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
In a house around the corner that is not a factory-tenement, lives
now the cigarmaker I spoke of as suffering from consumption which the
doctor said was due to the tobacco-fumes. Perhaps the lack of healthy
exercise had as much to do with it. His case is interesting from its
own stand-point. He too is one with a--for a Bohemian--large family.
Six children sit at his table. By trade a shoemaker, for thirteen
years he helped his wife make cigars in the manufacturer's tenement.
She was a very good hand, and until his health gave out two years ago
they were able to make from $17 to $25 a week, by lengthening the day
at both ends. Now that he can work no more, and the family under the
doctor's orders has moved away from the smell of tobacco, the burden
of its support has fallen upon her alone, for none of the children
are old enough to help. She has work in the shop at eight dollars a
week, and this must go round; it is all there is. Happily, this being
a tenement for revenue only, unmixed with cigars, the rent is cheaper:
seven dollars for two bright rooms on the top floor. No housekeeping
is attempted. A woman in Seventy-second Street supplies their cooking,
which the wife and mother fetches in a basket, her husband being too
weak. Breakfast of coffee and hard-tack, or black bread, at twenty
cents for the whole eight; a good many, the little woman says with a
brave, patient smile, and there is seldom anything to spare, but----.
The invalid is listening, and the sentence remains unfinished. What of
dinner? One of the children brings it from the cook. Oh! it is a good
dinner, meat, soup, greens and bread, all for thirty cents. It is the
principal family meal. Does she come home for dinner? No; she cannot
leave the shop, but gets a bite at her bench. The question: A bite of
what? seems as merciless as the surgeon's knife, and she winces under
it as one shrinks from physical pain. Bread, then. But at night they
all have supper together--sausage and bread. For ten cents they can eat
all they want. Can they not? she says, stroking the hair of the little
boy at her knee; his eyes glisten hungrily at the thought, as he nods
stoutly in support of his mother. Only, she adds, the week the rent is
due, they have to shorten rations to pay the landlord.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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