PREFACE.
The belief that every man’s experience ought to be worth something to the community from which he drew it, no matter what that experience may be, so long as it was gleaned along the line of some decent, honest work, made me begin this book. With the result before him, the reader can judge for himself now whether or not I was right. Right or wrong, the many and exacting duties of a newspaper man’s life would hardly have allowed me to bring it to an end but for frequent friendly lifts given me by willing hands. To the President of the Board of Health, Mr. Charles G. Wilson, and to Chief Inspector Byrnes of the Police Force I am indebted for much kindness. The patient friendship of Dr. Roger S. Tracy, the Registrar of Vital Statistics, has done for me what I never could have done for myself; for I know nothing of tables, statistics and percentages, while there is nothing about them that he does not know. Most of all, I owe in this, as in all things else, to the womanly sympathy and the loving companionship of my dear wife, ever my chief helper, my wisest counsellor, and my gentlest critic.
J. A. R.
CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |
| Introduction, | 1 |
| CHAPTER I. | |
| Genesis of the Tenement, | [7] |
| CHAPTER II. | |
| The Awakening, | [15] |
| CHAPTER III. | |
| The Mixed Crowd, | [21] |
| CHAPTER IV. | |
| The Down Town Back-alleys, | [28] |
| CHAPTER V. | |
| The Italian in New York, | [48] |
| CHAPTER VI. | |
| The Bend, | [55] |
| CHAPTER VII. | |
| A Raid on the Stale-beer Dives, | [71] |
| CHAPTER VIII. | |
| The Cheap Lodging-houses, | [82] |
| CHAPTER IX. | |
| Chinatown, | [92] |
| CHAPTER X. | |
| Jewtown, | [104] |
| CHAPTER XI. | |
| The Sweaters of Jewtown, | [120] |
| CHAPTER XII. | |
| The Bohemians—Tenement-house Cigarmaking, | [136] |
| CHAPTER XIII. | |
| The Color Line in New York, | [148] |
| CHAPTER XIV. | |
| The Common Herd, | [159] |
| CHAPTER XV. | |
| The Problem of the Children, | [179] |
| CHAPTER XVI. | |
| Waifs of the City’s Slums, | [187] |
| CHAPTER XVII. | |
| The Street Arab, | [196] |
| CHAPTER XVIII. | |
| The Reign of Rum, | [210] |
| CHAPTER XIX. | |
| The Harvest of Tares | [217] |
| CHAPTER XX. | |
| The Working Girls of New York, | [234] |
| CHAPTER XXI. | |
| Pauperism in the Tenements, | [243] |
| CHAPTER XXII. | |
| The Wrecks and the Waste, | [255] |
| CHAPTER XXIII. | |
| The Man with the Knife, | [263] |
| CHAPTER XXIV. | |
| What Has Been Done, | [268] |
| CHAPTER XXV. | |
| How the Case Stands, | [282] |