Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1892-02-05
Lady Somerset Gives Some Vivid
Descriptions Of Her Visit 10
These Dives.
Some Scenes of Misery ahd Woe She
Witnessed i'll Darkest New
York.
She Compares the Places of Misery in
New York With Those of
London.

great anu crushing misery against which
we are batting In the worlds largest
metropolis In the slow, hereditary growth
or years. Since the day when The great
tfe did for our city what no other or lesser
means could have accomplished and
partially purified the plague-Strlcken dis
trlcts or London by demolishing dwell
ilngS which were saturated with foul dis
ease, London has gradually, though
spasmodlcally, attempted to raise the peo-
pie from the slough of squalor which has
been her inheritance for years. Apathy
III the past and Ignorance of sanitary
laws has made the process marveously
slow, but the London of to-day is in many
ways almost miraculously better with all
the appalling Ills that still exist) than the
London of thirty years ago.
As, however with the human body, so
with that agglomerated mass Of life which
we call city, all chronic and disease is
more easily subdued than those fercer
forms OF sudden, violent disorder which
shatter and break down nervous and vital
force by their rapidity, so we must admit
that the fact that evil in New
York IN its worst torm should exist after
less than one hundred years of civiliza-
ton, is In itself a greater symptom of
deep seated mischief and threatens more
ultimate destructive III than that which
Is the slow growth of cumulative mis-
cry.
The actual pressure of population in
New York Is admittedly greater in the
congested districts than In the older city,
and this is the more serious because as
London spreads her immense network of
houses until gradually she encroaehes on
for counties. New York by her geograph-
lcal position is sea-imited as to- her exist.
ing compass.
The tenement-house system in New
York is admittedly a failure Whether
possibly by cheaper locomotion, smaller,
more homelike dwellings could be pro,
cured for the laboring classes in the future
it is impossible for a stranger to pre-
dict.
The lodging house difficulty remains.
so far as | have been able to gather, still
untouched. The family lodging house is
always the very stronghold OF vice and
sin. The s. cent bed is also an unmitigat-
ed evil In London lodging houses have
been opened with great success, not only
philanthropie put pecuniary, to meet this
necessity, providing bed and locker in a
cubicle, shut in by door with a lock and
key, for cents night; N the basement
there is a large kitchen in which the
occupants may sit, providing a place for
meals al d possibilities for cooking. The
Salvation Army shelters in London are
also OF untold value and no more SUCCESS
full work has been done by that indefatlg-
able body.
Perhaps the distinctive feature that
strikes stranger most in first visiting the
slums of New York is absence of the con
slant stream of life which renders our
great London thorougbfares almost as
crowded by night as by day. The law
which allows no vagrant to pass the
night on doorstep or under a railway
bridge clears the streets of the visibl
signs Of homeless misery which impress
themselves so indelibly on ones mind in
London.
The difference which, however, should
unhesitatlngly emphasize lies mainly In
tie fact that the London poor, apart from
the distinctly so-caIled criminal classes,
are, [ should say, more degraded than the
average inhabitant of corresponding
quarters in New York. This distinction
is chiefly due to all absence Of public senti-
ment against female drunkenness and the
extreme leniency with which the most open
immortality is regarded by women who
themselves are neither drunkards nor i'm
moral. The utter lack of any standard
produces state of society from which The
most ordinary self respect is conspicuous
by It's absence, even among those who are
comparatively virtuous.
In working among the factory girls the
real struggle is to give them the most ele-
mentary notions of propriety and decorum,
and it has often been almost dispairihg to
snow how to persuade them that the first
nrinciple of modesty forbade them fro
kissing the railway employees at every sta
ton during a journey taken for the
purpose of giving them summer holi-
day.
Women and children habituaIIy frequent
The gin shop and the long bars, end often
with tears In my eyes | have pleaded with
mothers In these places not to give tea
spo0nfuls of spirits to the babies they held
ia their arms.
The absence of all women in the saloons
Of New York, save those of whom fair
fame and good name are only memories, is
certainly very striking, and though I'M
derstand that the saloon attached to the
tenement house supplies perhaps an al.
most equal amount Of liquor to the To-
habitants of those dwell ines, the very fact
that public opinion is still respected aud
an outward snow of respectabillty preserv-
ed, is, while t lasts, of untold value.
And, indeed, | understand that drunken
ness among American women is every
where uncommon.
There Is, however, one aggravation of
this misery In New York. which renders
it more grim terrible than in London,
and that is th3 greater rent demanded out
of their wretcned earnings by the land
lords, fact which reduces their condition
to one of even more helplessly chronic des-
titution than in London.
In the cellar of one wretched tenement
house into which | vent, approached by
rickety stairway dripping with water,
three men were sleeping on beds composed
OF boards laid on the tops of barrels con-
tanning the fruit sold IN the'streets. The
h5or was so damp that the water stood in
snail puddles, and for this shelter each
man was paying So cents a week-one
shilling and sixpense in our English
money.
As | stood in that room ] felt truly
that those evils in the old country which
have made it neces sary for Gen Booth to
appeal to the pity Of the public to provide
for men that which is considered blre
necessity for the beasts that draw our hacks
and cabs are no greater evil than this.
heart to hrd In this new couPtry, with all
its real and great aspirations toward the
universal brotherhood of men, and under
the very shadow OF the new made mil
lionaires of this great city. such d,stitu.
I j.