Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1885-03-22
HUMAN NERDS.
The Injurious Influences Of Tsna'
msat House Life.
Home Feeling Situated aad Good Natural
Impulses IIed--GOOd Social
Intercourse Almost
Impossible,

old Baptist church on Elizabeth stree,
transformed for the purpose. The evil
has since grown enormously, 30 that the
present number of these houses exceed %.
600. Some 1000 of these are second-clasS
. fats with one family to each floor, while
5000 others are rear buildings, Of which
last not less than 500 abut directly against
each other There may thus be iteen
buildings contiguous, as in the Mul-
berry street bend" The rear build
ings average ten families each, or
total of $4,000 families in these
houses, many Of which are dens of filth,
disease and vice. Up to 1865 these tene.
ments were below Fourteenth street. and
the tenement house population Of the
Eleventh and Seventeenth wards was 81 600
and $4,000 respectively. Since that time the
uptown wards have been largely built up.
aud the evil is growing in degree and ex-
tent; and, what is worse, while the down
town houses are small the uptown struc-
lures are double-deckers of four or FIVE
stories, with from fifty to 800 people in each.
While Paris and London have next to no
manufactures, such as tailoring and
cigarmaking, which are calcula-
ted to breed inaction, the great
deterioration in the character OF a large
part of the immigrant population IN later
years, consisting OF Southern Italians, Bo-
hemians and Poles, whom custom and igno'
rance render Indifferent to sanitary needs,
and poverty compels to herd together in
dark and airless rooms, complexities the
problem and makes a remedy difficult OF
discovery Filthy trades like rag and bone
picking afford the escape from starvation OF
a large number of these people, and the best
paid of the class have too scanty means to
admit of savings tor future need. The ra-
pscity of landlords squeezes the tenants for
the rent, to pay which the last cent may be
required.
It would be hard to find parallel Of the
Intervening OF cause and effect as the case
Of the tenement house occupants presents.
Too ignorant to be fit for any but the worst
employments; too poor to be able to become
fit for anything better forced to be herded
and packed together in pens OF squalor;
starving the moment worn is suspended; in.
vitipg diseae BY those physical conditions
from which they cannot emerge; with clean
hness as necessary as it is impossible with
plumbing defective and wanting; the ten
ants poverty herds them, the herding pro
duce sickness, greater poverty, and that
poverty again, greater filth and more sick
ness. One psoduces an effect. and that ef'
feet again reproduces its cause. With this
double potency Of evil, how can the helpless
vic in escape his fate?
A family of FIVE persons condemned to
two rooms Zone of these dark and airlesO
finding it impossible to meet the rent, take
right dodgers in addition and make the
place still more uninhabitable. The divi-
sion of the time between labor and sleep
(giying a great deal to the first and little
to the secondl destroys the social element
and robs life of pleasure, and consequently
of hope The door to vice is opened and
bows are led to seek in dishonesty and
crime, girls in shame, an escape from the
insuferable burdens Of lie and career
not devoid of excitement and admit
ting OF ease.
The sensibiEties which refine and elevate
the nature are dulled and destroyed by this
ikening of human habitation to the stables
of cattle. The feeling Of local attachment
and love of home disappears, although the
home feeling is the basis Of the family,
which cannot exist withoutit. The lines OF
division and separation between families
are obliterated in these human hives, as
individuality is lost in the mass:
Privacy, the mark Of personal dignity and
sole assurance Of personal identity, be-
comes impossible and domestic ties di5ap-
pear in this grand process Of communism,
which does not stop with goods and chattels,
Marriage and the relations arising from 1t
are imperilled in this contamination, and
those oldest of words-father, mother
brother, sister, husband wife-loSt part OF
their significance. That state Of things is
directly established which is fatal 10 public
morals and the permanence ofsociety.
Children find in the street the only pleas
ure they ever know, and the constant inter
course of 80 many places all on a common
level. This level is Of necessity, low, and
each child assists IN the debasement OF the
rest. Quarrelling, fighting, profanity and
vice make up the child's life, and each as
sists in the corruption Of the rest. Those
lessons of childhood, which are said to be
never forgotten, are not received, and the
child is LETT detenceless against the assaults
of temptation. living debauches him more
than it does adults, and he falls to the level
Oft lowest and worst Crowding degrades
human beings morally and mentally, and
all seem to suffer from too great closeness
and too minute mutual knowledge and IN
SD, ctiou. 1t is thus in childhood, the most
receptive period of life, that these nurseries
of vice and generators of crime exert their
widest and most powerful influence, an In
Auence which only the removal OF its source
can counteract or abate.
Strange to say that the tenement house
lite begets in the tenant strong liking and
| active preference for this mode OF exist
ence, a fact which multiplies the obstacles
in the way Of reform. One has been Grip
pled BY fall; q woman has been abandoned
| by her husband; another woman is making
pants at seven cents pair, and yet another
! shirts at eight cents dozen; another, 8
widow, with several children; man 1:
sick with consumption and unable tC
support his family; another has lost hi!
situation, and the result is the same In al
cases-privation and want, or dependence
upon charity. With the certainty OF sick
ness or want Of work at irregular intervals
only. these people must look forward to th'
necessity OF charity as a frequent event
Dull times, sickness or inability to dres
suitably to the demands of a situation entai
constant and recurring loss Of employment
iaborers, seaustreSses and washers an!
scrubbers are most liable TO this periodical
" enforced idleness, and during the pas
year a single charitable society assisted 81
Of the first, 3OS ofthe second and sos OF to
third. Those who are the worst paid are ais
the most liable to lose work. Some idea OF tn
overcrowding is conveyed BY the fact this
in those sections with 800 to $50 people t
! the acre, where single block may contain
ffty-two tenements, how many thousand
are living in cold, dark, damp, airles
rooms, the buildings in an advanced stat
of decay, with window sashes unglazed, o
no sashes st all; roof, walls, ceilings, door;
floors, all in the same dilapidated condition
4 L. ar,