MR. RIIS' LECTURE

Mr. Jacob A. Riis, whose writings about the New York slums have given him an international reputation, spoke in Dartmouth Hall Friday evening, May 10, on "The Battle with the Slum." He was introduced by Secretary A. K. Skinner of the Christian Association, under whose auspices he had come.

The emphasis of the lecture was upon the responsibility of present citizens toward future citizens; of the American citizen and property owner toward the foreign population, especially toward those who rented of them their property. The question of the slum, Mr. Riis says, is simply a question of per cent. If landlords will be content with five per cent on their investment, there will be no slum; but out of their greed the slum has grown.

The impossibility of families living according to the laws of health or morality was brought out by references to the thousands of dark rooms, ill ventilated buildings, bathless blocks, crowded apartments, and sections of the city without a spot of green grass, and by statistics in regard to the mortality in these sections, especially infant mortality. That the tenement house question is important and has a bearing upon all questions of citizenship, of education, of decency may be seen by one sentence of the recent report of the tenement house commission: "These tenants live in an environment where everything makes, for unrighteousness."

The lecture throughout was illustrated by views made from photographs which Mr. Riis himself has taken in the progress of his work; and the need of carrying on the battle was made more emphatic by those pictures in which present wholesome and healthful conditions were contrasted with the former terrible ones.

A feeling reference to President Roosevelt, in connection with the assistance he gave in this work when he was police commissioner of New York, was accompanied by a portrait of him, thrown upon the screen, and evoked great applause; a portrait of Street Commissioner Waring was also shown, and two pictures illustrating what he accomplished in cleaning up the city in a material way.

Mr. Riis is a most interesting and convincing lecturer, with a vital subject, and the college community is indebted to those who were instrumental in bringing him here.