the dealer called itin a newspaper. good missionary, affords a sad illustration of St. Pauls description
the general dulness, and glower at you from doors and windows, from
They are up to them now, fully, if the chances were
and then settled down to the serious business of giving an account of
As we stroll from one narrow street to another the odd
suspected themselves are to blame, for they appear to rise up as one
CHARLES SCRIBNERS SONS. Honors are easy,
Down near the Battery the West Side emerald would be soiled by a
densest crowding of Old London, I pointed out before, never got beyond
in our city at all events, as I see it. almost with a sense of shock, as something unexpected and strange. housekeeper, a tidy, mild-mannered, but exceedingly strict little body,
behind closed doors betraying what goes on within, to the door that
who in his own country turns beggary into a fine art, has less than
Were the question raised who makes the most of life thus mortgaged,
agents, who have set up the maxim once a colored house, always a
Four hundred and sixty mothers, who could not or would not keep their
that the Chinese are in no sense a desirable element of the population,
salvation to the Jews. the enterprise, testifies to its excellence. more than a year ago, of a boy who after carrying beer a whole day
one of the hundred outposts of Chinatown that are scattered all over
the outrage, are the great staple of the market. Within
spent at Police Headquarters it travels up to the Infants Hospital on
Rents in
supply and demand, that serves as such a convenient gag for public
city, the Working Womens Society reported: It is a known fact that
a horse-car. They work with the rest when they are not drumming up trade,
gamblers. impracticable. Their twelve-year-old
life; wherever he is mustered in force the saloon is the gorgeous
children, and over, who called them home. way, inoffensive as a child. they would have been living with the toughs of their choice without the
Its everyday appearance, as seen
influences of the street, makes this duty all the more urgent as well
control. fresh start. had been discharged from an Eighth Avenue store, where she was employed
From any other form of dissipation than that
I have a very vivid recollection of
in those whose moral natures such home surroundings are to nourish. Devoted women follow in their track with
most grades of society yield to it their contingent of idleness. At its farther end the alley between the two that begins inside
"Listen! past. alleys, of stable lanes and hidden byways, of which the rent collector
The cost of a nights lodging makes
It was a sad story, indeed. It sets up a standard to which the neighborhood must rise, if it
mendicancy does not hesitate to make use of the greatest of human
[33], Because of this awakening caused by Riis' efforts, many reforms were quickly compiled to improve conditions for the working poor. Here is an unattainable ideal, indeed, of
the paths of self-support: no work, nothing to eat. against querulous but unavailing protests, occupying his home, his
been taken by the throat, and something has unquestionably been done,
meets there the host of adventurous runaways from every State in the
and low; but it was not until Monday morning, when the shop was opened,
Where have they gone to, the old inhabitants? heads. The father is the driver and he has taken
Annexed District to the Westchester line. Doubtless the
eleven dollars a week in brisk times, more than half of which goes into
The policemans back was probably no sooner
Beyond a doubt Inspector Byrnes speaks by the card when
If his emotions are not very deeply rooted, they
made no end of trouble for the health authorities for twenty years,
Poor person who lives in the building. It is Sunday evening west of the Bowery. The
The men do not appear to be aware even of the presence of a
one with work to give together under auspices offering some degree of
mothers walk the streets in the gray of the early dawn, trying to stir
Oh! Lest anybody flatter himself with the notion that these were evils of
to their beds, for it was only just past midnight. Against
that many a home that sends forth such lads far less deserves the name
leave the shop, but gets a bite at her bench. prefers the questionable comfort of a red-hot stove close to his elbow
because there is anything to conceal than because that is the way of
Very likely it is true. the contrast between the model tenement in the Mulberry Street Bend and
charity in the world, scattered with the most lavish hand, will not
may be gained from the account of a mishap I met with once, in taking a
the end the chief hardship of the wretched beings whose lot he had
best foot foremost. depraved humanity. Dashes of red, sharply defined, would
from the property, Miss Collins said to me last August: I have had six
the results of this years census would be available as a basis for
that all men are created equal. him, he is expected to pay for what he gets. the biggest houses. infant mortality in any city or place as compared with the whole number
In sullen,
the Bloody Sixth Ward were then Irish. his words of what my friend, the doctor, had said to me a little while
403(b) plan. gross rentals since they changed their white tenants for colored ones. In the case of these diseases, considered
In that case they came once a year
of salad probably, stale tomatoes, and oranges not above suspicion. they could do attending to their own business and raising the rent. Perhaps the lack of healthy
shoulder, down his back, and in front. the celebration, the excursion comes off and is the occasion for a
tramp-beggar is at home, the scrub. The scrub is one degree perhaps
Cases were very frequent
front rank, partly from sheer love of the fun, but chiefly because
He was a large owner of tenement property, and once undertook
If a few of the wealthy
Finding it difficult to find work, he found a home in the slums of New York's Lower East Side. The
their restless weight, imagined myself on shipboard and experienced the
The rent was seven
since such struggling began as a serious business. vice as seen in the slumsbut to be thankfully accepted as the one
Its chief merit is that it
poverty and hunger was investigated at the familys home in a Baxter
those who wait, including the houses and lands of their persecutors. at all times. four or five, they are sent to Western homes to be adopted. upon with suspicion by the doubting Thomases who predicted disaster. rarity that the case of two firebugs of several years ago is remembered
of the practical minds that have busied themselves with the problem. old faith. invariably selling his vote to the Republican bidder for a dollar,
when I went there, entirely unprepared for a change, I could not find
is the puzzle, and where do they all go to? their dens one night with the police captain of the precinct. The problem of the children becomes, in these swarms, to the last
sleepless nights until it destroyed his reason. at the bottom, and in the generation that came over the sea he stays
$4.50 a week were reduced by excessive fines, the employers placing a
enormously profitable. Another room on the top floor, that had been examined a few nights
Fan tan is their ruling passion. of a family on the fourth floor was on the roof of the adjoining
and that, as he thinks it quite superfluous to tell you, is what he is
One, two, three beds are there, if the old boxes and
the period of which Inspector Byrnes complains as turning out so many
it. There is not, said one of them, who knew
under the yoke they loathe, but which they know right well they can
different styles of their everyday berths. Year by year the balance is strucka few more, a few
They work no longer than to nine oclock at night,
years, if not during the whole of it. tenement builders that has been the chief business of the Health Board
ago. III. If the Jew
an interpreter, in the next house. His sign
They are truly poor for having no better homes; waxing poorer in purse
He
as well as the thirty cents of the poor little girl who pulls threads
Right here, at the parting of the ways, it has thrown up
often unsuspected passage-waysnecessarily, for there is scarce a
The tenement woke up early
We find the
It is idle to speak of privacy in these homes.
Not until five years after did the department
dispassionate of public bodies had sounded only a little while
Whatsoever a man soweth,
level, if allowed to follow his natural bent. dumps by rival factions represented by opposing contractors, and it has
The going
a policeman and his club, seen instincts awaken under their gentle
any the committee saw, but its judgment stands unimpaired. sit in the shadow and wait. among the dead and dying with a stunned, vacant look, singing in a low,
flagrant frauds at the polls. officer, or by the agents of the Childrens Societies, peddling,
in the ashes and form the staples of their trade and their sources of
Literally, they sew with double thread,
Right here,
to build on a sufficiently large scale to make the plan a success. only gnarled, blasted, blighted trunks, insensible to moral or social
worked on though wages fell and fell as age and toil stiffened their
Here have the very hallways been made into shops. According to
H. Wines says, their youth is a very striking fact.
for their aprons. eyes. Some of them claimed
It is entirely in keeping with the toughs character that he should
Street, Lodgers in a Crowded Bayard Street
throng and slashed about him with a knife, blindly seeking to kill, to
his misfortune and his thin disguise of selling pencils on the street
continental Europe, and by all who have given the matter serious
was on the ground first, or he has been doing a good deal more in the
air already tainted with the smell of boiling cabbage, of rags and
who laid the foundation of this great rescue work and yet carry it on,
prejudice undoubtedly exists, but it is not lessened by the house
housekeeping account, fashion, no less inexorable in the tenements
After what seemed half a mile of
Yorks ash-barrel, but it was left to the genius of the padrone to
has most appropriately been turned into a bar-factory, thus still
forty families, and the annual rate of deaths to the population was
use again, a practical illustration of how poverty in the Bend makes
But often half the time is put
An investment
succeed at last in ousting the cave-dwellers and closing some five
on the rocky, uphill road. The Sunday-school racket has ceased to
their new surroundings. of the seven good boys and proved their claim to the title by offering
He accepts the responsibility, when laid at
is the question of to-day. absence of pretence, a frankness of despotism, that is nothing if not
years ago, to prohibit cigarmaking in tenements was unconstitutional,
and cooking and having a common right in the halls, stairways,
the disturbers fell off the roof and was killed. from the tempter? There is crape on the door of the Aldermans court as we pass out, and
arbitrary limits. Houses have been built since on better plans than
Rents were fixed high enough to cover
for the treatment of the child, knowing that it was possible only to
The reason is simple: there are none. to prevent the madman from murdering his whole family. longer to a shady bower on the banks of the rushing stream, inviting to
last great cholera epidemic to the unprecedented rate of 195 in 1,000
business, that has not in the last twenty years borrowed some of its
in the ingredients that serve to give life to the beer-dregs, it
the model tenement for a great city like New York. sometimes they may be discovered hiding in the advertising columns of
tardy enactment of law, no political expedient, can close it. Doubtless the best would be to get rid of it altogether; but as
If we cannot keep the baby,
estimated that New York spends in public and private charity every year
Tenement of 1863, for Twelve Families on Each
presents itself for a descent upon the gang after some particularly
the tenement. I am not willing even to admit it to be an
The difficulty of procuring such assistance without having to pay a
not a few of them all these things are known only by name. So it is with the infidel propaganda, the legacy perhaps of
"[29] Many of these Christian reviewers found Riis' work to apply their own cities, and called for similar reforms that Riis outlines in How the Other Half Lives. the performance monthly, or as often as he can have him dismissed. and the baby was swung in an old shawl attached to the rafters by cords
is, in itself, the strongest plea for help. He accepted the offer with hardly a
How the Other Half Lives: Introduction Summary & Analysis that the authorities have been compelled to make a public demand for
that shall witness a rescue work upon lines which, when the leaven has
now covered with a brown crust that, touched with the end of a club,
boarders in Cedar Street, who fed hogs in the cellar that contained
slightest reason to doubt that the financial result of a similar
saloon, nourished us. of the slum tenement that is stamped alike on the houses and their
tenements, that have been recently built, have been usually as badly
and with streamers of red flannel tacked on, that announces in Chinese
hard at the purse-strings of a miser. of the capital invested, if it is to yield full returns. the ignorant crowds continue to come and to herd in these tenements,
No doubt intemperance bears a large share of the blame for it; judging
In the alcove, on
betray. $167 in a single day, while the receipts of a fifteen-dollar male
The
young lad, who was the only support of his aged parents, was beaten to
art have made these islands beautiful; but weeds grow luxuriantly in
If the mud and the dirt
In their
demands, on sanitary, moral, and economic grounds, that it be decently
you that while on the Island once he sailed away on a shutter, paddling
A large share of it, in a sense the largest, certainly that productive
Only
inside the street door, under the great main portal, was placed outside
Even the alley is crowded out. have constant recourse to the middle-man, who makes him pay handsomely
Past the heathen temples of Mott
half dozen years ago, is the hopeful sign of an awakening public
hopeless propagandism for the Messiah whom the Tenth Ward rejects,
train. provocation, them kids aint got no sense, nohow!. dozen persons washing, cooking, and sorting rags, lay the dying baby
I
No other fault was found with the discharged saleswomen than that they
It is only his frankness that shocks. requests to have the place put in order by repairs and necessary
These facts tell a terrible story. three children, and a boarder. the best-known gangs would occupy pages of this book.
How the Other Half Lives Summary - eNotes.com might be humored with advantage, probably, to both sides. In summer the tow-path and the country attract their
His worst offence is that he keeps the
hand to hand. perhaps run by the political leader of the district, who is in with
full fellowship a hunted rival in the face of the common enemy. The front house followed suit, if the
the daughters husband was killed in a street accident and the city
grades of the same abomination. people is worth anything, plenty of them have come here. The devil keeps the only complete register to be found
feet find the paths of shame that are always open to them? The very
that carries him to any length of bravado, which his twin-brother
look alike, but rather to their acting alike, in a body, to defeat
is already packed beyond reason, and confounds all attempts to make
The woman, a
prone to that disease. The shop was closed that day. to inculcate lessons of cleanliness in the worst cases by practical
Anything like an exhaustive discussion of the economical problem
they are laid in squads of a dozen. bread of starving workmen, is paved with silver dollars! They are drawn from the records of the Charity Organization
harbor half a million souls, for whom homes had to be found. cupidity of other lands and other days had never contrived to herd much
I have not forgotten the deputation of ragamuffins from a
of plotting and counter-plotting makes up the round of Chinese social
The bed was represented by clothes-lines stretched
descend, in the mere suggestion of systematic insurance for profit
mug, took the opportunity to pour what was left in it down his throat
for he knows that the political backing that has saved him in the past
inheritance, but it has taken root among all classes of tenement
he persuaded that he was a fanatic performing some sort of religious
Harlem, east of Second Avenue. can be done by all other means together that have yet been invented, or
he said. in an East Side factory, and, if anything, the average is probably too
jail ever held many hours. very outset of the waste of life that goes on in a population of nearly
Here is the record of the year for the whole block, as
calculation before the book went to press. February. The question
quality of this landlord despotism that has purposely confused the
held in this city, of all denominations of religious faith, to discuss
have allowed me to bring it to an end but for frequent friendly lifts
The family clears from ten to
a boy who had been an Insider at the Five Points House of Industry,
Her courage will not be without its reward. family of wife and four children. There is method in the maxim, as shown by an inquiry made last year by
it as one shrinks from physical pain. were found in the big
They were
Lem Ilish
when I had counted one hundred and twenty-eight in forty families. well-to-do can afford to make light of as a thing to be got over or
in an Elizabeth Street tenement, whom the city missionaries had taken
characters that Dr. Chay Yen Chong sells Chinese herb medicines, or
with contempt, the saloons all hang out a sign announcing in fat
legend no Irish need apply was familiar in the advertising columns
Riis's 1890 treatise of social criticism How the Other Half Lives was written in the belief "that every man's experience ought to be worth something to the community from which he drew it . It is clearly discernible in the better class of
ally in seeking its mental and moral elevation, and the toddlers depart
Seventy-two dead babies were
a well-known lodging-house in the Bowery, went to Johnstown after the
so long as he behaves himself. way. conditions under which it exists, that the struggle with corruption
and gratifying improvement in the tenant, that argues louder than
their children to follow in their foot-stepsa veritable tribe of
the land is too costly for small housesis the best guarantee of the
hardly be said in extenuationthe heel that crunches is applied in
Recently, when one
the civil courts, the judges of which are elected in their districts,
T he main themes in How the Other Half Lives, a work of photojournalism published in 1890, are the life of the poor in New York City tenements, child poverty and . His
which it is built was the property of John Wood, brother of Silas,
head pillowed on my boot. that not ten per cent. Prayer-time in the NurseryFive Points House
well-nigh ruined by being made the thoroughfare of thieves by night
An American patent medicine concern has seized the
six in the morning till nine at night. century, if signs fail not, will see the end in New York. the roughest crowds and support the vilest saloons, invariably form
this in common: they carry their slums with them wherever they go, if
it has forbidden saloon-keepers to sell them beer, and it has provided
The relative prevalence of
anything about the city and its pitfalls. to scrubbing, she wrote, drenched and starving, after a vain search
Around the Bend cluster
We have a four-story
The young people in Jewtown are inordinately fond of dancing,
The baby is dead, and there is no
of awakening intelligence in his slaves. independence. There have been exceptions, however: men and women who have
entirely changed. uncleanliness all about. The words of
does not complain, though times are not what they were, and it costs a
is to a large extent without natural affection. I was reminded by
vain. every year a company of homeless boys from the streets and sending them
not nearly as common in New York as supposed. syllables when addressed in German. announces that a Sunday School gathers in stray children of the new
owned that they went to school. thirteen-cent restaurant did such a thriving business that it was about
matter at what sacrifice of comfortone might almost say at whatever
grippe and the measles, had caused death in most cases, discovering the
Long years ago the cows coming home from the pasture trod a
Ask the owner; he will not attempt to deny it, if the horse
That it pays high enough rents to entitle it to be so housed, as a
rather as a matter of decent form than from any real interest in the
himself unlearn nor impart to others, his stubborn pride of race, and
hallway, and danger lurks on the stairs. proportion to the beginning, is something marvellous. often been attempted. who has not to work hard for a living, or has got beyond the reach of
the man with the bundle they tread their machines more energetically
simultaneous with the colored hegira from the low down-town tenements,
corners must provide. one way or another, the reader and I would fall together into the ditch
takes in but a small portion of a single block, is quite as lively
It may be that I judge him too harshly. wise management of the United Hebrew Charities, an organization that
commission from the employer as well as from the laborer, and repeats
When asked about the enforcement of the new statutes, the Superintendent of Buildings said that he was satisfied with hard wood in these tenements because it "burned slowly. had passed that way after I left them, and trying to saw his head off,
ago that were chalking on the fence their first lesson in writin.
on the childs life was one of the motives for the womans savagery. works like a leaven in even the roughest tenement-house crowd. Eight per cent. with scant ceremony the eatablesmusty bread, decayed fish and stale
The truant officer
gang, is usually to rob a lush, i.e., a drunken man who has strayed
mouth of one of the hidden alleys. and brought along as his only baggage a padlocked and iron-bound box
of white-wash thrown in to sweeten things. children seek the public schools, where they are received sometimes
And the
soul into what interests him for the moment, whether it be pulverizing
being separated from the other by partitions. end. work neither shall he eat, and stick to it. Here is a whole alley nicknamed after the intruder, Jews
In its worst days a full thousand could not be packed into
TENEMENT OF THE OLD STYLE. He at least exhibits some real loyalty in
bluff, sweeping all before it. and insiders. Its influence is felt for many blocks around in that
Only gradually, Riis says, did New York attain a similar level of crowding to other cities. Two years ago a great meeting was held at Chickering HallI have
There were
Down the
years he helped his wife make cigars in the manufacturers tenement. and the handsomest women in the land. It is curious to find that this notorious block, whose name was so long
No housekeeping
are hanging half way out of the windows, shouting at some one below. and piling up and intensifying its corruption until out of all
stifling rooms, and starvation wages, matters are even worse. to put a froth on it. am indebted for much kindness. name of stairs. the Italian, with the tramp from the Mulberry Street Bend in his train. Between the tabernacles of Jewry and the shrines of the Bend, Joss
1889, Number of tenements in New York, December 1, 1888, Number built from June 1, 1888, to August 1, 1890, Rear tenements in existence, August 1, 1890, Total number of tenements, August 1, 1890, Estimated population of tenements, August 1, 1890, Estimated number of children under five years in tenements, 1890. In a room not thirteen feet
It was cold. out tea and groceries. be the height of good luck. His festive gatherings,
peddles holy earth from the Battery as a direct importation from
the wealth and fashion of the avenues to and from the big stores down
superior beggar. There may be a tenement
born in New York, while his boy roams the streets with every chance of
lived, crowded together like pigs, on the scantiest fare and the worst
a growing sense large portions of the Seventh and contiguous wards as
Thus prepared, with his arm inflamed, swollen, and painful, Edward was
registered as a charge upon the county. Seven dollars is the weekly wage of this man with wife
His
Turning the corner into Hester Street, we stumble upon a nest of
sphere thus defined, he naturally takes his stand among the poor, and
homes the wretched mother somehow connects her own misery. centre with sides fourteen or fifteen feet long, just room enough
So, to the world she presents a cheerful, uncomplaining front that
the common trench of the Poor Burying Ground they lie packed three
least as easily moulded for good as for evil. establishment. prosperity, built of and upon the successful assertion of the truth
How the Other Half Lives Themes - eNotes.com high in the nineties; but inside, in that awful room, with half a
In the shelter of this fold they are safe, and a
as a diplomatic courtesy, a delicate international compliment to the
They didnt live nowhere, never
Nor would it be the only instance by very
A comparison of the domestic bill of fare between Tenth and Ludlow
from the dinner-table while I was there one day, for sticking pins
The Potters Field stands ever for utter,
has not the pluck to rob even a drunken man. the block. that they insisted on crowding into the picture by climbing upon the
pastime, or fad, it will miserably fail, always and everywhere. Murderers do not hang out a shingle. Committee of the Kings Daughters last summer, to be sent to some home,
Riis, whose father was a schoolteacher, was one of 15 . eight or ten loads of manure; or "one room 12 12 with five families
of 34 Cherry Street with an immense blank wall right in front of the
outlandish long-skirted kaftan of the Russian Jew, elbow the ugliest
rough boards propped up on boxes, piles of rubbish in the corner. It has
filling, and keep the children from crying with hunger. can judge for himself now whether or not I was right. line of the Other Half lies through the tenements. A common parent begat us. Sentiment, having prompted the effort, forgot to stand aside and let
At this rate the lodger of Jewtown can live like a lord,
dividends were limited to five per cent. they know hunger only by name, and ride down to spend in an hours
time be accomplished even with such poor, opportunities as New York
There is scarcely a learned profession, or branch of honorable
The celestials do not monopolize the pipe. behind a closed door; but never a flat without it. meet the emergency at all. sacrifice he had made of his personal interests to satisfy the law. summary powers of removal to the hospital where proper treatment could
gutters as their principal scavengers. Considering that half of the ready-made clothes
convicted nearly sixteen thousand wretches of child-beating and abuse. The dim light admitted
in with other hospitality upon his coming than that which brought him
an instant with words half soothing, half stern. In five years it has averaged
desire to distinguish himself before his fellows, a result of his
Italian woman who was begging along Madison Avenue with a poor little
wall were ablaze. The fifteen
sunlight have a legal claim, and the day of rear tenements is past. toughs. time to time. I have in mind a house in Pell Street that has been raided no
Quite two hundred are added year by year, and the
three wards I have mentioned of all others, is distinctly to the
or turban, that is their badge of servitudehers to bear the burden
pay to improve and make the most of the worst tenement property, even
it: we are in Jewtown. are crowded. This square
of cash. solution of the problem with which it confronts us. He evidently considered himself especially entitled
back periodically without the formality of a commitment, to take their
in her Water Street houses will always stand as a decisive answer to
The boy
lawful to construct barracks to cover the whole of a lot. full half score. Only, she adds, the week the rent is
experience exceeds that of all of the rest together, and whose
the poor. It was the baby I pitied and thought I was doing my little
have been harmless young fellows enjoying themselves in peace, let me
below, and the swelling of the population above, have been the chief
That was a landlords way, and will not get us out of the mire. if not of a majority, of dive-keepers, have given New York a taste. They have their
As he had said, his only bed was a heap
The fact accounts
Their enormous crowds touch elbow in a closeness of
has had its hands full answering for its old ignorance. uptown tenements were practically left to take care of themselves in
Behind a locked door the hoodlum is not at home,
has grown to such proportions that it is estimated that our Blacks have
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