St. Louis has just won an unremitting fight of five years for a tenement house law. Though there has during these years been much newspaper publicity, even an “extra” once when a public hearing ended in a riot, the final passage has been scarcely mentioned.
This law, social workers feel, marks a great advance for St. Louis. It requires running water on every floor of every tenement house, and a light from sunset to sunrise in every common hallway. Further provisions are that all halls of every tenement house must be kept by the owner in good repair and free from dirt, filth, ashes, or refuse, and that the rooms must be so maintained by the tenant. Fruit, vegetables, rags, junk, etc., may not be stored in a tenement house. For every tenement dwelling containing more than eight families there must be a caretaker or janitor.
Other provisions of importance are that cellars may never be used for living purposes and basements only under certain restricted conditions. Finally, no apartment nor any room of a tenement-house shall be occupied by more persons than will allow for each adult 500 cubic feet of air space, and for children 350 cubic feet each. This does not apply where the occupants make up a single family. It is designed especially to reduce the number of lodgers, whose presence results in so much overcrowding and immorality.
Those who have won this battle look back over as varied a struggle as social workers have ever encountered. In 1905 Charlotte Rumbold prepared for the Housing Committee of the Civic League a report on tenement-house conditions, so vividly written and illustrated that not only St. Louis but many other localities were stirred and eventually framed reform legislation. The St. Louis bill as first drawn was changed only in a few small details during its long career before passage. At the beginning it was fiercely fought by real estate men, who at one public hearing packed the house with pleaders, mostly tenement-house tenants, against the bill. Its defenders encountered hissing and hooting. All the lights were suddenly turned out, and half a riot followed. After this the crowd surged to the mayor’s office before it quieted down. The bill was defeated.
Shortly after the Civic League and the Real Estate Exchange held a conference and, to every one’s amazement, found that after all they disagreed only in certain minor matters. The same bill was re-introduced in 1911, but failed, owing to contention at the eleventh hour concerning certain legal aspects. When a new Board of Health was organized in 1912, its program included the passage of this bill. It was again introduced in September, 1912, and, in spite of repeated efforts of several legislative members to let it sleep to death, the constant prodding by other members brought the bill to final passage.
THE SEATTLE CONFERENCE OF CHARITIES AND CORRECTION
The committee on organization has been in many respects the keystone of the National Conference of Charities and Correction. The executive committee is, of course, the year-round authority, and has as its core the former presidents of the national body. The committee on organization has usually been appointed after the conference delegates are on the ground, but to it has been entrusted a two-fold responsibility to be mastered in a single week.
The proceedings of the conference are divided into six or seven main sections. Each section has a committee. Several of these sections have been more or less permanent, appearing again and again in the make-up of succeeding conferences. The trend, however, has been away from such a stereotyped organization. Each year new sections and committees have been devised to discuss new needs—committees on public health, on occupational standards, on probation and the like.
In other words, the temporary committee on organization has had practically to open the channels through which the conference of the succeeding year was to run, an exacting and fundamental piece of work. In addition, it has had the nomination of officers for the new year on its hands and all the turmoil of convention politics has descended on this committee. The result has been that usually a dozen of the most active and valuable members of the conference have been busy from early morning until midnight throughout the entire conference week, some of them scarcely taking part in the real proceedings at all.
At Cleveland last year a change was made and a by-law was passed providing that the work of the old committee on organization be handled by two committees, one on organization and one on nominations, and requiring that the first should be named by the president at least three months in advance of meetings. Frank Tucker of New York, president of the conference which meets in Seattle in June, has carried the reform a stage farther. The committee on nominations this year will not only have to choose a president and a slate of committee chairmen, but must find a successor to Alexander Johnson, who for eight years has been general secretary of the National Conference, and has resigned to become director of the new extension department of the Training School for Feeble-Minded at Vineland, N. J. Mr. Tucker has, therefore, named committees on organization, nominations, and time and place, in order that all three shall have ample time for their deliberations.