The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-12-28
NO SLUMS IN BERLIN.
THE TENEMENTS IN THE GER-
 MAN CAPITAL

4 AGAEEIStEes
 Berlin's great lesson is that of com-
 fortable, cheerful self-respecting living,
 As you study the conditions in which ] the Berliners are born and grow up
 you cease to wonder why German l emigration to America has fallen off.
 The wonder is that there is any left. Why on earth" I sasked myself, l should a Garman care to emigrate, with a chance of gravita.ing to an American slum, when he has the
 choice of living in this clean, whole
 some, beautiful capital?" There are no slums in Berlin. You may have seen ; this statement in print, but you do not ] realize it's full meaning until you have seen the homes of the poorest people in New York would be huddled in
 squalid rookeries in Allen street Ur Hell's kitchen-the people who are so
 poor that even in Berlin they take their i coppers to the horsemeat butcher shop or stand in line to buy condemned
 beef at the municipal slaughter house. ] Many of them are so poor that they , are party supported at the public ex- 1 pense.
 ] The homes of these people are in 1 broad, sunny streets, usually lined with trees and often parked off with strips
 of turf. In an American city most of 1 these streets would be called avenues, | if they were not promoted to the ranks
 of boulevards. On each side are
 blocks of dignified and attractive
 dwellings resembling in outward ap-
 pearance the ranks of high grade
 apartment houses about Morningsides Park, says Golfers.
 But there is one feature of these Ber- l lin tenements which has no counter l part in any section of New York. On | both sides of the street the house fronts, from top floor to basement, are
 one continuous bower of venture. In | front of almost every window Is a 1 balcony that has been turned into l hanging garden of flowers and vines. You see these window gardens in
 every quarter of Berlin-they are the city's most distinctive and most attrac- 1 tive feature-but nowhere do they seem so charming as in the quarters where they throw their radiant disguise over
 the grim skeleton of poverty. Each of the tenements whose front is thus bravely decked has a spacious central court-sometimes one into another through roomy arches. In all Berlin
 there is no such stagnant we'll or
 porid vapors as we call an "airshaft."
 Nor is there dark room. Every tene-
 ment rooms opens either upon the
 street or upon an ample court as big
 as a village yard, through which the
 bree2es and the sunlight have full play.
 In the newer tenements, every apart
 ment even if it consist of only one room
 has it's bath The public halls in the
 poorest buildings are scrubbed and
 light. The superintendent it would
 be an insult to call him janitor-has
 a neatly fitted office, with his papers
 docketed in a business desk. The usual
 arrangement of the upper floors is
 long hall dividing all the kitchen from
 the bedrooms and living rooms. The
 sitting rooms are rather ambitiously equipped with curtains, carpets, orna- mental clocks and pretentious furni- ture. Everything is .scrupulously clean.
 Throughout the great building the brooms and sprinkling pots are never still. Nowhere do you sniff the fetid tenement smell that gives the first warning of your approach to an Ameri- l can slum. The children, whose fathers may be earning 75 cents a day or may have their rent paid by the city, wear neat little print frocks, and their faces | show the wholesome influence of soap, | water, sunshine and fresh air.
 Nor is all this bit of Acadian vil- | lage life. Berlin is the fourth city in 1 the world and growing at a rate that ! will soon make it the third. It has more people than the boroughs of Man haitian. It is nearly three times the l size of Glasgow, which testers with l slums. It has deep and widespread | poverty. If the poor of Berlin can be l housed with deeency and comfort there | is no reason why any city should have submerged area No reason but one,I and that is the desire of the people l themselves. For some of the pleasing features of their tenement system the l Berliners have to think a paternaI | government. The government can regulate the construction of tenements; | can insist upn spacious courts, forbid | dark rooms. inspect the sanitary ar- rangements and regulate the lighting and clearing of the public halls But the government does not plant and | tend the window gardens; it does not scrub the kitchens, sweep the parlors, wash the childen's faces and launder their clothes. These things are done by the people themselves. Not only do tenants look after their own apart ments, but they form a natural cooperative moral police, to maintain the general standard of the house. If they find slatternly family among them they make it feel their disaproval and if necessary they complain to the and have 1t evicted. So it appears that it would not be enough to import the Berlin city government, efficient as that is-to get the same re- suits we should also have to import or duplicate the Berlin population. The poor of Berlin would make betterl homes under a Tammany government than the New York East Side would make under the administration of Ber- lin. The reformers who are fighting New York's slums are doing good work when they secure improved laws and F conscientious health inSnira tioo hut !