The City Below the Hill

‘The city above the hill’ is the home of the classes. Within its well-built residences will be found the captains of industry, the owners of real-estate, and those who labor with brain rather than hand. Here in predominating proportion reside the employing, the professional and the salaried classes. The manual worker in this district is indeed rare, the home of the poor cannot there be found. It is the exclusive habitat of the rich and of the well-to-do.

‘The city below the hill,’ on the other hand, is the dwelling place of the masses. Here it is the rich man that one finds it difficult to discover. Salaried and professional men are not entirely lacking, but even when to their number are added the shop-keepers and hotel men, these together represent but 15 per cent of its population. ‘The city below the hill’ is the home of the craftsman, of the manual wage-earner, of the mechanic and the clerk, and three-quarters of its population belong to this, the real industrial class. This area is not without its poor, and, as in other cities, a submerged tenth is present with its claims upon neighborly sympathy.

Source: Herbert Brown Ames, "The City Below the Hill" (Toronto: , 1897), 6

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