out her home and go West with him. The homestead was disposed of, and with the proceeds, the two thousand dollars which had been in the bank, and four horses and a wagon, the young man, with his older but still blooming bride and her four children, started toward Chattanooga. When thirty miles from Newport, Miller stopped his wagon and picking up his wife and four children, threw them into the road, exclaiming: " Now go back home, all of you, and be sure you get there quick." Miller drove away rapidly, leaving his wife and step- children to get back home as best they could. Miller was twenty-two years old. 34 Dying at the Top. , In August, near Macon, Ga., Thomas Wolfolk mur- dered his father, mother, their six children and a lady visitor in their home. The monster murdered them all by cutting their throats from ear to ear. Even the sucking babe lying sleeping in its cradle was not spared. Wolfolk is only twenty-seven years old. In the same month, in Louisville Ky., an unpro- tected German girl had lost her bearings and in the dusk of the evening was hunting her way home when she was seized by a number of men, who were in the act of drag- ging her into a dark alley, when her cries attracted a policeman, who rescued her. The policeman described the ruffians as " six well-dressed young men," none of whom were "over twenty-one years of age." The Turner gang of desperadoes living on Yellow Creek, Ky., was composed often men — allof whom, with the exception of Jack Turner himself, were young men ranging in years from seventeen to twenty-five. It was young men who composed the majority of the band of roughs who kept Rowan county, Ky., for so long the scene of outlawry and bloodshed. A writer says : " Craig ToUiver was perhaps thirty-five years of age and the others younger, down to one of fourteen, who fought like a tiger." John Thomas Ross, who was hung in Baltimore in September, 1887, murdered Mrs. Emily Brown to get fifteen dollars for her body at a medical institution. Af- ter breaking her skull with a hammer, he coolly tumbled her body on a wheelbarrow, trundled it throu^'h the streets to the college, and got his pay. He was twenty- six years old. Albert Howell, the Boston letter carrier and thief, was a church member. While carrying on his criminal proceedings he would keep his Bible beside him in the office, and at every leisure moment could be seen intent- ly reading it. His fellows would laugh at him for his piety, but he bore their scorn without a murmur. He was thirty years old. Dying at the 'Top. 35 One of the most fierce and bloody encounters that €ver occurred between pugilists in this country, took place at Rocky Point, near Pawtucket, July 20, 1887. For over four hours, and in sixty-one rounds, Ike Weir and Johnny Havelin pounded each other amid the ap- plause of the by-standers. Weir was twenty-nine years of age and Havelin but twenty. John L. Sullivan, who has done so much in this country to revive the barbarism of the old Roman pugilism and to brutalize the young men of the day, is not yet thirty years old. The above instances are only a few of the ten thou- sand that are occurring every year. It is not the excep- tion, it is the rule, that young men are the criminals of the day. From the single daily newspaper that comes into my home, the Louisville Courier Journal^ I took down those cases of crime chronicled in seven weeks, be- ginning with May i, 1887. Of the one hundred and eighty-two criminals, where the age was in one form or other mentioned, one hundred and sixty-five were young men. Of the fifty-three murders committed, all but eight of them were by young men. And nearly every one of the crimes committed by these one hundred and sixty-five young men was against the person, and in a form showing the basest instincts and lowest brutality. If any are in doubt as to the prominence of the young men in the crimes of the day, let them go with me to our jails and penitentiaries. Look into those faces, as regiment after* regiment, brigade after brigade, division after division, passes by you in striped garb and with lock-step, and it is young men who return your gaze. Visit the camps of the Southern prisons, where convicts, as in Georgia, are sub- jected to the most brutal treatment, and where blood- hounds, as in Texas, are kept ready to pounce on the runaway, and whom do you see serving in a bondage tenfold worse than the most bitter servitude that ever fell to the lot of an old-time slave — but an army of young men ? 36 Dying at the Top, Outside of the city of Philadelphia, on the route to Ocean Grove, the traveler sees to-day huge walls rising out of the ground. What are they for, he asks instinc- tively? They are too high for the foundations of great shops. They have no windows, and so cannot be de- signed for residences. They remind one of the great Chinese wall built to protect China against the inroads of the Tartars; and of the Cyclopean bulwarks within which the Babylonians took refuge from the attacks of the Persians. But these massive stone walls of Penn- sylvania are rising not to keep foes out but to shut them in. They are for a new prison for Pennsylvania's in- creasing numbers of criminals, seventy per cent, of whom are young men and boys. Our own sons are the Tar- tars of to-day, and the walls that, throughout the coun- try, incarcerate them, would, if placed end to end in a continuous line, rival in length China's fifteen-hundred- mile wonder. In the following prison statistics, it will be remem- bered that the expression " young men " applies to con- victs thirty years old and under: WHOLE NO. YOUNO MEN. Texas Penitentiaries at Rusk and Huntsville, according to Report of 1886-_ 2,859 2,097 Joliet, Illinois, (1886)... 1,494 971 South Carolina Prison received in two years, '85 and '86— 547 391 San Quentin and Folsom, Cal, (1886) 1,891 886 Kentucky Prison received in 1884 and 1885 1- - — . 1,153 869 Ohio Prison received in 1886 __ 812 503 Pennsylvania, Eastern, received In 1886—- — „- 572 405 Pennsylvania, Western, received in 1886 265 179 Sing Sing, N. Y., (1886) 1,582 1,111 Auburn, N. Y., (1886) 1,084 639 Indiana, South, (1886) 525 858 Rhode Island (1885) 1,244 850 Connecticut, (1885) 276 153 West Virginia received in 1883 and 1884 _ _ 205 162 Michigan Penitentiary received in forty-three years, up to 1882 _ 7,281 4,f Dying at the Top. 37 To this list, published in the first issues of this work, the following may be added : WHOLE NO. YOUNG MEN. Indiana Prison, South, (1888) 539 372 Ohio Prison enrolled for 1888 794 532 West Viry;inia committed in 1887 97 66 Nevada received in 1888 27 16 In Nevada Prison, Dec. 31. 1888 99 57 Indiana Prison, North, October 31, 1888-__- - 702 344 Georgia Prison, (1888). 1,537 1,421 Wisconsin, (1888) 438 224 Massachusetts Reformatory: 1884-5 663 469 1885-6. 615 435 1886-7— 662 441 1887-8 _ 607 428 Vermont, (1887-8) 94 49 Connecticut, (1888) 301 173 Reformatory at Ionia, Michigan, re- ceived from 1886 to 1888 1,378 945 Missouri received during 1887-8 1,523 1,105 Rhode Island received since 1838 1,397 953 New Jersey Prison, (1888) 881 494 Tennessee, (1889) 1,363 esti'd f= 1,190 Virginia (1888) .-. 372 239 Illinois (Joliet) received from Oct., 1887, to Oct., 1888 650 436 From these figures we learn that, in round numbers, seventy per cent, of the convicts in our penitentiaries are young men. In the common jails throughout the country the per cent, is not quite so large, owing to two facts, that there is a larger per cent, of women among the criminals, and that there are often mere children, wlio, if they are sent up at all, are sent to houses of refuge, in the states where these refuges are provided. Still, even with both these classes counted in, the per cent, of young men is very large. Frederick Howard Wines, in his " American Prisons," gives a table of the prison census of i88o, with the con- victs numbered according to their ages. The whole number including penitentiaries, city and county jails, military prisons, and hospitals for insane convicts, is given as fifty-eight thousand six hundred and nine, thir- 38 Dying at the Top, ty-four thousand three hundred and eighty-five of whom are young men from eighteen to thirty years of age. Some people do not seem to be at all startled at these statistics, about which there is no mistake nor fal- sification. They are met with, " Oh, young men are naturally bad ! " and " They are no worse than their fathers!" But they are our sons none the less; they have immortal souls that are being lost; their criminali- ties are costing the government immense sums. Society has a responsibility with reference to these young men. The mere fact that a boy is naturally bad, and that his father was worse than he is, is no reason why we should let him go to ruin without a desperate effort to save him. Is there nothing to stir men's souls in the fact that every day of this year 1889, there has been heard, in the penal institutions of what we call our " Christian cities," the tramp, tramp, of tens of thousands of young men? There are few things about which the masses of our people are more ignorant, than of the number and move- ments cT our criminal population. The almost universal tendency is to under-estimate rather than over-estimate the wide-spread extent of crime. The more one looks into the matter, the vaster grows the multitude, until he stands appalled at the armies of criminals that file before him. It will startle many, the statement that one in sixty of the present population of the United States is either in prison or ought to be there. Exact statis- tics cannot, of course, be given ; but from the statistics that are at hand, estimates may be made that will not be far from the truth. The most thorough and reliable prison report ever made in this country, is that of Carroll D. Wright, U. S. Commissioner of Labor, in his volume, '* Convict Labor." He gives sixty-four thousand three hundred and forty- nine as the number who, in the penitentiaries, jails, and reformatories of the United States, are engaged in con- vict labor; but he makes no attempt to enumerate the convicts who are not so engaged. In his catalogue are only one hundred and fifteen jails, whereas there are in Dying at the Top. 39 the whole country two thousand six hundred and eighty- seven counties, each of which has its place for the con- finement of prisoners. Apply to these counties the pro- portion, for instance, given for fifty-two counties in Ala- bama, and Mr. Wright's sixty-four thousand are increased to one hundred and thirteen thousand. That this num- ber is too low, is evident from the fact that very few of the jails in our older and more thickly populated states are among those giv^en by the commissioner. In the jails and houses of correction of only fourteen counties of Massachusetts, there are recorded four thousand con- victs. In New York State, outside of its penitentiaries, there were last year, according to Wm. M. Round, of the Prison Association, twelve thousand five hundred and thirty-five convicts in penal institutions. This would make for New York's sixty counties an average each of over two hundred criminals, instead of nineteen, the aver- age for Alabama. Mr. Wright has no statistics at all from Delaware, Idaho, Montana, and Utah. The jails and lockups of New York City and the crowded criminal institutions of Blackwell Island are not in his list. None of the city jails of such places as Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Louisville, Chicago and St. Louis have a place in this report, because having no connection with the question of convict labor. It is placing figures inside the facts, rather than outside, to say that at any given time in the United States there are one hundred and fifty thousand convicts in its prisons, jails, and houses of refuge and correction. Mr. Round, in "Our Criminals and Christianity," says: " By the best authorities it is reckoned that not more than one-fifth of the active criminals are in prison at one time." This would give our country a criminal population of seven hundred and fifty thousand, all of whom, within no great period of time, have actually been convicted of violations of law. So, say the same "best authorities," only about one- twelfth of all those whose living depends on crime, arc ever convicted and punished. 40 Dying at the Top, Place the proportion as low as one-seventh, and, on the basis of the above estimates, we have a criminal popula- tion of over one million, or more than one for every sixty of our present population. If this looks too large, remember that in the year ending September 30, 1886, there filed through the penal and reformatory institu- tions of Pennsylvania alone, an army of fifty-seven thou- sand seven hundred and seventeen, most of them arrested and confined for petty offenses, but criminals none the less. Some of these may have been arrested more than once in the year, but not a large proportion of them. Louisville, with a population of two hundred thousand, averages near eight thousand arrests a year, or one arrest for every twenty-five of its inhabitants; and Louisville is as orderly and law-abiding as any city of its size in the land. Now apply to the above general estimates the propor- tion of seventy per cent, for young men ; and subtracting one-tenth for female^ convicts, you have in prison at this date, in round numbers, ninety thousand young men, and five hundred thousand who are either now or have been convicted and incarcerated criminals — being one hundred and fifty thousand more than those young men who now make a profession of Christianity in the churches in this great land. Three-fourths of these young men are native-born Americans and have had from childhood the opportu- nities of Christian civilization. In the northern states seven-eighths of them have had more or less education, and cannot plead ignorance for their crimes; and a sur- prisingly large majority of them have had more or less of religious training. Of the two hundred and sixty- two prisoners received into the Western Pennsylvania prison, only 5.34 per cent, had no religious belief. Of three thousand eight hundred and sixty-two received into the work-house of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, in 1886, all but one hundred and seven had had religious trainino-. Of six hundred and sixty-eight received in Joliet prison, 111., in 1886, all but forty-three had Dying at the Top. 41 attended Sabbath-school in the different churches. Of eight hundred and fifteen received in Sing Sing prison, six hundred and sixty-nine had attended Sunday school when boys. In four years ending September 30, 1881, there were admitted to the Michigan penitentiary one thousand one hundred and twenty convicts — six hundred and seventeen of whom came from homes where either one or both parents were pious. This condition of things grows more dark and fore- boding when we learn that crime in our country is increasing with greater rapidity than the population, and that it is having its largest increase from the youth of American homes. The prisons of the land are crowded beyond their capacity, and the cry to thelegislatures every- where is, we must have more cell-room. In the reforma- tories of the United States there are ten thousand boys, ranging from seven years to seventeen years of age, most of whom have been committed for the same crimes that are sending adults to the penitentiaries. Pennsylvania, for the year ending September 30, 1886, had more children in its House of Refuge and Reform School than it had convicts in both of its penitentiaries. Among the arrests by the police of New York City in 1886 were two thousand two hundred and forty-eight boys and one thousand and fifty girls, under fourteen years of age. In the Kentucky penitentiary, from January i, 1880, to December 16, 1886, eight hundred and fifty-nine boys between the ages of sixteen and twenty years of age, were committed. Rev. W. W. Hill, chaplain of the California State Prison at San Quentin, states in his report for 1886: "During the last four years, notwith- standing the large percentage of discharges the num- ber (of boys) present has increased from forty to eighty, or one hundred per cent. How much longer can we be indifferent to conclusions •resulting from such facts? A few more one hundred per cent, increases and a new State prison must be built for the accommodation of juvenile criminals alone." The biennial report of th^ Western Penitentiary of 42 Dying at the Top, Pennsylvania gives the " prison population " from 1826 to 1886. Taking the catalogue by decades, and with the exception of that from 1846 to 1856, the increase of convicts has been far beyond the increase of Pennsyl- vania's population for corresponding decades. The decade ending 1846 shows an increase of prisoners of seventy-one per cent, over that ending 1836. The decade ending 1866 shows sixty-one per cent, increase over that ending 1856. The decade ending 1876, shows eight3^-one per cent, increase over that ending 1866; and that ending 1886, shows an increase of fifty-eight per cent, over the decade ending 1876. In all this sweep of sixty years, the very highest advance Pennsylvania has made in her population in any decade is thirty-three and one-third per cent. The prison reports for 1873 showed a prison popu- lation throughout the country of eighteen thousand four hundred and ninety-two. According to the report of Carroll D. Wright, the same prisons in 1886 held thirty-three thousand six hundred and thirty-eight con- victs, an increase of nearly eighty-two per cent.; whereas the whole population of the United States increased in the same period not forty per cent. In other words, so far as prison statistics afford a basis for judgment, crime in 1886 was more than twice as prevalent as it was only thirteen years before. Wm. M. F. Round tells us in his "Our Criminals and Christianity," that from 1880 to 1886, whilst the population of New York State increased twenty per cent., that of her penal institutions increased thirty-three per cent. Frederick H. Wines has an article in his paper of July, 1887, The International Record, on "The Increase of Crime." From statistics that he presents, crime is two and one-half times more prevalent in Pennsylvania than it was fifty years ago; in New Jersey, three times more prevalent; in Maine crime has advanced thirty- seven per cent, in twenty years. In Illinois the ratio of convictions is more than two and one-half times what it Dying at the Top. 43 was thirty years ago. " In three states, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New Hampshire, the percentage of increase, above that of the general population, in fifty years, has been one hundred and fifty-two. " In four states — including Illinois with those already named — the percentage of increase has been one hundred and four. " In seven states — including Maine, Iowa and Min- nesota — the percentage of increase for twenty years has been thirty-six. These seven states include nearly one- fourth of the total population, and it is fair to presume that there are more than one-third more convictions now in the entire country, in proportion to the population, than there were twenty years ago, at the close of the war." The seventeenth Annual Report of the Allegheny County (Pa.) Work-house gives its population from 1870 to 1886. The number sent into it from Pittsburg alone in 1870, was eight hundred and fifty- three; the number sent in 1886 was two thousand, eight hundred and seventy-eight, an increase in sixteen years of two hundred and thirty-six per cent. If the general popula- tion of that city had kept pace in its increase with the increase of its criminals, Pittsburg to-day would have a population of over two million souls, instead of two hundred and eighty-seven thousand for both Pittsburg and Allegheny. Says General Brinkerhoff of Ohio: ''So startling is the increase of crime, that it is very evident that society itself is in jeopardy, unless something is done to arrest and reverse this order of growth. Ac- cording to the United States census, crime has more than doubled every ten years for half a century past, and still the tide is rising. It is evident something must be done, or we die." The foregoing statistics are part of our country's census, as much so as those given relating to our crops, or mines, or colleges, or churches. They demand the consideration of every lover of his country. Emerson 44 Dying at the Top, never spoke wiser words than these attributed to ht» pen: "The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops; no; but the kind of men the country turns outr CHAPTER IV. WASTE. Young man, I have just passed my fiftieth birthday. So far as I know there is not a broken organ in my body. If it were not for indications outside of my person, in my grown children and in the records of the old family Bible, I would not know that I was over twenty-five years old. I cannot find at any point a single trace of the wear and tear of half a century. Yet have I gone under the billows of the severest bereave- ment; have had vexations and trials all through my public life, and have had bodily afflictions that would have sent me to the grave if I had ever been dissipated in any form. These bodies God has given us for the first dwelling- place of the soul are magnificent creations. They can stand almost any strain upon them, provided it comes in harmony with their laws. They are made to bear us and serve us for one hundred ^-xars, and then to let our souls out at the grave with the ease and peace of one alighting from the chariot of a king. But the draft you are making on your body, young man, is the waste of dissipation. Because of your sin- ful excesses, the doom of the wicked will fall on you, and you will not Hve out half your days. At fifty, as I turn to look back, I find that I have nearly outlived the sec- ond generation of fast young men. Those of my boy- hood days, who had as good bodies as my own, but who Dying at the lop. 45 subjected them to the drain of indulged passions, have been in their graves for fifteen and twenty years. Many who were born in the beginning of my ministry, and "sowed their wild oats," are already dead, and those who remain are broken and diseased, dragging out the end ol their short careers in misery. Any one who studies carefully the mortuary lists will find a critical period of human life at infancy. In the vital statistics of Ohio for 1885, one-sixth of the deaths fall within the first and second year. The proportion of deaths gradually diminishes till we come to the columns from twenty to twenty-five years, and from twenty- five to thirty, when there is a sudden rise in the number. We all understand the secret of so great mortality at infancy. It is owing to the risks of birth and the exposure of babyhood. But why should we reach another critical period at about the twenty-fifth year? At that period the body should be at the beginning of its manhood prime. Theorizers have imagined that human Hfe has a kind of wave motion, unseen and inexplicable, yet real. We come into life at birth in the trough of the wave. At about three years of age the billow begins to rise, and remains at its crest till about twenty, when it begins to sink, till at twenty-five the greatest depression is again reached. Then comes another swell that does not have its corresponding descent till fifty. Practical people have no difficulty in accounting for these upward and downward movements of the mortu- ary lines. At about fifteen years of age young girls fall into the foolish customs of society, and expose their health by only half dressing themselves. They " catch cold " ; important organs are disturbed ; in many instances rapid decline follows and between twenty and twenty- five comes death. It is only the wave-motion of exposure. At the same age young men begin to have what they call " fun." Their dissipation makes heavy drafts on the kidneys and lungs ; digestion is broken, and the 46 Dying at the Top, heart's action enfeebled. The twenty-fifth year comes round, and a wasted manhood sinks into an early grave. Young man, you are not ignorant ; you know what I say is true — that the sinking of your chances after twenty is through your early vices. Miss Willard quotes Quetelet, the famous statis- tician, as having made a special study of the statistics of European life insurance companies, and that he had reached the conclusion that the time of greatest risk (or highest death rate), in men's lives is the age of twenty- five years. She adds very wisely: " Unhappily the rea- son is not far to seek. Indulgence in tobacco, alcoholics, and impurity, if begun in early life, at the age of twenty- five will have reported themselves back in the wretched sequels of deterioration, often even unto death." The following extract is from a physician whose name I cannot give. But the words are too true to be omitted at this point. "It is a sad but unavoidable reflection that thousands of men who should be the bone and sinew of the country, pillars of society, of the church and of the State, are broken down, both physically and mentally, before they have reached the zenith of their usefulness. Early indis- cretions, the results of ignorance and folly; over-exertion of both mind and body, induced by inordinate ambition, dissipation and exposure, are continually working the ruin of thousands whose ability, energy and integrity the world needs to preserve the equilibnum of civilization. Some fall before they have yet entered the arena of active life, while many more, enervated by the effects of youthful folly, after a few years of ambitious labor, find themselves incompetent for the arduous duties of busi- ness and professional life, and are forced to retire igno- miniously from the field of action to meet an untimely death, or to drag out a weary and unsatisfactory exist- ence, incapacitated for both the duties and enjoyments of life. In the capacity of physicians it is our duty to ignore all false delicacy and speak plainly on this sub- ject, that the young may have due warning to shun Dying at the Top. 47 unnatural practices that lead to the subversion of man- hood and the loss of everything that makes life desirable. Let us also warn the unhappy victims of follies that are past undoing to improve the means of restoration while there is still hope. The reality is beyond adequate description. In its track we find the ravages of loath- some disease, physical, mental and moral degradation, disrupted homes, asylums filled with imbeciles, and graves that have kindly thrown the mantle of oblivion over wasted lives." What brings a blight on your body, brings a worse blight on your immortal soul. You are in the slow but sure process of exhausting all the higher elements of your manhood. The tenderness of your affections; the keen- ness of your sympathies; the kindliness of your minis- trations; your sensitiveness against wrong; your respect for the opinions and rights of others; your reverence for truth; your devoutness toward your God, are oozing away under these nights of revelry; and before you are many years older, you will have undergone that awful transformation that makes a brute of the man. A brute ! Why degrade an animal by comparing it with a human being whose manhood is wasted. What animal will take the life of its own kin? Will turn its own lair or den into a hell of wretchedness? Will go howling among the homes of its fellows, making itself a terror, when it should be a support and defense? The Bible stories of Cain killing his brother through jealousy; of the sons of Jacob, selling Joseph into bondage out of petty spite; of the sons of Eli robbing the people and living in lust among the fallen women of the city; of Absalom stealing the hearts of the people, and, under cover of filial reverence and of godliness, leaving Jerusa- lem, to drive his father from his home, are sometimes spoken of as the features of a barbarous era; but they are being repeated all over our country to-day, by sons who, in the indulgence of sinful passions, have turned their hearts into stone. In a city with whose homes I am familiar, I select a 48 Dying at the Top, section of thirteen squares in one direction and four in the other, making a parallelogram of fifty-two blocks. In this area within a single generation, I know of sixty young men who have "gone to the bad." How many others there may have been, in this section, among families with which I am not acquainted, I do not know. But here are sixty that I do know. Not one of them is from a poor family, or that of foreigners. They are Americans and from good homes. Most of them are from Christian households, and have had an education both in the day schools and Sabbath schools. Some have fallen through drink; some through licentiousness; some are dead-beats; some of them are tramps ; some gamblers ; some are dead — dead either from self-violence or the violence of others* The drain they have made on human hearts and human homes, no one but God can know. The days of wretched- ness to loved ones, and nights of painful anxious watch- ing, will be revealed only when the books of the last day are opened. One, after receiving his education for life, marries a harlot, and is wasting his substance in riotous living, and at the same time wasting the peace and sun- shine of parental hearts. Another marries a young girl, lives with her long enough to bring a child to her arms, and then blights her life by running away with another man's wife. A third marries a young girl who is sup- porting her home comfortably from her employment, and takes her away from her income under promise of sup- porting her himself. In course of time a child comes to their home, when he deserts her for another woman; and to secure money to spend on his villainies, takes his baby out of its cradle and sells the cradle. The poor young mother loses a husband, sacrifices a lucrative posi- tion, and is left with a child in her arms to struggle alone with the hardships of life, while the base scoundrel who called himself her husband goes his way to turn the sweetness of other lives into gall. So the whole dread- ful roll could be called, every one as he marches through his career of self-indulgence, trampling under his feet the hearts of fathers and mothers and wives, and sending Dying at the Top. 49 their wails of bitterness before him to the presence of a patient but just God. The picture I have drawn is by no means excep- tional. It is true of every town and city in this land. All around, Davids are going up to the ^'chamber over the gate," weeping and crying, "O my son Absalom I My son, my son Absalom ! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!" Rachels are mourning for their children and refusing to be comforted, while you, young man, are having your "good times" with your boon companions. Rev. J.J. Talbot, who is mentioned in the follow- ing clipping from one of our dailies, acted as a supply at one time in the Episcopal church of my own city. He liad the natural gifts to fit him for any position in life. His career of dissipation had a very small beginning — the sipping of the wine cup after communion. He was never willingly a victim to his passion. At times he would shut himself up for days that he might overcome the awful thirst for intoxicants, but the demon within him conquered him at last, and he died under its spell. The following extract is given because it shows, in words of pitiful pathos, the waste of dissipation : The Drink Demon. — J. J. Talbot, once a minister of the gospel, then a brilliant lawyer and member of Congress, lately died at South Bend, Ind., from the effects of strong drink. Mr. Colfax heard him speak in the following strain shortly before his death : "But now that the struggle is over, I can survey the field and measure the losses. I had position high and holy. This demon tore from around me the robes of my sacred office, and sent me forth churchless and godless, a very hissing by-word among men. Afterward I had business, large and lucrative, and my voice in all large courts was heard pleading for justice, mercy and the right. But the dust gathered on my un-open books, and no footfall crossed the threshold of the drunkard's office. I had money ample for all necessities, but it took wings and went to feed the coffers of the devils which possessed 50 Dying at the Top, me. I had a home adorned with all that wealth and the most exquisite taste could suggest. The devil crossed its threshold and the ligrht faded from its chambers; the fire went out on the holiest of altars, and, leading me through its portals, despair walked forth with her, and sorrow and anguish lingered within. I had children, beautiful to me, at least, as a dream of the morning, and they had so entwined themselves around their father's heart that, no matter where it might wander, it ever came back to them on the bright wings of a father's un- derlying love. This destroyer took their hands in his and led them away. I had a wife whose charms of mind and person were such that to see her was to remember, and to know her was to love. For thirteen years we walked the rugged path of life together, rejoicino^ in its sunshine and sorrowing in its shade. This infernal monster couldn't spare me even this. I had a mother, who for long, long years had not left her chair, a victim of suffering and disease, and her choicest delight was the reflection that the lessons which she had taught at her knee had taken root in the heart of her youngest born, and that he was useful to his fellows and an honor to her who bore him. But the thunderbolt reached even there, and there it did its most cruel work. Ah! me; never a word of reproach from her lips — only a tender caress; only a shadow of a great and unspoken griet gathered over the dear old face; only a trembling hand laid more lovingly on my head; only a closer clinging to the cross; only a more piteous appeal to heaven if her cup at last were not full. And while her boy raved in his wild delirium two thousand miles away, the pitying angels pushed the golden gates ajar, and the mother of the drunkard entered into rest. " And thus I stand ; a clergyman without a cure; a barrister without brief or business; a father without a child; a husband without a wife; a son without a parent; a man with scarcely a friend ; a soul without a hope — all swallowed up in the maelstrom of drink." Dyivg at the V}>p. 51 This destructive work of yours, young man, does not end with yourself and your home. Your loss of personal honor and intec^rity sends you into the world as a dangerous element. You are to enter into positions of responsibility only to betray the confidences placed in you. You are educating yourself to become an absconding clerk, a defaulting treasurer; to draw on the funds of others to meet your own losses in reckless speculations; to unite with bands of others like yourself to " beat" your employers out of their honest gains; to become a "boomer" and rob the innocent through fictitious values placed on bonds and stocks and real estate; to enter some city council, or jury room, or legislature, and there squander the public funds to meet the demands of your godless ambition ; to go to the polls in public elections to sell your own vote and buy the votes of others, and so defraud communities out of their just decisions. Good people are astounded to-day at the columns on columns in our newspapers, filled with the vil- lainies of men who have occupied positions of respon- sibility. Indianapolis was startled in January last to learn that Joseph A. Moore — a trusted citizen and high member of the church — had robbed the Connecticut Life Insurance Company out of half a million dollars, and still more startled to learn that at his headquarters this robbery had been systematically carried on for ten years. At present, Louisiana is disturbed over the fraudulent issue of bondp to the extent of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The enormous piunderings of New York City and Brooklyn have become famous the world over. Through "jobs" the capital at Albany, New York, has already cost eighteen million dollars. Its ceiling was the work of downright rascality. Harpers Weekly says: "It will remind the spectator that the shrewdest people under the sun can scarcely hope to put up an honest public building." "John C. Eno, who was a banker in New York City, and succeeded in stealing over four million dollars from 52 Dying at the Top, the Second National Bank, is living at present in Que- bec, the ancient capital of Canada, in a beautiful house on the St. Foye road, for which he paid seventy-five thou- sand dollars of his ill-gotten gains. He is living sur- rounded by his wife and family, and putting on a great deal of style, as he has the entree of the best society. He is frequently seen at the receptions given by the Lieu- tenant-Governor." "Thomas Axworthy lives in Windsor temporarily. His absence is enforced by reason of his having stolen five hundred thousand dollars from the municipality of Cleveland, Ohio, while acting as treasurer of the corpora- • tion. " Henr>' Dilckman, who robbed an insurance com- pany in St. Louis of seventy-five thousand dollars, is a fellow-townsman of Axworthy." Such extracts as these could be given by the score. The New York Sun is responsible for the statement that the stockholders of the great railroads running west and south-west from New York have been swindled out of forty million dollars. "By crooked manipulation and adroit financiering the officers in power have played the part of thieves, and with their aggrandizement depreciated the value of stocks and wrecked the roads whose affairs they were elected to supervise." Charles Francis Adams,, an expert in railroad affairs, is quoted as saying that this uneasy and unsatisfactory position of the railroad system of the country is to be accounted for by " the covetous- ness, want of good faith, and low moral tone of those in whose hands the management of the railroad system now is.'' The career of Henry S. Ives, a young man not yet thirty years old, is a romance of iniquity. Through the passion for wealth, public men gathered round him and were enchanted with his financial genius. Without one dollar of his own, he came to be the wonder of Wall Street. The Courier -Journal says of him : " The public considered him as a thief, but so long as the law did not the matter was but a trifle. In his Dying at the Top, 53 €arly attempt upon the road he had drawn in with him a man of recognized wealth and great honesty. When the thief was called into court, suspicion fell upon this man too, and the blow killed him. The unscrupulous broker immediately formed a plan to rob his estate, amounting to seven million dollars. He was detected and brought into court. This time he could not blind justice, and the whole tale of the life and crimes of this man, Henry S. Ives, is coming out. Forgery and perjury have been his most frequent instruments, and he has hesitated at nothing. He has stolen millions of dollars, and has proved himself one of the most daring freebooters of the age. Chicago is scarcely out of its excitement over the •daring of the Anarchists, till it is startled by the great conspiracy to murder Dr. Cronin. For bribery and lawlessness, this will stand unparalleled in the history of American courts. "Luther Laflin Mills, who is one of the lawyers assisting the prosecution in the Cronin case, and who is not an alarmist by any means, said yesterday to a group of reporters : ' I weigh well the meaning of my words. I fully appreciate the delicacy of the position which I occupy, and I will say that in the history of criminal trials there has been no more unscrupulous, audacious or wicked attempt to interfere with the cause of justice than there has been in the Cronin case. It is appalling on account of its effrontery, its utter disregard of the law, and its defiance of every known code of honor, honesty and legality. There has been nothing like it in the history of this country. There has been no such crime attempted against American law in my recollection, nor do I find any such attempt to pervert justice in the reading of the history of my country.'" Grave citizens are reading these things and saying under their breath, what does it all mean? Is there any man whom we can trust ? There is no mystery whatever in this condition of things. It is simply natural causes working out their 54 Dying at the Top, effects. Men do not gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles. These public plunderers and plotters are not all at present young men; but they were once young men. In early life their moral characters became vitiated, and robbery has become second nature to them. And, if something is not done to elevate and christianize the conscience of the present rising generation of boys and young men, the future will be as the present, full of the wrongs which one portion of society commits against the other; our property will become less safe from the threats of the anarchist; our lives less secure from the burglar and highwayman ; our investments will be more and more jeopardized by the speculator; our elections will pass even more fully than to-day into the hands of the briber and '' boodler," and our whole administration of justice become a by-word and a scorn to other nations of the earth. The mere fact that this is a free country, and that it is the people who govern, will not save us from the ruin that has come on earlier Republics. Our private and public Hfe, and both our legislation and administration, must be based on righteousness, or we fall. And what prospect have we for a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, so long as the mass of our young men have no fear of God before their eyes ? Dr. Washington Gladden, of Columbus, O., deliv- ered an intensely interesting series of lectures this sum- mer at Chautauqua, on some of the social and political problems of the day. His lecture on "Trusts" was a most serious and convincing portrayal of the danger of these immense combinations, unless they are carefully watched and guarded by the people and their represent- atives in our halls of legislation. What he urged above all things else for our safety was a higher order of conscientiousness in our citizens. After the lecture I sent him a copy of "Dying at the Top" and asked him the question, What prospect have we at present for a higher standard of conscientiousness ? It was asked in no captious spirit, but in all seriousness. Given, the Dying at the Top. 55 young men of the hour — drifting from all forms of religious life, and toying with the serpent that tempts with forbidden fruits — and there is no prospect of a condition of things any better than we have at present. I have faith that a better day is before us, but it will come only by our changing the existing status among our young men. Young man, I wish I could end the story of your waste right here. But I must take you where you have, now, little thought of ever possessing any influence for destruction. You look on death as the end-all of your reckless career, except as you may live to reap the fruits of your folly. You make two mistakes right here; you think that all the reaping time is in the other world and that the sowing time is wholly in this world. But observe carefully and you will conclude that reaping and sowing are never wholly separated in your life. The lassitude and pain that follow on the day after a night's debauch are in the harvest time. You are reaping the whirlwind the very instant you have sowed to the Vv^ind. There are reapings of remorse and despair that are reserved; but they are only the more remote results that come after patient nature and a long-suffering Heavenly Father have waited for you to repent and return. But you resist the warning of the immediate ingathering; by and by nature is exhausted, and the Spirit is grieved away, and then you are abandoned to the extreme consequences of your long course of sin, and learn that it is not a figure of speech where the Holy Scripture prophesies weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth for the deeds done in the body. After death your career will not be substantially changed. Your soul will be out of the body, but not out of this world. In the transition, you are moved to a higher plane of power and influence by having your spirit set loose from the limitations of a material body. On that higher plane, if you should go up from a pure and righteous manhood in the earthly body, you would be in a posi- tion to multiply your good works for others and your 56 Dying at the Tof. blessedness for yourself, by — shall I say a hundred-fold or a thousand-fold ? — by a "fold" as far above that of this earth as is the spiritual above the material. But you choose to go up to that exalted plane from a debased and debauched manhood. As you go you carry with you everything but your body — your memory, your passions, your tastes, your propensities, your desires for unholy gratification, your hate, your vindictiveness, and, out there in that land of spirits, you go on with your work just as you did here. Can that be so ? How can it be otherwise? My dear boy, please point me to an agent that stops its influence by any change of form, or even changes the character of its influence. The fuel in your grates is consumed, you say ; but that means only that the elements of it are set loose. The water and the gases go off into the great world outside, and the earthy matter to where it was in the earth before the vital powers of plant-life took it up. Not an element has lost its being nor a single property it possessed. Each takes its accustomed place in the rounds of Nature's work, to be, and to do, till the end of time, just what its Maker intended. A power, be it vital or spiritual, when once sent forth from the Creator's brain, never halts and never dies. You are a soul; your body is only its primal form; in death you are no less a soul. A soul is God's highest form of influence; being in the image of God, that influence is, in its nature, divine; because divine, it is continuous and continual in its ever-increasing sweep and power. In the great future, you will do wrong as you do here; you will break hearts, and wreck fortunes, and trample hopes — on and on and on — unless you stop right where you are, revolu- tionize your conduct and return to the God whom you have despised. Satan and his associate devils were once bright angels in Heaven ; they fell from their holiness as you have fallen. Did they cease to wield an influence to destroy ? Are they not now those very fallen souls that are possessing men and gratifying their hate and Dying at the Top. 67 revenge by ruining what God intends shall be saved and exalted? Now, halt, young man, and count the cost. For a sinful gratification you are filling your body with disease; preparing" for an early death; corrupting your higher gifts; loading up your conscience with the recollections of hearts and homes broken and dishonored; of property wasted; of society disturbed; of law violated; of God and man despised and wronged. And you are making forced funereal marches to the doom of a wicked, wasted child of the everlasting Father. CHAPTER V. WORMS BENEATH THE BARK. With the young men of American homes I am in profound sympathy. What I have written has come from a heart that loves them, and consents to reveal their waywardness, only because, by so doing, they may be saved. It is the very fewest of our youth who go astray from desire and design. The great mass of them think they can sin just a little and then " sober up " and " settle down," as many of their fathers have done. Many sin because they have never known anything else. A current that had its existence before they were born, has taken them up and carried them along on its easy yet resistless wave. Thousands of our criminals never designed to be criminal; they will tell you so when you gain their confidence. They are sinned against more than they are sinning. As a class, our young men are a noble-hearted set of fellows. They are kind and polite and generous to a fault. The public is under an immense indebtedness to them. W^ith what polish they wait on you at the coun- ter, and the offices of telegraph, telephone and railroad. They answer your thousand questions without a mur- 58 Dying at the Top, mur; they wait till you gratify your whims, and dismiss you with smiles. They give you directions and carry your packages, and help you on and off the cars as gen- tly and carefully as the trained attendants of royalty. Miss Jennie Smith, of Dayton, Ohio, when an invalid, traveling over the country in her wheel-cot found railroad men so uniformly kind and gentle that she is now devoting her life to preaching Christ among them.. " When an invalid, traveling on a wheel-cot, so carefully cared for by them, and finding how hungry they werr for sympathy in their isolated position, cut off as the^ were from the means of grace, her heart was drawn out to them with desires to help them spiritually." Yet these same railroad men are tempted and exposed as no set of men ever were; they have homes, but seldom see them; churches, but seldom are allowed to enter them. Day and night they are on the road in the service of others, exposed to weather and accident. Those whom they serve ride in the trains they guide and ^uard, without a word of kindness or sympathy for these brave fellows. Their ministrations are given without grudge, and received by the public without thanks. In the Railroad Gazette, published in New York, issue of April 26 last, is found this statement: " A cal- culation based upon accident returns in the reports of State commissioners indicates that every year some two thousand seven hundred able-bodied men are killed, and over twenty thousand injured in the discharge of their duties as employes of the railroads of this country." A writer in the Messenger of Peace, speaking con- cerning the railroad men of Iowa, says : " Our commissioner law has been in force for, ten years. This law requires railroad companies to report casualties of every kind to the board. In these ten years there have been killed and injured in this state by the link and pin coupling and hand brake alone, two thousand four hundred and twenty-six strong, able- bodied men, and the great majority of them young men. Dying at the Top. 59 "When these reports from the railroads commenced we had about four thousand miles of road ; we now have a little over eight thousand. The report of the commis- sioners for 1888 shows three hundred and fifty-two killed and injured by these two causes alone in this state last year. " We have in this nation now rising one hundred and fifty thousand miles of railroad. If the same death rate and injury hold all over the nation as in Iowa (and we have reason to believe it is greater) there are not less than six thousand six hundred of these young men ground to death under the cruel iron wheels, or caught between the cars and more or less crippled for life each year in this country. "This is indeed a fearful statement, and one the gen- eral public will be slow to believe just because of its awfulness. Nevertheless it is too awfully true. I am under rather than over the true facts. Railroad experts tell me I should make my calculations on the number of engines in use, rather than on the miles of road in the state. There is good reason for this. Then again Iowa is a temperance state. Her railroad men are almost uni- versally temperance men. Our trains are handled by sober men, but be that as it may, here are the astounding facts : Three hundred and fifty-two either killed or injured in the state of Iowa last year and on this most favorable calculation, six thousand six hundred in this nation by these two causes alone." How can one read and reflect on these facts without feeling that here is a body of brave, knightly gentlemen who deserve our sympathies and ministrations. When men of such material are found, out of the religious life, and often in ways of sin, one cannot but say to himself: Something is wrong. These erring men were not born just as they are. They are a result. If a tree withers before its time, injury has been done in some way. The law of cause and effect holds its place as truly in the realm of human thought and human conduct as it does in the material world. Remove the causes of vice. 60 Dying at the Top, and vicious characters will disappear, as readily as will fevers and pests when sanitary measures become com- plete. Says Dr. Maudsley : " It is certain that lunatics and criminals are as much manufactured articles as are steam-engines or calico-printing presses, only the process of organic manufacture is complex." It is the purpose of this chapter to study this ■*' process of organic manufacture," whereby our young men are turned away from the church into lives irrelig- ious and often criminal. The first step claiming our notice, is undoubtedly HEREDITY. A few months ago, in one of our American cities, there was executed a young man of twenty-five years of age. He had taken the life of a companion, in cold blood, and in his right mind. He did not deny his crime nor attempt a defense. He passed through his brief trial with perfect stolidity. He sang, chatted, told jokes, ate and slept as though he were as happy as any man alive. The announcement of his conviction and his sentence was received without the tremor of a nerve. At the execution, he examined the scaffold and the rope as coolly as if they had been a work of art. At his request, he put the noose round his own neck, adjusted it, and gave direction for them to spring the trap. When he was dead, the general verdict of society was — " He was a brute, and hanging was too good for him." For my purpose I will call him Gracey, and ask — Who and what made him a brute? People of true and solid culture will not find fault when I say that Gracey began his earth-life in the body of his father, where that strange brain power — whose mystery no man can fathom — determined that the germ should be human and not something else. The father was not a criminal, but he was a bad man none the less. He had come from a long line of low- lived ancestry, and never had an opportunity to be any Dying at the Top, 61 different from his parents. All his constitutional instincts and propensities were of the flesh. Alcohol and licen- tiousness had made him a victim of passion. On the germ-life within him, he stamped his character as distinctly as he ever had stamped the outlines of his face in his photograph. The mother had been a well-meaninc^ girl, and had worked honestly for her living till Gracey's father had first ruined and then married her. Their wedlock became a licensed indulgence, and the mother, in time and by harsh treatment, grew as hardened and debased as the father. In this mother's body, Gracey lay for months, isolated from all outside influences. The mother poured her life-blood into his veins, and her thoughts and propensities into his soul. Here was an ill-begotten germ developing in an ill-constructed soil. When Gracey was born, he was white because his parents made him white; he had human hands and eyes and feet, for his parents had them before him, and he had their characters — their tastes and passions — folded up in his baby heart, ready to spring into life in the coming development. Parentage settled the direction of Gracey's career. Does any one doubt it? This is Heredity, doubtless over-estimated by some, but vastly under-estimated by most. It is not true that birth Jixes character and destiny. Character, in this world, is seldom ever absolutely so fixed that it may not be revolutionized. Some Catholic Archbishop is credited with a very foolish remark: *' Give me the children of the land till they are five years of age, and Protestants may have them ever after." The idea is that by five years of age he could so fix their characters that they would ever after be Catholics at heart. But any child can be revolutionized after childhood or in manhood. You may make a civilized man out of the child of an Indian; a Christian out of the son of an idolatrous Hottentot. The transformation made by the gospel of Jesus Christ in such men as John B. Gough, Jerry McCauley, and 62 Dying at the Top. Dick Weaver, of the cock-pits of London, are a standings evidence that character is never absolutely fixed. It is not claimed here that Heredity ^jtv^y character, only that it gives a marked and decided trend to it; so much so that any system of philanthropy that does not take it into account can never redeem the world from vice. It was a fundamental law of the creation that every creature was to "bring forth of its kind." To this law we owe diversities that always have existed and always will exist. It is a law that is sovereign in the spirit as well as in matter. It is as impossible fqr a child begotten of lustful and vicious parents to begin its life unbiased from lust and vice, as for a serpent's egg to bring forth an eagle. The fact that many a child of a low-lived parentage develops early into ways of purity and Christian devotion, only proves that God has placed in our hands another law that may overcome that of heredity — the law of Environment. The following statement was made some time since in the Popular Science Monthly in illustration of the "Inheritance of Deformities": "One of the most singular of these is the case of Edward Lambert, whose whole body, except the face, the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet, was covered with a sort of shell, consisting of horny excrescences. He was the father of six children, all of whom presented the same anomaly at the age of six weeks. The only one of them who lived, transmitted the peculiarity to all of his sons, and this transmission, passing from male to rnale, persisted through five generations." Junius Henri Brown states his belief in heredity thus : "What the Rothschilds have been, they are still — men possessed of rare genius for pecuniary planning, and for bearing the largest and most difficult enterprises to suc- cessful issues. They transmit the properties, material and mental, which they have inherited. Their blood flows in kindred channels, generation after generation, and every drop of it dances to the jingle of coin. From foundation to turret they are built up and bulwarked Dying at the Top, 63 with cash. In due process of development, the future Rothschilds may become sacks of shining sovereigns." To anyone desiring to look more minutely into he- redity as it bears on vice and crime, let me commend a work published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, entitled "The Jukes." It was written by R. L. Dugdale, and is an honest attempt of the author to reveal to soci- ety a source of criminality that even philanthropy has ignored. In this work we find that in seven generations a single abandoned home bequeathed to the world twelve hundred descendants, a large majority of whom were idiots, imbeciles, drunkards, lunatics, paupers, prostitutes and criminals. Seven hundred and nine of the twelve hundred have been registered, and their history studied in Mr. Dugdale's work. He finds that, while harlotry in the community at large averages nearly two out of every hundred women, it was over twenty-nine times more fre- quent among the Juke women. In the line of Ada Juke, better known as " Margaret, the Mother of Criminals," it was found that crime among the men was thirty times greater than that in the community in general. Of the five hundred and thirty-five children born, nearly twenty- four per cent, were illegitimate. Among the women of this Juke family, the number of paupers was seven and a half times, and among the men nine times, greater than in the community at large. Among the sick and disabled of both sexes, nearly fifty-seven per cent, were paupers, one man, " through hereditary blindness, costing the town twenty-three years of out-door relief for two people, and a town-burial." Summing up the crimes and pauperism of this single family, Mr. Dugdale estimates that in seventy-five years it cost the public over one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, " without reckoning the cash paid for whisky, or taking into account the entailment of pau- perism and crime of the survivors in succeeding genera- tions, and the incurable disease, idiocy and insanity growing out of this debauchery, and reaching farther than we can calculate." 64 Dying at the Top, HOME. Our little hero came into the world under an unlucky star. Neither father nor mother hailed his presence. He was received and treated as an intruder. The vengeance of an angry parentage fell on his head. The mother wished him dead, and did everything, by exposure and neglect, to kill him. But he was destined to live and suffer, and to make others suffer like himself. In his home life, extending to his twelfth year, Gracey saw nothing but confusion and violence; and heard nothing except what tended to change his heart into stone. He was turned out of doors in the cold ; shut up in dark closets as a punishment; locked in the house and left alone for hours. He was kicked and beaten by a drunken father and angry mother, till he was compelled, like a savage, to turn on them with whatever weapons came to his hand. He learned to lie as his only success- ful weapon of defense; and to steal as, at times, his only means of support. His face bore the marks of perverted passion, and his soul was rank with those appetites that lay dormant in his birth. He grew shy and fearful, and looked on every human being as his foe. His only com- panionship was Avith the boys of the street whose lives were as bitter as his own, and together the only congen- ial pastime they found was in doing what aggravated and tormented others. Here was the childhood of what society afterwards calls "a brute," and yet not at a single point was he responsible. It is the story of the home life of thousands of boys. The majority of our desperate and hardened criminals sprung from just such conditions. In the New York State Reformatory, at Elmira, record is made of the parentage and home surroundings of the inmates. Of three thousand one hundred and thirty-four, only two hundred and eighty came from good homes, while all ot the balance sprang from homes indifferent or " positively bad." These records show also that the smallest per cent, of the inmates are set down as having " left home Dying at the Top. 65 previous to ten years of age " — only five in one hundred' while fifty per cent, were from those who were " at home up to the time of crime " — showing that a child's chances are increased for a law-abiding life by being taken away from bad home surroundings. The only remedy for these vicious households is in that slow change that takes place in the revolution of character. Until that is secured the number of criminals whom others force into crime will keep up. Mr. Dugdale expresses himself on the prominence of the home influence in these words: " The family is the fundamental type of social organ- ization, and as we found it was necessary to take the family in its successive generations as the proper basis for a study of our subject, so have we found, in those cases where the established order of society has sponta- neously produced amended lives, that the family hearth has formed an essential point of departure." It is not among the vicious classes alone that home delinquencies have proved ruinous to boyhood and early manhood. Many Christian parents mourn the lapsing of their children from purity and uprightness, little dreaming that their own omissions are the responsible agents. Boys, especially, come in contact with an im- pure world early in life. They are thrown into its at- mosphere in their early associations and at the public schools. Secret habits are taught them, that from the very beginning give their lives a trend toward what the Scriptures call the "flesh." In these secret indulgences, or rather abuses, is laid the ^gg that hatches out the criminal, and produces a manhood in which all spiritual- ity seems lost. The Master never uttered a truer word than when He said, " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Thousands of our young men and boys are not pure in heart. Their personal vices have made them gross and vulgar in thought, and sermons calling to a holy life leave no more impression on them than on the cattle in the field. Boys enter into these secret sins without knowing the wrong and danger of them. They are taught them by their playmates, whom 66 Dying at the Top, they have not suspected of a design of injuring them, and they often never learn the blighting influence of them till, later in life, they find themselves the victims of a terrible vice. These boys have parents whom God gave them to shield them and rescue them from these begin- nings of a low and sinful life, but who, from sheer reck- lessness or from a false sensitiveness, have left their children to learn of secret practices, not from those who would warn them against them, but from those who would teach them to practice them. A factor in childhood that parents seldom take into account, is found in the sexual instincts. These are born in us, and belong to the Creator's plan in our forma- tion. By His own provisions these instincts are made to develop early. Of all on the physical side of life, they are the most productive of good if they are guarded and controlled; but the most productive of evil if they are left alone. The average parent tries to conceal from himself and his child the existence of this sexual nature. The very terms by which its existence is designated are offensive to him. In his excessive modesty, this marvel- ous element in his child's nature never enters into his confidences and confidential counsels, and the child, with the possibilities of the second death in his body, is sent into the streets to learn the stuff of which he is made — and his parents go to their closets to mourn over their lost boy, and to wonder why their covenanted God will allow their child to be lost. It is not only on his physical side that a boy is neglected, even in church homes, but on his religious side; and in this lies one reason that so many of our ybung men seem to be wholly without serious religious convictions. It is a lesson Christian parents have yet to learn, that a Chris- tian character is of slow growth, and comes like the growth of a tree, by silent but constant accretion. "Ask- ing the Blessing" at the table three times a day; the singino^ of religious sonofs round the piano in the even- ings; the reading of Scripture, and the offering of a prayer at the family altar twice every day, may appear Dying at the Top. 67 trivial matters, but they make the atmosphere of home "arehgious atmosphere; and children, br-^athing it con- stantly, are unconsciously transformed into religious , V characters. ^ f It is by keeping their children in daily contact with ' /% church forms, that Catholic priests do so much in the ^ way of fixing their destiny for life. After their confir- mation at twelve or thirteen years of age, these children may be turned loose into the world, but they go with a bias to Rome that dies wholly in but few, even of those who profess to be converted to Protestantism. As Protestantism has no priests, it is the parents of its homes that should give cast to their children's lives by a constant home devotion. But Protestant parents do not do it. Family worship is rapidly becoming a "Lost Art" in Protestant church households. The vast major- ity of them do no more than occasionally " say grace at the table," and thousands of them do not even do that. In a Presbyterian church which I served as pastor, finding that many of the young people who united with the church had no conscientious convictions in the matter of secret, and home, and public prayer, I felt that the reason of it must lie in the devotionless homes of the church. Taking a census of the congregation, I found but ten family altars among one hundred and twenty families. A Presbyterian pastor of more than thirty years' service in a single congregation, when asked how many of his families had family worship, replied, ** Oh, not one in five." The Presbyterian discipline is very emphatic in urging the importance of home altars, and pastors, fifty years ago, made it part of their pastoral work to see that young married couples would begin their family life by reading and praying together; but of late years the matter has received less and less attention, until now, in hundreds of Presbyterian pulpits even, it is seldom mentioned. By consulting Moore's Digest, one can find scores of pages taken up in deliverances of the General Assembly on disputed doctrines, and in cases of discipline; but for eighty years there has not 68 Dying at the Top, been a single new, fresh, ringing deliverance on the subject of worship in Presbyterian homes. What is true of the homes of the Presbyterian church is true in a greater degree in the Methodist, Baptist, Congrega- tional and Episcopal households — devoutness of life in the matter of religious worship is being turned over more and more to a single day of the week, and to the brief services of the sanctuary and Sabbath school. According to the New York Independent^ the church population of this country is now nineteen millions. From the United States census of 1880, we find that there is about one family for every five of our popula- tion. This would give us for the country nearly four millions of church homes. Out of these homes there go every year into the world more than one hundred and seventy-five thousand young men who have reached twenty-one years of age. Allowing the high average of one family altar to eight church homes, and we have one hundred and fifty thousand young men, whom the church ought to have in her active work, sent into the world without having ever been brought into contact with Christian devotion in the so-called religious homes from which they have come. Such a condition of things is simply shameful, when we consider the character of the world into which our sons must go when they leave home. The ancient Jew had better opportunities for religious impressions. The two great principles on which the Hebrews were redeemed from their corrupt condition on leaving Egypt were, isolation from surrounding idolatrous nations, and daily contact with religious forms. Let any one read carefully the old Mosaic Ritual and he will see that the children of Jewish homes never passed a day without their eyes looking upon the sacrifices that were offered before the Tabernacle. Let the same person place the four million church homes of this country in a row, and pass first through those that are practically devotionless, and he will go through three million five hundred thousand before he hears a single prayer offered in a family group. Such a condition of things is Dying at the Top, 69 not even good Paganism. The old Romans had divin- ities called the Lares which they worshiped as the special providences that attended them everywhere. They were their domestic gods. It was the home hearth on which, as an altar, sacrifices were offered to them. " In all family repasts, the first thing done was to cast a portion of the viands into the fire that burned on the hearth, in honor of the Lares. In the form of marriage the bride always threw a piece of money on the hearth to the Lares of her family, and deposited another in the neighboring crossroads, in order to obtain admission into the home of her husband. Young persons, after their fifteenth year, consecrated to the Lares the bulla which they had worn from infancy. Soldiers, when their time of service was ended, dedicated to these powerful genii the arms with which they had fought the battles of their country. Captives and slaves restored to freedom, consecrated to the Lares the fetters from which they had just been freed. Before undertaking a journey or after a successful return, homage was paid to these deities, their protection was implored, or thanks were rendered for their oruardian care." Thus it was that Roman youth were molded by constant contact with religious convic- tions and religious forms. Yet tens of thousands of Christian parents in this enlightened age expect their children to go into the world with finished Christian characters, after having spent their childhood and youth with no kind of home divinities or daily devotional forms. A SECULARIZED SABBATH. The only sun-spot in Gracey's life came a few months before his tw^elfth year. A lady for whom he had run errands persuaded him to join her Sabbath-school class. It was a revelation to the boy. He found himself in an atmosphere of kindness, and for the first time m his life gentle words were spoken to him. The sunshine fell into and bes^an to warm his heart. In a few weeks the face did not look so harsh, nor the voice sound so rough. 70 Dying at the Top, Higher spirits were at work in the lad. It was the one chance in his life. He was slowly yet probably surely turning to the light like the vine that has sprouted and groped in the darkness. But the sun-spot was lost and with it went hope. Gracey found a place as chore boy at the depot of his native place, where he ate and slept and lived. The Sabbath was his busiest day, for it was then the "cleaning up" was done. With the busy Sabbath went the Sunday school, and the transforming angels that would have redeemed this unfortunate child. From the depot Gracey passed in time to the position of brake- man on a freight train, where he remained toiling seven days in every week till he committed his first crime against the civil law. I wonder if the busy people of this world ever dream that a multitude are losing Hope through a broken Sab- bath. Men may differ as to the Divine authority of the fourth commandment, and with reference to the right of the state to enforce its observance; but they cannot dis- agree as to the demoralizing influence of compelling seven days of toil out of every week. Nature herself demands the rest of the night and of one day in seven. It is a physiological fact that when a man's body is kept con- stantly weary from unbroken toil, all the reviving ener- gies of his nature are thrown into the nerves and muscles to sustain physical exhaustion. He is compelled to live simply a bodily life. The brain has no surplus blood for thought, hence, as an organ of reflection, it shrivels. Why is it that a tired man when he sits down at night after a day of iiard service, cannot read, but falls asleep over his book? It is an exhausted body saying to the mind, I have no strength left for you to do your work; I must have sleep. Thus the mind is crowded out and the whole man is materialized. This is true, not only of manual labor, but of unbroken toil of any kind. The clerk whose whole time for seven days in every week is spent in sell- ing goods over the counter; the accountant who never leaves his books but to lie down late at night to sleep; the operator who hears nothing the year round but the Dying at the Top, 71 click of his instrument; the agent who knows nothing but to hand out the ticket and take in the price of it — all of them are in a tread-mill — that by its constant wear and tear is shortening^ their lives, and what is far worse, taking from them the time and restfulness they must have for the cultivation of their higher powers. The world is only beginning to see that the fourth command- ment is founded on natural law as really as is digestion or the circulation of the blood. It says to every man, "You must rest one day in seven from your accustomed toil, or in your intellectual, domestic and religious, as well as in your physical interests, you must die." Now, one of the appalling facts of our times is, that the only day in the week that God has designated for man's rest is being taken from us and forced into the ser- vice of the world. Our railroads, manufactories, tele- graphs, street car and express companies, and many of our business establishments in all our cities, are compel- ling their employes to devote their entire seven days to their secular service. Christian people themselves are required to give up their only sacred day from their fam- ilies and church devotions, or lose their places. This secularizing of the Sabbath is telling most dis- astrously on our young men. They make up fully sixty per cent, of the employes on our railroads, and constitute the majority of all who live in the service of others. Their waking hours are all spent away from home influence, and the church has no opportunity to reach them with its regenerating agencies. Hence they are, from a social and religious standpoint, degenerating. They must degen- erate until they are allowed proper rest from their exhausting toil. A young man recently attended the evening service in the church of which I am pastor, and went to sleep. Afterward he apologized to a lady who shook hands with him, saying, "I could not help it; I was on the road all last night." And who could blame him ? Two millions of young men in this country are out "on the road," in every-day service and almost all-night service, 72 Dying at the Top, for men and for companies who work them like cattle. As a class, they are fearfully sinned against, and the blood of their loss will be demanded by a just God of those modern Pharaohs who force them into a bondage little less exacting than that required of the Hebrews in '■'' Remember the Sabbath day, to keep tt holy. Six days shalt thou lalor, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God : in it thou shalt not do any work, thou 7ior thy so7i, nor thy daughter y nor .thy manservant , nor thy tnaidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is witkiii thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea^ and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day : wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hal^ lowed it'' THE SALOON. Gracey took his first lesson in saloon life in his father's home, before he was seven years of age. Fre- quently he was sent with the bucket for beer, when he thought it not wrong to help himself. The first money he earned was spent in the saloon. On one occasion, having taken more than his head could stand, the saloon- keeper made a bed of his coat under the counter, where the child lay till he " slept off his drunk." When he began life on his own account, he had his evenings, as a usual thing, to himself. Where should he spend his leisure hours but at the saloon ? Here were his companions. The room was bright and cheer- ful, and everybody was made welcome. A violin and piano helped to entertain all the comers. There was the daily newspaper on a rack by the fire, and here were games under the gas-light. No other place in the city was open for him — not a spot where he could feel free to spend an hour. The churches were open but one day in the week, and the homes were all closed to him. Of course he went to the saloon. Why should he not go? No one had ever taught him that there was any wrong in so doing. Dying at the Top. 73 Who can deny that the saloon has come in to meet a want ? Young men without homes and young men with bad homes need a place of resort. Christian people were too slow in providing that resort, and the devil stepped in to meet the demand. "Will you walk into my parlor?" he said from his brilliantly lighted dens, and the young men v/alked in and were lost. In the saloon Gracey drank what fired his blood and unsettled his brain; he heard the jokes and stories of the low and vile; he saw pictures that were lewd; and read the books and p'apers of the obscene and the anarch- ist. And here it was he learned to be lewd and licentious; for the saloon had its second story, where the lust of the fallen heart was fully gratified. So go thou- sands like Gracey, who do not mean to be lost, but are carried on by companionship and appetite till they enter the rapids, when all power of self-control is lost, and then comes the precipice. Without considering" the saloon in connection with American politics, its social influence is enough to con- demn it forever. Saloon-keepers are not all bad men. Some of them are, in their German circles, men of stand- ing and influence, and their saloons are quiet and orderly hke themselves. They come to this country from Ger- many, where their business was respectable, and they have endeavored to keep it respectable here. I know some of these saloon-keepers who have raised families of sober and upright boys. But this better class is grow- ing smaller and smaller. As a class, saloon- keepers in our countiy are of the lowest characters. They are impure, profane, irreligious, vulgar and often criminal ; and their saloons are like them- selves. In no place, as here — outsiHe of the bagnio — is the atmosphere so saturated with all that is vicious and corrupting. Here one meets with the world's filthiest characters, filthiest pictures, and filthiest conversation, because here congregate society's filthiest souls. The American saloon is the rendezvous of thieves, and cut- throats, and gamblers. Bummers, tramps, dead-beats, 74 Dying at the Top, throng around them as flies around the paper prepared for their destruction. Here it is, are planned our prize- fights. Here come the distributers of obscene literature to ply their wretched traffic; here come the "boodlers" to arrange for the corruption of our elections — here, in these "Pest-Holes " of Infamy. Yet it is a lamentable fact that the principal patrons of the saloon are young men. Into a single saloon in Cincinnati, passed two hundred and fifty-two men within an hour — two hundred and thirty-six of whom were young men. In New Albany, Ind., in one hour and a half, on a certain evening,' one thousand one hundred and nine persons entered nineteen of seventy-six saloons, nine hundred and eighty- three of whom were young men and boys. C. H. Yatman stood on the streets of Newark, N. J., one day, and in five minutes counted sixty-two young men going into one saloon. He passed his watch to a friend, and asked him to stand and count for thirty minutes. In that time five hundred and ninety-two entered the saloon, most of them being young men. Yet this was only one of hundreds of saloons in that city. The two following are from Richard Morse's " Young Men of our Cities": "A city of seventeen thousand population, three thou- sand young men; one thousand and twenty-one, over one- fourth, entered forty-nine saloons in one -hour one Saturday night"; "A city of thirty-eight thousand population, six thousand younsf men ; on a certain Saturday evening ten per cent, of them visited seven of the one hundred and twenty-eight saloons." In Milwaukee on a certain evening, four hundred and sixty-eight persons entered a single saloon, nearly all of whom were young men and boys. In Leadville, Col., on a certain Sabbath evening, two hundred and fifty young men attended the eight Protestant and Catholic churches; the same evenings two thousand of the five thousand young men entered six of the seventy-six saloons. It is not surprising that the church reports of 1886 showed twenty-five young men admitted to the communion, and that the criminal Dying at the Top, 75 reports showed one thousand and ninety-seven arrests. The following was clipped from the Nezv York Inde- pendent of April 28, 1887: "A sad story comes from Indianapolis of the discovery there of a gambling room for boys from twelve to twenty years old. The boj's, employed as collectors, disappeared with funds, and this led to a search, which resulted in raiding a liquor saloon in a business block. Back of the bar was a room, at the end of which was what appeared to be a large ice-chest, but which was really a door leading to a room in the cellar, lighted with gas, in which were found forty boys, nearly all of highly respectable families, gambling at poker. They were smoking, and a number of them gave signs that they had been drink- ing. The police had been in utter ignorance of the place." The Providence, R. I., Young Men's Christian Association furnishes the following: On one Saturday evening, between the hours of eight and ten o'clock, by actual count, there were seen to enter two saloons within two doors of each other, respectively, twenty-six and twenty-eight young men in one hour and forty minutes. At another place, near the post-office, during the same time, sixty-five young men were seen to enter a single saloon. Still another saloon, within a few minutes' walk of the latter, ninety young men were seen to enter; at a fifth saloon, within easy walking distance of the largest number of boarding- houses in the city, were seen to enter within two hours, one hundred and forty-six young men. While the latter case is probably an exceptional one, it is believed upon good authority that not less than one hundred places are now open where an average of not less than fifty-two young men pass into these saloons every Saturday nighty or an aggregate of over five thousand within the two hours. Upon the beat of a single policeman, eighteen places were found where liquors were sold to young men over the counter. Evansville, Ind., has six thousand five hundred .young men between sixteen and thirty-five years of 76 Dying at the Top. age. There are twenty-six churches and two hundred and thirty-seven drinking places. By actual count, on a recent Saturday evening, four hundred and fifty-two young men were seen to enter four drinking places between the hours of nine and eleven. By actual count, there were only one hundred and forty-six young men in four of the representative Protestant churches in the city the next morning. Springfield, Ohio, judging by the census of 1880, has at present not less than six thousand five hundred young men. At my own request statistics were taken last February with the following result : In the seven principal churches on a certain Sabbath morn- ing were one hundred and seventy-one young men ; in five of the leading saloons in one hour, the evening previous were six hundred young men. In that city are one hundred and forty-one saloons. In New Carlisle, Pa., in December last, one thousand three hundred and fifty-eight young men entered eleven saloons from eight to eleven o'clock. Mr. Meigs, of Indianapolis, Ind., delivered a lecture some time since in Terre Haute. Before his visit he had seven young men take notes for him in that city. The result was on a certain Saturday evening, that these young men found one thousand and forty-five young men enter seven of the one hundred and fifty saloons; and on the following Sabbath morning only seventy-five young men in all of the churches. In Middletown, Ohio, there were taken for me the evening of P'eb. 16, 1889, the following: In one saloon, fifty-seven young men in a single hour; in a second, twenty-seven ; in a third, forty ; in a fourth, sixty — one hundred and ei