Part 13 (1/2)

The tiht work for day work, and I was not sorry A new life began forimpressions up till then I an to crystallize, to for, of sys hatched From that tier S Tracy, then a sanitary inspector in the Health Departuished statistician, to who I have ever had of the problems I have battled with; for he is very wise, while I as over with hiht up I met Professor Charles F Chandler, Major Willard Bullard, Dr Edward H Janes--men to whose practical wisdo of the Health Departreater debt than it is aware of; Dr

John T Nagle, whose friendly caave me some invaluable lessons; and General Ely Parker, Chief of the Six Nations

[Illustration: Dr Roger S Tracy]

I suppose it was the fact that he was an Indian that first attracted reat friends, and I loved nothing better in an idle hour than to smoke a pipe with the General in his poky little office at Police Headquarters

That was about all there was to it, too, for he rarely opened hisWhen, once in a while, it would happen that some of his people came down from the Reservation or froht Three pipes and about eleven grunts made up the whole of it, but it was none the less entirely friendly and satisfactory

We all have our oays of doing things, and that was theirs He was a noble old fellow His title was no trumpery show, either It was fairly earned on more than one bloody field with Grant's army

Parker was Grant's inal draft of the surrender at Apporeat pride It was not General Parker, however, but Donehogawa, Chief of the Senecas and of the reuardian of the western door of the council lodge, that appealed toand with Uncas and Chingachgook They had so here, and at last I had for a friend one of their kin I think he felt the bond of sympathy between us and prized it, for he showed me in many silent ways that he was fond of me There was about hi the tenements of Mulberry Street on the pay of a second-rate clerk, that never ceased to appeal to me When he lay dead, stricken like the soldier he was at his post, some letters of his to Mrs Harriet Converse, the adopted child of his tribe, went to my heart They were addressed to her on her travels He was of the ”wolf” tribe, she a ”snipe” ”Fro snipe,” they ran

Even in Mulberry Street he was a true son of the forest

Perhaps the General's sye of front froht no let-up on hostilities in our caood cause: I had interfered with long-cherished privileges I found the dayto work at all hours froht, and the immediate result was to corievance, and was held against ical outcome of the war it provoked was to stretch the day farther into the small hours Before I left Mulberry Street the circuit had been h the twenty-four hours without interruption Like its neighbor the Bowery, Mulberry Street never sleeps

[Illustration: General Ely Parker, Chief of the Six Nations]

There had been in 1879 an awakening of the public conscience on the tenement-house question which I had folloith interest, because it had started in the churches that have always seeht foruround, and most for their own sake and the cause they stand for But the awakening provedhiet up Five years later, in 1884, caht ho in the tene white milestone on a dreary road From that time on we hear of ”souls” in the slue up till then, and in a kind of self-defence, I suppose, we had had to forget that the people there had souls Because you couldn't very well count souls as chattels yielding so much income to the owner: it would not be polite toward the Lord, say Sounds queer, but if that was not the attitude I would like to knohat it was The Coh all its sessions as a reporter, and heard every word of the testimony, which was more than some of the Commissioners did Mr Ottendorfer and Mr Drexel, the banker, took s were dull One s to the full, never caught off his guard His clear, incisive questions, that went through all subterfuges to the root of things, were so the landscape far and near

He was Dr Felix Adler, whoiven him a very warm place in my heart Adler was born a Jew Often when I think of the position the Christian Church took, or rather did not take, on ait as the murder of the home in a tenement population of a million souls,--for that hat it came to,--I aoing to Boston to speak to a body of clergy He had shortly before received an invitation to address the same body on ”The Personality of Christ,” but had it in his o

”What will you tell thehtful little smile as he said: ”I shall tell them that the personality of Christ is too sacred a subject forin a swell hotel”

Does that help you to understand that aest of moral forces in Christian New York was and is Adler, the Jew or heretic, take it whichever way you please?

Four years later the finishi+ng touch was put to the course I took with the Adler Tenement-House Commission, when, toward the end of a three days' session in Chickering Hall offight the Church aging a and cried out, ”How are these men and women to understand the love of God you speak of, when they see only the greed of men?” He was a builder, Alfred T White of Brooklyn, who had proved the faith that was in hi real homes for the people, and had proved, too, that they were a paying investment It was just a question whether a man would take seven per cent and save his soul, or twenty-five and lose it

And I ht as well add here that it is the sa with the tenement-house question, sum themselves up in the effort, since there are men yet ould take twenty-five per cent and run that risk, to compel them to take seven and save their souls for them I wanted to jump up in my seat at that time and shout Amen! But I remembered that I was a reporter and kept still It was that same winter, however, that I wrote the title of hted it The book itself did not coood as written then I hadthat I heard the gospel preached to the poor in the only way that will ever reach them It was the last word that was said, and I have always believed that it was not exactly in the plan I saw so the some eminently respectable platitudes to shreds and tatters, cried out for personal service, loving touch, as the key to it all:--

”What if, when the poor leper came to the Lord to be healed, he had said to Peter, or soo touch that fellow and I'll pay you for it'? Or what if the Lord, when he caht his lunch with hiht? Would the world ever have coive, not our old clothes, not our prayers Those are cheap You can kneel down on a carpet and pray where it is warm and comfortable Not our soup--that is soive ive hiside of hi his poor, notwithstanding his sick and his debased, estate, just so soon you begin to worm your way into the very warood They whispered afterward in the corners about the ”lack of discretion of that goodway toward cleaning up in New York--did go, not sofro before that the ”so that needed rapple vith -room and the Bend The Adler Commission had proposed to ”break the back” of the latter by cutting Leonard Street through the ested forty years before, when the Five Points around the corner challenged the angry resentment of the community But no expedient would ever cover that case The whole sluislature to wipe it out bodily, and in 1888, after four years of pulling and hauling, we had spunked up enough to file maps for the ”Mulberry Bend Park” Blessed proious lot of effort, for right there decency had to begin, or not at all Go and look at it to-day and see what it is like

But that is another story The other nuisance cauns that I have any record of were fired in my newspapers in 1883, and from that time till Theodore Roosevelt shut up the vile dens in 1895 the battle raged without interuns I speak of were not the first that were fired--they were the first I fired so far as I can find For quite a generation before that there had been protests and coeons, the policee under one roof with trae upon Christian charity and all decency, but all without producing any other effect than spas on of the hose Nothing short of boiling water would have cleansed those dens

Nothing else caer even than the selfish ain is the deadly inertia in civic life which sis will let us be The older I get, the more patience I have with the sinner, and the less with the lazy good-for-nothing who is at the bottom of more than half the share of the world's troubles

Give me the thief if need be, but take the tra to fall in line and take up his end The end he lets lie soh

I ran to earth at last one of the citizens' bodies that were striving with the nuisance, and went and joined it I will not say that I was received graciously I was a reporter, and it was human nature to assume that I was merely after a sensation; and I did n That was the way to put life into it

Page after page I printed, now in this paper, now in that, and when the round was coain They winced a bit,for a change Perchance it an to stir The editors found so else Ponderous leaders about our ”duty toward the poor” appeared at intervals The Grand Jury on its tours saw and protested The City Hall felt the sting and squirue with the Board of Estimate and Apportion with Mrs

Josephine Shaell and John Finley, but not the last by a good one to Boston to see the hu with their hoave theood way, that, to li, so they did not have to go out and beg the first thing It seeood But the Mayor did not think so

”Boston! Boston!” he cried, impatiently, and waved us and the subject aside ”I a always how they do in Boston, and of the whole h to keep it up We caood, and meanwhile the newspaper broadsides continued No chance was allowed to pass of telling the people of New York what they were harboring They simply needed to know, I felt sure of that And I kno that I was right But it takes a lot of telling toHowever, that hat I was there for When it didn't see away at his rock perhaps a hundred ti in it Yet at the hundred and first bloould split in two, and I kneas not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together When my felloorkers smiled, I used to remind them of the Israelites that marched seven times around Jericho and blew their horns before the walls fell