Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). The Battle with the Slum. 1902.
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too much like robbery; so the owner was allowed to keep it. It takes time and a good many lives to grow a sentiment such as this law expressed. The Anglo-Saxon respect for vested rights is strong in us also. I remember going through a ragged school in London, once, and finding the eyes of the children in the infant class red and sore. Suspecting some contagion, I made inquiries, and was told that a collar factory next door was the cause of the trouble. The fumes from it poisoned the children’s eyes.
“And you allow it to stay, and let this thing go on?” I asked, in wonder.
Richard Watson Gilder, Chairman of the Tenement House Commission of 1894.
The superintendent shrugged his shoulders. “It is their factory,” he said.
I was on the point of saying something that might not have been polite, seeing that I was a guest, when I remembered that, in the newspaper which I carried in my pocket, I had just been reading a plea of some honorable M. P. for a much-needed
