Friday, February 28 excerpt from How the Other Half Lives

 In class: vocabulary test on "Outcasts" 
In class: we are continuing with an excerpt from How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis. This investigative report will serve as the "real life" counterpart to Stephen Crane's novel Maggie, Girl of the Streets, which we will begin on Tuesday.
Assignment: read the accompanying questions FIRST, then read the Introduction to How the Other Half Lives.  When you have have finished, select three of the six questions and write a 50 word response for each one. This is due at the close of class on Monday. (class handout / copy below)
Suggestion: use the handout from yesterday entitled "The Genesis of the Tenement" for an additional resource. The responses should contained lots of textual information.

How the Other Half Lives    (1890)  Jacob Riis

Introduction

The rapid growth of industrialization in the United States of the 1880s created an intense need for labor. The flood of tens of thousands of people— of them immigrants— northeastern cities created a housing problem of major proportions. Landlords, rushing to realize quick profits, persisted in subdividing their apartments into ever smaller units, forcing the poor into increasingly overcrowded living conditions.

Excerpt from Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives           

 Riis's work helped spark a new approach to reporting called "muckraking" that eventually led to the Progressive Era reform movements to improve these conditions. We previously read “The Genesis of the Tenement.”  Now we’ll look more closely at the lives of the people who lived there.

First read the questions that accompany this excerpt. Select three questions that you would like to answer in a well-written, text- based response of a minimum of 50 words each. Then read the excerpt, underlining or highlighting material that you might want to incorporate into your responses. 

The twenty-five cent lodging-house keeps up the pretense of a bedroom, though the head-high partition enclosing a space just large enough to hold a cot and a chair and allow the man room to pull off his clothes is the shallowest of all pretenses. The fifteen-cent bed stands boldly forth without screen in a room full of bunks with sheets as yellow and blankets as foul. At the ten-cent level the locker for the sleeper's clothes disappears. There is no longer need of it. The tramp limit is reached, and there is nothing to lock up save, on general principles, the lodger. Usually the ten- and seven-cent lodgings are different grades of the same abomination. Some sort of an apology for a bed, with mattress and blanket, represents the aristocratic purchase of the tramp who, by a lucky stroke of beggary, has exchanged the chance of an empty box or ash-barrel for shelter on the quality floor of one of these "hotels." A strip of canvas, strung between rough timbers, without covering of any kind, does for the couch of the seven-cent lodger who prefers the questionable comfort of a red-hot stove close to his elbow to the revelry of the stale-beer dive. It is not the most secure perch in the world. Uneasy sleepers roll off at intervals, but they have not far to fall to the next tier of bunks, and the commotion that ensues is speedily quieted by the boss and his club. On cold winter nights, when every bunk had its tenant, I have stood in such a lodging-room more than once, and listening to the snoring of the sleepers like the regular strokes of an engine, and the slow creaking of the beams under their restless weight, imagined myself on shipboard and experienced the very real nausea of sea-sickness. The one thing that did not favor the deception was the air; its character could not be mistaken.

The proprietor of one of these seven-cent houses was known to me as a man of reputed wealth and respectability. He "ran" three such establishments and made, it was said, $8,000 a year clear profit on his investment. He lived in a handsome house quite near to the stylish precincts of Murray Hill, where the nature of his occupation was not suspected. A notice that was posted on the wall of the lodgers' room suggested at least an effort to maintain his up-town standing in the slums. It read: "No swearing or loud talking after nine o'clock." Before nine no exceptions were taken to the natural vulgarity of the place; but that was the limit.

There are no licensed lodging-houses known to me which charge less than seven cents for even such a bed as this canvas strip, though there are unlicensed ones enough where one may sleep on the floor for five cents a spot, or squat in a sheltered hallway for three. The police station lodging-house, where the soft side of a plank is the regulation couch, is next in order. The manner in which this police bed is "made up" is interesting in its simplicity. The loose planks that make the platform are simply turned over, and the job is done, with an occasional coat of whitewash thrown in to sweeten things. I know of only one easier way, but, so far as I am informed, it has never been introduced in this country. It used to be practised, if report spoke truly, in certain old-country towns. The "bed" was represented by clothes-line stretched across the room upon which the sleepers hung by the arm-pits for a penny a night. In the morning the boss woke them up by simply untying the line at one end and letting it go with its load; a labor-saving device certainly, and highly successful in attaining the desired end. . . .

. . . If the tenement is here continually dragged into the eye of public condemnation and scorn, it is because in one way or another it is found directly responsible for, or intimately associated with, three-fourths of the miseries of the poor. In the Bohemian quarter it is made the vehicle for enforcing upon a proud race a slavery as real as any that ever disgraced the South. Not content with simply robbing the tenant, the owner, in the dual capacity of landlord and employer, reduces him to virtual serfdom by making him become his tenant, on such terms as he sees fit to make, the condition of employment at wages likewise of his own making. It does not help the case that this landlord employer, almost always a Jew, is frequently of the thrifty Polish race just described. . . .

. . . Probably more than half of all the Bohemians in this city are cigarmakers, and it is the herding of these in great numbers in the so-called tenement factories, where the cheapest grade of work is done at the lowest wages, that constitutes at once their greatest hardship and the chief grudge of other workmen against them. . . .

Men, women and children work together seven days in the week in these cheerless tenements to make a living for the family, from the break of day till far into the night. Often the wife is the original cigarmaker from the old home, the husband having adopted her trade here as a matter of necessity, because, knowing no word of English, he could get no other work. As they state the cause of the bitter hostility of the trades unions, she was the primary bone of contention in the day of the early Bohemian immigration. The unions refused to admit the women, and, as the support of the family depended upon her to a large extent, such terms as were offered had to be accepted. The manufacturer has ever since industriously fanned the antagonism between the unions and his hands, for his own advantage. The victory rests with him, since the Court of Appeals decided that the law, passed a few years ago, to prohibit cigarmaking in tenements was unconstitutional, and thus put an end to the struggle. . . .

. . . I have in mind an alley— inlet rather to a row of rear tenements— is either two or four feet wide according as the wall of the crazy old building that gives on it bulges out or in. I tried to count the children that swarmed there, but could not. Sometimes I have doubted that anybody knows just how many there are about. Bodies of drowned children turn up in the rivers right along in summer whom no one seems to know anything about. When last spring some workmen, while moving a pile of lumber on a North River pier, found under the last plank the body of a little lad crushed to death, no one had missed a boy, though his parents afterward turned up. The truant officer assuredly does not know, though he spends his life trying to find out, somewhat illogically, perhaps, since the department that employs him admits that thousands of poor children are crowded out of the schools year by year for want of room. . . .

Below are 6 questions that relate to Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives. Select three and respond to each in a minimum of 50 words.  Write your responses on a separate sheet of paper with an MLA heading. These are due at the close of class on Monday.  This is in preparation for the novel Maggie, Girl of the Streets, which we will be starting on Tuesday.

1.Explain some of the conditions described in this excerpt from How the Other Half Lives.

2. What point do you think Riis was trying to make when he chose the title for his book?

3. How effective is Riis's message?

4. Why did the poor agree to live in such conditions?

5. Why did city government officials allow these conditions to continue?

6. Do similar conditions exist today? Why or why not?

Thursday, February 27 Jacob Riis, The Genesis of the Tenament

Due tomorrow: vocabulary test on words from "Outcasts"

In class today: we are beginning to read excerpts from Jacob Riis' pioneering work of social criticism, which was published in 1890. In this work of non-fiction, Riis wanted to make the upper classes aware of the poverty around them. Riis was a Danish immigrant, who worked as a reporter for the New York Tribune, who was given the job of investigating the horrors of tenement life in the slums of New York. His report How the Other Half Lives was written with no detachment, that is Riis report is full of judgments, reflecting Riis' own biases. However, the book had a major impact and helped to change people's way of thinking about the poverty around them and what they could do to change it.  Today we are reading first chapter: "The Genesis of the Tenement." 

There is an accompanying set of discussion questions. You will work with an assigned partner. It is not necessary to write out the responses, as long as everyone stays on task. However, if you are absent, you will need to complete the responses.  class handout / copy below

                                                          

Below are some of Jacob Riis' photographs taken in the New York slums

Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914).  How the Other Half Lives.  1

 I. Genesis of the Tenement

 HELL’S KITCHEN AND SEBASTOPOL.

 THE first tenement New York knew bore the mark of Cain from its birth, though a generation passed before the writing was deciphered. It was the “rear house,” infamous ever after in our city’s history. There had been tenant-houses before, but they were not built for the purpose. Nothing would probably have shocked their original owners more than the idea of their harboring a promiscuous crowd; for they were the decorous homes of the old Knickerbockers, the proud aristocracy of Manhattan in the early days.    1

  It was the stir and bustle of trade, together with the tremendous immigration that followed upon the war of 1812 that dislodged them. In thirty-five years the city of less than a hundred thousand came to harbor half a million souls, for whom homes had to be found. Within the memory of men not yet in their prime, Washington had moved from his house on Cherry Hill as too far out of town to be easily reached. Now the old residents followed his example, but they moved in a different direction and for a different reason. Their comfortable dwellings in the once fashionable streets along the East River front fell into the hands of real-estate agents and boarding-house keepers; and here, says the report to the Legislature of 1857, when the evils engendered had excited just alarm, “in its beginning, the tenant-house became a real blessing to that class of industrious poor whose small earnings limited their expenses, and whose employment in workshops, stores, or about the warehouses and thoroughfares, render a near residence of much importance.” Not for long, however. As business increased, and the city grew with rapid strides, the necessities of the poor became the opportunity of their wealthier neighbors, and the stamp was set upon the old houses, suddenly become valuable, which the best thought and effort of a later age have vainly struggled to efface. Their “large rooms were partitioned into several smaller ones, without regard to light or ventilation, the rate of rent being lower in proportion to space or height from the street; and they soon became filled from cellar to garret with a class of tenantry living from hand to mouth, loose in morals, improvident in habits, degraded, and squalid as beggary itself.” It was thus the dark bedroom, prolific of untold depravities, came into the world. It was destined to survive the old houses. In their new rôle, says the old report, eloquent in its indignant denunciation of “evils more destructive than wars,” “they were not intended to last. Rents were fixed high enough to cover damage and abuse from this class, from whom nothing was expected, and the most was made of them while they lasted. Neatness, order, cleanliness, were never dreamed of in connection with the tenant-house system, as it spread its localities from year to year; while reckless slovenliness, discontent, privation, and ignorance were left to work out their invariable results, until the entire premises reached the level of tenant-house dilapidation, containing, but sheltering not, the miserable hordes that crowded beneath moldering, water-rotted roofs or burrowed among the rats of clammy cellars.” Yet so illogical is human greed that, at a later day, when called to account, “the proprietors frequently urged the filthy habits of the tenants as an excuse for the condition of their property, utterly losing sight of the fact that it was the tolerance of those habits which was the real evil, and that for this they themselves were alone responsible.”       2

  Still the pressure of the crowds did not abate, and in the old garden where the stolid Dutch burgher grew his tulips or early cabbages a rear house was built, generally of wood, two stories high at first. Presently it was carried up another story, and another. Where two families had lived ten moved in. The front house followed suit, if the brick walls were strong enough. The question was not always asked, judging from complaints made by a contemporary witness, that the old buildings were “often carried up to a great height without regard to the strength of the foundation walls.” It was rent the owner was after; nothing was said in the contract about either the safety or the comfort of the tenants. The garden gate no longer swung on its rusty hinges. The shell-paved walk had become an alley; what the rear house had left of the garden, a “court.” Plenty such are yet to be found in the Fourth Ward, with here and there one of the original rear tenements.         3

  Worse was to follow. It was “soon perceived by estate owners and agents of property that a greater percentage of profits could be realized by the conversion of houses and blocks into barracks, and dividing their space into smaller proportions capable of containing human life within four walls. … Blocks were rented of real estate owners, or ‘purchased on time,’ or taken in charge at a percentage, and held for under-letting.” With the appearance of the middleman, wholly irresponsible, and utterly reckless and unrestrained, began the era of tenement building which turned out such blocks as Gotham Court, where, in one cholera epidemic that scarcely touched the clean wards, the tenants died at the rate of one hundred and ninety-five to the thousand of population; which forced the general mortality of the city up from 1 in 41.83 in 1815, to 1 in 27.33 in 1855, a year of unusual freedom from epidemic disease, and which wrung from the early organizers of the Health Department this wail: “There are numerous examples of tenement-houses in which are lodged several hundred people that have a prorate allotment of ground area scarcely equal to two square yards upon the city lot, court-yards and all included.” The tenement-house population had swelled to half a million souls by that time, and on the East Side, in what is still the most densely populated district in all the world, China not excluded, it was packed at the rate of 290,000 to the square mile, a state of affairs wholly unexampled. The utmost cupidity of other lands and other days had never contrived to herd much more than half that number within the same space. The greatest crowding of Old London was at the rate of 175,816. Swine roamed the streets and gutters as their principal scavengers. 1 The death of a child in a tenement was registered at the Bureau of Vital Statistics as “plainly due to suffocation in the foul air of an unventilated apartment,” and the Senators, who had come down from Albany to find out what was the matter with New York, reported that “there are annually cut off from the population by disease and death enough human beings to people a city, and enough human labor to sustain it.” And yet experts had testified that, as compared with updown, rents were from twenty-five to thirty per cent, higher in the worst slums of the lower wards, with such accommodations as were enjoyed, for instance, by a “family with boarders” in Cedar Street, who fed hogs in the cellar that contained eight or ten loads of manure; or a one room 12 x 12 with five families living in it, comprising twenty persons of both sexes and all ages, with only two beds, without partition, screen, chair, or table.” The rate of rent has been successfully maintained to the present day, though the hog at least has been eliminated.                4

  Lest anybody flatter himself with the notion that these were evils of a day that is happily past and may safely be forgotten, let me mention here three very recent instances of tenement-house life that came under my notice. One was the burning of a rear house in Mott Street, from appearances one of the original tenant-houses that made their owners rich. The fire made homeless ten families, who had paid an average of $5 a month for their mean little cubby-holes. The owner himself told me that it was fully insured for $800, though it brought him in $600 a year rent. He evidently considered himself especially entitled to be pitied for losing such valuable property. Another was the case of a hard-working family of man and wife, young people from the old country, who took poison together in a Crosby Street tenement because they were “tired.” There was no other explanation, and none was needed when I stood in the room in which they had lived. It was in the attic with sloping ceiling and a single window so far out on the roof that it seemed not to belong to the place at all. With scarcely room enough to turn around in they had been compelled to pay five dollars and a half a month in advance. There were four such rooms in that attic, and together they brought in as much as many a handsome little cottage in a pleasant part of Brooklyn. The third instance was that of a colored family of husband, wife, and baby in a wretched rear rookery in West Third Street. Their rent was eight dollars and a half for a single room on the top-story, so small that I was unable to get a photograph of it even by placing the camera outside the open door. Three short steps across either way would have measured its full extent.    5

TENEMENT OF 1863, FOR TWELVE FAMILIES ON EACH FLAT 2 D. dark L. light. H. halls.

  There was just one excuse for the early tenement-house builders, and their successors may plead it with nearly as good right for what it is worth. “Such,” says an official report, “is the lack of houseroom in the city that any kind of tenement can be immediately crowded with lodgers, if there is space offered.” Thousands were living in cellars. There were three hundred underground lodging-houses in the city when the Health Department was organized. Some fifteen years before that the old Baptist Church in Mulberry Street, just off Chatham Street, had been sold, and the rear half of the frame structure had been converted into tenements that with their swarming population became the scandal even of that reckless age. The wretched pile harbored no less than forty families, and the annual rate of deaths to the population was officially stated to be 75 in 1,000. These tenements were an extreme type of very many, for the big barracks had by this time spread east and west and far up the island into the sparsely settled wards. Whether or not the title was clear to the land upon which they were built was of less account than that the rents were collected. If there were damages to pay, the tenant had to foot them. Cases were “very frequent when property was in litigation, and two or three different parties were collecting rents.” Of course under such circumstances “no repairs were ever made.”              6

   The climax had been reached. The situation was summed up by the Society for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor in these words: “Crazy old buildings, crowded rear tenements in filthy yards, dark, damp basements, leaking garrets, shops, outhouses, and stables  3 converted into dwellings, though scarcely fit to shelter brutes, are habitations of thousands of our fellow-beings in this wealthy, Christian city.” “The city,” says its historian, Mrs. Martha Lamb, commenting on the era of aqueduct building between 1835 and 1845, “was a general asylum for vagrants.” Young vagabonds, the natural offspring of such “home” conditions, overran the streets. Juvenile crime increased fearfully year by year. The Children’s Aid Society and kindred philanthropic organizations were yet unborn, but in the city directory was to be found the address of the “American Society for the Promotion of Education in Africa.”                   7

Accompanying handout.

                                                           Name(s) ____________________________________________________________

“Genesis of the Tenement” from Jacob Riis’ report How the Other Half Lives published in 1890

Directions  You are working in pairs (or individually, if you were absent from class). The reading material is the chapter “Genesis of the Tenement.”  One person should begin reading to the other, stopping at a designated line break with a number. At that point, both people are to discuss the corresponding numbered question, after which the other person reads aloud to the next break. You do not need to write out the response, as long as you successfully stay focused and complete the assignment. You are responsible for being able to share out the responses with the class.

1.       What is the mark of Cain and why does Riis apply this to tenements?

2.       Why had the original residents, the old Knickerbockers (these were the original settlers from the Netherlands in the 17^th century) left their homes?

3.       Why were these homes “in the beginning…a blessing…to the industrious poor?”

4.       Why did these former homes of the old Knickerbockers become valuable?

5.       From the context of the sentence, define garret.

6.       No question…keep reading

7.       What was the attitude of the real estate agents to their tenants?

8.       What happened to the old houses when “the pressure of the crowds did not abate?”

9.       What else did the estate owners do to realize “a greater percentage of profits?”

10.   What was the population of the Lower East Side?

11.   Give one example of the cupidity (extreme greed) of the real estate agents.

12.   On average, how much did people pay for a “mean little cubby hole?”

13.   How did the family on Crosby Street die?

14.   Why couldn’t Riis even take a photo of the single room on the top-story?

15.   What was the excuse given by “early tenement house builders” for crowding people into such tiny places?

16.   What was the annual rate of death for those who lived in the tenements?

17.   What happened to the children of the families who lived in the tenements?

Wednesday, February 26..Triangle Shirt Waist Fire day 2

Due Friday: vocabulary test on words from "Outcasts"...handed out Monday; copy on Monday's blog.
This will consist of 13 matching, plus 7 contextual sentences.

In class: Triangle Shirt Waist Fire article from New York Times, with accompanying text-based questions and written response. Due at the end of class.

Tuesday, February 25 Triangle Shirt Waist Fire

If you were absent yesterday, check pick up the handout about Horatio Alger and check the blog for the assignment. You are responsible for this material.
Due Friday, February 28: vocabulary quiz on "Poker Flat" ...handout Monday, copy on Monday's blog
We are continuing to explore Realism, both as a literary movement and how it impacted news writing, photography and art. Remember the qualities associated with Realism.
1. ideas of democracy, rather than a focus on the monarchical system of government; revolt against a genteel tradition.
2. voice of the common man is heard
3. in literary complex characters; their ethics are easily defined (think Poker Flat characters)
4. a desire (and a burgeoning sense of right) to control one's own destiny.
5. a focus on facts and details with an objective, non-judgmental eye
6. events and situations are plausible, and not distorted  by imagination and feelings (think Romanticism)
In class: we are reading the New York Times news story on the Triangle Shirt Waist Fire, with an accompanying graphic organizer and paragraph assignment. DUE end of class on Wednesday, February 26. class handouts and copies below.

Who were the people who worked in the factory?








THE FIRE

141 Men and Girls Die in Waist Factory Fire; Trapped High Up in Washington Place Building; Street Strewn with Bodies; Piles of Dead Inside

New York Times, March 26, 1911, p. 1.

Three stories of a ten-floor building at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place were burned yesterday, and while the fire was going on 141 young men and women at least 125 of them mere girls were burned to death or killed by jumping to the pavement below.

The building was fireproof. It shows now hardly any signs of the disaster that overtook it. The walls are as good as ever so are the floors, nothing is the worse for the fire except the furniture and 141 of the 600 men and girls that were employed in its upper three stories.

Most of the victims were suffocated or burned to death within the building, but some who fought their way to the windows and leaped met death as surely, but perhaps more quickly, on the pavements below.

All Over in Half an Hour

Nothing like it has been seen in New York since the burning of the General Slocum. The fire was practically all over in half an hour. It was confined to three floors the eighth, ninth, and tenth of the building. But it was the most murderous fire that New York had seen in many years.

The victims who are now lying at the Morgue waiting for someone to identify them by a tooth or the remains of a burned shoe were mostly girls from 16 to 23 years of age. They were employed at making shirtwaist by the Triangle Waist Company, the principal owners of which are Isaac Harris and Max Blanck. Most of them could barely speak English. Many of them came from Brooklyn. Almost all were the main support of their hard-working families.

There is just one fire escape in the building. That one is an interior fire escape. In Greene Street, where the terrified unfortunates crowded before they began to make their mad leaps to death, the whole big front of the building is guiltless of one. Nor is there a fire escape in the back.

The building was fireproof and the owners had put their trust in that. In fact, after the flames had done their worst last night, the building hardly showed a sign. Only the stock within it and the girl employees were burned.

A heap of corpses lay on the sidewalk for more than an hour. The firemen were too busy dealing with the fire to pay any attention to people whom they supposed beyond their aid. When the excitement had subsided to such an extent that some of the firemen and policemen could pay attention to this mass of the supposedly dead they found about half way down in the pack a girl who was still breathing. She died two minutes after she was found.

The Triangle Waist Company was the only sufferer by the disaster. There are other concerns in the building, but it was Saturday and the other companies had let their people go home. Messrs. Harris and Blanck, however, were busy and ?? their girls and some stayed.

Leaped Out of the Flames

At 4:40 o'clock, nearly five hours after the employes in the rest of the building had gone home, the fire broke out. The one little fire escape in the interior was resorted to by any of the doomed victims. Some of them escaped by running down the stairs, but in a moment or two this avenue was cut off by flame. The girls rushed to the windows and looked down at Greene Street, 100 feet below them. Then one poor, little creature jumped. There was a plate glass protection over part of the sidewalk, but she crashed through it, wrecking it and breaking her body into a thousand pieces.

Then they all began to drop. The crowd yelled "Don't jump!" but it was jump or be burned the proof of which is found in the fact that fifty burned bodies were taken from the ninth floor alone.

They jumped, the crashed through broken glass, they crushed themselves to death on the sidewalk. Of those who stayed behind it is better to say nothing except what a veteran policeman said as he gazed at a headless and charred trunk on the Greene Street sidewalk hours after the worst cases had been taken out:

"I saw the Slocum disaster, but it was nothing to this." "Is it a man or a woman?" asked the reporter. "It's human, that's all you can tell," answered the policeman.

It was just a mass of ashes, with blood congealed on what had probably been the neck.

Messrs. Harris and Blanck were in the building, but the escaped. They carried with the Mr. Blanck's children and a governess, and they fled over the roofs. Their employes did not know the way, because they had been in the habit of using the two freight elevators, and one of these elevators was not in service when the fire broke out.

Found Alive After the Fire

The first living victims, Hyman Meshel of 322 East Fifteenth Street, was taken from the ruins four hours after the fire was discovered. He was found paralyzed with fear and whimpering like a wounded animal in the basement, immersed in water to his neck, crouched on the top of a cable drum and with his head just below the floor of the elevator.

Meantime the remains of the dead it is hardly possible to call them bodies, because that would suggest something human, and there was nothing human about most of these were being taken in a steady stream to the Morgue for identification. First Avenue was lined with the usual curious east side crowd. Twenty-sixth Street was impassable. But in the Morgue they received the charred remnants with no more emotion than they ever display over anything.

Back in Greene Street there was another crowd. At midnight it had not decreased in the least. The police were holding it back to the fire lines, and discussing the tragedy in a tone which those seasoned witnesses of death seldom use.

"It's the worst thing I ever saw," said one old policeman.

Chief Croker said it was an outrage. He spoke bitterly of the way in which the Manufacturers' Association had called a meeting in Wall Street to take measures against his proposal for enforcing better methods of protection for employes in cases of fire.

No Chance to Save Victims

Four alarms were rung in fifteen minutes. The first five girls who jumped did go before the first engine could respond. That fact may not convey much of a picture to the mind of an unimaginative man, but anybody who has ever seen a fire can get from it some idea of the terrific rapidity with which the flames spread.

It may convey some idea too, to say that thirty bodies clogged the elevator shaft. These dead were all girls. They had made their rush their blindly when they discovered that there was no chance to get out by the fire escape. Then they found that the elevator was as hopeless as anything else, and they fell there in their tracks and died.

The Triangle Waist Company employed about 600 women and less than 100 men. One of the saddest features of the thing is the fact that they had almost finished for the day. In five minutes more, if the fire had started then, probably not a life would have been lost.

Last night District Attorney Whitman started an investigation not of this disaster alone but of the whole condition which makes it possible for a firetrap of such a kind to exist. Mr. Whitman's intention is to find out if the present laws cover such cases, and if they do not to frame laws that will.

Girls Jump To Sure Death

Fire Nets Prove Useless Firemen Helpless to Save Life. The fire which was first discovered at 4:40 o'clock on the eighth floor of the ten-story building at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street, leaped through the three upper stories occupied by the Triangle Waist Company with a sudden rush that left the Fire Department helpless.

How the fire started no one knows. On the three upper floors of the building were 600 employes of the waist company, 500 of whom were girls. The victims mostly Italians, Russians, Hungarians, and Germans were girls and men who had been employed by the firm of Harris & Blanck, owners of the Triangle Waist Company, after the strike in which the Jewish girls, formerly employed, had been become unionized and had demanded better working conditions. The building had experienced four recent fires and had been reported by the Fire Department to the Building Department as unsafe in account of the insufficiency of its exits.

The building itself was of the most modern construction and classed as fireproof. What burned so quickly and disastrously for the victims were shirtwaists, hanging on lines above tiers of workers, sewing machines placed so closely together that there was hardly aisle room for the girls between them, and shirtwaist trimmings and cuttings which littered the floors above the eighth and ninth stories.

Girls had begun leaping from the eighth story windows before firemen arrived. The firemen had trouble bringing their apparatus into position because of the bodies which strewed the pavement and sidewalks. While more bodies crashed down among them, they worked with desperation to run their ladders into position and to spread firenets.

One fireman running ahead of a hose wagon, which halted to avoid running over a body spread a firenet, and two more seized hold of it. A girl's body, coming end over end, struck on the side of it, and there was hope that she would be the first one of the score who had jumped to be saved.

Thousands of people who had crushed in from Broadway and Washington Square and were screaming with horror at what they saw watched closely the work with the firenet. Three other girls who had leaped for it a moment after the first one, struck it on top of her, and all four rolled out and lay still upon the pavement.

Five girls who stood together at a window close the Greene Street corner held their place while a fire ladder was worked toward them, but which stopped at its full length two stories lower down. They leaped together, clinging to each other, with fire streaming back from their hair and dresses. They struck a glass sidewalk cover and it to the basement. There was no time to aid them. With water pouring in upon them from a dozen hose nozzles the bodies lay for two hours where they struck, as did the many others who leaped to their deaths.

One girl, who waved a handkerchief at the crowd, leaped from a window adjoining the New York University Building on the westward. Her dress caught on a wire, and the crowd watched her hang there till her dress burned free and she came toppling down.

Many jumped whom the firemen believe they could have saved. A girl who saw the glass roof of a sidewalk cover at the first-story level of the New York University Building leaped for it, and her body crashed through to the sidewalk.

On Greene Street, running along the eastern face of the building more people leaped to the pavement than on Washington Place to the south. Fire nets proved just as useless to catch them and the ladders to reach them. None waited for the firemen to attempt to reach them with the scaling ladders.

All Would Soon Have Been Out

Strewn about as the firemen worked, the bodies indicated clearly the preponderance of women workers. Here and there was a man, but almost always they were women. One wore furs and a muss, and had a purse hanging from her arm. Nearly all were dressed for the street. The fire had flashed through their workroom just as they were expecting the signal to leave the building. In ten minutes more all would have been out, as many had stopped work in advance of the signal and had started to put on their wraps.

What happened inside there were few who could tell with any definiteness. All that those escaped seemed to remember was that there was a flash of flames, leaping first among the girls in the southeast corner of the eighth floor and then suddenly over the entire room, spreading through the linens and cottons with which the girls were working. The girls on the ninth floor caught sight of the flames through the window up the stairway, and up the elevator shaft.

On the tenth floor they got them a moment later, but most of those on that floor escaped by rushing to the roof and then on to the roof of the New York University Building, with the assistance of 100 university students who had been dismissed from a tenth story classroom.

There were in the building, according to the estimate of Fire Chief Croker, about 600 girls and 100 men.
GRAPHIC ORGANIZER

Name_________________________________________________

Triangle Shirt Waist Fire accompanying questions. The first 10 questions are worth 5 points each. You must use textual evidence to get credit. On the back is a writing assignment that is worth 50 points.  Use must incorporate textual evidence in the response to receive full credit. Please write the paragraph on lined paper, using an MLA heading.

1.       In journalism, the first sentence is knows as a lead (pronounced leed).  A well-written lead sums up the whole article, the details of which one finds when continuing to read. What the lead contains is the who, what, when where and how, also referred to as the four W’s and H. This is analogous to the thesis statements in your essays. If you have a clear thesis statement, your audience will be able to anticipate the major points that you will write about.

Read the lead the sentence and write out the four W’s and H.

Who ________________________________________-

What________________________________________________________________________________

When _______________________________________________________________________________

Where _______________________________________________________________________________

How__________________________________________________________________________________

1.       Using textual evidence, how did the deaths occur?

____________________________________________________________________________________________

2.       Using textual evidence, how were the victims identified?

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

3.       Why was the Triangle Waist Company the “only sufferer by the disaster”. (Use text)

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

4.       How did the owners, Messrs. Harris and Blanck escape? (text)

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

5.       Where were thirsdy of the bodies found?

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

6.       What was the saddest feature of the day? (text)

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

7.       How did the fire start?

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

8.       Why did it burn so quickly?

______________________________________________________________________________________________

9.       Why were the five girls “who stood together at the window close to the Greene Street corner unable to be saved? (use text)

____________________________________________________________________________________________

10.   What happened to the girl  who “leaped from a window adjoining the New York University Building on the westward?”  (use text)

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Writing response (50 points) Use must incorporate text in your response. The New York Times news article is a record of the facts of the fire, albeit, as a reflection of the time period, some of the diction is sensationalized. However, there is another story beneath the facts; that is what life was like to work at the Triangle Shirt Waist factory for the girls. Reread the article, underlining clues that indicate who these employees were and their work environment. Then write a well-written, text incorporated paragraph of no fewer than 200 words that describes the how the fire is a reflection of the attitudes of the society of the time.. To help construct the paragraph, use the organizer below. See example.

Organizer

Text                                                                                                         why this is important, what does this signify

“some fought their way to the windows”	The girls did not die passively; they were determined to find a way to escape.”  There were no emergency escape plans or leadership to help them

Monday, February 24....realism continued: The Triangle Shirt Waist Fire and Horatio Alger, reality vs idealsim

Reminder: please be on time and keep all electronic equipment away. Check the detention list each day. You have one week, at which point I call home to let your parent know you refused to complete the detention, and your name has been referred to an administrator.

I'm handing back the completed (or not) graphic organizers from "The Outcasts of Poker Flat". You fall into one of the following categories: 1) finished and graded 2) graded and an opportunity to change grade after school today 3) I have not received it and you have a ZERO.  Come after school to complete and bring your graphic organizer, which is also a writing grade.

I am handing out grade reports today. They are not carved in stone, so deal with them. With the exception of the essay / graphic organizer, everything else is worth 50 points, as they are very, very late. If you have a question or a concern, please see me outside of periods 6, 7 and 8.

Moving on....
In class: vocabulary handout from "Poker Flat"..test this Friday. copy below.
Horatio Alger stories, myth or reality. Class handout, copy below.
Who was Horatio Alger?
Horatio Alger, Jr. (1834-99) was a prolific writer of dime novel stories for boys. From the debut of his first novel, Ragged Dick, in 1867, Alger was instrumental in establishing a new genre of dime novels known as the 'city story.' The genre arose out of the wide-spread urbanization that followed the Civil War and paralleled the rise of industrialism. Alger's stories heroicized the young street urchins living in poverty among large, urban centers such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. With uncommon courage and moral fortitude, Alger's youths struggle against adversity to achieve great wealth and acclaim. These rags to riches stories were enormously popular with the public and flourished in the decades from 1870 to 1890.
Assignment: read the excerpt from The Cash Boy Has An Adventure and respond in quick write to the following: Why were the Horatio Alger Stories so popular?

To further the philosophy of Horatio Alger, Jr. and to encourage the spirit of Strive & Succeed that for half a century guided Alger's undaunted heroes

 CHAPTER VII. THE CASH BOY HAS AN ADVENTURE

Four weeks passed. The duties of a cash-boy are simple enough, and Frank had no difficulty in discharging them satisfactorily. At first he found it tiresome, being on his feet all day, for the cash-boys were not allowed to sit down, but he got used to this, being young and strong.

All this was very satisfactory, but one thing gave Frank uneasiness. His income was very inadequate to his wants.

"What makes you so glum, Frank?" asked Jasper Wheelock one evening.

"Do I look glum?" said Frank. "I was only thinking how I could earn more money. You know how little I get. I can hardly take care of myself, much less take care of Grace."

"I can lend you some money, Frank. Thanks to your good advice, I have got some laid up."

"Thank you, Jasper, but that wouldn't help matters. I should owe you the money, and I don't know how I could pay you."

"About increasing your income, I really don't know," said Jasper. "I am afraid Gilbert & Mack wouldn't raise your wages."

"I don't expect it. All the rest of the cash-boys would ask the same thing."

"True; still I know they are very well pleased with you. Duncan told me you did more work than any of the rest of the boys."

"I try to do all I can."

"He said you would make a good salesman, he thought. Of course you are too young for that yet."

"I suppose I am."

"Frank, I am earning fifteen dollars a week, you know, and I can get along on ten, but of the five I save let me give you two. I shall never feel it, and by and by when you are promoted it won't be necessary."

"Jasper, you are a true friend," said Frank, warmly; "but it wouldn't be right for me to accept your kind offer, though I shan't forget it. You have been a good friend to me."

"And you to me, Frank. I'll look out for you. Perhaps I may hear of something for you."

Small as Frank's income was, he had managed to live within it. It will be remembered that he had paid but fifty cents a week for a room. By great economy he had made his meals cost but two dollars a week, so that out of his three dollars he saved fifty cents. But this saving would not be sufficient to pay for his clothes. However, he had had no occasion to buy any as yet, and his little fund altogether amounted to twenty dollars. Of this sum he inclosed {sic} eight dollars to Mr. Pomeroy to pay for four weeks' board for Grace.

"I hope I shall be able to keep it up," he said to himself, thoughtfully. "At any rate, I've got enough to pay for six weeks more. Before that time something may turn up."

Several days passed without showing Frank any way by which he could increase his income. Jasper again offered to give him two dollars a week out of his own wages, but this our hero steadily refused.

One Friday evening, just as the store was about to close, the head salesman called Frank to him.

"Where do you live?" he asked.

"In Sixth avenue, near Twenty-fifth street."

"There's a bundle to go to Forty-sixth street. I'll pay your fare upon the stage if you'll carry it. I promised to send it to-night, and I don't like to disappoint the lady."

"I can carry it just as well as not."

Frank took the bundle, and got on board a passing omnibus. There was just one seat vacant beside an old gentleman of seventy, who appeared to be quite feeble.

At Forty-fifth street he pulled the strap and prepared to descend, leaning heavily on his cane as he did so. By some mischance the horses started a little too soon and the old man, losing his footing, fell in the street. Frank observed the accident and sprang out instantly to his help.

"I hope you are not much hurt, sir?" he said, hastily.

"I have hurt my knee," said the old gentleman.

"Let me assist you, sir," said Frank, helping him up.

"Thank you, my boy. I live at number forty-five, close by. If you will lead me to the door and into the house I shall be much indebted to you."

"Certainly, sir. It is no trouble to me."

With slow step, supported by our hero, the old gentleman walked to his own door.

It was opened by a maid servant, who looked with some surprise at Frank.

"I fell, Mary," explained her master, "and this young gentleman has kindly helped me home."

"Did you hurt yourself much, sir?"

"Not seriously."

"Can I do anything more for you, sir?" asked Frank.

"Come in a moment."

Our hero followed his new acquaintance into a handsomely furnished parlor.

"Now, my young friend tell me if you have been taken out of your way by your attention to me?"

"Oh, no, sir; I intended to get out at the next street."

"My dinner is just ready. Won't you stop and dine with me?"

"Thank you, sir," he said, hesitatingly, "but I promised to carry this bundle. I believe it is wanted at once."

"So you shall. You say the house is in the next street. You can go and return in five minutes. You have done me a service, and I may have it in my power to do something for you in return."

"Perhaps," thought Frank, "he can help me to some employment for my evenings." Then, aloud:

"Thank you, sir; I will come."

“The Outcasts of Poker Flat” by Bret Harte….vocabulary

Test Friday, February 28……..matching and comprehensive sentences

1.      ethical- (adjective)-  relating to moral principles

2.      plausible- (adjective)- seemingly reasonable or probable

3.      conjecture – (noun)- opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information

4.      innuendo- (noun)- insinuation or suggestion

5.      equity- (noun)- fairness

6.      malevolence- (noun)- hatefulness

7.      maudlin- (adjective)- self-pityingly or tearfully sentimental

8.      guileless- (adjective)- innocent

9.      recumbent- (adjective)- lying down

10.  temperance- (noun)- abstinence from an alcoholic drink

11.  celestial-(adjective)- heavenly

12.  sotto voce-(noun)- low voice

13.  to beguile- (verb)- to charm or enchant

February 14 "Outcasts" essay

In class: take out your graphic organizer and continue writing the essay that was handed out at the end of class yesterday. I will collect these at the end of class today. 

Below is the third copy of the handout.

Argumentative essay based upon “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” by Bret Harte

Due Friday, February 14 at the end of class.

Please respond to the following: How is the short story “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” representative of the literary movement Realism?

How should you organize your essay?

Introduction: Define realism in terms of time period and its qualities, concluding that this work is an example of this.

Now in the next three paragraphs you are going to prove your thesis statement by choosing three of the qualities found in Realism and then selecting specific areas of the text to support this. (That means you need to have read the story carefully.) There is a list of the qualities associated with Realism on your graphic organizer.

Conclusion: Do not say in conclusion. What is important about Realism in terms of its historical importance as connected to the development of the United States? What does it say about the concept of being an American? Realism purports to mirror life; does it in fact? These are some ideas you may consider addressing. Address these in terms of the story.

You must have textual evidence woven in. Use your graphic organizer. Pick out the words or phrases that best apply.

Here are some transition words you might use. Addition: also, again, as well as, besides, coupled with, furthermore, in addition, likewise, moreover, similarly

Consequence: accordingly, as a result, consequently, for this reason, for this purpose, 
hence, otherwise, so then, subsequently, therefore, thus, thereupon, wherefore

Contrast and Comparison: contrast, by the same token, conversely, instead, likewise,
on one hand, on the other hand, on the contrary, rather, similarly, yet, but, however, still, nevertheless, in contrast

Restatement:

in essence, in other words, namely, that is, that is to say, in short, in brief, to put it differently