LET IN THE SUN

By Woody Klein '51.New York: The Macmillan Company,1964. 297 pp. $5.95.

"This book," the author writes, "is an attempt to give a new perspective to a very old problem." Woody Klein knows slums. In 1959, as an undercover reporter for the New York World-Telegram and Sun, he lived as a tenant in some of New York's worst slum tenements. The series he wrote, entitled "I Lived in a Slum," won him a Page One Award from the New York Newspaper Guild for feature writing. He has seen slums in other American cities, in Puerto Rico, Europe, and Israel. He has reported on many facets of slum conditions. In 1961 a series on Puerto Rican immigration to New York won him a Newspaper Reporters Association Award; and in 1962 an Alumni Award for distinguished service to journalism from Columbia University.

Let in the Sun grew out of both professional and personal concerns. Professionally he confronted the fact that the richest country in the world is losing the battle against the slum; some 38,000,000 Americans live in slums today; this number is expected to swell to over 45,000,000 by 1975; urban redevelopment cannot keep up with the present rate of deterioration. "What disturbs me more than anything else," the author writes, "is not that the slum exists, but that most of us have developed such a tough skin that we don't even feel it any more. And what's worse, we don't want to know."

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil," he quotes Edmund Burke, "is that good men do nothing."

Let in the Sim is the story of one tenement house, the 139 people who live there, and all those who have or have had something to do with it as slumlords, tenants, cops, building inspectors, planners, politicians, soulmakers, doctors, social workers, teachers, and nurses. It is not a pretty story.

With gripping effectiveness he describes the victims, often underscoring with apt references, as in citing psychologist Charles Davis saying, "The most pitiful victim ... is not the slum child who dies, but the slum child who lives." The victims, the house in both its early hopeful and its later doomed years; these early chapters are grouped as The Crime. Part Two, The Suspects, reveals the roles in a realistic and fair balance of all who have had to do with 311 East 110th St. Part Three is The Verdict. All on trial are guilty, silent partners too. "Above all, the government officials and landlords are guilty because they abused the power to create and maintain this home. Second, the tenants are guilty, because they have failed to uphold the sanctity of this home. Third, the community workers are guilty, because they have failed to reach deep enough into the dark rooms of this house and bring sunlight to the people inside."

The author sees the problem as Jacob Riis did more than two generations ago, in How the Other Half Lives, when he wrote, "The slum is a cancer that has long roots that reach the avenue as well as the alley." Like Riis he confronts us with the slum as it is, not as something to be argued against any more than anyone argues against cancer, but as something to do something about, all that can be done about it. And that is a great deal, in the author's judgment.

In his concluding pages Klein presents a ten-point program for a massive attack on the slum. He concludes by saying, "It is time the United States launched the biggest and most effective attack on the slums the world has ever known. The dark shadow of the house at 311 East 110th Street has loomed over this nation for generations. We must now remove it forever and let in the sun."

This is an excellent, hard-hitting, timely book. Only those silent partners who prefer to wait for the knife between their own shoulder blades, or their daughters', will not want to read this book.

Professor of Sociology