The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-04-02

New York, March 25.-'.Can a man decently support a wife and family of two to four children in New York city
 on a salary of $500 a. year?''
 That's the problem that group of students in New York have been work ing on for two years, and their report, just published, draws up the first sci entific and philosophical conclusions on the standard of living yet made in this country. It is a statistical study, and statistics usually frighten people,
 but if figures ever lied and told stor, ies for themselves of deprivation and extravagance, foresight and lack of judgment, saving and spending, these statistics of workingmen'S families in New York certainly tell a. tale of their own-
 And they have a practical bearing, too, for the Buffalo Charity Organiza- tion Society has used the results ar rived at through this Investigation in the work Of giving out relief in that city. Charities and the Commons. the New York magazine devoted to social welfare, used the conclusions of the in vestigation in studying a strike of clay workers in Perth Amboy last winter when the minimum standard set up in the report of the estigation was measured against the actual amount of wages being received by the work CTS, and the wages given to the strik-
  below the required standard of living set by the investigators.
 The investigation was carried on through the cooperation of volunteers, trade union members and paid sched- u1e-reporters furnished fby the Russell Sage Foundation Dependent fanlil- ies were not included. The visitors tried to find normal families having both parents living with two to four children under sixteen years of age. The leading nationalitaes were includ- ed in the investigation which took in a study of 391 families who answered the scheduled questions with a sur prising degree of willingness. The expected none of your business an swer was forthcoming often enough, but on the whole the visitors were treated with consideration although some of the intimate queations were baked at
 One visitor tells this story about the item of expenditure for drinks away spoken of, the wife, who was answer ing most of the questions. emphatic ally exclaimed, Nothing At this the father, sitting silently and letting the wife do tn the & talking = turned his ,aan,aa hsaa straight into the fathers face. I etn- phasized the words drinks away from home and he could no longer restrain himself. About ten to fifteen glasses of beer a day and a glass Of whisikey,' he mumbled."'
 Of the 3e1 families whose home stor- ies were recorded, BIS had incomes ranging from $500 to SLIGO. The 25 below $500 and the 4S above SLIGO are included. and most of the attention is
 given to the SIS families within the narrower range. Thfrty-eight Of the fathers were laborers, thirty were teansters and sixty-six were garment workers. In these occupations, where it isl seldom possible for the father to earn more than $500 or $500 a year. it was found that the children or the mother must work, or dodgers must be taken, if the family is to enjoy any thing beyond bare necessities. Forty five children were found to be at work for wages, twenty boys and twenty five girls and. strange as it may seem, the families earning larger wages than in the small income groups. In the SIS families whose incomes ranged from $500 to $1,100 there were found 1O8 waEe-earners besides the father and of these 103 persons 5S were moth- CTS. ? working as mattresses, in many cases in the tenements in which they lived.
 Hard times often mean a good deal to the man with a. respectable income. But the burden comes hardest on these families already pretty close to the border line. Of the 19S Manhattan families who had been a year or more in the same tenement 102 reported an increase of rent from 50 cents to $ a month since 1905. One family on Es- sex street has been in its present tene- ment for 10 years. It now pays $23 month for four rooms. with toilet in apartment. Two years before the rent was SIS.
 Twenty-seven per cent. of all expen- age, by the eight families with incomes between $400 and $500, and 2e per cent. by the IT families with incomes be- tween $500 and $500 The 63 families nnnI average only 19 per cent, although paying s171 on an average, as compsr- ed with SPA. the average rent of fam lilies in the S40O income-grous,.
 Many bad conditions of crowding were found by the visitors It appears from the final summary that out of Ills Manhattan families with incomes between $500 and $500, n per cent. have no more than three rooms; of the 5S families in the $SeO group, 4a per cent have not more than three rooms and of the 70 families with incomes be- tween $So0 and S1, ,1c0, g per cent. live in three rooms or less.
 Nearly half of the total outlay of the 391 families is food. S29O.1O a. year is the average amount spent fer the $60O families and $451.4 for the SLIGO groups.
 s1CO was fixed as a minimum for family's c1othing.-a family of father mother and four children,--S1OO, Of the SIS families with incomes between 9oUO ana Sl-IOO, 1Z6 or 4U per cent. re- port less than the stated amount for clothing. By incomes. 57 per cent. of the families with incomes o1 between $500 and $500 are under -cis~d g per cent. of those with incomes of $500 to $9o0. and IS per cent. of those with in- comes between $900 and st.1GO. Of those who incomes below $500 three quarters were found under-clothed, l while only l in of the families with | over SLIGO to spend falls in this cate gory.
 Doctors bills are so Intermittent in | the history of any family that it is not possible to treat them like the regularly recurring expenditure for | food and rent. The average expendi- | ture for health ranges from S13.7S for l the families with incomes between $500 | and $700 to S2330 for families with in | comes between s900 and $1 100 It falls | to s14.s0 in the S1.0O0 group and rises, on account of a few cases where the | amount is very high. to $4O.1S for the | fo