Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/206

 IQ2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

hot -loves in tobacco-laden air. Numbers of women, unable to cut out, to fit or sew, spend their small incomes hiring their child- ren's garments made, themselves ragged meanwhile. Parental discipline is rare except in violent outbreaks, a common substi- tute for gentle suasion or moral sanction being a leather strap as broad as the hand, cut at one end into strips, the more effectu- ally to sting; and on big and little urchins alike, on male and female, corporal punishment is at times administered with this flesh-flaying device, compared with which the hickory switch of

iesome memory was a fairy wand. At other times wayward little ones, unrebuked, kick the parents in passion or pound the grandparent ; and as they grow older, untrained and uncontrolled, they become moving spirits in those misdoings that fill the peni- tentiaries and reformatories with young men and women criminals under the age of twenty-five. Such, in our urban tenements, are the surroundings and the habits of too many of the average working population.

On the other hand, improved tenement blocks are not always full, and our hitherto clumsy ventures in cooperative housekeep- ing, with all its labor-saving appliances, are shunned from deep- rooted prejudice. In one town a model building adapted for fifty families contains but thirty, while in neighboring rookeries, paying higher rent for wretched accommodations, dwell thousands of human beings to whom tidiness and decency are almost unknown. Other cities point with similar failures the moral of our ill-considered and unsympathetic philanthropies. Near a large commercial center an excellent library being opened for cotton operatives exclusively, the operatives would not con- sent to be classed apart by availing themselves of it, so the rooms were closed and the books given away. Indeed, read- ing rooms, lessons and other social features of religious or benevolent organizations are often scantily patronized, because there has been no previous schooling or no genuine sus- tained human interest under the perfunctory meetings. Homes established for underpaid women-workers are invaded by the well-to do, albeit the friendless factory girl, lodging in an attic or