In a narrow doorway, so narrow that perforce we stepped over her,
sat a woman with a young babe, nursing at breasts grossly naked and
libelling all the sacredness of motherhood. In the black and narrow hall
behind her we waded through a mess of young life, and essayed an even
narrower and fouler stairway. Up we went, three flights, each landing
two feet by three in area, and heaped with filth and refuse.
There were seven rooms in this abomination called a house. In six of the
rooms, twenty-odd people, of both sexes and all ages, cooked, ate, slept,
and worked. In size the rooms averaged eight feet by eight, or possibly
nine. The seventh room we entered. It was the den in which five men
"sweated." It was seven feet wide by eight long, and the table at which
the work was performed took up the major portion of the space. On this
table were five lasts, and there was barely room for the men to stand to
their work, for the rest of the space was heaped with cardboard, leather,
bundles of shoe uppers, and a miscellaneous assortment of materials used
in attaching the uppers of shoes to their soles.
In the adjoining room lived a woman and six children. In another vile
hole lived a widow, with an only son of sixteen who was dying of
consumption.
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