Poverty in Chicago.

It is a terrible thing to be poor in any part of the world. In Chicago poverty is simply a living death. The city is full of suffering and misery. Some of the wretched people who endure it have, no doubt, brought it upon themselves by drink, by idleness, or by other faults, but a large majority are simply unfortunate. Their poverty has come upon them through no fault of their own; they struggle bravely against it, and would better their condition if they could only find employment. They are held down by an iron hand, however, and vainly endeavor to rise out of their misery. They dwell in wretched tenement houses, in cellars of buildings in the more thickly populated parts of the city, and in shanties, and hovels in almost every quarter of the city. A few families, even in the midst of their sufferings, manage to keep their poor quarters clean and neat, but the majority live in squalor and filth. But little furniture is to be seen in the rooms of the poor. Everything that can bring money has been sold for the means with which to buy food. Many of these wretched homes have been stripped of all their contents for this purpose. A cooking stove sometimes constitutes the only article of furniture in a room, and the inmates sleep upon the floor. Not a chair or table is to be seen. Often there is no stove, and the only food that passes the lips of the occupants of these rooms is what is given them in charity.

The inmates of these wretched homes are often families who have seen better days. Once the husband and father could give those dependent upon him a comfortable home, and provide at least the necessaries of life. But sickness came upon him, or death took him, and the little family was deprived of his support. In vain the mother sought to procure work to keep her children in comfort. What work she could procure was at intervals, and the little she earned barely sufficed to keep a roof over their heads. Little by little they sank lower and lower, until poverty in its worst form settled upon them. The city is full of such cases, and missionaries, whose labors among the poor bring them in constant contact with scenes of suffering, confess that they do not know how these poor people manage to live. Whole blocks are filled with families on the verge of starvation. They would gladly work if they could get employment; but the city is so full of sufferers like themselves that they cannot escape from their wretched condition. The so-called Ghetto and other localities present scenes of misery which almost surpass belief. Many of the dwellers here pick up a bare subsistence.

To those who visit these sections of the city, each one seems worse than the other. The “Ghetto” is the most wretched haunt occupied by human beings in the country. It is easily found. Cross the river at Harrison street, go west to Jefferson street, turn south. Anybody can tell you where it is. There is no mistaking the place. A junkman’s cellar in the front of the house opens widely to the street, and, peering down, one may see a scene of men and women half buried in dirty rags and papers which they are gathering up and putting in bales for the paper mills. This is the general depot to which the rag-picker brings his odds and ends for sale after he has assorted them. Just as we emerge from this cellar, a rag-picker, heavily laden, passes up the stoop, and enters the hall above. Standing here and looking up, one beholds a sight that cannot be imagined. Rags to the right of him, rags to the left of him, on all sides nothing but rags. Lines in the yard draped with them, windows hung with them, every available object dressed in rags—and such rags! of every possible size, shape and color. Some of them have been drawn through the wash-tub to get off the worst dirt, but for the most part they are hung up just as they were taken from the bags, and left to the rain and snow to cleanse them. The exterior of the buildings is wretched enough; the interior equally so.

Some of the rooms on a cloudy day are as dark as dungeons, with but little light coming through the dirty window on the front and the smaller one on the back. Every inch of the ceiling and walls is black and dirty. Against this dark background are hung numerous hats, kettles, pans, joints of raw meat, partly consumed Bologna sausages, gowns of women, and so on. The beds are almost invariably covered with old carpets, that still retain some bits of their original color. None of the chairs have backs, and hardly any of them have four legs. Seated upon these uncertain supports, or often an empty soap box or upturned boiler, are the rag-pickers. Every man in the house has his hat on, including the one in bed napping after the hard work of the early morning. Not one bare-headed man is seen anywhere. Some of them are sitting dreamily by the stove, but most of them are sorting rags or cutting up old coats and pantaloons that are too much used to wear, and stuffing the bits into the bags for the junk dealer. In one room is a woman washing bones with her dirty hands, in another place four men are seated on a big chest, with a bit of Bologna sausage in one hand and a chunk of black bread in the other, making their noon-day meal. These same hands have just finished turning over filthy scraps from the garbage boxes and the gutters. On the ground floor a man, who looks for all the world like a brigand, is stirring broth over the fire, and the horrible odor of rottenness that comes from the pot is enough to knock one down.

Few of the members of the Italian colony speak English, except here and there one has mastered a few common phrases; but there is one word that all of them understand, and that is “Beer.” Here, as in other quarters where the poor are found, sour beer is dealt out at a cent a glass. I once asked a police officer if there was much drunkenness there. “Oh, yes, sir,” he replied; “we can go in there any night and get a cart load of drunken men and women.”

Passing through these quarters of abode of our foreign born brethren you will often find two or more families occupying a single room. Sometimes as many as a dozen people are to be found living in a small room. Often a family of five will take in lodgers at five cents a night. There are no beds. Chalk marks are made on the floor allotting a space 2x6 feet to each other. To add to their income they sell sour beer at 2 cents a quart. The place is filthy beyond belief. The upper floors are not quite so bad; but they contain sights that baffle description. The inmates are huddled together in disregard of cleanliness and decency. The rooms are dirty and the air is foul. The food is gathered principally from the garbage boxes of the streets or from the offal of the markets. The cooking is done from time to time and fills the room with horrible odors. There are no bedsteads. Filthy looking mattresses on the floor, or on boards placed upon supports. The inmates never undress, but go to bed with their clothes on, including their boots and shoes. The children are wan and pinched in appearance, and frightfully dirty. What wonder that sickness and disease hold high revel here!

Bad as is the lot of these people, they at least exist upon the face of the earth. Those who dwell in the cellars of these wretched quarters are infinitely worse off. They have but one entrance, and a single window gives light and ventilation. There is no outlet in the rear and the filth of the street drains steadily into them. They are occupied by the poorest of the poor, and the amount, of misery and wretchedness, dirt and squalor to be witnessed in them passes description. In the winter a stove heats the place, and renders the air so foul that one unaccustomed to it cannot breath in the room. Many of these cellars are lodging houses into which the wretched outcasts who walk the streets during the day, crowd for shelter at night. They pay from two to five cents for a night’s lodging, and sometimes as many as from twenty-five to fifty are packed in these terrible holes.

There are sections of many streets in the business part of the city that equal in wretchedness and misery those previously described. They are terrible streets, and even the police venture into them with caution. Drunken brawls, fights and stabbing affrays are of nightly occurrence.

John Chinaman is a stranger and a waif in the great city, but he has managed to establish a distinct quarter in Clark street. In other portions of the city are Chinese laundries, where the almond-eyed Celestials conduct their business of washing and ironing; but here are the headquarters of the Mongolians, their gaming and opium dens. Though peaceable as a rule, they are sometimes troublesome, and the police find them hard customers to handle. They are inveterate gamblers, and one of their chief dissipations consists in stupifying themselves by smoking opium. The opium dens are simply dirty rooms provided with wooden bunks, and sometimes beds, in which the smokers may lie and sleep off the effects of the terrible drug. Many of these places are patronized by white people, and some number women of the lower class among their customers. Half nude men and women of all nationalities and colors are sometimes found lying in heaps in a single room. These cases are rare, however, as the authorities are watchful for this class of law-breakers.