the spirit of good will, the author tries to spare that most sensitive thing in the world—community pride, but the truth comes out and is hungrily sought and widely quoted because the drama at Lawrence had startled the public. The volume has many passages of which these are samples:—[1]
"One tenement had a record of six deaths in five successive families in this tuberculosis incubator. This showed the absolute necessity of protecting people against themselves. It became necessary at once to inspect the tenements, and the Board soon found itself opposed by the greed of certain landlords. Dirt, darkness and dampness, the three worst features to fight, are fostered by such conditions. . . . One landlord said in cold blood that property of this sort had paid for itself within five years. But the price of such a profit was the health of his tenants."
". . . the head nurse employed by the District Nursing Department of the Middlesex Women's Club, expressed herself forcibly upon the conditions she found in her visits during the past year among the sick poor. 'I have been amazed,' she said, 'literally stunned, by the conditions under which many people live in Lowell. It is confined to no particular locality; there are bad conditions, in spots, scattered all over the city.'"
"Cellars are allowed to go unpurified by whitewash, until the odor from them is discernible from the outside of the building. Then there are rotten timbers, casements falling with decay, and a general atmosphere of dampness and mouldiness that is unwhole-
- ↑ The Record of a City, G. F. Kenngott; Macmillan & Co., 1912.
