New York DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 1903 Copyright, 1902 , By Dodd, Mead and Company . First Edition published September, 1902. CHAPTER PAGE I. At the Bottom , 1 II. The Development of Social Centers , 37 III. The Homes Under One Roof , 75 IV. Slow-Dawning Consciousness , 102 V. Working-Girls' Clubs , 135 VI. A Social Experiment , 162 VII. Within the Walls of Home , 196 VIII. Financial Relations in Families , 225 IX. Home Standards , 263 X. Where Lies the Responsibility? 290...

One of the first, and, up to the present time, one of the most interesting experiments made in New York for the better housing of the poor, was made in the early eighties by a score or less of philanthropic capitalists. These gentlemen organized a stock company to hold and manage tenement-house property, limiting their dividends to three per cent. on the capital; the surplus dividends, if any, over this amount, to be used in improving the property, and securing such conditions and opportunities

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 b

The importance of environment is at last admitted as a factor in character-building. That light and air are indispensable to cleanliness, and physical cleanliness to health, and health to morals, is the gospel that the evils of the tenements have forced the philanthropists to declare until the thinking public is convinced of its truth. There are tenement houses that have reputations as positive as individuals. Thoughtful, intelligent wives of working-men would not, could not be persuaded to move

In a preceding chapter an attempt was made to show how hopeless the task of home-making was for women who had neither knowledge nor ideals to guide them. When it is remembered that the environment of these homes was in itself degrading, to maintain even the semblance of a home was a remarkable achievement. These women knew but three educating influences—home, school and Church. Four, perhaps, if one chooses to count the streets, where most of their time was spent, as one. The value of the first

Twenty-five or thirty years ago in New York the question of the wisdom, if not the necessity, of moving the downtown churches uptown began to agitate the pastors and church leaders. The congregations, or part of the congregations, who had contributed most liberally to the support of the Church were beginning to move uptown, crowded out by business and the incoming foreign element which settles near the shipping and factory districts. The new-comers did not support the churches, especially the Pr

The Residents of the College Settlement learned in the first year of their work in Rivington Street to sympathize deeply with the married women, the mothers in the region. Mothers, after nights spent in overcrowded, unventilated bedrooms caring for nursing babies, began getting breakfast at five o'clock in the morning. Husband and children of every age must be wakened for work or for school, often irritable because of the unhygienic conditions under which they had slept. Friction and quarreling

One day a group of unusually intelligent wives of working men were driving through Central Park in a Park carriage. All were mothers, some of grown children, yet it was the first time that twelve of the twenty (all but two born in New York) had seen Central Park. Coming back on the east drive, the closed houses on Fifth Avenue attracted their attention. Various suggestions were made as to what use these houses could be put in the summer, when one woman, slight, delicate and extremely nervous, sa

The women of education who attempted to make the conditions of working-men's families better, found their own education advanced, their values of essentials greatly modified in some respects, greatly enlarged in others. This was due to the bravery, the unselfishness, the contradictions of character forced on their attention through the natural, familiar intercourse made possible through neighborhood and club relations. Probably the most astonishing experience in working-girls' club life is the r

The world knows two aspects of involuntary poverty: The one inseparable from degradation; the other picturesque, appealing to the emotions, and giving a field for the play of sympathetic activity that frequently neglects to note the results it attains. There are few who discern that poverty is a comparative term, and these do not use the word in its financial sense wholly. Those who know intimately the struggling, up-growing poor know that the rich can never give the exquisite expression to love

It took years for the evils of political machines to make life unbearable in New York. Not until the tremendous evils it imposed on child-life were given emphasis did the public sentiment of the city find intelligent expression—voice the moral conscience of the whole people. That dishonest administration of the city government imposed burdens on the home of the poor man no intelligent person disputed; but few knew how heavy the burdens or how far-reaching the effects on character. The people who