Produced by David Edwards, Christine P. Travers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) [Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all other inconsistencies are as in the original. Author's spelling has been maintained. Hyphen have been removed from God's-acre. The two types of Thought Breaks used in the book have been used in this project as well, type 1: 2 blank lines, type 2: line of asterisks.] [Illustration: "The Kid Was Standing Barefooted In The Passageway."] CHILDREN OF THE TENEMENTS BY JACOB A. RIIS _Author of_ "_The Making of an American_," "_The Battle with the Slum_," "_How the Other Half Lives_," _etc._ _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY C. M. RELYEA AND OTHERS_ New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1903 _All rights reserved_ Copyright, 1897, 1898, By THE CENTURY CO. Copyright, 1903, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up, electrotyped, and published October, 1903. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. PREFACE I have been asked a great many times in the last dozen years if I would not write an "East-side novel," and I have sometimes had much difficulty in convincing the publishers that I meant it when I said I would not. Yet the reason is plain: I cannot. I wish I could. There are some facts one can bring home much more easily than otherwise by wrapping them in fiction. But I never could invent even a small part of a plot. The story has to come to me complete before I can tell it. The stories printed in this volume came to me in the course of my work as police reporter for nearly a quarter of a century, and were printed in my paper, the _Evening Sun_. Some of them I published in the _Century Magazine_, the _Churchman_, and other periodicals, and they were embodied in an earlier collection under the title, "Out of Mulberry Street." Occasionally, I have used the freedom of the writer by stringing facts together to suit my own fancy. But none of the stories are invented. Nine out of ten of them are just as they came to me fresh from the life of the people, faithfully to portray which should, after all, be the aim of all fiction, as it must be its sufficient reward. J. A. R. CONTENTS PAGE The Rent Baby 1