The Children of the Poor

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Jacob August Riis. The Children of the Poor

PREFACE

CHAPTER I. THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILDREN

CHAPTER II. THE ITALIAN SLUM CHILDREN

CHAPTER III. IN THE GREAT EAST SIDE TREADMILL

CHAPTER IV. TONY AND HIS TRIBE

CHAPTER V. THE STORY OF KID McDUFF’S GIRL

CHAPTER VI. THE LITTLE TOILERS

CHAPTER VII. THE TRUANTS OF OUR STREETS

CHAPTER VIII. WHAT IT IS THAT MAKES BOYS BAD

CHAPTER IX. LITTLE MARY ELLEN’S LEGACY

CHAPTER X. THE STORY OF THE FRESH AIR FUND

CHAPTER XI. THE KINDERGARTENS AND NURSERIES

CHAPTER XII. THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

CHAPTER XIII. THE BOYS’ CLUBS

CHAPTER XIV. THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

CHAPTER XV. PUTTING A PREMIUM ON PAUPERISM

CHAPTER XVI. THE VERDICT OF THE POTTER’S FIELD

REGISTER OF CHILDREN’S CHARITIES. AS PUBLISHED BY THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY

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To my little ones, who, as I lay down my pen, come rushing in from the autumn fields, their hands filled with flowers “for the poor children,” I inscribe this book. May the love that shines in their eager eyes never grow cold within them; then they shall yet grow up to give a helping hand in working out this problem which so plagues the world to-day. As to their father’s share, it has been a very small and simple one, and now it is done. Other hands may carry forward the work. My aim has been to gather the facts for them to build upon. I said it in “How the Other Half Lives,” and now, in sending this volume to the printer, I can add nothing. The two books are one. Each supplements the other. Ours is an age of facts. It wants facts, not theories, and facts I have endeavored to set down in these pages. The reader may differ with me as to the application of them. He may be right and I wrong. But we shall not quarrel as to the facts themselves, I think. A false prophet in our day could do less harm than a careless reporter. That name I hope I shall not deserve.

To lay aside a work that has been so long a part of one’s life, is like losing a friend. But for the one lost I have gained many. They have been much to me. The friendship and counsel of Dr. Roger S. Tracy, of the Bureau of Vital Statistics, have lightened my labors as nothing else could save the presence and the sympathy of the best and dearest friend of all, my wife. To Major Willard Bullard, the most efficient chief of the Sanitary Police; Rabbi Adolph M. Radin; Mr. A. S. Solomons, of the Baron de Hirsch Relief Committee; Dr. Annie Sturges Daniel; Mr. L. W. Holste, of the Children’s Aid Society; Colonel George T. Balch, of the Board of Education; Mr. A. S. Fairchild, and to Dr. Max L. Margolis, my thanks are due and here given. Jew and Gentile, we have sought the truth together. Our reward must be in the consciousness that we have sought it faithfully and according to our light.

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No doubt Mott Street echoed with the blare of brass bands when poor little Carmen was carried from her bed of long suffering to her grave in Calvary. Scarce a day passes now in these tenements that does not see some little child, not rarely a new-born babe, carried to the grave in solemn state, preceded by a band playing mournful dirges and followed by a host with trailing banners, from some wretched home that barely sheltered it alive. No suspicion of the ludicrous incongruity of the show disturbs the paraders. It seems as if, but one remove from the dump, an insane passion for pomp and display, perhaps a natural reaction from the ash-barrel, lies in wait for this Italian, to which he falls a helpless victim. Not content with his own national and religious holidays and those he finds awaiting him here, he has invented or introduced a system of his own, a sort of communal celebration of proprietary saints, as it were, that has taken Mulberry Street by storm. As I understand it, the townsmen of some Italian village, when there is a sufficient number of them within reach, club together to celebrate its patron saint, and hire a band and set up a gorgeous altar in a convenient back yard. The fire-escapes overlooking it are draped with flags and transformed into reserved-seat galleries with the taste these people display under the most adverse circumstances. Crowds come and go, parading at intervals in gorgeous uniforms around the block. Admission is by the saloon-door, which nearly always holds the key to the situation, the saloonist who prompts the sudden attack of devotion being frequently a namesake of the saint and willing to go shares on the principle that he takes the profit and the saint the glory.

AN ITALIAN HOME UNDER A DUMP.

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