Call for social reform from "summary" of How The Other Half Lives by Jacob August Riis
The conditions are such that the only hope for relief must be sought in radical measures of reform. The tenement-house legislation of twenty years ago, aimed at the still existing rear tenements, has made no impression on the massed evils. They stand as they did. The tenements have grown worse. The shanty and the rear tenement have multiplied, and the most that can be claimed for the law is that the worst is not quite so bad as it once was. The tenement has not been reached at all. It still breeds as of old the poverty and the disease that carry off the children by the thousands. The tenement is a question awaiting its Moses. It is a problem that will not down. It can only increase as the city grows, unless there be a halt called, and a change made. The tenement must go. It is the breeding-place of all the city's vices and crimes. It is the home of the tramp and the thief, of the wife-beater and the murderer, of the pickpocket and the procuress. It is the den for the drunkard, the lair of the harlot. From the tenements come the children who swarm in the streets and grow up with the idea that honesty is not the best policy. It is a hotbed of anarchy, of socialism, of the most dangerous sort of socialism, that which breeds in the shadow of the church, and, nurtured on the promises of the demagogue, preys upon all society. The tenement is the tap-root of our social evil. If we are to deal effectually with the problem of the poor, we must begin at the beginning, at the house itself. The slum must not only be cleared away, but in its place decent homes must be provided for the poor. The tenement must be abolished. But it will not do to stop there. The tenement is only one of the many forms in which the social problem presents itself. There are the sweating dens, the factories, the mines. All these call for reform. The sweating den is a worse evil than the tenement. It is a veritable hell upon earth. The factory is but little better. It has its own vices and crimes, its own dangers and diseases. The mine is the worst of all. It is a living tomb for its victims. All these must be reached, if we are to cope with the problem of the
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