It is an instructive instance
of what can and cannot be done with the tenements into which we invite
these dirty strangers to teach them American ways and the self-respect of
future citizens and voters. There are five buildings--that is, five front
and four rear houses, the latter a story higher than those on the street;
that is because the rear houses were built last, to "accommodate" this
very Italian immigration that could be made to pay for anything. Chiefly
Irish had lived there before, but they moved out then. There were 360
tenants in the Barracks when the police census was taken in 1888, and 40
of them were babies. How many were romping children I do not know. The
"yard" they had to play in is just 5 feet 10 inches wide, and a dozen
steps below the street-level. The closets of all the buildings are in the
cellar of the rear houses and open upon this "yard," where it is always
dark and damp as in a dungeon. Its foul stenches reach even the top floor,
but so also does the sun at mid-day, and that is a luxury that counts as
an extra in the contract with the landlord. The rent is nearly one-half
higher near the top than it is on the street-level. Nine dollars above,
six and a half below, for one room with windows, two without, and with
barely space for a bed in each. But water-pipes have been put in lately,
under orders from the Health Department, and the rents have doubtless been
raised. "No windows" means no ventilation. The rear building backs up
against the tenement on the next street; a space a foot wide separates
them, but an attempt to ventilate the bed-rooms by windows on that was a
failure.

When the health officers got through with the Barracks in time for the
police census of 1891, the 360 tenants had been whittled down to 238, of
whom 47 were babies under five years. Persistent effort had succeeded in
establishing a standard of cleanliness that was a very great improvement
upon the condition prevailing in 1888. But still, as I have said, the slum
remained and will remain as long as that rear tenement stands. In the four
years fifty-one funerals had gone out from the Barracks. The white hearse
alone had made thirty-five trips carrying baby coffins. This was the way
the two standards showed up in the death returns at the Bureau of Vital
Statistics: in 1888 the adult death-rate, in a population of 320 over five
years old, was 15.62 per 1,000; the baby death-rate, 325.00 per 1,000,
or nearly one-third in a t