A TEN YEARS' WAR. An Account of the Battle with the Slum in New York. By Jacob A. Riis. With 12 Illustrations from Photographs. 12mo, $1.50.

Mr. Riis writes with authority, with concise statement, and trenchant argument, but he makes all this story of the battle against the slum as intensely, humanely interesting as anything one could well imagine. It is a great book, and one looks to see great results from it, now that it has been so wisely, so ably put before an intelligent and not unwilling public what there is to be done, and what may be done toward "curing the blight of the tenement."-The Interior (Chicago)

POOR PEOPLE. A novel dealing with life in the tenement district of Chicago. By I. K. Friedman. Crown 8vo, $1.50.

A volume replete with life, with people of real flesh and blood, who strive and suffer and make mistakes, and while some of them are borne down in the struggle, others again triumph over their squalid surroundings by the brave courage and steadfastness of their inner lives.- Commercial Advertiser (New York).

It is a story to hold one's attention all through-on account of the way in which the author brings the lives of these people of the tenements before one's eyes and almost into one's life. Worcester Spy.

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. By Lyman Abbott, D. D. 16m0, $1.25

It represents the settled opinions of a mature and conscientious thinker on a theme that is more and more forcing itself upon the attention of educated people, and its importance to those who wish to have an adequate comprehension of the issues involved can hardly be overestimated.-Boston Beacon.

TOOLS AND THE MAN. Property and Industry under the Christian Law. By Washington Gladden, D. D. 16mo. $1.25.

APPLIED CHRISTIANITY. Moral Aspects of Social Questions. By Washington Gladden, D. D. 16m0, $1.25.

RULING IDEAS OF THE PRESENT AGE. By Washington Gladden, D. D. 16mo, $1.25. No one commands more general confidence for conscientious endeavor to see facts as they are, or for a more devoted purpose to aid all helpful tendencies, reform all harmful, and promote the well-being of in

stronger, wiser, and more secure.

Dr. Alfred Meyer read a paper before the section of medicine of the New York Academy of Medicine last Tuesday evening, on "The City and Its Consumptive Poor: A plea for a municipal sanatorium outside of the corporate limits."

The charts used by the speaker served to show clearly the inadequate provision now made by the combined efforts of municipal and private charity to care for those suffering from tuberculosis. According to his figures there are between. 25,000 and 30,000 consumptives in Greater New York. The total number in all public and private hospitals is but 1,010. Of this number but 365 are in public institutions, showing that the city is doing comparatively very little--private charity twice as much-to alleviate the sufferings of this class of unfortunates.

No. 22.

Dr. Meyer estimated the number of deaths in the city from this dis ease to be 8,100 annually, and that the same number of incipient cases are contracted each year. These incipient cases, the speaker contended, are curable in a very large percentage of persons, when the proper treatment and environment are available. The giving of drugs

will not affect a cure. Fresh air and removal from the unsanitary con ditions of the tenement house are the only means of saving the majority of such cases. In the opinion of Dr. Meyer, the establish ment in the Adirondacks of such a sanatorium as he asks for would, in the end, be true economy upon the part of the city. The danger of in. fection would be so much lessened, and the number of cases of the disease so greatly reduced, that the city hospitals would not be called upon to care for thousands of patients in the advanced stages of the disease. as they are at present. His charts showed that the Department of Charities admitted to public hospitals from January 1 to October 1, 1900, 1,839 cases of consumption, and that of this number 635 died. The private hospitals of Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx admitted 3,050 cases, of which number 924 died. Thus it was shown that of

all cases treated in all hospitals nearly one-third proved fatal. Dr. Meyer believes that not only could a much larger percentage of patients be cured even when they have reached an alarming stage of the disease by treatment in a suitable sanatorium, but that the disease. could be very nearly eradicated in time. He thinks that adequate provision can be made for the needy cases by an expenditure of $3,000,000 for buildings and another million of dollars yearly for their maintenance, and urges that an appropriation of at least $300,000 be made to start the work.

44

Dr. John B. Cosby, commissioner of health, who led the discussion of the paper, declared that the Board of Health favored the project and would do all in their power to accomplish the undertaking. The Health Department," he said, "may be compelled to ask for at least $50,000 a year to care for advanced cases. But if we can get the new sanatorium I would rather have it."

Assemblyman Nelson H. Henry; John P. Faure, ex-commissioner of charities; Dr. Hermann H. Biggs; Frederick Sturges, vice-president Presbyterian Hospital; Chas. C. Savage, president Roosevelt Hospital; Dr. Henry Berg, and J. J. McKelvey, Esq., participated in the discussion. Letters were read from Rev. J. M. Buckley, D.D., Jacob H. Schiff, president Montefiore Home, and John W. Keller, commissioner of charities.

Dr. Buckley, in his letter to Dr. Meyer, said: "The more closely I

reflect upon the subject, the deeper is my conviction that both philanthropy and self-protection require the institution of such measures as you advocate.

That a suitable environment, plenty of fresh air, moderate exercise of the whole body, and of the respiratory organs in particular, will enable most of those in the early stages of the disease and a few of those who would be regarded even by the medical profession as hopeless, to rally, gain their original strength, and live and enjoy life for many years, I am as sure as of any fact of observation and experience As president of the board of managers of the Methodist Episcopal Seney Hospital, in Brooklyn, from its foundation, and as one of the members of the medical committee of the State Hospital for the Insane at Morris Plains, N. J., and as a result of my own recovery, I have come in contact with thousands of consumptives, and I have seen members of the same family who could be induced to adopt hygenic measures, recover, while others with the same heredity refusing to do so, have died."

Hon. John W.Keller wrote: "Under existing conditions the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx have not room enough in their public hospitals to care for phthisis cases proper ly. There is a prospect, however, for early and effective remedy for this deficiency. In February of next year the Manhattan State Hospital will have to leave Blackwell's Island, and the three buildings now occupied

by the insane will revert to the Department of Public Charities. These buildings will afford ample room for the treatment of phthisis cases among the poor of Manhattan and the Bronx, and it is my purpose to devote them, or such part of them as may be necessary to this use. Two of these three buildings are isolated. It would seem to me, therefore, that so far as the mere matter of room is concerned, the Department of Public Charities for Manhattan and the Bronx will have ample accommodation next year for all destitute persons suffering from phthisis.

But whether or not phthisis can be treated to better advantage in the Adirondacks, where it is proposed to build a new phthisis hospital, than on Blackwell's Island, is a matter for experts to determine. I am heartily in accord with any movement that the concensus of expert opinion may devise for the relief of the destitute suffering from this dreadful disease."

Ministers of New York city and vicinity and laymen interested in systematic benevolent work will do well to take CHARITIES, the official organ of the Charity Organization Society of the city of New York. The publication appears weekly, and is now in its fifth volume. The news items are important and the discussions instructive. It is to be obtained at five cents a copy, or by the year at $1.- The Christian Advo

cate.

**

Advance orders for the CHARITIES DIRECTORY of GREATER NEW YORK received by the Charity Organization Society at one dollar.

THE TENEMENT PROCRUSTES.

[New York Tribune]

The classic representation of Procrustes was not an amiable one. He had a bed, they tell us, which he compelled all his guests-unwilling ones, of course-to use. And, instead of making up the bed to suit the guests, he made the guests to fit the bed. If the guest was shorter than the bed, as seems from Procrustes's name generally to have been the case, he stretched him out to its full length, and if he was longer than the bed, he chopped off the superfluous inches. And so the old brigand's name has come down to us in execrated notoriety as a synonym for the ruthless sacrificing of man to arbitrary rules.

The report of the observations and investigations of the TenementHouse Commission suggests the thought that Procrustes has outlived the classic age and has survived in pernicious activity until this present time. He is, or was, incarnated in the man who devised the proportions of the city building lot. That is the Procrustean bed, to the arbitrary dimensions of which the multitudinous tenement-house dweller is perforce adapted. And it is from such adaptation that the most and the worst of the evils of tenement houses proceed. Light, air, privacy, sanitary equipments and other comforts and decencies and necessities of life are lacking. Why? Because there is not room for them in a building on so small a lot. They are chopped off to make the guest fit the Procrustean bed. Instead of the ground being divided to suit the needs of man, man and his needs are compressed to fit an arbitrary division of the ground.

It is a striking indication of the evils of unrestricted greed that there has been a steady lessening of the size of city lots. The depth is fixed,

of course, by the size of the block. But the width is variable, and has been decreased as greed of gain has increased.

Time was when twentyfive feet formed the standard width, though double lots of twice that width were common. Then there was some fellow who discovered that by reducing the width to about twenty-two and one-half feet he could divide a certain plat of ground into eleven instead of ten lots, and build eleven instead of ten houses; and as the difference in width could scarcely be noticed, he could get as good prices for twenty-two and onehalf foot as for twenty-five foot houses, and eleven rentals instead of ten from his ground. Soon another reduction was similarly made to twenty feet, which is now the "standard" width of private houses and of the most generous tenements. In many places, however, the eighteen foot lot is considered as standard and fifteen foot as merely "narrow," while a twenty-foot house is called "extra wide." Nor is that the end of reduction, for legion is the name of the old twenty-five-foot lots which. are now made to bear two houses or tenements of only twelve and onehalf feet each.

Now, if a man is willing to live largely on the stairs he may get along very well in a twelve and onehalf foot private house, or one of even half that width. Such a house may have every room opening directly upon the outer air, and so be well lighted and ventilated, and may be provided with "all the comforts of home." But with a tenement the case is different. With one or two families on each floor, so narrow

a lot means that the inmates must be deprived of the supply of light and circulation of air which are necessary for their wellbeing. If the building be not more than two or three stories high its plight will be bad. To build a

twelve and one-half foot tenement, with two families, or even one family, on a floor, to a height of six or eight stories, as is frequently done in this city, is simply murder.

A good many years ago the evil of dark inner rooms widely prevailed. and there were those who were prepared to demonstrate, mathematically and scientifically, that it could not be otherwise, and that such rooms were as necessary as the movement of the tides, and to prove, morally and legally, that it was right that it should be so and that those rooms should be jealously guarded as one of our essential institutions. But some unconvinced reformers got a law enacted abolishing the dark rooms, and then what a rattling of dry bones there was, to be sure, when some 40,000 windows were cut through in the twinkling of an eye! We should just like to see a similar experiment made in regulating the size of city lots and the width of houses erected upon them. We should not be a bit surprised if the modern bed of Procrustes were thus made to expand to fit the needs of its occupants.

BEGGARS.

Not only the able-bodied beggars, but the maimed and halt and blind who use their personal afflic tion as a thing of commerce, should be rigidly kept off our thoroughfares.-Syracuse Post-Standard.

We have nothing but pity for the really afflicted, and yet you are right; they ought not to parade their infirmities before the public. They should be taken care of by the state, but their appearance on our sidewalks should be prohibited. As for the professional and able-bodied beggar, he is a nuisance and should be gotten rid of without mercy.

N. Y. Herald.