\\ I RY ARCHITECTURAL AND FINE ARTS LIBRARY Gift of SEYMOUR B. Durst Old York Library Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/thirtyyearsbattlOOwarr THIRTY YEARS' BATTLE WITH CRIME, OR THE CRYING SHAME OF NEW YORK, AS SEEN UNDER THE BROAD GLARE OF AN OLD DETECTIVE'S LANTERN. BY JOHN H. WARREN, Jr. P0U3HKEEP3IE, K. Y. PUBLISHED BY A. J. WHITE. 1874. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, By A. J. White, In the Otlice of the Librarian of Congress, at 'Washington, D. C. INTRODUCTION. It was Lord Bacon who once complained that the physicians of his day showed no desire to solve the problem of the prolongation of human life. Were the great philo- sopher and jurist with us to-day, he would find the prob- lem still unsolved, though far more likely to reach its solution than it seemed three centuries ago. However great have been the advances made in the science of living since the "Novum Organum" made its appearance, it must be admitted that such advance has been due as much to a general desire on the part of the intelligent masses every- where for light in this direction, as to any specific effort on the part of the medical fraternity. In this, as in other matters looking to an improved physical condition of the race, the people have been eager to scrutinize every fresh attempt to improve our methods of living, without stop- ping to inquire whether such attempt was scientific or empirical. Increased facilities for a higher and more cultivated mode of life than that possessed by our ancestors, have proved a healthy stimulus to the efforts that have been made to sup- ply it, so that the great question of the hour is, what will best secure the maximum of living at the minimum of cost to the liver. In this, too, as in other matters essential to an efficient civil system, the present century has not been as prolific as its intense activity should have made it. Un- limited resources have hitherto made money-getting so easy, that our spending has been even disproportionately lavish and generous. In the general depression which followed closely upon the panic, and which still continues, the people have had time to take the second sober thought. iv Introduction, Economic questions of the gravest and most vital char- acter, looking to improved methods of taxation and the dis- tribution of the public burdens, have been pushed aside as avc rushed headlong in the midst of our abundance, that seem likely just now to receive the attention they should justly have had long ago. It is a rule in military matters that the success and effi- ciency of an army, depends not more upon its discipline and drill, than upon knowing properly how to feed, move, and care for it. Possessing all these, it becomes as nearly invincible as human skill can make it. "We are just being taught by that best of all teachers, experience, that to gov- ern a great city with strict justice to all classes, and with true economy, calls for the same high qualities, the same scrupulous fidelity to well-ascertained and correct methods, to produce a like efficiency. With all our modern facilities for transportation and the distribution of population, the great cities of the country are still overburdened with the care of the unthrifty, the criminal, and the worthless. AVith emigration for a feeder, ours has been packed to repletion with such a human ad- mixture of nationalities as was never witnessed before. As if to revenge themselves upon a nation blessed with unusual native resources, the pauper populations of Europe, along with millions that have proved self-sustaining, have poured in upon us to share with us the luxuries for which they pined, but were too indolent to produce with the work of their own idle hands. To-day we have them as our herit- age, packed away like so many cattle in our basements and garrets and tenement houses, an idle, filthy, debased mass, spawned on a foreign soil. To bestow and care for these in accordance with the dictates of a wise humanity, is the great municipal question of the hour, and one that we must begin soon to discuss with something like common sense if we would not be swamped altogether under a hideous load of pauper taxation. This, together with our boulevard taxes Introduction. v present a tax problem that is appalling. To put off longer the evil day that surely awaits us if we fail to move, and at once, in the matter, is to commit municipal suicide. A single fact tells the story of our present pauper-ridden condition. From 1847 to 1868, a period of twenty years, over four millions of aliens landed at the port of New York. While a large portion of this foreign influx has been scat- tered by our 60,000 miles of railroad over the West, the balance of it, and by far the most unthrifty portion, bur- rows on our island and its immediate neighborhood. As a natural outgrowth of this chaos of human refuse, we con- front at this moment a mass of pauperism and crime exhib- ited by no city of its size on the habitable globe. It is no marvel, therefore, that every species of vice and crime known to humanity should take root on our soil and flour- ish in spite of the most vigilant and painstaking efforts to prevent it. We have now reached the point at which pub- lic indifference must cease, and something be done to rid ourselves, as far as may be, of this incubus of evil. When, a few years ago, the most corrupt municipal cabal that the world has ever known, came into power in this city, it found the pliant and willing elements of its strength glaring at us from 20,000 tenement houses and basements. A single 3^ear sufficed to mould this mass into subservience through the ballot box, so that for years afterwards the people lay prostrate at the feet of this foreign foe to all gov- ernment. Elated with its success, the " Ring " carried matters with a hand so high that the contest ceased to be political, but became one between the scoundrels of the cabal and the respectable elements of the city. The fight waxed warmer and warmer, until at last misrule and thiev- ery succumbed, and a government decent, at least, in its animus, came in its stead. W T e are now more than a century old, and have a popu- lation of nearly one million of souls. We have behind us all that we could wish in the way of a rich and varied ex- Introduction, p rii nee. There has never been a period in our career when we wore better fitted to pause for a moment to look over the field of the past, and to try to come to some sen- sible conclusions as to the best possible methods to be em- ployed to make ns what we are destined to be, and shall be, if we profit by the lessons of the past, the leading city in the world in wealth, culture, and all that goes to make up a well-ordered, thrifty community. The pages that follow this introduction have been writ- ten for the single purpose of sketching, with a broad and truthful hand, certain grades of offences with which our city is cursed. The aim of the author has been not so much to \>v< ' luce an array of startling statistics, as to portray specific grades of crime and criminals, social and civil. With these plac d fully before us, supplemented by such plans for its eradication or mitigation, as the pictures themselves sug- gest, such an outlook upon crime may be indulged as will show how great is the necessity for an immediate and effi- cient attempt to throttle it. In a crusade of this sort, it is the eye and heart that need first to be informed. The fig- ures requisite for accurate and specific information, while attainable in some cases, are in others impossible of attain- ment, so that what is most important in such an outlook is that a complete survey of the field shall be made. To accomplish this, and at the same time to keep sepa- rate and distinct each department of crime gone over, the work has been divided into chapters, each of w r hich forms a separate view in itself. To the "Social Evil" we have given special prominence, because it is a question that touches the very marrow of our social and religious life, a question more than vital to us in view of the fearful in- crease of every phase of it made during the war of the re- bellion, and for the additional reason that in the interven- ing years little or nothing has been done to check its rav- ages, so that to-day, here, in this great city, virtue, which should be the rule, has become almost the exception. The Introduction. vii truth is an unpleasant one to face, but to shut our eyes upon it now, would be nothing short of criminal neg- ligence. "We have photographed, so to speak, in a series of sketches, Prostitution as it lives and flourishes between Murray Hill and Water street. The pictures have been taken from original scenes, and are neither caricatures, nor exaggera- tions of the hideous reality. The originals of these sketches may be witnessed every night in this city in thousands of temples erected to Lust. It is because we habitu- ally shut our eyes, and refuse to believe in the full extent of this social cancer, that we have transferred its painted faces to these pages, in the hope that something may be done to check and regulate it in accordance with the dictates of a truer humanity. While we have no hope that any impossi- ble purity will be arrived at in any attempt to mitigate the horrors of lewdness, there are many collateral branches of this evil that are susceptible of immediate eradication, and the fact that they are permitted to fester untouched, is a burning and standing disgrace to our city and its government. The chapters on " Circular Swindlers," and " Gambling Hells," each make their own record in an honest attempt to show the full extent of the evils and misery they create. The latter alone presents a picture so startling, that it is believed the only means left of rousing public attention to the pressing need of more stringent laws and a greater de- sire to enforce them than has hitherto been shown. The chapters on " Beggars " show the extremes to which benevolence and sympathy go in the full belief that their alms are well bestowed, when the facts being looked into, show that nearly every dollar tossed into the tills of the street mendicants of this city, goes to swell the savings of these long-visaged frauds instead, as is supposed, of reliev- ing their necessities. We have hitherto seen so little of real suffering from positive want, that the mere simulation of it by our street professionals is still all that is needed to com- viii Introduction, mand our purses and our tears at the same moment. As uc l'imnv oiler wo shall know these creatures better, and in- stead of taking care of them drive them from the streets into tin pursuit of an honest living. We have striven to show thai there is enough of real poverty all around us, that deserves, though it seldom gets either our sympathy or our help, and for the simple reason that it makes no street or other parade of its gaunt visage, but waits in silence to be sought out. We shall learn in time, what Eu- rope learned long ago, that intelligence and system is !i« eded as much in the care of our criminals and paupers, as in any other department of civil or social administration, and that the all-important question is to know how to make both, as nearly as possible, self-sustaining. What we need most just now is, to diminish by a wise and prudent management of our pauper and criminal population, burdens which, though useless, have been borne by reason of our great abundance, without murmur or complaint. It is encouraging to know, that, as a people, old age brings thriftier habits, and that.there is a rapidly growing interest among us in whatever relates to improved methods of pub- lic administration in all directions. The gamins of our city, those little waifs that meet us at every turn, stray bits of sunshine dressed in rags, and always on the alert for a stray penny, have assigned them a chapter by themselves, and we are proud to say that no portion of our task was wrought with a deeper or tenderer interest, than that which tells the simple story of these cin Id -waifs that come tumbling in upon us from the great, and almost unexplored sea of poverty that surrounds us. Bora with neither the " silver " nor any other " spoon " ill their mouths, their sole inheritance the poverty they wear so jauntily, they caper about us, day after day, as happy as if " born to good luck." We have watched them at their play, have seen them curled up on their mats of straw or rags, have followed them in their haunts, noted their indus- Introduction. ix try, seen them, in short, in every role they assume, and the shapes of our gamin are protean, and always witb increased sympathy and admiration. Of all our characters, none is more truly American than the gamin. He contains in him- self, as a germ, the courageous, independent manhood that seems to be a part of the inheritance of children born and reared under a republican system. Food adulteration, a subject of vital interest to all alike^ holds a prominent place in the following chapters. The patience with which Americans submit to swindles and petty annoyances of every sort, is proverbial, insomuch that when they go abroad even, their reputation for being joro- fuse " bleeders '*' precedes them, and renders them constantly liable to the grossest impositions. To none of these, at home, do they submit more quietly than that which bedevils the food they eat, and the stuff called wines which they im- bibe. For a century we have guzzled the one and swal- lowed the other, " asking no questions for conscience-sake," secretly hoping relief might come at some time, but never taking the trouble to ask for it. The truth is, we have been too busy to look after the quality of our food or the manner of its preparation for the table. "We have a little leisure now, and the kitchen, together with some other do- mestic matters, seems likely to claim in the future a modi- cum of our attention, and in that of food-poisoning, it can- not come a whit too soon. The general charge of food adulteration is an old one, but few have troubled themselves to ascertain its real ex- tent in this country, under the supposition that where such an abundance of the raw food materials was always at hand, there could be no good reason for the practice of so mean a crime as that of ruining our digestion. It was thought, and with truth, that a trying climate had done quite enough for us in this direction, without any help from the men who help us to our daily rations. Unhappily we have been de- ceived, and an examination into the facts reveals a state of X Introduction, things almost impossible of belief. The facts we have com- pile!, with some care, have been gathered from the most reliable sources, and arc worthy the attention of all who appreciate the part that good or bad food plays in our do- lnest ic n< >my. Our own city is an anomaly among the cities of the world, a fact that we have labored earnestly to show, not bj way of apology, but to explain phenomena otherwise un- explainable. We have been building in a century, what Europe has taken many centuries to accomplish, and it could not be expected that, in a period so brief, close me- thods, which are the results of experience and of closely packed populations, would be conspicuous in our modes of municipal government. That much of our work has been ill done, is because it has been hurriedly done, done by halves, at odd intervals in our onward march to wealth and fame. We have time now to live a little more in the past though with strict regard to the future, and the indications are that we shall so live that a wholesome and thorough overhauling of old and defective methods of living and gov- erning, will be exchanged for closer and more accurate me- thods in all needed directions. Broadway is described in the closing chapter, from the standpoint of the stranger passing through it for the first time, rather than from that of the busy New Yorker, who sees it every day without in fact seeing it at all, as he glides down its current of a morning wrapt in the solitude of his own musings, but as innocent of its eddies and counter- currents, as though he were traversing the solitude of a primeval forest. We have barely touched it historically, though the vein that led in that direction was a tempting one. Our object was to picture it to the eye of the occa- sional visitor, to catch its shifting scenes, its ever-varying moods, to make in short, a series of views from which, as a whole, Broadway could be seen at a distance to be what it really is, the most splendid business street in the world. Introduction. xi How far we have succeeded in our aim will be determined by the reader himself. A final word, in addition to what we have already said of the chapter on Prostitution, and we have done. Prostitu- tion with us has been treated hitherto as an evil that could not be touched. To mention it even, was of itself sufficient to call forth rebuke ; to meddle with it was utterly impossi- ble. Here prudery and false modesty had entrenched them- selves. Prudery will read what we have written, but will censure us in the same breath for uncovering a crime so hideous. We have taken our sketches of it in its own haunts, and from every grade, and for the following reasons. We believe the Social Evil to be one susceptible of regulation in such a way that at least one-half of its horrors may be mitigated by such regulation. Many others, who have given the subject special attention, are of the same opinion. The work to be done cannot be accomplished at arms- length, and without a thorough acquaintance with the dis- ease itself, for such it really is, it must be seen and under- stood, and when made the subject of discipline and of rem- edies, as it has been made in Paris and other cities of Europe, will elicit here the careful, considerate attention from the benevolent and the philanthropist, that it deserves, and which it is destined to have. There is no valid reason why this moral canker should be left to eat its way into our homes without a bold and determined effort to stay its rav- ages, and to know what is needful to do, we must under- stand well the evil to be overcome. To this end, and this alone, w r e have outlined its varied features, but in doing it, we have written no word that cannot be read aloud in any circle, and in sketching it we have not spared those, who, professing a great deal of horror and squeamishness when the Social Evil is a subject of discussion, contribute never- theless in many indirect ways, and we may add, direct as well, to its maintenance and support. J. H. W., Je. ONTENTS. Page Introduction 3 PART FIRST,— Prostitution. CHAPTER T. — From Fifth Avenue to Water Street 13 " II. — Death of a well-known Journalist in a house of Ill-Fame 16 " III. — Prostitution, its Influence, Character of the Men who sustain it 26 " IV. — Prostitution a Social Crime — What shall be done with it ? 37 u V. — Houses of Prostitution, and those who own them.. 47 *' VI. — Houses of Assignation — Who Patronize them ?.. . 50 " VII. — The Argument of the Prostitute 55 " VIII. — How Prostitution Secures its Victims 61 *' IX. — Another Victim 64 " X. — Other Causes of Prostitution — Closely-packed Popu- lations — New England's Contribution 74 " XI. — St arc hing for a Daughter — The Photograph 81 " XII. — Tin: Road to Ruin -From Fifth Avenue to Water Street- " High-toned " Houses 100 " XIII. — Parlor Houses — Negro Houses 109 11 XIV. — The Concert Saloons 117 " XV. — The Dance Houses 121 « XVI.— Masked Pall.. 125 " XVII. — The Future of Prostitution — Regulation and Other Theories — Dr. Chapin and the " Westminster Review " 133 11 X\ III. — Private Lying-in Hospitals 150 14 XIX. — " Baby Fanning" — Wholesale " Slaughter of the Innocents" 164 PART SECOND. CHAP TER I. — Beggars and Paupers 177 " II. — A Pauper's Death-bed 188 III. — Professional Beggars 198 " IV. — Child Vagabonds 215 " V. — The Gamins of New York 243 " VI. — Food Poisoners 257 " VII. — Gambling " Hells *' of New York 280 " VIII. — The Circular Swindle 319 " I\. — A Ride on Broadway 3150 " X. — A Few Facts 394 JR^IFIT FIRST. PROSTITUTION IN NEW YORK. CHAPTER I. FROM FIFTH AVENUE TO WATER STREET. We are a nation of forty millions of people. In reaching the standpoint of to-day, we have met with so few of the impediments to civilization incident to more closely packed populations, that we have taken no thought in our onward march of our own achieve- ments. We have lived history, but we have not yet found time to record it. A century of rich and varied experience lies behind us, and one which has been especially prolific in startling social phenomena, and the facts that properly range themselves under the head of Social Science ; and yet, it is an admitted truth, that no nation pos- sessing so many opportunities for healthy growth in all directions as this, has furnished, in the way of well- arranged social statistics, so little that is worth preserv- ing. While municipal Europe has been for centuries busy in reducing to a science the methods that shall teach her how to take care of her criminal and pauper population in such a way that the ends of economy, Prostitution in UTtW York. justice, and the public weal shall be best subserved, we have kept these social problems in the back- ground, in the vain hope that time and abundant resources would solve them to our satisfaction. Prostitution, a crime against society and the state as well, and in its hideousness, a bugbear with us Americans, bares its brazen front in all our great cities. In this, it may be said with exact truth, that directly, or in its effects, it penetrates all circles without distinc- tion, from the highest to the lowest. Confined no longer, as it once was in this city, within certain well defined limits, it has been borne along northward on the ever-swelling tide of our shifting population, until no locality is k it untouched by its envenomed breath. It wears a more decent appearance on Murray Hill and the fashionable up-town avenues, but it is, never- theless, entrenched even there, and gathers to itself yearly in its unchecked march the very flower of our youth. Did its ravages cease with these, there would be still some hope of a speedy mitigation of the evil, but it is a moral maelstrom, that buries in its polluted depths middle and old age itself, and too often the best brain and heart of the nation. Hitherto, and for obvious reasons, the crime of pros- titution has been ranked among those that we could not t<»uch without personal defilement. While the sin of drunkenness has called out in behalf of the inebriate the active sympathy of the Christian and the philan- thropist, we have almost totally ignored prostitution as an inward ulcer upon the body social, and the body politic, that no probe could reach. Lifting up our hands in a fervor of pious indigna- tion, we of New York, have been content to shut it up in the slums, build a wall about it, and then pray that Prostitution in New York. 15 the evil might cease from among us altogether. Thanking God that we were not as these vile creatures were, who sell their bodies first, and finally their souls, for money, we retired to our virtuous couches at night with a feeling, that if we had not exhausted active efforts in behalf of the fallen, it was because the case admitted of nothing in the way of a practical, earnest effort to check it. All at once, as if by the magic wand of the sorcerer, we find the barriers we had set up against this evil, that seemed to us an anomalous one, broken down, and the curse itself intrenched in broWn stone fronts, under the very shadows of the spires of our tallest church steeples, and under the very eaves of our palatial homes. The plague has come to our doors, and, horror-stricken and conscience-stricken as well, we find that many of those who are near and dear to ns, have not escaped its polluting and withering touch. Having now attacked us in our most vulnerable and sensitive point, our own homes, we have wisely con- cluded to face the evil. Indeed, it would seem, that it is impossible longer to turn our backs npon it. At all events, we begin to see that we cannot, if we would not be guilty of moral cowardice, refuse to join in any rational movement for curtailing its baneful effects, first by relieving it of its more bestial features, and then doing what we can to win back to a better life those women who are now without the pale of all that is decent and womanly. To present a faithful picture of this one phase of crime in our city, is the object of the following chapter, and we cannot better introduce it, than by reference to an incident which, at the time of its occur- rence, formed the subject of much scandal and gossip. 9 CHAPTER II. DEATH OF A WELL-KNOWN POLITICIAN IN A IIOUSE OF ILL-FAME. One evening in the month of March, 1S6-, I re- ceived a message at my rooms in Bleecker street, at midnight, from a woman well known to fashionable male New Yorkers at that time, to come at once to her residence on Murray Hill, near Fifth Avenue. A single glance at the bearer of the message, a Mulatto boy of sixteen, told me that something unusual had occurred to disturb the temper of u Madame," his mistress. Though I had never visited the house in its up-town quarters, I had known it in another part of the city under its present keeper, and knew it to be a notorious, but decidedly aristocratic haunt, if that much-abused term may be applied, as we think it can, to such a resort. Thinking that a murder or suicide had inter- posed to mar the usually lively routine of a palace dedicated to enjoyment, I hastened to the spot, and on arriving, was met by Madame herself. Her man- ner was cordial, but her once-impudent stare now gave way to a look so dejected, that for the moment ] pitied her. To describe her dress as it dawned upon me in all its splendor, would exhaust the vocabulary of a Parisian shopkeeper, or the parrot-tongue of a Broad- way man-milliner. It is sufficient to say, that she was, in the language of the pictorials, magnificently Prostitution in New York. 17 illustrated. She was literally ablaze with diamonds, and enveloped in lace and satin. Solomon, in all his glory, it is safe to say, was cheaply and thinly clad, compared with this painted and bedizened creature, and as for the " lilies of the field," they, poor things, were nowhere to be compared to this brazen beauty. And yet, to the credit of her once better self be it said, she still retained in her face and manner the evidence that she had been born and bred to grace a different sphere from that in which she now moved a modern Cleopatra, surrounded by the Marc Antonys and Lotharios that nightly graced her gorgeous apart- ments. Despite the ravages which dissipation had made, her figure was still a model in its voluptuous fullness, and there still clung to it, as if in mockery, a touch of native dignity, with something of womanly grace. It is quite possible that the excitement which ab- sorbed her for the moment worked the transformation. 1 employed the brief interval during which she was occupied in a hurried conversation with a servant, in a survey of the wonders that spread themselves before my astonished eyes. A single glance induced the belief that the accumulated splendor of the Orient and the harem had been transferred, as if by magic, to this perfect western imitation. Rosy arabesques gleamed on the walls above me. A superb bust of Cleopatra in marble occupied a pedestal of the same material. A head of Milton — what an odd place for the old re- former — forming one of a group, adorned the walls. A niche in the wall contained a statue of Minerva, a real gem in itself. Bronzes were scattered about with a wealth of display that seemed ill suited to such a place. From the windows of the principal 13 Prostitution in lS T ew York. drawing room, or saloon, and in which the houris of this passion's paradise held their nightly receptions in imitation of their high-toned neighbors, sipping per- fumed wines meantime from glasses of exquisite tex- ture and finish, depended curtains of the richest damask and lace sweeping with their soft folds the floor below. In a niche in the hall stood a full-sized Diana in marble, and on a pedestal opposite a Chasseur in bronze, each of which would have tempted the eye of a connoisseur. Rare exotics sent their fragrance through the over heated and languid atmosphere. Exquisite carvings lent an antique charm to uphol- stery, a world of color in itself. Carpets from Smyrna looms covered the floors, matched by hangings from Damascus. Antique vases, curiously wrought, added their chaims to this place dedicated to lust. On its walls hung pictures from easels that had never catered to the lust of the eye, pictures, from the pencils of artists that the world has delighted to honor. Hogarth, Rembrandt, Yan Dyke and Reynolds, side by side with Alston and the works of other home artists of a later period, while over all was shed the broad glare from crystal chandeliers, a " dazzling mass of artificial light." An aviary of gilded wire, with bronze orna- ments, from which came at intervals bursts of bewil- dering bird music, stood in a recess. A little aqua- rium, as if to make the harmony complete, was fed by cool drips from a basin of marble. Altogether the picture before me, and as I recall it at this remove from the scene itself, was one of marvelous beauty, the vividness of which no words can portray. What seemed strange, not one of the frail sisterhood was 6cen in any of the saloons. Prostitution- in New York. 19 A silence like death, broken now and then by the twitter of birds, reigned supreme. The living figures that nightly turned all this beauty into caricature, were absent, I was sole occupant. A scene had trans- pired in the very room in which I sat, that checked in a moment the mirth of the harlots even, as each ran terror-stricken to her apartment. At a moment when gaiety was at its highest, when the passionate appeal flashed from eye and lip, when wine and lust had transformed the woman into the harlot, the " grim messenger," death, had stalked through this place of enchantment, and laid his spectral hand upon one whose talents and tact had won for him the admiration of a nation of readers ! Skilled in the art that makes one man the fascinated creature of another, caucuses and conventions yielded as by magic to a voice and manner that on every trying occasion had proved suf- ficient to quell all opposition. At a period during the war, when passion ruled the hour, and hope and courage had given way to fear and the weakness that is born of it, he stood chief among those who had faith in the ultimate triumph of the nation over all its enemies. He had met at last, face to face, the enemy that no eloquence could silence, no tact circumvent, and without a word or a murmur, surrendered at his dread approach. But I anticipate ; a tap on my shoulder dispelled a reverie that had taken no note of time, a dream, which with its strange mixture of incongruities, had roused curiosity to the highest pitch, and quitting this scene at the bidding of the woman who had invoked it, I followed her to an apartment that explained the deep eilence that reigned about me. Madame led the way to it herself. A dim light from a single lamp threw Prostitution in New York. its flicker over a room to which art had again con- tributed some of its rarest treasures. Copies of the most celebrated statues of the old masters, nude and draped, graced pedestals of porphyry, beautiful in design, and elaborate in finish. A Niobe in marble, and a Venus, the latter a real gem, occupied a recess. On the frescoed walls hung pictures suggestive of the life to which shame and lust abandon themselves. Nothing indeed had been omitted in the way of accessories that could in the least con- tribute to kindle into a consuming flame the passions of the victims that crowded nightly this gilded haunt of vice, this one of the one hundred palaces that, between Union Square and Central Park, throw wide open their doors to the married and single voluptuaries of virtuous New York. How many occupying the high places in social, professional, and business life, and in not a few instances, even in the church, habitually leave their own firesides to become the companions of prostitutes, in the vain fancy that the silken canopy, the luxurious couch, and the creature that pollutes it, are the only witnesses of their perfidy and shame. A richly-carved divan, covered with rose-colored satin, blended its soft tints with other marvels of color and richness. Upon all this array, from the tiniest bit of bric-a-brac, to the rarest mosaics, brought together to woo the senses to a blissful, but brief oblivion, the hand of an exquisite taste was visible, There was no incongruous jumbling together of vulgar but costly trash. All had been arranged with the most fastidious care, so that the millionaire when he came, or the man of letters, or the young roue, born to luxury and splen- did surroundings, could easily imagine himself within the sacred precincts of his own elegant home. Prostitution in New York. 21 A couch, an India in itself, half concealed by undu- lating folds of crimson satin, stood in a recess. On it lay the dead body of a man, at that period well known as the most brilliant journalist and writer of his time, on this side of the Atlantic, if not in the world. At the clubs, in the very highest social circles, at Del- monico's, everywhere where wealth, wit and fashion congregated, his graceful pen, and equally graceful manners, had made him a favorite almost without a rival. His face, long familiar to me on the street, the plat- form, and from his box at the opera, now wore an ex- pression so placid and sweet, that I could not believe it that of one who had just closed his eyes upon all that was mortal. An inspection of the body, how- ever, upon which was found no trace of even a death struggle, and no mark of violence, showed a death from natural causes. The body lay on its right side, the head resting on a hand of snowy whiteness, sin- gularly delicate in shape, and so small that it might have been taken for the hand of a lady. On turning again to the face, I was amazed to find that from it had vanished every trace of passion. A born poli- tician, he had adopted at starting the tactics that believed in nothing but success. His naturally hand- some face had undergone the changes incident to a stormy career. It had never been a forbidding or a haughty face, though it was one that had been strongly marked with a contempt for all that was vulgar. Yet here it lay, with every dark line obliterated. It is one of the compensations of the death struggle, however long continued or violent, that its horrible imprint rarely clings to the features after the struggle has passed. 22 Prostitution in New York, In tills case — " M Death had left on it Only the beautiful." That hand, so shapely, would never again gesticulate defiance, or mark with graceful emphasis the point of an epigram or argument. That voice, so marvelous in its power to kindle the passions of the crowd, or ontrol them, was hushed forever. The facile pen that had given to American literature a higher contro- versial tone than it had ever known before, dropped, without a premonition, from the now nerveless fingers, and all that remained on earth of the once great civilian, rested before me on the couch of a prostitute. The circumstance carries with it its own moral, and it is safe to add, that could every fashionable devotee of passion among us believe for a moment that death might finally overtake him in such a place, these gilded haunts of vice would have fewer patrons. The woman who presided over this house I had known in her innocent days, in a manufacturing town in Massa- chusetts. She was of good family, and had been hand- somely educated, but had married while yet in her teens, a mechanic of good standing and industrious habits. A passion for dress and fast living brought speedy ruin to their household, and tired of the hum- drum life of a country village, she left home and all in it for the home, if such it could be called, in which I now found her. I had not, on this occasion, therefore, been sent for officially, but as one to whom she could go f<>r advice in a very singular and unusual dilemma. Dr. G m, a physician, well known to the vicinity of Murray Hill, was sent for, who, upon exam in a- tiop, pronounced the case one of apoplexy. The peculiar circumstances under which the death occurred, Prostitution in New York. 23 however, called for a coroner's investigation, and 1 took occasion to hint that I might he called upon to make some disagreeable revelations if an inquest upon the body should be omitted, though I felt that there was in reality no reason other than a legal one why an investigation of the facts should be made. Taking up an evening paper of the next day after the occurrence, my eye fell upon a paragraph, an- nouncing in startling head-lines the sudden death of a prominent politician and author, and that it had taken place, as was supposed, in his own hall, the body having been discovered in the morning in such a position as to warrant the belief that he had been seized with apoplexy in attempting to find his way to his own chamber. A night-key, found in his vest pocket, had suggested this mode of disposing of the body, a carriage and two attendants being all that was needed to carry out the plan. As I passed from this now dismal chamber to the hall below, I paused a moment at the door of the library — even here books were not ignored — as I had a word for the mistress before leaving ; while standing there, my eye caught the figure of a woman in the grand saloon. She was seated at a small table, and apparently absorbed in the book she held in her hand. The face, the figure, the dress she wore, and the queenly way in which she wore it, told the sad story of her life as plainly as though it had fallen from her own lips. Evidently annoyed at my presence, she left the parlor and passed me on her way to the story above. A still nearer view of the face and features, revealed the blight that had come upon a life in its first bloom. It was certain that such a face and man- 24 Prostitution in New York. nor could have belonged to no woman who had been bred to a life of shame. It was equally plain that her descent to her present mode of lite had been the result of some sudden resolve or overwhelming impulse. She had reached it at a bound. There had been no gradations. The dread alternative had been presented, and she had Beized upon it, and found in it a momentary relief, but the consequences of the fatal step were stamped in every feature with unmistakable distinctness. All this passed through my brain as I waited for a servant to let me into the street. As 1 sauntered down Fifth Avenue, the face still haunted me as one that I had known before. It sure- ly was not an ideal one. There was a look of intense suffering in it that nothing would ever efface ; a look that had become part of it. All that was tender and womanly had evidently dropped out of it in an in- stant, yet it was one never to be forgotten, just as one who has seen it, never forgets Niagara, the Pyramids, or a rare picture. There was a strange, sad depth in the dark eye, but no touch of dreaminess. The head was one that a sculptor would have chosen as a model, shapely and delicate in contour, " a perfect head," as the phre- nologists would say, poised upon a figure that seemed born to command. At all events, from some cause that I cannot explain, the face and figure entered my memory as a type, and though 1 saw the one, years afterwards, faded and withered, the other clad in rags, the picture served me a good purpose. The reader will ask himself why I have been thus minute in de- scribing the appearance of a woman that was after all only a prostitute, a social outcast, so to speak, the re- Prostitution m New York. 25 presentative of a class, and about the only class of persons absolutely shut out from all sympathy of their kind. The very idea of prostitution for money, selling one's soul daily to the highest bidder, is such, that it consigns the woman who thus makes virtue merchan- dise, to social oblivion, more than that, social per- dition. I will tell him why. It is a commonly received opinion that but few wo- men of intellect or education enter upon this life, that they are for the most part women of a low order of mind, with the animal instincts largely developed, and a low development of the moral. The opposite is the truth. These fallen women, as a class, would have taken rank in their innocent days with the average of their sex in all the essentials of womanhood, and we have placed this woman as a representative of many others of the same order with whom, as an officer of the law, we have for years come in frequent contact. To some, therefore, the case may seem a curious one, and the picture largely overdrawn. It is, on the con- trary, drawn from life, and in no way exaggerated, and we will add that should the time ever come when a broader humanity can get down from its pedestal, and will employ a part of its energies in improving the condition of these unfortunate ones, it will find that in the distribution of God's best gifts, these have not been neglected ; nay, more, it will find that the problem which their unhappy condition presents for solution is one eminently worthy of its best efforts. CHAPTEIt III. pBOermmozr. — its dtfluengb. — character of the ICES WHO SUSTAIN IT. INCREDIBLE as it may seem, the records of this de- partment of crime, in the office of the Chief of Police ol* this city, and which have been gathered with some care aa t<> accuracy, show that of the class of houses above described there are about one hundred, most of which are above Fourteenth street. That so little of them is known, is due to several causes. For some in- scrutable reason, known only to the Chief of Police and his subordinates, these records are not open to public inspection. Of course the public, in the opin- ion of this department, could not safely be trusted with so important a secret as that which should reveal, for Instance, the names of the owners of these houses, and having, moreover, a kind of pious care for the public morals, it keeps it in blissful ignorance, as well, of all the other details of this social crime. While it is true that to the eye of the public prostitution is of necessity, " sub rosa," and that its worshipers do not aa B rule parade to the world their own short-comings, there is still no good reason why any facts in relation to the effects of this moral disease should be withheld from any person desiring to possess himself of them. The truth is, prostitution, like an exotic, seeks the shade. The sunlight rarely falls upon its orgies, midnight iinds it at its height, when virtue and innocence are Prostitution in New York. 27 asleep. The rosy wine, the heated atmosphere, the broad glare from a hundred jets are its indispensable accessories, the crime itself is one that grows by what it feeds upon ; it is a blight that carries its curse into the very heart of our social and domestic life ; its de- votees are confined to no class or condition, they come from every walk of life, many of them laying their freshest energies, their cherished dreams and their loftiest ambitions upon the altar of this social moloch. The houses in which prostitution sells its favors to the highest bidders, are comparatively few in number, but the purchasers, who join in the nightly revel, are legion. From the Harlem all the way down to the vilest dens of Water street, scarcely a house can be found, in which are not visible, some of the dark traces of the " social evil." Is every house, then, a house of prostitution ? — by no means. But they who patronize and sustain them come up by thousands from every social grade. The diseases born of unhallowed gratification mingle their taint by contact or transmission with the best blood of the country ; the very capitol of the nation daily presents the humiliating spectacle of a venereal leper crawling on crutches to his seat in the Senate. Where rests the responsibility of this lustful exhibit that poisons the air of all our great cities, our own more than all others, and which, during the war, that prolific propagator of lust, spread itself like a great Upas over every foot of soil trodden by our armies ? Is it alone the woman who knocks down her virtue' to the highest bidder that should be punished, while the too willing purchaser goes unscathed ? The social ostracism of these creatures, which society erects as a barrier for its own protection, exiles the prostitute, but 23 Prostitution in Xtio York, receives with Open arms the man fresh from her caresses. While it shuts its door in the face of the fallen, it elevates to the highest places the most abject alaves to lust. It takes two parties to consum- mate the crime of prostitution, pray let me ask why the weaker party, the chief and almost sole sufferer in this business, should herself pay the whole penalty ? It would seem that the possessor of a spark of man- hood, to say nothing of gallantry, would lead a man who indulges this costly and demoralizing vice, to stand Bquarely up and take his share of the odium that comes from the filthy contact. Say what you will alx)ut a life of shame being on the part of the prosti- tute a voluntary one, there still remains the inconsisten- cy of turning up one's nose in pious horror at a frail one who appears in the end as the paramour of one's husband, father, friend, or it may be lover. Why should the man who has deliberately ruined a woman be permitted by society to add, without fear of punish- ment, cowardice to perfidy? It is said of Aaron Burr, that he always bore toward the women who shared with him the unmentionable crimes against virtue with which history charges him, a feeling of pity and tenderness, bordering on respect, and that to the day of his death he never refused to answer the pecuniary demands made upon him by them to the extent of his ability to meet them. The code BO peculiarity his own, and so characteristic of the man, though it did not diminish the criminality of bis acts, contained nevertheless an element of manli- ness which, despite his feelings, goes very far toward removing his name from the oblivion to which the public opinion of his day consigned it. Whatever his faults in all other directions, history will, in the end, Prostitution in New York, 29 credit him with a sensibility in this particular, never attributed to any other man of his stamp. It was one of the redeeming qualities of a character which, de- spite Mr. Parton's attempt to whitewash it, was not such a one as can safely be imitated, even in respect of the trait of which w T e speak. It is related of him, that only a few days before his death, a poor frail creature whom he had known in her more prosperous days, with whom he had long been on terms of criminal intimacy, called upon him when he shared with her the last sum of money he was known to possess, true to the last to this creature who had contributed to his lustful pleasures. One cannot but entertain a feeling of respect for sensibilities so delicate, however much we might despise Burr's morals, and the love of intrigue that was next to his ambition, his ruling trait. The fact that there is no social crime committed that reaches in its results so far down into the very heart of society, social, domes- tic and civil, cannot be overestimated, while in its re- mote influences it is felt everywhere. In its filthy train are found the Restells, the Rosenzweigs, and the whole brood of procurators that fatten on the prey that comes to them unbidden. As we ascend in the scale, w T e find that the money of prostitutes, backed up by that of those who patronize them, buys out the law not unfrequently as well as him who administers it. This is not all, nor the worst. A large share of do- mestic infelicity, which, with us Americans, has grown to be a disease without apparent remedy, can be traced directly to prostitution. Considered alone as a moral disease, it is sufficiently hideous, but when to this is added the physical suffer- ing entailed upon the race in a hereditary way, the 80 Prostitution in New York. bare thought of it is sickening, There is scarcely a family in the country tliat does not, at this moment, Buffer from its immediate effects, and every reader of these pages will recall some case of venerial contami- nation, wherein the sufferer has been innocent of the character of the ailment, and who at last w T ent to his grave from the effects of the "leprous distilment." What an appalling array of figures would that be that should present the number of those only who yearly rot down in our hospitals, but whose deep degradation and Buffering never elicit a word of comment or com- miseration ! True, this is the dark, disgusting side of the picture, but it is the one which appeals to the philan- thropist, the moralist, and the Church, with a mute eloquence more touching than words. The number of prostitutes on Manhattan Island is variously esti- mated at from twelve to twenty thousand. Either estimate, and the latter is probably the correct one, makes a sufficiently damning record of specific crime. Dr. Bellows, one of nature's really noble men, and one who has none of the prejudices shared in common by his cloth against the creatures that are doomed to lead shameless lives, not more from their own shortcomings than from the fact that society extends no kindly hand for their relief, lias, during his ministration in this city, devoted a large portion of his time in devising some way that will be effective in improving their condition, moral and physical. In this work he has been ably seconded by Bishop Simpson, and with such as these to lead in the good work much may yet be done to dispel prejudice and create in the community a healthy public sentiment in a matter vital to all classes of society. No holier work since the Crusades Prostitution in New York, 31 ever presented itself to those who are willing to help on a much-needed reform. Mr. Crapsey, in his " Nether Side of New York," an intensely interesting account of crime and its haunts in this city, makes the number much smaller, altogether about twelve thousand. His figures, from whatever source gathered, are far too small. The most intelligent and accurate estimates make the num- ber of those who use prostitution as a means of living not far from twenty-five thousand. The comparative- ly new phase of it that seeks the seclusion of the house of assignation, avoiding the parlor, the street, the hotel and the basement, presents to the philanthropist a fresh problem for solution. To solve it in such a way as to effectually cripple its baleful influence by confining it to well-defined and certain limits, will call into active service the best brain and heart of this Sodom of Western civilization. Recent developments in this direction reveal the start- ling and humiliating fact, that thousands of married women — married men are no longer the exclusive cul prits in this demoralizing business — moving in the highest circles of society, sewing women, and young girls still in their teens, and upon whom no suspicion even of lewdness rests, are nevertheless women of shame. Between these and the openly abandoned, there is but a single distinction, that of occupation. Many of these are known as active workers in the be- nevolent schemes of the day, and some even are to be found in the Church. A large proportion of them — and this is the worst feature of the case — are beyond the woes of want, and prostitute themselves, not for money, but from choice. Of this class Mr. Crapsey seems to have taken but little account, but the fact 82 Prostitution in New Tori-. that it takes one hundred houses to accommodate them, Bhowa their number to have been, up to this time, underestimated. It assuredly is a disagreeable f.u-t to look at, but it must be met, and more than this, it must be made the basis of an intelligent effort to mitigate the evil. When it is considered that the most reliable estimate makes one woman out of every twenty born in this city a prostitute, nothing more is needed in the way of figures. The public prostitute forms one of a distinct class, and in it one is rarely found that will not attribute her ruin to some married man or lover, so that forever after she is the uncompromising enemy of the custom- er- Bhe lures to her door. After all, the really large number of those who reach the parlor-house through the house of assignation, shows that voluntary prosti- tution would occupy no small place in a record accu- rately made up. As to culpability, it seems to be about equally shared between the sexes, the peculiar circumstance of each case not being taken into the ac- connt. The lustful passion is stronger in woman than in man, but the incentives to virtue are far stronger in woman, owing to her supposed moral superiority, and her far more delicate sens'bilities, so that responsi- bility is about evenly divided. This delicacy once overcome, her progress down- ward is rapid beyond conception, and when she has touched bottom, it will be found at a distance beyond the reach of man. In her descent she will sound every note of the filthy gamut. It seems then, that money is so rarely a first incentive to lewdness, that it need not to be taken largely into the account in any inquiry as to its causes. The important part it plays when all shame ceases, and passion has been degraded to a Prostitution in New York. 33 business level, is quite another matter — a question we gladly relegate to the expounders of ethical science. With that large class of women who are compelled to work for a living, the passion for dress and finery must be added to the causes of lewdness ; but if there were no difficulties in the way of procuring the em- ployment sought, the number of prostitutes coming from this class would still be very great. In great cities like this, where the pangs of poverty, if felt at all, are extreme, it is no wonder that so many are found too willing to exchange rags for finery, though the exchange be made at the expense of the quality most dear to every true woman. It is to be re- membered that this class of fallen ones, deficient at best in the self-respect that is the foundation of a good name, are rarely, if ever, reclaimed from a life of shame. If the guilty alone, the physically poisoned, suffered from the effects of this contaminating contact, the case would still be bad enough, but when innocent women, to say nothing of the children they have borne, bear in their faces through life, down to their very graves, the disgusting evidence of poisoned con- tact with their own husbands, it becomes one that can not be contemplated by decent people without a mingled feeling of disgust and indignation. This part of the subject is certainly an unsavory one, but it can not be omitted in a category that would be imperfect without it, nevertheless a single illustration will suffice. A few months ago I had occasion to visit the city of Utica, professionally, and on the day of my return was struck by the peculiar appearance of a lady si; ting opposite me at the table at Baggs' hotel. She was 84 Prostitution in New York. dressed in deep mourning, and so closely veiled, that but a very Bmall portion of her face was visible. The eye of a detective, sharpened by observation, is always on the look-out for unusual appearances, and this was B ease that annoyed, while it excited my curiosity. ( ha <>ne side of the lady sat a boy of six years, I should Bay, handsomely dressed, and with a face so sunny, and so indicative of boyish humor and roguery, that I longed for a romp with him. In a seat at the left of her mother sat a daughter, as I afterward learned, of the lady, a girl ten or twelve years old, and beautiful beyond any power of mine to describe. It was of a sort the very opposite of that of her brother, yet both were beautiful, her's the delicate beauty that fades at a touch of disease or misfortune. On entering a drawing-room car soon after, the three occupied chairs opposite my own. At Rome an old friend, whom I had known years before at Wash- ington, came on board, and without stopping to take my hand as he passed with a bow of recognition, walk- ed straight to the lady and greeted her in the most cordial manner, bestowing at the same time a kiss upon each of the children, who seemed equally pleas- ed to see him. Shortly after he took a chair next me, and my curiosity by this time was fully aroused, the more so as I caught the glimpse of a face that bore the unmistakable marks of a loathsome, and, as I thought, unmentionable disease. Our conversation naturally turned upon the party, and the sad history that formed the subject of it I give as nearly as possible in his own words. " The lady you see," said he, " is the daughter of Judge , one of the ablest lawyers in the State. I knew her at that time as one of the most beautiful m Prostitution hi Yew York. 35 women I had ever met, and she was as gifted as she was beautiful. Reared in affluence, she had known none but pleasant associations." Thirteen years ago she married one of the most bril- liant and promising young lawyers in Western New York. For a time all went well, and the two children you see were the only fruit of what was thought to be an especially happy marriage. Ambitious and proud of the success in his profession which his talents com- manded, he entered' political life, and from that day he was a doomed man. A native tendency to dissipa- tion rapidly developed itself, fostered by the more than corrupt associations that now pervade every phase of our political life. Brilliant and gifted as a lawyer, he was not successful as a politician, and after plunging into every excess known to the lowest of pot-house wire-pullers, he ended all one morning by suicide. The only legacy he left behind him is the two children you see, and you have seen of course what remains of the once beautiful face of which you caught a view as she removed her veil when I entered the car. She is now on her way home from the Arkansas Springs, whither she has been for treatment, and from which she has derived much benefit. Of the nature of the ravages of the disease that was literally con- suming her, she was kept in ignorance until she was shunned by some of her own relatives, who refused longer to meet her with the usual caress. Through the advice of an ignorant physician, she was denied the companiDnship for a time of her children. That is now happily ended, as she has them with her, but you see she is disfigured for life. What compensa- tion, he added, can ever come to this poor sensitive creature on this side of the grave for so cruel a wrong 30 Prostitution in New York. as this, and what penalty is adequate to punish sucli a crime? She is now thirty years old, but she has lived a thousand in suffering already. When the hor- rible truth first dawned upon her it is said that she uttered not one murmuring word at the inconceivable loss of her beauty, or of herself, it was of the fate of the two beautiful children only that you see, that she thought. Her chief trouble now is, that some day or other these children will be made acquainted with the cause of her frightful misfortune, and that from that mo- ment she will be only an object of loathing to them. Could the mute suffering which this innocent woman and mother has experienced be crowded into a single picture, what a story of unutterable woe it would tell, and yet this is but one of a thousand similar ones that could be taken from the same condition in life. This simple recital, true to the most minute detail, carries with it its moral ; not another word need be added. CHAPTER IV. PROSTITUTION A CIVIL CRIME. — WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH IT. The fact that private prostitution is becoming al- most as general with us as in France, where social morality has never attained to a very high pitch, is not a hopeful or comforting indication, yet such is the fact, and it is one that must be dealt with primarily in any effort to check or lesson its magnitude. The main cause of this is at once transparent and conclu- sive. The extravagance born of abundant resources, war, and success in all directions, has so corrupted every portion of our national life, that the moral tone of the nation is no longer what it once was, but has reached a depth so low as to be shocking even to our- selves. Social crimes, like infanticide, that were once placed on a level with murder, are now not only looked upon with complacency or overlooked altogether, but are defended on principle by certain theorists who believe that the begetting of large families should be prohib- ited by wholesome legislation. This and the love of ease and luxurious living, have so infected our domes- tic life, that if we go on at the present rate, virtue will be a commodity to be found only among a few old-fashioned and simple minded people. Our system of female education which fosters a con- tempt for the mother that delves among the pots and kettles in the kitchen, while the accomplished daugh- Prostituti07i in New York. ter just home from school, armed with her diploma, thumps away at the piano in the drawing room, must be hold accountable for much of the looseness in morals and virtue. As a corrollary to this, the busi- 0688 of the abortionist has been elevated to the dignity of a science. Kestells and Rosenzweigs flour- ish and grow rich from prostitution as as source of income, and by way of digression, let me ask why this woman has gone on for thirty years or more, com- mitting murders by wholesale, and with perfect im- munity ? It is alleged as a reason that Judges, high in the public esteem furnish her with victims, and we give the rumor for what it is worth. Certain it is, she goes unwhippcd of justice, while her foul hands reek with the blood of murdered innocence — literally an unchecked and continuous •slaughter of the innocents. In our failure to make this, and the crimes kindred to it, odious as is our plain duty, the whole country revels in a very saturnalia of lewdness and incontin- ency, insomuch that with female Young America the most successful of Don Juans wins its smiles and car- esses, while modesty and virtue take back seats, or are elbowed into the corner. The simple minded youth carefully reared, it may be, by a judicious mother, goes out into the world with a nature sweet and pure as it came from the hands of its Maker, only to find himself laughed at as a " spooney," or bit of verdancy not to be tolerated. A year or more of contact with girls of his own age, trained under the system that pulls down modesty and rears impudence and impertinence in its place, is quite sufficient to take the bloom from the rose ; and so it has come to pass that the innocent modesty of man- ner that is the crowning glory of a girl just blooming Prostitution in New York. 39 into womanhood, is scarcely to be fonnd in its perfec- tion outside of the conventual schools of the coun- try. iAs it is, only a few people of cultivated and old- fashioned antecedents can afford to possess manners without ostentation, or travel without carrying on their persons jewelry sufficient to stock a small store. The really well-bred and independent woman, whose position is well assured, can afford to make her jour- neys in a linen traveling dress, to be neat, clean, and comfortable, in short. But placing the responsibility of the crime of pros- titution where you will, the practical question is, " what will you do with it ?" The question not that of eradication, that is Utopian, but of checking its ra- vages by wholesome, judicious regulation. Society encounters the hard palpable fact, "what will society do with it V France, with an eye to business, and decency as well, looking at it, not from a distance with pious horror, shouting as do we " indecent ! — unclean !" gets down to it as a poetical question, strips it of all sentiment, and proceeds, in a common sense way, to regulate it in such a manner that it shall become a source of revenue to the state. If men and women- will be lewd, let them pay for the privilege. We shall not now argue the moral question, but simply state the case as it rests in her hands, and the result that she has reached in her eminently practical treatment of it, and which may be formulated thus. Prostitution is a crime against the state, it must therefore be regulated by law It cannot be wholly eradicated, but the good of society demands that it shall be regulated just as the traffic in intoxicating liquors is regulated with us, or tho adulteration of food is in continental Europe. She did not stop to 40 Prostitution in New York. grapple with the evil to suppress it, as some Xew York officials are said to do, but who manage to fill their pockets with the wages of shame, without any sensible diminution of the evil itself, but went to work to re- duce the business, for such it really is, to a well-ordered Bystem, constantly under the eye and in the power of her police. A recent legislature of this State, with the herculean grasp of mind that distinguishes the average of that yearly deliberate assemblage of statesmen, put (in its spectacles, went into a virtuous spasm that for a time threatened its very existence on account of its rarity, and cleaned up the whole unclean business by enacting a law that lewd women should not be allowed to solicit men on the street. Exhausted with this legislative incubation, they sat down to rest, and to-day there are as many "street- walkers " as ever on our streets, and the business of soliciting anywhere out of Broadway proceeds the same as before. "When your boon legislator is decoyed into a house of prostitution, it must not be by verbal solicitation, but through the influence of the sly wink, or nod, so potent to convince him the way he ought to vote for instance, on any important question. Paris, with her hives of prostitution, yielding by compulsion a portion of their sweets as a revenue in return for the protection which both these and society receive by such regulation, divides all her lewd houses into classes ; registers each, compels personal cleanli- ness on the part of the inmates, and provides the most rigid medical inspection and supervision, punishing the least infraction of these regulations with the sever- ed penalties. The result is that an air of decency is given to the whole business that it has never assumed with us, and never can assume, so long as we continue Prostitution in New York. 41 to treat it at arm's length, or what is nearer the truth, refuse to touch it at all. We stand appalled at the growing enormity, and gabble about the immorality of it. France ignores it as a moral question, leaving that to be settled and looked after by the benevolent and the philanthropist, but goes straight to work to render it outwardly and within, as decent as may be. Ah S say our good, well-meaning, but impracticable moralists, this French treatment is wholly utilitarian. It is Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill, reduced to practice, with God and morality left out. When we are taught as we shall be sooner or later, and per- haps through the agency of this very evil, that the business of government is to deal with crime, not as a moral question, but to afford protection by enacting wholesome laws, and looking rigidly to their enforce- ment, ridding ourselves of the idea that its business is to do this, and teach a Sunday-school beside, we shall have brought ourselves to the sensible, practical business of a proper regulation of it. The success achieved by France in keeping this social and civil curse within decent limits, is worthy of our immediate imitation. An effort was made a few years ago in St. Louis to regulate the evil there something after the French methods. The trial resulted in failure, and chiefly by reason of the fact, as we are informed, that public sentiment was altogether opposed to any merely utili- tarian regulation, what it demanded was a moral treat- ment of the case. The result was that prostitution in St. Louis re-occupies its old rut. Humanity and com- mon sense will clasp hands some day over this dirty business in our great cities, and when they do, the 42 Prostitution in Xew York, 4 * ulcerous film n will be robbed of its most bestial fea- tures. The more rigid moralist or pietarian will admit, on inspection, that the French method has far more hu- ; \ in it than our own unchristian habit of allow- ing these poor creatures to rot down under our very eyes by thousands every year in basements reeking with filth. As the result of our failure to regulate the evil, the number of those who engage in the busi- ness is unlimited. The field is an ample one, and wide open to all who choose to enter it. Prostitution and robbery in panel houses flourish under the same roof, and indeed it may be said that in this city gambling, robbery, drunkenness, murder and suicide, are all linked to prostitution. Turning to the moral side of the question for a moment, the utter inconsistency of our squeamishness and prudery, not to say hypocri- cy, become painfully transparent. Society, even the Church receives the adulterer with open arms, but consign to outer christian and social darkness the no more guilty adulteress. To cite a shining example by way of illustration,- 1 need only refer to the case of Lord Bury, a high official under Queen Victoria, who while on his way to Canada, on a St. Lawrence steamer, shocked public decency by sharing his state-room and his table with a notorious prostitute, yet he was courted, caressed, and toadied by the very best people of the Dominion. Mothers who had marriageable daughters on their hands, with small and large dowries, fairly beset this modest and virtuous scion of English aristocracy to take them home with him. The successful one was the wife of Sir Allan McXab, who finally managed to bury her daughter into the arms of Lord Bury, as his lawful, Prostitution in New York. 43 wedded spouse, and at the marriage of whom, all aris- tocratic Canada went literally beside itself, doing hom- age to Bury on bended knee. We may ridicule the new school of social scientists as much as we may, but we w T ill do well in the meantime to rid ourselves of all cant on the subject of the u social evil," if we cannot get down from our pious stilts to the more pressing need of regulating it. One other notorious circumstance as illustrating our own hypocrisy. There is a newspaper in this city that finds its way daily into the hands of nearly a quarter of a million of readers, a sheet that has coined millions by its advertising patronage alone. Not an issue of it ever appears that does not contain an array of advertisements, penned by the filthy fingers of pimps, procurators, and abortionists. In close prox- imity, as if by way of illustrating how closely nasti- ness and purity can dwell together, can be seen in the same issue, notices of sermons to be preached, together with the subject of the discourses, and then, as if to cap the filthy climax, the sermons themselves are given with editorial comments in the pious Monday's issue of this same immaculate sheet ; while we is ew Yorkers, with all our squeamishness and prudery, who turn up our noses at the " Police Gazette," take this paper to our homes and place it in the hands of our children. In a really Christian community this would be considered almost as bad as prostitution itself. What else is it, but a pandering to the worst of social crimes, those who should leave nothing undone to mitigate its horrors. Still another case. Years ago, before business took its line of march above Fourteenth street, the corpora- tion of Trinity leased buildings, which were said at H Prostitution in New Tonic. the time to be notorious houses of prostitution. Think of this great pious and wealthy corporation setting out to evangelise the world by money drawn from the bu- siness of prostitution, a corporation, moreover, that is allowed by the state to hold sixty millions of real pro- perty exempt from taxation. To say that such a regulation of the evil as we propose is to varnish crime, and, by rendering it more attractive, and less open, increase its power to demoralize and destroy, is absurd. Suppose the same argument were made to apply to our state pri- sons and reformatories, to the extent that personal cleanliness and decent manners should be ignored, lest these places should be rendered more attractive. The treatment may have been a little rough, but we think " Long John Wentworth," while Mayor of Chicago, struck a telling blow against lewdness in that city, when he ordered the keepers of these houses to be taxed, and that they must get the tax out of their cus- tomers. "If these fellows will be adulterers," said he, " let them foot the bills/' If prostitution, like rum-selling, must be tolerated because not susceptible of absolute banishment, why not subject it like the former to license regulation? Why should not crime, where it is possible to do it, be made to pay the expenses of all efforts to regulate or lessen it, and to pay in addition a revenue to the state i Why should the people be taxed to regulate a business abundantly able, like that of liquor selling, to make some amends for the raids it makes upon so- ciety \ Why, in short, should not all our prisons, almshouses, houses of refuge, and other reformatories, be made self-sustaining, and to yield beside something to the state ? Apply this principle to prostitution as a Prostitution in New York. 45 business' rigidly, and Water Street and the " Five Points " would soon become impossibilities. To deal with it, after our present slip-shod way, is to go back upon our boasted civilization. This much of the prac- tical side of this important question. Of the poor depraved creatures that have fled from virtuous homes and gentle companionship, to lead lives of the most besotted beastliness, and prostitution at its worst, is just this, it is useless to utter a word of remonstrance with the hope of being heeded. The traffic, and the manner of it, are peculiar. It is a life, once entered upon, all desire to retrace the fatal step vanishes. Maddened by stimulants, taken at first to still the remorse that mingles its pangs with the memories of innocent years, the very sight of vir- tue becomes hateful to the victim, all of which, added to the still more bitter thought, that they are moral lepers, without hope, renders life a perpetual tumult of consuming fire. Steeped in opium, or whiskey, they lie stupid by day, dreaming of the coming night's debauch, the orgies that light up their cheerless, drea- ry way with brief but lurid glares of pleasurable ex- citement. Of the hags, who, under the guise of mis- tress or madame, despoil them of their earnings as an equivalent for the miserable mockery of a home, we have only a word to utter. Such a character is be- yond reproach or criticism. There are some criminals that cannot be fitly described by words, and " madame" is one of them. Of the "badger" who deliberately robs the poor creature of the wages of her sin, or who lives upon her bounty under the thin disguise of lover, or hus- band, and to whom she often clings with the devotion born of the moral disease that is consuming her, noth- 46 Prostitution in New York. ing need be said. There is no hell that can be pic- tured that he would not disgrace with his filthy pre- sence. He is sul generis, outside of our pale, and being referable to no species that Darwin has men- edj may be dismissed as a moral monster, too far below the human species to be reached by human con- tempt. So of the pimp and procurator, the former a character, the introduction of which in this chapter calls for an apology. Nevertheless 1 , the horrid gallery would be incomplete unless graced by his loathsome visage. CHAPTER V. HOUSES OF PROSTITUTION, AND THOSE WHO OWN THEM. We have mentioned how far the Trinity Church corporation was formerly responsible for the social evil, and we wish to say that it was with no intention of throwing contempt on Christianity, or those who yield it their influence and support, but to show that reform in this direction, if it comes at all, must come from a change in public sentiment from its present tone of demoralization upon this question. Those who prop it up indirectly, by furnishing it with buildings in which to carry it on, must accept, not shrink from, the responsibility imposed by their acts. While it is doubtful if prostitution would cease to exist as an in- stitution among us, even if no decent person could be found to furnish it shelter, it would still flourish through the help of those who have means sufficient to build houses specially for its accommodation, and who unfortunately have no character to lose. But it so happens that men of wealth and good social posi- tion, some prominent in the church even, contribute directly to prop up the business by building houses for its accommodation, and who derive their chief income from rentals at the most exhorbitant rates. To dimin- ish lewdness, reform must commence at the outset, right here, where cupidity and saintly hypocrisy are banded together for its support. An institution that rears its palaces without let or hind- rance in quarters where virtue alone is supposed to dwell, 48 Prostitution vn New York. fids bo well assured of its position, that it laughs at any attempt to control it. Judges, lawyers, merchant princes, the solid men of every walk in life, in short, rally to its defence when it is in danger. How many, it would be well to inquire, of the sixteen hundred houses owned by a single person in this city, are occu- pied by prostitution, many of them of the lowest grade ? Would the extreme smallness of his income be considered an excuse for devoting his houses to so vile a purpose ? It must be soothing to tins poverty- stricken man of a hundred millions, to feel that he eats daily, not the bread of idle men, for he belongs to an industrious stock, but the fruit of prostitution. Should a tenant ask the priviledge of starting any- thing extra hazardous in any of them he, would be denied the boon, or turned into the street; but " Madame " goes to him, with the extra rent in her hand, and the bargain is consummated without even a thought of the character of its contents to be stowed away in the building she appropriates to her vile trade. So too the church must shoulder its share of responsi- bility for the crime. We knew, not many years ago, a deacon of the late venerable Dr. Spring's church on Fifth Avenue, who was called upon by one of the most wealthy, but no- torious, brothel keepers in this city, to purchase a house in a fashionable neighborhood, and of which he was the owner in fee. The use to which the house was to be appropriated he well knew, and he was glad of the opportunity to sell it to her at an exorbitant price, but before closing the bargain, and Adth the shrewdness of a true deacon, he consulted the law firm of Messrs. Brown, Hall & Yanderpool, to know if an}- legal disability stood in the way of such trana- Prostitution in New York. 49 fer for such a purpose. The moral question he did not take into account : we suppose he settled that part of it with his conscience, when he cut off a small modi- cum of the price to send to the poor heathen in tracts against the deep damning sin of prostitution. This embodiment of cant and hypocrisy still passes the contribution box in his church, we presume, and exhales for the delectation of this aristocratic congre- gation, a saintly aroma that is altogether pleasant to the pious olfactories of his brethren and sisters. We single out this man as a representative of a large class in the Church, to its shame be it said, a class by no means inconsiderable in numbers or influence. That such as these buy out the law, and put Christianity, decency even, at defiance, without loss of caste or position, is too true ; but some day or other, not far distant, they will be called to appear at a tribunal, the judge of which they will not be able to purchase, and who will prove inexorable in his judgments. How many members of the " Brick Church " knew of the deacon's practice and character, and did not choose to show him up in his true colors, we have no means of knowing, but that he was well known to be just what he is, to at least a few of them, cannot be doubted. How far above the prostitute in morality and real purity of character, was this deacon? No wonder then that prostitution rears its dens of pollution where it chooses, for it lies intrenched behind the wealth, the piety, the morality, and the respectability of this city ; and each of these classes shares with the gambler, the drunkard, the roue, and the whole brood of adulterers and fornicators the responsibility that attaches to its existence, and are in a very large sense to be held particej)s criminis. CHAPTER VI. HOUSES OF ASSIGNATION. — WHO PATRONISE THEM? The house of assignation is the home of private prostitution, but it is not true, as has been alleged again and again, that the open houses diminish as the others increase ; the truth seems to be that these places of assignment measure the fearful increase of the evil without sensibly decreasing the number of public houses. The theory, too, that the parlor houses will in time give way to the latter, is equally without foundation ; in fact, there is but one infer- ence to be drawn. Prostitution has penetrated the very heart of our domestic life, and what is worse, attacks it almost unseen. Were this crime an open one, it would be robbed of half its enormity, because it could then be dealt with by throwing around it the law of social excommunication. Unfortunately it is of necessity sub rosa, not a fragrant one, it is true, but one containing a deadly blight. The women, many of them, who know personally these haunts, go from our own firesides. Many have been reared amidst pleasant, even cultivated associa- tion?. The causes that lead to this phase of the base business are various, but chiefly these — a passion for dress and finery, a life free from care or labor, and our defective system of female education. To secure these, comfort, self-respect, virtue itself, are willingly sur- rendered in exchange. To be able to live in a flashy way in the fourth story cf a cheap hotel, thousands of Prostitution in New York. 51 women from plain but comfortable homes, sacrifice themselves every year by either marrying men of doubtful reputation, and with no means of honest sup- port, or failing in this will remain at home, and clothe themselves with the wages of sin through the medium of the house of assignation. A class still lower than this fly from poverty and want to lives of shame. Others again have met ruin, at an early age, and dreading the consequences of their sin, rush to prostitution as the only way left open for support. There are others still who enter this mode of life for the excitement it yields. The hard palpable fact that meets us at every step is, that lewdness, under cover of assignation, dwells un- noticed in a thousand homes where innocence alone is supposed to dwell. The fearful increase of prostitution, private and public, during and since the war, showed its power to destroy virtue to be second only to its power to des- troy life. During the five years of its progress, pas- sion stalked unchecked through the land ; and when its shadow was lifted, there was still left to us as a legacy, the darker shadow of social and domestic demoraliza- tion. It unsettled in a few brief years the foundation upon which our national life rested. So true is this, that the simple habits and manners once a heritage with us as a people, have now become traditional. The war, with the excitement it brought, the pas- sions and ambitions it aroused, opened up to millions of quiet people, in a social and business way, opportunities never dreamed of before. At one mad bound the nation cut loose from the past and set out to make a new history, and in making it, soon learned to despise the simple manners and habits of the past. Money could be picked up anywhere, and from the lowest rounds of 52 Prostitution in New York. the BOcial ladder to the very top, all the excesses and follies bora of a cheap currency, easily acquired, came down upon us like an earthquake. Contact, which before the war had been quiet and civil, changed in an instant to the most intense activity in every direc- tion. Speculation ran rife, new enterprises were set in motion and rushed through with the most daring im- petuosity. How the bills should ultimately be paid for all these, together with the extravagant living that came along as a consequence, did not for the moment occur to us. The nation had cut loose from its old moorings in a moment of frenzy, and the old ship of state that sailed so many years on a prosperous sea, now found herself far from the shore on an untried sea, in the midst of a storm that threatened its destruction. The sky cleared finally, but the lessons learned during the struggle were not heeded. Inflation was everywhere. There was nothing that had any bottom to it. We were literally rocked to sleep upon an ocean of rags, in the way of money, and, what is most wonderful to relate, now, with nearly ten years behind ns since the war-cloud was dispelled, we find ourselves sailing upon the same uncertain sea. To-day we lie prostrate at the feet of this moloch of war. Business is nowhere, corruption everywhere, from the sole leather pie ven- der on the street to the capital of the nation. We have at last touched bottom, and have stopped for a moment to take breath, and during this breathing spell we have looked about us only to find that the demon of demoralization holds us in his firm grasp. Political corruption is now the rule, and the tone of our whole national life has become so low that no hope can come from that quarter until the people them- Prostitution in New York. 53 selves go back to first principles and begin life anew. What wonder that amid all this confusion, this mad capering in search of wealth, and ease, and luxury, that innocence and virtue should be sacrified to a new mode of life that still threatens to lead the nation to destruction ? How many millions of us suffer to-day from the new possibilities in the way of living that the war made apparent ? Could we have felt then as we now know, to our cost, that the family of a man with an income of fifteen hundred dollars a year cannot be supported in the same style of that with three times that sum, many of our present ills would have been avoided ; and from this simple illustration we are led to see that the saddest feature of our overstrained American life at this moment, is that which consigns the thin, over-worked, prematurely-old mother to the kitchen, while the soft-handed daughter, clad in cheap finery, lounges in the parlor, and plays, in a very tragic way, the fine lady. What sight more sad, or more provoking, than to witness a half-educated girl knock a wheezy piano into spasms, to amuse the sweet- scented idiot that bends over her, and who will soon take her to himself, not for life, but until sentiment has vanished and the new establishment is left without a leg to stand upon. False education, false pride, and a false estimate of life's real worth, and the comforts that properly ap- preciated, make home a resting place for all that is pure and noble, have at last done the business for us, and now we begin to see that madness only lies in that direction, and that if we would retrieve the past, we must retrace courageously, the path that leads through the past fifteen years of our national life. What won- der that houses of assignation should be multiplying Prostitution i?i X win the subject over to a lewd life, the w T ell-drug- ged glass of wine does the business, and the ruin is complete. It is a long, tedious process often, but those who foot the bills are the sons of our million- aires, who pay handsomely, and who must have fur- nished them the very best and dantiest article that the market affords. This point reached, the descent to the second class brothel is easy, in most cases, while the more sensitive ones, who shrink at first from the idea of entering a bagnio, are led to it at last through the circuitous route of the hotel, boarding house, " where no imper- tinent questions are asked," or to the house of assigna- tion. Thence, the way down to the lowest hells of prostitution is swift and certain. Could the number of fathers and mothers that como Prostitution in New Yov~k, 79 here every year in search of daughters who have fall- en into lewd ways through some of the many snares set to entrap them be known, it would open the eyes of the most incredulous to a picture past comprehen- sion in the repulsiveness of its details. What field more white for a harvest of good and thorough work, than that covered with the twenty, yes thirty thousand women of shame, public and private, of this city ; and why, when all other crimes are most industriously ferreted out, should this crime against poor human nature, society, and the State, be left to fatten upon the means which a venal municipal gov- ernment furnishes through its neglect ? We look after the drunkard, the pauper, the home- less, the orphan, and the insane, but refuse absolutely that protection dictated by humanity to those women who, having once fallen by the way, find no friendly hand extended for their relief. Were it true that every one of this army of fallen ones had reached their present way of living volun- tarily, they would still have claims upon our sympathy and humanity ; but when it is remembered that the cases of voluntary prostitution are very rare, and form the exception to the rule, it seems positively amazing that no systematic effort has yet been made in this country, save in St. Louis, to reclaim them. The "Midnight Mission" of this city, organized some time since for the purpose of winning back to lives of virtue those fallen ones, has been able to ac- complish little or nothing for the want of means in the first place, and the still greater want of faith in a work that promises so little in the way of good and satisfac- tory results ; but it is, notwithstanding its failure thus far, a move in the right direction, and when pushed Prostitution in 3Tew York. in the right spirit, will take its true place among our very noblest charities. What is needed to start with, is faith in a cause that presents at starting so many obstacles in the way of success, none of which would be found insurmountable in the hands of the women who have made our other charities famous throughout the world. There is one direction in which the cry for reform comes trumpet-tongued, and to which, sooner or later, we must listen. It comes from girls who are dragged into the lowest hells of Water and other streets, before they have reached puberty ; mere children, and by these harpies we have mentioned. Not to do all that can be done to rescue these from the hand of the de- spoiler, is to belie the Christianity we profess, and go back upon our civilization and manhood, if such a quality be yet left to us here in this Sodom of the western world. Still another thing is certain. We are opening our eyes to the truth, gradually but surely, that prostitu- tion is but a part of the great sexual problem that the future must solve. The data to be used accumulates with a rapidity that is appalling, but it accumulates notwithstanding. If the Church, the moralist, the philanthropist, the benevolent, each sets his face against it, who but the scientist, in pursuit of truth, and that alone, and loving it, moreover, for its own sake, will undertake the work of removing the preju- dices that now surround it, and which stand in the way of its speedy solution ? CHAPTER ZI. SEARCHING FOR A DAUGHTER. THE PHOTOGRAPH. It is only a few months since that all New York was startled one morning by the announcement that a bond robbery, of a very large amount, had been per- petrated in a neighboring city. The thieves, as was suspected, came straight to this city, and I, with two others, was employed to work up the case. After baiting all our traps we " fought shy " for a time, waiting for events. Meantime a telegram arrived from one of the victims of the robbery to meet him on the morning following on a Fall River steamer. At an early hour 1 found myself on board, too early, as it turned out, not a passenger having yet left his stateroom, and so having a little time on my hands, I threw myself upon a sofa in the upper saloon, and waited developments. There are moments, even in the life of a detective, when, worn out or perplexed with unmanageable de- tails in some difficult case of crime, sleep comes with- out wooing, and he waits only the opportunity to find himself into the arms of the sleepy god. Though I had risen but a half hour before, in five minutes I was asleep. My nap was cut short, however, by a gentle tug at my coat collar, that set me bolt upright. It came from the person for whom I waited, who in- formed me, much to my chagrin, that one of the thieves had been found, and that the whole matter had been " compromised," a polite phrase which mod- 82 Prostitution in New York. era bond-robbery victims use in place of " compound- ing a felony." My occupation being gone, I started for my hotel, bnt before I reached the gang-plank of the steamer, I had been employed in another case that turned out a more successful one, and to which I look back now as the one that afforded me as much excitement as any other, though little beside persistence was needed to bring it to a successful issue. As I was leaving the steamer, my eye fastened itself, as by magnetism, upon a middle-aged man, plainly attired, and with that extreme attention to neatness that indicates the Xew England or Western ISTew York farmer, when he dons his best Sunday suit for a visit to the great Metropolis. A moment later and all thought of his dress van- ished, so entirely had I become absorbed in the face itself. To the practical eye of the detective, familiar with the slightest efforts at deception, there is nothing that so quickly inspires contempt as simulated grief, and if he be a sharp and steady observer, he rarely finds himself " mistaken in his man." I have been an actor in so many harrowing scenes during these later years of my official life, that I am rarely moved to anything like active sympathy, but go about my duties in a mechanical way, tolerably well satisfied to find the results achieved in any given case to be in fair proportion to the efforts expended ; yet, in spite of the indifference induced by constant contact with crime in one or another of its phases, a case now and then turns up that stirs one from the very bottom, and which, for the time, lifts him into a region that is romance itself. At all events, it was plain that here was a case of real, overwhelming Prostitution in yew York. 83 grief. There was no mistaking it, and so powerfully did it appeal in the look of blank despair in the face before me, that my habit of indifference soon gave way to an interest in the man, that I could not exj^lain. Whatever the cause of the grief, it had ploughed its way deep into long lines about the face and eye, and had left in the latter an expression of such mourn- ful tenderness that it would have melted a heart of stone. As I looked at the man with a feeling of sym- pathy that no other face ever inspired in me, it seemed that all these changes must have been wrought in an instant, as hair is said to whiten at a single touch of a great grief, or a sudden fright, that came to change in a moment the currents of a whole life. My look had evidently reassured him, for in a mo- ment he was at my side, and accosted me with the old familiar " Stranger, are you acquainted here in the city ?" " Tolerably well," I replied, showing him my badge, and looking into his face again with a vague feeling that I could be of service to him, and that he needed a guide. Upon inquiry, 1 found that he had come in search of a daughter who, he informed me, had left home four years before, and from whom he had not, during all this time, heard a word. " For three years," said he, " we have spent all the little means I had scraped together by hard work on a farm near Eochester, in the neighborhood of which I still reside. Two years ago I was compelled to give it up, but I have spent it all in search of her, and would spend as much more if I had it. " She was our only child," he continued, in the same garrulous strain, and which had for me, I cannot tell why, a strange fascination, "and a very sweet good girl, 84 Prostitution in New York. besides, always obedient and willing, and more like a sister than a daughter, for there was but eighteen years difference in their ages." By this time as we walked along together, we had reached Nassau street, when I enquired where he was going to stop during his stay. " He had not given it a thought," he said, and wanted to know where a cheap lodging could be obtained. I gave him the required information, and would have left him at once, but I had grown so anxious to hear his whole story, and he seemed so anxious to tell it, that I asked him to give me a brief account of the whole affair, which he did with a simple, touching elo- quence, that no pen can describe. It seems to me now, as I recall his look, his manner, and his words, that had he continued to talk until this time, I should have listened to him willingly. Full of his subject, he resumed at the point at which I had checked him, and from that time he had it all his own way. He talked straight on. " I was speaking of my wife," he continued. " We began life early, with nothing but our own hands, a good name, and a good stock of courage. Annie came to us within a year of our wedding day, and a happier little home was never seen than that was the day she came. From the hour she was born, up to the day she left us without a word of explanation, there never was a time when either of us would not have iriven our own life in exchange for Annie's. We worked and tugged from nothing, with a kind of glad feeling that though we both had been poor, and had no education to speak of, Annie should start out in lite with a brighter prospect, and so we worked, not for ourselves, but for her. Our neighbors would some- Prostitution in New York. 85 times say that we bad set our hearts too much on the child, and that it would have been better for her if she had shared with others the love we gave to her." Passing up Chatham street we stopped at Sweeny's, and as my breakfast hour had come, I took a seat with my new friend at one of the tables. As I took my seat opposite his face lighted up with an expression that was unearthly, and for the moment I thought him insane, and I still think he had passed into what the medical men call melancholia, but it was a madness so sweet in its sadness, that it carried me along with him with a fascination I had never felt before. After discussing a light breakfast, I excused myself and made an appointment with him at my rooms for the evening. There was not a moment during the in- terval that he was not in my mind, his face, and manner, and the simple story of his grief, and when the hour appointed for the meeting came, I opened the door to him with a feeling of relief. Dropping into a chair exhausted, he went on with his story. It had taken complete possession of every faculty he possessed, and I had myself become by this time so interested in its recital that I welcomed him in a way that put him perfectly at his ease. Besides this I had recalled to my mind during the day certain circumstances and remembrances that led me to believe that I should discover the whereabouts of his daughter. After remarking that he had spent the day walking about the streets, but had not met his daughter, he took up the thread of his story precisely where he had broken it in the morning, and went on in his old way, and wdiich seemed to give him immediate relief. As I looked at him now, I knew that four years of waiting for Annie to come back to him had made him S6 Prostitution in New York. a monomaniac. In his mind there was but one cen- tral, all-absorbing figure, and that was the daughter lost to him forever. He had looked at it with his mind's eye until all others had vanished. To him she was an ever-present entity. " About six months before my daughter disappear- ed," he resumed, " and while she was at a boarding school as a pupil, at the village of S , near where my little farm was located, a young man of good ap- pearance and manner came to reside at the village hotel, a kind of summer resort for plain people from the city. He was not like our own young men, who have to work for what they get, but had soft, white hands, and a foreign way with him that made him attractive to country people, and especially the young girls of S . In less than a week he was at home everywhere, — you know it don't take long to get acquainted in a town like ours. We are curious, and like to see strangers with their new ways, and new talk. Before the academy closed for the summer va- cation, he had made the acquaintance of almost every one of the larger girls, and had presented a letter to the principal from a distinguished clergyman of this city, endorsing him as a young man of wealth, and of good family. This w T as enough to set our little town crazy over him, and from that time he had it all his own way. Having no business, he amused himself driving about and calling upon the girls of the village and the boarders at the academy, where my daughter was also a boarder, coming to us at home on Sun- days. Vacation came at last, and Annie came home to stay, as we had spent all we could afford for her education. From the very day she arrived we saw that she was Prostitution in J¥ew York. 87 no longer the Annie that she had been to us. In all her life before, she had never seemed to keep from either her mother or myself anything that interested us. She never had any secrets, and we encotfraged her in having none, so that there was the most perfect freedom in her manner toward us, and which made her the life of the house. On coming home we noticed that all had changed, and Annie was no longer a child, but a woman. It was not a pleasant change for us, though it may have been to her. She was fretful and peevish, and what was worse than all, seemed dissatisfied with the home we had worked to secure for her sake. First she said she wanted to go away to teach, that she was tired of living in the country, and wanted to go away to the city where she could earn her own living, and see some- thing of the world. Soon after her return home she received a letter from some one, and the next day Mr. Morris, the young man I have mentioned, came to see her. She became very much excited during his stay, and yet I could see that she was glad to see him. I hated him from the moment I laid my eyes upon him, and the often er he came, (and he visited us constantly,) the more I became satisfied that Annie ought not to be allowed to go out with him alone. Her mother thought other- wise, and the very first angry word that was spoken in our little family, was said in a conversation about Morris. My wife thought I was prejudiced against him, and from that time I never said another word, but let things go on their own way, and that proved bad enough. The change in her manner was a terrible blow to me, sir. When it came I felt that all was over with 88 Prostitution in New York. us, and that the comfort we had hoped would be ours in our old age, would never come to us, and I was right, it never will. Somehow I had lived for her, though I didn't know it until now, and I had hoped that the man who ( should marry her would never take her from our roof, but that both would prefer to live with us as long as we should stay on earth ; and Annie had always, until now, said she never expected to leave a home that was good enough for anybody to live in. Meantime the visits of Mr. Morris grew more fre- quent, and it was a sad sight to me to witness her de- light at his coming, and how strangely she behaved in his absence. But talking was of no use, her mother had been won over, and 1 had to give in, and I did it with the best grace I could, though the very sight of him made me crawl all over. I had a kind of feeling that Morris would turn out an impostor, and that we should yet be rid of him. I was right, but when he did finally go, he left behind him one house in which there was real mourning. Had he burned it to the ground we could have rebuilt it with our own hands ; but he did more than that, he made it desolate forever. Not long after, the following advertisement appeared in a paper published in this city : Wanted. — A young woman, of good personal appearance, and good English education, to take charge of two children, in the family of a young widower. Address, etc. "The day after this notice appeared my daugh- ter and Morris were missing. He had paid his bill at the hotel, and the last heard of him was at a station near by, on the N. Y. Central railroad. Annie was with him. We got an officer to come clown here Prostitution in New York. 89 at once, and he remained a fortnight, but could get no clue to her, though I think he did not know the crook- ed ways of the city as you know them. My wife, until then a cheerful, bright woman, though never very strong in body, bore up for a while, expecting day after day that Annie would come back, married, perhaps, but all would be forgiven, and that we should still be one family ; but I felt when she went that she had gone forever, and that our life had been thrown away. My wife said very little about the loss we had suffered. Some women would have fretted and scolded, and talked and talked, but she was not of that sort. I verily believe she would have been living now if she could have talked about Annie's going as I do now, and as I have, ever since she left, — words do relieve one so much. But she refused to talk with any of her neighbors about it, and fell into a kind of stupor of grief that it made my very heart ache to see. True, she went about the house, and did her work just the same, but I could not look in that face of hers without feeling that it would soon be over with her, and that then I should be utterly alone. I had not long to wait. Coming in one day from a field in which I had been at work, just before noon, I entered the house by the kitchen door, and not finding my wife there, passed into the sitting room, a little room that had once been the brightest in our house. It was our family room, a little room, and had in it the little comforts that a plain man, if he knows what real comfort is, always dotes on. We had rarely sat down in it since Annie went away, and not finding my wife there, I concluded she had gone to her own room for a little rest, but on going to it found she was not there. 90 Prostitution in New York. •As I knew she had been in the habit of going to Annie's room often since she left, I stepped across the hall and opened the door to it, though with a sudden feeling that all was not right. On a little lounge, the frame of which I had made with my own hands years before, and which stood under the window that looked out upon our little garden and the broad meadow be- yond, lay my wife, and, as I thought, asleep, and not wishing to disturb her I went down stairs, without tli inking that it was near our dinner hour, and that no dinner had been prepared. I took a hasty lunch, but with a vague feeling of fear that I could not drive away. How I got there I have never been able to tell, for I have no recollection of going up stairs a second time, but I found myself soon afterwards stand- ing directly in front of the lounge. My wife still looked as if asleep, but as I lifted the curtain that shaded the window, the light that shone full upon her face, told me she was dead. In a moment I realized that I had nothing left me on earth, and I sat down to look upon the face that had cheered me in many a dark hour, with a feeling that her troubles, at least, were over, and that I must go on my sad way alone. Her face still wore a little of the troubled look it had worn for months, but be- fore we laid her in the coffin every trace of it had gone, and in its place the sweet, confiding face, as I had known it twenty years before, was there, a face that has been before me all these long weary years. On her breast lay a letter from Annie, written years before, while on a visit to a friend, and on which she experienced her first fit of home-sickness. It had dropped from her hand when the last sleep came. Her left hand still held a picture of the one that had Prostitution in New York. 91 been for years dead to us, and, as I now begin to feel, dead to herself. I have carried it in my pocket ever since. I cannot tell why, but as I sat there run- ning over the past, I felt a kind of sad satisfaction that was almost like indifference. It seemed to me that I should be better able to bear the burden alone than if two shared it ; but a moment later, when I reali- zed that she who lay motionless before me, had trav- eled along with me for twenty years, had made my home bright and happy for us there, who had tugged with me for every comfort we possessed, and shared them when they came with a look of satisfaction that made the toil that won them appear as nothing, I could bear it no longer, and I felt what I shall never feel again, the first full realization of my loss. Now, I remember nothing except that she died without a word about her who had been stolen from our home, or a word to comfort me in the long fruitless search of these four weary years. To-day I am without wife or child, and almost without hope. The little means I had got together has been spent, and I am only able to pursue this search through the bounty of a friend who has been a brother, and more than a brother to me in my great affliction. I want now to make one more effort to find a part of that which I have lost, and I believe I shall find her, and here in this city." He sat for a while, gazing with a vacant stare at the glowing grate before him, and as the light played around features from which all had vanished save a faint gleam of hope, I asked myself with a bitterness that I could not stifle, what has this man done that he should be driven to bear about with him through life such a sorrow as this? Suddenly arousing himself, he 92 Prostitution in JVew York. took from his pocket the photograph of which he had spoken, and handed it to me. I took it with a shud- der. I had seen the original the day before on the street. He caught in a moment my changed expression, but I gave him no satisfaction, though my course was at once resolved upon, and bidding him a hasty good night, bade him call early the next morning, at which time I promised him I would be ready for the search we proposed. At ten o'clock the next morning we stood at the door of the house described in the second chapter of this volume. The woman who presided over it then was still its mistress, and in a few minutes she made her appearance in the now faded but once splendid saloon. I stated my errand at once, and showed her the picture of Annie. She informed us that Mary Stevens, who was doubtless the original of that pho- tograph, had gone from her place a few months before, and that she did not know where she could be found. " I never enquire where my girls are going when they leave me," said she, " and I rarely see or hear from them afterwards." I was amazed at the change so brief a period had wrought in the house, and the woman, who sat staring at me with the impudence characteristic of her class ; and after a moment's further conversation, rose to take our leave, when an inmate of the establishment made her appearance, and informed me that Mary Stevens had been her room-mate, and that she had gone to live at No. — Greene Street, near 8th, the most notorious house of its class in New York; one of those nonde- script haunts of vice seen nowhere outside of this city, except in France, and more filthy even than any Paris can boast. Prostitution in New York. 93 During the day we called at a large number of par- lor houses, reserving the Greene street hell for the evening, when the opportunities for seeing the inmates all on the same stage would enable us to see her whom we sought, without being observed by her ; and I took care to conceal the real character of the house from my companion, feeling that the knowledge of the worst, when it came, as I now felt it would, had better come to him without anticipation. At ten o'clock in the evening we rang the door bell of the den that gathers to itself nightly the cream of New York's fast young men, the brilliant, dashing youths, who drive their tandems and four-in-hands in Central Park of an afternoon, the admired of all ad- mirers, and the envy of the envious. Without stop- ping to look about us, we passed along to the saloon made notorious for being altogether unique, if the word can be used in such a connection, in the charac- ter of its exhibitions. It seems incredible to those un- acquainted with this phase of crime, in the way of a disgusting exhibition, that any woman, not born and bred to prostitution, could ever be brought to forget that she was once human, and still take a part in such obscene revels as were nightly witnessed at this place. Beastliness is not a name for it, because even beasts have in them something of decency, in the gratifica- tion of their animal propensities and appetites, and it would seem that a woman$ or what was once a woman, who could find a real excitement in exhibiting herself naked to a crowd of bachanals, had reached that an- omalous condition where a correct and satisfactory classification of her among the animals is impossible. Nevertheless here she is, and brought here in part by her own volition, and partly by circumstances, many 94 Prostitution in -New York. of which go far toward a mitigation of her terrible crime. But here we are. The saloon is lighted with a thousand jets. Every accessory of light and color, gilding and tinsel, are brought to bear upon the scene. Soon we shall witness for ourselves the unanswerable evidence that woman, with all her native delicacy of feeling, her fine sense of what is proper in manner, her natural sensitiveness, in all of which she is man's ac- knowledged superior, is, after all, when once she has fallen, less susceptible to shame than man would be under the same conditions, and under the same circum- stances. 'We leave the problem, to those moralists and scientists who make the idiosyncracies of humau na- ture, and especially of women, their study, for solution. We are seated, my friend and I, and on looking at him I discover a mournful light in his faded eye that tells me he comprehends all, and that his Annie is hovering near him, not in the guise of an angel, like the mother, now in heaven, who bore her, but as a creature fit only for the companionship of demons. The curtain rises upon a group of naked women, in the most obscene postures. There is the hush that follows expectation, followed by the ribalt jest, the ob- scene remark, a yell of approval, and the curtain falls. Annie was not in that group, for the father's eye was not an indifferent one. It had been strained to its ut- most tension of nerve power, and with the fall of the only rag that concealed the nude forms of these wretched creatures, came a sigh of relief. I looked up at my companion again. " I want to go away from here," he said, and I shall regret it as long as I live that I did not second his desire, and take him at once from the place; but we had gone there for Prostitution in New York. 9'j a purpose, and I wanted to see it accomplished, though lie, poor fellow, would have been saved a stab that went straight to his heart when it came. Another scene, — but in this there are fewer figures, and that of Annie is the most prominent. Her form Was as near perfection as it is possible to conceive, but [ was gratified, because the circumstance illustrated a pet theory of my own, to see that she, of all the rest, was the only one that showed a feeling of mortifica- tion at the disgusting exhibition. The father rose to go, but sank back into his chair exhausted. He had not found Annie after all, but in place of her, the faded remnant of what was once a guileless, pure, in- nocent child, and that child the fruit of his own loins. I took his arm and led him from the room, but all he did and said after that was merely mechanical. He was brought by one rude shock at last to be only the walking shadow of what had once been a trusting, loving, simple-minded, but really noble man. The wreck was complete, and it was- wrought in an instant. He had found, at last, his Annie, and I had met, for the third time, the face that had haunted me from the moment I saw it ascending the stairs at Madam , till the rising of the curtain that dis- closed it again. On reaching the hall that led to the saloon, he gath- ered nerve enough to say that he wished to go at once, and without seeing his daughter. " It is all over now," he mumbled, "I never want to see her again." I suggested that there was still hope that she might be reclaimed, and mentioned the circumstance of her ap- parent mortification. "Yes, I saw it," he rejoined, 4 * but it's too late. We couldn't live together again. 90 Prostitution in New York. It wouldn't be my Annie, you know, she's gone. I shall never see her again." For the moment I felt that I was myself the cause of his present grief, a sorrow that surpassed in its mute depths any that I had ever seen or expect to witness again. He could not recall without a shudder the memory of the naked, disgusting figure, that he had seen, and that it was the same that he had hug- ged to his breast as a babe, now transformed by passion, lust and disease, to a thing more hideous than any he had ever seen. Meantime I had sent the keeper of the house to say to her that Annie was waited for in a private apart- ment to which we had been shown, and, in a few mo- ments, after making an amazingly elaborate toilet, as if to contrast with the late utter want of it, she made her appearance. The recognition was instantaneous but, for a mo- ment, a most painful one to each of us, not a word was spoken. When the silence was at last broken, it was by herself. There were no tears, no em- brace, no outward indication indeed that these two had ever met before, yet each had lived a lifetime in the brief interval we have marked. " You have come to take me home," were the first words she uttered. " Do you suppose that anything could induce me to carry from this, to you, horrid place, (the only home on earth left to me), the load of shame I have borne through these long, weary years ? Go back to the home I have disgraced ? Never ! I ask only to be let alone." The father replied with touching dignity, but in a way that told how great was the struggle going on within him, that return to the old home was impossi- Prostitution in J\ T evj York. 97 ble. The old homestead, too, had gone into other hands, but, he suggested with a shudder, that they could go to some unknown place, and settling among strangers, begin life again. She shook her head, but was too much overcome to speak. He rose to go, and as he was about to leave the room, handed her the picture that led to her identifi- cation, and another, that of her mother, of whom, strange to say, she had not spoken a word. She clutched the picture, and sank down upon the floor in an agony of grief. It had revived the whole past, and she was living it over again. The memory of her mother had roused what little was left in her that was human. On being told that she had died two years before, she did not shed a tear, but showed, on the contrary, a feeling of relief, a feeling, attested by her remark, that she, at least, had gone where suffering was unknown. She retained the pictures, but refused to listen to any further suggestions about quitting the life she was living. Morris, after effecting her ruin, had placed her in the house in which I had first met her, and of which he was the paid agent. She never saw him but once or twice after entering the place that hid her from the world's scorn, but she admitted that she would go with him now, gladly, to any place on earth. As for her father, between him and herself was a gulf, made by herself, that never could be passed, and with no de- monstration at parting, on the part of either, of any- thing like affection, we left her to the life she had chosen. The father wrote me for a time after leaving the city, which he did the next morning, but after a time his letters ceased, and a little less than a month ago I OS PsOstitution in New York. received the tidings of his death. He began to fail from the moment he returned to the place that had been his old home. The friend who had loaned him the last dollar expended in so fruitless a search, watch- ed over him until the last heart-string snapped, and he dropped into the grave a broken-hearted man. The scenes I have described in this chapter are true to the letter and I have given, moreover, as nearly as it is possible from memory, the conversations as they oc- curred, word for word. The picture is not a pleasant one for the contemplation of any who appreciate the sacredness of a home in which love, and comfort, and confidence are supreme, but it shows to the dwellers in these homes that when once the devil of lust, or passion, or an insane ambition for show, enters and takes possession, what was once a home, is forever after a hell. The blight once there, soon extends its withering touch to every branch of the family tree. When such scenes as these are occurring in this great Sodom almost every day of our lives, can pru- dery and moral squeamishness say that it must be . held guiltless in the do-nothing policy which marks our treatment, or rather want of treatment, of this great overshadowing evil ? Are we of the 19th century worse than the Jewish adulterers, to whom Christ said, "let him who is with- out offence, cast the first stone ?" It would seem that the time has fully come when the dictates of a com- mon humanity should lead us to forget the enormity of the offence in a really Christian effort to improve the condition, and, if possible, the life of the offender, and if our advanced modern Christianity is unequal to the task of performing a plain, simple duty like this it owes to these forlorn and degraded outcasts, it needs Prostitution in New York. 99 itself to be thoroughly and speedily reformed. If Christianity means anything, it means an honest, heartfelt, active effort to diminish crime and to reform the criminal, without distinction. If Christ himself could become the companion of Mary Magdalen, what shall be said of those who pretend to be his followers, who will not, in their immaculate purity, permit themselves to name even, much less sympathise, with the condition bodily, mentally, and socially, of the thirty thousand Magdalens that ply their trade un- disturbed in this city ? Here is indeed a field for true missionary work, but where, pray, are the missiona- ries ? Have they fled at the first approach of a lewd woman in their own streets, to find comfort and con- solation in a new and more congenial field among the fornicators of the Sandwich Islands ? The home field is not an inviting, nor is it a clean one, but there is no other so much neglected, and none which, if culti- vated in the true Christian spirit, would yield a more abuudant harvest. Who will enter it ? CHAPTER XIX. THE ROAD TO RUIN. — FROM FIFTH AVENUE TO WATER STREET. " HIGH-TONED " HOUSES. A great city like this is • a world in miniature, and there is perhaps no other of its size on the globe that presents so many social contrarieties and oddities, such a mixture of odds and ends in the way of nationalities, and populations gathered in from every quarter of the earth. When it is considered that the foreign elements that form fully one-half of these, come, in the main, from the middle and lower classes of Europe, the great variety is both anomalous and enigmatic in its make- up. To reduce such a medley of contradictions in thought, customs, manners, and habits, and above all, in creeds, to a homogenous mass, could scarcely be ex- pected of even the " best government on earth," and in a country, or under a form of government in which individual freedom is the rule, next to impossible. Between Fourteenth street, now a down-town local- ity, and the Battery, can be found in full blast at this moment, every mode of life and living, known to civil- ization, with now and then a dash of heathenism such as may be seen any day in the new Chinese Temple in Baxter street, dedicated to the worship of a half-dozen or more wooden chunks, which pass among their de- votees for gods of the first water. The pine hills of Norway, the sunny vales of France and Italy, the ranches of Mexico, the islands of the Mediterranean, Prostitution in JYew York. 101 Germany and the British Islands, South America and China, each contributes its modicum of a great whole, that has no exact counterpart anywhere else on earth — creeds, races and conditions all mingled together, in a batch that defies analysis, or even description. From the days of the good Peter Stuyvesant until now, it has been the nestling-place of the pauper pop- ulations of Europe. Here they have come to set up life on their own account. We have been a sort of patchwork, under which crept all that shunned the light of day. Add to this the political profligacy in- duced by this mingling, and which culminated under a ring, the majority of which were born on foreign soil, and the case presents itself in its very worst aspect, and one that calls for commiseration as well as cen- sure. It is no wonder, then, that virtue within its limits should be held at a discount, a cheap commodity at best, to be possessed and worn by a few over-pious and puritanical people. In a soil so rank, what wonder that the foul weed of prostitution flourishes to such a degree that it threatens to overrun the whole garden ? We have grown to a population of a million of souls, and have had a rich and most suggestive experience, and yet we have not learned from it how to distribute in a systematic way, this helpless human mass that comes to our shores at the rate of two hundred thou- sand a year. Born to poverty and its invariable ac- companiments, idleness and crime, panel houses, gam- bling hells, prostitution in all its grades, and crime of every sort known to criminals, it is not to be won- dered at, that justice herself should stand appalled in the presence of such an array of all that is vile and unmanageable. A journey through its gilded hells, from the highest to the lowest, from the places whore 102 Prostitution in New York. all that money can buy to tempt the appetite and teed the passions, down to the basement, reeking with filth and filled with pestilence, can be had for the trouble of making it, would well repay our kid-gloved moralists and philanthropists who roll in luxury, during the week, and sniffle for an hour or two on Sunday, like the Peeksniffs that they are, over the crimes and the sins of this thrice-cursed city. The bare fact, that the houses of ill-fame alone in this city, were they confined to one street, would make an avenue, covered on botli sides three miles long, does not speak volumes for our purity, but adds a new sig- nificance to the statement that only one out of every twenty of our women are chaste. If any one, no matter what his opinions concerning the " social evil" may be, or of the means to be used for its regulation or suppression, will go with me through all the grades of these houses that can be found between Fifth Ave- nue and Water street, keeping his eyes wide open to the manner in which these creatures live, who sell themselves for any price between ten dollars and as many cents, he will be in a fit condition to cease moral- izing, and in a state of preparation for action, if indeed, the sight, taken as a whole, should not have the effect to paralyze effort at the very start. Whatever the result, he could never plead ignorance after such an experience, and we wish all virtuous New York were, for its own sake, as well as of those who would doubtless be benefited by it, compelled to make the pilgrimage. It would be far more interest- ing and more profitable than the one recently made by some pious people to the Pope. They returned in an ecstatic spasm over the blessing of his Holiness, these would return with a healthy desire to do Prostitution in JVcw York, 103 penance for their wilful neglect of those who get for blessings nothing but curses. Let us take a look at one of these gilded up-town haunts. It is about midnight, and the glare from a hundred jets covers the scene with a kind of halo that sooner or later goes out in darkness. Seated at the tables of this superb saloon, in close, familiar conver- sation with living rottenness, covered with paint and satin, are New York's richest, most brilliant, and most "respectable" citizens. Most of these you see have fami- lies that constitute the cream of our society. Many of them keep mistresses besides, in establishments sup- ported by themselves. They come here for amuse- ment and excitement, to while away an hour, take a glass of champagne, and listen to the charming noth- ings that come from the lips of these Metropolitan Cleopatras. Houses of this class are not very numerous, for the reason that those who used to patronize them altogeth- er, are able now to keep up a private establishment in addition to that of the family, and for the reason be- sides, that assignation houses have taken their place, to some extent. Expensive as they are, and free from disease, in the main, they are a little too indiscriminate for the delicate and fastidious tastes of either old or young America. In these houses, Shoddy enters largely as an element with its stuffed wallet and fine suppers. Here congregate the politicians who have won their way to the now wide-open public purse. You know these by their swagger, and the lavish way in which they dispose of the means derived from official perquisites. They have grown so numerous since the war came, that they form a powerful class by them- selves. 104 Prostitution in New YbrJc. Some of the women in this house are not only beau* tifulj but intelligent ; and others, of manners and con- versation so high-toned, and indicative of early culture and pleasant associations, that it is difficult to believe at first sight that such a place is nothing after all but a house of prostitution, but as the evening wanes the " looker-on in Yenice " will find that wine and the ex- citements engendered by a free-and-easy contact, have, to some, though not to a positively vulgar extent, brought these better-class creatures of pleasure down to as low a level as they can reach in houses of this class. A year or two of this sort of living brings the shrunken form, the faded eye and complexion, the careless habits, and oftimes disease, either of which sends the prostitute one step lower in the road to ruin. Yonder is a brunette in mauve satin, who has been here three years, an unusually long period for any wo- man to remain in any one house. She has managed, by extreme care and tolerably temperate habits, aided by a constitution, that outside of this place would have carried her through a long life, to hold her own well enough to be still fit for the companion ship of the scions of New York's very best people. Next year at * farthest, will find her in a less rich, but far brighter costume, put on to conceal the ravages of a shameless life, but which will, in reality, make her fading charms more apparent; and yet it is amazing, as I look at her, to think how much of personal beauty has been preserved to her through all these years of daily and nightly dissipation, to say nothing of the remorse that these creatures suffer at this stage of their progress down the hill. Her history is a curious one, and stands as a counter- part or type of thousands of similar ones to be met Prostitution in New York. 105 with m these places. Descended from one of the best Virginia families, with the blood of the Lees and the Masons, it is said, running in her veins, she was sent North a few years ago to be educated at one of our up-town fashionable schools. During her stay there, she had permission at times to visit a family of wealth but of " loud " manners and loose associations. There she met a man more famous than any other of his time, for the conquests he had made over innocence and purity, and whose harem exceeded for years in the number and beauty of its members, that of any Turk who ever lived. The moment his lustful eye met that of this most voluptuous young creature, he deter- mined to make her his own, and in less than two years after her arrival in New York, she became his mistress. !No effort was ever made by her family to reclaim her. She had gone back on blood and breeding, and these never forgive so great an injury to themselves as she had committed. When she goes hence she will lose all self-respect, but she will not be likely to go much farther the way she is going. She will grow tired of life after the excitement in which she now lives is over, then will come despair, and then the final plunge into some of the waters that surround the city. When that comes, the chronicle that records it will be brief. " One more unfortunate, Weary of breath, Pwashly importunate, Gone to her death. n As the little gem from Tom Hood, from which the above lines are borrowed, runs through my memory, I feel for the first time how fit it was that the sweetest, and perhaps only requium ever chanted over the grave 106 Prostitution in New York. of a prostitute should have been penned by a man whose domestic life was as sweet and pure, as purity itself and who in all his poverty, as well as through the few successful years of authorship that finally came to him, never forgot to sing the songs that w r ent straight to the homes of the poor, the oppressed, or the fallen. The women that remain longest in houses of this kind are of that class who receive special attentions and support from some favorite, and the morbid ten- derness, for such it really is, that such a one invariably exhibits toward the man that takes the place in her af- fections of lover, brother, husband or friend, and he is all these in one, is sometimes most touching. The secret of this seems to lie in the fact of the utter iso- lation from all that is human in the way of affection, to which these creatures are doomed. Another fact, and a most touching one, explains the tenacity with which these cling to the worst specimens of male hu- manity ; and that is the natural longing, even in an abandoned woman, to find some man, however un- worthy, upon whom she can lavish what is left of a pure womanhood; and it is a noticeable indication that these rarely become so transformed that they cannot be touched by any attention that looks to such a rela- tion a most potent argument to show that low, and depraved, and beastly as she too often becomes, there can always be found in the heart of the most degraded prostitute, a chord that will vibrate to a touch of any- thing that looks like affection or kindliness, an illustra- tion as well of the theory that the idea of home comes not from necessity, or self-interest, but that it has its sure foundations in that native aspiration of every hu- man soul tor a place so sacred and so secure from intru- Prostitution in New York. 107 sion that around it may safely he centred the heart's choicest affections. So with the prostitute in thus lite- rally surrendering her all, even though it be to some base creature who deserts her without a pang, as he woulfl a beast that has grown old in his service, she yet finds some compassion in the vague fancy, born of the feeling we have described, that she is really loved in return. More than this, the relation of mistress, impure and immoral though it be, and the most po- tent enemy of a pure domestic life, it suggests to the prostitute, nevertheless, in a far-off way, the true mar- riage state, the condition above all others that every woman desires at some period of her existence, a long- ing that shines out, dimly it may be at times, but which is, after all, the grand, redeeming, conspicuous, indestructible passion, running like a golden thread through the web and woof of an otherwise utterly abandoned life. But I am moralizing and digressing. The man at that table, tossing off a glass of wine, is one of the most brilliant young lawyers of this city. He came here from a town in New Jersey, a few years ago, with a private reputation unspotted ; to-night he is paving the way that will lead him in a year or two, down to a worse than drunkard's grave. Dissipation, overwork, high living and women, are doing their work surely, and with a rapidity of which he himself is unconscious. To the uninitiated the scene before us is a curious one. Works of art, beautiful women, rare pictures, brilliant talk, men, married and young, with now and then a youth that should still be in leading strings, are the leading features. Coming from this place one night with a party of friends I had ciceroned, one of my companions, of a more philosophic turn than the 108 Prostitution in New York. rest, propounded the following questions : " Why," said be, "is not some organized effort made by women themselves to preserve their own sex from such a course as this ? " Without waiting for an answer, prompted by his own reflections upon the scene he had witnessed, he solved the problem to his own satisfaction in this way. " This love-longing uppermost in every woman's heart, makes women the rivals of each other in a most unequal contest. The plain, homely, but it may be, sensible woman, stands but a poor chance when beauty, wealth, brilliancy and high social position are her com- petitors for personal attentions, and born of this bitter rivalry, is the dislike that women bear each other in a social way, anywhere, in short, where this spirit of ri- valry plays anything like a conspicuous part." " It is a fact," he continued, " that women seldom deal gen- erously with women, and yet if any of these creatures are to be reclaimed, it must be through the efforts of woman herself ; and for the simple reason that she has not been the direct cause of, or a partner in, the ruin of such of her sex as have chosen lives of infamy. Christian women should rise above this prejudice against a fallen rival, and set themselves to work to perform a plain duty. As society is now constituted, all others, save it may be a few self-sacrificing ones, always on the alert to do whatever in them lies for the elevation of women, will be deterred by prudery alone from lending their influence and efforts in this direc- tion. CHAPTER XIII. PARLOR HOUSES. — NEGRO HOUSES. We bid adieu now to about all that is decent in the prosecution of the traffic in virtue in this city. We have looked at it as it is plied in the midst of our most fashionable quarters ; we have now to look at it in faded colors, in frowsy parlors, steeped in opium, ab- sinthe, bad whiskey, that modern invention of the devil, prostitution in rags, in the dance-house, the mas- querade, the lowest saloon, the negro houses, and, at last, burrowing in the dark dens of Water street. We are now in a parlor house of the second grade in Greene street. As we enter we are greeted by a vil- lainous smell of escaping gas from worn-out and leaky chandeliers, blended with that of vile cookery, and an atmosphere fetid with the exhalations of lungs unused to oxygen except such of it as come to them through this abominable medium. Dinginess is every- where. Rickety furniture gathered from Bowery and Chatham street auction rooms, covered with faded damask or rep, and surmounted with a coating of dust, are painfully conspicuous. A piano emits wheezy, metalic, and other nondescripts in the way of sound, from the back parlor. The creature that thumps it into submission, though gorgeously arrayed in a faded- out crimson silk, has barely sufficient on her in the way of clothing, to conceal the mountain of flesh that seems ready to burst its cerements. The women, as a rule, are natively course in manner and feature, and « 110 Prostitution in New York. now, with all the restraints of decency removed, are absolutely repulsive. It seems incredible that but a single step down- . ward should bring us to such an exhibition as this ; but so it is, and yet even here there is a faint attempt to keep up the proprieties that mark the intercourse of common but decent people. The dirty jest, passes from lip to lip with a relish that marks the depravity of the bearers of it, and an hour later, when the vile stuff sold at these places under the name of wine, had done its work, all restraint will be thrown aside, and from that time until passion has exhausted itself in the ex- citement of the parlors, and has sought the covered re- treat to finish out the nasty revel, there will be no check to orgies that cannot be described. I have talked with many of these creatures in their sober moments, and all told the same story, that they were never so happy, if the term happiness can be used in such a connection, as when the excitement was highest. After reaching this phase of the life they lead, the body becomes so soaked by the atrocious stuff they eat and drink, that every sense be- comes so blunted and morbid that brain and nervous excitement is about all that is left them. As the door closed behind us, Greene street, bad as it is at midnight, seemed a paradise in comparison with the den We had left. Having still another hour, we directed our steps to a notorious negro house in Woos- ter street. Whatever the causes, and there are many doubtless, it is an admitted fact, that our negro population fur- nish more examples of lewdness than any other in proportion to their numbers. Driven to those of their own color for companionship, their isolation from all Prostitution in Xcw York. Ill others except as servants, their native indolence, their emotional natures, all tend to make the colored woman a free and easy one in her habits. Since the war, and during its continuance, thousands of these came from the plantations of the South, and bringing their habits of indiscriminate mingling along with them, took to prostitution for a living, preferring naturally that mode of earning a living to entering our kitchens; and it is an indisputable fact that these get down lower in the business than any other of their white sisters. Desti- tute, as a rule of personal charms, they set themselves up with an eye to the barbarous, and when they have reached the lowest grade, are filthy and beastly beyond belief. A few of these, taken from the half-breeds, quad- roons and octaroons, are beautiful in face, and have besides a vuluptuous beauty of form, the result of the cross in blood, rarely found among the whites. The place we enter has for its presiding genius a white man. The patrons of this dusky abode are of the same hue, none others being admitted on any ac- count, and for very obvious reasons. If one would take the trouble to step in here for an hour or two oc- casionally, he would wonder why Mr. Sumner and other men of his stamp had insisted so long for the rights of the negro, for here in this building is the interminable war of the races coming to a happy con- clusion — so happy, indeed, that the white man is found nestling in the very bosom of the race that he had so long despised, and thus the long looked for niil- lenium has burst upon us from the dusky dens of Wooster street. Who shall say nay to this solution of a grave ques- tion ? 112 Prostitution in New York. One would naturally suppose that if there was a place on earth where the proud, blue-eyed, flaxen- haired Saxon could meet his colored brother on terms of absolute and fraternal equality, it would be in a colored house of prostitution. Nevertheless we arc doomed to disappointment again. There is still a pro- viso to be overcome. The Saxon is willing, yes, anx- ious to take the colored sister to his bosom but with eminently characteristic and dog-in-the-manger-like ex- clusiveness, rejects the colored brother, and thus, so to speak, is the great question of a common brotherhood thrown back upon its haunches, and all through the mulishness of the superior race. The problem is a curious and intricate one. We have turned it over in our mind, and conclude, sagely, we think, that it involves grave questions, mixed ques- tions, we may add of ethics, and of esthetics too, alto- gether beyond our poor comprehension. The collate- ral queries of flavor, odors, and the still kinky and per- plexing capillary one, we give up altogether to Darwin and the new social scientists. Coming down or up to the house itself, it is a well- ordered and cleanly one, as colored houses of the bet- ter class usually are, wherever found. The women are of all shades, except the coal black, as the full-blood, flat-nosed African would be a little too much for the high-bred and delicate sensibilities of the noblest scions of New York's aristocracy, in their present state of developement. Should we go on at the pres- ent rate, however, the be-turbaned and be-jeweled native of Africa's interior will soon be admitted to full communion with the sons of our best people. On the surface, in this house, everything seems un- exceptionable. The parlors are of small account and Prostitution in New York. 113 small in dimensions. The men who gather here prefer the privacy of the up-stair apartments. It would compromise them perhaps to come face to face with each other, in a public saloon or private parlor, each with a colored female hano;in«; on his arm. This is the whiter part of this dirty business, as the sequel will show. Farther down we shall find the negro woman of full blood burrowing in a reeking garret or base- ment along with her white paramour. A rule that prevails almost without exception in ordinary life, is reversed here among the colored prostitutes, and. forms another curious fact. A white man rarely cohabits with a black woman, taking her to his home; but white women are often found living with negroes in left-handed marriage. A single glance at the darker side of this picture will be sufficient, though it is all black enough. In New Church street, not far from Canal, stood, until recently, a small block of frame houses, with rickety stairs outside and inside, inhabited by both whites and negroes, living separately, the negroes having no occu- pation, except to live by prostitution. On the sidewalk, in front of this rookery, on any night, from ten o'clock to midnight, black women, with scarcely clothing enough upon their persons to hide their nakedness, could be seen soliciting black and white alike to enter their dens, though if asked the question as to blacks, even these half-starved, emaciated, and diseased creatures will tell you that black men are excluded, and that onlj r " white trash " is admitted to their rooms. Passing over a field of lumber, we reach the build- ing, and climb to the second story, by means of a stair- way that threatens, at every moment, to give way and send us to the darker regions below, to those reservoirs 114 Prostitution in New York. of filth that cannot be described. In the corner of a single room were huddled two creatures, one of whom was combing her knotted hair. There was no chair to be seen, and both crouched upon the floor. A rickety table, two or three cups and saucers, and a straw mat- tress, without covering of any sort, and so filthy that one look at it was quite sufficient, comprised the fur- niture of the apartment. The w T indow, there was but one, was stuffed with rags, the odors from the bodies, and the filthy floors of this horrible place, were al- most stifling, and the den altogether was as wretched a one as can be imagined. As we stood there, with our handkerchiefs to our noses, questioning the two women as to their mode of life, two white men entered the apartment and sat down upon the floor, and later, a mulatto made his appearance. The party was a curious one as illustrating this peculiar phase of our social life, and our civilization. "When asked why they preferred such a place as this to kitchens where comfort and plenty could be had by working for them, they replied that nobody would have them in their present condition, and that it was no use to try and get work, and they were right. They had reached the point at which reform in any direction, through their own efforts, was impossible. The only chance left for them would be that of a speedy exit to the Potter's field. Such is mixed prostitution. We were told not long since by a mulatto woman of decent manners and ap- pearance, that she had been employed for years in running down South for the purpose of procuring wo- men of her own color, as mistresses of white men of good standing, and some of them of wealth, as they preferred these to women of their own complexion. The Prostitution in New York. 115 problem is certainly a curious one, but it is doubtful if this fact in relation to it can be taken as an indica- tion, after all, that we are to free ourselves- at once from all prejudice as to color. We have, moreover, painted this phase of prostitution just as we have found it, to the very life, without gilding or exaggeration, and we have no fear that any who will read these pages will be lured thereby to any of the dens we have described. As to the first of these, we will admit that it presented not only the best, but, speaking sensually, an attractive and alluring side to the young man, whose entrance upon life has not been preceded by a judicious home training. We have had but one object in view, and that to rouse a really benevolent and philanthropic commun- ity to immediate action in a very grave matter, one that involves the character and reputation of our own homes, and our own children. The evil as it exists here in this city is a disgrace to our civilization, and it is a shame that an evil so demoralizing as is this of prostitution, should be allowed full sway, and without the slightest effort being made to check it or modify it in any of its worst phases even. One look at it is quite enough to convince the most incredulous and skeptical that for beastliness, prostitution in New York city is not equalled by all other vices put together. Between the grades we have described there is, of course, an infinite variety of life in this peculiar domain that we have not touched. We have furnished the frame-work, the outline, together with some of its more prominent features, though, we will add, not its most disgusting ones. To have painted these as they ac- tually appear, would make a picture so bestially horrid that none but the most corrupt would have cared to 116 Prostitution m New York. look at it. It is bad enough, but disgusting as it is, it is our business to go to work with mop in hand first, and if after this, our squeamish, sensi- tive ones, with nerves so apt to quiver when pros- titution is mentioned even, if, then, these want to sprinkle over it a little moral chloride of lime, or any other disinfectant, we have not the slightest objection to their doing so, but we insist that what is needed now is soap, sand, and a good stiff scrub-brush. When to this nasty, technical picture, is added the fighting., the profanity, the drunkenness, and the per- sonal filth that form its inevitable accompaniments, you have, at one swoop, pandemonium let loose. Prostitution being with us a trade or calling, it bar brought forth, as was natural, some distinguished in- ventors, who have managed to get their improvements in full and successful operation without the trouble of going to Washington for a patent. Being patronised and used by members of Congress, and others high in authority, no such process was necessary to give them currency or immunity from punishment or molestation,* and being also patted on the head by our city officials, or some of them, at least, they have managed to get on and thrive. Among these are the panel house, the dance house, the concert saloon, and the masked ball, with some other refinements that we have not the patience to en- umerate. CHAPTER XIV. THE CONCERT SALOONS. The Concert Saloon is a comparatively recent out- growth of prostitution as a business, and the record shows that they are about one hundred in number in our city. The creatures who do the waiting at these, are chosen with special regard to the amplitude of their proportions. A lean specimen in the modest cos- tume worn by the cherubs that nit about these classic halls would excite laughter only from the lusty males who patronise them. The waist of these flashy bean- ties is the only part of them that boasts a covering of any sort, so that in their apparel there is no waste of material; indeed it is astonishing how little it takes to dress up one of these houris. Red predominates as a tint in their complexion. Peggoty's arms, that the birds pecked at for red apples, were doubtless delicate- ly white compared with the ruddy redness of the con- cert saloon waiter-girl. Huge-limbed and squabby, they show in their make-up the low breed of the hu- man animal from which they spring, and on a closer inspection, their manners, habits, language and tastes will be found in perfect harmony with their exterior charms. Nevertheless, they are exactly suited to the tastes of those who £0 home with them after their night's work at the saloon is over. There are other men, or youths, rather, in their second stage of adolescence, who drop into these places of a night, but they rarely go any 118 Prostitution in New York. further than to look in, and they are the sons of the best of our middle-class folk, with now and then a scion of the pure blood, who comes to chaff with the girls, just to while away an hour, and to show a coun- try friend, mayhap, the sights. As the pay of the girls consists chiefly of a percent- age upon the drinks she sells, she is very industrious, and renders herself as agreeable as possible. The music is not of a high order, as the nightly assaults upon Wagner, Chapin, Beethoven, and other compos- ers, by hideously scraped cat-gut, abundantly attest. As you enter, one of these half naked creatures, in striped silk of gay colors, approaches you with a grin so bewitching that you drop into the first chair that offers and make out your order forthwith, a process that you are expected to repeat early and often, as do the Tammany and Republican inspectors, under the new system of cumulative voting. When you tire out on the drinks, she will ask you to go to the saloon in the rear of the bar, where the music is in full blast, a place in which, if your hearing is perfect, you will quit at the first opportunity consistent with the pro- prieties of the establishment. It is to be remarked that the poor painted thing that brings you your toddy, brings a glass for herself each time, and what is worse, tosses it off with a relish that is sad to witness. At midnight, or an hour or two later, she carries to her boarding house an amount of bad whisky that is truly appalling. Should you loose your own balance, you may be invited to try your luck at " keno," and however badly you may be hurt in the game, you must never " squeal," because your cry would be heard by the public ear, and then you would be in a position to be compromised, which would Prostitution in Xew York. . 119 " hurt," you know, and make home, if you are mar- ried, as Mr. Tilton would say, " a scene of ruin and desolation." Of course the bar, the music, nothing but the girls themselves, have really any attractions for the men who visit these saloons, for all the former are expen- sive nothings, to give the place the appearance of one of amusement, and to keep it open in spite of the law, by paying the ordinary license fee. Xumerous attempts, or feints rather, have been made by the police to break up these unseemly exhibitions, but without success; but success is not the object of those who make them, and so they nourish almost unmo- lested and unheeded by our inefficient rulers. If public sentiment was what it should be in relation to this social outrage, (for it is nothing else,) these places would be wiped out in a week, and in a way so sum- mary that they could not be set up again in any part of the city, much less in the very best and most fre- quented positions of Broadway. This never can be done until the people insist upon it, by electing to office men who will govern the city in the best interests of her best people, and keep right on, in the same good way. As it is, there is scarcely a hell of any sort in this great city of hells, whose keeper has not a " friend at court," so powerful and so efficient, that a little money paid to the proper person, (and your gambling saloon keeper and " badger " know just who these in- fluential ones are,) will not secure the immunity de- sired. After all, and it is not a pleasant theme for contem- plation, it must be admitted that the concert saloon is a natural and spontaneous product of our low social condition. Are we destitute of real refinement ] By 120 Prostitution in New York. no means ; but the difficulty seems to be that refine- ment cannot afford to soil its fingers with a product so disgusting as body-selling. If help comes, it must come from those who are neither so refined, nor so far removed from these poor degraded creatures that they must needs stand aloof from them altogether. But, right here even, we are confronted with difficulties that seem insuperable. Social looseness has invaded every grade of our home and social life, insomuch that we look complacently upon the sin of prostitution, and so fold our hands with a kind of consciousness that we ourselves are no better than we should be, and that, after all, the evil is one that must be tolerated, be- cause inevitable. CHAPTER XV. THE DANCE-HOUSES. In speaking of the negro houses, we omitted to say, that the lowest grade is not found in regularly- kept houses, but in rooms usually occupied by two forlorn creatures who ply their trade, each on her own account. There may be gradations still lower than this, but if so, we have failed to find them, and we have stopped at no details, however disgusting, that we could find, in order that the picture should be as near the true one as it is possible to get it. The dance-house is, in our judgment, the lowest, if not the very lowest, link of the Upas of lewdness. It seems to have been invented originally by some fiend to catch the sailor on his return from a voyage. The first thing " Jack" wants when he gets on shore is a glass of grog, a female companion, and then a dance ; and when all these are in his possession there is no happier creature alive, until the last cent goes into the till of the " lubber" who robs him, and then kicks him into the street. Armed with these, he will spend in a single week, the earnings of a year, and do it with a lavish generosity known to no other spendthrift. The women that burrow in these dens have, most of them, touched bottom in their business, and what of filth or bestiality cannot be fonnd in a Water street dance- house need not be searched for elsewhere. Ragged, bloated, and diseased, they only bide the time that shall see them, or all that is left of them, carried away 122 Prostitution in Wew YorTc, to the six feet of earth which is their last heritage on earth. A picture of one of these hells is not flattering to our self-estimation or the pride we feel in our own city, and the place it occupies among the great munici- palities of the world, but here it is, and a single one, taken at random, fitly represents the whole wretched group. The honr is near midnight. A narrow, vile-smelling entrance, leads you to the dancing-hall, which is, in reality, a large bar-room. Dingy tissue paper, covered with fly-filth, festoon the walls, and obscene prints are everywhere to be seen. Benches ranged around the sides of the room, receive the bloated bodies, it can scarcely be said that they have souls, of those who have become enraged with rum. There is a miserable at- tempt to keep up in the bar, the usual array of decan- ters and glasses, but with ill -success. Nevertheless the place itself is a palace compared with the creatures that spend in it the last end of their miserable lives. Mad with the horrible stuff dealt out to them by the human jackajl that grins from his place among the bottles, ragged, and foul beyond the power of mortal pen to describe, they shuffle over the sanded floors, lashing themselves literally into a momentary, deliri- ous dream that the dance is a dance of pleasure, instead of one that leads straight to death. Ghastly sight, unequalled in its ghastliness by any picture known to barbarism of the very lowest type. Strange that civilization itself should be guilty of pro- ducing a phase of sensualism unknown to any record- ed period of time. The brute that keeps this place, is the red-fisted and purple mass of flesh that lounges about the hall. His occupation is a most dignified one, and consists chiefly Prostitution in New York. 123 'I beating the women that fill his vile coffers with their earnings. How natural for man to rule it over, to those weaker than himself. This creature, bad and loathesome as he is, is a very aristocrat in his sphere, another evidence that there is none so low, in which the gradations are not kept up with painful minuteness. Here even he is a mogul ; higher up, he would be sim- ply what he is, a human beast. With a cruelty un- known to any other creature, perhaps, he exacts from these lowest of their kind, the last dollar of their dirty earnings, for the poor privilege of sleeping in filthy rooms of his own furnishing. When all power to earn a dollar or two has fled, and nothing but death awaits them, it is alleged by those who have gone down to the bottom of this one of crime's curiosities, that this human nondescript will strip to very naked- ness, or as near to it as he dares, the poor creature who spends the last remnant of her life in his service, and then turn her into the street. But this is not the worst feature of these places. The keepers of them are used as agents to single out young and innocent girls from beggarly houses. Once here they are ruined, and if unwilling to remain here, are taken to houses of a bet- ter class, and paid for per capita, as slaves are bought in the market place in countries where they are sold, body and soul, for a viler purpose than slavery. If any of our incredulous ones doubt the truth of what we have stated, and of which we have not told the half, let him step iuto one of these hells at mid- night, and see for himself faces, from which every indication that it belongs to a human being has van- ished. The scene upon which his eye will rest, will be some- thing like this. A dozen or more, perhaps twenty 124 Prostitution in New York, bloated hags, with their partners, are getting ready for a dance to the catgut of a single fiddle, if indeed an obscene whirl, can be called a dance, but it is all the same to the dancers ; it is fully suited to their desires, and that is all there is of it. When the drunken orgie is over, the brief interval that follows is filled with a drink of benzine all round, there is nothing in this foul place to drink so dignified, or so pure as whiskey, but a vile decoction distilled from a chromatic scale of poi- sons. When this has done its worst, and until the scene below stairs is exchanged for that of the foul rooms above, to look at it, one would suppose that hell itself had been set loose on earth ; for no one in his senses could believe at first sight that a place so horri- ble as is this could by any possibility be a product of aught short of pandemonium. The last dance for the night is over, and the dancers reel to couches festering in disease. We can go no fur- ther. He who would see all must go where even a de- tective cannot go, if he have left in him any sense of decency or self-respect. The maxim that vice to be abhorred must be seen, has no application to such a scene as we have described from actual observation. No man or youth still unsullied, should ever lay eyes upon a dance-house. It is enough to know that it is a sad reality. Human nature, under its most favorable aspects is bad enough, but this phase of it, once thor- oughly photographed upon the memory, reveals possi- bilities of depravity and baseness in man that can never be effaced, or forgotten, — he has experienced a shock from which he will never recover. CHAPTER XVI. MAFKED BALLS. The public masquerade, as it is now conducted in this city, during our winter season, is another of the refinements to which lewdness has given birth. That lewdness should give birth to anything but refinements is of course not to be expected, and we are driven, therefore, to enumerate them as they come from time to time upon us to startle and alarm. Originally it seems to have been a social gathering to which none but virtuous and respectable women were admitted, but after a time all this was changed, and the domino is now used to cover in it the most notorious prosti- tutes and bagnio keepers of the city. It has now de- generated into an amusement which no decent wom:in can afford to patronize by her presence. Xo matter how gotten up, or by whom, if it be a public affair, lewd women of the worst sort will be there. The mas- querade is not an altogether clean institution even where it had its origin in the carnival ; with as it is a whited sepulchre. Even Mons. Mercier, with all his French tact, could not conceal its hideousness even from the dullest American eyes. We are coming to it apace, but we have not yet reached that social con- dition when a woman of respectability, and good social position, can, as ladies of rank even do in Paris, go to a masquerade, because they can go incog, ''just to have a little fun." Our morals, bad as they are, do not quite yet allow us so extended a latitude. 126 Prostitution in New York. Since the disgusting exhibition given by the Societe des hals d'artistes, years ago, at the French Theatre on Fourteenth street, no New Yorker has been in doubt as to their character. The masque, a very thin one then, disclosed features that should have remained in Greene and Mercer streets, and now no domino is needed at all, and the bal masque is little better than a dance-house, or concert saloon. They are now pa- tronized almost exclusively by women without an es- cort. The men drop in during the evening as conven- ience and inclination suggests. ^Nevertheless, women occupying, prominent social positions go yet to these places, but they go in a manner which, were it known, would banish them at once from decent associations. It is an odd mixture that congregates here. Let • us look in upon one, and, if for the first time, be aston- ished. The floor of the saloon is covered with masks, the boxes with spectators. Many of the latter come from French families whose notions of what is proper are not what our own are, and who are not to be held re- sponsible altogether for the difference in education. At first all goes smoothly, as the bar-room has not had its effect to mystify the maskers. It will come soon. Many of these men are personally known to us. Yon- der, in ordinary costume, his only disguise being a domino that is not a disguise — is a jolly, but well- known city official. Yonder is the editor and owner of a newspaper that has made more money out of the Albany lobby during the past fifteen years than any other or all editors and newspapers put together. The Times man would recognize him if he were here, but the dignified Times has no place in such a crowd as this. Later, when champagne has done its work, Prostitution in New York, 127 our editor and his friend, will throw aside their masks and kick up their heels, lightened by numerous cock- tails, juleps, or Yerzenay cobblers, and go it with a looseness that will command instantaneous and unqualified admiration. Their wives are not here, poor dears, but the gentlemen have a night-key and can get in at home if they do happen to be a little late. Yonder is a millionaire, but a devotee of pleasure in all guises. lie is not a connoisseur, so to speak, in his pleasures. Of low birth, and lower tastes, he has none of the native qualities that make the high-toned man, and in the mad race for wealth which he ran in Erie stocks, he picked up nothing in the way of decent associations that remained with him after his fortune was assured. At midnight, this man will throw off his mask — he need never have donned it, for conceal- ment in his case is unnecessary, absurd even — and will join the obscene revel in a way that will excite both pity and disgust in any decent observer. But he is a true prince of the blood to which he belongs, and comes here to find the outlet for native nastiness that he could find nowhere else, save in a house of vile resort. The huge bundle of female flesh in tights and flesh- ings, her face covered with paint an inch thick, but not thick enough to conceal her bloated hideousness, is the keeper of an up-town " bad house," as our country friends say. She will be his partner in the dance, and when it is over, his carriage will carry him and herself to the elegant quarters which his own purse provides for her. Seated in a box up-stairs is the wife of one of the most respectable and wealthy merchants of this city 123 Prostitution in New York. She is Iiere in the company of the man whose society and whose person she prefers to those of her husband. The liason is well understood, common talk, and the husband allows her to go where she chooses, on con- dition that she keep to her own room when at home, and leave him to his own solitude and his own reflec- tions upon a hasty and ill-assorted marriage. It will scarcely be believed, but yonder is the wife of one of New York's ablest scholars. Coming to this country many years ago a widower of middle age, he married a giddy southern girl of twenty years, and from that day to this has been a banished man in his own household. She is a sensualist, of a somewhat refined type, but she finds ample opportunity for that sort of companionship, that her straight-laced, but thoroughly pure minded husband, cannot, and will not tolerate, and so they too agree to disagree, by living separately, so far as married rites are concerned, in their own house. He remonstrated and scolded for is long time, but finding her altogether incorigible, and desiring that the world should not know that which would compromise him and the high position he occupies, he pockets the insult to his own home, and betakes himself for consolation to his books, his friends, of whom he has a host, and his pipe. The masks are now thrown aside, and the boxes are emptied upon the floor below. All restraint is re- moved, and from this time a scene will be enacted under this roof, that will be almost incredible to the decent, but shocked looker-on that sees it for himself. Let us take another look, not for purposes of exag- geration, or to gather materials for a chapter, but to see what this thing really is. Here are old men, young men in all stages of adolescence, boys even, Prostitution in Xew York. 129 and women of every age, from the girl in her first teens to the middle-aged wife and mother. Men, high in business and social circles, accompanied by the women they keep. Others with the women they cohabit with at the better class houses of prostitution. There are young men who make the assignation house their place of sensuous rendezvous, and the sewing girl, or house servant, that goes with him there, is his com- panion to night. JSTow all these people, save those that live in houses of ill-fame, pass for virtuous women in the circle in which they move, while the men, well, no matter what a man really is, he generally passes master in his own " set" as a high-toned model of virtue and all that is manly ; at all events, he is rarely tabooed socially, no matter what may be his habits, provided his man- ners, his dress, and his pocket are unexceptionable, so that our high-bred mothers and daughters have no reason to find fault, when they themselves countenance in him, what is really disgusting to them, rather than lose the chance of marrying him to one of their darling daughters. Even the daughter herself has no scruples about it, and rather likes the lover all the better who comes to her with so deep a knowledge of life and its tortuous ways, that he lays upon the altar of her virtue a body without life or energy, if not positively diseased, and a heart that has not in it an impulse worthy of a human heart — " played out" — nothing expresses it so well, in all directions. Marriage comes to these at last, and the fruit of it, if such it can be called, has not enough in it in the way of body or mind, to be worth pre- serving. And this is the way we go on in this great, culti- 130 Prostitution in New York. vated, benevolent city. Are there no respectable women in this crowd ? Yes, a few. They have been can "-lit here for the first time, or have been induced to come under a mask, just a to see the sights." Of respectable men, they who pass for such, there are plenty. You can find them everywhere on this floor. Lawyers, politicians, merchants, doctors, all profes- sions, even the clerical, are represented here. We know a clergyrrfan of this city, who goes frequently to places of this sort, to whet up his vocabulary for the Sunday's discourse. Of course he is a sensationalist, but do not his congregation love the senses and all that pertains to their gratification ? But these are not all. Here are newspaper report- ers, editors, gamblers, brothel keepers, prize fighters, bruisers, thieves, knights of the "jimmy," the pistol and the bludgeon — all huddled together into one ag- glomerated, filthy mass. We approach the end of this unmasked masquerade, for I have tried faithfully to unmask it, and without the slightest exaggeration. I have come so far from this indeed, that had I given in detail the scenes that will be enacted on this floor between midnight and the dawn, when the sunlight shall creep in upon faded faces that " should not have worn this aspect for many a year," the chapter would be too disgusting to read, and if read, would not be believed. And yet, let us not forget that the male actors in it are, in the main, men of wealth and respectability. The dance-house is an ungilded mass of physical pu- trefaction ; this is one of moral death ; yet even here, the winking innuendo, the broad jest, the lascivious stare, have given place to ribaldry obscene retort, and the bestial caress, not to be described in these Prostitution in New York. 131 pages. Before the scene closes, fights, knock-downs, the knife, and perhaps the pistol, will be in free use, and diamonds, paste, elegant costumes, all mingled in one dirty mass. We close this chapter with a suggestion or two, by way of answer to those who sneer at the idea of bring- ing these places of amusement together with houses of prostitution under such a system of regulation and espionage as will compel them to be outwardly decent. The Police Department has, or pretends to have, in its possession the number of every house of prostitu- tion, the name of its keeper, and that of the house owner, together with a diagram of each house, and the names of the inmates. Suppose this register were open to the public, as it now is not, no access being allowed to it except on the part of a chosen few, how many of these places owned by respectable, many of them Christian men, would change hands or change their character in twenty-four hours ? The experiment could do no harm, assuredly. This is not all ; the regulation system, while it would check, though it could not banish the evil, would compel cleanliness, in so far that comparative freedom from disease would be assured, and thus the evil be shorn of its most disgusting physical features. We should certainly stop at nothing that will tend to check the fearful venerial inoculation that goes on now unchecked, and at such a rate of increase, for want of this regula- tion, that another decade's end will discover this taint in the blood of almost every family in the land. We do not say that society shall recognize prostitution as a legitimate or indispensable business, or that the strumpet shall be elevated upon a pedestal, to be adored bj our young men, but we do say that society 132 Prostitution in New York. will, in the end, be compelled, in self-defense, to recog- nize it as a business, and to subject it, moreover, to such regulations as will make it less revolting to the senses, to say nothing of the soul, and to check oy wholesome supervision the frightful diseases engen- dered by the illicit relations of the sexes. CHAPTER XVII. THE FUTURE OF PROSTITUTION. REGULATION AND OTHER THEORIES. DR. CHAPMAN AND THE "WESTMINSTER REVIEW." My chief purpose in the foregoing chapters has been to furnish the reader with a faithful and accurate pic- ture of prostitution as it exists in this city to-day ; sketches thrown off at intervals as I have been called upon to visit its haunts, presenting such only as could with propriety be transferred to the pages of a volume like this. Proposing no special theories of my own for consideration or adoption, I have been content to suggest, in a general way, as I have gone along, such possible remedies as seemed suited to the desperate case with which society has to deal. Everywhere, and for all time, a stumbling block in our civilization, with exceptional cases, like those of France, but little atten- tion has been paid to it. We in this country have been satisfied to stand appalled before this social curse and bewail its ravages. That time is past. The day of whining about it, it is to be hoped, is passing, while that of action has arrived. However much we may still desire to put away from us all thought or care of a social ulcer so offensive to delicacy, the ugly fact stares us in the face, that the disease is no longer con- fined to the lowest creatures that inhabit the slums. It is everywhere, and its spread is due largely to the fact that society looks upon the adulterer with com- placence. Even the presence of disease, the result of 131 Prostitution in New York. loose habits, is not deemed sufficient to make a man shunned, and if such a one be possessed of wealth, position, or has a good family-name and associations behind him, some ambitious mother will be found to intrust him with the happiness (misery usually) of her daughter. The men that pass current in what are known and recognized as the highest social circles, are not only often found to be the apologists of lewdness, but are themselves men of easy virtue. Does society frown upon these culprits ? When judges on the bench, and clergymen even, break the commandment against adultery, does society punish them with its ban ? In the case of the latter, society shakes its head, pouts a little at such naughtiness in a preacher of the Gospel, but follows these with its entire forgiveness. As to the others, all go unpunished, from the highest to the lowest in the social scale. Happily for the rising generation, the present period happens to be one in which the indications of a better day to come in our home and social life are plainly visible. Under the lead of social economists like Mill, Herbert Spencer, and others of the same school, we have come to look upon the social evil as not only one that can be modified and regulated, but one that society is bound to check by wholesome legislation in the first place, and also by, what will doubtless prove equally powerful to check it, social ostracism. Society suffers no compunction when it punishes its thieves, its burglars, its gamblers, its murderers, or even its drunkards, but with marked inconsistency, smiles upon the man who carries upon his person habitually, the marks of venereal poison, and what is worse, suffers him to taint, without fear of penal laws Prostitution in New York, 135 or social excommunication, the body of Lis own wife and the blood of the children that she bears him. But as I have hinted, we seem to have reached the period when we can discuss, in a thoughtful and intel- ligent way, aided by much in the way of useful data, prostitution in all its bearings, and in a spirit so broad and catholic, that substantial good must come as a result ; at all events, it is to be hailed as a sign of coming soundness, when we show a willingness to go to work to solve for ourselves, and in our own way, a problem that, up to this time, we have with cowardice more than reprehensible, refused to recognize as a problem at all. It is something gained, therefore, when we can be- gin to talk familiarly, and in a purely common-sense, practical way, of this abomination, as it looks up to us from its dirty retreat in the slums, as well as down upon us from its gilded palaces on Fifth Avenue. That the case is a peculiar one, environed and hedged in on all sides by other collateral questions, all perplexing in the extreme, and equally difficult of so- lution, is fully admitted, but this fact itself will prove a spur to exertion, and lead to the final work of per- forming a very plain duty. Thus fiir, little or nothing has been accomplished beyond airing our theories, and discussing methods in a vague, far-off way, at arm's length, so to speak. What is needed now is not a further discussion of mere social ideologies, but a stern, earnest, applica- tion of practical methods to control the evil, and keep it well in hand in the future. If we appeal to the monogamist for a solution of the problem, he will tell us, pointing to Brighaiu Young and his harem, that polygamy is but another Prostitution in New York. name for prostitution, and inseparable from it. The polygamist, surrounded by his wives, points to them with pride, and tells us coolly that these have been plucked from the fire of prostitution to which the one- w ife system would have consigned them, and that the exclusiveness alone of the latter system has in England and this country driven one woman in sixty to ignore all marriage laws for open prostitution, assignation, or the relation of mistress, and then clinches his argu- ment with the assertion that polygamy is practiced or tolerated by three-fourths of the race. Marriage, says the Eoman Catholic, fresh from the confessional, must be sanctioned by the Church, must be sacramental, and that any other is an adulterous one. The Protestant, backed up by Luther, who mar- ried a nun, and later by Pere Hyacinthe, who recently renounced his monastic vows, in order that he might marry an American woman whose character and sweet face had captured his religion as well as his heart, af- firms that marriage is a purely human and civil insti- tution, requiring only the consent of the parties to legalize it, and to confer legitimacy upon the fruit of it. Brigham Young and the Mormon Elders, supported by the whole Mormon establishment, set up under their own hand and seal, in a territ6ry under the exclusive control of Congress, a system that makes every Mor- mon woman in Utah a prostitute, and were it not for a growl now and then uttered upon the floor of Con- gress against the " Utah curse," Brigham's circle of prostitution would be as safe from attack from any quarter as are the marriage laws of New York. One pious theorist tells us, w r ith tears streaming from his honest eyes, that the American idea of mar- riage, making it a purely civil contract between two Prostitution in New YorTc. 137 persons will in the end lead logically and inevitably to a form of marriage that may be dissolved at any time by the parties that make it, and it is but just to say that his logic is irresistible. Coming down to prostitution as an institution, we find ourselves equally at sea as to theories. One school of moralists insists that the idea of sinfulness, or of disgrace, should be eliminated in our treat- ment, not only of the prostitute herself, but the men who make prostitution possible, that it should be treated as any other social disease, and that those whose bodies have been poisoned by indiscriminate cohabitation, should be admitted to our hospitals upon equal terms. Another set, which comprises the thor- oughly practical or scientific school, insists that pros- titution should be recognized as a legitimate and ne- cessary business or trade, and should forthwith be placed under government espionage and control ; while still another, the most inconsistent and narrow of all, avpws its belief that prostitution in every great city like our own, should be confined by law to a par- ticular quarter, walled in, and allowed to rot itself away in its own filth. It would be pertinent to in- quire who in such, a case should be allowed to keep the keys that would unlock the entrances to this " lep- ers' quarter." Meantime the emeute among the free-lovers and women's rights advocates generally continues, the lat- ter clamoring for the right of indiscriminate sexual association, and the whole brood insisting that chastity will be assured in the absolute equality that is to come from the future assimilation of the sexes, when woman shall no longer continue the slave of the " tyrant " man, and that with the advent of this period, prosti- 133 Prostitution in New York. tution will gather up its rags and its filth and betake itself to some less highly civilized locality, that ob- scene corner of the earth, we suppose, into which stubborn transgressors are to be stowed away by them- selves, to be worked over for the millennium. Con- servative orthodoxy, fully impressed with the charms that have hitherto drawn man toward woman, and which has made him her captive and slave, takes the alarm, and issues its anathemas against the free-lovers with an unction worthy of so holy a cause. Shakerism, fully convinced that the propagation of the human race has gone on about long enough, and far exceeded every reasonable limit as to numbers, and that lewdness is one of the outgrowths of this excess, presents to the world the most extraordinary exhibi- tion of continency, celibacy, and a pure, social state, than has ever before been witnessed. Through the ex- ercise of a self-subjugation, superhuman in its power, to those who do not practice it, the sexes come toge- ther under the same roof, sit at the same table, mingle, in short, in every social way, save that allowed by mar- riage, abstaining absolutely from all passionate gratifi- cation, and living lives as sweet, simple and pure as can be imagined, and coining nearer in their living to the realization of a perfect social state than any of the social ideologists. The vague dreamer, and we have not grown so prac- tical that he has become a myth, is still among us. His body on earth and his brain in the moon, he still lisps to us of that Utopia to come that is to surpass in the perfection of its beauty that of Sir Thomas Moore, that beautiful island teeming with flowers that never faded and fruits that knew no decay, its peaceful people shut out from all contagions, physical or social, Prostitution in New York. 139 — all this, if we will only behave ourselves, and live lives without passion, shall yet, he assures us, be ours. Laugh as we may at these over-sensitive people and their devotions, there is an element of the moral sub- lime in the life and tenets of a sect that have for their object the complete subjection in man of the lower to the higher. It is comforting, looking out from this mass of contradictions in the way of opinions, this chaos of living, in which the nineteenth century is so prolific, to find any considerable number of people standing high above the crowd, picturing to them- selves a social state in which crime and passion shall be unknown, where, amidst a spontaneity that shall render toil unnecessary, man shall yet dwell in sublime simplicity and innocence. An account of these dreams, these social ideologies from Zoroaster down to Ann Lee, would fill volumes. Some of these declare that when man fell from his high estate, nature was in perpetual bloom, and that at his fall barrenness and decay came in its place. The world has run the gauntlet of these ideologies from the New Atlantis of Bacon to the Shakers of New Lebanon, and the Oneida community, and has stamped them as they came as too one-sided for prac- tical adoption. We have discovered, after much trib- ulation through untold centuries, that man is a fear- fully complex animal, capable of the highest and grandest achievements, and of the deepest degrada- tion, a being with powers that render him God-like, and passions that sink him to a level below the brute, and that to improve him, and fit him for the place God intended he should occupy in the universe, a good deal of common sense, and still more of nerve, is needed in the trainer. 140 Prostitution in New York. So much for history, and the social theories it re- cords, nearly all of which have fought the battle of the passions, love, marriage, and the sexes, and in which prostitution has entered as an element, and with what success ? Just this, that the evil to-day is more prevalent than it has ever been, that it is increasing with fearful rapidity, that it stands at this moment among the chief perils of modern civilization, and that society is in almost blissful ignorance, for the want of reliable data, of the amount of disease propagated by this hideous evil. All this we know, and it will not do to fold our hands in face of the facts, and go to sleep and dream of some island to which the human race will some time be removed, purged of all its diseases and ills. It is folly to say that society shall do this or that, with the expectation that the command will be obeyed. Society happens to be so constituted that, like the in- dividuals that comprise it, it has a bad habit of putt- ing off what ought to be done until the particular case with which it has to deal becomes so desperate, that to put it off longer would be suicide or surren- der. If it is expected that society is going to transfer the strumpet to our parlors and our homes, and compel a recognition of her as if she were virtuous, under the name of free-love, society will do no such stupid thing. What will society do then, and how will it do it, seem to be pertinent questions just now. France has solved the problem of prostitution in part, from her own stand-point, and by methods suited to the charac- ter of her government and her people. England is making a laudable effort in the same direction, and in accordance with her own social peculiarities. A series Prostitution in New York. 141 of articles on prostitution in the Westminster Review, written by Dr. Chapman, sums up the case from the English standpoint, and from that of published sta- tistics as well, reviewing also the continental system. Dr. Chapman's results may be briefly summed up as follows : — First — The personnel of prostitutes is replaced every seven years. Second — These women do not, as a rule, die of their riotous living, but are absorbed back into the com- munity. Third — The amount of disease engendered by the illicit relation of the sexes is appalling. This is one of the most serious perils of modern civilization. "While the danger to the women themselves in the matter of longevity, has been absurdly overrated, the damage done to the health of the community by the prevalence of prostitution has scarcely been sus- pected. Fourth — The attempt on the part of government to suppress and limit prostitution by any expedient what- ever, has resulted in disappointment and disaster. At- tempts to regulate it have met with the same fate. The French system, despite the encomiums cast upon it, instead of checking, has had the effect to in- crease the spread of immorality, while as a check to the spread of disease, it has had less than no effect at all. So much for Dr. Chapman and his theory deduced from the English standpoint. The results arrived at by the Doctor, for the most part, are contradicted by well established data gathered from other fields of in- formation. However true it may be in England, that prostitutes, as a rule, are absorbed back into the com 142 Prostitution in New York. munity, it is not true of the same class in this coun- try. Our own statistics on this point are not abund- ant, but sufficiently so to show beyond a doubt that the number of those who find their way back into society is so small as to form the exception and not the rule. It is a well ascertained fact, here in this city, that where the life is once fully entered upon, all desire even, to return to a life of virtue ceases. It may be that the sturdy brute-force developed by beef and beer in the English prostitute, enables her to absorb venereal and all other poisons engendered by filthy living, and still leave her in a condition to be " absorbed back into the community," without en- dangering its health. With us her career as a pros- titute ended, there is so little life or vitality left in her, that her absorption in any direction is a matter of the smallest possible consequence, for at best she is but a wreck, her death, as a certain result of her sin, being but a question of time. The ability of the English physical constitution to resist the ravages of disease is seen in the seven years' replacement theory of Dr. Chapman. With us four years comes nearer the average, but then we live a good deal faster, as a general thing, than our English cousins, and those among us who live lives of shame form no exception to the general rule. Dr. Chapman's statement that, appalling as it is, the amount of disease engendered by the illicit rela- tion of the sexes is scarcely suspected, is forcibly made, and true to the letter. The disease being a pri- vate one, and treated in the most private way, re- mains a secret between the physician and patient, but if the number of patients that any city physician treats for venereal disease could be exactly ascertained, 4 Prostitution in New Yorh. 143 during any given year, the fact would be anything but a pleasant one. It is safe to say that the whole number treated in this city annually for venereal dis- ease, and the ills that flow directly from the poison, would exceed twenty-five thousand. If this fact alone is not sufficient to rouse public attention to the importance of checking this frightful exhibit, by some well digested attempt to regulate the evil, it would seem that with us, at least, this blight has become chronic, and hence incurable, and so the sooner we establish the " lepers' quarter " the better ; at all events, a community that is confessedly so low in the scale of civilization that it refuses to resist, by all the means in its power, the damage constantly done to itself by the prevalence of prostitution, deserves to suffer the consequences as they come. Dr. Chapman's assertion that all attempts to regu- late and limit prostitution by any expedient whatever, has resulted in disaster, if correct, calls for the most serious consideration. First, as to its accuracy, and per contra. In France, where the regulation system has under- gone the most thorough tests that have been made, the published results contradict in toto the statement he publishes. A recent report from the bureau that has charge of the bagnios of Paris, gives the most favorable results in favor of the regulation system. The facts gathered from carefully prepared tabular statements, show that not only has the amount of prostitution diminished, but that the results in the way of checking the spread of the disease have been most gratifying. Pierson's reports from the same bureau confirm the last published statement, and as there is no valid reason to suppose that these have not beeu 144 Prostitution in J\ r cw Yo?*k. made in good faith, and without any desire to make a case in favor of the displacement theory, the reports must 6tand as the very latest reliable information on the subject, Dr. Chapman to the contrary notwithstand- ing. It would be strange indeed if Dr. Chapman, or any other Englishman, writing upon the results of a French experiment in any department of government, could review, with anything like justice, such experiment. It is a peculiarity of the English mind to go counter to any theory advanced by a Frenchman, and in this case the national prejudice has led a man of ability to contradict tabular statements with a general denial unsupported by a single tact. So far as the French case stands, Dr. Chapman is out of court. But, on the other hand, let us admit the Doctor's statement to be true, then it follows that society has at least one ill for w T hich no remedy has as yet been found on this side of the Atlantic, and no attempt has been made, save in a single instance, to check the evil of prostitution by regulation or any other means, a fact that does not speak well for American humanity. Even here in this city, where an opportunity is offered for such an experiment as was never witnessed before, absolutely nothing has been done in this regard. — While charities, operated by our best men and wo- men, and which have lavished upon them — squandered upon them — untold sums yearly, multiply at a rate explainable only upon the theory that a spirit of rival- ry has been substituted for that of charity, absolutely nothing has been done to check an evil that has be- come so offensive that it poisons the very air we breathe. Our destitute orphans, foundlings, paupers, together l J ro titation in New York. 145 . with certain millionaire criminals, are cared for with a public tenderness that would be touching in its hu- manity, were it not that facts sometimes leak out in connection with some of these noted charities that lead incredulous people to doubt if there exists, after all, such an element in the community as charity. Her ever outstretched hand in this city, feels its way into every dark corner save one, with a zeal marvelous to witness. Of the ten thousand illegitimate waifs born on the island every year, it is safe to say that there are ten thousand dear, good, pious women, each ready to catch up one of these children of shame,' and bear it away in triumph to some sweet, luxurious retreat, pro- vided by charity for its reception, where it may be clothed in purple and fine linen, pampered with delica- cies, and nurtured and educated at charity's expense. Ask one of those charitable ones to go with you to the slums where such a thing as virtue or innocence is unknown*, where reeking basements distil odors that savor of concentrated poison ; where haggard, with- ered, hideous faces meet you at every step, each plead- ing with mute, but irresistible eloquence for help, and the lady thus appealed to will lift her head high in air, place her vinaigrette close to both nostrils, and whisper in your ear — "never!" The woman that sells her virtue should be an out- cast forever. " Away With her, she is unclean." It 1 is believed by those who have seen this evil face to face, and who know well the claims these creatures have upon our sympathy and pity, that a tithe only of the huge sums wasted annually in the name of charity, w T ould, if bestowed in this direction, be pro- ductive of an amount of good incalculable. Finally, the main question with which the public .116 Prostitution in New York. has to deal is, shall this rapidly growing evil be regu- lated by the state? It must be admitted in this con- nection, that there are a large number of well-meaning, but unthinking people in almost every community, who honestly believe that the better way is to allow evils like drunkenness and prostitution to die out of themselves, to work their own cure. No graver mis- take conld be made than to settle down upon such a policy. The difficulty is, that neither will die out so long as human passions and appetites exist. "Were the same rule to be carried out as a general principle to be applied to the power of the state to regulate any evil whatever resulting from the passions, cupidity, or ra- pacity of the individual, or any number of individuals, society would speedily be left without any protection whatever. If government means anything, it implies the power which the people themselves confer upon it, to regulate every public evil the control of which is demanded by the public weal. Hence, drunken- ness, prostitution, adulteration of food, crimes of every grade, in short, against the individual or the state, be- come proper subjects of regulation by the state, and this is all there is of it so far as the argument is con- cerned. To permit an evil like that of prostitution to flourish in our midst unchecked, under the supposition that the state has no business to meddle with such questions as that of its right or power to regulate it is not alone absurd, it is in itself a crime, and would be so considered if the state could be reached as can the individual. The fact that such an opinion prevails, is another melancholy proof of the growing contempt for law that is rife among us, an evil in itself, the cause of which may be fairly shared between the people them- Prostitution in JVevi York. U7 selves and the corrupt men they permit to legislate for and govern them. In Europe they manage these matters better. We shall so manage them when we are driven to it by the same influence that impels it, and have a more closely packed population. As we grow older and more sensible, the truth will at last begin to dawn upon us that government is, or should be, a machine whose chief and sole business it is to be as nearly per- fect a machine as human necessity added to human intelligence can make it, a machine to regulate the temporal affairs of those under it down to the minut- est detail demanding fur the public good legislative interference or control. What, says the stickler for " God in the Constitution," are morals to have no place in our system of government ? By all means, and their appropriate place in the hearts of the people who impart their tone to the government they make. An increase of individual morality will give us a healthy public morality, and these reacting on each other will give us in the end a government of the same character. Despite the loose, insincere gabble about reform, of which we hear so much, and witness so little, the age is an intensely self-seeking and sorded one. Even the benevolence and philanthropy of which we boast, is found, on inspection, much of it to be but skin deep. It bellows itself hoarse on the platform when the dem- agogue begs for office, but you hear nothing of it after the official boon he begs is granted. Show me a people possessing a nice sense of individual honor, and that quality will find its way into the legislative hall. Morality, and a high sense of public duty, must be looked for first in the community, and then us Prostitution in New York. in the men who represent it. The machine that exe cutes the people's will will be perfect in proportion a? this quality is found in those who construct it. AVhen a man thinks only of saving his own soul, he thinks or cares very little about the salvation of others. It is precisely thus with the public, as it stands related to the government. If its tone is low and weak, the men it elects to office will be corrupt and dishonest. A moral influence cannot be exerted by a people so destitute of moral sensibility that they go on year after year in electing to the highest places in the gift of the people the slimiest demagogues that can be found, until it has come to pass with us in this city, and throughout the country as well, that the government desired by really good men, is a consummation des- paired of. How can crime be arrested, and its evil effects coun- teracted, by law makers who are themselves criminals of the worst sort ? Of what use are a police, boards of health, charities, courts of justice, any government at all, in short, if it is to be administered by scound- rels colluding with scoundrels to destroy its influence for good, and who coddle the villain they are set to watch ? Give us a good firm toning up of the sense of pub- lic justice among the people, and civil service, muni- cipal and all other reforms, so much needed just at this time, will be forthcoming. When that day ar- rives, it will not be difficult to regulate the evil of prostitution, or any other public or social evil, to an extent that is now utterly impossible. The results can never come so long as the present declension in public virtue continues. The age demands, not a new moral- ity, but a morality that shall comprehend a full appre- Prostitution in New York. 149 elation of human duty and responsibility, as these stand related to government and the men who preside over it, and when our people can so far forget their theories, their hypocritical babbling about reform, their overweening self-estimation, their mad haste to get rich, and can get down to the business of looking after the public as well as individual needs, we shall cease trying to buy an easy way to heaven with the money filched from the public purse, or from over- reaching in any direction. CHAPTER XVIII. PRIVATE LYING-IN HOSPITALS. On any morning of the week the readers of the N. Y. Herald will find among its numerous advertise- ments something like the following : — "Board. — Ladies expecting to be confined, can procure plea- sant rooms, with careful attention, at No. 220 W. 27th Street. The above advertisement, furnishes the key that un- locks the secrets of three of the most diabolical trades that flourish in this city, to wit : Private lying-in hos- pitals, abortion hospitals, and that most recent outrage upon our civilization, the den of the " baby-farmer." The first we shall make the subject of this chapter, the next will give an account of "baby-farming," as witnessed by ourselves. Of the too well known trade of the abortionist, we shall have occasion to speak in a general way as we proceed. The Restells and Rosenzweigs, et id omne genus, have been allowed carte blanche for all time in their business of infant slaughter. The disgusting, horrible details, even, have not yet proved sufficiently sickening to nauseate the public stomach, and so each of the numerous physicians in this city, whose sole business it is to murder not alone children, but the miserable mothers who refuse to bear them in the natural way, ply their trade without molestation. When a crime like that of the Nathan murder is com- Prostitution in New York. 151 mitted, not a man is sent on the track of the murderer who does not strain every nerve within him to discover if possible and arrest the perpetrator, and not unfre- quently continuing the search for years, when the re- ward for his arrest happens to be a generous one. This is just as it should be, as far as it goes, for nothing is more commendable in a public officer than zeal in the discharge of his duties ; but why, in the face of this most gratifying exhibition of promptness and energy, are the murderers of two thousand five hundred chil- dren annually in this city allowed to go unpunished, without not the slightest effort being made to arrest a single one of them even ? The question is certainly a pertinent one, and we venture meekly to call upon the Police, the Board of Health, and the State commission- ers of charities, to give the public an intelligent an- swer. But our present business is not with the Eestells, or the unholy brood of which she is the mother, but with that class of unfortunate women who escape her clutches, but who bring up at last in the private lying- in hospital. Of these in this city there are about thirty in successful operation. Their business is to attend, during confinement, young women who get into trouble, and who, as we have hinted, manage to get through without the help of the abortionist. These unfortunates, many of them mere children, who have been ruined by some scoundrel older in years and crime, come here from all parts of the country. Xow and then the local paper contains a single paragraph about the " mysterious disappearance of a young girl," the sequel to which generally is that she has been sent away by her lover to be confined at one of these modern lying-in conveniences. So common have these 152 Prostitution in New York. institutions become of late, and so well known are they, that the very knowledge of their existence has tended to the spread of private prostitution. The cer- tainty of escape from detection through the agency of one of these hells is dwelt upon in advance of their fall, and the fall hence is all the more sure and speedy in consequence. When once her ruin is accomplished, the victim busies herself, if she be poor, in securing the means to get away to New York, for the purpose of confinement in the first place, and if the offspring be born alive, to have it sold for adoption if possible ; but failing in that, to have it fall into the " hanging basket " of the Foundling Hospital, or strangled or starved by the baby-farmer, and its remains deposited in the ash- barrel of that latest refinement of modern civilization. For the blessed privilege of lying-in at one of these filthy dens, at the close of gestation, the girl about to become a mother pays fifteen dollars per week for board and medical services and nursing through con- finement. These houses, dignified with the name of hospital, are of the ordinary sort, fitted up with the cheapest furniture, a single room containing several beds, so that anything like privacy or decency is out of the question. There is no need of secrecy now, and the patients, sharing a common misery, and a common degradation, huddle together in silence, waiting ner- vously the arrival of an event that the true mother hails as the most critical, and yet the most tender and interesting in her whole life, the advent of the first fruit of a virtuous marriage. Alas, how different such approach on the part of these hospital patients. Many of them poor, far from home and friends, shorn of all Prostitution in New York. 153 human sympathy and love, the qualities needed above all others to assuage the pangs of maternity, lie for weeks, sometimes months, brooding over the tirst false step that can never be retraced. Could a chapter be written by human pen, that could fitly portray the mute agony, the soul-destroying remorse, the unspeak- able anguish of a period so utterly desolate, so utterly hopeless, with not a ray of light even to kindle it into momentary brightness, how eagerly would it be read, and how vividly remembered ! So closely are these poor creatures packed away in these hospitals, that a single house is often made to accommodate thirty patients, the luxury of a single apartment being furnished at an extra, and altogether extortionate price. "What wonder that these creatures, some of whom have fled from comfortable homes, should prefer after all, the darkest, foulest corner on earth in which to hide the secret of their shame. If the keeper of the house has a difficult case, and a death is likely to result ; a regular physician is sent for. A certificate of death is all that is needed to put matters straight, allay suspicion, and insure a quiet interment. Of course this regular doctor grants such certificate only upon the most indubitable evidence that such death has resulted from natural causes. No " squeal- ing " is indulged here, save in the event of a falling- out with the physician. Should this regular and emi- nently respectable practitioner of the healing science, or art — what it really is escapes us for the moment — > fail to get his fee, however, the ash-barrels of the hospital are inspected forthwith, and a coroner called in to sit upon — the ashes. After this the fee comes without turning an extra screw in this dirty business. It is stated as a well known fact, that the infamous Prostitution in New YorJc. Madam Restell does not attend personally one in a hundred of the abortions she procures. Many of these patients are married women of supposed respecta- bility, residing in the city, and who of course employ a family physician, but who, desiring.no further in- crease of family, repair, when such increase seems inevitable, to the woman above all others on this western continent who out-Herods Herod himself in her wholesale and undisturbed " slaughter of the innocents." The modus operandi of this not very rare bit of scientific murder can be briefly described as follows : A probe of silver concealed in the delicately-formed hand of this modern slayer of the first unborn, is in- serted by stealth into the womb of the victim ; the sack enclosing the foetus being thus punctured, no human skill can prevent the premature birth. With a graceful wave of the hand, after the customary fee of two hundred dollars has been paid, Madame dis- misses her patient with the significant remark, that within three or four days she will need the atten- tions of her family physician. The patient finds it easy to invent some story about an " accident or fall," and her family physician is easily made to believe her story. If she comes through safely, all is well, and even if she dies, the certificate of the regular physician secures a quiet interment. This will explain why we never learn of Madam Restell losing patients. She turns them all over to the regular physician, who for a fee is discreet enough to keep quiet. What business, pray, has he to meddle with family secrets ? So much for the boasted honor of the medical pro- fession. Others of her patients are young unmarried girls, who undergo this ordeal to hide their shame. Prostitution in New York. 155 Those that the abortionists loose find their way into the private lying-in hospitals. The profits, coining down to figures, of these human slaughter-houses, form the bond of union between all the partners in this business. Of the thirty-six thou- sand births in this city annually, eight thousand are illegitimate ; and six thousand of these are born in the lying-in hospitals. The average lying-in time of each inmate is about five weeks, or seventy-five dollars for the whole time. This sum, multiplied by the whole number, foots up the business for each year at four hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the penalty which lust pays for its crimes committed in one direction only. The facts that have recently come to light through a slight misunderstanding between one of the keep- ers of these dens and a " regular physician," are not only startling in themselves, but for another rea- son. We have in this city a Police Department, a Board of Health, a Bureau of Vital Statistics, a Kegis- ter of Deaths and Burials, Coroners, and several Found- ling Hospitals, etc., etc., the members and officers of which have been for years in possession of all the facts bearing on this department of crime ; officials whose business it is to keep watch of, and to report to the proper authorities every infringement of the laws in relation to abortions, malpractice, and the abuses that result from these practices. Why is it that until recently there has been no arrests, no " squealing" on the part of any of these public officials, including the State Board of Charities and Corrections ? Are these boards and their subordinates in collusion with the criminals, who have reduced infanticide to a science, and who fatten on the gains filched from their unlucky victims 2 15G Prostitution in New York* What have the hundreds of regular physicians, cog- nizant of this whole dirty business, been doing during this long and undisturbed reign of these abortion Bor- gias ? Are they, too, to be held guiltless, with Dr. Harris, of the Bureau of Vital Statistics, and the whole Health Board at their back ? What secret influence was it that induced Coroner Woltman to think he had no right to arrest the woman Kilbride in West Twenty-sixth street, when he knew she was the slayer of the infant boy Charles Corey ? Is it possible that a coroner, who has been a member of the state legisla- ture, does not know that murder, in this misgoverned commonwealth even, is an indictable offence, and that there was no need of his running after the District Attorney to ascertain whether this woman could be arrested. It was his business to report the case at the proper place, and to see to it, moreover, that the arrest was made. Why, too, was the Coroner so zealous in that particular case, and why has he been so reticent in all the others that must perforce have fallen under his eye ? What oyster could be more dumb than this official has been during his whole term ? The simple, naked truth, as shown by recent developments in these cases is, that crimes that would turn the moral stomach of a Hottentot, or that of a South-Sea-Island-eating cannibal, are daily committed in a department in this city, under the exclusive control of the Board of Health, and which are notorious among all the officials that do business with the Board. For what are these officials paid princely salaries ? Is it not to discover and punish criminals like those who debauch the public morals and the public health at the same time by their practices ? It costs ten millions annually to pay the expenses of the criminal branch alone of our city gov- Prostitution in New York. 157 eminent, and twenty-seven millions will scarcely foot all the bills. This sum, enormous as it is, is wrung from the pockets of our over-burdened tax payers. What should the people of this city get in return for this lavish expenditure? The answer is, a government bo perfect in its machinery that the escape from justice of the political- criminal would be an utter impossi- bility. What do we get instead ? A system under which we revel from one year's end to another in an absolute carnival of crime. From the highwayman and murderer on our streets down to the perpetrator of the smallest misdemeanor, not one of them who possesses money or influential friends, but can either go entirely unwhipped of justice, or delay its coming for so long a period, that its moral effect is destroyed when it comes. Bound to the Juggernaut of a horde of rapacious officials, drawn together by mutual ties, in order that they may per- petuate their own succession to the places they fill, they enrich themselves at the expense of the people, denying to their masters and supporters even, the poor boon of that protection which is the chief object of all good government. It is known, moreover, to be true, that many of these officials, not content with their share of the public plunder, collude with scoundrels whom it is their business to bring to punishment, and such collusion adds largely to their official income. If the enormities constantly committed within these lying-in hospitals shall be finally brought to light, and their perpetrators punished, it will not be through any desire for their punishment on the part of those officials, but as a result of a healthier public tone, induced by a knowl- edge of the facts themselves. 153 Prostitution in New York. It is a matter of some moment to enquire whether New York furnishes all the victims offered up annu- ally within her borders upon these lying-in altars of lust. Of course no accurate figures are at hand. Not even its efficient Board of Health, its Coroner rummag* ing through ash barrels to find specimens of a species that seems likely to become extinct under his sitting; the Yital Statistic Bureau, nor any other person or bureau, has a care as to New York's share in this hideous business. A stray fact or out-of-the-way cir- cumstance comes to relieve her of a portion of the responsibility of the crimes imputed to her. Lewdness is not here with us an exclusive inherit- ance, though those who are guilty of it elsewhere find the dark corners of the metropolis a convenient place in which to hide the evidences of their own shame ; and it is a known fact, that hundreds of young women come here every year to be relieved of their unwel- come offspring, who do not live a hundred miles away. The cities lying on both banks of the Hudson fur- nish as many victims in proportion to population as does New York herself, and this, too, in spite of the fact that all great cities like this, are in a very large sense a receptacle into which settles, unobserved, the moral filth engendered in its suburbs, so that when our worse than no municipal government is taken into the account, and the slight effort made by us as a people to know the extent of our own shortcomings, the wonder is that we are as clean as we are. A breath- ing place for all that is vile at home and abroad, the great wonder seems to be that we are not utterly beyond the hope or possibility of reform, if indeed we are not and shall continue to be so long as we permit Prostitution in New York. 159 politic.il charlatans and scoundrels of every grade to fleece and misgovern us. It is enough to bear quietly our own burdens, but we manage to bear with meekness those of our neighbors as well, as the following incident will serve to show : Coming down from Albany a few days after the adjournment of the last legislature, we stopped as usual for luncheon at the famous Johnson restaurant at Poughkeepsie. A friend whom I had long known as a merchant in that city came on board when we left, and not having met him for a long time, we took a seat together, and chatted pleasantly all the way down to the city. At one of the stations below Pough- keepsie, I think it was at "New Hamburgh, a creature bearing the semblance of a man, but possessing as repulsive a face as I have ever seen, entered the cars. I cannot now recall, in all my experience among the worst criminals of this and other cities, a countenance so utterly destitute of a single human quality, or one so suggestive of all that is beastly and villainous. The once black, but now long, grizzled hair, the obese form, the blood-shot, baggy eye, and the unsteady knock-kneed shuffle of this monster, which I knew him to be the moment my eye closed on him, led me to ask of my companion his name and whereabouts as well as that of the shy, sad-looking girl of fourteen or fifteen years who took a seat beside him. A glance at the twain recalled boyhood visions of " Beauty and the Beast." " That man," said my friend, " is the notorious Dr. , of our city, and it is perhaps just to say of him, that a greater, or dirtier villain never escaped hanging than he. As an abor- tionist, a seducer of women, girls, and even children, he is without a rival among us. 160 Prostitution in New York. If the half that is reported of him be true, and the beastliness of his crimes is such that it could not be described in terms fit for human ears, even New York city does not furnish his equal. "With us, he is a social and professional outcast, but his victims are numbered by the score. The timid, sad-eyed creature, sitting beside this ogre, is some unprotected child he has picked up, and compelled to live with him as his wife. Up to this time he has escaped punishment, though several times arrested, but that such a brute is allowed to walk our streets, is due solely to the fact that crimes like his are extremely difficult of detection, and yet, he continued, this professional preyer upon innocence, though ignored, by any decent member of the profes- sion he disgraces, and who, as I said, is in all respects an outlaw, manages to thrive in a city noted through- out the country for its wealth and social culture. "The secret records of his filthy establishment in the suburbs, could they be unearthed, would show that lewdness with us is no uncommon thing, and that our city and county furnishes its full share of victims sent away to New York to be treated. A young woman of previous good character and standing, will now and then drop out of sight for a time, and then come back to us with the appearance of one who has been overtaken by some sudden and dangerous illness. The knowing ones lift their eyebrows, and smile sus- piciously, but the case among her intimate friends is well understood. This brute you see there, or some of your city doctors, has done the business for her." On arriving in New York my friend and I parted, and the Doctor, followed by his companion, took a Fourth Avenue car, and I saw nothing more of them, Prostitution in New York. 161 though the face of the man was indelibly stamped upon my memory. Early one morning, about a month afterward, I had occasion to call at the office of the Board of Charities and Corrections, and as I passed through the waiting- room, a woman closely veiled attracted my attention. A moment after the subordinate she wished to see came in, and as she addressed him, I recognized the features of the girl whom I had seen in company with the Poughkeepsie doctor. Her face was one in which an expression of extreme amiability was blended with that of a nature unsuspecting and easily led astray, and which explained at a glance how easily wrought had been her fall from virtue and innocence. Being informed that she must wait her turn before stating her case, as there were others before her, I ventured to speak to her, and recalled the incident on the cars. She was very communicative, and I allowed her to tell her story almost without interruption. She was sixteen years old, a native of Poughkeepsie, where she had lived until going to Glenham to reside two years before. She had worked in the mills at the latter place until sent for by an aunt living near Carmel, in Putnam County, who offered her a temporary home. Being an orphan, and without means, she accepted the proffered home, and while there, made the acquaint- ance of a farmer in the same neighborhood, a married man, and the father of a large family of chil- dren. The rest is easily told. She had been induced by this man to leave her aunt and become a servant in his house, and in a short time he accomplished her ruin. Of course some means had to be devised to get rid of her, and if possible, the coming evidence of her shame \ 162 Prostitution in JS\w York. and having had the Poughkeepsie doctor's help in another similar case, the two repaired to him for assistance in this. An effort to procure an abortion was not successful, and the poor girl, after suffering untold tortures, became so alarmed, that she refused to remain in the hands of the doctor. It was then thought best to let things take their natural course, and so a place was provided by her paramour at a private lying-in hospi- tal in this city. Two weeks' board was paid, with a promise that if more were needed, it would be forth- coming. Needing more funds, she wrote to her se- ducer, but he neither came to see her nor did he send her the promised means to help her through her diffi- culties. On the morning mentioned, the woman- keeper of the hospital turned her into the street with- out a moment's warning, and she had come to beg her way of the Charity Commissioners, into one of the lying-in hospitals of the city. Her account of the place she had left was straight- forward, and doubtless true in every particular, as she seemed to be one who had fallen by the way, not from native viciousness, but in consequence of her youth and want of protection against the wiles of the villain, who should have shielded her against wrong, instead of wronging her so cruelly himself. Her experience at the hospital had been bitter in the extreme. She had occupied a small room, in which three besides herself were expecting to be con- fined. The room and beds were filthy beyond descrip- tion, the board execrable. The woman who kept the place got her money in advance, and then literally starved them by offering them food that no human stomach could retain. Being utterly destitute, and Prostitution in Xew York. 163 without friends, she was sent to be cared for at one of the hospitals provided by the city for that purpose. We cite this case as one of hundreds of similar ones that come pouring in from the cities on the Hudson and towns contiguous, just to show that New York, bad as she is, owes much of her wickedness, and thousands of the criminals found in her dark places, to the country generally, but especially to her suburbs. Intelligent people from these suburban towns will tell us that since the war, private prostitution, almost un- known before it, is now so common a circumstance, as to render it impossible to predict what is to be the effect upon our rural population. While the city of Poughkeepsie, with its twenty-two thousand people, boasts not a single public house of prostitution, private lewdness is by no means uncom- mon, and the same may be said of every large town on the Hudson. When girls, or women, who have hitherto been classed among respectable people, get in trouble, they run down here for a visit, just as a ship puts in for repairs, and when matters are fixed up to her satisfaction, she takes her place in her accustomed circle, but New York pays the penalty of her mis- deeds. With the lewd sins of the whole country round about us laid at our door, and to our charge, what wonder that we should be looked down at as the modern Sodom, to say nothing of the Gomorrah, of the Western World ? CHAPTER XIX. "BABY FARMING." — WHOLESALE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS. The world yields the palm to us as a people in the matter of inventive genius. Our needs have been so pressing, and our power to supply them so limited, that the practical genius of the nation has been driven in the direction of inventions, and with results that have not been surpassed by any people of any period. It is generally supposed that of those high qualities which produce in their intensest activity the effect we name civilization, we possess our full share, and that we have used them to good purpese. We look back to the dark ages when the light of civilization first dawned, with a high consciousness of honest pride, thanking God that we are not as other men, and es- pecially like these poor publicans and sinners who, un- fortunately for themselves, lie behind us in the order of time, and who are now happily consigned to that shadowy realm from whose bourne no chivalrous knight-errant even, will ever return. When we want to air our piety or our morality, or wish to build to ourselves monuments that shall speak to coming ages of the amplitude of our charity and humanity, we turn back the pages of history until the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition appear, or further back to the reigns of the Roman tyrants, and then point the moral and adorn the tale that history teaches * Prostitution in New York. 165 with an exaltation of self-estimation that lulls to rest any lurking suspicion that we have not, after all, reached that condition of saintliness that renders us fit subjects for immediate translation to another and a brighter sphere. Should we desire to heighten the contrast by a few vivid touches, we recall the days of the auto dafe, the rack and the thumb-screw, the red hot pincers, the stocks, the blazing faggot, and all the other gentle and tender arguments employed by the promoters of the civilization of that period in the past, to squeeze the masses into a condition that was thought to be indispensible to fit them for the recep- tion of the true notion of the liberality, the exclusive inheritance of that intensely liberal age. Could we by any possibility of research, get far enough back into the musty records of the past, far beyond the period of the building of the " Tower," or the Catacombs, for example ; or, wandering still fur- ther among the tangled underbrush of extinct civiliza- tions, should, in some remote corner, find the ruins of a receptacle in which infants from the length of a span up to two years' existence, were systematically starved, what a burst of indignation would well up from our tender, honest hearts ; what rivers of tears would flow down our burning cheeks at such an evidence of hea thenish cruelty, and how gladly would each of us, were it possible, seize a whip of scorpions and insist upon going straight back into the tombs of past ages to chastise the ghosts, if nothing more tangible could be found, of these cruel monsters. All this, gentle reader of the last half of the nine- teenth, century, is unnecessary. We have among us, right here at our own doors, to-day, in this home of enterprise, and of progress, the very thing we ICO Prostitution in New York. have been exploring the past to find, but without avail, for the reason that, bad as were the nations of anti- tiquity, they still had left in them the maternal in- stinct, a quality once supposed to be native to woman, but which, alas ! seems to have been relegated to the species that Darwin has elevated to the place of hu- manity. " Baby farming," in plain English, baby destruc- tion, by that gentlest of all remedies known as starva- tion, is the exclusive inheritance of the present age. We seem to have no record of it before, and we tear- fully set it down to our own credit as one of the latest refinements of modern social economy. Even now, but for the reporters of the daily press in this city, a body of intelligent, faithful, and inde- fatigable chroniclers, whose labors in season and out of season have as yet brought them no adequate meed of appreciation or pecuniary reward, the public would still have known little or nothing of an institu- tion in our midst that places the climax of disgrace upon our boasted humanity ; nevertheless, here is the measure to be applied to ourselves, and being here, let us get a thorough look at it, and try honestly to profit in all needful ways by the lesson it teaches. Of course, respectable lewdness, or more accurately speaking, the lewdness practiced by women and girls of previous good character, is at the bottom of this " baby farming " business. So much the worse. If dignified respectability, sugared over w T ith its own ftxclusiveness, can perpetrate a crime so horrible as that of starving its own offspring, or ordering them to be starved, preferring this mode of secrecy to a public announcement of their own shame, it would seem that those occupying a lower social grade, but Prostitution in New York. 167 who are guilty of the same crime, should be dealt with somewhat tenderly until these high-toned ones are brought down to the common level. When dig- nity gets down into the dirt, there is no excuse for the folly, and it will not do, as it rises, penitential, from the pains and throes of maternity to look solemn, take out its well filled or scautily filled, purse, as the case may be, and order the " new comer" to be disposed of in that most modern, but not altogether human mode known as " marasmus." Even the civilization of the nineteenth century can stand a pretty heavy run on its conscience, but it is extremely doubtful if it can go into the business of starving by wholesale even, children who are unfortunate enough to have been born out of wedlock, and if a speedy end does not come to this business here in New York, then digni- fied respectability, to use an American term, must get on a back seat. It seems odd that an age which takes to itself the credit of special efforts toward the elevation of the race into a broader and higher sphere of cultivation than it has hitherto reached, should look with compla- cency upon a crime like this, yet such is actually the case. There was a time when every pure woman in the country shrunk with horror at the bare mention of infanticide. That time has passed, thanks to our artificial, " fast" methods of living. Infanticide now is not only winked at as a clear ruse to get rid of the cares of a household or family, but the starving of those little unwelcome evidences of passion, comes as a natural sequence to the original sin. The Bureau of Yital Statistics in charge of Dr. Harris, shows that of the thirty-four thousand chil- dren born annually in this city, eight thousand are un- 168 Prostitution in JVew YorTc, accounted for in accordance with the provisions and regulations of the Health Board. Two thousand five hundred of these are illegitimate, and about three thousand are abandoned or ordered to be got rid of by any means known to the modern art of infant destruc- tion. Twenty-five hundred are adopted or sold at twenty-five dollars per capita, a sum a trifle more re- munerative to their owners than that which calves bring to theirs in our markets. Those that fall (we mean the human babies) into the hands of the baby farming mid-wife, the modern butcher of our surplus infant population, never give their mothers, fathers, or anybody else, not even Coroner "Woltman, any trouble. When the fingers of one of these baby farmers close on a baby subject, one of two things happens, a sale of the waif to pay expenses, or a " case," in the ex- pressive language of the regular physician, " of ma- rasmus," followed by a burial permit. This latest de- vice is the final cover that places the whole dirty transaction, sub rosa and all is smoothed over for an- other subject. Thus the little waifs go under one after another on their journey to the Golgotha that awaits them, while their parents, respectable and otherwise, put on their best clothes, and their most unexceptiona- ble manners, and with heads high in air, take their places in the circles that missed them for a brief pe- riod, during which they were closeted with the baby farmer, but which gladly welcomed them on their re- turn. Ah ! how marvelous are some of the results of mod- ern civilization. Could Herod, we forget whether it was the tetrarch or the other Herod, come to us from his papyri wrappings in the mummy pit that enfolds him, how amazed and delighted would he be Prostitution in New York. 169 at the improved methods employed in these inventive days, to rid the world of superfluous offspring. Baby farming, as carried on in this city, is as yet emphatically an infant institution, and we humbly suggest to our worthy and most puissant State Board of Charities and Corrections, that here is a public or private infant, they may call it what they will, that sadly needs correction. If the half be true that is affirmed of it, this infant threatens total annihilation to every child, male or female, that is found without mother or father. Our astute Board will see that if this infant is allowed to go on without check, the taking of the census hereafter will be, so far as the human figures are concerned, a work of supereroga- tion. Thus far the business seems to have been divided between the midwife and the regular farmer. The former assists in bringing the baby to light, and is usually the keeper of a private lying-in hospital. If not sold at once, or if the child be sickly, and hence unsalable, it is passed over by the mid-wife to the farmer whose business it is to see that the baby shall give no trouble to its parents. The business is not a complicated one, and when once attempted on the part of the authorities, after the indefatigable reporters had worked up the case, the details of it were soon ascertained, and now, the daily press of the city having taken the initial in ferreting out this most gross and disgraceful abuse, it is to be hoped our wor- thy and well paid officials will put a stop to the busi- ness. There is certainly not the slightest reason why they should not, as there is no promise of pecuniary reward from collusion with a set of poverty stricken criminals. 170 Prostitution in New Fork. This whole villainous business in our city results from two causes — poverty and crime. A mother overburdened with work, and the cares of a rapidly increasing family, and the very poor seem to be the only mothers among us who do not resort to unnatural means to prevent or check such increase, pass their infants over to the care of the baby farmer or the foundling hospital. The illegitimate make up the balance, and under the basket system, as adopted by the foundling hospitals, any person could have an infant without incurring any responsibility. The little waifs would be carried in each morning, and no ques- tions, of course, asked. The system, however human, is a bad one, as it is in reality a bounty paid to crime. These baskets are supplied chiefly, it is supposed, by that class of moth- ers who retain some affection for the children they bear, and who comfort themselves with the assurance that " the baby will be well taken care of." It is not to be wondered at that this crime should flourish when the city covers its eyes and holds out both hands and baskets at the same time for the recep- tion of these children of passion. A decent regard for the public purse, to say nothing of the public morals, should lead our Health Board and Charity Board to adopt a plan of reception that would compel the parents of these children to come forward and prove their inability to take care of them, and to see to it, moreover, that the parents of illegiti- mates should not be relieved of all responsibility in a pecuniary way for the care of their infants. The developments recently made in this business through an accidental arrest, show a looseness and in- difference in its management, not to say ignorance, Prostitution in New York. 171 that are altogether reprehensible, and for which there is not the shadow of an excuse. It appears that for years the practice, a knowledge of which lias filled the public mind with indignation, has been carried on under the very noses of the Health and Charity Boards, and without the slightest efforts from either to punish delinquents, or to reduce the care of aban- doned and illegitimate children to something like an intelligent system. Dr. Harris, of the Yital Statistics Bureau, tells us, now that the horrible secrets of this business are in the public ear, that " he fears that by far the greater number of deaths from baby farming were from neg- lect, criminal or otherwise, and that some of these baby farmers ought to be arrested /" It is consoling to know that the fears of this eminently conscientious and care- ful public servant have been at last aroused. What, let us meekly ask, is the cause of the fears of the good Doctor? Have the quills of the reporters, and the vigilance of the press proved more than a match for the stolid indifference of the Doctor and the Board, in which he is a subordinate ? Why, during all these years of baby farming, these years of criminal neg- lect, has absolutely nothing been done to punish the guilty ones ? In London and in Paris these matters are looked after with a care as to supervision and statistics, that it would be well for this easy-going official to under- stand. Does he not know that the hanging of baskets dangling from the windows of foundling hos- pitals, is a hanging, if not a standing, invitation to lewdness and illegitimacy, and the public want to know the extent of this enormity through well arrang- ed and carefully prepared statistics, pointing out the 172 Prostitution in New York. sources and where rests the responsibility of these crimes, and it is to be hoped that he will make use of the information that has come to him without solicita- tion, by doing all that within him lies to induce the Board that employs him, and whose business it seems to be to look after it, to see to it that some of these murderers be brought to justice in the first place, and that such a register of all the facts in connection with the whole business be made as will render his bureau a source of intelligent and reliable information, and not a sinecure for a careless and indifferent official. If it shall appear, after all developments in this di- rection, that the public has fallen so low in its esti- mate of the value of human life and decency that this business is to go on unchecked, then let us erect for our use u baby towers," similar to those found among the pagans of China, into which superfluous female infants are still cast at their birth, and from which they never emerge. We could improve on the Chinese system by making no distinction of sex, race, color, or condition, and so establish the custom in full conformity with the enlightened and extremely sensitive spirit of the age. The wilful ignorance and indifference shown by both the Boards mentioned in this and other matters, vital to the health of this city, serve as another illus- tration of the utterly indifferent way in which our whole city government is conducted. Paris, with her population of two millions, exhibits a record in this department of crime in the way of statistics and in- telligent supervision, that would astonish even Dr. Harris and the Health Board, while to New York city officials, as a class, it would be an enigma altogether beyond their peculiar grade of intelligence to solve. But then it will be urged that we are a young na- Prostitution in New Yurie. 173 tion, and that statistical science with us is jet in its infancy, and that the thorough and admirable way in which crime and criminals are looked after in the crowded centres of Europe, is not hence to be expect- ed of us. The argument would be a valid one, but for this little circumstance. Our city contains less than a million of souls, so packed together as to afford easy access to any class of facts or figures which may be needed to show the actual condition of any portion of our popula- tion down to the minutest detail. Notwithstanding all this, it costs more to run the machinery of our city government than any other of its size perhaps in the world, and what makes the result more galling to our intelligence is, the absolute poverty of results that flow from the running of it. The need of reliable and carefully arranged data bearing upon any given subject is felt not alone in this city, it is the great vital need of the nation. Making all due allowances for youth, the immense area to be canvassed, there still remains the humiliating fact, and of which what we have cited are collaterals, that no census has yet been taken that has proved itself worth the paper upon which it was printed, to say nothing of its cost to the nation. No single subject, whether of population, or disease, crime, or of production in any of its department's, finds an intelligent record in any census table prepared by the government up to this time. As these tables, when* accurately and fully made, form the key to effective discipline and good methods in the science of government, it is not strange that we should, as a nation, have fallen far below older and better trained peoples than ourselves. Nevertheless, with us in this State, with our four 171 Prostitution in New York. millions of people, there is no excuse for this deficien- cy, and it is a fact not at all to our credit, that Massa- chusetts has far outstripped us in laying the founda- tion for a State Bureau of Statistics illustrating every department of her practical, social and domestic life. Its good results have been already witnessed in the way of pointing out defects in present methods, and suggesting improvements that her enterprising and thrifty people will not be slow to adopt. If each state would furnish the government with an equally well arranged and carefully collected mass of information upon economic questions, the next general census would become a volume of useful, ready refer- ence, and not what the present one is, a bit of paper lumber of little or no account. But, as we have said, these good results must come to us at last ; and now, while the country suffers such a depression in all directions as it has never felt before, is a good time to begin to lay the foundation upon which they must come. When we have learned how to take care of our paupers, criminals of every grade, and to conduct our national and local governments with sole reference to a wise economy, and for the good of all concerned, we shall begin to realize how much injustice has been wrought during all these years of hap-hazard administration, and it is proper to suggest, in reference to the government of this city, that if the reforms needed in this direction be not speedily inau- gurated, New York will soon cease to be the metrop- olis of the nation. In any other country under heaven, where law com- mands respect, and justice is not a mockery, such wholesale plundering of the tax payers by rings, as has been witnessed here during the past ten yoars, Prostitution in Hew York. 175 would lead to absolute anarchy, yet year after year we go on in the same rut, growling a little, but foot- ing the bills at last, thanking providence that the thieves who pluck and plunder us are of our own making, and that as good subjects we must bow our necks, subjugvm^ and without a murmur. When the better clay dawns, and it must come sooner or later, some, at least of the gross abuses mentioned in this chapter will disappear, and if the people who submit to this robbery will bestow a tithe of the care they give to their private concerns, upon the public inter- ests, the day will not be long in coming. n « 1 The Unfortunate beggar. PART SHOOND. CHAPTER I. BEGGARS AND PAUPERS. A gentleman on his way home in East Broadway late at night a few months ago, as he was passing from a side street into Chatham square, stumbled over what proved to be the body of a dead man. Calling a po- liceman standing near, the body was removed to the nearest station house. On examination, cuts and bruises were discovered on different parts of the head, chest, and arms, indicating a fierce struggle. The man had evidently been murdered, though for what cause it was impossible to conjecture, as there was nothing in his appearance or dress that bore the slightest suspi- cion that he could have been despatched for his money. Everything about him bore evidence of the most ex- treme poverty. The body was still warm, but pulsation had ceased, and death had doubtless resulted from hemorrhage. Before the physician who had been sent for arrived, an old woman, known as a beggar in the vicinity, made her appearance, recognized the body as that of her husband, and on being refused permission to remove it, began a series of wails and screams of the most frantic description. It was observed by the police- man in attendance that, though very noisy and demon- ITS Beggars and Paupers. strative, there was no sign of real grief in the old hag's manner, so that its simulation was not only a failure, but disgusting. It was not until portions of the clothing were being removed, to ascertain if pos- sible any further evidences of violence, that the real cause of the woman's howls and yells and curses were discovered. On stripping the body to the waist, there was found around it a leathern belt, in which were concealed over twelve hundred dollars in gold. The true secret of the woman's connection with the murdered man was solved, and the fear that the ducats in his belt would never be clutched by her own fin- gers, had rendered her nearly frantic. We cite this case to show that beggary has two sides wherever found, a criminal or hypocritical side, and another that comes welling up from the depths of real misfortune, a phase of it when fully understood and known to be real, never fails to find a hearty response on the part of the really benevolent and kind-hearted, who make it a part of their daily routine to look after these unfortunate wrecks as they come drifting to our doors from the great sea of poverty and suffering that lies all around us. A picture that would fitly des- cribe the criminal side of this great city would be altogether incomplete that should omit its beggars, and especially its professional mendicants, who, as a class, and they are a distinct order everywhere, are almost invariably criminals. Hence its insertion in this volume. Whatever its condition, every grade of the world's civilization exhibits the beggar. The real is always an object of sympathy, the professional, sui generis, and when discovered, is always an object that one feels an irresistible impulse to collar or foot into the Beggars and Paupers, 179 street ; nevertheless, they are all, taken together, the world's heritage, to be disposed of as shall seem meet. Man maintains his foothold everywhere, it is said, but the tenure of these last, turned up from the social subsoil of a great city like this, is so slight, that they can scarcely be said to have any existence at all. Our only consolation is found in the fact that the beggar is indigenous to all soils, and so, wrapping ourselves in the mantle of our charity, we go out to succor the really deserving poor, and to punish if possible the undeserving. We have sometimes thought, in our wanderings, that the theory of the unity of the races has no more irrefragible proof than the universality of this beg- garly fraternity. In the soft, enervating atmosphere of the tropics he is an institution, fat, sleek, and well- mannered, bearing in his temperament and face the evidences of the exuberant vitality and richness of the soil that gives him birth. Penetrate if you will, to regions where snow and ice are perpetual, and where the keen air quickens both blood and step into new life, and here, too, is the beggar. Penetrate still fur- ther into the limits where vegetation is almost un- known, and even here, hat in hand, if indeed he has a hat, you are confronted by the lordly, independent, confident, serene beggar. Climate has its effect upon him, otherwise he would be indistinguishable from the mass, but in all other respects the professional mendi- cant, with whom we have chiefly to deal in this chap- ter, is a fac-simile of any other of his kind, and what is more, all of his class are thoroughly contemptible. But, despite what we have said of the professionals, there are beggars, and plenty of them, who come to us with bodies so emaciated by starvation and disease, 180 Beggars and Paupers. and whose faces bear in tliem so much of grief, suffer- ing, deeply-rooted sorrow, and of absolute despair, that a heart of stone would soften at the very sight of them. These are the ones who answer most fitly the description of God's poor, " the poor ye have al- ways with you," and for whose relief the really bene- volent are seldom appealed to in vain. Among these last are a distinct portion, small in number, to their infinite credit be it said, who deserve especial mention, and not this alone, but who are worthy of the tenderest, kindliest sympathy in the power of humanity to bestow. We mean those self- respectable, proud, sensitive poor, who come to us, if they come at all, from the depths of a poverty so gall- ing, or a misfortune or sorrow so profound, that the very sight of them kindles even stolidity into an un- wonted warmth, unlocking the heart even of the miser, and that well-to-do affluence that believes all poverty is a crime deserving of starvation, or some- thing worse. When these beg, it is only as the alternative of ab- solute starvation. So long as the most superhuman efforts of brain or hand will keep the wolf of want, or the less terrible messenger of death, from the door, they never ask alms. No human measure can fathom, no human pen portray, the pent-up agony that these will endure, rather than beg. It is only when every resource has given out, when the crucible contains no drop of oil, when heart and soul, and every mortal energy have given way, and left them utterly alone in their destitution, that beggary comes as a last resort. At the very door of death, pride and poverty with these sometimes clasp their spectral fingers, only how- ever with a firm resolve to renew the battle of life Beggars and Paupers. 181 with redoubled energy. Such as these are not often or long beggars, but 'it is safe to say that while the struggle lasts, there is no class of our population that Buffers so much in the same period of time, or who suffer so uncomplainingly as these. Often reared in affluence, and amidst the most delightful surroundings and associations, the pangs of poverty and want come mingled with the bitter memory of other and brighter days, days sunny and warm with love, and hope, and courage, and all that makes life worth the living. Those who have been bom to poverty, and who have never known any other condition, accept it as the one inevitable fact of their existence, and thous- ands of weak-hearted ones surrender, after a struggle or two, to the fate that seems unavoidable, and go thence shuffling the rest of the way without a thought or a care beyond the present moment. Hope, ambi- tion, if they ever reach so high a feeling, or even a wish for anything better than their present forlorn ex- istence, drops out altogether, so that they plod their weary way without a murmur and without a care whe- ther life shall bring to them or not the pleasant things that it brings to others around them. Alas, how different the daily life of the others. With each returning day there comes, in addition to the tug for bread, the longing for the old delights that have gone forever, the dear companionship of friends, the pleasant home, the songs that made glad the hours, and filled the soul full of tender thoughts and memo- ries, all are present to heighten by contrast the miser- ies of these later days. The naked floor, the bed of straw, the sickly flower on the window sill, the only link between the present and the past, only serve to make life more unendurable. The daily routine, the 182 Beggars and Paupers. unceasing life and death struggle with this phase of poverty is, after all, the best part of it. It is some- thing that cannot be pushed away, and while it lasts, it serves to assuage, in some degree, the horrors of a life in which want goes hand in hand with idleness. In a great city like this it is impossible to mistake this class of unfortunates. It is never clad in rags, never filthy, never importunate. Patched and scanty always as are its garments, they are invariably clean and neat. You know them at a glance, and you know at the same moment that poverty has not come to them as a birthright, but by some sudden, cruel, blow of fortune that reversed at one turn every current of their lives. The pale face, a picture of agony long but silently suffered, the sunken eye, the withered form, the furtive glance, and the painful evidences in manner and costume to keep up appearances, are unmistakable. They are rarely seen on the public promenade, or in the fashionable quarters ; never at places of amuse- ment, having reached a point at which amusement never enters. At church, if they can make them- selves sufficiently decent to be seen, they occupy some corner where even poverty goes unobserved. Should they stagger to your door for help after the last crumb has disappeared, it will be with an appearance and demeanor so modest and so touching that any misap- prehension as to their real character is impossible. Could the money which the city wastes every year upon the pauper hummers of the station houses be used to supply the real needs of this class of our poor, it would prove a source of comfort incalculable to a class to whom comfort would come as the summer rain upon the thirsty earth. The class we have des- Beggars and Paupers. 183 cribed are not to be mistaken for that which is known as the genteel poor, a kind of decent, thread-bare, but still independent poverty that suffers only in its pride, its real wants being tolerably supplied, and for which this chapter has no place. Our plea for the other has been made for the simple reason that it seldom pleads for itself, and never, so long as a single shred of hope remains. Tom Hood, propped up by pillows, described these unfortunates, as his own life was ebbing away, in lines that will live as long as poverty lasts on the earth. At a moment when respectable penury had reached in London its very lowest round of suffering from want of employment, the " Song of the Shirt " went knocking at every door, and at every heart in Eng- land : — " Work ! work ! work ! While the cock is crowing aloof! And work — work — work, Till the stars shine through the roof! It's oh ! to be a slave Along with the barbarous turk, Where woman has never a soul to save, If this is Christian work ! u Work — work — work ! From weary chime to chime, Work — work — work, As prisoners work for crime ! Band, and gusset, and seam, Seam, and gusset, and band, Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumb'd, As well as the weary hand. " Oh ! but for one short "hour : A respite however brief ! No blessed leisure for Love or Hope, But only time for Grief ! 184 Beggars and Paupers. A little weeping would ease my heart, But in their briny bed My tears must stop, for every drop Hinders needle and thread!" In a great city like London, with its three millions of people, the accumulation of centuries from an over- crowded area, this class forms a larger part of the whole pauper population than in this country where the means of gaining a livelihood are more varied, and where the resources are more evenly distributed, so that cases like these we have cited are of comparative isolation, still, there are in New York, and for very obvious reasons, more of these than can be found in any, or perhaps all of our other cities put together. What else could be expected from a city that gathers to itself from its very location its own and the refuse of the world's population, thousands of the more decent of whom huddle together in one frantic struggle to keep body and soul together. In a varied round of duties running through many consecutive years, we have been forced to witness scenes of want and suffering the memory of which can never be effaced, and which must be laid away as by far the most disagreeable portion of a life crowded with disagreeable, though often the most intensely in- teresting and exciting incidents. In the homes of our sewing women alone, as a distinct class, there can be witnessed daily evidences of suffering, mental and bodily, that cannot be contemplated, at a distance even, without a shudder. "Why, says the querist, do people like these, who have known better days, insist upon remaining where absolute and continuous poverty must be met and faced with every dawn that breaks in upon their mis- Beggars and Paupers. 185 erable lives! The answer is not difficult, so far as very many of these are concerned. The thriftless, the profligate, and tiie lazy, indeed the whole army of professionals, together with those who inherit poverty and cling to it with bull-dog tenacity, prefer their filth and laziness and rags, with the certainty of star- vation in the end, to the comfort they have never known, and which could be secured in the country by a moderate effort in the way of work. Ask this dis- gusting crowd of lazaroni, covered with vermin and foulness, as they lie by hundreds almost naked upon the station house floors and pavements, on any cold night, and they will tell you u the country is a lone- some place," and that " they couldn't possibly live w r ay out there," and besides that " they have no money to get away with, and the work is so hard," preferring positively anything that comes to them in the way of poverty, if only it can be hugged and enjoyed in the garret or the reeking basement of a large city. Strange infatuation, that finds in rags, filth and dis- ease, a kind of enjoyment that is in itself a fascination not to be resisted. It would seem, therefore, that poverty of this sort is gregarious, and must needs re- solve itself into an aristocracy of numbers and modes of living peculiarly its own. How different the lives of the sewing women as a class, they who tug on from year to year, the end of each finding them poorer in flesh, spirit and purse than its beginning, until at last, after a life struggle in which the heroic and the moral sublime have entered as constant elements, rest comes at last, and never un- welcome, in the six feet of earth which is the common heritage at last, of all that is human ! Well-to-do affluence, sitting snug and cosey in front 1*6 Beggars and Paupers, of its blazing grate, its feet encased in velvet slippers, a sweet sense of comfort in all its surroundings, seldom condescends to look out from its warm wrappings upon the squalor and the wretchedness around it, and what is still worse, seldom condescends to do full justice to those less fortunate in their life and living, and it is only when the breath of misfortune touches its own hearth, and turns in a moment comfort to penury, that the woes and wants of others command from them the sympathy that, roused before, could have been of ser- vice in relieving some poor unfortunate who has fallen by the way. As a looker-in upon out-of-the-way places I have been more curious to observe the haunts and ways of the deserving poor than of any other class, and . have sometimes listened to stories of suffering from their own lips, and been familiar with incidents in their history, that would have found in me an inatten- tive listener had they come at second hand. It is ab- solute contact with the despairing from poverty that calls out what is best in us in the way of sympathy and active benevolence. In the summer of 1872 an attache of the Health Board, with whom I had long been on terms of famil- iar intimacy, and who at the time had on his hands some half dozen families of that class of proud poor, which seldom calls for aid, asked me to take a round with him, as he had one case of especial interest. Speaking of that poverty which is too proud to beg, let me ask why it is that it so seldom commands our ready sympathy, but on the contrary not unfrequently elicits our contempt? Is it because it has not reached that condition of abjectness that renders it a humble suppli- ant at our doors, and hence fails to set off our own opulence ? Beggars and Paupers. 187 Why is it that the impudent, insolent, hardened face of the trained mendicant at our doors, is more likely at a first glance to find favor in our eyes, than the proud, sensitive creature that conies with un- certain step and modest mien to ask for charity ? It is certain that pride alone has kept them from our doors until driven by the pangs of hunger into the street for bread. The quality that does this may not be in itself a pleasing one in a beggar for alms, but to us it has always seemed as the one stern, uncompromising trait in a self-respectful man or woman, that would com- mand, but for our own selfishness and vanity, and, we will add, self-sufficiency, the most profound regard and ready sympathy. As we passed along down West Broadway toward St. John's Park, we had indulged a lively discussion upon this curious side of human van- ity, when we found ourselves at the door of one of those quaint old Dutch houses of a period long since past, and of which but few architectural landmarks remain. CHAPTER II. A pauper's death bed. Threading our way up the outside flights of rickety Btairs to the third story, we felt our way to an apart- ment lighted by a single candle and occupied by three persons, the surviving remnants of what had been a family of seven, four of whom, a son and three daugh- ters had died before with that fell destroyer in our climate, consumption. A shambling mass of tenement houses surrounded the building, and through the open windows came the fumes from a stable near, showing that the locality was one in which the poor, though not the poorest of our population, huddle together, in a common fight for bread and existence. I had been long used to the places where shameless poverty burrowed in rags and filth, but here was nei- ther filth nor rags, yet the inventory of the effects of this family could be made in a moment. One by one the little articles of comfort that their better years had known, had gone to the pawnbroker's and had never been redeemed ; a faded carpet, a few old fashioned chairs, a well-worn bureau with brass handles, the style of a century ago, a stove, two beds, and a few table bits of crockery, composed the furniture of the room. Despite its poverty, the room was neatness itself. On a bed in one corner lay the father of the family, a man of originally delicate frame, but now shrunk to a thinness that was appalling. He was in the very last stage of the destroyer of his children, and as I Beggars and Paupers. 189 looked at him lying there so still, his hands folded upon his breast, his cheeks tinged with the treacherous hectic glow, that disappears only with the life of the consumptive patient, it seemed to me that I had never witnessed so melancholy a scene before. Yet I had not seen the half. After speaking a moment with the sick man, the wife and mother, a woman still in her prime, but worn to a shadow by want and watching, led me to a little room adjoining, where lay their only child, a daughter of thirteen years, dying from the same disease. Bending over the patched but snow- white coverlid, a faded remnant of their better days, she took the hand of the sufferer, but could not speak to her. She had not spoken to either my friend or my- self as we entered, and there was in her withered face as she stood there, candle in hand, a look of mute, ap- palling agony, that I longed to breathe the fresh air of the street. What, thought I, have these poor creat- ures done to deserve such a fate ? A moment more and the face of the mother lay buried in the pillow over which it had hovered. She did not sob or weep even, but there came a moan from that pillow, faint though it was, that I shall never forget. In another moment she was quite herself, and pointing to the child, mum- bled, she seemed to have almost lost the power of speech, that she was the last of five children, each of whom as it came, had been all and all to her. llally- ing as she continued, she went on to say, that for four years her husband had been unable to work, and that she had managed, until within a month, to support with her own hands her little family, and provide for the two sick ones besides many comforts that were in- dispensable, with now and then a little extra in the way of delicacies, prepared with her own hand. A 190 Beggars and Paupers. few weeks before, the house that had furnished her sewing failed, and with that her only means of support had vanished, as she had been unable to find employ- ment elsewhere. I enquired if she had no relatives upon whom she could call. She had none, and save a few church acquaintances, had no friends in the city. She had been, poor creature, too busy with her sewing and her sick ones to make friends, and had given up in despair until some one told her that she should pre- sent her case to the Board of Health. For several days she hesitated, running out when opportunity al- lowed for work, but none came, and when the last loaf had disappeared, and gaunt famine stood at the door, she made her case known. u Had I been alone my- self," she added, with a sudden energy that startled me, " I would have starved sooner than ask for help." " We have been very poor during all these years," she went on to say, " but you will hardly believe me when I tell you that my chief comfort has been the care of these twa sick ones you see here.. While they remain with me, I have still something to live for, and can work, no matter how hard, to make them com- fortable. 1 shall soon, very soon, be alone in the world, but if I could only go with them, and they are quickly going, I should be happy." The tone in which she uttered these words was so pitious that I could not bear to listen longer. It had in it the despairing wail of a soul that had suffered untold agony. Her manner and bearing during this brief recital had in them so strange a blending of pride, dignity and sweetness, that I became curious to know the his- tory of the family's present forlorn condition, fully assured that it would record a struggle in which pride Beggars and Paupers. 191 had been wounded, but not conquered. Her story was brief, but it will repay repetition, by way of show- ing how much a woman of weak physical constitution, nerved by an unconquerable pride and an affection that was almost sublime, could accomplish unaided and alone. The wreck of the family's fortunes had been going on for years. It commenced with the failure of the husband in business in an eastern city, and in which they had previously lived in affluence. The children as they came along had been tenderly nursed. Two had grown up to womanhood, and then faded out with the malady that came to them as an inheritance from both the paternal and maternal side. When the war broke out, the father, having nothing else to do, enlisted as a private, in the vain hope that promotion would speedily come, and with it the means of sup- port for himself and family. In less than a year he came back, broken down in health. He had never earned a penny from the day of his return. For two years he had been able to walk but a short distance from the house in which he now was soon to leave for- ever. Disposing of such little luxuries in the way of furniture and books as were still left them, the family removed from Providence to this city, took a suite of rooms in an up-town tenement house, and began life anew. The mother and the two older daughers man- aged for a time to keep up a decent appearance by working day and nigbt with all the energy of despair, to provide the means of making the younger ones pre- sentable at school and at church. They met fate, these three, face to face, and would have conquered, but the health of the daughters gave way, and then the mother had no alternative but to 192 Beggars and Paupers. work alone. The up-town rooms proved too expensive, and the room in which I was sitting, with the two smaller ones adjoining, had been taken as a last resort, the younger children taken from school, every trinket even that had any value was sold, and here, in these three rooms, a family of seven entrenched itself, and looked poverty squarely in the face, resolving to starve rather than beg. Here in this room the two older daughters had died, and this heroic mother had not only nursed and fed them with her own hands, but with the scanty earnings of the two younger children, added to her own, had been able to bury them de- cently when they left her for a home where it is to be hoped poverty is unknown. Two boys and the daughter I have mentioned re- mained to her, but for a short time only. Within the year following the death of the sisters, these too had gone from her sight — four within two years. The grief consequent upon such a loss would have killed any ordinary woman outright, but not such a one as this. Shutting up in her benumbed, but heroic heart, the great, unutterable sorrow that was too sacred to be paraded to the world, she presented her case to the Board of Health, and it being referred to my friend, he soon put them in charge of some benevolent people, the Board furnishing such medicines for the two sick ones as were needed. Up to this moment I had been so absorbed with the scene around me, the story of this proud woman, and the manner in which it was poured out, that I had passed unnoticed the ravages which hunger, suffering and exhaustive work had made upon the one who had borne the burden almost alone. Her face had in it still the traces of a beauty that in its first bloom had Beggars and Paupers. 193 been such as is rarely met with at any age, a beauty which even the now pinched features, the faded eye and the shrunken form could not conceal. It was that of a grand soul lighting up at the last moment a worn- out, nerveless body. As I looked at her, so calm, and apparently un- moved, in the very midst of all her trials, for others were still in store for her, I realized for the first time the power of long-continued illness to subdue pride, and soften the heart and bring it back through des- pondency to the helplessness of childhood. She had reached that condition when nerve, hope and courage had fled and left her almost alone with her poverty and her sorrow. She sat there a perfect picture of Washington Irving's picture of Mrs. Somers returning from the grave of her only son. Hers was a grief that the rich could not understand and were powerless to dissipate, one that no outward appliance could soothe. It had reached its " wintry day," could look forward to no " after-growth of joy," and was far beyond the power of consolation. As we rose to take our leave, the sufferer in the little room beyond was seized with a fit of coughing, and going to the bedside, I raised her up with my own hands, and supported her with pillows. This over, she sank back in utter exhaustion, and I saw that a sudden change for the worse had taken place. From this moment she began to sink rapidly, and restoratives had lost their power. The mother gave me one piteous, unearthly look. She had comprehended all. " She is going with the others, and I shall soon be alone," was all she uttered. She was right. There was another spasm of coughing, a nervous clasping of the hands, then relaxation, a gasp for breath, a momentary 191 Beggars and Paupers. shudder, and all was over. The last of the children for whom she had wrung out her life, had gone from her sight forever. Fate, and a cruel one it was, had one more blow in reserve for this heroic woman. It came a few days afterwards in the death of her husband, the father of her children, now all gone, and she alone in the wide, wide world. She had no lack 'of friends now. They came, buried the dead ones, and would have made the mother comfortable for all time, but it was too late. With the death of her daughter to whom she had clung with an affection that cannot be described in words, all seemed to fade away. Nothing was now left to her on earth that was worth living fur. The blow had come at last, she had long anticipated it, that paralyzed hope even, and she sank rapidly into a settled melancholy, and is at this moment an inmate of one of our hospitals for the insane. "We have told a simple story, and without the slight- est exaggeration, as it came from the lips of the prin- cipal actor in the scenes described, and we have but a single word to add, and it is this : How is it possible to compare for a moment such suffering as this, with that found in thousands of houses that have never known a comfort or a luxury, however trifling and we repeat what we have so often intimated in these pages, that sorrow such as this has claims that come to us from no other source. In a city like ours, thousands of such cases, where unfortunate ones have passed through every phase down the sliding scale from com- fort, luxury even, to the most abject poverty, exist at this moment. Of course they are rarely discovered, never until driven to desperation. They hide them- selves away in the dark places, respectable usually, of Beggars and Paupers. 195 our city, living lives of the most forlorn isolation, pre- ferring anything but death, and they sometimes aecept that rather than alms. A single case taken at random from these poor creatures who fight fate while life lasts, with nothing save their own hands and an un- conquerable pride, outweigh a thousand of those in- stances in which poverty, in most cases extreme, is accepted without a struggle, and with no apparent sacrifice of pride or self-respect. There is more actual, poignant suffering experienced in one family such as we have described, than in ten thousand of those born to the manor of poverty, and who throughout a life- time never have an aspiration above the present moment, who look upon the future as something with which they have nought to do, and which when it comes will take care of itself. The problem of pauperism, taken with reference to all its phases, and they cannot be enumerated in this chapter, is one of the most important with which the country will have to deal in the future. It is only within a very few years that it has pressed itself for solution outside the great cities. To-day it is one that affects the whole nation. In this great overgrown and overburdened city the way in which we are to dispose of it in future is a matter of paramount importance. There is no municipality in the world so over- freighted, literally eaten up with worthless beggars, as New York. They prey upon us in swarms. To dis- criminate between these and the deserving poor, is impossible at a glance, and without special inquiry into the cases as they present themselves, and to attempt such a task here among our lazaroni, would turn us out of our counting-rooms and places of business, and make us all beggars together. 19G Beggars and Paupers. The people of the rural districts, each with its little handful of " tramps " and " regulars," whine piteously about their mendicant burdens, but go to work by counties, purchase farms, erect fine buildings, elect a capable or incompetent superintendent, as the case may be, to take care of a few persons, at a cost alto- gether fabulous, when the small number taken care of is taken into the account, all without the least regard to system or economy. How different the case with us when in proportion to population and resources too, we have a thousand of these parasites to feed to their one. One of these days, when these pauper burdens become still more oppressive, we shall look about us to discover some method that will properly distribute and lighten them at the same time. When we open our dull eyes to the fact, as we shall, and quickly, that our prisons, reformatories, and all places where crimi- nals are permanently confined, can and ought always to be made self-sustaining, we shall have settled the criminal side of the question, and in favor of the pockets of our tax-payers. The question as to paupers is not so easy of solution. A large proportion of these are the aged, the infirm, the sickly, which, together with pauper children, are unable to work, and must therefore be an entire charge. What is needed in all directions, is system, economy of management, con- centration of numbers in such a way that the cost of their support shall be reduced to the very lowest figure consistent with their comfort. When we can bring ourselves down from the dis- cussion of theories of pauper regulation to such practi- cal methods as a little common sense would suggest, if we would permit it to enter our heads, the able- bodied beggars that now beset us at every turn with Beggars and Paupers. 197 their importunate, impudent appeals, would be driven from the street as a class, and compelled to earn a decent living ; but depend upon it, so long as we pat them on the head, and open our purses to them in order to get rid of them for a day, we shall have them on our hands. CHAPTER III. PROFESSIONAL BEGGARS. A professional beggar, by which we mean one of that class of mendicants who lives to beg, is a crimi- nal, and should be dealt with as such. Of all the dis- agreeable social facts against which people who earn their own living stumble, the professional beggar is the meanest, and the most despicable. Nothing in- spires our contempt so quickly as an affectation of want on the part of an able-bodied man or woman. Poverty, when it comes to us haggard and forlorn, though by no means blameless in him who suffers it, nevertheless commands sympathy, and usually gets it ; but the crouching, cowardly, hypocritical beggar, with brawny arms and perfect health, holding out his soft paw for a coin, rouses in him who stops long enough to think, nothing but loathing. A good square look at one of these creatures at your door, begets an im- pulse to kick him into the street, while with a woman of this sort, the door should invariably be slammed in her face. The difficulty is in distinguishing the real from the spurious beggar. Of course it is this class that is everywhere the most barefaced and yet the most forlorn when they first make their, appearance. They look up at you with half-closed eyes, and an affectation of woe, so grim and absurd, that if you had your choice you would give them hunger instead of alms. But here they stand, the impudent villains, hat in hand, very Uriah Heeps of humbleness, tears in Beggars and Paupers. 199 their eyes, a simulated all-goneness in their puffed-out cheeks and trembling limbs. What are you to do with so hard and pitiable a fact full before you, but begin to fumble in your pockets for the coin that ie sure to creep into their own well-filled bag, or into the till of the whisky-dealer around the corner. The shapes in which the professional appears to you are protean. Sometimes it comes in mid-winter, in the guise of a woman with the baby she has borrowed for the occasion. This is the fifth she has starved or frozen during the season. When the mercury is at zero, she is in her element, for what mortal can resist a woman, bareheaded, half naked, a baby half con- cealed under a dilapidated strip of shawl or ragged water-proof, crouching at your feet on the cold, damp pavement ? Except to the initiated, the thoroughly- posted in the tricks of these accomplished mendicants, the thing is impossible, and even the trained, city-born New Yorker, requires years of dogged practice to enable him to pass one of these without a qualm of conscience that makes him feel himself a compound of the coward and criminal for 'the rest of the day. Nevertheless he learns, after a few attacks, to get by without being fleeced, and that is something, though he does it only after absolutely torturing himself into the full belief that the woman is not only an arrant impostor, but that she is an infant-slayer besides, an imputation that is somewhat modified when he dis- covers that the brat is made of wax, as was found to be the case in one of these exhibitions years ago. The fat, sleek, but still ior\orn-looki?ig— we mean the manner of his looking — old man, whose trembling fingers have pushed under your nose for years the hat into which your coins have been regularly dropped as 200 Beggars and Paupers. a sop to your benevolence, sometimes turns up, all of a sudden, in a role so unexpected and amazing, that it knocks all jour preconcerted notions of charity, duty and piety into a chaos so confused and bewildering, that you stand awe-stricken and dumb in the presence of his sublime impudence. The following incident illustrates the point we make: An old, and we will add, especially kind-hearted gentleman of this city, whose office lias been in Wall street for the last twenty years or more, had been in the habit for years of dropping a coin or bit of cur- rency into the hand of one of the blind beggars on Broadway, near Trinity Church. After a few years, the old rascal (we mean the beggar) moved his stand- ing-place into Wall street, as being a more appropriate locality to his improved financial condition. Still the coin was dropped with its accustomed regularity, and scarcely ever without a resolve that some time or another, when opportunity should offer, he would look into the condition of this poor, long-suffering old Bar- timeus. The kindly old gentleman was spared the trouble of a call, the old beggar himself found it con- venient to call upon the lawyer instead, and we are happy to say the call was never returned. One morning Bartimeus dropped out of his accus- tomed haunt, and the old lawyer, as he threw off his wraps on entering his office on a very cold day, con- cluded the beggar had succumbed to the weather and renewed in his tender old heart his former resolve. About 12 o'clock a client dropped in to have a mort- gage drawn, he having been able to raise a matter of $6,000 upon a piece of up town property. The man who was to loan it to him, he said, would be in with the money by the time the papers were ready for exe- Beggars and Paupers. 201 cution. Before the time arrived, a middle-aged, well- dressed woman, leading a blind man, entered the office. It was old Bartimeus himself, washed up, ar- rayed in a black suit, hat in hand, but not in the old fashion. He was now a capitalist, and his wife pre- sented a check on a Bowery Savings institution for the whole six thousand, took in return the mortgage, and started for the County Clerk's office to have it record- ed. She had been there before as the sequel showed. Turning to his client, after the twain had departed, the old lawyer remarked, with a twinkle in his eye that would have tickled Burton himself, had he been there to witness it, that the money he had just taken from the old woman was furnished in part by himself, but, he added, " I shall not trouble you to give your note for its return, the old beggar will settle with me." Our tender-hearted friend does not find it difficult to pass one of these, a blind one even, on the sidewalk, since he discovered, as he did soon after the circum- stance we have detailed, that the old fellow had been loaning small sums on real estate for many years, and that he was actually worth at that moment §20.000. The rascal disappeared soon after from Wall street as a beggar, but we are not certain that he cannot even now be found " on 'change," as he assuredly would be had he an eye left to guide him to that locality so eminently suited to his genius for financial swindling. So much for professional number two. AVhat is most astounding in all this business is, that we £0 right on giving, never looking for a moment to the right or left to discover who are deserving of our gifts, but emptying out our purses into the greasy pockets of these abominable frauds, for such they are in nine cases out of ten, just to get rid of them and 202 Beggars and Paupers. satisfy ourselves that we have done something, trifling tliough it be, to help a poor soul out of the beggar's Slough of Despond. What we have actually done has been to take from the really unfortunate and deserving poor the amount that should have been bestowed upon them, and put it in the Savings Bunk to the credit of an old fraud like the one we have cited. To give in- telligently to a street beggar is out of the question, ex- cept- upon an actual enquiry into his circumstances. This is rarely, if ever made, and hence the foolishly stupid result. The following from a recent issue of the New York Times servos to illustrate further the folly of this hap- hazard charity that is no charity after all, but, on the •contrary, so much thrown away upon a class who make fraud the daily business of a life-time : " Lately a gentleman was accosted by an active, rather well-spoken young man in Union Square. In a confidential tone he detailed his sufferings, and con- cluded with the customary whine, ' If you could but give me a single cent, sir.' A ticket was tendered him, entitling him to the good offices of the Young Men's Christian Association in the Bowery, but declined with a sarcastic smile, and an assurance that he 4 knew Mr. Dooley, the Secretary, very well.' Later, in the dusk, the same gentleman whom this scamp had addressed was awaiting a car by the Fifth Avenue Hotel. ' If you could only give me one cent,' came in familiar tones on his ear. ' Why, I offered you a ticket entit- ling you to food only two hours ago.' ' Oh ! I beg your pardon, sir,' and the fellow slunk off to some one else." " A single cent," nothing more, allowing him to tell his own story, w T as what this full-chested, brawny- Beggars and Paupers. 203 armed pauper wanted. It requires no second glance at these pauper-villains to determine their real character, and yet we go on year after year, manufacturing them by the hundred, with our heedless, reckless alms- giving. This man stands as the type of his class, and which in this city alone number at least ten thousand persons. Ten thousand able-bodied men, able not only to earn their own living, but of contributing toward the general wealth of the nation. What are they but parisitic criminals, and what are we who breed them from our hard-earned storehouses, but partakers of their crime ? Ah, but Charity hides a multitude of sins, and surely there is no city in the world so splen- did in its almsgiving as New York, with its one hun- dred and twenty regularly organized charities. True, very true, but these very charities, illustrating as they do the marvelous generosity of a magnanimous peo- ple, are the very institutions that help to foster vaga- bondage by their bad habit of sending almoners in search of somebody to feed and clothe. In many cases there is a constant struggle going on between certain of these to be first at the scene of disaster or want, and so to be able to make a good showing of results at the end of the year. We know a private charity in this city, owning property worth $50,000, paid for by pri- vate contributions. In it are taken care of yearly an average of fifty children. It costs to run this concern $15,000 annually, or $300 for each inmate, and the interest on the investment may be added to this sum to arrive at the actual cost. Is this almsgiving ? It is simply and emphatically, luxury — nothing else. These children are better cared for than any portion of the children of our middle classes. This is humane and generous ; more than that, it is wastefulness. The 204 Beggars and Paupers. point we make is that it cares for so few and at such great cost. But then it is a private charity, and those who support it must be left to do it in their own way. Take another case, and not private, a clear case of wilful, stupid extravagance. It is that of the " bum- mers" at the Station Houses, a distinct, isolated array of filthy, able-bodied, vermin-covered lazaroni, lodged every night at the expense of the city. These same old u tramps" of both sexes, " bummers" and " repeaters," present themselves at one or another of the Station Houses of the city every night of the year, with the regularity and precision of a trained army of veterans, which indeed they are. What shall be done with them ? Build a work-house in place of the large lodging-house already erected for their accommodation, and then when they come shut them up in it, set them at work, earning an honest living with their own soft, but dirty clutches. These are the poor upon whom there should be no sympathy w r asted. Provide the means, and then let no meal be served, or lodging furnished, until it has been earned. Such a place would rid the city of one half of the present number that now prey upon it without compunction. Mr. Crapsey tells us in his volume, which we have already mentioned, that 140,000 lodgings are granted these creatures at the Station Houses in a single year. A waste of lodgings, you will say, and with truth, and yet the poor devils get the worst of it, for the same authority tells us that they sleep, if sleep comes to them at all, upon bare floors in unventilated rooms, eack employing himself in relieving his body of ver- min at the expense of that of his neighbor. Forlorn, disgusting picture of pauperism and beggary combin ed, a>id yet the half not told. To rank these last with t Beggars and Paupers. 205 the beggar class, though technically incorrect, falls not far short, after all, of a proper classification. At best, they are a vile cross between the confirmed beggar and regular pauper, without approaching in dignity to either, and we gladly relegate them to the tender care of our " City Fathers," who, together with our rival charities, seem never so truly happy as when pouring oil into the fancied wounds of these independent pack- ages of impudent beggardom. It is generally supposed that begging as a trade, or business, has as yet gained no foothold on these shores, and that this class is confined chiefly to the cities of Europe. Such is not the case. The beggars who live and thrive, and in very many cases die rich, and who have besides managed to live comfortably through a lifetime of beggary, are as thickly scattered through our large cities as they are abroad. The truth is, there is scarcely a vice, or any phase of crime, pauperism or beggardom known in Paris, London or in the Papal States and old Spain, where beggars are to the manor born, that has not its counterpart in a modified form in this city. We are as a people wonderfully apt at imitation, and in the matter of professional mendi- cancy, if we go on at our present pace, we shall sur- pass, in proportion to population, all other peoples. The tricks and devices practiced by these beggar free- booters are ingenious beyond description. The toilets of these creatures, especially of the women, are a study in themselves. The most tastefully draped woman among us could take lessons with profit from the " get up" of these "artful dodgers" of the female persua- sion. Every separate rag speaks a language as exact, though not so poetic, as that of flowers. What is the flirt of a lady's fan, its pungent perfume filling the air I 206 Beggars and Paupers. with visions of love and the tropics at the same mo- ment, compared with the artistic grace that reposes upon the head and shoulders of this beggar queen, her feet in the gutter, and her eves turned heavenward as if wrapped in holy contemplation instead of artistic rags. It is said that Charlotte Cushman despaired in the make up of her costume for " Meg. Merriles " until she seized one of these beggars for a model, and as a work of high art in the way of a " rig " that of the heroic " Meg " has never been surpassed save by the millionaire mendicants of New York. Apropos of rich beggars, what we have stated is not a wide ex- aggeration. There are, perhaps, one thousand street beggars in this city at this moment, who have plethoric bank accounts, and live in comfortable homes. Their earnings are not precarious, but can be counted upon for each day with the precision of a legitimate calling or trade. In finesse, deception, and that consummate knowledge of the weaknesses of givers, which is the forte of this class, they show a genius that is absolute ly amazing. Every shade of grief or woe, known to the beggar's repertoire, is simulated with a tact that Joe Jefferson might emulate. The more accomplished of them have been known to steal children, and starve them to the condition of meagre transparency needful for successful exhibition Of course the more harrowing it can be made, the more certain it is to pay, for there is no object on earth that will turn the pocket book of the average New Yorker inside out so quickly, as the sight of a baby that has the appearance of having been boiled in a kettle of dirty water to within an inch of its existence, which is the precise point at which the infant becomes a rara avis in the way of a beggar's inventory. Beggars and Paupers. 207 The tricks of these people are infinite in variety, and betray a smartness that, exercised in Wall street, would command the highest success. It is only a few years ago that a lady of wealth, residing in Baltimore, with a child, a daughter of two years, arrived in this city. A nurse, long em- ployed in the family, accompanied the two. The daughter was blind, and the mother had been urged by her family physician to place her little one in charge of a then celebrated occulist of this city. They arrived in the early morning train, and took lodgings at a hotel on Union Square, with the expec- tation of finding a suitable home in a private board- ing house if the doctor so advised. Meantime the mother took a carriage for the doctor's, leaving the nurse and child in their rooms ac the hotel. In the mother's absence, as was quite natural, the nurse and charge sauntered into the public parlors, and needing some article of dress of the child, the nurse ran to her room, leaving the latter in the parlor, though only for a few moments. On her return the child was missing, and all at- tempts to find her during the next three weeks proved unavailing. Months passed on, and the parents having abundant means, the search was kept up, but still without success. Light at last broke in upon tin's sor- rowing family, not from a detective's lantern, but through an old Quaker preacher, long a resident of this city, and distinguished among his people for shrewdness as well as piety, and who furnished the cue that led to the discovery of the child. Business Xew Yorkers of seven or eight years ago remember well the old "apple woman" who sold ap- ples and sole leather pies near the corner where the 208 Beggars and Paupers. Herald building now stands, and some of them remem- ber a forlorn beggar who used daily to crouch near the railing at the corner of the City Hall Park oppo- site. This old German hag, for such she was, had always in her arms a baby, though not the same one. Being the " mother of a large family," as she always piteously whined when extending her muddy paw for alms, she was not limited in her capital, nnd could now and then afford to "switch off" on a new infant prodigy of attenuated proportions. This old brute had a way of reducing them in flesh and spirit that a strictly moral, or even slightly civil code would scarce- ly sanction ; at all events, her last triumph of infant art was a blind one. The good Quaker who had the case of the lost child fresh in his memory, as the papers of the day had been full of it, got his observing eye on the old wo- man on his way down town one morning, about six months after the occurrence described. It was a chilly December day, the air was filled with flying snow- flakes, one of those mornings when the well-to-do citi zen wraps his fur muffler about his ears with comfort able satisfaction, as he hurries along to his place of business. Crossing Broadway in front of the Astor House Broadbrim saw the baby, its eyes turned up with an expression so piteous in their sightlessness, that he was brought to a sudden halt full in front of the moth- er. A single look satisfied him that the woman was an impostor, and that the baby was not her own, but a stolen or borrowed one. Going up to the old hag, the following colloquy occurred, which on the part of the Quaker, meant business. " Good woman, is this thy child?" Beggars and Paupers. 209 " Yes, sir," in the meekest of voices, and with eves upturned, in the very piteousness of despair. " Where does thee live ?" " In Church street, sir," in very broken English, as she began to smell a rat. " Hast thee any other children ?" " Yes, sir," tears freely flowing, " I have a large fam- ily, sir, and this one you see is blind, sir." " Will thee go with me to thy house ? I will go with thee and try and find some friends to help tnee." "No sir, I can't go," with sudden but suspicious energy of voice and manner, there was no whining now. Passing a coin into her hands, the good preacher took this friendly method of allaying suspicion, he walked straight to the nearest station house, and after a hasty consultation, made complaint before a magistrate, and had the woman arrested. On going to her quarters in Baxter street, (she did not live in Church, as she stated), a snug, comfortable place was found, which was her home, but in it were no other children. The husband, also a professional beggar, was home for the day sick, but very com- fortable in his indisposition, being surrounded with all the homelike aj^pliances that make invalidism tol- erable. As the officers entered, the old monster roused him- self and threatened vengeance for so unwarrantable, as it seemed to him, intrusion upon his premises, and was about to proceed to violent measures, when he and the old woman were hurried off to quarters not quite so snug as their own, but much more in keeping with their real character. The child meantime was given over to the care of some Sisters of Charity in Mulberry street, and its supposed parents sent for. They arrived 210 Beggars and Paupers. on the following morning, and at once recognized the child as their own. The poor creature whose misfortune alone should have saved it from ill treatment at the hands of any other than this she devil, had been whipped into sub- mission, and trained to the life of a beggar by starva- tion. The meeting between the parents and the little one, as described to me by an officer who witnessed it, was " the most harrowing scene he had ever wit- nessed." The mother, broken down in nerve at last, by months of weary waiting and anguish, such as only a mother could feel, went into an agony of grief at the sight of the lost one, that refused all consolation. The father's grief was equally touching, but with him indignation succeeded the mingled feeling of joy at finding his lost one, and sorrow for its suffering. In the absence of proof other than circumstantial that the woman had stolen the child, she was allowed to go unpunished, having sworn positively on the exam- ination that she found the child in the street alone and unattended, and that she took it and adopted it as her own. This is but one of hundreds of similar cases occur- ring every year in our city, showing that the bodies of stolen infants even, are used as a means to fill the pockets of this class of beggars. What a contrast does this picture present to that of the old apple woman on the opposite corner, w r hom we have already mentioned, who died a few years since, leaving to a graceless and profligate son, a snug little fortune, saved from daily penny and six-penny sales running through many long years. Such are some of the many contradictions that street life in our city hourly presents, and which seem tor Beggars and Paupers. 211 the most part inseparable from a population in which 50,000 paupers and beggars manage to live, move and have their existence. What is the plain moral to all this street begging business ? In our judgment it is this, summed up in a few simple propositions derived from a careful sur- vey of the whole field. Ample provision being made for all classes of the deserving poor, as well as thous- ands that are unworthy, beggary in this city is a crime, and should be treated as such. Street beggars of every class should be driven from the street, under penalty of imprisonment, and thus the business of supporting vagabonds be stopped. A place should be provided, say at Randall's Island, to which every vagrant should be sent for classification. The able-bodied should be sent to a work house prepared for the purpose, and those unable to work from whatever cause, should be cared tor at the expense of the city, if not looked after by our private charities, of which we shall have really more than we need for our pauper population when once we get it enrolled, and the care of which shall be reduced to a well-ordered, efficient system. Let it be understood that every able-bodied beggar or pauper is to be set at work, and kept at it for the benefit of the city until he shows a willingness to take care of him- self, and an end comes at once to street begging to begin with, and there is no greater nuisance that con- fronts us to-day in our streets, and at our station houses than this. We don't want any State Board of Charities and Corrections, but a City Board, with powers ample enough to deal with every individual case of pauperism, consolidated under the management of this Board, and which being vested with the entire responsibility, would perforce be driven to do the 212 Beggars and Paupers. work cheaper and better than any divided responsibil- ity could possibly do it. The besetting sin of the nation to-day is its tenden- cy to do things by halves, its one great overwhelming need is trained men in all directions, whether of labor or public supervision, and public administration. Get once the affairs of the nation, and those of its great cities conducted upon the same principle that an honest, thoroughly trained business man conducts his own private and business affairs, and we should be amazed at the result. Why should they not be thus controlled and conducted ? Let a people, careless, in- different, reckless even, as to the conduct of public affairs, answer. We talk about centralism, as though it was a bug- bear, and if by centralism is meant a clutching after power on the part of thievish rings, anxious only about their own pockets, longing to gorge them at the ex- pense of the people, it is a bugbear, and should be so held ; but in our judgment, what the country needs in all directions local and general, at this moment, is a little w T holesome consolidation of power into efficient and honorable hands. We have allowed thieves to scatter our hard earnings long enough, let us now try a little condensation. Why, indeed, should we divide, in this city for example, and subdivide the work of administration, as our own new charter has done it for us, until there is no responsibility anywhere, and what is worse, a municipal government that is not even the shadow of a government, a stupid sham, a heartless satire upon administration of any sort whatever. What city of its size on the face of the earth can be found that submits as meekly as do the people of this to any wrong, however flagrant or dastardly which Beggars and Paupers. 213 their masters inflict upon year in and year out. No sheep is more dumb before its shearers than we in the presence of the self-constituted, ignorant thieves, that pluck away our substance, and who spend it in riotous living. Our public and private charities are as well, perhapp more faithfully administered, than any other depart- ment of our municipal service, but the whole business of administration, from the Board of Aldermen, with the Mayor at its head — some hint that he is at the other end, under the present charter— down to the making of the pettiest official, needs to be reformed, and from the bottom. "We are set down as the Metropolis of the Western world, and in point of location, numbers, resources, wealth, etc., we are such, but in spite of ourselves, and chiefly because of our favorable situation. In the matter of government, there are cities of one-twen- tieth of our population infinitely better and more econ- omically governed than is ours, and that, too, in face of the fact that municipal administration is every- where with us in this country at a fearfully low ebb. "What is to be done ? Go on from bad to worse until the last municipal ditch is reached, or make a bold push for something better ? If Manhattan Island is to maintain the supremacy long allotted it, and which for a century and a half was the pride of all New Yorkers, her people must move soon, and in the right direction. The route to a more efficient and a more honest administration of our affairs than we have had for years is open to us. To stay where we are, is to allow the municipal star of empire to take its way to some point near us. It has already commenced to move. Will it gravitate back to its old place at our 2U Beggars and Paupers. beck ? if it will, we should not be long in wooing it with every appliance known to gravitation. A muni- cipality, one-tenth of whose population is annually under arrest, should begin seriously to build more prisons, work-houses and reformatories, or to construct a more stable government for those who may come after us. CHAPTER IV. CHILD VAGABONDS. The burning of Moscow in the days of the elder Napoleon has been supposed to be the greatest street scene ever witnessed, but when Victor Hugo, with a pen dipped in blood, tells us that the fatal insurrection of June, 1848, in Paris, was far grander, the reader pauses for a moment to be satisfied of the truth pre- sented by the contrast. The eye of the great novelist saw nothing save the great moral conflagration that lay far down at the bottom of that marvelous uprising, when, in one short hour, the whole rabble of a great city, from the gamin and vagabond of the slums, to the convict at the galleys, poured itself out into the streets, and demanded a hearing. Magnificent as was the scene, considered as a passionate outburst in which poverty and rags stood defiant, with clenched teeth, and heart on fire, demanding bread, it was, after all, mournful rather than splendid. It was one of those struggles in which the very dregs of society are thrown to the surface by one sudden, terrible upheavel, when reason lay prostrate at the foot of passion, and when a mad rabble shook its fists in the very faces of the res- pectability it hated. Such uprisings as that, however, must always com- mand a certain respect, for the world was not created for respectability alone. The meanest creature on God's footstool has a right to live, and even a small mob has rights which an entrenched privileged class is 216 Beggars and Paupers. forced sometimes to regard with something besides in- difference. An exasperated multitude, made up of those who have nothing to loose save their own lives in any scene of violence they may choose to inaugur- ate, may be subdued, but it cannot be lashed back into its lurking places without a feeling that society rarely deals justly with it, and that the ruler is as often at fault as the rabble itself, so that he who stands at a safe distance contemplating such a scene, feels a thrill of satisfaction when power and privilege combined conquers all that dares confront it, but feels at the same moment a desire to excuse and paliate the wrongs that power refuses to make right. But as we have said even brute force cannot always safely be ignored, for once set going, and inflamed by passion, its violence knows no bounds. Often during the late w T ar, as we threaded the slums of the city at dead of night after the riots of '63, the thought has come to us unbidden, how powerless we should be under our defective municipal administra- tion, in the hands of such a mob as that which bathed the streets of Paris in blood in the ever memorable struggle of '48. Imagine a social earthquake that should shake from their hiding places into the streets the vast army of criminals and vagabonds of every grade that infest this great, overgrown city. What scenes of pillage, of fire, of murder, could be enacted iu a city governed like this before a blow could be struck for life, law, or order. "With the fingers of a rabble of 100,000 at our throats, we would present a spectacle of municipal weakness that would be pitiable in the extreme. The thought is not an idle one, as the experience of the draft riots abundantly demon- strated, but one likely to occur at any moment of a The Gamins of New 2"ork, Beggars and Paupers, 217 great uprising of our people, from any cause what- ever. What a motly crowd would that be that should clamber into the street from the reeking basement and garret, and the thousands of low drinking places and other vile slums that make our city an earthly hell of the worst description every night from sunset until dawn. Conspicuous in this crowd would loom up the 15,000 child vagrants, beggars and vagabonds, that are the social heritage of New York, a sad sorrowful horde of castaways, that come floating up from the great ocean of beggardom and crime that beats against the shores of this beggar-besieged island. Ten thousand child vagabonds alone, most of whom we are educating to figure in catalogues of crime, of crime that we shall doubtless go on manufacturing year after year under our loose notions of the manner in which a vagrant and criminal army of idlers should be disposed of. We have hinted at the peril constantly impending over a city that contains witiiin it the possibilities for mis- chief pent up in a twentieth of a million of lives blighted at their birth, one-fifth of which are children under fifteen years. The problem presented by these simple figures is not so difficult of solution as we are in the habit of supposing, and there is no one social question that de- serves such immediate, practical consideration as that which involves the care of these fifteen thousand waifs. To those of us who look upon children as something better than an inevitable burden, and who do not believe that the human animal must be left to run the same chance for existence that confronts at birth the lowei 21S Beggars and Paupers. of God's creatures, no sight is more sad, no condition more deplorable, than that which presents a child with all its capacities for enjoyment and affection, a wan- derer upon the face of the earth. There is nothing so helpless as the helplessness of childhood, a fact that has never yet been given its true weight in the case, or want of it, which we are supposed to bestow even upon our own children, to say nothing of the duties which the State owes to the waifs that idleness, dissipation, and crime leave to its care. For some inscrutable reason, perhaps because en- dowed with superior reason, the babe that humanity undertakes to rear, remains in this utterly supine and helpless condition longer than the young of any of the lower animals, the most of which experience a period of pupilage so short they can scarce be called pupils at all. It is for this, among other reasons, that childhood appeals so strongly to all that is humane and tender within us for care and support, through this most try- ing period, and there is no single human quality so in- human and dispicable, as that which permits father or mother to abandon, without a pang, a family of young children to the care of a cruel world. Barring a few honorable exceptions, made possible through the influ- ence of our private and public charities too, no life is more utterly sunless than that led by the juvenile vag- abonds of a city like this. It is safe to say that between the Battery and the northern outlet of Central Park, six thousand children can be found at this moment who have never known the luxury of a home that contained a comfort, or a soul to care for them ; a homeless, motherless, half-nak- ed, half-starved crowd of girls and gamins, into whose Beggars and Paupers. 219 benighted lives no ray of the sunshine that warms a true mother's heart has ever penetrated. Many of these are scarcely out of their boyhood, little human packages of filth, impudence, and grim independence, standing at the crossings, the depots, the places of amusement, everywhere. They burrow in holes under ground that have never been lighted by a ray of sun- light or warmed by aught save a stray handful of coals filched from the ash barrels of the slums. Strangers to pure air, except when tramping over the better por- tions of the city, they come out of their hiding places each morning more dead than alive. The great bulk of these sleep in summer in the streets, or what is the same, in open areas, under the docks, or on bales of cotton, any out-of-the-way place in short, that will open to them its dirty, chilling, health-destroying hospi- tality. The sufferings of these little waifs during our cold northern winters, have never yet been realized by any save those who are compelled to witness them. Could the half be known it w T ould unfold a tale of criminal public negligence that we should be asham- ed of. What a social picture w T ould that be, that should present in just contrast the home of the Fifth Avenue millionaire, with the dark caverns in which these little wanderers curl up for the night. Where lives the Hogarth of the day who can paint, in broad touches, the deep pathos as well as grim humor that lies wrapped up in this beggarly little crowd ? Talk about Borrioboola-Gha, and the heathen of Timbuctoo, with these poor, depraved, and, when considered with reference to their responsibility, almost sinless army of vagrants that we, ourselves, are educating for places in our workhouses, almshouses and prisons. Ten thou- sand children clad in rags and filth, not of their own 220 Beggars and Paupers. seeking, but in hereditary rags and filth, to say nothing of the moral degredation that is an inseparable and even present adjunct of their dreary lives. We make no appeal in this chapter for adult crime, criminals, or vagrants, for the bulk of these must be held responsi- ble in part, at least, for their miserable condition. These have knowledge, experience, volition to guide them through life's labyrinth. It is for the children we write, the little gamins and waifs that struggle into life, and struggle through and out of it at last, without feeling in all the long dreary march the touch of a tender hand, or once listening to the music of a kindly voice. " It is the eye of childhood," says Lady Macbeth, " that fears a painted devil." That good-natured and eminently humane murderer of a kindly old king, might have added that childhood, when left to itself even, sometimes developes a power of resistance to the real devil when he comes, that this embodiment of cruelty never knew. Scenes are transpiring daily and nightly in which these homeless ones are actors, that turn low life into a romance of the most absorbing interest, and it is a fact creditable to the humanity of some of the later novelists and dramatists, that poverty-stricken, and criminal childhood, is often the central figure of a story that reaches all hearts at a bound through the common interest and affection that extreme youth and happiness must always command. Oliver Twist, the work-house in which he first saw the light, and little Nell, will live while a tongue survives in which can be repeated the simple, touching story of their lives, as Dickens told it. Whatever the faults of the great no- velist, the man who invested outcast childhood with a Beggars and Paupers. 221 dignity and sweetness never given to it before in ro- mance, will be forever remembered in the pictures of innocence that his genius has rendered immortal. Many of these children are driven into the street daily to beg the money that goes to support their drunken fathers and mothers in idleness. At night, after spending the whole day at crossings, or wherever they may be allowed to ply their trade, they hobble home, if in winter, often without shoes, and go supperless to their bed of straw in the corner, while the parents gorge themselves with the meal that the day's work of the children furnish. Thus in thousands of basements and garrets, where poverty and beastli- ness huddle together, is nature's order reversed, chil- dren of tender years taking the place of parents, with no return for their labor, save the crust that supplies them with the strength required for the ever coming day's trial. Incredible though as it may seem, it may be set down as true, that hundreds of these children die every year, if not of starvation outright, of the dis- eases engendered by want of food and warmth com- bined. Ghastly are the pictures of want and suffering, but the figures in it are the waifs that knock at our own doors. At every season, however inclement, the street is their only, and, in reality, their best home, for when in it they escape the cruel treatment that usually greets them when the kennel they call home is reached. In summer they are found under the stoops, on the docks, the rats of which are better fed than they, and as well housed. The first warm breath of spring conn s to them emphatically with healing in its wings, for how much more comfortable is the back of a market- cart in summer, with pure air to breathe, for a bed- 222 Beggars and Paujpen room, than the foul holes in which they are compelled to burrow in winter to keep from freezing. In mid- winter, when the oily-tongued "professional" holds out his fat palm for a coin, at our doors, these little vagrants of both sexes come shivering along, their bare feet pressing daintily the winter snow, or icy pavement, modestly asking, not for money, but a crust to keep body and soul together. When given them, as it usually is, for New Yorkers know full well that these little parasites are not frauds but pitiable realities, their little white teeth tear it to pieces with a kind of savage defiance, as though they knew well the fact that a cruel fate had pushed them into life for the sole purpose of making it one of torture. To the credit of some of our organized charities must be given the rescue of many of these from the life to which they have been reared. In very many cases, good homes have been provided outside of the city by Mr. Brace, of the Children's Aid Society, but more has been done by the Howard Mission, and the various Catholic Charities of the city, by way of relieving actual distress and suffering. If what is done in behalf of these children, could be done without rivalry or jealousy, and under a system that would bring each to bear harmoniously upon the end desired, even this most pitiable class could be taken from our doors and from the street; but the truth is that no such system, having a care for the future welfare of these waifs, has yet been got into effective working order. Of course it is impossible to find good homes for ail the boys and girls that are sent out by the Aid Soci- ety, but it is equally certain that they are often passed over into the hands of persons where the most cruel treatment is certain to be -the result, and where the Beggars and Paupers characters of those who take is known to be had by the careless agents who make the transfers. Xever- theless much lias been done by Mr. Brace, and the noble society under his care, to relieve the city of this rapidly growing evil. A work of such magnitude, however, cannot fairly be entrusted to a single asso- ciation, limited in means and resources, with the ex- pectation that it can be well done. The truth is it can at best only be approached or experimented upon under such conditions, bnt sooner or later this great work, for such it will prove to be, will have to be wrought ; when we have done it systematically, and shall find that it costs less to do the whole in that way than a fraction of it at random, and without special care as to the results, we shall wonder why we have been so stupid as not to have cleaned out this augean stable before. "What with our money-getting, our private enter- prises, our mad run in all directions for our own ad- vancement, we have not yet stopped long enough to take breath, and to see what lies wrapped up for good in these pauper beggar thousands of all classes that swarm around us. Hitherto the moral, or economical side of this mixed problem, has not yet had any earn- est, practical consideration. It is difficult to trace the real character and animus of our civilization through such a labrynth of moral filth as winds its foul way through the dark places of Kew York, but it may safely be said that no portion of it presents so strong an indictment against our hu- manity, and our Christianity as well, as that which reveals our indifference to the wants and needs of these children who come to us as insects are bred from filth. They move about us a living, perpetual impugnment 003 224 Beggars and Paupers. of our boasted superiority as a people. So long as it is considered no crime, beastly parents will be found in abundance who will drive their children into the streets as beggars and thieves. Any policeman will tell you that the mother, and the father too, will some- times follow a child all day long, in order to see that the time has been well put in, and that it is no un- common thing for these parent brutes to be found mauling and kicking the poor little slaves — they are nothing else — whose footsteps they have dogged. Stripped of shoes and all else in the way of clothing, to make their destitution more apparent and more at- tractive in its piteousness, they sally out each morning, rain or shine, often bearing with them the marks of personal violence, added to those that show the steady progress of the diseases that come from exposure and want of food. We recall now a case of a family of seven children, five of whom worked in a Yorkville factory. The home of these children was in Catharine street, and not only were all compelled to walk both ways to their work, a distance of eight miles or more, but the father, a brute unfit to live anywhere, would not allow them to take a crust even to their work. The meal, if such it could be called that was only a mockery of it, which they were allowed to take at a very early hour in the morning, served them until their return at night, when a similar one was afforded them. The case was brought to the notice of the public through the death of the youngest of the children mentioned, the people of the neighborhood affirming that the boy died of starvation and cruelty. The brute-father and mother — both were habitual drunkards — were arrested, and the evidence on examination showed that the most inhuman cruel* Beggars and Paupers. 225 ties had been added to that of starvation. A part of this went to show that for months these children, though walking eight miles each day, and performing ten hours of labor, had subsisted on two meals of boil- ed beans and bread, and that in quantities insufficient for their sustenance. We saw all of them, and heard the testimony on the trial, and a sadder sight we have never witnessed. Not one of them could be brought to testify until assured that the brutes, who appropri- ated their earnings for rum, would not be allowed to beat them for telling the truth. And yet these people were allowed to go with a reprimand, there being no law to meet the case. We cite this case to show that child beggars, and other outcast children, are not the only child-sufferers among us, and that there are cases, unfortunately, in which a brace of brutes like these go un whipped of justice all through a long life. If the punishment we are all taught to believe in, in the future, as a penalty for past misdeeds, shall prove to be one of grades, to what profound depths of it will these two be consigned. The sight of a mother inflict- ing unjust punishment through anger alone, is suffi- cient to rouse the indignation of those who witness it, yet here in this city are thousands of mothers and fathers, w T ho not only inflict cruel personal tortures upon their innocent, helpless children, but who repay the support they receive from their baby fingers with a brutal refusal to supply them with enough of the food their own child-hands have earned to keep them from starvation, and all this excites no ripple of indignation or pity even, save when by accident some case charged with special cruelty comes to light. The law is alike stupid and careless in its dealings with child criminals themselves, and with which the £20 Beggars and Paupers. city is infested. "What else indeed could be expected from a community that is itself guilty of criminal neg- ligence in its want of care of these incipients in crime, and which has not yet been found willing to furnish even the ounce of prevention that would in this direc- tion, were it used, work out many pounds of cure. Many of these, mostly boys, spend years of their lives in jail as a penalty for petty crimes, committed in a large number of cases before they are old enough to understand the nature of the act of which they have been found guilty. The brute of a magistrate, some ward politician, perhaps, will bully and terrorize the trembling little wretch into a confession of his crime, and then " send him up " with the remark that he ought to be hung, and will be, if he don't behave him- self better in future. The truth is, these child delin- quents should never be sent to prisons in which they come in close and immediate contact with older and confirmed criminals. To send such as these to a cell in the Tombs for example, is to render their salvation from crime almost impossible. Even our state houses of refuge, and reform schools, in which the penal sys- tem is still recognized, are bad enough, for the reason that the influences that surround them there, are not such as to make them forget that they are crim- inals. Elsewhere in several other states, the plan of taking care of this class of delinquents on the family plan, and banishing the prison idea altogether, is working admirably, and producing the most happy results, and all in proof of the theory that not only are a soul, brain, and a pair of hands saved to the State in every single instance of a reform by such means, but that the State itself has not performed its whole duty to each Beggars and Paupers. 227 of fhese, until such a way of escape from an otherwise certain moral death has been provided. The last and the present year, thus far, have been prolific of this class of youthful criminals. The bad times, the sudden stoppage of enterprises in all direc- tions that formerly employed vast numbers of adult and juvenile laborers, has driven a small army into our streets, in addition to the indigenous crowd that they meet, as they still come pouring in from the out- lying suburbs. Hundreds of runaways from comfortable farm- houses, or from the low life of villages and cities, find their way hither, prompted by the dream that money and amusements will be theirs for all time, and with far less labor than either can be acquired in the hum- drum homes they have left behind them. A few days, in which homesickness, repentance, and bitter disappointment, come as dread, but palpable re- alities, are quite sufficient to show T them what a great solitude New York is. To a stranger, who visits it for the first time with plenty of money in his purse even, it is dreary enough if he have no companion into whose ear he can pour his thoughts of the dream so long unrealized, the full realization of which often proves an experience productive of the most barren results, while to the youthful stranger, without money or friends, guided hither solely by a love of adventure, no spot on earth can be found so utterly lonely in its mad whirl, as Broadway itself. However attractive to the eye, superficially, let him who is silly enough t<> believe that a great city is ready at any moment to stand godfather to every new comer in search of a for- tune or a home, try the experiment, and he will find to his cost that there is no isolation so utterly without 228 Beggars and Paupers. sympathy, as that which meets the entire stranger in the streets of a great city. Amidst a thousand evi- dences of friction and apparent elbowing that bewilder the eye of the uninitiated, he finds no point of contact, he is held at a distance that seems immeasurable. In all this fearful hub-bub of moving vehicles, and mil- lions of people, he is an atom in whom no one around him has the slightest interest, a little unseen speck, borne along by a human current that cares as little about him as if he were the man in the moon. The youthful stranger in our metropolis, who makes his way without money or friends, must be set down among the lucky or plucky ones, but where one of this class succeeds hundreds go hopelessly under, and never come to the surface save as criminals, beggars, or paupers. Once fairly in the slough, courage or ambi- tion, if they have either, ooze out, and when help comes, if it comes at all, it finds them given over to irresolution, and what is worse, to an almost entire in- difference to their future. It is a noticeable circum- stance connected with the fate of these, that when once thoroughly demoralized by bad associations and want of success, the work of redemption is one of more diffi- culty than that which has for its object the care of those children who have been born, cradled and raised among criminals. Mr. Charles L. Brace, a gentleman fully qualified to speak intelligently from an extended and varied ex- perience among juvenile delinquents of every class, is credited with the remark that juvenile vagrancy springs in the main from orphanage. The statement is true, but not in the sense intended by Mr. Brace. The child of poor, and at the same time drunken, or intemperate parents, is born an orphan in reality ; and Beggars and Paupers. 229 of the fifteen thousand child-beggars and child-vagrants in our city's streets, it will be found that their being t!iere is caused by ruin. They are conceived and brought forth in rum literally, and may therefore be styled the legitimate children of the ten thousand places where whisky is sold in our city. What orpha- age more absolute in the wretchedness it entails than that which a drunken father voluntarily confers upon his innocent offspring. If it were possible to get at the precise figures in this matter, it would be found that rum, immediate or remote, is at the bottom of nine out of every ten cases of juvenile delinquency known in this city. Allowing a frontage of twenty feet to each one of these ten thousand orphan manufactures upon which to erect the building in which he kills by inches his victims,* and a street eighteen miles in length, lined on both sides with rum shops, would be the result. What a frightful showing run up in the interest of a single vice, but one alas that is the parent of nearly all the others in the catalogue of human vices. Could the money squandered annually in these ten thousand death-distilleries be devoted to alleviating the wretch- edness and misery entailed upon the children of their victims alone, it would afford some slight palliation of their great crime. So far from this, we have these death-distributors paying over a bagatelle in the way of a license-fee annually, the only decent transaction in its results connected with the whole vile business. Could these literally bloated aristocrats, whose puffy fingers and shirt bosoms are usually found laden with diamonds purchased with widows 1 and orphans' tears, see at a single glance, the fifty thousand sad and prematurely old faces, the work of their own hands, 230 Beggars and Paupers. that greet New Yorkers every day of the year on the streets, it would be a sight prolific of anything but pleasant reflections even in these easy-going gentle- men of the bar. What a procession, too, would that be, that should disclose at its head this same gallant and highly respectable ten thousand, followed by their daily customers, male and female, their children bring- ing up the rear. With what exultant pride could they point the dear public to the motley army behind them, and say, " Behold the work of our hands. These are they which have come to us through great tribulation. Good Samaritans like, we took them in, covered with rags and tilth, and sent them back penni- less to their homes in the slums. Soon the places that now know them, will know them no more forever, and we present thern to you for the last time, in order that you may have them in future in your own keep- ing. Poor in spirit and in body, and poorer still in purse, they are no longer of any use or profit to us, and we gladly remit them to your hands, and beseech you, on our knees, to give us a new supply." Will the dear public, so tenderly addressed, resist so bewitching an appeal ? Why should it '{ Are not these men the politicians that move heaven and earth, pouring freely out the money thus stolen to elect the candidate that protects them in their death-dealing work ? What should the public do, pray, but get down on its knees, as it does every day, to these shoulder-hitting traffickers in crime, and give them carte blanche in a business that hides its older victims in the grave-yards of the country, while its younger ones go to swell the long roll of the state prisons, the penitentiaries, and the reformatories scattered every- where to receive them. Beggars and Paupers. 231 "Were it not for the efforts constantly made for their amelioration, the evils that flow from intem- perance alone would make our city one vast lazar- house of crime, disease, and poverty combined. It does seem a little strange that human ingenuity pros* trates itself in abasement at the feet of this rum-god as it does to no other, and that it has yet found no means to stay his ravages even, but leaves him now, as it has left him for centuries, in full possession of the field. What a continuous satire upon all human government is the fact, that nineteen-twentieths of our population yield an almost passive obedience to the rum-selling remainder, and what is more marvelous still in a New Yorker, doing it at the expense of their own pockets. What nonsense is our boasted freedom, when in the very face of it, the great bulk of an other- wise strong-willed and hard-working people, per- mit themselves to be absolutely preyed upon by a small fraction of their own number. But so it is, and we leave this problem, to be solved by the scientists, with the hope that the satisfactory solution may speedily come. That such a solution would go far toward making us in reality, what we claim to be with a good deal of unnecessary flourish at times, a Christian nation, is very certain ; and hence let us all pray that the problem may be speedily solved. In the closely-packed cities of Europe, poverty and suffering among the poorer classes are inevitable. There, where resources are meagre, and where a dollar is earned with necessarily twice the effort that produ- ces it here, prudence and thrift constantly exercised are needful to keep a poor family from want, and hence the suffering in these cities among the laboring classes 232 Beggars and Paupers. finds many reasons for its existence that have no place with us. The harder the task of keeping body and soul together, the greater is the amount of courage required to do it, and it is found as a rule, that with those in whom existence is purchased at so dear a rate, and yields so little of comfort or pleasure when it comes, that pride, ambition, courage, all the qualities that set human energy in motion in the work of self- preservation, seem wanting, so that after a brief strug- gle against both, they go under at last without a care for the future, under the belief that as the world owes them a living, the world must pay its debts. With us the case is far different. Absolute want from any cause, save sickness or physical inability, is a crime. This may seem harsh, but it is at all events true. In a country like our own, where resources are abundant in all directions, no man who can work need be idle. The sure proof of this lies in the fact that we employ more unskilled labor, and pay better prices for it, than any other country in the world. The great scarcity of skilled labor, as one result of the " trades unions," is one cause of this, so that in our extremity we are driven to employ any one that will work, with- out much regard to his capacity. So despotic in their exclusiveness have these unions become, that appren- ticeship, once the great, and always the sure source of skilled labor, has been for the most part cut off, the union men refusing to work in the same shops where apprentices are employed. The result of all this is, that a single body of work- men have it in their power to prevent the employment of apprentices, and what is a still greater outrage, are able to dictate what shall be paid to inferior, profli- gate, and unthrifty workmen. This is called a system Beggars and Paupers. 233 of protection, and so it is, a protection that favors one class, but which discriminates against all the rest. There are thousands of boys who would be glad to learn trades in this city, and who through such oppor- tunities for self-support would become good, thrifty citizens, but the " unions " say no, and capital suc- cumbs. Driven to the wall, capital resorts to machin- ery, and such other devices as it can find to keep itself profitably employed, in spite of the ill-guided men who seek to cripple it, in the vain hope that they will be benefitted in the end, is a fatal mistake, that they will realize to their cost some day. One of these days when we shall find that a little free trade in labor will be a good thing to have. The principle that labor should be compelled to go into the market as a pound of butter goes, leaving its price to be regulated by its quality, and the demand for it, will assert itself at no distant day, and will, moreover, attest its superiority as a measure suggested by common sense. Hence, and for the reasons mentioned, taken toge- ther with the fact that our needs in the field of labor, and especially skilled labor, and the same may be said of farm labor, are far beyond our ability to supply them from a population scattered over so broad an area, poverty, here with us, save from the causes men- tioned, is a crime. Put into a single class the poverty induced directly and remotely by rum, and that which results from physical incapacity, and there would be nothing left of it for which the public would be justly called upon to have a care. All the rest, save the children, whom we have not taken into the account, could and should be made to take care of itself, and would do so, if our good, and often too charitable peo- ple, w r ould cease for awhile the habit of looking after Beggars and Paupers. and insisting upon supplying all its wants, and thus becoming themselves the eneouragers and supporters of idleness. After we shall have had a few more financial re- verses, the result of extravagant living, want of thrift, and the great need of that system in all our doings that is so distinguishing a quality among older and hence better trained peoples, we will get down to a real understanding of what our needs really are, and of our defects as well, and shall then get ourselves at work in good earnest to remedy the evils that afflict us. The juvenile thieves of New York, a class distinct in itself, and sweeping within its fearful circle, girls as well as boys, presents a most interesting, though sad phase of youthful depravity. Born to the beggar's inheritance, they pass from native smartness, through every avenue leading from beggary to crime, until they appear as full fledged purloiners of anything upon which they can lay their hands, with the hope of get- ting away with the plunder to some place of conceal- ment. They are as cunning a crew of artful dodgers as can be found in the world, and, as could be shown, far shrewder as a class than the child-thieves of Paris, who are supposed to be in possession to a larger degree than any others of the secrets that make thievery a science. From the sacking of a house, to the tapping of a till, they show a power of adaptation to their busi- ness that is born of self-confidence and utter self-aban- donment to the business in hand. Ingenious in their movements beyond conception, they are constantly on the alert, and show an amount of energy and industry that if employed in an honest direction, would lift them to speedy independence, if thrift were added to their native shrewdness. Beggars and Paupers. 235 Boys of twelve years and under are often found to be experts in the use of any and all the appliances needful for a successful burglary. The ransacking of an empty house, or of one temporarily closed, is often accomplished with a rapidity and completeness that extorts something akin to admiration from the police into whose hands they finally fall. In one case that came within our knowledge, three boys of about thirteen years each, entered a house in 32d Street during the absence of the family occupying it, and not only succeeded in blowing open the safe that contained the family silver and other valuables, but packed up and carried away light articles of value to the amount of §5000. They were caught early on a Saturday night by the owner suddenly returning for a single night, and who found the rascals removing the curtains from the parlor windows. They had sawed their way into the house through a back door, and were doubtless congratulating themselves upon their success in a rich field of operations, when they fell ignominiously from a pinnacle of glory into the nearest station house. Between these extremes of the art of thievery, there is a sliding scale of adventure that affords an ample field for the greatest diversity of talent. These little rascals will go through an empty house with a nonchalance, and an utter disregard of the law of meum and teuni that commands instantly the highest admiration. Vandalism is no name for their spoliations. Gas fixtures, lead pipe wrenched from its concealment in walls and among timbers, yield to their accomplished touch in a way that even a plumber would envy, and often the fact that a house hag been despoiled in this manner is first indicated by the flood that follows the removal of the pipes, and 23 G Beggars and Paupers. which the little thieves enjoy as a particularly good joke of youthful smartness in a somewhat dangerous and difficult business. Girl thieves are almost as prolific as boy " lifters," but the operations of these are confined to more indef- inite and casual limits, and consists for the most part in petty thefts that are rarely discovered until it is too late to arrest the little beggar thief, who never goes a second time to the place in which she has stolen a shawl, or a ring, or any other little thing that her fin- gers could clutch as she passes into the street from any house in which she has been admitted. A sad feature in these cases is the ease with which girls of tender age glide from thievery into prostitu- tion. Large numbers of these through the training of their parents, become the most expert black-mailers, a business which, unhappily for us in New York and Brooklyn, has been recently elevated into a profession, and dignified with something like respectability. When the Moultons and Tiltons of our aristocracy condescend to step down from the hitherto elevated plane of mor- ality and piety combined, upon which the world has looked out upon them for years, upon that which marks the blackmailer of the slums, or that class of them that advertise in the New York Herald, surely the beggar girls of the street, whose dainty fingers clasp the boquet that is to prove the ruin of the un- wary, can be pardoned for imitating their superiors in this most delicate and refined occupation. Such adepts have these creatures become many of them, and so successful are they in their business that they are found divided into regularly organized bands for the purpose, their own chastity and youth being the capital upon which they set up their trade. But Beggars and Pauper i 237 what can be more absurd than a girl black-mailer of twelve years of age, and many of them are not a day older. The mode of operations is to confront respect- able old gentlemen on their way to business, with a boquet, or a box of matches, or whatever else she may have to sell, follow him to his place of business, and then boldly entering when he is occupied with some customer, charge him with an attempt to seduce her. The police say that large sums are con- stantly being paid by these old fools to these little sinners, to prevent exposure. The thing seems in- credible, but it is true nevertheless. There is a lurking suspicion that any man who will allow himself to be caught in such a net is either an imbecile, a coward, or guilty of the charge, none of which is a credit to his common sense or his independence of character. In any city abroad, such a brood would be extermin- ated by a single brush of the police. Here they are allowed to flourish and ply their trade upon old inno- cents and dotards, with now and then an old rascal, in whom the fires of passion have not been stilled by age or self-control. Toward this latter class, no mercy should be shown, and both the blackmailer and the victim should be subjected to an arrest and punish- ment. In the case of those who are innocent, but who still pay hush money, the payment is made through a false notion that an injury to character would result in- case of exposure. The character that would be injured by taking one of these little sinners by the ears and handing her over to the police, must retain its hold upon respectability by a very slender thread indeed. This whole dirty business illustrates the moral cow- ardice that afflicts all in a country where social dis- 233 Beggars and Paupers. tinctions and grades are the most uncertain things in their tenure of all earthly possessions. The utter shamelessness with which this crime is perpetrated, and the inconsistency of it when taken in connection with the tender age of those who perpetrate it, will soon lead to its being broken up altogether, and when it is, a good deal of spectacled, sensitive, but nervous respectability and virtue, will experience infinite relief, to say nothing of the old sinners who will be allowed to become the aggressors, and so turn a black-mailing business into one that need not be mentioned here, but which the new state of things will naturally sug- gest. Now and then one of these sweet-faced specimens of youthful female impudence gets a Roland for her Oliver, and something besides which she has not bar- gained for. A gentleman of large wealth, a bachelor, and long a boarder at an up-town fashionable hotel, had been in the habit of having his 'laundress bring his linen to his room. On two or three occasions a daugh- ter of the woman, a young and pretty girl, had come instead, and the girl being bright, and a little pert be- sides, he had probably, as he stated in court he had, indulged in a little banter with the young woman. The mother brought his clothes on a certain day, and after receiving her pay for the work, informed the gen- tleman that she should not be able to look after his linen any longer, omitting just then, however, to state that she should nevertheless open another account with him. At this stage of the interim the daughter en- tered, of course by pre-arrangement with her maternal instructor, and charging the gentleman with having seduced her — she had actually been seduced, but not by him — demanded a large sum as hush money, to Beggars and Paupers. 239 begin with, and still another to be paid when the ease should reach its climax, in the birth of the expected offspring. The man was thunderstruck, and being a modest bachelor of fifty years or more, found himself in the ugliest dilemma of his life. His first impulse w r as to make the best terms possible, but the second sober thought convinced him, he being a man of the world, that if he paid the demand, he would be com- pelled to repeat the preliminary dose at every fresh demand, and that meanwhile he should be doomed to " hang on the ragged edge " of an ever-present " re- morse," to say nothing of " despair," and not being a high dignitary, or a cardinal, or even an ordinary preacher, he proceeded to business after the following fashion. Putting on his hat, he walked out into the hall, turned the key upon the black-mailers, and started for the hotel detective, an attache now become a neces- sary appendage at some of our large hotels. Not finding this, for the most part, ornamental personage at his post, he started in pursuit of a policeman, convinced as he went that he had chosen the proper and only course likely to relieve him of present and future diffi- culties from the same source. On regaining his room, accompanied by an officer, he found the woman in a state of repentance that was ludicrous in the extreme. Hie mother confessed herself a black-mailer, the daughter was sullen and silent, and the gentleman not being in a compromising mood, both were marched off in company with the officer. On the examination, the accused told a story so straight that both were com- mitted to answer a charge of conspiracy. The gentle- man has been at peace ever since, so far as any intru- sion upon the sanctity of his bachelor home on the part of these two worthies is concerned, but his linen goes 240 Beggars and Paupers. to a regular laundry, and not to a washerwoman who has a daughter. Thus it is, that here in our streets, children, girls of tender age even, pass, by steady advancement from petty thievery, to the commission of crimes that re- quire, to be successful, the coolness, the impudence, and the skill of old offenders. What is to be done with this vast army of petty criminals, hundreds of whom have not reached the age of legal responsibility ? It is plainly evident that the law is almost powerless in its dealings with them. Much has been done, and is being done, in the way of private effort, and something as well by the private charities, but the number of these criminals goes on increasing every year, for the want of a bureau to which should be committed every case of juvenile de- linquency that occurs in our streets. What is every- body's business is emphatically nobody's business in this domain of administration, and no system will reach the case that does not comprehend the entire and absolute control of all the child-outcasts that in- fest our streets. Justice to the public, and to these waifs them- selves, demands that something more than we are now doing be inaugurated for their care, reforma- tion, and education. It is cheaper, if economy alone be considered, to look after them in their criminal incipiency than to be compelled to support them in our state prisons when they shall have got beyond all desire or hope of reform. The law cannot deal justly with these cases, for the simple reason that the law is only a machine without sympathy or feeling, a mere instrument through which punishment comes upon conviction. Like the " water-cure," that was as Beggars and Paupers. 211 " old as the flood," in the language of its inventor, the law " kills more than it cures." Should any person interested in having this class of child delinquents brought under a system of super- vision that would forever remove them beyond the clutches of the judges of our police courts, let him go and witness the stupid, heartless mode practiced there in nearly every case of juvenile delinquency calling for an examination. Dragged, terror-stricken, as they often are, before these models of intelligence and wis- dom, the little culprits are bullied and intimidated, and finally dismissed with a rude reprimand such as might be expected from the mouth of a fifth-rate ward politician, or " sent up " with the remark that the little offender deserves hanging, and would have it now, if the gentle, fatherly Dogberry had power to pull the rope. To expect that officials, like those that disgrace jus- tice in the police courts in this city, have it in their hearts to bestow a word of sympathy upon a poor un- fortunate outcast child even, is absurd. As well might one expect to gather grapes of thistles. The only thought that enters their coarse stupid brains, is to shuffle through the morning's calendar as soon as pos- sible, in order that the rest of the day may be spent in looking after their own private affairs, or the poli- tics of the district to which they owe their elevation to a place for which they usually have especial disquali- fications, one of which invariably is an utter want of appreciation of the important place they are, unfor- tunate^ for the public, called upon to fill. The adult offenders who come before these worthies after a night's debauch, or in consequence of some crime committed, are, in the main, old offenders, callous to 242 Beggars and Paupers. appeals of any sort: but a kind word of advice spoken by a magistrate to one of these little delinquents, would be human, at least, and often productive of good besides. Here, as elsewhere, in many matters relating to municipal administration, will come an improvement sooner or later, upon the present code, as applied to children found guilty of petty crimes or misde- meanors. Common sense, sympathy, and a real care for the future of the little criminals, is what is needed for the bettering of his condition, with just so much of law as will make him amenable to discipline, and such a treatment of his case, as a whole, as will be most certain to send him back to society morally, at least, a new creature. Already much has been done in this direction, but chiefly by our private charities; what is needed now is regular, systematic, and kindly work, properly authorized, and intelligently and faithfully performed. Under the workings of such a system, in good hands, the good results would be incalculable ; and we believe the time is coming when just such a system will be inaugurated by the state. The state provides a system of instruction for its children, and it is its positive duty to go one step further, and provide reformatories in addition, for out- cast children whose parents have thrown them upon the world for support. A child of tender years, with- out father, mother, or any friend to assume the care of it becomes the child of the state, and the state should see to it that the responsibility and duties imposed by such charge are not shirked, but met and performed in accordance with the enlightened and humane spirit of the age. CHAPTER V. • THE GAMINS OF NEW YORK Modern civilization litis given birth to no character more distinctive in its features than the gamin of the streets, that compound of cunning, independence, sharpness and impudence, who has bestowed on him at birth the quality of omnipresence, and who never loses it until he is lost in the crowd, or what is too often the case, in the state prison. He is the most emphatic and distinctly marked fact of modern enter- prise, and the possibilities that lie wrapped up in modern ingenuity and go-aheadativeness. Victor Hu- go, in his immortal picture of him in Lcs MisemMes, gave him to the world in his sharper, coarser outline. Dickens tinished the picture, by showing how much of tenderness and native goodness lay concealed in this bit of ragged, dirty, yet admirable package of industry and improvidence. Ignorant and debased, through the influence of vile surroundings from his very entrance upon existence, he shows at an early age capacities for business that would make even a Wall-street sharper open wide his eyes with the most profound admiration. Energy, self-confidence, indefatigable industry, such as the world sees in no other class of workers, are the es- sential characteristics of the gamin. When it comes to thrift, he does not loom up especially conspicuous, though even in this direction he is sometimes found to be a marvel of unselfishness. Instances are abundant to show that he sometimes supports from his hard 244 Beggars and Paupers. earnings — and no worker on the face of the earth earn3 what lie gets through as many hard knocks from dame fortune as he — a drunken father and mother, while his own poor, half-clad body and empty stomach pay the penalty of the sacrifice. We call him an outcast, but do we ever stop to ask ourselves, as we look upon him of a cold morning, with scarcely clothing enough upon his little body to hide it from the weather, what sort of figure we would make under the same circumstances and surroundings, and whether or not we should be better or worse than he ? Let us look at him as he stands there, runs rather, for he is always on a canter, with a load of newspapers under his arm, or with the outfit of the boot black slung over his shoulder — he is usually one or the other of these. What a study for an artist, and what a pity that Hogarth couldn't have seen him at his best, when business is brisk, and when his little dirty, weather- stained face is all aglow at the sight of the coin that warms his equally dirty palm. Look at him as he runs in mad haste after the wagon that contains his news- paper capital, every nerve and tendon in his half-starv- ed little body strained to its utmost tension, his eye fired with visions of profits from ready sales of the freshest bit of news. With a desperation almost sav- age, he clutches from the back of the vehicle his treas- ures, and at the next moment the paper is in your hand and the precious coin in his pocket. Every coin that touches his finders sends through his sensitive frame a shiver of delight. It is the talisman that beckons fate to his side and conquers her in his behalf, the sesame that opens wide to him in the evening that gamin's paradise, the pit of the old Bowery Theatre, or the rat-pit of the sLums, his especial delight, when Beggars and Paupers. 245 all other amusements pall on his not over-refined tastes. He is a Jim Fisk in miniature, and in nine cases out of ten, had he some one to lend him a helping hand in time to pull him out of the slough in which he is per- force driven to walloAV, would exhibit the same shrewd energy in a better sphere that he displays with the odds all against him. Under any other possibilities than those which exist to day in our large cities for self-help, these frisky waifs would " go under " in a twinkling, but human wants and needs are as varied in this nineteenth century as the power to supply them, and so the news-boy and the boot-black take their places, as well they may, when the effort to win them is con- sidered, among the enterprising workers of our great cities, insomuch that they have become part and parcel of the life that begets them. Born to poverty, and bred, if indeed they can be said to have any breeding at all — to crime, they are better far than the conditions of their birth, and illus- trate even in their semi-vagabond lives the fact that total depravity must go to a social strata lower than that from which they were dug up, to find its aptest subjects. In the winter their work commences with the darkness of after-midnight, and in summer at the early dawn. When the rattle of the Hoe press in the basement of the daily paper ceases, and the editors and workmen creep to their lodgings, exhausted with the night's toil, the news-boy stands or lounges in the folding-room ready to take up the refrain. For him there is no sleep until the evening papers are deposited in the hands of their readers. All day long these industrious little human fleag jump from car to car, in and out of stores, hotels and 246 Beggars and Paupers. depots, and every imaginable hole or corner where a customer is likely to be found, with an industry thai never flags, and a courage that never gives way, even for a moment. The world might be searched in vain to find wrapped up in a single body of trained men even, such an amazing amount of the stuff out of which success in life can only come — all found in a lot of gamins that one writer has mentioned as the " spawn of our civilization." Of all the children born to pov- erty and destitution in this city, none are so little de- serving of such a title, and far from this they are the creators of a business which shows a greater amount of energy and enterprise in those who conduct it than can be found in any other, even though carried on by older hands, and planned by older brains. Mr. Crapsey, in a recent volume from his pen, pays these children a handsome and just tribute, showing from figures carefully gathered, how herculean is the task these waifs accomplish every day of the year. Speaking of the smallness of their profits, he says : " If a boy sells one hundred papers per day, he is doing more than an average business, but his profits amount only to about fifty cents ; so that three dollars per week is more than the general reward of an occu- pation that consumes fourteen hours per day and re- quires a daily capital almost equal to the weekly pro- fits. Out of these scanty earnings, got at such great cost, the news-boy can, if he will, live decently and comfortably. Although as a class improvident in the last degree, hundreds of the newsboys take the benefits of the practical philanthropy of the Children's Aid So- ciety, which has established the News-boys' Lodging House at No. 49 Park Place, where a boy can obtain wholesome meals and a clean bed at a cost of six cents Beggars and Paupers. 217 each. Less than half his petty profits, therefore, suf- fices for his sustenance and shelter, leaving him twenty- six cents per day to provide him clothing and other necessaries. Out of such gains as these a fund of $2,433.60 lias accumulated in the Savings Bank at- tached to the Lodging House from deposits made by 1,104 boys of their surplus pennies. But cheering as this tact is, when others are considered, the improvi- dence of the mass and the vast total of the homeless boys remain uncontradicted. During the year 1870, 8,655 different boys were inmates, for differing periods, of the Lodging House, and of this number, 3,122 were orphans, and 3,651 were half-orphans. Of the whole number, 33 per cent, were received at the Lodging House gratuitously, because they were destitute ; and we are brought face to face with the appalling fact that during 1870, 2,500 boys, under the age of four- teen years, sought in vain in the streets of Xew York for the subsistence that costs only 24 cents a day. That this is a misery that is forced upon and not sought by its victims, is shown by the fact that during the year only 713 of these admitted to the Lodging House were found to be truants who had fled from comfort- able homes from an uncontrollable spirit of adventure. All the others were actually homeless, nor did they constitute the total of the infantile privation of the year." It is impossible to contemplate such a showing as the above, with au^ht but mimrled sadness and admira- tion. A heroic light for life is grand in itself, but when viewed with a full knowledge of all the circumstances that make it heroic, it becomes something more than this. Adult age that lias left a happy childhood behind, retains in the misfortunes of later years the meniury, 2±S Beggars and Pauper* at least, of better days, and finds in this something to assuage present ills ; but how vastly different the ease of childhood such as this of which we speak ! In place of the freedom from care, and the tender love and pleasant associations, that render this period what it should always be, and w T ould be but for the brutality of parents, these gamins pass this period, if they get through it at all, as utterly ignorant of any approach to childish happiness or joyousness, as if they had been born in South Africa. These suffer what the savage never suffers, the bitterness that comes from the con- trasts that meet him at every step. Ragged, hatless and shoeless, perhaps pinched by cold and hunger, he looks at the little pampered child of fortune, as he passes in his velvet wraps, with a mo- mentary feeling that, compared with these, his lines have not fallen in very pleasant places, and that when the good things of this world were passed to the children he was somehow forgotten and kicked into a corner. It is all over in a moment, his philosophy has settled the knotty question to his own satisfaction, and running for a corner where the sun condescends to shine, he warms himself into a sweet dream of forgetfulness in a game of marbles, or matching pennies with a brother of his own order. We have sometimes thought his eye turned up w r ith a kind of bewitching indifference to all earthly things, save the game in hand, and in which he shows always an entire absorption that is marvel- lous, yet despite all his ills, and the fact that he is at best but a little savage, he is after all the happiest creature alive. It is thought that the orphan gamins are really hap- pier than those who have parents, for in the latter case their earnings in seven cases out of ten go to support Beggars and Paupers. 249 in idleness and drunkenness cruel and beastly parents. In these cases the kicks and cuffs that fortune bestows on them during the day are repeated at night in the foul dens they call their homes. How much is abso- lute orphanage to be preferred to a life so sunless and cheerless as this ? Take them all in all, they are an incomprehensible army of vagabonds, these newsboys, an enigma in our civilization. To attempt an analysis of their character or condition, would prove another Sphynx riddle, and it must remain forever unsolved. To rate them from the ordinary or common standpoint of juvenile life, is impossible. Boys of tender years are not in the habit of developing tastes and capacities for business that are usually the result of mature years, a taste that grows by exercise till it waxes into a pas- sion that in later years becomes unconquerable. Yet here is a class unlike any other, of mere children, that, unaided and alone — for what social isolation like that of the news-boy % — take to business while yet in their short-clothes, with a zest and energy unrivaled. The bare motive of necessity is not sufficient to account for an energy that seems almost superhuman, and we older people who think our lot a hard one if it imposes the daily task of a half dozen hours of pleasant occupation, handsomely rewarded, may well stand abashed by the side of the half-starved gamin who puts in ten or twelve hours a day and gallops to his kennel at night with a heart as light as a feather, if the weather only is warm, and all for the matter of fifty cents, the product of his day's work. What full-grown man, or body of men, with a hundred inducements pushing them on, that the news-boy cannot feel, can be found exhibiting so many qualities of an honorable manhood, and without any of the training from which such qualities are sup- 250 Beggars a..d Paupers. posed to come ? Fun and frolic are perennial with him, just the same as with hoys better favored, and striking out from the sjioulder at his fate, knocks it into the corner. Is it not possible that this little animal, so utterly unlike any other known species, has in him instincts and impulses apart from those of his kind, special gifts from the only kind Father he will ever know, and who seems to have specially endowed him for the niche he fills in a cold and selfish world ? Is it not possible that be is endowed at birth with the power of choice be- tween the pauper's grave and that which he may find after a long and useful life ? To look at him, one would never suppose he had a thought or a wish for aught beyond the, to him, supreme present. But all this is said of the better class of these gamins. A large proportion of them fall by the way. Their very suc- cess often proves their ruin. Mounting from a point so low in life that it cannot be estimated, to an income of fifty cents a day, and although they do not behave so absurdly as full-grown men do, who go from pov- erty to affluence at a bound, even these well-puised gamins sometimes succumb to good fortune and go under, after sunning themselves gloriously for a time in her smiles. It requires a tolerably strong, and well- governed will, to resist the burning power of fifty cents in a news-boy's pocket, and yet many of them, though beset by temptations on every hand, manage to save a little every day out of the pittance earned. We take our leave of these waifs, in this chapter, with a sigh of regret, freely confessing that in all our wanderings we have met no class of human beings that have touched so tenderly the very marrow of our sympathies. We have looked out upon them from every point w r ithin Beggars and Paupers. 251 our vision, and under no circumstances have they ever inspired our anger or contempt. To say that in the matter of native goodness, they compare well as a class with the average of mankind, is to utter but half the truth. It seems impossible not to believe that under happier conditions of birth and fortune, , no equal num- ber taken from any class better favored than these, would yield a larger percentage of honorable manhood in the end. There is something so grand in a hand to hand light for life and bread, grandly carried on by a man or woman, that it invariably commands the re- spect and the admiration of the most cold and selfish of our kind ; when carried on by a child in knee- breeches, or without any breeches at all, as is often the case with these tatterdemalions, there is no name for or limit to our respect. The boot-black is another offshoot of our civilization, standing in very close relations, of a morning especial- ly, with the human understanding, though he never attempts to put a lock on it as some more successful polishers of it have done before him. He is not so at- tractive in person or in manners as his quondam bro- ther of the street. Though not over pious, he usually swears, chews tobacco, and steals on state occasions, when times are tough, and the pedal extremities of the average New Yorker are in too much of a hurry to pause for a " shine up," he, nevertheless, spends a good deal of his time on his knees. He is a suppliant in attitude only, however, and will toss off an oath when he rises from his pedal devotions that would raise the hair of a Water-street desperado. He possesses the same enterprise as that of the news-boy, though we have always ranked him lower in the scale of human- ity than the former. To see him crouching over a pair 252 Beggars and Paupers. of number fifteen brogans, does not give one an exalt- ed idea of the character of his business, and hence he fails to inspire the respect we instinctively accord to the newspaper gamin. Some piece of stupidity has said that a profession dignifies nobody, that it is the man that dignifies the calling — but who will not say that a calling is in itself dignified or otherwise ? To say that the corn- doctor, who explores your feet to find a corn to " pick a fuss " with, occupies a position equal in respect to the lawyer or clergyman, or business man, is nonsense, and though the assertion may be set down as a sop to human worthlessness, it is contrary to the feeling which we term respect in the human animal. It is doubtless in obedience to this impulse that the boot-black mnst be content to stoop to conquer, and conquer he does, so far as income is concerned, it being largely in excess of that of the news-boy. The former has another advantage in the fact that but little capital is needed after his first outfit of brushes and polish, while the poor news-boy must have a good pocket-bank account constantly at hand for his daily use as capital. The boot-blacks earn from $7 to $12 per week, but it is doubtful if they lay by at its close much more than the news-boy. They earn their money easier, and it goes as it comes. But we must nut do them injus- tice, for they are but children after all: the point we mean to make as to the quality of their calling is just this, that it inspires the same amount of pity, but not an equal amount in respect on the part of the disin- terested beholder. On the other hand, his temptations are far greater and mure constant than those of other business gamins, i'ur tiie reason that having more money to spend, and "Beggars and Paupers. 253 more leisure in which to spend it, he falls into out-of- the way places, and soon learns to gamble away his earnings, so that he must be rated, not so much from what he naturally is, as from what he has to overcome in the way of temptation, in order to be anywhere at all in the scale of existence. Business rivalry and competition is much closer with these than with any other of the working gamins ; hence the contact is sharper, and in the struggle they encounter much more moral as well as physical filth than their wiry, shrewd neighbors. Their compara- tively large earnings, together with their habits of lounging abont, leads them naturally to the den of the thief and the burglar, so that they often become the tool, dupe, or accomplice of both. The percentage of ultimate success in reaching a decent condition in life is hence far less than that of any other working street boy. At night, for want of a better place, his earn- ings are squandered in gambling, food and tobacco, and he drops down into the first friendly kennel that offers a place for shelter. If the condition of these is deplorable, what must be that of thousands of idle outcasts in the streets, who earn nothing whatever, but pick up a stray penny now and then from the hand of charity, an utterly idle, lazy set of vermin-covered boy vagabonds, who should never be allowed to run in the streets, and who are at once the sediment and the disgrace of our humanity \ All day long, having no home or friends, they wander about the docks, scudding along under the walls of buildings as they go, to keep clear of the police, a miserable, villainous crew as ever set sail upon life's sea, and yet we never find time to ask ourselves how much cheaper it would be to take care of them now, 254 Beggars and Pauper* and fit them for honorable places in the future, than to look after them years hence, when their depreda- tions upon society shall have sent them to be cared for in the state prison or the reformatory. Why we should wait until these child-nomads of the street mature into the diseased paupers of the slums, with every native energy broken down bodily and mentally, all power of recuperation gone, and then take the wrecks on our hands, with the vain hope of making them self-sustaining, it is difficult to see ; yet such is our practice, itself another illustration of our want of good judgment in the care and management of our refuse population. A country so rich that it has as yet no peasant class like that of England, would be able, with very little trouble or expense, to put this non-producing class oi juvenile pauperism in a way to take care of itself. Compared with that product of centuries of serfdom, and now little better than a serf as he stands to-day powerless in the grasp of the British landholder, even the gamin is his superior in intelligence, while our lowest native farm laborer is a prince in comparison. Finally, it must be confessed that the estimate we attach to these waifs will derive its chief significance and value from the experience that makes it. The large-hearted man of the world, who has himself toiled up life's steeps, and only reached the summit after many years of unremitting tug and pushing away of obstacles that seemed to him insurmountable, will look with k:ndly eye upon these child-delvers of the street, who like himself have tugged, and with infin- ite courage and good nature, along their whole cheer- less way. With such as these, the contrast will al- ways be on the side of the gamin. To the pet of for- Beggars and Paupers. 255 tunc, however, the reckoning will be mostly different. Never having known the want or value of a dollar, and never having earned one, it may be, and having never known a want that was not either anticipated or answered on demand, this little tatterdemalion of the slums can never be aught but a disagreeable, disgust- ing fact, forever under his feet as he takes his after- noon airing on the fashionable boulevard, or in the park. What a pity that his sensitive soul, fitted for nothing save the most refined delights, should ever be doomed to come in contact with anything in this world that could offend it. It must be a wonder to such as these, the glow-worms of our social life, that the good Disposer of human events had not set apart some earthly paradise in which these worthless, but luminous creatures, could have spent their lives in one continuous, phosphorescent glow, secure from aught that could vex their tender, delicate sensibilities. But here they are, and it would seem that so long as they remain in this lower sphere of ours, they must expect to be shocked with the presence of people who are not only poor and destitute, but ragged and penniless, and who, fallen creatures that they are, would never see through the mists that shroud their sunless lives a hand outstretched from any of these. It is pleasant, nevertheless, to think that Avhen the vast network which envelops our civilization comes to be overhauled, the gamin in our streets will be found not only as pal- pable a reality within it as any other, and it may not be a pleasant matter for contemplation in that supreme moment that in the mad race for success, manhood and well-to-do thrift and independence was run- ning, neither stopped long enough to extend a help : ng hand to the little homeless, fatherless and friendless 250 Beggars and Paupers. gamin, but left him with the odds all in their own favor, to tight his way unaided and alone. As we run over in our memory the many bright, even happy faces, in spite of their destitution, of these children as we have talked with them while on our own way through the dark places of our city, we cannot but think that, when the final account comes to be made up, the books posted, and the rewards distributed, when for once all the differences that caste or fortune, ill or otherwise brings, are set aside, and each of us stands out to be taken for just what he is worth in himself, the gamin, for whom this plea has been lovingly made, will stand high among the highest, in the presence of the great Judge of all things mortal and immortal. % V CHAPTER VI. FOOD POISONERS. The remark that we are a nation of dyspeptics, lia3 been so long and so often reiterated, we have come to look upon it as a mere truism, and the evil itself as one without remedy. The same cannot be said of any other people, and if true of us, there must be some underlying causes for a malady so general that it would be well for the health of the nation to discover. The faces of seven out of every ten persons one meets of either sex of adult age, tell unmistakably the old story of indigestion. In our groat cities, where over- work among workers of every class except the mechani- cal, is the rule, dyspepsia is so common a complaint, that it passes unnoticed almost, the sufferer from the first appearance of it counting it among the ills induced by climatic changes or climatic severity, surrenders at discretion, and goes thence growling and groaning by turns through life, a burden to himself and a bore to his friends. The Sexton in Hamlet, consigns the mad prince for a cure to a place where " they are all as mad as he," and the denizen of another clime, anxious to be in- noculated with our national disease, has only to come and remain with us a year or so, to come out a full- blown, confirmed dyspeptic, and by this declension, should he remain long enough with us, would be able to go back home so thoroughly confirmed a hypochou 25S Food Poisoners. driae, that there would be no such thing as living with him forever afterward. That peculiarities of climate and hard mental labor are not the only causes of this difficulty is certain, for the American farmer, who ought to be the very soundest of men, the man above all others of whom it should be said, mens sana in corjpore scmo, is almost as often found with a set of weak digestives, as his city brother. What is the matter, then, if indeed, as we think is true, climate is not to be charged with the bulk of our dyspeptic sins ? Is the immoderate use of tobacco an underlying cause ? Doubtless it is, for tobacco is one of the narcotic poisons that cannot with- out danger to the human stomach and economy, be used to excess. Alcohol is a poison, but perhaps not more injurious to health, or so much, if moderately used, as tobacco itself. Putting together all the stimulants, adding over- work in all directions in general, ignorance of hygienic laws, bad cooking, and other kindred causes, and we still find ourselves unable to account for one-half the digestive horrors that afflict us as a nation. Should a confirmed old tea-drinker, her cuticle reduced to an olive hue, digestion gone, and her nerves shaky and uncertain, be told that the decoction of which she drinks a quart or more a day, is comprised, one part of old tea-leaves, another of toood shavings, the whole mixture cured and colored to the tea-tint, by running it through a solution of the most deadly poisons, she would either be incredulous, and cling to her favorite beverage, or else, convinced of the truth of the statement, toss her tea-urn out at the window, with what nerve still was left to her, and betake her- self to cold water. Nevertheless the statement is true Food Poisoners. 259 in every particular, as we shall proceed to show by facts that cannot be disputed. As a preliminary to what we are about to state, it is proper to say that the supposition that there is scarcely an article of food that we put in our mouths in the way of manufactured articles, that is not adulterated in some way, is literally true. To what extent this business is carried on, and with what effect upon the public health, are the questions we shall discuss in this chapter. In Europe, and especially in England, adulteration of food was carried on for years to such an extent that public attention was called to the mat- ter, and a Commission appointed with subordinate boards throughout the United Kingdom. The result, as shown by tests and examinations, was absolutely appalling, and confirmed fully all that had been sus- pected. The same state of things formerly existed upon the Continent, but they manage things of this sort better than we do, and have succeeded in placing the whole business of food poisoning under an effective local supervision, making it in certain cases a penal offense, precisely what it should be made everywhere. Competition in trade and the cupidity of dealers and manufacturers lie at the bottom of what has now become not a petty swindle merely, but a crime. When the whole subject of food poisoning shall come before our people in proper shape, so that what we eat and drink shall be ascertained by analysis, carefully and accurately made, w T e shall ask ourselves how it is that a swindle so general, should have been allowed such free course, and for so long a period. The answer to this will be, that this among many other important matters relative to the general health, have hitherto received but little attention, because we are in the first 260 Food Poisoners. place indifferent to what we deem petty matters, and have not vet had the time to look after the character of the stuff we put in our stomachs, or its effect upon our health. But, as this, happily for those who wish to reform their kitchens, is the day of investigations into all sorts of things, this of what we eat and drink comes in for a share of attention. In several of our large cities, boards of health have taken hold of the matter in good earnest, and with the best results. Analyses and tests have been made with results already attained, showing that the worst has not been even apprehended. Strange to say, however, and by way of showing how liable we are to be misled in a matter of this sort, the article of sugar, which we have long suspected of being made up in part of white sand, flour, bone-dust and even other substances deleterious to health, turns out to be absolutely pure, at least it is so found in tests made in Boston, Brooklyn and other cities, and hence the supposition that it is the same elsewmere. In the matter of tea already mentioned, the case is quite different ; indeed it appears doubtful, in view of the tests made, whether such an article as pure tea can be found at any retail store in the country. So scarce is the real article, that it has become like Gratiano's grain of wheat, hid in two bushels of chaff. You shall search all day ere you find it, and after you have found it, it proves not worth the search. It is a common remark among those who purchase this article in small quantities of the retailer, that the price paid is no indication of the quality, indeed the higher the price the poorer the quality, is often the ease, so that the more shrewd, and we will add sensible buyers, abandon the idea of getting either a Food Poisoners. 261 pure or a decent article even, and pay the smallest price on the ground of economy. Nothing is more delicious in its effect upon the tired or rasped nerves, than a cup of real " Oolong " or " Young Hyson but if one in these days of de- coctions that pass for tea, were to depend upon his nerve to procure it, he would speedily become nerve- less in the pursuit. There is good reason to believe that in a climate like our own, in which pure tea of good quality has come to be a necessity, that the spurious, poisonous article, manufactured, not grown, here, on our shores, will have to go to the wall, and the pure article come again into general use. The fol- lowing, among many other facts that can be adduced, will serve to show the ground of this belief. There is at this moment, in Brooklyn, ~N. Y., in successful operation, a large factory devoted exclusively to the manufacture of tea. The popular notion has been, that tea is a plant, or shrub, from which alone the real article could be gathered, but Yankee in- genuity, equal to any emergency, was not to be out- done in this direction, and so it set itself vigorously at work to produce an imitation that would defy de- tection, and so long as it confined itself to the work of renovating old tea leaves and palming them off for the first yield of the fragrant plant, all went on smoothly enough, but in an evil hour, moved thereto by the laudable desire for a large profit, wood shavings were introduced into this Brooklyn factory, and thence smuggled into the tea formerly made of old leaves. One would naturally suppose that the making of the old leaf-tea would have proved a pretty severe strain upon an ordinary conscience, but not so. The business turned out a profitable one, and thus proved a plaster « 2G2 Food Poisoners. sufficient to draw this innate faculty up to the required standard of approval. The process adopted in this model factory is as fol- lows : Saws of peculiar construction are used in pro- ducing a shaving of wood, which when curled 01 twisted tightly up, resembles very nearly a leaf of tea. These shavings, mixed with the old leaves, are put into a vat, in which is also placed a small proportion of good tea of the flavor desired. The mixture con- tains one-third of each. It is then dyed ; this is neces- sary to produce the ultimate death of the drinker, we suppose, and doctored with chemicals and drugs, so that in color and appearance, it could not be told from the real article. The flavor of it, however, discovers its real character to the most indelicate taster. It has a peculiar pungency, and is an astringent of the worst sort ; it is nothing, in short, but a slow though sure poison. It seems incredible that any person, claiming to be a merchant of respectability, could commit such a crime upon an unoffending community as this, yet such is the case, and one which illustrates what even respectability will do in order to line its pockets with ill-gotten gains. But this is only a beginning. Take another case, that of cream-a-tartar, an article of such necessary and common use in cooking, that it would be almost impossible to estimate the amount of it used in a single year in this city alone, and yet so little does the compound we buy for cream-a-tartar resemble the real article, that a pound of the latter going into a kitchen anywhere now, would open the eyes of the most inexperienced cook. The vile mixture sold for this staple, is a compound in which terra alba — white clay, or earth, forms in some cases eighty per cent, of the whole mixture. This powder is an insoluble poison, Food Poisoners. 203 and yet six millions of pounds of it are brought to this country every year, every particle of which goes into our stomachs under the name of cream-a-tartar. The price of this article depends in the main upon the amount which it contains of the powder, which ranges from twenty-five to eighty per cent. The Board of Health of the city of ~Ncv? York recently caused one hundred samples of cream-a-tartar to be purchased, one each at as many retail and small groceries, with the following result : Every one of them contained sixty per cent, of this poison, and some of them eighty per cent. This test shows that among grocers, no pure cream-a-tartar is sold. The cost of terra alba delivered here is about $17 per ton, a mere bagatelle compared with the cost of the pure article, and hence the great difference in prices. It seems amazing that a swindle so palpable as this should be permitted to thrive under our eyes, and no effort put forth to suppress it. Take another, a little outside of the ordinary cases of food adulteration, though one continually connected with our kitchen economy. It is a fact not generally known that the most costly and delicate perfumes are no longer distilled as formerly from the flowers from which they are named, or rather misnamed, but are made up from certain oils as a base, by a trick of the chemist's art. Fusil oil, a most offensive substance, found in the manufacture of brandy or whisky, is used with sulphuric acid and other chemicals to produce the oil of apples, pears, grapes, bitter almonds, pineapples, etc. So perfect is the imitation, that it can scarcely be distinguished from the oils distilled from the fruits themselves. The jellies we purchase at the groceries are largely flavored with these oils, being in reality 264 Food Poisoners. not jellies at all, but gelatine, flavored with the extracts named, not a particle of fruit being used in the compounds. They taste just as well, and being a good deal cheaper, why should the user stop to inquire precisely what effect fusil oil has upon the human stomach and digestion. The careful housewife, who still clings to the notion that apple or pineapple jelly, made from the fruit with her own hands, is a purer article, and more palatable and healthy than that made of fusil oil and old bones, will soon be driven to succumb to the new-fangled imitations. Hamlet, satirizing science, while quizzing old Polonius in the play, closes his brief lecture to that curious old gentleman, by the sage remark that to fol- low too closely the dust of the great Alexander, would be to find it at last " stopping a bunghole." " That were curious enough," says Polonius, and we think he was right. A too deep scrutiny into such matters is not always attended with the happiest, or most agree- able results. What could be more absurd than for a guest at a first-class hotel, who places the slightest value upon his comfort while partaking of its hospitality, to observe too closely the colored waiter who wipes the " clean plate " that he hands you, with the napkin or towel that he has used industriously for two or three days to wipe the perspiration from his ebony forehead, or which has been wound around his neck while his arms were folded waiting an order. Who would care to dine, even at Delmonico's, if one were doomed, as a penalty, to overlook the preparation of his dinner in the murky laboratory in the basement ? With a few rare exceptions in the cases of some old-fashioned Food Poisoners. 265 coots, who have still original notions of cleanliness in kitchen and cookery, we seem, instead of improving in this regard, to be approaching a point, at which in hotels at least, it will be best to remain in blissful ignorance of the profound mysteries of the cuisine, and " eat what is set before us, asking no questious for conscience sake." Curiosity of the prying sort is not a pleasant or profitable quality in these days of shams and cheap imitations. If we continue to go on at the present rate in matters involving mutations and transmuta- tions, to say nothing of transformations, the world will soon be turned inside out, and each of us will be found running wildly about the streets inquiring what's what, and who's who, an absurd sort of inquiry it is true, but which in the general confusion and chaos may be necessary, in order to preserve our identity. What a horrible, appalling thought that a man should leave his domicile in the morning as James or John, and come back in the evening as Ichabod or Nico- demus, and yet to this complexion shall we come at last, if there be not speedily some check placed upon this business of wholesale imitation of everything on earth, in the air, and in the waters under the earth. You step into a druggist's for a glass of Vichy, or Kissengen, and he pours down your throat without the slightest compunction or qualm of conscience, a base imitation of the real water, manufactured by his own hand and in his own cellar. Anon you feel moving within you those grand life-giving inspirations which only the water from the most celebrated Ger- man spas can give. It is laid down as a fact among the knowing ones in this fraud of food adulteration, that there is not an article of manufactured or pre- 206 Food Poisoners. pared food that we indulge, that is not m some way adulterated. Even the comb of honey, so tempting to tiie palate of those who indulge in sweets, may be tilled after the bee deposits have been removed, with a decoction that very nearly resembles the distilled sweetness of the clover field itself. The jar of pickles upon your table contains an acid so powerful, and so fatal to health, that the pickle itself soon loses its cool crispiness, and becomes a soft mess that crumbles at the touch. The pickles our grandmothers made were not of this sort ; but then our grandmothers conde- scended to grace the kitchen in those days, and their daughters were early instructed in the then simple, but proper ways of preparing a palatable repast. How far the base imitations and adulterations with which we are poisoned in these days, may be traced to the growing disgust of the mothers and daughters of the present generation for the kitchen, it is extremely dif- ficult to conjecture, but it is certain that the habit that prevails of leaving this home department, and all that pertains to it, to the management of incompetent and careless servants, has made the demand for cheap, manufactured food, so great and constant, that the ingenuity of the country is taxed to the utmost to supply it, and rather than be subjected to the trouble of preparing it at home, a lady will submit to any im- position in price or quality. With all our smartness, we have not yet learned the extent to which the pleasures of the table may be carried, and that, too, with a due regard to economy. The result must come, how- ever, from one of two sources, trained servants, or in the absence of these, through the experience and the personal supervision of the female head of the house- hold. Where wealth is ample, the difficulty is easily Food Poisoners, 267 overcome, but in the absence of it, every-day manage- ment of house and table can alone make a household what every household should be. The lady who is indifferent to the pleasure derived from a well-cooked meal, however plain and simple — and the simpler it is, and the fewer luxuries or dainties it boasts, the greater the need of patient work in its preparation — is not fit to preside over a home, for a home cannot be called such in which execrable cook- ing, or bad food, is the rule. At all events, a simple meal, deliciously cooked, so that one rises from it with a sweet sense of gustatory satisfaction, is by no means an impossibility in any family of ordinary means, and what is more, it may be prepared by one who is in no way deficient in the graces of manner and conversation that render life attractive and delightful outside of the kitchen. The best business men are those who have been trained to business, and who have brought energy, edu- cation, discipline, and hard work to its management, and we fail to discover anything degrading in the fact that a highly educated and cultivated man has added these to a life of business, and it is a rule in social life that the most agreeable men one meets are those who combine this knowledge of life and its affairs, this per- fect knowledge of the world, with the graces of refined taste and agreeable manners. It is most marvelous, that in the matter of food, its preparation for use as a means, not only of life, but of health, we are even yet, in spite of our boasted refine- ment, both ignorant and indifferent to a degree that is almost criminal. Think of gorging ourselves with powdered clay in place of a simple healthful ar- ticle that enters into every-day use in every family of 2G8 Food Poisoners. the land as in the case of cream-a- tartar. How com- placently the larger proportion of us receive from the hands of an equally innocent grocery the package of " pure Java," which is no Java at all, but only a mixture of roasted beans and peas, flavored with ever- present — in ground coffee — chickory and rye, which some parsimonious house-keepers say is better than either the Maracaibo or Java bean. Ginger is largely mixed with corn meal, which accounts for the differ- ence in quantity required for use, as the amount of the latter is greater or less in the compound. Buck- wheat bran, a very harmless substance, forms one of the ingredients in pepper, and indeed it may be said that all ground spices are adulterated, which accounts for the fact that the vender prefers to sell the latter, his profits on these being far greater by reason of their cheapness. As to confectionery, the result of the most searching tests and experiments that have been made, the results being the same in various localities, showing the adul- teration to be general, is simply appalling. We are a nation of sugar eaters. Confectionery in every con- ceivable shape, however nasty or poisonous in its make-up, is gobbled up with an avidity known only to the most morbid and depraved appetites. The more highly colored and pungent the article, the greater the amount that can be sold. This coloring matter, which enters so largely into the composition of confectionery for children, is, in almost every case, a deadly poison. Children's toys especially are rarely ever fit to be eaten. It would seem that the confectioners, through ignorance, or cupidity, the moral element of the nio:ive being the same in either case, have determined to de- stroy the stomachs of all the juveniles in the country, Food Poisoners, 269 in order that the morbid craving for their wares, grow- ing by what it feeds on, will in time reduce the stom- achs of young and old to the same level of indigestion, and so render them fit receptacles for little else than sweet tit-bits. The yellow-colored candies, so tempting to the eye of babydom, and of older ones as well, is usually sul- phide of antimony. Any chemist will tell you that a snfall dose of this operates as an emetic, while a large quantity, taken in the stomach, would result in poison- ing. In many kinds of confectionery in common, daily use, copper, lead, arsenic, and other poisons, are found mixed with that of sulphide of antimony, a fact that should be sufficiently startling to those having the care of children. Four well-defined poisons in a single stick of candy, is not a pleasant thing to contemplate, however agreeable they may be to the taste. Recent tests show that nearly all the white candies sold are made largely of plaster of paris or alum. The blue, so pleasant to the eye in confectionery, is usually Prussian blue, a rank poison, so is the green, which is produced from a solution of copper and arsenic. The reds are of vermilion, with mercury for a base. It is doubtful if such a thing as absolutely pure confection ery can be found, except the " taffy," made in our own kitchens. If you appeal to the seller of these poisons, so attractively done up, for an explanation, he will tell you that vegetable coloring matter cannot be obtained, and hence the resort to poisonous minerals. Buyers will have the stuff, and if we cannot produce it in a harmless way, we must do it in some other. When questioned as to the substitutes used in place of pure sugar in their villainous business, the old story of com- petition, and the public craving tor the largest quanti- 270 Food Poisoners. ty possible, at the cheapest rate, is offered in explana- tion. Could the ills of old and young, caused, directly by the use of this atrocious stuff be ascertained, it would either shut up every confectionery house in our great cities, or compel them to make a purer article. ^<> discrimination should be made in this whole vile business. The expensive, creamy, delicious confec- tionery from the most extensively patronized houses on Broadway, are equally impure with the French con- fections made in the side streets. That the profits in this business are sufficient to en- able the makers to furnish a pure article, was demon- strated in the fact that, a few years ago, two or three firms commenced the manufacture of fine confectionery in Wooster street, selling an equally pure article at half the Broadway prices, and the" result was a sale of all that they had facilities for making. While some check is placed upon the druggist to prevent him from killing his own customers with carelessly prepared pre- scriptions, the confectioners are allowed carte blanche in the work of wholesale poisoning, killing their customers, not outright, but by a process that requires years to complete the work, without suspicion of foul play. We have put the case of the venders of sweet things in the most pointed way, in order that the pub- lic may understand just what they get in return for their money at these most tempting, but health de- stroying shops. From tests made of ale and beer in several localities at the same time, the results were different. In the West and South-west, whiskey and ales are largely mixed with pernicious matter, in order to ffive them pungency to suit the blunted palate of the drinkers in these localities. In Boston, water only is used to re- Food Poisoners. 271 duce whiskey to a point fit for the Puritan stomach. It would seem that a section that still clings to elec- tion, predestination, the final perseverance of the saint, and the general immolation of unbaptised infants, ought to be able to take its whiskey " straight " and without adulteration of any sort, but this fact proves we are all mortal, and that the Puritan stomach, at least, is a little weaker than any other, a circumstance which ac- counts satisfactorily for the morbid power of its will. English ales are largely adulterated with a variety of pernicious adulterants. Caramel, or burnt sugar, coculus-Indicus, foots, grains of paradise, liquorice, quassia, picric acid, tobacco, sulphate of iron, and salt, are all largely used, often all of these in the same brewing. Caramel and liquorice are added to porter to give it body and the dark color needed to give it the appearance of strength after dilution by water. The bitter taste of both the London and American manufacture comes from the use of large quantities of picric acid and quassia. Its power to intoxicate is derived from grains of paradise, tobacco, and coculus- Indicus. All these ingredients help to conceal the fraudulent dilutions in both ale and porter. American manufacturers of malt liquors say their ales and por- ters are comparatively free from these English adul- terants, and as the tests thus far made have been in- sufficient to show a contrary state of things, we give them the benefit of the doubt. It is to be hoped that the matter of examinations and tests of intoxicating beverages of every sort, will soon be made as general with us as have those across the water, and with tho same beneficial results. A hand-book that would furnish every consumei with the means of detecting thjsc adulterants in food 272 Food Poisoners, and drink would bo invaluable. Armed with this, both the dealer and customer would have in his pos- session the means of ready detection, and thus free himself from imposition and fraud. The English tests recently made of food adulteration have been most exhaustive, and show the practice to be not only gen- eral, but to an extent that is almost incredible. The few tests made within the last two years in this coun- try, reveal the same deplorable state of things, so that the following may be set down as a tolerably accurate table of adulterants for both countries. In the matter of wheat and other flours, however, the English adul- terers have gone far beyond us, the cost and scarcity of these staples being far less here than with them. Wheat flour is often found mixed with beans, potato, and chestnut flour, and not unfrequently with bone- dust, clay, plaster of paris, alum, and sulphate of cop- per, the two latter ingredients are introduced into bread to give whiteness to an inferior grade of flour. BUTTER. In England, and on the Continent, the adulteration of butter has been reduced to a science, but, unluckily for the consumer, it is a reduction that adds to the profits of the dealer. Pecent experiments made by Prof. Acherly, of Preston, show that English butter, put up for market, sometimes contains silicate of sodium, chloride of calcium, starch, mashed potatoes, flour, cheese, stuff, rag-pulp, gelatine, beef and mutton suet, and various other fats, both animal and vegetable. Sodium is added to give it weight, with the appear- ance of lightness, the other adulterants tell their own story, and it is certainly not a very creditable one to dealers. Nearly all these are found in American but- ter, and especially the article called " Western butter," Food Poisoners. 273 a good deal of which is manufactured in New York, from an inferior article made in the Middle States. JRancid and stale butter, that no cook would tolerate for cooking butter even, can be so renovated that it readily passes in the market for the prime article. The process of renovation is very simple and inex- pensive, being nothing more than running the whole mass through a wash of permanganite of potassium. Salt, which in fresh butter should never exceed six per cent., is often found to be eight per cent, of the whole mixture. Butter that melts at a low tempera- ture, is invariably adulterated with the fat of meats. It requires a microscope to discover rag-pulp and flour, or potatoes, but this means will reveal the linen and cotton fibres so plainly as not to be mistaken. Lard, from its crystaline appearance, can always be detected under a microscope. The essential elements of the pure article, a very rare thing in the markets of to-day, are the glycerides of stearic, polmitic and oleic acids, and butyrin. Butter and flour, it seems then, though two of the indispensables of the kitchen, the former especially, are not only adulterated in England, but actually bedeviled, it can scarcely be called " doctor- ing," that being altogether too mild a name for it. A slice of English baker's bread, covered with a thick coating of American butter, would make a dose fit for an iron-walled stomach, but for an ordinary one, it would prove a very trying olive branch to hunger. " Pass that plate of rag-pulp," said a wag to a color- ed waiter at one of our up-town hotels, the butter being in a state of decomposition not altogether agree- able to his olfactories. The waiter stood astounded, and the boarder explained in a way that was expres- sive, if not scientific. "That dish of butter you have 274 Food Poisoners. brought me, contains old rags enough to make a towel as large as the one you hold in your fist." The board- er has since set up his own establishment, but it is doubtful if the quality of the butter on his table is much better than that of the hotel. Take Cayenne pepper and see what a poisonous, abominable mess is made of it by adulteration. Salt, red lead, brick dust, and Venetian red, with a very small amount of the real Cayenne, make up the article sold by our grocers. Two poisons, and an insoluble clay, in one little bottle of your table castor ! Cheese is frequently colored with anatto, harmless when pure, but often mixed with red lead, an active poison, that in many instances of cheese-poisoning has produced serious, and not unfrequently fatal results. Even our morning or afternoon cup of cocoa, the de- light of invalids, comes to us flavored only with the real article, the rest being made of sago, arrowroot, wheat, potato, and rice starches, sugar and protoxide of iron, a delicious drink, altogether soothing to the sensitive stomach of the sick. Since what we have said of coffee adulteration in this chapter was written, an account of some American tests recently made in the same direction, show that in addition to the adulterants usually found in ground coffee, wurtzel, baked liver, sawdust, tan, Yenetian red, and other poisons, " too numerous to mention," were found, the real forming not more than one-third of the mixture. That traditional pair of urchin's breeches that had been patched so often that nothing remained of the original material, would prove no match at all for a cup of coffee made from the patchwork men- tioned. Dr. Cameron, an English chemist, was asked a few Food Poisoners, 275 years ago to make some experiments in " sweet-meats," as it was supposed that these were doctored generally with pernicious adulterants. The worst fears were fully realized in the tests made. In addition to the poisons found in American confectionery, there were eliminated chromate of lead, oxide of lead, Brunswick and chrome green, zinc, Rinman's green, and Scheell's green, or arsenite of copper. The dearest bit of a " sweet-meat," a baby in its cradle, the Dr. described as follows : " The cradle was made of plaster of Paris, and the body of the infant of sugar and starch. Its eyes were Prussian blue, its cheeks stained with cochi- neal, and its clothes were painted with chromate of lead." Truly, a precious baby, but what a dose to be transferred, as it doubtless ultimately was, to the sto- mach of some baby of larger growth. Strained honey is adulterated everywhere, — chalk, flour, gelatine, dextrine and glucase, being the princi- pal adulterants. Even hog's lard comes to us stuffed with potato starch, chloride of calcium, and tallow. "With every glass of milk we drink, from the can of the milkman, water, starch and chalk are taken in quantities that represent the average conscience of the milkman. The olive oil that moistens our salads, would, if analyzed, be found largely made up of poppy oil, rape oil, lard oil, and sulphuric acid, the latter added for the purpose of bleaching it to the olive tint, w r e suppose. In the matter of tea adulterations, it was supposed that in this country we had reached the lowest point in the wood-shaving adulterant, but the experiments of Prof. Atcherly show that our doctored article is superior to the English. An English cup of doctored tea is composed, it seems, of the following ingredients : 276 Food Poisoners. " Willow, elder, sloe, hawthorne, beech, oak, elm, poplar, and plane leaves. Chloranthus inconspicuous, Cornelia Sasaqua, exhausted tea leaves, faced with Prussian blue — a very blue face ; cliromate of lead, and plumbago, rice husks, iron filings, wood shavings, spurious stalks, etc., etc.," what the " etc." stands for is still an enigma to all save the adulterer, we suspect, so that the question hereafter will be, in reference to the cup of coffee or tea that we lift to our lips, not what it does, but what it does not contain, beside the real article. One more sample and we close this chapter, with a feeling that if the facts contained in it are not suffi- cient to rouse attention that shall lead to some whole- some and effective legislation to prevent this utterly unconscionable, criminal, wholesale poisoning of food, we deserve to be poisoned in a body. The case we refer to is that of the wines, imported and of home manufacture, which we use on our tables, and for medicinal purposes. And first as to American wines, and by those we mean the wines made at the large wine stills of the country. Our own wines for hotel or private table use are of comparatively recent origin, and the tests thus far made show them to be freer from adulterants than any of the imported wines, and espe- cially of the cheap foreign wines, such as claret, for example, which cannot be found of good quality in this country now, except with great difficulty, if at all. The Cincinnati wines, and those of Hammondsport, New York, are rapidly driving the best foreign, ex-< pensive wines from the market; at all events, their coming has materially reduced the cost -of* certain brands from the best stills of Europe. Where the adulterations of the foreign article are made, it is diffi- I Food Poisoners^ 277 cult to ascertain. The importer, in the case of still wines, on draft, the old, heavy dinner wines, says that the doctoring is all done "on the other side." Wher- ever doctored, it is certain that but little of the pure juice of the foreign grape finds its way to American tables. The glass of foreign sherry, or port, or Madei- ra, so beautiful in color, but so execrable to the taste, may contain one or all of the following delectables to stomach and nerves: Rhatany, logwood, elderberry, Brazil-wood, the berries of the Virginian poke, purple holyoak, alum, glucase, cider, plain spirit, caramel, catechu, and water. Of course the real juice of the grape, in such a nondescript mixture as this is of de- cidedly homeopathic proportions. The profits on these frauds is enormous, but their real character none but the chemist who goes through them with fire and cru- cible can tell. Taken altogether, what a catalogue of frauds does this business of food and drink adulteration present ! What blissful uncertainty seizes upon the diner-out as he unfolds his napkin for a run through a course-din- ner at Delmonico's, or the " Fifth Avenue," and in the course of which he will run, or his stomach for him, the gauntlet of about fifty active poisons, to say noth- ing of those that lie dormant in the system, quietly preparing it for the advent of a fresh catalogue of dis- eases in after years. A single practical suggestion by way of remedy for this great evil, and we leave the subject to the consideration of the party most inter ested, the great public itself. Adulteration of both food and drink in this country is shown to be a fraud that extends to almost every article of table use. It has grown to its present pro portions, simply on account of the general indifference 278 Food Poisoners. in regard to a matter that was beyond the immediate reach of the consumer. The matter has now become one of pure sanitary importance. It is not so much a matter of money as of health, and of taste. We want a law to punish both the adulterer and him who sells adulterated food or drink. The evil is a general, but invisible one, detrimental to both health and morals, and must be met with a far-reaching, and efficient penal remedy. Every large city and village in the country should be divided into one or more sanitary districts, the business of which, among other duties incident to the public health, should be to punish every violation of a statute forbidding, and rendering penal the adulteration of food. Each local government must be made to look after all violations in its own district, the inspectors being invested with all needful power to carry out the law, and thus break up this wholesale attempt of two or three classes to grow rich at the expense of the pockets and the health of an unoffend- ing public. The death map of our great cities shows no darker or more dismal portion than that which makes the graves of those who die for want of pure food. The mortality of children alone from this cause should of itself rouse the indignation of all to a matter so vital to life and health. The more closely packed our popu- lations become, the more pressing the need of sanitary supervision and regulation. The common law of England prohibited any act that endangered the public health, whether positive or through neglect, but as the people came together in communities the general statutes grew inoperative, and the special enactments came in their place. If the father of Shakespeare was fined, more than three • Food Poisoners. 279 hundred years ago, as history says he was, for deposit- ing filth in the streets of Stratford-upon-Avon, in obe- dience to a desire for the public comfort and health, a wilful, deliberate act of food-poisoning occurring now ought surely to be punished in such a way as to prevent its recurrence. The whole country is alive to the questions of sewerage, drainage, ventilation, and general cleanliness : now let it add to its good work in these directions the regulations that will give to all classes alike security against the depredations of the food and drink poisoners. / CHAPTER VII. GAMBLING " HELLS " OF NEW YORK. " Try your luck again, Charley." " No, sir. You have got my last dollar, and you may go to h — 1 with it." Not another word passed 1 between the two, but brief as it was, this colloquy told the whole story of a young, but persistent gambler's career. It is my cue, now and then, as one on the look-out for sharpers that sometimes betake themselves to gambling houses as a refuge, to break in upon them at any hour of the day or night that suits me. I have the entree to all these dens from the palatial Chamberlains, down to the- lowest, and have often been the willing and unwilling observer and actor as well, in scenes that I cannot re- call without a shudder of disgust. Some of these, like the one mentioned, are of very recent date, and are fresh in my memory. None but old gamblers know the strange fascination that lurks in a game of " faro " or a dash at the " roulette " table. The eye, the man- ner, the affected quietude of the expert in play, illus- trate more strongly than all else, that a hope springs eternal in the human breast." It fades out, in the gambler's case only, with the life of the victim. It is doubtful if the realm of despair, nevertheless, furnishes any type of that element in our nature, that in a single instant banishes to utter solitude the man who has been suddenly stripped of every dime, like that bred in a gambling house. To a sensitive man, and there Gamlling "Hells" of JSTew York. 231 are thousands of such, who spend their days and nights in play, in this great city, to have fortune, friends, hope almost, swept away with one fell swoop in a gambling hell like Chamberlain's or Morrisey's, is to scatter at a blow every human calculation, andturn visions of wealth into the dread reality of utter and absolute poverty. We have seen a man whose passion for cards and faro was measured only by the strength of will that lay behind it, walk out of one of these splendid hells, after ruin irretrievable had come to him, with a nonchalance that seemed born of that coolness and in- difference sometimes shown by persons long demented. The feeling was only apparent, not real. An iceberg in appearance, a wild tumult of passions was at the very moment stirring in his heart, resembling the thunder-bursts that shake the mountain peaks after a sultry day in summer. The incident mentioned at the commencement of this chapter was of this sort, and is worthy of a place here as showing the power of a passion that gathers to it as it develops in intensity every other element in the victim's nature, until at last he finds himself the poss- essor of but one, solitary, overmastering impulse for play. The case we refer to is but one of a type that fur- nishes thousands of illustrations in this city every year. A merchant will come here, not unfrequently from a "Western city, who feels that New York must be " done up " before he returns, and that he is competent to " do it." There is no lack of companions, and soon he is on his round of pleasure, the gayest of the gay. Having a full purse, and being known at home as a generous spender in a small way, he wishes now to ex- pand his reputation in this regard, and every opportu- 2S2 Gambling "Hells" of New York. nity is afforded him. Wine, women, the theatres, the races, a drive in the Park or the boulevards that flank it, and which are so bewildering to the eye of rural simplicity, lure him on, until he stands, heated with drink, and flushed with an excitement never felt be- fore, in the presence of the villain that will transform him into a beggar by one fatal throw of the loaded dice, or one turn of the fatal roulette. The gilded hell in Eighth street, near Broadway, is known to every fast New Yorker, and I often find my- self there as a looker on. It is a good place to study faces and character, especially the latter. There is as much difference as can be imagined between the man- ner in which two people, or any number of people will act under the same circumstances. On the night in question a large number of players were present, and the excitement, though suppressed, as it usually is at these places, was of the most intense description. It is safe to say that fifty thousand dollars changed hands during the brief time I stood at one of the tables, watching with a thrill of emotion, new to myself even, the progress of the gambler's work. About twelve o'clock, the door opened, and a handsomely dressed man, of about thirty years, entered alone, and walked to the opposite side of the table at which I was stand- ing. There was nothing striking in his face or man- ner, save a look of sullen, stony indifference to all about him, that showed him to be an habitue of the hell. At a little after midnight there was a lull, when he stepped to the front of the table and began to play. It was evident in a moment that he was no novice. He had "been there" before and had lost, and lost heavily. All this was as certainly portrayed in his face, as if he had said it in so many unmistakable words. Gambling "Hells" of New York. 233 Xor was lie a professional who had run through the long gamut of play, until winning and losing were alike to him, the mere excitement of an hour. lie w r as something better than all this, yet he had the man- ner of one who had thrown the best chances of his life upon the hazard of chance, and had lost ; and it was indeed so, as the sequel proved, for I saw him then and there lay down his last dollar and lose it. It was the loss of it that led to the brief but expressive out- l burst that I have recounted. " You have got my last dollar, and you may go to hell with it." I am not given much to tears, at this period of my life, spent for the most part in entire familiarity with such scenes as this, but there was a something in the man's tone, as he uttered this sentence, that went straight to my heart, and, in spite of myself, I found my eyes moistened with an emotion that I could not suppress. Here was a man that showed in his face, his bearing, his dress, in everything about him, that he had been born with the traditional " silver spoon " for an inheritance, together with the unmistakable marks of a life spent amidst pleasant and cultivated associations. There was an ease, an independence, and a quiet dignity in all that he did and said that singled him out as no ordinary gambler. At every fresh look my interest in him increased, until it reached a degree of intensity that amounted to curiosity, and I determined, if opportunity offered, to gratify it to an extent that should have in it nothing of impertinence, or of the Paul Pry order of curiosity. I had not long to wait, for, after lighting a fresh cigar, he moved toward the door, bowed to a friend or two on his way, and passed into the street. As he stepped upon the sidewalk, I tapped him upon 2Si Gambling "Hells" of New York. the shoulder, with an apology for a seeming intrusion, remarking at the same time, that my interest in him had led to the familiarity. He stopped short, stood a moment without uttering a word, and then, in a voice husky with an excitement that shook every nerve within him, remarked : " You certainly have no claim upon my confidence, as you are an entire stranger, but I feel the need of a friend at this moment, as I have never felt it before, and although I may not find such in you, I shall trust- myself for a moment in the hands of one who seems, at least, to seek my confidence from no selfish motive." I assured him of my sincerity, and he went on to say what had happened to him in a brief career of one year in the metropolis to which, up to that time, he had been a stranger. I give his account of this episode in his life in his own words, as nearly as I can recall them. " To-night, as you see me," said he, " I am worse than ruined ; I am utterly lost. In all this great city, this solitude to a man, a stranger, like myself, I have not a friend or kinsman to whom I can appeal in my present extremity, the crisis of my life. My father, lon£ a rich merchant of St. Louis, and descended from one of her oldest and best French families, died a little more than a year ago, by which I came in possession of something over $200,000. After settling up his estate, as sole executor — my mother having died years a g — I determined to go to Europe, and spend a year or two among scenes that I had known as a student abroad. " As a young man at school, I had learned to play at the saloons of Paris and Vienna, where I resided for a time, but playing in those days was not a passion. Gambling "Hells " of New York. 285 but a mere pastime. On coming to New York, I in- vested every dollar I was worth in government secu- rities, and deposited them in the safe of a banker in Wall street, who was to furnish me with what means I should need abroad. In an unlucky hour I yielded to the wishes of a casual acquaintance to remain for a time in this city. With him as a companion, I soon became intimate at the clubs and other places of resort for fashionable young men of easy virtue and plenty of money. All went well so long as my purse was at his command, but I played deeper and deeper, until at last the very devil of chance got hold of me, and I threw myself into the business with a desperation that seems now, when all is gone, nothing but a troubled dream, a kind of nightmare that held me in its horrid embrace, until ruin stared me in the face. To-night I have not money enough left to take me back to the place in which I was born, nor do I know the man who would be likely to send me there. I have no pro- fession, no means of gaining a livelihood, and the thought that 1 was a beggar, alone in the wide world, came to me with a suddenness so terrible that I sunk to the lowest depth of despair as I left this thrice accursed building." We were still standing in front of the hell, which had proved more than that even, to him. I tendered him my warmest sympathy, and offered to interest my- self in him to any extent that lay in my way, but of course he declined the offer, and in such a way, as to cause a regret that I had made it. The' next morn- ing's papers contained a brief account of a young man who had committed suicide in a fashionable private hotel on Broadway, near 30th street. Curiosity led me to look in at the coroner's inquest, where I beheld the 286 Gambling "Hells" of Xew York. lifeless body of the man to whom I had said "good night" but a few hours before. This incident is by no means an unusual one in this city. These gambling houses of the better class, that is to say, the more fashionable sort, they are all alike in purpose and influence, furnish scores of such cases every year. They come and go as parts of a ghastly procession that moves continuously on to the perdition that awaits them. Could the agony, the despair, the mental torture experienced in a single night in the gambling hells that line Broadway and the streets that empty in it from 24th street to the Battery, be con- centrated into a single sketch, it would curdle the blood of the most indifferent gambler himself, while to the unfortunate it would be simply appalling. Nothing can be more absurd in these later days than the maxim of the old Roman poet, that " vice to be abhorred must be seen." We have got far beyond that condition of innocence that would render such familiarity with crime and criminals a safe moral in- vestment. Yice is no longer a monster so hideous and deformed, that the eye of innocence even becomes dis- gusted at the sight of it. * So far from this, it uses no disguises at all, nor does it need any. It may dress itself up in what shape it chooses, and even the most sanctimonious will run to take a look at it, and it has been shrewdly observed by a man of the world, hi in- self it is true, somewhat, given to sights and shows, that even piety prefers now to see the devil without paint, just as he is, horns, hoof and tail, a real devil and no mistake. Nobody is horrified now at sights, or at conversation, either of which would have set our Puritan fathers' and mothers' teeth on edge. As to what may be written that is positively lewd, and still Gambling "Hells " of JSTew York. 287 be devoured with an appetite that knows no limit to its gratification, the late Plymouth Church scandal fur- nishes a most apt illustration. It would seem that we have fallen upon times where exhibitions, however broad in suggestions of lewdness, win the applause of even " genteel " audiences. So far as appearances go, it is doubtful if the most refined private circles in our city can furnish in man- ner, at least, more perfect specimens of good breeding and dignity than do the first-class gambling houses of New York. The social grades of the gambling fra- ternity are as distinctly marked as any other. An evening spent at Chamberlain's place in Twenty-fourth street, or at his Long Branch hell, or at Congressman John Morrisey's, during the " season " at Saratoga, will convince the most skeptical that the men who drink deepest at the fatal Spring over which Chance presides, are not unfrequently men who are not strangers to literature, or wealth, and who are often men of the most refined tastes. In these houses nothing is omitted in the way of costly furniture and decorations that can render them attractive to men of wealth and station. The wines, the viands, the table silver and other appointments, the manner in which all is served, all tend artfully to strengthen the delusion that the place is a private one, and that he who presides over it is only doing his best to amuse his guests. One feature is conspicuous, however, through all the routine of one of these splen- did hells. Hilarity rarely is met with; drunkenness, never. The habitues of these places need all their wits when there, and seldom part with them through drink or excitement. Should a patron of the place come to it intoxicated, 288 Gambling "Hells" of New York. he is quietly, tenderly disposed of ; if a stranger, lie will be shown to the sidewalk. A funeral occasion is not marked by a silence more profound than that which prevails at the best places where the " tiger " is attacked, and it is certain that within them are rung nightly the death-knell of a thousand hopes. A step downwards reveals a different state of things both as to the houses and their personnel. Here all is tawdry in the way of ornaments and make-up. A " Cheap John " air pervades the whole concern. Of gilt and glitter there is still enough, but it is a base imitation ; the real is not to be found. Tumble-down objects in the way of furniture and adornments are everywhere. Not an evidence of good living or of good taste can be seen. The wines and liquors are abominable in quality, and the suppers such as would destroy the stomach of an ostrich. The same differ- ence is noticeable in the players. They are those one meets on Broadway any day in the year, and at the sight of whom you instinctively clutch your wallet if there be anything in it worth preserving. Coarse- featured, bag-eyed, loaded down with cheap jewelry, with now and then a single diamond preserved as a relic of other and, it may be, better days, they carry in their bearing and faces the sure evidences of growing degradation. A few of these have come from respect- ability to gambling for a living, a mode of existence that has no match in meanness on this side of the pit of the infernal regions. Another step down the lad- der, and you have reached the point at which disgust begins and continues to deepen to the bitter end. Around the tables of the well-bred Chamberlain, and in his private rooms, hovered grave Senators, Mem- Gambling "Tlells" of Yew York. 289 bers, and millionaires, the proprietor the peer of the best of them in dress and manner, and perhaps we might add with some show of truth, in morals as well. Here are coarse-grained faces, frowsy beards and hair, or close-cut to be out of the way, threadbare habili- ments, downcast looks from faces of the bull-dog type, and all around an atmosphere of villainy that betrays the character of the place. A smell compounded of odors of vile grease, bad liquors, and unclean bodies, pervades the apartment, reminding one of Satan's grand outburst in " Paradise Lost "— ^ " "Which way I fly is hell, myself am hell." Nothing can be imagined more dismal than maces of this grade to an outsider unused to such scenes. The creatures found here are in every appropriate sense the social vampires of the city. Having never known the ways of honest men, or earned an honest living for a single day of their worse than useless lives, they spend their time in " fighting the tiger "or playing poker. They are the creatures who began life at the wrong end, and have kept straight on the same direc- tion, until anything like reformation is not to be thought of. What room, indeed, for reforming a monster that has never known the ways or the haunts of innocence, but whose life has been one continu- ous retrogression, without a redeeming feature. The hang-dog manner in which the gamblers of these houses hover about the hell, shows them ripe for the perpe- tration of any crime from a petty theft to that of murder. This class of houses is not deemed the worst, and if filth and squalor are taken in the account, they are not so, but in all else they are as vile as the lowest, 290 Gambling " Hells " of New York. dirtiest faro dens in the city. The difference is only one of physical filth. The passion of the American gambler is admitted to be faro. From the millionaire Seuator who plays at Chamberlain's or the "Big Murray," down to the meanest shark who stands ready to take your life for a sou, faro is the game. The quiet manner in which it is played lends to it a peculiar fascination for all grades of players. A gambler at his work needs to be in full possession of all his wits. Anything that distracts his attention for a moment even annoys him. So constant is this habit of concentration, that it stamps itself indelibly upon the features, and so stolid do even these canaille become, that they can witness the " raking-in " of their last dime with a composure that would be admirable anywhere else. There are one hundred faro houses in this city, with a regular following perhaps of five thousand players. The others are outsiders, or occasionals, a small army in them- selves, but the army that furnishes the- means by which the "banks" are kept going. The average gains of the regular players, especially in the lower houses, are a trifle compared with those in the first-class hells. Mr. Crapsey describes the great American game as follows : " There is first, the large massive table, covered with green cloth, and on it, occupying less than half in surface, is the ' lay out,' which is a full suit of cards from the ace to the king, painted in a parallelogram. Then there is the dealing-box, into which the cards are put, face upward, and the whole game consists in guessing what card will be reached as they are drawn from the box. All being ready, the players make their bets by placing upon a card in the c lay out,' the amount they desire to risk upon it ; and the game can Gambling "Hells" of Xew York. 291 be best described by supposing that one of these is sanguine that the queen will win. lie therefore puts on the card the small round piece of ivory called 6 checks,' which he has purchased of the dealer, and * each of which represents a certain sum all the way from twenty cents to a hundred dollars. The first card having been exposed before the game opens, is ' dead,' and does not count. If the second should be a queen, the supposed player loses ; but if the third, he wins. The same rule holds ^ood through the seventeen turns in each deal, the dealer winning on each alternate card beginning with the second. But when only four cards remain in the box, the game assumes 1 a new phase as the last turn is called. The first and fourth card being: ' dead,' only the second and third are open to specula- tion, and the chances are considered so greatly against the player, that the dealer pays four for one on this turn. All this appears very simple to the tyro, and he cannot be made to understand that the bank has any advantage over him in guessing the order in which the cards in the box will be reached. He is fully pre- pared to believe that the only chances against him are the i splits,' as the bank takes half of whatever may be bet upon the card, when two of the same suit appear on the turn, and gives him nothing. It is impossible for casual lookers on to contemplate this game without a feeling that the player stands an equal chance of winning with the dealer. A little practical experi- ence, however, reveals the error; but it is the 'first impression that has contributed to make it the most fascinating of games played for money. "Provided a 1 square' game is dealt, the actual play- ing of faro is precisely the same whether thousands are wagered in the elegance of Twenty-fourth street, or as 292 Gambling "Hells " of Xew York. many pennies in the squalor of the Bowery. The players being seated around three sides of a table, where there is room for six or eight, the dealer take? up the other side, with the marker of the game generally at his elbow. This marker has the cue-box, a glance at which at any time, will show the players which cards of each suit are out, and which yet remain in the box ; and it is a knowledge eagerly sought by the bettors, who are to a great extent guided by it. There is rarely a w^orcl spoken during the progress of a deal, for faro is the most quiet and gentlemanly of games. A glance at the cue-box tells the player the condition of the dealing-box, and he silently places his wager in the shape of checks upon his chosen cards or card, with a copper upon them if he desires to bet upon the side of the bank, as he is at liberty to do. After each turn the dealer glances over the board, and without a word, picks up the checks he has won, or adds the same number to those already upon the cards in the cases wherein he has lost." But of course the game of faro, or any other game, played in a gambling saloon is very rarely a " square " one. To make it such, would be to render it an even thing between player and dealer, and that w^ould result in a division of the stakes so evenly that the business would be comparatively worthless. But, whether " square " or otherwise, it is always marked in well conducted houses, with an owl-like solemnity of manner in tine contrast with the noisy demeanor of their brethren of the Stock Exchange, in which yells and screams shake that pious edifice to its foundations every secular morning of the year. The truth is, faro is a fraud, and a perfectly transparent one. The player GamUing "Hells " of New York. 293 does not always sec it, simply because it is his cue not to see it. Like Cupid, the chance god is blind of his own motion. To admit that he knew it to be a fraud, and still go on playing, would be an impugn- ment of his good sense, and as he must play, he needs the excuse of business to help him through without incurring the imputation that he is a fool. The sanded cards, an old trick in faro, enables the dealer to so arrange the cards before dealing that the result is known fully to the dealer beforehand. No matter what card the player bets on, that card cannot win, except at the option of the dealer, so that the game is at best, in all inferior houses, and elsewhere too for the most part, we suspect, emphatically a " skin" game, in which the skinned is the player. These " skinners " are a class of vampires that would suck the blood from an oyster if they could find it, unconscionable villains, ready always to deal a card, or use a pistol. Now and then a decent, and withal, shrewd dupe, finds himself alone in one of these " skins," and com- prehending at a glance, that a cat in purgatory with- out claws, is in a safer place than he, should he open his mouth in the way of a growl, pockets his loss good- naturedly, and betakes himself to the street. He has taken his first lesson in faro, and if he be prudent, as he has shown himself sensible, will never " fight the tiger " again. As to the law against gambling — and there is a stringent one on our statute books to prevent it — it is worse than a dead letter. Not only is it not enforced, but it is impossible under our present, as it has been under any past city government in our re- membrance, to enforce it. A victim running from one of these faro hells, despoiled of his last dollar, would 29i Gambling u UelIs " of Few York. appeal in vain to any policeman to make an arrest. If this statement be otherwise than true, why is it that this swindle goes on year after year in a hundred places in our city, and scarcely an arrest even be made ? while as to the players themselves, despite the law which prohibits gambling, but one arrest has ever been made under it, it is said. We confess to no large amount of sympathy for the victim who walks into one of these hells voluntarily, with eyes wide open as to their character, and comes out " skinned but a little wholesome enforcement of the good law that we have, would afford the pro- tection for which it was designed. To single out a few of these notorious places, in which pocket and often life are equally in danger, for suppression, is absurd and unjust. The up-town, aris- tocratic hells, are as baneful in their influence, and as wide-reaching, as the nether hells, and not one of the whole number should be permitted to live and thrive in our midst. Night and day these gates that lead literally down to hell, are wide open to all who have money to risk, and were it possible to sum up in a single statement, the amount of capital, reputation, happiness and health, that go to swell the total of ruin for a single year, it would reveal a record of the most frightful and damning character. Statistics on this point are out of the question, any accurate computation of the pecuniary losses alone being impossible. But the saddest, most melancholy side of the story of play in this and all other places, has yet to be told, because it relates solely to a class of victims who have passed slowly but surely from an honorable business and reputable social life, into that of the gambler. Any well posted man in this dark, de- Gambling "Hells" of Xew York 295 moralizing, fatal business of chance, can point to some friend or acquaintance, who begun life with all that could render life desirable, but who, overtaken on the way by a passion for cards, sunk one after another into irretrievable disgrace and ruin — fortune, home, wife, children — all lipon the altar of faro. A walk up or down Broadway on any sunny day, will disclose at least a hundred human wrecks, moving listlessly along with the crowd, gaunt, ghastly, and threadbare, who have forsaken for the gaming table, in a few short years, profession, business, honor, a high place in social iife, and at last, life itself. ~No valid excuse can be pleaded in extenuation of the fact, that these places are not suppressed. Their locality in every individual case, is well known to the police. The difficulty of obtaining evidence, some- times stupidly given as a reason that no arrests are made, is worse than absurd. The police have access to these places at all times, and can, at any moment, obtain the necessary evidence to convict the whole crowd of faro bankers, at a single swoop. That a duty so entirely easy of accomplishment is not performed, is due to two causes chiefly, an inefficient and corrupt city government, and the legal enforcement that can come, if it comes at all, in the absence of such govern- ment, from an improved tone of the public morals. When that arrives, and there is great need of it just now in this great, overburdened, misgoverned metropo- lis, an improved condition of things in this direction will be the result. The daily routine of these social abominations is in itself a tragedy that never ends. The players are the actors, and one by one the stars pass from the stage to be heard of no more forever. The means and capacity for play once exhausted, there 296 Gambling "Retts" of New York. is but a brief interval between the victim and the grave that awaits him, a gap now and then suddenly closed by poison or the pistol. "New Yorkers remember well the recent case of a once rich and prominent business man from Buffalo, who, in a few short weeks, sunk himself and fortune into the vortex of faro, in this city. He came with wealth, social position, and an honorable name, and went back a ruined, heart-broken beggar. The suicides that result from losses in play, are perhaps greater in number than from any other single cause, though they are not always credited to this source, but occasionally one occurs that becomes the town talk for a day, a mere ripple upon the ever-open current of the gambler's existence. It is but a few months since that an old habitue of a gambling hell, on Broadway, near Spring street, saun- tered into his old haunt about two o'clock in the morn- ing, at a moment when the excitement of the game had risen to a climax, that was almost spectral in its intensity. Eyes that rarely glared with rage, but which wore usually an expression of coolness, the result of long discipline of both the feelings and the facial muscles, burned in their sockets. All restraint was for the moment removed, and the whole hell gleamed like pandemonium itself, with the fires of the pit that pas- sion had filled. No one heeded the old player, once a prince in the establishment, as he threw himself into an easy chair at one of the supper tables. The game finished, there was a brief lull, in which the silence of death reigned supreme. This was followed by a hum of voices, intermingled with a stray oath from a heavy loser. Wine and cigars are ordered for a party at a supper table, and in a few moments all were seated Gambling "Hells" of New York. 297 around it, when a scene of hilarity began, rarely wit- nessed even in a down-town gambling house. As the wine went round, the old gambler, who had until then passed unnoticed, rose and moved toward the table at which the party sat. He was recognized and pressed to drink. Declining the seat proffered him, he staggered to the bar at the opposite end of the room, called for a glass of whisky, drank it, and then placing a pistol to his temple, blew out his brains before any person in the room could reach him. His career had been marked by all the vicisitudes that follow close upon each other in the career of a gambler, who has come to the business from a position of honor and pecuniary independence. Day by day the passion for play became intensified, until hope vanished, and despair and the pistol closed the scene. Is one save those who have suffered from it, know any- thing of the bewildering fascination that lures such as these on to the ruin that must come sooner or later. The writer of this remembers well a case similar in its results, though different in a single circumstance. It was that of a teacher in a small town in the interior of this state, who had made a handsome competency in his business, when the death of a near relation of large wealth, and of whom he was sole heir, added a large fortune to what he had already amassed. Up to this time his habits had been unexceptionable, as are usually those of his profession. Suddenly, and with- out any apparent cause for it, he was seized with a passion fur cards and stock-gambling at the same time, and after going on a while, sold out his school, and with his family took up a residence in New York. His career in Wall street and at Chamberlain's was brief but decisive ; at the end of six months he had not a dol- 298 Gambling "Hells" of New York. lar in the world. His only passion was for play and speculation. Through all this short but painful epi- sode, lie had preserved the simple habits of his early life, his only dissipation being that of cards. A beggar at last, he realized for the first the real situation, but had not the nerve left to face it, and a few mornings after the failure of his last venture, hung himself in his own attic. The instances I have given are but faint echoes from a realm in which are constantly ring- ing the death knell of the gambler's last hope of suc- cess, the last throw of the fatal card. It is not to be wondered at that gamblers of every grade ply their trade unmolested at every turn in this city, and it is said that their number has increased fully one-half since the breaking out of the war in 1861. If the truth were told just as it is, it would be that we have fallen upon times when it may be said that we are a nation of gamblers. The rage for money-getting has so spread itself over every class of business men in the country, from the smallest shopkeeper to the largest operator, that slow, sure, and honest, is no longer the maxim that prevails in business circles as once it did, but in its place, the rule now is to get money at all hazards' and by any indirection however questionable. The average business nlorality of the country has reached so low a standard that sharpness is about the only quality desired in those who are to win their bread by it. The shrewd but dishonest salesman or confidential clerk, who has lost his place on account of some trick that transferred what belonged to his employer to his own pocket, finds no difficulty, if he be sharp only, in finding employment elsewhere where business is conducted npon his plan of doing it. The tricks which merchants employ to sell their wares, the Gambling "Hells" of iVew Yorlc. 299 short weights, the lie as to the quality and cost of the article, have become so common that the purchaser no longer expects to get the worth of his money for any- thing that he buys, and submits to petty swindles every day of his life with a meekness that is marvel- lous. It is only when some daring business thief goes for our pocket-book in a lump, in the way of a swindle, that we venture to offer a remonstrance. The twist- ings and tortuosities, the shirkings and pilferings of Wall street, have extended themselves to the country generally, insomuch that business is but another name for some trick or device. It is this general laxity of business morals that is in part, at least, responsible for that nondescript half gambler and half business man which we call " SKINNER." The skinner is a spawn of the swindles that have become so common of late that they have ceased al- most to occupy public attention. A defalcation that changes a half million of dollars from one pocket into another is the theme of a paragraph in our morning papers, but beyond that it scarcely excites a ripple of interest. Even the victim pockets the loss with a feel- ing, that he is not much better than the clerk who has robbed him. The skinner is emphatically a denizen of Wall street. He hovers over it like a bird of ill- omen over its carrion prey. He is not a man of capi- tal, but a man of brains. He is a gambler who finds his victims among thieves, strange to say, and so sharp is he, that he beats the thieves themselves, and hence may be set down as the most finished of outlaws. Those who know this species of the genus homo best, say that his facility of invention is such that he never does the same thing twice alike. If 300 Gambling "Hells" of New Yovlc. there lias been a bond robbery, especially coupon bonds, the cream of the accomplished thief's plunder, he turns up in the most unexpected places, and pro- ceeds to work back these stolen treasures into legiti- mate channels. He is the go-between, standing be- hind the door, it is true, half way between the public and the original thief, and having the bonds in his hat, he is ready to commence to carry on for a brief period a little business on his own account, so neces- sary is it that these coupon bonds be got back into the regular channels of trade. The necessity that creates him, is the means of his protection from arrest. The real thief dares not show his face, but the skinner is as well known in Wall street as is the broker of doubtful reputation with whom he deals. The thief passes the spoils at a certain price to the skinner, who chips off his commission by selling them at a slight advance to the bogus broker who puts them on the market, and thus the whole business is accomplished and no questions asked. Sometimes he will walk into the office of a broker with what purports to be a bundle of stolen bonds under his arm. A bargain is quickly struck at a low figure, the money paid over, when it is found that the package contained but one genuine bond. The skin- ner meantime has made his escape, and he never re- peats the swindle in the same office. In the case of registered bonds. To sell these is impossible, but by altering names and numbers he can take in a partner, effect a loan upon them, and then withdraw his bank account, leaving the bank to take care of itself. A full history of this sharpest of sharp- ers would fill a volume. We sketch him as we run through the gambling fraternity, because we look upon Gambling "Ilells " of New Fork. 301 bim as its offshoot, a little lower down in the scale, it is true, but still a casual acquaintance. He is the ori- ginator of the " check swindle," it is said, the most transparent and yet the most successful fraud ever prac- ticed upon the mercantile world, and one that is still practiced almost every day. It is difficult to conceive how any ordinary business man or firm can be indu- ced to pay over to a stranger the difference between the amount of a bill of goods sold to him and the check that he presents in payment, but so it is, and as the swindle repeats itself, the enigma remains un- solved. We consign this sharper to the tender mercies of our police, who will doubtless prove as tender to him in the future as they have been in the past, so regard- ful indeed that his face will never be seen in a court of justice as a receiver of stolen goods, though he re- ceives little else during the course of a whole career of crime. Another striking evidence of the utter indifference of the public to a moral nuisance that ought long ago to have been driven from our streets, is the Lottery swindle. To sell a lottery ticket in this state is a crime by the statute, punishable by fine or imprisonment, or both at the discretion of the judge. There are few offences more deserving of public execration than this, and none has accorded it a more general contempt, and yet, in spite of the law, and an overwhelming hatred of the whole villainous business, there is no class of men on our streets that drive a more thriving business than the lottery ticket venders. No attempt at concealment is made, and the swindle, under the very thin disguise of " exchange office," flourishes in every quarter of the city. Of all the games of chance, 302 Gambling "Hells" of New York. none has half the power to fascinate like this. We know persons sound on all other topics, absolutely in- sane on the subject of lotteries. The very sight of a bit of lottery pasteboard, or a " scheme," rouses the devil of cupidity within them to an extent that is most marvelous. The twentieth part of a full ticket will be worn by one of these infatuated gamblers as a kind of charm, or talisman, a perpetual token of good luck. The mischief of all this infatuation is, that it takes possession of a large class unable to bear any illegiti- mate strain upon their slender purses. Working men and sewing women spend more money in these places than any other class. Thousands pinch themselves in every conceivable way to get the coveted ticket or sec- tion of a ticket, that must surely, they fondly believe, bring them ultimate independence and ease. The disease, for such it really is, grows by what it feeds on, and comes in time to take complete possession of its victim. To resist it now, is impossible, and a por- tion of each year's earnings is set aside to feed the maw of a monster that rarely gives anything in re- turn. But the vice is confined not to the poor alone, it reaches all classes and conditions. The pocket of the threadbare unfortunate, the pauper, the beggar in tat- ters, the merchant, the lawyer and the clergyman even, is often the constant receptacle of an "Havana" or " Kentucky " scheme. If the victim is too poor to purchase a whole ticket in a foreign lottery, which costs $32, he contents himself with a part of one, or invests in the cheaper home article. The ticket he must have, for it keeps burning within him the un- quenchable fire of hope, investing even the dreariest life with a dream of wealth grander than would be the Gambling "Eells" of New Fork. 303 reality itself, should it ever come as a fact. If there is a fiction that mortals indulge, grander than all others, it is that which plays around the brain of a dupe who is crazed with the possession of a lottery ticket. Let any one who has never witnessed the entire power of chance over a certain order of mind, run into the lot- tery office on Broadway, near St. Paul's Church, on the day set apart for a drawing. The place, the crowd, especially the latter, is a study in itself. The most conspicuous object is the blackboard, upon which are written the numbers after the drawings have been made. Let us enter. What a motley crowd of anx- ious faces ! A glance reveals the fact that they are from almost every condition in life, from the man of wealth, anxious to increase it by chance, to the poor, forlorn, seedy purchaser, who has come for the last time, perhaps, to know his fate. He is not long in discovering it, for it comes to him in the usual form of a blank. With trembling lip and blanched face, he totters out and disappears in the crowd, neither a wiser nor a better man from the bitter experience ; indeed, this passion for lottery gambling is the one experience of life from which no benefit is derived, even from a thousand repetitions. The well-to-do speculator, who has not yet got down to a lottery ticket as his only wealth, runs carelessly in on his way u down town," reads his fate on the blackboard, and passes on with the old " better luck next time," running through his brain, as the only crumb of consolation to be extracted from the ex- perience. As we scan further this mournful gathering of human odds and ends, pity takes the place of cen- sure. Life is a duel at best with these, or with most of them, and there is, after all, method in the madness 304 GamUlng "Hells" of New York. that craves riches for its own sake, and without the trouble of delving for a lifetime to acquire it. It is easy for a self-possessed looker-on to discover the weak point in the make-up of each of these enthusiasts, for they are just this, but in itself the passion seems harm- less enough. It is acquisitiveness sharpened by oppor- tunity into a mad desire to gratify in ways not only illegitimate, but hopeless, that works the mischief in lottery gambling. A stronger moral sense in the com- munity, would shut up all these places, and thus the temptation of weak minds be removed. At all events, stupid as is the folly, the sin of it lies at the door of the public and those who execute, or fail, as in this cast-, to execute its commands. A brooding, sensitive mind, exasperated by poverty, must be allowed, in measuring its responsibility, a wide latitude, in a matter that appears so vital to it as that of the chances on a scheme of chance. These gamblers are law-breakers, it is true, but the public is a law-breaker as well, with this difference as to pun- ishment, that it cannot sutler as an individual, and hence the breaches and infractions that it constantly per- mits. The public opens these lottery doors, and here at this moment, in this one, can be seen a multitude which represents in miniature, thriftlessness and vaga- bondism, side by side with the delvers in mechanical and other branches of labor, all waiting with quick- ened pulse, and tumultuous brain, the lucky number that is to lift them out of a life-long pecuniary slough. The woman you see there, at the other end of the room, in faded dress and a face petrified by some great grief, has probably come here for the hundredth time, and each time on a fool's errand, as w r e, who look on indifferently, say, but to her, poor creature, the errand GamUing "Hells" of New York. 305 has seemed anything but that of a fool. Each visit marked a point in her forlorn existence, that will never be blotted from her memory. For years without number, a portion of her scanty earnings have gone to enrich the cormorants who fatten upon spoils wrung from the very heart of poverty and want. Could she by any miracle scrape together the money she has thrown to this lottery Moloch, she would pass from rags to competency at a bound. Too late for her, at least, and she passes out into the pavement crowd, bearing still another burden, inevitable, and now irresistible. No distress of mind or body could still this life-long passion in her heart. She has hug- ged the delusion with the intensity that a mother clings to her babe when all else is lost. She has be- come wedded to a blank, and when she has drawn the last one, hope will beam as brightly to her as it did when, with devouring eye and longing heart, she be- held her first lottery ticket. Yonder is a young man come to know the fate of his first venture in lottery gambling. If you met him on the street, you would exclaim instinctively, " just the timber of which lottery fools are made." How guile- less and innocent the face, the great blue eye, swim- ming in the liquid dew of youth and hope, sees nothing as it gazes, save the grand vision of future wealth that has now full possession of him. The announcement of his first failure is attended with a slight change of col- or, a nervous twitch of the eye, and then he too is gone. He will come again, and often, for the business thrives upon such as he. The hard-fisted mechanic you see there, is an old stager in the business, as are usually the men of his class. Seeing nothing ahead for a lifetime, beyond the average week's wages, and 306 GamUhg "Hells" of New Ybrh being destitute of the ambition that knows no such word as defeat, he is one who succumbed to fate at starting, and who, in the place of effort, has substituted chance. Such as he are not hurt much by lotteries. Whatever his opportunities in life might be, he would prefer the daily rut to any new path that he must mark out for himself, and so, pocketing his loss, he coolly re- invests, and joins the procession of failures that has moved on before him. Fatal infatuation, but of a kind to which most of us cling with a tenacity stronger even than life itself. These portraits, drawn from life, faintly sketched it is true, stand, nevertheless, for millions of similar ones whose originals have been lured on from year to year in pursuit of this lottery ignis fataus, and why should we wonder at it ? It is said that every mind, however weak, has some, to it, grand ideal, and what realm of the ideal more fascinating than that which wealth peoples with its own creations? What valleys are fairer, and what castles more airy than those which nestle in the brain of the man or woman who can find all of them in a lottery ticket ? What, after all, is there to wonder at in this pitiable exhibition, to prevent which, nothing absolutely is be- ing done ! In a country where every avenue leading to wealth and distinction is thrown wide open to the son of the poorest as well as that of the richest, the most provoking anomalies and contradictions are met on every hand. Self-inflated wealth jostles and elbows gaunt poverty on every street ; civilization in its very highest phases, stands out in striking contrast with the lowest depths of barbarism. Superabundant elegance rustles under silken canopies, while want herds to- gether like savages, yet all members of God's great Gambling "Hells" of New York. 307 family ! One side reveling amidst a plenty that rises in its self-exaltation to heaven, while penury sinks unaided to a point so near hell, that the pit ceases to have any terrors for it. Entering life under a cloud, the man who is born to poverty is seized with the unrest that never ceases, the worm that never dies, and when the tangible has slipped from his grasp, he seizes, as a last resort, upon any straw that promises to float him on a little further over the great, to him, dead sea of exist- ence, and it is thus that the lottery ticket often comes, as the fuel that kindles into new life the last slumber- ing ember on his hearth. The lotteries that flourish in this city are the Hav- ana, carried on under the Cuban government, the Ken- tucky State Lottery, and the Missouri State Lottery. All are unmitigated swindles, but yet are allowed to ply their trade with us as though they were Sunday- schools, instead of the vile things that they are, all we presume in furtherance of our peculiar notions of civi- lization and Christianity. The home lotteries are drawn every day, and the prizes being small, are patronized largely by people of small means. The men who carry on this business in this country are gamblers, sharpers, and prominent sporting men, and the business done and profits realized are enormous. The latter alone are estimated at three-quarters of a million yearly. That they are swindles in which the seller gets all the money and the purchaser of the tickets nothing, when taken as a class, the prizes being so rare that they form really no proportion to the pro- fits, is certain. The large amount of money required to work these schemes comes from the fact that the ticket sellers get a large commission on their sales. These last are issued to them in lots, and are sent over the 303 Gambling "Hells" of Xew York. country by combinations that follow each other in sets. Before the hour for drawing arrives, all tickets in the hands of agents, unsold, are returned to the principal office, so that the numbers that would draw the prizes are as likely to be in the packages returned as else- where, even supposing the scheme to be an honest one. To look for honesty in such a business is not only useless but absurd. Such a thing as an honest lottery scheme, outside of those temporarily established at our Church fairs, and at the fairs of the Young Men's Christian Associations, and other benevolent bodies, has probably never been witnessed. In any and all cases the numbers are so arranged that the prizes fall into the hands of the proprietors. Were it not for the fact that a prize, when drawn, is one of the means by which the business is kept alive, they would be still rarer than they are. A prize of $2,500 drawn in a country town of 2,500 inhabitants, where gossip travels on wings, will send fifty or more fools for tickets for the next drawing. We have never seen, and it is not likely we ever shall see, such an account of the busi- ness as shall show in any given drawing the proportion that prizes bear to the ticket sales of the scheme. One such exhibit would be likely to cure even the crazy purchasers of their mad folly. It must be set down to the credit of the buyers of these scraps that the purpose in the main is to better their condition. When fortune has frowned on an ambitious young man for example, one who has set up in life a decent home establishment, and he desires to keep it going, what wonder that the lottery ticket should be clutched at as he begins to run down hill with no power to bring ill-fortune to a halt 2 Gambling "Hells " of New York, 309 That picture-gallery would be a rare one that could hang on its walls the types alone of the distinct classes that buy lottery-tickets as a habit. On inspection it would be found that the faces therein would stand for every phase of credulity known to superstition. The man of slender means, proud, honest, but ambitious, would be likely to have for his nearest neighbor the weak one who ran for a lotteiy-ticket at the first approach of misfortune. In a corner would be seen the cautious buyer, and for a companion-piece the one who made the most noise over his purchase until the blank came, and who then subsided until the means could be raised for another venture. The man most to be pitied is the one who secured a small prize early in his career, and who has invested to no purpose regularly every week since. His life lias indeed been a blank and no mistake. Another picture represents the dashing victim, who always went for his ticket as a terrier goes for a rat, certain always that he will shake the fickle goddess into submission, and forever after woo her to some purpose, but alas, he too turns out a dupe, no better than the rest, save in the courage with which he keeps up the chase. High above all is the fool who has never allowed himself to " see the new moon over his left shoulder," who is a firm believer in chance, and his own power to control it. His faith in himself, and his ability to discover the combination that contains the coveted prize, is some- thing marvelous and altogether inspiring to those who follow his lead, and they are legion. This man devoured the " Wheel of Fortune " at starting, the wheel that turned him into a madman, and which he still reads at odd times by way of a reminder of past unlucky days, soon to be turned, all of them, into 310 Gambling "Hells " of New York. the one supremely fortunate one that shall bring him $30,000. Mr. Crapsey, in his chapter on " Lottery Gamblers," in his " Nether Side of New York," thus describes the difference in character between the home lotteries and the Royal Havana Lottery of Cuba. " The former are formed of three number combina- tions, are drawn twice each day, and in the days of wildcat banks, whatever may be the fact now, paid their prizes in depreciated paper money. The Havana, on the other hand, is a single number lottery, is drawn only once in every seventeen days, and pays all prizes in gold. As a lottery, it is respectable, but although openly advertised by three firms in Wall and Broad streets, calling themselves bankers, it is nothing but a lottery. I am not familiar with its working, but am assured on good authority that it is honorably man- aged. There is no better chance, however, for the patrons to get prizes than in the other schemes, and I need cite no stronger proof of the truth of this asser- tion, than the fact that a tenth of the extra capital prize of $200,000 gold sold in this city in April of 1871, was advertised by one of the bankers alluded to for nearly a year afterward. But while the Havana is tolerable as compared with the Kentucky, there are some special schemes which are much worse than the latter, as they are usually barefaced swindles, organ- ized and managed with the sole purpose of cheating. There is always one or more of these enterprises before the public, openly advertised and never interfered with. They usually take the shape of gift concerts, and always pretend to be for the benefit of some charity or legitimate industrial enterprise. Some of them are on the most gigantic scale, and permeate the Gambling "Hells" of New York. 311 whole country, while others are petty frauds, and in- tended to swindle only the metropolis. The Chicago fire has been the excuse for several, and the exhaustion of the South by the war, gave birth to scores, of which some are yet in existence, appealing by huge placards in their ofiices to the credulity of the people, to at once enrich themselves, and benefit their brethren of the South, by purchasing tickets in the ' Monster Gift Concert,' for the benefit of some named locality." A drawing in the Kentucky Lottery, as witnessed by the author himself, is thus described in the same chapter : — " The wheel was of glass, and stood where all the spectators could see that at the commencement of the operation it was absolutely empty. As the first step, one of the commissioners picked up the numbers from one to seventy-eight successively, and having held them up to the view of the audience, which on that occasion was a small negro boy and myself, rolled up the pasteboards on which the numbers were printed, and putting each in a small brass tube open at both ends, dropped it in the wheel. When all the numbers had been thus disposed of, the aperture in the wheel was closed and locked, after which another commis- sioner turned the wheel rapidly several times in both directions, so as to mix the numbers thoroughly. A blind boy, whose arms were bare to the shoulder, was then led up to the wheel, and the aperture having been opened, thrust in his hand, took out one of the brass tubes, and handed it to one of the three com- missioners. This official took out the pasteboard, and having displayed the number upon it, called it out to a clerk, who wrote it down, and bellowed it in his turn to a telegraph operator standing at his instru- ment in a remote corner of the room. All this having 312 Gambling "Bells " of New York. been done, the wheel was again closed, and turned twice around. This operation with the one before described was repeated until all the thirteen numbers of the scheme had been drawn, and the proceedings were then concluded by the commissioner signing a certificate, stating the time and place of the drawing, the numbers placed in the wheel, what ones were drawn, and the order in which they were drawn." A petty, but equally barefaced swindle is the " policy " game. The cheapness of it constitutes its chief power for mischief. Armed with a dollar, a poor devil can gamble all day on it in one of these places. The shops of this swindle are mostly in Thompson and Sullivan streets, and are filled all day with a crowd composed of all colors, characters, and nationalities. The odds, of course, are nearly all against the player. A player has a 'saddle' when any two of the numbers he selects are drawn, a 4 gig' when three of his numbers come out, and a 4 horse ' when four appear ; but he has a better chance to acquire Dexter, or any other carefully guarded steed, than he has to attain this highly apocryphal animal. A ' flat-gig ' is three numbers played for all three to be drawn, and gets its name, I presume, from the fact that it is played by nobody but fools who are known in the dialect common to detectives and thieves, as ' flats.' Yet no phase of c policy ' is more common, and there are thousands who trust to luck so im- plicitly, that they will persist in playing the gig-flat, when by also playing for the saddles, of which there are three in the gig, they might increase their chances of winning something, to a prodigious extent. Lest the general reader may be unable to fathom this mystery, I will illustrate it by supposing that the Gambling "Hells" of New York. 313 player selects 7-18-25, and plays them for the flat- gig. To win anything, all the numbers must be drawn ; but suppose he also saddles the numbers, he will win proportionately if either 7-18, 7-25, or 25-18 happen to come from the wheel. He may again increase his chances, by also playing for the single numbers; and if he should play each of them, say for one dollar, the saddles for fifty cents each, and the gig for twenty-five cents only, he would be indulging in a tolerably sensible gambling operation. Policy is but another name for an infatuation that draws to it by far the largest number of players. The negroes of Sullivan, Thompson and Wooster streets take to it as naturally as their white brethren, and on a capital of fifty cents will ride on ' saddles ' and i horses' for a whole day, which is certainly cheap riding, and for the time the journey lasts, very pleasant and exciting to the rider. As it reaches a larger class than any other, and poorer, policy works more mischief than any other branch of the chance business. The well-to-do pursue it to impoverishment, while the slothful and the lazy and the unthrifty cling to it with the little hope that survives ill fortune. How well they thrive is seen in the fact that about four hundred of these are in full blast at this time in this city. Four hundred banks, whose deposits are never returned to the depositor ! The million or more of dollars that is annually sunk into this vortex, is a million wrung chiefly from those who have never had a dime to throw away upon anything. Certain of success, they pore over the i Wheel of Fortune ' or ' Book of Dreams,' such as can read, until the hour for drawing comes, only to realize a fresh postponment of success. Now and then- a raid will be made upon these smaller con- 3U Gambling "Hells" of New York. corns by the police, but if driven out of one quarter, it is with the understanding that they can set up in a new one if they choose. The proprietors are, many of them, small-fry politicians, very useful to the man who wants to be alderman or something else of his ward, and these are the very fellows who have plenty of time to do their dirty work. The swindle, palpable as it is, and carried on in utter defiance of the law, is car- ried on nevertheless by those who create the law- makers, and it is not to be supposed for a moment that an alderman or a member of the state legislature would permit himself to strike even his most remote political ancestor, and so year after year this vice, like a hundred others, goes on undisturbed in our midst. The whole business of lottery gambling is carried on without the slightest attempt at concealment, so that an array of facts sufficient for an arrest can be picked up any day that would send a whole army of these law-breakers and robbers into exile. When political rings go to the wall, if they ever do in this Sodom of ours, and the people succeed to their true estate, with something like a true aj^preciation of their duties as citizens, this business of lottery-gambling, together with a host of similar outrages upon the public, will be forced to hide their diminished heads. As thousands of persons who held tickets in the late Louisville Library swindle believed it to have been honestly conducted, we quote from the columns of the Star Spangled Banner, a newspaper published at Hinsdale, N. EL, an account of the drawing by a cor- * respondent of that journal. Writing from Louisville on the night after the drawing, he thus deseribes it : " Two or three hundred thousand people have bits of waste paper in their pocket-books to-night, repre- Gambling "HeUa " of New York. 315 Ben ting their fully and gullibility in equal proportions. As an observer of this Louisville Library drawing and its surroundings — and not an observer holding a ticket either — I must £ay that it lias every appearance of being a stupendous sham and humbug. All day I have watched the big fraud called the drawing, except during the noon intermission, when I looked through the other fraud called the Public Library of Kentucky. A word here about this library. The lottery adver- tisements say the library has 50,000 volumes and 20,000 more on the way. The highest numbered book I could find on the shelves did not reach 20,000, Com- paring the shelves with other libraries not associated with lotteries, I do not believe there are 15,000 volumes in the Louisville affair. Many of these seem to have been raked out of second-hand collections. Trash is profusely abundant — such as duplicated volumes on the Satro tunnel — big books, and about as valuable as Patent Office reports. I asked one of the assistant librarians for the catalogue. He said the institution didn't have any, but was getting one up. I requested him to tell me how many books were in the library. His reply was that he didn't know, but that a great many new ones had been ordered. The collection of curiosities attached to the ' library ' is well enough as a begmning. There is certainly nothing imposing about it yet. The library itself is a flabby collection of odds and ends, that wouldn't fetch $10,000 under the ham- mer. So it's not into books the tremendous profits of the swindle are going. " Where $2 are received into this library lottery, only one is paid out in prizes. The victim virtually pays a $10 greenback for a $5 greenback. The sale of tickets for the present drawing was 45,000, at $50 each. 316 Gambling "Ilells " of New York. This gives a total of $2,250,000. The amount paid out in prizes is just one-half— that is, $1,125,000. The point where this palpable grab catches gulls is in offer- ing a few heavy prizes. Believers in luck are nume- rous, and with benevolent newspapers to allure them with easy pictures of sudden wealth, they rush into the snare pell-mell. The question is, what will become of the $1,125,000 left after the prizes of this drawing are settled ? Agents selling tickets secure ten per cent. Their remuneration therefore amounts to $225,000. Put advertising and printing at an even $100,000, and other expenses at $50,000. This will leave in the hands of the managers the immense sum of $750,000. Does anybody believe that the purchase of a few cart- loads of shabby, second-hand books can account for the expenditure of over one-hundredth part of this sum ? Not much. " One feature of the drawing to-day looked like a bold and deh'ant swindle. Not until this morning did the lottery managers make a public statement to the effect that only three-fourths of the 60,000 tickets had been sold, and that all the prizes, consequently, would be scaled down twenty-five per cent. Of course the number of tickets placed in the wheel should also have to be scaled down twenty -five per ct., that is, to 45,000. The Courier Journal, this morning, announced that it would be done. But it wasn't done. Sixty thousand tickets went into the wheel. Here, then, on the very morning of the drawing, the manag- ers made an alteration in their plan of operations, which was worth to them $375,000 in cash. Nice little plum — quite sufficient, indeed, to invite an inves- tigation by the fooled ticket holders. " Your correspondent was one of the audience at the Gambling "Hells" of New York, 317 drawing in the Public Library Hall. The spectators numbered about 1,500. Many of them were country- men. Many were mechanics. A few women, some of them bowed with age, were present. Even inval- ids could be singled out, each anxiously waiting to hear that he had made his eternal fortune. Almost without exception the spectators were hard-working men and women. The intelligent mercantile classes were scarcely represented at all. These 1,500 spectators held their own numbers in their fists and watched the drawings also for acquaintances. And how man y of that large audience do you suppose were suddenly en- riched during the day ? Not one. The biggest haul among them that I heard of was a tenth of $3,750. ik The drawing began about 8 A. m., and was con- ducted decorously, and so far as the wheel was con- cerned, with seeming fairness. The stage was occupied by gray-headed, respectable looking men, who, some people will think, might be a great deal better em- ployed in their declining years. Two large wheels, with glass sides, were kept revolving. One of these contained 60,000 cards, numbered from one upward. The other held 1,000 little packages, uniform in size and appearance. When opened each package was found to be a placard, on which was printed the amount of a prize in letters nearly a foot long, easily legible from any part of the hall. A blind boy drew forth a number. It was read aloud by the spokesman, and also by a member of the citizens' committee. Then a package was taken out of the other wheel by a blind girl, and its figure exhibited to the audience. Now and then when a number was announced, some one in the audience would cry out that he held it. Amid breathless silence the throng would await the 318 Gambling "Hells" of New York. unfolding of the little package that fixed the amount of the prize. Almost invariably the spokesman held up a placard inscribed §75. The audience would laugh, enjoying the joke in spite of its monotony. The lucky fellow probably held only a tenth part of the winning number, and was therefore entitled to the magnificent sum of $7.50. Realizing that his chance was all up, * the man ' who drew a prize would soon slink out of the house in a fit of profound disgust, and envying those still in suspense. " Here is another point for ticket-holders to look into if they ever get a chance — which, considering their lives of humble toil, is not very likely. The managers say that only three-fourths of the tickets were sold, and accordingly they reduced the prizes to that extent. But was just exactly one-fourth of the tickets left on their hands unpurchased ? If their statement is only an approximation — and can it possibly be anything else ? — the matter is important. Five per cent, of variation from their statement would mean $200,000. The ticket holders had a right to know exactly the number of tickets left unsold. To state it roundly at three-fourths shows how loosely the humbug is con- ducted, and how powerless the victims are to protect themselves against important departures from the scheme, as advertised up to the very morning of the drawing. The j oiliest people I saw at the hotels of Louisville were certain agents, who pocketed $25,000 commission allowed for the sale of tickets. And not one of them did I see at the drawing. They had sold their last ticket without a pang." CHAPTER VIII. THE CIRCULAR SWINDLE. The chapter on " Circular Swindlers" in Edward Crapsey's " Nether Side of New York," contains, to- ward its close, the following significant sentence : " This chapter has been entitled i Circular Swindlers,' but it would have been better to put the title in the singular number." Mr. Crapsey, in his search for ma- terials, doubtless found, as has the author of this in a similar search, the subject expanding itself to a field so wide as not to be easily controlled. It will be seen at a glance that the field is not only an ample one, but one that requires delicate and careful cultiva- tion. It is a patent fact in this marvelously active age, when enterprises run pell mell against each other in rival contests for supremacy and success, that many of these deemed legitimate enough upon their lace, would not be able, nevertheless, to bear the scrutiny of a very close in- spection. A large number of these enterprises are car- ried on solely by means of circulars, the patrons of the concern knowing nothing whatever of the real charac- ter of the thing patronised. Some of the recognized standing swindles and humbugs of the day, known to be such by the communities in which they thrive, are carried on exclusively by circulars that contain scarce- ly a word of truth, falsehoods wilfully and deliberately put forth for the purpose of deceiving the public, in reference to those, it is proper to say that public com- 320 The Circular Swindle. placency is not to be taken as an evidence of the good character or animus of these schemes, for such indeed they really are. Business honor, as well as business legitimacy, have accorded to them in these days of bitter rivalry, and, we will add, laxity of business morals, a latitude so wide that a business must be no- toriously and palpably a swindle, before it excites any- thing beyond individual suspicion or contempt. The swindles of the great showman, Barnum, were invariably of the humorous type, so funny that the pub- lic shook itself with peals of laughter while it paid its money for the swindle, all thought of culpability being swallowed up in the general guffaw. Even the Show- man's book on his own humbugs, the greatest of his exploits in that direction, and by far the most solemn and pathetic, was readily gobbled up by the same public that he had swindled so often before. But it is not to this sort that we shall specially address our- selves in this chapter. We do propose, however, and with an eye single to the public interest, to include in the range we have marked, not only some of the notorious swindles of the day, but others which, though passing long as legitimate concerns, are still laughed at by those who know them, and who do not for this reason patronise them, as wholesale swindles. That symptom in our business, and, we might add, our political life, that leads us to tolerate, and some- times actively give countenance and support to r ;rime, is by no means a healthy, though now got to be a general one. A disease like this rapidly spreads itself to every vital portion of the body it infects, until at last, as applied to communities, that individual sensi- tiveness to public wrongs, so essential to a high con- dition of public morality, dies out altogether, so that The Circular Swindle. 321 anything in the way of a wrong will be tolerated rather than be troubled with any effort to suppress it. [Religious fanaticism, like that which raged in Spain in the days of Philip the Second, and his infamous father, or that which led our good Puritan ancestors to burn witches and persecute the Quakers, has been left far in the background of our civilization, but it cannot be said that our advancement* in this direction has been marked by an equally healthy advance in political or business ethics. Ignore it as we may, the age, with us at least on this side of the Atlantic, is an age of tricks and devi- ces. Anything that wins, however questionable, is tolerated. We cannot stop to get behind the fact of success, in our eagerness to deify and worship it. We bow down to the Baal of riches with a servility known to no other people, though forcing ourselves to be- lieve that we are indifferent to it, and to those who possess it. Hence it is that latterly, circular, and hun- dreds of other swindlers, grow rich among us, and settle down to a quiet enjoyment of their ill-gotten gains, and what is worse than all, have accorded to them in their retirement, a modicum of public and individual respect, solely because they have been sharp enough and dishonest enough to make money. Mr. Crapsey sets out in the chapter referred to with the statement that " there are a dozen adroit rascals in New York who do a prosperous business by acting upon the principle that a large share of the people only need motive, and opportunity to become knaves." True, and he might have added that another .set of rascals who amass fortunes yearly by conducting a business recognized as legitimate, not in an honest and legitimate way, but as mountebanks and swind- 322 The Circular Swindle. lers, can be numbered by thousands, and that they are not confined to New York, but are scattered all over the country. While it is a fact that this latter class are not ranked with the "circular," the "sawdust," the "lottery," or with any other of what for a more appropriate name may be called technical swindlers, they are men never- theless whose capital in business consists chiefly of falsehood and impudence combined. In this class may be set down the wild-cat " Com- mercial Colleges" that a few years ago had their " chains " throughout the whole North, and some por- tions of the South, and which were carried on, as some of them are still conducted, by means of circulars filled with falsehoods intended to deceive the thous- ands of patrons that send their sons to them without other recommendation than the circular itself. Of course the class to which we refer furnished no re^u- lar, comprehensive curriculum of studies. A little penmanship, and a little book-keeping, with now and then a lecture upon nothing in particular and every- thing in general, formed the staple of that very uncer- tain commodity with them, called education. Hun- dreds of thousands of students, decoyed by a profusion of circular promises that were never fulfilled in any respect, left their homes, traveling often at great ex- pense hundreds and thousands of miles, to learn what any well taught district school would have furnished them at their own doors. So lean and barren in re- sults have these so-called Colleges proved themselves, so far as instruction is concerned, that they are now everywhere tabooed as educational humbugs of the most dangerous sort. To dignify a school with the name of College, that will furnish a young man with The Circular S to indie. 323 a diploma within a month of the payment of his matriculation fee, as one of these to our knowledge has dune, is to libel the name of College, and that for which it stands. Of course the sole object of these "chains" was money, without even the slightest edu- cational equivalent, though even this is not the worst feature of the case. Armed with his " sheep-skin," after a few weeks, or, at most, a few months of study in one of these Colleges, a young graduate felt him- self at liberty to present himself at the door of any counting-room or commercial house in the country, and demand a place at a large salary, with the assur- ance of one born and trained to business. So great did this nuisance become at last, that mer- chants in need of clerks now advertise for them in the following style of advertisement which we clip from a recent number of the Y. Herald : Wanted. — A. bright, active young man, as assistant book keeper in a wholesale store. Graduates of Commercial Colleges need not apply in person or by letter. Enquire, etc., etc. We know one of these Colleges located near this city, at the head of which is a light-headed mounte- bank, that for years had a most marvelous success by means of circulars containing little but falsehoods of the Munchausen type. The character of many of these circulars, if taken as an indication of the busi- ness morality of the country, would place it at so low an ebb as to be little better than a standing disgrace. Like many other of our business humbugs, it was born of that false spirit of enterprise that stops at noth- ing, however dishonest in a public way, that will en- rich the single individual that engineers it. The " stationery department " in the school of which we 324 The Circular Swindle. speak, is said to be a swindle without palliation or mit- igation, a wholesale grab at the pocket of the student, yielding to the proprietor a larger amount of profit than all the others put together. By dint of hard, constant work with the machine that grinds out the lying circulars and scatters them broadcast over the country, this most successful in the past of these com- mercial artful dodgers, is still kept on its legs, but with a patronage of an average of about two hundred and fifty pupils a year, as against the sixteen hundred of former years. The Commercial College dodge was a humbug, if not a swindle, in its very inception. It was designed to palm off upon the merchants of the country a class of young men who desired to reach at a bound the most lucrative commercial and clerical places without a tithe of the training needed as an essential to success. Many trained to the active work of the counting room, found themselves superceded for a time by this horde of " graduates " who had mastered in a month, penmanship, book-keeping, tele- graphy, banking, commercial law, arithmetic, active business, the latter extemporised in the " college," and several other kindred branches of study. But the new recruits were not a success, and it has been found that the road to business, like that to learning, is not a royal one, so that the " Com- mercial College," as it was and is, is likely soon to become extinct. An educational institution that re- quires millions of circulars, immense show bills, and a brass band traversing the country in its behalf, could not reasonably be expected to furnish either the weft or the woof of a sound business education, and it may be said with strict truth of the class that we refer to, that they are as innocent of any serious The Circular Swindle. 325 attempt to educate anybody as was Barnum, when traveling with Joyce Heth, or the " fat woman." GIFT ENTERPRISES. A little lower in grade come the gift enterprises of the day, and it may be said of the whole brood of them in general terms that they are swindles of the circular order. These gift enterprises, from the great " Library " schemes down to the lowest, are all of a piece. The " Magnolia " (Iowa) swindle carried on by Maynard & Co. was one of this sort. These scoun- drels commence at their victims and others in this way : u At the grand award of gifts, Jan. 20th, we are pleased to inform you that your ticket, No. 142068, was awarded one of the miscellaneous gifts, valued at S200. You will see by referring to circular sent to you, that on all miscellaneous gifts 5 per cent, on the valuation of each miscellaneous gift is required before the delivery of the gift, and 10 per cent is to be deducted from each cash gift. Therefore 5 per cent, on your gift amounts to $10, which must be sent to us, together with the ticket, within fifteen, days from the day you receive this notice, or the gift will be forfeited. " Therefore if you desire the gift to be sent, remit $10 at once." Here comes an important caution : '"In sending money, inclose the bills in your letter, carefully folded, seal closely, write our name, town and state plainly, and send the letter by regular mail and it will come safe ; or if you desire, you can register your letter, or you can send us drafts on New York or Chicago ; but you must not send postal money orders, as none but distributing offices have sufficient funds on hand to pay, and it might be two months before we could get the 'money, which would prevent our filling your order that length of time ; so be particular to send bills in letter or drafts on New York or Chicago. 4k In case your ticket has been mislaid or lost, the facts must be 326 The Circular Swindle. stated and the gift will be sent and the number cancelled of record on receipt of money." Magnolia, Iowa, got too hot for these scoundrels, and the next role they (Maynard & Co.) appeared in, was that of " reform." We have heard a good deal about reform in these later days among the politicians, but the lottery and circular swindlers have rarely made use of it, until Maynard & Co. resolved to leave Mag- nolia, which they did after publishing the following : " Since printing our notifications we have discontinued our office at Magnolia, owing to the inconvenience of its mail facilities, and hereafter in no case must any money or communication be sent to us at that office. "Owing to the strong desire on the part of our people and the Legislature to discontinue this line of business, we have decided to lend our aid in the cause of moral reform, and conse- quently will conduct no more distributions ; and in closing up our business, we simply follow our line of duty to our patrons on promises made in the past, and with many kind wishes, we are, " Very truly yours, Mayxard & Co." How much money was sunk by deluded ticket- holders in this business, no one will ever know, save those who received it, but the credulity of poor human nature is such, that the dupes in this case probably relished the swindle, and went straight, with purse wide open, to find another that promised equally fair. They had not long or far to look, for the $5 sewing machine humbug came along about that time, and the fools all nibbled at. the bait with a gusto that was positively amusing. The late concern, corner of Cort- Landt street, New York, is the last that we have heard of in this line. The machine sent out by them was ab- solutely worthless, but the buyers were legion. The counterfeit money swindle is an old one, and The Circular Swindle. 327 one of the most successful. " The love of money is the root of all evil," says the proverb, and the proverb has a double verification in the fact, that no swindle has been more successful than this. It seems incredible that any considerable number of persons, many of whom claim to be, and are, so far as general repute goes, of good standing in the communities in which they live, could have nibbled at this bait, and the busi- ness world would stand aghast if the number and char- acter of these were accurately known. The most bare- faced swindle of this sort, and the one that lived longest, was the following : New York, March, 1871. Dear Sir : We wish to secure the services of a smart and intelligent Agent in your locality for a business that cannot fail to yield (without much effort) at least a profit of Si 0,000 per year, and if shrewdly managed, will return a much larger amount, and this too without neglecting your regular business. We have been constantly engaged for several months past in preparing Plates of the $1, $2, $5 and $10 U. S. Greenbacks. Having completed them, we are now prepared to furnish the bills, of the different denomi- nations, in any quantity desired, above 3500. These are without any exception the finest executed bills that were ever issued in this country, and cannot be detected, even by the oldest experts ; they are correctly numbered, the engravings cannot be exce.led ; in fact, no expense or labor has been spared to bring the best talent the country could produce, in the art of the engraving and printing, to make our issues exactly like the originals, thus render- ing it just as safe for you to pass them as if they came from the 44 Treasury Department." We have them put up in packages of $500, SI, 000, $5,000 and $10,000. On account of the superior excellence of these bills, as weJl as the large expense of bringing them to perfection, we shall charge you 25 cts. on the dollar tor them ; but in order fairly to start you, and to show that we "mean business^ we will send you a package, charging you only 5 cts. on the dollar, provided you will pay the balance (20 cts. on the dollar) within fifteen days of receiving the package. You will be required to meet your bills promptly. The first cost to 32S The Circular Swindle. you will be $25 for $500 ; $50 for $1,000; $100 for $2,000 ; $250 for $5,000, and $500 for $10,000. When you order, be very par- ticular to send your letter by Express, for positively we will not lill an order that reaches us through the Post Office ; we have lost large amounts that have been forwarded this way, and we will run no risk hereafter. The Express is sure, safe and expeditious, and the money for- warded through it is at our risk. Seal your order, as you do any letter, and mark outside, in large figures, Value $500, and it will then be received and forwarded by the Express Co. It is always best to have a " Cash remittance' 1 '' accompanying your order, thus showing good faith on your part. Be very careful to dis- tinctly state the amount and denominations you wish, also your name and Post Office, with the County and State plainly and clearly icritten. You are one of three persons in your State that we addressed, and with these bills so artistically executed, and the facilities we will give you, you are started at once upon the high- way to fortune and affluence. You can rest assured of one thing, that you can never be wanting for funds while you are connected with us, and remain true. On receipt of your order, we im- mediately write through the Post Office to your address, stating the day we ship your package, and you will always call there before going to the Express. The package is made up in such a way that no one would ever suspect its nature. A personal interview is always desirable, and would better suit us, and might be to our mutual advantage, as you could then examine the money for yourself, and judge its quality, and the amount you would require. Fraternally yours, Jas. P. Baker & Co. No. 150 Broadway, K Y. City. P. S. We received so many letters, asking for samples, that we have concluded we will, on receipt of $5.00 by Express, send sample of our issue. We have also fractional currency in 10c, 15c, 25c, and 50c. denominations, fully up to our standard of Bills. Prompt attention and fair dealing guaranteed. Under different names, James P. Baker & Co. did a most successful business for some time, but finally came to grief, though not until a large fortune had » The Circular Swindle. 329 been realized. Others under the name and style of Win. Cooper & Co., S. Y. Adando & Co., Win. J. Fer- guson, 19i Broadway, New York, Win, B. Logan, Dutch street, and many others, have run this swindle to success. Cooper & Co. dashed out with the following, that proved perfectly irresistible to their customers : " When Congress authorized the present issue of greenbacks, the Treasury Department executed plates of enormous cost and wonderful workmanship, from which the whole amount of cur- rency authorized by Congress, was to be printed, and it was ordered at the time, that as soon as the whole amount had been printed, the plates, some 100 in numbsr, should be taken from the Treasury Printing Department, conveyed to the Navy-yard and melted. Now it so happened that the plates from which the 1, 2, and 5 dollar bills had been printed were not destroyed. How it was brought about, we, as a matter of prudence, do not state. It is enough to know that the plates are still preserved uninjured, and we trust their whereabouts will never be known except to us." McXally & Co., 229 Broadway, had the honor, it is said, of being the last of this crowd of rascals, and a precious bit of impudence they were. Improving on all the others, they struck out with a boldness and an assumption of honesty and fair dealing that was almost pathetic. Express all your money ) MoNally & Co., to this address. \ 229 Broadway. Dear Sir : You no doubt have some reluctance in engaging with us ; perhaps you already have received from different parties in New York, who represent things highly colored, with a great mixture of flattery, in respect to the goods they desire to dispose of, and their extreme cheapness, they unaccountably got hold of the way we do business, and as near as possible they try to imitate us; they are flooding the country with circulars, receiv- ing money and sending nothing in return ; you can see for your- 330 The Circular Swindle. selves. How can any one sell $1,000 worth of the goods for $10 ? They can't do it, and more, they don't do it. We have letters every day from parties they have gulled and caught. Now of two evils you can choose the least ; we have goods that no one ever has, so far, found fault with. Remember, we do this business with two names. One to write to and one to express all money to ; make no mistake in addressing us if you desire to do business and yourself justice. Address by "mail " your letter to P. Matboen & Co., Box 216 Jersey City, N. J. The upshot of all this dirty, villainous business has been, that the dupes finally got in return for. the good money sent, a small box filled with saw-dust. Form- erly, when these scoundrels did their business through the mails, it became necessary for them to show that no counterfeit money was actually sent, which was the case, as the victims got only the small photographic cards of the greenbacks, at that time so largely known, and which cost less than a penny each, so that the profits on the photographic u queer " were immense. The government soon broke this up, and then the scoundrels got down to saw-dust, forwarded C. O. D. by express, and so packed as to elude • detection in almost every case. The swindle still lives and flourishes, all because it is impossible to catch these knowing knaves at some palpable violation of the law. It is safe to say, and the fact itself goes far in illus- tration of the extent of the business, that during the past four years thousands of letters have been received at the office of the Chief of Police in this city from persons in receipt of these circulars, but who are not of the sort they are intended to reach. As to the victims themselves, it is enough to say that they trans- fer annually from their own to the pockets of these rascals about $300,000, the penalty paid for folly and dishonesty. The Circular Swindle. 331 On a par with the Commercial College humbug, the " National Surgical Institute," and the " New York Medical University" are samples. Some parties in the West took the medicines of the latter until they were on " their last legs " in consequence, before they discovered they had been taking the most injurious nostrums. One of the victims of this medical swindle, more plucky than the rest, and with still enough of life in him to make a strong fight, prepared himself for an attack on the " University" itself. His idea was to get down to the source of his unnumbered woes at once, by going to New York, which he did. After tramping over the city in search of the concern, it turned out to be altogether mythical, and he went back to the West disgusted. He had been doubly duped. The jaunt, however, did him good, and perhaps saved his life, a compensation that did not come to the other victims, who kept right on with the " University" me- dicines, until the arrival of the undertaker. Of any of the ten thousand other medical humbugs we have not patience to speak. A drowning man will catch at a straw, and a sick man, or one who believes himself ill, will swallow anything in the way of a remedy, no matter by whom administered. It is " gape, sinner, and swallow," and down goes the vile stuff, while faith in its efficacy " mounts upward to the skies," whither the taker soon wings his flight. The Watch Swindles have been numerous and effective. One of the latest heard of is that of Howard & Co., Chicago. This is the manner of it : " Dear Sir : The watch received from you January 15th is now- ready for delivery. You were correct when you stated it could not be repaired outside of our house. We have had great diffi- culty with it, but it is now in thorough order, and we will war- 332 The Circular Swindle. rant it to keep correct time for five years. You wrote that the ■watch was found, and desire to know its worth. It is a very valuable time-piece, and must have cost at least $500 in gold. It is now worth $400, in gold, and, for any one desiring a reliable time-keeper, is really cheap at first cost. Please remit amount oi bill by express, and the watch will be immediately forwarded. " Respectfully, Howaed & Co." What boy with $20.25 stowed away in his little bank, could be supposed to resist the temptation to possess himself of that $400 chronometer ? Of course the dodge takes in many cases, and the money is sent, but the watch never makes its appearance, and the silly victim pockets his loss, a little wiser, but no better man than he was before. Philadelphia furnished a Howard & Co., working for some time the $4 Geneva watch swindle, which proved a worthy scion of its sup- posed Chicago progenitor. Each was a libel upon the old and reputable house of Howard & Co., New York city. After Mr. Crapsey's paper on " Circular Swindlers" appeared in the "Galaxy," these watch swindlers, many of them, changed the names appended to their former circulars, leaving the latter, however, the same as before. Here is one of them : THE TISSOT GOLD HUNTER WATCH, S. L. TISSOT, Mcuiufacturer, LOCLE. SWITZERLAND. NORMAN, ADDERSON & CO., Sole Agents for the United States, NO. 7 PINE STREET, NEW YORK. Wholesale or Trade Price, $240 per doz. OFFICE OF NORMAN, ADDERSON & Co., Importers and Manufacturers of WATCHES, FINE GOLD JEW- ELRY, &c, No. 7 Pine Street, New York, December i$th, 1871. Deak Sir : As it is now almost one year since we have heard from you, and as wo have written twice in the meantime, we have concluded to address you on the subject once more. And should we not hear from you within twenty days, we will con- The Circular Swindle, 333 sider the watch forfeited, and will dispose of it to our best ad- vantage for ourselves. We would not hurry you in this matter ag the watch is ample security for the amount due. We must get our accounts all straight so as to settle up our books on the first of the new year. If you wish now to settle the matter, you can send the money by mail or express and we will forward the watch. Please return bill with the. money. Or, if it will suit your con- venience better, we will send it by express C. O. D. with bill, which you can pay on delivery. Yours respectfully, Norman, Adderson & Co. P. S. — We could have sold the watch last June for $90, at which time we notified you by mail and received no answer. The bill referred to in this case was dated February 27, 1871, and was made up of $3 for repairing a gold watch, $10 for loan on watch, and seventy cents in- terest, making a total of $13.70. The fraud seems small, but it was this very fact that made it effective. Sent out by the hundreds all over the country, these letters produced in the aggregate a very respectable amount for the knaves who mailed them. Many of them of course were unproductive, as the recipients were not caught by the shallow bait, but the majority are hooked. They know of course that they never left a watch to be repaired, and that they never got a loan of $10 upon it, but they suppose that a mistake has been made in addressing the letter, and they cannot resist the temptation to steal by indirection a watch which could have been sold "last June for $90." Many of them therefore hasten to remit the required $13.70, and find that they have themselves been sold at a singularly low rate. If they send the money by mail or express, it is the last act in their transactions with Norman, Adderson & Co. But if they choose the C. O. D. alternative, they promptly receive the package after having paid the bill, and on opening it 33± The Circular Swindle. discover to their intense disgust that it is only stuffed with sawdust. Many other similar schemes, more complex in their character, and requiring an extra amount of knavish- ness to work them successfully, could be given, but it is unnecessary. The fools who permit themselves to be swindled by this dodge, would keep right on, though one rose from the dead to tell them of their folly. Now and then a member of the newspaper frater- nity takes it into his head to turn swindler, and as journalism absorbs a large share of the talent of the country, sharp work may always be expected in such a venture, though for the honor of the cloth we are glad to be able to say that journalism is rarely dragged down into so dirty a pool. The latest case is that of the precocious Hyatt, of Poughkeepsie, Y., who published for a time the " Young Cadet" at that place. He succumbed at last, and left the city for the city's good, leaving behind him, it was said, sundry promises to pay that still remain in a state of blissful unfulfillment. A correspondent of the Star Sjmngled Hanner shows this beardless stripling up as follows : " About the first of last June I received a copy of the Young Cadet, from Poughkeepsie, N. Y, The publisher seemed very- anxious to have me raise him a club, for he kept continually send- ing me specimen copies. I finally concluded to take the agency, and so sent him 50 cents for two miniature chromos, posters, etc. The price of the Cadet, with the two daubs, was a dollar a year. I managed to get four subscribers for Hyatt, and sent him dollars, telling him that for my premium I had picked out a gold- plated holder, with gold pen and pencil combined. I waited for weeks after sending the money and didn't hear anything from him. I then began to think that I had been swindled. I wrote him a letter, telling him what I thought of such a pup, and if he The Circular Swindle, 335 didn't send the magazines I'd show him up to the public. The effect was, in about four days he sent along five magazines— one as my premium — but instead of the Young Cadet they were the Youth's Progress, a magazine about the same size. No chromos came, and the subscribers were madder than blazes. I should not have cared for the daubs if he had only sent the books ; but no, this representative of E. C. Allen thought it money, as well as one cent postage stamps in his pocket, not to. He never sent the magazines at any regular time, but would hang off and send them one by one. Of the six letters that I wrote to him I never got one answer (not even by postal card), and those that had stamps enclosed he pocketed. After sending three ma- gazines apiece, this honest youth shut off for good. I don't think he will be able to fleece any more in this place, as his character of late has been pretty roughly handled. I remain yours, etc. C. F. B urbane, Taunton, Mass. We have seen parties from Poughkeepsie who knew Hyatt, while a resident of that city, and who, to his credit be it said, did not rank him among the accom- plished swindlers, but one who had entered business as a youth with honest intentions, but who, after sev- eral hard hits from the genius of ill-luck, took a new tack, and, as the good old ladies say, " turned out very bad." If he is the swindler the Banner represents him to be, he has made an early commencement in crime that convicts him of an original talent for the business, and it is to be hoped his career will meet with some check that will send him back to a straight business life. If he is bound to persist in his new held, he will find before he gets through, that the way of a newspaper or magazine swindler is a hard one to travel. 336 The Circular Swindle. INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION COMPANY OF NEW YORK. On the first of April, 1870, a company bearing the above title was chartered by the legislature of this state. Its purpose, as set forth in its prospectus issued shortly afterwards, was as follows : " The object of the Industrial Exhibition Company is to erect a building for a " Perpetual WorkVs Fair''' 1 — a permanent home where every manufacturer can exhibit and sell his wares ; where every patentee can show his patent to those who will be most likely to understand and appreciate it; a centre of industry which will prove a benefit, not to New York alone, but to the nation and the entire world. The enterprise commends itself to every thoughtful mind. Its accomplishment should be a matter of pride to every American citizen. It appeals to every commercial interest ; to the inventive mind ; to the lover of the beautiful in art and nature ; to the selGsh and to the unselfish characteristics of humanity ; to those who desire to see trade increasing and business prosperous ; for such an undertaking cannot fail to materially aid and enlarge commerce of every kind. The gentlemen who take an active interest in the Industrial Exhibition Company need only to be named in order to convince the public that their interest proceeds, not from private motives, but rather from a sincere desire to assist in a great undertaking. From the many Directors, all well known to the people of the United States, we select a few names. (See List of Directors on the last page of this circular.) The Financial Agents of the Company, to whom is entrusted the negotiation of the entire loan, are Messrs. Morgenthau, Bruno & Co., German Bankers, who have had great experience in plac- ing similar loans for European governments. Parties desiring more minute information upon any subject connected herewith, are requested to address MORGENTHATT, BRUNO & Co., Post Office Drawer 29. No. 23 Park Row, N. Y. The names referred to above were the following, all of them of the best business repute, and several of The Circular Swindle. 337 them gentlemen of the very highest character and integrity : Board of Directors. — Hon. F. A. Alberger, President ; Gen. A. S. Diven, Vice-President; Win. 0. Moore, Treasurer; Reuben J. Todd, Secretary ; Wra. B. Ogden, Chicago, and High Bridge, N. Y. ; Paul K Spofford, 29 Broadway, N". Y. ; E. A. Boyd, 79 Murray street, X. Y. ; H. H. Durkee, 78 Pearl street, X. Y. ; Hon. Richard Kelly, President Fifth National Bank; James M. Selover, 17 Broad street, X. Y. ; Thomas J. Crombie, 1314 4th Avenue, and 1528 3d Avenue, 1ST. Y. ; Archibald M. Bliss, Brooklyn, Long Island ; J. M. Bnndy, Editor, 34 Park Row, N. Y. ; S. Mehrbach, President Second Avenue R. R., N. Y. ; Hon. Joseph M. Boyd, 408 East 114th street, X. Y. ; T. L. Tomlinson, 71 Broadway, 1ST. Y. ; J. W. Little, 322 Broadway, N. Y. ; Dr. L. G. Bartlett, 51 East 23th street, K. Y. ; Gen. J. Cors3, Chicago 111. ; W. L. Grant, Covington, Ky. ; Jewett M. Richmond, Buffalo, X. Y., and others. To build this " Palace of Industry," it was proposed to throw upon the market a loan similar to those that have been issued by certain cities abroad, for years past, many of which were created in good faith and redeemed as promised, while a large portion are still afloat, innocent of any living or prospective redeemer. In April, 1874, an amendment to the charter was passed, enabling the company to issue " premium bonds " to the amount of $20,000,000. Meantime it was rumored that lands had been purchased on the "Harlem Flats," at a cost of $1,500,000, one-sixth of which, "it is said," has been paid in. The newspapers of the city, as is their habit in enterprises of this sort, fought shy of the concern, although headed so respect- ably. They knew that great swindles sometimes have in their inception the influence of honest and wealthy men, who wash their hands of the job as soon as they ascertain its character, which seems to have been the 33S The Circular Swindle. case with this. Still, a few respectable papers like the World, the Commercial Advertiser, the Brooklyn Argus, and some others, lent it for a while their coun- tenance and support. The World, in its issue of the 29th of June last, contained an extended notice of it, in which the following paragraphs appeared: The system of premium bonds, which has all the seductive- ness of a lottery, is new in this country, but it has been used in Europe to float government loans to the extent of $600,000,000, about a fourth of the debt of the United States, and in loans raised by cities, railroads and private enterprises to an equal ex- tent. Under this method the bonds are in the first place at so low a figure, sometimes less than $5, that their distribution among a large number of persons is gained, a result which unlocks a large store of the floating capital and currency in the hands of the people. The whole number of shares is divided into series, and each year a certain number of these series are redeemed, the holders receiving their principal entire, plus and interest on the whole lo .in during that year. If this interest were simply dis- tributed evenly to the whole number of shares redeemed, the result to all would amount simply to receiving the interest for the whole number of shares in a lump. To avoid this and add not so much an element of luck as a possibility of the same suc- cess hoped for in any speculation, a part of the shares receive nearly the whole of the lumped interest, while the rest receive the principal with a much smaller addition. It should be said that the interest which is lost by those who get their money back in the closing year is equalized by making the prizes increase in value. The proposed loan of the Industrial Exhibition Company is for Twenty Millions, and with the bonds at $20 apiece, there are 1,000,000 bonds. These are divided into 10,000 series of 100 bonds each. In the fifty years which the bouds have to run, from 1874- to 1923, a certain number of series are allotted to each year, beginning with 50 for 1874, 100 for nine years after, then 150 for ten years, then 200 for twenty years ; 300 for five years, 400 for four years, and 450, all that are left, on the fiftieth year ; the number of bonds redeemed increasing as the funds aud re- sources of the company increase year by year. The distribution The Circular Swindle. 339 of interest is effected in this way : Each year there are four draw- ings in which, where 100 series are redeemed, ten series are drawn in January, forty in April, ten in July, and -forty in Oc- tober. In January of 1875, for instance, ten series are drawn ; the entire amount of interest ready to be distributed is $150,000 ; it is divided into one share of 8100,000, which will fall to a single bond, and the remainder as follows : One bond for $10,000. one for $5,000, one for $3,000, one for 81,000. ten bonds for $500. ten for 8200, twenty-seven for $100, forty eight for 850, and $900 for $21. " Of the 1,000 bonds which take part in this distribution of profits, 900 receive the principal and a small interest — about 5 per cent. ; the rest receive larger profits, ranging up to a fortune, for an investment of 820. The interest distributed in this manner increases in each decade, and in the last drawing in October the amount distributed to the last batch of 10,000 bonds which then remain is $530,000, the great majority receiving $40 atpiece, or double the usual investment. In fifty years, in this way, the company pays out 848,000,000 for its original loan of 820,000,000. This seems an enormous premium, but the interest on the original sum at 5 per cent, would be $50,000,000 at simple interest. In most business speculations the capital is absolutely risked, and every penny may be swallowed up without profit. Here, it is claimed by the company, every dollar is secured, and a small in- terest being retained, the remainder is exchanged for the possibi- lity of a successful speculation. Not only is the bond made ulti- mately as good as its face and better, but the company say they are ready at any time to take the bonds in payment for rent and the rest of the income of the exhibition building. It has beea found that a loan of this character always appreciates. 1 ' Surely no scheme was ever set forth in more attrac- tive, or in more " superb English " than this, but ful- some reasons not yet fully explained, the c< palace " has not been built and, it is whispered, never will he by the present company. It is whispered, too, with how much of truth we cannot state, that the gentle- men whose names were a "guarantee " as indeed they would have been, had the enterprise prospered, found 340 The Circular Swindle. it necessary to repudiate the whole concern. An ef- fort on the part of Mr. Alberger, and other members of the last Legislature to get an appropriation, failed utterly, and in the debate that took place on the bill in the Assembly, the whole concern was branded as a swindle. AVe have mentioned this industrial effort here, not for the purpose of ranking it among the out and-out swindles, but to show the tendency of schemes of this sort to fall into the manipulation of dishonest hands, while being figure-headed, to make a coinage, by res- pectable and influential names. We make no charges of corruption beyond these that were freely talked of at the time the appropriation was asked for. Since this company was chartered the people have had some bitter experience in the way of bonding schemes, many of which have not only come to great grief themselves, but carried with them thousands of poor, deluded, bond-holders who have been thus mercilessly despoiled of their last dollar. Hie moral of all this business could be found in the. answer to the query, as to what chance such a scheme as that presented by this " Industrial Exhibition " would have to get even a charter in the light of the past six months of our experience as a people. Four years ago we all screamed our loudest huzzas to any enterprise that could be galvanised into a precarious existence by an ad libitum issue of bonded promises to pay. It is the people's ox that has been " gored " this time, and it is but just to them to say that they seem likely to profit by the bitter experience by seeking better investments in future than that afforded by " wild-cat " bonds of any sort. Placing this scheme as a type of its class in the same category with the The Circular Swindle. 341 millions of railroad bonds not worth to-day, and which never will be, the paper upon which they are written, and how far are any of the schemes that created them from nothing fit to rank above swindles ? Let the mil- lions whose only wealth to-day consists of these worth- less promises, answer. The whole country has gone mad over a false spirit of enterprise during these later years, and its only road to financial sanity lies in coming straight down to " hard pan," by refusing to invest a dollar in any public enterprise that does not bear upon its face the evidence that it is an indispensable one, and that it must be made to pay. When bond- holders learn the simple truth, as they will at some time not far distant, that a railroad or municipal bond is nothing but an evidence of indebtedness, and that it can have but little real value until the thing it stands for has paid for itself, there will be no difficulty in deciding between the good and the-good-for noth- ing in the way of bonded wealth. But our business is with circular swindlers of every class, not political economy, though the latter subject is just now the all important one to Americans. This "Industrial" scheme is simply a lottery in which all the money that is made will be realized in the way of commissions paid to the agents who sell the tickets or so-called bonds, the balance of profits will go into the pockets of the man who owns that portion of the mudhole upon which it is proposed to erect the a Palace of Industry." Should it ever be built, innu- merable scows will be required to ferry ticket holders to the first "Exhibition." It is safe to say that those who embark will have a financial Charon for a ferry- man, and that at the end of the journey will be seen 342 The Circular Swindle. the "Palace," destined to swallow "both the coupon holders and their expectations. It is barely possible, however, that in humble imita- tion of our enterprising and sanguine Poughkeepsie neighbors, who laid the "cornerstone" of their great " Bridge" a few years ago, amidst the huzzas of some- thing less than a million of deluded people, that a similar exhibition awaits the ticket holders of the " Great Industrial Exhibition." We were present at the laying of the "corner-stone" of the Poughkeepsie " Enterprise " a work still in f utxiro, and which the people of a hundred years hence may wake up some morning to find realized at some other point of the " noble Hudson." But then the dinner that Pough- keepsie gave on that august and ever-to-be memor- able occasion, was surely an elegant one, and did not the guests put on their spectacles of gold in order to sharpen up the appetite by a good look at the silver covers, and that gorgeous " bill of fare," printed in letters of gold on satin gloss vellum, under the direc- tion of Poughkeepsie's Mayor? And did not the Mayor "von vow," and declare that the "bridge" should be completed in thirty days, and that the first " coal train " from Scranton and other sooty re- gions of the Pennsylvania hills, loaded to the brim with " black diamonds " from these same elevations, would traverse the " Poughkeepsie and Eastern " road, to the " Connecticut Western," so that every Boston sub- cellar should be filled with fuel without money and without price, before the Christmas holidays of that fearfully memorable year ? Alas ! how gorgeous the visions conjured up by that gorgeous Mayor, that believing Common Council, and that expectant mul- titude, and alas, too, where is the Bridge ? Echo an- The Circular Swindle, 343 swers, and repeating echoes will take up the refrain and keep on answering fainter and fainter through a hundred financial crashes yet to come — "where?" But then how glorious to remember the crowd that tossed high in air (in imitation of the Romans) its sweaty night-caps at the Mayor and his u big bridge." A word more about this " Industrial " lottery. Wo presume it to be in character precisely what the late "Louisville scheme" was. At the drawings of the latter a great deal of dramatic effect was produced by the presence on the stage of the " solid men " of Louis- ville. We wonder if in future drawings of the great "Industrial " a similar effort will be attempted ? How soothing it would be to the lacerated bosoms of dis- appointed coupon holders, to see before them on the stage, looking down from its serene heights upon the waiting crowd below, the solid, the venerable, the eminently respectable men of Gotham. What picture of moral grandeur more sublime, could be drawn for the contemplation of posterity than that of a lottery drawing of the " Great Industrial," on the stage of which should be seated such men as A. T. Stewart, Win. C. Bryant, Hamilton Fish, Wm. B. Astor, A\ r m. B. Odgen, " and others !" What a volume would that be in bulk and interest that would gather to itself a bare record of the swin- dles that have had their day and generation during the past fifteen years from the commencement of the great and good Jay Cooke's career as a bond manipu- lator, down to Colfax's "one thousand dollar notes from a friend," and the Credit 2fobilier ! Jay Cooke advising the holders of U. S. bonds to trade them off for those of the Northern Pacific Railroad. How like Banquo's ghosts in Macbeth must pass before the 34:4: The Circular Swindle. once great but now retired banker's eyes the long pro- cession of widows and orphans impoverished by his manipulating hand! The land swindles alone, from those engineered at Washington, some of them under official auspices^ down to the latest, pettiest local land " raffle," would fill a good sized book. Here is one, an account of which we clip from a recent number of the Prairie Farmer, a Missouri paper published at Forsyth, in that State " On last Tuesday evening a gentleman by the name of Lyon arrived in our village for the purpose of locating in this county. He hails from Virginia, and has bought a section of land from one P. S. Hoaglaud. " It turns out that the land is held under an old Spanish grant, which is worthless so far as the records show. We don't like t<> meddle with other men's business, but we have concluded to ven- tilate the swindle, and run the risk for a suit of damages, believ- ing that the facts will bear us out in denouncing it as one of the most gigantic land swindles ever perpetrated, and that the public will justify our act. On the 28th day of February, 1871, one S. T. Hoyt, of New York city, filed with the recorder of this county an Abstract of Title, purporting to be a grant made in the year 1793, by Baron de Carondelet, Governor General of the Province of Louisiana, to one Don Joseph Valliere, who died leaving this tract of land to his heirs, and on the 5th day of June, 1841, the Valliere heirs made power of attorney to one Creed Taylor, to dispose of said lauds, and on the same day Creed Taylor conveyed the land to one John Wilson, and on the 23d day of August, 1863, John Wil- son conveyed all of said lands to S. T. Hoyt, embracing the fol- lowing territory : Ten leagues on both banks of the Rio Blanco (White River.) Beginning at the most western branch of said river, thence running ten leagues in a south direction, thence on the south a parallel line with said river at a distance of ten leagues until it intersects the Rio Cibulos (supposed to be the Butfalo) at a point ten leagues in a direct line with White River, following this as to the mouth of Norte Grande, (supposed to be the North The Circular Swindle. 345 Fork), up the same to a point ten leagues in a direct line from its mouth, thence ascending the White River to the north in a wes- terly direction ten leagues from the same as far as its source, thence to the place of beginning. " This grant covers Ozark. Taney and Stone, and a portion of Douglas, Christian, Berry and McDonald counties in this State, and a large portion of Washington, Madison, Carroll, Boone. Ma- rion, Baxter and a small portion of Benton and Johnson counties in Arkansas, or an area of about 9,000 square miles. Mr. Iloyt has sold thousands of acres of this claim to honest, hard-working men all over the Union ; his victims are scattered from the Atlan- tic to the Pacific, and from Maine to Texas. In many instances the same tract of land has been sold and transferred to as many as three or four different parties. Mr. Hoyt, not satisfied with what he could do, has employed other parties to assist him. These men appear to have their head quarters in N"ew York city, and branch offices in all the principal cities in the Union, and espe- cially in Chicago." How many nibbled at this tempting bait, it is im- possible to say, but Hoyt retired upon a competency, and it is reported, still manages to keep those to whom lie sold the lands in question, on the tenter-hooks of a blissful expectation, by befogging the title to the lands passed. Before disposing of any of the lands under this " Spanish " transfer, Hoyt was smart enough to trump up and parade legal opinions from Rufus Choate, Daniel Webster, and other great lawyers long since gone to that shadowy realm where titles of the Hoyt stamp are unknown, and who of course will not come back to explain the swindle. STILL ANOTHER. This was a manufacturing swindle, and hailed from Yicksburg, Miss. How sweetly its " superb " English fell upon the willing ears, and they were legion, of those who swallowed this hook, baited with a $5 bill. Here it is : The Cvrcular Swindle. "Vicksbtjbo, Miss., Jan. 21, 1874. Dear Sir : -Will you, upon receipt of $1,000,' allow us to have your improved Walk Edger, manufactured to supply the trade of the South and West, for a term of two years, with a royalty of $2 on each one sold? If you desire to dispose of your invention in this manner, send $o to pay attorney's fee for examining title, etc., upon receipt of which we will make the necessary inquiries at the Patent Office, and have your invention examined before a board of competent judges, when, if everything is perfectly satis- factory, we will remit the amount by draft, on any Bank you may name ; the same to be subject to your order, upon receipt by us of the necessary transfer. Our arrangements will not prevent you from selling in any States you may receive offers for. Comply with our terms at once, if you desire to have us take hold of it. Respectfully, and truly yours, Miss. Valley Manufacturing Company." At the top of the accompanying circular, was the cut of a factory of immense dimensions, but which was a factory only on paper. Though barefaced, this swindle had a tremendous run, the $5 proving the snare that took in inventors from all directions. Even the patent-right men, who are generally supposed to be " up to snuff," went in on this at short notice, and came out a good deal wiser than when they entered. The dodge was finally traced to one Dedrick by a reporter of the Daily Yicksburger, in the follow- ing interview : " Reporter— I understand you represent the Mississippi Valley Manufacturing Company, and that you send these circulars (picking up one on a table near by) to various parts of the country ? Mr. D. — Yes, sir! I solicit, by means of this circular, the privilege of manufacturing patented articles, such as would sell in this section of the country. Reporter — Does it not require an immense capital to obtain this right, provided you must offer a large sum for it ? Mr. D.—lt would undoubtedly require an immense capital, but The Circular Swindle. 347 we never offer more than one or two hundred dollars, in no case over two hundred and fifty dollars. Reporter — I observe that this company was established in 1801. I don't remember seeing you here during that year, nor have I ever seen such buildings here as appear in this circular. After a vain effort to convince our reporter that the war closed in 1861, and that he came here then and opened business in the Prentiss House, and finding that his intervie.ver knew exactly when he did come here, and that it was in 1870, Mr. Dedrick stated that the company must have the semblance of nge, and tor that reason, to tell the truth, he put in the figures 1861. Regard- ing the building, he said that he had the lithograph made to represent any factory, that being a matter of small consequence. He also stated that he had sent some ten or twelve, or probably* two dozen, of these circulars to different parties. If our reporter is not very much mistaken, he saw a clerk writing similar ones as fast as his pen could travel, and as he was obtaining addresses from a sort of directory, he contemplated sending several thou- sand, no doubt." The following, dipt from the columns of the New York Herald, explains the high character of the lawyer and the business : T\IVORCES legally obtained ; no publicity; no fee in advance. *J M. House, Attorney, 194 Broadway. The manner in which Mr. House obtains business will be best understood by the following, from a victim, writing to the Chicago Tribune : Sir : Seeing an account of a divorce expose of one A. Goodrich, I would wish you to do me the favor of answering through your columns the following : — Four years ago, through one M. House, of this city, I obtained a divorce in Chicago from that man, Good- rich. I never lived there, nor ever saw Chicago. Is my divorce any good ? That Goodrich does all Mr. House's business. Yours, etc., Julia A. G. New York, Jan. 24, 1874. Hie Herald advertisement was the baitj and the 3±S The Gircidar Swindle. Tribune thus gives an account of the legal modus operandi : " A woman went to the New Orleans agent and ordered a Chicago divorce, and was in a hurry for it. The agent tele- graphed to Goodrich as follows : ' One divorce for Mrs. , married four years, on ground of desertion and drunkenness. Remit by express.' The woman got the divorce promptly, and with it a bill like this : ' Mrs. to Chicago Divorce Agency (New Orleans branch) Dr. One divorce by drunkenness and desertion, $15. Received payment.' (Divorces warranted for two years.)" How assuring must have been that " warrantee " — good for two years — two years of undisturbed repose to this legally-divorced and now happy client ! And so it goes on to the end of the chapter, or rather to chapters that have no end. Chicago has proved herself the most prolific in swindles of any western city, and must hence bear the palm for this sort of smartness. One of her latest efforts in this line was the Union Furnishing Co. of that enterprising locality. The Co., which never had any real, but only a " circular " existence, was run by Hodge & Co. As Hodge & Co. now sleep with their fathers of the profession which they once adorned, their character, as shown by the Chicago papers, is nut worth repeating, and we do so only to show how a concern of this sort will inveigle pious clergymen into the selling of their tickets. The following, from the Lacon (ill.) Journal explains itself, and with it we close this chapter with a sad sort of feeling that smart [is we are in a thousand ways, the fools among us seem in a fair way of remaining on earth for a long time The Circular Swindle. 349 i yet to come. One would suppose that the generation of these dupes would die out as we go along, but every year produces a new crop. This is the way in which Mrs. Marki, one of the latest of these, conies to grief: "This swindling firm of Hodge & Co. of Chicago, which lately collapsed, seems to have done a much greater business than has been supposed, and got awaj with large sums of money. A local preacher living near Northampton sold three hundred tickets. So taken up with the scheme was he that he abandoned his preaching and worked night and day. A Mrs. Marki, wife of 'big Dan' the butcher, who formerly lived in Lacon, met with equal if not greater success. She is an invalid and most of the time confined to her bed ; but the prospect of such ample returns imparted new life, and she too labored zealously and successfully, quite forgetting her ailments. One poor woman took one hundred tickets, and altogether the sales were something remarkable. Finally the orders were sent off, and impatiently she waited the rich returns sure to come. Each day for weeks as the express came in she was at the office to receive them, and the stereotyped inquiry was made, ' Anything for Mrs. Marki V Finally, after waiting until hope deferred had made her sick in reality, a large box did arrive, and the welcome news was brought home, fol- lowed by a dray with the goods. Such valuables must not be ex- posed out of doors, and so it was taken to the parlor, where a large crowd had assembled to view them. The cover was removed, and Mrs. Marki, beseeching the crowd to stand back, for she was going to handle the rich laces and dress goods first, carefully removed several layers of paper, and revealed, in all its beauty, the skul of a dead cow. Some wicked wags had concocted the Bell, and fixed up the box for the occasion. Mrs. M. gave one agonizing groan, and sat down so suddenly on the floor as to frighten her next door neighbors into the momentary belief that an earthquake had happened." CHAPTER IX. A RIDE DOWN BROADWAY. London has its Recent street, a world of shops in itself, its Paternoster Row, where the publishers bur- row, its Strand, and its Oxford street, each distinctive, but all thoroughly English. Paris has her Boulevards, and her Rne de la Paix, and Rome her Corso, each a picture of the civilization it represents, but expressive of nothing beyond its local traditions. In whatever direction the traveler bends his footsteps, these same marked, stereotyped peculiarities of architecture and of business characteristics, confront him, until the eye, tired of individuality, longs for a living picture that can present in a single view an epitome of the world's progress and the world's activity. There is but one such street, and that is our own Broadway. Though in reality, less than a century old, as it had scarcely a single feature of its present appearance until the incoming of the present century, it has gathered to itself in its architecture, its shops, its vehicles, its equipages, its costumes, and its manners, the very best of all these, culled from every corner, however remote, of the representative cities of the old world. But, while drawing upon so great a variety of sources for materials, it must be set down to our credit that we have not been satisfied to become mere imitators of what we have seen elsewhere. Though unlocking our ports to emigrants from every land, they did not begin to pour in upon us in large masses until A Bide Down Broadway. 351 after the beginning of the present century, so that Broadway as a great thoroughfare stands to-day the representative of all that is most valuable in modern activity and enterprise. It is more than two hundred years since Henry Hud- son started out for the north-east passage to India, arriving in Xew York harbor on the 3d of Si p- tember, 1609. The painted savage met him at what is now the Battery, but it was not until 1056 that the town was laid out into streets, so that Broadway may date its beginning from that year. The city's popula- tion was then one thousand souls, domiciled in one hundred and twenty-five dwellings. A little more than two hundred years ago, the Indians sold Manhattan Island to the whites for the nominal sum of twenty-four dollars, to-day the assessed value of its real estate alone exceeds five hundred mil- lions. History will be searched in vain to discover at once so rapid and so marvelous a march toward opu- lence and commercial distinction, one that might aptly be termed the march of a hundred years. From the advent of British rule under the Duke of York, until the appearance of the first newspaper in 1725, Broad- way was a mere span, without form or comeliness. To-day if you should ask a Xew Yorker even, where Broadway ends, he would hesitate a moment, and then say, " Really, sir, I don't quite know, but somewhere I should say across the Harlem, in Westchester County." One old gentleman to whom I propounded this enigma, answered very curtly that " the Broad- way street lamps were lighted every night up to lGTth street, but that Broadway itself went on to Albany." Being an old Holland Dutchman, Broad- way to him was nothing more or less than the Bloom- S52 A Huh Down Broad' cay. ingdale Road, and that lays its hand in that of the " old post road," somewhere near Cannansville, run- ning thence to the state capital. Broadway is now lighted about twelve miles ; in 1G97 every seventh house was ordered to hang out a lantern with a candle in it, in order, we suppose, that our good Dutch ancestors, who were given a little to saner-kraut and other Dutch luxuries, could find their way home with safety after an evening's indulgence. The Broadway with which we have to deal, is that which runs its magnificent course from Bowling Green to the Harlem river, and as our eye sweeps up and down from the curve of Grace Church, we realize for the first time how inadequate is pen or pencil to picture it as it is. Nevertheless here it lies, the immense fact born of a century, the great business heart of western civilization, its pulsations sending commercial life and vis:or to ten thousand marts lvinoj between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and the lumber forests of Maine to the shores of the great Gulf. AVe do not propose to write its history, for its daily record is the outgrowth of its daily activity, a continuous whirl that knows no ending. It is a thoroughfare that never goes to sleep. Traverse certain portions of it at what hour of the day or night you will, somebody will be there to greet you. It is a highway that echoes and re-echoes ever to the tread of the pedestrian, or the hoofs that keep it warm with their incessant clatter. Like our own vernacular, it has its moods and tenses, its declensions and con- junctions, though its talk is as varied as the nationalities that people it. To follow it through a day, and no two of its days are alike, though it does present a kind of unity in its infinite variety, would be like following a wayward child through a day of mad galloping and A Bide Down Broadway. 353 running. From early morn to early morn again it knows no moment of absolute solitude, its pulse never slips a beat, though it sometimes does get in a flutter, but beats straight on in unison with the tick of the clocks that hang in its spires, their faces always un- veiled to the busy throng that surges by them. Between midnight and the first streak of dawn, a thousand market wagons, loaded with every product known to the vegetable kingdom of Westchester, from the tiniest radish to the biggest West-India pumpkin, rattle their way to the old Washington and other down-town markets, thence to be transferred to the kitchens of the good livers of Gotham. A little later, the up-town grocer and market wagons join the procession, and by seven o'clock the return march has almost ceased, and every turnip and cabbage is laid out to tempt the market-woman's basket. From six to seven o'clock mechanical New York, which begins its daily work at the latter hour, sends a portion of those who walk to business down Broadway, the current, however, is not so strong as of old, before the city cars came on parallel lines to pick up the artizan and the laborer on his toilsome march. An hour and a half later, a looker-on at some point, say Union Square, can witness the gradual rising of the vast human tide that will bear on its bosom for the next two hours or more the business men of the city. What a motley'crowd it is to be sure, that will pass before us during these two hours of passage ! How many thousand schemes and secrets lie locked in the bosoms of this innumerable throng ! How many thousands who rush to business with hearts as light as the day itself, will come heavily back on the returning evening tide ! By half-past nine this current is at its 354 A Ride Down Broadway, flood, and soon the lowest point will be reached. "What a vast human panorama ! What possibilities of gait, of face, of costume, are gathered within it ! How many of the crowd now on their way to pay their respects to the hard-faced, grim god of business, will come back freighted with blighted hopes and withered expectations ! What a study for some young Hogarth or Nast would this crowd furnish, could he face the whole current as it passes ! Here goes one who has got his speed up to the highest point within the limits of a trot or canter. With eye fixed on the business problem of the day, he heeds not the dull rumble of the 'buss, or the evenly moving throng. At very short f intervals he "pulls out," as the horsemen say, and " cuts by " a squad whose leisurely pace annoys him. He is the average New Yorker, and takes to business as a duck to the nearest fish pond. With what consummate, sinuous grace he winds his way through the throng, making two blocks to its one in his eager haste to reach that most delightful of all nooks to the enterprising, ambitious American, his counting-room or other place of business. He is neat- ness personified, and the soul of method and despatch appears in every mark of his make-up. A million such as he, would make a human " ant-hill of units and tens." Anon comes along the business dandy or exquisite. He is gloved, clean shaved, every hair in his head is oiled and tuned up to concert pitch, his clothes are of the best quality and freshest make, and he invariably wears a cane. He glides along leisurely, keeping step to the music of the latest operatic air which he hums as he goes with entire self-satisfaction and content. The first is the representative business New Ycrker, A Hide Down Broadway, 355 the second represents a small class of favored ones who have come to business as an inheritance, but have not worked their way to independence as the others are doing or have already done. One soon learns to single out the habitue of Broad- way, for his dress, his gait, his manners, his everything localizes him, and tells the story of his life, as it were. His hat and shoes are always glossy, and his clothes free from lint or aught else that is unsightly. His country brother merchant you know at a glance. His shoes are blackened in front but not in the rear, and he wears the fast-growing inevitable soft hat. He af- fects gloves sometimes, but they don't sit easily upon him, while to the hand of the New r Yorker, man or woman, a glove clings as evenly as the cuticle it covers, and is worn, moreover, as if it were a part of the hand itself. This, by the way, may be remarked of every other article of dress worn by the well-bred Gothamite, and of his gait as well, while a New York woman has no superior, if indeed she has a rival, for graceful carriage or taste in dress. As a walker, she is ad- mitted by unprejudiced foreigners even, to be the most superb in the world. When it comes to our old or middle-aged business men, we don't present so many healthy or well-preserved specimens as can be found in any of the large cities of Europe, our climate and our business habits being altogether unfavorable to fleshy accumulations. A lawyer can be picked from out this mass with almost unerring certainty. There is a jerk in his gait, and a general crispiness in his make-up that betokens his cloth. Aforetime he rarely made his appearance in colors, but wore mourning invariably, as being more compatible with the dignity of his profession. Now, 356 A Hide Down Broadway. catching the go-ahead inspiration of the age, he some- times affects colors, but they are oddly suited to him, and the change is made, we half suspect, as a means of dispelling in part the darkness of the dingy holes in which he was wont to burrow during the day. Fancy Alexander Hamilton, with his powdered wig, cue and knee breeches, going down Broadway in a suit of Scotch gray. The costume of the days of Washington had fur many years a sole representative on Broad- way on the person of the late amiable Doctor Coombs. "With him it passed away, perhaps, for all time, but it formed for a goodly period a most picturesque link between the present and the past century. Of human oddities Broadway has its full share. Here, for example, is our country cousin. He has come down to the great city for the first time, and Broadway bursts upon his enchanted, bewildered eyes as if it were fairy land brought to earth. His wonder- ing earnest eye takes in everything, not at a glance, and with one sweep, but object by object. The busy New Yorker sees nothing in Broadway but the counting- room at the end of it. To him it is a solitude, the place above all others to solve a knotty problem. He throws himself on its broad current, and glides along wrapt in a sort of blissful oblivion. Husticus has no time for dreams. To him there is nothing so palpable as Broadway, and though he be not conscious of it, he is for the time its most palpable fact. The practiced navigator of this most busy of thoroughfares in the world will furl his sails at Fourteenth street, and go to Wall street at any hour of the day without a collision. Not so with Husticus. If he stops to talk for a mo- ment, or to look in at a shop window, it is more diffi- cult to get around him than it is to cross Broadway A Ride Down Broadway. 357 at the Astor House at noonday. lie always brings his field gait with him, a pace far slower than that used by any of his city cousins, and should one of these attempt to slip by him in the whirl, he will be found a somewhat awkward fact to overcome. Never- theless, and in spite of this unwieldiness, there is a certain well-bred homeliness in his unpretending inde- pendence and indifference to all around him that ren- ders him an object of almost picturesque interest, and it must not be forgotten that this same clever bit of homespun has in him the stuff that the real gentleman is made of, and that a year or so of town life is all that is needed to make him presentable in the best draw- ing rooms of the city, all showing a native superiority that cannot be found in men of his class anywhere in the world outside of this country. It is needful to add that this fact is in itself the highest encomium that can be pronounced upon a system which throws open alike to all its subjects every avenue to distinc- tion in business or professional life, creating possibili- ties that make the peasant of yesterday the millionaire of to-day ! It is now eleven o'clock, and for the next three hours or more there will be a lull of pedestrians in upper Broadway. The crowd that has passed will be busy at its sales and its book-keeping, its calculations and its schemes. Meantime another current has set in, for be it known to all the world there is no moment when the key is turned in the dead-lock of Broadway ; it is a tide that ebbs and flows forever. If the stranger will take the trouble to halt before Stewart's up-town store for an hour, he will have an opportunity to look over the flower of our American aristocracy, together with that which, not to speak it profanely, 358 A Rich Dov:n Broadway. smells of the finny specimen that comes from Cape Cod. The " old families/' and America has these as well as Europe, are unmistakable in the crowd. Their car- riages are heavier and plainer than those of the " new people," as are also their liveries. They move at a slower, well-bred sort of gait, just to show that they have always been rich enough to have leisure and to spare. Xo rough and tumble here, all goes along smoothly, though somewhat sleepily. Its o!d women wear puffed, grizzly hair, and are a little wrinkled, while the younger ones have a kind of pasteboardish appear- ance in the street, but at home they, and all whom they gather about them, are really the most agreeable people one meets in Xew York. The old gentlemen of this " set 7 ' have old-time, unaffected manners, and the young ones graduate at <; Columbia, 7 ' and then go to the clubs, and wear white neck- ties. Firth Avenue boasts but a few of these, but the neighborhood of Washington and St. [Mark's Place, and Stuyvesant Square down town, and the cross streets from Fourteenth up beyond Murray Hill, to- gether with Madison and Lexington avenues, hold pretty much all that is left of Xew York's old aristoc- racy, but, to its credit it must be said, that it has pre- served through all these democratic years its distinctive, old-time character, and that the raids of "shoddy'' have not been able to prevail against it. Within this charmed circle " shoddy " never makes its way, save by accident, when perhaps one of its young scape-graces breaks over into the fold and appropriates a lamb from the thorough-bred flock. On this fine September day the spurious and the pure gold of Xew York's society jostle each other on the street, and in the 6hops and A Rule Down Broadway, 359 stores. The difference between the two is perceptible at a glance. The " simon pure," well assured of its social foundations, bears itself with a certain indescrib- able well-bred ease that even "shoddy," with all its money, cannot imitate, save in a way to render it ridi- culous, a fact worthy of note by the way, as showing that there is one thing on earth that money alone can- not buy, and that is the culture and charming man- ners, the outgrowth of a lifetime of pleasant associa- tions and surroundings. Stop just here for a moment and you shall see that there still lives among us the old-fashioned fine lady, not that traditional bit of womanhood, arrogant, haughty, and combative, which " shoddy " fears and hates, but the quiet, dignified, self-respectful woman, well assured of her social superiority, but so consider- ate and tender of the claims of others, and so civil to all at home and abroad, that she carries with her a nameless charm wherever she goes. The practiced eye discovers her in a crowd instinctively. At Stew- art's, or at Ball & Black's, or on the street, she never stares at you with an insolent, vulgar air, as does " shoddy," through its gold goggles, but shows in her manner that the world was not created for her alone, though she reigns in it a very queen. That such a social relic of the past remains among us in spite of our democratic tendencies, goes far to demonstrate the truth that there is an aristocracy of culture and good breeding which comes not from titles or estates, a social superiority that is independent of primogeniture and all other legal devices to create a privileged class, and what is better still, that it is an aristocracy perfectly in harmony with democratic in- stitutions, a fact that neutralizes all our fine spun 360 A Bide Down Broadway. theories of social equality. To reach this circle some- thing more than wealth is requisite, and one needs to penetrate no further into its mysteries than those which Broadway furnishes on any bright day of the year, to prove the theory true in every particular. How un- mistakably too does this great Babel of a street ex- hibit the social element that bases its elevation — a fancied one in most cases — upon the length of its purse- strings. Observe how defiantly gilded vulgarity tosses its head as it rushes through Broadway. How gor- geous its array, how splendid its equipage, how savage- ly conscious that its once threadbare shoulders are now covered with velvet, and its fat fingers with jewels, the only real ones it boasts. There comes my lady Disdain in her coupe. It is just large enough to hold her comfortably, and the splen- didly gotten up Jehu that guides it through the tan- gled mazes of the showiest avenue in the world. In place of the well-bred jog-trot that the old coach which has been in the family for half a century assumes, my lady's steeds go at a breakneck pace, as though in pur- suit of the family doctor in a case of immergent dis- tress. A white poodle with red eyes, and a bright blue ribbon around its throat, disports himself upon the top of the carriage panel, or lies snugly in the lap of his ] n i stress. We will not stop to trace the family cord too far for fear, as Saxe says, that we may find it " waxed at the other end," and my lady cannot afford now to recognize that extreme of her earlier condition. She is out for a morning's shopping, but she is gotten up as if she were going to a ball or the opera. Shod- dy has good clothes, and it believes they were made to be worn on all occasions, and it is no small matter to be able to go about in a kind of perpetual full dress. A Ride Down Broadway. 361 Her carriage halts at Stewart's, and after sweeping with flowing train a large space of sidewalk in front of that famous magazine of all things under the sun, enters it. But she will not be lost in the crowd as she flaunts from room to room. All eyes will be upon her, for she stands the type of a class that has had what we call success, and to which in these later years we have bowed down with a subserviency born of the belief that there is nothing valuable on earth but money. After all, this represents but a single phase of our varied, energetic, go-ahead life. That these coarse, vulgar scions of the money god sometimes push their way to recognition from people of culture, is not to be wondered at under a system where the green grocer of to-day is the successful banker to-morrow, with a pal- ace on Fifth Avenue. After following with dazzled eye this wonderful ex- hibition of jewels and laces, who would suppose that the plainly, but neatly dressed woman at her side, without a single ornament upon her person, save a certain inimitable grace of manner, has mingled freely for a lifetime in the best court circles of Europe. She has an elegant establishment of her own, but she does not keep it for an everlasting social dress parade. Shoddy, not quite so well assured of its place in the social procession, must needs show itself every day at its very best. It is always " now or never " with it, and to keep itself at the head of the column, a pro- fuse amount of daily whipping and spurring is re- quired. These and their belongings are the but- terflies of Broadway, and with their apings of English aristocracy, contribute largely to enliven it and give to it a foreign air. Whatever its shortcom- 362 A Bide Down Broadway. ings in good breeding and culture, the Broadway shop- keepers have a tender appreciation of the lavish way in which it scatters its wealth. Let us leave these fashionable people and their gay trappings for a moment, and take a run down toward the other end of Broadway. It is the hour of noon, and let him who has nothing else to do take his stand at the corner of Park Row and Broadway, or on the steps of the Astor House. What a jam ! Stages, car- riages, cartmen, expressmen, pedestrians, all melted together in one agglomerate mass. Some wag has said that to cross Broadway at either of these points, or at any point from St. Paul's to Trinity Church, between twelve and four o'clock, requires the same skill in nav- igation as is requisite to get across the Atlantic with safety in a clamboat. Certain it is that at this time of day, lower Broadway resembles the ocean in the midst of a storm. The surging crowd, the pushing and el- bowing, the impolite ejaculations of those who bump against each other, and trample down old and new corn crops without compunction of conscience or sen- sibilities, is something altogether curious and instruc- 4 tive to see, instructive as showing how well, after all, down-trodden humanity can stand up, or try to stand np, under great afflictions. Add to all this the curses of the stage Jehu's, the Neptunes in the sea of Broad- way, the frantic struggles of the cartmen, those mod- ern models of politeness, who " run you down " as if you were a stag at bay, and after reducing you to the pavement level, thank heaven inwardly that there is one creeping or walking thing less to run over, and so go on their way rejoicing. If you are picked up insensi- ble, so much the better, for you will never be likely to trouble this king of the pave again. A Hide Down Broadway. 363 To a stranger, the most incomprehensible of pedes- tric feats, is that, which in a twinkling carries a New Yorker at a single bound from curb to curb of this human labyrinth. Picture him in front of the Astor at a quarter before three, on his way to a Nassau street bank. There is no time to be lost, and the turbulent Rubicon before him is to be crossed before the bank turns its keys for the day. A moment's pause, and he plunges into the very midst of this Babel of bawling cartmen and stage Jehus. With what dexterous, sinuous grace he makes his way to the other side, stop- ping just long enough on his arrival to see that his "patent leathers," despite the mud that sticks peren- nial on Broadway from Chamber street to Wall, have not gathered a speck of it to themselves in passing. In making the next few blocks he will meet ten thou- sand men like himself making the business " home stretch," but not one of them will be touched in all this mad gallop. Even in Nassau street, which is no- thing but a walled-up " cow-path," he will experience no unpleasant contact. Apropos of this thoroughfare, it is doubtful if there exists in all the world a street that demonstrates, during every hour of the day from daylight to dawn, so many problems of skillful loco- motion as this. But we are in Broadway again, and Rusticus, who has " done up " its upper portion, has managed to get down to the front of St. Paul's, at which point he too determines to cross to the other side of the Broadway Jordan. Retiring for a moment from the crowd on the side-walk, he rests his spinal column against the iron railing of the old church, in the hope that an ad- ditional bit of backbone for the contemplated enter- prise will be the result. The experiment produces a 364 A Bide Down Broadway. precisely opposite effect, as after watching the waves for a time his courage oozes out entirely. Neverthe- less something must be done, and at the moment of his most extreme hesitation a circumstance occurs that gives him new courage. A policeman is just about to wade across Broadway, accompanied on either side by a lady. Seizing the favorable moment, the trio em- bark for the other side, and without deviating an inch from the straight line to the opposite curb, reach the latter, though not without a free use of the butt end of a whip upon the noses of the stage horses. Rusticus stands amazed at a thing so neatly done, and plucks up a new spirit within him, though his success will not prove commensurate with his courage. Under its influence, however, he sets out, determined to cross over or bury himself forever in the crowd. He has scarcely struck out when he sees the end of the pole of an express wagon within a few inches of his right ear. Looking up the street, he finds the extremity of a stage pole in fearful proximity with the left. "With a bound he escapes this danger, but encounters at the next step two hacks coming from opposite directions, with just space enough to slide between them ; but just at this supreme moment a cartman approaches from below, and taking to his heels he strikes a bee line up the street. Now comes the tug of war. The question uppermost in his now illogical brain is, not how he shall get across, that hope has died out altogether, but how shall he get back again to first principles at St. Paul's ? Breathless with excitement, he starts out on a fresh rim over the " hard soap " of lower Broadway, his feet slipping under him at every step. He has never been in so tight a place before, but he resolves inwardly that if he can only touch bottom once more A Icicle Down Broadway, 305 on the side walk, he will stay on the west side for all time. By this time he has reached a point opposite the Astor, when a fresh inspiration seizes him. There is a lull just here, and the curve that winds around the south end of the new post-office wooes him. To reach it is but the work of a moment, and help comes from an unexpected quarter. A gamin, with a bundle of papers under his arm, who has watched the progress of Rusticus with a keen relish of the humor of the situation, rushes up to him and pilots him over the street, landing him securely in front of the Herald building. Young impertinence hands him a copy of the Commercial, and pocketing his fee, our country adventurer takes himself down Broadway, secretly wondering how he is ever to get back on the other side, a problem we leave him to work out for himself. If one's ubiquity permitted him to stand at the same moment of a morning at the Fulton, Wall street, the Staten Island and the New Jersey ferries, he would be able to see how it is that lower Broadway, for so large a portion of the day, is little better than a bedlam. Overcrowded though it be, it is the pride of the habitue, and a marvel to the stranger. To the New Yorker, the daily promenade on it is a delight that in- creases with each return of it. Seizing his cane after a hasty toilet and a hard day's work, he floats away upon its afternoon tide upward, and is soon pleasantly oblivious to all the world beside. What a grand crowd it is, to be sure, that sweeps from Canal to Fourteenth street, from four to six o'clock in the after- noon of any bright day of the year! What infinite grace ! (Xew Yorkers are the most superb walkers in the world) — what a kaleidescope of costumes, and what wonderful complexions ! Of dress, there is no 3GG A Bide Down Broadway. mode known on earth, save that of the Minlopica de- scribed by Prof. Owen, which is, after all, no dress at all, birt pudendal nakedness, that has not its counter- part in Broadway of an afternoon. From the flowing trousers of the Turk, to a " full dress" suit of black, all are here blended in one agglomerate, picturesque, moving mass. What more soothing to the rasped nerves of the over-worked Gothamite, than the upward flow of Broadway on a bright, crispy day, at any sea- son of the year ! Historically, and in the way of antiquities, Broad- way, it must be admitted, has little to boast. It is essentially, and in all respects, a modern street, a thoroughfare that will never be finished, speaking from the architect's stand point, until every available foot of it is covered on both its sides with substantial build- ings. It is not rich, even in traditions, and it has but few landmarks running back into the last century, yet judging from its past, it will be finished before its now handsome facades will show the mould or moss of Time's withering touch. To the traveler it stands the street emblem of modern civilization and progress ; to Americans, it represents the onward march of a hundred years, years that have no parallel in the his- tory of any other nation in the world. Architectu- rally, it is not merely the past reproduced, but the present epitomized, for though imitating in some re- spects the grander styles of the old world, architectural ideas peculiarly and essentially American, have in it, crystalized into styles at once unique and original. But, young as it is in years, Broadway is the pride of the nation as a business thoroughfare, and to the older of our citizens, who remember its earlier features, it is at once a marvel, and a history, every page of which A Bide Down Broadway. 3G7 bears upon its face an illustration of some phase of their own lives. Nor is it altogether devoid of his- torical interest. The old Kennedy House, at No. 1 Broadway, was sixteen years old at the breaking out of the war of the Revolution, and has a military and a diplomatic his- tory as the residence at different times of "Washington and other heroes, and also of Talleyrand the French savant and diplomatist, and is famous also for being the place where Arnold first plotted treason. "Washington was first inaugurated President in what was then the old Government House, afterwards re- placed by the block at the south end of Bowling Green. This latter inclosure in its present shape dates back to 1732. To look at it now, a little green patch not much bigger than a lap robe, one would scarcely suspect that it has a history running back more than two hundred years ; yet so it is. It may be set down, indeed, as the starting point from which American civilization took up the line of its march to the Gulf, the great Lakes on the north, and the Pacific. It was emphatically the first point covered in our city's his- tory, and around its immediate vicinity the now popu- lous island of Manhattan threw out its first commercial lines which to-day run parallel with those of countriss moss-grown with age before we, as a people, were born. As I stand, pencil in hand, on this golden October day, at the south-west corner of this historic little park, I feel myself for the moment, carried back to the period that witnessed the landing of Hudson at a point within sight more than two centuries ago. Failing to find the passage to India by way of a north-east pas- sage, he entered the bay that my eye covers, in 1000. 308 A Ride Down Broadway. The beautiful, and now cultivated Long Island shore, with the country back of it, was then a wilderness in- habited by savages, many of whom, joining the sav- ages of Manhatta, greeted the great navigator on his arrival. Staten Island, the Neversink Highlands, New Jersey, and the country west of the Palisades, knew at the time only the tread of the moccasined savage. It is a little unfortunate for a history, otherwise so bril- liant, that its beginning took its rise in a bacchanalian revel indulged by the Indians and Hudson's sailors, the latter furnishing the first " fire water " that ever arrived at the port of New York. The result was that these red gentlemen got gloriously drunk and sold the whole island to the pale gentlemen for about $24. We mention this fact to demonstrate the native shrewdness of the Yankee character, as distinguished from that of his stupid red brother, and to show as well that rings and corruptionists commenced when the bullock's hide, which, cut into thongs, furnished the measure of the island, to the astonished and out- witted, and we may add, though with no intention to slander our illustrious ancestors, handsomely swindled owners of it. But we pass over this as a mere pecca- dillo, characteristic of the superior white race, it may be, and one which has had a large and respectable en- dorsement up to the present moment of our history We certainly cannot be blamed for the repetition of a trick that was so eminently successful, and through which we were enabled to not only set up on our own account as a nation, but to overtake those who had set up long before us. But I must turn my face from the Bay and its never fading, ever-changing beauties, and my mind's eye from Hudson and the Indians, and take the promised A Bide Down Broadway. 869 run up Broadway from my present point of observation at Bowling Green. Just above, and until 1832, stood the old Jay House, famous in its latter days as the residence of Aaron Burr, and from which, during the same summer in which it was demolished, Burr was removed to Port Richmond, where he died the follow ing September. Within a stone's throw of the old tree that now stands at the north point of the Green, the soil which still nourishes the roots of which, was covered by the first fort erected in the country, were thrown up the first rude huts that formed the nucleus of Broadway. What a change meets the eye in its sweep of to-day along this now famous trading thor- oughfare and promenade ! What was once an orchard, and afterwards an open common, is now covered by the Mutual Life Insurance Co.'s building and that of the Equitable Life Insurance Co. The latter one of the most costly and imposing buildings on lower Broad- way, erected, w T e may add, at the expense of an army of policy holders, who placed their lives and a goodly portion of their purses into the hands of this most thrifty corporation, established for the sole benefit of the widow and- orphan, and we suggest the query, en passant, if it is not time that some of these rich corpo- rations, living in quarters so luxuriant, should move into plainer business places and divide the difference in cost with their patrons ? What a pride the insured must take in palaces of such magnificent propor- tions ! Under the rule of the good Peter Stuyvesant, who died in 1682, the city scarcely reached this limit, and up to 1656 had not gathered to itself one thousand in- habitants. Dutch thrift, however, backed up by plenty of good sauer-krout, sausage, and cheese, did 370 A Bide ZFp Broadway, the business, so that in 1674, when the English got final possession of it, Broadway had made an ambi- tious start northward, though we doubt if the most enterprising of the good Peter's subjeets ever dreamed that it would reach its present show of wealth and ex- tent. Passing scores of buildings that must be name- is & less, we come to Trinity Church, the building which resembles most nearly, though still but faintly, the cathedrals of Europe, and the richest of our ecclesias- tical corporations, a good living, in short, for some curate a little more ambitious than Goldsmith's u Yicar of Wakefield." Architecturally it is a grand pile, and may be viewed as the corner-stone of Broadway. Its grave-yard is one of the oldest in the country, the first interment made in it dating back to 1682. Let us enter for a moment's rest, this quiet retreat, this silent oasis in the ever shifting desert of Broadway, a place sacred to the memory, and the ashes of a portion of the first generations of Nieuw Amsterdam. The po- lite sexton gives us carte blanche to go where we list, and having a liking for old, quaint things, and out-of- the way places, we give ourselves up to a half hour's ramble amid its peaceful shades. Speaking after the manner of the statistician, rather than that of the anti- quarian, we find that Richard Churcher, aged five years, was the first to dedicate with his dust the sacred inclosure, and as if in remembrance of go marked an event in the history of Trinity, a gladiolus lifts its crimson and orange petals above the old brown stone that marks the place of the first burial. Passing from this boy grave, we stumbled upon another, far more pretentious, though the name in- scribed on the slab that covers it is by no means an unfamiliar one to German or English ears. It is that A Rile Up Broadway, 371 of John Smith, and on looking at the (late of Mr. Smith's departure, and the quaint lines that celebrate the event, we could not but conclude that though not in pursuit of the last resting-place of this illustrious histori- cal personage, we had by accident, as it were, aided by a pure love of the antiquated, discovered the end if not the beginning of the original John of the Smith fami- ly. It will be a source of infinite gratification to the family to know, that its earliest scions were deeply im- pressed with the importance of mural honors, as the following lines show, that still grace, though dimly, the stone before us : " Here lyes the body of John Smith, who departed this life August 5th, 1764. How loved, how valued, Once Availed the Note. By whom Related All, By whom Begot. A heap of dust alone remains Of Thee, This all thou art, And all the Proud shall be." Our theory as to this " John " being the paternat an- cestor of all the Smiths speedily fell to pieces, for on looking a little further we found that he died at the unripe age of 10 months. Trinity grave-yard boasts a full share of the graves of our heroic dead, the most ambitious and imposing of which, in a monumental way, being that which holds the remains of the " Sugar House Martyrs," those early heroes of the Revolutionary period, " Who died while imprisoned in this City for their devotion to Independence." This monument forms the hallowed centre of a corner, 372 A Bide Up Broadway. in which repose the ashes of many other heroes who gave their precious lives to their country at a time when patriotism meant something more than that which passes current for it in these degenerate days. On the south side, near Broadway, stands the monu- ment of Capt. James Lawrence, the hero of the Chesa- peake, an honored name in our history, and which still has a sole representative in the gifted grand-daughter that survives him. His widow, a gifted, amiable, and beautiful woman, died at "Newport a few years ago, beloved and admired by all who knew her. A few steps brings me to the grave of Alexander Hamilton, a name high among the highest in our his- tory, as statesman, lawyer, and soldier, and worthy to be linked with the greatest of the statesmen of any land. As I stand before the simple monument that marks the resting place of all that is mortal of him who was once the idol of his compatriots, the mourn- ful scene that ensued at his burial, when all New York turned out to honor his memory, crowds upon my vision. The duel at "Weehawken, almost within sight of where I stand, the temporary flight of Burr from an enraged populace, the desolate widow, the fatherless children, the nation in mourning, and the long caval- cade that followed him to this honored sepulchre, has each its place in a picture never to be forgotten while heroism, exalted worth, and genius hold a place in his- tory. Trinity was twice burned, the present structure being completed in 1846. Its chief relic is an elabor- ate chancel service presented by the good Queen Anne, and which links the church's history with that of her maternal government. As we pass through the iron railing that shuts it from Broadway, we pause instinctively for a moment A Bide Up Broadway. 373 to contemplate how deeply, and vividly, the idea of death is imbedded into the simplest minds, the simpler indeed, the more vivid, and as the thought expands itself, we see how it is that some of the rarest gems of the literature and the poetry of any people have been suggested by the crumbling mausoleum, or the un- marked grave. "Who can read Gray's immortal " Ele- gy " or follow in Sir Walter Scott, Old Mortality rum- maging among the graves of the Covenanters, without a reverence for the feeling that covers our existence here with so much that is grandly mysterious ? Washington Irving, the sweetest of our writers, found special delight in describing country church-yard scenes, the " Widow's Son " in his " Sketch Book " standing almost alone in its tender melancholy and its descrip- tions of picturesque beauty. There is scarcely a poet of note that has not touched this theme with a tender or heroic hand, sometimes singing the warrior to rest in notes that melt the heart to tenderness while they fill the soul with visions of martial glory, and again pour- ing out in accents of unspeakable anguish, his simple story at some obscure and long neglected grave. A burial place like that of Trinity, however, can never inspire the interest that clings to the suburban or country church-yard. Curiosity, rather than rev- erence, or a special sensibility to mural architecture, will always seek some place beyond the tumult of a noisy city for its gratification. We are impelled never- theless to confess, that this brief visit to the sepulchres of Trinity, with the surges of the great city's sea beat- ing all around it, proved so fascinating, that we re- entered the ever-sounding Babel of Broadway with regret. St. Paul's, too, has its dead heroes and its quaint in- 374 A Ride lJp Broadway. scriptions, but we leave the story of both to be told by less busy pens than our own, and so looking across the street from this landmark of old New York, the New York Herald building looms up to view on the site of the once famous Museum, long the pet of its founder, P. T. Earnum. There is nothing imposing in the white marble structure, from the basement of which the enterprising Herald is belched forth upon an unoffending people at the early dawn of every morning of the year, yet it has, after all, a kind of newspaper, go-ahead look that makes it an attractive feature of this portion of Broadway. It is at a point just beyond, that the eye of the stranger bids him halt, and take in that costly pile now receiving its finishing touches, the new Post- Office. The site is certainly a most striking and im- posing one, commanding as it does the entrance to City Hall Park from the south. When occupied, as it very soon will be, it is doubtful if the people of any city in the world will receive their mails from a more superb, as they certainly will not from a more expensive build- ing. We were told, as to the latter, at starting, that it would not go beyond a few hundred thousand or so, but as it progressed, and changes were made in the plans, in one case owing to the incompetence or stupidity of the architect who planned it, a whole story being added, it was found that the cost will run to something near $5,000,-000. Barring a few minor defects in its exterior plans and workmanship — we have not seen its interior — it will not be surpassed in grandeur by any building in the United States. A few more buildings like the last, let us add will drive structures of this and the Equitable Insurance building sort, out of the heads of ns Americans for a few years. The material of this A Hide Up Broadway, 375 postal palace dedicated to the New York mails, is of granite, marble and iron, the first, a soft grey stone of fine texture, soft in color, and exquisite in finish. It is three stories in height, surmounted by a Mansard roof, with a centre pavilion of four stories. The front pavilion will be 160 feet high, and the whole front facing the City Hall 320 feet in length. It is built after the manner of the French Renaissance, and sim- ilar in style to the Tuileries and the Hotel de A^ille in Paris, and may be summed up as the most ambitious structure in style, cost and finish of any business build- ing in the country outside of the Capitol. If any one doubts this statement let him appeal at once to the first tax-payer he meets for a confirmation of its truth, if a tax-payer himself, the query will be solved before it is asked. But why count the cost of a building that is to set off our vanity and pride beside distributing the mails? Are not its niches to be filled with statues- que illustrations of Washington, Commerce, America, Franklin, Justice, Art, Honor, Yirtue, etc., etc. ? Our only consolation in this marble array is, that Yirtue is to be enthroned at the helm, while Justice, with her eyes unbandaged (we hope) will benignantly descend from her old judicial heights to see that our mails are properly cared for. Clocks too, we are informed, are to be placed at various points in the outer walls for the accommodation of such impecunious ]S"e\v Yorkers' as cannot afford the luxury of a chronometer. The cost of these has not yet been estimated, but the bills will make their appearance, it is supposed, in due time, and the people, contrary to their usual custom, will for once, indulge the luxury of a growl. Opposite to this immense pile, stands the old Astor House, in its day, the prince of hostelries, and now, 370 A Hide Uj? Broadway. though alone as a far-down-town first class hotel, the best place in New York to get a plain, deliciously- cooked, early breakfast. The restaurant in its lower story ranks with those of Delmonico, and is a famous resort for down-town business men for luncheon, plea- sant talk and for " smiles." Time, and the ever-shift- ing centre of the City's gravitation, has robbed the Astor of much of its old-time patronage, and soon it will succumb altogether to the irrepressible tread of business. Next in importance as a building is the old City Hall, in the centre of City Hall Square, but sufficient- ly near Broadway to be considered a portion of it, and which to-day, despite its elegant, architectural sur- roundings, shows well as a handsome building of the olden time, a link between the city's past and present. It is nearly three-quarters of a century old, and built mostly of white marble. To the old New Yorker it is a landmark, and every foot of soil in the park around it is classic ground. An odd circumstance, illustrating the prevailing opinion of the people at the time as to the future of the city's growth, is its north side of brown stone, that material being used under the supposition that its northward limit would never extend beyond it. The circumstance exhibits as well the difference in thrift and economy between the peo- ple of that day and this. If a point below this was fixed upon as the future centre of the city at the com- mencement of the present century, what would the old New Yorker of that period think could he come back to earth now and find it moved northward five miles or more, extending its limits even beyond the Harlem ? The present building gathers up in its history a long train of events political, military and civil which will A Hide TJj) Broadway. 377 render it memorable for all time, traditions that will cling to it through many coming generations. From its warm portico, always open to the southern sun, how many grand reviews have been witnessed, how many orations spouted, what displays of bunting and fire- works, what ringing huzzas from a once really patriotic people, ardently in love with their government and country ? From these steps on which our feet rest at this moment, how many aspiring politicians, ripening into fancied aldermanic proportions, nourished by im- aginary bowls of turtle soup, have lifted up their husky voices to the open-mouthed crowd on the pavement below ? How often has this very pavement, and the beaten paths that lead to it, echoed to the tread of the citizen soldiery as they gathered for review, or to listen to the sublime oratorical pyrotechnics of some spread- eagle Fourth of July disturber of the peace ? Within its once ample halls, where the " Fathers" of the City were wont to assemble to legislate themselves in, and somebody else, out of office, and to draw their pay, how many toasts have been drunk " standing," " in silence," and at last " sitting," when the toasters could no longer bear their blushing honors on their un- certain legs ? What scenes have been enacted outside these walls, not always peaceful ones either, but now and then, stormy, tumultuous, and passionately violent in their character ! Around this old pile the war riots occur- red, when from ten thousand brazen throats wore echoed the notes of a northern rebellion so fiercely, that even the gentle, persuasive tones of the silver- tongued Seymour were insufficient to hush them into silence. Along the east side of this building, the good Horace Greeley lied to a neighboring restaurant to 378 A Hide Up Broadway. escape death at the hands of an infuriated mob. The old building too has had its vicissitudes. At the cele- bration of the laving of the Atlantic Cable, its head got dizzy with a tumult of dispatches over the new line, and these added to the shouts of the populace, and the fire works that were set off in honor of the event, upset it altogether and it lost its top by fire. A new crown was speedily placed upon it, and it stands out good as new, the most creditable of all the architectural remnants of the city as it was half a cen- tury ago. As a rendezvous on fete days to come, however, it has had its day, and will be known as such no more forever. Commerce has sent the current of population so far northward, that a few years only will elapse be- fore the whole park -will be given over to business, but we hope the old Hall, and the old inclosure in which it stands will remain intact until the dying murmurs of discord, and faction, are lost in the glad sounds of benediction and fraternal love. When it bows its head finally before the irrepressible tread of the god of all Americans, enterprise, something should be left to mark the spot that was for many years the city's northern outpost. The New Court House at the north end of City Hall Square, is one of those structures of which it is diffi- cult to speak with patience. To talk of an unfinished building is to dismiss it with the word " unfinished," but this abortion cannot be let off so easily. It was commenced — well we have forgotten in just what year — a long time ago, that it will ever be completed is a problem as incapable of solution as the riddle of the Sphynx, or that of a free translation of the hyerogly- pliics, but from the time the first brick was laid until A Ride Up Broadway. 379 the present moment, it would be impossible to say how many people have been enriched from the millions ap- propriated for its construction. Such a scheme of whole- sale plunder was probably never before witnessed in tho construction of any public edifice. It will be absolute- ly fire-proof when finished, and it is to be regretted that it could not have been rendered proof, as it pro- gressed, against the official cormorants and rings that have despoiled it. When finished, if that event should ever come to pass, it will stand for all time a monu- ment to thievery and municipal corruption. Archi- tecturally, and in its interior arrangement, it is said to be a success, and when completed will make the north side of the old square as imposing as the south, on which the Post Office lifts its magnificent dome. In its fire-proof niches will be deposited the records of the County Clerk, Register, Surrogate, Sheriff, Tax De- partments and Tax Officers, and unless a better set of officials preside over it in future than some of those who have occupied it in the past, a well-trained body of detectives should be added to the fire-proof safes and apartments, to keep watch of the records. It is a comfort to know that the court-rooms in it are large and airy, and that all the improvements known to ac- coustics have been brought to bear upon it, so that the whispers of a Judge on the bench, can be communi- cated to the prisoner at the bar without rupturing his tympanum, or hurting his feelings. As we go up Broadway from this point, the sounds of old New York will grow fainter and fainter until lost in the fastnesses of the Westchester hills. Never- theless, one cannot go without a feeling that the New- York of to-day, the city to which we hasten, not on foot any more, but by stage and rail, is an improve- 380 A Bide Up Broadway. ment upon that which saw the Dutch bonnes of less than two centuries ago in their snow-white caps, airing their babies at the " Battery " which was then the Central Park of Nieuw Amsterdam. But here we are at Stewart's down-town store at the south-east corner of Chambers street, at which point all that is classical and traditional in our history fades out, and the reign of enterprise begins. Let us stop for a moment to realize fully what is before us. Our own memory runs back to the period when Chambers street was the up-town home of many of our wealthiest citi- zens, but they too fled before that fierce spirit of trade, which began its march after the waters of the Hudson had been wedded to those of Lake Erie. Standing here to-day, how full and vivid the realiza- tion that Broadway is, of all thoroughfares, the one that is typical of our many-sided civilization. How slight in their results the conquests of the grandest armies, compared with those that have followed in the wake of commerce ! What power so grandly aggres- sive as that which calls into existence, as by magic, a great city teeming with wealth and a busy population ! How paltry and contemptible the trophies of war com- pared with such a triumph, of brick and mortar as that which has pushed its rapid way across this island dur- ing the last half century ! How pitilessly the genius of trade has let down the bars of each suburban field, until each yielded in its turn to the irresistible new comer ! How many thousand protests, from as many simple, but happy homesteads, have met the hod-car- rier on his march through upper Broadway ! It is all over now. The days of growling and grumbling have passed, and the bills, well, they are not all paid yet, but the triumph over brute force is none the less sub- A Ride Up Broadway. 381 stantial for all that. But will Broadway ever be fin- ished ? asks the occasional visitor, as each new pile deposits in advance on the street, the brick and lumber to be used in its creation. What if we do seem a little pompous in our architectural and other street belong- ings, that is but a natural outgrowth of hurry and a want of taste, and that nice sense of fitness of means to ends found in older and more cultivated communities. It is something to have shown to the world such an exhibi- tion of energy as it never saw before. One of these days when we have nothing to do but to look into the glass and admire ourselves — there are some malicious people who think the present a good time to begin — we will commence at Wall street and build Broadway over again, and spend in the rebuilding only a tithe of what has been thrown away in past extravagance. But, as I said, we are at Stewart's, and what a square, solid, substantial looking structure it is, a rare bit of business architecture without any of its fuss or feathers. Its very plainness, not an ornament, tawdry or otherwise, to be seen anywhere about it, tells each customer as he enters, that in it " business is business," and that everything moves in obedience to business laws as irrevocable, as were the enactments of the Medes and Persians. What need of doing business in a palace that the customer must pay for to gratify the vanity of the millionaire merchant ? Mr. Stewart has shown his sagacity, and his proverbial good sense in nothing more plainly, than in the happy adaptation of all his buildings to their uses, an underlying principle of all he plans and executes, and which is one of the effective elements of his great success. To give a bare idea in passing of the value of Broad- way corner lots, it may be mentioned that the lot on 382 A Bide Up Broadway. the north-west corner of Chambers street and Broad- way, was purchased by a gentleman who died about fifteen years ago for $1,000, to-day $150,000 would not buy it. James Gordon Bennett paid Mr. P. T. Barnum $100,000 for an unexpired lease of thir- teen years of the lot on which stands the Herald building. Sixty feet frontage adjoining this on Broadway, sold recently for the modest sum of $310,000. The sum originally paid for the whole island was $24. We are now at Canal street, and have passed on our way block after block of marble buildings that have no rivals in any business avenue in the world. We have left Wall street to the money-changers, Fulton, the city's commercial centre, to the carmen and the ever-surging crowd of that more than crammed local- ity, and can now look upward on Broadway with some faint perception that at last we are freed in part, at least, from the stunning Babel below. Just above, on the corner of Grand street, is the marble dry-good pal- ace of Messrs. Lord & Taylor, their down-town store in which their wholesale trade is conducted. Should a stranger on arriving at this point feel the need of something for the inner man, he can step to the rear of Lord & Taylor's on the corner of Grand and Mercer. There he will be met by John Ittner, a very prince of restaurateurs, who seats daily at his tables many of the merchant hon-vivants of the city who dine or lunch down town. His own face is the synonym for good cheer, and among caterers he is in the front rank. Apropos of restaurants and cooking. The stranger coming to New York for a day, if he be a well-bred man, and accustom- ed to good living at home, suffers no inconvenience so great as that which compels him to lunch or dine at A Ride Up Broadway. 383 any one of the restaurants on this portion of Broadway in which the cooking is not only unsavory, but detest- able, and hence we have mentioned Ittner's, which is but a step out of Broadway, for his sole benefit. We are now at the St. Nicholas, which is said to have the best arranged kitchen and the best conducted, in the country, a culinary honor which we think the Fifth Avenue Hotel has merited for years, beyond that of any hotel on this continent. This is high praise, but it will meet a ready response in thousands who have tasted for themselves the delicious breakfasts served at this hotel. That Byzantine building on the corner of Bond and Broadway is Brooks Bros, clothing emporium, a very gem in the way of architecture. A little below on the west side is the Appleton book and publishing house, a superb building of white marble, and one of the old and reliable book houses of the city. "We have passed Niblo's Theatre, and the Metro- politan, a hotel of varied and multitudinous fortunes. After the Lelands left it a few years ago, it was fur- nished by William M. Tweed, known erewhile as the " Boss," in a style of palatial splendor never perhaps witnessed before in any hotel. How much of the mo- ney that paid the furniture and fresco bills came from the pockets of our tax-payers, has never been ascer- tained, but it is surmised, and with good reason, that every dollar of it came from that source. When Mi*. Tweed changed his residence from Fifth Avenue to Kandall's Island, the hotel passed into other hands, though we believe he still retains an interest in it, which is managed by his son Eichard. The Lelands, known the world over as popular hotel keepers, managed it for years, but in an evil hour 384 A Bide Uj) Broadway. Simeon, who had charge of it at the time, passed through a series of financial disasters, it is said, and so the Metropolitan found a new master. Under the Le- lands it had but little political significance as a hostel- rie, but latterly it has been coddled by the Democratic leaders as their head-quarters, and as they still use it for the same purpose, it is plain that the " Boss " re- mains a power in the ranks of his old following. Its table, its servants, its parlor and its chamber suites are unequalled in convenience and elegance, and it was for years, under its former proprietors, emphatically a city winter home for New York families. Of course the onward march of trade, residence, and population, has diminished that patronage of both the Metropolitan and St. Nicholas, yet each keeps its place as a hotel of the very best class. As in all things else which relates to extravagant living, we have set the world an ex- ample of folly and wastefulness in our hotel life that is unworthy of imitation. Why should those who live plainly and well at home, be driven when away from it to take refuge in a hotel at $5 per day to gratify the extravagant tastes of the few who have made a fortune in a day, or have pushed themselves into official posi- tion, and must needs make their low origin more ap- parent by flaunting their finery and other belongings at a " first class " hotel ? While the American idea of a hotel is to have it as expensive and showy as possi- ble, the true notion of a home away from home, is to have every home and homely comfort at the lowest rate. If we go on at our present rate of extravagance in hotel living, the highest priced ones will be given up for the most part to rich vulgarity. To the really well bred, accustomed in their homes to quiet elegance in the way of surroundings, the costly hangings, superb A Ride Up Broadway. 335 mirrors, and general luxuriousness seen at the Metro- politan for example, are not only offensive to good taste, but ruinous to the purse of moderate dimensions. To feel how absolutely obsolete has become the old no- tion of an Inn, one has but to walk through magnificent- ly appointed palaces like the Fifth Avenue, the Wind- sor, and others of the same class in our city. The old wayside " tavern," once with us an imitation of the English Inn, with its crackling fire-place, its snow- white linen, and plain, palatable fare, surrendered to the genius of enterprise as it swept along regardless of the past or its traditions, so that now neither " Shod- dy," nor " Young America " can be satisfied with anything short of Oriental splendor when it goes away for a month or a week on business or pleasure, and so, with a sigh, we say good bye to the good cheer of the old tavern, and give ourselves up to the gassy exhibi- tions of over-heated rooms, and the modem " first- class " hotel. But while lounging at the Metropolitan and St. Ni- cholas, we have forgotten to move on, and must do so now at a rapid pace or else be driven to take another day for it, and that is more than we can give in these pages, even to our own Broadway. It is now four o'clock of this golden September day, not one of those sultry, exhaustive days that often come to us in this fitful climate at this season of the year, but a day send- ing out as feelers its first crisp suggestions that the Autumn is coming along with healing in his wings. Not a cloud is to be seen, and not a leaf is stirring. We are standing at Stewart's up-town store on the cor- ner of Tenth street and Broadway. As we look down toward Canal street we take in with one sweep of the eye, as grand a human panorama as can be seen in any 3SG A Hide Up Broadway. promenade on the face of the earth. What scene can he imagined that so completely represents the national mind as that which is this moment passing in review before me? What, compared with this, was the Tour- nament, that reflected the prowess, as well as all that was tender and gallant in love, of a chivalric age ? Have we not here, gathered within the scope of a mile, the very flower of a continent's civilization ? What a pageant it is to be sure ! One would suppose that old New York had turned out to celebrate some fete day in our calendar, and yet this scene reduplicates itself on every pleasant afternoon of the year, for it is no- thing after all but the returning tide that bears to ten thousand splendid homes the denizens of the me- tropolis. But I forget, and to escape being lost in this most gorgeous bit of pageantry, and being swept along with it, we will run into Stewart's for a moment, and let it pass. What a bazar, and what a crowd too is here ! We had supposed that all New York was out for an airing. Not so. Within these walls a thousand per- sons are at this moment turning over, with delicately gloved fingers, ten thousand articles gathered from every corner of the world. What a dazzling mass of textures, colors, and fabrics, from the most minute trinket, to the shawl or bit of lace that will cost what to the poor man would be a fortune, all brought into startling relief by such a concentration of sunlight as was never seen before in any building devoted to trade. Occupying a square by itself, the light reaches its remotest corner, showing up to the customer the somberest tint in its very best light. Just think of coming down from this height of dry good elevation, to a ten cent country store, and yet, alas, what would A Bide Up Broadway. 387 the world do without its country stores with their thread and needles, their green groceries, their every- thing, in short, that the country needs ? The truth is the Stewarts, and Lord & Taylors, and the Arnold & Constables, have spoiled us b} T tempting our " wim- min folks," as our good country cousins say, into all sorts of extravagances and folly. What full-grown man among us even, but will spend his " bottom dol- lar" upon his first day of shopping with mamma and her daughters at Stewart's ? But we are lingering too long here, and must travel on to Fourteenth street and Union Square, halting for a moment at Grace Church, the prettiest bit of church architecture in the western world. Built of white marble, and florrid in stylo, it presents with its little park in front, its rectory, of the same style and material as the parent edifice, a sweet picture of undisturbed repose, in the very heart of a great city. We do not suppose that there is ever much religious excitement within its sacred walls, save on Easter Day, and Christmas, and the other feasts and fasts peculiar to the Church of England, but it seems altogether a very comfortable place to renew week by week one's vows to lead a better and holier life. We have passed Wallack's Theatre, and are now at Union Square, the brightest, cheeriest little plaza, in our judgment, that the country boasts, the very heart too of Manhattan island, from which, in all directions, the crowd that has just swept along will radiate and continue radiating for the next two hours. A few years ago it was given up to the residences of some of our oldest and wealthiest families, to-day it is occupied by hotels, private habitations, and some of the finest retail shops in the city. Here too, trade, the great 383 A Bide 17p Broadway. leveler of all distinctions, has been busy, nevertheless as a promenade there is nothing finer, in our mind, in New York, outside of Central Park, that of course is to be for all time the New Yorker's paradise, and is hence, incomparable. Let us take a seat in a bal- cony of the Spingler House on the Broadway side, just to get a bird's-eye look at this superb little halting- place for the tired pedestrian. Here is the Lincoln statue to begin with, an abortion in metal, but yet better than to have had no statuesque presentment of the character, which, next to that of Washington, had more of gentleness and native grandeur in it than any other in our history. That elegant and imposing pile at the west corner of Broadway and Fourteenth street stands on the site of the old Roosevelt mansion, a house long famous for its elegant hospitality. The view from the dome that crowns it takes in its range every prominent object on the outer circuit of the island. The old Penniman mansion, just west of it, now devoted to trade, was equally famous in its day for its more showy, but far less elegant social gatherings. Alas, and by way of retrospect, how many of the gay crowds that once represented the two distinct phases of New York's aristocracy, money and family, have passed to the mansions beyond, where social distinctions, and social rivalries have no place ! It must be admitted, however, that in the march of years up to the present, Mammon has held its own, and more than its own. The energy that could push its way to wealth, has pushed its way as well into the charmed circle that has always made birth, however threadbare, the measure of its superiority, and it is a patent fact that now, despite the ravages that time and superior energy have A Ride Up Broadway. made in its ranks, the remaining scions of the old regime that held the social reins three-quarters of a century ago, still hug the prejudice that makes an out- at-elbow Schuyler or Livingston of more social conse- quence, than Smith or Jones in diamonds, with an income of a hundred thousand a year. At the southeast corner of the square stands the equestrian statue of "Washington, another atrocious outrage on horseback upon the memory of the " Father of his country," and one over which all New Yorkers who have any taste for art have shed tears without number. To call such an embodiment' of the heart's yearning for the perpetuation in bronze of the heroic and the palpable, would be to libel the beautiful and the grand in marble or on canvas. The Sphynx illustrates and immortalizes the Pyramids, but this statue of Washington illustrates nothing, save a futile but perpetual effort of the once great warrior and statesman, to urge his Bucephalus into a gallop. Let us move on round the square, taking in the elegant marble building, corner of Fourteenth street and Fourth Avenue, the Clarendon, a thoroughly English hotel, with English servants, English cooking, and English manners, and as comfortable a place to stop for a month as there is in the city. The Everett occupies the opposite corner of the square, and now we are back into Broadway again at the corner of Seven- teenth street. From this point to Thirty-fourth street, can be seen a succession of stores and hotels that tell at once the story of our grandeur and our folly, and which, when the reaction against fast living that man v sensible people are looking for, comes, will loom up as monuments of faded splendor. How strange it would seem, if even here in* the metropolis, we should some 300 A Ride Up Broadway. time or other learn that ignorance and vulgarity, entrenched in marble and brown-stone palaces, serves only to bring out in colors more vivid and prominent, these disagreeable qualities. The real aristocracy of any nation, is that which springs from education, and a cultivated mind, heart, and manners. From Seventeenth street to Madison Park and Twenty-third street is but a skip, and here we are. How great a change a few squares has wrought, and which is a notable feature in any contrast of the two parks. Hurry is the pedestrian order at the lower park, but up here at Madison, with its elegant sur- roundings, there is no indecent haste, nothing indeed that would breathe the slightest suspicion that any- body in this easy-going vicinage can have any possible reason for indulging speedy locomotion, for any such exhibition would be a vulgar one, and not to be endured in a locality sacred to Mammon and " fast " Xew York. If indeed anybody can be said to lounge in this ever turbulent and restless city, here is the place where the habit is indulged. To-day it is filled with nurses and their gaily-dressed charges, in their tiny carriages, and in arms, altogether a charming spectacle of well bred hilarity, for the children of the " best families " are positively allowed to romp in a superior sort of way in Madison Park. Large incomes are the rule around this choice in closure, and so are late breakfasts. The milk-man, or chimney operator, or the butcher-boy that should dare to utter his shrill screech in this locality, would be spasmodically jerked from his vulgar vehicle and consigned to the " Tombs." No beggar ever profanes this quadrangle, sacred to exclusiveness. Even the great bell in the steeple of Dr. Adams' church on the east side, proclaims in A Rile Up Broadway. 391 stirring tones the Puritan watchwords of election, predestination, and " once-in-grace-always-in-grace." That delicious little fountain, scattering its spray through the golden sunshine, illustrates in its upward flow, that self-satisfaction here sits enthroned without fear of intrusion. On the west side of the square, the Fifth Avenue Hotel, next to the " Windsor," the grandest in the country, sends out from early morn to midnight a continuous human outpouring of hand- somely arrayed men and women. Art, in the way of statuary, plays no important part here, a defect noticeable throughout the city, and in which, owing in part to our youth, and our want of taste, our own is inferior to many European cities of half our population. Busy as we are, we have not been able to force art beyond the level that our own want of art education has placed it. One of these days, we shall wipe out much that is tawdry and absurd in our houses, and replace it with styles more modest and far more beauti- ful, and the same improvement will come to our parks and squares. The elegant and showy building on the southeast corner of the park is the Union Square Club House, the best appointed and best sustained club in the city. Political and exclusive in its make-up, it absorbs the best elements of the Republican party, and is the most enjoyable and elegantly free and easy of all our clubs. It has hotel accommodations for a few transients, has an art gallery, and a snug little theatre as features of its belongings, reading, lunch and dining-rooms, and all that is requisite to till the bill of a resort that boasts on its roll of membership many of the very best men of our city, together with — since it is political — an unavoidable element of political hangers-on. The 302 A Ride Up Broadway, latter element is so small, that it is kept well in hand, and not being over-sensitive as to its status anywhere, except when feeding at the public crib, permits itself to be snubbed with that utter indifference that comes from vile habits and low associations, an utter want of self-respect, and an all-absorbing passion for the spoils of office. So great has been its success, however, that the Club was recently reorganized, with a capital of a million and a quarter. What effect a change of national administration would have upon its fortunes, 6uch change when it comes can alone determine, but one good effect would be lealized in a sudden falling- off of the place hunters, and which would be deemed a fortunate circumstance by its higher-toned members. The reader will pardon these little episodes and departures from the otherwise straight line of our march up Broadway, because of the fact that the actual belongings of Broadway often extend to the squares and parks that lead to it, and which are in fact portions of it. At the Worth Monument, in front of the Hoffman House, Fifth Avenue, which begins at Washington Square, some twenty blocks below, branches off northward. On it dwells that portion of " fast " New York, that looks down with self-satisfied contempt upon the arrogant assertion of superiority that distinguishes localities sacred to hereditary wealth and the irrepressible family silver. In the houses of the latter, " plated ware " is never found, so that our good friend, the "Hero of New Orleans," should he by chance be invited to dine with any of these old-time people, would find an ample field for the indulgence of his penchant for solid spoons. We have now reached Thirty-fourth street on our return trip, and have passed on our way up from A Ride Up Broadway. 393 Twenty-third street, a series of splendid family and transient hotels. The Hoffman House, with its cele- brated restaurant, the St. James, the Coleman House, the Sturtevant, the Grand Hotelj with others of lesser note, but all showing how many of our well-to-do people live in hotels, most of whom, with plenty of leisure and money as an inheritance, are mere birds of passage, flitting from place to place at home and in Europe, as fancy and inclination prompts, a don't-care, gipsy sort of existence to those who live for excitement rather than for the more substantial pleasures of a well- regulated and comfortable home. Living exclusively for themselves, they entertain none save themselves^ and are shallow and insipid enough as a rule to enjoy heartily the insipid entertainment. But we have been gossiping again, and while in- dulging so ill-mannered a trait, have reached Fifty- ninth street, the southwest entrance to Central Park. What need of going further ? We are now in sight of green fields, cultivated gardens, rude huts, and jagged rocks, but still Broadway pushes itself remorselessly along, until it crosses the Harlem and is lost among the Westchester hills. To follow it thither from this point would tire both ourselves and our readers, and we commit what is left of it to the tender hand of the antiquarian of the next century, who may perhaps take up his line of march, at the point from which our eye at this moment stretches away to the unfinished Broadway that lies bevond. CHAPTER X. A FEW FACTS. The animus and scope of the foregoing chapters may be best suggested by a brief recapitulation of infer- ences that follow as logical sequences the facts therein stated. The intelligent reader has seen that there has been no attempt made to generalize social phenomena, but to furnish the facts requisite foi such generalization. With politics we have had but little to do ; that with us, boundless, and just now, sadly demoralized field, we have left for the moralist to cultivate. It was sufficient for our purpose, to know that true social growth, and the structures that arise from it, can be best under- stood by gathering in a mass the facts that go to make up and explain the results arrived at. By reciting these facts and phenomena, we are enabled to see how closely our civilization, or that which passes for it, is linked to the barbarisms of a ruder age, and that we have but just entered upon a field, that in the future will be cultivated with a determination to get at new social facts and statistics never before dreamed of by the most devoted enthusiast in social science. The problem of how to live so as best to secure to the sub- ject the largest amount of rational living, by a proper distribution of the good things of the earth to all classes, is by no means one of easy solution. The economic questions alone, that stand closely related to these, and which include in their range, taxation, cost and quality of food, wages, co-operative science, and A Few Fact*. 395 the means of transportation, are all questions of \ital importance. Speaking from the standpoint of municipal life, every man of intelligence, bred in a large city, knows full well that the wear and tear of life in all direct- ions, induced by the friction from close contact, render the considerations of health, habitation, ventilation, rents and mode of living, of prime importance to the man of small means. Add to this, the proper classi- fication of the poor, a thing as yet unattempted in any systematic way on a large scale, the care of these, to- gether with efforts looking to the same results in the care and punishment of criminals of all degrees, and we certainly, as a new country, have much to accom- plish. Indeed it can scarcely be said that we have made a beginning in any of these needs that appeal to us just now so strongly for adjustment. Fortunately for those w T ho are to take our places, we have left behind us that period, the history of which was confined chiefly to depicting the lives of worth- less rulers who fancied them the only ones worth record- ing. To-day, kings and their satelites are passing out of sight into a sort of figure-head seclusion, while the people are crowding to the front, clamorous for such a share of God's gifts as their hands can produce under the stimulus of good laws and a mode of government that will know no distinction between the cottager and the millionaire in the equal distribution of its gifts. There is no study so interesting or beneficial to the student, as that which shows how nations work their way from poverty and the smallest possible beginning, to that condition of independence, intelligence, wealth and culture, which together form the true measure of their greatness. 390 A Few Facts. Ascending from the level of mere physical existence and the daily tug and toil incident to it, to the higher plane of thought, feeling and enjoyment, a new succes- sion of ohjeets is presented for inspection. Here we enter a new realm in which leisure, and how to employ it so as to secure to each the largest possible share of its blessings, are to be taken into the account— a realm in which society, and our relations to it as father, hus- band and friend, are conspicuous. Here home, the place above all others that plays the most important part among highly civilized peoples, comes in for its share of attention. In this domain of our life, art, science and amusements, must needs be considered and brought down to the level of e very-day existence, to lighten its cares, soften its asperities, and render its burdens less grievous to be borne. All this we shall need, now that we have taken our place among the great peoples of the earth, in order that we may not suffer in the comparisons to which we shall be subjected by the coming chronicler of our deeds. Then too, our very success as a nation, in ac- quiring wealth, has induced in us, as we have been borne along on the prosperous tide, false notions of wealth, its uses, and its real value, both to the possessor and the nation. The manufacturer who supplies the market with the manufactured article wrought from the rough material, clamors for a tariff, while he who sells the article cries out for free trade, the simple truth being, that capital should be so used that no class shall have a monopoly of its benefits. So too, since we have touched the domain of political economy, we should rid ourselves of the false notions that a great destruc- tion of property can take place without any real loss to the country, as well as of those still more stupid A Few Facts. 397 notions that personal extravagance is the life of trade, and hence to be encouraged, and that a promise to pay does not extinguish the debt to pay for which the promise is made. So too with legislation, for these different parts of a great system should be considered as indispensable parts of a great whole, it must be confessed that the popular notion of its just limits are altogether confused and ill-defined. He who desires nothing so much as to outstrip all others in the contest for success, de- mands the special legislation that will place the odds to his credit, while he who desires only the equal chance with all others, asks for nothing beyond the gene- ral enactment. In our alms-o-ivine:, the same defect is most notice- able. We wear out our lives in running about to seek out those who are poor from shiftlessness, forgetting when we relieve their necessities, that we have done just so much toward increasing the number of those who will live without work, so long as they can be sup- ported in idleness. We talk glibly of political corrup- tion and demoralization, complain bitterly that the country is on the verge of ruin, and all because some man of wealth has purchased political honors that he would not have taken the trouble to win in any other way, but we forget that for much of this corruption we are ourselves responsible. Shape matters as we may, the demagogue will rule so long as a constituency can be found to elect the demagogue to office,and when it has deliberately done this, what need of putting its lingers in its ears and whimpering over its own follies? What society needs is to do something toward reforming the individual, for the individual cannot undertake to re- form the world, and when this action and reaction 393 A Ft w Facts, goes on long enough, and all begin to see and feel the need of better men for office, we shall have better men for office, and the loud-mouthed demagogue will slip down and out of the places of which he and his kin to- day hold a monopoly. So long as the indifference of the people permits individuals and lobbies to mould, suggest, and control legislation for their own ends and purposes, at the expense of the people, so long will the true interests of the whole be sacrificed to those of the few. That wealth should be watched with a sharp eye for the purpose of guiding it into proper channels for the benefit of the whole, is certain, for when the machinery of a nation goes to sleep for want of employment, capital through monied corporations will step into its place, and seek to aggrandize itself. The capitalist to- day holds in many senses the balance of power. The railroads, the banks, the big enterprises of the country, the politicians and the law-makers are largely his creatures, but it does not follow that wealth hence should be destroyed, it needs only to be held in check, and held responsible for the evils that corne as the re- sults of its illegitimate use. The social life of every civilized people reveals a con- stant struggle going on for the bettering of man's social condition, an ever-present yearning for a higher and better life. Our own development as a nation has followed the practical so closely, that in our overween- ing desire for material success, we have thrust aside as matters difficult of adjustment much that we now find to be essential to a true enjoyment of the wealth we have, or supposed we had accumulated. Princely in our getting, we have been equally profuse in spending, making no provision the slightest, through a prudent A Few Facts. 299 economy, for the rainy clay that was sure to come at •no distant period. First came the war, and the nation, in a moment of inspiration of supreme energy, bonded the chasm, and so put far away, as it is supposed, the evil day when payment would be demanded. Elated by the temporary success of our financial legerdemain, it plunged even into fresh extravagances of living, new enterprises sprung up in all directions with a rapidity thac frightened the timid few, opening to the reckless many new fields of speculation, into which all rushed without regard to the evils that were sure to come. Enterprise after enterprise, based upon promises never to be fulfilled, followed each other in fearful succession. Instead of making an effort to pay our debts, we ex- erted our utmost to contract new ones in the vain be- lief that superior energy and pluck would somehow carry us through without reference to the barriers that nature has erected against man's follies and reck- lessness. For a brief time we sailed grandly upon our summer sea of financial glory, but our high-blown pride at last broke under us, and we woke up one morning to the full discovery that we had at last touched bottom. To enumerate the enterprises, social, financial, commercial and speculative, that vanished into thin air on that memorable morning, would be to repeat the story of a series of blunders and follies unparalleled. A thou- sand schemes that had never a leg to stand on, crum- bled in an instant to ashes, leaving their originators to the sad alternative of contemplating their own folly. The nation still stands in this attitude, crouching as it were / over the dead embers of the past. But we are coming rapidly to the lucid interval that will show us with appalling certainty its mistakes. Wo 400 A Few Facts. shall know for once, at least, that in the management of this world's affairs there are certain laws that can- not be set aside, certain immutable principles that can- not be ignored, and that to ignore them must sooner or later lead to disaster or irretrievable ruin. Oar financial follies, running through fifteen years, with their attendant clogs upon progress in all direc- tions, have rendered it necessary for us to go back to first principles of finance and to conform all else to the new order of things. If we have the courage to do this, keeping in view the fact that all real progress must come as the result of a willing obedience to just laws, the outgrowth of the nation's intelligence, the lesson, terrible though it be, will not have been learned in vain, and a new career of prosperity, with financial soundness for its basis, will again be opened alike to new-born energies and honorable ambition. FINIS. V it yooq pduvo\ v jcjaox^ s\\vcn oc\cn m\(\ } SdiuoD fwicf? jafl^,, pws udd(\ svl[ \\ dsnvodg yooq st(\\ davd\ dsvd\(\ 'davd\ noi tocj.ft isdna tinoiAiABS