The tenements of New York City! The change that I made—working with tenement-dwellers and living in rooming-houses to working in and living in the tenements—was like that experienced by a hunter when stepping from the outskirts to the depths of a jungle—a jungle abounding in treacherous quicksands and infested by the most venomous and noisome creatures of the animal kingdom—a swamp in which any misstep may plunge you into the choking depths of a quagmire or the coils of a slimy reptile.

But there are two great differences between the jungles of civilization and those created by nature. In nature’s works there is always beauty—however noxious the creature, however venomous the reptile, there is always beauty. The tenements of New York City are monstrously hideous.

In nature’s jungles the evolution is always upward from protoplasm to that most perfect of animals—man made in the image of his Maker. In the jungles of civilization the evolution is always downward—from man to beast, to reptile, and to that most noisome of living creatures, the human worm.

In the tenements of New York City we see the forced decivilization of representatives of all the civilized peoples. In it there exist thousands more afflicted than Lazarus, thousands possessed of more devils than the Master cast out of the man of Gadarenes, thousands in whom the light of human intelligence will never even flicker. It is the greatest of all earthly hells. It is the product of human greed.

Comparing New York City to a jungle—the gilded zone of Fifth and Park Avenues are the tall timbers, the grove of leisure and pleasure wherein the human animal having all that nature and civilization can supply is supposed to grow to perfection—the superman. Leaving this zone, going east or west, with every step leisure and pleasure grow rapidly less, farther and farther behind do we leave fresh air and sunshine, and all that makes life desirable.

I entered the tenements by two routes—as a social worker attached to Bellevue Hospital, and as a license inspector for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Polly Preston entered by yet another route—as a fugitive.

Even to-day as I write, with more than a thousand miles between me and New York City, I recall my work in the tenements as a social worker with a shiver. Social work is dispensing as charity that which should have been paid as wages. Had the wage been paid there would have been no rickety baby, no tubercular manhood and womanhood, no need for homes for incurables. It is underpaying that drives persons to live in the tenements, it is ill health or ignorance that keeps them there.

Possessing neither the blasphemous conceit formerly professed by Wilhelm Hohenzollern nor the sublime faith of the Pope, I did not enjoy acting as the personal representative of God Almighty. It used to make me sick as with nausea, more than once I was near to wringing my hands.

Who was I that honest, hard-working men and women should cringe before me?—poor overworked, underfed human beings who from their birth to their death never lost consciousness of the snarling presence of that hell-hound Poverty.

It was in my power to see that a quart of milk was delivered daily for Baby—real bottled grade A milk with all the cream in it. Johnnie was kept home for lack of shoes, and his father having been in the hospital going on five weeks, and his mother’s wages as scrubwoman only enough to buy food, there was no hope of his getting a pair unless—yes, I had the power to get for him a better pair than possessed by any boy on the Avenue. Wonderful lady! So all-powerful.

“Johnnie, bring a chair for the lady. Let ’er see what nice manners you’ve got.” And Johnnie, tripping over his own feet incased in a pair of men’s shoes past mending and too broken for his father to wear, drags forward the only whole chair in the flat.

Another typical case was that of Mary Kane. The tenement in which I found her was like ninety-nine out of every hundred in New York City. Dark halls with crooked stairs and air foul for lack of ventilation and over-crowding.

“Stop cryin’, Mamie. Here’s a lady from Bellevue. Maybe she can get you to go to the country.” And her mother, haggard and overworked to the point of desperation, turns to me with a wan smile which, in her effort to make it gracious, becomes a ghastly grin.

When I reply that it is because the society sending convalescing children to the country had reported that Mary had not used the card entitling her to two weeks in their home that I have called, her grin becomes that of a beaten dog. Again it is lack of shoes and a few clothes. In this case the husband and father is not in Bellevue. He had stopped in the corner saloon on his way home with his wages.

Mary has a tendency to T. B. To spin her life out even a few months will require plenty of fresh air and the right kind of food.

Hospital social service is to supplement the work of the doctors and nurses of that particular hospital. Fortunately, Mary has been in Bellevue. I took her size and the number of her shoes, and promised to get them along with another card entitling her to another two weeks in the country.

Time passes and again we are notified that Mary has not used her card. On my return to the tenement practically the same scene confronted me. Only this time the mother had a black eye, the baby tugging at her breast was whimpering, and Mary seated near a window, the only window in the flat from which a glimpse of the sky may be had, looked more like a ghost than a living child.

Before I was well in the door the mother hustled me back again into the hall. In a neighbor’s flat, a trifle lighter than her own because there were two windows in the front room opening on the street, she started to tell me her story. Because I had known many tenement wives and mothers I recognized that she was lying and stopped her.

“Who was that snoring in your back room?” I asked her. And fact by fact I draw the story from her.

The husband and father of the family had stolen the shoes and clothes sent for Mary, had sold them and gotten drunk on the proceeds. So drunk that— Oh, she didn’t mind a black eye so much, she assured me. He didn’t really mean it, being a good man when not in liquor. What she regretted was that he had missed two days at work.

Then with a grin like a cringing beaten dog she admitted that since Saturday noon she and Mary had lived on tea, without either milk or sugar, and part of a loaf of bread given her by a neighbor. To-morrow? Maybe by to-morrow her husband would be sober enough to return to his job.

Then came that terrible look—the look that made me want to wring my hands, to get off the earth, had such been possible. The look of a cringing human soul pleading to the All-Powerful for something dearer than life—to give Mary another chance.

A succession of such scenes is what entering the tenements as a social worker means. One sees only the abnormal, hears only the groans of the suffering, and of the misdeeds of the criminals.

Entering the tenements as an inspector of dog licenses for the A. S. P. C. A. brought me face to face with normal conditions—the well and the sick, the innocent and the criminal, the devils and the angels. I met them all, and so far as my time permitted I tried to get the point of view of each individual.

Hardest of all, I tried to get the point of view of the owners of tenement-houses—the originator or the perpetuator of the greatest of earthly hells. After working among and living in the property of the tenement-house owners for twenty-one months I believe that I succeeded.

GET MONEY—IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE BY WHAT MEANS, GET MONEY—is the point of view of the owners of tenement-house property in New York City.

They have no civic pride, no pride of race, no feeling of brotherhood. Greed, that’s all, GREED. Never do they consider the health or good name of the city, or the health or comfort of their tenants. It is get money, and more money.

Like the idle married woman, they are a curse, a mildew, sapping the very life-blood of those whose welfare and comfort should be their first aim.

Poverty of itself is not degrading. It is the filthy dens in which the poor of New York are forced to live that decivilizes them, converting human beings into beasts and reptiles. I do not believe that Abraham Lincoln himself could have risen above a childhood passed in the average New York tenement.

It is not the location, for the tenements among which I worked occupy the healthiest and most convenient portions of Manhattan Island. It is the landlord—the eternal drive of the house-owner for money, and more money. I have talked with hundreds of them, and found but one exception. That one was a stable-keeper, whose tenement-houses are situated in the lower gas-house district, and about whom I shall write farther on.

My remedy for tenement-house conditions is to make the owners live in them for twelve successive months. Force every tenement-owner to live with his or her family in the house that belongs to him or her, to pass one winter and one summer. What a cleaning up and tearing down there would be.

When that happens the police force of New York can be cut down to half, and the Health Department can go out of business. Neither the police nor the workers of the Health Department will have to do without city jobs. There will be room in the Department of Street-Cleaning. Then the cleaning will begin in those sections containing the greatest number of inhabitants, not in those having the most expensive property.