The Battle with the Slum

Three years ago I published under the title "A Ten Years' War" a series of papers intended to account for the battle with the slum since I wrote "How the Other Half Lives." A good many things can happen in three years. So many things have happened in these three, the fighting has been so general all along the line and has so held public attention, that this seems the proper time to pass it all in review once more. That I have tried to do in this book, retaining all that still applied of the old volume and adding as much more. The "stories" were printed in the Century Magazine. They are fact, not fiction. If the latter, they would have no place here.

"The Battle with the Slum" is properly the sequel to "How the Other Half Lives," and tells how far we have come and how. "With his usual hopefulness," I read in the annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science of my book three years ago, "the author is still looking forward to better things in the future." I was not deceived then. Not in the thirty years before did we advance as in these three, though Tammany blocked the way most of the time. It is great to have lived in a day that sees such things done.

J. A. R.

RICHMOND HILL, August 27, 1902.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction. What the Fight is about 1

CHAPTER

I. Battling against Heavy Odds 9

II. The Outworks of the Slum taken 36

III. The Devil's Money 63

IV. The Blight of the Double-decker 76

V. "Druv into Decency" 113

VI. The Mills House 154

VII. Pietro and the Jew 175

VIII. On whom shall we shut the Door? 202

IX. The Genesis of the Gang 227

X. Jim 256

XI. Letting in the Light 264

XII. The Passing of Cat Alley 310

XIII. Justice to the Boy 341

XIV. The Band begins to play 385

XV. "Neighbor" the Password 396

XVI. Reform by Humane Touch 413

XVII. The Unnecessary Story of Mrs. Ben Wah and Her Parrot 441

Index 451

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Theodore Roosevelt Frontispiece

PAGE

One of the Five Points Fifty Years Ago 12

The "Old Church" Tenement 15

An Old Wooster Street Court 17

A Fourth Ward Colony in the Bad Old Days 18

Dens of Death 21

Gotham Court 24

Green Dragon Yard, London 26

A Flagged Hallway in the "Big Flat" 28

Jersey Street Rookeries 32

The Survival of the Unfittest 33

The Rear Tenement grows up 38

Professor Felix Adler 39

A Cellar Dive in the Bend 41

It costs a Dollar a Month to sleep in these Sheds 46

Mulberry Street Police Station. Waiting for the Lodging to open 49

Night in Gotham Court 52

A Mulberry Bend Alley 55

"In the hallway I ran across two children, little tots, who were inquiring their way to the 'Commissioner'" 58

"With his whole hungry little soul in his eyes" 78

One Family's Outlook on the Air Shaft. The Mother said, "Our daughter does not care to come home to sleep" 93

The only Bath-tub in the Block. It hangs in the Air Shaft 103

The Old Style of Tenements, with Yards 106

As a Solid Block of Double-deckers, lawful until now, would appear 106

Richard Watson Gilder 117

The Mott Street Barracks 122

R. Fulton Cutting 128

Alfred Corning Clark Buildings 131

The Riverside Tenements in Brooklyn 141

A Typical East Side Block 146

Robert W. de Forest 147

Plan of a Typical Floor of the Competition in the C. O. S. Plans of Model Tenements 150

Plans of Tenements 151

A Seven-cent Lodging House in the Bowery 155

They had a Mind to see how it looked 157

Doorway of the Mills House, No. 1 159

Evening in One of the Courts in the Mills House, No. 1 163

Lodging Room in the Leonard Street Police Station 168

Women's Lodging Room in Eldridge Street Police Station 169