but the law obliges the owners to provide some apparent
means of escape, which they do in the form of iron
balconies and ladders, giving that festive air to
their facades which I have already noted. The
bare and dirty entries and staircases are really ramifications
of the filthy streets without, and each tenement opens
upon a landing as if it opened upon a public thoroughfare.
The rents extorted from the inmates is sometimes a
hundred per cent., and is nearly always cruelly out
of proportion to the value of the houses, not to speak
of the wretched shelter afforded; and when the rent
is not paid the family in arrears is set with all
its poor household gear upon the sidewalk, in a pitiless
indifference to the season and the weather, which you
could not realize without seeing it, and which is
incredible even of plutocratic nature. Of course,
landlordism, which you have read so much of, is at
its worst in the case of the tenement-houses.
But you must understand that comparatively few people
in New York own the roofs that shelter them. By
far the greater number live, however they live, in
houses owned by others, by a class who prosper and
grow rich, or richer, simply by owning the roofs over
other men’s heads. The landlords have, of
course, no human relation with their tenants, and
really no business relations, for all the affairs
between them are transacted by agents. Some have
the reputation of being better than others; but they
all live, or expect to live, without work, on their
rents. They are very much respected for it; the
rents are considered a just return from the money invested.
You must try to conceive of this as an actual fact,
and not merely as a statistical statement. I
know it will not be easy for you; it is not easy for
me, though I have it constantly before my face.
III
The tenement-house, such as it is, is the original
of the apartment-house, which perpetuates some of
its most characteristic features on a scale and in
material undreamed of in the simple philosophy of
the inventor of the tenement-house. The worst
of these features is the want of light and air, but
as much more space and as many more rooms are conceded
as the tenant will pay for. The apartment-house,
however, soars to heights that the tenement-house
never half reached, and is sometimes ten stories high.
It is built fireproof, very often, and is generally
equipped with an elevator, which runs night and day,
and makes one level of all the floors. The cheaper
sort, or those which have departed less from the tenement-house
original, have no elevators, but the street door in
all is kept shut and locked, and is opened only by
the tenant’s latch-key or by the janitor having
charge of the whole building. In the finer houses
there is a page whose sole duty it is to open and
shut this door, and who is usually brass-buttoned to
one blinding effect of livery with the elevator-boy.
Where this page or hall-boy is found, the elevator
Copyrights
Through the Eye of the Needle from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
