New York's Tenement Museum

During our still fairly recent vacation, my wife and I visited New York City’s Tenement Museum (http://www.tenement.org/). It calls itself a “museum of conscience,” and says its mission includes “to make conscious use of history to address contemporary social issues.”

Our guide was fairly clumsy about making us meditate on how terrible the conditions were for the inhabitants: a family of seven, say, in three rooms, without running water, working in the same place they lived.

My Filipina wife, however, was unsuitably unimpressed. She grew up in a rattan house with one room, no running water, and six brothers and sisters. That is, six living at any one time; three died before they made adolescence.

“A place like this would have been a big step up for us,” she commented. “I guess it’s what you’re used to.”

But it isn’t. The people who lived in this tenement block were coming from Ireland, Italy, or Eastern Europe at around the turn of the century.

With due respect, though relatively poor, the Philippines is far from the poorest country on Earth. Its GDP per capita is higher than much of Eastern Europe even today, let alone over a hundred years ago. And these folks were poor, not rich.

It may look meager to us today, but the real truth is that the people who lived in these tenements probably thought of themselves as prosperous. They were probably delighted at their good luck.

Another fascinating discovery on this tour: “sweat shops” are not what we commonly think. These people were not working in factories. A “sweat shop” was a small business, like other shops: they were sewing garments in their homes, under contract, often even with employees.

The net effect of closing down these tenements and sweat shops was to put them out of business and force them into factories. And, far from being grateful for this intervention, most were enraged.

This “social reform,” closing the tenements, was probably good for the rich: removed what was to them an eyesore, eliminated their small-business competition, and supplied them with cheap labour. But it sure was not good for the poor, who lost their homes, their independence, and their best route up the social ladder.

Perhaps it is ever thus. Indeed, it seems relevant to the fate of the Philippines today. “Reformers” trying to close the “sweatshops” of the Philippines—albeit these ones really are large factories—are really eliminating competition for themselves, while depriving Filipinos of the best jobs available and of their best chance to develop.

That’s the real story of the tenement museum; though you have to read it for yourself between the lines.