HOUSING
It is an interesting fact that among the very earliest pioneers in the
movement for better housing conditions were two women, Octavia Hill, of
London, and Ellen Collins, of New York. Of these two women, it has been
justly said: “They were alike in the fact that before anyone else saw
how bad housing underlies more of the mischief that is abroad in a great
city than do most other causes, they saw and understood. What is more,
they attacked the evil where few in their day had the courage, and fewer
the will, to meet it.”
Guided by the work done by Octavia Hill in England, Miss Fox, Miss
Parrish, and a few others organized, in the pioneer days of housing
reform, the Octavia Hill Association, as a branch of the Civic Club of
Philadelphia, a woman’s organization which had been investigating
congestion in courts and alleys and presenting reports. This association
still exists. The members of the association buy property in the
tenement districts, and either build new houses or improve old ones
which are rented then in the usual way. The shareholders are guaranteed
4 per cent. on their investment and still the houses are kept in
perfectly sanitary condition. It is eleemosynary in its interest though
profit-making in its appearance. It handles property for those who want
it handled by someone who will take more than a pecuniary interest in
the tenants.
The ideals of this association have been copied elsewhere, as in Detroit
and Washington. They were the inspiration for the Women’s Municipal
League of Boston, which now manages the property intrusted to its care
on the same principles. It regards the rent collector as a social worker
of real assistance to the landlord and the tenant.
The attitude that so many people have of placing the blame for bad
conditions upon tenants largely or solely was well answered by a member
of the Octavia Hill Association. After showing that the last annual bill
for repairs due to carelessness of tenants in the Association’s 500
houses was only $50, someone asked to what extent tenants are
responsible for bad housing conditions. Instantly the answer came,
“None.”
The work done by Miss Ellen Collins in New York is told by Miss Emily
Dinwiddie in “Tenements for a Million People.” Jacob Riis thus had able
assistants.
Women of wealth have helped to build some of the model tenements which
were, in the earlier stages, regarded as most important contributions to
the housing movement. Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt, Sr., for example, spent one
million dollars in erecting four model tenements in New York to meet the
needs of tuberculosis patients and their families.
As the housing reform movement assumed wider aspects than the
destruction of limited slum areas or the construction of model
tenements, women were everywhere found active along the new lines of
development. The Housing Problem, it is now recognized, offers different
aspects for different classes in society, although the requirements for
all individuals in the matters of light, air, warmth, sanitation, and
freedom from overcrowding, are similar.
HOMES FOR WORKING WOMEN
Homeless working women, for instance, are face to face with a serious
problem, for, as lodgers with very small incomes, they are not only
unable to secure airy and sanitary rooms, but they are often forced into
immoral surroundings and led to supplement their earnings in ways that
menace their own future. Homes for working girls have, therefore, been a
special concern of women in many of our cities.
Edith Hadley, president of the Chelsea House Association, New York,
shows the spirit with which women have generally undertaken this work:
“If we who have privileges and warm, comfortable, clean homes, cannot
say to these girls, ‘My sister, come home,’ surely it rests upon us to
do it in some community way. And if we cannot get the housing of girls
taken up as a community duty, then all the more must we struggle by
private enterprise to find out the way. We must say there shall be no
town throughout the length and breadth of our land where the girl cannot
find safe shelter, a place which, if her need is great, she may call
home.”
Even better wages would not alone solve this need and women realize
that. In New York, the census returns show 22,700 wage-earning women and
girls living by themselves in the city; yet there are still only some
forty houses where definite preparation for their home comfort has been
undertaken. Realizing the inadequacy of the housing provision for such
women, a boarding-house bureau was recently organized by certain women,
under the chairmanship of Cornelia Marshall, to investigate and report
on reliable boarding-houses and bring the list to the attention of
working women. This bureau was an outcome of a conference of authorities
in charge of working girls’ houses.
Housing reform, in its larger aspects, however, is a persistent struggle
to control the situation permanently by legislation, efficient
inspection, garden cities, and model small houses in place of tenements.
Added to this is the necessity of assimilation work with foreigners, of
education in personal and public hygiene in schools and homes, and
control of profit-making interests for the sake of homes for the people.
SURVEYS
The more thoughtful women interested in housing reform soon came to
realize that mere sentimental talk about housing evils is futile, and
that effective improvements must be based on actually known conditions,
their causes and effects.
Surveys have therefore taken precedence generally of propaganda for
legislation or enforcement of laws; and many of the very best of the
housing surveys in the country have been made by women. Here again it is
because of the greater readiness of women to admit women into the
secrets of the home that investigations carried on by them are apt to be
more successful. Women can best understand women’s and children’s needs
in the way of shelter, for one thing, and how far the labor of one woman
can accomplish housekeeping results. Theirs having been the tasks of
doing the family wash, guarding the babies at sleep and at play, cooking
and serving meals, removing dust and rubbish, they are in a better
position than men to know what conveniences facilitate that work and
what deprivations retard or prevent its accomplishment. No clearer proof
of that fact is needed than the response and testimony which poured into
the Bureau of Agriculture in reply to its query as to how it could best
serve women on the farms. These farmers’ wives cried with pitiable
appeal just for running water. Many instances were given of excellent
shelter and water provision for pigs and cattle while the wife and
babies were deprived of the commonest decencies.
The following is a partial list of housing surveys made by women within
the past five years:[31]
_Mount Vernon._ 1913. Report of Housing Investigation by Miss Udetta D.
Brown.
_Pittsburgh._ 1909. The Housing Situation in Pittsburgh, by F. Elisabeth
Crowell, _Charities and the Commons_, February 6.
_Sacramento._ 1913. Report of Investigation of Housing Conditions, by
Miss Caroline Schleef. Under direction Chamber of Commerce.
_Newburgh._ 1913. Report of Housing Investigation made by Miss Amy Woods
of the Newburgh Associated Charities for the Social Survey, conducted by
the Russell Sage Foundation. She pointed out opportunities for a better
housing code and will have much to do with the follow-up work.
1913. Housing Investigation by Miss Helen Safford Knowles, supplementing
Report of Carol Aronovici, on the Housing Conditions of the Welcome Hall
District.
_Cambridge._ 1913. Report of Investigation by Miss Flora Burton in First
Report of Cambridge Housing Association.
_Chicago._ 1912. Tenement Housing Conditions in Twentieth Ward, Chicago.
Report of Civics Committee of Chicago Woman’s Club.
1912. The Problem of the Negro. Report of Investigation by Alzada P.
Comstock, for Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy.
1912. Two Italian Districts, by G. P. Norton, ed. by S. P. Breckinridge
and E. Abbott of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy.
_American Journal of Sociology._ Consists of seven articles on housing
among the different races in Chicago.
_Grand Rapids._ 1913. Housing Conditions and Tendencies in Grand Rapids,
Michigan. Report of Housing Investigations by Miss Udetta D. Brown.
Under the supervision of the Charity Organization Society.
_Portland, Oregon._ A housing survey made by the Consumers’ League which
then drew up a housing ordinance to eliminate slums and presented it for
the consideration of the city council. Club women and welfare
organizations supported it.
_Bridgeport, Connecticut._ Survey of housing made for Housing
Association by Miss Udetta C. Brown.
_Elmira, New York._ 1913. Esther Denton made report on housing
conditions which aroused citizens.
_Hartford, Connecticut._ 1912. Through investigation of housing
conditions by Mary S. Heilman made for the Civic Club, whose president
is Dorothy B. Hillyer, Hartford was aroused and instances of deplorable
conditions of affairs were laid before the Board of Health.
_California Cities._ In 1911 housing conditions were studied and
reported on by Mrs. Johanna von Wagner, an expert of the Los Angeles
Housing Commission. Her report and influence helped to secure the
enactment of the state tenement house law.
In 1908 Charlotte Rumbold prepared for the Housing Committee of the
Civic League of St. Louis a report on tenement house conditions so
vividly written and illustrated that not only St. Louis but many other
localities were stirred and eventually framed reform legislation. It
took five years, however, to win a tenement house law in St. Louis.
In 1904 Miss Emily Dinwiddie made an investigation of three typical
sections of Philadelphia to pave the way for housing legislation,
especially for the enforcement of legislation through adequate
inspection. It was years before the legislation sought by Miss Dinwiddie
and her colleagues was secured, but in 1911 a state provision was
finally obtained. At the present time Miss Dinwiddie is in charge of the
Trinity property, of New York City, which was formerly accused of being
managed solely for profits. She is proving that rookeries can be turned
into homes and made to pay.
Alice S. Griffith, secretary of the San Francisco Housing Association,
emphasizes the need of more housing inspections. “How Social Workers Can
Aid Housing Reform,” by Mary E. Richmond, indicates their value as
inspectors.
The Women’s Municipal League of Boston took for study the Board of
Health’s record of 1,500 basements occupied for living purposes and came
to the decided opinion that basements at best are unfit for human
habitation. The League then petitioned the Legislature to make a law
governing basements erected subsequent to the passage of the acts of
1907, retroactive.
The housing work done by this League has been under the able leadership
of Miss Amelia Ames. The Committee of the League has been enlarged to
include representatives of the Massachusetts Civic League, the Roxbury
Welfare League, the Roxbury Charitable Association, South End House,
Elizabeth Peabody House, Associated Charities, the Homestead Commission,
and the Chamber of Commerce.
The first work of the original Municipal League Committee, as of its
enlarged group, was an investigation carried on largely by trained women
inspectors. The coöperation of the settlements and other organizations
helped materially in this survey, as it enabled a district examination
to be made, and placed the worst conditions in each district as a
definite responsibility on some neighborhood organization, like a
settlement, which could be charged with the duty of securing the
district improvement. None of this work was haphazard. Only trained
investigators were sought and employed. Miss Theodora Bailey, for
example, made over 400 inspections and carefully tabulated over 200. She
was able to interest legislators and reporters in the deplorable
conditions in Boston.
REFORMS
The Women’s Municipal League of New York has also investigated tenements
and reported violations of the law to the Department affected. It helped
to defeat proposed legislation which would remove all three-family
houses from the surveillance of the Tenement House Department, a piece
of reactionary legislation which aroused a successful protest from all
women interested in social welfare, as well as from all men similarly
interested.
This League also wishes to have all two-family houses and the rented
room houses placed under the Tenement House Department. It made a study
of the janitor’s situation and discovered that the janitors labor under
such disadvantages that they are responsible for many violations of
Health, Fire and Tenement Department laws. “The janitors should be
decently paid and decently housed; they should be instructed briefly in
the laws,” is the League’s decision.
From across the continent, we hear of women’s associations concerning
themselves with housing reform. _The American Club Woman_ reports: “Los
Angeles is studying the housing problem. It expects a great influx of
laboring population on the heels of the opening of the Panama Canal. The
Woman’s Friday Morning Club therefore has built a model cottage for
$500. The club proposes to acquire lands along the river bed and through
semi-isolated sections and there erect these small houses. Gardens about
the houses will help reduce the cost of living. The dream of the club
is: a city without a tenement; a city spotlessly clean in every nook and
corner; a city where there shall be thousands of small homes, renting at
the same cost as in a court, and in which the individuals shall have
sanitary comforts, the right of personal development and the privacy
which tends toward morality and pride. The Los Angeles Housing
Commission of which Mrs. Johanna von Wagner and other women are members,
has done some interesting housing in the case of Mexicans transferred
from their crude shacks to decently sanitary homes on city land.”
In Chicago, Mrs. Emmons Blaine was one of the founders of the City Homes
Association which started the housing movement there and she is still
one of the leaders in the Chicago work.
In the middle western states, Miss Mildred Chadsey of Cleveland, Ohio,
stands out conspicuously as a housing reformer and in an official
capacity. The Cleveland Bureau of Sanitation, of which she is chief, has
a sergeant, twenty policemen, and an office force under her direction.
Miss Chadsey up to the present has succeeded in demolishing over two
hundred wretched hovels and is demonstrating that bad housing does not
pay the city but is on the contrary frightfully expensive property. Some
of the slogans that have developed from her work are these: “It costs
less to be comfortable than it does to be uncomfortable.” “A good home
is less expensive than a poor one.” “Health and cleanliness come cheap.”
“Dirt and diseases are more costly than frankincense and myrrh.” This
new vision for Cleveland was largely the result of a survey made by
fourteen college investigators, under Miss Chadsey, who went out to
ascertain facts in two sections of Cleveland—one the famous “Haymarket”
district in the congested heart of the city; the other an open section
on the edge of the city. _The Survey_ published the report of that
investigation.
Indiana has a splendid housing reformer in Mrs. Albion Fellows Bacon, an
officer in the National Housing Association, who started a campaign for
a tenement house law before that association was formed. Her book,
“Beauty for Ashes,” a narrative of discovery out along the road from a
sheltered woman’s threshold, reveals the forces which have drawn most of
the women out into social activity and into governmental interest. No
woman can read this story without being moved to see what effect bad
housing has on the community and woman’s responsibility toward her
fellow-creatures in this as in other civic questions. Mrs. Bacon in her
observations out from her own threshold has been forced to see that the
war on bad homes is a war on poverty and its manifold products, vice and
disease among others. She well illustrates the logic and the
fearlessness with which even the most sheltered women often face facts
when once their human sympathy is awakened and their eyes are opened to
a public question. Mrs. Bacon, almost single-handed, secured housing
laws for the cities of Evansville and Indianapolis. Last year she
secured a still better law than that which crowned her first campaign.
In Allegheny, Pennsylvania, the Civic Club, a woman’s organization, has
been at the forefront in housing reform.
Miss Kate McKnight, of that association, initiated practically every
movement of the club till her death in 1907. Mrs. Franklin P. Adams,
acting president, drafted the tenement house laws governing cities of
the second class in Pennsylvania. Mrs. Adams is chairman of the State
Federation of Women’s Clubs, and of other societies. The Civic Club also
got an increase in the force of tenement inspectors and the chief
inspector was for some time a woman member of the club.
In Providence, Rhode Island, the Federation of Clubs passed resolutions
and sent letters to the legislature urging the enactment of a housing
bill. Moreover, they sent a delegation of women to the hearing before
the Judiciary Committee.
In New Orleans, Miss Eleanor McMain, the head of Kingsley House, was
very influential in securing the law regulating tenements in her city.
HOUSING IN WASHINGTON
In Washington, D. C., the housing problem has been forced upon the
attention of Congress which has shown gross neglect all these years in
its care of the national capital’s population and especially of the
negroes there. The voteless citizens of the capital and their
sympathizers from outside attempted for a long time to secure remedial
activity in the city of Washington whose alleys and slums were a
national disgrace from the standpoint of health, morals and crime.
Booklets and reports were published and organizations formed for the
purpose of bringing pressure to bear upon Congress to improve housing
conditions.
President Roosevelt had appointed a Homes Commission to study and report
on the alley dwellings but nothing had resulted from this except
possibly the conversion of Willow Tree Alley into an interior park.
Women and men felt that such an apparent remedy might cause still
greater evils by leaving many of the poor altogether homeless, and the
agitation was pushed the harder for the creation of a system of minor
streets created out of the alleys.
Last year two pamphlets of a vigorous nature were published by the
Monday Evening Club and by the Women’s Welfare Department of the
National Civic Federation. Public meetings were arranged by the Civic
Federation and conferences of social workers in Washington were called,
one of the biggest of these being held at the White House last winter—an
evidence of the interest taken by the wife of President Wilson in the
housing of the people in Washington.
Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, who had been aroused by visits made to the alleys
under the guidance of Mrs. Archibald Hopkins and Mrs. Ernest Bicknell,
piloted senators and congressmen into the bad areas to make them see and
feel the need of change. As a consequence of this work, bills were
introduced into both houses of Congress for some solution of the alley
problem. How much progress would have been made with the bills it is
difficult to know but the significant thing is that Mrs. Woodrow Wilson,
in almost her last conscious breath, made an appeal for the passing of
that legislation. Her husband, the President, fortunately, sent word
that such was her dying wish and out of sentiment for the “first lady of
the land” this much needed legislation was hurriedly passed by the
Senate of the United States, the lower house promising to add its
approval. Mrs. Wilson was told the good news before she died.
In a case where neither the men of the district involved nor the women
were voters, apparently an affecting sentimental situation saved the day
for the poor families herded in their misery in dark alleys. Certainly
up until this time, congressional land speculators in Washington had
turned a deaf ear to the pleas of the women and the men who sought help
for the slum dwellers.
In commenting on the situation in Washington, _The Survey_ said:
Washington has long enjoyed the reputation of being the best planned
city in America, the one large city in the world which from the day
of its foundation has been built more or less consistently along the
lines of a carefully thought-out plan. Only recently has it been
realized that from the beginning this plan has been incomplete.
While it provided for great public buildings and for dwellings of
the wealthy and the well-to-do, it not only failed to provide homes
for wage-earners, but actually offered temptations to house these
wage-earners in an unwholesome manner. The magnificent wide avenues
designed by Major L’Enfant, bordered along a great part of their
distance by very deep lots, led inevitably to the construction of
winding, branching alleys and the erection of hidden houses which
had no place in the original plan.
Modern city planning lays the emphasis less on public buildings and
boulevards and more on providing sites for homes. So the original
plan of Washington must be supplemented by a modern plan providing a
system of minor streets to let the wholesome light of publicity into
the hidden slums of Washington and to provide economic use for the
backs of the overdeep lots that line the avenues. They will do away
with the present temptation to keep the old shacks standing or to
build houses fronting on the avenues, but extending so far back that
their middle rooms are dark and airless. Halfway measures at this
time may wipe out the alley slums of the Capital only to give in
place of them a far more difficult problem, the deep, unlighted and
unventilated multiple dwelling.
HOMES OF NEGROES
In the South, as well as the North, women are at work on the housing
question. At the 1912 convention of the National Municipal League, in
Richmond, Virginia, it was manifest to the northern delegates that the
South and its women are awaking rapidly to the housing needs. Miss
Elizabeth Cocke in a talk on housing and morals in Richmond said:
Our local conditions in Richmond have, as yet, nothing which
approaches the tenement. There are a few old houses occupied by,
possibly, some half-dozen families to the house, but though these
show very bad conditions in room overcrowding, there are no
conditions of lack of light and air, if the windows are opened to
admit ventilation. In one instance I have found a bedroom, occupied
presumably by seven people, in which there is no window at all; one
door opening upon another room with two windows, and a second door
upon the entry on the upper landing.
Among the comparatively small foreign population there is a very
great deal of room overcrowding, but the most extensive of these
conditions exist among the negroes. These appear to be the most
squalid and least progressive, but this I believe to be largely due
to the demoralizing effects of bad housing and surroundings which do
not tend to any uplift.
Can children raised in Jail Bottom, whose only outlook is a
mountain-like dump of rotting rags and rusty tin cans on the one
side, and on the other a stream which is an open sewer, smelling to
heaven from the filth which it carries along, or leaves here and
there in slime upon its banks, have any but debasing ideas? Can
parents inculcate high moral standards when across the street or
down the block are houses of the “red-light” district? When a
dry-closet blocks the one small window of the kitchen, can lack of
decency be called to account? Is the world so small that there is no
room left for the amenities of life? Are ground space and floor
space of more value than cleanliness and health and morality?
It is certainly a fallacy that the poor do not want good housing. In
a wonderful address, given last spring at the Child Welfare
Conference, in Richmond, a negro speaker said in substance: “We
would use the bath tub as frequently and enjoy it as much as our
white brother and sister, if we could afford to rent houses which
have the bath tub in them. We do not prefer dilapidation and
discomfort, nor being forced to live in districts where there is
only depravity and low surroundings; but the better ones of us have
too much self-respect to force ourselves on our white brothers, if
they do not want us living alongside of them.”
All that Miss Cocke said was indorsed by the chairman, John Stewart
Bryan, who as publisher of one of the most influential newspapers in the
South, _The News Leader_, is in a position to know the facts. “It is an
old story to any engaged in work of this sort,” he declared, “that a
person situated as the negro is in Richmond pays more taxes than the
richest man in Richmond, because the taxes he pays take such a large
part of his income and he gets so little in return. All that Miss Cocke
says is true. They are segregated in Jackson ward, and under a new
ordinance they are being still further segregated. That is radically
wrong, it is economically wrong, and nothing in the world can change it
but an awakening of public sentiment, and it ought to be awakened and it
will be.”[32]
A study of the activities of women and women’s associations along
housing reform lines shows that they are beginning to recognize the
importance of good homes for our colored citizens. Professor Sophonisba
P. Breckinridge, of Chicago University and the Chicago School of Civics
and Philanthropy, has given this subject special study, and it is to her
that we owe the following thoughtful statement of this particular
housing question, published in _The Survey_:
One of the many serious problems that now confront the negro not
only in southern communities but also in many a northern city is the
difficulty he experiences in finding decent housing accommodations
for his family. In the face of increasing manifestations of race
prejudice, he has come to acquiesce silently, as various civil
rights are withheld from him in the old “free North,” which was once
the Mecca of his race. He rarely protests, for example, at being
excluded from restaurants and hotels or at being virtually refused
entertainment at the theater or the opera. There are three points,
however, which he cannot yield and in regard to which he should not
be allowed to yield. He must claim a decent home for his family in a
respectable neighborhood and at a reasonable rental, an equal chance
of employment with the white man, and education for his children. We
will consider here only the first of these three demands.
In a recent investigation of general housing conditions in
Chicago,[33] the problem of the negro was found to be quite
different from that of immigrants. With the negro, the housing
dilemma was found to be an acute problem not only among the poor, as
in the case of the Polish, the Jewish, or the Italian immigrant, but
also among the well-to-do. The man who is poor as well as black must
face the special evil of dilapidated insanitary dwellings and the
lodger evil in its worst form. But for every man who is black,
whether rich or poor, there is also the problem of extortionate
rents and of dangerous proximity to segregated vice. The negro is
not only compelled to live in a segregated black district, but this
region of negro homes is almost invariably the one in which vice is
tolerated by the police. That is, the segregation of the negro
quarter is only a segregation from respectable white people. The
disreputable white element is forced upon him. It is probably not
too much to say that no colored family can long escape the presence
of disreputable or disorderly neighbors. Respectable and well-to-do
negroes may by subterfuge succeed in buying property in a decent
neighborhood, but they are sure to be followed soon by those
disreputable elements which are allowed to exist outside the
so-called “levee” district.
In no other part of Chicago, not even in the Ghetto, was there found
a whole neighborhood so conspicuously dilapidated as the black belt
on the South Side. No other group suffered so much from decaying
buildings, leaking roofs, doors without hinges, broken windows,
insanitary plumbing, rotting floors, and a general lack of repairs.
In no other neighborhood were landlords so obdurate, so unwilling to
make necessary improvements or to cancel leases so that tenants
might seek better accommodations elsewhere. Of course, to go
elsewhere was often impossible because nowhere is the prospective
colored tenant or neighbor welcome. In the South Side black belt 74
per cent. of the buildings were in a state of disrepair; in a more
fortunate neighborhood, partly colored, only 65 per cent. of the
buildings were out of repair, but one-third were absolutely
dilapidated.
Not only does the negro suffer from this extreme dilapidation, but
he pays a heavy cost in the form of high rent. A careful house to
house canvass showed that in the most rundown colored neighborhoods
in the city, the rent for an ordinary four-room apartment was much
higher than in any other section of the city. In crowded immigrant
neighborhoods in different parts of the city, the median rental for
the prevailing four-room apartment was between $8 and $8.50; in
South Chicago near the steel mills it was between $9 and $9.50; and
in the Jewish quarter, between $10 and $10.50 was charged. But in
the great black belt of the South Side the sum exacted was between
$12 and $12.50. That is, while half of the people in the Bohemian,
Polish, and Lithuanian districts were paying less than $8.50, for
their four-room apartments; the steel-mill employees less than
$9.50, and the Jews in the Ghetto less than $10.50, the negro, in
the midst of extreme dilapidation and crowded into the territory
adjoining the segregated vice district, pays from $12 to $12.50.
This is from $2 to $4 a month more than the immigrant is paying for
an apartment of the same size in a better state of repair.
It seemed worth while to collect and to present the facts relating
to housing conditions in the negro districts of Chicago because one
must hope that they would not be tolerated if the great mass of
white people knew of their existence. Most people stand for fair
play. The persecutions which the negro endures because of race
prejudice undoubtedly express the feeling of but a small minority of
his fellow-citizens of the white race. Their continuance must be due
to the fact that the great majority are completely ignorant of the
heavy burden of injustice that the negro carries. Ignorance is the
bulwark of prejudice, and race prejudice is singularly dependent
upon an ignorance which is, to be sure, sometimes willful but which
more often is unintentional and accidental. It has come about,
however, that the small minority who cherish their prejudices have
had the power to make life increasingly hard for the black man.
Today they not only refuse to sit in the same part of the theater
with him and to let him enter a hotel which they patronize, but they
also refuse to allow him to live on the same street with them or in
the same neighborhood. Even in the North where the city
administration does not recognize a black “ghetto” or “pale,” the
real estate agents who register and commercialize what they suppose
to be a universal race prejudice are able to enforce one in
practice. It is out of this minority persecution that the special
negro housing problem has developed.
But while it is true that the active persecution of the negro is the
work of a small minority, its dangerous results are rendered
possible only by the acquiescence of the great majority who want
fair play. This prejudice can be made effective only because of the
possible use of the city administration, and the knowledge that
legal action intended to safeguard the rights of the negro is both
precarious and expensive. The police department, however, and the
courts of justice are, in theory at least, the agents of the
majority. It comes about therefore that while the great body of
people desire justice, they not only become parties to gross
injustice but must be held responsible for conditions demoralizing
to the negro and dangerous to the community as a whole.
Those friends of the negro who have tried to understand the
conditions of life as he faces them are very familiar with these
facts. But it is hoped that those who have been ignorant of the
heavy costs paid in decent family life for the ancient prejudice
that persists among us, will refuse to acquiesce in its continuance
when the facts are brought home to them.
Among the other women interested in the housing of negro families is
Mrs. John D. Hammond, the wife and coworker of the president of Paine
College in Augusta, Georgia. Believing that a better housed negro can be
better educated, Mr. and Mrs. Hammond have worked out a system for negro
housing in cities with that end in view. Their plan was recently
outlined in _The Survey_. The Society for the Improvement of Urban
Conditions among Negroes, composed of men and women, has a housing
bureau in New York which seeks by lectures, by literature, by personal
instruction, and by legislation, to promote better housing conditions
among the negroes of the city.
JUVENILE LEAGUES
As in city clean-up work and other social activities, so in their
housing reforms, women have enlisted the aid of school children, forming
them into juvenile leagues to act as housing inspectors for the more
obvious and outward defects. Boy Scouts have become greatly interested
in certain cities in the work of educating tenants to a sense of
responsibility for obedience to health laws and also in pointing out
violations to the authorities, not only on the part of tenants but of
landlords also. A picture at once comes to mind of a little member of a
Juvenile League pointing out to a tenement owner certain needs and
improvements which she had been taught to regard as requisite—a picture
printed in _The American City_ to illustrate the work accomplished by
children. Both men and women have been earnest in enlisting the sympathy
of children, partly for the actual inspection help rendered by them, and
yet more for the sake of educating the children in proper standards of
living in order that they may demand for themselves decent conditions
through pressure on their parents while they are minors and through
individual, social, and political activity when they are adults.
The importance of far-reaching power for the health officer is realized
by women housing reformers as well as by men. For example, Mrs. Bacon,
who was so instrumental in securing the enactment of the Indiana state
housing law, dealt with this subject at the second national housing
conference held in Philadelphia, in her paper on “Regulation by Law.”
Mrs. Johanna von Wagner of California did the same under her title of
“Instructive Sanitary Inspection.” The spirit of the conference showed
an earnest desire to coöperate with public officials, extend their
powers, and add to the constructive suggestions pointing the way to
improvement in city housing. The women delegates and speakers shared
this spirit and contributed to the practical suggestions as well as to
plans for coöperation.
HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS
Women are not only interested in the special or local housing problems
of their own district or city. They are actively affiliated with the
National Housing Association and take part in its national conferences
They thus coöperate with the men in the great work of arousing the
nation to a knowledge of the deadly peril of low standard homes and to a
sense of the immediate urgency of reform.
The New York Congestion Committee has not only been an influential body
but it has made a most careful study of the causes of congestion and has
drafted many, and secured the passage of some, important laws within the
past three or four years. Florence Kelley and Mrs. V. G. Simkhovitch are
members of the small executive board of the Committee, and women have
helped in the campaign of education which has been necessary to place
the evils of congestion and the program of the Committee before the
public. They have also helped in that most essential work, the securing
of signatures to the petition for the referendum on untaxing buildings.
In other ways, too, they have assisted: by making investigations and
writing to members of the state legislature urging the passage of laws.
They also formed the Women’s Society to lower rents and reduce taxes on
homes, similar to the men’s society with the same object. Together these
two societies have carried on a propaganda among the people of New York
which has had a marked influence on public interest in the housing
question. They issue a _Tenant’s Weekly_ in the interest of tenants and
small home-owners, the slogan of which is “The City for the People.” One
of their most effective pieces of work was the Congestion Exhibit, which
presented the economic aspects of housing together with an impression
which awakened horror at prevalent conditions.
A review of women’s activities in housing reform shows that they are
taking no narrow view of the matter. They realize that the problem of
congestion, the main element in the housing question, has many elements
of an economic, social or administrative nature which involve action on
the part of public authorities. Among these elements may be cited the
high cost of land; congestion of factories, warehouses, offices and
shops; low wages and long hours of labor; immigration; poor and
expensive transportation facilities; lack of adequate housing
inspection; ignorance of sanitary standards of living; and greed on the
part of landlords or real estate managers. Another factor is the
temporary foreign dweller who hopes to amass some money quickly and
return to his native land to live upon it. Lack of town planning is
still another factor that often leads to congestion.
As we shall see, women have entered into the town planning movement to
prevent the accumulation of plague spots. They are gradually beginning
to realize, as are men, that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of
cure. As town planning is not a private philanthropy, however, their
usefulness in this movement is limited wherever they do not possess the
ballot.
Women, therefore, are working in far greater numbers in the next phase
of housing: that of educating badly housed people in the laws of
hygiene. Every social movement which is not strictly evangelical
instills some demand for individual and family privacy, and for the
material bases of healthful and moral living. In congested areas it is
the increase of wants that is essential. More mere things are needed:
water, floor space, light, air, toilet conveniences, cooking and laundry
equipment for individual or coöperative life, refrigerators, fire
escapes, window blinds, wider and safer stairways, and innumerable other
material objects. There is no other important outcome of education in
hygiene or home beauty or housing standards except an increase of wants
and the consequent pressure on the wage standards, without which an
improvement in material possessions is impossible. Whatever individual
exceptions may be found, the general rule is that the poor overcrowd and
do so in order to make their pittances buy a little more food, a few
more clothes, books for their children, the month’s actual shelter, or a
doctor’s services.
Some women are consciously preaching higher standards of living to
foreigners, negroes, and the poor of every race assembled here, knowing
the ultimate pressure their work will have on labor demands. The
settlements which have almost involuntarily helped in this education
from the beginning, are more and more being led into the support of
working class movements having for their goal better wages and steadier
employment, as we discover in the chapter on social service. Other women
are unconsciously creating dissatisfaction with congestion and with that
poverty which underlies bad housing, through the teaching of domestic
science in all its forms, through public school education, health
centers, and the rest. The willingness to pay the price accompanies or
follows the desire for the things which make for health and culture.