Jacob A. Riis 1849–1914. The Battle with the Slum. 1902.
Page 243
| to take it. There was an explosion in a Fifth Street tenement, one winter’s night, that threw twenty families into a wild panic, and injured two of the tenants badly. There was much mystery about it, until it came out that the housekeeper had had a “run in” with the gang in the block. It wanted club room in the house, and she would not let it in. Beaten, it avenged itself in characteristic fashion by leaving a package of gunpowder on the stairs, where she would be sure to find it when she went the rounds with her candle to close up. That was a gang of the kind I have reference to, headed straight for Albany. And what is more, it will get there, unless things change greatly. The gunpowder was just a “bluff” to frighten the house-keeper, an instalment of the kind of politics it meant to play when it got its chance. |
| There was “nothing against” this gang except a probable row with the saloon keeper, since it applied elsewhere for house room. Not every gang has a police record of theft and “slugging” beyond the early encounters of the street. “Our honorable leader” is not always the captain of a band of cut-throats. He is the honorary president of the “social club” that bears his name, and he counts for something in the ward. But the ethical standards do not differ. “Do others, or they will do you,” felicitously adapted from Holy Writ for the |