Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-11-17
SEVEN BRAVE GIRLS
Risk Their Lives Daily in the Slums
of New York in Order to
REACH THE TENEMENT TENANTS.
Mingling Among the Squalid Inhabitants
on Equal Terms.
THEIR WORK ALREADY BEARING FRUIT
CORRESPONDENCE OF THE D1sPArcH.l

street, and think that the folks who have
Just taken up their home there constitute e
family more interesting than may be found
under any other roof in all New York City.
On one side of the house is q big lodging
with beer saloon in the cellar and on the
other side is Jewish synagogue now being
remodeled. Across the way and all
through the neighborhood are tenements
and cheap shops and low groggeries. The
population of the district is foreign. 1t is
the most densely settled ward in the city.
1t is also one of the poorest dirtiest and
most disorderly, and its police make more
arrests than are made in any other precinct
of the metropolis. In one year, according
to the latest statistics, there were 1855 ar
rests. This was one-tenth of the whole
number made throughout the town.
And yet into this squalid, sordid region
seven charming college girls have recently
come to live. The falling of their young
unsullied lives in this wretched, vicious,
dismal quarter, seems like the falling of a
lily in the mud. But the girls are content
They have been there a month and are
happy. They hope to STAY there many
more months and to be happier. They know
that they are surrounded by dirt and ig-
norsuce, and, what is worse, by the dangers
of contagious disease, and the risks of
drunken insult and brutal assault, but they
are fearless. Nay more, it was because
they knew these features of life existed in
their highest degree in this Tenth ward that
the girls went down there to make their
home. 1t was nearly two years ago that
the heroines first thought OF the unique
scheme. They had left their college halls
only little while before, and were
FULL OF HOPES AND PLANS
to make their lives useful. Last spring
their proposed experiment was merely item
lied in few of the New York papers. It
was generally agreed that the enthusiastic
young women had a laudable object, but
most men and many women said it was an
army contract that the girls had undertaken.
There were prophecies that the diploma
bearers would soon be daunted by the
dangers and difficulties, and that their pro-
iect would be abandoned. 1t was pro-
nounced absurd, this harum scarum idea Of
cultivated unmarried girls, accustomed to
surroundings of comfort and refinement
going into and staying in such an unclean,
immoral and altogether degraded district.
Well, all doubts and forewarnings to the
contrary, the girls have done it, and the
spirit of their philanthropy has begun its
novel life within the gloomy walls OF the
old-fashioned three-story and basement
house at e5 Rivington street.
Now, want to tell what sort of a home
this is, who the girls are, what they are
doing, how they are doing it, and what the
results appear to be and what they NAV be
some years hence. But first let me explain
the object of the work. 1t is in brief the
social elevation of the masses among whom
the venturesome collegians have settled.
The idea is of Boston birth. A college wo-
man living there had heard there was in
one of the slums Of London a settlement of
university students who chose to live and
study among the poor and unfortunate and
give to them plain missionary work in their
leisure time. They succeeded, and it is by
following somewhat similar methods that
THE BRAVE BAND
now in Rivington street hope to record
equal success among the desolate people of
this New York quarter. The girls are fully
aware that many well-disposed folk are fire.
quenting the squalor of this wretched ward
and endeavoring to remedy the evils that
everybody knows exist there. But the
means hitherto used have not wrought posi-
tive manentimprovement. 1t is an unfor- |
tunate fact that the ordinary mission
worker impresses the object of his or her
is broad social gulf between them. Now,
people among whom city missionaries labor |
do not want pity. They resent it. No mat
ter how keen their poverty, how monotonous
their tread of toll, no matter how dull their |
12-month round of hand-to-mouth existence.
they have inherited pride, a s1ubbornness,
which arises barrier-like against the e1-
hortation of those missionaries who sneak |
and act as if they stand upon a lofty plane |
TO step from which into the precincts of |
tenement life is a condescension in |
deed. The ordinary missionary is
patronizing, and the unfortu mates don't like |
that treatment. The ordinary missionary |
tells the mothers, whose horizons are so con- |
stantly elOuded by despair, that poverty IS |
the cross God has given them to carry, and |
that they must make the best of it and |
brighten their lives with the belief that it |
is blessing after all. The ordinary mis- |
sionary ladies out charity soup with one |
hand and with the other distributes tracts |
about ones patiently bearing ones burdens. |
Too often tbe soup is taken with a bitter |
relish, simply because it has too much of |
the charity favor, while too often the relig- |
ious tract, without being read, is used to |
start the morning fire. In too many forms |
indeed the lower tenement house |
families are made to feel that the mis- |
sionaries consider themselves superior to |
those among whom they are working. The |
most CALLING manifestation of this uncon- |
cealed belief OF superiority is the fact that |
almost invariably the missionaries and their |
never live among those whom
they would benefit. And an almost equally
annoying thing is that the missionaries |
never welcome to their own homes of COM
fort the poor folk in whose homes of dis
comfort they preach their unsatisfying Cos
pei There may be q prim mission hall for
the lowly to visit, but the cheerful fresides
Of the missionary's own household gods is
on an avenue of brown stone fronts, and |
somehow the toiling mother, the weary
factory girl, the neglected child
KNOW NO GREETING THERE.
Now, the spirit Of the College Settlement
that is the name that the girls have given
to their RivIngton street home-is the
reverse of the spirit of ordinary missionary
They have gone down into the
misery quarter to show the miserable that
they are not too blueblooded to breathe the
same air, nor too dignIfed to live in one of
the old houses. They have taken no tracts
with them, nor will they favor with the bit
ter herbs of charity the soup they may ask
the tenement folks to eat. They will not
preach the doctrine that poverty is a bless
ing in disguise, nor will they ever let the
Rivington street people feel there is a social
chasm between them that may not be
bridged.
You know how in small towns the house
wives get acquainted by popping their sun
bonneted heads over their back yard fences,
Ind venturing to exchange the salutations of
The day. Well, it is somewhat in this fash
ion that the seven young women of Vassar,
Wellesley and Smith scrape friendship with
their neighbors. And the talks that fol-
low, imagine from what comes to me in
various indirect ways, for in truth no man
has ever been present at any of these neigh
borly conversations, are not about texts and
tracts, but rather about pans and kettles
and recipes for barley broth and egg ONE