dots-menu
×

Home  »  The Battle with the Slum  »  Page 103

Jacob A. Riis 1849–1914. The Battle with the Slum. 1902.

Page 103

the shallow shafts, and the rear rooms. Their air must pass through other rooms or the tiny shafts, and cannot but be contaminated before it reaches them. A five-story house of this character contains apartments for eighteen or twenty families, a population frequently amounting to 100 people, and sometimes increased by boarders or lodgers to 150 or more.”
 
 
The only Bath-tub in the Block: it hangs in the Air Shaft.
 
  The commission, after looking in vain through the slums of the Old World cities for something to compare the double-deckers with, declared that, in their setting, the separateness and sacredness of home life were interfered with, and evils bred, physical and moral, that “conduce to the corruption of the young.” “Make for unrighteousness” said the commission of 1900, six years later.
  Yet it is for these that the “interests” of which