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A TEN YEARS' WAR
AN ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE
WITH THE SLUM IN
NEW YORK

JACOB A. RIIS

AUTHOB OF "HOW THB OTHEB HALF UVBS"

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

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1900

22 A TEN YEARS' WAR

the days that were. Soap and water have
worked a visible cure already, that must go
more than skin-deep. They are moral agents
of the first value in the slum. And the day
must come when rapid transit will cease to
be a football between contending forces in a
city of three million people, and the reason
for the outrageous crowding will cease to
exist with the scattering of the centres of
production to the suburb. That day may
be a long way off, measured by the impa-
tience of the philanthropist, but it is bound
to come. Meanwhile, philanthropy is not
sitting idle and waiting. It is building tene-
ments on the humane plan that wipes out
the lines of the twenty-five-foot lot, and lets
in sunshine and air and hope. It is putting
up hotels deserving of the name for the
army that but just now had no other home
than the cheap lodging houses which In-
spector Byrnes fitly called " nurseries of
crime." These also are standards from which
there is no backing down, even if coming up
to them is slow work^ and they are here to
stay, for they pay. That is the test. Not
charity, but justice, — that is the gospel
which they preach.

THE BATTLE WITH THE SLUM 23

Flushed with the success of many vic-
tories, we challenged the slum to a fight to
the finish a year ago, and bade it come on.
It came on. On our side fought the brav-
est and best. The man who marshaled the
citizen forces for their candidate had been
foremost in building homes, in erecting
baths for the people* in directing the self-
sacrificing labors of the oldest and worthiest
of the agencies for improving the condition
of the poor. With him battled men who
had given lives of patient study and effort
to the cause of helping their fellow men.
Shoulder to shoulder with them stood the
thoughtful workingman from the East Side
tenement. The slum, too, marshaled its
forces. Tammany produced her notes. She
pointed to the increased tax rate, showed
what it had cost to build schools and parks
and to clean house, and called it criminal
recklessness. The issue was made sharp
and clear. The war cry of the slum was
characteristic: " To hell with reform !" We
all remember the result. Politics interfered,
and turned victory into defeat. We were
beaten. I shall never forget that election
night. I walked home through the Bowery

24 A TEN YEARS' WAR

in the midnight hour, and saw it gorging it-
self, like a starved wolf, upon the promise of
the morrow. Drunken men and women sat
in every doorway, howling ribald songs and
curses. Hard faces I had not seen for years
showed themselves about the dives. The
mob made merry after its fashion. The old
days were coming back. Kef orm was dead,
and decency with it.

A year later, I passed that same way
on the night of election. The scene was
strangely changed. The street was unusu-
ally quiet for such a time. Men stood in
groups about the saloons, and talked in
whispers, with serious faces. The name of
Eoosevelt was heard on every hand. The
dives were running, but there was no shout-
ing, and violence was discouraged. When,
on the following day, I met the proprietor of
one of the oldest concerns in the Bowery, —
which, while doing a legitimate business,
caters necessarily to its crowds, and there-
fore sides with them, — he told me with
bitter reproach how he had been stricken in
pocket. A gambler had just been in to see
him, who had come on from the far West,
in anticipation of a wide-open town, and had

THE BATTLE WITH THE SLUM 25

got all ready to open a house in the Tender-
loin. " He brought $40,000 to put in the
business, and he came to take it away to
Baltimore. Just now the cashier of-------
Bank told me that two other gentlemen —
gamblers ? yes, that's what you call them —
had drawn $130,000 which they would
have invested here, and had gone after him.
Think of all that money gone to Baltimore!
That's what you've done!"

I went over to police headquarters, think-
ing of the sad state of that man, and in the
hallway I ran across two children, little tots,
who were inquiring their way to " the com-
missioner." The older was a hunchback
girl, who led her younger brother (he could
not have been over five or six years old)
by the hand. They explained their case to
me. They came from Allen Street. Some
undesirable women tenants had moved into
the tenement, and when complaint was made
that sent the police there, the children's
father, who was a poor Jewish tailor, was
blamed. The tenants took it out of the boy
by punching his nose till it bled. Where-
upon the children went straight to Mulberry
Street to see the commissioner and get jus-

26 A TEN YEARS' WAR

tice. It was the first time in twenty years
that I had known Allen Street to come to
police headquarters for justice; and in the
discovery that the new idea had reached
down to the little children I read the doom
of the slum, despite its loud vauntings.

No, it was not true that reform was dead,
with decency. It was not the slum that had
won; it was we who had lost. We were not
up to the mark, — not yet. But New York
is a many times cleaner and better city to-day
than it was ten years ago. Then I was able
to grasp easily the whole plan for wresting
it from the neglect and indifference that had
put us where we were. It was chiefly, al-
most wholly, remedial in its scope. Now it
is preventive, constructive, and no ten men
could gather all the threads and hold them.
We have made, are making headway, and
no Tammany has the power to stop us. She
knows it, too, and is in such frantic haste to
fill her pockets while she has time that she
has abandoned her old ally, the tax rate,
and the pretense of making bad government
cheap government. She is at this moment
engaged in raising taxes and assessments at
one and the same time to an unheard-of fig-