Good housing that pays /

by Fullerton L. Waldo

The Octavia Hill investor can be very sure his dividend does not come from living conditions that it would perturb an active conscience to know about. There is nothing that need fear exploitation. A constant prophylactic scrutiny prevents those living conditions that are the shame of every city that in this twentieth century tolerates them.

If the Association were engaged in its blest business for the money only, it could not have enlisted through all these years the intense interest of so many who have realized in their own experience the correlation of the kind of house a person lives in and the kind of character that is therein developed. Too long have we taken it for granted that the poor love to live poorly: a survival of the mediæval tradition that only the nobles had noble emotions, and that the crowd merely existed as a foil to the luminous brave deeds of a chivalry monopolized by the upper classes. Today we feel that

“The best things any mortal hath

Are those that every mortal shares,”

and in that faith those who know what it means to have “the social conscience” plan and act.

Year after year the Annual Reports of the Octavia Hill Association have presented with brevity and precision the summation of the progress in the twelve months. Here are set down the statement of net earnings, the explanation of unusual expenditures, the current history of properties long in possession of the Association or newly acquired, the transfer of property for any reason, the peculiar problems that have presented themselves, the formation of subsidiary or contributory bodies, the particular objectives in view or the directions in which the Association is prepared to offer especially helpful service. The audited Treasurer’s Report appended enables one to see in its clear and simple presentment where every cent has gone, and what the return has been on the Agency Account for each property. But for all the explicit story, one still must read between the lines to comprehend completely what has been going on in each of the homes which—without an odious paternalism—has come under the trained and keen observation of the friendly rent-collector and the executive superintendent.

The question of whether the enterprise pays or not is put on the highest ground by those who best understand what the Association is not merely trying to do but effectually doing. Go to the little Hector McIntosh playground and watch the children laughing and caroling in the swings, digging in the sandpile and pretending a sea-beach, sliding uproariously down their little wooden toboggan, racing about at tag, gay as butterflies, and ask them if it pays. Go to the mothers in the shade of the trees of Workman Place, or culling fresh vegetables and flowers from their own little gardens, there in the thick of the maelstrom of the shabbiest part of the city, and ask them. Go to those of the negro race who have hitherto been forced to live on the Jim Crow leavings of everything, whether they wanted to be clean and decent or not, and ask them. But do not ask the landlords who are losing money because the poor are discovering what it is reasonable to demand of every landlord. Do not ask a miser or a skinflint or a misanthrope if it pays.

This study has been completely a failure if it has not disclosed the fact that sense and sentiment are yokefellows to mutual advantage in this undertaking. There must always be those for whom philanthropy and business cannot discover a common denominator. That is why the personal examples of Octavia Hill and of those who follow in her train are of value, for these examples prove to a thinking majority that such work as theirs is not the altruism of dreamy, vague enthusiasts, but that of persons with “their souls in the work of their hands,” who are translating into a balance on the right side of the ledger their aspiration for better things for “the poor and him that hath no helper.” In twenty-one years this program and its outworking have been submitted, not once, but again and again, to the pragmatic test, and have emerged triumphant.

The principles on which the enterprise was founded and is conducted promise its immortality and its expansion indefinite. It conflicts with no extant organization except the cohesion of the predatory forces of greed and deception. It does not mean the duplication of effort or the multiplication of superfluous offices; it does not economically call for amalgamation with other societies of parallel function. It meets a need that is real and constant, and it invokes the support and cooperation of good citizenship. It must be allowed to help the city more and more, and in its turn it must always receive the official aid which has been and is generously accorded.

In every large city a problem similar to that which has faced the Association must be met, if the community does not shirk the obligation to its own dependent stratum. In every large city the prestige of the whole community is impaired if dirty streets, a lack of good water, smoke-clogged air and disreputable hovels are constituents of the social order. It is a truism that wherever a large working population congregates these are evils that call for a vigil unceasing. The fundamental advantages that make life livable for rich and poor alike are not wafted on the breath of a pious aspiration. They come by somebody’s downright work for them. They come by the banded effort of good citizens. They come by an unremitting holy warfare on all Apollyon’s brood of evils that are the sequel to the reign of the spoilsman in politics. If it be a true religion that visits the fatherless and the widows in their affliction then this is a work that may well engage the attention of the professors of that religion, for it keeps a roof over the heads of many who cannot satisfy a mercenary landlord’s demand. Its appeal is various and profound; its outreach is beyond any hard-and-fast limitation; its record is an open book of progress step by step, season by season toward a goal clearly seen from the start. The Octavia Hill Association has kept faith with the sainted memory of her whose name it bears; it has kept faith with the great public of the city which it is destined to serve more largely as its resources increase and its assistants multiply; it has kept faith finally, with its own ideals, which are those of all who believe in that