Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive.)
THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR
[Illustration]
THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR
BY
JACOB A. RIIS
AUTHOR OF "HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES"
_ILLUSTRATED_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1908
COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
PREFACE
To my little ones, who, as I lay down my pen, come rushing in from the
autumn fields, their hands filled with flowers "for the poor children," I
inscribe this book. May the love that shines in their eager eyes never
grow cold within them; then they shall yet grow up to give a helping hand
in working out this problem which so plagues the world to-day. As to their
father's share, it has been a very small and simple one, and now it is
done. Other hands may carry forward the work. My aim has been to gather
the facts for them to build upon. I said it in "How the Other Half Lives,"
and now, in sending this volume to the printer, I can add nothing. The two
books are one. Each supplements the other. Ours is an age of facts. It
wants facts, not theories, and facts I have endeavored to set down in
these pages. The reader may differ with me as to the application of them.
He may be right and I wrong. But we shall not quarrel as to the facts
themselves, I think. A false prophet in our day could do less harm than a
careless reporter. That name I hope I shall not deserve.
To lay aside a work that has been so long a part of one's life, is like
losing a friend. But for the one lost I have gained many. They have been
much to me. The friendship and counsel of Dr. Roger S. Tracy, of the
Bureau of Vital Statistics, have lightened my labors as nothing else
could save the presence and the sympathy of the best and dearest friend of
all, my wife. To Major Willard Bullard, the most efficient chief of the
Sanitary Police; Rabbi Adolph M. Radin; Mr. A. S. Solomons, of the Baron
de Hirsch Relief Committee; Dr. Annie Sturges Daniel; Mr. L. W. Holste, of
the Children's Aid Society; Colonel George T. Balch, of the Board of
Education; Mr. A. S. Fairchild, and to Dr. Max L. Margolis, my thanks are
due and here given. Jew and Gentile, we have sought the truth together.
Our reward must be in the consciousness that we have sought it faithfully
and according to our light.
J. A. R.
RICHMOND HILL, LONG ISLAND,
October 1, 1892.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I. THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILDREN, 1
CHAPTER II. THE ITALIAN SLUM CHILDREN, 10
CHAPTER III. IN THE GREAT EAST SIDE TREADMILL, 35
CHAPTER IV. TONY AND HIS TRIBE, 58
CHAPTER V. THE STORY OF KID MCDUFF'S GIRL, 87
CHAPTER VI. THE LITTLE TOILERS, 92
CHAPTER VII. THE TRUANTS OF OUR STREETS, 118
CHAPTER VIII. WHAT IT IS THAT MAKES BOYS BAD, 129
CHAPTER IX. LITTLE MARY ELLEN'S LEGACY, 142
CHAPTER X. THE STORY OF THE FRESH AIR FUND, 153
CHAPTER XI. THE KINDERGARTENS AND NURSERIES, 174
CHAPTER XII. THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS, 187
CHAPTER XIII. THE BOYS' CLUBS, 215
CHAPTER XIV. THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS, 245
CHAPTER XV. PUTTING A PREMIUM ON PAUPERISM, 277
CHAPTER XVI. THE VERDICT OF THE POTTERS FIELD, 286
REGISTER OF CHILDREN'S CHARITIES, 291
LISTS OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Saluting the Flag, _Frontispiece_
PAGE
The Mott Street Barracks, 16
An Italian Home under a Dump, 25
A Child of the Dump, 28
Pietro Learning to Make an Englis' Letter, 32
"Slept in the Cellar Four Years," 41
A Synagogue School in a Hester Street Tenement, 46
The Backstairs to Learning, 48
Class of Melammedim Learning English, 50
"I Scrubs."--Katie who Keeps House in West Forty-ninth Street, 61
Present Tenants of John Ericsson's Old House, now the Beach
Street Industrial School, 73
Their Playground a Truck, 86
Shine, Sir? 100
Little Susie at her Work, 110
Minding the Baby, 114
"Shooting Craps" in the Hall of the Newsboys' Lodging House, 122
Case No. 25,745 on the Society's Blotter, Before and After, 146
Club Used for Beating a Child, 152
Summer Boarders from Mott Street, 158
Making for the "Big Water," 167
Floating Hospital--St. John's Guild, 169
Playing at Housekeeping, 177
Poverty Gappers Playing Coney Island, 183
Poverty Gap Transformed--the Spot where Young Healey was
murdered is now a Playground, 185
The Late Charles Loring Brace, Founder of the Children's
Aid Society, 188
The First Patriotic Election in the Beach Street Industrial
School--Parlor in John Ericsson's Old House, 201
The Board of Election Inspectors in the Beach Street School, 207
The Plumbing Shop in the New York Trade Schools, 212
A Boys' Club Reading room, 222
The Carpenter Shop in the Avenue C Working Boys' Club, 226
Type-setting at the Avenue C Working Boys' Club, 231
A Bout with the Gloves in the Boys' Club of Calvary Parish, 235
Lining up for the Gymnasium, 240
A Snug Corner on a Cold Night, 246
2 A.M. in the Delivery-room in the "Sun" Office, 261
Buffalo, 264
Night School in the West Side Lodging-house.--Edward, the
Little Pedlar, Caught Napping, 265
The "Soup-House Gang," Class in History in the Duane Street
Newsboy's Lodging-house, 269
THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR
CHAPTER I.
THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILDREN
The problem of the children is the problem of the State. As we mould the
children of the toiling masses in our cities, so we shape the destiny of
the State which they will rule in their turn, taking the reins from our
hands. In proportion as we neglect or pass them by, the blame for bad
government to come rests upon us. The cities long since held the balance
of power; their dominion will be absolute soon unless the near future
finds some way of scattering the population which the era of steam-power
and industrial development has crowded together in the great centres of
that energy. At the beginning of the century the urban population of the
United States was 3.97 per cent. of the whole, or not quite one in
twenty-five. To-day it is 29.12 per cent., or nearly one in three. In the
lifetime of those who were babies in arms when the first gun was fired
upon Fort Sumter it has all but doubled. A million and a quarter live
to-day in the tenements of the American metropolis. Clearly, there is
reason for the sharp attention given at last to the life and the doings of
the other half, too long unconsidered. Philanthropy we call it sometimes
with patronizing airs. Better call it self-defence.
In New York there is all the more reason because it is the open door
through which pours in a practically unrestricted immigration, unfamiliar
with and unattuned to our institutions; the dumping-ground where it rids
itself of its burden of helplessness and incapacity, leaving the
procession of the strong and the able free to move on. This sediment forms
the body of our poor, the contingent that lives, always from hand to
mouth, with no provision and no means of providing for the morrow. In the
first generation it pre-empts our slums;[1] in the second, its worst
elements, reinforced by the influences that prevail there, develop the
tough, who confronts society with the claim that the world owes him a
living and that he will collect it in his own way. His plan is a practical
application of the spirit of our free institutions as his opportunities
have enabled him to grasp it.
Thus it comes about that here in New York to seek the children of the poor
one must go among those who, if they did not themselves come over the sea,
can rarely count back another generation born on American soil. Not that
there is far to go. Any tenement district will furnish its own tribe, or
medley of many tribes. Nor is it by any means certain that the children
when found will own their alien descent. Indeed, as a preliminary to
gaining their confidence, to hint at such a thing would be a bad blunder.
The ragged Avenue B boy, whose father at his age had barely heard, in his
corner of the Fatherland, of America as a place where the streets were
paved with nuggets of gold and roast pigeons flew into mouths opening wide
with wonder, would, it is safe to bet, be as prompt to resent the
insinuation that he was a "Dutchman," as would the little "Mick" the
Teuton's sore taunt. Even the son of the immigrant Jew in his virtual
isolation strains impatiently at the fetters of race and faith, while the
Italian takes abuse philosophically only when in the minority and bides
his time until he too shall be able to prove his title by calling those
who came after him names. However, to quarrel with the one or the other on
that ground would be useless. It is the logic of the lad's evolution, the
way of patriotism in the slums. His sincerity need not be questioned.
Many other things about him may be, and justly are, but not that. It is
perfectly transparent. His badness is as spontaneous as his goodness, and
for the moment all there is of the child. Whichever streak happens to
prevail, it is in full possession; if the bad is on top more frequently
than the other, it is his misfortune rather than his design. He is as
ready to give his only cent to a hungrier boy than he if it is settled
that he can "lick" him, and that he is therefore not a rival, as he is to
join him in torturing an unoffending cat for the common cheer. The penny
and the cat, the charity and the cruelty, are both pregnant facts in the
life that surrounds him, and of which he is to be the coming exponent. In
after years, when he is arrested by the officers of the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for beating his horse, the episode adds
but to his confusion of mind in which a single impression stands out clear
and lasting, viz., that somehow he got the worst of it as usual. But for
the punishment, the whole proceeding must seem ludicrous to him. As it is
he submits without comprehending. _He_ had to take the hard knocks always;
why should not his horse?
In other words, the child is a creature of environment, of opportunity, as
children are everywhere. And the environment here has been bad, as it was
and is in the lands across the sea that sent him to us. Our slums have
fairly rivalled, and in some respects outdone, the older ones after which
they patterned. Still, there is a difference, the difference between the
old slum and the new. The hopelessness, the sullen submission of life in
East London as we have seen it portrayed, has no counterpart here; neither
has the child born in the gutter and predestined by the order of society,
from which there is no appeal, to die there. We have our Lost Tenth to
fill the trench in the Potter's Field; quite as many wrecks at the finish,
perhaps, but the start seems fairer in the promise. Even on the slums the
doctrine of liberty has set its stamp. To be sure, for the want of the
schooling to decipher it properly, they spell it license there, and the
slip makes trouble. The tough and his scheme of levying tribute are the
result. But the police settle that with him, and when it comes to a
choice, the tough is to be preferred to the born pauper any day. The one
has the making of something in him, unpromising as he looks; seen in a
certain light he may even be considered a hopeful symptom. The other is
just so much dead loss. The tough is not born: he is made. The
all-important point is the one at which the manufacture can be stopped.
So rapid and great are the changes in American cities, that no slum has
yet had a chance here to grow old enough to distil its deadliest poison.
New York has been no exception. But we cannot always go at so fast a
pace. There is evidence enough in the crystallization of the varying
elements of the population along certain lines, no longer as uncertain as
they were, that we are slowing up already. Any observer of the poor in
this city is familiar with the appearance among them of that most
distressing and most dangerous symptom, the home-feeling for the slum that
opposes all efforts at betterment with dull indifference. Pauperism seems
to have grown faster of late than even the efforts put forth to check it.
We have witnessed this past winter a dozen times the spectacle of beggars
extorting money by threats or violence without the excuse which a season
of exceptional distress or hardship might have furnished. Further, the
raid in the last Legislature upon the structure of law built up in a
generation to regulate and keep the tenements within safe limits, shows
that fresh danger threatens in the alliance of the slum with politics.
Only the strongest public sentiment, kept always up to the point of prompt
action, avails to ward off this peril. But public sentiment soon wearies
of such watch-duty, as instanced on this occasion, when several bills
radically remodelling the tenement-house law and repealing some of its
most beneficent provisions, had passed both houses and were in the hands
of the Governor before a voice was raised against them, or anyone beside
the politicians and their backers seemed even to have heard of them. And
this hardly five years after a special commission of distinguished
citizens had sat an entire winter under authority of the State considering
the tenement-house problem, and as the result of its labors had secured as
vital the enactment of the very law against which the raid seemed to be
chiefly directed!
The tenement and the saloon, with the street that does not always divide
them, form the environment that is to make or unmake the child. The
influence of each of the three is bad. Together they have power to
overcome the strongest resistance. But the child born under their evil
spell has none such to offer. The testimony of all to whom has fallen the
task of undoing as much of the harm done by them as may be, from the
priest of the parish school to the chaplain of the penitentiary, agrees
upon this point, that even the tough, with all his desperation, is weak
rather than vicious. He promises well, he even means well; he is as
downright sincere in his repentance as he was in his wrong-doing; but it
doesn't prevent him from doing the very same evil deed over again the
minute he is rid of restraint. He would rather be a saint than a sinner;
but somehow he doesn't keep in the _role_ of saint, while the police help
perpetuate the memory of his wickedness. After all, he is not so very
different from the rest of us. Perhaps that, with a remorseful review of
the chances he has had, may help to make a fellow-feeling for him in us.
That is what he needs. The facts clearly indicate that from the
environment little improvement in the child is to be expected. There has
been progress in the way of building the tenements of late years, but they
swarm with greater crowds than ever--good reason why they challenge the
pernicious activity of the politician; and the old rookeries disappear
slowly. In the relation of the saloon to the child there has been no
visible improvement, and the street is still his refuge. It is, then, his
opportunities outside that must be improved if relief is to come. We have
the choice of hailing him man and brother or of being slugged and robbed
by him. It ought not to be a hard choice, despite the tatters and the
dirt, for which our past neglect is in great part to blame. Plenty of
evidence will be found in these pages to show that it has been made in the
right spirit already, and that it has proved a wise choice. No investment
gives a better return to-day on the capital put out than work among the
children of the poor.
A single fact will show what is meant by that. Within the lifetime of the
Children's Aid Society, in the thirty years between 1860 and 1890, while
the population of this city was doubled, the commitments of girls and
women for vagrancy fell off from 5,880 to 1,980, while the commitments of
girl thieves fell between 1865 and 1890 from 1 in 743 to 1 in 7,500.[2]
Stealing and vagrancy among boys has decreased too; if not so fast, yet at
a gratifying rate.
Enough has been written and said about the children of the poor and their
sufferings to make many a bigger book than this. From some of it one might
almost be led to believe that one-half of the children are worked like
slaves from toddling infancy, while the other half wander homeless and
helpless about the streets. Their miseries are great enough without
inventing any that do not exist. There is no such host of child outcasts
in New York as that. Thanks to the unwearied efforts of the children's
societies in the last generation, what there is is decreasing, if
anything. As for the little toilers, they will receive attention further
on. There are enough of them, but as a whole they are anything but a
repining lot. They suffer less, to their own knowledge, from their
wretched life than the community suffers for letting them live it, though
it, too, sees the truth but in glimpses. If the question were put to a
vote of the children to-morrow, whether they would take the old life with
its drawbacks, its occasional starvation, and its everyday kicks and hard
knocks; or the good clothes, the plentiful grub, and warm bed, with all
the restraints of civilized society and the "Sunday-school racket" of the
other boy thrown in, I have as little doubt that the street would carry
the day by a practically unanimous vote as I have that there are people
still to be found--too many of them--who would indorse the choice with a
sigh of relief and dismiss the subject, if it could be dismissed that way;
which, happily, it cannot.
The immediate duty which the community has to perform for its own
protection is to school the children first of all into good Americans, and
next into useful citizens. As a community it has not attended to this duty
as it should; but private effort has stepped in and is making up for its
neglect with encouraging success. The outlook that was gloomy from the
point of view of the tenement, brightens when seen from this angle,
however toilsome the road yet ahead. The inpouring of alien races no
longer darkens it. The problems that seemed so perplexing in the light of
freshly-formed prejudices against this or that immigrant, yield to this
simple solution 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 social
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. And in the general advance the children, thus firmly
grasped, are seen to be a powerful moving force. 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 wife nor children to
push him ahead. He left them behind that he might not become an American,
and by the standard he himself set up he has been judged.