mill towns of Massachusetts in the days of the "old immigration," the helplessness of the tenant is aggravated by the combination of the landlord and mill owner in the same individual or corporation, whose income is derived from house rents, as well as from manufacturing or mining. "In many industrial localities, say Professors Jenks and Lauck, "especially in those connected with the mining industry, the so-called 'company-house' system prevails under which the industrial worker . . . must live in a house owned by the operating company and rented to him."1 This system is as common in the Anglo-Saxon towns of the South, as in the Slav settlements of Pennsylvania.2 If the mill or mine worker were to "insist" upon a better dwelling, he could not hold his position.

The Immigration Commission made no systematic inquiries to ascertain the landlords' share of responsibility for the overcrowding and unsanitary conditions of the houses occupied by the new immigrants in industrial communities. The outspoken tendency of its investigation was to lay the whole blame upon the habits of the immigrants. There are scattered in its reports, however, occasional items of information which tell the other side of the story. The following description of a "company house" is illuminating:

The type of company house most frequently seen in the locality adjacent to Birmingham is a one-story frame building containing from two to four rooms, the four-room houses being frequently divided into two apartments. . . . They are usually devoid of any modern conveniences, such as bath or flush toilet.

But these houses are "built in close proximity to the steel, iron, or coke yard in which the laborers are employed," and they have no other choice but to take such houses as the company provides for them, or to travel a distance to and from work.

'Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 279

Streightoff, loc. cit., pp. 76-77.

3 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, p. 232.

From an account relating to another locality we learn that the rent paid by the recent immigrants "is excessive, and yields an unusually large rate of return to his landlord." It may be surmised from this illustration that the income from company houses also very likely "pays more than the ordinary return on the cost of the building."

The effect of the emphasis, however, laid by the Commission upon the "tendency . . . characteristic of the South Italian and Slav races" to "settle in that section of the town where .. the house rent is reduced to a minimum" is to divert public attention from the responsibility of the mine and mill operators for the insanitary condition of the tenements provided by them for their employees.3 The police power of the State is ample to protect the health of the community from the ill effects of insanitary housing conditions. Considered on its own merits, as a problem in public hygiene, the housing of the mine and mill operatives, whether native or foreign-born, has therefore no relevancy to the subject of immigration.

In reality, however, the housing problem is drawn into

Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, pp. 93-94.

2 Ibid., p. 229.

The following is quoted from a "description of a typical mining and coke village" in Pennsylvania:

"The typical company village is exceedingly insanitary. . . . The water supply of the coal and coke town is very impure and a source of disease. The companies usually 'clean up' the towns once a year; sometimes twice, but often not at all. There is little to stimulate cleanliness on the part of the tenants under such circumstances. The mine operators say that the existing conditions result from the fact that the foreigner is too dirty for the town to be other than what it is, but whether this is true or not, it seems that very little effort is made to improve the living conditions." (Ibid., vol. 6, p. 323.)

The defense is very typical, indeed. Because "the foreigner is dirty," the mining company which owns the village provides him with impure water which is a source of disease, and cleans up the village only twice a year. It is evident that the tenants cannot build water-works, nor can they install a system of sewerage. It would not avail them to "insist" upon these improvements, as there is no place to which they could move in case of refusal, these conditions being "typical."

the discussion of immigration only collaterally, as an argument in support of a theory. The Immigration Commission has filled its volumes with statistical tables, some of which show that the English-speaking wage-workers are better housed than the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, and others that the earnings of the former are higher. The impression conveyed by the race classification' is that the wages of the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe are low because they are willing to live in crowded quarters, whereas the wages of the Englishspeaking workmen are higher, because they "insist" upon the American standard of living. The Immigration Commission's own statistics, however, contain a refutation of this theory.

In the first place, it appears that there is the widest variation among wage-earners of each race with respect to housing, which shows that there is no common standard of living for all wage-earners of the same race, but that it varies for the individuals of the same race. Neither do the low rents paid by some of them force down the earnings of others of the same race, as demonstrated by the wide variations in earnings among individuals of the same race.

In the second place, it is found that "the household of immigrants, as compared with the native born wage-earners pays, generally speaking, the same if not higher rent per room. "2 In some districts the average monthly rent per apartment is also higher for recent immigrants than for American wage-earners of native parentage. In Ensley,

* Some of the "race" distinctions are unique. Thus we are informed that the Macedonians paid $5.53 per apartment, whereas the Greeks paid (5.94 and the Bulgarians only $4.28. (Ibid., vol. 9, p. 234, Table 687.) It can be found in the Commission's own Dictionary of Races that Macedonia is merely a political division with a mixed population consisting chiefly of Bulgarians and Greeks. Professors Jenks and Lauck also comment upon the per capita monthly rent payments of the Bulgarians who paid only $0.97, and the Macedonians who paid $0.78. (Jenks and Lauck, lot. cit., pp. 131-132.)

Ala., e. g., the latter paid on an average $5.40 per apartment, the Greeks, $5.94, and the Poles, $5.98. The lowest average rent per room was paid by the native white of native parentage, viz., $1.38; the new immigrants ranged in the following order: Slovaks, $1.73; Bulgarians, $1.82; Poles, $1.91; South Italians, $2.09; Greeks, $2.93.

I

It is believed, however, that the difference in rent is reduced by overcrowding, which is "most frequently shown by the keeping of boarders or lodgers. Great stress is laid upon the fact that the Southern and Eastern Europeans "break the independence of family life by taking boarders or lodgers into the home," whereas "the native American and older immigrant employees maintain an independent form of family life," though they send their wives and children to the factory.3 It is worthy of note, as a historical parallel, that in 1873 General Walker spoke of "the detestable American vice of 'boarding'. . . uprooting the ancient and honored institutions of the family."4 The Commission has laboriously figured out for each race the percentage of families taking lodgers or boarders. Aside from the merits of this criterion which will be considered later, it is open to question, whether the figures of the Commission may be accepted as typical. A similar investigation recently made by the United States Bureau of Labor led to widely divergent results. Out of 1139 American households studied by the Immigration Commission only 10 per cent had boarders or lodgers; out of 15,161 American households, however, studied by the Bureau of Labor 22.23 per cent kept boarders or lodgers. The variation of the percentage by race in the statistics of the Immigration Commission was from o to 79.3 per cent, whereas in the statistics of the United States Bureau of Labor the range of variation was from 16.50 to 30.77 per

Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9., p. 234, Table 687. "Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 122.

'Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., pp. 158, 161.

♦ Walker: Discussions in Economics and Statistics, p. 43.

cent. The discrepancies between the two series of figures relating to the old immigration are shown in Table 73.

TABLE 73.

PER CENT OF FAMILIES KEEPING BOARDERS OR LODGERS AMONG THE RACES OF THE OLD IMMIGRATION.1

That two official investigations separated by a brief interval of six or seven years have brought such widely divergent results, can probably be accounted for by the fact that the investigations of the Immigration Commission were concentrated upon selected industrial communities, where the English-speaking immigrants were mostly highpriced skilled mechanics, whereas the new immigrants were nearly all unskilled laborers; it has been shown, however, in Chapter VII, that each race is represented in every occupation. The investigation of the United States Bureau of Labor, on the other hand, was made in the leading industrial centers of thirty-three States and is believed to be "representative of the industrial portion of the country as a whole. "2

Apart, however, from the doubtful value of the statistics collected by the Immigration Commission on the subject of boarders and lodgers, the fatal defect of its race per

'Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 160. Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, p. 261.

• Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, p. 39.