Pittsburg has riches, art, organized charity, and
piety; but she lacks wealth, beauty, social justice, and
religion. And sending the "bad" to prison, and electing the
"good" to office, and changing the paper charters of the city,
are not going to work any real reform. They think they'll get
"good government" and "civic righteousness," and then their
problems will be solved. This is what they propose to do; this is
all they tell us now, and I can't write a story on that. The
story would be as futile as little legal reforms.
It is, however, consoling and inspiring to believe--yes, to
know--that there are in Pittsburg--as in all cities--hundreds of
thousands of decent, virtuous, wholesome, toiling people; that
these make up by far the larger part of the population, too, and
that they will save Pittsburg, and make her as good as she is
great. It is a fact stimulating to the imagination and
encouraging to the soul that, in all these stores and shops and
mills, there are hard-working, modest, unknown thousands who are
pure and loyal, who are humanity's hope; that even the most
stunted and abused figures out of the Survey give more promise
than that class which rides upon their backs and devours them as
it rides.
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