the story of a great life-saving social revolution, the mightiest in the nineteenth century and one of the most momentous in the history of civilization, is told here for the first time. it is told from the standpoint of the transformation of the city of new york, by a chief actor in the event.
only by forcing ourselves into a receptive mood can we of the present credit the half of what is set before us concerning the city that was. the shocked imagination rebels. it seeks relief in assuming that even a trained expert, a contemporaneous witness and investigator of the conditions described, in writing after they have passed away, unconsciously yields to the historian’s temptation to throw the past into dramatic relief by starting exaggerations.
dr. smith, however, leaves us no room for doubt. the appalling chapter in which he lays bare the new york of 1864 is a contemporaneous document. it is a physician’s report of a systematic medical inspection of new york in that year, as delivered before a legislative committee a few months later by the very physician who had directed the inspection.
nevertheless, the city that was is not new york alone. she is but a type. her condition, with variations, may be multiplied, during the early years of the nineteenth century, by the total of the cities, towns, and villages in the world. in the work of regeneration some of these anticipated her. others, including all throughout the territory of the united states, were aroused through her agitation and inspired by her example.
as a student of local history, the writer thought himself familiar with the many phases of the growth of new york; but the condition of the city as late as the period of our civil war, as here depicted,8 startled him as might a revelation. he believes that no seriously minded man or woman can afford to ignore this volume. we owe it to ourselves and to one another fully to face its lesson.
we shall be shocked; we shall be filled with horror; but accepting the city that now is, great as her faults may be, with a new gratitude, we shall turn with anointed sympathy and understanding to any earnest voice that pleads for the city that should be. and, indeed, other volumes which dr. smith himself has in preparation, as suggestive and as interesting as this one, may help us on in this direction.
frank allaben
