TENEMENT HOUSES | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Aug 2, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 31.

TENEMENT HOUSES.

THE tenement-house problem in the large cities is one of the gravest of our time. City life at its very best is almost wholly artificial. But when taken in its lowest forms it is the most degrading.

A recent report tells of sixty-six old tenement houses in New York City, in which 5,640 people lived. It need not be wondered at that the report further states that one-fourth of these tenants died within the short space of five years.

A great effort, and with much success, has been made in New York to have the old traps of tenement houses torn down and replaced by modern buildings that were at least sanitary and also afforded better light and air.

A capitalist company bought nineteen lots, upon which they built apartment houses according to the best modern skill. They no doubt did it for the money they could make, but we are assured that particular pains was taken to have these buildings as comfortable and healthful in their arrangments and construction as possible. The buildings on these nineteen lots have 373 apartments in them. And that means that 373 families will be huddled together in rooms—or apartments if you prefer the term—on these few small city lots.

Now think of what some of these figures mean. The 5,640 persons that were in the sixty-six old buildings would make a fair-sized little city. Call to mind some town of between five and six thousand, and then imagine all its inhabitants compressed into sixty-six old smoky, dark, dirty tenements. Or if you consider the nineteen buildings with 373 families, you will need to count on from 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants. Such places can hardly be thought of under the endearing name, home. They seem more like the burrowing-places of wild animals.

There are none of our large cities but what have these tenement slums. They are the breeding-places of the lowest vices and crimes. How can pure and elevating thoughts and actions emanate from such sinks of filth and iniquity? And how can men be led into the delusion that the world is getting better when thousands of professing Christians continue to offer up their pharisaical prayers without even a thought of seeking to relieve the miseries and combat the wickedness of these moral cesspools that exist in all the cities?

It is only when men are carried away in an oratorical trance to behold just a few of the best things that may be seen, that they get the idea that the world is growing better. When they take a calm survey of all the naked facts there is an irresistible consciousness of the terrible condition of this old sin-cursed earth, and a definite impression of the fact that the Lord must soon come to destroy it.