YARD DAY AT THE SETTLEMENT.
It was pathetic to hear the revelations of the little miseries of childhood due to lack of room in the home. "My mother used to drive us out of the house to get a chance to sweep it," said another mother of children. "I remember lots of times standing down at the hall door, shivering, waiting for her to get through. I would go into the neighbors' rooms, but often they had got rid of their own children for the reason my mother had of hers."
"I tell you what used to make me mad; it was to have to wait for the others to get through eating," said another. "When I hire a place I always look first to see if the kitchen is big enough to pull the table from the wall and sit about it. I don't think I ever had any hot dinner when I was little, and it used to make me mad. When I had three children I moved just to get a large kitchen; it ain't near so nice a place, but the kitchen is big." There was not a woman there who did not have a grievance against her childhood because there was not room. One of them with crimson cheeks told how she remembered the sense of comfort that came to her after the death of an older sister because she had a bed to herself; she said it was a long time before she knew the cause, for she missed her sister's companionship, but she was more comfortable; she enjoyed having the five nails at the foot of the bed for her own clothes. The woman who spoke first interrupted: "I never in my life had even a hook in the wall that was my own until I was married. We were so near of a size we could wear each other's things, and we did. The one who was quickest got the best of that size. You never knew whose clothes you'd have to put on in the morning. I'll never have but this child. She likes me. She hates being pushed and crowded. She has a bed and bureau of her own. Never, never until my husband can pay more rent will we have another child." She paid the penalty of death for this determination.
As one thinks of the number of human beings with all their belongings crowded into the floor space of a tenement-house home, the marvel at the endurance grows greater. Think of its limitations of conveniences!
To those who know the limitations of a tenement-house home, the criticisms and suggestions that the superficially informed reformers make on and for the hygienic management of these homes are at once the source of amusement and indignation. When stress is laid on airing a bed every morning, and one in imagination sees the only windows in another room with a breakfast table between them, a room already overcrowded with things, the only room for the mother and baby during the process, one wonders what the speaker would do under the same circumstances. Then when the horrors of dust are revealed and the necessity of keeping the floors clean by frequent washing is made to be imperative, one sees the bed that just fits between the walls at the head and foot, with half of its own space free in front of it, and again comes the question, what would the expert do living under like circumstances? What is needed everywhere is scientific knowledge in conjunction with intimate knowledge of the evils inseparable from the small dark rooms of even the best tenements, and then we will have suggestions that the woman can use—can apply to her own family conditions—who must do the work for a family within this space.
In the best of the tenements it will be found that where the tenants can afford a parlor, access to it is across the kitchen, where all the work of the family must be done. It will be seen at once the disadvantage at which the house-mother is when friends who are not intimate call. Nothing stands between her and the outer world but the door into a public hallway. The bedrooms admit of a bed, and sometimes, but only in the exceptional bedroom, a bureau. This is usually found in the parlor, if there is one, and in it all the clothes that can be folded, all the little accessories belonging to the family; to this, however, all must have access. If there is a closet for clothes, or if the family can own and house a wardrobe, it is usually in this room, and the common convenience of the family. The bedrooms, dark, offer no space for a washstand. The kitchen is the common wash-room. The kitchens of the tenement houses built in these later years are a marvel of inconvenience. The dish closet is a few shelves up near the ceiling, the lower one of which can be reached by a woman five feet four standing on the soles of her feet; a chair is necessary to reach the other shelves. Beneath this space is the pot closet, or it may be the stationary tubs, the top of which provides table space for cooking conveniences.
THE CHILDREN'S HOUR AT THE COLLEGE SETTLEMENT.