THE ONLY BATHTUB IN THE BLOCK From “The Battle with the Slum.” Copyright, 1901, by the Macmillan Company.] It was in one of the after swells of the great awakening that a man stood up in a meeting of church people of all denominations, gathered to find an answer to the question how to bring those multitudes back to the old altars, and cried: “How shall these people understand the love of God you speak of, when all about them they see only the greed of man?” He was a builder, a Christian builder, and he forthwith set about erecting in Brooklyn a row of tenements such as a Christian man could build with a clear conscience. The Riverside tenements stand there to-day unrivaled. (See illustration facing page 130.) It is much better to live on the yard there than in front, because you have a garden and you have flowers and even a band-stand where the band plays sometimes at the landlord’s expense. The tenants are happy and contented. So is the landlord. He told me himself that he has had six and six and a half and even as high as seven per cent. on his investment, and he said with scorn that the talk about the tenants “coming up to their opportunities” was the veriest humbug. “They are there now,” he said, “a long way ahead of the landlord.” Seven per cent. is good interest on any investment. It almost looks, does it not, as if it were a question then whether a man will take seven per cent. in providing for his brother and save his soul, or twenty-five per cent. and lose it? It is odd that there should be people willing to make the latter bargain; but, since there are such, you might almost say that our fight with the slum is a kind of missionary effort to compel them to take seven per cent. and save their souls in spite of themselves. [Illustration: THE RIVERSIDE TENEMENTS From “The Battle with the Slum.” Copyright, 1901, by the Macmillan Company.] Alfred T. White’s tenants have homes: he has made it possible for them. Humble homes to be sure, but furniture and show do not make the home of which I am thinking, the home that is the prop of the Republic. Look, now, upon this flat in an East-side block and tell me if you think that that is a proper setting for American citizenship. (See illustration facing.) That is one of the piggeries I have spoken of, and there are too many of them. Thirteen persons slept in that room where the law allowed only three. In that neighborhood I counted forty-three families in a tenement where the original builder had made room for seventeen. Do you think that is safe? And what must be the effect upon the growing generation of such an environment as that?