It is the way of the world. Nevertheless, as I said,
it moved.
How far we came is history, plain to read in our streets that will
never again be as dirty as they were, though they may not be as clean
as Waring left them; in the threescore splendid new school-houses
that stand as monuments of those busy years; in the open spots
that let the sunlight into the slum where it was darkest and most
foul; in the death rate that came down from 26.32 per thousand of
the living in 1887 to 19.53 in 1897. That was the "Ten Years' War"
[Footnote: Now, "The Battle with the Slum."] I wrote about and have
here before referred to. The three years of the Strong administration
saw all the big battles in which we beat the slum. I am not going
to rehearse them, for I am trying to tell my own story, and now I am
soon done with it. I carried a gun as a volunteer in that war, and
that was all; not even in the ranks at that. I was ever an irregular,
given to sniping on my own hook. Roosevelt, indeed, wanted me to
have a seat among Mayor Strong's official advisers; but we had it
out over that when he told me of it, and the compact we made that
he should never ask that service of me he has kept.
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