For the purpose of this report we have considered mainly the district in

the southeastern part of the city where our own work centres.[4] The

five wards, where this district lies, contain about one-tenth of the

population of the city and cover about one-eightieth of the area or one

and three-fifths square miles. The average density of population in

these wards is 123 persons to an acre. In the Third Ward the average

number increases to 209. The wards are relatively well provided with

park area, but the whole amount used for this purpose is only 16.88

acres out of a total of 1030 acres, which shows the crying need there is

for more breathing spaces in these congested districts. There are a

number of old graveyards which would be valuable additions to the park

area if they were so used. The total number of inhabitants in the five

wards is 127,466. Of these, 50,733 are foreign born, 17,611 are negroes.

It is impossible to attempt a description of the many phases of life

throughout this region. The large numbers of foreigners are grouped

together according to nationality, in fairly well-defined geographical

areas, each showing many characteristics of its own national life. The

slum districts shift their centres somewhat in the changing of

populations, but are seemingly as strongly entrenched as ever and extend

over increasingly large areas. Architecturally the buildings show great

variety. Quaint, gabled frame houses often in the most dilapidated

condition, modern brick dwellings, colonial houses of fine proportions,

and tenements are found side by side often in picturesque proximity.

The size of the block in Philadelphia is an important factor in any

consideration of its housing conditions. This block averages about 400

feet square. By the purpose of the founder of the city it was intended

that each house should be in the middle of the “breadth of his ground,

so as to give place to gardens, etc., such as might be a green country

towne which might never be burnt and might always be wholesome.”[5] This

large size has continued to be the plan of the city and has lent itself

readily to being cut up into the network of inner courts and alleys

which are practically universal. The gardens, however, in all the poorer

districts, have totally disappeared. The small house has been crowded

onto the ground formerly allotted to them, and the revenue from the land

has been increased by an intensive process, which while not building

into the air has covered the ground with large numbers of dwellings. It

is the limited height of the buildings that is the saving factor. If the

houses were high with the consequent increase of overcrowding to the

acre, the conditions would be extreme.

From the various types of houses known to us we have chosen for special

mention three of those which show most clearly the character and needs

of this district. The most striking of these is the occasional large

tenement. In the early nineties the great increase of immigration

suggested the building of tenements as a profitable investment. The

result was a goodly number of scattered houses, built under the law

governing the building of the ordinary dwelling-house and showing some

of the worst phases of tenement house construction. Narrow air-shafts,

lots closely built over, insufficient plumbing, badly ventilated and

dark rooms, inadequate fire-escapes, would if multiplied have thrust

upon us a problem of a very serious form. These houses hold from sixteen

to fifty families. In many instances the yard space is a long narrow

strip on which all the rooms are dependent for air and light except

those on the front of the building. When the adjoining lot is covered in

the same way the result is a narrow well in which sunshine cannot enter

and through which there is no circulation of air. In one case, in a

house built on the four sides of its ground, sixty-four rooms open on

such a well which is seven feet six inches in width, while in another

instance a copy of the New York dumb-bell plan is found. This movement

was fortunately watched and arrested in its early development. Through

the thoughtful action of Mr. Hector McIntosh and with the co-operation

of a number of prominent city officials and others, a wise law was

framed and accepted by the Legislature. The evil was checked and the

building of large and badly arranged tenements prevented.

Under this act of May 7, 1895, the term tenement is defined as meaning

every building which is, or is to be, occupied by three or more

families, living independently of each other and doing their cooking on

the premises. The act provides that not more than 80 per cent of a lot

can be built on, except in corner properties, that the width of a yard

shall be not less than eight feet, that every room in such houses shall

have a window opening upon a street or upon the yard, that every

tenement house over four stories high shall be fireproof, throughout. It

has also stringent provisions in regard to water supply, sanitation,

minimum size of rooms, halls, etc. The cost of building is thus so much

increased as to be almost prohibitive.

In 1890 the percentage of families living in tenement houses in

Philadelphia was 1.44. Whatever the increase in this figure may be in

the census of 1900,[6] it remains true that only the poorest live in one

and two rooms, and that as soon as a higher rent can be paid, or a small

house can be had at a low rent, the change is eagerly made. The

management of all large tenements is very difficult, and manifest evils

are sure to follow neglect and inefficiency on the part of the owners.

Thus, in a community containing so large a number of small houses, the

tide was turned from this plan of housing at a critical moment, the

results of which are of far-reaching benefit.

The second class of house which is found prominently is that built for

one family of the better class and now converted to the use of three or

more families of the very poor. In the history of housing in other

cities, these houses have formed one step in the evolution of such

tenements as we have described. Here, they form the most important phase

of our tenement house problem. May it not be that by wisely adapting

them to the needs of the very poor they can take the place of the larger

tenements and give to Philadelphia the proud distinction of housing

these classes in small buildings, which shall avoid the evils attendant

upon the herding of many families together? At present, there are large

numbers of houses of this class in the older parts of this region and a

total failure of any adaptation of the old arrangements to suit the new

conditions. The houses are usually well built and the rooms large and

well ventilated, but there is no attempt at adequate or sanitary

plumbing. The hydrant in the yard is often the only water supply and

there is probably but one closet, also in the yard, the privy well of

which may be shared by three adjoining houses. Little attention is given

to care or management. The repairs are neglected, the stairways are

dark, the halls obstructed by extra furniture and rubbish. In many cases

the cellars are damp and filthy and give no provision for storage. The

yards are obstructed, there are no arrangements for drying clothes.

The law provides that when buildings are altered into tenements certain

provisions shall be enforced, but it makes no mention of the need for

this alteration in houses so used without changes, nor does it exact any

such changes. The landlord of the district is keenly alive to the fact

that when alterations are to be made, an affidavit that the house is to

be used by only two families will protect him from the exactions of the

tenement house law. A special investigation into houses of this class

would surely show how the law could be amended to cover their defects

and to fit them at a moderate expenditure and under good regulation to

meet the needs of the newly arrived immigrant and of the very poor.

This type of houses built for one family and changed into tenements has

another and a worse form when it is used for what is known as a

“furnished room house.” There is a large, and it is believed a steadily

increasing, number of these in the older parts of the city and where

conditions have greatly deteriorated. There are no data on which to

estimate their number. A thorough inquiry could be made only with police

or other authority behind the workers. These houses are tenements and

have all the objectionable features of tenements in a marked degree,

besides others peculiar to themselves. These features are intensified by

the character of the tenants, who are of the lowest class. Sometimes the

houses are used for immoral purposes, and the occupants generally are

shiftless, intemperate and slovenly. Some few are deserving families

where the breadwinner is out of work. Their conditions are deplorable,

and they have not even the stimulus to decent living that comes from the

ownership of household goods. The buildings are generally old, and

ill-adapted to the number of people crowded in them. The rooms are

rented by the week at prices ranging from $1.50 to $2.50 per room. They

have the scantiest possible equipment of old and dilapidated furniture.

They are dirty and unventilated; the beds and bedding indescribable.

Water is seldom found above the ground floor. Bath-tubs are unknown or

used for storage. In most cases there is but one closet in the yard for

all the tenants of the house. The yards, as a rule, are filthy. There is

no apparent effort at cleanliness or supervision. One room is the

ordinary rule for one family, with frequent boarders in addition. In

some cases the large rooms have been divided by flimsy partitions, and

each half is occupied by a family. The primary need of these houses is

frequent and efficient inspection. This is more urgent than in a case of

ordinary tenements, as the occupants are the lowest and the poorest, and

unable or unwilling to make any efforts in their own behalf. In no way

can the Health and Building Department regulations be enforced, nor any

general improvement in the condition of these houses be effected, except

by a system of periodic inspection, followed by action by the proper

city departments. It is entirely possible that a thorough investigation

of these houses made under adequate authority throughout the city, would

show the prevalence of conditions warranting a system of licensing—the

license to be revoked upon failure by the landlord to enforce reasonable

regulations as to cleanliness, decency, overcrowding, etc.—in addition

to the present laws applying to all tenement houses.

The third class of houses to which we would draw special attention is

that of the rear dwelling, a small two or three-story house, built

sometimes singly and sometimes in rows of from two to eight or ten

houses on the rear of the front house. This plan of building has been

characterized as the horizontal rather than the vertical tenement. The

entrance to the row is by a narrow passage-way from the street or court.

This passage-way is also frequently the means by which the surface

drainage is carried to the street or to an open sewer-connection at its

entrance. The space in front of the houses is the only yard. Sometimes

this space widens at the end of the entrance-way and there is a double

row of dwellings facing each other and covering the rears of two or

three front lots. Sometimes again the open space forms a square with

houses on three sides. Thus one comes unexpectedly on a little community

whose existence one has not imagined. More often, however, the narrow

passage-way runs the whole length of the row and in many cases the brick

wall of an adjoining lot shuts away all air and sunshine and makes a

prison of the little court.

In a careful investigation made by the college settlement into the

sanitary condition of one block in its immediate neighborhood, this type

of house was strongly illustrated. Out of a total of 196 houses in the

block, over 90 were rear dwellings, and but a small proportion of these

was underdrained. The building of rear houses is now prohibited by law.

Such an investigation as we ask for would show many localities where

some houses should be torn down to give light and air to the others, and

other cases where the courts should be cut through or entirely

demolished. Where the conditions are good, however, these houses meet

the needs of the very poor and offer the advantage of an individual

house, at a low rent, even though it involve the common use of yard

space and closet and water conveniences.

Enough has been said about sanitation to show the great need of reform.

The death-rate is not the only gauge of the sanitary condition of the

neighborhood. It is shown also in lowered vitality and poor health for

which there are no statistical returns. The prevalence of surface

drainage in Philadelphia is very imperfectly realized. Of its 1500 miles

of streets, according to a Bulletin of the Department of Labor in 1901,

there were in that year 419 miles that were unpaved, and 613 miles

without sewers, leaving a balance of at least 193 miles of paved streets

without underdrainage. In streets where drains have been laid, many

houses have not been connected. The open drains still run through the

great majority of alleys, where the decaying matter stands in the

gutters and when dried is scattered about by the wind. Neglected and

foul privy wells are frequently found. The people are eager to tell

their grievances and many are submitting patiently to intolerable

conditions.

The most essential step now to be taken by the city is systematic and

frequent inspection of sanitary conditions. If it is not possible to

enforce underdrainage at once, such inspection would cause it to be

enforced where flagrant nuisances exist, and the moral influence of an

official would stimulate to better standards. The Board of Health can

make but rare inspections on its own initiative and its small force of

twenty inspectors of nuisances is unable to respond promptly to the

numbers of complaints made to it. If this force and the force of the

Bureau of Building Inspection were largely increased, with added powers,

the evils of insanitary dwellings and of the evasion of the building law

could be readily dealt with. There is no large city where these problems

could be more easily solved.

To prove more fully the need of such measures we hope that an

investigation full enough to give a comprehensive knowledge of existing

conditions may soon be made. The results of such an investigation would

not only promote these reforms, but would suggest other means of undoing

the evils which have arisen from our long neglect and of safeguarding

the future.

We have spoken thus far of the need of reform through legislation and

the strengthening of the municipal departments whose work is so

important in these districts. Such measures are necessary for all

classes; it is for the very poor that something more is needed. The

principle cannot be too strongly set forth that it is the management of

the dwellings of the poor, whether they live in courts or tenements,

that is to be the means of securing to them health and comfort, of

giving them, in reality, homes. Miss Octavia Hill began in London in

1864 the work that was destined from the strength of its underlying

principles to become a significant factor in dealing on these lines with

the housing problem in Europe and also to some extent in this country.

While considering that the “spiritual elevation of a large class depends

to a considerable extent on sanitary reform,”[7] Miss Hill believes also

that sanitary improvement itself depends upon the educational work among

grown-up people and that this work must be effected by individual

influence. It is this influence in the hands of the landlord or his

representative that is so great a power, and can be used either for weal

or woe.

Miss Hill’s plan is not to tear down old buildings and to begin anew,

but to improve existing conditions gradually as the tenants are trained

gradually to appreciate and desire better things. This work is done with

the assistance of large numbers of volunteer rent collectors, each one

of whom is specially trained and is given a small group of tenants to

care for. We quote from Miss Hill as to the duties of the collectors:

“We have tried so far as possible to enlist ladies who would have an

idea of how, by diligent attention to all business which devolves on a

landlord, by wise rule with regard to all duties which a tenant should

fulfill, by sympathetic and just decisions with a view to the common

good, a high standard of management could be obtained. Repairs promptly

and efficiently attended to, references carefully taken up, cleaning

sedulously supervised, overcrowding put an end to, the blessing of ready

money payment enforced, accounts strictly kept and, above all, tenants

so sorted as to be helpful to one another.” The relation thus

established on a basis of mutual obligation is one of real and often

enduring helpfulness, and the opportunities for service are almost

unlimited.

Miss Hill’s work has from the first been on a sound business basis and

has given excellent financial returns. She has never formed any

association of the owners of the many properties under her care, or of

the workers who manage them. She has felt that the work is freer, and

more real when thus untrammeled.

Many cities have followed the example of London in this plan of work.

That of the Edinburgh Social Union is of unusual interest. It believes,

as we must all believe, that the “immediate question to face is how to

make the best of present conditions, how to raise the standard of

comfort without waiting for legislative changes.” Its reports tell a

story of successful growth which is full of valuable and suggestive

experience.

In Philadelphia the need for the extension of such work grows to us

stronger and more insistent as we learn more of the neglected places of

our city, of the many streets and courts which need such influences as

these. We believe that this work must grow and that there will come also

a more realizing sense of the responsibility of the community for the

welfare of its people. In the wise control of new building, and of the

apartment houses which may be tenements in the future, by planning for

wide streets and many open spaces, by the awakening of higher civic

standards we shall come also to a higher social order. “Victory over

evil at its source and not in its consequences; reforms which shall

regard the welfare of future generations, who are the greatest

number.”[8]

EDITOR’S NOTE.—The Octavia Hill Association is a stock company

organized to improve living conditions in such neighborhoods as those

described in the foregoing paper, on lines similar to the work of Miss

Octavia Hill in London. Its aim is to improve old houses and small

properties rather than to build new ones. It uses women rent

collectors, both paid workers and volunteers. The Association was

organized in 1896 and has a capital stock of $50,000; it has paid

yearly dividends of 4 per cent and 4½ per cent. Its capital is

invested in houses which when purchased were typical of the classes

above described. These houses have been properly altered and repaired

and demonstrate the possibility of overcoming such conditions and yet

receiving a fair financial return. The Association assumes also the

management of property for other owners. It has seventy-seven houses

now under its care, sixty-five of which are small houses for separate

families, and twelve are tenements of a medium size, averaging eleven

or twelve rooms each. The Association desires especially to extend its

work of managing the properties of other owners, believing that the

relation thus established is stronger and more enduring than where the

ownership is in a company. Its directors are:

Nathaniel B. Crenshaw, President, Girard Trust Company, Broad and

Chestnut streets; Miss Hannah Fox, 339 South Broad street; Mrs.

William F. Jenks, 920 Clinton street; Mrs. Thomas S. Kirkbride,

Secretary, 1406 Spruce street; Hector McIntosh, 605 North Sixteenth

street; Miss Helen L. Parrish, 1135 Spruce street; Mrs. William M.

Lybrand, 139 East Walnut Lane, Germantown; George Woodward, M. D.,

Chestnut Hill; C. H. Ludington, Jr., Treasurer, 425 Arch street.

THE HOUSING CONDITIONS IN BOSTON

By ROBERT TREAT PAINE, ESQ.

Boston

The housing conditions of Boston may be studied under five aspects:

1. The growth of population compared with the increase of houses.

2. The facilities for the building of new houses by private enterprise.

3. The influence of philanthropic efforts in building model blocks and

separate homes.

4. Building laws.

5. The diminution of slum conditions.

1. The following table has been prepared by Dr. E. M. Hartwell,

statistician of Boston.

POPULATION AND NUMBER OF DWELLING-HOUSES WITH PER CENT OF ANNUAL

INCREASE.

─────────┬───────────┬──────────┬────────────────┬──────────┬──────────

Year. │ Estimated │ Per Cent │Total Number of │ Per Cent │ Of those

│Population.│Increase. │Dwelling-Houses.│Increase. │ Vacant

│ │ │ │ │Dwellings.

─────────┼───────────┼──────────┼────────────────┼──────────┼──────────

1891 │ 457,772 │ 2.07 │ 53,429 │ 2.42 │ 1,104

1892 │ 467,260 │ 2.07 │ 54,853 │ 2.67 │ 1,269

1893 │ 476,945 │ 2.07 │ 56,730 │ 3.42 │ 1,446

1894 │ 486,830 │ 2.07 │ 58,310 │ 2.79 │ 1,866

1895 │ 496,920 │ 2.07 │ 60,039 │ 2.96 │ 1,964

1896 │ 509,102 │ 2.45 │ 60,278 │ .40 │ 2,205

1897 │ 521,583 │ 2.45 │ 61,573 │ 2.15 │ 2,127

1898 │ 534,370 │ 2.45 │ 62,850 │ 2.07 │ 2,647

1899 │ 547,470 │ 2.45 │ 63,890 │ 1.65 │ 2,902

1900 │ 560,892 │ 2.45 │ 64,886 │ 1.56 │ 2,686

1901 │ 573,579 │ 2.26 │ 65,600 │ 1.10 │ 2,627

─────────┴───────────┴──────────┴────────────────┴──────────┴──────────

In the ten years from 1891 to 1901, while the population increased from

457,772 to 573,579, or 25.3 per cent, the number of dwelling-houses

increased from 53,429 to 65,600, or 22.8 per cent, not quite keeping

pace; and though not a few of the new buildings are capacious tenement

houses, yet actual conditions have probably not improved. It is to be

noted that 4 per cent of the dwellings are vacant.

2. The facilities for the building of new houses in the suburbs steadily

increase. The suburbs of Boston are deservedly healthy and are ample for

a vast population.

The President of the Boston Elevated Railway Company has furnished the

following statistics, which show in the last five and ten year periods a

marvelous development and explain the exodus outward from the crowded

centre into happy and healthy suburban life on some of the hundred hills

which make these suburbs so attractive. This outward migration shows no

sign of culmination, but is still under full headway.

The running time of the cars has improved so that it now averages nine

miles per hour on the whole system, against six miles or less ten years

ago when horses were used, and within the last five years it has been

reduced about 8 per cent. The track mileage increased from 260 miles in

1891 to 296 in 1896 and 408 in 1901. “For the year ending September 30,

1891, we ran 2,326,274 trips, 17,462,572 miles, carried 119,264,401

revenue passengers and 8,466,311 free transfer passengers. The average

length of each trip at that time was 7.5 miles. Five years later we ran

2,822,142 trips, 25,841,907 miles, carried 166,862,288 revenue

passengers and 17,566,361 free transfer passengers. The average length

of each trip was 9.16 miles. Five years later, or for the last fiscal

year, we ran 3,883,737 trips, 43,631,384 miles, carried 213,703,983

revenue passengers and 65,000,000 free transfer passengers. The length

of each trip had increased to 11.23 miles.”

The co-operative bank system has greatly promoted the construction and

separate ownership of the modest and cosy little homes springing up so

rapidly in all the suburbs of Boston. The Pioneer Bank was started in

1877, and to-day there are in Boston eighteen of these co-operative

banks with a capital of $5,029,478, nearly the whole of it loaned out on

small estates. A score of years ago it was no easy matter to obtain a

“building loan,” but co-operative banks have perfected the system of

loans to builders upon houses “in process of construction.” The

admirable process of small monthly payments not only educates the

borrowers into habits of saving, but in a few years reduces the loan, so

that the old-fashioned savings banks with their immense capital can take

up at lower rates these loans, when they are reduced to the statute

limit of 60 per cent of the value of the estate. Hence it is the case

that the $5,000,000 of co-operative bank capital by no means measures

the full beneficial influence of this system in the growth of suburban

homes.

3. The influence of philanthropic enterprise, compared with that of

private business, has been insignificant.

Three incorporated societies are working in a small way, the oldest, the

Boston Co-operative Building Company, chartered in 1871. With a capital

of $292,000, it has about $400,000 invested in seventy-eight houses with

985 rooms, occupied by 311 families containing 1,023 persons.

The Harrison avenue group of twenty-four three-storied brick

houses—each, except the corners, arranged for three families—has

attracted deserved attention, with its hollow square in the centre,

tastefully arranged as a playground for the children, and a bit of

beauty for the parents.

The company has just started to reproduce this hollow square on its last

purchase of 33,000 feet on Massachusetts avenue. Mr. A. W. Longfellow,

the architect of the Harrison avenue group, furnishes this plan of a

corner and a normal interior house just completed on Massachusetts

avenue, showing the latest developments of model tenement house design,

and also a land plan.

The thirty-one years of life of this company show many vicissitudes; 7

per cent being earned for some years, and then from 1876 to 1889,

dividends were stopped or reduced to 3 per cent and earnings were

invested. Recently dividends have been 6 per cent or 5 per cent. But the

capitalization of undivided profits has been so large, that it is not

possible to ascertain what the just annual earnings are from year to

year, and hence the educational influence is lost upon other capitalists

who might be incited, by a clear and exact statement of facts, to follow

the most commendable lead of this company in building the very best

model tenements and having them managed by the considerate care of women

agents.

The Workingmen’s Building Association was organized in 1888, to build

small separate houses for sale. Its first purchase of 668,591 feet,

about three miles out in Roxbury, was most successful. This tract was

divided into 150 lots, averaging 4,457 feet, so that one acre has ten

lots, with an estimated population of sixty to seventy souls.

[Illustration:

FIRST FLOOR PLAN OF TWO HOUSES OF THE MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE BLOCK FOR

THE BOSTON COÖPERATIVE BUILDING COMPANY ❋

·A· W· LONGFELLOW· ARCHITECT·

]

[Illustration:

PLAN SHOWING ARRANGEMENT OF BLOCKS ON MASS. AVE. LOT [150′ × 200′] AS

PROPOSED FOR THE BOSTON COÖPERATIVE BUILDING COMPANY ❋❋❋

·A·W·LONGFELLOW·ARCHITECT· BOSTON·

]

The houses cost from $1,800 to $3,000, and were almost all for single

families, total cost of a house and land varying from $2,600 to $4,500.

They were all sold by 1894. Its next venture in Dorchester found the

demand for single houses painfully reduced in the depression of the last

seven years, while a marked preference shows itself for “two-family” or

“three-flat” houses.

This company has not succeeded in building houses at lower cost, to its

great regret.

4. The building laws of a city greatly influence results. Boston was

startled by its great fire of 1872 into creating a stringent code. This

was remodeled in 1885, chapter 374. After a commission had studied the

subject anew, the present code was enacted in 1892, chapter 419, with

subsequent amendments.

Two features are especially important: (1), the percentage of the area

of a lot which may be built upon; (2), the height of the buildings and

the provisions as to fireproof construction.

The law of 1892 permitted three-quarters of the area to be covered,

measuring to the middle of the streets on which the lot abuts. This

proviso, however, would allow a building to cover the whole of a lot

sixty feet deep on a forty-foot street. The act also required two

exposures on open spaces at least ten feet wide, of an aggregate length

of one foot, for every twenty-five square feet occupied by the building.

These last provisions, however, were found not to prohibit the

construction of a huge four-storied tenement house on a lot forty-two

feet wide and 101 feet deep, built on a dumb-bell plan, with only about

two feet of open land across a part, but not the whole, of the rear. It

was the erection, in 1894, of this barrack, which led many observers to

doubt whether these new conditions were not worse than the old; whether

these vast tenement houses, sometimes called model houses, were not far

worse in many essentials for the health and welfare of their occupants

than the little old houses, often built of wood, which they replaced.

These views are confirmed by the deliberate judgment which Miss Octavia

Hill has put on record in her valuable chapter in the second volume of

Charles Booth’s great work on London.

The construction of this great tenement house, with such trifling rear

light, occasioned the act of 1895, chapter 239, which reduced the area

to be occupied from 75 to 65 per cent, and also required an open space

across the whole rear of the building, and of a depth equal to one-half

the width of the front street, not exceeding twenty feet, or an

equivalent area of open space in the rear of other dimensions.

The act of 1897, chapter 413, section 9, exempts corner lots from this

requirement of open rear land, and also gives the Building Commissioner

discretion to accept “an equivalent area of open space in the rear or on

either side of such building.”

It is worthy of note that these requirements are less stringent than

those in the new tenement house law, chapter 334, of 1901, for Greater

New York, which limits the building to 90 per cent of a corner lot and

70 per cent of any other lot.

Secondly, the law of 1897, chapter 413, section 3, required every

tenement house to be a first-class building, _i. e._, “of fireproof

construction throughout.” It was at once apprehended that this

requirement, that all tenement houses must be of fireproof construction,

would stop the building of tenement houses for tenants paying moderate

rents. Subsequent investigation showed, that after existing permits had

been exhausted, few, if any, tenement houses were built with tenements

renting at $16 a month or less. Reaction set in, and by the act of 1900,

chapter 321, the requirement of fireproof construction was removed from

tenement houses of not more than four stories and not more than fifty

feet in height, but here again came a proviso limiting these houses to

“two families, or less, above the second story.”

This is the present tenement house law of Boston. It seriously handicaps

the construction of tenement houses, but whether this is too stringent,

and the influences are harmful, is not yet apparent. So far as an

impulse is given to scatter the population out into the healthier

suburbs and into the small, separate, detached suburban homes, each with

its little plot of land, instead of the fearful overcrowding of families

in the huge new tenement houses, students of the social welfare of the

people must certainly rejoice.

In the old North End of Boston, where population is densest and rentals

are highest, the erection of new tenement houses and the remodeling of

old buildings into tenement houses are visible in many of the streets.

On the other hand, in the southerly part of old Boston, such enterprise

is nearly at a standstill and rents are falling, owing probably to the

greater attractiveness of the neighboring suburbs.

The definition of a tenement house by the number of tenements, rather

than by the number of rooms, discriminates with unintended harshness on

just that class whose welfare ought especially to be studied, the very

poor, the lone widow, the widower, the parent with a single child, who

always find with difficulty a single spacious room, and usually pay

higher rents because of the short supply of such much-needed

accommodation. Twenty years ago a committee of the Associated Charities

made a report to show the importance of building tenements of a single

room and to call the attention of capitalists to this need. A small

one-storied house with only four rooms, adapted for the needs of four

separate women, must conform to all the expensive provisions of the

tenement house code.

A just and judicious amendment should define a tenement house as having

more than three tenements “_and containing more than twelve rooms_.”

Workers among the poor were surprised last year at orders issuing from

the Board of Health, for single tenants to vacate single rooms. Such a

notice was nailed on the door of the large “square room” in the model

block of the Boston Co-operative Building Company, on Canton street,

occupied by a lone old woman. It is supposed that this mistaken policy

has been abandoned.

A strange thing happened in 1892; the building law of that year, chapter

419, in its final section 138, repealing numerous laws, included a

repeal of the health provision, 1885, chapter 382, section 4, defining

for health purposes a “tenement house.” So that since 1892, the Board of

Health has been shorn of so much of its powers over tenement houses as

depended on the definition, so carefully inserted in the health law of

1885, which has been since then the health code of Boston. Perhaps it is

stranger still that no allusion can be found in the annual reports of

the Board of Health, to this mysterious and probably unintended

curtailment of health powers, the exact legal effect whereof no man can

tell.[9]

5. A crusade for the extirpation of the slums of Boston has been waged

for the last fifteen years, thus far with no great success. Housing

conditions are justly to be condemned so long as old, dilapidated and

unsanitary buildings are allowed to stand, often so overcrowded upon the

land that sunlight and air are practically shut out. Such conditions are

a disgrace to any city. They tempt the most wretched of the poor, or

vicious, or criminal classes to worse degradation. The breadwinner loses

his health, which is his only wealth. Children grow up in shameless loss

of self-respect. Frequent visitors are physicians, police officers, and

charity agents; physicians to struggle with needless disease, the police

to arrest criminals created by their foul environment, and charity

agents to relieve countless varieties of want caused by cruel and unjust

conditions of life.

Private initiative has been struggling in these years to secure more

vigorous action by the Board of Health in the destruction of the worst

slums. Prof. Dwight Porter, acting under the auspices of a voluntary

committee, made an investigation and “Report upon a Sanitary Inspection

of Certain Tenement house Districts in Boston,” in 1888, which really

started the movement.

Committees of the Associated Charities have lodged indictments against

many vile slums and have been heard by the board. In 1891–2, the state

caused the Bureau of Labor to make a thorough and exhaustive

investigation. The report of Hon. H. G. Wadlin sets forth in two volumes

the results. (22d and 23d Annual Reports of the Bureau of the Statistics

of Labor. “A Tenement House Census of Boston,” made pursuant to chapter

115, Resolves of 1891.)

Sanitary conditions were classified under five heads: excellent, good,

fair, poor, and bad. It may be truly stated that tenements falling so

low as to be classed “bad” are so intolerable as to demand most summary

measures for their destruction, yet 1,346 houses were found to deserve

this just but terrible condemnation (Vol. 1, p. 577).

“It may be safely assumed that whenever a tenement was designated as

entirely bad as to its inside condition—that is, to be more explicit,

was bad as to facilities for light and air, ventilation and

cleanliness—such a tenement was unfit for human habitation. The

existence of such tenements forms primarily _an indictment against the

landlord_ who is responsible for their condition. They should either be

abandoned or improved. In some cases such improvement as would render

them suitable for occupancy can easily be made; in other cases, no

doubt, they should be permanently abandoned.” (Vol. 2, p. 417.)

“The existence of defective outside sanitary conditions is, upon the

whole, _an indictment against the city_; for while some of the defects

are due to unclean or poorly kept private ways and alleys, the

responsibility of the city for the existence of such defects can hardly

be avoided.” (Italics are the writer’s.) (Vol. 2, p. 418.)

In the reports of the Boston Board of Health no allusion is found to

this fearful indictment by the authorities of the Commonwealth, or to

the following municipal report.

In 1895 a special committee of the Common Council was appointed to

consider what improvement could be made in the tenement districts of

Boston, and what legislation was needed. They made a very brief “Partial

Report” (Document 125 of 1895) from which may be quoted:—“In the North

End the tenement houses are to-day a serious menace to public health....

The most astounding circumstance in connection with this investigation

that attracted the attention of your committee is the social and

financial standing of the owners of the most of these tenement houses.”

In 1897 a study was made, under the direction of the Tenement House

Committee of the Twentieth Century Club, of certain typical slums, and

the results were published with plans of some seven areas where

buildings were old, dilapidated and so overcrowded on the land, that no

remedy was possible except destruction either of all or of many of the

tenements. (“Some Slums in Boston,” by H. K. Estabrook, May 15, 1898.)

A public hearing was granted by the Board of Health on June 27, 1898,

and many competent experts and real estate owners testified to the

intolerable conditions. Mayor Quincy attended the hearing and promised

strong support. Commendable progress was made in vacating or destroying

some of the worst slums for about three years. But the exercise of the

power to “destroy” seems recently to have been paralyzed, perhaps, as a

result of pending litigation.

The law grants two powers to the Board of Health to deal with these

evils. Since 1850, chapter 108, tenements may be “vacated” if adjudged

unfit for human habitation. This power should be exercised only after

thorough investigation and on deliberate judgment, setting forth true

and sufficient causes. It may easily work grave injury to owners if

exercised unjustly. Yet, when justly exercised, orders to vacate should

be adhered to and not lightly rescinded because of political or other

pressure. Observe that this power to vacate requires no destruction of

the building and cannot justly prevent use of the vacated tenement for

other fit purposes, not of human habitation.

In 1897, chapter 219, the power to destroy [the statute word is

“remove”] buildings first appeared in Massachusetts. Its origin is

interesting. The British “Housing of the Working Classes Act,” 1890

(53–54 Vict., chapter 70), sections 30–37, is the origin, so far as I

know, of this new power “to order the demolition” of a “dwelling-house”

“unfit for human habitation.” Section 38 enlarged this power and made it

apply to “obstructive buildings,” thus condemning one building because

it injures another building. It is surprising that any American lawyer

could suppose that such a power would be sustained in America, where the

unlimited powers of the British Parliament are much curtailed by

constitutional safeguards.

Yet New York soon copied this British Act (1895, chapter 567, amended by

1897, chapter 57) in shape so condensed as to make its injustice more

conspicuous. This act was enforced for a few years in the city of New

York, till owners of property began to defend their rights in court. The

suit of Dassori _vs._ the Health Department of New York has settled that

this law cannot be enforced to its full extent.

“Proof that rear tenement houses, each five stories high, lighted only

from a court on the west or front from five to eleven feet wide, and a

space or opening of eleven inches wide at the southeast corner of the

court, and a space on the east side of eight inches filled with all

sorts of filth, occupied by 115 persons, showing a death-rate almost

twice the normal one, damp, filthy, infested with vermin, and filled

with foul smells, and by their construction interfering with the light

which would otherwise have been enjoyed by tenement houses on the front

of the lots, justifies a finding that the rear tenement houses are unfit

for habitation, but does not necessarily establish the fact that they

are not capable of being made fit for other uses to which the owner

might lawfully put them, nor does it show that the nuisance could not be

abated in any other way than by their destruction.

“The owner of a tenement house cannot be compelled to submit to its

destruction, if it is on his own land, merely because some building

adjacent to it is, by reason of its existence, deprived of proper

ventilation.” (N. Y. Health Dept. _vs._ Dassori, Appellate Division

Reports, Vol. 21, p. 348. October, 1897.)

Boston deserves no credit for the slovenly shape in which this faulty

law was reproduced, 1897, chapter 219, closely following the language of

the New York act. First the power to vacate is set forth, yet while

covering the same ground as our ancient and well-tried statute (1850,

chap. 108; Pub. Sts., chap. 80, sec. 24; Revised Laws, chap. 75, sec.

71), neither repeals nor amends it. Then follows the power to order

“removed,” _i. e._, destroyed, a building irremediably “unfit for human

habitation.”

Statute 1899, chapter 222, enlarged these powers of the Board of Health

so that the order may be not merely to “vacate” a building “unfit for

human habitation,” but to “cease to use” a building “unfit for use”; the

power to order buildings destroyed remaining limited to those “unfit for

human habitation.”

The suit (October, 1900) of Holland _vs._ Durgin _et al._ (Board of

Health) has gone on appeal to the Supreme Court. It raises interesting

questions as to this last statute, its constitutionality, the lawfulness

of a decree to remove, without previous notice to or opportunity to be

heard by the owner, as well as the lawfulness of an order to remove

stables occupied by horses and sheds only for storage as “unfit for

habitation” (_sic_), the statute language being “unfit for human

habitation.”

The Board of Health is thus clothed with transcendent powers, whose

exercise vitally affects the physical and moral welfare, especially of

that large portion of the people who are lowest in the economic scale.

These powers should only be lodged in the hands of men of strong

character, sound judgment, sanitary experience and genuine love for the

plain people. Yet the action of the Boston Board of Health has been

characterized for many years past by mysterious apathy.

The law provides that the Board of Health shall make annually “a full

and comprehensive statement of its acts during the year, and a review of

the sanitary condition of the city,” yet in the annual volumes of the

last ten years the space devoted to the sanitary condition of the city

has been utterly insignificant.

“To this subject, houses vacated, nearly a whole page is devoted in the

report for 1892; nearly two pages in the report for 1893; from four to

six lines in each of the reports for 1894, ’95, and ’96; and not one

word in the report for 1897. Throughout the 122 pages of this last

report, this extremely important duty to vacate houses unfit for

occupancy is not mentioned.

“The report for 1895 says only this: ‘The number of houses which the

board has ordered vacated during the year because of their unsanitary

condition is 112; of this number, however, a very large per cent were

put in a satisfactory condition before the expiration of the time

allowed the occupants to quit the premises, and in such cases the orders

were not enforced.’ The report for 1896 simply quotes this one sentence,

word for word—except that ‘121’ is substituted for ‘112.’ This one

sentence, then, is the ‘full and comprehensive statement’ of the acts of

the three years, 1895–7.”

In none of these reports since 1892 “is a list given either of houses

ordered vacated or of houses actually vacated, yet hundreds of other

lists and tables are given, as lists of stables ordered discontinued, of

passageways paved, and even of minor defects in certain houses. While in

the reports of the New York Board of Health there are complete lists of

houses vacated and of those demolished, in only two of our reports,

those for 1892 and ’93, are any of the houses ordered vacated named.”

The objection of injury to tenants by the destruction of slums has no

weight. The Associated Charities (Report of 1898, pp. 40–48) seized the

occasion of the building of the South Station and the change in the

neighborhood, in 1897–8, to cause a careful study to be made of the

results upon the welfare of the twelve poorest families known to them

when that sudden and forced migration occurred. “It brought out the

interesting fact that in every case the condition of the family was

improved by the change.”

Death-rates by wards are shown in the annual report of 1901 of the

Registry Department of Boston for the first time, so that it is possible

to compare. The ghastly fact stands out that the death-rate in some

wards is more than double what it is in the healthier wards, viz: one

person dying in the year 1900 out of 39 in Ward 7, 40 in Ward 13, 41 in

Ward 6, and 42 in Ward 5, contrasted with one in 81 in Ward 25, 72 in

Ward 24, 71 in Ward 23, 69 in Ward 20 (p. 5).

Now that this table proves how the murder of the innocents goes on, the

public conscience should be aroused. Statisticians will also tell us

that the ratio of sickness keeps pace with the ratio of death, so that

sickness among the poor, with its train of evils, is twofold more than

good sanitary conditions should tolerate.

The model buildings of London have told the world what a powerful

influence upon the length of life (and of course upon the amount of

sickness) of their occupants is exerted by healthy homes. The Peabody

buildings with a population of about 20,000 show a death-rate of about 1

in 71; and the Waterlow buildings, with 30,000 tenants, about 1 in 100,

while the rate of all London is about 1 in 57. In Boston, 1 out of 48

dies yearly.

A Tenement House Commission will probably be appointed by the Mayor this

year, to consider and report upon existing conditions and possible

improvement.

On the whole, the outlook is full of hope. Vigilance and vigorous action

are demanded of all municipal authorities. Public interest is aroused.

The action of other cities in Great Britain as well as in New York and

other American cities warns Boston not to fall behind in this movement,

which will surely give to us and our children a healthier city for the

homes of the plain people, with its plague spots extirpated, and an

increasing proportion of the population living out in suburban homes in

this city of unsurpassed suburban beauty.

HOUSING CONDITIONS IN JERSEY CITY

By MARY BUELL SAYLES

Fellow of the College Settlements Association

The housing of the working people in Jersey City presents few striking

or distinctive features. There are in the crowded parts of the city no

such alley-intersected or narrow back street districts as are found in

certain sections of Chicago and Philadelphia; there is no block which

presents such conspicuously bad conditions of overcrowded land areas,

and consequently deficient lighting and ventilation, as prevail

throughout the newer tenement house districts of New York. None the less

the evils of construction of sanitary neglect and of overcrowded living

quarters, which have been brought to light in the recently completed

investigation upon which the present article is based, are of a

character both to claim the interest of specialists and to compel the

attention of citizens.

In his report on housing conditions and tenement laws in leading

American cities, Mr. Veiller, then secretary of the New York Tenement

House Commission of 1900, notes but four cities, out of the twenty-seven

which he discusses, as having a tenement house problem. Among these is

Jersey City. Yet compared with the situation in New York, the Jersey

City tenement house problem is still in its early stages. The great mass

of the working class population is housed either in converted dwellings

or in tenement houses of the primitive type commonly erected here, as in

Manhattan, twenty to forty years ago; and these two classes of houses,

which in the great city have been rapidly giving way, during the last

generation, before the onslaught of the dumb-bell tenement with its

characteristic eighteen-inch wide air-shaft and overcrowded lot, in the

smaller city show few signs of a similar yielding of place. Very few

tenements are at present in process of erection, and so few built within

the last five or even ten years were found in the districts

investigated, that it is difficult to speak with certainty of present

tendencies in construction. It is, therefore, chiefly to evils long

fixed upon the community and grown so familiar as to be generally

overlooked, that attention has been directed—evils none the less serious

for this fact, and all the more difficult to eradicate.

The investigation upon which, as has been said, the present paper is

based, was necessarily very limited in scope, as it was undertaken

single-handed and, under the conditions of the College Settlements

Association fellowship, confined to a single academic year. Five hundred

houses having been decided upon as a reasonable estimate of the field

which could and should be covered, three districts were selected as

representative both of the worst and—hardly less important—of average

housing conditions. Seventeen blocks in all were investigated. Of these

the investigation of the first was largely experimental, as it was

undertaken before the printing of the regular schedules used later on,

and its results, though hardly less complete than those afterwards

obtained, are not in all respects uniform with them, and have therefore,

for the present, been set aside. It is then with the returns from

sixteen blocks, consisting of the records of five hundred and four

houses,[10] and of two thousand one hundred and fifty-four

apartments,[11] that we shall deal in this paper.[12]

Of the three districts, the first and largest includes the eight blocks

bounded by Sussex and Essex and by Van Vorst and Hudson streets,

together with two others adjoining, extending between Hudson and Greene

to Grand, and between Van Vorst and Warren to Dudley street. The widest

range of conditions, as might be expected from its relative size, is to

be found in this district. From the comfortable well-built dwellings of

Sussex street, only recently converted to tenement house uses, and still

in a large proportion of cases unaltered, to the four and five story

brick tenements and the huddled rear houses of Morris and Essex streets,

every type and grade of house is represented. The population of the

district is overwhelmingly foreign. Only 18 per cent of the 1,278

families interviewed were of American stock, while in some of the blocks

south of Morris street the percentage falls as low as 11 per cent. The

foreign elements most largely represented are the Polish and Russian,

who together lead with 18 per cent; the Germans who follow with 20 per

cent, and the Irish with 18 per cent. Twenty other nationalities are

represented, but as the most numerous, the Jewish, is represented by but

thirty-two families, no one of them forms an important element

numerically in the population.

The industrial attractions which have brought together this foreign

population are not far to seek. The great American Sugar Refinery looms

conspicuously on the southern boundary of the district; numerous other

factories and workshops are interspersed through the blocks; while to

the north, within a few minutes’ walk, lies the Pennsylvania Railroad,

and to the south, across a narrow strip of water, stretch the docks of

the Central Railroad of New Jersey. The foreign population shows, as was

to be expected, a heavy preponderance of factory hands, railroad

employees, and longshoremen.

The second district includes the two blocks bounded by Railroad avenue

and Morgan street and by Henderson and Warren streets, and another

adjoining, extending between Provost and Henderson to Bay street.

Bounded to the south by the Pennsylvania Railroad’s elevated tracks,

stretching out toward the Erie Railroad, and hedged in towards the

Hudson by factories, foundries and workshops, it offers to the immigrant

almost the same inducements of employment as does District I, and

presents an even larger percentage of foreign born inhabitants. Of the

506 families whose apartments were investigated, not quite 14 per cent

were Americans, 42 per cent were Polish, 18 per cent Irish, 13 per cent

Italians and 4 per cent Germans. Among the remaining families the Jewish

lead, numbering 16.

The houses of this district correspond with the older and more neglected

portion of District I, showing, however, a larger proportion of wooden

buildings and a smaller proportion of high tenements.

District III, consisting of the three blocks bounded by First and Second

and by Monmouth and Merseles streets, is located farther from the

business centre of the city and from the water front, near the foot of

the hill on which are situated most of the better-class resident

districts. It lies in the heart of what is known as Little Italy—the

most distinctively national section of the city, and the most

dilapidated and neglected. Sixty-five per cent of the 377 families

interviewed were Italians, and their manner of packing themselves

solidly where once they enter into possession gives to the southern half

of the district, with the blocks adjoining, an intensely foreign aspect.

The remaining 35 per cent, among whom the Irish, the American with 10

per cent, and the German nationalities predominate, are interspersed

chiefly on the northern side of the blocks, along Second street.

Rival attractions to the railroads, factories and docks, which claim so

large a part of the population in the other two districts, are here

offered by the dump-grounds adjacent. Irregular heavy laboring work is,

however, the predominating occupation among the Italians, though the

rag-picker and junk-dealer are frequently found, as well as the

omnipresent factory hand.

So much for the characteristics of the separate districts. For the

remainder of the paper, the houses will be dealt with, in the main,

without regard to district lines. Some preliminary classifications may

properly be given before more detailed points of construction and

sanitation are taken up, or special evils pointed out.

First of all, classifying the 504 houses by materials, we find that just

55 per cent are of wood, and 45 per cent of brick—a few of the former

having brick, and a few of the latter stone, fronts. If we group them by

the number of stories, three-story and three-story-and-basement houses

are found to lead with 54 per cent; four and four-story-and-basement

houses come next with 31 per cent; 5 per cent have five stories; the

remaining 10 per cent have either two stories or two stories and

basement, with the exception of two houses, one and one-half stories and

one-story-and-basement respectively.

Again, we may group the houses by the number of apartments contained.

Houses occupied by but one family were not touched in the investigation,

but sixty-three two-family houses were examined, leaving 431 houses

which contain accommodations for three families or more, thus falling

under the definition of a tenement house most generally accepted

throughout the country. Three-apartment houses are most common, 25 per

cent of the total number falling under this head; 58 percent have from

four to nine apartments; of houses containing ten apartments or more

there are twenty-three, or 4 per cent.

Another significant classification of houses is that by position on the

lot. Fourteen per cent of the houses investigated are rear houses. These

figures, however, give little idea of the actual aspect of things, as

two blocks are without any rear houses, and six others have but one or

two each, while in one block rear houses constitute no less than 40 per

cent of all. These houses are seldom over three stories in height, are

almost always of wood, are in general very old and frequently

dilapidated.

Turning now from classifications of the houses themselves to consider

the apartments they contain, we find that three-room apartments lead by

a wide margin, constituting 41 per cent of the total of 2,154. Next come

four-room apartments with 28 per cent; two-room apartments with 12 per

cent; five-room apartments with 7 per cent; six-room apartments with 4

per cent. Of one-room apartments there is less than 1 per cent. One per

cent of the apartments examined contained over six rooms.

If now, leaving these preliminary statistics, we turn to matters of

greater interest, we shall find it convenient to group the chief evils

found, as first, evils of construction, under which we shall speak only

of the two leading faults, lack of proper provision for escape in case

of fire, and inadequate lighting and ventilation; next, sanitary evils,

some of which are structural and some the result of natural conditions

or neglect; and lastly, evils of occupancy, chief among which is that of

overcrowded apartments.

The absence of fire-escapes is perhaps the most conspicuous and glaring

fault observable in the tenement houses of Jersey City. Of the

twenty-four five-story buildings found, just one-half were provided with

fire-escapes; while of the 155 four-story or four-story-and-basement

houses, only four were so equipped. After these figures it will hardly

surprise anyone to learn that in no case was a fire-escape found upon a

three-story house. There are thus out of a total of 431 tenement houses,

most of them three stories or more in height, but sixteen, or 3 per

cent, which are provided with fire-escapes of any kind.

The character of the fire-escapes found makes them in a number of cases

practically valueless. The balconies of five had wooden floors; and not

only in a large proportion of cases were balconies seriously encumbered

and stairway or ladder openings covered by tenants, but in two instances

trap doors were regularly fitted to these openings, the owner thus

encouraging the use of the balcony as a general catch-all and storage

place. Furthermore, in only three houses did all the apartments above

the ground floor have access to a balcony, while in one instance, but

one out of four families was provided with such means of egress. No form

of fireproof construction was anywhere found, even the dumb-waiter

shafts in the higher buildings, well known to be one of the most common

paths by which fire spreads, being almost without exception of wood.

In regard to lighting and ventilation, the facts are less easily

grouped. The buildings being seldom of a depth to encroach seriously

upon the yards, we find, with the exception of a very few of the higher

houses, that nearly all of the kitchens and general living-rooms open

upon the yard or street and are thus adequately lighted. In the

converted dwellings, and in all houses occupied by but one family on

each floor, a large proportion of bedrooms also are open to the outer

air. But in the three or four-story buildings erected originally for

tenement uses, and furnishing accommodations for two families or more on

a floor, a light bedroom is more nearly the exception than the rule. The

typical interior room is lighted by a window to the outer living-room or

a public hall, these windows seldom having more than five square feet of

glazed surface, and more frequently an area of from three to four square

feet. One thousand and eighty-four such rooms were noted in the course

of the investigation; while—a still more serious evil—399 rooms were

found which had no window at all, and in most cases not even a transom

opening into another room.

Light and air-shafts were found in only a small proportion of the

tenement houses investigated; and a light and air-shaft which is more

than the merest travesty of its respectable name is emphatically an

exception. The typical shaft is a triangular or oblong niche in the

outer wall, with an area of from five to twenty square feet; an

occasional variation being found in a square shaft of about the same

area, let into the interior of the house and covered in most cases by

a skylight. Below the top story such shafts furnish practically no

light, while tenants bore almost unvarying witness that windows upon

them were uniformly kept closed. A single whiff of the pent-up air

within their narrow walls is quite sufficient to convince one of the

wisdom of such disregard of their presence; and one feels no surprise

in reading the evidence of chemists and physicians as to the positive

injury to health wrought by pretended ventilation of this

sort—evidence which has led to the giving of the suggestive name of

culture tubes to such shafts. Among evils of sanitation only a few of

the most serious can be touched upon. Most conspicuous and widespread

of all is that of the foul and ill-smelling privy vault. Seventy-five

per cent of the houses investigated furnish no toilet accommodations

save these objectionable structures in the yard. The vaults are in the

main sewer-connected, one block and part of another in District III

being the only sections in which no street sewer is laid, though

unsewered vaults were found in small numbers elsewhere. But a sewer

connection is in a large proportion of cases a most illusory blessing.

The great mass of solid matter frequently remains after the liquids

have run off to the sewer, and its decomposition renders the air of

the yard, upon which the rear rooms depend, many times almost

intolerable. In two cases school-sinks—modified privies, with metal

vaults in which water stands—were discovered in cellars; but as the

water was changed, according to the testimony of tenants, but once a

week, these cannot be said to offer many advantages over the ordinary

privy. Among the 368 water-closets in use in the remaining houses, the

old and objectionable pan closets number sixty-one; while numerous

water-closet compartments are either entirely unventilated or have

windows only to halls or rooms, and in a number of cases, especially

on the top floor of five-story buildings, the water-flush is wholly

inadequate to cleanse the bowl.

A serious evil is also found in the location and condition of household

sinks. In seventy of the houses investigated all such sinks were located

in the public hall, while in fifty-five other houses sinks were so

located on one or more floors. Nearly every such sink is used by two

families. In one block, chosen at haphazard from those of the Italian

district, sixty apartments were found whose occupants were obliged so to

share their sink; while fifteen other apartments were provided with but

one sink to every three or four apartments. Furthermore, eight houses

were found in which, in flat defiance of a city ordinance, no water at

all was furnished indoors. One row of four such houses, containing in

all twenty-two apartments, was provided with but two hydrants in the

common yard, one hydrant serving for ten, the other for twelve

apartments.

The collection of statistics as to the plumbing of sinks was not at

first attempted, but was taken up as the result of an observation of

conditions in the earlier blocks investigated. Eleven hundred and

sixty-two sinks, located in four blocks of District I, and in the six

blocks of Districts II and III, were examined. Of these only 10 per cent

were properly trapped and vented; 68 per cent were trapped but not

vented—a far from satisfactory state of affairs, especially where as in

many cases traps were so small or otherwise defective as to be

practically useless; 10 per cent were neither trapped nor vented, the

pipes thus offering free passage to the contaminated sewer air; 12 per

cent were boarded up solidly, so that the waste-pipes could not be

examined—an almost sure sign that the concealed plumbing is of the

oldest and worst type.

One serious element in the insanitary conditions of the districts

investigated, which, unlike those just mentioned, cannot primarily be

charged to the householder, is found in the character of the land upon

which a large part of lower Jersey City is built. Only six of the

sixteen blocks investigated are composed entirely of original solid

ground. Five blocks in District I were in greater or less degree formed

by the filling in of marsh land or the extension of the water front. All

of District II, and nearly all of two blocks of District III, were so

formed.[13]

The significance of these facts appears when we realize that land so

made is largely intermingled with refuse matter, and, still more

important, is generally damp and is subject to periodic risings of

tidewater. In a large proportion of the houses built upon such land,

observations of the investigator, supplemented by the testimony of

tenants, proves that the water in cellars unprotected, as are nearly

all, by water-proof flooring, stands at times to a depth of several

inches. Sewage is thus frequently washed back into yards and cellars,

first floor apartments are rendered damp and unhealthful, and nauseating

odors suggest the serious danger to health which such a condition brings

upon the entire house. Fortunately the cellar-dwelling evil is not a

prevalent one in Jersey City; yet one instance is recalled where a

family paying for four rooms in the basement and first floor had been

obliged to vacate the lower two rooms entirely—the men of the family

wading through water knee-deep to rescue the kitchen stove.

One of the most serious evils from which the poorer classes suffer is

that of overcrowded apartments. As was anticipated from the facts

brought to light by investigations in other American cities, this evil

was found to be most prevalent among the poorest foreign population,

especially the Poles and Italians, and is largely due to the custom of

taking so called boarders—really, in most cases, lodgers, who provide

their own bedding and pay in the neighborhood of two dollars a month.

There are two ways of measuring overcrowding in apartments; by number of

individuals per room, and by cubic air space per individual. To secure

perfectly accurate results, it is of course necessary to discover just

how many rooms in a given apartment are occupied for sleeping purposes

and how many persons sleep in each. This may seem a simple matter, but

in practice reliable results are not only very difficult, but in many

cases impossible to secure, save by a night inspection. Not only must

allowance be made for very general under-statement of the number of

boarders taken, but in a large proportion of cases either no answers at

all or wholly unsatisfactory answers can be obtained to questions as to

the distribution of members of the family and of boarders at night.

Under these circumstances it has seemed best, instead of attempting to

state the number of individuals sleeping in each room and the precise

cubic air space afforded by that room to each, to give the ratio of

number of occupants to entire number of rooms in each apartment, and the

cubic air space per individual afforded by that apartment as a whole.

Only rough indications of the degree of overcrowding at night are of

course given by this method, but it has at least the advantage of

greater accuracy so far as it goes than could fairly be claimed for one

seemingly more precise.

Applying the method of measurement by cubic air space to the 2,154

apartments investigated, we find that in 65 per cent of them each

occupant has an allowance of 600 cubic feet of air or more. Living

conditions in most of these apartments are fair, and in many good; yet

some of the most disgraceful cases of overcrowding were found among

them—as in one apartment, where in a single large room two little girls

of about twelve years slept, together with a varying number of male

boarders. The remaining 35 per cent of apartments afford less than 600

cubic feet of air space per occupant. This means in nearly all cases a

serious degree of overcrowding; since if bedrooms alone are occupied at

night such an allowance for the whole apartment means actually on an

average less than 400 cubic feet, and often less than 300 or even 200

cubic feet for each person; while if the crowding compels the use of the

kitchen for sleeping purposes, other evils hardly less serious are added

to those of limited air space. Such being the meaning of the figures

given, it becomes evident that in the 199 apartments, 9 per cent of all,

in which there were found to be less than 400 cubic feet of air space to

each occupant in the apartment as a whole, very serious danger to health

exists. It is below the limit of 400 cubic feet per adult, with a

smaller allowance for children, that government interference has

generally been authorized, where authorized at all; as is notably the

case in Glasgow, where the law is enforced by an especially efficient

system of night inspection, and among American cities in New York.

The other test of overcrowding, by ratio of number of persons to number

of rooms, while a less accurate means of estimating effect on health,

furnishes a more accurate indication of the relation of overcrowding to

standards of decency. An example typical of many cases met with will

make this distinction clear. Suppose two large high-ceiled rooms with a

total cubic contents of 3,500 cubic feet, occupied by eight people. Each

person has then more than the minimum of 400 cubic feet; yet the absence

of any possibility of privacy or decency of living involved where men

and women boarders, parents and growing children make up the eight, need

not be dwelt upon. It is evident that four rooms with an aggregate

contents of less than 3,200 cubic feet might be occupied by the same

eight persons with perhaps greater danger to health from limited

breathing space, but with certainly better opportunities for separation

by sexes.

If we apply this second method of measurement, we find that in 24 per

cent of the total number of apartments there are two persons or more to

each room. Such apartments may fairly be classed as overcrowded; since

either every room is occupied for sleeping purposes, or if one room is

reserved for kitchen and living-room, the bedrooms are shared by a

minimum average of two and two-thirds, three or four persons each,

according as the number of rooms in the apartment is four, three or

two.[14] To appreciate what this means it is of course necessary to

realize that few bedrooms in such apartments contain more than 800 cubic

feet, while a large proportion are dark interior rooms containing from

600 to 400 cubic feet or even less. These facts having been pointed out,

it is unnecessary further to emphasize the seriousness of the state of

affairs, where, as in 196 apartments, 9 per cent of the total number,

the ratio of number of occupants to number of rooms rises as high as 2.5

or more.

Space will not permit of an extended comparison of these conditions of

overcrowding with those revealed by similar investigations in other

cities. It is interesting, however, to note in passing that the average

number of individuals per room in the districts investigated is higher

than the average number of occupants per room in the 9,859 apartments

covered by the recent investigation of the City Homes Association in

Chicago; the former being 1.35, and the latter 1.28 persons. While

averages do not form the most satisfactory basis of comparison, a

difference so marked as this unquestionably indicates a greater degree

of overcrowding in the Jersey City than in the Chicago districts.

Enough has been said, it is believed, to show that serious housing

problems demand solution in Jersey City. While the investigation covered

the living environment of but 10,179 persons out of a total city

population of 206,433, it may yet fairly claim to have some

representative value. The districts investigated of course present

conditions different in some respects from those of the city as a whole.

Thus—to use a method of comparison too rough to have any but a

suggestive value—while but 28 per cent of the total population of the

city are foreigners, 84 per cent of the heads of families whose

apartments were investigated are foreign born. Along with this large

proportion of the poorest foreign population go unquestionably

especially bad conditions of overcrowding, and in many respects of

sanitary neglect; though such is not the case with faults of housing

construction pure and simple. Nevertheless the accusation that an

unfairly dark and harrowing picture has been presented cannot justly be

brought; since on the one hand many tenement houses of the best type

were included, as is shown by a range of monthly rents between extremes

of $17 and $3 per apartment; while on the other, large numbers of blocks

as bad in character as any of those investigated could be pointed out in

other parts of the city. The hope of furnishing data upon which a

movement for reform might safely base its demands was the determining

incentive to the investigation; but this direct practical aim has by no

means obscured the sociological and scientific interests involved. If

the results obtained shall on the one hand be used as a point of

departure for social effort, and on the other be judged a real though

small contribution to the literature of the housing problem, the ends

sought will have been fully attained.

IV. The Child Labor Problem

CHILD LABOR LEGISLATION

By MRS. FLORENCE KELLEY

Secretary National Consumers’ League

It is most desirable that the present widespread agitation for child

labor legislation may achieve permanent results of a uniform character.

Such laws as now exist are alike in no two states; they are enforced

differently when they are enforced at all; they are uniform only in

their failure to afford adequate protection to the rising generation of

the working class.

It is the aim of this paper to set forth some essential points of an

effective child labor law efficiently enforced; for whatever the local

differences of industrial conditions may be, certain fundamental needs

of childhood are constant and child labor legislation must ultimately be

framed with regard to these.

This fact is somewhat recognized in the statutes already enacted; for

all these begin with a restriction upon the age at which the child may

begin to work. This minimal age has varied from ten years to fifteen,

differing in some states for boys and for girls, while the statutes

prescribing it have been weakened in some states by exemptions and

strengthened in others by educational requirements. The fundamental

provision of all child labor legislation has always been the prohibition

of work before a specified birthday.

Akin to the restriction of the age of employment is the restriction of

the hours of work. The former secures to the child a fixed modicum of

childhood; the latter assures to the adolescent certain leisure, all too

little, for growth and development.

No one law can be selected as containing all the provisions needed or

even as containing all the provisions now in force. It is not possible

to say to students of the subject, “The law of Massachusetts should be

copied everywhere,” for the laws of Ohio and Illinois contain single

provisions in advance of that of Massachusetts.

Among the best child labor laws in the United States are those of

Illinois and Indiana, which are almost identical. In Illinois no child

under the age of fourteen years can be legally employed in any mine,

manufacturing establishment, factory or workshop, mercantile

institution, store, office, or laundry. The Indiana law adds, to the

foregoing list, renovating works, bakeries and printing offices. This

prohibition is absolute throughout the year, admitting no exemptions or

exceptions. Herein lies the superiority of these laws. Under the New

York law, children at work in stores are exempt from restrictions during

half of December—from December 15 to December 31—and also during the

vacations of the public schools, when they may be employed from the age

of thirteen years everywhere outside of the factories, which happily

they may not enter before the fourteenth birthday. This exemption in New

York has been given such elastic construction that children have been

employed on Saturdays and even on school-days out of school-hours.

The laws of Illinois and Indiana are humane; they set the highest age

limit without exemptions yet attained; they are equitable since they

place mine owners, manufacturers and merchants in the same position in

relation to this particular source of cheap labor. The employment of

children under fourteen years of age is prohibited to all three sets of

employers alike.

Treating these laws as standard or normal, for purposes of comparison,

the law of Pennsylvania, for instance, is seen to fall below, because

under it children may work in certain mines at twelve years and in

factories at thirteen years of age; while lowest in the scale among all

the Northern and Middle states stands New Jersey, whose child labor law

permits boys to work at twelve and exempts all children, on grounds of

poverty, at discretion of the factory inspectors.

_Exemptions._

From the foregoing brief statement it is clear that the subject of

exemptions is a varied and complicated one. The most insidious form of

exemption, and therefore perhaps the most dangerous, is that prescribed

in the law of Wisconsin. Under it, no child may be employed under the

age of fourteen years in manufacture or commerce, unless it is exempted

on grounds of poverty by a judge of a local court. In practice, a judge

has no time to investigate the economic condition of hundreds of

families; hence he follows the recommendation of the deputy factory

inspector. This overworked officer is drawn away from his proper duties

to perform an economic investigation for which he possesses no especial

fitness. His own work suffers. Children are exempted from school

attendance and permitted to work, who more than any other children in

the community need education because of the poverty or shiftlessness of

their parents. Too often, drunken fathers are encouraged to further

drunkenness because their young children, under exemption, are earning

money which the parents spend. Finally, this exemption rests upon the

pernicious principle that a young child under fourteen years of age may

be burdened with the support of itself or its family.

It is not a legitimate function of the judiciary to investigate the

poverty of individual families. It is not a legitimate function of the

factory inspectors to investigate family life. Both officers are

interrupted in the performance of their legitimate duties by every

attempt to perform this alien task. Moreover, children under fourteen

years of age are undesirable additions to the body of wage-earners,

pressing by their competition upon the wages of their seniors and

therefore tending to produce in other families the same poverty which

serves as a pretext for their own exemption. The number of exempted

children, under such a provision, tends to increase continuously,

because greedy and pauperized parents are tempted to follow the example

of the really needy, in urging applications for exemptions.

_Reinforcements._

Besides being free from all the undermining effects of exemption

clauses, the child labor laws of Illinois and Indiana profit by several

reinforcing clauses. Chief among these is the requirement that children

under sixteen years and over fourteen years must keep on file in the

office of the place of employment an affidavit of the parent or

guardian, stating the date and place of birth of the child. In Indiana,

this must state also that the child can read and write the English

language. While some parents are undoubtedly guilty of perjury, and

others carelessly take the oath perfunctorily administered by a notary

public, thousands of honest people are deterred by the requirement of

the affidavit from sending their children to work before reaching the

fourteenth birthday.

Employers must produce, on demand of factory inspectors, affidavits for

all children under sixteen years of age in their employ. The penalty

prescribed for failure to do this is the same as for employing a child

under the age of fourteen years. The value of this provision for the

protection of the children depends wholly upon the policy of the

inspectors. If every failure to produce the affidavit is followed by

immediate prosecution, manufacturers become extremely cautious about

employing young children; children under fourteen years of age virtually

cease to be employed; and the number of those employed under sixteen

years of age diminishes because many employers refuse to be troubled

with affidavits, inspections and prosecutions. On the other hand,

employers of large numbers of children find it profitable to make one

clerk responsible for the presence in the office of an affidavit for

every child between the ages of fourteen and sixteen years. In these

cases, the children who have affidavits acquire a slight added value,

are somewhat less likely to be dismissed for trifling reasons, and

become somewhat more stable in their employment.

Where, however, inspectors fear to prosecute systematically, lest they

be removed from office, the provision requiring an affidavit to be

produced by the employer, on demand of an inspector, is not rigorously

enforced; children soon come to be employed upon their verbal assurance

that they are fourteen years of age, and the protection which might be

derived from this very useful reinforcing clause is lost for the

children under fourteen years of age, as well as for the older ones.

A farther reinforcement of the prohibition of employment of children

under fourteen years of age is the authority conferred by the Illinois

law upon inspectors to demand a certificate of physical fitness for

children who may seem unfit for their work. This provision enforced with

energy and discretion can be made, in the case of children conspicuously

undersized, largely to counteract the tendency to perjury on the part of

parents, besides relieving healthy children from overstrain of many

kinds. The difficulties encountered are chiefly two:—physicians grant

certificates without visiting the place of employment. This occurs quite

uniformly to the disgrace of the profession. Physicians also grant

certificates, in many cases, without careful examination of eyes, heart,

lungs and spinal column of the child, simply upon the parent’s statement

of poverty. To make this reinforcement thoroughly effective, every

factory inspection staff should include a physician, preferably two, a

man and a woman, appointed expressly to follow up the children and the

conditions under which they work.

_Educational Tests._

Several states require that children under sixteen years of age must be

able to read and write simple sentences in the English language, before

being employed. This is of the highest value in those states which

receive large streams of immigration from Europe. In New York, every

year, numbers of children are dismissed from factories by order of

factory inspectors, because the children cannot read; while in

Massachusetts, French Canadian children find school attendance at a high

premium because of the difficulty of securing employment without it. The

influence of the foreign voting constituency has defeated in several

states, for several years past, the effort to secure a statutory

requirement of ability to read and write English, or a specified

attendance at school, as a prerequisite for work on the part of children

under sixteen years of age. This is conspicuously true of Illinois,

where such a provision was defeated in the legislatures of 1893, 1895

and 1897.

The most powerful reinforcement of the child labor law is a compulsory

school attendance law effectively enforced. For want of this, the child

labor law of Illinois suffers severely. The school attendance law

requires children between the ages of eight and fourteen years to attend

school sixteen weeks, of which twelve must be consecutive. Children

under ten years of age must enter school in September, children under

twelve years must enter school not later than New Year’s. Meagre as

these provisions are, they are not uniformly and effectively enforced by

the local school boards; and the state factory inspectors are therefore

burdened with frequent prosecutions of employers because children under

fourteen years of age are sent to work by parents who should be

rigorously prosecuted by the school attendance officers.

In Indiana, the reinforcement afforded by the state truancy law is of

great value, for children must attend school to the age of fourteen

years, throughout the term of the school district in which they live,

generous provision being made for truant officers. This difference

accounts, perhaps, for the fact that Indiana has but three and one-half

thousand children under the age of sixteen years at work, compared with

nineteen thousand such children in Illinois; and this despite the rapid

development of the “Gas Belt” in Indiana, where the temptation is very

great for parents to put excessively young children to work with the

help of perjured affidavits. Truant officers, watching young children,

from the eighth to the fourteenth birthday, every day of the school

term, are the best preventive alike of perjury by parents and of child

labor. They constitute the best possible reinforcement of the child

labor law.

The contrasted practice of the neighboring states of Indiana and

Illinois, in this respect, is so marked that, unless the policy of

Illinois be radically changed in the near future, it is reasonable to

expect that, despite the excellent child labor law, the number of

children at work under the age of sixteen years must continue to double

at intervals of five years, as it has done in the past—the recruits

being largely drawn from the ranks of the children under the legal age

for work.

In Boston, the very enlightened firm of merchants known as Filene’s have

long made it a rule to employ no person who is not a graduate of the

grammar grades of the public schools. In two cases known to the writer,

girls aged respectively eighteen and sixteen years applied for work, but

were not engaged because they had not completed the school requirement.

They found employment elsewhere while attending the graded evening

schools of Boston in preparation for service at Filene’s. It is

reasonable to expect that this method of securing efficient help will be

increasingly followed by public-spirited employers interested in placing

a premium upon school attendance, until at last legislators may feel

justified in specifying some one grade of the schools below which the

pupil may not leave to begin working.

_The Hours of Labor._

Among the most advanced restrictions upon the hours of labor of children

is that of New Jersey, which prohibits all persons, men, women and

children, alike, from working in manufacturing establishments longer

than fifty-five (55) hours in any week, or after one o’clock on

Saturday. This provision applies throughout the year. Massachusetts and

Rhode Island prohibit the employment of women of any age and of youths

under eighteen years, longer than fifty-eight hours in any week, or ten

hours in one day, or after nine at night or before six in the morning.

These laws have the advantage of precision. They require that the hours

of work of the persons concerned must be posted conspicuously, and that

the posted hours shall constitute the working day—work beyond the posted

hours constituting a violation of the law—thus rendering the enforcement

of the law simple and easy.

The statute of Utah prohibits all persons from working in mines,

smelters and factories longer than eight hours in one day and

forty-eight hours in one week. This statute has been sustained by the

Supreme Court at Washington, in the decision in the case of Holden _vs._

Hardy, 1896. It does not, at present, affect any considerable number of

children, because child labor hardly exists in Utah. But with the

development of manufacture, now proceeding with startling rapidity, the

value of this enlightened law for the children who must inevitably find

employment is quite beyond computation. And as a precedent for similar

legislation elsewhere, this statute and the extremely strong decision of

the Supreme Court at Washington sustaining the validity of the statute

are of epoch-making importance.

_Night Work of Children._

The extent to which children are employed at night is not generally

recognized. In any state in which such employment is not explicitly

prohibited, it is very general in all branches of industry in which

children are employed by day. Glassworks, nut and bolt works, tin can

factories, furniture factories, cutleries, and scores of miscellaneous

industries employ boys regularly at night. Girls are regularly employed

in garment and candy factories during the busy season; and in some

factories this work continues all through the year, as in the cotton

mills of Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas. Wherever the prohibition is

not explicit and sweeping, the night work of children is the rule, not

the exception. In Illinois and Indiana boys are not prohibited from

working at night, and are regularly employed in the glassworks in both

states under circumstances of great hardship. In Indiana, girls are

forbidden to work after ten o’clock; but Illinois, cruelly belated in

this respect, merely restricts the work of children under sixteen years

of age to sixty hours in any week, and ten hours in one day, failing to

proscribe night work even for girls. It is, accordingly, very common.

Even in Boston, where the hours of labor of boys under eighteen years

engaged in manufacture and other forms of commerce are strictly limited,

a recent attempt to pass an ordinance requiring that newsboys under

fourteen years of age shall not sell papers on the streets after eight

o’clock at night failed utterly, and small boys are to be seen upon the

streets at all hours. The place of honor in the matter of legislation

prohibiting night work for children properly belongs to Ohio, which

provides that minors under eighteen years of age, may not be employed

after seven o’clock at night.

_Children Not Yet Protected._

Large numbers of working children remain wholly unprotected by

legislation. Not only have the four great cotton manufacturing states,

Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas, defeated all bills presented to

their legislatures for the purpose of protecting young children, but in

the North, also, newsboys, bootblacks, peddlers, vendors and the

thousands of children employed in the tenement houses of New York and

Chicago, and in the sweat-shops of Philadelphia, remain wholly outside

of the law’s protection, so far as statutory regulation of the

conditions of their work is concerned. The problem of abolishing the

overwork of school children in tenement houses, under the sweating

system, appears at present insoluble except by a prohibition of all

tenement house work.

_Enforcement._

To secure the enforcement of child labor legislation, there are needed

factory inspectors, both men and women, equipped with ample powers and

supplied with adequate funds for traveling and other expenses. These

inspectors need good general education, long experience, and vigorous

public opinion reinforcing their efforts. Massachusetts enjoys the

unique distinction, among the American states, of possessing a large

staff of factory inspectors meeting all these requirements; and

Massachusetts is, accordingly, the only state of which it may be

confidently asserted that its child labor law is uniformly and

effectively enforced at all times and in all its provisions. A faithful

officer serving a full quarter-century at the head of the department,

with subordinates equally assured of permanent tenure of office during

good behavior, has been able fearlessly and intelligently to enforce the

laws securing to the children of Massachusetts fourteen full years of

childhood, with opportunity for school life, followed by safety of life,

limb and health after entering upon the years of work.

In all the other states it is extremely difficult for an inspector who

faithfully enforces the law to retain his position. The interests which

oppose such legislation and object to its enforcement, are enormously

powerful and are thoroughly organized. The people who procure the

enactment of child labor laws are usually working people unacquainted

with the technical details of the work of inspection; busy in the effort

to earn their own living; not able to keep vigilant watch upon the work

of the inspectors, the creation of whose office they achieve. Thus the

officials are subjected to pressure in one direction only. If they are

idly passive, they may be allowed to vegetate in office several years.

If they are aggressively faithful to the oath of office, enforcing the

law by prosecuting offenders against its provisions, the children who

profit by this are unable to reward their benefactors; the working

people who obtained the creation of the office have no arts of bringing

pressure to bear effectively to reward faithfulness in public service by

appointed officers; while the offending employers are amply able to

punish what they decry as officious overactivity, if they do not go

farther and charge persecution and blackmail. For these reasons it may

almost be stated as a general proposition that the more lax the officer,

the longer his term of office; and the history of the departments of

factory inspection, the country over, sadly substantiates the statement.

The recent startling revelations of non-enforcement of the laws intended

to protect young children from exhausting overwork in the glass

factories in New Jersey merely intimate what will be found true in every

state in which there is not a powerfully organized, compact body of

public opinion alert to insist upon the retention of competent officers,

the removal of incompetent ones, and the uniform, consistent enforcement

of all the provisions of the child labor laws.

To form in every state, among the purchasers of the products of

manufacture, a body of alert, enlightened public opinion, keen to watch

the officers to whom is entrusted the duty of enforcing child labor

laws, rewarding with support and appreciation faithful officials and

calling attention to derelictions from duty on the part of the mere

politicians among them, this is an important part of the duty of the

National Consumers’ League.

CHILD LABOR IN THE DEPARTMENT STORE

By FRANKLIN N. BREWER

General Manager Wanamaker Store, Philadelphia

The topic assigned me, “Child Labor in (so called) Department Stores,”

interests us, I take it, from but one point of view: that of the

education and development of the child into the man or woman who shall

contribute and receive a normal share of the world’s good growth in

life, liberty and happiness.

I cannot claim comprehensive thought or research, under this topic, and

my paper must be the brief and superficial one of a man whose too short

days are full of the work of the builder rather than the study of the

architect.

If my coming before you is justified at all, it must be by the simple

statement I am able to make of how one establishment,[15] a typical one

of the class under consideration, is trying to meet its responsibility

for its children.

First entrance into the employ of this house is, to the extent possible,

with a clear understanding between parent, or guardian, and the

employer, that the child’s business career shall continue with the same

house, at least until maturity in years and efficiency in some distinct

branch of the business shall have been reached.

Following our State law, thirteen years is the minimum age. The smaller

boys begin as “cash boys.” Girls are not given this work, positions of

less freedom being considered safer for them. The girls up to, usually,

seventeen years of age, and the boys, other than cash boys, usually,

from sixteen to eighteen, are engaged directly in the general corps of

the junior employees—we call it “The Cadet Corps”—and into this corps

the cash boys come by promotion. Except at Christmas, the cash boys will

average two hundred in number; the cadets four hundred, of whom about

one hundred are girls. These six hundred young people are assigned to

duty in the various departments and divisions of the business, according

to natural aptitude and fitness, and are under the direction of their

respective department or section heads; but always, also, and until

graduation from the Cadet Corps, they are under the care and discipline

of the chief of the corps and a lady assistant. The young people are not

lost sight of individually, but are known and studied by the managers

with view to advancement according to capacity and natural abilities.

Cultivation of good manners, neatness, elevated personal habits, the

general requirements of the store service, lessons from their individual

experiences, etc., are considered with them individually and at general

meetings, and are emphasized by a system of monthly averages bearing

upon questions of promotion and increase of salary. To illustrate: Each

of the smaller boys (the cash boys) has his record card which he must

carry for a month. It is no small departure from small-boy nature,

simply to have and hold this card during a month without a forbidden

accumulation of dirt and damage upon it. One of the early signs of

progress, after the adoption of this feature of our plan, was an

increased average whiteness and remaining area in the cards surrendered

at the month’s end. This card epitomizes the boy’s early business life

and he reverences it and guards it. On one side are rules to be

committed to memory, but this is merely incidental. The other is the

serious side, where an array of spaces gradually fill up, like the

rising of the tide. Weekly ratings by his section manager for neatness,

promptness, truthfulness, etc.; a weekly rating at morning “inspection,”

by his general chief; daily strokes of the pencil (if occasion require)

for misconduct or neglect of duty—“bluies” the boys call these latter

marks and there is no levity or disrespect in the term. Protest against

what is felt to be an undeserved “bluie” is made to his chief, or even

to the general manager, with all the earnestness of an appeal to the

Supreme Court, and, needless to say, such appeals are patiently

entertained and decided with honest effort after justice. Upon these

cards, also, are entered the monthly figures given for the boys’

school-work. The average of all the ratings is the “store average” and

the misconduct marks (“bluies”) reckon so much off. The card goes home

for inspection and signing by parent or guardian. Upon the “store

average” depend increase of salary and promotion. If advance in salary

is not won reasonably soon (six weeks or two months usually bring the

first upward step) the conclusion is apt to be reached that the boy is

unfitted for our service and he is dropped from the ranks. The simple

expedient of these cards, and that which they represent, secures in

discipline what the harsh word and impulsive discharge never could

secure, and a month or two bring about in the little “raw recruit” a

surprising improvement.

I mention these details as illustrative of the spirit, character and

thoroughness with which, to the best of our ability, the problems of the

discipline and development of our young people are met, along their

whole course from first entrance into the business up to graduation into

the ranks of men and women. And this line of procedure is simple

recognition of the fact that these are children still, whose characters

are forming, and that faults and defects, which in man or woman might

require discharge, in the child simply demand correction.

The boys above the cash boy grade, and the girls, are placed, as early

as wisely possible (depending upon their own developing tendencies and

the business conditions), where some distinct branch of the business, or

class of merchandise, will be learned thoroughly. Stock boy, salesman,

stock-head, buyer’s assistant, is the usual line of advancement in

merchandising. Development in clerical lines makes the bookkeeper, the

auditor, the office assistant, the stenographer. In trades lines grow up

among us, the milliner, the dressmaker, the paper shade and flower

worker, the plate engraver and printer, the designer, draughtsman,

decorator, show-card painter, the mechanic in repair of bicycles, dolls,

and so on. Exceedingly numerous and varied are the paths open, and in so

far as possible an early and definite selection and patient reasonable

progress along some one of these paths are insisted upon. Meanwhile

salaries are advanced systematically according to a minimum scale which

is increased as progress above the average and promotion to higher

duties may mark the course of the individual.

Does the program, thus far, sound too serious and strict for normal

happiness and hopefulness in the children? See our young people and you

will find the reverse to be true. Granted a child, normal in body and

mind, happily busy and interested in duties of genuine importance to and

among other busy people, and the question of training in the business

proper answers itself: the child learns, absorbs, grows by the easy

process of nature. His capital knowledge, as a business man, becomes to

him like the mud on the carpet at Willie’s home: “I didn’t bring it into

the house, mamma; it just stuck to my shoes and came in itself.” But the

youthful business students of to-day require for normal development more

than the round of duty of a succession of business days in a fixed place

can supply, and more than the average home and home circle of friends

and interests of the working boy or girl do supply.