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.