One morning at breakfast, as we were sipping our chocolate, Mildred
cried out, “Oh, Ruby, I forgot to tell you! I am going to have a
symposium here to-night.”
“A symposium!—of whom? and what is it all to be about? Let me hear your
latest scheme,” I queried, laying down my black Hamburgs and looking up
at her. Her face was very bright and animated, and the scheme, whatever
it was, evidently interested her considerably.
Mildred leaned back in her chair and twirled the beautiful ruby ring
which she always wore. This ring had been her sister’s, and was an
heirloom; she rarely wore any other jewels, and when she was preoccupied
she had a habit of turning it round and round on her finger.
“I mean,” said Mildred, “to get together all the wisdom on the tenement
house question that is available in New York and Brooklyn, and see what
the consensus of opinion is; and I am going to have my amanuensis take
notes for future reference. You know I have some coöperative theories of
my own in regard to the matter, and I wish to ascertain what these
practical workers think of them.”
“Whom have you invited?” I inquired, beginning to be interested.
“Oh, Professor Felix Adler, for one. He built those tenements that we
saw the other day down on Cherry Street, you remember, and he is also
very much interested in manual training. Then there is Mr. Pratt, who
founded that great Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, with all kinds of
industrial training and a free library and reading-room. Then—let me
see—I have invited Mr. Barnard of the Five Points House of Industry,
Mrs. Alice Wellington Rollins, who wrote ‘Uncle Tom’s Tenement,’ Mr.
Charles L. Brace of the Children’s Aid Society, most of the agents of
the model tenement houses that I have visited, several of the lady
visitors in the charity organizations, and one or two architects.”
As it proved, however, not all who were invited came, but there were
enough to comfortably fill our pretty parlor. There were Jews and
Gentiles, radicals and high-churchmen, all interested in the same
subject, and many of them meeting each other for the first time.
Mildred had chocolate and cakes and fruit served, and then proceeded to
business in the dignified, quiet way which so well became her.
“I have asked you here this evening,” she said, “that I may get the
benefit of your united wisdom and experience. I seek enlightenment as to
the best way to solve the problem of the housing of the poor in a great
city. I wish to do something to make the conditions of existence a
little more bearable for some of the wretched creatures that I have been
seeing of late in such places as the Mulberry Street Bend, on Hester,
Forsyth, and Cherry streets, and a hundred other places.
“For some years, in connection with the Associated Charity work of
Boston, I have visited poor families in the alleys of North Street, and
have made myself somewhat familiar with the problems that are besetting
us in the herding together of enormous numbers of people under
conditions that, I think I am safe in saying, never before existed. What
little I have seen in other cities is as nothing to what I find here.
And it is here in New York, where I am told you have the most thickly
populated square mile on the globe, and where the dregs from Castle
Garden remain, that I propose to do something.
“As I have been about with your district visitors and have picked my way
among the garbage barrels and swarming mass of humanity in the Jewish
quarter, on their market day, I have wondered how it was possible for
morality to exist in the close personal contact and absolute want of
privacy which this lack of space necessitates. Now, tell me, what is to
be done to relieve this condition of things and permit those little
_gamins_ to grow up decent American citizens? Are things worse or are
they better than they used to be? I hear that a mint of money is spent
in charity, but I hear also that in the past one of the greatest causes
of pauperism has been found to be unwise philanthropy, and the more I
look into the question the more perplexed and uncertain I find myself.
“What does your experience suggest?” asked Mildred, turning with one of
her winning smiles to a cheery-faced lady of perhaps fifty years of age,
who sat at her right.
“That is a pretty hard question to answer,” was the reply. “I’ve been at
work for twenty-five years down on the East side near the river, and I
am free to say that I don’t see much improvement. Of course, things are
better in some ways; there is better sanitary inspection than there used
to be, and need enough there is of it too, with these filthy Italians
and Polish Jews who are pouring in here every week by the thousands. I
must say I haven’t much hope of them.”
“Yes, of course; but haven’t you hope of the children?” inquired
Mildred, eagerly.
“Yes, a little more hope for them, certainly,” responded the lady
somewhat dubiously, with a sigh that contrasted strangely with her
bright, hopeful face; “but I must say frankly, that the more I see of
the poor, the more hopeless I sometimes feel and the less able to make
generalizations and give advice. I used to think it a comparatively
simple thing, requiring merely money and hard work. Ten years ago I
could have given you advice very glibly, but I don’t feel so sure about
anything now; there are so many sides to everything, and so many
exceptions to every rule.
“Of course, good tenement houses are a great thing, provided you can
have a janitor and a housekeeper to keep them in order. But the best
model tenement house in the world would be completely ruined if entirely
given over to the class of tenants I know about. They will just as
likely as not throw their ashes and garbage down the waste-pipes, and
pile all their bedding out on the fire-escapes, blocking them up so as
to make them almost useless in case of a fire. It requires the patience
of Job to deal with such people. They don’t care for your new
improvements, and they don’t propose to be restrained by any regulations
or rules.
“As for the model tenement houses that we have, doubtless they are
excellent. But they don’t as a general thing reach the lowest class of
people, and in any event they are a mere drop in the bucket. There’s
just one consolation about it all, as I say to myself when I go
about,—these people have never been used to anything better, and they
don’t know how miserable they are.”
“That is just what I think is the worst of it,” said Mrs. Rollins, as
the speaker paused. “The fact that they don’t know anything better,
don’t expect anything better, don’t want anything better, is the
frightful thing about it. As to whether things are getting better or not
I can’t say, but I know this, the tenement house has come to stay; it
cannot be eliminated from the modern problem of living. Thousands of our
well-to-do people are living in flats and suites simply to avoid the
burden and expense of having to entertain so much company, and these
buildings, like the Spanish flats or the Dacotah, are really only
another kind of tenement house. As I say, the tenement house has come to
stay. Separate houses for separate families are going to be fewer and
fewer in our large cities, where land is becoming more and more
valuable. The thing that remains for us to do is to build with more
skill and wisdom, so that while the separate house must more and more
give way, the home need not be sacrificed.”
“Miss Brewster,” said a gray-bearded man whose name I did not learn, “as
to the question whether the charities and sanitary improvements of the
city have amounted to anything in the last twenty-five years, it seems
to me it is not well for us to rely wholly on personal impressions.
There are figures at command which can abundantly show that in two
respects at least—the lessening of the rates of mortality and the
reduction of arrests for crime—we have made an immense advance on
twenty-five years ago, in spite of the fact that the population has
nearly doubled. Permit me to state a few facts.”
“Good; this is just what I want,” said Mildred with keen attention.
He continued: “In 1864, when the sanitary examination of the city was
made, some wards were found to be peopled at the rate of 290,000 persons
to the square mile, while in the most densely populated part of London
the number was less than 176,000 to the square mile. To show what
sanitary regulations will do, let me say that the number of deaths in
London previous to a good sanitary government was one in twenty, and in
New York one in thirty-five, while after such regulations the number in
London was reduced to one in forty-five, and in New York to one in
thirty-eight and a half.
“We think our tenement houses now are bad enough, but let me read you a
report of the condition of things in 1866. ‘At this time the cities of
New York and Brooklyn were filled with nuisances, many of them of years’
duration. The streets were uncleaned; manure heaps, containing thousands
of tons, occupied piers and vacant lots; sewers were obstructed; houses
were crowded and badly ventilated and lighted; stables and yards were
filled with stagnant water, and many dark and damp cellars were
inhabited. The streets were obstructed, and the wharves and piers were
filthy and dangerous from dilapidation. Cattle were driven through the
streets at all hours of the day in large numbers. Slaughter houses were
open to the streets, and were offensive from the accumulated offal and
blood, or filled the sewers with decomposing animal matter. Gas
companies, shell-burners, and fat-boilers pursued their occupations
without regard to the public health or comfort, filling the air with
disgusting odors; and roaming swine were the principal scavengers of the
streets and gutters!’
“Moreover,” the gentleman continued, “owing to the general indifference
and ignorance concerning sanitary construction of houses, tenement
houses used often to be found having on one floor ten or twelve interior
rooms, with no means of ventilation or light except through other rooms;
and at night, when these rooms were occupied and the doors closed, one
may imagine the amount of poison which each person was compelled to
breathe. Now, all that has been remedied to a great extent. No such
houses are allowed to be built, and in lodging-houses there is a
wholesome regulation as to the number of cubic feet of air-space allowed
to each individual. Sanitary inspection is conducted by competent
officials at regular intervals. The public conscience has been aroused
in this matter.
“As I look back thirty-five years, I find that among the better class of
people there is far more fastidiousness in regard to all matters of
personal cleanliness than there used to be. There are more bathing
facilities, a greater delicacy in manners at table, a greater tendency
to isolation and privacy in personal matters of the toilet, and so
forth, and therefore among every class of people a better sentiment in
regard to the enforcement of sanitary regulations than there used to be
when I was a boy. But those who are helping these things, although many
absolutely, are relatively pitifully few. Yet no one who knows the
condition of affairs twenty years ago can question that an advance has
been made. We are learning to organize charity better, we are spending
our efforts in more profitable directions, and we are training our
public not to increase pauperism by the old-fashioned, pernicious
methods of indiscriminate giving. In regard to the lessening of juvenile
crime I think Mr. Brace can give the most valuable opinion of any one
present.”
All eyes were turned to Mr. Brace, and there was a hearty hand-clapping
as he prepared to speak.
“Since 1852,” he said, “the society which I represent has been doing its
best to rescue the little wanderers of this city from lives of suffering
and degradation. The value of its work is too well known for me to
enlarge upon it. We are met here this evening to discuss tenement
houses, and I will therefore take the time to make only two or three
statements in reply to Miss Brewster’s inquiry as to whether the morals
of the community have improved, and whether charitable and reformatory
work is of much value. Now, in spite of the fact that the overcrowding
in the poor quarters is greater than ever, that the lowest of the
European population are pouring into our city to an alarming extent,
that our municipal government has often been notoriously corrupt, in
spite of all this, I say, by means of the efforts which have been put
forth, there has been a steady and most satisfactory decrease in crime
during all these years. Allow me to give you a few figures. In 1859
there were more than five thousand five hundred commitments for female
vagrancy, and in 1886, notwithstanding the general increase in
population, there were less than two thousand five hundred commitments
for the same cause. In the eleven years preceding 1886, the decrease in
arrests for drunkenness among males was just about fifty per cent. I
will hand you a table, Miss Brewster, giving you the report of juvenile
crimes since 1875, and also the Police record containing the general
report for the city, the details of which you can read at your leisure.
I will simply say now that the net summing up of these reports shows a
remarkable decrease in crime of all sorts of twelve and a half per cent.
This, I think, will answer your question as to whether, on the whole,
our city is any better.”
“There is another thing to be noticed,” said a little lady over in the
corner. “People of all classes think more of going into the country and
getting fresh air than they used to. Thousands of families who thirty
years ago would not have spent two or three weeks in the year out of the
city now think they must have two months at least. They have come to
consider this a necessity for themselves, and it makes them through
sympathy appreciate a little the needs of the very poor during the
fierce summer heat. The lovely charities of the Flower Mission, Country
Week, and the harbor excursions have grown out of this sympathy for
others.
“I, for one, think that the world is far more kind and sympathetic than
it used to be, in all sorts of little ways, as is shown by the
multiplication of such societies as the ‘King’s Daughters’ and ‘Lend a
Hand’ clubs, by the increased tenderness with children, and prevention
of cruelty to animals. I don’t mean to say that people are much happier,
for they have a higher standard and are less content with objectionable
things than they used to be when I was a child forty years ago. But I
for one do not decry that kind of discontent with existing bad
circumstances. To me it seems to be only the precursor of reform. I do
not believe in encouraging the poor to be content with their lot. I
think, with Mrs. Rollins, that the worst thing possible is this fearful
apathy toward bad surroundings, of which one sees so much among our low
foreigners. The first thing to do in Americanizing them is to make them
discontented with living like the brutes.”
“And what is the first step in that direction?” inquired Mildred,
thoughtfully. “Is it more legislation to regulate and limit this fearful
inflow of more people than we are able to cope with; or is it a large
concerted movement of capitalists to provide better tenements? Or is it
education and Christianization?”
“As I hold, it is each and all of these,” said a blond-haired, keen-eyed
young man in the back part of the room, rising as he spoke and leaning
against the mantel. He spoke in a clear, crisp way which was pleasant to
hear.
“Legislation is needed, after we first enforce the laws which we already
have; but it would hardly be worth while to petition for new ones when
we can make the old but little more than a dead letter. At present no
foreigner can be allowed by law to land who has not money enough to
support himself for a year; and yet how often is this law enforced? No;
as long as the pressure of taxation and the burden of a great standing
army exists in every country in Europe, as long as our unchristian
tariff prevents the natural inflow of foreign products and grinds down
the laborers of the old world, so long shall we be compelled to face
this problem of Americanizing two thirds of the population of our great
cities. We here in New York live in a foreign city. There are less than
fifteen per cent. of us whose parents were born in this country and bred
in its political, religious, and social traditions. One doesn’t realize
this in walking down Broadway or Fifth Avenue; but in some parts of the
city where most people do not often go, one would think himself in
Germany, or Italy, or Poland.
“Now, you ask what is the first step toward Americanizing this foreign
element. _I_ say, education, Christianity, and better living. There
isn’t much use in trying to teach children when their stomachs are
empty; there is not much use in goody-goody Sunday-school talk without
the discipline in cleanliness, order, and industry which the day school
alone can compel; neither is there much use in giving these people
palaces to live in and supplying them with comforts and conveniences,
unless at the same time you bring some moral power to bear upon them,
while also helping them to a pretty good acquaintance with the three
R’s. You see, it works both ways. Clean and wholesome physical
surroundings create an opportunity for mental and spiritual growth, and
without the latter the former would not be appreciated or preserved.”
“I quite agree with the last speaker,” said Professor Adler in his mild,
quiet way, contrasting with the briskness of the blond young man whose
common-sense talk had pleased us. “The supply of pure air, sanitary
regulations, and decent comforts must be the primary object of the
philanthropist who would solve the problem of the housing of the poor;
but it will avail little, unless it is invariably accompanied by
constant supervision, helpfulness, and sympathy. Every tenement house
should have a responsible resident agent,—not a mere perfunctory person
who shall issue orders and collect the rent, but one who in case of
sickness or trouble can give advice and help, and by living constantly
in friendly relations with tenants can initiate reforms in a wise way.
The stubbornness and conservatism of the ignorant in opposing what is
for their real good is one of the most surprising things we have to
contend with. One would think, for instance, that a coöperative grocery
store, situated in a tenement house, and giving good quality at as
reasonable prices as could be obtained elsewhere, would be an inducement
to the average tenant to buy. But so great is the suspicion that we are
trying to take advantage of them in some way, that they will often
prefer to go farther and pay more, simply to assert their independence.”
“Do they take kindly to free kindergartens?” inquired Mildred.
“Yes, when they come to understand them; but the announcement of a
kindergarten, free reading-room, and bath-rooms in connection with a new
tenement house rarely offers much inducement to the average laborer
looking for rooms. But a large room which can be used in the morning for
kindergarten purposes, and at other times for a gathering place for
clubs and singing-classes, is an invaluable thing in every large
tenement house. This gives a foothold for all kinds of work to be
conducted by young gentlemen and ladies who desire to uplift the youth
of these neighborhoods. Gymnastic classes and glee clubs form a sort of
neutral ground where all may meet on a common level, and where the
refinement, intelligence, and good breeding of those who are willing to
give their services once or twice a week will soon make itself felt. It
is not necessary that they should directly teach or preach; but if they
are well-bred, kind-hearted people, they will by their mere tones of
voice and their method of managing things exert a subtle influence which
in tune will give them the power to go further and attempt other things.
“The quickest way to Americanize an ignorant foreigner is to give him
frequent object lessons in the shape of the best type of American
citizen.”
“I think I understand you,” said Mildred, “and it is what I myself
thoroughly believe. The model tenement house question is not merely a
question of brick and stone, ventilation, bath-rooms, and four per
cent.; it is a question largely of providing the best means for
uplifting spiritually, mentally, and physically these swarming masses.
Speaking of four per cent., let me inquire whether tenement houses can
be considered a good money investment. Not that I, personally, am
anxious to make money out of them; but I suppose it goes without saying
that anything like this which does not pay a fair percentage, and is
really a charity, in the end tends to pauperize and is pernicious.”
“Certainly,” replied Professor Adler; “and not only that, but most of
the poor are too proud to accept charity in that form, though,
inconsistently enough, they may be quite ready to accept it in other
ways. But anything which savors of an institution or charity, and that
puts them under obligations, is sure to fail. On the other hand, to hold
out to capitalists the idea that they had better put their money into
tenement houses because it is a good investment is something I do not
like to do. A man who wishes simply to make money would tell me that he
knows far better methods than mine, and would consider my advice an
impertinence. But every man, no matter how much of an egotist he may be,
likes to be thought unselfish, and if I can tell him that here is a
means of doing great good while at the same time he loses no money, then
he may listen to me. Money wisely put into tenements can provide for the
tenant far more advantages than he usually has; it can give light, air,
cleanliness, many conveniences in common with others, and yield to the
landlord four per cent. besides. Some good tenements pay six per cent.,
but this is perhaps at a sacrifice of conveniences to the tenant, or is
due to some special reasons. However, as the security of the investment
is so great, four per cent. may be considered fair interest.”
“Good; now as to the details,” said Mildred in her practical way. “I
want to tell you my scheme, and then let you criticise it to the utmost.
I suppose I was born with a bump for economy; at all events, nothing
tries me more than the excessive waste which I have seen around me all
my life. I don’t mean merely waste of money, but waste of time, waste of
energy and effort in every direction. Of course there is less of the
latter here than in the old world, for here Yankee ingenuity does not
have so hard a fight with prejudice, and every inventor of a
labor-saving machine is crowned with honor. Still, there is a terrible
amount of waste, especially in women’s work. I will not stop to speak of
all phases of it; but as I have observed men and women for years, and
have seen the suffering from needless backaches caused by climbing
stairs and doing housework in an unnecessarily hard way, as I have seen
the complexity and endless details of our modern life crowd out, in the
lives of all but the rich, the leisure which their children should have,
and which they need for their own self-development, I have racked my
brains to see what could be done to simplify the petty details of modern
housekeeping.
“I believe that we are on the verge of a new era in this respect. The
prejudices of centuries must give way to the new requirements of a
civilization which will more and more create an urban population, and
also a higher standard of physical comfort. Now in this, time, strength,
and money must be better conserved, or we shall, as a nation, have
nervous prostration, I fear.
“My only solution for this, or for a part of it at least, seems to me
coöperation, so that all shall get the greatest return for the least
outlay. I don’t mean for a moment that I believe hotel life or
boarding-house life to be the life of the family of the future. Heaven
forbid! That the privacy and seclusion of the individual and family
should be preserved is imperative. The home is the first consideration.
But that one’s food should be cooked, or one’s clothes made or washed,
inside the rooms occupied by the family, seems to me no essential
feature of the home, and I am convinced that where prejudice can be
removed, a great gain would be made by eliminating the first and last,
at least from the home of the city poor.
“In regard to the value of a common laundry with set tubs, I think most
of you have found them successful. I have found only one person-an
attendant in the beautiful Astral flats of Green Point—who told me that
they were considered undesirable, as tending to encourage gossip and
quarreling. Now the dwellings which I mean to build are intended for a
lower class of people than any whom I have hitherto found occupying
model tenement houses. In those on Seventy-second Street, I was told
there were many mechanics earning three to four dollars a day. Such
people are not what I call poor, and I design my houses for people who
earn, at most, only half of that. I want to give them the greatest
possible return for their money, and at the same time make a fair per
cent. on the capital invested. The income thus derived I shall devote to
the erection of more houses.
“I propose to make the buildings fairly fireproof, with iron staircases
and stone-paved halls. The interior walls will be of painted brick. Upon
the top of the house I propose to have a well-fenced, well-paved
playground, believing that the roof space which is so rarely utilized in
our great cities may be made of great service in this way. In most of
the tenement houses I find that the roof is not allowed to be used for
anything but drying clothes, the owners not caring to go to the extra
expense necessary to make it a perfectly safe place for children. But,
if it is all planned in the beginning, the expense will be comparatively
slight, and the open space thus provided will afford better air than any
interior court, and be, both physically and morally, a far safer place
than the street. By a simple arrangement of pulleys the drying clothes
can be elevated between strong, high posts quite above the heads of the
children, so that their play need not be interrupted. A stout wire
netting can be arranged to keep the clothes from blowing away.
“On the upper floor of the house I shall have several store-rooms
adjoining a freight elevator and a kitchen. This will be connected with
every floor of the house by speaking-tubes and dumb-waiters, so that
meals can be cooked here for the whole number of tenants and delivered
hot when ordered. The charge will be simply for the cost of preparing
the food itself and the fuel; and as everything will be bought by the
quantity, the expense for each individual will be moderate. I believe
that thus, with proper arrangements, and suiting the food to the tastes
of the occupants, the whole question of the food supply may be solved,
and three women do the work of a hundred. How does this feature of the
house impress you?”
As Mildred paused, three voices exclaimed in chorus,—
“It would never work in the world!” “Perfectly impracticable!” “They
would not like it at all!”
“Why not?” asked Mildred.
“Well, first of all,” said a man who proved to be an agent in one of the
large model tenement houses, “what would all those women do if you take
away their work from them? They would be idle and shiftless, and just
spend their time in gossiping and quarreling. I know ’em.”
“It seems to me,” said Mildred, rather tartly, “that if the average poor
man’s wife has not enough to do in washing, ironing, scrubbing,
sweeping, making and mending clothes for a household and attending to
her children, we need not feel any necessity laid upon us to fill up any
spare moment she may have for herself by an addition of needless work
for work’s sake. I know poor mothers in Boston who don’t get down so far
as the Common twice a year, who scarcely see a green tree from one
year’s end to another, who never think they can spare a moment’s time to
amuse their children, and who gladly turn the poor little ones into the
street to get them away from the hot cooking-stove which occupies the
best part of the only family living-room. It is to such mothers that I
would give a little freedom, and in time they will find something better
to do than quarreling and gossiping if they live in my tenements.”
“But they will have to pay a little more for their food than if they
cooked it themselves. The wages of the cook must be paid, and even a
little more counts,” remonstrated another skeptic.
“Not at all,” said Mildred, eagerly. “Think of the immense saving in
fuel to begin with. Why, most of these people, as you know well, buy
coal in small quantities, often by the hodful, paying for it at an
enormous rate when reckoned by the ton, to say nothing of the evil of
sending children out along the wharves to pick up dirty barrels and bits
of wood for kindling.”
“But in winter they would need the fire just the same for warmth,” said
some one.
“No; the whole house would have steam heat, thus making a valuable
saving of space as well, by doing away with the stove and place for
fuel. The halls of the model tenements now are heated by steam. I
estimate that the trifle extra which would be added to the price of the
room and the food would be no more than, probably not so much as, what
would be spent for food and fuel in the old way; for the poor that I
have known are the most extravagant people living. They buy a poor
quality of food at high rates, and through bad cooking and irregularity
of living waste and spoil much that they have.
“Besides, I have had another thing in mind,—that is, the mothers who go
out to work by the day and have to let their children come home from
school to pick up any kind of cold dinner that they find, and who, so
far as my experience goes, invariably spend every cent they get upon
candy and innutritious cakes bought at the bakery.”
“This is all a charming theory, Miss Brewster,” said a pale-faced lady
with auburn hair, who had hitherto remained silent; “but I am afraid
that until you have a more enlightened community to deal with it won’t
work. The conservatism, perhaps one might call it the stupidity, of the
lower classes is something we are fighting against all the time. Every
innovation has to be introduced with great caution in order not to
offend them. Strange as it may seem, these people who come from lands
where they have been down-trodden, with no privileges of any sort,
stickle more for their rights and independence, and are far less willing
to yield to restrictions than we. They don’t want to be ‘bossed.’ They
want to do as they please, even if they pay more for it and are not half
so well served. The idea of saving fuel and getting rid of the nuisance
of ash-barrels would not appeal to the low Italians. They cook their
little messes of macaroni over a few sticks, and would not dream of
using the fuel that an Irishman would require.
“Let me tell you about a cheap lunch-room that was started as an
experiment some time ago. We gave good, nutritious food at the lowest
cost price, and what was the result? It remained on our hands, and we
could not sell it, and discovered to our surprise that the people for
whose advantage we had established it learned that if they waited until
the food was cold and ready to spoil they could come to the back door
and ask for it and get it for little or nothing. It would really have
been wiser to throw the food away. Yet the very same people who would do
this showed a decided pride when they suspected any supervision or
interference in their domestic affairs. A coöperative kitchen was
established in one of our tenement houses as an experiment, that is, a
range to be used in common, in order to save the fuel and heat in summer
of a fire in each separate room. But no one liked to use it. Each woman
was afraid of interfering or being interfered with.”
“Naturally enough,” said Mildred; “and anything that should tend to mix
up families, where the yielding of personal preferences and ‘taking
turns’ is involved, would probably fail so long as human nature remains
human nature. I do not propose anything of that sort, you see.”
“I think myself,” said Professor Adler, “that the idea is thoroughly
good, and if cautiously and wisely carried out would be a success. I
should like to see the experiment tried. I have all my life been
preaching coöperation, not only for the poor, but for ourselves as well,
but with small success.”
“The chief objection, I suppose,” said Mildred, “is, that when food is
cooked in large quantities it never tastes so good. In time everything
seems to get a sort of boarding-house flavor, and individual tastes
cannot be consulted as in one’s own home. This may be made an objection
by the rich, but that a fastidiousness about a flavor should prevent
people from trying coöperation, who have all they can do to keep soul
and body together, seems to me more than ridiculous.”
“It is more than ridiculous, and I for one have faith that people can be
taught to see it,” said the blond young man with the clear, crisp
speech. “The people who have lived in the model tenement houses have
already learned to use dumb-waiters, speaking-tubes, set tubs,
ash-shutes, and the like, and have seen the advantages of these modern
conveniences. Now, with patience on our part and a painstaking
explanation of your scheme, I think that they could be led to see the
saving in time, fuel, space, money, and quality of food as well as the
increased variety of food and cleanliness incident to an arrangement
such as you propose, and which I heartily hope you will carry out. The
thing to do, as Octavia Hill in her work in London has wisely taught us,
is to make sure that we put in the right sort of men and women to manage
such a place. As she once said, ‘We have more model tenements than we
know how to take care of. My present work is to train women who will go
down and oversee them.’
“If, beside the man who is employed to attend to the business part of it
and to see that the sanitary condition is good, you will also put in one
or two nice American women who will look after the families in a
friendly way, giving suggestions and advice with tact, and carefully
explaining the advantages of improvements, I will vouch for the success
of the experiment. If some object, there are enough people of common
sense in the city to fill one house at least.”
“It seems to me,” said one speaker, “that we ought to be careful about
talking or even allowing ourselves to think of those whom we call the
‘lower classes’ as being essentially different from ourselves. They are
ignorant, of course, and dreadfully shiftless, some of them, but they
have the same instincts and affections as we, and I for one respect
their individuality and their privacy as I would our own. I shouldn’t
like to ask them to do anything I wouldn’t do myself under similar
circumstances. If _we_ aren’t ready for coöperation, how can we expect
them to be?”
“I ask nothing of any one,” replied Mildred, “which I would not be glad
to do myself under the same conditions, or under better conditions. We
are learning to coöperate in a thousand ways of which our grandfathers
never dreamed. Under the pressure of new duties and interests which our
age has brought with it, we are learning to eliminate useless individual
work where combined work is better. The law of reciprocity is the divine
law. Wasteful individual effort belongs to the age of savagery.
Communism, the mingling of families, and absence of personal privacy can
never I am convinced be tolerated by civilized people; but coöperation
with one’s fellows in harnessing up the forces of nature to subserve our
material interests and leave man more free for the development of his
higher nature, seems to me the only rational thing for rational beings.
Any reluctance to see and accept this seems to me the result of
prejudice.”
“I should put it even a little stronger than that,” said Professor
Adler, gently. “Under every objection which has been presented to me by
the friends with whom I have for years been laboring in this very line
of effort, I have felt that there was not mere prejudice but a real,
unconscious selfishness. All objections like the one you mention are
mere matters of detail which could be properly adjusted, and the freedom
of the wife from all petty details that eat up the greater part of her
life ought to more than compensate for the slight sacrifice of feeling
involved in doing an unaccustomed thing. I believe that we shall
gradually come to it; and meanwhile our boarding-houses and hotels will
shelter larger and larger numbers of women driven from housekeeping by
the weight of domestic cares. They will have lost their home in losing
their cook!”