THE BITTER CRY OF NEW YORK. (Daily News.)

North Otago Times, Issue 7176, 26 June 1891, Page 4

THE BITTER CRY OF NEW YORK. (Daily News.)

{Continued from 4th page.) in the order of precedence \ the Inter ones seem to have found oat that there must be «t least a process of concurrent conversion. Beyond all question much of the infamy is a direct product of the wretohedness and the Equator. ' Bobs Tweed ' wai born and bred in a New York slum, and he issued from it a prey upon Bociety. He saw in all civilisation only something to steal. The case is complicated by the taste of many of those miserable peoplt lor cellar life. They came from cellars in the old world, and they go to cellars in the new. The < dives' — as the policemen call them — are underground depols of forbidden industries.- Some* timeß the police ' raid ' them ', more often they are left alone owiDg to the sheer impossibility of disturbing them to any effect of reformation. The author's acoount of a raid on a ' stale beer dive' reads like a hunt for rats in a sewer. The constables march down in a body, kick the door in, and take every man they find, using their truncheons freely on any one who shows the slightest sign of resistance. Of 13 wretches seized in this way, all "but one carried revolversi The stale beer is a filthy compound, the mere refuse of the public houses frothed np by a chemical agency to make it look like something fit to drink. Many of these dens are night lodging-houses of a kind. For a few cents a customer may sit on a bench and lay his head on a table. At some of the lodging houses % bed cost 7 cents for the night, and the ous« tomera lie on hammocks tier above tier. One man who keeps three dens of this sort makes over 8000dols a year by them. The remedy is not nicely proportioned to the ill ', but from the author's account of what hai been done, there seems to be just aa much hope for the future as there is in our own cities at horne — just as much and no more. Besides the dreary pioturei of this city of dreadful night there are more cheerful ones 'where little children in the refuges are seen kneeling in files before going to bed, or working bojs are brigaded in comfortable homes. Perhaps New York ia no worse than London in all this, but it is useful to learn that it is no better. Pane, as we know from the labors of M. D'Haußsonville, though he is perhaps not exactly an unbiassed witness, is at least as badly off as London ; and Berlin, in its poorer quarter?, has been described as a very sink of abomination. It is idle to institute com' parißons where the sooial conditions that are the root of ]the evil are substantially the same.

Outcast New ¥"01 k has now uttered its 'biUercry' in an extraordinary I book just wiitten by Mr Jacob A. Rib, ami published by Sampson Low The book is an account of the slums of > PW Yoik, and it is entitled • How tJic Other Half Lives. 1 'I ho half might better liavc been tlnvcquailers, for Mr Rils tells us, this is the proportion between tho decent houses in the TCmpho City and the tenements which bhelter tho poverty, vico, and crime, i he author has made this work a labor of tho pity that is akin to love f'o has gone through the whole of the district with camera and notebook, and he has photographed its choicest bits for reproduction in this volume. New Yoik. to judge by his account of it, is at least as bad as London or peihapa is any other city of civilisation FOl a long timo its evil of ovei crowding wont on unchecked Everyone looks af er himself in America, i nd it seems to be nobody's business to intervene on beh ilf of * a degraded population j 'hiugs aic better now that s-initaiy boauls and other agencies of the kind aie at woik, but they are still bad enough. A few yeius ago the Kast fride which is still tho most densely populated place of its sl/.e in the world, w. s packed at tho rae of 290,000 persons to the square mile Iho worst crowding in old London, says the author, was at the lateofonly 175,000. Swine roamed the st eets and gutteis, and they we>e almost the only scavengers IV r Rils dreads to think of what may happen when emigration shall have doubled the picsent count of destitution and crime. He fears that outcast New York may one day use in its rage and nrseiy on the remaining fourth of opulence and ease. The officials of the Mib-Treasury Department seem to have lively appieheu&ions of the same soit. Their Hastille oi wealth 19 always leady to resist assault by a forlorn 'hope. Its bulletprooi doois, hand grenades, and Gatlin^ guns are regarded as matters of couise, -uch precautions are common at everj storehouse ot riches in the city. j" 01 only can tho safe deposit cellars bt flooded, in the event of fire, but eveij passage ot them can be filled, at .1 moment's notice, with scalding steam to repel a mob Mr Bils insists thai the wealth which has largely creitet this state of things in its lnuiy tt cieate itself should piovule the lemod) for i». Ihe slums raubt be lebuilt, i: need b°, at the public charge. The Fowery, and the Five Points ' I'linduian's Alley,' ' Hell's kitchen, ' Febastopol, 1 and 'The Bandits Koost' aie unrivalled as scenes 0: picturesque honor. In the New Yoik slums theie are foreigners 0 eveiy na'ion and ahnobt of e\ery ract and creed. Theie is an Italian quar tor, a Geiman quarter, a Jew town, £ hiiia town, with odd patches tha lepicsent most of the nee varieties 0 'Ir* ! rvan r . E 'ch race brings its owi fihhions of vico and want 'ih< Itdliaus, who aie chietly 'ihe rag pickers of the ciby, are under lh< thumb of the padrone, there as hero Ihe padrone at home has told then tempting lies about the ease am plenty of Aineiica and has persuadec them to mortgage every slick of then pioperty, and wheis they cannot bor io'.v, to beg the means of paying then passage to this Promised Land Thej earn the miserable deception tin moment they step ashore, but by thai time, this padione has done with them Ele has made hi& profit on their tickets, and he leaves them to starve Bui another padione, his paitner, awaits them at the quay, and he will faim out to them the right to gather the street Tefuse at starvation wages. Tht rooms in tenement houses wheio they and their like heid are often sub divided by halves and quaitcrs, each with its lodger. In some rooms people sleep on shelves one above the other, at a rate of 5 cents ' a spot ' Of over 600 of these tenements examined some timo since, less than 25 weie found even relatively decent, Iho population can be upon occasion the most desperate and dangerous in the woild. It has its own knowledge in the ins and outs of the neighborhood, and this sometimes extends to a knowledge of the short cuts by the seweis to remoter parts of the city. n the ' Tend,' wh eh is 'ho veiy core of New Yoik wretchedness, and is wiLbm Jj ill of the Fit c Poinfcs, man3 r of the prople never speak any other language than the one they brought over wi'h them. 'Ihe Geimans begin to learn English on the day they 1 md, but the Italians never take a lesson, ami the police t?1io patrol their quarters h ive to challenge them iv the slang of Venice or ! ome. ' Old Afiica' is, or was, the negro quarter, and .t is by no means the worst kept, 'he slums have giown to what they .ue by centimes cf neglect b'omo ot their houses were once tho dwellings of the old i utch biu»hois. Whore '1 c I'ulch bu'-ghcr giew his tulips in hs inn g.uden, ihe tenement owner has added a supplementary building, into which the light and air find their way only by a gymnastic feat. The author's point is that of all our modem hcc'al reformers — that the misery produces tl.e vice qui'o as much as the vice the miseiy. 'Jhc eailier reformers were all for the inner change as first (Continued on \sl Paye.)