Light and air acquired a legal
claim, and where the sun shines into the slum, the slum is doomed.
The worst tenements were destroyed; parks were opened, schools
built, playgrounds made. The children's rights were won back for
them. The slum denied them even the chance to live, for it was shown
that the worst rear tenements murdered the babies at the rate of
one in five. The Commission made it clear that the legislation that
was needed was "the kind that would root out every old ramshackle
disease-breeding tenement in the city." That was the way to begin
it. As to the rest of them, it laid the foundation deeper yet, for
it made us see that life in them "conduces to the corruption of
the young." That told it all. It meant that a mortgage was put on
the civic life of the morrow, which was not to be borne. We were
forewarned.
The corruption of the young! We move with rapid strides in our time.
That which was a threat, scoffed at by many, has become a present
and dreadful peril in half a dozen brief years. We took a short cut
to make it that when we tried to drain the pool of police blackmail
of which the Lexow disclosures had shown us the hideous depths.
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