Smyrna times., 1880-07-14
Tenament-House Life in New York,

The humane physicians connected with
the Children's Aid Society in New York
city are going the rounds of the tenement
houses in that crowded resort of misery,
| and the pictures which they give of the
way people live-if it can be called living
are simply frightful. The gloomiest touch
es in Taine's description of the tenements
OF Clvlta Vecchia and Naples are bright in
comparison with these doctors plain, mat.
ter-offact reports. Whole squares and
streets of dingy houses, each inhabited by
twenty or thirty families, are represented
as reeklng and oOzlng with all sorts Of filth
ana putreS cent with nauseous smells. Dirt,
ignorance, disease and suspicion lurk in
every one of these wretched tenements
Scarcely family possesses an ash box or q
garbage box; all the refuse is thrown into
the streets, and there the streetcleaninr
department permits it to lie and ferment.
The few cellars which are not occupied by
families are filled with malaria. breeding re.
fuse OF every conceivable sort. The city
takes no care OF its poor does nothing to
clear away their filth, and they cannot con-
celve how individuals should undertake to
90 what the government neglects. Their
CONSCIOUSNESS OF "man's inhumanity to
man" makes them suspicious in q painful
degree OF every effort to raise them from
their sunken state or amelorate their
wretched condition. They have lost their
faith in disinterested kindness. "These
people, said one of the doctors, ''are very
suspicious. They cannot understand how
the government can take an unselfsh in.
terest in their children, and they conse-
quently refuse to be confidential. In the
hospitals, too, we experience much trouble
from women who, i'll a great majority of
| cases, make false statements concerninr
their previous condition." This is n dark
commentary upon the Italian proverb that
suspicion releases the obligation of good
| faith" The poor little babies, such of
them as survive at all, and in some of these
nelghborhoods the air is SO foul that the
doctors say it is miracle how any infant
can surVlve-are the worst off of anv.
| They breathe an atmosphere saturated with
the ammonlacal smells from closet leaks.
| from piles of rotten vegetables and oarb.
age, and from foul and obstructed sewers.
They are i'll ted, i'll clad, dirty all the time,
swarmed over by millions Of flies and ut.
ter!y torlorn and wretched. Their poor
little lives are crossed and irrtated by a
thousand unmerited woes and depriyations.
and, even should they survive, the shadow
thus early cast over their tender lives will
never be lifted. The sqalid misery and
| filth which infest many of these neirhbor.
hoods is due to crime, drunkenness and
unthrlft, even more than to the natural
degradatlons OF extreme poverty. There
are some tenement eighborhoods, fully as
much Overcrowded as those described,
which are comparatively free from the re-
| voting phases of life those others present.
Here there is some evidence Of internal
wholesOmeness. The children, though punv
are clean: their shabby clothing is washe Id
and patched, and there is pathetic effort
| made to preserve q certain sort Of decency
and outward decorum. The inhabitants OF
all these wretched tenements, however
unite in protesting that it is not so much
! sanitary inspection that they need as new
tenement laws rigdly enforced. 1t is not
the tenant, but the landlord, they say, whe
IS responsible for the dirt and filth Nc
class of persons could be more cleanly in
their personal habits than the German.
living on the east side of Broadway, vel
they are compelled to pass their lives sur
rounded by foul smells and the most horri
BILE stenches. There are no sewer pipes
there is no drainage in this seaton, and the
landlord, while squeezing out the last dollar
Tor rent, never spends penny for improve
ments, no matter how necessary. Tn,
board of health surely ought to hav,
authority to invade such premises and max,
the needed improvements at the landlord
expense. Nothing but the extreme salu
brty of its site seems to save New Yorl
from devastating pestilence every year. A.
it is, in these polluted sections it is tn,
experience Of the doctors that nearly every
case of cholera infantum is fatal.-Bah
Stn.