How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New YorkRiis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
History
How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York
Riis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
Poor -- New York (State) -- New York; Tenement houses -- New York (State) -- New York
the reputed haunt of thieves, they have become the most orderly in the
neighborhood. Clothes are left hanging on the lines all night with
impunity, and the pretty flower-beds in the yard where the children
not only from the six houses, but of the whole block, play, skip, and
swing, are undisturbed. The tenants, by the way, provide the flowers
themselves in the spring, and take all the more pride in them because
they are their own. The six houses contain forty-five families, and
there "has never been any need of putting up a bill." As to the income
from the property, Miss Collins said to me last August: "I have had six
and even six and three-quarters per cent. on the capital invested; on
the whole, you may safely say five and a half per cent. This I regard
as entirely satisfactory." It should be added that she has persistently
refused to let the corner-store, now occupied by a butcher, as a
saloon; or her income from it might have been considerably increased.
Miss Collins's experience is of value chiefly as showing what can be
accomplished with the worst possible material, by the sort of personal
interest in the poor that alone will meet their real needs. All the
charity in the world, scattered with the most lavish hand, will not
take its place. "Fair play" between landlord and tenant is the key, too
long mislaid, that unlocks the door to success everywhere as it did
for Miss Collins. She has not lacked imitators whose experience has
been akin to her own. The case of Gotham Court has been already cited.
On the other hand, instances are not wanting of landlords who have
undertaken the task, but have tired of it or sold their property before
it had been fully redeemed, with the result that it relapsed into its
former bad condition faster than it had improved, and the tenants with
it. I am inclined to think that such houses are liable to fall even
below the average level. Backsliding in brick and mortar does not
greatly differ from similar performances in flesh and blood.
Backed by a strong and steady sentiment, such as these pioneers have
evinced, that would make it the personal business of wealthy owners
with time to spare to look after their tenants, the law would be
able in a very short time to work a salutary transformation in the
worst quarters, to the lasting advantage, I am well persuaded, of the
landlord no less than the tenant. Unfortunately, it is in this quality
of personal effort that the sentiment of interest in the poor, upon
which we have to depend, is too often lacking. People who are willing
to give money feel that that ought to be enough. It is not. The money
thus given is too apt to be wasted along with the sentiment that
prompted the gift.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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