west of Tenth Avenue, were
purchased of Mrs. Alfred Corning Clark, who took one tenth of the
capital stock of the City and Suburban Homes Company; and upon these was
erected the first block of tenements. This is the neighborhood toward
which the population has been setting with ever increasing congestion.
Already in 1895 the Twenty-second Ward contained nearly 200,000 souls. I
gave figures in the previous chapter that showed a crowding of more than
1100 persons per acre in some of the blocks here where the conditions of
the notorious Tenth Ward are certain to be reproduced, if indeed they
are not exceeded. In the Fifteenth Assembly District, some distance
below, but on the same line, the first sociological canvass of the
Federation of Churches had found the churches, schools, and other
educational agencies marshalling a frontage of 756 feet on the street,
while the saloon fronts stretched themselves over nearly a mile; so
that, said the compiler of these pregnant facts, "saloon social ideals
are minting themselves on the minds of the people at the ratio of seven
saloon thoughts to one educational thought." It would not have been easy
to find a spot better fitted for the experiment of restoring the home to
its place.

[Illustration: Alfred Corning Clark Buildings.]

The Alfred Corning Clark buildings, as they were called in recognition
of the effort of this public-spirited woman, have at this writing been
occupied five years. They harbor nearly four hundred families, as
contented a lot as I ever saw anywhere. The one tenant who left in
disgust was a young doctor who had settled on the estate, thinking he
could pick up a practice among so many. But he couldn't. They were not
often sick, those tenants. Last year only three died, and they were all
killed while away from home. So he had good cause of complaint. The rest
had none, and having none, they stay, which is no mean blow struck for
the home in the battle with the slum. The home feeling can never grow
where people do not stay long enough to feel at home, any more than the
plant can which the child is pulling up every two or three days to
"see if it has roots."

Half the tenement house population--and I am not sure that I ought not
to say the whole of it--is everlastingly on the move. Dr. Gould quotes
as an instance of it the experience of an assembly district leader in
distributing political circulars among the people in a good tenement
neighborhood. In three mont