Cast Adrift

“Why not?”

“It would arouse suspicion; and if there is anything wrong, the baby would drop out of sight. You would not find it if you went again. These people are like birds with their wings half lifted, and fly away at the first warning of danger. As it is, I fear my visit and inquiries will be quite sufficient to the cause the child’s removal to another place.”

Mr. Dinneford mused for a while:

“There ought to be some way to reach a case like this, and there is, I am sure. From what you say, it is more than probable that this poor little waif may have drifted out of some pleasant home, where love would bless it with the tenderest care, into this hell of neglect and cruelty. It should be rescued on the instant. It is my duty—it is yours—to see that it is done, and that without delay. I will go at once to the mayor and state the case. He will send an officer with me, I know, and we will take the child by force. If its real mother then comes forward and shows herself at all worthy to have the care of it, well; if not, I will see that it is taken care of. I know where to place it.”

To this proposition Mr. Paulding had no objection to offer.

“If you take that course, and act promptly, you can no doubt get possession of the poor thing. Indeed, sir”—and the missionary spoke with much earnestness—“if men of influence like yourself would come here and look the evil of suffering and neglected children in the face, and then do what they could to destroy that evil, there would soon be joy in heaven over the good work accomplished by their hands. I could give you a list of ten or twenty influential citizens whose will would be next to law in a matter like this who could in a month, if they put heart and hand to it, do such a work for humanity here as would make the angels glad. But they are too busy with their great enterprises to give thought and effort to a work like this.”

A shadow fell across the missionary’s face. There was a tone of discouragement in his voice.

“The great question is what to do,” said Mr. Dinneford. “There are no problems so hard to solve as these problems of social evil. If men and women choose to debase themselves, who is to hinder? The vicious heart seeks a vicious life. While the heart is depraved the life will be evil. So long as the fountain is corrupt the water will be foul.”

“There is a side to all this that most people do not consider,” answered Mr. Paulding. “Self-hurt is one thing, hurt of the neighbor quite another. It may be questioned whether society has a right to touch the individual freedom of a member in anything that affects himself alone. But the moment he begins to hurt his neighbor, whether from ill-will or for gain, then it is the duty of society to restrain him. The common weal demands this, to say nothing of Christian obligation. If a man were to set up an exhibition in our city dangerous to life and limb, but so fascinating as to attract large numbers to witness and participate therein, and if hundreds were maimed or killed every year, do you think any one would question the right of our authorities to repress it? And yet to-day there are in our city more than twenty thousand persons who live by doing things a thousand times more hurtful to the people than any such exhibition could possibly be. And what is marvelous to think of, the larger part of these persons are actually licensed by the State to get gain by hurting, depraving and destroying the people. Think of it, Mr. Dinneford! The whole question lies in a nutshell. There is no difficulty about the problem. Restrain men from doing harm to each other, and the work is more than half done.”

“Is not the law all the while doing this?”

“The law,” was answered, “is weakly dealing with effect—how weakly let prison and police statistics show. Forty thousand arrests in our city for a single year, and the cause of these arrests clearly traced to the liquor licenses granted to five or six thousand persons to make money by debasing and degrading the people. If all of these were engaged in useful employments, serving, as every true citizen is bound to do, the common good, do you think we should have so sad and sickening a record? No, sir! We must go back to the causes of things. Nothing but radical work will do.”

“You think, then,” said Mr. Dinneford, “that the true remedy for all these dreadful social evils lies in restrictive legislation?”

“Restrictive only on the principles of eternal right,” answered the missionary. “Man’s freedom over himself must not be touched. Only his freedom to hurt his neighbor must be abridged. Here society has a right to put bonds on its members—to say to each individual, You are free to do anything by which your neighbor is served, but nothing to harm him. Here is where the discrimination must be made; and when the mass of the people come to see this, we shall have the beginning of a new day. There will then be hope for such poor wretches as crowd this region; or if most of them are so far lost as to be without hope, their places, when they die, will not be filled with new recruits for the army of perdition.”

“If the laws we now have were only executed,” said Mr. Dinneford, “there might be hope in our legislative restrictions. But the people are defrauded of justice through defects in its machinery. There are combinations to defeat good laws. There are men holding high office notoriously in league with scoundrels who prey upon the people. Through these, justice perpetually fails.”

“The people are alone to blame,” replied the missionary. “Each is busy with his farm and his merchandise with his own affairs, regardless of his neighbor. The common good is nothing, so that his own good is served. Each weakly folds his hands and is sorry when these troublesome questions are brought to his notice, but doesn’t see that he can do anything. Nor can the people, unless some strong and influential leaders rally them, and, like great generals, lead them to the battle. As I said a little while ago, there are ten or twenty men in this city who, if they could be made to feel their high responsibility—who, if they could be induced to look away for a brief period from their great enterprises and concentrate thought and effort upon these questions of social evil, abuse of justice and violations of law—would in a single month inaugurate reforms and set agencies to work that would soon produce marvelous changes. They need not touch the rottenness of this half-dead carcass with knife or poultice. Only let them cut off the sources of pollution and disease, and the purified air will do the work of restoration where moral vitality remains, or hasten the end in those who are debased beyond hope.”

“What could these men do? Where would their work begin?” asked Mr. Dinneford.

“Their own intelligence would soon discover the way to do this work if their hearts were in it. Men who can organize and successfully conduct great financial and industrial enterprises, who know how to control the wealth and power of the country and lead the people almost at will, would hardly be at fault in the adjustment of a matter like this. What would be the money influence of ‘whisky rings’ and gambling associations, set against the social and money influence of these men? Nothing, sir, nothing! Do you think we should long have over six thousand bars and nearly four hundred lottery-policy shops in our city if the men to whom I refer were to take the matter in hand?”

“Are there so many policy-shops?” asked Mr. Dinneford, in surprise.

“There may be more. You will find them by scores in every locality where poor and ignorant people are crowded together, sucking out their substance, and in the neighborhood of all the market-houses and manufactories, gathering in spoil. The harm they are doing is beyond computation. The men who control this unlawful business are rich and closely organized. They gather in their dishonest gains at the rate of hundreds of thousands of dollars every year, and know how and where to use this money for the protection of their agents in the work of defrauding the people, and the people are helpless because our men of wealth and influence have no time to give to public justice or the suppression of great social wrongs. With them, as things now are, rests the chief responsibility. They have the intelligence, the wealth and the public confidence, and are fully equal to the task if they will put their hands to the work. Let them but lift the standard and sound the trumpet of reform, and the people will rally instantly at the call. It must not be a mere spasmodic effort—a public meeting with wordy resolutions and strong speeches only—but organized work based on true principles of social order and the just rights of the people.”

“You are very much in earnest about this matter,” said Mr. Dinneford, seeing how excited the missionary had grown.

“And so would you and every other good citizen become if, standing face to face, as I do daily, with this awful debasement and crime and suffering, you were able to comprehend something of its real character. If I could get the influential citizens to whom I have referred to come here and see for themselves, to look upon this pandemonium in their midst and take in an adequate idea of its character, significance and aggressive force, there would be some hope of making them see their duty, of arousing them to action. But they stand aloof, busy with personal and material interest, while thousands of men, women and children are yearly destroyed, soul and body, through their indifference to duty and ignorance of their fellows’ suffering.”

“It is easy to say such things,” answered Mr. Dinneford, who felt the remarks of Mr. Paulding as almost personal.

“Yes, it is easy to say them,” returned the missionary, his voice dropping to a lower key, “and it may be of little use to say them. I am sometimes almost in despair, standing so nearly alone as I do with my feet on the very brink of this devastating flood of evil, and getting back only faint echoes to my calls for help. But when year after year I see some sheaves coming in as the reward of my efforts and of the few noble hearts that work with me, I thank God and take courage, and I lift my voice and call more loudly for help, trusting that I may be heard by some who, if they would only come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty, would scatter his foes like chaff on the threshing-floor. But I am holding you back from your purpose to visit the mayor; I think you had better act promptly if you would get possession of the child. I shall be interested in the result, and will take it as a favor if you will call at the mission again.”

CHAPTER XV

WHEN Mr. Dinneford and the policeman sent by the mayor at his solicitation visited Grubb’s court, the baby was not to be found. The room in which it had been seen by Mr. Paulding was vacant. Such a room as it was!—low and narrow, with bare, blackened walls, the single window having scarcely two whole panes of glass, the air loaded with the foulness that exhaled from the filth-covered floor, the only furniture a rough box and a dirty old straw bed lying in a corner.

As Mr. Dinneford stood at the door of this room and inhaled its fetid air, he grew sick, almost faint. Stepping back, with a shocked and disgusted look on his face, he said to the policeman,

“There must be a mistake. This cannot be the room.”

Two or three children and a coarse, half-clothed woman, seeing a gentleman going into the house accompanied by a policeman, had followed them closely up stairs.

“Who lives in this room?” asked the policeman, addressing the woman.

“Don’t know as anybody lives there now,” she replied, with evident evasion.

“Who did live here?” demanded the policeman.

“Oh, lots!” returned the woman, curtly.

“I want to know who lived here last,” said the policeman, a little sternly.

“Can’t say—never keep the run of ‘em,” answered the woman, with more indifference than she felt. “Goin’ and comin’ all the while. Maybe it was Poll Davis.”

“Had she a baby?”

The woman gave a vulgar laugh as she replied: “I rather think not.”

“It was Moll Fling,” said one of the children, “and she had a baby.”

“When was she here last?” inquired the policeman.

The woman, unseen by the latter, raised her fist and threatened the child, who did not seem to be in the least afraid of her, for she answered promptly:

“She went away about an hour ago.”

“And took the baby?”

“Yes. You see Mr. Paulding was here asking about the baby, and she got scared.”

“Why should that scare her?”

“I don’t know, only it isn’t her baby.”

“How do you know that?”

“‘Cause it isn’t—I know it isn’t. She’s paid to take care of it.”

“Who by?”

“Pinky Swett.”

“Who’s Pinky Swett?”

“Don’t you know Pinky Swett?” and the child seemed half surprised.