56 KANSAS UNIVERSITY QIARTERLY. 



packing house. The work done by this church in dispensary and 

 employment bureau and other phases of so-called institutional 

 church work is sadly crippled for lack of means. 



On Sunday morning the "Patch" was visited. This is an irreg- 

 ular tract lying west of Armour's packing house and bordering on 

 the river. About eleven hundred people live in this place. One 

 two story house with a multitude of shanties and small houses 

 of from two to four rooms, comprise the buildings. The land is 

 under litigation and according!}' is leased to tenants. Fifty cents 

 per month will secure enough land upon which to build a small 

 house. The roads are narrow and winding, very filth}', even in 

 winter time, with refuse and debris of all sorts. Vaults, cisterns 

 and houses adjoin each other in close proximity. This settlement 

 is almost whollv given over to foreigners, and here one finds club 

 life existing. In these clubs, numbering from five to thirty-five in 

 membership, board is obtained at from $1.40 to $1.50 per week. 

 Each man pa}s the cook S2.25 per month, in return for which she 

 cooks, takes care of the entire house, and does each man's wash- 

 ing and mending. Most of the clubs own their houses. Five 

 hundred eighty men boarders live thus in these areas. These facts 

 are reliable, as they were given me by a young man named Mott, a 

 grocery clerk who lives in the "Patch." On Sunday afternoon 

 furniture is packed out into the street and the house is cleared for, 

 a carousal. Beer, tobacco and jokes are the order of the day, and 

 woe be to any unlucky missionary who goes among the Poles and 

 Austrians on that day, for if he refuses to drink with them his life 

 is not secure. On the bank of the river live some humble washer- 

 women, and so great — -and justly, too — is their fear of these men 

 that they dare not leave their homes after dark. It is needless to 

 say that morality is very low. 



Just before we left the "Patch" we visited a boarding house of 

 four rooms in which lived, besides the man and his wife, ten 

 boarders, all Bohemians. The man receives $g per week in the 

 packing house. His wife works like a slave, and is on terms of 

 intimacv with all the men. We are wondering if there is any light 

 in this darkness, and we find here and there signs that there is light. 



A little farther on we visited Mrs. Lewis, whom we found sick in 

 bed. She earns about $2 per week washing in a room in which it 

 is impossible to stand upright. On account of an injury to her 

 hand some years ago, from which she still suffers occasionally, she 

 is unfit for work in the packing house. Her daughter, some 

 fifteen years of age, lives at home in their house, which is offered 

 for sale at $15. About three years ago she professed conversion, 



