ccupants were close,
unventilated, and unclean. The complaint was universal among the tenants
that they are entirely uncared for, and that the only answer to their
request to have the place put in order, by repairs and necessary
improvements, was, that they must pay their rent or leave. Inquiry often
disclosed the fact that the owner of the property was a wealthy gentleman
or lady, either living in an aristocratic part of the city or in a
neighboring city, or, as was occasionally found to be the case, in
Europe. The property is usually managed entirely by an agent, whose
instructions are simple, but emphatic, viz., 'collect the rent in
advance, or, failing, eject the occupants.' The profits on this sort of
property, so administered, are rarely less than fifteen per cent., and
more generally thirty per cent. upon the investment."

The evils of the tenement house system are almost incalculable. It is
the experience of all nations that barrack life is demoralizing, and the
tenement house is but a barrack without the rigid discipline of a
military establishment. Its inmates know no such thing as privacy. Home
is but a word with them. They have habitations, but not homes. Within
the same walls are gathered the virtuous and the depraved, the honest
laborer and the thief. There can be no such thing as shielding the young
from improper outside influences. They have every opportunity to become
thoroughly corrupted without leaving the house. Decency is impossible.
Families exist in the greatest amount of personal discomfort, and the
children take every opportunity to escape from the house into the
streets. The tenement houses every year send many girls into the ranks
of the street walkers, and a greater number of young men into the ranks
of the roughs and thieves.

Drunkenness is very common among the inhabitants of these houses. Men
and women are literally driven into intemperance by the discomfort in
which they live. Nearly all the domestic murders occurring in the city
are perpetrated in the tenement houses. Immorality is very common.
Indeed, the latter crime is the logical result of such dense packing of
the sexes. It is a terrible thing to contemplate, but it is a fact that
one half of the population of this great city is subjected to the
demoralizing influences of these vast barracks. The laboring class, who
should constitute the backbone and sinew of the community, are thus
degraded to a level with paupe