The Secrets of the Great City: A Work Descriptive of the Virtues and the Vices, the Mysteries, Miseries and Crimes of New York CityMcCabe, James Dabney
History
The Secrets of the Great City: A Work Descriptive of the Virtues and the Vices, the Mysteries, Miseries and Crimes of New York City
McCabe, James Dabney
New York (N.Y.) -- Description and travel; New York (N.Y.) -- History
In good weather, a man with a good flute-organ can generally make from
two to five dollars a day. Those who have the best instruments seek the
best neighborhoods in the upper part of the city. There they are always
sure of an audience of children, whose parents pay well, and some of
these seemingly poor fellows have made as much as from ten to fifteen
dollars in a day and evening. In bad weather, however, they are forced
to be idle, as a good organ cannot be exposed with impunity at such
times. The "grinders" pay from five to eight dollars per month for
their rooms, and sustain their families entirely upon maccaroni. They
use but a single room for all the purposes of the family, and, no
matter how many are to be accommodated with sleeping arrangements,
manage to get along in some way. They are very exclusive, and herd by
themselves in a section of Five Points. Baxter and Park and the
adjoining streets are taken up, to a great extent, with Italians.
The better class of Italians keep their apartments as neat as possible.
Children of a genial clime, they are fond of heat, and the temperature
of their rooms stands at a stage which would suffocate an American.
As a general rule, the organ grinders are better off in this country
than in their own. Their wants are simple, and they can live with
comfort on an amazingly small sum.
There are, however, many who are not so fortunate as those to whom we
have referred. These are the great majority of the organ grinders, the
owners, or renters of the vile, discordant instruments which are the
bane of city people. They earn comparatively little but kicks and
curses. They are ordered off by irate householders, and receive but
little or no consideration from the police. They live in wretchedness
and want. Their homes are vile and filthy, and they are the
perpetrators of a great many of the crimes that disgrace the city. They
are frequent visitors at the Tombs, and are ready to be employed for
any dirty job for which unscrupulous men may wish to engage them.
THE WANDERING MINSTRELS.
Any one who can turn a crank can manage a street organ. The arrangement
of the instrument being entirely automatic, no knowledge of music on
the part of the grinder is necessary. Another class of street minstrels
are required to possess a certain amount of musical skill in order to
perform creditably. These are the strolling harpers and violinists.
Like the organ grinders they are chiefly Italians, but they are not so
fortunate in a pecuniary sense. Their earnings are very slender, and
they live lives of want and misery. A very few are excellent
performers, but the great mass have not the faintest idea of music.
CHILD MINSTRELS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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