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
were blackmailed. One, a Jew, told his story: he was ordered to pay five
dollars a week for privilege of keeping open Sundays. He paid, and they
asked ten. When he refused, he was told that it would be the worse for
him. He closed up. The very next week he was sued for a hundred dollars
by a man of whom he had never borrowed anything. He did not defend the
suit, and it went against him. In three days the sheriff was in his
store. He knew the hopelessness of it then, and went out and mortgaged
his store and paid the bill. The next week another man sued him for a
hundred dollars he did not owe. He went and threw himself on his mercy,
and the man let him off for the costs.
He was one of the many thousands of toilers who look with fear to the
approaching summer because it is then the hot tenement kills their
babies. Their one chance of life then depends upon the supply of ice
that is hawked from door to door in small pieces, since tenements have
rarely other refrigerator than the draughty air-shaft. The greed of
politicians plotted to deprive them of even this chance. They had
control of docks and means of transportation and they cornered the
supply, raising the price from thirty to sixty cents a hundred pounds
and suppressing the five-cent piece. Some of them that sat in high
official station grew rich, but the poor man's babies died and he saw at
last the quality of the friendship Tammany professed for him. The
push-cart pedlers, blackmailed and driven from pillar to post, saw it.
They had escaped from unbearable tyranny in their old home to find a
worse where they thought to be free; for to their oppressors yonder at
least their women were sacred.
It is difficult to approach calmly what is left of the diabolical
recital. The police, set once more to collecting blackmail from saloon
keepers, gambling hells, policy shops, and houses of ill fame, under a
chief who on a policeman's pay became in a few short years fairly
bloated with wealth, sank to the level of their occupation or into
helpless or hopeless compliance with the apparently inevitable. The East
Side, where the home struggled against such heavy odds, became a
sinkhole of undreamt-of corruption. The tenements were overrun with lewd
women who paid the police for protection and received it. Back of them
the politician who controlled all and took the profits. This newspaper
arraignment published in January, 1901, tells the bald truth:
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