Page:Americanisation - a letter to John Stuart Mill.djvu/14

 wisdom of humanity," on which Utopian reformers place so much reliance:—

"Right in the centre of the city, in the middle of countless millions of wealth, are hundreds of buildings of the following description:—The first we visited is labelled 'Improved Tenement Building,' and true to its title it is an improvement upon many. It is in Park-street, and is six stories high. Each storey contains two rooms of about ten by fourteen feet, with a small dark windowless bedroom of about half that size. A narrow, dark staircase winds from top to bottom. In each is a family of several persons. All the cooking is done in the same apartment. Ventilation is impossible, from the construction of the house. But the saddest feature of all is at the basement. The only place which answers to the name of water-closets for the men, women, and children, baffles all description, and would disgrace the worst camp or prison in the South. This reeking cesspool, situated at the bottom of the chasm between two huge buildings, poisons all the air that ever passes by the windows. They must, of necessity, inhale these pestiferous odours continually. For this privilege these tenants pay from five to six dollars a month [£12 to £15 a year]."

The interest on capital invested in these "improved" cholera beds is enormous; "in many cases not less than 35 per cent." Such houses, we are told, "are all full, and the rents collectable." The poor tenants, in spite of universal suffrage and the ballot, and the lavishly-endowed common schools, are completely at the mercy of their landlords, who, as the Tribune remarks, "have not the custody of either the health, or the morals, or the comfort of their tenants," and who, consequently, like certain rich companies in this country, "consult only their profit," acting strictly in accordance with the doctrine of laissez faire: "Everyone for himself, and the Devil take the hindmost."

As to the remedy, the New York Tribune in spite of its hopefulness, and firm persuasion that America manages its affairs better than England has ever done, is very much as sea. "The great difficulty," as it informs us, "lies in the fact that there exists no authority to control or prevent these matters; no person whose function and responsibility it is to