During the ten years which ended with 1889, the great metropolis of
the western continent added to the assessed valuation of its taxable
property almost half a billion dollars.
In all other essential respects save one, the decade was a period of
retrogression for New York City. Crime, pauperism, insanity, and
suicide increased; repression by brute force personified in an armed
police was fostered, while the education of the children of the masses
ebbed lower and lower. The standing army of the homeless swelled to
twelve thousand nightly lodgers in a single precinct, and forty
thousand children were forced to toil for scanty bread.
Prostitution, legalized in the purchase of besmirched foreign titles
and forced upon the attention of youth in the corrupting annals of the
daily press, was flaunted publicly as never before. Scientists
competed for the infamous distinction of inventing appliances for
murder by electricity, while in the domain of politics the sale of
votes in the closing years of the decade was more notorious than at
any period of the city's history. In a society in which all things are
commodities to be had for money, the labor power of stalwart men and
tiny children, the innocence of delicately cherished girlhood, the
marriage tie, the virtue of the servant, and the manhood of the
statesman, it is eminently fitting that the record of progress should
be kept officially in dollars and cents.
This is done in all our communities in the report of the disbursing
officer who is known in New York City under the title of the
Comptroller. His report shows what money the city spends, the sources
from which it is derived, and the purposes for which it is used. The
following data taken from statement "G" of his report for '89, may be
readily verified, and will prove, upon examination of the original, to
be but few among many conspicuous indications of retrogression.
Expressed in dollars and cents, then, the growth of pauperism and
crime was such in the decade which began with 1880, that we now spend
more than a million each year in excess of the sum spent then for the
same purposes. If we have grown in population so rapidly that the
percentages remain unchanged, the fact cannot be ascertained for want
of data. Nor is it important. The weighty fact is this, that pauperism
and crime have gained upon us. Riches are greater and poverty is
greater.
The moral and social retrogression indicated in this item of the
Comptroller's report is thrown into bold relief by another item, the
expenditures for schools. While the paupers and criminals have grown
upon us by an annual expenditure of more than a million in excess of
the sum needed in 1879, the school children's share of the public
funds has grown by less than a million in excess of the requirements
of 1879.
More shameful still is this retrogression when the item of police
expenditure is considered, for this exceeds outright the appropriation
for the Department of Education, and has grown more rapidly than the
expenditure for schools. It appears that, under existing conditions,
when property appreciates half a billion in value, it is necessary to
have four and one half millions' worth of police to watch over and
protect the half-billions' increase in assessed value from the ravages
of our paupers and criminals.
It seems also that in 1879 our police cost less than our schools,
while they now cost more. The problem assumes a still greater aspect
when the expenditure for paupers, criminals, and police are taken
together, for it then appears that they cost nearly twice as much as
the schools.
Thus the community is clearly moving in the direction of more
demoralized masses of population kept in check by the brute force of
an armed police, since each year the excess grows which is spent for
paupers, criminals, and police over the expenditure for education.
One retrogressive influence fails to find positive official
expression, and is, therefore, the more worthy of notice. This is the
collusion among officials to reduce primary school attendance. The
Board of Estimate and Apportionment never approves the full
appropriation made for the schools. The Board of Education strives to
live well within the sum allowed it, and crowds the greatest possible
number of children upon each teacher, the regular enrolment being
seventy primary pupils per teacher. Then to parry the charge of
over-filling schoolrooms, it becomes the duty of the principal to
reduce the enrolment per schoolhouse to the lowest point. Therefore,
when a zealous Sunday-school teacher finds that one of her little
charges has gone to work under age, the offices of the city's solitary
factory inspector being out of the question, she hunts up a truant
officer, who takes the child before a magistrate, who, in view of the
want of school accommodations, promptly discharges the truant. Behind
our local municipal administration lies our whole system of
capitalistic production, calling for cheap hands and profit, not
humane culture. And the school authorities do but seek to supply the
demand of that system for lads who can read the papers enough to vote
with the machine, and write and cipher enough to be available as
clerks.
Everything beyond this being unprofitable, the great mass of our city
children are turned out of school at the ages of ten, eleven, and
twelve years, to furnish "cheap" hands for industrial purposes.
The Comptroller's report is substantiated, moreover, by the concurrent
testimony of the State Superintendent of Education, who laments
that:--[14]
[14] Report State Superintendent of Education. Report 1888,
p. 12.
"There is a large, uneducated class in the State, and our
statistics show that it is growing larger. The attendance
upon the schools has not kept pace with the advance of
population. Recent legislation forbids the employment of
children under thirteen years of age in any manufacturing
establishment, but no adequate provision is made for
gathering them into schools, and the number in the streets
grows more rapidly than the number in the schools. Indeed,
nothing practical has ever been done in this State by way of
compelling attendance upon the schools. The result is sadly
apparent and the premonitions are full of warning."