Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1888-04-17

| The Common Lodging House Of Today
Clean and Fairly Comfortable - Tht
Various Glasses of Patrous-View of IN
| Interior--A Valet.
The common lodging house Of today i.
clean and fairly comfortable. Each house i.
| licensed TO receive n certain number only
| every man must have IA bed to himself, and
each bed must have so much space given u
| it. The difference in this respect may bt
| Judged from the fact that in one common
| lodging house with which am acquainted a
room now licensed for eleven beds formerly
contained twenty eight. Moreover, the law
| compels frequent scrubbings of floors and
| whitewashing of walls, and the slightest case
| of illness must be at once reported to the
nearest police station. Seeing the class of
customers the proprietor has to uccommo-
| date, you may imagine that the floors of the
| doimitories get terrific amount of scrub
| bing, with the result that they are far
cleaner and more wholesome than the car
petcd rooms of many more pretentious estab-
lishments, where an overworked housemaid
flicl5 the furniture with II duster, tickles the
carpet with brown and sweeps the fluff
under the bed.
There is very keen competition in the
trade, and some houses are naturally much
better than others. As consequence the
class Of lOdgers differs also. One proprietor,
by keeping his house as dirty as he dares, Sc.
cures the patronage of one class, while an
other, by making his house as comfortable as
possible, attracts men Of superior grade.
But to thoroughly understand what the
common lodging houses are you must SEQ
one. Come down this narrow, unswept and
under the weather looking street You see
hot K.li .
double fronted shop with the shutters still
up. That is a common lodging bouse. The
door in the center is swing door. Outside
it gentleman in the unpicturesque tatters
of our national costume is smoking a clay
pipe, and with his hands thrust in his trou-
sers pockets is looking fixedly at nothing.
Over the doorway at which the gentleman
stands is the inscription in white letters on a
black board "Registered Lodging House.
Beds 31sd. and 4d a Night"
Let us push the swing door open and walk
in. 1t is broad daylight outside, but directly
we have passed the swing door we find our
selves almost in darkness. The room we are
in Is the "kitchen," or common room, in
which all the guests sit and take their meals
and amuse themselves until it is time to go
up stairs to bed. cannot say how one of
these kitchens would look in the glare of day.
would be Hospitality received, and so they re-
main outside. And even there they are
snubbed, for, lest they should be inquisitive
and try and peep in at the lodging house
windows, the said windows are kept as grimy
as possible outside, and inside they are COW
cred with coat Of some dirty looking prep
aration.
The light in these kitchens, then, is gener-
ally of the dim, religious order. 1t suits the
scene The people who are sitting on the long
forms at the table, OF crouchinG together
before the dull red fire, would, some of them,
look hideous in the full light of day. In the
red glow that the fire throws on them, as
they sit in the darkened room, they look al
most picturesque.
The workmen who live in these lodging
houses are not home yet They will come in
about 6 o'clock There will not be many in
this house because it is low house-that is
to say, it is house frequented by tramps
and loafers and shady customers, and more
over it is a "family house." and that means
women and children to disturb the harmony
of the evening in the common kitchen. The
fact that these common lodging houses,
where beds are let out at fourpence a night,
are largely patroniZed by workmen in regu-
lar employment may astonish people who are
not behiRd the scenes. But know in some
Of these houses workingmen who have lived
there for twelve and sixteen years.
These men are single men and widowers,
and the houses which are for linen onlyn |
suit them much better than private lodgings |
would. First of all the house is open night |
and day; all day and all night the red fire |
CLOVIS and is ready for man 80 cook his late |
supper or his early breakfast at, Then there |
IS the society of the other men, pipes and |
and always pal to take a |
hand at cribbage, which is the fashionable |
lodging house game Moreover, |
zach man has bed to himself, which in pr-
gate lodgings for worlingmen is not always
1btainable. And there is always some one
20 call him early in the morning, in order
hat he may get up and go to his work, with
1ut having to pay the policeman on duty to
hrow stones at his window and yell out that
t is "half-past A."
The common lodging house is to these men
lome and club combined, and the proprietor
Who gets this class of men-men in steady
employment II tries to please them, and
they fill his house, and then he ex-
ludes chance customers and ''roughs," and
lis house becomes a regular workingman's
lome.
One great advantage that a man with regu.
ar wages finds in these places is that he is
BILE to keep valet. Yes, valet. In all OF
hese common lodging houses there are men
Who, for a copper or 80 a week, "valetn for
he aristocrats. For twopence a week paid
o q poorer fellow lodger the aristocrat has
lis boots blacked and his supper cooked. In
ddition to this, the valet runs his masters
rrands and keeps his favorite seat by the
ire till he wants it, and when there is a dis
ussion on any matter the faithful valet
hines in with his master and is always
eady to back him in any assertion he may
hoose to ake.-George r. Sims in Phila-
elphia Times