Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1897-06-17
FRESH AIR FUND WORK.
MINISTER DESCRIBES THE HOMES
OF TENEMENT CHILDREN.
Eighty Families Crowded Into One Build
ing on Bone Alley-Another Rouse Has
Twenty Families Living in One Room.
Their Poverty Is Indescribable.

ing on Bone Aliey-AnOther House Has
Twenty Families Living in One Room.
Their Poverty Is Indescribable.
Interest in the coming of the carload
of New York tenement house children
is Increasing as the time approaches for
their arrival. The little ones are eX-
pected here next month, but the exact
date has not yet been announced. The
committee selected by Mr.. Dechant, the
agent of the Tribune Fresh Air Fund, is
industriously at work taking the names
of persons who will provide a home for
one or more of these children during
their two weeks stay in Freeland The
committee consists of the following, to
whom applications should be sent not
later than the Goth inst Rev. j. j.
Kunt2, chairman; Rev. S. Cooper, Rev.
Il. e. Wilson, Rev. NJ. J. Fallihee, Rev.
j. p. Buxton, William Williamson and
j. j. Brobst
AT recent meeting of an organization
known as The Federation of East Side
Workers. Rev. John B. Devins, pastor
of Hope Chapel on East Fourth street,
New York, read the following paper:
"One cannot present the tenement
house problem on paper. He cannot
draw picture sufficiently vivid to be
| life-lilie. The camera fails here also:
you cannot photograph an odor. The
stereopticon tells only half the truth:
! you cannot flash dwarfed intellect or
a stunSed soul upon canvass. To under
stand very much about the homes of the
poor, you must live with the people and
live as they live; you must sleep where
they sleep and sleep as they sleep, in
their poorly-ventilated rooms; you must
eat what they eat, with quality frequent
y sacrificed to quantity; You must
breathe the foul air which they are
Obliged to inhale, often through no fault
of their own; you must walk through
the filthy streets in which they are com
PEELED to spend much of their time, be-
cause some one withholds the small
parks to which they are entitled; you
must read the cheap literature which
they read quality again being second
airy matter; you must climb the steps
of the dark and often ill-smelling stairs
which lead to their room or room and
bedroom where frequently five or six
persons live, eat, sleep and die; you
must undergo priyations as they do-un-
| justly it seems to them sometimes, and
to others also; you must go to bed hun
CRY and fall asleep from exhaustion
after walking for hours looking for
work; you must hear the landlord, or
worse, his agent, insisting on the rent
already overdue, when you have not a
dime in the house; you must meet the
insurance agent, whose weekly visits
alone seem to stand between you and.
the potter's lield you must listen to
your children crying for bread when
there is not crust in the cupboard nor
a penny in the purse to supply it; you
must watch your wife or child suffer
and waste and die, when the prescrip-
tion lies on the table, and you cannot
get the medicine for lack of money; you
must know something of these everyday
experiences of hundreds of families be-
fore you can understand very much
about the tenement-house problem and
its relation to the municipal govern
ment.
ali those who influence public opinion
realized what a terrible danger to the
city the tenement-house as an institu-
tion is, wonderful change would take
place. Efforts to purify politics or to
raise the moral standard of the city will
be of little avail while the source of the
trouble remains untouched. Superin-
tendent Brynes is quoted as saying re-
Gently: The tencments are one of the
biggest cOgs in the machine which
makes criminals, male and female. The
associations of the tenement districts
are dangerous-no one knows better
than both to the purity of the women
and the honesty Of men. That the
ovcrcrowding of the tenements must fill
childish minds with vicious and wicked
knowledge is certain. Thata large pro
portion Of our population lives in such
environment cannot but be serious
menace to society
american cities are too near home
'N' 70 w grasp INV pipbiSlho DOuhu up
in them as we should if we were dealing
with Toxic or Pekin, or even London.
1t Is not good form to have q pessmistic
spirit regarding our great country.
Our national pride is touched when the
spiritual needs of our own cities are
! faithfully presented. Darkest England
moved America to tears, and yet Lon
don has very small percentage of for
eign population, and New York has
more than 40 per cent. When the true
Bitter Cry of Outcast New York is
heard the Christian world will be stirred
to its depths. Let us glance at few
facts apparent to the most casual obser-
yer of the problems confronting the
church in the gateway Of the nation.
"In one house in Bone alley, not far
from Hope Chapel, eighty families live
today. l tried to hire two vacant rooms
in this tenement house few years ago.