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 bOClALIbM IN HYUL PAHK, LONDON. 
 lA uiLX'liut; oil huiKl.iy ulltiuwu, ui.ui lUc ilafblv kVrtli.J 

 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 TIIKIIJ IMIOHLKMS AM) WHAT IS 
 l)OIN(i TO SOLVE THEM 
 
 HY 
 
 ROliiaiT A. WOODS 
 W. T ELSING 
 
 JACOB A. nns 
 
 ^\^T.LARD PARSONS 
 EVI:RT J. WENDELL 
 ERNEST FLAGG 
 
 WILLIAM JEWETT TUCKER 
 JOSEPH KIRKLAND 
 SIR WALTER RF.SANT 
 FJ)MUND R. SPEARMAN 
 JFiiSIE WHITE MARIO 
 OSCAR CRAIG 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY 
 
 HUGH THOMSON, OTTO H IJA(;HKU, C. UROrcilTON, V. PERAUD, 
 
 IUVI\(; 11. WILES, HEHUKUT DENMAN, V. CUIUAYEDOFF, 
 
 ELLA I'. MOUILL, H. T. S(JHLAUERML'M>, KTiOUB TITO 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SORIUNER'S SONS 
 
 IK D.J
 
 COFTRIonT. 1896, BT 
 (11ARLK8 HCUIUNKR-S SONS 
 
 romTiM *■• »ooini"t»«« eon»»»tT 
 
 r^f 
 
 r<w+ 
 
 /f//
 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The papers composing' this book were contributed to Scrihner's 
 Magazine during the years 1891-1893 by authors whose Avork em- 
 bodied personal experience and close and sympathetic study, and 
 by artists whose drawings were made among the life they repre- 
 sent. They form perhaps the most important group of essays thus 
 far printed upon one of the most vital and (what is by no means the 
 same thing) one of the most widely discussed subjects of the time. 
 It is, indeed, the central subject of all social questions ; for all of 
 these, under whatever name, deal with the means of improving the 
 conditions of life and with the relief of suffering as the necessary 
 forerunners of all other reforms ; and whatever may be the diffi- 
 culties of those conditions, or the amount of that suffering in rural 
 communities or among special classes away from towns, it is only 
 in the centres of population that they present their great general 
 problems to the observation of all people alike, and comjjel an 
 answer to the question of their remedy. 
 
 Any series of joapers on the Poor in Great Cities will have had 
 many predecessors — has indeed in England a whole literature be- 
 hind it, of Avhose masterpieces some show their practical results to- 
 day in different individual directions, and some have become, so to 
 speak, the literary classics of their subject. The famous series in 
 the London Morning Chronicle in 1848, on " London Labor and the 
 London Poor " (i^erhaps the first to attract wide attention), the 
 " Parson Lot " papers of Charles Kingsley, the publications of the 
 group of men of whom Frederick Maurice was the centre, and a 
 long succession down to the " Bitter Cry of Outcast London " in our
 
 viii lyTRODUCTION 
 
 own clays, are of the former class ; passages in Carlyle, " Alton 
 Locke," and of late years Besaut's " All Sorts and Conditions of 
 Men," are in the latter. All of them dealt with the sntt'ering- and 
 the problems of a single city ; and all but the last named in each 
 list dealt with conditions altog'ether different from the present. 
 Each was an appeal to an unawakened audience, and each had a 
 condition complicated by centuries to show in colors that could not 
 be too dark, without any remedial experiments to discuss — for none 
 worth the name had been tried ; and without any comparisons of its 
 facts with others — for none had been made. 
 
 The conditions are quite different now. Awakening- is not 
 needed. Every thinking man has thoughts upon this matter. And 
 along with this realization has come practical experiment, in many 
 places and on an immense scale, toward a solution. Americans 
 especially are to be congratulated on the fact that they receive the 
 question, at the moment when the conditions of their large cities 
 begin to make it vital to them, with much of the light of older ex- 
 perience upon it, and (even with the peculiar difficulties with which 
 unrestricted immigration complicates it) in by no means its most 
 hopeless form. It is at our doors ; but not in a shape, if we recog- 
 nize fully its difficulties and take hold of it in earnest, where we 
 may not hope to prevent its dominating us in any sense. We have 
 Mulberry Street tenements and " Hell's Kitchens," sporadic and the 
 growth of a generation or two ; it is largely our own affair whether 
 we shall some time have Tom-All-Alones as a permanent institu- 
 tion, or the century-old sediment of "WTiitechajjel. 
 
 What we need to know is what is doing, here and elsewhere, in 
 the general and efficient activity that has been the growth of the 
 last few years ; and especially, what are the facts with which our 
 own efforts are to deal, and how facts elsewhere compare with 
 them. It is believed that the present volume tells this with a new 
 vividness and force — the vividness derived from actual experience 
 among and keen S3'mpathy with the poor, and the force from a 
 strong conviction of the fitness of this moment for intelligent and
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 vig-orons effort. The contributors of the articles — varying in 
 literary experience from Mr. Besant to those who here wrote for 
 the first time publicly upon the subject— have had that qualifica- 
 tion and conviction in common. 
 
 If a word need be said as to the illustration of the book, it 
 may best be an assurance of its accuracy, since its other qualities, 
 it is hoped, may be made to be their own commendation. The art- 
 ists who co-operated in the series of papers made their studies in 
 the places and among the life described, by sketches and by draw- 
 ings after photograj^hs made under their own supervision or the 
 author's.
 
 COXTEXTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE SOCLIL AWAKENING IN LONDON 1 
 
 Br ROBERT A. WOODS, 
 
 HEAD OF AXDOVER HOUSE. BOSTON. AND S0SIETI3LE RESIDENT AT TOTNBEE HALL. 
 
 The East Exd — The Giiowth of Knowledge of the Poor — Church Work 
 — The Salvation Army — Charity Orgaxizatioxs— The Social Move- 
 ment AT the Universities — Edward Denison — Arnold Toynbee — 
 Samuel A. Barn ett— Toynbee Hall — Oxford House — The Uniaersity 
 Settlements— The Peoples Palace — The Kyrle Society — Social- 
 istic Organization— John Burns— The Xew Trade-Unionism — The 
 Fabian Society — The London Government— 3Ir. Charles Booth. 
 
 LIFE IN NEW TOEK TENEMENT-HOUSES AS SEEN 
 BY A CITY MISSIONARY 42 
 
 By WILLIAM T. ELSIXG, 
 
 UnaSTEK OF THE DE WITT MEMORIAL XOS-SECTARIAX CHURCH IN KIVESGTON STREET, NEW YORK. 
 
 The East Side— Tenement Life — Contrasts in the Tenements — Dirt and 
 Cleanliness — Classes of Homes in the Tenements — Rents — Changes 
 in the Tenement Popul.\tion — Statistics of a Typical Block — Xa- 
 
 TIOXALITEES — INFLUENCES OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS — THE FRESH-AIR EX- 
 CURSIONS— ThE College Settlements — Stories op the Poor — The 
 Charity Organizations — The Church — Suggestions toward Improv- 
 LNG " Darkest New York."
 
 xii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE CHILDEEN OF THE POOR 86 
 
 By JACOB A. EIIS, 
 
 AUTHOR OP "HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES," ETC. 
 
 "One of God's Children" — Progress in the Care op Poor Children in 
 New York— The Children's Aid Society — Italians in Mulberry 
 Bend— The Schools — Some Typical Children of the East Side — 
 Child Population of the Jewish Tenements — Child Labor in the 
 Tenements— Some Solutions op the Problem — Ambition among the 
 School Children — The Flag in the Schools— Street Gamins and 
 their Future — Boys" Clubs— Little Housekeepers— The Story op 
 " Buffalo." 
 
 THE STORY OF THE FRESH-AIR FUND. 131 
 
 By WILLAED PAKSONS, 
 
 MANAGER. 
 
 The Foundation op the Fund — The Post and Tribune — Statistics of the 
 Fund— Excursions — The Provision for Entertaining the Children — 
 How the Excursions are Managed — Typical Letters — Effect of the 
 Children's Outings — Some "Fresh-air Boys" — The Physician's Re- 
 port — Fresh-air Funds in Other Cities — Development of the Plan. 
 
 BOYS' CLUBS IN NEW YORK 151 
 
 By evert JANSEN WENDELL. 
 
 The Boys op the Tenements — Street Life— A Boy's Temptations — First 
 Idea op the Boys' Clubs— Their Management— The Boys' Club of 
 St. Mark's Place— The Avenue C Working Boys' Club— Classes and 
 Amusements— Boys' Club of Calvary Parish— The Free Reading- 
 room for Boys— The Manor Chapel Boys' Club — The North Side, 
 THE West Side, and Other Clubs— Some Club Documents— Enter- 
 tainments— Songs— The Results— The Needs of a Successful Club 
 Worker.
 
 CONTENTS xiii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE WORK OF THE ANDOVER HOUSE IN BOSTON. . . . 177 
 
 By WILLIAM JEWETT TUCKEK, 
 
 PRESIDENT OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE ; FORMERLY PROFESSOR IN ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 
 LOWER AND HiGHEU PHILANTHROPY — GROWTH OF ORGANIZED CHARITY— 
 
 ANDOVER House and the New Philanthropy — Its Religious Motive 
 — Training op Workers — Origin of the Name — Not Denominational — 
 People Dealt with — Robert A. Woods — Administration — Principles 
 UPON which Work is Conducted— Boys' Clubs — The Question of Ten- 
 ements — Study of Social Conditions— Greater Boston— Andover 
 House Association — Field of Observation — Lectures — Place of 
 Sympathy in Scientific Work — Growth of the Movement— After 
 Four Ykars. 
 
 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO 195 
 
 By JOSEPH KIEKLAND, 
 
 AUTHOR OF " ZURY," ETC. 
 
 Peculiarity of Chicago's Conditions— Wide Distribution of the Poor 
 Population — The Greatest Poverty Among Foreign Elements — 
 "The Dive "—Typical Families— The "Bad Lands "—China Town— / 
 
 The Clark Street Mission — The Woman's Christian Temperance 
 Union— The Pacific Garden Mission— Statistics— The Unity Church, 
 St. James's Chukch, and Central Church Missions— Volunteer 
 Visitors— A Veteran— Hull House— Charity Organizations— The 
 Jews' Quarter — The Liberty Bell and Friendship Buildings- 
 Statistics OF A Sweat Shop— The Anarchists— Socialists. 
 
 A RIVERSIDE PARISH 240 
 
 By Sir WALTER BESANT, 
 
 AUTHOR OP "ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN." 
 
 Along the Banks of the Thames— The Port of London— The Sailor 
 Population-^Past Lawlessness of the Riverside Parishes— Roth- 
 ERHiTHE — Shipwrights' and Other Strikes — The Parish of St. 
 James's, Ratclifp — Its Social History — Charitable Undertakings- 
 Clubs and Larger Work— So.\ie Devoted Lives,
 
 xiv CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A SCHOOL FOR STREET ARABS ,,.... 275 
 
 By EDMUND E. SPEARMAN, 
 
 AUTHOR OF AKTICLES AND REPORTS ON EDUCATION IN FRANCE. 
 
 The Municipal Council op Paris and the "Morally Abandoned"— 
 Street Children without Care— Plans of M. Brueyre— Dr. Thulie 
 — D'Ale.mbert School for Paris Street Boys— Montevrain— Occu- 
 pations of the Boys— Printing, the Turning-shop, Cabinet-making 
 —Value of the Boys' Work— The Daily Routine— The Drill— The 
 Veterans— The School Table— Health Statistics— Future op the 
 Pupils. 
 
 THE POOR IN NAPLES 300 
 
 By JESSIE WHITE VA. MAEIO, 
 
 AUTHOR OF GOVERNMENT REPORTS ON THE ITALIAN POOR. 
 
 Horrible Condition op the Naples Poor a Quarter of a Century 
 Ago — Pasquale Villari's Investigations— The Dwellings— Efforts 
 at Improvement— The Rampa di Brancaccio— The Cemetery for the 
 Poor — The Cholera op 1884 — Volunteer Nurses— King Humbert's 
 Visit and Reforms — The Sanitary Conditions — "Naples Must be 
 Disembowelled " — Efforts of the Municipality — The Evicted Poor 
 — The New Buildings— Needs op the City — The Hospitals — Emi- 
 gration. 
 
 AGENCIES FOR THE PREAT^NTION OF PAUPERISM.. 339 
 
 By OSCAR CRAIG, 
 
 LATE PRESIDENT OF THE NEW YORK STATE BOARD OP CHARITIES. 
 
 Poverty and Pauperism — The Four Classes op Our Population — Pro- 
 cesses which Tend to Increase Pauperism — Pauper Immigration — 
 Laws to Control It — The Head Moneys — The Return of Alien 
 Paupers — The Big System of Out Relief — Organized Charity — As 
 AN Agent in the Prevention of Pauperism — The Charity Organiza- 
 tion Society op New York — Other Agencies op Benevolence —
 
 CONTENTS XV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CnuRCii Charities— The Jews— Treatment op the Insane Poor — 
 Management of the County Poor-houses— The Care op Dependent 
 Children— Repobmatories— The Discipline op Convicts— The Ques- 
 tion OP Heredity — Mr. Bhace's Testimony— The State Charities Aid 
 Association— The Factory Law. 
 
 THE NEW YOKK TENEMENT-HOUSE EYIL AND ITS 
 CURE. 370 
 
 By EENEST FLAGG, 
 
 ARCHITECT OP ST. LUIiE'S HOSPITAL, ETC., ETC. 
 
 Chief Causes op the Present Evil— Restrictions Imposed by the Con- 
 ventional City Lot — Types op Tenements — Danger from Fire — 
 Need op Radical Changes — Ignorance in Regard to Economic 
 Building — The Art op Commercial Planning — The Problem in 
 Other Cities — Extravagance op Present Methods Shown — Sug- 
 gestions FOR Improvement— The Question op Light — Reform a 
 Matter op Business Advantage. 
 
 INDEX 393
 
 I. 
 
 I
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTEATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Socialism in Hyde Park, London, Frontisjiiece 
 
 St. Jude's Church at "Worship Hour," 8.30 p.m., 9 
 
 A Smoking Conference, 17 
 
 Dramatic Entertainment at the Boro' of Hackney Workingmen's 
 
 Club, 25 
 
 John Burns Addressing the Dockers on Tower Hill, .... 33 
 
 A New Tenement op the Bettep. Sort, 51 
 
 Evicted— On the Sidewalk, 63 
 
 Both Over Seventy. "Wood for Sale," 79 
 
 The Mott Street Barracks, . . • 93 
 
 Saluting the Flag, . ,107 
 
 "Annie Rooney"— At a Boys' Club, . 155 
 
 German Night at Hull House, „ 209 
 
 In a Sweat-shop, 231 
 
 Searching the Men at the Dock Gates, 255 
 
 Lightermen After Dinner Putting off to Work from Ratcliff Stairs, 271 
 
 An Evicted Family of Neapolitans, 303 
 
 Gossip in Pending Street, Naples, 311
 
 xviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAOE 
 
 Cheap Bathing, 319 
 
 The Pleasures of Idleness, . . 335 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT 
 
 Auctioning Fish in the "Bitter Cry" District of London, . . . 2 
 Rev. Samuel A. Barnett, Vicar of St. Jude's, Whitechapel, and 
 
 Warden of Toynbee Hall, 4 
 
 Making Tambourine Frames at the Salvation Army Factory, Han- 
 bury Street 5 
 
 Prayer-meeting at a Salvation Army Factory, 7 
 
 General Booth, Commander-in-Chief of the Salvation Army, . . 11 
 Making up Bundles of Firewood at the Salvation Army Factory, 
 
 Hanbury Street, 14 
 
 The Work of the Country Holiday Fund, .... 16 
 
 In the Quadrangle, Toynbee Hall, 19 
 
 Dining-room, Toynbee Hall 21 
 
 Drawing-room, Toynbee Hall, 22 
 
 The People's Palace, 2 J 
 
 The Library" of the People's Palace, , 27 
 
 Charles Booth, Author op " Labor and Life of the People," . , 29 
 
 The Queen's Hall in the People's Palace, ...... 31 
 
 John Burns, , . 36 
 
 Tom Mann, 37 
 
 A Lecture at the Fabian Society, Essex Hall — A Question from the 
 
 Rear, ... , 39
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Library, Toynbee Hall, 41 
 
 The Home op a Thousand People, 44 
 
 The Bright Side of Life in a Tenement-house, 40 
 
 The Dark Side— Under the Same Roof, 47 
 
 Pig Alley, 49 
 
 A Grandfather Cutting Carpet-rags, 55 
 
 Poverty and Death, 58 
 
 A Hovel in the Italian Quarter, 61 
 
 The Monroe Model Tenement, 67 
 
 An Invalid Supporting His Family by Making Lace, .... 70 
 
 The Poor Helping the Poor — Distributing Thanksgiving Dinners, . 73 
 
 A Missionary Workshop — De Witt Memorial Church (non-sectarian), 75 
 
 "I scrubs." — Katie, who Keeps House in West Forty-ninth Street, . 87 
 The Late Charles Loring Brace, Founder of the Children's Aid 
 
 Society, 90 
 
 2 A.M. IN THE Delivery Room in the " Sun " Office, .... 97 
 
 PiETiio Learning to Make an Englis' Letter 101 
 
 The Backstairs to Learning, 104 
 
 A Synagogue School in a Hester Street Tenement, . . . . 113 
 
 Night School in the Seventh Avenue Boys' Lodging House, . . 116 
 
 " The Soup-House Gang," 119 
 
 Present Tenants op John Ericsson's Old House, 133 
 
 A Warm Corner for Newsboys on a Cold Night, 126 
 
 "Buffalo," 128 
 
 The Carpenters' Shop— Avenue C Working Boys' Club, . . . 153
 
 XX LIST OF ILLVSTBATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Typesetting at the Avenue C Working Boys' Club, .... 160 
 
 A Stereopticon Lecture— The Boys' Club of the Wilson Mission, . 163 
 
 Entrance to Boys' Club of the Wilson Mission, 165 
 
 A Good-natured Scrap, 168 
 
 A Boys' Club Reading-Room, . . .171 
 
 Lining Up to go into the Gymnasium, . 174 
 
 Familiar Scene in an Underground Lodging, 197 
 
 A Chicago Underground Lodging, 199 
 
 Sunday Afternoon in the Italian Quarter, 202 
 
 Italian Mothers, 204 
 
 " The Dive," 207 
 
 Hull House Creche, or Day Nursery 213 
 
 "Temperance Temple," . 216 
 
 Russian Jews at "Shelter House," 219 
 
 Another Group at "Shelter House," . . . . . . . 223 
 
 A Waif at the Mission Dormitory, 225 
 
 The "Bad Lands," 228 
 
 Laundry and Bath at the Liberty Bell 234 
 
 "Liberty Bell," 236 
 
 The Riverside St. James's, Ratclifp, 240 
 
 A Sketch in the Docks, 241 
 
 "Their First Yearning is for Finery," 246 
 
 A Mothers' Meeting, 248 
 
 Children at Prayer in the Chapel, Heckford House, . . 249 
 
 "Her bowsprit and her figurehead stick out over the street," . 251
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xxi 
 
 PAQE 
 
 A Little Dance at the Girls' Institute, 253 
 
 The Quaker Meeting-House, 258 
 
 Boys Playing Bagatelle in Heckfokd House, 261 
 
 Brushmaker, St. James's, Ratcliff, , 263 
 
 The Choir op the Parish Church, . 265 
 
 Smoking Concert at the Tee-to-tum, St. James's, Ratcliff, . . . 267 
 
 The Sewing Class, Girl's Institute, 269 
 
 The D'Alembert School Buildings at Montevrain, 279 
 
 The Printing Office, . 383 
 
 The Carpenter Shop, 288 
 
 The Drum Major, 292 
 
 The Trumpeter, 293 
 
 A Girl of the People, 306 
 
 An Old Street in the Poor Quarter being Metamorphosed, . . 309 
 
 Begging Hands, 315 
 
 "Hunger," a Sketch in the Poor Quarter,- 317 
 
 On the Stairs of Santa Lucia, ......... 323 
 
 Where Street Arabs Sleep, o . . . . 326 
 
 Interior of a Poor Quarter, 329 
 
 One of the New Blocks of Tenements in Naples, 383 
 
 Tenement-House Plans, 373-889
 
 THE SOCIAL AWAKENING IN LONDON 
 By EGBERT A. WOODS, 
 
 HEAD OF ANDOVER HOUSE, BOSTON, AND SOMETIME RESIDENT AT TOTNBEE HAIX 
 
 The East End — The GitowTH of Knowledge op the Poou — Chuhch Work— 
 The Salvation' Army — Charity Organizations— The Social MovejMent 
 AT THE Universities — Edward Denison — Arnold Toynbee — Samuel A. 
 Barnett — Toynbee Hall— Oxford House — The University Settlements 
 — The People's Palace — The Kyrle Society — Socialistic Organization 
 —John Burns— The New Trade-Unionism — The Fabian Society — The 
 London Government — Mr. Charles Booth. 
 
 THERE is a place hi Loudon — as Leadeiiliall Street, comin,£;- 
 past the site of the East India House, runs into Ahlgate — 
 where in a few stejis one parts 'company with the decreasing 
 number of merchants and clerks, and is swept into the strange cur- 
 rent of East-End humanity. One feels a sudden chill, as when 
 passing- out of a warm breeze into another with a touch of coming- 
 winter in it. Aldgate is still, almost as distinctly as when the wall 
 stood, the limit in that direction of the old City of London ; while 
 the movement of life from the East End turns sharply to the north 
 there, going- up through Houndsditch, the region of old clothes, 
 trafficked in through brokers and exchanges after the manner of 
 other lines of commerce. 
 
 From this point several miles eastward, from the water several 
 miles northward, live a million people, whose existence is very 
 largely taken up with a close struggle against poverty. A hundred 
 thousand East Londoners rise each morning with little or no assur- 
 ance as to where their daily bread may come from. Another great
 
 titf: pooh in great cities 
 
 Auct'onmg Fish in the " Bitter Cry " District of London. 
 
 re.o-ion, equal in size and population to the East End, and on a par 
 witli it as to social conditions, stretches off to the south from the 
 river Thames. So much of London may fairly be said to be given 
 over to poverty. But this is not to say that poverty is absent else- 
 where. It is never far away in London. The Seven Dials, like the 
 Five Points in New York, has lost its old identity ; but such regions 
 as Drury Lane still remain, and St, Luke's, and even the quarter 
 which stands in contrast to the nation's historic glory at West- 
 minster. 
 
 But the East End will still continue to be thought of in a special 
 way as the nether Loudon. It has a clearly marked life of its own.
 
 THE SOCIAL AWAKENING IN LONDON 3 
 
 South-London life is characterized by a pathetic monoton}'. East 
 Loudon has its gloom lit up by many picturesque features. A walk 
 down the broad High Street on a Saturday evening, among the 
 dockers, with their slouched caps and liaunel neckcloths, the factory 
 girls in their plumage hired by the week, and the many curious 
 types of people — gazing into the glaring shop windows : ins])ecting 
 and variously testing the wares of the booths set up by the road- 
 side, which have gone far on the Avay of all earthly treasures, moth- 
 eaten, rusted, if not indeed stolen ; listening to the noisy fakirs : or 
 joining in the sports of the improvised fair — gives one a strong 
 sense of the romantic side of existence in the East End. 
 
 It is this quality, in addition to the extremity of its need, that 
 has done so much toward making- East London, for the world at 
 large, the classic ground of poverty. The new efibrts for the eleva- 
 tion of East Londoners, of which nearly everyone has by this time 
 heard the rumor, are coniirming the claim to an undesirable pre- 
 eminence. Toynbee Hall and the People's Palace are now entered 
 in Baedeker, and one wonders whether the majority of their visit- 
 ors are not made uj) from the one hundred and fifty thousand 
 Americans who in the early weeks of summer populate the great 
 hotels and the lodging-houses qf Bloomsbury. It is a good thing: 
 if it is so. In America they are kept from a full sympathy with 
 their poorer brethren not only by the barrier of different social 
 position, but by the more impassable barrier of alien race. In 
 London the faces of the poor have the familiar Anglo-Saxon linea- 
 ments. One of the unsuspected reasons for that home feeling which 
 all intelligent Americans experience in London is that there they 
 are able to see themselves in tatters. It is this fact especiall}^ which 
 causes the average American to return from even a carriage ride 
 in the East End with some new care for the men and women who 
 have to pass their lives in a great city's closely crowded quarters. 
 
 The little tract, "The Bitter Cry of Outcast London," which in 
 1883 precipitated the agitation as to the condition of the poor, to<jk 
 its facts very largely from South London, from a region where the
 
 4 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 Loudon ( 'ong-regational Union luis one of its outposts. Collier's 
 Eents, as it is called, seems like an eddy in the vast current of Lon- 
 don life. It has drawn in those who could hardly float with the tide. 
 It is at a distance from any main avenue of travel. Long- Lane is 
 its thoroughfare and avenue of trade in stale provisions; and its side 
 
 opening's are noisome 
 alleys and dark, wind- 
 ing passage-ways. A 
 night journey through 
 Collier's Rents, under 
 the guidance of a mis- 
 si on ary, gives one 
 enough to see to assure 
 him that the picture of 
 existence given in the 
 tract is in no way over- 
 drawn. One also has 
 the feeling that Eng- 
 V. lish people, in their 
 
 I* concern brought on by 
 
 * , the knowledge of such 
 
 ; ■ .. a state of things, have 
 
 not estimated too great- 
 ly the shame of it, and, 
 in the higher sense, its 
 
 '"^ ' 
 -"^-^^-t 
 
 ">V% 
 
 Rev. Samuel A. Barnett, Vicar of St. Jude's, Whitechapel, and Warden -i 
 
 of Toynbee Hall. ClangCr. 
 
 The social awaken- 
 ing began in an agitation. All classes were moved by it. The 
 state of the London poor was felt to be to English civilization 
 something like an imputation of failure. It touched British pride, 
 and, l)y the ver}' greatness of the difliculty, stirred that w^onder- 
 ful reserve energy which distinguishes the British race. Each 
 of the various elements in the life of London felt the summons. 
 And so the social awakening has many phases. It includes one
 
 THE SOCIAL AWAKENING IN LONDON 
 
 of the most siguilicaiit labor movements iu the whole history of 
 labor since the Egyptians lost their Israelitish slaves. There is a 
 social movement from the universities ; there is a social movement 
 in art ; a strong social movement in politics ; and a social move- 
 ment, having much of the impulse of original Christianity, in the 
 Church. These 
 all, according to 
 English 
 
 go 
 
 nature, 
 their several 
 
 ways. They know 
 little about each 
 other. They do 
 not hold joint con- 
 ventions, nor or- 
 ganize bulky fed- 
 erations — each 
 sacrificing much 
 of what makes it 
 worth while, in or- 
 der to unite with 
 the rest. Each is 
 rather inclined to 
 minimize the in- 
 fluence of the oth- 
 ers. And yet they 
 are having a united influence which is bound in a large degree to 
 make over the life of London, making it prolific in resources for 
 the educational and moral advancement of the people, and for com 
 prehensive economic and political administration. 
 
 The East End of London as a field for work among the poor was 
 in undisputed possession of the Church, at least from the time of the 
 Franciscans, who had a mission station just inside the wall, down 
 to the present generation. If its work has but slightly met the 
 problem of London poverty, it has at least held its ground until in 
 
 Making Tambourine Frames at the Salvation Army Factory, Hanbury Street.
 
 C THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 these last days there has begun to be a feeling- that other elements 
 in society also owe a debt to the two great cities of the poor which 
 are included within the limits of the metropolis. The Church, in 
 all its branches, is meanwhile learning to magnify its office to the 
 people. It finds that those whose life is almost filled with the 
 straggle for physical existence, who know as yet hardly anything 
 about the human side of life, are in no way the fit objects of a merely 
 religious ministry. They must be sought where they are. They 
 must be helped toward a healthier and happier state of being, be- 
 fore they can be sensitive to appeals to the finer nature. And so 
 churches in the poorer parts of London are fast coming to fill the 
 highly Christian use of centres for every influence toward the better 
 life. So far as he has light and power, a clergyman in East or 
 South London is, in a very deep sense, eyes to the blind and feet to 
 the impotent. In another point of view, he often shows much of 
 that new kind of statesmanship which aims to organize a body of 
 people, larger or smaller, for the enjoyment of all that anywhere 
 makes life more fully worth the living. 
 
 The churches of the Establishment in London enter upon their 
 social work with the double advantage of the parish system, by which 
 each church has a definite responsibility for a certain district ; and 
 of the long tradition which makes it natural for a church to have a 
 number of workers with a variety of occupation. But otherwise 
 they are not more forward than the Nonconformist chapels and mis- 
 sion societies, in entering upon the new duties which new occasions 
 have brought. 
 
 Everywhere the work of charity — which has always been a con- 
 spicuous part of the activity of Christian churches — is being done 
 with increasing wisdom and eft'ectiveness. The sick among the 
 poor are ministered to by regular visitors, and in many cases by 
 trained nurses assigned to special districts. Social clubs for men, 
 for Avomen, and for young people relieve the hardness and mo- 
 notony of existence from day to day, and counteract the fascination 
 of evil. Some churches invite trade-unions to meet in their parish
 
 THE SOCIAL AWAKENING IN LONDON 
 
 Prayer-meeting at a Salvation Army Factory. 
 
 rooms, and thus save them from accepting- the hospitality of the 
 pnl)lic hduse. The matter of recreation is being- taken np in a way 
 that our Puritan chnrclies in America can as yet but dimly appre- 
 ciate. Of two very ritualistic churches, one has occasional dancing'
 
 8 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 ill its piiiisli house, which seems uoiie the less enjoyable ou account 
 of the young cassocked ascetics who stand solemnly by ; and the 
 other, in a criminal quarter, has a larg-e boys' club, with new ap- 
 plicants constantly begging- to be admitted, Avhose main feature is 
 prize sparring contests. At St. Jude's Church, in Whitechapel, of 
 which the Eev. Samuel A, Barnett, founder of Toynbee Hall, is the 
 vicar, there is every year a picture exhibition lasting for three 
 weeks, including Sundays, which was visited the last time by sev- 
 enty thousand peojjle. This same church has a unique musical 
 service called "The Worship Hour," on Sunday evening, at wdiich 
 the seats are nearly all taken by an audience including even some 
 of those hapless castaways of humanity, such as are seldom seen in 
 church, even in East London. From this kind of service, and the 
 frequent organ recitals, and oratorios given in churches, to the 
 brass-band concert which forms part of the exercises at the Rev. 
 Hugh Price Hughe's great Wesleyan West-London Mission, and 
 even to the timbrels of the Salvation lasses, music is found to he 
 one of the essential means of grace. 
 
 It goes almost without saying that the churches in London are 
 still far from meeting the critical facts of life under the extremes of 
 povei-ty and degradation. The Salvation Army, with all its gro- 
 tesqueness, stands for a sympathetic and thorough-going attempt to 
 meet these facts, before which the churches are standing powerless. 
 The Array acknowledges the failure of merely evangelistic meth- 
 ods. And now first for London, afterward wherever its soldiers go, 
 the enthusiasm of this unique and wonderful organization is to run 
 in the channels of social activity. Ever since 1884 the slum sisters 
 have been freely going in and out like sweet angels among the 
 haunts of the lost. For as long a time, the prison-gate brigades 
 have been setting discharged convicts on the way to manhood 
 again. But the large scheme of the book " In Darkest England," 
 of which an encouraging yearly report has just been published, is 
 intended to be a comprehensive mission of helpfulness to all the 
 elements of people in the lower social grades.
 
 • . ■ mm f x-i -'-' " ■■.!«■" 1 
 
 ST. JUDE'S CHURCH AT "WORSHIP HOUR," 8.30 P.M.
 
 THE SOCIAL AWAKENING IN LONDON 
 
 11 
 
 The food and shelter depots, Avhich have displaced the meetmj;;- 
 halls in several instances, take care of those who are without other 
 resort, at a charge of fourpence for supper, lodginpr, and breakfast. 
 Thence the men are introduced into the Army's factories and work- 
 shops, where they are put to wood-chopping-, mat-making-, carpeu- 
 
 General Booth, Commander-in-Chief of the Salvation Army. 
 (From a photograph by Elliott A Fry, Loudon.) 
 
 tering-, and other industries. The women are employed at sewing 
 and laundry-work, and in the match factory. There are homes spe- 
 cially provided for the wards of the slum corps and of the prison - 
 gate brigades, where they are given work suitable to their skill 
 and strength. The general city colony has already found its outlet 
 in a large rural community, which is to be a training place for farm
 
 12 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 Avork and shop work ; for the different tasks which the living of life 
 imposes, and for some of the consolations which it affords. Aside 
 from the united force which the discipline of the Army gives it for 
 undertaking such a movement, its followers, more than any other 
 type of person in these days, are moved by a passion for the out- 
 cast and distressed. In the presence of so rare a feeling of human- 
 ity, the technical objections that have been urged against the 
 scheme have seemed rather empty. One cannot but believe that 
 there is a suggestion in this scheme of other better schemes which 
 shall lead us toward that devoutly to be wished consummation, the 
 abolition of poverty, of which, even so judicious an authority as 
 Professor Marshall bids lis not to despair. 
 
 The effort to reduce to the semblance of a system the almost in- 
 finitely variou.s and numerous charities of London has been con- 
 tinued through the past twenty years with really encouraging 
 success. Every district in the metropolis has, in addition to its 
 public relieving office, a head-quarters for the administration of 
 voluntary charity. The disl^^'ict secretaries are coming to be per- 
 sons of special skill and training. Each local committee is com- 
 posed of re^jresentatives of the charitable agencies at work in its 
 district. In the East End the members of committees are largely 
 men and women who live in other parts of the metropolis, but take 
 up a sort of partial citizenship in one or another poor district. The 
 influence of charity organization in banishing beggary and what- 
 ever would confirm the poor in pauperism has been very marked. 
 It is almost a part of popular ethics now in London to refrain from 
 giving Avithout due investigation. And many have arrived at the 
 higher stage where they cari see the importance and the human in- 
 terest of learning for themselves how the poor live, and of helping 
 them as their deepest needs require. 
 
 Charity organization is taking a wider scope as it progresses. 
 It is making its framework available for those better forms of charity 
 which have to do with prevention. It has given a clue to various 
 associations for befriending children and young people. Among
 
 'THE SOCIAL AWAKENING IN LONDON 13 
 
 these is the Country Holiday Fund, which, every summer, sends 
 twenty thousand shim chiklren singing' through the underground 
 tunnels on their way to the sunny fields. The Charity Organiza- 
 tion Society also lends facilities to a most useful society which is 
 taking in charge the question of the sanitary conditions of ten- 
 ement-houses. Indeed, the newer tendencies of organized charity 
 begin to impart to this kind of work a kind of attraction such as 
 one has not been able to feel before. The leaders are now going 
 forward in the attempt to make each district committee include rep- 
 resentatives of every agency working in any way for the bettering 
 of the local community — churches, schools, parish officials, relief 
 societies, working-men's provident organizations, trade-unions, co- 
 operative stores. With the combination of these forces the aim is 
 to have each committee take in hand the Avhole social situation in 
 its own district, endeavoring to bring the people to a true under- 
 standing of this situation, and to a willingness each to do his share 
 toward making existence in that district wholesome and enjoyable. 
 
 With this comprehensive system, centred in one metropolitan 
 council, it becomes possible for the Charity Organization Society 
 to wield a considerable influence upon matters that affect the con- 
 ditions of life in London. There is only one regret about it all. It 
 is that the methods of the Society lack, to a degree, the element of 
 sympathy. So much of its work has all along had to do with curb- 
 ing harmful sentiment, that it is likely to be suspicious of senti- 
 ment in any form. A man holding a high position in the Society, 
 who acknowledged the difficulty, is responsible for the statement — 
 which I hope it may not seem unchivalrous to repeat — that the 
 women members of the committees were oftener unsympathetic 
 with their " cases " than the men. The explanation of this anomaly 
 seems to be that when the finer feelings are put under restraint, as 
 must be in the administration of charity, women come more com- 
 pletely than men under the letter of rigid precepts. 
 
 The special signs of the social awakening among the more fa- 
 vored classes are to be found not so much in the development of
 
 14 
 
 TJIK POOR ly GREAT CITIES 
 
 Making up Bundles of Firewood at the Salvation Army Factory, Hanbury Street. 
 
 previously existing- agencies as in the making of neAv experiments. 
 These at first are necessarily on a small scale, and afiect only their 
 OAvn particular localities. But already the success of some of these 
 experiments has suggested that it is practicable to repeat them in 
 the difl'erent working-class districts of the metropolis. As a result, 
 there are now taking their place in the life of London new kinds of 
 profession, new forms of institution, new lines of education, new 
 phases of literature. How much it means for the future that the 
 idea of social duty and an interest in social activity are beginning- 
 so largely to give character to thought and work at the universities ! 
 The social movement originating- at the universities has had a 
 quality of the moral picturesque from which neither cynicism nor 
 fashionable cultivation has been able to take away the charm. The
 
 THE SOCIAL AWAKENING IN LONDON 15 
 
 appeal to the imagiuation wliicli it lias made lias exercised a most 
 potent influence in removing- the impression that work among the 
 poor was diilness and weariness, and that utterly. The power to 
 make social service truly interesting-, one might almost say, has been 
 the determining- factor in the present great changes that are going 
 on in England. It was this power that constituted the great dis- 
 tinction of John Ruskin. Every department of social activity in 
 England has been stirred by his message. The men who founded 
 the first university settlement are in a special sense his fol- 
 lowers. 
 
 But the settlements stand for certain principles that are quite 
 out of the scope of the criticism that is always waged against the 
 sentimental side of such a movement. They stand distinctly for the 
 fact, not before accepted, but now growing more and m.6ve clear, 
 that social work demands the close, continued care of men and 
 women of the best gifts and training. They show that if society 
 Avould start afresh the glow of life in its far-out members, it must 
 bring there the same fulness and variety of resource that is needed 
 to keep life glowing at the centre. They are also the beginning of 
 a better understanding- of the truth which is confessed, but not be- 
 lieved, that where one member suffers all the members suffer with 
 it. In a just view of the case, the massing together of the well-to- 
 do over against the poor, neither group knoAving how the other lives, 
 involves as great evil to the one side as to the other. 
 
 In 1867 Edward Denison, a young Oxford man, born to that 
 inclination toward public duty which characterizes the high-class 
 Englishman, conceived the purpose of endeavoring to meet some of 
 the problems of poverty by taking up his abode in the midst of the 
 poor. He went into the parish where John Richard Green, as vicar, 
 was heroically at work. Denison died in a few years, and in 1875 
 Arnold Toynbee, a young tutor at Oxford, first took up his residence 
 in Whitechapel during the long vacation. Several summers were 
 spent in visiting- as a friend among- the people and joining with 
 working-men in the management of their clubs. But failing health
 
 10 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 compelled liim to r(^]iiiqinsli Lis social work, and in 1883 lie, too, 
 came to an early death. 
 
 It Avas just when Toynbee's friends at Oxford were planning, in 
 devotion to his memory, to take up some of the work which he had 
 left unfinished, that the feeling of anxiety caused by "The Bitter 
 Cry '■ was at its height in London. And Mr. Barnett, who had been 
 
 The Work of the Country Holiday Fund. 
 (Underground train tilled with little tamin? singing '■ Annie Rooney."') 
 
 working for ten years in Whitechapel, came to Oxford and met this 
 little circle in a college room. He told them that it would be of lit- 
 tle use merely to secure a room in East London where LTniversity 
 Extension lectures might be given, as they were thinking of doing. 
 He said that every message to the poor would be vain if it did not 
 come expressed in the life of brother-men. With this, he proposed 
 his plan for a settlement of university men, where a group should 
 reside together, and make their home a living centre of all elevating
 
 1^ -
 
 \>1\''J'
 
 THE SOCIAL AWAKENING IN LONDON 
 
 19 
 
 iutluences. There was that touch of inspiration about the plan 
 which is able to bring- into form and substance a somewhat vag-ue 
 and transcendental idea. A small settlement was at once begun in 
 temporary quarters. The cooperation of Cambridge was soon se- 
 cured. In a little more than a year a suitable building- was com- 
 pleted, and the work of Toynbee Hall began. 
 
 . /n 
 
 
 Toynbee Hall is essentially a transplant of university life in 
 Whitechapel. Tlie quadi-angle, the gables, the diamond-paned win- 
 dows, the larg-e g-eneral rooms, especially the dining--room with its 
 brilliant frieze of college shields, all make the place seem not so 
 distant from the dreamy walks by the Isis or the Cam. But these
 
 20 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 thing's are not so miicli for the sake of the university men as of their 
 neighbors, that they may breathe a little of the charmed atmos- 
 phere. For this purpose Toynbee Hall becomes a hospitable home. 
 All that it includes of earnestness, learning, skill, and whatever 
 may rise out of a spirit of friendliness, is meant to be put at the 
 service of the people of the East End. Everyone that is in any 
 way in relation with what goes on at the Hall is now and then the 
 guest of the residents at some informal gathering. Particular pro- 
 vision is even made that the residents may ask their new-made 
 friends to break bread with them. 
 
 The fifteen or twenty men constantly at the Hall, together Avitli 
 a considerable body of associate workers, by the skilled direction 
 of Mr. Barnett, have been able to accomplish some valuable results 
 for the improvement of politics and social life in Whitechapel. 
 There is a jDublic library in Whitechapel to-day — beside the Toyn- 
 bee Hall library — voted for by the local constituency as a result of 
 political canvassing from Toynbee Hall. The great improvement in 
 facilities for housing the people, in the administration of charity, 
 and in the respect for law and order shows striking results of the 
 work of the warden and residents. As for the increase of the 
 healthful pleasures of life which has been brought about in that 
 joyless region, it is alone enough to justify the faith of the found- 
 ers. The lines for a people's university are being broadly and 
 soundly laid. A long list of courses of study is carried through, to 
 the advantage of thirteen hundred students, male and female. The 
 facilities for study are gradually being improved, and there are 
 now two houses adjacent to Toynbee Hall Avhere forty young men, 
 members of the classes, live a kind of college life. In addition to 
 all the classes, each week during the winter there is a concert, two 
 popular lectures, and a smoking conference. At the smoking con- 
 ference specimens appear of nearly every sort of East Londoner — 
 all brought together by that general instinct for debate, which is 
 only a turn of the old imconquerable spirit of the Briton. 
 
 The second settlement — the Oxford House in Bethnal Green —
 
 THE 80V I AL AM'AKENING IN LONDON 
 
 21 
 
 took a more distinctly religious basis. In addition to carrying- on 
 many efforts similar to those at Toynbee Hall, the Oxford House men 
 enter actively into the work of the neighboring churches, preach 
 out-of-doors, and have Sunday services and addresses in their own 
 
 ; fu i^&sipjkft-v 
 
 ■ - ^ 
 
 hall. The University Club, which is carried on under its auspices, 
 is the most successful working-men's club of its kind in London. It 
 has about fifteen hundred members, and inchides a great variety of 
 featiires. It is kept from being lost in its extensiveness by having 
 the constant support and direction of Mr. P. R. Buchanan, a City 
 merchant, who lives in Bethnal Green with his family for the sake
 
 22 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 
 of entering" into an intimate, lielpfnl relation with working' people. 
 The clnb building- has thus far been the head-quarters of the larg-er 
 activities of the Oxford House, and the residents have occupied a 
 disused parish-school building'. But they expect by midsummer to 
 enter the new Oxford House, which will be well suited to all the 
 needs of the settlement. 
 
 In various parts of London there are colleg-e missions, some of 
 which were carried on before thp university settlements Avere estab- 
 lished. Altogether they number more than twenty. In most cases 
 a mission is merely kept going* by funds from the college or pre-
 
 THE SOCIAL AWAKENING IN LONDON 23 
 
 paratory school for which it is named, the missioner being a gradu- 
 ate ; but now the missions are more and more coming- to liave 
 g-roups of residents. For the rest of the settlements, there are : 
 the Women's University Settlement in South wark, which has sug- 
 g-ested the Mayfield House in Bethnal Green, St. Jude's House in 
 Whitechapel, and a new women's settlement in Canning- Town ; the 
 Mansfield House, begun by Oxford Congregationalists in Canning- 
 Town, and Browning Hall, begun by Cambridge Congregationalists 
 in Walworth ; a Wesleyau settlement in Bermondsey ; and Mrs. 
 Humphry Ward's University Hall, at a little distance from the 
 British Museum. Some educated young Jews have recently pro- 
 posed taking quarters in the midst of their brethren of Rag Fair and 
 Petticoat Lane. And no man can see where the end will be. 
 
 The novel philanthropy which has attracted the greatest atten- 
 tion is that of the People's Palace, which is the result, in the first 
 instance, of the turn given by Mr. Walter Besant's " All Sorts and 
 Conditions of Men " to a bequest that had already been made for 
 establishing an institute for working peojile in East London. The 
 People's Palace is essentially an institution. At Toynbee Hall they 
 resent the term. The People's Palace is now not much different 
 from a great technical school, where boys and girls may receive in- 
 struction in nearly all lines of art and skill. It has ample facilities 
 for recreation — a gymnasium and swimming-bath, one of the most 
 beautiful halls in London for concerts and other entertainments, a 
 large winter garden, and a well-supplied library and reading-room. 
 The People's Palace, under the care of Sir Edmund Currie, was con- 
 ducted so that it seemed to be filling out the dream with which it 
 began. But too much was attempted at once. It became involved 
 in financial difficulties, and necessity constrained its managers to 
 seek the powerful aid of the Drapers' Company, one of the old City 
 guilds which exercise a perfunctory charity as a tribute for being- 
 permitted to continue a rather luxurious existence. The manage- 
 ment of the Palace is now directed from the office of the Drapers' 
 Company, and shows that lack of appreciative sense which one
 
 24 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 might expect under the circumstances. The circulars have ' Dra- 
 pers' Company's Institute " in large letters, and " The People's 
 Palace " in small. 
 
 Yet one oug'ht not to make too much of the partial failure of this 
 noble scheme. The People's Palace, as it is, brings a g-reat enlarge- 
 ment to life in the East End. And there is still sufficient reason for 
 believing that the idea, as it was at first held, is a practicable one. 
 
 The People's Palace. 
 
 It is indeed determined upon that the plan shall be undertaken in 
 London on a very extensive scale. The Reg-ent Street Polytechnic, 
 through the generosity and devotion of Mr. Quintin Hogg, has 
 achieved a settled success at the points where the People's Palace 
 has, up to the present, failed. And there is now in hand a plan by 
 which a part of the vast accumiilated resources of the old City 
 parishes is to be g-iven for the purpose of establishing* a polytechnic 
 in every considerable district of the metropolis, putting- each one, 
 to a large extent, under the responsible control of people living in
 
 DRAMATIC ENTERTAINMENT AT THE BORO' OF HACKNEY WORKINGMEN'S CLUB
 
 THE SOCIAL AWAKENING IN LONDON 
 
 27 
 
 the district, or in some way connected with its interests. It is not 
 too much to hope that, gradnally, through faihires and successes, all 
 the more g-loomy regions of London shall be lit up with veritable 
 Palaces of Delight. 
 
 ,/ 
 
 yy 
 
 The Library of tne People's Palace, (From a photograph.) 
 
 The university settlements and the polytechnics in their work 
 draw deeply upon the aesthetic impulse for ways of cheering and 
 elevating the poor. But quite apart from them is the unique move- 
 ment which begins distinctly from the artist's point of view. Kus- 
 Idu is its prophet. It has two quite different, though not mutually
 
 28 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 exclusive, phases. Ou the one haud is the efibrt, which has a strong- 
 element behind it in the artistic circles of London, toward social 
 reconstruction as a necessity if the mass of the peoj)le are ever to 
 be saved from the degradation that comes from surroundings of 
 wretchedness. Among its supporters are William Morris, revolu- 
 tionary socialist ; Walter Crane, moderate socialist ; and Burne- 
 Jones, socialistic radical. On the other hand is the simjDler and 
 more immediate programme for "bringing beauty home to the 
 people." The Kyrle Societ}^ makes this its special object. The 
 members of the Society busy themselves with adorning working- 
 men's clubs, girls' homes, and mission halls. Some beautiful mu- 
 ral paintings have recently been executed in such places. There is 
 a musical section which gives concerts and oratorios in working- 
 class districts ; a branch for the distribution of good literature ; a 
 branch which works actively for securing and beautifying public 
 parks and open spaces, and seeing that they are managed for the 
 enjoyment of the people. The Kyrle Society is under the special 
 direction of Miss Octavia Hill, who has carried on such a courage- 
 ous warfare against the evils of London poverty for almost a gener- 
 ation. It includes in its membership many leading artists and 
 patrons of art. 
 
 By far the most stirring social developments in London, during 
 the last five years, have been in connection with strikes and social- 
 istic ag'itatiou among the working-men. There is an intenseness 
 and reality about these facts there, even to the minds of people in 
 the upper classes, which can be but dimly understood hj those not 
 living in the scene. In London, more than in any other great city 
 in the world at the present moment, the near interests of the major- 
 ity of the people are slowly rising into a solitary prominence. And 
 the main tide of the influence toward democracy comes not hy the 
 way of charity of any kind, but directly out of the working class it- 
 self. Close alongside the working-class movement, and often min- 
 gling with it, is the increasing tendency among men and women, not 
 of the labor ranks, who, with different social creeds, are committing
 
 THE SOCIAL AWAKENING IN LONDON 
 
 29 
 
 themselves definitely to the cause of the fourth estate in its demaud 
 for justice. Many of these persons have themselves felt the bitter- 
 ness of poverty ; others have been moved by a more distant sym- 
 pathy. But it is certain that the radical social attitude of a larg-© 
 
 Charles Booth, Author of "Labor and Life of the People." 
 (From a photograph by Elliott & Fry, London ) 
 
 bodj^ of educated men aud Avomen in London comes not merely 
 from what others have suffered. They belong- to wliat is called the 
 " literary i)roletariat." With the ever greater crowding of the pro- 
 fessions in the metropolis, especially as women are increasingly 
 entering into the competition of one form or another of intellectual
 
 30 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 work, there is a constantly growing number of persons of trained 
 mind and delicate sensibilities who find themselves hard pressed in 
 the strugg-le. Even after success in it, the keen remembrance of its 
 pangs lingers. Events have already shown in Loudon, and are 
 bound to show still more clearly, the i^rofound sig-nificance of this 
 personal sense of social wrong which is creeping in among those 
 who have the power that knowledge, skill, and intluence give them 
 to attack what they find to be false in social conditions. 
 
 London has been behindhand in the matter of movements of im- 
 portance among the artisans. It is among the strong, self-reliant 
 North-country men that the old trade-unions and the co-o^serative 
 stores have made their great attainments. The working-men of 
 London are of a less sturdy race, though that is in part because the 
 industries of the metropolis call for skilled labor in a smaller pro- 
 portion than do those of the northern towns. Li general, the 
 northern towns have the factories ; London, the warehouses and 
 the docks. 
 
 Li 1886, under the lead of the Socialists, who were then more 
 violent and less powerful than they now are, the agitations of the 
 unemployed began. The unemployed represent the two or three 
 most helpless grades of poverty. Some of them belong to the idle 
 and A'icious, but a large proportion of them are willing to work ac- 
 cording to their power. At any rate, it appeared clearly enough 
 that they represent a serious problem. Trafalgar Square, at one of 
 the main centres of traffic, was made a forum for the expression of 
 their demand for the means of subsistence. These meetings took 
 so threatening a turn that several efi'orts were made by the police 
 to disperse them. They continued intermittently during three 
 years. In addition to the Trafalgar Square demonstrations, there 
 were parades to district poor-houses ; church parades in which 
 Lazarus came to the portal that Dives, going in to worshiji, might 
 see him ; and even some riotous marches in which the windows of 
 clubs in Pall Mall and of shops in Piccadilly were made havoc of 
 By the summer of 1889 these agitations had died away. But the
 
 THE SOCIAL AWAKENING IN LONDON 
 
 31 
 
 The Queen's Hall in the People's Palace. (Fronn a photograph ) 
 
 temporary lull merely g-ave time for shifting the scene of action to 
 the principal seat of the difficulty at the docks. 
 
 The long- miles of docks down along the north bank of the river, 
 beginning at the Tower, which are so great a source of England's 
 wealth, contribute to East London life little more than a grudging 
 partial support to the vast body of casuals and hangers-on whom 
 they bring there. They are the last miserable hope of the unfortu- 
 nate and shiftless of every calling. A certain number of men are 
 regularly employed. After that, however, it is open to every man 
 to come with the rest in the morning, and join with them at the 
 dock-gates in fighting like wild beasts to see which ones of the num- 
 ber shall get in to secure a day's work — every man's hand against 
 his brother, with bread and starvation for a wager. The dock-
 
 32 TITE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 OAvuers had been taking- advantage of this sitnation b}'- paying- a 
 miserable i^ittance b}^ the honr, sometimes even dismissing men in 
 the middle of the day, so as to get the full use of men's fresh force. 
 Things became so unendurable that some of the stronger spirits 
 among the dockers decided to ask John Burns, who is a skilled me- 
 chanic, to come and see if there was not some help for them. Burns 
 had just been leading a successful strike of gas-workers ; and, before 
 that, had been one of the speakers at Trafalgar Square. In the face 
 of seeming impossibility, the men being wholly undiscij)lined and 
 completely dependent upon their employment for the bare necessa- 
 ries of life, John Burns determined to call out the thousands of 
 dock-workers of London. It was an act of surpassing courage. It 
 was not mere reckless daring. He saw that the market was rising, 
 so that the dock-owners could with difficulty hold out against the 
 demands of commerce. He knew from recent strikes, especially 
 from one in which the woes of the match-girls had been brought to 
 light, that public sentiment was turning strongly toward the sup- 
 port of down-trodden toilers. And he believed that the working- 
 men of England would uphold him with their hard-earned shil- 
 lings. These things all acted in his favor. Large quantities of re- 
 lief-supplies were sent in by the people of London every day. 
 More than a quarter of a million dollars were contributed to sup- 
 port the strike. English trade-unions gave ninety thousand, and 
 twice that sum came by telegraph from Australia. The rest of the 
 work was accomplished through Burns's marvellous power to hold 
 great masses of men with his voice — there were over one hundred 
 thousand men on strike at once — and through the statesmanlike 
 inner direction of the strike by his friend and fellow-craftsman, Tom 
 Mann. After six weeks of daily speaking, systematic distril^ution 
 of food and strike-pay, proposing and rejecting of overtures, and 
 withal no little apprehension on the part of good citizens of some 
 violent disturbance — the great strike was won, and a beginning 
 made of the organization of the great army of the unskilled, which 
 lias grown steadily from that time to this. In less than three
 
 JOHN BURNS ADDRESSING THE DOCKERS ON TOWER HILL.
 
 THE SOCIAL AWAKENING IN LONDON 35 
 
 years the Dockers' Union, and two other unions of the unskiHod, 
 have come to include upward of three hundred thousand men in 
 tlie United Kingdom. Under the general name of the New Trade- 
 Unionism, with Burns and Mann for leaders, they have won con- 
 tinual victories, extended aid to weaker unions, pushed their policy 
 to the front in the Trade-Union Congress, and gained a political 
 power which will give them at least John Burns for a representa- 
 tive in the next House of Commons. If John Burns and Tom 
 Mann should both be elected Members of Parliament, there would 
 be among the nation's legislators no men of truer hearts and more 
 temperate lives, and few of greater native ability than these heroes 
 of the masses. 
 
 Organized Socialism, out of which the movement of the laborers 
 sprang, has, as a result of this success through j)eaceful methods, 
 become steadily more moderate. One hears, even in Hyde Park, 
 where, on Sunday afternoon, advocates of every cause hold noisy 
 rivalry, less of fiery harangue and more about uniting for the sake 
 of keeping up wages and of putting representatives into the Counter 
 Council and into Parliament. AYilliam Morris's Socialist League^ 
 which still represents the j)oet's impatience of all mechanical meth- 
 ods, and clings to his fantastic revolutionary hope, has been growing- 
 weaker and weaker, until it has now dwindled almost down to the 
 single group which has a meeting in a hall back of Morris's house, in 
 Hammersmith, on Sunday evening, and sups in common afterward. 
 
 The rising tide of Socialism in London, so far as it goes in the 
 channels of organization, lies in the progress of the Fabian Society. 
 This unique association of Socialists is now in the seventh year of 
 its existence. It has about two hundred members, most of whom 
 are cultured people. Mr. Grant Allen, a year or two ago, deserted 
 the banner of Mr. Spencer, and became a Fabian. Mr. Walter Crane 
 is on the list of lecturers. The Bev. Stopford Brooke gives his ad- 
 hesion, and occasionally takes up his strong poetic prophecy at 
 Bedford Chapel, with denunciation of tlie present state of things,, 
 and aspiration toward all that can lead to a better.
 
 36 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 Pursuing- tlie pol- 
 icy of masterly de- 
 lay which the old 
 Roman advocated, 
 the Fabian Society 
 has exerted a marked 
 influence in London 
 throug-h its fort- 
 nig-htly meetings, its 
 tracts, and the vol- 
 ume of essays by its 
 leading- members. 
 These essays, which 
 have had a very large 
 sale, were first given 
 as lectures at the So- 
 ciety's meetings, and 
 may be regarded as 
 the best published 
 exposition of Social- 
 ism from the point 
 of view of enlight- 
 ened Socialists. The Society is gradually coming to be a political 
 power in the metropolis. This is i^artly because some of its lead- 
 ers have become acknowledged specialists as to questions of ad- 
 vanced municipal administration ; but it is more largely because of 
 a series of campaigns in the working-men's clubs. There are two 
 hundred of these in London, on a wholly independent basis. Out- 
 side of the entertainments which are provided, the members of the 
 clubs seem to be most attracted by political and industrial discus- 
 sion. At least once a week in all the larger clubs some person is 
 present to lecture. The men smoke their pipes, drink beer out of 
 huge pewter mugs, and listen. The Fabian Society has detailed a 
 group of its ablest speakers for this special service, and the result 
 
 John Burns. 
 
 (From a photograph by the London Stereoscopic Company.)
 
 THE SOCIAL AWAKENING IN LONDON 
 
 37 
 
 has beeu, tlii-ong-h inlluences direct and indirect, tliat the workiug- 
 nieu of London — who but a feAv years ago all supported Mr. Brad- 
 laugh and his unsatisfying political radicalism— are now well-nigh 
 unanimous in favor of the programme of immediate social legis- 
 lation which the Fabian Society is proposing. 
 
 The variety of social work in London is, it is true, almost end- 
 less, and each department has but little relation with the others ; 
 yet it would be far from the truth to represent the general social 
 situation as being a mere confused mass of exj)edients, of turnings 
 hither and thither. In fact every year shows in metropolitan life a 
 marked increase in the aggregate result of philanthropic and indus- 
 trial movements. It is certainly a new and remarkable exhibition 
 of the English power of achievement that, notwithstanding the 
 vastness of the problem, and its intangibleness, and the plausible 
 claims of superficial reform, the steady impulse from the begiiming, 
 on nearly every side, should have been toward attacking the prob- 
 lem at its centre, and toward devis- 
 ing broader plans of remedy as rap- 
 idly as the working out of any act- 
 ual results could suggest them. 
 
 The governing bodies of London 
 are showing themselves ready to 
 undertake large social schemes 
 based upon previous approved ex- 
 periments. The County Council, 
 by its fair way of treating men 
 working under it, has established 
 a " moral minimum " for wages, and 
 a " moral maximum " for hours. It 
 has greatly developed the " lungs " 
 of London — the parks, open spaces, 
 and playing fields. In the Avay of 
 
 new kinds of municipal administration the Council lias in charge 
 a very large building enterprise in Bethnal Green, for model tens- 
 
 Tom Mann,
 
 38 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 ment-houses wliich shall accommodate several thousands of peo- 
 ple ; and it has recently voted to assume control of one of the lead- 
 ing- tramway lines. The School Board requires all of its contract- 
 ors to comply with trade-union conditions as to wages and the 
 length of the working- day, and provides dinners for ill-fed children 
 at the schools. 
 
 The extensive investments of private capital, for the sake of im- 
 proving- the housing of the Avorking-j)eople, have resulted in com- 
 l^letely wiping- out many unsanitary and criminal quarters. In near- 
 ly every part of London one now sees great model tenement-houses, 
 constructed after the most recent patterns, and sometimes with 
 much architectural beauty. The buildings give a return of four or 
 live per cent, on the capital. The coffee-houses of London, besides 
 being one of the best of temperance measures, have proved advan- 
 tag-eous business investments. Even the newest form of people's 
 cafe, the Tee-to-tums, are conducted so that expenses are covered. 
 These unique institutions are the creation of Mr. P. R. Buchanan. 
 They combine the features of a coffee-house, supplying- a variety of 
 good food and non-alcoholic drinks, with those of a club, having 
 numerous facilities for improvement and recreation. The patrons 
 of each Tee-to-tum are org-anized by skilled social workers, who 
 direct their amusements. Mr. Buchanan well illustrates the new 
 type of man now coming forward in England, who, with intelli- 
 g-ence, means, and energy, shall devote himself and his possessions 
 to working out plans for widening the circuit of life for the toiling- 
 majority of his countrymen. Of this same fine public spirit is Mr. 
 Charles Booth, a wealthy merchant, who at the time when feeling- 
 was highest went alone to the East End and took lodgings for the 
 sake of making a careful study of the whole situation. Enlisting 
 the aid of some able young students of economics, and engaging a 
 regular staff of clerks, he began his great work, in Avhich he is put- 
 ting together a most painstaking, unbiassed, and lucid account of 
 the labor and life of the people of London. Six volumes, of which 
 Mr. Booth, Avith undue modesty, stands merely as the editor, have
 
 THE ,"^001 A L AWAKENING IN LONDON 
 
 39 
 
 already appeared, g'iviiig- a close description of the homes of the 
 poor in different degrees of poverty, and of the condition of work 
 at the different trades. With these volumes are colored maps in- 
 dicating- the character as to poverty and wealth of every street in 
 London. The remainder of the work will treat of all the trade- 
 unions and organizations for self-help among working people, and
 
 40 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 of the efforts toward social improvement in the Avay of charity and 
 ])]iilanthropy. 
 
 With the publication of these volnmes the social problem of 
 London beg-ius to be understood and realized in its leng-th and 
 breadth. " The Bitter Cry," the ag-itations of the unemployed, and 
 the great strike, served to arouse the sense of social responsibility. 
 The efforts of many sorts and conditions of people, with diverse 
 points of view and concerned about different social evils, have grad- 
 ually been showing* the methods for success under specific con- 
 ditions. And now comes this quiet, patient man, having- worked 
 along- throug-h the years of turmoil and novelty, trusting- implicitly 
 to the truth which the facts mig-ht express, and presents the whole 
 of the metropolis as an intelligible object of social study, and 
 makes it easy to see how in each neighborhood, according- to its 
 needs, there may be free course for whatever agencies have been 
 found to be of value in any other. 
 
 The first stage of the social awakening is over — that of scattered 
 experiments and of general investigation. The next, and even more 
 significant stage, the stage of expansion, is already entered iipon. 
 There is sufficient reason to expect that the County Council will 
 not stop in its undertaking- of social administration in the interest 
 of the people, until it has assumed the complete ownership and 
 direction of the gas and water supply and of the tramway lines. 
 The replacing of large insanitary tracts of buildings with model 
 tenement-houses will have to be continued in several other places 
 after the work in Bethnal Green is completed. There is coming to 
 be a marked increase of efficiency in the local parish boards, which 
 are charged with executing the laws for sanitation and poor-relief. 
 The co-ordination of all more obvious charities, and their compre- 
 hensive working in each district, will go on until there shall be as 
 well organized checks against i^auperism as there now are against 
 ci'ime. 
 
 "With the field in general thus laid (nit, there is already full 
 promise that each considerable section of the metropolis will have at
 
 THE ISOCIAL AWAKENING IN LONDON 
 
 41 
 
 least one public institution for the recreation and higher education 
 of the people. The churches and the university settlements may be 
 looked to for the g-radual development of all less formal and more 
 personal influences toward making life healthier, liapi)ier, nobler. 
 Meanwhile the long-, slow strug-g-le of the working-men, rising into 
 dramatic interest in its titful outbursts, is destined to bring them 
 to a position of independence, and in so strong and pure a democ- 
 racy as the County of London, ultimately, as they become worthy 
 of power, into a position of control.
 
 LIFE IN NEW YOEK TENEMENT-HOUSES AS SEEN 
 BY A CITY MISSIONARY 
 
 By WILLIAM T. ELSING, 
 
 MINISTER OP THE DE WITT MEMORIAL NON-SECTARIAN CHURCH IX RIVINGTON STREET, NEW YORK 
 
 TiiE East Side—Tenement Life— Contrasts in the Tenements — Diut and 
 Cleanliness— Classes op Homes in the Tenements — Rents— Changes in 
 THE Tenement Population — Statistics of a Typical Block — Nationali- 
 ties—Influences op the Public Schools — The Fresh-atr Excursions — 
 The College Settlements— Stories of the Poor — The Charity Organi- 
 zations — The Church — Suggestions toward Improving "Darkest New 
 York." 
 
 FOR nearly nine years I have spent much of my time in the 
 homes of the working people, on the East Side, in the lower 
 part of New York City. I have been with the people in their 
 days of joy and hours of sorrow. I have been present at their 
 marriage, baptismal, and funeral services. I have visited the sick 
 and dying in cold, dark cellars in midwinter, and sat by the bed- 
 side of sufferers in midsummer in the Ioav attic room, where the 
 heat was so intense and the perspiration flowed so abundantly that 
 it reminded me of a Turkish bath. I have been a frequent guest 
 in the homes of the humble. I have become the confidant of many 
 in days of trouble and anxiety. 
 
 I shall in this paper tell simply what I have heard, seen, and 
 know. I shall endeavor to avoid giving a one-sided statement. I 
 have noticed that nearly all those who Avork among the poor of our 
 great cities fall into the natural habit of drawing too dark a picture 
 of the real state of things. The outside world has always been
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 4^ 
 
 more inclined to listen to weird, startling-, and thrilling- statements 
 than to the more ordinary' and commonplace facts. If I were to 
 crowd into the space of one short chapter all the remarkable 
 things Avliich I have heard and seen during- the past nine years, I 
 might give an absolutely truthful account and produce a sensation, 
 and yet, after all, I should give a most misleading- idea of the actual 
 condition of the homes and the people with whom I have been so 
 intimately associated. We must not crowd all the sad and gloomy 
 experiences of a lifetime into a history which can be read in 
 an hour. 
 
 What I have said applies especially to the homes of the people 
 in the tenement-houses. An ordinary tenement-house contains five 
 stories and a basement, four families usually occupjdng a floor. 
 The halls in nearly all the houses are more or less dark, even during 
 the brightest part of the day. In the winter, just before the g-as is 
 lighted, dungeon darkness reigns. When groping my way in the 
 passages I usually imitate the steam craft in a thick fog and give 
 a danger-signal when I hear someone else approaching ; but even 
 when all is silent I proceed with caution, for more than once I have 
 stumbled against a baby who was quietly sitting in the dark hall or 
 on the stairs. In the old-style halls there is no way of getting light 
 and air, except from the skylight in the roof, or from the glass 
 transoms in the doors of the apartments. In the newer houses a 
 scanty supply of air comes directly from the air-shafts at the side of 
 the hall. The new houses are not much better lighted than the old 
 ones. The air-shafts are too narrow to convey much light to the 
 lower floors. In the older houses the sink is frequently found in 
 the hall, Avhere the four tenants living- on the same floor get their 
 water. These sinks in the dark halls are a source of great incon- 
 venience. A person is liable to stumble against them, and they are 
 frequently filthy and a menace to healtli. In the new tenements 
 the sink is never placed in the hall. In addition to the owner and 
 agent, in connection with every larg-e tenement-house, there is a 
 housekeeper. The housekeepers are usually strong and thrifty
 
 u 
 
 THE POOR IJV GEE AT CITIES 
 
 liousewives "svlio take care of tlie halls and stairs, liglit tlie gas, 
 sweep the sidewalks, and show the rooms to new applicants, and 
 frequently receive the rent until the ag-ent or landlord calls for it. 
 Sometimes the housekeeper deals directly with the landlord, who 
 
 .•,■,3, 
 
 
 The Home of a Thousand People. 
 
 comes once or twice a month to look at his property and collect the 
 rent. The housekeeper is frequently a widow, who g-ets free rent in 
 exchange for her work, and by means of sewing- or washing- is able 
 to provide food and clothing- for her children. It pays the land- 
 lord to have one tenant rent free in order to have a clean house. If
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 45 
 
 the Louse is small the housekeeper usually receives her rent at 
 a reduced rate in exchange for her services. There is never any 
 difficulty in getting- a good housekeeper. The landlord or agent sees 
 to it that the housekeeper does her duty and the housekeeper 
 "watches the tenants. If they soil tlie stairs and halls, she reminds 
 them of the fact in no uncertain way. If a careless tenant gives 
 unnecessary labor to the housekeeper that tenant will soon be com- 
 pelled to seek other quarters. The result is that the stairs and halls 
 in all the large tenement-houses are remarkably clean. I have 
 visited a great number of them, and can confidently say that I have 
 never seen the halls of a large tenement-house in as neglected and 
 dirty a condition as the corridors of the New York Post-Office. 
 But the moment you enter the rooms of the occupants you often 
 step from cleanliness into filth. The influence of the housekeeper 
 and the sight of the clean halls and stairs is to some the first lesson 
 in cleanliness, and is not without its beneficial effects. There is 
 a slow but constant improvement in this direction, and every year 
 strangers from many lands are getting gradually acquainted with 
 the use, value, and virtue of clean water. 
 
 The housekeeper is frequently wanting in the older and smaller 
 houses, which were formerly occupied by one family, but now serve 
 as homes for three or four. Every tenant is here expected to per- 
 form a portion of the housekeeper's duty without remuneration. 
 These houses are sometimes extremely dirty, and the death-rate is 
 higher than in the larger and better kept tenements. 
 
 Let us leave the hall and enter some of the homes in the larger 
 houses. To many persons, living in a tenement-house is synony- 
 mous with living in the slums, yet nothing is further from the 
 truth. It would be an easy matter for me to take a stranger into a 
 dozen or more homes so poor, dirty, and wretched that he Avould 
 not forget the sight for days, and he would be thoroughly con- 
 vinced that a home cannot exist in a tenement-house ; but I could 
 take that same person to an equal number of homes in the same 
 section of the city, and sometimes in the same house, which Avould
 
 46 
 
 THE POOR IN GEE AT CITIES 
 
 
 The Bright Side of Life in a Tenement-house. 
 
 turu liim into a joyful optimist, and forever satisfy him that the 
 state of thing's is not l)y any means as bad as it mig"ht be. To the
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TKNEMENT-H0U8ES 
 
 47 
 
 ■■■•■ .- ■ **■- ,/- -"_-■"■ 
 
 ••'■1 
 
 ^•tf ■^' 
 
 .■U'w •' -, 
 
 m 
 
 The Dark Side — under the Same Roof. 
 
 casual observer the tenement-houses in many ])ortions of New York 
 present a remarkable degree of uniformity. The great brick build-
 
 4S THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 ing's with their net-work of iron fire-escapes in front, their nu- 
 merous clothes-lines running from every window in the rear, the 
 well-worn stairs, the dark halls, the numerous odors, pleasant and 
 otherwise, coming from a score of different kitchens presided over 
 by housewives of various nationalities — these are all similar ; but 
 from the moment you enter the rooms you will find every variety 
 of homes, many of them poor, neg-lected, wretched, and dirty ; 
 others clean, thrifty, and attractive ; indeed, as great a variety 
 as exists in the interior of homes in an ordinary town. There 
 are homes where the floor is bare and dirty, the furniture broken 
 and scanty, the table g-reasy, the bedlineu yellow, the air foul and 
 heavy, the children pale, frowsy, and sticky, so that you squirm 
 wdieu the baby wants to kiss you ; but there is also another and 
 brighter side. There are at the same time thousands of cheerful, 
 happy homes in the tenement-houses. The floor is frequently as 
 clean and white as soap, water, and German muscle is able to make 
 it. The tablecloth and bedlinen, althougfli of coarse material, are 
 snow^y white. The stove has the brightness of a mirror, the cheap 
 lace-curtains are the perfection of cleanliness, and the simple furni- 
 ture shines with a recent polishing. There is nothing offensive 
 about the well-washed faces of the children. A few favorite flowers 
 are growing- on the window-sill. The room contains a book-shelf 
 with a few i^opular volumes. A bird-cag-e hang's from the ceiling ; 
 the little song-ster seems to feel that his music is appreciated in this 
 tenement-kitchen, and pours forth more rich and tender notes than 
 are ever heard in the silent chambers of the wealth5^ In such 
 homes the oft-recurring- motto, " God Bless Our Home," is not an 
 idle mockery. 
 
 A large number of tenement-houses in the lower portion of New 
 York are only a little below the common up-town flat. It is often 
 difficult to tell where the flat leaves off and the tenement begins. 
 You get about as little air and sunshine in the one as in the other. 
 The main diflerence lies in the number of rooms and the location. 
 If some down-town tenement-houses stood ui>-town they would be
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 
 
 49 
 
 called flats. The word teiiement is becoming- unpopular down-town, 
 and many landlords have dubbed their great caravansaries by the 
 more aristocratic name of " flat," and the term " rooms " has been 
 changed to "apartments." 
 
 There are three distinct classes of homes in the tenement-houses ; 
 the cheapest and 
 humblest of these is 
 the attic home, which 
 usually consists of 
 one or two rooms, 
 and is found onl}^ 
 dowai-town. These 
 are g^enerally occu- 
 pied by old persons. 
 Occasionally three 
 or four attic rooms 
 are connected and 
 rented to a family, 
 but as small single 
 rooms are sought 
 after by lonely old 
 people, the landlord 
 often rents them sep- 
 arately. An old lady 
 who has to earn her 
 bread with the nee- 
 <lle finds the attic at 
 once the cheapest and best place for her needs. The rent of one or 
 two unfurnished attic rooms rang-es from $3 to $5 per montli. 
 
 A large number of very poin- people live in three rooms — a 
 kitchen and two dark bedrooms. Where the family is larg-e the 
 kitchen lounge is opened and converted into a double bed at night. 
 The rent for three rooms is generally from $8 to $12 per month. 
 
 The vast majority of respectable working people live in four 
 
 Pig Alley.
 
 50 THE POOR TN GREAT CITIES 
 
 rooms — a kitchen, Iavo dark bedrooms, and a parlor. These parlors 
 are generally provided with a bed-lounge, and are used as sleeping- 
 rooms at night. The best room is always carpeted and often 
 provided with upholstered chairs. The walls are generally dec- 
 orated with family photographs and inexpensive pictures, and in 
 some of them I have found a piano. These parlors compare very 
 favorably with the best room in the house of the average farmer. 
 The rent for four rooms is from $12 to $16 per month. 
 
 The rent is an ever-present and unceasing source of anxiety to 
 a great many poor people. The family is sometimes obliged to go 
 half clothed and live on the cheapest and coarsest food in order to 
 provide the rent money. The monthly rent is a veritable sword of 
 Damocles. To a poor woman who dreads the coming of the land- 
 lord, the most enticing and attractive description of heaven which 
 I have been able to give is a place where they pay no rent. The 
 landlords are of necessity compelled to be peremptory and some- 
 times arbitrary in their demands. If a landlord were even a little 
 too lenient his tenement property would certainly prove a losing 
 investment. The apparently unreasonable harshness of many land- 
 lords is often justifiable, and the only means of securing them 
 against loss. Generally where a good tenant is unable to paj^ the 
 rent on account of sickness or lack of work the landlord is willing 
 to extend the time a few weeks. I frequently find families who are 
 two or three months in arrears. In the majority of cases where 
 dispossess papers are served, the landlord does not know his tenant 
 sufticiently Avell to trust him, or the tenant is unworthy of trust. 
 Yery few of those who are evicted are compelled to take to the street. 
 In most cases sufficient money is collected from friends, neighbors, 
 and charitable people to procure another place of shelter. Oc- 
 casionally, however, all the worldly possessions of an unfortunate 
 tenant are placed on the street. It is a pathetic sight to see a 
 small heap of poor household stuff standing on the sidewalk guarded 
 by the children, while the distressed mother is frantically rushing 
 from one charitable organization to another in search of help.
 
 .-:.:._-- ' o<|V^^<^-^^ 
 
 A NEW TENEMENT OF THE BETTER SORT. 
 One of many recently erected by private enterprise.
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 53 
 
 A poor German woman came to me on one occasion and informed 
 me that her fnrnitnre was standing- on the sidewalk, and she knew not 
 what wouki become of her. She had with her a beautiful little girl. 
 The child cried continually, but the motiier's distress was too great 
 for tears. She begged me in God's name to help her. I gave her 
 but little encouragement, and dismissed her with a few kind words. 
 She left without heaping abuse on me or cursing the church for its 
 neglect of the poor. A little later I went to the jalace where she in- 
 formed me her furniture was and found all her earthly goods on the 
 sidewalk. I inquired of some of her former neig-hbors about her 
 character, and on being- convinced that she Avas a worthy woman, 
 rented tAvo small rooms in a rear tenement. I found some 30ung 
 street-corner loafers, told them about the woman, and asked them 
 to lend a hand in getting the furniture moved. There is no man 
 so bad that he will not do a g-ood turn for another if you approach 
 him properly. These young- roughs went to work Avitli a Avill, and 
 when the poor woman returned from her last fruitless attempt to 
 collect enough for a new home she found everything arranged. She 
 was thankful and happy. I did not see her until two mouths later. 
 Then she appeared in as great distress as before, and showed me a 
 new dispossess paper. She informed me that she had failed to tind 
 work, everything- had been ag-ainst her, but she hoped to get on her 
 feet if I would once more help her. I told her it was impossible 
 for me to do anything- more for her ; so she thanked me for my 
 former kindness and departed. That afternoon I heard of a lady 
 in Orange, N. J., who Avanted a house-servant and a little girl 
 as Avaitress. I immediately thoug-ht of the German Avoman and 
 promised if possible to send her out to Orange as soon as arrange- 
 ments could be made. I was soon in the little rooms of the Avidow 
 and her daughter and expected to be the bearer of joyful tidings. 
 When I finished she looked sadly at the few scanty pieces of 
 furniture and said : 
 
 " If I go to the country Avhat shall I do Avith the stuff ? " 
 
 "My good woman," I said, "the stuff is not Avorth fifty
 
 5-i THE POOR JJ\' GREAT CITIES 
 
 cents ; give it to the boys to make a boutire, aiul. Jo wliat I tell 
 you." 
 
 "But I Lave not money enough to leave the city." 
 I provided the fare, the boys had a glorious time around their 
 fire, and that night, instead of sleei^iug in her comfortless room, the 
 poor woman was on Orange Mountain. It would have been a losing- 
 investment for any landlord to give an extension of time to that 
 woman, and yet she was a thoroughly worthy person, as the sequel 
 proved ; her old misery and trouble were at an end. She found 
 a good home and gave perfect satisfaction. 
 
 Many other experiences like this, and my constant association 
 with the conditions of tenement-house life, have, of course, led me 
 to certain conclusions as to the best remedies, which I shall reserve 
 for specific mention in the latter part of this paper. 
 
 The population of the tenement-houses in lower New York is 
 continually changing. There is a constant graduation of the better 
 element. As soon as the circumstances of the people imjjrove they 
 want better homes. A foreigner who took up his abode in a tene- 
 ment-house fifteen or twenty years ago may be perfectly contented 
 with his surroundings, but when his children g-row up and earn 
 good wages they are not satisfied with a tenement-house, and give 
 the old people no peace u\\i\\ a new home is found. Sometimes a 
 man who has led a bad life reforms and immediately seeks a better 
 home for his Avife and children. I know several men who w^ere at 
 one time low and degraded drunkards, a\1io would have been satis- 
 fied with a pig-sty, who had torn the clothes from their children's 
 backs, the blankets from their beds, and taken them to the pawn- 
 shop to get money for drink ; but through the good influences that 
 were thrown aroimd them, the wise counsel of friends, and the sav- 
 ing power of the gospel they became changed men. Their circum- 
 stances began to improve, the children were provided with clothes, 
 one xaiece of furniture after another was brought into the empty 
 rooms, until the place began to look like a home again. These
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 5 a 
 
 men were cliarmed Avitli the new life. Home became so dear a 
 place that they are willing- to travel an hour each morning- and 
 evening- in order to make it still more attractive. They began to 
 see the disadvantages of life in a tenement and found a new home 
 on Long Island or in New Jersey. 
 
 A Grandfather Cutting Carpet-rags. 
 
 This constant sifting- of the best elements makes religious and 
 philanthropic work in lower New York exceedingly difHeuit and 
 apparently unfruitful, but none the less encouraging and necessary. 
 The fact that the people leave the tenements in search of bett(>r 
 homes is the best proof that a good work is being accomplished. 
 A few months ago we celebrated the tenth anniversary of the ded-
 
 56 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 ication of one of our city missiou cliiirclies. There were six linn- 
 dred present, and out of this number there were only twenty-four 
 who were at the dedication ten years before. While the better class 
 is being- constantly sifted out of the tenements, a steady stream of 
 new-comers flows in to take their places. 
 
 Successive waves of population follow each other in rapid suc- 
 cession. It is often impossible to tell what the character of the 
 population will be in the next ten years. In 1830 the agents of the 
 New York City Mission visited 34,54:2 families. Among this num- 
 ber there Avere only 264 who desired foreig-n tracts, showing that 
 the population was then almost exclusively American or English- 
 speaking. Now the English language is rarely heard in some of 
 the lower parts of New York, except by the children. That section 
 of the city between the Bowery and East River, Grand and Hous- 
 ton Streets, has been successively occupied by Americans, Irish, 
 Germans, and is now fast coming into the possession of Russian 
 and Polish Jews. The Jewish invasion has been remarkably rapid. 
 Eight years ago I used to see occasionally a Jewish face on the 
 streets or a Jewish sign over the stores. Now the streets swarm 
 with them. 
 
 In 1892 I made a careful canvass of a typical block and found 
 800 families composed of 1,424 individuals. The nationalities of 
 the families were as follows: 244 German, 16 Irish, 11 American, 13 
 Hungarian, 6 Polish, 4 Russian, 2 Bohemian, 1 English, 1 Dutch, 
 and 2 Chinese. Among the 244 German families there were 192 
 Jews, 38 Protestants, and 14 Roman Catholics. The German Jews 
 are the most highly respected, and on this account many call them- 
 selves German who are in reality Russian or Polish Jews. These 
 300 heads of families are engaged in 72 different trades, occui^a- 
 tions, and professions. There are 73 tailors, 17 cigarmakers, 17 
 storekeepers, 12 ]iedlars, 11 painters, 9 butchers, and 9 shoemakers 
 in the block. The remaining 65 trades and professions are repre- 
 sented by 148 different persons. Thirty of the heads of families are 
 Roman Catholics, 47 Protestants, and 221 Jews, and 2 have no re-
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 57 
 
 lig-ion. The Jews do not as a rule mingle to any great extent witli 
 the Christians. When they come in large numbers into a street, 
 the Christians gradually withdraw, and the neighborhood finally 
 becomes a Jewish quarter. There are streets in New York where it 
 is a rare thing to find a Christian family. 
 
 During the transition period, when a locality is neither Chris- 
 tian nor Jewish, an interesting state of things prevails — a Jewish 
 family, a Koman Catholic family, a pious Protestant family, and a 
 heathen family, as far as religion is concerned, frequently live on 
 the same floor. Sufi'ering appeals to our common humanit^^ In 
 trouble and sickness these neighbors render each other assistance 
 and often become warm friends. I have seen a Jewish woman 
 watching anxiously by the bedside of a dying Christian. A Roman 
 Catholic or Jewish woman will often stand as godmother at the 
 baptism of a Protestant child. A pretty, black-eyed Jewess occa- 
 sionally captures the heart of a young Roman Catholic or Protes- 
 tant, and they have come to me to perform the marriage service. 
 Persons of various nations and religious beliefs are sometimes 
 present at a tenement-house funeral. Bigotry and national preju- 
 dice are gradually broken down and the much-abused tenement be- 
 comes a means of promoting the brotherhood of man and the union 
 of Christendom. You may hear daily from the lips of devout Ro- 
 man Catholics and Jews such words as these : " We belong to a 
 different religion, but we have the same God and hope to go to the 
 same heaven." Such confessions are not often heard in small 
 towns and country districts, but they are frequent in the tenement- 
 houses. 
 
 The Jews, who in all ages have been noted for their exclusive- 
 ness, are affected by this contact with Christians in the tenement- 
 house. In De Witt Memorial Church, with which I am connected, 
 an audience of three or four hundred Jews assembles every week to 
 hear Christian instruction. From the stand-point of social science 
 such a gathering every week for two or three years past is sig- 
 nificant. The Jew in every land has preserved his identity. Per-
 
 58 
 
 THE POOH IX GREAT CITIES 
 
 Poverty and Deatn 
 
 secnitiou lias isolated liim ; when he has been most hated he has 
 flourished, when he has been despised he has prospered. Like the 
 symbolic l>nrning" bush, the fires of persecution have not destroyed 
 him. It remains to be seen whether he will preserve his identity in 
 this country, where, as a citizen, he enjoys equal rights, and where 
 the doors of the public school and the Christian church stand open 
 to Jew and Gentile alike. 
 
 Whatever may be the nationality of the parents the children are 
 always thoroug-h Americans. The blond-haired, blue-eyed German 
 children ; the black -haired, dark-eyed Italians ; the little Jews, both 
 dark and blonde, from many lands, are all equally i)roud of being 
 Americans. A patriotic Irishman gave a beautiful edition of " Pict- 
 uresque Ireland" to one of the boys in my Sundaj'-school. The
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 59 
 
 lad looked disappointed. His father asked liim Avhy lie was not 
 pleased with the present. He answered : "I want a history of the 
 United States." We have a circulating library, patronized almost 
 exclusively by foreigners. The librarian informs me that four boys 
 out of every five call for United States histories. 
 
 The most powerful influence at work among the tenement-house 
 population is the public school. Every public school is a great 
 moral lighthouse, and stands for obedience, cleanliness, morality, 
 and patriotism, as Avell as mental training. When the little chil- 
 dren begin to attend the schools their hands and faces are in- 
 spected, and if they are not up to the standard, they are sent home 
 for a washing. A boy who is especially dirty is sometimes sent 
 down-stairs with the cleanest boy in school, and told to wash him- 
 self until he looks as well as his comi^anion. Such lessons are not 
 soon forgotten, and the result is the public-school children in lower 
 New York present a very respectable appearance. The fresh-air ex- 
 cursions, with many other benefits, promote cleaidiness. The heads 
 of the children must be examined before they can enjoy a trip into 
 the country. There is no more beautiful and beneficent charity than 
 this fresh-air work.* In two or three weeks the pale-faced children 
 return to the crowded city with renewed health and with larger and 
 better views of life. I know boys who became so enraptured with 
 green fields, running brooks, waving grain, and life on the farm 
 that they have fully resolved to leave the city when they become 
 men. One little fellow was so anxious to become a farmer that he 
 ran away because his parents would not permit him to leave liome. 
 
 The fresh-air work usually closes in October, but the young 
 ladies connected with the " College Settlement " have added a new 
 feature, which will commend itself to everyone who is acquainted 
 with the condition of life around us. Every Saturday afternoon 
 during the winter two of the ladies take a small party of children to 
 their summer home. Saturday evening is spent in playing various 
 * See The Story of the Fresli-air Fund, page 131.
 
 60 THE POOR IX GREAT CITIES 
 
 games, or enjojdng- a candy-pull, and having a general good time. 
 On Sunday the children attend the country church, and Sunday 
 evening, seated before a blazing open fire, a good book is read, or 
 the ladies in charge give some practical talk to the chiklren. On 
 Monday the little party returns to the city and the house is locked 
 until the following Saturday. Such a visit to the country will be 
 indelibly impressed upon these children. You cannot do people 
 very much good at long range. Hand-picked fruit is the best. 
 
 In the summer of 1891 I took my first party of boys from my 
 mission church to Northfield, Mass., and attended Mr. Moody's stu- 
 dents' conference. We pitched our tents in the forest, cooked our 
 own food, and sang college songs around our camp-fire at night. 
 In ten days I became thoroughly acquainted with the boys, and 
 Avas able to help them in many ways. I believe if every minister, 
 priest, rabbi, and Sunday-school superintendent would select eight 
 or ten young men and spend two weeks with them under canvas by 
 the side of a mountain-lake or trout-stream, more good might be 
 done in iDermanently influencing their lives than by many weeks of 
 eloquent preaching. 
 
 To keep the boys off the streets, and to train them to habits of 
 cleanliness, obedience, and manliness, military companies have been 
 formed in several of our down-town Sunday-schools. It is astonish- 
 ing how well a number of wild boys will go through military tactics 
 after a few months' drilling. The hope of our great cities lies in 
 the children of the poor. If we can influence them to become up- 
 right, honorable men and women, we shall not only save them, but 
 produce the most powerful lever for lifting up those of the same 
 class who are sinking. I know scores of children and young people 
 who are far better than their parents. Some of the noblest young 
 men I have ever known have worthless, drunken parents. Some of 
 the most beautiful flowers grow in mud-ponds, and some of the 
 truest and best young women in our city come from homes devoid 
 of good influences ; but in all such cases uplifting outside help has 
 moulded their characters.
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 
 
 61 
 
 While the people in tenement-houses are compelled to sleep in 
 rooms where the sunlig-ht never enters, and suffer many discomforts 
 from overcrowding-, especially in summer, there are certain compen- 
 
 H* 
 
 i^- 
 
 A Hovel in the Italian Quarter. 
 
 sations which must not be overlooked. The poor in large cities 
 who have steady work are, as a rule, better fed and clothed than the 
 same class in rural districts. Fresh vegetables, raised in hot-houses, 
 or sent from Southern markets, are sold throughout the winter at 
 reasonable prices, and in the early spring- strawberries and various
 
 62 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 other fruits are for sale on tlie streets in the tenement district k)ng- 
 before they reach the country towns and villages. In the poorest 
 quarter of the city you tind the so-called "delicatessen" shops, 
 where the choicest groceries, preserves, and canned meats are sold. 
 The clothing, too, worn by the young people is stylish and some- 
 times expensive ; anyone who walks through these districts will be 
 astonished at the number of well-dressed young i3eople. A young 
 woman who earns from $G to $8 a week will often be dressed in 
 silk or satin, made according to the fashion. The teeth, finger- 
 nails, and shoes are often the only signs of her poverty. When 
 visiting a stylish young woman's plain mother, I have sometimes 
 seen all the finery in which the daughter appeared at church on 
 Sunday hanging on the wall of a bare, comfortless bedroom not 
 much larger than a good -sized closet. 
 
 The tenement-house people are not all thriftless, as the records 
 of the down-town savings-banks clearly prove. Seven hundred out 
 of every thousand depositors in one of the banks on the Bowery live 
 in tenement-houses, and if it were not for tenement-house deposi- 
 tors several of our down -town savings-banks would be compelled to 
 give up business. An abundance of cruel and bitter poverty, how- 
 ever, can alwaA'^s be found. The " submerged tenth " is ever present. 
 
 A widow, for instance, with three or four young children who is 
 obliged to earn her bread by sewing, is in a most pitiable and ter- 
 rible position. Hundreds of such weary mothers continue their 
 work far into the night, with smarting eyes, aching backs, and break- 
 ing hearts. There is nothing which makes a man who has any feel- 
 ing for the suffering of his fellows so dissatisfied with our present 
 social system as the sight of such a poor woman sewing shirts and 
 overalls for twenty -nine cents a dozen. There are good people in 
 all our large cities who live just above the starving'-point. The 
 average earnings of the unskilled laborers with whom I am ac- 
 quainted is not over $10 per week. When a man is obliged to 
 spend one-fourth of this for rent, and feed and clothe his famil}" on
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 65 
 
 the remainder, it is impossible to lay by anything- for a rainy day. 
 When the father is out of work for a considerable time, or when 
 sickness or death enter the home, distress, hunger, and an urg-ent 
 landlord stare him in the face. 
 
 It is easy for those who have never felt it to overlook the con- 
 stant strain of poverty and the irritation which it causes in families 
 which in circumstances of ordinary comfort would be contented. 
 In such cases particularly can great g-ood be accomplished by a 
 visit from some clear-siglited and sympathetic person. 
 
 Not very long- ag-o I was invited to act as referee between a 
 husband and wife. There were three little children and a g-rand- 
 mother in the family. The man worked in a cigar-box factory ; 
 business Avas slack and he was employed only half time. His 
 averag-e weekly earning-s were $5. They had a debt of $11 at a 
 grocery-store and another of $35 at an undertaker's shop. I knew 
 the family ; both husband and wife were honest, sober, and indus- 
 trious people. The wife wanted to break up housekeeping- ; the 
 husband was opposed to this plan, and they had agreed to abide 
 by my decision. I examined each one separately. I began Avitli 
 the husliand and said : 
 
 " When a physician prescribes a remedy he must first know the 
 disease. I want }■ ou, therefore, to tell me plainly why yoiir wife 
 wants to break up the home. There may be good reasons why her 
 plan should be adopted. If you two cannot possibly agree, and are 
 fighting like cats and dogs, then I may be in favor of breaking up. 
 Tell nie just how the matter stands." 
 
 He informed me that he and his wife had always lived in perfect 
 peace. They never had any trouble except poverty. The wife Ijad 
 become completely discouraged, and the only way she saw out of 
 the difficulty was to jDut the children into an orphan asylum and go 
 out as a house-servant until she could earn enough to clear off the 
 debt, after which she hoped to get her home together again. The 
 wife and grandmother gave me the same account. The perpetual 
 strain of poverty was the only reason for breaking up the home.
 
 66 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 For the sake of the three little children I decided that the home 
 must not be broken up and promised to see that the debt at the 
 <?rocery-store was wiped out and the family clothing was taken out 
 of the pawn-shop. The grandmother was so pleased with the de- 
 cision that she determined to become a servant and begged me to 
 find a place for her. 
 
 In our large cities there is too much isolation between the rich 
 and the poor. The charitable societies are often the only link 
 between them. If the mother of every well-to-do home in our 
 large cities would regularly visit, once a month, a needy family, a 
 vast amount of good would be accomplished among the worthy 
 poor, and distress would be unknown. Human nature is too selfish 
 for such a happy state of things ever to be realized, but it is pos- 
 sible to bring the givers and receivers of charity closer together 
 than they are. If some of the wealthier ladies who now give a few- 
 dollars each year to the charitable societies would seek through 
 these societies to come into direct personal contact with the recipi- 
 ents of their charity, they would experience a deeper happiness 
 and fully realize the blessedness of giving. Business men are too 
 much occupied to make a monthly visit to the tenement-houses, 
 but if their wives and daughters would undertake this work a new 
 day would dawn for many a poor, heartbroken mother who is now 
 hopeless and longing for death to end her misery. We are fre- 
 quently asked, " Is it safe for a lady to visit these great tenement- 
 houses ? " We answer unhesitatingly, perfectly safe. The young 
 ladies connected with the City Mission go unmolested into the 
 darkest portions of New York. The first visit to a tenement-house 
 might be made in the company of a city missionary, after which 
 the most timid could go alone. 
 
 Nothing is easier than to make paupers out of the poor. Great 
 discretion must be exercised, but the Charity Organization So- 
 ciety, the Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor, the 
 City Mission, the Children's Aid Society, and other equally worthy 
 institutions are ever ready to give direction to individuals who
 
 LIFE IJV yEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 
 
 07 
 
 
 The Monroe Model Tenement. 
 
 desire to do personal work. A few ijersons have through the City 
 Mission come into personal contact with the poor, and the results 
 are most g-ratifying-. 
 
 While in a small town the distress of the poor is easil}^ made
 
 68 THE POOR IN GEE AT CITIES 
 
 known tlirouo'li friends and neighbors or the clerg-yman, in our 
 large cities the most deserving are often overlooked and suffer most 
 intenseh^ ; and it is these cases which are reached by personal 
 visitation. The w^orthy poor are generally the silent poor. Their 
 sufferings must be extreme before they make their wants known. 
 There are many poor, upright, God-fearing old people who strug- 
 gle against fearful odds to keep body and soul together, and yet 
 they drift daily toward the almshouse on Blackwell's Island, the 
 last and most dreaded halting-place on the way to Potter's Field. 
 I have nothing to say against the administration of the almshouse 
 or the treatment of its inmates, but I do not wonder that old men 
 and women who have led a good moral life, would rather die than 
 be stranded on the island and take up their abode among the 
 broken wrecks of humanitj^ which fill that institution. 
 
 It is very unwise to give aid without a thorough investigation. 
 Some time since a Polish Jew asked me the way to a certain street. 
 I directed him, and he said : " Dear sir, I am in great distress ; my 
 furniture is standing on the sidewalk in Essex Street, and my chil- 
 dren are watching the stuff, while I am trying to collect a little 
 money to get another place." He drew from his pocket a few 
 coppers, and asked me to add my gift. I said : " I do not know 
 you, and I am acquainted with a great many poor people whom I 
 would like to help, but I have not the means ; how, then, can you 
 expect any help from me ? " Two streams burst from his eyes. 
 The big tears rained down his beard and coat. " It is hard," he 
 said, and bowed his head, buried his face in a red handkerchief, 
 wdped off the tears, and passed on. I crossed the street. The tears 
 of that sad man touched me. I turned, ran after him, and said : 
 " Where is the stuff? " " In Essex Street." " What have you ? " 
 " A table, bureau, bed, and looking-glass," he replied. " Have you 
 nothing small that I can take with me and loan you money on ? "' 
 He pointed to his well-worn greasy coat, and said : " I have this." 
 " Show me the stuff," I said. We walked together, and I endeavored 
 to carry on a conversation w'ith the stranger in German, for he was
 
 LIFE m NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 69 
 
 igrnorant of Eng-lish, but suddenly lie seemed to have lost all kiiowl- 
 edge of the German tongue in which he had before addressed me, 
 and was perfectly dumb. When we reached Eidsre Street he fiuallv 
 spoke, and asked me to wait for him a moment while he went to see 
 a friend. I said : " Look here, I want you to take me to the stuff 
 immediately." He looked amazed and said : " What have I to do 
 with you ? " "A good deal," I replied ; " you either take me to the 
 stuff or I take you to the police station." " Do you think I am a 
 liar ? " I said : " You must take me to the stuff or you are a liar." 
 "Come," he said, " I will take you to the stuff." It was wonderful to see 
 how that old man, who had moved so slowly before, walked through 
 the crowded streets. I had all I could do to keep up with him. We 
 soon reached Essex Street. It was Friday afternoon and Essex Street 
 was in all its g'lory— old clothes, decayed meat, pungent fish, and 
 stale fruit abounded. The Ghetto in Eome and the Jewish quarters 
 in London and Amsterdam are nothing- compared with Essex Street. 
 At one place it was almost impossible to get through the crowd, 
 and I left the sidewalk and took the street. In a moment my new 
 acquaintance disappeared, and I have not seen him since. I liave 
 no doubt this man and many others like him are making a good 
 deal of money by playing on the sympathies of poor people. 
 
 I have made it a rule never to give a homeless man money, but 
 when his breath does not smell of whiskey I give him my card 
 containing the name and address of a lodging-house. The card 
 must be used the same day it is given. As some of those who ask 
 for a lodging never use the cards, my bill is always less than the 
 number of cards given out. One night a man told me he was tired 
 of his bad life and he wanted to become a better man. I spoke a 
 few encouraging words to him and was about to dismiss him, when 
 he told me he Avas sick and needed just five cents to get a dose of 
 salts. I took him at his word and immediately sent for the drug 
 and made him take it on the spot. It is needless to say that he 
 never troubled me again. 
 
 There remain many cases where charity is of no avail. Where
 
 (0 
 
 THE POOR IX GREAT CITIES 
 
 poverty is caused by crime, no relief can come except by breaking- 
 lip the home. Not loni;- since I was called to take charg-e of the 
 funeral of a little child. I g-roped my Avay up the creaking-, filthy 
 
 /. 
 
 •^ 
 
 i 
 
 «L„ 
 
 
 
 d^KoOiHTprJ 
 
 An Invalid Supporting His Family by Making Lace 
 
 stairs of a small, old-fashioned rear tenement. I knocked, but heard 
 no response ; I pushed the door open, but found no one in the room, 
 yet this was the place — " Kear, top lioor, left door." I made no
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 71 
 
 mistake. I entered the room and found a dead baby wrapped in an 
 old towel lying- on a table, I learned from the neig-hbory that the 
 father and mother had been out collecting- money to bury the child 
 and both had become beastly drunk. I returned to the dead child, 
 read the burial service, and thanked God that the little one was out 
 of its misery. A little later a man came and took the body to Pot- 
 ter's Field. The parents had buried (it would bo more accurate to 
 say starved to death) six children before they were two years old. 
 Yery little can be done for such people. Cumulative sentences 
 ought to be imposed upon them each time they are arrested for 
 drunkenness, so that prison-bars may prevent them from bring-iug- 
 the little sufferers into the world. 
 
 A great deal is done by the various charitable societies for the 
 relief of distress, but as far as my observation g-oes the most effec- 
 tive charitable work is done by the poor themselves. Thousands of 
 dollars are given away in the tenement districts every year by the in- 
 habitants of the tenements, of which no charitable society makes a 
 record. I have never related a peculiarly distressing case of poverty 
 to. a poor iDerson but there was a ready response, and out of their 
 own poverty the poor have ministered to those who were in need of 
 relief. The children of our City Mission school, who come from the 
 tenement-houses, contribute every Thanksgiving-Day from $80 to 
 $100 for the poor in our immediate neighborhood. A club of fifty 
 small boys and girls saved their pennies one year and bought thirty- 
 five Thanksgiving dinners for the poor, consisting of chickens, pota- 
 toes, beans, turnips, and cabbages. The original plan was to have 
 a head of cabbage go with each chicken, but the money gave out ; 
 this did not in any way disconcert the children, for they quickly 
 solved the difficulty by cutting a cabbage into four parts, and put- 
 ting a quarter into each bag. The children worked from 7.30 to 
 11 P.M. distributing the provisions. The members of this club visit 
 the hospitals, sing to the patients, and furnish them with reading 
 matter. In ten months they distributed as many as 27,901 booklets
 
 yo THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 aii.l illustrated papers. One summer the cliildren noticed that the 
 Hies troubled the sick people and there were no fans in some of the 
 hospitals. They saved their pennies, which in most cases would 
 have ^one to the candy-store, and bought a lot of palm-leaf fans at 
 a whcLsale house. They bound the fans with variously colored 
 ribbons and decorated them with scripture texts appropriate to the 
 sick, and on Sunday afternoon presented them to the delighted 
 patients. Tlic poor give that which costs them something, and 
 their joy is correspondingly greater. That the most spontaneous 
 and beautiful charity flourishes in the tenement-houses will un- 
 doubtedly be a surprise to many, but it is a fact well known to all 
 who have any large acquaintance with the poor in our great cities. 
 
 It is equally true that there is more virtue in tenement localities 
 than is commonly supposed. Darkness and sin have much in com- 
 mon. The dark halls and crowded homes are not favorable to 
 virtue, but nevertheless virtue is the rule and vice the exception. 
 The people who live in tenement-houses are not fastidious about 
 rules of etiquette and propriety. Young women sometimes allow 
 young men to address them and caress them in a manner which 
 would oifend well-bred people, and yet these girls would indig- 
 nantly resent any liberties which they consider dishonoring. Young 
 people occasionally desire to be married secretly, and timidly ask 
 if it is not possible for me to date back the wedding certificate 
 three or four months ; such cases, however, are not common. There 
 are many hasty marriages Avhere the consent of the parents has 
 not been obtained ; these sometimes end in a speedy sej^aration. 
 Yoiing girls occasionally come to me accompanied by young men 
 half drunk and ask me to perform the marriage ceremony. There 
 are self-styled clergymen who put up conspicuous signs advertising- 
 the fact that they make a business of uniting young people in mar- 
 riage. These hungry sharks are ever ready to give their services 
 for one or two dollars, thus phuiging thoughtless j^oung people 
 into misery. I have succeeded in breaking up matches which I 
 knew Avould have brought certain ruin to the parties concerned. I
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 
 
 73 
 
 always refuse to marry a young- couple when I am not permitted 
 to consult the parents before performing- the ceremony. If a law 
 were passed making- it oliligatory on young people to get a license 
 
 The Poor Helping the Poor — Distributing Thanksgiving Dinners. 
 
 from the civil courts before a clergyman could perform the mar- 
 riage, some unfortunate marriages would be prevented. A few- 
 hours of sober reflection would bring both parties to their senses. 
 
 The young people in our cities are extravagant. Very few of 
 them save anything. Many of them put all they earn on their
 
 74 TIII'J POOR IX GREAT CITIES 
 
 backs, and sometinies have not enough to pay the weddmg- fee, and 
 all the furniture for the new home has been bought on the instal- 
 ment plan. AVhen the young husband is sober and industrious the 
 married life generally moves on smoothly. It frequently happens, 
 however, that from the day of her marriage a girl begins to fade 
 like a flower. In three or four years a bright young girl will degen- 
 erate into a careworn, ill-tempered, slovenly middle-aged woman, 
 surrounded hy two ox three pale, ragged, ungoverned children. 
 She spent her girlhood in a store or sIioid, and was never initiated 
 into the art of housekeei^ing. Her husband finds the saloon a far 
 more comfortable place than his home. When industrial training- 
 shall have been introduced into every public school and the girls 
 get a thorough training in housekeei3ing we may look for improve- 
 ment in the home life of the poor in our cities. The cooking classes 
 in connection with the girls' clubs, the Young Women's Christian 
 Association, and those opened in some of the City Mission churches 
 are doing excellent service in training young women to assume the 
 responsibilities of home-makers. 
 
 The influence of the church on the tenement population is not 
 as great as it probably will be in the near future. The strongest 
 churches have followed their constituents and moved up-town ; 
 those which remained have languished, and in some cases have 
 been compelled to close for want of active support. A new era 
 has dawned. All religious denominations are interested in the 
 churehless masses, Ncav churches and chapels are being erected 
 down-town, and there is a strong feeling in every quarter that the 
 old stations must be maintained. The wisest men fully recognize 
 the fact that if the churches- among the tenement population are to 
 do efficient work they must be well manned, richly endowed, and 
 run at high pressure all through the year. AVherever church work 
 has been pursued on these lines the results have been most gratify- 
 ing. The workingmen, although not hostile, are generally extremely 
 indifferent to religion. They are concerned about food, clothing,
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 
 
 75 
 
 and a place of shelter for the present, and trouble themselves but 
 little al)out the future. The fact that the church is beginning- to 
 take an active interest in 
 the temporal welfare of the 
 working people is already- 
 producing beneficial results. 
 The daily press exerts as 
 great an influence over the 
 j)arents as the public school 
 does over the children. The 
 workingnien in the tenement- 
 houses constantly read the 
 newspapers, and they 
 read almost nothing- 
 else. What we need 
 is not more learned 
 lectureship founda- 
 tions on the evi- 
 dences of Christian- 
 ity, but endowments 
 to secure a large 
 number of short, con- 
 cise, popular prize 
 essays on moral and 
 religious s u b - 
 jects, especially 
 adapted in lan- 
 guage and style 
 to the working 
 people. If these 
 prize essays 
 were published 
 
 in the Sunday pa^jers they Avould be read by tens of thousands 
 of workingmen, and be a most powerful means of doing good. 
 
 A Missionary Workshop — De Witt Memorial Church (non-sectariarn)
 
 76 THK POOR IX GREAT CITIES 
 
 There are a g-reat many things which might be done to improve 
 the conditions of the poor, but most of the schemes proposed are 
 altogether impracticable. If we could make the poor sober and 
 industrious, and the rich unselfish and generous, poverty would soon 
 disappear; unfortunately we can do neither. We must take the 
 world as we find it, and employ the best means to reach the desired 
 end. I have seen a great deal of w^retchedness and poverty in lower 
 New York, and for some of these evils I can ofler no remedy ; but 
 if the following suggestions could be carried out I believe some- 
 thing would be done toward improving- " darkest New York : " 
 
 First. — There is nothing the inhabitants of the tenement-houses 
 need so much as more room, sunshine, and fresh air. At present 
 the sun never shines in the bedrooms of three-quarters of the 
 people of New York City. In some parts of our city the population 
 is nearly twice as dense as in the most crowded part of London. 
 Nowhere on the wide earth are human beings so crowded as in the 
 tenement districts. The sufiering in July and August is often in- 
 tense. The bedrooms become unbearable, and the roofs, fire-escapes, 
 and empty wagons are used as sleeping-places. Thousands of little 
 children do not see green grass during* the entire summer ; they are 
 virtually prisoners in their own homes. The only true remedy can 
 come in a complete system of cheap rapid transit. If the happy 
 day ever comes when a poor man can be carried to the green fields 
 of Long Island, New Jersey, or Westchester County for five cents, 
 then a wonderful change will take place. It is commonly supposed 
 that the poor enjoy herding together like dumb brutes on a cattle 
 train, but nothing is further from the truth. The only reason why 
 so many jieople put up with the numerous inconveniences of a ten- 
 ement-house is simply that stern necessity compels them to live 
 in this way. At the present time, with all the inconveniences of 
 travel, many persons are leaving- tenement-houses and seeking bet- 
 ter homes in Brooklyn, Jersey City, and upper New Y^ork. If the 
 North and East Rivers were spanned with railroad bridges, so 
 that in twenty minutes a workingman might be ten miles distant
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 77 
 
 from the factory or store, there would be a great exodus from the 
 tenement-houses, and many places now used as homes would be 
 turned into shops and warehouses. 
 
 Second. — A great blessing will be conferred on the crowded mul- 
 titudes of the East Side when the long-promised and eagerly-de- 
 sired small jDarks are opened. There are stone, coal, and lumber 
 yards on the river-front on the East Side which would make attrac- 
 tive breathing sjjots for the children of the poor. If the Park Com- 
 missioners would bestir themselves, and with all possible haste pro- 
 vide the children of the poor with small jsarks and play-grounds 
 they would confer an inestimable blessing upon the city. 
 
 Thirxl. — Great improvements have been made in the construc- 
 tion and sanitary arrangements of tenement-houses, but still more 
 must be done in the same direction. There are scores of horrible, 
 pestilential rat-holes which are utterly unfit for human habitation. 
 All such places ought to be condemned, and the Board of Health 
 must be backed up by public sentiment in its endeavor to root out 
 these plague-spots. Our city lots are not of the proper size to erect 
 the large rectangular European tenements with a court in the centre, 
 from which light and air can be conveyed into every room. A few 
 such model tenements, however, have been built by associations of 
 philanthropists and private individuals. More of these model ten- 
 ements are needed. They will bring down the exorbitantly high 
 rents which are now exacted from the poorest people. The model 
 tenement will confer a great boon upon large families. It is often 
 exceedingly difficult for a man who has seven or eight children to 
 get rooms in the better class houses. The first question asked is, 
 " How many children have you? " I know families who have been 
 compelled to pay a high rent for poor accommodations on account 
 of the large number of children. A poor woman searched all day 
 for rooms ; wherever she saw a place that suited her the old question, 
 "How many children have you?" was asked, and she was obliged 
 to look elsewhere. One morning she sent all her children to Green- 
 wood Cemetery, XDut on a black dress, and began the search of
 
 (S 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 rcjoms. \\'lien she had fouud a suitable phice the landloi-a asked, 
 •'How many chiWreii have you?" "Six," answered the woman, 
 sadly ; " but they are all in Greenwood." The landlord was satis- 
 tied that the children would do his place no harm. The woman 
 paid a month's rent and took possession. There was a scene at 
 iiio-ht, but during- the month the woman proved to be such a good 
 tenant that she was allowed to remain permanently. 
 
 Foiirth.—T\\e saloon is the poor man's club, and flourishes most 
 vigorously in the poorest sections of the city. Instead of denounc- 
 ing the saloon on account of the numerous evils it afflicts on the 
 poor, something better must be supplied to take its place. " Home 
 is the sacred refuge of our life," but notwithstanding all that poets 
 have sung and moralists have spoken, many workingmen are per- 
 fectly convinced that two dark bedrooms and a kitchen is not an 
 attractive place in which to spend a pleasant evening with a friend. 
 The saloon is the only substitute. When Orpheus passed by the 
 cave of the siren he took his lyre and made such wondrous melody 
 that sailors, enraptured by the music, spurned the seductive strains 
 that Avere wafted from the dangerous cave. The fal>le has its 
 application— give the workingmen something they will like as well 
 as the saloon and you will strike at the root of the evil. There are 
 excellent places, like Cooper Union and the Young Men's Institute ; 
 but these institutions cannot expect to draw those who live one or 
 two miles away in another part of the city. If the workingmen 
 were fully alive to the advantages aftbrded them they would un- 
 doubtedly be willing to walk a long distance, but the majority of 
 them have no ambition to improve themselves. Uliey spend their 
 evenings in the saloons because they are always within easy 
 reach and form agreeable meeting-places. It is absurd to denounce 
 the saloon in imqualified terms. The multitudes who patronize 
 them are not all absolute fools. Many simply seek to satisfy the 
 craving after fellowship which the Creator has implanted in their 
 natures. The saloons are well-lighted, conveniently located social 
 clubs, provided in some cases with a pleasant reading-room, and
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 81 
 
 always Avith obliging- proprietors. Wise men are beginning to see 
 tliat a substitute must be supplied to take the place of the saloon 
 which shall retain all its good features and simx3ly discard its evil 
 elements. The churches of various denominations are taking a 
 deep interest in providing attractive, well -lighted reading and club- 
 rooms for the workingmen in our large cities. A great and bene- 
 ficent Avork might be done by the Board of Education if free read- 
 ing rooms and libraries were opened in connection with every 
 public school in the crowded portions of the city. 
 
 Fifth. — Good old John Wesley said, " Cleanliness is next to god- 
 liness ; " but bathing in tenement-houses is exceedingly difficult and 
 sometimes impossible. On pleasant days, when vast numbers of 
 young men prefer the street-corner to the saloon, I have often stopped 
 among a group of young fellows and said : " Boys, suppose a first- 
 class swimming-bath were opened somewhere in this neighborhood, 
 where you could for five or ten cents dive from a spring-board and 
 plunge into a tank 50 feet wide and 100 feet long, full of warm, clean 
 water, would you patronize such a place ? " and the spontaneous 
 and united answer ahvays is : " You bet your life we would." I am 
 fully convinced that if a first-class natatorium, with reading-rooms, 
 library, and restaurant attached, was opened in some crowded 
 district, the result would surpass all exf)ectation. The baths have 
 been remarkably successful in London. In one of these institutions 
 over two hundred thousand baths were taken in a single year, and 
 the receijjts were more than $3,000 over the expenditures. Every 
 humanitarian effort which is successful across the ocean does not 
 succeed here, but from the sights which I witness every summer, 
 when hundreds of young men plunge from the docks, lumber-yards, 
 and shipping, at the risk of being arrested and having their clothes 
 stolen, I am convinced that a swimming-bath would at once become 
 Immensely pojjular. The old Romans were wise in this respect. 
 One of their great baths in our modern cities would be an efiective 
 means of aiding all forms of good work. 
 
 At the Christian conference held in Chickering Hall, in 1888, I 
 6
 
 82 THE POOR IN ORE AT CITIES 
 
 endeavored to impress upon the audience tlie need of public baths. 
 The <rood work begun at that time by the City Mission has been 
 completed by the Society for Improving- the Condition of the Poor. 
 The first bath was opened in August, 1891, and the results dxe most 
 satisfactory. Sixteen thousand baths were taken during the first 
 one hundred and fifteen days. One day in the latter part of Au- 
 gust, 1891, there were six hundred and sixty-nine bathers.* 
 
 Sixth. — There has been great need of a universal loan associa- 
 tion. The poor, as well as the rich, are frequently compelled to 
 borrow money. Unfortunately the poor, until lately, have not 
 been able to get it at a reasonable interest. There is no bank in 
 the city that Avill loan a poor man money and take his old 
 clothes, his wife's wedding-ring, or some little household treas- 
 ure as security. Yet the poor man is forced to borrow. He has 
 been out of work a few weeks. The landlord will come to-mor- 
 row. The children are hungry and call loudly for bread. In the 
 dark bedroom lies a child Avitli a burning fever. A physician 
 has been to see the child. He is a kind-hearted man, he knows 
 the hardships of the poor and does not expect his fee to-day ; but 
 of course the father cannot be expected to pay for the prescrip- 
 tion he has just written. How shall the man get bread for those 
 hungry children and medicine for this one who is sick ? They have 
 one last resort left — the household idols must be sacrificed. All 
 the valuables are brought together. These little rings and lockets, 
 and the silver cup which a proud uncle presented to the first baby 
 boy ; the father's overcoat and Sunday suit, with the mother's best 
 dress, are all needed to make up the $10 for the landlord, and to get 
 food and medicine for the children. The pawnbroker is ready to 
 devour everything which has any value. The pawn-tickets are 
 carefully put away, and the parents confidently hope that they Avill 
 soon be able to redeem the things they have " put away." They 
 redeem them at three per cent, a month, or else they finally lose 
 them, not having received more than one-fifth of the actual value 
 * Nearly one Imndred thousand baths are now taken every year.
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 83 
 
 of the articles. I sent a boy to an East Side pawn-shop with a 
 g-okl watch, the original cost of which was $150 ; its actual present 
 value was certainly not less than 1^40. The boy received $5, and 
 this was as much as he could get. I redeemed the watch the next 
 day, much to the disgust of the pawnbroker. What has proved a 
 great blessing to many people in distress, was the opening of the 
 offices of the Provident Loan Society, in the United Charities 
 Building on Fourth Avenue and Twenty-second Street.* I fear 
 that heretofore, no charitable society has undertaken this work, 
 from the mistaken idea many people have that su-ch an institution 
 would foster thriftless habits among the poor. Such persons for- 
 get that it is not a question of pawn-shops or no pawn-shops, 
 but whether Ave shall have one large, reputable loan association, 
 where the poor man's clothing and jewelry shall be as good as 
 the rich man's real estate at a banking-house, or a vast number 
 of little pawn-shops — those whirlpools in which the valuables of 
 many poor families are swallowed. Thieves who want to get rid 
 of stolen property, and thriftless drunkards who go to the pawn- 
 broker to disi^ose permanently of their property at the highest 
 prices, will continue to visit the pawn-shop ; but persons who need 
 a temporary loan to help them through a period of enforced idle- 
 ness or sickness will be greatly benefited by a wisely managed loan 
 association. 
 
 Seventli. — There is great need of trained nurses for the sick. 
 Hundreds of mothers who are obliged to care for their homes 
 during the day, are sitting at night by the bedside of sick children. 
 If the sickness is of a temporary nature these periods of broken rest 
 and double duty are passed without disaster. It frequently hap- 
 pens, however, that two or three childreii are sick at the same time. 
 The mother is compelled to work night and daj'- until nature gives 
 Avay and she breaks down under the strain. Sickness brings in- 
 creased expenses, therefore it is impossible for the husband to stay 
 at home to take care of his family. If he does not work there will 
 * Other loan associations have been opened since this paper was written.
 
 84 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 be no money next week for food, rent, and medicine. When the 
 physician tells him that the end is near for wife or child, then he 
 o-ives up his work. I have visited homes where I fonnd the 
 mother and all the children sick, and if it had not been for the 
 occasional visit of a neighbor there would have been no one to give 
 a cup of water to the sick or dying. Into such homes the trained 
 nurse comes like a ministering angel. She lights a fire in the cold 
 stove, bathes the sick, provides clean bedding, dresses the little 
 children, puts in order the rooms, and when the place looks like 
 home again, she takes from her basket some beef-tea, a little jelly, 
 or some other tempting morsel for the sick. The mother, who has 
 been lying hopeless in the dark bedroom, begins to revive, and 
 watches with deep interest the ministering stranger, and with wet 
 eyes says: "God bless you and reward you for what you have done 
 this day." The nurse not only aids the sick, but is able by her 
 counsel to help the mother when she has recovered. The friendly 
 talks on housekeeping and the care of the children are often of the 
 greatest value. The nurse also forms the connecting link between 
 the hospitals and the invalids hidden away in the tenement-houses, 
 many of whom would have been left to rot and finally to die on 
 their filthy beds if the nurses had not found them and sent them to 
 the hospital. The nurse does not stop to ask what the nationality 
 or creed of the sufferers is. The only recommendation required to 
 receive her services is sickness and distress. The nurses of the 
 Citv Mission are doing a noble work, but their number is too small 
 and they must be constantly restrained lest they break down from 
 overwork. Here is a work which can be done at once. Anyone 
 who desires to relieve the suffering poor in the most direct and 
 effective way can do it through a trained nurse. It would be a 
 source of the jiurest happiness to many a man and woman, when 
 they go to rest in their beautiful and luxurious homes, to know that 
 $600, the saving, perhaps, of some needless luxury, is keex)ing- a 
 faithful nurse at work the entire year, moistening the fevered lips 
 of the sick, or soothing the last hours of the dying-. The Great
 
 LIFE IN NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSES 85 
 
 Teacher of men consig-ned Dives to hell, not because of erroneous 
 theological opinions, but because he neglected the beg-g-ar, who lay 
 at his gate full of sores. Dives is among us to-day. He is clothed 
 in the finest robes and fares sumptuously every day. Lazarus is 
 also here. He lies in the cheerless bedroom of a tenement-house, 
 hungry, sick, and full of sores. The two have been brought to- 
 gether for a purpose. The onlj^ salvation for our modern Dives 
 lies in Lazarus. 
 
 Eighth. — There is need of greater co-operation among all good 
 men. When we see anyone endeavoring to cast out social demons 
 among us, let us not forbid him because he does not accept our 
 creed or follow our party. Prejudice, narrow-mindedness, and 
 bigotry have too long stood in the way of social reform. Wise 
 men must recognize that whatever is good is of God. It makes no 
 difference from what source it comes. When all good men shall 
 work together on the broadest lines of social reform, great and 
 beneficent changes will be brought about, and New York will con- 
 tinue to be a great, happy, and prosperous city.
 
 THE CHILDKEN OF THE POOR 
 By JACOB A. KIIS, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES," ETC. 
 
 "One of God's Children" — Progress in the Caue of Poor Children in 
 New York-The Children's Aid Society— Italians in Mulberry Bend— 
 The Schools— Some Typical Children of the East Side— Child Popula- 
 tion OF the Jewish Tenements— Child Labor in the Tenements— Some 
 Solutions op the Problem— Ambition among the School Children— The 
 Flag in the Schools— Street Gamins and their Future— Boys' Clubs 
 —Little Housekeepers— The Story of "Buffalo." 
 
 UNDER the lieacling " Just Oue of God's Children," one of the 
 morning- newspapers tokl the story not long ag-o of a news- 
 boy at the Brooklyn Bridg-e, who fell in a fit with his bundle 
 of papers under his arm, and was carried into the waiting--room by 
 the Bridge police. They sent for an ambulance, but before it came 
 the boy was out selling- papers again. The reporters asked the little 
 dark-eyed newswoman at the bridge entrance which boy it was. 
 
 " Little Maher it was," she answered. 
 
 " Who takes care of him ? " 
 
 " Oh ! no one but God," said she, " and he is too busy with 
 other folks to give him much attention." 
 
 Little Maher was the representative of a class that is happily 
 growing smaller year by year in our city. It is altogether likely 
 that a little inquiry into his case could have placed the responsi- 
 bility for his forlorn condition considerably nearer home, upon 
 someone who preferred giving Providence the job to taking the 
 trouble himself. There are homeless children in New York. It is
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 
 
 87 
 
 certain tliat we shall always have our full share. Yet it is equally 
 certain that society is coming- out ahead in its strug-g-le with this 
 problem. In ten years, during which New York added to her popu- 
 lation one-fourth, the homelessness of our streets, taking the returns 
 of the Children's Aid Society's lodg- 
 ingdiouses as the gauge, instead of 
 increasing proportionally has de- 
 creased nearly one-fifth ; and of the 
 Topsy element, it may be set down 
 as a fact, there is an end. 
 
 If we were able to argue from 
 this a corresponding improvement 
 in the general lot of the poor, we 
 should have good cause for con- 
 gratulation. But it is not so. The 
 showing is due mainly to the per- 
 fection of organized charitable ef- 
 fort, that proceeds nowadays upon 
 the sensible principle of putting out 
 a lire, viz., that it must be headed 
 off, not run down. It is possible 
 also that the Bowery lodging-houses 
 attract a larger share of the half- 
 grown lads with their promise of 
 greater freedom, which is not a 
 pleasant possibility. The general 
 situation is not perceptibly improved. The menace of the Sub- 
 merged Tenth has not been blotted from the register of the Pot- 
 ter's Field, and though the "twenty thousand poor children who 
 would not have known it was Christmas," but for public notice 
 to that effect, be a benevolent fiction, there are plenty whose brief 
 lives have had little enough of the embodiment of Christmas 
 cheer and good-will in them to make the name seem like a bitter 
 mockery.- If indeed. New York were not what she is ; if it were 
 
 sciubs " — Katie, who keeps house in West 
 Forty-ninth Street.
 
 SS THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 possible to-morrow to shut her door agrainst the immigration of 
 the workl and still maintain the conditions of to-day, I should 
 confidently predict a steady progress that would leave little of the 
 problem for the next generation to wrestle with. But that is only 
 another way of saying "if New York were not New York." It 
 is because she is New York that in reviewing our OAvn miseries we 
 have to take into account half the poverty, the ignorance, and the 
 helplessness of the cities of the Old World, that is dumped at our 
 door while the procession of the strong and of the able moves on. 
 And that is what makes our problem. 
 
 Heretofore the assimilation of these alien elements has been 
 sufficiently rapid. Will it continue so ? There has been evidence 
 lately that we are entering upon a new stage of metropolitan de- 
 velopment that might have fresh difficulties on this score. Anyone 
 who will sit an hour at a meeting of the Police Board, for instance, 
 when candidates for appointments are questioned as to their knowl- 
 edge of the city, will discover that a generation of young men has 
 grown up about us who claim, not New York as their birthplace, 
 but this or that section of it — the East Side, the Hook, Harlem, and 
 so on, and outside of that immediate neighborhood, unless their 
 emxDloyment has been of a character to take them much about, know 
 as little of the city of their birth as if the rest of it were in Timbuc- 
 too. These were the children of yesterday, when the population 
 was, so to speak, yet on the march. To-day we find it, though drift- 
 ing still, tarrying longer and crystallizing on race-lines in settle- 
 ments some of which have already as well-defined limits as if they 
 were walled in, to all intents and purposes separate towns. The 
 meaning of this is that our social fabric is stiffening into more per- 
 manent forms. Does it imply also that with its elasticity it is los- 
 ing its old power of assimilation, of digestion ? 
 
 I think not. The evidence is all to the contrary. Its vitality 
 seems to me not only unimpaired, but growing plainly stronger as 
 greater claims are made upon it by the influx of races foreign alike 
 of speech, of tradition, and of sentiment. Fresh problems are pre-
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 89 
 
 sented, fresh troubles foreshadowed, fresh prejudices aroused only 
 to receive iu their turn the same orderly, logical, and simple solu- 
 tion that discovers all alarm to have been groundless. Yesterday it 
 was the swarthy Italian, to-day the Russian Jew that excited our 
 distrust; to-morrow it may be the Arab or the Greek. All alike 
 they have taken, or are taking, their places in the ranks of our so- 
 cial phalanx, pushing upward from the bottom with steady effort, as 
 I believe they will continue to do, unless failure to provide them with 
 proper homes arrests the process. The slum tenement bears to it 
 the same relation as the effect the rags of an old tramp are said to 
 have upon the young idler in his company. He has only to wear 
 them to lose all ambition and become himself a tramp ; the stamp 
 is on him. But in the general advance the children are the moving- 
 force, the link between the past that had no future and the present 
 that accounts no task too great in the dawning consciousness of a 
 proud manhood. Their feeble hands roll away in play the stone 
 before which the statecraft of our wise day stood aghast. The one 
 immigrant who does not keep step, who, having fallen out of the 
 ranks, has been ordered to the rear, is the Chinaman, who brought 
 neither family nor children to push him ahead. He left them be- 
 hind that he might not become an American, and by the standard 
 he himself set up he has been judged. 
 
 I recall, not without amusement, one of the early experiences of 
 a committee with which I was trying to relieve some of the child 
 misery in the East Side tenements by providing an outing for the 
 very poorest of the little ones, who might otherwise have been over- 
 looked. In our anxiety to make our little charges as present- 
 able as possible, it seems we had succeeded so well as to arouse a 
 suspicion in our friends at the other end of the line that something- 
 was wrong, either with us or with the poor of which the patrician 
 youngsters in new frocks and with clean faces, that came to them, 
 were representatives. They wrote to us that they were in the field 
 for the " slum children," and slum children they wanted. It hap- 
 pened that their letter came just as we had before us two little
 
 90 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT PITIES 
 
 lads from the Mulberry Street Bend, ragged, dirty, imlcempt, and 
 altogether a sight to see. Our wardrobe was running low, and we 
 werrat our wits' end how to make these come up to our standard. 
 We sat looking at each other after we had heard the letter read, all 
 
 The Late Charles Loring Brace, Founder of the Children's Aid Society. 
 
 thinking the same thing, until the most courageoiTS said it : "Send 
 them as they are." Well, we did, and waited rather breathlessly 
 for the verdict. It came, with the children, in a note by return 
 train, that said : " Not that kind, please ! " And after that we were 
 allowed to have things our own Avay. 
 
 The two little fellows were Italians. In justice to our fright-
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 91 
 
 ened friends, it should be said that it was uot their nationality, but 
 their rags, to which they objected ; but not very many seasons have 
 passed since the crowding- of the black-eyed brigade of " guinnies " 
 as they were contemptuously dubbed, in ever-increasing numbers 
 into the ragged schools and the kindergartens, was watched with 
 regret and alarm by the teachers, as by many others who had no 
 better cause. The event proved that the children were the real 
 teachers. They had a more valuable lesson to impart than they 
 came to learn, and it has been a salutary one. To-day they are 
 gladly welcomed. Their sunny temper, which no hovel is dreary 
 enough, no hardship has power to cloud, has made them universal 
 favorites, and the discovery has been made by their teachers that 
 as the crowds pressed harder their school-rooms have marvellously 
 expanded, until they embrace within their walls an unsuspected 
 multitude, even many a slum tenement itself, cellar, " stoop," attic, 
 and all. Every lesson of cleanliness, of order, and of English 
 taught at the school is reflected into some wretched home, and re- 
 hearsed there as far as the limited opportunities will allow. No dem- 
 onstration with soap and Avater upon a dirty little face but widens 
 the sphere of these chief promoters of education in the slums. 
 " By'm by," said jDoor crippled Pietro to me, with a sober look, as 
 he labored away on his writing lesson, holding down the paper 
 with his maimed hand, " I learn t' make an Englis' letter ; maybe 
 my fader he learn too." I had my doubts of the father. He sat 
 watching Pietro with a pride in the achievement that was clearly 
 proportionate to the struggle it cost, and mirrored in his own face 
 every grimace and contortion the progress of education caused the 
 boy. " Si ! si! " he nodded eagerly ; " Pietro he good-a boy ; make 
 Englis', Englis' ! " and he made a flourish with his clay-pipe, as if 
 he too were making the English letter that was the object of their 
 common veneration. 
 
 Perhaps it is as much his growing and well-founded distrust of 
 the middle-man, whose unresisting victim he has heretofore been, 
 and his need of some other link to connect him with the English-
 
 92 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 speaking- world that surronuds him, as any i^ersonal interest in 
 book-learning-, that impels the illiterate Italian to bring- his boy to 
 school early and see that he attends it. Whatever his motive, the 
 effect is to demonstrate in a striking- way the truth of the observa- 
 tion that real reform of poverty and ig-norance must beg-in with the 
 children. In his case, at all events, the seed thus sown bears some 
 fruit in the present as well as in the coming- g-eneration of toilers. 
 The little ones, with their new standards and new ambitions, become 
 in a very real sense missionaries of the slums, whose work of regen- 
 eration begins with their parents. They are continually fetched 
 away from school by the mother or father to act as interpreters or 
 go-betweens in all the affairs of daily life, to be conscientiously 
 returned within the hour stipulated by the teacher who offers no 
 objection to this sort of interruption, knowing it to be the best con- 
 dition of her own success. One cannot helj) the hope that the -po- 
 sition of trust in which the children are thus placed may, in some 
 measure, help to mitigate their home-hardshiijs. From their birth 
 they have little else, though Italian parents are rarely cruel in the 
 sense of abusing their offspring. It is the home itself that consti- 
 tutes their chief hardship. Theirs are the poorest tenements, the 
 filthiest hovels in the city. It is only when his years offer the boy 
 an opportunity of escape to the street, that a ray of sunlight falls 
 into his life ; in his back-yard or in his alley it seldom finds him 
 out. Thenceforward most of his time is spent there, until the 
 school claims him. Since the sewing-machine found its way, with 
 the sweater's mortgage, into the Italian slums also, his sweet-faced 
 sister has been robbed to a large extent of even the freedom of the 
 dumj), where she used to pick cinders for her mother's kitchen 
 fire, and she has taken her place among the wage-earners w^hen 
 not on the school-bench. Sickness, unless it be mortal, is no ex- 
 cuse from the drudgery of the tenement. When, recently, one lit- 
 tle Italian girl, hardly yet in her teens, stayed away from her class 
 in the Mott Street Industrial School so long that her teacher went 
 to her home to look her up, she found the child in a high fever,
 
 THE MOTT STREET BARRACKS.
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 95 
 
 ill bed, sewing on coats with swollen eyes, tliough barelj^ able to 
 sit up. 
 
 But neither poverty nor abuse have power to discourage the 
 child of Italy ; for though he be born to the succession of the White 
 House, if fate and the genius of politics so will it, ho is in looks, in 
 temper, and in speech, when among his own, as much an Italian as 
 liis father, who could not even hold real estate if there were any 
 chance of his getting any. His nickname he pockets with a grin 
 that has in it no thought of the dagger and the revenge that come 
 to solace his after-years. Only the prospect of immediate punish- 
 ment eclipses his spirits for the moment. While the teacher of the 
 sick little girl was telling me her pitiful story in the school, a char- 
 acteristic group appeared on the stairway. Three little Italian cul- 
 prits in the grasp of Nellie, the tall and slender Irish girl who was 
 the mentor of her class for the day. They had been arrested " fur 
 fightin','' she briefly explained as she dragged them by the collar 
 toward the iirincipal, who just then came out to inquire the cause 
 of the rumpus, and thrust them forward to receive sentence. 'The 
 three, none of whom was over eight years old, evidently felt that 
 they were in the power of an enemy from whom no mercy was to be 
 expected, and made no appeal for any. One scowled defiance. He 
 was evidently the injured party. 
 
 " He hit-a me a clip on de jaw," he said in his defence, in the 
 dialect of Mott Street, with a slight touch of " the Bend." The 
 aggressor, a heavy -browed little ruffian, hung back with a dreary 
 howl, knuckling his eyes with a pair of fists that were nearly black. 
 The third and youngest was in a state of bewilderment that was 
 most ludicrous. He only knew that he had received a kick on the 
 back and had struck out in self-defence, when he was seized and 
 dragged away a prisoner. He was so dirty — school had only just 
 begun and there had been no time for the regular inspection — that 
 he was sentenced on the spot to be taken down and washed, while 
 the other two were led away to the iJrincipal's desk. All three 
 went out howling.
 
 96 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 Pei-liaps of all the little life-stories of poor Italian children I 
 have come across in the course of years— and they are many and 
 sad, most of them — none comes nearer to the hard every-clay fact 
 of those dreary tenements than that of my little friend Pietro of 
 whom I spoke, exceptional as was his own heavy misfortune and its 
 effect upon the boy. I met him first in the Mulberry Street police 
 station, where he was interpreting the defence in a shooting- case, 
 having- come in with the crowd from Jersey Street, where the thing 
 had happened at his own door. With his rags, his dirty bare feet, 
 and his shock of tousled hair, lie seemed to fit in so entirely there 
 of all places, and took so naturall}^ to the ways of the police station, 
 that he might have escaped my notice altogether but for his maimed 
 hand and his oddly grave, yet eager face, which no smile ever 
 crossed despite his thirteen years. Of both, his story, when I after- 
 ward came to know it, gave me full explanation. He was the oldest 
 sou of a laborer, not " borned here " as the rest of his sisters and 
 brothers. There were four of them, six in the famil}^ besides him- 
 self, as he put it : "2 sisters, 2 broders, 1 fader, 1 mother," subsist- 
 ing on an unsteady maximum income of $9 a week, the rent taking- 
 always the earnings of one week in four. The home thus dearly 
 l^aid for was a wretched room with a dark alcove for a bed-cham- 
 ber, in one of the vile old barracks that still preserve to Jersey 
 Street the memorv of its former bad eminence as among the worst 
 of the city's slums. Pietro had gone to the Sisters' school, black- 
 ing boots in a haphazard sort of way in his ofi'-hours, until the year 
 before, upon his mastering the alphabet, his education was consid- 
 ered to have sufficiently advanced to warrant his graduating into 
 the ranks of the family wage-earners, that were sadly in need of re- 
 cruiting. A steady job of " shinin' " was found for him in an Eighth 
 Ward saloon, and that afternoon, just before Christmas, he came 
 home from school and, putting his books away on the shelf for the 
 next in order to use, ran across Broadway full of joyous anticipa- 
 tion of his new dignity in an independent job. He did not see the 
 street-car until it was fairly upon him, and then it was too late.
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 
 
 97 
 
 They thought he was killed, but he was only crippled for life, 
 Wheu, after many months, ho came out of the hospital, where the 
 company had paid his board and posed as doing- a generous thing, 
 his bright smile was gone ; his shining was at an end, and with it 
 his career as it had been marked out for him. He must needs take 
 up something new, and he was bending all his energies, when I met 
 
 '*■'?R^.^S>JS. 
 
 2 a.m. in the Delivery Room in the " Sun " Office. 
 
 him, toward learning to make the "Englis' letter " with a degree of 
 proficiency that would justify the hope of his doing something 
 somewhere at some time to make up for what he had lost. It was 
 a far-off possibility yet. With the same end in view, probably, he 
 Avas taking nightly writing lessons in his mother-tongue from one 
 of the perambulating schoolmasters who circulate in the Italian 
 colony peddling education cheap in lots to suit. In his sober, sub- 
 missive way he was content with the prospect. It had its compen-
 
 98 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 satious. The boys who used to Avorry him now let him alone. 
 " When they see this," he said, holding up his scarred and mis- 
 shapen arm, " they don't strike me no more." Then there was his 
 fourteen months' old baby brother, wdio w^as beginning to walk and 
 could almost " make a letter." Pietro was much concerned about 
 his education, anxious evidently that he should one day take his 
 place. "I take him to school sometime," he said, piloting him 
 across the floor and talking softly to the child in his own melo- 
 dious Italian. I watched his grave, unchanging face, 
 
 " Pietro," I said, with a sudden yearning to know, " did you ever 
 
 laugh ? " 
 
 The boy glanced from the baby to me with a wistful look. 
 
 " I did wonst," he said, quietly, and went on his way. And I 
 would gladly have forgotten that I ever asked the question, even 
 as Pietro had forgotten his laugh. 
 
 I said that the Italians do not often abuse their children down- 
 right ; but poverty and ignorance are fearful allies in the homes of 
 the poor against defenceless childhood, even without the child- 
 beating fiend. Two cases which I encountered in the East Side 
 tenements this past summer show how the combination works at 
 its worst. Without a doubt they are typical of very many, though 
 I hope that few come quite up to their standard. The one was 
 the case of little Carmen, who at this writing lay between life and 
 death in the New York Hospital, the special care of the Society 
 for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. One of the summer 
 corps doctors found her in a Mott Street tenement, within a stone's- 
 throw of the Health Department's office, suffering from a wasting 
 disease that could only be combated b}^ the most careful nursing. 
 He put her case into the hands of the King's Daughters Committee 
 that followed in the steps of the doctors, and it was then that I saw 
 her. She lay in a little back-room, up two flights, and giving upon 
 a narrow yard where it was always twilight. The room was filthy 
 and close, and entirely devoid of furniture, with the exception of a 
 rickety stool, a slop-pail, and a rusty old stove, one end of which
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 99 
 
 was propped up Avitli bricks. Carmen's bed was a board laid across 
 the top of a barrel and a trunk set on end. I could not describe, if 
 I would, the condition of the child when she was raised from the 
 mess of straw and rags in which she lay. The sight unnerved even 
 the nurse, who had seen little else than such scenes all summer. 
 Loathsome bed-sores had attacked the wasted little body, and in 
 truth Carmen was more dead than alive. But when, shocked and 
 disgusted, we made preparations for her removal with all speed to 
 the hospital, the parents objected and refused to let us take her 
 away. They had to be taken into court and forced to surrender the 
 child under warrant of law, though it was clearly the little suffer- 
 er's only chance for life, and only the slenderest of chances at that. 
 
 Carmen was the victim of the stubborn ignorance that dreads 
 the hospital and the doctor above the discomfort of the dirt and 
 darkness and suffering that are its every-day attendants. Her par- 
 ents were no worse than the Monroe Street mother who refused to 
 let the health officer vaccinate her baby, because her crippled boy, 
 with one leg an inch shorter than the other, had " caught it " — the 
 leg, that is to say — from his vaccination. She knew it was so, and 
 with ignorance of that stamp there is no other argument than force. 
 But another element entered into the case of a sick Essex Street 
 baby. The tenement would not let it recover from a bad attack of 
 scarlet fever, and the parents would not let it be taken to the coun- 
 try or to the sea-shore, despite all efforts and entreaties. When 
 their motive came out at last, it proved to be a mercenary one. 
 They were behind with the rent, and as long as they had a sick 
 child in the house the landlord could not \)\\i them out. Sick, the 
 baby was to them a source of income, at all events a bar to expense, 
 and in that way so much capital. Well, or away, it would put them 
 at the mercy of the rent-collector at once. So they chose to let it 
 suffer. The parents were Jews, a fact that emi^hasizes the share 
 borne by desperate poverty in the transaction, for the family tie is 
 notoriousl}'' strong among their people. 
 
 How strong is this attachment to home and kindred that makes
 
 100 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 tlio Jew cliug to the humblest hearth and gather his chihlren and 
 liis chihU-en's chihlren about it, though grinding poverty leave 
 thcni only a bare crust to share, I saw in the case of little Jette 
 Brodsky, who strayed away from her own door, looking for her 
 papa. They were strangers, and ignorant and poor, so that weeks 
 went by before they could make their loss known and get a hear- 
 ing, and meanwhile Jette, who had been picked up and taken to 
 Police Headquarters, had been hidden away in an asylum, given 
 another name when nobody came to claim her, and had been quite 
 forgotten. But in the two years that passed before she was found 
 at last, her empty chair stood ever by her father's at the family 
 board, and no Sabbath eve but heard his prayer for the restoration 
 of their lost one. The tenement that has power to turn purest gold 
 to dross digs a pit for the Jew through this, his strongest virtue. 
 In its atmosphere it becomes his curse by helping to crowd his 
 lodgings to the point of official intervention. Then follow orders 
 to " reduce " the number of tenants, that mean increased rent which 
 the family cannot pay, or the breaking up of the home. An appeal 
 to avert such a calamity came to the Board of Health recently from 
 one of the refugee tenements. The tenant was a man wdtli a house- 
 ful of children, too full for the official scale as applied to the flat, 
 and his plea was backed by the influence of his only friend in need 
 — the family undertaker. There was something so cruelly suggest- 
 ive in the idea that the laugh it raised died without an echo. 
 
 When it comes to the child population of the poor Jewish tene- 
 ments, we have at last something definite to reckon with. We know 
 from the police census that there were, in 1890, 160,708 children \xi\- 
 der five years in all the tenements of the city, which is not saying 
 that there were so many poor children by a good many thousand. 
 But how many of them were Italians, how many Bohemians, how 
 many of Irish or German descent, we are yet left to guess. It is 
 difi"eront with these. A census, that was taken for a special pur- 
 pose, of the Jews in the East Side sweaters' district, several years 
 ago, gave a total of 23,J:05 children under six years, and 21,285
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 
 
 101 
 
 between six and fourteen, in a population of something- over a 
 hundred and eleven thousand that inhabited forty-five streets in 
 the Seventh, Tenth, and Thirteenth Wards. All of these were for- 
 
 (^s(W.rVlck5= 
 
 Pietro Learning to MaUe an Englis' Letter. 
 
 eiq-ners, most of them Paissian, Polish, and Eoumanian Jews, and 
 they are by all odds the hardest-worked and, barring- the Bohe- 
 mians, as a class, the poorest of our people. Accordin.g to the 
 record, scarce one-third of the heads of families had become natu- 
 ralized citizens, though the average of their stay in the United 
 States was between nine and ten years. The very language of our
 
 IQ2 THE rOOR ly- GREAT CITIES 
 
 country was to them a strang-e tongue, understood and spoken by 
 only 15,837 of the fifty thousand and odd adults enumerated. 
 Seven thousand of the rest spoke only German, five thousand Rus- 
 sian, and over twenty-one thousand could only make themselves 
 understood to each other, never to the world around them, in the 
 strange jargon that passes for Hebrew on the East Side, but is 
 really a mixture of a dozen known dialects and tongues, and of 
 some that were never known or heard anywhere else. In the cen- 
 sus it is down as just what it is— jargon, and nothing else. 
 
 Here, then, are conditions as unfavorable to the satisfactory, 
 even safe, development of child life in the chief American city, as 
 could well be imagined, more unfavorable even than with the Bo- 
 hemians, who have at least their faith in common with us, if safety 
 lies in the merging through the rising- generation of the discordant 
 elements into a common harmony. A community set apart, set 
 sharply against the rest in every clashing interest, social and in- 
 dustrial ; foreign in language, in faith, and in tradition ; repaying- 
 dislike with distrust ; expanding under the new relief from oppres- 
 sion in the unpopular qualities of greed and contentiousness fos- 
 tered by ages of tyranny unresistingly borne. But what says the 
 record of this ? That of the sixty thousand children, including the 
 fifteen thousand young men and women over fourteen who earn a 
 large share of the money that pays for rent and food, and the 
 twenty -three thousand toddlers under six years, fully one-third go 
 to school. Deducting the two extremes, little more than a thou- 
 sand children of between six and fourteen years, that is, of school 
 age, were put down as receiving no instruction at the time the cen- 
 sus was taken ; nor is it at all likely that this condition was perma- 
 nent in the case of the greater number of these. The poorest He- 
 brew knows — the poorer he is, the better he knows it — that 
 knowledge is power, and power as the means of getting on in the 
 world that has spurned him so long, is what his soul yearns for. 
 He lets no opportunity slip to obtain it. Day- and night-schools 
 are crowded with his children, who learn rapidly and with ease.
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 103 
 
 Every synagog-ue, every second rear tenement or dark back-yard, 
 has its school and its school-master, with his scourge to intercept 
 those who might otherwise escape. In the census there are put 
 down 251 Jewish teachers as living in these tenements, nearly all of 
 whom probably conduct such schools, so that, as the children form 
 always more than one-half * of the population in the Jewish quar- 
 ter, the evidence is, after all, that even here, with the tremendous 
 iupour of a destitute, ignorant people, the cause of progress along 
 the safe line is holding its own. 
 
 It is true that these tenement schools which absorb several 
 thousand children are not what they might be from a sanitary point 
 of view. It is also true that heretofore they have mainly been de- 
 voted to teaching East-Side Hebrew and the Talmud. But to the 
 one evil the health authorities have recently been aroused ; of the 
 other, the wise and patriotic men who are managing the Baron de 
 Hirscli charity are making a useful handle by gathering the teach- 
 ers in and setting them to learn English. Their new knowledge 
 will soon be reflected in their teaching, and the Hebrew schools be- 
 come primary classes in the system of public education. The school 
 in a Hester Street tenement that is shown in the picture is a fair 
 specimen of its kind — by no means one of the worst — and so is the 
 back-yard behind it, that serves as the children's playground, with 
 its dirty mud-puddles, its slop-barrels and broken flags, and its foul 
 tenement-house surroundings. Both fall in well with the home 
 lives and environment of the unhappy little wretches whose daily 
 horizon they limit. Missionaries though they truly be, like their 
 Italian playmates, in a good cause, they have not even the satisfac- 
 tion of knowing it. Born to toil and trouble, they claim their 
 heritage early and part with it late. What time they do not spend 
 on the school-bench is soon put to use in the home workshop. 
 When, in the midnight hour, the noise of the sewing-machine was 
 stilled at last, I have gone the rounds with the sanitary police and 
 counted often four, five, and even six of the little ones in a single 
 
 * Fifty-four per cent, in the census.
 
 104 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 bed, sometimes a sliake-dowii ou the hard floor, often a pile of half- 
 finished clothing brought liome from the sweater, in the stufiy 
 rooms of their tenements. In one I visited very lately, the only bed 
 was occupied by the entire family, lying lengthwise and crosswise, 
 literally in layers, three children at the feet, all except a boy of ten 
 
 or twelve, for whom there was 
 no room. He slept with his 
 clothes on to keep him warm, 
 in a pile of rags just inside 
 the door. It seemed to me im- 
 possible that families of chil- 
 dren could be raised at all in 
 such dens as I had my daily 
 and nightly walks in. And yet 
 the vital statistics and all close 
 observation agree in allotting 
 to these Jews even an unusual 
 degree of good health. Their 
 freedom from enfeebling vices 
 and the marvellous vitality of 
 the race must account for this. 
 Their homes, or their food, 
 which is frequently of the 
 worst because cheapest, as- 
 suredly do not. 
 
 I spoke of the labor done in 
 tenement homes. Like nearly 
 every other question that has 
 a bearing on the condition of the poor and of the wage-earners, 
 this one of the child home-workers has receutly been uj) for dis- 
 cussion. The first official contribution to it was a surprise, and 
 not least to the health officers Avho furnished it. According to 
 the tenement-house census, in the entire mass of nearly a million 
 and a quarter of tenants, only two hundred and forty-nine chil- 
 
 The Backstairs to Learning. 
 
 (Entrance to a Talmud School In Hester Street.)
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 105 
 
 dreu under fourteen years of age were found at work in living 
 rooms by the Sanitary Police. To anyone acquainted with the 
 ordinary aspect of tenement life the statement seemed ^preposterous, 
 and there are some valid reasons for believing- that the policemen 
 missed rather more than they found. They were seeking that 
 which, when found, would furnish proof of law-breaking against the 
 parent or employer, a fact of which these were fully aware. Hence 
 their coming, uniformed and in search of children, into a tenement 
 where such were at work, could scarcely fail to give those a holi- 
 day who were not big enough to be palmed off as fifteen at least. 
 Nevertheless, I suspect the policemen Avere much nearer right than 
 may be readily believed. Their census took no account of the 
 tenement factory in the back-yard, but only of the living-rooms, and 
 it was made chiefly during school hours. Most of the little slaves, 
 as of those older in years, were found in the East Side tenements 
 just spoken of, where the work often only fairly begins after the 
 factory has shut down for the day and the stores have released their 
 army of child-laborers. Had the policemen gone their rounds after 
 dark, they would have found a different state of affairs. The record 
 of school-attendance in the district shows that forty-seven attended 
 day-school for every one who went to night-school. 
 
 The same holds good with the Bohemians, who are, if anything, 
 more desperately poor than the Russian Jews, and have proportion- 
 ally greater need of their children's labor to help eke out the family 
 income. The testimony of the principal of the Industrial School in 
 East Seventy-third Street, for instance, where there are some three 
 hundred and odd Bohemian children in daily attendance, is to the 
 effect that the mothers " do not want them to stay a minute after 
 three o'clock," and if they do, verj^ soon come to claim them, so 
 that they may take up their places at the bench, rolling cigars or 
 stripping tobacco-leaves for the father, while the evening meal is 
 being got ready. The Bohemian has his own cause for the reserve 
 that keeps him a stranger in a strange land after living half his 
 life among us ; his reception has not been altogether hospitable, and
 
 -[no THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 it is not only his hard language aud his sullen moods that are to 
 blame. Yet, even he will " drive his children to school with sticks," 
 and the teacher has only to threaten the intractable ones with be- 
 ing sent home to bring them 'round. And yet, it is not that they 
 are often cruelly treated there. The Bohemian simply proposes 
 that his child shall enjoy the advantages that are denied him — 
 denied partly perha^js because of his refusal to accept them, but 
 still from his point of view denied. And he takes a short cut to that 
 goal by sending the child to school. The result is that the old 
 Bohemian disappears in the first generation born upon our soil. 
 His temper remains to some extent, it is true. He still has his 
 surly streaks, refuses to sing or recite in school when the teacher 
 or something else does not suit him, and can never be driven where 
 yet he is easily led ; but as he graduates into the public school and 
 is thrown there into contact with the children of more light-hearted 
 nationalities, he grows into that which his father would have long 
 since become, had he not got a wrong start, a \oydl American, 
 proud of his country, and a useful citizen. 
 
 But when the State has done its best by keeping the child at 
 school, at least a part of the day — and it has not done that until 
 New York has been provided with a Truant Home to give effect to 
 its present laws — the real kernel of this question of child labor re- 
 mains untouched yet. The trouble is not so much that the children 
 have to work early as with the sort of work they have to do. It is, 
 all of it, of a kind that leaves them, grown to manhood and woman- 
 hood, just where it found them, knowing no more and therefore 
 less than when they began, and with the years that should have 
 prepai'ed them for life's work gone in hopeless aud profitless 
 drudgery. How large a share of the responsibility for this failure 
 is borne by the senseless and wicked tyranny of so-called organ- 
 ized labor in denying to our own children a fair chance to learn 
 honest trades, while letting in foreign workmen in shoals to crowd 
 our market, a policy that is in a fair Avay of losing to labor all the 
 respect due it from our growing youth, I shall not here discuss.
 
 
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 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 109 
 
 The general result was well put by a tireless worker in the cause of 
 
 • 
 
 improving- the condition of the poor, who said to me : " They are 
 down on the scrub-level ; there you find them and have to put them 
 to such use as you can. They don't know anything else, and that is 
 what makes it so hard to find work for them. Even when they go 
 into a shop to sew, they come out mere machines, able to do only 
 one thing, which is a small part of the whole they do not grasp. 
 And thus, without the slightest training for the responsibilities of 
 life, they marry and transmit their incapacity to another generation 
 that is so much worse off to start with." She spoke of the girls, 
 but what she said fitted the boys just as well. The incapacity of 
 the mother is no greater than the ignorance of the father in the 
 mass of such unions. Ignorance and poverty are the natural her- 
 itage of the children. 
 
 I have in mind a typical family of that sort which our commit- 
 tee wrestled with a whole summer in Poverty Gap. Suggestive lo- 
 cation ! The man found his natural level on the Island, where we 
 sent him first thing. The woman was decent and willing to work, 
 and the girls young enough to train. But Mrs. Murphy did not 
 get on. " She can't even hold a flat-iron in her hand," reported her 
 first employer indignantly. The children were sent to good places 
 in the country, and repaid the kindness shown them by stealing, 
 and lying to cover up their thefts. They were not depraved, they 
 were simply exhibiting the fruit of the only training they had ever 
 received — that of the street. It was like undertaking a job of 
 original creation to try to make anything decent or useful out of 
 them. 
 
 Another case that exhibits the shoal that lies always close to the 
 track of ignorant poverty, is even now running in my mind, vainly 
 demanding a practical solution. I may say that I inherited it 
 from professional philanthropists, who had struggled with it for 
 more than half a dozen years without finding the Avay out they 
 sought. There were five children when they began, depending on 
 a mother who had about given up the struggle as useless. The
 
 110 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 fathor was a loafer. Wlieu Ave took them the children numbered 
 ten, and the strugsrle was long since over. The family bore the 
 panper stamp, and the mother's tears, by a transition impercepti- 
 ble probably to herself, had become its stock in trade. Two of the 
 children were working, earning all the money that came in ; those 
 that were not lay about in the room, watching tlie charity visitor 
 in a way and with an intentness that betrayed their interest in 
 the mother's appeal. It required very little experience to make 
 the prediction that shortly ten pauper families would carry on the 
 campaign of the one against society, if those children lived to 
 grow up. And they were not to blame, of course. I scarcely know 
 wdiich was most to be condemned— when we tried to break the 
 family up by throwing it on the street as a necessary step to get- 
 ting possession of the children— the politician who tripped us up 
 with his influence in the court, or the landlord who had all those 
 years made the poverty on the second floor pan out a golden inter- 
 est. It was the outrageous rent for the filthy den that had been 
 the most effective argument with sympathizing visitors. Their 
 pity had represented to the owner, as nearly as I could make out, 
 for eight long years, a capital of $2,600 invested at six per cent., 
 payable monthly. The idea of moving was preposterous ; for 
 what other landlord would take in a homeless family with ten chil- 
 dren and no income ? 
 
 Naturally the teaching of these children must begin by going 
 backward. The process may be observed in the industrial schools, 
 of which there are twenty-one scattered through the poor tenement 
 districts, Avitli a total enrolment of something over five thousand 
 pupils.* A count made last October showed that considerably 
 more than one-third w^ere born in twelve foreign countries where 
 English was not spoken, and that over ten per cent, knew no word 
 of our language. The vast majority of the rest were children of 
 foreign parents, mostly German and Irish, born here. According 
 
 * These schools are established and managed by the Children's Aid Society, as a 
 co-ordinate branch of the public-scliool system.
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 111 
 
 to the location of the school it is distinctive!}' Italian, Bohemian, 
 Hebrew, or mixed, the German, Irish, and colored children coming 
 in under this head and mingling- without the least friction. What- 
 ever its stamp of nationality-, the curriculum is much the same. 
 The start, as often as is necessary, is made with an object-lesson — 
 soap and water being the elements and the child the object. The 
 alphabet comes second on the list. Later on follow lessons in sew- 
 ing, cooking, carpentry for the boj^s, and like practical " branches," 
 of which the home aflfords the child no demonstration. The prizes 
 for good behavior are shoes and clothing, the special inducement 
 a free lunch in the dinner hour. Yer\- lately a unique exercise has 
 been added to the course in the schools, that lays hold of the 
 very marrow of the problem with which they deal. It is called 
 " saluting the flag," and originated with Colonel George T. Balch, 
 of the Board of Education, who conceived the idea of instilling 
 patriotism into the little future citizens of the Kepublic in doses to 
 suit their childish minds. To talk about the Union, of which most 
 of them had but the vaguest notion, or of the duty of the citizen, of 
 which they had no notion at all, was nonsense. In the flag it was 
 all foimd embodied in a central idea which the}' could grasp. In 
 the morning the star-spangled banner was brought into the school, 
 and the children were taught to salute it with patriotic words. 
 Then the best scholar of the day before was called out of the ranks, 
 and it was given to him or her to keep for the day. The thing took 
 at once and was a tremendous success. 
 
 Then was evolved the plan of letting the children decide for 
 themselves whether or not they would so salute the flag as a volun- 
 tary oftering, Avhile incidentallj'- instructing them in the duties of 
 the voter at a time when voting was the one topic of general inter- 
 est. Ballot-boxes were set up in the schools on the day before the 
 last general election. The children had been furnished -snth ballots 
 for and against the flag the week before, and told to take them 
 home to their parents and talk it over with them. On Monday 
 they cast their votes with all the solemuitj' of a regular election,
 
 112 
 
 THE POOR IX GREAT CITIES 
 
 aiul Avitli as much of its simple machinen^ as was practicable. As 
 was expected, only very few votes against the flag were recorded. 
 One little Irishman in the Mott Street school came without his 
 ballot. "The old man tore it up," he reported. In the East 
 
 ^^- — '. ?^ » >^ '>; ■ 
 
 . >-Ve:''S»NS>> . 
 
 A Synagogue School in a Hester Street Tenement. 
 
 Seventy- third Street school five Bohemians of tender years set 
 themselves down as opposed to the scheme of making- Americans of 
 them. Only one, a little girl, gave her reason. She brought her 
 own flag to school : " I vote for that," she said, sturdily, and the 
 teacher wisely recorded her vote and let her keep the banner. 
 
 I happened to witness the election in the Beach Street school, 
 where the children are nearly all Italians. The minority elements
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 113 
 
 were, however, represented on the board of election inspectors 
 by a colored girl and a little Irish miss, who did not seem in the 
 least abashed by the fact that they were nearly the only repre- 
 sentatives of their people in the school. The tremendons show of 
 dignity with which they took their seats at the poll was most im- 
 pressive. As a lesson in practical politics, the occasion had its 
 own humor. It was clear that the negress was most impressed with 
 the solemnity of the occasion, and the Irish girl with its practical 
 opportunities. The Italians disposition to grin and frolic, even in 
 her new and solemn character, betrayed the ease with which she 
 would, were it real politics, become the game of her Celtic col- 
 league. When it was all over they canvassed the vote with all the 
 gravity befitting the occasion, signed together a certificate stating 
 the result, and handed it over to the principal sealed in a man- 
 ner to defeat any attempt at fraud. Then the school sang Santa 
 Lucia, a sweet Neapolitan ballad. It was amusing to hear the 
 colored girl, and the half-dozen little Irish children, sing right 
 along with the rest the Italian words of which they did not under- 
 stand one. They had learned them from hearing them sung by 
 the others, and rolled them out just as loudly, if not as sweetly, as 
 they. 
 
 The first patriotic election in the Fifth Ward Industrial School 
 was held on historic ground. The house it occupies was John 
 Ericsson's imtil his death, and there he jjlanned nearly all his great 
 inventions, among them one that helped save the flag for which the 
 children voted that day. The children have lived faithfully up to 
 their pledge. Every morning sees the flag carried to the princi- 
 pal's desk and all the little ones, rising at the stroke of the bell, 
 say with one voice, "We turn to our flag as the sunflower turns to 
 the sun!" One bell, and every brown right fist is raised to the 
 brow, as in military salute : " We give our heads ! " Another 
 stroke, and the grimy little hands are laid on fis many hearts: 
 " And our hearts ! " Then with a shout that can be heard around 
 the corner : " to our country ! One country, one language,
 
 114 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 one flag- ! " No one can hear it and doubt that the chiklren mean 
 every Avord, and will not be apt to forg-et that lesson soon. 
 
 The earliest notion of order and harmless play comes to the 
 children through the kindergartens, to which access is now made 
 easier every day. Without a doubt this is the longest step for- 
 ward that has yet been taken in the race with poverty ; for the kin- 
 dergarten, in gathering in the children, is gradually but surely 
 conquering also the street, with its power for mischief. Until it 
 came, the street was the only escape from the tenement — a Hob- 
 son's choice, for it is hard to sa}^ which is the most corrupting. 
 The opportunities rampant in the one were a sad commentary on 
 the sure defilement of the other. AYliat could be expected of a 
 standard of decency like this one, of a household of tenants who 
 assured me that Mrs. M , at that moment under arrest for half- 
 clubbing her husband to death, was " a very good, a very decent 
 woman indeed, and if she did get full, he (the husband) was not 
 much ? "' Or of the rule of good conduct laid down hy a young girl, 
 found beaten and senseless in the street up in the Annexed District 
 last autumn : " Them was two of the fellers from Frog Hollow," 
 she said, resentfully, when I asked who struck her ; " them toughs 
 don't know how to behave theirselves when they see a lady in 
 liquor." Hers was the standard of the street, that naturally stamps 
 what belongs to it, the children's games with the rest. Games they 
 always had. It is not true, as someone has said, that our poor 
 children do not know how to play " London Bridge is falling 
 down " Avith as loud a din in the streets of New York, every day, as 
 it has fallen these hundred years and more in every British town, 
 and the children of the Bend march " all around the mulberry 
 bush " as gleefully as if there were a green shrub to be found with- 
 in a mile of their slum. It is the slum that smudges the game too 
 easily, and the kindergarten's work comes in helping to wipe off 
 the smut. So far from New York children being duller at their 
 play than those of other cities and lands, I believe the reverse to 
 be true. They lack neither spirit nor inventiveness. I watched a
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 115 
 
 crowd of them liayiiig' a donkey party in the street one night, when 
 those parties were all the rag-e. The donkey hung in the window 
 of a notion store, and a knot of tenement-house children, with tails 
 improvised from a newspaper and dragged in the g-utter to make 
 them stick, were staggering blindly across the sidewalk trying to 
 fix them in place on the pane. They got a heap of fun out of the 
 g-ame, quite as much, it seemed to me, as any crowd of children 
 could have got in a tine parlor, until the storekeeper came out with 
 his club. Every cellar-door becomes a toboggan-slide when the 
 children are around, unless it is hammered full of envious nails ; 
 every block a ball-ground when the policeman's back is turned, 
 and every roof a kite-tield ; for that innocent amusement is also 
 forbidden by city ordinance " below Fourteenth Street." 
 
 It is rather that their opportunities for mischief are greater than 
 those for harmless amusement ; made so, it has sometimes seemed 
 to me, with deliberate purpose to hatch the " tough." Given idle- 
 ness and the street, and he will grow without other encouragement 
 than an occasional "fanning" of a policeman's club. And the street 
 has to do for his playground. There is no other. Central Park is 
 miles away. The small parks that were ordered for his benefit five 
 years ago, exist yet only on paper. Games like kite-flying and 
 ball-playing, forbidden but not suppressed, as happily they cannot 
 be, become from harmless play a successful challenge of law and 
 order that points the way to later and worse achievements. Every 
 year the police forbid the building of election bonfires, and 
 threaten vengeance upon those who disobey the ordinance ; and 
 every election night sees the sky made lurid by them from one end 
 of the town to the other, with the police powerless to put them 
 out. Year by year the boys grow bolder in their raids on property 
 when their supply of firewood has given out, until the destruction 
 wrought at the last election became a matter of public scandal. 
 Stoops, wagons, and in one place a showcase containing property 
 worth many hundreds of dollars, were fed to the flames. It has 
 happened that an entire frame house has been carried ofi^ piecemeal
 
 116 
 
 THE rOOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 aud burned up on election niglit. The boys, organized in gangs, 
 with the one condition of membership that all must "give in 
 wood,"' store up enormous piles of fuel for months before, and 
 though the police lind and raid a good many of them, incidentally 
 laying in supplies of kindling wood for the winter, the pile 
 grows again in a single night as the neighborhood reluctantly con- 
 
 
 M^ 
 
 Night School in the Seventh Avenue Boys' Lodging House. 
 (Edward, the little pedlar, caught napping.) 
 
 tributes its ash-barrels to the cause. The germ of the gangs that 
 terrorize Avhole sections of the city at intervals, and feed our courts 
 and our jails, may, without much difficulty, be discovered in these 
 early and rather grotesque struggles of the boys with the police. 
 
 Even on the national day of freedom the boy is not left to the 
 enjoyment of his firecracker without the ineffectual threat of the 
 law. I am not defending the firecracker, but arraigning the fail- 
 ure of the law to carry its point and maintain its dignity. It has
 
 THE CIIILDREX OF THE POOR 117 
 
 robbed the poor cliilcT of tlie street-baud, one of his fe^v harmless 
 delig-hts, grudgingly restoring the hand-organ, but not the monkey 
 that lent it its charm. In the baud that, banished from the street, 
 sneaks into the back-yard, its instruments hidden under bulging 
 coats, the boy hails uo longer an innocent x)urveyor of amusement, 
 but an ally in the fight with the common enemy, the policeman. 
 In the Thanksgiviug-Day and New-Year parades, which he for- 
 mally permits, he furnishes them with the very weapon of gang or- 
 ganization which they afterward turn against him to his hurt. 
 
 And yet this boy who, when taken from his alley iyto the 
 country for the first time, cries out in delight, " How blue the sky 
 and what a lot of it there is ! " — not much of it at home in his bar- 
 rack — has, in the very love of dramatic display that sends him forth 
 to beat a policeman Avith his own club or die in the attempt, in the 
 intense vanity that is only a perverted form of pride capable of any 
 achievement, a handle by which he may be most easily grasped and 
 held. It cannot be done by gorging him e)i masse with apjjles and 
 gingerbread at a Christmas party.* It can be done only by indi- 
 vidual effort, and by the iniiuence of personal character in direct 
 contact wdth the child — the great secret of success in all dealings 
 with the i^oor. Foul as the gutter he comes from, he is open to the 
 reproach of "bad form" as few of his betters. Greater even than 
 his desire eventually to " down " a policeman, is his ambition to be 
 a " gentleman," as his sister's is to be a " lady." The street is re- 
 sponsil)le for the caricature either makes of the character. On a 
 play -bill in an East Side street, only the other day, I saAV this re>- 
 erioh^e set down : " Thursday — ' The Bowery Tramp ; ' Friday — ' The 
 Thief.' " It Avas a theatre I kncAV newsboys and the other children 
 of the street Avho Avere earning money to frequent in shoals. The 
 
 * As a matter of fact I heard, after the h\st one that caused so much discussion, in 
 an alley that sent seventy-five children to the show, a universal growl of discontent. 
 The effect on the children, even on those who received presents, was bad. They felt 
 that they had been on exhibition, and their greed was aroused with their resentment. 
 It was as I expected it would be.
 
 lis THE rOOR IX GEE AT CITIES 
 
 play-bill sug-g-ested the sort of training- tliey received there. Within 
 sight of the window where it hung- was a house occupied by a 
 handful of courageous young women, who settled there a couple of 
 years ago, to see what tliey could do among the children on the 
 other tack. They had a different story to tell. Having- once g-ained 
 their confidence they had found boys and girls most eager to learn 
 from them the ways of polite society. Perhaps that may be 
 thought not the highest of aims ; but it will hardly be denied that 
 to find a girl who was fighting in the street yesterday, to-day busy- 
 ing herself with the anxious inquiry whether it is proper, at table, 
 to take bread from the plate with the fingers or with the fork, 
 arg'ues progress ; or to see the battle-scarred young tough who a 
 month ago sat on the table with cigar in his mouth, hat on the back 
 of his head, and kicked his heels, who was ashamed to own where 
 he lived, and so terrorized the others with his scowl that the boy 
 who knew said he would g-et killed if he told — to see this i^roduct 
 of the street with carefully brushed clothes, a clean collar, and a 
 human smile inviting the lady manager to the foot-ball game be- 
 cause he knew she was from Princeton and a partisan, and what is 
 more, escorting her there like a gentleman. 
 
 In the wise plan of these reformers the gang became the chib 
 that weaned the boys from the street. The " Hero Club " and the 
 " Knights of the Piound Table " took the place of the Junk Gang 
 and its allies. They wrote their own laws, embodying a clause to 
 expel any disorderly member, and managed them with firmness. 
 True knights were they after their fashion, loyal to the house that 
 sheltered them, and ever on the alert to repel invasion. Sinful as it 
 was in their code not to " swipe " or " hook " a chicken or anything 
 left lying around loose within their bailiwick, if any outsider em- 
 ployed their tactics to the damage of the house, or of anything 
 befriended by it, they would swoop down upon him with swift ven- 
 geance and bring him in captive to be delivered over to punish- 
 ment. And when one of their friends hung out her shingle in an- 
 other street, with the word " doctor " over the bell, woe to the urchin
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 
 
 119 
 
 w-^ 
 
 The "Soup-House Ganff." 
 
 Class in Histoiy in the Duane Street Newsboys' Lodging-house. 
 
 who even glanced at that when the g'ang' pnlled all the other bells 
 in the block and langhed at the wrath of the tenants. One Inckless 
 cliajj forgot himself far enough to yank it one night, and immedi- 
 ately an angry cry Avent up from the gang : " Who pulled dat 
 bell?" "Mickey did," was the answer, and Mickey's howls an-
 
 120 THE POOR IX GREAT CITIES 
 
 iiouuced to tlie amused doctor tlie next minute that lie liad been 
 " slugged " and slie avenged. This doctor's account of the first 
 formal call of the gang in the block was highly amusing. It called 
 ill a body and showed a desire to please that tried the host's nerves 
 not a little. The boys vied Avitli each other in recounting for her 
 entertainment their encounters Avith the police enemy, and in ex- 
 hibiting their intimate knowledge of the wickedness of the slums 
 ill minutest detail. One, who was scarcely twelve years old, and 
 had lately moved from Bayard Street, knew all the ins and outs of 
 the Chinatown opium dives, and painted them in glowing colors. 
 The doctor listened with half-amused dismay, and when the boys 
 rose to go told them she was glad they had called. So were they, 
 they said, and they guessed they would call again the next night. 
 
 " Oh ! don't come to-morrow," said the doctor, in something of a 
 fright ; " come next week ! " She was relieved upon hearing the 
 leader of the gang reproving the rest of the fellows for their want 
 of style. He bowed with great precision and announced that he 
 would call " in about two weeks." 
 
 I am sorry to say that the entente cordiale of the establishment 
 was temporarily disturbed recently by a strike of the " Hero Club," 
 or the "Knights," I forget which. The managers received their 
 first intimation that trouble was brewing in the resignation of the 
 leader. It came by letter, in very dignified form. " My apprehen- 
 sions is now something eligible," he wrote. The ladies decided, 
 after thinking the matter over, that he meant that he was looking 
 for something better, and they translated the message correctly. 
 There came shortly, from the disaffected element he had gathered 
 around him, a written demand for the organization of a new club to 
 be called "the Gentlemen's Sons' Association; " among the objects 
 this : " Furthermore, that we may participate hereafter to commem- 
 orate with the doings of a gentleman." The request was refused, 
 and the boys went on strike, threatening to start their club else- 
 where. The ladies met the crisis firmly. Tliey sent a walking 
 delegate to the boys with the message that if they could organize a
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 121 
 
 strike, they, on their side, could organize a lock-out. There the 
 matter rested when I last heard of it. 
 
 The testimony of these workers agrees with that of most others 
 who reach the girls at an age when they are yet manageable, that 
 the most abiding results follow with them, though they are harder 
 to get at. The boys respond more readily, but also more easily fall 
 from grace. The same good and bad traits are found in both ; the 
 same trying superficiality, the same generous helpfulness, charac- 
 teristic of the poor everywhere. Out of the depth of their bitter 
 poverty I saw the children in the West Fifty-second Street Indus- 
 trial School, last Thanksgiving, bring for the relief of the aged and 
 helpless, and those even poorer than they, such gifts as they could 
 —a handful of ground cofiee in a paper bag, a couple of Irish po- 
 tatoes, a little sugar or flour, and joyfully offer to carry them home. 
 It was on such a trip I found little Katie, aged nine, in a Forty- 
 ninth Street tenement, keeping house for her older sister and two 
 brothers, all of whom worked in the hammock factory, earning from 
 14.50 to $1.50 a week. They had moved together when their mother 
 died and the father brought home another wife. Their combined 
 income was something like $9.50 a week, and the simple furniture 
 Avas bought on instalment. But it was all clean, if poor. Katie 
 did the cleaning and the cooking of the plain kind. She scrubbed 
 and swept and went to school, all as a matter of course, and ran the 
 house generally. In her person and work she answered the ques- 
 tion sometimes asked, why we hear so much about the boys and so 
 little of the girls ; because the home claims their work nnicli earlier 
 and to a much greater extent, while the boys are turned out to 
 shift for themselves, and because therefore their miseries are so 
 much more common-place, and proportionally uninteresting. It is 
 woman's lot to suffer in silence. If occasionally she makes herself 
 heard in querulous protest ; if injustice long borne gives her 
 tongue a sharper edge than the occasion seems to require, it can at 
 least be said in her favor that her bark is much worse than her bite. 
 The missionary who complains that the wife nags her husband to
 
 122 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 the point of making the saloon his refug-e, or the sister her brother 
 until he flees to the street, bears testimony in the same breath to 
 her readiness to sit up all night to mend the clothes of the scamp 
 she so hotly denounces. Sweetness of temper or of speech is not a 
 distinguishing- feature of tenement-house life, any more among the 
 children than with their elders. In a party sent out by our com- 
 mittee for a summer vacation on a Jersey farm, last summer, was a 
 little knot of six girls from the Seventh Ward. They had not been 
 gone three days before a letter came from one of them to the 
 mother of one of the others. "Mrs. Eeilly," it read, " if you have 
 any sinse you will send for your child." That they would all be 
 murdered was the sense the frightened mother made out of it. The 
 six came home post haste, the youngest in a state of high dudgeon 
 at her sudden translation back to the tenement. The lonesomeness 
 of the farm had frightened the others. She was little more than a 
 baby, and her desire to go back was explained by one of the res- 
 cued ones thus : " She sat two mortil hours at the table a stuffin' of 
 herself, till the missus she says, says she, ' Does yer mother lave xe 
 to sit that long at the table, sis ? ' " 
 
 Not rarely does this child of common clay rise to a height of 
 heroism that discovers depths of feeling and character full of un- 
 suspected promise. Two or three winters ago a midnight fire, 
 started by a fiend in human shape, destroyed a tenement in Hester 
 Street, killing a number of the tenants. On the fourth floor the 
 firemen found one of these penned in with his little girl and helped 
 them to the window. As they were handing out the child she broke 
 away from them suddenly and stepped back into the smoke to what 
 seemed certain death. The firemen, climbing after, groped around 
 shouting for her to come back. Half-way across the room they 
 came u])on her, gasping and nearly smothered, dragging a doll's 
 trunk over the floor. 
 
 " I could not leave it," she said, thrusting it at the men as they 
 seized her; "my mother " 
 
 They flung the box angrily through the window. It fell crash-
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 
 
 123 
 
 Present Tenants of John Ericsson's Old House, now the Beach Street Industrial School. 
 
 ing- on tlie sidewalk, and, breaking open, revealed no doll or tinery, 
 but the deed for her dead mother's grave. Little Bessie had not 
 forgotten her, despite her thirteen years.
 
 124: THE POOR IX GREAT CITIES 
 
 It is the tenement setting- that stamps the chikT's life with the 
 vicious touch which is sometimes only the caricature of the virtues 
 of a better soil. Under the rough l)urr lie undeveloped qualities of 
 good and of usefulness, rather perhaps of the cajDacity for them, 
 which, if the testimony- of observers on the other side be true, one 
 shall vainly seek in their brothers and sisters of the Old-AVorld 
 slums. It ma}" be, as I have had occasion to observe before, that 
 the reason must be soug-ht in the g-reater age of the breed over 
 there, and that we are observing here the beginning of a process of 
 deterioration that shall eventually land us where the}^ are, unless 
 the inroads of the tenement be checked by the preventive measures 
 of which I have spoken. The testimony of a teacher for twenty- 
 five years in one of the ragged schools, who has seen the shanty 
 neighborhood that surrounded her at the start give place to mile- 
 long rows of big tenements, is positive on this point. T\ ith the dis- 
 appearance of the shanties — homesteads in effect, however humble 
 — and the coming of the tenement crowds, there "has been a distinct 
 descent in the scale of refinement among the children, if one may 
 use the term. The crowds and the loss of home privacy, with the 
 increased importance of the street as a factor, account for it. The 
 general tone has been lowered, while at the same time, by reason 
 of the greater rescue efforts put forward, the original amount of 
 ignorance has been reduced. The big loafer of the old day, who 
 could neither read nor write, has been eliminated to a large extent. 
 Nearly all the children get now some schooling, if not much ; and 
 the proportion of child ofienders annually arraigned in the courts 
 has been materially reduced. There is compensation in this ; 
 whether enough to make up for Avliat is lost, time and the amount 
 of effort put forth to turn the scales for good wdll show. 
 
 Drunkenness is the vice that wrecks that half of the homes of 
 the poor which do not cause it. It is that which, in nine cases out 
 of ten, drives the boy to the street and the girl to a life of shame. 
 No end of sad cases could be quoted in support of this statement. 
 I can here only refer those who wish to convince themselves of its
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 125 
 
 truth to the records of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
 Chiklren, the Five Points House of Industry, the Eeformatory, and 
 a score of other charitabhi and correctional institutions, I have 
 been at some pains to satisfy myself on the point by tracing- back, 
 as far as I was able — by no means an easy task — the careers of the 
 boys I met in the lodging-houses that are set as traps for them, 
 where they have their run, chiefly down around the newspaper of- 
 fices. In seven cases out of ten it was the same story : a drunken 
 father or mother made the street preferable to the home— never 
 home in anything but name— and to the street they went. In the 
 other cases death had, perhaps, broken up the family and thrown 
 the boys upon the world. That was the story of one of the boys I 
 tried to photograph at a quiet game of " craps " in the wash-room 
 of the Duane Street lodging-house— James Brady. Father and 
 mother had both died two months after they came here from Ire- 
 land, and he went forth from the tenement alone and without a 
 friend, but not without courage. He just walked on until he 
 stumbled on the lodging-house and fell into a job of selling papers. 
 James, at the age of sixteen, was being initiated into the mysteries 
 of the alphabet in the evening school. He was not sure that he 
 liked it. The German boy who took a hand in the game, and who 
 made his grub and his bed-money, when he was lucky, by picking 
 U13 junk, had just such a career. The third, the bootblack, gave his 
 reasons briefly for running away from his Philadelphia home : 
 " Me muther wuz all the time hittin' me when I cum in the house, 
 so I cum away." So did a German boy I met there, if for a slightly 
 different reason. He was fresh from over the sea, and had not yet 
 learned a word of English. In his own tongue he told why he 
 came. His father sent him to a gymnasium, but the Latin was " zu 
 schwer " for him, and " der Herr Papa sagt' heraus ! " He was evi- 
 dently a boy of good family, but slow. His father could have 
 taken no better course, certainly, to cure him of that defect, if he 
 did not mind the danger of it. 
 
 Two little brothers, who attracted my attention by the sturdy
 
 126 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 way in whieli they lit Id together, back to back, against the world, 
 as it were, had a different story to tell. Their mother died, and 
 their father, who worked in a gas-house, broke \\^ the household, 
 unable to maintain it. The boys, eleven and thirteen years old, 
 
 A Warm Corner for Newsboys on a Cold Night. 
 
 Avent out to shift for themselves, while he made his home in a Bow- 
 ery lodging-house. The oldest of the brothers was then earning 
 three dollars a week in a factory ; the younger was selling news- 
 papers and making out. The day I first saw him he came in from 
 his route early — it was raining hard — to get dry trousers out for
 
 THE CniLDllEM OF THE rOOE 127 
 
 his brother against the time he shoukl be home from the factory. 
 There was no doubt the two would hew their way through the 
 worhi together. The right stuff was in them, as in the two other 
 lads, also brothers, I found in the Tompkins Square lodging-house. 
 Their parents had both died, leaving them to care for a palsied sis- 
 ter and a little brother. They sent the little one to school and 
 went to work for the sister. Their combined earnings at the shop 
 were just enough to support her and one of the brothers who stayed 
 with her. The other went to the lodging-house, where he could 
 live for eighteen cents a day, turning the rest of his earnings into 
 the family fund. With this view of these homeless lads, the one 
 who goes much among them is not surprised to hear of their club- 
 bing together, as they did in the Seventh Avenue lodging-house, 
 to fit out a little ragamuffin, Avho was brought in shivering from the 
 street, with a suit of clothes. There was not one in the crowd that 
 chipped in Avho had a whole coat to his back. 
 
 It was in this lodging-house I first saw Buffalo. He was pre- 
 sented to me the night I took the picture of my little vegetable- 
 peddling friend, Edward, asleeji on the front bench in evening- 
 school. Edward was nine years old and an orphan, but hard at 
 work every day earning his own living- by shouting from a ped- 
 ler's cart. He could not be made to sit for his picture, and I took 
 him at a disadvantage — in a double sense, for he had not made 
 his toilet ; it was in the days of the threatened water-famine, and 
 the boys had been warned not to waste water in washing, an in- 
 junction they cheerfully obeyed. I was anxious not to have the 
 boy disturbed, so the spelling-class went right on while I set up 
 the camera. It was an original class, original in its answers 
 as in its looks. This was wdiat I heard while I focused on poor 
 Eddie : 
 
 The teacher : " Cheat ! spell cheat." 
 
 Boy spells correctly. 
 
 Teacher : " Eight ! What is it to cheat ? " 
 
 Boy : " To skin one, like Tommy "
 
 12S 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 The teacher cut the exphination short, and ordering up another 
 boy, bade him spell " nerve." He did it. 
 
 " What is nerve ? " demanded the teacher ; " what does it mean ? " 
 
 " Cheek ! don't you know," said 
 the boy, and at that moment I 
 caught Buffalo blacking my sleep- 
 ing pedler's face with ink, just in 
 time to prevent his waking him 
 up. Then it was that I heard the 
 disturber's story. He was a char- 
 acter, and no mistake. He had 
 run away from Buffalo, whence his 
 name, " beating " his way down on 
 the trains until he reached New 
 York. He " shined " around until 
 he got so desperately hard up 
 that he had to sell his kit. Just 
 about then he was discovered hj 
 an artist, who paid him to sit for 
 him in his awful rags, with his 
 tousled hair that had not known 
 the restraint of a cap for months. 
 " Oh ! it was a daisy job," sighetl 
 Buffalo, at the recollection. He 
 had only to sit still and crack 
 jokes. Alas ! Buffalo's first effort 
 at righteousness upset him. He 
 had been taught in the lodging- 
 house that to be clean was the first 
 requisite of a gentleman, and on his first pay-day he went bravely, 
 eschewing " craps," and bought himself a ncAV coat and had his hair 
 cut. When, beaming Avith pride, he presented himself at the 
 studio in his new character, the artist turned him out as no longer 
 of any use to him. I am afraid that Buffalo's ambition to be " like 
 
 Buffalo.
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR 129 
 
 folks " received a shock by this mysterious misfortune that Avill 
 prevent his ever attaining- the level where he may join the class in 
 history that goes by the attractive name of the " Soup-house 
 Gang " in the Duane Street lodging-house school. And it is too 
 bad, for the class is proficient, if it is in its shirt-sleeves, and has at 
 least a couple of members who will certainly make their mark. 
 
 In the summer a good many of the boys sleep in the street ; it 
 is coolest there, and it costs nothing if one can get out of the sight 
 of the policeman. In winter they seek the lodging-diouses or curl 
 themselves up on the steam-pipes in the newspaper offices that 
 open their doors after midnight. They are hunted nowadays so 
 persistently by the police and by the agents of the Society for the 
 Prevention of Cruelty to Children, that very few escape altogether. 
 In the lodging-houses they are made to go to school. There are 
 enough of them always whom nobody owns ; but the great mass of 
 the boys and girls who cry their " extrees ! " on the street are chil- 
 dren with homes, who thus contribute to the family earnings and 
 sleep out, if they do, because they have either not sold their papers 
 or gambled away the money at craps, and are afraid to go home. 
 It was for such a reason little Giuseppe Marg^alto and his chum 
 made their bed in the ventilating chute at the post-office on the 
 night General Sherman died, and were caught by the fire that 
 broke out in the mail-room toAvard midnight. Giuseppe was 
 burned to death ; the other escaped to bring- the news to the dark 
 Crosby Street alley in which he had lived. Giuseppe did not die 
 his cruel death in vain. A much stricter watch has been kept 
 since upon the boys, and they are no longer allowed to sleep in 
 many places to which they formerly had access. The purpose 
 is to corral the homeless element in the lodging-houses ; and but 
 for the neighboring Bowery " hotels " that beckon the older boys 
 with their promise of greater freedom, it would probably be suc- 
 cessfully attained. 
 
 Even with this drawback, the figures of the Children's Aid 
 Society show that progress is being made. While in 1881 its
 
 130 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 lodging'-lioiises sheltered 14,452 children, of whom 13,155 were boys 
 iiud 1,287 girls, in 1891, though more than 500,000 had been added 
 to the city's population, the number of child-lodgers had fallen to 
 11,770, only 335 of whom were girls. The whole number of chil- 
 dren sheltered in the six houses, in twelve years, to 1891, was 149,- 
 994, among them 8,820 girls. The problem is a great one, but the 
 efforts on foot to solve it are as great, and growing. That the be- 
 ginning must be made with the children in the battle with poverty 
 and ignorance and crime was recognized long ago. It has been 
 made ; and we know now that through them the rampart next to 
 be taken — the home — is reached. It has been a forty years' war, 
 and it is only just begun. But the first blow, as the old saying 
 runs, is half the battle, and it has been struck in New York, and 
 struck to win.
 
 THE STOKY OF THE FEESH-AIR FUND 
 By WILLARD PARSONS 
 
 MANAGER 
 
 The Foundation of the Fund— The Post and Tkibune— Statistics of the 
 Fund— Excursions — The Provision for Entertaining the Children — 
 How THE Excursions are Managed — Typical Letters — Effect of the 
 Children's Outings — Some " Fresh-Air Boys'' — The Physicians Report — 
 Fresh- Air Funds in Other Cities — Development op the Plan. 
 
 IN tlie Slimmer of 1877, when pastor of a small clnircli in Slier- 
 nian, Pa., I came to New York and gathered a little company 
 of the poorest and most needy children I could find. They 
 were taken out among" my people, who were waiting- to receive 
 them as their guests for a fortnight during the midsummer heat. 
 Others took the place of the first company ; and at the end of the 
 season the g-ood people had entertained sixty poor city children 
 for a fortnight each ; and that, too, without any compensation save 
 the consciousness of having- done a simple Christ-like act of charity 
 to one in need. This somewhat novel experiment of taking little 
 ones from the wretched city tenements to comfortable country 
 homes was a most gratifying success. 
 
 The object first aimed at was the physical improvement of the 
 poor. It was only after months of earnest thought and careful 
 planning- that the Fresh- Air project was launched, even in this 
 small way. The work was started with the hope of proving that 
 bodies diseased, enfeebled by poor and insufiicient food and foul 
 air, could be benefited by a two weeks' stay in better surroundings.
 
 132 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 lu the i^lan of carrying on this experiment, there were three 
 main factors to be considered, viz. : 1. To get the money. 2. To 
 find the temporary homes. 3. To select the children. 
 
 First, as to raising* the money : It was an easy matter, after the 
 success of the first season, to induce the New York Evening Post to 
 take up the enterprise, and raise the necessary fund to carry on 
 and enlarge it, which it did successfully for four years. 
 
 AVhen the plan of continuing the enterprise was discussed in 
 the spring of 1882, the friends of the "Fund" most heartily wel- 
 comed the willingness of the New York Tribune to take it up ; and 
 it was then transferred from the Evcnhu] Post to the Trihune. By 
 the law of natural selection such a humane undertaking will best 
 crystallize around a journal of the character of the Trihune. The 
 large circulation of that newspaper and its well-known interest in 
 philanthropic labors of like character, together with the high class 
 people the journal reaches, have given the best possible support 
 to the " Fresh-Air Fund." 
 
 Monej' in abundance for all jiossible needs has always been 
 forthcoming. The mere statement in the Trihune that $3.00 would 
 give a poor child a fortnight in the country has been all that was 
 necessary to fill the treasury. It is a most significant fact that 
 more than three hundred thousand dollars have been sent as vol- 
 untary contributions, and it has never been necessary to employ 
 any collectors. 
 
 Every sort of entertainment has been given to swell the fund, 
 from children selling pin- wheels and wild flowers by the wayside, 
 netting, i^erhaps, a few coppers, to the more pretentious fair and 
 festival, netting its hundreds of dollars ; from the boys' circus in 
 the barn to the finished entertainments in public halls. Children 
 have pulled weeds in the garden and boys gone without their 
 Fourtli of July fire-crackers ; the small savings-bank of the dead 
 child has often been sent to bring life and happiness to the poor 
 sick one ; in fact, from Maine to California, from Canada to Florida, 
 from South America, from the Old World, and even from Africa,
 
 THE STORY OF THE FRESH- AIR FUND 
 
 133 
 
 have come voluntary contributions to carry on this most humane 
 work among the poor of our overcrowded city. 
 
 Beginning- in a very unobtrusive way— at first with a party of 
 only nine children, and, as I have said, with sixty for the entire 
 season— the work has grown steadily and rapidly till it has greatly 
 exceeded the wildest dreams of its manager. The growth of the 
 scheme from its inception is best illustrated by the following 
 table : 
 
 
 Number sent to the 
 
 country for two 
 
 weeks. 
 
 Number sent out 
 for one day. 
 
 Total number of 
 beneficiaries 
 
 Expenditures. 
 
 Average cost 
 per capita. 
 
 1877 
 
 1878 
 
 1879 
 
 1880 
 
 1881 
 
 1882 
 
 1883 
 
 1884 
 
 1885 
 
 1886 
 
 1887 
 
 1888 
 
 1889 
 
 1890 
 
 1891 
 
 1892 
 
 1893 
 
 1894 
 
 60 
 
 1,077 
 
 2,400 
 
 2,500 
 
 3,203 
 
 5.500 
 
 4,250 
 
 6,253 
 
 6,650 
 
 8,336 
 
 7.748 
 
 10,920 
 
 10,352 
 
 11,193 
 
 13,568 
 
 15,236 
 
 13,846 
 
 10,171 
 
 '600 
 1,000 
 
 5,700 
 1,000 
 6,073 
 1,600 
 
 18',629 
 
 22,088 
 25,560 
 26,329 
 
 28,432 
 
 60 
 
 1,077 
 
 2,400 
 
 3,100 
 
 4,203 
 
 5,500 
 
 9,950 
 
 7,253 
 
 12,723 
 
 9,936 
 
 7,748 
 
 10,920 
 
 10,352 
 
 29,222 
 
 35,656 
 
 40,796 
 
 40,175 
 
 40,850 
 
 .f 187 62 
 
 2,980 29 
 
 6,511 54 
 
 8,519 71 
 
 8,217 64 
 
 21,325 06 
 
 14,908 69 
 
 18,756 14 
 
 19,863 95 
 
 24,092 09 
 
 22,783 85 
 
 25,636 64 
 
 24,978 29 
 
 23,804 11 
 
 28,068 28 
 
 27,925 51 
 
 26,620 75 
 
 22,809 60 
 
 !if3 12 
 2 77 
 
 2 71 
 
 3 55 
 2 54 
 
 2 85 
 
 3 36 
 3 00 
 2 98 
 2 89 
 2 94 
 2 35 
 2 42 
 2 VI 
 2 03 
 1 83 
 
 1 92 
 
 2 24 
 
 Totals 
 
 133,263 
 
 136,411 
 
 209,674 
 
 S327,989 74 
 
 $2 46 
 
 It is thus seen that during its eighteen years 133,263 children 
 have been sent to the country for a fortnight's vacation, at a total 
 cost of $327,989.74, or at an average cost of $2.46 per capita. Be- 
 sides this, 136,411 have been taken out for a day's trip, which 
 makes the total number of beneficiaries 269,674. The entire ex- 
 penses of the day excursions have been borne by one gentleman, 
 and are not included in the table of expenditures. 
 
 The various transjoortation companies cheerfully make large re-
 
 134 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 ductions from the regular fare. No salaries or office expenses are 
 ever paid from the fund, and many helpers voluntarily give their 
 services. Who can instance a charity where $2.46 invested will do 
 as much good ? 
 
 The second question is most constantly asked: "How do you 
 find the temporary homes for the children ? " I have never found 
 any value in circulars, and but very little response even to personal 
 letters. I have only found success by i^ersonal appeals. Among 
 my own jiarishioners a practical interest was aroused as soon as I 
 had shown them something of the condition of the poor children in 
 the tenements, and the simple plan of relief was most heartily adopt- 
 ed. After the success of the experiment, other communities were 
 more easily interested and were quite ready to offer hospitality. 
 
 I begin early in April a systematic visitation from town to 
 town. A call is made on the various clergymen, the editor of the 
 local paper, and, if possible, a few of the leading citizens. A brief 
 explanation of the work — a few words to show the condition and 
 needs of the tenement-house children and the great benefit of a 
 fortnight's trij), are usually sufficient to awaken a practical interest. 
 Then a local committee is appointed and the success or failure in 
 that community is due, to a large extent, to the zeal and earnest- 
 ness of this committee. The local committee finds out how many 
 children can be provided for, and, when ready for their comj^any, 
 reports the result and arranges with the manager the various 
 details for their coming. Every possible opportunity for getting 
 a knowledge of the work before the people is seized upon. At any 
 and every sort of public meeting that can be heard of, permission 
 is asked to present the cause. Almost without exception, a few 
 minutes are granted. 
 
 Since the charity has grown to such proportions it is not pos- 
 sible for me to give much time to the country visitations, and 
 several people who are thorouglily familiar with my methods, and 
 in whom I have perfect confidence, have been most successful in 
 arousing an interest in the cause in the country. A railway ticket
 
 THE STORY OF THE FRESH- AIR FUND 135 
 
 g-iven is often the only expense necessary to send some of the city 
 missionaries, physicians, or clergymen into their native regions, 
 where (with an extended acquaintance among the people) it is easy 
 to induce them to throw wide open their hosi:)itable doors. In 
 every case there is a great deal in personal solicitation. 
 
 In answer to the third question, I may say that it is no easy mat- 
 ter to select the children for these trips. Everyone who has had the 
 care of getting a band of children ready for the countr\^ will most 
 readily testify to the truth of this statement. Last svimmer more 
 than two hundred workers among the poor aided in the selecting 
 and preparing the children for the country. These workers are 
 from the Church Missions, Bible Missions, Hospitals, Dispensaries, 
 Industrial Schools, Day Nurseries, Model Tenement Houses, and 
 kindred organizations. When the local committee has reported the 
 number they can receive their list is apportioned among those who 
 have children to send. A record is kept of all organizations and 
 individuals who apply for a share in the benefits, and the first one 
 to apply is called upon for children for the first company- to start. 
 Before the season is over all have abundant oj^portuuity to send 
 their most needy ones. The children selected manifest all degrees 
 of ignorance of the country — from those who imagine they know all 
 about it, having played under the trees in a city square, to the boy 
 who was shown a large herd of Alderneys by his farmer-host, and, 
 after intently watching them chew the cud, asked, " Say, mister, do 
 you have to buy gum for all them cows to chew ? " 
 
 Those who apply for a chance to send their children to the 
 country are instructed that they must be poor and needy, without 
 any infectious disease, clean, and free from vermin. A physician 
 then inspects each child. Dr. C. C. Vinton was the examining phy- 
 sician in 1890, and he examined nearly fifteen thousand children, 
 of whom about five thousand were sent into the country. Each 
 day the Board of Health furnished a list of the houses where there 
 was any contagious disease ; which was of immense help. With 
 that list before him, it was easy for the examiner to stop any child
 
 136 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 who came from an infected house. The majority were refused on 
 account of their hopeless condition as to vermin. It is a herculean 
 task to get the average tenement-house child in a suitable condition 
 to be received into country families. 
 
 What is the effect of entertaining- these poor children upon their 
 country hosts ? Will they receive such guests a second time in 
 their homes ? Is there no danger in bringing children directly out 
 of their low surroundings into families where the children are so 
 differently trained ? 
 
 The danger is much less than would at first appear. Those who 
 select the children are, for the most j^art, trained workers who have 
 a personal knowledge of each child and its surrounding, and they 
 send only such as are considered somewhat fitted to enter the new 
 home. The judgment of these Christian workers is by no means 
 infallible, yet the average result is remarkably good. The children 
 are on their good behavior. Self-respect is engendered. The en- 
 tirely new and comfortable surroundings usually bring out the 
 best in the child, and the fortnight's vacation is over before the 
 novelty has worn off. 
 
 A clergyman in northern New York, after having entertained one 
 hundred children, wrote as follows : " They have left a rich bless- 
 ing behind them, and they actually gave more than they received. 
 They have touched the hearts of the people and opened the foun- 
 tains of love, sympathy, and charity. The people have read about 
 the importance of benevolence, and have heard many sermons on 
 the beauty of charity ; but these have been quickly forgotten. The 
 children have been an object-lesson that will long live in their 
 hearts and minds." 
 
 "We want to thank you," wrote another minister from Massa- 
 chusetts, " for giving us this opportunity to do so much good. 
 Any inconvenience to which we have been put during the two 
 weeks is insignificant now, as we look at these thirt}^ glad faces and 
 think of the purifying and strengthening influences that have come
 
 THE STORY OF THE FRESH- AIR FUND 137 
 
 into their younq- lives during" these two weeks' stay with us." 
 These two letters are fair samples of hundreds of others I receive 
 every year. 
 
 Many people become strongly attached to the children, and fol- 
 low them into their wretched homes with letters and substantial 
 gifts. These country letters are highly prized and religiously 
 guarded. Nearly two thousand of these letters were forwarded to 
 me last year, containing invitations for the child to repeat the visit. 
 I can now recall no community where hospitality has been given 
 once, but that some children have been invited back the following- 
 years. 
 
 The success of the charity turns upon the country friends' will- 
 ingness to receive the children into their homes, and as yet thej^ 
 have shown no sig-ns of being weary in this service ; each year the 
 number of free places has increased. To the hospitable country 
 family the larg-est share of the work has fallen, both in practical 
 care and personal toucli. To them belongs the g-reatest credit ! 
 They have g-iven hospitality and a rich laersonal service during- the 
 Imsiest days of the year. It is given too — not grudgingly, but with 
 wonderful heartiness. 
 
 Nothing has ever so strengthened my faith in humanity as the 
 kind and loving- way the country i:)eople have received these 
 stranger guests. 
 
 Is there in the fortnight's outing for the poor anything- more 
 than a merely pleasant holiday ? AMiat good can accrue from tak- 
 ing a child out of its wretched home, and after two weeks of com- 
 fort and decent living, sending it back to its old surroundings ? 
 One minister writes : " It will only make the child discontented 
 with the surroundings where God placed him." 
 
 I contend that a great gain has been made, if you can only suc- 
 ceed in making- the tenement-house child thoroughly discontented 
 with his lot. There is some hope then of his getting out of it and 
 rising to a higher plane. The new life he sees in the country, the
 
 138 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 contact with good people, not at arm's length, but in their homes; 
 not at tlie dinner, feast, or entertainment given to him while the 
 giver stands by and looks doivn to see how he enjoys it, and re- 
 marks on his forlorn appearance ; but brought into the family and 
 given a seat at the table, where, as one boy wrote home, " I can 
 have two pieces of pie if I want, and nobody says nothing if I take 
 three pieces of cake ; " or, as a little girl reported, where " We have 
 lots to eat, and so much to eat that we could not tell you how much 
 we get to eat." 
 
 This is quite a different kind of service, and has resulted in the 
 complete transformation of many a child. It has gone back to its 
 wretchedness, to be sure, but in hundreds of instances about which 
 I have personally known it has returned with head and heart full of 
 ncAV ways, new ideas of decent living, and has successfully taught 
 the shiftless parents the better way. One, little girl talked so much 
 of her trill and described the country life in such glowing terms, 
 that her father came to inquire where it was his child went, add- 
 ing, " I should think it was Heaven, from the way she talks 
 about it." 
 
 Many a girl has begun, immediately on her return, to persuade 
 her mother to adopt the ways of the country mother. In scores of 
 instances that have come under my personal observation, children 
 have become so delighted with the country life, with its possibili- 
 ties for the poor, that they have persuaded the family to migrate, 
 the country friends gladly helping them to a home, and giving 
 work to make them independent. 
 
 One of the most serious problems of country life is to get help 
 for the necessary household work ; to be sure the few hundred peo- 
 ple that have been helped by this charity to locate permanently in 
 the country is but a drop in the bucket, and does not go far tow- 
 ard solving the " help " question ; still it is a little aid in the right 
 direction. 
 
 Even supposing it was nothing but a bright and pleasant holi- 
 day, and that after the two weets of good and wholesome food,
 
 THE STORY OF THE FRESH-AIR FUND 139 
 
 Avith pure air to breathe, the children were to go back to their okl 
 life — that is no small gain. We who do not live in tenements and, 
 perhaps, are not obliged to work till the cheek grows pale, never 
 think of objecting, when it comes our time for a fortnight's rest, 
 because after the holiday we must return to our toilsome place. 
 The change is thought necessary for those avIio have everything to 
 make it least necessary ; then certainly the holiday is none the less 
 beneficial for those whose whole life has been simply an exhaust- 
 ing battle with fearful odds against them. 
 
 A physician tells us we must take the loved one to a different 
 climate if we would save his life, and we lose no time in obeying 
 his orders. To thousands of the poor the same words have been 
 spoken. The same change was the only hope ; and the only 
 change possible was, perhaps, a ride on the ferry-boat. To thou- 
 sands of poor mothers the physicians have said, " Your child only 
 needs pure air. with wholesome and nutritious food." Perhaps 
 delicacies to tempt the appetite have been ordered when only the 
 plainest and coarsest necessaries are procurable. In thousands of 
 such cases the Fresh-Air Fund has come to the rescue, and given 
 both the pure air and the wholesome food, with results most 
 happy. 
 
 Let me give two or three instances where the moral influences 
 exerted by the simple and kindly life (sometimes with eccentric 
 peojjle), have resulted most happily on the child. 
 
 In 1878 a Mrs. Y , who was noted far and wide for her pe- 
 
 nuriousness, wrote me : " Homes are ready with me for two boys 
 and two girls, if your work is for the virtuous class of unfortunate 
 children. Please be plain and frank in the matter, for I don't wish 
 to have anything to do with a work that is not all right. God give 
 you wisdom.'' The italics are not mine. Someone had frightened 
 her by the statement that all the poor city children were illegiti- 
 mate. 
 
 One of the quartet sent to this place was a little fellow from one 
 of the most wretched homes that drink has caused. The boy had
 
 140 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 never before known kind treatment, and the pure, simple, and 
 wholesome life, Avith the abundant food of the hillside farm, stirred 
 his nature to the very depths and called out all his latent energies. 
 A few months ag-o, while in a bank, a Avell-dressed fellow immedi- 
 ately behind me in the line, reached out his hand, saying : 
 
 " I suppose you don't know me ; but I am Henry C ." 
 
 " Why," said I, " you must be the boy that Mrs. Y spanked 
 
 and fitted out with a complete suit of homespun, with the jacket 
 sleeves of a different color ! " 
 
 " Yes, I am the identical boy. I can't tell w^hether it was due to 
 the spanking or to the Joseph - like coat, but that two weeks 
 changed my whole life. I went to work when I came back, and 
 have been wdtli the same firm ever since. See here," said he, and 
 he opened his bank-book, showing several thousand dollars he was 
 about to deposit for the firm, " don't that look as though the firm 
 had confidence in me ? I literally came up out of the very lowest 
 slums, and my present prosperous condition is due to the interest 
 that family in the country has always taken in me since my visit 
 with them in 1878." 
 
 In the earlier days of the work a bright boy of ten was one of a 
 company invited to Schoharie County, N. Y. He endeared him- 
 self so thoroughly to his entertainers, who " live in a Avhite house 
 with green blinds and Christmas-trees all around it," that they 
 asked and received permission to keep the lad permanently. The 
 following is an exact copy of a part of the letter he wrote home 
 after he had been for a few months in his new home : 
 
 DEAPi MOTHER 
 
 i am still to Mrs. D and i was so Busy that i Could not Write Sooner i 
 
 drive the horses and put up the Cows and clean out the Cow Stable i am all 
 well i pick stones and i have an apple tree 6 Feet High and I have got a pair of 
 
 new pants and a new Coat and a pair of Suspenders and Mr. D is getting a 
 
 pair of New Boots made for me We killed one pig and one Cow i am going to 
 
 plow a little piece of land and plant Some Corn. When Mr. D killed the 
 
 Cow i helped and Mr. D had to take the Cow skin to be taned to make 
 
 leather and Mr. D gave the man Cow skin for leather to make me Boots i
 
 THE STORY OF THE FRESH- AIR FUND 141 
 
 am going to school to-morrow and i want to tell lizzie — panline — Charlie- 
 Christie — maggie — george and you to all write to me and if they all do when 
 Christmas Comes i will send all of you something nice if my uncle frank comes 
 to see yous you must tell him to write to me i Close my letter 
 
 From your oldest son A . 
 
 A year after that time tlie mother died. Some time afterward 
 an uncle beg-an Avriting- for the hxd to come back to the city — 
 he coveted his small earnings. But the little fellow had sense 
 enough to see that he was better off where he was. Finally the 
 uncle went after the boy, and told him his brother was dying in 
 the hospital, and was calling" constantly for him. Under such cir- 
 cumstances his foster parents readily gave him permission to re- 
 turn with the uncle for a visit. Before they reached the city, the 
 uncle told him he should never go back. He sent him to work at 
 Eleventh Avenue and Twenty-ninth Street, in a Avork-room situated 
 in the cellar, and his bedroom, like those in most tenement-houses, 
 had no outside window. The third day he was sent ujostairs on an 
 errand, and as soon as he saw the open door he bolted. He remem- 
 bered that a car that passed Fourth Street and Avenue C, would 
 take him to the People's Line for Albany. He ran with all his 
 might to Fourth Street, and then followed the car-tracks till he saw 
 on the large flag " Peoples' Line." He told part of his story to 
 the clerk, and finally added, "I am one of Mr. Parsons' Fresh-Air 
 boys, and I have got to go to Albany." That settled the matter, 
 and the clerk readily gave him a pass, A gentleman standing by 
 gave him a quarter for his supper. He held on to his appetite as 
 well as his quarter ; and in the morning laid his twenty-five cents 
 before the ticket agent at Albany, and called for a ticket to 
 
 E , a small place fifty miles distant. . He got the ticket. After 
 
 a few miles' walk from R he reached his new home safely, 
 
 and there he proposed to stay. He said he would take to the 
 woods if his uncle came after him again. This transpired fourteen 
 years ago. 
 
 Several years ago, a letter came from the young fellow. He is
 
 14:2 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 now an active Christian, married, and Avortli property, and expects 
 in a few years to have his farm all paid for. 
 
 Not long- ag-o I was stopped on Broadway by a well-dressed and 
 prosperous-looking- young man. 
 
 " I am one of your Fresh-Air boys— I am John ." I readily 
 
 recalled the boy. In 1878 he was one of a party taken to central 
 NeAV York. It had been a hot and very dusty ride, and at the end 
 of the journey this Five Points boy looked so thoroughly disrepu- 
 table, that the person who was to take him utterly refused to ac- 
 cept such a dirty and ill-looking boy. The tears of the lad, when 
 he found that no one wanted him, Howed in streams down his dirty 
 face, while the two tear-washed streaks, the red and white and black 
 spots about liis eyes and mouth, gave him a most unpromising 
 look. Before I reached the hotel with the sobbing and " left over " 
 boy a man came out of a small butcher shop, and so heartily and 
 kindly invited the boy to stay with him that the tears ceased in- 
 stantly. A thorougli bath and a new suit made a wonderful trans- 
 formation. The family took a great interest in and became 
 strongly attached to him. The chang-e from the wretched Cherry 
 Street tenement, with its drunken and often brutal parents, to the 
 clean and cheerful family of the butcher, where he was kindly 
 treated, made a strong impression. The family kept track of the 
 boy by corresponding with him, and have claimed a visit from him 
 every.year since. He is now married, lives in a comfortable Hat, 
 and has a good position as a commercial traveller. 
 
 Each child was chosen the first year on account of its physical 
 needs. The late Dr. White, of Brooklyn, most carefully examined 
 every child sent out, the entire sixty having passed through his 
 hands. He kept a careful record, and the following extracts from 
 a report which he submitted to a medical society will show the 
 success of the undertaking on its physical side : 
 
 All were taken from the very poor, though not from the class that usnally 
 beg from door to door. They were selected mainly with reference to their
 
 THE STORY OF THE FRESH- AIR FUND 143 
 
 physical condition, and were suffering more or less with some clironio disease, 
 born of neglect, privation, filth, and foul air. Prominent among the diseases 
 represented were scrofula, consumption, chronic bronchitis, asthma, hip-joint, 
 and spinal troubles. Among them were confirmed cripples, as well as those in 
 the incipient stage of more or less incurable diseases ; while others were simjily 
 in bad health, delicate, or sickly, the result of impure air or insufficient and 
 imj^roper food. Enfeebled by want and disease, bred in poverty and filth, no 
 wonder their faces, for the most part, were thin, pale, and haggard, and even 
 their smiles feeble and sicklv. 
 
 Of the effects of the trips he says generally : 
 
 Appetites improved, coughs ceased to be troublesome, ulcers healed, grow- 
 ing deformities were arrested, cheeks filled out and grew ruddy, spirits became 
 buoyant, the step elastic and childlike, while the sickly smile gave place to the 
 hearty laugh of childhood ; or, as very happily ex^iressed by a friend, "They 
 went out men and women — they came back little children." 
 
 To the educated physicians to whom the report was addressed 
 this general statement meant a good deal more than the words in- 
 dicate to most laymen. We who are not physicians do not under- 
 stand as physicians do how important the general building up of 
 the system is in the treatment of positive disease, and very few 
 persons not trained in the medical schools would think of a hy- 
 gienic vacation as an effective method of treating physical deform- 
 ity. In such a case we should hope to make the unfortunate child 
 happier, perhaps, by sending him to the country, but beyond that 
 v;e should not venture to hope for good. Yet here is what the 
 physician reported to his associates of such a case : 
 
 Another marked case of improvement was a boy, five years of age, who had 
 been suffering more than a year with disease of the upper dorsal vertebrse. 
 The disease had been detected in its earliest stages, and as the mother, a widow 
 with five young children, was very poor and unable to give i:)roper care or suit- 
 able food to the little patient, I had him sent to a hospital established for 
 treating such cases, expecting he would receive such special treatment as 
 his case required. After a residence of some months in the hospital, finding 
 that nothing was done for him excepting allowing him to live there, and that he 
 was constantly growing worse, the mother clandestinely brought him away. I 
 found him in constant pain, nights restless and sleepless, appetite gone, emaci-
 
 144 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 ation extreme, and deformity increasing. In that condition lie went to the 
 country with his little brother, seven years old, for nurse and guardian. A few 
 weeks' residence there produced a marvellous change. He came back hale and 
 hearty, health completely established— his spinal trouble arrested— indeed, 
 cured. 
 
 That little fellow's cure cost some contributor to tlie fund about 
 three dollars, and a family in the country a fortnight's hospi- 
 tality. 
 
 The following- are additional extracts from Dr. White's interest- 
 ing report : 
 
 The whole number selected under my own supervision was sixty. As to 
 diseases, they were classified as follows : 
 
 General debility 31 
 
 Deformities 7 
 
 Hip-joint disease 5 
 
 Spinal disease ^ 
 
 Knee-joint disease 1 
 
 Consumption 5 
 
 Bronchitis 4 
 
 Chorea 3 
 
 Chronic ulcers 2 
 
 Total 60 
 
 All those whose health was being slowly undermined by living in the impure 
 air of crowded and badly ventilated apartments, or from insufficient and im- 
 proper food, as well as those enfeebled by a previous attack of some acute dis- 
 ease, were classed under the head of General Debility, without reference to the 
 cause of their physical condition. Nearly all of this class returned home com- 
 pletely restored to health. All others were greatly benefited by the trip, and, 
 if not cured, in many cases with disease arrested for the time being at least. 
 All the cases of consumption improved. One young woman, aged twenty-thi'ee, 
 inheriting phthisis from her mother, and suffering for more than a year with 
 hemorrhages, harassing cough, and profuse expectoration, was so exhausted by 
 the trip on the Annex to the Erie Railroad depot that Mr. Parsons had misgiv- 
 ings about the propriety of her going on, fearing the result. She was carried 
 through safely, though soon after arriving at her destination an attack of hem- 
 orrhage prostrated her still more. She returned, after an absence of six weeks, 
 literally another being, resuming labor which sickness had interrui^ted, in the 
 shop where she still continues to work.
 
 THE STORY OF THE FRESH- AIR FUND 145 
 
 I afterward learned that the family who had entertained this 
 girl Avere straining- every nerve to save enough to pay interest on 
 borrowed money, and thus avert the sale of their farm. While 
 writing this article I have heard that this girl is now living in a 
 comfortable home of her own, apparently as well as any one ; and 
 it was only last summer that the eldest of her four children enjoyed 
 the farmer's hospitality. It may be of interest to add, that a lady, 
 who had been interested in this girl, when she heard of the farmer's 
 financial condition, made a most substantial gift to help him out of 
 his difficulty. 
 
 Dr. White also says in his report that " very marked improve- 
 ment Avas observed in nearly all cases of joint and spinal diseases." 
 
 I have given more space to this report of the first year of the 
 work for the simple reason that when but few children were sent 
 out, it was comparatively easy to watch the results closely. Now, 
 while many thousands are sent each year, selected by about two 
 hundred difierent workers, it is far more difficult and well-nigh im- 
 possible to have a personal knowledge of many of the children. 
 Yet I am fully convinced that when the children are carefully 
 chosen the same good results always obtain. The following brief 
 reports from responsible people, thoroughly familiar with the 
 work, surely su^^port this conviction : 
 
 The superintendent of one of the missions that has sent a large 
 number of children into the country says : " In the fall I can tell, 
 by just looking in their faces, which of the children have been in 
 the country. They are fatter, ruddier, and their whole expression 
 is changed and improved." 
 
 The superintendent of another of the Church Missions, who is 
 also a physician, told me that he selected the weakly ones each 
 year for the country trip, and he found the benefit so great that 
 they were the stronger ones during the winter. He instanced sev- 
 eral cases where particularly puny children, predisposed to nervous 
 and lung difficulties, had been entirely restored to robust health. 
 
 One of the missionary nurses said to me recently : " There are 
 lu
 
 146 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 about two liuiidred children sent to the comitry fvom our mission 
 each year. These nearly all live in the crowded tenements where 
 four families occupy each floor. I constantly visit among the sick 
 in these poor families, and I notice that those children who had a 
 fortnight in the country are much stronger physically, and the im- 
 proved condition lasts during the winter." 
 
 The chairman of the local committee in one village community 
 weighed every child in the party on arrival, and again after four- 
 teen days in the country. The average age was ten years. The 
 least gain was shown in a four-year-old boy, who added only one 
 pound to his weight. The greatest by an eleven-year-old girl, who 
 gained nine pounds. The average gain for the entire party was 
 four and nine-tenths pounds. 
 
 A missionary from one of the City Mission chapels says : " Dur- 
 ing the eight years I have been connected with this chapel, we have 
 sent out through the Fresh-Air Fund many hundreds of children. 
 I believe this fortnight in the country to be of incalculable benefit, 
 both educationally and physically. In a number of instances the 
 entire family of a beneficiary of the fund has been led to move to 
 the country. No small part of the good accomplished is the build- 
 ing up of health, and instances come constantly to my notice where 
 the two weeks in the country have, I believe, saved the life." 
 
 Dr. Vinton says : " In my experience of several years I have 
 seen much benefit received physically by children sent into the 
 country for two weeks. The first child I sent under the Trihune 
 
 Fresh - Air Fund was Annie , whom I had been treating 
 
 throughout the summer for St. Vitus's dance, and for whom place 
 was made in the last party of the year. She came back after two 
 weeks, rosy - cheeked instead of pale, heavier by a number of 
 pounds, and without any trace of her nervous trouble." 
 
 " In August, 1889," he adds, " I accompanied a party of about 
 one hundred and twenty children to Franklinville, N. Y., and again 
 took charge of them on their return to the city two weeks later. 
 The improvement in the physical condition of many of these cliil-
 
 THE STORY OF THE FRESH- AIR FUND 147 
 
 dren was very noticeable, eyes and faces which had been wan and 
 sunken, bearing- the evidences of health. The same changes were 
 noticed in a party I brought back from Waterville in the summer 
 of 1888, most of whom I had examined two weeks previously." 
 
 Dr. Daniel, who has long taken a professional interest in the 
 work, writes to me : 
 
 In 1890 I sent 235 children on excursions of the Fresh-Air Fund. 1 shall 
 comment upon them under the following classification : 
 
 1. Thirty-five children re-invited by their hosts of former years. Of these 
 not one had been ill during the preceding year, nor has been since. I have 
 either seen or heard directly from all of these, and for obvious reasons these are 
 the children who show the most jihysical improvement. 
 
 2. One hundred and four delicate children, i.e., children who are weakly 
 without recent acute illness. Of this number 1 can count thirty -five who were 
 not at the time under treatment in the dispensary. These were sent either to 
 care for younger children or because they were not very strong. All were bene- 
 fited by the change, as far as I know. Of- this class I can give the least positive 
 evidence because I have seen possibly only one-half of them. 
 
 3. Forty-seven children recovering from acute illness. These included ty- 
 phoid fever, measles, and acute pulmonary diseases, such as pneumonia and 
 bronchitis. All were improved, except two, increased in weight and with bet- 
 ter appetites. 
 
 4. Twenty-five chronic invalids. These included consumptives, those suf- 
 fering from tuberculosis of the glands, chronic heart diseases and bone dis- 
 eases. Of this class three were decidedly worse after the vacation, and the rest 
 were slightly improved ; the greatest improvement being in the appetite. All 
 of this class are continually under my observation. 
 
 5. Twenty-four children of the striking cloak- makers. This class showed 
 the most improvement, excepting only the first class. These children were 
 taken into the country simply because they were hungry and had been for sev- 
 eral weeks. All returned very much imj^roved in appearance and evidently in 
 weight ; the pale face and the hungry appearance had disappeared. Doctor 
 Brown took these children to the country and returned with them, and her 
 testimony agrees with mine. I have seen at least one-half of these children 
 since, and they still remain well. 
 
 1 should classify the children again into the very ^^oor, that is, those con- 
 tinuously poor, and children of a class who are able to have the actual necessa- 
 ries of life. About one-half of the children I sent last summer (not including 
 the cloak-makers' children) belong to the very poor class. These were not so 
 much benefited as the better class, because, 1, they are in a state of chronic 
 hunger ; 2, the time is not long enough to make much of an improvement ; and
 
 148 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 3, the slight benefit derived is not permanent, because they return to the same 
 mode of life. 
 
 Of the two hundred and thirty-five children twenty lived above Fourteenth 
 Street, two west of Broadway, four in Hoboken, and the others lived east of the 
 Bowery as far south as Chatham Square ; fifty-seven lived in rear tenements, 
 and twenty-eight in basements. 
 
 I have sent children for six or seven years, but have not definite statistics, 
 yet my impression is that at least one-half of the children sent are improved 
 physically. The most marked improvement is in appetite and general appear- 
 ance. I can say that I believe the Fresh-Air Fund is the best plaster we have 
 for unjust social conditions of the people. 
 
 One of the most gratify in g- results of this Fresh- Air enterprise 
 has been the readiness with wliich the idea has been taken np hj 
 others, till to-day there are vacation societies for about every class 
 of the poor. A great many of the city churches now provide fresh 
 air for the sick poor. Various societies and hospitals have their 
 country summer homes. Missions have their cottages by the sea. 
 Working girls' vacation societies provide a fortnight in the coun- 
 try for working girls who need the change ; other societies have 
 sprung up which provide for mothers both Avith and without young 
 children. King's Daughters' circles open houses for a few weeks 
 or for the season, and send into the city for the quota of inmates. 
 
 The Bartholdi Creche has been organized to help women with 
 small children who are unable to leave home except for a few hours 
 at a time. New York Life has started a summer village, where a 
 deserted hamlet, containing a score of cottages beautifully shaded, 
 is turned into a populous village, and where three hundred at one 
 time can find ample accommodations. Unoccupied houses in many 
 a town have been temporarily fitted up for the little city sufferers. 
 
 During the last few years there has been a number of perma- 
 nent places fitted up for children. At these homes there are skilled 
 people to manage and entertain children, and most excellent residts 
 are obtained. 
 
 The best results are obtained where the children are received 
 into the country families, for there the great moral influences are 
 best exerted, yet all these other plans do a vast amount of good.
 
 THE STORY OF THE FRESH- AIR FUND 149 
 
 There has also been a marked growth iu the direction of day ex- 
 cursions. More than a score of times last summer invitations were 
 sent from some of the suburban towns, for ten, twenty, or one hun- 
 dred of the poor, to come as their g-uests for a day. Transportation 
 and most abundant food were supplied. One gentleman, who only 
 stipulated that his name should not be published, gives for the en- 
 tire season the use of a grove on the Hudson. He also supplies all 
 the money for barges, music, and milk. Through the generosity of 
 this one man, more than one hundred and thirty-six thousand of 
 the city poor have had a day's outing. 
 
 Not only have various organizations in New York been quick to 
 seize hold of this Fresh-Air idea and adopt some phase of it for 
 their own poor, but the interest has been very marked in other 
 cities. Committees have waited upon the writer, from Boston and 
 Philadelphia, or have sent for instructions, to aid them in starting 
 a Fresh-Air Fund for the poor — in each of these cities they now 
 have a prosperous Country Week. Also from Hartford, Troy, Al- 
 bany, Buffalo, Chicago, 8t. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Baltimore, 
 and San Francisco, have inquiries and committees come. Quite a 
 number of other cities of less importance have also sent to ascer- 
 tain how such a work can be started. 
 
 Committees have also visited New York, to find out the modus 
 operandi, from Toronto, Montreal, St. Johns, and London and Man- 
 chester. Li London there is now a large work done for the poor, 
 either in the way of day-trips or a week's stay in the country. Ger- 
 many and Italy, too, have sent for information on the subject. 
 Dresden, Stuttgart, Vienna, and Berlin have each joined the move- 
 ment, and there is now a prosperous Fresh-Air work in each of 
 these cities. Some time ago a lady from the Sandwich Lslands 
 wrote for full information concerning the work. She was to pre- 
 sent the i^lans in detail at a large gathering in Honolulu. The 
 latest call for reports and statistics came from Russia. 
 
 This Fresh-Air movement all began in a small hamlet in north- 
 eastern Pennsylvania ; among a small flock, not one of whom was
 
 150 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 rich euoug"li to purchase the most modest house in New York. The 
 first baud numbered only nine — since that eighteen cars have been 
 necessary to accommodate a single party. The little enterprise so 
 simply started in 1877, has made its influence felt from Canada to 
 South America, from Boston to San Francisco. There has never 
 been an org-anization or staff of officers. The constitution and by- 
 laws are made and amended from day to day as required, and have 
 yet to be written. Perhaps the time is near at hand when the work 
 should be more systematically developed. I am quite certain that 
 a large number of skilled and paid helpers could be employed with 
 most satisfactory results.
 
 BOYS' CLUBS IN NEW YORK 
 
 Br EVERT JANSEX WENDELL 
 
 The Boys of the Tenements — Street Life— A Boys" Temptations— First Idea 
 OF the Boys' Clubs— Their Management — The Boys' Club of St. Mark's 
 Place — The Avenue C Working Boys' Club — Classes and Amusements — 
 Boys' Club op Calvary Parish — The Free-reading-room for Boys — The 
 Manor Chapel Boys' Club — The North Side, the West Side, and Other 
 Clubs- Some Club Documents — Entertainments— Songs— The Results — 
 The needs of a Successful Club Worker. 
 
 ANYONE wlio has been dowu to the tenement-house districts 
 on either side of our city of New York, knows how overrun 
 they are with boys of all descriptions, races, and sizes. 
 Ever\' doorway pours forth its little quota, and it is sometimes 
 Avitli difficulty that one can thread one's way through the crowds 
 that literally swarm about the sidewalks. Some are playing- quiet- 
 ly ; some are fighting ; some are " passing " ball when the police- 
 man on the beat is not in sight ; and others are gathered in lit- 
 tle groups smoking cigarettes, pitching pennies, or hatching some 
 scheme for fun when night comes. 
 
 Night is the great time ! In the morning many of them are at 
 school, and the streets are comparatively deserted ; l)ut in the af- 
 ternoon, when the schools let out, the children, with all the pent- 
 up energy produced by six hours of repression, descend upon them 
 and make them resound, only taking time to rush in for a few mo- 
 ments at supper-time, and then out again, to remain as late as is 
 consistent with escaping a spanking when they finally come in for 
 the nisrht.
 
 152 THE POOR IX GREAT CITIES 
 
 It is not strange that thej' seek tlie streets when one realizes 
 that the homes of many of them consist only of one or two small 
 rooms in a tenement-house, which have to serve as parlor, bed- 
 room, and kitchen, for father, mother, and all the children — and 
 families are not apt to be small in the tenement-house district. A 
 few of the more sober-minded stay in at night to prepare their les- 
 sons for the next daj^ or to help the mother care for the smaller 
 children, or wash the dishes ; but often they would only be in the 
 way, and it is more convenient for the mother to have them off 
 somewhere, amusing themselves, than under her feet, as she sets 
 the little home to rights, and the father wants a quiet rest after his 
 hard daj-'s work ; so the greater part of the children naturally seek 
 the streets at night — good and bad alike — and strong must the 
 character be that can long remain untarnished in the midst of all 
 that goes on there. 
 
 Many of them are children with instincts as pure and high- 
 minded as your ovra, if only they could be rightly trained ; chil- 
 dren of honest and hard-working jjarents, whose influence on them 
 during the short time that their daily labor permits them to be to- 
 gether is all that need be asked. But these children, from force of 
 circumstances, have to play side by side with children low in mind 
 and expression, unwashed, whose home influences are of the worst, 
 and who drink, smoke, chew, swear, or steal, when they are not in 
 the gallery of some cheap theatre, in one of the many small gam- 
 bling - dens in the rear of an innocent - looking candy or grocery 
 store, or " scrapping " in some dark corner far enough removed 
 from the glare of the saloons to render their movements indistinct. 
 All about, too, are groups of older boys just approaching manhood, 
 or its age, loafing about the corners, going in and out of the pool- 
 rooms, telling low stories, and making careless remarks to the 
 women who pass by ; while the not unusual spectacle of the men, 
 and sometimes women, rolling home from the grog-shops, com- 
 pletes a picture which makes it patent that if these boys are to 
 have a fair chance to develoj) good, wholesome characters, some
 
 BOYS' CLUBS IX XEW YORK 
 
 153 
 
 Tr.e Ca-perters' S'cs — A.erue C Wc'V^'g Brrs C jb. 
 
 Other alternative must be offered to tliem for tlie passing- of their 
 evening-s. 
 
 Something must be provided which will attract them from the 
 dirt and crime of the sti^eets to places where they will, instead, be 
 surrounded by simple cleanliness and good breeding ; where a cor-
 
 154 THE POOR IX GREAT CITIES 
 
 dial welcome will take the place of the rong-h greetiugs of their 
 street companions, and where they will have everj' opportunity to 
 jjass an evening of innocent enjoyment, restrained onh- by having 
 to consider the comfort and pleasure of the other boys about them. 
 
 It is from force of circumstances that many a small boy has 
 found himself in court on a charge of theft, unmanageable conduct, 
 or vagrancv — the three great heads under which our iuvenile de- 
 linquents are arraigned ! Many a boy has been taught to steal bv 
 an older companion of the streets, who draws a wily picture of how 
 easy it will be for him to tap a till or snatch from the front of a 
 store the coat or pair of shoes he can exchange at the pawnshop for 
 the pennies he gets so few of at home : who shares the pennies, if 
 the plan prove a success, and who leaves him to his fate if he is 
 caught. Many a bo\' has become unmanageable at home because 
 he has had so little home influence, and because on the street he 
 has been continually surrounded by boys whose disregard for home 
 restraint, and contempt for those who are bound by it, are very in- 
 fectious when no one is b\' to say a word on the other side. Many 
 a boy has been found sleeping* in a box or a wagon because he has 
 been beguiled by flaring- advertisements to go with " the rest of the 
 fellers " into the top gallery of a cheap theatre, and has emerg'ed 
 again, after having had his curiosity improperly satisfied, at so late 
 an hour that he honestly feared to go to the home he ought to have 
 gone to two or three hours earlier, and face his angry father — and 
 in each case the trouble has been brought about by the influences 
 of the street, with no one by to counteract them or to ofler any 
 proper alternative in place of their attractions. 
 
 Dirt and crime go hand in hand ; and if you can teach a boy 
 that cleanliness of body and courtesy of manner are preferable to 
 unwashed hands and surliness of speech, you will have helped him 
 forward farther than you know on his road to resjiectable man- 
 hood. 
 
 It was in the fall of 1878 that the small lioys about Tompkins 
 Square, having exhausted the ordinary methods of street enjoy-
 
 > 
 < 
 
 UJ 
 
 z 
 o 
 o
 
 vN^^'^
 
 BOYS' CLUBS IN NEW YORK 157 
 
 ment, began to amuse themselves by throwing- stones through the 
 windows of the Wilson Mission at No. 125 St, Mark's Place, and by 
 jeering- at the various people connected Avith it as they passed in 
 and out of the building-. These customs proving- in time both ex- 
 pensive and annoying- to the ladies and g-entlemen connected with 
 the mission, and complaints to the Police Department only result- 
 ing in a temporary cessation of hostilities whenever the lynx-eyed 
 policeman on the beat appeared, and as long as he remained in 
 sight, one of the ladies determined to try the soothing effects of 
 coals of fire, poured metaphorically upon the heads of the offend- 
 ing boys. So one evening she answered an especially irritating 
 volley of stones by appearing on the door-steps, and taking advan- 
 tage of a momentary lull in the cat-calls which her appearance had 
 excited, asked the boys if they would not come in and have some 
 coffee and cakes. Visions of " cops " with clubs behind the door 
 naturalh^ occurred to the minds of the prospective guests ; but 
 when a few of the more venturesome had sidled in, and no attacks, 
 apparently, had been made on them, the others took courage and 
 followed them, to find themselves quietly welcomed to the simple 
 repast which the lady had plenteously provided as the most practi- 
 cal form in Avhich to administer her coals of fire. Everyone had as 
 much as he wanted, no reference was made to the cause of the 
 broken glass, and each boy was treated with a kindness and cour- 
 tesy quite unexpected, in vicAV of the fact that within a few mo- 
 ments he had been engaged in smashing his hostess's windows. 
 AVhen the supper had all been absorbed, the boys were sent forth 
 with a pleasant good-night to ruminate on their evening's experi- 
 ences, and to decide which part of the evening had been the more 
 enjoyable — defacing the exterior of the mission building, or being 
 treated with kindness and courtesy within its walls ; and their de- 
 cision soon became apparent, for not onl}^ did the annoyances cease, 
 but the boys were soon back again, not for coffee and cakes, but to 
 ask if they could not come in and play games — though there was lit- 
 tle in the room but an atmosphere of kindness and good-breeding.
 
 15S THE POOR jy GREAT CITIES 
 
 Then more boys came and were Aveleomed, iuterested friends 
 sent down chairs and tables and games, a board of managers was 
 instituted, and so the first boys' ehib was started on the broad prin- 
 ciple which should underlie them all, of hearty welcome for any 
 boy, whatever his condition or belief, who prefers an evening- of 
 innocent enjoyment in a place where he must show respect and 
 courtesy to all about him, to the thoughtlessness and hidden dan- 
 gers of an evening in the street. 
 
 It makes no diiference what a boy's religion is — or if he has any ! 
 That is a question which should never come up in a club drawn 
 fi'om all classes in a crowded district, where all beliefs and no be- 
 liefs are all about one. Make rules for the government of the clubs 
 that will teach boys rather to be good citizens ; that will teach them 
 thej^ have duties not only to themselves but to others ; that will teach 
 them to stick to their own ideas and yet to respect the ideas of 
 other people, and to feel that the\' have not done their part if they 
 have failed to show consideration and courtesy to everyone with 
 whom they are brought in contact — be he millionaire or be he news- 
 boy ! This is Christian love and sympathy in its most practical 
 sense ; and its teaching does not breed dissension. 
 
 The Boys' Club is now in its seventeenth year of work, and an 
 average attendance of over two hundred and lift}' boys a night was 
 the result of one season's first three months. 
 
 When boys first come to the club the dirt of the street has often 
 rendered them quite unprepared to handle a book or a game with- 
 out seriously damaging its condition : but the desire to join the 
 other boys soon leads them to retire to the neat wash-room adjoin- 
 ing the club-room and to submit to the temporary discomfort of 
 washing their hands ; and after a short time they begin to prefer a 
 condition of mild cleanliness, and either come with clean hands to 
 the club, or retire at once to the wash-room on their arrival, with- 
 out waiting for the superintendent's hint to do so. 
 
 Occasionally, too, you find a small boy who has been beaten at 
 checkers or parchesi, and who has been asked by his victorious op-
 
 BOYS' CLUBS IX XEW YORK \f>d 
 
 X^oneut if he can play anxy other game better, rephing' to the query 
 hy ■■ batting" the other small bo}- over the head ; but the assault is 
 usuulh' committed with as much self-restraiut as is possible under 
 the circumstances, and with a feeling of considerable regret on the 
 part of the assailant that he is forced to avenge the insult within 
 the walls of the Boys' Club. A nicer, ludghter lot of boys you will 
 not find anywhere than you can see there of an evening. Their 
 clothes are not made at Poole's, nor is their linen of the finest, when 
 they substitute it for the cotton or flannel shirts in which they look 
 so much more pictu3*esque ; but their bright smiles and cheery 
 gieetings show that their hearts are in the right place, and that the 
 influences of the Boys" Club have not been exerted in vain. 
 
 There are classes in singing, writing, and book-keej^ing for 
 those who care to avail of them, A class in modelling, a year or 
 two ago, developed a latent genius who is now working at a good 
 salary in an art museum, and has almost enough laid aside to go 
 abroad and pursue his studies. There is a separate meeting-room 
 for the older boys whose records at the club entitle them to use it ; 
 and a penny sa^•ings-bank is in active and successful operation. 
 But the main object of the club has always been simi3ly to provide 
 quiet and innocent amusement sufficiently attractive to draw the 
 boys away from the danger of the streets, and to i)ut into their lives 
 the softening influences they are not apt to find elsewhere. 
 
 Those who knew Tompkins Square before the club was staiied 
 have onlv to Avalk through it now to see at once the different chai- 
 aeter of the boys there ; and those who did not know it before need 
 only talk with the neighbors and the policemen near by, to con- 
 ^■ince themselves of the splendid work it has accomplished. 
 
 The Avenue C Working Boys' Club, at No. 650 Ecist Fourteenth 
 Street, was started in 1884. under the name of the St, Georges 
 Boys' Club, and in its first two years of existence occupied the 
 basement of the building No, 207 East Sixteenth Street, which was 
 then i3ulled down to make room for the St. George's Memorial 
 House that now stands upon the same site, when the club moved to
 
 IGO 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 No. 237 East Twenty-first Street, still retainiDg- the old name, 
 tliong-li at that time it had no real connection with St. George's 
 Church. This new house was of four stories, of which the basement 
 was given to the janitor and his family, the parlor floor and the 
 
 second story were devoted 
 to club purposes, and the 
 upper floor w^as reuteel to 
 unhapiiy tenants. 
 
 At first the club was 
 conducted on the princi- 
 ple of the Boys' Club of 
 St. Mark's Place, and 
 aimed only to offer coun- 
 ter-attractions to those of 
 the street ; but the signal 
 success of a class in t\'pe- 
 setting, which had been 
 started as an experiment, 
 so impressed the mana- 
 gers that they decided to 
 concentrate their energies 
 on the teaching of trades ; 
 and a kindly ofter being 
 made to them by the 
 Avenue C I n d u s t r i a 1 
 Schools of the use of a 
 beautifully appointed lit- 
 tle carpenter shop, with benches and tools complete, in the new 
 building at the corner of Fourteenth Street and Avenue C, they de- 
 cided to leave the house in Twentv-first Street, after two verv sue- 
 cessful seasons, and moved to their new home, where classes were 
 established in carpentering and type-setting.* There are fift}" boys 
 
 * At present (1895) the club is carrying on its work most successfully in more com- 
 modious quarters at No. 2G9 Avenue C, near Sixteenth Street. 
 
 Type-setting at the Avenue C Working Boys' Club.
 
 BOYS' CLUBS ly XEW FORK IGl 
 
 in tlie classes, each of whom receives two lessons a Aveek in either 
 one of these trades, from skilled and practical instructors. 
 
 The carpenter's shop is beautifully appointed, there being- six 
 benches, each one large enough to accommodate two boys ; each 
 boy has his kit of tools, as good in every respect as those used by 
 regular cari:»enters ; and the chairs and tables and l3ook-cases they 
 turn out, not to speak of brackets and smaller articles of fiuTiiture 
 and decoration, many a man might well feel proud of having made. 
 
 The printing class is also in a flourishing condition, the lx>ys 
 having so far mastered the intricacies of setting and distributing 
 tyjie that they have been able to take in job printing, \s-ith most 
 creditable results ; and it is purposed before long to publish a 
 small i^aper, to appear monthly, an exiDeriment which had been in- 
 stituted with success in the old Twenty-first Street house, but which 
 had been discontinued on moving to the present quarters on ac- 
 count of so many of the boys being new to the work. 
 
 A number of the bovs in the classes have resrular work at these 
 same trades in the daytime, and the instruction in the club has led, 
 in many cases, to a decided increase in their weekly salaries. One 
 of the managers takes charge of the savings of such lx>ys as desire 
 it. and, when they have enough, helps them to open accounts in a 
 savings-bank ; and some of the boys who have started in this way, 
 now have two or three hundi'ed dollars to their credit. There is al- 
 ways a list of boys waiting to get into the classes, and if a boy fails 
 to attend regularly, or to do his best work, his place is filled by 
 someone who Avill appreciate the advantages more ; but these cases 
 do not often occur. The boys like the classes too well to want to 
 leave them. Medals are given at the end of each year to those 
 who have done the best work in the classes ; and on some holiday 
 in the spring, usually on Decoration Day, the managers take the 
 boys for an exciu*sion to the countri", the pleasui-e of which lasts in 
 remembrance far into the A\-inter. 
 
 On one of these excui"sions to Searsdale, one of the oldest boys 
 
 in the party, and one of the best workei-s in his class, appeared to 
 
 11
 
 162 THE POOR IN ORE AT CITIES 
 
 be especially happy, and finally confided to one of the managers 
 that he never had seen a real g-reen Held before, excepting- in the 
 Park, his experience having been confined to the vacant lots in the 
 city, filled Avith stones and broken bottles, in which the boys 
 played ball ; and the idea of a natural field of green grass in which 
 he could disport at pleasure with no sparrow policeman to chase 
 him off, was an entirely new sensation. This was a boy nearly six- 
 teen years old. 
 
 On another occasion when the boys of the old club were being 
 taken in a special car to Rockaway, the candy and pop-corn boy on 
 the train, under the impression that it was a demure Sunday-school 
 picnic, entered, as usual, and tossed his packages right and left 
 with that amiable lack of care so familiar to travellers on the sub- 
 urban railways, and with every expectation of reaijing a rich har- 
 vest. After allowing the usual two or three minutes for reflection, 
 he again entered the car, to find every candy -box empty on the 
 floor, and their contents being rapidly consumed by the boys, who 
 proceeded at once to mob him when he attempted to collect the 
 value of his indigestible confections. It was with difficulty that 
 he was rescued, and with more difficulty that a small collection 
 from the managers restored his equanimity, and consoled him for 
 his broken hat and the total loss of his dignity. 
 
 Another of the excursions was by water to Stateu Island, to see 
 " Buflalo Bill," on a large excursion boat carrying several hundred 
 passengers, the captain entering thoroughly into the spirit of the 
 occasion, and taking a sort of parental interest in the boys, who 
 were all gathered together in the bow of the boat, as quiet as 
 lambs. ' 
 
 When the show was over and the excursionists began to return, 
 the captain stood on the gang-plank, complacently patting his 
 waistcoat, and wanting to know if " our boys " were all right, and 
 not wanting to start quite on time for fear that some of them would 
 be left behind — which it afterward turned out was the case with two 
 or three. By the time this was discovered, however, it was no
 
 BOYS' vj.uns l^' yEw york 
 
 103 
 
 louger a source of regret to the captain, for the boys (who had be- 
 come somewhat excited by two hours of guns and bucking-horses 
 and Comanche Indians, and who were standing around the l)rass 
 band that was playing on the deck), were somewhat more restless 
 tlian they had been on the trip down ; and one of them attempted 
 to relieve his pent-up emotions by sticking a button into the big 
 
 A Stereopticon Lecture — the Boys' Club of the Wilson Mission. 
 
 trombone, with the effect of nearly strangling the stout gentleman- 
 who was playing on it. The infuriated musician made a wild dive 
 for the boy, who proceeded to defend himself with a chair, and in 
 a moment there was as pretty a riot as one would care to see all 
 over the forward deck — chairs flying, the bandmen swearing, and 
 the boys yelling like steam-whistles. When quiet finally Avas re- 
 stored by the extraction of the button from the trombone, and the 
 relegation of the boys to the after-deck, the captain, whose ideas-
 
 1()4 THE rooii IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 liad niidci'g'one a suddeu cliauge, and who had become yery red iu 
 
 the face, remarked that he " wouldn't take those d ^d boys down 
 
 to Stateu Island again for ten dollars a head." 
 
 The question often is asked as to which kind of club is the more 
 desirable — one in which trades are taught, or one in which the 
 boys are simply entertained ; but they are so different in character 
 that a fair comparison would be as difficult as it would be unneces- 
 sary. There is no doubt that the teaching of trades is of great im- 
 portance, and that the work done by a cIuIj of that character meets 
 a very important need ; but, on the other hand, it is the boys who 
 do not care to work w^ho are much more apt to get into mischief at 
 night on the street, and clubs devoted to drawing them in and pro- 
 viding them with innocent amusements fills a different need, but 
 hardly a less important one. 
 
 The Boys' Club of Calvary Parish, at No. 344 East Twenty-third 
 Street, was started about six years ago, shortly after the present 
 Avenue C Working- Boys' Club left that district ; and it has met 
 with great success, many of the boys of the old club, and no end of 
 others, having enjoyed its i^rivileges. In addition to a room for 
 books and games, they have a second room fitted up as a gymna- 
 sium, with trapezes, horizontal and parallel bars, and other gym- 
 nastic ai:)pliances, and the evening is usually divided between the 
 two, the first half being devoted to the reading-room and the sec- 
 ond half to the gymnasium, the boys forming in line at a given 
 signal and being- admitted one by one to the gymnasium on show- 
 ing- their tickets. Then the rest of the evening is given ui? to exer- 
 cise of all kinds, some going in for using the apparatus, and others 
 preferring boxing, single stick, or w^restling, for which the gloves 
 sticks, and mattresses are provided, if the superintendent has time 
 to oversee the exercise and keep it within proper bounds. Good- 
 nature is the one thing insisted on, and many a boy receives there 
 a valuable lesson in self-control, in connection with a mildly 
 bruised nose. 
 
 They also have a small printing class, and it is purposed to is-
 
 BOYS' CLUBS IN NEW YORK 
 
 165 
 
 sue periodically a small paper devoted to the interests of boys' 
 clubs in g-eneral, which, if persisted in, will do much g-ood to the 
 cause. 
 
 I have devoted 
 considerable space 
 to these three clubs 
 from their being 
 the oldest and most 
 complete of their 
 respective classes ; 
 but other clubs that 
 are doing splendid 
 work are the Free 
 Reading-Room for 
 boys, at No. 68-70 
 University Place, 
 formerly at 18 
 West Seventeenth 
 Street, and, later, 
 at No. 8 West Four- 
 teenth Street, 
 which was found- 
 ed in 1883, and 
 at which the to- 
 tal attendance 
 during the last 
 twelve years has 
 reached the ^ „ , 
 
 Entrance to Boys Club of the Wilson Miss'On, 125 St Mark's Place 
 
 enormous num- 
 ber of 316,913 boys ; the Manor Chapel Boys' Club, at No. 348 AYest 
 Twenty-sixth Street, which has an average attendance of about fifty 
 boys a night, and would have as many more if its rooms were 
 larger ; the Boys' Club of St. George's Church, at the St. George's 
 Memorial House in East Sixteenth Street, near Third Avenue, a
 
 1U6 THE POOR IK GREAT CITIES 
 
 llourishin£»' organization with about three hundred members, open 
 -every night, but so arranged that different boys come on each even- 
 ing-, excepting- on AVednesdays, when they all come tog-ether ; the 
 AVest Side AVorkiug- Boys' Club, at No. 794 Tenth Avenue, formerlj'- 
 in West Forty-seventh Street ; the Boys' Clubs of the University 
 Settlement at No. 26 Delancey Street ; and the Boys' Club of Grace 
 Mission, at No. 540 East Thirteenth Street, which was started in 
 1891, and with which the Wayside Boys' Club, formerly iu East 
 Twentieth Street, and later at the Bible House, has been con- 
 solidated. 
 
 This consolidation, however, was not accomplished without 
 some friction, as the following- pathetic little letter, which is be- 
 fore me as I write, and which was received about a week after the 
 new club had opened, by the former j^resident of the Wayside 
 Boys' Club, will show. It is g-iven without chaug-e of any kind ex- 
 cepting- the omission of the signers' names and the name of the 
 lady to whom it is addressed : 
 
 New York, Dec. 15, 1890. 
 
 *' Dear Mrs. : 
 
 " Would you please come and see to our Wayside Boys' Club ; that the first 
 lime it was open it was very nice, and after that near every boy iu that neigh- 
 borhood came walking in. And if you would be so kind to come and put them 
 out it would be a great pleasure to us. 
 
 " Mrs. , the club is not nice any more, and when we want to go home, 
 
 the boys would wait for us outside, and hit you. 
 
 " Mrs. , since them boys are in the club we don't have any games to 
 
 play with, and if we do play with the games, they come over to us and take it 
 off us. 
 
 " And by so doing j^lease oblige, 
 
 , President, 
 
 , Vice-President, 
 
 , Treasurer, 
 
 , Secretary, 
 
 , Floor Manager. 
 
 '■' Please excuse the writing. I was in baste. 
 
 " , Treasurer." 
 
 It is needless to state that the interests of the little fellows — for 
 none of the signers are more than twelve years old, and most of
 
 BOYS' CLUBS IN KEW YORK 167 
 
 them yomig'er — were protected, and that the club is now running 
 to the satisfaction of all. 
 
 All these clubs are open every night excepting in summer, and 
 gladly receive as members any boys who are willing to conduct 
 themselves properly while in the club-rooms — the only limit being 
 space. 
 
 In addition there are the Covenant Chapel Boys' Club, at No. 
 310 East Fortj^ -second Street ; the Boys' Club of Bethany Church, 
 on Tenth Avenue, between Thirty-fifth and Thirtj^-sixth Streets ; 
 and the Boys' Club of Christ Chapel, on West Sixty-sixth Street, 
 near Tenth Avenue — each open two or three evenings in the 
 week. 
 
 The membership of these clubs is largely composed of boys con- 
 nected with the Sunday-schools of these churches — although, occa- 
 sionally, some of the boys' friends are admitted also. 
 
 In summer, from June to October, all the clubs are closed, for 
 no one wants to stay indoors during the hot weather, and the boys 
 naturally seek the open air ; but the streets then are much less dan- 
 gerous, both on account of darkness coming on so much later than 
 in winter, and because hundreds of respectable people, who in win- 
 ter stay in their rooms, sit, in summer, out in front of their houses, 
 and thus render questionable practices in the streets much less 
 easy. 
 
 All the clubs have libraries, more or less good ; some of them 
 let the boys take books home, when they have shown themselves, 
 by good behavior, to be worthy of confidence ; man}" of them have 
 a class in something, to interest the boys who care to work ; sev- 
 eral have pennj^ savings-banks ; all of them have games, excepting 
 the x\venue C Working Boy's Club, which admits only the boys 
 who come to attend the trade classes ; a number have debating so- 
 cieties, in which Aveighty matters of world-wdde interest are dis- 
 cussed and dismissed with a rapidity which would greatly expedite 
 our national legislation if the system could be successfully intro- 
 duced at Washington ; two or three of them give their members an
 
 168 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 excursion in summer ; and they all give the boys periodical enter- 
 tainments, some as often as once a week, and others once a month, 
 or at long-er intervals. 
 
 An entertainment is the boys' greatest delight, especiall}^ when 
 it is accompanied by ice - cream, some of Avhich a number always 
 wrap up in paper — or stick a piece into their pockets without 
 
 A Good-natured Scrap — Boys' Club, Calvary Parish, in East Twenty-third Street. 
 
 any wrapper — to take to the little brother or sister at home. I 
 only remember one boy who ever refused ice-cream at an enter- 
 tainment, and he apologized by explaining that he had had the 
 colic all day, and his mother had told him " she'd lick him if he 
 took any." 
 
 They like anything in the form of an entertainment — magic-lan- 
 tern, stereopticon lecture, banjo-playing, ventriloquism, legerde- 
 main, any kind of instrumental music that is not too classical,
 
 BOYS' CLUBS IX NEW YORK 169 
 
 heroic or humorous recitations, and especially comic or sentimen- 
 tal songs in which they can join in the chorus. You have never 
 heard " Annie Eooney " or " McGinty " sung- unless you have heard 
 it sung at a boys' club : nor have you ever heard " America "" sung 
 as they can sing it. Thanks to the i^ublic schools, thej' know 
 nearly all the more familiar national and patriotic songs, " My 
 Country, tis of Thee," " The Eed, White, and Blue, ' '" Marching 
 thro' Georgia," ' Hail, Columbia," and " The Star-s^jangled Ban- 
 ner; ' and the life and earnestness they put into the singing of 
 them cannot but impress anyone who hears it with the importance 
 of surrounding them, so far as it can be done, with influences which 
 will tend to turn their enthusiasm into the right channels and 
 which will prevent their becoming the foes to society* which the 
 roughness of street life is so apt to produce when thev have not 
 had a fair chance to see the gentler side of life. 
 
 Sometimes they parodj* the sentimental songs very amusingly. 
 One of the popular favorites not long ago was a song with a very 
 taking air, called " Don't Leave your Mother, Tom," of which the 
 words of the chorus ran as follows : 
 
 " Stick to TOUT mother, Tom, when I am gone ! 
 Don't let her woriy, lad ; clon't let her mourn. 
 Remember that she nursed vou when I was far away ; 
 Stick to Toui" mother when her hair turns ^rav." 
 
 o^ 
 
 One night there seemed to be a certain disparity in the rhyming 
 of the chorus, and the gentleman who was playing on the piano 
 soon became aware that the boys were singing a diliereut version 
 of it from the ordinary, which, on persistent investigation, he dis- 
 covered to be 
 
 " Stick to your mother, Tom. while she has wealth, 
 Don't do a stroke of work : it's bad for the health ; 
 Be a corner loafer — roam aroand all dav, 
 And hit her with a shovel when her hair turns gi-av." 
 
 The boys are usually in tine form at an enteriainment, especial- 
 ly an entertainment given by themselves, when solos on the har-
 
 170 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 mouica, piccolo, and clappers are interspersed by clog-dances, vo- 
 cal solos, and recitations ; and tliey guy each other unmercifully, 
 thoug'h not more so than I have heard them g'uy other people ^svlio 
 have come down to entertain clubs that are just starting-. 
 
 I once heard a boys' club audience, which was being entertained 
 by a lady playing on the banjo, take advantage of the fact that 
 her dress did not quite reach to the ground to comment audibly 
 upon the color of her stockings ; and not long ago I heard a 
 dignified missionary, who had been describing the spread of the 
 Gospel in the Far East, and who proposed to illustrate Eastern 
 customs by displaying some native costumes he had brought 
 with him, instantly cautioned b}^ one of the bo3^s " to keei^ his 
 shirt on." 
 
 Not many weeks back a distinguished financier in this citj' be- 
 came possessed of a large magic lantern, with which on festive oc- 
 casions he was wont to entertain the admiring children of his 
 family ; and after considerable difficulty he was induced one day by 
 one of his daughters, who had become interested in a boys' club, to 
 display it before the club's members. 
 
 The show was progressing famously, and the daughter was 
 beaming with pride, when one of the boj's suddenly beckoned to 
 her, and isointing to the distinguished financier, remarked : 
 
 " What der yer call dat bloke ? " 
 
 " Whom do you mean ? " asked the proud daughter, in a tone of 
 much surprise, being quite unaccustomed to hearing the distin- 
 guished financier described as a " bloke." 
 
 "I mean dat bloke over dere, settin' off dem picturs T'- rep-lied 
 the boy. 
 
 " What do you desire to know about him ? " inquired the proud 
 daughter, with freezing* dignity. 
 
 " I want ter know what yer call one of dem fellers dat sets off 
 picturs ? " persisted the boy. 
 
 " That gentleman," said the proud daughter, in her most im- 
 pressive tone, " is my father."
 
 BOYS' CLUBS IN NEW YORK 
 
 111 
 
 ^ \ 
 
 A Boys' Club Reading-Room. 
 
 "Well!" said the boy, surveying" her with supreme contempt, 
 " (lon"t yer know yer own father's trade % " 
 
 After an entertainment given at the Boys' Club of St, Mark's 
 Place, one of the managers discovered, when he came to go home, 
 that his overcoat had been taken from the nail on Avhich it had
 
 172 THE POOR IX GREAT CITIES 
 
 been liniig-. The boys had all gone, and there was no possible 
 way of discovering the culprit, so the gentleman went home with- 
 out his coat, and had gotten over his temporary annoyance and 
 dismissed the matter from his mind when, one day, most unex- 
 pectedly, the overcoat Avas left at his house, accompanied by a com- 
 munication signed by more than two hundred l)oys of the club, 
 who, at the instance of the superintendent, had quietly taken the 
 matter in charge, had traced the coat to a x^awnshojD where the 
 thief had left it, and had taken up a collection among themselves 
 to get it out of pawn and restore it to the owner, that the dignity 
 and self-respect of the club members might be restored. 
 
 The gentleman lent me the communication, which also is before 
 me as I write, and which reads as follows, again the only change 
 being the omission of the names : 
 
 "January 15, 1891. 
 
 '■ Deak Sir : 
 
 " We, the undersigned members of the Boy's Chib, have taken the matter 
 regarding the overcoat which was taken from the club-rooms the night of the 
 entertainment, into consideration, and regret to say that it makes a man of your 
 rank feel very uncomfortable to have anything like that occur to him. We beg 
 to state that one of the members of the club has succeeded in getting the pawn- 
 ticket for same. This is the first time that anything of the kind has occurred 
 in these rooms, and it was through the utmost work of Mr. Rivolta (the superin- 
 tendent) that we succeeded in restoring the overcoat back to you. 
 
 "Trusting that anything of the sort will not occur again, we are, 
 
 " Very truly yours," 
 
 and then follow two hundred and twenty-two signatures. 
 
 Could anyone ask a more striking example of the civilizing and 
 elevating effects of boys' clubs on the characters of the little chaps 
 who enjoy their iirivileges than is afibrded by this letter ! 
 
 The coat was gone, there was no way of getting it back, and the 
 name of the thief was not known ; yet the boys could not stand the 
 idea that anyone who had been kind to them had been shabbily 
 treated, or that a stain should rest upon the reputation of their 
 club ; and they left no stone unturned until their own exertions and
 
 BOYS' CLUBS IN NEW YORK 173 
 
 pockets had made the wrong- good and thus their self-respect had 
 been restored. 
 
 The influences brought to bear upon the boys often are not 
 merely temporary ones. Many of the managers become so inter- 
 ested in certain boys that the friendship is a lasting one ; and long 
 after the boys have outgrown the clubs they come to see the man- 
 agers or correspond with them, so that the active influence on their 
 characters is often kept up until long after the age of young man- 
 hood has been passed. Several young men's clubs have been vol- 
 untarily formed, based on the broad principles of temiaerance and 
 respectability, by boys who had become too old for the boys' clubs, 
 but who were not willing to give up the quiet evenings of which 
 they had become so fond ; and many of the assistants in the 
 clubs to-day are boys who have graduated from them, and who 
 often in their early days were among their most troublesome mem- 
 bers. 
 
 Almost seven years ago there was a boy in one of the clubs in 
 whom one of the managers took a great interest — though his nat- 
 ural wildness caused considerable anxiety at home — but who sud- 
 denly ceased to come to the club, and sent no word as to the cause 
 of his sudden absence. 
 
 For several weeks the manager inquired for him and looked for 
 him, liut without success, until one day he heard from a compan- 
 ion that the boy had been committed to one of the public institu- 
 tions for some especially unbridled demonstration of mischief, and* 
 was there serving out his term. The gentleman went to the in- 
 stitution and found the boy, who was delighted to see him, and 
 Avho, after a time, confided to him the cause for which he had been 
 sent there, which was of a much more serious nature than the gen- 
 tleman had supposed. He talked to the boy, however, and wrote 
 to him every little while, and though he continually got into harm- 
 less little scrapes, from his unbounded fund of animal spirits, still 
 everything seemed to be going on most favorably until, on one of 
 the gentleman's visits, he found the bo}' in a state of considerable
 
 174 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 excitement (produced by having- been pnnislied, as he thought, un- 
 fairly), and witli all his plans made to run away from the institu- 
 tion. 
 
 He detailed these plans to the gentleman, who told him, of 
 course, that he would consider the information confidential, and 
 certainly would not make use of it to stop him if the boy persisted 
 in his ]ilan ; that he advised him, however, very strongly, not to do 
 so, but to stay there, and so conduct himself as to leave behind 
 
 ,-dis!^Sftai<Hra»Km!. ..^^ :>2i^:»i£<C>~ 
 
 
 r'^W^^ 
 
 Lining Up to go into the Gynanasiunn. 
 
 him, when he should leave the institution, a record so clear that 
 anyone who ever should want to consult it afterward could find 
 nothing in it to his discredit. 
 
 In time the argument so impressed the boy that he determined 
 to follow the advice, and from that time forward he became as ear- 
 nest a worker in the school and in the shops as any boj^ in the in- 
 stitution, and finally ended his term and left there with the hearti- 
 est good wishes of everyone connected with it, all having a good 
 word to saj'^ of him. Since leaving he has come constantly to the 
 gentleman for advice and counsel, and now is settling down into a 
 quiet, hard-working fellow, with every indication of becoming a 
 comfort to his parents and a useful member of society.
 
 SOYS' CLUBS IN NEW YORK 175 
 
 Some time ago tlie same g'entleman found, in another institu- 
 tion of the kind, a bright little fellow, who had been sent there 
 by his parents more than two years l)efore for being- unmanage- 
 able at home ; and whose record there, both in work and in con- 
 duct, had been of too low a grade for him to get his discharge, 
 although apparently he had no vicious traits. The gentleman took 
 an interest in him, talked to him in a friendly way, and soon con- 
 vinced him that it was a thing: to be heartily ashamed of for a boy 
 with his evident natural brightness to have so poor a record, as a 
 result solely of his indifference. 
 
 Two or three times they talked together on the subject ; and on 
 coming for the fourth time the gentleman found the boy radiant at 
 having" attained the highest grade. For over five months he kept 
 it, only losing it once for "slugging" a boy who had kicked him — 
 an exhibition of spirit of which the gentleman heartily approved ; 
 and within a week of this writing, the boy received his honor- 
 able discharge from the institution, and went home to help his 
 father at a trade, with a record of excellence behind him that he 
 never would have attained had not his ambition been stirred bj^ 
 the evidence of friendly sympathy and the encouragement of feel- 
 ing that some one else reallj^ cared whether or not he did himself 
 and his abilities full justice — an impulse wdiich the boys' clubs are 
 giving to-day to hundreds of boys just like him. There is no 
 doubt that they have been a most powerful factor in the encourag- 
 ing decrease in juvenile delinquency during the last few years ; and 
 it is earnestly to be hoiked that soon there may be a free club for 
 boj'S in every w^ard of the city. 
 
 Every club has had trouble when it started ; furniture has been 
 upset, windows have been broken, and the managers have been as- 
 saulted with potatoes and onions and mud ; Init there is not one 
 which has not the most satisfactory results to tell of as soon as it 
 has become known that the managers had come there with no in- 
 tention of patronizing the boys, but with every intention of being 
 their friends. The boys will not stand patronage — and the more
 
 176 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 credit to them for it — but they quickly find out whether a man is 
 really in sympathy Avith them or not. 
 
 Don't g-o in for boys' club work unless you can feel a genuine 
 personal interest in the boys themselves ; don't go in for it if occa- 
 sional dirty hands and faces will hopelessly offend 3'our taste ; 
 don't go in for it if ragged clothes and tattered shirts will antago- 
 nize you, for all these will continually confront you ; but if you care 
 enough for boys to look below the surface, j^ou will find under 
 those little breasts hearts as true and affections as deep as you will 
 ever meet with anywhere, ready to be influenced by an interest 
 they feel to be sincere, and eager to respond to the love and sym- 
 pathy of which they get so little elsewhere, and which will do more 
 than anything else ever can to counteract the dangerous influences 
 
 of the streets, and make them honest, true, and law-abiding citi- 
 zens.
 
 THE WOEK OF THE ANDOVEE HOUSE IN BOSTON 
 By WILLIAM JEWETT TUCKEE 
 
 PBEblDENT OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, FORMERLY PROFESSOR IN ANBOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 Lower and Higher Philanthropy — Growth of Organized Charity — Andover 
 House and the New Philanthropy — Its Religious Motive— Training of 
 WoiucEus — Origin of the Name — Not Denominational — People Dealt 
 ■with — Robert A. Woods — Administration— Principles upon which Work 
 IS Conducted— Boys' Clubs— The Question of Tenements — Study of Soc- 
 ial Conditions— Greater Boston— Andover House Association — Field 
 OP Observation— Lectures— Place of Sympathy in Scientific Work — 
 Growth of the Movement— After Four Years. 
 
 rriHE distinction is now recognized, though not as j^et very 
 I clearly defined in the public mind, between what is known as 
 the lower and the higher philanthropy. The lower philan- 
 throjiy meant the attempt " to put right what social conditions had 
 put wrong." The higher philanthropy means the attempt " to put 
 right the social conditions themselves," 
 
 Of course, no moral significance attaches to the use of the term 
 " higher " as applied to philanthropy. The term, like the phrase, 
 " the higher criticism," is entirely free from assumption. Nothing 
 could have been nobler in motive or in practice than that first sim- 
 ple charity which Avent out to meet the early poverty of the cities, 
 and Avhich Avas ahvays ready to run upon its errands of mercy Avith- 
 out stopping to ask too many questions. It developed characters 
 of rare sensitiveness. Charity became one of the fine arts, creating 
 personal types of moral beauty. Men saAv that it must be blessed 
 
 to give, Avhatever it might be to receive. And when the problem of 
 12
 
 178 THE POOR IN ORE AT CITIES 
 
 suffering- grew weig-lity and urgent, with the growth of the cit3% 
 this same spirit of charity g-rew strong, watchful, and inventive. It 
 proved to be able to deal with classes, as before it had dealt with 
 individuals. It was quick to follow out every hint and suggestion 
 of unrelieved want and distress. Charities multiplied as the ob- 
 jects of charity were detected. The relief of the poor brought to 
 light the child of poverty, the child of poverty led the way to his 
 crinpled brother, the diseased child pointed to the suffering 
 mother ; and when the region of disease was once really discov- 
 ered, it was quickly occuijied with every variety of institutional re- 
 lief. 
 
 I recall a characteristic example of the spirit and method of the 
 old charity in the person of a well-known philanthropist of New 
 York, who for more than half a century followed with an unerring 
 instinct the subtle progress of distress and misery. When I knew 
 him he had passed his three score and ten years. Yet each year 
 seemed to add to the eagerness and intensity of his search. An in- 
 cident, associated with his greatest personal bereavement, revealed 
 to me the whole spirit of his life. As I called upon him in his sor- 
 row, he took me, after a little, into the presence of his dead, and 
 there talked, as only the voice of age and love could speak. Sud- 
 denly he stopped, put his hand into his pocket, and took out a 
 check. " There," said he, " is a check for $25,000 from Mrs. Stew- 
 art for my woman's hospital." Then, resuming the conversation as 
 if there had been no interruption — there really had been none — he 
 covered the face of his dead and withdrew, to take up again in its 
 time his now solitary, but joyous, work. My honored friend was 
 the embodiment of that charity, to the credit of which must be 
 placed the countless organizations and institutions which are the 
 most conspicuous signs of a living Christianity. 
 
 But with the extraordinary multiplication and extension of char- 
 ities, consequent upon the growth of poverty, disease, and vice, the 
 question began to arise in some earnest minds, may there not be, 
 after all, something better than charity, or, at least, may there not
 
 THE WORK OF THE AXDOVER HOUSE IX BOSTOX 179 
 
 Ije a larger and better charity ? Grant that the progress of Chris- 
 tianity has been marked by the relie%'ing agencies and institutions 
 which line its path, may not its progress be still more clearly 
 marked by the relative decrease of these very agencies and institn- 
 Ti<ms ? May not Christianity be applied wisely, vigorously, and 
 with better results at the sources of suffering ? The serious asking 
 of these questions gradually brought in the higher philanthropy, 
 whose aim, as I have said, is not so much " to put right what soc- 
 ial conditions have put wrong, ' as to " put right the social condi- 
 tions themselves." The new philanthropy does not attempt to su- 
 persede entirely the old charit}- ; it does offer itself as a much- 
 needed helper and ally. 
 
 The intermediate step from the lower to the higher philan- 
 thropy was taken through the charity organization movement, the 
 motive of which was to economize charity. The moral as well as 
 financial waste of the current charity had become appalling. It 
 was estimated that the "pauper, the impostor, and the fraud of 
 everv description, carried off at least one-half of all charity, public 
 and private." The i^oor man, who preferred to work rather than to 
 beg, was supplanted by the pauper, who preferred to beg rather 
 than to work. It was a comparatively easy matter for a profes- 
 sional pauper to utilize the charity of several different societies, 
 especially those which were religious, for the support of himself or 
 his family : while shrewd knaves, who saw the market value of an 
 infij-mity or a deformity, organized an army of cripples of every 
 sort, whom they stationed at the comers of the streets, or through 
 whom they invaded the homes of the compassionate. The demor- 
 alizing effect of this traffic in charity was so evident that decisive 
 measures were taken to break it up through reforms in the method 
 of administration. In 1869 a society was organized in London 
 under the title, " The Society for Organizing Charitable Eelief , and 
 for Repressing Mendicity," an organization which was quickly cop- 
 ied in the larger towns of the provinces. The first move in the 
 same direction, in this eountrv. was made in 1877, in the city of
 
 ISO TEE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 Buffalo, through the establishment of a like org-anization, which 
 has since been adopted in most of the cities of the country under 
 the name of the " Associated Charities." Naturally these societies 
 began their work as a crusade against indiscriminate charity. 
 They brought together, as far as practicable, all the benevolent 
 agencies which were at work in a given community, they intro- 
 duced the scientific and systematic visitation of the poor, they 
 sought out and exposed the iniquitous frauds which had been fos- 
 tered by neglect, and in various ways decreased the growing vol- 
 ume of pauperism. And the work of the " Associated Charities " 
 necessarily led to the study of social conditions. It was impossi- 
 ble to deal with pauperism in any scientific way without investiga- 
 ting the sources of it. Still the inherited object of the " Associ- 
 ated Charities " was charity — the relief of suffering — the special 
 occasion for its action being the need of seeing to it that charity 
 reached the actual sufferer, and only in the right way. It belonged 
 by origin, and in part by method, to the agencies which were try- 
 ing " to put right what social conditions had put wrong." It was 
 evident that a new type of philanthropy was needed, with the one 
 distinct object of trying " to put right the social conditions them- 
 selves." 
 
 The Audover House has its place and does its work within the 
 sphere of this new philanthropy. It is one of the agencies which 
 represent, in a simple and unostentatious way, the principles and 
 methods through which the new philanthropy is beginning to make 
 itself felt in society. While in sympathy with all charitable move- 
 ments, and having representatives upon the boards of " Associated 
 Charities " in its vicinity, it is not another charitable organization 
 or institution. It has no moneys to disburse. As far as appears 
 to a transient visitor, the House is simply a home where a group 
 of educated young men live, study, and work. But the House is 
 organized upon an idea, which the group is constantly working 
 out, each man in harmony with his fellow. Evidently the great 
 requisite in any attempt to modify wrong social conditions is the
 
 THE WORK OF THE ANDOVER HOUSE IN BOSTON 181 
 
 perfect nnderstandiug of those conditions. And the knowledge of 
 any such conditions is best gained by practically subjecting one's 
 self to them, at least to the extent of making them the daily en- 
 vironment of his life. Residence is the key to the situation in any 
 locality. It is wonderful how many things come to one, in the way 
 of the daily intercourse with his neighbors, which would entirely 
 evade the most careful search from without. It is the unsought in- 
 formation which tells best the story of a neighborhood. And far 
 beyond any gain in the way of knowledge is the sense of identifica- 
 tion with others which comes through residence among them. One 
 is conscious of breathing the same social atmospliere, and though 
 he may retreat from the more disheartening surroundings of his 
 work into the shelter and cheer of the group, yet the scenes in the 
 midst of which he lives are in mind by day and by night. The con- 
 stant strain upon the sympathies is the test of the real significance 
 of living under wrong social conditions. I doubt if one person can 
 well bear the strain. It is the groui^ which saves the individual to 
 his work, and supplies that fund of good cheer which is indispen- 
 sable to it. 
 
 This resident group is made up of educated men, of men, that is, 
 trained to think upon social problems. It represents the contri- 
 bution of thought rather than of money toward their solution. 
 Doubtless some of the theories held, though learned in the best 
 schools, are found to need essential modification when tested by the 
 actual fact. But they give intelligent approach to studies from life. 
 And it should be said that much of the knowledge within recent 
 books is based upon direct investigation, as with Charles Booth's 
 " Labor and Life of the People," or is the result of reasoning upon 
 ascertained facts. To call the present training of the schools in 
 Sociology purely theoretical is a misnomer. It is in realitj'^ but 
 one degree removed from life. 
 
 Further, the group represents the idea of special consecration 
 on the part of its members. The work of the House proceeds from 
 the religious motive. It is carried on without compensation, ex-
 
 1S3 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 cept in cases where expenses are met by fellowships. Some resi- 
 dents propose to make work of the nature there carried on their 
 life-work. Others will take the spirit of it into their after-duties, 
 whatever may be their special character. I doubt if there is any 
 field which calls more clearly for the true missionary disposition 
 and temper than resident work among the poor in the great cities. 
 
 The Andover House took its name from its origin. As might be 
 supposed, a large number of the graduates of Andover Theological 
 Seminary (about twenty miles from Boston) are in service in and 
 around Boston. In October of 1891 a jjersonal invitation was ex- 
 tended through these graduates, to all who were interested in es- 
 tablishing a settlement for social work in Boston, to form an asso- 
 ciation for that purpose. The invitation met with a quick and 
 generous response, and an Association was at once formed which 
 now numbers about three hundred members. This Association is 
 made up of persons who are interested in this special type of work. 
 No other qualification is asked for. Of course, the principles 
 upon which the work is to be carried on are clearly stated in 
 the constitution which was adopted by the Association. As has 
 been stated, the religious motive pervades the whole movement, 
 but it is in no sense sectarian. It is not even inter-denominational. 
 No regard is paid to denominational distinctions. The Council, 
 which is the administrative body in the Association, is made up of 
 persons of various religious faiths, and this has come about not at 
 all by design, but naturally according to i^ersonal interest. The 
 work is supported partly by membership fees, and partly by annual 
 subscriptions. The first year a considerable additional expense 
 was incurred in the furnishing of the house, a task which was gra- 
 ciously fulfilled by a committee of ladies from the Association. 
 
 The House is located at No. 6 Eollins Street, a short street be- 
 tween Washington Street and Harrison Avenue, in Ward XVII., at 
 the east end of the city. The street itself is quite exceptional in 
 its appearance, being made up of two blocks of entirely respectable- 
 looking dwelling-houses. Some of the houses still remain in the
 
 THE WORK OF THE ANDOVER HOUSE IN BOSTON 1S3 
 
 possession of the original owners. The general section covered by 
 the House is a narrow strip of about half a mile in leng-th, lying- on 
 the east side of Washington Street, and falling away toward what 
 is known as the South Cove. The social movement in Boston is 
 away from the south and east. Each street toward the west in- 
 creases the social standing of its residents. 
 
 The population of the neighborhood is not the most picturesque 
 in its poverty in the city. The most recent immigration— the 
 Russian Jew, the Italian, and even the Arab — has not as yet really 
 invaded the district, though it has made its appearance at the 
 lower end. That stage of overcrowding has not been reached 
 which discriminates in favor of the lowest and most degraded. 
 And yet the population embraces some of the worst types to be 
 found in the city. It is by no means homogeneous. Nearly all 
 nationalities and races are represented in it. There is no social 
 unity. The largest social unit is a group. Extreme social condi- 
 tions are found in close contiguity. The visitor Avho passes from 
 street into alley and court will quickly notice, but will not be apt to 
 measure, the contrasts. The neighborhood is overshadowed by 
 vice, though not as yet overwhelmed by it. The social evil is a 
 more serious menace than drunkenness or gambling. In a word, 
 the neighborhood is in ijrecisely the condition in which some one 
 section of a great city is always to be found, which has been left to 
 take the chance of the future, with little or nothing to expect from 
 business or social movements, and Avithout the advantage of any 
 kind of unity. 
 
 This general section of Boston was chosen with the purpose of 
 attempting to stay the tide of poverty and vice which is flowing in 
 upon it, and of arresting the social disintegration which, has 
 already begun. While the section represents in some parts a 
 family life of intelligence and purity, it represents in other parts 
 most sorely the need of the three-fold work of development, re- 
 covery, and rescue. 
 
 The house accommodates at present six men. The head of the
 
 184 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 House — Mr. Eobert A. Woods — is a graduate of Andover, a former 
 resident of Toyubee Hall, aud now well known through his lect- 
 ures upon social questions, and his book upon " Eng-lish Social 
 Movements." "With him are associated live men, graduates of dif- 
 ferent colleges and seminaries, who give part or all of their time 
 to the work. The " spare time " of men who are engaged in regular 
 j)ursuits is not alone sufficient for the work iu hand. Business life 
 in this country is so intense, that all which can be asked of those iu 
 regular business is a certain amount of volunteer aid in special de- 
 partments. No resident is received for less than six months, and 
 the average term of service is more than a year. Naturally, the 
 longer the time in residence the greater the results which may be 
 expected. A certain element of comparative permanence among 
 the residents is absolutely necessary to any success. And next to 
 permanence among the residents is regularity among the associate 
 workers. A very efficient staff of associates has already been or- 
 ganized of those who give one or two evenings of each week. 
 Among these, at present, are some of the younger journalists, 
 architects, and scientific and literary men of the city, some ladies 
 of thorough interest and experience in work among girls and young 
 women. 
 
 The local work of the Andover House rests upon certain well- 
 defined principles, which it may be well at this point to carefully 
 enumerate. The first principle is that the work is altogether per- 
 sonal, and in no sense institutional. None of the ordinary institu- 
 tional results are to be expected. A thorough and consistent plan 
 has been formulated, but no programme. The work of next year 
 may not be that of this year. The one constant quantity is per- 
 sonal influence, personal invention, personal sympathy and cour- 
 age, the individual and united purpose to increase the moral 
 valuation of the neighborhood. 
 
 A second principle is that nothing shoidd be done by the House 
 which can be, or ought to be, done through existing organizations. 
 All duplication of work is to be avoided. With this end in view, a
 
 THE WORK OF THE ANDOVER HOUSE IN BOSTON 185 
 
 careful estimate lias been made of the various forces which are 
 already in operation within the neighborhood, whether religious, 
 moral, educational, or charitable. The aim is co-operation. Mem- 
 bers of the House are identified with many of the organizations 
 located in the vicinity. They serve on their committees, and are 
 their agents and visitors. They report facts coming within their 
 province, make sug-gestions, and in every way seek to increase 
 their efficiency and usefulness. The Andover House does not 
 crave notoriety in matters of reform, but it is intent upon securing 
 such results affecting the public morals as may from time to time 
 seem legitimate and practicable. It has already initiated some 
 plans which have had a successful issue, but the work has been 
 done through others. The object of the House is influence, not 
 power. 
 
 A third principle, resolutely adhered to, is the avoidance of 
 proselyting, not in appearance only, but in reality. The motive of 
 the work, as I have said, is profoundly religious, admitting a con- 
 secration as deep as that attending any missionary enterprise, but 
 the results arrived at are not specifically religious. Members of 
 the House have the perfect freedom of their personal religious aflil- 
 iations, and are encouraged to co-operate in every practicable way 
 with the churches with which they may be identified. But the 
 attempt to change the religious faith of those whom the residents 
 may visit in their houses is not for a moment considered ; and 
 this, not as a matter of policy, Init of principle. The one end and 
 aim of the House is to create a true social unity, to which all may 
 contribute who have anything of value to ofi'er. Its chief object is 
 not that of the churches. The religious motive permeates and in- 
 forms its methods, but it does not seek chiefly religious results. 
 Religion in and of itself, as illustrated in the various communions, 
 will never give the social unity, in any community, which is now 
 the most essential element in the change of social conditions. 
 
 A fourth principle is the development of the neighborhood from 
 within rather than from without. The personal acknowledgment
 
 186 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 of this principle is tlirougli residence. That, however, is the only 
 easy beginning- of its application. The neighborhood must be in 
 every way awakened, encouraged, and stimulated to work for it- 
 self. Perhaps the quickest api)eal can be made through the needs 
 of the children. Later, the appeals from more general needs can 
 be made, needs which the neighborhood can fitly ask the city to 
 satisfy, and the final outcome may be the develoi:)ment of a com- 
 mendable pride, as true as that which sometimes shows itself in 
 village communities. But the constant method is improvement 
 through self-help, not by patronage. I cannot overestimate the 
 advantage of co-operation between adjacent classes in society. 
 To bring together the extremes, as in ordinary mission work, is not 
 a sufficient result. It is the coming together of those who are sep- 
 arated by the slighter difi"erences in conditions — which are often 
 the greater barriers — the mutual helpfulness of those whose lives 
 really touch, that constitutes the permanent hope of any neighbor- 
 hood. It is the acknowledgment of neighborship which realizes 
 that fine social ideal — the community. 
 
 Acting upon these principles, the residents of the House began 
 their work about a year ago. It should be noted that for the first 
 six months there were but four in residence, and two of these could 
 give only a part of their time. Naturally, the first object sought 
 was a general knowledge of the resources of the neighborhood, and 
 then acquaintance with the people, as far as possible, through visi- 
 tation in their homes. Biit access to one's neighbors in a city is 
 not an altogether easy matter, whatever may be the intent. Fortu- 
 nately, the small boy proved to be a natural medium of communica- 
 tion with the families whom the residents wdshed most to reach. 
 As soon as the boys in the vicinage heard of the House, they began 
 at once to investigate its possibilities. And as they came in in- 
 creasing numbers, they were organized into clubs, till every night 
 in the week, except Sunday, was given up to groups as large as 
 could be accommodated. 
 
 A library of the best bo^'s' books was generously provided by
 
 THE WORK OF THE ANDOVER HOUSE IN BOSTON 187 
 
 one of tlie Council for circulation, and the residents taxed their 
 invention to provide interesting- and profitable entertainment. The 
 boy, thus become a friend, opened the door of the home, and the 
 heart of the parent. Access to a considerable part of the neighbor- 
 hood became simple and natural. Yisitation, as far as there have 
 been time and opportunity for it, has been conducive to the best 
 results. Friendly relations have been established, which are simple 
 and sincere. One of the more mature and experienced of the res- 
 idents has gained a place in the confidence and afii'ection of the 
 families in an adjacent court, which any man might envy. He is 
 known and trusted as their friend, to whom they turn in their temp- 
 tations and trials, which are neither few nor light. And through 
 him they are beginning to find themselves at home at the House. 
 
 After visitation came organization — so much, at least, as seemed 
 necessary for the best development of those who had been reached. 
 I have referred to the boys' clubs. These were transferred early in 
 the autumn from the house to a hall near by, partly to allow the use 
 of the house for the organization of other groups, and partly in 
 accordance with the principle, which I have enunciated, that what- 
 ever can be done through other agencies should be done through 
 them. The place of the boys' clubs in the house has been taken by 
 clubs and classes of young men and young women, and by groups 
 of girls and of children— these last under the care of special teach- 
 ers. The residents and their associates still take the entire charge 
 of the work among boys, and devote much time to it. The theory 
 of work is to be lavish with personal influence, to put a great deal 
 of one's self into the thing which one undertakes, whatever it may 
 be. From four to six residents and associates are present on each 
 evening with each group of boys. To the ordinary exercises and 
 drill, of such clubs are added regular exhibitions through the 
 microscope, instruction in drawing and carpentrj^ talks on elec- 
 trical science, and a plentiful supply of good music. The clubs 
 of young men and young women are furnished with fit o1)jects of 
 entertainment and study. One class in current events is under the
 
 188 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 eliarg-e of an accomplished journalist. The folloAving- schedule of 
 evening's illustrates this kind of work : 
 
 Monday. — Boys' Club (thirty boys under eleven years of ag-e), at 
 hall. 
 
 Tuesday. — Boys' Club (twenty boys over twelve years of ag-e), 
 at hall. 
 
 Wednesday. — Bo3's' Club (twenty-five boys from eleven to twelve 
 years of age), at hall ; Young Women's Class (fifteen young- women), 
 at house. 
 
 Thursdcuj. — Monday night Boys' Club repeated, at hall. 
 
 Friday. — Tuesday night Boys Club repeated, at hall ; Children's 
 Club (thirty children), 3 P. m., at house; Young Men's Class (fifteen 
 j^oung men), 8 p.m., at house. 
 
 Saturday. — AVednesday night Boys' Club repeated, at hall; 
 Girls' Club (thirty girls), 2.30 p.m., at house ; Young Men's Club 
 (ten young men), 8 p.m., at house. 
 
 Sunday. — 8.30 p.m., music hour, at house. 
 
 At the present time organization has not advanced beyond these 
 limits, but it will be extended among older persons if it seems the 
 natural method of procedure ; otherwise some other means of 
 mutual aid will be devised. It may prove to be better to establish 
 entirely difi:erent relations with the working-men of the district. 
 The residents have been cordially welcomed in their intercourse 
 with the leaders of labor organizations, and it is hoped that there 
 may soon be a conference between some representatives of these 
 organizations and the members of the Council. 
 
 The house is frequently used for receptions, sometimes for the 
 association, sometimes for workers in the various societies, temper- 
 ance or charitable, in the ward, and sometimes for the families in 
 different parts of the neighborhood. It is becoming more and 
 more a true social centre. The table is found to be a fitting place 
 where the residents may discuss with guests all questions of order 
 or progress affecting the community. Much more is accomplished 
 by the social than by merely official intercourse with those who
 
 THE WORK OF THE ANDOVEE HOUSE IN BOSTON 1S9 
 
 may in various ways represent the political, or educational, or phil- 
 anthropic affairs of the neig-hborhood. 
 
 While these more personal methods have been in o^Deration, 
 attention has been steadily directed toward the opportunity for 
 material improvement, where it seemed to be necessary to moral 
 development. I have said that the last stage of overcrowding has 
 not been reached in the district. But the tenement-house question 
 presents here, as everywhere where it exists, the dilemma, how to 
 improve the tenement and keep the tenant. Little is gained mor- 
 ally by the erection of new and better buildings, if the old dwellers 
 are driven out into even lower surroundings. Doubtless the begin- 
 ning must be made in the elevation of the tenant throug*h a certain 
 amount of improvement in the tenement ; but after a little the 
 process must be reversed and the further improvement of the tene- 
 ment effected through the elevation of the tenant. It has seemed, 
 therefore, to some of the business men on the Council, that it is 
 necessary that control, by rental or purchase, should be gained of 
 some of the worst tenements in the district, that the work of in- 
 ternal and external improvement may be carried on together. 
 There is reason to hope that the methods of tenement-house reform 
 developed by Miss Octavia Hill may be applied at no distant day 
 to some one house, at least, as an object-lesson. 
 
 Without entering further into the local work of the House, 
 which from the nature of the case cannot be fully forecast or even 
 described in detail, I will refer to its more general scientific work. 
 One object of the House is the study by the residents of social con- 
 ditions. There are three sources of this study— observation in the 
 field, conversation with experts, and books. The residents bring to 
 their work a certain amount of attainment in the theoretical study 
 of Sociology. Through the generosity of a friend of the House, 
 residing in another State, a sociological library has been begun, 
 which will enable the residents to continue their economic studies. 
 
 There are unusual opportunities in Boston for conference with 
 experts on social questions. The value of the services of the Hon.
 
 190 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 Carroll D. Wright, as Chief of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor in 
 Massachusetts, was recognized by his appointment as United 
 States Commissioner of Labor, and the work which he inaugurated 
 has been vigorously maintained by his successor, the Hon. Horace 
 Ct. Wadlin. The cit}' has in its employ experts skilled in educa- 
 tional and economic affairs, and sanitation. The same remark ap- 
 plies to several of the educational and charitable institutions in and 
 around Boston. And not a few private citizens, who have conse- 
 crated their leisure as well as their wealth to the service of hu- 
 manity, have become authorities upon many questions of social 
 urgency. 
 
 The field of observation open to the residents of the House is far 
 wider than the limits of their actual work. Subjects reaching quite 
 outside these limits are already before them for individual study 
 and investigation. I am confident that no general field is so invit- 
 ing to the student of questions which are partly social and partly 
 political, as that of municipal politics. For the present, more ques- 
 tions of this sort await solution from the municipality than from 
 the State. Boston has now reached that stage in its municipal 
 growth when the most interesting and vital problems are pressing 
 for solution. The Greater Boston, which Mr. Sylvester Baxter has 
 described in his intelligent study, comprising the adjacent towns 
 and cities, is nearly double the population of the city proper. But 
 this greater city is already a fact in some particulars, especially as 
 so recognized by the general Government in the postal service, and 
 by the State in the system of sewerage. It is fast becoming a ques- 
 tion, how long interests which are so closely related can be kept 
 apart by political boundaries. An absorption of territory by Bos- 
 ton, corresponding to that already accomplished by Philadelphia 
 and Chicago, would precipitate many moral and social issues which 
 are to-day held in uncertainty. The time is opportune, whether 
 changes are imminent or not, for the student of municipal ques- 
 tions to inquire into the social and political life of Boston. 
 
 Little reference has been made to the Andover House Associa-
 
 THE WORK OF THE ANDOVER HOUSE IN BOSTON 191 
 
 tion, wliicli supports the House. Thus far its chief business has 
 been the support of the House. The main return from the House 
 to the Association has been in the bulletins, which from time to 
 time show the prog-ress of the work. Something- has been done in 
 the way of lectures, delivered at the house for the benefit of all the 
 members. These lectures were furnished altogether from the As- 
 sociation itself. A course of six lectures is inserted to show the 
 nature of the subjects treated by the lecturers, and afterward in 
 general discussion : 1. " The Housing of the People," by Hon. 
 Robert Treat Paine. 2. " Sanitary Improvement," hj Professor 
 Dwiglit Porter. 3. " The Temperance Problem in Massachusetts," 
 by Rev. William E. Wolcott. 4. " Women's College Settlements," 
 by Miss Yida D. Scudder. 5. " Working- Girls' Clubs," by Miss O. 
 M. E. Rowe. 6. " The Child Problem," by Mr. C. W. Birtwell. 
 
 The House serves, through its residents and library, the much- 
 needed purpose of a bureau of information on social questions. 
 PreiDarations are also being made for lectures to be g-iven, as de- 
 sired, in the neighboring- towns, according to the methods of Uni- 
 versity extension. Social clubs are being organized in many towns, 
 some in connection with churches and some independently^ for 
 serious investigation and discussion. Eastern Massachusetts, with 
 its large urban and suburban population, with its manufacturing 
 centres, representing various and changing nationalities, and with 
 its small village communities retaining still something- of the 
 original type of the early settlement, offers rare facilities for social 
 study. More than this, it makes its appeal to the new philan- 
 tlirojjy. The social problem of New Eng-land is as g-rave as that of 
 any part of the country. Charity certainly cannot solve it. Some- 
 thing as true in sj)irit, but far broader and deeper in method, is 
 necessary to effect safely the transfer from the old individualism to 
 the future state of social unity. 
 
 The work of the Andover House has been set forth in this chapter 
 as an illustration of certain principles and methods which charac- 
 terize a new type of philanthropy. The general features of the
 
 192 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 type are unmistakable. Details varj' according- to tlie agencies em- 
 ployed. Some of the agencies are purely scientific and express 
 little or no sentiment. But all depend in part for their scientific 
 value upon the sympathj' which attends their working. There are 
 facts in social life which will not yield their entire content except 
 under the sympathetic ai^proach. Science, which is unsympathetic, 
 does not find what it is searching after. Sentiment may be lack- 
 ing, but not sympathy. Still the fact remains that the new philan- 
 thro^Dy is making its strongest appeal to young men and young 
 Avomen, especially to those who have the best intellectual and moral 
 training. It is impossible to overestimate the seriousness and the 
 enthusiasm with which the incoming generation is attacking what 
 it believes to be the problem of its time. There is a fervor about 
 this consecration to the Avork of social Christianity like that which 
 characterized the work of Christian missions at the beginning of 
 the century. It may well be so, for the only cry in our time which 
 compares in intensity with that which caught the ear of Carey and 
 Mills, is the cry from the Christian cities. We are beginning to 
 understand how much the apparently simple command of Christ 
 meant, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor." The perfect obedience 
 has not yet been rendered, but enough has been attempted to show 
 that it requires careful study, invention, patience, sympathy, and 
 practical heroism. Resident work " among the poor in great cities " 
 has its reliefs, like missionary work in foreign lands, chief of which 
 is the fact that it is work in a group. Like that, too, it has its 
 grateful surprises, or perhaps, one should better say, its grateful 
 certainties, in individual results. The outcome is always found in 
 some lives rescued, recovered, enlarged, with the possibility that 
 one, at least, may be reached who may prove a greater blessing to 
 his kind than all his benefactors. And the social result, while more 
 undefined, is still appreciable to those who, as they work, can see 
 in it the promise of the future society. 
 
 The growth of the movement represented by the Andover House 
 is quite as rapid as its best interests alloAV. Three houses are al-
 
 THE WORK OF THE AN DOVER HOUSE IN BOSTON 193 
 
 read}^ establislied in Boston Avorking- upon the same principles : 
 one connected with Boston University, made up of graduate stu- 
 dents and their wives ; Denison House, one of the Women's Colleg-e 
 Settlements ; and Dorothea House, named after Miss Dorothea 
 Dix, and composed of unmarried women : and there are two others 
 in immediate prospect. Similar work in other cities is fully de- 
 scribed in other pages of this volume. The general movement is 
 a remarkable illustration of the value of the contribution of the 
 personal element, when fully trained and consecrated, to a noble 
 cause. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT BY ROBEET A. WOODS, HEAD OF THE 
 
 ANDOVER HOUSE 
 
 The plan of work as explained by Dr. Tucker in this chapter 
 has been quite consistently followed during the four years since the 
 Andover House opened its doors. Whatever change of emphasis 
 experience may have brought about in the details of the plan, the 
 residents have held with especial firmness to the principle of being 
 "lavish of personal influence." In several ways — though this art is 
 very long, and results come not with observation— the House has 
 justified the hopes of those who inaugurated it. 
 
 It has succeeded in keeping together a group of five or six col- 
 lege men representing a variety of tasks and of callings in life. 
 The average stay of all the residents has been over a year. For the 
 present staff, the average stay has been nearly two years. Thus the 
 residents become identified in feeling with the neighborhood life, 
 and several of them have developed original and valuable lines of 
 social work such as would be suggested by their individual inter- 
 ests and talents. 
 
 In a perfectly gradual and natural way the House has been 
 
 coming into relation with the people and the social institutions of 
 
 its neighborhood and district. This is accomplished at the House 
 
 l)y informal hospitality and by a great variety of clubs, classes, lect- 
 13
 
 194 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 ures, concerts, eutertaiumeuts, and parties, in all of which there is 
 the touch of simple fellowship on a basis of common humanity ; and 
 throii,i>-hout the district by visiting- in the homes of the people and 
 by sharing- in the work of all sorts of organizations and institutions 
 — charitable, philanthropic, reformatory, political, educational, re- 
 ligious — that are making- for the better life of the district. The 
 plan is still to accomplish results not by creating new agencies, but 
 Ijy co-operating- with those already at work. This has been possible 
 for nearly everything- but the ministry of beaut}'. That had to be 
 developed out of nothing. The House has taken the lead in organ- 
 izing free art exhibitions and an annual series of concerts, through 
 which the best art and music that Boston can supply has l3ecome 
 available to South End people. 
 
 Much work has been done in the way of the careful and sym- 
 pathetic study of social conditions. Some of the residents have 
 come into relations of friendly understanding Avith the trades-union- 
 ists of the city, and have come- to have knowledge of, and iuHu- 
 ence in, the labor movement in its changing phases. Each resident 
 is encouraged to take up the special investigation of some ijrac- 
 tical social question. The results of these studies are published in 
 a series of bulletins which are sent out to members of the Andover 
 House Association. Some of their titles are : " A Guide to Evening- 
 Classes in Boston," "The Number of the Unemployed," "The 
 Anatomy of a Tenement Street," "A Study of Beg-gars and their 
 Lodgings." One of the best uses of the House is its now well-rec- 
 ognized function of serving- as a kind of moral and intellectual ex- 
 change through which busy men may acquaint themselves with the 
 social situation, at which they may meet on neutral ground other 
 men who under all ordinary circumstances would never cross their 
 paths, and may even be separated from them by great gulfs of 
 social distinction and prejudice. 
 August, 1895.
 
 AMONG THE POOE OF CHICAGO 
 
 By JOSEPH KIEKLAND 
 
 AUTHOR OF " ZURT," ETC. 
 
 Peculiakity op Chicago's Conditions — Wide Distribution of the Pooh 
 Population — The Greatest Poverty Among Foreign Elements — " The 
 Dive "—Typical Families — The "Bad Lands" — China-Town— The Clark 
 Street Mission ^ The Woman's Christian Temperance Union — The 
 Pacific Garden Mission — Statistics— The Unity Church, St. James's 
 Church and Central Church Missions — Volunteer Visitors — A Vet- 
 ekan — Hull House — Charity Organizations — The Jews' Quarter — The 
 Liberty Bell and Friendship Buildings — Statistics of a Sweat Shop — 
 The Anarchists — Socialists. 
 
 CHICAGO'S plague-spots are rather red than black ; blotches 
 marking- excess rather than insufficiency. Vice and crime are 
 more characteristic of a new, young-, busy, careless, pros- 
 perous city than is any compulsory, inevitable misery. An Eng- 
 lish philanthropist who visited Hull House (Rev. Mr. Barnett, 
 Warden of Toynbee Hall) remarked, in taking- his leave, that the 
 prevalent dirt and flagrant vice in Chicago exceeded anything in 
 London ; but that he had seen scarce any evidence of actual want. 
 
 The West is the paradise of the poor. " And the purgatory of 
 the rest of us," adds some fine lady who agonizes over the servant 
 problem. Well, even if this were true (which it is not), it would be 
 better than the reverse. The paradise of the rich, based on the 
 piirgatory of the poor, has endured long enough in the older lands. 
 
 " How the other half lives," in Chicago, is " pretty much as it 
 chooses." Americans born, and the better natures among the 
 foreign born (supposing them to have physical strength), can
 
 100 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 select their own kind of happiness. If they choose the joy which 
 springs from sobriety, they can have it in plenty. If thej' prefer 
 the Jelight of drink, that also is abundant. A solid devotion to 
 Avork and saving- gives a house and lot, a comfortable and well- 
 taught family, and a good chance for children and g-randchildreu, 
 Avho will take rank among the best, employing laborers of their 
 own, and perhaps, alas ! looking back with mortification on their 
 laboring- ancestors. An equally solid devotion to drink gives vice, 
 crime, want, and (what we should call) misery ; but this is a free 
 country. The latter class, like the former, are exercising their ina- 
 lienable right of self-g-overnment. They absolutely do not want our 
 cleanliness, our savings-accounts, our good clothes, books, schools, 
 churches, society, progress, and all that, unless they can have them 
 without paying the price — temperance ; and they cannot so have 
 them. Half of the " other half " belong strictly to the first-named 
 class, a tenth to the last-named, and the rest pursue a middle 
 course. Some rise from the middle to the upper ; the others live 
 along, having ups and downs and furnishing the recruits to keei^ 
 up the numbers of the lower, the " submerged tenth " which, hap- 
 pily, has not the facult}' of maintaining itself by direct reproduc- 
 tion. 
 
 The city has no "East End," " Whitechapel," or "Mulberry 
 Street " region ; no locality' given over to great hives of helpless- 
 ness, since there is no quarter which was built up for fine resi- 
 dences or business blocks and afterward deserted and turned over 
 to baser uses. The most ancient house in town (but one) is not fifty 
 years old, and the average scarcely twenty. Therefore " the tene- 
 ment-house evil," as it is knoAvn in New York and London, shows 
 almost no trace in the new, spacious mart on the edge of the Grantl 
 Prairie. Rooms are sublet to individuals and families, yet it is not 
 in tall, huge rookeries built for the purpose, but in smaller, lower 
 structures, otitside the limits of the Great Fire, which destroyed 
 the Avhole middle district — cleared it of weeds to make way for a 
 sturdier and healthier growth. If ever the time comes when the
 
 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO 
 
 19' 
 
 sky-scraping- structures of to-day are deserted by the uses for 
 which they are now occupied because they are in the geographi- 
 cal and business centre of the city, then there may be in Chicago 
 gigantic human hives of wretchedness such as exist in London and 
 New York. But as Chicago can 
 spread north, south, and west, it 
 is difficult to imagine a state of 
 things when the present business 
 district shall not be what it is. 
 
 The " lay of the land " is ag-ainst 
 local congestion. The river, with 
 its main stem running east and 
 west and its sprawling- branches 
 running north and south, trisects 
 the whole plain into North Side, 
 South Side, and West Side. These 
 in turn are dissected into smaller 
 patches by the railways, which 
 come to the very centre of popu- 
 lation, and radiate thence in all 
 directions except due east, where 
 the lake maintains a glorious ven- 
 tilation, moral and material. 
 
 There is no " Sailors' Quarter," 
 no place where Jack ashore hast- 
 ens to spend in a week the savings 
 of a year ; gets drunk as soon as 
 jDossible, and stays drunk as long- as possible, to balance his weeks 
 or months of enforced abstinence. The sailors here have only a 
 week or less afloat at one stretch, and they spend, every winter, 
 several months on shore, when they go mining or lumbering or 
 pursuing whatever calling- suits their fancy. Many of them are 
 family men — good, sturdy fellows, not distinguishable from the 
 average of intelligent tradesmen. 
 
 Familiar Scene in an Underground Lodging.
 
 198 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 For depth of shadow iu Chicago low life one must look to the 
 foreign elements,* the persons who are not only of alien birth but 
 of unrelated blood — the Mongolian, the African, the Sclav, the 
 semitropic Latin. Among them may be found a certain degree of 
 isolation, and therefore of clannish crowding ; also of contented 
 squalor, jealous of inspection and interference. It is in the quar- 
 ters inhabited by these that there are to be found the worst parts 
 of Chicago, the most unsavory spots in their moral and material 
 aspects. 
 
 Twelfth Street is encumbered by a long viaduct, reaching from 
 Wabash Avenue, westward, across the south branch of the river, 
 ending on the west side very near the starting-point of the Great 
 Fire of 1871. The viaduct nearly fills the street, and from it one 
 
 *0f Cliinamen there are about two thousand in Cliicago, living, as a general 
 rule, iu one quarter of the city — South Clark Street, adjoining the line occupied by 
 the Lake Shore and eastern Illinois Railways, running eastward and southward, and 
 the Rock Island, running westward. Of Italians Chicago has many thousands, part of 
 whom live in the South Clark Street neighborhood, and a larger number only a few 
 squares away, on the West Side, across the south branch of the river. Besides the 
 light common labor of street-cleaning, scavengering, etc., they control, practically, all 
 the great fruit-business of the city, and some of them are getting rich at it. Yet the 
 homes of the majority are among the most lowly and squalid in the city. Educated 
 Italians of the upper classes are handsomely housed in some of the fashionable streets. 
 The Poles and Bohemians inhabit a southwestern quarter, where their impossible 
 names occupy the sign-boards and their unbeautiful faces strike the eye and haunt the 
 memory. They are hard workers and not extravagant, and though crowded thej- are 
 not congested, though poor they are not in want. The colored people have done and 
 are doing remarkably well, considering the disadvantages and discouragements under 
 which they live. They are not largely the .supporters of the grog-shops. Their beset- 
 ting sin is gambling. They are industrious rather than hard-working, docile rather 
 than enterprising, and economical rather than acquisitive. There are impediments to 
 any accumulation such as their white neighbors engage in. For instance, suppose one 
 of tliem to invest his savings in a " Building Society," he would find, when his lot was 
 ready for him, that he would be unwelcome to his neighbors of a lighter skin. Even 
 as a renter he is only acceptable in regions devoted to his race. As one of them said 
 tome: " Nobody thinks a colored man fit for anything above being a porter. " Still, 
 as I said, there is a very perceptible advance in the race ; and it shows but little of 
 poverty or dependence, and still less of crime.
 
 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO 
 
 199 
 
 looks into the second stories of the taller houses, and over the roofs 
 of the shorter. One has there the advantages for observation pos- 
 sessed by the fabled " devil on two sticks." This is the habitation 
 of the Italian proletariat. 
 
 To g-et to the main floors of these sqnalid habitations one must 
 climb down many steps ; hence the name of the locality, " The 
 
 A Chicago Underground Lodging. 
 
 Dive." I once saw men carrying- into one of the darkened en- 
 trances here an immense bunch of g-reen bananas, which hung- 
 down between them like the " g-rapes of Eslicol " in the old primer. 
 One can only fancy the atmosphere in which this wonderful fruit 
 would hang- to ripen, and hope that the ripening process is one of 
 exhalation, not of inhalation, during- the week or more which must 
 elapse before it appears, yellow and mellow, to be sold from the
 
 200 THE POOR IX GREAT CITIES 
 
 wayside fruit-stand, or be dragrged slowly about the streets iu tlie 
 wagons attended by the dark-skinned pedlers as they troll forth, 
 in the sonorous Italian tones, " Banano-o ! Fi, Ei, Banano-o-o-o ! " 
 
 A bad state of things exists under the shadow of this viaduct, 
 and under the inclined planes by which the traffic of each street it 
 crosses is raised to its level. This is easy to believe, but it is hard 
 to imagine just how filthy, how squalid, how noisome, how abhor- 
 rent it all is. Walking along between inhabited houses and the 
 brick abutments of the raised way is like walking between the 
 walls of a sewer— like it to every sense — sight, smell, hearing, and 
 feeling. 
 
 The adjacent buildings are mostly of wood — small, low, rotten, 
 and crowded. In no case have I found one family occupjdng more 
 than two rooms — often only one. Here and there would be seen an 
 attempt at cleanliness of floor and bedclothing, Ijut nowhere even a 
 pretence of SAveeping of halls and stairways, or of shovelling out of 
 gutters and other foul conduits. "What squalor, filth, crowding ! 
 The constant feeling of the visitor is, "how dreadfully wretched 
 these people — ought to be." 
 
 Ought to be, but are not. They are chiefly the lower class of 
 Italians, born and bred, probably, to the knowledge of actual hun- 
 ger, which here they must rarely feel. I went among them re- 
 cently ; there were scarcely any men visible ; the swarms were 
 chiefly of women and children. The men were away, largely, no 
 doubt, attending to the fruit business and scavenger work which 
 have been mentioned. The women were universally caring for their 
 innumerable children, and these latter, especially the bojs, played, 
 shouted, careered about the halls and stairways, yards and roofs, in 
 uncontrolled freedom and gayety. Two or three of them had found 
 a great turnip, or some such vegetable, and siilit it in pieces, which 
 they displayed in a row on a board beside a gutter ; no pretence of 
 having any customers — it was merely the exhibition of an inherited 
 instinct for keeping an Italian fruit-stand ! 
 
 In the corner of a squalid hallway, just outside of the maternal
 
 AMONG THE POOR OF GHIGAQO 201 
 
 door (there not being- an inch of spare room within), a brig-ht-ej^ed 
 little girl had arranged a quite respectable imitation of a floor-bed 
 (both coverlet and stuffing- being rags), and on it lay a dirty, dilapi- 
 dated, flaxen-haired doll. The girl's instinct, too, was showing it- 
 self. Within the room the mother, with head bound up, as is the 
 universal custom of her kind, was attending to some duties ; a 
 child of two or three years sat staring at the intruder, and on the 
 floor stood a wash-tub over which was bending (and really work- 
 ing) a mite of a girl not more than six years old. Her little arms 
 could scarcely reach the grimy liquid in the bottom of the tub, but 
 she did the best she could, and up and down the tin wash-board 
 sounded her tiny kniickles, handling- some dingy, dripping- stuff or 
 other, she scarcely pausing to look up and notice who had opened 
 the door. 
 
 Here were a few men, more women, and most children ; but no 
 young- unmarried women. One wonders where are the grown girls. 
 They are not in service in private families ; such a thing is un- 
 known here ; and they are not adapted to the business of shop- 
 girls. It is to be hoped that they are engaged in the innumerable 
 handicrafts that prevail ; paper-box and paper-bag makers, tobac- 
 co-handlers, book-folders and stitchers, etc. The Hull House lad- 
 ies say that they marry early in their teens, and that many of them 
 do bits of plain sewing — the mere finishing of trouser-legs, etc. — at 
 wonderfully low rates, and in wonderfully large quantities, often in 
 the so-called " sweat-shops " of the tailoring trade. The clothing 
 of all has been (apparently) bought at Chicago second-hand cloth- 
 ing stores ; or, if imported from Italy, has a common and familiar 
 aspect, which anew illustrates the levelling and averaging hand of 
 modern commerce and intercourse, Avhence it comes that all man- 
 kind is growing to look alike — each individual to be a " composite 
 photograph *' of all the rest. 
 
 Every person, of whatever sex or age, is clothed sufficiently for 
 decency and for warmth ; and seems to be provided with all food 
 necessary to sustain life, though perhaps not the rudest health.
 
 202 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 Emerg-iiio- on a second-story balcony at the back of one of these 
 Italian lionses one comes upon a long- vista of house rears and tum- 
 ble-down back - sheds, squalid beyond conception. Neishboring- 
 Avindows are filled with faces peering- out with interest and amuse- 
 ment at the stranger. Here and there are bits of rope stretched 
 
 ^■ 
 
 Sunday Afternoon in the Italian Quarter. 
 
 from one nail to another — from house to shed, from fence to banis- 
 ter, from w^indow-sill to door-post — carrying- forlorn arrays of 
 washed clothing. Each is the effort of some lowdy woman to pre- 
 serve a little cleanliness in the garments of herself and her house- 
 hold. At least a forlorn hope is keeping up the battle against 
 vileness. 
 
 On a hot summer night every roof and every balcony in sight 
 is covered with sleeping men, women, and children, each with only
 
 A3WyG THE POOR OF CHIC AGO 203 
 
 a sing-le blanket or coverlet for all purposes of protection and de- 
 cency. All winter the cook-stove of each family supplies warmth 
 to the little household. (The cheapest coal is always to be had at 
 $3 a ton or less.) 
 
 " The Bad Lands " is a quarter more repellent because more 
 pretentious than " The Dive," but, being the abode of vice ami 
 crime rather than of poverty, it can be properly omitted here. 
 Women of the town are not molested so long- as' they stay within 
 doors, except on occasion of the frequent rows, fig-hts, robberies, 
 and murders. The men about are, if possible, more repulsive than 
 the women. Some have showy clothes, more are " bums," wrecks 
 of humanity ; slouching-, dirty, sneaking, hangdog tramps. They 
 do not want work, could not get it if they Avanted it, and could not 
 do it if they got it. All they want is a dime a day. With that 
 they can get a great big " schooner " of beer and a chance at the 
 free-lunch counter. They sleep on the floor till the place closes up 
 and then crawl into some doorway or hallway, or go to the police 
 station for a l)uiik. 
 
 One recognizes Chinatown by the curious signs over the shoj^s. 
 The Chinese are industrious and economical and peaceable — never 
 molest anybody who lets them alone. Opium they take just as our 
 people take whiskej^, and it does not seem to hurt them any more. 
 But when the police find them taking in whites as well as China- 
 men, they "run them in." It is death, and worse than death, to 
 the others, especially to women. In a tjq3ioa,l Chinese shop all is 
 scrupulously neat and clean. It seems as *if, by some magic, the 
 smoky, dusty atmosphere of Chicago had been excluded from this 
 unique interior, which looks like the inside of a bric-a-brac cabinet, 
 with bright colors, tinsel, and shining metals. On the walls are 
 colored photographs, shoAving the proprietors beautifully dressed 
 in dove-colored garments. In a kind of shrine stands a " Joss 
 table " or altar, with what is probably a Confucian text hanging
 
 204 
 
 THE POOR IN ORE AT CITIES 
 
 over it, and lying on it some opinm pipes. In a room behind the 
 shop a " fan-tan " g-ame is going on upon a straw-matted table, 
 
 around which gath- 
 er interested Celes- 
 tials three deep. 
 In the shop is a 
 freshly opened im- 
 portation, barrels 
 and boxes of Chi- 
 nese delicacies, 
 pickled fish of va- 
 rious kinds, with 
 the pungent odor 
 which belongs to 
 that kind of food 
 the world round 
 and the seas over. 
 The m e n a r e 
 clothed in heavy, 
 warm cloth, cut in 
 Chinese fashion — • 
 great, broad cloaks, 
 loose trousers, felt- 
 soled shoes, etc. — 
 but in American 
 felt hats. 
 
 Italian Mothers. 
 
 At 406 Clark 
 Street, in the very 
 midst of all that is alien to our better nature, rises the Clark Street 
 Mission.* Here are daily gathered, in a free kindergarten, some 
 scores of the little unfortunates whom a cruel fate has planted in 
 this cesspool. It is a touching sight ; they are so innocent as yet, 
 
 * The mission is now on Wabash Avenue, between Fourteenth and Fifteenth Streets.
 
 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO 205 
 
 mere buds spring-ins: up in the track of a lava-stream. There is a 
 creche here as well as kinderg-arten, and tiny creatures, well fed 
 and cared for, swing- in hammocks, or sit, stand, walk, or creeji all 
 about in charge of kind, devoted young- Avomen, Curiously enough, 
 many of the little ones are born of Arabian mothers. There are 
 some hundreds of Arabs housed near by. The attendant thinks 
 they are Christian converts, in charge of church folk who were for- 
 merly missionaries in Arabia. The women are occupied in peddling 
 small wares and trinkets, which they carry about in packs and 
 baskets.* In the same hall are evening and Sunday religious meet- 
 ings ; and not long ago there was a series of midnight prayer- 
 meetings held here, with how much success I do not know. 
 
 The whole enterprise is in charge (and at the charge) of the 
 g-reat Woman's Christian Temperance Union. This is an institu- 
 tion of wonderful strength and beauty ; a giantess, throned in in- 
 telligence and honor ; stretching- her strong- hands toward the 
 Aveak, sinking thousands of the " submerged tenth," and all who are 
 on the edge of the submergence. The W. C. T. U, numbers more 
 than 200,000 members in all, of whom 1G,000 are in Illinois, and 
 their activity is tireless, their ability wonderful. It is one of the 
 phenomena marking the elevation of the sex under the sunshine of 
 Western freedom and prosperity. The building, planned, erected, 
 and paid for by this body, is the most perfect and (as it should 
 be) the most sightly of all Chicago's new "sky-scrapers." It is 
 named " Temperance Temjde ; " its cost was $1,100,000. Its spare 
 room is fully occupied, and it will earn rentals amounting to 
 §200,000 a year. 
 
 The Pacific Garden Mission has a larg-e hall, opening directly 
 on Van Buren Street, within five hundred feet of the Grand Pacific 
 Hotel, yet within a scarcely greater distance of some of the Avorst 
 of the " bad districts " of the city. " The Dive " is only half a mile 
 south of it, and " The Levee," " The Bad Lands," " Chinatown," 
 
 * A year ago I met a party of Arabians on the San Juan River, in Nicaragua, and 
 they too were peddling trinkets carried in packs ana baskets.
 
 206 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 etc., are still nearer. Tlie single big room is vast and clingj^— the 
 latter characteristic inseparable from every apartment in Chicago 
 which is not the object of constant, laborious cleaning and renova- 
 tion. The walls are covered with Scripture texts in large letters, 
 " Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God," etc. " Wel- 
 come," " God is love," and other cheering mottoes are embossed in 
 Christmas greens over the platform. A little collection of hymns 
 is upon each seat, and notices of the hours of services are sus- 
 pended in various places, among the rest some announcing the Sal- 
 vation Army meetings. No effort at ornament for ornament's sake 
 appears anywhere ; nor any outward gayety to suggest inward joy 
 and peace. Colonel Clark * is the moving and controlling spirit of 
 the Mission, as well as its chief money supporter. The meetings on 
 Sunday are often full to the doors ; a few front seats being filled 
 by the " workers " and particular friends, and the rest hx the 
 chance-comers, gathered from adjacent slums to hear the music and 
 look on at the devotional exercises. It is one of the simply relig- 
 ious efforts to elevate the debased and reform the bad, by offering to 
 them "Christ and him crucified; "by the direct interposition of 
 heaven it must succeed, but without such miracle it cannot. The 
 " news of salvation " no longer surprises and charms the world, for 
 the world has ceased to fear the opposite. One is reminded of the 
 plaint made two hundred years ago by the French missionaries 
 sent to the savages of this very region (their skin was red in those 
 days) when they said, in effect : " Surely we are in nowise to be 
 comjiared with the Holy Apostles ; yet the world must have 
 changed since they went forth among the heathen who heard them 
 gladly, and, rejoicing to receive the glorious news of salvation, 
 tiocked forward, one and all, demanding baptism. Here we sail 
 the floods and scale the mountains in pursuit of one poor savage, if 
 haply we may prevail to save him from the wrath to come, and in 
 most cases his salvation is changed to backsliding as soon as our 
 backs are turned." To the same general effect is the conclusion 
 
 * Since Colonel Clark's death the work has been ably carried on by Mrs. Clark.
 
 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO 
 
 207 
 
 reached by the religious workers of to-day, who say " these beings 
 are in nowise fit subjects for a merely religious ministry." 
 
 I once told a young musician (a Scandinavian) at the Pacific 
 Garden Mission that I was then in search of the veiy poor and 
 miserable, the helpless- 
 ly wretched, and asked 
 him where they were to 
 be found. He asked 
 where I had been, and 
 on telling him that I 
 came fresh from " The 
 Dive," "The Bad 
 Lands," " Biler Ave- 
 nue," " Niggertown, " 
 " Chinatown," etc., he 
 asked if these were not 
 poor enough. I said 
 they were rather vi- 
 cious, drunken, and de- 
 praved than poor ; that 
 I wanted to find the 
 poverty that springs 
 from misfortune rath- 
 er than that from 
 drink. To this he 
 impulsively gave the 
 pregnant answer : 
 
 " There is none. 
 You might find one or two others in five hundred, but it is drink 
 in the case of all the rest." 
 
 And so it goes. Such is the evidence of the experts, the philan- 
 thropists, the missionaries, and the senses themselves. There 
 are sixty saloons in two blocks of this dreadful Dismal Swamp. 
 Each saloon pays 1500 a year of city license alone ; pays its United 
 
 ' The Dive.
 
 208 THE rOOIl IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 States Government license for selling spirits, beer, and tobacco ; 
 pays for all its stock in trade, its rent, its wages, and expenses- 
 thrives like a Canada thistle on the barren soil of its environ- 
 ment. Five hundred dollars for license, $500 for rent, $1,000 for 
 wages and expenses, and $1,500 for stock in trade makes $3,500. 
 The sums paid by these "poor" must reach $4,000 a year, on 
 the average, to each saloon; and sixty saloons gives $240,000 a 
 year, all in one street, within a distance of two squares. A^erily 
 the savings of the rich are as nothing compared with the wast- 
 ings of the poor. Beer is the alleviation and perpetuation of 
 
 poverty. 
 
 I also asked the young musician about the condition of his fel- 
 low-Scandinavians, where their poor could best be studied. He re- 
 plied that there were none. Individual helplessness was cared for 
 by individual charities and the churches. That is what might be 
 expected. The Scandinavian immigration has been, on the whole, 
 the finest addition to the northwest. They are largely agricultur- 
 ists, are temperate, industrious, strong, frugal, and hardy. Not sel- 
 dom do great colonies of them go on cheap excursions back to visit 
 the Fatherland. They pass through Chicago — men, women, and 
 children— with bands playing and flags flying ; they cross the sea 
 and spend some time at the old home, spreading the news of West- 
 ern freedom and plenty, and then return Avitli many recruits and 
 with fresh relish for the Greater Scandinavia they are building 
 among us. Those who do remain in the cities are helpers worth 
 having. The girls make the best house-servants — strong, intelligent, 
 respectful, and self-respecting; and the men, though not blameless 
 in the matter of drink, yet are not among the willing slaves to it. 
 On the whole, they see the alternative presented to them — the two 
 kinds of hajipiness already spoken of — and make what seems to us 
 the wisest choice between them. The servants, as cooks and " sec- 
 ond girls," earn from three to five or six dollars a week besides their 
 board and lodging, and the demand for such as have anything like 
 a fair knowledge of their business is always ahead of the supply.
 
 es^'^ f
 
 J
 
 AMONG THE POOR OF CHIC AGO 211 
 
 They dress well, save money, and spend immense sums in helping 
 their friends here and in the Fatherland. 
 
 In the " North Division," near the great gas-works, exists a large 
 colony Avhich of old earned the name of " Little Hell," and which 
 presents features of deep shadow with gleams of growing light — a 
 dark cloud with a silver lining. Many of the men are gas-work 
 laborers, doing hard duty, earning large wages, and drinking deep 
 draughts. They are of three races — Irish, German, and Scandi- 
 navian — the lirst-named the most able and the most turl^ulent. 
 The wages earned since the works were started, if they had been 
 wisely used, would have bought the entire plant ; would have 
 vested every dollar of the vast and profitable stock in the workers. 
 The latter would now be the capitalists. But that is a mere truism. 
 The wage-earners of the whole country would be the capitalists if 
 it were not that they have preferred to take their joy drop by drop. 
 
 The bright lining of the dark cloud hovering about the gas- 
 works is the Unity Church Industrial School and Boys' Club near 
 by, and the Saint James's Church and Central Church Mis- 
 sions, not far away. The former (which I happen to know most 
 about) was started in 1876 by the women of Eobert Collyer's 
 church, in an effort to do something for the poorest and most 
 neglected children, the difficulty being that this class was soon 
 supplanted by a better class, less in need of help — " people more 
 anxious for what they could get than what they could learn." The 
 others, children of the drunken and vicious, Avere always hardest to 
 reach and to keep hold of. 
 
 From this grain of mustard-seed has grown a great tree. The 
 excellent and benevolent Eli Bates bequeathed to the enterprise 
 $20,000, which was used for the construction of a brick building 
 having all the appliances for an industrial school, and there the 
 worthy Unity Church people spend time and money to good pur- 
 pose. There are classes in various branches, and a large and well- 
 kept creche.
 
 212 TUE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 A noticeable feature of this " lay mission " is the Boys' Club, 
 where, for several months every year, meetings have been held on 
 several evenings each week to give the youth of the neighborhood 
 rational and wholesome fun with some incidental instruction. The 
 boys range from eight to sixteen years old, and were at the start 
 a " hard lot." Yet they always had some traits of good feeling. 
 The young women teachers always found them easier to manage 
 than did the men. And even when discipline had to be main- 
 tained by force, the majority was sure to be on the side of law and 
 order. As far as possible, the boys are made to manage their own 
 games and exercises, showing sometimes a good deal of ability. 
 They number, on ordinary evenings, about sixty, the " picnic ag- 
 gregate" reaching to a hundred and fifty. The older boys are 
 workers during the daytime ; the younger, attendants on public 
 and parochial schools. 
 
 There is but little want among the families. Their houses are 
 small and not crowded together ; but the households occupy gener- 
 ally only two or three rooms each. 
 
 "VMiether influenced by the various missions near by, by the 
 paving and improvement of streets, or by other causes, or partly by 
 the one and i^artl}" by the others, the place is losing its old char- 
 acter, and even its ugly sobriquet is almost forgotten. 
 
 In Chicago the "fashion" and the larger part (though not 
 by any means all) of the wealth of the city are on the 
 "South Side" and "North Side," where also the deepest poverty 
 and degradation are to be found. On the great " West Side " are 
 the industrious and prosperous workers, with their tens of thou- 
 sands of labor-bought homes. It may be a new idea to the deni- 
 zens of older cities that laborers should, can, and do own their 
 dwelling-places, both land and building. Far more than half the 
 homes in Chicago are so owned and occupied. The chief part of 
 real-estate speculation is the buying of suburban acres and sub- 
 dividing and selling them in lots to thrifty workmen. Purchase for
 
 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO 
 
 213 
 
 the sake of putting up houses to rent as clwelling-s (except in the 
 case of flats) is now extremely rare. The chief agent in this home- 
 stead movement is to be found in the numerous " building socie- 
 ties," wherein the mechanic deposits his savings as they accrue, 
 and then when be wishes to build his home he draws from the 
 society whatever he may have laid up, and borrows from it what he 
 may need in addition, paying a premium in addition to the usual 
 interest. (This premium and interest inure to the benefit of the 
 other depositors.) Membership in a building society, and the 
 
 A,M fuuiMrnMM>mFm^ T<n] «f nfFI «• '£=^U> 'Nr jL -> 
 
 «> >.-.;^£.o '^,?aSa?^ 
 
 Hull House Creche, or Day Nursery. 
 
 hope of a bit of ground all his own, are wonderful incentives to 
 temperance in the man and economy in the wife. And when the 
 lot is selected, how he clings to it ! Beer and whiskey are for- 
 gotten. Even schooling and some other good and proper cares are 
 apt to be postponed. A city of such homes is safe from anarchy. 
 As for any wielder of torch and dynamite, as soon as he steps forth 
 into the light of the humble private fireside, and the " lamp in the 
 window," he is in peril of his life. 
 
 On the West Side are also, especially in winter, the unem- 
 ployed ; some of whom could not find work if they would, some 
 would not if they could, and some, when they can and do work,
 
 214 TUE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 make the omnipresent saloon their saving-s-bank ; a bank which 
 takes in g-ood money but pays out only false tokens. 
 
 I accompanied one of the " Volunteer County Visitors " on her 
 walk in search of the jDeople who should be helped by charity, 
 public or private. We walked through a half-mile of street lined 
 Avitli the crowded habitations of the poor. At the farther end of 
 it are visible the moving trains of the Fort Wayne Eailway, and 
 above and beyond these the masts and funnels of shipping. Being 
 just outside the old " burnt district," its houses are of wood, an- 
 cient, squalid, dilapidated. There is not more than about one sa- 
 loon to every street corner, therefore this is far from an " infested " 
 region. It is chiefly occupied by Italians, who are not, as yet, the 
 sots and terrors of the social system, and do not seem likely ever 
 to become so. Groups of them are idling about, well enough 
 dressed, but low-browed and ill-favored, looking with apparent 
 surliness on visitors come to spy out the nakedness of the land. 
 Within the houses we find the families crowded into two small 
 rooms each, or thereabouts; and in those two rooms are all the 
 operations of existence to be carried on in each case. Sleeping, 
 eating, cooking, washing, ironing-, sickness, child-bearing-, nursing, 
 living, dying, and burying — these considerations force themselves 
 on the mind and suggest dismal ijictures as one fancies a life so 
 spent. 
 
 Yet as to mere room, warmth, shelter, dryness, and convenience, 
 the inhabitants are better accommodated than is the campaigning 
 soldier in his tent, having no furniture, clothing for night or 
 day, or other appliances for comfort, except those he can carry with 
 him from camp to camp in addition to his arms and accoutrements. 
 But women and children are not soldiers. Camp miseries would 
 kill them ; one Avho has sufi^ered such privation can scarcely feel 
 the proper degree of pity for these creatures — warm, dry, fat, 
 clothed, safe, at leisure and at liberty. 
 
 The poorest and most wretched household we found that day
 
 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO 215 
 
 was tliat of an old soldier, a gray-liaired man of education and (at 
 some time) of intelligence, once a lieutenant in a volunteer regi- 
 ment. He was wounded at the battle of Fair Oaks. There he lies, 
 g-rimy and vermin-infested, in a filthy bed, with a young g-randchild 
 beside him in like condition, and a drunken virago of a woman, 
 ramping and scolding- in the two rooms which constitute the family 
 abode. She is quite the most repulsive being- yet met with. A 
 little inquiry develops the fact that this man was in the Soldiers' 
 Home at Milwaukee (and could return there to remain, if he 
 wished), well fed, clothed, and cared for, and that he left there be- 
 cause : " You see you can't stand it to be kept down all the time, 
 and moved back and forth, and here and there, whether you like it 
 or not." And he moved his black paws back and forth, and here 
 and there, on the dingy bedclothes, to indicate how the Home de- 
 prived him of his freedom— his "liberty" to pass his time in the 
 living- death which his present condition seems to the onlooker. 
 
 Chicago's " Hull House " is already widely known as the " Toyn- 
 bee Hall " of the West, though the parallelism between the two in- 
 stitutions is far from absolute and complete. In the first place, 
 Hull House was started and is carried on by women, with only the 
 occasional and exceptional heli^ — welcome though it is — of the 
 other sex. Then, too, the system is as different as are the condi- 
 tions in which the two institutions are placed. Its best service in 
 stimulating the intellectual life of the neighborhood has been in 
 the establishment of its college-extension classes, which have grown 
 into what is practicalh^ an evening college, with thirty courses 
 weekly and a membership of one hundred and fifty to two hundred 
 students of a high order. 
 
 In a widel}^ difierent sphere is its strictly philanthropic work. 
 Yet, even here, Hull House is not a mission, since no especial re- 
 ligion is inculcated and no particular social reform is announced as 
 the object of its being. If people in the humbler classes of its vis- 
 itors learn there to live good, clean, temperate lives, it is throug-h
 
 216 
 
 THE POOR IN GEE AT CITIEfi 
 
 " Temperance Temple." 
 
 Built by the Woman's Christiau Temperance Union. 
 
 the demonstration of the enduring beaiity and g-ayety of such a life 
 as contrasted with the lurid and fleeting joys of the other. Hull
 
 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO 217 
 
 House parlors, class-rooms, g-ymuasium, library, etc., are the rivals 
 of the swarming- grog-shops. Nobody, not even the ornaments of 
 clie college-extension classes, is more welcome than the jjoor fellow 
 who has begun to feel that he can no longer struggle against pov- 
 erty and drink, and nobody is less pointed at, preached at, or set 
 upon than he. The choice is open to him, right hand or left hand 
 as he sees fit, and it surely seems as if no sane human being could 
 hesitate. At least the boy growing up with the choice before him, 
 and the light shining on the parting of the ways, will take — is tak- 
 ing—the one those devoted young women are making so inviting to 
 his footsteps. 
 
 It is not charity that Hull House offers, any more than it is pre- 
 cept. True, there are some cases which arise, outside the business 
 of the House, where public or private beneficence is turned toward 
 deserving helplessness. But that is not strictly Hull House work. 
 The latter consists in bestowing friendship and sympathy, the sis- 
 terly heart, hand, and voice, on all who are willing to come within 
 its sweet and pleasant influence. 
 
 With characteristic wisdom and good feeling the Board of the 
 grand Chicago Public Library (free to all) has placed one of its 
 sub-stations in the reading-room of Hull House ; and in that large, 
 handsome, well-lighted apartment applications for books are taken, 
 and the books are delivered and returned, all quite without expense 
 of any kind to the reader. 
 
 The building which contains the library and reading-room has 
 been added to the Hull House structures by the liberality of Ed- 
 ward B. Butler. The same building contains a studio in which 
 drawing-classes are held each evening, and an admirably fitted art- 
 exhibit room in which some of the best pictures in Chicago are 
 shown from time to time. The humanitarian side of the Hull 
 House activity is maintained by the Nursery, the Kindergarten, the 
 Diet Kitchen, the District Nursing, and the Industrial Classes. Its 
 activities are multiform that they may meet the needs, not alone of 
 the enterprising nor yet the poor, but of its neighborhood as a
 
 218 TEE POOR IN ORE AT CITIES 
 
 whole. That it has met such a need is shown by the fact that the 
 weekl3" membership of its club and classes is nine hundred. 
 
 The Creche, or Day Nursery, is surely as bright, sunny, and 
 pretty a room as any ever devoted to that angelic purpose. Two 
 little, low tables, two dozen little, low chairs, each holding a pa- 
 thetic little figure, dear to some mother's heart, and a young lady 
 as busy (and sometimes as puzzled) as a pullet with a brood of 
 ducklings— these are the dramatis personce. It is luncheon-time, 
 and with much pains the babes have been brought to reasonable 
 order, side by side, each restless pair of hands joined in a devo- 
 tional attitude far from symbolic of the impatient being behind 
 them. One small creature remains rebellious, and stands against 
 the wall in tearful protest. The guardian angel explains that the 
 small creature misses its mother, whereupon a visitor lifts it in his 
 arms, and all is jDeace. 
 
 The Creche has flourished greatly. The numbers vary from 
 twenty-five to thirty, being governed by a curious law — the preva- 
 lence of house-cleaning! When many mothers can find jobs of 
 scrubbing (which, by the way, earns a dollar and a half a day), then 
 many babies are the helpless beneficiaries of the good offices of 
 Hull House. But the benefit is not a gift ; Hull House gives out 
 no alms ; everj' child is paid for at five cents a day. 
 
 The Sewing-Class is, if possible, a still more beautiful sight. 
 Twenty or thirty little girls are gathered about low .tables sewing 
 away for dear life, and sitting among them are several young 
 " society " women, guiding the immature hands and thoughts. It 
 is proudly said that no social pleasures are allowed to stand in the 
 way of this philanthroiDic duty. 
 
 From an admirable pamphlet entitled "Hull House: A Social 
 Settlement," I condense the following sketch of labors and ef- 
 forts : 
 
 Monday Evenings : Social Club, thirty girls. Debating Club, 
 thirty young men. (The two clubs join later in the evening.)
 
 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO 
 
 219 
 
 Athletic Class. Drawing- Class. Greek Art Class. Mathematics 
 Class. English Composition Class. 
 
 Tuesday Evening: : AVorking- People's Social Science Club. (Ad- 
 dresses and discussions led by judges, lawyers, and business men.) 
 
 Russian Jews at " Shelter House." 
 
 Gymnasium. Drawing- Class. Cooking- Class. American History. 
 Eeading- Party. Ca?sar. Latin Grammar. Political Economy. 
 Modern History. 
 
 And so on through the week. The noticeable varieties of inter- 
 est include (besides the branches already named) Singing, Needle- 
 work, Diet Kitchen, Biology, Shakespeare, Lilies and Ferns, Victor 
 Hugo, German Reception, Chemistry, Electricity, Clay Modelling,
 
 220 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 English for Italians, Women's Gymnastics, etc. This vast ciuTicu- 
 lum is only for the evenings ; the mornings and afternoons and the 
 Sundays have their own programmes; and it may well be im- 
 agined that no business establishment goes far beyond this bee- 
 hive of benevolence in orderly bustle and activity. 
 
 Hull House is fairly supplied with means. The use of the 
 property it occupies was freely and generously bestowed upon it by 
 Miss Helen Culver, to whom the property w^as devised by the late 
 Charles J. Hull, whose old family residence it was. Then, too, the 
 needs of the institution are wonderfully small compared with the 
 ever- widening and deepening sphere of its influence. 
 
 Miss Jane Addams and Miss Ellen Gates Starr are the young 
 women whose hearts conceived it, whose minds planned it, and 
 whose small hands started it and have managed it thus far. 
 
 One of the young women had some private means of her own ; 
 and such is the sway of their gentle influence among those who 
 know them that when they are told that money must come, lo ! 
 it appears. And, what is more, when they are forced to admit 
 that their strength — unfortunately not superabundant — has reached 
 its limit, other young helpers are at hand and the work never 
 flags. 
 
 There exist in Chicago other benevolent institutions whose very 
 number and variety preclude description. The City Directory con- 
 tains the addresses of 57 asylums and hospitals, 28 infirmaries and 
 dispensaries, 41 missions, 60 temperance societies, lodges, etc., and 
 thirty-seven colmnns of secret benevolent associations, camps, 
 lodges, circles, etc. The city is honeycombed with philanthropic 
 associations in all magnitudes, shapes, and forms, from the ancient 
 and honorable "Relief and Aid" (which won deathless fame after 
 the Great Fire) down to the latest " Working-Girls' Luncheon 
 Club," the Ursula, instituted by the graduates of an advanced school 
 to provide and furnish, at cost, mid-day meals in the business dis- 
 tricts for their toiling sisters. (There are several such clubs, and 
 more are forming.) Everyone of the hundreds of churches is a cen-
 
 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO 221 
 
 tre of charitable effort. It becomes a net-work so all-pervading 
 that one wonders that any should slip through, after all, and per- 
 ish of want, as occasionally happens, nevertheless. 
 
 What is known as the " Poor Jews' Quarter " (as contra-distin- 
 guished from the splendid homes of their richer co-religionists) 
 lies near the western end of Twelfth Street Bridge, and to the 
 southward of the West Side Italian quarters already spoken of. 
 Certainly it is not the abode of ease, luxury, and elegance ; its 
 odors are not those of flowery meads, its architecture is not marked 
 by either massiveness or ornamentation, its streets and alleys are 
 not grassy (though they look as if they might be fertile under 
 proper cultivation), and its denizens are more remarkable for num- 
 ber than for attractiveness. On the other hand, the region is still 
 less suggestive of a " Ghetto," according to any prevailing tradition 
 of those abodes. Children, ranging from infancy to adolescence, 
 and from invalidism to rude health, throng the sidewalks. Many 
 of these children have never seen a tree or a blade of grass. " In 
 our summer country excursions," said a lady of Hull House, " we 
 have much pleasure in watching them— they kneel down sometimes 
 so as to study the grass and feel it with their hands." Yet the side- 
 walk seems to furnish a tolerable substitute for the grass-plat, and 
 the passer-by has to edge close to street or fence to keep clear of 
 the flying rope, turned by two girls, while a little string of others 
 are awaiting their turn to jump, each one who " trips " taking the 
 place of one of the turners — just as is done by their richer fellow- 
 mortals, better fed and better dressed, but perhaps not more joyous 
 and miregretful. 
 
 In the midst of this swarming colony rises— tall, large, hand- 
 some, and solid— the " Jewish Training School," under the manage- 
 ment of a strong band of the solid Israelites of the city (represent- 
 ing, of course, solid millions of money) and the superintendency of 
 Professor Gabriel Bamberger. Fifty thousand dollars a year is 
 wisely and economically expended here, and eight hundred children 
 and youths, of both sexes, and all races and religions, are taught
 
 222 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 and cared for. The classes in drawing and clay-modelling- are es- 
 pecially notable. 
 
 Not far away is the " Shelter House " of the " Society in Aid of 
 Russian Ivefugees." There the members of this unfortunate class 
 
 Another Group at " Shelter House." 
 
 find surcease of their woes and persecutions in a blessed harbor of 
 temporary refug-e, whence they are scattered to various employ- 
 ments and chances to earn an honest living-, free from imperialism, 
 officialism, priestcraft, and military service. They are a sturdy- 
 looking set, and will not be long in learning that their greatest ill-
 
 AMONG THE POOR OB' CHICAGO 223 
 
 treatment is turned to tlieir greatest good luck when they arrive at 
 the " Shelter House." They are " submerg-ed " no longer. 
 
 "When the back streets of Chicago are undergoing their spring 
 cleaning, the mass of mud collected for removal in this quarter is 
 incredible. The piles along the street-side are as high as they can 
 be made to stand erect, and as close together as they can be. This 
 is the accumulation of the months of December to March inclusive 
 —the months when snow, frost, and short days impede the work so 
 that a dollar laid out does perhaps not forty cents' worth of good. 
 Then, too, the cold renders the vile deposit less hurtful to health, 
 and the moisture and the frost keep it from flying about in the 
 form of dust. The main streets are cleaned even when there is 
 snow on the ground.* 
 
 One characteristic development of business-like philanthropy in 
 Chicago is in the " Liberty Bell " and " Friendship " buildings for 
 the accommodation of working-men. They are not germane to the 
 subject of poverty, except to show its absence, prevention, or alle- 
 viation. The first-named was an experiment in the direction of 
 furnishing to working-men good accommodations at rates almost 
 nominal. A man is there ofl:'ered a bath, a shave, and the use of a 
 laundry (both provided with hot and cold water and soap), and a 
 clean bed in a clean and ventilated room, all for ten cents. The 
 whole main floor is devoted to a waiting-room with chairs and 
 tables. In this room one sees from fifty to one hundred men, old 
 and young, talking, smoking, reading newspapers, and the place is 
 filled with the hum of conversation. In one corner is a group dis- 
 cussing work and wages ; in another the younger felloAVS have made 
 their newspapers into balls which they toss one to another. There 
 is no drinking, no singing, and no boisterous mirth. " They take 
 
 * Even ill well-swept London the streets are neglected in winter. ' ' In one street is 
 the body of a dead dog, and near by two dead cats, which lie as though they had 
 slain each other ; all three have been crushed flat by the traffic which has gone over 
 them, and they, like everything else, are frozen and harmless.'' — Labor and Life of the 
 People, vol. ii., p. 96, London, 1892.
 
 224 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 their pleasure sacllj', according to their wont," as Froissart remarks 
 concerning their far-away ancestors. 
 
 From the profits earned by the "Liberty Bell" the ''Friend- 
 ship " has been built. There things are more handsomely done. Not 
 only are there no beds in tiers, as at the other jDlace ; but each is 
 entirely inclosed in a locked space, eight feet high, and protected 
 by charged electric wires, so that the tenant and all his belongings 
 are safe from intrusion or theft. The same accommodations (in 
 more elegant form) are offered as in the former place, and the en- 
 tire charge is fifteen cents. The originator of the pleasant and 
 profitable scheme is now abroad, looking for further knowledge 
 wherewith to provide further improvements. 
 
 At each place a good meal is served, in a restaurant attached, at 
 an additional charge of ten cents. The savings of the men are ac- 
 cei^ted and cared for by the concern, and they amount to a very 
 considerable sum. The men are largely dock-workers, sailors wait- 
 ing for the opening of the lakes, mechanics out of a job, workers at 
 light trades and callings about town, etc. All are comfortably 
 clothed and quite free from any marks of want. 
 
 This is a pleasant aspect of the labor situation ; but it is to be 
 remembered that here we have only the able-bodied single men, 
 the class which is last to feel the griping hand of poverty. Women 
 and children, the difficidt and distressing element in the social 
 problem, are in all this left out of the account. The dock-laborers 
 among these men— the largest class— earn from twenty to twenty- 
 five cents an hour. 
 
 On the North Side (255 Indiana Street) is the " Home for Self- 
 supporting Women," which, as its name implies, does a service for 
 the other sex somewhat similar to that offered to men at the 
 " Friendship." For obvious reasons the difliculties in dealing with 
 the stronger sex are greatly magnified when the weaker is in ques- 
 tion. Yet, great or small, those difficulties are braved, and, to a 
 large extent, conquered. Better entertainment must be (and is) 
 provided : larger charges must therefore be imposed, and that on
 
 AMONG THE POOR OF CHIVAGO 
 
 225 
 
 individuals whose wages are smaller. Still the enterprise is nearly 
 self-supporting-, and when kindly fate shall inspire some rich and 
 benevolent friend of woman to pay oil" a $10,000 mortgage on the 
 realty of the Home, then its net income will overtake its outgo, and 
 even in time exceed it, making its devoted ministers (all women) 
 
 T-fl^i|gl^ 
 
 QiU-t\^'-'^ 
 
 A Waif at the Mission Dormitory. 
 
 able to extend its influence in an ever-increasing ratio. Meantime 
 the annual reports are written in an admirable style of good-hum- 
 ored naivete which shows that work and worry cannot daunt or sad- 
 den those whose hearts are in their business. It is a most worthy 
 and successful effort at the best kind of help ; but it still leaves un- 
 touched the problem of family helplessness — the soft, elastic, un- 
 breakable bond which binds the hands and feet of mothers. 
 
 Near the centre of business are two institutions for the care of 
 15
 
 226 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 homeless newsboys, bootblacks, and other yoimg street workers, 
 the " AVaifs' Mission and Training- Hcliool " and the " Newsboys' 
 Home." The former has a school, a dining-room and kitchen, a 
 dormitory with fifty beds, a bath-room, a g-ymuasium, a printing- 
 office, etc., and its plan includes military drill (with a brass baud 
 tVn-med among the boys themselves), instruction in the jn'inting 
 business, and the iinding of places for boys old enough to enter 
 steady employment. Its patrons and managers include judges of 
 court, business men and capitalists, and a board of charitable 
 women. The number of boys accommodated is limited to the num- 
 ber of beds. 
 
 An institution somewhat analogous to this is the " Illinois 
 School of Agriculture and Manual Training for Boys," placed on 
 three hundred acres of farming land at Glenwood, not far south ( )f 
 the city limits. Until this school was started (1887) there was ab- 
 solutely no place to which a boy could be sent who was thrown 
 upon the world by any of the lamentable casualties to which every 
 community is subject — orphanage, desertion, forced separation from 
 drunken or criminal parents. The courts of certain counties make use 
 of this as a refuge for such boys, and allow a certain small monthly 
 stipend for each ; but this is necessarily far short of the absolute 
 requirements of proper subsistence, clothing, and education, and 
 more money than the school has yet received could be well used in 
 it. The boys are provided with homes, chiefly with farmers, and 
 the average outhiy for each, up to the time when he is so provided 
 for, is only about $60. The future life of the boy is kept in view 
 and recorded : almost always with results that justify the efforts. 
 
 The Newsboys' and Bootblacks' Home is the oldest of the insti- 
 tutions of its class. It cares for some fifty or sixty boys, giving 
 them decent sustenance and protection at lowest cost, and also pro- 
 viding for their amusement when circumstances permit. Some 
 philanthropic persons object to these refuges of the human waifs 
 and strays on the ground that they encourage boys to run away 
 from their families. To this there seem to be two possible answers
 
 AMONG TJIE POOR OF CHICAGO 227 
 
 — first, that every lodge, circle, hospital, asylum, and refuge runs 
 to some extent against the family relation, not even excepting the 
 fashionable club-houses; next, that the boys in the missions have 
 perhaps found a l)etter home than they left ; that the change for 
 them is a step upward, not downward. As far as one can see, it is 
 a change from the gutter to the mission. 
 
 The sweat-s/w]) is a i^lace where, separate from the tailor-shop 
 or clothing- warehouse, a "sweater" (middleman) assembles jour- 
 neymen tailors and needle-women, to work under his supervision. 
 He takes a cheap room outside the dear and crowded business cen- 
 tre, and within the neighborhood where the work - people live. 
 Thus is rent saved to the employer, and time and travel to the em- 
 ployed. The men can and do work more hours than was possible 
 under the centralized system, and their wives and children can 
 help, especially when, as is often done, the garments are taken 
 home to " finish." (Even the very young can pull out l)asting- 
 threads.) This "finishing" is what remains undone after the ma- 
 chine has done its work, and consists in '' felling " the waist and 
 leg-ends of trousers (paid at one and one-half cent a pair), and, in 
 short, all the "felling" necessary on every garment of any kind. 
 For this service, at the prices paid, they cannot earn more than 
 from twenty-five to forty cents a day, and the work is largely done 
 by Italian, Polish, and Bohemian women and girls. 
 
 The entire number of persons employed in these vocations may 
 be stated. at 5,000 men (of whom 800 are Jews), and from 20,000 to 
 23,000 women and children. The wages are reckoned by " piece- 
 work," and (outside the " finishing ") run about as follows : 
 
 Girls, hand-sewers, earn nothing for the first month, then as un- 
 skilled workers they get $1 to $1.50 a week, $3 a week, and (as 
 skilled workers) $6 a week. The first-named class constitutes fifty 
 per cent, of all, the second thirty per cent., and the last twenty per 
 cent. In the general work men are only employed to do button- 
 holing and pressing, and their earnings are as follows : "Pressers,"
 
 2'JS 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 $8 to $12 a week ; " underpressers," $4 to $7. Cloak operators earn 
 $8 to S12 a week. Fonr-fiftlis of the se\viiio--maclimes are furnished 
 by the ''sweaters" (middlemen); also needles, thread, and Avax. 
 The " sweat-shop " day is ten hours ; but many take work home 
 
 
 >?^"^ 
 
 -1-, "X.^^iVer 
 
 The 
 
 Bad Lands." 
 
 to get in overtime ; and occasionally the shops themselves are kept 
 open for extra work, from which the hardest and ablest workers 
 sometimes make from $14 to $16 a week. On the other hand, the 
 regular work-season for cloakmaking- is but seven months, and for 
 other branches nine months, in the j^ear. The averag-e w^eekly liv- 
 ing- expenses of a ma-n and wife, with two children, as estimated by 
 a self-educated workman named Bisno, are as follows: Kent (three
 
 AMONG THE. POOR OB' CHICAGO 229 
 
 or four small rooms), $2 ; food, fuel, and light, $4 ; clothing-, $2, and 
 beer and spirits, $1. 
 
 The first matter complained of is the wretchedness of the quar- 
 ters. The proposed remedy for this is the establishment l)y 
 clothiers of outlying- workshops which shall be clean, light, and 
 ventilated— in other words, not " sweat-shops." A city ordinance 
 enacts that rooms provided for workmen shall contain space equal 
 to five hundred cubic feet of air for each person employed ; but in 
 the average " sweat-shop " only about a tenth of that quantity is to 
 be found. In one such place there were fifteen men and women in 
 one room, which contained also a pile of mattresses on which some 
 of the men sleep at nig-ht. The closets were disgraceful. In an 
 adjoining room were piles of clothing, made and unmade, on the 
 same table wdth the food of the family. Two dirty little children 
 were playing about the floor. 
 
 The second complaint regards the public good. It is averred, 
 with apparent reason, that clothing should not be exposed to con- 
 tamination and possible infection in rooms not set apart for work- 
 ing-rooms, especially in private houses, where members of the 
 fjimily, young and old, may quite possibly be ill of dangerously 
 contagious fevers and other complaints. The danger of contagion 
 from the hands of the workman himself is multiplied in proportion 
 as the tenement is crowded where the garments are taken for work. 
 
 Another complaint, urged with much feeling, is that when the 
 workers set up a " Union " shop of their own, where they did the 
 very best w^ork at prices as low^ as those charged at the "sweat- 
 shops," but (by saving the profits of a middleman) were able to give 
 more to the workers, they were deliberately and confessedly " frozen 
 oiit " by the withholding of patronage by the clothing firms, and 
 this after having been in prosperous and peaceable operation for 
 two years. The "sweaters " could not force down w^ages as low as 
 they wished, because the workers in the " Union " shops were doing 
 so well. Therefore they got the employing firms to refuse Avork to 
 the men's own estal)lisliment, and throw it all into the middleman's
 
 230 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES " 
 
 hands. A firm of employers for whom the association had worked 
 two years were instrumental in this incredil)le cruelty. It is said 
 by the Avorkmen that they were driven to their action by others in 
 the business, for when the little co-operative concern applied for 
 work, they were referred to an association of the employing" firms, 
 and were there absolutely refused. 
 
 The " SAveating' sj^stem " has been in operation about tAvelve 
 years, during- which time some firms have failed, while others have 
 increased their production tenfold. Meantime certain " sweaters " 
 have g-rown rich; two having- built from their gains tenement- 
 houses for rent to the poor workers. The wholesale clothing- busi- 
 ness of Chicag-o is about $20,000,000 a year. 
 
 Mr. Bisno, the workman to whom I have alluded, has been led 
 by his reading- toward Socialism (very far from Anarchism), and he 
 thinks that poverty and drink are parent and child — povert}' the 
 parent. A talk with him would be an enlightenment to any person 
 who had not already adequate knowledg-e of the meaning- of the 
 short phrase "A good day's work." He would g-et a new idea of the 
 unusual ability, mental and manual, the unflagg-ing- speed, the un- 
 wearied application which go to make the earning of a day's wages 
 of the higher grades. He thinks that he could not maintain such 
 speed without some liquid stimulus, in which other equally good 
 workers think he is mistaken. (At the same time he is extremely 
 moderate.) He says that beer is sold at five cents the measured 
 pint (yielding two-and-a-half glasses), and that it is freely brought 
 into the " sweat-shops," wherein, in fact, the workers are entirely 
 independent of personal control, their work alone being subject to 
 inspection and criticism. The inspection is close and constant, and 
 failure entails the doing over of the job. Spoiling (such as tearing 
 while ripping spoiled seams) leads to deductions from pay. The 
 latter is very rare. 
 
 Division of labor is good: scattering of workers from great 
 groups into smaller groups is good ; employment of women in their 
 own homes is good ; prevention of theft is good, and cheai^ness of 
 
 I 
 
 i
 
 Q. 
 
 o 
 
 X 
 CO 
 
 < 
 
 LU 
 
 5: 
 
 en
 
 UN!
 
 AMONG TIIP POOR OF CHICAGO 233 
 
 g-arments is ^ood. Unwholesome atmosphere, moral and material, 
 is bad ; insufficient wages is bad ; possibility of infection is bad, 
 and child-labor is (usually) bad. How shall the good be preserved 
 and the bad cured or alleviated ? 
 
 At the head-quarters of the West Side police one is in the near 
 neighborhood of the " Anarchist Riot " of 1886. In that building 
 the police force was mustered and formed for its march out to the 
 anarchist meeting-place, 500 feet distant ; and there 67 of the 
 police, killed and wounded, were laid when brought back a few 
 minutes later. The messenger in attendance is one of the severe- 
 ly wounded, now too much shattered to do more than light tasks 
 about the station. Conversation with some of the men at this sta- 
 tion has led me to a new appreciation of the magnitude of the is- 
 sues then and there fought out, and the linality of the settlement 
 arrived at. A lieutenant of police recently said to me : 
 
 " The whole thing is played out. They will never make another 
 experiment. There is no interest in anarchy or socialism any more, 
 and no meetings to speak of. They do get together, some of them, 
 at Twelfth Street Turner Hall, but you'd never knoAv that they had 
 ever planned a riot or loaded a bomb. No ; they have no connec- 
 tion with hardship and poverty. They can always get their beer, 
 and that's the main thing with them." 
 
 These quiet and unassuming officers of law and order know that 
 they did their duty, and think that their success was a foregone 
 conclusion. They do not know that though other " stronger " gov- 
 ernments could have put down anarchy by force of arms, and 
 hanged or shot the insurgents by martial law, yet this is perhaps 
 the only government on earth which could have met such a move- 
 ment by the ordinary police power, and then have given the guilty 
 a long public trial before " a jury of their peers," and have relied 
 on a verdict of conviction, a judgment of death, and the deliberate 
 execution of that judgment. 
 
 Mr. Joseph Greenhut (himself a Socialist, somewhat out of sym-
 
 •2S4: 
 
 THE POOR IX GREAT CITIES 
 
 Laundry and Bath at the Liberty Bel! 
 
 patliy with tlie alleviation of poverty, its absolute cure Ijeing-, in 
 his view, possible by changes in the constitution of society), fur- 
 nishes many statistics showing- the ruling rates of wages earned in 
 some hundreds of trades and callings, from which the following are 
 selected : 
 
 Per diem. 
 
 Bricklayers, stone-cutters, and stone-masons . .$4 00 
 
 Plasterers 3 50 to ^4 00 
 
 Carpenters 2 50 to 2 80 
 
 Bridge-builders 2 50 to 3 25 
 
 Ship-carpenters and caulkers 2 00 to 3 50 
 
 Machinists, blacksmiths, and wagon-makers 2 00 to 2 50 
 
 Pattern-makers and horse-shoers 2 75 to 3 50 
 
 Engineers 2 00 to 5 00 
 
 Grain-trimmers 2 75 to 3 50 
 
 Lumber-shovers 3 00 to 6 00 
 
 Sewer-builders 2 00 to 3 00
 
 AMOKG THE POOR OF CHICAGO 285 
 
 I'er diem. 
 
 Plumbers, gas-fitters, jjainters, photograiDhers, printers, etc .'$2 00 to $3 50 
 
 Boot- and shoe-makers, cigar-makers, millers, stereotypers and 
 electrotypers, copper, tin, and sheet-iron workers, brass fin- 
 ishers, upholsterers, etc 1 75 to 3 00 
 
 Iron and steel mill-workers, japanners, etc 1 50 to G 00 
 
 Tailors and suit-makers 1 00 to 3 00 
 
 Type-founders, furriers, bookbinders, furniture-workers, distil- 
 lers, brewers, etc 1 50 to 3 00 
 
 Sailors (with board) 1 50 to '1 0(1 
 
 Farmers 1 50 to 3 00 
 
 Coopers, fish-packers, gravel-roofers, freight-house men, laundry- 
 men, makers of iron and lead pipe, wire-goods, vault-lights, 
 
 etc 1 50 to 2 50 
 
 Brick-makers 1 00 to 8 00 
 
 Planing-mill hands 1 25 to 2 25 
 
 Harness-makers, musical instrument-makers 1 25 to 3 00 
 
 Market-men, ice-wagon men, etc 1 50 to 2 75 
 
 Packing and slaughter-house men 1 25 to 4 00 
 
 Lumber-yard hands 1 25 to 1 50 
 
 Dock laborers 1 00 to 2 00 
 
 Confectioners, millinery and straw-goods makers, hair-workers, 
 
 etc 1 00 to 3 00 
 
 Female clerks ' ' 1 00 to 2 75 
 
 Glove and mitten-makers GO cents to 3 00 
 
 By the week. 
 
 Drug clerks $12 00 to $25 00 
 
 Telegraph and telephone operators '. 10 00 to 20 00 
 
 Bakers and barbers 10 00 to 14 00 
 
 Stablemen 9 00 to 15 00 
 
 Teamsters 9 00 to 12 00 
 
 Dressmakers 6 00 to 15 00 
 
 Office stenographers and typewriters 6 00 to 20 00 
 
 Mr. Greenhut estimates tlie iinniigraiit nationalities (including- 
 their cliildren) composing- Chicago as follows : Germans, 400,000 ; 
 Irish, 210,000 ; Sclavonians, 100,000 ; Scandinavians, 110,000 ; Eng- 
 lish, Scotch, and Welsh, 80,000 ; French Canadians, 15,000 ; Ital- 
 ians, 15,000 ; French, 5,000 ; Colored, 13,000 ; and Chinese, 2,000. 
 
 No one donbts bnt that the drink-bill of Chicag-o— estimated at 
 $1,000,000 a week, of which three-fourths comes from the pockets of
 
 236 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 the poor — would cliaug-e into prosperity, practically, all the adver- 
 sity of the mifortuuate classes, just as the drink-bill of Russia — 
 $1,000,000 a day — Avould supplant famine by abundance. Much 
 poverty comes from drink that does not come from drunkenness. 
 
 '/#'"" 
 
 ' Liberty Bell 
 
 A man may spend in drink the total profit on his earning-s, the 
 total surplus above necessary outg-oes, and it may — usually does— 
 amount to an insurance fund which, well invested, would form a re- 
 spectable fortune during- his prosperous years. Then, when old 
 age, sickness, or accident befalls, he is penniless. His poverty
 
 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO 237 
 
 s[)ring'S from drink ; no matter if lie never was drunk in liis life. 
 The man who drinks up what he mig-lit save is as short-sighted as 
 the hnsbandman who should needlessly eat up his seed-wheat. 
 
 "Paying- off" is often done in saloons, in which the paymaster 
 may or may not be interested. It is a vile and hurtful practice. A 
 late article in a Chicago paper contains the following words on this 
 theme : 
 
 Contractor Piatkiewicz said some of his workmen liabitiially spent for liquor 
 half their earnings, and that on oi>e jjay-night, several years ago, he recollected 
 that out of a total of $480 due his men, the chips in the basket gave to the 
 saloon-keeper $200. To add to this, he said that as many " treats all around " 
 were made as there were men in the saloon. From a large number of sources 
 it was learned that it is the custom with the Polish laborers — the violation of 
 which means disgrace — for each man on pay-night to treat all his fellows, the 
 bartender and contractor included, and for the two latter, when it comes their 
 turn, to treat the men. It is needless to say that the contractor and bartender 
 rarely have to pay for what they " set ui> " to the crowd. 
 
 The possible remedy for this state of things — if there be any 
 remedy— is outside the province of the present essay. Suffice it to 
 say here, that the non-expert observer, however sympathetic, is 
 prone to feel that any effort at relief of the " chosen miseries " 
 which does not strike at the cause of the choice, is futile. 
 
 A late issue of the Chicago Tribune had the following suggest- 
 ive paragraph : 
 
 WoBK Waiting for Unejiployed. 
 
 THE STATEMENT ABOUT CHICAGO'S ARMY OF IDLE MEN REFUTED. 
 
 "The statement that there are 30,000 to 50,000 laboring men out of employ- 
 ment to-day in Chicago is false," said Oscar Kuehne yesterday. Mr. Kuehne is 
 the General Agent of the German Benevolent Society and is in a position to know. 
 "I could have furnished," he continued, "during the month of March, employ- 
 ment to 300 or 400 more men than I did, if I had had the men to fill the appli- 
 cations that came into my office. Farmers from within a radius of thirty miles 
 of Chicago come to me to supply them with farm-laborers, and when I tell them 
 that I haven't men for them, and can't get the sort of men they want, they ask in 
 surprise where these 50,000 unemjiloyed in Chicago are. At one o'clock this 
 afternoon there were thirty farmers in my office after laborers. They would
 
 238 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 have employed fifty men, but I had to disappoint them. The truth of the mat- 
 ter is that there is no excuse for the idleness of an energetic young man who is 
 not married. He can get work if he wants it. For a married man there is 
 more excuse. He is not free to move about as the unmarried man is, and is 
 more limited in his choice of occupations. We find it more difficult to get 
 work for men of families." 
 
 There is some chosen poverty which is not necessarily connected 
 with drink. Many instances arise in the minds of men and women 
 who are trying to do their philanthropic dnty. 
 
 The pitiable man is he who cannot get work to do, and in so far 
 as this article on poverty in the West does not present the harrow- 
 ing pictures of want elsewhere, it must'be accounted for in the same 
 way as was the shortness of the celebrated chapter on " Snakes in 
 Iceland." Work and wages, seed-time and harvest, have not yet 
 failed in the land. And the art of making the wise choice of pos- 
 sible joys, though not yet fully learned, is gaining ground. 
 
 The overwhelming tendency of modern life is toward the cities. 
 It almost seems as if they would have to be walled about in order 
 to keep in the country the proportions — four-fifths at least— which 
 must remain there in order to provide food for all. Everything 
 done " to alleviate the condition of the poor in great cities " works 
 in the direction of bringing more into them ; and no argument or 
 persuasion, or more solid consideration of betterment, prevails to 
 get them out after once immersed in the pleasurable excitement of 
 gregarious existence ; they would rather starve in a crowd than 
 grow fat in quietude— especially if the " crowd " is sprinkled with 
 aromatic " charity." 
 
 Humanity, like other semifluids, moves in the line of least re- 
 sistance and most propulsion. Idleness drifts toward where com- 
 miseration and alms-giving are most generous and unquestioning ; 
 love of drink toward where beer and liquor are most plentiful. The 
 free soup-kitchen is a profitable neighbor for the saloon. Labor is 
 a blessing— in disguise ; and a free gift is often a disguised curse. 
 
 Then is a part of the prevalent philanthropic feeling, though
 
 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO 230 
 
 coniiiii; from the uoblest part of our nature, tainted with sentimen- 
 tality and sensationalism '? Is it, to a certain extent, the vagary of 
 good men and women who, consciously or unconsciously, regard 
 physical labor as only a necessary evil ? Is it part of the new 
 creed which sees in drink not the cause but the consequence of want 
 and misery ? Quien s(tbe? At any rate, if any statement should be 
 made of the Western aspect of the matter, as it appears to men 
 dio regard duly paid toil as the condition of well-being, which 
 statement did not present this possibility as at least an obtruding 
 suspicion, it would be false and defective. 
 
 " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread " was not a curse 
 but a blessing, and so shall be until a dreary Utopia prevail, com- 
 petition giving place to combination, mankind being beaten up into 
 an omelet, and excelling and excellence no more. 
 
 *.v.* Major Joseph Kirkland, the writer of this paper, was born in Geneva, N. Y., on 
 January 7, 18B0, and died in Chicago, INIay 4, 1894. He was a well-known lawyer 
 who had been for a number of years prominently identified with Chicago. His first 
 studies of social questions were made while engaged in coal mining in Illinois and 
 Indiana. Two novels by him, " Zury. the Meanest Man in Spring County." and 
 "The McVeys," attracted wide attention for their truth to the life depicted and 
 strong powers of characterization. 
 
 \
 
 jVffif 
 
 
 A RIYEKSIDE PAEISH 
 
 By WALTER BESANT 
 
 AUTHOR OF "ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN' 
 
 Along the Banks of the Thames — The Port of London — The Sailou Popu- 
 lation — Past Lawlessness op the Riverside Parishes — Rotherhithe — 
 Shipwrights' and Other Strikes — The Parish of St. James's, Ratcliff 
 — Its Social History — Charitable Undertakings— Clubs and Larger 
 Work — Some Devoted Lives. 
 
 THERE are several riverside parishes east of London Bridg-e, 
 not counting" the ancient towns of Deptford and Greenwich, 
 which formerly lay beyond London, and could not be reck- 
 oned as suburbs. The history of all these parishes, till the pres- 
 ent century, is the same. Once, southeast and west of London, 
 there stretched a broad marsh covered with water at every spring- 
 tide ; here and there rose islets overgrown with brambles, the 
 haunt of wild fowl innumerable. In course of time, the city hav- 
 ing- g^own and stretched out long arms along the bank, people 
 began to build a broad and strong river-wall to keep out the floods. 
 This river- wall, which still remains, was grradually extended until it 
 reached the mouth of the river and ran quite round the low coast 
 of Essex. To the marshes succeeded a vast level, low-lying, fertile
 
 A RIVERSIDE PARISH 
 
 241 
 
 reg-ion affording- ,£roocl pasture, excellent dairy farms, and gardens 
 i)f fruit and vegetables. The only inhabitants of this district were 
 the farmers and the farmhands. So things continued for a thou- 
 sand years, while the ships went up the river with wind and tide, 
 and down the river with Avind and tide, and were moored below the 
 
 A Sketch in the Docks. 
 
 Bridge, and discharged their cargoes into lighters, which landed 
 them on the quays of London Port, between the Tower and the 
 Bridge. As for the people avIio did the work of the Port — the load- 
 ing and the unloading — those whom now w^e call the stevedores, 
 coalers, dockers, lightermen, and w^atermen, they lived in the nar- 
 row lanes and crowded courts above and about Thames Street. 
 
 When the trade of London Port increased, these courts became 
 more crowded ; some of them overflowed, and a colony outside the 
 
 walls was established in St. Katherine's Precinct beyond the 
 
 If)
 
 242 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 Tower. Next to St. Katherine's lay the fields called bj' Htnw 
 " Wappiii in the "NYose," or Wash, where there were broken pluccs 
 in the wall, and the water poured in so that it was as much a marsh 
 as when there was no dyke at all. Then the Commissioners of 
 Sewers thouo^ht it would be a good plan to encourage people to 
 build along- the wall, so that they would be personally interested 
 in its preservation. Thus arose the Hamlet of Wapi^ing', which, 
 till far into the eighteenth century, consisted of little more than a 
 single long- street, w^ith a few cross lanes, inhabited by sailor folk. 
 At this time— it was toward the end of the sixteenth century — Ix^- 
 g-an that great and w^onderful development of London trade which 
 has continued without any cessation of g-rowth. Gresham began it. 
 He taught the citizens how to unite for the common weal ; he gave 
 them a Bourse ; he transferred the foreign trade of Antwerp to the 
 Thames. Then the service of the river g-rew apace ; where one 
 lig-hter had sufficed there were now wanted ten ; " Wappin in the 
 Wose " became crowded Wapping- ; the long- street stretched far- 
 ther and farther along the river beyond Shad's Well ; beyond Rat- 
 cliff Cross, wdiere the "red cliif " came down nearly to the river 
 bank; beyond the "Lime-house;" beyond the "Poplar" Grove. 
 The whole of that great city of a million souls, now called East 
 London, consisted, until the end of the last century, of Whitechapel 
 and Bethnal Green, still preserving something of the old rusticity ; 
 of Mile End, Stepney and Bow, and West Ham, hamlets set among 
 fields, and market-gardens, and of that long fringe of riverside 
 streets and houses. In these rural hamlets great merchants had 
 their country-houses ; the place was fertile ; the air was Avhole- 
 some ; nowhere could one see finer flowers or finer plants ; the 
 merchant-captains — both those at sea and those retired — had 
 houses Avith garden-bowers and masts at Mile End Old Town. 
 Captain Cook left his wife and cliildren there when he went sailing 
 round the world ; here, because ground was cheap and plentiful, 
 were long ro]3e-walks and tenter-grounds ; here were roadside tav- 
 erns and gardens for the thirsty Londoner on a summer evening;
 
 en 
 
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 O 
 
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 cc 
 
 O 
 
 DC 
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 Q.
 
 A RIVEttSIDE PARISH 245 
 
 liere were placed many almshouses, dotted about among- the g-ar- 
 dens, where the poor old folks lengthened their days in peace and 
 fresh air. 
 
 But Riverside London was a far different place ; here lived none 
 but sailors, watermen, lightermen, and all tliose who liad to do 
 with ships and shipping, with the wants and the pleasures of the 
 sailors. Boat-builders had their yards along- the bank ; mast-mak- 
 ers, sail-makers, rope-makers, block-makers ; there were repairing- 
 docks dotted about all down the river, each able to hold one ship 
 at a time, like one or two still remaining at Rotherhithe ; there 
 were ship - Iniilding yards of considerable importance ; all these 
 places employed a vast number of workmen— carpenters, caulkers, 
 painters, riggers, carvers of figure heads, block-makers, stevedores, 
 lightermen, watermen, victuallers, tavern-keei)ers, and all the rog- 
 uery and rlhauderle that always gather round mercantile Jack 
 ashore. A crowded suburb indeed it was, and for the most part 
 Avith no gentle-folk to give the people an example of conduct, tem- 
 perance, and religion. At best the master-mariners, a decorous 
 people, and the better class of tradesmen, to lead the way to cliun-h. 
 And as time went on the better class vanished, until the riverside 
 parishes became abandoned entirely to mercantile Jack, and to 
 those who live by loading and unloading, repairing and building 
 the ships, and by showing- Jack ashore how fastest and best to 
 spend his money. There were churches — AVapping, St. George in 
 the East, Shadwell, and Limehouse they are there to this day ; but 
 Jack and his friends enter not their portals. Moreover, when they 
 were built the function of the clergyman was to perform with dig- 
 nity and reverence the services of the church ; if people chose not 
 to come, and the law of attendance could not be enforced, so much 
 the worse for them. Though Jack kept out of church, there was 
 some religious life in the place, as is shown not only by the pres- 
 ence of the church, but also b}' that of the chapel. Now, Avherever 
 there is a clia]iel it indicates thought, independence, and a sensi- 
 ble elevation al)Ove the reckless, senseless rabble. Some kinds of
 
 246 
 
 THIi: POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 NoiK'Oiiforraity also indicate a first step toward education ami 
 
 culture. 
 
 He who now stands on London Bridg-e and looks down the river, 
 
 will see a large 
 number of steam- 
 ers lying off the 
 quays ; there are 
 b a r g e s , rive r- 
 steamers, and 
 boats ; there are 
 great ocean-steam- 
 ers working \\\) or 
 down the river ; 
 but there is little 
 to give the stran- 
 ger even a suspi- 
 cion of the enor- 
 mous trade that is 
 carried on at the 
 Port of London. 
 That Port is now 
 hidden behind the 
 dock gates ; the 
 trade is invisible 
 unless one enters 
 the docks and 
 reckons up the 
 ships and their 
 tonnage, the ware- 
 houses and their 
 contents. But a hundred years ago this trade was visible to any 
 who chose to look at it, and the ships in which the trade was car- 
 ried on were visil)le as well. 
 
 Below the Bridge, the river, for more than a mile, pursues a 
 
 ^ 
 
 :X- 
 
 "Their first yearning is for finery."
 
 A niVMIiSIBBJ PAJiLSII 247 
 
 straight course Avith a iiuiforin breadth. It then bends in a north- 
 easterly direction for a mile or so, when it turns southward, pass- 
 ing- Deptford and Greenwich. Now, a hundred years ago, for two 
 miles and more below the bridge, the ships lay moored side by side 
 in double lines, with a narrow channel between. There were no 
 docks ; all the loading" and the unloading had to be done by means 
 of barges and lighters in the stream. One can hardly realize this 
 vast concourse of boats and barges and ships ; the thousands of 
 men at work ; the passage to and fro of the barges laden to tlie 
 v.ater's edge, or returning empty to the sliij)'s side ; the yeo-heave- 
 oh ! of the sailors hoisting up the casks and bales and cases ; the 
 shouting, the turmoil, the quarrelling, the lighting, the tumult 
 ui:)on the river, now so peaceful. But when we talk of a riverside 
 parish we must remember this great concourse, because it was the 
 cause of practices from which we suffer to the joresent day. 
 
 Of these things we may be perfectly certain : First, that with- 
 out the presence among, a people of some higher life, some nobler 
 standard, than that of the senses, this people will sink rapidly and 
 surely. Next, that no class of persons, whether in the better or the 
 "worser rank, can ever be trusted to be a law unto themselves. For 
 which reason we may continue to be grateful to our ancestors who 
 caused to be written in large letters of gold, for all the world to 
 see once a week, " Thus saith the Loed, Thou slialt not steal," 
 and the rest : the lack of which reminder sometimes causeth, in 
 Nonconformist circles, it is whispered, a deplorable separation of 
 faith and works. The third maxim, axiom, or self-evident proposi- 
 tion is, that when people can steal without fear of consequences 
 they will steal. All through the last century, and indeed far into 
 this, the only influence brought to bear upon the common people 
 was that of authority. The master ruled his servants ; he watched 
 over them ; when they were young he had them catechised and 
 taught the sentiments proper to their station ; he also flogged them 
 soundly ; when they grew up he gave them wages and work ; he 
 made them go to church regularly ; he rewarded them for industrj'
 
 248 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 by fraternal care ; he sent tliem to the almshouse when they were 
 old. At chnreh the sermons were not for the servants hut for the 
 masters ; yet the former were reminded every week of the Ten 
 Commandments, which were not only Avritten out large for all to 
 
 A Mother's Meeting. 
 
 see, but were read out for their instruction every Sunday morning-. 
 The decay of authority is one of the distinguishing- features of the 
 present century. 
 
 But in Eiverside London there were no masters, and there was 
 no authority for the great mass of the people. The sailor ashore 
 had no master; the men who worked on the lighters and on the
 
 A RIVERSIDE PARISH 
 
 249 
 
 sliips liacl uo master except for the day ; the ig-nol)le horde of those 
 who supi)lied the coarse pleasures of the sailors had no masters ; 
 they were not made to do anything but what they pleased ; the 
 church was not for them ; their children were not sent to school ; 
 their only masters were the fear of the g-allows, constantly dangled 
 before their eyes at Execution Dock and on the shores of the Isle 
 of Dog-s, and their profound respect for the cat-o'-nine-tails. They 
 knew no morality ; 
 they had no oth- 
 er restraint ; they 
 all together slid, 
 ran, fell, leaped, 
 danced, and rolled 
 swiftly and easily 
 adown the Prim- 
 rose Path ; they 
 fell into a savagery 
 the like of which 
 has never been 
 known among 
 English-folk since 
 the days of their 
 conversion to the 
 
 Christian faith. It is only l)y searching and poking among un- 
 known pamphlets and forgotten books that one finds out the act- 
 ual depths of the English savagery of the last centur3^ And it is 
 not too much to say that for drunkenness, brutality, and igno- 
 rance, the Englishman of the baser kind touched about the lowest 
 depth ever reached by civilized man during the last century. 
 Wliat he was in Pdverside London has been disclosed by Oolqu- 
 hoim, the Police Magistrate. Here he was not only a drunkard, s. 
 brawler, a torturer of dumb beasts, a wife-beater, a profligate — he 
 was also, with his fellows, engaged every day, and all day long, in 
 a vast systematic organized depredation. The people of the river- 
 
 Children at Prayer in the Chapel, Heckford House.
 
 250 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 side wevG all, to a man, river pirates; by day and by niiilit tliey 
 stole from the ships. There were often as many as a thousand ves- 
 sels lying- in the river; there were many hundreds of boats, 
 barges, and lighters eng-aged upon their cargoes. They practised 
 their robberies in a thousand ingenious ways ; they weighed the 
 anchors and stole them ; they cut adrift lig-hters when they were 
 loaded, and when they had floated down the river they pillaged 
 what they could carry and left the rest to sink or swim ; they 
 waited till night and then rowed off to half-laden lighters and 
 helped themselves. Sometimes they went on board the ships as 
 stevedores and tossed bales overboard to a confederate in a boat 
 below ; or they were coopers who carried under their aprons bags 
 Avhicli they filled with sugar from the casks ; or they took with 
 them bladders for stealing the rum. Some Avaded about in the 
 mud at low tide to catch anything that was thrown to them from 
 the ships. Some obtained admission to the ship as rat-catchers, 
 and in that capacity were able to carry away plunder previously 
 concealed by their friends ; some, called settfflc -hunters, stood on the 
 quays as porters, carrying bags under their long aprons in which 
 to hide whatever they could pilfer. It was estimated that, taking 
 one year with another, the dei^redations from the shipping in the 
 Port of London amounted to nearly a cpiarter of a million sterling 
 every year. All this was carried on by the riverside people. But, 
 to make robbery successful, there must be accomplices, receiving- 
 houses, fences, a way to dispose of the goods. In this case the 
 thieves had as their accomplices the whole of the population of the 
 quarter where they lived. All the public houses were secret mar- 
 kets attended by grocers and other tradesmen where the booty was 
 sold by auction, and, to escape detection fictitious bills and ac- 
 counts were given and received. The thieves were known among 
 themselves by fancy names, which at once indicated the special 
 line of each and showed the popularity of the calling ; they \>'eve 
 bold pirates, night plunderers, light horsemen, heavy horsemen, 
 mud-larks, game lightermen, scuffle -hunters and gangsmen. Their
 
 A RIVERSIDE PARISH 
 
 251 
 
 " Her bowsprit and her figurehead stick out over the street. 
 
 thefts enabled them to live in the coarse profusion of meat and 
 drink, which was all they wanted ; yet they were always poor be- 
 cause their plunder was knocked down for so little ; they saved
 
 252 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 notliiu.s' ; and tliey were ahvays egg-ed on to new robberies by the 
 men who sokl them drinks, the women who took their money from 
 them, and tlie honest merchants who attended the secret markets. 
 
 I dwell upon the past because the present is its natural legacy. 
 When you read of the efforts now being made to raise the living, 
 or at least to prevent them from sinking any lower, remember that 
 they are what the dead made them. We inherit more than the 
 wealth of our ancestors ; we inherit the consequences of their mis- 
 deeds. It is a most expensive thing to suffer the people to drop 
 and sink ; it is a biirden which we lay upon posterity if we do not 
 continually spend and be spent in lifting them up. AThy, Ave have 
 been the best part of two thousand years in recovering the civiliza- 
 tion which fell to pieces when the Eoman Empire decayed. We 
 have not been fifty years in dragging up the very poor Avhom Ave 
 neglected and left to themselves, the galloAvs, the cat, and the 
 press-gang only a hundred years ago. And how sIoav, how slow 
 and sometimes hopeless, is the work ! 
 
 The establishment of riA^er police and the construction of docks 
 have cleared the river of all this gentr3\ Ships noAv enter the 
 docks ; there discharge and receive ; the laborers can carry away 
 nothing through the dock-gates. No apron alloAvs a bag to be 
 hidden ; policemen stand at the gates to search the men ; the old 
 game is gone — A\'hat is left is a surA'iving spirit of lawlessness ; the 
 herding together ; the hand-to-mouth life ; the love of drink is the 
 chief attainable pleasure ; the absence of conscience and responsi- 
 bility ; and the old brutality. 
 
 What the riverside then was may be learned by a small piece of 
 Rotherhithe in which the old things still linger. Small repairing- 
 docks, each capable of liolding one vessel, are dotted along the 
 street ; to each are its great dock-gates keeping out the high tide, 
 aud the quays and the shops and the care-taker's lodge ; the ship 
 lies in the dock shored up by timbers on either side, and the work- 
 men are hammering, caulking, painting, and scraping the wooden 
 hull ; her bowsprit and her figurehead stick out over the street.
 
 A RIVERSIDE PARISH 
 
 253 
 
 Between tlie docks are small two-storied houses, half of them little 
 shops trying to sell something- ; the piiblic-house is frequent, but 
 the " Humors " of Eateliff Highway are absent ; mercantile Jack at 
 Eotherhithe is mostly Norwegian and has morals of his own. Such, 
 however, as this 
 little village of 
 Eotherhithe is, so 
 were " Wappin in 
 the Wose," Shad- 
 well, EatclifF, and 
 the " Lime-house " 
 a hundred years 
 ago, with the ad- 
 dition of street- 
 fig h t i n g an d 
 brawling all day 
 long ; the perpet- 
 ual adoration of 
 r u m ; quarrels 
 over stolen goods ; 
 quarrels over 
 drunken drabs ; 
 quarrels over all 
 fours ; the scrap- 
 ing of fiddles from 
 every public- 
 house, the noise of singing, feasting, and dancing, and a never-end- 
 ing, still-beginning debauch, all hushed and quiet — as birds cower 
 in the hedge at sight of the kestrel— Avhen the press-gang swept 
 down the narrow streets and carried off the lads, unwilling to leave 
 the girls and the grog, and put them aboard His Majesty's tender 
 to meet what fate might bring. 
 
 The construction of the great docks has completely changed 
 this quarter. The Precinct of St. Katherine's by the Tower has al- 
 
 i!«5<'.Ji4^^'?[.. 
 
 A Little Dance at the Girls* Institute.
 
 254 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 most entirely disappeared, being- covered by St. Katlierine's Dock ; 
 the Loudon Dock has reduced Wapping to a strip covered ^\\i\x 
 Avarehouses. But the church remains, so frankly i^roclaiming itself 
 of the eighteenth century, with its great churchyard. The new 
 Dock Basin, Limehouse Basin, and the AYest India Docks, have 
 sliced huge cantles out of Shadwell, Limehouse, and Poplar ; the 
 little private docks and boat-building 3^ards have disappeared ; 
 here and there the dock remains, with its river-gates gone, an an- 
 cient barge reposing in its black mud ; here and there may be 
 found a great building which Avas formerly a Avarehouse Avhen 
 ship-building Avas still carried on. That branch of industry Avas 
 abandoned after 1868, when the shipAA'rights struck for. higher 
 wages. Their action transferred the ship-building of the country 
 to the Clyde, and threw out of work thousands of men who hud 
 been earning large Avages in the yards. Before this unlucky event 
 Riverside London had been rough and squalid, but there were in it 
 plenty of people earning good wages — skilled artisans, good crafts- 
 men. Since then it has been next door to starving. The effect of 
 the shipwrights' strike may be illustrated in the history of one 
 couple. 
 
 The man, of L'isli parentage, though born in Stepney, was a 
 painter or decorator of the saloons and cabins of ships : he was a 
 highly skilled Avorkman of taste and dexterity : he could not only 
 paint but he could carve : he made about three pounds a week and 
 lived in comfort. The wife, a decent Yorkshire woman AA'hose man- 
 ners Avere very much above those of the Riverside folk, was a feAV 
 years older than her husband : they had no children. During the 
 years of fatness they saved nothing ; the husband was not a drunk- 
 ard, but, like most Avorkmen, he liked to cut a figure and to make a 
 shoAv. So he saved little or nothing. When the yard was finally 
 closed he had to cadge about for work. Fifteen years later he was 
 found in a single room of the meanest tenement-house : his furni- 
 ture Avas reduced to a bed, a table, and a chair : all that they had 
 Avas a little tea and no money — no money at all. He was Aveak and
 
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 ^ K 
 
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 H',. 
 
 ^Hl KflBUiiffl, 
 
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 V 1 
 
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 SzafichittCf tnJi' yria/H .ja ^fu. xl^bck C^«.*J 
 
 SEARCHING THE MEN AT THE DOCK GATES.
 
 A RIVERSIDE PARISH 257 
 
 ill with ti'iKlg-ing- about in search of work : he was lying- exhausted 
 on the bed while his wife sat crouched over the little bit of fire. 
 This was how they had lived for fifteen years — the whole time on 
 the verg-e of starvation. Well, they were taken away ; they were 
 persuaded to leave their quarters and to try another place where 
 odd jobs were found for the man, and where the woman made 
 friends in private families for whom she did a little sewing. But it 
 was too late for the man ; his privations had destroyed his sleight 
 of hand, though he knew it not ; the fine workman was gone ; he 
 took painters' paralysis, and very often when work was oflered his 
 hand would drop before he could begin it ; then the long years of 
 tramping about had made him restless ; from time to time he was 
 fain to borrow a few shillings and to go on the tramp again, pre- 
 tending that he was in search of work ; he would stay away for a 
 fortnight, marching about from i:)lace to place, heartily enjoying 
 the change and the social evening at the public-houses where he 
 ]iut up. For, though no drunkard, he loved to sit in a warm bar 
 and to talk over the splendors of the past. Then he died. No 
 one, now looking at the neat old lady in the clean white cajj and 
 apron who sits all day in the nursery crooning over her work, 
 would believe that she has gone through this ordeal by famine, 
 and served her fifteen years' term of starvation for the sins of 
 others. 
 
 The Parish of St. James's, Eatcliff, is the least known of River- 
 side London. There is nothing about this parish in the Guide- 
 books ; nobody goes to see it. Why should they? There is nothing 
 to see. Yet it is not without its romantic touches. Once there was 5 
 here a cross — the Eatclifi" Cross — but nobody knows what it was, 
 when it w^as erected, why it was erected, or when it was pulled 
 down. The oldest inhabitant now at Ratcliff remembers that there 
 was a cross here — the name survived until the other day, attached 
 to a little street, but that is now gone. It is mentioned in Dryden. 
 And on the Queen's accession, in 1837, she was proclaimed, among 
 
 other places, at Ratcliff Cross — but why, no one knows. Once the 
 
 17
 
 25S 
 
 THE POOE IN GEE AT CITIES 
 
 T-e Qja. = - Meeting-House. 
 
 Ship^-i-igkts' Company had their ball here ; it stood amon.£r g-ardens 
 where the scent of the gillyflower and the stock ming-led with the 
 scent of the tar fi-om the neighboring- rope-yard and boat-building
 
 A RIVERSIDE PARISH :>59 
 
 yard ; iu the old daj's, mauj' were tlie feasts wliich the jolly ship- 
 wrights held in their hall after service at St. Diiustau"s, Stepuej-. 
 TJie hall is now pulled down, and the Comi^any, which is one of the 
 smallest, worth an income of less than a thousand, has never built 
 another. Then there are the Katcliff Stairs — rather dirty and di- 
 lapidated to look at, but, at half-tide, aflbrding the best view one 
 can get any where of the Pool and the shipping-. In the good old 
 da^'S of the scuffle -hunters and the heavj' horsemen, the view of the 
 thousand ships moored in their long lines with the narrow passage 
 between was splendid. History has deigned to speak of Eatcliff 
 Stairs, "Twas by these steps that the gallant AYilloughby embarked 
 for his fatal voj-age ; with flags flying and the discharge of guns he 
 sailed jjast Green-ndch, hoping that the king would come forth to 
 see him pass. Alas I the young king lay a-dj-ing, and Willoughbj^ 
 himself was sailing ofl' to meet his death. 
 
 The parish contains four good houses, all of which, I believe, 
 are marked iu Koque's map of 1745. 
 
 One of these is now the vicarage of the new church ; it is a large, 
 solid, and substantial house, built early in the last centurv, when as 
 yet the light horsemen and lumpers were no nearer than Wapping. 
 The walls of the dining-room are i3ainted with Italian landscapes to 
 which belongs a romance. The paintings were executed by a young 
 Italian artist. For the sake of convenience he was allowed by the 
 merchant who then lived here, and emploj^ed him, to stay in the 
 house. Now the merchant had a daughter, and she was fail- ; the 
 artist was a goodly jouth, and inflammable ; as the poet says, their 
 eyes met ; presently, as the poet goes on, their lips met ; then the 
 merchant found out what was going on, and ordered the young 
 man, with good old British determination, out of the house ; the 
 young man retired to his room, presumably to pack u^ his things. 
 But he did not go out of the house ; instead of that, he hanged him- 
 self in his room. His ghost, naturally, continued to remain iu the 
 house, and has been seen by many, ^liy he has not long ago 
 joined the ghost of the voung ladv is not clear, unless that, like
 
 260 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 mam' g-liosts, liis chief pleasure is in keeping- as miserable as lie 
 possibly can. 
 
 Tlie second large house of the parish is aj^parently of the same 
 date, but the broad g^arden in which it formerly stood has been built 
 over by mean tenement-houses ; nothing- is known about it ; at 
 Ijresent certain Boman Catholic sisters live in it and carry on some 
 kind of work. 
 
 The third great house is one of the few surviving sx)ecimens of 
 the merchant's warehouse and residence in one. It is now an old 
 and tumble-down place. Its ancient history I know not. AVliut 
 rich and costly bales were hoisted into this warehouse ; what goods 
 lay here waiting to be carried down the Stairs, and so on board 
 ship in the Pool ; what fortunes were made and lost here one knows 
 not. Its ancient history is gone and lost, but it has a modern his- 
 tory. Here a certain man began, in a small way, a work which has 
 grown to be great ; here he spent and was spent ; here he gave his 
 life for the work, which was for the children of the poor. He was a 
 young physician ; he saw in this squalid and crowded neighbor- 
 hood the lives of the children needlessly sacrificed by the thou- 
 sand for the want of a hos^jital ; to be taken ill in the wretched room 
 Avhere the whole family lived was to die ; the nearest hospital was 
 two miles away. The j^oung physician had but slender means, but 
 he had a stout heart. He found this house empty, its rent a song. 
 He took it, ]iut in half a dozen beds, constituted himself the physi- 
 cian and his wife the nurse, and opened the Children's Hospital. 
 Yery soon the rooms became wards ; the wards became crowded 
 with children ; the one nurse was multiplied by twenty ; the one 
 physician by six. Yery soon, too, the physician lay upon his death- 
 bed, killed by the work. But the Children's Hospital was founded, 
 and now it stands, not far off, a stately building with one of its 
 wards — the Heckford Ward — named after the jDliysician who gave 
 his own life to save the children. When the house ceased to be a 
 hospital it was taken l)y a Mr. Dawson, who was first to start here a 
 club for the very rough lads. He, too, gave his life for the cause,
 
 A RIVERSIDE PARISH 
 
 261 
 
 for the illness which killed him was due to overwork and neglect. 
 Devotion and death are therefore associated with this old house. 
 
 The fourth large house is now degraded to a common lodo-ino-- 
 house. But it has still its line old staircase. 
 
 The Parish of St. James's, EatclifF, consists of an irregular patch 
 of ground having the river on the south, and the Commercial Eoad, 
 
 Boys Playing Bagatelle 
 
 Heckford HoUo 
 
 one of the great arteries of London, on the north. It contains 
 about seven thousand people, of whom some three thousand are 
 Irish Catholics. It includes a number of small, mean, and squalid 
 streets ; there is not anywhere in the great city a collection of 
 streets smaller or meaner. The people live in tenement-houses, 
 very often one family for every room — in one street, for instance, of 
 fifty houses, there are one hundred and thirty families. The 
 men are nearly all dock-laborers — the descendants of the scuffle- 
 hunters, whose traditions still survive, perhaps, in an unconquer-
 
 262 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 able hatred of government. The women and girls are shirt-makers, 
 tailoresses, jam-makers, biscuit-makers, match-makers, and rope- 
 makers. 
 
 In this parish the only g-entle-folk are the clerg-y and the ladies 
 working in the parish for the Church ; there are no substantial 
 shopkeepers, no private residents, no lawyer, no doctor, no profes- 
 sional people of any kind ; there are thirty-six public-houses, or 
 one to every hundred adults, so that if each spends on an average 
 onlj^ two shillings a week, the weekly takings of each are ten 
 pounds. Till lately there were forty-six, but ten have been sup- 
 pressed ; there are no places of public entertainment, there are no 
 books, there are hardly any papers except some of those Irish 
 pai3ers whose continued sufferance gives the lie to their own ever- 
 lasting charges of Eng-lish tyranny. Most significant of all, there 
 are no Dissenting- chapels, with one remarkable exception. Fif- 
 teen chapels in the three parishes of Ratcliff, Shadwell, and St. 
 George's have been closed during the past twenty years. Does 
 this mean conversion to the Aug-lican Church ? Not exactly ; it 
 means, first, that the people have become too poor to maintain a 
 chapel, and next, that they have become too poor to think of relig- 
 ion. So long as an Englishman's head is above the grinding mis- 
 ery, he exercises, as he should, a free and independent choice of 
 creeds, therein" vindicating and asserting his liberties. Here there 
 is no chapel, therefore no one thinks; they lie like sheep; of 
 death and its possibilities no one heeds ; they live from day to 
 day ; when they are young they believe they will be always young ; 
 when they are old, so far as they know, they have been always 
 old. 
 
 The people being such as they are— so poor, so helpless, so 
 ignorant — what is done for them ? How are they helped upward ? 
 How are they driven, i)ushed, shoved, pulled, to prevent them from 
 sinking still lower ? For they are not at the lowest depths ; they 
 are not criminals ; up to their lights they are honest ; that poor 
 fellow who stands with his hands ready — all he has got in the wide
 
 A RIVERSIDE PARISH 
 
 2G3 
 
 world— only his liauds— no trade, no craft, no skill— will give you 
 a good day's work if you en.o-ag-e him ; he will not steal things; he 
 Avill drink more than he should with the money you give him ; he 
 will knock his wife 
 down if she angers 
 him ; but he is not 
 a criminal. That 
 step has yet to be 
 taken ; he will not 
 take it ; but his 
 children may, and 
 unless they are pre- 
 vented they cer- 
 tainly will. For the 
 London-born child 
 very soon learns 
 the meaning of the 
 Easy Way and the 
 Primrose Path. We 
 have to do with the 
 people ignorant, 
 drunken, helpless, 
 always at the point 
 of destitution, their 
 M'hole thoughts as 
 much concentrated 
 upon the difficulty 
 of the daily bread 
 
 as ever were those Bru.hmakei, St James's, RatcMf. 
 
 of their ancestor 
 
 who roamed about the Middlesex Forest and hunted the bear with 
 
 a club, and shot the wild-goose with a flint-headed arrow. 
 
 First there is the Church work; that is to say, the various 
 agencies and machinery directed by the vicar. Perhaps it may be
 
 204 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 a new thing to some American readers to learn liow .much of the 
 time and thoughts of our Anglican beneficed clergymen are wanted 
 for things not directly religious. The church, a plain and unpre- 
 tending edifice, built in the year 1838, is served by the vicar and 
 two curates. There are daily services, and on Sundays an early 
 celebration. The average attendance at the regular Sunday mid- 
 day service is about one hundred; in the evening it is generally 
 double that number. They are all adults. For the children an- 
 other service is held in the Mission Room. The average attend- 
 ance of the Sunday-schools and Bible classes is about three hun- 
 dred and fifty, and would be more if the vicar had a larger staff of 
 teachers, of whom, however, there are forty-two. The whole num- 
 ber of men and women engaged in organized work connected with 
 the Church is about one hundred and twenty-six. Some of them 
 are ladies from the other end of London, but most belong to the 
 parish itself ; in the choir, for instance, are found a barber, a post- 
 man, a care-taker, and one or two small shopkeepers, all living in 
 the parish. When we remember that Ratcliff is not what is called 
 a " show " parish, that the newspapers never talk about it, and 
 that rich people never hear of it, this indicates a very considera- 
 ble support to Church work. 
 
 In addition to the church proper there is the "Mission ChaiDcl," 
 where other services are held. One day in the week there is a 
 sale of clothes at very small prices. They are sold rather than 
 given, because if the women have paid a few pence for them they 
 are less willing to pawn them than if they had received them for 
 nothing. In the Mission Chai3el are held classes for young girls 
 and services for children. 
 
 The churchyard, like so many of the London church}' ards, has 
 been converted into a recreation-ground, where there are trees and 
 flower-beds, and benches for old and young. 
 
 Outside the Church, but yet connected with it, there is, first, the 
 Girls' Club. The girls of Ratcliff are all working-girls ; as might 
 be expected, a rough and wild company, as untrained as colts, yet
 
 A RIVERSIDE PARISH 
 
 2G5 
 
 open to kindly and considerate treatment. Their first yearning- is 
 for finery ; give them a high liat with a flaring ostrich feather, a 
 phish jacket, and a " fringe," and they are happy. There are 
 seventy-five of these girls ; they use their club every evening, and 
 
 The Choir of the Parish Church. 
 
 they have various classes, though it cannot be said that they are 
 desirous of learning anything. Needlework, especially, they dis- 
 like ; they dance, sing, have musical drill, and read a little. Five 
 ladies who work for the church and for the club, live in the club- 
 house, and other ladies come to lend assistance. When we consider 
 what the homes and the companions of these girls are, what kind
 
 266 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 of men will be their liiisbancls, and that they are to become mothers 
 of the next generation, it seems as if one could not possibly attempt 
 a more useful achievement than their civilization. Above all. this 
 club stands in the way of the greatest curse of East London — the 
 boy and girl marriage. For the elder women there are Mothers' 
 Meetings, at which two hundred attend every week ; and there 
 are branches of the Societies for Nursing and Helping Married 
 Women. 
 
 For general purposes there is a Parish Sick and Distress Fund ; 
 a fund for giving dinners to poor children ; there is a frequent dis- 
 tribution of fruit, vegetables, and flowers, sent up by people from 
 the country. And for the children there is a large room which they 
 can use as a play -room from four o'clock till half-past seven. Here 
 they are at least warm ; were it not for this room they would have 
 to run about the cold streets ; here they have games and pictures 
 and toys. In connection with the work for the girls, help is given 
 by the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants, 
 which takes charge of a good many of the girls. 
 
 For the men there is one of the institutions called a Tee-to- 
 tum Club, Avhich has a grand cafe open to everybody all day long ; 
 the members manage the club themselves ; they have a concert once 
 a week, a dramatic performance once a week, a gymnastic display 
 once a week ; on Sunday they have a lecture or an address, with a 
 discussion after it : and they have smaller clubs attached for foot- 
 ball, cricket, rowing, and swimming. 
 
 For the younger lads there is another club, of one hundred and 
 sixty members; they also have their gymnasium, their foot-ball, 
 cricket, and swimming clubs ; their classes for carpentry, wood- 
 carving, singing, and shorthand; their savings' bank, their sick 
 club, and their library. 
 
 Only the better class of lads belong to this club. But there is a 
 low^er set, those Avho lounge about the streets at night, and take to 
 gambling and betting. For these boys the children's play-room is 
 opened in the evening ; here they read, talk, box, and play baga-
 
 A RIVERSIDE PARISH 
 
 267 
 
 telle, draugflits, and dominos. These lads are as rough as cau be 
 found, yet on the whole they give very little trouble. 
 
 Another important institution is the Country Holiday ; this is 
 
 Smoking Concert at the Tee-to-tum, St. James 3, Rjtcliff. 
 
 accomplished by saving-. It means, while it lasts, an expenditure 
 of live shillings a week ; sometimes the lads are taken to the sea- 
 side and live in a barn ; sometimes the girls are sent to a village
 
 268 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 and placed about in cottages. A great number of the girls and 
 lads go off every year a hopping in Kent. 
 
 Add to these the temperance societies, and we seem to complete 
 the organized work of the Church. It must, however, be remem- 
 bered that this work is not confined to those who attend the ser- 
 vices or are Anglican in name. The clergy and the ladies who help 
 them go about the whole parish from house to house ; they know 
 all the people in every house, to whatever creed they belong ; their 
 visits are looked for as a kind of right ; they are not insulted even 
 by the roughest ; they are trusted by all ; as they go along the 
 streets the children run after them and hang upon their dress ; if a 
 strange man is walking with one of these ladies they catch at his 
 hands and pull at his coat-tails — we judge of a man, you see, by his 
 companions. All this machinery seems costly. It is, of course, far 
 bej'ond the slender resources of the parish. It demands, however, 
 no more than £850 a year, of which £310 is found by different so- 
 cieties, and the sum of £500 has to be raised somehow. 
 
 There are, it has been stated, no more than seven thousand peo- 
 ple in this parish, of whom nearly half belong to the Church of 
 Rome. It would, therefore, almost seem as if every man, woman, 
 and child in the place must be brought under the influence of all this 
 work. In a sense all the jpeople do feel the influence of the Church, 
 whether they are Anglicans or not. The parish system, as you 
 have seen, provides everything ; for the men, clubs ; for the women, 
 nursing in sickness, friendly counsel always, help in trouble ; the 
 girls are brought together and kept out of mischief and encouraged 
 in self-respect by ladies who understand what they want and how 
 they look at things ; the grown lads are taken from the streets, and, 
 with the younger boys, are taught arts and crafts, and are trained 
 in manly exercises just as if they were boys of Eton and Harrow. 
 The Church services, which used to be everything, are now only a 
 part of the parish work. The clergy are at once servants of the 
 altar, preachers, teachers, almoners, leaders in all kinds of societies 
 and clubs, and providers of amusements and recreation. The peo-
 
 A RIVERSIDE PARISH 
 
 269 
 
 pie look on, hold out their hands, receive, at first indifferently — but 
 presently, one by one, awaken to a new sense. As they receive 
 they cannot choose but to discover that these ladies have given up 
 
 'J)jii^K*i,n( 
 
 The Sewing Class, Girl's Institute. 
 
 their luxurious homes and the life of ease in order to work among- 
 them. They also discover that these young gentlemen who " run " 
 the clubs, teach the boys gymnastics, boxing, drawing, carving, and 
 the rest, give up for this all their evenings— the flower of the day
 
 270 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 in the tlower of life. What for ? "What do they get for it ? Xot in 
 this parish only, but in every parish the same kind of thing g-oes 
 on and spreads daily. This — observe — is the last step hut one of 
 charity. For the progress of charity is as follows : First, there is 
 the pitiful dole to the beggar ; then the bequest to monk and 
 monaster}' ; then the founding of the almshouse and the parish 
 charity ; then the Easter and the Christmas offerings ; then the gift 
 to the almoner ; then the cheque to a society ; next — latest and best 
 — personal service among the poor. This is both flower and fruit 
 of charity. One thing only remains. And before long this thing 
 also shall come to pass as well. 
 
 Those who live in the dens and witness these things done daily 
 must be stocks and stones if they were not moved by them. They 
 are not stocks and stones ; they are actually, though slowl}^ moved 
 by them ; the old hatred of the Church — you may find it expressed 
 in the workingman's papers of fifty years ago — is djdng out rap- 
 idly in our great towns ; the brawling is better ; even the drinking 
 is diminishing. And there is another — perhaps an unexpected — re- 
 sult. Xot only are the poor turning to the Church which befriends 
 them, the Church which they used to deride, but the clergy are 
 turning to the poor; there are many for whom the condition of the 
 people is above all other earthly considerations. If that great 
 conflict — long predicted — of capital and labor ever takes place, it 
 is safe to prophecy that the Church will not desert the poor. 
 
 Apai"t from the Church what machinery is at work ? First, be- 
 cause there are so many Catholics in the place, one must think of 
 them. It is, however, difficult to ascertain the Catholic agencies at 
 work among these people. The people are told that they must go 
 to mass ; Roman Catholic sisters give dinners to children ; there is 
 tlie Roman League of the Cross — a temperance association ; I think 
 that the Catholics are in great measure left to the charities of the 
 Anglicans, so long as these do not try to convert the Romans. 
 
 The Salvation Army people attempt nothing — absolutely noth- 
 ing in this parish. There are at present neither Baptist, nor Wes-
 
 "«F 
 
 
 .7 - 4 ' 
 
 
 LIGHTERMEN AFTER DINNER PUTTING OFF TO WORK FROM RATCLIFF STAIRS.
 
 A RIVERSIDE PARISH 273 
 
 leyan, nor Independent chapels in the place. A few years ago, on 
 the appearance of the book called the " Bitter Cry of Outcast Lon- 
 don," an attempt was made by the last-named body ; they found an 
 old chapel belonging- to the Congregationalists, with an endowment 
 of £80 a year, which they turned into a mission hall, and carried 
 on with spirit, for two years mission work in the place ; they soon 
 obtained large funds, which they seem to have lavished with more 
 zeal than discretion. Presently their money was all gone and they 
 could get no more ; then the chapel was turned into a night-shelter. 
 Next it was burned to the ground. It is now rebuilt and is again a 
 night-shelter. There is, however, an historic monument in the par- 
 ish with which remains a survival of former activitj^ It is a Quaker 
 meeting-house which dates back to 1667. It stands within its walls, 
 quiet and decorous ; there are the chapel, the ante-room, and the 
 burial-ground. The congregation still- meet, reduced to fifty ; they 
 still hold their Sunday-school ; and not far off one of the fraternity 
 carries on a Creche which takes care of seventy or eighty babies, 
 and is blessed every day by as many mothers. 
 
 Considering all these agencies — how they are at work day after 
 day, never resting, never ceasing, never relaxing their hold, always 
 compelling the people more and more within the circle of their in- 
 fluence ; how they incline the hearts of the children to better things 
 and show them how to win these better tilings — one wonders that 
 the whole parish is not already clad in white robes and sitting with 
 harp and crown. On the other hand, walking down London Street, 
 Batcliff, looking at the foul houses, hearing the foul language, see- 
 ing the poor women with black eyes, watching the multitudinous 
 children in the mud ; one wonders whether even these agencies are 
 enough to stem the tide and to prevent this mass of people from 
 falling lower and lower still into the hell of savagery. This parish 
 is one of the poorest in London ; it is one of the least known ; it is 
 one of the least visited. Explorers of slums seldom come here ; it 
 is not fashionably miserable. Yet all these fine things are done 
 
 here, and as in this parish so in every other. It is continually stated 
 18
 
 274 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 as a mere commonplace — one may see the thing advanced every- 
 where, in " thoug-htf ul " papers, in leading- articles — that the Church 
 of Kome alone can produce its self-sacrificing martyrs, its lives of 
 pure devotion. Then what of these parish-workers of the Church 
 of England 1 What of that young physician who worked himself 
 to death for the children ? AYliat of the young men — not one here 
 and there — but in dozens — who give up all that 3'oung men mostly 
 love for the sake of laborious nights among rough and rude lads ? 
 What of the gentlewomen who pass long years — give up their 
 youth, their beaut}^ and their strength^among girls and women 
 whose language is at first like a blow to them ? What of the clergj^ 
 themselves, alwaj^s, all day long, living in the midst of the very 
 poor — hardly paid, always giving out of their poverty, forgotten in 
 their obscurit}*, far from any chance of promotion, too hard- worked 
 to read or study, dropped out of all the old scholarly circles ? Nay, 
 my brothers, we cannot allow to the Church of Rome all the unself- 
 ish men and women. Father Damien is one of us as well. I have 
 met him — I know him by sight — he lives, and has long lived, in 
 Riverside London.
 
 A SCHOOL FOE STEEET AEABS 
 By EDMUND R. SPEAEMAN, 
 
 AUTHOR OP ARTICLES AND REPORTS ON EDUCATION IN FRANCE 
 
 The Municipal Council of Pakis and the '• Morally Abandoned" — Street 
 Children without Care— Plans of M. Brueyre — Dr. Thulie — D'Alem- 
 BERT School for Paris Street Boys— Montevrain — Occupations op the 
 Boys — Printing, the Turning-shop, Cabinet-making — "Value of the 
 Boys' Work — The Daily Routine — The Drill — The Veterans — The 
 School Table — Health Statistics— Future of the Pupils. 
 
 STEEET Arabs are often picturesque to look at, especially ou 
 tlie canvases of tlie fair bride of an African explorer. They 
 are also amusing in their " cheek " and their " lingo " espe- 
 cially in the pages of Dickens. But they are also highly dangerous 
 to the public peace if allowed to " run to seed," the seed being often 
 robbery, outrage, and even murder. The street Arab battalions of 
 London during recent years have kept whole districts under a 
 reign of terror, and one notorious murder in Marylebone, connected 
 with the wild excesses of the London urchins, a few years ago set 
 all tongues to wagging over the necessity of some sweejjing reform. 
 The street Arab grows into the " larrikin " and " hoodlum," the 
 " rough " and " plug ugly," and becomes less picturesque and more 
 obnoxious. 
 
 While London has been talking, Paris has been acting. The 
 philosophic guardians of the French capital have, during the last 
 decade, taken the street Arab in hand to some purpose, and have 
 dealt with him in a manner to serve as a model to the other great 
 capitals of the world, where the same questions are sure to jjresent 
 themselves for solution.
 
 276 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 The Municipal Council of Paris lias invented a new theory in 
 legislation regarding- the young-. The street Arab is, according- to 
 them, to be known henceforth in jurisprudence as the " morally 
 abandoned." Other cities and other lands have taken to task the 
 juvenile convicted vagrant and criminal, and devised schemes for 
 their reclamation ; but the Parisian authorities apjDly the axiom 
 that the " ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure," 
 and take the children before they have become either misdemean- 
 ants or criminals. The juvenile criminal and juvenile vagabond, in 
 nine cases out of ten, is the child of certain classes of parents who 
 are unfit to have the care of children. Such are the older criminals 
 themselves, the notoriously vicious, and the notoriously debauched 
 or dissipated. By a new French law (July 24, 1889), all this special 
 class of parents are denied all rights over their children. This law 
 is the result of the Paris lever, which, in this as in so many other 
 matters, raised the whole of France. 
 
 Previous to 1889 there was no legal authority in France to hand 
 over non-convicted children above twelve years of age to the pub- 
 lic charge. Moreover there was no authority to take into state 
 charge any children below twelve not convicted of otfence who had 
 not been cast adrift by their parents, although the said parents 
 might be worse than none. This great lack in the French legisla- 
 lation especially struck the attention of M. Loys Brueyre, who, in 
 his capacity as head of the children's bureau in the ofiice of poor 
 relief in the Department of the Seine, had peculiar facilities for 
 knowing the shortcomings of the system. M. Brueyre felt that a 
 large number of children were wandering the streets under no 
 proper parental care, or, worse still, highly improper care, who 
 would make better citizens than those already in charge under the 
 orphan, foundling, and common laws. At present these children _ 
 were plunging into certain careers of ignorance, vice, and crime. 
 
 There is nothing like " teaching by example," and, before mov- 
 ing the unwieldy and stolid fabric of national legislation, the au-j 
 thorities of the capital were first apjDealed to, and asked to put the
 
 A SCHOOL FOE STREET ARABS 277 
 
 idea into practice, showing- the practicability of reclaiming- these 
 juvenile vagabonds, then get the country to adopt it, after it saw 
 " how the thing- worked." M. Brueyre found an able backer in the 
 work in M. Michel Moring-, director of the department of the Paris 
 poor relief, who induced the Council of the Seine to take up the 
 matter. The Council consists of the well-known Municipal Council 
 of Paris, with the deputies from the hanlieue or communes in the 
 suburbs outside the fortifications. All matters relating to the 
 police and poor relief are treated as departmental affairs. The Seine 
 Council debated several schemes, siich as the establishment of a de- 
 partmental orphan asylum, and the care of all children where the 
 mother was " seule et miserable''' or where the father was " veiif oxi 
 ahcmdonne par sa femmey All these propositions being set aside 
 as impracticable, the Council finally came around to M. Brueyre's 
 idea. This idea was first developed before a special committee of 
 the Council, consisting- of M. Moring-, Dr. Thulie (ex-president of 
 the Council and also of the Anthropological Society), and M. Charles 
 Lafont (one of the representatives for Paris in the Chamber of 
 Deputies). In December, 1879, this commission reported most favor- 
 ably, and, although the premature death of M. Moring, in May, 
 1880, deprived the scheme of its ablest supporter, a g-ood substitute 
 was found in M. Moring's successor, M. Charles Quentin, who gave 
 the new proteges that great requisite in successful movements of 
 reform and legislation — a name. M. Quentin dubbed the children 
 proposed to be taken in state keeping- the " morally abandoned," a 
 most happy appellation. 
 
 To Dr. Thulie we owe the careful fostering of the idea in the 
 channels of legislation. His painstaking- reports on the progress 
 of the matter have been summarized in his elaborate work on the 
 Paris foundlings,* a perfect triumph of typography achieved by 
 the children for whom the author did so much to give an opportu- 
 nity to gain their present position. From the first all the foster- 
 parents of the new scheme were active in their several directions. 
 * Enfants Assistes de la Seine. Paris, 1887.
 
 278 THE POOR IN GEE AT CITIES 
 
 M. Quentin, as head of the Paris branch of that curious comiDOund 
 of public and private charity, the French poor relief, used every 
 available occasion to give facilities for launching- the venture. 
 Among other opportunities he was enabled to purchase, for forty 
 thousand francs, a beautifully located farm in the Department of the 
 Seine-et-Marne, for the installation of some hospitalary or hygienic 
 establishment. M. Quentin induced the Council to devote this pur- 
 chase to the use of one of the new schools. It is now the location 
 I am about to describe. Meanwhile M. Lafont had interested his 
 powerful fellow-legislator, the distinguished M. Theophile Roussel 
 (then a fellow-deputy, but since elected a senator), who has divided 
 his life between chemistr}^ for adults and philanthropy for juveniles, 
 to broach the legal reform. M. Roussel (who is the author of the 
 standard law for the protection of nursing children, known as the 
 Eoussel Act) formulated still another important law for child pro- 
 tection, the one which became at length enacted in 1889. Dr. Thulie 
 collected all the accumulated wisdom of past experience on the sub- 
 ject, including the advice of the prison reform societies, and espe- 
 cially the noble Pastor Eobin, the Protestant philanthropist of Belle- 
 ville, and of M. Charles Lucas, of the Institute, the accomplished 
 architect and resolute advocate for the abolition of death penalties, 
 and of other prison reforms. Most important of all was the mission 
 of M. Brueyre himself, who happened to be blessed with a store of 
 rich friends and the knack of interesting them in helping forward 
 good works. Funds were the chief requisite ; for the Council could 
 not or would not vote much money for the venture, as it hardly had 
 the power. The donations obtained by M. Brueyre were mostly from 
 the kings of the haute finance, including several of the Eothschilds. 
 Some of these donations were for the service generally, and some 
 for particular undertakings. Several schools were thus inau- 
 gurated. A school of horticulture at Yillepreux, not far from Ver- 
 sailles, was one of the first ventures. This was at first a great sus- 
 cess, being especially under the benevolent eye of M. Pioussel 
 himself. The Minister of Agriculture gave an annual donation,
 
 A SCHOOL FOR STREET ARABS 
 
 279 
 
 and two scliolarsliips at the Barres School of Forestry, near Mon- 
 targis, were also created for the benefit of the Villepreux scholars. 
 This last is a great honor, for in Loiret the picked guardians of the 
 national forests are trained. Yillepreux has languished of late, 
 from various causes, but may yet recover its early vigor. Another 
 school has been placed at Alengon, principally of typography, the 
 young printers being trained and their labor used by a local printer. 
 To this school a shoemaking department has been added. Still 
 another school for girls, of weaving and housekeeping, was started 
 
 
 The D'Alembert School Buildings at Montevrain. 
 
 at Yseure, a little commune in central France, but the pupils were 
 so few that it was soon closed. The most imi3ortant of all the vent- 
 ures, however, was the school of cabinet-making, with a minor 
 printing annex, which, in 1881, was, as before mentioned, author- 
 ized by the MuniciiDal Council to be placed at Montevrain in the 
 Seine-et-Marne. In honor of the co-founder of the Encyclopiiedia, 
 the Municipal Council (which holds as gospel that all good dates 
 from the Revolution, and that, the Eevolution being the sum of all 
 wisdom, the EncyclopBedia was its prophet) named the new venture 
 the D'Alembert School.* The immediate inauguration of the vent- 
 
 * Some of the more orthodox revolutionists insist on calling it the Alembert 
 School, considering the aristocratic prefix as rank heresy.
 
 280 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 ure was provided for by the mimificeut gift of fifty thousand francs 
 by the Baron de Sarter. This sum was afterward supplemented by 
 a like amount from Madame Dag'nan. Still another of M. Brueyre's 
 financial friends, M. Edouard Kohn, has given nine thousand five 
 hundred francs at various times and Madame S. Emden three 
 thousand francs. These various benefactions are duly acknowledged 
 in letters of gold on a tablet at the school to-day. This rich sup- 
 ply of funds has encouraged the Municipal Council to devote an 
 increasing amount of attention to the plan, and to allow consider- 
 able subsidies from the general fund. The school was opened in 
 August, 1882, and has had an increasingly jirosperous history. It 
 has had the devotion of two thoroughly enthusiastic directors, M. 
 May, the first, being replaced a year or two since by M. Dehesden, 
 and both of them have evidently had their whole hearts in the un- 
 dertaking. No more agreeable day can be passed in the country 
 around Paris than by a visit to the D'Alembert School, for anyone 
 who has the " open sesame " of an order from the Place de Greve. 
 
 Fifteen miles to the eastward of Paris, on the Strasbourg line, 
 is the quaint old town of Lagny, lying on the south bank of the 
 wide and sleepy Marne, having a twin town (Thorigny) on the north 
 bank. The fine old bridges and the lazily moving canal-boats give 
 a notion of the easy-going life of other days. The bustle and mod- 
 ern innovations of the great steam highway are hidden from the 
 river-side. The crooked old streets of Lagny seem only made for 
 palfreys and cavaliers. Taking the eastern highway out of the 
 town, we soon find ourselves climbing to high ground, whence we 
 look across the river valley to the flourishing settlement of Damp- 
 mart. The Marne valley is sweet to the eye and refreshing to the 
 lungs. No choicer spot could be found to escape the close confine- 
 ment of town life at such short distance from Notre Dame and the 
 Hotel de Ville. Here, just east of Lagny, in the sparsely settled 
 commune of Montevrain — the home of the D'Alembert School — at 
 a spot where the painstaking road-builders of the " king's high- 
 way," in the days when kings were rife in France, have spanned the 
 
 I 
 
 A
 
 A SCHOOL FOR STREET ARABS 281 
 
 sudden fall of a deep hollow by a fine viaduct of solid earth. Close 
 under the high land to the right, a steep slope is left toward the still 
 deeper falling ground on the left. Thus, quite below the roadway, 
 and reached by a flight of steps and inclined paths, are hidden the 
 buildings of the farm. These buildings are not now attached to 
 their former domain, but will be added most likely in a short while 
 for increased accommodation. Covering the former fields toward 
 the roadway, the new structures and new dispositions of the ground 
 for the school might themselves be unnoticed by a careless passer- 
 by, being all below the road-level. The ofiicial who Avas inspired 
 with the notion of placing an asylum on the spot was certainly en- 
 dowed with the gift of " happy thoughts." The situation is simply 
 ideal ; on one side it nestles against the hill-side, protected from 
 the bleakness of a too exposed position, Avhile toward the river the 
 broad expanse of valley below gives air and sunshine in abundance. 
 Here the D'Alembert School lodges, feeds, and instructs a constant 
 succession of Parisian street Arabs, giving them indeed an indus- 
 trial paradise. 
 
 The grounds are ample, and include trim-kept gardens and 
 lawns to the road-side, wdth high shrubberies hiding most of the 
 place. To the rear the two chief workshops are placed high up at 
 either extremity of a long parade, this latter being the exercise 
 ground and gymnasium. The parade is the rear and much the 
 larger of the two open courts, the one nearer the road being sep- 
 arated by a large building used in three floors as a dormitory, the 
 upper story being under a pitched roof with dormer Avindows. To 
 the right of this front court is the directors' office and residence, 
 while to the left is the mess-room and storage-house. At the rear 
 of the great court or parade is a fourth dormitory in a low building, 
 while to its right is the " police cell " for bad boys (a structure 
 whose office is almost a sinecure), and to the left is an engine-house 
 with a third workshop devoted to turning. The majority of the 
 young workers are however employed in the two large brick joavil- 
 ions which face each other from the high banks that bound the
 
 282 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 premises. In the river end of the left-hand or western i^avilion is 
 installed the school of printing. The lower story is devoted to the 
 presses, hand and foot, while above is the composing-room. Two 
 large machine presses are placed in the adjoining end of the rear 
 building, next to the turners, and thus, like the latter, have the use 
 of the power from the engine-room. 
 
 The printing occupies about thirty of the boys, and, like all 
 the other departments, is under the direction of a master of the 
 craft. Judging by the results, the teaching printer must be a born 
 genius at the task : the work turned out by these young aspirants to 
 " the Art preservative of Art " will bear comparison Avith the best 
 in any land, and is of the most varied and difficult description, in- 
 cluding a great variety of ornamental and " table work." Of 
 course, excellent method and ample materials, in the shaj^e of a 
 full assortment of type and other necessaries for a great printing- 
 office go a long way to help the young printers. But their tutor 
 and the aptitude and interest taken by the pupils are the chief 
 factors. On my visiting rounds I encountered one bright little 
 lad who had only been four days in the school, yet had set up a 
 short galley of type, the proof of which was better than some I have 
 seen come from old printers. Of course he must have been excep- 
 tionally clever and have been carefully coached ; but all the pupils 
 seem to be able to perform somewhat similar prodigies. An older 
 pupil, of eighteen months' standing, was setting up a railway time- 
 table, which not one compositor in five hundred would dare to 
 undertake at first sight. The street Arab as a printer is evidently 
 a success. No printing-office in the world can show such a galaxy 
 of choice and capable apprentices as can the D'Alembert School. 
 
 The work in the jjress-room below is of as great excellence as 
 the type-setting above, and, although there are no " long runs " (as 
 printers call taking a great many impressions of the same work) to 
 keep the two large machines of the latest improved patterns in two 
 adjoining buildings always in motion, the young printers are as 
 adept in this branch of the trade as in the others. Doubtless,
 
 A SCHOOL FOR STREET ARABS 
 
 283 
 
 when the capabilities of this printiiig'-office get fully into the gen- 
 eral administrative craniums, the imprint of Montevrain will be as 
 familiar in French official documents as "Eyre tt Spottiswoode, 
 Printers to the Queen," on the English archives, or " Government 
 Printing Office, Washington," on those of the United States. This 
 
 The Printing Office. 
 
 was not originally intended for the chief jirinting school of the 
 service, that at Alen^on having printing as its special feature, 
 while at Montevrain only a handful of boys were orig-inally set to 
 the composing-stick and ink-roller. The easy access to Paris, how- 
 ever, soon occasioned the printing of the overseeing bureau to drift 
 to Montevrain, which soon outstripped the more distant rival, now
 
 284 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 still eng-aged on private work. At present Alen9on is becoming 
 more and more an apprenticeship of its alternated trade, the trade 
 of tlie twin Saints Crispin-Crispanus. The shoemakers can as well 
 be five hundred miles away as fifty. 
 
 The handiness of the printers to Paris has not caused them to 
 oust the other trade of Montevrain, however, for the very good rea- 
 son that all the other young apprentices are engaged in manufacture 
 which is even more important as an adjunct to the administrative 
 bureau than the printing. They, in fact, make a large proportion 
 of the furniture for the hospital service of Paris. 
 
 I have mentioned the turning-shop adjoining the press-room on 
 one side, and the engine-room on the other, in the rear buildings. 
 There are only a few boys here, because the ornamental work is a 
 minor factor in ordinary cabinet-making. The product is never- 
 theless worthy of comparison with the most beautiful furniture in 
 the matter of artistic finish, although simple as a rule. The sawing 
 is mostly done by the master turner, a circular saw being the last 
 thing intrusted to a workman, and especially dangerous to novices, 
 however careful and clever. The work in the turning-room is the 
 most dangerous on the premises, and liable to take odd fingers and 
 thumbs as a toll on the highway to knowledge. The boys when I 
 visited them seemed to have thus far escaped with only a bandaged 
 forefinger on the eldest of their number, due doubtless to the mo- 
 mentary forgetfulness of some recent day. For, although not 
 trusted with the circular saw itself, all turning is done at rapidly 
 oscillating engine-driven instruments, and the least carelessness 
 occasions injury either to the work or to the workman. The 3 ouths 
 here were producing various ornamental designs with the confident 
 dexterity of a master of the craft, although the chips, from gouges, 
 chisels, grooving-planes, and bevelling-knives, showered like driven 
 snow over the chucks and mandrels of the turning-lathes and mould- 
 ing-gear, and the loud crunching of the sharp iron on the hard 
 fibre was quite enough to frighten the nervous observer. 
 
 Leaving the clever young turners to their sanctuary of sawdust,
 
 A SCHOOL FOR STREET ARABS 285 
 
 I next visited the lower floor of the opposite end of the chief work- 
 shops, beyond the printing-room. Here the first elements of the 
 cabinet-making trade were being instilled into the heads of some 
 fifteen of the younger pupils, planing and polishing the large 
 smooth surfaces of furniture being here the special feature. The 
 great bulk of the articles in hand seemed to be washstands and 
 tables. At the time of my visit a great stock of new furniture was 
 being made for the Bichat Hospital at Paris, large alterations and 
 renovations there requiring a new supply. The superintendent at 
 the polishing-up workshop seemed to have a more mischievous 
 crew than any other : probably the less steady attention required 
 for the work allows animal spirits more scope. Hence the rebukes 
 of the schoolmaster were rife here— the only specimens I noticed 
 on my visit. 
 
 On the floor above, the work was chiefly fitting and finishing, 
 putting on ornaments, locks to drawers and doors, etc., the fire and 
 glue-pot being ever at hand. Here the work was of special nicety, 
 and the ingenuity shown by the young workmen in mortising, pin- 
 ning, clamping, etc., being very wonderful. In a room of twenty 
 boys, of course, a single overseer has to trust almost entirely to 
 each one's talent and faithfulness of detail. If the work were 
 solely matter of practice, to be thrown aside when done, the after- 
 examination and correction of faults would be all necessary. As a 
 fact, the work is all disposed of for important use, and will not 
 only bear comparison with the furniture sold in the fashionable 
 salesroom, but is superior to most modern work, which is generally 
 made to sell and not to use. 
 
 The truth is, the cabinet-making trade is one which has suf- 
 fered more than any other by the modern mania for hurry-skurry, 
 shoddy manufacture, and mere show in place of substance. The 
 so-called " craze " for old furniture, rife during the last thirty or 
 forty years, has this solid basis of reason that the furniture of our 
 ancestors is an altogether different iDroduct, outside all considera- 
 tions of fashion, from that of the modern cabinet-maker, who
 
 286 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 knows not his trade, but is a mere particle in a great macliine of 
 cheap and slovenly production. This school at Montevrain was 
 partly started as a protest ag-ainst this bad tendency in the cabinet 
 trade, by one of the leading- and most enlightened cabinet firms of 
 Paris, that of Damon-Kreiger, in Saint-Antoine. The Municipal 
 Council would scarcely have been able to launch their novel scheme 
 without the assistance of this far-sighted house. The cabinet-mak- 
 ing of Paris is famous the world over, but, like that elsewhere, has 
 been going rapidly to the bad. A genuine cabinet-maker, master 
 of his trade, below middle age, has almost ceased to exist in the 
 French capital. The firm of Damon-Kreiger keenly felt this lack. 
 The extreme division of labor and a machine-like production is 
 profitable enough to master and men, if fashions never changed. 
 But fashions do change, and fashions in furniture as well. It 
 was found that the machine w^orkman of divided labor was inca- 
 pable of producing g-ood work in another direction, when his own 
 special feature became obsolete and a new one was wanted. It 
 is only the master of all branches of the art who can thus easily 
 shift about. The process of extreme division of labor has been 
 built up in all trades by a sort of process of living on brain capital. 
 The old race of workmen, with their all-round capacity, could 
 easily develop special features in various directions. But grad- 
 ually this breeds but mere human machines. When these human 
 machines are asked to work another way they cannot respond. 
 The streets of our great capitals are swarming with helpless, worth- 
 less, beggared workmen, thrown out of employment by mere vio- 
 lent shifts of fashion and their own inability to adapt themselves 
 to altered conditions. With the streets of Paris full of unemployed 
 workmen, such a firm as these Saint-Antoine cabinet-makers cried 
 in vain for competent artisans. They evidently had some of the 
 old-fashioned love for faithful apprenticeshiii. But the workman 
 no longer apprentices his son, the son no longer submits to ap- 
 prenticeshii). The father wants his son to support himself from 
 the day he sets to work ; the son thinks he has the right to assume
 
 A SCHOOL FOR STREET ARABS 287 
 
 an independent position thenceforth. But here was a chance for the 
 firm of Saint- Antoine. The city of Paris had a stock of boys, 
 intelligent, and yet amenable to discipline, and only too glad 
 to take sufficient time to learn a thorough trade. In fact, the 
 longer the better ; for it meant good living and a pleasant home 
 meanwhile — things hitherto unknown — and therefore to be all 
 the more appreciated. So the firm of Damon-Kreiger not only 
 furnished a picked band of working instructors in the trade and 
 abundant material for the work, but also agreed to take the work 
 even at a cost far above that in their own workshops ; for it was 
 stipulated by the city that the boys must be paid from the very 
 start for such work as they did. In this way a valuable beginning 
 was obtained.* In course of years, when a thoroughly efficient 
 staff of apprentices was generated, including a good i^roportion of 
 boys of two and three years' training, joractically capable journey- 
 men, the products, of course, became very much more valuable, 
 and the school was able to be almost self-supporting. 
 
 The solid character of the product of the school to-day I well 
 appreciated when I crossed the extensive exercise yard and 
 mounted the high bank to the opposite workshop. Here but a 
 small number of boys are employed, the chief portion of the pavil- 
 ion, the larger of the two, and having three stories, being devoted to 
 storage of the work and of specimens of special results or trophies 
 of industry. Some of these were exhibited at the great exhil)ition 
 of 1889, and included most beautiful examples of not only plain but 
 ornamental work, in ebony and rosewood. There was a state bed 
 
 *For tlie clew to this interesting episode in the ecarly history of the D'Alembert 
 School, I am indebted to the report of a converscation between an intelligent fore- 
 man in the Damon-Kreiger employ (M. Lepine) and ]M. Francisqne Sarcey (the 
 famous dramatic critic), in the Oagne-Petit newspaper. This daily journalistic 
 refulgence of all the talents (which was really " too good to last," and like "the 
 good, died young ") printed, at the end of April, 1885 (and near the close of its own 
 career), an account of the visit of M. Sarcey with the publisher and certain officials 
 to Montevrain. The articles (like most French journalism) are rather erroneous if 
 not erratic, but, as their source would indicate, naturally most entertaining.
 
 288 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 whicli Louis Quinze himself miglit have envied, while some of the 
 inlaj'iug's of tables and sideboards were simply exquisite. To the 
 professional eye, however, the triumph of all the exhibits was a 
 large hard- wood cylinder, perfect in its smooth circle, the most dif- 
 ficult of all turninsT processes. It is far more important that the 
 
 "SV^ 
 
 The Carpenter Shop. 
 
 young- workmen are apt in the iDlain, honest work they are chiefly 
 engaged in. 
 
 In this pavilion the workers are principally emi^loyed in the 
 carpentry and joinery features of the cabinet trade. Doors and 
 sashes and all the specialties of the joiner are here maniiDulated, 
 and the young workmen show that at a pinch they could build a 
 house as well as furnish it. 
 
 The upper floor of this right-hand (or eastern) X)avilion is de-
 
 A SCHOOL FOR STREET ARABS 289 
 
 voted to two scliool-rooms, one for g-eneral study, and the other for 
 drawing- and design. Each room is fitted with all the accessories 
 of not only elementary but higher instruction. Maps and charts 
 adorn the walls, while implements of exam^ole and experiment in 
 the rudiments of the sciences are visible in the cabinets. The 
 benches look neat, and little injured by the proverbial jack-knives 
 of the village urchin in the country school-rooms. The drawing- 
 school is, of course, a most important feature, and the scholars can 
 not only show their ingenuity on the blackboard and paper sheets, 
 but can carry out the ideas here developed by speedy application 
 in the workshop. The trade of the cabinet-maker is specially 
 fertile in opportunities for the ingenious designer, while even the 
 printers, in their artistic ornamental work, have some field also for 
 application of the instruction. 
 
 The hours of schooling are somewhat peculiar, but perhaps best 
 adapted to the circumstances. The young learners take their les- 
 sons just after rising from, and just before going to, their beds. 
 This gives a solid day in the more active employment. The follow- 
 ing is the daily routine at Montevrain : 
 
 5 A.M. Rising, morning toilet, and arrangement of dormitories. 
 
 5.45 A.M. School. 
 
 7 A.M. Soup. 
 
 7.30 A.M. Workshop. 
 
 11 A.M. Gymnastics. 
 
 12 M. Luncheon. 
 2 P.M. Workshop. 
 6.30 P.M. Dinner. 
 7 P.M. School. 
 8.30 P.M. Bed. 
 
 On four days in the week there is one extra hour of school (8.30 
 to 9.30), for the pupils in music and drawing, two evenings for each. 
 The regular schoolmaster is replaced in these lessons by special in- 
 structors. 
 
 The gymnastics are a great pride of the school, the grand parade 
 19
 
 290 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 between the two banks bounded by tlie workshops offering- excep- 
 tional facilities for various manoeuvres. Besides the cross-bars, 
 swings, etc., such as are characteristic of every French barrack yard, 
 the boj^s here make a special feature of fireman's exercise ; they 
 have not onl}' a fire-engine, but an experienced instructor from the 
 corps of scqyeurs-pompiers ; for all the French firemen are either sol- 
 diers in the service of the state or organized as local military bat- 
 talions. The school has also had the advantage of a special in- 
 structor from the famous militar}^ gymnastic school at Joinville-le- 
 Pont, just east of Paris. From these advantages they have been 
 enabled to compete with marked success in the athletic competi- 
 tions so rife in France of recent years, the mania for athletics being 
 the feature of the age. The D'Alembert School boasts a great col- 
 lection of Avreaths, medals, and other trophies, from gymnastic and 
 fire exercise competitions, even as far away as the historic old town 
 of Provins, in Champagne, whence the D'Alembert School carried 
 away in triumph a pretty little statuette of Joseph Viola, the Avig- 
 non boy hero of the Revolution (killed by the Koyalist insurgents 
 of '93 while cutting the cables on the Rhone), ofi^ered by President 
 Carnot himself. All these prizes are displayed in great state in the 
 directors' office. Perhaps some of the snobbish spirits (found even 
 among school-boys) of more fashionable establishments may feel 
 shocked at seeing the street Arabs of Paris prove themselves best 
 in the tug of war, but the D'Alembert boys never allow their illus- 
 trious name to be backward in the race, and the supercilious critics 
 (if any such exist) may be reminded that the great D'Alembert him- 
 self, not a physical, but an intellectual, giant, was not only a Paris 
 street Arab, but a Parisian foundling.* 
 
 * As D'Alembert is the most illustrious name on tlie roll of the juvenile outcasts 
 of Paris, a few recently disclosed facts regarding his earliest experiences iu life will 
 be interesting. D'Alembert was the product of one of the many amours of Cardinal 
 de Tencin's erratic sister, the famous authoress of the Princessede Cleves^ escaped nun, 
 and Parisian leader of literary fashion. D'Alembert's father was the Chevalier Des- 
 touches, another illustrious literary connection, the chevalier being of the famih' of 
 Philippe Destouches, the poet. Several biographical errors being generally repeated
 
 A SCHOOL FOE STREET ARABS 291 
 
 As every able-bodied Frenchman is a soldier, of course military 
 
 exercise is a portion of the athletic instruction — a full supply of guns 
 
 regardiug D'Alembert's birth, M. Leon Lallemand produced the following authenti- 
 cated facts on June 8, 1885, in an address before the Academy of Sciences, and has 
 included them in his excellent Histoire des Enfants abando lines: 
 
 " In the Biographie Universelle of Michaud (new edition, tome i., page 385) will 
 be found the following information concerning the origin of D'Alerabert : 
 
 " ' Alembert (Jean le Rond d'), born at Paris, November 16, 1717, was exposed on 
 the steps of St. Jean le Rond — a church near Notre Dame, now desti'oj'ed. The ex- 
 istence of this child appeared so frail that the Commissaire of Police who received it, 
 instead of sending it to the Enfants Trouves, thought it necessary to give it special 
 care, and with this view confided it to the wife of a poor glazier. Perhaps he had 
 received some instructions to act in this manner, for although the parents never made 
 themselves known, a few days after its birth they retook the abandoned one from 
 where they had left it.' Same details in the JVouveau Dictionnaire de la Conversation 
 etde la Lecture (2meEd., Didot, 1873, tome vii., p. 104). 
 
 "These recitals, extracts from the eulogy on D'Alembert delivered before the 
 Academy of Sciences by Condorcet, contain, side by side with the truth, some points 
 which are not exact and which it is important to correct. 
 
 "D'Alembert was really abandoned on the steps of the church of St. Jean le 
 Rond, and the proces-verbal of the exposure, published above, shows that special 
 precautions had been taken, for the poor forsaken ones were never placed in wooden 
 boxes. People were generally quite content to deposit them on the earth or on a 
 bench. The story of the commissaire who did not dare to have the child taken to the 
 Maison de la Couche on account of its weakness, is absolutely false, as is proved by 
 the register of admissions for the year 1717, where, on folio 513, under the register 
 No. 1584, we find : 
 
 " ' Jean le Rond, newly born — on the proces-verbal of Commissaire Delamere of 
 16th November, 1717, given in nurse to Anne Freyon, wife of Louis Lemaire, living 
 at Cremery. 
 
 " ' First month, 5 livres for the first month, ended 17 December, 1718. 
 
 " ' 5 January, 1718, 2 livres, 5 francs to 1 January, 1718, when the child was re- 
 turned to its parents. This child was given up to Sieur Molin, doctor in ordinary to 
 the King, who charged himself with it by deed before Beussel, notary, on January 
 1, 1718.' 
 
 "It is thus established, 1st, That D'Alembert was deposited at the Maison de 
 Couche, and placed at nurse in Picardy for six months. 2d. That his parents, not wish- 
 ing to betray their incognito, chose M. Jacques Molin, known as Dumoulin, one of 
 the most celebrated practitioners of his time." 
 
 It is worth noting that D'Alemi)ert chose to remain a foundling. "When he had 
 become monarch of the mind of France, greater than the king, his erratic mother 
 ■wished to claim him. It was too late. He refused the offer.
 
 292 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 
 V 
 
 of small pattern (not the famous new Lebel, but breech-loaders of 
 another siDecies) enable the D'Alembert battalion to forestall the 
 time when each youth will have to serve his three years in the 
 active army. For, though the trades here learned are for life, the 
 
 young- artisans, each and all, 
 have to have their first ex- 
 perience of manhood, the 
 same as other citizens, in 
 the calling of war. 
 
 The guns are a noticeable 
 feature in the dormitories, 
 standing in racks at either 
 ^^. %f'2E^--. ^ ^^'4| j jr'^:^^'^^/ end of each sleepiug-apart- 
 
 •"^ '^ ^*^ "**** ^' ment. In fact these dormi- 
 
 tories have somewhat the 
 look of barrack life. There 
 are about thirty beds in each 
 of the principal ones, each 
 bed with a small locker at 
 its head, in which, in mili- 
 tary order, are found the 
 dress-suits, brushes, etc., of 
 the youth appertaining there- 
 to. The boys work ordina- 
 rily in blue jeans and bare- 
 headed, but the " Sunday 
 suits " are quite gala affairs, 
 with spruce naval caps and gold-lettered ribbon, a handsome white 
 flannel shirt with rolling collar and corded throat, a double-breasted 
 blue tunic with brass buttons and ornaments in the lapels, a pair 
 of blue trousers, and a x>air of flannel pantaloons and v/hite gait- 
 ers. This supply makes two full rig-outs, for both military and 
 gymnastic exercises, the waist for the latter in great galas being 
 adorned with dazzling red and sky-blue sashes, a store of which are 
 
 The Drum Major.
 
 A SCHOOL FOB STREET ARABS 
 
 293 
 
 kept in tlie school wardrobe. This wardrobe is the only portion 
 of the premises where the boys are not their own servants. Two 
 seamstresses and a wardrobe mistress keep the whole of the stock 
 of clothes in excellent repair, and also have charg-e of all spare 
 garments, issuing- such as are needed. The washing- is not done at 
 Montevrain, but sent to Paris, 
 to the Hospital Lariboissiere, 
 which, being- near the Stras- 
 bourg station, can accommodate 
 the school in the course of its 
 own g-reat labors without any 
 inconvenience. 
 
 Sunday is a general holiday 
 at Montevrain. The Municipal 
 Council, being- rampantly secu- 
 lar, there is no chapel or chap- 
 lain on the premises. As the 
 boys are all given leave on Sun- 
 day, those over sixteen can at- 
 tend church if so inclined. Prob- 
 ably few of them thus spend the 
 Sunday, boys not being much 
 given to that idea of their own 
 accord. Those under sixteen 
 have their Sunday leave in 
 charge of an attendant. The 
 hours of the leave are from 
 2 to 7 P.M. Each boy is given five sous for pocket-money on Sun- 
 days, to lay out in " cakes and ale." During the four years' appren- 
 ticeship a certain sum is put by to give them at the end of their 
 apprenticeshijj, as a start. Besides this, a boy away from his ap- 
 prenticeship can stay and work until eighteen years of age, when 
 he departs for the army. If he comes at the minimum age of 
 twelve (as the majority do), this means two years, from sixteen to 
 
 The Trumpeter.
 
 294 THE POOR IN ORE AT CITIES 
 
 eigliteen. These boys are called the "veterans," and are paid 
 three francs a day, one franc being- however charged for keep. The 
 " veterans " are jiaid each three mouths, but are allowed advances 
 of fifteen francs a month. They have full liberty on Sunday, to g-o 
 to Paris and return when they please. These " veterans " occupy 
 a jjortion of the fourth dormitory (the rest not being used as yet), 
 and are barred off from the room, having" trunks instead of lockers, 
 and altogether begin to blossom out a bit. As the jolly director 
 said, rattling on in his description : " Void la canne, le j^cirahde, et 
 qiielquefois le parasol aussi,'' and a merry twinkle came into his eye. 
 These " veterans " are quite free to go to any other employment, 
 with the consent (which is never refused) of the officials at Paris, 
 as the Poor Relief Bureau stands in loco "parerdis in every respect, 
 even to consent to marriag-e, until twenty-five years of age, a 
 Frenchman's legal majority ; but the good living and secure em- 
 ployment at Montevrain are better than an uncertainty. One of 
 them went away with eight hundred francs and then enlisted to work 
 at his trade in the artillery for six years, where he would g-et extra 
 pay, and not get out of practice ; he has already been promoted. 
 
 M. Dehesdin related an interesting tale, illustrating the far- 
 reaching benefits of such institutions as the D'Alembert School. 
 In Paris, a poor working painter, with five children, three boys and 
 two girls, died suddenly, and his death was followed soon by that 
 of his widow. The children would have been helpless, being be- 
 yond the limit of twelve years, at which the law for the help of 
 abandoned children and orphans draws the line, had not the boys 
 been allowed to come, all three, to Montevrain, where one became 
 a printer and two became cabinet-makers. The two girls had to 
 shift for themselves, but one went to service, while the other, the 
 eldest, had just obtained a place as book-keeper before the family 
 catastrophe. In course of time the boys got their trades and places 
 in Paris, the eldest being allowed the short one year's military ser- 
 vice as support of a family, for a family they have again become. 
 The eldest sister, having hired apartments, recalled the younger
 
 A SCHOOL FOR STREET ARABS 295 
 
 from service to set up as the housekeeper, and then g-athered the 
 three brothers tog-ether. Thus, by the help of the timely interven- 
 tion of the D'Alembert institution, a family was saved Avhich would 
 otherwise have been scattered in hopeless misery. 
 
 Such a return to home life must have been a sweet variety for 
 these brothers, for, after all, good living-, beautiful surroundings, 
 and healthy employment as have our street Arabs at Montevrain, 
 there is an eternal barrack huddling- and drill, which even young- 
 humanity must wish occasional relief from. Perhaps it would not 
 do to allow these lads of untried propensities to live away from an 
 inspecting eye. ' Still, it seems as if tiny apartments of their own 
 might make them more responsible and civilized citizens, teaching 
 them self-respect and self-dependence. They could do the house- 
 hold duties as now, although separately. At present two boys each 
 day are detailed to act as the mess servants of the establishment, 
 assisting the cook and waiting on the tables. The boys cannot do 
 their own cooking, however, a woman cook, with the women of the 
 wardrobe, being the only female element connected with the school. 
 Besides the instructing staff, there are three attendants who have 
 charge of the discipline. One of these is the fire inspector before 
 mentioned, and another is the accomplished gymnast. 
 
 The diet of the school is a very formal affair, the bill of fare for each 
 meal for a month being printed. The morning meal consists of vari- 
 ous kinds of soup — herb soup, meat soup, rice soup, onion soup, leek 
 soup, julienne soup, and panade being scattered through the thirty- 
 one days. In like manner the noon meal is varied with veal, hashed 
 beef, mutton, fresh pork, sausages, black-puddings, and beef in va- 
 rious fashions, and all with a variety of vegetables. The evening 
 meal is a sort of compromise between dinner and supper, being soup 
 and vegetables — potatoes, beans, lentils, macaroni, on part of the 
 days, and on others soup and meats, including roasted veal. The 
 diet also includes wine from the city's own wine-cellar, and a mod- 
 erate allowance of fruits, dessert, etc., in season. Altogether, the 
 living: is not bad at Montevrain.
 
 290 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 The beliavior of the boys at table, a sure index of boarding- 
 school life (even in a Squeers academy), is remarkably jjleasant. 
 My first insight into the routine, on my visit (as I arrived at high 
 noon), was to see the lads marshalled on the parade by their drill- 
 master, marched to the tables and seated in the dining-hall to the 
 left of the front court. They ate with relish and satisfaction as well 
 as decorum, and when, at two o'clock, I saw them again summoned 
 by trumpet-call to the parade-ground, to march to the two work- 
 shops, a large detail to the left and a little one to the right, there 
 was a cheerfulness and a promptitude which told, more than words, 
 of good living and happy existence. 
 
 On the diet above, the street Arabs thrive most wonderfully. 
 The health of the school is generally perfect, the doctor's bill being 
 lower than at almost any similar collection of juveniles gathered 
 haphazard from anything but healthy surroundings. There has been 
 but one death in the ten years since the establishment of the school, 
 that of a boy, in 1889, from a pulmonary consumption. A great 
 hygienic advantage of the establishment is the jiroximity of the 
 limpid Marne, in the waters of which the boys take regular baths 
 in the summer months, nearly all of them becoming accomplished 
 swimmers. In winter the}' have to content themselves with the 
 ample bath-rooms of the establishment, where they are given three 
 baths a week. 
 
 The accommodations of the school could easily be made quite 
 equal to three or four hundred pupils, and in course of time that 
 number may be reached, when the idea gets generally acceiated in 
 the official brain. This will largely increase the value of the estab- 
 lishment, for the product will increase in proportion to the workers, 
 while the expenses will not rise in quite the same j)i'oportiou, a 
 school of one hundred being relatively much more costly than one 
 of fourfold the number. At present the cost, though on a liberal 
 scale, is recouped to a considerable degree. In 1889, for instance, 
 the credits to the school actually exceeded the debits by over forty 
 thousand francs, because a large arrear of products of former years
 
 A SCHOOL FOB STREET ARABS 297 
 
 were then broug-ht in. The actual product for that year was over 
 one hundred thousand francs to one hundred and sixty thousand 
 francs of cost, not a bad showing- for a great public " charity." As 
 the number of older and skilled pupils becomes g-reater, the value 
 of the products increases. The product of 1890 included thirty 
 thousand francs for printing- alone, and two or three times as much 
 in the cabinet- making line. 
 
 The school is b}^ far the most successful of the new " morally 
 abandoned " ventures, and its fame g-ets already noised about. In 
 fact, parents and guardians have offered large sums to be allowed 
 to have their children g-iven the beneficial phj^sical and industrial 
 training at Montevrain — a strange turn of fortune's wheel when the 
 well-to-do citizen envies for his own cherished offspring- the lot of 
 the poor street Arab ! Of course such offers are refused. The 
 Municipal Council have not yet summoned up courage to take up 
 the mournful inheritance of 1848, and the "national workshops." 
 All these fond parents can easily get their offspring admitted at 
 Montevrain by simply becoming- bad citizens themselves and throw- 
 ing their children into the streets. 
 
 In initiating Montevrain and its mates, the French officials 
 made a careful study of the legislation and establishments in Great 
 Britain and the United States. The interesting- story of the de- 
 velopment of reformatory and industrial schools is a record of the 
 generous rivalry and emulation between different states of western 
 Europe and their transatlantic neighbors, in private and public 
 efforts, for over a century past. The French reformers combined 
 the best features of the whole field, and, moreover, made a distinct 
 advance on all. The English law allowed the removal of the chil- 
 dren found in certain associations. The Massachusetts law annuls 
 all parental rig-ht over its reformatory proteg-es. The New York 
 plan included apprenticeship at various trades. In Scotland, 
 Sheriff Watson first gave technical instruction to young vagrants 
 in association. The Council of the Seine decided to initiate a 
 wholesale crusade for the removal of all children in obviously im-
 
 29S THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 proper hands, to assiime the anntilliug- of parental rights, to edu- 
 cate their children with all the advantages of those in the care of 
 careful guardians, and to do this by large boarding-schools with a 
 variety of teachers. Until the strict legal sanction of the legisla- 
 ture could be had, the Council acted upon its own assumption. 
 There were freqiient cases of drunken, brutal, and criminal joarents 
 coming with effrontery and bluster to reclaim their offspring, gen- 
 erally to advance their own selfish schemes. All such were 
 promptly kicked out of doors. Of course the courts were open to 
 them ; it was well known that they would never dare to appeal to 
 the law, an appeal almost certainly liable to end in a damaging ex- 
 pose of their own characters, perha^DS bringing them into the 
 clutches of the very law itself, and most certainly confirming the 
 denial of rights over their children, rights which the children 
 themselves invariably repudiated. At length the law of 1889 settled 
 the matter for once and all. The distinctive character of Monte- 
 vrain and the other new schools is the " weeding " process. These 
 schools cannot be a success without it. The weakness of previous 
 ambitious industrial refuges is the necessity of using only the often 
 poor human material — and using all this material — which comes 
 for treatment. 
 
 In their Kedhill enterprise the London Philanthropic Society 
 was taunted by a Quarterly reviewer with its little chance when it 
 lacked the enthusiasm and exceptional care of Mr. Turner, the 
 founder. The reform school for western New York, in Rochester, 
 which imitated Montevrain on a large scale in 1884, will find a difti- 
 cult task if it hopes to bring all the young outcasts into the neces- 
 sary limited curriculum of highly technical trades. No such im- 
 possibility is attempted at Montevrain. The stupid, incompetent, 
 and refractory youths are carefully sifted out and sent elsewhere. 
 The widely-spread network of agricultural colonies, and other aids 
 for the ill-provided juvenile in France, enables this to be done. 
 Thus the elite of the street Arabs can always be provided for at 
 Montevrain. Thus is this special school almost sure of success.
 
 A SCHOOL FOR STREET ARABS 299 
 
 The banislied boys are sometimes allowed to return. Of course the 
 incompetent have little care to renew their failures, but in cases of 
 mere childish waywardness of really bright youths they often beg- 
 to go back to such a cheerful home, where their talents find such 
 gratifying scope. In case of genuine amendment these jirayers are 
 answered. Thus the Moutevrain school is a very model of good 
 conduct. The Parisian street Arabs take pride in their eminent 
 privileges, and the graduates of Montevrain are as liable to achieve 
 praiseworthy social distinction as the graduates of any learned uni- 
 versity in the world.
 
 THE POOE IN NAPLES 
 By JESSIE WHITE VA. MAEIO, 
 
 AUTHOR OF GOVERNMENT REPORTS ON THE ITALIAN POOR 
 
 HouRiBLE Condition op the Naples Poor a Quarter op a Century Ago — 
 Pasquale Villari's Investigations— The Dwellings — Epforts at Im- 
 provement — The Rampa di Brancaccio — The Cemetery for the Poor— 
 The Cholera of 1884 — Volunteer Nurses— King Humbert's Visit and 
 Reforms — The Sanitary^ Conditions — "Naples Must be Disembowelled " 
 — Efforts op the Municipality — The Evicted Poor — The New Build- 
 ings — Needs of the City — The Hospitals — Emigration. 
 
 THE old saying- Vecli Napoli poi mori7' maybe translated " See 
 misery in Naples to learn what misery means " — ^to realize 
 what amount of linnger, nakedness, vice, ignorance, supersti- 
 tion, and oppression can be condensed in the caves, dens, and ken- 
 nels, unfit for beasts, inhabited by the poor of Naples. In 1871 it 
 was affirmed by the " authorities " that, of the entire population of 
 the city, two-thirds had no recognized means of livelihood ; no one 
 knew how more than a quarter of a million human beings lived, 
 still less where they passed their lives of privation, pain, and 
 wretchedness ; or how, when death ended all, their bodies were 
 flung down to rot together in foul charnel holes, far away and apart 
 from the holy ground where the upper third were laid to rest that — 
 
 " From their ashes may be made 
 The violets of their native land." 
 
 Five years later, in 1876, when misery, gaunt and stark, reared 
 its head for the first time defiantly in every city, town, and village
 
 THE POOR IN NAPLES 301 
 
 of Italy — the g-rinding- tax, proving- the proverbial feather on the 
 too patient camel's back, " inquiries into distress, its causes and 
 possible remedies," were proposed by some of the old makers of 
 Italy, who maintained that the aim of the revolution had been to 
 create a country for all the Italians and not for a privileged few. 
 The government sanctioned the proposal, and the agricultural in- 
 quiry was set on foot and carried out in every i^rovince by special 
 commissioners. It revealed such depths of misery in the rural dis- 
 tricts as could never be imagined or believed in by those who still 
 apostrophize : 
 
 " Thou Italy, whose ever goklen fields, 
 Ploughed by the sunbeams only, would suffice 
 For the world's granary. " 
 
 In Lombardy, Mantua, and Yenetia, all fertile wheat-iDroducing- 
 provinces, it was found that the patient, toiling, abstemious peas- 
 ant, fed upon maize exclusively, tasting" white bread only at glean- 
 ing time, rarely touching- wine, washing- down his untiojwovy polenta 
 with impure, fetid water, was affected with pellagra. This awful 
 disease — now, alas, become endemic and hereditary — after wasting- 
 the body by slow degrees, afl'ects the brain and lands the victims 
 raving- maniacs in the male and female mad asylums of Venice and 
 of Milan. It is now being- successfully g-rappled with in the first 
 stages, by the parish doctors who, in many communes, are author- 
 ized to administer white bread, wine, and even meat ; in the second, 
 by special establishments where patients are received and treated, 
 i.e., well fed until they recover /»;'c> tein.; while for the poor wretches 
 who have reached the third stage, there is no help but in the g-rave, 
 no hope save in a speedy release. 
 
 But a worse state of things was revealed in Naples by private 
 studies and researches set on foot by Pasquale Villari * and the re- 
 
 * The present writer was among the recruits, but for a long time declined to write 
 of misery in Naples for the Italian press, believing that tlie slate of the poor in Lon- 
 don was even worse than in Naples. Professor Villari, the well-known author of the 
 lives of Savonarola ami Machiavelli, Minister of Public Instructiim. inKh-rtook
 
 302 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 emits lie pressed into the service of liis native city. The facts and 
 figures set down in unvarnished prose in his " Southern Letters," 
 convinced the authorities " that something- must be done if only to 
 protect the ' upper third ' from the possible upheaval of the seeth- 
 ing masses below, increasing- ever in numbers, terribly dispropor- 
 tioned to the means of accommodation provided for them." 
 
 Heart - rending as were the descriptions given of the misery 
 of the masses by Villari, Fucino Renato, Fortunato Sonnino, and 
 others, they by no means prepared me for the actual state of tilings 
 which I heard, saw, and touched in Naples, accompanied alternately 
 by priests, policemen, and parish doctors, and always by old friends 
 and comrades of the campaigning days when all believed that the 
 overthrow of despots, the ousting of the foreigner, the abolition of 
 the temporal power, when Italy should be one in Rome, would find 
 bread and work for all as the result of liberty and the ballot. 
 
 I spent hours and days, later, weeks and months, in the lower 
 quarters of Porto, Pendino, Mercato, and Vicaria, in the fondaci, 
 the cellars, caves, grottos, brothels, and locande (penny-a-night 
 
 to go to London and see for himself, and on his return we received a long letter, from 
 which the following is an extract : 
 
 " I assure you, on my honor, that the poor in Naples are infinitely worse off than 
 the poor in London. Furnished with an order from the chief of police in London, I 
 have visited, with detectives in plain clothes, the worst quarters of the city — the 
 Docks, the East End, saying always : ' Show me all that is most horrible in Lon- 
 don. I want to see the dwellings of the most wretclied and miserable inhabitants.' 
 
 " Great and widespread is misery in London ; but I do not hesitate to declare, 
 with profound conviction, that those who say that the conditions of the poor in Lon- 
 don are worse than those of the poor in Naples, have either never seen the poor in 
 Loudon or have never visited the poor in Naples. If it happens that cases of death 
 from starvation are more frequent in London than in Naples, the cause lies in the 
 climate of London. If in Naples we had the climate of London a very large number 
 of our poor would find peace in the grave and cease to live a life that is worse than 
 death. 
 
 "Pasquale Villari. 
 
 "Florence, March 30, 1876." 
 
 After the receipt of this letter we published, in 1877, a book entitled La Miseria 
 di Napoli.
 
 _l 
 o 
 
 Q. 
 < 
 
 UJ 
 
 O 
 
 Q 
 
 > 
 
 HI
 
 THE POOR IJV NAPLES 805 
 
 lodg-ing'-liouses) wliere the raisevahles congTegate. Sickeniug- were 
 the sights by day, still sadder the scenes by night as yoa passed 
 church steps, serving- as the only bed for hundreds ; under porches 
 where you stumbled over, without awakening the sleejaers, who also 
 occupied the benches of the vendors of fish and other comestibles 
 in Basso Porto, while in fish-baskets and empty orang-e-boxes, 
 curled up like cats but without the cat's fur coat, were hundreds of 
 children of both sexes who had never known a father and rarely 
 knew their mother's name or their own. It was a farce to talk of 
 statistics of births and deaths in these quarters. " The existence of 
 the bo3^s is known to the authorities," writes an eminent physician, 
 now (Assessore d'igiene) Sanitary Officer in the Municipality of 
 Naples, " when they are taken up for theft or npiccola mancanza : of 
 the girls when they come on the brothel registers " (abolished, hu- 
 manity be praised ! in 1889). Of what use was it to take stock of 
 vice, disease, and crime, save to hold it up as the legitimate out- 
 growth of the foul dens in which the " masses " herd>? In the first 
 report made by the corporation it was shown that 130,000 lived in 
 the hassi e sotterranei, in cellars, caves, and grottos. No mention 
 was then made of the fondaci, which the Swedish physician, Axel 
 Munthe,* stigmatizes as " the most ghastly human dwellings on the 
 face of the earth." 
 
 Let the American reader take that wonderful book, " How the 
 Other Half Lives," and look at the photograph of Hell's Kitchen 
 and Sebastopol (page 6). Imagine such a building, but with blank 
 walls all round, no windows in any, entered by a dark alley leading 
 to a court where the common cesspool fraternizes with the drink- 
 ing-water well, where, round the court, are stables for cows, mules, 
 donkeys, and goats — while in the corners of the same court, tripe, 
 liver and lights vendors prepare their edibles, or stale fish-mongers 
 keep their deposits — and they will have the framework and exterior 
 of a fondaco. Then let them construct in their mind's eye one 
 single brick or stone staircase leading up to inner balconies — up, 
 
 * See Lelters from a Mourning City. 
 20
 
 306 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 up, three, four, or five stories. Fifteen or twenty rooms are entered 
 from each balcony, which serves for door and window, there being 
 no other aperture ; each corner room on each story being" absolutely 
 dark even at mid-day, as each balcony is covered with the joavement 
 of the upper one. Put a hole between each two rooms for the pub- 
 lic performance of 
 all private offices ; 
 shut out from the 
 top story such light 
 as might gieam 
 from the sky, by 
 dint of poles, 
 strings, ropes, and 
 cords laden with 
 filthy rags — and 
 you have a more 
 or less accurate 
 idea of the interior 
 of the fondaco at 
 Naples. 
 
 All of these I 
 have visited at in- 
 tervals during the 
 last seventeen 
 years, finding their 
 numbers dimin- 
 ished at each visit, 
 but never until lately have I found a new tenement inhabited by 
 the evicted /?m??«cAe/'e for whom they were ostensibly built. 
 
 In 1877 the municipality made a grant of land to a co-operative 
 society for the purpose of building houses for the poor. As soon 
 as these were finished, small shop-keepers, civil servants, etc., se- 
 cured all the apartments ; then irritated by the taunts that they 
 were living in houses built for the poor, inscribed on the front of 
 
 A Girl of the People.
 
 THE POOR IN NAPLES 307 
 
 the block, " The houses of the Co-operative Society are not poor- 
 houses ! " Ag-aiu, in 1879, a loan was raised for demolishing- the 
 worst fondaci and grottos, cellars, and caves, and for the erection 
 of airy, healthy tenements for the people, and in 1880 the writer 
 was invited by the mayor to inspect these. Capital houses they 
 were ! built on the spot where last I had seen the fondaci— AxceWa., 
 Castig-lione, Conventino, San Camillo, Cento Piatti, Piscavino S. 
 Felice, Miroballo — and after due admiration of the spacious court, 
 wide street, decent ing-ress, outer balconies, etc., I ventured to ask : 
 " Where are the funnachere ? These clean, Avell-dressed people, 
 with their pianos and excellent furniture, are not the poor creatures 
 we used to visit here." 
 
 " Of course they are not," said the contractor, " what are they to 
 us ? " while a vice-syndic said : " This is my section ; I know that 
 my rione is redeemed, that we have got rid of the plebs : what care 
 we where they are gone ? Let them burst, it would be better for 
 them. Cre^nno pure, che sard meglio ! " * 
 
 As I was turning from the spot in silent despair, an old man 
 came up and said : " I can tell you Avliere some of the jooor creat- 
 iires are gone. They were turned out into the streets, many of them 
 went into the fondaci that remain, two families, and even three in a 
 room ; the price of these has been raised as the numbers grow less, 
 and many of them are in the grotto at the Rampa di Brancaccio." 
 With a newspaper man, sceptical of "the misery of the poor in 
 Naples," and an English and a German lady, I walked along the 
 splendid Corso Vittorio Emanuele, whence you have the finest view 
 of Naples, of Vesuvius and the sea, and suddenly 
 
 " Out of the sunlit glory 
 Into the dark we trod—" 
 
 literally dropping down into the grotto del Brancaccio, where, at 
 first, absolute darkness seemed to reign. 
 
 It was a cavern with mud for pavement, rock for walls, while the 
 
 * I quote from a letter printed in the Pmvjolo, of Naples, on the day of the visit.
 
 308 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 water dripped from the ceiling, and one sink in the centre served 
 for the " wants of all." Here were lodged more than two hundred 
 human beings, some forty families ; their apartments being di- 
 vided bj^ a string where they hung their Avretched rags. The fami- 
 lies who had the " apartments " by the grating that served for win- 
 dow, paid ten, nine, eight, seven lire per month each. These poor 
 creatures subscribed among themselves two lire so that a poor old 
 man should not be turned out, but allowed to sleep on straw by the 
 common sink, and they fed a poor woman who was dying, with 
 scraps from their scant repasts. This grotto yielded its owner a 
 montlily rent, always paid up, far exceeding that paid by the in- 
 habitants of the new tenements and decent houses, and he con- 
 tinued to so " grind the faces of the poor " until 1884, when King 
 Cholera carried off his tenants, and the grotto was closed, as was 
 the charnel-house to which the inmates were carried to their last 
 
 abode. 
 
 In order to convince the sceptic still further that there was no 
 exaggeration in the accounts of the horrors, we invited him to ac- 
 company us to what was then the only cemetery for the poor of 
 Naples. It is an immense square with three hundred and sixty- 
 five holes, each covered with a huge stone, with a ring in each for 
 uplifting. On the first of January, hole No. 1 was opened and all 
 the poor who died on that day were brought up iu great pomp of 
 funeral car and trappings, with priests and tapers, etc. The first to 
 be thrown in was a corpse with shirt and trousers. " He is a pri- 
 vate," said La Raffaella, the poor woman who used to take charge 
 of the child corpses, kiss each of them so that they might take the 
 kiss to " limbo." " He died at home and his people had dressed 
 him." He was placed in the zinc coffin, the crank swung this over 
 the hole, you heard a fall, then the coffin came up empty : next 
 were flung down the naked corpses of the inhabitants of the poor- 
 houses and charitable institutions, then the little children. Last 
 came up the car of the Hospital Degli Incurabili, with the scat- 
 tered members swept from the dissecting-table. Then the hole
 
 THE POOR IN NAPLES 
 
 3U9 
 
 An Old Street in the Poor Quarter being Metanriorphosed. 
 
 No. 1 was closed not to be reopened until next year. On the mor- 
 row, over hole No. 2 the same horrors were re-enacted. The vic- 
 tims of Kinsr Cholera in 188i were the last buried in these charueL
 
 310 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 holes ; the cemeterj^ Avas closed when he was dethroned, and a new 
 cemetery for the poor opened just opposite the monumental ceme- 
 tery of the rich at Foria. 
 
 It was in the summer of that year that the cholera reappeared 
 and its swift and sudden ravages compelled attention to the 
 "where" and "how" its numerous victims lived and died. In these 
 same quarters of Porto Pendino, Mercato, and Yicaria, 20,000 died 
 of cholera in 1836-37 ; an equal number in 1854-65, 1866, and 1873, 
 while the higher quarters of Naples were comparatively free from 
 the scourge. In 1884, from the 17th of August to the 31st, the 
 cases were not more than three every twenty-four hours. On the 
 1st of September 143 were attacked, 72 succumbed on the 10th of 
 the same month ; 966 cases, 474 deaths, are given as the official sta- 
 tistics ; the sum total of deaths is variously stated at eight, nine, 
 and ten thousand. But official bulletins are never trustworthy in 
 these cases, the authorities strive to abate panic, and it is a well- 
 known fact that numbers of cases were never reported to the munic- 
 ipality, the dead being carried oflf in carts and omnibuses to the 
 special cholera cemetery and charnel-house, without any possible 
 register. Dr. Axel Munthe, who lived and worked among the poor 
 during the entire time, gives it as his belief, supported by others, 
 that during " not one but four or five days there were about one 
 thousand cases per diem." So markedly was the disease confined 
 to the poor quarters that for many days it was impossible for the 
 municipal authorities to do anything to alleviate its ravages ; the 
 poor, ignorant, superstitious plebs being firmly convinced that the 
 cholera had been introduced among them for the express purpose 
 of diminishing their numbers. 
 
 Hence the refusal to go to the hospital, to take the medicines 
 sent, to allow disinfectants to be iised, to abstain from fruit, vege- 
 tables, and stale fish, even when good soup and meat were oifered 
 instead. Then it was that King Humbert went to Naples and vis- 
 ited in person the stricken patients in iheiv fojidaci and cellars, in 
 the caves and slums, and this, his first experience of actual misery,
 
 
 /f, 
 
 
 «1/ 
 
 GOSSIP IN PENDING STREET, NAPLES.
 
 THE POOR IN NAPLES 313 
 
 save as the result of war or a sudden catastrophe, made such a pro- 
 found impression on his mind that he ]3romised the poor people 
 there and then that they should have decent houses built expressly 
 for them. Even now they will tell you that (h Re kept his word, 
 but that the Signori have taken the jmlacea all for themselves. 
 
 The royal example was speedily followed ; bands of students 
 and working-men under the white cross proffered their services, and 
 the Neapolitan citizens who had not all fled, enlisted under the 
 doctors, who are ever brave and devoted in Italy, and Avorked as 
 nurses, cooks, helpers of the living, even as porters of the dead. 
 The poor people, ever grateful, gentle, docile, yielded to these 
 " kind strangers," and allowed themselves to be taken to the hos- 
 pitals or tended in their own dens where, by the White Cross band 
 alone, assistance was furnished to 7,015 cases. Of the volunteer 
 nurses, Lombards, Tuscans, Romans, some ninety in all, several 
 were attacked but only three succumbed, all adhering strictly to 
 the rules laid down as to diet and the specifics to be used in case 
 of seizure. The cholera, at its height between the 10th and 18th 
 of September, abated gradually from that day until the 9th of Octo- 
 ber, when suddenly, on the 10th and lltli, 122 were attacked and 37 
 succumbed. This 10th of October is the first of the famous ottohrate, 
 when the poorest of the poor managed to get a taste of the new 
 wine which is still fermenting, and that year it is very probable 
 that they toasted with unwonted zeal the disappearance of the 
 cholera, which on the 9th had not made a single victim. The lus- 
 cious blue figs, the bread and watermelons which could in that 
 cholera year be had for a song, were also unusually abundant. 
 The regulations at last enforced by the authorities had been re- 
 laxed ; the sale of rags recommenced, and to all these causes may 
 doubtless be owing in part the reappearance of the foe supposed 
 to be vanquished. 
 
 But fortunately for poor Naples, the cholera found in King 
 Humbert an adversary determined to resist its intrusion for the 
 future ; and men of science, doctors, students, were encouraged to
 
 3U THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 study the causes of the disease even more diligently than the cure 
 for it, when in possession. When the sudden reappearance filled 
 the city with fresh alarm, and the poor, wretched people were 
 soundly abused in the newspapers for their " orgies," more than 
 one professor affirmed that the real cause must be traced to the 
 sudden change of temperature, to the southwest wind, sirocco, 
 which prevents the sewers from discharging their contents into 
 the sea and drives the refuse back to the streets and shores, which, 
 in the quarters of Pendino and Porto, are almost on a level with 
 the sea ; and to the condition of the water under ground which, 
 swelled by the tremendous rainfalls, carried more putrid matter 
 than usual into the drinking-wells and streams. Certain it is that 
 as soon as the tramontana (north wind) began to blow, and the low 
 tides allowed the impurities to put out to sea, the cholera dimin- 
 ished and for three years returned no more. Then came the narra- 
 tions in the newspapers of the actual state of the habitations of the 
 poor — how human beings and beasts were crowded together, how 
 the stables were never cleaned, how the sinks filtered into the wells 
 — twelve hundred and fourteen of these being foul but " possibly 
 cleansible," while sixt3-three were ordered to be filled up and 
 closed. It was shown that these quarters were more densely popu- 
 lated than any other portion of Europe, London included ; while 
 the insalubrious trades were carried on in the most populous por- 
 tions of the overcrowded quarters, there being no less than two 
 liundred and thirty -five large and small rag and bone stores in the 
 midst, while decayed vegetables, the entrails of beasts, and stale 
 fish were left where flung, scavengers and dustmen confining their 
 labors to the quarters of the "upper third." 
 
 All these accounts King Humbert read attentively, and to old 
 Depretis, then prime minister, said : " Italy must redeem Naples 
 at any cost." And the old statesman answered: "Yes, Naples 
 must be disembowelled." Bisogna sventrare Napoli. A bill Avas 
 presented to the Chamber for the gift of fifty millions of lire, and 
 the loan of other fifty millions for the sanitation of the unhealthy
 
 THE POOR IN NAPLES 
 
 3J5 
 
 quarters of the city, and for the decent housing- of the poor, and 
 the sums were voted without a murmur, so great was the sympathy 
 felt for the victims of the cholera and their survivors, whose misery 
 was portrayed with heart - rending eloquence. The senate ap- 
 proved, and the king set his zeal to the decree on January 15, 1885. 
 
 As studies for the amelioration of the poor quarters and the san- 
 itation of Naples had been carried on, and paid for, and tlie authors 
 of plans decorated 
 during the last ten 
 years, it was sup- 
 posed that (the fi- 
 nancial question 
 solved) the work 
 would be com- 
 menced there and 
 then, but two more 
 years were wasted 
 in finding out 
 " how not to do it." 
 
 Until 1850 Na- 
 ples had always 
 been reckoned one 
 of the healthiest 
 cities in Italy. Ty- 
 phus and diphthe- 
 ria were rare ; no one had ever heard of a Neapolitan fever. True, 
 when the rains were heavy the city in many parts was inundated 
 with flowing streams called lave, and wooden bridges were erected 
 over several streets, otherwise traffic would have been impossible. 
 Once the so-called lava dei vergini carried away a horse and car- 
 riage in its impetuous course. To remedy this state of things 
 the government of King Bomba ordered a system of sewers which, 
 either owing to the ignorance of the engineers or the jobbery of the 
 contractors, rendered the last state of Naples worse than the first. 
 
 f.££^^^/l'^ 
 
 Begging Hands.
 
 316 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 Into these sewers, wMcli had insufficient slope, not only the rain- 
 water, bnt the water from sinks, all the contents of the cesspools, 
 were supposed to flow. But in seasons of droug-ht nothing- flowed ; 
 all remained in the sewers. Often the sewers were so badly con- 
 structed that instead of carrying off the contents of the cesspools 
 the}' carried their own contents into the drinking--wells. Hence the 
 stench often noticed in some of the best streets of Naples. Some 
 of the conduits are almost on a level with the street ; many of them 
 have burst. One of the best modern engineers of Naples writes : 
 " If you uncover the streets of our city, ditches of putrid matter 
 most baneful to health will reveal themselves to the eye of the in- 
 discreet observer." He quotes one special sjaot, Vkolo del Sole, 
 " where cholera, tyjihus, every sort of lung disease had reigned su- 
 preme." This " Sun alley," where the sun never shines, was closed, 
 and the health of the neighborhood became normal. But when a 
 number of jjeople were ousted from their houses for the excavation 
 of the corso reale, the Vicolo was again inhabited, and out of 
 seventy-two inhabitants, the cholera carried off sixty. Every time 
 that excavations were made in any part of the low quarters of 
 Naples, typhus, diphtheria, or the newly invented Neapolitan 
 fever broke out — and, to quote official statements, " If one case of 
 fever broke out in a house where the cesspool communicated with 
 the drinking- well, all the families who drew water from that well 
 were laid low with the same fever. Again, these horrible sewers 
 when they succeeded in emptying themselves, did so in the most 
 populous quarters of the city, so that the Kiviera became a putrid 
 lake, and in the best quarters of Chiaja the stench at eventide was 
 so horrible that the people used to call it the malora di Chiaja (bad 
 hour of). When the southwest wind blew the high tide prevented 
 the sewerage from going out to sea, so all the matter brought down 
 remained strewed along the shore. The best hotels were closed 
 owing to the fever that prevailed, and are now nearly all replaced 
 by others built in the higher quarters, the Eione Amadeo, Corso 
 Vittorio Emanuele, etc.
 
 THE POOR IN NAPLES 
 
 317 
 
 Hence the firs<3 thing- to be thought of for the sanitation of Na- 
 ples was the renovation and purification of the drains. The fewest 
 possible excavations, the greatest possible extent of colmate (raising 
 the level), was clear- 
 ly indicated ; and as 
 this " silting up " 
 the lower quarters 
 has to be done, not 
 as in Lincolnshire 
 fens by allowing* wa- 
 ter to leave its own 
 sediments, but by 
 material imported, it 
 was and is a very 
 costly proceeding. 
 
 Alas ! that the 
 lessons taught by 
 the former attempts 
 at redeeming the 
 slums should have 
 been forgotten, or 
 rather deliberately 
 neg-lected. " Don't 
 begin at the end in- 
 stead of at the be- 
 ginning-," said G. 
 Florenzano, in 1885. 
 " Don't begin by pull- 
 ing- down the old 
 houses until you have built new ones for the evicted tenants of the 
 fondaci, grottos, etc. Jf you go on the old system the poor creat- 
 ures who now have a roof over their heads will have to crowd the 
 remaining /6';^<'/ac^ even as did those of Porto when you beautified 
 the Via del Duomo, or they will crowd into the cloisters of S. Tom- 
 
 " Hunger," a Sketch in the Poor Quarter.
 
 318 . THE POOR IN ORE AT CITIES 
 
 maso di Aquino, where the cliolera mowed down so many victims. 
 You can pull down houses in a week, but it takes a year to build 
 them, and another year must elapse before they are habitable." 
 The discussions and commissions went on for two years and a half. 
 There was the question of whether the municipality should expro- 
 priate, demolish, and rebuild on its own account. The majority 
 were against this, urging- that public bodies are the worst of all 
 workers. Then should the whole contract be given to one society 
 or to several ? And here the war of the " one lot " or " lot of lots " 
 raged fiercely. " Whoever gets the contract, however few or many 
 be the contractors," said Villari, from his seat in the Senate, and 
 other sentimentalists, "let them be bound over to build healthy 
 houses for the poor who will be evicted from the slums, on a site 
 not so far from their old homes as to prevent them from carrying 
 on their daily emj)loyments, and at rents certainly not higher than 
 those they pay at present." 
 
 To this, practical people answered that : " No building society 
 would build at a loss, and that healthy houses in healthy sites in 
 the populous quarters of Naples could not be erected for the letting 
 price of five lire per room." 
 
 " Then let the municipality first deduct from the hundred mill- 
 ions given for the poor of Naples such sums as are necessary for 
 building these houses without profit," retorted the sentimentalists ; 
 " in the long run they will be found to pay, but in any case they 
 must be built." 
 
 As usual the vox clamante resounded in the desert only. In 
 1888, the municipality entered into a contract with a building soci- 
 ety of Milan for the entire work of expropriation, demolition of old 
 houses, the construction of new ones, and the all-important work 
 of laying down the sewers and paving the streets above. The lay- 
 ing down of gas and the canalization of the water of the Serino in 
 the new quarters was alone retained in the hands of the municipal- 
 ity and separately contracted for. The contract itself, to use the 
 words of the minority of the " communal councillors," represented
 
 ■4 
 
 ^■ II 
 
 W f f 
 
 i^^ 
 
 K^irm 
 
 m 
 
 lli^' 
 
 3*' 
 
 P; 
 
 
 ilMii.i/:: :l 
 
 tBi»..,Li, 
 
 li f,r.|-''l':^':l^^^'^'* 
 
 
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 i\i.i> -'it' t 
 
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 CO 
 
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 .,...:U
 
 THE POOR IN NAPLES 321 
 
 a direct violation of the spirit of the law passed by the Italian par- 
 liament in the interests of the community and for the sanitation of 
 Naples, while the commission of inquiry delegated by the council 
 to examine and report on the works, affirmed that " Private specu- 
 lation, substituted for the superintendence of the commune and the 
 State, naturally ignored the philanthropic impulse of the law, alloAv- 
 ing industrial calculation and bankers' rings to boss the enterprise 
 especially planned for the benefit of the poorest classes and to san- 
 ify the lowest quarters of the city." So much for the spirit of the 
 contract. 
 
 Coming to its execution, the municipality neither armed itself 
 with sufficient powers for compelling the contractors to perform 
 their work properly, nor did it put such powers as were reserved 
 into execution. Consequently expropriations which, by the terms 
 of the contract, ought to have allowed three months to elapse be- 
 tween the notice to quit and the actual departure, were often car- 
 ried out within a week of the notice given. Availing themselves 
 of the law which sanctions exjDropriations at a fixed price for 
 public benefit, the society bore hard on manj^ small proprie- 
 tors, whose houses they took without any immediate need, and 
 these, until the time comes for their demolition, are underlet to 
 the worst class of usurers, Avho have evicted the tenants and 
 doubled the rent. Then the first houses were jerry built. One fell 
 while building and killed several workmen. Again, the contract 
 bound the society to build houses only three stories high, to avoid 
 the overcrowding so complained of in the old quarters. They built 
 them of four stories. The courtyards were to occupy one-sixth of 
 the Avhole area of each tenement — they were found to occupy 
 barely one-seventh or even one-eighth. Finally (and this raised a 
 popular outcry at last), in no single tenement built by the so- 
 ciety could the evicted poor find a room, because they were all 
 about twice the price of their former ones, and so far removed 
 from the scene of their daily labors that it was very doubtful 
 
 whether they could inhabit them at all. It is neither edifying 
 13
 
 322 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 nor iuteresting" to seek out wlio were the chief culprits ; certainly 
 the municipal authorities, who took no thought for the poor for 
 whom the money was voted, were the original sinners. But when 
 the hue and cry was raised the money was spent and it was no use 
 crying- over spilt milk. The municipality was bankrupt. Besides 
 inheriting- the debts and deficits of its predecessors, it had squan- 
 dered vast sums on useless works, g-iven three millions to the so- 
 ciety which built the King- Humbert Gallery — a capital building- 
 for the cold and uncertain climate of Milan ; quite a superfluity in 
 sunny Naples, where everybody lives in the open air, and where 
 you can hardly yet g-et sellers and buyers to use the new covered 
 market-place instead of the street pavements. 
 
 So the municipality was dissolved by the government and a 
 Royal Commissioner sent to take the affairs of the commune in 
 hand. When I came here affairs seemed past praying- for, the 
 state of overcrowding- in the poorest quarters was worse than ever. 
 I found houses condemned as unsafe and propjjed up with shores, 
 without a window-pane or door on hing-es, crowded to excess — the 
 fondaci left standing- with double their old numbers of inhabitants ; 
 the cellars full, and at night the streets turned into public dormi- 
 tories. True, the water from the Serino had been broug-ht into 
 Naples, and this is a priceless boon which can only be appreciated 
 by those who remember the bad old days when even at the best 
 hotels you dared not drink a g-lass of unboiled water ; when the 
 poor people had to purchase water at one or two sous per litre, 
 those who could not do so g-oiug- athirst. Then the old charnel- 
 house is actually closed, and the new cemetery is as beautiful as a 
 cemetery need be. Though it has only been open five years it is 
 already nearly full. The poor have the graves and a parish coffin 
 gratis, but after eighteen months the " bones are exhumed to make 
 room for the fresh corpses." The families who can afford to do so 
 pay for a niche in which to deposit the " bones," while the remains 
 of those who have no friends able to do so are placed in a huge cis- 
 tern outside the cemetery. At any rate the poorest have now for a
 
 THE POOR IN NAPLES 
 
 323 
 
 time a grave to themselves and need not say Avith envy as they 
 used to do when accompanying some signore to the monumental 
 cemetery, "O Mayn- 
 
 niia ima, varria 
 
 murt pe 
 " Mother 
 
 stacca ! " 
 mine, I 
 would die to stop 
 here." 
 
 Then Naples as 
 a city is undoubt- 
 edly renovated and 
 beautified ; always 
 hella, ever dolce, it 
 is now one of the 
 most commodious 
 cities in the world. 
 Trams take you 
 from Posilipo to 
 the royal palace, 
 from the Via Tasso 
 to the lieclusoria. 
 New palaces, new 
 houses rise \\\) to 
 the east and west of 
 the city. 
 
 Besides the dem- 
 olitions and recon- 
 structions of the 
 famous Societa di 
 Kisanimento, an- 
 other society has 
 
 built largely at the Rioiie Vasto at Capuana, case economiche and 
 edifizi civili which we should call workmen's houses and houses for 
 well-to-do peoj)le. Even so in the Rione Arenaccia Orientale, in the 
 
 Or\ Ihe Stjiri of Santa Lucia.
 
 324 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 Rlone S. Efrem Vecchio OttocalU Ponti Rossi. lu the Rione Vometv- 
 Arenella the Bauca Tiberina has built enormously ; constructed two 
 J'miicolari (cable railwaj^s), and in two years the population of that 
 quarter has increased from 751 to 3,991 ; but there are no funna- 
 chhre among- them. 
 
 In the favorite quarter of foreign artists, Santa Lucia, where the 
 oyster and " fruits of the sea " mongers and their wives, the sulphur- 
 water vendors, fryers of 2^olipi and peperoni, congregate, these luc'i- 
 ani also inhabit fondaci not quite as filthy as those of Porto and 
 Pendino, nor are they nearly as docile. They strongly objected to 
 the tramway as an invasion of their rights, and laughed to scorn 
 the builders of the new houses on the shore of the Castello Dell' 
 Uovo and of the new loggie for the shell-fish vendors. " The first 
 high wind," they say, would carry stalls and fish into the sea, and as 
 for the new houses, they pis2{ca7io (are too dear), no7i jannme 'n terra 
 (they shall not demolish our houses), they tell you, and as yet no 
 one has dared to tackle them. The new houses are divided into 
 charming little apartments with a kitchen and convenience in each, 
 but the kitchen and one room cost 15 lire, others 20, 30, even 35 lire. 
 
 With a budget of thirty million lire and a huge deficit, little 
 margin was left to the Roj'al Commissary, who had to cut down 
 estimates, retrench in every department, " economize to the bone," 
 but as winter approached, the cry of the people became audible in 
 high places. It was one thing to camp out in the summer, but 
 quite another to use the streets for bed and the sky for roof in the 
 months of December, January, and February, while the new com- 
 mission of engineers and medical men pronounced many of the 
 hovels still inhabited to be " dangerous to life and limb," and or- 
 dered the society to repair or close them at once. The society 
 chose the latter alternative, thus reducing still further the scant ac- 
 commodation — but the Royal Commissary was not a " corporation." 
 He had a soul, or at least a heart. " For six months," he writes, in 
 his report to the government at the close of his mission, '* a fam- 
 ished mob, turha famelica, have thronged the stairs of the muni-
 
 THE POOR IN NAPLES 325 
 
 cipality ; childreu of both sexes, utterly destitute, who must of 
 necessity go to the bad ; mothers chispiug- dying- babies to their 
 milkless breasts ; widows followed by a tribe of almost naked chil- 
 dren ; aged and intirm of both sexes, hungry and in tatters— and 
 this spectacle, which has wrung my heart, reveals but a small por- 
 tion of the prevalent destitution. One can but marvel at the docile 
 nature of the lower orders of Neapolitans, who bear with such 
 resignation and patience their unutterable sufferings. One cannot 
 think without shuddering of this winter, which overtook whole 
 families without a roof over their heads, without a rag to cover 
 them, without the slightest provision for their maintenance." 
 
 To remedy this awful state of things in some degree, this royal 
 extraordinary commissary, in Naples for six months only (Senator 
 Giuseppe Saredo), gave it to be understood that the society 7mi.d 
 find means of lodging the evicted poor in some of the new tene- 
 ments at the old prices. He even consented to a compromise, by 
 which, leaving all the work of laying down drains and filling up 
 low places intact, he consented to the delay in certain buildings 
 which ought to have been completed in the third hiemiio, on the 
 conditions that the society should cede tenements capable of hous- 
 ing fifteen hundred people, no single room to cost more than five 
 lire per month. The first great exodus took place in December, 
 1891; unfortunately, the housing schedules were not all given to 
 people who could not afford to pay more than five lire ; and when I 
 visited the tenements the brass bedsteads and mahogany chests of 
 drawers told tales of past homes in quite other places than in the 
 slums. But in many rooms we did find our funacchere; the thin 
 end of the wedge was inserted, and when the Eoyal Commissary's 
 term of office came to an end the new Syndic repeated the experi- 
 ment, and arranged with the society for other tenements capable 
 of housing other two thousand of the poorest. This time the vice- 
 syndics have had a warning that if they give schedules to any but 
 the houseless poor their offices and honors will be transferred. At 
 first the idea of removing the poor costermongers, porters, coal-
 
 326 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 heavers, fish, snail, and tripe venders so far from their old slums 
 and haunts seemed unpractical and even cruel ; but having- revisited 
 those haunts and the skimmers in their new homes, seen the shops 
 opened on the ground floors of the new dwellings, turned on the 
 water-tap which is in each room or apartment, inspected the closets 
 which are perfectly scentless, I can only express a feeling of thank- 
 fulness that the axe has been laid at the root of the tree at last. 
 
 
 ■JfiJI 
 
 Whe'e Street Arabs Sleep. 
 
 It is not only a question of health and longevity — the poor peo- 
 ple in the fondaci cellars and underground dens were entirely at 
 the mercy of the camorra which, however the police and the au- 
 thorities may flatter themselves, has never been killed and very 
 slightly scotched. These poor creatures, crowded in one spot, are 
 the terrified victims of the camoi'rlst, that " unclean beast of dishon- 
 est idleness " of yore, who now has cleaned himself up a bit, but is 
 
 J
 
 THE POOH IN NAPLES 327 
 
 as bestial, dishonest, and idle as ever. With the dispersion of the 
 skimmers and the allotment to each of a room or rooms with doors 
 that lock, and windows that open, the camorrlsifi reign is over, 
 especially as the society, though compelled to charge only five lire 
 per room, has no help from the municipality in collecting- rents, 
 and therefore selects for porters (concierge) men who attend to 
 their interests and not to those of the camorra. 
 
 What is now wanted in the new quarters are infant schools, ele- 
 mentary and industrial schools, of all of which Naples possesses 
 some of the most perfect that I have ever seen in Italy or in Eng- 
 land. Naples, a city of contrasts in all respects, is especially so 
 in the management of her public and private institutions. 
 
 Of charitable institutions belonging to the poor by right, Na- 
 ples has enoug-h and to spare, with two hundred edifices and over 
 eight or ten millions of annual income. But these edifices and this 
 income serve every interest save that of the poor. Administrators, 
 priests, governors, electors, deputies, councillors and their clients 
 get thus the lion's share. The Albergo dei Poveri, with an income 
 of over a million and a half, maintains a family of employees ex- 
 ceeding seven hundred, while the poor, many of whom are merely 
 proteges of the rich, have dwindled down to two thousand. The 
 children have scarcely a shirt to change ; the school for deaf and 
 dumb boys has been so neglected for years that only of late has the 
 new director been able to form a class. The girls in charge of 
 WxQfiglie delta carita, French nuns, are kept so hard at Avork at em- 
 broidery and flower making that their health is ruined, and the ag- 
 glomeration of old men and women, young boys and girls under 
 one roof is by no means conducive to order, discipline, or morality. 
 One " governor " succeeds another. One sells 5,000 square me- 
 tres of land to a building society for eleven lire per metre, at a 
 time when in certain portions of the cit}'^ land is worth three and 
 four hundred lire. His successor brings an action against the pur- 
 chaser and the costs are enormous. Another has farmed out the 
 rents to some collector at far too low a price ; another action is
 
 328 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 brought. The chemist is proved to have substituted flour for qui- 
 nine, Dover's powders without opium, and is suspended. But the 
 corpo delicto, i.e., the analyzed medicines, have disappeared ; the 
 chemist will come off triumphant and the Albergo dei Poveri will 
 have to pay costs and damages, and possibly to meet an action for 
 libel. Of course there is a deficit in the budget ; and this will con- 
 tinue to increase, whoever may be governor, as long as the system 
 remains and as long as places are created for proteges of Senator 
 A, Deputy B, or Counsellor C. 
 
 The enormous hospital of the Incurahili, where also a royal corn- 
 missionary presides, was found to be in a most deplorable state. 
 The number of patients reduced from one thousand to seven hun- 
 dred ; the meat of inferior quality to that j)rescribed. Despite the 
 25,000 lire which appear in the budg-et for linen, there were not 
 sufficient sheets to change the beds of the sick, yet there was an ac- 
 cumulated deficit of 869,030 lire, and for last year alone 200,000 lire. 
 As the present special commissioners have really reduced the ex- 
 penditure, while increasing the number of patients admitted, dimin- 
 ished the enormous number of servants, and by supplying food to 
 those on guard deprived them of the temptation to steal the rations 
 of the sick ; as they have thoroughly cleansed the hospital from 
 garret to cellar, constructed water-closets, etc., we hope they will 
 be allowed to remain in ofiice sufiicient time to render a return to 
 former abuses impossible. 
 
 Some improvement there is, w^e notice, in the Foundling Hos- 
 pital, which was in a wretched state, the mortality among infants 
 amounting to ninety -five and even one hundred per cent. The sys- 
 tem adopted of giving them out to be nursed by poor families in 
 the city and country round Naples, answers admirably, as the poor 
 people here regard them as the " Virgin's children ""—figlie delta 
 Madonna. Still there are over three hundred big, lazy girls in the 
 establishment who ought to have been put out to earn their living 
 long ago. 
 
 The Casa di Maternita, added to the establishment, is admirably
 
 THE POOR IN NAPLES 
 
 321) 
 
 conducted, and the secrets of the poor girls or women Avho demand 
 admission are religiously kept. 
 
 The famous con- 
 vent of the Sepolte Vive 
 of Suor Orsola Be- 
 niucasa, which created 
 such a sensation in 
 the newspapers a year 
 since, is now complete- 
 ly reformed ; the few 
 surviving nuns are 
 pensioned oif and al- 
 lotted a residence in 
 some distant portion 
 of the enormous edi- 
 fice, while the income 
 of 100,000 lire is ap- 
 plied to the education 
 of poor children. There 
 are also classes for the 
 children of parents 
 who can pay, a normal 
 school, and a kinder- 
 garten. 
 
 As the reformed 
 law of charitable in- 
 stitutions is only two 
 years old, and the 
 government and mu- 
 nicipal authorities are 
 doing their best to apply it in spite of the clergy and the vested 
 interests of innumerable loafers, we may hope that in time to come 
 the poor and the poor alone may profit by this their own and only 
 wealth. How such wealth may be profitably applied is shown by 
 
 
 
 ■S-KX 
 
 -frtr 
 
 Interior of a Poor Quarter.
 
 330 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 the numerous establishments founded and maintained by private 
 charity. The chiklren's hosi^ital, Osp'itale Lina, founded and main- 
 tained by the well-known philanthropist, Duchessa Ravaschiera, is 
 a perfect gem. There are eighty beds, each occupied by a poor 
 child for whom a surgical operation is necessary. All the first sur- 
 geons and doctors of Naples give their services. The Duchess 
 herself, who founded the hospital in memory of her only daiighter, 
 Lina, superintends it in person, often living- and sleeping there, 
 and the delight of the children when " Mamma Duchessa " enters 
 the wards is very touching-. 
 
 The asylum for girls orphaned during the cholera of 1884 is an- 
 other example of how much can be done, with comparatively small 
 sums, under personal supervision. Here 285 boarders and 250 day 
 scholars are maintained at a cost of little over 100,000 francs, sub- 
 scribed by individuals, the Bank of Naples, the Chamber of Com- 
 merce, etc. All the children frequent the elementary schools, and 
 are each taught a trade, dressmaking, plain needlework, making 
 and mending- — m.agUeria (machine-knitted vests), stockings, petti- 
 coats, etc., artificial flowers, embroidery, and lace making. At the 
 Exposition of Palermo there was a beautiful collection of the w^ork 
 done by the girls of this school ; we could wish that they were not 
 compelled to toil so many hours a day, but necessity knows no law, 
 and the administration of the superintendent. Baron Tosti, is above 
 all praise. There are two educational and industrial schools for 
 boys in Naples which may serve as models to the other provinces 
 of Italy and to other nations. 
 
 The Listifufo Casanovas,"^ for boys who have attended the infant 
 schools, was founded in 1862 by Alfonzo della Valle di Casanova. 
 Elementary schools and Avorkshops Avere opened under the same 
 roof and carried on privately with great success until 1880 ; then 
 
 * All American lady, well known in Boston for her work in prison reform, said to 
 us, as we were taking her over these schools ; " We have nothing so good as this in 
 America."
 
 THE POOR IN NAPLES 331 
 
 recognized as a Coiyo Morale by the g-overnment, Avliicli assigned a 
 large building with open spaces for gymnastics and recreation, sur- 
 rounded by eleven new workshops. Industrial schools generalh' 
 are a failure, owing to the expense incurred by the payment of di- 
 rectors of Avorkshops, the purchase of machines, tools, instruments, 
 and raw material. In this establishment the workshop alone is 
 given rent free to the master — blacksmiths, carpenters, tailors, 
 boot-makers, brass-workers, cameo, lava workers, workers in bronze, 
 sculptors, ebonists, wood-carvers, and printers — with whom a regu- 
 lar contract is signed, for a certain number of years, by which, on 
 " November 1st, directors A, B, and C shall open a workshop, fur- 
 nishing it with all such machines and instruments as are necessary 
 for carrying on and teaching his trade to a fixed number of pupils." 
 In case of bankruptcy the master must at once quit the workshop. 
 The boys for the first two years, that is until they are nine, attend 
 the elementary schools exclusively ; then they or their parents 
 choose their trade, and as soon as their work becomes profitable, 
 they are paid a certain sum fixed by the master-workman and the 
 director of the establishment, who receives the pay of the boys 
 weekly and gives half to them, half to the establishment. At first 
 the boys were compelled to place all their portion in postal savings 
 banks, but as all are day scholars and are housed and fed by their 
 parents, it was found that these, being too poor to maintain them, 
 removed them from the school before they were proficient in their 
 respective trades. From the report up to March 6, 1892, we find 
 559 " present," 104 pupils who had quitted the establishment as 
 skilled workmen, all of whom are eagerly sought by the directors 
 of workshops in this city. The income of the institute does not ex- 
 ceed 72,000 francs, of which 22,000 is paid to school-masters and 
 servants ; the remainder goes in buildings, prizes to the pupils, etc. 
 The Casanova opera also has a beautiful department at the Exposi- 
 tion at Palermo, where albums and pamphlets show its whole his- 
 tory from the beginning. 
 
 A similar institution, much rougher, but even more meritorious,
 
 332 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 is the working- school in the ex-convent of S. Antonio a Tarsia. The 
 boys collected here are the real waifs and straj-s taken from the 
 streets— gutter-sparrows, literally. The founder is Giovanni Flor- 
 enzano, ex-member of parliament and {assessore) officer of public in- 
 struction in the municipality of Naples. It is conducted on the 
 same i^rinciples as that of Casanova, but, alas ! not with equal funds. 
 
 
 One of the New Blocks of Tenements in Naples. 
 
 There is a workshop for carpenters, ebony-workers, wood-carvers, 
 and gilders, for blacksmiths, workers in bronze, for the manufact- 
 ure of iron and steel instruments, and a large printing'-office. The 
 boys gathered there number from two hundred and fifty to three 
 hundred. Unfortunately the impecuniosity of the municipality has 
 deprived this school of four thousand francs annually. 
 
 Signor Florenzano, who has done much for popular instruction 
 in Naples, in 1883 oj^ened a Sunday-school for recreation in a large
 
 THE POOR IN NAPLES 3^3 
 
 hall with a pretty g-arc^en in the Vico Cupa a Chiara, where seven 
 hiiudred children, all under separate patronage of benevolent men 
 and women, were clothed, and on every Sundaj^ taught choral sing- 
 ing, gymnastics, and military exercises. Alas ! both the hall and 
 garden have been demolished by the pickaxe of a building- society, 
 and the children are dispersed. This idea of placing- every boy in 
 the working school under the protection of some well-to-do person 
 is excellent. A few more such industrial schools as these of Casa- 
 nova and Tarsia would be the making of the next generation of 
 Neapolitan boys. These private institutions also form a striking 
 contrast with the so-called reformatories, penitentiaries, and cor- 
 rectional establishments with which Italy, and especially Naples, 
 abounds. In three of these which we visited we may say, without 
 fear of contradiction, that there are no reforms, and no penitents in 
 any of them. In one of these, whei-e each boy costs three francs 
 per day, discoJi, merely naughty boys and boys sent by their own 
 parents to be disciplined, are mixed up with culprits who have been 
 condemned once, twice, and thrice, for whom " paternal discipline " 
 is a derision, who break down the doors of their cells, kick the 
 jailors, and yet are fed on coffee and milk in the morning-, meat at 
 mid-day, soup at night, and wine three times a Aveek. 
 
 We have not space for even a brief reference to prison discipline 
 in Italy, but we may say as a g-eneral rule that delinquents and 
 criminals alone are housed, fed, clothed, and cared for by the State ; 
 that the greater the crime, the more hardened the criminal, the 
 better does he lodge, dress, and, till yesterday, fare ! 
 
 We must not close this story of the poor in Naples without a 
 reference to two other institutions dedicated to the poor alone. 
 The one is the school for the blind at Caravaggio, which, Avith the 
 boarding-house and school founded by Lady Strachen, offer a pleas- 
 ant contrast to the blind institute at S. Giuseppe, dependent on 
 the Alhergo del Poveri. The blind institute, now called Prince of 
 Naples, founded by the brothers Martucelli, is admirable. The
 
 334 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 blind boj^s.and girls read, write, print, and play yarious instru- 
 ments, are shoe-makers, carpenters, basket and Venetian blind-mak- 
 ers. The correspondent of the London Times, on seeing the depart- 
 ment of this school at the Palermo Exhibition, could hardly believe 
 that the work was done by blind children. 
 
 The Froebel Institute, now called the Victor Emanuel Interna- 
 tional Institute, was founded by Julia Salis Schwabe, an enthusias- 
 tic admirer of Garibaldi, who, in 1860, appealed to women to open 
 popular schools for the education of the poor in the southern prov- 
 inces. Professor Villari took it under his especial jDrotection, and 
 the old medical college at S. Aniello was assigned for the purpose, 
 so that poor girls taken from the streets could be housed, fed, and 
 educated. At present the boarding-school has been much reduced, 
 but the day, infant, and elementary schools are simply perfect. 
 Side by side with the classes for poor children, are paying classes 
 for the well-to-do, who are taught to find pleasure in bringing 
 clothes and boots for their poorer companions. The " haves" pay 
 seven lire a month, which suffices to give a capital soup every day 
 to about four hundred children of the " have nots." The establish- 
 ment serves also as a training-school for teachers of this Froebelian, 
 or as it ought to be called, Pestalozzian system, certainly the most 
 admirable yet invented for keeping children bright, happy, and 
 active, and while placing no undue strain on their intellectual 
 faculties, disciplining and preparing them for the age when these 
 can be exercised. It is a school such as this which I long to see 
 Oldened in the new quarters where the children taken from the 
 fondaci cellars and slums in general are now housed. Very dismal 
 they look, shut up in the respective rooms, seated upon the window- 
 sills, longing for the open street, of hasso porto, the filthy court- 
 yards, where there were goats and rats to play with, any amount of 
 dirt for the " makin' o' mud pies," and the chance of a stray pizza or 
 frazaglia, the gift of kindly foodmongers. Now, of course the j^or- 
 ters forbid the leaving open the doors of the " aj^artments," the 
 squatting on staircases, the congregating in the courtyards where
 
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 THE POOR IN NAPLES 337 
 
 no "waslipools" have been erected, "expressly to prevent the 
 skimmers from reducing- the new tenements to the state of the okl 
 fondacir All this is highly proper, but very forlorn for the little 
 ones. 
 
 B}^ degrees it is to be hoped that the inhabitants of Naples, rich 
 and poor, will be induced to go and live in the suburbs. At present 
 there is a population which has increased from a little over four 
 hundred thousand to nearly six hundred thousand, crowded over 
 eight square kilometres ; deduct the space occupied by churches 
 and public buildings, and there is little more than seven square 
 kilometres. And this is the first greatest misfortune for the poor 
 in Naples. The problenj of housing them solved, it Avill be, after 
 all, but the alpha of the business. There is neither " bread nor 
 work " for the masses, who increase and multiply like rabbits in a 
 warren. On this ijoiut they are exti^melj^ sensitive. Finding a 
 lad of eigliteen, for wliom we were trying to get work, just married 
 to a girl of sixteen, we ventured to remonstrate, asking how they 
 were to keep their children ? " Volete anche spegnere la razza dei 
 2)ezze}iti " — " Do you want even to extinguisk tke race of misera- 
 bles ? " tke kusband asked, indignantly. 
 
 Hitkerto tke surplus population of tke provinces kas swarmed 
 off to Brazil and tke United States. From tke former country 
 many of tkem return witk sad tales of wkole families swept away by 
 yellow fever, of kard labor lioeing coffee witk insufficient remuner- 
 ation, and tke impossibility of obtaining proper nouriskmeut. 
 And now comes tke natural but sad report, from tke United States 
 accentuated by Mr. Ckandler, in tke Forum, tkat republican citizens 
 are tired of tke poor, meek, feckless, imclean offshoots of royal 
 courts and aristocratic institutions who extract a livelihood from 
 New York's ash-barrels ; who contract for the right to trim the ash- 
 scoics before they are sent out to sea, whereas a few years ago men 
 were paid a dollar and a kalf a day for tke said "trimming;" who 
 keep the stale beer dives and pig together in the " Bend ; " who used 
 at home to receive but five cents per day and " wittals " that dogs 
 23
 
 338 THE POOR IN ORE AT CITIES 
 
 refuse, iiiiclersell tlieir labor abroad, and thus lower tlie wages of the 
 natives. 
 
 We cannot wonder that the cry is : " Send them back — here they 
 are encumbrances." 
 
 But when this safety-valve is closed some new outlet will have 
 to be found to prevent an explosion, and the " upper third " will do 
 well to devise the ways and means while yet there is time.
 
 AGENCIES FOE THE PEEYENTION OF PAUPERISM 
 
 By OSCAR CRAIG * 
 
 LATE PRESIDENT OF THE NEVS' YORK STATE BOARD OF CHARITIES. 
 
 Poverty and Pauperism — The Four Classes op Our Population — Processes 
 WHICH Tend to Increase Pauperism — Pauper Immigration — Laws to 
 Control It— The Head Moneys — The Return op Alien Paupers— The 
 Big System op Out Relief — Organized Charity — As an Agent in the 
 Prevention op Pauperism — The Charity Organization Society of New 
 York — Other Agencies of Benevolence — Church Charities — The Jews 
 — Treatment op the Insane Poor — Management op the County Poor- 
 houses— The Care op Dependent Children — Reformatories — The Dis- 
 cipline OF Convicts — The Question op Heredity — Mr. Brace's Testi- 
 mony — The State Charities Aid Association — The Factory Law\ 
 
 POYEKTY and pauperism are words which shoukl not be used 
 as equivalents, or even as synonyms. The terms stand for 
 thing-s or thoughts which in some respects are antithesis. 
 An individual may be both a poor person and a pauper ; but the 
 majority of the poor, when not demoralized by unwise interference 
 or neg-lect, are neither purposely nor actually in the attitude of 
 pauperism, which is that of dependence on public or private char- 
 
 * The Hon. Oscar Craig, President of the New York State Board of Charities 
 (whose persistent and sacrificing efforts for the poor b}'' scientilic, as well as linmani- 
 tarian, methods, have been increasingly acknowledged since his untimely death in 
 January, 1894), wrote the chapter herewith published in the spring of 1893. A part 
 of it, very much condensed, was published in Scribner's Magazine for July, 1893, but 
 the present is the first publication in its entirety of one of the last and most mature 
 expressions of the views of a man who spoke with the highest authority by reason 
 of his extensive experience and knowledge, as well as by his remarkable clarity of 
 judgment. Mr. Craig intended further to revise this paper for book publication.
 
 340 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 ity in the form of either indoor or out-relief; vhile a large minor- 
 ity, if not a major part, of paupers misrepresent or suppress either 
 infrequently their accumulations of property, or more often their 
 ability to work, which is their capital, and so pass as poor persons 
 only hj their false pretences or concealments. 
 
 Another distinction must be made. The productive classes 
 should not be identified with even " the poor." The worker who 
 toils continuously and effectually, such as the parish priest or min- 
 ister of the gospel or teacher in the rural district, the farmer, the 
 artisan, or the humble laborer, may be in destitute circumstances, or 
 in distress of desire to supply the higher wants of his family with 
 the small means at his command ; but such workers make the world 
 rich in spiritual worth and material wealth, and accumulate the po- 
 tential forces, moral and physical, which, being liberated from 
 time to time, lead to the progress of the world. They are, in such 
 points, differentiated from the simply indigent or worthy popr, who, 
 though patient, enduring, suffering uncomplainingly, striving to 
 avoid the dependence of pauperism, and if defeated renewing the 
 struggle for an honest living, are handicapped in the race by some 
 incumbrance or inefficiency, proceeding from incomplete corre- 
 spondence with their environment, or imperfect organism, or de- 
 fective energj^ or vitality ; and who (while deserving the favors of 
 the strong to "help them to help themselves," and perhaps more 
 the favorites of heaven than many who succeed better in the strug- 
 gle for existence on earth) are nevertheless not energetic factors in 
 industrial activities or in the performance of duties to society. 
 
 A distinct set remains to be mentioned, viz.: the opulent who 
 are not rich by the results of their own industry for the moral or 
 material ends of society, and who, neglecting their social obliga- 
 tions, suffer atrophy of virile and moral powers, and, like paupers, 
 live on the world's surplus without adding to it or giving any fair 
 equivalent for their maintenance. 
 
 These four categories may thus be arranged in two divisions : 
 first — the poor and laorkhig classes, both of which are entitled to our
 
 AGENCIES FOR THE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM 341 
 
 respect for different sorts of praiseworthy qualities ; and, second — 
 the idle inch and the pauper, neither of which is worthy of our praise. 
 Eliminating- from consideration the affluent who lead useless lives, 
 as of no account, we have the remaining- unprofitable class of the 
 second division contrasted with the two estimable classes of the 
 first division. 
 
 Observing- these distinctions, it is obvious that any principle or 
 policy which leads toward the prevention of pauperism, conduces 
 pro tanto to the protection of both the poor and the producing- 
 classes. To defend the workers, as members of the social organism 
 most entitled to honor, is to shield them from unjust taxes levied 
 to support persons who are able but unwilling to work, or to main- 
 tain in comfort and comparative luxury, to a degree relatively 
 higher than the averag-e families of tax-payers can enjoy, even 
 
 * u rn . 
 
 those who are willing but unable to work. To preserve the poor 
 from injury is to guard not merely their physical welfare but also 
 their moral well-being, and to ward off the forces that break down 
 their manhood and thus tend to disintegrate society. 
 
 To prevent pauperism is to go before the processes which lead to 
 it, and to anticipate the causes which, if not counteracted, tend, by 
 successive steps, to make the productive and independent worker 
 lapse into indigence, and the indigent to descend into dependence. 
 Preventive measures are therefore better than any and all means 
 that are merely repressive or remedial. 
 
 The work of prevention is so imperfect in most communities, 
 while the processes for the propagation of pauperism are so suc- 
 cessful in many countries of Europe, that there is imposed on pub- 
 lic authorities in the United States the duty of exclusion or expul- 
 sion of all immigrants who may be infected with this vice or disease. 
 This proscriptive duty devolves on charity administration in the 
 State of New York more than elsewhere in America, for the reason 
 that its territory includes the principal port of entry, and therefore 
 naturally returns the worst elements, while most of the able-bodied
 
 342 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 and the riglit-minded pass into the interior States, where they be- 
 come worthy and valuable citizens of the Kepublic. 
 
 It may be sugg"ested that the return of such immigrants, who 
 have effected a landing by eluding the agencies of the Federal Gov- 
 ernment, does not go to the true end of the prevention of this dis- 
 ease, or even its reduction or relief in the world at large. But this 
 view is not so broad as at first sight it seems to be, in subordinating 
 patriotism to philanthropy, and is not so comprehensive as that 
 which justifies the necessary means for the preservation of the so- 
 cial organisms and life of America, with their potential advantages 
 and benefits to the whole world. There is no rooin for doubt that im- 
 migration, if unrestricted, loould soon change from lohat now is mostly 
 good, to that ivhich would he mainly had, if not in actual ratio of num- 
 hers, at least in real irroportionfif x>ower. 
 
 It is difficult for Americans, in their magnanimity, to realize or 
 fully believe, however realistic may be the story, that government 
 and other agencies in Europe have deliberately and successfully 
 conducted their diseased, filthy, vicious, and criminal dregs of so- 
 ciety, by ocean steamers, as sewers, into cesspools made of the ports 
 • and towns of the United States, But such is the fact established 
 by evidence convincing and cumulative. The late Dr. Anderson, 
 President of the Rochester University, and member of the State 
 Board of Charities for the Seventh Judicial District, submitted to 
 the board a paper dated January 12, 1875, which cites admissions 
 made by publicists and other authorities abroad, showing this fact. 
 And it has been confirmed by proofs annuall}^ gathered since the 
 year 1873, by the Secretary of the State Board of Charities, and by 
 the findings of the Board made in its annual reports to the Legis- 
 lature. 
 
 The State of New York has sought relief in various enactments. 
 Chapter 277 of the laws of 1831, and chapter 230 of the laws of 1833, 
 were practically inoperative, on account of the difficulty of proving 
 the intent or knowledge of the master of the vessel, or other per- 
 son, introducing the convict or the pauper into the State. The act
 
 AGENCIES FOR THE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM: 343 
 
 passed IVLay 15, 1847, entitled " An Act Concerning Passeng-ers in 
 Vessels Coming- to the United States," and the amendatory and sup- 
 plementary acts, created commissioners of immigration and amon^- 
 other things made the consignees, masters, agents, and owners of 
 vessels liable for the support of immigrants who were " lunatic, 
 idiot, deaf, dumb, blind, infirm, maimed, over sixty years old, 
 widows having families, or for any cause unable to support them- 
 selves," provided that such liability might be discharged by paying 
 a commutation tax of two dollars and fifty cents 2>er capita on all 
 immigrants within twenty-four hours after leaving the vessel. The 
 result, of course, was that the commutation money was always as- 
 sessed on the immigrant at his place of departure. The law directed 
 the commissioners to pay, from such money, the cost of maintaining 
 such immigrants as became a public charge within the State, but 
 not beyond the period of five years from landing. This statutory 
 indemnity was inadequate, on account of the short term of mainten- 
 ance and of the small sum of " head money," by reason of which the 
 commissioners, though restricted by the five years' clause, incurred 
 debts which their resources would not cancel. While about nine 
 thousand foreigners were thus maintained from such commutation 
 money, between the years 1868 and 1873 inclusive — a period just 
 prior to the first subsequent legislation hereafter mentioned — there 
 were foreign-born inmates of county poor-houses and city alms- 
 houses in the State, during the same six j^ears, to an annual average 
 of thirty-five thousand to forty thousand, being about two-thirds of 
 the total population of these houses, though foreign-born persons 
 were oulv about one-third of the total census of the State. Another 
 inevitable limitation iu the law was that it could cover only the 
 ports of entry within its jurisdiction, while the classes of defective 
 and dependent persons provided against were in large numbers 
 shipped to Canadian ports, and thence forwarded over the border, 
 with their destinations practically fixed, as if ticketed, to the i:)oor- 
 liouses and almshouses of the counties and cities of the State. 
 
 This statiite provoked comments from jurists on the question of
 
 344 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 its validity. Finally, the Supreme Court of the Uuited States (in 
 the case of Henderson et at. v. Mayor of New York et al., decided in 
 October, 1875) declared that the provisions in the law for levying 
 the tax on immigrants, and the penalties leading to it, were in reg- 
 ulation of commerce, and therefore in violation of the Federal Con- 
 stitution. 
 
 After this decision, cutting off the inflow of the " head money," 
 the unnaturalized paupers who had floated on the currents of immi- 
 gration and had become moored by our charity cables under tlie 
 five years' clause, were supported by the Commissioners of Immigra- 
 tion on Ward's Island, from apjjropriations by the Legislature of 
 the State in the years 1876 to 1883, amounting to $1,140,500, and on 
 credit in county poor-houses, city almshouses, incorporated hos- 
 pitals, orphan asylums, and other charitable institutions, in the 
 further amount of $105,008.96, which is a debt against the State to 
 be paid from the proceeds of the sale of its propert}^ on Ward's 
 Island ; and also from a loan of $200,000 made in 1875 by The Emi- 
 grants' Industrial Savings Bank of New York, secured by a mort- 
 gage on the Ward's Island property, which mortgage was, in 1882, 
 assigned to the Comptroller of the State as an investment for the 
 United States Deposit Fund, thus making the funny combination 
 of a mortgage held hj the State on its own property, and as secu- 
 rity for trust funds. 
 
 But these various sums represent only a small part of the defici- 
 ency of the " head moneys," as already shown by reference to the 
 ordinary statistics of alien paiiperism, which was a public charge, 
 not on the State at large, but on counties and cities. The proofs 
 demonstrate that the Supreme Court, in cutting off the commuta- 
 tion contracts, released the people of New York State from a most 
 destructive and deplorable policy of inviting foreign convicts, luna- 
 tics, and paupers to come, with the implied covenant of mainten- 
 ance for five years and probably for life. 
 
 At the time of this decision (1875), there Avas no National statute 
 on the subject. Subsequently Federal Legislation was repeatedly
 
 > 
 
 AGENCIES FOR THE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM 345 
 
 invoked by the State Board of Charities of New York, in corre- 
 spondence with the State Department and Senators and Kepresenta- 
 tives at Washington, and with the National Conference of Charities 
 and Correction, and the boards and authorities of other States. 
 The result of the agitation was the act of Congress to regulate im- 
 migration, passed in 1882, by which it was provided, among other 
 things, that if there shall be found among- immigrants on vessels, 
 " any convict, lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of 
 himself or herself without becoming a public charge, . . , such 
 person shall not be permitted to land." This law was at first exe- 
 cuted by State authorities, but is now enforced by Federal officers, 
 under regulations of the Secretary of the Treasury of the United 
 States. Assuming", for argument's sake, that its administration has 
 been reasonably diligent, the fact remains that great numbers of 
 alien pauj^ers annually elude the Federal examinations and obtain a 
 footing on our shores, perhaps the majority of whom infest the city 
 and the State of New York. 
 
 The Legislature of the State has provided for the return of such 
 foreign and unnaturalized paupers as are assisted by cities, charita- 
 ble societies, and other agencies to emigrate, after the expiration of 
 one year from their immig-ation (which is the period limiting- such 
 action by officers under the Federal statute). Under the Alien Pau- 
 per Law of New York, enacted in 1880, and enforced by the Chief 
 Secretary of its State Board of Charities, seventeen hundred and 
 twenty -nine of these assisted immigrants, most of them being rem- 
 nants of the imperfect execution of the law of Congress, have been 
 sent to their homes or places of settlement, by through tickets to 
 tliose places in foreign countries. Such returns have been accom- 
 plished in humane ways, at an expense of less than twenty-two dol- 
 lars per capita, or about one-fifth of the cost of maintenance for one 
 year, computed at two dollars per week, and about one seventy - 
 fifth of their support for life, on an estimate of expectation of fif- 
 teen years, which is verified by experience. Thus, at a total expen- 
 ditiire of $37,238.46, the expulsion of these organized invaders of
 
 346 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 the soil of New York has saved to the taxpayers of the State over 
 $2,700,000. 
 
 These g-eneral statistics are taken from the annual reports of the 
 State Board of Charities to the Legislature of New York ; and the 
 data for the fiscal year closing September 30, 1891, are as follows : 
 
 The number of alien jjaiipers removed by the Board from the poor-houses, 
 almshouses, hosi^itals, asylums, and other charitable institutions of this State, 
 and sent to their homes in different countries of Europe, during the fiscal year 
 ending September 30, 1891, jjursuant to chapter 549 of the laws of 1880, was as 
 follows : To England, 38 ; to Ireland, 37 ; to Italy, 32 ; to Austria-Hungary, 
 15 ; to Germany, 22 ; to Scotland, 13 ; to Sweden and Switzerland, each, 5 ; to 
 Russia, 1 ; and to Denmark, 2 — total, 173. 
 
 The examination showed that they were deported from their several Euro- 
 pean homes to this country by the following agencies, viz.: By cities and other 
 municipalities, 34 ; by their relatives, guardians, and friends, 67 ; by various 
 European immigration and benevolent societies, 49 ; by individuals under con- 
 tract to labor, 23 — total, 173. 
 
 Preceding the Alien Pauper Law was the State Pauper Law, 
 enacted June 7, 1873, and amended in 1871 and 1875, which is still 
 in full force and eifect. lender its provisions, the Secretary of the 
 State Board of Charities returns to their homes or friends in other 
 States of the Union and other countries, State paupers, that is to 
 say, dependent persons having no legal settlement by sixty days' 
 residence in any of the counties of the State, and found by the 
 Secretary in the State almshouses, which are certain county poor- 
 houses selected and designated by the State Board as receptacles 
 of these classes. 
 
 The report of the State Board of Charities, transmitted to the 
 Legislature February 17, 1892, shows that the whole number of per- 
 sons committed as State paupers under this act since it went into 
 effect, October 22, 1873, has been 24,153, viz. : males, 18,813 ; fe- 
 males, 5,340. Of these 15,071 have been furnished transportation 
 to their homes or places of legal settlement in other States and 
 countries, and this State thus released of the burden and expense
 
 AGENCIES FOB THE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM 347 
 
 of their support and care tlirough life. To have maintained these 
 paupers in the poor-houses and almshouses of the State, at the low 
 rate of $100 each per annum, would have involved an annual outlay 
 of $1,507,100 ; and, calculating- the averag-e duration of their lives at 
 fifteen years, they would, in the end, have entailed the enormous 
 expenditure of $22,G0G,500, by the various cities and counties of the 
 State. The average annual expense since the law went into effect, 
 for maintenance, supervision, and care, and for the removal of 
 15,071 helpless paupers to their homes or places of legal settle- 
 ment, has been less than $40,000, or about $25 per person. 
 
 Every invasion of the delinquent, diseased, and destitute classes 
 which is finally turned back by the State government, if not at first 
 repelled by the Federal authorities, deters unnumbered irruptions 
 of similar sorts ; by making such experiments of vagrant mendi- 
 cants from sister States uncertain, or rather rendering' it almost 
 certain that their ventures will prove unprofitable and unpleasant 
 to themselves ; and by discouraging- benevolent societies, munici- 
 palities, and g-overnment agencies in Europe, from their bolder at- 
 tempts to organize such immoral incursions into our territory. 
 Thus, the State Pauper Law and the Alien Pauper Law have not 
 only immediately effected an actual saving- of perhaps $25,000,000 as 
 already computed, but on a fair estimate of probabilities, have re- 
 sulted in sparing the resources of the State the useless expenditure 
 of larger sums of money, as well as its social and moral economies, 
 much disorder, and the blood and life of its people, the contagion 
 and infection of disease and vice. 
 
 The public system of out-relief, as organized and administered 
 in many places, is a prolific propagator of pauperism. Until our 
 departments and bureaus of local, as well as State and National, 
 governments shall be regulated by a reformed civil-service divorced 
 from partisan politics, the dispensation of alms in money or food 
 or other things, by public officials, to recipients in their homes, will 
 continue to be a source of corruption. The taint affects the body
 
 348 TUE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 politic directly, as does all venality in public life. The fraud upon 
 the service is of no account, in comparison with the wrong done in 
 converting- whole families and circles of people, who are actually 
 or potentially self-supporting, into the most shameful mendicants 
 and dependants. The offspring of households so " helped " soon 
 become helpless parasites upon the public. 
 
 Organized charity, administered by voluntary societies, is the 
 remedy for such evils. The first association of this sort in the 
 United States was formed in the year 1877, in the city of Buffalo, 
 N. y. Similar societies now exist in Philadelphia, Boston, Brook- 
 lyn, and about one hundred other American cities, the forms and 
 plans of which differ in certain res^Dects, some of them more than 
 others resembling the pioneer organization of London, but the best 
 of them providing no financial aid except through outside agencies 
 or in emergencies. 
 
 The Charity Organization Society of the City of New York, 
 formed January 26, 1882, is destined to do a great work in the 
 metropolis. Its " New York Charities Directory " contains over 
 four hundred pages of valuable notes of more than three hundred 
 benevolent, and more than five hundred congregational, agencies, 
 omitting only those which are reported adversely by the State 
 Board of Charities, or otherwise known to be unworthy. 
 
 The following extracts from the Constitution show the prin- 
 ciples of the society : 
 
 Every department of its work shall be completely severed from all qiiestions 
 of religious belief, politics, and nationality. 
 
 No person representing tlie society in any capacity whatsoever shall use his 
 or her position for the purpose of proselytism. 
 
 The society shall not directly dispense alms in any form. 
 
 The chief objects of the society are : 
 
 To be a centre of intercommunication between the various churches and 
 charitable agencies in the city. To foster harmonious co-operation between 
 them, and to check the evils of the overlaijping of relief.
 
 I 
 
 AGENCIES FOR THE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM 349 
 
 To investigate tlioronglilj-, and without charge, the cases of all applicants 
 for relief which are referred to the society for inquiry, and to send the persons 
 having a legitimate interest in such cases full reports of the results of investiga- 
 tion. 
 
 To obtain from the proper charities and charitable individuals suitable and 
 adequate relief for deserving cases. 
 
 To procure work for poor persons who are capable of being wholly or par- 
 tially self-supporting. 
 
 To repress mendicity by the above means and by the prosecution of impos- 
 tors. 
 
 To promote the general walfare of the poor by social and sanitary reforms, 
 and by the inculcation of habits of providence and self-dependence. 
 
 Its tender of services has been accepted by nearly all the relig- 
 ious and relief associations ; and its references of cases receive the 
 immediate attention of the Department of Public Charities and 
 Correction. It is to the credit of the city government that its ad- 
 ministration of out-relief has been reduced to the annual sum of 
 ^bout $20,000. The writer being a citizen of no mean city in the 
 same State, which has less than one hundred and fifty thousand in- 
 habitants, regrets that its annual outlay in the old ways for the old 
 objects of out-relief, is relatively larger, being about $33,500, or 
 nearly double that of the metropolis, for less than one-tenth of the 
 population. In the matter of places where spirituous and fermented 
 liquors are sold to be drunk at the bar or on the premises, the two 
 cities are in comparison as follows : In Rochester, exclusive of 
 drug-stores, about twelve hundred, of which about nine hundred 
 and fifty are licensed ; in New York, about nine thousand licensed 
 and unlicensed saloons and places, according to the writer's esti- 
 mate from data given by Mr. Robert Graham, the Secretary of the 
 Church Temperance Society, confirmed by advices published in the 
 New York S^m, on the alleged authority of Superintendent Byrnes, 
 That the provincial city has needs to be met by the direct agency 
 and the indirect influence of its infant society for the organization 
 of charity, is clear in the light of the facts cited.
 
 350 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 The popular appreliension should embrace one prominent fact, 
 found from general statistics, viz. : that public indoor relief is not 
 increased by diminishing public out-relief, which shows that cases 
 requiring out-relief are supplied by private societies or persons, 
 and that other cases applying for it do not, when refused, come 
 upon the public in any way, the exceptions, if any, proving the 
 rules governing each class of cases. It is to be remembered al- 
 ways that the good ministry of charity (though by the older max- 
 ims confined in theory to the relief of only the industrious or the 
 virtuous) is by the better precepts and practices under modern 
 methods extended to the worthy and the unworthy, by moral meas- 
 ures as well as material means adapted to reach each individual 
 case for the preservation or restoration of the jjerson directly in- 
 volved, and the consequent protection of society. This is the work 
 of charity organization. It is to be understood also that the aim to 
 organize the powers for good against the organized forces of evil, 
 in communities where the citizens have not time to investigate or 
 to co-operate in works of mercy, does not relieve the constituent or 
 the corresj)onding members of charity organization from the duty, 
 or deprive them of the blessedness, of beneficence. The design is 
 to inform the conscience of benevolent people with the proofs in 
 each case ; and not to discharge them from, but to charge them 
 with, the obligations of humanity. 
 
 Other forms of charity organization are found in older types. 
 The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, in the city of New York, organ- 
 ized in 1835 and incorporated in 1872 ; the New York Association 
 for Improving the Condition of the Poor, organized in 1813 and in- 
 corporated in 1818 ; the Society for the Eelief of Poor Widows 
 with Small Children, in New York, organized in 1798 and incorpor- 
 ated in 1802 ; the Children's Aid Society of the City of New York, 
 organized in 1853 and incorporated in 1855, and numerous other as- 
 sociations in the metropolis ; with the Rochester Female Charita- 
 ble Society for the Relief of the Sick Poor, organized in 1822 and 
 incorporated in 1855, now operating in eighty-four defined districts,
 
 AGENCIES FOR THE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM 351 
 
 to which are assigned about one hundred visitors under eighteen 
 active directresses— one and all represent associations in the State 
 of New York which were precursors in the evolution of charity or- 
 ganizations, and proceeded on the underlying principles of the dis- 
 l)ensation of moral as well as material relief and its administration 
 by " friendly visitors." 
 
 University settlements, now introduced in New York, Chicago, 
 and Boston, promise to become influential centres of personal sac- 
 rifices and endeavors for the restoration and protection of the weak 
 l)y the realization of their brotherhood with the strong. 
 
 The public and private agencies of benevolence already pointed 
 out, with their manifold instrumentalities, are characterized by the 
 self-sacrifice as well as the se\erity of sympathy seeking the high- 
 est relief. Their work is in full agreement with that enforced by 
 the public conscience, which has been informed through such in- 
 vestigations as those by Mr. Brace, in his inquiries respecting "The 
 Dangerous Classes of New York," and by Mr. Eiis, in his " Studies 
 Among the Tenements of New York," showing " How the Other 
 Half Lives." Such new activities have, in this generation, arisen 
 at dift'erent centres in the world. The " Rationalized Christianity " 
 commended in Mr. Spencer's " Data of Ethics," as a popular equiv- 
 alent for scientific altruism, does not account for the origin, how- 
 ever it may explain the movement, of such voluntary or spontane- 
 ous agencies. The awakening has been produced by Christianity, 
 not in the abstract, but in the concrete, working- in the hearts of 
 men. Its practical pity for unhappy or unworthy men is the evolu- 
 tion of Christian experience, and is justified and inspired by the 
 Christian scriptures ; and, as the writer believes, is informed by the 
 providence and the person of Christ, who evidently works not 
 through all who profess his name, but through those, confessing or 
 non-confessing, who have been touched by his truth and Spirit. • 
 
 With these general movements are otliers which were earlier in 
 origin, though special, and on church and denominational lines. 
 The various boards of home missions are doing much for the salva-
 
 352 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 tiou of secular society. The City Mission and Tract Society and 
 the City Mission Society, P. E., of New York, with their evangelis- 
 tic labors, are working- also on the same plane as Mr. Brace and Mr. 
 Eiis, and in similar lines — saving- from pauperism as well as from 
 other forms of vice and disease. May all churches, whose sincere 
 members have the means in their own private resources, ultimately 
 and speedily become convinced that it is their duty to call assistant 
 ministers and consecrated laymen wholly set apart to "go out 
 quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and l)ring in hither 
 the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind," and to "go 
 out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in." 
 Philanthropists who are enlightened on these subjects appreciate 
 the administration of the Ivoman Catholic Church and the Protest- 
 ant Episcopal Church in their ministries to the socially and spirit- 
 ually destitute and dependent classes. 
 
 The Jewish congregations in the United States are, in some re- 
 spects, examples to distinctively Christian societies. Their minis- 
 ters are frequently students of social science. The precepts which 
 they put into practice have also their religious, as well as their 
 scientific, credentials and authority. For they read the moral law 
 of love as it is written, not only on the human heart, where it is so 
 often illegible, or in pagan philosophy and in literature, or in the 
 writings of the Christian covenant and dispensation, but also clearly 
 and fully in their own sacred scriptures whose formula, " thou slialt 
 love thy neighbor as thyself," is in these very terms adopted by 
 Christ. The practice of these precepts by this ancient people re- 
 specting their poor, is unprecedented and unparalleled in its honor 
 to the written word. If there are Jews in the poor-houses and alms- 
 houses of the counties and cities of the State, they are exceptions 
 proving the rule. Perhaps they sometimes extend too liberal as- 
 sistance to their dependent brethren, and demoralize by out-relief 
 in even private dispensation ; but such cases are comparatively 
 rare. The endeavor of ministers and members of their congrega- 
 tions is to relieve all classes of their indigent people, by helping
 
 I 
 
 AGENCIES FOR THE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM 353 
 
 tliem to help themselves through the personal ag-eiicy of friendly 
 visitors. The refugees from religious or political persecuticm in 
 Europe, who have come under the protection and care of the Jews 
 in America within the last few years, have been severe but success- 
 ful tests of these principles for the prevention of pauperism. 
 
 In the united Jewish charities organized by the principal Jewish 
 congregation, under their minister, Eev. Max Landsberg, Ph.D., in 
 Rochester, N. Y., 106 new " cases," or families, of 2G2 persons, Avere 
 received as Jewish immigrants from Russia, from October 1, 1891, 
 to March 1, 1892. Nearly all of these cases came in a destitute 
 and dependent condition, and thirty were men who had left their 
 wives and children in Russia. One of these cases is given as a fair 
 representation of them all, viz. : a family of 10 jjersons assisted as 
 follows : October, $77.04 ; November, $17.75 ; December, $10 ; Jan- 
 nary, $12 ; February, $8 ; March, $5 ; besides three and one-half 
 tons of coal, and aid in finding and doing work, with friendly coun- 
 sel. This family is now self-supporting, though its head had been 
 a fish-packer in Russia, and was obliged to learn a new trade here. 
 Of the 106 cases, 19 were refused and 85 were assisted, of whom all 
 are now earning their own maintenance without assistance except 
 friendly advice. 
 
 Dr. Landsberg- asserts that a large expense at first, in proper 
 cases, may be true economy of means to the end of self-mainten- 
 ance. Many other i^ersons who deal Avith destitute classes gravi- 
 tating toward dependence have arrived at this conclusion. The 
 danger of out-relief, in such cases, arises, as we have seen, from the 
 political nature of its public dispensation, but disappears on its i3ri- 
 vate and organized administration b}'^ means of friendly visitors. 
 
 Indoor relief in county poor-houses and city almshouses, under 
 proper laws, can be regulated and corrected by rules and checks, 
 which cannot be applied to the conduct of political oflicials in mat- 
 ters of out-relief. There have been radical improvements in these 
 
 houses during the past twenty-five years. The last beneficent 
 23
 
 354 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 change in the State of New York was effected by Chapter 12G of the 
 laws of 1890, known as the State Care Act. By this statute — except- 
 ing the Counties of New York, Kings, and Monroe, but providing 
 that they may elect to waive such exception — it is enacted that the 
 insane poor shall be transferred from county custody to care and 
 treatment in State hospitals. Monroe County has already accepted 
 both the benefits and burdens of this legislative act. It is to be re- 
 gretted that the way is not made clear for the City and County of 
 New York to pursue the same course, in accordance with the con- 
 clusions of the State Board of Charities, stated in several reports of 
 its standing committee on the insane. The fact remains that the 
 condition of the insane poor in the asylums of New York Citj^, on 
 Blackwell's, Ward's, and Hart's Islands, has been worse in some re- 
 spects than in the rural and other interior counties of the State ; 
 and has been caused by crowding buildings, some of which are not 
 tenantable, through the neglect of successive Boards of Estimate 
 and Apportionment to make proper appropriations. 
 
 The Willard Asylum Act, passed in 1865, had provided for 
 exclusive State care ; but on account of deficient provisions in the 
 State institutions, the State Board of Charities, in pursuance of its 
 authority by law, exempted nineteen counties from its operation. 
 The new departure under the State Care Act of 1890, has made such 
 progress in the increase of accommodations at the State hospitals 
 by means of inexpensive buildings, on detached or cottage plans, 
 for the custody of the medically chronic classes of the insane, as to 
 warrant the confident belief that, within one or two years, more or 
 less, the transition from County to State care, except in the Counties 
 of New York and Kings, will be happily completed. 
 
 The correction or prevention of pauperism is intimately related 
 to the curative and humane treatment and care of the insane j)oor, 
 for the reason that while, like many other classes of poor persons, 
 they, with their families, may become dependent or demoralized 
 through either neglect or unwise interference, they are neither nee-
 
 AGENCIES FOR TUE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM 355 
 
 essarily nor presumptively paupers. The fact may be better stated 
 by saying- positively that an extremely small proportion of the in- 
 digent insane come from the classes tainted with pauperism. This 
 conclusion, though contrary to popular apprehension, is sustained 
 by the opinions of alienists and specialists. Insanity, when ne- 
 glected, is the cause of pauperism, but pauperism is seldom the 
 source of insanity. The workers in the poor-houses have been 
 confined almost exclusively to the lunatics. The legislation in the 
 great States of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois, for ex- 
 clusive State care, is absolutely justified on the ground of humanity, 
 but may also be defended on the ground of economy. Opponents 
 objected that the better care of the State would attract patients 
 who, under the county system, would remain in their families. If 
 the prediction shall be fulfilled, the results will not be deplored in 
 the interest of society. The father, or rnother, or bread-winner, of a 
 family, when stricken with insanity, ceases to become a producer, 
 and, at the same time, becomes an incumbrance upon not only the 
 accumulations or earnings, but also the time, energy, and jn'oduc- 
 ing capacity of the other members of the family, thereby directly 
 impoverishing the community, and perhaps further prejudicing it 
 by the ultimate pauperization of the family. Here, as everywhere, 
 the welfare of the State is consistent Avitli humanity toward its citi- 
 zens, and justice to its taxpayers is in harmony with mercy to its 
 wards. 
 
 The separatioji of the sexes, which has been effected in the 
 county houses, will, it is believed, be followed by better classifica- 
 tion of the inmates. The obstacles now in the way are not so fre- 
 quently the results of mal-administration, as they are the necessary 
 effects of bad construction of old buildings. But all obstructions 
 must give way to the obligation of respecting the worthy j)oor, who 
 have become dependent from losses of friends, or health, or property, 
 and of separating them from vagrant or vicious paupers. Such 
 classification for indoor relief, with private charity properly organ-
 
 3o(j THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 ized outside, will remove the last excuse for the public dispensa- 
 tion of out-relief. The consummation will afford another ilhistra- 
 tion of the harmony between humanity, as a social and political 
 duty, and public policy. 
 
 The transference of children from the demoralizing- influences of 
 poor-houses to asylums was effected by a law, recommended by the 
 State Board of Charities, and enacted in the year 1875. Prior to 
 this legislation, its subjects, many of whom on the death of their 
 parents came from homes of relative industry and purity, and most 
 of whom were presumptively innocent of the virus of pauperism 
 though susceptible and in highly receptive states, were one and all 
 detained in intimate association with the chronic cases of the dis- 
 ease, in the common wards of the county houses, until they could 
 be placed by the county superintendents of the poor in private 
 families. While the net results of the law have been good, the 
 statistics gathered and compiled by the State Board of Charities 
 show that its operation has been attended with incidental evils. 
 The following- figures are approximate, inasmuch as they relate to 
 all institutions that reported such data in 1891, which are the ma- 
 jority of the whole number. Of 18,556 orphan and destitute chil- 
 dren in such asylums, October 1, 1891, there were 3,671 orphans, 
 10,356 half orphans, 4,065 who had both parents living, and 465 whose 
 social condition was not g:iven ; while there were supported by 
 cities, counties, and towns, 11,061 ; by parents and friends, 1,717 ; 
 by the institutions, 2,430 ; and not stated, 3,348 ; and there were 
 committed, by magistrates and courts, 8,130 ; by commissioners of 
 charities, 1,005 ; by superintendents of the poor, 1,823 ; by overseers 
 of the poor, 938 ; by parents and friends, 4,422 ; and not stated, 
 2,238 ; and the duration of institution life had been 5,763 for less % 
 than one year ; 5,757 for one year and less than three ; 3,051 for 
 three years and less than five ; 2,782 for over five years ; and not 
 stated 303 — though the total number of sick, infirm, crippled, de- 
 formed, or disabled was only about three per cent., and of feeble- 
 minded, only one and two-tenths per cent., with thirteen cases
 
 AGENGIE8 FOR THE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM 357 
 
 of idiocy. The indications from these statistics are that some asy- 
 lums are taking on the character of permanent homes at pnhlic ex- 
 pense, tlioug-li they should be regarded as domiciliary for only tran- 
 sitional and provisional purposes, until their beneficiaries can be 
 placed in good families. One evil is that while the institutions are 
 thus enlarged and extended, they impose burdens on the taxpayers 
 for maintenance of their wards, without commensurate benefits, but 
 in many cases with positive injury. Children who are detained too 
 long in asylums tend to become institutionized and unfitted to cor- 
 respond with a free environment on their final discharge. The close 
 corporations of private managers of these semi-public institutions 
 sometimes lose their sense of responsibility to the people. Relief 
 would be found in remedial legislation, providing among other 
 things for county or city agents, or another paid secretary of the 
 State Board, whose duty it should be to see that the asylums exer- 
 cise due diligence in placing their wards, under proper conditions, 
 in private families of good character and circumstances, in visiting 
 them statedly, and in securing legal commitments to the institutions 
 and proper indentures from them, thus protecting foster parents as 
 well as their adopted children. 
 
 A high authority on these questions — Mrs. Charles Riissell 
 Lowell — in her report to the State Board of Charities, transmitted 
 with its annual report to the Legislature in 1890, has given proofs of 
 the evils in the present system or want of system, and proposed 
 remedies. The report shows about $1,500,000 expended for the care 
 and maintenance of about an average of 14,000 children for the pre- 
 ceding fiscal year, in the city of New York, with other facts, from 
 which the inference is plain that many parents with their offspring 
 are pauperized by removing them from the natural relations of life, 
 with unwise kindness, if not inhumanity, to them, as well as injus- 
 tice to the taxpayers. 
 
 In the State Charities Record for December, 1894, published by 
 the State Charities Aid Association, the leading article, by Anna T. 
 AVilson, formerly of Philadelphia, now of the Charity Organization
 
 358 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 Society of New York, contrasts the care of dependent children in 
 the two cities, and it is stated that, in the year 1890, the city of New 
 York, with a population of 1,500,000, appropriated $1,647,295.10 for 
 the support of 15,449 children in its private institutions, and 
 $192,997.74 for the support of 909 children on Eaudall's Island, mak- 
 ing $1,840,292.84 for an average of not less than 15,000 children ; 
 while the city of Philadelphia, with a population of 1,000,000 appro- 
 priated $28,724.82 for the support of an average of less than 250 
 children in institutions. The system of boarding out children un- 
 til the}^ can be permanently placed by adoption in families, is in 
 Philadelphia made the substitute for the system of asylums in New 
 York ; and from all accounts appears to be working well, as also 
 may be said of the new extension of the plan from dejaendent to 
 destitute children, including those convicted of felonies, of which 
 Homer Folks writes hopefully in the Record for November, 1894. It 
 should, however, be borne in mind that the results have been partly 
 due to fortunate combinations of circumstances, including the as- 
 sistance of the Children's Aid Society of Pennsylvania ; and that 
 data from large fields in other States and countries show that the 
 boarding-out system has not always proved humane, even for de- 
 pendent adults.* 
 
 There is now devolved by law upon the State Board of Charities 
 of New York, the function of determining and certifying whether 
 applications for the incorporation of institutions and societies hav- 
 ing the care of children, shall be granted. This power is carefully 
 exercised, and decisions are made under it only after full investiga- 
 tion. 
 
 Notwithstanding the safeguards and precautions vouchsafed by 
 
 * Fdi- juvenile dependents the system is reported from England as unsatisfactory 
 (p. 171, appendix to the last edition of The Poor Law of England by T. W. Fowie ; 
 Macmillan & Co.). The extended and successive reports of Hon. William P. Letch- 
 worth, on the asylums for orphan and destitute children in the State, transmitted 
 and published with many of the annual reports of the State Board of Charities of 
 New York, are here mentioned as of high authoritj^ and value, though they are but 
 a small fraction of his labors and contributions in the general work of the board.
 
 AGENCIES FOR THE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM 359 
 
 the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chiklren in New York 
 and other cities, which are assumed to be all that are possible un- 
 der existing- laws, there is reason to believe that children are not 
 infrequently committed to juvenile reformatories, including- the 
 House of Eefuge on Kandall's Island and the State Industrial 
 School at Rochester, N. Y., on frivolous or false complaints of par- 
 ents, in order to shift the burden of maintenance and education to 
 the State, county, or city. The remedy should be found in new 
 legislation, requiring corroboratory proofs on all complaints by 
 parents or guardians or relations, and assessing, upon the persons 
 responsil)le for the support of the children in the home, part of the 
 cost of their maintenance in the institution. 
 
 The progress which has been made in some of these reforma- 
 tories, during- the last decade, furnishes great temptation for unwise 
 if not fraudulent commitments to them. In the matter of techno- 
 logic instruction alone, the State Industrial School of New York 
 offers great inducements ; as among the semi-public institutions of 
 this sort in the same state the Catholic Protectory has, for the last 
 decade, been in advance in the teaching- of trades. That these ju- 
 venile institutions, and the reformatories for adults, do accomplish 
 reformations in vastly greater proportions than could be effected in 
 the same classes by the old time confinement and discipline in 
 State prisons, county and city penitentiaries and jails, is a conclu- 
 sion of fact from experience in the State of New York (whatever it 
 may be in Massachusetts or elsewhere) resjDecting which there is 
 no reasonable doubt among persons acquainted with the sul)ject. 
 
 Kecent discussions have appeared to throw doubts over some 
 points that should be clear. If, in any county or state or institu- 
 tion, sentiment has been exchanged for sentimentalism, or ideas 
 have been entertained without verification by facts, we may expect 
 reactions swinging to the other extreme before there can be any 
 stable equilibrium of opinion or feeling among the opposing- 
 parties on the questions in penology. That all progress in the
 
 360 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 mental and social, as well as in the physical world, must be in 
 rhythm, is shown by Mr. Herbert Spencer, and illustrated by cer- 
 tain criticisms which lately have denied even the wise humanity 
 and practical risfhteousness of the recommendations of the great 
 prison reformer, Howard. 
 
 The sceptic who questions the superiority of remedial over re- 
 tributive discipline of convicts, may resolve his doubts by visiting- 
 the State Reformatory of New York. This institution, at Elmira, 
 is for men under thirty and over sixteen years of age, on first con- 
 viction of felony, and under sentence not to exceed the maximum 
 prison term, but otherwise indeterminate. The evidence shows 
 that about eighty per cent, of the criminals committed to it are re- 
 formed, in the sense that they are made over, not into perfected 
 saints, but into law-abiding citizens. 
 
 This is the end attained. What are the means employed ? 
 They are measures not of conciliation, but of conversion. The cul- 
 prit is conformed to the environment ; not the environment to him. 
 He is conformed to society, being formed, by pressure which is new, 
 to a standard which also is new to him, that is to say, he is re- 
 formed. The process is painful in proportion as it is needful. The 
 patient on reception is admitted to the middle grade, from which it 
 is possible for him to gain promotion to the highest grade, whence, 
 after due probation, he would be graduated to his home or other 
 proper place selected for him by the superintendent, but thus re- 
 leased on parole and trial until proved to be worthy of absolute dis- 
 charge. The frequent experience, however, is of degradation to 
 the lowest grade, as the first actual step, seemingly backward, Itut 
 as the events jirove, in most cases really forward. The subject 
 striving to regain his lost footing must use every exertion, physical, 
 mental, and moral, in continued effort and endeavor ; and before 
 success is apt to plunge into despair, to be lifted only by personal 
 intervention of the superintendent, inspiring in him a new will as 
 of grace. The writer once visited all the lowest grade men after 
 they were locked in their cells at night, and was pleased to hear
 
 AGENCIES FOR THE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM 361 
 
 tliem ascribe their failures to themselves, and not to the system or 
 its administration ; while not a few, however, expressed their de- 
 sire to be transferred to State-prison, in order to escape the disci- 
 pline, and, as some of them illustrated their meaning-, in order to 
 avoid the schools and study after the day's work, and to obtain to- 
 bacco and indulgence. 
 
 The process of such conversion, and the drill and discipline and 
 rehabilitation of the very nervous org-anism into a new character 
 and manhood, is necessarily painful. But to use this fact or the 
 natural laws accounting for it, to justify or excuse the old time dis- 
 cipline of iprisons, where profane and obscene keepers cursed and 
 abused the convicts, and inflicted on them corj^oral punishments in 
 order to " g-et even with them," is no more sensible than it would be 
 for a surgeon or physician to subject his patient to pains of arbi- 
 trary cuttings and burnings and flagellations, in addition to the 
 necessary sufferings of curative processes. 
 
 The system of State-prisons of New York, as distinguished from 
 that of its reformatories, is vitiated by an inherited tendency to 
 political partisanship, contrary to the statute (Sub. 3, Sec. 50, of 
 Chapter 382 of the laws of 1889) ; and, with that of its county jciils, 
 is thus to a great extent subsidized for the production of chronic 
 felons and paupers. 
 
 The work of reformatories must be inadequate, unless the pre- 
 ventive work of such associations as the Society for the Prevention 
 of Crime, and the restorative work of the Prison Association of 
 New York, shall sustain and supplement it. 
 
 The preventive measures respecting prisoners have an intimate 
 relation, with those regarding paupers. Any decrease in the num- 
 ber of recidivous criminals or misdemeanants diminishes the num- 
 ber of paupers manifoldly ; for habitual offenders, in their intervals 
 between prison terms, beget and educate races of variously demor- 
 alized and pauperized types of human beings, and criminals and 
 paupers succeed each other, as has been familiarly illustrated in 
 the annals of " The Jukes," in the State of New York, and in the
 
 362 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 more recent history of the " Tribe of Ishmael," by Kev. Oscar 
 McCulloch, the late President of the State Board of Charities of 
 Indiana. The present practice under the hiws is to sentence dis- 
 turbers of the peace, on conviction of public drunkenness, debauch- 
 ery, or disorder, to imprisonment for a term of ten days or upward, 
 just sufficient to permit, not reformation of moral character, but re- 
 cuperation of vitality and accumulation of physical energy for re- 
 newed dissipation and disturbance, with repetitions of transgression 
 and punishment indefinitely prolonged, perhaps scores of times in 
 one life. 
 
 Civil inferventioJi, to he henejicent to such trcmsgressors, or to society, 
 wJiose laws they violate, should he prolonged and uninterrupted, until 
 there is a reasonahle evidence of refoi'mation ; and in the absence of 
 trustworthy evidence should be continued indefinitely, until death 
 may release these cumberers of the ground. 
 
 This conclusion in favor of indeterminate sentences without 
 maximum limits, applies to delinquent or depraved paupers, who 
 now come and go to and from the jDublic houses of counties and 
 cities, with the primary eflect of prolonging their own evil courses, 
 and with the secondary consequence of continuing their kind by 
 generation or succession. For, waiving the philosophical explana- 
 tion of social environment on the one hand, and the theory of nat- 
 ural inheritance on the other, we know as matters of fact that often, 
 in almost unbroken and indefinite lines, criminals and paupers suc- 
 ceed each other, under the intermittent treatment of civil govern- 
 ments, where, if either removed from society or left to nature, they 
 would soon become extinct. 
 
 The question ofhe7'edity (though eliminated from the problem of 
 the treatment of adult individuals belonging to the delinquent and 
 dependent classes, the solution of which is on any hypothesis in 
 their detention from their kind) is not so easily disposed of when 
 we come to their offspring, to detain whom indefinitely in either 
 prisons or asylums would be inhuman and unjust. The great work
 
 AGENCIES FOR THE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM 363 
 
 done by the Cliildren's Aid Society of New York, in placing their 
 wards in good homes in Western States, represents, on a grand 
 scale of conception and execntion, the proper treatment which is 
 at once popular and philosophic. But the question has often re- 
 turned to thoughtful minds. What has become of the taint or ten- 
 dency in the blood of these children to evil, if any, when mixed in 
 the veins of descendants in the Western States, where they have 
 been adopted into pure families and developed under a i3ure atmos- 
 phere, and finall}^ have intermarried with other stocks ? 
 
 The discussion of hereditary tendency came to the surface in 
 some of the articles of the symposium entitled "Treatment of Ju- 
 venile Delinquents," in The Independent of March 3, 1892. The sub- 
 ject was there settled by overruling Avhat were assumed to be the 
 inductions or speculations of scientists, as opposed to the conclu- 
 sions of practical workers in the field. The findings of fact from 
 the experience, the observation, and the first sources of information 
 of these philanthropic specialists, who deal directly with the mat- 
 ters involved in the inquiry, are worth more than hypotheses in- 
 vented to account for general statements of phenomena in l)ooks. 
 
 In a recent letter Mr. C. Loving Brace, Secretary'' of the Chil- 
 dren's Aid Society, said : " So far as we can judge, inheritance does 
 not figure in the problem. It is want of care and judicious train- 
 ing in childhood which is responsible for whatever difticulties we 
 have to cope wdth. This Society has i^laced 84,000 children in 
 homes since it began this work forty years ago ; and it is our ex- 
 IDerience that no matter what the parents may be, if the child is 
 taken away at an age so early that it has not yet understood the 
 wickedness about it, if placed in a country home with kind and ju- 
 dicious adoptive parents, it is almost certain to do well. My father 
 has always stated that not more than two per cent, turned out 
 badly. But if the child is not transplanted early enough, tlion there 
 are the bad examples, bad habits, and knowledge of evil ways to 
 contend against. It is among these older children that we some- 
 times fail and of whom complaints are sometimes made, but inher-
 
 364 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 itance is not responsible for this. It is early neglect and evil sur- 
 roundings," 
 
 Happily, Mr. Brace is right, and there is no real contention 
 at the present time between science and the ex^jerience gained by 
 philanthropists. The last word of scientists is' in accordance with 
 the words of these practical specialists. The theory of heredity 
 now held by Wallace, who shares with Darwin the credit of the hy- 
 pothesis of natural selection, and by AYeismann and the most emi- 
 nent authorities, is that acquired characteristics of the parent do 
 not pass to the child by inheritance. The truth stated would seem 
 to admit a tendency of all traits of progenitors to pass, which in the 
 case of qualities that are the results of protracted accumulations 
 of experience, continued in long lines of successive g-enerations, 
 will be transmitted, unless overcome by environment ; but which 
 in the case of qualities that were acquired by the immediate an- 
 cestors, will not be propagated with any effectual or appreciable 
 force if opposed by outside influences. Hence, a foster parent 
 would assume less risk of blood in succoring- the offspring of de- 
 linquent, diseased, or dependent parents whose remote lineage is 
 good, than in adopting the children whose father and mother are 
 both worthy in their own personal character, but one, if not both, 
 of whom come of general stock which was bad. These conclusions 
 make the matter so mixed as to remove it from practical considera- 
 tion. 
 
 In this light we can appreciate the work done by the Children's 
 Aid Society of New York, not only in the magnitude of its propor- 
 tions, but in the far-reaching effects of its beneficence. This soci- 
 ety, during the last fiscal year, had charge of 36,363 children, of 
 whom it taught and partly clothed and fed 10,464 in its twenty-two 
 industrial schools and nine night schools, and sent 2,851 to homes, 
 mainly in the "West. It is an approved agency for bringing to bear 
 the influences of environment and education upon character and 
 destiny at formative periods of growth. 
 
 And complementary to such work is that of the Societies for the
 
 AGENCIES FOR THE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM 3G5 
 
 Prevention of Cruelty to Children, whicli interfere to protect chil- 
 dren in their homes, become guardians of their persons, and take 
 charge of them upon commitments, and thus by moral influence as 
 well as actual intervention prevent not only untold suffering, but 
 also the demoralizing effects upon the parent who inflicts as well as 
 the child who suffers cruelty. 
 
 No presentation of the subject of liquor saloons is needed. The 
 moral and religious people of the State know perfectly well that 
 these saloons are the centres where political corruption tinds its 
 points of application, and whence flow unceasing currents creating 
 most of the pauperism and public vice which infest the body politic. 
 And the same respectable and dominant classes know as well that, 
 without imposing prohibitory laws upon unwilling minorities, or un- 
 duly interfering with personal liberty, it is in their power to abate 
 these public nuisances. A mighty crusade in this direction might 
 be led by some agency such as the Church Temperance Society. 
 
 It may be hoped that remedies for many social evils, as well as 
 reformations of abuses in public institutions of charity and correc- 
 tion, will, in the future, even more than in the past, be promoted by 
 the State Charities Aid Association of the City of New York. This 
 society was formed twenty years aga by Miss Louisa Lee Schuyler. 
 While its work in some respects is subordinated to that of the 
 State Board of Charities, as implied in its title and incorporation, 
 its annual reports to the Board in printed book-form show that its 
 labors extend on certain lines beyond those of the Board ; for being 
 of voluntary character, its methods, including newspaper publica- 
 tions, are not constrained by ofiicial rules. It is not necessary to 
 agree with all its conclusions in order to appreciate that they are 
 of the highest authority, whether in conjunction or opposition to 
 those of the State Board, or in extension of the same. The writer 
 regards the society * as a social factor whose importance cannot be 
 
 over-estimated. 
 
 * The great power of this association in advancing humanitarian movements is
 
 366 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 The two general g-uides in the great works of reform and relief 
 within the city of Xew York are, first, with primary and particular 
 reference to public reforms, the State Charities Aid Association, Ko. 
 21 University Place, with its published journal, The Staie Char- 
 ities Record ; and, second, with special regard to private relief, the 
 Charity Organization Society at the same place, with its monthly 
 periodical, The Charities Review. The last-named society, with the 
 Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, and the 
 Children's Aid Society, is to have its home in the United Charities 
 Building, Fourth Avenue, corner of Twenty-second Street, erected 
 b}" Mr. John S. Kennedy. 
 
 Any review of laws, agencies, and labors for humanity and social 
 economy should not lose sight of the vital relation between the 
 primary work of protecting the producers in society from lapsing 
 into indigence and the secondary work of preventing the poor from 
 falling into pauperism. But the means of performing the para- 
 mount duty of protection to the workers come directly within the 
 purview of this chapter upon the prevention of pauperism, only in 
 the matter of the cost of private and public charity and relief. 
 From the tables of statistics collected and compiled by the State 
 Board of Charities, and appended as schedules in its annual reports 
 to the Legislature of Xew York, the following comparative state- 
 ment has been made, showing expenditures for charitable and re- 
 formatory purposes between the years 1880 and 1891, both inclu- 
 sive, to wit : 
 
 Year. Amount exi)enclecl. Year. Amount expended. 
 
 1880.. .«8,482,648 71 1881 89,260,117 77 
 
 1882 9,320,142 60 1883 9,938,037 05 
 
 1884 10,642,763 86 1885 11,538,739 86 
 
 due to the high character of its membership. Its officers are : Professor Charles 
 F. Chandler, of Columbia College, President ; Mrs. William B. Rice, Vice-Presi- 
 dent ; Hon. Charles S. Fairchild, Treasurer ; Miss Abby Rowland Woolsey, Li- 
 brarian, and ]Mr. John H. Finley, Secretary. It will be difficult to fill the place of 
 Mr. Finley, who has accepted the presidency of Knox College. 
 
 I 
 
 i
 
 AGENCIES FOR THE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM oij': 
 
 Year. Amount expended. Year. Amount exi^ended. 
 
 1886 12,027,990 01 1887 12,574,074 67 
 
 1888 13,315,698 97 1889 14,868,733 77 
 
 1890 16,349,842 43 1891 17,605,660 58 
 
 It thus appears that in this period of twelve years the expen- 
 ditures have increased a little more than one hundred per cent. 
 Tliongh the iDopulation of the State increased only about nineteen 
 per cent., as is shown on the basis of the Federal census, it also ap- 
 pears from the reiDorts of the Comptroller of the State, that its 
 wealth has increased about fifty per cent, during the same x'eriod. 
 Of this increase in expenditures — $9,123,011.87 — the sum of Si. 222,- 
 282. Gl relates to institutions managed by the State ; and the State 
 Reformatory at Elmira, and the Soldiers' and Sailors' Home at 
 Bath, two of the State institutions existing prior to 1880, did not 
 appear in the statistics at the beginning of this period of twelve 
 years. Again, of this increase the sum of $1,171,053.58 relates to 
 institutions owned and controlled by counties and cities, leaving 
 $6,729,675.68 increase in the institutions under the direction and 
 control of incorporated benevolent associations. Thus it will be 
 seen that more than two-thirds of the increase of the cost of pub- 
 lic and private relief and charity is due to private charity, and that 
 the fraction of less than one-sixth of such increase, owing to the 
 State Institutions, is further reduced on account of two of them ex- 
 isting, but not reporting to the Board in 1880. 
 
 There is no reason to disbelieve or doubt that — excepting per- 
 haps the Soldiers' and Sailors' Home, the existence of which is 
 justified by patriotic sentiment— each and all the State institutions 
 for relief or reform, including the eight State hospitals for the in- 
 sane, the State Institution for Feeble-minded Children, at Syracuse, 
 the Custodial Asjdum for Feeble-minded Women, at Newark, the 
 reformatories and the asylums for the blind and the deaf, do save 
 to the people more than their cost in preventing pauperism, and 
 therefore in protecting both the industrial and the indigent classes. 
 
 The conclusion of the whole matter is, that ivhatever protects the
 
 368 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 poor from pauperism, also protects tlie producer from poverty, and vice 
 versa. Therefore the State, if justified in interfering for the good of any 
 one of these thr^ee classes, niay justly intervene at either end of the series. 
 
 The Factory Law, regulating' the sanitary and moral conditions 
 of labor, of adult as well as juvenile operatives congregated in 
 masses, where the units have no separate control, and the princi- 
 ple of certain proposed legislation correcting the evils of what is 
 known as the " sweating systeni," come within the legitimate scope 
 of governmental authority. In the same sphere are many of the 
 remedies proposed by reforms for improving the tenements of the 
 working-classes in large cities, and for promoting the public 
 health. To the objection that such civil laws interfere with the 
 natural laws of trade, the answer is that, not only in society, but in 
 all departments of nature, higher forces constantly intervene to 
 regulate the action of lower forces, and so interfere, not in viola- 
 tion, but in pursuance, of the laws of the mental and the physical 
 worlds. The advocates of extreme individualism, excluding the in- 
 tervention of the State in matters of trade or industry, as also in 
 matters of relief or charity, are inconsistent when they belong, as 
 most of them do, to the class of thinkers who hold to the theory of 
 society, not as an aggregation of individuals, but as an organism. 
 The reasonable reconciliation of opposing theories seems to be that 
 paternalism in the State shall govern, wherever the individual can- 
 not properly control the conditions for his own protection, as in 
 factory laws and charity laws ; but that in all other respects indi- 
 vidualism should reign, leaving each person to work out his own 
 salvation in the struggle for existence, as essential discipline for 
 his own well being, as well as for the general welfare of society. 
 
 One objection, which is more specific and specious, opposes all 
 interference by society in public relief or private charity, for the 
 reason that the delinquent and dependent classes should as indi- 
 viduals be left to suffer, in order that the beneficent processes 
 of nature, providing for the death and disappearance of the spe- 
 cies, may not be defeated or delayed. This position is abhorrent
 
 AGENCIES FOR THE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM 369 
 
 S 
 
 to moral sentiment. It is also nnsoimd in its philosophy, seemin 
 to ignore that Mr. Darwin's law of " natural selection," as Avell as 
 Mr. Spencer's law of " the survival of the littest," which .t cites, do 
 in their full scope include society as symbolized under the fig-ures 
 of " the social organism " and " the body politic," in which is resi- 
 dent a moral force in correspondence with the environment of 
 moral law. Humanity is superior to political economy or biology, 
 and must leave the community which denies it to moral disinteo-ra- 
 tion and dissolution, until, by reverse processes of selection, Avhich 
 sometimes occiir in both the higher and the lower forms of life, it 
 shall become unfit to survive. 
 
 The policy which has obtained of dispensing public charities as 
 well as civil penalties so as to injure rather than benefit their ob- 
 jects and society, is an excuse though not a justification for such 
 opposition to humanity. 
 
 The simple truth, as we have seen, is that the hal)itual and 
 hardened pauper, as well as the congenital or confirmed criminal, 
 should be restrained in his tendency to evil, and to the extent of 
 his ability constrained to labor for the support of himself and his 
 famih^j if any, dependent on him ; and indefinitely continued in 
 such discipline, with all needful instruction, recreation, and influ- 
 ence to recovery, under indeterminate sentence of confinement ; 
 and thus sequestered from society until he reforms or dies. This 
 is the law for remedial, not retributive, and lareventive, not ]inni- 
 tive, relief; and is thus the law of kindness to the criminous or un- 
 worthy delinquents or dependants, and of safety to the virtuous 
 workers and the honest poor, and therefore of justice. Such equity, 
 rather than mere mercy, is the best expression of charity in jiuljlic 
 relations, and the true reconciliation of the scientific as Avell as the 
 economical objections to the intervention of the State for the sake 
 of humanity. Such relief would be within the practical reach, as 
 well as the political right, of the State to-day, were the public con- 
 science properly informed of the facts relating to the prevention of 
 
 l^auperism. 
 
 24
 
 THE NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSE EVIL AND ITS 
 
 CURE 
 
 By ERNEST FLAGG, 
 
 ABCHITKCT OP ST. LUKE'S HOSPITAL, ETC., ETC. 
 
 Chief Causes of the Present Evil— Restkictions Imposed by the Conven- 
 tional City Lot— Types op Tenements— Dangeu from Fire— Need of 
 Radical Changes— Ignorance in Regard to Economic Building— The 
 Art of Commercial Planning— The Problem in Other Cities— Extrava- 
 gance OP Present Methods Shown— Suggestions for Improvement— The 
 Question of Light— Reform a Matter of Business Advantage. 
 
 rriHE greatest evil which ever befell New York City was the di- 
 I vision of blocks into lots of 25 x 100 feet. So true is this, 
 that no other disaster can for a moment be compared with it. 
 Fires, pestilence, and financial troubles are as nothing- in compari- 
 son ; for from this division has arisen the New York system of tene- 
 ment-houses, the worst curse which ever afflicted any great com- 
 munity. 
 
 The object of this paper is to show that the evils of the system 
 lie almost entirely in the plan ; that with another plan, light, air, 
 health, and comfort can be furnished at the same, if not at less, cost 
 than the great majority of the inhabitants of this town are now 
 forced to pay for dwellings not lit for the lower animals. Unfor- 
 tunately, the same division of the land which led to the plan for 
 these houses is the chief obstacle in the way of reform. 
 
 The houses are built on lots 25 x 100 feet, and g-enerally about 
 five stories high. A regulation of the Board of Health now limits 
 the depth to ninety feet, so that there is a space of ten feet by the
 
 THE NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSE EVIL AND ITS CURE 371 
 
 width of the lot at the rear for light. Of course, this is doubled 
 when similar houses are erected back to back. In addition there is 
 usually a narrow court, or well, at the sides, of about four feet wide, 
 when the houses are built side by side. That is to say, each owner 
 leaves a recess at the side of about two feet by forty odd, as shown in 
 Figures 1 (p. 373) and 4 (p. 384) ; each floor is arranged for two fami- 
 lies in the better class of houses, but more generally four families 
 occupy one floor. Each family has a room facing the street or the 
 yard, and from two to three rooms lighted, or rather not lighted, 
 from the central slit or well. The front rooms measure about 
 twelve feet square. The others about seven by ten feet. 
 
 When the city was first laid out, the division of the blocks into 
 lots 25 X 100 feet was entirely unobjectionable. The people gener- 
 ally built houses of moderate dimensions, lighted at the front from 
 the street, and in the rear from the ydrd. If a larger dwelling was 
 required more land was taken, and the house was made wider ; but 
 as the city grew the land increased so greatly in value that an eftbrt 
 was made to occupy more of the 25 x 100 feet lot than was consistent 
 with the proper lighting of the interior. 
 
 As every one knows, the fashionable quarter of the town, first at 
 the Battery, has removed steadily and rapidl}" to the north. As the 
 richer people vacated their houses to go farther uptown, they were 
 turned over to the poor. Houses built for one family were occupied 
 by twice as many families as the building had floors. The city 
 grew at such a rate that it soon became necessary to erect new 
 houses as tenements. The builders having been in the habit of 
 building houses on lots of 25 x 100 feet, saw no better way than to 
 continue the practice, and this new style of building took a form 
 which the shape of the lot suggested. 
 
 This arbitrary division of the city into lots of twenty -five feet, more 
 or less, in width by one hundred feet deep, and the custom of deal- 
 ing in and building on plots of that size, has worked most disas- 
 trous results for the tenement-house population. The system of 
 houses which has resulted is a monstrous evil, which can scarcely be
 
 372 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 over-estimated. Tlie modern tenement is not only detrimental to 
 the liealtli, morals, and comfort of the people, but also a severe tax 
 upon their earnings. In no place do the poor pay such high rents 
 as in this city, and in no place are the accommodations so bad iu 
 pro^Dortion to the prices paid. These results are due to two causes : 
 
 First. The excessive value of the land, caused by the shape and 
 situation of the city. 
 
 Second. To the extravagant type of house which has resulted 
 from the shaiDe and size of the lot. 
 
 Of the two evils the latter is the greater, for it affects the health 
 and welfare of the i^eojile, besides being a tax upon their earnings, 
 but, fortunatel}^ it is the one which can be remedied. 
 
 All the tenement-houses of New York, except corner houses, 
 certain old buildings, constructed originall}^ for other purposes, 
 and a few model tenements, belong to one of two classes, or types. 
 
 1. Those having two biiildings to the lot, one being in the rear 
 and known as the rear tenement, and which together cover about 
 ninety Joer cent, of its area. 
 
 2. Those of one building to the lot, which usually covers about 
 eighty per cent, of its area ; in both cases the lot being twenty- 
 five feet or a little more or less in width and one hundred feet deep. 
 
 The erection of houses of the former type is now prohibited, and 
 those in existence are all old. The building on that part of the 
 lot nearest the street formerly served as a dwelling for one family, 
 and the rear building owed its existence to the greed of the owner, 
 who begrudged the liberal space left vacant at the rear of these old 
 houses for light and air. As no more of these rear tenements can 
 be built, we may dismiss this class from consideration, with the 
 devout hope that speedy legislation will soon work their complete 
 destruction. They are the most vicious tenements which we have, 
 so far as the rear building is concerned. 
 
 Of the second class there are several varieties, all having a 
 strong family resemblance. They are all long and narrow, and 
 mav be classified as follows :
 
 THE NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSE EVIL AND ITS CUBE 373 
 
 1. Houses with windows only at the front and rear, all the cen- 
 tral rooms being- dark. A regulation of the Board of Health also 
 prevents the erection of more of this kind. Those now in exist- 
 ence, like the rear tenements, should be destroyed. 
 
 Figure 1. 
 
 2. Houses having- enclosed courts or wells at th€ sides. 
 
 3. Houses having spaces at the sides which are open at the 
 rear. 
 
 4. Houses having the characteristics of both of the two former 
 varieties.
 
 374: THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 Figure 1 sliows an upper-floor plan of four houses belonging- to 
 these varieties. Thousands upon thousands of such buildings have 
 been built during the last few years, hundreds are now in the course 
 of erection, and others of the same kind, at an ever-increasing rate, 
 will be built in the future unless something is done to prevent it. 
 
 A glance at Figure 1 will show how objectionable this type of 
 house is. The slit at the side is from four to five feet wide ; all in- 
 terior rooms open upon it, consequently each bedroom window has 
 another bedroom window belonging to the next house directly op- 
 posite to it, and only four or five feet distant ; privacy is not to be 
 thought of under such circumstances. In summer these windows 
 must be left open, and all the noise, odors, dust, and heat circulate 
 from one house to the other; these conditions are, of course, 
 greatly aggravated when the slit is enclosed on all four sides as in 
 the second and fourth varieties, in which case it becomes a veritable 
 nuisance, not only dangerous to the health and morals of the occu- 
 pants, but also to their lives by reason of fire, as it forms a flue 
 which could scarcely be better contrived for the quick spreading 
 of flames from one floor to another on both sides of it. Indeed the 
 danger from fire is greatly increased in all these so-called im- 
 proved varieties (those having slits at the sides), for no fire 
 walls are provided such as existed in houses of the old tjq^e, and a 
 fire once started, there is no barrier to it except the Fire Depart- 
 ment, It may sweep through the entire block, for the narrow slit 
 forms no obstacle to the spread of the flames, w^hich can leap across 
 it and spread to the adjoining houses, and so on through the entire 
 row. 
 
 It would seem as if the increased danger from fire alone would 
 serve to i3revent the erection of such buildings, instead of which it 
 simply serves to increase the insurance rate, which eventually falls 
 on the tenant, as the landlord must reimburse himself by charging 
 more rent than he otherwise would. Thus the tenant, besides 
 having to risk his life by fire, must pay a higher rent for the priv- 
 ilege.
 
 THE NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSE EVIL AND ITS CURE 375 
 
 If a method of building cau be devised whereby the cost of erec- 
 tion and the danger from fire will be lessened, such an achieve- 
 ment will be a very great boon, not so much to the landlord as to 
 the working population of the city. For as every tax on property 
 is eventually laid on the tenant, so every saving will, in time, work 
 to his advantage. Now, if it can also be shown that much more light 
 and air can be given, and a better and more liberal arrangement of 
 the rooms can be devised, a great good will have been accomplished. 
 
 In order to work such a reform we must first convince the pub- 
 lic, or the powers that be, of a fact which seems to be too apparent 
 to need stating, viz. : No satisfactory tenement, from hoth the commer- 
 cial and sanitai'y stand-point, can he erected, under the conditions which 
 prevail in Neio York, upon a lot of 25 x 100 feet, or one of about these 
 dimensions, for if a sufficient space be left vacant to properly light the 
 interior, the building cannot he profitable, owing to the high price of the 
 land, and if enough land is covered to make the building profitable as 
 an investment, the i?iterior cannot be properly lighted and ventilated. 
 
 One would think that the truth of this had been too thoroughly 
 demonstrated to need insisting upon. Have we not before our eyes 
 ten thousand object-lessons which demonstrate it ? Has not every 
 conceivable combination of plan for a twenty-five by one hundred 
 feet lot been tried over and over again ? Yet where is the satisfac- 
 tory tenement-house on such a lot— that is to say, the house which 
 is satisfactory from both the commercial and sanitary standpoint ? 
 To meet both these requirements is incompatible with lots of this 
 size and shape in view of the high cost of land. If the present plan 
 is retained, one of two considerations must give way ; less profit 
 must be made, or else the health, safety, and comfort of the tenant 
 must be sacrificed. It does not require much knowledge of human 
 nature to guess which of these interests will prevail. 
 
 If our tenements are to be improved, half-way measures will not 
 do. During the last fifteen or twenty years the Board of Health 
 has made feeble efi'orts at reform, and we now have houses of an 
 improved type, that is to say, buildings of the kind described above.
 
 376 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 It is tinnecessary to comment farther on this style of house. Very 
 little imag-ination is required to picture to one's self the wretched 
 condition of people forced to live under such circumstances, and 
 the great danger arising- therefrom to the health and morals of the 
 community. By far the greater number of the inhabitants of this 
 city live in such houses : from sixteen to twenty families to a single 
 lot. 
 
 From the time of its first introduction there has been no radical 
 change in the plan of these houses. Acres upon acres have been 
 covered by them, all constructed on the same general plan, based 
 upon the shape of the lot 25 X 100 feet. Strange to say, they are 
 not usually built singly. In most cases they are put up in blocks 
 of from two, three, and four, up to twenty or more, yet no attempt 
 is ever made to depart from the stereotyi3ed plan. If an owner 
 has a plot one hundred feet square, instead of building one house 
 he builds four houses. It never seems to have occurred to anyone 
 that this is an extremely extravagant and wasteful way of build- 
 ing ; yet such is the case, for the system involves the erection 
 of an unnecessary amount of wall, partitions, and corridor, also an 
 unnecessary amount of entrances, halls, etc., and a consequent loss 
 of room. So great is the loss from these causes that it is possi- 
 ble to plan buildings of a different type which, Avhile having the 
 same amount of rentable space in rooms, shall cover so much 
 less of the lot as to leave an abundant space free for light and air. 
 Covering a smaller area they will cost less to erect, so that prop- 
 erly lighted and well-ventilated apartments can be supplied at less 
 than it costs to build the dreadful affairs which we now have. 
 
 The difficulty has arisen, and persistently flourishes, because we 
 are ignorant of the art of economical planning. For who would 
 waste money in erecting unnecessary walls, halls, etc., if he knew 
 how to obtain the same amount of rentable space much better 
 lighted without them ? By the present system the ground is en- 
 cumbered, the light obstructed, and the building rendered un- 
 healthy and unfit to live in ; all of which is accomplished at an in-
 
 TUE NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSE EVIL AND ITS CUBE 377 
 
 creased expense over what the same rentable space, well lighted, 
 might be ol)taiDed for. Great svims of money are yearly squan- 
 dered upon making- the buildings unfit to live in. Then other great 
 riums are contributed by charitable people to relieve the resulting 
 distress. Hospitals are kept full, children die, misery, disease, and 
 crime flourish, because the i^eople are huddled tog'ether without 
 sufficient light and air. 
 
 The art of commercial or economical planning is an exact science 
 very little understood anywhere, and least of all here. It is a curi- 
 ous fact that, although thousands of books have been written upon 
 architecture, there are practically none on i)lanning, which is un- 
 questionably the most important part of architecture. 
 
 One of the two chief difficulties in economical planning lies in 
 the admission of light to the interior. If the building is to be 
 erected on valuable land, that architect shows the greatest skill 
 who so arranges the plan that the interior shall receive a sufficient 
 amount of light with the least expenditure of open space. If 
 courts enclosed on all sides are used, the best results can be ob- 
 tained from those which are about square, for we can imagine the 
 court drawn out into the form of an oblong parallelogram, always of 
 the same superficial area, but finally becoming a slit too narrow for 
 the transmission of light. The shape of the lots upon which our 
 tenements are built forces the designer to choose the most uneco- 
 nomical form of court. Thus he gets the least amount of light 
 from the space left vacant. 
 
 The second great difficulty in economical planning is to obtain 
 the best results as regards the strength of the building and the 
 convenient disposition of the rooms with the least expenditure of 
 building materials and the least waste of floor in corridors, pas- 
 sages, etc. ; economy of materials, means a double saving, for not 
 only is the cost of such materials saved, but also the space which 
 they occupy. The shape of our tenement-houses forces the de- 
 signer to choose the most uneconomical construction ; as the houses 
 must be long and narrow they require the maximum of wall and
 
 378 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 also the maximum of passages or corridors, for to reach all parts of 
 a long- narrow building- there must be long- passage-ways, while if 
 the building- is compact and square such corridors can be reduced 
 to a minimum. 
 
 In short, no worse type of plan could well be devised. There is 
 absolutely nothing to recommend it either as regards economy or 
 healthfuluess. It seems as if the builders had gone out of the way 
 to produce the worst possible results. With the greatest expendi- 
 ture of materials they obtain the least amount of rentable space in 
 proportion to the area covered, and what area is not covered is so ar- 
 ranged as to afford almost the least proportional light to the interior. 
 
 In planning houses for the poor economy of space is of the most 
 vital importance, for any waste in the arrangement lays an added 
 burden on people least able to bear it. Our tenement-house sys- 
 tem is the result of accident. No intelligent thought has been 
 bestowed on the problem, or at least all such thought has been 
 wasted upon the 25 X 100 feet plan, where the conditions are such 
 as to preclude the possibility of a successful solution. 
 
 In the great cities of Europe nothing of the kind is found. In 
 London the houses for the poor, if on narrow lots, are low and 
 shallow, having rooms opening to the front and rear, a type of 
 house only compatible with low-priced land. In Paris, within the 
 fortifications, where land is dear, what do we find? The houses are 
 almost all built upon plots of land of from seventy-five to one hun- 
 dred feet in width. To those who have not the requisite knowledge 
 or skill to solve the problem for themselves, this fact should be of 
 great significance, for the French are universally admitted to be 
 the most logical and economical of builders, and certainly in no 
 country is the education of the architect so thorough and the skill 
 displayed in planning so great. If, then, the French do not build 
 upon narrow strips of land, it is because such a method is not eco- 
 nomical and is inconsistent with the best results. 
 
 The first law of economical planning is this : The more nearly 
 one can keep to the square the more economical the house, a truth
 
 THE NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSE EVIL AND ITS CUBE 379 
 
 SO evident that anyone but a New York builder ou^lit to grasp it 
 without difficulty, and one which needs no other demonstration than 
 to picture to one's self a square house, then to imag-ine it drawn out 
 into an oblong-, always occupying- the same area ; as it increases in 
 length it diminishes in breadth. One can imagine the house drawn 
 out until it becomes all walls. Every foot of length which is added 
 at the expense of breadth adds to the amount of walls required and 
 deducts just as much from the area enclosed, besides rendering 
 corridors necessary, which might otherwise be dispensed with. 
 
 The fact that so much of the land is held in narrow oblong- par- 
 cels is our misfortune ; but the obstacle is not insuperable, as shown 
 by our office buildings. The land down-town was held under the 
 same conditions, but when it became apparent that it was not eco- 
 nomical to erect office buildings ou lots of the standard size, the 
 difficulty was gradually overcome, and such buildings are now al- 
 most always built on lots of greater dimensions. The tenement- 
 house evil is staring us in the face, and the community is daily be- 
 coming more and more alive to the imperative necessity for reform. 
 A desperate disease needs a desperate remedy. It should be made 
 unprofitable to erect the kind of tenement we now have. If it is 
 clearly shown that the present evils can be overcome by the adop- 
 tion of a different type of building, erected on larger lots, certain 
 restrictions established by law would in time bring- about the de- 
 sired change. 
 
 In order to show how extravagant the present type of plan is, let 
 us take a hypothetical case. Suppose that it is desired to build a 
 small habitation in an open space. Here we can say definitely that 
 the most economical rectangular plan is an exact square, for every 
 deviation from it involves the erection of more wall to enclose a 
 given area in rooms. 
 
 Let Figure 2 (p. 380) be the plan of such a building, of the dimen- 
 sions shown, which we will call the first type. The number of running 
 feet of wall necessary to inclose it is roughly 4 X 20 = 80 feet. The 
 area inclosed is 20 X 20 = 400 square feet. Now, any deviation from
 
 380 
 
 THE POOR IN GBEAT CITIES 
 
 First type. 
 
 1 -^-H 
 
 J 
 
 J 
 
 1 ^j 
 
 -- 
 
 Second type. 
 
 this plan will be found to be more extravagant, as shown in Figure 
 3, which we will call the second type. In this case we have a quad- 
 rilateral inclosing- the same area, measur- 
 ing 10 X 40 feet. The number of running 
 feet of wall necessary to inclose this is 2 
 X 40 + 2 X 10 = 100 feet. Area inclosed is 
 10 X 40 = 400 square feet as before. Thus 
 there is a saving of twenty per cent, in 
 wall by the former method. Moreover, no 
 corridor is required by the first plan. The 
 corridor is of no use to the tenant, except 
 c „ as a passage, and it costs as much to build 
 
 as a like area in rooms. In the dwelling 
 of the first type, divided as shown in Figure 2, let A be the living- 
 room, B, C, and D the bedrooms. Any of these 
 rooms can be reached directly from A. Also in the 
 dAvelling of the second tyjDe, as shown in Figure 
 3, let A be the living-room, and B, C, and D bed- 
 rooms. To reach any of these rooms from A, with- 
 out going through other rooms, requires a corri- 
 dor of 3 feet X 20 feet, or 60 square feet. There is 
 thus a saving of space on this score, between the 
 two plans, of fifteen per cent. There is also a sav- 
 ing of fifteen per cent, in the number of running 
 feet of interior partitions required to separate the 
 various rooms. 
 
 As a more complete demonstration of the im- 
 portance of this principle let us suppose these 
 two figures to be the plans of one-story structures 
 with interior dimensions as given, and having ex- 
 terior walls of brick one foot thick ; and that the 
 cost to erect the one shown in Figure 3 would be 
 twelve cents per cubic foot. The contents of the building, suppos- 
 ing it to be twelve feet high, would be 6,048 cubic feet, and the cost 
 
 Figure 3.
 
 THE NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSE EVIL AND ITS CUBE 381 
 
 to erect $725. Now, let us suppose that the cost of the other would 
 be at the same rate, less the saving- effected in the amount of wall 
 required to inclose it. Its contents would be 5,808 cubic feet, 
 which, at twelve cents per cubic foot, equals $697 ; from which de- 
 duct the cost of 20 running feet of wall 12 feet high ; estimating 
 the cost of the brick-work at $12 per thousand brick laid, this would 
 amount to $60, making- the net cost $637. Now, by the first type 
 we have 380 square feet of available floor-space in the rooms after 
 deducting space occupied by partitions, etc., and in the second type 
 only 317 square feet of such space. By the first type each square 
 foot of rentable floor-space in rooms would cost, to erect, $16.76, 
 while by the second type each square foot of such space would cost 
 $22.87. Therefore there is a saving in the first type over the second 
 type of more than twentj'-six per cent., to say nothing of the fact 
 that it covers less ground, an item of great importance in cities. 
 
 The comparison might be pushed further, and an additional 
 saving calculated on the partitions necessary to separate the rooms, 
 cost of foundations, and other matters, all in favor of the first t3q3e ; 
 but enough has been shown to demonstrate the principle involved ; 
 and one may say here, by way of parenthesis, that, if the art of com- 
 mercial or economical planning were understood by our architects, 
 enough money might be saved in a few years on buildings erected 
 in this city to endow all the charitable institutions which we have. 
 The Building Department records show that the value of tenements, 
 flats, etc., erected in this city during the last fourteen years, amounts 
 to three hundred and twenty-five million dollars : of this amount at 
 least fifteen per cent, might have been saved, or nearly fifty million 
 dollars, on this one class of buildings. The money has been worse 
 than throM'n away, because the vast amount of useless masonry 
 which these millions represent has served no other purpose than to 
 obstruct the light and render the buildings unhealthy and expensive. 
 
 While it is possible to build dwellings exactly according to the 
 first type in the country, where the cost of land is not a consider- 
 ation, and there may be an open space on all sides, it is not practi-
 
 382 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 cable to so arrange them in the city, where the same conditions do 
 not prevail. But, as will be shown, in order to arrive at the best 
 results we must conform to this law as nearly as circumstances will 
 admit. The more nearly we can approach to the first type the more 
 economical will be the plan. 
 
 Now, the plan of our tenements, of necessity, owing- to the shape 
 of the lot, are based upon the second type. The plans which are 
 submitted in Figures 5, 6, and 7 (pp. 385, 388, 389), are based upon 
 the first type. It will be shown that the actual saving by these 
 plans over those in common use, while not so great as between the 
 hypothetical plans shown in Figures 2 and 3, is still very consider- 
 able. In the present tenement there is no proper provision for 
 light and air. In the plans submitted there is such provision, yet, 
 owing to the saving effected by the method of jDlanning, the cost 
 per square foot of available space by these plans would be much 
 less than by the present vicious method. 
 
 The law provides that in buildings of this class a certain percent- 
 age of the area of the land shall be left vacant for light and air. 
 Again, a certain percentage of the area of the lots must be occupied 
 by supports ; that is, the constructional parts, such as walls and 
 partitions ; there must also be staircases and means of communica- 
 tion, that is to say, parts occuijied in public. What is left after 
 these deductions have been made is the kernel of the nut, so to 
 speak. It forms the net rentable area or space in rooms. Now, 
 that plan is the most economical which gives the greatest amount 
 of such rentable space with the least expenditure of building ma- 
 terial and the least waste of space in the parts to be used in public, 
 always provided that the necessary strength is secured. But the 
 value of the rentable space depends largely upon the way it is 
 lighted and upon the convenient arrangement of the rooms. 
 
 In comparing the relative value of two plans, therefore, we must 
 take into consideration : 
 
 1. The projjortion which the net available rentable area bears 
 to the whole gross area of the buildino:.
 
 r 
 
 THE NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSE EVIL AND ITS CURE 383 
 
 2. The way this rentable portion is lighted, and how the rooms 
 are arranged with reference to the convenience of those who are to 
 occupy them. 
 
 The absurdity of building tenements of the ordinary kind can be 
 understood by the following comparison between the plans shown in 
 Figures 4 and 5. Figure 4 shows the i^lan of four tenements occu- 
 pying a plot one hundred feet square ; Figure 5 shows one tene- 
 ment planued as nearly as possible upon the S3'stem illustrated by 
 Figure 2 and designed for a plot also one hundred feet square. 
 
 "We will call Figure 4 plan A, and Figure 5 plan B ; both have 
 been carefully drawn to the same scale and the following calcula- 
 tion accurately made. For convenience walls are taken at one foot 
 and partitions at six inches thick. The walls between the houses 
 ■ in plan A are supposed to be party walls. 
 
 Plan A. 
 
 Plan A represents four houses of 
 the ordinary type. 
 
 Net rentable area on each floor, ex- 
 clusive of walls, partitions, stairs, cor- 
 ridors, and other public jaarts, 5,550 
 square feet. 
 
 Left vacant for light and air, 2,060 
 square feet. 
 
 Space occupied by constructive 
 parts: walls, partitions, etc., 1,400 
 square feet. 
 
 Sj^ace occupied by stairs, corridors, 
 and other public i^arts, 990 square 
 feet. 
 
 Has no fire-walls, but a fire start- 
 ing in one house can leap across the 
 narrow courts and sweep through the 
 block. 
 
 Plan B. 
 
 Plan B represents one house de- 
 signed for four lots. 
 
 Net rentable area on each floor, ex- 
 clusive of walls, partitions, stairs, cor- 
 ridors, and other public j)arts, 5,500 
 square feet. 
 
 Left vacant for light and air, 3,000 
 square feet. In favor of this jilan, 
 thirty jier cent. 
 
 Space occupied by constructive 
 parts: walls, partitions, etc., 1,100 
 square feet. In favor of this jilau 
 twenty-one per cent. 
 
 Space occuijied by stairs, corridors, 
 and other public i^ai'ts, 433 square 
 feet. In favor of tliis plan, fifty-six 
 per cent. 
 
 Has four nnpierced fire-walls from 
 top to bottom, affording protection 
 against the spread of fire. The courts 
 at the side are so wide that the flames 
 could not under ordinary circumstances 
 spread from one building to another.
 
 384 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 Tlak a. 
 
 Has no brick walls around the 
 staircases, which are thus uuisrotected 
 against fire. 
 
 Five-sevenths of the rooms open on 
 
 Plan B. 
 
 Has brick walls around area enclos- 
 ing each staircase, so that it can be 
 made fireproof. 
 
 No rooms have windows opening on 
 
 Rfiirl.jit tine 
 
 102 
 
 STREET. 
 Figure 4 — Plan A. 
 
 -- ?i 
 
 narrow shafts four feet eight inches 
 wide, which cannot provide suflRcient 
 light for the lower floors, but which 
 act as an excellent conductor of noise, 
 odors, etc., at ortlinary times, and as a 
 fine for spread of flames in case of fire. 
 There is only one water-closet to 
 
 a court less than eighteen feet wide. 
 The central court measures thirty feet 
 square, so that every room would be 
 abundantly lighted directly from the 
 outer air. 
 
 Each apartment has its own water-
 
 THE NEW YORK TENEMENT-UOUSE EVIL AND ITS CUBE 385 
 
 Plan A. Plan B. 
 
 eacli two apartments, and as these wa- closet, opening directly upon the outer 
 ter-closots open directly from the pub- air, from which it is reached by means 
 lie hall, they are apt to be a nuisance. of a balcony. 
 
 No lift is provided. There is one lift to each three apart- 
 
 ments. 
 
 Rear Lot Line 
 
 ;$$^S^^^^ 
 
 STREET. 
 Figure 5-Plan B. 
 
 One-half the aiaartments only are 
 front apartments. 
 
 There is only one sink for four 
 apartments. 
 
 Many of the bedrooms can only be 
 25 
 
 Five-sixths of the ai)artments are 
 front apartments, either facing the 
 street or courts recessed from the 
 street. 
 
 Each apartment has its own sink. 
 
 Every bedroom can be entered dir
 
 3S6 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 Plan A. Plan B. 
 
 entered by passing through other bed- rectly from the living-room or kitchen, 
 
 rooms or the public corridor. without passing through any other 
 
 bedroom. 
 The stairs are poorly lighted from The stairs and landings are abun- 
 
 a court about eleven feet square, and dantly lighted from a court thirty feet 
 
 the passages are not so well lighted as square, and there are no corridors, 
 the stairs. 
 
 It will be seen that in tlie case of the two plans above compared 
 the net rentable area is the same for both, but that the four houses 
 of the ordinary type require twenty-one per cent, more building- 
 material with which to erect them than would be required in the 
 other case, and that the space allotted to parts used in common or 
 by the public is fifty-six per cent, greater. Of the total area of the 
 lot, 10,000 square feet, 2,390 square feet, or nearly twenty-four per 
 cent, of the whole, is required on each floor for these purposes, 
 while with plan B only a little over fifteen per cent, of the area is 
 thus used ; the saving- being effected in the economy of the planning. 
 
 It will also be noticed that although the space left vacant for light 
 and air is almost one-half more, or nearly one thousand square feet 
 greater, in plan B than in plan A, yet the amount of rentable space 
 in rooms is the same in both ; but even this increased area does not 
 adequately represent the relative advantage of the former plan over 
 the latter in this respect, for the light is concentrated in plan B in 
 large bodies. The lighting of a building does not depend so much 
 upon the area of the unoccupied space as upon how that space is 
 managed. Thus the central court in plan B is smaller than the 
 united area of the light wells in plan A ; but the rooms open- 
 ing upon the wells will receive an insufficient amount of light, 
 while those opening upon the court shown in plan B, where the 
 least dimension is thirty feet, will be well lighted. Indeed, every 
 room upon this latter plan would receive an abundance of light, 
 for none of them have windows opening upon a space less than 
 eighteen feet wide, while the windows of most of the rooms of the 
 other plan open upon a space only about four feet wide ; nor do
 
 THE JVEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSE EVIL AND ITS CURE 387 
 
 these widths, either, represent the relative amount of lig-ht, as up 
 to a certain point the light increases in a greater proportion than 
 the increase in the width of the court. Also, a court, unless very- 
 large, which is open on one side is of very much more service than 
 one of the same dimensions closed on all sides. The difference, 
 then, in the lighting of the two plans is out of all proportion to the 
 increased light area. 
 
 A building constructed in accordance with plan B would be 
 properly lighted ; tenements of the ordinary type are only properly 
 lighted at the two ends. The available rentable space cannot be 
 compared, for one is fit for human habitation and the other is not. 
 
 It is not fair to compare the relative economy of plans of such 
 different characters, still plan B can well bear such comparison. 
 Plan A has no fire-walls or walls around staircases, yet to erect the 
 four buildings shown would require more than one hundred running 
 feet of wall over what would be needed in the erection of one build- 
 ing of the kind shown in plan B. The cubical contents of this build- 
 ing, estimating its height at 60 feet, would be 420,000 cubic feet ; 
 assuming the cost at fifteen cents per cubic foot, the total cost of 
 building would be $63,000. The cubical contents of the four build- 
 ings shown in plan A, assuming that the height was the same, 
 would be 476,400 cubic feet, and the cost to erect at fifteen cents 
 per cubic foot, $71,460. 
 
 From the above it will be seen that the building shown by plan 
 B, although infinitely better lighted, and containing the same 
 amount of rentable floor area, would cost less to build than the 
 other, even if both were calculated at the same rate per cubic foot ; 
 but this would not be the case, for while 850 running feet of wall 
 is required by plan A, only 750 running feet of such wall is re- 
 quired by plan B, nor is the increased amount of wall required by 
 plan A any advantage for fire or otherwise, but rather the contrary. 
 For it will be seen that, while there are four divisions which might 
 be called separate buildings in both cases, yet in plan B the divid- 
 ing walls are true fire-walls, unpierced, extending from top to bot-
 
 3SS 
 
 THE POOR IX GREAT CITIES 
 
 torn, -wliile in tlie case of plan A, tlie diTiding- walls are pierced by 
 ■windows, only about four feet distant from those in the next house, 
 so that these walls offer no security against fire. 
 
 In addition to the saving- of 100 running feet of brick wall ex- 
 
 Rear Lot Lr.e 
 
 .r5-3 : 
 
 'mUL 
 
 tending from foundation to roof, there is another saving of 330 run- 
 ning feet of partition, plastered on both sides, on each floor ; the 
 cost of these two items would amount to over $5,000, which should 
 be deducted from the estimated cost \)\ plan B. Now we have :
 
 TUE XEW YORK TEyEilEyT-HOrSE EVIL ASD ITS CUBE aS9 
 
 Net cost of building #71,160 
 
 Add cost of land, say 8^,000 per 
 lot, or 832,000 in both cases 32,000 
 
 $103,460 
 
 PLA5 B. 
 
 $58,000 
 
 32,000 
 
 $90,000 
 
 Fgu-e 7 — Pa,i D. 
 
 Thus the well-ligrhted space shown on phin B could be rented 
 for t\lK>ut thii-teen per cent, less than the improperly ligrhted quar- 
 ters shown on plan A, and the owner wotdd still receive the same 
 rate of interest on the investment ; or the owner of a house planneil
 
 390 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 according to plan B conld give his tenants thirteen per cent, more 
 room for the same rent than the owner of a bnikling planned ac- 
 cording to plan A, and still receive the same rate of interest on the 
 investment. 
 
 The above comparisons have been made between four ordinary- 
 houses, and one building designed for a lot 100 feet square ; but 
 the same principles which govern plan B are applicable to a cer- 
 tain extent to buildings intended for lots of smaller dimensions, as 
 shown in j^lans C and D. Plan C is for a lot 75 X 100 feet, and plan 
 D for one 50 X 100 feet. While the best results are obtained the 
 more nearly we can approach to the square, yet fairly economical 
 plans can be made for buildings on lots not less than 50 feet 
 wide. 
 
 There are two methods of lighting a building : one may be called 
 the independent method, and the other the dependent method. In 
 the first case the owner depends entirely uj^on his own property for 
 light, in the other case he counts more or less u^aon his neighbor's 
 land. 
 
 The first is the French method. Buildings in France are gen- 
 erally jirovided with a central court of sufficient size to properly 
 light the house. The latter method is that in vogue in this city ; 
 we depend for light partly upon the area of unoccupied space on 
 our own land, and partly upon what we hope our neighbors will 
 leave unoccupied. The latter method is the more economical, pro- 
 vided one is sure that the adjoining property-holder will kindly 
 adapt his structure to the needs of our building. Unfortunately, it 
 is seldom one can depend upon such consideration. 
 
 If tenement-houses are to receive a part of their light from the 
 outside, then restrictions should be placed upon the adjoining land 
 which will insure this light. 
 
 It will be noticed that in plans B, C, and D a sj)ace 9 feet wide is 
 left at the side of the house, extending from the street to a line 
 about 30 feet from the rear of the lot ; a similar space should be 
 required to be left unoccupied at the side of all tenement-houses,
 
 THE NEW YORK TENEMENT-HOUSE EVIL AND ITS CURE 391 
 
 or buikliug-s which adjoin tenement-houses ; such a reg-ukxtiou 
 woukl amount to a prohibition in the case of lots only 25 feet wide, 
 which ought to be the case. 
 
 If houses are to be built of the present type, there is only one 
 possible way to make them habitable — that is, to reduce the depth 
 of the buildings to such an extent as will make them unprofitable 
 for tenement purposes. Something more must be required than a 
 mere percentage of unoccupied space. As shown in jjlans B, C, and 
 D, about seventy per cent, of the lot may be covered and the build- 
 ing- thoroughly lighted in every part, but to insure such a result the 
 lot must measure at least 50 feet in width. 
 
 The power to make the necessary restriction is already in the 
 hands of the Board of Health, and needs only to be enforced, A 
 simple regulation requiring space to be left vacant at the side of the 
 building, like that now enforced for such space at the rear, would 
 quickly bring about a change of plan. Such a restriction would re- 
 sult in the adoption of buildings of the type shown in.plans B, C, 
 and D, and the New York tenement-house problem would be solved 
 so far as new buildings are concerned. Many years would be re- 
 quired to bring about a complete change, but the buildings al- 
 ready constructed are of such a flimsy character that they cannot 
 last forever ; moreover, when it is once realized what a great econ- 
 omy there is in this type of planning over the one in ordinary use, 
 many owners will be inclined to rebuild. 
 
 In plan B there are three apartments for each lot occupied, or 
 twelve in all, while in plan A, there are sixteen. In other words, 
 the apartments of plan B have about twenty-five per cent, more 
 floor space than those of plan A, The rooms are, upon an average, 
 twenty-flve per cent, larger, which ought to be the case. To crowd 
 four families on each floor of a twenty-five foot house is not right or 
 decent ; nor is it right to provide bedrooms 7X9 feet which never 
 receive a ray of sunlight, and which must often be occupied by sev- 
 eral people continuously. The rooms shown on plan B are small 
 enough in all conscience, but what an improvement over those of
 
 392 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES 
 
 the ordinary kind. Not only are tliey one-quarter larger and well 
 lighted, but also more conveniently arranged. 
 
 Notwithstanding their twenty-five per cent, larger size, proper 
 light and ventilation, greater security against fire and better ar- 
 rangement, these apartments could doubtless be rented for the same 
 price as those of the kind we now have, owing to the greater econ- 
 omy of the i^lan, and to the fact that there would be fewer vacan- 
 cies than is usually the case, and loss of rent from unoccupied apart- 
 ments would count less as a factor in estimating the returns from 
 the property. 
 
 The philanthropic method of reform can accomplish but little. 
 "What if a hundred or five hundred landlords erect model tenements 
 and rent them at a low rate ? Such relief would only be a drop in 
 the bucket, so long as the vast majority of owners continue the 
 erection of houses of the kind we now have. 
 
 Reform can only be brought about through the pockets of the 
 landlords. Show them how they can build good houses for less 
 than it now costs them to build bad ones. Show them how they can 
 get the same amount of desirable properly lighted fioor space at 
 less cost than they have heretofore paid for undesirable, improperly 
 lighted floor space. This is to strike at the root of the evil. Then 
 let the Board of Health do its part to bring about the change. For 
 twenty years this body has been temporizing with the subject, and 
 with the best intentions has accomplished little. It is now high 
 time to call a halt and to root out the evil, making use of the pow- 
 ers which years ago were vested in it for this very purpose.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Addams, Miss Jane, 220. 
 
 Aleu^on School of Typography, 279, 
 
 283. 
 Alien paupers in New York State, 345- 
 
 347. 
 Aliens, assimilation of, 88. 
 Almshouses in cities, 353, 354. 
 
 foreign-born inmates of, in New 
 Yorl< State, 348, 344. 
 Andover Association, 182, 190, 191. 
 Andover House, the work of, in Boston, 
 177-194. 
 
 beginning of tlie work, 186. 
 
 Boys' Clubs, 186-188. 
 
 bureau of information, as a, 191. 
 
 Charity Organization, the intluence 
 of, 179, 180. 
 
 old charity, the spirit of, 178. 
 
 field of observation, 190. 
 
 growth of the movement, 192, 193. 
 
 location, 182, 183. 
 
 lower and higher pliilanthropy, 177. 
 
 origin of the name, 182. 
 
 resident group, the, and associates, 
 181, 182, 183, 184. 
 
 value of resident work, 191, 192. 
 
 scientific work, 189, 190. 
 
 social centre as a, 188, 189. 
 
 tenement-house question, the, 189. 
 
 Woods, Robert A., 184. 
 
 four years of work, 193, 194. 
 
 principles of work, 180, 181, 184-186. 
 Apprentices, 106, 109, 286. 
 Arabians in Chicago, 205. 
 Associated charities, the, 180. 
 
 Balch, Colonel George T., 111. 
 Bamberger, Professor Gabriel, 221. 
 Barnett, Rev. Samuel A., founder of 
 
 Toynbee Hall, 16, 17, 195. 
 Bartholdi Creche, the, 148. 
 Bates, Eli, 211. 
 Baxter, Sylvester, 190. 
 Besant, Walter, 23. 
 
 Bigotry, breaking down in the tenements, 
 57. 
 
 a hindrance to co-operation, 85. 
 Birtwell, C. W., 191. 
 " Bitter Cry of Outcast London, The," 3, 
 
 16. 
 Bohemians, the, 101, 102, 105, 106. 
 Booth, Charles, 38, 40, 181. 
 Boston. See Andover House. 
 Boy criminals, genesis of, in the tene- 
 ments, 154. 
 Boys' Clubs, 151-176. 
 
 Andover House, at, 186-188. 
 
 Avenue C Working Boys' Club, the, 
 159-164, 167. 
 
 Bethany Church Club, 167. 
 
 Calvary Parish Club, 164, 165. 
 
 character of tlie boys dealt with, 176. 
 
 Chicago, in, 211. 
 
 Christ Chapel Club, 167. 
 
 Covenant Chapel Club, 167. 
 
 difficulties at the start, 175. 
 
 entertainments, 168-171. 
 
 Free Reading-room for Boys, the, 
 165. 
 
 Grace iVIissiou Club, 166. 
 
 libraries, 167.
 
 394 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Boys' Clubs, London, in, 266, 267. 
 
 Manor Chapel Club, 165. 
 
 moral effects, 171-175. 
 
 need of them, the, 151-154. 
 
 St. George's Church Club, 165, 166. 
 
 St. Mark's Place Club, the, 154-159. 
 
 University Settlement Club, the, 
 166. 
 
 Wayside Club, the, 106, 167. 
 
 West-side Working Boys' Club, the, 
 166. 
 
 when they are open, 167. 
 Brace, Charles Loring, Secretary of the 
 Children's Aid Society, 351, 363, 
 364. 
 Brooke, Rev. Stopford, 35. 
 Brueyre, M. Loys, 276-278. 
 Buchanan, Mr. P. R, 21,38. 
 Building societies, 213. 
 Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 28. 
 Burns, John, 32, 35. 
 Butler, Edward B., 217. 
 Byrnes, ex-Superintendent, 349. 
 
 Charity, causes of its growth, 351. 
 genesis of, 270. 
 modern, more effective, 350. 
 spirit and accomplishments of the 
 
 old, 177-179. 
 Charity Organization Society of London, 
 
 12, 13. 
 of the City of New York, 66, 179, 
 
 180, 348, 349. 
 Charities Review, the, 366. 
 Chicago, among the poor of, 195-239. 
 Anarchists, the, 233. 
 Arabians, the, 205. 
 Bad Lands, the, 203. 
 benevolent institutions, 220, 221. 
 Central Church Mission, 211. 
 Chinese, the, 198, 203, 204. 
 Clark Street Mission, 204, 205. 
 drink-bill of the city, 235, 236. 
 foreign elements constitute the very 
 
 poor, 198. 
 homes owned by the working classes, 
 
 212, 213 
 
 Chicago, Hull House, 215-220. 
 Italians, the, 198-203, 214. 
 Jews, the, 221-223. 
 Libert}" Bell and Friendship, the, 
 
 223, 224. 
 
 life there much a matter of choice, 
 
 195, 196. 
 " Little Hell," 211. 
 Newsboys' and Bootblacks' Home, 
 
 226." 
 Pacific Garden Mission, the, 205, 
 
 206. 
 poor, no district of the abject, 196, 
 
 207. 
 residential district, the, 212. 
 room for expansion, 197. 
 St. James's Church Mission, 211. 
 saloons, 207, 208, 237. 
 Scandinavians, the, 208, 211. 
 Self-supporting Women, Home for, 
 
 224, 225. 
 
 streets, foulness of, in spring, 223. 
 sweat-shops, 227-233. 
 Temperance Temple, 205. 
 tenement-house evil, not j^et a 
 
 menace, 196, 197. 
 Unity Church Industrial School and 
 
 Boys' Club, 211, 212. 
 wages, 234, 235. 
 Waifs' Mission and Training School, 
 
 the, 226. 
 work wailing for the unemployed, 
 237, 238. 
 Child reform, laws in relation to, 276, 
 
 277, 297, 298. 
 Children of the poor, the, 86-130. 
 
 wrongly committed to institutions, 
 
 359. 
 
 Children's Aid Society of the City of 
 
 New York, the, 66, 87, 110, 129, 
 
 130, 350. 363, 364. 
 
 Children's Aid Society of Pennsylvania, 
 
 358. 
 Chinese, the, 89, 198, 203, 204. 
 Church of England, its martyrs to the 
 
 work of raising man, 274. 
 Church Temperance Society, the, 365.
 
 INDEX 
 
 395 
 
 Christiauity, the awakener of modern 
 cbaritv work, 351. 
 
 Cities attract the idle by their charities, 
 238. 
 
 City Mission, the, of New York, 56, 71, 
 73, 84, 87. 
 
 City ]\Iission and Tract Society, the, 353. 
 
 Clark, Colonel George R., 206. 
 
 College settlements. See University Settle- 
 men ts. 
 
 Colly er, Rev. Robert, 311. 
 
 Cook, Captain, 342. 
 
 Co-operation, the need of, 85. 
 
 County poor-houses in New York State, 
 355. 
 
 Craig, Oscar, 359. 
 
 Crane, Walter, 28, 35. 
 
 Culver, Miss Helen, 230. 
 
 Currie, Sir Edmund, 33. 
 
 Dagnan, Madame, 380. 
 D'Alembert, Jean le Rond, 390, 291. 
 D'Alembert Scliool, the. See Street 
 
 Arabs, a School for. 
 Damon -Kreiger, 286, 387. 
 " Darkest England, In," 38. 
 Dawson, M., 260. 
 Dehesden, M.,280. 
 Denison, Edward, 15. 
 Dependent children, care of, in New 
 
 York State, 356-359. 
 Deserving poor, the, suffer most, 68. 
 Dirt and crime, 154. 
 Divi-sion of labor, the, 386. 
 Dockers' strike, the. See London. 
 
 Emden, Madame S., 380. 
 Ericsson, John, 113. 
 Evening Post, The, 133. 
 
 Fabian Society, the, 35-37. 
 Factory law in New York State, 368. 
 Florenzano, Signor, 332, 333. 
 Four classes of society, the, 340, 341. 
 France, age of legal majority in, 294. 
 her care of the morally abandoned, 
 276-278. 
 
 Fresh-air-Fund, story of the, 181-150. 
 beginning, its, 131, 149. 
 day excursions, 149. 
 effect of the children upon their 
 
 hosts, 136, 137. 
 Evening Post, The, first paper of the 
 
 Fund, 132. 
 growth of the work, 133, 148, 149, 
 
 150. 
 Life's summer village, 148. 
 money question, the, 132, 133, 134. 
 moral effects, 137-143, 145. 
 physical results, 139, 142-147. 
 selecting the children, 135, 136. 
 temporarj' homes, finding, 134, 135. 
 Trihxine, The, and the raising of the 
 
 money, 132. 
 Fresh-air work in London, 207, 268. 
 
 Graham, Robert, 349. 
 Green, John Richard, 15. 
 Greenhut, Joseph, 234, 235. 
 
 Habitual offenders, 361, 363, 369. 
 
 Heckford, Dr., 260. 
 
 Heredity, the question of, 362-364. 
 
 Hill, Miss Octavia, 28, 189. 
 
 Hirsch, Baron de, 103. 
 
 Hogg, Quinton, 24. 
 
 " How the Other Half Lives," by Jacob 
 
 A. Riis. 305. 
 Hughes, Rev. Hugh Price, 8. 
 Hull, Charles J., 220. 
 Hull House, 215-230. 
 
 Idle rich, the, 340. 
 
 Idleness and the tough, 115. 
 
 Ignorance and poverty, 98, 99, 106. 109, 
 
 110. 
 Illinois School of Agriculture and Train- 
 
 ing School for Boys, the, 236. 
 Immigration, dangers of unrestricted, 
 
 342. 
 and pauperism in the State of New 
 
 York, 342-346. 
 and pauiicrism in the United States, 
 
 341, 342.
 
 JOG 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Immigration, and the problem of pover- 
 ty in New York City, 88. 
 Impostors among the poor, 68, 69. 
 Independent, The, symposium in, on 
 
 juvenile delinquents, 363. 
 Insane poor, the, in the State of New 
 
 York, 354, 355. 
 Italians, the, 91-95, 98, 198-203, 314. 
 Italy, extreme poverty of the peasantry, 
 
 301. 
 
 Je-wisii charities, 231, 333, 353, 353. 
 Jews, the, 56-58, 68, 69, 99-104, 231, 
 
 322. 
 "Jukes, the," 361. 
 Juvenile delinquents, 363. 
 
 Kindergartens, 114, 204. 
 King Humbert, 312-315. 
 King's Daughters, the, 98, 148. 
 Kirkland, Major Joseph, 239. 
 Kohn, M. Edouard, 280. 
 
 "L.\BOR and Life of the People," by 
 
 Charles Booth, 38-40, 181. 
 Lafont, M. Charles, 277, 378. 
 Landsberg, Rev. Max, Ph.D., 353. 
 Life, New York, its fresh-air work, 148. 
 Loan associations, 83, 83. 
 London, artists' movement, the, 38. 
 
 "Bitter Cry of Outcast London, 
 
 the," 3, 16. 
 Boys' Clubs, 366, 267. 
 Charity Organization, 12, 13. 
 Children's Hospital, the, 360. 
 church, the work of the, 5. 
 churches of the riverside, influence 
 and work, their, 347, 348, 263, 
 274. 
 County Council work, the, 37, 40. 
 "Darkest England, In," influence 
 
 of the book, 28. 
 dockers, the, 31-35. 
 docks, new, influence of, 252, 354. 
 Fabian Society, the, 36, 37. 
 fresh-air work, 367, 268. 
 Girls' Club of Ratclifl, 364, 365. 
 
 London, Irish Catholics, the, in St. 
 James's Parish, 361, 268, 370. 
 
 " Labor and Life of the People," by 
 Charles Booth, 38-40, 181. 
 
 literary proletariat, the, 29, 30. 
 
 model tenements, 38. 
 
 People's Palace, the, 23, 24. 
 
 people of the riverside, 345, 249- 
 252, 261-263. 
 
 polytechnics, the, 24, 27. 
 
 Port, the, 241,246. 
 
 promise of the future, 40, 41. 
 
 riverside parishes, the old, 340-354. 
 
 Rotlierhithe, the past and the present. 
 353, 253. 
 
 St. James's Parish, Rat cliff, 257-274. 
 
 Salvation Army, the, 8, 12, 270-273. 
 
 shipwrights' strike, the, and its re- 
 sults, 254-257. 
 
 social awakening, the, 1-41. 
 
 Socialists, the, 30, 35. 
 
 Society for Organizing Charitable 
 Relief, the, and Repressing Men- 
 dicity, 179. 
 
 tenement-houses, 261. 
 
 Toynbee Hall, 3, 19, 20. 
 
 trades-unions, 30, 38. 
 
 university settlements, the, 14-23, 27. 
 
 variety of social work, the, 37. 
 
 wages, the question of, 37, 38. 
 Lowell, Mrs. Charles Russell, 357. 
 
 McCuLLOCH, Rev. Oscar, 362. 
 Mann, Tom, 32. 35. 
 Marriage among the poor, 73-74. 
 Marshall, Professor, 18. 
 May, M., 380. 
 
 Montevrain. See Street Arabs. 
 Moring, M. Michel, 377. 
 Morris, "William, 38, 35. 
 Munthe, Axel, 305, 310. 
 
 Naples, the poor in, 300-338. 
 burial-places, 308-310, 322. 
 camorra, the, 326, 327. 
 charitable institutions, 327-334, 
 cholera, the, 310-314, 318.
 
 INDEX 
 
 397 
 
 Naples, emigrants, 333-338. 
 
 failure of efforts to supply better 
 
 homes, 306, 307, 317, 318, 324, 
 
 325. 
 how they live, 300, 301, 305-308, 
 
 322. 
 improvements in the city of, 323, 
 
 324. 
 population, congested, 337. 
 sanitary conditions, 314-316. 
 Santa Lucia, 324. 
 schools, the need of, 327. 
 water-supply, 314, 322. 
 Newspapers, influence of, 75. 
 New York City, Association for Improv- 
 ing the Condition of the Poor, 
 
 350. 
 Blackwell's Island, 68 
 Bohemians, the, 105, 106. 
 Bower}^ lodging-houses, 87. 
 boy's clubs, 118-120, 151-176. 
 Carmen, little story of, 98, 99. 
 census of a typical East-side block, 
 
 56, 57. 
 Charity Organization Society, the, 
 
 66, 179, 180, 348, 349. 
 child workers, 104, 105. 
 Children's Aid Societj', the, 66, 87, 
 
 110, 129, 130, 350, 363, 364. 
 children of the poor, the, 86-130. 
 church, influence of the, 74, 75. 
 City Mission, the, 56, 66, 67, 71, 72, 
 
 84. 
 college settlement, the, 59, 60. 
 co-operation, the benefits of, 85. 
 Cooper Union, 78. 
 deserving poor suffer most, the, 68. 
 De Witt Memorial Church, 57. 
 drunkenness wrecks many homes, 
 
 124, 125. 
 election-night celebration, 115, 116. 
 evictions, 50, 53, 54. 
 extravagance of the poor, 73, 74. 
 Five Points House of Industry, the, 
 
 125. 
 flats or tenements, 48. 
 foreign born, the, 110. 
 
 New York City, Fresh-air Fund, 59, 60, 
 
 89, 90, 131-150. 
 games of the tenements, 114, 115. 
 gangs, 115, 116, 120, 129. 
 girls of the tenements, 121-123. 
 homes in the tenements, the three 
 
 classes of, 49, 50. 
 homes broken up by i^overtj', 65, 66. 
 homeless children, 86, 87, 125-130. 
 immigration jn-oblem, the, 88, 89. 
 impostors, 68, 69. 
 industrial schools, the, 110-113. 
 Italians, the, 90-99. 
 Jews, the, 57-59, 69, 99-104. 
 Katie, the little housekeeper, 121. 
 kindergartens, 114. 
 King's Daughters, the, 98, 148. 
 loan associations, 82, 83. 
 lodging-houses for boys, 127, 129, 
 
 130. 
 marriage among the poor, 72-74. 
 model tenements, more needed, 77, 
 
 78. 
 morality in the tenements, 72, 73, 114. 
 nationalities in the tenements, 56, 57. 
 nurses, trained, the great need of, 
 
 83, 84. 
 occupations in an East-side block, 56. 
 organized labor, tyranny of, and its 
 
 results, 106-110. 
 overcrowding, influence of, 124. 
 parks, the need of, 77, 115. 
 poor helping the poor, the, 71, 72, 
 
 121. 
 population, density of, 54-5(1, 76. 
 poverty and crime, 09-71. 
 Poverty Gap, 109. 
 Public Schools, influence of, 59. 
 race lines, the li.xing of, 88. 
 rapid transit, what it would do for 
 
 the poor, 70, 77. 
 religious denominations in an East- 
 side block. 56, 57. 
 rents, 49, 50. 
 rich and poor, 66. 
 saloons, the, 78. 79. 
 savings banks, 62.
 
 398 
 
 INDEX 
 
 New York Cily, slum children, 89-91. 
 
 Society for the PreveiUiou of Cruelty 
 to Cbildreu, the, 98, 125, 139, 
 359, 365. 
 
 swimming-baths, 81, 82. 
 
 tenement, a typical, 43-48. 
 
 Truant Home, need of, 106. 
 
 wages of the unskilled, 63-65. 
 
 Young Men's Institute, the, 78. See, 
 also, Tenement-House Evil and its 
 Cure. 
 Nurses, trained, need of, in the tene- 
 ments, 83, 84. 
 
 Organized charity, character of the 
 work done by, 351. 
 
 influence of, 179, 180. 
 
 value of, 348. 
 Organized labor, tyranny of, 106, 107. 
 
 Paine, Robert Treat, 191. 
 
 Paris, care of the children of the street 
 
 by, 275, 276. 
 Pauper family, a typical case, 109, 110. 
 Pauperism, agencies for the prevention 
 
 of, 339-392. 
 Alien Pauper Law, the, in New 
 
 York State, 345, 346, 
 Catholic Protectoiy, the, 359. 
 Charity Organization Society of the 
 
 City of New York, 348, 349, 
 
 366. 
 Children's Aid Society, the, of New 
 
 York, 350, 363, 364. 
 Children's Aid Society of Pennsyl- 
 vania, 358. 
 ■church work, 351, 352. 
 City Mission Society, P. E. , of New 
 
 York, 352. 
 City Mission and Tract Society, the, 
 
 352. 
 condition defined, the, 339. 
 cost of charitable institutions in New 
 
 York State, 366, 367. 
 dependent children, care of, 356-359. 
 Factory Law, the, 368. 
 heredity, the question of, 362, 363. 
 
 Pauperism, immigration and, in the 
 United States, 341, 342. 
 
 in New York State, 342-346. 
 
 insane poor, the care of, 354, 355. 
 
 Jewish charities, in the United 
 States, 352, 353. 
 
 New York Association for Improv- 
 ing the Condition of the Poor, 
 350. 
 
 organized charitj', character of the 
 work done by, 351 ; value of, 
 348. 
 
 out-relief, 347, 348, 350. 
 
 poor and almshouses, 353, 354. 
 
 Prison Association, the, of New 
 York, 361. 
 
 punishment of transgressors, the, 
 301 , 362. 
 
 relation between producers and 
 paupers, 366. 
 
 remedial better than retributive dis- 
 cipline, 360, 361, 369. 
 
 Rochester Female Charitable Society 
 for the Relief of the Sick Poor, 
 350, 351. 
 
 saloons, influence of the, 365. 
 
 sexes, separation of the, 355. 
 
 Society for the Prevention of Crime, 
 the, 361. 
 
 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty 
 to Children, the, 359, 364. 
 
 Society for the Kulief of Poor Wid- 
 ows with Small Children, 350. 
 
 Society of St. Vincent de Paul, the, 
 350. 
 
 Soldiers' Home, the, 367. 
 
 State Board of Charities, the New 
 York, 340, 356, 358, 365. 
 
 State Charities Aid Society, the, of 
 New York, 365. 
 
 State Charities Reeoi% The, 357, 366. 
 
 State intervention, the question of, 
 368, 369. 
 
 State paupers in New York, 346, 
 347. 
 
 State Prisons in New York, 361, 362 
 
 tenement-house question, the, 368.
 
 INDEX 
 
 399 
 
 Pauperism, university settlements, in- 
 fluence of, 351. 
 Wilhird Asylum Act, the, 354. 
 Paupers, made by injudicious charity, 
 
 66. 
 Pawnshops, 83. 
 People's Palace, the, 3, 23, 24. 
 Philanthropy, the new, 177, 192. 
 Poor, the children of the, 86-130. 
 Poor helping the poor, the, 53, 71, 72, 
 
 121, 122. 
 Poor, suggestions for improving their 
 
 condition, 76-85. 
 Poor-houses, 353, 354. 
 Population, densit}^ of, in New York, 
 76. 
 density of, in Naples, 357. 
 shifting of, 54-56. 
 Porter, Professor Dwight, 191. 
 Poverty and crime, 69-71. 
 
 and drink, 124, 125, 230, 236-238. 
 and ignorance, 98, 99. 
 
 QuENTiN, M. Charles, 277. 
 
 Redhill, 298. 
 
 Reformatories, 275-299, 359, 360, 361. 
 
 Remedial superior to retributive disci- 
 pline, 360, 361. 
 
 Rent, the great burden of the poor, 49, 
 50T 
 
 Rich and poor, the, 66, 85. 
 
 Riis, Jacob A., 351. 
 
 Rochester Female Charitable Society for 
 the Relief of the Sick Poor, 350, 
 351. 
 
 Rochester School of Reform, 298. 
 
 Roman Catholic Church, charities of, 
 352. 
 
 Roussel, M. Theophile, 278. 
 
 Rowe, Miss O. M.E., 191. 
 
 Ruskin, John, 15, 27. 
 
 Saloons, 78, 81, 207, 208. 237, 349, 
 
 • 365. 
 Salvation Army, the, 8, 12, 270-273. 
 Sarter, the Baron de, 280. 
 
 Scandinavians, the, 208. 
 Schuyler, Miss Louisa, 365. 
 Schwabe, Julia Sails, 334. 
 Scudder, Miss Vida, 191. 
 Small towns, the poor in, 67, 68. 
 Society for Improving the Condition of 
 the Poor, 66, 82. 
 
 for the Prevention of Crime, 361. 
 
 for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
 Children, the, 98, 125, 129, 359, 
 364. 
 
 for the Relief of Poor Widows with 
 Small Children, 350. 
 
 of St. Vincent de Paul, 350. 
 Spencer, Herbert, 351, 360. 
 Starr, Miss Ellen Gates, 220. 
 State Board of Charities of New York, 
 346, 356, 358, 365. 
 
 Charities Aid Society, the, of New 
 York, 365. 
 
 Charities Recoi'd. 357, 366. 
 
 prisons in New York, 361, 362. 
 Street Arab, the, a menace to public 
 peace, 275. 
 
 Arabs, a school for, 275-299. 
 
 age of enti'ance, 293. 
 
 benefits of such institutions, 294, 
 295. 
 
 buildings. 281. 
 
 cabinet-making, 284-288. 
 
 cost of maintenance, 296, 297. 
 
 day's routine, a, 289. 
 
 development of the idea, 277, 278. 
 
 diet, 295, 296. 
 
 dress, 292, 293. 
 
 earnings of the boys, 287, 293, 294. 
 
 foundation, 280. 
 
 gymnastics, 290. 
 
 incompetent and vicious, the, not re- 
 tained, 298. 
 
 location, 278, 279, 280, 281. 
 
 mental training, 289. 
 
 military drill, 291, 292. 
 
 motive of the school, 276. 
 
 name, the, 279. 
 
 printing department, 282-284. 
 
 similar institutions, 279, 297, 298.
 
 400 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Strikes, 28, 31, 32, 254, 255. 
 Sun, The, New York, 349. 
 Sweat-shops, 227-230. 
 
 Tenement-house evil, the New York, 
 
 and its cure, 370-392. 
 chief causes of the evil, 370 372. 
 commercial planning, the art of, 378, 
 
 383. 
 extravagance of present methods, 
 
 377, 378, 379, 381, 384-390. 
 investment, the, in present structures, 
 
 383. 
 lighting, ways of, 390, 391. 
 necessary conditions of life at present, 
 
 376. 
 need of radical reform, 375, 381. 
 objections to present plans, 374. 
 obstacles, the, not insuperable, 380. 
 principles of economical planning, 
 
 380, 384. 
 question, the, in other cities, 380. 
 satisfactory building imder present 
 
 conditions impossible, 375. 
 solving the problem, a way of, 391, 
 
 392. 
 typical houses, 370, 371, 373. 
 
 (See also Chicago, London, Naples.) 
 Tenement-houses, life in New York, 42- 
 
 85. 
 
 Thulie, Dr., 277, 278. 
 Tough, genesis of the, 117. 
 Toynbee, Arnold, 15. 
 Toynbee Hall, 3, 8, 19, 20. 
 Trades-unions, 29, 35. 
 '"'Tribe of Ishmael," 362. 
 Tribune, The, New York, 132. 
 
 University settlements, in Boston, 177- 
 194. 
 in London, 19, 20, 23. 
 iu New York, 59, 60. 
 influence of, 351. 
 
 ViLLARi Pasquale, 301. 
 
 Villepreux, School of Horticulture, 278, 
 
 279. 
 Vinton, Dr. C. C, 135. 
 
 Wadlin, Hon. Horace G., 190. 
 
 Wages, 62, 63, 227, 234 235. 
 
 White, Dr., report of, 142-145. 
 
 Willard Asylum Act, the. 354. 
 
 Wilson, Anna T., 358. 
 
 Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 
 
 205. 
 Woods, Robert A., 184. 
 Wright, Carroll D., 190 
 
 Yseure, school for girls, 279.
 
 V
 
 I
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 ■** 331.8P792 C001 
 
 THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES; THEIR PROBLEMS 
 
 3 0112 025290021