The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 15, February 18, 1897

Spain is in a very unhappy state at present. The people are angry at having spent so much money, and wasted so many lives, over the wars in Cuba and the Philippine Islands, without arriving at any result, and they are blaming the Government for not trying to bring about peace.

It is more than likely that a change in the government will soon take place.

The present Government is very angry with Weyler, because it has come to light that many of the marches he has cabled about to Spain have not been made at all. He has taken the train wherever he could, and if he has seen no bands of insurgents from the car windows he has telegraphed that peace was restored, and no more rebels were to be found in the province.

The latest news of all is, that the Spanish Government in Madrid is preparing a paper which will be sent to Cuba very shortly. It offers the Cubans Home Rule, and gives them a great many rights that they do not now possess.

While the Cubans are pleased at this, they have not much faith in the offer, and say that unless the United States promises to see that Spain carries out her promises, they will not consider the offer at all.

The principal Cubans are waiting to see the actual paper before they say much about it.

In the mean while, many of the Spanish soldiers are deserting from their own ranks, and going over to the Cuban side.

The Spaniards have been offering every inducement to get the Cubans to desert, and go over to them, but hardly any have done so—the only person of importance being the infamous Dr. Zertuccha, who betrayed Maceo.

A telegram from Havana says that a major in the Spanish army, with 100 men and 50,000 rounds of ammunition, joined General Gomez the other day. At Puerto Principe, a Spanish colonel, with a whole company of well-armed men, also went over to the Cubans.

The Cubans think this is a very favorable sign for them, and look for a speedy end to the war.

The filibustering steamers Three Friends and Dauntless have been released.

Their owners have had to promise to give them up again whenever they are wanted. They have also had to give the court some money, which they will lose if the ships are not brought back when the court calls for them.

If the cases of piracy and filibustering against them are found to be true, the ships will become the property of the Government, and the owners will lose them altogether.

The United States cruiser Montgomery has been ordered to Key West, to prevent filibustering parties going over to Cuba, and the Raleigh, which has been doing this duty, has gone to be repaired.

People who are interested in the comfort of the poor of New York are very glad to know that some dreadful rear tenement houses in Mott Street are to be taken away by order of the Board of Health.

We all read about tenement houses, and we all feel sorry that many of the houses for the poor to live in are not as comfortably built as they might be.

Very few of us know the discomforts that the poor have to endure, who are obliged to live in the old, badly planned tenement-houses.

Poor people must live near their work, because they cannot afford to pay car-fares back and forth every day. So the tenement-houses are generally built in neighborhoods where the work is being done, and people have to take them clean or dirty, well or badly built, because they must make their home in that neighborhood.

In some of the older and poorer tenements, many families live on the same floor; they are crowded together in the most dreadful manner, and instead of having plenty of light, air, and water to help make them endurable, they have little or none of any of these necessary things.

In these houses the want of water is one of the greatest evils. Instead of giving each tenement a nice sink, and a water-boiler at the back of the stove, so that people can have hot and cold water all the time, there is no water put into any of the rooms.

Outside on the landing there is water, and a rough sink, which the tenants of each floor use in common. They have to go into the hall to fetch every drop of water they use, and this is the only place they have to empty the dirty water away.

In some houses the sinks are not on every floor, and in these, the poor women have to drag their heavy buckets of water up and down the stairs.

The tenements are not heated. Each tenant has to keep his own rooms warm.

Every drop of warm water they need for cooking or washing has first to be boiled over the stove, and so the poor are forced to use a great deal more coal than more well-to-do people need.

It is not because they don't pay the landlords enough rent that the poor have no comforts in their homes. So many families can be packed into one floor, that landlords find tenement-houses pay them extremely well.

Many of the tenement-houses have been allowed to get so dilapidated, that the Board of Health has taken the matter in hand, and has been trying to make the landlord have them properly drained, and cleaned, and repaired.

It came to the knowledge of this board that there were some rear tenements in Mott Street, which were in a frightful condition.

They had been built at the back of some houses fronting on Mott Street—in fact, they had been put in the little spot of ground that had been the yard belonging to the front houses.

They came up so close to the front buildings that, by stretching out your arms, you could almost touch the front wall of one house and the back wall of the other. The actual distance apart was a little over seven feet.

This would have been bad enough, but worse was to come. After a time, warehouses were built over the surrounding back yards, and at last these poor tenements had brick walls round their sides and backs, to within eight inches of the windows, and all the light they got was given them by the seven-foot court that divided them from the houses in front.

Just imagine the darkness and the stuffiness of these rooms. Think how awful they must have been in the summer, with not a breath of air reaching them from any quarter. The tenants were obliged to go up to the roof and sleep there, for the rooms were unbearable.

The people who lived on the lower floors paid less rent than those on the top, because when you got up to the top floor there was a faint glimmer of daylight.

The tenants were put to the expense of burning lights all day long, because neither sun nor light could reach them.

When the Board of Health found out about these horrible places, and learned that little children were being born and brought up in them, an order was at once given that the rear tenements should be torn down.

But the owner objected. He tried to pretend that his houses were fit for people to live in, and went to law to prevent the Board of Health from interfering.

This was last September. Ever since then the matter has been in the courts before the judge.

People have still been living in these awful dens, getting sick, and losing their children, and spending more money for doctors and medicine than would have paid their car-fare to healthier and more comfortable homes.

The court has at last decided that these rear tenements are dangerous and unhealthy, and the Board of Health will have them pulled down in a very short time.

Many of our wealthy people wish so sincerely that poor people should have more comforts, that they are spending their money in building beautiful model tenement-houses, which will give the tenants every possible comfort for the same amount of money that they now have to pay for the dark, wretched places they live in.

One gentleman, Mr. D.O. Mills, felt so sorry for the men who had no homes, and were obliged to take board in these wretched tenements, that he is building a model lodging-house for them.