Читать книгу The Leaven in a Great City - Lillian William Betts - Страница 6

Table of Contents

The centralization of the interests of the tenement-house population is not understood by those who broaden their mental, if not their active, interest by reading and travel; who in the varied interest of a broader life are forced to see the multiplicity of factors that enter into the settlement of every problem. This is what we mean by knowing the relation of things; marking the distinction between those who see only and those who comprehend. The man who is a machine set in the place where he bears his relation to the whole by an authority which he dares not question loses all opportunity to comprehend his relation to that whole. He is interested in immediate results as related to himself only. This is the relation which the mass of the tenement-house workers and voters bear to life.

The people of whole sections live entirely within certain geographical lines, every interest centered within these limits.

The race sections are logical, based on the law of natural selection; of family interest. The first generation of immigrants naturally hold the second generation of home-makers near them, and these together hold the relatives and friends who follow. Three generations are not infrequently found in the same house, each maintaining its own home. The new arrivals keep alive the foreign home traditions, the foreign home habits of living. Poverty and greed make the people crowd together. The last arrivals are taught what their predecessors have learned of American life and law. The race section perpetuates itself; it retains all that it can of the old life, and interprets the new according to the lessons learned from environment, and power as it is exercised on the people. Each race section has its own thoroughfare. The people on the street use their own language, and trade in shops of their own countrymen. In some sections newspapers are published in the language of the section, giving prominence to the local news. Were it not for the public schools, one wonders what would be the result of this race centralization.