THE IRISH IN AMERICA

By John Francis Maguire, 1868

CHAPTER XI.

Evil of remaining in the great Cities--Why the City attracts the new Comer--Consequence of Overcrowding--The Tenement Houses of New York--Important Official Reports--Glimpses of the Reality--An inviting Picture--Misery and Slavery combined--Inducements to Intemperance--Massacre of the Innocents--In the wrong Place--Town and Country

IRELAND, whence a great tide of human life has been pouring across the Atlantic for more than half a century, is rightly described as 'an agricultural country;' by which is meant that the far larger portion of its population are devoted to the cultivation of the soil. In no country have the peasantry exhibited a stronger or more passionate attachment to the land than in that country from which such myriads have gone and are still going forth. And yet the strange fact, indeed the serious evil, is, that, notwithstanding the vast majority of those who emigrate from Ireland to America have been exclusively engaged in the cultivation of the soil--as farmers, farm-servants, or outdoor labourers--so many of this class remain in cities and towns, for which they are not best suited; rather than go to the country, for which they are specially suited, and where they would be certain to secure for themselves and their families, not merely a home, but comfort and independence. I deliberately assert that it is not within the power of language to describe adequately, much less exaggerate, the evil consequences of this unhappy tendency of the Irish to congregate in the large towns of America. But why they have hitherto done so may be accounted for without much difficulty.

Irish emigrants of the peasant and labouring class were generally poor, and after defraying their first expenses on landing had little left to enable them to push their way into the country in search of such employment as was best suited to their knowledge and capacity; though had they known what was in store for too many of them and their children, they would have endured the severest privation and braved any hardship, in order to free themselves from the fatal spell in which the fascination of a city life has meshed the souls of so many of their race. Either they brought little money with them, and were therefore unable to go on; or that little was plundered from them by those whose trade it was to prey upon the inexperience or credulity of the new-comer. Therefore, to them, the poor or the plundered Irish emigrants, the first and pressing necessity was employment; and so splendid seemed the result of that employment, even the rudest and most laborious kind, as compared with what they were able to earn in the old country, that it at once predisposed them in favour of a city life.

The glittering silver dollar, how bright it looked, and how heavy it weighed, when contrasted with the miserable sixpence, the scanty 'tenpenny-bit,' or the occasional shilling, at home! Then there were old friends and former companions or acquaintances to be met with at every street-corner; and there was news to give, and news to receive--too often, perhaps, in the liquor-store or dram-shop kept by a countryman--probably 'a neighbour's child,' or 'a decent boy from the next ploughland.' Then 'the chapel was handy,' and 'a Christian wouldn't be overtaken for want of a priest;' then there was 'the schooling convenient for the children, poor things,'--so the glorious chance was lost; and the simple, innocent countryman, to whom the trees of the virgin forest were nodding their branches in friendly invitation, and the blooming prairie expanded its fruitful bosom in vain, became the denizen of a city, for which he was unqualified by training, by habit, and by association. Possibly it was the mother's courage that failed her as she glanced at the flock of little ones who clustered around her, or timidly clung to her skirts, and she thought of the new dangers and further perils that awaited them; and it was her maternal influence that was flung into the trembling balance against the country and in favour of the city. Or employment was readily found for one of the girls, or one or two of the boys, and things looked so hopeful in the fine place that all thoughts of the fresh, breezy, healthful plain or hill-side were shut out at that supreme moment of the emigrant's destiny; though many a time after did he and they long for one breath of pure air, as they languished in the stifling heat of summer in a tenement house. Or the pioneer of the family--most likely a young girl--had found good employment, and, with the fruits of her honest toil, had gradually brought out brothers and sisters, father and mother, for whose companionship her heart ever yearned; and possibly her affection, was stronger than her prudence, or she knew nothing of the West and its limitless resources. Or sickness, that had followed the emigrant's family across the ocean, fastened upon some member of the group as they touched the soil for which they had so ardently prayed; and though the fever or the cholera did not destroy a precious life, it did the almost as precious opportunity of a better future: the spring of that energy which was sufficient to break asunder the ties and habits of previous years --sufficient for flight from home and country--was broken; and those who faced America in high hope were thenceforth added to the teeming population of a city--to which class it might be painful to speculate.

It is easy enough to explain why and how those who should not have remained in the great cities did so; but it is not so easy to depict the evils which have flowed, which daily flow, which, unhappily for the race, must continue to flow from the pernicious tendency of the Irish peasant to adopt a mode of livelihood for which he is not suited by previous knowledge or training, and to place himself in a position dangerous to his morals, if not fatal to his independence. These evils may be indicated, though they cannot be adequately described.

This headlong rushing into the great cities has the necessary effect of unduly adding to their population, thereby overtaxing their resources, however large or even extraordinary these resources may be, and of rudely disturbing the balance of supply and demand. The hands--the men, women, and children--thus become too many for the work to be done, as the work becomes too little for the hands willing and able to do it. What is worse, there are too many mouths for the bread of independence; and thus the bread of charity has to supplement the bread which is purchased with the sweat of the brow. Happy would it be for the poor in the towns of America, as elsewhere, if the bread of charity were the only bread with which the bread of independence is supplemented. But there is also the bread of degradation, and the bread of crime. And when the moral principle is blunted by abject misery, or weakened by disappointments and privation, there is but a narrow barrier between poverty and crime; and this, too frequently, is soon passed. For such labour as is thus recklessly poured into the great towns there is constant peril.

It is true there are seasons when there is a glut of work, when the demand exceeds the supply--when some gigantic industry or some sudden necessity clamours for additional hands; but there are also, and more frequently, seasons when work is slack, seasons of little employment, seasons of utter paralysis and stagnation. Cities are liable to occasional depressions of trade, resulting from over production, or the successful rivalry of foreign nations, or even portions of the same country; or there are smashings of banks, and commercial panics, and periods of general mistrust. Or, owing to the intense severity of certain seasons, there is a total cessation of employments of particular kinds, by which vast numbers of people are flung idle on the streets. If at once employed and provident, the condition of the working population in the towns is happy enough; but if there be no providence while there is employment, one may imagine how it fares with the family who are destitute alike of employment and the will or capacity for husbanding its fruits. It is hard enough for the honest thrifty working man to hold his own in the great towns of America, for rents are high, and living is dear, and the cost of clothes and other necessaries is enormous; but when the work fails, or stops, terrible indeed is his position. Then does the Irish peasant realise the fatal blunder he has made, in having chosen the town, with all its risks, and dangers, and sad uncertainties, instead of having gone into the country, 110 matter where, and adopted the industry for which he was best suited. Possibly, the fault was not his, of having selected the wrong place for his great venture in life; but whether his adoption of the town in preference to the country were voluntary or the result of circumstance, the evil is done, and he and his family must reap the consequences, whatever these may be.

The evil of overcrowding is magnified to a prodigious extent in New York, which, being the port of arrival--the Gate of the New World--receives a certain addition to its population from almost every ship-load of emigrants that passes through Castle Garden. There is scarcely any city in the world possessing greater resources than New York, but these resources have long since been strained to the very uttermost to meet the yearly increasing demands created by this continuous accession to its inhabitants; and if there be not some check put to this undue increase of the population, for which even the available space is altogether inadequate, it is difficult to think what the consequences must be. Every succeeding year tends to aggravate the existing evils, which, while rendering the necessity for a remedy more urgent, also render its nature and its application more difficult.

As in all cities growing in wealth and in population, the dwelling accommodation of the poor is yearly sacrificed to the increasing necessities or luxury of the rich. While spacious streets and grand mansions are on the increase, the portions of the city in which the working classes once found an economical residence are being steadily encroached upon--just as the artisan and labouring population of the City of London are driven from their homes by the inexorable march of city improvements, and streets and courts and alleys are swallowed up by a great thoroughfare or a gigantic railway terminus. There is some resource in London, as the working class may move to some portion of the vast Metropolitan district, though not without serious inconvenience; but unless the fast increasing multitudes that seem determined to settle in New York adopt the Chinese mode of supplementing the space on shore by habitation in boat and raft on water, they must be content to dwell in unwholesome and noisome cellars, or crowd in the small and costly rooms into which the tenement houses are divided.

As stated on official authority, there are 16,000 tenement houses in New York, and in these there dwell more than half a million of people! This astounding fact is of itself so suggestive of misery and evil that it scarcely requires to be enlarged upon; but some details will best exhibit the mischievous consequences of overcrowding--not by the class who, at home in Ireland, have lived in cities, and been accustomed to city-life and city pursuits, but by a class the majority of whom rarely if ever entered a city in the old country until they were on their way to the port of embarkation--by those whose right place in America is the country, and whose natural pursuit is the cultivation of the land. Let the reader glance at the tenement houses--those houses and `cellars' in which the working masses of New York swarm--those delightful abodes for which so many of the hardy peasantry of Ireland madly surrender the roomy log-cabin of the clearing, and the frame house of a few years after, together with almost certain independence and prosperity. I have entered several of these tenement houses, in company with one to whom their inmates were well known; I have spoken to the tenants of the different flats, and have minutely examined everything that could enlighten me as to their real condition; but I deem it well to rely rather on official statements, which are based on the most accurate knowledge, and are above the suspicion of exaggeration.

The Commissioners of the Metropolitan Board of Health, in their Report for 1866, say:--

The first, and at all times the most prolific cause of disease, was found to be the insalubrious condition of most of the tenement houses in the cities of New York and Brooklyn. These houses are generally built without any reference to the health or comfort of the occupant, but simply with a view to economy and profit to the owner. The provision for ventilation and light is very insufficient, and the arrangement of water-closets or privies could hardly be worse if actually intended to produce disease. These houses were almost invariably crowded, and ill-ventilated to such a degree as to render the air within them continually impure and offensive. . . . The basements were often entirely below ground, the ceiling being a foot or two below the level of the street, and was necessarily far more damp, dark, and ill-ventilated than the remainder of the house. The cellars, when unoccupied, were frequently flooded to the depth of several inches with stagnant water, and were made the receptacles of garbage and refuse matter of every description. ... In many cases, the cellars were constantly occupied, and sometimes used as lodging-houses, where there was no ventilation save by the entrance, and in which the occupants were entirely dependent upon artificial light by day as well as by night. Such was the character of a vast number of the tenement houses in the lower parts of the city of New York, and along its eastern and western borders. Disease, especially in the form of fevers of a typhoid character, was constantly present in these dwellings, and every now and then became in more than one of them epidemic. It was found that in one of these twenty cases of typhus had occurred during the previous year.

The poor Irishman in New York is not without experiencing the tender mercies of 'middlemen,' to whom in many instances the tenement houses are leased. These middlemen are generally irresponsible parties, with no interest in the property except its immediate profits, and who destroyed the original ventilation, such as it was, by the simple process of dividing the rooms into smaller ones, and by crowding three or four families into a space originally intended for a single family.

In 1864, the Citizens' Association of New York was organised, its main object being the promotion of Sanitary Reform. It has already effected much service through the information it has afforded in its valuable publications, which exhibit in a striking manner the enormous evil of overcrowding, and its consequences to the morals and health of the community. Associated with this organisation are many eminent physicians, who constitute the Council of Hygiene, whose report forms one of the most important features of the volume. Having divided the city into districts for the purpose of inspection, the Council appointed competent medical officers for that task; and from the detailed reports of these inspectors an accurate notion may be obtained of the sanitary condition of each district.

That the overcrowding of New York is far in excess of all other cities may be shown by a comparison of that city with London. In the English metropolis, the highest rate of population to the square mile is in East London, where, according to the report of a recent Royal Commission, it reached as high as 175,816. Whereas in certain portions of the Fourth Ward of New York, the tenant-house population were in 1864 'packed at the rate of about 290,000 inhabitants to the square mile.' Nor is it at all probable that things have come to the worst in this respect. The Council of Hygiene, in their Report, take rather a desponding view of the future. Not only has New York already become one of the most populous and densely crowded cities in the world, 'but it is plainly its destiny to become at once the most populous and the most overcrowded of the great maritime cities.' The evils, therefore, which now imperil health and morals in consequence of overcrowding, will increase with the increase of the population.

That there are several tenement houses constructed with a due regard for their intended object--the comfort and accommodation of their inmates--is true; but such houses are rather the exception than the rule, and the rent demanded for cleanly and commodious apartments in a tenement provided with the requisite appliances, places them beyond the means of the mass of the working population. It is not with houses of this class, but of the kind which are occupied by the poorer portion of the community, including of necessity those who have made the fatal mistake of stopping in New York, instead of pushing on to the country and occupying the land, that I propose to deal. A few extracts, taken at random from some of the Reports, will place the reader sufficiently in possession of the evils of overcrowding, and the perils, alike to soul and body, of the tenement system, which is now, though late, arousing the alarmed attention of statesmen and philanthropists.

Dr. Monnell, to whom the inspection of the 'First Sanitary District' was entrusted, states that the inhabitants of this district, which comprises part of the First and the whole of the Third Ward, are largely of foreign birth--about one-half Irish, one-quarter Germans, and the remainder Americans, Swedes, Danes, &c. Two-thirds of the resident population consist of labourers and mechanics with their families. The general characteristics are, 'a medium grade of intelligence and a commendable amount of industry, intermixed largely with ignorance, depravity, pauperism, and dissipation of the most abandoned character.' As an illustration of the evil of overcrowding, and the perilous characteristics of a large class of the floating population--consisting in this district of `travellers, emigrants, sailors, and vagabonds without a habitation and almost without a name'--that mingle with the more permanent residents of this lower district of the city, Dr. Monnell thus makes the reader acquainted with a certain squalid old tenant house in Washington Street:--

Passing from apartment to apartment, until we reached the upper garret, we found every place crowded with occupants, one room, only 5 ½ by 9 feet, and a low ceiling, containing two adults and a daughter of twelve years, and the father working as a shoemaker in the room, while in the upper garret were found a couple of dark rooms kept by haggard crones, who nightly supplied lodgings to twenty or thirty vagabonds and homeless persons. This wretched hiding-place of men, women, and girls, who in such places become daily more vicious and more wretched, had long been a hot-bed of typhus, seven of the lodgers having been sent to the fever hospital, while permanent residents on the lower floors had become infected with the same malady and died.

In the construction of many modern tenant houses, it would appear, the Inspector states, 'that hygienic laws and sanitary requirements have been estimated as of only secondary importance, the great problem being how to domicile the greatest number of families on a given area. And in the practical solution of that problem, in this district, lies the great overshadowing cause of insalubrity, before which all others combined sink into insignificance. The most marked feature of the tenant houses is the small size of their apartments, whereby ensues overcrowding in each family.' Having described a group of tenement houses, which are represented by the aid of photography, and designated as `a perpetual fever nest,' the Report thus proceeds:--

And in addition, the street throughout this whole neighbourhood presents habitually the vilest condition of tilth, and reeks with most offensive odours. Typhus fever and measles were very prevalent here in the early part of the summer. In my weekly reports of 'pestilential diseases and insalubrious quarters,' I have had frequent occasion to describe the condition of families and disease in the premises that are here photographed. The beautiful work of the artist renders unnecessary any further description of these squalid and pestiferous tenements, and their noisome fronting of dilapidated and overflowing privies, and a dismal, narrow, flooded court. That eruptive fevers, typhus, and physical decay may always be seen here is certainly not surprising.

The worst effects upon the inmates of the poorest class of tenant houses are exhibited not so much in the more acute form of disease, as 'in the pale and sickly countenance of their occupants, with lax fibre and general absence of robust health; we see it also in the pining and wasting of infants, and in the general prevalence of strumous, ophthalmic, and eruptive disorders. All these appearances indicate unmistakably the want of those great indispensible necessities of health--pure air and light.'

Let us follow Dr. Pulling, the 'Inspector of the Fourth Sanitary District' in his visits of inspection, and, without straining probability, assume that the miserable picture so graphically drawn is that of an Irish family, the victims of the one great and fatal mistake of the husband and the father--that of having remained in New York, instead of carrying his strength and his industry to the place where they were most required, and were sure to be appreciated:

Through a narrow alley we enter a small courtyard which the lofty buildings in front keep in almost perpetual shade. Entering it from the street on a sunny day, the atmosphere seems like that of a well. The yard is filled with recently-washed clothing suspended to dry. In the centre of this space are the closets used by the population of both front and rear houses. Their presence is quite as perceptible to the smell as to the sight.

Making our way through this enclosure, and descending four or five steps, we find ourselves in the basement of the rear-building. We enter a room whose ceiling is blackened with smoke, and its walls discoloured with damp. In front, opening on a narrow area covered with green mould, two small windows, their tops scarcely level with the courtyard, afford at noonday a twilight illumination to the apartment. Through their broken frames they admit a damp air laden with effluvia which constitute the vital atmosphere imbibed by all who are immured in this dismal abode.

A door at the back of this room communicates with another which is entirely dark, and has but one opening. Both rooms together have an area of about 18 feet square, and these apartments are the home of six persons. The father of the family, a day labourer, is absent; the mother, a wrinkled crone at thirty, sits rocking in her arms an infant, whose pasty and pallid features tell that decay and death are usurping the place of health and life. Two older children are in the street, which is their only playground, and the only place where they can go to breathe an atmosphere that is even comparatively pure. A fourth child, emaciated to a skeleton, and with that ghastly and unearthly look which marasmus impresses on its victims, has reared its feeble frame on a rickety chair against the window sill, and is striving to get a glimpse at the smiling heavens whose light is so seldom permitted to gladden its longing eyes. Its youth has battled nobly against the terribly morbid and devitalizing agents which have depressed its childish life--the poisonous air, the darkness, and the damp; but the battle is nearly over--it is easy to decide where the victory will be.

The cellar tenements of this district are fearful abodes for human beings. They were occupied, in 1864, by 1,400 persons, and their floors ranged from ten to thirty feet below high-water mark! 'In the sub-tidal basements nineteen families, or 110 persons, live beneath the level of the sea.' `In very many cases the vaults of privies are situated on the same or a higher level, and their contents frequently ooze through walls into the occupied apartments beside them. Fully one-fourth of these subterranean domiciles are pervaded by a most offensive odour from this source, and rendered exceedingly unwholesome as human habitations. These are the places in which we most frequently meet with typhoid fever and dysentery during the summer months.'

Matters are not much better in 'the Sixth Inspection District,' where the tenement population is about 23,000.

In some of the cellars and basements water trickled down the walls, the source of which was traced to the foulest soakage. One cannot be surprised to learn that the noxious effluvia always present in these basements are of a sickening character. Many of these cellars are occupied by two or three families; a number are also occupied as lodging-houses, accommodating from twenty to thirty lodgers! What an abode for those who, leaving home and country, crossed the ocean in the hope of bettering their condition!

The Inspector of the Eleventh District, Dr. Brown, states that nearly one-fifth of all the tenements are rear buildings, some of them of the lowest grade. They are generally contracted in size, shut out from the sunlight, and commonly are obstructions to light and ventilation in the front buildings. The interval between the front and rear house is frequently so small and sometimes so completely enclosed on all sides by the adjacent houses `as to constitute a mere well-hole.' Referring to certain houses in Hammond and Washington Streets, the Inspector describes their inhabited cellars, the ceilings of which are below the level of the street, `inaccessible to the rays of the sun, and always damp and dismal. Three of them are flooded at every rain, and require to be baled out. They are let at a somewhat smaller rent than is asked for apartments on the upper floor, and are rented by those to whom poverty leaves no choice. They are rarely vacant.'

Under the heading 'Rents,' we find the Inspector of the Fourth Sanitary District stating that `in regular tenant houses the rent of each domicile (generally consisting of two rooms--a "living room" and a bedroom) at present averages $9 per month, or $108 the year.' The cellar is, we are informed, 'let at a somewhat lower rate' than the average mentioned.

From the Report of Dr. Furman, the Inspector of the Seventeenth Sanitary District, the following passage is extracted:--

Most of the larger tenant houses are in a state of muckiness, and as a rule, overcrowded, without ventilation or light. These are offensive enough (and incapable to preserve a normal standard of health); but the crowded rear tenant houses, completely cut off from ventilation and perhaps light, are still worse. They abound in dark, damp, and noisome basements and cellars, converted into sleeping apartments. In these the invigorating and health-preserving sunlight and fresh air are never accessible.

An illustration is given of one of these habitations, the `living rooms' of which are nearly dark, and the dormitories' dark and damp.' The Report thus continues:--

Here we have low, damp, dark, and unventilated bed-rooms, whose inmates respire a murky air, and consort with snails, spiders, and muckworms. These underground habitations are most pernicious in laying the foundation for and developing strumous ophthalmia, hip-joint, and certain diseases of the spine, diseases of the respiratory organs (the chief of which is consumption), rheumatism, which in turn produces organic disease of the heart.

The picture would not be perfect without the following:--

They--the houses--are in many instances owned by large capitalists by whom they are farmed out to a class of factors, who make this their especial business. These men pay to the owner of the property a sum which is considered a fair return on the capital invested, and rely for their profits (which are often enormous) on the additional amount which they can extort from the wretched tenants whose homes frequently become untenantable for want of repairs, which the 'agent' deems it his interest to withhold. These men contrive to absorb most of the scanty surplus which remains to the tenants after paying for their miserable food, shelter, and raiment. They are, in many instances, proprietors of low groceries, liquor stores, and 'policy shops' connected with such premises, -- the same individual often being the actual owner of a large number. Many of the wretched population are held by these men in a state of abject dependence and vassalage little short of actual slavery.

And this is in the greatest city of the Great Republic of the New World! The poor Irishman who leaves his own country to escape from the tyranny of the most grinding landlord, and becomes the slavish vassal of one of these blood-suckers, makes but a poor exchange. The `improvement in his condition might be fittingly indicated by the homely adage,--'from the frying-pan into the fire.' The rudest hut in the midst of a forest, the loneliest cabin on the prairie, would be a palace to one of these abodes. Health, energy, independence, self-respect--the hopeful family growing up as strong as young lions, and fleet as antelopes--plenty for all, and a hearty welcome for the stranger and the wayfarer,--this is the country. What a contrast is it to the squalor, the debasement, and the slavery of the town--as described by a competent authority!

How intemperance, the author of so many ills to mankind, and in a special degree to those who live by their labour, has its origin in these abodes of misery, to which the working population are condemned through poverty and the want of cheap and healthful homes, is thus accounted for by the Commissioners of Health:--

This we know from observation, and from the testimony of dispensary physicians and other visitors among the poor, that the crowded, dark, and unventilated homes of the classes from which pauperism springs are driven to habits of tippling by the combined influences of the vital depression and demoralising surroundings of their unhealthy habitations. Pertinent was the reply of a drunken mother, in a dismal rear-court, to a sanitary officer, who asked her why she drank: `If you lived in this place, you would ask for whisky instead of milk.'

Dr. Burrall, Inspector for the Twelfth District, touches in his Report on the same point:--

It may be that the depressing causes existing in such a neighbourhood prompt to the use of some `oblivious antidote,' by which for a time the rough edges of life may be smoothed over. It may be, too, that these stimulants excite a certain degree of prophylactic influence, but the quality of liquor obtained in such places is injurious to the digestive organs, the brain becomes unduly excited, and quarrelling or even murder results.

Dr. Field, Inspector for the Eighteenth District, enters fully into the demoralising influences and results produced by the low class of tenements on those who inhabit them:--

Moreover, it is an accepted fact that to live for a long time deprived of pure air and sunlight will not only depress a man physically and mentally, but will actually demoralise him. The atmosphere is precisely adapted, through its properties and constituents, to the wants of the beings designed to breathe it.

A man gradually loses ambition and hope; concern for the welfare of his family, by slow degrees, loses its hold upon him. Loss of physical vigour attends this corresponding condition of the mind, until at length lassitude and depression of spirits and constant ennui get such control over him that no power or effort of the will can shake them off. With this decline of energy and vigour, both of mind and body, is set up an instinctive yearning for something which will give a temporary respite to the dragging weariness of life. Hence we find the children even, who are brought up without the stimulating influence of pure air and sunlight, will learn to cry for tea and coffee before they learn to talk; and they will refuse the draught unless it be strong. One would hardly credit, unless he has visited considerably among the tenant-house population, how general this habit is among the youngest children. As they grow older, they acquire the appetite of their parents for alcoholic stimulants: and we need not go further to account for any extreme of immorality and want.

Nor are abundant opportunities wanting for the indulgence of this fatal passion. Of the twenty-nine Inspectors who report on the sanitary condition of New York, there is not one who does not deplore the existence of the lowest class of 'groggeries' in the midst of the very poorest district. One statement as to this fact will suffice. Dr. Oscar G. Smith, reporting on the Ninth District, says--`The number of dram-shops to be met in those localities where a tenant-house class reside, is surprising.' Dr. Edward W. Derby, in his Report on the Fourteenth District, gives a painful picture of the prevalence of this unhappy vice:--

The low groggeries and groceries, in all of which liquors are sold, are constantly thronged, I am sorry, to say, with members of both sexes, youth and old age vieing with each other as to their capabilities of drinking, enriching the proprietors of these places, spending their last penny in gratifying their morbidly-debased appetite, rather than purchasing the necessaries of life for their families, and then issuing forth or being thrust out upon the streets in various stages of intoxication, half crazed with the vile and poisonous liquor they have swallowed, fit subjects for the committing of the many crimes which are daily chronicled in our papers. Such are the places which stare you in the face at every step, a disgrace to the city, and a prolific source of corruption to the morals of the surrounding inhabitants.

`Poison,' `vile poison,' `noxious and deleterious compounds,' are the terms generally applied to the description of liquor for which so many sacrifice their means, their health, and the happiness of their families.

With such a state of things--affecting at least a very large portion of the tenement population of New York--it cannot be a matter of surprise that the destruction of infant life in that city is something prodigious. The total number of deaths `in the first year of life,' for the nine months ending the 30th of September, 1866, was 6,258! This is a Massacre of the Innocents with a vengeance. The Commissioners of the Board of Health remark:--

The rate of mortality in children under five years of age in New York is greater than in any city with which this Board has correspondence, and the cause of this excess will best be sought in the miserable housing and habits of the labouring classes, and in the multiplied sources of foul air in our two cities. . . . From various data now in hand, the conclusion is warranted, that death has in each of the past two years taken nearly one-third of the total number before the first birthday.

Dr. Derby takes rather a philosophical view of this tremendous death rate, and is inclined to regard it as a providential counterpoise to the fecundity of the poor, which, he states, has long been a matter of remark. He adds:--

The number of diseases which menace and destroy infantile existence seems almost a providential interference to prevent an excess of population over and above that which the means of the parents could possibly support. Nor, when we reflect upon the condition in which these unfortunate children are found to exist, and the many circumstances, moral and hygienic, by which they are surrounded, do we wonder less at the amount of sickness and mortality among them, than that it is not greater; less that they die than they survive.

Dr. Monnell thus concludes his remarks on the destruction of life caused by the miserable dwellings of his district: --

In the deadly atmosphere of some low basement, or close unventilated bedroom, or in the wretched squalor of some dilapidated garret, those little ones so numerously born amongst this class first draw their breath, and in an atmosphere surcharged with poison they battle for life; but in the unequal strife very few survive, and thus are yearly sacrificed whole hecatombs of living souls. They fall victims not of necessity, nor of the decrees of inevitable Fate, but of ignorance and avarice, and are lost to parents and friends, to society, and to usefulness in the world.

These poor immature blossoms, that perish so miserably in the foul air of an overcrowded city, how they would have thriven in the pure atmosphere of the country! where the young cheek, `pasty and pallid' in damp and dismal cellar, or the fusty sleeping-hole of the tenement house, would bloom with health, and the eye, so dull and languid in the haunts of misery or vice, would sparkle into life and hope! In the country, throughout America, children are, next to his own industry and health, the best capital of the parent. What they are under the circumstances described in the passages just quoted the reader may easily imagine.

My own previously formed convictions, which for years had been strong in favour of the Irish selecting the right place for their special industry, were, if possible, confirmed by a visit to tenement houses of different classes. I remember one in particular, occupied principally by Irish. It presented none of the revolting features common to the dens already described. There was no squalor, no dilapidation; the place appeared to be in fair order. But the tenants were not the class of people who should have remained in New York. In Ireland they belonged to the rural population; and when I lifted the latch and entered an apartment, it was just as if I had walked some miles into the country at home, and entered the cabin of the labourer, or the cottage of the farmer; for in the accent and manner of the inmates there was no difference whatever. They were all racy of the soil. You could not visit any house inhabited by a number of Irish in which instances of the beautiful charity by which the race are distinguished would not be displayed. Here, for instance, was a great strong fellow, not long from the old country, and not able to get work, listlessly leaning against the door-post of a lower apartment, the tenants of which had given `the poor boy' a hearty welcome, and a 'shake-down,' and `a bit and sup;' though they themselves had a hard struggle to keep want from their humble hearth. There was in another room a mother, with her own young brood, yet who found a corner in her woman's heart for the orphan child of a neighbour that died some months before.

In one of the upper 'domiciles' there were then six persons, a mother, four young children, and a female relative, who was engaged in washing. The husband, the seventh inmate, a labouring man, was out at work. The principal apartment measured about 9 feet by 12; the dimensions of the other, the bedroom, allowing little more than the space occupied by a fair-sized four-post bedstead. A stove, necessary for the season, occupied no small portion of the chief apartment. There was no actual want of essential articles of furniture, such as a table and chairs , and the walls were not without one or two pious and patriotic pictures, Catholic and Irish. The children were tolerably clean, but pale and sickly; and a poor little fellow, of wonderfully bright countenance, hopped about on one leg, from an injury which, owing to neglect, was likely to cripple him for life. For this house accommodation, for this confined space, in which seven human beings were pent up for so many hours together, there was paid $7 a month, or $84 a year. Work or no work--and it was not unfrequently the latter--this rent should of necessity be met. In English money, even at the present rate of 3s. 3d. the dollar in 'greenbacks,' a year's rent would come to 13l. 13s.; as much as would enable the tenant of these apartments to purchase the fee-simple of more than 50 acres of good land in a Western State.

The mother of the children was quiet, well-mannered, and respectable in appearance; and though the freshness had long since faded from her face, she retained the traces of a kind of grave and pensive beauty. She was the daughter of a decent farmer in West Carbery, county Cork, and her husband, now a day labourer in New York, had also held some land in the same locality. They had come to America 'to better themselves,'--'to be more independent than they were at home;' and here they were, stuffed into a little room in a tenement house, with four young helpless children depending on them for support, their only means consisting of the earnings of the father of the family--about $9 a week; out of which everything had to be provided, and at prices so excessive as to leave but a small balance en the Saturday night. A month's idleness, or a fortnight's sickness, and what misery! Necessaries to be had on credit, at a rate equal to the vendor's supposed risk; and to be paid for on a future day. in addition to the never-ceasing outlay for the daily wants of a young and growing family. Here then were intelligence, practical knowledge, special aptitude for a country life, madly flung away; and the all but certainty of a grand future, that is, a future of comfort and independence, sacrificed for the precarious employment of a day-labourer in New York . A few years of hopeful toil, not more trying, but less trying to the constitution, than that which he went through every clay, would have enabled the tenant of that stuffy apartment in a desperately overcrowded city to provide his wife and children with a happy, healthful, prosperous home, which would have been theirs for ever, and from which neither factor, nor agent, nor groggery owner could have driven them. But, alas for them and for him! the ready employment and its apparently large reward, and the attractions of a city, were more than a match for his good sense; and now, like so many of his countrymen, he is as thoroughly out of his legitimate sphere as man can possibly be. I regretted I could not see the husband; but I did, as a matter of conscientious duty, endeavour to make the wife and mother comprehend the magnitude of the mistake which had been made, and urged her to counsel him to free himself at the first opportunity from a position for which he was not suited, and which was not suited for him.

I saw much in other tenement houses--whether houses specially built for the purpose, or houses adapted to that purpose--to justify the accuracy of the descriptions given in the Reports from which I have quoted; but though I witnessed much misery and squalor, and in a few instances glanced into places scarcely fit for the shelter of animals, I must confess to have been more impressed by the sad blunder of these young people--who would have made such splendid settlers in some fertile region, whether of Canada or the States--than with all I saw or heard during the day.

Even where there is sobriety, industry, good conduct, constant employment, the city is not the place for the man bred in the country, and acquainted from his boyhood only with country pursuits, whether as farmer or farm labourer. The country wants him, clamours for him, welcomes him, bids him prosper, and offers him the means of doing so. But suppose there is not industry, sobriety, good conduct, or constant employment, is it necessary to depict the consequences? The once simple peasant is soon smirched by the foulness of such city corruption as too frequently surrounds him or lies in his daily path; and the dram shop, so ruinously convenient to the dwellings of the toiling poor, finds him one of its best customers. If his children escape the perils of infancy, and grow up about him, what is their training, what their career, what their fate? Possibly they are saved, through some merciful interposition; perhaps by the tears and prayers of a good mother, perhaps by the example of a sister who has caught the mother's spirit. Possibly they grow up in industry and virtue, but the odds are fearfully against them; and it is not at all improbable that the quick-witted offspring of the father, who become intemperate and demoralised, fall into the class known as the Arabs of the Street, those victims of parental neglect or unprovided orphanage, that, as they arrive at manhood, mature into a still more dangerous class--the roughs and rowdies of the city, who are ready for every kind of mischief, and to whom excitement, no matter at whatever expense it may be purchased, becomes the first necessity of their existence.

Let it not be supposed that, in my earnest desire to direct the practical attention of my countrymen, at both sides of the Atlantic, to an evil of universally admitted magnitude, I desire to exaggerate in the least. From the very nature of things, the great cities of America--and in a special degree New York--must be the refuge of the unfortunate, the home of the helpless, the hiding-place of the broken-down, even of the criminal: and these, while crowding the dwelling-places of the poor, and straining the resources and preying on the charity of their communities, multiply their existing evils, and add to their vices. Still, in spite of the dangers and temptations by which they are perpetually surrounded--dangers and temptations springing even from the very freedom of Republican institutions no less than from the generous social habits of the American people--there are thousands, hundreds of thousands, of Irish-born citizens of the United States, residing in New York and in the other great cities of the Union, who are in every respect the equals of the best of American population--honourable and upright in their dealings; industrious, energetic, and enterprising in business; intelligent and quick of capacity; progressive and go-ahead; and as loyally devoted to the institutions of their adopted country as if they had been bom under its flag. Nevertheless, I repeat the assertion, justified by innumerable authorities -- authorities beyond the faintest shadow of suspicion--that the city is not the right place for the Irish peasant, and that it is the worst place which he could select as his home.

The Irish peasant, who quits his native country for England or Scotland, may be excused for hiding himself in any of its great towns, manufacturing or commercial, inland or seaport; for not only may he find employment for himself, and have some chance for his young people in them, but there is no opportunity of his much bettering his condition by going into the county. But there is no excuse whatever for his remaining in the cities of America, crowding and blocking them up, when there are at this hour as many opportunities for his getting on in the country--that is, making a home and independence for himself and his children--as there were for the millions of all nationalities who went before him, and who now constitute the strength and glory of the Republic. The Irish peasant who goes to England or Scotland has little chance of being accepted even as the tenant of a farm in either of those countries--a remote one, indeed, of ever becoming a proprietor of English or Scottish soil; but the most miserable cottier of Connemara or the worst-paid day-labourer of Cork or Tipperary, who has the good sense to push on from the American seaboard towards those vast regions of virgin land that woo the hardy vigour of the pioneer, may in the course of a few years possess hundreds of acres of real estate by a more glorious title than has been too often acquired in the old countries of Europe, his own included--by the right of patient industry, blessed toil, and sanctifying privation.