Very few of these occupations are what can properly be called skilled work, many of them are extremely irregular and casual, and many of them pay less than a living wage.
The housing of these families is such as would be anticipated by those who know them and the facilities the district offers. There are very few new-law tenements in this part of New York, and little good can be said of the best of the old-law houses. Really good housing is practically unknown. For example, but two of our 55 families had bathrooms in their apartments. Many apartments contained small toilet rooms, and other families used toilets in the hall on the same floor. Some still had only an old-fashioned yard toilet. One house furnished for its tenants a cellar toilet used also by the men who patronized the ground floor saloon adjoining it, and this horrible situation made the children of the house afraid to go to the cellar alone or after dark.
We have housing records for 53 of our 55 families. Thirty of these lived in apartments containing one or more dark rooms, with no windows to the outer air, or to anything more than a tiny air-shaft. Of these 30 families, 10 had one dark room, 18 had two dark rooms, one had three dark rooms, and one had four dark rooms. The number of persons in household and the number of rooms occupied were as shown in the following table:
| Persons in household | FAMILIES OCCUPYING | All families | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | ||
| Two | 1 | 1 | .. | .. | .. | 2 |
| Three | 1 | .. | 3 | .. | .. | 4 |
| Four | .. | 2 | 2 | .. | .. | 4 |
| Five | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | .. | 8 |
| Six | .. | 2 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 11 |
| Seven | .. | 5 | 4 | 2 | .. | 11 |
| Eight or nine | .. | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 9 |
| Ten or eleven | .. | .. | 1 | 1 | .. | 2 |
| Twelve and less than seventeen | .. | .. | .. | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Total | 3 | 15 | 21 | 9 | 5 | 53 |
[a] Information is not available as to the number of persons in or number of rooms occupied by two of the 55 households.
In spite of the lack of space, light, and air, and the poor sanitary conveniences, six of the families in apartments, as shown in the following table, paid rentals of $20 or over per month, four paid from $16 to $20, 20 paid from $12 to $16, 17 paid from $8.00 to $12, and only three paid less than $8.00. One family lived in furnished rooms for which they paid $3.50 a week; one family owned the house they lived in; for three we had no records of the amount of rent paid. The distribution of rentals according to number is shown by the following table:
| Rooms occupied | FAMILIES PAYING MONTHLY RENTAL OF | All families | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Less than $8 | $8 and less than $12 | $12 and less than $16 | $16 and less than $20 | $20 and over | ||
| Two | .. | 2 | .. | .. | .. | 2 |
| Three | 2 | 8 | 4 | .. | .. | 14 |
| Four | 1 | 7 | 10 | 3 | 1 | 22 |
| Five | .. | .. | 5 | 1 | 2 | 8 |
| Six | .. | .. | 1 | .. | 2 | 3 |
| Six and bath | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 3 | 17 | 20 | 4 | 6 | 50 |
[a] This item was not secured for three of the 55 families; one family owned the house in which they lived, and one lived in furnished rooms, paying $3.50 a week.
Life insurance is almost universal in our district except for families in the most abject poverty. Often every member is insured, the rate varying from 5 cents a week for children to 25 cents or more for adults. One family spent $52 a year for insurance out of a possible maximum income of $806 for seven persons. Another family of seven spent $2.40 a week out of an income which probably did not average more than $20 a week at the most. The benefit seldom does more than cover the cost of the funeral, and often barely that. The baby may have been insured for $30 and the undertaker’s bill is likely to be $40 or $50. One wife received $141 at her husband’s death, and the funeral expenses were $155, leaving a debt of $14, the cost of an illness, and a family of children to support. Such a funeral, of course, indicates lack of judgment on the part of the family, but it must be remembered that from time out of mind and in all ranks of society, a fine funeral has meant respect for the dead; and burial in the Potter’s Field is still a sign of the lowest economic stage to which a man can fall.
Twenty-five of the 55 families, or nearly half, had been in the past, or were at the time of our investigation, affected by excessive drinking on the part of one or both parents. Of this we were sure, either from records of philanthropic agencies or from our own knowledge. Some of the remaining 30 families had no cases of alcoholism, but concerning others we were unable to get any definite information. To summarize: In 25 families either the father or mother, or both, were subject to excessive drinking; in 13 of these the fathers drank to excess; in four the mothers drank; in eight of the 25 families both the father and the mother drank. “Excessive drinking” does not necessarily mean habitual drunkenness. Such cases are not frequent. On the other hand, it never means merely taking either an occasional or a regular drink, unless this is done to excess. It means at the least drinking of the sort which makes the mother unable to keep her home together without interference from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children or makes it impossible for the father to “hold down” a job. In all 25 of these cases, the families had relief records.