Sidney Hook on growing up poor in New York
Over the semester break I re-read some of Sidney Hook’s autobiographical Out of Step. I disagree with Hook about most things philosophical — he was a pragmatist and a Marxist of varying sorts — but I do respect that Hook was one of the first to reject and criticize the lockstep party-mentality and slavish following of all things Soviet that was characteristic of the far left for much of the century.
I was struck by Hook’s description of growing up in an immigrant neighborhood in New York City in the first decades of the twentieth century.
“The physical conditions under which we lived were quite primitive. On Locust Street where we lived for some years, the toilets were in the yard. In other tenements they were shared with another family. All were railroad flats, heated only by a coal stove and boiler in the kitchen. Gas provided illumination and the most common means of suicide. We froze in winter and fried in summer. Vermin were almost always a problem, and the smell of kerosene pervaded our bedrooms, which had no windows and gave on skylights instead. The public baths were used until bathtubs were installed. The women worked like pack horses; their work was never done. Nor could their husbands have shared their household labors. My father left for work before we arose; he returned from work when we were ready to go to bed. More than once, to the astonishment and amusement of the children, he would fall asleep at the dinner table with the soup spoon in his hand poised in the air” (p. 11).
Still, Hook managed to overcome his surroundings and become one of the most prominent philosophers of his generation.
Tags: New York City in 1910, Out of Step, poverty in the United States, pragmatic Marxism, Sidney Hook
