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1. LONG ago it was said that
"one half of the world does not know how the
other half lives." That was true then. It did
not know because it did not care. The half that
was on top cared little for the struggles, and less
for the fate of those who were underneath, so long
as it was able to hold them there and keep its own
seat. There came a time when the discomfort and
crowding below were so great, and the consequent
upheavals so violent, that it was no longer an easy
thing to do, and then the upper half fell to inquiring
what was the matter. Information on the subject
has been accumulating rapidly since, and the whole
world has had its hands full answering for its old
ignorance.
2. In New York, the youngest
of the world's great cities, that time came later
than elsewhere, because the crowding had not been
so great. There were those who believed that it
would never come; but their hopes were vain. Greed
and reckless selfishness wrought like results here
as in the cities of older lands. "When the
great riot occurred in 1863," so reads the
testimony of the Secretary of the Prison Association
of New York before a legislative committee appointed
to investigate causes of the increase of crime in
the State twenty-five years ago, "every hiding-place
and nursery of crime discovered itself by immediate
and active participation in the operations of the
mob. Those very places and domiciles, and all that
are like them, are to-day nurseries of crime, and
of the vices and disorderly courses which lead to
crime. By far the largest part--eighty per cent.
at least--of crimes against properly and against
the person are perpetrated by individuals who have
either lost connection with home life, or never
had any, or whose homes had ceased to be sufficiently
separate, decent, and desirable to afford what ate
regarded as ordinary wholesome influences of home
and family. . . . The younger criminals seem
to come almost exclusively from the worst tenement
house districts, that is, when traced back to the
very places where they had their homes in the city
here.'' Of one thing New York made sure at that
earls stage of the inquiry: the boundary line of
the Other Half lies through the tenements.
3. It is ten years and over,
now, since that line divided New York's population
evenly. To-day three-fourths of its people live
in the tenements, and the nineteenth century drift
of the population to the cities is sending ever-increasing
multitudes to crowd them. The fifteen thousand tenant
houses that were the despair of the sanitarian in
the past generation have swelled into thirty-seven
thousand, and more than twelve hundred thousand
persons call them home. The one way out he saw--rapid
transit to the suburbs--has brought no relief. We
know now that these is no way out; that the "system"
that was the evil offspring of public neglect and
private greed has come to stay, a storm-centre forever
of our civilization. Nothing is left but to make
the best of a bad bargain.
4. What the tenements are and
how they grow to what they are, we shall see hereafter.
The story is dark enough, drawn from the plain public
records, to send a chill to any heart. If it shall
appear that the sufferings and the sins of the "other
half," and the evil they breed, are but as
a just punishment upon the community that gave it
no other choice, it will be because that is the
truth. The boundary line lies there because, while
the forces for good on one side vastly outweigh
the bad--it were not well otherwise--in the tenements
all the influences make for evil; because they are
the hot-beds of the epidemics that carry death to
rich and poor alike; the nurseries of pauperism
and crime that fill our jails and police courts;
that throw off a scum of forty thousand human wrecks
to the island asylums and workhouses year by year;
that turned out in the last eight years a round
half million beggars to prey upon our charities;
that maintain a standing army of ten thousand tramps
with all that that implies; because, above all,
they touch the family life with deadly moral contagion.
This is their worst crime, inseparable from the
system. That we have to own it the child of our
own wrong does not excuse it, even though it gives
it claim upon our utmost patience and tenderest
charity.
5. What are you going to do
about it? is the question of to-day. It was asked
once of our city in taunting defiance by a band
of political cutthroats, the legitimate outgrowth
of life on the tenement-house level.[1] Law and order found the answer then and prevailed.
With our enormously swelling population held in
this galling bondage, will that answer always be
given? It will depend on how fully the situation
that prompted the challenge is grasped. Forty per
cent. of the distress among the poor, said a recent
official report, is due to drunkenness. But the
first legislative committee ever appointed to probe
this sore went deeper down and uncovered its roots.
The "conclusion forced itself upon it that
certain conditions and associations of human life
and habitation are the prolific parents of corresponding
habits and morals," and it recommended "the
prevention of drunkenness by providing for every
man a clean and comfortable home. Years after, a
sanitary inquiry brought to light the fact that
"more than one-half of the tenements with two-thirds
of their population were held by owners veto trade
the keeping of them a business, generally
a speculation. The owner was seeking a certain
percentage on his outlay, and that percentage very
rarely fell below fifteen per cent., and frequently
exceeded thirty. [2] . . .
The complaint was universal among the tenants that
they were entirely smeared for, and that the only
answer to their requests to have the place put in
order by repairs and necessary improvements was
that they must pay their rent or leave. The agent's
instructions were simple but emphatic: 'Collect
the rent in advance, or, failing, eject the occupants."'
Upon such a stock grew this upas-tree. Small wonder
the fruit is bitter. The remedy that shall be an
effective answer to the coming appeal for justice
must proceed from the public conscience. Neither
legislation nor charity can cover the ground. The
greed of capital that wrought the evil must itself
undo it, as far as it can now be undone. Homes must
be built for the working masses by those who employ
their labor; but tenements must cease to be "good
property" in the old, heartless sense. "Philanthropy
and five per cent." is the penance exacted.
6. If this is true from a purely
economic point of view, what then of the outlook
front the Christian standpoint? Not long ago a great
meeting was held in this city, of all denominations
of religious faith, to discuss the question how
to lay hold of these teeming masses in the tenements
with Christian influences, to which they are now
too often strangers. Might not the conference have
found in the warning of one Brooklyn builder, who
has invested his capital on this plan and made it
pay more than a money interest, a hint worth heeding:
"How shall the love of God be understood by
those who have been nurtured in sight only of the
greed of man?" |
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Go to Chapter 1
[1] Tweed was born and bred
in a Fourth Ward tenement.
[2] Forty per cent. was
declared by witnesses before a Senate Committee
to be a fair average interest on tenement property.
Instances were given of its being one hundred
percent. and over.
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