104
 

THE POOR IN GREAT CITIES
 

bed, sometimes a shake-down on the hard floor, often a pile of half-
finished clothing brought home from the sweater, in the stuffy
-rooms of their tenements. In one I visited very lately, the only bed
was occupied by the entire family, lying lengthwise and crosswise,
literally in layers, three children at the feet, all except a boy of ten

or twelve, for whom there was
no room. He slept with his
clothes on to keep him warm,
in a pile of rags just inside
the door. It seemed to me im¬
possible that families of chil¬
dren could be raised at all in
such dens as I had my daily
and nightly walks in. And yet
the vital statistics and all close
observation agree in allotting
to these Jews even an unusual
degree of good health. Their
freedom from enfeebling vices
and the marvellous vitality of
the race must account for this.
Their homes, or their food,
which is frequently of the
w^orst because cheax3est, as¬
suredly do not.

I spoke of the labor done in
tenement homes. Like nearly
every other question that has
a bearing on the condition of the poor and of the wage-earners,
this one of the child home-workers has recently been ux3 for dis¬
cussion. The first official contribution to it Avas a surxorise, and
not least to the health officers who furnished it. According to
the tenement-house census, in the entire mass of nearly a million
and a quarter of tenants, only two hundred and forty-nine chil-
 

\e\^5^.
 

The Backstairs to Learning.
(Entrance to a Talmud School in Hester Street.)