英文短文欣赏

Protecting Against PovertyConditions in the Late Nineteenth the great cities of the ninet

In the great cities of the nineteenth century slum dwellers crowded into foul-smelling tenements , worked in sweatshop industries, and were victims of such working and living conditions as seemed beyond any power to remedy or change. The tenements, four to six stories high, crowded along alleys, which served as air-shafts. Only a few of the rooms faced the alley; the majority of the rooms had access to neither light nor air. There was little or no inside plumbing, and frequently there was but a single sink with running water for an entire tenement. There were no playgrounds, no parks, and few schoolhouses in such areas. There were saloons ; there was plenty of vice and crime; and there was disease.

On New Yorks East Side, the death rate for children in 1888 was 140 per 1000. Today it is about 7 per 1000. Contagious diseases such as typhoid fever, smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and tuberculosis took a frightful toll every year. In the 1890s, Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant, began writing stories about the conditions among the poor who lived in Murderers Alley, Hells Kitchen, Poverty Gap, the Lung Blocks, and the Bowery. His book, How the Other Half Lives, stirred the conscience of the nation. People on other parts of the country began to see that the conditions in New York which he so vividly described might also exist in the cities where they lived.