So the city became a battlefield of a thousand streets, ten thousand houses, roofs, cellars and alleys. The city became unsafe, and people walked and lived in terror.

Until the Puerto Ricans came upon the scene. Then the gangs had a purpose and target and the city became much safer for everyone—except the PR’s. They had come here without invitation so whatever disaster befell them was of their own doing.

Some thinking persons wondered what would happen if the PR’s fled or were driven from the city. It was best not to delve too deeply or project too far. As things were, the gangs warred against the PR’s, the PR’s retaliated in kind. Optimistically, they might exterminate each other; and with this happy hope for the future, the city continued to conduct business as usual—and die.

Because the night was warm, people at the windows and on the stoops of the tenements saw the Jets, and only those who approved openly of their activities called out to the boys. Those who did not looked away or hid behind newspapers and handkerchiefs because the Jets meant trouble and in this crowded block there was more trouble than air, light, or hope. So why look for more?

On other streets there were other gangs that slept late in the day, stirred in the afternoon, and like prowling cats came fully alive at night to stalk the cellars, the alleys, the roofs, the streets of the crowded, decaying West Side of Manhattan.

There was no place to move, no place to go. It was twenty years since the Second World War had begun and ended, but housing that ordinary people could afford was still at a premium; and if a white man wanted to get out of his apartment there wasn’t a landlord anywhere who wasn’t delighted at the vacancy which he could immediately fill at an increase in rent.

And if he wanted to sub-divide three rooms into five, six, or even eight, he could fill every one of them with Puerto Ricans and really make himself a bundle so big and fat that he could spend most of any year in Florida or California. He need never see his buildings, his tenants, or do anything for the maintenance of halls, walls and roofs. If the building fell down the landlord could turn his property into a parking lot.

So in the end, even people who didn’t like the Jets had to admit that the boys were doing something about saving what little was left to them of the neighborhood. If they didn’t like the way the boys operated, at least the boys did something, which was more than could be said for the politicians and the gas they spouted downtown.

None of the politicians lived on the West Side; none of them had to fight for a little room, a little air to breathe; and if the city was unsafe, crowded, depressing, if more and more streets were becoming unsafe after dark, whose fault was it? Not one person in any of the tenements had ever been asked if he wanted the PR’s admitted to the country. They had no voice in the decision but that didn’t mean they didn’t resent it. None of the newspapers spoke for the people on the West Side—only kids like the Jets, who used their voices and fists. It was best not to forget this.