That, as a rule,
there were three rooms for five people; and many of the families
gathered their fuel on the street; that many had no gas--used oil and
wood; that many families spent about twenty-five cents a day for food;
that few clothes were bought, and these mainly from the instalment man
and second hand at that; that many were recipients of help; and that
recreation and education were everywhere reduced to the lowest terms.
That is, boys and girls were hustled to work at twelve by giving their
age as fourteen, and recreation meant an outing a year to Coney Island,
and beer, and, once in a while, the nickel theater; that there were
practically no savings. And there was one conclusion he could not
evade--namely, that while overcrowding, improvidence, extravagance, and
vice explained the misery of some families, yet there were limits. For
instance:

On Manhattan Island no adequate housing can be obtained at less than
twelve or fourteen dollars a month.

That there is no health in a diet of bread and tea.

That--curious facts!--coal burns up, coats and shoes wear out in spite
of mending.

That the average housewife cannot take time to go bargain-hunting or
experimenting with new food combinations, or in making or mending
garments, and neither has she the ability nor training to do so.

That, in fact, the poor, largely speaking, were between the upper and
nether millstones of low wages and high prices.

Of course there was the vice, but while drink causes poverty, poverty
causes drink. Joe found intemperance among women; he found little
children running to the saloon for cans of beer; he found plenty of men
drunkards. But what things to offset these! The woman who bought three
bushels of coal a week for seventy-five cents, watched her fires, picked
out the half-burned pieces, reused them, and wasted no heat; the
children foraging the streets for kindling-wood; the family in bed to
keep warm; the wife whose husband had pawned her wedding-ring for drink,
and who had bought a ten-cent brass one, "to keep the respect of her
children"; the man working for ten dollars a week, who once had owned
his own saloon, but, so he said, "it was impossible to make money out of
a saloon unless I put in gambling-machines or women, and I wouldn't
stand for it"; the woman whose husband was a drunkard, and who,
therefore, went to the Battery 5 A.M. to 10, then 5 P.M. to 7, every day
to do scrubbing for twenty dollars a month; the won