Chapter 8 SOCIAL MICROBES IN BOSTON TENEMENT HOUSES, AND HOW TO DESTROY THEM.

"Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be."

-ALFRED TENNYSON: In Memoriam.

The greatest claim Job ever makes for himself is that in the days of his prosperity, when everybody knew him and was obsequious to him as a rich man, he was not only kind to the poor, but exhibited for them a genuine sympathy which was illustrated in his carefully searching out the causes of their troubles.

There is a good deal that passes for kindness and sympathy, in these days, that is nothing more than lazy good-nature. Ignorant or indifferent charity is often as mischievous in its results as the wicked greed of the skinflint and the miser. Sympathy, to be worth any thing, must be incarnated, as in Job's case, so that it becomes feet to the lame and eyes to the blind. Frances Power Cobbe declares that the most Christ-like thing she ever heard from human lips, was from the "Good Earl" of Shaftesbury:-

"The friend of all the friendless 'neath the sun;

Whose hand had wiped away a thousand tears;

Whose eloquent lips and clear, strong brain have done

God's holy service through his fourscore years."

When he was speaking to her one day, in his study, of the wrongs of young girls, which he had just been investigating, the tears came to his eyes and his voice trembled. After a pause, he added, "When I feel how old I am, and know I must soon die, I hope it is not wrong, but I feel I cannot bear to go and leave the world with all the misery in it."

People who have no genuine sympathy for their fellows, oftentimes grow harder-hearted at a revelation of the miseries of the oppressed, which stirs nobler souls to their profoundest depths and awakens them to all manner of helpful benevolence. There is an old legend of St. Hilary Loricatus, who scourged himself so perpetually that his skin became like the hide of a rhinoceros. So, acquaintance with the sorrows and woes of the poor and unfortunate, acquired out of a morbid curiosity, or a hunger for that kind of emotion experienced by the reader of sensational novels, will result only in marring and hardening us.

Very different is the result of such knowledge when obtained through an earnest sympathy and a holy ambition to assuage the sorrows of the distressed. Shelley never wrote anything more beautiful, perhaps, than this:-

"In sacred Athens, near the fane

Of Wisdom, Pity's altar stood;

Serve not the unknown God in vain,

But pay that broken shrine again,

Love for hate, and tears for blood."

I put this emphasis on the need of searching out the wrongs of the poor, because I am satisfied that one of the greatest factors in the present tenement-house situation is the ignorance and indifference of the people as to the condition of things in the slum tenement house. I am sure that nothing but good can come from an honest attempt to "let in the light of day upon the landlordism of the slums, as you have let it in upon Mormonism, and other hateful things that prefer darkness rather than light."

We need to bear in mind constantly, in considering this question, that society is a whole, and that an evil in one class of our citizenship cannot help but have its vicious influence, in a greater or less degree, upon every other portion of society. We must also remember that the bad tenement house is the birthplace and cradle, and to a large extent the schoolroom, of multitudes of boys and girls who are to exert their influence on every phase of our city life in the near future. Modern scientists have pursued the study of disease microbes with such diligence, that they claim to be able to recognize beyond mistake the germs of certain diseases. They find them in the atmosphere almost everywhere, and they prove that these microbes are real germs of disease, by their experiments with the lower animals.

The soil under our feet is full of these micro-organisms. The smallest quantity of earth put in water reveals, through the microscope, besides the organic and mineral matter, a mass of beings more or less complex, moving more or less rapidly. A German author, Mr. Reimers, has calculated that every cubic centimetre of earth may contain several million germs.

[Illustration: EXTERIOR OF A NORTH END TENEMENT HOUSE.]

Among these microbes some have not been studied, and the part they play in the economy of life is not known to us, while certain others have functions which have been well determined. Carbuncle, for instance, is one of the most terrible maladies which can attack cattle, and sometimes even men. Now-a-days, thanks to the labors of the scientists, this malady had become quite rare, and tends more and more to disappear. For a long time it has been known that carbuncle has been due to a particular microbe, but it was not known how it was propagated. M. Pasteur has demonstrated that this propagation was due, in part at least, to the longevity of the germs.

Thus it is, if you bury the dead body of an animal which has died of carbuncle, in a ditch five or six feet deep, and cover it with earth, the carbuncle bacteria will be found in the neighboring soil several years after the interment. We can understand, then, that cattle put to graze on this land, or fed by provender from it, may contract the disease. So when the cause of this malady was unknown, it is not to be wondered at that superstitious country people called these places "cursed fields."

There are social microbes no less potent and mischievous than those with which Pasteur deals. Some of those who are infected with the contagion are put away in pest-houses or in prisons; many more walk the streets, and spread their dangerous infection through the social, business, and home life of the people. My claim is that the bad tenement house in Boston, as everywhere else where people are herded together in crowded filthy quarters, where sanitary laws are neglected or defied either by landlords or tenants, or both, furnishes a breeding-place for the microbes of nearly every sin and vice that infest our modern society. The editor of the Portland Oregonian, commenting on General Booth's scheme for the rescue of the London poor, says: "Its most hopeful features are those which propose to provide the lowly with means to help themselves, in the building and maintenance of homes. Thousands of women belonging to the 'submerged tenth' need almost as much instruction in the simple acts of housewifely thrift and neatness, as the squaws belonging to the North American Indian tribes.

[Illustration: WIDOW AND TWO CHILDREN IN UNDER-GROUND TENEMENT.]

"Homes, in the civilized sense of the term, they have never had to keep, and their squalid abiding-places, overrun with wretched and quarrelsome half-clad children, and bare of the commonest comforts of life, have offered very unattractive fields for womanly originality and painstaking endeavor. A cheerful, quiet home, wherein the laborer is always sure of warmth and light and wholesome food, has in it a saving grace which all the creeds in Christendom cannot compass without its auxiliary aid."

The power of the liquor traffic, and all the other kindred vices that cluster about it, is constantly re-enforced by the social conditions of the neglected tenement house. Temptation enters as largely into drunkenness as into any other vice; and in the foul and fetid courts of the North End, the West End, South Boston, and the Cove, temptation to vice of every kind is ever present. The words of George R. Simms, in his earnest study of life in the homes of the London poor, apply with equal force to such sections in Boston: "The complete lack of home comforts, the necessity of dulling every finer sense in order to endure the surrounding horrors, the absence of anything to enter into competition with the light and glitter of the gin palace, and the cheapness of the drink in comparison with food, all these contribute to make the poor easy victims to intemperance. Among the poor, the constant war with fate, the harassing conditions of daily life, and the apparent hopelessness of trying to improve their condition, do undoubtedly tend to make them 'drown their sorrows' and rush for relief to the fiery waters of that Lethe which the publican dispenses at so much a glass. Ask any of the temperance workers in the viler districts, and they will tell you how they have watched hundreds of decent folk come into a bad neighborhood, and gradually sink under the degrading influences of their surroundings. There are a few men who have worked to keep their brethen from the clutches of the drink fiend who would not gladly hail the advent of air, light, and cleanliness, and the enforcement of sanitary laws, as the best weapons with which to do doughty deeds in their combats with intemperance among the poor."

One of the hardest things to deal with, in an attempt to arouse good people who are well-to-do and steadily prosperous to a serious study of the troubles of the poor, is to shake them out of the erroneous conviction that it is always the fault of the poor that they are in financial straits and compelled to resort to such places of dwelling. Put yourself in your brother's place, and listen to this true story of New England life enacted during the past year.

There lived, until a little over a year ago, in Western New York, a family which we will call Simmons,-far removed from the real name. The family consisted of the husband and wife, each about thirty-five years of age, and four children,-the eldest ten. Mr. Simmons was a confectioner by trade, but for some years had been travelling for a wholesale grocer's house in New York. He was a man of good address, and was fairly successful until, in some of the competitions of trade, the New York house determined to withdraw from that section, and he was thrown out of business. After casting about for several weeks in a vain attempt to get employment, he decided to bring his family with him to New England. They removed to Worcester, where for months he sought employment, but was unable to find anything except short jobs for a day or two at a time. Mrs. Simmons, who was an educated and refilled woman, and a most worthy lady in every respect, did what she could to assist her husband; but as a fifth child was born to them in the autumn, she was so weakened by sickness and the care of her children, that she could do little besides looking after them. As the months passed, they were compelled to resort to the pawnshop-the bank of the unfortunate. First went their silverware, which was mostly wedding presents, an anguish to part with to people of their history and character. Then followed their best clothing, and some splendid books out of a well-selected library-for remember that these were educated, intelligent people, with all the instincts and tastes of good breeding. Finally, discouraged with Worcester, they removed, with what they had left, to Boston. Again for weary days, stretching into weeks, went on the disheartening search for work. Mr. Simmons says in those days the very iron entered into his soul. To see his refined, cultivated wife sick and wasting away, his children improperly clothed and hungry, and compelled, day by day, to return to the tenement house on the filthy street whither his condition had forced him, with a feeling of utter helplessness, he declares that nothing but the religious convictions of his youth, and the sense of the cowardice of the act, saved him from the death of the suicide.

[Illustration: THE BANK OF THE UNFORTUNATE.]

During the winter they were compelled to sell their excellent cooking-range, which they had brought with them from New York, and procure a cheaper one. All the books that were left followed; then the bedsteads and other furniture went, until there was only one bedstead left, and that was rented through the day to a man who worked nights. Many days they had nothing to eat but bread or crackers-and often that was of a stale quality and a scant allowance. The eldest, a little boy, attended the Sunday-school of a Boston church; he has one of the truest, noblest, and most interesting faces I have ever seen. On missing him for a couple of Sundays, the superintendent of the school went in search of him, and for the first time knew of the condition of the family.

[Illustration: OUT OF WORK.]

The Sunday-school superintendent found his little scholar lying in a dry-goods box,-for there was no bed in the daytime,-sick from lack of food and clothing. He made inquiries of the mother, and at last, with sobs and tears, she told their story. Their necessities were relieved, and through the sympathetic interest of a number of Christian men the husband now has steady employment. Now, it is easy to say that he should have gone to the church, or the charities, with the story of his condition-and I think that is true; but, on the other hand, you can see that it was the very worthiness of the family, their very nobility, that made that course seem more bitter than starvation. Bear in mind that these people were not dissipated, that they were strictly moral and religious, and that both father and mother were of prepossessing appearance. This man did not drink, or smoke, or chew, and was intensely anxious to take care of his family; he was willing to do the humblest work, and preferred death to begging or dishonor.

Only a few weeks since, I called, with a brother minister, on a family of Maine people in a miserable tenement house in the North End. The husband and father had been sick and out of work for a good while. A short time before my visit, however, he had shipped on a coaster from Hyannis to Philadelphia. He had arranged for a little credit for his family to keep them from starving, until his expected return; but the winds had been contrary, and he was several days overdue. The wife and four children were in despair. They had had nothing since the morning of the day before, and then only bread and water, except a little broth which a neighbor, not much better off, brought in to one of the children-a beautiful little girl, sick with what would be "la grippe" on Beacon Hill, but is only "grip" down in the slums. The mother had a little babe, and was in such delicate health that it was impossible for her to go out to wash or scrub. Her two narrow little rooms were scrupulously neat and clean, as were her children; but the tears ran down her cheeks as, in answer to our questions, she confessed, as if she had been admitting a crime, poor soul, that they had had nothing to eat all day.

I give you these instances to show you how false is the idea that poverty and enforced residence in a miserable tenement house are a badge of sin or wrong-doing. But think of the agony of fathers and mothers, who love their children as well as you love yours, and have ambitions for them as holy and pure, who are compelled to see their loved ones deteriorating under their eyes, and through the contamination of the poisonous moral atmosphere which they breathe, dropping slowly, but certainly, down to a level with the brutality which surrounds them.

[Illustration: A CHEAP LODGING-HOUSE.]

Well, you ask, what is the remedy for all this? My main purpose, in this series of discourses, was to place the facts of the situation before the people. But I have some plain, practical, common-sense suggestions to make. In the first place, we want an almost infinitely better system of inspection of tenement houses. Every tenement house in the city, having as many as eight families in it, ought to be inspected carefully, at least once a month-and once a week would be better-by an officer who holds his place under civil-service rules, entirely independent of politics, and who is held to a strict responsibility for the performance of his duties.

As to the tenement-house sweat-shop, I am convinced that a very simple law, which ought to be passed by the next legislature, requiring every manufacturer, of any kind, to file with the inspector of factories a list of the names and addresses of the people who work for him, would work wonders. It may be that there are some firms as low down as the one whose superintendent remarked the other day, when asked what the effect would be in their business if it were known that their goods were manufactured in filthy tenement houses: "It would make no difference at all; our customers would buy of us just the same, no matter where our garments were made." This firm, I am sure, would find itself mistaken, and, with a great many others, would break off its connection with the sweating-business if the law forced it to make that relation public.

Yet I am sure that nothing promises so much for reform as a revival of conscientious landlordism. The landlord is now, too often, as one well says, "an enormous wealthy estate, with heirs scattered here and there, who hire an agent, as their Southern brothers hired an overseer, irresponsible, unsympathetic, caring only to please his patrons, by showing a large balance of profit. And the poorer the tenement, the larger the balance. No repairs, no janitor, no supervision to pay for; accommodations so wretched that only the very wretched, who will expect to be crowded and miserable, will apply for it. O landlord! or 'estate!' too busy to collect your own rents, be not too indolent to require of your agent a strict account when he brings you twenty per cent instead of six! You would quickly bring him to book if he were suddenly to hand you six instead of twenty, but the time to question him is when it is twenty."

Mrs. Alice Wellington Rollins says in the Forum, speaking of New York: "Nothing is more astonishing, in investigating the slums, than the discovery of the enormous prices the poor are paying for the most wretched accommodations. One man boasts that he draws thirty-three per cent on his tenement investments." The same writer wisely says, farther: "The landlord is not to be a philanthropist, willing to sacrifice himself for the good of others; he is to be an intelligent capitalist, putting in his money purely as an investment, and philanthropic only to the degree of being satisfied with six per cent returns, of hiring a janitor to be on hand day and night, of being his own agent, or keeping a sharp lookout on the one he may have to employ, and of urging his wife to collect the rents. But individual landlordism need not necessarily be confined to individual persons. Individual corporations can become landlords. Why should not some of the insurance companies that complain of being unable to find suitable investments for their immense funds, take hold of the tenement question? A life-insurance company of Boston, complaining of the low rates of interest obtainable, announce that they never expect over five per cent, and find it difficult at times to get four.

"Half of the trouble is caused by the wilful cruelty, but half by the thoughtlessness, of the landlords. A wise writer has said recently: 'Often you don't need to say to a man, "Why do you do so?" If you can show him what he is doing, it is often enough to rouse him to reform.' I have faith enough in human nature to believe that if we could organize a procession of landlords and compel them to walk through the tenement districts, they would begin the reform themselves."

Let me relate to you a very interesting experiment that has indeed long since passed the era of experiment. In 1879 Mrs. Alice N. Lincoln and a young lady friend were so wrought upon by the filth and misery which they saw in certain tenement houses visited by them, in connection with the Associated Charities, that they determined to do something to better the condition of these poor people. They hired a large house on the corner of Chardon and Merrimac Streets. It contained twenty-seven tenements, and the rent agreed upon with the owner was one thousand dollars a year, though since the first year they have paid twelve hundred. The house had the worst possible reputation morally, and had been under the ban of the police for a long time.

It was, at the time they took it, half empty, because of the degraded character of the occupants. Its entries and corridors were blackened with smoke, and dingy and uninviting. The sinks were in dark corners, and were foul and disease-breeding. The stairways were innocent of water or broom, and throughout the entire house, from top to bottom, ceilings, walls, stairways-everything was dirty and neglected. It was surely not an attractive task to attempt to bring cleanliness and order out of such chaos, but these resolute young reformers deliberately set themselves to perform the seemingly impossible. The interior was painted, improved means of lighting and ventilating the sinks were ordered, and wood and coal closets arranged for each tenement on its own landing.

[Illustration: THE "GOOD LUCK" TENEMENT HOUSE.]

Previously the tenants had to keep their fuel in the cellar. The mouldy wall-paper was removed from the entries, and a fresh surface of plastering was put on. A few of the worst tenants had to be removed, but the majority, pleased with the new administration of things, were willing to accept its rules and remain. Tenants were soon found for every room; and this house, which had been regarded as very unhealthy, and had been a regular hive for fevers under the old regime of carelessness and greed, that did not care how dirty the tenants were so long as they paid their rent, under the new rule of cleanliness became so healthy that disease was almost unknown, and was, and is to this day, known by the tenants and the neighborhood generally as the "Good Luck House." The ladies collected their own rents, and kept everything well under their own supervision. A close account was kept of all receipts and expenditures, and at the end of the first year the balance of cash in hand was $111.67, or more than eleven per cent on the investment. The second year it was still more profitable, the net sum at the end of the year being $157.47. Mrs. Lincoln still carries on the administration of the "Good Luck House," and no queen was ever treated with more genuine respect than she is there. She is regarded as a most practical sort of patron saint to the institution. Yet there is no element of charity suggested in her dealings with her tenants. It is simply Christian justice. She seeks with great care to help them retain their self-respect, and treats them as fully her equal in personal responsibility. The rent is required to be paid regularly. One rigid rule enforced upon all tenants is cleanliness. She pays for the weekly scrubbing of the halls and stairways, but the tenants are required to sweep them every day, in turn. The sinks and drains are kept clean. All this has a marvellous effect on the home habits of the inmates; and I have seen as clean and tidy rooms in the "Good Luck" tenement house as I have seen anywhere, and that, too, on days when they were caught unawares, it not being the regular rent day, when they expect the landlady. All above six per cent has been put in the bank as an emergency fund, and, from time to time, the tenants have been permitted to share some unexpected pleasure from this. Once a splendid entertainment was given the tenants, in a public hall, with stereopticon views; at another time, it took a more material method of expression, and a good blanket, a pitcher and basin for each family, came out of this fund. In every way the tenants are made to know that their interests are in perfect harmony with those of the landlady. To encourage them to use more room, where they are able to pay for it, a discount is made on each additional room taken, and ten cents a week is deducted for payment in advance. A majority of them avail themselves of this privilege.

If he who makes a tree to grow where none grew before, is a public benefactor, surely she who has made it possible for many family-trees to grow and thrive, yielding their fragrance and their fruit in a pure home and social life, is a benefactress in the highest sense.

Let us encourage on every side the transformation of filthy, neglected tenements into "Good Luck" houses.

[Illustration: THE SAND GARDEN.]

A little wise thoughtfulness may vastly improve the childhood of the slums. Boys' clubs and girls' clubs are steps in the right direction. They awaken an interest in innocent games, afford a glimpse of beautiful pictures, and give zest to the intellectual appetite for fresh, wholesome books. The "sand garden" is also a happy thought. Think of thousands of children reared in the narrowest, filthiest quarters, who have never had a chance to make even a mud-pie out in the pure air of heaven. It may seem a small thing to some, but it is a tragedy to me. When I remember my own happy childhood over in the Oregon woods, where I ran as free and untrammelled as a young colt in the pasture, and made mud-pies beside the brook that had its home in a great bubbling spring on the hillside, breathing the air fragrant with the perfume of wild lilies, while robins and bobolinks and meadow larks sported and sang without fear, on every side-when I contrast a childhood like that with the child-life in the Boston slums, I am heart-broken. There is nothing so sad as this "murder of the innocents" that is going on in all our great cities. Marianne Farningham sings their dirge:-

"Such sights there are in the great sin-soiled city,

As might compel an angel into pity;

But none more sad in all the world of care,

Than a young child driven to black despair!"

Surely, trumpet blast never called men and women to a holier crusade than this rescue of the lost childhood of the slums.