Mulberry Street

“ Such is the daily march of the mob in Mulberry Street near the mouth of Jersey's blind alley, and such is its outrageous behavior as observed by a presumably decent person from the windows of the big red-brick building across the way.
Suddenly there is an explosion of sound under the decent person's window, and a hand-organ starts off with a jerk like a freight train on a down grade, that joggles a whole string of crashing notes. Then it gets down to work, and its harsh, high-pitched, metallic drone makes the street ring for a moment. ”

“ A Night on Mulberry Street. 85These nights on Mulberry Street or vicinity had a great fascination for me, and in subsequent years continued to have a fascination. For a decade I occasionally yearned to be back there with the companions of these days of my fairie apprenticeship. With half a score of adolescents and two or three young women, an evening would be spent in some humble two-room apartment. Everybody was exceedingly happy, and I perhaps the happiest of all, sitting now in one young man’s lap, and now in that of another. ”

“ My stock of patience, never very large, was showing signs of giving out, and I retorted hotly that then, if they wanted to know, I was a reporter, and perhaps Mulberry Street had as much sanctity in it as a church that would not listen to its wrongs. They only shut the doors a little tighter at that. It did not mend matters that about that time I tried a little truth-telling in my own fold and came to grief. It did not prove to be any more popular on Long Island than in New York. ”

“ In the good old days when Bill Tweed was New York's owner, when Jim Fisk was the proprietor of our judges and Kelso sat in Mulberry street, the king of those good men, the police, who defend our lives and property, this city became a spectacle to gods and men such as we thought then could never be equaled. ”

“ In matters musical Silvio Romano is the authority of Mulberry Street. His two hundred and fifty pounds of flesh add weight to his opinion. When there are no customers in his shop, when he is not busy honing or stropping his razors, he is sitting on two chairs, guitar in hand, playing and singing to his heart's content.
Mulberry Street, "Little Italy" of the down town east side, is a very busy street—so busy, indeed, it makes one suspicious. Young men walk up and down the sidewalk, calling to each other ”

“ Tread it ever so lightly on the avenues, in the tenements it kills right and left. Such an epidemic ravaged three crowded blocks in Elizabeth Street on the heels of the grippe last winter, and, when it had spent its fury, the death-maps in the Bureau of Vital Statistics looked as if a black hand had been laid across those blocks, over-shadowing in part the contiguous tenements in Mott Street, and with the thumb covering a particularly packed settlement of half a dozen houses in Mulberry Street. ”

“ My route from the office lay through the Fourth and the Sixth wards, the worst in the city, and for years I walked every morning between two and four o'clock the whole length of Mulberry Street, through the Bend and across the Five Points down to Fulton Ferry. There were cars on the Bowery, but I liked to walk, for so I saw the slum when off its guard. The instinct to pose is as strong there as it is on Fifth Avenue. It is a human impulse, I suppose. We all like to be thought well of by our fellows. ”

“ Through a quiet street leading toward Mulberry Avenue walked a man, haggard of face, misty of eye. He was a small man, almost a youth, of meagre frame and rather pronounced garb. He carried a rusty satchel, grimy and battered, like the scarred veteran of a long and strenuous campaign.
Now he was passing a dusky corner; one he had good cause to remember, but his thoughts were far away. So he failed to associate the low, two-story building with the significant words of the scared woman, frowsy and unkempt, who clattered down the stairs and across the walk, halting and startling him. ”

“ Mike Murphy’s home was neither elegant nor spacious. Mulberry Street is not an aristocratic locality, and its residents do not in general move in fashionable society. Mrs. Murphy was a retail merchant, being the proprietor of an apple-stand on Nassau, near Spruce Street. Several years’ exposure to the weather had made her face nearly as red as the apples she dealt in, and a sedentary life had enlarged her proportions till she weighed close upon two hundred pounds. ”

“ The baby came three weeks ago, right in the hardest of the hard times. It was never strong enough to nurse, and the milk bought in Mulberry street is not for babies to grow on who are not strong enough to stand anything. Little John never grew at all. He lay upon his pillow this morning as white and wan and tiny as the day he came into a world that didn’t want him. ”

“ The shoe fits every large city more or less snugly. I know, for I have had a good deal to do with fitting it on the last two or three years; and often, when looking my audience over in lecturing about Tony and his hardships, I am thinking about Mulberry Street and the old days when problems, civic or otherwise, were farthest from my mind in digging out the facts that lay ready to the hand of the police reporter. ”

“ Two long years had passed, and the memory of her and hers had long since faded out of Mulberry Street, when, in the overhauling of one of the children's homes we thought we had canvassed thoroughly, the child turned up, as unaccountably as she had been lost. All that I ever learned about it was that she had been brought there, picked up by some one in the street, probably, and, after more or less inquiry that had failed to connect with the search at our end of the line, had been included in their flock on some formal commitment, and had stayed there. ”

“ The Five Points had been cleansed, as far as the immediate neighborhood was concerned, but the Mulberry Street Bend was fast outdoing it in foulness not a stone's threw away, and new centres of corruption were continually springing up and getting the upper hand whenever vigilance was relaxed for ever so short a time. It is one of the curses of the tenement-house system that the worst houses exercise a levelling influence upon all the rest, just as one bad boy in a schoolroom will spoil the whole class. ”

“ So, also, I got a picture of the Bend upon my mind which so soon as I should be able to transfer it to that of the community would help settle with that pig-sty according to its deserts. It was not fit for Christian men and women, let alone innocent children, to live in, and therefore it had to go. So with the police lodging-rooms, some of the worst of which were right there, at the Mulberry Street Station and around the corner in Elizabeth Street. ”

“ Since I wrote “How the Other Half Lives” I have been asked many times upon what basis of experience, of fact, I built that account of life in New York tenements. These stories contain the answer. They are from the daily grist of the police hopper in Mulberry street, at which I have been grinding for twenty years. They are reprinted from the columns of my newspaper, and from the magazines as a contribution to the discussion of the lives and homes of the poor, which in recent years has done much to better their lot, and is yet to do much more when we have all come to understand each other. ”

“ I wish that man to understand, if his eye ever falls upon this page—for wrapping purposes, we will say—that, in the language of Mulberry Street, I am on to him. He has got a job recently, driving a bakery wagon, and he times his route so that he can tie up in front of his wife's grocery every day at twelve o'clock, and he puts in a solid hour of his employer's time helping his wife through the noonday rush. ”

“ The building extends through to Mott street, in the rear. It is situated on the easterly side of Mulberry street, between Bleecker and Houston streets. It is ninety feet in width. The Mulberry street front is of white marble, and the Mott street front is of pressed brick, with white marble trimmings. It is fitted up with great taste, and every convenience and comfort is provided for the members of the force on duty here. The greatest order is manifest. Everything and every man has a place, and must be in it at the proper times. There is no confusion. Each department has its separate quarters. ”

“ As he walks along, whenever he meets any robust, well-built young man of about his own age, who is alone, he is seen to stop and address to him a few words. If we had been able to follow this queer-acting individual for the previous hour before he passed us on Mulberry street, we would have seen him roaming about through all the streets of the then dark and criminal 4th Ward, occasionally halting near the groups of ruffians congregated in front of the bar-rooms, and then failing of courage to speak, pass along. ”

“ And without a moment’s delay she set off for Grand Street, where the flower of Mulberry does its shopping.
Two hours afterward, her arms heaped with bundles, and every cent of the ten dollars gone, she appeared in the kitchen of her landlady and shocked her with tidings of the nuptials so near at hand.
“Body of the Serpent!” remarked the Garlic Woman. “In the morning you are a woman without hope, and in the evening you come back the promised wife of a rich signore.” ”

“ A flock of fellow-pilgrims clattered by at high speed in care of a guide, who charged five cents a head for piloting them safely to the Italian colony. The hatless women, burdened with babies and heavy sacks, struggled bravely to keep up with the men, who carried the umbrellas. Bertino fell in behind, and soon they turned the corner of Franklin Street. Here they got their first glimpse of Mulberry, which lay clearly visible in the distance at the foot of a hill whose summit is Broadway. ”

“ Into the ugliest tenement street Christmas brings something of picturesqueness as of cheer. Its message was ever to the poor and the heavy-laden, and by them it is understood with an instinctive yearning to do it honor. In the stiff dignity of the brownstone streets up-town there may be scarce a hint of it. In the homes of the poor it blossoms on stoop and fire-escape, looks out of the front window, and makes the unsightly barber-pole to sprout overnight like an Aaron’s rod. Poor indeed is the home that has not its sign of peace over the hearth, be it but a single sprig of green. ”

“ The shops east and west are pouring forth their swarms of workers. Street and sidewalk are filled with an eager throng of young men and women, chatting gaily, and elbowing the jam of holiday shoppers that linger about the big stores. The street-cars labor along, loaded down to the steps with passengers carrying bundles of every size and odd shape. Along the curb a string of peddlers hawk penny toys in push-carts with noisy clamor, fearless for once of being moved on by the police. [Pg 5] Christmas brings a two weeks’ respite from persecution even to the friendless street-fakir. ”

“ The stranger who enters Mulberry Bend and sees the dress-goods and the candies is sure to think that the place has been decorated to receive him. No, nobody will hurt you if you go down there and are polite, and mind your own business, and do not step on the babies. But if you stare about and make comments, I think those people will be justified in suspecting that the people uptown don't always know how to behave themselves like [Pg 93] ladies and gentlemen, so do not bring disgrace on your neighborhood, and do not go in a cab. ”

“ I was dimly conscious of a rush of blue and brass; and then I saw—the whole street saw—a child, a toddling baby, in the middle of the railroad-track, right in front of the coming car. It reached out its tiny hand toward the madly clanging bell and crowed. A scream rose wild and piercing above the tumult; men struggled with a frantic woman on the curb, and turned their heads away—
And then there stood the Kid, with the child in his arms, unhurt. I see him now, as he set it down gently as any woman, trying, with lingering touch, to unclasp the grip of the baby hand upon his rough finger. ”

“ I done a good business, as I had done ever since me and me old woman came out from Ireland, these forty years ago. Me old woman fell sick and after running up a long doctor bill, she died, the Lord bless her soul, for if we had our fights, she was a good woman to me. One mornin’ after she had been [Page 106] put in her grave, I started out to go across Mulberry Street. ”

“ He had to go with his alley, before the better day could bring light and hope to the Tenth Ward.
What became of the people who were dispossessed? The answer to that is the reply, too, to the wail that goes up from the speculative builder every time we put the screws on the tenement house law. It does not pay him to build any more, he says. But when the multitudes of Mulberry Bend, of Hester Street, and of the Bone Alley Park were put out, there was more than room enough for them in new houses ready for their use. ”

“ He stopped at the gate in the stone fence, and looked long and steadily at the cottage in the chestnuts. No life stirred within, and he walked through the gap with slow and hesitating step. Under the kitchen window he stood awhile, sheltered from the storm, as if undecided, then stepped to the horse-shed and rapped gently on the door.
“’Liza!” he called, “’Liza, old girl! It’s me—Jim!” ”

“ Mulberry and Crosby streets are especially the homes of Italians, who on Sunday mornings pour out of the tenements upon the pavement and street below in such throngs that a stranger can scarcely elbow his way through. The Chinese have taken possession of the lower part of Mott street, and established laundries, groceries, tea-houses, lodging-houses, and opium-smoking dens. ”