The Battle with the SlumRiis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
History
The Battle with the Slum
Riis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
Poor; Poor -- New York (State) -- New York; Tenement houses -- New York (State) -- New York
[Footnote 10: They had "health wardens" in the old days, and the
Council of Hygiene tells of the efficient way two of them fought the
smallpox. One stood at the foot of the stairs and yelled to those
minding a patient in the next story to "put pieces of camphor about
the clothes of the sick and occasionally throw a piece on the hot
stove." The other summoned the occupants of a smallpox smitten
tenement to the hall door and cautioned them to say nothing about it
to any one, or he would send them all to the pest-house!]
The tenement had grown its logical crop. In the sweating conspiracy it
is a prime factor. Its extortionate rates make the need, and the need of
the poor was ever the opportunity of their oppressor. What they have to
take becomes the standard of all the rest. Sweating is only a modern
name for it. The cause is as old as the slum itself.
[Illustration: Jersey Street Rookeries.]
However, the new light was not without its allies. Chief among them was
the onward march of business that wiped out many a foul spot which had
sorely, tried the patience of us all. A carriage factory took the place
of the Big Flat when it had become a disgusting scandal. Jersey Street,
a short block between Mulberry and Crosby streets, to which no
Whitechapel slum could hold a candle, became a factory-street. No one
lives there now. The last who did was murdered by the gang that grew as
naturally out of its wickedness as a toadstool grows on a rotten log. He
kept the saloon on the corner of Crosby Street. Saloon and tenements are
gone together. Where they were are rows of factories, empty and silent
at night. A man may go safely there now at any hour. I should not have
advised strangers to try that when it was at its worst, though Police
Headquarters was but a block away.
[Illustration: The Survival of the Unfittest.]
I photographed that phase of the battle with the slum just before they
shut in the last tenement in the block with a factory building in its
rear. It stood for a while after that down in a deep sort of pocket with
not enough light struggling down on the brightest of days to make out
anything clearly in the rooms,--truly a survival of the unfittest; but
the tenants stayed. They had access through a hallway on Crosby Street;
they had never been used to a yard; as for the darkness, that they had
always been used to. They were "manured to the soil," in the words of
Mrs. Partington. But at length business claimed the last foot of the
block, and peace came to it and to us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account