The houses of the ward, for the most part wooden, were originally built for one family and are now occupied by several. They
are after the type of the inconvenient frame cottages found in the
poorer suburbs twenty years ago. Many of them were built where
they now stand; others were brought thither on rollers, because
their previous sites had been taken for factories. The fewer brick
tenement buildings which are three or four stories high are comparatively new, and there are few large tenements. The little
wooden houses have a temporary aspect, and for this reason, perhaps, the tenement-house legislation in Chicago is totally inadequate. Rear tenements flourish; many houses have no water
supply save the faucet in the back yard, there are no fire escapes,
the garbage and ashes are placed in wooden boxes which are fastened to the street pavements. One of the most discouraging features about the present system of tenement houses is that many
are owned by sordid and ignorant immigrants. The theory that
wealth brings responsibility, that possession entails at length education and refinement, in these cases fails utterly. The children of
an Italian immigrant owner may "shine" shoes in the street, and
his wife may pick rags from the street gutter, laboriously sorting
them in a dingy court. Wealth may do something for her selfcomplacency and feeling of consequence; it certainly does nothing for her comfort or her children's improvement nor for the
cleanliness of any one concerned. Another thing that prevents
better houses in Chicago is the tentative attitude of the real estate men. Many unsavory conditions are allowed to continue
which would be regarded with horror if they were considered permanent. Meanwhile, the wretched conditions persist until at
least two generations of children have been born and reared in
them.
In every neighborhood where poorer people live, because rents
are supposed to be cheaper there, is an element which, although
uncertain in the individual, in the aggregate can be counted
upon. It is composed of people of former education and opportunity who have cherished ambitions and prospects, but who are
caricatures of what they meant to be —"hollow ghosts which
blame the living men." There are times in many lives when there
is a cessation of energy and loss of power. Men and women of education and refinement come to live in a cheaper neighborhood
because they lack the ability to make money, because of ill
health, because of an unfortunate marriage, or for other reasons