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Updated: May 7, 2025
=Mulberry Bend.= In striking contrast with this home are conditions in Mulberry Bend, New York, as described by a writer thoroughly conversant with conditions as they were until recently conditions, however, now much bettered: "These alleys, running from nowhere to nowhere, alongside cellars where the light never enters and where nothing can live but beast-men and beast-women and rats; behind foul rookeries where skulk the murderer and the abandoned tramp; beside hideous plague-spots where the stench is overpowering Bottle Alley, where the rag-pickers pile their bags of stinking stuff, and the Whyo Roost where evil-visaged beings prowl about, hunting for prey; dozens of alleys winding in and out and intersecting, so that the beast may slay his prey, and hide in the jungle, and be safe; these foul alleys who shall picture them, or explore their depths, or describe their wretchedness and their hideousness?... Upon the doorsteps weary mothers are nursing little babies who will never know the meaning of innocent childhood, but will be versed in the immoral lore of the Underworld before they learn their alphabet.
They were usually rag-pickers who ate at night the scraps for which they had begged during the day. There was in the city an Old Ladies' Home; but this was not for Negroes. A house was secured and the women taken in, Joanna Moore and her associates moving into the second story.
Progress is an honest man; the ideal and the absolute do not filch pocket-handkerchiefs. By whom were the wagons containing the wealth of the Tuileries escorted in 1848? By the rag-pickers of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Rags mounted guard over the treasure. Virtue rendered these tatterdemalions resplendent.
On each side were low doors entering the basements of the houses, and the population consisted of rag-pickers, second-hand clothiers and one pawnshop. It was just such a place as one would expect to meet the lowest types of humanity. Dirty children were playing in the half-deserted place, their blue lips and pinched faces speaking eloquently of their poverty.
Not cardinals only, kings, bishops and princes, canons and nobles, but the corporations of the town also had contributed these panels of fire; the richest, such as the Guilds of Drapers and Furriers, of Goldsmiths and Money-changers, had each presented five to Our Lady, while the poorer companies of the Master Scavengers and Water-carriers, the Porters and Rag-pickers, each gave one.
Having made up his mind, he descended the steps of the station at a rapid pace, passing soldiers with their knapsacks on their backs, and poor people who rise early coming to take the morning train, the train of poverty and want. In front of one of the stations he saw a crowd collected, rag-pickers and countrywomen.
At this gilded, falsified populace, whose fathers were pickpockets, or carrion-crows, or rag-pickers, with wives compliant, lewd and forgetful: for they are all of them not far different from harlots Populace above, populace below! What are 'poor' and 'rich' at present! That distinction did I unlearn, then did I flee away further and ever further, until I came to those kine."
"Rag-pickers collect all the rags and old linen of Europe," the printer concluded, "and buy any kind of tissue. The rags are sorted and warehoused by the wholesale rag merchants, who supply the paper-mills.
"Yet another garment would I tell thee of, such a one as eye hath not before seen." He stopped to laugh heartily. "A garment it also was of many colors," and again he laughed. "In that which is filthy and cast away do rag-pickers stir and strive.
"The devil he was!" said Dumoulin, somewhat out of countenance, though in general not over-scrupulous in the choice of his bottle-companions: but, after the first surprise, he resumed, with the most charming amenity: "There are some rag-pickers very high by scent I mean descent!"
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