Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

In Allegheny, Pennsylvania, the Civic Club, a woman’s organization, has been at the forefront in housing reform.

Miss Kate McKnight, of that association, initiated practically every movement of the club till her death in 1907. Mrs. Franklin P. Adams, acting president, drafted the tenement house laws governing cities of the second class in Pennsylvania. Mrs. Adams is chairman of the State Federation of Women’s Clubs, and of other societies. The Civic Club also got an increase in the force of tenement inspectors and the chief inspector was for some time a woman member of the club.

In Providence, Rhode Island, the Federation of Clubs passed resolutions and sent letters to the legislature urging the enactment of a housing bill. Moreover, they sent a delegation of women to the hearing before the Judiciary Committee.

In New Orleans, Miss Eleanor McMain, the head of Kingsley House, was very influential in securing the law regulating tenements in her city.

Housing in Washington

In Washington, D. C., the housing problem has been forced upon the attention of Congress which has shown gross neglect all these years in its care of the national capital’s population and especially of the negroes there. The voteless citizens of the capital and their sympathizers from outside attempted for a long time to secure remedial activity in the city of Washington whose alleys and slums were a national disgrace from the standpoint of health, morals and crime. Booklets and reports were published and organizations formed for the purpose of bringing pressure to bear upon Congress to improve housing conditions.

President Roosevelt had appointed a Homes Commission to study and report on the alley dwellings but nothing had resulted from this except possibly the conversion of Willow Tree Alley into an interior park. Women and men felt that such an apparent remedy might cause still greater evils by leaving many of the poor altogether homeless, and the agitation was pushed the harder for the creation of a system of minor streets created out of the alleys.

Last year two pamphlets of a vigorous nature were published by the Monday Evening Club and by the Women’s Welfare Department of the National Civic Federation. Public meetings were arranged by the Civic Federation and conferences of social workers in Washington were called, one of the biggest of these being held at the White House last winter—an evidence of the interest taken by the wife of President Wilson in the housing of the people in Washington.

Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, who had been aroused by visits made to the alleys under the guidance of Mrs. Archibald Hopkins and Mrs. Ernest Bicknell, piloted senators and congressmen into the bad areas to make them see and feel the need of change. As a consequence of this work, bills were introduced into both houses of Congress for some solution of the alley problem. How much progress would have been made with the bills it is difficult to know but the significant thing is that Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, in almost her last conscious breath, made an appeal for the passing of that legislation. Her husband, the President, fortunately, sent word that such was her dying wish and out of sentiment for the “first lady of the land” this much needed legislation was hurriedly passed by the Senate of the United States, the lower house promising to add its approval. Mrs. Wilson was told the good news before she died.

In a case where neither the men of the district involved nor the women were voters, apparently an affecting sentimental situation saved the day for the poor families herded in their misery in dark alleys. Certainly up until this time, congressional land speculators in Washington had turned a deaf ear to the pleas of the women and the men who sought help for the slum dwellers.