Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-10-15

enade Some day it is going to be bridge.
New York calls it the East river prloge
even now; but how thing that peglns
nowhere in particular and ends nowhere III
particular can be called bridge Is known
only to the municipal authorities.
1t Is a stately bridge from each one OF
its giant steel skeletons OF towers TO inc
other But it has no approaches yet. AT
the Manhattan end 1t dips into a torh'
ragged, dusty, ugly wilderness miles away
from any business section of the city. No
body goes there unless he Ives there. NO
body goes there to reach the bridge, pe-
cause with the foresight so characteristic
of New York, they built the bridge in
mad hurry, but never thought of way to
carry folk over it.
A Dead Bridge.
So this thing that was swung high over
the river by feverish work, day and night,
with all modern engineering resources eX-
hausted to hurry, hurry, hurry, that 1t
might relieve the mortal congestion of the
city, is trainless and dead today A few
miserable cars run to it and past it; but
nothing goes over it-nothing except the
great East Side tenement house popula ton
The Ghetto has seized upon 1t as splen-
did gift-joy-giving, life-giving. The vast
structure that was flung in the SKY beset
with steel rails side by side and still more
steel rails hung high over the rest, to drum
with a thousand car wheels at time, TO
throb with unending professions or trains
carrying their live freight by the hundred
thousand, echoes only to the cries ana
shouts of the tenement children, and the
shuttle of the patient, plodding feet OF the
people of the Ghetto. The only wheeled
traffic that crosses it is In the shape OF
baby carriages whose tiny occupants, but
for this gift of the fairy accident, would
never see anything throughout all their in
fancy except the sheer walls OF black
houses, dirty streets and still more dirty
pits that are called back yards and areas
nv plea fiction of law.
The bridge builders started to build an
approach. They have advanced SO far in
their work as to carve mighty cash into
the crowded city-a cash that looks like
Deep sore wound. Straight through the
heart of the Ghetto it goes, right through
what once was it's most crowded part
where more than a thousand people were
crushed together in residence on every
acre of precious ground.
The Heart of Tenement Life.
Like the surgeon, exposing the inner sa-
cred mysteries of the human body with his
scalpel, the city engineers with blast and
crowbar have laid bare the very heart of
tenement house life.
Some day when they make a bridge out
of it, the sight that may be seen on both
sides of that mile-long approach will be
one of the spectacles of the world.
Looking down on the open wound are
two long shouldering rows of tenements.
towering away to the westward as far as
sight can reach till they are lost in the
gray dust of streets where still more tene-
ments rise, battling in hideous, inanimate
fight for the light and air of which there
is not half enough to go around.
The strangers who will be whisked along
that approach some day will ride over
places where two and three hundred fam
lilies lived in spaces exactly as large as
those occupied farther uptown by the
houses in which Andrew Carnegie, Charles
Schwab and the various Vanderbilts find
barely room enough for their single families
and servants.
two solid milestone on each side-where
there is not house that is not tenement;
not an inch of ground that is not occupied;
not a blade of grass: not a single undefiled
watt Of air; not one room out of three into
which the sun shines full and fair.
When they have passed those two rows
of houses, they will have Pc ssed through
a street that harbors 43.315 people. In
every one of those blocks. two and one
half acres in area, that front.on the bridge,
there are from 1900 to $500 people. In
the most crowded of those blocks. :03 fam
lilies are herded. In the least crowded there
are 141 families. and the density of the pop
ulation is 331 persons to the acre. In the
most crowded block the density of popula-
ton is such that 1,162 people live. eat,
sleep and die on every acre.
A Bridge Of Laughter.
The bridge that is so useless just now for
the New York for which it was built has
become priceless to this Ghetto for which
It was not built. The Ghetto children
Chamber all over 1t, play on it, live on it and