The evening times., 1899-03-20

| the extreme. When, in addition to this,
the buildings are unsanitary, dark. unyen-
| tilated, and without adequate water sup
| ply, they become breeding places of dis
ease. and then they are source of inn
mediate danger to the whole community
OF course, there is also danger in al
lowing moral pestholes to exist, but the
effects are not quite so obvious.
Future generations may ask, why did
| these people of the nineteenth century,
with all their boasted progress, allow such
degradation and pollution within a stones
throw of their churches and colleges. The
answer will probably not be fiattering 10
| the plutocrat of today. The simple truth
of the matter is that, whenever there is d
movement toward cleaning out these slum
districts, howl goes up from the land
| lord, who sees large part of his income
slipping out of his grasp. Tenement
! house property is acknowledged to be
! among the most valuable in New York-to
| the man who receives the rent. While the
prices charged for these dirty, dark, foul
breathed places are low, compared with
the charge for rooms in a decent house,
! they are high enough to return quite
respectable-or neutrality-suspicious. on
the investment. In these places there need
be no money spent for improvements; there
is no money lost by letting rooms lie idle,
because the poor are numerous, and must
live somewhere. Plumbing, whitewashing.
roof mending. replacing of glass and stair
rails and broken floors, and all those mat
ters, cost but fraction of the bill for
repairs in any respectable apartment house,
and the business is practically all in
come.
In discussion on this question, a we'll
to-do man once enquired rather supercil-
iously, whether if all the tenement
houses were replaced by dwellings fit for
human being to live in, and all the ten
ants subjected TO regulations which pre-
vented the collection of one family, or two,
or three, in the same room, the result
might not be that the poor would have no
place whatever 10 go, and would be worse
off than before. There are two answers
to this query. First, if it should actually
| happen that all the tenement-houses in
the city were condemned and replaced by
suitable dwellings, constructed on a sani-
the town where poor people might live
after the old barbarc fashion, those who
could not be accommodated inside the city
limits would go outside; they would form
little suburban villages; landlords would
build other apartment houses in the sub
urbs; and the population, instead of be-
ing congested, would be distributed more
in the way which God intended it should
be- 1t was never part of the plan of
nature that human beings should live in
anthills.
Here is a story which is still more to the
point: Once upon a time two young
women in Boston came Unexpectedly into
the possession of a large fortune. A part
of the estate consisted OF tenement-houses.
The new owners were college women, with
a philanthropic turn of mind, and did not
wish to have slum dwellings on their con-
sciences. They determined TO try an ex-
pertinent They turned all the occupants
out OF one of the buildings. put in sani-
tary plumbing bathtubs, and modern i'm
provements. whitewashed and painted and
made repairs, and then re-rented the rooms
10 as many of the old dodgers as would
come back, at the same rent as formerly
stipulating that there should be no over
crowding. They found at the end of a
year that they were getting 10 per cent
on their investment. This indicates that
some of the wealthy landlords could afford
to give their tenants proper accommoda-
tions, and yet not be utterly impoverished
4
Even if it were true that the death OF
the fiendish murderess, Mrs. Place, as the
penalty for her monstrous crime is "a
| disgrace to the State it is hardly fair
to place the blame on the governor be-
cause he did not interfere. But it is not
clear that it is disgrace. If such a Grim
inal had been rescued from the chair. the
next person to commit a like crime would
be hanged by mob on the ground that
the law is not enforced. That would be
wicked and deplorable, but it would hap
pen, all the same, and there would be the
risk of hanging an innocent person. since
mobs do not always wait for the verdict
of jury II the amiable people who are
shocked by the killing of a murderess who
first blinded her innocent victim with an
acid, could have their own sweet will, the
forms of justice would be banished in many
cases and violent deaths would become
more frequent.
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