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From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Sunday, September 17, 1905.
IN BROOKLYN'S GHETTO.
For eleven months two young women settlement workers
and college graduates have been living in the heart of
the Brooklyn Ghetto. They have been received as
residents of this interesting colony of strange people
with strange habits. These two observing students have
become acquainted with the methods in the daily life of
the Yiddish folk with whom they have cast their lot. The
things they have seen and the reforms they have
instituted are related in this article, written by one
of them. As they will continue for some time to make
their home in the district they have chosen as their
field of labor, it will be apparent why their names must
remain unpublished.
It was
simply and solely the picturesqueness of the Brooklyn Ghetto that
attracted two young college women to seek a home in its heart nearly
two years ago. That the Jewish housewives of the neighborhood needed
the example of a better domestic science was realized by the
strangers at their first visit. That the mothers needed lessons in
the way of brining up their children was also realized.
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A Typical Dweller in the Ghetto.
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An Everyday Street Scene. |
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That public-spirited residents were needed to spur on the city
departments, responsible for a better care of the neighborhood, to a
realization of that responsibility could be seen in a flash. That a
small park and playgrounds, as well as public baths should be worked
for by residents of the Ghetto was easy enough to realize. But
because this sketch is to afford an opportunity for perfect honesty,
it must be stated that it was the genuinely quaint and unusual
qualities of the Ghetto that persuaded the students to leave their
homes in a fashionable part of Brooklyn to make a home in Seigel
Street, the Fifth Avenue of the neighborhood.
There is no millionaires' row in this
street, but there is to be found the most exclusive element of the
Ghetto. The students at first regretted that their demand for a
bathtub took them into this richer neighborhood. The search for a
home having a bathroom began two years ago. At that time model
tenements were beginning to appear. |
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begun to replace the old air shafts. Each room was light and
well ventilated but bathtubs were considered a superfluity. They were not arranged for in the
plans for the new tenements that were already rented even while
they existed only on paper. The students, thoroughly resolved to
live in the Ghetto, became the champion of the bathroom idea.
They visited the builders that had already broken ground for
several new tenements. A laugh was the only answer given in the
first pleading. Brooklyn's Ghetto dwellers would not know what
use to make of a bathtub. The idea, an entirely new one, was
evidently a source of mirth to the builders and not to be taken
at all seriously. The students were in earnest, however, and
bent upon imparting this seriousness to the landlords. It
required patience and hard work. Two houses were completed, each
providing homes for fifteen families and without bathrooms. It
looked discouraging but the students stuck to it. After ground
had been broken for two more houses and the foundations all but
completed, the students made their way beyond the builder to the
owner himself.
It was a source of keen regret
to the students that their demand for a bathtub led them into
the very heart of the wealthiest portion of the neighborhood,
but poverty begins before affluence ends in a Jewish quarter,
and the new residents soon found to their delight that the home
among the rich was the only way of making the acquaintance of
the prosperous merchants, while the poor were more willing to be
visited by dwellers in the envied sections than by their own
next door neighbors.
With the opening of the
Williamsburg Bridge came a new influx of Jews from Manhattan's
lower East Side. They came across the East River by thousands.
Hundreds had long lived in America, while hundreds were new to
this soil and were making their first home in the free country
in Brooklyn. It took but a few months from the time of the
opening of the new bridge to more than double the Jewish
population of Williamsburg alone. The families coming from
Manhattan were happy, for better houses at less money were to be
had here and because of the new bridge the old occupations
across the river could still be carried on. The Jews from abroad
were far happier than it had ever entered their minds a human
being could be. New life had been opened to them that they could
not grasp in its entirety, so great was the joy that it held. In
the height of this new delight came a crash. Landlords had
waited until every nook and every corner of their property was
crowded, then raised the rents. There was scarcely a family that
had not been paying every cent possible for rent, but the order
was relentless: "Pay the increase or move."
Only one way of complying could
be found. It was for two families to huddle in where before one
had lived. Crowded living conditions had long been known in this
quarter, but the date of the increased rent scale marked the
birth of a system of huddling together far more suggestive of
animal life than of anything human. There were many families
that could afford the higher rents and are today the occupants
of the new tenements. They, too, live in close quarters, but
only where there is dire poverty is the the horrible animal-like
huddling. The apartments in the model tenements consist of three
and four rooms in addition to the bathrooms. Five rooms, the
haushalterin (the housekeeper) will tell you, as she shows
you into the largest and most expensive suite. Nor will she like
it if you prefer to call it four rooms and an alcove. |
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Market Day.
| On the same floor with the students lives an aged Hebrew
and German teacher, whose old wife loves to patronize the
students, whom she calls "Strange kindern," and to whom she
gives many a lecture in household economy, without charge
and with the utmost good will thrown in. The fact that these
lessons are free is greatly appreciated by the students
because of an early experience that they had with the old
woman. Soon after moving into the house one of students was
struggling, in good German, to make a marketman understand
her instructions about the delivery of her groceries. The
struggle was being carried on at the dumbwaiter shaft in the
hall. The old teacher came out in time to realize the
difficulty. The student could speak only good German, while
the tradesman could speak only Yiddish. Neither could grasp
the language of the other to a sufficient extent to effect
an understanding. The student was feeling the misery of
failure when the old woman offered to act as interpreter.
The proffered services were accepted gladly because of he
opportunity which seemed o be opening of becoming better
acquainted. For a month these attentions were continued,
although in half that time the student had mastered enough
Yiddish to speak to the grocer with comparative ease. At the
end of the month a neatly folded bit of paper was handed to
the student by the teacher. When opened it was found to be a
bill for services as interpreter. The bill was made out for
$5, but a note pinned to the corner explained that only
one-half that amount was expected, as the bill was made out
for the higher figure in case of its being seen by other
people. The students have now been living in the Ghetto
eleven months. They have kept in constant touch with fifteen
families during that time. Seven of these households have
money enough to warrant good homes, and wholesome livings,
while the remaining eight are typical of thousands of the
poorer families. The well-to-do families are in the same
house with the students. There are four children in the
smallest family and eight in the largest. Invariably a
relative finds his place around the family board and hearth
in addition. Among the very poor, "the boarder method" is
regarded as the sole way of paying the rent. But among the
better-to-do, a social or a clannish feeling is at the
bottom of the custom. That this custom should be broken is
earnestly realized by the students, but just how it can be
broken is the all-important problem to solve. That it is an
unwise custom can be readily realized when one considers
that seven, nine or even eleven persons of a family are
living in three rooms. The admission of an outsider can only
be allowed at the expense of privacy in sleeping and in
living quarters. Definite good has been accomplished,
however, by the students and in the most friendly and
neighborly way. Their apartment door is frequently left wide
open that their housekeeping methods may be observed. And
they have been observed in a score or more ways. The
observations are made most frequently by the children. they
carry home to their parents the new ideas and it is to them
that the credit for the actual changes that are made
belongs. The housewives are slower for more reasons than
that of greater age. One, however, grasped the laundry
situation rather more quickly than would have been expected.
The students had been in their new home but six weeks. Six
different washings had been hung upon their clothesline. The
interested neighbor across the court asked the washerwoman
why she washed so often. The question was overheard by one
of the students, who gladly explained why cleanliness was
such a necessary trait in good living. The questioner's mind
was certainly good ground upon which to sow the seed. She
confessed that her sheets and pillowcases were washed but
two, three or four times a year, while her blankets were
only washed "when they needed it."
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Yiddish speaking parents that have become
acquainted with the students testify to their gratitude for the
new home among them, because of the greater respect that they
now receive from their children. The students took the trouble
to learn Yiddish that they might speak with the parents to whom
English was unknown.
Many of the children had come to despise the
jargon in the public schools. Their parents could speak nothing
else and were fast being ignored or despised by their offspring.
When strangers would take the trouble to learn the language, a
new value was attached to it by the youngsters, with a resulting
happiness to all concerned.
photo: The Street Nursery. |
Another good effect of the new home has been upon the youngest
children's digestive systems. The students, like a large
percentage of unmarried women, have the strictest of ideas as to
how children should be trained. Jewish mothers, like hundreds of
Gentile mothers, frequently think that a small child opens its
mouth only to have it filled with food. And such food! It makes
no difference whether the child has teeth. It is given anything
at hand, with the utmost disregard of the law of cause and
effect. The students at once put up a big fight in behalf of
good digestion for the tiny tots. All fifteen mothers--for each
has a new baby--were labored with in one way or another until
they were made more or less firm in the habit of feeding the
baby every two or three hours only, according to the age of the
tot. In many instances it required the spending of entire nights
in some homes to see that the plan but just begun was carried
out.Fifteen families are indeed a small proportion of a
population of 175,000 or 200,000. There are many friends of the
students who feel that their life in the Ghetto is one of
unjustifiable sacrifice. Others think that the work has been
done for self-aggrandizement and often ask the students what
they have to gain by their queer experiment. To the first set of
questions the students reply that the work, though hard, has
never been tedious, and the value of directing a human life into
broader and better channels can be appreciated only by some one
who has done it. To the second set of questioners the students
are likely to reply, with a manner that is a bit patronizing,
that they hope to gain experience. Both students have been
settlement workers. Both feel that the very walls of a
settlement house form a complete barrier between those that
would help and those whom they would help, especially when they
be Jews. Thus it is that the experiment has been made and thus
it is that it has been proven the work has really been a leaven.
It has been such a little leaven, but it has been in the very
heart of the entire lump. |
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