THE HEALTH OF THE MAN ON THE “STEM”
The hazards the homeless man takes while at work in the city are far less than on the seasonal out-of-town work. The health problem of the transient “on the stem” is nevertheless serious. It is not so much a problem of work conditions as of hotels and lodging accommodations and restaurants.
The cheap lodging-houses and hotels in Chicago are under the surveillance of the Chicago Department of Health. The department has done much to keep down contagion and to raise the standards of these places. Infectious diseases have been more rare here than in hotels in the Loop. These hotels survived the influenza epidemics as well as any in the city. There has been a gradual rise in the standards of health and sanitation of the hotels and lodging-houses, but just how much this is due to the watchful care of the Department of Health cannot be said. Other factors, such as business competition, may also have entered in to improve conditions.
In many respects the cheap workingmen’s hotels still fall far below the standards set by law. Indeed, if all of them lived up to the letter of the law in every respect, many would find it unprofitable to operate. These hotels are in buildings that were erected for other purposes, buildings that cannot be adequately made over to accommodate comfortably hundreds of men.
The problem of ventilation is present in the older hotels for men. In some corners, in hallways and isolated rooms, there is never any circulation of air. The smells accumulate from day to day so that the guest on entering a room is greeted by a variety of odors to which each of his predecessors has contributed.
The following statement of an investigator indicates what is one of the most objectionable features of the cheap hotel.
The lack of adequate toilet facilities is deplorable. In one hotel I found two toilets for one hundred and eighty men and in another seven for three hundred and eighty. Some of the toilets have absolutely no outside ventilation, opening on sleeping rooms. Some of them are located in halls with no partition separating them from sleeping rooms and are a source of foul and nauseating odors.[45]
With respect to wash basins and bath facilities the condition is no better. Many do not even have hot water. In some places from twenty to forty men use the same wash bowl.
The Department of Health has taken an active part in the campaign against vermin, and co-operates whenever a complaint is made. Their task seems hopeless since the patrons are so transient and so frequently carry vermin from one place to another. The very buildings are often breeding places for bedbugs, lice, and roaches.