chools; but Tammany came
back. Once again, now, we are catching up. Yesterday Mayor Low's reform
government voted six millions of dollars for new schools. The school
census law that was forgotten almost as soon as made (the census was to
be taken once in two years, but was taken only twice) is to be enforced
again so that we know where we stand. In that most crowded neighborhood
in all the world, where the superintendent lately pleaded in vain for
three new schools, half a dozen have been built, the finest in this or
any other land,--great, light, and airy structures, with playgrounds on
the roof; and all over the city the like are going up. The briefest of
our laws, every word of which is like the blow of a hammer driving the
nails home in the coffin of the bad old days, says that never one shall
be built without its playground.

[Footnote 13: The first school census was taken in 1895 by order of
the legislature. It showed that there were 50,069 children of school
age in New York City out of school and unemployed. The number had
been variously estimated from 5000 to 150,000.]

And not for the child's use only. The band shall play there yet and
neighbor meet neighbor in such social contact as the slum has never
known to its undoing. Even as I write this the band is tuning up and the
children dancing to its strains with shouts of joy. The president of the
board of education and members of the board lead in the revolt against
the old. Clergymen applaud the opening of the school buildings on Sunday
for concerts, lectures, and neighborhood meetings. Common sense is
having its day. The streets are cleaned.

The slum has even been washed. We tried that on Hester Street years ago,
in the age of cobblestone pavements, and the result fairly frightened
us. I remember the indignant reply of a well-known citizen, a man of
large business responsibility and experience in the handling of men, to
whom the office of street-cleaning commissioner had been offered, when I
asked him if he would accept. "I have lived," he said, "a blameless life
for forty years, and have a character in the community. I cannot
afford--no man with a reputation can afford--to hold that office; it
will surely wreck it." It made Colonel Waring's reputation. He took the
trucks from the streets. Tammany, in a brief interregnum of vigor under
Mayor Grant, had laid the axe to the unsightly telegraph poles and
begun to pave the streets with asphalt,