Poor -- New York (State) -- New York; Social settlements
In the two-room apartments in this house there is one closet, with shelves
about six inches wide. This is in the one room that serves as living-room,
kitchen, dining-room--a room less than eight feet wide. The bedroom is
perfectly dark, ventilated by a square window into perfectly dark,
unventilated halls. A full-sized bed leaves the width of the door between
it and the wall. The three-room apartments have outside windows--five to
the three rooms. There is a closet in the kitchen and one in the large
room. People talk of poverty, but few people know what it is. A woman who
had moved into the three-room apartment had hung all the clothing for five
in family in the one bedroom on four nails. In reply to a protest, she said
patiently and quietly: "There are no hooks in the closet in the front room,
and I hadn't a penny to buy any." Ten cents provided that closet with
hooks. A comment was made on the keeping of the washtub under the kitchen
table. "Why do you not have the tub carried to the cellar?" An expression
of self-pity passed over the woman's face as she explained that the tub
would have to be carried down three flights of stairs, out on the street,
around the corner, down the cellar stairs, and then to her coal cellar at
the extreme end of the cellar.
The house stands on a corner, the entrance from the street at the extreme
end of the west wall. The cellar door was formerly close to the entrance
door, but the landlord built in the back end of the cellar an oven when a
baker hired the store on the first floor. A cellar door was then opened at
the farthest part of the front, or south wall, one hundred and twenty-five
feet from the entrance door of the house. Is it surprising that coal is
bought by the pail by all the tenants? That tubs are kept anywhere in their
rooms where there is space?
Shiftlessness, thriftless uncleanliness marks even the sidewalk about this
house. The dirt inside or out troubles nobody. Children will spill half the
contents of the garbage pail they are carrying to the cans in the tiny
yard, in halls and on the stairway. It is kicked out of the way without
comment. Dogs or cats, and ofttimes both, are members of the families who
live under this roof. The unsanitary conditions of the closets in the yard
arouse pity for the tenants on the first floor; but no tenant thinks of
complaining to either the housekeeper or the authorities. It would be
useless, and would get them into trouble. The present owner is willing to
kalsomine the bedrooms and halls each spring, but the tenants object
because it makes a lot of work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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