I did, however, have one exceedingly useful experience.  A bill was introduced by the Cigar-Makers’ Union to prohibit the manufacture of cigars in tenement-houses.  I was appointed one of a committee of three to investigate conditions in the tenement-houses and see if legislation should be had.  Of my two colleagues on the committee, one took no interest in the measure and privately said he did not think it was right, but that he had to vote for it because the labor unions were strong in his district and he was pledged to support the bill.  The other, a sporting Tammany man who afterwards abandoned politics for the race-track, was a very good fellow.  He told me frankly that he had to be against the bill because certain interests which were all-powerful and with which he had dealings required him to be against it, but that I was a free agent, and that if I would look into the matter he believed I would favor the legislation.  As a matter of fact, I had supposed I would be against the legislation, and I rather think that I was put on the committee with that idea, for the respectable people I knew were against it; it was contrary to the principles of political economy of the laissez-faire kind; and the business men who spoke to me about it shook their heads and said that it was designed to prevent a man doing as he wished and as he had a right to do with what was his own.

However, my first visits to the tenement-house districts in question made me feel that, whatever the theories might be, as a matter of practical common sense I could not conscientiously vote for the continuance of the conditions which I saw.  These conditions rendered it impossible for the families of the tenement-house workers to live so that the children might grow up fitted for the exacting duties of American citizenship.  I visited the tenement-houses once with my colleagues of the committee, once with some of the labor union representatives, and once or twice by myself.  In a few of the tenement-houses there were suites of rooms ample in number where the work on the tobacco was done in rooms not occupied for cooking or sleeping or living.  In the overwhelming majority of cases, however, there were one, two, or three room apartments, and the work of manufacturing the tobacco by men, women, and children went on day and night in the eating, living, and sleeping rooms—­sometimes in one room.  I have always remembered one room in which two families were living.  On my inquiry as to who the third adult male was I was told that he was a boarder with one of the families.  There were several children, three men, and two women in this room.  The tobacco was stowed about everywhere, alongside the foul bedding, and in a corner where there were scraps of food.  The men, women, and children in this room worked by day and far on into the evening, and they slept and ate there.  They were Bohemians, unable to speak English, except that one of the children knew enough to act as interpreter.