murder there, rarely
a Sunday. It was the wickedest, as it was the foulest, spot in all the
city. In the slum the two are interchangeable terms for reasons that are
clear enough for me. But I shall not speculate about it, only state the
facts. The old houses fairly reeked with outrage and violence. When they
were torn down, I counted seventeen deeds of blood in that place which
I myself remembered, and those I had forgotten probably numbered seven
times seventeen. The district attorney connected more than a score of
murders of his own recollection with Bottle Alley, the Whyo Gang's
headquarters. Five years have passed since it was made into a park, and
scarce a knife had been drawn or a shot fired in all that neighborhood.
Only twice have I been called as a police reporter to the spot. It is
not that the murder has moved to another neighborhood, for there has
been no increase of violence in Little Italy or wherever else the crowd
went that moved out. It is that the light has come in and made crime
hideous. It is being let in wherever the slum has bred murder and
robbery, bred the gang, in the past. Wait, now, another ten years, and
let us see what a story there will be to tell.

Avail? Why, it was only the other day that Tammany was actually caught
applauding[36] Comptroller Coler's words in Plymouth Church, "Whenever
the city builds a schoolhouse upon the site of a dive and creates a
park, a distinct and permanent mental, moral, and physical improvement
has been made, and public opinion will sustain such a policy, even if a
dive-keeper is driven out of business and somebody's ground rent is
reduced." And Tammany's press agent, in his enthusiasm, sent forth this
paean: "In the light of such events how absurd it is for the enemies of
the organization to contend that Tammany is not the greatest moral force
in the community." Tammany a moral force! The park and the playground
have availed, then, to bring back the day of miracles.

[Footnote 36: To be sure, it did nothing else. When the people asked
for $5000 to fit up one playground. Mayor Van Wyck replied with a
sneer that "Vaudeville destroyed Rome."]

CHAPTER XII

THE PASSING OF CAT ALLEY

When Santa Claus comes around to New York this Christmas he will look in
vain for some of the slum alleys he used to know. They are gone. Where
some of them were, there are shrubs and trees and greensward; the sites
of others are holes and hillocks yet, that b