Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). The Battle with the Slum. 1902.
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the promise. The whole Gap turned out to do the dead bully honor. I have not heard from the Gap, and hardly from Hell’s Kitchen, in five years. The last news from the Kitchen was when the thin wedge of a column of negroes, in their uptown migration, tried to squeeze in, and provoked a race war; but that in fairness should not be laid up against it. In certain local aspects it might be accounted a sacred duty; as much so as to get drunk and provoke a fight on the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne. But on the whole the Kitchen has grown orderly. The gang rarely beats a policeman
