By John Francis Maguire, 1868
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CHAPTER XI.
Evil of remaining in the great Cities--Why the City attracts the new Comer--Consequence of Overcrowding--The Tenement Houses of New York--Important Official Reports--Glimpses of the Reality--An inviting Picture--Misery and Slavery combined--Inducements to Intemperance--Massacre of the Innocents--In the wrong Place--Town and Country
IRELAND, whence a great tide of human life has been pouring across the Atlantic for more than half a century, is rightly described as 'an agricultural country;' by which is meant that the far larger portion of its population are devoted to the cultivation of the soil. In no country have the peasantry exhibited a stronger or more passionate attachment to the land than in that country from which such myriads have gone and are still going forth. And yet the strange fact, indeed the serious evil, is, that, notwithstanding the vast majority of those who emigrate from Ireland to America have been exclusively engaged in the cultivation of the soil--as farmers, farm-servants, or outdoor labourers--so many of this class remain in cities and towns, for which they are not best suited; rather than go to the country, for which they are specially suited, and where they would be certain to secure for themselves and their families, not merely a home, but comfort and independence. I deliberately assert that it is not within the power of language to describe adequately, much less exaggerate, the evil consequences of this unhappy tendency of the Irish to congregate in the large towns of America. But why they have hitherto done so may be accounted for without much difficulty.
Irish emigrants of the peasant and labouring class were generally poor, and after defraying their first expenses on landing had little left to enable them to push their way into the country in search of such employment as was best suited to their knowledge and capacity; though had they known what was in store for too many of them and their children, they would have endured the severest privation and braved any hardship, in order to free themselves from the fatal spell in which the fascination of a city life has meshed the souls of so many of their race. Either they brought little money with them, and were therefore unable to go on; or that little was plundered from them by those whose trade it was to prey upon the inexperience or credulity of the new-comer. Therefore, to them, the poor or the plundered Irish emigrants, the first and pressing necessity was employment; and so splendid seemed the result of that employment, even the rudest and most laborious kind, as compared with what they were able to earn in the old country, that it at once predisposed them in favour of a city life.
The glittering silver dollar, how bright it looked, and how heavy it weighed, when contrasted with the miserable sixpence, the scanty 'tenpenny-bit,' or the occasional shilling, at home! Then there were old friends and former companions or acquaintances to be met with at every street-corner; and there was news to give, and news to receive--too often, perhaps, in the liquor-store or dram-shop kept by a countryman--probably 'a neighbour's child,' or 'a decent boy from the next ploughland.' Then 'the chapel was handy,' and 'a Christian wouldn't be overtaken for want of a priest;' then there was 'the schooling convenient for the children, poor things,'--so the glorious chance was lost; and the simple, innocent countryman, to whom the trees of the virgin forest were nodding their branches in friendly invitation, and the blooming prairie expanded its fruitful bosom in vain, became the denizen of a city, for which he was unqualified by training, by habit, and by association. Possibly it was the mother's courage that failed her as she glanced at the flock of little ones who clustered around her, or timidly clung to her skirts, and she thought of the new dangers and further perils that awaited them; and it was her maternal influence that was flung into the trembling balance against the country and in favour of the city. Or employment was readily found for one of the girls, or one or two of the boys, and things looked so hopeful in the fine place that all thoughts of the fresh, breezy, healthful plain or hill-side were shut out at that supreme moment of the emigrant's destiny; though many a time after did he and they long for one breath of pure air, as they languished in the stifling heat of summer in a tenement house. Or the pioneer of the family--most likely a young girl--had found good employment, and, with the fruits of her honest toil, had gradually brought out brothers and sisters, father and mother, for whose companionship her heart ever yearned; and possibly her affection, was stronger than her prudence, or she knew nothing of the West and its limitless resources. Or sickness, that had followed the emigrant's family across the ocean, fastened upon some member of the group as they touched the soil for which they had so ardently prayed; and though the fever or the cholera did not destroy a precious life, it did the almost as precious opportunity of a better future: the spring of that energy which was sufficient to break asunder the ties and habits of previous years --sufficient for flight from home and country--was broken; and those who faced America in high hope were thenceforth added to the teeming population of a city--to which class it might be painful to speculate.
It is easy enough to explain why and how those who should not have remained in the great cities did so; but it is not so easy to depict the evils which have flowed, which daily flow, which, unhappily for the race, must continue to flow from the pernicious tendency of the Irish peasant to adopt a mode of livelihood for which he is not suited by previous knowledge or training, and to place himself in a position dangerous to his morals, if not fatal to his independence. These evils may be indicated, though they cannot be adequately described.
This headlong rushing into the great cities has the necessary effect of unduly adding to their population, thereby overtaxing their resources, however large or even extraordinary these resources may be, and of rudely disturbing the balance of supply and demand. The hands--the men, women, and children--thus become too many for the work to be done, as the work becomes too little for the hands willing and able to do it. What is worse, there are too many mouths for the bread of independence; and thus the bread of charity has to supplement the bread which is purchased with the sweat of the brow. Happy would it be for the poor in the towns of America, as elsewhere, if the bread of charity were the only bread with which the bread of independence is supplemented. But there is also the bread of degradation, and the bread of crime. And when the moral principle is blunted by abject misery, or weakened by disappointments and privation, there is but a narrow barrier between poverty and crime; and this, too frequently, is soon passed. For such labour as is thus recklessly poured into the great towns there is constant peril.
It is true there are seasons when there is a glut of work, when the demand exceeds the supply--when some gigantic industry or some sudden necessity clamours for additional hands; but there are also, and more frequently, seasons when work is slack, seasons of little employment, seasons of utter paralysis and stagnation. Cities are liable to occasional depressions of trade, resulting from over production, or the successful rivalry of foreign nations, or even portions of the same country; or there are smashings of banks, and commercial panics, and periods of general mistrust. Or, owing to the intense severity of certain seasons, there is a total cessation of employments of particular kinds, by which vast numbers of people are flung idle on the streets. If at once employed and provident, the condition of the working population in the towns is happy enough; but if there be no providence while there is employment, one may imagine how it fares with the family who are destitute alike of employment and the will or capacity for husbanding its fruits. It is hard enough for the honest thrifty working man to hold his own in the great towns of America, for rents are high, and living is dear, and the cost of clothes and other necessaries is enormous; but when the work fails, or stops, terrible indeed is his position. Then does the Irish peasant realise the fatal blunder he has made, in having chosen the town, with all its risks, and dangers, and sad uncertainties, instead of having gone into the country, 110 matter where, and adopted the industry for which he was best suited. Possibly, the fault was not his, of having selected the wrong place for his great venture in life; but whether his adoption of the town in preference to the country were voluntary or the result of circumstance, the evil is done, and he and his family must reap the consequences, whatever these may be.
The evil of overcrowding is magnified to a prodigious extent in New York, which, being the port of arrival--the Gate of the New World--receives a certain addition to its population from almost every ship-load of emigrants that passes through Castle Garden. There is scarcely any city in the world possessing greater resources than New York, but these resources have long since been strained to the very uttermost to meet the yearly increasing demands created by this continuous accession to its inhabitants; and if there be not some check put to this undue increase of the population, for which even the available space is altogether inadequate, it is difficult to think what the consequences must be. Every succeeding year tends to aggravate the existing evils, which, while rendering the necessity for a remedy more urgent, also render its nature and its application more difficult.
As in all cities growing in wealth and in population, the dwelling accommodation of the poor is yearly sacrificed to the increasing necessities or luxury of the rich. While spacious streets and grand mansions are on the increase, the portions of the city in which the working classes once found an economical residence are being steadily encroached upon--just as the artisan and labouring population of the City of London are driven from their homes by the inexorable march of city improvements, and streets and courts and alleys are swallowed up by a great thoroughfare or a gigantic railway terminus. There is some resource in London, as the working class may move to some portion of the vast Metropolitan district, though not without serious inconvenience; but unless the fast increasing multitudes that seem determined to settle in New York adopt the Chinese mode of supplementing the space on shore by habitation in boat and raft on water, they must be content to dwell in unwholesome and noisome cellars, or crowd in the small and costly rooms into which the tenement houses are divided.
As stated on official authority, there are 16,000 tenement houses in New York, and in these there dwell more than half a million of people! This astounding fact is of itself so suggestive of misery and evil that it scarcely requires to be enlarged upon; but some details will best exhibit the mischievous consequences of overcrowding--not by the class who, at home in Ireland, have lived in cities, and been accustomed to city-life and city pursuits, but by a class the majority of whom rarely if ever entered a city in the old country until they were on their way to the port of embarkation--by those whose right place in America is the country, and whose natural pursuit is the cultivation of the land. Let the reader glance at the tenement houses--those houses and `cellars' in which the working masses of New York swarm--those delightful abodes for which so many of the hardy peasantry of Ireland madly surrender the roomy log-cabin of the clearing, and the frame house of a few years after, together with almost certain independence and prosperity. I have entered several of these tenement houses, in company with one to whom their inmates were well known; I have spoken to the tenants of the different flats, and have minutely examined everything that could enlighten me as to their real condition; but I deem it well to rely rather on official statements, which are based on the most accurate knowledge, and are above the suspicion of exaggeration.
The Commissioners of the Metropolitan Board of Health, in their Report for 1866, say:--
The first, and at all times the most prolific cause of disease, was found to be the insalubrious condition of most of the tenement houses in the cities of New York and Brooklyn. These houses are generally built without any reference to the health or comfort of the occupant, but simply with a view to economy and profit to the owner. The provision for ventilation and light is very insufficient, and the arrangement of water-closets or privies could hardly be worse if actually intended to produce disease. These houses were almost invariably crowded, and ill-ventilated to such a degree as to render the air within them continually impure and offensive. . . . The basements were often entirely below ground, the ceiling being a foot or two below the level of the street, and was necessarily far more damp, dark, and ill-ventilated than the remainder of the house. The cellars, when unoccupied, were frequently flooded to the depth of several inches with stagnant water, and were made the receptacles of garbage and refuse matter of every description. ... In many cases, the cellars were constantly occupied, and sometimes used as lodging-houses, where there was no ventilation save by the entrance, and in which the occupants were entirely dependent upon artificial light by day as well as by night. Such was the character of a vast number of the tenement houses in the lower parts of the city of New York, and along its eastern and western borders. Disease, especially in the form of fevers of a typhoid character, was constantly present in these dwellings, and every now and then became in more than one of them epidemic. It was found that in one of these twenty cases of typhus had occurred during the previous year.
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