The workingman's advocate. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1864-1877, 1876-01-15
10000 TENANT HOUSES
Which Breed Misery WrstohednssA,
ViOs, and Crime In New York.

The following is taken from a paper read
before the American Social Science Aasooia-
tion by Robert Treat Pane
New YORK, alas has not been free TO
choose. Crowded between two rivers,
her wealth and growth has raised the price
of land, 30 that houses for the laboring
classes must be high, and large, and close
Built with out much regard to air, light,
or health, growing gradually more compact
and less clean and fresh, falling by degrees
into decay, crowded, AN the city grows,
with denser numbers-the horrors Of the
tenement house system Of New YoIk have
long been appalling. To those who know
these houses no words of mine are needed
to call up the filth and degradation of the
crowds packed into their cellars. their
chambers, and their attics often several
families IN single room, husbands and
wives, single men and widows, grown Up
boys and girls, young children, too; often
eight to a dozen souls, and ali cOmmingled
in a single room No privacy Of home
guards the virtue Of the girls or checks the
passions Of the men. Modesty, the shield
Of purity, Is lost or never known. Crime
and vice thrive as in q hot-bed Diseases
rage with q virulence unknown elsewhere.
Gotham Court" has since slain its ten
antry the fearful maximum Of 1876 per A.
600. Of course the dregs 81 the city col
lect-vagrants, beggars, vagabond q, and
thieves, all vicious and often drunken. The
respectable poor can hardly choose, and,
choosing best, can hardly escape contagion.
Ii ia overcrowding which il the source Of
all the trouble, and that they can not
avoid.
New York contains about 20, 600 tene-
ment-houses housing over half a million of
souls. A single ward has a tenant populA-
tiou twice that of Boston The Eleventh
Ward, New York, crowded a population
of 6O,0OO, ten years ago, into an area
averaging las square feet each. Thirty
acres, in Ward -Four, huddled population
of over IL, 600, at the fearful rate Of 290,-
900 to the square mile. This is worse by
far than the worst crowding in London,
where the East End only shows . rate Of
lie, 900 to the square mile. Enough OF
figures. These only hint the utter woe, the
gloom, the despair Of the wretched
poverty dragged surely down to pauPeriSm;
disease spread by pestilential vapors, and
a cruel death rate. They prove that the
children grow up in beggary and vice, to
prey in savage retaliation on a community
that has been guilty toward them Of foul
neglect. Crimes Of violence and crimes Of
theft, almshouses and prisons, are the Sad
incidents of their career. A ghastly pic
ture of the misery and vice, of the permAn-
ent and growing degradation, which large
tenement houses collect and breed But
challenge any one who hears or reads
these lines to let his fancy dwell on the
horrors of men and women, adult boys and
boys and girls, with children, too, often
a dozen or more souls, living or dying in 9
single room, or cellar Of huge barracks,
and then say whether the above language.
or any human words, can equal the scene.
And all tins ln q Christian dAy-in .
Christian land. Well mag We pause and
ask Must all this be