The great
manufacturers, the great merchants, the great lawyers--high
priests of the Power God--throw up their hands. Can such things
be? Dreadful, horrible!--blindly oblivious of their own
responsibility for the epidemic.
More startling still to the conquerors were the pitiless
revelations of the Survey, exhibiting in mathematical terms the
cost to the human factor of this monstrous material success.
Hordes of anaemic, emaciated men and women, exhausted by long
hours of toil, piled thick in wretched hovels, underfed,
half-clothed, dragging out a miserable existence unrelieved by
leisure or rest or recreation--the Juggernaut toll of
efficiency--of the passion for results at any price. Against this
horror, what avails Pittsburg's panorama of splendid churches, of
lordly palaces, of noble art museums, of great orchestras, richly
endowed educational institutions--the patriotic tribute of the
conquerors to civilization? What is this boasted civilization of
ours worth--not Pittsburg's only, for Pittsburg is an
incident--if it be reared on the wrecked and depleted bodies of
men at its base?
There would then be the opportunity in the article to suggest the
regenerated Pittsburg--all this furious energy hitherto devoted
to material success turned to social betterment and decent
government.
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