Entering the tenements as an inspector of dog licenses for the A. S. P. C. A. brought me face to face with normal conditions—the well and the sick, the innocent and the criminal, the devils and the angels. I met them all, and so far as my time permitted I tried to get the point of view of each individual. Hardest of all, I tried to get the point of view of the owners of tenement-houses—the originator or the perpetuator of the greatest of earthly hells. After working among and living in the property of the tenement-house owners for twenty-one months I believe that I succeeded. GET MONEY—IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE BY WHAT MEANS, GET MONEY—is the point of view of the owners of tenement-house property in New York City. They have no civic pride, no pride of race, no feeling of brotherhood. Greed, that’s all, GREED. Never do they consider the health or good name of the city, or the health or comfort of their tenants. It is get money, and more money. Like the idle married woman, they are a curse, a mildew, sapping the very life-blood of those whose welfare and comfort should be their first aim. Poverty of itself is not degrading. It is the filthy dens in which the poor of New York are forced to live that decivilizes them, converting human beings into beasts and reptiles. I do not believe that Abraham Lincoln himself could have risen above a childhood passed in the average New York tenement. It is not the location, for the tenements among which I worked occupy the healthiest and most convenient portions of Manhattan Island. It is the landlord—the eternal drive of the house-owner for money, and more money. I have talked with hundreds of them, and found but one exception. That one was a stable-keeper, whose tenement-houses are situated in the lower gas-house district, and about whom I shall write farther on. My remedy for tenement-house conditions is to make the owners live in them for twelve successive months. Force every tenement-owner to live with his or her family in the house that belongs to him or her, to pass one winter and one summer. What a cleaning up and tearing down there would be. When that happens the police force of New York can be cut down to half, and the Health Department can go out of business. Neither the police nor the workers of the Health Department will have to do without city jobs. There will be room in the Department of Street-Cleaning. Then the cleaning will begin in those sections containing the greatest number of inhabitants, not in those having the most expensive property. CHAPTER XVI BURROWING IN