In order to establish a sure ground for estimate as to the economic
drain of this disease upon this community, a concrete study of the cost
of typhoid in six selected wards of Greater Pittsburgh was undertaken
by the Pittsburgh Survey. The sections of the city chosen are fairly
representative of living conditions among the wage-earning population.
Wards 8 and 11, in what is commonly known as the Hill District,
represent a congested quarter made up largely of Russian Jews,
Austrians and Italians, with a considerable number of Americans and
American Negroes. The residents of these two wards are chiefly employes
of the small trades and the sweating and stogie industries, clerks,
factory hands, common laborers, etc., who are rather below the average
scale of earning capacity. They number about 22,000 for the two wards
and among them there were forty-four per cent of the cases studied.
Wards 25, 26 and 27 are on the South Side. Their total population is
about 33,000; mill hands, mostly of Slavic origin, occupy those parts
of these wards bordering the Monongahela River, and a better-off class
of Americans occupy the hilltops overlooking the river. The wards
would, therefore, represent a rather uneven population, as based on
nationality or wage scale, but were not a large factor in this study,
as only eight per cent of the cases covered were found in these wards.
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[Illustration: PITTSBURGH