i?6 The Life Worth Living 



were made ready for the first colony of these 

 people. When it came to actually leaving 

 New York there was some trouble in inducing 

 a dozen families to go, but by collecting people 

 with many children and making the rents of 

 the cottages almost nominal, a dozen families 

 were found to make the experiment. In less 

 than a year and a half the scheme was aban- 

 doned. At no time were the cottages all occu- 

 pied after the first month, and it required great 

 inducements to prevail upon the tenants to re- 

 main more than a quarter. The reasons given 

 by them for returning to New York were, in 

 all cases, the same: the women of the family 

 were lonely they missed the society of the 

 tenements. They missed the life of the streets, 

 the drunken brawls, the yells and screams, the 

 dirt, the noise, the heat, the foul air and lan- 

 guage of the slums. The children may have 

 enjoyed the country, but their elders wanted 

 society. Going higher in the social scale, it 

 seems to be very much the same story. People 

 with not much to think about cannot get on 

 without the crowd, no matter what kind of a 

 crowd. I am convinced that this is a far more 



