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revenue levied in the city of New York alone is now ten times greater than the entire sum raised by the Government of the whole American Union at the end of last century. At that time the average amount paid by each inhabitant of New York was about 4s. per head, man, woman, and child. Last year it was nearly 80s. per head; showing an increase in the pressure of local taxation, within that period, of 2,000 per cent.!
When we inquire into the causes of the increased mortality in the "Empire City" of the Union, whose journalism inspires public sentiment, and manufactures public opinion for the "Model Republic," we find that one of the chief sources of the evil has been the unchecked progress of what is called "the tenement system," a wretched sort of barracks on a gigantic scale, in which some three or four hundred thousands of the working classes of New York find lodgings.[1] Last November, when rumours of the approach of cholera had awakened public attention to the fact that so many nurseries of pestilence were growing up in the very midst of the city, the New York Tribune gave a report of "A Tour among the Tenements,"from which I take the following graphic passage, in order to show you how much more powerful the aggregate greed of an unlimited democracy is likely to become than "the aggregate
- ↑ Some idea of the magnitude of these dwellings may be gathered from one, which is 50 feet front by 250 feet deep. It has an alley running the whole depth on each side of it. These alley-ways are excavated to the depth of the cellars, arched over, and covered with flag stoops, in which, at intervals, are open gratings to give light; the whole length of which space is occupied by water-closets without doors, and under which are open drains communicating with the street sewer. This building is occupied mostly by foreigners. It is calculated for 126 families, each family having a room in which they cook, eat, sleep, and sit. The only ventilation is by a window which opens against a dead wall eight feet distant, and to which rises the vapour from the vaults below. Such buildings are, many of them, provided with gas and water, and they vary in the degree of ventilation and sanitary regulation. The importance they occupy in this metropolis is manifest in the fact that the population of the city of New York was, in 1861, 810,000; of which one-half lived in tenement houses.—Appleton's American Cyclopædia, 1861.
