Town and city

Front matter

i uui^iCR HYGIENE SERIES I

BY FRANCES GULICK JEWETT wBg!Bra!arftaei.-:«--ia

THE

Book Three BY

FRANCES GULICK JEWETT

\, I/O . t. Mi V f. \

GINN & COMPANY '

BOSTON . NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON

Entered at Stationers' Hall

Copyright, igo6, by LUTHER H. GULICK

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 67.9

V\)t gtfttngum jgtegg

GINN & COMPANY . PRO- PRIETORS . BOSTON • U.S.A.

Introduction

While the laws of personal hygiene are recognized on every side and even taught to children, the wider laws of community hygiene have not, in the past, been included in the curriculum of our public schools. This might seem strange save for the fact that the entire subject of public health is modern.

Indeed, with the power of the microbe unsuspected until 1865, with tubercle bacilli and the laws which control them undiscovered until 1882, with universal ignorance of the cure of diphtheria until 1892, and of malaria and yellow fever until 1901, it is not surprising that scientific facts about these preventable diseases have not as yet, to any appreciable extent, been adapted to the understanding of young children.

At last, however, between the progress of scientific research on the one hand and of unprecedented acquaintance with city conditions on the other, instruction in the importance of the laws of civic hygiene has become not only possible but imperative.

Scientists have learned not merely the causes of a high death rate but the way to avoid them. Moreover, the modern methods of research are of such profound

IV INTRODUCTION

interest that I can discover no reason why they should not be presented to school children with the sure expectation of enlisting their enthusiastic cooperation in the work of raising the standards of city life.

In planning this hygiene series I have had in mind the fact that children are influenced not so much by dogmatic assertion as by acquaintance with facts and courses of reasoning. Assure a child that unwashed people, crowded into unclean rooms, breathing impure air, and drinking impure water are more likely to be ill than clean people in clean rooms, breathing pure air, and drinking pure water, and he may or may not believe you; but explain to him the nature of those microbes which endanger life through water, air, and food ; show by actual facts how the death rate has been raised and lowered ; demonstrate by individual example the laws of contagion, and we shall convince the child by the same facts that have convinced his elders.

The capacity to profit by generalized statements comes only with age. For this reason, in the present series, even on the subjects of alcohol and narcotics, dogmatic assertion and the easy moral have been avoided. Treatment of subjects by this method necessarily increases the volume of the text, but it also rouses and holds the interest of the reader.

Although I have thus planned the series myself, the writing of each separate volume has been done by others.

INTRODUCTION V

It is but just to these authors to say that in preparing the facts for presentation they have spared no pains to acquaint themselves with the work of the original investigators on whose authority their own statements rest. In proof of this is the present volume in which pure water is discussed. The author visited the experiment station in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where more scientific work has been done in sewage filtration than elsewhere in the United States, made careful study of water conditions in New York and other American cities, and consulted, among other works, the list of books contained in the bibliography at the close of this volume. Other subjects are treated with similar thoroughness.

Owing to the direct style and swift movement of each chapter, the vast amount of work involved is not recognized at once by the casual reader, but other readers will recognize the fact that nothing of this sort has ever before been done for children. In certain directions, indeed, the present volume represents a new step in the evolution of young citizens.

During the past few years important contributions have been made to the fund of information concerning the effects of the use of alcohol and narcotics. These contributions come partly from scientific work in Germany and elsewhere, partly from recent investigations of the interrelations of drink with crime and pauperism,

VI INTRODUCTION

and partly from the anti-alcohol requirements of large business corporations in the United States.

These facts, thus contributed, together with those more generally known, furnish a story of such exceptional vividness and power that, in regard to scientific instruction on the subjects of alcohol and narcotics, we cannot but be faithful to the demands of school law in

the various states.

Luther Halsey Gulick

Contents

Chapter Page

I. Growth of Cities . i

II. Results of Overcrowding 9

Chapter I Growth Of Cities

An Indian in his wigwam on the prairie may have quite as kind a heart as a city man in his city home ; he may also be more vigorous and able to run faster, but as a rule he cannot in a single day do so much as the city man, either for himself or for his neighbor.

Just here, then, is the secret of our growing towns and cities. Human beings are becoming more and more anxious to give and receive all they can from day to day; and they wish to do this as conveniently and promptly as possible.

It turns out also that the more they have the more they want, and the more they want the more they learn to make, until to-day men and women all over the world are living together as groups of people who depend on one another. Some are manufacturing goods, some are selling them ; some supply food, others supply wits. All are buying something, and in one way or another they all serve each other.

Indeed, that is the one great advantage of our cities: people are close enough together to help each other at the shortest notice and in the best way. As time goes on, however, notice what happens. See how it has worked on Manhattan Island, where New York City stands.

Homes on the Prairie

In 1700 the houses of the city were far apart; wide streets were between them, large grounds around them, where children played ; grass was everywhere, also trees, birds, and flowers. One hundred years later many more houses stood on the same space of ground; less grass was near them, fewer trees, no birds, hardly any flowers. One hundred years later still in certain parts of the city no grass could be seen as far as the eye could reach;

CiROVVTH OF CITIES 3

no trees, no birds, only a few flowers in flowerpots, while the houses were so tall that the narrow, paved streets between them looked like hard, slender valleys between stone and brick mountains. Little chance for sunlight there ! Instead of carriages drawn by horses,

A Village Home there now appeared cars, automobiles, bicycles, and business wagons; and these rushed so fast here and there that children had to give up playing on the streets.

This was bad enough; yet into that crowded place people were now pouring at the rate of one hundred thousand every year ; and, strange to say, they all found room to live. How did they do it ?

Land was growing more valuable each year, and to make the most of it men ran their buildings up from three to seven and eight stories : one tenement in New

York City is twelve stories high. They packed these houses so close together that, in some cases, almost no land in each block was left for a breathing space. They divided and subdivided each broad flat into scores and hundreds of tiny rooms ; for, from first to last, the one object in mind was to make as many rooms as possible, so as to accommodate as many people as possible and receive rent from them all.

The result was that in 1897 five blocks of buildings in New York City held about three thousand people each; and by 1904 there were over three hundred and fifty thousand dark, unventilated rooms in the city. (Do not try to remember these figures, but notice how large they are.)

In 1900 one such block held twenty-seven hundred and eighty-one men, women, and children who were stowed away in fifteen hundred and eighty-eight rooms. As it happened, over four hundred of these rooms had no windows whatever and no outside doors, while six hundred other rooms opened into the air shafts. Now an air shaft is often simply a twenty-eight-inch wide air well that runs up through the center of the building. Anywhere from twenty to sixty windows open into it, and wretched odors from scores of kitchens and bedrooms stream into it so constantly that people often nail up their own windows to keep out the smells and the polluted air from other rooms.

Taken altogether, then, in a single block there were over one thousand rooms which no ray of sunlight could ever find, which no breath of really fresh air could ever enter. In fact, when the doors of most of those rooms were shut, they were like black, airless boxes with the

Homes in New York City covers on. Nevertheless, in 1900, in that very block, four hundred and sixty-six babies were trying to keep alive. No wonder they often failed! No wonder they died even faster than the grown folks !

Still, by running up those towering houses, by making many rooms, by crowding human beings into them regardless of life and health, New York City manages to accommodate hundreds and thousands of fresh arrivals every year. The end of it is that, in a certain district of the city, people have stowed themselves away at the rate of two hundred and ninety thousand to the square mile. This simply means that just there more human beings live closer together than they do anywhere else in the world.

Since that sort of crowding must be woefully uncomfortable, we wonder why yet other people are willing to increase the crowd by going to that particular spot to live.

The truth is that, as a rule, when a man goes to a city to carry on his work he cannot afford either to buy a house or to build one; still he must find a home for himself and his family somewhere, and for the sake of saving time and car fare he hires rooms as near his work as possible. Then, too, other men who are hunting for work go to the same region. They also hire rooms there; and at any point in a city where those two streams of people meet, there the houses are tallest, the streets narrowest, the rooms darkest.

Not only this, but multitudes of these men and women know nothing about the advantages of fresh air, cleanliness, and ventilation. They must also economize all they can. When, therefore, they have all they can do to buy food and clothes for the family, and when they find that

P"|ir'fTTfTj

An Air Shaft Twenty Inches Wide and Six Stories Deep they can save four or five dollars a month on rent by living in dark, close sleeping rooms, they are almost sure to do it.

Generally the consequences of overcrowding are darkness, unclean houses, unclean air, and unclean people. Disease microbes are sure to follow ; and wherever they go the history is the same, for disease and death travel with them.

On the other hand, in every city there are thousands of homes with room enough around them to give grass, flowers, and children a chance ; and each home of that sort raises the health standard for the entire city. Wide, clean streets full of sunshine do the same thing ; yet the most beautiful home in the most beautiful city is in danger when, in another part of the same city, narrow streets and crowded blocks are filled with men and women who live in the midst of uncleanness, impure air, and disease.

Chapter II Results Of Overcrowding

No owner of tenement houses in a crowded city would for a moment think of walking through the streets with a revolver, shooting down thirty or forty persons out of every thousand whom he should meet, for the sake of robbing them. But he does something quite as bad when, knowing that his houses are death traps, he rents them to thousands of people, who live in them and die in them while he pockets the rent.

Mulberry Bend in New York City used to be one of these terrible places. In early days it was "a crooked three-acre lot with a path through it made by cows." But it ended by being covered close with rotten buildings, narrow stairways, halls so dark that a man could not see his hand before his face, and small unventilated rooms, where every year people died at the rate of forty or more for every thousand who lived in them.

In London the crowding is so great that three hundred thousand of its citizens live in tenements of one room for a family. Forty thousand of these live five in a single room, while eight thousand live eight in a room.

lO

When overcrowding reaches such a point everything suffers. Careless people using dark halls, cellars, and bath rooms are not neat in disposing of their rubbish, their garbage, and their soiled clothes. They act as if they thought the darkness were going to save them

Mulberry Bend, a Notorious Slum

from disease as well as from disgrace. Yet everything helps disease along in these neglected houses. Gas pipes leak and sewer pipes are out of order ; the air grows heavy with carbon dioxid, with illuminating gas, with foul gases from broken sewers, with the smell of dirt ; while at the same time dampness adds to the dangerous conditions.

RESULTS OF OVERCROWDING

II

Mr. Riis, who has studied New York City thoroughly, was in despair when he saw. the condition of things. He found cellars so near the river that the water soaked through and rose and fell with the tide. Indeed, he says

A Dark, Interior Room There are over three hundred and sixty thousand like it in New York City

he knew cases where parents " kept their children in bed till ebb tide " to keep them dry.

Fifty years ago in Boston the situation seems to have been even more tragic ; for during a cholera epidemic, when a certain doctor went to see a sick woman who lived in a cellar, he found the water so deep that the only way he could reach her bed was by walking on planks laid from one stool to another.

In those days, of course, no one knew that dampness, darkness, and dirt are just the three conditions that are best for microbes and worst for men; to-day those facts are plain enough. It is also quite as plain that even when a city is clean, well built, and uncrowded, the

inhabitants of the place may die each year at the rate of seventeen for every thousand. Men know this from records that have been kept ; they are, therefore, startled over other city records which show that when people live in damp, dark cellars, or in dark, crowded, unclean houses, the number of deaths jumps to thirty or forty for each thousand.

In New York City the darkest and most unwholesome houses are rear tenements which stand so close behind the front tenements that the distance between them is from two inches to five feet. Of course, each building keeps daylight from the other; at the same time the rear tenement is always the older, the more unclean, and the more neglected of the two. Naturally,

Rubbish in the Courtyard

RESULTS OF OVERCROWDING of course, the rents are lower here and the people more crowded.

Remember these facts and read the following figures. Mr. De Forest, in his book called The Tenement House Problem, tells us that, in the First Ward, in tenements which had no houses behind them, about twenty-nine people died out of each thousand that lived there; whereas, in the same ward, when there was a rear tenement, the deaths rose to sixty-one for each thousand of the occupants. Sadder yet, in such places, when an epidemic once had a start, nothing stopped it, — young and old, strong and weak, all seemed doomed.

This is bad enough for grown folks, but babies always suffer most in such places. In those rear tenements, therefore, the death rate for babies rose to two hundred and four for every thousand ; that is, one baby died for every five that were born. When men began to realize all this, they called

Where Microbes Live Two Years AND Longer those places " infant slaughter houses," for they said that the condition of the buildings killed the babies.

In Berlin, Germany, in 1885, there were over thirteen hundred thousand residents, and seventy-three thousand of them lived in families in one-room tenements. That means that each family lived, slept, cooked, and ate in the same room. They were distributed as follows :

In one-room tenements 73,ooo

In two-room tenements 382,000

In three-room tenements . . 432,000

In four-room tenements ... 398,000

Now compare those figures with this other table which shows the death rate in each set of rooms :

Per

Thousand

In one-room tenements 163.5

In two-room tenements 22.5

In three-room tenements . . ... . ... 7.5

In four-room tenements 5.4

These astounding figures showed that families in four-room tenements were thirty times as likely to live through the year as those in one-room tenements. The explanation is the old one that we began to understand in Good Health. Any human being who has too little oxygen or too little sunshine, who breathes air with gas in it, or odors from soiled clothes, from leaking sewer pipes, from decaying food and unwashed people, is doing what he can to m?ke his body too weak to resist disease

RESULTS OF OVERCROWDING 15

microbes. In the end, therefore, he may be as helpless before them as a half-starved man is helpless before a wild animal, — the animal and the microbe are likely to be victorious in both cases.

This is serious enough, though it is not the whole of the story, for all thinkers know that the place a man lives in affects his character; that the more crowded, unclean, and uncomfortable a tenement is, the more lawless and reckless do the inhabitants become ; that jails, hospitals, and asylums are filled with streams of unfortunate citizens who pour into them from the more unhealthful tenements.

In fact it is true that every year forty thousand men and women find their way from the same part of New York to the penitentiaries and the almshouses of the city.

There are two reasons, then, why every part of a city should be kept in healthful condition :

1. Because cities need men and women with strong bodies.

2. Because cities need men and women with strong characters.

Chapter III Reforms

In 1902 New York City established a new Tenement House Department, and after that reforms moved along at a brisk pace.

Four hundred inspectors were then chosen and sent out to visit the eighty-two thousand tenements of the city and to report on the condition of these buildings, which held twenty-three hundred thousand people. The precise definition of a tenement is a house in which three or more families live and keep house separately, or where more than two families live on one floor.

For the first time in the history of New York her tenements were being thoroughly examined. Sometimes the tenants were curious over the work of the inspectors ; at other times they were indignant; but they always ended by being grateful.

One of the first inspectors visited a five-story house

on the East Side ; and crowds of Italian men, women,

and children gathered around him, curiously wondering

what he wanted. They were astonished to have him go

directly to the cellar. He himself was astonished two

minutes later when he stepped off the lowest stair into

REFORMS 17

a pond of cold water. The children giggled, of course ; but he lighted a torch and looked around. Such a sight ! Baskets and boxes and trash of every sort were afloat. Indeed, as he said afterwards, it looked as if a ship had been wrecked down there. Everybody was ready to help, however, and with chairs, stones, and planks he made a bridge across to the waste pipe. There he found the trouble, — a hole three inches wide and six inches long, with all the waste water of the entire house pouring through it into the cellar.

With such an introduction to the house as that, he was prepared for anything else, — water pipes and flushing apparatus out of order; woodwork around the sinks so rotten that the odor of the place was intolerable; walls, ceilings, and floors unclean beyond description.

After this report was sent in reformation began. Carpenters, plasterers, and plumbers went to work ; pipes were mended, flushing basins put in order, ceilings renewed, walls whitened. And when the inspector visited the place again a few weeks later he says he should not have known it except for the Italians. But they knew him at once and proudly took him around from one part of the house to another to show off the wonderful improvements, — new drain, dry cellar, new washtubs, clean walls, fresh ceilings, all as tidy and wholesome as possible.

That was the experience of one man. Reports also went in by the hundred and the thousand from all the other inspectors, until the department at last felt that they had pretty definite knowledge to go by. They then decided to do three things:

1. To give the city the right kind of new tenement houses.

2. To continue with the work of making the old ones fit to live in.

3. To supervise both the old and the new so carefully and constantly that they would be kept in sanitary condition.

Many owners of tenements resisted these improvements, saying that they could not afford to pay for them, but the officers of the department were firm ; the law was behind them and they enforced it. Hundreds of the worst tenements were bought by the city and pulled down ; others were repaired and altered ; while, as fast as possible, new tenements were built. And now came a pleasant surprise. In many cases the owners themselves began to be grateful ; for they found that instead of objecting to higher rent, thousands of citizens were willing to pay a little extra for the sake of clean rooms, pure air, and more sunshine. In fact they often seemed enthusiastic about these things.

Still the greatest enthusiasm was over the new tenement houses themselves. During 1902 five hundred and

REFORMS 19

forty-three of these were put up, and in 1903 there were over twice as many more. They were such an improvement over the old buildings and people were so anxious to live in them that they were rented not only as fast as they were finished, but every room was engaged even before the .buildings were fairly up. Sometimes people even went so far in their eagerness that they rented their new homes from the drawings of them, which they examined before the first stone of the building was laid.

More than that, in certain parts of the city there was such great interest in the matter that troops of men and women took their friends with them on Sunday excursions to visit the new tenements. They enjoyed the light rooms, bathrooms, wide halls, fresh air, and sunshine. Rents were a little higher to be sure, but everything was built according to the new law ; and since that time people have talked about "new-law houses," which means houses built since 1901, and "old-law houses," built before 1 90 1. Notice the difference between the two sets:

Old-law houses. Hundreds of small rooms with no outside door or window ; no chance for light ; no fresh air in the building except through the slamming front door; halls narrow, sixty feet long, so dark that you stumbled over ragged creeping babies without seeing them; stairs narrow, steep, dark; cellars damp, neglected, often filthy ; bathrooms in common for the entire building ; very little protection against fire ; central air shaft twenty-eight inches wide ; dust, dirt, rubbish, and darkness everywhere. Yet the rent for these dreadful places was often very high.

New-law houses. No room without a window opening out of doors; good light and ventilation; halls square, broad, light ; stairs neither steep nor dark ; every one of them fireproof; cellars damp proof; separate bathroom arrangements for each family ; courtyard not less than twelve and a half feet wide and twenty-eight feet long; light everywhere so that dust and rubbish show plainly and have little chance. These new dwellings were often built by honest people who were not willing to charge too much for rent.

No wonder those buildings were besieged by people who wished to live in them.

Yet even in making old tenements respectable the department did great things. Here are a few figures to show what the reformers accomplished in eighteen months. They found the names of forty-four thousand tenement-house owners and saw to it that they repaired their property according to law. They cleared out eleven thousand cellars and halls full of rubbish and filth; cleaned thirteen thousand ceilings and fifteen thousand walls; put down ten thousand new floors and placed seventeen hundred fire escapes. It is not necessary to remember these figures ; simply notice what a great work was done in a short time.

REFORMS 2 1

As this was going on tenants were encouraged to complain to the department about owners who were not keeping their houses up to the standard of the law. Twenty-five thousand of these complaints came and were looked into. Some of them were certainly not very reasonable ; for Mr. De Forest, from whose report I take many of these facts, says that one old lady was indignant because the department did not clear the fleas out of her room, while another wanted somebody to stop the janitor from raising dust when he swept, — a most important point, yet the department could not take charge of such details.

With so much being done. New York was cleaner and in better health in 1903 than ever before. As Mr. Riis says, she had made fifty years' progress in four years ; and the one great fact that proved this was the change in her death rate. I give a table covering several years to show the gain :

•' *-^ Deaths per

Thousand

1866 33.00

1887 26.00

1897 20.03

1 901 . 20.00

1902 18.70

1903 18.11

If the population of New York City is four million, as it soon will be, a small change in the death rate makes a large change in the whole number of those who die.

Indeed, in this case, even the figures at the right of the decimal point become an important matter. Let one additional life be saved for every thousand people every year, and enough will be kept alive to fill a good-sized village. Notice the following figures carefully :

" " " "■ 20 " " " = 80,000

" " " " 18 " " " = 72,000

" " " " 17 " " " = 68,000

In New York City, therefore, if the death rate should be seventeen instead of eighteen out of every thousand, four thousand lives would be saved in one year. This is worth stpving for.

In tenement-house improvement Boston has worked as well as New York. Indeed, since 1890 there have been citizens' movements in Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Washington, Baltimore, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Kansas City, and thousands of smaller places. Cities take lessons from each other, and the larger the city the larger the lesson. For this reason New York City is the best place to study overcrowding and reforms, for no city in the United States can compare with New York in size and in improvement of tenement houses.

Chapter IV Expense Of Alcohol To State And City

When reforms are such an expense to a city, it is well for the citizens to know what other expenses must be met, and to decide whether money is being wasted in any way. We learn something about this from the state of Massachusetts, for this state leads the country in the way she has studied the expense of crime to both the city and the state.

In 1880 a certain committee of men proposed to find out the exact connection between crime and alcohol, and to do it they kept track of the work done by nine criminal courts in Suffolk County. These remarkable figures show what they discovered :

Sentences for drink 12,221

Sentences for illegal selling 68

Sentences for other crimes . . 4,6io

Total sentences in Suffolk County for one year . . 16,899

Notice the difference, — twelve thousand alcohol arrests and four thousand arrests for all the other crimes put together ! Such was the record for one year. But it seems that, for twenty previous years, the same sort of statistics had been kept. They show that during that time sixty sentences out of every hundred in the whole state of Massachusetts were for what are called " liquor offenses."

Matters did not improve fast after that, for in 1895 the same committee studied again, and found that during the year sixty-six sentences out of every hundred in the state were for actual drunkenness. Besides, there were thousands of cases where men were under the influence of alcohol when they planned or committed their crime. With these included, the committee found that for a single year eighty-six out of every hundred who were sentenced could point to alcohol as the cause of their disgrace.