Memoirs of a millionaire

by Lucia True Ames Mead

Mildred had chocolate and cakes and fruit served, and then proceeded to business in the dignified, quiet way which so well became her.

“I have asked you here this evening,” she said, “that I may get the benefit of your united wisdom and experience. I seek enlightenment as to the best way to solve the problem of the housing of the poor in a great city. I wish to do something to make the conditions of existence a little more bearable for some of the wretched creatures that I have been seeing of late in such places as the Mulberry Street Bend, on Hester, Forsyth, and Cherry streets, and a hundred other places.

“For some years, in connection with the Associated Charity work of Boston, I have visited poor families in the alleys of North Street, and have made myself somewhat familiar with the problems that are besetting us in the herding together of enormous numbers of people under conditions that, I think I am safe in saying, never before existed. What little I have seen in other cities is as nothing to what I find here. And it is here in New York, where I am told you have the most thickly populated square mile on the globe, and where the dregs from Castle Garden remain, that I propose to do something.

“As I have been about with your district visitors and have picked my way among the garbage barrels and swarming mass of humanity in the Jewish quarter, on their market day, I have wondered how it was possible for morality to exist in the close personal contact and absolute want of privacy which this lack of space necessitates. Now, tell me, what is to be done to relieve this condition of things and permit those little gamins to grow up decent American citizens? Are things worse or are they better than they used to be? I hear that a mint of money is spent in charity, but I hear also that in the past one of the greatest causes of pauperism has been found to be unwise philanthropy, and the more I look into the question the more perplexed and uncertain I find myself.

“What does your experience suggest?” asked Mildred, turning with one of her winning smiles to a cheery-faced lady of perhaps fifty years of age, who sat at her right.

“That is a pretty hard question to answer,” was the reply. “I’ve been at work for twenty-five years down on the East side near the river, and I am free to say that I don’t see much improvement. Of course, things are better in some ways; there is better sanitary inspection than there used to be, and need enough there is of it too, with these filthy Italians and Polish Jews who are pouring in here every week by the thousands. I must say I haven’t much hope of them.”

“Yes, of course; but haven’t you hope of the children?” inquired Mildred, eagerly.

“Yes, a little more hope for them, certainly,” responded the lady somewhat dubiously, with a sigh that contrasted strangely with her bright, hopeful face; “but I must say frankly, that the more I see of the poor, the more hopeless I sometimes feel and the less able to make generalizations and give advice. I used to think it a comparatively simple thing, requiring merely money and hard work. Ten years ago I could have given you advice very glibly, but I don’t feel so sure about anything now; there are so many sides to everything, and so many exceptions to every rule.

“Of course, good tenement houses are a great thing, provided you can have a janitor and a housekeeper to keep them in order. But the best model tenement house in the world would be completely ruined if entirely given over to the class of tenants I know about. They will just as likely as not throw their ashes and garbage down the waste-pipes, and pile all their bedding out on the fire-escapes, blocking them up so as to make them almost useless in case of a fire. It requires the patience of Job to deal with such people. They don’t care for your new improvements, and they don’t propose to be restrained by any regulations or rules.

“As for the model tenement houses that we have, doubtless they are excellent. But they don’t as a general thing reach the lowest class of people, and in any event they are a mere drop in the bucket. There’s just one consolation about it all, as I say to myself when I go about,—these people have never been used to anything better, and they don’t know how miserable they are.”