New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1881-08-28
JOHNNY BOUQUETS WALKS.

HoUsEs-A STRANGE MEDLEY OF INDUSTRY AND
POVERTY, GREED AND sQUALoR-MYsTERIEs OF
THE GREAT NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. CoID-fHE
PROBLEM yFAsT-How LAGER BEER is MADE
SOLD AND CONSUMED.
My sster-in-law, whom I have brought up 10 the
bouquet trade and who has been presented win the
Freedom of The City by the masters of the Board OF
Aldermen and who knows the metropolis In some
respects better than do SAID last Wednesday
morning:
"Let us 90 down among the cgar-makers. /
want to show you how they tie up cigar leaf for the
NilliOn."
We eaped into green cal at Madison Square,
which went past Union square and Stryvesant
Square and along the noble plaza of Tompkins
Square which is the best of the small parks of New
York--the largest of Them bordered by houses of
uniformity and height and since the police
have allowed green trees instead of ramparts and
cannon TO grow there, it has become beautiful
city landscape, though every house that fronts it is
% crowded tenement. A little south of TOmpkins
Square the turns down Secohd-s. to reach the
Williamsburg ferry. The city thereabouts falls
out of its normal perpendicuar and requires series
of streets which if extended above and below very
far would be in the East River. That street next
beyond First-ave. they call Avenue-A; the next, to
the east, Avenue-B, is right in the axis of Black
wells Island. Avenues-C and ID, like the two
foregoing, are broad slightly Streets full of life
and light and dirt, but like the street scenes
except in this city. Piles of dirt and garbage lie
along the curbstones, barrels and boxes of refuse
are stewing by the hall-doors, carts and wagons
have mounted the ordure ptes if to make
barrcades: the high brick houses generally five
or six stories. are partly open to the view as if
their dingy fronts transparent. and there can
be seen other multitudes than those which crowd
the tall stoops, washing sewing. cooking quarrel
ling, ironing sleeping drinking, reading, jabbering,
shouting, making busy bedlam, and from the
windows are hung lower-pots, bird-cages old
clothes, bed linen, utensils and whatever con-
venence necessity requires to be exposed to the
passengers eye, nostril. You hear the poll
parrots squawk and swear, and the piping bull
finches whistle at the street crier far below, who
pushes his barrow through the muck and cries
Old Clothes" or Mussels, fresh," or "Wein
Sausage" You some pair of idle girls draw
jeers and jokes from fifty stoops as you go past.
Somewhere in the lofty checker-board a is
playing the cornet resolved to draw Levy's salary
split every on Manhattan Island. Chinese
laundrymen are in some of the Easements, looking
like race of only women. All languages but
English salute the ear all faces but Ango-Dane
examine your appaIiton, all mythology but
American history is known to these hosts of gre
garious yet guardianless children.
"Ah! Mary Ann" said i, " this Avenue-B sepa-
rates the Eleventh from the Seventeenth Ward
Seylla from Charybds. East of Avenue-B. live
100000 to the square mile say twelve square
yards to the human soul. West of it IN the Seven
teenth Ward live about 90 900 to the square mile.
London at ITS worst has no such population this
for density. East London. where crowded the
most, only up to 175,000 people to the square
mile. There are above A, 100 houses in the Seven
teenth Ward which together contain population
OF 100000.
SLEEPING IN THE FACTORY.
We stopped in Second-St before hve-story brick,
with a door in common low to tie pavement and
ni,c,r nf ;nho chi
@This is the mandatory" said Maryantha.
"Factory of what Z" asked.
HOf cigars"
"Where is the signboard of any factory here 7"
My belle led up to little piece of tin about
foot square, scarcely big enough to upon the
proportions of the s1uaiC tenement and there read
in hardly legible lettering, if it sign of
"C@sar Jones, withdrawing" the words George
Bunch, cigars"
This man, Maryantha," 1 remarked, certainly
punches his light under a bushel."
"'Ts not his object to be known as manufacture
ing here" replied Mary Ann. He has to put out
some little finger board to satisfy the very small
scrupes of the revenue officials. The customers of
tenement-house cigar-makers have little idea that
in these sweltering tenements the goods strip
ped, sprinkled, spread and rolled amidst the feet
of naked children and the fumes of beer and sleep;
that these vast lodging houses also living cigar
factories, and III not twenty-five feet SQUARE
and de,and their industry raked from these trodden
floors is sucked between the lips of the million and
called by some high-soundng NAME as "The Con-
queror Cigar" or the Regal Cortes"
We turned up Avenue-B, and another tenement
of The wOrser kind showed the shrinking little black
tin sign. Continuing along Second-st. toward Ave-
nue-C great row ofthese sardne-box houses rose
blazing red upon the morning sunshine, all stirring
with animal life-fve close stories where sleep had
not vet ceased though manufacturing had begun.
"They work fourteen hours a day." exclaimed
Maryantha, "and make in that time 700 cigars
Consequently they must begin at in the morning
and work till or 10 at night But to make 700
cigars and 81 takes the labor of four persons
the children to strip the tobacco from the STEMS the
wife to make the bunches,' or filters and the man
OF the family to roll and trim the cigars When they
have finished the days work they are too tired to
go OUT so they drink beer where they have been
sitting and breathing all day till they become dull
enough to sleep. But before going to bed they must
wet down and spread upon the floor to dry all the
tobacco for next days manufacture AS they pos
sess no other room to do it in, they use the same
room they have inhabited all day. which is at once
kitchen, dining room and work room, and in the
night or next morning the woman and the children
walk on the tobacco which strews the floor and
however soied it is rolled while yet dry damp into
700 cigars. And life goes on fer 500
DAYS. and so fve-eighths of all the cigars in New
York are prepared"
"Where are Our philanthropists ?" exclaimed.
@Where are the polices Have truant act in
New-York to rescue future American citizens from
Iavery like this and send them to school I"
We have a truant act, but it is a dead letter
The parents Of those children are usually Bone
maus. often raised in the tyrannical Government
III of An fria ira horo