TENEMENT-HOUSE REFORM. [From N. Y. Times.] We trust that every reader of The Times who is interested in the welfare of the millions of Greater New York read the compilation made in these columns yesterday of the answers made by more or less expert witnesses to the questions put to them by the Tenement-House Commission, because there is not a question more important to the welfare of the great majority of dwellers in this huge municipality than the question how it is to be housed. That it is now housed so badly that the condition may be called intolerable is an opinion in which refined and sensitive observers of the conditions agree. On the other hand, it is said, with plausibility, that conditions which refined and sensitive observers find intolerable are not at all intolerable to the actual dwellers in these habitations, which is to say to the great majority of inhabitants of this city. On the contrary, it is said, still with high plausibility, that they do not make use of such facilities for health and cleanliness as are already put in their way, and that to endow the actual tenement-house population, for example, with separate bathrooms would be to emulate the injudicious benefactor in Goldsmith who "sent the poor ruffles who wanted a shirt." The rejoinder to this is not difficult. It is that the public should see that every householder, or tenement householder, has the means of living in decency and health, and that he should be taught by other agencies to employ the facilities for such living that his landlord should be compelled to provide. As Carlyle asks about the condition of Ireland, "If that dreary Greenland wind of benighted want had frozen him into a kind of torpor and numb callosity, so that he saw not, felt not, was that, to a creature with a soul in it, some assuagement, or the cruelest wretchedness of all?" We quite admit that the sincere and uninstructed searcher for truth, who should try to elicit it from the answers to the questions propounded by the Tenement-House Association to the various classes of more or less experts interrogated by that association, would be apt to experience, in the first instance, a feeling of complete bewilderment. There is room, in treating this question, for a pretty wide difference between honest minds, according to the point of view. There is, in the first place, the enormous pressure upon everybody prominently concerned in the building, ownership, and maintenance of the existing and current tenement houses to maintain that everything is for the best in the best of all tenement-house worlds. Doubtless a good deal of this talk may be thrown out as irrelevant and incompetent, upon the ground that the talker is treating a great public question simply from the point of view of his own personal interest, whereby his expertness is discredited. We regret to say that a good deal of expert testimony, not so evidently biased, is really as much biased, and by the same twist. And, even when we pass the limit of evident personal interest, this class of expertness, in this matter, is discredited by the wise remark of Archbishop Whately that, while men actively engaged in any business are commonly the best judges of the value of changes of detail in that business they are apt to be the very worst judges of propositions for radical and fundamental change. Everybody who has got his knowledge of tenement houses from actual experience in building or operating tenement houses, under the actual laws and gate its evils is an interferance with their personal rights. So long, in a word, you will teach the majority of voters to oppose a citizens' candidate and to stand by Croker and the unnamable corruptions of Tammany rule. Model tenements built upon a number of lots do not touch the essential questions of tenement-house reform at all. As Mr. Gibson, one of the expert witnesses in this investigation, says, the result of building them is that they are occupied by members of the class for which they are not intended. It is only by making the tenement house on the single lot impossible to be constructed that tenement-house reform can really be obtained. On October II the trustees of the proposed State Hospital for Consumptives gave a hearing to the friends and opponents of the Big Clear Lake site. To us, having much meditated this matter, it seems that there are two chief obstacles to all tenementhouse reform in New York. They resolve themselves really into one "25 by 100" city lot. That legacy of the Street Commissions of 1807 being granted, the other obstacle follows. That is the fact that the tenement house, upon such a city lot, is the favorite investment, far beyond any other or all others, of small investors in the city of New York. All the mischiefs of the tenement-house system flow almost necessarily from these two facts. You may, by law or otherwise, Charity Organization Society asks, work for a mitigate the atrocities of the tenement house for two families on a floor, or even for one family on a floor. But you can never, so long as you admit a man's right to build a double tenement on such a lot, make the New York tenementhouse a place in which it is wholesome or seemly that a family should live and bring up children. So long as you permit these conditions you will make it certain that the liquor saloon will be, to the males, the most attractive resort in a tenement house block. So long you will teach the voters that there is a sacred sanctity about the saloon, which is more of a "home" than the place they inhabit, and that an attempt to regulate it and to miti Classified Advertisements. Advertisements under this head, two lines or more without display, 5 cents a line. DISTRICT COMMITTEE of the married min who has a cork leg. He has been employed as watchman, peddler, etc., but is willing to take any kind of work. Address J. L, care of CHARITIES. WANT ANTED, position of Matron, Housekeeper, or other position of trust, in Institution or Hospital; fully understands catering, buying, the management of servants, has executive ability and experience. F. L. S., care of CHARITIES. HE CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY Tappeals for rootoANIZATION S widow with four children, only one of whom is old enough to work. She has almost supported the family for three years, but her health is now breaking down. For $100 to pay $6 a month rent for an Italian widow with four young children. She has assistance also from another society and works to support her family, but can not keep them together without additional aid. For $100 to pay $6 rent per month for an Italian widow who is ill and who, with her four young children, is principally supported by a cousin, with whom they live and who has a family of his own. For $60 to continue payments of $5 monthly to an invalid, who can not enter a home and who has some help from another society. For $60 to continue to help an old widow, who has no relations, but whose rent is paid by a benevolent gentleman Any money for these cases sent to the Charity Organization Society, 105 East 22d street, will be duly and publicly acknowledged. CHARITIES THE OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE NEW YORK, N. Y., POST-OFFICE. Issued every Saturday. Five cents a copy. Subscription price, one dollar a year, in advance. Three dollars a hundred. ADVERTISING RATES. Classified advertisements, 5 cents a line, eight words to the line, agate measure. Display, 5 cents a line, 14 lines to the inch. Full page, 200 agate lines, $10. Half page, 100 agate lines, $5. Quarter page, 50 agate lines, $2.50. Special position, twenty-five per cent additional. EDWARD T. DEVINE, Editor. PUBLICATION OFFICE: NEW YORK, OCTOBER 20, 1900. The annual meeting of the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York was held in the United Charities Building, on Wednesday, October 10. The following members of the central council were reelected for a period of three years: Herbert B. Turner, Morris S. Thompson, Charles F. Cox, Henry B. Anderson, Franklin H. Giddings, George L. Cheney, George P. Rowell, Thomas M. Mulry, I. N. Phelps Stokes. ** * At the meeting of the Central Council, held immediately afterwards, the following officers were elected for the ensuing year: Robert W. de Forest, president; Otto T. Bannard, vice-president; J. Pierpont Morgan, treasurer; Edward T. Devine, general secretary. Mr. Philip W. Ayres, whose resignation as assistant secretary of the New York Charity Organization Society has been reported in CHARITIES, will remain in the service of the society as director of the Summer School in Philanthropic Work. This is cause for congratulation, not only because it continues Mr. Ayres's official relation with the society, but because it insures the continuance of the very successful work of the summer school during the past three years. -* Requests for information upon various aspects of the work of the Charity Organization Society come to its office from all parts of the world. One of the latest instances is a letter from Salonica, Turkey, asking for information about the working of the Penny Provident Fund. The writer speaks on behalf of a small community of young Bulgarians, it having occurred to her that the fund might be of assistance in the efforts now being made to encourage habits of thrift and economy in that community. provement of the living conditions of the Jewish quarter. The report of the president, Mr. Henry Rice, which is to be printed in the annual report of the society, will also be of much interest. It is understood that the Board of Estimate and Apportionment has informally endorsed the plan of a consolidation of all the libraries of the Greater New York receiving public funds under the New York Public Library. The allowance for each book in circulation for the coming year is to be six and one-half cents, except in the case of the Library for the Blind, which will be allowed ten cents, the maximum cents, the maximum provided by law. The plan of merging the smaller libraries is to be carried out gradually, and no definite steps in this direction have yet been taken. ** * We printed in CHARITIES of October 13, an account of a sociological study of a city block in 1896, the block being that bounded by Gold, Concord, Prince, and Tillary streets, in the Borough of Brooklyn, attributing the authorship of this study to Rev. Gaylord S. White. We desire to correct this statement. This study was made by Mr. A. J. Marsh while a resident of the parish house of the City Park Branch of the First Presbyterian Church, of which Mr. Gaylord S. White is the minister. ** * Under the direction of Mr. Frank Damrosch, who has charge of the singing in the public schools of New York city, the Peoples' singing movement has trained over five thousand persons since the fall of 1892, when it was started. The People's Choral Union, for the more advanced students, meets at Cooper Union on Sunday at 4 P. M., the first meeting for the present season having been held last Sunday. Elementary classes are held at many places in Manhattan, Bronx and Brooklyn boroughs, and there are also advanced classes in St. George's Memorial Building, 203 to 207 East Sixteenth street, and in the Imperial Lyceum, 162 East Fiftieth street. The movement is described as for working people, by working people. The director and his assistants volunteer their services and the receipts from dues and from concerts are used for incidental expenses. Applicants are requested to send their names to the secretary, 41 University place, or to go direct to any class during its session. Beginners are expected to spend one season in a preparatory class and another in an advanced class before entering the Choral Union. board to fill vacancies caused by food, clothing, and money. I have a little baby that is sick my husband is sick also I have no one only a sister that gives me 3.00 dollars a week and that dont go far when you have to meet a lot of things with if you would be so kind as to give me a little aid I would be so happy I do nothing but cry to think what I have went through I have no more to say at present I had to borrow this paper and stamp of a lady in the house please be so kind as to answer From Yours Respectfully SIRS: My husband got work to day geting $10.00 a week and I cryed with joy you dont imagine how glad I was and with the $3.00 my sister gives me will be $13.00 I will get in a week God is so good to Poor people so you need'n't mind giving me any aid as I am so over joyed with my husband working I am going to move the first weeks salary he gets so you dont need inquireing about me the lady that you sent to my house was so good and kind that I shall never forget her and tell her I was thankful for what she done for me that I dont know how I shall thank her. Respectfully, MRS. M SO |