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 -
 
 HOUSING REFORM
 
 RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION 
 PU BLICATIONS 
 
 A MODEL TENEMENT HOUSE LAW. By LAWRENCE 
 VEILLER. 130 pages. Price, postpaid, $1.25. 
 
 THE STANDARD OF LIVING AMONG WORKING- 
 MEN'S FAMILIES IN NEW YORK CITY. By 
 ROBERT COIT CHAPIN, Ph.D. 388 pages. 131 tables. 
 1 6 diagrams. Price, postpaid, $2.00. 
 
 MEDICAL INSPECTION OF SCHOOLS. By LUTHER 
 HALSEY GULICK, M.D., and LEONARD P. AYRES, A.M. 
 286 pages. Third edition. Price, postpaid, $1.00. 
 
 LAGGARDS IN OUR SCHOOLS: A Study of Retarda- 
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 LEONARD P. AYRES, A.M. 252 pages. 106 tables. 
 38 diagrams. Price, postpaid, $1.50. 
 
 THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY. Findings in six vol- 
 umes. Butler's "Women and the Trades," published 
 January, 1910. 440 pages. Price, $1.50. By mail, 11.72. 
 (Other volumes in preparation.) 
 
 THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS IN THE 
 UNITED STATES: Including a Directory of Institutions 
 dealing with Tuberculosis in the United States and Canada. 
 Compiled under the direction of the National Association 
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 P. JACOBS. 467 pages. Price, postpaid, $ i.oo. 
 
 HOUSING REFORM: A Hand-book for Practical Use in 
 American Cities. By LAWRENCE VEILLER. Foreword by 
 Robert W. de Forest. 220 pages. Price, postpaid, $1.25. 
 
 AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS. By M. LOUISE GREENE, 
 M.Pd., Ph.D. (In Press.) 
 
 REPORT ON THE DESIRABILITY OF ESTABLISHING 
 AN EMPLOYMENT BUREAU IN THE CITY OF 
 NEW YORK. By EDWARD T. DEVINE, Ph.D., LL.D. 
 238 pages. Paper. Price, postpaid, fi.oo. 
 
 THE SALARY LOAN BUSINESS IN NEW YORK CITY. 
 By CLARENCE W. WASSAM, Ph.D. With Extracts from 
 an unpublished Report by FRANK JULIAN WARNE, Ph.D. 
 143 pages. Paper. Price, postpaid, 75 cents. 
 
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 CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE 
 
 105 EAST 22D STREET, NEW YORK 
 158 ADAMS STREET. CHICAGO
 
 RUSSELL SAGE 
 FOUNDATION 
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 A HAND-BOOK FOR 
 
 PRACTICAL USE 
 
 IN AMERICAN 
 
 CITIES 
 
 BY 
 
 LAWRENCE VEILLER 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARITIES PUBLICATION 
 COMMITTE E . . MCMX
 
 Copy right, 1910, by 
 The Russell Sage Foundation 
 
 PRESS OF WM. F. FELL CO. 
 PHILADELPHIA
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 BY ROBERT W. DE FOREST 
 
 THIS book is a practical handbook on tene- 
 ment reform in America. Public spirited 
 citizens of every American city are asking 
 themselves what to do to prevent in their commu- 
 nity the housing evils that have grown up elsewhere 
 and to remedy those that have come into existence 
 around their own homes. This book is intended 
 to answer that question. There is no more of 
 theory about it than is essential to intelligent 
 conclusion and effective action. It has been 
 written at the instance of the Russell Sage Founda- 
 tion by the person who is most competent, by 
 knowledge and experience, to answer that ques- 
 tion. 
 
 Lawrence Veiller has made a lifelong study of 
 this subject. As a settlement worker in New York 
 he acquired an intimate knowledge of how the 
 wage earners of that city live. He was secretary 
 and practical director of the Tenement House 
 Committee of the New York Charity Organization 
 Society when it was first organized in 1898. He 
 became secretary of the New York State Tenement 
 House Commission of 1900, which drafted the 
 present Tenement Law for cities of the first class 
 
 vii
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 and created the Tenement Department of New 
 York City. And as First Deputy Tenement 
 Commissioner during the two years after the 
 Department came into existence he had a large 
 part in the initial enforcement of that law. 
 
 The last chapter in the book contains a collec- 
 tion of negative "Don'ts." All the previous 
 chapters deal with affirmative "Do's." 
 
 If I were to emphasize any particular line of 
 affirmative action in housing reform, it would be 
 the prevention of the tenement disease before any 
 city begins to suffer from it. 
 
 We Americans have an unhappy faculty of not 
 remembering until after we have forgotten, of 
 not beginning to conserve our resources and save 
 our forests until after we have lost them. But 
 we are surely practical enough to profit by ex- 
 perience. And experience applied to housing 
 reform establishes the proposition which should 
 be printed in large type that No GROWING 
 
 AMERICAN CITY, HOWEVER FREE FROM TENE- 
 MENTS NOW, CAN AFFORD TO BE WITHOUT BUILD- 
 ING REGULATIONS TO PREVENT DARK ROOMS 
 
 AND UNSANITARY CONDITIONS. There is no hard- 
 ship to anyone in so regulating the future building 
 of all houses intended to contain three or more 
 families as to ensure an open space in the rear, a 
 window for every room, opening either on the street 
 or an open rear or an open court proportioned 
 to height, also water supply, sewer connection 
 and a separate toilet. There can be no intelligent 
 
 viii
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 opposition to such a regulation, be it by state law 
 or city ordinance. Such regulation, however 
 much tenement evils may have come to exist, 
 will safeguard the future, even if some of the past 
 is lost. It is in the line of least resistance and 
 greatest accomplishment. 
 
 There is nothing inherently objectionable in 
 the tenement as a type of city dwelling; that is, 
 in a multiple house intended to be occupied by 
 three or more families living independently. 
 The objection lies in permitting them to be built 
 without proper regulation. It is the wellnigh 
 universal form in many European cities. It is 
 likely to be increasingly the form in American 
 cities. 
 
 There comes a time in the growth of every city 
 when it begins to feel the need of building laws 
 to guard against fire, and appropriate enactment 
 is made. If destruction to life and property by 
 disease were as spectacular as destruction by 
 fire, protection against disease-breeding houses 
 would precede protection against those that spread 
 only fire. Both kinds of protection are essential 
 and cannot be ensured too early in a city's de- 
 velopment. 
 
 IX
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FOREWORD, BY ROBERT W. DEFOREST . . . vii 
 
 I 
 
 Housing Evils and their Significance ... 3 
 
 II 
 
 Some Popular Fallacies 15 
 
 III 
 
 Congestion and Overcrowding 27 
 
 IV 
 The Housing Problem a Three-Fold One . . 39 
 
 V 
 How to Start a Movement for Housing Reform . 49 
 
 VI 
 The Essentials of a Housing Investigation . . 55 
 
 VII 
 
 Model Tenements and their Limitations . . 63 
 
 VIII 
 
 Municipal Tenements and Municipal Regulation . 77 
 
 xi
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 IX 
 
 Essential Principles of a Housing Law ... 89 
 
 PACK 
 
 X 
 
 What a Housing Law should Contain . . . 101 
 
 XI 
 
 The Enforcement of Housing Laws . . . -123 
 
 XII 
 
 How to Secure Legislative Reforms . . . -151 
 
 XIII 
 The Field of Private Effort 171 
 
 XIV 
 
 A Chapter of "Don' ts" 193 
 
 SAMPLE SCHEDULES FOR HOUSING INVESTIGA- 
 TIONS 199 
 
 INDEX 207 
 
 xu
 
 I 
 
 HOUSING EVILS AND THEIR 
 SIGNIFICANCE
 
 1 
 
 HOUSING EVILS AND TFVEIR 
 SIGNIFICANCE 
 
 EVERY American city has its housing problem. 
 While in no two cities the same, in all 
 there are certain underlying conditions 
 which find common expression. Bad housing con- 
 ditions generally first manifest themselves when 
 several families are found living in a dwelling in- 
 tended originally for a single family. Then, with 
 the increase in population, there comes the building 
 of regular tenement houses usually before any 
 restrictions have been thought of by the com- 
 munity. Rapidly from this point develop the 
 evils of cellar dwellings, unsanitary privies, lack 
 of drainage, inadequate water supply, filthy out- 
 premises, defective plumbing, dark rooms and 
 halls, overcrowding, the taking in of lodgers, 
 congestion, excessive rents, the sweating evil and 
 those other manifestations of modern social life 
 which are too often seen in our large cities. 
 
 The causes for these evils are not to be found in 
 any one thing but are to be traced through a va- 
 riety of influences operating through considerable 
 periods of time. Some of the evils are peculiar 
 
 3
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 to a single com; 7 xmity, but most of them sooner 
 or later are foil 1 id in all cities. The chief under- 
 lying factor which stands out in every community 
 is that they ire, in nearly every case, due to 
 neglect and 'gnorance. Neglect on the part of 
 the commun ty, failure of its citizens to recognize 
 evil tenden^es as they develop; dangerous igno- 
 rance on the part of citizens and public officials 
 of what is going on within the city's gates a 
 feeling of safety and of confidence that all must 
 be right because they see little that is wrong, that 
 things cannot be bad as long as they are hidden; 
 a false civic pride which believes that everything 
 in one's own city is the best, a dangerous sort of 
 apathy content to leave things as they are, a 
 laisse^ faire policy which brings forth fruit of 
 unrighteousness. 
 
 Invariably accompanying these two causes, 
 but to a lesser degree, is found a third, greed. 
 Greed on the part of those persons who for the 
 sake of a larger profit on their investments, are 
 willing to traffic in human lives, to sacrifice the 
 health and welfare of countless thousands. 
 
 It is only in comparatively recent years that 
 the community as a whole has beenjilive to the 
 importance_of right housing conditions, and the 
 far-reaching influence of wrong ones. With the 
 changed view that has come of late with regard 
 to much of our modern charitable and social 
 effort, emphasis has come to be placed more and 
 more upon the environment in which people live, 
 
 4
 
 HOUSING EVILS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 
 
 and less upon those hereditary traits of character 
 which social workers of earlier years were wont 
 to observe. 
 
 1 1 is not so very many years since we were told 
 that it was practically useless to attempt to 
 improve the condition of the poor; that their 
 poverty was caused by their own vices, by defects 
 of character transmitted from father to son, from 
 generation to generation, by faults which were in 
 the blood, hereditary traits and instincts impos- 
 sible to overcome. The theory that tuberculosis 
 was an incurable hereditary disease prevailed 
 with equal force about the same period. We 
 know now, however, that both these views were 
 erroneous; that poverty too is a germ disease, 
 contagious even at times; that it thrives amid the 
 same conditions as those under which the germs 
 of tuberculosis flourish in darkness, filth and 
 sordid surroundings; and that when the light 
 has once been let in the first step towards its cure 
 has been taken. 
 
 Environment leaves its ineffaceable records on 
 the souls, minds and bodies of men, there to be 
 read by all able to understand. A child living 
 its early years in dark rooms, without sunlight 
 or fresh air, does not grow up to be a normal 
 healthy person, but is anaemic, weak, sickly, like 
 a plant grown in the dark. He is handicapped in 
 his school life; his earning capacity is diminished 
 and his resisting power weakened. It is not of 
 such material that strong nations are made. Im- 
 
 5
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 provement of social conditions, as indeed of all 
 others, starts with the improvement of domestic 
 life. When there are no homes there will be no 
 nation. 
 
 While every American city has its housing 
 problem, fortunately but few cities have as yet a 
 tenement house problem. The two are quite 
 distinct and should be carefully differentiated. 
 Moreover, no city in America, except New York, 
 need have a tenement house problem. The few 
 that have can easily solve their problems at their 
 present stage of development, if they will be ac- 
 tive and vigilant. 
 
 It should be recognized at the outset that the 
 normal method of housing the working population 
 in our American cities is in small houses, each 
 house occupied by a separate family, often with a 
 small bit of land, with privacy for all, and with a 
 secure sense of individuality and opportunity for 
 real domestic life. Under no other method can 
 we expect American institutions to be main- 
 tained. It is useless to expect a conservative 
 point of view in the workingman, if his home is 
 but three or four rooms in some huge building in 
 which dwell from twenty to thirty other families, 
 and this home is his only from month to month. 
 Where a man has a home of his own he has every 
 incentive to be economical and thrifty, to take 
 his part in the duties of citizenship, to be a real 
 sharer in government. Democracy was not pred- 
 
 6
 
 HOUSING EVILS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 
 
 icated upon a country made up of tenement 
 ^dwellers, nor can it so survive. 
 
 It is in such small houses that the great mass 
 of the working people are housed in most of our 
 cities. It is so in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, 
 Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, St. 
 Louis, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Cleveland, Indian- 
 apolis, San Francisco, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and 
 in fact in all the larger cities except New York. 
 In many of these cities, however, several families 
 live in one building, in some cities there are 
 frequently two families to a house, in others three, 
 and in others even more. In a few, the tenement 
 house system has begun to develop; and in all of 
 those mentioned there are found individual tene- 
 ment houses, similar to those of New York- 
 large buildings four or five stories high, with 
 several families on each floor, and with all the 
 usual features of the multiple dwelling. But in 
 none of these cities, as yet, has this become the 
 dominant type of building. In that lies the 
 hopeful element of the situation. 
 
 The conditions in New York are without 
 parallel in the civilized world. In no city of 
 Europe, not in Naples nor in Rome, neither in 
 London nor in Paris, neither in Berlin, Vienna 
 nor Buda Pesth, not in Constantinople nor in St. 
 Petersburgh, not in ancient Edinburgh nor modern 
 Glasgow, not in heathen Canton nor Bombay are 
 to be found such conditions as prevail in modern, 
 
 7
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 enlightened, twentieth century, Christian New 
 York. 
 
 In no other city is the mass of the working 
 population housed as it is in New York, in tall 
 tenement houses, extending up into the air fifty 
 or sixty feet, and stretching for miles in every 
 direction as far as the eye can reach. In no other 
 city are there the same appalling conditions with 
 regard to lack of light and air in the homes of 
 the poor. In no other city is there so great con- 
 gestion and overcrowding. In no other city do 
 the poor so suffer from excessive rents; in no city 
 are the conditions of city life so complex. No- 
 where are the evils of modern life so varied, 
 nowhere are the problems so difficult of solution. 
 
 If New York is so abnormal it may well be 
 asked of what benefit to other communities are 
 its problems; what lessons can others learn from 
 New York's experience? New York, cosmopoli- 
 tan in its population, is equally cosmopolitan in 
 its social problems. Here will be found the prob- 
 lems of all other American cities, sometimes only 
 in the germ, often, however, developed to an 
 extent not dreamt of elsewhere. New York is 
 the "horrible example." It is the startling 
 crystallization in brick and mortar of the potential 
 housing evils of every other American city. It 
 typifies the kind of city that other American 
 cities may develop into under the influence of 
 similar forces, unless timely effort is put forth to 
 prevent such development. 
 
 8
 
 HOUSING EVILS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 
 
 In 1835, 74 years ago, New York had a popula- 
 tion of about 270,000 and was then a city of the 
 size of Detroit, Milwaukee and Washington to-day. 
 New York then had no tenement house system; 
 it had then no miles of congested streets, no lodger 
 evil, no overcrowding, no social problems of great 
 magnitude. 
 
 The homes of its working people were at that 
 time small one-story and two-story houses, 
 each family living in its separate house, as they do 
 to-day in Detroit, Milwaukee and Washington, 
 cities of the same size. Had New York been 
 told at that time that conditions would ever be 
 such as they are to-day, who would have given 
 credence to such wild statements? And yet what 
 reason is there to expect that Detroit, Milwaukee, 
 Washington and similar cities may not in time 
 develop as New York has, and exhibit seventy- 
 five years from now similar conditions to plague 
 future communities with social problems of similar 
 or even greater difficulty? Who can doubt that 
 the tendencies and forces at work in New York 
 in these past seventy-five years are as surely at 
 work to-day in other American cities? 
 
 In the experience of New York may be found a 
 lesson for every other city. Here, exhibited in 
 striking form, are to be seen the evils that have 
 resulted from sixty years' neglect of housing 
 conditions, the failure not merely to anticipate 
 the city's future development and to provide 
 safeguards against evil tendencies, but, far worse, 
 
 9
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 failure to recognize and remedy evils long existent, 
 and further failure of the efforts at amelioration 
 to keep pace with the new evils fast developing. 
 So that, notwithstanding all the effort put forth, 
 notwithstanding the great accomplishments of 
 recent years, housing conditions in New York to- 
 day are worse than they were sixty years ago. 
 
 Through these causes, we have to-day the 
 tenement house system prevalent throughout New 
 York as the chief means of housing the greater 
 part of the city's population, over two-thirds of 
 the people living in multiple dwellings; we have 
 to-day over 100,000 separate tenement houses; we 
 have a city built up of four and five-story buildings, 
 instead of two-story and three-story ones; we 
 have over 10,000 tenement houses of the hopeless 
 and discredited "dumb-bell" type with narrow 
 "air-shafts" furnishing neither sunlight nor fresh 
 air to the thousands of people living in the rooms 
 opening on them; we have over 20,000 tenement 
 houses of the older type in which most of the rooms 
 are without light or ventilation; we have over 
 100,000 dark unventilated rooms without even a 
 window to an adjoining room; we have 80,000 
 buildings, housing nearly 3,000,000 people, so 
 constructed as to be a standing menace to the 
 community in the event of fire, most of them built 
 with wooden stairs, wooden halls and wooden 
 floors, and thousands built entirely of wood. 
 
 Over a million people have no bathing facilities 
 in their homes; while even a greater number are 
 
 10
 
 HOUSING EVILS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 
 
 limited to the use of sanitary conveniences in 
 common with other families, without proper 
 privacy; over a quarter of a million people had in 
 the year 1900, no other sanitary conveniences than 
 antiquated yard privies; and even to-day 2000 
 of these privy sinks still remain, many of them 
 located in densely populated districts, a source of 
 danger to all in the neighborhood, facilitating 
 the spread of contagious disease through the 
 medium of the common house-fly. 
 
 Here we have conditions of congestion of pop- 
 ulation unparalleled elsewhere in the civilized 
 world. In one small portion of Manhattan Island, 
 the district south of Fourteenth street and east of 
 Broadway, dwell over 500,000 human beings, a 
 population in itself greater than the entire popu- 
 lation of any other American city except Chicago, 
 Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston and Baltimore; 
 a population greater, indeed, than the population 
 of each of the following states: Arizona, Delaware, 
 Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, 
 New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island, 
 Utah, Vermont and Wyoming. 
 
 New York may well serve as a warning to other 
 communities of what may come from present 
 tendencies if allowed to continue unchecked. 
 If you do not want such conditions in your city, 
 there is but one way to avoid them. See to it 
 that you do not get them. Be alert and vigilant. 
 Study present and future tendencies. Profit by 
 New York's mistakes. Keep your city a city 
 
 1 1
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 of homes, not a city of tenements. It is all pos- 
 sible, if you act in time. There is a time when all 
 errors can be remedied with comparatively little 
 loss; do not let that time go by. 
 
 No housing evils are necessary; none need be 
 tolerated. Where they exist they are always a 
 reflection upon the intelligence, rightmindedness 
 and moral tone of the community. 
 
 12
 
 II 
 
 SOME POPULAR FALLACIES
 
 II 
 
 SOME POPULAR FALLACIES 
 
 TO properly understand the housing problem 
 it is necessary for many of us to free our 
 minds from a number of misconceptions- 
 popular fallacies which seem to possess a subtle 
 power of impression and which prevail far more 
 easily than the truth. Chief among these is the 
 belief that the poor are of a different race from 
 the rich; that they have not the same impulses, 
 the same vices, the same frailties, the same virtues; 
 that they are a totally distinct class, who, when 
 they are in misfortune or in misery, are so because 
 of their own fault; that in some way they possess 
 a natural faculty for getting into trouble; that 
 intemperance among the rich is a disease, among 
 the poor a deliberate vice; that the poor should 
 always immediately recognize the wisdom of the 
 advice offered by those who would not dare to 
 proffer similar suggestions to more prosperous 
 friends, and that failure to take such advice is a 
 sign of wicked wilfulness. Probably no one thing 
 more clearly indicates the kinship of the rich and 
 the poor than the ingrained unwillingness of both 
 to follow the advice of others; unless, perhaps, 
 
 >5
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 the failure of both alike to realize that "The life 
 is more than meat and the body than raiment." 
 The rich and the poor are indeed alike in all 
 essential particulars and that is the trouble. 
 Were they different, we might with reason hope 
 that ethical principles to which one class has 
 failed to respond might indeed appeal to the other. 
 That failure is the failure of humanity in general, 
 and not of the poor alone. 
 
 A kindred fallacy is that the poor do not want 
 good housing conditions; that there is no use in 
 providing improved dwellings for them; that good 
 homes will not be appreciated and that the 
 majority of the working people prefer to live in 
 squalor and in sordid surroundings. Nothing 
 could be farther from the facts. That there are 
 individuals in every community who prefer to 
 live in squalor is unquestionably true, but the 
 majority of the poor not only welcome improved 
 housing conditions but ardently desire them. 
 One of the most pathetic things in modern city 
 life is the constant striving on their part to improve 
 living surroundings. That so many triumph over 
 their adverse environment is everlastingly to 
 their credit. 
 
 Another popular fallacy is the view that it is 
 only the people who need to be reformed and not 
 the physical, industrial and social conditions under 
 which they live. If one still adheres to the doc- 
 trine of original sin and the innate depravity of 
 the human race, it is conceivable that such views 
 
 16
 
 SOME POPULAR FALLACIES 
 
 should be held. No one, however, who has worked 
 for even a slight period of time among the poor 
 has any doubt of what it is that needs reformation 
 first. It will generally be found that when the 
 conditions surrounding the lives of the poor have 
 been changed the people have, in large measure, 
 changed with them. 
 
 We all live up to our environment more or less, 
 like the beggar in the bed of the king, and it is 
 certainly the first duty of government "To make 
 it as hard as possible for men to go wrong and as 
 easy as possible for them to go right" to remove 
 the hindering things that cramp and weaken both 
 body and soul. 
 
 Deep-rooted, too, is the belief that the poor 
 like to be dirty, instanced always by the oft- 
 repeated story that the common use of bathtubs 
 among this class of society is for the storage of 
 coal. No story, I imagine, has been repeated 
 more often and none has less basis of fact a 
 hasty generalization from a single instance. 
 Perhaps my failure during sixteen years' constant 
 experience of tenement conditions in New York, 
 throughout all parts of it, to observe instances 
 of this nature has been due to the failure to find 
 the bathtub, an institution that it has seldom been 
 my good fortune to encounter in the ordinary 
 tenement house. When one considers that few 
 of the tenement population possess so great a 
 luxury as a bathtub, and that it is their custom 
 to buy coal by the pail because of their inability 
 2 17
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 to pay for a larger quantity at one time, the story 
 falls to the ground. 
 
 Over against this impressionistic picture one 
 should, in all fairness, place those countless others, 
 which stand out with photographic clearness, of 
 the tenement house mother laboriously carrying 
 in pail after pail of water from the one faucet in 
 the public hall, heating it in various receptacles 
 on the kitchen stove and giving child after child 
 its bath in an inconvenient wooden wash tub. 
 
 The most emphatic proof of the desire of the 
 great mass of the tenement population for physical 
 cleanliness, is furnished by the experience of 
 various public baths. A striking instance is found 
 in the case of the People's Baths. Founded in 
 1891 and located partly in the crowded Italian quar- 
 ter and partly on the edge of the commercial dis- 
 trict and therefore somewhat at a disadvantage, the 
 number of baths taken increased from 59,440 
 in 1892 to 135,599 in 1908, and this notwithstand- 
 ing the fact that a fee of five cents is charged for 
 each bath. Few people realize the efforts made 
 by most of the tenement house population to keep 
 clean under the most adverse conditions. When 
 all the water that can be obtained must be carried 
 up several flights of stairs, cleanliness is indeed a 
 virtue. 
 
 Then there is the fallacious fear on the part of 
 some that there will be a lack of shelter and that 
 unless some philanthropist provides special hous- 
 ing accommodations at once for the lowest classes 
 
 18
 
 SOME POPULAR FALLACIES 
 
 in the community, they will have nowhere to 
 live. This has never been a practical question in 
 any American city. There are, of course, times 
 when there may be in some quarters of each city 
 a shortage of housing accommodations, within 
 certain rentals, but there is never such lack of 
 accommodations that people are without shelter 
 because of inability to find places in which to live; 
 nor will there ever be such a situation. 
 
 Where pressure for living accommodations be- 
 comes so great that the demand overwhelmingly 
 exceeds the supply, there is always a migration of 
 workers and their families from one section to an- 
 other. Before such a situation develops, however, 
 the self-interest of the average builder can be 
 trusted to deal with it. Such men keep in very 
 close touch with the development of each section 
 of the city and are quick to seize their opportunity 
 to make a profitable investment. This fear that 
 there will be a lack of shelter is frequently ex- 
 pressed in connection with large public improve- 
 ments. Where it is proposed to tear down 
 unsanitary tenements, or to create a new small 
 park in some crowded quarter, the cry soon goes 
 up that you are depriving the people of their homes 
 and that they will have nowhere to live. There 
 has never been a case in this country where the 
 population thus displaced has suffered. They 
 quickly adapt themselves to the new conditions. 
 In New York, in connection with one public 
 improvement, 10,000 persons were displaced at
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 practically one time and they found homes without 
 difficulty. 
 
 Another erroneous belief is that good houses do 
 not pay. It is true that many so-called model 
 tenement enterprises have not paid. This has 
 not been because the houses were improved 
 buildings, but because they had been either un- 
 wisely planned, extravagantly built or badly 
 managed. 
 
 A picturesque view frequently encountered is 
 that dilapidation is a serious evil. As a rule, it 
 means at most discomfort. It seldom means 
 illness or disease. The popular conception (cer- 
 tainly the newspaper one) of bad housing condi- 
 tions is some small old building in dilapidated 
 condition. This is only a minor evil compared 
 with the really serious conditions which frequently 
 exist in the tall, modern, expensive looking tene- 
 ments of our larger cities, fair on the outside but 
 whited sepulchres, containing within dark rooms 
 and narrow airshafts, poisonous plumbing and 
 countless other evils. A leaky roof is only an 
 intermittent discomfort, but unventilated rooms 
 and bad plumbing are subtle and sure destroyers 
 of health. Housing reform is not to be sought 
 upon a basis of aesthetic advance. It must rest 
 on a much firmer foundation, that of public health 
 and the stability and social welfare of the com- 
 munity. 
 
 That unsanitary houses should be destroyed 
 is another mistaken belief. This is the rock on 
 
 20
 
 SOME POPULAR FALLACIES 
 
 which the bark of housing reform often founders. 
 Frequently the first effort made is to secure the 
 enactment of laws which will permit the destruc- 
 tion of unsanitary buildings. A less drastic and 
 equally effective method is simply to prohibit 
 the occupancy of such houses. If there are houses 
 which are manifestly unfit for human habitation, 
 people should not be permitted to dwell in them. 
 Nothing is to be gained by their destruction. 
 The empty building itself is not dangerous. Why, 
 therefore, should the state destroy property of 
 this kind? The attempt to do so creates an 
 opposition, on the part of property owners, which 
 often sets back many years the whole movement 
 for housing reform. 
 
 Probably one of the most interesting fallacies 
 of all those entertained is the one that rear tene- 
 ments are in themselves bad. I suppose that 
 there is hardly an individual who would not at 
 once express the opinion that the worst type of 
 tenement house is the rear tenement. Such, 
 however, is emphatically not the case. There are 
 bad rear tenements, but there are many good 
 ones many indeed which are far better to live in 
 than many front houses. There is nothing in the 
 fact that the building is located in the rear away 
 from the street which makes the house bad in 
 itself. The determination of whether it is good 
 or bad rests upon other considerations the same 
 considerations indeed which apply to a front 
 house; namely, the amount of open space sur- 
 
 21
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 rounding it, the provision for adequate light and 
 ventilation, reasonable fire protection and proper 
 maintenance and care of the premises. There is 
 a belief quite prevalent that the fact that the rear 
 building is hidden away from the street and access 
 to it must be had through the front building, 
 leads to immorality and deeds of darkness. This, 
 however, is only a belief. There is nothing in the 
 experience of any city to substantiate such a view. 
 I suppose the reason why the rear tenement has 
 such a bad name is because of the failure of the 
 public to carefully analyze the causes of bad 
 conditions. It is true that the death rate in 
 many of the rear tenements has often been much 
 higher than it has been in many of the front 
 houses. To argue from this, post hoc ergo propter 
 hoc, that the high death rate in such buildings is 
 due to the fact that they are rear houses is singu- 
 larly naive. A careful study of the facts shows 
 that the high death rate in many of these buildings 
 is due to a variety of causes. Because they have 
 no view of the street, they naturally command a 
 lower rental, just as the rear apartments of a 
 front building command lower rentals than the 
 street apartments. Moreover, they are generally 
 old buildings and are invariably provided with 
 privies and privy sinks instead of the modern 
 plumbing and sanitary conveniences found in 
 front buildings; they are seldom provided with 
 water supply inside the buildings. For these 
 reasons rents are lower and such buildings are 
 
 22
 
 SOME POPULAR FALLACIES 
 
 usually occupied by the poorest elements of the 
 community. That the death rate should be 
 higher among these classes, handicapped by pov- 
 erty, ill-nourished, and having a constant struggle 
 to make both ends meet, is not surprising. It is 
 manifestly misleading to charge these potent influ- 
 ences to the rear tenement as such. 
 
 On the other hand, there are rear houses that 
 are distinctly bad "back-to-back" tenements, 
 so-called; buildings which practically abut each 
 other in the rear, sometimes with but two or 
 three inches between them, shutting out light 
 and ventilation and creating various kinds of 
 unsanitary conditions. Such dwellings should not 
 be tolerated. Bad rear tenements should not be 
 allowed to be occupied any more than bad front 
 tenements. But there should be no distinction 
 made because of the fact that one is on the street 
 and the other in the yard. 
 
 Finally comes the often-encountered view that 
 the main criterion of the presence or absence of 
 bad conditions is to be found in the death rate. 
 To argue from a low death rate that housing 
 conditions are satisfactory is misleading. It is 
 equally misleading to argue that a high death 
 rate is due primarily to bad housing conditions,^ 
 So many elements enter into the death rate that 
 it is unsafe to generalize from it. In the first 
 place, the death rate is a ratio between two classes 
 of facts: the population and the number of deaths 
 in a given year. The latter fact is generally 
 
 23
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 accurately known; the former fact is almost 
 never accurately known except just at the time 
 when a census has been taken. The population, 
 a very important element in figuring the death 
 rate, is generally therefore an estimate. It is a 
 frequent trick of a municipal administration when 
 it desires to make a good showing in regard to the 
 death rate, to over-estimate the city's growth of 
 population. This is pretty safe, as no one really 
 knows what the city's population is, and figures 
 that are put out can not be successfully disputed. 
 Besides, there is an inherent tendency in most peo- 
 ple to feel a sense of complacent pride in the growth 
 of their own community, and few citizens are in- 
 clined to dispute the accuracy of figures which show 
 what seems to most minds desirable advancement. 
 Other elements which enter into death rates are 
 the nature of occupation, race, diet, industrial con- 
 ditions, and an infinite variety of influences. 
 Furthermore, it is not necessary to base one's 
 judgment with regard to the presence or absence 
 of adverse housing conditions upon questions of 
 death rate. Why, therefore, pay attention to it? 
 If there are bad housing conditions it is a matter 
 easily susceptible of proof. Unsanitary privies, 
 dark rooms, lack of drainage, cellar dwellings, 
 overcrowding and all the other more frequent 
 manifestations of bad housing, if they exist, can 
 be shown. So long as they are there the necessity 
 for remedying them exists. The appeal to the 
 death rate becomes of no moment. 
 
 24
 
 Ill 
 
 CONGESTION AND OVERCROWDING
 
 CERTAIN social problems are inextricably 
 interwoven with the housing problem. Of 
 these, congestion and overcrowding are 
 two of the more important. The terms are not 
 synonymous, nor are they very well understood. 
 We talk about crowding and overcrowding, and 
 congestion of population. What is meant? Where 
 does crowding end and overcrowding begin? 
 When may a district be said to be congested? 
 How many people should occupy an acre of land? 
 Is there any arbitrary standard that can be 
 determined upon? Are we all sure that it is 
 injurious to a community to have, for example, 
 500 people to the acre? And if 500 may be 
 permitted, where is the line to be drawn? Is 
 750 too many, or indeed 1000? Who is to deter- 
 mine? 
 
 Frankly, I do not believe that there is any arbi- 
 trary or fixed standard that can be adopted. In 
 some parts of China where the number of people 
 to the acre is very much less than it is in many 
 parts of modern New York, conditions of living 
 are infinitely worse from the point of view of 
 
 27
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 overcrowding and congestion. It makes a very 
 great difference whether 1000 people to the acre 
 are housed in buildings one and two stories high 
 or whether they are housed in buildings five and 
 six stories high. There may easily be 500 and 
 even 1000 people to the acre living in high build- 
 ings ten or twenty stories high and yet there be no 
 conditions of overcrowding whatever. In some 
 high-class hotels in our larger cities it will be 
 found that there are over 1200 persons to the 
 acre, yet no sensible person dreams of calling such 
 conditions, conditions of overcrowding or con- 
 gestion. 
 
 Congestion and overcrowding are not to be 
 determined by the number of people living on a 
 given area of land. The vital question is the 
 distribution of such population, the actual close 
 proximity in which people live. 
 
 There are two kinds of overcrowding. These 
 should be carefully distinguished. The first is 
 the overcrowding of limited areas of land with an 
 undue population, resulting in congestion. This 
 is the form of overcrowding with which we are 
 more familiar in American cities, especially in 
 the larger ones, but is not the form that is gener- 
 ally meant in the discussion of this question. 
 Overcrowding, as it is known in English and 
 European cities, concerns itself almost entirely 
 with the occupation by an undue number of 
 persons of a limited space in rooms or apartments. 
 This is the great problem in London and, to a 
 
 28
 
 CONGESTION AND OVERCROWDING 
 
 somewhat lesser extent, in some of the larger 
 English and Scotch cities. 
 
 Room overcrowding is a very different thing 
 from land overcrowding; but here, too, there are 
 difficulties in the way of establishing arbitrary 
 standards. What constitutes room overcrowding? 
 The only standard that has been adopted hereto- 
 fore in this country has been the standard of a 
 minimum amount of cubic air space. In most 
 cities this standard has been 400 cubic feet of air 
 for each adult, and 200 cubic feet of air for each 
 child under twelve years of age occupying a room. 
 Such a standard is valueless. To illustrate: A 
 bedroom seven feet wide and ten feet long and nine 
 feet high contains 630 cubic feet of air. Let us as- 
 sume it is well lighted and ventilated, with a large 
 window opening directly on a broad street, and 
 that the room communicates with other rooms 
 with plentiful windows and through ventilation. 
 No better bedroom could be devised from the point 
 of view of health and sanitation, and yet a man 
 and his wife, or two boys fourteen years of age, 
 could not under such a requirement of law legally 
 sleep in this room, because there is not 400 cubic 
 feet of air for each. 
 
 If 400 cubic feet is not the proper minimum, 
 what is the proper minimum? Shall it be 600 or 
 800 or 200? Study of the problems involved 
 leads to the conclusion that not only the question 
 of cubic air space must be considered, but far 
 more important must be the kind of air supplied 
 
 29
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 to the room and the frequency of its renewal. It 
 would be far better to permit a family to sleep in 
 a room containing but 400 cubic feet of air of 
 excellent quality and frequently renewed, than 
 to permit them to sleep in a room containing four 
 times the amount where the renewal was not so 
 frequent nor the source of original supply so 
 satisfactory. It makes a very great difference 
 whether the air comes from a broad street or 
 from a narrow alley, from a large backyard or 
 from a narrow air-shaft. These considerations 
 are generally lost sight of in the discussion of this 
 problem. This question like the question of land 
 overcrowding can not be determined by any arbi- 
 trary standard. 
 
 But while our theoretical standards may vary, 
 and while workable legal limits are yet to be 
 determined, there are undebatable relief measures 
 which may be undertaken. The problem of 
 congestion is largely one of distribution, both 
 within and without the city. Every effort should 
 be made to encourage people to leave the crowded 
 quarters of the large cities and return to country 
 or suburban life. This is easy to say but difficult 
 to accomplish. The causes which have led to the 
 concentration in the cities of this large population 
 militate against its distribution. 
 
 As a rule, people live in cities because they like 
 city life; because they find there social and 
 industrial opportunities which are not to be found 
 in country districts. Those persons in cities, 
 
 30
 
 CONGESTION AND OVERCROWDING 
 
 however, who have a liking and aptitude for rural 
 life should be encouraged to move to the country. 
 To be effective this should be done in an organized 
 way and with a definite realization of what is 
 necessary. The main thing is to insure to them 
 equal or better opportunities for earning their 
 livelihood. Educational and social advantages 
 must be provided as well, if a movement of this 
 kind is to succeed. 
 
 When this has been done, however, and those 
 in the cities who can be induced to seek their 
 fortunes in the country have done so, there will 
 still remain a vast number of people who must be 
 housed in cities. The great majority of the work- 
 ing people will always live there and every effort 
 should be made to see that they are housed under 
 proper conditions. 
 
 Not only should efforts be made to remove 
 people from the city to the country, but attempts 
 should be made, so far as may be practicable, to 
 induce persons living in crowded districts to move 
 to the outlying sections of large cities. Through 
 an organized campaign there should be brought 
 home to them the advantages thus to be found: 
 the cheaper rents attainable, the better light and 
 air, the better school advantages, the opportunity 
 for healthful play for their children, the possibility 
 of quiet and of individual life. 
 
 To thousands, however, this appeal can not be 
 made. Neither country nor suburban life is at- 
 tractive to them. Their enjoyment is found in the 
 
 3'
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 stir of city life, the crowd, the constant social ac- 
 tivity. The easier opportunities for employment, 
 the theatres, the lighted streets, the saloons, the 
 lodge meetings, the dancing academies, churches, 
 settlements, all prove potent attractions, and only 
 a comparative few of the ordinary tenement popu- 
 lation have any desire to leave these things for the 
 advantages of life in the less densely settled dis- 
 tricts. 
 
 In addition to attempts to get people out of the 
 city and to distribute them within the city, if 
 congestion of population is to be overcome and 
 overcrowding prevented, efforts addressed to the 
 problems of land overcrowding and room over- 
 crowding, separately, must be made. There must 
 be devised some practicable plan of restriction of 
 population within the city itself and some adequate 
 method of preventing room overcrowding. The 
 only practicable way to remedy land overcrowding, 
 so far as the future is concerned, is to limit the 
 height of dwellings and also the area of land that 
 may be built upon, thus reducing the number of 
 people who can occupy it. 
 
 This, however, will not remedy existing condi- 
 tions. The only way that these can be improved is 
 by tearing down large areas and rebuilding, follow- 
 ing the precedents established in European cities. 
 Thus far no such scheme has been carried out in 
 any American city. The chief obstacle to it is its 
 excessive cost. When we consider that an ordi- 
 nary block in the tenement districts on the Lower 
 
 32
 
 CONGESTION AND OVERCROWDING 
 
 East Side of New York is worth from $1,000,000 
 to $1,500,000, it is obvious that the city can not 
 embark upon improvement schemes of this nature 
 to a very great extent without imposing insupport- 
 able burdens upon the taxpayers. 
 
 Room overcrowding is bound up with another 
 social problem; namely, the lodger evil. This 
 prevails chiefly among the foreign elements of the 
 population, more especially among the Italians 
 and Poles, and in some cities, the Hungarians and 
 other Slavic races. It also prevails among the 
 Jews in the larger cities. It is fraught with great 
 danger to the social fabric of the country. It 
 means the undermining of family life; often the 
 breaking down of domestic standards. It fre- 
 quently leads to the breaking up of homes and 
 families, to the downfall and subsequent degraded 
 career of young women, to grave immoralities 
 in a word, to the profanation of the home. 
 
 Its economic consequences are also serious. To 
 it may be charged, in large degree, the high rentals 
 which prevail in many cities. Probably no more 
 curious instance occurs of the peculiar intertwin- 
 ing of cause and effect. Often, the inadequate 
 earnings of the poor immigrant make it necessary 
 to supplement the family income by taking in 
 boarders or lodgers. In many cases, such neces- 
 sity does not exist, but the parsimonious habits 
 of the people lead them to adopt this way of 
 adding dollar to dollar. It is hard to tell to what 
 extent the practice is due to necessity and to 
 3 33
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 what extent to avarice. The result is the same in 
 both cases. The effect soon is to raise rents. 
 Landlords are quick to realize that their tenants 
 have augmented the family earnings by sub- 
 letting a portion of their rooms. The rooms at 
 once become more valuable because a larger rev- 
 enue can thus be secured and rents are promptly 
 raised. Thus, in a short time, the tenant is no 
 better off than before; in fact, worse, because the 
 practice has spread and standards of living have 
 been readjusted. The total family income, though 
 now greater, is still relatively where it was before, 
 because of the increased cost of living. 
 
 No adequate method has as yet been devised of 
 effectively preventing room overcrowding. The 
 attempts made thus far have all been in the direc- 
 tion of limiting by law the number of people occu- 
 pying a room with reference to the amount of 
 cubic air space in it. Unfortunately, such a 
 provision is almost impossible of enforcement. 
 In order to enforce it, inspections must be made 
 at night. It is only then that the lodgers and 
 boarders, the chief causes of overcrowding, are to 
 be found. To question the tenement dwellers in 
 the daytime with regard to their practice of taking 
 in boarders or lodgers is to ask them to convict 
 themselves, and such investigations are obviously 
 of little value. To adequately carry on night 
 inspections of the homes of the poor would re- 
 quire an army of inspectors. It would involve, 
 moreover, an invasion of the privacy of the home, 
 
 34
 
 CONGESTION AND OVERCROWDING 
 
 which is repugnant to American institutions. 
 The routing out of workingmen's families after 
 midnight in order to determine whether they 
 have boarders or lodgers living with them would 
 be intolerable. 
 
 To cope with the problem of overcrowding and 
 the lodger evil effectively the law should place 
 upon the landlord the responsibility for an undue 
 number of people in his house, as it has already 
 placed upon him in the case of women of ill- 
 repute responsibility for their character. In 
 certain classes of tenements the taking in of 
 lodgers or boarders, except with the written 
 consent of the landlord, must be prohibited and 
 the landlord must be held responsible for any 
 departure from this rule. This principle has not 
 as yet been recognized by any American city, 
 but it is one that must be established if this evil 
 is to be overcome. 
 
 35
 
 IV 
 
 THE HOUSING PROBLEM A THREE-FOLD 
 
 ONE
 
 IV 
 
 THE HOUSING PROBLEM A THREE-FOLD 
 
 ONE 
 
 THE housing problem is a three-fold one 
 and concerns the future, the present and 
 the past. I put the future first. 
 
 Effort at housing reform should be directed 
 first toward preventing the erection of buildings 
 which are not suitable for people to live in. It 
 is better to shut the stable door before the horse 
 is stolen. The first duty is to safeguard the future, 
 to prevent the growth of new slums, to prevent 
 the creation of types of buildings which will later 
 become a menace to the community. 
 
 The housing problem also concerns the present. 
 Provision must be made for the proper main- 
 tenance of all houses. The state must see to it 
 that the dwellings of the poor of those members 
 of the community least able to protect themselves 
 are maintained in a sanitary condition, are 
 kept in repair, are provided with the necessities 
 of decent living. 
 
 Housing reform also concerns the past. It 
 must remedy the mistakes of earlier years; it 
 must make up for the neglect and carelessness of 
 
 39
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 preceding generations, and must bring about such 
 changes in the older buildings as are necessary 
 to make them fit for human habitation and pre- 
 vent their being an influence for disease and death. 
 
 The housing problem is in another sense a three- 
 fold one and must be considered from three dif- 
 ferent points of view: the sanitary, the structural, 
 the social. From the point of view of sanitation, 
 effort at housing reform should concern itself 
 with provision for adequate light and sufficient 
 ventilation in all buildings, for a sufficient water 
 supply within the houses, preferably in each 
 apartment, and for proper sanitary conveniences. 
 Provision must be made for the collection of 
 garbage, and other waste material with sufficient 
 frequency, for the cleanliness of those parts of the 
 building used in common by several families, with 
 fixed responsibility for their proper maintenance; 
 and where many families live in one house, for 
 the employment of competent housekeepers or 
 janitors to look after the building. In the older 
 houses privy vaults and sinks must be abolished 
 and more modern conveniences substituted; anti- 
 quated earthenware drains must be done away 
 with. 
 
 From the structural point of view, provision 
 should be made for reasonable protection in case 
 of fire. Where many people dwell in one building, 
 fire-escapes that will permit quick and ready 
 egress must be furnished. The determination of 
 what is necessary must depend upon the number 
 
 40
 
 HOUSING PROBLEM A THREE-FOLD ONE 
 
 of people living in the building, the nature of its 
 construction and the effectiveness of the local 
 fire-department service. 
 
 In future buildings methods of construction 
 should be required that will minimize the danger 
 from fire. Here, as elsewhere, one should avoid 
 arbitrary standards. There is a popular concep- 
 tion that fire-proof buildings are essential. They 
 are not. To decree that every tenement house 
 erected in the future shall be of fire-proof con- 
 struction may be a great mistake. The result 
 may be, as it has been in some places, the com- 
 plete cessation of the building of new houses for 
 the accommodation of the poorer members of the 
 community, resulting in a dearth of living accom- 
 modations, forcing up rents and compelling people 
 to live in the older and more dilapidated buildings; 
 thus defeating the very purposes of those who had 
 brought about such enactment. Requirements of 
 such nature must be reasonable; they must address 
 themselves to the facts. 
 
 The decision must be based upon a study of the 
 frequency of fires in a given locality, the number 
 of lives thus lost annually, the cost of building 
 construction, land values, rents and similar ques- 
 tions. Even in the great city of New York, in 
 its most congested districts, where land values are 
 at their highest, where the population of each 
 block frequently ranges from 2500 to 3000 people 
 and where the houses are built up solidly in rows 
 of six-story tenements with twenty families in 
 
 41
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 each, the most ardent advocates of housing reform 
 have not deemed it wise to enact that all future 
 tenement houses even in those sections shall be of 
 fire-proof construction. Instead, a type of build- 
 ing has been permitted to be erected in which 
 the special danger points have special safeguards 
 thrown around them. 
 
 From the social point of view, effort at housing 
 reform must concern itself with a vast host of 
 questions: the questions of overcrowding, con- 
 gestion of population, the lodger evil, the adapta- 
 tion of diverse foreign peoples to American con- 
 ditions, the difficulties of adjustment to the new 
 environment with the impediment of a strange 
 language, the lack of educational opportunities, 
 the sweating system that evil by which homes are 
 turned into workshops and outside workers are 
 brought in to intrude upon the family life the 
 lack of opportunities for healthful recreation and 
 play, and the difficulty of ordinary social inter- 
 course in the cramped surroundings. These are 
 but some of the more important questions which 
 must be carefully studied. Each is a problem in 
 itself, but each is closely interwoven with the 
 housing problem. The housing problem should 
 not be considered without reference to them, nor 
 can these problems be adequately treated without 
 reference to the home environment. 
 
 The housing problem is in another sense, still, 
 a three-fold one. It must be considered from the 
 point of view of the landlord, the tenant and the 
 
 42
 
 HOUSING PROBLEM A THREE-FOLD ONE 
 
 community. There is grave danger that housing 
 reformers in considering the welfare of the tenant 
 may fail to consider the point of view of the land- 
 lord. It must be clearly recognized that the 
 landlord has a right to a legitimate profit on his 
 investment. On the other hand he must not be 
 permitted to wring an undue profit from it at the 
 expense of his tenants. There are all kinds of 
 landlords and all kinds of tenants. Many owners 
 promptly make repairs, provide every reasonable 
 convenience for the occupants and take pride in 
 keeping their property in first-class condition. 
 
 But there are also landlords who neglect their 
 houses, who make no repairs except under com- 
 pulsion, who care little whether their tenants 
 suffer inconveniences and sanitary evils, and 
 whose chief interest is in obtaining from their 
 properties the largest possible return upon their 
 investment. Similarly with regard to the tenants: 
 there are good tenants and bad tenants. The 
 conception of some landlords that most tenants 
 are destructive, disorderly, anxious to get all they 
 can out of the landlord, willing to leave with 
 many months' rent unpaid, is applicable only to 
 a limited number. 
 
 Finally, regard must be had for the welfare of 
 the community. The injury caused to the whole 
 social fabric, the effect of bad housing conditions 
 in producing vice, crime, poverty, disease, sick- 
 ness, death, must be weighed and considered. 
 The community has an interest in such questions 
 
 43
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 quite equal to that of the landlord and the tenant. 
 All these various interests must be fairly consid- 
 ered. No one must unduly preponderate. 
 
 The housing problem is in another sense a three- 
 fold one, and must be considered with regard to 
 the existing conditions, the laws, and their 
 administration. Beyond all other things effort 
 at housing reform must proceed upon carefully 
 ascertained exact knowledge of the conditions 
 which require remedy. The laws which are put 
 into effect to remedy those conditions must not 
 be arbitrary enactments based upon the theoretical 
 views of social enthusiasts, but must be the result 
 of carefully worked-out, practical consideration of 
 the problems involved, and adapted to the peculiar 
 local conditions it is sought to remedy. 
 
 There is a tendency in many communities and 
 a very unfortunate one to copy in a rather unim- 
 aginative way some law enacted in another city, 
 acting apparently upon the hypothesis that what is 
 good for one place is good for another. Housing 
 legislation upon such a basis will not succeed, and 
 should not succeed. While it is true that each 
 city should take advantage to the fullest extent 
 of the experience of other cities, studying the 
 laws that have been there enacted and embodying 
 in their own statutes their best features, the fact 
 remains that the wisest law is one which is exactly 
 fitted to meet the peculiar local conditions. 
 
 It is useless to put forth time and effort in 
 securing the enactment of legislation unless the 
 
 44
 
 HOUSING PROBLEM A THREE-FOLD ONE 
 
 means are provided for its prompt and thorough 
 enforcement. It is a common experience to find 
 communities enacting elaborate laws for the reg- 
 ulation of social evils of various kinds but fail- 
 ing to provide machinery for their enforcement. 
 This may satisfy a desire for intellectual activity 
 on the part of groups of enthusiasts, but can not 
 go far toward remedying adverse social conditions. 
 Nearly every state is thus encumbered with nu- 
 merous laws that are never or seldom enforced. 
 
 Not only must the administrative machinery 
 be provided for by law but adequate financial 
 provision for its support must be made by the 
 local authorities. 
 
 A lesson in this regard is to be learned from 
 New York's experience. Eight years ago a com- 
 prehensive scheme for the improvement of the 
 older tenement houses in the more essential 
 particulars was provided in the Tenement House 
 Act of 1901. Owners were required to remove 
 unsanitary privy sinks, to cut windows into dark 
 rooms, to lighten dark halls, to concrete cellars 
 and to make other structural changes. They 
 were given a year's time in which to do this. 
 Adequate administrative machinery was provided 
 through the creation of a separate city department 
 known as the Tenement House Department, one 
 of whose functions was to see that these changes 
 were carried out. Only now, however, eight 
 years later, has this department received from 
 the local authorities a sufficient appropriation to 
 
 45
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 enable it to do this work. The result is that the 
 larger part of the work has remained undone 
 during all of this time and thousands of the city's 
 population have had to continue life under those 
 adverse conditions which the legislation had de- 
 creed eight years ago should cease. 
 
 46
 
 HOW TO START A MOVEMENT FOR HOUS- 
 ING REFORM
 
 HOW TO START A MOVEMENT FOR HOUS- 
 ING REFORM 
 
 THE failure to remedy bad housing conditions 
 in many communities has been due not so 
 much to lack of understanding of the con- 
 ditions themselves, as to lack of knowledge of the 
 best method of remedying them. The first step 
 is the formation of a committee of public spirited 
 citizens, conscious of the dangerous effects of bad 
 environment and anxious to remove, so far as may 
 be practicable, the adverse conditions under which 
 many people are compelled to live. Such a com- 
 mittee should be carefully selected and organ- 
 ized. Its function is a two-fold one: first, to as- 
 certain the facts and formulate the remedies; 
 second, to educate the community with regard to 
 the conditions discovered and the means at hand 
 for their amelioration. It must therefore be a 
 body sufficiently wise to prosecute its inquiry and 
 urge its reforms in a practical and sane way, and 
 also one that will command public confidence. 
 
 As the questions with which it is to deal are 
 those of building construction, architectural plan- 
 ning, fire protection, sanitation and modern social 
 4 49
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 problems, the committee should preferably be 
 composed of leading representatives of the pro- 
 fessions actively dealing with such problems. 
 Where it is possible, it should have among its 
 members a practical architect, a builder of the 
 better grade, a sanitary engineer or high grade 
 plumber, the chief of the fire department, the 
 superintendent of buildings or similar official, a 
 leading physician, a leading lawyer, a prominent 
 real estate man, a leading social worker either 
 the head of a settlement or of a local charitable 
 society familiar with the conditions under which 
 the poor live and such other prominent citizens 
 as would naturally be interested in a movement 
 of this kind from the humanitarian point of view 
 and whose standing in the community would add 
 weight to the committee. 
 
 But the essential element for success is an 
 efficient and homogeneous committee that com- 
 mands public confidence and can readily work 
 together. No variety of professional experience 
 should outweigh this essential element. 
 
 In selecting the personnel, care should be taken 
 to avoid the appointment of public officials who 
 are merely politicians and neither interested in 
 the inquiry nor actively familiar with the work 
 of their own departments. It is important that 
 the various representatives mentioned should not 
 only be deemed representative by the members of 
 their own professions, but also by the general 
 public. Too much emphasis can not be placed
 
 A MOVEMENT FOR HOUSING REFORM 
 
 upon the desirability of having the committee 
 so constituted that it will seem to the public a 
 practical body. As a rule it is desirable that it 
 should be composed entirely of men. 
 
 The best committee, however constituted, will 
 make little progress unless it secures a competent 
 executive. The difficulty of securing such men 
 has been one of the main reasons why the improve- 
 ment of housing conditions has not made more 
 rapid progress in many American cities. The 
 right man must combine so many different 
 qualities. He must understand practical building 
 construction; he must understand plumbing and 
 modern sanitation; the essential principles of 
 light and ventilation; he must be familiar with 
 the conditions under which the poor live; must 
 be able to discriminate between necessities and 
 conveniences; must have a sense of proportion, an 
 appreciation of values of the relation between 
 what is possible and what is desirable; the ability 
 to present facts in a way that will be convincing 
 to the public; a knowledge of the purposes, 
 methods and scope of social investigations, and 
 an ability to handle the results obtained from 
 such inquiries. He must also possess the faculty 
 of working harmoniously with various groups of 
 people. And above all he must master in advance 
 the arguments of his opponents. 
 
 Every movement for housing reform is a battle. 
 Most of them are protracted wars extending over 
 many years. The leader of the campaign must 
 
 5'
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 have many of the qualities of a good general. 
 Strategy must not be unknown to him. 
 
 Vitally important is the ability to get the point 
 of view of the various interests involved in bad 
 housing conditions. There must be breadth of 
 view, fair-mindedness and tolerance of the rights 
 of others, of the owners as well as of the tenants, 
 if a successful outcome is to be had from such a 
 movement. 
 
 I have said that the functions of an improved 
 housing committee are two-fold: to ascertain the 
 facts, and to educate the community. It would 
 seem a truism to state that the first duty is the 
 ascertainment of the facts, yet probably no one 
 thing is harder to impress upon persons taking up 
 a movement for housing reform than this. It is 
 true that the facts are known in a general way, but 
 that is not what is meant. The facts must be 
 known accurately, carefully and scientifically. 
 There are no short cuts. 
 
 There can be no successful legislation based 
 upon impressions. Reforms not based upon care- 
 fully ascertained facts will be found to have no 
 permanent value. You will but enact a law one 
 year to have it repealed the next. 
 
 The breast-works which defend the law are 
 made of the materials dug out in the investigation.
 
 VI
 
 VI 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS OF A HOUSING 
 INVESTIGATION 
 
 THE purpose of all housing investigations is 
 primarily to find out exactly what the con- 
 ditions are, so that appropriate action may 
 be taken to bring about their amelioration. Such 
 an inquiry, therefore, must be directed to practical 
 ends. It must concern itself not only with present 
 conditions, but with past causes and future ten- 
 dencies. It is not to be treated as a sociological 
 investigation. If it is so treated, it will have 
 little permanent value in improving conditions. 
 Nor is it to be prosecuted from the point of view 
 primarily of increasing the knowledge of the 
 community with regard to the conditions under 
 which people live. That will indeed be one of its 
 important by-products, but its main end should 
 be the formulation of measures by which the ad- 
 verse conditions discovered may be remedied. 
 
 No part of a housing investigation is of more 
 importance than the formulation of the schedules 
 to be used in the inquiry, and no part is usually 
 approached with so little knowledge of the facts 
 to be disclosed. Often because of the interest 
 
 55
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 aroused in the community and the pressure 
 brought by members of the committee, there is 
 the temptation to hurry into the field with in- 
 vestigations, prematurely, before a comprehensive 
 plan has been worked out. Such procedure is a 
 costly waste of effort and money. The results 
 obtained are invariably unsatisfactory, and often 
 many phases of the inquiry have to be done over. 
 A month or more may very well be taken in the 
 preparation of housing schedules, especially where 
 the person making the inquiry comes to the task 
 without special knowledge of such investigations. 
 It will repay the investigator, before adopting his 
 final schedules, to put them to actual test in the 
 field for some days, as it will generally be found 
 that many changes are necessary in order to make 
 the schedules serve their full purpose. 
 
 The preparation of such schedules often taxes 
 all the resources of an investigator. Certain im- 
 portant points should be borne in mind. Expe- 
 rience shows that schedules of this nature should 
 be in card form, thus permitting the filing of 
 the records with regard to individual buildings 
 in a systematic and readily accessible way. The 
 best size card to use is one five inches wide by 
 eight inches long. This is a standard size and can 
 be obtained in stock. Cards any smaller than 
 this will be found insufficient to contain the various 
 facts that it is necessary to ascertain. Different 
 colors should be used for different purposes. 
 
 In general, the various points expected to be 
 56
 
 ESSENTIALS OF A HOUSING INVESTIGATION 
 
 covered should be anticipated and printed upon 
 the card, leaving to the investigator merely the 
 task of checking the various classes of facts dis- 
 covered in the inquiry. This is important for 
 two reasons: first, in order to save the time of the 
 investigator; second, so as to present the same 
 classes of facts in the same way with regard to 
 each building, family or block that may be the 
 subject of the inquiry. If, instead of this, each 
 investigator is allowed to write in what his judg- 
 ment suggests with regard to each class of facts, 
 it will be found, when it is sought to tabulate the 
 results of the inquiry, that they are not susceptible 
 of tabulation, and that, instead of having a clear, 
 concise, definite report of conditions found, there 
 will be nothing more than a mere jumble of im- 
 pressions, from which it will be difficult to give the 
 public a clear conception of the actual conditions. 
 The records should be made in ink. Investi- 
 gators should not be permitted to use note books 
 and to copy the facts from their note books on 
 the cards at home or in the office. Such a method 
 is not only an unnecessary duplication of work 
 but fatal to accuracy. The cards are for actual 
 field use and should be so designed as to facilitate 
 such use. Quite frequently persons making hous- 
 ing schedules arrange the facts that are to be 
 noted on the cards in such order as they happen 
 to occur to them. The result is that often an 
 investigator, if he follows his card schedules (as 
 he must) is called upon to record certain facts 
 
 57
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 with regard to the cellar of a house, is then called 
 upon to record facts with regard to the roof, then 
 suddenly plunged to the cellar again, then to 
 some of the apartments, perhaps on the third floor, 
 then to the out-premises, and so jumped from one 
 portion of the building to another, involving an 
 unnecessary waste of time and effort. 
 
 The properly prepared schedule* arranges the 
 classes of facts to be noted, in the same order on 
 the card as will be actually followed by the inves- 
 tigator in his progress through the building, begin- 
 ning either at the cellar and ascending through the 
 building to the roof, or beginning at the roof and 
 descending to the cellar and out-premises. 
 
 Where there are many apartments or families 
 in a building and it is desired to learn many facts 
 with regard to each apartment or family, it will 
 be found essential to prepare separate schedules 
 for each apartment or family, separating the facts 
 thus ascertained from the general points of in- 
 formation with regard to the building itself. 
 
 In preparing card schedules it is important that 
 the method of printing should embody, so far as 
 practicable, a scheme of classification of the more 
 important classes of facts to be ascertained. 
 Thus, one style and size of type should be used to 
 indicate certain classes of facts, like cleanliness 
 and repair; and a subordinate size and style of 
 type to indicate sub-topics under each one of these 
 classes. 
 
 *See sample schedules, pages 199-203. 
 58
 
 ESSENTIALS OF A HOUSING INVESTIGATION 
 
 How to do away with the conflicting judgment 
 of different individuals is one of the problems 
 that is most perplexing. How is one to tell the 
 number of dark rooms, for example, where there 
 are such conflicting opinions in the minds of the 
 investigators as to what a dark room is? What 
 constitutes a dark room, and a very dark room? 
 Even more confusing are reports rendered with 
 regard to conditions of cleanliness and uncleanli- 
 ness. What is a dirty hall? What one person 
 calls a dirty hall another may call a clean one. 
 Similarly with regard to repair: To be told that a 
 house is in good repair or in poor repair means 
 little. What seems poor repair to one man seems 
 very bad repair to another. 
 
 As a means of counteracting this difficulty so far 
 as may be practicable, a plan has been devised by 
 which it is sought to have the investigator report 
 the conditions found not only by an adjective but 
 also to indicate on a percentage basis his opinion as 
 to the state of affairs disclosed: Thus, in reporting 
 as to cleanliness it is suggested that the following 
 scheme be adopted: That the investigators be 
 allowed to answer only in the following terms: 
 "Very Clean," "Clean," "Dirty," "Somewhat 
 Dirty," "Filthy," and in addition be required to 
 indicate these facts on a percentage basis, thus 
 "Very Clean" shall be deemed 100; "Clean," 80; 
 "Somewhat Dirty," 60; "Dirty," 40; "Filthy," 
 "o." Similarly with regard to repair: The 
 investigator should be permitted to answer in 
 
 59
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 only three terms as to the condition of repair; viz., 
 " Good," " Fair, " " Bad," and these should be nu- 
 merically expressed by 100, 50, o. The obser- 
 vance of these principles will be found to be of 
 great help. 
 
 Another point upon which emphasis should be 
 placed is the importance of providing in the be- 
 ginning of such inquiries for sufficient time and 
 for the expenditure of sufficient funds for the 
 tabulation of the reports after the field work is 
 completed. Often too little provision is made 
 for this phase of the work. It will be found that 
 it takes quite as much time as does the actual 
 ascertainment of the facts in the field. 
 
 As the investigation proceeds, arrangements 
 should be made for securing photographs of typ- 
 ical conditions for use in illustrating the report, 
 as they will greatly enhance its value and effec- 
 tiveness. 
 
 No portion of a housing investigation presents 
 more difficulties than the formulation of the re- 
 port. The most important and vital facts may 
 have been discovered and yet, unless they are 
 properly presented, little value is likely to flow 
 from the investigation. The facts discovered 
 must be presented to the community in such a 
 way as to hold people's attention; to impress 
 upon them in a manner never to be forgotten the 
 conditions under which many are living and the 
 menace of these conditions to the community as 
 a whole. 
 
 60
 
 VII 
 
 MODEL TENEMENTS AND THEIR 
 LIMITATIONS
 
 VII 
 
 MODEL TENEMENTS AND THEIR 
 LIMITATIONS 
 
 IN the popular mind the solution of the hous- 
 ing problem lies in the building of "model 
 tenements." Probably the first suggestion 
 that is made when a group of people take up the 
 housing problem for the first time is to build a 
 model tenement. It is strange that intelligent 
 people should believe that the building of one 
 house of this kind in any city can have any very 
 appreciable effect in solving the housing problem. 
 I doubt whether such belief is ever consciously 
 held. What happens is that people see bad 
 housing conditions and say to themselves: "The 
 poor should have decent houses to live in. They 
 have built model tenements in other places. In 
 some cities they have been very successful. Sup- 
 pose we build one." Underlying this is the desire 
 to get quick results, to see quickly realized the 
 tangible product of one's efforts. 
 
 Such a point of view indicates lack of imagina- 
 tion, a failure to appreciate the extent and influ- 
 ence of the bad conditions that exist and the 
 limitations of the influence of one model tenement. 
 
 63
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 Perhaps back of all, in the minds of those who 
 really do think this far, is the belief that it is 
 necessary to demonstrate: first, that the poor 
 really want improved housing conditions; second, 
 that model tenements will pay in that particular 
 city and, third, that when they have demonstrated 
 these two things the influence of their effort will 
 be so great that it will lead other persons to build 
 similar houses and thus gradually provide more 
 accommodations of this nature for the working 
 people. 
 
 It would hardly seem necessary to comment on 
 the state of the philanthropic education of a 
 community that needs to have demonstrated to 
 it in so expensive a way the fact that the poor 
 desire improved and decent dwellings. It is a 
 singularly provincial view which thinks it neces- 
 sary to show that model tenements will pay in 
 a particular locality, in view of their success for 
 over fifty years in many of the large cities of the 
 world. 
 
 Finally, the belief that the ordinary com- 
 mercial builder will be led to build improved 
 tenements because of the object lesson afforded 
 by the particular model tenement in question, is 
 chimerical. The commercial builder is not in- 
 fluenced by such considerations. His sole inter- 
 est in building houses is to make money. He is 
 going to build those houses that will net him the 
 largest return, unless he is prevented by legis- 
 lation. Nor will he voluntarily give up any 
 
 64
 
 MODEL TENEMENTS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS 
 
 share of his profits in order that the future tenants 
 of the building may have more conveniences. 
 This is not a theoretical view. There is no city in 
 America where model tenements have been built 
 in which they have materially influenced the 
 ordinary commercial builder. 
 
 That persons really seeking to improve housing 
 conditions should be willing to limit their efforts 
 to the construction and management of a model 
 tenement and be satisfied with the narrow results 
 that flow from such an effort is disappointing. 
 They do not seem to ask themselves: " How many 
 people will this effort of ours reach? While we 
 are building this one model tenement, which may 
 at the best house 50 families or 250 people, how 
 many unsanitary tenements will be constructed 
 by speculative builders and how many thousands 
 of people will be compelled to live in them?" 
 
 Nor do they ask, " How many families are still 
 being compelled to live in the old, dilapidated, un- 
 sanitary houses in which they now live?" There 
 seems to be no appreciation of the relation of their 
 efforts to the community as a whole; no concep- 
 tion on their part of the number of people for 
 whom proper housing accommodations must be 
 provided and their total inability to meet these 
 needs through the building of one or even several 
 model tenements. The question of the distribu- 
 tion of such houses is also ordinarily lost sight 
 of. People fail to realize that the building of one 
 model tenement in the east end of the town is of 
 5 65
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 very little advantage in improving the housing 
 conditions of the people in the west end or in the 
 south end or in some other quarter. 
 
 The building of model tenements is in no com- 
 munity a solution of the housing problem. If 
 there are large numbers of people living in tene- 
 ments insufficiently ventilated, in rooms partly 
 underground, the building of a model tenement, 
 even in that neighborhood, will remedy these 
 conditions only for the few who live in it, and as 
 long as conditions remain unchanged, people will 
 continue to suffer under them. The situation of 
 the thousands of people who must still live in 
 houses that are dilapidated and out of repair^*. - 
 is in no way improved by the building of a model 
 tenement in their city. If many families must 
 still live in rooms the majority of which are dark, 
 the building of a model tenement does not help 
 them. If thousands of people are compelled to 
 live without adequate water supply and with 
 unsanitary plumbing, the building of a model 
 tenement in no way improves their condition. 
 
 The only way to improve the bad housing condi- 
 tions that exist defective plumbing, dark rooms, 
 unsanitary premises and all the other evils is to 
 improve those conditions; namely, to prohibit 
 cellar dwellings and to compel the owners by legal 
 enactment to let light into the rooms, to clean up 
 the premises and keep them clean, to provide 
 water supply, &c. 
 
 Moreover, good intentions do not make a model 
 66
 
 MODEL TENEMENTS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS 
 
 tenement. To build a successful one requires a 
 knowledge of the conditions under which the poor 
 live; familiarity with the best and wisest methods 
 of planning; an appreciation of the peculiar local 
 conditions which exist in each neighborhood and 
 the selection of the appropriate locality for the 
 building. Even when all these requirements are 
 observed, the whole enterprise may be wrecked 
 because of the inability of the persons interested 
 in it to properly manage it. The management of 
 a tenement house is not an easy task, especially 
 where the building contains a considerable num- 
 ber of people of foreign nationalities. Too often 
 the persons interested in such enterprises are un- 
 familiar with the actual conditions under which 
 the poorer people live, and are apt either to be 
 extravagant in the construction of the building, 
 to go to unnecessary expense, to waste space in 
 unwise planning, or to so manage the house after 
 it is erected that it becomes a failure. 
 
 The history of the first model tenement in New 
 York is strikingly interesting. It was built in 
 1855 by a group of public-spirited citizens who 
 desired to improve living conditions. It was 
 known as the "Workmen's Home." One of the 
 most interesting things connected with it was the 
 statement made in the prospectus, that " Every 
 room is well ventilated, having air flues from each 
 to the roof." When it is known that there were 
 on each floor twenty-eight entirely dark bedrooms, 
 with only such ventilation as might be obtained 
 
 67
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 from the public hallways or from a flue about the 
 thickness of one brick in one of the walls, this 
 statement seems rather astonishing to our present- 
 day notions of what constitutes adequate light and 
 ventilation. A few years after the building was 
 erected it degenerated into one of the worst houses 
 in the city and became the resort of thieves, 
 prostitutes and the criminal classes generally. 
 
 Another house built somewhat more recently 
 has never been able to pay more than three per 
 cent on the investment, sometimes not that, 
 because an undue amount of land was left vacant 
 and the building was unwisely planned. A third 
 experiment of this nature recently terminated after 
 considerable financial loss. After a life of seven- 
 teen years, the property was abandoned by its 
 philanthropic owners and sold to some real estate 
 speculators, who shortly after altered the building, 
 with the announcement that they found it neces- 
 sary to do so to make it a paying proposition and 
 to bring it up to the standards demanded by the 
 tenants. 
 
 The failure of these enterprises does not indicate 
 that model tenements can not be built that will 
 succeed, but does point to the fact that there are 
 difficulties to be encountered which the average 
 philanthropic person without experience does not 
 think of when it is proposed to start an enterprise 
 of this kind. 
 
 The various model tenement enterprises in this 
 country have manifested themselves in two forms. 
 
 68
 
 MODEL TENEMENTS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS 
 
 First, the building of improved houses with the 
 expressed intention of furnishing comfortable and 
 pleasant living accommodations to the poorer 
 members of the community at rents lower than the 
 prevailing rentals. Such enterprises must be re- 
 garded strictly as charity. They are very undesir- 
 able and exert a pauperizing influence as do other 
 forms of outdoor relief. They also invariably in- 
 jure the cause of housing reform. 
 
 The other form of effort, frequently designated 
 by the title " Philanthropy and Five Per cent," is 
 found in the work of those persons who, recognizing 
 the unfortunate effect of such charity, build model 
 tenements with the determination that their work 
 shall be conducted as a business enterprise; that 
 unless they can get a fair return upon the money in- 
 vested it shall not be carried on; and that the ac- 
 commodations furnished shall not be at rates lower 
 than the prevailing rents in the neighborhood. 
 Such enterprises have in most cities been success- 
 ful. They have paid a fair return on the invest- 
 ment, generally about five per cent; in a few cases 
 more, in a number of cases less. The most success- 
 ful of them are the very excellent buildings of Mr. 
 Alfred T. White in Brooklyn, the first of which was 
 erected in 1877, and those of the City and Subur- 
 ban Homes Company of New York City, which 
 date from 1896. In Boston there are also several 
 companies which have been uniformly successful 
 in this field of effort. 
 
 The great objection to the building of model 
 69
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 tenements as a solution of the housing problem 
 is that it means, as a rule, the complete diversion 
 of the interest, energy and financial support of 
 benevolent people who genuinely desire to improve 
 the condition of the poor away from lines of effort 
 that are fundamentally corrective towards those 
 that are merely palliative. Until adequate restric- 
 tive legislation has been passed and the certainty 
 of its enforcement secured, there should be no 
 talk of any other form of effort in housing reform. 
 
 Those who contemplate building model tene- 
 ments before this has been accomplished, should 
 clearly recognize that they are not making any 
 substantial contribution to the solution of the 
 housing problem; that they are benefiting the 
 few to the exclusion of the many; that they are, 
 at best, cultivating one small corner, while the 
 length and breadth of the field remains untilled. 
 
 The same amount of energy and effort that is 
 put ordinarily into the formation of a model 
 tenement company and the building and manage- 
 ment of one or two groups of model tenements, 
 applied with proper intelligence to a movement 
 for legislation preventing the construction of bad 
 types of dwellings, insuring the construction of 
 good ones, and securing the proper maintenance 
 of all dwellings, will yield a thousandfold greater 
 results. 
 
 The community must see to it that houses 
 are not built in the future that are unfit for its 
 citizens to live in in a word, that structurally 
 
 70
 
 MODEL TENEMENTS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS 
 
 every tenement house in the future shall be a 
 model tenement. The community must also see 
 to it that the homes of the poorer classes are 
 maintained in a decent and sanitary condition. 
 It takes more effort in the beginning; it requires 
 more skill, more patience, more imagination; one 
 must be willing to wait a few years to see the 
 fruition of one's efforts. But when once realized 
 they are realized practically for all time. 
 
 The relative extent of the influences resulting 
 from the building of a model tenement and the 
 influences resulting from the enactment of proper 
 housing laws is seen in the actual experience of 
 different American cities. The experience of New 
 York, where the greatest effort for housing reform 
 has been made and for a longer period of time than 
 in any other place, affords a striking illustration. 
 The movement for housing reform in that city 
 was begun over sixty years ago. During that time 
 various similar movements have been organized at 
 intervals of about ten years. The first organized 
 movement was forty years ago. 
 
 During these forty years, through the efforts of 
 philanthropically inclined persons, there have been 
 built in the Borough of Manhattan 25 groups of 
 model tenements equivalent to 89 separate houses, 
 providing accommodations for 3588 families or 
 17,940 persons. In the same period of time the 
 speculative builder has built approximately 27,100 
 tenement houses, most of them of a very objec- 
 tionable type, unsanitary buildings, with many 
 
 7'
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 dark rooms, narrow air-shafts, improper ventila- 
 tion, inadequate plumbing and absence of proper 
 sanitary conveniences, insufficient privacy and 
 great danger in case of fire. In these buildings 
 are housed approximately 253,510 families or over 
 one million and a quarter of people (1,267,550). 
 That is, while philanthropic people in this period 
 have been building model tenements for 17,000 
 people, the ordinary builder, unrestrained by ade- 
 quate restrictive legislation, has provided unsan- 
 itary homes for 1,267,550 people. 
 
 In other words, for every 13 people who have 
 been provided with model tenements, 1000 others 
 have been condemned to live in unsanitary ones. 
 
 Had the same effort which went to the building 
 and management of these model tenements been 
 expended in securing the enactment and enforce- 
 ment of proper housing laws, most of the housing 
 evils in New York City would not exist to-day. 
 That this is not a theoretical view is fully proven 
 by the operation of the present tenement house 
 law. This law, enacted in 1901, was the first 
 adequate legislation to control and regulate the 
 future type of tenement house in this city and 
 ensure the building of houses with sufficient light 
 and ventilation, proper sanitation, privacy and 
 reasonable protection against fire. Every house 
 built under its operation is, in these essential 
 particulars, equal to the best model tenements 
 constructed in New York in recent years. 
 
 During the period of seven years in which this 
 72
 
 MODEL TENEMENTS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS 
 
 law has been in operation philanthropic persons 
 interested in the building of model tenements have 
 built 13 groups of buildings, equivalent to about 
 37 separate houses, providing living accommoda- 
 tions for 1871 families or 9,355 persons. During 
 the same period the ordinary commercial specu- 
 lative builder, building for his own profit and with- 
 out any thought of the welfare of his tenants, has 
 built 21,761 houses providing accommodations 
 for 253,255 families or over one million and a 
 quarter persons (1,266,275), equal in the essential 
 respects above noted to these model tenements. 
 
 To put it in another way, philanthropy in this 
 period has provided but seven-tenths of one per 
 cent of the improved living conditions while 99^$- 
 per cent has been provided by the speculative 
 builder restrained and controlled by wise legisla- 
 tion. 
 
 And this has all been brought about by the 
 enactment of a law which compels the building of 
 proper houses and forbids the erection of others. 
 
 Houses once built stay a long time. It will be 
 generations before bad types of houses are de- 
 stroyed, and when structurally wrong, it is diffi- 
 cult, almost impossible, to adequately improve 
 them. 
 
 73
 
 VIII 
 
 MUNICIPAL TENEMENTS AND MUNICIPAL 
 REGULATION
 
 VIII 
 
 MUNICIPAL TENEMENTS AND MUNICIPAL 
 REGULATION 
 
 WITH the increasing trend in this country 
 in recent years toward municipal opera- 
 tion of public utilities and the extension 
 of municipal functions generally, there has been a 
 growing demand for the construction and manage- 
 ment of tenement houses by the municipality. 
 
 It is no part of the function of this book to enter 
 upon a discussion of state socialism or the relative 
 advantages and disadvantages of the municipal 
 operation of public utilities. The question we 
 have to consider is whether the housing problem 
 in any given city will be best solved by having 
 the municipality undertake the building and man- 
 agement of tenement houses. 
 
 This is a question which must be settled by 
 each city with reference to its experience in the 
 conduct of its municipal affairs. The experience 
 of other American cities in this direction must also 
 be taken advantage of. 
 
 Now what are the conclusions which lead to the 
 belief that the solution of the housing problem is 
 to be found along such lines? The argument 
 
 77
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 most commonly advanced by the advocates of 
 municipal tenements is that such enterprises have 
 been carried on, on a very large scale, in other 
 countries, especially in Germany and Great Brit- 
 ain, and have been very successful. 
 
 That municipal tenements have succeeded in 
 Europe, is hardly a reason for urging such an 
 experiment in America. Political conditions here 
 are totally different. Here there is not the same 
 tenure of office in municipal administration. 
 Permanency of administration is essential to suc- 
 cess in such enterprises. The shifting of respon- 
 sible officers every two or four years in itself 
 precludes the possibility of success. 
 
 Moreover, no European city certainly not the 
 great cities of England, Scotland and Germany 
 where such enterprises have had their greatest suc- 
 cess has had to deal with anything but a homoge- 
 neous population. No such city has been called 
 upon as American cities are called upon to as- 
 similate a constantly increasing crowd of immi- 
 grants, representing nearly every nationality in 
 the world. Nor have such cities had to face the 
 problem of adjusting their municipal government 
 to widely varying standards and methods of living, 
 hampered by the inability of the varied population 
 to speak and understand a common language. 
 
 The advocates of municipal tenements, recog- 
 nizing that many of the housing evils of to-day are 
 due to the failure of individual landlords to realize 
 their responsibilities, undoubtedly believe that if 
 
 78
 
 MUNICIPAL TENEMENTS AND REGULATION 
 
 once the city becomes a landlord it will have a 
 higher sense of responsibility, and that the public 
 will hold it to a higher standard of administration. 
 It is also probably their view, even though not 
 often consciously expressed, that the city will not 
 enter upon such an enterprise with the idea of 
 making money from it, and that, therefore, the 
 money that now goes to the profit of landlords and 
 builders could be devoted either to the reduction 
 of rents or to the building of better houses and 
 the provision of more comforts and conveniences 
 than are now enjoyed by the ordinary tenement- 
 house dweller. 
 
 Taking up the first of these arguments, that a 
 higher standard of administration in the manage- 
 ment of tenement houses may be expected from 
 the city government than is now had from numer- 
 ous individual owners, let us consider what basis 
 in fact there is in the experience of any city in 
 America to warrant such a belief. In the first 
 place, who are the people who actually will manage 
 the municipal tenements? In every American 
 city, if this experiment were undertaken, the 
 management would necessarily be left to one of 
 two classes of persons: either politicians, ap- 
 pointed to office for political reasons, or persons 
 appointed to office as a result of competitive civil 
 service examination. 
 
 Is there any doubt as to the kind of tenement 
 house management that would result from placing 
 the control of numerous tenements in the hands 
 
 79
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 of the ordinary politician? Hardly more than 
 mere allusion need be made to the obvious oppor- 
 tunities for political patronage afforded by the 
 municipal operation of tenement houses. How 
 difficult it would be to withstand the appeals of 
 the district leader that families about to be dis- 
 possessed for failure to pay their rent promptly 
 should be permitted to remain in the city's 
 tenements until such time as they could hope to 
 meet their obligations; and how that time would 
 lengthen from month to month! How important 
 would be the power before election time of assign- 
 ing the municipal dwellers to various districts, 
 and what tempting opportunities this would offer 
 for the colonizing of voters ! City life is sufficiently 
 complex now and the municipal problem suf- 
 ficiently difficult, without further encumbering it 
 with the numerous complications which would 
 result from municipal tenements. 
 
 On the other hand, what sort of administration 
 of such enterprises could be expected from the 
 kind of person that would be appointed as a result 
 of a civil service examination? Anyone who has 
 administered public office in any of our large 
 cities and been compelled to appoint his sub- 
 ordinates by this method knows how difficult it is, 
 as a rule, to secure in this way, men of the requisite 
 experience and capacity for administrative posi- 
 tions. 
 
 In addition to the difficulties to be encountered 
 in securing the right kind of officers to administer 
 
 80
 
 MUNICIPAL TENEMENTS AND REGULATION 
 
 such enterprises, are the very serious difficulties 
 with which public officers must contend, in the 
 nature of restrictive legislation, which hampers 
 the free management of public affairs provisions 
 of city charters and various enactments of legis- 
 latures framed with an intent to prevent corrup- 
 tion, and all of which would especially hamper and 
 obstruct such an official in the performance of his 
 duties. For instance, in several cities no contract 
 amounting to $1,000 or more can be let without 
 public bidding and without advertisement for a 
 period of several weeks, and then the official 
 in question is compelled by law to award such 
 contract to the lowest bidder. 
 
 If cities are to embark upon municipal operation 
 of tenement houses, most of our present laws with 
 regard to the conduct of public affairs will have 
 to be wiped off the statute books. The civil ser- 
 vice laws in many cases will also prove a serious 
 bar to proper and efficient administration. The 
 inability of a public officer to readily and promptly 
 discharge an incompetent employe would seriously 
 complicate matters. What a delicious situation 
 it would be where the janitor or housekeeper of 
 a tenement house could not be discharged for 
 incompetence except after a trial, with the pro- 
 ceedings subject to review by the courts upon 
 ceriiorari! 
 
 If the city is to enter the field of building opera- 
 tions and compete with private capital and is to 
 build its houses without thought of profit, private 
 6 81
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 enterprise will in a short time be driven out of the 
 field. It can not compete with municipal under- 
 taking. The result will be that in a short time 
 the municipality will find that it must occupy 
 the entire field. The only houses that will then 
 be built for the accommodation of the poor will 
 be built by the city. Private builders will have 
 ceased to operate. What this means can best be 
 appreciated when it is understood that in the City 
 of New York for example, one hundred and twelve 
 million dollars' worth of tenement houses were 
 built during the year 1906. That the city should 
 embark upon so vast an enterprise as the provi- 
 sion of dwellings for the majority of its citizens 
 is not to be contemplated. 
 
 This question, however, is not to be determined 
 upon any theoretical basis. The question which 
 each community must face is: What is there 
 in the experience of that particular city in its 
 municipal administration that would indicate that 
 those entrusted with the administration of the 
 city's affairs are likely to build and manage tene- 
 ment houses in a better way than they are now 
 built and managed by individual owners? 
 
 This is a matter which it should not be difficult 
 to decide at any time. The citizens of any com- 
 munity have before them at all times a constant 
 object lesson as to the efficiency of their municipal 
 officers and the desirability of entrusting to them 
 new and enlarged functions. Shall we bond 
 ourselves, the citizens may ask, or increase our 
 
 82
 
 MUNICIPAL TENEMENTS AND REGULATION 
 
 tax rate, to enter upon the experiment of munic- 
 ipal ownership and operation of tenement houses, 
 and by this means secure better homes for the 
 masses of our working people? Are we likely, not 
 merely with our present administration but with 
 the kind of administration that we have generally 
 had in past years in this town, to have such tene- 
 ment houses properly managed? 
 
 The decision must necessarily rest upon the 
 answer that can be made to the questions: How 
 are our city officers performing the functions with 
 which they are now charged? Are our streets 
 being properly cleaned? Is our police force being 
 wisely administered? Do gambling houses and 
 evil resorts exist? Do public officers sell privileges 
 to practice iniquity? Do corruption and crime 
 flourish? Are our public charities administered as 
 well as they would be administered through pri- 
 vate societies? Is our public school system what 
 it should be? Is our Water Department a source 
 of revenue to the city? Are the city's affairs in 
 general adequately administered? Upon the an- 
 swers to such questions must the decision rest. 
 It would seem that we can wisely postpone so 
 important an experiment until we have achieved 
 better municipal administration of those functions 
 of government which now engage the attention of 
 the authorities. 
 
 There is no arbitrary principle which can be laid 
 down deciding that one thing is a municipal 
 function and another is not. The determination 
 
 83
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 of what shall be done by the city and what shall 
 be done by individuals must rest primarily upon 
 the consideration of which can do it most advan- 
 tageously for the community. If it is clear that 
 the city can best perform any particular function 
 with the kind of administration a community is 
 likely to have most of the time, not the kind it 
 may happen to have at some particular and ex- 
 ceptional period, but the kind that its own expe- 
 rience through a number of years indicates is 
 generally likely to prevail, it is clear that the 
 city should be entrusted with that function. If, 
 however, experience indicates the opposite, it is 
 far better to continue to leave to private indi- 
 viduals the performance of these responsibilities. 
 Moreover, what is to be gained by having the 
 government thus extend its functions? Do the 
 advocates of such a plan expect to demonstrate 
 that houses which are sanitary can be built and 
 pay a fair return on the money invested? This has 
 been demonstrated over and over again in the 
 past fifty years. Do they expect that by this 
 method they will be sure that all tenement houses 
 which are erected in the future will be sanitary and 
 provide proper accommodations for the persons 
 who are to live in them? This result has already 
 been obtained by tenement house laws, under 
 which no houses can be constructed which do not 
 provide such accommodations. If the laws did 
 not accomplish this result, the remedy would be 
 to amend the laws. 
 
 84
 
 MUNICIPAL TENEMENTS AND REGULATION 
 
 The determination of this whole question is to 
 be found in a middle course between the two 
 extremes urged. Housing evils can not be 
 remedied if private individuals are permitted, 
 without restraint, to neglect the rights, comforts 
 and welfare of their tenants. On the other hand, 
 housing evils in America are not to be remedied by 
 having government embark upon the experiment 
 of the municipal ownership and operation of 
 tenement houses. The solution of the question is 
 to be found in the regulation of such enterprises 
 by the state or municipality, as the case may be. 
 
 It is eminently the right of the state and of 
 each community to see to it that people are not 
 permitted to live under conditions which make for 
 poverty, sickness, disease and death; which pro- 
 duce pauper, criminal and vicious citizens, whom 
 the state is subsequently called upon to support 
 and reform. 
 
 The state has not only a right but a duty to 
 perform and must say to private individuals: 
 "Thus far you may go, but no farther. You shall 
 not be permitted to build a house in which people 
 ought not to live; you shall not be permitted to 
 so mis-manage your house that it is unhealthful 
 or dangerous for people to live in it." It is along 
 the lines of such regulation that the solution of the 
 housing problem is to be found in every American 
 community. 
 
 It is by the exercise of the police power of the 
 state that this problem is to be met. The state 
 
 85
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 can most appropriately extend the strong arm of 
 the law toward those weaker members of the 
 community who are unable to protect themselves. 
 It is clearly within its duties to protect the com- 
 munity to the fullest degree from the consequences 
 of lack of foresight and from the willingness on 
 the part of individuals to exploit their weaker 
 brothers. 
 
 There are, however, constitutional and legal 
 limitations which must be observed, and it is well 
 that there are such limitations. It is not the 
 function of the state to impose upon its citizens 
 through legislative mandate the desires of a lim- 
 ited number of the community to secure conve- 
 niences and comforts. Housing legislation must 
 deal solely with necessities, with things that re- 
 late to the public welfare. It must distinguish 
 between what is desirable and what is essential, 
 between what a philanthropist may voluntarily do 
 and what the state may legally require. 
 
 86
 
 IX 
 
 ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF A HOUSING 
 LAW
 
 IX 
 
 ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF A HOUSING 
 LAW 
 
 IF the solution of the housing problem is to be 
 found chiefly in legislation preventing the 
 erection of objectionable buildings and se- 
 curing the adequate maintenance of all buildings, 
 it is important that such legislation should be based 
 upon sound principles and its limitations clearly 
 defined. 
 
 Such laws are pre-eminently for the use of lay- 
 men. They must be clearly understood not only 
 by builders and architects, but also by owners of 
 small properties, who are often of foreign extrac- 
 tion, frequently illiterate and unable to understand 
 complicated legal phrases. The first requisite, 
 therefore, is clearness. What the law intends 
 must be quickly and readily grasped. The laws 
 should also be concise in form. Their provisions 
 should be expressed in short, separate sentences, 
 not in long, involved paragraphs. Precision is of 
 vital importance. All terms should be carefully 
 defined. On the other hand, acts of this nature 
 must be so drawn as to stand the test in the courts. 
 In a word, they should be as if written by laymen 
 
 89
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 for laymen, and yet at the same time so carefully 
 drawn that every word has its exact legal weight 
 and says neither more nor less than is intended. 
 
 In formulating such legislation, one of the essen- 
 tial considerations is the importance of securing 
 uniformity of treatment for all persons affected 
 by its provisions. There must be no discrimina- 
 tion between individuals, nor any opportunity for 
 such discrimination. 
 
 One of the first questions to be determined is 
 with reference to the granting of discretionary 
 power to the various enforcing authorities. In 
 the earlier attempts at housing reform, the law- 
 making bodies as a rule hesitate to formulate with 
 care and precision the exact requirements to be 
 imposed upon builders and owners. Instead, 
 realizing that their insufficient technical knowledge 
 makes them unable to anticipate the various 
 practical questions that may arise, they enact 
 sweeping prohibitions and leave the details to 
 the judgment of the Superintendent of Buildings 
 or Commissioner of Health. 
 
 While theoretically in many cases it would seem 
 desirable to entrust discretionary power to the 
 enforcing officials in fact many people believe 
 that laws of this nature can not be fairly enforced 
 without it the experience of most cities shows 
 that the granting of discretionary power has in 
 nearly every case led to abuse and ultimately to 
 nullification of the law. If one stops to consider 
 it, it is not strange that this should be so. What 
 
 90
 
 ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF A HOUSING LAW 
 
 generally happens is well illustrated in the ex- 
 perience of New York City. 
 
 Here in 1895 it was provided in a law enacted 
 in that year, that no tenement house erected after 
 that date should occupy more than 65 per cent of 
 the lot. This was the clear intention of the 
 framers of the law. They, however, added a 
 clause to the effect that where the light and ven- 
 tilation of a building was materially improved the 
 Superintendent of Buildings might permit a greater 
 percentage of the lot to be occupied, but in no 
 case more than 75 per cent. In a word, they de- 
 parted from their original purpose of definitely 
 limiting the amount of land to be occupied, be- 
 lieving that the enforcing officer might be per- 
 mitted to use his judgment and permit a larger 
 proportion to be covered in special cases. 
 
 Now what actually happened? Within a year, 
 every tenement house that was erected occupied 
 the full 75 per cent of the lot. No one even thought 
 of covering any less and from the very nature of 
 things, nothing else could have been expected. 
 If one architect presents a plan for a new building 
 and the Superintendent of Buildings permits him 
 to occupy 75 per cent of the lot, a competing archi- 
 tect a few weeks later in submitting his plans will 
 demand that he too be permitted to occupy as 
 much. So gradually every architect insists upon 
 his right to cover as much of the lot as his pre- 
 decessors have done. 
 
 There are, however, graver abuses connected 
 9
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 with the grant and exercise of discretionary power. 
 Nothing leads to municipal corruption so rapidly 
 as leaving indefinitely to a single official the deter- 
 mination of what shall be done in individual cases 
 without possibility of review. Favored architects 
 in a short time, because of their friendship or 
 political influence, or because of a corrupt under- 
 standing with the enforcing official, are gradually 
 able to crowd out of business competitors without 
 these advantages or who are unwilling to adopt 
 the methods employed by their less scrupulous 
 rivals. In a short time a situation develops by 
 which a few firms of architects or builders control 
 the entire business of a community. 
 
 Further forms of corruption and favoritism are 
 found in practices which flow from this situation, 
 some of which have become the more accepted 
 and most successful forms of modern municipal 
 corruption. The methods of direct stealing from 
 the city which were in vogue some years ago are 
 no longer employed by even the most corrupt 
 public officials. Most of the municipal corruption 
 at the present time is to be found in the furnishing 
 of inside information by which the political friends 
 or business associates of public officers are enabled 
 to make advantageous contracts and business 
 deals the "Honest Graft" of recent fame. 
 
 The way in which this operates in the building 
 industry and in the enforcement of building laws 
 is intimately associated with this question of dis- 
 cretionary power. What often happens is that 
 
 92
 
 ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF A HOUSING LAW 
 
 the corrupt city official refuses to grant to some 
 architect or builder what he has granted to many 
 others, stating that the matter is within his dis- 
 cretion. After several negotiations it then devel- 
 ops that if the contract for erecting the building 
 in question which may in many cases amount 
 to thousands of dollars is placed with the right 
 firm of builders, or if a certain kind of material 
 is used, it becomes possible for the city official 
 "upon further consideration of the matter" and 
 the presentation of "new arguments" to grant 
 authority to utilize methods of construction which 
 had previously been denied. 
 
 1 1 is a very bad principle to make your enforc- 
 ing officer also your law-making body. The two 
 functions should be kept separate. If the Super- 
 intendent of Buildings or the Health Commissioner 
 is competent to determine what the requirements 
 shall be in a given case, there is no reason why 
 he should not indicate these facts in advance to 
 the members of the Legislature and have such 
 determination embodied in the laws of the State, 
 thus enabling all citizens to know with certainty 
 what they may do and may not do, and so remove 
 opportunities for favoritism and corruption. 
 
 Every group of persons taking up housing reform 
 will have to face this situation. Pressure will 
 always be brought to bear upon them by the local 
 enforcing authorities to grant to them large dis- 
 cretionary power. Experience shows that this is 
 not desirable. With regard to buildings erected 
 
 93
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 in the future, there should be no discretionary 
 power of any kind. In considering, however, 
 laws requiring the structural alteration or recon- 
 struction of the older houses, the situation is 
 different. Here it will be found, owing to the 
 widely varying conditions in different buildings, 
 which make impracticable the carrying out of rigid 
 requirements, that a limited discretion must be 
 given to the enforcing authorities. 
 
 In general, however, every effort should be made 
 to avoid indefinite and vague grants of power. 
 Pains should be taken, even though it takes a 
 longer time and involves more work, to state in the 
 law precisely what owners and builders may do. 
 Wherever it is necessary to grant discretionary 
 power it should be limited and clearly defined. 
 Provision should be made for proper publicity 
 in connection with the exercise of such power, 
 so that those interested may acquaint themselves 
 with the rulings that have been made and may 
 insist that the privileges which have been granted 
 to others shall be equally granted to them. 
 
 In formulating a housing law its relation to 
 other similar statutes must be taken into careful 
 consideration. In nearly every community there 
 will be found sanitary codes or ordinances, build- 
 ing and health laws and plumbing regulations. 
 In each one of these will be found something bear- 
 ing on housing conditions. Any tenement house 
 act to be effective must be framed with reference 
 to these other closely allied subjects. There is 
 
 94
 
 ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF A HOUSING LAW 
 
 danger in this work, especially where various 
 portions of housing codes are formulated by sub- 
 committees of a larger body, of framing each 
 individual provision only with reference to itself 
 and without regard to its place in the general 
 scheme or plan. Care must be taken to prevent 
 conflict between different provisions of the same 
 act and also to avoid similar conflict between the 
 provisions of the housing law in question and 
 similar enactments already on the statute books. 
 
 Future tendencies must be considered as well 
 as present conditions. An excellent illustration 
 of this is had in the failure to realize in earlier 
 years the developments that would come with 
 regard to the greater depth of the buildings and the 
 necessity of larger yard spaces. When the first 
 Tenement House Act in America was passed in 
 1867, it provided that no building erected after 
 that date should have a yard less than 10 feet 
 in depth. As a matter of fact, at that time few 
 builders thought of building a tenement house with 
 a yard less than 50 feet in depth. The provision 
 of the law, therefore, was of little practical effect. 
 
 If the persons who were responsible for the 
 framing of that law forty years ago had realized 
 that in subsequent years conditions would seriously 
 change and that there might be a desire on the part 
 of builders to cover more and more of the land 
 by building the houses deeper on the lots and thus 
 leaving less and less space open for light and air 
 they undoubtedly would have incorporated in 
 
 95
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 the statutes of that time a provision that the yards 
 in future tenement houses should be of no less 
 depth than they actually were at the time, namely, 
 50 feet. This could have been done then without 
 difficulty. 
 
 No one objects to the prohibition of something 
 he does not want to do. 1 1 would at the immediate 
 time it is true have been no more controlling than 
 the provision for yards of i o feet, because no one 
 then desired to build houses deeper than 50 feet; 
 but it would have had incalculable value in setting 
 a standard which presumably could have been 
 adhered to in subsequent years. If the law had 
 then fixed the minimum depth of yards at 50 
 feet there would not have been through all those 
 following forty years a gradual encroachment 
 upon the yard space, and the building of the house 
 first 60 feet deep, then 70 feet deep, then 80 feet 
 deep and finally 90 feet deep. The builder, finding 
 that the law prohibited any such depth and 
 required that a yard of 50 feet be left, would 
 have found no opportunity to change and the 
 consequent artificial stimulation of land values 
 would not have arisen. It is a very wise maxim 
 never to set your standards lower than the 
 standards that are actually adhered to at the time 
 the law is enacted. 
 
 If the prevailing height of tenement houses that 
 are being erected in a given community is three 
 stories and you are formulating a new housing 
 law, keep the height that the law permits such 
 
 96
 
 ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF A HOUSING LAW 
 
 buildings to be erected at the standard which 
 then exists, namely, three stories. If the then 
 standard is five stories you cannot hope, in all 
 probability, to reduce it. Do not assume that it 
 is unnecessary to make an enactment upon that 
 subject and make no mention of it in your law, 
 but embody in your statute the standard which 
 you find existing at that time, unless the sentiment 
 of the community is strongly in favor of a higher 
 one. The failure to observe these principles may 
 mean that you will have a city built up of six- 
 story tenements instead of three-story dwellings, 
 with all that that means in congestion of popula- 
 tion, prevalence of tuberculosis and other social 
 problems. 
 
 97
 
 X 
 
 WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN
 
 X 
 WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 
 
 WHAT, it may be asked, are the important 
 things which a housing law should con- 
 tain? While requirements will differ 
 necessarily in each community, there are certain 
 fundamental things which should be found in every 
 housing law. They must all alike regulate the con- 
 struction of new buildings, provide for the proper 
 maintenance of all buildings and to a greater or 
 less extent embody plans for the improvement 
 and alteration of the older buildings. In addition, 
 they must deal with questions of light, ventilation, 
 sanitation, plumbing, drainage, fire protection, 
 and to some extent with certain social questions. 
 Probably the most difficult question to deal with 
 is the question of light and ventilation most 
 difficult in the large cities, least understood in the 
 smaller ones, but fortunately more easy to handle 
 in the latter because of the lack as yet of any 
 serious evils in such places. How are adequate 
 light and ventilation to be secured? In the first 
 place, the problem of getting it in buildings erected 
 in the future is quite distinct from the problem 
 of getting it in buildings that are already built. 
 
 101
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 Let us consider first the buildings hereafter to 
 be erected. Here it is necessary to make sure 
 that every room, every hall, every water-closet 
 compartment and bath room, every cellar, in a 
 word, every part of the building, shall have ade- 
 quate light and ventilation. How is this to be 
 done? In the first place the street on which the 
 building is to be located must be wide enough to 
 insure this. The streets are already there and of 
 course cannot be changed. But if a street is too 
 narrow, the law must prohibit the erection there 
 of houses of undue height. 
 
 The next important step is to make sure that 
 the yard at the rear of the building is of sufficient 
 size, because all the light and air that come into 
 the rear rooms must come through this yard. 
 Moreover, such yards must be considered from 
 a neighborhood point of view. Light and ventila- 
 tion must not be considered with reference to a 
 particular building only, but with regard to the ef- 
 fect if the whole block were similarly built up. In 
 general the only adequate, rational and satisfac- 
 tory method is to regulate the size of open spaces, 
 left to provide light and air, in relation to the 
 height of the building. Where buildings are but 
 two stories high, a yard 20 feet deep may be en- 
 tirely adequate; where, however, buildings are six 
 stories high a much larger yard is necessary, and 
 where they are twenty stories high and the neigh- 
 boring buildings are of similar height, very much 
 larger open spaces are essential. 
 
 1 02
 
 WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 
 
 Important as this principle is, there is hardly 
 any American city which has as yet adopted it. 
 Heretofore the method of determining these ques- 
 tions has been largely by rule of thumb. 
 
 It will not do, however, to concern oneself 
 solely with the width of the street and the size of 
 the yards. If a house is built more than 24 feet 
 deep, it will necessarily exceed two rooms in 
 depth. The minute it does this a host of problems 
 arise. When it is but two rooms deep everything 
 is simple one room opens on the street, the other 
 on the yard. When, however, it is four rooms 
 deep, and even seven or eight rooms deep, the 
 situation becomes complicated. The problem is 
 this: How are the interior rooms to be adequately 
 lighted and ventilated? 
 
 In the earliest days no effort was made to pro- 
 vide light or ventilation for such rooms. The 
 earliest types of houses that were built specifically 
 as tenements, were houses that were four rooms 
 in depth: one room opening on the street, another 
 on the yard, and between them interior rooms 
 securing their only light and ventilation through 
 doorways into the outer rooms. 
 
 In somewhat later years an effort was made to 
 secure some ventilation for such inner rooms, by 
 requiring that they should have air-flues extending 
 to the roof. In many cities this resulted in the 
 construction of air-flues about the size of one brick; 
 in some, in the building of chimneys. Gradually 
 from this developed the so-called " air-shaft," and 
 
 103
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 later came the requirement in the law that all 
 rooms should open either directly to the outer air 
 or upon air-shafts. 
 
 None of these requirements accomplished the 
 purpose that was intended because they lacked 
 sufficient precision. To provide simply that a 
 room shall open upon an air-shaft is of little value 
 as a means of furnishing light, if it results, as it 
 has, in rooms so dark that one has to light a 
 match to find the shaft! Also of little value for 
 ventilating purposes if the air in the shaft is so 
 stagnant that tenants prefer to keep their windows 
 closed. 
 
 The next step was to require that air-shafts 
 should be of a certain minimum area in square feet. 
 This also failed of its purpose because architects 
 and builders then proceeded to build long, narrow 
 air-shafts but a few inches in width and many feet 
 in length. These provided neither adequate light 
 nor proper ventilation, but complied with the legal 
 requirements. 
 
 Finally there was evolved the present system, 
 found in the New York law, by which every room 
 is required to open either upon the street or upon 
 a yard of a certain minimum depth> or upon a 
 court of a certain minimum width and length, with 
 the further provision that these minimum spaces 
 shall be materially increased with an increase in 
 the height of the building, and may be decreased 
 for a lower building. Provision must also be 
 made for the frequent renewal of the air at 
 
 104
 
 WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 
 
 the bottom of courts by means of tunnels or 
 intakes. 
 
 Only after thirty-four years of effort have we ar- 
 rived at an adequate method of insuring proper 
 light and ventilation in new tenement houses. 
 
 But even with all of this done, there is still 
 more to be considered in securing adequate light 
 and ventilation. The size of the rooms must also 
 be provided for and a minimum established. 
 Here, too, it is not safe to rely upon the amount of 
 cubic air space as a standard any more than it 
 was safe to count upon providing that courts or 
 shafts should be of a certain area. A minimum 
 height for rooms must be fixed as well as a mini- 
 mum floor area. Similar measures should be taken 
 with regard to public halls and stairs, water- 
 closet compartments and bathrooms, and cellars. 
 
 The problem of letting light and air into dark 
 and badly ventilated rooms already built is a 
 totally different and very difficult one. The errors 
 of former years are now unfortunately crystallized 
 in brick and mortar. In most cases it is impossible 
 to make changes that will be really adequate. 
 Rooms that were originally not provided with 
 windows opening directly to the outer air can 
 never be made entirely satisfactory. 
 
 All that anyone can hope to do is to make such 
 houses reasonably habitable, letting in as much 
 light and air as can be obtained by methods that 
 are practicable. Wherever it is possible to cut 
 windows into an exterior wall letting light and air 
 
 105
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 enter the room from a yard or from open spaces 
 on adjoining premises, it should be done. Where 
 this cannot be done, there are two methods by 
 which light can be provided for interior rooms 
 in old buildings. The simplest method is by 
 requiring the cutting of a large window in the 
 partition separating the dark interior room from 
 an adjoining room. By this method a consider- 
 able amount of light is let into the room which 
 before was quite dark. The ventilation is also 
 improved. Such window to be adequate should 
 be about 3 by 5 feet in size and these dimensions 
 should be specified in any law attempting to deal 
 with the subject. 
 
 The other method of supplying light to interior 
 rooms is by requiring the construction in the old 
 buildings of a new light shaft. This, however, 
 is a difficult matter. In the first place it generally 
 involves heavy expense. It often means the 
 weakening of the building structurally to such 
 an extent that very substantial alterations become 
 necessary. It also means as a rule losing rentable 
 floor space on each floor. There is of course no 
 use in requiring an alteration of this nature unless 
 the light shaft that is thus provided is of sufficient 
 size to really furnish adequate light and ventila- 
 tion to the interior rooms in question. If the 
 shaft is an inner one, that is, enclosed on four 
 sides, it will be found that a shaft less than 10 feet 
 in its minimum dimension for a four-story building 
 is not adequate. Generally it is not practicable 
 
 1 06
 
 WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 
 
 to construct a shaft of this size in an ordinary 
 house. 
 
 Moreover, a new shaft of this kind is a fire 
 menace unless built of fireproof material and to 
 require a new fireproof shaft in the older, non- 
 fireproof buildings is somewhat of an anomaly. 
 On the whole, except in rare instances, it will be 
 found that this method of securing light and 
 ventilation is not one which can be wisely em- 
 bodied in a housing law. 
 
 The requirement of structural changes of any 
 kind in an existing building should be approached 
 with great care, and only those things which are 
 vitally essential to the welfare of the community 
 should be included in a housing law. 
 
 The alterations required must not only be 
 practicable from a structural point of view but 
 financially practicable also. It is manifestly 
 unwise to impose upon the owner of a building 
 requirements in the way of structural improve- 
 ments that involve expenditures out of proportion 
 to its revenue-producing possibilities. If there are 
 conditions in individual buildings which render 
 them unfit for human habitation, there should be 
 no hesitation in forbidding their occupancy. 
 This, however, is a very different matter from 
 requiring by law specific structural alterations in 
 all buildings of a certain class. 
 
 Every housing law should contain for both new 
 and old houses requirements with regard to sani- 
 
 107
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 tation, plumbing, drainage and adequate water 
 supply. 
 
 Here are involved some of the most important 
 problems that a community has to deal with. 
 All those questions which may be described under 
 the term "good housekeeping" are included: 
 care of the premises, proper maintenance, cleanli- 
 ness, condition of the out-premises, absence of 
 poisonous sewer gases, dampness, &c. Here, too, 
 the problem of securing proper sanitation in new 
 buildings is very different from that of obtaining 
 it in those houses that are already built. In 
 buildings that are erected in the future it is a 
 clear proposition that wherever there is a system 
 of public sewers, every house intended for occu- 
 pancy by more than one family (and indeed every 
 dwelling house) should be equipped with a proper 
 system of modern sanitary plumbing. Nothing 
 else is to be thought of. 
 
 In a community of any considerable size, to 
 compel people to use antiquated privies instead 
 of modern water-closets, is a relic of barbarism. 
 If the community is not large enough to be able 
 to afford a system of public sewers, there is not 
 the slightest reason why multiple dwellings should 
 be erected, as there is plenty of room and land 
 values are low, and it is entirely feasible for each 
 family to have its own dwelling. In general no 
 community ought to permit the erection of a 
 tenement house on a street in which there is no 
 sewer. 
 
 1 08
 
 WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 
 
 It should not be difficult to secure modern, 
 sanitary plumbing in any city. The essential 
 things are that the materials used should be of 
 sufficiently good quality to stand the average wear. 
 Plumbing pipes should be of a material that is 
 durable and does not lend itself easily to leaks. 
 Fixtures should be of a modern nature and simple 
 in form, not some complicated watch-like mechan- 
 ism easily put out of order, nor of such antiquated 
 form as to lead to sanitary abuses and to render 
 difficult their being kept in a cleanly condition. 
 Joints in pipes should be gas-tight; all fixtures 
 should be adequately trapped and vented; plumb- 
 ing should so far as practicable be "open" or 
 exposed; sewer connections should generally be 
 separate; the use of earthenware or tile sewer 
 pipes should be prohibited; objectionable types 
 of closets, such as long hoppers and pan closets, 
 should not be permitted. 
 
 Adequate drainage of out-premises and of roofs 
 should be accomplished by means of proper leaders,, 
 gutters and drains. In multiple" dwellings each 
 family should have its own separate water-closet. 
 The use of such conveniences in common leads to 
 serious social evils and should not be tolerated in 
 future buildings. In addition, such conveniences 
 should be entirely within the control of the indi- 
 vidual family and should not be located in public 
 parts of the house. This is essential not only for 
 the comfort and convenience of the family, but also 
 
 109
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 advantageous to the owner as it enables him to 
 centre responsibility for sanitary abuses. 
 
 Each family should have its own supply of city 
 water in at least one place in the apartment. It 
 is useless to expect people to be clean or to be 
 good citizens if they do not have a generous supply 
 of water. Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness. 
 Involved in this also is the question of preven- 
 tion of disease. The workingman must be able to 
 maintain his physical condition at a high standard 
 if he is to resist attacks of disease. There should 
 therefore be, as a matter of legal requirement, 
 an adequate supply of water in all dwelling houses. 
 
 The question of providing stationary washtubs 
 and bathtubs is, however, quite different. These 
 must be considered as in the nature of conveni- 
 ences not necessities and matters the law should 
 not deal with. It will be generally found, how- 
 ever, that enlightened builders will in self-interest 
 make provision for stationary tubs, where the law 
 requires them to provide a sink and running water. 
 The question of whether housing laws should 
 require builders to furnish bathtubs in new houses 
 is one which has perhaps been debated more than 
 any other question. There is no doubt that the 
 opportunity for bathing, and bathing frequently, 
 is a necessity. But if an ample supply of run- 
 ning water is provided for every family, they 
 can avail themselves of opportunities for frequent 
 bathing, though of course not with the same con- 
 venience and comfort as if bathtubs were provided. 
 
 no
 
 WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 
 
 The experience of New York in this regard 
 may perhaps be suggestive for other communities. 
 When the Tenement House Commission of 1900 
 was considering these questions it had urged upon 
 it with considerable earnestness the suggestion 
 that the tenement house law should include a 
 compulsory requirement for a bathtub in every 
 apartment in each tenement house erected in the 
 future. Many others urged that if this could not 
 be done, the law should require a limited number 
 of baths to be provided for the use of the tenants, 
 in the cellar or some other public part of the 
 building. 
 
 After careful consideration of this whole ques- 
 tion the Commission reached the conclusion that 
 any requirement of law for baths to be used in 
 common by the tenants of a tenement house, 
 would be unwise, would set back the movement 
 for bathing facilities many years and would result 
 in the abuse and ultimate removal of such equip- 
 ment. It was also felt that to require a private 
 bath for each family as a matter of law, was not 
 practicable and might with difficulty be sustained 
 if attacked in the courts. The Commission, how- 
 ever, having provided that in new tenements each 
 family should have its own private water-closet 
 within the apartment, believed that builders would 
 at the same time on their own initiative add a 
 bathtub, as this could be done at very little cost 
 and would mean that the apartment would bring 
 a slightly increased rental. That this view of the 
 
 in
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 case was sound has been amply proved by the 
 result under eight years' operation of the tenement 
 house law. Although that law requires no bath- 
 ing facilities whatever in new tenements, in 86 
 per cent of all the new houses erected, private 
 baths for each family have been provided by the 
 builders, of their own volition. 
 
 The proper maintenance of all tenement houses, 
 as well as of all dwellings occupied by the poor, is 
 a question that vitally concerns every community. 
 Primarily the evils which are generally found are 
 due to two factors: The neglect of the owner to 
 care for those parts of the building that are within 
 his control, and secondly the neglect and misuse 
 by the tenants of the facilities with which they 
 are provided. Let there be no mistake with 
 regard to this. This is not a one-sided question. 
 The unsanitary conditions which exist in dwellings 
 of this kind are not by any means entirely due to 
 the tenants; nor are they on the other hand en- 
 tirely due to the landlord. The responsibility 
 must be shared by each. 
 
 Every housing law must provide some scheme 
 by which houses of this nature may be maintained 
 in proper condition. An important factor in 
 this situation is the requirement that where 
 buildings are occupied by a number of families 
 there shall be a resident caretaker or janitor on 
 the premises responsible to the landlord for the 
 conditions. In all of the larger buildings that 
 is, where there are more than six families in a 
 
 I 12
 
 WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 
 
 house this is essential. It is desirable even 
 where there are fewer families, but not always 
 practicable from the owner's point of view. Of 
 course where the owner resides in the house him- 
 self, as is frequently the case, such a requirement 
 is not necessary. 
 
 Experience shows that the danger points in the 
 tenement house from a sanitary point of view are 
 the public parts of the building for which no one 
 is responsible: cellars, yards, roofs, halls, stairs, 
 out-premises, &c. What is everybody's business 
 is generally nobody's business. Individual tenants 
 do not feel much responsibility or concern for 
 the care of such portions of the building; being 
 used in common, they are apt to be frequently 
 abused, and it is almost impossible under these 
 circumstances, to fix responsibility for abuse. 
 
 A housing law should provide that all parts of 
 the building shall be kept clean and free from accu- 
 mulations of dirt; that the owner shall be required 
 to thoroughly cleanse all parts of the building 
 whenever directed by the appropriate authorities; 
 that the cellar floors shall be free from dampness; 
 that the cellar walls and ceilings shall be white- 
 washed or painted at reasonable intervals; that 
 the house and all portions of it shall be kept in 
 good repair; that the roof shall not leak and that 
 all rain water shall be carried off to the sewer, 
 where a sewer exists, so as to prevent dampness 
 in the walls or in the yards or areas; that proper 
 receptacles for ashes, garbage and other waste 
 8 113
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 matter shall be provided in sufficient quantity; 
 that there shall be running water at least in one 
 place on every floor of the building. 
 
 With regard to protection in case of fire, the 
 main provision of any housing law is the require- 
 ment that there shall be adequate fire-escapes 
 for the use of each family so that in the event of 
 fire the tenants may have every reasonable 
 opportunity to escape without loss of life. The 
 standards as to what constitutes adequate fire- 
 escapes will differ in different places. In general 
 it is clear that fire-escapes of which wooden bal- 
 conies or wooden stairs or ladders are an inte- 
 gral part are not safe; that rope ladders and all 
 similar kinds of appliances, including wire, steel 
 and cable ladder fire-escapes, are inadequate for 
 houses of this kind. 
 
 Fire-escapes should consist of outside balconies 
 either of iron or stone. Iron will be generally 
 found to be the best, cheapest and most practica- 
 ble. In houses erected in the future the fire- 
 escape balconies should be connected by stairs, 
 the only satisfactory means of connection, and 
 these stairs should be placed at an angle suffi- 
 ciently inclined to permit easy descent by the ten- 
 ants not only by able-bodied men used to climb- 
 ing ladders, but also by women, children and old 
 people. 
 
 It is important that the fire-escapes shall not 
 only be adequate but shall seem adequate to the 
 tenants so that they will trust themselves to them 
 
 114
 
 WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 
 
 in case of fire. It is undoubtedly true that most 
 people could go up and down a vertical ladder 
 such as is provided for many fire-escapes, but 
 women, children and old people in the excitement 
 and panic of fire will not do so. If that is the 
 case, vertical ladders are of little value as fire- 
 escapes for tenement houses. 
 
 The fire-escape balconies should be of sufficient 
 width, should be strong, should contain openings of 
 adequate size and should be so located as to afford 
 the quickest escape. The best place for a fire- 
 escape balcony is on the front of the building, 
 because in case of fire the people naturally run 
 to the street; that is the quarter from which they 
 are expecting help from the firemen; that is the 
 normal place to go. In many cases, however, 
 it is necessary for the fire-escapes to be placed on 
 the rear of the building as well as on the front. 
 This is so in every instance where there are sepa- 
 rate apartments in the rear which do not extend 
 to the street. In such cases, care should be taken 
 to provide for a proper and safe means of egress 
 from the yard to the street, as it will do little good 
 to allow the tenants to escape to the yard if they 
 are trapped there. 
 
 Fire-escapes are quite as much for the use of the 
 firemen as they are for the use of the tenants. 
 In the large cities they are provided, not only to 
 enable the tenants to get out of the building but 
 also to enable the firemen to get quickly to the 
 fire and rescue those tenants who are unable to 
 
 "5
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 descend in safety. They are also quite as much 
 to be used for ascent as for descent. Often the 
 best means of escape in a fire is to the roof and 
 from the roof of the building to an adjoining house. 
 That is why it is generally provided in tenement 
 houses that the public stairs shall extend to the 
 roof. Often, however, escape this way is cut off. 
 Then the fire-escapes become of especial value. 
 
 In addition to providing fire-escapes, fire pro- 
 tection in new buildings may be secured through 
 the limitation of the height of non-fireproof 
 houses and the requirement that the public parts 
 of the building, especially those portions that are 
 known to be danger points, shall be constructed 
 in such way as to safeguard the lives of the tenants. 
 
 Experience shows that in the ordinary tenement 
 house one-quarter of all the fires start in the cel- 
 lar. The cellars and the public halls and stairs 
 are the danger points. It is therefore desirable 
 in constructing new houses, to shut off the cellar 
 from the rest of the building. This is done in the 
 larger cities in the case of buildings five and six 
 stories high by requiring the construction of the 
 first floor above the cellar to be entirely fireproof 
 that is, iron beams with fireproof filling and to 
 prohibit any openings in this floor. This involves 
 having access to the cellar only from the outside 
 of the building. It is not quite so convenient for 
 the tenants, but it has been found to be entirely 
 practicable to have the tenants go out into the 
 court or yard to get down into the cellar. Where 
 
 1.6
 
 WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 
 
 it is necessary to extend a dumbwaiter shaft down 
 to the cellar it is desirable to require it to be 
 built entirely of fireproof construction and to 
 be provided with fireproof, self-closing doors. 
 
 It is strange, that no matter where a tenement 
 house fire starts, whether in the apartments on 
 the top floor or on the first floor, whether in the 
 cellar or in an airshaft, it invariably immediately 
 gets to the public halls and stairs of the building, 
 which seem to act like a gigantic flue. It therefore 
 becomes especially important to see that the halls 
 and stairs of such buildings are fireproof and are 
 shut of? from the non-fireproof parts of the build- 
 ing. 
 
 The type of tenement house that has been 
 evolved in New York to meet this situation is one 
 in which the stairs and halls are fireproof. They 
 are enclosed in brick walls and the floors are 
 constructed of iron beams with fireproof filling; 
 the stairs are either iron, slate or marble. The 
 openings in the walls leading to the apartments are 
 provided with self-closing, fireproof doors so that 
 if a fire should start in one of the apartments it 
 can not "mushroom out" and spread to the stairs 
 and halls and thus to the other apartments. 
 
 This type of house has given eminent satisfac- 
 tion in New York. It is practically the main type 
 that has been built since the passage of the Tene- 
 ment House Act in 1901. During that period of 
 eight years, in the Borough of Manhattan alone 
 4506 new tenement houses have been built pro- 
 
 117
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 viding accommodations for 116,789 families, or 
 approximately over half a million people. There 
 has not, however, in all this time been a single in- 
 stance of a bad fire in one of these houses; nor has 
 there been any loss of life from fire in one of these 
 buildings nor any fire in which any considerable 
 financial damage has resulted. Thus far the type 
 has stood the test perfectly. 
 
 Beyond this, laws with regard to fire protection 
 should concern themselves with seeing that no 
 inflammable or dangerous materials are permit- 
 ted to be stored in houses of this nature, and that 
 no dangerous occupations are carried on in such 
 buildings. Bakeries, especially where they boil 
 fat, are frequently sources of danger. 
 
 In addition to the questions of light and ventila- 
 tion, sanitation, plumbing and drainage, and fire 
 protection above described, there are questions 
 involved concerning the use and occupancy of 
 dwellings, which should be taken into considera- 
 tion in every housing law. Cellar dwellings are 
 among the first evils to be discovered in many 
 places and are nearly always an unnecessary evil. 
 Sometimes, in the larger communities where hous- 
 ing conditions have been neglected for many 
 years, they have to be tolerated for a while. In 
 the smaller communities they are nearly always 
 unnecessary and should never be tolerated. 
 
 Care, however, must be taken to distinguish 
 between cellars that are fit for habitation and those 
 that are not. As a rule, most cellars are unfit. 
 
 118
 
 WHAT A HOUSING LAW SHOULD CONTAIN 
 
 A housing law must carefully regulate the occu- 
 pancy of such places for living purposes. It 
 must establish standards which will ensure proper 
 light and ventilation and freedom from dampness. 
 The main points to be considered are the height 
 and size of rooms, the sources of light and air, 
 the height of ceiling above ground and the na- 
 ture of the cellar floor, with proper provision for 
 keeping out dampness. 
 
 The use of tenement houses by women of im- 
 proper character, in close proximity to respectable 
 people, is a serious evil in some of the larger 
 cities and one that should be guarded against. 
 In most places it will not be found necessary to 
 include in a tenement house law any provisions 
 dealing with this subject. Where, however, the 
 evil has appeared in tenement houses it should 
 be so penalized that women of this class will at 
 once find it to their advantage to remove from 
 such buildings. 
 
 Restrictions with regard to the keeping of ani- 
 mals on the premises should be included in most 
 housing laws. It will not do to prohibit the keep- 
 ing of all animals, as people naturally desire to 
 keep birds, cats and dogs. But one may with 
 reason draw the line at pigs, horses, goats, turtles, 
 rabbits, chickens, cows, &c. All of these have" 
 been encountered in New York's tenement houses. 
 This practice, however convenient it may be, is 
 unwise from a sanitary point of view. It is not 
 good for the animal nor is it good for the people. 
 
 119
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 Other uses to which tenement houses are often 
 put are unwise and should not be permitted. 
 Especially should it be made illegal to carry on a 
 common lodging house in a tenement house. 
 The mingling of the ordinary lodging house patron 
 with the tenement house dweller is not a good 
 thing for the community. 
 
 120
 
 XI 
 
 THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS
 
 XI 
 THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 
 
 THE housing problem is not solved when a 
 tenement house law has been passed. Such 
 laws are not self-operative. Housing evils 
 will not vanish of their own accord. The causes 
 which have led to them are too deep-rooted to 
 permit anything so simple. In formulating hous- 
 ing legislation, therefore, one must consider 
 whether there exists administrative machinery 
 adequate to carry it out. If not, new machinery 
 must be created. 
 
 In general it will be found that there is some 
 branch of the local government entrusted with 
 functions and duties bearing upon the proper 
 housing of the people. In the larger cities there 
 is a separate department of buildings, or depart- 
 ment of public safety charged with responsibility 
 for the inspection of new buildings, and the se- 
 curity of old ones. In every community where 
 there are any housing problems it is safe to as- 
 sume that there will be found a board of health, 
 or similar body. Between these two bodies is 
 generally divided the responsibility for housing 
 administration. Sometimes these branches of the 
 
 123
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 government share this responsibility with others; 
 often with the police department; sometimes 
 where there is a separate fire department, with 
 the fire department. 
 
 It will invariably be found that such division of 
 responsibility is unwise and leads to non-enforce- 
 ment of law. In some cities the shifting of re- 
 sponsibility from one branch of the city govern- 
 ment to another has become a fine art. It is so 
 much easier for a negligent clerk to advise an 
 uninformed citizen that the particular matter he 
 complains of is the duty of some other depart- 
 ment, than it is to set the machinery of his own 
 department in motion. The result to the citizen 
 is unfortunate. No more potent discourager of 
 civic enthusiasm can be found than this method 
 of passing along the public-spirited citizen from 
 one department to another. After he has visited 
 three or four with regard to the same matter and 
 finds each one giving him conflicting advice as to 
 which branch of the city government is really 
 entrusted with the functions in question, he 
 begins to lose his interest in the matter and his 
 desire to see things improved. It is the rare 
 citizen that becomes aroused at this situation and 
 fired with a desire to put an end to it. 
 
 Wherever it is possible it is eminently wise 
 to centre responsibility for the administration of 
 housing laws. This principle, however, must not 
 lead to imposing such duties upon departments 
 that are not organized to carry out the work. 
 
 124
 
 THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 
 
 Nor should it lead to the formation of new branches 
 of the city government, with all their intricate 
 mechanism, unless the conditions are so serious 
 as to warrant such a step. 
 
 In most cities it will be found the part of wisdom 
 to place in the control of the bureau of buildings 
 or similar body, the responsibility for the enforce- 
 ment of those provisions of housing laws which 
 deal with building construction and protection 
 in case of fire: such matters as thickness of walls, 
 materials of which buildings shall be constructed, 
 fireproofing questions, the construction of stairs 
 and of fire-escapes and similar matters. These 
 questions relate only to buildings erected in the 
 future. Beyond this the jurisdiction of the bureau 
 of buildings should not go. 
 
 All questions of a sanitary nature including light 
 and ventilation, plumbing, water supply and simi- 
 lar questions should be left to the health depart- 
 ment as well as the vast work of regulating the 
 maintenance of buildings of this kind. These 
 are the functions which a health department may 
 legitimately perform. 
 
 With regard to regulating the maintenance of 
 such houses, there will probably be no difference 
 of opinion in any quarter. It will generally be 
 found, however, that local building interests will 
 prefer vesting in the department of buildings juris- 
 diction over questions affecting light and venti- 
 lation and plumbing construction in new build- 
 ings, urging with considerable plausibility that all 
 
 125
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 matters relating to new buildings should be lodged 
 in such a department, leaving to the health de- 
 partment the care and maintenance of buildings 
 after they are once erected. 
 
 This is plausible but not sound. The depart- 
 ment which regulates use must control the details 
 of construction which affect that use. A knowl- 
 edge of the conditions gained in the constant 
 daily dealing with the problems involved, is 
 a prerequisite to the application of the necessary 
 remedies. 
 
 A department which never has to deal with 
 problems of light and ventilation after a build- 
 ing is occupied, whose employees never become 
 familiar with conditions of overcrowding, bad 
 ventilation, lack of light, abuses of plumbing, 
 lack of repair, conditions of dampness, &c., is 
 not equipped to determine what standards shall 
 be enforced in connection with the construc- 
 tion of such buildings. One illustration suffices. 
 The conditions of light in a building immediately 
 after it is completed, when the plaster is new and 
 white and there are no curtains or hangings at 
 the windows, are totally different from what they 
 are later. This was excellently illustrated in 
 New York not many years ago, when the Super- 
 intendent of Buildings, under examination before a 
 legislative Commission, gave it as his opinion that 
 the discredited air-shaft which had been aptly 
 termed "A culture tube on a gigantic scale "- 
 was entirely adequate and satisfactory as the sole 
 
 126
 
 THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 
 
 means of providing light and ventilation for ten 
 out of fourteen rooms on every floor in each new 
 tenement house that was being erected, notwith- 
 standing the fact that such shafts were but 28 
 inches wide and 60 feet long, 60 to 70 feet high, 
 enclosed on all four sides, and without any intake 
 of air at the bottom; and this in the face of the 
 universal condemnation of this particular feature 
 as a breeder of disease, a destroyer of morals and 
 a menace in case of fire an opinion shared unani- 
 mously by health officials, fire department officials, 
 the general public and the tenement house dweller. 
 
 Building departments are generally closely al- 
 lied to building interests. In nearly every city 
 it is customary to put a builder at the head of 
 such department; in rare cases an architect is 
 appointed. In any event it will be found that 
 building departments are invariably sensitive to 
 building interests and are apt to consider the 
 questions that arise in connection with the en- 
 forcement of housing laws more from the point 
 of view of those interests than from the point of 
 view of the welfare of the future occupants and 
 of the community. 
 
 Health departments, on the other hand, are not 
 subject to such influences. They are generally 
 presided over by sanitarians. Their chief object 
 is to save life, to prevent disease and to reduce the 
 death rate. They are not likely to tolerate in new 
 buildings the perpetuation of evils which in a few 
 years will greatly increase their own burdens and 
 
 127
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 render difficult the carrying out of their chief 
 functions. 
 
 For all of these reasons, therefore, jurisdiction 
 over the enforcement of provisions affecting light 
 and ventilation, regulating the sizes of yards, 
 courts and other open spaces; the size of rooms, 
 the methods of ventilation of halls, stairs, cellars 
 and water-closet compartments; the installation 
 of sanitary plumbing and modern appliances, is 
 wisely placed in the hands of health officers. 
 
 In New York City the main functions affecting 
 tenement houses, normally exercised by building 
 and health departments, have been placed in one 
 centralized department of the city government, 
 known as the Tenement House Department. 
 This has been made necessary by reason of the 
 extraordinary conditions which there exist, to 
 which allusion has already been made in this book. 
 The test of whether it is necessary to establish a 
 separate tenement house department in other 
 cities is the number of tenement houses and the 
 size of the tenement house population. In gen- 
 eral it is safe to say that no city needs to form 
 a separate branch of the city government for this 
 purpose, unless it has 25,000 or more tenement 
 houses. 
 
 This does not mean that it may not often be 
 desirable to create a tenement house bureau in 
 the board of health. Where there is a consider- 
 able number of tenement houses, the concentra- 
 tion of the work relating to the maintenance of 
 
 128
 
 THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 
 
 buildings in one such bureau tends to greater 
 efficiency of administration. 
 
 Adequate inspection is the keynote of successful 
 administration. Without knowledge of the exact 
 conditions it is hopeless to attempt to apply rem- 
 edies. That knowledge can not be gained except 
 by inspection. There are no formulas which can 
 be applied wholesale. Each house must be treated 
 on its own merits. Each case presents its own 
 problem. 
 
 The difficulties in the way of achieving adequate 
 inspection are great. In the first place one must 
 secure competent inspectors. But, alas, they 
 are difficult to get and to keep. Frequently 
 incompetent inspectors are foisted upon the com- 
 munity for political reasons. Even at the best, 
 one's choice is limited to men who have shown 
 proficiency in a civil service examination but 
 concerning whose judgment and general ability 
 the appointing officer knows nothing. One hesi- 
 tates to determine which is the worse horn of the 
 dilemma. The political appointee often turns out 
 to be in time a competent, and frequently a 
 practical man. The civil service employee fre- 
 quently turns out to be neither. Generally both 
 classes of employees have to be taught their 
 business at the city's expense. Too frequently, 
 just when a municipal officer has succeeded in 
 bringing his employees to a state of experience 
 and ability where they are of real service to the 
 city, he is compelled to lose them because of his 
 9 129
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 inability to fittingly reward their increasingly 
 valuable services. 
 
 One way to secure good inspectors is to appoint 
 women. This of course presupposes an adminis- 
 tration free from politics. There are several ad- 
 vantages in using women for sanitary inspection 
 work. In the first place for the salary paid, one 
 can generally obtain a woman of higher capacity. 
 This insures a greater degree of intelligence and 
 skill, a greater interest in the work, more zeal, 
 often a personal desire to improve conditions and 
 greater loyalty to the department. With women 
 there is less necessity for discipline and greater 
 permanency in the department's staff. 
 
 The disadvantages of women inspectors are their 
 lack of practical knowledge; except in rare in- 
 stances, they can not be used for the inspection 
 of new buildings or for structural matters; as 
 a rule they do not turn out quite as large a volume 
 of work as the men, though it is generally of better 
 quality. On the whole they make very efficient 
 sanitary inspectors. Every health department 
 that has any considerable amount of sanitary 
 inspection to do should have several women 
 inspectors on its staff. 
 
 Adequate inspection is essential, but it is not 
 the only thing. While the eyes of the Department 
 must be able to see clearly and to report accurately 
 what they see, the guiding intelligence must so 
 manage and conduct its affairs as to bring about 
 a fair and impartial enforcement of the law. 
 
 130
 
 THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 
 
 There must be unlimited backbone, a readiness to 
 insist upon strict enforcement when such enforce- 
 ment is essential, but also there must be the 
 discernment that will recognize the necessity at 
 times of other than a rigid enforcement of the 
 law especially in relation to the older buildings 
 and that will adapt itself to varying conditions. 
 
 The enforcement of housing laws with regard 
 to new buildings presents very different problems 
 from the enforcement of similar laws in connection 
 with the maintenance of buildings. The main 
 difference is in the speed with which such enforce- 
 ment must be brought about. It may do no 
 serious harm to permit violations in the older 
 houses to drag on for several months. Such a 
 course of procedure, however, in new buildings 
 is fatal. During the delay, the building is com- 
 pleted. It will do little good to the future occu- 
 pants of a house built contrary to law to collect 
 a fine from the owner. The number of fines 
 collected in such cases is not an evidence of the 
 department's efficiency, but an indictment of its 
 methods. 
 
 To illustrate: If the law requires that a yard 
 of 20 feet in depth shall be left at the rear of a new 
 building and the builder leaves but 14 feet thus 
 decreasing the amount of light and air available for 
 the tenants there is no way that such defect 
 can be remedied after the building is completed, 
 short of tearing down the entire rear wall at great 
 expense and difficulty. Similarly if the law 
 
 '3'
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 requires that a court shall be 12 feet wide and the 
 builder builds it 10 feet thus decreasing the 
 light and ventilation of the rooms opening upon 
 it there is no way of remedying this defect after 
 the building is once completed without practically 
 destroying the building. Judges are very loath 
 to order such drastic changes, nor should it be 
 necessary. 
 
 The proper method is to see to it that such facts 
 are discovered while the building is being erected, 
 before it has progressed too far and then insist 
 that the builder shall rectify the errors before 
 going ahead further with his work. The best 
 way to bring this about is by a method which has 
 been put into practice in the New York Tenement 
 House Department. When such defects are dis- 
 covered builders are notified to remedy them im- 
 mediately and failing this, are compelled to stop 
 all further work on their building. At first, 
 because of the old lax ways which had been in 
 vogue, they did not believe that the department 
 was in earnest, and when ordered to stop building 
 proceeded with all the more haste to complete the 
 work. When, however, they found several police- 
 men at the job with instructions to arrest every- 
 body that touched a brick, the whole situation 
 assumed a new aspect. It did not require more 
 than two or three such occurrences to bring it 
 home to the builders of that city that the day had 
 passed when they could with impunity defy the 
 law. They have at last learned their lesson and 
 
 132
 
 THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 
 
 know that the tenement houses that they now 
 build must in all essential particulars comply 
 with the law. Where a department finds any 
 difficulty in stopping the progress of such work, 
 it should be given the right to invoke the aid of 
 the courts through injunction proceedings. 
 
 Another important method of securing the 
 proper construction of new buildings has been the 
 plan of requiring that after a new tenement is 
 completed and before it can be legally occupied a 
 certificate shall be issued by the enforcing author- 
 ities to the effect that it complies in all respects 
 with the law. This has been one of the most 
 important provisions of the New York law and 
 has done much to make for improved housing 
 conditions. Under its operation builders have 
 learned that there is little advantage in attempting 
 to evade the law because, even though they may 
 succeed for a while, (often through the connivance 
 of corrupt inspectors) in utilizing forbidden meth- 
 ods of building construction, they find that it 
 in no way benefits them in the end because they 
 are confronted with this nightmare of a final 
 certificate, with a knowledge that their house must 
 be finally examined by a different inspector and 
 that every violation of law which can be seen 
 (and most of them cannot be covered up) will 
 then be disclosed and a certificate refused. 
 
 Most buildings, too, are at the present day built 
 on borrowed money through the system of building 
 loans, and the men who lend that money wisely
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 refuse to make their final payments until they are 
 assured through the agency of the department's 
 final certificate that the building in question is 
 lawful. In the old days, before such a provision 
 existed, it was the common practice to run up 
 tenement houses contrary to law and fill them with 
 tenants sometimes even before the stairs of the 
 building were completed. 
 
 The problems involved in the proper main- 
 tenance of the homes of the poor are very great. 
 In most communities little effort is made to dis- 
 cover housing evils or other sanitary evils upon 
 the initiative of the sanitary authorities. As a 
 rule they are quite content often necessarily so 
 because of the limited funds at their command 
 to await the complaints of citizens, believing that 
 if there are serious sanitary evils they will be thus 
 called to their attention. 
 
 This is a slipshod, antiquated practice and can 
 not be dignified as a method of inspection. It is 
 a very unfortunate practice. It means discrimi- 
 nation. It means that one property owner whose 
 house is in a fairly good condition is required by 
 the health officers to expend money and do con- 
 siderable work while his neighbor in the next 
 street whose house is in a far worse condition, is 
 not bothered from year's end to year's end, simply 
 because he has a different class of tenants who 
 have not cared to send complaints to the local 
 authorities. 
 
 1 1 also means neglect. 1 1 means that unsanitary
 
 THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 
 
 conditions, often far worse than those that are 
 complained of and dealt with by the Department, 
 remain for months unknown and unchecked. 
 Besides, the practice of sending complaints is 
 fraught with danger to the tenants and is dis- 
 couraged in every way possible by the landlord 
 and often by municipal employees. That land- 
 lords should seek to discourage such complaints 
 does not require comment. Many adopt the 
 practice of evicting those tenants who send com- 
 plaints to the local health officers. As most 
 tenants hold their apartments on monthly leases 
 this is always feasible on the first of the month. 
 It is a system which uniformly accomplishes the 
 results desired. A tenant who has had this ex- 
 perience once or twice soon loses his zest for civic 
 reform. 
 
 Clerks and other employees in city departments 
 lend their aid to the accomplishment of the same 
 end, reasoning that the more they can discourage 
 complaints the less work they will have to do. 
 Moreover, the average tenement house dweller 
 does not understand the intricacies of the processes 
 which must be employed and the legal delays 
 involved in bringing recalcitrant owners to book. 
 Finding no attention paid to his complaints so far 
 as he can see not realizing that it often takes 
 months for the department to bring about a change 
 in the conditions complained of he becomes pessi- 
 mistic and ceases to send complaints, and the 
 belief thus comes to be general that there is little
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 use of taking up such matters, and that the ordi- 
 nary citizen has little chance of having his com- 
 plaints attended to unless he has influence behind 
 him. 
 
 There should be substituted for inspection on 
 complaint, periodic sanitary inspection of all 
 houses upon the initiative of the enforcing authori- 
 ties, regularly at definite times. This is the only 
 method of sanitary inspection which is worthy 
 the name of a system. To substitute this entirely 
 for inspection on complaint should be the aim of 
 every sanitary officer. It is the ideal towards 
 which all should work, and it is to be hoped that 
 the time is not far distant when sanitary officials 
 may be able to disregard entirely the numerous 
 citizens' complaints that come to them and trust 
 completely to periodic inspection to disclose all 
 evils of a serious nature. 
 
 In crowded cities where there is a vast tenement 
 house population the ideal is to have such in- 
 spections made once a month. It will be many 
 years before that ideal is reached. The practica- 
 ble plan in most cities is three times a year; and 
 this, with such re-inspections as would necessarily 
 be made to ascertain whether orders have been 
 carried out, should suffice in most communities. 
 Uniformity of treatment of owners is thus accom- 
 plished. The discovery of serious sanitary abuses 
 is no longer left to chance nor to the caprice or ill 
 feeling of some malicious tenant. 
 
 One of the most important powers to be exer- 
 136
 
 THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 
 
 cised by any health board is the right to vacate 
 houses that are unfit for human habitation. This 
 is very different from the right to condemn or 
 destroy property. It is a perfectly clear proposi- 
 tion that if a house, whether it be a tenement or 
 dwelling, is unfit for human habitation it should 
 not be occupied by human beings. And it should 
 be within the power of the responsible governing 
 officers to accomplish this. There should be no 
 opportunity in such extreme cases of unending 
 delays and long drawn out contests in the courts. 
 Where conditions exist that are perpetuating ill- 
 ness, creating disease and death, and weakening 
 the social and moral fibre of the community, it is 
 the paramount duty of the community to put an 
 end to them without delay. 
 
 And yet there are very few American cities 
 whose health officers possess this important power. 
 New York has possessed it for many years. There 
 both the health commissioner and in the case of 
 tenement houses the tenement house commis- 
 sioner have the power without application to the 
 courts, when a building is unfit for human habita- 
 tion, after a notice to the owner, to order the house 
 to be vacated within a short period of time, 
 generally three to five days. Should the owner 
 fail to comply with such orders the departments 
 in question then have the right to send their own 
 police officers to the buildings and forcibly and 
 bodily eject the tenants. This is done practically 
 every week in the year in the City of New York.
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 In the year 1908 the Tenement House Department 
 of that city vacated 76 houses for this reason. 
 Seldom are these powers contested in court. 
 
 The great advantage of this method of procedure 
 is that people immediately cease to live under 
 improper conditions. It also spurs the landlord 
 to vigorous action in seeking to meet the depart- 
 ment's orders. As long as his house is unoccupied 
 he is losing money, as no rents are being paid; 
 and, as he cannot put tenants back into his build- 
 ing until the conditions have been remedied, he 
 finds it advantageous to comply speedily with the 
 department's requirements. 
 
 Every American city should give to its health 
 officers such powers. Being extreme powers they 
 should be exercised only in extreme cases. 
 
 The legal equipment of the department is a 
 vital adjunct of every sanitary officer. In many 
 cities the weakness of this is a serious handicap to 
 housing reform. In only a few are there to be 
 found special counsel assigned to boards of health 
 for this purpose. Generally they have to rely 
 upon the city attorney or corporation counsel 
 who performs similar functions for all the other 
 branches of the city government and who neces- 
 sarily, with a limited staff, can give only a small 
 portion of his time and attention to the prosecution 
 of violations of the health laws. 
 
 Wherever there are many tenement houses it 
 will be found advisable for the health department 
 to have its own counsel with an adequate staff. In 
 
 138
 
 THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 
 
 the last analysis, the strength of the department 
 will depend very largely upon the strength of its 
 legal end. Where owners refuse to comply with 
 the law, the only way in which compliance can be 
 brought about is through the bringing of suits. In 
 some cities unwilling owners are persuaded to 
 comply, through persistent letter-writing on the 
 part of the health officers. The disadvantage of 
 this method is that it is generally slow. Owners 
 who do not wish to maintain their houses in proper 
 condition soon realize that such letters are not 
 of serious consequence and gradually adopt the 
 practice of promising to comply so as to gain time. 
 By this means it is often possible for them to 
 protract negotiations several months before the 
 matter is taken up by the department's attorney. 
 
 Better than an attorney in many cases is an 
 expert photographer on the department's staff. 
 This idea was first developed in the administration 
 of the Tenement House Department in New York. 
 Up to that time photographs had not played any 
 considerable part in the administration of sanitary 
 or housing laws. One good photograph may often 
 accomplish as much as a lawsuit. Nothing will 
 bring an owner so quickly to terms as the sight 
 of a series of photographs of the conditions in his 
 house. 
 
 Some of the most interesting experiences I have 
 ever had have been the encounters with tene- 
 ment house owners who have entered my office 
 protesting that the orders issued against their 
 
 '39
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 property were without basis, insisting that the 
 inspectors of the department must be very incom- 
 petent and that serious injustice had been done; 
 vehemently asserting that their buildings were 
 always kept in an entirely sanitary condition and 
 that the conditions complained of in the inspec- 
 tors' reports could not have existed. 
 
 After listening to these remarks without com- 
 ment, there was always considerable pleasure in. 
 placing before their astonished eyes five or six pho- 
 tographs showing indescribably bad conditions and 
 saying quietly that these were photographs of the 
 conditions that existed at the building in question. 
 It was seldom necessary for the owner to take a 
 second glance at the pictures. He generally at 
 once terminated the interview with the statement 
 that he had no idea that such conditions existed 
 (which in some cases was true) and left the office 
 with a promise to remedy them immediately. 
 
 The great advantage of the photograph is not 
 only that it is a true record of conditions which 
 exist at a given time, but that the owner of the 
 house knows that the department has in its posses- 
 sion evidence which if taken into court he could 
 not successfully refute. It is only in rare instances 
 that any owner attempts to contest the depart- 
 ment's orders in the face of such evidence. 
 
 Two kinds of legal process are available: Civil 
 and criminal. The former is the one most gener- 
 ally used. It consists chiefly in the institution, 
 in minor courts, of actions for small penalties; 
 
 140
 
 THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 
 
 in similar actions in branches of the Supreme 
 Court for larger sums; in proceedings for the 
 vacation of premises unfit for human habitation; 
 in suits for the abatement of nuisances, and in 
 injunction proceedings where it is necessary to 
 prevent owners from carrying certain plans into 
 effect which would result in harm to the com- 
 munity. In some cases also in proceedings to 
 compel owners to carry out the department's 
 orders and for the collection of moneys expended 
 by the department in carrying out orders which 
 owners have refused to comply with. 
 
 In very few cities have criminal proceedings 
 been resorted to, although in many the department 
 of health possesses this power; in most places 
 violations of health laws are misdemeanors. A 
 greater use of the criminal remedies would un- 
 doubtedly result in a prompter compliance with 
 the law in most cases. Few owners mind very 
 much being sued in a minor court for a penalty 
 of $25 or $50, but most owners seriously object 
 to being arrested, put in jail, admitted to bail 
 and tried by criminal process. Of course this 
 should be resorted to only in serious cases. It 
 is a power which it is dangerous to abuse. 
 
 Health departments should also have the power 
 where an owner has refused or neglected for some 
 time to carry out important orders, to step in 
 themselves, if need be, and do the work at the 
 city's expense, with the right to impose this cost 
 as a lien upon the property. From very early 
 
 141
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 days such a power has been enjoyed by the health 
 officials of New York. In recent years they have 
 not had to exercise it frequently. 
 
 If such powers are given, care should be taken 
 to provide at the same time for a fund out of 
 which such expenses can be defrayed, otherwise 
 the department will be effectually stopped from ac- 
 complishing much in this direction. Allusion has 
 already been made in this chapter to the impor- 
 tance of giving to health departments the right to 
 vacate houses that are unfit for human habitation. 
 This power should be extended to cases where 
 houses are without fire-escapes and human life is 
 endangered thereby. 
 
 An important adjunct to the legal powers of 
 the department is the right to file a Us pendens 
 (notice of suit pending) in the case of violations of 
 housing, health and building laws where the owners 
 have failed to comply with reasonable diligence, 
 and the enforcing authorities contemplate bring- 
 ing an action. This course of procedure is very 
 effective as it serves notice to real estate inter- 
 ests and lawyers that there is something the mat- 
 ter with the house and prevents an owner from 
 unloading the property upon some innocent pur- 
 chaser who has not suspected that there may 
 be violations pending, the removal of which will 
 require the expenditure of considerable money. 
 All penalties incurred through violation of housing 
 laws should be made liens upon the property. 
 
 There is little value in any of these powers or 
 142
 
 THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 
 
 in housing laws themselves if there is not a well 
 developed public sentiment in each community 
 to sustain them. A particularly disheartening 
 experience is, after weeks of preparation of a suit 
 and possibly after months of effort by the local 
 officials to secure the remedy of some abuse, to 
 have finally the whole matter summarily dis- 
 missed by some minor judge when the case is 
 taken into court, with a refusal on his part to 
 hold the owner or to impose upon him the proper 
 penalty, notwithstanding the trouble and expense 
 to which the community has been put and the 
 evils which the unfortunate tenants have had to 
 suffer for a long period of time. This is too fre- 
 quently the case. 
 
 There is often an entire lack of appreciation on 
 the part of the judges in minor courts of the im- 
 portance of housing laws and the necessity of their 
 supporting public officials in their work. So great 
 a drawback has this become in one eastern city 
 that the authorities have finally been compelled to 
 a very large extent to withdraw their suits from 
 these courts and bring proceedings in branches of 
 the Supreme Court itself. 
 
 The time is probably soon coming when we 
 shall establish in most of our cities special courts 
 in which all suits brought on the part of the mu- 
 nicipality or the state will be prosecuted that is, 
 a true municipal court: a place where actions 
 affecting the municipality solely may be tried. 
 Such a plan would possess great advantages. It 
 
 '43
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 would mean that the judges of such courts would 
 thus become familiar with the intricacies of laws 
 that are often highly technical and complicated, 
 and would through the constant determination of 
 such issues be able to enforce standards that would 
 raise the entire tone of the municipal adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 Another practice which renders difficult the 
 enforcement of health laws is the failure on the 
 part of the prosecuting officers to collect penalties 
 when once imposed. All the various steps may 
 have been taken, weeks have been consumed in 
 the preparation of a case, issue has been joined, 
 decision rendered in favor of the municipality, a 
 penalty imposed upon the offending owner and 
 then the attorney for the city makes no effort to 
 collect the penalty. 
 
 The effect of this policy has been reflected in 
 the attitude of the courts, voiced in the sentiment 
 frequently expressed by many of the judges that it 
 is not their function to serve as collectors of reve- 
 nue for the city meaning that they will not im- 
 pose penalties where owners have promised to 
 comply, even though that promise has only been 
 wrung out of them in court after many months' 
 delay. Such an attitude seriously hampers proper 
 enforcement. 
 
 The centering in one department of responsi- 
 bility for the enforcement of specific provisions 
 of law is no more important than the centering 
 upon the owner of the responsibility for all un- 
 
 144
 
 THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 
 
 sanitary or dangerous conditions. To the ordi- 
 nary person it seems perhaps fair that tenants 
 and lessees should share with owners the respon- 
 sibility for unsanitary conditions. 
 
 Such a scheme, however, is impossible from an 
 administrative point of view, especially where the 
 chief method of enforcement is by means of civil 
 proceedings. If you are going to sue a man he 
 must have some property upon which you can 
 levy in the event of your securing a judgment. 
 Imagine the unprofitableness of the city's spend- 
 ing time and money in suing some irresponsible 
 tenant from whom a judgment could not be col- 
 lected. The owner is really the responsible per- 
 son. It is his business and duty to see that his 
 house is kept in proper condition. 
 
 This is a question which has given great concern 
 to tenement house owners. They have always 
 pointed to the fact that the owner is made respon- 
 sible for all violations of law as a great injustice, 
 and have with apparent reason inquired why 
 penalties have not been imposed equally upon 
 tenants. Of course, there are cases where the 
 apartments of individual tenants are kept in a 
 filthy condition and the property is shamefully 
 abused. If a landlord has taken in tenants who 
 abuse his house and refuse to comply with the 
 laws of health, it is an entirely easy matter to 
 turn them out. 
 
 In the great majority of cases, however, the ten- 
 ants are law-abiding people who keep their apart- 
 
 10 I 45
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 ments in excellent condition. It is the public 
 parts of the tenement house that are generally in 
 trouble. Over these the owner is the only person 
 who has control. The task of a city department 
 which had to hold twenty different families respon- 
 sible for the cleanliness of a public hallway or the 
 repair of a public water-closet, would indeed be an 
 impossible one. In the long run it will be found 
 that no hardship is worked upon owners by hold- 
 ing them to strict accountability for the care of 
 their premises. 
 
 The only instance with which I am familiar 
 where housing laws do seek to place penalties 
 upon tenants is in regard to the placing of en- 
 cumbrances on fire-escape balconies. In this 
 case the tenant is made liable to a fine of $10 for 
 each offense and also liable to arrest. Even this 
 provision, designed for the protection of the 
 tenants themselves, does not work well. Few 
 judges are willing to make criminals of ignorant 
 foreigners, who, unfamiliar with our customs and 
 laws, have placed some household utensil or put 
 their bedding to air upon the fire-escape balconies. 
 
 Essential to the efficient administration of a 
 housing law is the registration of the name and 
 address of tenement owners. A plan originally 
 tried in New York some years ago was to require 
 the name and address of the owner of the tenement 
 house to be posted in a conspicuous place in the 
 public hallway. This was not a success. 
 
 The plan at present in vogue is the requirement 
 146
 
 THE ENFORCEMENT OF HOUSING LAWS 
 
 that every owner shall register his name and ad- 
 dress in the Tenement House Department, with the 
 further provision that if he fails to do so, service of 
 all legal papers shall be deemed adequate by merely 
 nailing copies of 'such papers upon the door of 
 the building. Without such information sanitary 
 abuses of a serious nature are often permitted to 
 exist for long periods because of the inability of the 
 authorities to place responsibility. 
 
 Co-operation is an important element in housing 
 reform. To get the best results there should be 
 the fullest co-operation between the city depart- 
 ments themselves and with civic bodies and private 
 citizens interested in the improvement of living 
 conditions. 
 
 Politics should of course be kept out of city 
 departments charged with the enforcement of 
 sanitary laws. No matter what one may believe 
 with regard to other branches of the city govern- 
 ment, there is generally a well crystallized senti- 
 ment that the department of health should not 
 be made the sport of politicians. This is a propo- 
 sition about which there can be no question. 
 Fortunately politicians are gradually learning that 
 there is nothing more dangerous to tamper with 
 than the health of the people and increasingly 
 each year health departments are being freed from 
 these influences. 
 
 Where politics does enter into the administra- 
 tion of housing laws, there is considerable that 
 can be accomplished even through the politician. 
 He can be made to see that the enforcement of 
 
 '47
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 laws in the interest of the poorer members of the 
 community is a political asset and that there is 
 more to be gained politically by taking this side 
 of the question than in urging the suspension of 
 special requirements in the interest of individual 
 constituents. 
 
 The average politician, seeking favors from the 
 head of a city department, cares very little 
 whether the municipal officer grants his request 
 and he secures the extension of time or modifi- 
 cation of some order that may be desired. All 
 that he generally wants is to show the member 
 of his district who has come to him for help, that 
 his request has been heeded and that the enforcing 
 authorities have done what they could to do him 
 a favor. This may be tactfully accomplished 
 without in any way sacrificing the welfare of the 
 community. Like everything else, it depends 
 very much on the way in which it is done. 
 
 Efficient housing administration to be successful 
 must be sane. There must be a sense of propor- 
 tion on the part of the head of the department. 
 He must not give his attention unduly to matters 
 of minor moment, especially when large questions 
 and serious evils are put aside. He must not too 
 rigidly adhere to the strict letter of the law nor 
 feel that he can never deviate from it in the slight- 
 est respect. On the other hand there must not 
 be so liberal an interpretation as to nullify its 
 intent. In general, sanitary officers should attack 
 the worst evils first and so proceed as to bring 
 about a uniform treatment of citizens. 
 
 148
 
 XII 
 
 HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS
 
 XII 
 
 HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 
 
 HOUSING reformers are often in doubt 
 whether it is better to seek state legislation 
 or to attempt to remedy conditions through 
 municipal ordinance. The latter is easier, but is 
 less likely to give satisfactory results. The chief 
 advantage of state legislation is its greater degree 
 of permanency. In many states the legislature 
 meets but once in two years. Moreover, it 
 generally takes two or three months to get im- 
 portant legislation passed. The result is that 
 when you have once obtained your law you have, 
 to a large extent, ensured its stability. The law 
 once obtained cannot be repealed or amended in 
 important particulars without the public knowing 
 it; nor can it be done quickly. One has, there- 
 fore, ample time to muster his forces to repel 
 attacks that may be made. 
 
 On the other hand, if you enact a municipal 
 ordinance it is subject to constant change. Few 
 communities pay close attention to the work of 
 their Common Council, and matters slip through 
 easily. Local boards are generally in session 
 throughout the year. Almost any week they can
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 put through a radical amendment to a housing 
 ordinance before its friends have time to rally to 
 its defense. 
 
 It will be found, too, that the aldermen are 
 much more susceptible to local influences. Some 
 builder will find a provision of the housing ordi- 
 nance in his way when he wants to build a flat 
 or apartment house, and will get his alderman 
 to introduce an amendment making an exception 
 in the case of his building or even changing 
 altogether the particular provision. It is difficult 
 to combat successfully amendments of this kind 
 in the short time at one's disposal, even if aware 
 of them, and gradually the ordinance is broken 
 down in its essential provisions and becomes of 
 little force and effect. 
 
 This is less likely to happen in state legislation. 
 The members of the legislature are not so sensi- 
 tive to local influence. Only a few of them come 
 from a particular city. The others freed from 
 local pressure are apt to consider the proposal to 
 weaken a beneficent law of this kind, with refer- 
 ence to the general welfare of the state, and the 
 member desiring such changes will find himself 
 unable to accomplish them. 
 
 There is also some doubt as to the power of local 
 municipal bodies, such as boards of aldermen, to 
 prescribe legal remedies for the violation of housing 
 ordinances that will be sufficiently strong. In 
 addition there is always the question of conflict 
 between a local ordinance and laws that may be 
 
 152
 
 HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 
 
 enacted at some future time by the state legisla- 
 ture. In such cases the state law will always have 
 the greater force and effect, and it is therefore 
 the part of wisdom to start upon this basis. 
 
 For all of these reasons it is wiser to seek the 
 remedy for housing conditions through legislative 
 enactment rather than through municipal ordi- 
 nance. 
 
 Usually the first efforts at securing legislation 
 for housing reform fail. The community where 
 this experience is not repeated year after year is 
 fortunate. The reasons for the failures are not 
 far to seek. The persons interested in such 
 movements are, as a rule, unfamiliar with the 
 factors which enter into success in this field or are 
 unwilling to address themselves in a practical 
 way to the problems which have to be met. 
 
 In the first place public sentiment is an essen- 
 tial factor. We talk very glibly of methods of 
 government in this country and of our governing 
 officials, whereas we all know or should know that 
 the real governing force is the force of public 
 sentiment. Public sentiment is a vague and illu- 
 sive thing, working often in inscrutable ways. 
 Fortunately it is nearly always on the side of 
 movements for the improvement of social con- 
 ditions, notably for housing reform. The effort 
 to direct it into proper channels should not be 
 difficult, if undertaken with a knowledge of what 
 is requisite and with a definite end in view. 
 
 The most potent factor in this situation is the 
 '53
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 press. It is useless to attempt a legislative cam- 
 paign of any importance until the support of the 
 press has been obtained. To get this, let the man- 
 aging editors and others responsible for the for- 
 mulation of a newspaper's policy understand the 
 conditions which exist and let them see them at 
 first hand. The knowledge thus gained will be 
 found to be of lasting value. 
 
 Editors are, as a rule, very practical men. 
 They must be assured that the movement which 
 you advocate is on a sound basis and in the hands 
 of practical people. Be assured that the argu- 
 ments you advance will be offset at various times 
 in all manner of ways and through all sorts of 
 channels by counter arguments to the effect that 
 your plans are "visionary" and "theoretical," and 
 will not benefit the people whom you seek to 
 benefit, but on the contrary may work irreparable 
 hardship to property interests that are affected 
 thereby. 
 
 These are arguments that are sure to be ad- 
 vanced and arguments that the housing reformer 
 must be able to meet and satisfactorily dispose of. 
 No attempt to secure housing legislation should 
 be made until the community has been informed 
 with regard to the conditions which prevail and a 
 strong public sentiment for their abolition de- 
 veloped. 
 
 In what other ways can public sentiment be 
 developed besides through the press? The method 
 that generally produces the largest and quickest
 
 HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 
 
 returns is through circularization in various forms, 
 through writing letters from time to time to 
 prominent citizens calling their attention to evils 
 which exist in the community, and always direct- 
 ing the letter to some specific question concerning 
 which you desire to awaken their interest and to 
 secure their support. The indefinite letter is of 
 little value in fact, is likely to weaken your influ- 
 ence and injure your cause. 
 
 Popular lectures, if given by interesting speak- 
 ers, also play an important part in the education 
 of the community and the development of public 
 sentiment. Lantern slides showing the actual 
 conditions that exist are a potent aid in this work. 
 The distribution of photographic reproductions of 
 some of the worst evils, as well as typical instances 
 of conditions that your investigation has disclosed, 
 attaching to them always a human interest where 
 possible, is always effective in reaching people's 
 sympathies and securing their support, because it 
 enables them to picture actual conditions. This 
 is important, as many people lack imagination. 
 One good photograph is worth six pages of print, 
 but it must tell the story and you must be sure 
 that it tells the story. 
 
 Enlisting the labor men in the cause, where the 
 labor movement is strong and progressive, is 
 nearly always helpful. Housing reform is a 
 matter that vitally concerns them. They who 
 have been engaged for generations in the fight 
 for better working conditions for themselves are 
 
 '55
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 quick to rally in support of an appeal for better 
 living conditions for their wives and families. 
 It inspires confidence in their own cause for them 
 to enlist in a disinterested campaign, and their 
 leaders are quick to see the advantage of such co- 
 operation. The labor men, moreover, bring great 
 strength to any movement for housing reform 
 because of the attention which legislators give to 
 the demands of labor. 
 
 The most direct and natural source of appeal is 
 to the members of boards of charitable societies 
 and to citizens interested in other forms of social 
 work. Their connection with such work indicates 
 an interest in the cause an interest which, as a 
 rule, needs only to be developed and directed. 
 Women's clubs, civic organizations, settlements 
 and kindred bodies may be made potent allies. 
 Do not, however, surrender the leadership of 
 your cause into their hands. 
 
 In general, one's task is not so much to create 
 public sentiment as to direct it: to fully inform 
 the public as to the conditions, to formulate the 
 remedies and present them for public judgment 
 and approval, and to direct the great force of 
 public sentiment towards securing the reforms 
 that are urgently needed. 
 
 It is a common experience for a community to 
 be aroused to housing evils, to have had a care- 
 fully selected citizens' committee at work making 
 careful investigations and studies of the problem 
 for a year or two, to have prepared a housing law 
 
 156
 
 HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 
 
 after the most careful and mature deliberation 
 extending over many months, and then to utterly 
 fail to secure the enactment of its measures by the 
 legislature. It is a disheartening experience and 
 it frequently acts as a check to housing progress. 
 What is the reason for it? The chief reason lies 
 in the fact that legislative success requires special 
 abilities. 
 
 The ordinary citizen would never for a moment 
 dream of conducting a complicated lawsuit if not 
 a lawyer; nor would he feel confidence in his 
 ability to perform some delicate surgical opera- 
 tion if not a surgeon. Getting an important bill 
 through a legislature in the face of great opposi- 
 tion is quite as difficult a task and requires special 
 knowledge; yet frequently the ordinary citizen 
 undertakes this task with cheerful confidence and, 
 as a rule, without the slightest appreciation of 
 what he is about to experience. From an educa- 
 tional point of view it is perhaps advantageous 
 that he should adopt this course, but its effect 
 on the cause of housing reform is uniformly 
 unfortunate. 
 
 It is only in rare cases that the ordinary citi- 
 zen is keen enough to grasp quickly the essential 
 principles of the game and adapt himself to them. 
 He comes to the experiment totally unprepared 
 for his task, handicapped as a rule by text-book 
 views of government, not realizing that, as a rule, 
 the actual methods are as different from the 
 theoretical ones as day from night. It is difficult 
 
 157
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 for the average man to adjust himself to this 
 situation with sufficient readiness. It is incred- 
 ible to him that the views which he has enter- 
 tained for so long a time should be erroneous. 
 How can it be? He has heard little from others 
 indicating that the real methods of government 
 are so different from the ones commonly accepted 
 as prevailing. In the legislative experience he 
 learns for the first time that a good cause may be 
 a handicap; that it is often easier to pass a bill 
 which works injury to the community than one 
 which improves conditions; that the bill which 
 benefits everybody is far more difficult to pass 
 than the bill which benefits a single individual or 
 corporation. 
 
 He also has radically to readjust his ideas in 
 other directions. In most legislatures he is bound 
 to find that the real determination of what bills 
 shall pass and what bills shall fail often rests 
 with some single individual the political boss, 
 a man responsible to no one, holding no office and 
 yet shaping and controlling the destinies of the 
 state. Sometimes he will find a group of bosses 
 rather than a single one. At first the ordinary 
 good citizen will be horrified at such conditions. 
 It is so violent a contrast to all that he had 
 learned in earlier years as to methods of govern- 
 ment, so violent a shock to his ideals. 
 
 From the point of view of housing reform, how- 
 ever, such conditions are often a distinct help 
 rather than a hindrance. The boss is always 
 
 158
 
 HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 
 
 amenable to public sentiment, and the advantage 
 which corporations and special interests find in the 
 boss system may without reproach be turned to 
 account by the reformer. The great advantage is 
 that it is much easier to convince one man with 
 regard to so highly technical a subject as housing 
 legislation than it is to convince two hundred- 
 two hundred of all degrees of intelligence and 
 integrity. 
 
 Of course there is another side to it. It is easier 
 also for those interests which may be opposed to 
 housing reform to influence the boss than it is for 
 them to influence two hundred members of the 
 legislature. But admitting all of this, the fact 
 still remains that the existing political conditions, 
 much as they are to be regretted from many points 
 of view, lend themselves most advantageously to 
 the securing of progressive legislation, not only in 
 the field of housing reform but in other fields of 
 social effort. 
 
 The trouble with many social reformers has 
 been that they have not been willing to take 
 advantage of the situation as they find it, and 
 direct this force into useful channels, but have 
 held aloof and refused to face conditions as they 
 are. 
 
 If you are trying to get housing legislation 
 through a legislature which is controlled by a boss, 
 what a futile waste of time it is to seek out the one 
 hundred or two hundred members of that body 
 and go through the empty formality of attempting
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 to secure the individual support of each one of 
 those men as if he really controlled the destinies 
 of the cause in which you are interested. The 
 influence that you want is the influence which 
 can affect your cause favorably. If you live in a 
 boss-ridden state it is just as futile to ask the 
 support of individual members of the legislature 
 in that state as to ask the aid of the Mikado of 
 Japan. Without the support of the boss all other 
 support is of little value. 
 
 The mistake that is too often made is in assum- 
 ing that the boss, because he has an unsavory 
 reputation politically, has ceased to be a human 
 being in assuming that he is the enemy of all 
 good things and that you can not count upon his 
 help in the particular reforms in which you are 
 interested. The direct opposite is generally the 
 case. The political leader is very keen to welcome 
 opportunities of playing a helpful part in progres- 
 sive social movements, especially in a cause which 
 does not affect his personal interests and which, 
 as a rule, will be a source of political capital and 
 incidentally secure for him the commendation of 
 public-spirited citizens. He always has his ear 
 to the ground. But he is human also in this 
 if he has the power, he wants to be consulted. 
 And it is generally better to consult people in 
 advance than afterward. 
 
 Boss-ridden or not boss-ridden, the secret of 
 legislative success may be summed up as the right 
 pressure, in the right place, at the right time, in 
 
 160
 
 HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 
 
 the right way, by the right person. No one of 
 these things can be omitted. 
 
 It must be the right pressure. If you want to 
 influence a member from a certain county there 
 is little use in asking people who live in a totally 
 different county and who are not his constituents 
 to use their influence with him. But there is 
 every use in letting him understand the sentiment 
 of the people in his own district. That is the right 
 pressure. 
 
 The pressure to be effective must also be in the 
 right place: All legislatures do their work by 
 committee system. In practically all of them, 
 bills when introduced are uniformly referred to 
 committees for consideration and for the hearing 
 of the arguments for and against each measure. 
 When a bill is in committee and having the con- 
 sideration of the ten or fifteen members who may 
 constitute that committee, there is little use in 
 bringing pressure to bear upon the general mem- 
 bers of the legislature who are not members of 
 that committee. They will give little or no atten- 
 tion to any matter until it comes before them on 
 the floor of the house after having been considered 
 by committee and reported favorably or unfavor- 
 ably from them; but pressure brought upon the 
 members of that particular committee by which 
 your bill is being considered is of the very greatest 
 value. That is pressure in the right place. 
 
 It must also be at the right time. If you are 
 anxious to have your bill reported out of committee 
 ii 161
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 and your committee holds its meetings on Friday, 
 it is not advantageous to personally interview the 
 members of that committee on Monday and urge 
 them to vote in favor of your measure. 
 
 If a bill has been reported by a committee and 
 is up for consideration in one house there is little 
 use in seeking to influence the members of the 
 other house which is not then considering the 
 measure in question and which can not, in the 
 nature of things, consider it until some time later. 
 The pressure must be at the right time. 
 
 It also must be in the right way. Probably the 
 most futile thing that the average citizen does 
 and the method which he instinctively adopts is 
 to get up a petition of thousands of names in favor 
 of his measure and send it to the legislature. This 
 is a relic of a pre-glacial political period. Such 
 methods never influence legislators; they know 
 how easy it is to get signatures to petitions and 
 how the American people are prone to sign un- 
 thinkingly almost any statement that is put before 
 them. They are quite right to pay no attention 
 to such alleged expressions of public sentiment, 
 because they represent nothing. The pressure 
 must be in the right way. 
 
 Letters, however, from constituents and espe- 
 cially from prominent members of the community 
 to their own representatives, are of value, espe- 
 cially letters which indicate not only an interest in 
 the subject but a knowledge of it and a considera- 
 tion of the essential principles involved in the 
 
 162
 
 HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 
 
 particular measure under consideration. Edi- 
 torials from influential newspapers published at 
 timely periods are another form of pressure in the 
 right way. Personal requests from the constitu- 
 ents of members are probably of even more potent 
 influence. 
 
 There is great danger from the amateur in this 
 field. The writing of letters to members of the 
 legislature, as well as the sending of telegrams, 
 has been greatly overdone in recent years; so 
 much so that it would almost seem as if this 
 method of influencing public sentiment were los- 
 ing such value as it once had. When rightly 
 done, I know of nothing, however, that can take 
 its place. The thing to be guarded against is 
 making it mechanical; especially sending printed 
 letters or postal cards to individuals asking them 
 to sign and send to their representatives. Such 
 documents are of no more value than the petition 
 and are in fact only another form of it. 
 
 Some objection pertains to organized letter 
 writing even when properly done. It is of course 
 impossible to expect that the members of the 
 legislature will not recognize the fact that such 
 expressions of opinion are sent them by request 
 and are to a greater or less extent inspired. This 
 will be discounted by them, but there will still 
 remain strongly impressed upon their minds the 
 extent of the organization that exists in behalf 
 of a particular project and an appreciation on their 
 part that a considerable number of people among 
 
 .63
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 their constituents are sufficiently interested in the 
 subject to write letters upon the request of some 
 person more deeply interested. The pressure 
 must be in the right way. 
 
 It must also be by the right person. The 
 opinion of the man who is totally unknown to a 
 member of the legislature can not be expected 
 to have very much influence upon him, and yet 
 many social reformers lose sight of this completely; 
 they seem to think that it is the number of demon- 
 strations which counts, not the quality. Find 
 out who the man is that has the greatest influence 
 with the particular senator or assemblyman that 
 you want to interest in your project and reach 
 him through his friend. If you are seeking politi- 
 cal influence, enlist his political chief in the cause. 
 Sometimes it may be the district leader; some- 
 times the state committeeman; sometimes it may 
 be the governor of the state. The pressure must 
 be by the right person. 
 
 A legislative campaign is akin to warfare. It 
 is like a military campaign and in it the regulars 
 always have the advantage of the volunteers; 
 they know the game; they are not gun-shy; they 
 have been on the firing line before; they know 
 what to expect. As in ordinary warfare, organi- 
 zation is essential to success. To be successful 
 there must be a plan of campaign, and that plan 
 must be carried out by shrewd generals who have 
 won their right to lead by success in many cam- 
 paigns. Above all things, there must be recog- 
 
 164
 
 HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 
 
 nized leadership. Mob rule can not succeed here 
 any more than in ordinary warfare. 
 
 Sometimes the enemy must be fought by his 
 own methods; strategy must be resorted to when 
 necessary; every move in the game must at times 
 be taken advantage of. If to secure its success- 
 ful passage it is necessary to manoeuvre to cast 
 your bill in certain forms in order to get it before 
 a committee which will be favorable to it and 
 away from a committee which will be antag- 
 onistic to it this must be done. 
 
 Progress in legislation rests on compromise. 
 The member of the legislature is pulled this way 
 and that by conflicting interests. He is told by 
 one group of people that the project under con- 
 sideration is visionary and will result in great 
 injury to important interests; by another group 
 that it is a sane, practicable, common-sense plan, 
 commended by the entire community except one 
 or two particular interests which are adversely 
 affected by it. With no direct sources of informa- 
 tion, as far as he can see the opinions of the one 
 group are entitled to as much consideration as 
 the other. The legislator generally solves the 
 difficulty by compromising: by giving something 
 to one group and taking a little from the other. 
 This generally satisfies neither; but in the long 
 run the various interests adjust themselves to such 
 decisions and often with surprising facility. 
 
 Social reformers should recognize this and should 
 base their recommendations upon it. They should 
 
 165
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 not make the error of compromising before they 
 have to; of anticipating the opposition that is 
 going to be brought against the measures they 
 have in view and saying to themselves: "We dare 
 not go this far because such and such interests 
 will be sure to oppose us and there is no hope of 
 securing what we desire." The result is that, 
 having compromised in advance of the necessity, 
 they are forced when the actual occasion arrives 
 to compromise still further and to consent to the 
 enactment of something that is far below the 
 standard that would have been possible. Don't 
 compromise until you have to. It is also a good 
 thing to have something to compromise with. 
 If you expect and earnestly desire to secure the 
 enactment of a housing law, for instance, limiting 
 the percentage of lot that may be covered to 
 seventy per cent, don't start with any such 
 standard in your proposal. Start at sixty-five; 
 have five per cent to compromise with. If you 
 start at seventy, you may be quite sure that you 
 will end at seventy-five. 
 
 It is also vitally important to be prepared to 
 legislate on a basis of fact and not on impressions. 
 You must not only know your facts but be able 
 to demonstrate conclusively to the members of the 
 legislature that you know them and that you 
 stand upon solid ground. Do not forget also, 
 that they come from widely scattered communi- 
 ties and may not be familiar with the conditions 
 which you are seeking to remedy. As a rule, the 
 
 1 66
 
 HOW TO SECURE LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 
 
 rural members of a legislature need to be thor- 
 oughly enlightened with regard to housing con- 
 ditions which prevail in cities. Such conditions 
 they do not dream can exist. They should see 
 the conditions at first hand. Where this is not 
 possible, they should see photographs and often 
 models. 
 
 When he has been informed and aroused it will 
 generally be found that the rural member of the 
 legislature is a most potent ally in housing reform. 
 He has not become case-hardened to the condi- 
 tions which prevail in the cities, he is not subject 
 to the pressure of the local influences there which 
 desire to perpetuate them and he has standards 
 which make the conditions that prevail in most 
 cities seem to him intolerable and to cry aloud 
 for remedy. 
 
 It is wise, too, to constantly remind oneself 
 that the members of the legislature are subject to 
 human influences; that startling as it may seem, 
 they may vote for your measure, not because of 
 its merits, but because of their friendship for you 
 or for the member who happens to sit next to 
 them who wants to see the bill pass. 
 
 One word of caution against overdoing it in 
 campaigning for legislative reforms. The social 
 worker in his zeal runs a very serious risk of 
 wearing out his welcome; of importuning the 
 members of the legislature too much. Do not 
 lose your perspective. The member of the legis- 
 lature is interested in a great many other things. 
 
 167
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 Your measure is but one very small, minor matter 
 to him a mere incident of the session. 
 
 To sum it up: Legislative reforms are to be 
 accomplished only by patient, skilled, well- 
 directed effort. They are not achieved by acci- 
 dent, inspiration or enthusiasm. 
 
 168
 
 XIII 
 
 THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT
 
 XIII 
 THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 
 
 WHILE the main burden in the movement 
 for housing reform must be borne by 
 public officials, there is a large field 
 to be occupied by private citizens. The two ef- 
 forts must supplement each other at every point. 
 Neither alone is sufficient. But the two fields are 
 distinct. There are many things which the govern- 
 ment may do which can not be done effectively by 
 private citizens; and there are many things that it 
 is better for the private citizen to do than for the 
 government to undertake. It is quite impossible, 
 for instance, for private effort to see to it effectively 
 that thousands of tenement houses or even hun- 
 dreds are maintained in a sanitary condition. 
 This is clearly a governmental function. On the 
 other hand there is much to be done which it is 
 not the province of government to assume. 
 
 The first and most important way in which 
 private citizens can aid the cause of housing 
 reform is in the organization of a citizens' com- 
 mittee for the purpose of securing such legislation 
 as may be necessary to regulate the construction 
 and supervise the maintenance of the homes of 
 
 171
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 the people and to provide the adequate adminis- 
 trative machinery for carrying such laws into 
 effect. 
 
 The mistake that is too often made by many 
 people is in losing their interest and in feeling 
 that their work is accomplished when some 
 legislative reform has been achieved. So far 
 from being the termination of their efforts such a 
 period should really mark the beginning of their 
 main work. Any important change in the laws 
 will at first bring opposition from those interests 
 which are affected by it. Unless its friends are 
 alert, it frequently happens that important legis- 
 lative reforms are within a year or two nullified 
 by the interests adversely affected. 
 
 Moreover, housing laws are difficult to frame. 
 It is not always possible to anticipate with suffi- 
 cient precision, conditions which may arise, and it 
 will generally be found that such enactments 
 need subsequent amendment. It is far better 
 that housing laws should be amended by their 
 friends than by their enemies. If their friends do 
 not act you may be sure that their enemies will. 
 Private citizens should, therefore, after bringing 
 about some important legislative reform, watch 
 with great care its effect, and with an open mind 
 be prepared to make such changes as may be 
 necessary to make it more perfectly accomplish 
 the ends desired and to remove any unnecessary 
 hardship that may have been unwittingly involved. 
 
 Then there is a very important and valuable 
 172
 
 THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 
 
 function to perform in aiding administrative of- 
 ficers in the interpretation of laws which often 
 they have had no part in formulating. This is a 
 very real service. The intent of a statute may 
 have been very clear in the mind of the person 
 who framed it, but it may seem to have a totally 
 different meaning and purpose to some one else 
 who is interpreting it without that particular 
 knowledge. 
 
 The next important way in which citizens can 
 advance the cause of housing reform is through a 
 permanent and adequate system of what may be 
 termed "law enforcement" namely, of seeing 
 that the local authorities properly administer the 
 laws. At first thought it would appear that this 
 ought not to be necessary; that citizens should 
 not have to hire some outside person to watch 
 the enforcement of statutes by public officials 
 whose compensation they are taxed to defray. 
 This unofficial government, however, is a necessity 
 especially in the large cities. Municipal adminis- 
 tration has become so complex and the functions 
 of the municipality so much extended, that without 
 this public-spirited service on the part of citizens 
 there is serious danger of the failure of democratic 
 institutions. 
 
 There could not be a more wholesome stimulus 
 for the public official, than the knowledge that a 
 group of leading citizens is vitally interested in 
 the proper administration of his department and 
 that they are contributing time and money to
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 that end. Such a scheme of law enforcement 
 should be on a basis of co-operation with the public 
 officials and not on a basis of antagonistic criti- 
 cism. It must assume that the public official is 
 honest and conscientious and desires to secure 
 the best administration of his department, even 
 when it seems otherwise. It is surprising to see 
 the way in which even the worst politician responds 
 to an appeal upon such a basis. Realizing the 
 standard that has been set for him and that 
 public sentiment expects him to adhere to such 
 a standard, he becomes stimulated to greater 
 efforts and more efficient work, if only through 
 fear of the criticism that will be directed to him. 
 Of course there are occasions when it becomes 
 necessary to frankly and severely criticise the 
 head of a department, even going so far as 
 to demand his removal from office when once 
 convinced that any proper administration of the 
 department under him is hopeless. Such proce- 
 dure, however, should be resorted to only where 
 all reasonable efforts to bring about a better 
 administration have failed and where there is a 
 fair expectation of securing the appointment of a 
 better man in his place. Charges against public 
 officials are often too recklessly preferred by 
 private citizens in reform movements. It is a 
 dangerous thing to undertake, unless one is very 
 sure of the facts. A public official has a very 
 disconcerting way sometimes of knowing more 
 about the subject than the private citizen and
 
 THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 
 
 of making charges seem very ridiculous. No one 
 thing stands out more strikingly in the history of 
 the effort for municipal reform than the failure 
 of the reformer to make good in such instances. 
 The trouble is that he relies too much upon his 
 own belief as to the inefficiency and bad faith of 
 the official, not realizing that to secure his removal 
 from office he must be able to prove conclusively 
 to the removing officer clear-cut, specific instances 
 which, beyond shadow of doubt, indicate the un- 
 fitness of the public official for his office. There 
 is a great difference between moral certainty and 
 legal certainty. 
 
 There is another side to it as well. The public 
 official is human and susceptible to the influences 
 which ordinarily affect human beings. The people 
 he finds friendly and helpful to him are likely to 
 have influence with him. The people who criti- 
 cize him unjustly, without an appreciation of the 
 limitations and difficulties under which he is 
 working, he is apt not to give much heed to. 
 Here again is another point of difficulty. In such 
 movements few citizens take the time to familiar- 
 ize themselves with the limitations under which 
 municipal officers work. They see a tenement 
 house in an unsanitary condition and they at 
 once assume that the official is neglecting his 
 duties. As a rule they seldom ask themselves 
 whether these conditions may not have had his 
 attention already and what the reasons may be 
 which have led to the continuance of this apparent 
 
 '75
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 neglect. Few realize how long it takes sometimes 
 to bring about improvements in a particular case. 
 
 Social workers frequently offend in this way. 
 They complain to the health officer about some 
 unsanitary condition and then perhaps a week 
 later, finding no change in the situation, condemn 
 the officer for not having performed his duty and 
 state that there is no use in sending complaints 
 to him; not realizing the length of time necessarily 
 consumed in such matters nor the various processes 
 that must be gone through before results can be 
 obtained. Especially in this connection we should 
 apply to ourselves the old warning, " I pray you 
 by the mercies of God to remember that you may 
 be mistaken." 
 
 For these reasons, and for many others, it will 
 be found that it is unwise to attempt any plan 
 of law enforcement that is, of calling the atten- 
 tion of the municipal authorities to housing evils 
 which require attention through volunteer work- 
 ers. In the first place it is very difficult to secure 
 volunteers who have a working knowledge of 
 what constitutes bad housing conditions, and no 
 volunteer worker can as a rule give the time for 
 the patient and careful study that is necessary to 
 equip him with the expert sanitary knowledge that 
 is requisite in such work. It is essential, there- 
 fore, in any movement of this kind, to have the 
 services of a competent, properly compensated, 
 trained expert. 
 
 Where any plan of law enforcement is taken up 
 176
 
 THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 
 
 it will be found best to proceed upon a district 
 basis; that is, to concentrate on a given neigh- 
 borhood and to systematically inspect one house 
 after another in that neighborhood, calling the 
 attention of the local authorities to the conditions 
 that are discovered. This is far wiser than at- 
 tempting to spread out all over the city at one 
 time and much fairer to owners and to the en- 
 forcing authorities. 
 
 Another important way in which the private 
 citizen can aid the cause of housing reform is in 
 the formation of companies to take over the 
 management of tenement houses. In some cities 
 this has been combined with the ownership of 
 model tenements, where a company already run- 
 ning such house has advantageously taken over 
 the management of other tenements. But the two 
 are not necessarily connected. 
 
 Housing evils are in the main due to the fact 
 that the owners of the property are either unaware 
 or neglectful of the conditions which exist or are 
 ignorant of the right way in which to manage 
 property of this kind. The city can do much in 
 forcing owners to keep their property in a sanitary 
 condition, but this is an unending task. Few 
 cities are sufficiently well equipped to do this 
 adequately. Their work should be supplemented, 
 therefore, as far as possible by private effort. The 
 simplest and wisest way to supplement it is to sub- 
 stitute for a neglectful, ignorant and careless land- 
 lord, a careful, conscientious and attentive one. 
 
 12 ,77
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 This by no means necessitates any change in the 
 ownership of the property. It is a question of 
 management. The management of a tenement 
 house in which there are many families is not a sim- 
 ple task. It requires experience, good judgment, 
 patience, tact, intelligence and knowledge of hu- 
 man nature. It should be done by persons who 
 by temperament and experience are fitted for 
 this particular field. Good management of tene- 
 ment houses pays. A well managed tenement 
 house is more profitable in the long run to an 
 owner than a poorly managed one. In such 
 houses there are fewer losses from vacant rooms 
 and from bad debts, and a much smaller bill for 
 repairs. 
 
 Next to securing improved laws and their proper 
 administration, no better form of private effort 
 can be found than the formation of companies for 
 the proper, efficient and economical management 
 of tenement house property. Excellent results 
 in this direction have been obtained in London, 
 and in America, especially in Philadelphia through 
 the work of the Octavia Hill Association. The 
 City and Suburban Homes Company of New York 
 has recently extended its work into this field and 
 is obtaining satisfactory results. 
 
 In this work there is a distinct opportunity for 
 women. A woman as a rule is more successful 
 than a man. This is not strange, as the larger 
 part of tenement house management is nothing 
 more nor less than sympathetic understanding 
 
 ,78
 
 THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 
 
 and good housekeeping. The secret of success is 
 in maintaining satisfactory relations with the 
 tenants, in making them consider it a real privilege 
 to live in your house and a calamity to be forced 
 to go elsewhere. This result is not so difficult to 
 bring about as it may seem. As soon as the 
 tenants experience the benefits of the new regime 
 and realize that their landlord has human relations 
 with them, most obstacles to a proper understand- 
 ing disappear. 
 
 Of course a proper understanding can not be 
 had with tenants unless they are decent people; 
 but decent landlords need have no other kind. 
 If they get them, it is entirely their own fault. 
 That they do get them to the great extent which 
 they now do, is not surprising in view of the fact 
 that they make little effort to safeguard them- 
 selves. Nothing is easier than keeping out of 
 one's house objectionable tenants, provided one 
 is willing to take a little pains. It is a perfectly 
 simple thing before taking in new tenants, to 
 require references as to character, especially from 
 the places in which they have previously resided. 
 It is equally simple to adopt the practice of visit- 
 ing their previous residences and there ascertain- 
 ing the essential things with regard to them, 
 namely, whether they are respectable, temperate 
 people and pay their rent promptly. This is an 
 essential prerequisite to proper tenement house 
 management. 
 
 Another very desirable thing is to make it to 
 179
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 the interest of the tenants to take care of the house 
 as if it were their own property. The best method 
 that has been devised thus far of accomplishing 
 this has been the admirable plan that is adopted 
 by some companies, of allowing each family 
 repairs and re-decorations each year to the amount 
 of one month's rent and then permitting the ten- 
 ants, if they so maintain their rooms that it is 
 not necessary to spend this money, to have the 
 benefit of it as a deduction from their rent. This 
 gives to each family a direct incentive to careful 
 use of the apartments. 
 
 Another form of effort in which private citizens 
 may wisely engage is in buying up from time to 
 time some of the more antiquated houses, im- 
 proving them in the more essential respects, 
 letting light into dark rooms, doing away with 
 antiquated sanitary conveniences and substitut- 
 ing modern ones, improving generally the tone, 
 appearance and quality of the house, and, when 
 such renovation has been completed, putting in a 
 higher grade of tenants and then, as opportunity 
 offers, selling the building at a reasonable advance 
 and investing the money in other buildings, and 
 repeating this process indefinitely. One's capital 
 is thus always live capital, and a large field of 
 influence is possible. It is an excellent way also 
 of stimulating other owners to the improvement 
 of their property. If a number of houses in a 
 neighborhood are improved in this way it will be 
 
 1 80
 
 THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 
 
 found that other owners will wake up to the neces- 
 sity of making similar changes in their property. 
 
 There is almost an unlimited field to be occupied 
 in the study of social conditions and the deter- 
 mination of their relation to housing problems. 
 Such questions as rentals, overcrowding, the lodger 
 evil, tenement labor, offer wide fields of effort for 
 the good of the community. 
 
 In general, a fruitful source of endeavor is to 
 be found in the education of the community. 
 This indeed is a prerequisite to all successful 
 effort. A campaign for improved housing laws 
 can not succeed until there has been created a 
 sound public sentiment which demands their 
 enactment and is unwilling to tolerate the further 
 existence of unsanitary conditions. 
 
 The most potent factor in creating this sentiment 
 is the press. Here is the means of quickly and 
 in a striking way reaching thousands of people in 
 a few moments, where by any other method only 
 hundreds could be reached during a considerable 
 period. Without the support of the press little 
 progress can be expected in housing reform in any 
 community. As a rule it is not difficult to obtain 
 that support. The policy of a paper is determined 
 by its proprietor and its editors, and they are 
 influenced primarily by what they think will appeal 
 to the intelligence and judgment of their readers. 
 In addition, editors and newspaper proprietors 
 are of course influenced by the views of their 
 friends and by the views of men of standing in the 
 
 181
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 community. Sometimes in rare instances such 
 influence is exerted against the cause of housing 
 reform. Owners of unsanitary tenements, some- 
 times our "best citizens," exert their influence to 
 prevent the passage and enforcement of laws which 
 may affect them financially. This, however, is 
 not a condition that generally prevails. 
 
 The best appeal, however, to the editor or 
 proprietor of a paper is the appeal to his own rea- 
 son. You are not only dealing with an editor, 
 but with a man. If there are conditions in your 
 city which cry aloud for remedy, which are in- 
 tolerable, which produce disease and death and 
 lead to social and moral degradation, you do not 
 need to rest your effort to secure the support of a 
 particular newspaper upon the recommendations 
 of any citizen, no matter how influential he may 
 be. There is a much easier and simpler way. 
 Take your editor to the conditions and let him 
 observe them at first hand. It takes a little more 
 time to do this but the effort is more than amply 
 repaid. An impression thus gained is not easily 
 eradicated. One actual physical inspection by 
 the editor in person is worth all the articles that 
 you may ever send him for publication. This is 
 the keynote of the whole educational movement 
 in housing reform. Let the people understand 
 the facts. Where they cannot see conditions at 
 first hand acquaint them with such conditions by 
 means of photographs. 
 
 The education of the community must go on 
 182
 
 THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 
 
 all the time. It is not something to be done at 
 one particular moment and then dropped. It is 
 an inherent part of any scheme for housing im- 
 provement. The community must progress with 
 you if you are to expect advanced standards. 
 
 There is a very large field to be cultivated in 
 educating tenants to a better knowledge of right 
 ways of living and to a higher standard of their 
 own responsibilities. Even though the landlord 
 neglects to care for the public parts of his building 
 the fact remains that if each tenant had a keen 
 sense of responsibility for the maintenance of 
 sanitary conditions, few unsanitary conditions 
 would exist. The increasing foreign population 
 seriously complicates the problem. Ignorant of 
 our language, and not accustomed to methods 
 of living that they find here, they do not easily 
 adapt themselves to the changed conditions, and 
 frequently adopt habits which render difficult 
 the maintenance of proper standards. Most of 
 them err through ignorance, not by intent; 
 perhaps it would be more accurate to say through 
 thoughtlessness. It is so much easier to throw 
 waste material out of a window of a tenement if 
 one lives on the upper stories than it is to put it 
 in a pail and carry it down several flights of stairs. 
 Many who do this would not do so if they under- 
 stood that this practice resulted in conditions 
 which cause sickness to themselves and their 
 children as well as to their neighbors. 
 
 The importance of adequate ventilation in their 
 183
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 homes has never been impressed upon them. It 
 is only in rare instances that one finds a tenement 
 house dweller awake to this. One may provide 
 tenement houses with large rooms, with ample 
 light and air and yet the tenants by keeping 
 their windows shut day and night, live in close, 
 badly ventilated rooms. They must be taught 
 the significance of good ventilation and of bad 
 ventilation, and they must be taught in a way that 
 they will comprehend. You can not appeal to 
 them successfully on abstract principles, but you 
 can appeal most successfully if you make your 
 appeal direct and personal. 
 
 How valuable would be a movement which in- 
 structed tenants thoroughly with regard to the im- 
 portance of having their windows open at night; 
 which broke down the old superstition of the dan- 
 gers of night air inbred for generations in the 
 Italian peasants who come to this country. It 
 is not strange that this belief should still prevail 
 among the simple working people who have come 
 here from various European countries, where ow- 
 ing to the prevalence of malaria-breeding mos- 
 quitoes, the practice of keeping windows open at 
 night was a menace. 
 
 How many tenants understand modern plumb- 
 ing or realize the dangers connected with it and 
 the necessity for its proper care? They have some 
 waste material they wish to dispose of, and what 
 more natural than for them to put it in the closet? 
 It disappears and bothers them no more so they 
 
 184
 
 THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 
 
 think. They do not realize that they may be 
 creating serious sanitary evils, which will result 
 in unnecessary expense to the landlord and, if 
 neglected by him, in sickness to themselves and to 
 other tenants. 
 
 An organized movement, therefore, for the 
 education of tenants in the essential affairs of 
 domestic life would be most profitable in its 
 results. Such a plan could be wisely carried out 
 in two ways: First, through proper instruction in 
 the public schools, thus reaching the children and 
 insuring that the next generation shall have had 
 the opportunity of appreciating the significance 
 of these questions. A considerable amount of 
 this information will filter from the child to its 
 parents. 
 
 The other method would be through the sys- 
 tematic visitation in their homes in accordance 
 with a well developed plan, of each family in a 
 given neighborhood by some person with a special 
 gift for influencing people of this kind. Such a 
 plan has been carried out very successfully in some 
 cities, notably, in the City of Yonkers, where for 
 several years past a woman inspector connected 
 with the Health Department has carried on such 
 work. Her work has not been limited, however, 
 solely to the sanitary care of the home but has 
 embraced such important questions as the care of 
 children, proper diet, methods of cooking, as well 
 as questions of personal and house cleanliness. 
 An important adjunct to any such plan is the dis- 
 
 185
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 tribution of educational leaflets. These, however, 
 should be put in very simple form to be effective. 
 It will be found as a rule that the greatest influ- 
 ence will come from the personal relationships es- 
 tablished. 
 
 Almost, though not quite, as important is the 
 education of the landlord. A man who has 
 acquired property is not likely to believe that he 
 needs to be instructed with regard to its manage- 
 ment. He is quite confident, as a rule, that he 
 understands how to run his house better than 
 anybody else. Sometimes he does. Often, how- 
 ever, he does not. The test of it is found in the 
 conditions that exist. If his house is clean, 
 orderly, the tenants of good character, the vacan- 
 cies few and his bills for repairs small, it is quite 
 obvious that he needs no instruction from any- 
 body as to how to run his building. If, on the 
 other hand, the house is in an unsanitary con- 
 dition, or there is an undue number of vacant 
 apartments or he is obtaining comparatively little 
 income from his property, it is pretty evident that 
 the house is not being well managed and that the 
 landlord has something to learn. Even in such 
 cases he will be loath to admit this. The landlord 
 under such circumstances, when urged to consider 
 whether the management of his property can not 
 be improved, is likely to reply in the same vein 
 as did the tenant who, when urged by the woman 
 sanitary inspector to make certain changes with 
 regard to her methods of caring for her children, 
 
 186
 
 THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 
 
 replied that "she guessed she didn't need anybody 
 to tell her how to bring up children; she had 
 buried seven of them." 
 
 The method of approach is the same in both 
 cases. The tenant must be made to see that the 
 fact that she had buried seven children was an 
 indictment of her methods of management; the 
 landlord must be made to see that the fact that 
 he has to spend large sums of money each year 
 on repairs, that he loses a great deal of money on 
 account of vacant apartments and bad debts, is 
 an indictment of his methods of running his house. 
 
 What are the main things which the landlord 
 needs to learn? The first and most vital thing 
 for him to learn is that it is against his interest 
 to have unsanitary conditions prevail in his 
 property; that it is to his interest to have his 
 property maintained in a clean and proper con- 
 dition; that even though this involves spending 
 money, it will be money saved in the end; that 
 the character of his tenants is of vital concern to 
 him and that he has it within his power to choose 
 his tenants; that there is more profit in having a 
 house filled with contented people who desire to 
 remain there for a long time, and with no vacant 
 apartments, than there is in having many vacant 
 apartments and a few tenants paying higher 
 rents; and, finally, the landlord should have 
 awakened in him a sense of moral responsibility 
 with regard to the welfare of his tenants. He has 
 an unusual opportunity for influencing for good 
 
 .87
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 or ill the welfare of hundreds of lives. Such an 
 appeal can not be made in the first instance, 
 perhaps, but can be made ultimately. The appeal 
 to self-interest is the one that must be made first; 
 the appeal to enlightened conscience afterward. 
 
 How is the education of landlords to be brought 
 about? Just exactly as the education of tenants: 
 In an organized way by people who know more 
 about the landlord's business than he does. It 
 will not do to send people to teach him who are 
 not competent to teach. It will not do to send 
 people who can not gain his confidence. You 
 must first get your influence before you use it. 
 You can't get your influence with the landlord 
 unless he is convinced that your knowledge of the 
 subject exceeds his own. That, you have to de- 
 monstrate. He will not take you at your own es- 
 timate or at that of another. You must let him 
 see what is being done by other landlords and 
 the advantages that accrue from their methods, 
 and you must be prepared for his resisting every 
 suggestion you make. In that regard he is alto- 
 gether human. 
 
 Another form of useful effort along educational 
 lines is in the training of janitors for the care of 
 tenement houses. In our large cities where the 
 type of house is one occupied by many families 
 and where a janitor or resident housekeeper is 
 essential, this is of greater importance than in 
 the smaller communities. It is not strange that 
 tenement houses are often kept in a neglected 
 
 188
 
 THE FIELD OF PRIVATE EFFORT 
 
 condition when we reflect that we entrust the 
 care of twenty families one hundred people the 
 adjustment of their social differences, the decision 
 as to the use of the public parts of the building, the 
 necessary discipline, etc., to some ignorant man 
 or woman totally unfamiliar with sanitary require- 
 ments, with no special standards of their own, with 
 no knowledge of sanitary plumbing or what it 
 means and with generally such inadequate com- 
 pensation that it necessitates their following some 
 other occupation for their main source of income 
 and devoting to the care of the house and the 
 twenty families, only such small portions of their 
 time as they can spare from their regular business. 
 
 Many tenement house owners would be glad to 
 employ competent janitors if they could obtain 
 them, and would be glad to compensate such men 
 adequately. It is, however, almost impossible to 
 obtain a good janitor. In the first place there 
 is no source of supply, no employment agencies 
 where they can be obtained. No special quali- 
 fications are required and there is no method of 
 training. No one thus far has attempted to 
 equip the janitor for his duties. 
 
 What is greatly needed in such cities as New 
 York, Boston and Chicago, is a training school for 
 janitors where they can learn both the theory and 
 practice of their work; can be made familiar with 
 the laws and ordinances bearing upon it, with 
 the rights of landlords and the rights of tenants; 
 where they can be instructed in a practical way 
 
 189
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 in their duties; where they can be taken through 
 a tenement house and shown the relations of 
 the plumbing to the health of the occupants, can 
 learn how to make ordinary repairs to plumbing, 
 to remove obstructions in pipes and fixtures; 
 can learn how to do the necessary odd jobs of 
 carpenter work that every tenement house re- 
 quires; be taught the importance of maintaining 
 high standards of sanitary conditions; the best 
 way to handle garbage, ashes and other refuse; the 
 necessity of ventilation in all parts of such a build- 
 ing, the frequent airing of public halls in a word, 
 can learn in a practical way the bearing of all 
 their duties upon the lives of the people whom 
 they are put there to serve, and upon the financial 
 interests of their employers. If such a training 
 school were established and properly managed, 
 it is reasonable to expect that only competent 
 trained janitors would ultimately be employed by 
 real estate owners. Such a training school must 
 come in the near future. London has its sanitary 
 institute, but no American city has anything of 
 the kind. 
 
 These are some of the more important forms of 
 work that can be undertaken advantageously by 
 persons interested in improving housing conditions. 
 All of them, however, will be comparatively in- 
 effective unless preceded by a successful effort to 
 secure the enactment of laws that will regulate 
 adequately the construction and maintenance of the 
 houses in which the great mass of the people live. 
 
 190
 
 XIV 
 A CHAPTER OF DON'TS
 
 XIV 
 A CHAPTER OF DONTS 
 
 DON'T let your city become a city of tene- 
 ments. Keep it a city of homes. 
 Don't imagine there is no necessity for 
 action because conditions in your city are not as 
 bad as they are elsewhere. 
 
 Don't build a model tenement until you have 
 secured a model housing law. 
 
 Don't attempt to legislate first and investigate 
 afterwards. 
 
 Don't permit any new houses to be built that 
 do not have adequate light and ventilation and 
 proper sanitation. 
 
 Don't legislate merely for the present. 
 
 Don't permit the growth of new slums. Pre- 
 vention is better than cure. 
 
 Don't urge that all new houses shall be fireproof. 
 
 Don't permit the occupancy of new houses if 
 built in violation of law. 
 
 Don't lightly give discretionary power to the 
 officials who enforce your housing laws. 
 
 Don't urge the creation of a Tenement House 
 Department, unless you have more than 25,000 
 tenement houses. 
 
 '3 193
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 Don't complain of the enforcing authorities 
 until you are familiar with their methods of 
 administration. 
 
 Don't tolerate cellar dwellings. 
 
 Don't let the poor be denied a liberal supply of 
 water in their homes. 
 
 Don't permit houses unfit for human habitation 
 to be occupied. 
 
 Don't urge at first the reconstruction of the 
 older houses. Let this wait until after other 
 things have been done. 
 
 Don't permit privies to exist in any city. 
 Compel their removal. 
 
 Don't urge the destruction of unsanitary 
 buildings. Keep them empty if they are not fit 
 for human habitation. 
 
 Don't tolerate the lodger evil. Nip it in the bud. 
 
 Don't take up minor matters, but attack the 
 worst evils first. 
 
 Don't allow the enforcement of housing laws to 
 be nullified by politicians. 
 
 Don't neglect the landlord's side of the question. 
 
 Don't repeat the talk about the poor not want- 
 ing good housing accommodations. 
 
 Don't urge the municipal ownership and opera- 
 tion of tenement houses. 
 
 Don't ask the poor questions about themselves 
 in housing investigations but about their houses. 
 
 Don't resort to criticism of public officials until 
 you have tried co-operation. 
 
 194
 
 A CHAPTER OF DON TS 
 
 Don't rely on the death rate alone as an index 
 of good or bad housing conditions. 
 
 Don't confuse the fields of public and private 
 effort. 
 
 Don't cease your efforts when you have passed 
 a good law. Eternal vigilance is not only the 
 price of liberty, but of all progress. 
 
 195
 
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 INDEX
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ACCOMMODATIONS 
 
 housing, scarcity un- 
 likely 18-20 
 
 ADMINISTRATION 
 of housing laws. See 
 Enforcement and Mu- 
 nicipal 
 AIR-SHAFTS, 10, 103-107, 126-127 
 
 AIR SPACE 
 
 as a standard of ventila- 
 tion 29-30, 1 05 
 
 ALDERMEN 
 
 and City Councils 151-153 
 
 ALTERATIONS. . 105-107, 131-132 
 ANIMALS 
 
 in tenement houses. . . 1 19-120 
 ARCHITECTS 
 
 and housing laws 91 , 92 
 
 "BACK-TO-BACK" TENE- 
 MENTS 23 
 
 BATHING FACILITIES 
 lack of, in tenements, 10, 17-18 
 
 requirements for 1 10-1 12 
 
 coal in the bath-tub 
 story discredited 17-18 
 
 BATHS 
 public, patronage of 18 
 
 Boss 
 political 158-160 
 
 BUILDERS 
 and provision of housing 
 
 accommodations 19 
 
 and model tenements, 64, 71- 
 
 and municipal control, 81-82 
 
 and housing regulations, 92-93, 
 
 96-97, i i 1-1 12, 127, 
 
 '32-134, "52 
 
 BUILDINGS 
 
 department or bureau of. 
 See Department. 
 
 CARETAKERS ........... 1 12-1 13 
 
 CELLAR DWELLINGS, 3, 66, 118- 
 
 119 
 
 CHARITABLE WORKERS. See 
 
 Social workers 
 CHILD 
 
 effect of bad housing 
 upon ............... 5 
 
 ClRCULARIZATION ......... 155 
 
 CITIZENS 
 
 neglect and ignorance 
 
 CITIZENS' COMMITTEES 
 
 how constituted ........ 49, 50 
 
 proper functions of .. 171-177 
 
 CITY AND SUBURBAN 
 HOMES COMPANY ....... 69 
 
 CITY LIFE 
 
 and country life ........ 3-3 2 
 
 attractions of city ....... 32 
 
 CIVIL PROCESS ........... 146 
 
 CIVIL SERVICE EMPLOYEES 
 
 129-130 
 
 CLEANLINESS 
 
 efforts of poor to obtain . 17-18 
 provision of bathing 
 facilities ........... 1 10-1 12 
 
 care of premises ... 40, 113-114 
 standards for .......... 59 
 
 COAL 
 
 in the bath-tub, story 
 discredited ........... 17-18 
 
 COMMISSIONER 
 of Health, powers of ____ 90 
 
 207
 
 INDEX 
 
 PACK 
 
 COMMITTEE 
 
 on housing reform, its 
 function two-fold 49 
 
 personnel 49-5 1 
 
 qualifications of execu- 
 tive 51 
 
 duties of 52 
 
 COMMITTEES 
 
 legislative 161-162 
 
 COMMUNITY 
 
 and housing evils, 4, 12, 43- 
 
 44, 49, 5 2 
 COMPETITION 
 
 municipal control would 
 
 drive out 81-82 
 
 COMPLAINTS 
 
 futility of 1 24, 1 34-1 36 
 
 CONGESTION 
 
 and overcrowding, in 
 
 New York 8, 1 1 
 
 general discussion 25-35 
 
 difficulty of setting stan- 
 dards 2 7-3 o 
 
 room overcrowding. . 28-29, 32 
 airspace as a standard. . 29-30 
 relief measures suggested 3 0-3 5 
 distribution of popula- 
 tion one remedy 30-32 
 
 CONSTRUCTION 
 
 responsibility for 125, 126 
 
 CORRUPTION 
 
 municipal, in connection 
 
 with building 92-93 
 
 COURTS 
 
 attitude of 142-144 
 
 CRIMINAL PROCESS 140 
 
 DARK ROOMS 3, 5, 8, 10, 59 
 
 DEATH RATE 
 and bad housing condi- 
 tions 22-24 
 
 DEPARTMENT 
 
 of buildings 1 23, 1 25 
 
 and the building inter- 
 ests 127 
 
 of public safety 1 23 
 
 DESTRUCTION 
 of unsanitary buildings 20, 32- 
 
 33 
 
 DILAPIDATION 
 
 not necessarily an evil. . . 20 
 DISCRETIONARY POWER, 
 
 dangers of granting 90-94 
 
 DISTRIBUTION 
 
 of population, one rem- 
 edy for congestion . . . .30-32 
 
 DONT'S 
 
 a chapter of 191-195 
 
 DRAINAGE 3, 40, 108-109 
 
 " DUMB-BELL" TENEMENTS 10 
 
 EARNING CAPACITY 
 
 affected by bad housing . 5 
 ENFORCEMENT 
 
 of housing laws 44-45, 121- 
 148 
 
 qualifications of officials 
 
 130-131 
 
 responsibility for 123-124 
 
 ENVIRONMENT 4, 5, 16-17 
 
 EXECUTIVE 
 
 of housing committee ... 5 1-52 
 
 FACTS 
 
 knowledge of essential to 
 housing reform, 44, 52-53, 
 167 
 FALLACIES 
 
 popular 1 3-24 
 
 with regard to the poor. . 15-18 
 
 lack of shelter 1 8-20 
 
 dilapidation 20 
 
 destruction of buildings. 20-21 
 
 rear tenements 21 -23 
 
 on the death rate 23-24 
 
 FINES 
 
 futility of 131 
 
 FIRE 
 
 protection against, 10, 40-42, 
 114-118, 125 
 department and housing 
 laws 124 
 
 208
 
 INDEX 
 
 FIRE-ESCAPES 
 material and construc- 
 tion 1 14-1 16 
 
 blocking of 146 
 
 FIRES 1 17, 1 18 
 
 FOREIGN POPULATION 
 as factor in the housing 
 problem 42 
 
 GRAFT 
 
 See Corruption 
 GREED 
 
 a cause of housing evils. . 
 
 HEALTH DEPARTMENT 
 and administration of 
 housing laws, 125, 126, 127- 
 
 128, i37~'39, i40->43 
 tenement house bureau 
 
 in 129 
 
 women inspectors 1 30 
 
 and politics 147-148 
 
 HEIGHT 
 of buildings 96-97, 102, 116 
 
 HOMES 
 
 importance of good. . .6, 11-12 
 and the lodger evil 33 
 
 HOUSING 
 Committee on. 
 See Committee 
 
 HOUSING EVILS 
 
 manifestations of 3 
 
 causes 3-4 
 
 crystallized in New York 7-12 
 
 unnecessary 12 
 
 evidences of 24 
 
 effect on community. . . .43-44 
 remedies for. . 30-35, 66, 70-73 
 
 HOUSING INVESTIGATION 
 
 essentials of 53~6o 
 
 schedules important .... 55 
 preparation of schedules . 56-60 
 
 HOUSING LAWS 
 must meet local needs. . . 44 
 
 PAGE 
 
 HOUSING LAWS (Continued) 
 
 administration 44~47 
 
 relation to other stat- 
 utes 44,94-95 
 
 essential principles of. . .87-97 
 knowledge of facts essen- 
 tial 32-53 
 
 terms should be definite . 89-90 
 dangers of granting dis- 
 cretionary power 90-94 
 
 should look to future. . . .95-97 
 what a housing law 
 
 should contain 99-120 
 
 fundamental considera- 
 tions 101 
 
 light and ventilation. . 101-107 
 
 sanitation 107-1 1 2 
 
 maintenance 1 12-1 14, 125, 126 
 fire protection . . . 1 14-1 18, 125 
 
 enforcement of 121-148 
 
 advantages of state law 
 over municipal ordi- 
 nance 151 
 
 amendments to 172 
 
 HOUSING PROBLEM 
 
 is widespread 3 
 
 distinct from tenement 
 
 house problem 6 
 
 a three-fold problem 37-46 
 
 prevention of first im- 
 portance 39 
 
 sanitary, structural, and 
 
 social 40-42 
 
 duty of state toward 85-86 
 
 HOUSING REFORM 
 
 basis for 20 
 
 mistakes in, 21, 41,43,44-45, 
 
 53 
 
 how to start a move- 
 ment for 47-5 2 
 
 committee on 49-5 1 
 
 campaigns 51-52, 164-168 
 
 in New York 7'~73 
 
 IGNORANCE 
 
 a factor in housing evils . 4 
 INJUNCTION 141 
 
 209
 
 INDEX 
 
 INSPECTION 
 to determine overcrowd- 
 
 . in S 34-35 
 
 importance of adequate 129- 
 
 130, 134-140 
 
 INTERIOR ROOMS, 103, 105, 106 
 INVESTIGATION 
 See Housing Investigation. 
 
 JANITORS 112-113 
 
 training of 188-190 
 
 LABOR MEN 
 
 and housing legislation 155-1 56 
 LAND 
 occupied. See Yard 
 
 Spaces. 
 
 overcrowding. See Over- 
 crowding 
 
 LANDLORDS 
 
 and overcrowding 35 
 
 rights and duties of. .42-43, 52 
 
 the city as 78-80 
 
 responsibility 144-145 
 
 registration of 146-147 
 
 education of 186-188 
 
 LAW ENFORCEMENT 173-177 
 
 LAWS. See Legislation and 
 
 Housing Law 
 LEGAL 
 
 equipment of health de- 
 partments 138-139 
 
 processes, civil and crim- 
 inal 140-144 
 
 LEGISLATION 
 
 with regard to lodgers. . . 34-35 
 administration and fi- 
 nances 45-46 
 
 importance of accurate 
 knowledge in securing 44, 
 52-53, 167 
 
 results of, in New York, 45-46, 
 71, 73, 84, 91 
 in relation to municipal 
 control... 8 1 
 
 LEGISLATION (Continued) 
 constitutional limita- 
 tions 86 
 
 should deal with essen- 
 tials 86 
 
 essential principles of, 44-46, 
 87^7 
 
 enforcement 121-148 
 
 advantages of state laws 151- 
 
 '53 
 methods of securing. . 153-168 
 
 LEGISLATIVE REFORMS 
 
 how to secure 151-168 
 
 committees 161-162 
 
 LESSONS 
 
 from New York's ex- 
 perience . . .7-12, 45-46, 91, 
 1 1 1 
 
 LETTERS 
 
 in securing legislative re- 
 forms 162-164 
 
 LIGHT 
 
 importance of, 3, 5, 8, 10, 22 
 requirements for, in a 
 housing law. .101-107, 126- 
 127 
 
 LODGER EVIL 3, 33-35,42 
 
 placing of responsibility 
 
 for 35 
 
 economic consequences 
 
 of 33-34 
 
 LODGING HOUSES 
 in tenements. .. 120 
 
 MAINTENANCE 112-114, I2 5> I2 6> 
 134-148 
 MANAGEMENT 
 of tenements 177, 178 
 
 MODEL TENEMENT HOUSES 20 
 and their limitations. . . .61-73 
 not a solution of the 
 
 housing problem 63-66 
 
 commercial builders not 
 
 influenced by 64-65 
 
 benefit but few. . .65-66, 71-73 
 in New York 67-68,71-73 
 
 2IO
 
 INDEX 
 
 FACE 
 
 MODEL TENEMENT HOUSES (Con- 
 tinued) 
 
 as charitable enterprises. 69 
 " philanthropy and 5 per 
 
 cent " 69 
 
 effort and money often 
 
 misplaced 70, 72-73 
 
 MUNICIPAL 
 
 functions 83-84 
 
 operation, advantages 
 
 and disadvantages of . 77-86 
 European conditions dif- 
 ferent 78 
 
 the city as landlord 78-80 
 
 civil service law an ob- 
 stacle to efficient ad- 
 ministration 80-8 1 
 
 restrictive legislation ... 81 
 would kill competition. . 81-82 
 ordinances, disadvan- 
 tages of 151-153 
 
 regulation 77-80 
 
 tenements 77~86 
 
 NEGLECT 
 a cause of housing evils. . 4 
 
 NEW BUILDINGS 
 methods of enforcement 
 in 131-134 
 
 NEW YORK 
 tenement house problem 
 
 in 6,7-12,71-73 
 
 lessons to be learned 
 
 from, 7-12, 45-46, 91, in 
 number and types of 
 tenement houses, 10-1 1, 1 17- 
 118 
 
 housing legislation in, 41, 45- 
 
 46, 71-72, 91, 104, iii- 
 
 ii2, 117-118, 132-133, 137, 
 
 142 
 
 Tenement House De- 
 partment viii, 45-46, 
 
 128, 132, 138, 139, 14; 
 model tenements in...(' 
 
 costof tenements, in 1906 
 
 OCTAVIA HILL ASSOCIA- 
 TION 178 
 
 OUTPREMISES 3, 109 
 
 OVERCROWDING 
 
 room and land 27-29, 32 
 
 and the lodger evil 33~53 
 
 remedies for 3~35. 42 
 
 See also Congestion 
 
 OWNERS. See Landlords 
 
 PARKS. See Public Im- 
 provements 
 
 PENALTIES 144 
 
 PETITIONS 
 
 of little value 162 
 
 " PHILANTHROPY AND FIVE 
 
 PERCENT" 69 
 
 PHOTOGRAPHS 
 
 value of 60, 1 39- 1 40, 1 5 5 
 
 PLUMBING, 3, 20,40, 108-109, 125 
 
 ignorance of tenants 
 
 with regard to 184-185 
 
 POLICE DEPARTMENT 
 
 and housing laws 1 24 
 
 POLICE POWER 
 
 of state, in tenement 
 
 house regulation 85-86 
 
 POLITICS 
 
 and housing reform, 50, 77-86, 
 129-130, 147-148, 151-152, 
 158-160, 164-168 
 POOR 
 
 the, misconceptions with 
 
 regard to 15-18 
 
 POPULATION 
 
 distribution of 30-32 
 
 POVERTY 
 
 new view of 5 
 
 PRESS 
 
 the, its support essen- 
 tial 153-154, 181-182 
 
 PRESSURE 
 
 on living accommodations 19 
 
 21 I
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREVENTION 
 the best solution of 
 
 housing evils 39, 70-7 1 
 
 PRIVATE EFFORT 
 
 the field of 171-190 
 
 citizens' committees . . 171-177 
 
 attitude toward officials 173- 
 
 176 
 
 district inspection 176-177 
 
 companies to manage 
 
 tenements 177-180 
 
 through education. . . . 181-190 
 
 PRIVIES 3, 1 1, 40, 1 08 
 
 PROGRAMME 
 
 for housing reform. ... 171-190 
 PROHIBITION 
 
 of occupancy. See 
 Vacating of Premises 
 PROSTITUTES 
 
 in tenement houses 119 
 
 PUBLIC 
 improvements, do not 
 
 work hardship 19-20 
 
 officials, ignorance of 
 
 housing evils 4 
 
 officials, attitude toward 174- 
 176 
 
 sentiment, power of. 153-160, 
 181-182 
 PUBLIC BATHS. See Batbs 
 
 REAR TENEMENTS 
 
 not necessarily bad 21-23 
 
 REGISTRATION 
 
 of tenement owners. . . 146-147 
 
 RELIEF MEASURES. See 
 
 Remedies 
 REMEDIES 
 
 for congestion and over- 
 crowding 3~35 
 
 for bad housing condi- 
 tions 66, 85 
 
 police power of state. . . .85-86 
 See Legislation and 
 Housing Laws 
 
 RENTS 
 
 excessive 3, 8 
 
 and the lodger evil 33~35 
 
 REPORTS 
 of housing investigations 60 
 
 RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 shifting of 1 24 
 
 ROOM OVERCROWDING. 
 See Overcrowding 
 
 ROOMS 
 
 interior 1 03, 1 05, 1 06 
 
 lighting of 105 
 
 dark 3, 5, 8, 10, 59 
 
 SANITARY 
 
 conveniences in tene- 
 ment houses ii 
 
 problems 40 
 
 SANITATION 40, 107-112, 127-128 
 See also Light, Plumb- 
 ing, Water Supply 
 SCHEDULES 
 
 importance of, in hous- 
 ing investigations . . . .55-56 
 preparation and use of . . 56-60 
 
 order of subjects 57~5^ 
 
 tabulation of results 60 
 
 samples of 199-203 
 
 "SCHOOL-SINKS." 
 
 See Privies 
 
 SHELTER 
 
 scarcity of, unlikely 18-20 
 
 SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 in relation to housing 
 evils, 3,8,9, 16-17, 2 7> 33> 
 42, 43, 85, 92-93. ' '9 
 SOCIAL WORKERS 
 
 changed views of 4-5 
 
 in legislative campaigns 156, 
 
 159, 1 66 
 
 and law enforcement. ... 176 
 
 STAIRS 
 
 necessity for fireproof 
 construction 1 17 
 
 212
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS 
 
 in housing reform 40-42, 101- 
 105 
 SUPERINTENDENT OF 
 
 BUILDINGS 
 
 dangers of granting dis- 
 cretionary power to. . .90-94 
 
 SWEATING EVIL 3, 42 
 
 TENANTS 
 
 protection of 43, 145-146 
 
 instruction of 183-186 
 
 responsibility. ...112, 145-146 
 selection of 179, 180 
 
 TENEMENT HOUSE 
 
 what constitutes a 7, 8 
 
 "dumb-bell" 10 
 
 rear 21-23 
 
 "back-to-back" 23 
 
 TENEMENT HOUSE ACT 
 
 of 1867 95 
 
 of 1901 45, 1 17 
 
 TENEMENT HOUSE COM- 
 MISSION in 
 
 TENEMENT HOUSE DE- 
 PARTMENT or bureau. . .45-46, 
 128-129, 137 
 See also New York 
 
 TENEMENT HOUSE PROB- 
 LEM 
 
 beginnings of 3.6,7 
 
 restricted to few cities. . . 6, 7 
 easily checked at outset. 6, 7 
 
 in New York 8-12 
 
 duty of the state toward . 85-86 
 See Legislation and 
 Housing Laws 
 
 TUBERCULOSIS 
 and poverty. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 5 
 
 UNSANITARY HOUSES 
 to be vacated 21, 107, 137, 138 
 
 VACATING 
 
 of premises ...21, 1 07, 137, 138 
 VENTILATION 
 
 importance of 8, 10, 20, 22, 
 29-30 
 
 requirements in a hous- 
 ing law 96-97, 101-107 
 
 responsibility for secur- 
 ing 125 
 
 ignorance of tenants 
 with regard to 183-184 
 
 VOLUNTEER WORKERS 
 
 and law enforcement 176 
 
 WATER-CLOSETS 109, 1 1 1 
 
 WATER SUPPLY . .3, 108-1 10, 125 
 
 WHITE, ALFRED T. 
 
 pioneer in building model 
 tenements 69 
 
 WOMEN 
 
 inspectors 1 30 
 
 rent collectors 178, 179 
 
 WORKINGMEN 
 
 normal housing condi- 
 tions of 6,7 
 
 housing of, in New York . 8, 9 
 and housing legislation 155-156 
 
 YARD SPACES 95-97, 102, 131-132 
 
 213
 
 A MODEL TENEMENT 
 HOUSE LAW 
 
 BY LAWRENCE VEILLER 
 
 Author of " Housing Reform," etc. 
 
 "A Model Tenement House Law" is 
 uniform in size with "Housing Reform" 
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 Specific sections cover every essential 
 feature of a model housing law so arranged 
 that by changing a word here or there it 
 can be adopted by any community as a 
 state law or a city ordinance. 
 
 An invaluable aid for all persons formu- 
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 SOCIAL FORCES 
 
 By EDWARD T. DEVINE 
 
 Editor The Survey; General Secretary of the New York Charity Orginiza- 
 
 tion Society; Schiff Professor of Social Economy. Columbia University; 
 
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 Vigorous analysis and comment. Philadelphia 
 "Public Ledger." 
 
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 repellent to none. New York " Times." 
 
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 THE 
 
 SURVEY 
 
 A JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTIVE PHILANTHROPY 
 
 THE SURVEY is a weekly magazine for all those who 
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 women, must pass muster in their relation to the com- 
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 THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY 
 
 A CLOSE RANGE INVESTIGATION OF CONDITIONS 
 
 OF LIFE AND LABOR IN AN AMERICAN 
 
 INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT 
 
 FINDINGS IN Six VOLUMES 
 
 Edited by 
 
 PAUL UNDERWOOD KELLOGG 
 
 COLLEAGUES IN THE FIELD WORK 
 ROBERT A. WOODS, head worker, South End House, Boston, author of 
 
 "Americans in Process," "The City Wilderness," etc. 
 JOHN R. COMMONS, professor, University of Wisconsin, Secretary 
 
 American Association for Labor Legislation; author of "Trade 
 
 Union and Labor Problems." 
 FLORENCE KELLEY, Secretary National Consumers' League, former 
 
 chief factory inspector, Illinois; author of "Ethical Gains Through 
 
 Legislation." 
 LAWRENCE VEILLER, former secretary New York State Tenement 
 
 House Commission; editor of "The Tenement House Problem." 
 PETER ROBERTS, secretary for immigration, International Y. M. C. A.; 
 
 author of "Anthracite Coal Industry," "Anthracite Coal Com- 
 munities." 
 
 ALOIS B. KOUKOL, secretary Slavonic Immigrant Society. 
 RICHARD R. WRIGHT, JR., former head of Trinity Mission in the Black 
 
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 CHARLES MULFORD ROBINSON, civic advertiser for Denver, Columbus, 
 
 Honolulu, etc., author of "Modem Civic Art," "Improvement of 
 
 Towns and Cities." 
 LILA VERPLANCK NORTH, member of faculty, College for Women, 
 
 Baltimore. 
 FLORENCE LARRABEE LATTIMORE, formerly of Children's Bureau, 
 
 Seybert Institution, Philadelphia. 
 
 ELIZABETH BEARDSLEY BUTLER, former secretary, New Jersey Con- 
 sumers' League. 
 JOHN A. FITCH, Fellow, University of Wisconsin; expert New York 
 
 State Department of Labor. 
 
 CRYSTAL EASTMAN, attomey-at-Iaw, secretary New York State Com- 
 mission on Employers' Liability. 
 MARGARET F. BYINGTON, formerly of Boston Associated Charities, Red 
 
 Cross Representative at Monongah Mine Disaster. 
 AND OTHERS. 
 
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 this country." Review of Reviews. 
 
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