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ED ITED BY
Robert 3, 3}}odiſg
THE CITY WILDERN ESS. A Settlement Study.
South End, Boston. By Residents and Associates of the
South End House. With colored Maps. 12mo, $1.50,
AMERICANS IN PROCESS. A Settlement Study.
North and West Ends, Boston. By Residents and
Associates of the South End House. 12mo, $1.50, 7tet.
Postage extra.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY
Boston AND NEw York
A M E R J C A N S I N
P R O C E S S
A SETTLEMENT STUDY
BY
RESIDENTS AND ASSOCIATES OF THE
SOUTH END HOUSE
EDITED BY
ROBERT A. WOODS
HEAD OF THE HOUSE
NORTH AND WEST ENDS
BOSTON
24ſºſtºl{M}{N}
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SC
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHT ON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
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copyRIGHT, 1902, By Robert A. wooDs
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Æublished December, 1902
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PREFACE
THE study of North and West End life which
makes up the present volume had its beginning
in an investigation of South End conditions, the
results of which were published four years ago in
the book “The City Wilderness.” It was found
that much valuable material sought out for the
South End study was equally available for the
North and West Ends. The direct advantage of
such a presentment has been apparent in the
South End. The task of each agency for local
improvement has been made more distinct. By
laying out the large exhaustive measure of the
local community’s possibilities and needs, a stronger
union of forces has been secured. It was felt
that a similar study of the North and West Ends
would be of service to the scheme of social im-
provement in those districts.
In the practical work of the South End House,
as its plan broadens, it is found essential that the
forces existing in these other two downtown work-
ing-class districts should be understood and, so far
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iw PREFACE
as possible, dealt with. There is a gradual drift
of population, including all the different nationali-
ties, from the northern to the southern border of
the business section of the city. In its local work,
the House is constantly compelled to take account
of this movement of population and the causes
which produce it. In certain large undertakings
toward social improvement, covering the city in
their scope, but having special concern for the
three downtown tenement-house sections, residents
of the House have been called into service. This
service is partly in connection with voluntary or-
ganizations and partly under the municipality.
Certain special enactments, in the enforcement of
which the residents of the House are much in-
terested, have an almost exclusive bearing upon
these three districts. In efforts toward the further
development of such legislation, knowledge of the
facts as found in all three districts is needed by
the advocate of the cause of any one of them.
A peculiar stimulus to the present investigation
has come through the hindrance offered at City
Hall by a certain mysterious political power in
the West End to a great project of popular bet-
terment for which the residents of the South End
House, among others, have long worked and will
continue to work until its success is assured.
PREFACE V
The South End study had its best use, perhaps,
in aiding thoughtful people throughout Boston and
its suburbs to discern the vital relation which
exists between that district and the local commu-
nities in which the prosperous classes reside. It
is hoped that the present volume may further aid in
making clear the responsibilities in which resource-
ful citizens stand for the great immigrant popula-
tions which are close at the city's heart.
In Boston, as in other large cities, municipal
and social reform are much embarrassed by the
lack of any kindling realization, even in the minds
of sagacious, disinterested persons, of the actual,
present-day truth with regard to the urban com-
munity in the thick of which the drama of their
active life is set. The indifference of the so-called
good citizen is largely because his best effort to
produce a mental picture of his city in its essential
human aspects results in something altogether
vague, scattered, out-of-date. Many of the efforts
toward better things reflect this lack of mental
furnishing in being piecemeal, casual and beside
the mark.
The purpose of this volume, as of its predeces-
sor, is to contribute toward building up a contem-
porary conception of the city, as the groundwork
of a type of municipal and social improvement
vi PR EFACE
which shall be accurate in its adaptation to de-
tailed facts and statesmanlike in its grasp of large
forces and total situations. It seems to the writers
that such a conception may best be gained by the
analysis of affairs in one after another of the
congested districts of the city, presenting those
districts in their measure of separateness and in-
dividuality as against the remainder of the city,
while showing, not in the language of exhortation
but in terms of ascertained reality, the complex
connections which bring these districts and the other
sections of the city into a living ensemble.
The writers have, with one or two exceptions,
had long familiarity with persons and affairs in
the North and West Ends. The present study
has been progressing during the time since the
volume dealing with the South End was issued.
Of course the writers do not have so intimate a
knowledge of the life of these districts as of the
section of the city in which most of them have for
years lived and worked; but some of them have re-
sided during considerable periods amid the situa-
tion covered by the present investigation. One
contributor, Miss Beale, has for some ten years
had unusual opportunities of close acquaintance
with the inner life of the Jewish and Italian
colonies.
PREFACE vii
The resources of observation and experience
possessed by many whose field of work lies largely
or entirely in these districts have been freely
placed at our service, and have been largely drawn
upon. To all the local agents of the Associated
Charities, and to all the leading philanthropic
workers in both districts, we are much indebted.
The public school teachers, particularly Mr. L. H.
Dutton and Miss Ellen Sawtelle, have done much
to forward one of the most important parts of our
inquiry. We have had much assistance from
clergymen and other church workers; especially
we wish to thank the Rev. Reuben Kidner, of St.
Andrew's Church, for his constant aid and encour-
agement. For many valuable suggestions as to the
social history of the North End, we are indebted to
the late Henry B. Mackintosh, son of Peter Mackin-
tosh, master of the Hancock School in the early
part of the last century. The records and special
knowledge of various public officials and bureaus
have been put at our service, — the Police Depart-
ment at the central office and the local stations,
the Board of Health, the Board of Assessors, the
State Factory Inspectors, the State Bureau of Sta-
tistics of Labor, the Inspector of Immigration for
Boston.
The editor has again had the general assistance
viii PREFACE
of his colleague in the direction of the South End
House, Mr. William I. Cole. Mrs. William L.
Rutan, an associate in the work of the settlement
during the past ten years, beside making her con-
tributions to the text, has assisted with the proof-
reading and prepared the index. Several residents
of the House have helped with the collection of
statistics and other data for some of the chapters,
chiefly Messrs. Fred E. Haynes, Rufus E. Miles,
Roswell F. Phelps and Everett W. Goodhue.
While the study was in its early stages the
writers received valuable suggestions from two
books, both written by men now or formerly con-
nected with Toynbee Hall and therefore from a
point of view particularly suited to the present
purpose. These books are “Italy To-Day,” by
Bolton King and Thomas Okey (Scribners), and
“The Jew in London,” by C. Russell and H. S.
Lewis (Crowell).
The double-page maps, which are brought down
to the time of publication, are intended accurately
to indicate preponderating conditions in each block.
In the nationality map, where there is a double
strip of color, it is to be understood that no single
nationality is in a majority in the block, but that
two nationalities are represented in proportions of
from thirty to fifty per cent, each. In the map
PR EFACE ix
showing industrial grades, a type of block is shown
here which does not exist at the South End, - one
in which the unskilled and the clerks are somewhat
equally represented, while skilled workmen are
hardly found. This state of things, which goes with
the Jewish tendency to leap over the skilled labor
stage in their haste to become shopkeepers, is
marked by a new mixed color. In preparing the
maps, the same detailed methods have been fol-
lowed as those explained in the preface of “The
City Wilderness.” The district maps cover nearly
the whole of two wards and a small portion of a
third. The North End is substantially identical
with Ward 6, so far as population is concerned.
The West End maps cover practically all of Ward
8, with a narrow strip of Ward 11.
In a few instances reference is made to “The
City Wilderness” for a somewhat fuller treatment
of topics which naturally called for greater em-
phasis in that volume than in this. In one or
two cases some repetition seemed advisable. The
two books are essentially independent. It is the
earnest hope of the writers, however, having pro-
ceeded thus far, that these may be fitted together
with the results of further investigations into a
comprehensive exposition of social conditions in
Boston at the beginning of the twentieth century.
II.
III.
IV.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
XI.
XII.
CONTENTS
. METES AND BOUNDs e º e t e
Robert A. Woods.
BEFORE THE INVASION
Elizabeth Y. Rutan.
THE INVADING HosT
Frederick A. Bushée.
CITY AND SLUM . tº º e º & º
Edward H. Chandler.
. LIVELIHOOD
Robert A. Woods.
. TEAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP . © e
Robert A. Woods.
LAw AND ORDER
William I. Cole.
IIFE's AMENITIES tº º º e e
Jessie Fremont Beale and Anne Withington.
Two ANCIENT FAITHS .
William I. Cole.
. THE CHILD OF THE STRANGER
Caroline S. Atherton and Elizabeth Y. Rutan.
CoMMUNITY OF INTEREST e
William I. Cole and Rufus E. Miles.
ASSIMILATION: A Two-EDGED SworD . &
Robert A. Woods.
PAGE
11
40
71
... 104
. 147
. 190
. 224
. 254
. 289
. 321
. 356
II.
III.
VII.
VIII.
XI.
MAPS
PAGE
. BOSTON IN OUTLINE . º e º q tº ... 2
BOSTON, 1722 . º & g © g sº , 24
NATIONALITIES IN THE NORTH END & tº . 40
Compiled by Frederick A. Bushée and Rufus E.
Miles.
. NATIONALITIES IN THE WEST END . e * . 46
Compiled by Frederick A. Bushée and Rufus E.
Miles.
... BUILDINGS IN THE NORTH END * g & . 70
Compiled by Frederick A. Bushée and Roswell F.
Phelps.
... BUILDINGS IN THE WEST END . g tº § . 76
Compiled by Frederick A. Bushée and Roswell F.
Phelps.
A TYPE OF TENEMENT-Bouse. IMPROVEMENT . 90
INDUSTRIAL GRADES IN THE NORTH END . . 130
Compiled by Rufus E. Miles and Robert A. Woods.
INDUSTRIAL GRADES IN THE WEST END . gº . 136
Compiled by Rufus E. Miles and Robert A. Woods.
. INSTITUTIONS IN THE North END . º º . 288
Compiled by William I. Cole.
INSTITUTIONS IN THE WEST END . tº g . 320
Compiled by William I. Cole.
ROXBURY
OUTLINE MAP OF BOSTON
OMITTING SUBURBAN DISTRICTS

AMERICANS IN PROCESS
CHAPTER I
METES AND BOUNDS
FROM Boston Common two blocks to the north
begins a wedge-shaped open space, in whose extreme
angle commercial respectability fades away into
freak shows, burlesque theatres, palm gardens, and
the like. Scollay Square has so many radiating
outlets to all corners of heaven that it might have
afforded the original suggestion of Boston's some-
what outworn municipal epithet. One street dips
and then runs on as straight as these old streets
ever run, into the heart of the North End.
Another, having begun its winding course on the
city side among great office buildings, loses itself in
the square, but takes up the thread again at an un-
expected point among the dubious resorts, as a West
End thoroughfare. A third street is one of the
approaches to the North Union Station. The
station, with its broad stretch of tracks and the
2 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
stream of traffic to and from it, all flanked by
thoroughfares to Charlestown and East Cambridge,
sets off the North and West Ends distinctly
from each other. At night, however, after the
streets leading to the station become comparatively
deserted, the districts are united by two steady
processions jostling each other as they slowly move
back and forth, – shoppers, theatre-goers, callers,
strollers.
The North End is less than half a mile in any
of its dimensions. It is a “tight little island,”
hemmed in by continuous and ever-encroaching
currents of commercial activity. The station
thoroughfares lead to the markets. The markets
extend to the docks. The docks reach around
from the markets to the railroads again.
The West End, beginning at the North Station,
— with whose traffic it is more concerned than the
North End, - has another curving water front as
a boundary. On the south, Beacon Hill makes
an effectual barrier. The West End population
is allowed, however, to take possession of the bleak
northeast slope. It is also beginning to make its
way by force around the foot of the hill on either
side.
The interior frame of the North End is that of
one main highway to the East Boston ferry, with
METES AND BOUNDS 3
a tributary street running on either side of it.
The thoroughfare, Hanover Street, is cosmopolitan.
Salem Street, toward the water, selected as a place
of peaceful abode by Hebraist Puritans, is now, in
the whirligig of time, turned over to the Hebrews
themselves. North Street, on the side toward the
markets, is, as it were, an Alpine pass through cold-
storage warehouses into “Little Italy.” These
three arteries of travel open the way to a network
of cross-streets, passageways and blind alleys.
The West End has two squares serving as
ganglia for its communication, one with the busi-
ness section of the city, the other with the North
Station. Beyond these squares go thoroughfares
converging toward the West Boston Bridge to
Cambridgeport. Most of the streets auxiliary to
these are not so narrow nor so close together as the
corresponding communicating ways of the North
End. The situation in the West End is one of
contrasts, – places as dark and noisome as any in
the North End; frequent rows of houses retaining
an air of comfort and respectability such as has
almost wholly passed from the North End. Often
these contrasts represent the degenerate and pro-
gressive extremes of life among the remnant of
the former possessors of both districts, the Irish.
The North and West Ends do not have the
4 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
advantage of being central and pivotal in their
accessibility to the whole city, as the South End
has." They stand curiously aloof, so far as
social contact and intercommunication are con-
cerned. The North End, shut in between the busi-
ness section and the water, has no nearer neigh-
bor for resident population— excluding the West
End itself — than Charlestown and East Boston.
The West End is almost as completely isolated.
It touches other resident population only at the
confines of the Beacon Hill quarter; and this is
the one point where any of the struggling people
of these districts have the semblance of neighborly
contact with prosperous and responsible Boston
citizens. As the inhabitants of this part of the
West End are chiefly negroes, it is to be feared
that the only relation resulting from the propin-
quity is a constrained political one, and mutually
corrupting at that.
Indeed, as so often happens, contact produces a
recoil, - the black belt shuts off the West End
from view to a considerable extent. On the other
hand, the very distinctness of the North End as a
community in itself constitutes part of the attrac.
tion which it holds for the imagination. It is true,
of course, that the history of the West End as a
* The City Wilderness, p. 4.
METES AND BOUNDS 5
poor district is somewhat recent, while the North
End has for generations been Boston's classic land
of poverty. To this day, though other parts of
the city can show worse neighborhoods, economi-
cally and morally, it is difficult for the elderly
Boston citizen to set any distressing occurrence as-
sociated with the life of the poor in other scenes
than those of the North End.
The North End combines in curious fashion the
atmosphere belonging to distinct foreign colonies
with that of many of the special historic associa-
tions and mementos of old Boston. Its Revolu-
tionary landmarks make it a source of pride to all
intelligent citizens of Boston. There are few days
in the year when some group of visitors in the city
do not find their way to these interesting spots.
They can hardly return through the North End
throng without some anxious query as to the part
which the most recent recruits will take in the
American people's future history. Such coming
and going also serves to give the immigrant some
intimation of the better standards which mark the
country of his adoption.
The West End is more modern ; and being so
near to the heart of the city contains a number
of the institutions that are inseparable from the
movement of a great city's life. Some of these
6 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
suggest care about its wreckage and tragedy, -
the Charity Building, the Wayfarers’ Lodge, several
great hospitals, the county jail, the morgue. The
public dignity of the community is present in the
State House and the Court House, both of which
reach back to the edge of this district. Naturally
these different institutions bring a large number
of responsible citizens back and forth in the West
End, and contribute toward the existence of a
human touch between it and more favored parts
of the city.
Even the indifferent among the rich are com-
pelled on occasion to have a glimpse of the North
and West End Lazarus. The way to Europe, if
one sail from Boston, lies through the North End.
The way to the North Shore and its summer
charms lies through the West End. Before em-
barking on train or ship, with all their wafting
suggestion, there comes to many that challenge of
responsibility for the common good, which is the
very life of democracy, and without which, as recent
solemn warnings have assured us, our great cities
will rush to industrial and moral disaster.
This feeling of responsibility, so far as Boston
is concerned, has to a large extent been infused
into the Boston mind as the result of half a century
of endeavor directed toward meeting the needs of
METES AND BOUNDS 7
the particular districts of the city which are under
review in this volume. The constant change and
growth of the problem as a result of successive
tidal waves of immigration has made it impossible
for the methods of the past to keep pace with the
needs which they sought to remedy. Nevertheless,
there was developed in these districts, before the
days of scientific charity or preventive philan-
thropy, that keen social compunction out of whose
very failures those maturer developments have
arisen.
Fifteen years ago the organization of charity
began to ripen into forms of action designed to
shut off some of the need of relief in the indi-
vidual and family life, and lift the people, espe-
cially the young, to the level of fair opportunities
of industry and happiness. But a final over-
whelming incursion of helpless, inarticulate for-
eigners swept in upon the North End, and in less
degree upon the West End, necessarily postponing
the larger growth of personal philanthropy, and
precipitating sanitary, industrial and moral prob-
lems so threatening that it became necessary to
call upon the State for new and unprecedented
forms of legislative action.
The crowding of buildings upon land, and of
human beings into buildings, became extreme and
8 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
unendurable. There was much determined action
on the part of the Board of Health, under the
reassuring spur of an even more determined pub-
lic sentiment. It was found, however, that the
powers of the Board were insufficient. In London,
the sanitary authorities had been granted power
not merely to vacate but to destroy objectionable
habitations, and certain great single areas had
been demolished. New York had, so far as legis-
lation goes, followed in the footsteps of England,
but there had been as yet no satisfactory enforce-
ment of the law. In Boston this most advanced
form of legislation against the slum has for five
years now been enforced with increasing grasp and
effectiveness.
The new immigrant population introduced a
system of home industry tending quickly to degrade
family life and to depress greatly the wage stan-
dard of our people. Through adequate legislation,
systematically administered, Boston has conducted
an original experiment of the highest importance
to the whole civilized world, resulting in the practi-
cal abolition of that worst pest of city industry,
the sweating system.
At the same time, without special legislation,
but by the direct pressure of public sentiment
upon the police authorities, a telling blow has been
METES AND BOUNDS 9
dealt at the different established headquarters of
those degrading forms of prostitution which, in
New York particularly, have grown to be the most
serious threat of congested tenement life.
By these searching reforms directed almost ex-
clusively at conditions in the North and West
Ends, the two districts have had some of the most
unyielding factors eliminated bodily from their
social equation. As a result, voluntary public
service, through which the whole of both districts
is kept under general moral surveillance and, in
lesser degree, under influences of a personally
inspiring and upbuilding sort, finds itself in a
wholly new stage of incentive and opportunity.
It is an even greater source of encouragement that
the developments of private philanthropy seem
likely to be far outdistanced by the ministry of
social opportunity on the part of the municipality.
The growth of communities of Continental
immigrants in Boston was at first of the nature
of a calamity to the city. The main action of the
community as a whole was brought to bear, and
the calamitous stage was erelong safely passed.
Boston has contrived to erect dikes against its
quota of the deluge of tenement-house evils with
which New York and, in a different way, Chicago
are still overwhelmed. Some years must still
10 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
elapse before the two great metropolitan cities,
with their appalling difficulties, shall have come
into a calm and steady era of reconstruction such
as Boston has already reached. Meanwhile, the
situation outlined in these chapters may more or
less closely represent the problem of alien life
which confronts the average large city in the
United States. It is true that no city in the coun-
try has the recuperative resources, in proportion
to its size, that are available in the matured com-
munity existence of Boston. It is, however, one
of the chief distinctions of present-day American
life in general that there is so great a variety of
effort, municipal, commercial, philanthropic, for
the advancement of general human well-being
among all our urban populations.
CHAPTER II
BEFORE THE INVASION
UNTIL the year 1630, the tract of New Eng-
land soil that was to become the town of Boston
lay a rough and almost uncultivated stretch of
perhaps six hundred acres, uninhabited save for
a solitary English farmer whose name is pre-
served at the northern and southern extremes
of his ancient squatter's claim in Blackstone
Street and Blackstone Square. The territory
was known by the Indians as Shawmut, and was
in form a peninsula, connected with the main-
land upon the south by a narrow neck. With
broken, irregular outline, it extended into the
harbor in a general northerly direction, terminating
at the northeast and northwest in promontories at
the points where the Charles and the Mystic
empty into the bay. The fields sloping back from
these promontories were the sections known to-day
as the North and West Ends of Boston, and were
separated at that time by a deep tidal inlet, covered
with water at high tide, but at ebb presenting a
12 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
dreary surface of mud flats, in extent about equal
to the present Boston Common.
These extremes of the city are often referred
to as its oldest parts. In reality the western pas-
tures lay almost untouched for a century, while
the eastern extremity as a building site was only
the second thought of the colonists. The latter
lay due north from the narrow neck, directly across
the bay from Charlestown. In a letter sent back
to England by a young girl, one of the first boat-
load of immigrants to land at Shawmut, is a de-
scription of the locality. “A place very uneven,”
Ann Pollard writes, “abounding in small hollows
and swamps covered with blueberries and other
low bushes.” Between the low northern tract,
which these words seem to fit, and the higher
lands to the south lay an almost impassable marsh,
now marked by Blackstone Street, and it is to this
feature that the district owes its earliest name,
“The Island of North Boston.” Over the marsh's
narrowest breadth, a distance of about eight hun-
dred feet, the waters of the inlet upon the west
and those of a deep indentation known as the
Great Cove upon the east mingled at high tide
and cut off the land to the north from the main
body of the peninsula. Except for an elevation
of fifty feet close by the shore, now known as
BEFORE THE IN VASION 13
Copp's Hill, upon which the girl may have stood
as she framed her description, Shawmut's north-
ern acres were low and would easily come within
her range. Looking beyond them to the south
across the waters of the Great Cove on her left,
she might see Fort Hill, to-day but a memory
brought to mind by the name Fort Hill Square.
Beyond the waters of the tidal inlet on her right,
soon to be transformed into the Mill Pond, rose
the three long since diminished heads of Beacon
Hill, the tri-mountain from which Boston gained
her second name, preserved in Tremont Street.
The company of English Puritans who pur-
chased the territory just described landed at a
point on the coast near the present Charles River
Bridge in the fall of 1630, and crossed the marsh,
establishing their first homes in the neighborhood
of Spring Lane. For a year or more, the chief
business of their town government was the allot-
ment of land. Only a very few assignments were
made in the western pastures, but in consequence
of the business possibilities suggested by the harbor
frontage, shore allotments in the northern acres
Soon came to be looked upon as desirable. Al-
though the low interior of the district probably
did not appeal to the settlers at once as a site for
homes, it was not long before its advantages were
14 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
discovered. Its nearness to what soon showed them-
selves to be future business parts of the town, the
coast line and Dock Square, gradually caused it to
find favor in the eyes of the artisans, with their
long hours of labor and their frequent habit of
combining home and shop. Between the first
place of settlement and the point upon the coast
nearest the opposite village of Charlestown a track
was naturally worn to the ferry, and along this
road and to either side of it sprang up the humble
homes of cobbler, carpenter, candle-maker, cooper,
and biscuit baker, — low cottages with shops at-
tached, and in many cases with land at the back
sloping down to a wharf. In a few years the main
outlines of the old North End were those that
may be seen to-day, a district but three streets
wide, – Hanover, Salem, and North streets, –
with Hanover Street, then as now, the middle and
main thoroughfare, “The Way leading to the
Ferry.” Salem and North streets followed the
coast line; and east and west from the highway
ran connecting lanes, their crooked outlines, which
more than two hundred years of travel have not
made straight, taking shape according to the
caprice of the home-builders.
The first poor cottages that lined these quiet,
country roads were no proof of the energy and
BEFORE THE IN VASION 15
ingenuity of their owners. The colony's scanty
records afford occasional impressive glimpses of
the determination that made the hamlet a town,
and many of the efforts most important to the
general welfare centred at the North End. A
nineteenth century historian has exclaimed con-
cerning Boston, “No other great city of the world
has undergone such changes at the hands of man;
not a trace of its original outline remains.” The
beginning of this remarkable transformation may
be traced to the measures taken to supply the
early demand for mill facilities. Across the tidal
inlet that separated the North End from the
remote western pastures ran a ridge of land where
Causeway Street now lies, that had been used by
the Indians as a footpath over the flats. This
ridge suggested a dam with the possibilities of water-
power, and in a few years from the time of settle-
ment the acres of useless, offensive flats had been
transformed into a Mill Pond supplying power for
tidal grist-mills, for years the chief mills of the
town. A company of men who soon leased the
Mill Pond privileges drained the marsh, digging a
deep trench at the narrowest point and bridging
it. The canal thus formed connected the Mill
Pond and the Great Cove, and was known for a
century and a half as the Mill Creek.
16 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
Such changes as these, rapidly increasing as they
did both the accessibility and the business impor-
tance of the North End, resulted in the district’s
becoming before the end of the century the most
densely populated part of the town, – a charac-
ter it has never lost. In the burying-ground on
Copp's Hill it is said that more than half of the
inhabitants of the town during its first century
were buried. That the population was fairly
prosperous as well as numerous may be inferred
from the building of the Second Church in 1650,
the meeting-house of the famous Mathers on North
Square. As the North End grew, this square be-
came the centre of the district, both as a residen-
tial quarter and a place of public assembly. The
town pump was there, and one of the earliest mar-
ket-places, and after the building of the church
the residences of the most influential parishioners
clustered about it or were built in the adjoining
streets. The successive generations of Mathers
all lived near the church, and men like Holyoke,
the soap-boiler, father of the future Harvard pre-
sident, plied their trades in the cottages round
about.
For the first half century, the North End con-
tinued a growing, flourishing community. From
what we may gather, that earliest Society had
BEFORE THE IN VASION 17
a certain ideal character despite its grim defects.
The settlers were largely artisans, but they were
artisans of unusual quality and intense religious
convictions, whose chief ambition was to make
homes and establish an ideal state, where “magis-
trate and minister walked hande in hande, dis-
countenancing and punishing sin in whomsoever,
and standing for the praise of them that do well.”
The homesteads of very few can be positively
located, though here and there the memory of a
man's residence and a glimpse of character sur-
vives in the name of his property or the record
of some public act. Thomas Marshall — keeper
of the first ferry “from Mylne Point to Charles-
town,” which lay at the foot of Black Horse
Lane, later Prince Street — frequently appears in
the old records. “Ferryman, shoemaker, select-
man, land-owner, and deacon,” he may be regarded
as a representative citizen. His home and gar-
den were on “The Highway leading from the
Orange Tavern to the Ferry;” and in 1652,
moved by an idea that was perhaps shrewd as
well as generous, he gave the town a roading
across his land to shorten the distance to the
drawbridge over the Mill Creek, just as Marshall
Street now offers a short-cut from Union to Han-
over Street.
18 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
This gift of a short-cut suggests also another
story, that of the growth that had gone on at
either side of the creek, too rapidly to be a sub-
stantial one. Stores and dwellings were of poor,
slight character, structures designed to meet a
hasty need, and of inflammable material. A
growth of this kind could not be long uninter-
rupted, and between 1676 and 1679 the catas-
trophe inevitable in a thickly settled community
of such a sort took place. Great fires swept the
northern end of the town ; the first, north of
the creek, consuming the church on North Square
and many dwellings roundabout ; the second, start-
ing in Dock Square and spreading until eighty
dwelling-houses, seventy warehouses, and several
vessels lying in dock were burned.
As nearly as it may be defined, the conflagra-
tions of the last quarter of the century mark the
close of the first period of Boston life, the dis-
tinctly Puritan period. The rebuilding of the north-
ern part of the town was accomplished by a people
entering upon very different conditions from those
affecting the men who first struck their spades into
the rocky soil of the blueberry pastures. Grow-
ing prosperity and a rapidly increasing population
united with the change from colonial to crown
government that came in 1685 to bring about
IBEFORE THE IN VASION 19
marked alterations both in habits and ideals.
English governors with their families and a train
of servants and employees introduced a social
life long distinct and alien from that of the Puri-
tans, but none the less exerting a powerful and
subtle influence. If Thomas Marshall, shoemaker
and selectman, was representative of the first
period, John Hull, merchant and mint-master,
was as surely a type of the second. He, too,
lived north of the Mill Creek, where a street
still testifies to his position in the community;
and it was in his home on Sheafe Street that the
first mint was set up. It is John Hull who
said of Endicott, “He died poor, as most of
our rulers do, having more attended the public
than their own private interests.” Hull's virtues
were after another order. He did not die poor.
“He rendered fairly to the public, and in return
he took his own.”
With the appointment of Sir William Phips in
1692, the story of North End life becomes more
varied. Governor Phips had been a North End
boy, apprentice to a ship-carpenter, and upon his
return to Boston, enriched and titled, after many
years of absence, he built a “fair dwelling” near
his boyhood’s haunts. It may have been the
mansion house of Sir William and Lady Phips,
20 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
on the corner of Charter Street, that first
turned the tide of fashion across the Mill Creek;
for at the beginning of the new century the sober
streets of the North End were here and there re-
lieved by the gay attire and free demeanor of men
to whom court life was a familiar experience; and
mingling with the gossip of the North Church
parish spread rumors of the doings of fashionable
dames who were making the best of a temporary
exile from English society.
The buildings that sprang up after the great
fire expressed both increasing prosperity and these
changing social conditions. The flames had de-
stroyed the hovels, and the new houses of brick
and cement suggested hospitality, and had a com-
fort and a beauty of their own. Many of the better
sort were built with overhanging stories and clus-
tered gables. These devices at once gave an
imposing appearance and helped out the limited
space of the building lot, and between each and its
neighbor there was only room enough for “the
privilege of eaves-dripping.” This is but one of
the many indications that the district was growing
crowded. Early in the century building companies
began to form, cutting new roads through such
meadows as yet remained, and laying them out in
house lots, narrow at the front but affording long
BEFORE THE IN VASION 21
gardens at the back; and by 1708, when the first
formal list of streets was made, there were found
to be as many streets, lanes, and alleys around
Dock Square and northward as in all the rest of
the town.
If the North End at this time is to be thought
of as the centre of population and business, the
South End, stretching from Milk Street out toward
the Neck, held, perhaps, the suburban part of the
town, while the West End still offered opportunity
for residents who preferred isolation or homes par-
taking of the nature of farms. The last was a
section triangular in shape, and it had at the begin-
ning of the seventeenth century but two roads cut
through its pastures, – Sudbury Street, connecting
it with the business centre, and Cambridge Street.
Beyond were fields and pastures, which were
coming to be called “The New Fields,” as the
eyes of the citizens turned speculatively toward
them. What is now Bowdoin Square was known
as Bowling Green, and fell away in a grassy slope
to the Mill Pond. On a small eminence on Cam-
bridge Street stood a windmill. At the point of
the triangle were copper works, and in various
parts of the fields were most of the ropewalks of
the town, long, narrow sheds, sometimes over seven
hundred feet in length, where rope and twine of all
22 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
sorts were spun. The ropewalks became an im-
portant industry in Boston, as many as sixty
spinning at one time. Even at this early date
there was great demand for their products both
from vessels rigged for foreign service and from
fishing and coasting craft demanding rougher sort
of cordage. The district was very sparsely peo-
pled, containing only an occasional farm and the
dwellings of the proprietors of those little manu-
facturing enterprises that demanded the stretch of
ground the New Fields afforded. The land was
in the hands of a few men whose names are handed
down in the streets cut later on through their pas-
tures. Phillips, Leverett, Lynde and Staniford,
Chambers and Russell, were large property holders,
while the Rev. James Allen at the beginning of
the eighteenth century owned a far larger part
of the territory of Boston than was ever held by
any one individual save Blackstone, the pioneer.
The history of the district is simply one of
changing and increasing proprietors and their
building enterprises, and can be almost completely
traced up to the time of the Revolution in the
names of its streets. This last may be said also
of the North End, except for the difference that
there is between its characteristics and those
of the West End. The latter is the story of indi-
BEFORE THE IN VASION 23
vidual citizens of an established community; while
the history of the North End, as told by the vary-
ing names of its streets, is a tale of a town's in-
ception and hard-won development. In the early
Puritan times, the titles given the streets of the
latter district are mostly of a cumbrous, descrip-
tive character, as “The street leading up to the
house of Sir William Phips, Knight.” In Garden
Court Street there still lingers a pleasant flavor of
the descriptive custom ; but most of the old names
that survive chronicle events rather than character-
istics, and show the difference between the simple
expedients of a hamlet and the exacting demands
of a growing town. The more formal and perma-
nent names of streets appear in the complete list
already mentioned as having been made in 1708.
At that time Black Horse Lane ceased to be called
after the tavern at its head and was known as
Prince Street, while Fleet Street became the
recognized title of Scarlet's Wharf Lane.
The year 1700 may be said to mark about the
middle of a half century in which New England
life was in a transition state. “The Pilgrims had
gone out,” wrote Sewall, “and the large men
had not come in.” Intellectually this was Boston's
dark age. The fervor of the religious life that
animated the first settlers was going, and the
24 AlMERICANS IN PROCESS
records of the churches show petty and revolting
altercations. It was its mercantile importance,
constantly increasing, that saved the social character
of the town. So important a seaport could not be
neglected by the mother country. The supervision
of the colony's affairs demanded the services of
clever governors ; the business openings offered by
growing trade brought good blood from the old
world to seek a younger son's uncertain fortunes
in the new ; and many of the incoming merchants
and crown officials chose their dwellings north of
the creek. Before the century had completed its
first quarter the sober, church-going North End
was well started upon its bravest period, and for
fifty years was to be known as the court end of
the town. The pronounced change from exclusive
Puritanism was plainly manifested by the building
of Christ Church on Salem Street in 1723. Its
congregation, without doubt, was mainly made up
of the families of the new English merchants and
the crown officials, and the demand for its existence
shows the considerable size of the new society, as
the style of the edifice the wealth of its members.
North Square continued to be the social centre,
and it represented both phases of life at their best.
Side by side with the modest, substantial houses
that were the homes of the attendants of the
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B EFORE THE IN VASION 25
church of the Mathers stood two mansions around
the memory of which are gathered tales of Splen-
dor and ceremony in little accord with the tradi-
tions of the Puritans. One of these, Governor
Hutchinson’s home, is inseparably connected with
the Stamp Act troubles, for in 1765 it was sacked
by the infuriated mob, its owner barely escaping
with his life; while around the house of Sir Harry
Frankland linger not only tales of the young Port
collector's luxurious tastes, but also the strange
romance of Agnes Surriage, his peasant ward of
Marblehead. These houses have long since dis-
appeared, and the one landmark now remaining
upon the square, in the low wooden house of Paul
Revere, is a reminder of a very different life and
spirit. The age-long drama of the Roundhead
and the Cavalier was being enacted in New Eng-
land as truly as it had been in the old. While a
mimic London society gives color to the fifty years
preceding the Revolution, a deeper, stronger life
was developing among the plain people, which was
doubtless broadened and rendered more effective in
its final outbreak by the forced contact with the
fashionable world. Names and phrases, well-worn
to-day, were used then for the first time with no
thought that they were to prove the imperishable
catchwords of a great nation's politics. “Samuel
26 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
Adams and twenty others,” writes an old historian,
“used to meet and make a caucus.” This is the
first time this word is seen; and from the fact
that the meetings referred to were held in a part
of Boston where the ship business was carried on,
etymologists have agreed that caucus is a corrup-
tion of calkers, meeting being understood. A
few years later, upon Washington’s birthday,
William Cooper uttered the famous words, “The
spirit of the times; ” and on June seventeenth of
the same year, 1774, there was coined in Boston the
phrase “Continental Congress,” when a term was
required to show American union as opposed to
the English king and Parliament. Boston was be-
coming more than a colonial town, and the little
North End held within its narrow breadth not only
governing forces from an old world, but also the
germs of a young republic.
The days of Winthrop and Endicott, Sewall and
Hull, were gone, but young men were being born
and bred in Boston in whose greatness posterity
has had even more reason to believe. Franklin
had left his father's home at the corner of Han-
over and Union streets before 1725, preferring
to seek his fortune in another line than that of
his inherited trade of soap-boiling and candle-
making; but Adams and Hancock and Revere
REFORE THE IN VASION 27
and Otis lived or worked at the North End dur-
ing the middle years of the century, suavely and
shrewdly conducting their business by day, while
nightly they foregathered at the Green Dragon or
the Salutation Inn, maturing plans of which the
results were to help on the birth of a nation.
This, however, was but an undercurrent for years,
scarcely disturbing the calm surface of Boston's
steady material development. North of the Mill
Creek the streets grew crowded with dwellings, all
of brick after 1711, when the law forbade the fur-
ther use of wood. Side gardens became too valu-
able for their owners to keep, and houses elbowed
each other in their effort for frontage, or actually
united in blocks. Another church had been erected,
“seventeen substantial mechanics” forming a new
society; and on the site of the Eliot School of
to-day had been established a “Latin Grammar
School” for boys. Every sort of business flour-
ished along the water line and about the Town
Dock. In 1724 sixteen master ship-carpenters of
the Thames were complaining to the King that
their trade was being injured and their workmen
were emigrating on account of the New England
competition ; and six of the shipyards that were
proving such formidable rivals to the mother coun-
try lay just at the base of Copp's Hill. The great
28 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
gift of Faneuil Hall, made to the town by Peter
Faneuil in 1740, established the gateway to the
North End for the remainder of the century as
the business heart of Boston.
With this growth of business came increased
population and constant demand for building lots
having frontage upon thoroughfares. Under such
need the West End, during the second quarter of
the eighteenth century, grew rapidly to be a com-
munity by itself. Leverett Street was cut through
in 1730, forming a second highway to Cambridge,
and by 1733 all the older thoroughfares had been
laid out and named. The beginning of a local
social life is seen in the establishment of the West
Church in 1736. This church was put up on
Lynde Street, opposite Cambridge Street, and from
the day of its establishment throughout the century
and a half of its existence it continued to represent
in both pulpit and parish a most substantial type
of Boston life, both social and intellectual. Cotton
Hill, where crown officials formed an exclusive
society, and the Bowling Green were the only
centres of wealth in the westerly part of the
town. The other streets were built up gradually
with modest, comfortable homes, with compara-
tively little business encroachment except the small
shops and the increasing number of ropewalks,
BEFORE THE IN VASION 29
though these last fled before the homes instead of
the usual reverse result.
In spite of court end traditions, of which the
novelists make the most, and the alleged splen-
dors of Cotton Hill, the pre-revolutionary life of
Boston seems strangely simple. John Frizell, a
wealthy merchant who lived on Garden Court the
first quarter of the eighteenth century, and who
owned much land in the neighborhood, was the first
man in Boston to keep a carriage, and the first stable
in the town was his on Moon Street. By 1768, the
number of people to keep carriages was only twenty-
two, and even at the end of the century they num-
bered but one hundred and forty-five. Few houses
were spacious enough to admit of large functions,
and festivities of any size were held in one or two
halls that could be hired for such occasions at the
North End. Aside from the official life and a
Small group of large merchants, the prosperity
of the town was represented by master mechanics
and tradesmen. Toward the end of the century
six of the wealthiest men of the town were bakers,
three of whom, John White, Edward Edes, and
Deacon Tudor, lived at the North End. At the
time of the siege of Boston, the baker, Ebenezer
Torrey, removed to Sudbury, and died leaving an
estate of $100,000.
30 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
When the discontent of half a century culmi-
nated in the uncontrollable outbreak that became
the War of Independence, the North End was
the scene of exciting preliminary action, and the
vantage ground from which the first decisive battle
was watched. There seems to be no doubt that
the plain people, joined by a scattering few of the
wealthier class, formed the nucleus of Boston's
patriotic party. Paul Revere, the versatile North
Square goldsmith, has left on record, “In the fall
of 1774 and winter of 1775, I was one of upwards
thirty, chiefly mechanics, who formed themselves
into a committee for the purpose of watching the
British soldiers and gaining every intelligence of
the movements of the Tories.”
These days, in which the North End reached
the height of its historic fame, were in their very
nature the beginning of its decadence. When
General Howe left Boston, on the eighth of March,
1776, he took with him nearly one thousand of the
residents of the town. Such wealthy and impor-
tant families as the North End had held were among
these refugees; and in the period of reconstruction
that followed the war, the little Island of North
Boston, though continuing to be the most populous
district of the town, and containing within its nar-
row confines one third of the whole number of
REFORE THE IN VASION 31
inhabitants on the peninsula, did not again attract
people of means and ideas of luxurious living.
Its streets were narrow and crooked, its houses
small and too thickly crowded to admit of new
buildings. The tide of fashion turned westward
and up the slopes of the trimountain ; and even
the Puritan type, as it prospered and rebuilt, found
the North End unsuited to its broadening tastes.
Previous to the Evacuation, the largest congrega-
tion in the town had been that of the New North
Church on Hanover Street. Its subsequent decay
is typical of the change in the whole district. In
1775, many of its members retired to the country,
and upon their return to Boston did not renew
their connection with the church. Says an old
chronicler, “The young gentlemen who have mar-
ried wives in other parts of the town have found
it difficult to persuade them to become so ungenteel
as to attend worship at the North End. Even the
clergymen have abandoned that part of the town.
There are six large congregations to the northward
of the canal, and only one of their ministers re-
sides there.” Hanover and Salem streets and
their lanes were left to folk of busy lives and lim-
ited means who still prized the advantages of homes
near the centre of trade ; and until the middle
of the century they held a constantly decreasing
32 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
number of thrifty mechanics and small merchants,
with occasional families of means and culture who
clung to their old homes.
The loss in population which Boston sustained
after the war had been made up by a new element
coming into the city to take advantage of the fresh
commercial openings. This consisted of wealthy
country families, largely from Essex County, who
quickly took a prominent part in both the business
and public life of the town. Splendid mansions
were built, exceeding anything that Boston had
seen before in the way of homes; many on Fort
Hill, some on Beacon Hill, and others on the Bowl-
ing Green, which in 1788 received its new name.
It was at that time the seat of spacious old-time
mansion houses, with beautiful grounds and fine
trees, and most of the householders were well-
known men. By the beginning of the century,
Bowdoin Square was the most important social
centre at the West End, and it was almost the
only spot at the time where any large number of
wealthy or distinguished families built.
By 1775 the cross streets in the vicinity of the
square had most of them the outlines of to-day.
Further west the greater part of the area was in
its primitive condition of pastures, with the pest-
house and the Province hospital located upon Grove
BEFORE THE IN VASION 33
Street by reason of the remoteness of the locality.
In 1784 the whole West End held one meeting-house
and about one hundred and seventy dwellings, and
it was looked upon as rather a remote district,
although it was regarded favorably as a pleasant
and healthy one on account of its shelter from the
east winds. From the beginning of the nineteenth
century, its growth was rapid in every direction.
In thirty years it had outwardly much the appear-
ance of to-day, and socially the character that it was
to preserve for half a century. To the west and
north, streets were quickly put through, and by 1804
Pinckney and Hancock and Myrtle streets were
crowned with pleasant homes. In that year the
child population had become sufficiently large and
democratic to demand a public school, and the
Mayhew School was erected on the corner of Char-
don and Hawkins streets.
The social development of the West End was
for many years in inverse ratio to the decay of the
North End. Just as the former reached its best
development, the latter, about 1850, was yielding
up its last traces of the old American life. Its
changes, however, after the first great loss of
wealth in 1775, were gradual ones. Names still
spoken in Boston are associated with the decadent
period of the old court end. Hanover Street,
34 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
though abounding in small stores, held a good
many substantial families up to 1840. On Sheafe
Street, Lyman Beecher and his famous family
made their home ; and it is this street, with its old
gardens at the back, which was the last to suc-
cumb to the pressure of the immigrants. Its final
surrender was dramatically sudden, according to
the district's historian. Nine families who ate
Thanksgiving dinner on Sheafe Street one year
were partaking of it the next at the South End.
North Street, long doubtful in character, sunk still
further in degradation, and gradually infected its
neighbors. One by one the quiet streets were
encroached upon by the two fatal enemies of home
life, the tenement and retail business; until for
fifty years the North End has been simply a
synonym for the first sheltering place of hordes of
immigrants fleeing from oppressive conditions of
the old world ; one race after another successively
settling, prospering, and moving on.
As of old, North Square is the centre of a social
life; but over the doors of houses where once
stood the homes of English carpenters, coopers,
and candle-makers, hang Italian patronymics; and
the quiet triangle resounds to the chatter of a
people to whom the tongue of IIolyoke and Mather
is almost as strange as the famous Puritans' names.
JB EFORE THE IN VASION 35
As of old, the district is but three streets wide.
The pressure of business buildings erected on the
new land keeps the tenements within the old out-
lines prescribed by the waters of the long-forgot-
ten Pond, Creek, and Cove. The North End is no
longer an island, no longer even a peninsula; acres
of made land connect its area with that of the West
End, the promontory so many centuries divided
from it by the tide-water and the Mill Pond. At
the beginning of the last century, the Mill Pond
was filled in ; in 1828 the water was cut off from
the Mill Creek; and in 1868 came the final ob-
literations of the island's early outlines, when the
shore of the Great Cove was dredged and the
Cove made solid land by the transference to its bed
of the earth that had once formed Fort Hill.
Boston’s original distinguishing features, a histo-
rian observes, were its hills and coves; but in
the course of years “its coves have swallowed up
its hills.”
This development of the old district's possi-
bilities had its effect upon the character of the
neighboring West End, though the change was so
gradual as to be hardly perceptible at any one time.
For many years the district altered very little out-
wardly, the vacant lots on the slopes of the hill
filling up with tall, narrow houses overflowing with
36 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
family life. Regular blocks were the exception,
as householders were establishing their own homes
for the most part, and each built after his own
fancy so far as limited space would permit. The
occasional wooden house of the first of the century
gave up its garden to the square-cornered brick
wedge that followed it as a model dwelling, and
both were overshadowed later on by the four-story
swell front that gained in favor after 1850. The
important changes henceforth were the gradual,
imperceptible ones incidental to the pressure from
behind of business and immigration.
As Bowdoin Square earliest became a social
centre, so it first felt these encroachments which
advanced quickly after the work of filling in
the Mill Pond began. The square's existence as
a fashionable quarter covered perhaps fifty years.
Within that period its character changed from
country homes to suburban estates; these later
giving way to city blocks of stone and brick, some
of which still survive transformed into buildings
for public use. After 1875, changes came rapidly,
and old inhabitants began to look back upon a
time when society was unmixed with the dreaded
“foreign element.”
During most of the nineteenth century, the
West End was a district splendidly representative
BEFORE THE IN VASION 37
of Anglo-Saxon American life. Upon the summit
of Beacon Hill were the finest residences of the
city, rapidly increasing in number after the com-
pletion of the State House in 1798; and upon the
streets just behind the State House to the east,
Hancock, Temple, and Bowdoin streets, lived some
of the most distinguished men in Boston's history.
In sharp contrast, close by, on the slope of the
hill, stood miserable huts tenanted by the most
disreputable people of the city. At the end of
Joy Street and straggling northward was a colony
of negroes living in extreme squalor. Except for
the portions occupied by these extremes of Society,
the West End was a comfortable, fairly well-to-do
community, abundantly supplied with churches and
public schools. It was cut off from the rest of
residential Boston by the Common and business
sections, and preserved the distinct local feeling
and characteristics of a small town. Allen and
McLean streets held the homes of the most privi-
leged; Chambers, Staniford, Lynde, and part of
Leverett streets were inhabited by the fairly well-
to-do ; and the narrow houses on the steep hillside
streets were owned or rented by thrifty, ambitious
American families but one generation from the
farm. The population was comparatively free
from foreigners, and the public schools were filled
38 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
with the children of typical New England homes,
whose heads represented the substantial business
life of the city, in all its grades. The English
High School for boys was located at the west end
of Pinckney Street. It was founded for the pur-
pose of giving to boys who did not care for col-
lege training a good English and business prepara-
tion, and the knowledge of the French language.
When a High School for girls was projected, the
best district in the city for the experiment was con-
sidered to be that of the Bowdoin School on Myr-
tle Street. Except upon the summit of the hill,
the life was mostly the simple, democratic one ex-
pressed by the public schools; and so stable was
the population that sometimes three generations of
the same family received their elementary education
in the same grammar School.
The first enemy of the home life of the West End
was not the one that earliest attacked the older dis-
trict. It was the outcome, not of foreign immigra-
tion, but of increase in native population drawn in
by the growth of the city's trade. Boarding-houses,
and not tenements, here put the homes to flight.
Lads from sixteen to twenty-five, leaving the farm
for the larger opportunities of the city, demanded
shelter. Widows and spinsters of the West End
opened their doors, thankful for this new means of
BEFORE THE IN VASION 39
bread-winning at a time when needlework and
teaching were the only occupations for American
women. The boarding-house life of the middle of
the century is held often in pleasant and grateful
remembrance by gray-haired business merchants;
and literary circles, that the reading world has
come to think of with affection, existed within these
narrow boarding-houses on some of the hilly streets.
of the West End. Their less worthy successors,
the lodging-houses, still mark the advance of irre-
sistible forces that are at last pushing all the
earlier types of American life entirely outside of
the confines of old Boston.
CHAPTER III
THE INVADING HOST
THE North End, for its present inhabitants, has
representatives of twenty-five different nationali-
ties. Irish, Jews, and Italians are the large factors
in the population, together making up four fifths
of the whole. In 1895, the total population of the
North End was 23,800. The census of 1900
shows that this number has grown to 28,000.
The West End has had a later development
than the North End, and shows a less variety of
nationalities. Its population has never been of so
foreign a character as that of the North End,
although a large Jewish influx has poured into its
streets during the past few years, and has changed
the complexion of the entire district. At the pre-
sent time, the West End may be divided, by a line
running through Green and Allen streets, into
two distinct sections. The section north of this
line is similar to the North End in the character
of its inhabitants, while the southern section re-
sembles the South End. The total population of
Map Illustrating the Distribution of the
PREDOMINANT RACE FACTOR:
in the
NORTH END, BOSTON.
North Union Station
:ii
|
causeway
;
Haymarket CRoss
Square
º
HAnover
\ }
*
w-
|RISH
JEWS D
| | ITALIAN8 sº
L | PORTUGUESE *~ º
MIXED *~
Scale in Rods
10 20 30 40
%. Mile =l










THE IN VADING, HOST 41
the West End in 1895 was 28,000, nearly one half
of which was made up of Jews and Irish. In 1900,
the total population was approximately 34,500,
and the proportion of Jews was greatly increased."
The homogeneous character of Boston's popu-
lation was first seriously disturbed by the Irish
famine of 1846. For fifteen years before that
date a fairly steady immigration of Irish, English,
British-Americans, and Germans had made the
foreign-born inhabitants of the North End number
about one third of a total population of 20,000.
Immigration into Boston for ten years following
the Irish famine was so preponderatingly Irish
that other nationalities may be practically disre-
garded. The growth of the Irish during those ten
years, including their children born in this coun-
try, was over 100 per cent. Already, in 1850, the
Irish formed about one half of the population of
1 The census of 1900 brings out the interesting fact that, for
the city as a whole, the older nationalities — the Irish, English,
Scotch, and Germans — have decreased slightly since 1895. The
British-Americans and Swedes have made steady increase, and
the Italians and Jews have grown with astonishing rapidity. The
Italians have grown from 7900 to 13,738, making an increase of
74 per cent. in five years: the Russians have grown from 11,979
to 14,995, or 25 per cent. ; and the Poles from 1221 to 3832, or
214 per cent. The greater part of this increase of Italians and
Jews has been in the two districts under consideration.
42 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
23,000 in the North End, while the Americans
numbered only 9200. Still, the Irish were closely
packed away on the back streets, so that the gen-
eral effect was Anglo-Saxon rather than Celtic.1
By 1855 the Irish had grown to 14,000, and the
total population to 26,000. Fortunately for the
health of the inhabitants, the North End has never
contained a larger population than this. The Irish
inhabitants continued to increase slowly up to
1880. Since that time, with the advent of other
nationalities, they have rapidly diminished. In
1895 they numbered 6800. The Americans, mean-
time, have dwindled to insignificant proportions.
In 1895 only about 1500 persons remained whose
parents were born in the United States, and half
this number were children of parents born out-
side Massachusetts. It requires diligent search
to find any Boston family still clinging to its
old home, in the midst of this motley mixture
of races. In the West End, the Irish never had
so great a preponderance as in the North End.
In 1850 they formed about one fifth of a total
population of 20,518, and in 1855 they formed a
little less than one fourth of a population of
* A city census of 1850 gives the nationalities by streets, mak-
ing possible an exact comparison between that period and the
present.
TIIE IN VADING HOST 43
23,500. A steady increase until 1880 brought
their numbers up to 10,000, which gave them
a lead of 3600 over the American residents.
Before another census was taken the tide had
turned, just as it had in the North End, and the
decrease has continued up to the present. In
1895, the Irish, numbering 7200, were the leading
nationality in the West End. During the past
seven years, however, the Jews have displaced
them so rapidly that the Irish probably no longer
hold first place. A larger number of Americans
live in the West End than in the North End. In
1895, 4800 resided there, though to a large extent
they belong to the lodging-house class and do not
represent American family life.
The advent of the Irish brought about the first
in a series of racial shiftings in the North and
West Ends. About 1880 there came a marked
change in the character of immigration. Since
then, so rapid a transformation has been produced
that even old inhabitants, daily witnesses of the
scene, have been startled at times. In 1880, less
than 1000 Italians lived in the North End, and
only 125 in the West End. In the whole of both
districts, only a few hundred Jews were to be found,
and most of those were Germans. The Russians
were outnumbered even by the Poles. In the pre-
44 . AMERICANS IN PROCESS
sent situation one can trace but little resemblance
to that of 1880. The story of immigration into
Boston for the last twenty years is for the most
part an influx of Jews and Italians followed by
more Jews and Italians. According to the census
of 1895, the number of Italians in the North End
had reached 7700. The Russians and Poles,
who, roughly speaking, form the Jewish popula-
tion, numbered 6200, all but 400 of these being
Russians. Although it has been a popular belief
that a greater mass of Jews than of any other sub-
division of humanity will collect in a given space,
a longer acquaintance with the Italians has forced
one to abandon this idea. When the North End
reached the point of human Saturation, the less per-
sistent material — that is, the Jews and the Irish
— found its way to neighboring places, leaving the
Italians in possession. In the West End, in 1895,
there were 6300 Jews and only 1100 Italians, and
migration to this section from the North End con-
tinues to be more largely Jewish than Italian. At
present, immigration from Ireland is just about
sufficient to keep up the number of Irish homes in
these districts. The excited, venturesome immi-
gration of the fifties has now given place to a calm
and confident arrival in response to invitations of
relatives or friends.
THE IN VADING, HOST 45
Besides the Irish, Jews, and Italians, some of
the less important nationalities deserve mention.
About 800 Portuguese were living in the North
End in 1895; but removals to the suburbs have
since thinned them out. British and British-
Americans to the number of 1200 are scattered
throughout the North End. In the West End,
they are more numerous, as they centre in lodging-
house districts. Some 1400 British and 2000
British-Americans are to be found in the West
End, chiefly in the southern part of the district.
About 3000 negroes also occupy a fairly well-de-
fined area around Phillips Street in the West End.
A number of more temporary residents make
themselves conspicuous in both districts. Sea-far-
ing transients of many nationalities find harbor
from the dangers of the deep in sailors' boarding
and lodging houses, which are not without their
own peculiar perils. At any given time perhaps
one hundred sailors may be found in the district;
but the number varies. They go on a coasting
voyage of from four to six weeks, and stay ashore
till their wages are spent. This does not take
long; for the recreation of the majority of them
includes some sort of dissipation. Besides these
regular sailor inhabitants, a number of sailors from
the steamships spend their leisure in the city while
46 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
living aboard their vessels. A larger number of
tramps also seem to live in the cheap lodging-houses
of the North End than in other parts of the city.
They cling to the outskirts of the district, and ask
for a drink or for a cent to get across the ferry.
No tramp was ever yet on the right side of a
ferry.
The causes of the enormous influx of Jews and
Southern Italians during recent years are excep-
tional, and deserve consideration. In the south of
Italy emigration is confined chiefly to the peasants
from the mountain districts, where the civilization
of the coast regions has not penetrated, but where
the tax-gatherer never fails to appear. The natural
poverty of the country would be in itself a suffi-
cient cause of emigration ; for artisans' wages are
less in Italy than in Germany, and farm-hands re-
ceive barely enough to maintain life, their wages
not infrequently falling below twenty cents a day. 1
But the unbearable part of Italian poverty lies in
the vicious system of taxation, which seems to be
specially arranged to oppress the poor. “Progres-
sive taxation topsy-turvy, * some one calls it, for it
has been estimated that fifty-four per cent. of the
taxes are paid by the poor and working classes.”
1 See Italy To-day, by Bolton King and Thomas Okey, p. 126.
* Ibid., p. 138.
Map Illustrating the Distribution of the
Worth Union
Station
| AMERICANS
| | |RISH
JEWS
BRITISH & PROVINCIALS
| NEGROES
[ ] ITALIANS
MIXED
PREDOMINANT RACE FACTORS
in the
WEST END, BOSTON.
Scale in Rods
0. 10 20 30 40
L-
}%. Mile





THE IN VADING FIOST 47
The small farmer is perhaps most seriously affected.
The land tax alone takes from twenty to twenty-five
per cent. of the net profits of the farm, and in ad-
dition to it he must pay income tax, succession duty,
and communal cattle tax, beside the various indi-
rect taxes which bear heavily upon the necessaries
of life. Not infrequently the profits of a farm
are entirely absorbed by taxes, and improvements
are not undertaken through fear of increased as-
sessment.
Poverty in Italy is also intimately associated
with over-population. The birth-rate is high ; in
fact, for all of Europe, the excess of births over
deaths is greater only in Germany, Great Britain,
and the Scandinavian countries; and parts of Italy
are among the most densely peopled districts of
Europe. One third too many laborers in the Po
valley is the estimate of one writer.” This sur-
plus population is, of course, a serious impediment
to the economic progress of the lower classes; but
the high birth-rate, especially marked among the
very poor, seems to show that the over-population
is rather the result of utter hopelessness arising
out of economic conditions than the cause of those
conditions. At any rate economic conditions and
the surplus population together make Italy a coun-
! Ibid., p. 140. * Ibid., p. 311.
48 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
try to get away from ; and the stories of a returned
emigrant or the persuasiveness of a steamship
agent will be enough to start a considerable exodus.
Sometimes the renting or selling of a farm will
provide the funds for passage money, but many
who are unable to raise a sufficient amount are
assisted by friends in America. It will be easily
understood, therefore, that they have little money
to exhibit upon their arrival in this country.
The emigration of Jews from Russia has been
indirectly necessitated by the repressive action of
the Russian government. The real cause of the
trouble lies in the long and bitter contest which
has gone on in that country between Jew and Gen-
tile. At last many of the Gentiles, finding them-
selves undermined by the subtle Jewish methods,
organized riots and destroyed the property of those
who, they felt, had undone them. The “May
Laws” of 1882, following the anti-Semitic riots,
revoked certain privileges which had been ac-
corded to the Jews since 1865, and required
the enforcement of previous laws restricting the
residence of most Jews to fifteen provinces in
the western part of Russia known as the Jew-
ish Pale of Settlement; and it furthermore pro-
hibited their residing in the country districts.
Those decrees have been enforced with varying
THE IN VADING FIOST 49
degrees of severity in the different districts;
but the result has been to overcrowd the towns
of the Pale and to deprive a large number of
the Jews of even the bare means of livelihood.
It has been through the benevolence of Baron
de Hirsch that thousands who had no means of
their own were enabled to reach America. Now,
however, the influence of the administrators of his
great trust is exerted to turn the tide of immigra-
tion toward the Argentine Republic.
To Jewish sympathizers the action of the Czar
has seemed an uncalled-for persecution, an outrage
against humanity. It has indeed involved much
barbarous severity and a vast amount of unde-
served suffering. It was not, however, as is often
supposed, the outcome of mere meaningless hatred.
The case of the Russian is summed up simply in
the old story of the money-lending Jew. From
the Russian point of view, the matter was an ur-
gent one, and the remedy was thought to be, under
the circumstances, a great piece of statesmanship.
The Russian peasant was, of course, no match for
the Jew in the instinct for sharp practice in trade.
Even hedged in by a multitude of restrictions, the
Jews have become an economic power in Russia —
too often a grasping and relentless power. If they
had perfect freedom, they would erelong control
50 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
the material resources of the country. But such
a triumph of a narrow and specialized economic
instinct is a form of survival to which the Czar is
inalterably opposed. He stands as the protector
of his hundred million Russian subjects, and feels
that the Jew must not be allowed to outwit them
and hinder their natural economic development.
The American sequel to these and similar pas-
sages in the history of Europe during the past
century has to do with imparting distinctive Amer-
ican qualities to the individual immigrant type, and
with bringing about a degree of common feeling
among these diverse ethnic types in their immedi-
ate relations one with another. Both these ends
may possibly be attained by the same means,
but not necessarily. It is easy to see that two
nationalities may readily adopt American ideals
and standards of life and yet not conform to
each other. They may never be wrought into
social unity. The Americanizing process is — up
to a certain point — the less difficult of accomplish-
ment. American ideals in time usually appeal
to persons who have sufficient enterprise to emi-
grate, although extreme isolation is likely to thwart
such a tendency. To obtain complete social unity,
there must be concrete common interests sufficient
to insure active coöperation between the members
THE IN VADING, HOST 51
of the different racial groups. All this means
more than naturalization and casting a vote. To
appreciate the difficulty properly involves an in-
quiry into every phase of social life; though only
some of the most important tendencies, as seen in
Boston's chief immigrant districts, can be noted
here.
A disturbed balance of the sexes is the inevita-
ble result of any great movement of population.
A significant characteristic of the North End lies
in the abnormal excess of males over females,
which, according to the census of 1895, amounts
to 1500, two thirds of this excess being attributed
to the Italians. This number, however, is doubt-
less too small; for the census was taken in the
spring of the year, when the Italians begin to get
work outside the city. It is pretty certain that a
much larger number of single men than is indicated
by the census returns resides in the Italian quarter
during the greater part of the year, and the actual
number is still further augmented by transients,
who are always a considerable factor in a colony
of this size. Each nationality has some excess
of males over females, with the exception of the
Irish, British-Americans, and Portuguese. The
excess of females in these cases is insignificant,
save with the Irish, where it amounts to over 200.
52 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
These facts mean a distinct majority of men in
the tenement houses, with a slight preponderance
of women in the lodging-houses.
To the disproportion of the sexes in the tene-
ments, a large degree of overcrowding and the
crime resulting therefrom may be directly traced.
A considerable, though a decreasing, proportion of
Italians are temporary residents in this country,
and they occupy provisional quarters. Their pur-
pose is to save money, and they do it by maintain-
ing the most niggardly kind of existence. Fami-
lies having small tenements sublet rooms to them
for their accommodation. Eight, ten, and some-
times more men will occupy a single room. For
the room, a fire, and perhaps some slight services
in mending, each lodger pays twenty-five or thirty
cents a week. A scant amount of cheap food takes
a dollar more. But this small expense for neces-
saries is sometimes supplemented by a large liquor
bill. A number of men living together in idle-
ness makes card-playing and beer-drinking com-
mon and, for them, expensive modes of recreation;
and in this kind of life may be found the cause
of most of the serious crime of the North End.
Being an excitable race, the Italians resort to
knives and pistols in quarrels over cards or from
jealousies arising from the relationship of the sexes.
THE IN VADING, HOST 53
But overcrowding among the Italians is not con-
fined to single men. Many Italian families live in
very congested fashion. The tenement-house cen-
sus of Boston, taken in 1891, presented some very
significant figures as to this point. At a time
when there was a much smaller number of Italians
than at present, two precincts, occupied chiefly by
Italians, contained 154 families who were occupy-
ing only one room each; and 459 families, or more
than one half the inhabitants of the precincts,
were living on an average with more than two
persons to a room. Even families who could well
afford comfortable tenements often show no incli-
nation to give up their insanitary dwellings. But
many of the Italians are beginning to seek some-
thing better. They are now, in considerable num-
bers, moving into the more desirable tenements to
the west of Hanover Street; and some families,
especially of the second generation, are taking a
more significant step in detaching themselves from
the colony and settling amid pleasanter surround-
ings. Meanwhile many new additions are being
made to the colony, as the result of the establish-
ment of a direct line of steamers between Boston
and the Mediterranean.
Jewish abodes in the North End are only a little
less crowded than those of the Italians, but it is
54 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
the crowding due to large families, not to numbers
of adults. As the Jews become more wealthy, or
in other words, as time passes, they do not propor-
tionately enlarge their quarters. Still having the
herding instinct of the ghetto, the overcrowding
of their rooms occurs to them as an easy method
of thrift. The uncleanly ways of the ghetto thus
continue to find a pretext.
But neither cramped quarters nor the absorp-
tion of business affairs destroys Jewish home and
family life. Married life is the normal state of
the Jews, and they uniformly have large families.
Their children are nurtured and trained with affec-
tionate care. There is noticeable attachment be-
tween the two generations, even outside the family
circle. A mutual regard and confidence exists
between old and young, such as is seldom found
among other nationalities. Jewish boys associate
freely with their elders, and the relationship is so
natural as to show neither presumption on the one
side nor patronage on the other. Small children
may be seen tagging along after the patriarchs,
who give a friendly welcome to their advances.
And the freedom engenders in the young a respect
for their elders, which is lacking among those na-
tionalities in which the two generations are seldom
united in free social intercourse. It is one of the
THE IN VADING HOST 55
sad and disappointing aspects of life for the older
members of the Jewish community that, as time
goes by, the language and customs of the new
country become a serious barrier between their
children and themselves. Jewish women are ten-
derly cared for as mothers, though, true to ancient
traditions, the men are superior in all things.
Strangely enough, considering their family life,
matrimonial alliances occasionally come to be busi-
ness transactions, and professional matchmakers
are not infrequently resorted to. In such cases
trading ability is more valued in the spouse than
domestic traits.
The Negroes in the West End are not, on the
whole, in a congested district, although instances
where lodgers are crowded in with a family are
not unknown among them. Such a practice is at
best conducive neither to health nor to morality;
but it is especially deleterious to the Negroes, for
any indiscriminate mingling of the sexes serves
only to increase their natural tendency to im-
morality. Most of the tenements occupied by
Negroes are poor, though they are generally kept
clean. Single men among them are lodged in
much less desirable quarters than white men who
are receiving the same wages. Signs of prosperity
take the shape of decorations of the person.
56 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
Economy in home comforts and lavishness in out-
ward display is often a characteristic of the poorer
classes, but it is carried to its last extreme by the
Negroes.
The Irish of the North End, for the most part,
do not represent the best qualities of their race. A
small minority are of the more progressive kind.
Such families remain on account of owning real
estate, or because the young men have political
interests; but the majority are of the less enter-
prising, who have not shown the ability to rise, –
for the Irish in the North End are not recent im-
migrants. Many, it must be feared, have joined
the ranks of the permanently poor. But, being
older residents, and speaking the English language,
they stand to the later immigrants as the native
type, unfortunately not always to the profit of the
American reputation. The Irish in the West End
are, in general, more intelligent and prosperous,
and resemble more nearly those in the South End.
They have made progress in every way, and by their
remarkable race trait of adaptability they have con-
formed in a great degree to American ways.
The lodging-house population in the West End
differs but little from that in the South End.
Rows of brick houses with non-committal fronts
shelter a population of all shades of character and
THE IN VADING, HOST 57
interests. The men belong to the clerk and artisan
classes, and are chiefly Americans, British-Ameri-
cans, and Irish. They represent a class which is
trying to maintain its social position under con-
ditions which are no longer favorable. By post-
poning marriage they succeed in keeping up an
appearance of their old standard in an atmosphere
which is careless of the individual, and in which
the individual becomes careless of himself, because
he has no strong guiding or restraining attach-
ments. Lodging-house life is at best temporary
and forms a poor substitute for the home. But
even that takes the greater part of the lodgers'
wages, and too often normal home life is never
realized. Comparatively few marry later in life.
Temporary unions are often the expedients of in-
sufficient resources, and tend to become a sort of
recognized institution. Numbers of the lodging-
house class are simply being sacrificed industrially
and morally because of their inability to conform
to a lowered scale of living.
Among the different nationalities the Jews are
perhaps making the most rapid progress; and this
is not in material resources alone, for the advan-
tages of an education are not ignored. Jewish
children are among the brightest in the schools,
and they study with a seriousness which is foreign
58 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
to their Irish and Italian mates. High school and
even college attracts a large number of those whose
means permit. To most of the poorer Jews, how-
ever, the desire for an education simply does not
arise before the all-important question of making
a living, and getting on. Boys go to school in
order to get a license to sell papers; while both
parents devote their whole energy to increasing the
family resources. -
The Italians have not been as successful as the
Jews in gaining financial headway, but their pro-
gress has been sufficiently encouraging. They are
developing into skilled workmen following a variety
of useful and productive callings. It is these
specialized workmen who form the more permanent
and desirable part of the North End colony. A
small number of better educated Italians have not
on the whole proved to be a very desirable class.
They sometimes have more education than honesty,
and manage to live as parasites on their inexpe-
rienced countrymen. At the other extreme, the
illiterate are a handicap to progress in the Italian
colony. Next to the Portuguese and Spaniards,
the Italians are the most illiterate of any nation-
ality in western Europe. Comparatively few of
the southern peasants can read and write their own
language. This is doubtless one reason why they
THE IN VADING, HOST 59
are so backward about learning English, although
the nature of their occupations makes English less
essential to them than to the Jews. It ought to
be said that the cause of illiteracy in their own
country is not so much a disregard of education
on the part of the people as it is the absence of a
persistent and rational policy on the part of the
government.
Among the Portuguese, poverty is an altogether
too common characteristic. While this poverty
does not amount to complete pauperism, assistance
from charitable societies is very common. The
most successful among this nationality are small
tradesmen and artisans. Sea-faring Portuguese
form a small part of the North End colony. Not
a few families are dependent upon the labor of
women, and their lot is a hard one. Yet in the
matter of clean homes, the Portuguese stand in
striking and happy contrast with the Jews. Por-
tuguese of the first generation keep to themselves
pretty closely. Their quarrels and their immorali-
ties are not complained of, and consequently are
little noticed. Children of both sexes, however,
desire to get away from the confinement of the
home and work in factories. Thus in the second
generation the isolation of the Portuguese is over-
COIſle,
60 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
The Negroes are acted upon by conflicting forces.
On the one hand, they are ambitious, imitative, and
anxious to appear like other people ; on the other
hand, certain animal propensities and the intoxi-
cation of Northern freedom are continual impedi-
ments to their progress, and tend to widen the
breach between them and those white people whom
they wish to resemble. As the better class of
Negroes are leaving the West End, those that re-
main are coming more and more to represent un-
desirable types, such as are found in the lower part
of the South End. A large majority of the Negroes
are poor, and they are improving their condition
very slowly. All except the oldest are possessed
of at least the rudiments of an education. They
are proud of all achievements in this line, for it
makes them more like other people. The acquisi-
tion of knowledge, however, though easy for the
little children, becomes arduous after a few years,
and many drop out before they have finished the
grammar school course. Perhaps their assistance
is needed for the support of the family, but the
children themselves say they do not get marks
high enough, and they do not like to go to school.
Notwithstanding the Negroes' desire for assimila-
tion, color remains an almost insuperable obstacle
to them. Occasional marriages occur between
THE IN VADING, HOST 61
colored men and white women, but they are of
little avail in breaking down the barrier. Such
couples are usually absorbed by the Negro race,
although if they belong to the more educated class
they enter into natural relationships with neither
T206.
In regard to identification of interest and feel-
ing among the different ethnic groups there are,
aside from the Negro problem, many encouraging
features. On the whole, of course, progress in
this direction is slow. Irish immigrants during
the early part of the century were a desirable class,
and coming in smaller numbers they assimilated
with native Americans pretty readily. Later the
assisted immigration that followed the Irish famine
brought an inferior type, and the influx into the
North End was also too sudden. The Americans
gradually moved to other parts of the city, and left
the Irish in control. The religious question was
the chief cause of ill feeling between these two
races, and was the great hindrance to easy assimi-
lation.
When the Italians and Jews became noticeable
factors in the North End, they were received with
little tolerance by the Irish, who were then “old
inhabitants.” They were unwelcome interlopers,
and became subjects of petty persecution. Direct
62 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
molestations have ceased, but there is little inter-
course between the groups.
Less friction is noticeable in the schools than
anywhere else, although a schoolboy's honor seldom
extends beyond the limits of his own kind. In
social clubs, which are more personal affairs, the
nationalities seldom mix. The Jews and Italians
get along with each other better than either does
with the Irish. The dignity of Irish lads is
somewhat compromised by associating intimately
with Jewish or Italian boys, and their wit makes
them schoolboy leaders. One Irish club voted an
Italian boy a member because he was a “good
fellow,” and then upon further consideration voted
him out again because he was an Italian. They
feared that companionship with him would open
the way to companionship with other Italian boys.
Jewish boys in the same way would not vote an
Irish boy into their clubs, and an Irish boy would
not on his life be voted in. The seriousness that
pervades a Jewish boys’ club is depressing to the
Irish spirit. This is aptly illustrated by the re-
mark of a twelve-year old member who, becoming
disgusted with an endless debate over parliamen-
tary procedure, exclaimed, “I can't idle away my
wastin’ hours. If you want me to belong to this
club you must do something.” Social and philan-
THE IN VADING, HOST 63
thropic institutions find it better to work with a
single nationality, or at least to keep the nation-
alities separate as far as possible.
Political activities bring about association among
the different nationalities, and in this the Irish
manage to overcome their exclusiveness. The
Irishman regards politics as a separate department
of life. It is an end in itself, and is undertaken
for its own sake. To be sure, he hopes by its
means to be able to gain a living, but that is the
stake of a game which has a fascination all its
own. The political interest of the Irish people
is shown not only in the large proportion of Irish
voters, but also in the greater activity of those
voters. They are not merely the most easily or-
ganized of any nationality, but they are the most
capable organizers. According to their own ac-
count, this political capacity is the result of the
struggle for independence in Ireland.
Oppression of the Jew has resulted in his being
gravely deficient in civic sense. Business is his
great concern, and politics is wholly subsidiary
to it. First interested in politics through his busi-
ness associations, business interests still influence
his vote. Although the percentage of Jewish
voters is hardly more than half as large as that of
the Irish, considering their short residence they
64 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
make a very creditable showing. They are kept
from becoming organizers, however, by the mutual
jealousies of their leaders. Consequently the Irish
step in and attempt a task which proves a strain
even to their ingenuity. In fact, the Jew is a
thorn in the flesh to the Irish politician. The
Irishman does not court the Jew because he loves
him so, but because he wishes to convince his much
doubting brother that, although they may differ
socially and religiously and may be rivals in busi-
ness, it is entirely possible to be friends in the
party camp. At first the Jews so imperfectly
understood the political game that they formed
educational clubs to influence their people to be-
come naturalized, without regard to the party
affiliations of the prospective citizens. Such con-
duct is incomprehensible to Irish politicians; yet
it was several years before they could teach the
Jews the art of naturalizing only such a person
as would support the party. Even now, they
assert, the Jews have not the constancy to follow
the lead of those true friends who have aided them
to become citizens of the United States.
The Italians are much more docile. Although
they have taken little real interest in public affairs,
they are ready to follow the lead of others and be-
come American citizens. But most of the Italians
TIII, IN VADING FIOST 65
are not eligible for citizenship, and the law has been
strained somewhat for their benefit. As the law
confers the right of citizenship upon minors with
the father's naturalization, Italians are often able
to recollect, upon second thought, that they do ful-
fill the proper conditions for the special privilege.
Notwithstanding this liberal possibility, a smaller
percentage of Italians than of any other nation-
ality possesses the franchise, though a marked in-
crease of Italian names on the local voting lists
has recently been made.
The English and British-Americans assimilate
politically less easily than might be expected, consid-
ering their high percentage of literacy and the simi-
larity of their institutions with our own. This very
similarity, however, awakens a feeling of rivalry
which is not evident among other nationalities.
While immigrants from continental Europe come
here with a kind of preconceived belief in the per-
fection of American institutions, English subjects
have a distinct feeling that their own are superior,
and are loath to become citizens of a country which
they have adopted merely for economic reasons.
British Provincials are seen at the polls less fre-
quently than the native English, but this may be
partly for the reason that a large number of them
are only temporary residents here.
66 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
The Portuguese show almost as small a propor.
tion of voters as the Italians. They have the ad-
Vantage of a somewhat longer residence in this
country than the Italians, but on the other hand
they are the most illiterate of all our foreign in-
habitants.
The Negroes, like the Jews, show the lack
of a tradition of citizenship. They ignore their
opportunities in political life. If they were in any
sense an organized body, possessed of a fraction
of Irish sagacity, they would be a more powerful
and respected people in public life.
Intermarriage among nationalities, as a rule,
affords important indications of the fading of race
distinctions. Measured by this standard, the Eng-
lish and British-Americans assimilate most readily
of all, not excepting the Irish. Both nationalities
have entered into alliances pretty freely with the
Irish and Americans, as well as with other races.
The Irish, owing partly to the large excess of fe-
males, have intermarried with almost all the nation-
alities, but much more commonly with the English-
speaking people. Other nationalities residing in
these districts have thus far made comparatively
few outside marriage ties. Italians, particularly
the men, are beginning to form unions with the
Irish and Portuguese, even difference of language
THE IN VADING, HOST 67
not forming an insuperable obstacle. A case in
point is that of an Italian who married a Portu-
guese girl when neither could understand the
language of the other. Such unions have their
inconveniences; and they must be especially disad-
vantageous to the Portuguese, for their tongues are
their most common weapon of defense. Marriages
between Jews and Gentiles are not unknown,
still they are infrequent enough to occasion com-
ment whenever they occur. The most frequent
cases are those in which Jewish men take Irish
or American wives, although occasionally Jewish
women marry outside the faith. On the whole, the
sentiment is quite strong against the unions of
Jews and Gentiles, and such unions are too excep-
tional to be cited as evidence of any present Jew-
ish tendency toward affiliation with other ethnic
groups. g
The separateness of the Jew has always been a
favorite theme, yet something might be said on the
other side. They are not so compact a mass as is
often supposed. Jews from different countries
differ not a little from each other. The Russians
are the most pronounced type, and are probably
the most conservative of all. The Germans are
more liberal, and give support to the reformed sect.
A few who come to this country after living in
68 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
England bear a characteristic impress in their
speech, and even seem to have caught a certain
sturdy quality from the English environment."
Both the German and the English Jews consider
the Russians much inferior, while the Russians
are shocked at the irreligious deportment of their
more progressive brethren. The isolation of this
peculiar people, originating in their religion, is
preserved by ever-present reminders in all their
scheme of life that they are Jews. It is pos-
sible, however, that under the dissipating force of
freedom the Jews will lose much of their aloof-
ness; some of their peculiar traits will disappear,
and others will be modified. They are begin-
ning to enter a larger number of occupations,
and are coming into friendly relations with out-
siders in business and in politics. They drink
beer like their neighbors, and sometimes sell it.
They are less particular about their Jewish diet,
and an increasing number are observing less rigor-
ously many of the religious ceremonies they for-
merly kept so strictly. As to their separateness
in religion, the very term Christian has been to
1 English Jews are said to have a nearer resemblance to their
Christian countrymen than to the members of their own race who
have recently poured into London from Russia. See The Jew in
London, Russell and Lewis, p. 24.
THE IN VADING, HOST 69
them so long a synonym for persecution, that the
aversion which they have felt toward the Christian
religion cannot be wondered at. Many of them,
however, are coming to have a curious way of
omitting and ignoring the hated term as applied
to Gentile friends.
On the whole, it may be said that the racial
elements in the North and West Ends are reluctant
to mingle with each other, but tend slowly to con-
form to American ideals. In the development of
American patriotic feeling, two of the chief types
leave little to be desired. No nationality can
show more loyal Americans among its numbers
than the Irish. Their hatred of the English,
which they say is born in the blood, has made
them love their adopted country the more. Al-
though they always retain tender memories of their
native land, the freedom with which they have
gained access to American life has made their
assimilation thorough and their loyalty complete.
Among the Italians enthusiasm for their own
country is always shown by fitting observance
of their national holidays; still the American flag
always receives equal attention with their own in
the decorations. The children, both in school
and in the boys' and girls’ clubs, learn American
traditions and come to love American freedom.
70 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
There is sufficient ground for anxiety in the case
of each of the racial groups in these districts.
The residuum of the Irish are in danger of the
extreme forms of degradation. It is unfortunate
that the Italians are allowed to live in a way which
tends to dwarf their simple virtues, and which
offers fertile soil for the growth of crime. The
Jews in their very process of conformity are los-
ing some of their most desirable qualities. Virtue
by tradition is failing to withstand the seductive
clamor of the city's temptations. The Negroes,
condemned to conditions which do not tend to ele-
vate the race, too easily accept their lot. Through
the social preference among them for personal ser-
vice as against independent labor, they relinquish
the last possibility of associating with the whites
upon the same plane, and open wider the way to
industrial and moral shiftlessness. In general, the
danger of the situation in the North and West
Ends is that a considerable proportion of the new-
comers, instead of finding here opportunities of pre-
paration for a more normal life, will be overcome
by their own numbers and their isolated situation,
and will settle back, accepting present conditions
as their permanent lot.
- g Map Illustrating the
: º VARIOUS TYPES
Worth Union Station : ; - Builºngs
: 3. convenovº in the
m NORTH END
causeway BOSTON.
--
un §
o : . §
> - - -
Haymarket Square
W
|
TENEMENT HOUSES
| | LODGING HOUSE8 D.
APARTMENT HOUSE8 -
| | STORE8 º &
FACTORIE8
-- DWELLINGS OVER STORE8
PUBLIC BUILDING8
-
Scale in Rods
10 20 30 40
%. Mile










CHAPTER IV
CITY AND SLUM
THE first important sanitary problem to be faced
in the development of a city is that of the drain-
age. At the outset no special provision is made
other than the utilization, in the simplest manner,
of some neighboring stream or body of water.
In Paris, as late as 1750, open ditches had
served all purposes of drainage. At that time the
little stream into which many of these ditches emp-
tied their foul waters was covered over, chiefly in
order to make more building space. Up to a com-
paratively recent period, the canals of Amsterdam
were stagnant sewers. Hamburg's sewerage was
carried into the Elbe and, until the cholera epi-
demic of 1892, allowed to float back with the tide,
polluting the water supply. The tendency of both
European and American cities has been to adopt
the cheapest, most temporary measure in sanita-
tion until forced by epidemics to a provision both
more costly and more adequate.
In Boston, as late as the second decade of the
72 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
nineteenth century, there was an open sewer cross-
ing the centre of the city. Mill Creek, the outlet
of the old Mill Pond, received the drainage of the
higher ground of the North End, and with the
increase of population became the first important
public nuisance to be corrected by the town gov-
ernment. Private drainage was unregulated. Each
householder was at liberty to construct his own
system and to dig ditches in the street at his own
pleasure.
Following the problem of drainage comes the
problem of a pure water supply. Here again
cities have usually waited to be forced by epidemics
into proper sanitary provisions. At first public
wells were sufficient. These were supplanted by
private wells. Then, as the possibilities of pollu-
tion from bad drainage became understood, water
was brought from the nearest and most conven-
ient course. With recent years the sources have
been more carefully selected and guarded and the
water filtered.
The cleaning of the streets has been a matter
of slower development. Not yet is the problem
satisfactorily solved, although great improvement
is manifest in the past ten years. And perhaps
the most important sanitary problem of all, the
proper housing of the people, has waited until
CITY AND SI, UM 73
the present century, with its enormous advance in
urban population, to receive adequate recognition.
Previous to the year 1800, Boston had few sani-
- tary regulations. The frequent epidemics came
and went without teaching their lessons. There is
record of at least twelve visitations of smallpox
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In
1722, of the 4549 inhabitants living north of Mill
Creek, 2596 were victims of this disease and 281
died. The first Board of Health was established
in 1799 by act of the legislature. To this board
was given the power to enter forcibly any building
or vessel, examine into all causes of sickness and
all nuisances, “and the same to destroy, remove or
prevent, as the case may require.” "
With the incorporation of the town as a city
in 1822, and the advent of Mayor Josiah Quincy
in the following year, came the beginning of a
thorough and adequate treatment of sanitary prob-
lems. A uniform system of drainage was estab-
lished under a municipal “superintendent of
common sewers.” Steps were taken to insure a
permanent and pure water supply, owned by the
city and under its control. The Board of Health
gave place to a single health commissioner, re-
sponsible to the mayor and aldermen. After five
* Shaw, History of Boston, p. 154.
74 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
years of vigorous effort and struggle in the courts,
the right of the city to exercise complete juris-
diction in sanitary matters was established per-
manently. g
Mayor Quincy paid especial attention to the
problem of street cleaning. Previously the respon-
sibility had been divided between the householders
and the Board of Health, much of the work was
done by private contract, and the results were very
unsatisfactory. The mayor determined on an
effective object lesson. He secured an outfit of
carts and horses, expended $1400, and removed
three thousand tons of dirt from the city streets
at one cleaning. The result convinced the city
of the need of permanent municipal control.
The falling of the death rate of 1827 below the
rate of any previous year, even below that of any
city of equal population on record, was the crown-
ing tribute to the effectiveness of the administra-
tion. i
In order that the housing problem of later days
may be understood, it is necessary that its roots
in sanitary conditions should be made clear. Bad
drainage, impure water, and unclean streets gave
rise to epidemics; these epidemics were most
violent in overcrowded and improperly drained
and ventilated houses. The attention drawn to
CITY AND SLUM 75
such houses, usually inhabited by the poorest of the
people, developed a more comprehensive study of
housing conditions and an effort to remedy the
defects. Some of the evils of bad housing have
come only with the later growth of the cities, and
could not have been foreseen. But the problem
as a whole would never have become so serious
had the people of Boston persisted in living up to
the light which was given them in the early years
of the nineteenth century.
There are four well-defined periods in the his-
tory of the sanitary and housing problems of the
North and West Ends. These may be designated
as the period of epidemics, until the last outbreak
of smallpox in 1872; the period of constructive
effort, from the clearing away of Fort Hill in 1867
to 1889; the period of detailed investigation,
from 1889 to 1897; and the present period, with
its enlarged municipal powers, beginning in
1898.
As early as 1678 the Reverend Thomas Thacher
put forth a broadside entitled “A Brief Rule to
guide the Common People of New England how
to order themselves and theirs in the Small Pocks,
or Measles.” It remained for another clergyman,
the Reverend Joseph Tuckerman, minister at large
from 1826, and founder of the Benevolent Fra-
76 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
ternity of Churches, to cry out against the over-
crowded and miserable tenements and the inhabited
cellars. When the smallpox appeared in 1824,
and the Asiatic cholera for the first time in 1832,
the city was already aware of the local causes that
aided the spread of the contagion. Many years
passed, however, before those causes were remedied.
Fifty thousand dollars were appropriated to stay
the first attack of cholera, and a general fast day
appointed. But the overcrowding and filth re-
mained. -
The census of 1845 gave the city a total popu-
lation of 114,366. Wards 5 and 6, in the West
End, had the fewest inhabitants to a house
(8.4); while Ward 2, the eastern part of the
North End, and Ward 8, the eastern part of
the Fort Hill district, nearby, had 17.79 and 19.15,
respectively. The average for the city was 10.57.
“Less than one third of the houses in the city and
none of the houses in the North End took aque-
duct water; and many houses were not connected
with the city sewerage system.” "
These facts made it easy to predict the territory
which would be most afflicted by the next epidemic.
In 1848 one of the city physicians published a
statement which ought to have aroused the city.
1 Bushee, Growth of the Population of Boston.
Map Illustrating the
w
VARIOUS TYPES
of
BUILDINGS
in the
w
WEST END - /
BOSTON. º - -
i
Worth Union Station
causeway
r
-
2.
r
-
La
- ~ - º
º o - >
: m ~
~ >
º - r
-
-
TENEMENT HOUSEs
LODGING HOUSES
APARTMENT HOUSEs
STORES
FACTORIES
Scale in Rods
0 20 30 40
%. Mile
0
DWELLINGS OVER STORE8
PUBLIC BUILDINGS










CITY AND SI, UM 77
He said: “The dwellings of the poor are mostly
filthy, often from neglect on the part of the land-
lords, who get large rents and do not provide suit-
able drains, privies, yards, etc. Municipal regu-
lation is far from effective. We need a health
commissioner who should be dictator and turn
out any excess of population from houses and
streets.”
In spite of these warnings conditions were not
improved, and in 1849 the Asiatic cholera raged
for the second time. According to the report of
a “Committee on Internal Health '' made after
the epidemic had run its course, those sections of
the city nearest sea-level, the least perfect in drain-
age, the worst ventilated, and the most crowded and
filthy, were the most afflicted. Especial mention
is made of the Fort Hill neighborhood, which is
called the worst spot in the city. A nest of mis-
erable tenements at the corner of Stillman and
Endicott streets was described as “filled to over-
flowing with a most vicious and miserable popu-
lation.” In the rear of 136 Hanover Street there
were twelve deaths in two days out of 50 inhab-
itants. Altogether there were about 114 deaths
in the North End and 66 in the West End during
the four months of the disease. The whole num-
ber of deaths throughout the city was 611.
78 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
In connection with the report there is a vivid
description of the cellar dwellings, 586 of which
were then occupied, usually sheltering from five to
fifteen persons in each. The police had reported
one cellar as the sleeping apartment of thirty-
nine persons. “In another,” wrote the city
physician, “the tide had risen so high that it was
necessary to approach the bedside of a patient
'by means of a plank which was laid from one stool
to another; while the dead body of an infant was
actually sailing about the room in its coffin. Many
of the inhabited cellars are inundated by the back-
water of the drains during high tides; and being
entirely below the level of the sidewalks, they are
almost entirely without light and ventilation. But
far from being considered a hardship, a residence
in them is considered preferable to loftier apart-
ments. They are said to be cooler in summer and
warmer in winter, and consequently command
higher rents.” "
Five years later, cholera appeared for the third
time. Keith's Alley and the Fort Hill dis-
trict were the centres of its greatest virulence.
An attempt was made by the Board of Health,
namely, the mayor and aldermen, who had dis-
possessed the single health commissioner in 1850,
* Report of the Committee on Internal Health, Boston, 1849.
CITY AND §I. UM 79
to remedy matters by vacating the most obnox-
ious buildings. The tenants did not choose to be
ejected, and there were many contests between
them and the police in the effort to enforce sani-
tary measures. As a result, such measures were
not thoroughly enforced.
The period of epidemics culminated with the
fearful outbreak of smallpox in 1872. There
was no suitable hospital for contagious diseases.
The city officials charged three dollars for fumigat-
ing one room and five dollars for a tenement. As
a result, the most needy houses were neglected:
738 persons died of the epidemic in 1872, and
302 in 1873, out of a total of 3700 cases. It was
made clear that the sanitary administration of
the city was inadequate. Although the mayor
and aldermen called pºon an unpaid advisory
board of physicians for aid in times of epidemic,
they often took offense at advice; and the physi-
cians, finding that the measures they recommended
were not carried out, refused to serve. Mayor
Gaston led the movement for a separate Board of
Health, independent of politics and composed of
qualified men. In 1873, under the pressure of
the smallpox epidemic, the City Council was
obliged to yield its opposition, and such a board
was established.
80 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
4.
The period of constructive effort in sanitation and
housing began with the removal of Fort Hill. The
territory now bounded by Pearl, Milk, and Broad
streets was cut down an average of twenty-five
feet, the highest point being fifty feet above the
present level. Although commercial reasons, such
as the demand of business upon the district and
the need of soil for the filling in of Albany Street,
were the chief reasons for the improvement, yet
the fact that for over twenty years Fort Hill had
been pointed out as the most overcrowded and
unsanitary spot in the city undoubtedly weighed
heavily in favor of its removal. The work was be-
gun in October, 1866, and finished in July, 1872,
at a cost of $1,575,000.
Previous to this time very little had been done
in the way of improved tºnement-house construc-
tion. Dr. Tuckerman had advocated building
suburban houses, thinking that by getting many of
the poor out of the overcrowded districts it would
be comparatively easy to care for those that re-
mained. On the other hand, a committee appointed
at a public meeting on June 12, 1846, to consider
the expediency of providing better tenements for
the poor, reported that the poor would not go out
of the city, and that it was quite practicable to
build sanitary tenement houses in the city which
CITY AND SI, UM 81
would yield a fair return on the investment.
Beyond a few sporadic attempts with single houses,
nothing seems to have resulted from either of these
suggestions until 1871. In that year the Boston
Coöperative Building Company was organized with
a capital of $200,000. Its object was to provide
homes at moderate rates: first, by building new
tenements; second, by cleaning and remodel-
ing old tenements; and third, by erecting small
houses in the country to be sold on monthly install-
ments. It was probably expected that the third
of these three methods of improving housing con-
ditions would be the most successful. This has
not proved to be the case; but the first two
methods have been carried out with excellent
results. Three estates owned by the company in
the North and West Ends, including old houses
remodeled as well as”new houses especially con-
structed, provide accommodations for eighty-four
families, at a weekly rental varying from seventy-
seven to eighty-five cents per room. In 1900 the
net profit of one of these estates, based on the
present valuation, amounted to seven per cent., and
of another eight per cent. The company has paid
to its stockholders annual dividends ranging from
three to seven per cent. in all but five or six years
of its existence. The present rate is five per cent.
82 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
Another form of constructive effort is illustrated
in the work of Mrs. Alice N. Lincoln, who has
leased and managed various large tenement houses
in the West End. One of the most important of
these houses was taken in 1879, thoroughly cleaned
and ventilated, and rented to the poorer class of
tenants. By careful supervision, the house still
continues to yield a fair return over expenses.
Similar results have been achieved in other private
enterprises.
State legislation, at first in 1868 copied from a
New York law of the previous year and later re-
modeled, gave the new Board of Health ample
power to regulate sanitary conditions. In 1885
was passed the act in relation to the preservation
of health in buildings, in the city of Boston, com-
monly called the “Boston's Health Act,” and sub-
stantially in force at the present time. It expli-
citly prescribes all that is necessary in the matter
of cleanliness and drainage, the removal of refuse,
the care and ventilation of rooms and passages.
It also regulates overcrowding and the habitation
of cellars.
But notwithstanding better machinery and strin-
gent legislation, the slums of the city multiplied
from year to year. Not yet had the remedies been
sufficiently radical. The effort to clean up un-
CITY AND SI, UM 83
wholesome spots did not prevent evil conditions
from constantly recurring. The time had come
for a more thorough study of bad housing with a
view to prevention. Boston entered in 1889 upon
the period of investigation, and during the follow-
ing nine years much light was thrown on its hous-
ing problem.
The first thorough investigation, apart from the
somewhat superficial and sensational revelations
of occasional newspaper articles, was undertaken
in 1889 by Professor Dwight Porter of the Insti-
tute of Technology. With the aid of half a dozen
students he conducted a careful inspection of 910
houses in six different wards, containing a popula-
tion of about 12,000 persons. He found overcrowd-
ing in 203 tenement houses, and made especial note
of the condition of the Italians in the North End.
Bad drainage and unclean water-closets were found
to be very common. Special recommendations of
the report were: the widening of the narrowest
streets, the tearing down of rear buildings, the in-
crease of the number of sanitary inspectors, the
doing away with all unventilated sleeping-rooms,
the individual trapping of all sink pipes, the vigor-
ous supervision of all plumbing by the Board of
Health, the designation of the number of occupants
to be allowed in each house, the establishment of
84 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
open squares in tenement-house districts, the restric-
tion of the proportion of a lot to be covered by a
tenement house, and the prohibition of the occu-
pancy of cellars. It is an encouraging fact that
nearly all of these recommendations have since
been incorporated in state and city laws.
Following this report, in two years came the
elaborate annual reports of the Massachusetts
Bureau of Statistics of Labor for 1891 and 1892,
made under the direction of Mr. H. G. Wadlin.
They gave the number of families living in rented
tenements in the city of Boston, the rentals paid,
the number of rooms occupied, the sanitary con-
dition of these tenements, and other similar data.
This investigation was ordered by the legislature,
and came at a time when public sentiment was
awakening to the questions involved. Some of the
facts brought out concerning the North and West
Ends were of striking interest.
The average number of people to a house varied
from 17.81 in the precinct bounded by North
Street, North Square, Prince and Hanover streets
to 8.65 in the district between Chambers, Poplar,
Spring, Allen, Blossom, and Parkman streets.
Overcrowding was especially noted in old Ward 6,
comprising the northern and eastern portion of the
North End. Here 259 families were reported as
CITY AND SLUM 85
living in one-room tenements, with an average
of 2.67 persons to a family, and 1154 families in
two-room tenements, with an average of 3.74 to
a family. The corresponding figures for the whole
city were found to be an average of 1.96 per family
for the 1053 families in one-room tenements and
2.87 per family for the 5695 families in two-room
tenements.
Outside sanitary conditions — the cleanliness
and size of neighboring spaces, the exposure of the
house to the sun, and the drainage of the surround-
ing district — were distinguished from inside sani-
tary conditions, such as light, ventilation, cleanliness
of water-closets and cellars. Every house was clas-
sified in respect to both outside and inside sanitary
conditions as either “excellent,” “good,” “fair,”
“poor,” or “bad.” The following statistics con-
cerning the houses classed as “bad” in the North
and West Ends revealed a situation that needed
vigorous remedy: — -
North End. West End.
Whole number of families 4942 4435
Number with bad outside conditions 199 157
Number with bad inside conditions 129 88
Number with all conditions bad 52 84.
The specific location of nearly all the houses with
bad inside conditions, an evil which, as Mr. Wadlin
86 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
said, rests primarily upon the landlord, was as fol.
lows: On Battery Street, ten houses; Charter
Street, fourteen ; Crescent Place, fourteen; Merri-
mac Street, thirty ; Norman Street, fifteen; North
Street, sixteen; North Margin Street, fifteen; South
Margin Street, fifty-one ; Cusson Place, eight.
Although the report did not disclose housing
conditions as bad in proportion as those in New
York City, yet it was clearly an indictment, and
established the fact that the tenement houses of
Boston had been too much neglected. The fact
that 522 families were found in the city living
in wholly bad sanitary conditions both outside
and inside showed that the municipal authority
to vacate unsanitary dwellings had not been suf-
ficiently exercised. In fact, the official reports of
the Board of Health reveal this; for in 1891 only
eleven houses were actually vacated; in 1892 none
at all; in 1893 twenty-one ; and in 1894 twenty-
six.
* Public sentiment revealed itself in the formation
in 1892 of the Better Dwellings Society for the
purpose of aiding “in improving the sanitary con-
dition of Boston, and especially of its tenement
houses.” For two years this society did good
service in gathering and publishing lists of unsan-
itary tenement houses and private alleys. As a
CITY AND SLUM 87
result of a hearing granted to the Society by the
Board of Health, a considerable number of the
worst houses, many of them in the North End, were
ordered vacated.
The City Council felt the pressure of public
sentiment, and in 1895 and 1896 appointed com-
mittees to report on the improvement of the tene-
ment houses. The first of these committees went
so far as to say that “In the North End the
tenement houses are to-day a serious menace to
public health.” But no adequate remedies were
suggested, and the superficial character of the re-
port showed that the situation was not taken seri-
ously. The report of the second committee was
even less satisfactory.
Private enterprise proved more efficient. In
1898 an investigation made for the Tenement
House Committee of the Twentieth Century Club
by Mr. H. K. Estabrook was in some respects the
most effective for good results of all that had been
undertaken. Several hundred houses in many
parts of the city were visited, and sixty-eight of the
most typical selected for description. A pamphlet
was published giving drawings of the ground plans
of many of these houses, with an account of their
bad drainage, uncleanliness, and general condition
when visited.
88 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
This report attracted much attention, and was
extensively copied in the public press. It revealed
in an authoritative manner a situation which de-
manded official action. Public sentiment was
aroused by the report. The municipal authorities
recognized that the time had come for a more rad-
ical treatment of the slum problem. At a public
hearing, granted by the Board of Health in June,
1898, to a considerable number of citizens who
petitioned to have the slums that had been men-
tioned in Mr. Estabrook’s report, as well as
others, effectively dealt with, Mayor Quincy ap-
peared in person and told the members of the
board that he would support an active crusade on
their part.
This was the beginning of the fourth period of
enlarged municipal activity. Preparation had been
made not only in the investigations of the previous
twenty years, but especially in the new power to
demolish unsanitary buildings, granted to the Board
of Health by the legislature of 1897. The origin
of this act of the legislature is to be found in the
English “Housing of the Working Classes.” Act of
1890. Previous to that year there had been much
accomplished in English cities in the clearing of
slum areas; but it had always been necessary
1 Estabrook, Some Slums in Boston, 1898.
CITY AND SI, UM 89
for the municipality to buy the unsanitary property
at exorbitant prices. The Act of 1890 remedied
this defect and made it possible for local authori-
ties to take such property by compulsory purchase,
paying no more than a fair market value, less the
amount necessary to put the property in good San-
itary condition. A similar law was passed by the
New York Assembly in 1895. With the new
Massachusetts law of 1897 behind them, and the
aroused public sentiment sustaining them, the
health authorities proceeded to order demolished
many of the worst buildings in the city. During
the four years since the passage of the law, over
150 dwelling-houses and 80 stables have been
torn down. So far no damages have been paid,
and not until the summer of 1901 did an expro-
priated property owner carry his case into the
courts. By condemning only the worst buildings,
the Board of Health has not yet found anything
due the owners on account of the buildings, after
deducting from their market value the expense of
tearing them down.
The result of clearing away or remodeling old
and unsanitary buildings has usually been a per-
manent improvement. This may be illustrated by
three examples typical of the changes which are
taking place in the crowded sections of the city.
90 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
The first method is that of opening up a play-
ground or park where there has been a nest of
overcrowded and miserable houses. A good illus-
tration of this is the playground between North
Bennett and Prince streets, adjoining the Paul
Revere School. In this space, now permanently
cleared, were formerly twenty-five or more houses,
nearly all of which had become unfit for habitation.
A number of small alleys ran into this area from
the streets mentioned ; otherwise almost the whole
of the ground was covered. This undertaking
involved the purchase of 11,384 square feet of
land in addition to the schoolhouse site. Another
instance was the clearing of the area north of the
Copp's Hill burying-ground for the present Copp's
Hill Terrace and North End Park. Here seven
acres have been made available for purposes of
rest and recreation.
The second type of improvement is shown in the
replacing of a group of unsanitary houses by a single
tenement house or a tenement-house block. This
is well illustrated on Fleet Street, between North
and Hanover, where there was formerly a cluster
of ten wooden and brick houses on either side of
Clifford Place and the adjoining alley. Mr. Esta-
brook, in 1898, described the houses on Clifford
Place as follows: “In none of the houses is there
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Illustration of Housing Changes
(Second Type)







CITY AND SI, UM 91
any thorough ventilation; air shafts were not
thought of when these houses were built. Though
the sun shines into some rooms on the top floors, all
the lower rooms are very dark. From cellar to roof,
each house is very dirty and battered. In many
rooms pieces of the ceiling have already fallen,
and more is apparently about to fall. The wooden
houses on both sides of the alleys shake so much as
one walks about them, and their floors are so far
from level, that it is surprising that they have not
collapsed, in spite of the support given them by the
adjoining buildings.” These buildings were ordered
demolished by the Board of Health. The owner
of the property obeyed the order, and upon the area
thus cleared has erected one large five-story brick
house with accommodation for forty families. This
house is not what a building for so large a number
of people ought to be. Its halls are narrow and
much too dark, and there are but two main en- .
trances for all who live in the building. But in
point of physical healthfulness there is undoubtedly
a change for the better. A similar illustration of
this type of improvement is the wiping out of
Kenna Place, leading off Grove Street between
Phillips and Revere streets in the West End. At
the present time a block of apartment houses
Estabrook, Some Slums in Boston, p. 16.
92 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
covers the area where formerly were wretched
rookeries.
The third type of permanent improvement is the
remodeling of an unsanitary block so radically as
to make it habitable. This is well illustrated in
the notorious Keith's Alley, leading from North
Street towards Hanover. In 1898 a block of three
three-story brick houses on the left had no rear
ventilation other than that gained by two small air
shafts covered in at the top. Towering above the
block in the rear were brick buildings four and a
half and six stories high. Across the alley, about
eleven feet distant, was a block of two three-story
wooden buildings, whose only rear windows opened
on a narrow crack between them and a five-story
brick warehouse. The only water-closets for these
blocks were in the open space at the upper end of
the alley. The Board of Health ordered the houses
vacated. The owners of the property then pro-
ceeded to make radical changes. A large section
was cut out of the centre of the brick block, giving
light and ventilation to the rear rooms of the inner
houses. The closets were taken out of the yard.
New closets, with suitable plumbing, were put into
each house and opened on the air shafts, which were
themselves opened at the top to the outer air.
Similar changes were made in the wooden block on
CITY AND SI, UM 93
the right of the alley. Both blocks may now be
considered as at least out of the worst class.
Cheap lodging-houses, which are more numerous
in the North and West Ends than in other parts of
the city, have of late years engaged the attention
of the Board of Health, and some extremely salutary
changes have been effected. Many of the most
objectionable have been closed. By stringent regu-
lations and constant supervision, the remainder are
now fairly clean and well ventilated, and supplied
with cleanly furnishings. Overcrowding has been
to a large extent prevented by nocturnal visits on
the part of the health authorities. *
The “lanes,” “alleys,” and “courts” of the city
are, according to a recent report of the Health De-
partment, “in a bad sanitary condition and subject
to a great deal of complaint.” The difficulty lies
in the proper adjustment of responsibility for their
cleanliness, since they are private property. Un-
cleanly habits of their owners keep many of these
open spaces in a most undesirable condition. Not
until the street-cleaning department of the city
shall have the entire authority to clean them at the
abutters’ expense will the difficulty be satisfactorily
OVel’COIY) e.
Some of the facts concerning disease and death
in the city will indicate the present need of in-
94 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
creased sanitary effort. During 1900 Boston's
population was 560,892, and 11,670 deaths were
reported. This would make the city death-rate for
the year 20.81 per thousand inhabitants, or one
in each 48.06. This death-rate has been lowered
in only four of the last fifty years, two of these
four years being 1898 and 1899. Ward 6, in the
North End, shows the largest number of deaths
under one year of age, 184, or 8.74 per cent. of the
whole number of deaths under one year; and the
largest number of deaths between one and five
years, 177, or 13.7 per cent. of the whole number
of deaths between one and five years. The death-
rate in Ward 6 was one in each 41 ; in the whole
city one in each 48. In Ward 8, of the West End,
where the adult lodging-house population lowers
the rate, it was one in each 58. In Ward 25, a
suburban district, the rate was one in each 81.
Wards 7 and 13 show a total death-rate slightly
higher than Ward 6, though in the mortality of
children under five years, the North End is far in
excess of any other section. -
In the matter of specific diseases Ward 6 is not-
able again in having the largest total number of
deaths from pneumonia, meningitis, typhoid fever,
and diphtheria; and the second largest number
of deaths from cholera infantum and bronchitis.
CITY AND SI, UM 95
This ward also leads in homicides. In Ward 8
the mortality figures are not so striking, although
its percentage for deaths of children between one
and five years of age is exceeded in only two other
wards. This ward leads in the total number of
deaths from diseases of the heart, and is second
only to Ward 6 in the total number of deaths from
pneumonia. These wards do not have so large a
number of deaths from consumption as do several
other wards of the city. Consumption specially
afflicts the Irish in the severe New England climate,
and makes its greatest ravages where they are most
Ill IIſléI’OllS.
Wards 6 and 8 lead with 1386 and 1033 births,
respectively, out of a total of 16,351. Ward 11, in
the Back Bay, reported only 238. That is to say,
in Ward 6, of the North End, there was one birth
to every 22 of the population; in Ward 8, of the
West End, one in every 28; and in Ward 11, of
the Back Bay, one in every 81.
It has been thought by some students of the
housing problem that the tenement-house conges-
tion in the North and West Ends would be relieved
by the building of small houses in the suburbs and
the cheapening of transit facilities. Dorchester
and West Roxbury have shown great gains in pop-
ulation since 1895, and a large number of small
96 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
houses have been built in these sections. But it
remains true that Ward 8, of the West End, in-
creased in population during the same period faster
than any other section of the city, except the two
suburbs named. It now has the distinction of con-
taining the largest number of persons to the acre,
173.6. Ward 9, in the South End, ranks second,
with 132.2, and Ward 6 third, with 104.3. The
relative growth of these two wards may be shown
as follows : —
1895. 1900.
Ward 6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27,860 30,546
Ward 8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23,130 28,817
50,990 59,363
The same figures for Dorchester and West Rox-
bury are as follows : —
1895. 1900.
Wards 20 and 24 (Dorchester) 39,768 59,682
Ward 23 (West Roxbury) 18,283 23,637
58,051 83,319
Let it be noted, however, that the acreage of
Dorchester is 5590 and of West Roxbury 7660.
There were in 1900 only 10.6 persons to the acre
in Dorchester, as compared with 104.3 in the North
End, and 3.1 persons to the acre in West Roxbury,
173.6 of the West End.
Evidently the time is far in the future when the
in contrast with the
CITY AND SLUM 97
cheaper rates in food and the pleasures of asso-
ciation with one's kind can be overcome by the
attractions of healthier surroundings and suburban
houses. The tenement-house problem of the North
and West Ends is destined to be a vital one for
many years to come.
In this connection a few figures from the United
States census of 1900 will be instructive. The
percentage of Boston dwellings containing three
or more families is 19.9. In 1890 it was 17.2.
Ward 6 is reported as having an average of
3.3 families to a dwelling; Ward 8, 2.8. These
are the largest averages among the wards, the
average for the whole city being 1.8. Of the whole
number of families in the city, 41.3 per cent. live
in dwellings containing three or more families, as
against 37.5 per cent. in 1890. In Ward 6, out
of 5843 families, 4754 live in dwellings containing
three or more families; in Ward 8, 3818 out of
5065 families live under similar conditions.
The present condition of the tenement houses in
the North and West Ends is not satisfactory from
any point of view. The Health Department of
the city has not succeeded in preventing over-
crowding, or in compelling owners to provide the
necessary ventilation and sanitary arrangements.
Although a considerable number of the very worst
98 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
houses have been removed, a very large number
of wretched dwellings are left. They are not
quite bad enough to be condemned without pay-
ment of damages, but they are entirely unfit for
human habitation, according to the standards set
by modern sanitary science and modern ideals
of home life. In March, 1899, the consulting
architect of the city reported to the mayor the
result of his investigation of these unfit houses.
He described dirty and battered walls and ceilings,
dark cellars with water standing in them, alleys
littered with garbage and filth, broken and leaking
drain-pipes, interior rooms or closets and damp
basements used as bedrooms and even then over-
crowded, dark and narrow stairways, dark and
filthy water-closets, closets long frozen or otherwise
out of order, tenements inadequately lighted and
unventilated because of high buildings closely sur-
rounding them, and houses so dilapidated and so
much settled that they are dangerous.
In the fall of 1901 the Health Department
ordered a comprehensive examination of all tene-
ment houses in the city. Each inspector reported
the details in regard to the sanitary condition of
every house in his district. These reports have
Deen filed with the department, though they have
not been tabulated by streets and wards, as they
CITY AND SLUM 99
should be if they are to be of the greatest value.
A compilation of the reports of twenty-six tene-
ment houses in South Margin Street, in the West
End, reveals the following situation : —
The number of tenements reported upon was
118, containing 350 rooms. In these rooms 540
persons are living, though the number allowed by
law is only 446. Of the 197 bedrooms, 97 con-
tain less than 600 cubic feet of air space. Thirty-
eight of the bedrooms are dark rooms, and 33 of
the tenements are reported as overcrowded. Six
houses are said to have defective drainage. Six-
teen have cellars that are damp or filthy or both.
Eleven yards are in bad condition. Nineteen out
of 20 garbage receptacles are reported as defective
or insufficient or both. Seventeen out of 67 water-
closets are in bad condition. The name of the
owner is posted in only 9 of the 26 houses.
It is to be said, of course, that the personal
habits of the tenants are largely responsible for
such conditions, and that these habits are not under
municipal control. Undoubtedly many a suitable
tenement house is turned into a place of misery by
the ignorance and vice of its occupants. Beyond
a certain point in sanitary regulation the health
authorities of a city cannot go. Nevertheless the
housing problem is one that cannot be dismissed as
100 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
merely one of many incidentals under the care
of the city. It must receive the attention it de-
mands. Not only does the health of the city
depend largely on the condition of its tenement
houses, but the morals as well. Such a problem
has become serious enough to require the most
thoughtful attention of able men and women who
have devoted their best energies to its solution.
It cannot be properly handled by those who are
compelled to make it subordinate to other duties.
New York City has found it necessary to establish
a separate Tenement-house Department. There
are many good reasons why Boston, though a much
smaller city, should do the same.
Complaints against the present building laws of
Boston have arisen from several quarters. Those
who have been inclined to invest money in improved
tenement houses are now deterred on the ground
that first-class buildings, erected under present
requirements and rented to families who cannot
pay as much as sixteen dollars a month, would
yield practically no return on the investment.
Others complain that under the head of repairs
the present laws allow old buildings to be recon-
structed without conforming to restrictions applied
to new buildings. This leads to the perpetuation
in an increased degree of the evils of the old
CITY AND SI, UM 101
houses. Finally the Health Department, in its
report for 1901, complains that the present build-
ing laws over-emphasize the matter of fireproof con-
struction and pay too little attention to light and
ventilation, thereby permitting air shafts that are
utterly inadequate and halls and stairways which
are almost totally dark.
Such complaints make it clear that there is need
of a careful revision of these laws from the various
points of view of fireproof construction, economical
arrangement, adequate ventilation and light, ar-
tistic architecture, and inexpensive accommodation.
Such a revision should be made by a commission
made up of architects, builders, physicians, and san-
itary and philanthropic experts. A petition has
been presented to the mayor of Boston by the Tene-
ment-house Committee of the Twentieth Century
Club asking for the appointment of just such a
commission. Public-spirited citizens, whose opin-
ions would carry great weight, have indicated their
willingness to serve on a commission of this kind
without other compensation than the opportunity
to aid in improving housing conditions. Changes
in legislation proposed by such a body would cer-
tainly receive the most careful consideration on the
part of the members of the Massachusetts legis-
lature.
102 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
Meanwhile there are various lines of improve-
ment which can and undoubtedly will be under-
taken. The investigation of the tenement houses
made by the Health Department in 1901 furnishes
the data for much effective sanitary progress. The
demolition of single unfit buildings continues,
although the lack of funds retards activity in this
direction. Having no money in hand for the pay-
ment of possible damages, it is inevitable that the
authorities should avoid condemning any building
for which a claim for damages could be successfully
established. This results, as has already been said,
in the demolition of only the very worst build-
ings. That more than this needs to be done is
recognized by the Health Department, and the
sum of $10,000 has been requested from the City
Council as a sinking fund to provide against
damage suits. It is essential that some such
appropriation be made in the near future.
The department has also recommended the
widening and extending of certain narrow streets
and alleys. “There are a number of congested
districts in this city where improvements of this
kind could be made to great advantage; such, for
instance, as Webster Avenue from Hanover Street
to Unity Street, which could be widened and made
a street, thus doing away with a lot of unsanitary
CITY AND SLUM 103
dwellings and improving all the others. Another
great improvement could be made by the extension
of Hale Street, formerly Crescent Place, to South
Margin Street.” "
Nor has the need of more open spaces been over-
looked. In the report for 1900,” the department
recommended that “as Cross Street is to be widened
in the near future, the territory bounded by Salem,
Stillman, Endicott, and Cross streets be taken
possession of by the city and made a breathing
spot, thus doing away with a number of old, unsan-
itary, and dilapidated tenement houses, and also
abolishing Morton Street, which is one of the nar-
rowest, dirtiest, and most unsanitary streets in the
city of Boston.”
Such recommendations cannot long go unheeded.
The housing problem has come to be recognized in
England as the most vital of all municipal problems,
and heroic efforts are being made to solve it. It
is receiving in Boston the attention of an increas-
ing number of those who are most intelligent con-
cerning the needs of the city. The situation must
be handled in a comprehensive manner, with ade-
Quate recognition of the future, and in a full
sense of its bearing upon the city's welfare and
progress.
1 Annual Report of the Health Department for 1901, p. 42.
* Ibid., p. 42.
CHAPTER V
LIVELIHOOD
IN ways of earning their bread, as in other
things, North and West End people stand out quite
distinct from the remainder of the city's popula-
tion. Something of their industrial civilization
they brought with them. The city, from the nature
of its growth, had made these districts the likely
lodgment of struggling immigrants as they arrived.
To a considerable extent it had also ordained the
currents in which the local industry should run.
This is particularly true with respect to the North
End. The sharp limit of the water-front, with its
docks, warehouses, and great traffic; the North
Union Station and its approaches; the markets
reaching out toward the railroad terminal in one
direction, and toward the harbor in another —
effectually stamp their impress upon the district.
The boundaries of the West End do not take a form
so definitely commercial, but the section is much
more affected by railroad activity than the North
End, while it has easier access to the great centres
LIVE LIHOOD 105
of trade in the heart of the city. Beacon Hill
prevents the growth of trade to the south of the
district, while the bank of the river is not avail-
able for commercial use on account of the draw-
bridge tolls, added to the high cost of land. Be-
tween the hill and the river is a narrow strip of
territory which the West End population is gradu-
ally invading. Here there are numerous stables,
and the workshops of many jobbing mechanics and
artisans. The northern slope of the hill, rejected
by the prosperous as being exposed to all that is
worst in the Boston winter, furnishes convenient
location for two strongly contrasted grades of at-
taché to downtown establishments, clerks and Ne-
groes.
There is not much large-scale manufacture in or
near the North and West Ends. The only con-
siderable plants are, one for the generation of
illuminating gas, –which is soon to be removed, -
the other for the generation of electric power for
the transit system. These are both on the North
End water-front. The North End has some tin
factories and furniture factories, and in both dis-
tricts there are large establishments for the manu-
facture of confectionery and cigars. In general,
land is too expensive in these parts for any in-
dustrial enterprise requiring space.
106 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
The great stores of the city, all of which can
easily be reached from any point in these districts
by walking, are related to them not merely as
centres of employment and bases for household
supply, but as markets for clothing made at home
or in small workshops, and as headquarters for lay-
ing in the materials for peddling.
The direction taken by shopkeeping within these
districts, even more than other aspects of their
economic life, is largely a matter of nationality.
The Italian and Jewish colonies are to a consider-
able extent self-sufficient, with the full variety of
trade in the hands of men of their own race. But
in the Italian quarter the clothing trade is con-
trolled by Jews, and the Jewish quarter is being
invaded by Italian greengrocers. Here and there,
ever more rarely, is a weather-beaten signboard with
the name of some belated New Englander, strug-
gling to maintain his foothold against intruders on
his market by offering to speak several sorts of
foreign tongue.
There are a few Jewish and Italian liquor sellers,
but the Irish still hold their regrettable monopoly
of that noxious trade. The saloons are the last
commercial relic of Irish occupation. They are ex-
ceptionally numerous because to these two districts
are apportioned the full number of saloons sup-
DIVELIHOOD 107
posed to be appropriate to the great crowds that
are found near or within their boundaries during
business hours. The business has been a very
lucrative one in times past, and many well-to-do
Irish families throughout the city owe their rise in
life to it; but this condition of things has changed.
Not a few saloon-keepers, in fact, find it difficult
to make their living out of the trade. In all
parts of the city, even where the Irish strongly
predominate, the cause of temperance is making
headway, because it is the general testimony that
the saloon business is noticeably falling off. There
is additional reason for such falling off where Jews
and Italians are displacing a population of Irish ori-
gin, both being more temperate races, taking milder
liquors, and using them at home. The Jew seldom
enters a saloon. Italians in considerable numbers
patronize the saloons kept by their own country-
men at the North End. Here they learn to drink
beer instead of the Italian wines to which they
have been accustomed.
There is a special and permanent fitness in
the Italians' choice of abode just next to the great
fruit and vegetable markets. The citizens of Bos-
ton owe a great debt to the Italians for organizing
and developing the retail fruit trade throughout
the city. The Italians have, in fact, created a
108 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
wholesome appetite for fruit among the mass of
the people. Believing in their goods, they have
special skill in selecting, arranging and caring for
it. Even the newest immigrant, with his push-
cart, makes his wares attractive, and unwittingly
acts as the dietetic missionary of the back streets
throughout the city. In their stores at the North
End the Italians have striking displays of vege-
tables in their season, red and green peppers having
all seasons for their own.
As has been suggested, the Jews seem to prize
the Italians’ taste and cleanliness as a purveyor of
food. The contrast between the Italian and Jewish
grocery would seem to be appreciable in every case
to more senses than one. As to meat, however,
the faithful Israelite still prefers the ceremonially
even to the aseptically clean. The tendency of the
Jew toward wearing apparel as his stock in trade
is strongly shown by his ready recourse to the ped-
dler's pack, and even by his falling back as a last
resort upon “rags.” The Jew’s surprising power
of making headway is seen in his very first essays.
The Jewish immigrant has moral capital to begin
with. He is seldom or never illiterate. He always
has a friend who can loan him a shelter if not
money. And he is not by any means always im-
poverished when he reaches our shores. Borne
LIVELIHOOD 109
forward by his indomitable pertinacity, armed with
a few words of English, he shoulders his junk bag
or his peddler's pack. Jewish peddlers in some
cases start out on long circuits through New Eng-
land, and are gone for months. They are not
much seen in the immediate vicinity of the city.
That route of caravan trade has been recently taken
§p by some Semitic cousins of theirs, the women of
the new Syrian colony at the South End.
The Jew’s capacity for trade in cast-off utilities
appears frequently, of course, in the pawnshops,
“misfit parlors ” and junk shops. These lines of
trade are, however, not so successful as formerly.
The charges of pawnbrokers are restricted by law
to one and a half per cent. per month, and they are
likely to suffer severely if they accept stolen goods.
New ready-made clothing has become so cheap at the
downtown stores that the demand for second-hand
garments, except those of “Harvard students,”
has quite fallen away. Trade in junk has also
suffered by the lessened cost of manufacture in
various lines. It would appear, however, that
every effort is made to exhaust the remaining pos-
sibilities of the rag and bottle business, judging
from the number and persistency of raucous-voiced
Hebrews who file through the back alleys of vari-
ous parts of the city.
110 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
The junk collector or peddler in a surprisingly
short time is found as the proprietor of a small
basement store, or the owner of a wagon in which
he hawks vegetables or ice in summer, wood and
coal in winter. The owner of a clothing or dry-
goods store is in a more secure position, not deal-
ing in goods that are so perishable or so limited
to their season ; but these small merchants are
constantly feeling the competition of the great
department stores among their more thrifty cus-
tomers, and of the installment stores among the less
thrifty. There is, in fact, a new type of peddler,
a man who, by a special understanding with a
department store, sells its goods to customers on
the installment plan. This is an alliance on the
part of the small Jewish trader and the depart-
ment store in order to meet the installment store
with its own weapons.
The more prosperous shopkeepers are German
Jews on Hanover Street. Their trade is on a con-
siderable scale, and they own their places of busi-
ness. On Salem Street the property is still held
by old Boston families. Clothing stores are the
most conspicuous, and the dealers do not wait pas-
sively within for their customers. Food supplies
and household furnishings of the cheapest grades
are all dealt in. An exception must be made in
LIVELIHOOD 111
the case of the butcher shops. These have the
trade of Jews from all sections of the city.
They sell the better qualities of meat, and are
especially careful about their supply of fish. There
are three bankers on Salem Street, whose business
seems to be chiefly concerned with foreign ex-
change. In the West End, Jewish trade is increas-
ing rapidly, but this growth, up to the present,
takes the shape of innumerable small enterprises.
Many of them must go to the wall before there
can be any possibility of well-conducted and pros-
perous establishments in the streets of which the
Jews have taken possession.
The sale of jewelry is a staple form of business
among the more prosperous Jews of these parts of
the city. For this, as for other sorts of trade,
they prefer to be a little removed from the Jewish
quarter, where they can have the trade of their
congeners and of the world as well. There is
some personal and incidental trade in gold and
gems, as was characteristic of the Jews in the
Middle Ages. A case in point was that of a kosher
butcher who was also in a quiet way a dealer in
diamonds. This survival is the more interesting
because the Jew has come to realize intensely that
he is at last in a country where he will not be com-
pelled to flee at night ; that his treasure need no
112 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
longer be such as can be tied in a napkin. The
old land hunger has returned upon him in a pas-
sion for “real estate.” With a keen sense for
earning his living by profit rather than by wages,
and with the necessary capacity for strict attention
to detail, this easiest and surest form of profit-
making is to him an economic vision of hope and
happiness. The increase of Jewish ownership in
real estate during the past ten years has been
amazing. The number of Jewish landlords is so
large that the pioneers among them complain bit-
terly that there are “too many in the business.”
A considerable number of Jews now give their
occupation as “real estate; ” but even petty traders
are property owners by the way. One man who
has been a peddler for fifteen years owns two
houses. A certain small shopkeeper in the North
End is the owner of three houses, which accommo-
date ten families besides his own.
Jewish real-estate holdings are more numerous in
proportion in the parts of the city under review in
this volume than elsewhere in the city, but in the
South End and Roxbury such holdings are rapidly
growing. In the North and West Ends in 1900,
estates with a total assessed valuation of $6,344,700
were charged to persons of names unmistakably
DIVELIHOOD 113
Jewish." Practically every parcel of this property
represents but a very slender cash investment, but
it is managed so painstakingly and shrewdly that
mortgages are rapidly reduced. The method of the
new landlord is in nearly every case the same. He
purchases an old building, tears out the plaster
partitions, rearranging them so as to give a larger
number of rooms, builds an ell so as to cover as
much of the ground as possible, tears down the old
front wall and erects a new one of showy yellow
brick, which seems to be particularly attractive to
tenants’ eyes, and almost universally makes the
front cellar do duty as a basement store. The old
material is used as far as possible. New material
is of the cheapest grade. The labor is provided
by ill-paid recent immigrants. Such a develop-
ment implies a large amount of money-lending on
the part of brethren who have been particularly
successful.
The two most characteristic forms of small capi-
talist that have developed among the Continental
immigrants are the Jewish sweater and the Italian
padrone. Originally the sweating system was a
method on the part of small manufacturers to escape
the cost of rent, heat and light by having the em-
* The property of well-known downtown merchants is not in-
cluded in this total.
114 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
ployee do the work in his own home. The sweater
also sets out to secure the advantage of the prin-
ciple that a man's home is his castle, in order to
avoid legislative regulation and official inspection.
He seeks as his employees the most ignorant and
helpless of the immigrants; enlists all the mem-
bers of a family, including little children; pays
them by the piece at cruelly low rates, so that very
long hours of work are necessary, amid congestion
that conduces surely to ill health and low morality.
The scale of wages for other work-people is se-
riously endangered. These evils, in their worst
aspects, may fortunately be spoken of as things of
the past in Boston. Ten years ago, as the result
of public agitation, a law was passed by which
work at home is under very careful inspection as
to the sanitary surroundings in which the work is
done. Licenses are given only in case of strict
cleanliness in the tenement of the applicant, in the
hallways leading to it, and in the yard at the back.
A fine of fifty dollars is provided for the offense
of giving out work to an unlicensed person. At
present, licenses for home work in the North and
West Ends are comparatively limited in number.
They are held principally by Italian and Portu-
guese women, who eke out a little in time spared
from their domestic duties.
LIVELIHOOD 115
The sweating system has thus, to all intents and
purposes, disappeared from districts where it once
flourished, and where all the local conditions for
its growth still exist. The effect of the anti-
sweating legislation was at first in Some ways dis-
astrous. The orders which had formerly been
fulfilled in Boston sweat shops were immediately
transferred to sweaters in New York. The local
garment industry in its cheaper grades was for a
time prostrated. Many garment-workers went to
New York, some to Canada.
* In due time, however, a considerable share of
the old industry was reorganized in separate work-
shops, which are subject to factory inspection.
There are certain attractive sides to this work.
The Jew dislikes the military regulations which
necessarily govern a factory. He enjoys the
friendly intimacy of the shop. The master pro-
vides, as far as possible, for his Sabbath rest and
worship. The smaller shops are attached to a
little tailor store — it is usually a “ladies’ tailor”
—and are scattered through various parts of the
city. When they work for private customers they
are not subject to inspection. The larger shops
are found in the North and West Ends, for the
most part in warehouse buildings. The force in
each shop includes from five to thirty men and
116 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
women. The men are chiefly Jews; the women,
Italians and Portuguese. Some of the evils of the
sweating system still persist, — low wages, long,
uncertain hours, evasion of sanitary regulations,
very irregular employment according to dull or
busy season, the competition of recent unskilled
immigrants. It is from these shops that the
unfinished clothing is given out to the licensed
home-workers.
The rise of the Jewish master tailor presents an
instructive instance of the evolution of the capital-
ist. He works endlessly, living with his family
on an impossibly small expenditure. He lays by a
small amount. He gets his landlord or his butcher
as his security. He purchases a sewing machine
and a pressing table on the installment plan. At
first he makes less than his employees; but by per-
severance, by quick perception as to organizing and
subdividing the industry into specialties, often by
keeping up a human feeling between himself and
his employees, he gradually develops his business
until he can command the services of certain
specially skilled workmen to act as leaders in his
shop, and can present inducements to foremen in
the large clothing stores for the sake of winning
their patronage.
Within the past three or four years, a considera-
LIVELIHOOD 117 -
ble business in the raw material of the garment
industry has sprung up at the North End. There
are now eight small firms dealing in woolen goods.
It is possible for them to compete with downtown
wholesalers by keen attention to small considera-
tions in buying, by paying low rents, and by han-
dling poor grades of goods. Their business is not
confined to the local garment trade; they supply
small Jewish tailors in different parts of New
England.
The Jew is narrow in the range of his occupa-
tions. The growth of a class of mechanics and
artisans has awaited the development of a class
of small capitalists. Jewish real-estate ownership
is already bringing an increase of Jewish workmen
in the building trades. The Jews have the in-
genuity and mechanical ability which would fit
them for industrial crafts, and many of them have
followed such vocations in Russia.
The Italian represents a varied list of occu-
pations. In the North End colony there are
artisans, bakers, barbers, confectioners, musicians,
tailors, scissors grinders, shoemakers, marble cut-
ters, and workers in plaster. The Italians have
discovered how much the average young clerk or
mechanic, on occasion, enjoys having some one else
polish his shoes. At a number of points through-
118 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
out the city they have opened good-sized rooms
wholly given over to bootblacking, and these rooms
seem to furnish rather profitable occupation. Many
Italian boys are bootblacks at large in the old-time
way, making Boston Common their headquarters.
An increasing number of Italian women, with a
few men, engage in agricultural work in the mar-
ket gardens of Arlington, Belmont, Lexington and
other adjoining towns. The women bring some
intelligence and endless assiduity to such work,
and the market gardeners are much pleased with
this new source of labor supply. A cluster of
bright headdresses among the growing crops in a
New England field is a distinctly novel sight. It
is a thing, however, which brings a sigh for all in
American tradition which goes against overbur-
dened womanhood. Often, in addition to their
field labor, these women walk the entire distance
from the North End and back each day.
Fully fifty per cent. of the men of the Boston
Italian colony are engaged more or less regularly
at heavy labor with pick and shovel, in railroad
building or in the construction of gas and water
works. Such toil always nowadays calls to mind
the Italian. This is quite as true in various parts
of Europe as in this country. The one-time con-
queror of the world is now its slave.
LIVELIHOOD 119
When the Italian laborer appeared among us, he
was indeed in bondage, under a cruel taskmaster.
The Italian padrone, in the days of his ascend-
ency, took a disastrously large commission for the
purchase of the immigrant's steamer ticket, upon
his wages after he arrived, upon the rent of his
miserable overcrowded abode; and finally, in many
cases, with the assistance of an Italian banker, ap-
propriated his savings wholesale. The padrone's
methods have been much limited as the years
have passed. The Italian government, which for-
merly looked upon all emigrants in the light of
deserters, now takes a more liberal attitude, and
has regulations in force to protect its citizens as
they leave the country. The stranger arriving
upon our shores now has friends, acquainted to
some extent with the English language and with
the ways of the country, who inform him as to
wages and conditions of labor, and perhaps receive
him as a lodger in their own little tenement. The
absconding banker is becoming rare, especially as
the Italians are learning to put their savings in
the old, well-established savings banks of the city.
One of the Italian banks at the North End does
business under a name recognizably Irish, – this in
the hope of convincing Little Italy that it is an
American institution. The American Express
120 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
Company has recently established a branch near
North Square, offering in Italian terms to send
money safely to Europe. The Italian banks still
appear to drive a thriving trade, if the lavish dis-
play of gold and greenbacks in their windows may
be taken as proof. Their close relations with the
padrones is shown by their acting as headquarters
for information about employment for groups of
unskilled laborers at various points throughout the
surrounding country.
A few Italians have taken up the business of
hotel-keeping, but the standards of these men have
been so lax as to make them very objectionable in
that capacity, - so much so that their progress in
that direction has to some extent been blocked by
the police. It must not be thought, however, that
all Italian business enterprise is of the nature of
preying upon the community. There are several
successful Italian firms in the wholesale fruit
trade. The manufacture of macaroni is a natural
and growing avenue for Italian business talent.
The making and selling of plaster casts of statu-
ary, for which so large a demand has within a few
years been created, is thus far an Italian monopoly.
The number of Italian real-estate owners is very
considerable. In the North End, in 1900, $2,325,-
800 worth of property was ascribed in the city
LIVELIHOOD 121
records to persons having Italian names. A few
artists, musicians and handicraftsmen of distinct
ability have begun to appear among them, and
there is prospect of many more in the rising gener-
ation; but such persons are likely to move to other
parts of the city.
A very large majority of the Irish in the North
and West Ends are unskilled laborers. On the
whole, they do not suffer as much as would be
supposed under the competition of recent immi-
grants. To a considerable degree the Irish and
the Jews represent non-competing groups, their
industrial capacities being so divergent. Then the
large amount of work carried on by the municipal-
ity, for which the Italians might be candidates, is
restricted to American citizens. This, as well as
labor under the great corporations, whose fran-
chises come from the city government, is dispensed
almost entirely as political patronage. As the
politics of these two districts is still in the control
of the Irish, men of that nationality practically
monopolize these forms of labor so far as the North
and West End population is concerned. It is prob-
able that not less than one third of the families
of Irish extraction in these districts have bread-
winners that are employed through political influ-
€IlC62.
122 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
There is among them a large number of dock
laborers, freight handlers, and teamsters. The
skilled trades have some representation. Members
of the younger generation are very likely to seek
mercantile employment. The Irish huckster is
giving way to the Italian with his push-cart. The
prosperous Irish citizens of these parts, omitting
saloon-keepers and politicians, are a few substantial
shopkeepers who still remain, and a few contract-
ors, who for the most part might be classed as
politicians.
The Portuguese are sufficiently numerous to
have some small supply stores of their own. Like
the Scandinavians in the North End, they are
primarily sailors and fishermen or longshoremen.
They are found to some extent in skilled mechani-
cal work, as pattern-makers or cabinet-makers.
Some of the young men become barbers. The
young women go out as domestic servants, though
a few are shopgirls.
The Greeks are in active and, so far as their
numbers go, successful competition with the Ital-
ians as sellers of fruit and sweets. Indeed, they
are leaving their ancient rivals far behind. They
are becoming noticeable for their achievements in
developing the confectionery trade in the neighbor-
hood of the great downtown stores which attract
LIVELIHOOD 123
women purchasers. The Greeks know that the
mother on returning home must always come bear-
ing gifts.
There are several small but enterprising Negro
shopkeepers at the foot of the hill in the West
End. A branch of Booker Washington’s Business
Men's League exists in that quarter. The vast
majority of them, however, follow the menial occu-
pations to which they are fated, - waiters, ser-
vants, sleeping-car porters, bootblacks. Some
occupy the more independent positions of janitor
or elevator man. Occasionally a colored man em-
ployed in a store combines the functions of porter
and clerk. There are but few colored members of
skilled trades, and even the barber’s trade seems
to be closing to them. A considerable number of
burly Southern Negroes work in the markets, car-
rying quarters and halves of meat on their backs.
There are also a few colored teamsters. Persons of
leisure are by no means lacking, supported by their
wives, who go forth as laundresses or scrubwomen.
Men of American and British American ante-
cedents, found in the West End lodging-houses,
are chiefly clerks in stores and counting-houses,
though there are among them not a few mechanics
and artisans, who, having only themselves to pro-
vide for, manage to live in a somewhat more
124 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
ambitious way than most of their fellow workmen.
Here and there through the lodging-house streets
are a few members of the learned professions, for
the most part in rather doubtful standing. Each
nationality among the tenement houses of both dis-
tricts, including the Negroes, is gradually developing
its quota of professional men. There is a notice-
able tendency on the part of the brighter young
men, especially among the Jews, to become lawyers
and enter the lists for a general city clientele. Too
often they seem to have an instinct for methods
which do not lend credit to their calling.
The lot of most immigrant women, so far as
actual labor goes, is not so severe as it was be-
fore they left their old homes. Factory develop-
ment takes from them spinning, weaving, knitting,
and to some extent even sewing. There are dis-
tinct signs of leisure among the Italian housewives
at the North End. It is this state of things which
makes it possible for some of them to undertake
agricultural labor, and for others to scour the city
for wood, which they carry on their heads by the
cart load, skillfully navigating through the most
crowded streets. Italian girls and young women
quite commonly work in the confectionery factories.
Some of them, and some Jewish girls as well,
are now found behind the counters of the depart-
LIVE LIHOOD 125
ment stores. But Jewish women seldom leave
their homes to work. Marriage comes early, and
unmarried women are as scarce as beggars in the
Jewish community. Where there is a store, the
family lives adjoining it, and the wife and daugh-
ters assist actively in conducting the business. A
considerable number of Jewish and Italian women
work with the men in the garment shops. Irish
women have almost disappeared from the sewing
trade in this part of the city, as a result of the
disastrous competition of the newcomers. For
many of them the change was a tragedy. Others
have found more secure employment in the down-
town factories and department stores. In the
lodging-house district in the West End, there
are of course many young women from the country
and some from the British provinces, who have
positions as saleswomen, stenographers and writ-
ing clerks in large mercantile establishments.
The pressure upon children to become wage
earners as soon as the compulsory period of school
attendance is passed, so as to supplement the fam-
ily income, is, except in the case of Jewish girls,
well-nigh universal and very insistent. Office
boys, cash boys and messenger boys in the city are
largely Irish. Jewish boys monopolize the down-
town newspaper trade. Italian boys are boot-
126 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
blacks. Colored boys are fortunate in beginning
with the occupations which they will follow as
men. Boys of other nationalities follow juvenile
occupations, which in a few years leave them on the
employment market almost as helpless, as far as
experience and training is concerned, as they were
when they left school. The evil effect of the
streets is very apparent upon all children of these
districts, but they are all having better opportuni-
ties of education than their parents. Few will
fall below the level of the immigrant generation,
and an appreciable proportion of them, through
special training and opportunities, are rising to a
wholly new level of capability and resource.
There is a much greater uniformity of industrial
status in these districts than in any other part of
the city. The North End is so particularly char-
acterized by this sameness that it proved difficult
to register on a map the slight shades of difference
from block to block in that district. It is a great
community of the unskilled — of those, on the one
hand, who have not yet had time enough to rise,
and those, on the other, who are the stragglers left
behind by the more enterprising of their kind.
As there are in these districts several large
establishments supplying temporary quarters for
homeless men, it will be understood that the tramp
LIVELIHOOD 127
finds ample winter quarters here. The typical
guests at these places subsist by street begging
and petty thieving, with occasional jobs. The daily
goal of their hopes is a night's lodging and strong
drink as much as possible, with or without food.
Their “change of air” takes the form of a few
months down the harbor at the House of Correc-
tion or the Almshouse. In the cheap lodging-
houses, besides tramps, there are undoubtedly a
few genuine “journeymen,” traveling in search of
work. Some sailors and fishermen also stop here
during the interim of their voyages, – such as do
not go to the special boarding-houses for men of
sea-faring occupations. Among this floating popu-
lation, and closely allied to it, is a considerable
class of casual workmen. Their way of life is
partly created by the uncertainties of employment
that go with all dock and water-side industries,
though as important a cause is the general degen-
erating tendencies that spring out of tenement-
house life. Specimens of this grade may be seen at
any time lounging about or staggering away from
the saloons on Commercial Street. It must not be
thought, of course, that these degraded specimens
constitute more than the residuum of the men en-
gaged in the industries of the harbor. The mass
of the men regularly attached to the dock and
128 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
shipping interests find their employment more or
less irregular, and there is danger always that this
irresponsible class beneath, with its crude, ravenous
desires, will offer to do their work at a lower wage
than they in their more human way can live upon.
During recent years there has not appeared any
serious problem of the unemployed in these dis-
tricts. There are, of course, occasional difficulties,
as when the anti-sweating law went into effect,
throwing many Jews out of work, or when by a
change of city administration many Irish employees
find themselves “on the bricks,” or when within
a few weeks there are several thousand newly ar-
rived Italians thrown upon the labor market. But
ordinarily the permanently unemployed are a very
small remnant. Many Italians may be seen loaf-
ing about North Square, but as a rule they are
simply waiting between jobs on large construction
works. The Jews are not inclined even to wait
between jobs, though they cannot turn so easily as
formerly to garment-making or even to junk col-
lecting, since those occupations have been placed
under license, with special restrictions and regula-
tions. On the whole, however, the only Jews who
are not working are the white-bearded elders who
sit on the synagogue steps.
How people subsist when out of work is a ques-
LIVELIHOOD 129
tion which is exceedingly difficult for the outsider
to understand. Ordinarily families have some bit
of savings to fall back upon. Then there are the
small basement stores giving credit. There are
occasional small jobs. Perhaps the wife can go
out to work, or the children are pressed into
employment. Relatives and friends often go to
surprising lengths in supplying food and loaning
money. There are successive journeys to the
pawnshop. All the time subsidies of charitable
relief are unfortunately more available than re-
courses in the way of self-support.
The lowest grade of regularly paid employment
in these districts is garment work. It is done by
the day or by the piece. In the shops, women
earn from $3 to $5 a week, men from $9 to $12
and upward. The comparatively unskilled nature
of the work, and the almost unlimited supply of
operatives, make competition for employment very
intense. Women sewing at home cannot earn more
than thirty or forty cents in a long day.
Italian gang laborers formerly received only
$1.25 per day, but they are now freely offered
$1.50 or $1.75. This is for work at a distance.
They have to pay their carfare, and there are al-
ways possibilities that their wages will be heavily
drawn upon for their victualling and shanty accom-
130 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
modations. Considering how much time they lose
during the year, they are probably no better off
than the fruit hawkers, who make on the average
$5 or $6 per week. Italian women on farms earn
$1 per day. The Italian hurdy-gurdy grinder,
with the tambourine girl in peasant costume, who
as a rule hires his instrument by the day, has a
somewhat larger income than this, and considers
himself much superior to his horny-handed coun-
tryman — a leisured aristocrat, so to speak.
Among the Irish part of the population, the
standard wage is $2 per diem, the rate paid to
the laborers in the city departments. For simi-
lar employment on corporation works and in con-
nection with building operations the wage is $1.75.
There is also a choice between the two sorts of
employment in the number of months in the year
during which men must lie off — the time being
shortest in city work — and the amount of stren-
uousness exacted, the city here being also the
most indulgent employer. Teaming, cab driving,
freight handling and dock work are paid for at
rates a little lower. Longshoremen work by the
hour at from twenty-five to sixty cents, the latter
amount being for evening and Sunday labor. Sail-
ors receive $30 per month. Fishermen still have
the old-time coöperative system of payment, — the
Worth Union Station
Map Illustrating the
INDUSTRIAL CHARACTER
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LIVE LIHOOD 131
ship having one fourth of the value of the catch, and
the remainder, after expenses have been deducted,
going to the master and the men.
The North and West Ends are both singularly
deficient in artisans and mechanics. Men of that
grade of skill in the Irish population have to a large
extent moved elsewhere, and the type has developed
but little among the Jewish and, as yet, among
the Italian population. The specially capable and
enterprising ones rise quickly out of the ranks of
the unskilled, leap over the skilled-labor stage, and
become clerks or shopkeepers. Most of the skilled
labor class is found in the better streets of the West
End, some of them being young men in the lodging-
houses on the hill slope. Their wages run from
$2.25 to $3.25 per day, with more or less loss of
time during the year, according to season. Some
of the Jews have a profitable type of skilled labor
in cigar-making. The wages are from $15 to $25
per week, with little loss of time during the year.
Jewish and Italian bakers receive about $10 per
week. In all trades which they enter, the Italians
are still somewhat below the usual standard of
wages. This is true of the barbers, for instance,
who receive from $6 to $10 her week. “Italian
labor” is a standing bugaboo'among the working
classes of the city, and only time can remove its
132 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
meaning. Negroes engaged in personal service
have comfortable incomes. The wages of waiters
are of course often but the smaller part of their
receipts. Sleeping-car porters are the magnates of
the colored servant class. They often take in $100
a month.
Shopgirls receive $5 or $6 per week. Women
stenographers and clerks in business offices have
from $6 to $10 per week, and more in cases of
special ability. The ordinary weekly wage of men
clerks ranges from $10 to $15.
The mass of small Jewish shopkeepers do not
make more than a bare living out of their trade.
Many of the little basement stores are only auxil-
iary sources of income. In some instances, cven the
basement store is a source of substantial gains.
Under such circumstances the rent is very low
and the prices correspondingly less. In one case
of a basement store, this method of competition is
so successful that, with the whole family employed,
an annual business of $10,000 is transacted, with
a net profit of twenty-five per cent. This is the
rate of profit on which all Jewish dealers calculate.
Some of the woolen firms do a gross business of
$40,000 or $50,000 a year.
The question of times and seasons in the North
and West End industry is a complicated and serious
LIVELIHOOD 133
one. This is particularly true in the garment
trade. There is a slack time of sometimes two
months, from August to October, and another of
equal length after Christmas. The Jews are em-
barrassed with regard to the Sabbath. Recently
arrived immigrants lose both Saturday and Sunday,
but after a time conscientious scruples begin to give
way. The loss of both days is too heavily felt,
and the employer, who is naturally under special
pressure to have work finished at the end of the
week, can ill afford to retain help which drops out
at the moment of special need. So far as Jewish
stores go, conditions vary between being closed
during the whole of both days and being stealthily
open during the whole of both days. The police,
however, follow up with some degree of vigor the
matter of Sunday closing.
Garment work done at the homes cannot be regu-
lated either as to days or hours; and to some ex-
tent work is carried from the shops by employees
to be finished at home, against the chance of discov-
ery by the factory inspectors. The workshops, be-
sides coming under strict sanitary restrictions, are
of course subject to the State regulation of fifty-
eight hours as the maximum weekly working time
in all manufacturing establishments. The limit of
sixty hours for the week's work in mercantile estab-
134 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
lishments, which was set a year ago by the State,
will, when its enforcement is fully organized, bring
much relief to many employees in the small stores
in this part of the city. For those who work in
the large downtown stores, the working day is uni-
versally not so long as the maximum limit allowed
by the law. Italian laborers have their busy season
during the spring and summer. As a rule they
have no protection as to the hours of work, and
their day ordinarily is one of ten hours. The
dock and water-side laborers work by the hour at
somewhat irregular intervals. Expressmen and
truckmen have long and elastic hours. The city
laborer, as part of model conditions, has the eight-
hour day.
The effort to classify the different industrial
grades of these districts, and to make out the rela-
tive numerical strength of each, is beset by special
difficulties, and the result can only be broadly sug-
gestive of the situation. The entire mass of the
garment-workers, with the exception of a few men
obviously attached to downtown tailoring establish-
ments, must be included among the unskilled.
Some of this large number already belong to the
higher grade, and many will no doubt within a few
years stand either among the skilled or among the
clerks and shopkeepers.
LIVELIHOOD 135
On the other hand, all of the trading class, with
the exception of peddlers and organ grinders, may
be included among the clerks. Many of these,
so far as income is concerned, are no higher than
the unskilled, but they represent in their personal
history a step up from the level of unskilled labor
and a step nearer the social condition of the shop-
keeper class.
The proportion of the dependent classes may be
broadly estimated from the reports of public and
private charities in these districts. Such reports
indicate that about twelve per cent. of the popu-
lation in the North End, and about nine per cent.
in the West End, have received some form of
charitable relief within the past two years. These
proportions would include practically all of those
who belong distinctly to the grades of casual and
intermittent workers, together with tramps, loafers
and semi-criminals. These three lowest types,
judging from returns made by proprietors of cheap
lodging-houses for the police records, may be esti-
mated at three per cent. for the North End and
two per cent. for the West End.
The industrial character of the bulk of the
population may be analyzed satisfactorily by means
of the Assessors' List, which for purposes of iden-
tification gives the occupation of each man over
136 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
twenty years of age in the city. The list for 1901
for these districts contains 7853 names for the
North End, 13,170 for the West End. A classi-
fication and count of the occupations represented
show that for the North End unskilled laborers,
including garment-workers and a few other inferior
trades, number 5068; skilled workmen, receiving
standard wages, 1317; clerks, superior workmen
and shopkeepers, 1239. Those entered without
occupation, chiefly old men, foot up to 121, while
to professional men and downtown merchants not
more than 108 can be credited. For the West
End the corresponding figures are: unskilled,
5603; skilled, 2431; clerks, 4699; without occu-
pation, 197; professional and commercial, 240.
These numbers for men in different parts of the
districts represent slightly different totals for the
entire population. The total is slightly larger in
proportion in the lodging-houses than in the tene-
ment houses, reflecting the large proportion of wo-
men lodgers. Taking out the percentages already
allowed to the loafer, casual and intermittent
classes, and charging a majority of these to the
unskilled laborers and a majority of the remainder
to the unskilled workmen, we may distribute those
without occupation, the veterans, proportionally
among the three chief classes.
Map Illustrating the
T-
INDUSTRIAL CHARACTER
of the
POPULATION
in the
WEST END
BOSTON.
i
causeway
Scale in rods
0 10 20 30 40
L-E.-E.
%. Mile
&
&
Worth Union
Station
1, UNSKILLED
2-1 & 3 MIXED
| || 3, SKILLED

















LIVELIHOOD 137
The result for the North End is : the unskilled
labor class, regularly employed, fifty-eight per
cent. ; the mechanic and artisan class, earning
standard wages, fourteen per cent. ; the clerk and
shopkeeper class, fourteen per cent. ; the profes-
sional and mercantile class, two per cent.
The result for the West End is : unskilled,
forty-one per cent. ; mechanics and artisans, seven-
teen per cent. ; clerks and shopkeepers, thirty-one
per cent. ; professional and business men, two per
cent."
The distribution of the narrow incomes of the
vast majority of North and West End bread-win-
ners so as to supply their large households with
the costly necessaries of life is obviously a very
anxious matter. An ignorant consumer, dealing
with a grasping landlord and an often more or less
1. Of course full statistical value is not claimed for these
figures. They are presented as affording from the best available
data a sufficient indication of the economic complexion of these
communities. Under this reckoning, about thirty per cent. of
West End people, and about forty per cent. of North End people,
are below the line of poverty as set by Charles Booth in his
London studies. The part of the South End described in The
City Wilderness stands a few points higher than the West End.
In London there are about thirty districts, each having as many
inhabitants as the North End, that stand lower than it on the
scale of poverty, and nearly seventy that stand lower than the
West End.
138 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
fraudulent dealer, is heavily handicapped, even with
the best use of his very limited resources. In
many cases the one condition which makes the
situation possible is that in which the housewife,
charged with the responsibility of treasurer and
bursar, devotes a degree of native intelligence to
her expenditure, and to the care of the home and
the preparation of the food after it is bought.
Rent at the North and West Ends is somewhat
higher than in any other tenement-house quarter
in the city, because of the high land values ad-
jacent to the city’s great traffic. Two of the
nationalities, on account of social prejudice, are
compelled to pay somewhat higher rents than the
others, – the Jews and the Negroes. Jews, in
fact, seem to be willing to pay high rents, reducing
the average cost by crowding the rooms of their
tenements. They tend thus to make rents higher
for others. Italians reduce the cost of the rent per
person in the same way, without being so willing to
pay more when the house has a showy front. In
general, it may be said that families do not pay a
larger share of their incomes for rent in the North
and West Ends than in other districts of the city,
but get less for their money. In the vast majority
of cases, the amount of the rental charge comes
between two and three dollars a week.
LIVELIHOOD 139
TA large part of the population is huddled into
old houses originally built for the use of single
families. Many of the smaller tenement houses
are built in rear yards and courts. There are many
large newly built tenement blocks, in which the evil
devices involved in making over old houses are per-
petuated in the new. This process is still going on
at a rapid rate, particularly in the West End. The
most recent new or remodeled structures generally
take the form of apartment houses with some ap-
pearance of privacy at the entrance, some modern
conveniences and often but one family to a floor.
The outer appearance is extremely deceptive, and
a few years will work havoc with the flimsy mate-
rials out of which these buildings are constructed;
yet for the present they represent an advance for the
tenants. A somewhat poorer yet very worthy class
is found in the large blocks of model tenement
houses representing “philanthropy and five per
cent.” -
The Jews, inured through long centuries to over-
crowding and uncleanliness, adjust themselves to
such surroundings with unfortunate ease. The
Italians, while not models in the matter of cleanli-
ness and the reserves of life, seek to make their
windows and narrow courts suggestive of the green
world from which most of them have come, and in
140 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
which a better order of living was not so over-
whelmingly difficult. The Portuguese and the
Negroes, not standing so high as neighboring types
in the matter of the more serious sanctions of life,
are both strongly inclined to cleanliness in their
homes. There are actually streets in the West
End where, while Jews are moving in, Negro house-
wives are gathering up their skirts and seeking a
more spotless environment.
Much attention has been given by public authori-
ties to the cheap lodging-houses in this part of
the city, and some slight leveling up in their
standard is apparent. There are a number of
second-rate hotels in both districts, – some of them
resorts of a degrading type, some better grade
lodging-houses, some simply saloons with liberty
to sell liquor on Sunday. The boarding-house
does not seem to have passed away quite so com-
pletely in the West End as in the South End,
and there are not so many separate basement
dining-rooms; but the background of life on the
slope of Beacon Hill beyond the State House is
essentially the same as that of the respectable-
appearing decadent streets of the South End.
In spite of the fact that these districts are so
near the city's best base of supply for meat and
vegetables, the people trade at very small shops,
LIVELIIIOOD 141
and of course are compelled to follow the extrava-
gant method of buying in small quantities. The
Jewish meat supply is in the hands of a local Jew-
ish monopolist, and the savage riots of the New
York Ghetto were reproduced in the North End
when the price of meat recently rose so high. The
evidence was quite clear that the local wholesaler
had undertaken to increase the momentum of ris-
ing prices in order to secure special personal ad-
vantage.
The Jews' faithfulness to the dietetic code of
the Mosaic law makes them no more strange and
individual in their notions about food than are the
Italians. They use but little meat. Crabs and
razor fish are a staple. Occasionally they have
chicken or pork. Beef is a rare luxury. The Ital-
ians like their food greasy, highly spiced and fla-
vored with garlic or onions. A dish so dressed
will have for a body nothing more substantial than
macaroni. With this they will have French bread,
beer and some partly spoiled fruit or dried olives.
Such a diet is inexpensive so far as first cost is con-
cerned, but a sturdy growth cannot be made upon it.
The frequency of rickets among Italian children, and
the general high average of sickness among adults,
is owing very largely to their choice of food.
Their liking for this strong-tasting but innutritious
142 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
food is so deep seated that if they go to a hospital
they consider themselves wronged when they are
placed upon a diet of milk and beefsteak.
As in the South End, there has been of late
years a marked increase in the number of restau-
rants, which are common along nearly all the
chief streets. Hardly one of them is in the least
clean or attractive. The little Italian eating-
places in the North End have about them some of
the atmosphere of the Continental café; but in the
West End restaurants, the hapless lodger finds
not even that solace to counteract the poor quality
of his food. Nearly all the Negroes continue to
have some sort of home attachment, and they have
good food when they can possibly afford it. Their
comparatively high standard as to the conditions of
home life probably reflects their hereditary associa-
tions as servants in homes of the well-to-do. It is
needless to say that a Negro does not neglect his
clothes. Many young colored people from the West
End, - as seen, for instance, at a band concert on
Boston Common, — while showing an undue ex-
penditure in clothes, are yet dressed becomingly.
The Jews are also very fond of fine clothes, or
at least of the appearance of such. The women,
as family incomes increase, appear in cotton velvet
or brocaded satinet, with colored feathers in their
LIVELIHOOD 143
hats, mock sealskin coats and dubious jewelry.
The Italians are more frugal, and do not cultivate
an appearance of elegance. The women are satis-
fied with simple fabrics in bright colors. The men
do not affect broadcloth, as Jewish men do, but are
contented on Sunday — if the day be marked by
nothing more — with a gay necktie, curled and
unctuous hair and a brilliant polish to their shoes.
The desire for clothing of American cut is one
that rises strong in the breast of the immigrant
immediately upon his arrival, and the imported
styles become less and less in evidence every year.
Long beards among the Jewish men, and wigs
among the women, are seen but little as compared
with a few years ago. The inclination of the
Jews to move away from the antiquated tenement
houses of the North End into the new flats of the
West End, where they have figured plush furni-
ture, flowered carpets, and even pianos, is very
marked. In such ways there is sometimes among
the Jews, particularly on the part of the women,
a distinct tendency toward extravagance. The
secret of such an unexpected phenomenon is undue
social ambition. Probably no nationality is so
keenly alert as the Jews to the various marks
that register gradual advancement to higher and
higher social levels.
144 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
All the nationalities at the North and West
Ends make considerable contributions to the sup-
port of religion, an outlay which, even from the
most superficial point of view, is an exceedingly
useful public investment. Parents are more and
more putting themselves at pains and cost to secure
the benefits of education beyond the grammar
school for their boys, and, to some extent, for
their girls. This is of course especially the case
among the Jews, whose intellectuality is a distin-
guishing trait. All classes spend some money upon
the theatre — on the whole, beneficially. The
Italians give much attention to public recreation.
Considerable expense is incurred by them on feast
days and Italian national holidays.
Even microscopic incomes do not forbid to the
Italians, much less to the Jews, the practice of
thrift. Italians save to go back to Italy, or to
bring friends over. Some save and become land-
holders and small business men. Many of those
who are diggers in the ditch put by one hundred
dollars in the course of a year. Italians do not
easily fall back upon charitable agencies; but, for
those who slip, determined spurring is needed in
order to get them well under way again. Jews
are not likely to need charity, but when they do
they seem not to have much self-respect in the
LIVE LIHOOD 145
matter, looking upon such relief as another re-
source to be availed of to the utmost limit.
Among Jews there are two types of providence.
One sort of person places his family upon the low-
est possible line as to home conditions, food and
clothing, in order to make the utmost margin be-
tween his expenditures and his income. He intends
some day to have things different, but he wishes to
become a capitalist and make his living by profits
rather than by wages, at the earliest possible mo-
ment. His family is under degrading conditions;
he himself is ill nourished, and his children are
dwarfed physically and morally. The other type
is also eager to become a capitalist, but he wishes,
from the beginning, to have his family under
healthful and encouraging conditions. Instead of
taking up his abode in some swarming, reeking
court at the North End, he lives in a comfortable
little flat at the West End. He does not save so
rapidly, but he is in condition to earn more,
to enjoy more, and to be an increasingly more suc-
cessful man in the future; his children, meanwhile,
are laying the foundation of a fair education and a
reasonably healthy physical and moral adult life.
The inhabitants of the North and West Ends
have their obvious economic sins. The shame of
a variety of underhanded methods in trade, not
146 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
easily punishable by law, must be laid at the door
of a certain type of Jew. More serious than any
of these things, however, is the danger that lurks
in the low standard of wages and expenditure
which all Jews and Italians bring in with them,
and in which great numbers persist. So long and
So far as this state of things continues, the new-
comer remains an enemy to all that is best in
American life, and cannot expect to be received
into the friendly fellowship of American citizens.
The American “standard of living and of life” is
being intrenched in various ways, – by the com-
monwealth and the municipality, by working-class
regulations and sentiments. It has suffered seri-
ously, and still is threatened. The issue will
depend on the effect of the total civilization of
the city in amplifying the range of wants among
these new peoples. In this way the energy, pro-
ductive capacity and ambition of the mass of
them will be brought to a higher point. At the
same time, that base, passionate enterprise will be
tempered which would ruthlessly sacrifice kindred
and neighbor for the dream of ultimate prosperity.
CHAPTER WI
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP
“AFTER all, the predominating issue is — work.”
The congressional candidate had made a few flour-
ishes about matters of concern to the nation, such
as militarism and trusts. This was his way of arriv-
ing at reality in the North End. He then pro-
ceeded to explain that by securing from the national
government an appropriation of millions of dollars
to deepen the harbor at Boston, he would open up
to the men whose humble abodes are near the har-
bor docks an almost endless vista of jobs. The
deeper harbor will lead to the erection of new
docks, which men must needs be employed upon to
build. Docks mean dockers. New ships will come
and must be manned. This growth will imply new
factories and new warehouses, which men must
build, and which once opened will remain as well-
springs of employment forever.
The tendency to localize and domesticate the
universal is one of the master motives of ward poli-
tics. There is in the mind of the voter a marked
148 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
absence of such faculty of abstraction as will en-
able him to feel himself receiving advantage from
the general action of the community in its large,
ordinary functions. These are to him like the
atmosphere. He wishes to see some new, divisible
fruitage produced toward the enlargement of his
meagre life. This feeling is so pervasive that the
fulfillment of the individual voter's insistent need
becomes the decisive test of political and public
service.
Honesty and special capacity in public officials
is a virtue which has some value in campaigns, but
even then it is usually so indiscriminately ascribed
to all candidates as to make it the mere material
of compliment and persiflage. A hundred times
more worth while than general honesty in the eyes
of the local electorate is fair play. The serious
charge against an office-holder is not “he was dis-
honest,” but “he was greedy; ” he did not im-
part to his constituency enough of the results of his
influence and power. The remedy does not seem
to the people to be that of the business man, nor
yet that of the scholar in politics. Civil service
reform means to them administration in the hands
of a class that may be honest in an arid sort of
way, but not serviceable or responsible, so far as
they are concerned. The “greedy” politician can
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP 149
be and is soon displaced by one who will be
“fair.” There is an ingrained and powerful feel-
ing that the hope of the poorer and alien classes
is in holding blindly together. The reformer is,
in fact, looked upon with some of the distrust and
fear in which in the Middle Ages the equally truth-
loving heretic was viewed, - as one who would turn
distraught humanity aside from the only way of
salvation.
Ordinary public standards of intellectual fitness
count for little or nothing in these parts of the city.
It is, in fact, a distinct hindrance in a candidate to
have the air of training. Occasionally some young
politician is charged with being a graduate of Har-
vard; and the charge is denied resentfully. One
of the foremost political magnates, a man of un-
doubted native ability, who has held high elective
office as a lawmaker, is yet unable, after several
attempts, to secure admission to the practice of the
law. Such a fact hardly creates a ripple of inter-
est among the rank and file of his following.
There are political virtues of different degrees,
but the greatest of these is loyalty. Ward politics
is built up out of racial, religious, industrial affilia-
tions; out of blood kinship ; out of childhood asso-
ciations, youthful camaraderie, general neighbor-
hood sociability. Party regularity is simply the
150 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
coalescence of all these. It is the brightest star
in the crown of a political veteran to have been
“always regular.” The frequent petty insurrec-
tions only show the power of this loyalty. They
are family quarrels. The offending member is
still more loved and even more trusted, so far as
family interests are concerned, than any outsider.
The very disinterestedness of the outsider makes
the family recoil from him. The sudden way in
which the most acrimonious political breaches are
healed over shows the underlying fraternal bond.
Ward politics is an amplified scheme of family com-
munism — a modernized clan. Some day it may
perhaps become apparent to the historian, looking
back, that this clan life in the midst of civilization
went with the industrial and social confusion of
the time. The poor in our cities have as fierce a
contest with industrial conditions as the barbarians
had against wild nature. The similarity of social
formation, of ethical standard, goes with the simi-
larity of the facts of the two kinds of life. The
present-day barbaric outlook must be altered if we
would impart truly civilized conceptions of politics
or of life in general.
In these northern wards, as in the inner wards
at the South End, one of the parties is so strong
that there is never any contest, and the minority
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP 151
party is of consequence only in general city elec-
tions. The strain and conflict which go with
politics occur only when there are faction fights.
These are not uncommon, and while they last are
more intense than any contest across party lines.
Where the party nomination is equivalent to an
election, it is natural that there should be keen com-
petition within party lines. In the fierce glare of
a faction fight, the true perspectives of ward poli-
tics come out. The charges brought against leaders
by their opponents, and the claims of service ren-
dered which are made in reply, show the actual
motive and trend of politics in the ward.
Sectarian feeling is appealed to by asserting that
a certain leading politician used the church as a
tool, and that he was dismissed from the altar by
the reverend pastor. He is accused of having
invited a non-Christian to officiate as bearer at a
funeral. Racial feeling is goaded by the charge
that a Jewish office-holder had expressed pro-
fane contempt for the Irish ; and an Irish alder-
man is denounced for not having rushed to the
defense of his Italian constituents when they were
classed with Negroes at a meeting of the board.
That a certain leader is making use of politics for
his own enrichment is sustained by the charge that
he is treasurer of a corporation receiving numerous
152 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
contracts; that he is one of a real-estate syndi-
cate whose land is assessed at one third of its
value; that he and his brothers own seven saloons
among them ; that one of his lieutenants in the
State Senate wronged and duped the voters of
the constituency by taking money rather than
patronage for his vote on a street railway bill. It
is asserted that a prominent local political figure is
not a resident of the ward, and packs the voting list
with other non-residents. A poster calling atten-
tion to these facts says: “Home Rule is the funda-
mental principle of free government, which prin-
ciple men died to establish. Why, therefore,
should the people of this ward allow residents of
Concord, Acton, Winchendon, Lawrence, Win-
throp, Beachmont, East Boston, the South End, to
govern them 7” This same tyrant and usurper
has, it is said, secured the dismissal of many men
from their work, and made “saddened and broken
homes because heads of families voted as they
thought was right.” Not content with a relentless
policy toward foes, he is, it is said, traitorous to
friends; and it is even hurled through the dense
pipe-smoke into the teeth of the populace that one
such victim of treachery actually died of a broken
heart.
The scene changes. Look on that picture and
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP 153
on this; trace here the lineaments of the man whom
King Demos delighteth to honor. He went on the
hottest days to contractors and corporations seeking
jobs for men in the ward. He was noted for the
“conspicuousness of his presence when wanted.”
The people did not have to “play hide and seek”
with him; when they desired his services he could
always be found. He represented his constituency
“so earnestly, so successfully, so untiringly.” in
the search for employment for them. He voted for
the abolition of civil service regulations that he
might have more jobs to dispense. He voted to
control corporations having contracts with muni-
cipalities in such way as to make corporation
patronage as valuable a political asset as that of
the municipality itself. He opposed a measure
to punish housewives who undertook to use milk
cans or jars for any other purpose than that for
which they were intended. He promoted a measure
compelling ice companies to sell five-cent cakes of
ice, and a measure requiring gas companies to sell
their product for seventy-five cents per thousand
feet. He urged the boarding out of neglected
children in families of the same faith as that to
which their parents belonged. He sought the re-
laxation of some of the restrictions on the use
of the Sabbath; and, though his constituents might
154 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
not acknowledge this as a special service to them-
selves, worked for the abolition of dark cells and of
the death penalty. Lastly, he supported an increase
in the tax-rate, but only in order to give more em-
ployment to laborers — not for the sake of provid-
ing “high salaries for Back Bay dudes.”
The machine politician especially opposes reform
measures like that of civil service restrictions and
the secret ballot. These make it more difficult to
organize and control the vote, to secure the appoint-
ment of particular men, and, what is more exas-
perating, to hold the allegiance of men after they
have been installed in city jobs. It is not uncom-
mon for political appointees whose positions have
been placed under the protection of civil service
regulations to throw over all obligations to the
political machine, and even to move away to a re-
mote suburban district.
Such facts make it all the more important that
the work of party organization should be pains-
takingly done. In bringing out the votes of these
wards, the ward committees may be said to exhaust
the possibilities, to use everything and neglect no-
thing, in order to produce results.
Here, as in the South End," the street-corner
gangs and a variety of loosely organized clubs form
1 The City Wilderness, p. 114, sq.
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSEIIP 155
political groups, ready made to the hand of the
ward heeler. In the North End certain political
clubs leap into activity during campaign time. In
the West End there is a remarkable political
organization having rooms on the most prominent
square in the ward. This club keeps up an active
existence all the year round, and is the headquar-
ters for the entire business of machine politics of
the ward.
Apart from all formal organizations, each ward
is divided into several sections, and local lieutenants
are appointed to hold together, and bring to the front
at the proper time, the vote of their neighborhoods.
The local lieutenant devotes himself unremittingly
to the people of his section of the ward. He keeps
himself acquainted with their whole round of life,
and constitutes himself the adviser and helper of
them all. By unresting vigilance, together with
a careful and comprehensive system of political
account keeping and statistics, he knows within a
few votes just how much strength his section holds
for the party ticket. As campaign time approaches
committees are appointed, who divide among them-
selves the responsibility of seeing and making sure
of all the voters in these sub-districts. The ardor
of propagandism exhibited by these local commit-
tees quite surpasses the proselyting zeal of any type
156 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
of churchman. Indeed, the most aggressive soli-
citors of trade could hardly equal them ; because if
inducements fail, they have an organized power
of constraint behind them which amounts almost
to that of the tax collector or police magistrate.
The care and shrewdness with which this work is
done is illustrated by the fact that in the West
End it is sometimes the custom to appoint one man
to get out eight voters, and soon after to appoint
two other men each to get out four of the same
eight. In the North End every imaginable sup-
porter of the party has his name enrolled in a card
catalogue. Every such person is visited in advance
of the caucus, and to the utmost limit of the re-
sources of the machine — with its knowledge of
each man’s ties, obligations, ambitions, necessities
— satisfactorily “fixed.” At the caucus, and
again at election, voters, as they appear, are checked
off by party representatives. When proceedings
are half over, trusty men are dispatched in every
direction throughout the ward to chase in the
tardy ones. “So run I not as uncertainly; so
fight I not as one that beateth the air º might be
taken as the watchword of the ward politician. It is
because he sends the arrow so straight to the mark,
the axe so sure to the root of the tree, that the far
less determined reformer fails to overthrow him.
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP 157
Very special efforts have to be made to adapt
political methods to the particular spirit and ne-
cessity of the different nationalities in these cos-
mopolitan wards. There is a constant tendency
on the part of the Irish to move away to better
favored parts of the city, where they will not be
subjected to so crowded conditions and to unpleasant
association with recent Continental immigrants.
As the local political leaders are nearly all of Irish
origin, and as the Irish are their surest and best
reliance, they make determined efforts to retain in
the ward the remnant of the Irish population.
The Roman Catholic churches of these districts,
which with enormous establishments are in danger
of being left stranded, are working toward the
same end. It is a fixed rule in Ward 8 that no
man can receive a job without pledging himself
to remain a voter in the ward as long as he holds
the job.
The Jews and Italians are gradually becoming
voters under pressure of leaders of their own, who
show them the advantages of so doing. Nowadays,
the Jew junk collector must have taken out citizen-
ship papers before he can get a license, and the
Italian laborer has no prospect of being engaged
on city work unless he be an American citizen.
Peddlers, junk dealers, fruit sellers, organ grinders,
158 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
sewing-women, clothing manufacturers, – all must
have dealings with public officials. Everybody
knows, too, that by mistake or otherwise the laws
of a strange country are easily broken. Under
such circumstances the value of an accommodating
expert in public administration is soon realized.
The newcomer, in establishing his home, finds that
Some credit is necessary. The gas company re-
quires security. The politician — not unknown
to corporations — gives it. The politician expects
votes in return. He has ways of enforcing his
displeasure if the votes are not forthcoming. In
each identical bearing of the social mechanism
where oil is needed, it is possible to put sand.
Finer considerations are by no means lacking.
It is coming to be a matter of racial pride and
loyalty among Italians and Jews to place them-
selves on an equality with those who assume supe-
riority over newcomers. They wish to escape the
contempt with which the ignorant treat foreigners;
they crave the full round of American experience.
Soon they realize that their children are to be
Americans, and this makes American citizenship
more clearly their own destiny. -
As to party affiliations, both of these nation-
alities, when first arrived in Boston, were inclined
to be Republicans. They seemed to recognize in
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSEIIP 159
the Republican party a distinctly American organ-
ization. The word republican is one that the
Italian is familiar with, and it has inspiring asso-
ciations for him. The Republicans have not had
the sagacity to take advantage of this situation.
They have allowed these wards to be under a type
of leadership which is certainly as corrupt as that
of the opposite party, without any of the redeeming
qualities that go with its strength. This state of
things has conduced to the change in political
alignment which has taken place. It was not a
spontaneous movement. Neither the Jew nor the
Italian, be it said, is instinctively drawn to the
Irishman, nor he to them.
The Irish have made great efforts to win the
Italians to the Democratic party. They are co-
religionists, and they can love each other for their
common enmity to the Jew. At least half the
Italian voters in the North End are now Demo-
crats. They make good political workers. They
organize effectively, and are quite disinterested.
The chief difficulty about them from the political
organizer's point of view is that they are split into
many rival camps, according to the city or province
in Italy from which they came. The leaders of
these different cliques, in their claims to recogni-
tion, are very prone to exaggerate the number of
160 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
their naturalized followers. The Democratic lead-
ers have managed also to secure a considerable
following among the Jews. Were these districts
not so overwhelmingly Democratic, the Jews could
be kept more closely within the Republican fold.
As it is, the poorer ones are very likely to be
Democrats. They are made to see, in the machine's
tangible, lucrative ways, the advantage of support-
ing the local political powers that be. They are
very difficult material for the politician. They are
individualists, quarreling constantly among them-
selves, each demanding to have as good a share as
the most favored one. They do not act in a mass
under impulses of loyalty. They are of that very
uncomfortable sort who “ have to be seen often.”
They demand stated and regular returns for politi-
cal allegiance, or else their allegiance is gone.
The Negro vote is for the most part gerryman-
dered into a Republican ward. There is some com-
petition between the parties for their suffrage.
There are three classes of Negro voters, each class
including a considerable number : those who are
purchased at so much a head; those who act under
leaders for a consideration of some sort ; honest
voters whose support is held by their being “recog-
nized" in various ways.
The inducements brought to the minds of the
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP 161
voters in these wards, it will be seen, are of a
concrete, unmistakable sort. Of outright bribery
it must be said that there is very little. Every
political step, however, involves some sort of indi-
rect bribery. The whole course of local political
procedure is beset with trickery and fraud. There
are specialists in naturalization, each of whom
stands as sponsor to large numbers of newcomers,
swearing falsely as to the length of time they have
been in this country. They retain certain inter-
preters to serve their purposes. The reading test
is managed with considerable ease. Under a
friendly registration officer, any rude attempt at
pronouncing the words of the Constitution is con-
sidered satisfactory. Immigrants, provided they
are familiar with the Roman alphabet letters, after
a little coaching, summon intelligence and courage
to pronounce a series of English words, syllable by
syllable, in an incoherent way; and a North End
wardroom is not the place for stiff academical
requirements.
It is perfectly true that there are often, if not
always, some hundreds of voters in these districts
who do not pretend to live in this part of the city.
Many of the “boys’ who have moved away from
the North End still retain a “residence ’’ there.
They spend a night or two at a certain address at
162 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
the first of May, rarely even complying with the
letter of the law, and then have themselves regis-
tered as voters from that address. It is quite pos-
sible, in case of local faction fights, to decide the
issue at a caucus, or in city elections to affect
the general result, by this “carpet-bagger’’ vote.
The choice of men to stand as candidates for
party nomination at the caucus is subject to a
variety of considerations. The foremost politi-
cians have probably climbed the ladder of elective
fame so far as ward politicians can. The West
End boss, who has been to the top, deigns, like
“the old man eloquent,” to return to lower posts
of statesmanship ; but he is exceptional. The usual
plan is for the leader to put forward some specially
trusted intimate, often a brother or a cousin, for
the important nominations. Specially bright “talk-
ers” are likely to be advanced for honors in the
City or State legislative chambers. Faithful party
workers are “rewarded ” by a term in the Com-
mon Council. It is the policy, also, in both dis-
tricts, to “recognize” the Continental elements by
giving some of their number small elective offices.
Some of these are beginning to rise above the Com-
mon Council. One Jew and one Italian from the
North End have served in the lower branch of the
legislature. Every man selected to go before the
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP 163
caucus is required to agree, in the presence of wit-
nesses, that if he is elected to office he will act en-
tirely as the ward organization directs.
The filing of caucus nomination papers is every
year the occasion of some absurd, disgraceful ex-
hibition. A heeler gets into the party office by
a window, or down through a skylight, in order to
have his faction’s list of nominees placed first on
the caucus ticket. Or the announcement of the
time for filing nominations, of which public adver-
tisement is required, is placed in an obscure part
of the first edition of the afternoon papers, and
those in possession of the secret have their nomina-
tions filed while their opponents are still waiting
for the news.
As a rule, local contests in the North and West
Ends never extend beyond the caucus, except in a
merely perfunctory way. The West End is so
boss ridden that there is rarely any public cam-
paign at all. The democracy does not meet and
reason together for the common good. Important
elections take place in this district without a single
meeting for a discussion of the issues involved.
This seems to represent the extreme step in setting
aside our American precedents. The West End
doctrine is that platform discussion is “hot air ; ”
that the newspapers are all “fixed ” by corpora-
164 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
tions'; and that the welfare of city and nation is
neither here nor there to Ward 8. This does not
mean that there is nothing to an election but the
leader's fiat. On the contrary, the campaign in the
shape of “personal work '' is carried to the bench
and counter, the threshold and fireside, the saloon
bar and the street corner, — wherever the voter is
found. Exhaustive organization, not talk, is the
West End style of canvass. In either district
freedom of speech is sometimes subject to actual
abridgment in the case of bolters. In the West
End a dissenting faction had made all arrange-
ments to hold a meeting in the wardroom, but
arrived to find the lights out and the door securely
locked. In the North End there was to be, under
insurgent leadership, a special Jewish rally in a
new synagogue which was practically completed.
Influence was brought to bear upon the contractor
to post a notice that the building was unsafe.
At rallies, when there is a local contest, much
time and attention is given to specific instructions
as to the proper candidates to be voted for under
each heading on the ballot, and careful warnings
are given as to the proper sources of light, provided
light is necessary. Indeed, a ward rally at the
North End toward the close of the evening assumes
the character of a district school, in which the
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP 165
pupils of different grades are given their different
appropriate lessons by the chief political pedagogue,
to be learned by caucus day.
It is said that a peculiar sort of “crib’ has
been devised by which some of these pupils occa-
sionally escape the mental burden of their lesson.
For a certain office there are a number of inde-
pendent candidates, whose fitness for the nomina-
tion consists in the fact that their names are
confusingly like those of the “regulars.” A tooth
comb is taken and the teeth removed, except those
which are spaced so as to point to the names of the
“regular” candidates on the caucus ballot, when
the end of the comb is pointed at the name of the
office to be filled; or better still, a piece of card-
board has oblong holes cut in it, which, when fitted
over the list of nominees, leaves only the approved
names in sight. Thus equipped the recent Italian
immigrant may be enabled to vote “right" with
an accuracy of which enlightened voters — whose
eyes might wander—would be quite incapable. .
At this point political ingenuity comes within a
hair's breadth of making the machine automatic.
At the caucus itself instruction is still liberally
and insistently dispensed; though then, of course,
false doctrine is likely to be even more loudly pro-
claimed. In this case there is everything in the
166 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
Voter's knowing the particular source from which
the instruction comes. The officers of the caucus
are on the alert for opportunities. There is a
provision by which a voter who has any physical
defect of hand or eye may seek help of the offi-
cers of the caucus. Sometimes a halting intellect
is symbolically bodied forth in a bandaged eye
or an arm in a sling. Then it is important to
have the right man ready to “assist.” Some-
times caucus officers exercise terrorism over cer-
tain voters by assisting them against their will,
particularly those who are under the influence of
liquor. These actions, however, are very closely
watched by the opposing forces at the rail, who
loudly protest to the captain or lieutenant of the
police. Such an official is always present at this
up-to-date folkmote, clothed with summary author-
ity, and supported by from twenty to fifty rounds-
men and two or three plain-clothes detectives.
The faction leaders outside the rail give close
vigilance to watching the line of voters as they
pass in to the polling booths. When the “fight.”
is a warm one, a large number of votes are
challenged. The ground of most of the chal-
lenges is false registration, — covering the case of
“carpet-baggers,” whom every one knows to be
non-residents, but whose failure to comply with
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP 167
the letter of the law may be difficult to prove.
Quite often Republicans are found voting in Demo-
cratic caucuses. Occasionally a man is challenged
as a repeater; that is, as voting on the name of an-
other man, who may be late, absent, ill, in jail, or
dead.
It is perhaps needless to say that the object of
these challenges is not a disinterested desire to stop
such corrupt practices. If the vote proves to be a
close one, the challenges are followed up. As the
caucus has now practically the same legal sanctions
as an election, there are severe penalties involved.
Usually, however, nothing is heard of them after-
wards, and many people in the district come to look
upon false registration, and even repeating, as part
of the safe and profitable risk of the game of
politics. After one caucus, in which the opposition
made specially strenuous protests and entered many
challenges, one of the local heelers was heard to
remark, “Well, we ran in a couple hundred of
them, anyway.” A voter is sometimes challenged
simply in order that the faction leaders may know
exactly what the nature of his vote is. It was the
intention, under the secret-ballot system, to make
it impossible for the politician to keep account of
stock and know about the actual delivery of goods.
This worthy intention is easily defeated. A voter
168 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
is challenged just as he is about to deposit his bal-
lot. It is then necessary for him to identify his
ballot by writing his name on the back of it. Con-
federates of the faction leaders, when the count
comes, can discover whether the challenged voter
has voted “right.” This method is operated so
effectually, and the machine so severely punishes
irregularity thus discovered, that the security of the
secret ballot is to a considerable degree lost.
It is only when a defeated faction refuses to
abide by the result of the caucus that the full
excitement of the campaign is carried beyond the
primary and into the final election. Aside from
such fraternal strife, there remains in general city
elections the stimulus of supplying a large local
vote for the party candidates; and as both wards
carry an enormous list of city appointees, this in-
citement is always sufficient to keep the machine
actively at work up to election time.
The power of such political organization is in
that it is incessantly at work. It hardly has a
season in which it is more busy than at other times.
It has no vacations. Election won or lost, the
organization comes at once to the steady, all the
year round task of keeping the forces together and,
as far as possible, satisfied. After a victory each
ward tries to secure the greatest share of the
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSEIIP 169
spoils, and Wards 6 and 8 are noted for getting
more than their share. In case of defeat various
shifts are made to keep as many men as possible
in office. There is at least a slight hold on power
in the Board of Aldermen, or there are members
of the legislature who can secure jobs from cor-
porations. Many go back to their old trades.
Loosely attached ones move away, remaining avail-
able for “residence ’’ purposes when needed. In
general, the same interlacing of relationship and
association which lifts the fortunate into city
positions serves to break their fall in the event
of party failure. In any case, everything is done
to stimulate the voters to watch and work for
the future. It is a strange fact that party loyalty
seems to rise higher during the lean years than dur-
ing the fat years. Bolters choose the times when
the party is in power as the favorable time for their
insurrections; because, while many are provided
for, more are not, and there are infinite possibili-
ties for jealousies and bickering. As a City Hall
official expressed it, “Every time I give a job I
make one friend and ten enemies.”
The brother and lieutenant of the Ward 8 boss,
when in the legislature, dismissed some very im-
portant measure limiting the power of a certain
corporation by saying that he was too busy attend-
170 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
ing to securing work for the unemployed to pay
attention to such matters. The task of placing a
large number of men in city work is indeed a very
engrossing and exasperating one. There lies in
waiting the disappointment of seeing them all dis-
charged. In Ward 6, at a recent political over-
turn, 212 men were removed. No wonder that the
boss in the ward campaign that followed the mayor-
alty election, with a lenient and fostering air, stated
that if there were any men still in the city employ
who feared that they might lose their jobs by com-
ing to the caucus, such men would be excused from
coming. This announcement was the accompani-
ment of whispered rumors that a child had starved
to death, and a man had committed suicide. It can
easily be understood, therefore, that there is a cer-
tain solemn hush about the last campaign meeting
before a city election, when the turn of events
affects so deeply the well-being of so many of the
families of the ward.
Civil service regulations offer obstacles in the
way of patronage, but the law is to some extent
evaded. A boss secures the discharge of a large
number of men “for the good of the service ’’ or
“for lack of work.” After a little time he begins
to draw liberally upon the civil service list, which
he has been careful to have filled up in the mean
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP 171
time by his own men. Sometimes it is possible to
make a new classification of labor, to have men
enter their names under this new head, and then
to have a call sent from the city departments for
workmen of the new description. It has been
asserted that on one occasion certain politicians in
the West End surreptitiously secured the civil
service examination papers in order to make sure
of landing their men. The story goes that one
half of the questions were changed, with the result
that all the West End candidates made a mark of
exactly fifty per cent. There is immunity from
these embarrassments in the placing of laborers
with corporations that have close relations with the
municipal government. This is more and more an
integral part of the machine scheme. Contractors
and tradesmen who deal with the city departments
are also confidently looked to by political leaders
as sources of employment.
As matters of personal interest, of course only
the larger stakes in the game concern the political
chief and his aides-de-camp. Aside from securing
a few well-paid appointive posts at City Hall, each
ward expects that the teaming, street construction
and other large city work carried on within its
limits shall be done by some of its citizen con-
tractors. These contracting firms are usually of
172 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
an improvised sort, and are often only a name
to cover up the operations of two or three politi-
cians. Large profits are made in these ways.
Matters are so arranged that when the administra-
tion changes, the good-will and fixtures are trans-
ferred to a firm ostensibly connected with the
party newly in power, but the ownership probably
remains the same.
It is in connection with land transactions that
the professional politician finds his special financial
opportunity. Some of these schemes come near to
the line of legitimate business. For instance, at
the time when the new bridge to Charlestown was
to be erected, there was intense rivalry between two
groups of local politicians as to which should de-
termine the precise location of the bridge. One
group had options on one row of buildings, the
other on a different row. The successful group
first secured a large amount of money for damages
to their buildings, and then profited by the rise
in value of their property after the improvements
were completed. Such money-making exploits on
the basis of inside knowledge of facts, and even
on the basis of facts actually created for the pur-
pose, are, of course, the commonplace of much of
the large business enterprise of the present day.
Without that degree of excuse is the practice
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP 173
of managing the purchase of real estate by the city
at a price greatly in excess of its real value, the
amount in excess going as booty to the chief polit-
ical agents in bringing about the purchase. At
least two local politicians have frequently been en-
gaged in undertakings of this kind. “Land
deals '' are, in fact, so common that among old
hands at City Hall it is taken for granted that no
purchase of land by the city can be made without
some official receiving his “dot.”
The relation between politics and local trade of
every sort is close. Shopkeepers find that it is
very necessary to be on friendly terms with the
machine. Their trade may diminish otherwise.
A provision dealer in the West End was placed
under a boycott not long ago because he had a
political bolter engaged in cutting meat for him,
but the provision dealer pluckily endured the tem-
porary stress. The liquor trade is everywhere
just on the edge of politics. But as the licenses
are given by a State board, over which ward politi-
cians can have but little influence, the relation of
the politician to the saloon-keeper is simply that
of two men who can give each other aid in for-
warding their different projects. In several forms
of Jewish trade and enterprise, the politician finds
financial opportunities. The junk dealer seeks a
174 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
license. Theoretically it costs five dollars; in
practice it costs fifty. The jerry-builder seeks a
license to make over an old building and crowd
new additions upon the land. The politician can
help him, for a consideration. After crowding the
building over every possible inch of land, he wishes
to gain more space by adding bay windows that jut
out over the public street. In many cases the
narrow streets in the West End, newly built up by
Jewish landlords, have bay windows three feet deep
reaching out on both sides, and almost continuous
along the whole length of the street. A certain
former Republican alderman, now holding a more
important position, is said to have pocketed twenty-
five dollars for each of these obstructions. As
a result, among some of his companions he is
called “ Bay Window,” by way of jolly nickname.
It must not be thought, however, that the poli-
tician never serves his constituency for naught.
He has an endless number of thankless tasks laid
upon him. He must see that this poor family's
rent is paid; he must secure legal assistance for
that oppressed immigrant ; he has to arbitrate
local disputes; he must secure for the sick admis-
sion to the hospital; he is pressed to use his best
endeavors to get ambitious but incapable girls into
the high or normal school; he must find places for
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP 175
them as stenographers or teachers when they have
finished their education; he must put the poor,
worthy and unworthy alike, in the way of receiving
help from church or municipal charities; he is
besieged for opportunities of work by widows
and helpless people. He makes it his business
to befriend the culprit before the law, advancing
bail, securing witnesses, getting the complaint
smoothed down, the penalty eased. As a philan-
thropist, under enlightened standards he could
hardly be allowed to pass; still, he is inclined to
believe himself one, and many of his constituents
share the opinion with him. He is certainly human
in the variety, the universality, of his interests and
service. Up to a certain point, also, the boss must
necessarily be a man of character. As seen in
these districts, the political chiefs, whatever may
be said about their public morality, answer to the
severest tests that private domestic rectitude may
place upon them.
Ward politics is largely an affair of young men.
It brings them into some sort of equal association
with persons of influence and power. Ambitious
youths, with no one to help them to a professional
or commercial career, and having prejudices to
meet in those lines against their race and reli-
gion, find an open, inviting opportunity in politics.
176 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
Middle-aged men do not care for its excitements,
and cannot so well afford its risks. It is a difficult
task to get the older men to come to the caucus and
wait for hours in line. Still, the family claim is
so strong that cases are not uncommon in which
a successful young politician, holding an important
position at City Hall, will find a place for his
father as laborer in one of the city departments.
The intricacies of family relationship have so
much to do with holding the party together that
the sentiments of women have telling force. Two
minor politicians in the North End have recently
found themselves discredited because they were
saloon-keepers and non-churchgoers. The influ-
ence which led to their undoing came chiefly from
what was said here and there over the table at home.
Either fault by itself might have been condoned,
but the double delinquency could not be endured.
No man need hope for votes from these constitu-
encies who is known to be discourteous to women
or inconsiderate of children.
Politics, far more than any other interest, gives
dignity to the larger social life in these wards.
The man who succeeds in business moves away into
pleasanter surroundings; the man who succeeds in
politics must, in effect at least, remain. Politics
lifts and localizes at the same time. It is, there-
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP 177
fore, on the political, not on the economic or edu-
cational scale, that social dignities are registered.
Politics forms a titled aristocracy. No consider-
able social occasion is complete which is not illus-
trated by some of these men of rank.
The political affairs of a ward are nominally in
the hands of a ward committee for each party, but
aside from the difficulty of finding among the
voters of the ward twelve or fifteen men of suffi-
cient special capacity and experience to serve on
such a committee, the situation is so complicated,
requires such varied, flexible and instant action,
both for the regulation of internal affairs and for
playing the local forces in the large outer field of
a mayoralty campaign, that the single powerful
leader is a natural and inevitable development.
Even the reformer, if he reaches his conclusions
on the basis of the facts as they are, is compelled
to admit that the conditions require some sort of
boss. The boss, too, must be near his people, and,
in essential respects, like them. “He’s our kind.”
is the keynote of loyalty to political leadership;
and this, indeed, is usually as true, though the
sentiment may be more subtly expressed, among
the educated classes as among the working classes.
The two leaders in Ward 6 and Ward 8 have,
until about a year ago, been engaged in a relent-
178 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
less duel with each other. The trouble began in a
nominating convention. Charging that the Ward
6 man did not trade votes as he agreed to do, the
Ward 8 man swore that he would let his right arm
wither before he would ever take the hand of his
professional brother. The two wards, being close
neighbors, are in the same aldermanic and sena-
torial districts. Each boss strove to organize sup-
port in his rival's ward for alderman and senator,
and every weapon in the arsenal of political chi-
canery was put in commission. Each proceeded
to organize a band of insurgents in the territory of
the other. Each played defensive tactics against
the other by bringing hordes of “carpet-baggers”
into his ward. After such strokes had been dealt
back and forth during successive campaigns, the
Ward 8 leader was able to institute a deadly attack
from the rear. This was done by means of an or-
ganized, persistent policy of treachery to his party,
through which he continued to retain a large share
of his power after the opposition party had come
into control of the city government. By placing at
work men belonging to his opponent's ward at a
time when all of his opponent's most loyal followers
were being discharged, he effectually checkmated
the enemy. The two bosses have now established
a modus wivendi, to the peace and quiet of the city
TIRAFFIC IN CITIZENSIIIP 179
as a whole. The capitulating Ward 6 man, how-
ever, is now looked at somewhat askance by his
“regular ” colleagues in other parts of the city.
These two men, strongly contrasted in personal
traits and in some of their methods, yet are alike
in representing the ward boss as no other political
leaders in the city now do. There are other lead-
ers as powerful or more so, but this is because
they have gained large influence in the public coun-
cils of the party or the municipality. There are
no others who give such unremitting personal
attention to the perplexing maze of petty affairs
which makes up the internal life of their wards.
In this respect the Ward 8 leader clearly out-
strips the Ward 6 leader — so as to be known
throughout the city as the man who, against ever-
increasing obstacles, holds the vote of his ward
absolutely in hand. His galvanic mastery of his
followers is, in fact, so absolute that he can juggle
with the votes of fifteen hundred men, throwing
them, at the same time, for the regular candidate
for mayor and for an unknown insurgent candi-
date for street commissioner.
Both bosses exercise that combination of auto-
cracy and benignity, frankness and mystery, which
goes with paternal sway. Both know how to bring
out and give scope for capacity in the young be-
180 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
fore it knows itself. Both know how to check and
mar a career that is leading toward ends alien to
their own. Both have their power balanced with
an overwhelming load of responsibility. The anxi-
eties brought about by the general pressure for
place, the constant unrest and outright treachery
of their following, the personal clashing of rival
suppliants, – all these, while outside foes may
be clamoring, constitute a body of corroding care
such as only the strongest men could endure. The
Ward 6 leader, a man of nervous, impetuous type,
some years ago found that the strain of living in
the thick of all this became too great, and removed
with his family twenty miles out into the country.
Here, then, in the land of popular representative
government, is the curious anomaly of a political
leader of a large constitueney, elected to every sort
of office by them, who has for years made his home
a score of miles away, under conditions in every
respect different from their own. Every one knows
the fact, but it is spoken of under the breath, ex-
cept when an insurgent movement breaks out. It
would be impossible for him to retain his hold but
for the large family connection which the boss
enjoys. One of the humors of a recent revolution-
ary uprising in the ward was a burlesque pro-
gramme of a play, in which the characters were
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP 181
Ring John and a long list of princes of the blood
royal.
This leader comes of the well-to-do Irish, most
of whom have given up all connection with the
North End. His family for many years kept an
old-country grocery, including “bottled goods.”
He has had a fair education in the Boston schools.
His executive force became apparent in connection
with schoolboy interests during his course in the
English High School. He was in politics as soon
as he became a voter. His ascent was exceedingly
rapid. He leaped from the Common Council to
the State Senate, and thence leaped again to Con-
gress, being almost the youngest member during
his first session. He was elected to Congress by
the odd rallying cry, “The people believe in rota-
tion,” displacing a man who had represented the
district with special ability and distinction. The
time came, however, when his rallying cry was due
to be used against him. Since being, in turn, ro-
tated out, he has become the editor of a weekly
paper combining religion with its politics, which
was formerly the possession of the only general
municipal boss the city of Boston has yet known.
“The young Napoleon of the North End” is
not inaptly named. He is short, dark, sharp
featured, with set lips. He has quick movements
182 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
and an anxious look. His home life is said to be
very attractive, and he is very hospitable to his
city friends at his country establishment. His
opponents accuse him of obviously making use of
the church to further his ends; his friends say
that he has rendered the church very important
aid. Certain it is that he is a loyal church-
man, and that there is nothing in his private life
to belie his profession. For keeping up his influ-
ence in the ward, he is noted among the politicians
of the city for vast and intense activity, for the
acute and subtle manipulation of personal and
social interests, and for successful dickering with
other political leaders of his own party. He has
apparently had a comfortable income, in and out
of office ; but there are no signs of his having any
considerable property. Though there is always
more or less unrest under his leadership, the people
of the ward are proud of his personal success,
even when not held to him by the bond of benefits
received. He has shown an aggressive interest in
several very important movements at the North
End for the bettering of the way of life among
the people. The North End Park, a playground
and swimming beach, is his “monument.” He
does not fail to make frequent public reference to
his connection with these enterprises. In general,
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP 183
he follows the type in making the central figure at
public meetings, at charitable bazaars and in the
columns of the papers. His grand ambition is
to attain the dignity of “His Honor, the Mayor.”
The king of Ward 8 utterly scorns all such
vanities. Caring nothing for glory, living after
the homeliest fashion among his own people, hav-
ing no family, and only the semblance of other
business, he rivets his attention upon his craft of
ward boss. He is of the poor Irish, and there
are touches of the cabin life of his ancestors in his
plain, homely ways; on the other hand, his name,
a very unusual one, is that of an ancient Irish
chieftain. He began life as a newsboy, but even
then he used to take his recreation by going to the
State House to listen to the legislative debates.
He came to the front just as some of the last of
the well-to-do Irish leaders were passing from the
West End to pleasanter quarters.
He has no tendencies toward any sort of dis-
sipation, abstaining from liquor, and even from
tobacco. He is said to have given as a reason for
his abstinent life a promise long ago made to his
mother. He is fondly attached to his brother,
who wanders somewhat from his own chosen ways.
He is punctiliously devout ; and though availing
himself fully of church esprit de corps for his
184 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
purposes, yet as a worshiper he seeks an obscure cor-
ner, not the foremost seats. He always distrusts
the stranger, meaning by the stranger any one not
of his own tried and intimate followers. It is this
narrow, intense form of allegiance which he seeks
and creates that makes him a sort of clan chief,
hated and feared almost as much by the regular
forces of his allies as by the enemy, but supported
by the unquestioning loyalty of clansmen to their
chief. The North End is split up into many gangs,
and there a revolt is always imminent. The West
End boss sees to it that there is but one gang, the
membership of his ward political club. The annual
incomes of municipal employees in the membership
of this organization aggregate not less than $80,-
000 or $90,000. Under the peculiar West End
system for being on both sides of the fence politi-
cally, none of its members walk the streets all
night in agonized suspense before an election, as
city employees in the North End sometimes do.
These facts suggest the indissoluble nature of the
tie which holds the club together. The boss has
his “real-estate ’’ office in the club, and the mem-
bers always know how to find him.
In contrast with the North End leader, this man
is stolid and unrefined. He looks darkly out of
eyeglasses set against beetling brows. His chief
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP 185
feature is his lower jaw, which is broad, square
and protruding to the point of caricature. He
walks with a dapper step, and has a rapid, choppy
utterance, which gibe oddly with his large head and
heavy features. He speaks but seldom, however.
He will walk for blocks or drive for miles with one
of his associates beside him and not utter a sylla-
ble. He is without magnetism ; on the other hand,
he is not arbitrary or domineering, though very
severe and sudden with anything savoring of dis-
loyalty. His personal mastery comes of his sheer
executive force and strength of character. He is
always in command and on the field in person.
His easy self-possession reaches its height at the
caucus: the wonderful knowledge which he has of
his ward is every moment apparent; even jaw-
breaking Russian names he calls out before the
clerks have time to consult the lists; his manipu-
lation of affairs suggests the compositor setting
type with the linotype invention, and the result of
it all is as surely his act. He is connected with
no social organizations, though he provides in his
scheme for the social ambitions of others, making
use of such motives for his own ends. At bot-
tom he is the financier. Thrift is the keynote of
his life, and the real ambition of his life is that
of the money-getter. He saved money when he
186 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
was a city laborer at $1.75 per day. He has
numerous real-estate holdings, and is said to be
worth at least $100,000. It is said that he desires
to be a general city boss. If so, he seeks not the
honors but the emoluments.
He constantly inculcates thrift upon his follow-
ers. He is also a stern advocate of a temperate,
self-controlled life. He gives the advantage always,
in distributing patronage, to men of sobriety and
steady character. Unmarried and accused of be-
ing a woman-hater, he constantly urges marriage
upon the young men of the ward. He very often
gives his followers substantial aid in setting up a
new household, and it is part of his code of laws
for the ward political club that the club shall give
each member who marries a generous present.
Such a policy of social upbuilding in the ward does
not displace the usual charities of the boss, but
supplements them by something truly sagacious
and far-reaching. This policy reaches its height
in his special efforts to discover promising young
men, encourage them with their training, launch
them upon their careers, give them positions of
confidence and power in the politics of the ward,
and place them in high-salaried positions in the
city government, or establish them as contractors,
to win still larger sums from the public.
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSHIP 187
The fanatical fixedness of purpose with which
this man insists on keeping up his patronage list
and his representation on the appropriation and
finance committees of the City Council, along with
his peculiar narrowness of range and inability to
trust the outsider, constitute him probably the most
serious menace to good government that now exists
in the city of Boston. There could hardly be a
more curious and tragic instance of a man holding
absolutely to a programme of right living in his
personal life and standing with unwavering loyalty
by his friends and neighbors, yet commonly sus-
pected of exercising every ingenuity of unscrupu-
lousness in public affairs, and even treating his own
political party with barefaced treachery. He con-
trols a sufficient vote, so that his party is compelled
to bargain for his support. He is constantly creat-
ing deadlocks in party conventions, in order that
the vote of his ward may count for several times
more than that of any other. The opposing party
may nearly always win him for the proper price.
There are times when this adept of ethical leger-
demain sells out to both parties, and by the help
of disaffected elements in other wards actually
delivers the goods.
The length to which he will go when kept back
from any part of his booty was shown when Josiah
188 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
Quincy was elected mayor a few years ago. Mr.
Quincy considered his demands in the way of jobs,
contracts and committee appointments altogether
exorbitant, and refused to grant them. With his
ablest lieutenant, he entered the State legislature.
Here they combined with the opposite party to
hinder Mr. Quincy's projects for improving the
city charter. A youthful member of his staff, five-
and-twenty, a miracle of brazenness, was placed,
by means of a similarly treacherous alliance, in the
chair of the Common Council. Here some of Mr.
Quincy's most interesting plans for enhancing the
health and happiness of the masses of the people
were hopelessly blocked. Leading citizens, regard-
less of dividing lines, sent in formal petitions.
The whole organized force of the working people
of the city, chiefly of his race, sternly demanded
favorable action in matters so vital to them. Far-
seeing leaders of his party saw here a signal politi-
cal point of vantage. But with his ward in solid
files behind him, and holding the balance of power
between the two parties in the Council, he stood
immovable. And all to satisfy the desire of ven-
geance in the heart of this strange political Shylock,
with his flinty exaction of human life as forfeit for
his lost ducats.
He has in his ward what might stand as “monu-
TRAFFIC IN CITIZENSEIIP 189
ments,” — the Charlesbank Gymnasium and the
West End Branch Library. He takes little inter-
est in these enterprises; in fact, he hardly more
than acquiesced in their establishment. They are
now falling almost entirely into the hands of the
Jews; and he, though contriving to hold a following
among that race, is secretly a bitter anti-Semite.
In part, this may be because in their worst traits
he resembles them ; “it is not the colors, but the
shades, that hate each other.” The chief reason is
not a subtle one. The cement of clan has held
together the foundations of his power. Those
foundations are being sapped. His own people are
being displaced and scattered. The Jew is becom-
ing omnipresent about him — as a spectre warning
the Irish boss of his coming downfall.
His supremacy will not pass away, however, be-
fore he has drilled leaders of the Continental immi-
grants in ways that are subversive of the American
party system, not to speak of every holy tradition
of our free Republic. The evil methods will remain;
yet not because of him or any of his like. They
exist because, to immigrant as to native humanity,
liberty is an empty thing without the means of life.
Machine politics provides for the purchase of op-
portunity by the payment of freedom.
CHAPTER VII
LAW AND ORDER
THE North End, with the addition of the North
Union Station and one half of the great market
region near Dock Square, go to make up Police
Division 1. From the first of December, 1900,
to the first of December, 1901, the total number of
arrests in this division for all offenses was 4300
males and 575 females, or 4875 altogether. Of
these, 3124 were for drunkenness, 306 for assault
of one kind or another, 232 for simple larceny, 37
for breaking and entering dwellings and buildings,
77 for offences against chastity, including night-
walking and the keeping of a noisy and disorderly
house, 75 for gaming on the Lord’s Day and at
other times and being present where gaming was
going on, 3 for murder and being accessory to mur-
der, and 6 for manslaughter. There were taken
into custody, also, 203 suspicious persons, and 37
vagrants and tramps of both sexes; 87 disturbances
were suppressed ; 368 sick and injured persons
were assisted, and 32 dead bodies were cared for.
LA W AND ORDER 191
But the North End is bordered and crossed by
great highways of travel and traffic from one part
of the city to another. Therefore the figures given
represent a much greater population than that
which makes its home in the North End. A sepa-
ration of almost any one of these groups of figures
into residents and non-residents would give some
surprising results. As a matter of fact, of the
entire number of persons arrested in this division,
fully two thirds live outside the limits of Boston.
Naturally, the majority of these non-residents are
arrested for drunkenness or immorality of some
kind, since a great number of men, and some wo-
men, from neighboring cities and towns, especially
from those to the north of the city, resort to the
North End for purposes of wrong doing.
If the remaining third of the total number of
arrests is separated into residents of the North
End and those of other parts of the city, there is
another surprising result. On the basis of a care-
ful estimate, no less than one half belong outside
the North End. For what offenses these non-
residents are arrested it is not easy to say ; but
probably for drunkenness and immorality in gen-
eral, as in the case of those living away from the
city.
Thus it appears that out of the 4875 persons
192 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
arrested in the division during the twelve months
ending December 1, 1901, fully 3250 did not
belong in Boston at all, and only about 825 resided
at the North End. In view of the fact that this
last-mentioned number comprises all who were
arrested for any offense whatever, including drunk-
enness, in a population of nearly 30,000, it seems
astonishingly small. According to the police show-
ing, therefore, the North End, so far from being
exceptionally lawless, is, on the contrary, law-abid-
ing to a degree that is not generally supposed.
Certain measures recently taken by the police in
the North End have had an important bearing on
the moral welfare of this section of the city. One
of these was the closing of the last of the dance
halls in the spring of 1900. These dance halls for
a number of years before they were shut up had
been the sole survivals characteristic of that period
in the history of the district when the moral tide
was at its very lowest ebb. This period, which
covered fifteen or twenty years from about the
middle of the century which has just closed, pre-
sents a picture of vicious and criminal activity that
seems incredible to one familiar with the North
End of the present day. “Jilt shops” — those
resorts under the name of brothels into which the
sailor was enticed merely for robbery—were strewn
LA JW AND ORDER 193
thickly along Ann Street, now North Street. There
was a rat-pit where sporting men from all parts
of the city gathered, and where fights among the
spectators were of the most frequent occurrence.
In the saloon above this rat-pit the drinks were
served by girls with painted cheeks and in low-
necked dresses. Entertainments of the lewdest
character were given in a resort off North Margin
Street and elsewhere. The “ North End Block”
sheltered a swarming population of thieves, mur-
derers, prostitutes and gamblers. In and around
Richmond Street was gathered a mass of depraved
Negroes and white people who constituted what
was known as the “Black Sea.” A stranger ven-
turing too near this “Black Sea’’ was very likely
to be engulfed by it, only to be tossed back later,
robbed and stripped, if not lifeless.
The dance halls had come into existence early in
the century; but during this period they reached
their greatest number and sank to their lowest
level. Those that survived the period, while less
and less open, and having a constantly diminishing
patronage, remained essentially unchanged to the
very end. Indeed the charge on which they were
closed, that of being houses of ill-fame, might have
been brought with equal propriety against them
during the eighty or more years of their existence.
194 AMIERICANS IN PROCESS
Licenses were not required, since admission was
free and no liquor sold. The women were paid a
Small fee by the proprietors in addition to what
they received from their victims. The proprietors,
who bore all the running expenses, including the
cost of the music, ostensibly derived their profits
from the sale of the so-called “soft' or non-alco-
holic drinks. No private rooms were connected
directly with the halls, but such rooms were to
be found on the floors above or elsewhere in the
immediate neighborhood. That the proprietors
controlled some of these rooms there is no doubt.
The closing of the dance halls really registered
the moral change that had taken place at the North
End within the last quarter of a century. The
conditions out of which such resorts had sprung,
and upon which their continuance really depended,
had ceased to exist. During their later years the
dance halls had been more and more of an ana-
chronism. A rapidly decreasing number of their
women habituées, and a smaller and smaller per-
centage of their patronage, came from the neigh-
borhood. At the same time, local public sentiment
was growing constantly stronger against them, as
being a disgrace and a menace.
Thus the shutting up of these dance halls may
be said to mark the end of a long and interesting
LAW AND ORDER 195
chapter in the history of the North End, - a chap-
ter of moral decline to an almost inconceivably
low point, and of at least partial moral recovery.
But after all, it is the narrative of what has taken
place on the soil of the North End rather than in
the hearts and minds of the people; for the changed
moral situation has been due, for the most part, to
the change of the population. The moral decadence
began with the incoming of the vicious and crim-
inal of all races to take the places left vacant by
the departure of the people of the better grades;
with the coming of the self-respecting and indus-
trious foreign immigrant began the moral revival.
In other words, the history of morals at the
North End is at bottom little more than the his-
tory of the social changes that have taken place
here.
This should not be construed as meaning that
religious, educational and coercive agencies have
not been at work all along, or have been ineffective.
On the contrary, they have done much to keep the
North End from sinking to any lower point of
moral degradation, and to aid it in its moral recu-
peration. The work of the churches and schools is
described in other chapters of this book; that of
the police only is in point here.
Even in the most turbulent days of the North
196 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
End, police activity was by no means lacking.
Haunts of vice and crime were broken up, law-
breakers of every sort were driven away or taken
into custody, and life and property were safeguarded.
In 1851 a single descent of the police on the no-
torious Ann Street resulted in the apprehension of
165 persons guilty of every sort of vice and crime.
In another raid on the same street a few years
later, 51 street-walkers and inmates of houses of
ill-fame were taken into custody. The police
annals of this whole period are full of tales of
sensational encounters with burglars, murderers
and other desperate characters. As late as 1870
or later, it was not considered safe for a police
officer to go alone through certain quarters. Two
officers went together and also took care to walk
in the middle of the street. Nevertheless, the
police force in this part of the city was far too
small for the situation that it tried to meet. In
1854, when the Police Department of the City
of Boston superseded the Boston Watch and Po-
lice, there were in the North End division one
captain, two lieutenants and thirty-three patrol-
men. To-day the force in practically the same
division numbers ninety.
A recent event that has had an important bear-
ing on the moral welfare of the North End was the
LA W AND ORDER 197
loss by one of the hotels of its innholder's license.
An innholder's license, it will be remembered,
carries with it the privilege of serving liquors
with food at any and all times excepting between
the hours of eleven at night and six in the morn-
ing. Unlike the dance halls, this hotel, as it was
conducted, had never been rooted in local con-
ditions. With others of the same general class
here and there in the city, it owed much of its
business to the breaking up, by the police, of the
organized houses of prostitution throughout Boston.
Women frequented its spacious café on the second
floor, where they were known to be present and
could easily be found. Men and women also came
in company. Some of the women lived in the
house, hiring their rooms by the week, month, or
for a longer time; a few drifted in from the near-by
dance halls before these were closed. The waiters
had each a favorite among the habituées, for whom
they solicited custom, and shared in her illicit
earnings. Practically none of the women belonged
in the North End, and nearly all of the male
patrons were non-residents.
The loss of its innholder's license involved, of
course, the loss of those privileges of selling liquor
on Sundays and holidays, upon which the pros-
perity of such an hotel depends. As a result, the
198 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
character of the house was completely changed.
The café was made into a general dining-room,
which, together with a similar room on an upper
floor, was visited by a constituency of a distinctly
better grade than that of former days. The hotel
held merely an ordinary bar-room license. But
this change proved fatal to its financial interests;
within a few months it has been obliged to
assign.
Prostitution was not wholly banished from the
North End by these two events. Finding the doors
of their former haunts shut against them, some
of the women established themselves in near-by
tenements or took to the street. Yet they did
not long escape police vigilance, and were taken
into custody or compelled to leave the district.
At the present time there are no disorderly houses
at this end of the city and but little street-walking.
That prostitution no longer exists here cannot, of
course, be affirmed. There is an unwritten law
of the local hotels which points unmistakably to
its continued presence. This law is that a woman
who comes with a man, presumably her husband,
and remains over night, shall not be allowed to
depart alone until her companion has been seen
and gives assurance that his valuables are intact. -
Thus the unpleasant consequences of a reported
IAW AND ORDER 199
robbery in the house are avoided. But prosti-
tution no longer flaunts itself openly. On the
contrary, whatever of it still remains here is well
under cover and avoids rather than seeks attention.
The immigrants, who form the characteristic
resident population of the North End, have brought
certain evil ways of their own ; they are also in-
evitably affected by the moral contagion in their
surroundings. The Italian men, especially those
of the so-called lower classes, are as a rule very
lax morally, and the younger Jewish men are be-
coming so more and more. Dispensary doctors
are able to give evidence of the serious inroads of
sexual immorality among their Italian male pa-
tients, and to a less extent among their Jewish
ones. Several Italians who are unmarried or with-
out their wives may live with a common mistress,
ostensibly the housekeeper of the group. This
woman may be American or Irish, but is never
an Italian.
The women of both races, on the other hand,
are chaste with comparatively few exceptions. In
the café of the hotel described, a Jewish girl rarely
appeared, and an Italian girl almost never. No
girl of either race frequented the dance halls. In
the case of the Jewish women, chastity is due to
religious and home influences; in that of the
200 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
Italian, there is, in addition, the special protect-
ing and avenging arm of the male members of
the family. Any man attempting to lead an
Italian woman astray is liable to be visited with
a severe penalty from her father, brother or other
male relative. Within a few years an Italian was
murdered in the North End to prevent his return-
ing to Italy, where he was likely to take up again
an illicit relationship in which he had involved
a kinswoman of the murderer. The custom still
obtains among the Italians that a girl, especially if
she is of marriageable age, shall never appear upon
the street without a chaperon. The loyalty that
goes with race seems to afford the Jewish girl, in
a negative way, something of the same protection,
for when she does lose her virtue it is seldom or
never through a man of her own race. Although
many of the Jewish men are bigamists, or at least
are supporting more than one woman—one in Bos-
ton and one in New York or elsewhere — there is
probably no instance in the North End where a
Jewish woman is living with a man to whom, in
her opinion, she is not properly married.
The number of liquor licenses held in Police
Division 1 is 128. Of these, 10 are innholders'
licenses, and the remainder, with the excep-
tion of 21, are ordinary saloon licenses. The
IA W AND ORDER 201
21 excepted are distributed among the drug-
gists, grocers and wholesale classes. Thus there
are in this division 97 bar-rooms, including those
in the hotels. Apportioned equally among the
inhabitants of the division, these would give one
saloon for about every 309 men, women and chil-
dren. But with the exception of the Italian
saloons, few of them derive any considerable part
of their trade from people living in the North
End. Indeed, should all but the Italian saloons
suddenly become dependent upon strictly local
patronage, the larger number would go out of ex-
istence at once. The Jews, who with the Italians
constitute the great mass of the population, are
not frequenters of the saloon. Moderate drinking
is very general among them, but it is carried on
for the most part in their houses and places of
Social meeting. Up to a few years ago, no Jew
engaged in the liquor business, at least directly.
At the present time, however, two or three large
saloons are carried on by Jewish proprietors.
Irish and Scandinavian bartenders are employed
in them to draw in the trade of the Irish and
Scandinavians. The Italians, though they are be-
ginning to drift into the American saloons, patron-
ize chiefly the saloons of their own people. These
Saloons, which are distinctly Italian in character,
202 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
are situated on North street and one or two adjoin-
ing streets, and are resorted to for social as well
as drinking purposes. Indeed, gaming rather than
drinking seems to be their chief attraction. A
man buys a glass of light wine or beer, and sitting
down at one of the little tables, with which these
saloons are well supplied, passes two or three hours
in some game of chance with his companions, or in
watching the play that may be going on.
The great bulk of saloon patronage at the North
End, as has been said, is by non-residents. The
prohibition enactment in places on the north side
of Boston sends into the North End by the ferries
and the railroads entering the North Union Station
a great crowd of people after liquor. These fur-
nish the great majority of the men and women
arrested for drunkenness. According to the aver-
age ratio between resident and non-resident offend-
ers who fall into the hands of the police here, all
but about 450 of the 3124 persons taken into
custody for drunkenness during the twelve months
ending December 1, 1901, had their places of abode
outside this section of the city.
Here, as well as throughout the city, the number
of arrests for drunkenness is falling off appreciably
year by year, the result, to some extent, of a more
lenient policy on the part of the police in dealing
LAW AND ORDER 203
with “drunks.” Whenever circumstances permit,
a man under the influence of liquor is put in the
care of friends or quietly sent home, instead of be-
ing taken to the station house, whence he can be
discharged only by the courts. Yet there seems
to be an actual diminution in the amount of ex-
cessive drinking. This is due, in some measure at
least, to the increased consumption of beer in place
of harder liquors.
Observation tends rather to confirm than to dis-
prove the correctness of this estimate, low as it
appears. Excessive drinking is not a characteris-
tic either of the Jews or of the Italians. Indeed,
instances of it among the former are extremely
rare, and by no means common among the latter.
The 3124 arrests for drunkenness referred to in-
cluded no arrests of Jews and only five or six of
Italians.
This moderation in the use of alcoholic drink is
easily explained as part of the general frugality
that characterizes both races. In the case of the
Jews it has a further explanation in the habitual
self-control of this people. Perhaps, also, the
enlightenment of the race in the matter of health,
resulting from the inculcation and observance of
their dietary and other hygienic laws, serves as an
additional restraint from immoderate drinking.
204 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
Among the Jews and Italians alike, beer has
displaced to a very large extent the home-made
wines and the light wines of Europe; but among
the Italians especially, stronger liquors are begin-
ning to displace both. In the Italian home the
bottle of “rock and rye ’’ is seen with increasing
frequency by the side of the bottle of Chianti.
While this change in the direction of more intoxi-
cating drink is due more or less to mere imitation
of American ways, it is also a result of the demand
for stronger stimulants created by the severer strain
of life in this country. With the increase in the
use of ardent spirits, the amount of drunkenness
will of course increase, and in time sobriety may
cease to be a characteristic of the Italian citizen.
There are no gaming-places, strictly speaking,
in the North End. Men play for drinks or even
for small sums of money in the pool-rooms and in
some of the saloons; but gaming-places with rou-
lette wheel or other implement of chance, or where
large sums are staked at cards, are not to be found
at this end of the city. Consequently, whatever
gaming is carried on here is of a comparatively
harmless character, and is confined for the most
part to the resident population.
Groups of boys, especially newsboys and boot-
blacks, may be seen at almost any time in side
LA W AND ORDER 205
streets, doorways and elsewhere, shooting craps or
engaged in some other game of skill or chance.
The public playground adjoining the Paul Revere
school is a favorite gathering-place of these youth-
ful gamesters. Here they congregate in consider-
able numbers, especially on Sunday mornings, sta-
tioning sentinels on the street at either side to
guard against surprise by the police. But this
and other similar precautions do not always avail,
for occasionally the police make a descent upon
the boys and take one or more into custody as a
warning to the rest. Of the seventy-five persons
arrested in this section of the city for gaming dur-
ing the year 1901, the majority were juveniles.
The gaming spirit which shows itself in the boys
is conspicuous on all sides in the men. Generally
speaking, the Jews and Italians are habitual
gamesters. Necessarily, the stakes are small, but
the play seems to lose none of its zest on this
account. Unlike the Jews, who shun publicity in
this as in most of their other diversions, the
Italians frequent the Italian saloons, where they
will play hour after hour, perhaps merely “for the
drinks.” Every evening during the week, and
many an afternoon, especially in winter, any one
of these saloons is crowded with men sitting at
the tables over their wine or beer, intent upon a
206 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
game of chance played with the fingers. Cards
are not allowed in the saloons, but are very gener-
ally played elsewhere. Those who play at home
take their table out of doors if a suitable place is
at hand and the weather permits. A group of
these open-air players may not infrequently be
seen on a pleasant summer afternoon in the courts
leading off Hanover and North streets. Here the
bits of bright drapery flung over the galleries of
the surrounding houses, the plants in the windows,
and the gayly colored head-coverings of the women
moving about give a foreign air to the scene.
While the Italians engage in “finger play ” in
their saloons, and gather about the card-tables
in the open air, the Jews carry on their play in
the privacy of their homes, shops and clubrooms.
“Pinnacle,” the favorite of their card games,
seems never to lose its fascination for old or young.
One passing along Salem Street may see in the
rear of one shop after another a group of men,
some of them quite venerable in appearance, en-
gaged in this game. Now and then, especially
among the Italians, a quarrel results from some
turn in the play, which brings what is going on to
the attention of the police; but the gaming itself
by either race is seldom of a character to warrant
police interference.
LA W AND OR DEIR 207
Strangely enough, crime at the North End, while
comparatively small in amount, is to a considerable
extent of the most serious character. Between
such minor offenses as drunkenness, simple larceny
or gaming, and the greatest of all crimes in the eye
of the law, there are few gradations. During the
last eight years twenty murders, whose perpetrators
were found out and convicted, have been com-
mitted in this section of the city. Of these mur-
derers fourteen had their homes here. During
the twelve months so often referred to, three men
were arrested for murder and four for assault
with intent to murder — all residents of the North
End. Thus a population that on the whole is
orderly and law abiding almost to an exceptional
degree includes an element of a strikingly different
character.
But these murderers and would-be murderers
are of a single race, — the Italian, and of the Sicil-
ian or Calabrian branch of that race; and they by
no means are representative of the population, or
even of the Italian people. Moreover, while some
of them premeditated their crimes, the majority
acted on the impulse of the moment ; hence are
bomicides rather than murderers. Of the twenty
convicted of murder within the last eight years,
only one was convicted of murder in the first
208 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
degree. Some of the murders were to satisfy a
blood feud perhaps of long standing, or to avenge
an insult or injury to a kinswoman of the mur-
derer. Indications of the Mafia are to be found
at the North End, but none of the murders here
have been traced directly or indirectly to that
organization.
Although the Italians often exert themselves in
behalf of a guilty countryman, they do so in order
to save the Italian name from the disgrace that his
punishment would cast upon it. Their action does
not mean that they condone the offense or even
have any special regard for the individual. Un-
fortunately, such efforts are having a most perni-
cious effect upon the more ignorant of their country-
men in lessening respect for law and in creating
among them at the same time an erroneous im-
pression as to the protective power of money.
Not infrequently an Italian undergoing search in
the police station is found to have a roll of bills on
his person, which he keeps, as he says, to use when
he gets into trouble.
To remove one cause of so many murderous acts
by their countrymen, a number of Italians several
years ago petitioned the governor to revive and
enforce the law against carrying concealed weap-
ons. With the revolver and stiletto out of reach,
I, A W AND ORDER 209
they believed whatever fierce passions might be
aroused would in most instances subside before a
crime was committed. But on the general ground
of individual freedom, the governor refused the
request; and nearly every Italian, as soon as he
arrives in this country, procures a revolver, which,
together with his stiletto, is always at hand to
resent an affront or to avenge an injury.
Other than murder, and assault with intent to
murder, there is but little serious crime at the
North End. Of course, where so many saloons
stand open to the passing throngs, there are more
or less assaults — 289 in the year of which the
police statistics have been given. Burglary is of
infrequent occurrence, a district of this description
offering but few inducements to the professional
thief. Italian boys, and to a less extent Jewish
boys, steal junk whenever an opportunity presents
itself, and commit other minor offenses. In the
Italian rising generation especially, an increasing
spirit of lawlessness is very noticeable. Gangs of
these boys are beginning to present a serious prob-
lem, the so-called “American spirit” appearing to
have peculiar possession of them.
The Jews seldom fall into the hands of the po-
lice, but they cannot be called a race “void of
offense against the public order and welfare.”
210 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
They are especially prone to contentions with one
another, as well as with their Gentile neighbors.
No other people come to the police station so often
to make complaints and demand redress. The
ground of their grievances is usually that of abu-
sive or threatening language or some form of per-
sonal violence. In nearly all cases their feelings
have been hurt more than their bodies. Either
side will produce witnesses to almost any number
in support of its affirmations or denials. The
readiness of the Jews to commit the crime of per-
jury has passed into a proverb in this part of the
city. But the characteristic thrift of the race does
not desert the complainants even in the heated
recital of their wrongs, real or fancied ; for unless
they see in the satisfaction which they demand
some pecuniary gain to themselves, they usually
drop their accusations. Isolated and aggravated
cases of arson and swindling and other serious
crimes with a similar motive have occurred among
the Jews in both the North and West Ends.
There are occasional instances of such crimes
which suspicion ascribes to them, but where evi-
dence has been skillfully covered up. In general,
the law of the land is feared rather than respected
by Jewish immigrants; and a considerable propor-
tion of them show a tendency, in many petty ways,
LA W AND ORDER 211
to violate its spirit while formally observing the
letter. On the whole, however, the Jewish commu-
nity is law abiding to a marked degree.
That portion of the West End under review lies
wholly within the bounds and comprises about four
fifths of the territory of Police Division 3. Inas-
much as it includes nearly all of the characteristic
part of the division, the police statistics for the
division as a whole may be taken as a trustworthy
guide to the criminal tendencies here. During
the year ending December 1, 1901, there were
4.192 arrests in the division, including 2804 for
drunkenness, 261 for assault, 8 for murder and
being accessory to murder, 6 for manslaughter, 12
for robbery and assault to rob, 50 for breaking and
entering dwellings and buildings, 165 for simple
larceny, 124 for offenses against chastity, including
night-walking, 13 for keeping a noisy and disor-
derly house, and 47 for gaming, being present
where gaming implements were found or keeping
a gaming-house. In addition, 248 suspicious per-
sons and 11 vagrants and tramps were taken in
charge, 514 sick and injured persons were assisted,
135 disturbances were suppressed and 28 dead
bodies cared for.
The West End, as well as the North End, is
traversed by great thoroughfares to the North
212 AMERICANS IN PIPOCESS
Union Station and to adjacent cities and towns.
Moreover, the variety theatres and dime museums
on Bowdoin Square and Court and Howard streets
bring throngs of people into the district. IIence,
as at the North End, much of the wrong doing here
is by strangers and sojourners. Of the 4192 per-
sons arrested in this division in 1901, 2338 were
residents and 1854 were non-residents. On an
average, between two fifths and one half of all
offenders have their homes elsewhere in the city
or altogether outside Boston. This ratio falls
below that in the case of “drunks,” since the sa-
loons clustered about the West Boston and Craigie
bridges and the North Union Station derive no
little amount of their patronage from the suburban
places, especially those in which prohibition is in
force. It is rumored that the proprietors of some
of these saloons contribute annually to the no-
license campaign funds in the city directly across
the Charles.
Like the North End, the West End to-day is in
a state of moral recovery, although it never reached
such a point of degradation as the North End forty
or fifty years ago. Its moral regeneration like-
wise, so far as this has come about, has been due to
similar causes, – the breaking up of centres of vice
and crime and, in those sections where morality was
LA W AND ORIDER 213
at its lowest ebb, the displacement of the vicious
and semi-criminal population by Jewish and Italian
immigrants. Within the last three years seven
hotels of the same general type as the North End
hotel described have been closed by the police,
with excellent results. Put this movement in the
direction of moral betterment has had less local
support than at the North End, chiefly because
of the large lodging-house population here. Pro-
verbially, lodgers concern themselves but little
about neighborhood conditions. Hence the West
End presents a better field than the North End
for the observation of what may be done by po-
lice measures in making “vice difficult and virtue
easy.”
That section of the West End between Green
and Allen streets and the North Union Station
differs but little in the general character of its
population from the North End, and may be re-
garded as an extension of that part of the city.
With a few rather unimportant qualifications, what
has been said of the criminal tendencies at the
North End applies equally well to this particular
region. Occasionally a crime is committed here
unlike any that is apt to occur at the North End,
as, for instance, burglary. Prostitution is to be
found under particularly hideous forms in the West
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LA W A N I) OR DEIR 215
2
deed, the terrorism which the “lovers ” often ex-
ercise over these women, and the heartlessness with
which they will desert one favorite for another,
deepen beyond measure their infamy. Neverthe-
less, however brutal he may be, a man of this sort
seems to have no difficulty in finding a woman
to support him. Formerly the police were wont to
belabor with their clubs such a character wherever
found ; this irregular though not uncommendable
treatment is no longer permitted. Groups of this
class, well dressed, well fed, and smoking cigars,
stand about on the streets or loiter over the pool-
table or bar; while the girls who support them are
urged on by fear lest their earnings fall short of
the sum demanded, and violence or, what they fear
even worse, desertion, be the penalty.
A few well-known houses of ill fame, and certain
other houses of a suspicious character, still exist
in the West End. Real-estate interests, and some-
times even public sentiment itself, stand in the way
of closing them. At one time the police were
about to succeed in breaking up the oldest and
best known of these houses through keeping a
persistent watch upon it ; but the neighbors ob-
jected so strongly to a continuance of the surveil-
lance, because of the annoyance to themselves, that
the attempt had to be abandoned. However, the
216 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
number of such places is far less than formerly.
Access to those that do survive is closely guarded.
Strangers cannot gain admission unless satisfactorily
vouched for. Solicitation from windows or door-
ways is practically unknown except in the lowest
haunts of the Negroes. Street-walkers may still
be seen, but their every movement is watched by
the police. The moment one of these women
is seen attempting to ply her evil trade, she is
warned, if not at once placed under arrest. Some
of these street-walkers are “badgers,” or women
whose business it is to entice men to rooms where
they may be robbed by accomplices. While pros-
titution is still carried on here, its methods have
changed within recent years. Instead of the
parlor house there is the variety theatre, the low-
priced café, and especially the hotel. With one or
two exceptions, West End hotels are houses of
assignation. “Lovers,” or “runners,” are also
taking the place more and more of women seeking
their own victims.
The places of amusement which centre about
Court Street between Hanover Street and Bowdoin
Square have already been spoken of as bringing
into the West End throngs of people living elsewhere
in the city or in the suburbs. They serve also, of
course, to bring into this part of the city great
LA W AND ORDER 217
numbers of men and women of the theatrical profes-
sion who furnish their entertainment. Now while
such people are as a rule orderly and well be-
haved, they call around themselves, in the hotels
and boarding-houses, and in the theatres, an objec-
tionable class of both sexes. These hangers-on
— young men about town, prostitutes, gamblers
and crooks of various descriptions — give much of
that character to the professional quarter and sur-
rounding region popularly attributed to it. How-
ever well deserved this character may have been,
it no longer holds to the same extent; for within
the last few years the Howard Street neighborhood
has undergone a distinct change in the upward
direction. Fights are much less frequent than
formerly; and in the number of vicious and
criminal acts there has been a marked falling off.
One cause of this improvement has been the
closing on Howard Street of three hotels through
the withholding of their liquor licenses.
The Negro quarter at the West End includes
among its population a class of the vicious and
semi-criminals, both black and white. This ele-
ment is larger relatively than once it was, through
the removal of so many of the respectable and well-
to-do colored people to Cambridgeport, the South
End and elsewhere. Yet poverty and social de-
218 AMEIRICANS IN PROCESS
gradation are no oftener synonymous in the case
of the Negro than in that of the white man.
Close by some of the worst haunts on the back
slope of Deacon Hill are blocks and sections occu-
pied by decent and law abiding, though extremely
poor families.
Sexual immorality, the characteristic shortcom.
ing of the race, is made by many of the Negroes
directly or indirectly a means of gain. There are
numerous women who seek white men as well as
those of their own color on the street; and instances
are not uncommon of colored men, often with
white wives, following the inhuman ways of the
Italian husbands who have been referred to. Even
among apparently respectable families, prosti-
tution is indirectly made an additional source of
revenue through the rental of rooms by the even-
ing or night. Robbery often accompanies prosti-
tution, and not infrequently is the chief motive
in it.
In the section given over to the Negroes, alley
leads off alley, with perhaps a narrow passage to a
different street from that by which the first alley
was entered. Sometimes these unsuspected exits
wind between high buildings, or, in one instance
at least, go directly under a building. From this
particular underground passage open the doors of
LA W AND ORDER 219
a number of tenements, apparently the only means
by which the tenements can be reached. A curi-
ous group of wooden houses at the corner of
Phillips and Anderson streets has recently been
torn down. Between the buildings ran wooden
walks — now on one elevation, now on another, the
different elevations reached by flights of steps —
and bridges extended from the upper story of one
house to the corresponding story of another, and
from roof to roof. It suggested to the visitor the
scene of the flight of Bill Sykes from the police,
and his subsequent suicide, as described by Dickens
in “Oliver Twist.”
Now the very opportunities for vice and crime
that this general section affords must draw thither
the vicious and criminal. Wherever wrong doing
can be carried on comparatively free from obser-
vation or with small danger of apprehension if
detected, there the wrong doers will congregate.
The stage of real life seldom waits long for actors
to carry on the play for which the scene is set.
Dens for infamy will sooner or later become dens
of infamy. Moreover, the dark and unsanitary
dwellings, of which there are many, and the over-
crowding, which is to be found here and there,
combine to foster, if not to call into existence,
tendencies to immorality. Moral ills as well as
220 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
physical ills spring from unwholesome surround-
ings. Therefore the first remedial agencies here
should be light, air and sanitation. Not until
the housing conditions have been radically im-
proved can the community be reclaimed. If Gar-
den Street Arch, Grove Street Terrace or Strong
Place is to be brought up to a uniformly decent
standard, the initiative must be taken by the
Board of Health. When the conditions of a
moral life have been provided, then will come
the time for the churches and other moral and
religious agencies.
As at the North End, gaming has been nearly
stamped out. What survives is carried on behind
closed and carefully guarded doors. The game is
invariably poker, since the implements for roulette
or faro could not be concealed quickly and effectu-
ally in case of a visit from the police, or easily
removed to another place when flight becomes
necessary. Forty-seven arrests for all offenses in-
volving gaming is the record for the year ending
December 1, 1901.
Policy, likewise, while not suppressed completely,
is kept well “on the run.” Chances are sold in
and around the hotels and saloons and on the
street, but with every precaution against attract-
ing the attention of the police. While this evil
LA W AND ORDER 221
has peculiar attractions for the Negroes, it is by no
means confined to them.
The saloons at the West End, of which there are
eighty-eight, differ but little from those at the North
End, excepting the Italian saloons among the
latter. Like the North End saloons also, they have
a very large non-resident patronage. For this the
numerous places of amusement described, as well
as the thoroughfares to Cambridge and the North
Union Station, divide the responsibility. Here, as
elsewhere in the city, a drunken man is seen with
surprising infrequency when the enormous number
of saloon patrons is taken into account.
There is comparatively little serious crime, as at
the North End. Of the nine persons arrested for
murder achieved, attempted or alleged, a number
were fugitives from outside the city. Members of
the under world gravitate in this direction rather
than to the North End, because of the places of
amusement here. Certain bar-rooms and hotels,
especially in the vicinity of Howard Street, are
more or less gathering-places of this class. Here
and around the theatres and on the streets the
police would look for a “suspect,” rather than in
any particular lodging-house block or section.
Indeed, no particular lodging-house street is espe-
cially given over to crooks of any kind.
222 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
As to life and property, both districts are safe
to a degree. In nearly every case the victim of an
assault or robbery is partially to blame for what
befalls him. The well-behaved can come and go
at any and all times in either of these districts
with little or no fear of molestation. Of course
the man looking for adventure is very apt to
find what he seeks. As regards gaming, both
sections are practically closed; and, in respect to
prostitution, are far from being “wide open.” The
old dance halls have gone, and though a few new
ones have appeared, they are not of so low a type.
Saloons are numerous in each, but excessive drink-
ing is rather on the decrease than on the increase.
With the exception of an occasional murder or
murderous assault among the Sicilians, crime of a
serious nature is of comparatively infrequent occur-
rence. Although the number of arrests year by
year, with the exception of those for drunkenness,
has not fallen off very noticeably during the last
few years, the offenses for which the arrests were
made are increasingly of a minor character.
Whatever may be true of individual patrolmen,
there is no evidence that the police in general are
protecting prostitution or any other form of vice
or crime. Indeed, most of the signs point in quite
the contrary direction. Connivance with wrong
LAW AND ORDER 223
doing there may be on the part of a man on the
beat here and there, but it does not extend far up
in the force. A prominent member of the under
world has declared emphatically that he could do
no “business” with the captain at the West End.
Nevertheless, there are men who sometimes suc-
ceed in collecting considerable sums of money from
wrong doers by representing themselves as influen-
tial in police circles, if not the direct agents of
police authorities. These “middlemen,” as they
are styled, merely trade on some chance acquaint-
ance with a member of the police department, and
as a rule work solely in their own interests. There
are instances where they have been so bold as to
actually assume the name of some prominent offi-
cial. In most cases they soon come to grief through
the failure of their victims to receive the exemption
from police interference guaranteed.
At the North and West Ends alike, an up-
ward moral tendency is more and more apparent,
hastened in the case of the former by a constantly
growing public sentiment. Whatever other causes
this tendency may have had, it is due in no small
measure, especially at the North End, to the sup-
planting of the low and vicious element by people
of cleaner lives and higher ideals.
CHAPTER VIII
LIFE's AMENITIES
THE outer aspect of great cities, even of con-
trasted American and European cities, grows less
dissimilar year by year. Nevertheless, enough of
the Old World can yet be found in some sections
of the North and West Ends so that the stranger
coming into these parts almost forgets that he is
in America. The language heard on every side is
in a foreign tongue, and the palpitating interest
and variety of the street life give one a feeling
that he is having a glimpse into some far-off town
or village. A wealth of song and story is brought
to mind by some word or gesture, a Neapolitan lilt
or two belligerents biting thumbs even as did the
ill-fated Montague and Capulet.
The light-heartedness of the Italians, and their
keen love of pleasure, make an atmosphere so full
of gayety that a spectator for the time is led to
overlook the many discomforts which must natu-
rally fall to the share of a people so closely crowded
together. But perhaps these discomforts affect the
IIFE”.S AMENITIES 225
Italians less than any other race, for they love the
open air and the general fellowship of their kind,
and every possible moment is spent beyond the
confines of the house walls. The first glimpse of
spring brings with it thronging streets, crowded
doorways and well-filled open windows. With
uncovered heads, the women and girls saunter up
and down the sidewalks, or with their bits of cro-
cheted lace, intended for home decoration, sit in
some doorway or at an open window, where they
may gossip with a neighbor or join in a gay street
song. Here too may be seen the curved knitting
needle used by the older Italian woman as she
rounds out the stocking for the coming winter.
The men crowd the curbstone or open street, dis-
cussing the politics of their country, their personal
injuries or the possibilities for assisting some less
fortunate brother. Groups of men and boys, num-
bering fifteen or twenty, congregate in some street
or square, and immediately there is such emphatic
utterance, fiery denunciation, violent gesture and
all-pervading excitement as would convince the
unaccustomed that a mass meeting was discussing
the wrongs of a nation, rather than that a casual
group of neighbors was exchanging gossip.
The street offers much to vary what is otherwise
often a life of mere monotony and toil. The street
226 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
piano, which is an ever-present, ever-welcome en-
tertainer, starts the children dancing. Their feet
have already forsaken the steps of Italy. It is not
any peasant dance through which they flit, with
the native lightness and aptness of their rhythmic
land; it is the prancing, burlesqued grace of the
Afro-American cake walk. The hurdy-gurdy is
played by Italians of the south, and each instru-
ment is usually accompanied by a man and a
woman, the latter's deft handling of her tambourine
often calling forth enthusiasm from the onlookers.
These women retain the full peasant costume as a
dramatic property. The short, full skirts are usu-
ally made of some cotton stuff. The kerchiefs worn
about the shoulders, of the brightest yellows, the
richest browns and purples and the most brilliant
reds and greens, bordered with bands of colored
flowers, are not in the least dimmed by the bright
blues, magentas and Roman stripes of the aprons,
which are always a part of the street dress. Even
the folded kerchief thrown over the back of the
head, as a protection from the rays of the sun, is
more or less gay. The arrangement, however, of
these bits of color is often of the very crudest.
The kerchiefs, the quaint jewelry, the long ear
pendants and the talisman worn about the neck
are much coveted bits of decoration, highly prized
LIFE”.S AMENITIES 227
*.
by the possessors and passed down from genera-
tion to generation.
Nowhere out of Naples can a truer picture of
southern Italian life be found than in the home of
the street piano and its grinder. While on the
street these people are really working, caught in
the whirl of American life; but when they have
turned in for the night, and all the hurdy-gurdies
have been housed, the performers are free to re-
lapse into their native temper. The court in which
a large number live is transformed as if by magic,
and the Bella Napoli, with all its gayety, its lights
and shadows, suddenly stands out upon the scene of
the North End of Boston. Everything is there, —
the song, the tambourine, the accordion, and lastly
the dance and the glass of Chianti. There, indeed,
the tarantella, the favorite and famous dance of
Southern Italy, is performed exactly as it is among
the crags of Capri, or at sundown beside the in-
hauled fishing nets of Sta. Lucia. Nothing is
wanting — the dark, rich coloring of the skin, the
heavy hair, the bright touches of color in the dress,
and the sturdy peasants whirling, balancing, tread-
ing the many figures, while the accordion plays on
in rapid time until one after another drops out
exhausted and fresh dancers take the floor. These
bits of home country life are enacted in the streets
228 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
and courts unfrequented generally by the outside
world. It is to the familiar visitor of the byways
that one must turn for guidance if he would really
know the people in their most care-free moments.
The loyalty of the Italian to the land of his
birth, and his love of the dramatic, make him seek
every opportunity for a folk festival. The anni-
versaries of the various benevolent and secret soci-
eties are often celebrated by processions of men
and children carrying gay banners. These, together
with the bright sashes of the little ones and the
insignia worn by the men, cause one to feel that the
Italians are truly a nation of children, born to turn
their world into a stage, with every-day life as the
sufficient material of the play. Although they can-
not be said to be a people of deep religious feeling,
the historic associations of their church, and its
unequaled pageantry, appeal to their emotional na-
tures. Easter is the greatest festival of the entire
Christian year. The long gloom of Lent quickly re-
cedes, and Easter Sunday is truly a gala day alike
to the rich and the poor. Mass is attended on that
day by all who are able to leave their homes and
who are within the pale of the church. For church
decorations, potted plants are coming into favor,
taking the place of the paper flowers and tinsel
ornaments which have given such a tawdry air to
LIFE”.S AMENITIES 229
altar dressings. Images of the Virgin and Risen
Christ are often carried in processional with “music
and banner.” These processions are frequently
seen in the streets, as they pass from the school
buildings to the churches. The various classes in
the Sunday-schools, and the different church Socie-
ties, are conspicuous by reason of their particular
ornamentations, and with the banners and various
religious symbols the whole makes an impressive
sight. Easter is also a favorite time for the cele-
brating of weddings, as the Catholic Church pro-
hibits the solemnizing of any marriages during the
Lenten season. The dinner on Easter Day is one
of the great events of the year. The entire family
is collected, and certain dishes, peculiar to the sea-
son, are prepared with great care ; ravioli, a kind
of pastry, together with macaroni in some form,
are usually among the dinner delicacies. The de-
coration of the table is perhaps of as much interest
as the food itself. This is peculiarly true so far
as the children are concerned, for their places are
indicated by confetti and sugar toys, the latter of
the gayest colors. This Easter dinner is usually
followed by a dance. Indeed a succession of many
large dancing parties is given at this time of the
year.
The more elaborate of the candy toys used at
230 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
the holiday seasons are the work of the Neapolitan
confectioner of North Square, whose reputation as
an artist in sugar has made it possible for him to
secure for his work prices that are not dreamed of
by other shopkeepers. Many tales could be told
of these gay bits of sugar; how they are used first
to decorate the festal board, how they are after-
wards carried by the children like a favorite doll,
until the bright color has been replaced by dust
and grime, and how they are finally broken into
fragments to sweeten the breakfast cup of coffee, –
thereby combining thrift and aesthetics in a charac-
teristic if not felicitous way. A visit to this rare
workshop and salesroom, all in one apartment, is
well worth while, particularly at the Christmas and
Easter seasons. For weeks in advance the confec-
tioner has been at work, and the variety and gayety
of his wares are unequaled. He has grown very
proud of his skill, and though deeply grateful for
the admiration shown by sight-seers, he scorns to
betray this weakness. With the simplicity of this
childlike race neither the candy-maker nor his
neighborhood customers find any incongruity in
rendering, alike with the flowers and fruits, the
doves and lambs of Eastertide, – loftier symbols
of the holy and happy season. Barley sugar to
them is a material not more or less profane than
LIFE'S AMENITIES 231
wax or ebony or gold. A sugar Saint excites no
astonishment, nor does a deftly moulded figure of
the Christ upon the cross, done in translucent pink
and amber sugar, suggest to these people any un-
Seemliness.
It is one of the great resources of the Italians
that they can extract pleasure from the humblest
and most commonplace events. The simpler enjoy-
ments are entered into with quite as much zest as
the greater. The hot summer evenings are made
delightful by their readiness to avail themselves of
the ferry-boats, whole families getting cool, fresh
air in this way. The roof parties are perhaps the
most popular summer gatherings. The weeding of
the tiny herb gardens that are to be seen upon the
roof of almost every Italian tenement house, and
the making of the brilliant tomato conserve, when
accompanied by friendly chat, cease to be labor.
This is also true of the many excursions into the
country in search of dandelions, mushrooms and
other table dainties. The family picnic in one of
the breathing spaces of the city again shows their
quickness to get pleasure wherever pleasure may
be found. Such a group enjoying supper on the
Common on a hot afternoon is a sight familiar to
all.
On a fête day the houses from cellar to roof are
232 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
decked with the red, green and white of Italy, as
well as the Stars and Stripes. Everywhere some
effort is made toward holiday dress. Chinese lan-
terns, too, often play a large part in the decorations.
During a recent visit from a distinguished guest,
North Square was brilliantly lighted with colored
electric lights, showing the readiness of the Italian
people to adapt themselves to modern methods.
In winter the streets are comparatively quiet.
Doorstep and window chats are transferred to the
living-room. Small quarters do not limit sociabil-
ity. It is rare that a family is permitted to spend
the evening alone. Some lodger or boarder friend
from the neighborhood drops in, and over the glass
of wine or mug of beer tales of the home country
are told. The men of the family enjoy the life of
the neighboring saloon, where, aside from the social
drink, various games can be played. It is at one
of these saloons that the favorite game of peasant
Italy, “bocce,” is played almost every evening, and
as this is the one place in Boston where it may be
found, there are many spectators. The older peo-
ple rarely mingle with people of another national-
ity, except the better educated ones, who sometimes
go to enjoy a good play at one of the uptown thea-
tres. The operas, too, and many of the best con-
certs are attended by those who can afford such
LIFE”.S AMENITIES 233
luxuries. Those who saw the hearty and apprecia-
tive welcome which her countrymen in the upper
gallery gave to Signora Duse will never forget it.
The Italians have no theatre of their own.
Occasionally traveling showmen with marionettes
have stayed for a season in the North End and
then gone their way. Amateur theatrical perform-
ances are not infrequent. These busy people find
time after the long hours of the barber or tailor or
candy shop to learn their parts, attend rehearsals,
and finally to give their play in some hall of the
city; and a very creditable performance it is, though
the play may be the most stilted and old-fashioned
of dramas. An air of domesticity pervades the
audience. Mothers bring their babies, and the
performers converse with friends before the raising
of the curtain. The members of the orchestra are
invited by name to dispense their music with more
5
liberality. “Pipe up, Tony,” says one friend to
another, and they scrape and pound and blow till
flesh rebels and they turn upon their too apprecia-
tive and too urgent following. The desire for amuse-
ment and excitement among the younger men and
boys is not always satisfied with these more whole-
some pleasures, and some of them, though in no
large numbers, find their way to the cheaper thea-
tres and museums. The Italian girl, however,
234 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
unless she has stepped beyond the confines of mo-
rality, is rarely seen in any public place of amuse-
ment save in the company of an older person.
No daughter is more carefully looked after than
the child of Italian parents. In a ballroom the
wall seats are occupied by the many matrons in
attendance, whose beaming faces show the delight
they take in the good times enjoyed by their
charges. Many of these older people show their
newness to this country by the style and arrange-
ment of their dress. The three-cornered kerchief
tied over the head, and the gay shoulder shawl, are
not an infrequent sight in the dancing hall, while the
daughters of these same mothers appear in gowns
made in the latest fashion. Sometimes these young
people regret the lack of hat or bonnet in the
street costume of their parents, for they are desir-
ous of having them dressed like the “American
lady.” As yet the Americanizing of these young
Italian girls has not taken from them their refresh-
ing naturalness. Their cards are filled before they
have had time to remove their outer wraps, and at
the first strain of the music the floor is filled, and
they fairly dance into the arms of their partners,
and this with no touch of immodesty. The guard-
ing of the unaffianced is, however, lax as compared
with the restraint exercised after her betrothal, and
LIFE's AMENITIES 235
indeed often after her marriage. By nature the
Italian is most jealous and demands of his mate,
not only absolute devotion, but often abstinence
from almost the commonest civilities from other
men. These punctilious demands are not confined
to the better classes; they are quite as carefully
obeyed in the humblest families. A certain fruit
vender, who cannot aspire to a push-cart, but must
conduct his business from a basket carried on his
shoulder, can tell, with as much pride as the owner
of a fruit market in the Back Bay, how for two
whole years, during his daughter's engagement, she
was never seen on the street, except in company
with her mother on the way to and from church,
until the day of her wedding. Her fiancé, he will
explain, was not in Boston, and they were anxious
to give him no cause for suspicion. Nor does the
bestowal of the dowry and the family jewels belong
to any one grade of society. The poor fruit ped-
dler's daughter received from her father a dowry
of two hundred dollars. Her mother's gift to her
on her wedding day was six pairs of ear-rings and
six finger rings, all of quaint design and of the
purest gold.
No one has really made the acquaintance of the
Italian people of our city, or indeed of any city,
until he has seen them in the art galleries. A
236 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
Sunday afternoon in the Museum of Fine Arts
shows them at their best. Whole families, many
of them unable to speak English, find their way
here. They walk through the rooms as if treading
upon sacred ground. Undoubtedly they recognize
in some of the statuary copies of familiar objects
in art-loving Italy. The Italian standard of beauty
is not always high or even correct, but love of
beauty as they perceive it is a vital part of their
lives. If they often rejoice unwisely in what is
gaudy, it is nevertheless true that none more than
they, and few as much, draw deep and genuine de-
light from the best that our public galleries have
to offer.
Jew and Italian are near neighbors in the North
End. The two neighborhoods touch, but the line
between them is sharp, the atmosphere of each
absolutely alien to the other. The genial, care-
free expression of the men in the Italian district
is suddenly missed when the border-line into the
Jewish quarter is crossed. There we find the
shrewd yet ingratiating look which so often
means financial gain at any cost, even at the cost
of self-respect. This, in the long-bearded Jew
of the older generation, is clothed with a cover of
conscious martyrdom. Then, too, from the Italian
woman, always hard worked, yet thoroughly alive
LIFE'S AMENITIES 237
to varying interests, we turn to the forlorn, almost
degraded woman of the Jewish household, whose
every action reveals the narrow, oppressive atmos-
phere which she has breathed for so many genera-
tions. The great intellectual gifts of this race
have been far from equally shared between the
sexes. Book learning for the Jewish woman has
in the past been thought unnecessary, and the lack
of education is keenly written in the faces of the
older women.
Resemblance between these two localities lies
merely in the crowding of the streets and the inces-
sant trading thereon. While there is much that
is of peculiar interest in Jewish life, there can be,
where there is so much squalor, but little real
beauty. On the streets the commercial instinct
is everywhere evident. The dangling old clothes,
the pawnshop windows filled with everything that
could possibly be turned into money, the baskets,
barrels and carts of foul-smelling fish, do not add
to the charm of the scene, and are hardly offset by
the boxes of green vegetables and ripe fruits which
border the sidewalk; but the human element, the
owners of the shops and wagons, with their forlorn
expressions of anxiety to sell, the patriarchal old
men, the intent, purchasing housekeepers and the
energetic young salesmen who do not hesitate to
238 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
drag customers into the shops, are of never-fail-
ing interest. The general dinginess of the locality
is perhaps centred in the unattractive Jewish res-
taurants and meat shops. The windows of the
former are filled with indifferent eatables, and
from the grimy ceilings often hang festoons of long
sausages, while the meat shops display a great vari-
ety of fresh meats, some of the most loathsome
parts of the fowls and carcasses being placed on the
counters in such quantities as to lead one to sup-
pose that they are in great demand, if not looked
upon as delicacies. These eating saloons and meat
shops contrast strangely with the occasional corner
or basement where second-hand Hebrew books are
sold, and where the beautiful parchment and leather
bindings tempt one to dream of their scholarly
past. Fine old brass candlesticks are often for
sale in these places. It is to such bits of bright-
ness that this region owes much of its small aspect
of cheer.
During the warm weather the streets teem with
life. Every doorway is crowded with the older
people, while the sidewalks and highways are popu-
lous with children, some in an almost undressed
condition. They are all great lovers of music, and
the advent of any musical instrument sets the
youthful feet at once to dancing. The Jewish
IIFE”.S AMENITIES 239
children dance as if by instinct, and their correct
ear for music makes them apt pupils in the side-
walk branch of the art.
There can be no greater contrast drawn be-
tween Jews and Italians than in their several
ways of celebrating holidays and feasts, – the
Italian seeking the air and sun on every occa-
sion, the Jew finding sanctuary in his home for
festival and rite; yet it is during the various
holidays that the Jewish quarters appear to best
advantage. These seasons first make themselves
apparent to the Christian world by the festal
gowns of the women and children. Among the
older Jewish women, especially among those belong-
ing to the Orthodox church, the married ones are
easily distinguished by the coarse brown wig often
made of some material other than human hair, the
absence of which after marriage was formerly
looked upon as a mark of immodesty. At times a
kerchief or a piece of black cotton lace is used
to take the place of the wig ; but like many other
customs, this of covering the head is disappearing
before the general Americanizing tendency.
While the Jews are a people having large fami-
lies, their inborn love of money-making leads them
to crowd into the smallest quarters. Families
having very respectable bank accounts have been
240 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
known to occupy cellar rooms where damp and cold
streaked the walls. Yet it is in their homes that
the Jews rise to their best level. The family life
is usually worthy of admiration. The parents are
devoted guardians. The father feels strongly the
responsibility of instructing his sons and daugh-
ters in the laws and customs of the faith. The
mother is the affectionate and interested companion
of her children, big or little. Even in the homes
of the poorest, candles are always lighted for the
Friday evening service, and the family assemble
for the beginning of the Sabbath. On Saturday,
after returning from the synagogue, the day is
spent in visiting or receiving calls. The neighbor,
with the ever-convenient shawl thrown over her
head, comes to have a chat and a glass of tea from
the steaming samovar. Many of the living-rooms
of the Jewish people are furnished with beautiful
specimens of hand-made copper dishes and brass
candlesticks, all of which are brought from the
old home country. The great need of increasing
the family income often makes it difficult for the
immigrants to keep these fine pieces of copper and
brass. Strange as it may seem, one of their own
countrymen usually stands near, ready to offer to
these financially stranded ones a sum not one
quarter of the market value of their treasures.
IIFE”.S AMENITIES 241
As a result, these interesting objects are gradually
finding their way into the houses of well-to-do Amer-
icans, while the Jewish kitchens are becoming
more and more filled with iron ware such as is sold
in all of our house-furnishing stores.
The Jews have some social life in their various
benevolent organizations, culminating in an oc-
casional dance; but their intensest interests of this
sort centre about their many religious ceremonies.
In every home the circumcising of the newly born
male child, the betrothal and the wedding of a
son or daughter, are occasions of great moment,
and are looked forward to as times of feasting and
merrymaking. The wedding is perhaps the most
interesting of these three functions. The cere-
mony is rarely performed in the bride's home, the
lavish hospitality of the occasion necessitating the
hiring of some hall for the reception, even when
the pair are married in the synagogue. The ori-
ental love for splendor and display is everywhere
seen. Since it is possible to hire all things, even
the wedding gown and veil, these are often, by the
desire of the bride, mere temporary finery, in
order that the money saved thereby may be used
to increase the general gorgeousness of the oc-
casion. The hospitality is unbounded. Not only
are parents and brothers and sisters constantly on
242 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
the alert to see that the guests are cared for, but
the bride herself omits no effort for their comfort
and enjoyment. Entire families are among the
guests, from mothers with nursing babies to grand-
fathers and grandmothers, and all share the com-
mon joyousness.
At the ceremony, the father or mother of the
bride accompanies her to the canopy under which
she stands, facing the east. She is followed by
an attendant, who is the wife of the best man.
The lights carried by the friends of the bride
recall to memory the wise and foolish virgins of
Holy Writ. The rabbi tells the pair that they
take their vows as descendants of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob ; gives them a dissertation on married
life, and his blessing. After they have tasted the
consecrated wine, the groom crushes the goblet
under his heel to show to the world his determi-
nation to overcome all evil in the new life upon
which they are entering. Dancing follows the
ceremony, and lasts long into the night. Every-
body tries to make everybody else happy. Young
men and young women dance with small children
as well as with each other, and pay an exquisite
deference to their elders. The wedding supper is
served at many tables, so that all can sit down
to the feast. The men often take their seats
IIFE'S AMENITIES 243
before the women, and always eat with their
hats on.
At the ceremony of the circumcision, great
honor is conferred upon the man chosen to hold
the child, such a one usually being high in author-
ity in the church. He has no further duties
toward the child. Such ceremonies are followed
by feasting and dancing, — home-made wine, cake
and conserves being provided in abundance. This
free-handed hospitality is never accompanied or
followed by intemperance.
The Jewish year has many holidays, from the
New Year, which comes in the early autumn, to
the single national holiday, which is celebrated as a
day of thanksgiving in the early summer. At the
Feast of Booths, green bowers are erected on roofs
or in back yards. The Feast of Lights brings into
use whatever wealth of candlesticks a family may
possess. A feast is often preceded by a fast.
Purim follows closely upon the Fast of Esther, and
its coming is characterized by masquerade balls,
the exchanging of gifts, and festivities generally.
The holiday which entails the greatest preparation
is the season of the Passover. It is then that
children are everywhere seen munching the un-
leavened bread, while huge packages of it are piled
in every grocery shop.
244 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
The amusements and merrymakings of the
Jewish people cannot be described without further
mention of their great love for music. The operas
are largely attended by Hebrews, many being will-
ing to undergo some sacrifice to hear a great artist.
They are also devoted to the theatre, and as the
best are too expensive for the poorer people, they
go in great numbers to the cheap places of amuse-
ment. This is peculiarly true of the boys and
girls; and an evening spent in the Dime Museum,
the Nickelodeon or the music hall will confirm the
observation. There is no regular Jewish theatre
in Boston, but several times during the year Yid-
dish plays are given in one of the up-town houses
by a company imported from New York. These
plays are pictures of family life, usually Russian
in character, and are exquisite in their simplicity.
The acting is of an artistic quality rarely seen in
our playhouses. The audience at such plays is
most interesting. The familiar scenes, the old
joys, the old wrongs and restraints touch deeply;
progress is measured by departure from old cus-
toms. The vigor with which the Americanized
Jewess applauds revolutionary sentiments with
regard to the overbearing husband in the play is
very significant.
No class of people in Boston has perhaps less op-
IIFE”.S AMENITIES 245
portunity for recreation than the Portuguese immi-
grants from the “Western Islands,” as the Azores
are popularly called. They come to us from their
island homes, hoping to taste of riches, the sup-
posed reward of all who go to America, only to
find themselves swallowed up in the heart of a
large tenement district, their homes the closest
and darkest, and their outdoor life gained only
at the expense of long hours of toil. The pride
of the former landholder will not allow them to go
out of their homes to work, and as a consequence
the usual occupation of the women is the finishing
of men's clothing. They easily obtain licenses for
the work, as they are the neatest of housekeepers;
but it is, of course, one of the poorest paid in-
dustries. Even when the clatter of the sewing
machine has ceased and the living-room is deserted
for the better air of the street, the work of sewing
on buttons and picking out bastings does not cease.
Indeed, the latter is often assigned to children of
five years or so, while the older people, as all who
have reached the age of thirteen years are consid-
ered, undertake the more difficult work.
With the early autumn comes the yearly exodus
to the cranberry bogs of Cape Cod. This is a
season of work and pleasure, looked forward
to with the greatest delight. It is like a great
246 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
family reunion, for here they meet their kinsfolk
who have settled on the Cape, as well as many
relatives and friends from the city whom they
rarely see in their cruelly over-worked lives. And
after the busy day of picking, screening and mea-
suring the cranberries is over, which begins with
the drying off of the dew on the vines and ends
with the setting of the sun, they are ready for an
evening of genuine relaxation. The great frame
shanties, where many workers are housed, afford
opportunities for the exchange of many a bit of
gossip and for many a game and dance. A cran-
berry-picking in our sparkling September weather
is a sight never to be forgotten. It has sometimes
been compared to the hop-picking in Kent, which
affords many a Londoner the only country outing
he ever gets; but just as the Londoner can offer no
such richness of color in skin or hair or costume
as can these children of the sun, no more can the
mild moistness of the English autumn be com-
pared to a brilliant September day on Cape Cod.
The great poverty of the Portuguese prohibits
many gayeties; indeed, it almost prevents the
simplest hospitality. The glass of wine and the
home-made cake so familiar in the home of the well-
to-do are rarely seen in the homes of these island-
ers, yet their cordiality and sweetness of spirit are
LIFE”.S AMENITIES 247
ſ
manifest. Constant privations have led to some
evils, their conjugal irregularities being attributed
to poverty. A woman abandoned by her husband
sees no necessity for the expense and trouble of
any legal steps before accepting a second spouse.
She marries again, regardless of the existence or
whereabouts of the deserter.
Church festivals vary the monotony of their
lives to a small degree, and the occasional dance
or picnic gives to these temperate and unusually
industrious people a little of deserved good cheer.
They have their benevolent Societies, whose treasu-
ries must be replenished from time to time, and this
can best be accomplished by means of an entertain-
ment.
The West End has ever been the great habitat
of the colored race in Boston, and in spite of the
exodus of the past few years to the South End, to
Cambridgeport and to the suburbs at the north,
many yet remain, while the churches and the so-
cial gatherings bring back others who no longer
have an abiding-place there. The chief recreation
of the colored people of the West End centres
about their benefit or secret societies. The aver-
age city Negro belongs to many “orders,” “circles”
or societies, which hold frequent meetings. They
are usually carried on in the homes of members,
248 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
and at these meetings business and festivity blend.
Then there are balls and receptions, which are
often most elaborate. A marked feature of these
events is the large number of visitors from distant
cities. There is a characteristic note about every
such affair. Whether it be due to the high degree
of skill gained from years of training in domestic
service, their inborn love of the ornate or simple
ebullition of animal spirits, there is certainly an air
of effulgence and exuberance about a social gath-
ering of colored people to which no other race can
attain. Yet here as everywhere, by one of the
paradoxes of fate, the Negro, who is the tragic
figure in our national life, is called to play a com-
edy part. Barred out from the society he most
admires, his mimicry only excites mirth, and when
he touches the white race on grounds of social
equality it is the meeting of outcast with outcast.
Back of some of the haunting scenes of vice in the
West End stalks the spectre of race prejudice
which has shut off from their kind once respectable
persons who have married members of the black
race. On the other side of the shield we see in
the faces of refined and cultured colored men and
women the triumph of nature over the degrading
relations which slavery enforced. It is surely as
unjust to judge the colored race by its worst as it
LIFE'S AMENITIES 249
would be so to judge the whites; while on the
other hand, the story of the ascent of the black
man is unparalleled in rapidity by that of the more
favored race. Among the educated class the re-
markable evolution of the woman's club of recent
years has played its part, and in the State Fed-
eration of Working Women's Clubs there are
no more earnest and intelligent members than a
group of young colored women. The Negro has
dwelt with us long; but so fixed are our notions of
his character and limitations that it is with a shock
of surprise and wonder that we come upon a gath-
ering of the best of the colored race, differing not
one whit in manners, in taste or in appearance,
save for the richer color of the skin, from any simi-
lar group of white people. The traditional traits
of the Negro, dearly loved by story-tellers and
playwriters, the florid manner, the brilliant garb,
the antics and the inconsequence are not far to
seek; but what has been achieved by the few may
be achieved by the many, and the life of the com-
munity may yet be made greater by the awakening
of this youthful, untried race.
The Irish are, of course, the most numerous of our
foreign-born population ; but they have been with
us so long and so intimately that they have become
more closely identified with the native life than
250 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
have other races. The more ambitious have, as
a rule, moved away from their first homes in the
North and West Ends, pushed out by the invading
Jew and Italian. A very great number of people
are still attached to the Irish Catholic churches. A
degree of social life centres in the churches. They
furnish only a single bit of pageantry to the streets.
The processions of children crowned with wreaths
and wearing colored sashes, which are to be seen in
the Whitsuntide season, with the banners, mottoes
and little images which are carried, suggest the
spectacles dearly loved by the peasants over-seas.
Aside from church relations, there are dances for
Some unfortunate brother, or the annual balls and
picnics of labor organizations and of the innumer-
able social clubs. The Hibernian is first, last and
always a social being, and this instinct does not
fail him even in his times of distress and bereave-
ment. For this reason, genuine grief and sympa-
thy are not incompatible with keen appreciation
of a convivial touch in the wake and of the pomp
and drama of the funeral. The near-by summer
resorts draw crowds from the Irish-Americans
every Sunday or holiday or evening off. In the
winter the theatres attract large numbers of them.
In some cases they become regular subscribers to
the less expensive playhouses of good repute. The
LIFE”.S AMENITIES 251
distinguishing characteristic of Irish-American so-
cial gatherings is, of course, their political signifi-
C3.11(26.
The theatre and things theatrical fill a large place
in the life of the people of the North and West Ends.
Not only is there a very numerous theatre-going
population, but in the district between Scollay
Square and Bowdoin Square there exists a world
almost untouched by any outside life. The hun-
dreds of performers in the cheap theatres and
museums thereabout come and go, taking no part
in our common life. The crowding of the “profes-
sion ” is so great, and competition is consequently
so fierce, that to keep pace they must rehearse and
retouch and embellish their “acts” during their
spare moments. Their stock in trade is some phy-
sical peculiarity — a flexible spine, an iron jaw, a
brazen voice — or some gift in the way of dancing,
dreary repartee or mimicry. They form partner-
ships — conjugal ones, too — for business ends, and
sever them when it seems desirable so to do, with
no thought of their relation to the community.
They have few acquaintances beyond the walls of
the theatres, and as their specialties pall or rivals
crowd them out, they one by one drop from the
ranks and are submerged in the crowd. In spite
of the irregularity and irresponsibility of their
252 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
lives, much that is innocent may be found in them.
There is no glamour about the stage for these peo-
ple. Their daily round is just so much work to
be done, with the hope, often unfulfilled, of another
job in the future. As to the character of their per-
formance, there is much that is harmless, a part that
has actual merit, and a part that is positively bad.
The audiences are drawn not only from various
parts of the city, but, in the more notorious places,
from all parts of New England. The rural visitor
who wishes to plunge into dissipation in Boston hies
to these hunting-grounds of the thief, the prosti-
tute and the gambler.
The several places of amusement attract differ-
ent kinds of audiences. One of them — the Bow-
doin Square Theatre — is the home of sensational
melodrama free from indecency. Another appeals
to a morbid love of the abnormal, and “freaks”
of all kinds may be found there. At the others
the performance consists of a medley of innocent
accomplishments, inane chaff and the grossest vul-
garity. Too many of the younger people of foreign
extraction are finding their way to these places;
but it is doubtful if as yet they form an appreci-
able proportion of the audiences.
There is one note always discernible in the
daily life of the foreign peoples of the North and
LIFE'S AMENITIES 253
West Ends, and nowhere is it clearer than in their
moments of leisure. In spite of the survival
of types, in spite of the inevitable longing for the
home country, in spite of all the differences of
race and tradition, the strongest and most impel-
ling of motives, the most cherished of ideals, is that
of becoming American. Color, melody, comfort
and content — indeed some of the sterner virtues
themselves—are sacrificed before this Goddess of
Democracy whose protecting arms, these people
from foreign lands have been led to believe, will
afford them and theirs a share in the joys of life.
Not so ugly as it seems at first glance, then, is
the ready adaptability with which the newcomers
take on the least commendable of our customs.
The Italian girl who forgets her cadenza and sings
the most nasal of street songs, her mother who
prefers the scrubbing of offices to the handicraft
of her ancestors, her father who forsakes his native
wines for beer, are unconscious idealists; and be-
neath one and all of these humble acts lies a mean-
ing which we who are born to our inheritance would
do well to prize. “”T is not the custom of the
country” is a phrase that is changing the manners
of the centuries and shaking the beliefs of ages
past.
CHAPTER IX
TWO ANCIENT FAITHS
BETWEEN the early religious situation at the
North End and that of to-day, Christ Church,
whose house of worship stands on Salem Street, is
the single connecting link. When it was organ-
ized in 1723, it was the second church of the
Episcopal faith and order in Boston. At the Old
North, Increase Mather was ending his long pas-
torate, and Cotton Mather, his son and colleague,
was in the height of his power. Peter Thatcher
was occupying the pulpit at the New North, his
call a few years before having been the cause of a
remarkable dissension in the church. The New
Brick Church had been recently organized by one
of the factions in this quarrel. Conveniently
located by the side of the Mill Pond was a little
wooden structure in which the frowned-upon Bap-
tists were worshiping.
An especial interest attaches to Christ Church
because of the stately and now historic building
which it has occupied from the first. In the
TWO ANCIENT FAITHS 255
steeple of this edifice, according to tradition, were
displayed the signal lanterns of Paul Revere which
warned the country of the march of the British to
Lexington and Concord; from its tower General
Gage witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill; and
in one of the burial vaults beneath its nave the re-
mains of Major Pitcairn reposed until transferred
to Westminster Abbey.
Indeed, the historic associations connected with
its house of worship have served to keep the church
where it is, notwithstanding the decreasing number
and wider and wider scattering of its adherents.
Of the hundred or more communicants on its rolls
to-day, less than twenty reside within the limits
of the North End, and a good part of the fifty or
sixty members of its Sunday-school come from East
Boston and Charlestown. The Sunday morning
service — the only service of the week which is
regularly maintained — brings together a small
congregation made up chiefly of sight-seers.
Other Protestant survivals are three agencies
of different denominations for religious and social
work among the sailors. Sea-faring men have been
a class more or less numerous at the North End
ever since the days when the town dock was where
Faneuil Hall now stands and wharves reached out
into the water from the present North Square.
256 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
All three agencies hold religious meetings, give aid
to seamen in distress, provide lectures, entertain-
ments and suppers, maintain a reading-room and
visit among the sailors in their homes and boarding-
places and on shipboard. The Mariners' House,
under Methodist management, provides a home
where seamen can obtain board at moderate rates.
If in circumstances of need, they are received
and cared for free of charge. The Baptist Bethel
restricts its efforts less than the others to the sea-
faring class, carrying on a Sunday-school and sev-
eral educational and industrial classes made up of
children and young people from the neighborhood.
It spreads its net wide by calling itself “a church
for seamen and landmen,”
and now employs an
Italian missionary to look after people of his own
race living round about.
Not all the Protestant religious agencies in the
North End to-day are survivals of the past. In
1894 a Methodist Episcopal minister of Italian
birth began work among his countrymen. The
following year a church of seventy members was
organized, which five years later had a total enroll-
ment of over five hundred, of whom one hundred
and seventy-five constituted its actual resident
membership. One reason of this growth, which
came exclusively from the Roman Catholics, was
TWO ANCIENT FAITHIS 257
to be found in the social and educational privileges
provided by the church. Unfortunately, however,
the logic of the come-outer has appeared in a di-
vision of the church itself. Part of the people,
with the pastor, have taken up the Congregational
form of organization.
Certain specially degraded conditions of life,
formerly more characteristic of the North End
than now, brought the “slum corps’ of the Salva-
tion Army to their relief. A small mission for
Scandinavian seamen, and one more survival of
other times in a single personal representative of
the “Society for the Employment of Bible Read-
ers in Boston,” fill out the number of Protest-
ant religious agencies. With the exception of the
two Italian churches, all nine minister chiefly to
sojourners or to social outcasts and the extremely
poverty stricken, leaving the more stable and nor-
mal classes, who make up the bulk of the popula-
tion, practically untouched. Even in the case of
the Italian Protestant fragments, they include
unattached and shifting individuals rather more
than family groups. The serious truth is that if
any or all of these Protestant agencies should drop
out completely, the general religious situation in
the North End would be affected almost not
at all.
258 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
At the West End there has not been, of course,
so long a religious history as in the North End,
and there are no survivals of old-time church life.
Several of the old buildings, including that of the
West Church, associated with great names in its
pastorate, are still standing, but have been turned
to other uses. There is in the West End a larger
constituency available for Protestant ministrations
than in the North End. This is true chiefly on
account of the colored population.
A Negro church, the Zion Methodist, is the
oldest existing religious organization in the West
End. It dates from 1836. Through the removal
of so many Negroes from this part of the city,
barely a third of the moderate number of its at-
tendants live in the vicinity of its house of worship,
on North Russell Street. The rest have their
homes in the South End, Cambridgeport, Charles-
town, and even farther away.
There are three other congregations of colored
people in the part of the West End covered by
these studies, – the Revere Street Methodist, the
Twelfth Baptist and St. Augustine's. Not far
away is the Charles Street Methodist. With
the exception of the last, they are small — the
Revere Street Church comprising scarcely a hand-
ful — and draw but a minor part of their audi-
TWO ANCIENT FAITHS 259
ences from the immediate vicinity. Among them
there is no coöperation and but little common ac-
quaintance. Indeed, an association of the colored
churches of the district would be very distasteful
to the Negro. In his religion, as in other things,
he would forget, and have all others forget, that he
is colored. He will never of his own accord draw
the line between himself and the white man.
St. Augustine's is a missionary outpost for col-
ored people, sustained by the Church of St. John
the Evangelist. It possesses an advantage over the
other Negro churches in that it has a white rector
and a corps of white assistants, for white religious
workers are more acceptable to the colored peo-
ple than religious workers of black skin. This is
due partly to the higher moral character that as a
rule white preachers and missionary visitors pos-
sess, and partly, also, to the aggressive feeling
of equality between one Negro and another that
is characteristic of the colored race. The women
helpers of St. Augustine's are members of the
Sisterhood of St. Margaret, a religious order of
the Episcopal Church, whose headquarters in Bos-
ton are in Louisburg Square, a short distance away.
The rector is one of the group of Cowley Fathers
who constitute the ministry of the Church of St.
John the Evangelist.
260 AMEIRICANS IN PROCESS
Alone of the five churches mentioned, St. Augus-
tine's is establishing vital points of contact with
its neighborhood. Indeed, it is the only one of
the five whose removal would involve serious loss
to the Negroes of this section of the West End.
Even those who have no connection with the
church often turn to it when they need the offices
of a minister or desire personal counsel. But this
local activity is only a part of the work of St.
Augustine's. The majority of its one hundred
and fifty communicants, with a proportion nearly
as large of the attendants upon its services, are
scattered throughout the city and suburbs, espe-
cially in Cambridgeport. Among those recently
removed to the South End, a branch Sunday-school,
with occasional religious services, has been estab-
lished. St. Augustine's, with all the authority it
can command, endeavors to hold its followers to a
reasonably high standard of morality. Although
it is not always successful, moral lapses are per-
haps no more frequent among its adherents than
among those of many a white church. Aside from
the hold it has on its own members, it exerts a
marked restraining influence from wrong doing
upon the entire colored population.
Of course the Negroes of the West End do not
confine their church-going to organizations of their
TWO ANCIENT FAITIIS 261
own race or to the district in which they live. In
fact, within half a mile or more of Deacon IIill,
there are few churches, not excepting the Roman
Catholic, into which they fail to find their way.
The considerations which guide them in the selec-
tion of a place of worship are by no means pecul-
iarly their own. Too often, as with men and
women of another complexion, their motives may
be resolved into the desire for social distinction.
The woman who can claim membership in Trinity
parish is apt to feel socially superior to her female
neighbor attending the Zion Methodist or Twelfth
Baptist. St. Augustine's itself wins and holds
many of its followers less by its ritual than by the
social prestige it is thought to confer. Those who
go into the Roman Catholic Church do so because
here, as they believe, black and white will be treated
as equals.
A considerable part of the colored people have
no church affiliation whatever. Nor, with the
single exception of St. Augustine's, is there any
religious agency trying to reach this class of the
unchurched, which includes, of course, the vicious
and criminal element among the Negroes. Prob-
ably no section in Boston calls for wise and ener-
getic religious work as does the colored quarter of
the West End. Here the missionary will find, if
262 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
not the largest opportunity, at least the most urgent
need.
The Church of St. John the Evangelist, with its
monastic clergy, holds a unique place among the
Episcopal churches of Boston. From the character
of its worship and discipline, it appeals to Episco-
palians of extreme ritualistic tendencies scattered
throughout the city. Thus it is the church of a
special class rather than of a particular locality.
The opposite extreme to the elaborate ritualistic
worship at St. John the Evangelist's is the service
at the Second Reformed Presbyterian, or “Cove-
nanter,” Church on Chambers Street. Here the
use of a church organ is not tolerated, and only
the psalms in a metrical version are sung. Psalm
singing, Scripture reading, prayer and a sermon
make up the order of worship. The membership
of this church is composed of Scotch people from
the British Provinces, having their homes for the
most part outside the city. The building where
they meet was a chapel of the Old South Church
when that society worshiped in the historic edifice
on Washington Street.
The First Methodist congregation is another
example of a fairly prosperous church which
touches at only a few points the life of the neigh-
borhood in which it worships. Of its four hun-
TWO ANCIENT FAITHS 263
dred enrolled members, fully one half live at a dis-
tance from the church building, although a some-
what larger proportion of the attendants upon its
services come from within a radius of half a mile.
The church missionary on her round of calls visits
in Forest Hills, Revere, Brookline, Somerville and
Charlestown, as well as in the West and North
Ends.
In the local work among the white people, three
organizations are striving to meet their needs in
some direct and systematic way. Bulfinch Place
Church, which represents Unitarian effort, ante-
dates by some years the other two, having occupied
its present building since 1869, when it removed
from Pitts Street. Although its policy has been
from the first to retain under its care all who have
been numbered among its adherents, even after
they have removed from the neighborhood, it is
actively engaged also in building up a local con-
stituency. About two hundred families and indi-
viduals living in the vicinity are ministered to in
some regular way, many of whom are without
church affiliation of any kind. Under the leader-
ship of its present pastor, the church has insti-
tuted a number of changes in the direction of a
social ministry. To a slight extent this unsectarian
work touches Jews and Italians.
264 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
St. Andrews is a dependency of Trinity Church,
and was organized through the efforts of Phillips
Brooks in 1876, when its attractive house of wor-
ship was built. It has about one hundred and fifty
communicants, and nearly as many members of the
Sunday-school, including the officers and teachers.
Besides the usual services, prayers are read daily
at five o’clock in the afternoon, with an attendance
varying from twelve to fifteen persons. At all of
the services the number of children present is notice-
able. A parish house adjoining the church building
furnishes convenient quarters for the social activi-
ties of the church, which include a medical dispen-
sary for women and girls and a mutual aid society
with insurance benefits. A number of social clubs
for boys and girls are formed chiefly though not
exclusively out of the membership of the Sunday-
school. Space is provided for a kindergarten in
charge of the city, and a playroom is carried on in
the summer time.
A unique branch of St. Andrews is a mission for
deaf mutes, established in 1892. Through the
minister in charge and lay readers, this mission has
carried the gospel to deaf mutes in other Episcopal
dioceses of New England, and to-day has congre-
gations in Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Is-
land. About thirty communicants are cared for by
the original mission.
TWO ANCIENT FAITHS 265
When St. Andrews began its work twenty-five
years ago, the section of the West End in and
around Chambers Street was the home of a large
number of English-speaking Protestants, – peo-
ple from the north of Ireland and the British
Provinces, interspersed with some Americans. To-
day nearly all of these have disappeared, and their
places have been taken by the Jews from the North
End. This complete change in the character of the
population has given an embarrassing check to
the work of the church; but it holds many of the
results of its effective efforts in the past, and is on
the alert for whatever forms of human service the
needs of the new situation may demand.
The Tabernacle Baptist Church, like the Bul-
finch Place Church, makes special efforts to reach
the lodging-house class. In common with the other
downtown churches of the city, however, it has a
scattered constituency. Hardly more than a fourth
of its five hundred members live on Beacon Hill,
the remainder having their homes as far away as
Somerville, Everett, Chelsea, East Boston or Dor-
chester. This non-resident portion of the church
includes nearly all of the families, while the un-
attached individuals live in lodging-houses in this
general section of the city. Unlike the Bulfinch
Place Church and St. Andrews, it engages in few
266 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
forms of social activity, but is a people's church
conducted on distinctively religious lines. If its
results in numbers are not large, they are quite
substantial.
In that part of the West End where the social
outcasts of both sexes congregate, or through which
they pass, four rescue missions and a corp of the
Salvation Army have established themselves. A
large restaurant is carried on in connection with
one of the missions, where good food is sold at
extremely low prices. The room used for the res-
taurant purposes is below the line of the sidewalk,
and is bare and dingy. There is no attempt at
decoration, save a few Scripture mottoes on the
wall. The floor is thickly covered with sawdust.
The deal tables are without cloths. Cleanliness in
the preparation and serving of the food is notice-
able, however. As many as eighteen hundred men
have been fed here in the course of a single day.
Low as the prices are, the place meets its expenses
and provides in addition the funds for carrying on
the mission, including the rent of the rooms and
the salary of the superintendent.
Without doubt these agencies succeed now and
then in the reclamation of some man or woman,
but their chief service is rather one of witnessing
to the existence of a real need than in meeting that
TWO ANCIENT FAITHS 267
need. The Salvation Army ceased long ago to
excite opposition, and is fast ceasing to excite even
passing interest. " Its meetings are attended by
comparatively few outside the number of its direct
following.
Taking the West End as a whole, therefore, it
is quite clear that Protestantism is passing. From
the North End, to all intents and purposes, Pro-
testantism has already passed. The religious issue,
in all its depth of meaning to personal and public
welfare and progress, so far as it concerns the
actual constituent life of these two districts, lies
with the Roman Catholic and Jewish systems.
Five Roman Catholic churches have their places
of worship in the North End and one in the West
End, - three Irish, two Italian and one Portuguese.
St. Mary's, an Irish church, is the oldest as well as
the largest of them all, and the second church of
the Roman Catholic faith established in Boston.
The site of its house of worship on Endicott
Street was purchased by the Roman Catholics for
a church building as early as 1834, and two years
later a completed structure was dedicated. The
present building, erected about twenty-five years
ago, is an imposing edifice with a seating capacity
of about eighteen hundred. Since 1847 the church
has been in charge of the Jesuit order, which has
two other churches in the city.
268 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
St. Mary's is a mission; hence, though serving
as a parish church, its ministry is not restricted to
those living within its parochial bounds. Visual
evidence of this is given by the throngs that pour
through the doors of its sacred edifice after a Sun-
day morning mass and scatter to other parts of the
city. The procession of these returning worshipers
going over the new Charlestown bridge presents
a truly impressive sight, extending from one end
of the bridge to the other, a compact moving col-
umn, and occupying a considerable time in passing.
Indeed, the non-resident following of St. Mary's
offsets more or less the shrinkage in its local con-
stituency caused by the removal of the Irish from
the North End. Fully five thousand people still
attend its various Sunday services. After a recent
mission, forty-four hundred came to its confes-
sional, and there were many attendants besides
who visited the confessionals of other churches.
In addition to its ministrations to its own congrega-
tion, St. Mary's maintains chapels at the city penal
and pauper institutions on the harbor islands.
St. Stephen's, which shares with St. Mary's the
spiritual care of the Irish Roman Catholics in the
North End, is a parish church merely. Hence it
has been affected much more than St. Mary's by
the moving away of the older and more prosperous
TWO ANCIENT FAITHS 269
Irish families. Nevertheless it is still a large and
important church. As the distinctive and influen-
tial parish church of the North End, it has a spe-
cial attraction for local politicians who wish to use
its social and charitable organizations as so many
additional means of advancing their interests with
the public. -
St. Joseph's, on Chambers Street, cares for the
Irish Roman Catholics at the West End, with the
exception of those who attend the mission church of
St. Mary's. Formerly its number of communicants
was so great that on special occasions the spacious
building could not hold all who came, and the
broad steps leading up to the doors, and even the
sidewalk itself, would be crowded with kneeling
worshipers. To-day no congregation that comes is
too large for the accommodations, so greatly has
the Irish population at the West End fallen off.
These churches, like nearly all Roman Catholic
churches, include among their organizations sodali-
ties of adult members for religious instruction and
the promotion of a stricter observance of the
sacraments, and a conference of the Society of
St. Vincent de Paul, to care for the poor of the
parish. In common with the Roman Catholic
Church in general, they seem to be realizing the
demoralization caused by drink among their people,
270 AMERICANS IN PRocess
and are increasingly aggressive against it. St.
Mary’s and St. Stephen's provide some opportunity
for secular culture in a Reading Circle. Each has
also in its parish building a spacious hall for social
and other purposes. St. Mary’s Hall is equipped
with stage and scenery for dramatic performances.
St. Stephen's, aside from its parish interests, is
taking an active part in promoting the general
welfare of the North End. Under its leadership
an organization of prominent citizens, including
Protestants and Jews, has been formed to cooperate
with the police and other departments of the city
government in securing better conditions through-
out the district.
The Italian Roman Catholics have had a place
of worship on Prince Street since 1874. Their
present church home consists of an older part dedi-
cated in 1890, and a newer part recently added.
The church is known as the Church of St. Leonard
of Port Maurice, and from the first has been in the
charge of the Brotherhood of St. Francis. Its in-
terior adornment includes some beautiful work done
and contributed by parishioners. Peculiar interest
attaches to St. Leonard’s because of its shrine of
St. Anthony. Roman Catholics from all parts of
Boston, irrespective of race or social condition,
visit this shrine to make some request, usually for
TWO ANCIENT FAITHS 271
physical healing, in behalf of themselves or their
friends. Tuesday evening a special service is held
for the visitors, when a relic of the saint is shown.
At this service the scene around the altar suggests
what one might see on a larger scale at St. Anne
de Beaupré, or even at Lourdes, – a motley crowd
of young and old, of poor and apparently well-to-
do, of “the lame, halt and blind,” pressing for-
ward to kiss the relic and receive the blessing of
St. Anthony. The church derives a good part
of its income from the gifts of these visitors and
from the sale of small articles relating to St.
Anthony.
Dissatisfaction on the part of some communi-
cants with the Franciscans’ management of St.
Leonard’s led to the establishment of a second Ital-
ian Roman Catholic church in 1895. Those who
came out of the Prince Street church bought,
of their own initiative, a building on North Square
for the use of the new society. This edifice had
been the scene of a religious and social work
among sailors conducted by “Father” Taylor, well
known as an eloquent Methodist preacher. The
title to the property is still held in the name of a
committee of the church, although the church itself
is under the direction and authority of the diocese.
A situation as unusual as this, from a Roman
272 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
Catholic point of view, was brought about only by
a special concession from Rome, and has but one
or two parallels in this country. -
The Church of the Sacred Heart is the name
given to this second congregation. Within its
house of worship an interesting scene is presented
whenever a service is going on. At the farther
end of the audience room, presenting a brilliant
contrast to the dingy walls and rough woodwork
of the rest of the place, rises a richly adorned
altar, the lofty reredos of which fills the entire
space between the galleries. Kneeling figures of
angels, one on the right and one on the left,
keep guard over the altar, while a shrine occupies
either corner under the galleries, before which
burn great clusters of candles. Every seat on the
floor and in the gallery is taken, and all avail-
able standing room is crowded almost to the point
of suffocation. The dark eyes and swarthy com-
plexions of the worshipers, the gayly colored head
coverings of the women, their large gold or brass
ear-rings, and, indeed, the whole aspect of the place,
might easily lead one to believe that he had wan-
dered into a chapel in the outskirts of Genoa or
Naples. s
The Roman Catholic Sunday-schools are largely
attended, but seem to be of no great value. They
TWO ANCIENT FAITHS 273
are not much inferior, however, to the Sunday-
schools connected with most of the Protestant
centres of these districts. In the case of the
Catholics, insufficient care about religious training
in the Sunday-school is abundantly made up in the
parochial school. At St. Mary's and St. Stephen's,
where alone in the North and West Ends, until
recently, parochial education was provided, the
schools gather in practically all the children of
those parishes. The parochial school at St. Mary’s
is the oldest in the city. It was established as the
result of an incident which occurred in 1859, when
a boy of the parish was punished by a public-
school teacher for refusing to read a passage from
the Protestant Bible. This present year, both
Italian churches have opened parochial Schools for
their own children.
The Irish and Italian Roman Catholics differ
one from the other in certain broad respects, aris-
ing from differences in the religious traditions, as
well as in the temperaments, of the two races.
The Vatican's hostility to Italian unity has created
a conviction more or less widespread among the
Italians that the church is the enemy of the
people's liberties. Wherever this exists, there
is an accompanying feeling of estrangement from
the church, for the Italians are “patriots first and
274 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
churchmen after.” A considerable number of the
immigrants retain a sincere piety, especially those
from districts where the priests’ authority is still
unchallenged, but the majority are indifferent to
their inherited faith. Some entertain toward it a
feeling of actual hostility.
The Irish, on the other hand, have found the
church the very bulwark of their liberties.
Through it they have maintained such nationality
as they possess, and to be included within its fold
gives them dignity in their own eyes and in the
eyes of the world. Religious feeling, also, is
much stronger in this people than in the Italians.
Hence, generally speaking, the Irish are far more
devoted to their church than the Italians, and sub-
mit much more fully to its authority. But this
difference does not show itself in the matter of
mere church attendance. Indeed, it would be hard
to say which race goes to public worship more
generally, the Irish or the Italian. In the motive
of church going, however, the difference appears.
The Irish go to church more especially for reasons
of devotion ; the Italians for social reasons. Of
course there are many exceptions among both
races; all the devout Roman Catholics are not
Irish, nor are all the indifferent ones Italians. Both
kinds of motives run off more or less into super-
TWO ANCIENT FAITHS 275
stition. The extent of this cannot be traced in
either nationality, but it is safe to say that among
the Italians its influence is the more general.
The social atmosphere which the Italians cast
about public worship appears in the scenes in Prince
Street and North Square on Sunday morning.
Those coming out from mass, or waiting until the
hour for the next mass, congregate in large num-
bers, filling street and sidewalk alike, all talking
and gesticulating. This open-air conclave has be-
come so great an institution that those working at
a distance return whenever possible in order to be
present at it.
The Portuguese Roman Catholics differ little
from the Italians. They have, however, a deeper,
perhaps more superstitious, regard for their church,
and very generally attend religious services. But
the corrective and restraining influence of the
church on their lives is certainly no more powerful
than in the case of the Italians. The strength of
Roman Catholicism in the North End is in the
Irish rather than in the Latin churches. It is not
too much to say that St. Mary’s, from the charac-
ter of its ministry and the loyalty of its followers,
is the most important agency for righteousness in
this part of Boston."
* For some estimate of the influence of the Roman Catholic
276 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
Nearly all of the Jews living in the North and
West Ends are, or recently have been, of the
orthodox faith. Their chief and largest house of
worship, which is the headquarters of orthodox
Judaism in Boston, stands in Baldwin Place, off
Salem Street. This structure, built originally by
the Second Baptist Society, has been occupied by
the Jews for about twelve years. Next to this in
size and interest is a building erected quite recently
on a site adjoining Baldwin Place. A third im.
portant meeting-place is in Smith's Court, off Joy
Street, on the north slope of Beacon Hill, in a
building which was relinquished a year or two ago
by St. Paul's Church, the oldest congregation of
colored people in Boston. The change in the
ownership of this building within so recent a time
registers the curious social displacement that is
coming about in that part of the West End.
Besides the congregations worshiping at these
three centres, there are smaller congregations meet-
ing in various halls. A number of families from
the same province or city in Europe unite to form
a synagogue, to which in many instances they give
the name of the place from which they come.
These smaller or “neighborhood' synagogues usu-
Church on the personal and family life of its people, the reader is
referred to The City Wilderness, pp. 202, 221, sq.
TWO ANCIENT FAITHS 277
ally combine the functions of religious worship
with those of a benefit order to provide against
sickness and death. The rooms in which they meet
are used also, to a certain extent, for social pur-
poses. Connected with each synagogue, and main-
tained by it, is a school for instructing the children
in the Hebrew language. Additional schools are
supported by the synagogues in common, especially
for the poorer children.
Between the older and the younger Jews there
is a marked difference as regards loyalty to the
faith. The grandparents, and among the later
immigrants the middle aged, cling to the old cus-
toms and traditions with passionate tenacity, while
each succeeding generation is more noticeably break-
ing away from them. One of the men of the
Jewish colony told the whole story of the growing
infidelity among his people when he said, “My
father prays every day; I pray once a week; my
son never prays.” But the attendance at religious
services is probably, on the average, as great as
among Protestants. Unlike that of the Protestants,
it is predominantly of men, for according to the
Jewish system the women are not under the same
obligation as the men to be present at the worship
of the synagogue.
Their more important religious festivals are still
278 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
very generally observed, even by those who pay
little regard to the ordinary round of religious
duties. The Day of Atonement, especially, is a
rallying time for the indifferent and devout alike,
ushering in the most solemn period in the Jewish
year, — the period when, according to the Jewish
belief, the good or ill fortune of each one is fixed
for the next twelve months, and the lists are made
up of those appointed to die and of the souls des-
tined to be born. Therefore it is a period to be
observed with fasting and prayer, with attendance
upon the services of the synagogue, and, during
certain of the eight days of its continuance, with
abstinence from all secular employment.
As the hour of sunset draws near on the even-
ing which marks the beginning of the festival, all
the Jewish places of business are closed. Throngs
of Jews of all ages and both sexes fill the streets
on their way to the various places of worship ; for
he would be an apostate, indeed, who voluntarily
absented himself from the synagogue on that even-
ing. Evidence that large numbers of the Jews
seldom if ever attend public worship throughout
the rest of the year is furnished by the fact that
during the Atonement season the usual synagogues
cannot begin to accommodate the crowds, and
additional halls and rooms are brought into use.
TWO ANCIENT FAITHS 279
Within the Baldwin Place synagogue the scene
is strange and impressive. The entire floor of the
place is a solid mass of men and boys, while the
galleries are crowded with women and girls. All
heads are covered, and in addition every male has
over his shoulders a “prayer shawl,” — a scarf of
silk or linen with curiously knotted fringe at the
ends. The older men are clad also in long garments
of white linen, the robes of their burial. Upon
a raised platform around the reading-desk are
grouped the readers who have been called up from
the congregation, the cantor in his raiment of white
and gold, and the members of the choir, wearing
black robes and turbans. At the right and left of
the “ark,” in the “chief seats,” sit the president
and other officials, or “rulers,” of the synagogue.
An ever-burning lamp, symbol of Jehovah's pres-
ence, hangs high over all.
As the service proceeds, the sacred books from
which one reader after another has read, or rather
chanted, in a high pitched voice, are rolled up and
returned to the “ark” in solemn procession. At
a given signal the whole congregation rises and
breaks into some repetition, in the Hebrew tongue,
uttering the words with great rapidity and swaying
their bodies back and forward in rhythmical accom-
paniment, the more venerable the worshiper the
280 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
greater his earnestness. The confusion of sounds
subsides, and the cantor takes up the service, his
voice swelling out in lamentation or dying away
in a sob ; now rising in a shout of triumph, now
sinking down to a whisper that seems to be the
utterance of hope and peace. At frequent inter-
vals the choir chimes in with strong, well-trained
voices, singing the words to some melody that has
come down from the remote past.
Next to the Day of Atonement in importance
and in the generality of its observance is the Feast
of the Passover. This substitutes rejoicing for
humiliation and confession. The scene of the sup-
per itself is the home, not the synagogue. It is,
indeed, the patriotic and home festival of the Jew-
ish year, a combination of the American Fourth of
July and Thanksgiving.
Sabbath observance is fast becoming confined to
the older people. Each year fewer stores and work-
shops in the Salem Street neighborhood are closed
on the seventh day. When, a year or two ago, by
a special police concession the places of business
in this particular section that were closed on Satur-
day could be kept open on Sunday, many of the
Jewish proprietors saw in this only an opportunity
to gain an additional business day. While shut-
ting the doors and drawing down the shades of
TWO ANCIENT FAITHS 281
their places of business on Saturday, they would
remain near for any chance customer. This abuse
of the concession led finally to its withdrawal.
Such incidents would seem to mark a serious de-
parture from the standards of Sabbath observance
in the stronghold of orthodox Judaism.
It is a striking fact of Judaism that it re-
mains a race bond even for those who have lost its
spiritual impulse. Nationality is still a mould in
which their scheme of the moral life is cast. The
patriarchal elder sighs for a handful of the sacred
soil of Palestine on which to rest his dying head,
and even many emancipated youth look with devo-
tion to the Holy Land.
Zionism as found in these districts is not identi-
fied with extreme orthodoxy, but includes among
its advocates many who are far from strict ob-
servers of their religion. There is quite a general
agreement that its aim and motive is to establish
a refuge in Palestine for the persecuted of their
race. In fact, here as elsewhere it has more “the
character of an enthusiasm than of a reasoned
policy.” Five or six societies of Zionists have
their headquarters in this part of the city. Here
they meet for social purposes, and maintain a
forum for the discussion of current events. The
ardor of many of the members of these societies
282 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
carries their thoughts beyond the bounds of a mere
racial utopia and makes them socialists.
At the North and West Ends, Roman Catholi-
cism and Judaism, existing side by side, present
a sharp and dramatic contrast to each other.
Never is this more apparent than when, as some-
times happens, the season of Easter and that of
the Passover are coincident. While the Roman
Catholics are thronging their churches in sorrow
and penitence because of a betrayed, crucified and
buried Saviour, the Jews, gathered in family
groups about the Passover supper, joyously recite
the story of Israel’s deliverance from Egyptian
bondage, and renew their faith in the coming of
another deliverer, one who will be greater than
Moses. In the Roman Catholic churches, the
figures on the altars are shrouded in token of the
dead Christ ; in the Jewish home the door stands
open for Elijah, the herald of the Messiah, and
the cup of wine is ready for the longed-for guest.
On Easter Day the Roman Catholics have re-
moved the emblems of mourning from their altars,
and are rejoicing with the rest of Christendom
over the resurrection of Christ from the dead;
but the Jews have sadly closed the door opened in
vain, and poured the wine from the untasted cup.
During this period, if ever, it is natural to sup-
TWO ANCIENT FAITHS 283
pose that the two religious elements would clash ;
but strange as it may seem, aside from the cry of
“Christ-killer,” with which a Roman Catholic
child now and then greets his Jewish fellow, few
expressions of bigotry are to be heard on either
side. In common with the Jew, the Roman Catho-
lic is constantly experiencing some disadvantage
on account of his religion, and this makes him
more or less tolerant of his Jewish neighbor. The
Jew, on his part, has learned patience and long-
suffering through ages of oppression. In too
many cases on both sides, however, this forbear-
ance arises from lack of religious earnestness. In
one very curious way they are actually brought
together by their religious difference, for many
Roman Catholic boys make a business of lighting
and caring for the fires in Jewish homes on the
days when the Jews are enjoined by their religion
from engaging in manual labor of any kind.
“Fire, fire l’ is the cry that may be heard
throughout the Jewish quarter on the morning of
such days, as the “fire-lighters” go about seeking
customers. While these boys render a needed
service, they are, nevertheless, held in contempt
by their employers. Indeed, the ignorance and
stupidity of the “fire-lighters” has passed into a
proverb among the Jews.
284 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
The Italians make the saints' and other church
days occasions for out-of-door decorations and
pageantry as well as of church going. In the
morning, mass is very generally attended, and in
the evening, after the lanterns are lighted, a pro-
cession is formed which, headed by a native band,
parades through the principal streets of the North
End.
The Jews confine their religious celebrations to
the synagogue or to the privacy of their own
homes. Indeed, one might walk through the
Jewish quarter on the Day of Atonement or of
the Passover and, aside from the number of Jews
going to and from their places of worship, fail to
detect any sign that a festival is in progress.
The Jewish religious system intensifies the
family life. Its personal moral code is without
doubt the secret of the astonishing vitality of the
race. The quality of the affection which exists
in the home seems almost enough to atone for the
narrow life of the wife and mother, whose range of
duty is simply to bring up her children well, keep
a kosher house and be kind. The intense inner
life of the persecuted has developed in many of
the Russian Jews a fine emotional nature. This
ingrained type of family and clan religion, how-
ever, has tended to prevent friendly feeling for
TWO ANCIENT FAITHS 285
outsiders. The Jew prides himself upon his
acuteness, upon the high tone of his family life
and upon what he deems the special enlightenment
of his form of faith. Considering himself superior
to Christians, he is very likely to misjudge and
distrust them.
The Roman Catholic Church exerts a powerful
constraining and disciplinary power among its fol-
lowers, many of them detached from their social
and even from their domestic moorings. This is
particularly true of recent immigrants, like the
Italians and Portuguese, in a country utterly
strange and bewildering in thought, speech and
ways of life. That these nationalities have on the
whole maintained so creditable a morale is largely
owing to the Church's overshadowing presence and
its familiar, insistent appeal to the moral imagi-
nation. What the effect of the new life will be
upon this influence is yet to be determined.
With the Irish, the Roman Catholic Church
has had more time in which to provide for the
new situation. Its influence in safeguarding the
family is distinct and determined, affording 3,Il
indispensable check to the corrupting influences
of the local life. The Church thus preserves the
force of that enthusiasm which is one of the chief
distinctions of the Irish race, and affords direction
286 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
and steadiness to an often mercurial and contradic-
tory temperament.
Roman Catholicism and Judaism, widely sepa-
rated as they are in all outward aspects, yet funda-
mentally meet on common ground. Their systems
of ethics, coming down out of the long past, have
brought with them a large traditionary element
which includes prescriptions and observances that
once fulfilled moral needs but do not sufficiently
lay hold on life in these fast-moving days. All the
underlying principles in these great systems have
their profound force and meaning, but both put
a disproportionate emphasis upon special observ-
ance as against daily conduct. In the ghettos and
cloisters of the past, religion must needs create a
world of its own ; but the open world of to-day,
with all its new challenge to the souls of men, pre-
sents the living issues out of which real religion
must grow. In both Roman Catholicism and Juda-
ism, punishment is looked upon as something extra-
neous to sin, imputed to it by solemn outward
decree, rather than like unto it and coming out of
its very heart. Roman Catholicism, by placing its
awards in an unseen world, to a degree suggests
the inward personal quality of the punishment of
sin. In Orthodox Judaism the penalties of diso-
bedience are represented as falling mainly in this
TWO ANCIENT FAITHS 287
world, - he who eats bread during the Passover
shortens his days.
A system of restrictions whose scope is narrower
than the normal contemporary life leaves, as all
history shows, the alternative between a mechanical
formalism on the one hand and irreligion on the
other. Among Roman Catholics skepticism has
gained but little ground ; but the artificial charac-
ter of the attachment of a considerable and in-
creasing proportion of its adherents is hardly open
to question. The opportunities of the new life
lead the Jew to make short work of his tradi-
tions, and throw him out of the pale of religion
altogether. The danger is that the very fineness
which Judaism has created may only make him the
more open to all the subtle undermining influences
of city life. In the Roman Catholic Church, the
crisis has not yet come in the contest between a
negative, protective religious policy and the ever-
expanding life of the people. When the crisis
does come, there will no doubt appear a new and
interesting programme of adaptation to facts on the
part of this most flexible of historic institutions.
In any case, there is much hope in the increas-
ing activity among well-disposed men and women
of various religious connections toward building
up the outer intrenchments of the spiritual life by
288 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
the improvement of personal, family, neighborhood
and municipal conditions. The better understand-
ing which arises between Protestant and Catholic,
between Christian and Jew, when they work to-
gether thus on common ground, will give that
sense of human unity out of which vital forms of
religion in the future must come.
Worth Union Station
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CHAPTER X
THE CHILD OF THE STRANGER
CROwd CD between narrow byways that run
northwest from Hanover Street stand some half
dozen large brick buildings that perhaps appeal to
a visitor as marking the centre of public life in the
North End. If the stranger chance to be from
over the sea, and about to settle upon this populous
edge of the new country, the first impression that
these buildings make is justified by the part they
later play in the lives of the children for whose sake
the parents may have ventured to the unknown
land. Within them is located the seat of govern-
ment for the local child world — a world more in
need of special government here than in other
parts of the city, in that its little citizens are speak-
ing a different tongue, acquiring different habits
and daily developing different ideas from the
grown-up world to which they are akin by blood.
The present inquiry as to the public-school sys-
tem has to do with its local limitations and pecu-
liarities and the special significance which it has
290 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
for children chiefly of foreign birth and wholly of
foreign parentage. At the North End of Boston,
the public schools have to deal with a child popu-
lation of which more than ninety per cent. is of
Hebrew or Italian blood. Certainly half these
children were born on foreign soil, while the re-
mainder come from homes scarcely touched by
American influences, and where the English lan-
guage is only imperfectly known.
The universally significant facts among such a
school population are only those incidental to the
elementary schools, and an attempt to picture the
local school life can hardly overstate the impor-
tance of these grades, or paint their meaning to the
child in too vivid colors. There is no high-school
building in the schoolhouse group that lies to the
northwest of Hanover Street, nor is there need of
one. “From the kindergarten to the master's
class' defines the entire school career of a child
who, in comparison with his fellows, may be looked
upon as having received a thorough education. A
sketch of the years included within these limits is
practically all that is required in an effort to show
the relation between the public school and the
immigrant child.
The goal of the master's class, to which compara-
tively few attain, is reached by two converging
THE CHILD OF THE STRANGER 291
paths: by the regular course of promotions, fol-
lowing the kindergarten through nine primary and
grammar grades; or by a less well understood period
of instruction, known as “ungraded class work.”
The distinctive peculiarity of school work at the
North End is the ungraded class for newly arrived
foreign children. This is a characteristic neces-
sity in a district where a master may say of his
graduating class, “Twenty-seven out of forty-two
were born in Russia; and from three to five years
ago not one of those twenty-seven could speak Eng-
lish.” Another remark made by the same master
shows more fundamentally the need and nature of
ungraded work at the North End: “We have five
fresh from the steamer to-day. They go into the
ungraded classes for special language work, and
they will be pushed ahead as fast as possible toward
their proper grades.”
Pouring constantly into the ungraded classes are
European children of the most impressionable age,
whose first acquaintance with American life and
whose only hope of a good command of the English
tongue lie in the public schools. Nearly all of
them, of course, have had more or less school train-
ing in their native language; but, for a time, they
are as speechless, for all practical American pur-
poses, as newly entered pupils in the Horace Mann
292 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
School, for deaf mutes, at the other end of the
city.
The devotion and skill with which the North
End teachers perform their task of making the
dumb to speak strengthen the parallel. Their suc-
cess is astonishing, even with the average child;
while the occasional, phenomenal results are almost
beyond belief. “Land on Saturday, settle on
Sunday, school on Monday, vote on Tuesday” is a
proverb among the teachers; and one is inclined to
take the saying literally after conversing with a
Russian girl sixteen years of age who, leaving the
steamer the first of March without a word of Eng-
lish at her command, is explaining to a visitor by
the middle of May that her only real difficulty
in seventh grade work is with the text-book of
United States history, which seems to her written
in another language from the one she is learning
to speak.
“And the English these children give us back,”
says an enthusiastic master, “is our own English.”
Enthusiasm is found everywhere among the in-
structors of foreign children, and with it is a cor-
responding fervor of belief in the ability of their
pupils, especially the Hebrews, who are said to
“rush through the grades as soon as they get the
language.”
TIIE, CIIILD OF THE STRANGER 293
The process of getting the language is worthy
of attention, particularly in its beginning. Side
by side in an ungraded class sit little women of
seven or eight, miniature European peasants in
dress and bearing, and older girls, for whom a fort-
night has sufficed almost to eliminate Russian or
Italian peculiarities of costume. These children are
ungraded as to years, but all are of one grade in
speechlessness and in eagerness to learn the strange
tongue of the new land. Their progress is sugges-
tive of dawning intelligence in babies, and the sur-
prised happiness of one face after another, as each
in her order of quickness catches an idea, is inde-
scribably touching in its almost infantile sponta-
neity. Over and over, in quiet pleasant tones,
the teacher repeats every-day words and simple
sentences, accompanying them by explanatory ges-
tures, until at last “Rise’’ and “File ” and “Put
your pencil in your desk” and “Put your pencil
on your desk” have accomplished their purpose, and
the class is ready for more abstract ideas.
It is not language alone that these new little citi-
zens acquire in the early days of public-school life.
Not the least important result of the speedy transi-
tion from ship to school may be traced to the fact
that the schoolhouse steps lead to a practical know-
ledge of law as well as letters. “Fresh from the
294 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
steamer is no figure of speech, and the short
time that elapses before the immigrant child be-
comes a registered member of the school world
gives him little opportunity to fall into the lawless-
ness that naturally attends a change of environ-
ment. The school's neighborhood representative,
the truant officer, does much, directly and indirectly,
to bring about this speedy enrollment in the blue
book of the school; yet he is not always obliged to
take the initiative. The parents’ own preconceived
idea, that America means education, is usually aided
by the quickly volunteered information of more
experienced neighbors that the place for children
is in school. An interesting sight in the office of
a North End school is a flock of frightened little
foreigners under the kindly guardianship of an
Americanized relative ; or, more pathetic still,
shepherded by an equally frightened, speechless mo-
ther, who can make known only by signs that she
wishes her offspring started upon the right road.
Probably neither children nor parents have any
idea how stringent and far-reaching is the jurisdic-
tion under which they are now coming. By means
of teachers and truant officer, the school practically
dictates the conduct of the child during his waking
hours. The precision with which the complicated
school machinery moves, in a district where its ob-
THE CHILD OF THE STRANGER 295
stacles are of the most unique and baffling descrip-
tion, is a tribute to the imagination, as well as to
the diligence, of the executive force. Not a child
shall be lost seems to be the motto, - and it is a
practically accomplished ideal. Chevan Panhasky,
as occasionally happens, in her enthusiasm for
things American, may elect between terms to be
known henceforth as Celia Smith. The school
does not dispute her right even while deploring
her taste. Her disappearance must be accounted
for, however, though it mean weeks of effort, and
until Celia Smith has explained her identity, search
for the missing Panhasky is not given over.
Such is the beginning of school life for a large
part of the children who will quickly be the Eng-
lish-speaking, and therefore the influential, resi-
dents of the North End, - the more disciplined,
and therefore the controlling, members of the
community. As a general result of these years
of training, there is an ability on the part of the
children to speak a fairly pure English tongue
and to understand a purer one; to comprehend
the penalty of broken law, if not to feel the beauty
of law preserved. A glance at the dialect of some
realistic novel whose scene is laid in an East Lon-
don slum gives a vivid idea of the difference it
might make, to both state and individual, were these
296 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
same little foreign people left to acquire a street
vernacular and limited for life to such a feeble,
squalid vehicle as that ; while only a slight obser-
vation of any crowded immigrant quarter brings a
menacing conception of what a future generation
would be were it bred in American freedom with-
out American law.
At the other end of the path, to which many
find their way through the ungraded class, is the
master's class, with its hope of the grammar school
diploma. This, as has been suggested, is the de-
finite educational goal of the children of this quar-
ter of the city. To attain it is to “graduate,” an
achievement which ranks here, in popular regard,
with graduation from the high school in another
district, or the obtaining of a college degree in yet
more favored circles, – though neither high school
nor college is entirely unknown or unsought.
Each September, indeed, a surprisingly large
number of boys, and a handful of girls, go up to
the high schools at the South End, carrying their
grammar school diplomas as certificates of admis-
sion. Not infrequently the boys have in view
college or professional training. That the girls
never have, and that the proportion going further
than the grammar school is so small, is due, not
to lack of ability or inclination, and not wholly
TIII, CHILD OF THE STRANGER 297
to straitened means, but to the custom of early
marriage, which is particularly strong among the
Hebrews.
It seems truly unfortunate that girls who show
both talent and desire should be denied the privilege
of higher studies; but the more serious evil is
that so few children, boys or girls, should have the
training of the entire nine grades of the elementary
schools. These high school candidates are favored
representatives of an already picked corps, and their
existence does not detract from the statement that
the facts incidental to the elementary schools are
the only ones of universal significance. The gradu-
ating class of a grammar school is a small part
of the children who entered some six years before.
The law requires that children between seven and
fourteen years of age shall be in school ; but at
every stage in the course these immigrant children,
so unevenly started, are attaining their sad ma-
jority. Where two hundred enter, only about
fifty graduate. The master's class ranks in school
nomenclature as ninth grade. Between it and the
grade below there is no appreciable diminution in
numbers; but between the seventh and eighth
grades the difference is pitifully great. Only about
half the children who leave the seventh grade in
June reappear after the long vacation to enter the
298 AMERICANS IN DROCESS
eighth grade. The reports of the schools composed
largely of the children of immigrants show approx-
imately that seventy-five per cent. of the pupils
never reach the eighth grade; that a fraction of
this seventy-five per cent., moreover, are unable
to keep up in the regular course, and are given
instruction in what English educators call “ special
difficulty classes”; and that of those who do com-
plete the nine grades, one half the boys and four
fifths of the girls do not go further. Such statis-
tics bring out clearly the vital meaning of the
elementary schools in districts like the North End,
and the imperative need of a curriculum specifically
adapted to children who must get all the educa-
tional training they will ever get in the public
schools and before their fifteenth year.
Pupils leave school for a variety of reasons. A
broad division of these reasons might be made
under the heads of poverty and lack of interest.
Instances of the first in the cases of pupils of
unquestionable ability are many and touching.
To alter this is a hope of the future. The im-
mediate concern is to secure a school curriculum
that will remedy the second condition, and at the
same time give to those to whom the first applies
the best training the few years admit ; to make
school life so practical and attractive that an effort
THE CEIILD OF THE STRANGER 299
to keep the children in school will be made by the
parents and will not be resisted by the boys and
girls. The necessary routine of language, geo-
graphy and arithmetic is a heavy burden for chil-
dren who cannot in any way connect these studies
with their home lives. Something is needed to
help float the load, - something that will both
enliven school hours and bring them more closely
into relation with the homes and every-day expe-
riences. Various expedients are tried, and most
hopeful among them is industrial training of differ-
ent sorts. In this work the children are happy;
the parents understand and approve it ; and ob-
servant teachers state concerning it that the actual
working power of the pupils seems increased by
the relaxation and pleasure of the change. The
special importance of industrial training in the im-
migrant districts is emphasized by a glance at a
list of parents’ employments, taken from the records
of an ungraded class, - 27 laborers, 1 clerk in
bar-room, 3 barbers, 1 dressmaker, 3 tailors, 4
peddlers, 1 housekeeper, 4 organ grinders, 1 stone
cutter, 1 harness maker, 1 rag picker, 1 rabbi, 2
shoemakers, 1 undertaker, 1 clerk, 2 fishermen,
2 bricklayers, 1 blacksmith, 1 baker, 1 painter, 1
gravedigger, 1 fruit vender.
“I am weary,” says Ruskin, “of seeing the
300 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
subject of education treated as if education meant
only teaching children to write and cipher. The
real education, the only education which should be
compulsory, means nothing of the kind; it means
teaching children to be clean, active, honest and
useful.” Out of twenty-five school hours a week,
the time devoted to pursuits specifically in line
with the great man's ideal is given as follows in
tºſe Course of Study for the Boston Grammar
Schools published in 1899: —
Moral training, one half hour a week.
Physical training and recesses, three hours a
week.
Manual training, two hours a week.
To this should be added, in a discussion of the
North End, the time allowed in the Paul Revere
School for a weekly bath.
The new building of this school is a marked
result of the increasing responsibility the city
feels towards its child population and their special,
local needs. The school’s spacious basement is
lighted by electricity and furnished with shower
baths. Here six hundred little children are bathed
each week; and by one who knows anything of
North End tenement houses the question of the
necessity of public bathing facilities will not be
raised. Not long since a kindergarten teacher
THE CHILD OF THE STRANGER 301
had occasion to remove a child’s frock for the
purpose of trying on a garment. The child was
found to be completely encased in woolen rags
sewed securely around its body. Upon the teach-
er's applying the scissors to some of the stitches,
the child screamed: “Don’t do that, my mamma's
got me sewed up for all winter l’” From the
standpoint of the foreign mother there was nothing
reprehensible in this, but it is plain that the con-
venient sewing-up system must vanish before the
introduction of the public bath. It is close by the
Paul Revere school that the city has reserved
a lot of land for one of its public playgrounds,
and in some of the neighboring school buildings
the plan of leaving schoolyards open for the chil-
dren's use is also being tried.
The North End schools are fortunate in being
in close connection with two philanthropic enter-
prises, the North End Union and the North Ben-
net Street Industrial School, and the buildings of
both are so near as practically to form a part of the
great public schoolhouse group. Both these insti-
tutions supplement the training of the schools by
clubs and free classes. In the day of its founding,
the North Bennet Street Industrial School had no
parallel among the public schools of the city in its
methods. That industrial training is now given
302 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
throughout the city is largely due to its founder,
Mrs. Quincy Shaw, and the noble example she
set in its establishment. The Eliot Grammar
School has not yet facilities for manual training,
but once a week its boys are sent down the street
to the Industrial School, where, through Mrs.
Shaw's liberality, they receive more varied and ex-
tensive training than is given by the city. A
choice is offered between modeling, carpentering,
printing and leather-work, and the boys are divided
about equally in their tastes. One of the results
of both these institutions is that pupils once in the
day classes are likely to follow up their work after
business hours in the evening classes.
The industrial training given in the grammar
school is received with intelligent appreciation by
the boys and girls of the three upper grades. For
the girls the term implies instruction in sewing and
cooking. The latter is perhaps the more popular
occupation, and the girls regret so keenly being
obliged to give it up upon entering the master's
class that a special arrangement has been made in
the Hancock School by which the pupils of the ninth
grade are given an opportunity several times dur-
ing the year to prepare and serve a dinner for the
teachers. The work that goes on in the charming
upstairs kitchen of the Hancock School really
THE CHILD OF THE STRANGER 303
should be dignified by the name Domestic Sci-
ence. That it implies something far more serious
than even the important art of cooking will be
granted when it is understood that there are some
among the girls of each successive class who, from
religious scruples, never taste what they painstak-
ingly and happily prepare ; and there are many
others who will eat only a limited number of dishes.
It is the ways of healthful, happy homes that the
girls catch a glimpse of during the two hours a
week that for two years of their school life they
spend in the upstairs kitchen. A woman who
comes into unusually sympathetic relations with
the daughters of immigrants says, as a result of
her years of experience, that she is convinced that
it is not the acquisition of facts but cultivation
that the foreign girls need for their future happi-
ness and usefulness, – correct ideas of life, and
freedom from superstition, rather than definite
knowledge about trade winds and syntax. Within
two or three years of leaving school, sometimes
sooner, these girls are wives and mothers. If the
object of education is to fit for life, it seems hardly
an open question whether industrial training under
skilled, cultivated direction does not contribute as
much to the desired end as the more academic
branches. One far-reaching, desirable function
304 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
it certainly fulfills, — that of a connecting link
between school and home. The girls can discuss
sewing and cooking with their mothers when they
have no language to discuss trade winds and syn-
tax ; and they constantly demonstrate the mate-
rial results of their training in a fashion highly
acceptable to the whole family. It does not seem
improbable that marriage might be delayed a year or
two if fathers and mothers could see that a further
school course would mean definite training for the
life that is to them the only life a girl should look
forward to. The question of difference in ideals
has an important bearing upon any discussion of
the early training that best fits for life. The
daughters of Russian and Italian immigrants do
not look upon teaching, bookkeeping, stenography
or shop-tending as aims of life. They simply and
openly desire a sound mind, so far as they under-
stand it, within a sound body, that they may make
good wives and present their husbands with healthy
SOIlS.
The mere fact of graduation is urged strenu-
ously by the teachers, even when there is no hope
of the high school for pupils, because of their belief
of the important effect it has upon the children's
after-life. A grammar school diploma, framed
and hanging upon the wall, confers academic dig-
THE CIIILD OF THE STIRANGER 305
nity upon a home. The possession of it entitles
the owner to various social privileges. One advan-
tage that comes from graduation is the right of
membership in the old graduates' associations.
There are a number of these at the North and
West Ends. Thus far they have been composed
largely of those who made their homes in the dis-
trict in its more prosperous days. Recent gradu-
ates are becoming eager to join as soon as they are
so circumstanced as to afford the entrance fee.
The associations hold occasional reunions in addi-
tion to their business meetings, and they show their
love for the old school in various practical ways.
One society supports a library in the school build-
ing, and in addition to this pleasant aid to school
work, it has recently added a fine stereopticon, which
is in constant use. Each school building is a social
centre in the chance which its “public days'
afford for reunions, and it is the pupils who have
achieved graduation who are apt to come back,
feeling sure of welcome and recognition from the
teachers. Graduates’ clubs, made up of members
of individual classes, are well-known features of
the neighborhood. In their organization and func-
tions they are a credit to their schools, and they
show the force of a master's statement that the
ninth grade illustrates the survival of the fittest.
306 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
A study of these yearly survivors, their condi-
tions and their victory over conditions would be
intensely interesting were there time for such an
examination. The members of the graduating class
and the grade below it hold their places, as a rule,
through ability and force of character, and not
infrequently, it should be noted, as a result of
great sacrifice on the part of their parents. It
is no easy matter for fathers and mothers limited
as to language and educational traditions, and for-
ever under the galling conditions of precarious
employment, to allow a boy or girl capable of add-
ing to the family income to spend five hours a
day in school and one or more in home study. The
wonder is that it is ever done; for while the attain-
ment of a grammar school diploma is an honor,
failure to attain it is not looked upon as a disgrace.
To be without it, in the eyes of the parents, is
hardly a deprivation. The children themselves
show independence and business enterprise in the
struggle. In the Eliot School alone three hundred
and fifty boys are licensed newsboys and bootblacks.
But it is still likely that the lists of graduates would
diminish in the face of such obstacles were it not
for the encouragement of the teachers and their
interest in individual pupils. If children show
ability they are pushed through the grades as fast
THE CHILD OF THE STRANGER 307
as can be done conscientiously. This is in order
that they may reach the eighth grade at least
before the age limit is attained; for at the eighth
grade begins a sort of home stretch where chil-
dren and parents have caught their second breath,
and become able to endure to the end.
The meaning of school life to some of those
who have been thus hurried on may be read in the
stirring autobiographies that the graduating class
of one school is each year asked to write. Refu-
gees from Russian persecution tell in eloquent,
well-chosen words personal experiences holding all
the elements of tragic drama, and they picture
vividly the contrast between the conditions of their
European homes and the school privileges of Amer-
ica. The intelligent appreciation and the fre-
quent literary merit of these records are among
the things that place the foreign poor and their pos-
sibilities in an entirely new light, and arouse the
devotion and enthusiasm of those who come in con-
tact with them in the schools. In a survey of the
immigrant quarter of the city, where the combi-
nation of foreign habits and extreme poverty results
in such deplorable conditions, it must not be for-
gotten that dwelling in the midst of these conditions
there are those capable of rising above them, not
only from sporadic ability, but also by reason of
308 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
naturally inherited powers. The determination that
has kept Judea a name for two thousand years, the
fire that made Italy one and free, are in our North
End schools being developed and directed by what
the City provides. Side by side with sluggish
Sicily sits eloquent, ambitious Lombardy; while
among the Hebrew children are the sons and
daughters of men of learning, whom only a foreign
tongue keeps in such narrow circumstances. Thus
it is not surprising that there is real ability among
the holders of the grammar School diplomas, and
it seems beyond question that their after-lives jus-
tify the effort of the attainment. “The Jewish
boys will take from a third to a half of our prizes
right along,” writes an English High School
teacher. “Out of thirty Franklin medals awarded
in 1897, 1898, 1899, five were awarded to boys
from the Eliot School at the North End. The
results of the awarding of Franklin medals in June,
1900, show that five of the ten were given to
Jewish boys from the North and West Ends.” The
prize winners do not all stop here. On the rolls of
the law and medical schools of Boston and Cam-
bridge are increasingly recorded Russian and Italian
names; while already in the city there are men of
foreign birth and North End breeding who have
made their way through high school and uni-
THE CHILD OF THE STRANGER 309
versity, and are now practising their professions
close by the schools from which they received their
first diplomas.
From such statements as these, and from a visit
to the schools, one might be led to suppose that
the shifting of population has left the district en-
tirely Continental in its racial character. This
is not quite true. Though the Irish race is being
pushed out of its old home by the new immigrants,
the change has not taken place as entirely as the
appearance of the public schools would indicate.
Some twelve hundred children, of whom the larger
part are of Irish birth or descent, are cared for by
the parochial school system of the Roman Catholic
Church. St. Mary’s School, in the old armory
building on Endicott Street, numbers 630 pupils;
St. Stephen's School has 550. The schools accom-
modate both boys and girls, though they are not
coeducational in their plan. The instructors are all
women. The lady in charge, and the teachers
under whom the girls are placed, are sisters of a
religious order. The boys are in charge of lay
teachers, graduates of church schools. In both
these schools the preference is given to Irish chil-
dren. St. Stephen's school is still almost ex-
clusively Celtic, but St. Mary's is feeling the
change in population, and dark Italian faces are
310 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
thickly sprinkled among the fairer children of
the earlier inhabitants. Each parochial school in-
cludes the regulation nine primary and grammar
grades, and a “receiving class” somewhat cor-
responding to the public kindergarten. For un-
graded classes they have as yet no need. St.
Stephen's school has an additional three years'
course of high school work for girls. The gradu-
ating class of the grammar school consists of about
fifteen boys and girls.
The grade work of the parochial schools is very
similar to that of the public schools, though from
lack of funds it is necessarily limited to bare essen-
tials. The diplomas of both schools admit boys
to Boston College, a Jesuit institution, but not
to the public high schools. Boys who intend to go
further are preparing for the most part to enter
the former institution, at which St. Mary's school
has four scholarships. Alike as the public schools
and the church schools are in many ways, their
dissimilarities are yet marked and interesting.
Church symbols and ecclesiastical uniform, in the
parochial schools, everywhere lend their own subtle
charm and influence to the modern schoolroom
atmosphere. In the daily work, certainly as much
time as the public schools allow for their nature study
and industrial work — both of which the parochial
THE CHILD OF THE STRANGER 311
school is obliged to forego — is taken up in the
lines that specially distinguish the parochial school
religious exercises and instruction. One
system,
half hour of religious instruction is given each
day. School sessions open and close with devo-
tional exercises. Every half hour, at St. Mary's
school, little heads are dropped for a moment of
prayer. The books used are partly those of the
public schools; but some are, of course, special in
their nature. The school reader is markedly eccle-
siastical in its tone.
One aspect of the public school system of the
North End is too interesting to be passed over,
though it has little connection with the child life
of the district, — and that is the work of the even-
ing classes. Very few children attend. The six
hundred pupils who meet in the Eliot School for five
months in the year are mostly men over eighteen
years of age, recent immigrants who come to school
to learn the language. The plan is practically that
of the ungraded classes already described. The
Italians are the predominating race; next to them
come the Russian Jews. Between the adult pupils
of these two races there exists the most childish
and unreasonable antagonism, which at times be-
comes so violent in its expression that it is not
feasible for them to mix in class work. Offense
312 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
is taken upon the slightest occasion. The oppro-
brious epithets of “Dago” and “Sheeny ” are
apparently the earliest and easiest of English
words. A class of Italians is said, not long since,
to have got into such an uproar that the pre-
sence of the head master was necessary to quell
the incipient riot. The teacher, a man of German
extraction, proved unequal to the emergency, and
was ignorant of the origin of the outbreak. When
quiet had been restored, and inquiries were being
made, the class insisted, in the face of the Ger-
man's protestations, that he had called them
“Dagos.” After much discussion the mystery
was cleared up. The teacher, in course of in-
struction, had repeated the familiar conjugation of
“to go.” His Teutonic accent had transformed the
innocent plural into the unfortunate sounds of
“We go, you go, Dago,” and his class, to a man,
had furiously resented the insult.
As in the case of the children of the day
schools, the Hebrews are far cleverer with books
than the Italians, and do more advanced work.
With either race considerable determination is
required to face the discomforts attendant upon
evening school instruction. The session begins
at 7.30. Most of the men come direct from
work, thus going without their suppers till half
THE CHILD OF THE STRANGER 313
past nine. The rooms are close and crowded ;
the teaching force, though of excellent quality, is
inadequate as to numbers; and the men, some-
times gray-headed, and as often as not middle-aged,
are painfully squeezed between seats and desks
planned for children anywhere from nine to fifteen
years of age.
Quite the most interesting class in the building
is a roomful of Greeks, -strong, good-looking
young fellows, most of whom have received a fair
education in their own country. Some among
them are university graduates. Two years ago
the Greek class chanced to be made up of fifty
young Spartans. Now the membership is from
various parts of Greece. The distinction of the
class lies in its teacher, — a young Greek who has
been several years in this country and has volun-
teered his services to his countrymen as instructor
in the language in which he has become fluent
himself. The class is conducted in good modern
Greek, used as a medium of instruction in Eng-
lish. Most of these men are fruit venders and,
except for a few months in the winter, are roaming
about the country in various capacities connected
with the fruit trade.
The importance of making still further use of
ample School buildings, situated in such a densely
314 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
inhabited district, has for a long time been keenly
felt by the North End teachers. One master, with
a number of his assistants, has formed a corps of
instruction, serving without pay, to meet in the
evening the more advanced day school pupils
and assist them with the preparation of their
lessons and in other ways. Pupils who wish only
to come and read by themselves are encouraged
to do so. During the latter part of last winter
the North End was one of the two sections of the
city in which the School Board began a new and
admirable experiment in the way of making the
schoolhouse a centre for evening instruction in
certain interesting forms of handicraft as well as
for popular lectures and various forms of social
recreation.*
The possible significance of an ideal school life
perfectly adapted to the needs of a locality cannot
be overestimated; the actual significance of any
school life is great and, with rare exceptions, im-
plies happiness and growth. These are general
truths, and their force is increased when applied to
children for whom school is not simply the most
important interest, but usually the only daily in-
terest representing high ideals and development.
It is too much to expect of youth that it will fully
appreciate its privileges. Yet it is clear to a care-
* The board has also begun to provide vacation schools.
THE CHILD OF THE STRANGER 315
ful observer that school life is on the whole en-
joyed, notwithstanding much adult misapprehension,
which too often expresses itself in undiscriminating
and sweeping criticism. Just as all life has its
dreary spots, so school life is not exempt. A com-
parison of the mere creature comforts of the
schoolroom with the average home of the poorer
districts, an acquaintance with the attractive de-
vices used by teachers to lighten the burden of the
elementary studies, and especially an intelligent
appreciation of the spirit and skill of the in-
structors, must bring any fair mind to the convic-
tion that the public school, with all its defects, is
the happiest, most hopeful part of child existence
in the North End. The discouraging statements
of truancy may be urged against this position.
The question of truancy, however, has many sides.
The line between culpable and excusable absence
is hard to draw, and often confirmed truancy is a
habit resulting from repeated discouragements that
lie neither at the door of the school nor at that of
the pupil. A drunken mother, a dying baby sister,
a chance for work compelling both parents to be
away from home and throwing the care of some
half dozen younger children upon the shoulders of
a boy or girl of twelve, – these are conditions,
reported by the truant officer, that force a teacher
316 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
into reluctant charity for even such flagrant of.
fenders as truants, and cause her to feel that too
harsh reproof may be outraging a child’s finest
instincts.
Children of the school age are profoundly af-
fected by imagination and ambition. The school
appeals to both these qualities, though more suc-
cessfully, as yet, to the latter. The spirit of emu-
lation is strong in the public schools, and while
it occasionally may be forced to excess, its general
results are good and productive of sound growth.
Children value the visible symbol of success, and the
ingenious teacher takes advantage of this feeling.
The position of monitor, even though the duty im-
plied be nothing more than sharpening pencils;
the possession of the little flag, loaned to the line
that goes through the gymnastic exercises with the
most military precision, — such distinctions as these
are stimulating in possibility and give much joy
when attained. To be head boy of the fourth or
fifth grade is an honor as keenly appreciated as
municipal preferment of a later day. To hold
two hundred fellow pupils spellbound while one
thunders the speech of John Adams from the plat-
form, with only a suggestion of Italy in one's ac-
cents, is perhaps as intoxicating as any success of
after life. Moreover, it is an incentive to manly
TEIE CHILD OF THE STRANGER 317
bearing to file in and out, upstairs and down, a big
brick building several times a day feeling that the
eyes of great men are upon you, as master and
assistants watch your progress and note your pos-
sible forgetfulness to doff your cap.
Such influences as these are calculated to work
toward manliness and patriotism, though just here
lurks a possible defect of public school education
— one that must be recognized to be averted.
“You taught me language,” mocks Caliban at his
master, “and my profit on't is, I know how to
curse.” The patriot is preceded by “Young
America” in the little citizen's development. It
will depend much upon the work of the elementary
schools whether Americanism stops with unprinci-
pled partisanship and bombastic jingoism, as em-
bodied in ward politics, or develops into genuine,
intelligent love of country. Certainly the change
which comes over the children is a swift and ap-
parently spontaneous one. A little girl of foreign
birth and stammering tongue, in one of the lower
grades, tells an English visitor that the beautiful
portrait of the Father of his Country, hanging
upon the schoolroom wall, is Buffalo Bill. This is
the beginning. A few grades higher a group of
boys of foreign birth are celebrating Washing-
ton's birthday. In mimic scene they reproduce
318 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
the proceedings of the last Continental Congress,
statesman after statesman answering as his name
is called. The gentleman from Virginia delivers
himself of his great utterances, hardly able to
await his turn ; the gentleman from Pennsylvania
protests in vain; all at last agree vehemently to
hang together or to hang separately, and they affix
their names to an imaginary Declaration of Inde-
pendence, their audience cheering the while with
excitement and joining with the patriots later in
singing fervently and unquestioningly “Land where
our fathers died.”
It is deliberate choice on the part of both boys
and girls to ignore their foreign origin. They are
American, and at times disappointingly Ameri-
can. Their very names become unlovely to their
Anglicized ears, and the result is often a bewilder-
ing change that asks neither the advice of elders
nor the consent of the law. Their taste in amuse-
ments undergoes a similar change. Should the
student of comparative folk-lore pursue his re-
searches in the North End, he would be met by the
familiar strains of “Sally Waters,” and he would
find the polyglot Russian boys preferring to dis-
cuss “craps” in English, rather than to conduct
some European game in their inherited Yiddish or
Slavic tongues. If a dramatic club is formed, the
THE CEIILD OF THE STRANGER 319
children choose American plays; and in all en-
tertainments their national airs give way to the
street songs of the city and the patriotic hymns of
the school. The Hebrews have had no country :
the Italians have found a better one ; the new
land is large enough for both : and while Hebrews
affiliate with Hebrews and Italians with Italians,
there seems to be no recognized antagonism be-
tween them more serious than a strong feeling of
class superiority on the part of each race.
Such a state of things during school life is
bound to have its influence upon future conditions,
the more so because the direct influence of the
elementary schools is not soon outgrown. Even
to the boys and girls who go higher, the gram-
mar school, remains the most tangible object of
affectionate loyalty. Children cannot spend from
five to ten years in one locality, with one set of
interests, under leaders better known and of more
immediate importance than the President and his
Cabinet, without strong ties being formed; and
these ties, as the school course nears its end, are
made closer by charming devices. The story of
the master's class is a tale by itself. Boys and
girls who reach that stage of advancement, who
go through the impressive ceremonies of gradu-
ation, who leave the big brick schoolhouse carrying
320 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
a grammar School diploma, take out into the world
not only the sense of dignity that comes from
attainment, and from possession of the rudiments
of knowledge, but also sentiments, memories and
traditions, enriched by a consciousness of warm
and enduring friendship with masters and teachers,
which deepen as the years go by.
Bath"wº
Map to show the
CHIEF INSTITUTIONS
and
MEETING PLACES
in the
WEST END, BOSTON.
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CHAPTER XI
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST
PHILANTHROPY, as it is now understood, must
work with rather than for those whom it would
help. Defective parts of human society can never
be repaired from without like parts of a broken
machine; they must share actively in working out
their own salvation. On the other hand, any part
of society that needs regeneration is little likely to
accomplish the task by itself. Social reform, to be
in the highest degree sound and permanent, must
spring from the coöperation of all classes. Yet
nearly all efforts at social reform lean to one side or
the other. They are predominantly either exer-
tions of certain public-spirited individuals in be-
half of others, or else spontaneous unaided efforts
of the mass in its own interest. In a few cases —
and here lie the greatest possibilities — the two
elements are combined more equally.
Enterprises designed to secure and maintain the
indispensable conditions of a wholesome life, with-
out which a person can hardly be expected to stand
322 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
on his own feet, are almost inevitably of the first sort
— efforts for people. They may fairly be called
remedial, in that they strive for a state of social
health in which all individuals shall be capable of
self-direction and self-support. Not only the ordi-
nary material relief agencies, but those providing
medical aid, care of children and proper housing
conditions are of this kind.
The spontaneous form is seen in the effort to
satisfy sometimes widespread desires, sometimes
merely private, local wants. Such are trade unions,
social clubs, patriotic orders among the Italians,
benefit orders and Zionism among the Jews.
The third form, the coöperative, finding its op-
portunity after the remedial has supplied the abso-
lute essentials, and reaching out with intelligent
sympathy to all sorts of popular association, en-
deavors to lead to higher levels of thought and life.
It includes, therefore, the church, the school, pri-
vately established educational experiments and the
social settlement with its varied programme of local
improvement.
This classification implies no judgment. The
three classes are not three levels, one above an-
other; they simply represent different kinds of
work demanded by different circumstances. An
enterprise in any one of the three divisions may
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 323
do really constructive work in the sense of achiev-
ing some fresh adaptation of the community's means
to its needs, of making some distinct gain, more or
less permanent, in guiding social energy toward
the accomplishment of useful social ends. Never-
theless, the most effective philanthropic work is
that directed by disinterested intelligence which
seeks the coöperation of those to be helped.
In districts like the North and West Ends, where
a large proportion of the population is foreign in
habits of life and thought, even when not in birth,
and quite unacquainted with the ideas of modern
democracy, it is to be expected that most of the
social effort should come from without. The im-
migrant from Russia or Italy, accustomed to the
tyranny of the Czar's police or to the exactions
of the tax-gatherer, naturally devotes all his ener-
gies toward making some place for himself and his
family in the whirl of new life into which he has
plunged. Had he the aptitude for concern about
the common welfare, he lacks the time. Further-
more, the idea of his having any influence upon the
conduct of public affairs is bewilderingly novel;
the possibility, too, of combining with his neigh-
bors even for purely private purposes is a privilege
not at once appreciated. Remedial agencies, there-
fore — effort of outsiders for the district — have
324 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
the most imposing equipment and present the great-
est array of activities. Since the needs to which
they minister are for the most part concrete and
easily distinguished, the methods of dealing with
them are correspondingly well reasoned out and
highly developed.
It happens that in a single building in the West
End most of the large relief-giving organizations
of the city, both public and private, have their
headquarters. The Charity Building on Chardon
Street, under the management of the Overseers of
the Poor, furnishes offices to some fifteen charitable
societies, rent free, except that they share the run-
ning expenses of the building. -
The municipal provision for poor relief is in
the hands of two boards, - the Overseers of the
Poor, who have charge of outdoor relief 1 and tem-
porary lodging and meals, and the Pauper Insti-
tutions Trustees, controlling the two almshouses.
The outdoor relief of the Overseers is intended only
to furnish partial support; the entirely depend-
ent are cared for by the Pauper Institutions. In
the last twenty-five years, though there has been a
slight increase in the total amount of outdoor re-
lief, the number of families aided has been reduced
I Outdoor relief is aid furnished to families in their homes, in
distinction from the indoor relief of the almshouses.
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 325
by one half, thus doubling the average amount per
family. The inference is that each family receives
more effective treatment than formerly. The
Overseers also have the administration of private
trust funds for various designated purposes, amount-
ing to three quarters of a million dollars. Under
the direction of the Overseers, too, the Tempo-
rary Home on Chardon Street and the Wayfarers’
Lodge on Hawkins Street furnish for short periods
shelter and food, – the one to women and chil-
dren, the other to men. The women perform the
household duties of the Home, while the men work
in a woodyard. It is upwards of twenty years
ago that Boston did away with the old system
of giving temporary lodging in police stations.
At that time some 60,000 men sought such lodg-
ing in the course of a year; now, owing to the
increasingly strict rules of the Lodge in the mat-
ter of cleanliness and sanitation, and its steady
insistence on the work equivalent for lodging and
meals, the number of tramps has greatly dimin-
ished. A fair proportion of those who come to the
Lodge are young or middle-aged able-bodied men,
neither professionally vagrant nor vicious, but
moderately able workmen. Industrial disturbances
over a wide area are felt in the fluctuation of num-
bers at the Lodge.
326 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
If all the private relief agencies including the
city in their scope were to be enumerated in these
pages, this chapter would be converted into a di-
rectory; for more nearly than any other American
city, Boston resembles London in inheriting from
the past a legacy of charitable societies. Out of
the long list a few accomplish the most of what is
done, especially in the North and West Ends: the
Associated Charities and the Provident Associa-
tion, the Federation of Jewish Charities, the St.
Vincent de Paul, and several smaller societies
which devote themselves to the needy of a partic-
ular race or creed. Some of these aim to be more
than relief dispensers, and endeavor, by getting at
the main causes of need, to effect a permanent
remedy.
The Associated Charities organization, which
now has twenty-five years of activity behind it, de-
clares its main objects to be “to raise the needy
above the need of relief, prevent begging and im-
position and diminish pauperism.” To further
these ends it strives “to secure the concurrent and
harmonious action of the different charities in Bos-
ton,” and “to encourage thrift, self-dependence
and industry through friendly intercourse, advice
and sympathy.” In effect, the society is a clear-
ing-house, referring cases to the appropriate special
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 327
agency or, if none such is available, itself assuming
charge. As an organization it furnishes no direct
relief, but procures it, when necessary, from others.
Its mechanism is well known : the city is divided
into districts, each of which is cared for by a paid
agent in coöperation with a group of people willing
to do what they can in the way of personal service.
The agent does most of the investigating and
executive work, while the volunteers undertake the
friendly visiting. The negative objects at which
the society aims are of course less difficult of accom-
plishment than the positive: it is much easier to
“prevent begging and imposition' and, to a less ex-
tent, to prevent the duplication of effort than “to
raise the needy above the need of relief.” and “to
diminish pauperism.” Accordingly, the society
has been the more conspicuously successful in the
former tasks. Four of its conferences share the
responsibility of the North and West Ends. Con-
ference VI. cares for the territory lying north of
Prince Street and east of Salem and Hanover streets.
Hence its work is largely among the Italians. Con-
ferences VII. and VIII. include within their districts
those parts of the North and West Ends which
constitute the Jewish quarter, and Conference IX.
presides over the section where is congregated prae-
tically all the Negro population of the West End.
328 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul is the great
Roman Catholic relief-giving agency. It is repre-
sented at the North End by conferences at St.
Mary's, St. Stephen's and the Sacred Heart of
Jesus, and at the West End by a conference at
St. Joseph’s. Like the Associated Charities, this
organization lays considerable stress on friendly
visiting.
The Federation of Jewish Charities includes
the Hebrew Benevolent Association, the Leopold
Morse Home, a free employment bureau and sev-
eral other societies with special objects. For
newly arrived Jewish immigrants the Baron de
Hirsch fund makes provision. This fund may be
devoted to trade instruction, establishing men in
business, forwarding families to friends or to where
employment may be secured, or, in case of inca-
pacity for self-support, to returning them to Eu-
rope. A home on Cooper Street affords tempo-
rary shelter. The Hebrew Benevolent Society aids
those who have been in this country for more
than a year. Perhaps three fourths of its work is
done in the North and West Ends, and most of
the remainder in the South End. As compared
with the Associated Charities, it is more of a
relief-giving organization. Its policy may be de-
scribed as that of giving relief in such a way as to
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 329
prevent further necessity for relief; it provides for
whatever subsidy may set breadwinners upon their
feet, — temporary removal of children, temporary
relief or transportation to another place where
work is to be obtained, - while the Associated
Charities lays the stress upon personal influence.
The remainder of the agencies make it their
chief business to dispense material relief, for the
most part visiting only enough to guard against
fraud. The various churches, of course, also carry
on more or less desultory work of this kind.
Among the larger organizations there is consid-
erable combined effort and division of labor. The
Overseers care for those in chronic poverty; the
Associated Charities for those who show some
prospect of getting upon their own feet; the Pro-
vident, the Hebrew Benevolent and others, often
at the request of the Associated Charities, supply
temporary support ; the Jewish Federation and St.
Vincent's Society, as far as they can, care for their
special constituencies. The information possessed
by each is at the service of the others.
The experience of these societies in dealing with
the conditions that confront them throughout the
city leads one to look to them for certain facts
which indicate the part taken by the North and
West Ends in the city's problem of poverty. No
330 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
complete statement can be made, but from the few
available records of the leading societies some hints
may be gleaned.
Together the two sections contain about 11 per
cent. of Boston's population. From them the Long
Island Almshouse, which has six sevenths of the
city's indoor paupers, draws 18 per cent. of its in-
mates; of the persons aided by the Society of St.
Vincent de Paul, 12 per cent. live in these districts
and receive 13 per cent. of the relief; the Provi-
dent Association distributes 16 per cent. of its coal
and groceries here; and the Associated Charities
for five or more years has found 30 per cent. of
its cases in this section. These districts appear,
therefore, to be receiving aid in proportion greater
than that of their population, yet perhaps not in
such excess as might be imagined. With an in-
crease of 20 per cent. in the population of the dis-
trict between 1895 and 1900, the percentage of
coal and groceries received by it from the Provi-
dent since 1890 has fallen off from 28 to 16. In
the same period, the number of persons in the en-
tire city receiving aid from the Society of St. Vin-
cent de Paul has increased 50 per cent., while in
these districts the increase has been slight. Paral-
lel with this there has been for the whole city a
small increase in the amount of relief; for the
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 331
North and West Ends, a slight decrease. These
figures, so far as they go, indicate that the dis-
tricts are at least not increasingly dependent.
To this result the Jews contribute not a little.
Through their Federation, they succeed in provid-
ing for the bulk of their poor, very few of whom
fall to the care of the Overseers. In the North
End, as nearly as can be ascertained, out of about
120 families aided by the Overseers in 1901, per-
haps a dozen were Jewish, and half of these were
aided only temporarily. The conference of the As-
sociated Charities which deals most with them has
not over twenty-five per cent. of its cases from that
race. That is to say, the addition of the Jews to
the population of Boston has resulted in little per-
manent direct increase of demand upon the city's
relief resources. Indirectly, of course, their mere
presence has contributed to the industrial pressure
which has forced others to apply for aid.
Among the Italians there are one or two relief
societies, which, however, are in the main mutual
insurance orders, paying sickness and death bene-
fits. Their general charitable work, limited as it
is to their surplus funds, is necessarily of small
extent. In many cases where Italians ask for aid
it is because sickness has exhausted the little hoard
accumulated in the summer for maintenance during
332 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
the idle winter months. When they obtain aid
from the Overseers, work is required at the Way-
farers’ Lodge, where they often believe themselves
on a “City job.” Most of the aid given them is
temporary. Out of the 120 families already men-
tioned as being aided by the Overseers of the Poor
at the North End, about 25 were Italian, and only
7 of these have received continuous relief. The
Associated Charities last year, on the other hand,
found three quarters of its 279 North End cases,
of which 103 were new cases, among the Italians.
Though the total number of cases relieved
through Conference IX. of the Associated Chari-
ties was 309, the number of colored families receiv-
ing assistance was but 35. This is accounted for
not so much by prosperity — for there is much
poverty among the Negroes — as by the forms of
mutual aid that exist among the people of this
race. Nearly every respectable Negro belongs to
a sick benefit association, which he values, when
in health, for its social opportunities, and turns to
for aid in time of need.
By elimination we come to a conclusion, also
verified by positive experience, that the Irish race
furnishes the bulk of the dependents in the North
and West Ends. Of the families in the North End
aided by the Overseers, sixty per cent. are Irish
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 333
or Irish-American ; of the admissions to the Long
Island Almshouse from that district, half are Irish
or Irish-American. And ordinarily it is not the
lately arrived immigrant that falls back on charity,
— it is either those who have been in this country
a long while or an American-born generation.
So far, then, as the North and West Ends are
dependent districts, immigration is not immediately
and directly responsible. The newcomers, while
many are poor enough, are usually here in order to
better themselves; most have not lived in large
cities, nor have they an extensive acquaintance
with charity. It is rather the stragglers left be-
hind by the earlier immigrants that are unequal to
the task of self-support. Years of residence in a
poor, crowded quarter, association chiefly with their
own countrymen and contact with American life
only at isolated and often the least salutary points
undermine their self-respect and make them liable
to become alms receivers.
Systematic care of children necessarily works in
intimate association with other kinds of organized
effort. The specific work of this nature in Boston
is divided between the City and several private
societies. The City conducts all juvenile work
through the Children's Institutions Department,
which takes in charge not only dependent and
334 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
neglected children, but also truants and juvenile
lawbreakers. Boy criminals are sent to the House
of Reformation at Rainsford Island; the truants
are sent to the Parental School at West Roxbury;
while the dependent and neglected children are
placed out in selected homes in various parts of
New England. In the placing-out work, the chil-
dren are assigned to families of the same religious
faith as the parents. On February 1, 1902, the
end of the recording year, 860 children were in
charge of the Placing-Out Division, of which num-
ber 319 were boarding and 320 in free homes; the
remainder were in institutions, chiefly the Massa-
chusetts School for the Feeble-Minded.
It is the policy of the Children's Institutions
Department not to admit children to its care if any
private agency is available. The most extensive of
these agencies is the Boston Children's Aid Soci-
ety, which does comprehensive and thorough-going
work with both destitute and wayward children.
Its methods are, in brief: first, investigation and,
if likely to prove sufficient, advice; if further
treatment is required, it refers the case whenever
possible to some other and special agency; when
this is not feasible, it retains supervision itself.
Its work in all three ways is elastic and personal.
The Bureau of Information and Counsel, although
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 335
less conspicuous than the other departments, is
especially valuable because its work is so largely
preventive; its importance will appear somewhat
from the fact that it rendered service in over 750
instances during the past year, – a larger number
than was credited to any other department. The
Placing-Out Department has under its supervision
at any one time an average of over 250 children,
scattered over New England in private homes.
Destitute and abandoned children are also cared
for through the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.
For the most part, this society does not continue a
systematic supervision, but places the children in
Roman Catholic institutions. Out of 368 variously
placed last year, 293 were consigned to such insti-
tutions and 69 to private families.
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chil-
dren protects neglected or abused children, chiefly
by legal means. It effects this in the homes of
the children if possible; otherwise, it removes the
children.
The day nurseries, of which there are two — one
at the North and one at the West End — not only
provide during the day better care for young chil-
dren than they are likely to receive at home, but
allow mothers opportunity for work or for recovery
from sickness. In connection with the North Ben-
336 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
net Street Day Nursery, at the North End, older
girls are taught cooking, table work and care of
children, mothers’ meetings are held, and enter-
tainments are given for both fathers and mothers.
The matron visits in the families of the children,
and by suggestion and encouragement tries to in-
crease the sense of responsibility in the mothers,
and to help toward healthy, prudent home life.
This nursery is entirely free; at the West End,
the payment of five cents a day is required.
At the North and West Ends, as in the city at
large, resources for medical aid are comparatively
abundant. Perhaps no form of charity is given or
received with more satisfaction. Given, it meets
an evident need ; received, it produces little of
the demoralization often consequent upon material
relief, although not even medical aid, of course,
escapes being imposed upon. In the West End
there is particularly easy access to such resources,
as it contains the Massachusetts General Hospi-
tal; the Boston Lying-in Hospital; and the House
of the Good Samaritan, where care and medical
treatment are provided for white women and girls,
and for young boys; the West End Nursery and In-
fants’ Hospital; St. Monica's Home, a hospital for
colored women and girls ; the Vincent Memorial
Hospital, for wage-earning women and girls; the
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 337
Massachusetts Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary:
the New England Eye and Ear Hospital; and in
Haymarket Square, the Relief Station of the Bos-
ton City Hospital. A branch of the Mount Sinai
Hospital has recently been erected by the Jews for
the better accommodation of the patients of that
race. Eight or more prominent hospitals situated
elsewhere in Boston are open also to the sick of
these districts. The House of the Good Samari-
tan, the out-patient departments of the other hos-
pitals, and the Relief Station are entirely free, but
with these exceptions the hospitals make some
charge whenever the patients are able to pay.
Dispensaries are connected with nearly all of
these hospitals, and a number of independent dis-
pensaries are to be found here and there in this
part of the city. In connection with one of the
latter a hospital is maintained at the South End.
The Epworth League maintains a medical mission
in the North End. Two doctors and two nurses
are kept busy answering the calls of the neighbor-
hood, chiefly among the Jews and the Italians. A
small fee is charged for prescriptions, and a mod-
erate charge is made for visits to the homes.
In the North and West Ends, though not to
the same extent as in the South End, the sign
9
“Dispensary” is occasionally hung out to attract
338 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
practice for a quack doctor, or is applied to what
poses as a charitable institution in the announce-
ments of “benefit” performances, while it more
than covers expenses by its charges for medicine.
Under the classification made at the beginning
of this chapter, a few enterprises stand on the
border line between the remedial and the coöpera-
tive. They furnish a much needed form of chari-
table aid, but it is their purpose to use business
methods as far as possible. The Industrial Aid
Society, the remainder of whose corporate name
reads “for the Prevention of Pauperism,” is a free
employment office for both men and women. It
makes special efforts to secure situations in the
country. Of its applicants at present about one
half of the men and one third of the women — these
often with children — are sent to be employed out
of town. Nearly twice as many positions are found
for women as for men. “The men and women,”
says a late report, “for whom we seek and find
work are very largely drawn from that class of
the community who are helped by private charity,
and are liable at any moment to become recipi-
ents of public aid and thereby become veritable
paupers.” This society has for some time at-
tempted to coöperate with the City’s Wayfarers’
Lodge and Temporary Home, in the case of the
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 339
latter with more success than in that of the
former. The men interviewed by the society's
agent at the Lodge, while they appeared “tem-
porarily out of a place and willing to work if work
could be found for them,” proved in many instan-
ces to be “wholly indifferent to their own welfare,
caring only to obtain a shelter for the night and
something to eat.” For a number of women from
the Home, places have been provided by the
society.
Another small private charity of similar nature
is a society which is connected with Conference
VII. of the Associated Charities. This society
gives out plain sewing to women, and sells the com-
pleted garments at a reasonable rate to the poor.
It is intended to be educational in its influence,
helping the women to a permanent trade.
From the density and character of the popula-
tion in the North and West Ends, one would sup-
pose that here, if anywhere in the city, is the place
for efforts at model housing. The only organized
attempt of the kind, however, is that of the Bos-
ton Coöperative Building Company, two of whose
five estates are in these districts. Neither build-
ing was erected by the company, though a new
addition was made to one of them. The tenements
are kept in a sanitary and not overcrowded condi-
340 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
tion, and proper moral standards are insisted upon.
The limited extent of this company’s effort in the
North and West Ends is due to the law which
requires that a house containing more than three
families shall be thoroughly fireproof. A recent
report of this company declares: “Careful esti-
mates of the cost of model tenements make it clear
that such a house cannot be expected to make a
good return upon the investment. . . . It is clear
that as far as the North End is concerned it will
not much longer be a residential district. The
encroachments of business, especially since the
building of the new Union Stations, have raised
the price of land to such a point that it becomes
impossible for us to supply good new tenements at
low rentals.” In the West End the colored people
are being crowded out by “the Jews, for whom
we need not build, as their own people supply all
necessary accommodations.” The upshot is that
this company is locating its new buildings on the
edge of Roxbury.
By individual initiative, however, a few addi-
tional attempts in this direction have been made.
Among the houses privately owned or leased and
conducted upon improved methods may be men-
tioned several on Chardon Street and others on
Norman Street and Church Place.
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 341
Jewish landlords, as the report of the Boston
Coöperative Puilding Company points out, are
building tenement houses, but the accommodations
which they furnish comply with the law by the
narrowest possible margin. Such structures tend
to throw the burden of maintaining tolerable hous-
ing conditions upon the Building Department of
the City and the inspectors of the Board of
Health.
Extensive as is the equipment and organization
of all these remedial agencies, and imposing as is the
array of their activities, all combined they succeed
in accomplishing little more than enabling the com-
munity to hold its own in the struggle for social
health. Their work is negative; it strives merely
to prevent the weaker parts of the community from
succumbing to forces too strong for them. So far
as it is successful, it gives people the bare oppor-
tunity to make what they can of themselves, but
does little to aid them in the process.
Of the spontaneous efforts at self-improvement,
the trade union, one of the most familiar, seems to
be of less importance in the life of the North and
West Ends than elsewhere, at any rate among the
more recent immigrants. In trades like the gar-
ment-makers, the Jews form the majority of the
union membership ; the Jewish bakers are organ-
342 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
ized separately ; in a few trades there are some
Italians. In the Jews the racial combination of
the communistic and individualist tempers, now
one, now the other uppermost, prevents effectual
coöperation. Often ready enough to organize, they
with equal readiness break up on a division of inter-
ests. The Italians commonly do the most unskilled
sort of work; this, in addition to the jealousy felt
toward each other by natives of the different sec-
tions of Italy, renders concerted action difficult.
Both Jews and Italians, being unaccustomed to
liberty, are at a loss how to use it. The Irish of
the district, on the contrary, are natural organizers,
and have been in this country longer than either
of the Continental peoples. Probably a fairly large
proportion of them belong to unions. But these
represent mostly unskilled trades, demanding no
very high grade of ability ; and the organizations,
being no more stable than the members composing
them, form on the whole no influential part of the
trade-union world, on which, indeed, they some-
times bring discredit by hasty, ill-considered action.
There are many Socialists among the Jews, and
a few among the Italians. At present they are not
to any great extent banded together in active or-
ganizations. No doubt good times largely account
for the absence of aggressive social unrest. In any
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 343
case, extreme types of Socialism, imported from
amid Continental proletarian conditions, soon be-
come much modified by American influences.
The form of organization which seems to have
struck the fancy of the Jews is the benefit order.
Some of these are exclusively of Jewish member-
ship, like the Brith Abraham and the Sons of
Benjamin, which extend throughout the country;
others — and these seem to be in even higher favor
—are lodges of familiar American orders, such as
the Knights of Pythias. The social features of
these societies constitute, of course, no small part
of their attractiveness.
The Italians have a number of benefit orders.
Some of these are lodges of national organizations
like the Foresters and the Knights of Columbus.
They also have several military societies. They
belong in greatest numbers to the religious societies
connected with the various churches. Demanding
little from members in the way of dues or duties,
appealing to traditional sentiment in the perpetu-
ated celebration of festival days, and providing
social intercourse in many ways, the religious soci-
eties have, especially among the Southern Italians,
a well-nigh universal following.
Among both Jews and Italians there are small
local clubs for purely social purposes. These are
344 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
apt to be rather short-lived, springing up among
groups of young people that happen to be thrown
together, and dying out when their interests begin
to diverge. The masters of the North End schools
are encouraging the formation of associations among
their graduates, in an attempt to make social inter-
course more permanent and to have it centre around
educational influences.
The importance of the spontaneous efforts often
lies not so much in the external, concrete effect
they succeed in producing as in their disclosure of
real wants. It often happens that the more neces-
sary a reform is, the less able are those in need of
it to carry it out. But wherever there is a persist-
ent endeavor for a certain object, no matter whether
or not the endeavor succeeds, there exists a want
which the best intelligence of the community must
reckon with sooner or later. Here is the point at
which social energy put forth will count for most,
because at this point it will meet with most coöper-
ation.
In the enterprises which we have termed in the
broadest sense coöperative, we find the desire to
improve met half-way by the desire to help. In
them the community’s best intelligence is set to
guide aspirations to their fulfillment, — the ideal
form of social service. Its greatest embodiments
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 34
5
are the church and the school, which are, in spite
of their imperfections, the most powerful institu-
tions in human society aside from the family.
There must be a continual readjustment of profes-
sional methods, but this form will always remain the
ideal, - the expert in the service of the many.
Perhaps the most conspicuous example of this
sort of organization in the districts under review is
the North Bennet Street Industrial School. The
name designates a group of very effective enter-
prises more or less independent of one another,
but housed in one building. Founded some twenty
years ago as a mission, before long it began to be de-
finitely educational in purpose. Its workers became
convinced that the greatest need of the district was
training in industry, and accordingly they began
experiments, the success of which did much to force
that training into the public schools. For fifteen
years classes have been sent from the public
schools to its different departments; its present
public school classes, some fifteen in number and
comprising about nine hundred pupils, are in-
structed in modeling, sloyd, leather work and print-
ing. In addition it has its own evening classes in
millinery, dressmaking, cooking and sewing, to-
gether with gymnastics for both girls and boys.
Besides the Industrial School proper, and en-
346 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
tirely unconnected with it, there is in the same
building the day nursery already mentioned and a
kindergarten, from which a number of clubs have
grown up. By intimate acquaintance with the
families, it aims to coöperate with them in the
training of the children; at the same time it is
careful not to diminish the parents' responsibility.
Bearing only indirectly upon the local life, there
is a normal training school in sloyd, of whose grad-
uates about one hundred and fifty are now teaching
in various parts of the country. A branch of the
Public Library in the building does much to stim-
ulate and supply a local desire for good reading,
especially among the children. Its quarters, how-
ever, are really inadequate ; there should at least
be separate rooms for adults and children. This
group of enterprises is an example of intelligent
adaptation of means to needs. Discarding several
departments — an employment office, a relief sta-
tion and others — when they proved ill advised, it
has progressively met the wants of its district. A
reading-room on Hanover Street, while not con-
nected directly with the North Bennet Street In-
dustrial School, derives its support and direction
from the same general source. This pleasant re-
sort, which is for men only, is open afternoon and
evening. Representatives of many nationalities
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 347
and types of employment avail themselves of its
privileges.
Generally similar in character to the industrial
department of the North Bennet Street School,
although designed specifically for a single race,
is the Hebrew Industrial School on Allen Street.
Here the work is chiefly among girls and young
women, who are taught cooking, sewing, the care
of the home and other kindred branches. The
aim is less to train them to become wage earners
than to fit them for the duties of domestic life. A
single club of boys, numbering twenty-five or more,
engage in the study of history and in debates upon
current questions, to the end that they may take an
intelligent part in public affairs and become good
citizens. The school follows the best Jewish ideals.
Two other agencies for social improvement are
at work chiefly among a single nationality. The
Society for the Protection of Italian Immigrants
aims to insure new arrivals from Italy against
deception and villainy, and also to instruct them
in the English language and to give them some
knowledge of the institutions of this country. Ed-
ucational classes are held at its headquarters on
Hanover Street. Like the Hebrew Industrial
School, this society is conducted by representa-
tives of the same race as that of its constituency.
348 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
They both include among their supporters numer-
ous public-spirited citizens of Boston birth and
traditions. The Civic Service House, on Salem
Street, is a settlement having Jewish young men
for its residents, some of whom have grown up in
the North End. It is intended primarily for Jews,
but includes Italians also within the scope of its
efforts. Political enlightenment is the underlying
purpose of its clubs, classes and courses of lec-
tures. Hence it reaches chiefly boys and young
men. Its financial support is from non-Jewish
SOUll’CéS.
The oldest of the settlements established at the
North and West Ends is the Epworth League
House, to whose medical work reference has al-
ready been made. Next in importance to this
kind of service is its effort in the interest of ad-
vanced education. Two literary clubs, one of young
men, the other of young women, Jews and Ital-
ians, have been carried on for a number of years
with signal success. Several members of the young
men's club have taken partial or complete college
courses, and some have entered professional careers.
These received not only encouragement but much
of their actual instruction from residents of the
Epworth League House. There is a distinctively
religious atmosphere about all the work of this
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 349
settlement. A Sunday-School has a regular place
on its programme. No aggressive attempt is made
at proselytism however.
The North End Union, under the direction of
the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, is hardly a
settlement in the full sense. During the school
year it rents much of its room to the city for
school and kindergarten purposes. In two trades,
printing and plumbing, a sort of trade school is
carried on ; only those, however, already engaged
at the trade may attend. The school aims to sup-
plement the practical knowledge gained by daily
work, not to teach beginners. Its classes are re-
cruited from the city at large. In other ways the
Union touches more nearly the life of the neigh-
borhood. A gymnasium and a bath are at the ser-
vice of all on simple conditions, and a reading and
recreation room is open to boys certain hours of
the day and evening. There is also a Sunday af-
ternoon school broadly ethical in its aims. A flower
mission is an important part of the summer work.
For the accommodation of the children, a separate
house is provided a few doors away. Here sew-
ing and other classes for girls are held.
There are two settlements in the West End,
both having women residents only. The work of
the Elizabeth Peabody House centres about the
350 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
kindergarten and the influence upon home life
which may grow out of it. The House is situated
in one of the most thoroughly foreign spots in the
West End, where the homes stand in great need
of the domestic standards inculcated by the resi-
dents. The Willard Y. Settlement makes a spe-
cial point of the provision of quarters for working
girls, although it also devotes considerable atten-
tion to the children of the neighborhood. Con-
nected with this settlement is a summer playground
for children.
Very much in the spirit of the settlements are
the home libraries of the Children's Aid Society,
scattered throughout the district to the number
of twenty. Since the first of these libraries was
established fifteen years ago, the plan has won
wide recognition, and has been adopted in many
other cities. The system, which is now familiar,
consists in placing a small library in some home,
with one of the children as custodian, and with a
volunteer visitor in charge. The library group,
ten in number, meet the volunteer director once a
week in the home, talk over the books which they
have read, play games or plan for any activities
which the group may carry on. From this centre
influences branch out in all directions, and the
possibilities are limited only by the personal re-
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 351
sources and capacity of the leader. The children
belonging to these libraries are usually under fif-
teen years of age.
The Stamp Savings or Home Savings Society
affords a natural introduction to a neighborhood.
It at once gives the collector an occupation with
which he may be identified in the minds of his
public, and puts in his way many opportunities for
friendly service. There are collecting stations at
the North End Union, the Epworth League and
Elizabeth Peabody Houses and St. Andrew's. A
number of independent collectors have lists of fami-
lies whose savings they call for at weekly intervals.
Aside from its work through such agencies as
its Building Department, Board of Health and
Street Cleaning Division, the City contributes to
the health and enjoyment of people in its crowded
quarters through its public baths, gymnasiums and
playgrounds. The North End Park, which lies
along the water-front at the foot of Copp's Hill,
combines a beach bath with a general pleasure re-
sort. Here on either side is a solidly constructed
building containing dressing quarters, one of the
houses being for men and boys, the other for wo-
men and girls. A double recreation pier extends
well out into the water, affording a delightful view
of the harbor. A portion of the beach is reserved
352 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
for girls and young children, where swings, see-
saws and piles of sand are provided. Space is fur-
nished also for quoits, hand ball and other games
in which the boys like to engage. The play, as
well as the bathing, is in charge of attendants and
instructors in the pay of the City. Band concerts
are occasionallv given, and the season ends with a
water carnival, at which prizes are offered for pro-
ficiency in swimming. Everything is entirely free
with the exception that a small fee is charged for
the use of bathing suits and towels. In the case
of children, even this charge may be remitted.
The popularity of this park may be inferred from
the number of bathers during a single summer.
In 1901 this amounted to 280,000, the larger
part of whom were from the immediate vicinity.
The North End Park is in charge of the Depart-
ment of Public Baths.
At the West End, similar opportunities for health
and recreation are provided in the Charlesbank,
a park extending along the river-front the whole
distance between the Craigie and West Boston
bridges. This park is under the direction of the
Municipal Park Commission. There are no out-
of-door bathing facilities, but hot and cold baths
are furnished the year round, the two sexes
occupying separate buildings. An open-air gym-
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 353
nasium adjoins each of these bathing establish-
ments; and the women may continue athletic ex-
ercises through the winter in a gymnasium under
the same roof with their bath. The women's
gymnasium, as well as a spacious playground for
children, is in charge of the Massachusetts Emer-
gency and Hygiene Association. The Charles-
bank includes a pleasant resort with shaded walks
and seats and an attractive view of the river.
In the West End Branch of the Public Library,
the City has made local provision for needs of
another character. The stately old West Church
building was purchased in 1894 for the purpose,
and has been admirably adapted to its new uses.
Here three hundred or more reference books may
be consulted, and selections may be made from
twelve thousand other volumes for reading on the
premises or for use at home. In addition, the
two reading-rooms, one for adults and one for chil-
dren, are well supplied with periodical literature.
Each year sees a marked increase in the number
of people availing themselves of these privileges.
In 1900, 131,522 books were taken out for reading
at home; in 1901, 137,713. The reading-rooms,
with a combined seating capacity of 350, are often
crowded, especially on Sunday. Among this great
number of patrons, the Jews are the most largely
354 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
represented; the Irish come next, and there is a
considerable proportion of Negroes.
Very recently a combination of interests has
been formed with the general improvement of the
North End as its object. Its significance lies in
the fact that it undertakes to be an alliance of
all citizens in sympathy with its object, and in-
cludes Roman Catholic clergy, local politicians
and settlement workers. The churches were the
prime movers, driven to such exertions by the
menacing fact that the better members of their
congregations are leaving the district for more de-
sirable residential quarters. Already something has
been accomplished in the way of securing cleaner
streets and better order. It is through concrete
effort based on familiarity with the detailed facts
that this attempt promises to be effective.
Slight as this enterprise is, it represents a suffi-
cient conjunction of forces to rouse the hope of
distinct and permanent gains in Social conditions
at the North End. It is carrying toward a logical
conclusion the motive in which the best type of
social service, as seen in these districts, is under-
taken. By means of allied action on the part of
all their centres of influence, whether of a normal
or an exceptional character, the great bulk of the
population of each district could be drawn into a
COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 355
common loyalty and trained to a collective initia-
tive. Every helpful agency would be enabled to
make its full contribution to the local well-being
with only a minimum of loss on account of isola-
tion or cross-purposes. Each would have its stand-
ing as a recognized constituent factor in the total
life of its district. The best inherent possibilities
of the people would be brought to light by such
developments of mutual aid. It would then be
easy to secure from the municipality further large
IIlê3 SUII’éS designed to meet district needs. In gen-
eral, through the growth of district public spirit, the
North and West Ends, as compact units, would
be enabled to draw far more deeply upon the vast
resources of the city's civilization.
CHAPTER XII
ASSIMILATION : A TWO-EDGED SWORD
THERE is somewhere a parable that narrates how
a dread disease appeared in the lodge of a great
estate. The manor-house was far in through wind-
ing lanes. Yet one day the scourge, spreading
this way and that, leaped over the distance, smit-
ing the firstborn and future master. Thus was it
burned into the souls of those in the great house
and those in the cottage that there is one human
family.
At the city’s gateway lie two communities stricken
with the evils attendant on toil and deprivation,
and kept aloof by alien birth as well as by poverty
from prosperous, indigenous citizenship. In the
simpler round of domestic life and friendly inter-
course, the people are to a surprising degree with-
out reproach ; but the larger social life tends to
drift as it will. There is a measure of vicarious
public spirit sustained for these districts by men and
women whose sphere of influence would ordinarily
lie elsewhere. These persons also strive to broaden
ASSIMILATION : A TWO-EDGED SWORD 357
and strengthen character among the people against
the strain of an untried, distracting existence. The
ultimate issue for individual and common well-
being lies in the counter-currents which are bring-
ing these communities into the full vital circulation
of the city’s existence.
The North and West Ends, along several im-
portant lines, provide a large share of the labor
force required for the city. They are also rapidly
opening avenues of small trade auxiliary to some
of the city’s principal business enterprises. The
development of skilled workers is slow and needs
encouragement. Not so with the shopkeepers. In-
deed within a comparatively short time many of
them will be found in the ranks of the downtown
merchants, while their children are even now for-
cing their way upward into the professions.
Yet the path of success is blocked to many of
those who feel in themselves the capacity for better
things. To them America has represented great
hopes. Democracy meant a breaking down of the
barriers that confined them ; but they discover this
to be true only as affecting the technical frame-
work of democracy, — the administration of gov-
ernment. Baffled in other directions, men with
initiative and mental grasp give rein to their
power and ambition in the field of politics. These
358 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
leaders develop an unscrupulous system of con-
trol over local interests, public and private. The
spread of this system to all similar districts has
made it to a large extent dominant in the pub-
lic administration of the city. The prosperous
classes have begun to find that a demoralizing
political régime, bred in the midst of an alien, ill-
favored way of life, is getting its hold upon the
affairs of their pleasant residential districts, and
even at times threatens important downtown busi-
ness interests.
Here begins the application of the parable.
Among the most respectable suburban population
to be found within the boundaries of the city there
is a startling instance of political contagion. A
man holding great political power, formerly in
high office, determined to hold still higher, stands
practically convicted of misappropriation of public
funds. Notwithstanding this fact, it is only by
the most earnest and persistent efforts of high-
minded citizens that he is kept from full politi-
cal control of the district. What is the secret
of his mysterious power 2 This man, a Republi-
can, of New England origin, now living in the
same fashion as his suburban neighbors, began
his political career not many years ago as a resi-
dent of the West End, under the tutelage of the
ASSIMILATION : A TWO-EDGED SWORD 359
Democratic boss of that district. The West End
Democratic boss secured his nomination and elec-
tion as a Republican to the State legislature. This
same boss assisted him to an important appointive
office under a Republican mayor. On removing to
the suburbs he at once proceeded to put in force
the policy of his master, adapted somewhat to dif-
ferent local conditions. The two men continue to
maintain an offensive and defensive alliance, with
utter disregard of party lines. It is as if in the
Civil War there had been two bands of guerrillas,
ostensibly on opposite sides in the contest but
really acting in unison, caring nothing for the
issue at stake, and only for booty. In the City
Council it is now and then possible to see this alli-
ance in actual operation. There are times when
some disgraceful scheme has been so thoroughly
exposed as to draw off all members who have any
healthy fear of public opinion. At such moments,
when the smoke of conflict clears, a group of the
West End type of Democrats and certain Dorches-
ter Republicans are often found standing together,
held by the honor which obtains among such.
This combination greatly aids the boss of the
West End in postponing the effects of the incur-
sion of an alien race into his ward. The North
End leader has been studying how he too, under
360 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
similar stress, may make to himself friends of the
suburban mammon of unrighteousness. He is, in
a different way, proceeding to lay a long base line
for general municipal operations. He has decided
to give up his home in the country and establish
himself as resident boss in one of the Dorchester
wards, just beyond South Boston, whose leader
died recently. This ward presents a promising
future to him, as it is fast becoming Democratic.
His brother will remain as regent in the North
End. The North End ward and this Dorchester
ward, in the near future, will be found acting in
rigid unison. They will exercise a combined lev-
erage at City Hall equal to that of three or four
wards acting separately. Supposing the present
political working unity between the North and
West Ends to continue, the two districts pictured
forth in this book, each with its surburban satrapy,
will determine the public policy of the city of
Boston.
Political conditions in districts like the North
and West Ends are the occasion of much of the
corrupting influence which certain corporations ex-
ert upon the City Council and the State legislature,
though the blame of the corporations is not less
but greater on that account. The bosses of these
two districts are frequently mentioned in such
ASSIMILATION : A TWO—EDGED SWORD 361
connections. There is striking evidence that cor-
poration leaders accept, use and fortify the ward
machine system. A recent flagrant case before
the legislature, involving a matter profoundly and
obviously affecting the well-being of the congested
masses of the people, was at last disposed of sat-
isfactorily only by a powerful veto message from
the governor. At every stage the representatives
of the North and West Ends voted like automata
in support of extortionate corporation demands.
The explanation is, of course, that so many cor-
poration jobs and other favors have been dispensed
in those districts that their representatives were
completely in the power of the corporation. If a
prominent corporation leader aspires to the gover-
norship, with its saving veto power, the ease with
which he secures control of the political resources
of Wards 6 and 8, and similar districts, is the
prime element of strength in his candidacy.
The time must come when the honest citizens of
Dorchester, who find themselves hard put to it to
crush the viper in their bosom, shall open their eyes
to the fact that the political problem of Dorches-
ter cannot be disposed of except by including the
North and West Ends in a combined attack. Back
Bay citizens with some of the old-time Boston public
spirit, who are amazed to discover college mates
362 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
and fellow club members confronting them in their
reasonable efforts to protect the public interest,
must begin to devote an important part of their
attention to the enemy's base of supply for alder-
manic and legislative votes in Wards 6 and 8 and
similar little known sections of the city. Saga-
cious business men, demanding that the legislature
shall treat corporation franchises precisely as a
business firm would, must not only scrutinize the
propositions which the corporations set before the
legislature, but must deal with those determining
factors in the background, where legislators from
the crowded districts have their walk and conver-
sation with their constituents, which prevent their
making a good bargain for the public and cause
them so easily to acquiesce in arrogant corporation
demands.
It may be doubted whether evil communica-
tions are much worse than no communications at
all. There is a strange, ever-increasing reaction
upon the life of affairs and upon social morality in
Boston as a result of the rift in Society between
the native and immigrant stocks. In affairs the
distinction, speaking roughly, is that between busi-
ness and politics. The successful business classes
are filled with contempt for the entire political
personnel. Membership in the City Council im-
ASSIMILATION: A TWO-EDGED SWORD 863
pairs a man's business credit if he has any. It is
literally true that among business men an apology
seems to be called for when one is seen in City
Hall. In Athens it was the mark of the aristocracy
that they governed the city, while the newly en-
franchised class attended to its provisioning. In
this latter-day democratic city, the situation is pre-
cisely reversed. This means that the large majority
of those men in Boston who are making the fullest
use of American economic opportunities are fast dis-
missing from their minds the civic responsibilities
which form the just and essential balance to those
opportunities. Considering the serious nature of
our municipal needs, the question may fairly be
raised whether the average business man in Boston
is any worthier pillar of a democratic municipality
than is the average politician.
On the moral side, the working classes, strikingly
illustrated by the two districts under review in this
volume, are not held together with the established
and comfortable classes in a single great spiritual
communion standing ever for common humanity.
The two sections of Society are in separate and
opposing religious bodies. The force of these di-
vergent loyalties is distinctly anti-social. Religious
cleavage, coinciding very closely with racial and
industrial lines of distinction, tends to make the
364 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
old-established Protestantism of the city a mere
middle-class religion. To Protestantism, and to
Protestants as such, this means exclusion from the
most essential moral function of the church in a
democracy, and ultimate apathy and atrophy in the
face of public moral needs.
So far as informal social intercourse goes, the
native part of the city’s population has been con-
stituted a separated aristocracy, in spite of itself,
by the coming of the immigrants. There is some-
times a saving human relation between classes where
they have the same blood and the same traditions,
as in Scotland. Here, on the contrary, the favored
class, except by special exertion, has little if any
common experience upon which to base common
understanding with those who make up the city's
industrial population. Even when persons from
one side come in contact with persons from the
other, there are special obstacles to that by-play of
acquaintance which softens and uplifts the motives
of life, and serves particularly as an antidote to
the temptations of the prosperous. It even begins
to appear that the absence of the means of social
intercommunication is a serious hindrance in the
conduct of business. To the employer, the ease of
coming to terms and keeping on terms with his la-
bor force is an increasingly important factor in his
ASSIMILATION: A TWO-EDGED SWORD 365
success. Many thoughtful business men are con-
scious of the fact that the character of the growth
of the city's population has left them particularly
at a loss in this respect.
It is clear, therefore, that the problems of the
North and West Ends cannot be considered alone.
In the more obvious point of view, the needs of
these districts, in themselves, are so great as to
call upon the whole city for remedy. When the
situation is looked into more deeply, the reflex
influence of these communities upon the city as an
entirety is so pervasive as to challenge the collec-
tive efforts of citizens and the corporate action of
the municipality and the commonwealth.
There has already been governmental procedure
against unsanitary dwellings, against a degrading
form of industry, against base amusements, which
has lifted the whole material and moral scale of
living. Steps toward the public supply of positive
social opportunity are now being taken. The two
waterside playgrounds for summer sports are soon
to have their complement in two public indoor gym-
nasiums with baths, one for each district. This,
with the provision of baths in the new school build-
ings, will furnish satisfactory public facilities for
cleanliness and physical exercise. A beginning has
been made in the public use of school buildings, out
366 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
of regular hours, for special forms of education and
recreation ; this movement will, without doubt, be
rapidly extended. At no distant date there must
be in each of these districts a kind of local town
hall which shall serve as a highly attractive centre
for technical and artistic training, for the popu-
lar ministry of good music, good books and good
pictures, and for every sort of friendly gathering
that includes large numbers of different racial
types of the people. Such an institution may,
without hesitation, be said to be a necessity to the
Americanization and general progress of such com-
munities.
Along with new forms of municipal enterprise,
there is still need of further penetrating action in
the better care of the streets, in the establishment
of a still higher standard for the condemnation
of unsanitary dwellings and in further restrictions
upon the alteration of old houses into flats and
tenements. It is much to be hoped, in the inter-
est of the North End population, that the day may
soon come when the business of the city will re-
quire the opening of new streets which shall cut
through some of its congested areas to connect the
North and South Stations.
The development of a far-sighted, human mu-
nicipal policy will add greatly to the health and
ASSIMILATION : A TWO-EDGED SWORD 367
happiness of North and West End people. It will
have an indirect result which will be hardly less
important. Such municipal action, coming close
to the needs of the people, will create among them
a realistic civic sense. It will give them some ac-
tual experience and training in the privileges of
democracy. It will constantly illustrate to them,
in such ways that they will themselves feel the
distinction, the relative effects of good and bad
administration. While such a programme will not
destroy boss power, it is certain that abstract re-
form is impotent to produce that result in these
districts. What may be hoped for is the gradual
rise of a higher type of political leader, one who
will seek popular support through the promotion
of such public Services as have been mentioned,
rather than through various dubious forms of pat-
romage.
A quite unideal politician of this more progres-
sive type may well have the coöperation of those
who are seeking the next step, not the ultimate
height, in municipal and social improvement. Poli-
ticians who persist in turning their eyes away from
the light, who show no sense of their public re-
sponsibility, and no purpose to raise the condition
of the entire mass of the people in their districts,
must be pilloried as public enemies. Here again
368 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
there must be a general movement throughout the
city if actual results are to be achieved. The
power of all the local politicians is, to a large
extent, sustained and increased by combinations
formed in the Board of Aldermen. The total
number of responsible citizens throughout the city
could assert their will if the aldermen were nomi-
nated and elected at large, and the records of all
candidates for the board placed under the scrutiny
of the whole city." The Public School Associa-
tion, after a few years of determined effort, has
been able to change the character of the School
Board. Having won in this preliminary skirmish,
municipal reform must now proceed to the far
more serious task of providing the city with a re-
sponsible group, if not majority, of men in its
chief legislative chamber. The high standard
which has been kept for the mayoralty would thus
be made much more secure ; but, what is especially
to the present point, the possibility of drawing upon
public resources and wielding public influence as
material of ward machine transactions would be
greatly restricted.
1 Recent legislation looking toward the abolition of nomi-
mating conventions makes the chance of success in this matter
much greater than it has been at any time before. These con-
ventions are often used to defeat the popular will.
ASSIMILATION: A TWO-EDGED SWORD 369
In support of this attack, front and rear, in
City Hall and among the tenement houses, against
the worst phases of municipal corruption, there is
urgent need of action on the part of business
organizations, on the one hand, and the church,
on the other. The commercial and moral welfare
of the city is certainly deeply involved. But aside
from politics, the situation in the North and West
Ends, and other similar districts, calls for large
enterprise on the part of these interests, each act-
ing within its own sphere.
There are ways of economic service for the
sake of the city and the nation amid such popu-
lations, affecting their housing, their food, their
industry, their recreation, in which there is ur-
gent need of the best business method and the
best business skill. Young men in commercial
callings, who under different circumstances would
aspire to fulfill some honorable official public duty,
may thus find opportunities which to the discern-
ing mind are quite as interesting and rewarding.
As to the churches of the well-to-do, - which,
speaking broadly, means the Protestant churches,
— it has been made clear that in their formal doc-
trinal capacity, they can touch only the fringe of
the situation set forth in these chapters. Not far
from one third of all the people of Boston fall into
370 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
the same general category as the inhabitants of
the North and West Ends, – heavily handicapped
by material conditions in every struggle for char-
acter and the more abundant life, held in religious
associations chiefly made up of themselves, and
therefore impotent to lift the load. Numerous
forerunners have indeed gone forth out of the re-
sourceful, separated churches of the prosperous
city districts; but there must come out of these
comfortable congregations a large, free, adventu-
rous movement which in the name of the one God
and a common humanity shall address itself to this
greatest of all the city's spiritual needs. It is a
melancholy reflection that when any serious moral
crisis arises in the thick of the Boston working
classes, the old-established religious life of the
city is almost utterly without authority or power
among them in shaping the issue. Yet there are
a thousand human ways, aside from the region of
sectarian strife, in which such moral influence can
be established.
For the larger work of social uplift among the
people of the North and West Ends, the foregoing
studies indicate the main lines of action. The popu-
lation may be broadly separated into three different
strata, each having needs quite different from those
of the others. There is the residuum at the bottom,
ASSIMILATION: A TWO-EDGED SWORD 871
characterized by some chronic form of dependence
or degeneracy. There is the aristocracy of labor at
the top, those who are likely to rise out of work-
ing-class life altogether, including all who are born
with special capacity, whatever their surroundings
may be. Between the two levels is a great middle
class of labor, the working class proper, made up
of those who will neither rise nor fall out of their
grade, and most of whose children will not pass
above it.
Among those who make up the residuum, much
more thoroughgoing methods are needed than those
now in force. The tramps, or roving paupers, who
are very common in these districts, especially in
winter, ought to encounter in Boston a work test
that would be sternly reinforced by the police and
by an awakened public sentiment. The Board of
Overseers, by a daring, determined policy in con-
nection with the Wayfarers’ Lodge, could effectu-
ally remove Boston from the tramps' road map,
and thus abolish the roving pauper so far as Bos-
ton is concerned. The early stages of resident
pauperism, drunkenness, prostitution and crime
should be met by patient counteracting treatment;
but their more advanced phases ought all to be
dealt with after the manner of the cumulative
sentence leading up to permanent seclusion. By
372 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
removing these specially difficult factors from the
poverty equation, it would be much easier to
conduct forms of relief for those who have hon-
orably fallen out of the struggle for subsistence,
temporarily or permanently. There would be free
scope for broadly devised private, coöperative and
municipal measures of assistance to families over-
come by some domestic catastrophe, to workmen
forced into the ranks of the unemployed and to
industrial veterans who have worthily ended their
term of service. All such effort, since early Chris-
tian days, has had its dignity from the side of
human compassion. Modern economic science has
given added meaning to it by showing the impor-
tance of saving the wastes of labor force, and of
shielding the superior grades of labor from the
disastrous competition of those who, for one reason
or another, are driven to a desperate fight for bare
existence.
For those who stand contrasted with the strag-
glers of the industrial army, whose native capaci-
ties mark them out for the higher levels of work
and an appreciation of the finer things of life, it
is of the greatest public importance that a cramp-
ing environment should not be permitted to shut
them off from opportunities on the plane of their
talents. One of the most serious obstacles that
ASSIMILATION : A TWO-EDGED SWORD 373
confronts the ambitious youth from the North and
West Ends takes the form of certain racial dislikes
felt by men of power in the city's business affairs.
Whatever ground there may be for such feelings,
they are comparatively groundless as affecting the
rising generation. An attitude of this sort, where
there ought to be opened up to the bright young
Jew the full range of industry, is condemning
him, somewhat as in the Middle Ages, to certain
narrow lines of trade. It leaves to enterprising
young Irish-Americans little recourse aside from
the ever open path into corrupt politics. Fre-
quently they go into ward politics in order to get
a start in business or the law, and are held for life
by its lucrative but ignoble inducements. The
Italians cannot be kept from entering a very wide
range of occupations, but their rise in their call-
ings is often hindered by that caution on the part
of employers which is akin to prejudice. There
must be a wider entrance for the children of the
newcomers into the great constructive activities of
the city. This is a matter of serious moment to
the commercial progress of the city, as well as to
the young men of the immigrant nationalities.
The waste of ability and genius — one of the
sadly prominent phenomena of North and West
End existence — is coming to be recognized as a
374 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
dangerous form of public profligacy." The pro-
ductive capacity of a nation or a city is the fun-
damental source of its wealth. In the city of
Boston, three brilliant races are bringing forth a
new brood. The Irish, for the first time in their
history, are having a just opportunity to work out
their destiny, held by emulation of the Anglo-
Saxons, but no longer driven to the wall by their
sheer aggressive force. The Jewish race has an
immemorial record as the prolific mother of genius.
The Italian strain has historically outstripped all
others by being thrice — once politically, once
religiously, once intellectually — the dominating
power of the world. Yet it is almost a matter of
haphazard whether children of these races among
us, who may be born with the highest order of
capacity, do not have the spirit within them
quenched by a childhood spent in dismal, degrad-
ing streets. Even after such capacity has begun
distinctly to manifest itself, we are content often
to throw it away by not making unfailing pro-
vision for necessary training and apprenticeship.
In England and France it is now publicly recog-
nized as essential to the general advancement in
wealth and welfare that the education of specially
capable boys and girls should not be hindered by
1 Marshall: Principles of Economics, Vol. I, 2d. ed., p. 272.
ASSIMILATION : A TWO-EDGED SWORD 375
such an adventitious circumstance as the poverty
or ignorance of the parents. There could hardly
be a more profitable investment of public funds
than by the establishment of scholarships under
which the successful grammar school pupil, other-
wise kept by poverty from going farther, should
have the opportunity of continuing his education
along academical or technical lines, until he had
received the best development and training which
his talents justified and the community could sup-
ply. -
For the vast majority of the people in the North
and West Ends, between the submerged grades at
the bottom and the aristocracy of labor at the top,
the sound policy is to encourage and mould every
helpful form of association. They are not, on the
one hand, goaded by necessity, nor on the other
incited by ambition. They constitute the working
class proper. They are collectivists; and loyalties
of various kinds are the determining forces among
them. Indeed the whole movement of present-
day society makes it essential that they should
cling together. It is of vital consequence to all
concerned, however, that such forms of attachment
should be tempered by intelligence, and by toler-
ance toward other types of people in the com-
munity.
376 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
Trade unionism is indispensable to a fair stand-
ard of life in such a population. Organization
for the protection of wages is a step to which the
more recent bodies of immigrants may well be
urged. This would prevent them from establish-
ing for themselves and tending to fix for others
a scale of living which is deleterious to the inter-
ests and prospects of the city and the nation. A
compact and enlightened form of political organi-
zation among the more recent immigrants will be
the means of securing them such individual con-
sideration as they need from public authorities,
and will teach them the more advantageous as well
as nobler way of seeking the general bettering of
the local life rather than joining in a scramble for
patronage and spoils.
In stimulating such organized action, as well as
leavening with better purposes the whole local
scheme of mutual aid in the home and of friendly
intercourse in the neighborhood, the settlements
and other similar centres play an increasingly im-
portant part." The Roman Catholic churches, which
* The public value of such work is beginning to be capable of
statistical demonstration. The report of the Institutions Regis-
tration Department for 1901–2 shows a falling off in juvenile
arrests of from twelve to twenty per cent, throughout the city
during the past ten years. The cause of this improvement is
ascribed tentatively to the better provision for special cases of
ASSIMILATION : A TWO-EDGED SWORD 377
until recently have kept to their one great task of
direct appeal to the inner personal nature, are
catching something of the same spirit. Too high
praise cannot be given to the plan of the newly
formed North End Improvement Association, which
was organized at the instance of some of their
clergy, and includes representatives of all the lead-
ing agencies for social improvement in the district.
In the training of the mass of the children,
with their average abilities, there is profound need
of instruction directed specifically toward their best
future usefulness. It is a curious anomaly that
the public school should send its pupils forth into
the world presumably to earn their livelihood, but
with no training for any sort of vocation. Manual
training for boys and domestic instruction for girls
are being introduced under the stimulus of private
philanthropic enterprise. It is to be hoped that
they will take up much more space in the public
school curriculum, even if a much shorter list of
studies should be made necessary as a result.
The importance of industrial education is, how-
ever, coming to be felt by all observant persons.
The vital question of moral education remains
neglected and dependent children, and to “the manifold individ-
ual and associate efforts to improve the environment of chil-
dren and to direct their youthful energy within law-abiding
channels.”
378 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
strangely in abeyance. It cannot long remain so:
it must soon become a burning issue. The Roman
Catholic Church stands alone in its proper insist-
ence upon such education ; but by maintaining
separate schools it serves to keep alive prejudices
in its own and other followings which injure the
cause of religion as well as the cause of patriotism.
The time must come when the public school author-
ities must make it possible for different religious
persuasions to provide their different types of in-
struction in harmonious relation with the public
school system. In this way the values which the
Roman Catholic is rightly intent upon would be
secured, while the dangers which the Protestant
rightly fears from any connection of Church and
State would be reduced to a minimum.
Among the different racial types found in the
North and West Ends, there are two which pre-
sent problems that are exceptionally difficult, though
hardly at all involved with any question of foreign
immigration. The Negro in the Northern cities
may, in time, present difficulties comparable to
those which he stands for in some of the agricul-
tural regions of the South. So far as the slum is
to be a permanency in Boston, it will exist in a chain
of black neighborhoods, each having a penumbra
formed by mixture with the offscouring of other
ASSIMILATION : A TWO-EDGED SWORD 379
races. There is much encouragement to be found
in the advance made by many colored people ; but
for a considerable proportion of them, as against
the barriers of almost ineradicable race prejudice,
there is little hopeful prospect.
The lodging-house population, an increasing
mass of men and women of American or nearly
related origin, without the restraint of family ties,
ground in the highly organized machinery of great
business establishments, the men's wages lowered
by the competition of the women, and the women
hoping to marry the men whose incomes they have
unwittingly undermined, constitute a situation that
seems to epitomize the industrial and moral com-
plications of city life. Some slight efforts are
being made to make good the peculiar social depri-
vations of these people; such efforts must be greatly
increased. The state of things is likely, however,
to be worse before it is better; and real improve-
ment must await certain changes in the underlying
causes which produce it. The sentiments of people
generally must be altered with regard to the desira-
bility of mercantile employment as against skilled
manual work; and there must be a less regard for
appearance in the establishment of home life.
The time has hardly yet arrived for any safe
estimate of the psychological traits which the dif-
380 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
ferent immigrant nationalities will contribute to
the future type of Boston citizen. Amalgama-
tion has hardly yet begun. It is clear enough,
however, that they are, each in its different way,
making valuable contributions to the city's eco-
nomic and moral welfare.
The Irish, holding to Celtic clan traditions, ad-
vance in a body. Their progress is slow, but quite
general. The North and West Ends contain a
considerable number of them who have proved
incapable of rising, but throughout the city their
steady ascent in the scale of well-being is one of
the obvious facts of the city’s life. It is true that
as voters many of the Irish can hardly be said as
yet to be Americanized. To an observer situated
So as to measure subtle changes in their social
standards, a higher type of public spirit is clearly
seen to be spreading among them. Such progress
will be more rapid when public spirit among the
native population inclines to seek the coöperation
of the best leaders among the Irish in making the
city government more fully serve the local public
needs of the more congested wards. In the matter
of liquor drinking, the past few years have wit-
nessed a distinct veering of sentiment on the part of
many Irish citizens, and the Irish clergy in Boston
are fast coming into line for organized opposition
ASSIMILATION : A TWO-EDGED SWORD 381
to the saloon. The beneficial results of such a
change of attitude among the leaders of the Irish
population will be inconceivably great.
In the North and West Ends, within a few years
the last signs of the supremacy of the Irish must
pass away, and there will be only degraded rem-
nants of them left stranded in odd nooks and
corners. The North End, so far as the encroach-
ments of trade allow it to continue as a place of
abode, is to be an Italian stronghold. The West
End will pass quite fully into the possession of the
Jews. The more progressive members of both
nationalities will gradually leave these colonies
and scatter themselves throughout the city and
suburbs. Thus bereft, and not being so much
under the observation of people of other types,
there will be danger in both colonies of a relapse.
The baser sort among the Italians will feel them-
selves under less restraint against deeds of disorder
and violence. Many of the Jews will inclose them-
selves in an inhuman sordidness. The violence is
no greater evil than the sordidness; there will be
need of penetrating measures against both. It is
impossible to doubt, however, that each colony in
its characteristic way will maintain a predominantly
worthy character. In both there will be a high
degree of industry, sobriety and domestic peace.
382 AMERICANS IN PROCESS
In one the goal of effort will be prosperity; in the
other the simple joys of life. There is already
ground for hope that many of the enterprising
spirits, who leave their immigrant neighborhoods
for the larger theatre of the city’s activity, will
find satisfaction in seeking the welfare and pro-
gress of the local communities in which they and
their countrymen were introduced to the ways of
American citizenship.
The immigrant nationalities are already adding
variety and fresh impulse to the city's industrial
and social interests. It is essential that the estab-
lished civilization of Boston should much more
fully lay hold upon the body of feelings and tradi-
tions which are represented at the North and West
Ends. The motive should be to have them affected
by the American spirit, but also to have the Amer-
ican spirit affected by what is real in them. The
loyal American, honoring and seeking to preserve
much in the genius of each nationality, will thus
stimulate each racial type to seek for what is
worthy in all the others.
There is a growing conviction that democracy is
not merely a political system, but an ethical philo-
sophy. In either view it requires for its existence
a large measure of social coherence. This must not
be of the nature of a formless solidarity, but must
ASSIMILATION : A TWO-EDGED SWORD 383
provide for the perspective that comes of having
genuine identity in every type of mind and char-
acter, and in every form of association which men
make on the basis of their heredity, their work,
their recreation, their moral ideals. The political
framework of the country is a federal union, estab-
lished in sacrifice, preserved at an appalling cost.
In an equally profound sense, the better social order
in which the American life of the future will be
gathered up must be a federal union also.
INDEX
ADAMS, SAMUEL, 26.
Agricultural work, 118.
Aldermen, Board of, 169.
Alley.S. See Streets and alleys.
Almshouse, City. See Boston,
Pauper Trustees.
Americanization, 50, 61 ff., 253 ; of
children 291 f., 317 ff. See Na-
tionalities, Immigration.
Americans, 42 f.
AmusementS, Chap. viii. See Na-
tionalities.
Ann Pollard, 12.
Arrests, North End, 190 ft., 196,
202 f.; West End, 211 f., 220 f.
See Crime, Police.
Art galleries, 236.
Artisans and mechanics, Colonial,
14, 16, 17, 27, 29; Irish, 121 ; Ital-
ian, 117; Jewish, 117; Portu-
guese, 122; Statistics Of. See
ASSes SOrs’ list.
Assessors’ list, 135 f.
ASSOciated Charities, 326 f., 329 ft.
Banks and bankers, 111, 119 f.
Barbers, 122 f.
Baron de Hirsch Fund. See Jew-
ish Charities.
Baths, at North End Union, 349;
public, 365; school, 300.
Beacon Hill, 13.
Better l)wellings Society, 86.
BlackStone, first Settler, 11, 22.
See StreetS.
Boarding houses, 38 f., 140. See
Lodging houses.
BOOtblacks, 118.
Boss, political, 151 ff., 171, 177, 359
f. See Political types.
Boston, Almshouse, 127, 330; Com-
mon, 1, 37; Coöperative Build-
ing Co., 81, 339 f.; Health Act,
82; House of Correction, 127 ;
incorporation of, 73; Island of
BOSton, 12, 35.
Bowdoin Square, 21, 28, 36. -
Bowling Green. See Bowdoin
Square.
British-Americans, political tem-
per Of, 65.
Building Company, Boston CO-
operative. See Boston.
Buildings. See Legislation, Tene-
ment.S.
Burglary. See Crime.
Carpet-baggers, 162, 166.
Catholicism, compared with Juda-
ism, 282 f.; Irish and Italian
compared, 273 ff.; Portuguese,
275; methods of, 376.
Caucus, methods, 165 fſ. ; nomina-
tion papers, 163. See Parties,
POlitics.
Cellars, 78, 82, 84 f., 98 f.
Census. See Population.
Charity, Chap. xi. See Philan-
thropy.
Charles bank. See Parks and Play-
groundS.
Child Labor, 118, 125 f., 306.
Children, Chap. X. ; training Of,
industrial, 299 ft., 377; moral, 300,
377 f. See Child labor, Philan-
thropy.
Children's Aid Society, 334 f.;
Home libraries, 350.
Churches, Catholic, Chap. ix, ;
North End, St. Mary’s, 267 ff.;
St. Stephen’s, 268 ft.; Sacred
Heart, 271 f.; St. Leonard's, 270
f.; West End, St. Joseph's, 269.
See Catholicism, Religious
Work.
Churches, Jewish, Baldwin Place,
276; Smith's Court, 276.
Churches, Protestant, Chap. ix.:
380
INDEX
North End, Baptist, 254; Christ,
254 f.; Congregational, 257;
Italian, 257; Methodist, 256 ;
New Brick, 254; Old North,
254, see Mathers; West End,
Baptist Tabernacle, 265; Bul-
finch Place, 263 ; Charles Street
Methodist, 258; First Metho-
dist, 262 f.; Reformed Presbyte-
rian, 262; Revere Street Metho-
dist, 258; St. Andrew’s, 264 f.; St.
Augustine’s, 259; St. John the
Evangelist's, 262; Twelfth Bap-
tist, 258 ; West Church, 258 ;
Zion Methodist, 258. See Pro-
testantism, Religious work.
City Council, 362 f.
City Hall, 363.
Civic Service House, 348.
JewS. -
Civil Service, 154, 170 f.
Clerks, 123, 134 ft. See Shops.
Clubs and gangs, political, 155,
184; SOcial, Negro, 249; School
graduate, 305, 343 f.
Confectioners, 122, 124.
COntractOrS, 122.
Copp's Hill, 13, 16, 27.
Corporations, employment by,
121; power of, 361 f.
Crime, Chap. vii.; at North End,
207 ; at West End, 213 f., 221;
statistics of, 146, 190, 209; treat-
ment of, 371. See Arrests,
Drunkenness, Gambling, Mur-
der, Police, Prostitution.
See
Dance halls, 192 ft.
Day nurseries, 335 f.
Death rate, 74. See DiSeaSe.
Democracy, eSSentialS Of, 382 ;
limitationS Of, 357.
Dependent Classes, 135. See
Charity, Philanthropy.
Pºe, 72 f., 75 ft., 93 ff. See Death
T2,IC.
Dock Square, 14, 18.
DOCkS, 2.
Dorchester, Democratic party,
360; political problem Of, 361;
Republicans, 359.
T)runkenneSS, 380.
Crime. †
Dwellings, earlier, Chap. ii.; mod-
ern, see Lodging houses, Tene-
mentS.
See ArrestS,
Education, Chap. X. See also 144.
Elizabeth Peabody House, 350.
Endicott, John, 19.
Epidemics. See Disease.
Epworth League House, 337, 348.
Estabrook, H. K., 87.
EVening Schools. See Schools.
Factories, 105, 124.
Faneuil Hall, 28.
Ferry, 46; earliest, 17.
Fires, 18.
Firelighters, 282.
Fort Hill, 13, 35, 80.
Frankland, Sir Harry, 25.
Franklin, Benjamin, 26.
Fruit dealers, 107 f., 120.
Gambling, 202, 204 ft., 220. See
Crime.
Gardens, 21, 27.
Garment trades, 106, 110, 115 ft.,
133 f., 157 f.
Gaston, Mayor, 79.
Gºnment colonial, 18; Crown,
18 f.
Grammar Schools, importance Of,
293, 304, 307, 314, 319. See
SchoolS.
Great Cove, 12 f., 15, 35.
Greeks, 313; industries of, 122.
Grocery trade, 108.
Gymnasiums, at North End
Union, 349; public, 351 ff., 365.
Hancock, John, 26.
Hanover St., 14, 289.
Health, Board of, 8, 73 f., 78 f.;
powers of, 82, 88; recommenda-
tions of, 102 f.; reports of, 86,93.
Hebrew Benevolent Society. See
Jewish Charities.
Hebrew Industrial School, 347.
High schools, 296, 308. See
SchoolS. e
Home libraries, 350. See Chil-
dren’s Aid Society.
Hospitals, City, 337; , Epworth
League, 337; House of the Good
Samaritan, 336; Lying-in, 336;
Mass. Charitable Eye and Ear
Infirmary, 337; Mass. General,
336; Mt. Sinai, 337; St. Monica's,
336; Vincent Memorial HOSpital,
336.
Hotels, 120 ; loss of license, 197 f.;
West End, 216, 221. See Li-
censes, Itestaurants, Saloons.
Hours of labor, 133 f.
Housing, model, 339 f.; problem of,
74 f., 103. See Disease, Lodging-
INDEX
387
houses, Overcrowding, Tene-
mentS.
Hull, John, 19.
Immigrants, limited Opportuni-
ties of, 357, 373.
Immigration, 5, 7, 34, 41 ff.; better
class of, 195; Causes of, 46 f.;
protection of immigrants, 119 ;
results of, 7 f., 146, 190, 382.
Incomes, 137.
Industrial Aid Society, 338.
Industrial training, 299 f.,
377.
Industries, Chap. v. ; list of, 136 f.
Institutions, Registration Depart-
ment Report, 376, footnote.
Irish, 41 ff., 56; development Of,
379 f.; festivals, 250; genius. Of
374 ; mode of life, 70; political
temper, 63, 159.
Italians, 44, 46 ft.; benefit Socie-
ties, 331, 343; characteristics,
117, 143, 199, 204, 214, 224 ft. ;
genius, 374; development, 58,
380 ; festivals, 228 ft., 284; mode
of life, 52, 70, 83, 139 f.; political
temper,64 f., 157 f., 162; children,
290, 312 ; WOmen, 234.
349,
Jewelers, 111.
Jewish Charities, Federation of,
328.
Jews, benefit orders, 343; charac-
teristics, 67 ff., 108, 142 ft., 199 ft.,
205, 209 f., 237; children, 290,
312; development, 57, 301 ; fes-
tivals, 239, 278 ft. ; genius, 374;
landlords, 113, 174,341 ; mode of
life, 53 ff., 70, 137, 238; political
temper, 63 f., 157,162.
Judaism, 276 f.; compared with
Catholicism, 282 ft. ; festivals,
239, 278, 280, 282; SynagogueS,
276
Junk shops, 109 f., 157 f.
Juvenile lawbreakers, decrease
of, 376, footnote.
Kindergartens, 291; North Bennet
St., 346. See Elizabeth Peabody
HOuSe.
IXitchen bar-rooms. See Saloons.
Labor, Statistics, 84 f. See La-
borers, Unemployed.
Laborers, 118, 121 f., 126 ft., 371; un-
skilled, 134 ft., 299, 342. See
Labor, Unemployed.
Land deals, political, 172 f.
Landlords, Jewish. See JewS.
Legislation, building, 100 f.; moral,
8 f., 82,88; sanitary, 7 f., 73, 82 f.
88 f., 99, 101, 365.
Leopold Morse Home. See Jew-
ish charities.
Licenses, liquor, 173, 197, 200 f.
See Hotels, SaloonS.
Liquor traffic. See Hotels, Li-
censes, SaloonS.
Tittle Italy, 3.
Lodging houses, 39, 56 f., 93, 140;
Social influence of, 379. See
Boarding houseS.
Manufacturing. See Factories.
Markets, 2; great, 107 ; Jewish,
108, 111, 141; political boycott Of,
173.
Marshall, Thoma,S, 17, 19.
Massachusetts Emergency and
Hygiene Association, 353.
Mathers, clergymen, 16, 25.
Medical relief, 336 f.
Merchal) {S, 136.
Middlemen, 223.
Mill Creek, formation Of, 15 ;
water cut off of, 35; drainage
into, 72.
Mill Pond, formation of, 15; filled
in, 35.
Murder, 207 ff. See Crime.
Nationalities. See American, Brit-
ish, Greeks, Irish, Italians,
Jews, Negroes, Portuguese,
Scandinavian, Syrian. Also
Assimilation, Population, Immi-
gration.
Naturalization, 161.
Negroes, 4, 37, 45; benefit Orders,
332; characteristics, 60, 142,248 ;
churches, 258; mode of life, 55,
70, 140; Occupations, 123; recrea-
tions, 248; political temper, 66,
160; vicious class, 217 f.
North Bennet Street, Industrial
School, 301, 345. i
North End, Chap. ii.; boundaries
and thoroughfares, 1 ff., 14, 20 f.,
31; character, 2 f., 222; growth,
16 f.; labor force, 357; moral de-
cline and recovery, 33 f., 193 ff.
North End Improvement ASSocia-
tion, 354, 377.
North End Park, 182, 351.
North End Union, 349.
North Square, 16, 18, 24.
388
INDEX
North St., 14.
Organ grinders, 135,226 f.
Overcrowding, 7, 52 ft., 80, 83, 139;
prevention of, 93, 99; protest
against, 76; statistics of, 84 f.,
96 f. See Legislation.
Overseers of the Poor, 324, 371.
Padrones, 113, 119.
Parks and playgrounds, 90, 103,
351 ff., 365.
Parochial schools, 273, 309 ft.
Parties, political, Chap. vi. ; affili-
ations to, 158 ſſ., 167; candi-
dates of, 162; loyalty to, 169;
nominations of, 162; Organiza-
tion of, 154 ft., 163 f., 168 f.
Pauperism, causes of, 333. See
I)ependent classes.
Pauper Trustees, 324.
Pawnshops, 109.
IPeddlers, 108 f., 135, 157 f.
Philanthropy, Chap. xi.; allied
action, 354 f.; child relief work,
335 fſ. ; division of labor, 329;
private relief work, 7 f., 326 ft. ;
public relief 9, 324 f.; Statistics
of relief, 330 ft. ; three forms of
relief, 321 f.
Phips, Governor, 19.
Police, IDiv. 1, 190, 196; Div. 2,
211 ; intervention, 192, 196 f., 222
f.
Politics, ward, Chap. vi.; 147 ff.;
as a Career, 357 f.; Carpet bag-
gers, 162, 166; ClubS and gangs,
155, 184; fraudulent registra-
tion, 166 ft.; land deals, 172 f.;
leaders and methods, 151 ff.,
157 f., 161, 165, 169 ft., 177; natu-
ralization, 161 ; non-resident
voters, 161 ; quarrels, 178; ral-
lies, 164 f.; woman influence, 177.
See Americanization, Caucus,
Political corruption, Political
types.
Political corruption, 358, 361 f.
Political types, 179 f., 183 ff.
IPopulation, early, chap ii.; recent,
chap. iii.; growth in, 76, 95 ft.
I’orter, Dwight, 83.
I’ortuguese, 45; characteristics of,
59, 122, 140 ; mode of life, 245;
festivals, 247; SOCieties, 247.
Professions, 124, 136 f.
Prostitution, 9, 57, 197 f.; Italian,
213 ſſ., Negro, 218, See Crime.
Protestantism, 257, 267 f.; a class
religion, 364; inadequacy, 370.
Public library, 346, 353,
Public School Association, 368.
Public spirit, 6 ft., 88, 101, 223, 300,
366 ft.
Puritan Society, 13 ff.; change
from, 18 ft.
Quincy, first mayor, 73, 89 ; third
may Or, 188.
Rallies, political, 164 f.
Reading-rooms, 314, 346.
Ičeal estate, business, 112 f., 117;
Owners of, 121. See Building,
Housing.
Itegistration, 166 ft.
Religious cleavage, 363.
Rºgous observance, chap. ix.,
4.
Religious work, Catholic, Sunday-
Schools, 272 f. See Churches,
Parochial Schools.
Religious work, Protestant, Bible
readers, 257; Mariners’ House,
256; Salvation Army, 257, 266.
See Churches, Protestantism.
Rents, 138.
RestaurantS, 142.
Itevere, Paul, 25 f., 30.
Revolution, 30 ; landmarks of, 5;
pre-Revolutionary life, 11–29.
Ropewalks, 21 f., 128.
Sabbath observance, 280.
Sailors, 45, 127, 255 f.
Salem Street, 14.
Saloons, at West End, 221; Ital-
ian, 106 f., 140, 201 f.; kitchen
bar-rooms. See Hotels, Ilicenses.
Sanitation. Chap. iv.; moral ef-
fects of, 218. See Disease,
Housing, Legislation, Over-
Crowding, TenementS.
Scandinavians, 122.
Scholarships, 375.
School buildings, use of, 313, 365 f.
Schools, Chap. x.; Bowdoin, 38;
Eliot, 27, 302; English High, 38,
181; evening, 311 ff. ; Girls'
High, 38; Hancock, 302; “Latin
Grammar,” 27; Mayhow, 33.
See Grammar, High, Parochial
Schools.
School statistics, 297 f.
SCOllay Square, 1.
Settlements, 348 ff., 376.
Sewall, Samuel, 23.
Sewerage, 71 ff., 74, 76, 82, 87, 99.
SeX disproportion, 51 f.
INDEX
389
Shipyards, 27.
Shops, 106, 110 f., 122, 132; Shop-
keepers, 136.
Slums, growth, 82, 88; SOcial con-
dition, 356.
Socialism, 342 f.
Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children, 335.
sº of St. Vincent de Paul, 328,
335.
Society for the Protection of
Italian Immigrants, 347.
Stamp Savings Society, 351.
State House, 37.
Station, North Union, 1 ff.
Stores, 106, 125.
Streets, colonial. Chap. ii.
Streets and alleys, 3,90, 93,218 ft. ;
widening of, 102.
Street cleaning, 72, 74.
Surriage, Agnes, 25.
Sunday Observance, 133.
Sabbath.
Sweating, 113 ff.
Syrians, 109.
See
Taverns, 23, 27.
Temporary Home, 325.
Tenements, 34, 39, 100; improved,
80 ft., 89 f.; investigation of, 83
ff., 98, 102; past State Of, 77 f.;
present state of, 90 f., 97 ff., 139.
See Housing, Legislation, Over
Crowding.
Theatres, 144, 217, 232 f., 244, 251 f.
Sée Amusement.8.
Trade Unions, 341, 376.
Tra.Inp8, 46, 123, 371.
ployed.
Twentieth Century Club, investi-
gations of, 87 f.; petition Of, 101.
See Unem-
Unemployed, 123, 126 ff., 136, 170.
See Tramps, Laborers.
Unskilled. See Laborers.
Ventilation, 74, 82 f., 91 f., 97 f., 101.
Voters, non-resident, 161.
Wadlin, H. G., 84.
Wages, 116, 129 f., 137 f.
Water-closets, 77, 83, 92, 98 f.
Water-side industries, 127.
Sailors.
Water supply, 72 f., 76.
Wayfarers’ Lodge, 325, 332, 338 f.
West End, boundaries and thor-
Oughfares, 1, 3, 11, 28, 32 f., 212 f.;
character of, 2 ft., 213 f., 222;
labor force, 357; moral decline
and recovery, 35 fſ., 212 f.;
Police Div. 3,211.
Women, occupations of, 118, 122
ff.; political influence of, 157,
177 ; relief work for, 339.
Words coined in Boston, 26
See
Zionism, 281.
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