Читать книгу A Book About Myself онлайн

84 страница из 148

In the face of such a scene or picture as this my mind invariably paused in question. I had been reared on dogmatic religious and moral theory, or at least had been compelled to listen to it all my life. Here then was a part of the work of an omnipotent God, who nevertheless tolerated, apparently, a most industrious devil. Why did He do it? Why did nature, when left to itself, devise such astounding slums and human muck heaps? Harlots in doorways or behind windows or under lamp-posts in these areas, smirking and signaling creatures with the dullest or most fox-like expression and with heavily smeared lips and cheeks and blackened eyebrows, were ready to give themselves for one dollar, or even fifty cents, and this in the heart of this budding and prosperous West, a land flowing with milk and honey! What had brought that about so soon in a new, rich, healthy, forceful land—God? devil? or both working together toward a common end? Near at hand were huge and rapidly expanding industries. The street-cars and trains, morning and evening, were crowded with earnest, careful, saving, seeking, moderately well-dressed people who were presumably anxious to work and lay aside a competence and own a home. Then why was it that these others lived in such a hell? Was God to blame? Or society?