Slums Quotes
Moses became the greatest “builder” the world had ever known. The Bridges and tunnels into New York, the highways in the city and Long Island, the development of Fire Island and the World Trade Center were all his work. Babbitt was a very large building and construction contractor. The Cold War was ongoing and his reference to civilian defense was an absurd notion of the 1950s that building bomb shelters in cities and homes could protect the civilian population in the event of nuclear attack. This was actually an official government position and program.
After Nixon was elected, he never did very much to make Black Capitalism come to pass, but he did make the concept a more respectable idea and it has grown slowly since.
It was common then for people to die in tenements as a result of shoddy construction, poisoning by sewer gas, and unsanitary conditions. As the result of the efforts of reformers like Riis and Theodore Roosevelt health inspectors were appointed and errant builders went to jail—in some cases for manslaughter.
This is an invaluable historical quotation showing urban housing conditions in the 1920s.
Franklin, then a Harvard student was courting Eleanor who had been working in a settlement house on the Lower East Side of New York. He visited her there and on this occasion a young girl had become very ill and Eleanor wanted to see her home and took Franklin along. This was his first experience with the living conditions of poor people.
