Fullerton L. Waldo

“ There are so many children shrieking and sprawling over the cobbles already that it doesn’t seem as though there could be any left in any of the houses. But there are always plenty more. Here are some, too tiny to be allowed to go to the city swimming-baths. In the heat of summer they wear scarcely any clothes, and their puny limbs stick out from their tattered garments like twigs from a bird’s nest. ”

“ If he who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before is a benefactor, then what is he who tears down a ramshackle tenement and rears in its place such a house as the Casa Ravello, where many families enjoy the privileges of privacy and individuality, or a group of houses such as those in the Richmond district, where the children have abundant play room and each occupant controls half his house, or a small home for one family of which so many examples are entered on the books of the Association in various localities and at varying prices, all within a modest range? ”

“ But that is the reason, if you please, that he hasn’t the rent today. There is so often the slenderest margin between a sufficiency and dire distress in the case of the poor. To most of us a strike is in the newspapers. To them a strike is in their lives—it may come like a bolt of lightning crashing through the roof to disrupt a home.
92Perhaps the reckless joy-rider or motor-truck driver will never know how many little children are kept within doors by their mothers for fear they will be run over if they play in the street. But the rent-collector knows. ”

“ No record of a transaction in the business of the Association depends upon haphazard recollection or mere say-so. The office-hours are conducted without fuss or flurry, the floors are spotless, the desks are cleared for action. Waste motion is eliminated, the virtues of thrift and of system are illustrated, and still there is heart and human feeling in the enterprise. It is not possible to visit the headquarters without realizing at once the atmosphere of sincerity and diligence and practical success that surrounds the work. It is philanthropy ”

“ If the Association were engaged in its blest business for the money only, it could not have enlisted through all these years 108the intense interest of so many who have realized in their own experience the correlation of the kind of house a person lives in and the kind of character that is therein developed. Too long have we taken it for granted that the poor love to live poorly: a survival of the mediæval tradition that only the nobles had noble emotions, and that the crowd merely existed as a foil to the luminous brave deeds of a chivalry monopolized by the upper classes. ”

“ The houses round about—not Association property—have ruinous shacks at the rear that hold broken boxes and barrels, superannuated chairs and bedding and broken-down baby carriages. There is no clear space to sit under a shade-tree, or plant morning-glories, or put a sandpile. One longs to see the workmen who are paving the Octavia Hill courtyard below turn their attention to the whole vicinity. ”

“ In a dark angle of a yard, behind a woodshed cluttered and foul, there is a pool of stinking black water out of which you can fish rotten burlap and odds and ends of the social history of all the houses. The curious children have turned pale green, like sprouts in a cellar, and their arms are thin as pipestems. ”

“ Philadelphia families, accustomed to think of health and comfort largely in terms of the upgrowing generation, prefer privacy to promiscuity, and love their own vine and fig-tree, rising from the ground level, with the tenacious affection that attaches to a patriarchal inheritance. Where the individual home is an impossible luxury, the multiple dwelling that is reared must recognize the right of the family to every procurable blessing and convenience of the single house. ”

“ The life-story of the work in Philadelphia that perpetuates her name and her influence is next set forth. The reader is then taken into the places where the Association has labored to clean out and to build up in order that sun and air and running water may perform their medicinal offices for body and soul together; that germs and vermin may be routed with the dirt that breeds them; that babies may have a chance to grow into decent and useful citizens; that a sense of neighborliness and interdependence may be fostered even among those whose nationality, religion and language are diverse. ”

“ The question of repairs, when the tenants make their requests or the rent-collector’s inspection discovers places where they may be needed, is a matter determined by urgency, and by the amount of money already expended on the property, and by the evinced cooperative spirit of the tenant. It stands to reason that slovenly and destructive occupants are not accorded the same attention that is given to the representatives of those who are clean and careful and prompt in their payments. ”

“ Another striking object-lesson among many that might be cited as to the value of the quiet influence of the rent-collector—an influence that permeates as subtly as yeast—is to be seen in the group of houses for the negro population on Naudain Street near the offices of the Association, to which reference has already been made. One of these houses, since it is given over to single old women, has come to be called the “Old Ladies’ Home.” Would one find exemplary contentment let him talk with an old crippled, blind woman who lives on the top floor. ”

“ That is why the personal examples of Octavia Hill and of those who follow in her train are of value, for these examples prove to a thinking majority that such work as theirs is not the altruism of dreamy, vague enthusiasts, but that of persons with “their souls in the work of their hands,” who are translating into a balance on the right side of the ledger their aspiration for better things for “the poor and him that hath no helper.” ”

“ The fundamental advantages that make life livable for rich and poor alike are not wafted on the breath of a pious aspiration. They come by somebody’s downright work for them. They come by the banded effort of good citizens. ”

“ So it has been accustomed to purchase its groups piecemeal from a number of owners.
It is probable that in the future the Association will undertake to an increasing extent the construction of new dwellings. For a long time to come, if not always, it will continue to renovate old dwellings, for the old dwellings, situated in the congested areas, are the abodes of most of the poor, who are traditionally averse to uprooting; and often the poor feel much more at home in an old house “fixed up” than in a new house to which the adjustment only comes by the slow stages of a social education. ”

“ Many a Browning Society has little to do with Browning, and many a reading circle takes Shakespeare’s name in vain: but in the case of the Octavia Hill Association there is so close a correspondence between the work and the practical idealism of the woman whose name it bears that a study of her career of service to humanity in England and thus throughout the world sheds light upon the organized and incorporated effort in Philadelphia. ”

“ The investment is in so much more than bricks and mortar, concrete and cast iron. It is an investment in human lives, and it underwrites the welfare of the city, the country, the world in the age to come by assuring the health and happiness of the unborn. ”

“ A piano in the house, and the daughter’s lessons, mean stinting for all the rest, as in the case of a home—not controlled by the Association—where a druggist’s clerk lives and we find the kitchen range, the dinner-table and a Steinway baby-grand crowded together in one small room.
The Association has its own force of mechanics, for work old and new, and the superintendent is their “boss.” They have a repair shop in the basement of the office at 613–15 Lombard Street for any work that is not to be done on the premises. ”

“ In 1885 a lending library for children, in the heart of a negro district at Seventh and St. Mary Streets, brought home to its benevolent promoters the need of a new and improved order of living in the hovels where the books were circulated. It was plain that a transformation was not to be wrought merely by the magic of good books. People must take hold of people; life must come into stimulating contact with life; the socially uplifted must discover that the economically downtrodden were their neighbors. ”

“ It has battled for everything that makes for better conditions of housing and of living in a city. The list of good works it has brought out of dreamland into the light of common day is as diversified as the life of the great city 22which the persistent effort of this Club has sweetened and ennobled. It was but natural that the Octavia Hill Association should have its genesis among friends in council who met in the hospitable quarters of the Club in the winter and spring of 1895–96 to study the large and many-angled problem of fair play for the metropolitan poor. ”

“ In one case where an orthodox Jewish family was blamed by neighbors, the supposed culprits were exonerated by the discovery of a ham-bone in the can when the lid was lifted.
Just as the work of a Red Cross nurse in a war-hospital is a different matter from a debutante’s dream of it, so the inspection by the rent-collector may become a very plain and prosaic, undecorative business indeed. She has to see, to think, to know. Nothing is too small for her attention. ”

“ Cellars and basements must not be used for sleeping purposes, nor should animals be kept and slaughtered on the premises. Ignorance and indifference on the part of landlord and tenant alike, the investigator held, is the great obstacle in the way of reform. The personal worker who will see clearly and report frankly and fearlessly is indispensable. Such workers, it is clear, are provided by the superintendence and the friendly rent-collection of the Octavia Hill Association. ”

“ Miss Hill relied largely on volunteer collectors. The Association in addition to its unpaid collectors employs several who are paid. Miss Hill obtained purchasers for houses which she desired to improve. The Association, as a stock company, has purchased outright a number of houses. It has realized that whereas certain landlords on a grand scale in London controlled vast areas, in Philadelphia, aside from the Girard Estate, with its admirable model homes for persons who can afford them, there are very few owners of large, undivided tracts where blocks of model houses might be created. ”

“ Business is business. Let the charitable societies, the soup kitchens, the Salvation Army or what you will, look out for the other side of the matter.”
The answer to this contention is that a conscientious landlord can hardly be satisfied to accept money from any sort of house without knowing or caring how it is obtained. Several times in the experience of the Association the owners of houses which had descended to base uses were shocked and grieved inexpressibly to learn of it. ”

“ It is a postulate that those who are looking for the largest possible dividend on an investment without regard to any other consideration will scarcely be satisfied with the 4 per cent. which the Association is paying. The stockholders of the Association and the directors as a rule are glad to realize that their investment is providing good homes for the poor at low cost, and they are content to forego the somewhat higher profits that might accrue if nobody cared how the tenants lived. ”

“ The problems of housing and sanitation are day-in and day-out problems that require a constant vigilance and not a divided interest or a sporadic enthusiasm that can detach itself at pleasure from the object of its concern. The work of volunteers is by no means undervalued in its unselfish service to this Association. ”

“ One of the houses shows menacing patches of brown specks on the plastering of a tiny bedroom—that means the larvæ of 82vermin. In a hole in the midst of each patch are the live insects. The friendly rent-collector makes a careful note of the fact. There is an evil day in store for this common pest of the tenants in old houses, when the Association shall bring its batteries of formidable disinfectants to bear. The Association is not fond of spreading wall-paper over the surfaces where insects live and thrive. ”

“ The Association has stipulated that the properties it took over should be in need of reconstruction and improvement; that the price should be sufficiently low to allow of the necessary repairs and still leave a fair return on the sum invested; that the group dealt with should be large enough to present a conspicuous object-lesson to the community. Many a neighborhood must be—and is—a little ashamed to look itself in the face, after regarding the spick-and-span aspect of the Association improvement adjoining its unseemliness. ”

“ In every large city a problem similar to that which has faced the Association must be met, if the community does not shirk the obligation to its own dependent stratum. In every large city the prestige of the whole community is impaired if dirty 110streets, a lack of good water, smoke-clogged air and disreputable hovels are constituents of the social order. ”

“ Careful calculation showed that in a group of 140 families, for one year, the cost of repairs for plumbing due to the tenants’ carelessness was $32. The real estate officer of a large trust company declared this an excellent record.
As the rent-collector of tact and insight makes her rounds the mechanical transaction of requesting and receipting for the 86rent is accomplished frictionlessly and with dispatch in the great majority of instances. The services of the constable, at a cost of $2.00, to dispossess a family are rarely and very regretfully called into requisition. ”

“ That sanitary, durable and comfortable dwellings can be built for rental at less than $15.00 per month, and made to yield under proper management a return of 5 per cent. has been repeatedly demonstrated in this and other cities. To any interest that is willing to consider such investment with the further view of meeting a community need, we should offer our services. From our own actual experience in this field and our knowledge of similar undertakings elsewhere, our organization can, we believe, render valuable help in the planning and execution of such projects. ”

“ The moral influence of Miss Hill’s system has been to admit women to a greater extent into the management of housing companies, a practice which has undoubted advantages. Several of the large London dwelling companies acknowledge that their success, financially and morally, only began with the introduction of rent-collecting through lady volunteers. ”

“ An all-important factor is the “friendly rent-collector” who, while firm in her insistence upon prompt payment of the rent, forms a living link of sympathy and perception between the landlord or landlady and the tenant, and among the tenants themselves. The thorough training of this collector is essential, and for this training Miss Hill left minute prescriptions. ”

“ I’ve just come in from a round of visits to the nine houses; and somehow it’s been a day of small worries about all sorts of repairs, and things of that kind. It is only when the detail is really managed on as great principles as the whole plan, that a work becomes really good.” That last sentence holds the vital germ of Octavia Hill’s own philosophy, living on in the work of the Association that bears her name. ”

“ The Octavia Hill investor can be very sure his dividend does not come from living conditions that it would perturb an active conscience to know about. There is nothing that need fear exploitation. A constant prophylactic scrutiny prevents those living conditions that are the shame of every city that in this twentieth century tolerates them. ”

“ The aim is to improve the living conditions in the poorer residence districts of the City of Philadelphia. To accomplish this purpose the Association buys dwellings and other real estate and improves them so as to make them habitable and healthful. It endeavors thereby to improve the moral and physical condition of the tenants. It offers its services as agent to other owners of like properties. In this capacity it attends to collections, alterations and repairs, clerical and special work, general oversight, etc., and makes a fair charge for such services. ”

“ The philanthropic side of the Association’s endeavor will cling to the old houses. The sheer business astuteness of the enterprise will erect new dwellings. The problem is to keep the due proportion between the business and the philanthropy.
73 74The tenants of the Association are not allowed to sublet or to take in lodgers without explicit authorization. That this regulation is sensible is obvious. Any other course would lead to all the evils of overcrowding and of positive immorality which the organization was created in large part to fight. The housing of the single man is not attempted. ”