Jew does not prefer to live in the congested districts. They are found to reside near their places of work, and when the two alternatives are open to them, the larger proportion embraces the opportunity to live among decent surroundings. The most important finding in the investigation of the group of workers employed in Brooklyn near the Brooklyn Bridge is the relatively small proportion who live in Manhattan, in spite of its accessibility. With the crowded down-town colony of Little Italy easily accessible, only 37.8 per cent of these Italians live in Lower Manhattan. Of the group working in Brooklyn, there are more than fifty per cent less Italians, and almost fifty per cent less Russians and Jews living in Manhattan, than of the groups that are employed in Manhattan. This fact shows the effect of concentrating industries in Manhattan and demonstrates what a difference exists when the factories are located only just outside. Manufacturers in suburban sites within accessible distance of Manhattan remove their workmen from the congested districts. The workmen, when given the chance, prefer to live in the less crowded sections. This is true even of the much-maligned Italian and Jew.

"When the influence of immigration and the distribution of the various nationalities are carefully considered, the tendency of our immigrant people to live in congested districts near the work places cannot occasion very great surprise, in view of the fact that our foreign population is the most unskilled, and therefore, the lowest paid, and that it is employed in industries working the longest hours. This tendency—and the fact that aliens form the largest part of our most congested population is admitted—has been frequently seized upon as the explanation of congestion, and hence these theorists have demanded restriction of immigration as a remedy for congestion. However, if congestion were due to the desire or willingness of our alien population to live in congested districts, we should expect those employed within a reasonable distance of Manhattan to make every effort to live there. But this is exactly contrary to the facts as brought out in the preceding study. The Italians, Jews, and Slavic peoples, who have oftenest been indicted for congestion, have proved themselves innocent and their positive unwillingness to live in Manhattan, when escape is offered, is evidenced by every group of workers in the factories outside of Lower Manhattan.

If, therefore, this mass of evidence has any weight, the oftrepeated theory of congestion—that it is the result of the preference of the people, the gregarious instinct—is disproved.

"The basic cause of congestion in all great cities is to be found in the failure on the part of the community to provide necessary safeguards. The first of these negative causes is the lack of proper planning of the city. Had our cities been laid out on broad, comprehensive plans, had our streets been laid out on wide, intelligent lines, and adequate parks provided, had our industrial and commercial districts been segregated, and our residence districts reserved, some of the very tap-roots of congestion would have been removed.

"The lack of adequate building laws is closely linked to that of city planning. The limitation of the area of the lot which can be built upon, the height of the house, the size of the rooms, are all factors which would definitely and certainly confine and limit congestion. But even those laws we have, have not been adequately enforced. Had our laws been enforced in the best possible manner, we would have gained a little in preventing congestion. Of the local conditions peculiar to New York, which with thought and foresight might have been prevented, the first and foremost is the lack of adequate rapid transit. Whenever it has been advantageous to do business in Lower Manhattan, it has been convenient, because of lack of transit facilities, both to have a permanent place of business there and to live there. Transit not only converged on Lower Manhattan, but what there was of it simply conveyed people into the crowded districts and 'dumped' them. Had transit facilities to neighboring localities been convenient and adequate, the population might have availed itself of the advantages of the central city, and business might have flourished in other than down-town Manhattan districts. Important factors in the campaign for the relief of congestion of population in Manhattan are: first, the removal of factories from Manhattan, and their distribution according to some comprehensive plan throughout the outlying suburbs; second, the enactment of laws to prevent the reproduction of bad living and housing conditions in the other neighborhoods. This is city planning."

It is evident from Professor Pratt's analysis that conges

tion in New York City is not wrought by the habits or standards of living of the immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe, but is forced upon them by conditions not of their own making.

As regards the effects of this congestion upon the rate of wages, on the other hand, the determining factor is not the discomfort suffered by the immigrant, but the amount he must expend for rent. And it is a well-known fact that house rent in New York is higher than in the rest of the United States. The average rent in New York City for a normal workingman's family, according to latest pre-war statistics, was $13.50 to $14.00 a month, whereas in the rest of the United States, it ranged from $8.25 to $11.00 per month. The Jewish or Italian immigrant in New York City was compelled to expend for rent about $1.00 a week more than the wage-earners in small towns where the native American workmen predominate. The American workman may be better housed, yet when the manufacturer employing immigrant labor in New York must meet in the nation's market his competitor employing native American labor in a small country town, it is the native American workman, rather than the immigrant recently arrived in New York from Southern or Eastern Europe, that can be induced or coerced to accept a lower wage.

C. Housing Conditions in the Country at Large

In a retrospective view of the New England textile manufacturing towns of the period when the operatives in

'Amos G. Warner; American Charities, p. 180. "Not only is the cost of housing less in cities outside of New York, but the accommodations enjoyed are better. Detached houses are the rule, with no question of access to light and air. The number of rooms is 3, in only I case of the 53 (Rochester); only 6 report 4 rooms, and 7 and 8 rooms are of frequent occurrence. . . . For $8.00 a month in the smaller towns of the State, and $10.00 or $11.00 in the cities like Syracuse, better accommoations can be secured than for $15.00 in Manhattan."-Chapin: The Standard of Living in New York City, p. 303.

the mills were recruited among the farm girls of the neighborhood, the Immigration Commission has discovered a description of their living conditions "which affords a pleasing contrast with the Lowell of the present." "The life in the boarding houses was very agreeable. These houses belonged to the corporation, " i. e., they were "company houses," in modern parlance. Dr. Sumner, however, in her History of Women in Industry in the United States, written for the U. S. Bureau of Labor, quotes other contemporary testimony less bucolic in character. From the same town of Lowell, complaints were made in 1845 that a dozen or more of the "daughters of New England" were crowded into "the same hot, ill-ventilated attic." The boarding houses of the Tremont mills in 1847 were described in the following extract from a letter:

'T is quite common for us to write on the cover of a bandbox, and sit upon a trunk, as tables or chairs in our sleeping rooms are all out of the question, because there is no room for such articles, as 4 to 6 occupy every room, and of course trunks and bandboxes constitute furniture for the rooms we occupy. A thing called a light-stand, a little more than a foot square, is our table for the use of 6. Washstands are uncommon articles—it has never been my lot to enjoy their use, except at my own expense.2

Comparative statistics of house tenancy in Boston in 1855 and 1900 show that in the middle of the nineteenth century the tenement house population was as numerous, in proportion, as in our day. This can be seen from Table 71 on page 242.

Overcrowded and filthy tenement houses were as prevalent forty years ago in Boston, as in New York. There also the conversion of the single family house into a tenement house, where a whole family was jammed in every room, was productive "of filth and grime." An early report of the Massachusetts Labor Bureau, describing the

Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, pp. 508–509.

Helen L. Sumner: Report of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States, vol. ix., pp. 87-88.

tenement houses of Boston and their surroundings, speaks of "hovels rotting with damp and mould," of "puddles reeking with stenchy garbage," of "putrid cesspools and uncleansed drains, befouled with unspeakable nastiness."

TABLE 71.

PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF THE FAMILIES OF BOSTON ACCORDING TO NUMBER OF FAMILIES PER HOUSE, 1855 AND 1900.*

The degree of congestion at the close of the '60's is exemplified by the description of a block of tenements consisting of fifty-six rooms which were occupied by fifty-four families, mostly Irish. There were also a few English and colored families among them. The stairways were rotten and dangerous. The ventilation of the rooms was very poor. Washing, ironing, and drying were all done in the only room which was both a living room and a sleeping room.3

The two-room tenements on Meander Street consisted of a living and a sleeping room, both dark and damp and dirty. Other tenements visited were old, rickety frame houses with plastering broken down and full of holes through which rain and sun freely entered. In the summer the houses swarmed with vermin. These houses were occupied by American and Irish tenants.

Another tenement house in Kingston Court was a wooden building consisting of six apartments, some with three rooms and some with only one to each. The living rooms 'Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 3d Annual Report (1871-1872), pp. 437-438.

* Census of Boston, 1855, p. 11 (percentages computed); XII. Census of United States. Population, Part II., p. 186, Table XCVIII.

3 Reports of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1870, pp. 164-180.