From the Bottom Up: The Life Story of Alexander Irvine

by Alexander Irvine

I am unable to analyze the quick currents of thought that went through my mind at that instant. I cannot explain how the change came. I know that there came to me a bigger thought than any I had ever known, and that thought so thrilled me with human feeling, with love for men, that I said to my soul: "Soul, if this multitude is doomed to hell, be brave; gird up your loins and go with them!"

In that tenement district people were being murdered by the tens of thousands by tuberculosis, by defective plumbing, by new diseases born of the herding of men and women like cattle. I made some feeble attempt to investigate, to ascertain, to acquaint myself with the facts, and my investigation led me to this result—a result that the lapse of years has not altered; that the private ownership of tenements—the private profits in housing—was not only the mother of the great white plague, but of most of the plagues down there that endanger health. It led me to the belief also that the struggle for bodily health, the struggle to survive, was so fierce as to leave little time for soul health or mental health! It was a source of continual wonder to me that people so helpless and so neglected were as good as they were, or as healthy as they were. It did not seem reasonable to lay the blame at the doors of the owners of the tenements. Many of them had a tenement only as a source of income—and to acquire the tenement had taken long years of savings, earnings and sacrifices. It was part of the great game of business, the game of "live I, die you!"

The churches and synagogues are of little vital importance there, because they ignore social conditions, or largely ignore them. And there is a reason for this also, and the reason is that they are supported by the people—the very people who perpetuate the evils against which prophet, priest and pastor ought to cry out continually. The protest against such conditions is a negligible quantity.

There is a protest, an outcry, but it is related neither to the church nor to the synagogue. The East Side has a soul, but it is not an ecclesiastical soul! It is a soul that is alive—so much alive to the interest of the people that many times I felt ashamed of myself when I listened to the socialistic orators on the street corners and in the East Side halls. They were stirring up the minds of the people. They were not merely making them discontented with conditions, but they were offering a programme of reconstruction—a programme that included a trowel as well as a sword.

The soul of the East Side expressed itself in the Yiddish press, daily, weekly, and monthly, and in Yiddish literature, and in the spoken word of the propagandist whose ideal, though limited in literary expression, made him a flame of living fire. It was this soul of the East Side that drove me against my will to study the relation of politics to the condition of the people. One of the first things that I discovered was the grip that Tammany had on the people. Every saloon keeper was a power in the community. Men, of any force of character whatever, who were willing to hold their hands behind their backs for Tammany graft, were singled out by the organization for some moiety of honour. Small merchants found it to their advantage to keep on the right side of the saloon keepers and the Tammany leaders. I remember trying to express this thought in an uptown church to a wealthy congregation; and I remember distinctly, also, that I was rebuked by one of the leading lights of the missionary society of which I was a part. I was informed that my business was to "save souls," and in my public addresses to tell how I saved them; that political conditions must be left to the politicians—and it was done.

To the old church at the corner of Market and Henry streets came Dowling. He followed me as a matter of fellowship—we loved each other. And came also Dave Ranney, the "puddler from Pittsburg."

On the first anniversary of Dave's conversion, I gathered a hundred wastrels of the Bowery together and gave them a dinner at the church. Dave, of course, was the guest of honour. When my guests were full and warm, they became reminiscent, and I urged them, a few of them, to tell us their stories—to unfold the torn manuscripts of their lives. Dave told his first.

"Boys," he said, "I was one of de toughest gazabos what ever hung aroun' de square. I met dis man an' tried t' bleed 'im, but it warn't no go—'e was on to de game and cudn't be touch't.

"I giv'd 'im a song an' dance story fur weeks. One day 'e sez to me, sez 'e, 'Chum!'—well, say boys, when I went out an' had a luk at meself, sez I, 'Ye dhirty loafer, if a man like dat calls y' "chum," why don't y' take a brace an' get on de dead level?' So I did an' I've been on de dead level ever since—ain't I, boss?"