Showing typical toilet and water supply; also a few of the boarders in
these houses.]
The congestion in Homestead must be considered not only from the
standpoint of the family and the child, however, but of the single man.
His problem is no small one. In the figures for the mill we find that
30.5 per cent of the total number of Slavs are unmarried. This large
group, in the period before they send back for a wife or sweetheart,
must find some sort of a home. While some are scattered in families and
create the lodging problem we have been considering, others live in
groups over which a "boarding boss" presides. In West Homestead, for
example, in about twenty houses there were three hundred Bulgarians,
among whom at the time of the depression there were only three women.
These scattered houses hidden away on the outskirts of the town housed
a group of happy, industrious men, all ambitious to hoard their money
and return to the old country as men of property. They cared little how
they lived so long as they lived cheaply. One of these homes consisted
of two rooms one above the other, each perhaps twelve by twenty feet.
In the kitchen I saw the wife of the boarding boss getting dinner,
some sort of hot apple cake and a stew of the cheapest cuts of meat.
Along one side of the room was an oilcloth covered table with a plank
bench on each side, and above a long row of handleless white cups in a
rack, and a shelf with tin knives and forks on it. Near the up-to-date
range, the only real piece of furniture in the room, hung the "buckets"
in which all mill men carry their noon or midnight meal. A crowd of
men were lounging cheerfully about talking, smoking and enjoying life,
making the most of the leisure enforced by the shutdown in the mill. In
the room above, double iron bedsteads were set close together and on
them comfortables were neatly laid. Here besides the "boarding boss"
and his wife and two babies, lived twenty men. The boss, himself, was a
stalwart Bulgarian who had come to this country several years ago, and
by running this house besides working in the mill, had accumulated a
good deal of money. The financial arrangements of such an establishment
are simple. The boarding boss runs the house, and the men pay him
three dollars a month for a place to sleep, for having their clothes
washed, and their food cooked. In addition an account is kept of the
food purchased, and the total is divided among the men at each pay day.
The housewife purchases and cooks what special food each man chooses
to order: beef, pork, lamb, each with a tag of some sort labeling the
order, and all frying together. A separate statement is kept of these
expenses for each boarder. Such an account for a group of men in a
small Slavic household may prove of interest.
The family (which consisted of a man, his wife, his brother, and three
children, eleven, eight, one, and four boarders), occupied a house of
four rooms, one of them dark, for which they paid a rent of fourteen
dollars. The man, though he had been in this country about twelve
years, was still earning only $10.80 a week with which to meet the
needs of his growing family. One-half the cost of the food was paid by
the boarders including the brother, amounting for each man to about
$1.06 a week. For the whole family, the expenditure was as follows:
flour and bread, $2.03; vegetables, $1.06; fruit, $.56; milk, eggs,
etc., $1.98; sugar, $.49; sundries, $.73; meat, $5.78; a total of
$12.63. Besides this the boarders ordered "extras," and the following
table for a month expresses the men's individual likings: