Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt:... CHAPTER XII ASSIMILATION: A TWO-EDGED SWORD There is somewhere a parable that narrates how a dread disease appeared in the lodge of a great estate. The manor-house was far in through winding lanes. Yet one day the scourge, spreading this way and that, leaped over the distance, smiting the firstborn and future master. Thus was it burned into the souls of those in the great house and those in the cottage that there is one human family. At the city's gateway lie two communities stricken with the evils attendant on toil and deprivation, and kept aloof by alien birth as well as by poverty from prosperous, indigenous citizenship. In the simpler round of domestic life and friendly intercourse, the people are to a surprising degree without reproach; but the larger social life tends to drift as it will. There is a measure of vicarious public spirit sustained for these districts by men and women whose sphere of influence would ordinarily lie elsewhere. These persons also strive to broaden and strengthen character among the people against the strain of an untried, distracting existence. The ultimate issue for individual and common wellbeing lies in the counter-currents which are bringing these communities into the full vital circulation of the city's existence. The North and West Ends, along several important lines, provide a large share of the labor force required for the city. They are also rapidly opening avenues of small trade auxiliary to some of the city's principal business enterprises. The development of skilled workers is slow and needs encouragement. Not so with the shopkeepers. Indeed within a comparatively short time many of them will be found in the ranks of the downtown merchants, while their children are even now forcing their way...