OCR Text |
Show LECTURED TO CAPACITY HOUSE JACOB RIIS AT WEBER ACADEMY LAST EVENING. Illustrated Lecture, "The Battle With the Slums," Presented In Most Convincing Manner. Jacob Rlls, sunshine worker, newspaper news-paper writer, lecturer, and friend ex- i traordinary to the child of tho slums, charmed a pneued audience at Weber Academy auditorium last evening vlth hfa illustrated lecture entitle! 'The Battle With the Slums." Not only by far the most interesting and Instructive number of the Beaton's leMurc course, Mr. Rlls' address probably prob-ably brought homo to tho minds ot 2:1a Ogden audience, the conditions existing In tho lower strata of American Ameri-can society more forcibly and effectively effec-tively than it ever had been their fortune for-tune to hear. The pictures used to illustrate tho lecturo were from photos taken by Mr. Rlls himself in and around New York City, more particularly tho famous "East Side." He said that three-fourth's of New York's population wero toilers; that they worked with their hands for a living. "You have no plums out here," ho Bald, "and you don't want them, cither. cith-er. You aro already beginning zo look into the homes of your tollers and plan for their betterment and future, fu-ture, with the idea that an ounce ot pi event! ve is worth a pound of cure. That is the spirit that will prevent slum life in the years to come and you are building better than you lnow." In taking up the subject of slum life, he said that darkness was characteristic char-acteristic of it and the lirst to bo observed. ob-served. He showed a view of a single block in New York in which then wero thousands of homes Into which the sunlight had never shone. Ho said that there were 314.000 window-less window-less homes in New York City,' In which oven a plant would not grow, and added: "If a plant will not grow In one of those frightful places, how in tho name of God can you expect a child to grow there?" He showod a view of a single tenement tene-ment block in which there were 6.Ui0 tenants; an alley 200 feet in depth and "twice the length of a drunken man in width, where a thousand miserable mis-erable specimens of God's handiwork existed in placos they called homo. I "Thore were 500 babies In arms in that one block," he said, "and tho death rate was 33 1-3 per cent of the ixumber born." Mr. Rlls made little mention of the liquor question and, In fact, stated that rather than drink being at the-bottom the-bottom of the slum conditions, it was more likely that the conditions were largely responsible for the drink, "It's fresh air they need," he said. "I,et In the sunlight; give the aching little feet a place to run and romp In the open; let the little starved soul3 drink in the blessings of God's pure atmosphere and those, minds will expand ex-pand and grow and you will have citizens citi-zens and patriots not criminals, instead in-stead of being born into the world, the majority of the population of some of those districts seem to have been damned into it." He told of the schools and play- grounds that had been provided after years of battle with the inertia ot the rich and tho greed of tho grasping landlords. He Hl0Ke of Theodore Roosevelt rs the man .who had done such miracles mir-acles for the poor of New York in the way of bettering their conditions and helping to mould public opinion In behalf of the work. |