The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, July 1884, No. 10Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
History
The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, July 1884, No. 10
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Institution -- Periodicals; Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle -- Periodicals
This gregarious life leads to great independence of character among the
women; the average survivor of the tenement house is no puny, frightened
creature, but a very active animal, ready to scratch, retort, appeal to
law, and loves and marries as she wishes. There is some natural deviation
from virtue, as from cleanliness, yet the recuperative principle in
women, as in men, is at least redeeming, and it is to be doubted whether
the vices in the tenement houses exceed those in the fashionable streets.
It is believed here that the worst class of people New York possesses
are the Bohemians from northern Austria. This degraded race was at one
time, or until the emperors destroyed it politically, the repository of
most of the vices of Europe. Among the Bohemians you find the domestic
virtues at the lowest ebb, and socialism at its lewdest. A manufacturer
was recently telling me of two Bohemians in his employment who grew weary
of their wives, and without any other marriage, and without quarrel,
they agreed, men and women, to change partners, and continue to live
and work together. At a recent strike of cigar makers in this city, a
working woman who stripped tobacco was set upon by three men and knocked
down because she preferred to take lower wages rather than keep idle and
support some of the demagogue patrols.
New York, however, has no such dens to-day as it had forty years ago,
when the Five Points was in the height of its orgies. Through that old
swampy quarter of the city broad streets have been cut, and manufactories
have been established. I have my doubts whether, at this moment, the
worst features of New York’s population are not to be found in some of
the rougher suburbs off the island. The draft riots of 1863 assisted
the peace and order of New York by bringing about a collision between
the very bad elements and the law. The police, who are generally hated
by the vicious as the visible representatives of the law, received from
that moment a degree of discipline which has ever since been kept up,
and the militia regiments of New York City have been provided with large
armories, and are in a fair state of discipline.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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