As most people before me have said, the conditions in the tenements were horrible. Immigrants were always looked down on, no matter what. The thing I found most incredible was probably in Anbinder’s book, when he was saying that the most expensive rent in the neighborhood was around $7. SEVEN DOLLARS?!?!! FOR WHAT?!?! These people had nothing. At all. Not even the bare necessities. No bathrooms, no beds, no running water, or heat in the winter. My first thought when I read this part was, “I wish I could go back to that time with the money I have now and buy a bunch of houses.” Then I realized how terrible the conditions were.
As Liz points out in her Spark, the fact that blacks and whites lived together peacefully was amazing. Even though they were constantly drinking, dancing, and prostituting themselves, they still lived and slept in the same tenemants, even sometimes the same bed in the same room. It was cruel of the rich white people to go “slumming” in these neighborhoods, looking down at and pitying the immigrants living in terrible conditions. But what did they do about it? That’s right. Nothing. Not a thing.
About the whole capitalist/socialist debate, I’m not too great with these terms, but America is and has always been a capitalist society. We depend on money. We THRIVE on it. In the books, as well as in present day life, it is impossible to get anywhere in life without money.
