HOUSING
In Johnstown the so-called “double” house predominates, usually frame. The double house is in reality two semidetached houses built upon a single lot. Rows of three or more houses of two, three, or four rooms each are common, and they are known locally as three-family, or six-family houses, as the case may be. Sometimes these are “rear houses,” that is, they are built behind other houses that face the street, on the same lots and in fact are approached by way of a narrow alley running alongside the house that has its frontage directly on the street. For this type of house water-closets or privies are often in rows in the yard or court that is used in common by all families. (See Plates Q and R.) In some places they are too few in number to permit each family to have the exclusive use of one.
Johnstown has three or four comparatively high-grade apartment houses, and in several office buildings rooms are rented to families for housekeeping. These are generally taken by native families.
In one of these office buildings the two lower floors are used for business purposes and the two upper floors are given over entirely to tenement purposes. From 40 to 50 families live here, many of whom have but one room. To serve the 20 or 25 families on each floor there is one bath and toilet room for men and another for women. Adjoining the toilet rooms is a small room containing garbage cans and trash receptacles for the use of the tenants.
The sanitary conditions in some of the best tenements or apartments, however, are not up to the standards of other cities, and in those occupied by the poorer people conditions are much worse than are usually permitted to exist in cities having large tenement houses in great numbers, where a tenement-house problem is recognized as such and active efforts are made by the municipality to improve conditions.
An absolute measure of the importance of each single housing defect in a high mortality rate can not be secured from this study. But it is not without interest to note that in homes where water is piped into the house the infant mortality rate was 117.6 per thousand, as compared with a rate of 197.9 in homes where the water had to be carried in from outdoors. Or that in the homes of 496 live-born babies where bathtubs were found the infant mortality rate was 72.6, while it was more than double, or 164.8, where there were no bathtubs. Desirable as a bathtub and bodily cleanliness may be, this does not prove that the lives of the babies were saved by the presence of the tub or the assumed cleanliness of the persons having them. In a city of Johnstown’s low housing standards, the tub is an index of a good home, a suitable house from a sanitary standpoint, a fairly comfortable income, and all the favorable conditions that go with such an income.
The same trend of a high infant mortality rate in connection with other housing defects is noted in the next table.
| Table 3.—Distribution of Live Births and of Deaths During First Year, and Infant Mortality Rate, According to Housing Conditions. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Deaths during First Year | |||
| HOUSING CONDITIONS | Live births | Number | Infant mortality rate |
| Total | 1,463 | 196 | 134.0 |
| Dry homes | 808 | 99 | 122.5 |
| Moderately dry homes | 336 | 47 | 139.9 |
| Damp homes | 319 | 50 | 156.7 |
| Bath | 496 | 36 | 72.6 |
| No bath | 965 | 159 | 164.8 |
| Not reported | 2 | 1 | ([[14]]) |
| Water supply in house | 1,173 | 138 | 117.6 |
| Water supply outside | 288 | 57 | 197.9 |
| Not reported | 2 | 1 | ([[14]]) |
| City water available | 1,333 | 176 | 132.0 |
| City water not available | 128 | 19 | 148.4 |
| Not reported | 2 | 1 | ([[14]]) |
| Yard clean | 801 | 80 | 99.9 |
| Yard not clean | 632 | 107 | 169.3 |
| No yard | 28 | 8 | ([[14]]) |
| Not reported | 2 | 1 | ([[14]]) |
| Water-closet | 739 | 80 | 108.3 |
| Yard privy | 722 | 115 | 159.3 |
| Not reported | 2 | 1 | ([[14]]) |
[14]. Total live births less than 50; base therefore considered too small to use in computing an infant mortality rate.
The following summary may be of interest in indicating some relation between infant mortality and cleanliness or uncleanliness combined with dryness or dampness of homes:
| Table 4.—Distribution of Live Births and of Deaths During First Year, and Infant Mortality, According to Cleanliness and Dryness of Home. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Deaths during First Year | |||
| TYPE OF HOME | Live births | Number | Infant mortality rate |
| All types | 1,463 | 196 | 134.0 |
| Clean | 943 | 107 | 113.5 |
| Moderately clean | 354 | 58 | 163.8 |
| Dirty | 166 | 31 | 186.7 |
| Dry | 807 | 99 | 122.7 |
| Damp | 656 | 97 | 147.9 |
| Clean: | |||
| Dry | 581 | 61 | 105.0 |
| Damp | 362 | 46 | 127.1 |
| Moderately clean: | |||
| Dry | 158 | 27 | 170.9 |
| Damp | 196 | 31 | 158.2 |
| Dirty: | |||
| Dry | 68 | 11 | 161.8 |
| Damp | 98 | 20 | 204.1 |
Dirt is doubtless unhealthful, but the amount of ill health or the number of infant deaths caused by a home being dirty can hardly be measured, when, as is usually the case, the dirt is accompanied by so many other bad conditions arising from poverty. For example, a home in close proximity to railroad tracks or mills whose stacks send forth clouds of soot, smoke, and ashes is generally the poorly built home of those who have neither time nor means to secure and retain cleanliness under such difficulties.
Overcrowding in homes is another factor the relative importance of which can not be exactly determined, because of its close connection with other ills. But the degree of overcrowding is greatest in the small cheaper houses, those of one, two, three, or four rooms. The average number of persons per room in the homes of all live-born babies for whom the data were secured was found to be 1.38. Homes of four rooms were more numerous than those of any other size and they housed an average of 1.58 persons per room. The number of babies in homes of various sizes with the number of persons per room for homes of each size was as follows:
| Table 5.—Number of Babies Living in Homes of Each Specified Size, and Average Number of Persons Per Room in Homes of Each Size. | ||
|---|---|---|
| Size of home | Live-born babies | Persons per room |
| All homes | 1,463 | |
| 1 room | 33 | 4.42 |
| 2 rooms | 165 | 2.27 |
| 3 rooms | 147 | 1.83 |
| 4 rooms | 526 | 1.58 |
| 5 rooms | 222 | 1.22 |
| 6 rooms | 233 | 1.07 |
| 7 rooms | 38 | .96 |
| 8 rooms | 43 | 0.83 |
| 9 rooms | 22 | .93 |
| 10 rooms | 4 | .88 |
| 11 rooms | 4 | .64 |
| 12 rooms | 1 | .75 |
| 13 rooms | 1 | .69 |
| 14 rooms | 2 | .43 |
| Not reported | 22 | |
In homes of one, two, three, or four rooms or where the number of occupants ranged from 4.42 to 1.58 persons per room the infant mortality rate was 155, as compared with a rate of but 101.8 in larger homes, where the number ranged from 1.22 to 0.43 persons per room.
The 1910 census returns show that the greatest overcrowding was in ward 15, where the average number of persons per dwelling was 9.9. Wards 16, 11, and 14 came next with rates of 8.3, 7.7, and 7.2 respectively. The infant mortality rate for these four wards is 190.2, which is over one-third more than the rate for the whole city.
The mortality rate among infants who slept in a room with no other person than their parents was much lower than among those who slept in a room with more than two persons. The babies that slept in separate beds also had a much lower infant mortality rate than those who did not sleep alone, as shown in the next table. (Table omitted.)
In presenting statistics on sleeping and ventilation, only the babies who lived at least one month have been considered, for the reason that so many deaths during the first month of life were due to prenatal causes.
The incidence shown in the foregoing table is significant, even though it can by no means be deduced therefrom that the health of a large proportion of babies was so impaired by sleeping with older and more or less unhealthy persons that death resulted. But irregular night feeding and overfeeding are undoubtedly harmful, and the mother is tempted to subject the baby to this when it sleeps with her and disturbs her rest.
Of the 1,389 babies who lived at least one month, 600, or 43.2 per cent., lived in homes where the baby slept in a room with not more than two other persons. The fact that the baby slept in a room with no more persons than its parents generally argues that the family’s means permitted them to have one or more additional rooms for other members of the family, but in other cases, of course, merely that there were no other persons in the family.
Almost every home visited had means for good ventilation of the baby’s room at night, yet but 604, or 43.5 per cent., of the 1,389 babies who lived at least a month slept at night in well-ventilated rooms—that is, in rooms where, according to the mother’s statement, a window was open all night. Some mothers opened windows when the weather was neither cold nor damp; or opened them in a hall or room adjoining that where the baby slept; others emphatically stated that at night the windows were “always shut tight.” The babies subjected to differences of ventilation show corresponding variations in infant mortality rates.
A high death rate in badly ventilated homes can not be charged wholly to bad air. The mother who did not, or could not, provide proper ventilation was generally the mother without the means or the knowledge necessary to enable her to care for her baby properly in other respects, and yet the marked differences suggest that ventilation is itself a very important ally of the baby in its first year of struggle for existence.
In many rooms that were poorly ventilated, windows were not opened for the reason that the room was not properly heated and the houses themselves were flimsy and drafty. The problem in such houses is to keep warm. If the windows were frequently or constantly opened, the houses would be too cold to live in. In some localities the outside air is so laden with soot, ashes, dirt, and smoke that every effort is made to keep it out of the house.
The foreigners, who generally have the most miserable homes, are not dirty people who select bad living conditions through innate poor judgment, low standards, and lack of taste. The squalid homes which housed the natives and later the Germans and the Irish until the present type of immigrants came to do the more poorly paid work were the only homes available within the purchasing power of their low wages. The new immigrants demanded practically nothing and the owners did practically nothing in the matter of improving these homes, which naturally became more and more squalid as time went on. An excessive infant mortality rate and insanitary homes in unhealthful sections were found to be coexistent.