Collection › The Lutheran Pioneer (St. Louis) › Vol. 49 (1927) › Sheet 75
The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1927, Sheet 75

Concordia Seminary Library, St. Louis (scholar.csl.edu/lutheran_pioneer/49)
Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

13

schooled in crime must have a direct tendency to
train thieves, thugs, and burglars.

Housing conditions in the tenement sections of
our larger cities beggar description. Filth, foul air,
and lack of sunshine make them the lurking places
of disease and the hiding-places of crime. The poor
children born and reared in such places never learn
to know what actual living is, unless a happy turn
of events rescues them from their native haunts
and removes them to more decent surroundings.
Carlyle was right when he said many years ago

ings. In-its 110,000 tenements are housed almost
4,000,000 people. Thousands of the rooms in these
tenements are lighted and ventilated from the so-
called air-shafts, generally less than thirty inches
wide, possibly sixty feet long, and as high as the
building, generally five or six stories. In many in-
stances the tenants use these shafts for garbage
receptacles and dump refuse and filth of every de-
scription into them, which all remains to rot in the
shaft for weeks. Is it any wonder that the death-
rate is high among people living under such con-

The Kannapolis, N. C., Undergrowth.
All are three years old and under the care of Superintendent F. D. Alston, pastor.

that a cab-horse in London had a far happier lot
. than fell to those who had to spend their days in
London’s slums. For the death of the horse meant
the loss of money to its owner, but the death of
a poor tenement dweller means nothing! Pitiful,
indeed, is the lot of the child that sees the light of
day through the grimy windows of a tenement
house. Its childhood will be passed in squalor, its
youth will be drab and cheerless, and its later years
will know but little that makes for real happiness
and joy.

New York City is said to have more than 25,000
cellar-rooms that are used as homes by human be-

ditions? Is it ‘surprising that such living condi-
tions breed not only physical disease, but likewise
vice and crime?

What Can be Done?

Let the Church, first of ‘all, give all encourage-
ment to better the living conditions and help bring
about such changes as will make these tenements
become as nearly as possible what a normal home
should be. We feel that one potent means of help-
fulness toward the unhappy tenement dweller would
be frequent friendly visiting on the part of the
Church’s representatives. Keeping in personal