Produced by David Edwards, Christine P. Travers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.)

[Transcriber's note: ^ indicates superscript.]

The Battle with the Slum

AUTHOR OF "THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN," "HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES," ETC.

The Battle with the Slum

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1902

The Battle with the Slum

Copyright, 1902, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

Three years ago I published under the title "A Ten Years' War" a series of papers intended to account for the battle with the slum since I wrote "How the Other Half Lives." A good many things can happen in three years. So many things have happened in these three, the fighting has been so general all along the line and has so held public attention, that this seems the proper time to pass it all in review once more. That I have tried to do in this book, retaining all that still applied of the old volume and adding as much more. The "stories" were printed in the _Century Magazine_. They are fact, not fiction. If the latter, they would have no place here.

"The Battle with the Slum" is properly the sequel to "How the Other Half Lives," and tells how far we have come and how. "With his usual hopefulness," I read in the annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science of my book three years ago, "the author is still looking forward to better things in the future." I was not deceived then. Not in the thirty years before did we advance as in these three, though Tammany blocked the way most of the time. It is great to have lived in a day that sees such things done.

VIII. On whom shall we shut the Door? 202

XVII. The Unnecessary Story of Mrs. Ben Wah and Her Parrot 441

One of the Five Points Fifty Years Ago 12

A Fourth Ward Colony in the Bad Old Days 18

It costs a Dollar a Month to sleep in these Sheds 46

Mulberry Street Police Station. Waiting for the Lodging to open 49

"In the hallway I ran across two children, little tots, who were inquiring their way to the 'Commissioner'" 58

"With his whole hungry little soul in his eyes" 78

One Family's Outlook on the Air Shaft. The Mother said, "Our daughter does not care to come home to sleep" 93