Year: 1879

l. The Plague Spots OF the Cify.


The clergy of the city never enlisted in a


better or more useful work than that which


was inaugurated yesterday. In number


of the churches, in accordance with an
arrangement made few days ago,
gatherings were held to discuss our


present tenement house system and


to suggest remedies for its evils. The
attendance at all these meetings was re-
markable both as to numbers and character,
and the earnestness and practical intelli-
gence displayed in the discussions prove
that the participants in the movement are
serious in the important task they have


undertaken to perform.


Morally and physically tho tenement
houses of New York are the plague spots Of
the city. Poverty, vice and crime find in
them the hotbeds for their termination, the
rich soil for their growth. Persons Of
very small means but of decent, reputa-
BILE lives, are driven to seek these
| pest houses because Of the high
rents prevailing elsewhere and the
absence of such decent dwellings, for the
| humber classes as are found in some other
great cities. They soon become contain
mated by the habits Of those with whom
they associate, The very atmosphere
corrupts their minds as well as their
bodies Drunkenness is q common vice
in tenement houses, because men and VIC
men whose homes are unfit for human
beings to live in are often driven to drink
as relief from thought. Besides, in
tenement house privacy is impossible the
foul mir is an incentive to drink, and in
| majority Of such houses dealer in slow
poisons sold under the name of liquor
finds an opportunity to ply his trade prob
ably without troubling the Excise Commits
sioners for license. Thus the poor be-
come poorer. the sober give themselves
over to inebriety, self-respect disappears
and the dry rot of the miserable system
soon eats into the body and soul Of the
! newcomer.


The city can never be safe from q pesti-
lence SO long as the present tenement
houses in crowded neighborhoods are
suffered to exist. Every summer we pro-





carry misery into thousands of homes
but would strike blow at the prog
ress and business prosperity of the
city from which we could not wholly
recover IN twenty years. In streets never
properly cleaned we have buildings in
which thousands of unclean people-men,
women and children-are packed like
cattle in pen. Ventilation is
thing unknown and unthought of;
and if ventilation existed it would
only let out one current Of foul air to admit
another equally impsre. Closets and eel
lars are used as bedrooms. Cooking, sleep
ing and living are all performed in a single
apartment, and without any change of at
mosphere. Bad drainage adds its poison to
all this and yet our citizens who are
better off and live in more comfortable dwell
ings, seldom reflect that at almost any
moment the monster of pestilence may be
warmed into existence by this aggregation of
impurities and 60 forth on destroying mis-
| sion into every home in the city. Moral dis
ease is indeed doing its work at all tines in
this dreadful atmosphere. We are some
times startled at the prevalence Of vice
among young females in the city. Yet how
can girls be preserved from destruction
who are brought up under a sys-
| tenn which herds males and females
together in common apartment.
sometimes with bare pretence at scpara-
ton and more often with none at all
What dreadful responsibility is on a
Christian community in which such sys-
tenn is suffered to exist.


1t is o crusade against this vice and misery
that was inaugurated last night. Several
| practical propositions were made for action,
among which was one that oil the churches
should enlist in the work as branches of
| central ladies' society; that capable
ladies should visit the tenement houses
to teach poor and ignorant women
how to live in cleanliness. how to buy and
cook food and how to preserve their chill
dren's health. 1t is proposed to urge the
Board of Health aud the Legislature to ac-
tive efforts to suppress the evil. 1t is to be
hoped that the movement will be persevered
in and will be productive of good. If we
had foul, putrid, pestilential pool in the
heart of the city, threatening disease and
death to oil, we should not rest until it was
removed. We ought not to pause until the
present. horrible tenement house system is
| swept out of existence


| The encouragement OF American Art.
We recently advocated the establishment
| of national bureau and Of national schools


OF art, being convinced that this was the


true and only proper and eficacious way


of clevating American art TO q position