The shanty family are never quite so poor as the tenement-house family; as they have no rent to pay. But the filth and wretchedness in which they sometimes live are beyond description.
It happened that for many years (not wishing to scatter my efforts too much), I made this quarter my special "parish" for visitations; and very discouraging visits they were, many of them. The people had very little regular occupation, many being widows who did occasional "chores" in families; others lived on the sale of the coal their children gathered, or on the pigs which shared their domicile; others kept fowls, and all had vast flocks of goats, though where the profits from these latter came I could never discover, as no one seemed to buy the milk, and I never heard of their killing them. Money, however, in some way they did procure, and one old red-faced swill-gatherer I knew well, whose bright child we tried so long to save, who died finally, it was said, with a large deposit in the Savings-Bank, which no one could claim; yet one corner of her bed-chamber was filled with a heap of smelling bones, and the pigs slept under her bed.
Another old rag-picker I remember whose shanty was a sight to behold; all the odds and ends of a great, city seemed piled up in it,—bones, broken dishes, rags, bits of furniture, cinders, old tin, useless lamps, decaying vegetables, ribbons, cloths, legless chairs, and carrion, all mixed together, and heaped up nearly to the ceiling, leaving hardly room for a bed on the floor where the woman and her two children slept. Yet all these were marvels of health and vigor, far surpassing most children I know in the comfortable classes. The woman was German, and after years of effort could never be induced to do anything for the education of her children, until finally I put the police on their track as vagrants, and they were safely housed in the "Juvenile Asylum."
Many a time have I come into their shanties on a snowy morning and found the people asleep with the snow lying thick on their bed-clothes. One poor creature was found thus one morning by the police, frozen stiff. They all suffered, as might be expected, terribly from rheumatism. Liquor, of course, "prevailed." Every woman drank hard, I suppose to forget her misery; and dreadful quarrels raged among them.
The few men there worked hard at stone-quarrying, but were often disabled by disease and useless from drunkenness. Many of the women had been abandoned by their husbands, as their families increased and became burdensome, or as they themselves grew plain and bad-tempered. Some of these poor creatures drank still more to heal their wounded affections. The children, of course, were rapidly following the ways of their parents. The life of a swill-gatherer, or coal-picker, or chiffonnier in the streets soon wears off a girl's modesty and prepares her for worse occupation.
Into this community of poor, ignorant, and drunken people I threw myself, and resolved, with God's aid, to try to do something for them. Here for years I visited from cabin to cabin, or hunted out every cellar and attic of the neighboring tenement-houses; standing at death-beds and sick-beds, seeking to administer consolation and advice, and, aided by others, to render every species of assistance.
In returning home from these rounds, amidst filth and poverty, I remember that I was frequently so depressed and exhausted as to throw myself flat upon the rug in front of the fire, scarcely able to move. The discouraging feature in such visits as I was making, and which must always exist in similar efforts, is that one has no point of religious contact with these people.
Among all the hundreds of families I knew and visited I never met but two that were Protestants. To all words of spiritual warning or help there came the chilling formalism of the ignorant Roman Catholic in reply, implying that certain outward acts made the soul right with its Creator. The very inner ideas of our spiritual life of free love towards God, true repentance and trust in a Divine Redeemer, seemed wanting in their minds. I never had the least ambition to be a proselytizer, and never tried to convert them, and I certainly had no prejudice against the Romanists; on the contrary, it has been my fortune in Europe to enjoy the intercourse of some most spiritual-minded Catholics. But these poor people seemed stamped with the spiritual lifelessness of Romanism. At how many a lonely death-bed or sick-bed, where even the priest had forgotten to come, have I longed and tried to say some comforting word of religion to the dull ear, closing to all earthly sounds; but even if heard and the sympathy gratefully felt, it made scarcely more religious impression than would the chants of the Buddhists have done. One sprinkle of holy water were worth a volume of such words.
A Protestant has great difficulty in coming into connection with the Romanist poor. I was often curious to know the exact influence of the priests over these people. The lowest poor in New York are not, I think, much cared for by the Romanist priesthood. One reason, without doubt, is that their attention has thus far been mainly (and wisely) directed to building handsome churches, and that they have not means to do much for these persons. Another and more powerful reason is, probably, that the old "enthusiasm of humanity" which animated a Guy, a Vincent de Paul, or Xavier, has died out among them.
I have known, however; individual cases in our city, where a priest has exercised a marked influence in keeping his charge from intoxication. There were also occasionally, in this very region, something like "Revivals of Religion" among the people, stimulated by the priests, in which many young girls joined religious societies, and did lead, to my knowledge, for a time more pure and devout lives.