How the Other Half Lives · Chapter
XVIII: The Reign of Rum explained
This chapter examines the pervasive influence of saloons in New York's tenement districts, highlighting how they outnumber churches, corrupt politics, exploit poverty, and particularly harm children.
What happens
This chapter examines the pervasive influence of saloons in New York's tenement districts, highlighting how they outnumber churches, corrupt politics, exploit poverty, and particularly harm children. The author contrasts the scarcity of wholesome public spaces with the abundance of dramshops, which serve as poor men's clubs and political hubs. The chapter includes a tragic anecdote of a boy who died after being served alcohol, emphasizing the saloon's role in child corruption and societal decay.
Themes in this chapter
Alcoholism and the Saloon
The chapter details the saloon's dominance in tenement life, its role in corrupting politics, and its devastating impact on children and families.
Child Suffering and Exploitation
The chapter highlights the tragic fate of children who are served alcohol, including a boy who died after drinking beer and was eaten by rats.
Crime and Moral Degradation
Saloons foster crime, shield criminals, and are linked to political corruption, with dive-keepers becoming aldermen and police officials.
Poverty and Inequality
The saloon thrives on direst poverty, levying a heavy tax on the poor, while the wealthy owners gain prominence and political power.
Characters to notice
- Unknown
The narrator observes and counts saloons versus churches, follows a boy into a saloon, and recounts the story of a boy killed by rats.
- The Boy
A boy in bare feet on a cold November night is served beer despite a sign prohibiting it; another boy dies after drinking beer all day, killed and half-eaten by rats.
- Chief Inspector Byrnes
Mentioned as having men who spot criminals in reputable saloons.
Key passages
“Where God builds a church the devil builds next door—a saloon, is an old saying that has lost its point in New York.”
The old saying that a saloon always appears next to a church no longer applies in New York because the saloons are far more numerous.
The author uses this to illustrate the overwhelming presence of saloons over churches.
“I doubt if one child in a thousand, who brings his growler to be filled at the average New York bar, is sent away empty-handed, if able to pay for what he wants.”
Almost every child who comes to a bar with a container to buy beer is served as long as they have money.
This highlights the widespread disregard for laws prohibiting serving alcohol to minors.
“All the evil the saloon does in breeding poverty and in corrupting politics; all the suffering it brings into the lives of its thousands of innocent victims, the wives and children of drunkards it sends forth to curse the community; its fostering of crime and its shielding of criminals—it is all as nothing to this, its worst offence.”
Compared to the corruption of children, all other harms caused by saloons—poverty, political corruption, suffering of families, crime—pale in significance.
The author emphasizes that child corruption is the saloon's most grievous offense.