Excerpt from The Workingman and the Synagogue
In this district are to be found some of the largest industrial plants in the country, which explains the presence of an enormous laboring class. Almost every conceivable object is manufactured in this section, and all kinds of labor can be secured, from the skilled diamond cutter and steel engraver to "the hewer of wood and the drawer of water." Here men, women and children early and late hear the busy whirr of the machines as they earn their daily bread, or long to hear it, when loss of employment or a slack season make them feel more keenly the pinch of poverty. On the East Side all the glory and the grandeur of an industrial age are to be seen; the almost human sensitiveness and efficiency of machinery; the organization and equipment of great factories; the nice calculations of human and machine capacity; the great buildings for mercantile, industrial, educational and philanthropic purposes, the fruits of the splendid risks and bold adventures of progressive capitalists.
Here also flourish and multiply all the degradation and vice of an industrial age. Here are exhibited on all sides the remnants of spiritual beings turned to tools. Machines answer the anguish and sorrow of the workmen with a meaningless roar, and reply to their cry for sympathy and help with an incessant, unremitting cruel clamor. The diseases of occupation are here taken from the realm of the theoretical into that of such accurate prediction as to make it possible for the scientist to compute by age and number the percentage of deaths in the various trades. Here we see youths lashed to machines when society should have guaranteed them sunshine and play. Also "immorality is in the streets, now in the broad places and lieth in wait at every corner." (Prov. vii, 12.) On the one hand men and women are forced to live in homes which, because of the congestion, are like hovels. Loss of honor and self-respect are not unknown guests. Lack of leisure prevents the pursuit of self-culture through study and reflection.
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