Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 August 1883 — The Poor of New York. [ARTICLE]

The Poor of New York.

A somewhat extended familiarity with the drinking poor of New York long ago convinced me of the impossibility of persuading them to live decently. If twenty men and women and children literally life in one room—eat, drink, undress, dress, sleep, cook, wash and “stay”—doesn’t common sense tell you that all barriers of ordinary decency must of necessity of be broken down ? And when decency and modesty are gone the end is come. To what is this terrible condition attributable? Partly to municipal neglect, largely to rum and, to an extent, to the dislike these people have of leaving crowded centers and seeking new homes. Look at the fast-arriving immigrants. They come in. here at the rate of half a million. Where do they go ? Some put for the fat sVest, and a few go South, but New York’s dirt and squalor, stench and poverty are good enough for a majority of them, and, with the hope of being in the Board of Aidermen in a year or so, they squat in the fijrst gutter they find and smoke the dudeen office of freedom. The American H6me Mission Society should never preach about poor clergymen “ out W est. ” There are thousand*

who need the preaching of cleanliness right here. Far be it from mete ridicule anything honestly done to “save souls’ in the future, but I am frank to confess I would like to see a little something done to help bodies in the present.—Joe Howard, in Philadelphia Press.