PRESENT PROBLEMS OF THE SCHOOL 105 



A partial solution of the problem is to open the school buildings 

 and yards in the afternoon and evening throughout the school year 

 and during the summer vacation for purposes of manual training, 

 gymnastics, athletics, and free play. The New York educational 

 authorities are using the school buildings in this way. The result 

 is that thousands of children find rest, recreation, and improvement 

 in the school buildings; that the " little mothers " find peace and 

 quiet for their infant charges; and that hundreds of street gangs are 

 converted into boys' clubs earnestly seeking self-improvement. 



Even, however, if every school-house in the city were used at all 

 reasonable hours for purposes of recreation and improvement, the 

 measure would still fall short of counteracting the tenement-house 

 evil. The tenement-house destroys the home; and without the 

 well-ordered home and its influences the school can accomplish 

 comparatively little. Nothing short of a revolution in the existing 

 tenement-house system will restore the life of the poor in the city of 

 New York to something like normal conditions. And how is this to 

 be accomplished? I answer unhesitatingly that the tenement-house, 

 as it has been known in New York City, must be eradicated. 



University and other social settlements are doing good, small parks 

 afford some relief, and the public schools are doing a good deal and 

 may do much more, but none of these instrumentalities goes to the 

 root of the matter. The central evil of the crowded tenement is that 

 it destroys home and family life, and no cure will be complete except 

 a cure which restores to the poor man in cities the possibility of 

 making a home for his wife and children. To this end the munici- 

 pality should lay down strict rules, determined by experts, as to the 

 height, floor-space, air-space, and number of families to be accommo- 

 dated, according to which all tenements built by private owners shall 

 be constructed. New York took a considerable stride in this direc- 

 tion by its tenement-house law of 1901, but the remedy is far from 

 being sufficient. The municipality should employ its credit to 

 purchase tracts of unoccupied land upon which to erect model 

 homes for workingmen amid pleasant and sanitary surroundings, 

 and rent, or sell them, at a moderate profit. 



To such a scheme the objection will be made that it is rank paternal- 

 ism. I answer that paternalism is justified when private initiative 

 fails to root out an evil that is sapping the vitality of the nation at its 

 root - - the home life of the people. Again, it will be objected that 

 municipal management is often, if not generally, characterized by 

 carelessness, extravagance, and fraud. The all-sufficient answer is, 

 first, that no amount of plundering and blundering on the part of 

 municipal authorities could equal in its bad effects the evil wrought 

 by the heart lessness and rapacity of tenement landlords; and, in the 

 second place, that the experience of municipal authorities amply 



