The Greeley Tribune

A PEEP INTO BERLIN

RIXDORF, THE WHITECHAPEL OF THE GERMAN CAPITAL.

There Are No Slums, and Everything Is Bright and Clean and Under Police Control In the Quarter Where the Working People Live.

Nothing in Berlin so much impresses me as Rixdorf, the Whitechapel of the German capital.

You know the east end of London—the stifling courts, the grimy alleys, the roaring taverns, the tattered children, the suffocating reek of frying fish and the groups of gossiping slatterns at every gloomy doorstep. Now let me show how another European city houses its working classes. Come with me into the "slums" of Berlin.

From the center of the city, with its splendid houses and its ceaseless shops, an electric tram carries one swiftly to Rixdorf, a district connected by every possible means with every quarter of the city, however fashionable or magnificent. And when you reach it you scarcely know that you have left the fashionable and magnificent quarters at all, for on every side of you are spacious streets, with trees planted at the curb, and on the other hand tall white palaces rising up with solid dignity toward a clear sky: huge houses, bright and speckless, with wide doorways, many shining windows and iron railed balconies, where creepers twine and children play: splendid and noble houses, such as you would look for with difficulty in almost any quarter of London. It is here that the working classes of Berlin live out their careful, thrifty and laborious lives.

The jerry builder does not exist in Berlin. As soon as land falls vacant it is purchased by companies of recognized repute, often by banking houses, and only such streets are planned which meet all the requirements of sanitation and art. The houses are built, and the working classes enter them, the well off renting the ground and first floors, the poorer folk mounting to the floors above. From the doorstep to the fan light in the roof everything is clean and orderly.

I have had the pleasure of entering some of these flats and talking to their owners. I found the interiors no whit less pleasing than the magnificence of the facades. Here, for instance, is the home of a man who keeps a little greengrocer's shop in his front room. On the walls are shelves bright with polished china and tin. A stove filled with hot bricks diffuses a pleasant warmth and shines in all its tiles with the labors of the housewife. A table spread with a neat cloth occupies the center of the room and is set out with the frugal tea of the little family. The grandmother, with a warm shawl over her shoulders, sits in a high backed chair beaming at her visitors. The good housewife, radiantly clean, hangs over the back of the chair, nodding a sympathetic head at every twist of the conversation. Big and burly, leaning against the wall, with his cap in his hand, his arms folded across his deep chest, is the master of the household—an ex-seaman, with shining dark eyes, black hair and a red face.

The big boar hound which pulls the vegetable cart through the streets presses his full weight against the legs of the English visitor and drives him slowly and resolutely to the wall, where he holds him prisoner till the master, laughing, and the housewife apologizing, call him off. We learn from these good people that they have their hard times and that it is often difficult to dress the children as they could wish, but nevertheless they never go short of food—no, no; that does not happen in Berlin. As for work—why, life would be a poor thing without it, and there is usually an hour or two in the evening when they can go and hear music at the cafe. Oh, yes; they are comfortable enough, and Berlin is pretty good as cities go. But the country—ah, that's fine, that is!

But everywhere, even in this orderly quarter of the city, there is evidence of what the Berliners hate and resent more than anything else "the control."

"Look!" said my guide, a working man, as we mounted the stairs of one of these Rixdorf palaces. His hand pointed to a door on the first floor, and I saw to my amazement that it was a police office. "Yes," he said bitterly, "they live with us: even in our houses! The control; always the control!" I asked to be allowed to enter, and, having a magic name on my lips as an introduction, I was permitted to inspect the place. The police greeted me in a pleasant fashion, taking their cigars from their mouths and pausing in their games to give me information. As we passed out and stood for a moment looking at the photographs and descriptions of missing citizens on the wall I told my guide that the police seemed to me agreeable enough.

"They are all right," he said, "but they are only the strings. The people who pull the strings—ah, those are the devils! You should see them! Oh, my heavens, you should!"

But I saw no brutalizing evidence of the control in my wanderings. I entered little beer houses, comfortable places, with tables and chairs and music going cheerfully through the evening, and saw no check upon the enjoyment of the people. They have their beer gardens in Rixdorf, their music halls and their places for lectures and Socialist meetings. They walk through the broad streets and pay calls at each other's houses and crowd to the Tempelhof field to see the great military reviews. It seemed to me that they are in happy circumstances.

Now, I saw during all my wanderings through Rixdorf one half drunken man, but never did I see a drunken woman. I am told that drunkenness among the women is unknown.— Harold Bigbie in London Mail.