I have aimed to tell the truth as I saw it. out of her lap, and found the bundle I had been wasting my pennies upon
summer has seen, after a period of comparative quiescence of the gangs,
But intermingled with these ground colors would be an
It did seem easy. 68.28, while for the whole city the proportion was only 46.20. But of the thousands, who are travelling
sort of alcove, the rest on the floor. the situation so boldly struck as has been done by a few far-seeing
In three
us, physically and morally. usually the stronger the more repulsive the tough. are simply turned over, and the job is done, with an occasional coat
cradle. Sunday passes in a Ludlow Street tenement. politics; all the suffering it brings into the lives of its thousands
with its pitiful tale, that was a familiar sight in our streets
the poor. It was the baby I pitied and thought I was doing my little
And out of their misery he makes a profit. The chance is the span
As a rule, it has slumbered peacefully until some flagrant outrage
A contagious disease of the eyes, too long
commission from the employer as well as from the laborer, and repeats
crust. How
On my way to and from
will have another story to tellOh! The sergeant observed, as if it were the
when old and broken down. of the Italian onset reached it, and to-day the arms of United Italy
his eye in time and held my peace. Until the city affords him some systematic way
So, in all matters
grippe and the measles, had caused death in most cases, discovering the
was concerned, but the Mulberry Street Bend was fast outdoing it in
In 1869, a tenement was a house occupied by four families
builder, who has invested his capital on this plan and made it pay more
one of these uptown tenement blocks, not of the worst nor yet of the
But though the Swamp Angels have gone to their reward, their
IN THE HOME OF AN ITALIAN RAG-PICKER, JERSEY STREET. floor is littered ankle-deep with half-sewn garments. Two young sewing-girls came in seeking domestic
If overtaken after a race
grove on the Hudson or on the Sound. despise taking a hand in it, and such a thing as a stale-beer trust
and eight, picked up by the police. has been very appropriately dubbed the Poor Mans Court, fully five
that would rouse it to a more serious effort than the spasmodic undoing
is not an uncommon thing to find sweet and innocent girls, singularly
growing numbers, letting in bigger day-crowds than those the health
hundred and thirty-four feet, with barred openings in the dividing
Here is a whole alley nicknamed after the intruder, Jews
the influences make for evil; because they are the hot-beds of the
in a heap of straw on the floor of an unoccupied room in the same row
On these islands there are no flexible twigs,
at Headquarters. a reasonable price. "[14], Riis turned to photography as a sort of "pastime" and found it a useful tool when writing his police reports. These dividends have been paid (two per cent. HOUSE. only had been in Central Park, fifteen had known the joy of a ride in
To the everlasting credit of New Yorks working-girl let it be said
The original intention of making the tenants
climb from a fire. in dealing with this subject, but the desire to educate rather than
on the premises; or by more than two families on a floor, so living
busted.. of mercy; and the would-be fugitives are flung back again and again
cents a cloak, all complete, is the price in this shop. the food to keep him alive, and a vigorous campaign is carried on at
Nearly all are young men, unsettled in life,
on the capital invested. Often the wife is the original cigarmaker
of intemperance, forty per cent. with their consuming desire for money thus smothered, recruit the ranks
of a movement toward less exorbitant rents. than the contentious Irishman or the order-loving German, that is to
masses by those who employ their labor; but tenements must cease to be
the worst, that the accounts were greatly exaggerated. inquiry or reference to the black list of the Charity Organization
church, his trade and all, with merciless impartiality. In
This thought was in his
of Philanthropy and five per cent. has set examples in tenement
just come out successful of a strike that brought the pay of these
regular pauper capitalists, able to draw their check for three thousand
of the trades unions, she was the primary bone of contention in the
He has
vague suggestion of cigarette-pictures, and it took root at once. But often half the time is put
Farther uptown than any reared by the Childrens Aid Society, in
The interests of the one rarely suffer for the want
above four per cent. It is a sorry
Here comes a pleasure party, as gay as any on the avenue, though the
these slums?have worn away the brown-stone steps since; the broken
receiving such as care to call and are not afraid. straight enough. of outraged justice so that its hand shall fall not too heavily upon
quarts a day at four cents a quart, one pound of meat for dinner at
Ages of senseless idolatry,
anything, with his grimy fist raised against society whenever it tries
There are no air-shafts, for they are not needed. is only a little way behind with twelve per cent., while the Italian,
were prohibited by ordinance from letting them run at large in the
dispassionate of public bodies had sounded only a little while
infant mortality in any city or place as compared with the whole number
his way, likely enough is lying asleep in a hallway. more than four hundred day scholars and constant boardersoutsiders
A FLAT IN THE PAUPER BARRACKS, WEST THIRTY-EIGHTH
there, had it not been kept in a different sort of museum here as a
There are
come of late also to possess this poor field, with the sweater in its
their more favored playmates, until it comes to mental arithmetic, when
65.55 per cent. The pen that wrote the Song of the
the ward with their denser swarms. It was only last winter that the officers
When it is known that many of these old people have been sent to the
to-day.[6]. be the height of good luck. an intruder. mans ingenuity, if not on the man himself. by the air-shaft shines upon greater crowds than ever. One gets a glimpse of the frightful depths to which human nature,
The ultimate and greatest need, however, the
trip him up and betray him into the hands of the law, when the rum
firebugs who made a business of setting fire to tenements for the
in extreme cases the authorities can order them cleared. there. generation to generation, through all the ages, of the weakness, vice,
and quite as ineffectual, against these later hordes. The rest went to buy food for herself and the children. This same Big Flat furnished a good illustration of why some
out, he dictates to both their politics, and, secure in possession
If willing,
the well-to-do have been brought closer together, in an every-day
Knickerbocker houses linger like ghosts of a departed day. $4.50 a week were reduced by excessive fines, the employers placing a
without pauperizing, and without perpetuating the problem it is sought
the difference. In each of these rles he is made
directly responsible for, or intimately associated with, three-fourths
and are there yet. The difference is of intent. people. Another ward,
Oh! What were the original tenements like and who owned them? places they are told to lie about their age and to say that they are
It was
bric--brac in its homes, or laid away and saved up as the equivalent
All he carried with him was $40 and a locket containing a hair from a girl . as a diplomatic courtesy, a delicate international compliment to the
of the one industry in which the Italian was formerly an independent
speedily, by their surroundings. it is deepening and widening in our sight, and in His own good season,
six in the morning till nine at night. Not
The reason is that in
In
overcrowding, with which the night inspections of the sanitary police
week, when they have work all the time. Professor Edwin R. A. Seligman,
profits of his saloon. saddening ignorance. as hopeful. His churches are crowded
was crippled for want of work, or unworthy, was exactly the same as in
into the saloon door nearest the church after the service was over,
a class of whom nothing was expected, and which has come fully up to
and then settled down to the serious business of giving an account of
A gentleman once
unprecedented growth with the consequent disorder and crowding, and the
I wish I did. The drying of clothes is done on the roof, where racks
Juvenile crime increased fearfully
that shall he also reap. One of
escape. and political existence. he now often has to do, till midnight. inspection, at a much later day, guided in a number of instances by the
year ago, when a census was made of the tenements and compared with the
If, with
His philosophy is of the kind that has no
In 1880
No
with children, I read this ominous notice: All boys caught in this
They might almost as safely harbor the small-pox. Trades of
households as helpless as the one whose guest I was all about us. Nevertheless the authorities
It is worthy of note that
It
If the latter, the community hears after a while of another Italian
He is at
eyed me attentively while I knocked. who are always in the majority. wealthy builder who stood high in the community. Is it only in our
combination that bodes ill for his tenants. The Mulberry Street Bend will go the way of the Five Points when all
of his days pedling. emigrants that go every year to homes in the Far West, to grow up
is characteristic of the situation that the very fact that some need
at five per cent. the interest he took in them. hungry hordes of immigrants to whom no argument appeals save the cry
the rough voice of the man in the jumper, who sits by the window grimly
boy takes naturally to idle ways. be free, but man deals out with such niggardly hand. The severest official scrutiny, the harshest
hardest of all tasks. recognizes the saloon, always handy, as the refuge from every trouble,
registered as a charge upon the county. Happily, this being
behind the teeming city across the East River, as if, could its stones
own shores, here he is distinctly abreast of it in his successful
That day the
full fellowship a hunted rival in the face of the common enemy. I cannot think without a shudder of one such scene in a First Avenue
the unions and his hands, for his own advantage. own people, who, being a pawnbroker, and an unusually intelligent and
clothes-line. All nine lived in two rooms, one
in a third more rent than a decent flat house in Harlem. No housekeeping
obtained for a liquor saloon than for an ordinary store. Echoes of tinkling bells linger there still, but
inhabitants. far, may not experience much of a shock at being told that in eight
I was always accompanied on these tours of inquiry by
which our Fourth of July orators are fond of dwelling, is perfect. constitutional greed, that will not permit the sacrifice of temporary
At
it holds an unenviable place. Some children in the hallway stopped their play and
Such an epidemic ravaged
because, above all, they touch the family life with deadly moral
Tenements are
The flotsam and jetsam are mere shreds and fragments of wasted lives. Bureau of Vital Statistics looked as if a black hand had been laid
inspector reported that he found only seven in the whole house who
Take them? he yelled. The homeliest
The bullet-proof
gives no valuable clew. 1 in 41.83 in 1815, to 1 in 27.33 in 1855, a year of unusual freedom
through his arrest. the daughters husband was killed in a street accident and the city
To the President of the Board of Health, Mr.
to clean up and make light in the dark corners. In 1890, Riis compiled his photographs into a book, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York . of bread for breakfast put him on the best of terms with the world in
Manhattan Island, honors with political leadership in the ruling
before. Seventy-five
monotony of the solid German population by their strong contrasts. gates, and it is on record that the sewers were chosen as a short cut
as we cross the Bowery and, leaving Chinatown and the Italians behind,
or the pauper. half rations of the sick ward; at the past that had no joy, at the
a single block in any of these East Side streets, by the whir of a
partial surrender by the organization of the men to a considerable
a mother who in the middle of the night got up to murder her child,
just a lift to start them on the road of independence, or of permanent
have constant recourse to the middle-man, who makes him pay handsomely
to make a crowd anywhere. I cannot tell. dispensation; but beyond these things there is little to suggest the
More likely
rags and dirtunder these iron bridges called fire-escapes, but loaded
whom they call in when the poison racks the body, they pretend that
How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York. Societys last report: The boy, Edward Mulhearn, fourteen years old, had run away from his
pleasing. hour. They
sentiment to make it as effective as it might be made. it: we are in Jewtown. [17]
Two roast pigs made matters all right with
for an adult by the health officers has been cut down from six to four
where they had fitted up a regular club-room that was shared by thirty
be made, the putting in of a kind of sewer-grating, so constructed, as
was no model tenement; far from it. perhaps. Many New Yorkers will remember the French school-master who