The Children of the PoorRiis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
History
The Children of the Poor
Riis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
Child welfare -- New York (State) -- New York; Poor; Poor -- New York (State) -- New York
So much for the sweat-shops. Jewish, Italian, and Bohemian, the story is
the same always. In the children that are growing up, to "vote as would
their master's dogs if allowed the right of suffrage," the community reaps
its reward in due season for allowing such things to exist. It is a kind
of interest in the payment of which there is never default. The physician
gets another view of it. "Not long ago," says Dr. Annie S. Daniel, in the
last report of the out-practice of the Infirmary for Women and Children,
"we found in such an apartment five persons making cigars, including the
mother. Two children were ill with diphtheria. Both parents attended to
the children; they would syringe the nose of each child and, without
washing their hands, return to their cigars. We have repeatedly observed
the same thing when the work was manufacturing clothing and
under-garments, to be bought as well by the rich as the poor. Hand-sewed
shoes, made for a fashionable Broadway shoe store, were sewed at home by a
man in whose family were three children with scarlet fever. And such
instances are common. Only death or lack of work closes tenement-house
manufactories. When reported to the Board of Health, the inspector at once
prohibits further manufacture during the continuance of the disease, but
his back is scarcely turned before the people return to their work. When
we consider that stopping this work means no food and no roof over their
heads, the fact that the disease may be carried by their work cannot be
expected to impress the people."
[Illustration: SHINE, SIR?]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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