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[Illustration: NO LONGER PROFITABLE.]
THE LEAVEN IN A GREAT CITY
by
LILLIAN W. BETTS
Illustrated
[Illustration]
New York
Dodd, Mead & Company
1903
Copyright, 1902,
By Dodd, Mead and Company.
First Edition published September, 1902.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. AT THE BOTTOM, 1
II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL CENTERS, 37
III. THE HOMES UNDER ONE ROOF, 75
IV. SLOW-DAWNING CONSCIOUSNESS, 102
V. WORKING-GIRLS' CLUBS, 135
VI. A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT, 162
VII. WITHIN THE WALLS OF HOME, 196
VIII. FINANCIAL RELATIONS IN FAMILIES, 225
IX. HOME STANDARDS, 263
X. WHERE LIES THE RESPONSIBILITY? 290
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
No Longer Profitable--_Frontispiece_
The Site of the Old Runway 12
Your Choice 24
Saturday Morning on the East Side 38
The Past, Present, and Middle Period 44
A Social Centre that Becomes Political 56
A Doorway on the East Side 60
Early Morning among the Push-Carts 64
Meeting the Needs of the Neighbourhood 70
A Remnant of the Past 76
A Type of the Present 88
A Corner in a Workingman's Home 94
A Spiritual Bulwark 128
Where the People Share 134
A Corner in an Old Section 152
Opposite a Corner in an Old Section 154
The Woman's Home Improvement Club at the Settlement 168
The Kindergarten of the College Settlement 178
Making a Selection 184
At the Settlement--A Stormy Day 188
Yard Day at the Settlement 196
The Children's Hour at the College Settlement 200
Mutual Interests 206
The Forest of the Tenements 212
The Children's Playground 218
Library Day at the College Settlement 224
A Street on the East Side 236
A Cooking Class of Mothers and Children 244
A Meeting of Neighbours 250
The Reading-Room at the Settlement 254
After School at the College Settlement 258
The Morning Airing of an East Side Heiress 264
A Bit of Old Greenwich 274
A Little Father 280
A Corner in Old Greenwich 286
Taking their Turn in the Yard at the Settlement 294
CHAPTER I.
AT THE BOTTOM.
One of the first, and, up to the present time, one of the most interesting
experiments made in New York for the better housing of the poor, was made
in the early eighties by a score or less of philanthropic capitalists.
These gentlemen organized a stock company to hold and manage tenement-house
property, limiting their dividends to three per cent. on the capital; the
surplus dividends, if any, over this amount, to be used in improving the
property, and securing such conditions and opportunities for the tenants as
would stimulate pride and independence. The formation of this company
followed one of the periodic agitations of the tenement-house problems
customary in New York.
In 1878 a conference was called by the State Charities' Aid Association to
consider the condition of the tenement houses in this city. Mr. Alfred T.
White, of Brooklyn, had at this time proved that model tenements, conducted
on strictly business principles, paid as investments, and stated at this
conference that his model houses made a return of seven one-half per cent.
As a result of this conference a committee was appointed who reported that
they did not find it desirable to recommend the building of model tenements
in New York at this time. Mr. White for many years stood alone as the man
of wealth with the courage of his convictions, that there were wage-earners
compelled to live under tenement-house conditions who would pay for and
respect the best housing that capital would offer them, within their
rent-paying capacity.
The tenement-house agitation continued.
In 1879 Mayor Cooper had appointed a committee known as the "Mayor's
Committee," to devise means to effect tenement-house reforms. This
committee reported, and among other suggestions recommended, that companies
be organized to build modern tenements. Some members of this committee,
with others, formed the stock company alluded to with a capital of
$300,000. With a wisdom peculiarly their own, they did not wait until model
buildings could be erected according to plans not yet drawn on sites not
yet selected, but they leased on a long lease property that had been
unproductive for a long time, and occupied by a people at the lowest level
of the home-making people of the city. Below them are the people who do not
even pretend to make a home. This property was located in the old Fourth
Ward. It was the reputation of this ward, and the record of the particular
property, which doubtless led these capitalists to secure it. It was
conceded that the poverty and degradation of the Fourth Ward was at least
as great as in any other section of the city. The property leased had
attracted public attention and been the subject of special investigation
and reports in every agitation of the tenement-house problem since 1856.
The Fourth Ward criminal and health records figure for an even longer
period in every effort at bettering municipal conditions by the example it
presented of civic indifference, neglect and maladministration. The houses
faced on two alleys, known in their best days as "Single" and "Double"
alley, respectively. As this distinction indicates, on Single Alley one row
of houses faced the walls of the adjoining property, while two rows of
houses faced each other across Double Alley. Later known as Swipe's Alley,
Guzzle Row, Hell's Kitchen, Murderers' Row, showing the gradual descent
from respectability. There is a tradition that Single Alley once had
gardens that extended to Roosevelt Street; that the houses had been
occupied by one family; but this cannot be verified. In their most
degenerate days these houses had an air of exclusiveness, due doubtless to
their fronting on courts and the tall iron fences, with gates, that
separated the houses from the street. The neighborhood at one time was
aristocratic; Franklin Square, but a short distance from the property, was
a social center of national greatness. As business went northward, the
merchants, bankers, tradespeople, followed, for the tie between home and
business was still very close; the midday dinner made distance between the
two impossible. The old homes were left for subdivision among the skilled
workmen and clerks.
The tide of immigration set in, and the strangers settled near the docks
and wharfs--the source of their wages; in time they crowded into the old
residences, beginning the housing problem of New York. These old homes were
soon overcrowded. They could not be made sanitary. The demand for room was
so great that the large closets--the necessity of the old-time
housekeepers--were counted bedrooms, and are to-day in houses of this type
in tenement-house regions throughout the city.
The property secured by the new company at the time it was leased was a
part of a large estate, the owner of which during his lifetime had
personally cared for it. He was both strict and just, and these two
attributes preserved these houses for years after the property in the
neighborhood had begun to yield to the character of later residents. This
owner kept the alleys and the houses in repair. The semi-privacy the iron
gate gave the tenants was for years the reason that the better-paid
mechanics remained in the courts or alleys. When the owner died, the
property was put in control of an agent, with the usual result--rapid
degeneracy. It was now conducted to secure the largest returns at the least
outlay. The evils of the absentee landlord are not confined to Ireland.
Absenteeism on the part of owners of tenement-house property is one of the
causes of the social and civic problems that retard the growth of the
highest civilization in New York. Under the management of an agent, the
character of the tenants in the courts changed rapidly, and the people who
took possession added to the disreputable character of the Fourth Ward. For
years before this the largest per cent. of the immigrants settling in New
York settled in this section. They came with distorted notions as to their
place in the new land. Liberty meant to the majority the right to follow
their own will. When hunger and loneliness and nakedness forced them to
reconsider their first conception of what America was, resentment,
recklessness, or adaptability developed. The difference was a matter of
temperament quite as much as of race.
In 1880 the heads of the families living in the courts were day
laborers--men who worked along the docks, coal shovelers, hucksters, women
who did a day's work, sold newspapers at the ferries, or worked in the
factories. Every child in the alley was ready to do anything that would
earn money from the time he could walk. The people knew every benefit the
city dispensed to the poor: free coal; homes available and how to get in
them; free burial; every organization that dispersed charity, and how to
get it. Even the children were clever in their extremities, and knew how to
get assistance when the Island claimed their parents. From infancy the
children looked forward to wage-earning as a time of happiness. School was
a prison-house to be avoided, except when its warmth and shelter were
preferable to the street, or the home, when intemperance and temper made
life unendurable in it; then they attended school willingly. The truant
officers in this region were not feared. They were the fags of the "boss,"
not the officers of a city department. None of the fads of to-day, which so
disturb the conservative people who see ruin of mental ability in modern
educational systems, were then thought of. The kindergarten, nature study,
manual training, were on the educational horizon of New York, in a cloud
scarcely so large as a man's hand. The trustee system was in perfect
working order. The teachers were what God made them, unhampered by the
pressure of superintendent and supervisors to maintain standards.
It was as true in that day as in 1892, when a man, wholly familiar with all
the systems of education in the country, to the question, "Why is there
such uniformity in the defects of the schools in the tenement-house
regions?" replied, "They represent the demands of the people in the
district who elect the men who control them. You will find that the public
schools always represent the public sentiment and demands of the people
interested in them."
This was profoundly true of the schools in this region at this time. To-day
there is scarcely any change in the buildings except that of added age. At
least two of them are a disgrace to the city. But there is a great change
in the system. To-day the civilizing force in this community is the public
schools; the remnant does not attract the philanthropist. To the men and
women of our public schools who, preserving the highest ideals, work with
enthusiasm amid the most discouraging surroundings, the city owes a debt
that money cannot repay.
The liquor saloons numbered then about as they do now, occupying every
available space. More elaborate now, perhaps, for they represent political
headquarters, if not proprietorship, of men identified with the worst forms
of political corruption; then, as now, openly used in the interest of these
men. There is this great change, that children dare not now, as they did
then, enter and leave these places fearlessly at any hour carrying pails,
pitchers or bottles. It was then a neighborly kindness to let children thus
serve a neighbor; it was a source of revenue to the children.
The gangs were many and notorious in the ward. Frequent were the clashes
and loyal the spirit with which assailed and assailants maintained silence
if there was danger of arrest because of these conflicts. "To squeal" was
to earn the contempt of the community. The number of crimes, the full
measure of degradation, reached in this ward will never be known. The dense
population of this ward is so hidden by business and traffic that in 1901
the statement was made by some people interested in civic affairs that the
region was given over to office buildings. The district of which the Fourth
Ward is a part cast 10,000 votes in the mayoralty campaign of that year.
Votes that represent a civilization as peculiarly its own as though oceans
separated it from the people a mile and a half away.
Target companies were the social clubs of that day, the forerunners of the
political organizations of to-day. The climax of their existence were the
annual excursions to some near-by grove for shooting matches. These matches
were the great social occasions of the many "sets." The question of who was
the reigning belle of the locality was settled beyond dispute by selection
of one to present the wreath for the target, or a big bunch of flowers, to
the captain of the target company on the day of the annual parade. These
were always of artificial flowers, and were made gorgeous and splendid by
floating strips and fringes of tinsel paper. The greatest feuds in the Ward
have grown out of the selection of the fair lady to present these trophies.
Her selection changed the political history of her friends often, and her
knights' fists fought her cause, and crowned her, their wounds testifying
to their devotion. The political "boss" of that period presented the
organizations that acknowledged his leadership with silver mugs, castors or
pitchers--prizes for the shooters--but he presented money to keep the
balance of his popularity. The gifts were carried conspicuously over the
route of the procession, which always stopped in front of the house of the
lady, who was to express her favor in the gifts of floral trophies--usually
paid for by the company, sometimes by her knight, or knights combined for
her honor. This house was for the time being the center of interest for the
crowd, as she was of envy or pride to the community. The day of the target
parade was one that called for great sacrifice, that it might be attended
by the requisite formalities and new clothes. Money must be raised to
provide barouches for the great political lights of the ward who gave this
particular company their favor; to pay the attendant colored men who
carried the target and the water and tin cups; for the band with the drum
major. All cost money, and money was scarce; but the prominence and
pleasure paid; and the Fourth Ward had many of these organizations, which
made life exciting, and at times dangerous, when their several groups met,
each struggling for supremacy, each with a leader who must be defended.
Fresh-air organizations, seaside resorts, were as unknown as trolleys;
hundreds in the Fourth Ward lived and died without ever having seen Central
Park or the ocean. The relief from the sufferings of summer was sitting and
sleeping on the near-by piers. Man's humanity to man at this period of New
York's social history was expressed in hospitals, infirmaries, homes of
many kinds, distribution of food, clothes and medicine. The more
applications secured for these sources of relief, the more tickets given
out in a year at any point for outside relief, the more easy the conscience
of the men who sent the money that maintained them, who measured the value
of their charities by the figures representing human beings that appeared
in the reports. Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners were then, as now,
"round-ups" for the wretched, the needy and the lazy. The pleasure of the
givers was greatly added to by watching the hungry eating.
What caused the misery and wretchedness was no secret; but with few
exceptions the men of money and brains were not ready to remove the
prevailing and rooted cause. The exceptions were the men who, impressed by
the example of Mr. Alfred T. White, leased the tenements known as Single
and Double alley, or Gotham Court, the worst piece of property in what was
acknowledged to be the worst ward in the city.
It had grown more and more difficult to collect rents, and the destruction
of the property by the tenants made any effort at repair futile. Lead pipe,
brass faucets, were wrenched off and sold as rapidly as they were put in;
banisters, stair-rails, blinds, even wooden floors had been used as
firewood. The very bricks on the chimneys were used as missiles of offense
and defense. The Double Alley boasted of a haunted house, which at times
created the greatest excitement in the neighborhood because of mysterious
noises and lights seen and heard at night. Again and again the house had
been raided by the police and stolen goods recovered after the ghostly
exhibits. The police showed to the brave of the neighborhood that sulphur
and brimstone were the ghostly lights, and clever arrangements of ropes and
pulleys and pans the source of the cries and groans that had frozen them
with fear. It was useless. The next appearance of the lights and the sound
of awful groans filled the neighborhood with terror.
For obvious reasons the only source of water supply was a hydrant in the
center of each alley. The only drainage was the sink sunk in front of it.
When it is remembered that between five and six hundred people lived in
these houses, the opportunities for cleanliness will be appreciated. All
the water used was carried up and down stairs. That pans and pails of water
were emptied from the windows without careful note of the passer-by beneath
is not surprising. This naturally was not conducive to peace; but peace was
not the aim of the people of the court; in fact, its disturbance varied the
monotony of life in the alleys.
[Illustration: THE SITE OF THE OLD RUNWAY.]
Single Alley had a narrow opening from its rear, or western, end to
Roosevelt Street. This was paved with brick sunken and broken. It was a
dormitory for the drunken and homeless, a depository for all kinds of
refuse. This alley was a runway. The entrance on the two streets offered
every opportunity of escape to the fleeing fugitive from justice or
vengeance. The code of honor of the alley was to speed the hunted and
obstruct the hunter. The policeman entering the alley in pursuit of a
transgressor knew his fate; he was a target for water, wood, coal, bricks
and unlimited language; unexpected obstructions would be found in the
alley, and the attentions he received when he tripped or fell were intended
to increase the distance between the representative of law and order and
the fleeing offender. He or she might or might not be a friend. The alley's
activity in behalf of the fugitive was based on a new interpretation of the
promised return of bread cast on the waters.
No matter how bitter the feuds that divided the tenants in the alley, the
appearance of a rent collector in the later days healed the breach, bridged
the widest chasm. He was a common foe and to be downed by common consent.
If abuse and defiance did not drive him beyond the gates, bricks dropped
from the roofs, after a vigorous campaign of water and cooking utensils,
conducted by the feminine contingent from the windows, usually
accomplished his complete rout, not only for that time, but for the future.
As the years passed on, it became almost impossible to get any agent to
make the second attempt to collect rent from the tenants of the alleys.
The home life of the people in the alley was interesting. Every inch of
space was occupied. The families ranged from a childless old couple, past
seventy, who had lived twenty-eight years in the Single Alley, to the boy
and girl who had just started housekeeping on nothing at all. The women in
the alleys had married, it was found, at about eighteen. They knew
absolutely nothing of housekeeping. Many of them acknowledged that they had
never made a fire before they married. The most elementary knowledge of
cooking, sewing or the use of money was lacking. Of the two hundred and one
mothers in the alley, one could cut and make the garments for herself and
children; four could make bread--one did; one made soup sometimes, but
could not remember the last time. Meals consisted of bread and coffee, or
tea, with beer provided for "him" for breakfast and supper. Dinner was a
"bit" of meat or fish, thought of and cooked between eleven and twelve; the
cooking was frying. Potatoes were substituted for bread at this meal;
rarely any other vegetable except Sunday. On that day, if there was money
enough in the morning, dinner was of corned beef and cabbage, or bacon and
cabbage. One family standing at the head of this community socially had
meat three times each day. This family had in it five wage-earners. They
paid four dollars a month rent for two rooms. The children had all been
born and had grown to manhood and womanhood in the alley. As the writer was
able to win the confidence of these people, it was evident that each mother
was conscious that something was wrong that life yielded no better return.
What was wrong? Where the remedy was to be found did not seem to interest
them. The days drifted. Children ran half naked or in rags, while mothers
sat in neighbors' rooms, stood in doorways, in the halls, or lounged in the
alleys. There were homes in which neither needles, thread nor scissors
could be found. The mother did not know how to use them. A pot and a frying
pan were the only cooking utensils the most lavish closet revealed. Washing
and scrubbing are laborious at any time, but when carrying water from ten
to fifty feet on the level, then up one to four flights of stairs and down
again is added to the labor, it is not astonishing that dishes, clothes and
bodies were at all times freighted with disease and death. A knowledge of
the relation between dirt and disease, cleanliness and health was not the
general knowledge it is to-day. Their relation to moral elevation or
degradation is barely understood to-day.
The average weekly wages of the men living in the alleys at this period was
between eight and nine dollars per week, and sometimes kept at the latter
figure for weeks. It will be seen at once that the poverty, misery,
degradation and dirt that kept life at the level it was in the alleys was
due to some other cause than wages, for rent was only four dollars a month,
when paid, and it was paid less than eight months of the year. Beer flowed
in the alley; tin cans, pitchers, pails, went back and forth at all times
of the day and night. It was the first errand on which the baby feet were
sent. Every woman in the alley acknowledged that she had seen her husband
drunk before she married him. She knew better how to manage him when he was
drunk than when he was sober. A blow given in drink was not recorded
against a husband either by the wife or her neighbors. A blow given when
the man was sober was remembered and aroused pity and sympathy. Over
seventy per cent. of the women drank to the point of unconsciousness. All
used liquor. Of child training there was none. The act that was laughed at
this hour brought a blow the next. Attending school was for the child to
decide. If he wanted to go, he went. Usually lack of clothing shut out
about half the children of school age in the alley.
Mother love was largely a matter of animal instinct. While the baby
depended on her for nourishment, she could be found with it in her arms at
all times; it was, so far as life had a concentrated thought, her constant
care. The moment the baby found its feet and used them, the child was cut
loose and began his individual life. His standards, language, habits, were
what his environment made them. His care, so far as the mother was
concerned, was conducted on the lines of the least resistance. If the child
was struck by an outsider, it raised the tiger in the mother; if ill, a
burden to carry for which there was neither money nor knowledge; the mother
had no strength and could not meet cares that demanded continuous thought;
her mind was not trained to it. Health and disease were largely a matter of
luck. Death brought pangs, but life was too much of a struggle for it to be
a crushing blow, even when it was one's child. Children came and went too
fast in the alleys for their coming or going to fill or empty even a
mother's life.
Not one woman in the alley could remember ever having an entire new outfit
in her life, nor had any of her children; her first baby had worn garments
that had been made for some more fortunate baby.
Such was the dead level of existence lived in the alleys. Without the
stimulus of drink it would be lethargy, and was when there was no money to
treat or be treated. Pleasure? It was unknown outside of the beer can. If
that did not give pleasure, why life was a hand-to-hand, hopeless struggle
with homelessness, hunger and nakedness. In the alleys a fight became a
pleasure and death a social opportunity. Even love seemed denied the people
of the alleys. Marriage often was a part of the habitual drifting when not
a matter of compulsion. Homes were established with no bond but that of
law, and sometimes not that. That they even were what they were was a
tribute to the fundamental morality that is the salvation of the civilized
world.
These were the people who had made the alleys between 1855 and 1880, when
the owners of the estate gladly leased the property on a long lease. As has
been stated, spasmodic attempts had been made to reclaim the property, to
make it productive, but always by men acting for the owners; they never
came in personal contact with the tenants. It is doubtful if they even had
any conception of the effect of their delegated responsibility on the
people, or had any knowledge of the change that resulted when the property
ceased to have the personal supervision of the owner.
The lessees put two ladies in control of the property. One or the other was
to be found there each day.
The tenants were notified that rent must be paid weekly; that the rooms
would be white-washed and painted; that the agents would be at liberty to
visit the rooms daily; that no child would be permitted to carry liquor on
the premises; every bundle or basket carried by a child would be examined,
and any liquor found would be emptied into the sink in the yard. Water
would be put in the halls on each floor; destruction of property would mean
eviction. All who were unwilling to accept these conditions were asked to
move at once. The rent remained the same, four dollars per month for two
rooms. Families desiring four rooms could have them for eight dollars per
month, the company cutting a door through the party walls, giving direct
ventilation through the floor, with windows opening on both alleys. The
absolute impossibility of getting two equally good rooms in the
neighborhood for the same rent kept the majority of the families. A few
tacitly accepted the change, largely because acquiescence was their habit
of mind, while some expected to set at naught any rules or regulations
that they found obnoxious. No tenant moved voluntarily.
The new ownership took possession with the same human beings who had
occupied the houses for years. The first step was to insist on cleanliness.
The alleys were swept and washed every morning, as were the halls and
stairways. Garbage cans were provided and their use insisted on. Every can
or bundle carried by a child was examined, and all liquors found in them
were emptied into the sink in the yard. Quarrels and fights grew less
frequent, especially among the women. The children attended school, for
their appearance during school hours led to investigations that the
majority of the tenants preferred to avoid. The aim was to establish such
relations between the representatives of the company and the tenants as
would give opportunities to reduce the ignorance and indifference that were
quite as responsible, if not more responsible, for the misery in the homes
than lack of money. The tenants held aloof. They were tenants because they
could not get as much comfort for the money elsewhere; but there could be
no friendship where the payment of rent was insisted upon, where
drunkenness involved the risk of, and abuse of property positive, eviction.
Several young couples were tenants. The aim and hope of the agents were to
gain the confidence of these young mothers. The first child of one died
late that summer. Potter's Field was the place of burial. The young father
could have worked six days in the week, but that would have been slavery
intolerable. He refused it, and followed his lifelong habit of drifting,
which was also that of the young mother. She had never resented her
husband's days of idleness until this baby died and there was not one cent
to provide for the care and disposition of the little body. This was the
opportunity of the two women who were waiting to prove that they were not
oppressors. A little coffin, a white slip and socks, some flowers--at that
time an unheard-of tribute to death--a carriage and a grave in the cemetery
approved by the mother's church was provided. The battle was won. Every
man, woman and child in the alley surrendered to this evidence of
comradeship. That this act gave birth to hopes that must be stifled was
natural. Rules must be enforced and comradeship expressed at the times of
emergency. The first and hardest battle was won. Confidences were gained
that led to marriages and baptisms that had been neglected or forgotten.
The office, simply but tastefully furnished, became a school-room, where
the mothers and the children learned to sew. Goods were bought in
quantities and sold at cost to the learners. A sewing machine and a
teacher appeared and were welcomed. Practical talks, or, more properly,
conversations, were held; but no one took note of them as special efforts
in philanthropy, they were so naturally a part of each day's experience.
The daily visits to each tenant resulted in establishing relations that
justified reproof, suggestion, commendation. The standards of pleasure,
pain, suffering, accomplishment were elementary in the alleys. An hour's
work with the needle left the worker exhausted, and diversion then meant
moral safety. The homes were barren, and the acme of hope was wages to pay
rent, buy food and clothes; the last rarely realized. The months, and even
years, passed without the people passing beyond the confines of the ward.
The generations lived this life, and it was a fixed habit. The world had
nothing to offer to the habitual residents of the ward that the ward did
not provide; it has but little to-day to offer them.
In spite of the emptiness of life and barrenness of these homes, they were
on the whole better than the homes of the preceding generation.
When the wives laid the cause of their burdens on their husbands' shoulders
because they drank, the question, "Did you know he drank when you married
him?" would be answered easily, with no thought of self-condemnation,
"Yes," in frank confession.
"Do you drink?"
"I drink beer, mostly. Sure, ye get discouraged just working and washing,
and never a cent; not a decent rag to go on the street, and no place to go
when you get there but a neighbor's house. What is there but a glass of
beer? You don't mean to get drunk; yer that before ye know."
This total lack of personal relation to life was me mental attitude of
almost every woman. If she was a widow, she worked to make a home for her
children, who, again and again, so often that it ceased to attract
attention, heard how much harder life was because they were in it. This
seemed the accepted attitude, and accounted for the expression on the faces
of these children--a puzzled, hardened expression that blotted out all
suggestion of childhood. That time was an element in the problem of life
was not accepted. That the garment made at home would last longer and cost
less was conceded; but what was the use of making things when they could be
bought so cheaply. The total absence of reasoning powers was shown here. To
make soup would mean staying at home, thinking and planning for hours in
advance of a meal. The soup would cost no more than steak and provide two
meals, but it would mean loneliness, when the time, through ignorance,
could not be turned to interesting uses.
There were women in these alleys, mothers of grown children, who could not
tell a bias from a straight edge; who could not put a gingham apron
together having straight and bias selvages. Beyond sewing on occasional
buttons, there was no use in their minds for needles. They had worked in
tin factories. They had worked at all kinds of employment that called into
play the minimum amount of brains and the maximum of muscles. Not one woman
was found who before her marriage had worked in any line of employment that
had the slightest connection with the arts of home-making. The wages they
earned was that of unskilled labor, in lines of employment known to be
intermittent. Wages, large or small, went into the common family fund. The
future was not a matter of care. When all in the family worked, life was
lived merrily; when hard luck came, life was lived stoically. This spirit
went into the home of the wage-earners when they married. There was far
less physical suffering than the privations of their lives made natural.
Often these limitations were self-imposed; there was money enough to give
life color and purpose, if only there had been knowledge to guide in the
adjustment between necessities and income; a conception of time as an
element in the financial problem.
[Illustration: YOUR CHOICE.]
The closer one entered into the individual life, the more clearly was it
revealed that the problems of poverty grew out of the inability to see the
relations of things, to comprehend life in its entirety. Even after two
years of close relation with these people in the alleys, it was with the
utmost caution and tact that the subject of free coal could be broached. It
was then distributed by the city--an intimate source of political
corruption. A large quantity of coal was purchased and put in the cellar.
It was offered to the tenants at the same price the grocer sold it by the
pail, with the difference that it was delivered in the rooms. First, pride,
a desire to appear somewhat above the neighbors, moved to independence on
the coal question. In two years' time free coal was in the category of
disgraces in the alley, and marked a rising moral tide.
A young woman and her husband were special objects of attention to the
agents. They were young, good-looking, bright, and, when sober, ambitious
as their conception of life made possible. Both drank, the woman more than
the man, and she sank lower when drunk. For years she had spent more time
on the Island than off it. What could be done? The whitewashing and
painting of the two hopelessly barren rooms seemed to bring the woman to a
pause. It was not possible to get beer through a neighbor's child now, and
until she was drunk this woman would not go into a saloon. The clean alley,
washed every morning, by some process of reasoning seemed to demand
corresponding effort indoors, and the barren rooms were never dirty when
the woman was sober. Even this gave employment to hands that had never used
a needle, therefore less time was spent lounging in the doorway or other
rooms. The washing of clothes, though ragged and few, took time and
centered the interest, if but for a short time. The look of utter weariness
and indifference in the face of the woman was slowly disappearing. There
was really a purpose in life; the four walls and little else that was home
required thought and effort. Life had an object at last. But the devil of
drink was not so easily conquered; she was gone one morning from home. The
neighbors explained to the agents her absence, being familiar with the
habits of the type. In court she listened again indifferently to "Ten
dollars or ten days." This time a woman came forward, paid the ten dollars,
and Agnes was free. Surprised, dumb-stricken, wondering why, Agnes followed
the friend home. New clothes, simple, suitable, were waiting for her. Then
the fight began. At times it was hourly. Work was provided that the clumsy,
untrained hands could do. The proceeds were to pay for a new carpet, that
had to be unrolled many times to hold Agnes from the street. At last it was
down, and the two friends added a rocker and a picture. Tom was a new man,
and every penny of his wages came home. All this time the prosperity of the
couple was viewed by most of the people as due to passing "good luck." That
there was a moral battle being fought did not seem to enter their
consciousness. Four years later, on the stairway, the writer saw Agnes with
her beautiful baby boy, her first-born, on her arm. The comprehension of
what the sight must have been on the Mount of Transfiguration has always
been clearer when the expression on the face of Agnes, as she met the woman
who had fought for her salvation for time and eternity, is recalled. Two
years had passed since Agnes had tasted liquor in any form. Her passionate
devotion to her baby, her new knowledge of the arts of home-making, kept
her so busy that Agnes was rarely a visitor to her neighbors, except in the
case of sickness. Tom's love of liquor seemed limited; largely a matter of
companionship or discouragement. When his home became a center of interest
to Agnes, his buoyant nature responded to the new environment. When liquor
disappeared from the home, it ceased to be a constant temptation. Outside
of his home Tom found for a time that his new departure attracted to him
unpleasant attention, guying, teasing, coaxing, which he met with jokes.
Force as an inducement to make him drink was met by blows; and Tom struck
heavily. The new impulse for a better life brought heavy social penalties
on Tom and Agnes. It meant nothing in common with those about them. When a
man and woman will neither treat nor be treated at that social level social
ostracism follows. Their home was the refuge of the children driven by
frenzied, drunken parents from their own homes. What they had they shared
with the children when the parents were on the Island. When sickness came
to homes in the alleys, Tom and Agnes could be relied upon to share and
help in carrying the added burdens. Tom's muscles and the knowledge of
their power saved many a wife from blows that, without Tom, would have
fallen freely. Back of their every effort stood the two wise women who were
redeeming this corner of the great city. The day came when Tom and Agnes
realized the boy must grow up in a different neighborhood, and Tom and
Agnes moved.
The making of a laundry compelled the removal of a childless couple who had
occupied their rooms over thirty years. It was impossible to make them
accept the fact that the children could play in the alley under the new
_regime_. For years the old woman and her stick were familiar to the sight
and the feelings of the children of the alley. "I'm in Dixie's Land. Dixie
ain't home!" had been shouted under their windows, at their room door,
which was very near the alley door, to bring them out in torrents of rage.
As age made the old couple less fleet and more quarrelsome, the daring of
the children grew, and any time of the day or night the conflict between
the old couple and the children, in which parents figured, was a
possibility. Peace became impossible. The decision was final; the old
couple must go; their rooms were necessary to the new improvements. It was
pathetic to discover that no amount of persuasion would make the old couple
live north of Roosevelt Street; it meant a lowering in their social world.
"I've always lived respectable, and I always will. I would not live in that
block," announced the old woman, with conscious pride. Even the alley, it
was found, had standards of residence, a line that must not be crossed, to
maintain respectability.
By this time the mental attitude of every woman in the alleys had changed
toward her home. Positive determination to overcome inertia, or ambition to
excel, it was impossible to create. Innate predilections were the chief
factor in individual development among the women. What a woman liked to do
she attempted to learn how to do, or what she found she could do most
easily. Some would learn to cook who absolutely refused to sew; some would
sew who refused to cook; some would take care of the babies while the
mothers were learning who would neither cook nor sew, feeling they could do
both well enough; these it was impossible to make home-makers. The shackles
of the past could never be thrown off wholly by the home-makers in the
alleys. The children responded; could be won by personal affection, by
prizes, by the mother's insistence. For it was soon learned that nimble
fingers in the home lightened the mother's work; but the mothers were the
unwilling victims of their own past.
The use of money was the most difficult lesson of all to teach. If there
was money, the food was bought lavishly; pennies were given freely to the
children. If there was no money, the barrenness was accepted even
cheerfully. Wages were given at the maximum weekly amount remembered. No
deductions were made for idle days. It requires a knowledge of advanced
arithmetic to adjust intelligently forty weeks of wages to fifty-two weeks
of expenses. It requires more than an elementary knowledge of arithmetic to
adjust five days' wages to the seven days' expenses, fixed and emergency,
of a growing family. When a week comes that brings six or seven days'
wages, is it a marvel that in view of the many weeks of imposed
restrictions this week of wealth should be welcomed as a period of freedom
from care? That the money should be lavishly used? It takes the ability to
think, to connect cause and effect, imagination, to see possible results,
memory of experiences to hold men and women constantly in check, and this
means mental training. Not a woman in the alley had attended school
regularly during even the short period of her school life; each one had
gone to work the moment she could earn money. Neither she nor any one about
her questioned the value of the work she found to do beyond the money it
gave at once. Nobody ever thought of the present as in relation to the
future. Now that she was a mother, she met life the same way. Her children
must earn money. To make sacrifices that their wage-earning capacity in the
future might be greater would, if suggested to her, have been merely an
evidence of how little the rich know of life. What was the estimate of life
these mothers in the alley made? The differences between them were
external, not mental. One answers for nearly all. To get as much comfort
out of to-day as possible and to-morrow work hard, and be careful. To the
majority that to be used to-morrow never came. When plenty came, it was
always to-day--a glad, free day that might never come again.
At the end of four years but four of the tenants of the alleys who were
tenants when the lease was executed had been evicted. The death rate had
lowered from 85 to 22 per cent. The tenants rarely appeared in the police
courts. Wife-beating created excitement and indignation. But in spite of
the awakening, a moral, mental, physical inertia, stagnation, held more
than the majority of the tenants in control. There was spasmodic response;
but the painful truth had to be accepted that there must be redemptive
power within to respond to redemptive conditions without before the home
could be vitalized with the spirit of hope and energy. Fifty years and more
of neglect and indifference cannot be overcome in five years of moral
activity exerted to overcome the evils man neglected to prevent.
The alleys are gone; some tenants drifted to other scenes, more settled in
the tall, dark tenements that have sprung up through the whole district,
the worst type erected in New York. The rear buildings abound even back of
the tall factories, reached by dark, noisome alleys. No amount of care or
repair could save the old houses. They have gone the way of all material
things. Their history is a part of the social and political history of New
York.
How slowly moral sentiment grows in a large city is shown by the years that
elapsed before active measures were taken to redeem what was known as a
plague spot, a menace to the body politic, a constant source of moral
degeneracy.
The Citizens' Association, organized in 1864, through its Council of
Hygiene and Public Health, districted the city for special investigation by
sanitary experts. One of these gives a large part of his report to Gotham
Court, and presents sectional drawings to show the impossibility of
securing proper sanitary conditions for the people living in the notorious
houses. It seems incredible that these conditions once known should not
have aroused public interest to the point of action. Nothing was done. The
physical and moral degeneracy continued until 1880, when a few private
individuals made the experiment of redemption. Even this came when the
houses had gone beyond the point of reclaiming. On the site of the old
buildings rises a new business building.
Not far away two of the most brutal and atrocious murders of recent years
in New York have occurred. In July, 1901, three blocks from the old
buildings, in broad daylight, a man known to be the collecting agent for
property in the neighborhood was robbed by three members of a well-known
gang. The children are thin, precocious. Their language, even in their
play, is vulgar, coarse, profane. Babies have at their command strange
oaths, probably never heard elsewhere. The streets are neglected, the
sidewalks uneven and broken. For almost half a century this region has had
a reputation peculiar to itself. Efforts have been made to reach the
people, but they have not been persistent. Even the church efforts are
perfunctory, as though faith as to the redemptive power in this people did
not exist.
This fact remains: within the boundaries of this region lives a community
that is shaping the political control of New York City and State, and will
for years to come. It has its traditions of loyalty; it has fixed standards
of its own peculiar privileges; its standards of rights. The very police of
the region expect certain things to occur; misdemeanors of a certain
character that would bring punishment anywhere else are passed by here;
they are part of the civilization of the region. Snuggled down under the
shadow of the bridge and the elevated road, a center of business interests
which the moral standards of the residents do not affect, because their
activities, other than of the muscles, are not exercised until carts,
drays, drivers, clerks, proprietors have gone northward or across the
river. The community lives within itself, has created its own standards,
and is New York in its own estimation.
Writing of the people in this section in 1865, a sanitary expert quotes
with an apology a medical term common in the hospitals and dispensaries as
a disease of the people in this section, "tenement-house rot." The term
has, perhaps, in the interests of civilization, died out; but no one can
walk through these streets, observing the faces of the people, and not
realize that the old, unsanitary, germ-laden tenements of this section have
produced a physical condition peculiar to this region, as it has a moral
degeneracy that is peculiarly its own. The section, as a whole, has not
attracted the philanthropist. He is wise in his day and generation and puts
forth his efforts where the tide of humanity is rising, and not falling,
even though it means three or four generations before the tide is out.
New York has a gospel all its own. Work where the crowds are greatest, that
the printed reports may count people in great numbers, for ye gain dollars
thereby. New York counts the remnant only at the polls, and ignores the
penalty her indifference imposes on her own advancement.
The opening years of the century hold promise that there is at least a
partial realization of the solidarity of the interest of the people. That
conditions make for degradation in the homes means degradation of citizens;
and this means burdens laid, not on the sections where the homes and the
citizens are found, but on the whole city. What altruism has not
accomplished, selfishness may. It may be that where all else has failed,
intelligent politics may redeem, and the section again may be the center of
the moral as well as commercial activity.