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: ^ indicates superscript.] THE BATTLE WITH THE SLUM [Illustration: Editor's logo.] [Illustration: Author.] THE BATTLE WITH THE SLUM BY JACOB A. RIIS AUTHOR OF "THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN," "HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES," ETC. _ILLUSTRATED_ New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1902 _All rights reserved_ Copyright, 1902, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped October, 1902. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. PREFACE Three years ago I published under the title "A Ten Years' War" a series of papers intended to account for the battle with the slum since I wrote "How the Other Half Lives." A good many things can happen in three years. So many things have happened in these three, the fighting has been so general all along the line and has so held public attention, that this seems the proper time to pass it all in review once more. That I have tried to do in this book, retaining all that still applied of the old volume and adding as much more. The "stories" were printed in the _Century Magazine_. They are fact, not fiction. If the latter, they would have no place here. "The Battle with the Slum" is properly the sequel to "How the Other Half Lives," and tells how far we have come and how. "With his usual hopefulness," I read in the annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science of my book three years ago, "the author is still looking forward to better things in the future." I was not deceived then. Not in the thirty years before did we advance as in these three, though Tammany blocked the way most of the time. It is great to have lived in a day that sees such things done. J. A. R. RICHMOND HILL, August 27, 1902. CONTENTS PAGE Introduction. What the Fight is about 1 CHAPTER I. Battling against Heavy Odds 9 II. The Outworks of the Slum taken 36 III. The Devil's Money 63 IV. The Blight of the Double-decker 76 V. "Druv into Decency" 113 VI. The Mills House 154 VII. Pietro and the Jew 175 VIII. On whom shall we shut the Door? 202 IX. The Genesis of the Gang 227 X. Jim 256