Consider the odors that must arise where garbage is thrown out of the windows, or lies rotting in the cellar; where the slops are allowed to flow into the street, or worse nuisances are committed in the darkened hallways. What protection from infection can be expected where the tubercular patients are allowed to expectorate on the floor, or a diphtheria-stricken child to share its food with a playmate? What think you of the moral conditions where the sexes are herded together in the bedrooms, irrespective of relationship and age?

It is from such places as these that hospitals, almshouses, jails, reformatories, insane asylums to say nothing of private instituare fed.

tions

Prevention costs less than cure and any work that tends to arrest the progress of disease and crime should be regarded as an economy to the State.

My plea is, therefore, for the systematic inspection of tenementhouses, not in the spirit of a mere perfunctory performance of duty, but because sanitation has become a science of Christian civilization as well as a code of ancient Judaism, and proper housing and proper food have come to occupy a place in the moral as well as in the physical sphere. It is this ethical aspect that should incite our enthusiasm as well as guide our action, and my desire is so to arouse your interest, convince your judgments and touch your hearts, that each one here will aid in the formation of a public sentiment that will be felt throughout the land.

DISCUSSION ON "HEALTH AND HOUSING "

INSPECTION."

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66

SANITARY

Mr. DEVINE.-There is time for a very brief discussion of these subjects. As they will particularly interest the sociological departments of the universities, I am glad to see present besides Mr. Gilder from whom we shall certainly hope to have a word or two, a representative from Syracuse University, Professor J. H.

Hamilton; from Northwestern University in Professor Bradley; from Stanford University in Professor Mary Roberts Smith; from Vassar College in Professor Herbert E. Mills; from Cornell University in Professor Frank E. Fetter, and from Yale University in Professor Henry W. Farnam. I am not sure that I have named by any means all the university people here, but it is certainly very gratifying that so many universities are represented.

Mr. R. W. GILDER. The tenement-house population is discovered by different people at different times. I discovered the tenement-house population before the Civil War, when I was taken by my saintly and now sainted father into the old Five Points and was shown things that no tenement-house commissioner, certainly none of 1900 – or 1901. can now see in this city. Sub-cellars occupied by the refuse of humanity; Old Cow Bay; scenes such as exist in the pictures that Dante makes, but not now in reality, certainly, in this city.

The speculative builder discovers this population very early and acts upon his knowledge. The benevolent physician, and people who are interested in charities, naturally discover it because they find in it opportunity for their work. The politician discovers it not long before election. I, myself, rediscovered it in this last election, if you will permit me to say so. I will not go into politics here, but I may say that I went to meetings on the East Side and had the great enjoyment of looking into the faces of the people of that part of New York which, I confess, most interests me. I went in the trail of that magnificent comet which is now, I believe, a fixed star, Mr. Jerome, and looking into those faces I said to myself, "Here is the salvation of New York; the people of the tenements are the salvation of New York." And now we will not talk about the election; of course that is more or less politics; so I will not say how it went; but those interested in tenement-house reform are interested in the Health Department, for instance. The

Health Department has the most severe body of laws, probably, of any department in the world. Our tenement-house laws, as you know, have been a model for great cities in other countries. They have been in the hands of people, lately, not fit;- that is not politics. They are now to be taken out of such hands.

Under some tenement-house laws passed in 1895, sanitary inspectors were put under Civil Service rules. A change in the law made it possible for the gentleman who now presides over the Police Department, who then presided over the Health Department, to construe the law, and perhaps he was legally right, so that the inspectors of the tenements were transferred from the general force of the police, from the patrol force, without examination; and I understand now that it is a "soft snap."

We look forward to perilous days and we look forward to triumphant days in the immediate future of tenement-house reform in this city. Responsibility of a very serious character is to be assumed by that splendid enactment which makes the tenementhouse laws all come under a new department. The carrying out of the laws under this department will be a matter requiring that union of wisdom with right feeling which we call tact.

I am glad that the tenement-house reform is not confined to the chief cities of the State, but is now to go wherever it is needed, wherever the aggregations of population are so great that the matter is the subject of special laws and special exertions.

There are here with us to-night, and I hope you will give them a chance to speak, several persons who know this subject by daily life, by daily contact.

Dr. JANE E. ROBBINS.- One night on my way home from a church in the country, where I had been speaking, one of our club boys said to me, "I just hate to hear you talk about New York." I asked him why and he said, "Because you make these people in the country think that we just live right on top of each

other." And I said, "Well, to tell the truth, Jake, that is just the way you seem to me to be living." Certainly in the country we wouldn't think of housing respectable cows as my club boys who heard me speak that night were all of them housed. When people talk about the slums I always object, because they imply something slummy about the people, but if you mean by slums the houses of the poor, there isn't any word in the English language slummy enough to describe the slums.

I want to say in closing that it seems to me most important for you to encourage the young people to go and live in these tenement-houses. Two of us went to live in Mulberry street and stayed there a year and a half. The hygiene was very bad, but you can take your mind off it. We had to move out for June, July, August and September, but the rest of the year we stayed, and I think if a certain number of your young people went and lived in tenement-houses it would have some effect in lessening the evils of their conditions.

There is one point that has not been mentioned in the discussion to-night, that is, the manufacturing done in tenement-houses. Today I attended in Extra Place, a little alley on the East Side, a child in a family of five persons in two rooms, the rent of which is $8 per month. The woman, in addition to the care of the sick child and her housework, finishes trousers, earning from 20 to 40 cents per day by working very hard. There are thousands of such cases scattered over the East Side. This house in Extra Place, six stories high, accommodates four families on a floor, and in each apartment double families are found, that is two families in an apartment of two rooms planned for one family. This question of manufacturing in the tenement-houses is one of the most important parts of the tenement-house problem in New York.

Mrs. I. VON WAGNER, Yonkers. I think that all those evils which have been spoken of can be helped only by thorough houseto-house inspection done by women; a woman is seldom refused

admittance, because she will understand the situation, whether cleaning or washing day, sickness or death, she can enter. It is always a surprise to the men in the office that I have entered a certain house they have vainly tried to inspect for several years. It is the woman we meet in our work and it is the housekeeper that has to be instructed in laws of hygiene and sanitation, and whose coöperation with the Board of Health has to be secured. For of what use is sanitary legislation unless practically applied? In inspecting a house I go from cellar up to the roof, seeing to conditions of halls, rooms, roof, plumbing and yard.

The usual remark is I am glad it is a woman this time, we have been waiting for you to come and then I hear all their complaints. The women often say, "You don't think we would take a man through our bedrooms."

The men inspectors go as far as the hall and call up "Everything all right here," and the women glad to get rid of them, say, everything is all right and that is the end of men's work.

Rev. Dr. JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS.-There is one additional recommendation, it seems to me, that the excellent paper of the chairman should contain. The three that he gave are admirable; may I suggest a fourth? A reasonable enforcement of the laws. enacted. New York does not know yet what it owes to the Gilder Tenement-House Commission of 1894. This commission provided among other things for two or more small parks on the lower East Side. One year and a half passed under the Strong Administration before a step was taken to secure those parks, and then the initiative was taken by private citizens and not by the officials. The officials when trying to do their best, have so many duties to perform that new ones must be brought to their attention by citizens.

We hear a great deal said about lessening tenement-house evils by having working people go to the suburbs to live. But we do not stop to think what that means to many families, both in regard