Just back of the City Hall, towards the East River, and within full sight of Broadway, is the terrible and wretched district known as the Five Points. You may stand in the open space at the intersection of Park and Worth streets, the true Five Points, in the midst of a wide sea of sin and suffering, and gaze right into Broadway with its marble palaces of trade, its busy, well-dressed throng, and its roar and bustle so indicative of wealth and prosperity. It is almost within pistol shot, but what a wide gulf lies between the two thoroughfares, a gulf that the wretched, shabby, dirty creatures who go slouching by you may never cross. There everything is bright and cheerful. Here every surrounding is dark and wretched. The streets are narrow and dirty, the dwellings are foul and gloomy, and the very air seems heavy with misery and crime. For many a block the scene is the same. This is the realm of Poverty. Here want and suffering, and vice hold their courts. It is a strange land to you who have known nothing but the upper and better quarters of the great city. It is a very terrible place to those who are forced to dwell in it. For many blocks to the north and south of where we stand in Worth street, and from Elm street back to East River, the Five Points presents a succession of similar scenes of wretchedness.

A FIVE POINTS RUM SHOP.

Yet, bad as it is, it was worse a few years ago. There was not more suffering, it is true, but crime was more frequent here. A respectably dressed man could not pass through this section twelve years ago without risking his safety or his life. Murders, robberies, and crimes of all kinds were numerous. Fugitives from justice found a sure refuge here, and the officers of the law frequently did not dare to seek them in their hiding places. Now, thanks to the march of trade up the island, the work of the missionaries, and the vigilance of the new police, the Five Points quarter is safe enough during the day. But still, there are some sections of it in which it is not prudent to venture at night. The criminal class no longer herd here, but have scattered themselves over the island, so that the quarter now contains really more suffering than crime.

Twenty years ago there stood in Park street, near Worth, a large dilapidated building known as the “Old Brewery.” It was almost in ruins, but it was the most densely populated building in the city. It is said to have contained at one time as many as 1200 people. Its passages were long and dark, and it abounded in rooms of all sizes and descriptions, in many of which were secure hiding places for men and stolen goods. The occupants were chiefly the most desperate characters in New York, and the “Old Brewery” was everywhere recognized as the headquarters of crime in the metropolis. The narrow thoroughfare extending around it was known as “Murderers’ Alley” and “The Den of Thieves.” No respectable person ever ventured near it, and even the officers of the law avoided it except when their duty compelled them to enter it. It was a terrible place.

Nor was the neighborhood in which this building was located any better. The ground was damp and marshy, the old Collect Pond having originally covered the site, and the streets were filthy beyond description. It is said that there were underground passages extending under the streets from some of the houses to others in different blocks, which were kept secret from all but professional criminals. These were used for facilitating the commission of crimes and the escape of criminals. Brothels and rum shops abounded, and from morning until night brawls were going on in a dozen or more of them at once.

The locality is better now. In 1852, the Old Brewery was purchased by the Ladies’ Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and was pulled down. Its site is now occupied by the neat and comfortable buildings of the Five Points Mission. Just across Worth street is the Five Points House of Industry, and business is creeping in slowly to change the character of this immediate locality forever.

In speaking of the Five Points, I include the Fourth and Sixth Wards, which are generally regarded as constituting that section—probably because they are the most wretched and criminal of all in the city. This description will apply with almost equal force to a large part of the First Ward, lying along the North River side of the island. The Fourth and Sixth Wards are also among the most densely populated, being the smallest wards in extent in the city.

The streets in this section are generally narrow and crooked. The gutters and the roadway are lined with filth, and from the dark, dingy houses comes up the most sickening stench. Every house is packed to its utmost capacity. In some are simply the poor, in others are those whose reputations make the policemen careful in entering them. Some of these buildings are simply dens of thieves. All the streets are wretched enough, but Baxter street has of late years succeeded to the reputation formerly enjoyed by its neighbor, Park street. It is a narrow, crooked thoroughfare. The sidewalk is almost gone in many places, and the street is full of holes. Some of the buildings are of brick, and are lofty enough for a modern Tower of Babel. Others are one and two story wooden shanties. All are hideously dirty. From Canal to Chatham street there is not the slightest sign of cleanliness or comfort. From Franklin to Chatham street there is scarcely a house without a bucket shop or “distillery,” as the signs over the door read, on the ground floor. Here the vilest and most poisonous compounds are sold as whiskey, gin, rum, and brandy. Their effects are visible on every hand. Some of these houses are brothels of the lowest description, and, ah, such terrible faces as look out upon you as you pass them by! Surely no more hopeless, crime-stained visages are to be seen this side of the home of the damned. The filth that is thrown into the street lies there and decays until the kindly heavens pour down a drenching shower and wash it away. As a natural consequence, the neighborhood is sickly, and sometimes the infection amounts almost to a plague.

Between Fourteenth street and the Battery, half a million of people are crowded into about one-fifth of the island of Manhattan. Within this section there are about 13,000 tenement houses, fully one-half of which are in bad condition, dirty and unhealthy. One small block of the Five Points district is said to contain 382 families. The most wretched tenement houses are to be found in the Five Points. The stairways are rickety and groan and tremble beneath your tread. The entries are dark and foul. Some of these buildings have secret passages connecting them with others of a similar character. These passages are known only to criminals, and are used by them for their vile purposes. Offenders may safely hide from the police in these wretched abodes. Every room is crowded with people. Sometimes as many as a dozen are packed into a single apartment. Decency and morality soon fade away here. Drunkenness is the general rule. Some of the dwellers here never leave their abodes, but remain in them the year round stupefied with liquor, to procure which their wives, husbands or children will beg or steal. Thousands of children are born here every year, and thousands happily die in the first few months of infancy. Those who survive rarely see the sun until they are able to crawl out into the streets. Both old and young die at a fearful rate. They inhale disease with every breath.

The exact number of vagrant and destitute children to be found in the Five Points is not known. There are thousands, however. Some have placed the estimate as high as 15,000, and some higher. They are chiefly of foreign parentage. They do not attend the public schools, for they are too dirty and ragged. The poor little wretches have no friends but the attachÉs of the missions. The missionaries do much for them, but they cannot aid all. Indeed, they frequently have great difficulty in inducing the parents of the children to allow them to attend their schools. The parents are mostly of the Roman Catholic faith, and the clergy of that Church have from the first exerted their entire influence to destroy the missions, and put a stop to their work. They feared the effect of these establishments upon the minds of the children, and, strange as it may seem, preferred to let them starve in the street, or come to worse ending, rather than risk the effects of education and Protestant influence. To those who know what a great and blessed work these missions have done, this statement will no doubt be astounding. Yet it is true.

In spite of the missions, however, the lot of the majority of the Five Points children is very sad. Their parents are always poor, and unable to keep them in comfort. Too frequently they are drunken brutes, and then the life of the little one is simply miserable. In the morning the child is thrust out of its terrible home to pick rags, bones, cinders, or anything that can be used or sold, or to beg or steal, for many are carefully trained in dishonesty. They are disgustingly dirty, and all but the missionaries shrink from contact with them. The majority are old looking and ugly, but a few have bright, intelligent faces. From the time they are capable of receiving impressions, they are thrown into constant contact with vice and crime. They grow up to acquire surely and steadily the ways of their elders. The boys recruit the ranks of the pickpockets, thieves, and murderers of the city; the girls become waiters in the concert halls, or street walkers, and thence go down to ruin, greater misery and death.

In winter and summer suffering is the lot of the Five Points. In the summer the heat is intense, and the inmates of the houses pour out into the filthy streets to seek relief from the torture to which they are subjected indoors. In winter they are half frozen with cold. The missionaries and the police tell some dreary stories of this quarter. A writer in a city journal thus describes a visit made in company with the missionary of the Five Points House of Industry to one of these homes of sorrow:

“The next place visited was a perfect hovel. Mr. Shultz, in passing along a narrow dark hall leading towards the head of the stairs, knocked at an old door, through which the faintest ray of light was struggling. ‘Come in,’ said a voice on the opposite side of the room. The door being opened, a most sickening scene appeared. The room was larger than the last one, and filthier. The thin outside walls were patched with pieces of pasteboard, the floor was covered with dirt, and what straggling pieces of furniture they had were lying about as if they had been shaken up by an earthquake. There was a miserable fire, and the storm outside howled and rattled away at the old roof, threatening to carry it off in every succeeding gust. The tenants were a man, his wife, a boy, and a girl. They had sold their table to pay their rent, and their wretched meal of bones and crusts was set on an old packing box which was drawn close up to the stove. When the visitors entered the man and woman were standing, leaning over the stove. The girl, aged about ten years, and a very bright looking child, having just been off on some errand, had got both feet wet, and now had her stockings off, holding them close to the coals to dry them. The boy seemed to be overgrown for his age, and half idiotic. He sat at one corner of the stove, his back to the visitors, and his legs stretched out under the hearth. His big coat collar was turned up around his neck, and his chin sunk down, so that his face could not be seen. His long, straight hair covered his ears and the sides of his face. He did not look up until he was directly questioned by Mr. Shultz, and then he simply raised his chin far enough to grunt. The girl, when spoken to, looked up slyly and laughed.

“The man, on being asked if he was unable to work, said he would be glad to work if he could get anything to do. He was a painter, and belonged to a painters’ protective union. But there were so many out of employment, that it was useless trying to get any help. He pointed to an old basket filled with coke, and said he had just sold their last chair to buy it. He had worked eighteen years at the Metropolitan Hotel, but got out of work, and has been out ever since. Mr. Shultz offered to take the little girl into the House of Industry, and give her board, clothes, and education. He asked the father if he would let her go, saying the place was only a few steps from them, and they could see her often. The man replied that he did not like a separation from his child. The missionary assured him that it would be no separation, and then asked the mother the same question. She stood speechless for several moments, as if thinking over the matter, and when the missionary, after using his best arguments, again asked her whether she would allow him to take care of her child, she simply replied, ‘No.’ She said they would all hang together as long as they could, and, if necessary, all would starve together.

“This family had evidently seen better times. The man had an honest face, and talked as if he had once been able to earn a respectable living. The woman had some features that would be called noble if they were worn in connection with costlier apparel. The girl was unmistakably smart, and the only thing to mar their appearance as a family, so far as personal looks were concerned, was the thick-lipped, slovenly boy.”

II. THE CELLARS.

If the people of whom I have written are sufferers, they at least exist upon the surface of the earth. But what shall we say of those who pass their lives in the cellars of the wretched buildings I have described?

A few of these cellars are dry, but all are dirty. Some are occupied as dwelling-places, and some are divided into a sort of store or groggery and living and sleeping rooms. Others still are kept as lodging-houses, where the poorest of the poor find shelter for the night.

In writing of these cellars, I wish it to be understood that I do not refer to the rooms partly above and partly below the level of the side-walk, with some chance of ventilation, and known to the Health Officers as “basements,” but to the cellars pure and simple, all of which are sunk below the level of the street, and all of which are infinitely wretched. There were in April, 1869, about 12,000 of these cellars known to the Board of Health, and containing from 96,000 to 100,000 persons. With the exception of 211, all of these were such as were utterly forbidden, under the health ordinances of the city, to be used or rented as tenements. The Board of Health have frequently considered the advisability of removing this population, and have been prevented only by the magnitude of the task, and the certainty of rendering this large number of persons homeless for a time at least.

The larger portion of these cellars have but one entrance, and that furnishes the only means of ventilation. They have no outlet to the rear, and frequently the filth of the streets comes washing down the walls into the room within. In the brightest day they are dark and gloomy. The air is always foul. The drains of the houses above pass within a few feet of the floor, and as they are generally in bad condition the filth frequently comes oozing up and poisons the air with its foul odors. In some cases there has been found a direct opening from the drain into the cellar, affording a free passage for all the sewer gas into the room. The Board of Health do all they can to remedy this, but the owners and occupants of the cellars are hard to manage, and throw every obstacle in the way of the execution of the health ordinances.

The rents paid for these wretched abodes are exorbitant. Dr. Harris, the Superintendent of the Board of Health, states that as much as twenty dollars per month is often demanded of the occupants by the owners. Half of that sum would secure a clean and decent room in some of the up-town tenements. The poor creatures, in sheer despair, make no effort to better their condition, and live on here in misery, and often in vice, until death comes to their relief.

A FIVE POINTS LODGING CELLAR.

Many of the cellars are used as lodging-houses. These are known to the police as “Bed Houses.” In company with Captain Allaire and Detective Finn, the writer once made a tour of inspection through these establishments. One of them shall serve as a specimen. Descending through a rickety door-way, we passed into a room about sixteen feet square and eight feet high. At one end was a stove in which a fire burned feebly, and close by a small kerosene lamp on a table dimly lighted the room. An old hag, who had lost the greater part of her nose, and whose face was half hidden by the huge frill of the cap she wore, sat rocking herself in a rickety chair by the table. The room was more than half in the shadow, and the air was so dense and foul that I could scarcely breathe. By the dim light I could see that a number of filthy straw mattresses were ranged on the floor along the wall. Above these were wooden bunks, like those of a barracks, filled with dirty beds and screened by curtains. The room was capable of accommodating at least twenty persons, and I was told that the hag in the chair, who was the proprietress, was “a good hand at packing her lodgers well together.” It was early, but several of the beds were occupied. The curtains were drawn in some cases, and we could not see the occupants. In one, however, was a child, but little more than a baby, as plump and ruddy, and as fair-skinned and pretty as though it had been the child of a lady of wealth. The little one was sleeping soundly, and, by a common instinct, we gathered about its bed, and watched it in silence.

“It is too pretty a child for such a place,” said one of the party.

I glanced at Detective Finn. His face wore a troubled expression.

“A man becomes hardened to the sights I see,” he said in answer to my glance, “but I can scarcely keep the tears from my eyes when I see a child like this in such a place; for, you see, I know what a life it is growing up to.”

This wretched place Mr. Finn told us was one of the best of all the bed houses. He proved his assertion by conducting us to one out of which we beat a hasty retreat. The night air never seemed so pure to me as it did as I came out of the vile den into the clear starlight. I could scarcely breathe in the fearful hole we had just been in, and yet it was rapidly filling up with people who were to pass the night there. There were men, women and children, but they were all huddled together in one room. There was no such thing as privacy. Some of the lodgers were simply unfortunate, some were vagrants, and others were criminals.

I do not believe that all the sanitary measures in the world could ever make these places clean or healthy. The atmosphere is always too foul and dense to be breathed by any but lungs accustomed to it. When the cellars are crowded with lodgers, and the heat of the stove adds to the poison, it must be appalling. The poor wretches who seek shelter here are more than half stupefied by it, and pass the night in this condition instead of in a healthful sleep. They pay from ten to twenty-five cents for their lodgings, and if they desire a supper or breakfast, are given a cup of coffee and a piece of bread, or a bowl of soup for a similar sum.

As a matter of course only vagrants and those who have gone down into the depths of poverty come here. They must choose between the cellars and the streets, and the beds offered them here are warmer and softer than the stones of the street.

“Have we seen the worst?” I asked Mr. Finn, as we came out of the last place.

“No,” he replied, “there are worse places yet. But I’ll not take you there.”

The reader will readily credit this assertion, after reading the following account of a visit of the Health Officers to one of a number of similar cellars in Washington Street, on the west side of the city:

“The place next visited was No. 27 Washington street. This building is also owned by ‘Butcher Burke,’ and is one of the most filthy and horrible places in the city. We passed under an old tumble-down doorway that seemed to have no earthly excuse for standing there, and into a dismal, dark entry, with a zig-zag wall covered with a leprous slime, our conductor crying out all the time: ‘Steady, gentlemen, steady, keep to your left; place is full of holes.’

“Presently we emerged into a yard with a detestable pavement of broken bricks and mud, with high, towering houses surmounting it all around, and a number of broken outhouses and privies covering a large portion of the ground surface of the yard. Turning around, we could see the back of the tenement house from whose entry we had just emerged, with its numberless and wretched windows, shutting out the sky, or the fog, which was the only thing visible above us, and a cloud of clothes-lines stretched hither and thither, like a spider’s web.

“There were eight privies in the yard, and we entered them. The night soil was within a foot and a half of the seats, and the odor was terrible. From these privies a drain passed under the surface of the muddy, sloppy yard, to the margin of the building, where a descent of perhaps four feet was obtained, at the bottom of which the basement floor was level with the windows, giving a sickly light, but no air or ventilation whatever, to the inhabitants of the cellar. But the worst is yet to be told. The drain from the privies connecting with the sewer in the street had a man-hole, which was open, at the place where the yard was broken for a descent into this infernal cellar. This man-hole was about four feet wide and three feet deep, forming a small table for a cataract of night soil and other fecal matter, which poured over this artificial table in a miniature and loathsome Niagara and into a cesspool at the bottom, and from thence was conducted under the rotten boards of the cellar through a brick drain, a few inches below the board flooring, to the main sewer in the street. The bottom of the windows in this house are on a dead level with this horrid cesspool, so that a man sitting on a chair at the window would not have only the odor, but also the view of this loathsome matter circulating at his feet in the pool below. We entered the back cellar after knocking at the door a few minutes, and a man, poverty-stricken and wretched in appearance, of the laboring class, came with a candle to let us in. The room was in a filthy condition, ten by twenty-two and a half feet, with a ceiling of six feet three inches elevation from the floor. A woman, wretched and woe-begone as the man, rose suddenly from a dirty bed at the back of the room, and bade us welcome civilly enough, in her night clothing, which was scanty.

“‘And are yees the Boord of Helth, sure. Well it isn’t much we have to show thin, but yees can see it all without any charge at all, at all.’

“‘How much rent do you pay here?’ asked the writer of the man with the candle.

“‘Is it rint ye mane? Nyah, its $6 a munth, shure, and glad to get it, and if we don’t pay it, it’s the little time we’ll get from Burke, but out on the street wid us, like pigs, and the divil resave the bit of sattysfaction we’ll get from him than ye would from the Lord Palmershtown, Nyah!’

“‘How do you live?’

“‘Shure, I put in coal now and thin, whin I can get it to put, and that’s not often, God knows, alanna!’

“‘How much do you earn?’

“‘Is it earn d’ye say? Sometimes fifty cents a day, sometimes two dollars a week; and thin it’s good times wid me.’

“The Woman of the House.—‘Don’t mind him, man, what he’s saying. Shure he niver earns two dollars a week at all. That id be a good week faix for me. Two dollars indade!’

“‘Have you any children?’

“‘We have one dauther, a girl—a fine, big girl.’

“‘How old is she?’

“‘Well, I suppose she’s twenty-two next Mikilmas.’

“Woman.—‘Indade she’s not, shure. She’s only a slip of a gerrul, fifteen or sixteen years of age, goin’ on.’

“While the parents were arguing the age of their daughter, who, it seems, worked as a servant girl in some private residence, and only slept here when out of employment, the Health Officer was testing the condition of the walls by poking his umbrella at the base under the window and directly over the cess-pool. The point of the umbrella, which was tipped with a thin sheet of brass, made ready entrance into the walls, which were so soft and damp that the point of the umbrella when drawn out left each time a deep circular mark behind, as if it had been drawn from a rotten or decomposed cheese in summer.

“‘Take up a board from the floor,’ said the Health Officer. The man, who informed us that his name was William McNamara, ‘from Innis, in the County Clare, siventeen miles beyand Limerick,’ readily complied, and taking an axe dug up a board without much trouble, as the boards were decayed, and right underneath we found the top of the brick drain, in a bad state of repair, the fecal matter oozing up with a rank stench. Every one stooped down to look at this proof of sanitary disregard, and while this entire party were on their knees, looking at the broken drain, two large rats ran across the floor, and nestling in a rather familiar manner between the legs of Mr. McNamara for an instant, frisked out of the dreary, dirty room into the luxurious cesspool.

“The physician asked, ‘Are those rats?’ of Mr. McNamara.

“‘Rats is it? endade they were. It’s nothing out of the way here to see thim. Shure some of thim are as big as cats. And why wouldn’t they—they have no wurrok or nothing else to do.’”

III. THE MISSIONS.

There are now three thriving and much-needed Missions in the district, to which I have applied the general name of the Five Points. These are the Five Points Mission, the Five Points House of Industry, and the Howard Mission, or Home for Little Wanderers.

The Five Points Mission is the oldest. It is conducted by the “Ladies’ Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church,” and as has been stated, occupies the site of the “Old Brewery.” I have already described the “Old Brewery” as it existed twenty years ago. Few decent people ever ventured near it at that time, and even the missionaries felt that they were incurring a risk in venturing into it.

A number of Christian women of position and means, who knew the locality only by reputation, determined, with a courage peculiar to their sex, to break up this den, and make it a stronghold of religion and virtue. Their plan was regarded by the public as chimerical, but they persevered in its execution, trusting in the help of Him in whose cause they were laboring. A school was opened in Park street, immediately facing the “Old Brewery,” and was placed in charge of the Rev. L. M. Pease, of the Methodist Church. This school at once gathered in the ragged and dirty children of the neighborhood, and at first it seemed impossible to do anything with them. Patience and energy triumphed at last. The school became a success, and the ladies who had projected it resolved to enlarge it. In 1852 the “Old Brewery” building was purchased and pulled down, and in June, 1853, the present commodious and handsome Mission building was opened. Since then constant success has crowned the efforts of the Ladies’ Society. Their property is now valued at $100,000.

THE LADIES’ FIVE POINTS MISSION.

The Mission is at present in charge of the Rev. James N. Shaffer. It receives a small appropriation from the State for the support of its day-school, but is mainly dependent upon voluntary contributions for its support. Food, clothing, money, in short, everything that can be useful in the establishment, are given it. Donations come to it from all parts of the country, for the Mission is widely known, and thousands of Christian people give it their assistance. The railroad and express companies forward, without charge, all packages designed for it.

Children are the chief care of the Mission. Those in charge of it believe that first impressions are the strongest and most lasting. They take young children away from the haunts of vice and crime, and clothe and care for them. They are regularly and carefully instructed in the rudiments of an English education, and are trained to serve the Lord. At a proper age they are provided with homes, or with respectable employment, and are placed in a way to become useful Christian men and women. Year after year the work goes on. Children are taken in every day, if there is room for them, and are trained in virtue and intelligence, and every year the “Home,” as its inmates love to call it, sends out a band of brave, bright, useful young people into the world. But for its blessed aid they would have been so many more vagrants and criminals.

The school averages about 450 pupils. In the twenty years of the career of the Mission thousands have been educated by it. As I passed through the various class-rooms I found children of all ages. In the infant-class were little ones who were simply kept warm and amused. The amusement was instructive, as well, as they were taught to recognize various objects by the young lady in charge of them. They all bore evidences of the greatest poverty, but they were unquestionably happy and contented.

“Do you find harshness necessary?” I asked of the lady principal, who was my guide.

“No,” was the reply. “We rely upon kindness. If they do not wish to stay with us, we let them go away in peace. They are mostly good children,” she added, “and they really love the school.”

A little curly-headed girl came up to her as she was speaking:

“What does Louisa want, now?” she asked, encouraging the child with a kind smile.

“Please, Mrs. Van Aiken,” said the child, “Nelly Jackson wants another cake.”

Nelly Jackson was one of the tiniest and plumpest of the infant class I had just inspected, and I had found her with a cake in hand at the time of my visit. Mrs. Van Aiken hesitated a moment, and then gave the desired permission.

“Cakes,” she added, turning to me, “constitute one of our rewards of merit for the little ones. When they are very good we give them doll-babies at Christmas.”

Says the Secretary in her last Report of the work of the Mission: “These children have quick perceptions and warm hearts, and they are not unworthy of the confidence placed in them by their teachers. All their happy moments come to them through the Mission School, and kind hearts and willing hands occasionally prepare for them a little festival or excursion, enjoyed with a zest unknown to more prosperous children. . . . . An excursion to Central Park was arranged for them one summer afternoon. The sight of the animals, the run over the soft green grass, so grateful to eye and touch, the sail on the lake, their sweet songs keeping time with the stroke of the oar—all this was a bit of fairy land to a childhood of so few pleasures. Then the evening of the Fourth of July spent on the roof of the Mission House, enjoying the display of fireworks, and singing patriotic songs. One kind friend makes a winter evening marvellous to childish eyes by the varied scenes, historic, scriptural, poetic, of the magic lantern.”

If the Mission did no more than give these little ones a warm shelter during the day, and provide for them such pleasures as cakes, doll-babies, excursions, and magic lanterns, it would still be doing a noble work, for these children are dwellers in the Five Points, a locality where pleasure is almost unknown. The Mission does more, however, it educates the children; it provides them with the clothes they wear, and gives each child a lunch at midday. It also gives clothing, bedding and food to the parents of the children where they need it. It is provided with a tasteful chapel, in which religious services are held on Sunday and during the week. The Sunday-school is large, and provides religious instruction for the attendants. A “Free Library and Reading-room” has been opened in the basement, for the use of all who will avail themselves of it. It is open every night, and it is well patronized by the adult population of the vicinity. The homeless and friendless, who are simply unfortunate, are sheltered, as far as the accommodations will permit, and are provided with homes and employment. The work of the Mission, apart from its schools, for the year ending May 1st, 1871, is thus summed up by the Secretary: “The following statistics do not include coal nor medicine, which are very considerable items: 5197 pieces of clothing, including pairs of shoes and bed-quilts, have been distributed from the wardrobes, and 1293 through the office, making a total of 6490; 122,113 rations of food have been given to the needy; 4 infants have been adopted; 66 children have been provided with homes; and 119 adults have been sent to places of employment.”

The Treasurer states that during the same period $3004 were given away in “direct charities.”

The Five Points House of Industry is situated on Worth street, diagonally opposite the Home Mission. It consists of two large brick edifices, covering an area about 100 feet square. This Mission was begun by the Rev. L. M. Pease, the same gentleman who was in charge of the Home Mission at the time of the purchase of the “Old Brewery.” He conceived a different plan for the management of the Home Mission from that determined upon by the ladies, and finding cooperation impossible, resigned his position, and began his labors afresh, according to his own plan, and trusting entirely to the generosity of the public for his support. He was ably assisted by his good wife in carrying out his plan. He began with one room, and in 1853 was able to hire five houses, which he filled with the occupants of the wretched hovels in the vicinity. He procured work for them, such as needle-work, basket-making, baking, straw-work, shoe-making, etc. He made himself personally responsible to the persons giving the work for its safe return. The expenses of the Mission were then, as now, paid from the profits of this work, and the donations of persons interested in the scheme. Five hundred persons were thus supported. Schools were opened, children were taught, clothed and fed, and religious services were regularly conducted.

In 1854, the health of Mr. Pease began to fail under his herculean labors. He had carried his enterprise to a successful issue, however. He had done good to thousands, and had won friends for the institution, who were resolved, and possessed of the means, to carry it on. A Society was incorporated for the conduct of the Mission, and, in 1856, the larger of the present buildings was erected. In 1869, the edifice was increased to its present size. Heavy donations were made to the institution by Mr. Sickles, who gave $20,000, and Mr. Chauncy Rose, who gave $10,000, and it was constantly in receipt of smaller sums, which made up an aggregate sufficient to provide for its wants. Its progress has been onward and upward, and it is a noble monument to the energy and Christian charity of Mr. Pease, its founder.

The main work of the Mission is with the children, but it also looks after the adults of the wretched quarter in which it is located. There are about two hundred children residing in the building. These have been taken from the cellars and garrets of the Five Points. Two hundred more, children of the very poor, are in attendance upon the schools. All are clothed and fed here. Besides being educated, they are taught useful trades. The House is supported partly by voluntary contributions and partly by the labor of its inmates.

Besides the children, there are always about forty destitute women, who would otherwise be homeless, residing in the building. The annual number thus sheltered is about six hundred. They are provided with situations as servants as rapidly as possible. Since its opening, sixteen years ago, the House has sheltered and provided for 20,000 persons. The number of lodgings furnished yearly is about 90,000, and the daily number of meals averages 1000. Since 1856, 4,135,218 meals have been given to the poor. No one is ever turned away hungry, and sometimes as many as 150 persons, men and women, driven to the doors of the House by hunger, may be seen seated at its table at the dinner hour.

The Howard Mission and Home for Little Wanderers is situated in the heart of the Fourth Ward, in one of the most wretched quarters of the city. Here the inhabitants are packed into their dirty dwellings at the rate of 290,000 persons to the square mile. The dirt and the wretchedness of this part of the city are terrible to behold, the sufferings of the people are very great, and the mortality is heavy. Sailors’ lodging houses of the lowest character, dance houses, rum shops, and thieves’ cribs are numerous, and the moral condition of the Ward is worse than the sanitary.

In May, 1861, the Rev. W. C. Van Meter organized a Mission in the very heart of this locality, to which he gave the name of the Howard Mission and Home for Little Wanderers. For three years it was maintained by his individual exertions, but, in 1864, Mr. Van Meter having secured for it wealthy and powerful friends, it was regularly incorporated, and placed under the control of a Board of Managers, Mr. Van Meter still continuing to act as Superintendent. Since then, comfortable and tasteful brick buildings have been erected for the Mission, and it is succeeding now beyond the first hopes of its founder. Our engraving shows the New Bowery front as it will appear when completed.

The Mission is located in the New Bowery, just below its junction with Chatham Square. It extends back to Roosevelt street, upon which thoroughfare there is an entrance. The erection of the buildings on the New Bowery will about double the size of the Mission, and proportionately increase its capacity for doing good. It is entirely dependent upon voluntary contributions for its support.

THE HOWARD MISSION (AS IT WILL APPEAR WHEN COMPLETED).

“Our object,” says Mr. Van Meter, “is to do all the good we can to the souls and bodies of all whom we can reach.” It may be added, that the prime object of the Mission is to care for neglected and abused children, whether orphans or not, and also for the children of honest and struggling poverty. It further undertakes to aid and comfort the sick, to furnish food, shelter, and clothing to the destitute, to procure work for the unemployed, and to impart intellectual, moral, and religious instruction to all who are willing to receive it.

“Our field,” says Mr. Van Meter, “is the very concentration of all evil and the headquarters of the most desperate and degraded representatives of many nations. It swarms with poor little helpless victims, who are born in sin and shame, nursed in misery, want, and woe, and carefully trained to all manner of degradation, vice, and crime. The packing of these poor creatures is incredible. In this ward there are less than two dwelling houses for each low rum hole, gambling house, and den of infamy. Near us, on a small lot, but 150 by 240 feet, are twenty tenant houses, 111 families, 5 stables, a soap and candle factory, and a tan yard. On four blocks, close to the Mission, are 517 children, 318 Roman Catholic and 10 Protestant families, 35 rum holes, and 18 brothels. In No. 14 Baxter street, but three or four blocks from us, are 92 families, consisting of 92 men, 81 women, 54 boys and 53 girls. Of these, 151 are Italians, 92 Irish, 28 Chinese, 3 English, 2 Africans, 2 Jews, 1 German, and but 7 Americans.

“Our work,” he says, “is chiefly with the children. These are divided into three classes, consisting of, I. Those placed under our care to be sent to homes and situations. II. Those whom we are not authorized to send to homes, but who need a temporary shelter until their friends can provide for them or surrender them to us. These two classes remain day and night in the Mission. III. Those who have homes or places in which to sleep. These enjoy the benefits of the wardrobe, dining and school rooms, but do not sleep in the Mission.

“Food, fuel and clothing are given to the poor, after a careful inspection of their condition. Mothers leave their small children in the day nursery during the day while they go out to work. The sick are visited, assisted, and comforted. Work is sought for the unemployed. We help the poor to help themselves.

“The children over whom we can get legal control are placed in carefully selected Christian families, chiefly in the country, either for adoption or as members of the families. . . They receive a good common school education, or are trained to some useful business, trade, or profession, and are thus fitted for the great duties of mature life. We know that our work prevents crime; keeps hundreds of children out of the streets, keeps boys out of bar-rooms, gambling houses, and prisons, and girls out of concert saloons, dance houses, and other avenues that lead down to death; and that it makes hundreds of cellar and attic homes more cleanly, more healthy, and more happy, and less wretched, wicked, and hopeless. We never turn a homeless child from our door. From past experience we are warranted in saying that one dollar a week will keep a well filled plate on our table for any little wanderer, and secure to it all the benefits of the Mission. Ten dollars will pay the average cost of placing a child in a good home.”

During the ten years of its existence, the Mission has received more than 10,000 children into its day and Sunday schools. Hundreds of these have been provided with good homes. Thousands of poor women have left their little ones here while they were at their daily work, knowing that their babies are cared for with kindness and intelligence. The famous nurseries of Paris exact a fee of four cents, American money, per head for taking care of the children during the day, but at the Little Wanderers’ Home, this service is rendered to the mother and child without charge.

Yet in spite of the great work which the Missions are carrying on, the wretchedness, the suffering, the vice and the crime of the Five Points are appalling. All these establishments need all the assistance and encouragement that can possibly be given them. More workers are needed, and more means to sustain them. “The harvest indeed is plenteous, but the laborers are few.”