sat a woman with a young babe nursing at breasts
grossly naked and libelling all the sacredness of
motherhood. In the black and narrow hall behind
her we waded through a mess of young life, and
essayed an even narrower and fouler stairway. Up
we went, three flights, each landing two feet by
three in area, and heaped with filth and refuse.

There were seven rooms in this abomination
called a house. In six of the rooms, twenty-odd
people, of both sexes and all ages, cooked, ate,
slept, and worked. In size the rooms averaged
eight feet by eight, or possibly nine. The sev
enth room we entered. It was the den in which
five men sweated. It was seven feet wide by
eight long, and the table at which the work was
performed took up the major portion of the space.
On this table were five lasts, and there was barely
room for the men to stand to their work, for the
rest of the space was heaped with cardboard,
leather, bundles of shoe uppers, and a miscellane
ous assortment of materials used in attaching the
uppers of shoes to their soles.

In the adjoining room lived a woman and six
children. In another vile hole lived a widow, with
an only son of sixteen who was dying of consump
tion. The woman hawked sweetmeats on the
street, I w r as told, and more often failed than not
in supplying her son with the three quarts of milk

[[57]]

p056 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p057w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p058

v?