Show PICTURES IK THE metropolis tha other adf of life h the greit amen cm se port birthplace OF THE TENEMENT turn but a dozen steps from the rush and roar of the elevated railroad where it divides under the Bro rooklyn bridge at franklin square and with ita din echoing yet in your ears you have turned the corner from prosperity to poverty you stand upon the domain of the tenement in the shadow of the great stone abut menla linger about the old houses the worst traditions of half a century down the winding slope of cheery street proud and fashionable cheery hill that was their broad steps sleeping roofs and dormer windows solid comfort stamped by the builder in every one of their generous lines are easily made out all the more easily for the contrast with the ugly barracks that elbow them right and left these never had other design than to shelter at as little outlay as possible the greatest crowds out of which rent could be wrung for in the wake of the discovery that money could be coined out of human misery or as it was less offensively put that tenements were good property came a viler creation of mans greed before the public conscience awoke to the wrong that can never again be undone and of fabich we must be always paying the penalty like ghosts of a departed day the old houses linger but their glory is gone this one with its shabby front and poorly patched roof who shall tell what glowing fi resides what happy children it bouce owned heavy feet often with unsteady step for the pot bouse is next door have worn away the brownstone steps since the broken col dumns at the door have rotted away at the base of the handsome cornice barely a trace is left dirt and desolation in the wide hallway and danger lurks on the rickety stairs rough pine boards fence off the roomy fireplace where coal is brought by the pail at the rate of twelve dollars a ton these have no place the old garden gate long sines went to decay and lell from ita bingea the arched gateway is there still but it leads no longer to a garden in its place has come a dark and nameless alley shut out by high brick walls cheerless as the lives of those they shell er OF LIFE IN CHEERY STREET of the sort of answer that would come from these tenements to the vexed question Is life worth living were they beard at all in the discussion the following cut from the last report of the association for the improvement of the condition of the poor a long name for a weary task contains a suggestion in the depth of winter the attention of the association was called to a protestant family living in a garret in a miserable tenement on cheery street the fam ilys condition was most deplorable the man his wife and tareo small children shivering in one room through the roof of which the piti aces winds of winter whistled the room was almost barren of furniture the parents slept on the floor the elder children in boxes and the baby was swung in an old shawl attached to the rafters by cords by way of a hammock the father the been obliged to give up that calling because be was in consumption and was unable ta provide either bread or fire for his little ones perhaps this may be put down as an exceptional cose but one that came to my notice some months ago in a seventh ward tenement was typical enough to escape that reproach there were nine in the family husband wife an aged grandmother and six children honest hardworking hard working germans scrupulously neat but poor all nine lived in two rooms one about ten feet square that served as parlor bedroom and eating room the other a emall hall room roaine into a kitchen the rent waa seven dollars and a half more than a weeks wages for the husband and father that day the mother had thrown herself out of the window and was carried up from the street dead bhe was discouraged said gome of the other women from the tenement who had come in to look after the children while a messenger carried the news to the father at the shop they went stolidly about their task although they were evidently not without feeling for the dead woman no doubt she was wrong in not taking life philosophically as the four families a city missionary found housekeeping in the four corbera of one room they got along well enough together until one of the families took a boarder and made trouble LIVE IN BEND it is upon the bend in mulberry street that this italian blight has fallen chiefly it is here the sanitary policemen poli cemin locates the bulk of his four hundred and the reformer gives nathe task in despair where mulberry street crooks like an elbow within hail of the oln depravity of the five points are the miserable homes of the i the law of kaleidoscopic do charge that rules life in the lower strata of our city long bince put the swarthy stunted emigrant from southern bialy in exclusive possession of this field just as his black eyed boy has the the bootblacks trade the chinaman the laundry and the negro the razor for pur poses of honest industry as well as anatomical research here is the back alley in its foulest develop ment naturally enough for there is scarcely a lot that has not two three or four tenements upon it swarming with unwholesome crowds what squalor and degradation inhabit these dens the health officers know through the long summer days their carts patrol the bend scattering disinfectants disinfect ants in streets and lane sinks and cellars and hidden hovels where the tramp burrows from midnight ill far into the small hours of the morning the emans thundering rap on the closed doors is heard with his stern command Apri port on his rounds gathering evidence of illegal overcrowds ing the doors are opened unwillingly enough but the order means business and the tenant knows it even if he understands no word of english in a room not thirteen feet either v ay slept twelve men and women two or three in bunk set in a sort of alcove the rest on the floor A kerosene lamp burned dimly in the fearful atmon phere probably to guide other and later arrivals to their beds for it was only just pat midnight A babas fretful came from an adjoining hall room where in the semidarkness semi darkness three recumbent figures could be made out WHITE SLAVES OP THE clinese iU AHTER out of the tenements of the bend and its feeders come the white slaves of the chinese dens of of vice and their infernal drug that infused into the bloody sixth ward of od a subtler poison than ever the detale beer dives knew or the sudden death of the old brewery there are houses dozens of them in molt and pell street that are literally jammed froia the joint in the cellar to the attic with these hapless victims of a passion which once acquired demands the sacrifice of every instinct of decency to its insatiate desire there is a church in mott street at the entrance to china town that stands as a bagrier between it and the tenements beyond its young men have waged unceasing war upon the monstrous wickedness for years but with very little real result I 1 have in mind a house in Pell Street that has been raided no end of times by the police and ita population emptied upon the island or into the reformatories yet is today to day honeycombed with scores of the conventional households of the chinese the men worship pers of jose the women all white girls nearly always of tender ag worshipping shipping wor nothing save the pipe that has enslaved them body and soul easily tempted from homes that have no claim to the name they rarely or ever return mott street gives up its victims only to the charity hospital or the potters field of the depth of their fall no one is cuore thoroughly aware than iheke girls themselves no one leys concerned about it the calmness with which they discuss it while insisting illogically upon the fiction of a marriage that de ceia a DO one ia disheartening their misery is peculiarly fond of company and an amount of visiting goes on in these households that makes it extremely difficult for the stranger to untangle them I 1 came across a company of them hitting the pipe together on a tour through their dens one night with the bolice captain of the precinct the girls knew him called him by name offered him a pipe and chat with him about the incidents of their acquaintance how many timed he had sent them up and their cbanta of lasting much longer acio sun look here mr said the grocer by way of a joke to the old farmer found this broue which weighs live pounds in the bottom of that last crock of butter I 1 bought of you lucy connaro picter this ia rejoined the man as he turned to hu wit a taint neither you handled the crock bl but you must hev mixed em up down cellar no I 1 though the gal probably did ashes jt that keer less wall smith ill allow lur it the crocka got mixed this waa the one we were going to send to the preachers prea chera donation party and ive been horn out of a clean dollar I 1 orter hev put a label on it |