gave him from actual personal
experience his horror of these tramp lodging-houses. As member of the
Health Board I was brought into very close relations with the conditions
of life in the tenement-house districts. Here again I used to visit the
different tenement-house regions, usually in company with Riis, to
see for myself what the conditions were. It was largely this personal
experience that enabled me while on the Health Board to struggle not
only zealously, but with reasonable efficiency and success, to improve
conditions. We did our share in making forward strides in the matter of
housing the working people of the city with some regard to decency and
comfort.

The midnight trips that Riis and I took enabled me to see what the
Police Department was doing, and also gave me personal insight into some
of the problems of city life. It is one thing to listen in perfunctory
fashion to tales of overcrowded tenements, and it is quite another
actually to see what that overcrowding means, some hot summer night, by
even a single inspection during the hours of darkness. There was a very
hot spell one midsummer while I was Police Commissioner, and most of
each night I spent walking through the tenement-house districts and
visiting police stations to see what was being done. It was a tragic
week. We did everything possible to alleviate the suffering. Much of it
was heartbreaking, especially the gasping misery of the little children
and of the worn-out mothers. Every resource of the Health Department, of
the Police Department, and even the Fire Department (which flooded the
hot streets) was taxed in the effort to render service. The heat killed
such multitudes of horses that the means at our disposal for removing
the poor dead beasts proved quite inadequate, although every nerve was
strained to the limit. In consequence we received scores of complaints
from persons before whose doors dead horses had remained, festering
in the heat, for two or three days. One irascible man sent us furious
denunciations, until we were at last able to send a big dray to drag
away the horse that lay dead before his shop door. The huge dray already
contained eleven other dead horses, and when it reached this particular
door it broke down, and it was hours before it could be moved. The
unfortunate man who had thus been cursed with a granted wish closed
his doors in despair and wrote us a final pathetic letter in which he
requested us to remove either t