How the Other Half Lives: Audiobook Sample
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
long ago, it was said that 1/2 of the world does not know how the other half lives. That was true then it did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles and less for the fate of those who are underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat. There came a time when the discomforting crowding below were so great and the consequent upheavals so violent that it was no longer an easy thing to Dio. And then the upper half fell to enquiring. What was the matter? Information on the subject has been accumulating rapidly since, and the whole world has had its hands full answering for its old ignorance. In New York, the youngest of the world's great cities, that time came later than elsewhere because the crowding had not been so great. There were those who believe that it would never come, but their hopes were vain. Greed and reckless selfishness rot like results here, as in the cities of older lands. When the great riot occurred in 18 63 so reads the testimony of the secretary of the Prison Association of New York before a legislative committee appointed to investigate causes of the increase of crime in the state 25 years ago. Every hiding place and nursery of crime discovered itself by immediate and active participation in the operations of the mob. Those very places and domiciles and all that are like them are today nurseries of crime and of devices and disorderly courses, which lead to crime. By far the largest part, 80% at least of crimes against poverty and against the person are perpetrated by individuals who have either lost connection with home life or never had any or whose homes had ceased to be sufficiently separate, decent and desirable. To afford what are regarded as ordinary, wholesome influences of home and family, the younger criminals seem to come almost exclusively from the worst tenement house districts. That is, when traced back to the very places where they had their homes in the city here. Of one thing, New York made sure at the early stage of the inquiry, the boundary line of the other half lives through the tenements. It is 10 years and over now, since the line divided New York's population evenly. Today, 3/4 of its people live in the tenements. In the 19th century, drift of the population to the city's is sending ever increasing multitudes to crowd them. The 15,000 tenant houses that were the despair of the sanitary in in the past generation have swelled into 37,000 and more than 1,200,000 persons call them home. The one way out he saw rapid transit to the suburbs has brought no relief. We know now that there is no way out that the system that was the evil offspring of public neglect and private greed has come to stay a storm center forever of our civilization, nothing is left but to make the best of a bad bargain, what the tenements are and how they grow toe what they are. We shall see here after the story is dark enough, drawn from the plane public records to send a chill to any heart. If it shall appear that the sufferings and the sins of the other half and the evil they breed are but as a just punishment upon the community, that gave it no other choice, it will be because that is the truth. The boundary line lies there because while the forces for good on one side vastly outweigh the bad, it we're not well, otherwise in the tenements, all the influences make for evil because they are the hotbeds of the epidemics that carried death to rich and poor alike. The nurseries of populism and crime that filler jails and police courts that throw off a scum of 40,000 human wrecks to the island asylums and workhouses year by year. That turned out in the last eight years around half 1,000,000 beggars to prey upon our charities that maintain a standing army of 10,000 tramps with all that implies because above all, they touch the family life with deadly moral contagion. It is their worst crime, inseparable from the system that we have toe own it. The child of our own wrong does not excuse it, even though it gives it claim upon our utmost patients and tenderness. Charity. What are you going to do about it? Is the question of today. It was asked once of our city in taunting defiance by a band of political cut throats, the legitimate outgrowth of life on the tenement house level Law and Order found the answer then and prevailed with are enormously swelling population held in this galling bondage. Well, that answer always be given. It will depend on how fully the situation that prompted the challenges grasped 40% of the distress among the poor, said a recent official report is due to drunkenness. But the first legislative committee ever appointed to probe this sore went deeper down and uncovered its roots. The conclusion forced itself upon it that certain conditions and associations of human life and habitation are the prolific parents of corresponding habits and morals, and it recommended the prevention of drunkenness by providing for every man a clean and comfortable home.