Living Conditions. How the Other Half Lives- Jacob Riis on the Tenements

Transcription

1 Living Conditions How the Other Half Lives- Jacob Riis on the Tenements 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 A flight of stairs. You can feel your way, if you cannot see it. Close? Yes! All the fresh air that ever enters these stairs comes from the hall door that is forever slamming, The sinks are in the hallway, that all the tenants may have access and all be poisoned alike by their summer stenches. Hear the pump squeak! It is the lullaby of tenement house babes. In summer, when a thousand thirsty throats pant for a cooling drink in this block, it is worked in vain. The child is dying with measles. With half a chance it might have lived; but it had none. That dark bedroom killed it. When the summer heats come with their suffering they have meaning more terrible than words can tell Step carefully over this baby it is a baby, spite of its rags and dirt under these iron bridges called fire escapes with broken household goods, with washtubs and barrels, over which no man could climb from a fire. There are plenty of houses with half a hundred such in. The tenement is much like the one in front we just left, only fouler, closer, darker The woman, a stout matron with hard lines of care in her face, is at the washtub. I try to keep the childer clean, she says, apologetically, but with a hopeless glance around. The spice of hot soapsuds is added to the air already tainted with the smell of boiling cabbage, of rags and uncleanliness all about..... The twenty-five cent lodging-house keeps up the pretense of a bedroom, though the head-high partition enclosing a space just large enough to hold a cot and a chair and allow the man room to pull off his clothes is the shallowest of all pretenses. The fifteen-cent bed stands boldly forth without screen in a room full of bunks with sheets as yellow and blankets as foul... On cold winter nights the snoring of the sleepers like the regular strokes of an engine, and the slow creaking of the beams under their restless weight, imagined myself on shipboard and experienced the very real nausea of sea-sickness.

2 Working Conditions Hard Times Cotton Mills Girls, Excerpt 2 In the four textile states in 1890, men formed only 35 percent of the work force, women made up 40 percent, and children between the ages of ten and fifteen made up 25 percent. A seventy-hour workweek earned about $2.50 in 1885 and slightly less in 1895 Lower wages and longer hours accounted for cheaper cotton manufacturing in the South In the South, children of fourteen could, by law, work the same hours as adults, but at the Amazon mill, children started to work at a much younger age.... These children, who might have worked a sixty-four hour workweek, were allowed to keep maybe twenty-five cents of their wages, if any, after household expenses were taken care of. The Jungle- Upton Sinclairs description of the working conditions in the Meat Packing industry There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was mouldy and white it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There

3 would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together the meat would be shovelled into carts, and the man who did the shovelling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. \

4 Working Condition Reforms Pure Food and Drug Act An Act for preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors, and for regulating traffic therein, and for other purposes it shall be unlawful for any person to manufacture within any Territory or the District of Columbia any article of food or drug which is adulterated or misbranded, within the meaning of this misbranded, as used herein, shall apply to all drugs, or articles of food, or articles which enter into the composition of food, the package or label of which shall bear any statement, design, or device regarding such article, or the ingredients or substances contained therein which shall be false or misleading in any particular Keating-Owen Child Labor Act no producer, manufacturer, or dealer shall ship or deliver for shipment in interstate or foreign commerce, any article or commodity the product of any mine or quarry situated in the United States, in which within thirty days prior to the time of the removal of such product therefrom children under the age of sixteen years have been employed or permitted to work, the removal of such product therefrom children under the age of fourteen years have been employed or permitted to work, or children between the ages of fourteen years and sixteen years have been employed or permitted to work more than eight hours in any day, or more than six days in any week, or after the hour of seven o'clock postmeridian, or before the hour of six o'clock antemeridian

5 The Meat Inspection Act (1906) For the purpose of preventing the use in interstate or foreign commerce of meat and meat food products which are unsound, unhealthy unwholesome, or otherwise unfit for use as human food, the Secretary of Agriculture may order inspectors to examine and inspect all cattle, sheep, swine, and goats before they shall be allowed to enter any slaughtering, packing, meat-canning, rendering, or similar establishment; and all cattle swine, sheep, and goats found on such inspection to show symptoms of disease shall be set apart and slaughtered separately from cattle, etc., shall be subject to examination, and all carcasses or labeled, marked, stamped, or tagged as Inspected and condemned and shall be destroyed for food purposes by the establishment [meatpacker]in the presence of an inspector.

6 Living Condition Reforms The Tenement House Committee-Columbia University formed in 1898, which put through an investigation of housing conditions and a campaign of public education the Committee was formed with the purpose of securing the enforcement of existing laws protecting the health and safety of tenement dwellers; closely following new legislation affecting the tenement question, opposing dangerous bills and supporting beneficial measures; studying present housing problems; and carrying on an active educational campaign for better tenement conditions. New York Department of Street Cleaning George E. Waring on the effects of the Department of Street Cleaning New York is now thoroughly clean in every part Clean streets means much more than the casual observer is apt to think. It has justly been said that 'cleanliness is catching,'and clean streets are leading to clean hallways and stair cases and cleaner living-rooms." Before and After

7 Tenement House Act 1901 Chapter 2- Fire Safety Section 11. Every tenement house hereafter erected exceeding six stories shall be a fireproof tenement house Section 12. Every non fireproof tenement house shall have fire escapes located and constructed Chapter 3-Light and ventilation 67. every tenement house hereafter erected every room shall have at least one window opening directly upon the street such window shall be so located as to properly light all portions of such rooms 70. Rooms, size of all rooms shall be of the following minimum sizes each apartment there shall be at least one room containing not less than one hundred and twenty square feet of floor area

8 Chapter 4- Sanitary Provisions 95. Water-closet accommodations there shall be a separate water-closet in a separate compartment within each apartment 105. Cleanliness of buildings- Every tenement house and every part thereof shall be kept clean and free from any accumulation of dirt, filth, or garbage the owner of every tenement house or part thereof shall thoroughly cleanse all the rooms, privies, water-closets, cesspools, drains 109. Receptacles for ashes, garbage, and refuse- The owner of every tenement house shall provide for suitable convivences for ashes, rubbish, garbage, refuse and other matter.