HIS LIFE AND WORK 



boast of the city was Fulton's new steamboat, 

 the Clermont, which could waddle to Albany 

 and back, if all went well, in three days or 

 possibly four. 



As for social conditions, they were so hope- 

 lessly bad that few had the heart to improve 

 them. The house that we call a "slum tene- 

 ment" to-day would have made an average 

 American hotel in 1809. Rudeness and rowdy- 

 ism were the rule. Drunkenness was as com- 

 mon, and as little considered, as smoking is 

 at the present time; there was no organized 

 opposition to it of any kind, except one little 

 temperance society at Saratoga. There were 

 no sewers, and much of the water was drawn 

 from putrid wells. Many faces were pitted 

 with small-pox. Cholera and yellow jack 

 or strange hunger-fevers cut wide swaths of 

 death again and again among the helpless people. 

 There was no science, of course, and no sanita- 

 tion, and no medical knowledge except a medley 

 of drastic measures which were apt to be as 

 dangerous as the disease. 



The desperate struggle to survive appears 



[7] 



