From the cinder path beside a railroad that crosses the level part of
Homestead, you enter an alley, bordered on one side by stables and on
the other by shabby two-story frame houses. The doors of the houses
are closed, but dishpans and old clothes decorating their exterior,
mark them as inhabited. You turn from the alley through a narrow
passageway, and find yourself in a small court, on three sides of which
are smoke-grimed houses, on the fourth, low stables. The open space
teems with life and movement. Children, dogs and hens make it lively
under foot; overhead long lines of flapping clothes are to be dodged. A
group of women stand gossiping in one corner waiting their turn at the
pump,--this pump being one of the two sources of water supply for the
twenty families who live here. Another woman is dumping the contents
of her washtubs upon the paved ground, and the greasy, soapy water
runs into an open drain a few feet from the pump. In the center of the
court, a circular wooden building with ten compartments opening into
one vault, flushed only by this waste water, constitutes the toilet
facilities for over a hundred people. For the sixty-three rooms in the
houses about the court shelter a group of twenty families, Polish,
Slavic, and Hungarian, Jewish and even Negro; and twenty-seven little
children find in this crowded brick-paved space their only playground.
The cinder path has led us to the heart of the sanitary evils of the
steel town. For this court typifies those conditions which result when
there crowd in upon an industrial district, hundreds of unskilled
immigrant laborers, largely single men, largely country people, who
want a place to sleep for the least possible cash. Most of the petty
local landlords who provide quarters care nothing for the condition of
their places, and regard the wages of these transients as legitimate
spoils.
To determine the extent of such congestion, I made a study of the
twenty-one courts in the second ward of Homestead, where yards,
toilets, and water supply are used in common. In these courts lived 239
families, 102 of whom took lodgers. Even of those who lived in two-room
tenements, a half took lodgers. Fifty-one families, including sometimes
four or five people, lived in one-room tenements. One-half the families
used their kitchens as sleeping rooms. Only three houses had running
water inside, and in at least three instances over 110 people were
dependent on one yard-hydrant for water. These are but fragmentary
indications, but the situation seemed serious enough to warrant an
intensive study, with the help of an interpreter, of these courts.
The background of life in this section is a gloomy one. The level land
forming the second ward, cut off from the river by the mill and from
the country by the steep hill behind, forms a pocket where the smoke
settles heavily. Here, on the original site of the town, gardens as
well as alleys have been utilized for building small frame houses.
The space is nearly covered. In some instances these houses are built
in haphazard fashion on the lots; more often they surround a court,
such as I have described. Though they vary in character, these groups
usually consist of four or six two-story houses facing the street and
a similar number facing the alley. Between these rows is a small court
connected with the street by a narrow passage. Fifty-eight per cent
of the houses have only four rooms, and only four have more than six.
The former class usually shelters two families, one having the two
rooms on the street and the other the two on the court. In summer, to
give some through ventilation to the stifling rooms, doors leading to
the stairway between the front and rear rooms are left open. As the
families are often friends and fellow countrymen, this opportunity for
friendly intercourse is not unwelcome. Indeed, the cheerful gossip
that enlivens wash day, like the card-playing in the court on a summer
evening, suggests the friendliness of village days.
Nothing in the surroundings of these festivities, however, bears out
the suggestion. Accumulations of rubbish and broken brick pavements,
render the courts as a whole untidy and unwholesome. Some of the houses
have little porches that might give a sense of homelikeness, but for
the most part they are bare and dingy. As they are built close to the
street with only this busy court behind, the owner can hardly have that
bit of garden so dear to the heart of former country dwellers. Only,
here and there, a little bed of lettuce with its note of delicate green
or the vivid red of a geranium blossom brightens the monotony. Dreary
as is the exterior, however, the greatest evils to the dwellers in
the court arise from other things, from inadequate water supply, from
meager toilet facilities, from overcrowding.
The conditions as to water supply are very serious. In all the
twenty-one courts only three families had running water in their
houses, and even the hydrants in the courts were not for individual
families. In no court were fewer than five families using one hydrant
or pump, while in exceptional instances there were as many as nineteen,
twenty and twenty-one families. As waste water pipes are also wanting
in the houses, the heavy tubs of water must be carried out as well as
in. In this smoky town a double amount of washing and cleaning must
be done. The wash is a heavy one, and when the weather permits, it is
done in the yard. This addition of tubs, wringers, clothes baskets, and
soapy water on the pavement to the already populous court makes it no
very serviceable playground for children.
The toilet accommodations, while possibly more adequate than the water
supply, are unsatisfactory in consequence of the lack of running
water. There is not a single indoor closet in any of these courts. The
streets of Homestead all have sewers, and by a borough ordinance, even
the outside vaults must be connected with them. These are, however,
ordinarily flushed only by the waste water, which flows from the yards
directly into them; when conditions become intolerable, the tenants
wash them out with a hose attached to the hydrant. As long as they are
in the yards, this totally inadequate device is apparently the only one
possible. The closets, moreover, which are usually in the center of the
courts only a few yards from the kitchen doors, create from the point
of view either of sanitation or decency an intolerable condition. While
occasionally three or four families must use one compartment, usually
only two families need do so. But even this means that often they are
not locked and that no one has a special sense of responsibility, in
consequence of which they are frequently filthy. It is not perhaps
surprising that this state of affairs is tolerated by people who have
lived on farms and were used to meager toilet facilities; but the
discomfort and danger here are infinitely greater than in the country,
and here the conditions are remediable.
The overcrowding within the houses shown by the accompanying chart
makes the water and toilet conditions more unendurable. Half the
families who do not take lodgers and eighty-five per cent of those who
do, average more than two persons to the room,--a number indicative,
generally, of conditions which do not permit moral or physical well
being.
FAMILIES CLASSIFIED AS TO AVERAGE NUMBER OF
PERSONS PER ROOM.
Number of persons
per room 1 2 3 4 5 5 plus
Families without
lodgers, total,
137. percentage 13.8 35.7 38 9.7 1.4 1.4
With lodgers,
Total 102,
percentage 5.8 8.8 42 30.4 6.8 5.8
Let us consider first the causes of such congestion in so small a town,
next its nature and results, and finally the possibility of improvement.
Three factors are involved in producing this state of affairs, the
growth of the mill and town, the low wage of the laborer, and his
ambition. The mill has developed fast, and in spite of improved
machinery has rapidly increased the number of its employes. In 1892,
at the time of the strike, 4,000 men were employed; now nearly 7,000,
exclusive of the clerical force. Moreover at each addition to the size
of the mill, homes are destroyed to give it place. And further, the
steep slopes of a hill hinder the growth of the town. Although suburbs
are gradually building beyond this hill, car-fare is an item to be
considered when a man earns $1.60 a day, and as there have not been,
except during the hard times of 1908, a sufficient number of cheap
houses for rent, the people accustomed to small quarters have crowded
together along these alleys. The lowest paid workingmen are naturally
the ones that inhabit them. Of 220 men, eighty-eight per cent were
unskilled workers receiving less than two dollars a day. This figure
is usual among the Slavs, since of the 3,602 employed in the mill,
eighty-five per cent are unskilled.
That the greatest overcrowding is in the families taking lodgers, shows
a general tendency to economize in this way rather than by crowding the
family into too small a tenement. The three dollars a month which the
lodgers pay for their room might seem a small return for the labor and
loss of privacy of home life; but in more than three-quarters of the
families taking lodgers the income from them covered the rent, while in
one-fifth of the families it was twice the rent or even more.
This tendency to economize even at the loss of home life, induced
primarily by low wages, has a further cause in the ambition of the
Slavs to own a home in a better locality, or to buy a bit of property
in the old country to which they may some day return. Again and
again in explaining why they took lodgers these excuses were given,
"Saving to educate the children", "The father does not earn enough
to support the family", "Taking boarders in order to start a bank
account". Thrift, it would seem, is not a virtue to be recommended
indiscriminately. Figures as to overcrowding are in themselves but a
lifeless display; when you see them exemplified in individual homes
they become terribly significant. I entered one morning a two-room
tenement,--the kitchen, perhaps twelve by fifteen feet, was steaming
with vapor from a big washtub on a chair in the middle of the room.
Here the mother was trying to wash, and at the same time to keep the
elder of her two babies from going into a tub full of boiling water
standing on the floor. On one side of the room was a huge, puffy bed,
one feather tick to sleep on and another for covering; near the window
a sewing machine, in the corner an organ,--all these besides the
inevitable cook stove whereon in the place of honor was cooking the
evening's soup. Asleep upstairs in the second room were one boarder and
the man of the house. The two other boarders were at work.
Can you picture the effect on the mother of such a home, the overwork
for her, the brief possibility of rest when the babies come? Yet
it is even more disastrous to the children. And, as appears in the
accompanying chart, many of the families who take boarders are families
with children.
WITH LODGERS WITHOUT LODGERS
No CHILDREN FAMILIES FAMILIES
0 30 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 24 XXXXXXXXXXXX
1 30 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 46 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
2 25 XXXXXXXXXXXXX 26 XXXXXXXXXXXXX
3 10 XXXXX 22 XXXXXXXXXXX
4 7 XXXX 15 XXXXXXXX
5 0 7 XXXX
The situation brings serious results both to the health and the
character of the children. The overworked mother has neither time nor
patience for their care and training. As half of the families use the
kitchen for sleeping, there is a close mingling of the lodgers with the
family which endangers the children's morals. In only four instances
were girls over fourteen found in the families taking lodgers, but
even the younger children learn evil quickly from the free spoken men.
One man in a position to know the situation intimately, spoke of the
appalling familiarity with vice among the children in these families. A
priest told me that he preached to the women against this way of saving
money, but as long as wages are low and the good ambition to own a
home or have a bank account can find no other way of fulfilling itself,
it is difficult to persuade them to give it up.
The crowding and other ills have also serious physical consequences.
The birth rate and the deaths of children under two, show that while
among the Slavs in the second ward a child died for every three that
were born, among the other population of Homestead one died for
every six that were born. Against many of these deaths was the entry
"malnutrition due to poor food and overcrowding." Sadder still is the
case of those wailing babies who do survive and begin life with an
under-vitalized system ready for both the disease and the dissipation
that attend weak bodies and wills.
Outside of the crowded tenement rooms where are the many children to
play? In investigating the conditions in one narrow court, I opened a
door into a low shed where the entrails of a chicken lay on the floor.
It was foul and dark and I turned away in disgust, but the bright
little boy beside me piped up cheerily, "Oh that's our gypsy cave." A
sorry region, surely, for a child's imagination to rove!
[Illustration: _Photograph by Lewis W. Hine._