Jacob A. Riis 1849–1914. The Battle with the Slum. 1902.
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| the same page that had an enthusiastic review of the college football season. I do not suppose it did any harm, for the paper was probably not read by one of the men it had set out to reform. But suppose it had been, how much would it have appealed to them? Exactly the qualities of robust manliness which football is supposed to encourage in college students had been evoked by the trial of strength and skill which they had witnessed. As to the brutality, they knew that fifty young men are maimed or killed at football to one who fares ill in a boxing match. Would it seem to them common sense, or cant and humbug? |
| That is what it comes down to in the end: common sense and common honesty. Common sense to steer us clear of the “sociology” reef that would make our cause ridiculous, on Fifth Avenue and in East Broadway. I have no quarrel with the man who would do things by system and in order; but the man who would reduce men and women and children to mere items in his infallible system and classify and sub-classify them until they are as dried up as his theories, that man I will fight till I die. One throb of a human heart is worth a whole book of his stuff. Common honesty to keep us afloat at all. If we worship as success mere money-getting, closing our eyes to the means, let us at least say it like the man who told me to-day that “after all, one |