The meals are either prepared in the apartment or secured at some near-by restaurant, or the two methods are combined. In the absence of all semblance of family life, every possible expedient to reduce expense is adopted, with the unfortunate results that might be expected. The following description of such a household will give a concrete idea of the type:
“To-day, in a certain mining town, there are fourteen Slavs, all unmarried, and with only themselves to support, who rent one large, formerly abandoned, storeroom. This is taken care of by a housekeeper, who also prepares the meals for the men. Each man has his own tin plate, tin knife, fork, and cup; he has his own ham and bread, and a place in which to keep them. Some things they buy in common, the distribution being made by the housekeeper. For beds the men sleep on bunks arranged along the walls and resembling shelves in a grocery store. Each has his own blanket; each carries it out-of-doors to air when he gets up in the morning, and back again when he returns from his work at night. The monthly cost of living to each of these men is not over four dollars. They spend but little on clothes the year round, contenting themselves with the cheapest kind of material, and not infrequently wearing cast-off garments purchased of some second-hand dealer. For fuel they burn coal from the culm-banks or wood from along the highway, which costs them nothing but their labor in gathering it.”[[213]]
That housing conditions such as have been portrayed above should prevail so generally all over the country is a serious indictment against the social and industrial organization of the United States. It has been intimated that these conditions are not in all cases due to the choice of the immigrant, or to the lack of desire for better things on his part. Whether they are not, to a large degree, actually due to the presence of the immigrant in this country is quite another matter, upon the decision of which must rest much of the final judgment as to the desirability of immigration under the present system.
Throughout the study of housing conditions among the foreign-born, it becomes more and more evident that there is a marked distinction not only between the homes of the native-born and the foreign-born, but between those of the older and newer immigrants. By whatever test the standards of each class are measured, there is almost invariably a decided discrepancy in favor of the older races. As regards the number of rooms per apartment, the size of households, the number of persons per room, the number of boarders, the care and upkeep of the apartment, the English, Scandinavians, Germans, and Irish come much nearer to what might be considered a reasonable American standard than do the Italians, either north or south, the Slavs (except perhaps the Bohemians and Moravians), the Greeks, Syrians, Bulgarians, etc. This distinction is well brought out in mining localities, where the newer races have displaced the older within recent years. A graphic comparison is given by Mr. F. J. Warne in his book, The Slav Invasion and the Mine Workers. He says that, by the time of the coming of the Slavs, the Irish, English, Welsh, Scotch, and German mine workers had grown accustomed to a “social life of some dignity and comfort.” The English-speaking mine worker wanted a home and family. That home was usually a neat, two-story frame house, with porch and yard. Within were pictures on the walls, and carpets on the floors of the best rooms. He wished to have no one as a permanent resident of the house save his own family, or very near relatives. He desired his wife to be well dressed and comfortable, and his children to have the benefits of school. His wants were always just beyond his wages, and always increasing.
The Slav had no wife and children, and wished none. “He was satisfied to live in almost any kind of a place, to wear almost anything that would clothe his nakedness, and to eat any kind of food that would keep body and soul together.” He was content to live in a one-room hut, built of driftwood and roofed with tin from old powder cans. In the mining towns he drifted to the poorer and cheaper sections to live. He did not care with whom or with how many he lived, provided they were of his own nationality. When two such standards are brought into competition, it is inevitable that the higher should yield in some way or other.
This difference in standards is undoubtedly due in part to a difference in natural instincts and aptitudes for decency and cleanliness between the common classes of northern and southern Europe, but probably more to the customary standards to which they have become habituated in their native land. The effect is the same, whatever the cause. The new immigrant desires a certain improvement in his standard as a reward for emigration, but the new standard need not be by any means the equivalent of that of the immigrant races which have preceded him. As long as we continue to draw our immigrants from more and more backward and undeveloped nations and races we may expect to see a progressive degradation in the customary standard of the working people.
There are many other considerations besides congestion which determine the character of life in the slums. Many of these have already been suggested in preceding paragraphs. Prominent among them are ventilation, sanitary and cooking facilities, light, water supply, healthfulness of surroundings, and play room for children. The degree in which evils exist in these particulars, in any locality, depends primarily upon the stringency of the local tenement and public health laws, and the energy and faithfulness of their enforcement. Much is being accomplished and has been accomplished in recent years in the direction of securing better conditions. Yet there is almost infinite room for improvement. The futility of relying upon the individual benevolence and humanity of builders, owners, and agents was demonstrated long ago. Here, of all places, eternal vigilance on the part of the better classes of society is the price of safety. Descriptions of the homes of the foreign-born are full of accounts of dark and absolutely unventilated bedrooms, houses unprovided with any water supply, filthy outdoor closets and privy vaults, toilets used by ten or twelve families conjointly, buildings covering the entire lot, dooryards flooded with stagnant water and refuse, basements half filled with water, domestic animals sharing the limited accommodations with the family, and a host of other horrors. Detailed descriptions of these dwellings are unnecessary. Any one interested may find them in abundance in the accounts of housing conditions in the poorer sections of our cities and towns, for, as the Immigration Commission has amply demonstrated, the slum, wherever found, is distinctively the home of the foreign-born.[[214]]
It is almost superfluous to add that there are thousands of immigrants, even of the newer races, who live in conditions wholly different from those we have been discussing. Individuals of every race, in large numbers, have succeeded in raising themselves from the lowly estate of their compatriots, and establishing homes of culture and refinement, even of luxury. Examples of this class are prominent, and are frequently referred to. Yet in spite of this, the slum remains the characteristic home of the average immigrant to this country, and as such it must be reckoned with.
The influence of the slum must of necessity be hampering and degrading to its denizens. No poorer training school for American citizens could be devised. Not only is the life prejudicial to health and morals, and destructive of ambition, but it precludes practically all incidental or unconscious contact with the uplifting influences of American life. Almost the only actively assimilating agency with which the slum dweller comes into immediate relationship is the public school, and this lacks much of its value as an assimilating force in districts which are so largely foreign that the pupils meet few, if any, children of native-born parents. Any practical program for solving the immigration problem must attack the slum boldly. In the words of Mr. Frederic Almy, “You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and you cannot make an American citizen out of a tenement slum. The slum must go. If you spare the slum, you will spoil the child.”[[215]]
In regard to the housing conditions of the foreign-born outside of the larger centers of population it is more difficult to make generalizations. Fortunately, it is also less necessary. Some of the foremost housing evils are essentially city matters. Particularly is it true of immigrants who have established themselves in independent agriculture, that they have made a long step toward Americanization. While every grade of dwelling may be found among foreign-born agriculturists, from the wretched hovel of the Italian market gardener to the home of the Swedish farmer of the Northwest which ranks with the finest in the land, yet the alien who takes up his abode in the country has, in many respects, removed himself from the general problem of the immigrant, and his living conditions can, with a reasonable degree of safety, be left to look after themselves. Yet it has been abundantly proved that slum conditions can exist even in the country, and in small towns. This is especially true in mining camps, and in the smaller manufacturing communities. Some of the worst conditions of the most crowded sections of the cities are reproduced in the shacks of the miners or the dwellings of the factory hands. Overcrowding, bad ventilation, unsanitary toilet facilities, inadequate heating, and filth are not city monopolies. The taking of boarders is especially common in these communities, and, in the mining towns, brings a peculiar evil with it, in addition to all the regular disadvantages. This lies in the necessity which every mine worker is under of bathing every day after work. In the absence of bathrooms, ablutions are customarily performed in a tub set in the kitchen, and in the crowded quarters of the miner’s cabin, the children of the household are accustomed to the sight of nudity from their infancy up, to the serious injury of their moral sense.[[216]]