come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him." To his Father he appeals in every crisis of his life. "It is not merely to a 'better self' within that he directs his appeals, but to the eternal God. . . In communion with God alone does complete peace and assurance come to his soul. . . Take communion with God out of his life and there might be left us an ethical ideal, but surely there would be no religion, no redeeming power. Jesus Christ lived a human life, deriving his being and drawing his inspiration from a divine source.' With this consciousness of human limitation and human dependence there is equally clearly revealed another, but certainly not inconsistent or antagonistic, consciousness. He was conscious of fulfilling the Old Testament; conscious of speaking with an authority transcending that of the revered traditions of his time; conscious of a right to set aside directly ancient forms and ceremonies, such as fastings and washings, and, indirectly, by a liberal interpretation, observances as sacred as those of the Sabbath day; conscious of filling to the full the ancient hopes of Israel of a coming Messiah who would bring in the kingdom of God-a consciousness affirmed in his first recorded sermon in Nazareth, and reiterated under the solemn sanction of an oath in the trial for his life before the Sanhedrin. In this spiritual consciousness of Jesus Christ as it is recorded in the fragmentary biographies which we possess there are two characteristics which are absolutely unique in spiritual biography. In his utterances there are no expressions of repentance and no expressions of aspiration. In them there is no parallel to Paul's, "The good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do ;" no parallel to the Psalmist's, "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." Jesus looks back upon his life's past without regret ; he looks forward to his life's future without eagerness. His spiritual experience is not that of a seeker after God; it is that of one who has found God and is at rest in him. The secret of this combined self-consciousness in Jesus Christ-this consciousness of the human and of the divine-Dr. Stokes finds in the teaching of the first chapter of the Bible, that God created man in his own image; that it was God's spirit breathed into man that made him a living soul, and gave him the capacity of communion with his Father in heaven. To Jesus the human and the divine are not essentially unlike, but kindred, and God is first of all one. "The historical Jesus was not in his own mind equivalent to, or an integral and essential part of, the Godhead. . . . It does not seem possible, without restricting the idea of Deity, to call him, as he walked on earth, God, and we cannot believe that he would have himself liked to be so called." The power he possessed was divine. It came from God. The spirit which entered his soul was the Eternal Spirit. Prophet he was indeed, but something infinitely greater too-revealer and revelation of the love of God. He not merely preached it and proclaimed it, but he manifested it, through his own life of perfect righteousness and service. And it is this realization in one man of God's purpose for all men, rather than any difference of essence or potentiality between Jesus and his brethren, that makes him, as far as we know, the only perfect Son of the one Father." "God is trying to incarnate himself in every one of us, and it is to be hoped that some day we may all realize our latent divinity, as did Jesus of Nazareth, and be in a measure Christs-perfect men in love and faith. . . If ever that day comes, the uniqueness of Jesus Christ will stand out the more prominently, as without him it would have been impossible to reach his level." This uniqueness of Jesus Christ, this manifestation of God in Jesus of Nazareth, " is not necessarily dependent upon any theory as to his birth. The believer in the Virgin Birth and the believer in the natural birth of Jesus may both place their faith in the same Incarnation. ' Dr. Stokes has rendered a real and important service to the Christian Church, and especially to young and thoughtful men and women, by this statement of spiritual faith in the terms of a rational philosophy. We agree with him that it is not in accord with the traditional theology of the past; and it is in accord with the Nicene Creed only as the Nicene Creed is regarded as an emotional, not a philosophical expression, as the utterance not of an opinion but of a profound reverence. But whether it is in accord with creeds ancient or modern, theologies old or new, is not important if it is in accord with the teachings of Jesus concerning himself and the teachings of the Apostles concerning him. It did not come within the purpose of Dr. Stokes to consider the apostolic teachings, and it would make this article altogether too long if I were to attempt an interpretation, or even a full report, of those teachings. It must suffice to say here that there is scarcely any title which the Apostles give Jesus which they do not also give in a modified form to his disciples. He is the Son of God, and we are sons of God. He sits upon the throne and reigns, and we reign with him. He is the Light of the World, and we are to be lights in the world. He is the Good Shepherd, and we are appointed to shepherd the sheep intrusted to us. He is the temple in which God dwells, and every Christian is a temple in which God dwells. He is clothed with divine power, and we are bid to be clothed with the whole armor of God. He is holy, and we are called to be holy as he is holy. He forgives sins, and we are told that whosesoever sins we forgive, they shall be forgiven. He is one with the Father, and he prays for his disciples that they may be one with him and the Father. In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and we are directed to pray that, being rooted and grounded in love, we also may be filled with all the fullness of God. It is one thing to say that Jesus Christ was like other men. It is quite another thing to say that other men may become like Jesus Christ. No interpretation of the character, life, and mission of Jesus Christ conforms to either his teaching concerning himself or the teaching of the Apostles concerning him and his disciples which does not recognize the truth that God's ideal for his children is that explicitly affirmed by Christ's beloved disciple, "As he is, so are we in this world." The way to learn whether the life and character of Jesus are divine or not is by an endeavor to live that life and to attain that character. LYMAN ABBOTT. I THE OLD WAY OF DEALING WITH N 1821 Sydney Smith thus described the "There are, in every county in England, large public schools, maintained at the expense of the county, for the encouragement of profligacy and vice, and for providing a proper succession of house-breakers, profligates, and thieves. They are schools, too, conducted without the smallest degree of partiality or favor, there being no man (however mean his birth or obscure his situation) who may not easily procure admission to them. The moment any young person evinces the slightest propensity for these pursuits he is provided with food, clothing, and lodging, and put to his studies under the most accomplished thieves and cutthroats the county can supply. There is not, to be sure, a formal arrangement of lectures, after the manner of our universities; but the petty larcenous stripling, being left destitute of every species of employment and locked up with accomplished villains as idle as himself, listens to their pleasant narrative of successful crimes, and pants for the hour of freedom that he may begin the same bold and interesting career." This is a perfectly true picture of the prison establishments of many counties in England, and was true, till very lately, of almost all; and the effects so completely answered the design that in the year 1818 there were committed to the jails of the United Kingdom more than one hundred and seven thousand persons, a number supposed to be greater than that of all the commitments in the other kingdoms of Europe put together. The county jails in America were sometimes worse and rarely better. Mr. John Bach McMaster thus describes a jail in Connecticut as it existed fifty years after peace with Great Britain had been declared : "For more than fifty years after the peace there was in Connecticut an underground prison which surpassed in horrors the Black Hole of Calcutta. This den, known as the Newgate Prison, was in an old worked-out copper mine in the hills near Granby. The only entrance to it was by means of a ladder down a shaft which led to the caverns underground. There, in little pens of wood, from thirty to one hundred culprits were immured, their feet made fast to iron bars and their necks chained to beams in the roof. The darkness was intense, the caves reeked with filth, vermin abounded; water trickled from the roof and oozed from the sides of the caverns; huge masses of earth were perpetually falling off. In the dampness and the filth the clothing of the prisoners grew moldy and rotted away, and their limbs became stiff with rheumatism. The Newgate Prison was perhaps the worst in the country, yet in every county were jails such as would now be thought unfit places of habitation for the vilest and most loathsome of beasts. . . "Into such pits and dungeons all classes of offenders of both sexes were indiscriminately thrust. It is therefore not at all surprising that they became seminaries of every conceivable form of vice, and centers of the most disgusting diseases. Prostitutes plied their calling openly in the presence of men and women of decent station and guilty of no crime but an inability to pay their debts. Men confined as witnesses were compelled to mingle with the forger besmeared with the filth of the pillory and the fornicator streaming with blood from the whipping-post, while here and there among the throng were culprits whose ears had just been cropped, or whose arms, fresh from the branding-iron, emitted the stench of scorched flesh. The entire system of punishment was such as cannot be contemplated without mingled feelings of pity and disgust." In 1884 General Brinkerhoff described the American jail as it existed then, and as, it must be added, it exists to-day in many parts of the country : "To establish a school of crime requires (1) teachers skilled in the theory and practice of crime; (2) pupils with inclination, opportunity, and leisure to learn; (3) a place of meeting together. All these requirements are provided and paid for by the public in the erection, organization, and equipment of county jails and city prisons. With less than half a dozen exceptions, all the jails and city prisons in the United States are schools of this kind, and it is difficult to conceive how a more efficient system for the education of criminals could be devised. . . . Every observant jailer knows with what devilish skill the professors of this school ply their vocation. Hour after hour they beguile the weariness of enforced confinement with marvelous tales of successful crime, and the methods by which escape has been accomplished. If attention fails, games of chance, interspersed with obscene jokes and ribald songs, serve to amuse and while away the time. In this way the usual atmosphere of a jail is made so foul that the stamina of a saint is scarce strong enough to resist. Let a prisoner attempt to be decent, and to resist the contaminating influences brought to bear upon him, especially in a large jail, and he will find that, so far as personal comfort is concerned, he might as well be in a den of wild beasts." Thomas Mott Osborne in his volume "Within Prison Walls" gives an account of his experience in one of the punishment cells of Auburn Prison: "The jail is admirably situated for the purpose of performing the operation of breaking a man's spirit; for it has on one side the death chamber and on the other the prison dynamo with its ceaseless grinding, night and day. It is a vaulted stone dungeon about fifty feet long and twenty wide. It is absolutely bare except for one wooden bench along the north end, a locker where the jail clothes are kept, and eight cells arranged in a row along the east wall and backing on the wall of the death chamber. The eight cells are of solid sheet iron-floor, sides, back, and roof. They are studded with rivets projecting about a quarter of an inch. At the time that Warden Rattigan came into office there was no other floor; inmates slept on the bare iron-and the rivets! The cells are about four and a half feet wide, eight feet deep, and nine feet high. There is a feeble attempt at ventilation-a small hole in the roof of the cell; which hole communicates with an iron pipe. Where the pipe goes is of no consequence, for it does not ventilate. Practically, there is no air in the cell except what percolates in through the extra heavily grated door. 'In none too pleasant a frame of mind toward prison officialdom, I enter my iron cage. It is the first one of the eight and is absolutely empty of everything except a papier-mâché bucket. There is no seat, no bed, no mattress or bedding, no place to. wash, no water to wash with, nothingexcept the bucket. "A convict trusty who now appears within the radius of the electric light hands me a round tin can, and the grated door is banged to and locked. I take my seat upon the floor and await developments. "Soon the trusty hands me, through an extra large slot in the door, a roll of pieces of newspaper, evidently intended for possible toilet purposes. There soon follows a slice of bread, and then there is poked through the slot the end of a long tin funnel which holds a precise measure of water. I hold my tin can to the end of the funnel and receive a gill-neither more nor less than exactly one gill-which is to last me through the night. I never appreciated before what a small quantity is measured by a gill. The water covers the bottom of my tin can to the depth the water a man here was allowed in twentyof about an inch and a half. four hours was one gill!" "And three gills of water is all the inmates of this place are allowed in twenty-four hours. "And up to the time that Warden Rattigan took office and first visited the jail all What do our readers think of these illustrations of the method commonly pursued to-day in civilized America for the cure and prevention of crime? THE GARMENT TRADE AND THE MINIMUM WAGE AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. HENRY MOSKOWITZ PRESIDENT OF THE NEW YORK MUNICIPAL CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION Dr. Henry Moskowitz knows labor conditions in New York City as an industrial center as well, perhaps, as any other citizen. He was secretary of the Board of Arbitration under the Protocol for five years. He recently sent The Outlook an article dealing with the psychology and philosophy of labor conflicts. As a result of reading this article we asked him to tell us about his own personal experience. He kindly consented, and this interview is the result. Especial interest is added to Dr. Moskowitz's discussion of labor conditions by the great labor dispute between employers and employees in the cloak, suit, and skirt manufacturing shops in New York. From 30,000 to 60,000 employees are without employment as the direct result of a lockout declared by the employers, at once followed by the declaration of a general strike by the employees. The unions claim to be willing to arbitrate and assert that the employers have refused to arbitrate, that they have treated with contempt the Mayor's Conciliation Board formed some time ago to handle just such matters, and that the employers intend to fight organized labor (that is, the unions) to a finish. The manufacturers say that the unions not only demand the closed shop but that they insist that the employers should practically act as collectors of union dues and that the employees' demands as to working conditions and pay are exorbitant and unfair.-THE EDITORS. Chiefly in the biggest market of the United States for women's industries, which is the city of New York. Compared with New York City, the markets in Cleveland, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Boston are small. Are those garments made in factories that look like steel works or places where they make machines? They were made until ten years ago in sweat-shops. Now the great bulk of work is made in factories in the big loft buildings that look like office buildings, such as those across the street here, opposite The Outlook's office, or in similar factories which are located west of Broadway. Do the people who make these garments get good wages? The unskilled people have been getting poor annual wages; the very skilled people have been getting increasingly better wages. Can they be considered living wages? For the skilled operators, yes, their annual wage is people? · Yes. I even worked in a sweat-shop for a short time-in a tailor shop. I lived with these people and was brought up with them. I was brought up on the lower East Side of New York, which now consists of tenementhouses, and in my boyhood days of many sweat-shops. Many of these sweat-shops have now been removed, owing to the activity of the unions and of the social workers, to progressive legislation, to the removal of the trade to new buildings in better districts, and to the natural progress of the industry itself. But the congestion on the East Side was chiefly due to the fact that these factories were located near (Continued on page following illustrations) |