The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-04-18
COST OF LIVING
 IN NEW YORK The Price The Working Man
 Has To Fay WIFE AND FOUR CHILDRE N A Two-Years' Study in the Metropolis of Am%ica of sst Average Fam
 ilies-Salary of $500 Year.
WIFE AND FOUR CHlLDRE N

New York, April 17.-"Can a man de- gently support a wife and family of two
 to four children, in New York city, on
 salary of sSO0 a year."
 That's the problem that a group of stu
 dents in New York have been working
 on for two years and their report, Just
 published draws up the first scientific and
 philosophical conclusions on the standard of living yet made in this country. It is
 statistical study, and statistics usually frighhen people but if figures ever lived
 and told stories for themselves of depri-
 vaton and extravaganza, foresight and
 lack of judgment, saving and spending. these statistics of workingmens families in New York certainly tell a tale of their
 own
 And they have a practical bearing, too,
 for the Buffalo Charity Organization so- ciety has used the results arrived at i through this investigation in the work of
 giving out relief in that city. Charities
 and the Commons, the New York maga- zine devoted to social welfare, used the conclusions of the investigat tion in study | ing a strike of clay workers in Perth Am- 1 boy last winter when the minimum stand-
 ard set up in the report of the inyestiga- ! ton was measured against the actual
 amount of wages being received by the
 workers, and. the wages given to the striking pottery men were found to be
 way below the required standard of living
 set by the investigators.
 The investigation was carried on
 through the cooperation of volunteers, trades union members and paid schedule reporters furnished b ythe Russell Sage Founoation. Dependent families were not included. The visitors tried to find nor mai families, having both parents living, with two to four children under 16 years of age. The leading nationalitie5 were in-
 cluded ill the investigation which took in
 a study of 991 families who answered the
 scheduled questions with surprising de-
 gree of willingness. The expected none of your business answer was forthcom- ing often enough, but on the whole lne
 visitors were treated with consideration.
 although some of the intimate questions were baked at.
 One visitor tells this story about the
 item of expenditure for drinks away from homc" When liquors were spoken
 of, the wife, who was answering most Of
 the questions, emphatically exclaimed. Nothing At this the father, sitting sl-
 lently and letting the wife do the talking,
 turned his head toward the street How ever, looking straight into the fathers
 face, I emphasized the words drinks away from home and he could no longer
 restrain himself About 10 to 15 glasses of beer day and a glass of whisky. he
 mumbIed.''
 l OfAthe S91 families whose home stories | were recorded, SIS had incomes ranging 1 from S6OO to S11OO The 25 below 5000 and | the 4S above sl100 are included and most | of the attention is given to the SIS fam | lilies within the narrower range. Thlrty- | eight of the fathers were laborers, 5V | were teamsters and 66 were garment | workers In these occupations, where 1t Is 1 seldom possible for the father to earn
 more than $500 or $500 year, it was found | that the children or the mother must | work or lodgers must be taken, 1T the
 family is to enjoy anything beyond bare | necessities Forty-five children were found | to/be at work for wages, 20 boys and 70 | girls and, strange as 1t may seem, more | children were found employed In the fam 1 flies earning larger wages than In the | small income groups In the Sls families | whose incomes ranged from $6oo to sl1oo. l there were found 103 wage-earners besides
 the father and of these 103 persons 5S | were mothers 2 working as mattresses, | in many cases in the teneTnents in which l they lived.
 Hard times often mean good deal to | the man with q respectable Income. But
 the burden comes hardest on these fam | flies already pretty close to the border | line. Of the 1pS Manhattan families who 1 had been a year more in the same l tenement 102 reported an increase of rent from 50 cents to $5 a month since l9Oo. One l family on Essex street has been in Its present tenement for 10 years It now | pays $2S a month for rooms, with toilet
 in apartment Two years before the rent l was SIS.
 | Twenty-seven per cent of all expendi- | lures is paid for rent, on the average, by | the families with incomes between $4OJ
 and $500. and 25 per cent by the 1T families
 with incomes between $500 and ss00. The l 63 families with incomes between $900 and s1O00 average only 19 per cent, although
 paying $171 an average, as compared
 with sls4, the average rent of families in | the $400 income group.
 Many bad conditions of crowdng were
 found by the visitors. It appears from
 the final summary that out of 1l6 Manhat- | tan families with incomes between $0O9 | and $500, 1 per cent have no more than
 three rooms; of the 5S families in the $500 l group, AS per cent have not more than l three rooms, and of the 70 families with incomes between s9o0 and $1100, 39 per cent | live in rooms or less.
 | Nearly half of the total outlay of the
 S91 families is food; s290,10 year is the ] average amount spent for the $500 families l and S451.46 for the s110o groups. | One hundred dollars was fixed as a min- | imum for a familys clothing-family ] of father, mother and four chill 1 dren-$10O Of the BIS familie l with incomes between $500 and $1100 l26 1 or 10 per cent, report less than the stated | amount for clothing. By incomes, 57 per | cent of the families with incomes of be- | tween $500 and $500 are under-clad, 32 per | cent of those with incomes of $500 to 800
 and IS per cent of those with incomes be- I tween $900 and $1100. Of those with in- 1 comes below $500 three-quarters were found under-clothed, while in only one or two of the families with over $1100 to spend falls in this category.
 | Doctors bills are so intermittent in the history of any family that it is not possi- ble to treat them like the regularly re- curing expenditure for food and rent.