THE HEART OF THE JUNGLE
The tenements of New York City! The change that I made—working with
tenement-dwellers and living in rooming-houses to working in and living
in the tenements—was like that experienced by a hunter when stepping
from the outskirts to the depths of a jungle—a jungle abounding in
treacherous quicksands and infested by the most venomous and noisome
creatures of the animal kingdom—a swamp in which any misstep may plunge
you into the choking depths of a quagmire or the coils of a slimy
reptile.
But there are two great differences between the jungles of civilization
and those created by nature. In nature’s works there is always
beauty—however noxious the creature, however venomous the reptile, there
is always beauty. The tenements of New York City are monstrously
hideous.
In nature’s jungles the evolution is always upward from protoplasm to
that most perfect of animals—man made in the image of his Maker. In the
jungles of civilization the evolution is always downward—from man to
beast, to reptile, and to that most noisome of living creatures, the
human worm.
In the tenements of New York City we see the forced decivilization of
representatives of all the civilized peoples. In it there exist
thousands more afflicted than Lazarus, thousands possessed of more
devils than the Master cast out of the man of Gadarenes, thousands in
whom the light of human intelligence will never even flicker. It is the
greatest of all earthly hells. It is the product of human greed.
Comparing New York City to a jungle—the gilded zone of Fifth and Park
Avenues are the tall timbers, the grove of leisure and pleasure wherein
the human animal having all that nature and civilization can supply is
supposed to grow to perfection—the superman. Leaving this zone, going
east or west, with every step leisure and pleasure grow rapidly less,
farther and farther behind do we leave fresh air and sunshine, and all
that makes life desirable.
I entered the tenements by two routes—as a social worker attached to
Bellevue Hospital, and as a license inspector for the American Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Polly Preston entered by yet
another route—as a fugitive.
Even to-day as I write, with more than a thousand miles between me and
New York City, I recall my work in the tenements as a social worker with
a shiver. Social work is dispensing as charity that which should have
been paid as wages. Had the wage been paid there would have been no
rickety baby, no tubercular manhood and womanhood, no need for homes for
incurables. It is underpaying that drives persons to live in the
tenements, it is ill health or ignorance that keeps them there.
Possessing neither the blasphemous conceit formerly professed by Wilhelm
Hohenzollern nor the sublime faith of the Pope, I did not enjoy acting
as the personal representative of God Almighty. It used to make me sick
as with nausea, more than once I was near to wringing my hands.
Who was I that honest, hard-working men and women should cringe before
me?—poor overworked, underfed human beings who from their birth to their
death never lost consciousness of the snarling presence of that
hell-hound Poverty.
It was in my power to see that a quart of milk was delivered daily for
Baby—real bottled grade A milk with all the cream in it. Johnnie was
kept home for lack of shoes, and his father having been in the hospital
going on five weeks, and his mother’s wages as scrubwoman only enough to
buy food, there was no hope of his getting a pair unless—yes, I had the
power to get for him a better pair than possessed by any boy on the
Avenue. Wonderful lady! So all-powerful.
“Johnnie, bring a chair for the lady. Let ’er see what nice manners
you’ve got.” And Johnnie, tripping over his own feet incased in a pair
of men’s shoes past mending and too broken for his father to wear, drags
forward the only whole chair in the flat.
Another typical case was that of Mary Kane. The tenement in which I
found her was like ninety-nine out of every hundred in New York City.
Dark halls with crooked stairs and air foul for lack of ventilation and
over-crowding.
“Stop cryin’, Mamie. Here’s a lady from Bellevue. Maybe she can get you
to go to the country.” And her mother, haggard and overworked to the
point of desperation, turns to me with a wan smile which, in her effort
to make it gracious, becomes a ghastly grin.
When I reply that it is because the society sending convalescing
children to the country had reported that Mary had not used the card
entitling her to two weeks in their home that I have called, her grin
becomes that of a beaten dog. Again it is lack of shoes and a few
clothes. In this case the husband and father is not in Bellevue. He had
stopped in the corner saloon on his way home with his wages.
Mary has a tendency to T. B. To spin her life out even a few months will
require plenty of fresh air and the right kind of food.
Hospital social service is to supplement the work of the doctors and
nurses of that particular hospital. Fortunately, Mary has been in
Bellevue. I took her size and the number of her shoes, and promised to
get them along with another card entitling her to another two weeks in
the country.
Time passes and again we are notified that Mary has not used her card.
On my return to the tenement practically the same scene confronted me.
Only this time the mother had a black eye, the baby tugging at her
breast was whimpering, and Mary seated near a window, the only window in
the flat from which a glimpse of the sky may be had, looked more like a
ghost than a living child.
Before I was well in the door the mother hustled me back again into the
hall. In a neighbor’s flat, a trifle lighter than her own because there
were two windows in the front room opening on the street, she started to
tell me her story. Because I had known many tenement wives and mothers I
recognized that she was lying and stopped her.
“Who was that snoring in your back room?” I asked her. And fact by fact
I draw the story from her.
The husband and father of the family had stolen the shoes and clothes
sent for Mary, had sold them and gotten drunk on the proceeds. So drunk
that— Oh, she didn’t mind a black eye so much, she assured me. He didn’t
really mean it, being a good man when not in liquor. What she regretted
was that he had missed two days at work.
Then with a grin like a cringing beaten dog she admitted that since
Saturday noon she and Mary had lived on tea, without either milk or
sugar, and part of a loaf of bread given her by a neighbor. To-morrow?
Maybe by to-morrow her husband would be sober enough to return to his
job.
Then came that terrible look—the look that made me want to wring my
hands, to get off the earth, had such been possible. The look of a
cringing human soul pleading to the All-Powerful for something dearer
than life—to give Mary another chance.
A succession of such scenes is what entering the tenements as a social
worker means. One sees only the abnormal, hears only the groans of the
suffering, and of the misdeeds of the criminals.
Entering the tenements as an inspector of dog licenses for the A. S. P.
C. A. brought me face to face with normal conditions—the well and the
sick, the innocent and the criminal, the devils and the angels. I met
them all, and so far as my time permitted I tried to get the point of
view of each individual.
Hardest of all, I tried to get the point of view of the owners of
tenement-houses—the originator or the perpetuator of the greatest of
earthly hells. After working among and living in the property of the
tenement-house owners for twenty-one months I believe that I succeeded.
GET MONEY—IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE BY WHAT MEANS, GET MONEY—is the point
of view of the owners of tenement-house property in New York City.
They have no civic pride, no pride of race, no feeling of brotherhood.
Greed, that’s all, GREED. Never do they consider the health or good name
of the city, or the health or comfort of their tenants. It is get money,
and more money.
Like the idle married woman, they are a curse, a mildew, sapping the
very life-blood of those whose welfare and comfort should be their first
aim.
Poverty of itself is not degrading. It is the filthy dens in which the
poor of New York are forced to live that decivilizes them, converting
human beings into beasts and reptiles. I do not believe that Abraham
Lincoln himself could have risen above a childhood passed in the average
New York tenement.
It is not the location, for the tenements among which I worked occupy
the healthiest and most convenient portions of Manhattan Island. It is
the landlord—the eternal drive of the house-owner for money, and more
money. I have talked with hundreds of them, and found but one exception.
That one was a stable-keeper, whose tenement-houses are situated in the
lower gas-house district, and about whom I shall write farther on.
My remedy for tenement-house conditions is to make the owners live in
them for twelve successive months. Force every tenement-owner to live
with his or her family in the house that belongs to him or her, to pass
one winter and one summer. What a cleaning up and tearing down there
would be.
When that happens the police force of New York can be cut down to half,
and the Health Department can go out of business. Neither the police nor
the workers of the Health Department will have to do without city jobs.
There will be room in the Department of Street-Cleaning. Then the
cleaning will begin in those sections containing the greatest number of
inhabitants, not in those having the most expensive property.