The Clifton clarion., 1885-04-01
NEW YORK'S BITTER CRY.

NEW YORK'S BITTER CRY. The Disinherited Poor of the Me-
 trOpOlfs.
 Some Protestant ministers and members of Protestant church met the other day in New York to discuss the "bitter cry" that iscon- stantly gong up from the disin- herited poor of the metropolis. Some of the facts elicited during this discussion are interesting, as showing the evils produced by disinheritances. No less interest ing are the remedies" proposed by these ministers of the gospel. One speaker, who was the sanitary engineer and president of a recent tenement house commission ap- pointed by the Governor of New York, thus describes the so-called ''homes" into which the wage workers of the wealthiest city on the American continent are packed like so many sardines: "There are to-day 1S,000 tenement houses in this city. There are houses sand wiched in between the rear of one house and the rear of another. In some instances there is only Q space of nine inches between such buildings. [Sensation.] Then there are the tenement houses known as 'double-deckers'-fve stories high and with four families living on each floor. In some of these houses live upward of 100 persons. The official records show an average of three deaths a year to the tenement house. Let us take a tenement twenty years old. If the bodies of those dying in the house during that time were put in coffins a foot and a half deep, and these coffins were placed one on top of the other, pile would be raised twice the height of a five story building. I know of one tenement house in this city in which there have been 1,6OC deaths"
 One of the ministers at this con- ference we are speaking of, dwell ing on the moral aspect of the subject under discussion, said among other things that "there were 21,000 fallen women in New York. There were about 3,OOC thieves and 8 large number oi vagrants. The male vagrants lived partly by begging, partly by petty thieving and partly from the ash barrels. The female vagrants passed a great deal of their time in public institutions. There were 460 females in this city who had been committed upward of twenty times to the island. The remedy lay in the gospel.p VI
 These startling facts supply us with data that will enable us te form some idea of the way the souls, as well as the bodies, of tht disinherited are killed by the grea original crime of allowing few men to monopolize what God 1T His fatherly benefcence intended for all. The suggestion that the remedy for this terrible state ot things 'lay in the gospel" would be cruel mockery if we did not know that it was offered in all sin cerity. A lady member of thu State Board of Charities, who wal present. with a woman's clearnes: of perception spoke of the "gospe remedy" in this manner:
 Vice and misery reproduce eacl other. What wonder is it that the poor go to the liquor shop ant the dance house to escape iron the squalor and misery of theil surroundings! What can you ex pect from children whose onl, playground is the gutters Two little boys were recently fined by a magistrate for playing hop scotch in the street. He told then they should go to the parks tt carry on such play. How can ; boy living on Chrystie street go tt Central Park every day?
 Those not acquainted with Nev York will understand the signifi canoe of this question better whel we state that the street named i almost four miles from Centra Park.
 Of all the clerical gentlemen who spoke about New York's ''bit ter cry" only one-the Rev. Dr Lyman Abbott-seemed to SC, that the wage question had any thing to do with the misery unde discussion. The reverend docto said:
 One of the great evils lying a | @e ,~,,aL of khD