By far the largest part eighty percent, at least of crimes against property and against the person are perpetrated by individuals who have either lost connection with home life or never had any” (Iris, 2010, p. 5). The lives of those who was rich and lived on top cared little of how the other half was living. With an abundance of people living in tenement buildings, most rooms were dark, unhealthy, and unventilated apartments, which caused so many children death due to suffocation.
The tenements were left unkempt, the buildings were dilapidation, and left filthy by the tenets. Over the past forty years, disease spread through the city which causes the population to decline and the morality rate to increase. As New York began to attract newcomers into the city, the crowd becomes mixed with people who are Italian, German, Russian, Jewish, African, and Chinese, etc. As the incoming mixed crowd begins settling in the lower part of New York, the tenements living was strange to some and many became poor.
Many found skills in the laundry business, as a rag-picker, selling fruit. When African Americans began to settling in New York from the south, it became apparent to many that “white people that they will not live in the same house as a colored tenants, or even in a house recently occupied by Negroes” (Iris, 201 0, p. 87). The house agents had set up the maxim “once a colored house, always a colored house” (Iris, 2010, p. 87).