NIGHT SCENE IN A SLAVIC LODGING HOUSE.
Three men in the far bed, two in the others, twelve in the room. In some of these lodgings day workers sleep nights in beds occupied by night workers in the daytime.
But it is in the immigrant lodging houses that conditions are worst. These conditions are not always the choice of the men. The Croatians, Servians, Roumanians and Greeks have only from five to ten per cent of women among them; hence the men of these nationalities have but few boarding houses conducted by their own people to go to, and crowding is inevitable. English-speaking and German families will not open their doors to them. Single men in groups of from six to twenty go into one house in charge of a boarding-boss and his wife. Each man pays from seventy-five cents to a dollar a week for room to sleep in and the little cooking and washing that are to be done. Food for the company is bought on one book, and every two weeks the sum total is divided equally among the boarders, each man paying his pro rata share. The bill for two weeks will hardly amount to three dollars a man, so that the average boarder will spend ten dollars a month on room rent and maintenance. The mania for saving results in many cases in skimping the necessaries of life. A priest told me of a Lithuanian who lived on ten cents a day, and by helping the landlady in her house work, the man saved room rent. I found Russians (Greek Orthodox) on Tustine street who were paying three dollars a month for room rent. They buy bread made by Russian Jews, get a herring and a pot of beer, and live,—not always,—in peace. When they pay three dollars and fifty cents for room rent, soup is included in the contract. Domestic tragedies sometimes invade these communal households, such as a case of assault and battery which came up in an alderman's office. The complainant was a single man who appeared with a ghastly scalp wound. When this boarding-boss presented his bill at the end of two weeks, the charges were five dollars more than the man thought they ought to be. He protested and the boarding-boss took a hatchet to silence him. The Italians are close livers; but possibly the worst conditions I saw were among the Armenians in the neighborhood of Basin alley.
In these boarding establishments as a general rule, the kitchen is commonly used as a bedroom. When the boarding boss rents two rooms, he and his wife sleep in the kitchen, and the boarders take the other room. It is not unusual for a boarding-boss to rent but one room. He and his wife put their bed in one corner; the stove in another; and the boarders take the remainder. Sometimes the rooms are so crowded that the boss and his wife sleep on the floor; and I repeatedly found cases where beds were being worked double shift,—night and day. The city Bureau of Health has endeavored to reduce the number of beds in a room, but it does not follow that the people occupying that room get out,—they sleep on the floor minus the bed. Here as elsewhere the problem is one of the hardest for sanitary inspectors to cope with.
SLAVIC LODGING HOUSE ON THE SOUTH SIDE.
Four beds; two in a bed. The young fellow at the table was writing home. Before him were pictures of his mother and sisters in immaculate peasant costumes.
Sometimes four or six men rent a house and run it themselves, doing their own cooking and washing and occasionally bringing in a woman to do a little cleaning. They may stand this for about six months and then get out when the room is past the cleaning stage. Such crowding is very prevalent in the low lying parts of the South Side, in the neighborhood of Penn avenue in the city proper, and in sections of Allegheny. Among the Russians of Tustine street I found thirty-three persons living in one house in six rooms and an attic. These were distributed among three families. The Croatians also are bad crowders. A milk dealer told me of twenty-eight who lived in a house in Carey alley. When I asked, "How do they live?" his reply was, "I don't know and don't care if I get my money for my milk." In Pork House row and near Eckert street in Allegheny, things were no better, and some blocks of houses under the California avenue bridge were as bad as any thing I saw.
Before we condemn immigrants for the filth of their lodgings, we must remember that they are largely rural peoples unused to such city barracks. This fact is illustrated especially in their ignorance regarding that terror which has waited upon foreigners in the Pittsburgh district,—typhoid fever. Dr. Leon Sadowski estimated that as high as fifty per cent of all young foreigners who come to Pittsburgh contract typhoid fever within two years of their coming. Dr. Maracovick told me that in four years no less than 100 Croatians in the neighborhood of Smallman street had come down with the fever, and that most of them died. "You cannot make the foreigner believe that Pittsburgh water is unwholesome," said Dr. Welsh of Bellevue. "He comes from rural communities where contamination of water is unknown." Physicians told me of men who had been warned, deliberately going to the Allegheny to quench their thirst.