The immigrants in the city tenements are especially exposed to consumption, that "Great White Plague" which yearly kills its tens of thousands. In New York City alone ten thousand die annually of tuberculosis; and this is the result largely of tenement conditions. Statisticians estimate that the annual money loss in the United States from tuberculosis, counting the cost of nursing, food, medicines, and attendance, as well as the loss of productive labor, is $330,000,000. Mr. Hunter instances a case where an entire family was wiped out by this disease within two years and a half. In spite of his efforts to get the father, who was the first one infected with the disease, to go to a hospital, he refused, saying that as he had to die, he was going to die with his family. The Health Board said it had no authority forcibly to compel the man to go to a hospital; and the result was that the whole family died with him. This plague "is the result of our weakness, our ignorance, our selfishness, and our vices; there is no need of its existence, and it is the duty of the state to stamp it out." That is Mr. Hunter's conclusion, with which we heartily agree.
V. The Cry of the Children
Peril of Child Neglect
Another peril of the city, and of the entire country as well, that comes through the foreigners is child neglect and labor; which means illiteracy, stunted body and mind, and often wreckage of life. Every foreign neighborhood is full of children, and sad enough is the average child of poverty. What makes the tenement district of the great city so terrible to you as you go into it is the sight of the throngs of children, who know little of home as you know it, have irregular and scanty meals, and surroundings of intemperance, dirt, foul atmosphere and speech, disease and vice. No wonder the police in these districts say that their worst trouble arises from the boys and the gangs of young "toughs." There is every reason for this unwholesome product. Mr. Hunter says there are not less than half a million children in Greater New York whose only playground is the street. Result, the street gang; and this gang is the really vital influence in the life of most boys in the large cities. It is this life, which develops, as Mr. Riis says, "dislike of regular work, physical incapability of sustained effort, gambling propensities, absence of energy, and carelessness of the happiness of others." The great homeless, yardless tenement, where the children of the immigrants are condemned to live, is the nursery of sickness and crime. The child is left for good influence to the school, the settlement, or the mission. For the enormous amount of juvenile crime in the city, which it requires a special court to deal with, the conditions are more responsible than the children, or even than the parents, who are unable to maintain home life, and who, through the pinch of poverty or the impulse of avarice, give over the education of the children to school or street. Here is a picture of the life on its darker side:
Street Life of Children
"Crowded in the tenements where the bedrooms are small and often dark, where the living room is also a kitchen, a laundry, and often a garment-making shop, are the growing children whose bodies cry out for exercise and play. They are often an irritant to the busy mother, and likely as not the object of her carping and scolding. The teeming tenements open their doors, and out into the dark passageways and courts, through foul alleys and over broken sidewalks, flow ever renewed streams of playing children. Under the feet of passing horses, under the wheels of passing street-cars, jostled about by the pedestrian, driven on by the policeman, they annoy everyone. They crowd about the music or drunken brawls in the saloons, they play hide-and-seek about the garbage boxes, they shoot 'craps' in the alleys, they seek always and everywhere activity, movement, life."[77]
Imprisoned Childhood
But worse than this picture is that of childhood in the sweat-shop, the factory, the mine, and other places of employment. Mr. Hunter has written a chapter on "The Child"[78] that should be studied by every lover of humanity. Its facts ring out a clarion call for reform. This touches our subject most closely because, as he says, "These evils of child life are doubly dangerous and serious because the mass of people in poverty in our cities are immigrants. The children of immigrants are a remarkable race of little ones."
Happy Childhood
Indeed they are, and they give you the bright side of the picture, in spite of all the evil conditions in which they live. The present writer stood recently opposite the entrance to a public school in the congested East Side, where not one of all the thousand or more of scholars was of native stock. As the crowds of little girls poured out at noontime their faces made a fascinating study. The conspicuous thing about them was the smile and fun and brightness. The dress was of every description, and one of the merriest-faced of all had on one shoe and one rubber in place of the second shoe; but from the faces you would never suspect into what kind of places these children were about to go for all they know of home. The hope lies in the children, and the schools are their great blessing and outlet, even if as Mrs. Betts says, many of them of certain classes do not think so. Mr. Hunter says: