Social legislation and social activity

by American Academy of Political and Social Science

The law provides that the Board of Health shall make annually “a full and comprehensive statement of its acts during the year, and a review of the sanitary condition of the city,” yet in the annual volumes of the last ten years the space devoted to the sanitary condition of the city has been utterly insignificant.

“To this subject, houses vacated, nearly a whole page is devoted in the report for 1892; nearly two pages in the report for 1893; from four to six lines in each of the reports for 1894, ’95, and ’96; and not one word in the report for 1897. Throughout the 122 pages of this last report, this extremely important duty to vacate houses unfit for occupancy is not mentioned.

“The report for 1895 says only this: ‘The number of houses which the board has ordered vacated during the year because of their unsanitary condition is 112; of this number, however, a very large per cent were put in a satisfactory condition before the expiration of the time allowed the occupants to quit the premises, and in such cases the orders were not enforced.’ The report for 1896 simply quotes this one sentence, word for word—except that ‘121’ is substituted for ‘112.’ This one sentence, then, is the ‘full and comprehensive statement’ of the acts of the three years, 1895–7.”

In none of these reports since 1892 “is a list given either of houses ordered vacated or of houses actually vacated, yet hundreds of other lists and tables are given, as lists of stables ordered discontinued, of passageways paved, and even of minor defects in certain houses. While in the reports of the New York Board of Health there are complete lists of houses vacated and of those demolished, in only two of our reports, those for 1892 and ’93, are any of the houses ordered vacated named.”

The objection of injury to tenants by the destruction of slums has no weight. The Associated Charities (Report of 1898, pp. 40–48) seized the occasion of the building of the South Station and the change in the neighborhood, in 1897–8, to cause a careful study to be made of the results upon the welfare of the twelve poorest families known to them when that sudden and forced migration occurred. “It brought out the interesting fact that in every case the condition of the family was improved by the change.”

Death-rates by wards are shown in the annual report of 1901 of the Registry Department of Boston for the first time, so that it is possible to compare. The ghastly fact stands out that the death-rate in some wards is more than double what it is in the healthier wards, viz: one person dying in the year 1900 out of 39 in Ward 7, 40 in Ward 13, 41 in Ward 6, and 42 in Ward 5, contrasted with one in 81 in Ward 25, 72 in Ward 24, 71 in Ward 23, 69 in Ward 20 (p. 5).

Now that this table proves how the murder of the innocents goes on, the public conscience should be aroused. Statisticians will also tell us that the ratio of sickness keeps pace with the ratio of death, so that sickness among the poor, with its train of evils, is twofold more than good sanitary conditions should tolerate.

The model buildings of London have told the world what a powerful influence upon the length of life (and of course upon the amount of sickness) of their occupants is exerted by healthy homes. The Peabody buildings with a population of about 20,000 show a death-rate of about 1 in 71; and the Waterlow buildings, with 30,000 tenants, about 1 in 100, while the rate of all London is about 1 in 57. In Boston, 1 out of 48 dies yearly.

A Tenement House Commission will probably be appointed by the Mayor this year, to consider and report upon existing conditions and possible improvement.

On the whole, the outlook is full of hope. Vigilance and vigorous action are demanded of all municipal authorities. Public interest is aroused. The action of other cities in Great Britain as well as in New York and other American cities warns Boston not to fall behind in this movement, which will surely give to us and our children a healthier city for the homes of the plain people, with its plague spots extirpated, and an increasing proportion of the population living out in suburban homes in this city of unsurpassed suburban beauty.