The Bowery, that Broadway of the slums, odoriferous sink of cosmopolitan pauperism, degradation, and crime, wore its familiar, everyday aspect of ugly squalor and vice—grimy, dilapidated rookeries, dark, sinister hallways, filthy, greasy pavements littered with decayed fruit skins, gutters choked up with offensive black slime, suspicious-looking characters, abominable stenches of sauerkraut and stale beer which offended the nostrils on every side. On the slender rails high overhead occasional trains crashed by with a sullen roar; in the middle of the roadway rushing trolley cars noisily clanged their warning gongs, while on either sidewalk stretching as far south as the City Hall cheap clothing shops, tough saloons, low dance halls, pawnbrokers, penny arcades, vaudeville shows, displayed their gaudy signs. Up and down pushed and jostled a perspiring and motley crowd—bearded Jew peddlers, pallid sweat-shop workers, Chinese, flashily dressed "toughs," furtive-eyed pickpockets, sailors on shore leave, factory girls, painted street walkers, slouching longshoremen, tattered tramps, derelicts of both sexes—an appalling host of unkempt, unwashed, evil-smelling humanity.
In the side streets, just off the main thoroughfare, conditions were even more congested and depressing. On either hand ricketty, grimy tenements were alive with bearded Russians, fierce-looking Italians, vociferating Irish, pot-bellied Germans. From broken windows hung clotheslines bending under the load of newly washed rags; on flimsy, rusty fire-escapes were jammed filthy mattresses on which slept the wretched occupants, glad to escape from the foul air and heat within; dark stairways and stoops were thronged with neglected, consumptive children. The evil smells were so numerous that it was impossible to determine which was the most objectionable. The air was full of discordant, nerve-racking sounds. On one side of the street an Italian was grinding a wheezy organ, while little girls, some with bare feet, danced to the music. A few yards farther on, boys with white faces drawn by hunger, were rummaging eagerly in ash barrels, hunting for scraps of refuse. Two women were pulling each other's hair in the centre of a circle of encouraging neighbors, neglected babes were screaming, dogs were barking, a vendor was shrieking his wares. It was Hell, yet nothing unusual—only everyday life in the slums.
"Isn't it dreadful?" murmured Paula, as she and Tod hurried along Rivington Street.
"Gee!" replied her escort. "Look at some of those faces! They seem hardly human. Animals are better looking."
"They are not to blame," answered Paula sadly. "These poor people are the victims of circumstances. They have been brutalized—the Jews by centuries of race persecution, the others by merciless economic conditions. The black poverty in which they live is well nigh inconceivable. Their desperate struggle for mere existence is unbelievable."
"Phew!" exclaimed Tod, as he peeped through the window of a gloomy, broken-down rookery. "How can any one live in such a place? The Black Hole of Calcutta couldn't have been much worse!"
"That's just it," answered Paula, with some warmth. "You self-satisfied, well-fed people uptown don't take the trouble to come down here to find out how the poor live. We Settlement workers know, for we are right in the heart of it all. What you see from the street is nothing. You must enter some of these tenements if you wish to become really acquainted with the shocking conditions in which they live—the crushing poverty, the physical and moral suffering, the gross immorality. In some places as many as twelve persons, full-grown men and women, half-grown boys and girls, all eat and sleep in one dark, ill-ventilated room. Can you wonder that such a life brutalizes them and that they die like flies?"
Tod shrugged his shoulders.
"What good would it do if we did know? We couldn't help all of them. You remember what Baron Rothschild said to a wild-eyed anarchist who one day managed to break into his office brandishing a pistol: 'My friend, you insist that I share my fortune with the poor. I am worth five millions of dollars. There are in the world more than five hundred million paupers. Here is your share—exactly one cent.'"
"That's all very well," smiled Paula. "I don't go to that extreme. We can't help all, but we can help a little. If the rich could see things as they are, it would make them reflect. I don't think they would be so wickedly extravagant in their own homes if they saw all this misery. The price of one big dinner served in a Fifth Avenue mansion would support half a dozen families here for a year."