CHAPTER II

Where the Negro Lives

It is thirty-five years since, in his Sym¬
phony, Sidney Lanier told of

"The poor
That stand by the inward opening door
Trade's hand doth tighten evermore.
And sigh their monstrous foul air sigh
For the outside hills of liberty."

Were Lanier writing this today, we should
wonder whether New York's crowded tene¬
ments had not served as inspiration for his
figure. The island of Manhattan, about
eight miles long by two miles wide, with an
additional slender triangle of five miles at
the north end, in 1905, housed two million
one hundred and twelve thousand people.
These men and women and children were not
scattered uniformly throughout the island,
but were placed in selected corners, one thou¬
sand to the acre, while a mile or so away
large comfortable homes held families of two

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