TENEMENT HOUSE PROBLEM. 123 TENEMENT HOUSE PROBLEM. ingly inadequate, needed repairs are not made, the tenants deteriorate, and the slum is formed. A district built up fully with new tenements and more crowded than the slum may be less de- graded, but is hardly more wholesome. A high death-rate, especially among infants, is a normal characteristic of tenement districts. In New York in 1804 the general death-rate for the city was 22.75, but it was as high as 33 in some crowded wards. Jewish quarters, densely popu- lated as they are, are exceptional in usually hav- ing a death-rate below that for the wliole city. In certain rear tenements in New York the death- rate for children under five years has been at times over 200 per 1000. The personal and social evils of tenement life are more far-reaching than the physical. See Housing Problem. A first step in reform is legislation compelling the destruction or renovation of existing dwell- ings that are unsanitary, but it is equally im- portant to provide for rehousing the displaced population, and to see that new tenements are properly built. The British act of 1S90 permits municipal condcnuiation of unsanitary areas, but requires that all persons displaced shall be re- housed on or near the same site. Ordinary laborers must live near their work, or in the central area of the city, and it is thought a mis- take to build in such areas model tenements at a cost requiring rents that only the skilled arti- san can pay. To house the artisan in the outer belts, the clerk and similarly paid workers in the suburbs, and to provide quick and cheap transportation, is the eff'ective mode of attacking the housing problem. Such a process is neces- sarily slow. So long as old houses stand, and new ones are put up for private profit, a good sanitary and building code is essential, but with it should be provided, as has not usually been done in American cities; a proper force for in- spection and enforcement. Private initiative has proved that model tenements can be connner- cially successful in housing either artisans or more poorly paid laborers. As the more obvious evils of overcrowding, malconstruc- tion, and insanitation are corrected, the pure- ly social aspects of the problem are attacked more and more directl}', both by the municipality itself and b}' private philanthropy. In Great r>ritain housing improvements on a large scale have been undertaken by the municipalities. Pri- vate companies also have been active. The Housing of the Working Classes Act (1890), con- solidating and improving a series of laws reach- ing back to 18.51, permits cities to condemn and acquire eoonomically areas adjudged unsanitary, and to erect and manage new dwellings on the premises. Under this act London spent $1,400,- 000 in clearing 15 acres of one of its worst slums in Bethnal Green, laid out the area attractively, and rehoused upon the same site practically all the 5700 people disjilaced. The County Council later undertook other schemes involving the hous- ing of 25,000 persons, and in accordance with the amendment of 1000 began to build workmen's cottages outside the county limits. Several large private foundations, such as the Peabody Fund, have built and successfully run model tenements on a large scale. In Continental Europe construction of tene- ments by the city is less common than in Eng- land, but general sanitary reform has been very marked. In Berlin, where over 99 per cent, of the population live in apartments or tenements, the chief activity centres in ellieient sanitary measures and the removal of congestion through rapid transit and supervision of the suburbs. In many German towns, and in Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia, and France, municipal efl'ort has gone along similar lines, while many model tenements have been built by private societies. In Paris sanitary conditions are carefully super- vised, and questionable tenements are in the hands of a special commission. Conditions differ widely in the large cities of the United States. Most have slum districts; not many, as yet, have developed a serious tene- ment house problem. Chicago's rapid and ill- regulated growth has given her several deplor- able areas, with a great number of old. neglected and unsanitary houses. .lersey City has some of the worst tenement districts in the countr.y. In Boston conditions are similar to those of New York, W'here the tenement problem has long been pressing, and, owing to the confined land space of Manhattan Island, is unique in diffi- culty. The Board of Health was roused to criticise housing conditions as early as 1834, and after 1843, when the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor was founded, the mat- ter was frequently brought to public notice. A legislative inquiry in ISofl and an investiga- tion by the Council of Hygiene in ISlU led to the first tenement-house ordinance in 1807. New York has long had a model sanitary code, but provision for enforcement has been wholly insuf- ficient for this, as with its tenement laws. Up to 1879, the date of the next revival of public interest, tenement dwellings in New Y'ork were modified private houses or rear tenements built behind such, or buildings put up solely for tene- ment purposes, covering 75 to 90 per cent, of the lot's area. In 1879 appeared the typical New York tenement, the 'double-deckef or 'dumb- bell.' Built five stories high on a lot 25 feet wide, it covers from 86 to 90 per cent, of the lot's depth, and 75 per cent, of its area, with 14 rooms, for four families, on each floor. Its typical fea- ture is the laterally indented air shaft, usually 28 inches wide in the widest part, or 56 inches when two similar houses are together. All rooms except the four outside ones open upon this shaft, which gives little daylight and no ventila- tion below the fourth story, is the source of greatest danger during fires, and has been de- scribed, hj-gienically, as a 'culture tube on a large scale.' Under such conditions perhaps a million New Yorkers live. The commissions of 1884 and 1894 improved the tenement laws in various points, but little progress was made in enforcement. Model tene- ments, beginning with the 'Riverside' dwellings in Brooklyn, erected by Alfred T. ^Vhite in 1876, have been built in many places in New York City, notably by the City and Suburban Homes Com- pany (founded 1896). These undertakings have been commercially successful, paying dividends of 4 to 7 per cent. No American city has followed the English policy of building tenements on its own account, but the plan of condemning prop- erty for small parks has found favor. New Y'ork spends at least $1,000,000 yearly in this way. It thus abolished its worst slum, at Mul- berry Bend, and — one example among several — ■
