It has not one room that can
be thoroughly ventilated.
"The vaults and sewers which are to carry off the filth of one hundred
and twenty-six families have grated openings in the alleys, and doorways
in the cellars, through which the deadly miasma penetrates and poisons
the air of the house and courts. The water-closets for the whole vast
establishment are a range of stalls, without doors, and accessible not
only from the building, but even from the street. Comfort here is out
of the question; common decency impossible, and the horrid brutalities
of the passenger-ship are day after day repeated, but on a larger
scale.
"In similar dwellings are living five hundred and ten thousand persons,
(nearly one half of the inhabitants of the city,) chiefly from the
laboring classes, of very moderate means, and also the uncounted
thousands of those who do not know to-day what they shall have to live
on to-morrow. This immense population is found chiefly in an area of
less than four square miles. The vagrant and neglected children among
them would form a procession in double file eight miles long from the
Battery to Harlem.
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