THE 
 
 FOURTH WARD 
 SURVEY 
 
 ROCHESTER 
 
 AMOJV YOUR CITY 
 
 COLIN CAMPBELL COOPER’S “MAIN STREET BRIDGE” 
 THE BEGINNING AND END OF THE WARD 
 
 EDWIN ALFRED RUMBALL 
 
 EN CENTS A COPY Published by The Common Good Publishing Co., Rochester, N. Y. 
 

 EDWIN ALFRED RUMBALL 
 
 HOW TO MAKE A WARD SURVEY 
 
 Reference: Prof. Carol Aronovici’s “Knowing One’s Own Community,” 
 Free copies of this sent on receipt of two stamps to Mr. Rumball. 
 
 
 First of all become well acquainted with the ward lines and streets. Find out 
 with the aid of the Federal Census returns and data usually obtainable at City Hall, 
 such items as density and character of Population. See if is possible to obtain the 
 birth rate, death rate and infant mortality rates. See how many of the children go 
 to school and where. Inquire as to their attendance, health and recreational 
 facilities. Learn how many Churches and philanthropic institutions there are in 
 the ward and what they are doing. How far is the school being used. What are 
 the civic assets of the ward ? What are the ward records for insanity, crime and 
 pauperism ? Number of vacant lots on which children may play? Watch for all 
 violations of city ordinances. Photograph all conditions that call for remark. 
 Make all statistics as comparative as possible. Let house work be done by two, 
 that all criticism may be met with corroborative evidence ; be courteous, patient 
 and “greatly obliged.” 
 
 Suggested Copy for House Record 
 
 No.;. Street. Date. 
 
 Rented Mortgaged Owned Race Rent 
 
 Number of Families in house. Number of Persons. 
 
 “ “ “ “ tenements. “ “ “ in tenements. 
 
 “ “ “ over stores. “ “ “ over stores. 
 
 Bathroom? Inside Toilet ? “ “ Roomers. 
 
 Who work in the family for wages ? “ “ children under 16. 
 
 Name of Owner. Address. 
 
 Remarks : 
 
BIRDS-EYE VIEW OF THE FOURTH WARD 
 
 The Fourth Ward Survey 
 
 A Study in our Civic and 
 Social Tendencies. 
 
 In July, 1911, a survey was made of the Fourth Ward. It was con¬ 
 ducted by the writer with the help of four others: Dr. Albert Bowen, 
 now of Honolulu; Mr. Harold Sanford, Mr. Frank Osborn, both of the 
 University of Rochester; and Miss Rachel Stillwell, who did the statistical 
 work on the children. A mass of data was obtained and many photo¬ 
 graphs taken. 
 
 Like other things needing to be done in the City it was a piece of 
 “Nobody’s Business,” but it will pay well if it in any way leads other 
 groups to study other wards in a similar manner. We did not choose the 
 ward unit because we were fond of it, but only because it was a unit 
 which for the present was the most practical for getting things done. If 
 groups of young men from the churches and social institutions, or the 
 class in Civics at the University were to take up like studies in the other 
 wards of the city a further value would be given to our data by the com¬ 
 parison. The Fourth Ward was chosen for more than one reason. It was 
 no small reason that the surveyors were members of a church which stood 
 in the centre of the ward. They were beginning to answer a new question, 
 not, why don’t the people come to the churches, but why don’t the churches 
 go to the people? A further reason was that the Fourth Ward was small 
 ■enough for a small group of workers to handle. It is the smallest ward but 
 four. Another reason was that this ward had the reputation of being one 
 of the worst in the city. It will be remembered that it used to be called 
 the “Bloody Fourth.” After having gone through the ward they do not 
 feel that it is the worst, it probably stands third in such a reckoning. Last 
 but not least it was felt that in this ward there would be found little immi- ■ 
 gration which could be blamed for the bad conditions. It was found to be 
 largely an American ward. According to the 13th Census the population 
 •of the ward was 5,821. Of this number we found that only 413 were 
 immigrants, and most of these had been over so long that they ought to 
 be spoken of as Americans. 
 
4 
 
 The Fourth Ward Survey 
 
 For the sake of reference we give the outline of the ward as follows: 
 It begins in the river and ends there. Running from about 67 Main Street y 
 East, south side, to the Liberty Building, it takes in the west side of East 
 Avenue to William Street. Then one side of the following streets: 1-245 
 William Street, 101-321 Monroe Avenue, 117-193 Alexander Street; both 
 sides of Monroe Avenue from 1-100; 1-334 of South Avenue; 1-375 of 
 Clinton Avenue South; 1-106 of Broadway; 1-57 Pearl Street; 134-164 
 South Union Street; 126-395 Court Street and 1-22 George Street. Last 
 of all the entire streets of the following names: Atlas, Capron, Chestnut, 
 Cortland, Downs, Denning, Elm, Ely, Euclid, Griffith, Howell, Johnson, 
 Lawn, Marshall, South, South Water, Stone, and Temple streets; Minerva 
 Place, Meyer Place, Martha Place, Morley Place, O’Neil Place and Lauer 
 Park. 
 
 As a ward it has some things to distinguish it from other wards. 
 The assessed value of its real estate is now $12,596,850; only four 
 wards are higher. The personal estate of the same period was $1,529,060, 
 the First Ward alone is higher. The only mention in the Report 
 of the City Plan of Rochester of “unsightly, cheap and ill-kept 
 tenements’’ was to buildings in the Fourth Ward. For all the unhealthy 
 living conditions that we found in the ward, it is the only ward which has 
 a medical man for its Alderman. It can probably boast of more saloons 
 to the acre than any other section of the City. The thirteen places in which 
 liquor can be obtained on South Avenue between Main Street and the 
 Canal Bridge is what one might expect in some Western mining towns 
 or in Whitechapel in London, but not in a city of the character of 
 Rochester. In density of population it stands fourth among the wards of 
 the City, it having 45 persons to the acre. One thing we particularly 
 noticed was that very few people of the ward owned their own homes. 
 Birds of the air have nests and savages have their wigwams, but the vast 
 majority of the people of the Fourth Ward have nowhere to lay their 
 heads without paying rent. 
 
 A word is perhaps necessary of the spirit in which the survey was 
 conducted. It was Thoreau who said, “If I knew that a man was coming 
 to my house with the conscious design of doing me good I would flee for 
 my life.” Every man with a home in this land has a little of this feeling. 
 He does not feel the need of being surveyed and rather resents all inquiry 
 that sounds like it. However anxious we were to get our information, we 
 tried to remember this, and considering the large number of questions 
 which we put as we went from house to house and room to room, we were 
 on the whole treated most patiently and courteously. 
 
 The motives which moved us to the work were not those of pity. 
 That a man is living in conditions which for us would be very uncom¬ 
 fortable and distressing is not of itself a reason for our pity. His environ¬ 
 ment and education may have fitted him for nothing better, and a lifting of 
 him to our notion of good living conditions might make him very unhappy. 
 Our real excuse for meddling with his unhealthy comfort was that he 
 could be more a menace to others than to himself; for evil living condi¬ 
 tions are a social injustice, and in this knowledge should be approached. 
 Last but not least, we were moved to do this thing in the interest of the 
 children. We do not believe that their destiny is wrapped up in that of 
 their parents. Undeserving men and women there may be, but nowhere 
 are there any undeserving children. The parents may be at home in 
 these conditions and desire nothing better, but the children from the 
 beginning should be led to expect something better. Closely allied with 
 
by Edwin Alfred Rnmball 
 
 5 
 
 this question of the child is the conviction we had that at bottom the real 
 evil of our cities was the evil of the home. According - as the home is 
 either good or bad so will be our whole municipal life. If the home is 
 menaced by evil housing, low wages, ignorant parents, so will our common 
 life in politics and morals be found low. The family is the unit of our 
 civilization and the effect of all hurts upon it is felt throughout our entire 
 life. The white plague of Tuberculosis, the red plague of Prostitution 
 and the grey plague of Infant Mortality, all come because the homes of 
 the people are in peril. 
 
 Housing and Homes 
 
 The ownership of property which can be rented as homes for the 
 people is one of the greatest social burdens which can be put upon the 
 men and women of our community. To the pr-overbial ‘‘landlords trou¬ 
 bles,”—which many landlords bring upon themselves,—there must be 
 added the grave obligations which come upon them as the custodians 
 of the home and its power for good and evil. A master of industry may 
 hurt society by the payment of low wages and unfit conditions of labor; 
 a politician may demoralize a community by graft and civic treason; but 
 the landlord has it in his power to hurt deadlier than all, for he may strike 
 at the home and destroy the institution upon which all the other institu¬ 
 tions of our civilization are founded. This may be a new thought for 
 many landlords, but “a man has just as much right to kill another man in 
 the street with an ax as he has to kill him with a house.” Rent can be and 
 often is, blood-money. 
 
 Of course many bad landlords are unconscious sinners even in this 
 day of social enlightenment. Their conscience is in the keeping of house 
 agents and rent-collectors, and the conditions surrounding the real source 
 of their income are unknown to them. Or, and this is perhaps more often 
 Irue, their eyes are yet blind to the great social wrongs which bad-housing 
 
6 
 
 The Fourth Ward Survey 
 
 can inflict. They have looked at their old houses and other people’s old 
 houses, and while seeing that they were the places where poor folk lived,, 
 they have not seen that they were slums. We all forget that there are 
 different kinds of slums, that each city has its own type of slum. There 
 is the London slum, the Berlin slum, and the New York slum; the San 
 Francisco slum and the Rochester slum. Even our villages have their 
 slums. And because there does not seem to exist in Rochester a slum like' 
 a London slum we have no right to say that our city is slumless. That 
 we are only just beginning to learn this, may not be against us. The very 
 best landlord had to learn, and his social awakening and social virtue 
 doubtless came gradually. That a lot of our poor men’s homes are in the 
 hands of people who are counted among the most honored of our citizens, 
 that some of the worst are owned by good church members, should not 
 lead us to sarcastic remarks but rather to show them the next step in their 
 religion. We had to be shown, and it is their due. What is bad housing?' 
 If a house imperils the bodily or moral health of the tenant in any way, 
 it is a bad house. If it is unsafe and unsanitary and thus unfit for home¬ 
 making, it is a bad house. If it in any way hurts the community, it is a bad 
 house. The old idea—let’s call it old, though it is still with us,—was that 
 a house or room to rent, was a financial proposition, something to make 
 money. The new idea—let’s call it new, though it has hardly yet 
 dawned,—is that a place to rent, must be first of all a place in which to* 
 live. It must be an ethical and physical proposition, something to make 
 citizens. 
 
 Perhaps the first thing to say in writing of the housing conditions of 
 the Fourth Ward is to state the kind of houses that we found there. This 
 must of course be largely a description of outsides. If we had had time 
 and opportunity we could have noted the interiors, but the American is 
 lord of his castle, and however much we may have desired to measure, in 
 some of the houses, the strata of dirt on the walls and floor, or to note the- 
 cracks and loose plastering where germs can breed at leisure, we should 
 have been refused. 
 
 Originally, the one family house was the universal type. Our street 
 sheets of the Survey show that there are only 321 houses in the Fourth 
 Ward with but one family in them. Every man and woman has, or 
 ought to have, a feeling of everlasting sanctity for the place which through 
 all childhood days was known as ‘Tome.” Seventy per cent, or there¬ 
 abouts of the families in the Fourth Ward will never be able to claim one 
 house there with the joy of sole rentship,—not ownership,—for upstairs- 
 and downstairs and in a few cases even the cellar, is somebody else’s 
 home. Nearly a hundred houses—not flats—had two families in them,, 
 twenty-one had three, ten had four. Hundreds had roomers. 
 
 Some parts of the Ward, notably East Avenue, Alexander, William,. 
 Lawn, Griffith Streets and a few others had houses with which no fault 
 can be found in this Survey. An odd house here and there on these streets 
 might be found which could be criticized, but on the whole the housing was 
 good. We do not wish at any moment to give the impression that we- 
 found anything sensational. Conditions usually have to grow a great 
 deal worse before they are thought bad enough to remedy. Our hope is,, 
 that we may act before that time comes. That some things that we found 
 were bad enough, we leave our readers to judge. Let us not imagine,— 
 this is the continual warning of Lawrence Veiller, the great housing expert 
 of New York,—that there is no necessity for action, because conditions in; 
 our city are not as bad as elsewhere. 
 
by Edzvin Alfred Rumball 
 
 7 
 
 FIVE EXHIBITS OF HOUSING CONDITIONS IN THE FOURTH WARD 
 
8 
 
 The Fourth Ward Survey 
 
 Bad housing does not always mean old or poor looking houses. We 
 found recently built houses and expensive looking houses that deserved to 
 be included in our charge of bad housing. The expensive and uncrowded, 
 well-kept flat may find itself in the same category as the slum. This is 
 certainly true if children are allowed to live there. Of course in a ward 
 so near the center of the city, there are a large number of modern apart¬ 
 ment houses. We found 27 such buildings and in them some 200 families. 
 In most of them be it said, to their credit, children are not allowed. In 
 some, children are theoretically excluded, but find their way to them. We 
 can believe that landlords are so kind when the stork finds their flats that 
 they have not the heart to evict. But no landlord is kind and no parent is 
 kind who tries to make home for a child past babyhood in one of these 
 flats. This same reasoning applies to the many rooming houses that we 
 found. In this Ward are about 1,300 roomers. The street which had the 
 heaviest count was Chestnut Street, where we found 331, though there 
 are only 71 houses on the street. Some of these houses were well cared 
 for and in them no children. In others it was a puzzle to see where they all 
 slept. One old man said that his house had eight rooms, including the , 
 kitchen, and that while they had five roomers, he and his wife were very 
 anxious to obtain three more. Of course the query is, where would he and 
 his wife sleep? The best that we can hope is that like a house that the 
 writer once found in a London slum, where the beds had three “shifts” of 
 sleepers every twenty-four hours—eight hours each by the clock—that the 
 old couple at least had day sleepers among their roomers. The rooming 
 business is more than a business of convenience. Love of profit, high 
 rents and heavy taxes are all reasons for the rooming business. The New 
 York City Commission on the Congestion of Population, which recently 
 made its report, found rooming houses a great cause of overcrowding. 
 In this section of the Ward the population is planted at the rate of 63 to 
 the acre. This is one of the thickest in the city of Rochester. 
 
 One of the worst conditions that we found in the Ward in more than 
 one place is illustrated in Exhibit 3 of the composite photograph on an¬ 
 other page. These houses—three only of five are seen—are in the back 
 garden of a Griffith Street house. The little lane which runs between the 
 houses, is called Lauer Park. They do not appear to be of recent con¬ 
 struction, but there is no indication on the map of Rochester that such a 
 place exists. To come to it, one has to travel the Canal tow-path and 
 turn from it a little before reaching Denning Street. Of back-garden or 
 rear-lot houses we found some twentv-five in the Ward. Monroe Avenue, 
 South Street, South Clinton and James Street all have them; Gailley Place, 
 Martha Place and Morley Place should also be included in such counting. 
 Broadway seemed to have the largest number of such houses. Meyer 
 Place, which turns off from Broadway, can show as good a lot of houses 
 of this kind as appear anywhere in the Ward. We mean good in the best 
 sense. They are well-cared for and the tenants seem to be of a choice 
 kind. We feel sure that one good reason for these better conditions is 
 the fact that the rents are comparatively low. It pays to ask a low rent. 
 We shall see this again presently. In one of the rear-lot houses on the 
 Canal side of Broadway we were told of three families inside. Many of 
 these places have no sewer except as we may so denominate the Canal. 
 Meyer Place might have one if the level on Broadway allowed it to be 
 received; that is to say, the street was made without any thought of 
 other homes being built in back-gardens. If the law had corresponded 
 with such short-sightedness, limiting the number of houses which could 
 
by Edwin Alfred Rumball 
 
 9 
 
 be built on a given area, much of the congestion and preparation for con¬ 
 gestion that we have, might have been spared us. 
 
 SMALL AND CHEAP FOURTH WARD HOMES, ILLUSTRATING THE ASSETS 
 
 OF HUMANE LANDLORDISM 
 
 Compared with the congestion in larger cities, there is not on the 
 whole any terrible congestion in the Fourth Ward. But note what there 
 is. Only three other Wards in the city have more congestion, namely, the 
 7th, 8th, and 16th. These have 55, 51 and 48 persons to the acre respect¬ 
 ively. The Fourth Ward has 45. But there are places in the Fourth 
 Ward which register much higher than that. For example, the district 
 bounded by Court, Chestnut, George, William, Monroe Avenue and 
 Clinton Avenue South, has in it 702 persons. It is one of the smallest 
 enumeration districts which were taken in the last census, yet these 702 
 people are living at 63 to the acre. It is demanded that 25 people to the 
 acre alone gives really healthful environment. This is often hard to get 
 in our cities but the good residential sections of our city manage to get it. 
 The density of population in the 10th Ward is ten to the acre, in the 12th 
 Ward it is nineteen, in the 14th Ward it is only fourteen; if air and sun¬ 
 shine are more necessary for the poor than the rich, why are we so con¬ 
 tent to let them have less of it? The pity is that, if we get such human 
 conditions for the poor to live in, it may make their living harder, for up 
 will go the rents. We found that one landlord,—we ought to write LORD 1 
 in capitals,—even had the audacity to charge extra rent for God’s sun¬ 
 shine. The tenants on the sunny side of his block had to put an extra 
 piece into his pocket because the sun shined there. We wonder where he 
 found his estimate on the value of sunshine! We wonder whether his 
 conscience ever tells him to reduce the rent on the shady side to but two- 
 thirds the other! 
 
 We do not need to remind our readers that the worst feature that 
 we found in the housing of the people of this Ward, was found in its tene¬ 
 ment life. The homes over some of the stores on Monroe and South 
 Avenues and on some smaller streets present a serious condition. Roch¬ 
 ester has as much right to look to its tenements as the larger cities where 
 
IO 
 
 The Fourth Ward Survey 
 
 they are more plentiful. No city can afford to tolerate even the begin¬ 
 nings of them. On the ground of health and social welfare, the 1,400 
 delegates to the International Housing Congress last year in Vienna, 
 unanimously condemned the Tenement. A tenement is never, not even 
 under the so-called “model'’ conditions, a fit place for a home to be made. 
 Everyone knows of course that the tenement was introduced to help solve 
 the question of cheap homes, but it has miserably failed. And all housing 
 remedies will fail which try to meet the situation with the cheapest thing 
 to be done. It costs money to really solve this problem of the home, and 
 not the smallest amount must come to the tenants in an increase of wages, 
 that they may meet the cost with their own pay. But this is digressing to 
 our chapter on “Betterment” before we have our problem in front of us. 
 Over some of the stores on South Avenue, we found from seven to twenty 
 families. Some had two or three rooms and some less. Nearly two hun¬ 
 dred families, often, of course, of only two persons, but about 7 per cent, 
 of the population were found living over or behind stores in more or less 
 tenement conditions. The terrible meaning of this fact for the children of 
 the Ward we must speak upon when we come to deal with the children. 
 Suffice it to say here, that the findings of large cities in this matter can be a 
 warning to us of what we must expect if these things continue. Miss 
 Fulmer, Superintendent of the Visiting Nurses’ Association of Chicago, 
 says: “Two-thirds of the delinquent children come from homes where 
 dirty, illy-ventilated rooms predominate; two-thirds of the physical ill 
 children from the same; one-third of the shiftless mothers from the same; 
 two-thirds of the deserting fathers from the same. In a study of fifty 
 backward children in an ungraded school of a large city, forty-three of 
 these children occupied homes that it should have been the business of the 
 State to see did not exist.” It is impossible to describe the gloom of the 
 long dark stairs and passage-landings which we found in these places; 
 these things with the dark rooms and filthy sanitary conditions must be 
 seen to be understood. On Monroe Avenue were found as many as thirty 
 roomers to two toilets, four families to one toilet, nine families to three 
 toilets. On Main Street Bridge where the ward line begins, there is a 
 piece of property owned by a non-resident, which has four families on the 
 top floor without any toilet. The landlord told the tenants to use the office 
 toilets on the floor below. This enables him to house an extra tenant 
 where the toilet ought to be, and is therefore more profitable. Frequently 
 the toilets were in dark unventilated cellars. On one small street one 
 could smell the nuisance arising from one of the cellars by simply passing 
 the house, so filthy was it. Upon this street are but three houses; but 
 being owned by three different persons there is little social influence the 
 one on the others. A good tenant cannot control the character of those 
 who would become her neighbors. In these three small houses are to be 
 found six or seven families, containing about two dozen persons. Only 
 one of the houses has a single family. 
 
 Some houses here and there in the Ward, need a more radical remedy 
 than that which we may offer for the others. “It should not be forgotten,” 
 says an English writer on Housing, “that the housing question is not one 
 of" building only, it is also one of demolition.” We hope that the city of 
 Rochester at the proper time will take such a view of the question, in 
 regard to some of the property on the West side of South Avenue, when 
 the Canal has to be abandoned. Upon the property that we have in mind, 
 we found some of the worst features in the Ward. In one of the blocks 
 we found 18 families and 13 single Greek men. One of the Exhibits— A — 
 
by Edwin Alfred Rumball 
 
 11 
 
 given with this chapter, shows a cellar home in this row where an Italian 
 family live in the day. Everyone, i. e. five in family plus four boarders, 
 sleeps above ground. But at No. 201—see Exhibit 1—there is a real cellar 
 home. In the photograph it is just possible to distinguish the window of 
 this residence, about eighteen inches above the pathway. Down below we 
 found an Irish family, an old couple who deserved better from their 
 adopted country. We should not like to have to fetch our coal from the 
 place where they had to sleep. The landlord is doubtless within his legal 
 rights in so renting. The law of this State regarding tenements does say 
 something about cellar homes, but it should make them illegal, not try 
 to make them inhabitable. New York City has 25,000 of them. The 
 Statician of the Prudential Insurance Company in a statement before the 
 Congestion Commission called all cellar homes “inhuman”; and that they 
 are. Insurance men are not given to sentiment when dealing with such 
 questions and we may feel sure that every piece of evil-housing in the city 
 of Rochester to-day is a certain financial loss as well as a loss in many 
 other respects. 
 
 In this Ward are to be found two large tenements belonging to one 
 estate. The property is not any worse in some respects than some smaller 
 pieces in the Ward; the fact that there is a janitor and that there are bath¬ 
 rooms in the blocks may indicate a real care to make the best of the bar¬ 
 rack-looking places. One of these tenements is of the dumbbell variety 
 which is one of the very worst things to plan for in a city.—See Exhibit 
 2—In this tenement were 14 families and although children were forbid¬ 
 den, they were there. It was a hot July day when we went to this block 
 and the yard was covered with garbage. The stench from this was so 
 great that the tenants had to keep their windows closed to breathe with 
 any pleasure. We took a photograph of the yard but as we could not 
 photograph the smell it did not seem well to reproduce it here. . 
 
 Legally it could doubtless be shown that the owners were not respon¬ 
 sible for this condition, but it seems to us that especially in tenements 
 proper receptacles for garbage ought to be asked of the owners, and untidy 
 tenant and careless collector made to do better. The other tenement con¬ 
 tained 16 families and no children. On neither of these blocks were there 
 fire-escapes, doubtless the law does not require them but the frame stairs 
 leading to the back doors of the tenants, would have been soon consumed 
 in a big blaze. This was not an infrequent condition in the Ward, and 
 in one of the large flats, a small fire risk came about two years ago and 
 we understand that at that time a fire escape was promised, but it has 
 never been erected. 
 
 One of the ways, owners have of doubling their rentals is to build 
 on the entire lot line and get two houses where only one ought to be. This 
 is not only true of the rear-lot houses that we have already spoken of, but 
 also of quite a few recently built houses facing the street. In this type of 
 house or flat there is no yard of any kind and the child within has 
 nowhere but the street for play. Her sand pile and romping ground have 
 been used to put money into some thoughtless landlord s pocket. See 
 Exhibit 5. 
 
 We ought to make some comment on the fact that one of these tene¬ 
 ments was over a saloon. To survey the Fourth Ward is to come veiy 
 close to the influence of the saloon. The law forbids that such a place be 
 placed within so near to a church, but says nothing of the greater menace 
 of its nearness to a home. Does it not seem to the men and women of 
 to-day that the only right and safe law to make in regard to the position 
 
12 
 
 The Fourth Ward Survey 
 
 TWO FOURTH WARD BLOCKS WITH NO FIRE ESCAPES 
 16 families in one, n in the other 
 
 of saloons, is to place them so many yards away from homes rather that* 
 from churches ? Why should the churches which are closed three parts of 
 the week be protected from the evil influence of the saloon, while a poor 
 widow and her children, in order to get cheap housing, are obliged to live 
 over or next door to one ? The church will get little hurt from proximity —- 
 to a saloon, and may get a great deal of good if it leads the people of the 
 church to transform the saloons into coffee houses as they do in London 
 when they come too near. But the home is too often unable to protect itself 
 against the influence and should be the first to be protected. If we imperil 
 the homes of the people we imperil everything. 
 
 “The more things improve, the louder become our exclamations 
 about their badness.” So said Herbert Spencer some years ago. That the 
 Fourth Ward is getting this revelation—call it exclamation, if you will,— 
 may be the most hopeful thing about the Ward. Let us reiterate that 
 other Wards could show an equally bad state of things and we believe even 
 worse. To help by comparison with the Fourth Ward we had small sur¬ 
 veys taken in the 11th and 20th Wards also. Out of 340 homes investi¬ 
 gated in the 11th Ward on such streets as Tremont, Clifton, Jefferson,. 
 Penn, Gladstone, Troup, Rockland, Epworth, St. Clair, Churchlea and 
 Terry, we found that while 50 per cent, of the homes were owned— 
 which is better than the Fourth Ward—still, 50 per cent, of the rented 
 homes were without bathrooms, and 11 per cent, of these houses had toilets 
 in the cellar, which is quite as bad, if not worse than the Fourth. Then 
 from 204 similar houses in the 20th Ward we found that 45 per cent, 
 were rented, and here also 50 per cent, of these were without bathrooms. 
 Instead of the nuisance of cellar toilets, the neighbors in this Ward had 
 most complaint to make of outside closets. But this whole method of 
 
by Edwin Alfred Rumball 
 
 i3 
 
 comparison is questionable, for we ought not to be satisfied with mere 
 averages. In the London County Council Schools, three decayed teeth 
 are charted as normal, many slight eye defects, many slight degrees of 
 feeble nutrition and many slight deformities are “normal.” None the less 
 these things are handicaps and such average children are very average in 
 general capacity, character and citizenship. We must strike at evil, seen 
 as evil and not be content because it is only better than some condition 
 that is really very bad. 
 
 We cannot take space to register all the complaints that we were 
 forced to listen to as we went from door to door and from room to room. 
 “Don’t call this a city of Flowers,” said one hard working woman, at the 
 top of a tenement, “when my children have to live in a place like this.” 
 Some lamented lack of bathrooms—no mean lack during those hot July 
 days—some, dirty and broken toilets; some, high rents; some, unremoved 
 garbage; some, dark rooms; some, dark passages; some, risky and broken 
 stairways; some, low wages; some, lack of fire escapes; and some, that 
 they had no yards for the children to play. The total effect of these things 
 was that few could speak in love for their city; and without that a city is 
 lost. With love it may become great and honored. To adapt some recent 
 words of Gilbert K. Chesterton, we close by saying, “It is not enough for a 
 man to disapprove of the Fourth Ward. In that case he will merely cut his 
 throat or move into the Twelfth. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to 
 approve of the Fourth Ward, for then it would remain the Fourth Ward, 
 which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be, for someone 
 to love the Fourth Ward, to love it transcendentally and without any 
 earthly reason. . . . Men did not love Rome because she was great. 
 
 So she was great because they loved her.” 
 
 THE WADSWORTH SCHOOL, NO. 12 
 
 JFfe Children of the Ward 
 
 “Being a baby is an extra-hazardous occupation. This will be the 
 judgment of all who know the evil living conditions of our modern cities. 
 The soldier who goes to some terrible battle or enters upon a long period 
 of bloody war, the sailor who faces the dangers of a long voyage on 
 
H 
 
 The Fourth Ward Survey 
 
 THE DEAD BABY OF THE WORKERS 
 
 —Detailfrom Jules Van Biesbroeek's monument in Museum of Venice 
 
 “One third of the Population in our Cemetries consists 
 of children under five years of age.’’ In Rochester last 
 year (1911) 694 were buried. 
 
 unknown and stormy seas, the miner who takes his life in his hand into the 
 bowels of the earth and the aviator who lifts it into the dangers of the 
 upper air, all possess less hazardous occupations than the little baby who 
 comes to live in our modern cities. It has been written that “one-third 
 of the population of our cemeteries consists of children under five years 
 of age. . . The little tots could not have walked the distance if we 
 
 had not pushed them all the way.” And yet the most pitiful victim of our 
 modern city life is not the baby who dies, but the slum child who lives. 
 The child who dies robs the nation of a citizen, but very often the child 
 
by Edwin Alfred Rumball 
 
 15 
 
 who lives gives to the nation one more tuberculosis victim or one more 
 criminal. 
 
 The survey of the Fourth Ward was undertaken very largely in the 
 interest of the children. Most of the questions that we asked as we went 
 from door to door had reference to the children. If the City of Roch¬ 
 ester were feeling the fundamental importance of the child life of our city 
 as we hope one day it will, it would have been possible to have included 
 far more useful information of the children in this chapter than we here 
 present. 
 
 “there remains something yet to be done with 
 
 THE HOMES OF THESE CHILDREN” 
 
 So much by way of introduction to the life of the children of the 
 Fourth Ward. Some of the questions which no one knows about in the 
 City as a whole we were able to find out of this ward. There are 
 about 550 children in the ward; of this number about 200 are under five 
 years of age. It is almost a babyless ward for we only found 31 children 
 under one year of age. These children are living mostly where there is 
 enough garden round the house to romp upon; but one-third of them 
 live in tenements or in flats which fill the entire lot and thus provide no¬ 
 where to play but the street. Forty-five per cent of these children were 
 found in tenements on South Avenue, twenty per cent of them found in the 
 tenements on Monroe Avenue. We ought to have added to this large 
 group of children those who live in the numerous rooming houses, for 
 a child has very little of the freedom and joy of home life who has to 
 share home, sweet home with a number of lodgers, whose mothers’ time is 
 taken up by long hours of housekeeping for them. Some years ago the 
 women of the city began a movement which resulted in beautiful works 
 of art being placed in our school buildings. Flow much benefit this has 
 been to the children of these congested wards it may be impossible to 
 ever tell, but it must have been immeasurable. To compare the interior 
 beauty of our school houses with those of England, for example, makes 
 one proud of American school ideals. But there remains something yet 
 to be done with the homes of these children. There can be very little 
 thought of beauty in the mind of the child whose eyes look out on bare 
 
i6 
 
 The Fourth Ward Survey 
 
 walls enclosing ash heaps and garbage piles, loathsome outbuildings and 
 other marks of ruin and decay, filth and grime. Our leading psycholo¬ 
 gists tell us that everything which makes an impression on the five senses 
 of the child, helps to stamp the soul with its power, and if anything should 
 receive the care of a city it should be the environment of its children. 
 It is not a great many years ago that New York City thought it had no 
 housing question and the environment of the children was neglected with 
 results that have made that city a by-word and a horror. In a recent 
 article, Jacob Riis, has written this word which is beginning to have terri¬ 
 ble meaning in our own city. “The tenement without privacy spews out 
 the boy to the street and the saloon with its gambling and its license, 
 where the brazen prostitute goes in and out, defiant of the law that says 
 that she shall not, flaunting her tawdry finery before the tired girls whose 
 bitter toil hardly suffices to feed and clothe their half-starved bodies. 
 
 “the boys tried to play upon it, but they were turned 
 
 OFF BY THE POLICE” 
 
 I can hear yet the mother of one, as I stood at her window and looked 
 out upon an airshaft that was her daily outlook, all there was of it. 
 ‘Mary does not like to sleep here.’ Mary had gone on to the street. That 
 was her story and judgment died on my lips.” The cry for better homes 
 is no dreamer's cry, and until the housing code of Rochester is made in 
 the interest of the people who have to live in the houses instead of in 
 the interest of the persons who own the houses, we may expect that the 
 ethical tone of our city will be gradually lowered. The press is already 
 beginning to speak of the “Underworld of Rochester.” Where did it 
 begin ? We feel sure after seeing some of the places where the children 
 of Rochester were born and what they were expected to call home that 
 their houses killed their homes. 
 
 There is no Playground in the Fourth Ward for the play of these 
 children—Remember one child in three only has the street. There are 
 very few vacant lots left. We give three exhibits of them to show 
 where something might be begun. The best is probably the corner of 
 tffe Wadsworth tract near No. 12 school, between Marshall and Griffith ’ 
 
by Edwm Aljred Riimball 
 
 i7 
 
 Streets and bounded by Broadway. This land is the property of the city 
 but it is unfenced and barren and of no use to any one. Last year when 
 the boys tried to play upon it, they were turned off by the police. Doubt¬ 
 less their play was of the unsupervised kind and proved a nuisance; but 
 there is no reason why a few swings and see-saws and sand-piles, etc. 
 might not be placed on this vacant city lot at once and some one put in 
 charge to supervise it. What better place could there be found for a 
 playground than next to the Schoolhouse? Then there is another good 
 place for the things that children love behind the Universalist Church. 
 It is not large, but until some use is found for it, we feel sure that the 
 Church will be glad of the suggestion to loan it to the children of the 
 section. Another lot, which is being held for a large price, is next to 
 Gannett House, and ought to be obtained for the children as a place for 
 their play forever. This lot is large enough for many things and half-a- 
 •century hence will be a boon in this neighborhood, if only it can be 
 obtained for the children. It has been said that a Republic without sun- 
 
 “the church will be glad of the suggestion” 
 
 shine, without grass and flowers, without fun and frolic in the young 
 years is a fraud on the face of it. Be that true or no, we do not hesitate 
 to say that it is as important that the Fourth Ward have these play¬ 
 grounds as for it to continue to have the Convention Hall, the Chamber 
 of Commerce, the Y. M. C. A. or any of its seven churches. 
 
 Most of the children of the ward go to the Wadsworth School, 
 better known as No. 12. Some 300 children—which is about half of the 
 number registered at that school—come from this ward. The other 
 school in the ward is St. Mary's Parochial School. The children in this 
 school come from long distances and actually only about 60 or 70 come 
 from the ward. We made a careful analysis of last year’s school records 
 of the Wadsworth School to discover how many children were sick 
 and how many days were lost in such sickness. The results can be 
 tabulated as follows: 
 
 First Semester: September to February, 1910-1911. 
 
 Number of pupils from the ward: 304. 
 
i8 
 
 The Fourth Ward Survey 
 
 Number of these who were sick: 159. 
 
 Number of School days lost by sickness: 985 days. 
 
 Second Semester: February to June, 1911. 
 
 Number of pupils from the ward: 293. 
 
 Number of these who were sick: 150. 
 
 Number of school days lost by sickness: 1028 days. 
 
 During the first term the greatest amount of sickness was in the first 
 grade—the little tots—where out of 50 children 32 lost 294 days by sick¬ 
 ness. During the second term, the greatest amount of sickness was again 
 in this grade where out of 40 children, 31 lost 344 days by sickness. We 
 did not study the Parochial School records, so cannot add their figures, 
 but these alone are serious enough to provide work for a school nurse and 
 school visitor who if they did not give their whole time to No. 12 school 
 could at least give part of their time here and part to some other school. 
 In an exhaustive examination made of some seventy thousand school 
 children of the City of Glasgow, it was found that those who were living 
 in one room were of lighter weight and shorter stature than those whose 
 homes consisted of from two to four rooms. If what we have written 
 will only lead some of us to prepare against such figures ever being found 
 true in this city, it will have been worth while. Of course there is no 
 poverty like the poverty of the English and Scotch cities, but there is no 
 telling what there will be if our children in the down-town wards have 
 no better chance than many that we have seen seem to have. 
 
 There is a great deal which ought to be written of the splendid work 
 which the Principal and teachers of the Wadsworth School are doing 
 for these children. It is the greatest social institution in the ward, but 
 the report of our findings at the school belong properly to the next chap¬ 
 ter which will speak of the agencies which are at work in the ward for 
 its betterment. 
 
 WHERE THE CITY TEACHES THE NEXT THING TO GODLINESS 
 
 fJJe Assets of the Ward 
 
 It is not yet as common as we hope that it will one day be for a survey 
 to be associated with the assets of the community. Too often such work 
 is only a muck-raking exhibition of the dark and unwholesome elements. 
 But a survey must, if it would create confidence, mirror the life of the 
 community, not only its marring. If it is only acceptable to the yellow 
 
by Edwin Alfred Rumball 
 
 19 
 
 editor, it will not be acceptable to the people who are needed to help 
 make things better. 
 
 The great asset of the Fourth Ward is its people. Upon their receiv¬ 
 ing the opportunity and power to get together depends the future of the 
 whole ward. Upon their children rests the hopes which already are burn¬ 
 ing to be realised in many hearts. They may have different views of the 
 situation and have different degrees of civic enthusiasm, but they are and 
 must be the ones to bring about most of the good things that we shall 
 afterwards mention, and by the People of the Fourth Ward we mean all 
 of the people, rich and poor, good and bad. We took the photograph one 
 day in the ward of one of its tenement children. The little girl was nine 
 years of age but only looked about five. Her mother was dead and her 
 father had never been known. She was dirty and ill-clad. She was cer¬ 
 tainly ill-nourished and underfed. She had nowhere to play but the 
 street, where we found her at times begging pennies from the passersby. 
 We mention the poor little thing in order to say that even this white, thin 
 little body is one of the assets of the Fourth Ward. We refuse to speak of 
 her yet as a menace. She yet has a chance. But if the City of Rochester 
 does not soon awake to the seriousness of having such a playless, homeless 
 condition for- its little ones, they will indeed be the menace of the com¬ 
 munity. Human life everywhere is an asset until by continual treading of 
 it down in the mire it becomes a living pestilence. 
 
 The Fourth Ward contains a number of institutions whose presence 
 in that part of the city is accidental. They are not there for the good of 
 the ward so much as for the good of the city. These are the Health 
 Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce, the Convention Hall, the City Baths, 
 the Labor Lyceum, the Socialist Headquarters, The Brotherhood and the 
 Y. M. C. A. We ought perhaps also to add the nine or ten theaters and 
 amusement houses. The work of none of these agencies can be measured 
 by the influence they have on the ward; nothing but a city survey could 
 tell just what they mean to us; but in a few instances there is a direct 
 and indirect touch with their immediate neighborhood. For instance, 
 there can be no doubt that at the City Baths where there are 200 baths a 
 day and some 400 plunges, that the people of the district surrounding the 
 Bath House are regular participants in this civic asset. At the Y. M. C. 
 A. there is also a slight touch with the ward. In its Life Clubs so-called, 
 there is. a small membership of Fourth Ward boys, its Rooming Directory 
 and Free Employment Agency must also be used by the district on occa¬ 
 sions, but the very nature of this institution forbids that it touch the ward 
 very much. Its benefits are mostly for those who can afford to pay its 
 fees, and who are more or less in religious harmony with its intention. 
 Its possibilities for the future we cannot mention here. Like the Y. M. 
 C. A. in its relation to the ward and its work for the whole city, we have 
 the Brotherhood. Under the leadership of Dr. Crapsey, its meetings are 
 held each Sunday evening in the Victoria Theater, and from the fine plat¬ 
 form which it provides, there must be a continual influence for good 
 going out to many in the immediate neighborhood of the theater. As 
 part of the city, the ward must have its share also in the aid which the 
 Brotherhood is able to give to the needy. But it is as difficult to give a 
 ward estimate of the influence of these institutions as to estimate the influ¬ 
 ence of those institutions outside of the ward which are entering to aid 
 every day in many ways. For example, the city Poor Department has had 
 an average of 41 recipients a year of its charity for the last five years in the 
 ward and the Charity Organization Society has had 49 a year. The chief 
 
20 
 
 The Fourth Ward Survey 
 
 purpose of noting these assets of the ward whether we are able to say 
 much of them or no, is to record the kind of helpfulness which we may 
 ■expect from them in any attempt to better the conditions of the ward. 
 With each one at its given or chosen task we may know better how to 
 •encourage co-operation. 
 
 It is usual in numbering the assets of a community to speak at some 
 length of its religious institutions. If we follow this custom in 
 the ward we shall have to speak of some six churches and two or three 
 small missions. It is natural that we should look to them in this way, 
 for do they not stand for the supreme good of all communities? 
 
 FOR SALE : LET THOSE WHO BUY PUT IN THE TITLE DEEDS, 
 
 “THAT THE CHILDREN SHALL PLAY HERE FOREVER” 
 
 For long ages they have been supposed to be their brothers’ keepers. 
 They have been the teachers of the human helpfulness which should 
 lift up the fallen and care for the sick and here, they are supposed to be 
 the light of that little world which we have made the subject of our survey. 
 There are six churches in this ward: St. Mary’s, Catholic; Christ Church, 
 Episcopalian; the Universalist, the Unitarian, the Congregational, and the 
 Christian Church. In addition to these regular churches there is Elim 
 Church on William Street, the Liberty Mission on Howell Street, the 
 Puritan Mission on South Avenue, and another religious mission whose 
 ■cult we could not discover, in one of the buildings on Main Street bridge. 
 In our enquiry of the ministers of the churches as to the amount of social 
 and institutional work which their churches were doing, we found that 
 ao far as they were concerned that there was a very real desire to do 
 :good things for the community, but a great lack of actual doing. This 
 was often because of financial reasons and for the reason that all the 
 ■churches are still in the pioneer days of social service, and the right thing 
 to do and the right way to go about it, is almost unknown to them. It is 
 so hard for them to sever the religious motives from the purely human¬ 
 itarian demands which the modern social call makes upon them. So far 
 as the function of a church is concerned, in its spiritual work, there is 
 doubtless good being done, it does not lend itself to the measurement of a 
 
by Edwin Alfred Rumball 
 
 21 
 
 survey, but need not be any the less an asset for that reason. One pastor 
 wrote, “The work of carrying on the Kingdom is done largely on the 
 basis that a parish church should be the fountain center of spirituality,, 
 that the community may be filled with spiritual grace to undertake that 
 up-building of the moral and physical well-being of the people.” This is, 
 of course, the most usual way of describing the work of a church, we have: 
 no fault to find with it if it means exactly what it says; if the moral and 
 physical well-being of the community is to be the test of the fountain of 
 spirituality, we feel sure that those who think this way will soon feel the 
 need of more moral spirituality. The Fourth Ward is a splendid chal¬ 
 lenge to its churches, and while it may be ecclesiastically correct to confine 
 the work to their worship service only, we do not hesitate to say that the 
 church which does no more than that will soon be a dead center of unspir¬ 
 ituality. We recall the prayer of the little girl who said, “I saw a ragged 
 man, looking very miserable in the storm to-day, but it is none of our 
 business, is it God ?” If we read aright the signs of the times we feel 
 sure that the church which comes to God with that kind of statement, is 
 doomed. 
 
 With the exception of the Unitarian Church, all the churches draw a 
 number of their people from the Fourth Ward, and there must thereby 
 be a direct and indirect interest on their part in many people who live- 
 there. St. Mary’s seems to have the largest number of adherents in the- 
 ward, but the little Christian Church on Howell Street has nearly as 
 many. The Universalist and the Unitarian Churches are doing a little 
 social work which is already beginning to tell in different betterments. At 
 the Liberty Mission on Howell Street there is a Home for a number of 
 working women where rooms can be had at a low price. But the only 
 institutional Church in the ward is the Unitarian Church on Temple- 
 Street. Fewest ward people worship there, but it would appear that more 
 receive humanitarian and social help from it than from any other relig¬ 
 ious society in the ward. At Gannett House on Temple Street, there is- 
 something doing every day. A boys’ club which began this year with 
 over 200 members meets there twice a week, to do various things in the 
 manual training classes and in the gymnasium. On another evening a 
 number of working girls of the neighborhood gather for dancing and 
 other forms of amusement under good supervision. A dancing school for 
 the young people of the ward meets every week. On Saturday some sixty 
 younger girls gather in classes in dressmaking, cooking, dancing 
 Four clubs use their basketball court at different times of the week, and 
 going from the place all the time are workers who help in the homes of 
 the people, sometimes it is to pay rent, sometimes to buy clothes and 
 food. Last summer the Gannett House nurse was placed in the school’ 
 district to attend to the milk station. There being no tubs at the City 
 Baths for mothers to take their families for the weekly wash, Gannett 
 House was opened all through the summer and the tubbing process was 
 gone through at the rate of 23 a day, in the bath room there installed. 
 Good as this work is for the neighborhood, there is one serious criticism 
 to be made of it all. It should be done in the people’s own Temple, the 
 school house. Clubs and dancing classes, domestic training and baths, 
 basketball and gymnasium, nurse and visitor are all legitimate school 
 activities. And when the City of Rochester will put the work of such 
 institutions as Gannett House into the school, we understand that this place- 
 of goodwill will gladly look for something else to do. Until the city does- 
 
22 
 
 The Fourth Ward Survey 
 
 m/ 
 
 this we feel that there rests on every church the obligation to do these 
 things for the community. We say obligation because we mean that there 
 is a real debt which each church owes to the community in which it 
 .stands. Each year the Fourth Ward, through the City, places thousands 
 of dollars into the treasuries of these churches, and they are under the 
 obligation to make some return. We refer to the exemption from taxes 
 which these churches receive. Somebody has to pay them, and the 
 churches may well ask themselves the question how much their freedom 
 
 THE CHURCHES OF THE FOURTH WARD 
 
 1.—The Unitarian-Congregational Church. 2.—Gannett House. 3.—St. Mary’s Catholic Church. 
 
 4.—Christ Church—Epicopalian. 5.—The South Congregational Church. 6.-The Disciples Church. 
 
 7.—The Universalist Church. 
 
 from taxes accounts for the poverty around them in property which is 
 taxed. The thousands of dollars which the City of Rochester gives the 
 churches of the Fourth Ward each year, at the very least places upon 
 them the social obligation to return it to the people of the ward in work 
 for better housing, playgrounds and the opening of the school houses and 
 those other humanitarian efforts which are not charity but common 
 justice. It will be a shame for the sense of justice in the churches to be 
 surpassed by the sense of justice in the community, the churches ought to 
 be moral enough after all these years to be the ethical leaders of the peo¬ 
 ple, and not the unwilling followers of the visions which are given outside 
 the churches. But it is the vision that men will follow, whether it have 
 the church behind it or no, for where the community is without it, its 
 people must inevitably go wrong. 
 
 Fast, but very far from least, we have the asset of the schools of the 
 ward. We did not succeed in obtaining very much information of the 
 parochial school at St. Mary’s, only about one-sixth of the children of the 
 ward go to the parochial school, so we must confine ourselves to the Wads¬ 
 worth School where most of the ward children are to be found. 
 We have sometimes heard people say who have seen the kind of 
 homes that some of our children are living in, that they would like to save 
 these children from their homes. This may be sometimes necessary, but 
 we often forget that there is such a thing as saving a child for its home. 
 
by Edwin Alfred Rumball 
 
 23 
 
 Children are often the first to regenerate the homes which have hurt them. 
 We have found this to be so in the Open-Air School in this city. They go 
 back to the homes which have made them weak with ideals which have 
 transformed them into healthy places to live in. This is happening all the 
 time to some extent in the Fourth Ward from the influence of the chil¬ 
 dren who go to No. 12 School. Apart from the regular school influence, 
 we found that this school was the center of all manner of good things. It 
 was in this school that the first Mother’s Club in the city was started. 
 This was some years ago in connection with the kindergarten; it has 
 bought most of the pictures for the school building, and until the Board 
 of Education took up the work, it paid the salary for the gymnasium 
 instructor who taught the boys after school. Soon after the building was 
 finished, they raised a good sized nest-egg towards the installation of a 
 gymnasium on the third floor of the building. They also give the gradua¬ 
 tion banquets and at times even give material help to homes in the neigh¬ 
 borhood. Like the Mother’s Clubs in other schools they raise most of 
 their money by lectures and cooked food sales and so on. From its very 
 character this club is one of the great assets of the ward and in a future 
 chapter we want to point out how it may increase its usefulness. 
 
 Last summer this was the only school in the city which had a vacation 
 school within it. We hope that such a shameful thing will never have to 
 be written of a city of this size again. For six weeks during July and 
 August the school was opened for the happy business of the children who 
 must be doing something. In some way it took the place of the absent 
 playground and many who would have been on the streets all these weeks 
 were able to occupy their days in happy work. A coaching class for the 
 children who were sick and backward during the previous semesters was 
 part of the Vacation School work. In 1909 there was an average attend¬ 
 ance of 138 from 306 children, in 1910 there was an average of 179 from 
 316 children, this year it was larger still. These children came from long 
 distances showing the need for more of these schools. Last year they 
 came from the following schools: 
 
 One hundred twenty-five came from No. 12 School; Clinton Avenue 
 South. Forty-four came from No. 24 School; Benton Street. Thirty- 
 two came from No. 15 School; Monroe Avenue. Twenty-two came from 
 No. 3 School; Tremont Street. Nine came from No. 14 School; Scio 
 Street. Eight came from No. 5 School; Jones Street. Six came from 
 No. 13 School; Hickory Street. Forty-five came from Mt. Mary’s Paro¬ 
 chial School on South Street. 
 
 Then smaller groups from other private schools, from East High, and 
 from Nos. 4, 18, 19, 20, 21 and 35. In one of her reports Miss Brown, 
 the Principal, said: “Could the taxpayers realize just what it means to 
 these children, the physical and moral benefits conferred by keeping them 
 happily busy, there would be a great demand for the extension of this 
 work.” 
 
 One of the most interesting of all the school activities here is the man¬ 
 ner in which the school is meeting the need for the adequate feeding of the 
 backward children. Reports from many cities show that there are plenty 
 of children who come to school hungry and improperly fed and it is not at 
 all unnatural that Rochester should be of this number. The work has not 
 been undertaken here with any feeling that this solution will go very far 
 in its effects. But where the child cannot be reached through the home, 
 the home must be reached through the child. The misfortunes, misdeeds 
 
24 
 
 The Fourth Ward Survey 
 
 and shortcomings of parents must not be allowed to handicap the child. 
 Of course the underfed child is usually not alone in its trouble, there may 
 be an underfed baby at home, an ill-nourished mother and other weak¬ 
 nesses in the domestic life which point to larger problems, but the school 
 can at least reach part of the difficulty and where it can do so, every 
 encouragement should be given. At present the work has been confined 
 to the two special classes which we have already mentioned, for these 
 classes have only one session and the lunch hour comes in of itself. Under 
 the scientific domestic genius of Mrs. Hodgkin of the East High School 
 Lunch Room, one cent portions have been given to these little ones which 
 have made a material difference in their behavior and progress. Here 
 are some of the lunches, let any reader judge of the nutrition which they 
 must give: 
 
 1. Cornmeal Mush, Sliced Oranges and Bread. 2. Baked Beans,. 
 Hot Chocolate and Bread. 3. Creamed Codfish, Apple Sauce, Hot 
 Chocolate and Bread. 4. Creamed Potato Soup, Bread Pudding and 
 Hot Chocolate. 5. Vegetable Soup, Potatoes and Meat Sandwiches, and 
 Hot Chocolate. 6. Baked Split Peas, Stewed Rhubarb, Hot Chocolate 
 and Bread. 
 
 These are just samples from a list of menus which we saw at the 
 school. Each menu costs two cents. Half a portion can be had for one 
 cent. But so popular are the lunches with the children that one day when 
 Cornbeaf Hash was the main portion, one boy enthusiastically bought 
 seven portions. The teachers report that since this activity has been 
 introduced into the school there has been a marked difference in the 
 behavior of the children. We older children ought to have learned long 
 ago that there is very little work that can be done by any one, especially 
 by the little ones, when the “tummy feels bad.” Last year the work of 
 the preparation of this food was done by one of the normal classes of the 
 Mechanics Institute, the equipment being given by the Board of Educa¬ 
 tion. This year the work is being paid for by the Mother’s Club which is 
 attached to the school, on the whole a very much better plan until the 
 Board can be responsible for all the expense connected with it. It ought 
 to be recorded that the children’s pennies practically pay for the portions, 
 and estimated by the most material of standards it is really a very small 
 investment to ask the city to make, for such large returns. To see what 
 other cities at home and abroad are doing in this matter we should like to 
 refer our readers to the Government Bulletin 1909, No. 3, of the United 
 States Bureau of Education, on “The Daily Meals of School Children." 
 This is a sixty page pamphlet which goes into the matter in a very thor¬ 
 ough and wise manner. 
 
 May we say in drawing this article on the assets of the Fourth Ward 
 to a close, that for these assets we are in real need of conservative men 
 and women. If the people and institutions of the ward can be shown 
 that there is danger of these assets being destroyed, the wakening touch 
 will have been given. We need conservators, men and women who will 
 say to the landlords and tenement owners who sell darkness for light,, 
 shacks for shelter, and disease for fresh air, that the Home and the Child 
 and the School are sacred and must be conserved, that these are things 
 which we cannot afford to give up. Men and women who will stand-pat 
 for these things will deserve the honor which all on-coming generations 
 will give to those who know the things which feed the roots of Life. 
 
by Edwin Alfred Rumball 
 
 25 
 
 Q)hat to do in the Ward Now 
 
 The chief warning made to the City of Rochester by the results of 
 this somewhat modest Survey is its call to watch our evil civic tendencies. 
 We have no excuse to repeat the social crimes and disasters of the cities 
 of the old world. Any student of demography can discover in our Ameri¬ 
 can cities and even in Rochester, tendencies which spell trouble in the 
 future for the physical and moral well-being of our race. It took the 
 English factory system with its accompanying congestion of population, 
 one hundred and twenty-five years to awaken England to the fact that 
 in place of the strong English yeomen there had arisen hundreds of thou¬ 
 sands of narrow chested, enaemic stunted factory hands, who were physi¬ 
 cally unfit even to do the dog’s work of fighting. We have already 
 aroused ourselves in this land to these dangers, but the awakening has 
 yet to come to the vast majority, especially to> those who find their ignor¬ 
 ance profitable. It is always hard to convince a man of the evil of any¬ 
 thing that puts money into his pocket. 
 
 It may be well to say at the outset of this section of the report that 
 we do not believe that any one remedy, nor the suggestions and experi¬ 
 ence of any one mind will make the Fourth Ward, “as it is in Heaven.” 
 But we are convinced that the attempt to carry out some of the thoughts 
 of the closing sections of this report will bring wisdom enough to. make 
 the ward twenty times over a better ward to live in. 
 
 The first thing to do in the Fourth Ward is to more efficiently utilize 
 its present assets. This may seem trite advice, but it is one of the most 
 practical suggestions to make. Let us begin with the School, the only 
 real Temple of the People. There are so many Rochester teachers whose 
 social sense is awakened that we believe that they will not need much 
 more than the suggestion of the wealth of their opportunity to begin to 
 work for greater things. The School can be a more efficient center for 
 the children. The chief things that Number Twelve School seems to 
 need for its children are a School Nurse, a Gymnasium and a Play¬ 
 ground. The first of these must have been very evident from our report 
 of the sickness there last year, and also from the fact that so many of 
 the Ward children live in such bad housing conditions. A beginning 
 might be made if such a nurse could spend half her time at this school 
 and half say at Number Fifteen on Monroe Avenue. The Gymnasium 
 has already been begun, but sadly needs finishing. A thousand dollars 
 would be ample to help this part of the plant well on the road to efficiency. 
 A Playground is the greatest need of all. When a ward has literally 
 hundreds of its children with not even a yard to play in, it is fearful to 
 think of the social results. The question of money ought not to enter 
 here, it is too important to delay for want of money. In New York City 
 in 1908, the City fathers spent $15,000,000 on Playgrounds. In some 
 instances the price of the land was enormous; one plot containing less 
 than two acres cost the city $1,811,000. In the far west, cities are bond¬ 
 ing themselves for playgrounds; Rochester cannot afford to have it said 
 of her that in this matter she delays. Let the City acquire property near 
 to the School for a Playground and let it be deeded to the children for¬ 
 ever. They will repay in a citizenship of which we need not be ashamed. 
 It was our building laws that robbed them of their yards, surely it is 
 our bounden duty to provide a common yard for the whole neighborhood! 
 
26 
 
 The Fourth Ward Survey 
 
 If the children are to have these things, the graduate children also 
 have a claim on the School. The five years from fourteen to nineteen 
 in the lives of our young people, are as everyone should know, the most 
 important years in life. Students of crime tell us that the largest per¬ 
 centage of criminals are made during these years. Students of history 
 tell us on the other hand that the first steps towards greatness come from 
 the impressions of these years. Zona Gale, in her recent story, “Mothers 
 of Men,” has one of the women who has been put on a vigilance com¬ 
 mittee to keep the young folks off the streets at nights, ask this poser: 
 “They won’t set home, an’ when we’ve vigilanced ’em off the street,, 
 where are we going to vigilance ’em to?” Then one of the women has 
 an inspiration. “Give ’em the place that’s their’s,” she says. “Give ’em 
 the Schoolhouse, open evenin’s an lit an het an' music an' things doin’.” 
 And so Friendship Village Schoolhouse becomes a Neighborhood Center. 
 
 Civic Improvement Committee 
 
 No one who knows the homes in the Fourth Ward as they are to be 
 found in the tenements will deny that this is one of the things to do in 
 the Ward. Four rooms on the third floor, up a gloomy staircase, with 
 a smelly kitchen, and father and his friends playing cards and smoking, 
 does not make home for the girl who comes home from the factory. She 
 will not stay home, however many sermons are preached on “Home as 
 a Social Center.” She will go to the dancing saloon, the moving picture 
 show, to the streets with the boys, and if she goes farther than she meant 
 to go, we all ought to feel that the blame rests on our shoulders too. 
 Open the Schoolhouse. Put the Dance Hall there, place the Moving Pic¬ 
 ture Show there, and let the healthy desire for recreation find a place 
 for itself under municipal wholesomeness and neighborhood friendliness. 
 Fourth Ward young people now dance over Saloons on South Avenue, 
 except for the few who have found the small dance school at Gannett 
 House, none seem to be having the right environment for their recrea¬ 
 tion. This is something to do for the Fourth Ward now. 
 
by Edwin Alfred Ramball 
 
 2 7 
 
 But the Citizens have also a claim on the Schoolhouse. They need 
 a Ward Commons where they can eat together and foster the spirit of 
 Neighborhood. They need a place in which to register and cast their 
 votes. And what building can there be more fitted than the Great Com¬ 
 munity Hall which we call the Schoolhouse! The Fourth of July Wel¬ 
 come Fests which the Rochester City Club has given to the new citizens 
 of our city each year ought to be carried out in the Wards. Let every 
 Schoolhouse have its dining hall, and let every year witness the gradua¬ 
 tion of our youth into citizenship at such a banquet. Let our New 
 Americans and the Coming-of-Age Americans be the guests of the Neigh¬ 
 borhood and the entrance on the duties of Citizenship come in the honor 
 of Freedom and the dignity of democracy. This will be furthered if we 
 sense the absurdity of asking freemen to use the barber's shops and the 
 Tobacconist’s stores as the altars of their Franchise; the school can serve: 
 as the best altar. If other cities in this country can do this, why not 
 Rochester? Let us begin in the Fourth Ward. All these school activ¬ 
 ities increase the spirit of democracy, and the increase of democracy will 
 be the salvation of the Ward. 
 
 Civic Improvement Committee 
 
 It is very often the honor of the women of our communities to start 
 such betterments and we shall finish our word about the school by call¬ 
 ing for a more efficient Mother’s Club at the School. It was the first to 
 be started in Rochester, and deserves to be the best. At present it seems 
 to be composed mostly of the few mothers, in comfortable homes. As v 
 such it has done many fine things, but it has done nothing as yet to what 
 it will do when every mother in the Ward is made to feel that the Club 
 is her Club. Some good evening meetings, house to house work, inter¬ 
 esting their children, are some of the “paper-plans" which occur to us 
 to help bring this about. A live representative Mother’s Club at Number 
 Twelve School could help the whole ward to civic efficiency. After all, 
 is there a thing mentioned in this Survey which has not fundamental 
 relation to the motherhood of the Ward? If there is one cure for all, it is 
 good mothering. Another asset of the Ward we have said are the 
 Churches. Suggestions for the increase of their efficiency we have already 
 
28 
 
 The Fourth Ward Survey 
 
 made in a preceding chapter. So many are the things that we should 
 like to see the seven churches of the ward performing, that we have 
 been more than once tempted to play the role of a new “John the Divine,” 
 and after hearing loud trumpets behind us, write to the “Seven Churches 
 of the Fourth Ward” the old time words: “I know thy works, that 
 thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead. Be thou watchful 
 and stablish the things that remain, which were ready to die; for I have 
 found no works of thine fulfilled before my God.” We will be content to 
 suggest but one thing that the churches of the ward could do more effi¬ 
 ciently. It will be in the line of their method and will be something 
 that they can all do together; and it will enable them to contribute a 
 real good to the Ward. One of the great needs of the ward is a home 
 where economic and intelligible standards of living are set up and where 
 ■every one finds a friend. In Rochester we call such a place a Housekeep¬ 
 ing Center. Here will live a settlement worker and a Nurse. They will 
 both teach in the homes of the people and will be the clearing house for 
 the ward’s many social needs. The ideals and work of such establish¬ 
 ments can be splendidly studied at the Center already on Lewis Street 
 in this city. The Lewis Street Center is backed and managed by Protes¬ 
 tants, Catholics and by Jewish friends and all is splendidly meeting the 
 needs of the homes. The settlement worker is a Protestant and the 
 nurse is a Catholic. In the Fourth Ward we could do the same. Let 
 all the churches unite to do this thing. It will cost about $2,000 a year. 
 One church in the ward,—a small one, too,—has given during the last 
 sixteen years over $30,000 to foreign missions; all of them are doubt¬ 
 less doing similar irrelevant things. Here they can bring a little bit of 
 tangible heaven to their own doors; and we do not believe that they 
 will wholly dislike seeing their money expended. This is what the 
 Churches CAN do for the Fourth Ward now. 
 
 The third asset in the ward which needs to be brought to greater 
 efficiency is the enforcement of Law; or the better execution of the will 
 of the People. This is one of the most important sections of this chapter 
 and will cause us to refer to many things. It is not putting it too strongly 
 to say that half the misery in the Fourth Ward is from causes that the 
 adequate enforcement of the law could remedy. Most of us go to sleep 
 as soon as we get a good law into the charter, and think that the work 
 of reform is over, where it has only begun. This is why some politicians 
 are so glad to pass a law, it soothes; it puts an end to the troublesome 
 energy of reformers for the time being. It is always possible to get intox¬ 
 icated on Sunday in the Fourth Ward; we have even known the would-be 
 ■drinkers to be waiting in line for the place to open in the early morning. 
 There are police about, but they do not see these things. There were Red 
 Light dens in the Fourth Ward. One place was raided soon after the 
 Survey was made, two others have since gone we know not where. 
 One woman rented two houses for the trade, when her next door neighbor 
 complained of the character of her house. So impossible is it to get tan¬ 
 gible evidence of these things that we can do little more than say that 
 more vigilance is wanted on the part of our police. There are tenements 
 in the ward without fire-escapes and blocks containing many more than 
 the limit of eight families without janitors, and last but far from least 
 sanitary conditions which are a disgrace to a civilized city. The behest 
 that citizens should have respect for the law is hardly anywhere so nulli¬ 
 fied as in this ward. In the face of some of the conditions we were asked 
 what difiference the law made, and we were obliged to confess very little. 
 
by Edwin Alfred Rumball 
 
 29 
 
 We have a splendid over-crowding ordinance, but we found thirty men in 
 four rooms; and in one instance an orphan boy had to sleep in the hall¬ 
 way, because there was no room. We have the finest Health Officer in the 
 country, but we found one toilet to thirty persons; and in another place 
 one to twenty-eight persons; and in one of the places on Main Street 
 bridge, even four families without any toilet at all! We found dark 
 rooms and cellar homes and garbage conditions which were indescribable. 
 All these things mean but one thing, namely, that we are either not will¬ 
 ing or not able to execute the will of the people. But in any case our 
 ability depends on our willingness. If this city had a Department of 
 Health and not a small Bureau in the Department of Public Safety, and 
 appropriations large enough to increase its staff with men who could 
 really work, we believe that the Fourth Ward would soon show a different 
 aspect. We deliberately write of men who can really zvork because we 
 think that it is a policy of the past, and not in harmony with the sanitary 
 ideals of the present to permit old soldiers to be on the staff of a Health 
 Department. The efficiency that is required in such a department calls 
 more and more for energy in the prime of life, and the city has a right to 
 that kind of work. We say this in full respect for the splendid work 
 which our soldiers have rendered under difficult circumstances for their 
 city as well as the country. But we cannot tell of what to do in the 
 Fourth Ward or in any other Ward without calling attention to this great 
 need for greater support for our Health Officer. Personal prejudice- 
 should not be allowed to hinder his work even if we like to possess it for 
 our own morbid pleasure. One thing we feel sure of; if some of his ideals 
 of housing conditions for human beings were realized in this ward we 
 should have less than half of all the other evils. In closing this section 
 we call attention to a provision of that gigantic social reform which has 
 just been made law in England: the Lloyd-George Insurance Bill. It 
 provides that where excessive sickness is found in a locality and it is 
 found to be the fault of some person, a claim may be made against such 
 a person for the extra expenditure incurred by reason of such sickness. 
 A landlord, therefore, who shall permit his tenements to get into such 
 a condition that they cause excessive sickness will be compelled to pay for 
 his negligence. We believe that such a provision in action in this ward 
 would bring a tremendous claim on its landlords; for as we have already 
 shown 50 per cent, of its school children were sick last year and lost over 
 2,000 school days. That many of these tenement landlords are good 
 church members and men honored in the city of Rochester, makes the 
 failure the greater for them. “Give heed to the common good,” says 
 Savonarola, “and forget private interests; for if ye will reform the city 
 to this intent ye will have greater glory than in all past times.’' 
 
 But our ideal of the Fourth Ward cannot even rest content with the- 
 fulfillment of these requirements. Its evils are wider than the walls of 
 the tenements and too deep for the reforming enthusiasm of churches and 
 well intentioned people to reach. If the home—“the trysting place of the 
 generations”—is to be conserved, the moral and economic conditions out 
 of which it comes must be studied. We dare not attempt anything so 
 large as this, but in our conclusion we will try to suggest the line of 
 development which it seems to us will be pursued by those who wisely 
 understand the needs of our modern populations. We close this chapter 
 by drawing attention to the difference which the recently tendered City 
 Plan will make to the Fourth Ward. So beneficial will be its adoption by 
 this city, so helpful for the health of the congested sections, so beautiful 
 
3 o 
 
 The Fourth Ward Survey 
 
 LARGEST BREATHING PLACE IN THE WARD I 1.8 acres 
 
 '“His quiet eyes were looking down on the Fourth Ward as full of sadness in the 
 stone of the monument as if they were the old eyes of days gone by.’’ 
 
 for the eyes of all, that we do not hesitate to ask that at the opportune 
 time, the whole ward seek to have its share fully carried out. It will 
 be seen from the drawings that considerable change is contemplated. In 
 place of the old tenements on the west side of South Avenue, there will 
 be a green parkway, with a promenade along the banks of the river. Trees 
 again will throw their shade along the avenue even as near to Main 
 Street as the Osburn House. The future Harbor of Rochester will be 
 seen from the promenade, and one of the beauty spots of the city will be 
 beside its waters. The Erie Canal bed will form a new street, with a lofty 
 arcade on the north side as is illustrated in two of the pictures given 
 with this chapter. Main Street bridge, which is the beginning of the 
 Fourth Ward, is to have treatment sufficient to let us no longer pass over 
 it without being aware that the river is below us. The more nearly it can 
 be made to approach the Ponte Vechio of Florence the better it will be 
 as an esthetic and a financial proposition. The slight widening and the 
 archways which will give glimpes of the river are well worth having. 
 Some things will have to happen soon when the Erie Canal is abandoned 
 and among other things we hope that it will be realized that the bridge 
 •over the canal on South Avenue which looks like a steel spider-web, “in 
 utter disregard of everything but a simple engineering problem,” is an 
 •opportunity to build there something really beautiful. We owe it to our¬ 
 selves to give to our bridges the well-proportioned simple beauty which 
 has placed the world’s great viaducts among the most dignified structures 
 of the genius of man. On paper a bridge may be just a question of math¬ 
 ematics, but out in the open it must be a part of the skies and the world 
 .around; and must blend with all. 
 
by Edwin Alfred Rumball 
 
 3i 
 
 Once during the warm summer nights we journeyed through Wash¬ 
 ington Square beneath the noble monument which we have raised to the 
 memory of the men who stood beside Abraham Lincoln in the war 
 days. His quiet eyes were looking down on the Fourth Ward as full of 
 sadness in the stone of the monument as if they were the old eyes of days 
 gone by. Around the base of the memorial huddled together in scores 
 were fathers, mothers and children of the Fourth Ward. The grass 
 was covered with their bodies. Do we need to be told whence they had 
 come and why they had come there in the dead of night? Listen. These 
 were the homeless folk of the Fourth Ward. It is true they had tene¬ 
 ments to live in, they had dark windowless rooms in which to sleep, they 
 had stuffy passages and even cool cellars where they could have laid down 
 after the days’ work in the factory was over. But these are not Homes. 
 They had left their hot lofts and sought the grass at Lincoln’s feet; these 
 who have the right to stand with him as American citizens, who when 
 the next Lincoln comes to abolish the new slavery, will be the soldiers of 
 the cause; these were the homeless folk of the Fourth Ward. Homeless 
 by the law; homeless by the consent of the Seven Churches; homeless 
 in order to warn us in time of the tendencies of our present unsocial legis¬ 
 lation, and bring gladness again into the sad eyes that still look down on 
 the ward and its woe. We do not believe that anything that we have 
 suggested is hard to perform, we feel that the task is easy to those who 
 will set the rights of the people above all others; easy to those who will 
 set the welfare of men and women and children above the prosperity of 
 business; easy for any city administration to help put into operation if 
 once it becomes such as will care more for the making of citizens like 
 Lincoln than for the protection of evils which send homeless ones to the 
 grassy base of his monument. Such are some of the things that seem'to 
 us as needful to do in the Fourth Ward now. 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 After all our reforming has been accomplished we shall still have 
 the fundamental wrongs at the basis of modern society which are respon¬ 
 sible for most of the troubles in the Fourth Ward as in other sections of 
 our populations. There is no call to blame any one for this, we have not 
 yet evolved our Social State, but the growing sense of the injustice of the 
 present scheme and the awakening of a deeper sense of democracy for 
 industry as well as government may throw the opportunity for greater 
 changes in our path sooner than we think. Space forbids that we paint a 
 picture of the future of the Fourth Ward under a regime of social- 
 democratic legislation; but that alone will make the conditions possible for 
 the abolition of tenements, car-fares, wage-slavery, half-education, and 
 the political corruption, which things are so largely to blame for the 
 poverty there to-day. When the moral and economic conditions out of 
 which the modern home comes have been studied and changed, the “tryst- 
 ing-place of the generations” will be such in fact as well as name. To give 
 HOME back to the people, is the pledge of the wisest and best men and 
 women in the great modern international Socialist movement. They 
 would make the world over into a commune like the home. Till that 
 comes or some condition as good, let us bend cheerfully to the common 
 toil of human service, patient in the knowledge that we cannot finish the 
 task, that in the Fiftieth Century there will be something left to do. But 
 what we leave undone will dynamite the souls of men, women and little 
 •children who are struggling for life by our side to-day. 
 
Civic Improvement Committ 
 
 Suggestion for Treatment of Old Aqueduct, Court Street Bridge and Arcade