Poor -- New York (State) -- New York; Social settlements
The Hebrews, as tenants will, on the same block show many social grades,
many degrees of poverty and prosperity, many stages of development in
American civilization. There is a sense of feeling of brotherhood that
other people lack. The houses will range from the most uncleanly, ill-kept,
to the new tenement with ornate entrance and modern improvements. The most
modern will, on entering, be found with walls marked and broken when the
wood-work is new. No one seems troubled by this destruction. The
housekeeper does not struggle, for it is expected and charged for in the
rent. Plumbing is of the simplest, for it is expected to present the
largest percentage of loss in the administration of the property. One of
the most elaborate of the new tenements erected on the lower East Side was
visited three months after it was occupied. Every hallway from top to
bottom of the house had broken plaster and was marked by pencil and crayon.
The plumber was then a daily visitor. This house a year afterward bore on
the interior evidences that years of hard usage might have brought. The
housekeeper collected rents and attended to the garbage. She was utterly
indifferent to the appearance of the house, which, intended for prosperous
families, was a nest of sweat-shops, where even children of six and seven
were employed. The rents had been collected; that was the owner's only
requirement.
The West Side is congested, because manufacture and storehouses are
displacing the houses. Rents are high, and the houses for the most part old
residences occupied by several families. The people, generally, are
Americans. They are deeply attached to this old section, because it is
their birthplace; and for many of them an even deeper attachment prevails,
for this section was the birthplace of parents. The houses often are found
to have lifelong friends, often relatives, as tenants. The tenants keep the
halls and stairways clean in turn, and the houses generally are well kept
up. Here one tenant is allowed a rebate on rent for renting rooms,
collecting the rent, caring for the sidewalk and stoop, the garbage and
ash-cans. The majority of the people in this section are Protestants. The
Protestant churches are well maintained. The Trinity Corporation supports
kindergartens, cooking and sewing schools. The Judson Memorial is a very
attractive gymnasium, that brings children from as far west as the North
River. The Methodist Church holds many who in no other section could find
the same equality and freedom. The vocabulary of the people through this
section shows the effect of the newer activities in the modern churches;
the effect of the enlarging interests of the children in art and nature
through the public school education.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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