The Washington times., 1903-08-23

4 II may De asked, What is done TO
remedy these conditions? 1t is easy
enough to find fault. but what can one
do about it? In paragraph describing
one of the tenement blocks, Mr.. Riis
mentions at least one thing that has
been done. He says:
Here, let me show you a tenement
house block on the east side TODAY
There were 2.7S1 persons living in ii
when census was made OF IT two years
ago, 466 of them babies in arms. There
were AL dark rooms with no windows
at all. and 635 rooms that opened upon
the air-shaft. An army OF mendicants
was marching forth from that block; in
five years $50 different families in it had
applied for public relief. In that time it
had harbored thirty-two reported cases of
tuberculosis, and probably at least three
times as many more n all stages that
were not reported. The year before, the
health department had recorded thirteen
cases of diphtheria there However. the
rent roll was all right. 1t amounted to
s113,964 year.
Il tell you these things that you may
understand the setting of the home IN
the greatest of American cities. Two
millions of people in New York live in
such tenements- Do you see those mar
row slitc in the roof? They are the
shafts, two feet four inches wide,
sixty or seventy feet deep. through
which light and air are supposed, in
the landlords theory, to come down to
the tenants We have just upset that
theory, and forbidden those double
deckers with that kind of air-shaft
There are to be courts, hereafter, so
that the tenant may have light enough
within the house to make out his neigh
bor"
1t was In that block that the only
bathtub was found hung out OF window
that was the only place in which there
was room for 1t. Mr.. Riis tells of an
other block IN which there was a back
yard five feet ten inches wide. He
says he knows the measurement is cor
rect, because he measured 1t himself.
Theodore Roosevelt holding the other
end of the tape line.
1t is about time that civilized Ameri-
cans should realize that you cannot put
a man into surroundings which make for
disease and degradation and not expect
him TO respond 10 the influences. In the
words of the backwoodsman when he
was shown through a badly managed
poorhouse. also lunatic asylum, full of
stenches. dirt, and noise:
How'd you expect a sick feller to git
well when ye put him where a well
feller'd git sick?"
How can we expect the poor TO be
healthy, clean, virtuous, when they
are housed in buildings which make 1t
impossible? We refuse to allow our own
houses to be unsanitary, we teach our
children the use of water, we are care
full to admit light and fresh air. on the
ground that our morals. health. and
spirits will suffer II we do not Yet the
we'll to-do citizen could hardly create in
his own house such conditions as those
Of the tenements. There is no reason
why the poor cannot be housed comfor-
tably at prices which they can afford 10
pay. Mr.. Riis tells OF a tenenent-owner
who testified that he was getting 6 and
per cent on his model tepements, fit
dwellings for anybody. The prices
which many of the poor pay for their
tenements would cover the cost of de-
cent dwellings, if the dwellings were 10
be had. And even If it would not, the
city could better afford to provide light,
air. and water than to build more and
ever more poorhouses, jails, and hos
pitfalls. 1t is one or the other.
In the last chapter the author an
swerS in another way the question
What can we do?" There are many
thoughtful. well-intentioned people who