DEPARTMENT FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF SOCIAL CONDITIONS, NEW YORK CHARITY
ORGANIZATION SOCIETY
Last winter, the Pittsburgh Survey, co-operating with the Bureau of
Health, conducted a special investigation of the housing situation
in Pittsburgh. Its purpose was a general stock-taking from the point
of view of sanitary regulation. Evil conditions were found to exist
in every section of the city. Over the omnipresent vaults, graceless
privy sheds flouted one's sense of decency. Eyrie rookeries perched
on the hillsides were swarming with men, women and children,--entire
families living in one room and accommodating "boarders" in a corner
thereof. Cellar rooms were the abiding places of other families. In
many houses water was a luxury, to be obtained only through much
effort of toiling steps and straining muscles. Courts and alleys
fouled by bad drainage and piles of rubbish were playgrounds for
rickety, pale-faced, grimy children. An enveloping cloud of smoke
and dust through which light and air must filter made housekeeping a
travesty in many neighborhoods; and every phase of the situation was
intensified by the evil of overcrowding,--of houses upon lots, of
families into houses, of people into rooms. Old one-family houses were
found converted into multiple dwellings, showing that Pittsburgh's
housing problem threatened to become a tenement-house problem as well.
To cope with these conditions was a Bureau of Health, hampered by an
insufficient appropriation, an inadequate force of employes, and in
the large an uneducated, indifferent, public opinion. A report of the
investigation was published, and was used by the housing committee
of the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce in its campaign of education
in support of ordinances then before councils. These ordinances were
in line with recommendations of Superintendent James F. Edwards of
the Bureau of Health and the city administration. Councils voted an
increase of $20,000 to the bureau for its work in this field. The force
of employes in the tenement house division was increased from one chief
inspector, three inspectors and a part-time stenographer, to one chief
inspector of experience, ten inspectors, one clerk and one stenographer
on full time. A new system of records was inaugurated and comprehensive
measures were undertaken to obtain the complete census of all
tenements in Greater Pittsburgh. Subsequently, an ordinance was passed
providing for the compulsory registration of tenement houses.[7] Here,
then, has been a long stride ahead in the course of housing reform in
Pittsburgh, which had been inaugurated several years before by Williams
H. Matthews, headworker of Kingsley House, and the leaders of the Civic
Club,--pioneer work which had secured the provisions of the existing
state tenement house law and the creation of a tenement division under
the Bureau of Health.
[7] Other ordinances affecting the housing situation have been put
before councils through the instigation of Dr. Edwards. One provided
for a special bond issue, [carried by the people in November], for
the erection of furnaces to consume rubbish and ashes: and it is to
be hoped provision will be made for its collection. Hitherto the city
has been content to collect and dispose of garbage only. Rubbish and
ashes in unsightly piles accumulate in back-yards until a sanitary
inspector serves notice on the householder to remove them at his own
expense. Another ordinance drawn for the purpose of giving the health
authorities power to vacate cellar rooms in dwellings other than
tenements, failed to pass.
[Illustration: SAW MILL RUN.