[Illustration: Lunching at Delmonico's.]
"The slum," says this writer, "is not at all so unspeakably vile,"
and measures for relief based on my arraignment "must be necessarily
abortive." Every once in a while I am asked why I became a newspaper
man. For one thing, because there were writers of such trash, who,
themselves comfortably lodged, have not red blood enough in their
veins to feel for those to whom everything is denied, and not sense
enough to make out the facts when they see them, or they would
not call playgrounds, schoolhouses, and better tenements "abortive
measures." Some one had to tell the facts; that is one reason why
I became a reporter. And I am going to stay one until the last of
that ilk has ceased to discourage men from trying to help their
fellows by the shortest cut they can find, whether it fits in a
theory or not. I don't care two pins for all the social theories
that were ever made unless they help to make better men and women
by bettering their lot. I have had cranks of that order, who rated
as sensible beings in the ordinary affairs of life, tell me that I
was doing harm rather than good by helping improve the lot of the
poor; it delayed the final day of justice we were waiting for.
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