Slum Life
Enough of them [tenements] everywhere. Suppose we look into one?... Be a little
careful, please! The hall is dark and you might stumble over the children pitching
pennies back there. Not that it would hurt them; kicks and cuffs are their daily diet.
They have little else. Here where the hall turns and dives into utter darkness is a
step, and another, another. A flight of stairs. You can feel your way, if you cannot
see it. Close? Yes! What would you have? All the fresh air that ever enters these
stairs comes from the hall-door that is forever slamming, and from the
windows of dark bedrooms... That was a woman filling her pail by the hydrant
you just bumped against. The sinks are in the hallway, that all the tenants may have
access... In summer, when a thousand thirsty throats pant for a cooling
drink in this block, it is worked in vain... Here is a door. Listen! That short hack-
ing cough, that tiny, helpless wail-what do they mean?... Oh! a sadly familiar
story-before the day is at an end. The child is dying with measles. With half a
chance it might have lived; but it had none. That dark bedroom killed it.
-Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives:
Studies Among the Tenements of New York, 1890