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Readers are asked to re- port all cases of books marked or mutilated. SEf Loan Do not deface books by marks and writing. Cornell University Library HD 7288.U5W85 The lodging house problem In Boston 3 1924 008 842 167 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924008842167 HARVARD ECONOMIC STUDIES Volume I: The English Patents of Monopoly, by William H. Price. 8vo, $1.50, ntt. Volume II: The Lodging-House Problem in Boston, by Albert B. Wolfe. 8vo, $1.50, net. Volume III: The Stannaries; A study of the English Tin Miner, by George R. Lewis. 8vo, $1.50, net. Volume IV : Railroad Reorganization, by Stuart Daggett. 8vo, $2.00, net. Volume V: Wool-Growing and the Tariff, by Chester W. Wright. 8vo, $2.00, net. Volume VI : Public Ownership of Telephones on the Continent of Europe, by Arthur N. Holcombe. 8vo, $2.CX), net. Volume VII : The History of the British Post Office, by J. C. Hemmeon. 8vo, $2.00, net. Volume VIII : The Cotton Manufacturing In- dustry of the United States, by M. T. Copeland. 8vo, $2.00, net. Volume IX : The History of the Grain Trade in France, by Abbott Payson Usher. In Press. HARVARD UNIVERSITY Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. HARVARD ECONOMIC STUDIES PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS VOL. II OUTLINE MAP OF BOSTON OMITTING SUBHEBAN DISTKICTS THE LODGING HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON BY ALBERT BENEDICT WOLFE, Ph.D. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY IN OBERUN COLLEGE AND SOMETIME HOLDER OF THE SOUTH END BOUSE FELLOWSHIP IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY PUBLISHED FROM THE INCOME OF THE WILLIAM H. BALDWIN JR. 1885 FUND CAMBRIDGE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD Oxford University Press 1913 II v. 50 COPYRIGHT, 1906 BY THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OS HAEVAED COLLEGE PREFACE The material for this monograph was collected during a resi- dence of two years as Harvard Fellow at the South End House, Boston, 1902-04. The writer wishes to acknowledge his indebted- ness to Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Woods and to Mr. WiUiam M. Prest of the South End House, to Prof. J. Rose Colby of Normal, 111., to Prof. W. Z. Ripley of Harvard, and especially to Prof. T. N. Carver, editor of this series, for reading the manuscript and offer- ing valuable criticism. For whatever errors there may be, and for shortcomings in the results obtained, the writer and the extremely diflScult conditions of investigation must alone be held responsible. If he has blazed a way into a problem which others will attack, in Boston and elsewhere, with resources more nearly in proportion to the task before them, he will deem his labor well spent. Obeklin, November 12, 1906. CONTENTS I. Introduction i II. The historical evolution of the South End lodging-house section . . 1 1 III The lodging-house districts of Boston 20 IV. The economic structure of the South End lodging-house district . . 27 V. The house itself 34 VI. The change from boarding to lodging ... .... 38 VII. The lodging-house keeper and her problem . . 52 VIII. Trading in furniture and good-will 67 IX. The real-estate situation in the lodging-house district ... . . 72 X. The lodger: general characteristics of the lodging-house population . 81 XI. The lodger: occupation . .... 86 XII. The lodger: economic condition 97 XIII. The lodger: his life and social condition .... 109 XIV. Vital statistics 115 Sec. I. Statistical data 115 Sec. II. Density of population ....117 Sec. III. Influence of the lodging-house on distribution of population by sex 122 Sec. IV. Influence of the lodging-house on the age-grouping of population 125 Sec. V. Birth- and death-rates in the lodging-house district .... 127 XV. Crime and prostitution T34 XVI. The problem of marriage . 150 XVII. Summary and conclusion . .... 167 APPENDICES A. Books and pamphlets bearing on the lodging-house question . . 185 B. Movements of populations from the country to the city .... 188 C. Student-quarters in Boston .... 191 LIST OF CHARTS Outline Map of Boston Frontispiece I. Change from private residences to lodging-houses, Union Park, Bos- ton, 1868-1902 14 II. Map showing the general situation of the South End lodging-house district with respect to the rest of the city 22 III. Map showing the situation, boundaries, and types of buildings and institutions in the South End lodging-house district .... 24 IV. Map showing the economic structure of the South End lodging-house district 28 V. Plan of first and second floors of the typical lodging-house ... 34 VI. Percentage of lodging-house landladies who have husbands or other male relatives of the same name in the house — geographical dis- tribution by precincts 54 VII. Fall of real-estate values. Union Park, 1 868-1902 76 VIII. Geographical distribution by precincts of adult male lodgers engaged- in professional service 88 IX. Idem, domestic and personal service 88 X. Idem, manufacturing and mechanical pursuits 92 XI. Idem, trade and transportation 92 XII. Density of population of Boston, 1900 (based on statistics by pre- cincts) 118 XIII. Density of population of male adult lodgers, 1902, South End lodging- house district 120 XIV. Distribution of population by sex, by wards, Boston, 1900 . . . 124 XV. Birth-rates by wards, Boston, 1901 128 XVI. Comparison of birth-rates and death-rates, by wards, 1901 . . . 132 XVII. Geographical distribution of students, Boston 190 XVIII. The new student-quarter in Boston 192 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In this study the term lodging-house is used both in a general and in specific senses. Generically it means any sort of habitation, hotels excepted, where a person can obtain lodging, whether for a night, a week, or a month. Specifically it has two different applications : first to the cheap lodging-house of the Bowery type, secondly to a class of dwelUngs often known in other cities as rooming-houses or furnished-room houses. This investigation deals with the room- ing-house only, and with the mercantile employees and skilled mechanics whom it shelters. The distinction between the cheap, transient lodging-house and the rooming-house lies in the class of patrons, in prices charged, and in method of payment. The lodgers in a rooming-house pay by the week or month, those in a cheap lodging-house by the night. The "roomers" pay from one to seven dollars a week, and are both men and women; the patron of the cheap lodging-house pays from five to twenty-five cents a night, and is generally a man, although there are in the larger cities cheap lodging-houses for women also. The rooming-house may receive transients, but generally at a rate not below fifty cents, and often as high as one dollar a night. Inasmuch as this investigation deals almost exclusively with Boston, and as the term rooming-house is rarely or never heard there, it seems best to use the term lodging- house in these pages rather than the more specific terms rooming- house or furnished-room house. It should be understood at once, then, that the term lodging-house as used here, unless indicated otherwise, covers the class of dwelhngs in which Uve the great mid- dle class of clerks, salesmen, skilled mechanics, and miscellaneous industrial workers, who for the most part are unmarried and with- out other abiding-place in the city — dwellings where men and 2 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON women are lodged upon payment of a sum of money weekly or monthly. ' The lodging-house of any sort has claimed comparatively little attention in the literature of the housing question, and the room- ing-house specifically has fared still worse. The only definition we have been able to find, outside the dictionaries, is the following: "A lodging-house shall be taken to mean and include any house or building or portion thereof in which persons are harbored, or received, or lodged for hire, for a single night or for less than a week at one time, or any part of which is let for any person to sleep in for any term less than a week." ^ This is the definition given in the original New York tenement-house law of 1867 (chap. 908, sec. 17), and it has been continued through all the subsequent acts with- out change. It excludes the rooming-house, where the ordinary rental period is a week or a month, but which is commonly called a lodging-house, and in some cities is never called anything else. A definition so at variance with common usage is obviously defect- ive, and may be positively misleading. The cheap dormitories furnishing a bed at from five to twenty- five cents a night, which fall under the Tenement- House Act definition, have given the health officials and other authorities in American and European cities much trouble, and it is perhaps not unnat- ural that the official use of the term should differ from the broader popular use. European cities have long had large municipal lodg- ing-houses for the shelter of transients who at the time can afford nothing more, and even of whole families in need over consider- able periods of time. Municipal lodging-houses for deahng with the vagrant problem have also had some significance in this coun- try, notably in New York and in Chicago.' In England most, if not all, of the municipal lodging-houses are merely publicly owned "common lodging-houses," a type which perhaps corresponds most ' The common term in Philadelphia is furnished-room house; in New York, Chi- cago, Cleveland, and St. Louis, rooming-house. ^ De Forest and Veiller, The Tenement House Prohlem, vol. ii, p. 331. See also E. R. L. Gould, Housing of the Working People, Eighth Special Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Labor, 1895, p. 27. ^ Municipal lodging-houses now exist in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, St. Louis, Washington, New Haven, Syracuse, and Chicago. — Zueblin, American Municipal Progress, p. 102. INTRODUCTION 3 nearly to the cheap lodging-houses covered by the New York Tene- ment Law definition. In Great Britain, and on the Continent as well, common lodging-houses are of considerable importance in the hous- ing question.^ In England, also, some large employers maintain lodging- or boarding-houses where their employees are compelled to hve — a practice known as "living-in." At least such was the case in the north of England a decade ago.^ We may be thankful that this is ' Of Great Britain we are told: "A very large section of the community knows no other home than that afforded by the common lodging-houses of our large towns and cities. This section includes a very considerable proportion of single men and women, who, either on account of the precarious nature of their work or the desire for the society which such a lodging-house provides, make no provision of a more permanent nature. As the places of work and the wages earned vary from time to time, so the situation and the character of their lodging change. Moreover, a very large proportion are ' tramps,' whose course is from one centre to another, and whose hotel is the common lodging-house, or very often the workhouse ward or tramp cell. Of the married people with families, who use the accommodation of the 'paddeu ken,' by far the greater proportion belong to the tramp class." These houses are sub- ject to inspection and license. The Public Health Act regulates them and provides "that no house shall be registered as a common lodging-house until it has been in- spected and improved for the purpose by some officer of the Local Authority." — Bowmaker, The Housing of the Working Classes, pp. 102, 103 (London, 1895). See also W. S. McNeill, Die Aufgaben der Siadtgemeinden in der Wohnungsjrage, Berlin, 1902, p. 24; and Fabian Essays in Socialism, pp. 49, 52. 2 See Dilke, Bulley, and Whitley, Women's Work, London, r894, pp. 58, 59. "Another matter with regard to which discontent is rapidly spreading is the system of compulsory ' living-in' which prevails widely in drapery and large outfitting estab- lishments. . . A drapery firm in the North of England, for example, employs 300 assistants of both sexes, and all are obliged to live in the house provided by the em- ployer. In shops where 'living-in' is compulsory, board and lodging is usually valued at £40 per annum. It is a common complaint, however, among assistants that if after some years' service they obtain the privilege of Hving 'out' they only receive an allowance of £15 to £20 per annum. . . For the sum charged by the employer the inmates of a large house ought to be comfortably fed and housed; but though in some cases the arrangements are all that could be desired, yet against the majority grave accusations are made with regard to overcrowding, bad food, and uncomfortable household arrangements. The bedroom accommodation is said to be insuflicient, and the furniture scanty; the food provided is often poor, and sometimes uneatable. Sundry small filchings in the shape of blacking boots, use of piano and library, are also strongly resented. There is seldom any provision for social life, perhaps because there would be no time to enjoy it. Usually the two sexes are lodged apart, but some boarding-houses are apparently mixed, for in one set of house-rules it is stated that talking in the dining-room during meals is 'strictly prohibited,' that young men are 4 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON one type of lodging we have escaped in this country. While it is possible to define the lodging- or rooming-house in a specific sense, it is impossible to find a good definition that will be descriptive of all the forms of habitations or institutions to which the term lodging- house is appUed, even in the United States. The various varieties of lodging-house merge into one another so gradually that no hard and sharp hne of demarkation can be drawn. At one extreme are the cheap, transient houses for men, already mentioned, often dens of "yeggmen" and other criminals; and at the other the comfort- able, highly respectable, and oftentimes luxurious bachelor apart- ments which are to be found in every large city. Between these extremes is the rooming-house or (as called in Boston) the lodging- house, which in the United States has become a great distinct type in itself. While there may be difiiculty in classifying certain houses, the lodging-house of this study is a fairly distinct type, and the most important one in numbers and in social and economic influence. The problem of the middle-class lodger or roomer, however, is wider than the realm of the out and out lodging- or rooming-house. Many persons hving in apartments let certain rooms to cut down expenses. The same is true of many tenement famihes, but here of course we merge into another problem, that of the tenement- lodger evil, which in cities of compact tenement districts hke New York and Boston, is one of the serious sides of the whole tenement- house problem. This is true also in England and on the Continent, especially in Germany, as is attested by the attention given the e\Tl not permitted to enter the young ladies' sitting-room, and visitors are not allowed in the house. At most establishments only twenty minutes or half an hour is allowed for dinner, and the assistants are liable to be called off if required in the shop. . . "When Sunday comes round a diametrically opposite policy is followed, and after being kept in close confinement during six days of the week the unhappy assistant finds himself or herself put outside the door on the seventh. Either the boarders are given to understand that their presence is not desired within doors, or else no meals are provided, and the assistants are left to shift for themselves as best they may. No doubt the best -conducted houses are careful of their assistants' comfort on Sundays. Extreme cases in which the assistants are absolutely shut out are probably rare; but some are known to exist, and the tendency to make Sunday an uncomfortable day for those who remain indoors appears to be pretty general. The disastrous conse- quences of throwing female assistants — often mere girls — upon their own resources upon the day of the week when respectable means of shelter and refreshment are least accessible can easily be imagined." INTRODUCTION 5 in German housing-question literature. In Boston, this particular evil, while not so great, is still serious. "Frequently lodgers are crowded into tenement- rooms of scant dimensions. Small rooms with no outside windows and even parts of rooms are let for lodgers, and in this way a single man can get sleeping accommodations for fifty cents a week." ' The lodger evil of the tenements, a part of the tenement-house problem, will not be touched upon by us. But lodgers in apartment suites and in private famihes where only a room or two is rented are to be found in considerable numbers and should be taken account of in a full consideration of the lodging-house problem. The lodging-house must be distinguished once for all from the boarding-house. The lodging-house never gives board. The lodger is not a boarder. The boarder eats and sleeps in the same place. The lodger or "roomer" sleeps in one place and "takes his meals out." ^ The lodging-house must also be distinguished from the apartment-house on the one hand, and from the tenement on the other. Both the apartment and the tenement are family houses, their rooms are rented in suites and are fitted for housekeeping; but the lodging-house is cut up into separate rooms to be rented to single men and women or to childless married couples of hmited means, who are wilhng to undergo the inconveniences of Ufe in one room and meals at a corner " caf6." ' Neither the apartment dweller nor the lodger (or roomer) has been the subject of much study. The voluminous English, Con- tinental, and American literature on the housing question deals almost exclusively with the tenement and the tenement classes. The great army of mercantile employees and skilled mechanics — the ' Bush€e, Ethnic Factors in the Population oj Boston, p. 34. See also The City Wilderness, pp. 34, 35. ' In England lodgers have meals served in their rooms, but the strenuous life of the American does not permit of such indulgence. ' While the point does not strictly concern us here it may be of interest to remark upon the difference between the tenement-house and the apartment-house. While the distinction is a, broad one it is one of degree rather than of kind, and it is often difiScult, sometimes impossible, to draw a sharp line between the two. The difference is usually fixed more or less arbitrarily, according to the number of rooms in a suite, the rental rate, sanitary equipment, and the like. In practice the distinction very often turns on the presence or absence of a bathroom for each suite. 6 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON clerks, salesmen, bookkeepers, stenographers, dressmakers, mil- liners, barbers, restaurant-keepers, policemen, nurses, and the un- married journeymen carpenters, painters, machinists, \^electricians, etc., are commonly supposed to live in wholesome surroundings. As a matter of fact httle is really known of the hfe of the "unat- tached " men and women, and still less has been put in pubhshed form. Something has been written concerning the shop-girl, but generally to the effect that she Uves at home, receives "subsidiary wages" or "pin-money" for her work, and thus renders the lot of the girl who has to earn all her own Hving very hard. Then the latter girl is forgotten, and it is thoughtlessly supposed that because the mercantile employee dresses presentably, and the skilled me- chanic gets high day- or piece-wages, the conditions in which they live when not at work are presumably not bad. A few persons have long known that the lodging-house and the life of the lodg- ing-house population, in Boston at least, constitute a grave and far-reaching social problem. But the exact nature of that problem, its extreme complexity, and its numerous ramifications have not been precisely clear, nor have data been at hand upon which to judge what solution, if any, can be found. The lodging-house population is an appreciable part of the total city population. The "boarders and lodgers" of Boston ten years ago numbered over 54,000,* and the number now must be between 70,000 and 80,000. This includes boarders and lodgers of all classes an}'where within the corporation Hmits of Boston. The popula- tion of the thirteen precincts covering the South End lodging-house district — the one in which this investigation is centred — is shown in the following table: Table i. population of the south end lodging-house dis- trict, BY PRECINCTS, I900 AND I905 igoo ' 1905 ' Ward 9 Precinct 5 3.°73 2)95 1 Ward 9 Precinct 6 2,849 2,894 Ward 10 Precinct 3 2,161 1,773 ' Massachusetts State Census, 1895, vol. ii, p. 554. ' 31st Annual Report Mass. Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1900, pp. 58, 59. ' Population and Legal Voters, Census of Mass., 1905, — pamphlet issued by the Bureau of Labor, pp. 9-1 1. INTRODUCTION Ward 10 Precinct 4 Ward 10 Precinct 5 Ward 10 Precinct 6 Ward 12 Precinct i Ward 12 Precinct 2 Ward 12 Precinct 3 Ward 12 Precinct 4 Ward 12 Precinct 5 Ward 12 Precinct 6 Ward 12 Precinct 7 2,129 2,028 1,688 1,342 2,06s 1,947 3-633 2,953 3>024 2,468 2,276 2,640 3,405 2,610 2,779 2,971 4,910 4,453 3,614 3,643 Total 37,606 34,673 1 Just how many of these people live in lodging-houses it is impos- sible to state, since there are a number of short tenement-house streets and a few apartment-houses and private residences in the district. On the whole it is probable that the lodging-house popu- lation of these thirteen precincts by itself would aggregate between 25,000 and 30,000; but this must be taken only as a rough estimate. It is evident that a district of so large a population, and one the inner Hfe of which is so little known, is worthy of study. Further- more, while this study will apply specifically to the lodging-house district of the South End of Boston, the conditions found must be taken in the main as typical of conditions existing or rapidly com- ing into existence in nearly every large city. The extent of the lodging-house population, as well as the dan- gers to which it is subject, is undoubtedly closely connected with ' The decline of nearly 3000 (7.8 %) in the population of these thirteen precincts in five years comes as a surprise. The Bureau of Labor, in a personal communica- tion, attributes it "to the fact that these wards [wards 9, 10, and 12] are becoming more and more devoted to business purposes, and residences are being demolished or transformed into business offices." It is true that the first stories of houses on the lower part of Columbus Avenue (below Massachusetts Avenue) are being remodeled into stores in considerable numbers, and that a similar though much less noticeable movement is in progress on Tremont Street (between Bover Street and Massachu- setts Avenue) — a movement similar to that which is transforming Boylston Street and Huntington Avenue, and which will undoubtedly attack other Back Bay streets, but as yet it scarcely seems that this can be sufficient cause for the noticeable decline in population. The fact that one census is Federal, the other State, probably must be taken into account. And it may be, also, that a greater number of persons who have to board or lodge are finding accommodations in suburban districts than -was the case five or six years ago. Boston's constantly improving transit service would help toward this end; and if such a movement is going on, however slowly, it is a hopeful sign. 8 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON the trend of population from the country and smaller towns to the metropolitan centres. The mobility of our American population, and this tendency to flock to the cities, are well- recognized phenom- ena.' The strength of this great movement is apparent when we re- member that there has been an increase since 1890 in urban popu- lation, for the country as a whole, of very nearly 37 per cent, as com- pared with an increase in total population during the same period (ten years) of not quite 21 per cent.^ The large number of new- comers in Boston at any given time is indicated by the fact that in 1895 there were on May i, 10,861 persons ten years of age and over who had hved in Boston only six months or less. About half of this number were foreigners, the rest were native-bom Ameri- cans.' The State Census shows that the recruits to city life are chiefly over twenty years old, and that the number of native-bom migrants is far in excess of the foreign-bom. In Appendix B will be found an analysis of the nati\ity of the population of Boston for the years 1885, 1895, and 1900. The large percentage of the popu- lation of great cities not native to the city named is shown in the following table: Table 2. nativity of population of the five largest cities' Bom in the U. S. Total Bom in but not For- bom city in city eign- outside named. named. bom of city. New York 55-o% 8.0% 37-0% 4S-o% Chicago 45-3 20.1% 34-6% 54-7% Philadelphia 65.3% 11-9% 22.8% 34.7% St. Louis SS-8% 24-8% 19-4% 44-2% Boston 50.9% 14-0% 35-1% 49-1% ' See, for example, the Twelfth U. S. Census, Population, part i, pp. Ixxxi-xc. Cf. also, Webber, Growth of Cities ; Ross, Foundations of Sociology, pp. 331-333 and passim ; and for German theory and conditions, Hansen, Die Drei Bevolkerrungs- stufen, 1889, Ammon, Die natUrliche Auslese beim Menschen, 1893, Die Gesellschafts- ordnung und ihre natiirlichen Grundlagen, 1895, and Kuczynski, Der Zug nach der Stadt, 1897. ' Twelfth U. 5. Census, Pop., part i, p. Ixxxvii. ' Massachusetts State Census, 1895, vol. ii, pp. 790, 791. * Compiled from the Twelfth U. S. Census, Pop., part i, pp. clxvii-cbdx. INTRODUCTION 9 Nearly one half the present population of Boston, it appears, was born outside the city. It is impossible to say what proportion of these new-comers find their way to boarding- or lodging-houses, but the lodging-house class is recruited chiefly from them, and the more pronounced the movement from country to city, the larger will be the lodging class, and the more pressing the lodging-house problem. The very fact, however, that the movement from country to city has seemed so commonplace and natural has been well calculated to leave us with Uttle appreciation of its significance until the stat- isticians put it before us in precise figures. Even then the corollary — that in the lives of a very large part of these young people who are drifting cityward the lodging-house, for a long time at least, supplants the home — has escaped recognition at anything like its full importance. But it is not alone the young men and women who come to the cities for the first time to work who help fill the lodging-houses. Both one of the causes and one of the results of the wonderful economic efficiency of modem industrial organization hes in the large number of skilled mechanics who are ever ready to be up and moving to some other place on short notice, — liter- ally "journeymen" with no fixed place of abode, no strong family ties, Uttle effective social instinct. So strong is this tendency that some trade-unions, notably the cigar-makers, have revived the old custom of providing an insurance fund for men out of work and travehng from one place to another (" going on tramp," as it used to be called) in search of employment. The skilled mechanic, in many trades, is likely to be sent almost anywhere. Especially is this true in building-trades, transportation, and certain kinds of domestic and personal service. Modern industry demands large sacrifices of home and comfort on the part of its servants. The movement toward the cities has been regarded as mainly economic in its motive.' It will not do, however, to throw too ex- clusive an emphasis upon purely economic forces. " Opportunity," which every city seems to spell in capital letters, must be taken in a wider sense than that for employment merely. Sentimental con- siderations cannot be left out of account. Men and women flock to the cities to work and to live. To those who come for industrial reasons must be added those who come driven by dreams of "liv- C£. Richard T. Ely, The Coming City, p. 26. lO THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON ing in the city," and to these in turn all the students, the tourists, and the great number of old and shipwrecked persons who seem naturally to gravitate thither. Opportunities for work, and for amusement, excitement, and variety, the attractive force of the un- known, the hypnotic influence of the color and movement and energy of the crowd, all help to draw men and women to the cities. Primarily, nevertheless, the reasons for the existence of the lodger or roomer are economic. The world's work has to be done and people flock to the cities to do it. To the lodging-house increasing numbers of the middle class gravitate in those years of struggle which in ever lengthening array must elapse between the time they leave the home of their fathers and reach the home of their own. It is the lodging-house (or rooming-house if it is so called in your city) which shelters these young people while they gain an education or a "footing" and earn their own living. Certain causes thus produce in the city a multitude of homeless persons who must have some place to eat and sleep. The demand thus created affords a means of livehhood to a sec- ond class of persons, chiefly women, who could be economically productive in scarcely any other way than by keeping lodgers. The lodging-house keeper, or, as she is famiUarly known, the "land- lady," constitutes a class of her own. Her economic and social status are considered at length in chapter vin. The third element in the lodging-house question is a real-estate problem. Large population migrations from one urban district to another take place in the history of every city. The expansion of business districts, changes in lines of transportation, improvements in suburbs, and, more potent and least explicable of aU, changes in the fashionableness of various districts, may depopulate a fine residence section, and leave there a vast area of old dwellings which become forthwith white elephants on the hands of their owners. Still too good to be "made down" into tenements, the invariable fate of these houses is to be turned over to the tender mercies of the lodging- or boarding-house keeper. The combination of the problem of these three classes, the lodger, the landlady, and the owner, forms the groundwork of the eco- nomic, social, and moral conditions with which the following chapters will have to deal. CHAPTER II THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF THE SOUTH END LODGING-HOUSE SECTION The existence of a compact lodging-house district demands his- torical explanation. Why does it happen to be here rather than else- where? How long has it been here? What were the forces that placed it here? The explanation is found in those typical intra- urban migrations, mention of which has just been made in the pre- ceding chapter.' Previous to about 1790 the North End of Boston had been the most desirable residential section, but at that time the West End, Beacon Hill, and part of Washington Street were occupied by equally well-to-do famiHes.^ Soon after this time, however, the American families began to desert the North End and to turn toward the Fort Hill and Pearl Street district. With the passing of the North End as a residential district, there were for a considerable period in the early part of the nineteenth century two residential sections, namely, that of Fort Hill, and that of Beacon Hill and the West End. Before 1850, however, signs of momentous change were already apparent. Two forces seem to have been active, rendering new popu- lation movements inevitable. The business of the city was rapidly expanding, and the situation of the Fort Hill district was such that it must soon be demanded for business purposes. Nothing so quickly "kills" a locality for residential purposes as the resistless encroach- ment of trade and commerce upon its borders. The phenomenon may be observed in any large city to-day, and it is invariably ac- companied by real estate and social changes that make it worthy of far more study than we can here give it. In the second place Beacon Hill and the West End had become so completely built-up and so compactly populated that a swarming of the young couples ' It is not necessary here to enter upon a detailed account of the earlier history of the South End. This may be found to some extent in Shurtleff's Topographical and Historical Description of Boston, and in a condensed form in The City Wilderness. ^ F. A. Bush^e, Growth of the Population of Boston, in the Publications of the Amer- ican Statistical Association, June, 1899, p. 246. 12 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON to some other part of the city was necessary. The young people who were growing up, marrying, and estabhshing homes of their own, had to cut themselves away from the old residence district, however much they may have disliked to leave. The Back Bay marshes were not then filled-in and indeed there was as yet scarcely any thought of such a measure. Otherwise it is safe to say that the movement would have been a gradual overflow of families from the Hill down onto the flats to the west of the Pubhc Garden. Nor was there any communication to speak of with the suburbs. In fact it is almost an anachronism to speak of suburbs during this period. There were surrounding towns, more or less distant, but as a rule people who had permanent business in the city lived in the city. From almost the beginning of the century, circumstances had so developed that the South End was perforce destined, as time went on, to become the Mecca of well-to-do famihes in search of a desirable, fashionable locahty in which to "build" and estabhsh homes. Beacon Hill and the West End continued to hold their old famihes down to the modem period characterized by the building- up of the Back Bay, but they poured forth their surplus population into the South End. The South End speedily claimed the popu- lation of the old Fort Hill district also. Thus it came to pass that the South End became the great well-to-do residential section of the city.^ Several influences determined this location. In the first place the fact that the land in the South End was made from good soUd material brought by rail from the^pland country of Needham and other towns, and not from slime 'and mud pumped from the bottom of the Charles River (the present method), seems to have been an attraction. But a far stronger influence was the street rail- way. As pointed out in "The City Wilderness," "the development of the street railway at the opportune mofeient determined the loca- tion of the new residential section of the period from 1855 to 1870 in the South End. The Metropolitan Railroad procured its charter in 1853, and opened its hne from Scollay Square to the South End ' AH but a small portion of the South End is built upon made land. The filling- in of the marshes of the South and Back Bays within the present limits of the South End was in progress from about 1800, and was not completed until the end of the '6o's. Meanwhile building operations had been rushed forward during the 'so's. Lack of space forbids our tracing, even in outline, this earlier development of the South End, full of interest as it is. EVOLUTION OF THE SOUTH END DISTRICT 1 3 and Roxbury late in 1856. For the next fifteen years the South End was the growing and popular quarter of the city; street after street was built up with rows of swell-front brick houses, which are still the dominant feature of the architecture of the district." ' In the third place it is well to point out, also, that with the exception of South Boston, the South End was the only new part of the city open to occupancy. East Boston, Cambridge, and Charlestown were miles away across water and mud marshes, the Back Bay was an artificial lake, and South Boston itself, which otherwise might have been a beautiful residence district, was cut off by the waters of the South Bay and Fort Point Channel. Continuous growth could take place only along the line of the Neck and the filhng to either side of it. The street railway undoubtedly faciUtated the expansion of the district, but it seems probable that the South End would have been chosen anyhow. And once the tide of fashion had set in that direction, nothing could stop it. Fashion decreed its favor to the South End, and that settled the matter. Every effort was made to make the district attractive. The houses were extremely well built for that period, and no expense seems to have been spared to make them elegant, and in many instances even luxurious.^ Provision was made for parks, and some of the pret- tiest places in Boston to-day are the httle parks and "squares" of the South End lodging-house district. Especially may be mentioned West Chester Park, Worcester Square, and Union Park. For al- most a quarter of a century Hveried coachmen and white-capped nursemaids airing their charges were a common sight on Tremont Street and other thoroughfares, while the cross-streets were gay with the voices of children." The South End, then, was once a city of private homes; now ' The City Wilderness, p. 30. ' The Building Department of the City of Boston was not organized until 1873. Previous to that there were no restrictions on building, other than those contained in the deeds to the land. There is therefore no record of building operations in the city until 1873, and as most of the South End, with the exception of Columbus Avenue, was built before that date, we are thrown back upon the "oldest inhabitant" for information. ' We cannot agree with the writer in The City Wilderness when he says, "The history of the South End is almost devoid of dramatic incident or picturesqueness." — Page 31. 14 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON it is a Mdldemess of factories, tenements, and lodging-houses. Fully five sixths of the old residences are now rooming-houses. Built in the fifties and early sixties they served their proper function for an allotted time, and then a transformation came which was almost startling in its suddenness. Fashion, which had dealt kindly with this section of the city, changed. For some time the South End struggled to keep up appearances, to retain its gentiHty, but the forces of city growth were too strong for it. Style changes in real estate as in dress, and, comparatively, just as quickly and erratically. It is said that the first faint whisperings of impending change were heard soon after the Civil War. But the storm did not break over the real-estate situation in the South End till Reconstruction days were past, and the crisis of '73 had begun to work out its effects. The immediate occasion for the change seems to have been the real-estate situation on Columbus Avenue. This street was put through as far as Northampton Street about 1870, and was imme- diately built up with a somewhat cheaper style of houses than those on the older streets. Most of these new houses were built on mort- gages, and after the panic of '73 had broken over the city most of them were in the possession of the banks. The banks sold them for what they would bring, and the result was an acute drop in the value of Columbus Avenue real estate, and in the character of the imme- diate locaKty. The shock thus felt on Colxmibus Avenue with such sudden force gradually had the effect of disturbing the equilibrium in the rest of the South End. It soon became evident that the palmy days of the district were over. Men's eyes were turned towards a new Mecca. The Back Bay flats were being filled-in, and for vari- ous reasons they looked attractive. A few famihes, leaders in resi- dential fashion, as it were, broke the ice, sold or rented their South End homesteads, and erected new mansions on Beacon, Marlbor- ough, Newbury, and Boylston streets and Commonwealth Avenue. The movement gained strength, slowly at first, and then, as the con- tagion of change struck deeper, with an almost appalHng rush. As one person put it, "The people got out of the South End Uke rats." It is not possible to assign any definite date for the exodus. All we can say is that it began in the seventies, gained momentum during the early eighties, and was practically finished before 1890. By 1885 the South End had become dominantly a lodging-house section. I I i !!! m III III III 11 I ■ I I I' I i I I i i ^ I i 111 ^1 I 11 g H i ii i m I Ii o EVOLUTION OF THE SOUTH END DISTRICT 15 The progress of the exodus and of the change of houses from pri- vate residences to lodging-houses is illustrated by Chart i, which represents conditions as they existed on Union Park from 1868 to 1902. This chart may be taken as typical of the whole district, except that many blocks could have been selected that would show no private residences left, and also with the possible exception that the change took place somewhat earlier toward Dover Street, and later toward Massachusetts Avenue. Each black line repre- sents an individual house during the time in which it was a private residence ; its continuation in a light line represents the period dur- ing which it has been a lodging-house. The chart indicates that the period of fastest transformation was in 1884-85. It is constructed upon data secured by a laborious search of the city assessors' books. The period of most rapid change, in the middle of the eighties, was accompanied and followed by unusual activity in real- estate exchanges in the South End. People moving away from a dechn- ing district, and perhaps anxious to disengage money from old pro- perty in order to build new residences, were anxious to sell, all the more so because real-estate values were declining at a prodigious rate.^ The accompanying table shows this increased activity for Union Park. Table 3. NUMBER OF REAL-ESTATE TRANSFERS ON UNION PARK, 1868-I902.2 31 1868-69. --4 1885-86... -7 " 1869-70. --4 1886-87... -5 1870-71. . .1 ~ 1887-88. . . 7 1871-72. ..6 1888-89... 6 1872-73. • -4 .16 1889-90... 6 1873-74- --4 1890-91 . . . 5] 1874-75- . .1 _ 1891-92... 7 1875-76. •-3~ 1892-93... 2 1876-77. . .0 1893-94. . . 2 1877-78. . .1 ■ 6 1894-95... 6. 1878-79. . .1 1895-96... 6] 1879-80. ■-I . 1896-97-.. .6 1880-81. ..o~ 1897-98... -5 1881-82. --S 1898-99. .. -5 1882-83. --3 ' 15 1899-1900. -0 - 1883-84. -■4 I 900-1 901. -5 1884-85. --3. 1901-1902. •S ' See Chart vri. ' Data from city assessors' books. ■ 22 1 6 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON It is significant that the number of transfers more than doubled in the five years 1885-1890, over the number in the preceding five years. The obverse of the shield — the darker aspect of which for the South End in this period showed thus a great exodus of private fam- ilies, increase of real-estate transfers, decline in real-estate values, and an incoming of the lodging-house — is to be seen in other places in the filling, building, and populating of the Back Bay, and in an enormous increase of the population in the suburbs. Back of the call of fashion, which demanded that the rich and well-to-do families should migrate to the wind-swept, mud-filled, and treeless flats of the Charles River, lay certain more rational motives. The houses of the South End were not yet old, but they were of an old type. Business was creeping in on the north, and factories were beginning to belch smoke on the east. Above all, however, the open- ing-up of the Back Bay lands gave opportunity for the people who had once migrated from Beacon Hill and the West End to return and be near their old friends and relatives. The West End was de- clining, to be sure, just as the South End was, but families were simply moving out onto the newly made land, and the South End famines made haste to join them. "In all growth, great or small, central or axial, the vital feature is continuity, the universal tend- ency being to add on buildings one by one, of the same general character as those which preceded them," says a recent authority. "Lack of continuity, from whatever cause, explains many of the greatest disappointments in anticipated real-estate movements." ' This fact was admirably illustrated by both the South End and the Back Bay. The South End, lacking continuity with the older resi- dence district, could not hold its own when that continuity was estabhshed between Beacon Hill and the Back Bay. Another reason, almost as strong, for the exodus was the growing popularity of the suburbs. The cheapness of land and building material for frame houses outside the city attracted many persons. The expansion of the park systems, the improvement of thorough- fares, and the great natural beauty of many of the city's suburbs attracted others. Thus towns like Milton and Brookline drew the rich and the ultra-rich. What counts for more, however, the expan- ' Hurd, Principles oj City Land Values, p. 74. EVOLUTION OF THE SOUTH END DISTRICT 1 7 sion of the street railway systems, and the improvement of the sub- urban service on the steam roads, enabled people of moderate means to live in the suburbs with some degree of comfort. Rapid transit has done much to change the configuration of most cities. Just as the introduction of the horse-car had been an influence drawing people to the South End, so now the electric car was a force attracting more and more people away from the congested inner circles.* That some connection existed between the growth of the suburbs and the exodus of families from the South End is evident from Tables 4, 5, and 6. Table 5 includes the inner suburbs which are practically continuous with the city, and which can be reached by a five-cent fare. Table 6 includes outer suburbs which fall within a radius of approximately twelve miles from the State House. Table 4.^ POPULATION AND INCREASE OF POPULATION, BOSTON, 3 ;87o-i905 19OS 1900 1890 1880 1870 Population 595-380 560,892 448,477 362,839 250,526 Increase (niunbers) 34,488 112,415 85,638 112,313 Increase (per cent.) 6.1 25.0 23.6 44.9 Table 5. POPULATION AND INCREASE OF POPULATION, INNER SUBURBS, 1870-n 905 1905 1900 1890 1880 1870 Brookline 23,436 19,935 12,103 8,057 6,650 Newton 36,827 33,587 24,379 16,995 12,825 Watertown 11,258 9,706 7,073 5,426 4,326 Cambridge 97,434 91,886 70,028 52,699 36,934 Somerville 69,272 61,643 40,152 24,933 14,685 Medford 19,686 18,244 11,079 7,573 5,717 Maiden 38,037 33,664 23,031 12,017 7,367 Everett 29,111 24,336 11,068 4,159 2,220 Chelsea 37,289 34,072 27,909 21,782 i8,S47 ' For some statistics of the Boston Elevated Railroad Company, see Publications, Am. Acad, of Pol. and Soc. Science, no. 345, p. 124. ^ The data for this and the two following tables are taken from the U. S. Census for 1870 and 1880, Tenth Census, Pop., vol. i, pp. 208, 290; for 1890 and 1900, Twelfth Census, Pop., part i, pp. 199-201. The figures for 1905 are from the advance sheets of the Mass. State Census of 1905 pamphlet entitled Population and Legal Voters. Includes: Boston proper, East Boston, South Boston, Dorchester, West Roxbury (annexed 1872-3), Brighton (annexed 1873), Charlestown (annexed 1873), and Roxbury. 1 8 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON Revere 12,659 10,395 5,668 2,263 1,197 Winthrop 7,034 6,058 2,726 1,043 532 Arlington 9,668 8,603 5,629 4,100 3,261 Hyde Park 14,510 13,244 10,193 7,088 4,136 Milton 7,054 6,578 4,278 3,206 2,683 Totals 413,275 371,951 255,314 171,341 121,080 Increase (numbers) 41,324 116,637 83,957 50,261 Increase (per cent.) II. I 45-7 48.9 41-5 Table 6. population and increase of population, outer suburbs, 1870-i905 1905 igoo 1890 1880 1870 Lexington 4,530 3,831 3,197 2,460 2,227 Winchester 8,242 7,248 4,861 3,802 2,64s Wobum 14,402 14,254 13,499 10,931 8,560 Burlington 588 593 617 711 626 Melrose 14,295 12,962 9,519 4,560 3,414 Stoneham 6,332 6,197 6,155 4,890 4,513 Wakefield 10,268 9,290 6,982 5,547 4,13s Reading 5,682 4,969 4,088 3,181 2,664 Saugus 6,253 5,084 3,673 2,625 2,247 Lynn 77,042 68,513 55,727 38,274 28,233 Swampscott 5,141 4,548 3,198 2,500 1,846 Nahant 922 1,152 880 808 475 Hull 2,060 1,703 989 383 261 Hingham 4,819 5,059 4,564 4,485 4,442 Weymouth ",58s 11,324 10,866 10,570 9,090 Braintree 6,879 5,981 4,848 3,855 3,948 Quincy 28,076 23,899 16,723 10,570 7,442 Randolph 4,034 3,993 3,946 4,027 5,642 Canton 4,702 4,584 4,538 4,516 3,879 Dedham 7,774 7,457 7,123 6,233 7.342 Westwood ' 1,136 1,112 Wellesley 6,189 5,072 3,600 Weston 2,091 1,834 1,664 1,148 1,261 Waltham 26,282 23,481 18,707 11,712 9,065 Belmont 4,360 3,929 2,098 1,615 1,513 Needham 4,284 267,968 4,016 3,035 194,097 5,252 143,63s 3,607 Totals 242,085 120,027 Increase (numbers) 25,883 47,988 50,462 23,608 Increase (per cent.) 10.7 24-5 35-1 19.6 In view of the facts brought out by these tables we are constrained to differ with the writer in the "PubHcations " of the American Sta- • Organized from Dedham town since 1890. EVOLUTION OF THE SOUTH END DISTRICT 1 9 tistical Association who says, "the greatest growths of the suburbs have usually taken place contemporaneously with the greatest growths of the city." ' A comparison of the percentage of increase for the three decades shows exactly the opposite fact: Table 7. percentage of increase of population, boston and SUBURBS T 900-1 905 (half-decade) I 890-1 goo I 880-1 890 1870-1880 Boston 6.1 25.0 23.6 44-9 Inner suburbs ii.i 45-7 48.9 4I-S Outer suburbs 10.7 24-5 351 19.6 The period of greatest growth for the city, 1870-1880, was that of the least growth for the suburbs, while the period of least growth of the city, 1880- 1890, was that of the greatest growth of the sub- urbs. The five years 1 900-1 905 also show a much faster rate of growth of the suburbs than of the city. There is no doubt whatever that the decade 1880-1890 was one of reaction against crowded city conditions, and of expansion of suburban life. In thirty years the city and outer suburbs doubled their population ; in the same time the population of the inner suburbs trebled. The fact we wish to emphasize is that this movement of the decade 1880-1890 was con- temporaneous with the exodus from the South End. The people who left that section of the city went partly to the Back Bay, partly to the suburbs; and their places in the South End were taken by an army of lodgers and lodging-house keepers. There was an ele- ment of the dramatic in this sudden transformation of a whole dis- trict, in the turning-over of houses full of associations and family history to the tender mercies of indifferent strangers. Everywhere in the South End to-day we are reminded of a departed glory, and there is something of sadness in the plaint of such old residents as still remain: "The South End is not what it once was!" In the chapters that follow we shall gain some idea of what the South End is Hke to-day. ' F. A. Bush^e, The Growth 0/ the Population of Boston, in Publications, A. S. A., June, 1899, p. 259. CHAPTER III THE LODGING-HOUSE DISTRICTS OF BOSTON Section I. The South End The lodging-house district of the South End of Boston is probably one of the most compact and characteristic, if not also the largest to be found in any city. Its boundaries cannot be described on every side with absolute precision, however, for the reason that the main central area, the unmistakable region of lodging-houses, in places gradually merges out into other districts occupied either by apart- ment-houses or by tenements. The general situation of the district as regards the rest of the city is shown in Chart ii. Roughly speaking the district extends from Dover and Berkeley streets on the north to Northampton on the south, a distance of about four iifths of a mile; and from the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad (between Columbus and Huntington avenues) on the west to Washington Street on the east. The situation of the district within the South End, and the details of boundary are shown in Charts in and iv. The boundaries on the north and west are clearly cut and definite. On the west side there is the great apartment- and lodging-house district which stretches from Copley Square out Huntington Avenue; but be- tween this and the South End is the railroad, which is an effectual barrier between the two districts, preventing them from having much in common. On the north side Dover Street separates the district sharply from a very compact and crowded tenement-house section, which intervenes between the lodging-house district and the downtown business section. On the south the lodging-house section fades out quickly, but not all at once, into the tenement- house district of lower Roxbury; but even here and far up toward Roxbury Crossing, on the cross-streets, the sign "Rooms to Let" meets the eye at not infrequent intervals. On the east the limits are somewhat harder to fix. Southeastward the district stretches across THE LODGING-HOUSE DISTRICTS OF BOSTON 21 Washington Street, and is brought summarily to a stop by the grounds of the City Hospital. But further north are a number of cross-streets, Stoughton, East Newton, etc., which are hned with houses that look like lodging-houses, but which for the most part have under- gone one more stage of degeneration and been "made down" into tenements. Some are still lodging-houses, however, and many of the tenements take in lodgers. The boundary on the east, therefore, has to be located somewhat arbitrarily. It is to be noticed that the district is surrounded on three sides — the north, east, and south by great tenement-house areas, which respectively separate it from the business section, from the waters of the South Bay, and from the outlying regions of Roxbury and Dorchester. As will be seen by Chart ii, most of the district is within easy walking distance of downtown, no part of it being more than a mile and a half distant from the business district. Transportation facil- ities are excellent. At least three thoroughfares traverse the dis- trict from downtown — Washington Street, with its surface Hnes and the elevated, Tremont Street, with surface cars either way al- most every minute, and Columbus Avenue, with scarcely less fre- quent service. A few surface cars also run on Shawmut Avenue. Facilities for communication across the district are not so good. Practically no car service exists between the South End and the Back Bay. Like the Back Bay the South End is almost a dead level, rang- ing only from twelve to eighteen feet above tidewater. The street plan of the district (see Chart iii) shows three features. First, the four longitudinal thoroughfares already mentioned, radiating from the business district through the lodging-house section to Rox- bury and beyond. Second, the cross- streets, which run from the railroad through the district to Harrison Avenue and beyond. And third, several small parks and squares, of which the combined Franklin and Blackstone squares have the greatest area. The most characteristic external feature of the district is its houses. The first impression is one of insufferable monotony in the style of architecture. The architects of fifty years ago seem to have lacked creative imagination, and apparently could conceive of but one form of city residence. The cost of buildings frequently rose to $25,000 and sometimes as high as $40,000, but they were all of 22 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON the same type — pressed brick, trimmed with brown or red sand- stone with "swell fronts" and "high stoops," granite steps and an oppressive amount of ironwork in balustrades and the fences with which the little six by ten front grass-plots were rehgiously inclosed. Looking down a street of these edifices, one sees a series of swell fronts, three or four stories high, a battery of high front steps, and a skyHne scalloped by the tops of the fronts and notched by the dormer windows of the attic rooms. Many of the cross-streets are shaded, chiefly with elms, which in summer afford a grateful reHef from the heat which, on the main thoroughfares and the unprotected side streets, beats down un- mercifully upon the brick walls and macadam pavements. The trees of Union and West Chester Parks and of Worcester Square do credit to the civic thoughtfulness of the builders of the South End. These oases of green in an endless desert of brick and mor- tar, mere swelKngs in the streets as they are, are due to private en- terprise of the past. Property owners on them bore the expense of their maintenance, and had the chief enjoyment of their use. On Union Park each householder carried a key to the gate of the cen- tral park area. In two or three instances what were once semi- private parks of this sort may be found tucked away in the middle of a block, and reached at present only by a narrow and unsightly alley. The yards in the rear of the houses are larger than would be the case with modern real-estate property. When they are well kept they are not unattractive, and the writer has seen two or three lodg- ing-house back yards which would not greatly shock the taste of the most fastidious. In many of the yards are fruit and other trees, with here and there a hlac bush to remind us of the past. In the spring, along many of the alleys blossoms and green buds are not lacking to apprise the rear-room lodger of the season. The poorer parts of the district, however, approach more nearly tenement-area conditions. The alleys themselves, like many of the yards, are not too well kept, and the writer is incHned to think that the streets of the lodging-house district on the whole are not kept so clean as those of the tenement regions, especially where the city in the latter has put down asphalt pavement. No part of the city assumes a more deceptive outward appear- ance than the South End lodging-house district. One can pass CMART-n . or THE 50UTH E-NJJ. WEST E.NP. THE LODGING-HOUSE DISTRICTS OF BOSTON 23 through most parts of it in any direction with eyes wide open and senses alert, and yet get scarcely an inkhng of the nature of the hfe that goes on within the clean and genteel exteriors of these elegantly sombre and dignified old houses. They look hke the mansions of the moderately rich and well-to-do. True, there is that in them which speaks of decline, but touched up with a few repairs, they might be the residence place of " old famihes." Only the tell-tale " Rooms to Let " sign informs us to the contrary. The mansions are lodging-houses, their mistresses are "landladies," and the men and women who carry their latch-keys, to let themselves in and out when they will, are lodgers. We saw in Chapter 11 that nearly every house has become a lodging-house. The general compactness of the South End as a lodging-house district is shown in Chart m. Private residences are so few and so scattered that they could not be represented on the chart. There are many miscellaneous features in the district, some of which have nothing, or very little, to do with its life. Such are the churches, the grammar schools, the Latin and English high schools, and a number of charitable and philanthropical institutions. The more important of these are indicated in the chart. During the working hours of the day the cross- streets are almost deserted, — only the main thoroughfares presenting the varied life of many persons coming and going on their countless individual missions. The lodging-house population works, and the houses are cleared by eight o'clock in the morning. But when the business day is over and the downtown offices and shops pour forth their Hving stream of tired humanity, the district assumes a new aspect. Every passing car drops at each crossing its quota of men and women; through the streets flows a continuous procession of pedestrians, wending their way to rooms or caf^s, spreading out through the side streets, filtering into the great lines of lodging-houses as far as Northampton Street, like a river flowing through a deha with many mouths. Then the deserted rooms put forth Ught after Hght, until by eight o'clock half the windows are illumined, some dimly, some brilliantly. Meanwhile the caf^s and dining-rooms are hav- ing their second busy season of the day (the first being in the morn- ing), and do not quiet down till after eight o'clock. 24 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON On a summer's evening the scene is shifted a little. There are fewer lodgers in the district, all who could having betaken them- selves to Winthrop or some other near-by resort, anywhere out of the heat, the dust, and the dead air of the city. Those who remain seem to prefer the evening on the front steps to the seclusion of their rooms. There is more sociabihty in the spring and summer. Groups on the steps of nearly every house hnger the evening through, dis- cussing nothings or the price of board at the latest new cafe. Section II. Beacon Hill and the West End There are two typical large lodging-house districts in Boston, — the South End, and Beacon Hill, including a portion of the West End. Although this inquiry is concerned chiefly with the lodger problem as presented in the South End, it wiU not be amiss to say a word about the West End and about the smaller aggregations of lodging-houses which exist here and there in the city. The Beacon HiU and West End district is far less compact and homogeneous than the South End. In the West End we have a heterogeneous mass of tenements and lodging-houses mingled on the same street in the most haphazard manner. We find character- istic lodging-house streets, also, sandwiched in between streets of tenement-houses, and vice versa. Beginning at Bowdoin Square a more or less weU-defined belt of lodging-houses extends north- ward and westward, taking in portions of Green, Lynde, Cham- bers, Eaton, McLean, and Allan streets. But the main body of lodg- ing-houses Ues to the south and southwest of Bowdoin Square, in the direction of the State House, the Common, and Beacon Street. Here are lodging-house streets Kke Hancock, Temple, and Bow- doin, almost as compact as those of the South End, stretching up Beacon Hill nearly to the State House. The streets down the west- em slope of the hill are also more or less thickly occupied with lodg- ing-houses. These include portions of Joy, Russell, Myrtle, Revere, West Cedar, Pinckney, Mt. Vernon, and Chestnut streets. The history of the South End district can be summed up in one or two epochs marked by violent changes in the character of the district. For the West End and Beacon Hill no such sharp-cut and characteristic periods can be distinguished. To quote from "Amer- icans in Process": THE LODGING-HOUSE DISTRICTS OF BOSTON 25 " During most of the nineteenth century the West End was a dis- trict splendidly representative of Anglo-Saxon American life. Upon the summit of Beacon Hill were the finest residences of the city, rapidly increasing in number after the completion of the State House in 1798; and upon the streets just behind the State House to the east, Hancock, Temple, and Bowdoin streets, lived some of the most distinguished men in Boston's history. . . . "The first enemy of the home life of the West End was not the one that earliest attacked the older district [the North End]. It was the outcome not of foreign immigration, but of increase in native population drawn in by the growth of the city's trade. Boarding- houses, and not tenements, here put the homes to flight. Lads from sixteen to twenty-five, leaving the farm for the larger opportuni- ties of the city, demanded shelter. Widows and spinsters of the West End opened their doors, thankful for this new means of bread- winning at a time when needlework and teaching were the only occupations for American women." * Whatever may have been the beneficial offices of the boarding- house in its day, it is now, in Boston at least, an institution of the past. "Its less worthy successor, the lodging-house, still marks the advance of irresistible forces that at last are pushing all the earlier types of American life entirely outside the confines of Boston." '■ The West End is now a great conglomerate of tenements, apart- ments, and lodging-houses, together with numbers of small retail shops creeping up the streets, and the few private residences which still cling tenaciously to their old locations on the western slope of Beacon Hill. While the change from private residences to lodging- houses was taking place, the external appearance of the district was also suffering change. Whole sections have gradually sunk to the tenement-house level; and with the slow certainty of a dread dis- ease the ugly, cheap brick front of the tenement is creeping up the sides of Beacon Hill, and appearing in blotches here and there in otherwise healthy looking streets of fine old residences. Thus re- sults the present heterogeneous appearance of the district. It is a mixture of many different elements, not like the South End, where every house is a lodging-house, and each one an exact copy of its neighbor. ' Elizabeth Y. Rutan, in Americans in Process, pp. 35-39. 26 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON Section III. Miscellaneous Small Districts Returning to the South End but still outside the lodging-house district proper, we find scarcely a 'street of any length in this whole part of the city where the "Rooms to Let" sign is not displayed. There are numbers of isolated lodging-house streets, like Rollins, Asylum, and Davis. Even on semi-tenement streets like Stoughton and East Brookhne, and in densely packed tenement regions like the district between Dover and Castle streets, rooms may be had. Lower Harrison Avenue between Chinatown and Castle Street is Hned with room-signs, as are also Tremont Street from Castle Square to Pleasant Street, St. James Avenue, and parts of many other streets in the city. Around Madison Park in lower Roxbury is another cluster of lodging-houses. The apartment-house region about Huntington Avenue and St. Botolph Street is practically a lodging-house district, but of a dif- ferent and higher type than the two already described. Nearly every flat and apartment in this district, which hes roughly between Boyls- ton Street and the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, offers rooms to let. They are taken very largely by students, artists, musicians, and business-men of comfortable income. In the streets between Symphony Hall and the Fens another large student quarter is found. Newbury Street in the Back Bay for almost its whole length is rapidly becoming a lodging-house street. While this in- vestigation is concerned chiefly with the South End, therefore, it must not be forgotten that lodging-houses and lodgers are to be found in many other parts of the city. It comes the nearest to ubi- quity, perhaps, of any type of city dwelUng. CHAPTER IV THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE OF THE SOUTH END LODGING-HOUSE DISTRICT It would be strange if a district so distinctly differentiated from its surrounding neighbors as we have seen the South End lodging- house district to be had not a definite internal structure. The pri- mary division of the South End streets into horizontal thorough- fares radiating through the district from the downtown business section, and the cross- streets, marks also a fundamental division of economic function. The key to the economic structure of the lodging-house district is the grouping and localization of mercan- tile industries. The cross-streets are devoted almost entirely to lodg- ing-houses, but the main thoroughfares are lined not only with lodg- ing-houses but also with all the variety of shops and local industries that can cater to the wants and whims of forty thousand people. Nearly all the caf^s, dining-rooms, laundries, tailor-shops, and drug- stores are grouped primarily on the three main lines of communi- cation, Tremont Street, Washington Street, and Columbus Avenue, with a secondary grouping on certain parts of Dover and Dart- mouth streets and Shawmut Avenue. The situation of the various business estabUshments which de- pend for support chiefly upon the lodgers is shown in Chart iv, which represents conditions as they existed in October, 1903. Only the main and the more numerous kinds of establishments are indi- cated. The map includes 87 cafes, 65 basement dining-rooms, 41 saloons, 24 Hquor-stores, 27 drug-stores, 11 pool-rooms, 70 tailor- ing establishments, 78 laundries, and a number of real-estate offices. The eating-establishments, to a total of 152, stand out with great- est prominence both numerically and as features of the district, with the laundries and tailor-shops as prominent seconds. These local industries may be grouped broadly, first into those which provide food, second those which provide drink, amusement, and recreation, third those which look after the clothing of the peo- 28 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON pie, fourth those concerned with the health of the people, and fifth miscellaneous. Under the first group — establishments which feed the people — fall the caf^s, dining-rooms, and quick lunches; the bakeries, dehcatessen estabUshments, and cooked-meat stores ; the grocery and pro^^sion stores, and the fruit-stands. There is some difference between the cafe and the dining-room. The cafe ordinarily serves meals a la carte and stmi-table d'hote. The dining-room serves only table d'hdte, is usually managed by a woman of uncertain experience, and is invariably located in the basement of some lodging-house. A glance at the map will show that the cafes are scattered thickly along Columbus Avenue, along Tremont Street between Massa- chusetts Avenue and West Brookhne Street, and along Washing- ton Street. Basement dining-rooms can also be noted here and there upon the cross-streets, but like the cafes they tend to group upon the main streets. Prices charged and kind of food served are de- scribed in Chapter xiv. Scattered all over the district, but chiefly on the main streets, especially on Tremont Street and Columbus Avenue, are small bake-shops and dehcatessen depots. They carry a hght line of " ready- to-eat" groceries, bread, cake, crackers, cookies, cream and milk, pickles, olives, etc. Many of the caiis also sell light provisions of the cake and pickle variety. No attempt is made to locate the deh- catessen establishments on the map. Their number, however, and the business they do, are suggestive of the amount of cracker and cheese diet that must be indulged in by the lodger class. These shops are always open late at night, especially on Saturdays, when they are crowded with customers. They are open, also, on Sunday mornings. The second class of estabhshments includes the saloons, pool- rooms, dance-halls, theatres, and one beer-garden. These may all be classed together as among the agencies which help to satisfy the pleasure-loving and social instincts. About a dozen pool-rooms are situated within or near the limits of the district, but they evi- dently rely only in part upon the lodging-house population for their patronage. The law in Boston does not permit saloons to run pool- rooms. The two classes of establishments are therefore distinct, although they here and there appear to centre in the same locality. ECONOMIC STRUCTURE OF THE DISTRICT 29 The separation is undoubtedly a good measure; there will not be so much drinking when one has to sally out, into the rain maybe, and walk half a block to a corner saloon, as there will be when it is only a step or two from the pool- table to the bar in the same room; nor will there be so much playing for the drinks. Partly for these reasons, no doubt, the pool- rooms of the lodging district are as a rule quiet and inoffensive, and undoubtedly afford welcome relief to many a male lodger from weary evening hours in which he does not know what to do with himself. At the same time, while "2^ cents per cue" does not seem an exorbitant charge, the patron of the place can easily make away with money in the course of an even- ing, or of several evenings a week, which a rational economy would demand for expenditure in other directions. In fact, it is perhaps a general criticism on the lodger or the unmarried mercantile class that the men (not the women) spend a disproportionate share of their income for amusement. This is no doubt natural, consider- ing the humdrum character of their daily work and life, their some- what limited field of interests, their non-acquaintance with the higher standards of art and literature and drama, and their gen- eral lack of knowledge where to find in the city, full as it is of oppor- tunities, chance for better amusement and more cultivated avoca- tions than standing about a billiard-table and puffing at a 5-cent Cremo, or lovingly breathing forth the fragrant smoke of a Turkish Trophy. The intersections of Dover and Washington, and of Washing- ton and Northampton streets are distinguished by the number of pool-rooms and saloons there located. At both these corners there is an elevated railroad station, and at both many surface-car lines intersect. This undoubtedly makes them good locations for saloons and pool-room trade. The saloons are without exception near tene- ment-house districts, upon which they probably depend in the main for patronage. Certain hotels in the district, however, are provided with bars, which are frequented by the more "sporty" type of lodger. The row of saloons on Dover Street is more in the district than of it. These places cater to the tenement-house population in the compact blocks just below Dover Street. Car-hnes converge upon this section through Washington and Tremont streets from downtown and from Roxbury, through Berkeley Street from Cam- 30 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON bridge and the West End, and through Dover Street from South Boston, and the saloons are situated where the laborer on his way to and from his work must pass them. The same is true of the Northampton Street group. The liquor-stores supply the wants of a somewhat different class of customers. They carry a full line of beers, whiskies, wines, and other liquors — for the most part bottled goods — besides more or less elaborate stocks of fancy hght groceries for which with liquor there is a joint demand. There is little doubt that these stores are patron- ized to a great extent, though not exclusively, by a clientele which is also in one way or another closely connected with the divers forms of prostitution which exist in the district. Some of them are clean, well-ordered, and attractive in appearance, the proprietors evidently recognizing the business expediency of these quahties. These latter stores carry also the higher grades of groceries. One hotel during the summer conducts a beer-garden, which does a fairly good business and attracts a characteristic patronage. It is situated in the northern part of the district near some of the poorer and "shadier" lodging-house streets, and within conven- ient distance of the theatres of the section. In Boston such resorts are almost sure to be places of assignation, openly or secretly. The law that no liquor shall be sold after eleven o'clock p. m. is rigidly observed both here and in the saloons, which no doubt does some- thing to prevent the "all-night living" characteristic of New York and Chicago. In the dance-halls, however, of which there are several in the dis- trict, merriment may continue till well toward morning. Dances begin at eight o'clock and last till two A. m. or later. It is not un- common for young men and women to dance these hours nearly every night and work all day betweentimes. What the effect must be on their labor efficiency is evident. But we cannot pass any whole- sale condemnation on the dance-halls, any more than we can on the saloon. They have a function to perform. The fact that they perform it ill, or that it is distorted into excesses, is another thing. Change from work, amusement and relaxation, gratification of the social and gregarious instincts, if not had in one form will be sought in another. It devolves upon the social director not to deprive peo- ple of opportunity for these things, but to change the conditions ECONOMIC STRUCTURE OF THE DISTRICT 3 1 under which such instincts are satisfied, to see that moderation takes the place of excess, to see that heakhy social processes are substi- tuted for pathological ones. Probably he can abohsh neither the saloon nor the pubhc dance-hall until he provides a worthier sub- stitute. Meanwhile much can be done toward mitigating the evils of both. In Boston dance-halls are not run in connection with sa- loons, a practice which is a curse to Chicago and Cleveland and doubtless many other cities. By far the larger portion of the habi- tues of the club-dances and pubhc dances in the halls of the South End come from the tenements, rather than the lodging-houses, but the halls are in the lodging-house district, a part of the environment of the lodger, either an open opportunity to him of amusement, or one of many reminders of his isolation from social companionship which others may enjoy, as the case may be. There are four theatres in the district, three on Washington Street and one at Castle Square. All but the Castle Square Theatre pro- duce cheap melodrama or vaudeville. In the summer of 1905, how- ever, one of the Washington Street houses was producing Yiddish drama. The Castle Square Theatre, under good management, with a hard-working stock-company, and producing standard plays, enjoys a full patronage, and must be reckoned as one of the social forces, in the main for good, within the district. The third group of estabhshments includes the tailor-shops and laundries. Seventy tailoring-estabhshments look after the raiment of the male lodgers, and such of the women as can afford to patron- ize a "ladies' tailor." Like the other shops the tailors depend mainly on the lodgers for support. They attract attention by mere force of numbers. The shops are small, cheap, often dirty, and in many cases are little more than places for repairing and pressing gar- ments. Sometimes the suggestive sign "Dress-Suits to Let" is seen. "Pressing neatly done," "Garments turned, repairing done," etc., are characteristic legends. Prices are low; trousers are pressed for ten or fifteen cents, a suit sponged and pressed for fifty or seventy-five cents, and suits sold for as low as twelve dollars. Some of the ladies' tailoring-shops are patronized by a good grade of customers from without. One customer brings another, the advan- tage being that the prices charged are lower than on Boylston and other fashionable shopping streets, a fact due to smaller rent and 32 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON less desirable quarters and situation. After a time these tailors may acquire such custom as to warrant their moving over to the more fashionable locations, as several in recent years have done. Next to the eating-estabUshments, the laundries occupy the most prominent place on the map. Seemingly every other comer is occu- pied by a Chinese laundry. To the man or woman interested in the variegated phases of human existence, the hfe and industry which shows itself superficially through the broad windows of these Chinese shops will be not without its interest. These Chinamen are said to be the riffraff and outcasts of their own race; they are a class of men singularly slight of stature and to all appearances weak in physique, but they are the embodiment of patience and industriousness. It is hardly possible to pass by a Chinese laundry shop so late at night as not to see some of its inmates diligently at work. In a description of the lodging-house district they could not be omitted; for they are not only in the district, but they have a part to play in the life and experiences of the lodger. Concerned with the health of the people are the doctors and drug- stores. There are about 175 physicians in the district, some of them among the best in the city and a few taking rank among the most disreputable quacks and criminal operators. The drug-stores, as in any district, occupy an important place among the local mercantile estabHshments. The exact nature of their trade is problematic. It is doubtful if many of them could live but for their cigar, soda, and candy sales. The patent medicine business is killed by the department stores and the cut-price drug- stores. Mention should be made of the considerable number of fakes and social parasites that are scattered up and down Tremont Street, Shawmut Avenue, and Washington Street. Just why so many palm- ists, card-readers, business mediums, trance-artists, astrologers, and the hke should congregate in the South End, would be hard to say, but they are there and constitute an unpleasant feature of the district. They have rooms in the lodging-houses where they ply their trade. Some are no doubt conducting places of prostitution in disguise. Among the miscellaneous industries supported by local patron- age are upholstering-shops, tin and hardware stores, painters' and ECONOMIC STRUCTURE OF THE DISTRICT 33 plumbers' establishments, new and second-hand furniture stores, many of which curse the district with sales on the installment plan, notion and small dry-goods stores, small jewelry-shops, and "gent's" (never "gentleman's" or "men's") furnishing-stores. Such is the variety of business enterprise which gives life and color to the district. The locaUzation of industry catering to a spe- cific and characteristic population group is a fine example of the value of location in the business world. It is also the salvation of real-estate values on the main streets, which is of more than theo- retical importance. It is of interest to us, however, chiefly because in some suggestive external respects it mirrors the life of the lodger. Without some idea of the environment in which the lodger lives, we can gain but an imperfect idea of his economic and social con- dition. The lodging-house itself, to which we now turn, constitutes the intimate essence of this environment. CHAPTER V THE HOUSE ITSELF As shown in Chart v, the rooms of the Boston lodging-house are divided into " square " and " side." In other cities the side rooms are commonly known as hall bedrooms. Both square and side rooms are designated as "front" and "rear" according to their position in the house. In the basement are the dining-room and kitchen, sometimes let together to a couple for housekeeping or to a base- ment dining-room proprietor, sometimes retained as li\ing-rooms by the landlady herseK. On the first floor are the two parlors, front and rear, and generally a small rear side room. The parlors are high-ceiled, with the large amount of stucco-work which characterizes the houses built fifty years ago. They have elaborate white marble mantelpieces, imported at some expense when the houses were built, and some of them still contain fine large mirrors which have come down to the lodging-house contingent from the pahny days of the past. The front parlor is so large and high that it is rarely a pleasant room, in spite of the fact that the best furni- ture of the house generally goes into it in an effort to make it the " show room" and to get a high rent for it. The rear parlor is smaller and easier to rent. The two parlors are connected by shding-doors, which are sometimes hidden by tapestry which makes an impro- vised closet. On the second floor are the bath-room, a front side room, and two large square rooms, each of which has a spacious closet and running hot and cold water. On the third floor are two square and two side rooms, and on the fourth two square and two side rooms, or sometimes only two square rooms. All the square rooms below the fourth floor are heated, but generally none of the side. The heat is furnace heat, except in a few instances where steam or hot water has been installed, and is often inadequate. In general the houses are without fire-escapes. f/rsiFJoor, ^ ^ »5ecoMc( floor. CHART V. Plans of First and Second Floor of the Typical Lodging-House. THE HOUSE ITSELF 35 The furniture of the typical side room is necessarily scant. There is not much room for it. It consists ordinarily of a single bed or couch, a small dresser, a chair, perhaps a small wardrobe, and a picture or two. With the square room somewhat more liberality is shown. The bed is iron, either single or double, or some sort of a folding contrivance, often big, unwieldly, and unsightly. Carpets are either of ingrain or some form of brussels, more generally the latter, and generally much worn and covered by cheap rugs of out- rageous combinations of color and pattern. A small table or two, a dresser, various kinds of chairs, and some cheap pictures complete the equipment. The windows are supplied with shades and encum- bered with lace or muslin curtains. The furniture is for the most part old, having come down from the indefinite past, through many vicissitudes of ownership and mortgage foreclosure. Some houses, however, in the better sections, have been supplied with new fur- niture of modern type. In a comparatively few houses the old plush armchairs and rockers have been discarded and their place filled with comfortable Morris chairs and willow or grass rockers; the marble-topped centre-tables have given way to neat weathered oak, the wooden folding-beds to iron, and the thick microbe-filled car- pets to clean, cool, and attractive mattings and rugs. There is even an improvement in the pictures. The chances are that such a house will have a public parlor, and that its lodgers will know something of each other. It is decidedly more homehke than the ordinary type. The lodging-house, hke the tenement, has a sanitary problem, but one far less pressing and of a different nature. It is a question whether the unsanitary conditions of the tenement do not result, in the long run, perhaps quite as much from the character of its inhabitants as from the nature of the tenement itself. In the lodg- ing-house, on the other hand, the problem comes mainly from the house and its unsuitability for the purposes to which it is put. The great sanitary deficiency of the lodging-house, almost with- out exception, is the lack of proper bathing facilities. There is almost never more than one bath-room in a house, whether the house has nine rooms or eighteen, and six lodgers or twenty. It is gen- erally on the second floor, taking the place of a rear side room. When so situated it is well lighted and can be well ventilated. Sometimes, 36 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON however, in houses which deviate from the general plan, it is an inner room, practically without light, and devoid of outside venti- lation. The tub, except in the very best houses, which have put in modern plumbing, is of tin or copper, oftentimes rusty, corroded, and dirty. The brass faucets are generally in the same state, and the washbowl while perhaps not actually unclean has the appear- ance of being so, owing to the long use of the marble. In general the whole room has an unattractive appearance. The towel supply is rarely adequate to the needs of the house. Hot water is a rare commodity, and the lodger is supposed to use it sparingly and with circumspection, that his fellow lodgers may not be cheated from their meagre share. During the warm months of the spring, sum- mer, and autumn, there are weeks together, in many houses, when not a drop of hot water goes through the pipes. The customary plan, however, in the summer months, is to supply hot water once or twice a week, say on Saturdays and Sundays. In many cases the bath-room looks like a general store-room for dirty Knen, brooms, and other household utensils. It is clear that one bath-room for a dozen to a score of persons is not enough. In fact, many of the smaller houses on out-of-the- way streets have no bath-rooms at all. There should certainly be two bath-rooms in every house, one on the second, the other on the third floor. If the bathing facilities were better, lodgers might ac- quire what as a rule they have not at present — the habit of taking an invigorating plunge every morning. The water-closets are frequently old-fashioned, with a scant flush- ing supply. In many instances this undoubtedly makes them a nui- sance, and a menace to the health of the occupants of the house. Open plumbing is a rarity; and numerous are the complaints of landladies about the trouble and expense they are put to by care- less or ignorant lodgers. The houses are often damp, owing to the water in the cellars and to insufi&cient heat. The furnace fires are allowed to die down dur- ing the day when the lodgers are nearly all out, and are started up toward evening in time to get the rooms heated before their return. Ventilation is poor. The lodger is no exception to the rule that human beings taken generally are afraid of fresh air, especially at night. The old plush furniture, the hangings, rugs, and carpets serve to THE HOUSE ITSELF 37 catch and hold the dust with which the air of the South End is well freighted at nearly all seasons of the year. The great amount of traffic on the main streets, and the macadam pavements on the side streets produce so much dirt and dust that it is impossible to keep a room free from it. It blows through streets and alleys, swirls up the sides of buildings, and settles in attic windows as much as in parlors and basements. The houses are not all free from vermin; the first thing the sophisticated lodger does in looking over a new room is to ex- amine the bed very carefully. There are some houses in the South End which are pleasing to enter because of their immaculate clean- liness, where no speck of dust shows on furniture or woodwork, and linen and muslin vrindow draperies shine white and fresh. Such houses are, unfortunately, exceptions; in most of them one will find that the landlady has daughters or other persons to help her in the work of the house. Again there are houses upon the best streets the uncleanliness of which can scarcely be described, from the slatternly dress of the landlady to the greasy stairs and the soiled and ragged bedspreads. CHAPTER VI THE CHANGE FROM BOARDING TO LODGING Little has been said of the boarding-house, because that institu- tion is practically non-existent in Boston. Certain statistics are available which go to show a pronounced change from boarding- houses to lodging-houses. Certain other data, also, give us the pro- portion of boarding- and lodging-houses to the total population of the city, thus showing something of the relative importance of the lodging-house problem in various cities. Let us first examine the statistics bearing on the ratio of boarding- and lodging-houses to total population, which is shown in the following table: Table 8. boardeng- AND LODGmG-HOUSE KEEPERS EST THE TEN largest CITIES, ] 1900^ 3 c a. "3 Ratio of boarding and lodging-houses ti) population: i ti every New York 474 2,813 3,287 3,437,202 1,04s persons Chicago 196 2,151 2,347 1,698,575 723 Philadelphia 208 1,357 1,565 1,293,697 826 St. Louis 156 1,084 1,240 575,238 463 Boston 148 1,423 1,571 560,892 357 Baltimore 47 54° 587 508,957 867 Cleveland 41 429 470 381,768 812 Buffalo 30 359 389 352,387 905 San Francisco 297 1,173 1,470 342,782 233 Cincinnati 26 319 345 325,902 945 ' Compiled from the Twelfth Census, Pop., part ii, Table 94. ' Twelfth Census, Pop., part i, p. Ixix. The actual number of houses in all the cities would be slightly larger than is indi- cated in the table, since some persons keep more than one house. THE CHANGE FROM BOARDING TO LODGING 39 The table shows at once that, with the exception of San Francisco, Boston has more lodging- and boarding-houses (almost entirely lodging-houses) in proportion to its population than any other large city in the country. There are peculiar conditions giving San Francisco a very high ratio of boarding- and lodging-houses. A student of social conditions in San Francisco states them as following: (i) "The preponderance of unmarried men and trans- ients in San Francisco. San Francisco is the distributing-point for labor, etc., for the whole Pacific Coast, and many young men come here for curiosity and pleasure. ... It is variously esti- mated that there are from 10,000 to 25,000 transients during the rainy season, i. e., December to March. (2) Labor in CaHfornia is pecuUarly intermittent on account of the speciahzation of crops, and our men make so much money in harvest-time that they do not need to work in the winter. On the other hand the price of lodgings and of board is very cheap in San Francisco, there being many lo-cent and 20-cent lodging-houses and restaurants. The winters are so mild that httle heating is required for rooms, and clothing is not expensive. So it is a gregarious habit of the Cali- fornia workingmen to flock to San Francisco, and although the individuals are constantly shifting, there are always a large number in the city." * It is a far cry from the 233 persons to a house in San Francisco, or the 357 in Boston, to the 1045 in New York. San Francisco, Boston, and St. Louis stand in a class by themselves, with a very high ratio of boarding- and lodging-houses. A comparison of the number of boarding- and lodging-houses relative to population at different censuses gives some indication of the relative number of persons living in such houses at different dates. Unfortunately the necessary data are not available in the Census of 1890, but from that of 1880 we have the following table : ' Mr. Dane Coolidge, of the South Park Settlement, in a letter which left San Fran- cisco the day before the earthquake. It might be suggested in this connection that San Francisco now has an opportunity to erect buildings adapted from a scientific, economic, and sanitary point of view to the needs of the great lodger class. 40 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON Table 9. boarding- and lodging-house keepers in the ten largest cities, 1880 ' .9 ■3 1 0, a •a Ratio of boai ing- and lodgii house keepers population : i every New York 386 983 i>3<59 1,206,299 1,104 persons Brooklyn 32 186 218 566,663 Chicago 143 548 691 503-195 728 Philadelphia 108 533 641 847,170 1,321 St. Louis 142 314 456 350,518 768 Boston 149 452 601 362,839 604 Baltimore 45 125 170 332,313 1,955 Cleveland 36 "3 149 160,146 1,075 Buffalo 47 79 126 155,134 1,231 San Francisco 184 291 475 233,959 492 Cincinnati 44 168 212 255,139 1,203 Comparison of this table with that for 1900 reveals an almost startling increase, during the twenty years, in the number of board- ing- and lodging-houses. The following table arranges the cities in order of ratio of houses to population in 1900, and shows the great increase that has taken place in nearly every instance. Table 10. ratio of boarding- and lodging-house keepers to TOTAL POPULATION, 1880 AND 1900 1880. 1900. Difference. San Francisco 492 233 259 Boston 604 357 247 St. Louis 768 463 305 Chicago 728 723 5 Cleveland 1,175 612 263 Philadelphia 1,321 826 495 Baltimore 1,955 867 1,088 Buffalo 1,231 905 326 Cincinnati 1,203 945 258 New York 1,104 1,045 59 ' Compiled from the Tenth Census, volume on population. THE CHANGE FROM BOARDING TO LODGING 4 1 Chicago and New York show practically no increase; Balti- more, on the other hand, more than doubles its ratio, and increases the absolute number of her boarding- and lodging-houses nearly three and one half times. San Francisco, Boston, and St. Louis also show substantially a doubling of their ratios. It seems impos- sible to escape the conclusion that the lodging- and the boarding- houses have been becoming rapidly an increasingly important form of abode in American cities.* Table 11 gives the statistics of boarding- and lodging-house keepers for eight Massachusetts cities. The highest ratio is shown by Law- rence, the lowest by Fall River, both great textile factory towns. Table ii. boarding- and lodging-house keepers, Massachu- setts CITIES, 1900 \Z •3 a I a Ratio of board- ing- and lodging- houses to popu- lation: I to every Boston 148 1,423 l,S4i 560,892 357 Worcester 23 15s 178 118,421 665 Fall River 22 72 94 104,963 1,115 Lowell 67 i8S 252 94,969 377 Lynn 45 134 179 68,513 S" New Bedford 16 83 99 62,442 630 Lawrence 49 128 177 62,559 352 Springfield 13 105 118 62,059 525 So much for boarding- and lodging-houses. Their number gives some idea of the number of boarders and lodgers, but only indi- • rectly. Unfortunately the United States Census gives no statistics for boarders and lodgers. We cannot compare, therefore, Boston with other large cities in this respect, — a fact to be regretted, since ' Care has been taken to ascertain that there was no change in the census defini- tion of "boarding- and lodging-house keepers" between 1880 and 1900. The Census OflSce "has simply tabulated from the schedules of the enumerators the number of persons returned by them, with these occupations. No special instruc- tions, or definition of these occupations, was furnished the enumerators in 1880, 1890, or 1900.'' 42 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON such comparison would throw considerable hght on the relative numbers of persons in different cities who are condemned to lodging- or boarding-house life, — certainly no smaU percentage in a great city like New York or Chicago. We can, however, compare Boston with other cities in Massachusetts, seven of which, excluding the immediate suburbs of Boston, have a population of over 50,000 each. Data for this comparison have been found in the Massa- chusetts State Censuses for 1885 and 1895, in the tables showing "relation to head of family." Turning to the last column of Table 12, we find that only one Massachusetts city had a greater proportion of boarders and lodg- ers than Boston. That was Lowell, with 10,516, or 12.4 per cent, of its total population, — a high percentage due probably to the young men and women engaged in the textile industries there. Fall River shows the lowest percentage, 5.5, which seems due to the fact that nearly half the population is foreign, and that foreigners marry and go into homes of their own, however poor, earher than Ameri- cans. Table 12. boarders and lodgers, cities of Massachusetts OF over 50,000 population, 1895 ' •h J2 2 "Si d a-. -3 ■jj-a «J 3 u ,- s g- ^ ^ rt ^ ca M CJ S_ **.» "S-S rj XI V I-3 ^ ~ '>• d .Q to "0^ i " .c 2 ■z'l .0 c — D — li 2 LI :ent. num odge cent num odge gi ? to w f. a. ^ J Per tola and Per tola and Boston 496,920 54,422 9,496 44,926 174 82.6 10.9 Worcester 98,767 6,667 3,581 3,086 53-7 46-3 6-5 Fall River 89,203 4,968 4,286 682 86.0 14.0 5-5 Lowell 84,367 10,516 5,132 5,384 48.8 51-2 12.4 LjTin 62,354 5,999 2,578 3>42i 430 57-0 9.6 New Bedford 55,251 3,444 2,672 777 77.6 22.4 6.2 Lawrence 52,164 5,654 3,499 2,15s 62.0 38.0 10.6 Springfield 51,522 3.904 1,900 2,004 49-7 50-3 75 Compiled from Mass. State Census, 1895, vol. ii, pp. 554-569. Idem, vol. i, p. 50. THE CHANGE FROM BOARDING TO LODGING 43 Table 13. — boarders and lodgers, eight cities of Mas- sachusetts, 1885 * "H e OJ S 2 1^ en T3 tn'T3 "■ 2 t1 >- H "5 ui 0. ■o -ss lb a) 60 ^B. UH b^ T3 J2 V ^ §^ ^•H S." f-* !rt J3 ^ >» «J &n t-i MH ^ XI .-a c If ■s^e °^i2 •s" .2 tn *j a s, *^ e l?n • ° 3 CT3 ■H e 60 cen 1 nu lod| cen 1 nu lodi 0. cd ■a t- ri -rt >« rt "O ^^ !" u ■« c 2SS 55,467 Including Boston. 693 30-7 386 51 1885 > Total. 91,548 65,509 26,039 50,268 32,842 17,426 141,816 98,351 43,465 141,816 Excluding Boston. 81.1 18.9 62.2 Table 18. boarders and lodgers, Massachusetts, 1895 Males Boarders Lodgers Native-born. 66,925 30,244 36,681 Females 40,175 Boarders 19,175 Lodgers 21,099 Totals, both sexes 107,100 Total number of boarders Total number of lodgers Total number of boarders and lodgers Percentage of boarders to total number of boarders and lodgers Percentage of lodgers to total number of boarders and lodgers Per cent, excess of boarders over lodgers Foreign-bom. 65,971 39,418 26,553 22,149 11,558 10,591 88,120 Including Boston. 51-3 48.7 2.6 Total. 132,896 69,662 63,234 62,324 30,634 31,690 195,220 100,296 94,924 195,220 Excluding Boston. 63.8 36.2 27.6 ' Mass. State Census, 1885, vol. i, p. 484. ' Mass. State Census, 1895, vol. ii, p. 572. CHAPTER VII THE LODGING-HOUSE KEEPER AND HER PROBLEM The lodging-house keeper has developed as a natural result of new conditions, — the rising demand, on the part of boarders, for more freedom and a bohemian existence; and that advance of scientific industry and that growing keenness of competition which we have seen so fatal to the boarding-house keeper. We have an interest in the lodging-house keeper for two reasons : first, because she does much to make the lodging-house what it is, and to determine its influence over the lodger; and secondly, because her class is a large one and is beset with some difficult problems of its own. Most lodging-house keepers are women, — ninety-five out of a hundred probably, — and where there is a man who sets himself down as proprietor of a lodging-house, — unless it be one of the cheap, transient sort with which we are not dealing, — the chances are that he has a wife or daughter who is the real person in charge and does the major share of the work.' Since the lodging-house keepers are practically all women, we shall hereafter call them, for the sake of brevity, the landladies. As to age they range from young girls to old women who can scarcely hobble about. Of the 1423 females engaged in the boarding and lodging occupation in Boston in 1900, 23 were between sixteen and twenty-four years of age, 703 between twenty-five and forty-four, 592 between forty- five and sixty-four, and 103 sixty-five years and over. Ninety-one per cent., that is, were between twenty-five and sixty-four, and 7.2 per cent, were sixty-five or over. As to nationahty, 489 were native- bom whites, 656 were foreign-bom, and 55 were negroes. These ' The Census of 1900 (Occupations, pp. 494, 498) shows 148 male "boarding- and lodging-house keepers" in Boston to 1423 females, a proportion of one male to every nine and a half females engaged in the business; but as by far the greater number of these men are engaged in the cheap lodging-house business, the census figures do not apply directly in our problem. THE LODGING-HOUSE KEEPER AND HER PROBLEM 53 latter are found chiefly around the Back Bay station, where there is a large negro colony. The Census gives us (for females) : Persons of native parentage Persons having either one or both parents born in Ireland 397 Russia (Russian Jews) Canada, English 217 Great Britain 117 Scandanavia 27 Canada, French 19 Germany 14 Italy Austria-Hungary Other countries Mixed foreign parentage 535 10 7 3 9 68 The largest single division is the native-bom. Most of these come from New England. Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont — northern New England — seem to unite with Canada in sending a steady stream of people to Boston to fill its lodging-houses, either as lodgers or as landladies and housekeepers. The large number of Irish land- ladies is noteworthy, but the writer is inclined to think that their number in the South End is exceeded by the Canadians.' ' The nearest statistics we have for a district smaller than the whole city are given in the following table, taken from the Massachusetts State Census of 1895, vol. iv, pp. 1007 and loii, representing conditions, be it remembered, as they were ten or twelve years ago. It covers a much larger territory than the lodging-house section, and in fact somewhat more than is usually included in the term "South End," but it is not without some value as indicating the age, nationality, and literacy or illiteracy of persons engaged in the " Boarding and Lodging " occupation. It includes not only landladies but restaurant- and caf^-keepers, which makes the numbers larger than those of the census of 1900. Table 19. persons enga( GED in the " B0> \RD1NG AND LODGING ' ' OCCUPATION IN THE SOUTH END 15 but under 20 but 60 and Total 20 under 60 over Illiterates Males Native-bom 75° 23 709 18 II Foreign-born 300 10 281 9 4 Total 1,050 33 990 27 IS Females Native-born 8S7 4S 7S7 SI 9 Foreign-bom 973 72 868 33 37 Total 1,826 117 1,625 84 46 The Bureau of Statistics of Labor, in a letter to the writer, defines the South End district of the State Census as follows: "The so-called South End District lies be- 54 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON Of more importance than the nationality or age of the landladies is their conjugal condition, and also what may be called their pre- vious condition of servitude; for not all landladies have been trained in the lodging-house business all their lives. Very many have come from the hill farms of New England and Canada, some have risen from the tenement-house, and not a few have seen better days. Here, for instance, is one whose husband used to be a prominent shoe manufacturer, but lost his money in the stress of competition and then died; now his widow is making an heroic and successful struggle, amid conditions which she has had absolutely no train- ing to meet. Here is a widow whose husband was a sea captain, another whose husband was a newspaper editor; and so the Ust goes. We should undoubtedly be surprised could we ascertain the number and sterhng character of the women whom misfortune of some sort has condemned to keeping roomers. Most of them take it philosophically. It speaks well for feminine fortitude when a kindly faced old lady, who used to have servants of her own, tells you vnth a smile that keeping lodgers "is very pleasant work, if you don't mind the little things." A very large proportion of land- ladies, but not all, are widowed or divorced. The Census of 1900 shows 353 married, 324 single, 50 divorced, and 696 widowed. Only one quarter (24.8 per cent.) were married. But this is no sure cri- terion of the number of landladies who may have more or less help from some male relative. Table 20, compiled from the annual Pre- tween the South Bay (Fort Point Channel) and a line drawn through the centres of the following streets and railroads, beginning at Bristol on the north: Bristol, Harri- son Avenue, Dover, Berkeley, Albany Railroad, Providence Railroad, Northamp- ton to the centre of Columbus Avenue; thence diagonally across the blocks to the corner of Hammond and Tremont streets; thence through the centre of Hammond Street to Shawm ut Avenue; thence easterly nearly to Fellows Street, beyond Harri- son Avenue; thence easterly across the blocks to the centre of Northampton Street; through the centre of Northampton Street to Albany Street; and thence through the centre of Albany Street to Massachusetts Avenue; and by the centre of Massa- chusetts Avenue to the water line along the canal." If the writer may venture a criti- cism, he would suggest that this is a type of very poor division for statistical purposes. It includes both a great region of tenement -houses and a vast area of lodging-houses, — two districts totally different in population, in economic structure, and in social significance. Adding the two together in statistical columns is like adding pianos and turnips in the same sum. The result means little for most purposes. The table here given is unfortunately the nearest approach we can yet make to the statistics needed. v,y,uor. " - "'■"^ ' 30% •• •• 4o;4 CHART VI. Psroentage o{ lodging house landladies who have husbarias or other male relative© of the same name htthe house.— whoie dependeTice probably is not.therefore. solely in the keeping of lodgers. THE LODGING-HOUSE KEEPER AND HER PROBLEM 55 cinct Lists of Male Residents ' for 1903, which also gives the names of the landladies in lodging-house districts, shows that about half the landladies are either widowed or single, and that the other half, where not married, at least have some male relative of the same name in the house, upon whom they could perhaps rely, if need be, for assistance. A total of 1389 houses are included in the table. The results by precincts are shown graphically in Chart vi. Table 20. number and percentage of lodging-house keepers WHO HAVE, and OF THOSE WHO HAVE NOT, HUSBANDS OR OTHER MALE RELATIVES OF THE SAME NAME IN THE HOUSE. ^ . cu 1 u a ^ •S _e V •E- §■3 hout mal s in the se. cent, witl tives in th se. cent. 1 e relatives e house. ■■a v s tM n ^ ^.S ^•S.S £^^ 75 6s 53-5 46.S 57 88 39 61 37 33 53 47 61 55 52-5 47-5 36 47 43 57 49 24 67 33 27 13 67.S 325 71 81 46.5 53-5 42 61 41 59 55 73 43 57 66 52 56 44 60 39 60 40 56 67 45-5 54-5 692 697 49-82 50- 13 Ward 12 Precinct i Ward 12 Precinct 2 Ward 12 Precinct 3 Ward 12 Precinct 4 Ward 12 Precinct 5 Ward 12 Precinct 6 Ward 12 Precinct 7 Ward 9 Precinct 5 Ward 9 Precinct 6 Ward 10 Precinct 3 Ward 10 Precinct 4 Ward 10 Precinct 5 Ward 10 Precinct 6 Totals It will be noted from the chart that the region of the best lodg- ing-houses. Ward 12, Precinct 2, and the adjoining precincts, i, 4, and 5, show the lowest percentage of married landladies. Nowhere is the percentage of married less than one third the total. The large number of married in Ward 10, Precinct 5, is due to the fact that this is a negro quarter. In Precincts 6 and 7 of Ward 12, the large ' Formerly compiled each year by the Board of Assessors, but now made up under the direction of the Board of Police Commissioners by a house-to-house canvass by policemen the first day of May each year. 56 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON proportion of married is due chiefly to the large number of Jewish families living there and taking in lodgers. The occupations of husbands of landladies are interesting as throwing some light upon the social standards likely to be held to, and also as indicating something of the economic status of the couples thus keeping lodgers. The male relatives' occupations were divided as follows: Professional service 30 Domestic and personal service 117 Trade and transportation 227 Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits 198 The largest single employments represented were: dealers, etc., 56; clerks, 53; salesmen, 37; carpenters, 30; waiters, 28; and machin- ists, 20.^ ' The employments in detail are given in the following table: Table 21. occttpations of male relatives (m the same house) of lodging- HotrsE keepers I. Projessional Service, 30. Physicians 11 Lawyers 3 Musicians 6 Opticians 2 Dentists 3 Editor, journalist, architect, teacher, chemist, i each. II. Domestic and Personal Servants, 117. Waiters 28 Stewards 6 Janitors 16 Watchmen 5 Laborers 9 Barbers 4 Cooks 9 Stablemen 3 Policemen 8 Butlers 2 Porters 8 Hotel-men 2 Coachmen 7 Nurses 2 Bartenders 6 Peddler, belhnan reach. III. Trade and Transportation, 227. A. Clerks 53 Conductors 6 Salesmen 37 Foremen 6 Real-estate agents 14 Managers 5 Bookkeepers 11 Superintendents 2 Shippers 10 Collectors 2 Agents 7 Commercial travelers 2 Insurance agents 6 Stock-keeper, solicitor, adjuster, cashier, secretary, ticket-seller, stenographer, speculator, mail30o 16,800 15,550 19,000 250 2,200 }■ 11-5% 1872 18,000 21,500 3,500 1872 38,000 43,000 5,000, 1874 17,100 18,000 900 ~ 1874 17,100 18,000 900 1 4% 1874 18,100 19,000 900 1874 1S.300 15,375 75. 1875 15,500 15,000 500 1876 17,000 18,000 1,000 1878 15,500 14,000 1,500 1880 13,200 13,200 1882 14,500 13,000 1,500 1882 17,400 18,000 600 1882 14,400 15,000 600 1882 14,100 15,000 900 1882 12,700 13,000 300 1882 12,700 15,000 2,300 1883 13,200 12,550 650 ' The data were obtained from the assessors' books, except in a few instances where the records of deeds yielded a little information. Unfortunately practically no selling prices are recorded after 1887, the invariable record being "considera- tion $L." 74 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON 1883 10,700 14,000 3,300 1884 13.400 15,000 1,600 1884 13,000 13,000 1884 14,000 14,000 1885 12,000 12,000 1886 13,000 12,100 900 1886 15,100 13,900 1,200 1887 13,700 12,000 1,700 The table shows that up to probably 1875 the real value was in excess of assessed valuation. For the next ten years real and assessed values do not differ greatly, but beginning with 1885 we have assess- ments in excess of real value. It is worthy of note that assessments began to exceed real values at about the time of the most rapid change from private residences to lodging-houses in the district. If assessed valuations thirty years ago had borne the same rela- tion to real values as is the case now, the fall of South End real estate would appear much more pronounced than is actually revealed by the assessors' books. The assessments then seem to have been from ten to fifteen per cent, below the real value, while to-day they are probably as much above. In using the assessed valuations over a long series of years as a criterion of real value and its fluctuations we are on entirely conservative ground. Table 25 gives the assessed valuation of real estate on Union Park from 1868 to 1902. Time did not permit the collection of valuations for other streets, nor was it possible, without an undue expenditure of labor, to carry the table back of 1868. The books for the earlier years are difficult of access, and changes in ward Hnes, variations in arrangement and naming of streets, and the like, increase the difficulties. Table 25. assessed valuation, fifty houses, union park, 1868-1905 1868 $824,000 1887 $661,600 1869 937,000 1888 619,200 1870 899,200 1889 619,200 1871 865,200 1890 619,200 1872 888,100 1891 618,100 1873 891,500 1892 618,200 1874 891,700 1893 618,200 REAL ESTATE IN THE DISTRICT 75 187s 892,300 1894 617,700 1876 843,300 189s 618,700 1877 788,300 1896 621,700 1878 745,500 1897 626,400 1879 727,100 1898 620,400 1880 727,400 1899 620,300 1881 722,400 1900 612,300 1882 663,500 1901 612,300 1883 663,900 1902 578,400 1884 663,500 1903 598,300 1885 663,400 1904 598,300 1886 663,700 1905 544,800 The table, showing a fall from $937,000 in 1869 to $578,000 in 1902, and finally to $544,800 in 1905, even allowing for the pecuniary disturbances of the Civil War and the '70's, speaks for itself. The average value of each house in 1875 was $17,846; in 1902 it was only $11,568, and in 1905 only $10,896. The decline in thirty years was thus nearly 38.4 %.' Individual houses can be selected showing much larger declines. Chart vii shows graphically the facts of Table 25. The tremendous dechne of South End real-estate values is an incontestable fact. We have said already that the decline began on Columbus Avenue and was due to the crisis of '73^ Chart vii shows that in Union Park also the decline began soon after that year. The crisis was undoubtedly the prime cause for the deprecia- tion setting in. The impending opening-up of the Back Bay lands removed any hope of recovery. The exodus of the resident families only helped to intensify the fall in values. Such original owners as have retained their property have experienced a disheartening shrinkage in its value. The following are a few samples : Table 26. LOSSES SUSTAINED BY PRESENT OWNERS. (samples) Present owner has held since Selling price then Assessed valuation, 1902 Loss 1872 $24,000 $17,100 $6,900 1891 13,000 11,700 1,300 1872 21,500 12,500 9,000 1870 19,000 10,800 8,200 1870 22,000 12,100 9,900 ^ Three corner houses, which have been remodeled either as apartments or by- putting in stores, are omitted from these calculations. 76 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON It is but fair to remember, however, that such losses are not actually so great as they seem, notwithstanding that they would appear still larger could we judge of present value by market prices instead of assessed valuations, because the loss has been largely on the house, and was to some extent at least to have been expected. An old house is not supposed to bring a high price any more than an old coat. Some decline in values in the South End would probably have occurred even had it continued a residential section. This necessity of decline is well expressed by a recent writer: "When the public," he says, "have been educated to prefer Hght stone or brick houses to the old-fashioned brown-stone front, and modem interior arrangements, decorations, and plumbing to former styles of equipment, the old value of the house has about departed." ' Furthermore, it is probable that the value of South End dweUing- houses has touched about its lowest point. The value of the land in the future should counterbalance the decUne in the value of the house. The great losses have already been sustained by former owners and are irreparable. Present owners, whether they have held the property long or not, must accept the situation, and cannot reasonably expect to reap a rental income based on the former value of their property. In estimating the return that present owners are receiving we shall therefore reckon it upon present value, or, more conservatively, upon present assessed valuation. It is an old traditional rule in the real-estate business that a fair rent for a dwelhng-house is ten per cent, annually of its value. This generally means from 6 per cent, to 7 per cent, net income on the investment. Opinions of real-estate men differ as to whether owners of lodging-house property are getting a fair return. The average rent of sixteen houses on Union Park, Upton Street, and West Canton Street was found by the writer to be a little over 9 per cent, of the assessed valuation. Whether this rate holds good over the lodging-house district as a whole we have no means of knowing, but we shall not be far wrong in assuming that it does. It means that a house assessed at $12,000 will rent for $1080. To derive the net income from this gross rental, we must deduct taxes, repairs, agent's commission, and a certain amount for depreciation. In 1902-3 the tax-rate in Boston was $14.80 per thousand. Agent's ' Hurd, Principles of City Land Valties, N. Y. 1903, p. 108. ~§. 1 ~ c u ^ s / S) -) ^ -! K ' 5^ K > .^ U 1- h 2? s ^.A N :ii ^ -^ , 1 .V -J yS s oc: . >• „s: ^\ y s» ^ ^2 / / ^ / '^^ > / h ■/^ c Jvl - K / L § / U — ~. .^ 1 1 i 1 § § 1 1 1 v^ >! 4 4 .4 4^ 4 i ^~ REAL ESTATE IN THE DISTRICT yj commission is generally five per cent, of the gross rent. On old but still substantial residences, like these, we should deduct from 4 to 5 per cent, for repairs, and about i^ per cent, for depreciation.' The annual account will then stand somewhat as follows : — Rental income, 9% of Taxes @ $14,80 per mille $177.60 $12,000 $1080.00 Repairs @ 5% of $1080 S4.00 Agent's commission S4.oo Depreciation @ ij% of value 180.00 Total $465.60 Balance (Net income on as- sessed value) 614.40 $1080.00 $1080.00 Allowing for insurance this represents an annual net income of nearly 5 per cent, on the assessed valuation; and as these are above real value, it is safe to say that the net income is fully 5 per cent, of the real value. We have made ample allowance for the fixed expenses. As a matter of fact the average owner of lodging-house property will often do without an agent, and reduce the repair bill to a ridicu- lously low figure. Evidences of decay are apparent all over the district, and real-estate dealers state that owners are not keeping their property in good repair. Broadly speaking, then, it seems that the South End property-owner manages as a rule to reap a fair return upon the value of his property. Of the three classes involved in the lodging-house problem, — the lodgers, the lodging-house keepers, and the owners, — the latter seem to have least to complain of. Yet the landlords are to a great extent just the class who would object most strenuously to any curtailment of their moderate income. In part they are the heirs of the old residents. In large part, also, they are persons of moderate means who have invested a few thousand dollars in lodging-house property. Their ranks include dressmakers, clerks, carpenters, bakers, musicians, foremen, teamsters, cashiers, machinists, bookkeepers, physicians, jewelers, printers, bankers and brokers, florists, lawyers, real-estate agents, and various kinds of merchants and dealers. Of 270 houses 116 were found registered on the record of deeds in the names of women; but this does not necessarily mean that so large a proportion are ' Hurd, Principles of City Land Values, pp. 127-8, 107. 78 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON actually owned by women, since the house often stands in the wife's name when the property really belongs to the husband. Some of these persons have undoubtedly been hoodwinked into buying lodging-house real estate at good round prices by unscrupu- lous dealers, and to such a reduction of rental income might come as something of a hardship. A considerable amount of crooked business is done in lodging-house real estate, though not so much as there is in furniture and good-will. Trading in equities and juggling with mortgages are common processes. Real estate of speculative value, like apartment-houses in course of construction, and property depreciating in value, Hke South End lodging-houses, are especially adapted to this kind of manipulation. Trading in equities is a process by which the unwary are made to pay highly for lodging-house real estate and often to lose all they invest. Sup- pose, for example, that Smith owns a house which he values at $16,000, but which on the market would not sell for anything Hke that amount. Suppose also that this property is mortgaged for $10,000. Suppose, further, that Jones, an individual entirely unacquainted with the tricks and turns of city real estate, owns a piece of land in the country which he values at $3000. Smith gets Jones into a " deal," and allows him to set the value of his land at $4000 provided the city property be set at $20,000. Jones assumes the mortgage of $10,000, gives Smith a second mortgage of $6000 to cover the balance of the $16,000, and deeds over the land to cover the additional $4000 of the $20,000. Smith is now the owner of land worth $3000 and he holds a mortgage of $6000 on the town house. Jones holds a house worth perhaps $14,000 mortgaged for $16,000, on which sum he has to pay interest. As time goes on, Jones may very hkely be unable to meet his interest payments, the mortgages are foreclosed, and the house is sold at auction. It will not bring $16,000, but it will yield something over and above the $10,000 necessary to pay off the first mortgage, and this excess is pocketed by Smith. Jones loses everything, while Smith retains the land in the country and $3000 or $4000 in cash. What will be the future of real estate in the lodging-house district is hard to say. At various times real-estate dealers have thought they saw rays of hope. The Back Bay station was expected to create a centre of trafi&c and business, in what is now a negro lodging-house REAL ESTATE IN THE DISTRICT 79 district. The inconvenience of the noisy elevated road on Washington Street was expected to cause a shifting of real estate business to Shawmut Avenue, nearer the centre of the lodging-house section. But neither of these hopes was realized. At the present time a movement is on foot to modify the tene- ment-house law to permit the remodeling of lodging-houses into tenements without inserting steel beams, fireproof materials, and other expensive requirements which hitherto have made it econom- ically impossible to "make down" a lodging-house. At present the rules for first-class construction apply to such remodeled houses. On April 15, 1903, the mayor appointed a commission "to investi- gate tenement-house conditions in the city of Boston." This com- mission submitted its report May 18, 1904, and in it makes refer- ence to the pecuhar needs of the South End. "The commission recognizes the justice of the complaint of many property-owners of the South and West Ends that present laws make it practically impossible for them to reconstruct dwelling- houses into four-story apartment-houses without incurring a burden of expense greater than the possible income will warrant. As a result most of these houses, no longer occupied as formerly by a well-to-do class of single famihes, have become boarding- and lodging-houses, and there has been a general depreciation in their value. It would seem both safe and wise to provide for the altera- tion of such houses into tenement-houses of second-class construc- tion by relaxing the requirements that they be ' plastered on incom- bustible materials throughout,' and removing the Hmitation of the number of families which may occupy each house. If the stair- ways are made fireproof and the rooms be properly lighted and ventilated, if also there be sufficient open area on the lot each house occupies, there will be no increase of danger in the recon- struction proposed." ' And again in a minority report by Mr. Samuel M. Child: "Within the last thirty years the character and occupation of a large section of the city has materially changed; I refer especially to the West and South Ends, so-called, covered with sybstantial, well-built, brick houses on wide streets, and ample yard-room in the rear. Under the present building laws it ' Report of the Commission appointed by the Maybr to investigate Tenement- House Conditions in the City of Boston (City Document no. 77, 1904), p. 3. 8o THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON is impossible to remodel these buildings and adapt them to the changed conditions and needs of the community. There is no reason, in my opinion, why any existing brick building in the city limits, built as a dwelling for a single family, might not with safety be remodeled into suites — a tenement on a floor, using second- class construction, so-called. This will house a large proportion of the community comfortably and within the means of the average wage-earner for many years." '■ There was thus unanimity of opinion in the commission that owners of lodging-houses, or old dwelling- houses, not more than four stories in height, should be allowed to remodel them into tenements without undergoing the expensive requirements of the present law. Should this be done, i. e., the rules for second-class construction made apphcable, lodging-houses can be changed into tenement-houses or flats at moderate cost, or they can be remodeled so as to fill more satisfactorily than now the precise use of a lodging-house by having a large number of small rooms and more adequate sanitary equipment. It is to be hoped that this change will be made, as it would go far toward relieving the real-estate situation in the South End.^ The demand for tene- ments and cheap apartments is much heavier than for lodging- houses.^ The change would therefore help property-holders. It would be of social value, also, for it would create a supply of moder- ate-priced flats within easy walking distance of the down-town business district. It would break up the compactness of the lodging- house district, suggest home and family to the now too often callous lodger, and perhaps help greatly in solving the moral problem of the district.^ ' Report of the Commission appointed by the Mayor to investigate Tenement- House Conditions in the City of Boston (City Document no. 77, 1904), pp. 46, 47. 2 Cf. Report of the aforesaid commission, pp. 3, 9, 41, 46, 47, 48, and 50. ' Cf. Boston Transcript for December 10, 1903. * Cf. Chapters xvii and xvni. CHAPTER X THE lodger: general CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LODGING-HOUSE POPULATION The lodgers are numerically and in every other way the most important class with whom this investigation has to deal. We shall perhaps best gain a general notion of the class by first analyzing its sex and age, conjugal condition, nationality, and occupation, and by ascertaining as best we may whence the lodgers come and why they are lodgers. The South End lodging-house population was briefly and well described in 1898 in " The City Wilderness : " " They really compose those of the working classes who are single, with a few married couples who have not yet made themselves homes; that is, they stand for the large number of unmarried persons who have come to Boston from the distance to make their fortunes — and have not yet made them." Naturally most lodgers have come from other cities and towns and from the country. Were they native to Boston, most of them would have had parents whom they would not have left till ready to marry and set up homes of their own. As stated in "The City Wilderness," the lodger class is not really characterized by nationality. Although we find representatives of almost every country, roomers are far more homogeneous racially than the tenement-house population. The houses of the West End contain a larger proportion of Irish than those of the South End, but with some few Germans and a sprinkling of Irish and English, the great mass remain Americans and Canadians. The Americans, who constitute by far the largest single ethnic element, are mostly from New England and New York. They are the farm boys and young fellows from rural New England towns, who come to the Hub with a film of glorious prospects before their eyes, to be clerks and salesmen, to enter business colleges and blossom out as bookkeepers at six dollars a week. They are skilled mechanics who come from other cities to help in the industries 82 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON of Boston. They are negroes of the South, who, attracted by wider opportunities than the conservatism of the South will afford them, and by an already extensive colony of their race, come to Boston in the hope of bettering their condition. They are young girls who come from rocky farms and hill towns to escape the irksome drudg- ery and monotony of petty household duties; girls who have grown tired, very early in their lives, perhaps, of helping their mothers wash the dishes and pare the potatoes, and who have set their eyes to the city as a sort of Mecca for all in search of opportunity. They come to struggle along as clerks and stenographers, as milliners and dressmakers, as fancy-workers, nurses, and waitresses. Not a few come as students, to have their hearts gnawed at by homesickness, and to starve themselves on one meal a day, for the sake of an idea. The Canadians come mostly from the Lower Provinces, and as a rule do not intend to remain long in Boston. This is more espe- cially true of the girls, a large number of whom come as domestic servants, and who always have hosts of cousins and other relatives scattered about in the lodging-houses. Those who are not house- hold servants are manicurists, dressmakers, waitresses, and the like. The sexes seem about equally divided. According to the State Census of 1895, 65.1 per cent, of the lodgers were males, but as this applies to all conditions of lodgers, wherever found, whether in suburban districts or in the lowest cheap houses of the West End, it has little value for us. While the lodging-class is characterized, as we shall see, by the absence of children, and by an age-grouping in the productive period of life; while also it is characteristically a class of unmar- ried persons, on the one hand fairly homogeneous in nationality, and on the other extremely heterogeneous in occupation; still none of these traits would in itself so sharply differentiate it from other classes as does the fact that above all the lodging-house class is a floating population, or, as a noted French economist has called it, a population noniade.^ The following table is instructive on this point : ' Leroy-Beaulieu, in Repartition des Richesses. See post, p. 105. THE LODGER: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 83 Table 27. number of adult male lodgers, (a) who changed, AND (b) who did not CHANGE THEIR PLACE OF RESIDENCE BETWEEN MAY I, I902, AND MAY I, I903 Note. The column headed "Here" includes all lodgers who were in the same house at both dates; that headed "Out of Boston" those who on May i, 1902, were living outside the city; that headed "In Boston" those who were living in the city, but at some other address; and that headed "Unknown" those whose addresses on the earlier date could not be ascertained by the police, who made the canvass. Out of Total Here Boston In Boston Unknown Ward 12, Precinct 1 737 383 115 164 75 Ward 12, Precinct 2 843 440 99 195 109 Ward 12, Precinct 3 454 225 57 129 43 Ward 12, Precinct 4 873 450 132 222 69 Ward 12, Precinct 5 600 278 95 174 53 Ward 12, Precinct 6 514 302 63 115 34 Ward 12, Precinct 7 285 180 20 68 17 Ward 9, Precinct 5 1039 450 165 309 115 Ward 9, Precinct 6 852 400 119 234 99 Ward 10, Precinct 3 674 311 195 93 75 Ward 10, Precinct 4 631 301 209 71 50 Ward 10, Precinct 5 549 259 92 in 87 Ward 10, Precinct 6 790 358 233 93 106 Totals 8,841 4,337 1,594 1,978 932 Per cent, of total 100. 49.03 18.04 2238 lO-SS Total per cent, known living elsewhere 40.42 Total per cent, living elsewhere 50-97 A word of explanation will make clear the meaning of this table. The Annual Precinct Lists of Male Residents give not only the name, age, occupation, and present address of each man twenty years old or over, but also his address a year previous, where it could be ascertained. The table shows that, out of the total of 8841 lodgers included, only 49 per cent, had not changed their place of abode during the year. There is no reason to suppose that the facts would appear differently for women lodgers, had we any data wherewith to judge their case. To make this matter perfectly clear it may not be out of place to see at a given date what the distribution was a year before of 84 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON lodgers in a few individual houses, taken at random. In one house, for instance, out of a total of fifteen male lodgers, only five had been there as long as a year. In a house on Columbus Avenue nine male lodgers had been distributed as follows: a furniture dealer and a librarian had been there as much as a year, two musi- cians had come from other addresses in the city, a student from Georgetown, a bookkeeper from New Hampshire, another student from Michigan, another from Dedham, and a merchant from a previous address unknown. In a house on Concord Square, with six male lodgers, none had been there a year before; two, a clerk and a reporter, had come from Worcester; a draftsman came from Maine, a polisher from Duxbury, and two salesmen from some other part of the city. In a house in Waltham Street, which had an unusually large number of male lodgers, twenty-three in all, eight had been there a year or more, — a steam-fitter, a fireman, a dancing-master, a brick-layer, a printer, and an elevator-man; seven had lived elsewhere in the city — a photographer, a painter, a collector, a carpet-layer, a foreman, a mason, and a janitor. Of the remaining men, a waiter had come from Lynn, a bartender from Ireland, a brakeman from Montana, a provision-dealer and a clerk from Nova Scotia, a salesman from Waltham, a carpenter from New York, and a machinist from Quincy. Such a list could be extended indefinitely. It is interesting also to note in this connection that out of a list of the addresses of nearly three hundred and fifty members, kindly furnished us by one of the city's largest organizations for young men, we found that probably two thirds had been changed within eight months. One of the largest churches in the South End has a card catalogue containing the names of some five thousand lodgers. The pastor says he would be glad if half the addresses were correct. The fact that nearly 20 per cent, of the lodgers now in Boston were a year ago living outside the city is merely a phase of the great movement, the constant flow, of population from country to city, which we have mentioned in an earlier chapter. Various causes may be assigned for the great amount of moving from place to place within the city. Dissatisfaction with rooms and room-mates, the idea that some other place is better, or at least not so bad, pure restlessness under distressingly irksome surroundings, change in place of THE LODGER: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 85 employment, change of landladies, or discontinuance of the house in which they lodged, are all causes of an incessant ebb and flow of lodgers from one house and one locality to another. This extreme fluidity of the lodging-house population makes it a difflcult one to manipulate — for any one but the ward politicians, who find it much to their taste. A difficulty scarcely less important, in the way of social betterment, is the heterogeneity of occupation, to which the following chapter is devoted. CHAPTER XI THE lodger: occupation Like most other urban statistics, those of occupation are published by wards only, and not by precincts or blocks, as would be necessary for a segregation of the statistics of occupations for lodgers. We are therefore forced to resort to other data. The only source from which it seems possible to derive any statistical information whatever for occupations is the series of Precinct Lists of Male Residents. Any one sufficiently acquainted with the minute local geography of the lodging-house district can use these voting-lists to reach some estimation of the vocational constitution of the lodger class. By an intelligent use of the lists we can exclude persons living in apartment- and tenement-houses and in private residences, and have left as a basis of calculation only those living in lodging-houses. We can then estimate the relative number of the lodgers engaged in the various occupations and branches of employment, compare these proportions' vdth the proportions shown for the city as a whole, note any tendency of lodgers of the same occupation to congregate in the same locality, show the variety of occupations represented in typical lodging-house streets and in typical individual houses, and finally analyze the effects of lodging-house life upon the labor efficiency of the men and women subject to its influences. It must be understood, however, that the data furnished by these lists apply only to adult males. For male lodgers under twenty years of age we have no statistical data. But first-hand acquaintance with the lodging- class shows that the number of male minor lodgers is small. Nor have we any statistical information for that half of the lodging-house population which consists of women. This is greatly to be regretted. Attention in this chapter should be directed not so much to the absolute numbers given as to the percentages derived from them. In a calculation of this kind we obviously cannot hope to include all the lodgers living within the district covered. Only such houses THE LODGER: OCCUPATION 87 have been included as were, according to all evidences, almost certainly to be classed as lodging-houses. Tenement-houses, apart- ments, private residences, and in some cases whole streets, have been excluded, and with them undoubtedly many persons who in a regular census would be classed as lodgers. Most fairly viewed the statistical method we have been compelled to use is that of sampling.' While perhaps the absolute numbers do not mean much, we are confident that the percentages would not differ materially in a complete enumeration. The total number of male lodgers included in our calculations in this chapter is 7631. Their distribution among the four great branches of employment is shown in the following table, which is based on data for the thirteen precincts constituting the South End lodging-house district.^ Table 28. branches of occupation, adult male lodgers Branch of Employment Number Per cent, of Professional service 951 13s Domestic and personal service I3°3 17- Trade and transportation 3490 455 Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits 1887 25 Total 7631 100. The striking fact in this table is the very large percentage engaged in trade and transportation. Most of these men, as we shall see, are clerks, salesmen, and small dealers. Together with the skilled workmen, who make up the mass of those engaged in manufactur- ing and mechanical pursuits, they lend the lodging-house population its characteristic tone. The percentage of domestic and personal servants is swelled by the great number of negro waiters living about the Back Bay Station. Turning to the census of employments for all Boston in 1900, we find that there were 180,052 males ten years old and over engaged in the four great branches of occupation above tabulated, dis- tributed as follows: ' Cf . Bowley, Elements of Statistics, p. 308. ' Agriculture of course is not included. Certain miscellaneous employments, represented by only a few men each, which could not well be classified under any of the four heads, are excluded. Number 10,866 Per cent, of total 6-5 37,749 79,667 61,770 20.5 38.5 34-5 88 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON Table 29. occupation of males, ten years of age and over, BOSTON, 1900 * Branch of Employment Professional service Domestic and personal service Trade and transportation Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits Evidently this is a somewhat more even distribution than that of the lodgers. A comparison of Table 29 with Table 28 will show whether the lodging-house draws its clientele proportionally more heavily from one branch of occupation than from another.^ Table 30. occupation of male adult lodgers, and of males in all boston Males ten Male lodgers years old Per cent. 20 years old, and over, excess (+) for Branch of Employment and over all Boston lodgers Professional service 13 5% 6.5% 6.0% ( + ) Domestic and personal service 1 7.0 20.5 35 ( - ) Trade and transportation 45.5 38.5 7.0 ( + ) Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits 25.0 34.5 9.5 ( — ) It is evident that proportionally a larger number of professional men and of men following commercial pursuits (trade and trans- portation) than of skilled workmen or of domestic and personal servants, live in lodgings. The most striking difference appears in the professional service class. Here the proportion in lodging- houses is almost twice that in the professional class at large, and in this case no part of the difference can be due to the difference in age limitations in the two sets of percentages, since there are prac- tically no professional men who are under twenty years of age. That 950 out of some 7600 lodgers should be engaged in professional callings is a noteworthy fact. The presence in lodging-houses of so ' Compiled from the Twelfth U. S Census, Population, part ii. Table 94. ^ It is well to point out, however, that Table 29 includes males between the ages of ten and twenty, who were not included in the table for lodgers. While this fact theoretically renders the two tables incomparable, it seems probable, as already stated, that the number of male lodgers under twenty years of age is in fact too small to alter the results materially. ~ «, 1- s «• - vB «|i^ •^* C-^ 3 « >=i'o l^"^^^^*^^ ■*« ■// * AfW 'A A/ THE LODGER: OCCUPATION 89 many men of this class is to be explained by two causes. First, professional men are under great expense for their education and technical training, and are slower in gaining a footing than men in other employments. They cannot marry and establish homes of their own so soon, and in consequence the lodging-house naturally becomes their abiding-place for a time. Secondly, a considerable number of physicians, dentists, and the like, men whose employ- ments are to a great extent necessarily localized, are doubtless drawn to the lodging-house district to be near their patrons and chents, actual or hoped-for. A large number of engineers and electricians also add to the ranks of professional men in lodgings.^ The larger relative number of clerks, salesmen, etc., in lodging- houses than in the city as a whole is to be expected. The average shop-girl hves at home with her parents or relatives, in the city or the suburbs ; but the ordinary clerk or salesman, earning often not so much as the average skilled mechanic, yet feeling himself on a higher social plane than the latter, is for a long time unwilling to marry and assume the responsibility of home and family, and con- sequently remains indefinitely in his lodging-house. Turning to the skilled workman we find an excess percentage not on the side of the lodgers, but on that of the population as a whole. Here again the use of the same age limit in both tables might increase slightly the number in lodgings, but on the whole it seems that the skilled mechanic does not take to the lodging-house as a semi-permanent abode with quite the same freedom as does the mercantile employee. Two reasons are to be assigned for this also. First, the workman does not like to live too far from his work, and there is but one factory district within easy walking distance from the lodging-house district of the South End.^ Secondly, it is probable that skilled workmen marry earlier than mercantile employees. Of men engaged in domestic and personal service we find also a larger proportion in the population at large than in the lodging- ' By the United States Census, engineers and electricians are classified as profes- sional men. It would seem that electricians would be more properly classified as skilled mechanics. ' Cf. R. F. Phelps, South End Factory Employees and Their Homes, Boston, 1903. (Published by the South End House Association.) go THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON houses, but the difference is not great. That it is not greater is due largely to the large number of negroes in the lodging-house district immediately contiguous to the Back Bay Station. That it is so large, on the other hand, is perhaps due to the fact that the percentage for the whole city includes a great number of day laborers, who are classed by the census as domestic and personal servants, and few of whom are to be found in lodging-houses. We have now to consider whether any tendency is evident for lodgers of the same general occupation to congregate in the same locahty. Occupation is one of the strongest bases of sociability. It strengthens sympathy and the "consciousness of kind" between individuals by giving them a strong community of interest. This, together with variations in incomes and standards of Uving in different employments, should lead us to expect some tendency toward a geographical grouping by occupation. The distribution of male adult lodgers is shown graphically in Charts viii, ix, x, and xi. The geographical divisions are precincts. Table 31 gives the data from which these charts were constructed: Table 31.' geographical distribution, by occupation, and BY wards and precincts, OF MALE ADULT LODGERS, SOUTH END LODGING-HOUSE DISTRICT, I903 Ward 9 Ward 10 Ward 13 Precinct: s 634561334567 Total per „ , , cent. Branch of occupa- tion Prof. serv. . . 10.8 9.0 6.8 6.5 6.3 8.1 12.0 13.3 5.7 10.4 4.4 4.6 2-1 100 Dom. and pers. . 10.7 5.7 8.8 12.5 15.5 15.2 4.7 3.9 3.7 6.8 4.9 4.5 3.1 100 Tr. and trans. . lo.o 9.0 7.9 5.5 4.6 8.9 9.9 11.6 47 10.7 7.6 6.4 3.2 100 Mfg. and mcli. 2i 3 12 2 7.5 6.3 3.2 5.7 52 55 5.5 9.9 6.4 6.4 4.9 100 Percentage of total number of lodgers (7631). 13.0 9.2 78 70 63 9.0 8.0 go 4.8 9.8 6.6 6.0 3.5 100 The significant facts brought out by this table are the concentra- tion of professional men in Precincts i, 2, and 4 of Ward 12, and in Precinct 5 of Ward 9; the very pronounced concentration of domestic and personal servants in Precincts 4, 5, and 6 of Ward 10, together with a secondary grouping in Precinct 5 of Ward 9; the grouping of persons engaged in trade and transportation in Pre- cincts I, 2, and 4 of Ward 12; and finally, the heavy concentration of skilled mechanics in Precincts 5 and 6 of Ward 9. ' Summarized from Tables 32, 33, 34, and 35. THE LODGER: OCCUPATION 9 1 Let us look for a moment at each branch of occupation separately. 1. Professional Service. Table 31 and Chart viii show that the professional men are strongly centralized in a district in Ward 12 bounded roughly by Massachusetts Avenue, Tremont Street, West Canton Street, and the Hartford railroad tracks. This area is the best part of the South End lodging-house district. The general absence of professional men from Precincts 3, 4, and 5 of Ward 10 is explained by the large number of domestic and personal servants that appear in these precincts, as is clear from Chart ix. 2. Domestic and Personal Service. Nearly two thirds of the lodgers classified as domestic and personal servants (about 1300) reside, as shown by Table 31 and Chart ix, in the four precincts of Ward ID, and in Precinct 5 of Ward 9, — in other words in a belt of territory extending across the South End from the Back Bay Station and the Hartford Railroad to Tremont Street and the lower part of Shawmut Avenue. A large number of negro waiters, cooks and stewards, barbers. Janitors, and porters find rooms in the western part of this belt, and constitute the bulk of this class to be found in lodgings. The intersection of Dartmouth Street and Columbus Avenue marks about the centre of this negro colony. Their choice of this locality is probably due, in part at least, to its proximity to the apartment-house, hotel, and private residence districts of the Back Bay just across the railroad and beyond Copley Square. 3. Manufacturing and Mechanical Pursuits. As is shown in Chart X, the skilled workmen are concentrated heavily in the down-town end of the district. There is but one centre of density for this class — the two precincts, 5 and 6, of Ward 9, where exactly one third of the skilled mechanics are lodged. The chief reasons why they are centralized here (between Dover and West Dedham streets, and Tremont and Washington streets) are: first, the proximity of the South End factory district, secondly the near- ness of the down-town business district, which is within easy walking distance, and thirdly perhaps the fact that the locality is somewhat less "genteel" than the districts farther out in Ward 12. Those portions of the latter ward which show a strong centralization of the professional and business classes show very small percentages for mechanical pursuits, a bit of evidence that the two classes do not much tend toward social amalgamation. Precinct 5 of Ward 9 92 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON shows a large percentage both of skilled mechanics and of profes- sional men, but electricians and engineers here make up a large proportion of the professional class. 4. Trade and Transportation. Turning to Chart xi, we find in this same district of Ward 12 a large percentage of mercantile employees. The strongest grouping of this class is, however, in the outer precincts of Ward 12, coinciding roughly with that of the professional men. While, then, to summarize the conclusions to be reached from this survey, we may say that no especially surprising concentrations are noted, nevertheless the district is diflferentiated into well-defined localities each of which is characterized by its own occupational class. Acquaintance with the district fully corroborates the evidence of this analysis. The tendency of the professional and commercial classes to congregate in Ward 12, of the clerks to settle thickly in the lodging-house part of Ward 9, and of the domestic and personal servants to concentrate in certain precincts of Ward 10, lends a tone of its own to each district, and is in part also a result of that distinctive tone.' The details upon which the foregoing analysis is made are given in Tables 34, 35, 36, and 37, which show the actual number con- sidered in each occupation. Points of minor interest are the central- ization of physicians in Precincts i, 2, 4, and 5 of Ward 12 (Table 34), and the great number of clerks and salesmen that appear in Table 35. (See Appendix to this chapter.) The importance of individual occupations is shown in the follow- ing table, for all in which more than one hundred persons were found : Table 32. occupations of male lodgers, in order of number employed Foremen, managers, etc. 203 Engineers 177 Real est. and insurance agents 157 Cooks and stewards 152 ' " The distribution of any element of the population over the city is significant both as indicating the character of the element and as accounting in some measure for its character." — Lillian Brandt, The Negroes of St. Louis, in the Publications of the American Statistical Association, March, 1903, p. 219. Clerks 1002 Salesmen 610 Merchants and dealers 411 Waiters 361 o « i< CO a .^ n ? tt tl >5 .^ > f t THE LODGER: OCCUPATION 93 Bookkeepers 303 Electricians 130 Machinists 269 Tailors 124 Carpenters 260 Physicians 123 Railroad employees 256 Laborers 119 Painters and paper- hangers 242 Piano- and cabinet-makers 117 Printers 220 Agents (not specified) 115 Teamsters 212 Plumbers, gas- and steam-fitters 105 Various scattering trades and occupations are represented by only a few persons each. The wide range of occupation of lodgers is apparent, however, when we find representatives not only of the callings included in the tables, but the following as well: photo- grapher, sailor, pilot, sail-maker, sea captain, justice of the peace, laundryman, boat-builder, window-dresser, purse-maker, horse- trainer, meter-reader, property-man, scene-shifter, embalmer, fur- rier, rubber-worker, speculator, poet, coffee-roaster, carpet-layer, brush-maker, nailer, time-keeper, cooper, paver, gas-prover, proof- reader, paper-ruler, and chauffeur. The heterogeneity of lodgers, vocationally, is well illustrated, also, by the variety of occupations found in any one street or block of houses, or in individual houses taken at random. This may be noted by referring back to the instances given of the change of address of lodgers. (Page 84.) Two other examples may be given here, including women as well as men lodgers: In a house on Street there were at one time a bookkeeper, an elderly lady with no occupation, a single woman of some means, a student in Technology, an expert stenographer, a young man of independent income, a law student, a clerk in a newspaper office, a nurse, a fortune-teller, and a commercial traveler. In another house, not far from Copley Square there were at once a bookkeeper (woman), two clerks (men), a draughtswoman, an architect, an accountant for a piano concern, a harness-maker, two women from California, a broker and his wife, a professor in one of the leading educational institutions of the city, a policeman, and the landlady's son and his wife. Barring the fact that fewer occupations are open to women, we should find, had we the requisite data, the same heterogeneity of occupation among women lodgers as among men. In the absence of even such imperfect data as are afforded us for men by the pre- Wives, no employment 33 Bookkeepers Single women, no employment. i6 Milliners Stenographers i6 Students Waitresses i6 Tailoresses Dressmakers IS Sewing-girls Saleswomen 12 Teachers Nurses 12 Cooks Clerks lO Art students 94 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON cinct voting-lists, we must fall back upon personal observation. In the case of two hundred women lodgers taken at random from all parts of the district, we have the following vocational distribu- tion: Table 33. distribution of (200) women lodgers by occupation 8 8 5 4 4 4 2 2 and one each of the following : book -agent, real-estate agent, agent, cashier, cashier in hardware-store, cashier in millinery-store, cashier in restaurant, clerk in photographer's studio, draughtswoman, designer of monuments, property- woman in theatre, telegraph-operator, masseuse, manicurist, teacher on sewing- machine, teacher of millinery, stitcher, dress-fitter, passe-partout worker, straw -plaiter, straw-shop worker, "in city for her health," "taking piano- lessons," "missionary from Colorado," unknown, 4; total, 200. The number of married women not working is noteworthy. The husbands of such are men who have reached the more lucrative stages of employment than has the average lodger. In many cases both husband and wife work, and then some curious combinations are found: husband a draughtsman, wife a clerk; husband a real- estate agent, wife a milliner; here a machinist and a dress-trimmer have joined forces; and there a barber and a stenographer. The single women without employment are chiefly old ladies, most of them living on modest incomes, or supported by some relative or by charity. No comment is needed upon the large number of stenographers, dressmakers, nurses, bookkeepers, and milhners. The large number of waitresses is in part due to the demand from the local cafes. The saleswomen and clerks, if this table represents their true proportion in the lodging-house population, must be employed for the most part in small stores and offices, since a com- paratively small number of girls employed in the big department stores live in lodging-houses. Some investigation was made of this point. In one store, employing 176 sales-girls, only seven lived in THE LODGER: OCCUPATION 95 lodging-houses, 19 boarded or lived with friends or relatives, and the other 150 lived at home. Out of 782 clerks and sales-girls in another large department store, only 83 lived in the South End lodging-house district, and probably not all of these in lodging- houses. The low wages paid this class of employees does not permit of their living in lodgings. Some large department stores make a special point of employing only girls who live at home, whom they can secure at low wages. APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XI Table 34. geographical distribution, professional service Ward 9. Ward lo. Ward 12 Precinct : Occupation 5 6 3 4 S 6 I 2 3 4 5 6 7 Total. ,f:5. Actors . . . . 7 4 3 2 I 2 1 4 - 4 2 30 3.2 Musicians II 3 3 6 3 10 15 13 7 7 I 4 86 9.0 Artists 5 4 3 12 6 2 6 4 3 2 48 5-0 Architects and draughts- men . . . 7 5 3 5 3 4 8 8 2 8 2 58 6.1 Physicians . 9 12 2 5 8 6 24 18 5 17 13 4 123 12.9 Dentists . 3 4 4 3 3 3 3 5 4 7 - 1 41 4-3 Clergymen - 2 I 2 I 5 I 2 1 2 I 21 2.2 Teachers . . 9 3 7 6 3 11 9 2 4 2 2 60 6.3 Lawyers . . . 3 7 4 2 I 12 9 14 I 11 9 75 8.0 Journalists . . . . I 10 4 1 3 3 3 3 9 3 I - 42 4-4 Literary and scientific - 2 5 2 3 9 2 3 6 I I 35 3-7 Engineers .... 28 16 20 12 6 10 19 20 II 11 10 10 4 177 18.6 Electricians .... 22 5 12 12 9 9 7 19 4 18 7 S 130 137 Miscellaneous . . 7 2 2 - 2 I 2 4 I 2 I 25 2.6 Totals ... 103 85 64 62 60 77 114 127 54 99 42 44 20 951 lOO.O Per cent. 10.8 g.o 6.8 6.5 63 81 12.0 133 57 10.4 4.4 4.6 2.1 loo.o Table 35. geographical distribution, domestic and PERSONAL service Ward 9- Ward 10 Ward 12. Totals. Precinct : 5 6 3 4 5 6 I 2 3 4 5 6 7 Per Occupation cent, Waiters ... 32 16 38 50 81 75 8 5 22 8 16 5 5 361 27.7 Cooks and stewards 32 14 17 16 II ■4 8 3 5 14 7 8 3 153 1 1.6 Restaurant keepers . . 5 6 5 5 6 6 6 - 5 4 4 2 54 t\ Bartenders . . . . . 13 8 10 4 2 7 4 2 10 8 9 2 79 6.0 Policemen, watcliraen, etc. . . • 9 6 5 9 2 5 6 4 2 II Q 6 5- V 6.0 10 4 2 2 3 12 2 10 1 16 2 I 16 1 ' 9 12 3 3 4 3 - 80 6.1 Nurses 41 Janitors , . 3 10 7 10 10 22 4 2 - 7 I 6 6 88 6.8 Laborers . . 20 II 3 6 15 13 11 3 5 9 5 8 10 119 8.4 Miscellaneous 16 - ■9 49 65 38 2 13 II 4 9 4 7 237 18.2 Totals 139 74 116 163 202 1,8 62 5" 47 89 65 57 40 1303 lOO.O Per cent. 12.515.5152 4.7 3.g 37 6-8 4-9 45 3i 96 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON Table 36. geographical distribution, trade and transportation Ward 9- Ward 10 Ward 12 Totals. Precinct : Occupation 5 6 3 4 5 6 I 2 3 4 S 6 7 Per cent. Salesmen . . . 43 67 SI 18 33 62 7S 67 27 S4 43 2S 18 610 I7-S Clerks 123 102 88 60 42 97 93 113 ss Ss S2 5i 3" 1002 2S.8 Bookkeepers . , . 3^ ZS 28 II 18 32 27 3* 14 37 ■7 '7 10 303 8.7 Commercial travelers 7 4 S 2 6 8 IS 4 8 8 4 2 78 2.2 Railroad employees . . 27 27 19 19 IS IS 18 16 3 23 39 28 7 .2S6 7-4 Real estate and insur. agents .... 9 17 14 8 I 9 17 19 12 31 10 7 3 157 4-S Agents (not specified) 13 14 9 8 10 9 II 16 I II 6 7 "5 3.3 Merchants and dealers 18 1° 14 23 22 37 38 bS 19 S7 40 3S 13 411 11.7 Foremen, managers, etc. II 10 19 II 9 IS 24 27 12 26 21 10 8 203 S.8 Bankers and brokers I S 9 2 2 3 h 14 2 6 6 I I S8 1-7 Contractors and builders 2 1 I _ _ 2 9 6 2 S I 1 2 34 I.O Manufacturers . - 2 I 4 S 2 - 2 - 3 I 20 .6 Publishers . . - I - I 2 I - I 2 I 9 .2 Teamsters . . . ss 10 11 11 4 13 S II 10 29 16 19 IS 212 6.1 Miscellaneous . . . - - 7 8 3 3 I 22 .6 Totals 348 314 275 194 162 306 341 415 16s 374 263 22 1 112 3490 100.0 Per cent. 10. g.o 7-9 S-S 4.6 8., 9-9 11.6 4-7 10.7 7.6 6.4 3-2 lOO.O Table 37. geographical distribution: manufactures and mechanical pursuits Ward 9. Ward 10 Ward 12. , Precinct : Occupation 5 6 3 4 5 6 ' 2 3 4 S 6 7 Totals. Per cent. Carpenters 64 34 24 16 8 ■3 12 9 12 28 17 "7 6 260 13.7 Masons * H 15 7 4 - 3 I 8 4 3 10 12 6 92 4.9 Painters and paper-hang- ers . . . . ■ 59 34 23 18 3 13 16 7 12 21 18 II 7 242 12.8 Plumbers, and gas and steam-fitters . . 22 17 8 7 2 6 3 4 8 13 8 4 3 105 SS Other building trades 6 5 - 2 - 2 4 2 3 6 2 2 2 36 1-9 Total for building trades jbs' i^. -if! 47 'S J7 J^\ JO 37 ^'. JJ !Z! !£. 7JS ss.s Machinists . . 69 41 i3 19 7 IS 10 10 14 39 9 14 4 269 143 Other iron and steel- workers . . . 19 7 4 4 2 3 9 3 4 6 5 10 6 82 4-5 Other metal-workers 14 702 10 IS! 4 a6" 3 _26 3 _ I I 4 _ 2 4_ S 2 2 58 30 Total for metal trades . 13 '9 20 r? "so' 49 22 "13" 72 409 2r.S Printing trades (chiefly printers) ... 39 17 17 18 5 13 13 26 20 13 14 18 320 11.6 Textile trades (chiefly tailors) 17 8 9 7 10 13 12 9 5 7 8 14 124 5.5 Piano and cabinet-mak- ers 22 10 4 4 7 5 7 3 4 8 13 5 25 117 6.3 Other wood-workers . . 3 - I I 3 2 5 4 32 I.I Shoe-makers and leather- workers . 17 9 4 - 5 5 - 4 T 5 3 7 64 3*4 Butchers and bakers II 3 8 6 3 2 4 I 4 7 5 6 63 3-4 Cigar-makers . . . 14 10 6 5 4 - - 5 I 2 - 47 2.5 Miscellaneous .... 12 402 8 228 6 142 4 118 3 S8 8 106 4 97 9 102 7 102 10 ■8s 4 129 5 129 6 89 86 4.6 Totals . . . 1887 100.0 Per cent. 21.3 12.2 7.5 6.3 3,2 5.7 5 2 5.5 s-s 9.9 6.4 6.4 4.9 lOo.o CHAPTER XII THE lodger: economic condition Employment is the key to income, which is the measure of possible expenditure. An individual's economic condition is measured by the size of his income and by the expenses which he must regularly meet out of it. Knowing a lodger's occupation, we can estimate his income and compare with it certain fixed weekly charges he must meet. Not all lodgers are wage-earners. There are many wives sup- ported by husbands, some husbands supported by wives; there are many students, and many old people, some living on the income from past savings, some on the bounty of relatives, some on charity. But the vast majority of lodgers, both men and women, are paid workers. Until recently we have had no reliable statistics of the wages of mercantile employees in Boston, but Part iii of the Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor for 1902 consists of a collection of mercantile wages and salaries. The Report covers 455 establishments in the heart of the business district, and 9454 employees. Tables 38 and 39 are based on it. Table 40 is from trade-union sources. Table 38. lowest, highest, and average weekly income, selected mercantile employments, boston, 1902 Lowest Highest Average Men Women Men Women Men Women Buyers $15-16 $15-16 $125 $81 $35.66 $26.07 Bookkeepers 6-7 5-6 57-58 25-26 19,73 11.06 Bookkeepers' assistants — — — — 11.90 9.89 Clerks 4- S 3-4 28-29 2°-2i "■22 12.50 Cashiers 5-6 3-4 23-24 18-19 i3-20 7.89 Stenographers 8-9 4-5 16-17 20-21 12.03 io-86 Commercial travelers lo-ri — 100 — 28.22 — Salesmen 3-4 3-4 60 24-25 14.99 8.04 98 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON Table 39. lowest, highest, and average weekly income, selected employments of the domestic and personal service class, boston, 1902 Lowest Highest Average Men Women Men Women Men Women Cooks $9-10 $4-5 $34-35 $11-12 $16.49 $6.7r Cooks' assistants 4- 5 — — — 10.67 — Bartenders 11-12 — 23-24 — ISS7 — Watchmen 6- 7 — 3°-3i — 13-93 — Laborers — — — — 10-33 — Waiters 2- 3 2-3 18-19 9-10 9.10 4-83 Janitors 5-6 — 14-15 — 9-05 — Table 40. wages of mechanics, skilled and unskilled, boston, 1903-4, under trade union schedules ' Wages per week, Hours assuming constant per day Wages per day employment Steam-fitters 8 $3.50-4 00 $21.00-24.00 Plumbers 8 3.75-4.00 22 50-24.00 Gas-fitters 8 3-50 21.00 Plasterers 8 4.00 24.00 Brick -layers 8 4.40 26.40 Masons 8 4.40 26.40 Carpenters 8 3.00 18.00 Elevator-constructors 8 3.60 21.60 House -smiths 8 3.00-3.50 18.00-21.00 Sheet-metal workers 8 2-75-3-50 16.50-21.00 Painters 8 2.80-3.00 16 80-18.00 Decorators 8 3.20-4.00 19.20-24.00 Structural-iron workers 8 4.00 24.00 Roofers 8 3.00 18.00 Electricians 8 3.20 19.20 Steam-fitters 8 3.50-4.00 21.00-24.00 Pipe-coverers 8 3.00 18.00 Marble-cutters 8 3.50-4.00 21.00-24.00 Freestone-cutters 8 4.00 24.00 Laborers 8 or 9 2.40 or 2.70 14.40-16.20 Plasterers' laborers 8 2.75-3.00 16.50-18.00 Cement-workers 8 3.00-3.50 18.00-21.00 Cement-workers' helpers 8 2.00-2.25 12.00-15.00 Art-glass workers 8 3-00-3-50 18.00-21.00 ' This wage-list was kindly furnished the writer by Mr. Harry B. Taplin, Amherst Fellow at the South End House, Boston, 1902-04, who has made a special study of trade-unionism in Boston. THE LODGER: ECONOMIC CONDITION 99 Steam-fitters' helpers 8 2.00-2.50 12.00-15.00 Tile-layers 8 4.25 25-50 Tile-layers' helpers 8 2.50 15.00 Woodworkers 50 hours per wk. 2.80-4.00 16.80-24.00 Hardwood finishers 50 hours per wk. 2.80 up 16.80 up. Paper-hangers (piece-work) 4.00 up 24.00 up. Cigar-makers (piece-work) 20.00 These tables are sufficient to give some idea of the weekly income of the vocational classes that constitute the greater part of the lodging-house population. Certain fixed and regular expenses, namely, room-rent, board, laundry, and in many cases car-fare, must be met. What remains of weekly income may go for clothing, etc. As the greater part of the lodging-house district is within easy walking distance of the business district we shall exclude car-fare from this discussion, especially as we can scarcely hope to arrive at any correct estimate of it for the mass of lodgers. Laundry expenses also vary. Fifty cents a week might suffice one person, while another could not get along on a dollar. Laundry expense is harder on women and girls than on men. Many lodgers do a part of their own washing, although most landladies object to it. The two main charges are of course board and room-rent. The writer made an attempt in the early part of his labors on this inves- tigation to gather some statistics at first hand in regard to these two items, but it was productive of such meagre results for the labor expended that it was not persisted in. However, such results as were obtained, together with general information as to lodging- house rates, render it certain that the average weekly payment for room-rent is not far from two dollars per person. One hundred and five persons in eight houses on Union Park, for example, paid an average weekly rent of $2.34, while eighty-one persons in five houses on Upton Street near by paid a weekly average of only $1.90. The individual averages for the eight houses on Union Park ran respec- tively as follows: $2.14, $2.18, $1.94, $2.25, $2.80, $2.71, $2.32, $2.40. This shows considerable variation from house to house. Nearly as much is shown by the houses on Upton Street: $1.96, $1.65, $1.80, $2.00, $2.10. One house on Dartmouth Street shows an average of $3.16. Where the averages for different streets and different houses so close together vary so much, a general average lOO THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON for the whole district, even had we the data for its calculation, would obviously give little information concerning the actual cost of rooms to individuals. Naturally a person can, within limits, suit the price of his room to his purse. The great demand, as shown by room-registry experience, seems to be for $2.00 and $3.00 rooms. The average prices charged for rooms have already been given in Tables 22 and 23, Chapter viii. Side rooms for less than $1.50 are rare, the usual rate being from $1.50 to $2.00. The demand for side rooms exceeds the supply. Square rooms range from $2.00 for unheated attic rooms to $5.00 and $6.00 for the best front rooms. A square room is usually occupied by two persons, who room together, the chances are, quite as much to reduce expenses as to enjoy each other's company. Among women there is a strong objection to rooming with any one, though there are of course those who either prefer it or do not object to it. Turning to rent paid by lodgers of different occupations, we find that where a man and wife occupy a room they pay from $3.50 to $6.00 a week and that the kind of employment has little to do with the price paid. We find single salesmen paying $2, $3, and $4 a week; saleswomen, $1 to $3; clerks, both men and women, $1.50 to $4; dressmakers, $1.75 to $3; trained women nurses, $2 to $4; stenographers, $1.25 to $3; waiters and waitresses, $1.00 to $3. For skilled mechanics the almost uniform level is $2.00. Turning to Table 40, we see that the weekly earnings of the skilled mechanic do not, in times of constant employment, fall below $16 per week. It is said that the ratio of rent to income varies from 12 per cent, to 15 per cent, among the wealthy to twenty- five or thirty- five per cent, among tenement dwellers.* So far as rental expenses are concerned our unmarried skilled mechanic lodger is evidently not to be classed with the tenement population. In some other occupations, however, room-rent assumes at times more alarming proportions. Take, for example, the female clerks, whose highest wages do not range over $12 a week. Two dollars a week is i6§ per cent, of this. The average weekly wages of wait- resses are only $4.83, and unlike waiters, they get scarcely any tips. From $1.00 to $3.00 for room-rent does not leave a wide margin for other expenses. The average weekly wage of saleswomen is ' Hurd, Principles oj City Land Values. THE LODGER: ECONOMIC CONDITION lOI $8.00 a week; a room- rent of $1.50 a week deducts 18.7 per cent, of this, one of $2.00 a week 25 per cent. We may be thankful that not a very large number of sales-girls live in lodgings. No shadow of doubt can be entertained that very many underpaid mercantile employees, other than sales-girls, are compelled to live in lodging- houses, where they pay out a disproportionate amount of their incomes for room-rent, and necessarily go underfed and inade- quately clothed. Especially is this true of the women and girls. With salaries almost uniformly lower than that paid men, as the tables show, very often for exactly the same kind and amount of work, they still have to maintain the same standards of living, and in the matter of dress even a higher standard. The employer expects his female help to look neat and clean constantly. The girl has to dress well, outwardly, even though she suffer from cold.* We will not pursue the details of room- rent expense farther. The reader can readily see by a comparison of the tables that room-rent need not be felt as a seriously heavy charge by the better paid mer- cantile employees and skilled mechanics; that it is about a normal charge upon those of average salary; but that upon those whose salary is below the average it bears as a heavy burden. After room-rent comes the board-bill. Whether the present ar- rangement for sleeping in one place and eating in another is econom- ically advantageous to those whom circumstances compel to hve outside the pale of the home may be doubted. The lodger of to-day accepts the situation as he finds it, as a matter of course. Probably he would be loath to go back to the regime of the boarding-house. Room-rent and board-bill thus become two distinct items in his expense account. The basement dining-rooms are largely patronized. Their almost invariable rates, as before noted, are " Gents, $3.50, ladies, $3.00." Why they make this difference in price is something of a conundrum, but it has become an established custom and holds undisputed sway. In its origin it was probably based on the idea that women ' The superintendent of one of the best working girls' homes in the city states that the wages of her girls do not average over eight dollars a week. Twelve dollars is the highest, and only two or three girls receive as much as ten. There are seventy- five girls in the house. The superintendent does not think these wages are below the average wages of girls in lodging-houses. I02 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON eat less than men and should consequently be charged less. It may be, also, that there was in the distinction some sub-conscious acknowledgement that women, receiving much lower wages than men, could not be expected to pay as much. Be this as it may, it is obvious that no very high grade of board can be served either to men or women at such rates. The writer has eaten in many of these dining-rooms, and while in a few the food was good, considering the price, in many both the food and the service were atrocious. Soup, a choice of beef or mutton, boiled potatoes, "side beans," stewed com, and blueberry pie, with tea or coffee (?) would con- stitute a typical dinner in the best of the dining-rooms. The follow- ing list of prices is advertised by one of the largest and best-known eating places: Full ticket, 21 meals $4.00 Breakfast and dinner, 14 meals 3.00 Breakfast, 7 meals 1.50 Dinner, 7 meals 1.50 Luncheon, 7 meals 1.20 This is the one big restaurant in the district which serves meals exclusively table d'hote, and it is as much an institution of its region as the State House is of Beacon Hill. A sample menu for luncheon reads well, but upon actual test is distinctly disappointing. The cost of board in a cafe is somewhat higher than in a dining- room. The writer, in a personal test of caf^ life, found it impossible to reduce the cost below $4.50 a week, and have enough to eat. At that it was necessary to abstain from desserts of any kind. For breakfast the average lodger rarely pays over fifteen or twenty cents. Most of the caf^s serve "combination breakfasts" some of which, offered by a caf^ of about average excellence, run as follows: Small tenderloin steak, French fried potatoes, tea or coffee 30 cts. Broiled lamb chop, fried egg, tea or coffee 25 cts. Fried ham, fried egg, side beans, tea or coffee 25 cts. Two eggs on toast, baked beans, tea or coffee 20 cts. Fried sausage, griddle cakes, tea or coffee 20 cts. Corned beef hash, dropped egg, tea or coffee 15 cts. Baked beans, fish-cake, tea or coffee 10 cts. A cereal increases the charge five or ten cents, and fruit from five to fifteen cents. Most lodgers dispense with both. The consequent THE LODGER: ECONOMIC CONDITION 103 excessive diet of fried things reveals itself in sallow complexions and sluggish circulations. Allowing twenty cents for breakfast, twenty-five for lunch, and thirty-five for dinner, a modest enough estimate, we find a total of $5.60 per week. As many of the caf& issue discount tickets, which give a reduction of ten or fifteen per cent, for payment in advance, the actual cost of the week's board may be somewhat reduced. One caf^, for example, offers discount tickets, $5.75 for $5.00; another, $3.50 for $3.00, $2.15 for $2.00, and $1.10 for $1.00. If the lodger is thrifty enough to buy a five- dollar ticket in advance he can reduce the above $5.60 to something less than $5. The best dining-rooms in Ward 12 charge yearly as much as this — five dollars a week for three meals a day, or four dollars for breakfasts and dinners being the highest dining-room rates. At the model boarding-house of the South End House it is found possible to set a good table for $3.50 a week, but only for two meals a day and three on Sunday; for three meals a day it is found necessary to charge $4.50. There are no men in the house. To reduce the board to these figures it is necessary to have at least fifteen boarders. It is doubtful whether the average lodger can afford as much as this for board even in good times. The writer does not believe that the average male lodger pays over four dollars a week, even when taking his meals at caffe. For women the rate must be still lower. Were there a few large and well patronized dining-halls in the South End, with a thousand boarders each, it would probably be possible to introduce many economies of large-scale production and reduce the cost of board materially. The cost of board to student members of the Harvard Dining Association in Memorial Hall, Cambridge, averages little, if any, over four dollars a week, and the board is incomparably better than one can get for that amount anywhere in the South End. Reducing room-rent and board to their lowest terms, $1.50 and $3.00 or $3.50 a week, respectively, we must conclude that a woman cannot expect to live in a lodging-house and take her meals out for less than $4.50 or $5.00 a week, and that a man cannot live for less than $5.00 or $5.50. For a woman $5.00 and for a man $5.50 a week may in the long run be set as the lowest price for room and board. At these figures the lodger will have to live in an unheated and stuffy side room, or share a poorly furnished and often untidy I04 TBE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON square room with some roommate about whom he perhaps knows little; and he will have to be content with the plain and very often ill-cooked food of the basement dining-room and the cheaper cafes. If he has a square room to himself, and eats in the better cafes his weekly expenses cannot well be under $7.00, and may easily amount to nine or ten dollars. Compare now the probable lowest general cost of living vsith the lowest rates of salary paid to mercantile employees (Table 38, columns i and 2). It is at once evident that most of these low-paid persons cannot meet even the mere board and room-rent expenses of lodging-house life. Those of this class who do not live at home are starving themselves in the cheapest rooms to be had in tenement- houses and the lowest grade of fumished-room house. The income of the highest-paid mercantile employees, on the other hand, will easily permit them to hve in South End lodgings. As a matter of fact when salary rises to S25 a week, the recipient is likely sooner or later to seek a room in the suburbs. It is the medium grade mer- cantile employees and the skilled mechanics who stay in the lodging- houses. And with them board and room- rent wiU take from one third to one half of their weekly income. A considerable amount of light housekeeping is done in lodging- houses. Evidence of this is afforded by landladies, and by the many small bakeshops and delicatessen establishments scattered through the district. How great are the privations patiently and philosoph- ically borne by many an underpaid clerk or struggling young sten- ographer will never be known except to the individuals themselves, for they are hedged about by a pardonable pride, and are more or less cut off from companionship. Perhaps enough has been said to render it tolerably clear that the economic outlook of the majority of lodgers is neither very roseate nor entirely hopeless. Their hfe is one of daily grind, of monotonous hand-to-mouth hving, a sort of dead level of existence, modified here by heroic struggle, and there by indifferent expenditure of total earnings in legitimate and illegitimate ways. In the lodging-house population we are deahng to a large extent with that great class of young men and women who, ha\-ing a certain amount of education and a considerable degree of pride, are struggling along in the ranks of mercantile employment now for a long time overcrowded. We THE LODGER: ECONOMIC CONDITION , 105 have heard the clerks and salesmen called "the most despicable of classes," from the idea that they go into the ofSce and behind the counter to be "genteel," to wear good clothes, and to escape the manual toil of the mechanic and artisan. No doubt there is some truth in this conception. The average clerk in a city store has no very broad conception of life ; he lacks humor to appreciate himself at his own real and small social value; he is prone to look down upon the skilled workman as of a lower social class. Again we hear disapprobation expressed because girls who have to earn their own living generally prefer to enter stores and factories than to go into homes as domestic servants. Those who express such disapproval should first be careful that they have some acquaintance with both sides of the question.' And those who consider the mercantile employees "the most despicable of classes" will do well to pause and inquire how many of these young men and women are drawn into stuffy offices, crowded department stores, and unhealthy fac- tories by the siren cry " Room at the top!" — and this when in fact every one knows that the room at the top will suffice for a very few only, and that the business world is not a pyramid on its apex, but one on the broad, solid base constituted by the thousands of ordinary men and women who have to do the every-day tasks of the world. As it is hope of power and influence that draws an ever increasing number of college graduates into the legal profession, just so is it hope of advancement, fully as much as desire to be genteel and to escape manual labor, that draws young men and women of more modest education into the endless chain of office and shop work from which few can actually escape to higher levels. It was a recog- nition of this overcrowding of the ranks of mercantile employment by men and women of moderate attainments that led M. Leroy- BeauHeu to write, as far back as 188 1: "Le pauperism qui est a craindre aujourd'hui, ce n'est pas celui des mis^rables qui ne savent ne lire ni ecrire, c'est le pauperism des hommes instruits, plus au moins capables de toute tiche de bureau; voilk les vrais pauvres dont la civihsation, si elle n'y prend garde, produira des legions k I'avenir." ^ This opinion, it seems to us, has been borne out by ' See, for a sympathetic analysis of the reasons for the girls' choice of store and factory in preference to domestic service, Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, chapter iv. 2 De la Repartition des Richesses, pp. 558-59. I06 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON the developments of the quarter- century which has passed since it was expressed. It can hardly be doubted by any one acquainted with the conditions that comparative poverty in the lodging-house population, characterized by the presence of so many mercantile employees, is as grinding as in the tenements, and that among the lodgers there is perhaps a more poignant sufiFering from loneliness and absence of friends and home hfe than is dreamed of among tenement-dwellers. Finally we have to record a fact which will no doubt be new to most readers. The lodging-house is not free from that more sordid type of poverty that renders necessary the good offices and aid of the charity visitor. We shall show in a later chapter, moreover, that the lodging-house tends to be a breeding-place for more serious forms of social degeneration; here we have to look a moment at the connection existing between the lodging-house and actual pauperism. District 12 of the Associated Charities covers a large part of the South End tenement, and nearly all of the South End lodging-house district. During the year 1903-4 about 165 new cases were recorded on its books, of which more than one half came from lodging- houses. Charity officers in the district say that the number of lodg- ing-house cases is on the increase. Philanthropical workers who have had years of experience in the district bear evidence to the amount of real poverty encountered. That we should find a certain number of human derelicts in the furnished-room house is natural. When families lose their means of support, when husbands lose their positions, and wives are compelled to go out and do battle in a world for which they unfortunately have had no practical business training, when homes break up and household goods and furniture — those last anchors of men and women to a sense of ownership and a permanent interest in a fixed abode — are lost, then the lodging- house with its "furnished room to let" becomes the only refuge. Let an individual "down on his luck" once lose all his personal property save what he can carry in his trunk or wear on his back, let him once enter a furnished-room house and once be reduced to calling for charity aid, and the chances are that he is on a downward pathway from which it will be diflBcult for him to rescue himself or for any one to save him. We can make only slight reference to THE LODGER: ECONOMIC CONDITION 107 this subject here. It was our purpose to give outlines of several lodging-house cases taken from the records of the Associated Charities, and also of two or three which have come under our personal view, but space does not permit. We may, however, record one case which, though not typical in the sense of being common, is nevertheless suggestive of the unexpected variety of misery which now and then comes to light. The man was a piano-tuner by profession, and was not a mean performer on the lighter stringed instruments. According to his own story, which there was no reason whatever to doubt, he had been a prosperous teacher of mandolin and guitar in Texas, in San Francisco, and finally in Massachusetts. Struck with a run of hard luck in losing most of his pupils, and unable to get enough piano-tuning to make a living, he made one more move, to Boston. There, after some months' struggle, he was forced to apply to the Associated Charities for aid. He was found on the top floor of a Tremont Street lodging-house with his wife and sick baby. Out of work, without friends, acquaintances, or business connections, he was daily making desperate efforts to get a job as piano-tuner or to get a few pupils. He had not succeeded in either. The weeks ran along and the couple managed to live on an occasional odd job of tuning and aid advanced by the Associated Charities. Meanwhile they were able to pay no rent, winter was coming on, and their room had no heat, and another baby was expected. The house was kept by an old couple who had not the heart to turn them out. A visit to their room took one up two flights of dark winding stairs, over carpets gray with age and dirt, and through halls permeated with the various odors of cooking and the dead air which quickly accumulates in a second-rate lodging-house. In response to a knock, one was admitted into a large room, the air of which was if possible worse than that of the hall outside. A gas stove burning out what little oxygen there is, cooking going on in an alcove, and win- dows tightly closed to keep out December cold, are in combination enough to explain haggard faces and sick babies. On one occasion, when the temperature was below zero, the couple sat up all night between two gas stoves. Soon afterward the second baby was born, and the couple were persuaded to move to cheaper quarters in a tenement-house. The man had still managed to retain a strong I08 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON self-respect and a beautiful set of piano-tuning tools, and when last heard of had obtained a temporary job in a piano- factory. The subject of poverty in the rooming-house deserves more ex- tended treatment than we can here give to it. There is material in the charity records for a study of this particular phase of poverty and of the influence of lodging-house Ufe on pauperism, which would be of definite value were it made. CHAPTER XIII THE lodger: his life and social condition Of the social conditions characterizing rooming-house Hfe, not the least important is the remarkable isolation of the individual lodger from his fellows, — the absence of all semblance of home ties, of companionship and friendship, and, for hundreds of young men and women, even of mere acquaintances. There is no true social life within the lodging-house. Without the spiritual or intel- lectual reward that hermits are supposed to have for their isolation, many lodgers lead hermits' existence. Their place in the world is anomalous. Surrounded by thousands of their own age and social position, they are as much alone, in the crowd, as they would be on the most lonely farm on some windswept New England hillside. That the lodgers, taking them by and large, do not know each other is the evidence of all who are conversant with the life of the South End district. Lodgers themselves, landladies, church, charity, and philanthropical workers, real-estate men, and proprietors of room registries, all testify to this fact. An especially striking instance of this isolation came to the writer's attention during the winter of 1903-04. A young artist who had been earning his living by illus- trating newspapers and magazines fell out of work and was in destitute circumstances. Through a chance acquaintanceship with a philanthropic worker who lived near by, he was helped along during the winter with an odd job here and there. Then, toward spring, some one discovered living in the same house with him, during all the time of his lack of employment, another illustrator who had had more work than he could handle, and who had been looking for an assistant. The two men were introduced, to their mutual advantage, but previous to their introduction by an outsider they' had never spoken to each other, although meeting nearly every day. To what causes may such isolation be attributed? Differences of nationality and employment may have some slight effect in this direction, but not much. We have seen some tendency of persons no THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON in the same occupation to congregate in the same general locality — an indication, perhaps, of some degree of sociability within the locality. Within individual houses, however, we found a large number of employments represented, and can scarcely doubt that the resultant tendency is for the lodgers of the same house to keep individually to themselves. A far stronger cause of isolation is the lack of fixed residence on the part of most lodgers. As we have seen, fully one half the lodging-house population changes its residence every year. The inmates of a house are continually changing — old ones dropping out, whither who knows, and new ones hovering in, whence and with what antecedent connections who can tell? The absence of gatherings of lodgers, indeed of any room in which they may gather, and of any occasion for such gathering, contribute further to the general desolateness of lodging-house life. There is no lingering after meals, no singing, no discussion, no summer afternoon excursion planned by the lodgers of a house. Only in rare instances has a rooming-house a homelike atmosphere. The landlady, even if she wished, might find it hard to bring her lodgers together; for if the average landlady looks upon her lodger simply and solely as a rent-paying organism, the lodger returns the com- pKment by regarding her as a creature whose duty it is to sweep his room, make his bed, and mind her own business. With this attitude of mutual indifference, not to say veiled hostility, between landlady and lodger, place the uncongeniality which must exist between people who are kept strangers to each other through fre- quent change of address, differences in employment, in ideas and in mental horizon, and lack of opportunities to meet in friendly intercourse. Isolation is the natural result.' ' Walter Besant's Autobiography contains an expressive passage on the isolation of the lodger: " When I was tired and hungry I would look for a chop-house, dine, and then walk slowly home to my lodgings, taking a cup of coffee at a coffee-house on the way. I ought to have stayed home in the evening, and worked, but Featherstone Buildings is a very quiet place. In the evening the place was absolutely silent. The silence sometimes helped me to work, sometimes it got on my nerves and became intolerable. I would then go out and wander about the streets for the sake of animation, the crowds and the lights, or I would go half-price — a shilling — to the pit of the theatre, or I would drop into a casino and sit in the comer and look on at the dancing. The thing was risky, but I came to no harm. To this day I cannot think of those lonely evenings in my London lodging without a touch of the old terror. I see myself sitting THE LODGER: HIS LIFE AND SOCIAL CONDITION III In one sense, of course, all individuals are isolated, but many a lodger may not have even the solace of chance acquaintances. In the lodging-house world, furthermore, isolation has its own peculiar dangers. Take the typical case of a young fellow coming in from the country to earn his living. He has secured a position in some mercantile estabhshment at eight or ten dollars a week. He comes to the city an absolute stranger, ignorant of its complex- ities, destitute of worldly wisdom, and very probably unprovided with that strong, self-rehant moral reason, without which he will be at sea when he encounters the host of confusing problems his new hfe will certainly present. He first must find a place to live, which, for the time being, means a place to eat and sleep. In the old days he would probably have been taken in by some kindly-disposed boarding-house landlady, but to-day the motherly landlady is chiefly a dream of the past. What, then, are the steps by which he acquires his introduction to city life ? First of all he lands in some lodging-house. It may be a homelike place, one of the most reput- able lodging-houses in the city. It may be a den of thieves and pros- titutes. The chances are that it is neither, but simply one of the hundreds of nondescript, mediocre houses of the South or West End. He has a typical little six-by-eight hall bedroom. He sees little or nothing of the other lodgers, even of those on the same floor with himself. He takes his meals in some near-by basement dining- room. The only acquaintances he makes for a long time are the casual ones of the office and counter. He may begin to drift into a saloon or a pool-room on his way home in the evening and thus pick up a few more connections. As time goes on and he becomes more and more sophisticated he will not scruple to follow up the chance meetings of the cafe table, and finally those of the lodging- house itself. In fact it is conceivable that his first acquaintances may be in the house. They may be either good or bad; in either case they are accidental and casual. But the possibilities wrapped up in such casual meetings are not incapable of assuming a danger- at a table, books stretched out before me. I go to work. Presently I sit up and look around. The silence is too much for me. I take my hat and go out. There are thousands of young fellows to-day who find, as I found every evening, the silence and loneUness intolerable." — Quoted in a pamphlet recently issued by the American Institute of Social Service. 1 1 2 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON ous aspect; as when a woman of immoral type happens to take a room next to the young country lad on the third floor rear. The general absence of a reception-room for the use of roomers and their friends is a very important cause for the lack of social life and companionship. Landladies affirm, as we saw in Chapter vm, and with good show of reason, that they cannot afford the loss of rent which would necessarily result from the reserval of a room as a public parlor. But the fact that lodgers do not demand this require- ment of common decency shows how the pressure of economic necessity will modify moral conventions and standards. Probably not one girl in a hundred who finds herself in a rooming-house would have thought while at home of receiving a gentleman caller in her bedroom. Yet ninety per cent, of the women lodgers, if they associate with men at all, must either receive them in that way or loiter with them in the streets. Some landladies, indeed, go farther and prescribe definite rules hampering or preventing social inter- course in their houses. A few prohibit their lodgers, especially women, from having callers at all. One landlady will not have people in her house who exchange visits because she feels that they will be sure to get discontented by discussing herself and her house. On the other hand, isolation is not entirely due to the landlady and economic conditions. Many women lodgers take great care not to make acquaintance to any extent with people in the same house, often because of some disagreeable experience or for the sake of protecting their privacy, about which they are sometimes over- solicitous. With social intercourse hampered in so many ways, spare time — evenings and Sundays — hangs heavily on the roomer. He is not a church-going person, and his chief literary resource is the Sunday newspaper. Whether that satisfies the cravings of his soul after enlightenment we do not know. In the summer-time, when the warm evenings come, the lodger deserts his room for the front steps. Probably more lodgers come to know each other in these spring and summer evening loiterings than in any other way. What the average lodger does with his long evenings in the winter is something of a mystery. He has the evening paper (not the "Transcript," which is too expensive), but few books. In the many rooms of lodgers which THE LODGER: HIS LIFE AND SOCIAL CONDITION II3 the writer has seen in different parts of the district, books and evidences of reading were rare exceptions. The lodger Hves in his trunk. Books would be an impediment, even could he afford to buy them. There is, of course, considerable visiting back and forth between lodgers who have been in the city long enough to get acquainted, but the amount is not great, and certainly not so great as it would be were there civilized facilities for the reception of callers. The theatres of the South End help to while away an occa- sional evening. Probably one reason melodrama has such a hold on the South End would be found in the dreary routine of the life of the lodger and tenement-dweller. Various educational advantages are within reach of the lodger, if he only knew of them more generally. The Public Library is easily accessible from the district. The South End Branch of it was located, prior to 1904, in the basement of the Enghsh High School — a poor situation. Probably comparatively few lodgers knew of its existence at all. It now, however, occupies the old Everyday Church building on Shawmut Avenue, is above ground, easily accessible, near the centre of the district, and it bids fair to increase rapidly in usefulness. Chief of the educational advantages in the neighborhood, avail- able for lodgers, is the Central Evening High School, held in the building of the English High. The school provides "special advan- tages for those who are employed during the day and who desire a thorough and practical training to assist them in securing advance- ment in business. The courses of study comprise all the studies of the day high school and of the practical business college. The school is open free of charge to all persons living in Boston who are above fourteen years of age." ' A considerable share of its pupils are said to be lodgers.^ The Mercantile Library Club, on Tremont Street, has a membership of one hundred about equally divided between past residents of the districts and the better class of lodgers. ' From the Announcement of the school. ' The writer asked the School Committee for the privilege of examining the card catalogue of the school's enrollment for the purpose of ascertaining exactly to what extent the lodging-house population avails itself of the school, but for reasons known only to themselves the officials of the Committee refused to grant the request. Other- wise we should be able to give much more definite information on an important point. 114 ^^^ LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON Parker Memorial, on Berkeley Street, an institutional Unitarian church, and Shawmut Congregational Church, on Tremont Street, offer many advantages to roomers, as do also the Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations and the Young Men's Christian Union. The South End House, with its staff of university settlement workers, is also seeking gradually to extend various social and educational advantages to lodgers.' ' For the work of the South End House in attacking the lodging-house problem, see South End House Report, 1906, pp. 8, 24, and 25, and earlier reports. CHAPTER XIV VITAL STATISTICS Sec. I. Statistical Data It would be surprising if a population group so well defined as that of the South End lodging-house district had no noticeable influence upon the phenomena of births, deaths, marriages, density and age-grouping of population, sex-distribution, sickness and health, and the like. In this chapter we shall try to ascertain what influences can be traced to the lodging-house. Perhaps the most important consideration in this connection is the influence of the lodging-house on the marriage-rate, and on the question of race- perpetuation or race-suicide, which has been more or less in the public consciousness for the past few years. The question of mar- riage is reserved to a later chapter. This chapter will be devoted to density of population, age- and sex-distribution, and births and deaths. It should be understood at the outset that the conclusions we may reach in this chapter are approximations only, and that they are not highly refined statistical deductions. Much as we should prefer accuracy and refinement, we cannot, in the present state of urban statistics, attain them. This is especially true of an inquiry, hke the present one, limited to a single and specific population-group covering a limited territory not exactly coextensive with any com- bination of administrative districts for which statistics are pub- hshed. The statistical data in any way available are discouragingly meagre and inadequate, not to say misleading. In the present conditions of our public statistical bureaus specialized and localized statistics are perhaps not to be looked for. They can be had only when the bureaus are given larger resources in appropriations, in working force, and in leaders who understand the value of special social statistics for small areas. We have not, unfortunately, a Charles Booth always standing ready to meet the expense of collect- ing facts and statistics concerning the life and labor of every branch of the population, and of every unknown section of the city; other- wise we should not remain in such dense ignorance of the conditions Il6 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON for existence surrounding great masses of people who are practically our next-door neighbors. How great is the dearth of statistical data and how it baffles the investigator may perhaps be seen as we pro- ceed.' If the lodging-house section were coterminous with ward boundaries, or if some one ward were entirely filled with lodging- houses, it would be easy to utilize the ward statistics at present available, so far as they go. Unfortunately, however, the South End lodging-house district covers parts of three different wards. Ward 9 is a lodging-house section in its western portion; about half of Ward 10 is a lodging-house district; and Ward 12 is almost entirely, but not completely, a lodging-house district. Little use can be made of the statistics of Wards 9 and 10 by themselves, and in using those of Ward 12, par excellence the lodging-house ward of the city, we must bear in mind that certain disturbing influences deflect the figures from what they would be did they apply to a purely lodging- house population. These disturbing elements are, first, five or six ' Urban population and vital statistics, if given at all for a unit smaller than the city as a whole, are given by wards or other large administrative districts which have practically no relation to population-groups, and in which changes of boundary from time to time render comparison at different periods of time difl&cult and some- times impossible. Moreover, such districts are too large to give accurate results. Were data collected and published by voting precincts, or better, by equally small but permanent statistical divisions, most of these difficulties would be obviated, because precincts are so small that the investigator could combine them at pleasure so as to include just that area he wished to include and no more. As yet, however, with the exception of simple statistics of population, the ward is the smallest unit used. The only data for accurate charting and calculating of density of population are published in the t,isI Annual Report of the Mass. Bureau of Statistics of Labor (1900), pp. 57-60, where population by precincts for 1895 and 1900 is given, and the pre- liminary returns of the State Census of 1905 on Population and Legal Voters (pp. 10, 11). For age-distribution there is nothing published, either by wards or precincts. The only material even remotely available on this point consists of statistics by wards of persons of school age, to be found in the Twelfth Census, Population, part i, p. 222, and in the Reports of the Boston School Committee, the City Statistical Department, and the Municipal Register. For sex-distribution statistics by wards are given in the Annual Report of the Registry Department of the City of Boston (since 1901). No statistics of morbidity are available. For marriages statistics are published only for the city as a whole, in the reports of the City Registry Department. Previous to 1901 this Department published its statistics only for the city at large, but since that year certain vital statistics have been published by wards — an innovation for which the City Registrar deserves sincere thanks. It is to be hoped that a way may be cleared for an extension of this policy. VITAL STATISTICS II7 short tenement-house streets, secondly, a number of apartment- houses, and thirdly, a few private residences. Their effect will be noted as we proceed. In considering the influence of lodging-house life upon vital statistics it is convenient to distinguish between general and special influences. The ultimate purpose of all statistics is to furnish facts about the public welfare, and data upon which suggestions for im- provement may find logical foundation. Certain phenomena are of prime importance in themselves as having a direct and forceful influence upon the public weal. Such are births, deaths, and mar- riages, and to a lesser extent, density of population. Statistical knowledge of these phenomena is directly valuable. Other phe- nomena are important because of the influence they exert over birth and death rates, the number of marriages, the size of families, and the hke. Age and sex, density of population, nationahty or race, occupation, etc., are influences of a general nature active everywhere at all times. In addition to these may be mentioned certain more specific influences peculiar to city life. Here we must place the sani- tary condition of the houses and streets, regularity or irregularity of living, prevalence or absence of prostitution, intemperance, crime, the general physical condition of the people,' and last but not least, their psychological state. With all these influences, general and special, the lodging-house has a more or less distinct connection, either as affected by them or as affecting them. Its connection with birth-rates is direct and unmistakable. Some influence can also be traced on death-rates and on density of population. There is also an indirect influence on all these phenomena through the sex and age constitution of the lodging-house population, and through the physical and moral environment the rooming-house throws about the individual. Sec. II. Density of Population It may be laid down as a rule, well borne out as we shall see by statistical data, and certainly corroborated by personal knowledge • Much is to be looked for in this particular matter not only from statistics of mortality and morbidity, but from the physical examinations and anthropometry in our gymnasiums. It is not too much to hope that every ward in the city will eventually be provided with a municipal gymnasium and a trained physical director. Il8 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON of lodging-house conditions, that wherever a private residence degenerates into a lodging-house the natural consequence is an increase in the number of people living under its roof. The South End residence of twenty-five years ago Wcis the exact prototype of the private residence of the Back Bay (Ward ii) to-day. Some indication of the increase in the number of persons per dwell- ing in the South End since it became a lodging-house section may therefore be had from a comparison with the present Back Bay district. In 1900 Ward 12, our lodging-house ward, had an average of 10.81 persons per dweUing; that for Ward 11 was only 6.66 per dwelling. Taking these figures as they stand, we should con- clude that a change from a private residence to a lodging-house will in the long run result in an increase of about four persons per dwelling. This simple deduction, however, would fall short of the truth. Four of the precincts of Ward 11 with a population of 9840 — more than half the total population of the ward — are in the West End and up the side of Beacon Hill, and, with the exception of a few streets on the Hill where many old Boston families still cling, constitute a district of densely populated tenement- and lodging-houses. The other five precincts, with a population of 9434, constitute a fashionable residence district. It is evident that the crowded houses of the four West End precincts must very appre- ciably raise the average number of persons per dwelling for the ward as a whole. How much less than 6.66 the average would be for the private residence section alone it is impossible to say, but it would certainly be reduced materially.' It might on the other hand be objected that the average for Ward 12 is raised by the tenement- houses in the ward, but the objection would be ill-founded because the tenement-houses of the ward are all small, and the effect, if anything, would be to reduce rather than increase the average number of persons per dwelling. On the whole, therefore, it seems likely that if we could but isolate the statistics for the private resi- dence on the one hand and those for the lodging-house on the other, we should find that the change from private residence to lodging- house would result in at least a doubling of population. This con- ' We have to remember, however, that while Back Bay families may be small they may have a bountiful supply of servants. In the lower Back Bay it is not uncom- mon to find from six to nine servants living in a house. VITAL STATISTICS II9 elusion is more than substantiated by personal observation. Taking nearly a hundred houses as a basis, the writer found the average number per house to be a trifle over fourteen. How many private residences of the Back Bay contain half this number ? That Ward 12 (even including as it does not only the vast body of rooming-houses, but also the numerous apartment-houses, a con- siderable number of small tenements, and a sprinkling of private houses, which tend to lower the average) has a high average number of persons per dwelling, when compared with other sections of the city, may be seen from Table 41. The general situation and charac- ter of each ward is noted in the table, and may be of interest in connection with the other tables of this chapter. Table 41. average number of persons to a dwelling, bos- ton, BY WARDS Location and character of ward North End; foreign tenement. West End; foreign tenement. South Cove; tenement-houses. South End; tenement- and lodging-houses. Charlestown; tenement-houses. East Boston; tenement-houses. Back Bay and South End; lodging- and apart- ment-houses. Roxbury; largely tenement-houses. Charlestown; tenement houses. South Boston; tenement-houses. Roxbury; tenement-houses. South End; lodging-houses. Roxbury; tenement-houses. South Boston; tenement- and apartment-houses. Roxbury; miscellaneous. South Boston; tenement-houses. East Boston; miscellaneous. ' Calculated by dividing the population of each ward as given in the State Census of 1905 by the number of dwellings in the ward as given by the latest Report of the City Registrar. See Population and Legal Voters (preliminary pamphlet of the census of 1905) pp. 9-1 1 ; and Annual Report of the Registry Department of the City of Boston, 1904, p. 297. The figures here calculated are more accurate than the latest available Registry figures, because based on actual population, and not estimated, returns. ' Annual Report of Registry Department, 1902, p. 268. For the Registrar's method of adjusting the census figures (of 1900) to the number of dwelhngs as shown by the returns of the City Assessing Department see the same Report, pp. 214-215. /ard Persons to a dwelling 1904-5* 1902^ 6 19.6 20.33 8 16.2 15-77 7 12.3 11.66 9 11.9 ^Zii 3 II. 9 9 21 2 11.4 10.43 10 10.9 10.48 19 10. 1 10.00 5 lO.O 9.92 13 9-7 10.56 18 94 9.88 12 g.2 10.81 17 9.2 936 14 8.8 8.54 22 8.6 7-73 15 84 8.48 I 8.1 756 21 7-9 7-55 20 7.6 6.68 II 7-3 6.66 23 6.7 6.35 24 6.7 6.25 4 6.7 7.29 25 S-i S.61 i6 4.8 8.49 120 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON Roxbury; miscellaneous. Dorchester; residences and apartment-houses. Back Bay; fine residences and apartment-houses. West Roxbury; suburban district. Dorchester; suburban district. Charlestown; miscellaneous. Brighton; suburban district. Dorchester; largely tenement-houses, and much vacant land. The table shows well the characteristic density resulting from the presence of the lodging-house. In 1902 only four wards had a greater estimated density per dwelling than Ward 12, and these were without exception the great tenement-house wards of the city. By 1904 Ward 12 had fallen to tenth place, but still ranked among the dense tenement-house wards. The ten wards showing the highest averages are all either tenement-house or lodging-house wards. According to the State Census of 1905 the population of Ward 12 has declined (see page 7), owing probably to the encroachment of business. The estimates of the Registry Department may there- fore be erroneous, but not flagrantly so; or it may be that the very encroachment of business deprives the district of more houses than it does, in proportion, of population, and that the number of per- sons per dwelling may still rise. Ward 11, which is like the South End as it was a quarter-century ago, comes near the bottom. Naturally the suburban wards have the lowest averages. The changes of whole streets, precincts, or wards from private residences to lodging-houses, which gradually took place in the South End, evidently can have but one result. The district will suffer a large increase in population. This increase in what is now the lodging-house district can actually be observed in the statistics covering the period in which the change took place. Ward 18, the old ward which previous to the change in ward lines in 1895 '^^ nearly coterminous with the present Ward 12, showed an increase of population in the decade 1885 to 1895 of 25 per cent. Between 1895 and 1900, also, the growth continued, but at a somewhat slower rate — about 9 per cent, increase for the five years. It is impossible to account for this growth on the basis of natural increase. The death-rate of the present ward far exceeds the birth-rate, and probably has done so for many years.' Nor can it be accounted for ' Birth- and death-rates by wards were not compiled previous to 1900. cmnrxuL •.•:v;.'-.--.>v.-v:;>/ •;.'.--->!v.\v.>;y!ii' :-sXA'5j.V'r.-0^iV.' ^X^:!^: Si :^v?;r3i*j' ri'i* -1 '.'.'"I'r '^^Vv ::c^ V«!f ■•^•:&t'^::;^U^ *•■>???•-; W^ ^i??As^ VITAL STATISTICS 121 to any extent by the erection and occupation of new buildings. The territory was already pretty completely covered with dwellings. Of late years a few cheap apartment-houses have been built, but they have usually taken the place of lodging-houses torn down or remodelled to make room for them. The only possible explanation of the increase, therefore, seems to be the influx of lodgers which took place within the decade 1885 to 1895 and continued with slightly diminished force to 1900.' That the South End rooming-house district is one of the most densely populated portions of the city may be seen from Chart xii. We are fortunate in possessing population statistics by voting pre- cincts for the year 1900 and also precinct maps showing the location and boundaries of each precinct.^ A glance at the map will show that the foreign and tenement- house wards. Wards 6 and 8, are by far the most densely populated portions of the city. After these come portions of Wards 13, 14, and 15, in South Boston, and Ward 9 in the South End. Ward 9 merits somewhat closer examination. The thickly populated western portion, next to Ward 12, is a typical lodging-house district. It is in fact, as will be seen by reference to Chart xiii, the most densely populated portion of the lodging-house section, so far as we can judge by male lodgers alone. Judging of density by the imperfect standard of number of per- sons per acre, Ward 12 stands fifth, as shown by the following table: ' See Chapter in. ^ See the Report for igoo of the Mass. Bureau of Statistics of Labor. With the data it is possible to construct a fairly accurate map of density. Each dot in the chart represents approximately one hundred persons, and the dots are placed within the precincts as nearly as possible where the population actually is. The precinct out- lines are then erased, that the map may not be too complicated. Large park areas and uninhabited spaces, such as docks, railroad yards, unfilled flats, outlying and unsettled territory, are given no dots. These uninhabited areas are located with the help of a large map of the city, in connection with careful personal observation. This method of showing density is as accurate as can be attained with the data at hand. Compared with the usual method of representing density by wards and scattering the density uniformly over each respective ward the method here followed is perfection itself, because it puts the population where it belongs. A map of the city in the old way gives Ward 6 a much less dense population than either Ward 8 or Ward 9, whereas the truth is that Ward 6 (the North End) is fully as densely populated as Ward 8 (the West End) and that the greater part of Ward 9 does not compare vdth either in density. 122 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON Table 42. density of population, by wards, boston, 1904-5 ' Ward Density Ward Density Ward Density 8 185.6 10 60.5 19 38-4 9 119.0 17 57-4 22 36.S 6 102.3 14 57-4 13 35-8 18 100.6 3 44.6 II 35-2 12 92-5 4 4I-S 20 30.2 IS 83.6 21 41.4 1 22.2 2 72.6 7 39-5 24 14.6 5 61.7 16 38.6 25 23 7-9 3-4 To summarize the results obtained from such population and density statistics as are available, we find, (i) that both statistics and experience will show a large increase in the number of persons per dwelling wherever a private residence district changes to lodg- ing-houses; (2) that the notable increase of population since 1885 (up to 1900) in what is now the South End lodging-house district coincided in time with the change from private residences to lodging- houses and was due to that change; (3) that the present lodging- house district is one of the most densely populated portions of the city, second only to the most densely populated tenement-house districts. Sec. III. The influence of the lodging-house on distribution of population by sex For this phase of the subject we have three contradictory sets of data: first, the statistics of sex-distribution by wards; secondly, statistics of the sex of boarders and lodgers in 1895; and thirdly, the results of some personal observation. The following table gives the ward statistics: Table 43. percentage of males and of females to total WARD population, 1901 ^ Excess of males Excess of Females 11.2 10.4 94 8.6 ' Compiled from ward areas given in City Registrar's Report, 1904, p. 297, and ward population in 1905 given in preliminary pamphlet of State Census of 1905, Population and Legal Voters, pp. 9-1 1. ' Calculated from the Report of the Registry Department, Boston, 1901, p. 11. Ward Males Females 6 55.6 44-4 7 55-2 44-8 8 54-7 45-3 S 54-3 45-7 VITAL STATISTICS 1 23 Table 43- - continued Ward Males Females Excess of Males Excess of Females 2 53-1 46.9 6.2 9 51.8 48.2 3-6 13 50-9 49.1 1.8 14 50.6 49-4 1.2 4 50.2 49.8 ■4 3 50.0 50.0 .0 .0 18 49.4 50.6 1.2 I 49.1 50-9 1.8 25 48.8 SI-2 2.4 17 48.6 51-4 2.8 23 48.4 Si-6 3-2 15 47-9 521 4.2 16 47.6 52.4 4.8 24 47.6 52.4 4.8 19 47-4 52 6 5-2 22 47-4 52.6 5-2 10 45 7 543 8.6 20 45-5 54-5 9.0 12 44.2 55-S I J. 6 21 42.6 57-4 14.8 II 41.0 59.0 18.0 In connection with this table attention is also called to Chart xiv, showing the geographical distribution of the preponderance of sex one way or the other. The strongest determinant of relative percentages of the sexes is nationality. A glance at the map will show that the wards which have an excess of males (Wards 6, 7, 8, 5, 2, 9, 14, 13, and 3) form a belt across the city from north to south, including all of Charlestown, the western portion of East Boston, all of the North and West Ends, the South Cove (Ward 7), and the greater part of South Boston. These wards contain the great foreign population of the city. On the other hand, as shown by the map, and the table, the wards which show an excess of females are, generally speaking, and with the exception of Ward 12, the residential wards of the Back Bay and the outlying portions of the city. The largest percentage excess of females is in Ward 11, the Back Bay, where there are 18 per cent, more women than men.' Next comes Ward 21, an attractive residence district contiguous to ' In Ward 11 the excess of women is in some measure due to the large number of female domestic servants. 124 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON Franklin Park. Ward 12 comes third, with an excess of 11.6 per cent. Compare this with the excess of females for Boston as a whole, 1.7 per cent., or with the 16.6 per cent, excess in Brookhne, which is said to have the largest excess of females in proportion to its size of any city or town in the United States. Ward statistics, it is evident, indicates that the South End lodging-house district, including not only lodgers, but all its other residents as well, has an exceedingly high excess of females. When, on the other hand, we examine the statistics of boarders and lodgers as published in the Census of Massachusetts for 1895, we find the relative percentages of males and females reversed. In 1895, ^S-i PS'^ cent, of the (then) 54,422 lodgers and boarders in Boston were males and only 34.9 per cent, females. In round num- bers the males comprised two thirds, and the females only one third of the total number. These two sets of data, high percentage of females in the typical lodging-house ward (Ward 12) and low percentage of females in the boarders and lodgers for the city as a whole in 1895, must be reconciled. If they are both to be taken without change or inter- pretation, the inevitable conclusion must be that there are not many lodgers in Ward 12, and this we know to be absolutely contrary to fact. A number of circumstances account for the conflict in the evidence. In the first place it may be doubted whether all the female lodgers would get enumerated in any census. Tucked away in rear, side, and attic rooms, and for the most part out of the house at work at day, they are easily overlooked. Landladies are much less dis- posed to give information about their women than about their men lodgers. Secondly, the statistics of boarders and lodgers in the state census include all classes of lodgers, whether inmates of the fur- nished-room house or of the ten-to-twenty cents a night dives of the West and North Ends. In this latter class of lodgings there is a very heavy preponderance of males, the class being composed largely of unmarried foreign laborers and of vagrants. Thirdly, the years that have elapsed since 1895 have been sufficient time to permit of a great increase in the number of women living in lodging-houses. The state census of 1905 will probably reveal whether such an increase has taken place.' Certain it is that the field of industry has been every- ' At the moment of writing these returns unfortunately are not yet available. VITAL STATISTICS 1 25 where opening to women, that girls as well as boys are more gener- ally leaving their homes and seeking employment in the shops and factories of the city, — that the tide which flows from the quiet countryside to the tumultuous urban centres, pouring its flood of unattached men and women into the rooming-houses, brings the sisters as well as the brothers, the daughters as well as the sons. Fourthly, there are some minor elements in Ward 12 which may tend to raise the percentage of women. Nearly all the lodging-house keepers are women, and it may be that the apartment-houses in the ward contain more women than men. But the three factors first mentioned are enough to explain the discrepancy in the statistics, and to show that the figures for 1895 are of no value to us in this connection. Finally our third source of information — personal investigation — corroborates the ward statistics, and indicates that the figures for Ward 1 2 as a whole give probably a correct idea of the sex-dis- tribution of the lodging-house population. In a count of nearly a hundred houses we found the number of men lodgers and of women lodgers substantially the same. Add the landladies, and we have a heavy excess of females. Sec. IV. Influence oj the lodging-house on the age-grouping oj population With the exception of the school census of persons of school age, no statistics of population by age-groups and wards are published. We have therefore endeavored to gain a few crumbs of information from the Precinct Lists of Male Residents, of which we have made use in other connections as well. The following table is constructed from an analysis of some of these lists, and gives the age-grouping of males over 20 years of age in three typical lodging-house precincts: Table 44. male adult lodgers by age-groups, three typical precincts Age-Groups: 20-2425-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 S°-S4 55-59 60-64 65-69 70 and over. Wd. 9- Free. 6. 116 180 163 107 87 72 65 27 28 16 17 Wd. 10, Free. 3- 119 149 98 6S 69 42 47 18 24 12 5 Wd. 12. Free. 2. 100 163 124 lOS lOI 57 60 36 32 19 23 Totals 335 492 38s 277 ^12 171 172 91 84 47 45 Averages 112 164 128 92 86 57 57 3° 28 16 15 126 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON So far as we can judge from such a table, which is imperfect because of the lack of data for the age-groups below twenty, at least 8i per cent, of the male lodgers are below fifty years of age, 63 per cent, below forty, and 51 per cent, below thirty-five. Over one third are between the ages of twenty and thirty. The considerable number of men over sixty years old, and even of seventy and over, should be noted. The lodgers in the main represent what should be the years of vigorous young manhood and womanhood; they are the active rank and file of the business and laboring world. The table, it must be remembered, is for adult males only; we have no statistics for women lodgers. The most striking fact about the age-grouping of lodgers is the almost total absence of children. Were it possible to isolate statistics for the lodging-houses alone, free from the influence of tenement- and apartment-houses, this fact could be brought out vividly. Even with the crude statistics which we have, the small number of children in the South End lodging-house district, roughly coexten- sive with Ward 12, is noticeable. The only statistics available for this matter are those of the school census. The following table gives the number of children of school age, 5 to 15 years, by wards, and the percentage to total population in each ward. The percentages, and not the absolute numbers, are of importance. Table 45. children of school age, 5 to 15 years, by wards fard Estimated popula- tion, igo2.' Children 5 to 15 years of age, 1902.^ Percentage of the total ward population.' 19 28,494 5,765 20.2 1 6 2 23,961 32,085 24,078 4,731 6,105 4,565 19.8 19.0 18.9 13 23 14 23,961 24,785 22,489 4,372 4,928 4,067 18.3 18.3 18.1 18 22 8 23,490 26,904 30,260 4.241 4.831 5.408 18.0 18.0 I7-S ' Annual Report of the Registry Department, Boston, 1902. ' Monthly Bulletin, City Statistics Department, October, 1903, Appendix, Table II, p. 270. ' Calculated. VITAL STATISTICS I 27 Ta BLE 45 — continued Estimated popula- Children 5 to 15 years Percentage of the Ward tion, T902. of age, 1902. total ward population. 16 21,017 3,670 17-4 25 20,252 3,533 17.4 24 28,494 4,928 17-3 17 26,256 4,560 17-3 15 20,664 3,505 16 9 20 34,13s 5,760 16.6 4 13-893 2,240 16.2 3 15,306 2,408 15-7 9 25,786 3,786 14.7 21 35,079 3,SS8 14.2 5 13,481 1,481 10.9 7 15,542 1,468 9.4 II 20,252 1,700 8.4 12 24^785 1,953 1.8 10 23,254 1,693 7-3 As in so many of our tables here again we find Wards 10, 11, and 12 in close company. Ward 10, consisting chiefly of lodging- and apartment-houses, has the smallest percentage of children, while Ward 12, lodging-houses, has practically no more. Compare its 7.8 per cent, with the 20.2 per cent, of Ward 19. A request to the Boston School Committee to be allowed to look over the registers of the grammar and primary schools drawing children from Ward 12, in order that an estimate might be made of the number of children coming from tenement-house streets and deducted from the figures given above for Ward 12, met with a re- fusal. Had the estimate been possible it would have been sufficient to show beyond a doubt that the lodging-house population is void of that life and brightness which only "a child in the house" can bring. Sec. V. Birth- and death-rates in the lodging-house district The small number of school age in Ward 12 would naturally lead one to expect a low birth-rate there. As a matter of fact, we find that the birth-rate is not only very low, but that it is the lowest of any ward in the city. The following table shows the unique position held by Wards 10, 11, and 12, in comparison with other wards: 128 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON Table 46. birth-rates, by wards, for i 900-1 904, and aver- age BIRTH-RATES FOR THE FIVE YEARS ' Average for fard 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 the five years.' 6 45-37 45-85 46.9 46.6 45-9 46.12 13 41.82 37-" 34-3 34-9 31-1 35-85 8 35-88 34.06 31.6 314 32.2 33-03 19 33-92 ii-T--!- 29.6 29.4 26.9 30-39 2 32-93 30.80 27-4 26.7 27.6 29.01 I 30-57 27.40 25-6 27-3 28.1 27.79 17 31-91 27-51 26.7 27.2 24.4 27-54 14 29.08 28.19 26.4 27.1 23-9 26.9s 18 31-15 27.21 25-4 25-7 23.6 26.61 16 29.42 24-54 27-4 27-3 24-3 26.59 3 26.91 25-30 26.2 25-9 26.3 26.12 25 27.12 25-09 27.8 24.2 24-5 25-74 4 25-74 26.60 23.8 23-8 24-7 24-93 7 29.36 25-05 25-8 21. 1 22.4 24-72 IS 28.47 26.52 22.3 23-7 22.5 24.69 20 24.69 23.10 22.7 23-7 23.6 2356 22 26.74 22.92 23.6 21.0 22.6 2337 9 25-3° 2459 22.8 22.0 21.4 23.19 24 2351 2434 21.7 21.2 22.4 22.63 23 23-77 21.32 21.7 25-5 19.0 22.26 5 22.43 22.19 21-5 20.8 21.6 21.70 21 19.10 19-85 19.7 16.7 17.2 18.51 II 12.34 12.70 13-3 14.2 I2-S 13.01 10 13-36 1330 11-3 11.9 12.9 12-55 12 11.67 11.70 13.2 1 1.8 11.07 ii.6g Chart XV shows graphically the birth-rates by wards. The birth-rate of Ward 12, 11.69, "^^ find to be lower than that even of such wards as 10 and 11, fashionable residence and apart- ment-house districts, where according to modern conditions we look for the lowest birth-rate. The extremely low birth-rate of all three of these wards may be reahzed by comparison with the average rate for the whole city, which for the five years, 1900 to 1904 inclusive, was 27.03. This is something more than twice as high as the rate of the three wards in question. It is a far cry, of course, to the enormous ' Compiled from the Annual Report of the Registry Department, Boston, 1904, Appendix A, pp. 245-293. ' Calculated. VITAL STATISTICS I 29 birth-rate of over 46 to the thousand in the North End (Ward 6), but the low rate of the Back Bay and of the lodging-house dis- trict of the South End can be brought out further by comparison with the suburban wards, which are naturally occupied chiefly by private residences. Could we in Ward 11 ehminate the influence of the foreign population of the West End portion of the ward, we should have a much lower birth-rate for the Back Bay than is actually shown in the table. Similarly in Ward 12 the tene- ment-house streets tend to raise the birth-rate far above what it would be for the lodging-houses alone. Even as they stand, how- ever, the figures are eloquent in what they tell of the influence of the lodging-house. As to the causes of the low birth-rate in Ward 11 it is not here our province to speak. For Ward 10 and Ward 12 little doubt can be entertained as to what are the influences active. In Ward 10 both apartment- and lodging-houses tend to reduce the rate to a minimum. In Ward 12 the influence is chiefly that of the lodging-house. The peculiar social conditions of lodging-house life, together with the economic condition of the lodging-house population, have to be taken into account. The low birth-rate can- not be due to the old age of the population, for it is composed of men and women as a rule in the prime of life; nor on the other hand can it be due to the youthfulness of the population, for there are no children in the lodging-house; nor can it be due to the scarcity of women to become mothers, for the ward contains a heavy excess of females. It must be due, therefore, to late mar- riages, and to the fact that when lodgers do marry they leave the district in a short time and take up their homes in the suburbs in that outer limbo of cheap frame apartment-houses or tene- ments which is neither city nor suburbs.* We return to this sub- ject in Chapter xviii. ' The extremely low birth-rate in the densely populated lodging-house districts, into which crowd so many young men and women who have come to the city to earn their fortunes, comes in curious contrast to Newsholme's statement that "A high birth-rate usually occurs in crowded districts, there being in these a much higher proportion of people at child-bearing age, owing to the in-rush of young workers in search of the higher town wages." — Vital Statistics, p 97. 130 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON For death-rates we have the following table: Table 47. death-rates, 1900 to 1904, and average for the five years, by wards ' Average for Ia.rd I goo 1901 1902 1903 1904 five years ' 7 2543 25.64 25-99 20.7 24.2 24-39 13 25.26 27.36 24-58 232 18.4 23-75 5 23.67 21.65 22.47 17.6 15-4 20.16 6 23.86 20.27 19-57 18.7 17.4 19.96 17 23.40 20.41 18.20 16.4 18.2 19.32 18 23.70 19.10 18.20 182 16.3 19.10 9 22-57 18.03 18.45 16.3 16.8 18.43 3 19-43 19.94 1751 16.3 16.3 17.90 4 19.92 19.46 17.27 17.1 15-2 17.79 14 18.17 17 81 16 27 16.7 17-3 17-25 2 18.34 18.80 16.90 14.1 16.5 16.93 19 18.61 17.07 17.26 158 14.9 16.73 15 18.17 16.21 18.48 14-5 iS-i 16.49 16 18.18 15-40 16.51 15-5 13-7 15.86 12 17-85 i6.gi 15-93 13-9 14.2 15-56 I 16.77 1462 15-90 15.6 14-5 15.48 23 14.00 2377 13-79 13-1 12.3 15-39 21 15.96 16.87 14-59 13-7 14.7 1536 ir 1774 15.02 14-36 14-7 13-4 15-04 20 14-43 15-84 16,05 13-7 14.0 14.80 8 i7-°3 16.59 14.60 I3-I 12.2 14-50 22 16.24 14.81 13.01 12.5 13.6 14-05 24 13-71 13-44 1393 14.2 13-7 13.80 10 14-85 15-37 13.28 12.6 12.4 13-70 25 12.24 13-91 13-77 13-6 13-° 13-30 The death-rate of Ward 12, it will be noted, is a little below the median; fourteen wards have a higher rate, ten a lower. The death- rate, as well as the birth-rate, of Ward 12 would be slightly lower if we could exclude the tenement-houses. Otherwise the relatively dense population of the ward seems to exert little influence on death- rates, though whatever effect it may have cannot be traced owing to the lack of statistics of population by age-groups. But the higher death-rates of some other wards are due to the less economical arrangement of houses on building-sites, worse sanitary appliances, ' Compiled from the Report of the Registry Department of the City of Boston. 1904, pp. 245-293. ' Calculated. VITAL STATISTICS 131 insalubrious ward topography, and less favorable age and sex- grouping, nationality, and employment. There is no reason to sup- pose that the lodging-house should exercise any very appreciable direct influence on death-rates. Sanitary conditions are not bad enough for that, nor are they so good as to cut down the rate. Probably, all in all, the mere physical surroundings of the lodger are not more unhealthful than those of the average city-dweller. But indirectly, through age-grouping and the like, the lodging-house may have some effect. Other things being equal we should look for one of the lowest death-rates in the city in Ward 12, since the bulk of the lodging-house population is in the prime of life ; with comparatively few births there are of necessity comparatively few infant deaths. But there are enough tenement children and babies in the district, and enough old people in the lodging-houses to prevent the death-rate from faUing to the minimum. The lowest death-rates naturally occur in the suburban wards. Ward 10, how- ever, which has next to the lowest death-rate, is a lodging- and apart- ment-house ward. There must be some peculiar constitution of population, of dwelhngs, or of topography to account for this. Probably the cause is to be found in the general absence of bad tenement-house streets, in the large amount of open land in the ward, and in the fact that it contains a lodging-house population in the years of life when death comes most seldom, and an apart- ment-house contingent chiefly of young and middle-aged people, with small families and few births, living in relatively new and modern flats, and in fairly comfortable circumstances. A comparison of the average birth- and death-rates of Tables 46 and 47 yields some further light on the position of the lodging-house district as regards population and social vitality. Table 48 arranges the wards in order of difference between average annual birth-rate and average annual death-rate, to the great disparagement of the apartment- house Ward 10, the aristocratic Back Bay Ward 11, and the lodging-house Ward 12. In each of these three wards, the deaths are in excess of the births. In none of them therefore is the ward population self-perpetuating. Ward 7 is the only other ward in the city that comes near this state of affairs, and Ward 7 is at the other end of the social scale from Ward 11. In Ward 7, notwithstanding a high birth-rate, the high infant mortality, the crowded conditions, 132 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON the unhealthful proximity to the stagnant waters of the harbor and South Bay raise the death-rate to a point almost sufficient to keep the population stationary. All the other wards show an excess of births over deaths, some little, others much. The most remarkable excess is that of Ward 8, because of the very high birth-rate and very low death-rate, two things which do not usually go together. This unique condition must be attributed to the Jewish population. In considering the position of Ward lo, ii, and 12, it is well to point out that their birth-rates are less than the death-rate of any ward in the city, while, with the exception of Ward 10, their death- rates do not fall in the lowest group. Chart xvi shows graphically this unfavorable relation between births and deaths.^ These three wards stretch across the city in a broad belt from the Charles River almost to the South Bay, and represent that part of Boston's popula- tion which is committing "race-suicide" at no uncertain rate.^ It is a phenomenon that deserves more thorough and more scientific study than it has yet received. Table 48. birth-rates and death-rates compared, by wards Excess of birth- Excess of death- rate over death- rate over birth- Ward Birth-rate Death-rate rate rate 6 46.12 19.96 26.16 8 33-03 14-50 18.53 19 30-39 16.73 13.66 25 25-74 13-30 12.44 I 27.79 15.48 12.31 13 35-85 23-75 12.10 2 29.01 16.93 12.08 16 26.59 15-86 10-73 14 26.9s 17-25 9.70 22 23-37 14-05 9-32 24 22.63 13.80 8.83 20 23-56 14.80 8.76 3 26.12 17.90 8.22 IS 24.69 16.49 8.20 ' The chart is based on the figures for igor, but would not be materially altered -were it changed to suit the averages for T900-1904. ' Should the changes in the building laws above alluded to (Chapter x) be made, and any considerable number of lodging-houses be remodelled into tenement- or low- priced apartment-houses, we should look for an increase in birth-rate, since married couples would take the place of single men and women. 0.2 « «-^ VITAL STATISTICS 133 Table 48 — continued. Excess of birth- Excess of death- rate over death- rate over birth- Ward Birth-rate Death-rate rate rate 18 26.61 19.10 7-Si 23 22.26 1539 7-37 4 2493 17.79 7.24 17 2754 19.32 6.22 9 23.19 18.43 4.76 21 18.51 15-36 3-iS 5 21.70 20.16 I-S4 7 24.72 24-39 •33 10 125s 13-70 I-IS II 13.01 iS-°4 2.03 12 11.69 15.48 3-79 CHAPTER XV CRIME AND PROSTITUTION The lodging-house has shown itself to exert a not unimportant influence upon the vital statistics of the city; it has disclosed to us new forms, or at least new conditions of poverty and dependence; and now we have to note that it presents certain still darker aspects of which it is our duty to speak in this chapter and the next. An assiduous and discriminating reader of the daily newspaper must be struck with the frequency with which the lodging-house appears in one role or another — generally an unenviable one — within its columns. The exact amount of crime connected with, or centring in a lodging-house district is problematic, but it is not small, and there is no room whatever to doubt its existence. Gambling, theft, counterfeiting, suicide, and murder, all come to light as occasional or frequent manifestations of the underworld of lodging-house life. The writer regrets that he has not kept a systematic record of the crimes connected with the rooming-house, so far as it has come under his observation. Such task must be left to those who follow out the more detailed investigation of the subject. Such accounts as came to notice without special search in Boston newspapers were saved, however, for the winter and spring of 1903-04; and some continuous acquaintance with the papers of four other large cities of the country, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and Cleveland convinces us that the conditions in Boston are duplicated elsewhere, no doubt in every large city in the country. In Boston, the rooming-house is dragged into the papers most often, perhaps, by the suicide of a lodger. At least eight instances came to notice in approximately eight months. There were doubt- less others as well ; and there have been many since. That the lodg- ing-house should be the scene of many such tragedies is natural. The friendless, the unemployed middle class men and girls in trouble and far from home drift to the rooming-house, sometimes of a better, sometimes of a worse type. The house itself is not in- CRIME AND PROSTITUTION 1 35 frequently the scene of the deed. More often, perhaps, we read that such and such a lodger has ended his troubles by jumping into the Charles River, or elsewhere away from home by some other means. The causes of the suicides are various, and they not infrequently throw a sidelight upon the inner life of the lodging-house district. Suicide of seduced girls is common; despondency due to financial troubles or to inabiUty to get work, and jealousies and intrigues over illicit love-affairs are also important causes. Sometimes the notice of the suicide is laconically brief, stating only the fact and the means: " Mary committed suicide this morning at St. last night by taking hydrate of chloral." During the winter of 1903-4, there were at least two murders and a double shooting in South End lodging-houses, all directly due to some form of jealousy. In one case a jealous man shot the woman who was living with him as his wife, and a man whom he had found with her. This was in a quiet and "eminently respectable" lodging- house on a reputable street. Scarcely a month after this case occurred another of similar nature on Washington Street, where a young man shot and killed a waitress who had been living with him as his wife but who refused to continue the relation. A month later the papers were reporting another tragedy: "Murder was done at the South End this noon, when shot and killed , whom he found in company with his wife. The crime was com- mitted in Mrs. 's room on the fourth floor of the lodging-house at St." These cases are of not so much significance in them- selves as of what lies beyond, and, never reaching a climax, murder or suicide, does not come to light. Crime of a less serious nature helps still further to darken the pages of the lodging-house record. When a daring shoplifter is wanted, or stolen goods are sought for, they are generally found in some lodging-house. Nearly a dozen cases of this kind, in the South End alone, came to our notice during the winter. A man and woman were locked up for stealing laundry, a shoplifter living in a South End rooming-house and selling her stolen goods in South End pawn-shops was arrested, and three men and a woman were apprehended for having stolen goods in their room. A doctor in a South End lodging-house was arrested for obtaining money from unsuspecting women under cover of "a good investment." 136 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON The following newspaper notice shows a kind of thief typical of the lodging-house: "A. B. aUas X. Y., of Quincy, was arrested last evening charged with being a lodging-house thief. He has a criminal record. He hired a room at St. and robbed the rooms of other lodgers when they were out." The lodging-house thief is a distinct class of criminal, just as is the shophfter or the pickpocket. His method as exemplified above is to hire a room in a lodging-house for a short time, and to seize the opportunity thus afforded to appropri- ate everything he can lay hands on. He takes jewelry and other personal property of the lodgers, or this faiUng, fills his suit-cases with rugs and bed-clothing. He corresponds in the lodging-house district to the "servant-girl thief" in the private residence districts. Another sort of thievery is the "jumping" of room-rent bills. This, however, does not appear to be a common evil. Few such cases are reported to the police, and most landladies say they have httle trouble on this score — probably because experience has rendered them doubly vigilant. The universal rule is that rents shall be paid in advance at least one week, and the unscrupulous roomer thus has Uttle chance to cheat the landlady. Sometimes cases of clever swindling occur. One girl, for instance, made a practice of getting in arrears with her rent and leaving a cheap, and empty, trunk for the consolation of the landlady. Another evil not uncommon in the lodging-house district is gambling. Whether the houses in which gambhng, through police raids and otherwise, comes to light are as a rule lodging-houses we are unable to state, but it is certain that gambling-houses and gambling-rooms exist within the confines of the lodging-house district, and even on what are considered the best streets.* Persons who content themselves with the idea that no gambhng goes on in the South End are cherishing a delusion. Even outward indications point plainly to the contrary. Just to what extent the lodging-house ' Of a raid in the best section of the South End we read i " Fifteen men were charged with being present where gambling implements were found, and one was alleged to have been the watchman. Eight packs of cards, 325 chips, a. gaming table, etc., were seized." And again: "About six p. M. officers of Station 5 raided a room at Ave. and seized two packs of cards, 190 chips, and gaming implements. Five men were arrested." In a raid on Shawmut Avenue during the winter one man lost his life by falling from the roof whither he had gone to escape the police who were raiding a gambling-room. CRIME AND PROSTITUTION 1 37 population as such is a participant in these operations it is not possible to say, but the important fact is that the evil forms part of the general and constant environment of the lodger, and that the unwary, or the naturally free-and-easy youth may at any time fall into its ways. We saw in Chapter iv that a number of Hquor-stores are situated in the district, and that, while there are practically no saloons within the district proper, many are situated on the borders, between the lodging-house district and the tenement-house regions beyond.* Nevertheless drunkenness is not a typical lodging-house evil in this country as it is abroad.^ In the cheaper houses which furnish "shelter to the wholly irresponsible, if not criminal element," in which "visitors arrive and depart any hour of the day or night," and "men and women lodgers pass in and out of each others' rooms indifferently," drunkenness and other evils of course go hand in hand.' Regions of such houses abound on Washington Street about Dover Street, and on the cross-streets to the eastward, on lower Tremont Street, lower Shawmut Avenue, on Harrison Avenue between Castle and Beach Streets, and in the West End. But the police report that an arrest for drunkenness in the better class of lodging-house is comparatively rare. The writer can testify, how- ever, that in one week in the winter of 1902-3 there were in the block where he was then living — one of the best streets in the South End — three disturbances calling for poUce intervention: a drunken cook in a basement dining-room, a drunken man beating his wife, and a midnight disturbance the exact character of which never came to light. The lodging-house district is a sort of sink into which are drained all the homeless vagabonds who live by their wits and by preying upon other people. All sorts of criminals naturally drift thither because they have no other haven of refuge, and in many cases no doubt because they find their victims in the lodging-house popula- ' The saloons on West Dedham and West Canton streets are essentially outside the district, because they draw their patronage from the tenement-house population of those streets and the obscure back streets near at hand. ' Cf. Georges Picot, "L'habitation ouvrifere a Paris — Le logement en garni." Academic des Sciences Morales et PolUiques, n. s., vol. 53, p. 673. 3 Cf. The City Wilderness, p. 167. 138 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON tion itself. Perhaps the chief reason, however, why lodging-houses — and these not the cheap transient houses merely, but well- equipped furnished-room houses in respectable districts — are so frequented by the criminal class is that here they can most easily evade the police, by frequent change of address. An interesting fact in this connection is that in the lodging-house district bordering on a certain short street in the South End the postman has between 4000 and 5000 letters a year which he cannot deliver owing to the way in which people move about, and often because landladies do not know the names of their lodgers. It is the evidence of the police that most of the criminals of the city live in lodging-houses, not of the South End exclusively, but more especially of the West End. Nor is it too much to say that the lodging-house makes criminals. When a young man and a young woman are thrown together in illicit relations by the very force and circumstances of lodging-house environment, and through the chain of events thus started, the girl becomes a suicide or the boy a murderer, the lodging-house must be held responsible for social dissolution. The connection between prostitution and crime is well recognized. Even a priori one would suppose that the free-and-easy relations of rooming-house life, and the promiscuousness with which persons of each sex, and of all occupations, education, and antecedents, are thrown together would lead often to criminal associations and then to criminal acts. We have inductive evidence that such is the case. Such, also, is the testimony of all who have had any experience with lodging-house life. A careful search of police records, were it permitted, or even of newspaper files, would more than substantiate the conclusion to which we are forced. An interesting sidelight is thrown on the breadth of view of public officials, when in the face of conditions such as these the probation officer of a city as large as Boston states that he traces absolutely no connection between lodging-houses and crime. The backwardness of criminal statistics in American cities is illustrated by the fact that, in Boston at least, no record of crime is kept by wards or precincts, or by the type of district and of houses in which crimes occur. While the police go on struggling, with fluctuating zeal, to suppress criminal tendencies, at least one source of crime CRIME AND PROSTITUTION 1 39 is left unattacked. It is time the conditions were acknowledged and given detailed technical study by those whose business it is to see that not only ready-made criminals are apprehended, but that new criminals shall not be produced needlessly because of our failure to attack the sources of crime, wherever discovered. The most anomalous aspect of crime in the lodging-house is its close juxtaposition to virtue. The good and evil sleep in adjoining rooms and sit vis-k-vis at the cafd table. Unsuspecting youth is thrown in contact with the hardened conscience whose sensibilities reach only to things gross and material; young men and women learn lessons in life from roug and prostitute, which tend sooner or later to break down their moral standards and to lower the moral plane of their action. Whether many young men and women are thrown directly with hardened criminals in the lodging-house is not the question, at least not the whole question. The fact is that they live next door to fearful possibilities, which often develop into actualities ; and what is of equal import, they become famihar with prostitution, accustomed to its constant presence in all its varied aspects. To this subject we now turn. No attempt to picture the lodging- house world would be even approximately accurate without some reference to this evil. In general it may be said that not only with regard to the extent of its presence in lodging-house districts, but with regard to its prevalence in other and unsuspected parts of the city the general thinking public knows altogether too little. It is to be hoped that some way will be found in the near future to afford ample funds and two or three expert investigators for the problem of prostitution as it presents itself in Boston. What is to be said here is only by way of suggestion as to what a careful and detailed special investigation would certainly reveal in the lodging-house district. It seems safe to say that there are few lodging-houses which may not at some time come under moral suspicion. We have already noted that landladies fall broadly into two classes — those who care and those who do not care. Constant vigilance on the part of the landlady, who must always be setting herself against the tendencies of rooming-house custom and pubhc feeling, is necessary to the maintenance of a house of irreproachable respectabihty. The I40 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON economic struggle she must make — the necessity of renting as many rooms as possible — results in a gradual and perhaps uncon- scious relaxation of her moral standards, at least in so far as they are applied in practice. Before she knows it she has dropped into the easy-going habit of not knowing too much about her lodgers, and various evils have crept into her house, of which moral laxness and downright prostitution may be the least. Prostitution appears under many different guises, nearly all of which can be found in the lodging-house district. First there are a considerable number of regular houses of prostitution. The writer was furnished a hst of fifteen by the New England Watch and Ward Society, and this by no means covers the known number of such houses in the. district. Oftentimes the police and every one else living near know these houses for what they are, but it is extremely difficult to get evidence that will satisfy the punctiliousness of the courts and secure conviction. The best of the houses are ostensibly elegant and very quiet private residences. They are always abso- lutely, almost deathly, quiet during the day, and even at night they are careful not to invite police surveillance by noise or by lighted windows. Although there is some slight tendency toward a grouping of disreputable houses in fixed centres, regular houses of ill-fame can be found on some of the best lodging-house streets. A second and much more frequent type of disreputable house is conducted under the guise of a lodging-house. It is very likely to display a conspicuous room-sign, and to have its street number posted in large characters in the door or window. It wiU take a few lodgers, as a blind, preferably of course men and transients, but it is primarily a house of prostitution and conducted by the mistress for that purpose. A variant of this type is that in which the landlady is not directly engaged in the traffic, but where, with her knowledge, live women of loose character who bring men to their rooms whenever they please. Rents in such houses are high. An especially interesting bit of evidence as to the possibilities of such houses came to the writer's notice. A prominent minister of the South End, who recently moved in from the suburbs, found himself together with his wife and a young girl intrusted to their care, in a house of this type. They had been there a month or two before they discovered it. The landlady had made all proper pre- CRIME AND PROSTITUTION 141 tensions of conducting a first-class rooming-house in every way above reproach. A still more common type of lodging-house (for we pass insensibly from out-and-out houses of prostitution to lodging-houses) is that in which with the landlady's tacit consent men lodgers may take women to their rooms. This is commonly known as a house "with privileges." ' In all these houses the landlady knows of the irregular practices. She knows that if she allows them under her roof she can reap a much higher price for her rooms. Outwardly such houses do not differ from the reputable lodging-house, and one might live in them for some little time before discovering their real character. The point to be noted is that an inexperienced young girl or young man coming to the city to hve for the first time is about as Ukely to land in one of the disreputable houses as in a safe place. Few lodging- house keepers require references from prospective lodgers. Many houses will take any lodgers that may come at any hour of the night or day. Such houses constitute themselves rivals of the hotel, for the accommodation of those transient couples who ostensibly as man and wife always "have just arrived in the city and want lodgings for the night." Prostitution may also go on within a house without the landlady's knowledge. Nearly every lodging-house keeper says she keeps a sharp watch over her lodgers, and that she keeps " only nice people." If she is not deceived in the second idea she certainly is in the first. Living in the basement, or even in the front parlor on the first floor, it is impossible for her to know much of what goes on on the floors above. The proximity of the rooms of men and women, the fact that they have, under lodging-house etiquette, perfect right to visit one another's rooms, and the quietness with which people can come in and out, render immoral practices not only easy, but almost ' Cf . The City Wilderness, pp. 1 67-8. Very much the same conditions are recorded for Parisian lodging-houses. "Le locataire en garni est done guett^ par ralcoolisme et ses perils croissants. Ce n'est pas le seul danger. A part un petit nombre de logeurs, les maStres de ces hdtels ne resistent pas a un genre de gain tout special. Sous le nom de chambre r&erv^ aux voyageurs, il y a au premifere ,^tage una pifece mieux meublfe. dont le tariff est arbitraire et le usage trhs suspect." — Georges Picot, in Seances et Travaux de I' Academic des Sciences Morales et Politiques, n. s., vol. 53, pp. 673-674. 142 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON a matter of certainty, and this despite the isolation of the individual in social matters, and the rapidity with which the constituency of a house changes. The absence of a public parlor and the conse- quent custom of taking caUers to rooms have also a tendency to create situations the evil possibilities of which can scarcely be overesti- mated. All this helps to give to any but the very best houses an atmosphere of moral laxity within which the lodger comes inevitably sooner or later to tolerate thoughts, associations, and actions which in other surroundings he would not brook an instant. Not the least regrettable or the least dangerous phase of immor- ality in the lodging-house is the large number of informal and temporary unions there to be found going under the outward sem- blance of marriage. In the last chapter we saw instances of crime resulting from such illicit combinations. Their number it is of course impossible to ascertain, but the testimony of persons ac- quainted with lodging-house life indicates that a revelation of the actual number of such combinations existing at any one time would cause virtuous society some consternation. These unions come about in various ways, from chance meetings in the lodging-house, on the street, or in the cafds. The isolation of the young life from companionship and friends renders the potentialities of such acquaintanceships very great. A man and a girl meet, perhaps at a cafe table; they meet again, by chance perhaps, and then by tacit consent or appointment. At first the girl pays her own way; then some day she allows the man to pay for her dinner or to take her to the theatre. Thus matters progress until, with a consistent masculine sense of compensatory justice, he comes unconsciously to think he has some claims upon her, and she, bowing to tradi- tional ways of thinking, also comes to something of the same feeling. The final result of it all is that they strike up a temporary alliance for the sake of companionship and the sa\'ing of expense. In many cases both parties are actuated by genuine and lasting regard, and the union, albeit illegal, may be happy. In such cases marriage is nearly always looked forward to as soon as the couple feel that they can surely afford it. In other cases the motive of the girl is simply to find support, and that of the man gratification. Economic reasons play an important part in the formations of such unions. Employers are not lacking who pay low wages, with the expectation that their CRIME AND PROSTITUTION 1 43 female employee will have some "gentleman friend" to help her. That temporary unions are formed for the winter months, and re- formed with varying combinations the following autumn, cannot be doubted. Perhaps as often the union runs on from year to year, because the parties desire to live together permanently, or because from sheer inertia they are unable to separate. A prominent minister of a large South End church states that he is not infrequently called upon by parents to interfere with a son or daughter who is living in this way. His course is always, if possible, tactfully to get the consent of the couple to a legal marriage and to go with the man himself for the license if need be, in the hopes of seeing the couple started on the way to a home of their own, outside the lodging-house district. There is no doubt whatever that the temporary union is one avenue through which the prostitute class, both of men and of women, is recruited. After a girl has lived with a man and has been "thrown over" by him, it is much easier for her to cast aside her pride and self-respect and go to living with other men, — whence the way to the life of the avowed prostitute is straight and open. And after a man has thus treated one girl, it is easy for him to con- tinue to prostitute himself and leave a trail of ruined lives behind him. A writer on Parisian lodging-houses, already quoted in these pages, states that ninety- nine per cent, of the women prostitutes of Paris are recruited from the lodging-house class.' The prevalence of immorality among males is a less uncertain quantity than is the extent of prostitution among women lodgers. The evidence of a number of rehable physicians of the South End is that sexual immorality and venereal disease are very common among male lodgers. In fact, one is left to believe that few young men in the lodging-house district escape contamination at some time in their lives. At the same time the physicians are almost with- out exception unwilling to say that these evils are more prevalent among lodgers than among other classes. Drug-store clerks, how- ever, who were in the South End before it became a lodging-house section, say that their trade has become of a much less agreeable character since the change took place. ' " Sur cent filles qui tombent dans la prostitution, il y en a quatre-vingt-quinze qui le doivent au logement." — Georges Picot, op. cit., p. 681. He makes this state- ment on the authority of a police official. 144 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON The great number of "medical specialists" in the South End, whose carefully worded but transparent advertisements fill one or two of Boston's less reputable newspapers, is an indication of an evil growing directly out of the temporary unions to which we have alluded, the great number of mistresses or "kept women" in certain apartment-house sections, and the disinclination seemingly of all classes save the tenement-dwellers to have children. The doctors have much evidence on this and kindred topics, all of which bears more or less directly on the general lodging-house problem, but into which we cannot enter here. It belongs to the special investiga- tion which we hope some one will make. At any rate the people of Boston have not been without occasion of late to ask themselves how prevalent the evil is. Another question to be considered when the connection between the lodging-house and prostitution shall have been investigated thoroughly is that of the public attitude toward houses of prostitu- tion. Shall they be permitted, or compelled, to centralize in some one locality and be kept as strictly as possible within its limits; or shall the police attack them wherever found and scatter them as much as possible ? Different cities follow different policies. Ten or a dozen years ago Boston adopted the policy of scattering the houses, with the result that to-day they are sprinkled all over the city, but most thickly in the lodging-house districts. Prostitution would undoubtedly arise in lodging-houses even were there no houses of ill-fame in the district, but as it is now there is an inextricable mix- ture of the good and the bad, the prevalence of the evil is intensified by loose women living in rooms instead of regular houses, and daily contact renders every one familiar with at least the outward aspects of the immoral life. There is of course a strong argument on the other side, in favor of scattering the houses. But we have here no intention of taking up the question either pro or con. We merely wish to emphasize that the problem of prostitution and the moral problem of the lodging-house cannot be separated. The final solution of either will do much toward solving the other. At the risk of trying the reader's patience extracts from the personal narratives of two actual lodging-house occupants are here inserted. These concrete cases could be duplicated many times over, but these two are especially interesting because they illustrate CRIME AND PROSTITUTION 1 45 in concrete form so many of the characteristics of lodging-house life — the heterogeneity and fluidity of population, the buying and selling and moving, the eating in caf^s, the struggle to maintain standards of living, the isolations of the lodger's life, and the moral dangers with which that life is beset. Two Experiences of Lodging-House Life Number i. "Once I found myself living in a sunless, cellary room, and I thought best to make a change. I waited for the sum- mer vacation, when I should have more time, but for months beforehand I was making inquiries of all my friends and looking about myself. . . . When the summer came I went to the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, which keeps a book containing the addresses of rooms and gives references of the landladies. I took a long trip for the sole purpose of making inquiry of one whom I thought knew as to what was a safe locality, one that could not be questioned, and made every effort that I could think of to make sure that I was making the right move. I decided as the best I could do to go to a house kept by a young couple just from the country. "I moved in July. The last week in September I left the city a week on business. When I returned a new landlady was installed. A remark that she made to the effect that if one wished to keep the house filled, one could not be particular, but must take whoever came along, decided me at once not to stay with her. She in turn decided to take another house, and wished me to go with her. "Not wishing to move so soon again unless necessary, I went to the agent and made arrangements to keep my room if a satisfactory party took the house. I emphasized the fact that I could put up with some things that I did n't like, but the thing that I must insist upon was that every one in the house must be of unquestionable character. I also saw the owner, and repeated the same to him. I received assurances that I should be 'protected,' and no one but desirable parties should come in. When the house was let, I took pains to say the same thing to landlady no. 3, and was assured again and again that everything should be straight about the place " One night later I went to sleep at ten p. m. to find myself soon 146 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON broad awake. At first all was silent as death, but in a few minutes there were low shrieks that soon became frightful. I heard the housekeeper call 'what's the matter?' and then she came bursting into my room, telling me that that had been going on for some time. I thought the man was kiUing his wife, and as I listened breath- lessly after every sickening thud and cessation of shrieks, and wondered if he had choked her to death, I thought of myself in a police court as witness; of my name in the papers; of the friends in the country who would be astonished, some perhaps suspicious, at my being in a place like that. . . . "There was but a sick man in the house outside of the quarrel- some couple, and while I was asking myself if I had the courage to rap on the door below, the policeman rang the bell. I was on the top floor and could not speak to him, and the rest kept perfectly silent. The woman who did the shrieking answered the ofiicer, and all was quiet for the rest of the night. The housekeeper instructed her daughters to lie to the ofiScer, and he was told that they did not hear any noise or know of any trouble. I told my landlady that I should not stay another night in that house until those people went out. In a few days they did so. The drink was not the worst of it. There is no doubt whatever that no marriage ceremony had been performed for them, and the woman was not even true to the self- imposed bond, and that was the trouble. "Every landlady who wishes you to think her establishment irreproachable will tell you that she keeps ' a very quiet house,' but, with the exception of that single night when passion got beyond control, that was a very quiet house, and I doubt if my landlady would ever have sent that couple adrift if they had kept quiet. . . . "The man who followed and wanted 'to be in a quiet house' was just as bland and smooth in his talk and carefully quiet in his ways as possible. He rented a room on the lower floor. I went to my landlady and said, 'Apropos of the trouble we have recently had, I would like to ask what you know of the character of this man.' 'Nothing, except that he came from Tremont Street and wanted to be in a quiet house.' 'Did n't you ask him for any references?' 'No.' It is needless to say that I knew that I must go elsewhere for a room, but I hoped that matters might not come to a crisis until I could have time in the summer to set up another despairing hunt. CRIME AND PROSTITUTION 147 A hasty move might land me in just as bad a place. To close the story, this man went around the streets asking young girls to come into his room and drink wine. They came, and he let them in. It is easy to drug wine; he used to let them out the next morning. "... I wrote my employer that I could not go to him, gave up a week's rent that I had paid, and tumbled out of the place. "There was no time that I was there that I felt in personal peril. If I had been a young girl, fond of company, and with few resources, I should not have been safe. And I can see no reason why a young girl, even with the best intentions, might not be put in similar conditions. I know of no precaution I could take that I did not take. Available knowledge of safe places is altogether inade- quate, and sooner or later, I think the girl finds herself on the street hunting rooms, relying on the signs she sees or the 'ads.' she has read in the morning papers." Number 2. "I came as a girl to work in Boston fresh from a simple life in the country. "Such relatives as were left to me . . . assisted me to find a lodging- room in the South End. I was too inexperienced to under- stand their anxiety for me in regard to the character of the house where I was to live. I was finally settled in a side room in a house kept by a man and his wife where some cousins of mine also lodged. The protection which their company afiforded certainly seemed ample, and the arrangement was a pleasant one. "After living there for some weeks in my narrow quarters, for which I paid $1.50 a week, I went down one evening to my land- lady's parlor to pay my rent. Her husband was seated in the room and she was lying on the couch. ... I was forced to the suspicion that she was drunk. ... A little while elapsed before I saw her one afternoon when I returned home, seated in the lap of a man who was not her husband, while on the table near them were bottles and glasses. Needless to say that with such evidence my cousins and myself gave up our rooms in that house. There had been other reasons for judging my landlady's character adversely, of which I did not feel the full weight until with greater experience I realized to the full their significance. There is no doubt that she would have 148 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON led me into a life of ruin if I had heeded her suggestions or shown any disposition for a life of excitement. . . . On another occasion she told me with cruel frankness that another woman occupant of the house, with whom I had been for some time on friendly terms, was the mistress and not the wife, as I had supposed, of the man who came to spend Sundays with her. "Leaving this vicious place, I secured another side room in a house which also seemed eminently respectable. A school-teacher and a married couple certainly gave it a good tone. The woman in charge was young and very attractive. She spoke of it as her mother's house, and I called her 'Mrs. .' Before long, when I went to pay my rent I began to meet in her parlor a very hand- some and agreeable man. One day she was ill in her room, so that I went in there to pay my rent. I was very much surprised to find it most elegantly furnished. Her dresses had always seemed to me out of place in her business as a lodging-house keeper, but I was not disposed to be over-critical. The illness proved to be consump- tion of such a nature that she was prescribed country air. Again I was misled because she had a doctor to whom I had been myself, and who was, I supposed, a person practicing among respectable people. The gentleman now urged in every way that I should go to the country with her, promising that in any event I should be amply paid and would not be allowed to suffer by giving up my permanent position with its scanty six dollars a week. My eyes had been opened sufficiently to make me uncomfortable and suspicious, and I refused. I can see now how if that offer had come a little later, when I was unexpectedly without work, I might in perfect good faith have accepted a position most compromising and embarrassing, to say the least, for her death occurred within a week. "My next move was a most agreeable combination with some young married friends. The woman who kept the house was not very attractive, so we saw her only when we paid the rent. This arrangement lasted a winter until the others went to housekeeping. Soon after I fell seriously ill. My doctor summoned a friend who, coming to see me during the day, quickly discovered what I and my friends had never suspected — that the two lower floors of the house were being used for gambling and other most disreputable purposes. I was at once removed, but it was only four or five weeks later that CRIME AND PROSTITUTION 1 49 the house was raided by the police. Had I remained an unsuspecting inmate of such a house, — what might it have meant to a girl whose good character was her chief reUance in earning a slender living? " Such was my introduction to city life." CHAPTER XVI THE PROBLEM OF MARRIAGE Viewed in proper perspective the lodging-house question is of far broader sociological significance than the mere number of persons involved might lead us to suppose. It is in fact an important phase of the general problem of the home, — of the maintenance of the home ideal against certain social and economic forces which in the present era are tending strongly to disrupt it. We have just had a glimpse into the darker recesses of lodging-house life, and we cannot but pause to inquire what, in the light of the preceding chapter, must be the influence of the lodging-house upon the home life of those who go out from it. What is its effect upon the marriage- rate, and upon the attitude of men and women toward the institutions of marriage, home, and family? Are the dearth of children in the lodging-house section and the extremely low birth-rate there due to scarcity of marriages among persons who are, or who have been, lodgers ? Is, or is not, the influence of the lodging-house to postpone marriage indefinitely, and in some cases to do away with it altogether as an unnecessary restriction upon personal hberty ? Upon the answer to these questions, so far as any answer is possible in the present state of our knowledge, depends still further our judgment of the moral and social status of the lodging-house. First of all it is necessary to ascertain the facts. Do lodgers marry ? And if they marry, do they have children ? Unfortunately for this inquiry these queries cannot be answered definitely. There is no statistical evidence one way or the other. It is to be regretted that the Annual Reports of the City Registry Department, while giving by wards valuable tabulations of birth- and death-rates, afford us absolutely no information concerning local marriage-rates. Had we the marriage-rate of Ward 1 2, as we have its birth- and death- rates, we could therefrom make some rough inference as to the probable extent of marriage in the lodging-house population. In the absence of direct statistics we must resort to indirect methods. THE PROBLEM OF MARRIAGE 151 The birth- and death-rates tell something. Other things being equal, a locality that does not naturally reproduce itself — in other words one in which the annual death-rate exceeds year after year the annual birth-rate, as is the case in Ward 12 — probably has a low marriage-rate. On the other hand it is entirely possible that even with this excess of deaths over births a high marriage-rate might still exist. This would be so did lodgers marry and then move out of the district, or if after marriage they did not have children, both of which suppositions are to some extent true to fact. Nevertheless the extremely low birth-rate of the lodging-house district stands as a black mark against it. The movement of married lodgers from the district cannot be measured without the aid of a special city or state census, and even by that means it is doubtful if it would be easy to arrive at a close approximation to the truth. All, then, that the statistics tell us is that if lodgers marry they do not remain in the district and have children. The writer had hoped that some evidence might be gleaned from church-records, from physicians, ministers, and from landladies; but the church-records tell us nothing, the physicians have Httle to say on the subject, and the evidence of the landladies is conflicting and on this point unreliable. Only by the ministers, who perform marriages, are we granted a grain of comfort, and that a small one. Most of the South End ministers know little of lodging-house life. Their congregations consist largely of people from outside the district, and, with one or two exceptions, they themselves live in the suburbs. One or two, however, come more or less in contact with lodgers, and are seeking intelligently to attack the lodging- house problem. One minister states that on the average he performs two marriages per week, one of which is of lodgers. Another per- forms an average of three marriages per week of lodgers, but his practice is altogether exceptional. He is well known to the lodgers. His opinion is that sooner or later the lodger does marry, but that in most cases the step is postponed indefinitely, generally for eco- nomic reasons. We are, however, left in the dark as to the actual nimiber of marriages or the actual marriage-rate among lodgers, as compared with other classes. One fact we may be sure of: the tendency of lodging-house life is to postpone both marriage and the intention to marry. 152 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON This slowness of the lodger to undertake the responsibilities of the marriage-tie is due to three varieties of causes, social, economic, and moral. Among the social influences stands first the fact that lodgers have little opportunity to meet in legitimate social intercourse. Some- thing has been said of the lamentable isolation of the individual condemned to the life of the lodger, but it will bear reemphasis. The fact that not one lodging-house in a hundred has a public parlor or reception-room, in which women lodgers may receive their friends is strong evidence that men and women are not, in the average rooming-house, thrown together in the most healthy sort of relation. Some girls will readily accept the way of the world, reluctantly or thoughtlessly as the case may be, and rather than be isolated from natural intercourse, descend to the level of lodging- house etiquette. Others positively refuse to receive a man caller in their bedrooms. Such must either go without male company or else enjoy it strolling the street or sitting on a park bench in the uncertain hghts and shadows of trees and electric Ughts. It is a question which of these courses is most demoralizing. Most girls in lodging-houses are either working their way alone in Boston or are there as students, with scarcely any one near to take a friendly and at the same time intelligent interest in them. Bad as the old- time boarding-house might be in its moral influence (and it could be and still is, where it exists, sometimes extremely detrimental to moral standards), there was nevertheless the landlady herself who knew her boarders at least by name and occupation, and who in probably the majority of houses would do what was in her power to preserve a girl or young man from a false step. The meetings between young men and women in the boarding-house were much more natural and normal, and took place under much more nearly the conditions demanded by common-sense propriety than do those of the lodging-house. And they were very much more frequent. It is extremely doubtful, however, whether the insistence that every house should have a pubUc parlor would cure the evils to which we have alluded, although it would undoubtedly contribute some alleviation to a situation now all but hopeless. A second, more deeply rooted social influence also comes in here — class consciousness. The writer once heard a college student THE PROBLEM OF MARRIAGE 1 53 speak in tones of regret of a girl who had married a railway brake- man, as if she were uncompromisingly lost by marrying out of her class, although upon inquiry it appeared that she herself was the daughter of a village merchant. This is one matter in which fiction is not truer than real life. Class consciousness has an existence in real life which can scarcely be overestimated. The important fact to note here is that it retards the marriage-rate, especially in the city. The average shop-girl or stenographer or dressmaker prob- ably would look upon " going into service " and marrying a mechanic as two evils between which she would rather not have to choose. It is a curious fact that even girls of the great working-class itself sometimes look down upon its men, and would as a rule welcome a chance of marrying out of it. This attitude is perhaps due in part to much dime-novel and penny-dreadful reading, to which it is ascribed by a woman who had abundant opportunity for first-hand observation of working-girls.' It may be due also to a commendable desire to better one's position in life. Probably, moreover, the fact that some lines of employment are largely given over to particular nationalities proves a barrier. Back even of these influences there no doubt lies something of the old feeling that manual work is degrading, that the dry-goods clerk is more of a gentleman than the brick-mason or the begrimed machinist. There is that in lodging- house life, too, which sometimes makes a girl choose rather to be the mistress of the man with money than the wife of a working-man or poorly-paid office employee. And the man very often coldly calculates that it will cost less to keep such a mistress, who can work and earn some money wages for herself, than to marry and set up housekeeping. In brief, social classes and conflicting social ideals tend to erect barriers of pride and artificial notions of propriety which in many cases are not easily broken over and in many others are broken down with such a crash of moral sensibiUties that marriage does not seem a necessary formality. The average mercantile employee, man or woman, attains to social standards which are conceived to render marriage with a member of the "working-class" undesirable, though all manner of temporary aUiances may be tolerated, and thus matrimonial unions which, ' Cf. The Long Day — the Story of a New York Working Girl as Told by Her- self, New York. 154 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON under a more thoughtful, and less selfishly conventional sense of propriety would be in all respects beneficial to society and happy for the individuals themselves, are prevented. The selfish individualism of lodging-house life, however, lies deeper than class consciousness and false social scales. Its root is economic. Modem competitive industry is a grimly contested game, in which every man's hand is against his fellow. The spHtting up into groups merely serves to obscure this fact. Each man, each group, is quick to assert rights, but not slow to take advantage of another whenever opportunity affords. Not every motive in competitive society, of course, is based on this narrow selfishness. There is much altruism, even in American cities, but the fact that it so conspicuously takes on the name of charity and philanthropy is in itself a sorry commentary upon our feeble powers of industrial and social cooperation. It is especially in cities that the most intense individualism is rampant. There such a thing as " neighborliness " (outside the tenements) is rare. Mutual aid is rarely spontaneous; it has to be carefully organized, with by-laws and a constitution. Country and village and town know what community-life is. The city knows chiefly group-life. And within and between the groups constant conflict — an all but Darwinian struggle — is the normal condition. Into this seething mass young persons are dropped, beheving that they are entering a veritable elysium of opportunity where they can show their mettle. They come with certain economic standards of hving which vary more or less between the different occupational branches. Despite the general leveling tendencies of economic competition and the dreariness of lodging-house existence, individuals cling with a death-grasp to the maintenance of such economic standards as they possess. The selfishness of the individual is still further cultivated by the hard conditions of the economic struggle which he, or she, has to make. The warm-hearted girl, and the genial, generous young fellow very soon become cold and calculating, seeking every- where the greatest individual comfort at the least expense. Nor is this much to be wondered at when we remember how near the subsistence limit are wages, especially of women and of unskilled men in all employments. Standards of living, cost of living, and wages thus assume paramount importance in the marriage question. THE PROBLEM OF MARRIAGE 1 55 Both men and women come to value highly the pseudo-Bohemian- ism and the artificial excitements of city life, and marriage comes to be looked upon as too great a sacrifice, — a sacrifice which looks all the greater, too, when it is perceived that the wages of the girl will in all likelihood have to be given up sooner or later, and that the two will have to subsist on what now is scarcely enough for one. It would not be correct, however, to hold, as some opponents of women's labor are disposed to hold, that the employment of a woman brings down the wages of the man in the same or similar employments, who would in the natural course be Ukely to marry her; so that he is handicapped as a bread-winner for her and her children, thus establishing a vicious circle which is to be held responsible for many of the economic and moral difficulties which cause the lodging-house problem. It would require more courage than we have thus to lay the lodging-house problem at the door of woman-labor and women's wages. We have yet to find any authority who ascribes a low rate of wages, when it exists generally, to the competition of women, although such competition may be one factor. And in so far as the wages of men are low enough to exert an influence tending to postpone marriage and diminish the marriage-rate, this result must be attributed to all the numerous forces which determine wages, and not to a minor individual influ- ence like the competition of women in certain specific lines of employment. Where women are paid less than men for the same kind and amount of labor, men necessarily feel that competition and evils may result. But the obvious remedy is not the exclusion of women from that employment, but through trade-union agencies or other- wise to raise their wages to the level of those of men. There never was a time when justice did not demand equal wages, for the same work, for men and women, but it has been only as the fact that social expediency also demands it has slowly dawned on the con- sciousness of trade-unionists and economists that the cry has gone up for organization and equal remuneration. The unions in self- defense have been compelled to take up the cause of women in industry, and therein lies the remedy for such temporary evils as may come from this source. 156 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON The case of the married woman working for wages and that of the pin-money worker stand upon somewhat different footing. Where both husband and wife work for wages, both may be tempted, unless prevented by collective bargaining, to accept lower wages than they would were they unmarried. Wherever a married woman does the same work and accepts less pay for it, the employer is virtually , getting a subsidy in the shape of a rebate in wage-payments, and did any considerable number of married women take this course, their competition might be felt as an unfair pressure upon men and upon women who have to earn all their own support. It is not probable, however, that any considerable number of married women will, for a long time to come at least, be employed for wages, and even if they are an increasing inteUigence in unionism and collective bargaining will prevent them from accepting cut-rate wages. The competition of the pin-money worker is at present serious, not for men, but for women who have for support only what they earn themselves. The women and girls who go into the department- stores, into offices and factories and mills, for supplementary wages must be eliminated if the problem of a general living-wage which will allow a reasonably timely marriage is to be settled. Perhaps such workers constitute the chief cause of lower wages for women than men, or if not the cause, at least the occasion. We saw in Chap- ter XI that female department-store employees largely live at home. The writer tried persistently to get data relating to the number of mercantile employees of large department-stores who were living in lodgings. In a few instances store superintendents were cordial and helpful, and one superintendent of employees went so far as to have the time-clerk make out a list of nearly a thousand employees with their addresses. One store had data ready at hand telling whether each employee boarded, lodged, or lived at home. At some stores, however, evasive answers were given, and promises of information made only to be forgotten or broken. And at some others the authorities came out flat-footedly with the comprehensive statement that they employed only girls living at home (not stating why) and hinted in not very subtile terms that they did not need investigation. There is another phase of pin-money wages also. The girl who receives them may neither live at home nor be self-supporting. THE PROBLEM OF MARRIAGE 1 57 Little doubt exists in the writer's mind that much of the rumor of immoraUty in the conditions under which sales-girls, and depart- ment-store employees generally, have to work is well founded in fact. This belief is based on the attitude of some department-store officials with whom he has come in contact, and also on direct authority of men thoroughly familiar with the mercantile business in New York and Chicago. It is asserted that some employers, especially managers of great and popular cheap-price department- stores, do not take it amiss if their women employees have "gentle- men friends " to live with. This is not saying that any considerable number of shop-girls do so live. As to the actual extent of the prac- tice we know nothing. When you hear, however, of a department- store official making bets that he will be able to seduce a "stubborn" girl before the month is up (and that he did so), any possibility may be looked for. The cause of the evil does not lie primarily in the class of girls employed, nor in the general social conditions of city life, nor even in the cynical selfishness of employers, super- intendents, and managers, which is in turn communicated to the rank and file of men employees, though these are powerful con- tributory causes. The root of the situation lies in the low wages of shop-girls. It is not within our province to write a disquisition upon women's wages, but this much seems to us true: that so long as women are paid less than men for the same work, or practically the same work, then questions of morals will inevitably follow. It may be a question whether, in mercantile employment, say, low wages cause immoral private lives or immoral private lives low wages. It might be, of course, that because a girl can live with a "gentleman friend" or be partially supported by a married man living in another town or another part of the same city, she will be able and willing to spend her days behind a counter for wages on which alone she could hardly keep soul and body together. Un- doubtedly it does work this way sometimes. But the bulk of the influence is the other way. The fact that wages are below decent subsistence level is a direct and powerful incentive to the self- sustaining girl to take the first step toward "easier" conditions. Grant that most of her companions live at home and lead, as the world goes, perfectly normal and moral lives. This makes it all the harder for the girl in question. They may spend all their money 158 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON on dress, theatre, and other pleasures ; she, though equally pretty, equally clever, with as good education, must pay the Uon's share of her wages for a cold hall-bedroom on some street most of her ac- quaintances never heard of, and for lonely breakfasts and suppers in cheap eating- places ; must go less well-dressed than they, and perhaps as time goes on, be a less efficient saleswoman because of her unequal struggle. Let her ask for living wages and be brutally asked, "Well, why don't you get a gentleman friend!" or let her be approached subtly and insinuatingly, and what are the probabihties of her action ? Give her living wages, and in most cases she would rise above the temptation, if it were one. Give her the "pin-money" wages on which so many mercantile female-wage scales are based, and the result is not so sure. The girl who works for subsidiary wages and falls into the trap of being partially supported by "a friend" loses that independence the desire for which may have been the very thing that induced her to enter the ranks of the employed. Probably the sense of freedom in small money-matters from parents or relatives acts as a strong incentive to many girls to go to work early, even where it is by no means necessary. Now this desire for independence is partially good, partially bad — bad because it is content with a partial inde- pendence, which becomes in the long run something of a bondage, good because it points in the right direction if only carried far enough. If women were potentially as economically independent as men there would be far less prostitution, licensed and unlicensed, than there is to-day. Women who have the power to earn their own living, as well as the fortunate ones who have a living income from property, will not be compelled to marry for a living. They can maintain their independence and their self-respect as individuals in a way impossible under a social regime in which women were not generally permitted to enter industry if they so chose. Where women can earn their own living alone if need be, marriages will be real marriages, and not, as we venture to say some are under present conditions, hypocritical unions ostensibly for love, but really for the gratification of the man and the support of the woman. Probably as ideas now run (the idea that the wife is "supported" and that the husband is the sole bread-winner of the family), the loss of her own direct industrial earnings, which is consequent on THE PROBLEM OF MARRIAGE 1 59 marriage, appears to the more thoughtful girl a serious loss of independence. But this fear need not be entertained when it is recognized more explicitly that husband and wife are co-workers, co-partners in home-building and home-maintaining even where, as in most cases will probably be true, the wife is not a money-wage earner. Even as things are, where husband and wife both go on earning wages, as is true in many cases, this objection need not apply, but in such cases children are perhaps not likely to appear on the scene. If home and children be the end in view, the wages of the wife, under present conditions at least, must in the great majority of cases be sacrificed, and the man held responsible for the total money (not real) income. The question of relative cost of living, for one and for two, then becomes of importance. Whether, as is sometimes asserted, a couple can live on practically the same sum necessary for one, having regard only to food and rent, is not a part of our task to decide. Certainly they cannot do so if they continue living in lodging-houses. It can be done in one way only. The woman must become a housekeeper, and the family income must be turned over directly to the grocer and the owner of the flat, and not to the lodging-house keeper and the restau- rant-man. The question of flat and apartment rents and facilities thus becomes a feature in the solution of the lodging-house marriage question. What accommodations exist for the young couple of very moderate means who wish to set up housekeeping? Data are not at hand for the answer, and to collect them would lead us beyond the scope of this investigation. That task is left to some one else.' The writer does not believe that apartment facilities in Boston offer the same inducement to the young couple to escape from lodging-house life that they do in other cities, for instance, in Chicago or St. Louis, where new and modern flats are scattered everywhere and at moderate price. Certainly in the South End proper — the • In some respects, especially in its connection with "high-class prostitution" and in its influence upon the family and the family ideal, the modern apartment-house is as worthy of attention from the social student as is the lodging-house. Geographical distribution of apartment-houses of various classes in city and suburbs, rents and extra charges, nature of service, extent to which flat- and apartment-dwellers take in lodgers, rules excluding families with children, and the general social and moral tendencies of the apartment -house life — these are some of the lines of investigation that should be worked out. l6o THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON part of the city with which the lodger is chiefly familiar — apart- ment accommodations are very meagre. Two classes of apartment- houses are to be distinguished : first, those built thirty or thirty-five years ago when the district was at its height, and which were extremely well built, for a fine class of tenants ; and secondly, those which have been built within the past eight or ten years, and which are mostly of flimsy construction, and intended to attract a much cheaper tenantry than were the older apartments. Suites of from five to seven rooms can be had in the older houses for from forty to seventy-five dollars a month — suites which used to rent for seventy- five dollars up. In the newer houses, some of which are remodeled lodging-houses, rents do not fall below thirty dollars a month. There is a great lack of small apartments, of three or four rooms, suitable for the young couple of moderate means, and to rent for eighteen or twenty dollars a month. Such apartments can be had in the city, but in districts which are in some measure undesirable — either because they are more or less infested with prostitutes, or because they are in that outer limbo of the city which is neither city nor suburbs, and in districts where the line between the flat or apart- ment and the tenement-house is very indistinct. It makes a great difference to a young couple's pride whether they start life in an "apartment" or a "tenement." There can be little doubt that the building of small, moderate- priced apartments within the lodging-house district by remodeling lodging-houses at a nominal cost, as would be possible under less unnecessarily stringent tenement-house regulations, would be a great step in advance.' The economic obstacles in the way of marriage are not peculiar to the lodger. His difficulties are the same as confront all classes. It only happens that at the particular time when the problem comes into the life of very many young men and women, it finds them, because of the conditions of modern industry, away from the pa- rental roof and living the monotonous, hand-to-mouth existence of the lodging- or boarding-house. It would, indeed, be exceedingly interesting to know how many persons in the city's population have been at some time in their lives lodgers or boarders. The percentage would certainly not be small. We should not be surprised, there- Cf. pp. 79, 80. THE PROBLEM OF MARRIAGE l6l fore, that the lodger is somewhat slow in marrying. In a time when members of the middle and upper classes are especially chary of early marriage and large families, when relative poverty is as pro- nounced among lawyers, teachers, doctors, and scientific men as among laborers and sewing-girls, when even married people in well-to-do circumstances are unwilling to incur the trouble and expense of rearing children, when in high society circles it is almost what we may call a social misdemeanor to have a family, we cannot be surprised that the ordinary underpaid clerk, the mechanic with unsteady employment, the small dealer dependent upon a fluctuating and uncertain patronage, and the struggling young lawyer and dentist for a long time hesitate to assume the responsibilities of the marriage tie. The indications are that this postponement of mar- riage and this unwillingness to have children are true, not only of the lodging-house population, but of all parts of middle-class society. The decreasing size of families is a phenomenon which has drawn the attention of statisticians, of social students, of clergymen, and statesmen; it is closely connected with the cry of "race suicide," and with the problems growing out of the general rush to the cities, the great increase in the cost of living in recent years, the large number of divorces, and the prevalence of all sorts of prostitution. Standards of living, under the influences of modem city hfe, are thus becoming more and more individualistic, and their effect is not limited to preventing young people of one economic class from freely marrying individuals of another class, nor yet merely to postponing the time of riiarriage and increasing the age of wedding couples. It goes much farther. The unfashionableness of having children must also be attributed to economic and social standards. Children mean expense and trouble and constant attention and "being tied down at home." Many people in the city, moreover, are constantly seeking expensive modes of enjoyment — frequent threatre parties, popular caf^ suppers, automobiles, and a dozen other things they cannot afford. If the average mercantile employee, no matter whether he is well paid or not, can only ape the manners and habits of the rich, he thinks he is having a good time. The trouble lies in the fact that so many people have false standards and do not know how to get lasting enjoyment out of the money they earn. The consequence is seen in row on row of apartment- 1 62 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON houses filled with childless couples, in the considerable number of such couples in lodging-houses, and in the surprisingly large prac- tice enjoyed by the particular class of medical specialists who some- times figure in criminal cases. But the standard does not always act in this doubly deplorable way. Absence of children may be noted in sections of middle-class society where even the most Puritanical critic of wants and their satisfaction could not bring a charge of economic Philistinism. Reference is made, of course, to that large number of persons who do not feel that they ought to bring children into the world to whom they cannot give education and opportunities conforming to con- stantly heightening standards. Moreover, standards of living have become legitimately higher than they were formerly. Income that used to go to buy food for a dozen hungry mouths now goes for food plus other things, for a smaller number. Nor can we doubt seriously that so long as the number is not reduced beyond reason, and so long as false, purely imitative standards of expenditure are not set up, the aggregate happiness will be greater. The danger in the pro- cess of a rising standard of living lies precisely in the fact that it may change from a family standard to an individual standard. The very advantages of city life tend to make this danger all the more acute. Modern ways of living call forth individual wants undreamed of by our fathers and mothers. We demand as necessities things which even a few years ago would have been expensive luxuries. The existence of good theatres, of good music, and of all the multi- form means of recreation, enjoyment, and improvement in the mod- em city tends to render the individual selfish and self-centred, and to emphasize the individual life at the expense of that of the family and the home. And it is not yet proved that the individual, rather than home and family, is the unit upon which the solidarity of the state and society rests.* The lodging-class is exposed more than any ' " There are increasing reasons for fearing that while the progress of medical sci- ence and sanitation is saving from death a continually increasing number of children of those who are feeble physically and mentally, many of those who are most thought- ful and best endowed with energy, enterprise, and self-control are tending to defer their marriages and in other ways to limit the number of children whom they leave behind them. The motive is sometimes selfish, and perhaps it is best that hard and frivolous people should have but few descendants of their own type. But more often it is desire to secure a good social position for their children." — Marshall, Princi- ples of Economics, p. 281. THE PROBLEM OF MARRIAGE 1 63 Other, perhaps, to the danger of this individualization of stand- ard. Certain moral influences cooperate with the economic and social causes to render the lodger slow in marrying. The prevalence of prostitution, of temporary and informal unions, and of general looseness of moral texture in the lodging-house world has been considered elsewhere. Can we doubt that all this has a direct and baneful influence upon the lodger's attitude toward the marriage tie ? Economic and social conditions determine the number of iUicit unions, but once formed they become immoral forces tending in- definitely to postpone marriage, or to dispense with it in ioto, and to debase the ideals of a holy and spiritual union into those of tem- porary passion and economic expediency. The general psychological attitude of the lodger toward marriage, home, and family undergoes a change, or develops under distorting influences. Indifference, inertia, and cold, hard, calculating cynicism are too often the pro- ducts. The general absence of any family life with which the lodger may come in daily or even occasional contact removes the influence of imitation, which is so often the motive power to action; and the lodging-house world continues to ingraft habits and habitual view- points which the individual will not easily outgrow. When the lodger does take the step of marriage, where does he go to live? Usually the couple continue to live in lodgings, but invariably they move to another house from the one in which they were married. The coming of the first child, which, it may be, is deferred as long as possible, as a rule takes them from the lodging- house into more commodious quarters. In two minutes a minister of the South End enumerated to the writer nearly thirty lodging- house couples of his acquaintance who have been married from three to five years and are still childless. We need not be surprised, then, at the comparatively large numbers of married couples to be found in lodging-houses. Here again enters the standard of living. It is a shock to the pride to move from a lodging-house to even a model tenement-house. It is much easier to board at a dining-room or caf6 than to keep house. In the lodging-district we are near the heart of the city; when we are married and have children we have to move out to nobody knows where. Metropolitan Boston is unique, among the cities known to the writer, in having scattered 1 64 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON by the hundred all through its outlying districts frame apartment- houses, between which and frame tenement-houses there is no dis- tinct line of cleavage. Some are in first-class districts with pleasant surroundings and high rental charges, but between these and the grimy three-story frame tenement on some muddy side street where dirty children swarm and the hurdy-gurdy grinds in the blare of the sun, there is a continuous series. Somewhere in this series, unless they go out still farther into the suburban districts and rent a cot- tage, the couple will have to settle. When they do move it is gen- erally to this "outer limbo," where in a short time they become indistinguishable from the rest of the population, and doubtless wish they had come from the lodging-house sooner. Their reluc- tance to make the change, we think, must be attributed in large measure to two chief causes, — disUke of housework, and fear of dropping down in the social scale. The writer would not be misunderstood, in what is said above concerning the probable tendencies of the lodging-house to lower the marriage- and birth-rate, to imply that such a reduction is neces- sarily and absolutely an evil. He can conceive of conditions under which the lower birth-rate and the general disposition to hmit the size of families might be taken as signs of increasing enlightenment, and is not one of those who constantly cry out for more people and a higher birth-rate, without regard to the quality of either. In recent years there has been, even in this country, a recrudescence of the old Mercantilist idea, and of the old notion of Continental Officialdom, that a great population is the one and only basis of national prosperity. At the bottom of this notion in the old times lay the idea that a large population is the basis of a large standing army, and of increased tax-receipts. No doubt these same notions obtain on the Continent to-day, and it would be interesting to ascer- tain how far they form a sub-conscious stimulus to the present cry in America for earlier marriages and larger families. But the real interests of the country and of society demand not so much a high birth-rate in general as a higher birth-rate from those classes which are now not even holding their own. A higher sense of social duty is necessary on the part of the well-to-do middle class, which will make them see that upon them, above all others, devolves the task of maintaining the vitality of the population. Motives which now THE PROBLEM OF MARRIAGE 1 65 lead to very small families or to none at all, must give way to such as will render the child a welcome comer, and its rearing and edu- cation, in the broadest sense of that term, a task and pleasure to be turned to as a welcome reUef from the mad rush after great wealth and social standing. The same remarks apply to the highly educated classes as well. At present, as every one knows, the high birth-rate is among the classes least equipped for the rearing of children likely to prove a benefit to the state, while the low birth-rates are among just those educated and well-to-do people who inhabit the healthiest and finest portions of our cities, and who have the resources for the performance of a duty they are now shirking. The question to which we come is this: Is the lodging-house population, in which we find the lowest birth-rate in Boston, apart from the conditions which surround it, the kind we wish to see reproduce itself ? The answer, we think, must be in the affirmative. For we must remember that with all its shortcomings and with all the dangers and evils with which it is beset, the lodging-house popu- lation is still appreciably above the population of the thickly inhab- ited tenement-districts, where the birth-rate is highest, not only in physical vitality, but in education and ambition. And we must remember that the shortcomings of the lodger as an individual are due in no small measure to the conditions in which he lives and from which marriage and the coming of children must necessarily remove him. Considering the sources and the character of the young men and women who become lodgers, we can scarcely ques- tion that the sooner marriage rescues them from the lodging-house world and its sophisticating, leveling, and contaminating influences, the better it will be both for the individuals and for society. Moder- ate marriage- and birth-rates in the classes now anchored indefin- itely in the desolate stretches of lodging-house existence, and played upon by only here and there a deceptive little flurry of recreation or excitement, would not only increase population from a more desirable source than now furnishes the main growth, but in the long run would result in a higher degree of social vitality, physical, mental, and moral. Whether this higher marriage-rate can be looked for in the near future is doubtful. The indispensable prerequisite for it is better accommodation for young couples of moderate means, in the shape r66 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON of small, low-priced flats and apartments. Fundamentally, however, the solution of these questions carries us far afield. Higher wages for the mercantile employee, and in some way a removal of the hard, grinding struggle for existence at his customary point in the social scale, and of the more demorahzing social evils of the lodging-house ■world, are certainly necessary steps to any lasting improvement. CHAPTER XVII SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION The problem of the lodger is a complex of many problems, due primarily, as we saw in Chapter i, to economic and social causes of far-reaching character. In so far as the imperfect data at our command would allow, we have seen the nature of the lodging-house world into which these social and economic necessities throw so large a part of our metropolitan populations. There will always be a lodging- or boarding-house problem of some sort. Enough was said in Chapter i to make it clear that modern industrial conditions render some such institution an eco- nomic necessity. Men can no longer live at home with parents or master until their apprentice years are past and they are ready to settle in homes of their own, as was, ideally at least, the case a hun- dred, even fifty years ago. The call for hands and brains takes them in a thousand directions, over indefinite distances, in an infinite net- work of crossing paths. Without doubt, much of the roaming occa- sioned by modern industry is unnecessary, but it cannot be helped. Men and women will go where employment is, to a great extent regardless of home ties. Indeed, to some degree, the individual's native locality is without honor in his mind. The old adage is reversed. The prophet refuses to honor his own country. Other cities and other commonwealths look more attractive to him. To economic necessity, therefore, must be added social, and certain subtle psychological forces, all conspiring to produce the peculiar restlessness, the gregariousness, the nomadism, characteris- tic of the modem American populace. It is a population which moves rapidly with no impedimenta save a valise and a trunk. It is fortunate for the nomad that shelter is offered; fortunate, too, for the landlady that he comes; and fortunate for the landlord that she stands ready to undertake the business. A district like the South End lodging-house section is the product of three forces — this restless flow of people to the city from the 1 68 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON country and from city to city; the intra-urban migration of city populations from district to district, leaving thus an area of old houses; and the drifting in of widows, thrifty young couples, and people of broken fortune to open the deserted houses to the lodger, in answer to his demand for shelter. A lodging-house district so produced has a definite situation and boundary, and within these boundaries we have the external en- vironment of the lodger. Such statistical data as are available show that in Boston the boarding-house is practically extinct, and that it is being displaced by the lodging-house in many other cities throughout the country. The probable causes of this movement lie largely in the advantages of the caf^ over the boarding-house, and in the greater freedom of life in the lodging-house. The character of the landladies varies greatly. It determines in no small measure the conditions of life for the lodger, and in turn is reacted upon strongly by forces largely beyond the landlady's control. Her economic position is precarious and her effort to make both ends meet is a prominent cause for the existence of immoral tendencies. She is product of hard circumstances, one whose life is as isolated and monotonous as that of many of her lodgers. She is, moreover, often the prey of various sorts of sharpers, chief of whom is the "real estate" agent who sells her lodging-house furni- ture and good- will at exorbitant rates and ensnares her in the toils of installment payments and mortgages. The real-estate situation lies back of the landlady's economic struggle, and constitutes an element in the economic and moral problem of the lodger. While an enormous depreciation in the value of South End real estate has taken place, the present owners are probably receiving a fair return on their investment. Never- theless the fact that the depreciation has taken place, and is still probably going on to some extent, renders the average landlord penurious in making repairs and stringent in exacting the highest rent obtainable. The burden thus laid upon the landlady is partly transferred to the lodger in the shape of high room- rents, and to the public in loosened moral conditions. The lodgers themselves are characterized primarily by four qualities: (i) the tendency to move frequently — the nomad pro- SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 1 69 pensity, (2) isolation of the individual, (3) heterogeneity, and (4) the economic struggle which in general they are making — rela- tive poverty. By occupation they are largely mercantile employees and skilled mechanics, but there is a larger percentage of profes- sional men and women than we should expect. There is among them some tendency to geographical grouping by occupation, enough to lend a characteristic tone to different locaUties within the dis- trict, but probably not enough to present any very effective social bond. A striking connection is noticeable between the lodging-house and the vital statistics of the city. The lodging-house tends to in- crease the density of population, while nevertheless few children are to be found in the lodging-house district which has the lowest birth-rate of any in the city — lower, in fact, than the lowest death- rate of any ward in the city. It follows that the lodging-house population is not reproducing itself, and probably that it has a low marriage-rate. The question of the influence of the lodging-house in postponing marriage was discussed in Chapter xvi and certain dark phases of lodging-house life were outlined in Chapter xv. It is not necessary to review these chapters here. Our task is in a sense finished, for it is perhaps not within our province to suggest solutions for a problem so diflScult and one for which, undoubtedly, no single solution can be found. We tnist, however, that it is evident to the reader whose patience has lasted through these pages that the lodging-house question is a moral problem, the permanent solution of which, if any there be, must lie in attacking the social and economic conditions which produce it, conditions which lie far beyond the narrow limits of the lodging- house district itself or even of the city as a whole. Before we indi- cate the changes which seem needful in these broader conditions, we will note a few remedial measures within the district itself, some of which should be taken at once, while others would be equally desirable could a way be found to bring them about. First of all the general public should be taught something of the conditions. Both as a help in turning attention to the problem and to secure very much needed exact statistical data, the State Bureau of Statistics of Labor should be empowered to make a comprehen- sive investigation. A special appropriation should be made by the 170 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON Legislature for this purpose; more than ordinary return would be reaped for the time and money invested. In the mean time a movement which has already been started in a small way to organize an effective public sentiment among the landladies of the district should be pushed faithfully and untiringly. Much can be done toward actual improvement of conditions if the better class of lodging-house keepers can gradually be brought into friendly discussion and cooperation. This might result eventually in formal organization as an "improvement league." The writer beheves the reputable landladies, as soon as they understand the motive and nature of such a movement, would be willing and eager to afiBliate themselves with it. With such an organization once under way effective discussions could be brought to bear on ways and means of improving the external environment of the lodger. Attention should be directed to such small economies and con- veniences as hot water and towel supply, adequate bath-room facilities, methods of keeping a house clean and fresh, the kind of furniture to buy, etc. Gradually the burdensome legacy of old days — the plush rocker and the dusty, thick carpets and hangings, the folding-bed and the worn rugs — might be relegated to the junk dealer, and light, clean iron beds, painted floors with clean rugs and mattings, and furniture at once clean, durable, and attractive could be introduced.' Gradually, also, landlords might be brought to make more liberal pro\'ision for repairs and for improvement in the external appearance of the district; and the run-down-in- the-heel look now so prevalent might pass away. Of more vital importance, however, would be the influence such an organization might exert in gradually clarifying the moral atmosphere of the district. A room registry run on disinterested principles has been started by the South End House, and through it the attempt is being made to secure the cooperation of landladies in requiring re- ferences from their lodgers. A hard struggle will have to be made before it is on a sure basis, but such attempts should not be lightly given up. The room registry and the improvement league should be parts of the same organization. Gradually through it attention ' Some interesting remarks on lodging-house furniture and landladies' ideas may be found in a short article entitled " Furnished Lodgings," in the Living Age for May, 1904, pp. 380-382. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 171 could be brought to the real-estate sharks who prey upon inno- cent people by selling them lodging-house furniture and good-will at double rates, and by all manner of chicanery and treachery cheat them out of their hard-earned money. Enough evidence could be collected in a short time to convict more than one of these sharp- ers. Calling most of all for instant action is the connection that un- doubtedly exists between the lodging-house and prostitution. The contamination of young men, the deterioration in the modesty and moraUty of young women, the existence of actual houses of prosti- tution in the guise of lodging-houses, the laxity of landladies, the large number of informal unions, the general loosening of moral texture, — these things cannot be looked upon impassively. Nor can the actual criminal tendencies that the lodging-house may pro- duce in the individual be overlooked. The remedy for these evils will not soon be found. Police and courts and public sentiment must apply remedies which must be found by patient, scientific research and experiment. So long as there is prostitution, on the one hand, and grinding economic struggle on the other, we may look to see the record of the lodging-house suicide and homicide continue. Obviously one of the first things to be done toward wiping out the conditions which give us this darkest aspect of the lodging-house is to require every house to have a public parlor. It may be objected that the landlady cannot afford it. She must, then, either charge more for her rooms — an undesirable step — or the landlord must reduce his rent. The reform is so palpably necessary that the eco- nomic changes it might necessitate must be left to look after them- selves. A pubUc parlor would not in itself cure all abuses or solve the moral problem of the lodging-house, but it would dispense with the custom and necessity of taking callers to rooms, and would thus abohsh one great excuse and opportunity for immoral asso- ciations and conduct.' Whether, as some have suggested, this re- • " The most important necessity of the model working-woman's hotel or lodging- house would be, not a luxurious table, not a dainty sleeping-room, but a parlor! The number of young girls who go wrong in a great city like this for want of the various necessities of a parlor must make the angels in heaven weep. The houses where the poorly-paid girl lives have no accommodations for the entertainment of her male friends. If the house is conducted vdth any respect for the conventions, the girl-lodger 172 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON form and other needed regulations could best be brought about by a law requiring that even- lodging-house should be licensed and inspected, the writer is not ready to say. If no other way can be found, the license act should be passed and enforced. As said before, community of interest and public sentiment on the part of the better class of landladies can do much, and perhaps without such common feeling and action not much can be accomplished by external authority. In many ways the general opportunities open to lodgers should be increased. Those that already exist, some of which we men- tioned in Chapter xm, should be made more widely known to lodgers, and others should be added. A city bath-house and a gym- nasium should be erected near the centre of the district; two or three more pubUc reading-rooms should be established; and per- haps above all some organization should be perfected to adver- tise to the lodger the great advantages of the city and its beautiful surroundings — opportunities for rest, recreation, amusement, and improvement, free to aU who know of them and can afford the small expense of reaching them.' No city in the countrj- has so magni- ficent a system of outer parks and reservations as has Boston — thanks to Charles Eliot, a true lover of nature and a benefactor of the people, and to a public- spirited and progressive Metropolitan Park Commission. Xo other city of the countn' possesses the Charles River, the Blue HiUs, the Middlesex Fells, the Lynn Woods, or the magnificent variety and extent of seashore within half an hour's ride. But the common people in great measure have yet to learn and appreciate all this, and to take advantage of the opporhmities offered. The average dweUer of the tenement or the lodging-house must meet her young man on the ' stoop ' or on the street comer. As the courtship progresses, they must have recourse either to the benches of the pubhc parks, pro- \4ded the weather be favorable, or else to the light and warmth of the back room of a saloon. The average cheap lodging-house is usually conducted, however, with but scant regard for the conventions, and the girl usually is forced to adopt the more convenient, and as it would seem to her, really more self-respecting habit of receiving her company in her room. And either one of these methods of courtship, it is evident, cannot but be in the end demoralizing and degrading to thoughtless young people, how- ever innocent they may be of any deliberate wrong-doing." The Long Day, pp. 287-288. ' The American Institute of Social Service, 287 Fourth Avenue, New York, has issued "a practical handbook to the resources and progress of New York" called The Better New York (copyright, 1904), with this special end in view. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 1 73 has about as much elasticity as a brick. There is in each a tremen- dous amount of inertia to be overcome. But it must be overcome, and the lodger must be got out into the open air in summer-time and autumn, and in winter to church, — a church which will show some vital interest in, and knowledge of, his needs, — to lecture and concert, and to a good theatre, — endowed, if we can have it no other way. And, if it be not heresy to say so, bring back the bicycle, now cheap enough to be within the reach of those who need it most, and create, too, an interest in that athletic and edu- cative pastime, walking, — walking in the fields and parks. In a word, advertise to the lodger a little of the salt of life, that the stale flatness of his existence may at least be a little disguised. The isolation of the lodger's life and the insufferable monotony and dreariness of it must in some such composite manner be removed. The individual must be put into a more real and healthy touch with himself and his environment. At every possible vantage-point, the artificiahty and deceptive sham of lodging-house life — the false freedom of lodging-house irresponsibility must be attacked. When such movements are started and begin to be effective, we may look for more permanence of abode on the part of the lodger, and the "population nomade" may cease increasing at so rapid a rate.' The lodger, not wishing then to move every other month, may be willing and able to acquire, say, a few books and a piece or two of furniture; and perhaps in some unconscious manner a better home than a lonely room on the third floor of some lodging-house may sug- gest itself. In all these ways, too, the lodger must be given more of the personal element in life. In the academic world there is the com- panionship and personal touch with books, and to a certain extent — unfortunately too sHght — with men and women; in the world of business and industry there is contact with men, but not with books; in the lodging-house too often there is neither. The lodg- ing-house perhaps stands for the latest step in the progressive loss * " Ce d^veloppement de la population nomade est le point le plus important peut- gtre de ce que Ton appelle la question sociale. A d^faut de propri^t^ terrienne, il est bon de poss^der au moins sa maison; a d^faut encore de cette propriety plus r^pan- due, il y a une propri^t^ rudimentaire, essentielle dont tout individu devrait jouir, qu'il devrait avoir le d&ir et les moyens de se procurer et de conserver; c'est la pro- pnit6 de ses meubles, de son lit, de sa table et de tout qui forme le mobilier le plus simple." — Leroy-Beaulieu, Reparation des Richesses, pp. 214, 215. 174 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON of the personal element in life which we seem to have suffered. In- dustry expands and employer and employee lose touch with each other. The college grows into a university, and despite the many compensatory advantages, the mass of the students are deprived of much of that close relation with the instructor as above all a teacher and friend, which is so effective an element in education. Social customs crystallize, and mistress and maid become as two isolated beings, void of personality to each other. And finally the lodging- house supplants the boarding-house, and the lodger is deprived of even the slender personal connections it afforded him. There are also sweeping reforms that should be made in the lodgers' broader physical environment. Perhaps it is too much to expect, for a long time to come, any broad improvement in the eating facihties of the district, but such improvement is sorely needed. The food served in the caf^s, as a rule, and in the $3. 50- a- week basement dining-rooms, is neither of the right quahty nor of the right preparation to sustain the labor- efficiency of the lodger. The opportunity exists for some persons of means and philanthropically disposed to establish two or three large, modern restaurants in the district, and do the population a great service, without in the long run losing anything on their investment. The writer sees no reason why a really large eating- establishment, capable of catering to at least one thousand persons for breakfast and dinner, should not be able to earn fair interest on the investment, if run on scientific and business-hke lines, and at the same time give the South End lodger much better fare and service than he gets now. The economies of large-scale productions should enable this to be done. Of course there would be the diificulties of finding a central location and a large enough building, or site for building, but difficulties are overcome in the business world and there is no reason why they should not be in the philanthropic. But the undertaking would have to be a large one, backed by capital. The advantages it would give the lodger are obvious: first of all, good food, well cooked and well served, at rates not higher than he is paying now in the struggling, ill-managed, httle dining-rooms and caf^s; secondly, more congenial surroundings at meal- times — a large and airy, well-hghted, and not architecturally ugly hall, in- stead of a hot cafe-room inhabited by swarms of flies and tousle- SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 1 75 headed waitresses; thirdly, a chance for some friendly intercourse at meal- times. It would be possible to have " club- tables " just as students do in college commons. Were there smoking-rooms and the like added, for the use of which a small additional weekly or monthly due might be charged, the establishment would have many of the attributes of a club-house, and it would furnish more than one avenue by which social betterment could enter the South End. Could we have a few such large, hberally managed eating-halls, and at the same time could the present system of lodging-houses be reformed by the introduction of public parlors, better sanitary resources, and an enlightened moral opinion on the part of both landladies and lodgers, there would be no necessity for wishing to do away with the lodging-house and bring back again the board- ing-house. In the absence of such reforms, we are inclined to be- heve that the boarding-house, with all its imperfections, its oftentimes ill-cooked and insufficient food, its intrigue, its vulgarity, would prove in the long run a better way of living than the present lodg- ing-and-cafd system. It is not hkely, however, that the boarding- house will come back spontaneously — the drift is the other way, as we saw — nor is it probable that it can be reintroduced generally by any combination of philanthropic and social forces likely to be available. The reform of the lodging-houses on the one hand, and of the eating facilities on the other, seems to the writer much more practical and feasible than any plan looking toward the abolition of the lodging-house. Given our modern American economic and industrial organization, drawing in its wake the constant change of residence, the constant drifting and shifting to which we as a people are subject, the lodging-house is a necessary form of habi- tation. Capital has made model lodging-houses pay. Presumably the Mills Hotels for working-men in New York, which are well known to every one who takes the slightest interest in the housing question, are yielding a fair return on the investment.' Why could ' At least this was the intention of their owner. In his address delivered at the opening of the Bleecker Street Hotel, Nov. 1, 1897, Mr. Mills said: "Let me make clear, however, at the outset that it is in no sense a charitable concern. . . . Mills Hotel No. I will differ from the ordinary lodging-house most of all in its effort to give the man what he pays for — the very fullest possible equivalent for his money. But it is the intention, from the very beginning, to conduct the enterprise upon a business basis; and this implies that it will be self-supporting. . . No patron of the Mills 176 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON not a like fair return be made on investment in large eating-halls, and in similar hotels in Boston? No permanent solution of the lodging-house question can be looked for, can even be approached, for a long time to come, un- less some such action is taken, unless, in other words, very broad changes are made in the lodger's environment. The lodger will continue to exist and demand accommodations. Educative pro- cesses taking a long time to institute, starting far out beyond the lodging-house district or the city, and working their efiFects out only very gradually may change the character of the lodger; but that is neither here nor now, and even if it does take place within the next quarter century it will still be working against the adverse current of lodging-house environment and its influence. The present kind of environment must be in large measure destroyed. No single line of reform will do this. The establishment of work- ing-women's and working-men's hotels and of large eating-estab- lishments (all on a paying basis), the general institution of a public parlor, the abohtion, so far as possible, of prostitution from the dis- trict, the introduction of model lodging-houses of the ordinary size, and of model boarding-houses for such as prefer that type of habi- tation, — all these are not too much to hope for, nor is any one superfluous if it can be had. The establishment of philanthropical hotels for working-girls, however, is fraught with certain danger. There is a comparatively large number of these establishments in Boston already, and re- cently one of the largest experiments of the kind ever tried has been inaugurated. In almost every instance, we believe, these "homes" or "hotels" or "houses" are not self-supporting, that is, the guests or "inmates" do not pay for all they get. The last large experiment pays all running expenses, but does not pay the interest on the in- vestment in building and plant. This has to be covered by private subscription, notwithstanding that the girls and women living there belong very largely to the better-paid mercantile employments. No amount of circumlocution or euphemism will disguise the fact Hotel will receive more than he pays for, unless it be my hearty good will and good wishes. . . . He will think better of himself and will be a more self-reliant, manly man, and a better citizen, if he knows that he is honestly paying for what he gets." — Municipal Affairs, March, 1899, pp. 85-87; see also p. 106. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 177 that all such houses are a form of charity, to a greater or less ex- tent. Some such establishments are undoubtedly necessary in every large city, to take care of girls who are caught temporarily in straight- ened circumstances. But the girl ought not to be led to think she is fully paying her own way when she is not. There could be but one effect of a multiphcation of non-self-supporting working-girls' homes above this minimum. It would tend to lower, or at least to keep down to their present level (subsidiary-wage basis), the wages of female labor. A large amount of female labor is already paid on that basis, — on the idea that the gfrl lives at home and does not have to pay full board; or that, if she is a married woman, her husband is earning the main income; or perhaps that she is helped by a "friend." And a "home" or boarding-house of any kind, where she can get bed and food for less than ordinary normal or market cost, is simply one more basis and excuse for the payment and for the acceptance of wages below a fair living standard. It is perfectly possible, however, to establish large and well-equipped working-women's and working-men's hotels on a sound, paying financial basis. It has been done both in this country and abroad, and it can be done in Boston. All such enterprises, parallel to the Mills Hotels of New York, should be welcomed, as they will neither in the slightest way detract from a man's or woman's self-respect, nor endanger the hving standard of wages.^ ' The following will he found valuable references on the subject of working-girls' homes and hotels: Harriet Fayes, " The Housing of Single Women," in Municipal Affairs, March, 1899, pp. 95-107; an admirable article. The Long Day, ch. xi, and Epilogue. Third Annual Report of the Franklin Square House, Boston, 1905. Mary S. Ferguson, " Boarding-Houses and Clubs for Working- Women " in Bulletin No. 15 of the United States Department of Labor (March, 1898), pp. 141-196. United States Department of Labor, Fourth Annual Report. Carroll D. Wright, The Working-Girls of Boston, 1889. The intelligent working-girls' view is strikingly and clearly stated by the author of The Long Day: "We have a great and crying need for two things — things which it is entirely within the power of a broad-minded philanthropy to supply. The most urgent of these needs is a very material and unpoetic one. We need a well-regulated system of boarding- and lodging-houses where we can live with decency upon the small wages we receive. We do not want any so-called ' working-girls' homes,' — God forgive the euphemism! — which, while overcharging us for the accommodations, at the same time would put 178 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON The improvement of housing conditions for the lodger class need not wait upon such large enterprises, however. There is a heavy demand, as we have seen, for single rooms, while the proportion of double ("square") rooms to single ("side" or "hall") rooms in the district is about eight to five. It would be possible with a change in the building laws (a bill for which at the time of writing is before the Legislature) to remodel the present lodging-houses so as to have two single rooms where there is now one double room. It us in the attitude of charity dependents. What the working-girl needs is a cheap hotel or system of hotels — for she needs a great many of them — designed something after the Mills Hotel for working-men. She also needs a system of well-regulated lodg- ing-houses, such as are scattered all over the city for the benefit of men. My expe- rience of the working-girls' home in which I lived for many weeks, and from my ob- servations and inquiries regarding a number of similar ' homes,' which I have since visited, justifies me in making a few suggestions regarding the general plan and con- duct of the ideal philanthropic scheme which I have in mind. " First and most important, there must be no semblance of charity. Let the work- ing-girls' hotel and the working-girls' lodging-house be not only self-supporting, but so built and conducted that they will pay a fair rate of interest upon the money in- vested. Otherwise they would fail of any truly philanthropic object. "As to their conduct as institutions, there should be no rules, no regulations which are not in full operation in the Waldorf-Astoria or the Hotel St. Regis. The curse of all such attempts in the past has been the insistence upon coercive morality. Make them not only non-sectarian but non-religious. There is no more need of conduct- ing a working-girls' hotel or lodging-house in the name of God or under the auspices of religious sentiment than there is necessity for advertising the Martha Washing- ton Hotel or any fashionable bachelor apartment-house as being under divine gtiid- ance. "A clean room and three wholesomely cooked meals a day can be furnished to working-girls at a price such as would make it possible for them to live honestly on the small wage of the factory and store. We do not ask for luxuries or dainties. We do not get them in the miserable, dark warrens where we are now obliged to sleep, and we do not get them at the unappetizing boarding-house tables where countless thousands of us find sustenance. I do not know — I suppose nobody does know — how many working-girls in New York City live in lodging-houses. But they are legion, and very few of them are contented with that life. . . . " In the model lodging-house there should be perfect liberty of conduct and ac- tion on the part of guests — who will not be ' inmates ' in any sense of the word. Such guests should have perfect liberty to come and go when they please at any hour of the day or night; be permitted to see any person they choose to have come, without question or challenge, so long as the conventions of ordinary social life are complied with. Such an institution conducted on such a plan and managed so that it would make fair returns to its promoters, cannot fail to be welcomed; and would be of inestimable benefit as an uplifting and regenerative force with those for whom it is designed." — The Long Day, pp. 285-288. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 1 79 would thus be possible, at relatively low cost it seems, to have in the same building eighteen single rooms, two baths, and a public parlor, where now there are eight double rooms, five single rooms, only one bath, and no pubUc parlor. Moreover, the dining-room and kitchen will be retained in the basement, so that the house can be run as a boarding-house if desired. The South End House has at present a definite plan for taking two houses and remodeling them in this way. The experiment will be extremely interesting, and with little doubt, successful. Where a number of houses can be put under the same business management it is believed they can be made a satisfactory business proposition even after the expense of remodehng. And there can be no doubt that from the lodger's social and moral standpoint it is a desirable change. So far as existing houses are concerned, in other words, this is a true reform, because it changes old dwellings, by no means fitted for the purpose to which they are now put, into structurally proper lodging- and boarding-houses. Along with this reform can go that other one of which we have spoken in connection with the marriage problem, the remodeling of South End houses into small apartments at moderate price to supply a much felt need, and to encourage the lodger to adopt mar- ried life. This form of remodeling can probably be safely left to private enterprise, as soon as the building laws permit. Not any one nor all of these reforms together will solve the lodger problem in any permanent manner. The true reform must come from changes in economic and social standards that will fundamentally affect the lodger, or prospective lodger, him- self. It must lie in better moral training for the boys and girls whom economic conditions are almost surely going to send out to do battle in the world — a place where they will meet many trying and dangerous situations. In more ways than one, as lodgers, they will be thrown upon their own resources; economically they will have to earn their own living; socially they will be, for a long time possibly, more or less isolated, and will have to pick their friends from the chance acquaintances they may make; morally they will have no one to account to but themselves, for the restric- tions of parents, family, home, and community are removed in distance and in time, and their influence is in inverse proportion. l8o THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON The lodger's own conscience must be his mentor, his own moral judgment his guide. Few thoughtful persons will deny that the man or woman whose morals are strongly self-reliant, based on his or her own thought- out standards, is in all ways better fitted to face the world in en- joyment and in service than he whose standards and habits are shaped by external control, be it parental, social, or any other. " Social control" is a powerful thing within the social group to which an individual belongs, for many it is almost an absolute despot, rul- ing with an inflexible rod over conduct, but just as soon as the in- dividual finds himself in a different group, the group-control to which he has been subject comes in conflict with a new control, new ways of living, new standards of thought and action, and be- comes either of no force or worse than none. This is precisely the position in which thousands of young persons find themselves who flock to the cities for work, and through force of circumstances become lodgers, answerable, for the most part, to no one but them- selves for their conduct. To throw a young person suddenly into such an environment is like throwing a child into deep water and leaving it to sink or swim. The mass of the young people who find themselves in lodgings are by no means fitted for any such Spartan training; their moral con- stitution is not sturdy enough to withstand the shock of such sudden immersion in individual moral responsibiUty. They have not, at least in very many cases, the moral training necessary to carry safely the degree of freedom thrust upon them by the conditions of lodg- ing-house existence. No small proportion of them come from the country and small towns, with the no doubt sincere but often narrow, inflexible, and generally inadequate training of the country. Taught to exercise their conduct by precept and rule rather than by judg- ment and reason, when they come to the city and enter into the new, strange, sordid, half-cynical atmosphere of the lodging-house world, with its isolation and its freedom, they find themselves at sea without compass or rudder. The moral and religious precepts by which they have been taught to regulate their lives, however good in themselves, may have been sufficient for the rural district and the small towns from which they came, but they break down entirely when subjected to the strain and stress of the city, and SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION l8r especially of that particular portion of the city which is fullest of reefs and shoals. The result: before they have got their bearings they have drifted hopelessly. Two deficiencies in their constitu- tion, therefore, stand in the way of their safety. One is that such moral education as they have had has been of the local, non-adapt- ive sort, not touching the great and practical problems of modern life, — of the kind, too often, that strains at a gnat and swallows a camel. The other lies in the way moral training has been admin- istered — by rule, and not by rational thought appealing to an active sense of justice and right. We can scarcely expect rural society to fit people once for all for the complexities of city Ufe, but before the most acute phase of the lodger problem will pass away, a change will have to take place in the home and school training of the boy and girl. Even the inadequate, non-adaptable religious and moral training, for- merly given in church and school, is dropping away, and in its place not enough ethical instruction of either a direct or an indirect na- ture has been substituted. The home is partially to blame, but not so much as the schools, which fail somewhat to grasp the ethical and social importance of what we may call the social studies, e. g. literature and history, and have thrown proportionally undue em- phasis upon the sciences and languages. However, this is not a pedagogical treatise. We merely wish to point out that in larger school funds lies one of the cures for the lodging-house problem. If it is the business of schools to prepare the individual for life in the world, it is also their business to try to conform their curriculums to the demand the world is going to make on the individual. The boys and girls of to-day, who are to be the men or women of to- morrow, to go out and face all sorts of new situations, ought to have above all things an education which will put them in possession of themselves wherever they are, that when they leave behind the setting of family traditions, customs, Understandings, and of vil- lage emulations and social demands, where nobody dares do things contrary to local standards of action for fear of "what peo- ple will say," and come into a place where one can do about as he pleases and nobody will know it, much less say anything, they will not lose moral grip on themselves. The country is not the only source which supplies the stream of 1 82 THE LODGING-HOUSE PROBLEM IN BOSTON lodgers. A large percentage come from the city; if not from Boston, then from some other urban centre where they have been bom and bred. They have come down from the old-time boarding-house and up from the tenement, and they are sophisticated to such an extent that they feel habitually a certain leniency toward the loose- ness of lodging-house conduct. And to this indifferent class we must add the positively vicious and criminal. With a mixture of these three classes and the conditions with which we are now famiUar, as the enviroimient of the individual lodger, are we to wonder if the influence of the lodging-house is direcdy and specifically immoral? The unbroken routine of such life will drive not a few to rash acts merely as a change and escape from isolation and monotony. And beyond this, consciously or unconsciously, the influence of imitation will be at work. If we stay in Rome long enough, we do as the Romans do. Environment such as the South End Lodging House districts constitutes is naturally and necessarily stronger in the long run than precept. Indeed it is a question whether a general training could be devised which would render the individual permanently proof against its debihtating influence. But education of the generation which replenishes the lodging-house population will not only strengthen the individual who must undergo the hfe of a lodger; it wiU also purify the en- vironment of the lodger. Finally, no ultimate cure of the problems now existing will be reached until the economic conditions which produce them are changed. When the tremendous rush to the cities abates, when the underpaid mercantile employee is recognized by public and em- ployer as entitled to a living wage as much as the skilled mechanic, when the public realizes that the female stenographer is under just as heavy expenses as the man beside her, who is doing the same work at twice the wages, when, in short, we reach a juster sense of economic proportion and social expediency than we have yet at- tained, we can say that the chief of the basic causes of the lodging- house problem has been removed. APPENDICES APPENDIX A BIBLIOGRAPHY A. There is no book bearing directly and primarily upon the rooming- house problem. The following books, however, recognize the exist- ence of such a problem, and certain parts of them are suggestive. Bush6e, Frederick A., The Ethnic Factors of the Population of Boston, Pub- lications of the American Economic Association, May, 1903. Ferguson, Mary S., Boarding-Houses and Clubs for Working- Women, Bulletin No. 15, United States Department of Labor (March, 1898). Leroy-Beaulieu, Repartition des Richesses, Paris, 1881. Picot, Georges, L'habitation ouvrifere S, Paris — Le logement en garni, Insti- tut de France, Academic des Sciences et Politiques, Stances et travaux, n. s. vol. 53 (1900), pp. 664-686. The Long Day — The True Story of a New York Working-Girl as Told by Herself, New York, 1905; especially chapters I, in, ix, and Epilogue. Woods, Robert A., and others. The City Wilderness, Boston, 1899. Americans in Process, Boston, 1902. B. The statistical material in this investigation has been gleaned from the following sources: Annual Reports of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1900, 1902. Annual Reports of the Registry Department of the City of Boston, 1901-1904. Massachusetts State CensiK, 1905, pamphlet on Population and Legal Voters. Massachusetts State Census, 1895, vols, i, 11, and iv. Massachusetts State Census, 1885, vol. i. Monthly Bulletin, City Statistics Department, Boston, October, 1903. Municipal Register, Boston, 1901, 1902. Precinct Lists of Male Residents, 1903. Real Estate Assessment Books, Assessors' Office, Boston, 1868-1904. Records of Deeds and Mortgages, City Hall, Boston. Twelfth United States Census, 1900, Population, parts I and 11. Twelfth United States Census, Special Report on Occupations, 1904. C. The following books and articles have also been of assistance in various ways: Addams, Jane, Democracy and Social Ethics. l86 APPENDIX Bowley, Elements of Statistics. Bowmaker, The Housing of the Working Classes, London, 1895. Brandt, Lilian, The Negroes of St. Louis, Publications of the American Statis- tical Association, March, 1903. Bush^e, Frederick A., The Growth of the Population of the City of Boston, Publications of the American Statistical Association, June, 1899. DeForest and Veiller, The Tenement-House Problem, New York, 1903. Dilke, Bulley, and Whitley, Women's Work, London, 1894. Ely, Richard T., The Coming City, 1903. Fayfes, Harriet, The Housing of Single Women, Municipal Affairs, March, 1899. FrankUn Square House Association, Boston, Reports and pamphlets of. Gould, E. R. L., Housing of the Working People, Eighth Special Report of the United States Commissioner of Labor, 1895. Hurd, Richard M., Principles of City Land Values, New York, 1903. Kuczynski, Der Zug nach der Stadt, 1897. Living Age, May, 1904, article on Furnished Lodgings. McNeill, W. S., Die Aufgaben der Stadtgemeinden in der Wohnungsfrage, Berlin, 1902. Mayo-Smith, Statistics and Sociology. Mussey, H. R., The "Fake" Instalment Business, University Settlement So- ciety, New York, 1903. Newsholm, Vital Statistics. Octavia Hill Association, Report on Certain Aspects of the Holding Problem in Philadelphia, American Academy of Political and Social Science, No. 345 (July, 1902). Paine, Robert Treat, The Housing Conditions in the City of Boston, in the same. Phelps, R. F., South End Factory Operatives and Their Residence, South End House, Boston, 1903. Report of the Commission Appointed by the Mayor to Investigate Tenement - House Conditions in the City of Boston, Boston, Municipal Printing OflSce, 1904. South End House, Boston, Reports of, 1902-1906. Sykes, John F. J., Public Health and Housing, London, 1901. Thomas, John Lloyd, Workingmen's Hotels, Municipal Affairs, March, 1899. United States Department of Labor, Fourth Annual Report, 1888, — Work- ing-Women in Large Cities; especially the chapter on Working-Girls' Clubs and Homes. Weber, Adna F., The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century, Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, vol. xi, 1899. APPENDIX 187 Whitmore, Henry, Real Estate Values in Boston, Publications of the American Statistical Association, March, 1896. Wilcox, Delos F., The American City : A Problem in Democracy, New York, 1904. Wright, Carroll D., The Working-Girls of Boston, Boston, 1889. Zeublin, American Municipal Progress, 1903. APPENDIX B MOVEMENTS OF POPULATION FROM THE COUNTRY TO THE CITY — SOME STATISTICS SHOWING THE NATIVITY OF THE POPULATION OF BOSTON For the light they throw upon the sources from which the lodging-house popu- lation is probably derived, the following tables may not be without value and interest. Table 49. nativity of the population of boston, 1885 ' Per cent. Total population, 1885 Bom in Boston Bom outside of Boston Bom in: Massachusetts Other New England states New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania South Atlantic states North Central states South Central states Western states United States, not specified Total bom in the United States, outside of Bos- ton Canada, etc. Total bom in the United States outside of Boston and in Canada Foreign bom, excluding Canadians Table 50. nativity of the population of boston, 1895 ^ Per cent. Total population 496,920 loo.o Bom in Boston 208,317 42.0 Bom outside of Boston 288,603 58.0 • Compiled from the State Census of Massachusetts, 1885, vol. i, p. 550. ' Compiled from the State Census of Massachusetts, 1895, vol. ii, pp. 671, 672. 390>393 lOO.O 150.177 38.5 240,216 6I.S 50.304 12.7 38,869 lO.O 9.321 2-5 4,120 2.. 105 551 2.2 370 1,281 106,921 27.4 27,322 7.0 134,243 344 105,973 27.1 APPENDIX 189 Bom in: Massachusetts Other New England states New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania South Atlantic states ■ North Central states South Central states Western States United states, not specified American citizens bom abroad Total bom in the United States, outside of Boston Canada, etc. Total bom in the United States, outside of Bos- ton, and in Canada, etc. Foreign born, exclusive of Canadians, etc. The Federal Census of 1900 does not give the number of residents of Boston who were born in Massachusetts but outside of Boston. The total number bpm in Massachusetts was 285,242, and if we assume that the same proportion of these were bom in Boston as in 1895, when the total number of residents of Boston bom in Massachusetts was 247,885, of whom 208,317 were bom out- side of Boston, we get the proportion 247,885 : 208,317 : : 285,242 : 239,900, the last term of which, 239,900, represents the probable number of residents of Boston in 1900 who were bora in Boston. This leaves 45,342 bom in Massa- chusetts but outside of Boston. We are now in position to constmct a table for 1900 parallel to those given for 1885 and 1895. 39.568 7-9 40,500 8.1 I3>S90 2.7 6,625 3,561 864 30 649 1,832 1,122 108,211 21.7 44,202 9.0 152,413 3°-7 136,190 273 Table 51. nativity OF THE POPUXATION or BOSTON, 1900 1 Per cent. Total population, 1900 560,892 loo.o ^ Bom in Boston 239,900 42.7 ^ Bora outside of Boston 320,992 57-3 Bom in: ' Massachusetts 45,342 8.1 Other New England states 43,077 7-7 New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania 16,556 30 South Atlantic states 8,028 North Central states 4,686 * Compiled from the Twelfth U. 5. Census, Population, part I, pp. 706-709. ' Estimated. 190 APPENDIX South Central states i>i25 3.3 Western States 977 United States, not specified 2,5S6 American citizens bom abroad, etc. ii5i8 Total bom in the United States outside of Boston 123,863 22.1 Born in Canada, etc. 50,282 9.0 Total bom in the United States, outside of Boston and in Canada, etc. 174,145 31.1 Foreign bom, exclusive of Canadians 146,874 26.2 The following table gives the percentages bom in Boston and outside of Boston for the three years 1885, 1895, and 1900. Table 52. nativity of the population of boston, by percentages 1885 1895 1900 Total population of Boston lOO.O lOO.O lOO.O Bom in Boston 38.5 42.0 42.7 Bom outside of Boston 615 58.0 57-3 Bom in: Massachusetts 12.7 7-9 8.1 Other New England states lO.O 8.1 7-7 New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania 2-5 2.7 30 Elsewhere in the United States 2.2 3° 3-3 Canada, etc. 7.0 9.0 9.0 Foreign bom, exclusive of Canadians 27.1 273 2O.2 The salient facts shown by this table are these; that about sixty per cent, of the population of Boston was bom elsewhere, but that there has been a slight decrease (4.2 %) of this non-native element since 1885; that of this non-native portion of the population the foreign born, exclusive of Canadians, etc., con- stitute nearly one half, and that the other half is derived chiefly from New Eng- land and the British American provinces. The Canadian element is of great social significance. It appears to maintain an even level of about nine per cent, of the total population, but increased somewhat in the ten years between 1885 and 1895. In these same ten years there was a striking fall in the percentage from Massachusetts as well as from other New England states. The percent- age from the near-by states of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania shows but a slight decrease in the fifteen years. APPENDIX C STUDENT-QUARTERS IN BOSTON A treatment, however summary, of the lodging-house question in Boston should not omit some reference to the student-class. Perhaps no population group is so thoroughly a lodging- and boarding-class as are the students. In the nature of things most of them are away from home and have to live in board- ing- or lodging-houses, however much they may dislike the life. This is espe- cially true in Boston where as a rule the educational institutions are not pro- vided with dormitories and eating-halls. In general the student must shift for himself, find his own boarding- and rooming-places, and be his own judge of suitable houses and localities. The general result leaves much to be desired. With a word first as to the residence of teachers in Boston, we may turn to the geographical distribution of students of a few typical institutions. The pro- blem of the student-lodger is a separate problem in itself, and is one best left to persons whose work has made them familiar with its special peculiarities, its own points of difficulty, its own tendencies for good and for evil. The public schools of Boston are presided over by approximately 2220 teachers (1903). Of these about 120, or only 5.4 % live in South End lodging- houses. The inclusion of the West End would increase the percentage slightly, but it is evident that most of the public school teachers live in suburban dis- tricts, and that teachers as a class do not form an appreciable part of the lodg- ing-house population. It is said and with near approach to truth that there are between 20,000 and 25,000 students in Boston. This includes students in the large educa- tional institutions like the New England Conservatory of Music, the Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology, the Harvard Medical School, Tufts Medical School, Emerson College of Oratory, Boston University, etc. Besides these we have the students in all the miscellaneous little institutions — the business col- leges, the art schools, the schools of dramatic expression, etc. Many of these students live at home in the city, many live in the suburbs near and far, but most will be found in the lodging- and boarding-houses of the city. Some idea of the geographical distribution of the students may be gained from Chart xvn, which shows the distribution of some 11 80 students from one of the large educational institutions of the city.' Of these the South End ' Out of some 1300 in the institution. The other 320 lived in the suburbs beyond the limits of this map. 192 APPENDIX lodging-district claims the greatest number, 238; the West End and Beacon Hill claim 97, Newbury Street (Back Bay) 94, St. Botolph Street 88, and Hunt- ington Avenue 37. The map represents fairly well what would be the general distribution of students could we obtain data for all the institutions. It is evident that the South End lodging-house district is one of the great student-quarters of the city. Besides the South End there are four other stu- dent-districts at present: namely, the West End and Beacon Hill district (A on the chart), the Huntington Avenue and St. Botolph Street district (D and E), the Newbury Street district (B), and finally the new student-quarter in the western portion of Ward 10, between Massachusetts Avenue on one side and Huntington Avenue and the Fenway on the other (F). The district between Huntington Avenue and the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, including St. Botolph Street and the cross-streets, Harcourt, Garrison, Follen, Durham, Cumberland, Blackwood, and Albemarle streets, is perhaps at pre- sent the most typical student-quarter of the city. But for the railroad it would be continuous with the South End. The railroad, however, acts as a stone wall between the two sections, and they are distinctly unlike in appearance and in character. The South End is full of lodging-houses as such. The other district is given over mainly to flat-dwellers, who re-rent rooms to students, artists, musicians, and the higher class of business employees. District F, the newest student-quarter, together with Huntington Avenue and St. Botolph Street, is practically sure to become the one great, typical stu- dent-quarter of the city, — a district far more thoroughly and compactly given over to students than is any section at present. This newer section includes: Westland Avenue, Batavia, Gainsborough, Jarvis, and Hemenway streets, and portions of St. Botolph Street and Huntington Avenue, and a large amount of territory yet to be built up. Within this new district are already situated the New England Conservatory of Music, the Emerson College of Oratory, Simmons College, and the Harvard and Tufts Medical Schools. The Museum of Fine Arts, with its art school, will move to the same district in the near future, and it is possible that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will sooner or later move to the same locality. When these movements are completed we may expect to see the students, those of the better class at least, leave the South End and Beacon Hill lodging-houses. Houses and dormitories for the special accommodation of students will be built in the new district and we may expect to see the problem of the student solved to some extent. The New England Conservatory has already erected a residence-hall accommodat- ing about two hundred women-students, divided into groups, each group having its own private parlor, dining-hall, and servants. INDEX INDEX Addresses, rapid change of, 83-85, 138, 142, 145-149. See also Nomadism. Administrative districts not suitable units for statistical purposes, 116. Advertising, 62, 70, 144, 147. Age, 117, 125-127, 129, 131. Of landladies, 52. Of lodgers, 81, 82, 83, 115, 125-127. Alleys, 22, 27. Altruism, 154. Ambition, 165. American Institute of Social Service, 172, note. Americans in Process quoted, 25. Amusement, 27, 29, 30, 172. See also Thea- tres, Dance-halls, etc. Anthropometry, 117, note. Apartment-houses, 4, 24-25, 26, 79, 86-87, 91, 117, 119, 121, 125, 126, 128-129, '3'> '44> 159-162, 164, 166, 179, 189. Bachelor-, 4, 178, note. Should be investigated, 159. Architecture, 13, 21, 22, 34-37. Assessed valuations, relation to real values, 72- 74- Assignation, 30. Associated Charities, 106, 107. Astrologers, 32. Back Bay, 12, 13, 14, 16, 19, 26, 75, 91, 117, 119, 124, 129, 131. Bakeries, 28, 104. Baltimore, 38, 40. Banks, 14. Basement dining-rooms. See Dining-rooms. Bath-room, 34, 35, 36, 170, 179. Beacon Hill, 11, 16, 24-25, 118, 188-189. Beds, 35, 37, 170. Beer garden, 28, 30. Besant, Walter, quoted, 1 10, note. Bibliography, 183-185. Bicycling, 173. Billiard-halls. See Pool-rooms. Birth-rate. See Births. Births, 115, 117, 121, 128-133, 150-151, 164, 169. See also Children and Marriage. Blue Hills, 172. Board, price of, 3, note, 101-104, '74> I77- Quality of, 102, 174-175. Boarding-houses, 25, 38-51. Distinguished from lodging-houses, 5. Supplanted by lodging-houses, 25, 43-56, 152, 168, 174. Bohemianism, 52, 155. Books, 113, 173. Booth, Charles, 115. Boston Transcript, 112. Boundaries, 20-26, 168. Brandt, Lillian, quoted, 92, note. Brighton, 120. Brookline, 16, 124. Brooklyn, 40. Buffalo, 38, 40. Building Department, 13, note. Building laws, 79-80, 132, note, 178, 179. Building trades, 96. Bureau of Statistics of Labor (Massachusetts), 7, note, 53, note, 66, 97, 169-170. Busb6e, F. A., quoted, 19. Business, 10, 11, 16, 27-33, 47> ^3> ^9"7°i '°5» 120, 173, 174, 179- Business mediums, 32. Caf^s, 5, 23, 24, 27, 39, 46, 47, 48, 49, 66, 102- 104,111,139, 142, 145, 161, 163, 168, 174-176. Distinguished from dining-rooms, 28. Cambridge, 13, 29, 103. • Canada, 53-54, 81, 82. Card catalogues, 47, 84. Card readers, 32. Carpets, 35, 36, 60, 107, 170. Change from boarding to lodging, 38-51. Charity, 94, 97, 106-108, 154, 175, note, 176- 178 and note. Charles River, 16, 135, 172. Charlestown, 13, 119, 120, 123. Chicago, 30, 31, 38, 40, 41, 42, 134, 157, 159. Child, Samuel M., quoted, 79-80. Children, 13, 82, 126, 129, 131, 144, 150, 151, 159, 161-166, 169. Chinese, 32. Church records, 151. Churches, 23, 84, 143, 151, 173, 181. Cincinnati, 38, 40. Cily Wilderness, The, quoted, 12, 13, note, 81, 137- Class consciousness, 152-154, 101. Clerks. See Manufacturiug and Mechanical Pursuits, also Mercantile Employees. Cleveland, 31, 38, 40, 134. 196 INDEX Closets, 34. Clothing, 27, 31, 99, loi, 157-158- Coal-bills, 58. Coercive morality, 178. Collective bargaining, 156. See also Trade Unions. Columbus Avenue, building up of, 14. Combination meals, 102. Commissions, 69, 76-77. Common, the, 24. Community life, 154. Influence of, removed, 179-180, l8i. Companionship, lacking. See Isolation. Competition, 32, 47-49, 154, 155, 156, 157- 158, 166. Congregation, tendency toward, 90-92, 167, 169. Conjugal condition of landladies, 54-57. Of lodgers, 81, 94. See also Marriage. Consciousness of kind, 90. Consumption, uneconomic, 161. Continent, the, lodging-houses on, g. Cooked meat, 28. Coolidge, Dane, quoted, 39. Cost. See Price. Cost of living, 159-162. See also Price. Counterfeiting, 134. Country offers inadequate moral training for city life, 179-182. Courtship, 172, note. See also Public Parlor. Crime, 4, 32, 69,-117, I34-I49» '62, 171. Criminals. See Prime. Criminal statistics, backwardness of, 138. Crisis of 1873, 14, 75. Crowd, influence of, 10. S^ also Imitation. Cynicism, 163, 180. Dance-halls, 28, 30, 31. Death-rates. See Deaths. Deaths, 115, 117, 121, 128-133, 136, note, 150- 151, 169. Delicatessen establishments, 28, 104. Density of population. See Population. Map of, how made, 121, note. Department stores, 32, 94-95, 105, 156-158. Depreciation, 76-77, 168. Dining-halls, large, needed, 103, 174-176. Dining-rooms, 23, 27, 101-102, iii, 137, 163. Distinguished from cafes, 28. Discount tickets. See Meal-tickets. Disreputable houses in guise of lodging-houses, 140-141, 171. Divorce, 161. Doctors, 32, 92, 135, 143-144, 148, 151, 162. Domestic and personal service, 87, 88, 89, 90, Domestic servants, 82, 105, 118, note, 136, 153, 174. Dorchester, 120. Dormitories for students, 188-189. Dover Street, 20, 26, 29. Drink, 27, 29, 30, 31. See also Intemperance. Drug-stores, 27, 32, 143. Drunkenness. See Drink and Intemperance, Dwellings, average number of persons to, n8- 120. Dwelling-houses. See Private residences. East Boston, 13, 119, 120, 123. Education, 104, 105, 106, 113-114, 138, 165, 169, I72-I73» I74» 176, 181, 182. Moral, more intelligent, needed, 179-182. Elevated railway, 79. Eliot, Charles, 172. Employers, attitude of, loi, 156-158. Employment. See Occupation. Environment, 27-33, ''7» '3'» ^35-^36, 138, 145-149, 165, 168, 170, 173-182. Equities, trading in, 70, 78. Evening high school, 113. Evidence, hard to secure, 140, 151. Against real-estate sharpers, 171. Evil, the lodger-, in tenements, 4. Exodus, the, from the South End, 14 ff., 67, 75. Expenses, of landladies, 57-60. Of landlords, 76-77. Of lodgers, 99-104. Factories, 14, 16, 89, 91, 105, 125, 156. Fakes, 32. Family, 150 ff., 161-162, 163, 164, 179. Fashion, 10, 13, 14, 31, 32. Fees, 69. Fens, 26. Fire-escapes, 34. Fire-proofing, 79-80. Flats. See Apartment-houses. Flats, filling of, 12, 14, 75. Fluidity of lodging-house population. See No- madism. Foreclosure, 68, 69. See also Mortgages. Foreigners, 8, 42, 53, 123. Fort HiU, II. Fort Point Channel, 13. Franklin Park, 124. Free-lunches, 48. Furnished-room houses. See Lodging-houses, definition. Furniture, 33, 35, 37, 59, 66, 67-71, 106, 168, 170-171, 173. Gambling, 134, 135-136, 148. Gas-bills, 58. Germany, 4. Good-will, 63, 67-71, 168, 171. Great Britain, lodging-houses in, 2, 3. Grocery stores, 28. Group- conflict, 154. Group-control. See Social Control. INDEX 197 Habit, 163, 180. Hall-Tooms. See "Side rooms.'' Harvard Dining Association, 103. Health, 28, 32, 36-37, 63, 66, 102-103, "5. 131, 132, 165. Heat, 34, 39, 58, 103, 107. Heterogeneity of the lodging-house population, 82, 84, 93, no, 145-149, 169. Home, supplanted by the lodging-house, 0, 150 fl. Homicide. See Murder. Hotels, 29, 30, 91, 141. Hot water, 36. Housekeeping, 5, 104, 159, 163. House-rent, 58, 63, 64-66, 76-78, 100, 159-160, 164, 168, 171. Hurd, Richard M., quoted, 16, 76. Husbands, occupation of, 54, 56-57, 94. Elicit love affairs. See Informal unions. Imitation, 161, 162, 163, 182. Improvement league, possible, 170. Income, 158. Of landladies, 57-58, 60-63. Of landlords, 76-77. Of lodgers, 90, 97-99. Independence. See Personal freedom. Individualism. See Selfishness. Inertia, 172-173. Infant deaths, 131, 132. Informal unions, 135, 138, 142-144, 146-147, 153. '63> 171- Inspection, 3, note, 172. Installment sales, 33, 68 S., 168. Insurance, 77. Intemperance, 117, 137, 146-147. Interest law evaded, 69. Investment, 174-176, 178, note. See also Real estate. Isolation, 31, 104, 106, 109, no, 112, 142, 145-149, 152, 168, 173-174. •79. '8°. 182. Causes of, 109-110. Jews, low infant death-rate among, 132. Just wage, 155, 182. Kitchen, 179. Laborers, 90. Labor efficiency, 30, 86, 174. Landladies, 10, 19, 23, 37, 38-42, 47, 52-71, no. III, 112, 124, 125, 136, 138, 139-140, 141, 145-149. 'S'. 15^. 162, 167, 168, 170, 171, 172, 175. Landlords, 10, 57, 60, 72-80, 145, 167, 170, 171. Large-scale productions in the restaurant busi- ness, 47, 174-176. Laundries, 27, 31, 32. Laundry, 59-60, 99, 135. Leroy-Beaulieu quoted, 105, 173, note. Library facilities, 113, 172. License, lodging-house, 3, note, 172. Marriage, 143. Living-in, 3, note. Liquor-stores, 27, 30, 137. Local industries, 27-33. Lodgers, number of, 6-7. Lodging-house, cheap, 1, 39, 124-125, 137, 138. Common, 2, 3. Definition, i, 2. Distinguished from boarding-house, 5. Municipal, 2. Lodging-house keepers. See landladies. Long Day, The, quoted, 171-172, note, 177- 178, note. Losses in real estate, 75-76. Lynn Woods, 172. Made land, 12. Mail, 138. Mantels, 34. Manufacturing and Mechanical Pursuits, 87, 88, 90, 91, 96. Marriage, 12, 89, 115, 117,129, 142-143,150- 166, 179. See also Conjugal condition. Co-partnership of, 159. Postponement of, 150-152, 155, 161. Marriage-rate, 150-151, 153, 155-163, 164, 169. Marshall, Alfred, quoted, 162, note. Marshes, 13. Massachusetts cities, lodgers and boarders in, 41-46. Mealers, 49. Meal-tickets, 49, 102. Median, the, 130. Melodrama, 31, 113. Men often preferred as lodgers, 66. Mercantile employees, i, 5, 97, loo-ioi, 104- 106, 156, 161-166, 169. See also Trade and Transportation. Mercantile establishments, 27-33. Mercantile Library Club, 113. Mercantilism, spirit of, still existent, 164. Metal trades, 96. Metropolitan Park Commission, 172. Middle classes, attitude toward marriage and children, 161-166. Middlesex Fells, 172. Migration, intra-urban, 11-19, •^^• Mills Hotels, 175-177. Milton, 16. Ministers, 84, 140, 143, 151, 163. Mirrors, 34. Model boarding-houses, 103, 176. Model lodging-houses, 175-178. Money-lenders, 71. 198 INDEX Moral responsibility, 179-182. Morals, 46,49-50,57,63, 64,65, m, 112, 117, 134-149, 152-153, i56-i59» i^S* 168, 169- 182. Mortgages, 63, 66, 68, 69, 71, 78, 168. Municipal baths, 172. Municipal gymnasiums, 117, note, 172. Murder, 134, 135, 138, 171. Mussey, H. R., quoted, 68. Mutual aid, 154. Nationality, 117, 123, 131, 153. Of landladies, 52-53. Of lodgers, 81. Nativity of the population of Boston, 185-187. Neck, the, 13. Negroes, 78, 82, 87, 90, 91. Neighborliness, 154. New England, 53, 54, 71, 81. New England Watch and Ward Society, 140. Newsholme, Arthur, quoted, 129-130, note. Newspapers, 112, 134, 138. New York, 2, 3, 30, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 81, 134, 157, 178, note. Nomadism of lodgers, 82-85, ^'°> ^3^> ^4^' i45-M9» 168-169, i73» 175- North End, 11, 119, 123, 125, 129. Occupation, 25, 54, 56-57, 117, 131, 153. Of lodgers, 81, 82,83,86-96, 97-99, 137, 169. Opportunities, 9, 10, 29, 81, 113-114, 154, 162, 172-173. Overcrowding, 3, note. Palmists, 32. Paris, 143. Parker Memorial, 114. Parks, 13, 16, 152, 172, note, 172-173. Semi-private, 22. Parlor, 34, 62. See also Public parlor. Pavements, 22, 37. Pawn-shops, 135. Personal element, loss of, 173-174. Personal freedom, 158, 168, 173, 178, note, 179- 182. Personal service. See Domestic and personal service. Philadelphia, 38, 40. Philanthropy, province of, in the lodging-house problem, 174-180. Picot, Georges, quoted, 141, note, 143, note. Pictures, 35. Pin-money. See Subsidiary wages. Plumbing, 36. Police, 136, 137, 138-139, 140, 144, 146, 149, 171. Pool-rooms, 27, 28, 29, iii. Population, demand for large, not entirely ra- tional, 164-165. Density of, 115, 117, 118-122, 169. Increase of, 8, 19. In suburbs, 17-19. Lodging-house, in various cities, 38-50. Movement of, from country to city, 8-10. Of lodging-house district, 6, 7. Poverty, 105-108, 161, 169. Precinct lists, 54-55, 83, 86, 125. Precinct maps, 121. Prices, board, 48-49. Clothing, 31. Coal, 58. Gas, 58. Lodging-houses, 70-71. Provisions, 47. Real estate. See Real-estate values. Rooms, 99-100. Water, 59. Pride, 104, 153, 160, 163-164. Change to lodging-houses, 15, 25. In lodging-house districts, 7, 23, 25, 86-87, 117, 119. Private residences, 13, 91, 118. Probation officer, 138. Professional service, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 95, 169. Prostitution, 30, 32, 117, 134-149, 158, 159, note, 160, 161, 163, 171. Extent of, not generally realized, 139. Need of detailed investigation of, 139, 144. Segregation of, 144. Provision stores, 28. Public Garden, 12. Public Library, 113. See also Library facilities. Public opinion, 170, 171, 172, 175. Public parlor, 35, 46, 57, 65-66, 112-U3, 142, 152, I7i-i72» i75» 179- Quacks, 32, 144. Quick lunches, 28. Race. See Nationality. Race suicide, 115, 132-133, 161. Reading-rooms, 172. Real estate, 10, 14, 15, 16, 72-80. Real-estate agents, 27, 58, 63, 67-71, 92, 168. Real-estate transfers, 15, 16. Real-estate values, 33, 72-80. Decline of» 15. Real income of the family not dependent upon the husband alone, 159. Reception-room. See Public parlor. Recreation, 27, 162, 165, 172. See also Amuse- ments. References rarely required, 141, 146, 170. On working-women's homes, 177, note. Reform suggested, 169-182. Registry Department of Boston, 119, 120, ff., ISO- Religion, 178, note, 181. INDEX 199 Remedial measures, 169-174. Remodeled lodging-houses, possibilities of, 178-179. Rent. See House-rent, Room-rent, etc. Repairs, 59, 76-77, 168, 170. Residence districts, 11. Restaurants. See Caf^s and Dining-rooms. Risk, 69, 71. Rooming-house. . See » Lodging-house, defini- tion. Room registry, 62, 67, 100, 109, 170-171, Room-rent, 5, 60-62, 99-101, 136, 140, 168, 171, 177. Rooms, distinction between "square" and '*side,*' 34. In tenements, 4, 5. Price of. See Room-rent. Situation of, in house, 34. Room-signs, 23, 26, 63, 140, 147. Roxbury, 13, 20, 26, 29, 119, 120. Rules, undesir ability of, 3, note, 178, 180- 181. Rutan, Elizabeth Y., quoted, 25. St. Louis, 38, 39, 40, 41, 134, 159. Salesmen. See Mercantile employees and Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits. Saloons, 27-31, in, 137, 172, note. Sampling (statistical method), 87. San Francisco, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45, 107. Sanitation, 35, 117, 131, 175. School census, 125, 126-127. School committee, 127. Schools, 23. Remiss in ethical training, 181. Second-class construction, 79-80. Seduction, iu-112, 135, 157, 158. Selfishness, 154, 157, 161, 162-163. Sex, 117, 122-125, ^3^- Of lodgers, 81-82, 115, 122-125. Of lodging-house keepers, 52. Shade, 22. Sharpers, 63, 66, 67-71, 136, 167, 171. Shawmut Church, 114. Shop-girls, 6, 89, 94-95, loo-ioi, 153, 156- 158. Shoplifters, 135. Side rooms. See Rooms. Single rooms, heavy demand for, icx3, 178. Skilled mechanics, i, 5, 9, 81, 89, 90, 100, 105, 153, 168. Smoking-rooms, 175. Social betterment, 85, 169-182. Social control, 180. Social cooperation, 154, 170. Social dissolution, 138. Social intercourse. See Isolation. Social parasites, 32, 137. Social standards, changes in, needed, 179-182. South Bay, 13, 132. South Boston, 13, 29, 119, 120, 123. South Cove, 119, 123. South End House, 103, 114, 179. Speculation, 78. Standard of living, 90, 101, 145, 154-155, 157, 161-163. State House, 24, 25. Statistical bureaus, 115. Statistics, conflict of, 124. Criminal, backwardness of, 138. Lacking, 83,86, 115-116,124,125-126, 130- 131, 138, 150, 169-170. Purpose of, 117. Stolen goods, 135. Straw lodgers, 67. Street plan, 21, 27. Street railways, 12, 13, 17, 21, 29. Stucco-work, 34. Student quarters, 188-189. Students, 26, 58, 82, 97, 174-175. Style. See Fashion. Subsidiary wages, 6, 156-159, 177. Suburbs, 10, 12, 16, 17, 62, 104, 120, 129, 131, 159, note, 160, 188. Population of, 17-19. Suicide, 134-135, 138, 171. Summer, effect of, on lodging-house population, 61-62. Sundays, 3, note, 28, 36, 112, 148. Sympathy, 90. Tailoring establishments, 27, 31, 32. Tapestry, 34, 36. Taxes, 72, 76-77. Tax-rate, 76. Teachers, residence of, 188. Tenement-House Act (New York), 2. Tenement-House Act (Massachusetts), move- ment for revision of, 79-80. Tenement-House population. See Tenement- houses. Tenement-houses, 4, 24-25, 29, 31, 35, 54, 63, 79, 81, 86-87, ^'^j 104* ^°6» ^i3» 'I7> ^i^j 120, 122, 126, 127, 129, 130, 131, 137, 144, 154, 160, 163, 164, 172, 182. Theatres, 30, 31, 113, 162, 173. Theft, 134, 135-137. Topography, 131. Towels, 36, 59-60, 170. Trade and Transportation, 87, 88, 90, 92, 96. Trade-unions, 9, 155-156. Tramps, 2, 3. Transients, i, 140, 141. Transportation, 10, 12, 17, 29. See also Street railways. Union Park, 13, 22, 73-75, 76, 99. Urban statistics, inadequacy of, 115-116. 200 INDEX Vacant land, izr, note, 131. Vacant rooms, 61-63. Vaudeville, 31. See also Theatres. Venereal disease, 143. Ventilation, 35, 36, 37. Vermin, 37. Vitality, 164-165. Vital statistics, 1 15-133, 169. Available urban, 116, note. Wages, 97-99, loo-ioi, 104, 154, 156-159, 182. See also Subsidiary wages. Wage statistics, 97-99. Walking, 173. Ward politicians, 85. Wards, location and character of, 1 19-120. Population and vital statistics of, 115-133. Water-bills, 59. Water-closets, 36, 59, 60. West Chester Park, 13, 22. West End, 11, 16, 24-25, 29, 81, 82, 118, 119, 123, 125, 129, 137, 138, 188. West Roxbury, 120. Whitmore, Henry, quoted, 72. Widows, 54, 64, 168. Winthrop, 24. Woman-labor, 155. Women, holders of real estate, 77-78. Married, as wage-earners, 156. Occupations of, 25, 47-48, 63, 93-95, 125, ijS. Wages of, 95, 97-ioz, I54-IS5' '77- Women lodgers, statistics of, lacking, 83, 86, 124, 126. Women's clubs, 65. Women's Educational and Industrial Union, 145- Worcester Square, 13, 22. Working-girls' homes, 176-178. Effect on wages, 177. Yards, 22, 79. Yeggmen, 4. Young Men's Christian Association, 114. Young Men's Christian Union, 114. Young Women's Christian Association, 62-66.