By Rev. John Roach Stratton, D.D.
New York is a modern Babylon! Indeed, the ancient city of that name was small in comparison with this might metropolis of today. The Hanging Gardens of ancient Babylon would dwindle into insignificance beside Woolworth Building, the Equitable Building or the Metropolitan Tower!
New York is now the greatest city upon earth. It is well called “the Metropolis of Mankind.” there are more than 7 million people within 20 miles of New York’s City Hall. This is nearly as many as there are in all of Canada. This is as many as there are in half a dozen western of southern states rolled into one.
Nor is that all. If you extend your line 100 miles and inscribe a circle around New York’s City Hall, you will take in 20 million people. In other words, about one-fifth of the entire population of the Republic is directly influenced by this great seething metropolis of today.
And what a mixed multitude it is. More than 30 different tongues are spoken in New York every day, and there are more than 25 newspapers published in foreign languages. Forty-five per cent of the entire population is foreign born or children of foreign-born parents. There are more Italians in New York than in Rome; there are more Germans than in any city of the world except Berlin and Hamburg; there are Russians enough in New York to constitute a city as large as St. Louis, and there are twice as many Jews as ever lived in Jerusalem at one time. The largest Jewish population ever assembled upon earth since the exodus from Egypt is now congested in New York City; about one in four of the population belonging to that interesting and—we will agree—enterprising race. New York is the largest Negro city in the world, and it is also the largest Irish city in the world. There are 200,000 more Irishmen in New York than there are in Dublin.
I am giving these facts about the population in order that my readers may understand that every problem which we confront in New York is affected by these conditions. We have many foreign cities within the confines of the greater city. There never has been anything on earth like it before. There have been great cities, and there has been some mixture of population, but never before upon the surface of the globe have there been brought together so many large groups of people from different races from the earth. And they are congested upon this little spot of ground which centers in Manhattan Island, jammed together and piled up on top of each other, at some points, 50 stories high!
The material splendor and strength of New York are almost unimaginable. The total wealth of this area is estimated by some as high as $50 billion. this is more than the entire nation was worth at the time of the Civil War. Everything in this city, of necessity, is done on a huge scale. For example, 10 mail carriers are busy all the time each day handling the mail for one of our big office buildings alone; and it requires 5,000 tons of coal every night to light the 12 million electric lights of the city, which illuminate the homes and offices, and make Broadway gleam with the splendor of the noonday and sparkle with the radiant glow of the rainbow.
Every day 800,000 people arrive or depart through the railroad stations. This means that a large city pours into the metropolis and out of it every 24 hours. And the traction lines of the city—the subways, the elevated and the surface lines—carry approximately 8 million people very 24 hours. This is twice as many as are carried by all the steam railroads of the entire United States in a day, and our country, as we know, has the greatest railroad system upon earth. This is twice as m any as are carried by all the steam railroads of the entire United States in a day, and our country, as we know, has the greatest railroad system upon earth. Think of it! And think what a rushing, bustling hive of humanity the modern metropolis is.
There are 1,500 hotels in the city and 31 post offices. Four transients arrive every second. A passenger train comes into the city every 52 seconds, and a ship clears the harbor every 42 minutes. There is a real estate transaction every 25 minutes. In normal times, a new building is erected every hour. A fire occurs every 30 minutes, and every day more than 300 people move to New York to live. A wedding takes place every 13 minutes, a funeral every 14 minutes—so it is evident that the weddings still have the funerals beat, though by a very narrow margin—and every 6 minutes a new baby is born to face the problems and temptations, as well as the opportunities and privileges, which the marvelous metropolis offers.
I was speaking, some time since, in the South, giving some of these facts about New York, and at the close of the address, a southerner came forward and said to me: “I want you to tell me how all those millions of folk, piled up so close together, get enough water to drink and food to eat.” Having lived so long myself in the South, with its prodigality in the culinary department, I knew what was in his mind. And so I explained to him, in regard to the water, that a subterranean stream of pure water, flowing more than 100 miles through mighty conduits, provides the city with a water supply which would furnish every human being in the world with more than a quart a day. There is not quite so much other liquid refreshment in New York as there used to be before the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect—though there is still a great deal of that—but we do have plenty of the finest water.
And as for food, I explained to this southern friend that it requires 266 train loads of provisions to feed New York for a single week. Not 266 carloads, but 266 train loads. In other words, a solid freight train reaching from New York to Philadelphia, loaded with provisions, is needed to feed these 7 million people for seven days. To give just an idea at this point I can mention the one items of milk. More than 2,000 tons of milk are brought into New York by the milk trains every day. There are 2,272,502 quarts, or an average of about 13 ounces for each resident of the city.
It can be seen from these facts how vitally important an orderly society and adequate and regular transportation are in New York, and how dangerous is the typing up of trains and ferries. During the labor disorders and the strikes last winter, there were times when there was a real menace from lack of food. If the strikes had gone on a little longer, doubtless I would have had to face the problem pf where to get food for my children and the other members of my family.
Now, no thoughtful mind can fail to see that religion and the church of Christ have enormous interests at stake in the light of the tremendous facts which I have given about New York City. New York does profoundly influence all of America and the world. If we could see this city a truly Christian city, instead of a pagan city, as it is now, it would send out tides of righteous influence throughout the length and breadth of America and to the four quarters of the earth.
New York is the greatest missionary field upon the face of the globe today. The moral and religious needs of the people are pathetic, and the facts are staggering.
One thing is everlasting true; we must either Americanize and Christianize New York, or New York will speedily Europeanize and paganize us! Already the breaking down of the American Sabbath, the decay of old-fashioned home ideals, the weakening of the family life through divorce and marital infidelity, the inroads of rationalism in religion, an appalling worldliness within the churches and the red flood of radicalism and anarchy are menacing the very foundations of our Anglo-Saxon life.
Of these teeming millions, only 30 per cent are connected with any sort of religious organization—either Jewish, Catholic or Protestant. Think of that, my reader, and let the import of that tremendous fact sink home into your heart. Only 30 out of each hundred of this great pathetic mass who give any recognition to God in any form.
If Jesus walked these streets again in the flesh, His heart would break with compassion, and once more His tears would flow as He beheld these multitudes, literally “like sheep without a shepherd.”
At every opportunity, I ask my co-religionists here: What are we, His followers, going to do about it all? Shut up our churches during the four summer months, as many do? Lower the flag? Continue through our skeptical seminaries to put animated question marks in the pulpits instead of true prophets of God? Preach a thousand foolish fads instead of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ?
What are we going to do about it?
After having lived in many parts of our country, and as the result of careful observation and meditation, I give it as the profound conviction or my heart and mind that New York is the greatest religious problem of the world today. In a very real sense, New York sets the pace, and what she does is copied and followed right down the line. Only last summer, on two different trips I made, I heard the silly sensuous songs from Broadway being sung. The first trip was down into the mountains--a little hamlet in North Carolina. Then I jumped all the way up to Canada, and heard those same songs being rattled on the piano and sung by the young people in a Canadian home.
Yes, what are we going to do about it? For, believe me, my reader, we have got to do something about it!
Listen!
In the Times Square of New York there are 100 blocks. Starting at 28th street on the south and running to 48th street on the north, starting with Park avenue on the east and running to Eighth avenue on the west, there are just 100 squares. Within this territory there are two Jewish synagogues, four Catholic churches and 13 Protestant churches. These churches have a combined seating capacity of 16,400. An investigation was made a short time as to attendance, and on Sunday evenings, with very advantageous weather conditions, there were only 1,817 persons in attendance by actual count in all the churches of the entire district.
What is the matter?
In this same district there are 45 theaters and 10 moving picture houses, with a combined seating capacity of 78,027. On the Sunday night when there were only 1,817 persons in all the churches, there must have been as many as 75,000 in the theaters and movies for the attendance at each week at these places is now estimated to be a million men, women and children, and the Sabbath has come to be the most popular recreation day of the week. On Sunday evening, rain or shine, longlines of people can be seen before the box offices of the New York theaters and movie houses, waiting for an opportunity to pay fancy prices to get inside and listen to silly jokes and look at lewd women, with their gaudy tights and their painted cheeks.
Once more, what are we going to do about it, we Christians?--we people who have named the name of Jesus and who claim to be the “salt” of society? One thing is certainly true: If we continue much longer in the religious lines along which we have moved in this city in recent years, Protestantism will undoubtedly come the end of its course. There are 107 fewer Protestant churches on Manhattan Island today than there were 10 years ago. The end, therefore, is in sight, unless radical and revolutionary changes are effected.
I give these facts not only to show what a tremendous city New York is, but also to impress upon all minds the startling differences today between those who seek “pleasure,” even on Sunday, and those who seek the higher things of life.
I do not mean to say that New York is the worst city on earth. It is not. In many respects it is one of the best of the big cities of the world. And New York is worse than other centers of population only because of the mixed population and the greater degree of congestion to which I have already referred. And again I repeat that the characteristics of New York are present also in greater or less degree everywhere else today. There are lessons, therefore, that we all need to learn, and there are truths that every patriotic, God-fearing American should now frankly take to heart.
If I am asked, consequently, what is the matter with New York, I will reply by saying the same thing that is the matter with all Americans; we are on a joy ride when we ought to be at a prayer meeting! Our people are money mad and pleasure crazed. We do not realize the solemn grandeur of the times in which we live. Listen! We are still in the shadow of the most awful war that ever wasted the world. Ten millions of the youth of the race—10,000,000 dear lads--the picked flower of humanity are dead. They fell out of the air, they sank down into the sea, they were blown to bits by bombs of hellish power, and they were stabbed and shot and gassed and hacked into mince meat. Their poor bodies are rotting in the earth and under the sea, and it would require more than a year for their ghostly forms to march past a given point if they could once more walk the earth. And now, is an aftermath of war, half of the race is standing in the shadow of starvation, anarchy and disease. Now, in the face of this, what are we dong in this favored and prosperous land? We are indulging in such an orgy of extravagance and soft living and self-pleasing that our people have never dreamed before! The love of luxury, which spells always social decay, has gripped many, and the aim and object of a multitude of lives to day lies no higher than the pitiful and paltry purpose to make money, by fair means of foul, and then to spend it in the search for silly pleasures and selfish ease.
Yes, we are on a joy ride when we ought to be at a prayer meeting; and if we do not stop soon, God Almighty will stop us; and when the hand of Heaven is stretched out to stay a prodigal race, it falls heavily and spares not. May we take our warning and profit by the example of the past, and turn back to God and righteousness before it is too late!
John Stratton Roach [Roach Stratton??] was born in Evansville, Indiana, April 6, 1875, of Southern parents, his father the Rev. Dr. H.D.R. Stratton. Dr. Stratton was educated at Mercer University, Bacon, Georgia; the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville; the University of Chicago, and the Boston school of Oratory. Since entering the ministry, Dr. Stratton has held four notable pastorates, the first being that of the Second Baptist church, Chicago; the second that of Immanuel-Seventh church, Baltimore; the third that of the First Baptist church, Norfolk, Va.; and his present one, the world-famous Calvary Baptist church on Fifth Avenue, New York. He is the author of several books and has been a frequent contributor to magazines. Recently he had the metropolis of the United States stirred to bitter resentment by his investigations and exposures of evil conditions there.
From The Mount Airy News, Aug. 18, 1921
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