p. 10 | PROBLEMS OF CITY LIFE by Christian Work

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 10, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 49.

PROBLEMS OF CITY LIFE.

By Christian Work

Facts and Figures Gathered by the Federation of Churches.

THE Federation of Churches and Christian Workers in New York City has published a pamphlet giving the results of a sociological canvass made by it in the Fifteenth Assembly District, one of the most densely populated and churchless regions in the metropolis. These results are given in the form of carefully drawn charts and elaborate tables of statistics accompanied with many practical suggestions and recommendations for carrying into effect the lessons to be drawn from the mass of facts and figures thus presented relative to the social and religious needs of the city. From this pamphlet the following facts of special interest from a sociological point of view have been collated:—

Yonkers is to-day ahead of New York City in its public baths.

Tokyo is cleaner in its bathing customs than New York.

The percentage of people owning their own homes in New York City is smaller than in any other city of the New World.

There are at least seven individual blocks in New York City containing over three thousand people each. Each of these has a population equivalent to the entire population of Tarrytown.

The percentage of children at work during school hours throughout the city of New York is a little above 5; in the Fifteenth Assembly District, a little above 6; and in each age subdivision, the number of girls at work is larger than the number of boys.

Of 3,453 families whose thrift was estimated by the canvassers of the Federation, only 1,039 were reported as conspicuously thrifty.

Of 33,891 people in the blocks canvassed by the Federation, 10,657 were wage earners; and of these 2,017, or 18.9 per cent., were employed on Sunday. The percentage of wage earners to population was 31.4 per cent., and, of these wage earners, 18.9 per cent. were working seven days a week.

The canvass of the Federation shows that there are only 1,037 bath tubs for 8,176 families, or 1 bath tub to 7.9 families, in the Fifteenth Assembly District.

Counting the side entrance, corner lot frontage also, the saloons and liquor stores occupy 5,173 feet on the sidewalks of the Fifteenth Assembly District—almost a mile. Their street area is equivalent to the four sides of more than two and a half blocks; while the churches, clubs, and public schools combined, would not cover one long side of a single block.

The number of families in a dwelling is more than three times as great in New York as in Philadelphia, and is 83.6 per cent. greater than in Brooklyn, the city in the United States which most nearly approaches New York in the number of families per dwelling.

The Greater New York, estimating its population at three million people, will start with a larger density per acre than Greater London had in 1896. The acreage upon which the three million people of Greater New York will be housed, is not half as large as that of Greater London.

One million, seven hundred and forty-two thousand, nine hundred and eighty-five people live on Manhattan Island. This population is housed on 13,487.2 acres, an area less than some farms in the west. The density per acre of the population of the city south of the Harlem is yet the greatest of all cities in the world. It is 129.2 per acre.

New York is seventh among the cities of the United States in the percentage of its population who are foreign born. Six hundred and thirty-nine thousand, nine hundred and forty-three of the population of New York, or 42.23 per cent., in 1890, were foreign born. The white persons of foreign parentage in New York City, in 1890, exceeded the entire population of the city of Chicago, or the State of California. They were 1,215,463. The number having both parents foreign born was 1,101,543.—Christian Work.