ith room for over 18,000 tenants at our New York
average of four and a half to the family. Including the Bend, the whole
number of the dispossessed was not 12,000. On Manhattan Island there
were at that time more than 37,000 vacant flats, so that it seems those
builders were either "talking through their hats," or else they were
philanthropists pure and simple. And I know they were not that. The
whole question of rehousing the population that had been so carefully
considered abroad made us no trouble, though it gave a few well-meaning
people unnecessary concern. The unhoused were scattered some, which was
one of the things we hoped for, but hardly dared believe would come to
pass. Many of them, as it appeared, had remained in their old slum more
from force of habit and association than because of necessity.

"Everything takes ten years," said Abram S. Hewitt, when, exactly ten
years after he had as mayor championed the Small Parks Act, he took his
seat as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Small Parks. The ten years
had wrought a great change. It was no longer the slum of to-day, but
that of to-morrow, that challenged attention. The committee took the
point of view of the children from the first. It had a large map
prepared, showing where in the city there was room to play and where
there was none. Then it called in the police and asked them to point out
where there was trouble with the boys; and in every instance the
policeman put his finger upon a treeless slum.

"They have no other playground than the street," was the explanation
given in each case. "They smash lamps and break windows. The
storekeepers kick and there is trouble. That is how it begins." "Many
complaints are received daily of boys annoying pedestrians,
storekeepers, and tenants by their continually playing base-ball in some
parts of almost every street. The damage is not slight. Arrests are
frequent, much more frequent than when they had open lots to play in."
This last was the report of an up-town captain. He remembered the days
when there were open lots there. "But those lots are now built upon," he
said, "and for every new house there are more boys and less chance for
them to play."

The committee put a red daub on the map to indicate trouble. Then it
asked those police captains who had not spoken to show them where their
precincts were, and why they had no trouble. Every one of them put his
finger on a green spot that marked a park.

"My peo