How the Other Half Lives
The Fountainhead , part 1, chapter 12 T he Wynand newspaper chain, trying to boost its sales and publicity, decides to run an exposé of living conditions in New York’s slums. The editor-in- chief Alvah Scarret assigns Dominique Francon , who’s his favorite columnist, to do an investigation. Although Dominique is used to living in the lap of luxury, she agrees to spend two weeks living in a run-down tenement on the East Side, washing up in a tin bath, peeling potatoes in a shared kitchen, mingling with the poor people who live there and getting to know them. At the end of two weeks she returned to her penthouse apartment on the roof of a hotel over Central Park, and her articles on life in the slums appeared in the Banner. They were a merciless, brilliant account. She heard baffled questions at a dinner party. “My dear, you didn’t actually write those things?” “Dominique, you didn’t really live in that place?” “Oh, yes,” she answered. “The house you own on East Twelfth Street , Mrs. P...