I wish it had been seventy.
The landlords sued, but the courts sided with the Health Board.
When at last we stopped to take breath we had fairly broken the
back of the slum and made precedents of our own that would last a
while. Mr. Roosevelt was personally sued twice, I think, but that
was all the good it did them. We were having our innings that time,
and there were a lot of arrears to collect. The city paid for the
property that was taken, of course, and more than it ought to have
paid, to my way of thinking. The law gave the owner of a tenement
that was altogether unfit just the value of the brick and timbers
that were in it. It was enough, for "unfit" meant murderous, and
why should a man have a better right to kill his neighbor with a
house than with an axe in the street? But the lawyers who counseled
compromise bought Gotham Court, one of the most hopeless slums
in the Fourth Ward, for nearly $20,000. It was not worth so many
cents. The Barracks with their awful baby death-rate were found to
be mortgaged to a cemetery corporation.
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