NEW YORK TO-DAY.

Evening Star, Issue 12942, 4 May 1908, Page 5

NEW YORK TO-DAY.

The glory and the ehamo of American civilisation have been alike illustrated in the past week. The arrival of the fleet on the Pacific coast is an achievement over which the people of the United States are entitled to rejoice. The exhibition of the terrible congestion in the fiats of this city, opened by Governor Hughes in the Natural History Museum, is enough to make Socialists of those who have a spark of sympathy left for common humanity. T visited tins exhibition with Mr North" director of the census, and we could hardly believe possible the conditions there illustrated by wax models of families who sleep by night and work by day. In many cases the actual coctents of tho rooms had been transplanted from the tenements. There was a windowless room, which looked more like a Chinaman's opium den, labelled "300,000 TOoms_ like this still loft and occupied in various parts of New York." There were models of tenement blocks containing 2,781 persons, and only 264 water closets, and not one bath. Of 1,588 rooms 441 were dark and had no ventilation to the outer air, and 635 getting their sole light and air from a dark and narrow airshaft. This is not one of tho worst features of the city. Sweating shops by day and night were here illustrated as bad in uncleanliness and wretchedness as those in the East of London. " And this," exclaimed ono gentleman present, "is one feature of the life in that America to which the poor and oppressed and persecuted of all nations have been looking as a haven of liberty and rest and unlimited possibilities." The reverse side of this realistic picture of the evils of massing people in New York in a limited area may be noted in the invaluable and heroic work being done, not by one, but by fifty different organisations dealing with the problems involved. It would take columns to describe the misery depicted at this exhibition and to give an adequate idea of what has been accomplished and is in progress, by legislative and other means, for the eradication of these evils, 'The thought has often occurred to me, Can the good work ever keep pace with the demoralisation of such congestion, which is spreading? About 200,000 new immigrants settled in New York last year. Mr North told me that at the .present rate of .growth there mkht be

a population of 7,000,000 in 1920. "*Many blocks in Manhattan have a density of over 1,000 persons to the acre. Over fifty blocks each have "a population of 3,000 to 4,000. Yet there are more than 100,000 acres in New York which average less than four inhabitants to the acre. Tenement house building laws, playgrounds for children, aided distribution—one Jewish society having since 1901 removed 35,000 persons to farming colonies and small cities—and improved transit facilities have given a measure of relief. Perplexing problems these; but in the general awakening to the conlditions which are facing people here, they are being earnestly, and, I hope, effectively grappled with.—'Times' New York correspondent.