Oh no. Far from it.
In our last episode, the nature of tenement living in New York was briefly examined, and it became clear that around the time Mrs. Hyde Kittredge was teaching tenement dwellers how to take care of their rude hovels, entire households, from the oldest to the youngest, were put to work making clothes and flowers in their tenement "homes" to make ends meet. Everybody had to work, otherwise the household would be out on the street.
In that era, when corporate trusts had a lock on the economy and the lives of workers, subsistence was about the best that working class people -- immigrants or not -- could hope for. "Struggle" wasn't the half of it.
Yet Mrs. Hyde Kittredge, aware of the facts, still made sure her tenement dwellers completed their housekeeping tasks, regardless of any other duties they may have, like sewing clothes for Campbell Kid dolls and making lace. To Mrs. Hyde Kittredge and the like, the Problem was the tenement and the chaos of the dwellers' lives therein. She would teach them how to order their lives in the tenements with the expectation that making their lives more orderly within the tenement walls would lead to greater order, peace and security outside them. There was tremendous fear -- justifiable -- that the tenements were hotbeds of insurrection. Showing the tenement dwellers how to make their lives better in the tenements was openly intended to defuse the fury of the masses at the abject state of oppression and poverty in which they lived.
Our previous lesson ended with some notes on cleaning your sink. Assuming you had one. Some further notes are necessary:
And kerosene. Don't forget the kerosene!
If there was a sink at all in the tenement unit itself (sometimes they were only in the hall), a rusty iron one wasn't surprising.
In the following view, the girls are cleaning up the fancy Model Tenement kitchen. Laundry tubs are next to the rusty iron sink in the corner:
The Improvised Refrigerator is a wooden box hung outside the window (in the air shaft) which was said to be perfectly fine for keeping perishables in all but the hottest weather. No doubt in cold weather, the contents would freeze solid. But given the incandescent heat of the coal stove, no doubt they were quickly thawed when needed.
Hanging on the wall next to the sink are the sink brush and the sink shovel mentioned previously, and there is an absolute abundance of tubs and basins and pans for various cleanly purposes. There are also two spigots at the sink, leading me to wonder if, surprisingly, this Model Tenement is supplied with running hot water. What luxury if so.
The lesson concludes:
Now wait a minute! You're going to have the students boil their garbage pails every day? You're going to put it on the stove and boil it? For how long? But I suppose if the stove is hot, why not?
Oh, and there's a note about roaches and water bugs:
Roach salt. That sounds like a good product. Of course you do have to sweep it up in the morning (along with all the roaches) before you start to cook.
And now the Review:
You got that last part? How to test the temperature of the oven? "Put ya hand in it, dearie, see if it's hot enough! Heah, lemme count witcha. Onnnnne, teeeewwwwooooo, trrrrrrreeeeeee...." Just cruel. But these were tough times. There were no reliable thermometers or temperature regulators on ovens, not even on gas ones. You either put your child's hand in the oven or you ruined your cake.
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