Post 4, Group B: If Christ Came to Chicago by: JJ Leath

             In class, we discussed W.T. Stead’s work If Christ Came to Chicago. In the excerpt we read in class, Stead wrote about a prostitute in Chicago by the name of Maggie Darling. Stead spent significant time within the brothel that Maggie worked at. He was there and observed their “monotonous existence” and observed when they were “pulled” by the police. Stead could have focused on their vices, or Stead could have also focused on police corruption in Chicago, for he witnessed this first-hand. Rather, he chooses to spill the most ink about Maggie’s past. This conscience choice made by the author is revealing about his purpose of writing this work. Stead has directed this work at the upper-class so that they can gain understanding of what it is like to be a person in Maggie’s position and to humanize people on the fringe of society. 

            To analyze a work, it is crucial that you examine the context from which it was written. The context of If Christ Came to Chicago can be gleaned if you consider the audience that Stead was writing for. This account was published in 1894 as a book. Lower-class audiences wouldn’t have the money to buy the book, the leisure time to read it, and the illiteracy rate in the lower-class at the turn of the 19^th century was much higher than the illiteracy rate in the upper-class. Further, I'm not sure that the audience was meant to be citizens of Chicago, I believe that this work was meant for those in Stead's home-city of London. This may have been written about Chicago, but it was widely circulated and published in England. When the time period is considered, it becomes clear that this book was written for the upper-class (possibly specifically the upper-class in London) with the specific goal of educating them on the realities of living life in the shoes of a person like Maggie Darling.  

            Given context, I believe that you can start analyzing Stead’s intentions. While on the surface Stead was just showing the life of a prostitute, I don't think Stead wanted to simply show what it was like to live like Maggie Darling. Stead wanted to humanize Maggie, and by doing so, humanize every “Maggie Darling” that we all see daily, if we live in a large city that is. The social elites of London, Chicago, and New York would likely run into “Maggie Darling” often (especially if they were frequently clients of their corner’s ‘Maggie’). They would see the impoverished on the street, and they would likely keep their distance. It is easy to blame their vices and poor decisions when you can keep a distance from them and their story. When you can keep your distance from a group, it is easy to "otherize" them. What If Christ Came to Chicago did was remove that distance. Stead threw Maggie’s story in your face; you can’t escape it. 

            Stead then took this one step further. He starts by showing the realities of Maggie’s life, he then humanized her, and he finished by telling the account of the villain of the story. The prostitute wasn’t the villain, it was a rich catholic. As a reader, I had to ask if there was anything significant about this. Given the context of the piece and Stead’s purpose, I believe that he was inadvertently telling the upper-class that the social ills that occur in the city’s underbelly is somewhat their fault. When Maggie told her story, she accounted that she was able to get out of the prostitution scene in San Francisco, and if it weren’t for the self-righteous action of the rich catholic Mrs. McD, Maggie wouldn’t have been pushed into prostitution again. She could have been an “up-standing citizen”. I believe that this aspect of Maggie’s life is what creates the most powerful social commentary of the piece – Maggie's lot in life wasn't entirely her fault. I think that this is supposed to be a metaphor to Victorian England and the economic system that was propping up the London elite. It was the economic system that was pushing the "Maggie Darlings" of London into desperate situations. The message of If Christ Came to Chicago ultimately is that the world’s “Maggie Darlings” aren’t all bad, they are desperate, and those with power and influence are somewhat responsible for this.   

            The fault of the upper-class in Victorian wasn’t explicit, but they were definitely exploiting the lower classes of London. During the Victorian period in England, the Industrial Revolution was raging in London. This became the source of much of this newfound wealth, and while industrialization created a great deal of wealth, there were many in Victorian England that were left behind.  In “Economic Development and the Demographics of Criminals in Victorian England”, the authors examined the trends of crime in this time period. The authors noted that “As industrialization proceeded, workers increasingly found their human capital unsuitable to the technology level, which forced some into crime”. In this paper, the data from Victorian England showed a 20% increase in economic crime (or non-white collar crime done for economic gain). The crime statistics in this paper show desperation within the lower-classes. While I don’t think the upper-class is guilty for their success, it is indisputable that the system propelling them was burying others.

            What makes If Christ Came to Chicago interesting and so important is its applicability today. We are in the next Industrial Revolution. Computers are affecting our economy like machines did in Victorian England. The wealth that has been created has been incredible. It has created billionaires like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. And just like the Industrial Revolution, there are members of our society being left behind. How many different homeless people have you seen while you drive to school? How many times was the widening wealth gap brought up during the 2016 election? We are living in an Industrial Revolution remix, and the question is whether we will learn the lessons being shown in If Christ Came to Chicago or if we will continue to blame the misfortune of the forgotten on "their own poor choices".

Source:

Vickers, Chris, and Nicolas L. Ziebarth. “Economic Development and the Demographics of                              Criminals in Victorian England.” The Journal of Law and Economics, vol. 59, no. 1, 2016,                  pp. 191–223., doi:10.1086/684303.