58INTEU-SEMINAR'· MIS~IONARY ALLIANCE.process of reasoning among the people, they can strike in with arguments,objections, illustrations and imagery which we could never CODceive."Light marks the path of Christianity. "The school-house bes~dethe church," books and newspapers in the native languages, maklllgknown the power of the press, the habits of ci'dlized life and of socialorder introduced where but a few years before was only the durknessof su~erst i tion and every license to iniquity-these are the signs whichmark the pre-sence of the missionary of the cro~s. \Vherever the Gospelhat) come with its quick(>ning power, it has awakened a desire not onlyfor the comforts and conveniences of Hfe, but for intellectual developmentas well. The high schools, the colleges, and the theological seminarieswhich follow the planting of the church kindle in the minds ofthe pe-ople the pure and noble aspirations which Christianity alone ofall religions can inspire.Let us cherish the hope and breathe the prayer that the efforts ofthe Church in education will progress until all the citIes and towns ofheathen and pagan lands have the gospel minister and Christian teacherliving among them j until their children are educated, their civil libertiesguaranteed and understood, their literature purified, their conditionin this world made brighter nnd happier by the full revelation ofanother made known to them.Evangelization of the Foreign Population in OurWestern Cities.PAPER, BY snERM.\X w. BROWN, .\NDOVER, llASS.The limited time allowed for the discussion of this theme will permit me to speak only in ontlines and suggestions.I. I invite you first to review with me the t,rtent of the field. Ourwestern 8tate8 hold the keys of our future civilization. To show this,it is no longer necessary to produce statistics concerning their vast territoryandmarvelously increllsing pupulation. Comparisons of them toother countries, indicating these facts, have become too proverbial. Ifit be true that the character of the United States of the 20th century isto be moulded by influences finding their birth in our western states,much morp i8 it true that the character of those states will be shapedby the political, intellectual and moral forces emanating from the citieswithin their borders. The city is the heart of civilization, from whichpulsate influences flowing through all the arteries and penetrating allthe veins of civilized life. 'rhose influences vivify or infect the wholeorganism according as their source, the city, is pure or corrupt. Significant,therafore, is the fact, that, as the world grows older, the percent. of the urban population always increases, and that this centralizingtendency was never in history so marked as in the past fifty years,and in no country 80 evident as in the western part of the United Statei.• •EYANGELIZAT(QN OF' 1'HE FOnEIGN POPULATION. ~9According to the" Tenth Census," in the fifty years between 1830 and1880, our whole population increased less than fOll r fold, while oururban population increased thirteen fold. The proportion of our urbanpopulation was six times greater in 1880 than it was in 1800. This estimateapplies to the nation ilt large, but in the case of our westerncities the fuets Sfe still more striking. Duluth, Minnea.polis, St. Paul,and Kansas City are urbrlD mushrooms. Not alone because of this greatand rapidly increasing proportion of urban population does the citydirect the COUfse of civili7.ation. lIere is the literary center whichfeeds the national mind, the press, perhaps carrying the truth, perhapssaturated with infidelity. In the city are controlled the mines, manufactoriesand railroads of the whole land. In the city we see at oneglance the " glory and shame" of the nation, the magnificence nndcomfort of wealth and the squalor and wretchedness of poverty. Ourwestern cit ies, t hen, will be the sources of those elements which willunite in this nation's progress or in its decay.Of great import, therefore, is the pregnant fact that these westerncities, which hold the destiny of our future ch·ilization, are cities offoreigners. Says Mr. Loomi s, "Few of us realize how far from beingADg' l o-~axon E"ither in race, tradition or religion are the cities of theUnited Stlltes."* This is pre-eminently true in the case of the west.Bptween the Mississippi nnd the Pacific the proportion of foreigners isll('srly three times as great as it is between the ?tliflsissippi and the Atlantic.Seventy-five p E"r cent of the immigrants to this country go tolIle western states and territories. According to Dr. Strong's estimate,\vbich seE"ms a plaUSible one, our foreign population will number inIrlOO not less than 43,000,000, of which 25,000,000 will be west of the''li.;;sissippi. So thnt allowing the increase of the entire population tobe 350 per cent. between 1880 and 1900, two-thirds of the whole populationof the west will be foreign. The danger from this foreign elementcomesnot so much from its magnitude as from its concentration intilE" cities. Taken as a whole our western urban popull1tions, thoughthf'y may be American, yet are not Americanized. The language ofother nntlons comes from their tongues; foreign blood courses in theirveins. Heventy-eight per cent. of the population of St. Louis are foreign-bora,or children of the first generation of foreign-born pa·rents; eighty· one per cent. of J,Iilw8ukee, eighty-four per cent. otDetroit, eighty-three per cent. of Cleveland and in Chicago onlyf'ight persons out of every hundred are native Americans.t Intbis foreign element the Germans, Slavs and Scandinavians predomiuate.More than one-half of the foreign population in St. Louis, Cincinnatiand Milwaukee are Germans. Chicago has chiefly Bohemians,... Modern OiUes " comprl8tn~ a couree of lecturee delivered at Andover Tbeo.Seo1., 1886, by Samuel Lane LoomIS.tE.timated from II Tenth Census."
60 INTER-SEMINARY MISSIONARY ALLIANCE.Poles, Danes, Hollanders, Swedes, Norwegians, Russians and SwissjDetroit has Polesj Cleveland, Bohemians, and Minneapolis, Scandinavians.II" I now ask you to consider the dang,r, (VI"ising from thi, foreignPOPlll.ltion a .. n(l threatening OW1' Oh1'istictn ci'IJilization. As preliminaryto this, let us glance at the social position occupied by this foreignelement. The pOl)Ulatiolls of our cities Illay be divided into twoclasses, according as brain or muscle is the chief factor in their work,the business class and the labor class. The line of demarcation is notalwa.ys distinct; some members of the labor class often use more intelligencethan many of the business class. Yet as a whole the intellectualand social conditions of these two classes are totally different,and the contrast between them is every day growing greater. Themembers of the labor class have smaller incomes, dress more poorly,have less food and of poorer quality, live in smaller and less comfortablE'
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