He says there are
360,000 dark rooms in Greater New York. And these are almost entirely
occupied by the foreigners. But unsanitary conditions prevail also in
all the cities, large and small, and especially in the mine and mill and
factory towns, wherever large masses of the poorest workers live.
[Sidenote: Legal Remedies Possible]
Concerning possible legislation to correct these city evils of
environment, Mr. Sargent says: "So far as the overcrowding in city
tenements is concerned, municipal ordinances in our large cities
prescribing the amount of space which rapacious landlords should, under
penalties sufficiently heavy to enforce obedience, be required to give
each tenant, would go far toward attaining the object in view. Whether
such a plan could be brought into existence through the efforts of our
general government, or whether the Congress could itself legislate
directly, upon sanitary and moral grounds, against the notorious
practice of housing aliens with less regard for health and comfort than
is shown in placing brute animals in pens, the Bureau is unprepared to
say.
[Sidenote: Demands Immediate Remedy]
It is, however, convinced that no feature of the immigration question so
insistently demands public attention and effective action.
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