Workers' housing

“ This is an issue in which the workers are especially concerned. The rich are not worried about housing conditions. It is the workers who will be the prey of the greedy landlords of New York. That is an important issue in this campaign and the Socialist Party stands squarely for the re-enactment of the housing law and for the curbing of capitalistic greed in the interest of better housing conditions for the benefit of the working class and the exploited and suffering poor. ”

“ And any local group of citizens, desiring to intrust themselves in housing the workers properly, can scarcely expect to do more in the beginning than to establish a local demonstration of sound housing, which will point the way to future progress, and thus set a standard for their district to follow. ”

“ Undoubtedly, however, a large number of bona fide working men, regular workers, or casual workers, would still be unable to afford a sanitary and satisfactory house. It is impossible really to solve the housing problem till this condition of things has been altered, and a wide extension of the policy of the Trade Boards Act, placing an increasing number of trades under it, and fixing a minimum wage for them, is essential to true housing reform. ”

“ The People’s Homesite and Housing Corporation is expanding low-rental housing for urban workers and the Home Financing Commission is ready to undertake aided self-help housing in the small communities, as well as private housing under a system of insured mortgages. ”

“ Looking at the other side of the picture—that of the lower paid workers—outside the factory classification are the clerical workers, the "white collar class," the government employees, such as policemen, postmen, firemen, street-cleaners, who are in many cases less well-paid than the semi-skilled, or even the unskilled.
Equally important is the fact of considerable variation in income between members of each wage group. After all, the family is the unit in housing, financially or otherwise, and the income of the family may be larger than the wages of the head. ”

“ Gentleman and the Chief Secretary on having introduced the Bill, I believe it does not go far enough to satisfy the demands of the labourers. The Chief Secretary thinks that £1,000,000 will be sufficient to complete the housing of the working population. I am satisfied, from my own experience and knowledge of the labouring population, and the numbers who are still unhoused, that it will require far more than this before you complete the beneficent work of housing our workers in happiness and comfort on their native soil. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a given case, this method may result in setting too low the amount of money in a wage-earner's family which is available for housing expenditure. Factory wages vary greatly in different occupations, and, from the angle of housing finance, the average in any occupation may be lowered because the statistics of factory wages include the large numbers of very youthful employees of both sexes who are not to be classed as home providers. Furthermore, outside the ranks of factory workers lie certain classes of very highly paid wage-earners, such as the mechanics in the building trades. ”

“ As one drops down the economic scale the present failure to properly house the wage-earner becomes more striking. For the family of the semi-skilled worker, for the factory worker's family whose income is hardly larger than average factory wage, for the lower-paid ranks of the "white collar" worker and of the government employee, decent housing in new construction is scarcely to be had to-day anywhere. And as for the housing problem of the unskilled worker, married and with a normalsized family, it may be a long time indeed before he can be provided for. ”

“ The chief fault of company housing was, that it superposed the landlord-tenant strife on the capital-labor antagonism, and thus created a combination which has been responsible for some of the most unsavory episodes in American industrial history. ”

“ In deciding the housing policy for a specific locality or for a single housing enterprise in respect to rentals and to the number of rooms to be provided, there should be no great difficulty in steering between the variations in different wage groups and in individual families, which seem to conflict. The fact is, that for some time to come, it will be possible to care for the needs of only the more prosperous wage-earners. In almost any industrial district, new low-priced housing of the right kind will not go begging for occupants. ”

“ The main purpose in the erection and operation of such a building should be to demonstrate that it is possible to provide satisfactory living accommodations for working men at a reasonable rental and as a business proposition that will net five to six per cent." It would be difficult to find, in a few words, a clearer statement of the policy of housing in its social, architectural and financial relationships. ”

“ It is necessary to understand the tangle of economic and human factors which has caused the existing situation in industrial housing. In dissecting the corpse of the housing industry, we soon find, as already stated, that high prices was the disease which killed the patient. Everything that enters into the cost of a home—land, site utilities, building construction, finance, taxes, municipal assessments, household furnishings, maintenance, operation of the completed home—has enormously increased in price. ”

“ New times bring new problems and housing is one of these. In the picture of industrial expansion, as it exists in the minds of most people, housing does not figure prominently. The need of the wage-earner for a home is assumed to care for itself in the market furnished by the local real estate interests. ”

“ The Immigration Commission found not only that in some cases the stock was inferior and the prices high, but that there was a sense of compulsion that made it almost impossible to adjust income and needs.
It is hardly necessary to point out that the supply of housing accommodations by the employer has the same influence as the supply of food and clothing. The power as employer may be, and often is, exerted to fix the conditions under which the family life goes on; and the tenant is deprived of the experience of selecting, of choosing, of balancing what one gives with what one gets. ”

“ To place one-third of our working-class in decent, freehold dwellings would alone, if the material and means of production sufficed, require the whole working-capacity of the country for two years. Even after the last manufacturer's villa-residence, the last palace-hotel, have long been turned into tenements, the solution of the most urgent part of the housing-question will still be an affair of decades. ”

“ On behalf of a number of well-known capitalists, who had been identified with the cause of tenement house reform for years, Robert Fulton Cutting, the president of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, offered to build homes for the working people that should be worthy of the name, on a large scale. A company was formed, and chose for its president Dr. Elgin R. L. Gould, author of the government report on [Pg 83] the Housing of the Working People, the standard work on the subject. A million dollars were raised by public subscription, and operations were begun at once. ”

“ Bright specks that were commute ships, little eggs that carried businessmen and white-collar workers around. The huge transport tubes that shot masses of workmen to factories and labor camps from their housing units. ”

“ The fact is that housing suffers from a somewhat obsolete and primitive business system in which small-scale methods of operation, heavy overhead, inefficient production, and excessive speculation are the chief causes of failure. From an economic viewpoint, the great need in wage-earners' housing is efficient large-scale production. ”

“ Slum property will sink to zero, and the whole working population will move into houses of a class quite above those which they can now afford to occupy. Families which are now compelled to huddle together in one room will be able to rent five or six, and thus will the housing problem temporarily solve itself by the simple process of a diminution in the numbers of the tenants. ”

“ The claim has been made, especially in real estate circles, that, if the wage-earner would be willing to return to the home of his forefathers, where he enjoyed plenty of space, but had less elaborate plumbing, heating and electric equipment and appliances—what are popularly known as "modern conveniences"—he could once again be economically housed. Some critics cite the fact that even to-day most American farm houses lack mechanical improvements. In other words (it is claimed) what makes wage-earners' housing expensive is the cost of luxuries, not of necessities. ”

“ Instances have been brought to our attention where, entirely without the knowledge of the owners, conditions have existed not merely unsanitary but also otherwise highly objectionable and which would have subjected the owners to just criticism. This the standards of management of our Association will absolutely prevent. (4) Industrial housing by employers for their employees. ”

“ In this light, tenement house legislation is no more than an adaptation of domestic necessities and customs to the difficulties of living three stories deep, and factory acts no more than an effort to work out the law of skull crackers, freight yards, and electrically driven mines. We have to fashion a city not alone for the hereditary householder, but for the mobile and transient and half-assimilated, for workers with multiple tools and above all for people on an upward trend. ”

“ The mill demands strong, cheap labor, but concerns itself little whether that labor is provided with living [Pg 922] conditions that will maintain its efficiency or secure the efficiency of the next generation. The housing situation is in the hands of men actuated only by a greed of profit. The community, on the other hand though realizing the situation, does not take its responsibility for the aliens in its midst with sufficient seriousness to attempt to limit the power of these landlords. ”

“ The economic gains by such an exodus are equally clear, provided the philanthropy that starts it will maintain a careful watch to prevent the old slum conditions being reproduced in the new places and unscrupulous employers from taking advantage of the isolation of their workers. With this chance removed, strikes are not so readily fomented by home-owners. The manufacturer secures steady labor, the worker a steady job. The young are removed from the contamination of the tenement. ”

“ The first year’s programme of working-class housing alone calls for at least 6,000,000,000 bricks. That is to say, unless wall materials other than brick are freely used, we shall fall alarmingly short of what the population of Great Britain needs in bare accommodation, and all building and engineering projects whatsoever other than housing must be postponed indefinitely. ”

“ When that occurs, it should be possible to house the American wage-earner better than ever before. The success of the Bayonne experiment renews the hope of providing good housing for the less prosperous families of the population. Then, of our two pictures, the one of slums and the other of ideal garden homes, only the ideal garden homes will remain. ”

“ Q. We have heard this question from the standpoint of Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, but the clientele of this association, as I understand it, covers the entire country, and I should like to ask Mr. De Forest whether it is not true that the investigation made by the Tenement House Commission of New York disclosed the fact that in virtually every manufacturing city of the country there is to-day distinctly a housing problem for the poor and that definite constructive work needs to be done to remedy the evils. ”

“ Thomas, meant everything to the welfare of all American labor, and the experiment would fail if the Bayonne Housing Corporation were compelled to pay extravagant wages. The workmen heeded the architect's appeal and, almost without exception, they stuck to their jobs, and gave their best efforts to produce. Labor, therefore, deserves a full share of credit for the success of the undertaking. ”

“ Particularly significant is that part of it which, in proposing definite measures of relief, at the same time lays down the fundamental principles of industrial housing. First, the report goes to the root of the whole complicated subject by emphasizing the essentials of durable construction, and of daylight, ventilation, garden and recreation space in the architectural design. To quote the report: "We believe that the only plan by which apartments can be provided will be an apartment house or a modified form of tenement house containing not more than fifty apartments. ”

“ This achievement brings within the reach of the higher-paid wage-earner an ideal home of the American standard of living. By thus demonstrating that the better-paid wage-earner can be ideally housed, the ultimate goal in housing, namely, the lower-paid ranks of the population—is brought nearer realization. ”