- THERE are probably few persons who are above finding comfort
for the sense of their own shortcomings or fallures by learning that there are others in a worse case than themselves. Many of me are in need of such comfort as we consider the housing -question, and realise the comparative failure of the efforts "hitherto made to cope with it. Let us then read The Tenement House Problem, and we shall at least learn that our difficulties are not greater, nor our remedies more unsuccessful, than those whicli meet the American philanthropist. The enormous scale on which things American are planned, which leads to the killing of hundreds in,,a railway accident where we hear of tens, or to the amassing of fortunes by millions where we deal with thousands, is applied equally to this mighty problem of the housing of the working classes. In New York they build houses six or seven stories high, each block -of which, covering only 25 ft. x 100 ft. of ground, contains accommodation for from a hundred to a hundred and fifty people. Compared to such colossal evils, our slums with their low two-storied houses should be easy to deal with. And, indeed, till the last three years the New York authorities seem for the most part to have folded their hands in impotent despair, and left the great mass of their industrial population to grow up in conditions which made health of body and mind very difficult of attainment. One pitiful feature of the story is that the form of building known as the " dumb-bell " tenement, now universally condemned as hopelessly insanitary and conducive to the worst evils of crowded living, was intro- .cluc,ed into New York in 1879 as the result of a competition to which a hundred and ninety architects sent in plans, organised and judged by persons who were apparently anxious to make the best provision possible for the working population, and who should have been capable of making a wise selection from the plans before them. It is only fair to add that at the time this plan was adopted warnings were uttered against the evils it introduced or increased, a leading article in the New York Times going so far as to say that "if one of our crowded wards were built up after any one of these prize designs the evils of -onr present tenement house system would be increased ten- fold." This prophecy has been fulfilled with startling accu- racy, and the reformer of to-day has to own himself baffled in any attempt to improve in any satisfactory way these huge tenement houses. They are so radically bad that complete destruction is their only remedy. What are their faults ? They are practically a succession of back-to-back houses piled one on another, with the additional very serious evil that, the depth of each house being so great in proportion to its width-100 ft. to 25 ft.—they have on each floor at least four bedrooms, one to each suite of rooms, which can receive light and air crak through a door into the adjacent room, while the back rooms depend for ventilation on the narrow space of ten feet, which, when the law is enforced, is left open till it meets the towering wall of the next tenement house.
• The Tenement House Problem. By Various Writers. Edited by B. W. De Forest and L. Verner. a vole. London ; Macmillan and Co. [21e.]
By way of mitigating the evils of darkness and airleasness, there runs along the middle of each aide of these blocks for
a depth of sixty feet a space called by courtesy an "air-shaft," twenty-eight inches wide, entirely enclosed by the walls of the houses, whose windows look into its semi-darkness, and have frequently to be hermetically sealed so as to keep out the foul smells which rise up the shaft.
It is perhaps hardly necessary to study minutely the evils of the "double-decker, dumb-bell tenement." For it—or rather, the power to build it—is now a thing of the past. "At one stroke it was wiped out of existence as a type of future multiple dwelling." Yet it still stands, housing tens of thousands of men, women, and children, useful only as a startling object-lesson of what to avoid in the building of workmen's homes. We may hope that such a violent example of failure is not now required by us ; but we can hardly flatter ourselves that we have passed the time when we need to study and imitate the methods of the New York State Tenement House Commission, the result of whose inquiries is embodied in the book we are considering. This Commission was appointed by President Roosevelt when he was Governor of the State of New York in 1900. It made most exhaustive inquiries into the conditions of the tenement houses of New York, shrinking from no labour, however arduous and dis- agreeable, which could procure really valuable information on its subject. Its Report "was adopted in its entirety. Its pro- posed Tenement House Law was passed by both branches of the Legislature. Its proposed separate Tenement House Department for the city of New York was made part of the new charter of that city Seth Low was elected first mayor of the city under that new charter, and he appointed the chairman of the State Commission First Tenement House Commissioner of New York City, who in turn named the Secretary of the State Commission as his first deputy." In such favourable circumstances good work has been carried on. In 1902 five hundred and forty- three new tenement houses were built ; in the first half of 1903 plans for six hundred and ninety-nine more were filed. These new houses have been "an unqualified success," builders and owners agreeing as to their merits, and even stating that they are more remunerative than the old. It is indeed a striking fact that the difficulty of cost is hardly mentioned throughout this discussion of the housing question. In the introduction we are told that "it would be a sorrowful comment on the intelligence of the working people if they were not willing to pay a little more for vastly improved living accommodations," and such a comment need apparently not be made, the rooms in the new houses being eagerly taken up in spite of enhanced rents. How comparatively simple would our English housing problem become if we could believe that we had only to appeal to the "intelligence of the working people" to make the building and maintenance of roomy, airy, sanitary dwellings a really profitable undertaking. But as we said before, we may console ourselves in moments of depression over the difficulties which confront the English housing reformer with the firm conviction that in the matters of inherited evils, of baffling want of space, and of wide- spread indifference he is entirely beaten by his American rival. That so much has been done in the face of such difficulties to remove the most crying of the evils produced by them reflects the greatest credit on those who have worked for the better- ment of New York housing. The record of their efforts, of the evils they found and the reforms they introduced, is full of vital interest, and may well provide a stimulating and inspiring subject of study to those who would do a like work for London.
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