This seems shocking. But this is by no means the worst! There are 580 tenement-houses in New York which contain, by actual count, 10,933 families, or about 85 persons each; 193 others, which accommodate 111 persons each; 71 others, which cover 140 each; and, finally, 29—these must be the most profitable!—which have a total population of no less than 5,449 souls, or 187 to each house!
That part of Fifth Avenue which holds the chief part of the wealth and fashion of New York has an extent of about two miles, or, counting both sides of the street, four miles. These four miles of stately palaces are occupied by four hundred families; while a single block of tenement-houses, not two hundred yards out of Fifth Avenue, contains no less than seven hundred families, or 3,500 souls! Seven such blocks, Mr. Halliday pertinently remarks, would contain more people than the city of Hartford, which covers an area of several miles square.
Such astounding facts as these the industrious Buckle of the year 3000, intent upon a history of our American civilization, will quote to the croakers of that day as samples of our nineteenth-century barbarism.
"But," some one may object, "if the houses were comfortably arranged, and land was really scarce, after all, these people were not so badly off."
The "tenement-house," which is now one of the "institutions" of New York, stands usually upon a lot 25 by 100 feet, is from four to six stories high, and is so divided internally as to contain four families on each floor,—each family eating, drinking, sleeping, cooking, washing, and fighting in a room eight feet by ten and a bed-room six feet by ten; unless, indeed,—which very frequently happens, says Mr. Halliday,—the family renting these two rooms takes in another family to board, or sub-lets one room to one or even two other families!
But the modern improvements?
One of the largest and most recently built of the New York "barracks" has apartments for 126 famines. It was built especially for this use. It stands on a lot 50 by 250 feet, is entered at the sides from alleys eight feet wide, and, by reason of the vicinity of another barrack of equal height, the rooms are so darkened that on a cloudy day it is impossible to read or sew in them without artificial light. It has not one room which can in any way be thoroughly ventilated. The vaults and sewers which are to carry off the filth of the 126 families have grated openings in the alleys, and door-ways in the cellars, through which the noisome and deadly miasmata penetrate and poison the dank air of the house and the courts. The water-closets for the whole vast establishment are a range of stalls without doors, and accessible not only from the building, but even from the street. Comfort is here out of the question; common decency has been rendered impossible; and the horrible brutalities of the passenger-ship are day after day repeated,—but on a larger scale. And yet this is a fair specimen. And for such hideous and necessarily demoralizing habitations,—for two rooms, stench, indecency, and gloom, the poor family pays—and the rich builder receives—"thirty-five per cent, annually on the cost of the apartments!"
When a city has half a million of inhabitants who must content themselves with such quarters as these, which, even the beasts of the field would perish in, does any man wonder that 18,000 women were arrested in the last year? that in the three months ending January 31st, 1859, 13,765 arrests were made by the city police, of which over one-third were females, one in six under twenty years of age, and more than one-half under thirty? that in 1855 there was one death in every 26-1/3 of the population? that in 1858 the five city dispensaries were called on to treat (gratuitously) 65,442 infant patients? that, in 1855, 1,938 infants were stillborn, and 6,390, or 1 in 99 of the population, did not live the first year out? while, at the present time, 20,000 children roam the streets, and never enter a schoolroom? With such homes, is there cause for surprise that husbands murder their wives? that mothers abuse their children,—and would kill them, too, were they not profitable little slaves, as Mr. Halliday shows? that men and women live in drunken stupor upon the spoils of young children,—often not their own,—sent out to beg, to steal, or do worse yet? that even the very fag-end of humanity, the sentiment of "honor among thieves," perishes here?
For twenty years, Mr. Halliday has labored among these poor creatures, as the "agent" or missionary of the "American Female Guardian Society and Home for the Friendless," an association of noble-minded and unusually practical men and women. If any of our readers fear lest the fountain of benevolence may dry up within him, we commend Mr. Halliday's book to his perusal. He will find there some little stories which have a pathos beyond tears; some facts—happening, mayhap, within ten minutes' walk of his own fireside—quite as strange as the strangest fiction of Mr. Cobb or Mr. Emerson Bennett. We have not space left for any account of Mr. Halliday's labors. His Society provides not only boys and girls, but even men and women under certain circumstances, with present assistance and shelter, and afterwards a home and work in the country, at a distance from the temptations and miseries of the city. It is curious to read that Mr. Halliday receives frequent orders from various States—even the most distant West—for "a baby," "a boy," "a little girl." It is good to know that in that way many bright young souls are saved from the horrors of "tenement" life, and placed in kind hands; and it is touching to read, that, while many of these little ones are remarkable for good looks and bright spirits, all are reported as singularly quiet, sedate, and submissive. We are glad to know that the types of the paper published by the Society are set up by the women who have a refuge in its Home; and we were sorry to read of one boy, who always ran away from everybody and every place, being at last secured in the House of Refuge, where, being now nearly eleven years old, the monster! "he seems dejected, and I have never seen him smile," says Mr. Halliday. This boy—and a good many others who like the streets and the free air better than the black-hole of a tenement—should go to sea. The sea is an honorable trade, (it used to be a profession,) and the merchants of New York could not do a wiser or a better thing than in providing a school-ship where such lads could be taught the rudiments of seamanship and navigation, or, in default of that, sending them as apprentices in their vessels.
We have two complaints to enter against Mr. Halliday: first, that he has given his book a title which will deter most sensible people from opening it; and, second, that in his valuable report on the tenement-houses, he does not give the names of those enterprising personages who make thirty-five per cent, at the expense, not only of their poor tenants, but of every tax-payer in New York.