Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance Read online

  II

  Formerly the New-Yorker lived in one of three different ways: in privatehouses, or boarding-houses, or hotels; there were few restaurants orpublic tables outside of the hotels, and those who had lodgings and tooktheir meals at eating-houses were but a small proportion of the wholenumber. The old classification still holds in a measure, but within thelast thirty years, or ever since the Civil War, when the enormouscommercial expansion of the country began, several different ways ofliving have been opened. The first and most noticeable of these ishousekeeping in flats, or apartments of three or four rooms or more, onthe same floor, as in all the countries of Europe except England; thoughthe flat is now making itself known in London, too. Before the war, theNew-Yorker who kept house did so in a separate house, three or fourstories in height, with a street door of its own. Its pattern within wasfixed by long usage, and seldom varied; without, it was of brown-stonebefore, and brick behind, with an open space there for drying clothes,which was sometimes gardened or planted with trees and vines. The rear ofthe city blocks which these houses formed was more attractive than thefront, as you may still see in the vast succession of monotonouscross-streets not yet invaded by poverty or business; and often theperspective of these rears is picturesque and pleasing. But with thesudden growth of the population when peace came, and through theacquaintance the hordes of American tourists had made with Europeanfashions of living, it became easy, or at least simple, to divide thefloors of many of these private dwellings into apartments, each with itsown kitchen and all the apparatus of housekeeping. The apartments thenhad the street entrance and the stairways in common, and they had incommon the cellar and the furnace for heating; they had in common thedisadvantage of being badly aired and badly lighted. They were dark,cramped, and uncomfortable, but they were cheaper than separate houses,and they were more homelike than boarding-houses or hotels. Large numbersof them still remain in use, and when people began to live in flats, inconformity with the law of evolution, many buildings were put up andsubdivided into apartments in imitation of the old dwellings which hadbeen changed.

  But the apartment as the New-Yorkers now mostly have it, was at the sametime evolving from another direction. The poorer class of New Yorkwork-people had for a long period before the war lived, as they stilllive, in vast edifices, once thought prodigiously tall, which were calledtenement-houses. In these a family of five or ten persons is commonlypacked in two or three rooms, and even in one room, where they eat andsleep, without the amenities and often without the decencies of life, andof course without light and air. The buildings in case of fire aredeath-traps; but the law obliges the owners to provide some apparentmeans of escape, which they do in the form of iron balconies and ladders,giving that festive air to their facades which I have already noted. Thebare and dirty entries and staircases are really ramifications of thefilthy streets without, and each tenement opens upon a landing as if itopened upon a public thoroughfare. The rents extorted from the inmates issometimes a hundred per cent., and is nearly always cruelly out ofproportion to the value of the houses, not to speak of the wretchedshelter afforded; and when the rent is not paid the family in arrears isset with all its poor household gear upon the sidewalk, in a pitilessindifference to the season and the weather, which you could not realizewithout seeing it, and which is incredible even of plutocratic nature. Ofcourse, landlordism, which you have read so much of, is at its worstin the case of the tenement-houses. But you must understand thatcomparatively few people in New York own the roofs that shelter them. Byfar the greater number live, however they live, in houses owned byothers, by a class who prosper and grow rich, or richer, simply by owningthe roofs over other men's heads. The landlords have, of course, no humanrelation with their tenants, and really no business relations, for allthe affairs between them are transacted by agents. Some have thereputation of being better than others; but they all live, or expect tolive, without work, on their rents. They are very much respected for it;the rents are considered a just return from the money invested. You musttry to conceive of this as an actual fact, and not merely as astatistical statement. I know it will not be easy for you; it is not easyfor me, though I have it constantly before my face.