CHAPTER XXV.
HOW THE CASE STANDS.
WHAT, then, are the bald facts with which we have to deal in New York?
I. That we have a tremendous, ever swelling crowd of wage-earners which it is our business to house decently.
II. That it is not housed decently.
III. That it must be so housed here for the present, and for a long time to come, all schemes of suburban relief being as yet utopian, impracticable.
IV. That it pays high enough rents to entitle it to be so housed, as a right.
V. That nothing but our own slothfulness is in the way of so housing it, since "the condition of the tenants is in advance of the condition of the houses which they occupy" (Report of Tenement-house Commission).
VI. That the security of the one no less than of the other half demands, on sanitary, moral, and economic grounds, that it be decently housed.
VII. That it will pay to do it. As an investment, I mean, and in hard cash. This I shall immediately proceed to prove.
VIII. That the tenement has come to stay, and must itself be the solution of the problem with which it confronts us.
This is the fact from which we cannot get away, however we may deplore it. Doubtless the best would be to
