CHEAP LODGING HOUSES.
The Bowery and eastern section of the city are full of cheap lodging
houses, which form a peculiar feature of city life. "There is a very
large and increasing class of vagrants who live from hand to mouth, and
who, beneath the dignity of the lowest grade of boarding houses, find a
nightly abode in cheap lodgings. These establishments are planned so as
to afford the greatest accommodation in point of numbers with the least
in point of comfort. The halls or rather passages are narrow, and the
rooms are small, dark, dirty and infested with vermin. The bedding
consists of a straw pallet and coarse sheets, and a coverlet of a
quality too poor to be an object of luxury. In some houses no sheets or
coverlet are afforded, but even with the best of these accommodations
the lodger suffers from cold in the winter, while in the summer he is
devoured with bed-bugs. For such accommodations in a room which half a
dozen may share, the lodger pays ten cents, though it is said there is
a lower depth where they sleep on the floor and pay half the above-
mentioned price. The profit of this business may be inferred from the
fact that one hundred and fifty lodgings, and in some cases a much
larger number, are sold by each house, making a net receipt of $15 per
night, to which is to be added the profits of a bar, where the vilest
whiskey is retailed in 'dime nips.' The business of a lodging house
seldom commences before ten o'clock, and its greatest rush is just
after the closing of the theatres; but all through the night, till
three o'clock in the morning, they are receiving such of the outcast
population as can offer the price of a bed. To any one interested in
the misery of the city, the array presented on such an occasion is very
striking. One sees every variety of character, runaway boys, truant
apprentices, drunken mechanics and broken-down mankind generally. Among
these are men who have seen better days. They are decayed gentlemen who
appear regularly in Wall street, and eke out the day by such petty
business as they may get hold of, and are lucky if they can make enough
to carry them through the night. In all lodging houses the rule holds
good 'first come, first served,' and the last man in the room gets the
worst spot. Each one sleeps with his clothes on and his hat under his
head to keep it from being stolen. At eight o'clock in the morning all
oversleepers are awakened and the rooms got ready for the coming night.
No one is allowed to take anything away, and if the lodger has a parcel
he is required to leave it at the bar. This prevents the theft of bed-
clothes. As the expenses connected with lodging houses are very light,
they are generally profitable, and in some instances large fortunes
have been made at the business. The one recently burned was a correct
illustration of the vices and miseries of the poor; a lodging house up
stairs and in the basement a concert-saloon, so that the poverty
engendered by the one could be sheltered by the other."