1

The same conditions were reported from Salem. The houses were seldom repaired, the plumbing was very poor, and the pump water was often made unfit for drinking purposes by the washings of the yard. The odor in the houses was bad. The following description of a house at No. 18 Lemon Street, is quoted as an extreme case, which nevertheless indicates what conditions were tolerated in those days:

In connection with the kitchen, and only separated by a door was the pantry, quite reluctantly shown us by the mistress. She said that it being very much out of repair, and not fit to be used as such, they concluded it was best to turn it into a cowshed. Here were two cows, and all the accompaniments usually found in a stable, in direct connection with the kitchen, filling the house with its unmitigated stench. In this place pigs and hens were once kept, besides the cow, the former on all occasions making the freest use of the domestic apartments.'

About the same time (1872) shanty dwellers were found among the laborers of Massachusetts. The paymaster of tunnel laborers employed at North Adams in 1872 testified that many of them lived in shanties on the works and even kept boarders. "The miners, rockmen, etc., who have no families, board at the shanties. They are filthy, dirty places. . . ."2

The congestion and squalor of the past, were no better than the worst housing conditions that were found by the investigators of the Immigration Commission among the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Yet the tenement-house dwellers of forty years ago were all of Teuton and Celtic stock. As stated in a previous chapter, contemporary observers sought to explain the bad housing conditions of the Irish immigrants by the low standard of living of the people of Ireland. Although living conditions

1 Reports of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1870, pp. 372 and 380.

2 Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. Third Annual Report (1871-1872), pp. 440–441.

3 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 459.

in Ireland have greatly improved since those days, yet they still remain far below the average of the most overcrowded sections of the great American cities.

The investigation of the Immigration Commission was confined to "the overcrowded, poor quarters of the city"; in the households investigated, the average number of persons per room was 1.34.1 In the city of Dublin, according to the census of 1901, four fifths of all tenements consisted of four rooms or less with an average of 2.20 persons per room. More than one third of all tenements had three persons or more per room. Three fifths of all tenements consisted of one or two rooms only. In the whole of Ireland, one third of all families lived in two rooms or less.3 There were 38,086 families of three or more persons living in one room each. These extremes of congestion comprised 4.2 per cent of all Irish families. The details are given in

PERSONS, 1901.4

NUMBER OF TENEMENTS OF ONE ROOM OCCUPIED BY THREE OR MORE

If it is maintained that the immigrant tends to transplant to the American soil the standard of living of his native country, it must follow from the latest statistics of housing conditions in Ireland that even the present-day Irish immiI Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., pp. 117, 119.

2 See Appendix, Table XVI.

3 Census of Ireland, 1901. General Report, p. 112, Table 9; p. 173, Table 49. 4 Ibid., Table 10.

grants are open to the same objection as the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. The fact that the investigation of the Immigration Commission discovered among the Irish no overcrowding approaching that of their mother country must be taken to mean one of two things: either its investigators overlooked the recent Irish immigrants and /selected only old Irish settlers who had in the course of time advanced on the social scale, or else the standard of living of the recent Irish immigrants in the United States was not determined by their living conditions in Ireland, but depended upon their earning ability in this country. In either case the race theory of economics fathered by the Commission fails.

That bad housing conditions are not the exclusive characteristic of the immigrant, but are found under like economic conditions among the native wage-carners as well, has been shown by the investigation of the Immigration Commission in Alabama, where there are practically no foreigners whose competition might be supposed to have forced down the American standard of living. In the outlying towns, beyond the territory immediately adjacent to Birmingham, many of the bituminous coal mines are operated exclusively by native labor and native white Americans are employed as unskilled laborers. "In these environments the home of the native white laborer is frequently devoid of the more modern equipment and sanitation." Mr. Streightoff, in his study of the standard of living, uses stronger language. According to him, "in the Southern mill towns conditions are about at their worst." The number of foreign-born wage-earners in the Southern mills is negligible and cannot affect the housing situation. The mill workers are country people of old American stock. And yet the company houses in which they live "are neither sheathed, plastered, nor papered, and the tenants suffer intensely from the occasional cold weather."2

I

2

Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, p. 229.

Streightoff: The Standard of Living, pp. 76–77 and 92.

The preceding comparison between the present and the past, on the one hand, and between native and foreignborn mill and mine workers, on the other, irresistibly leads to the conclusion that the cause of bad housing conditions is not racial, but economic. That the difference among wage-earners in this respect "depends, of course. upon the income," is admitted, "to a considerable extent,' by the experts of the Immigration Commission with the qualification, however, that the difference depends ('apparently also upon the insistence" of the tenants themselves upon having proper accommodations. If the South Italian or Irish laborers, or the Southern white mill hands, are not so well housed as their Welsh foreman, or English engineer, it is because, apart from their inability to raise the rent of a substantial dwelling, they do not "insist" upon having it for the money they are able to pay. That the English or German laborers and factory hands of past generations lived in filthy tenements, must have been due, by the same method of reasoning, to lack of "insistence" on their part upon better accommodations. This view implies a belief that the law of supply and demand will assure to the wage-workers such homes as they will "insist" upon. The economic distinction between land and other forms of property is lost sight of.

The inadequacy of the law of supply and demand in the matter of housing was conclusively demonstrated by all investigations of the New York housing system, which 'agreed in showing the landlord, rather than the helpless tenant, as the primitive cause of tenement evils. "2

In the mill towns and mining camps of to-day, as in the

"There seems to be a decided difference . . . among the various races the South Italians and the Syrians among the recent immigrants, the Irish among the older immigrants, not being so well provided with sanitary equipment as are the other races. This depends, of course, to a considerable extent, upon the income, but apparently also upon the insistence of the persons themselves upon having proper water supply and toilet accommodations.”—Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 126. 2 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 459.

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. 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.

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