THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



13 



Photograph from Edwin I^evick 



A MODERN APARTMENT HOUSE OF THE TYPE PREVAILING AEONG RIVERSIDE DRIVE 



Nearly four million people live in "tenements" in New York, for under the law a "tene- 

 ment" is anything from one of the frowsy seven-story affairs in the lower and poorer East 

 Side, overrun by poor children, to the fashionable apartment house on Riverside Drive, open 

 only to tenants who have big bank rolls but no children. 



would seem a paradise for all the germs 

 in the catalogue that city is New York. 

 From every continent, every clime, and 

 every country have come its inhabitants. 

 For the most part those who come from 

 foreign lands are as ignorant about the 

 germ theory of disease when they arrive 

 as a primary pupil is ignorant about dif- 

 ferential calculus. 



Every one knows that crowding tends 

 to magnify the problem of public health. 

 "Too thick to thrive" is an alliterative 

 phrase which diagnoses the health situ- 

 ation in many an overcrowded population 

 center. When it is remembered that on 

 the average square mile in Manhattan 

 there are nearly as many people as in the 

 whole State of Nevada, and that down 



