Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1913-07-20
Indiana's Housing Bill
 The Best In The Union.
uow One Woman Worked for It and
 Won.

r;tv of Evansville, there lives the dearest little woman. Mrs, Albion re,lows Bacon, who is giving her life +o the poor Wife of banker and merchant, with every material com fort she has heart so big that it ,,;11 not rest content with personal case. but she must reach out and help tho less fortunate She is tiny bit of humanity, with seemingly only one foot on earth, with her hand in that of the Infinite, posed ready for flight.
 About six years ago she lost love- ,v daughter, and with the passing away of the child her interest in mere worldly pleasures died. In the midst of her deep sorrow she drove down to one of their tenement houses to look after some repairs, and was shocked at the condition in which the tenants were living. Aghast at the surroundings, she turned to the tenant and said. Do I take money from YOU? Is this all you get in return?' The woman acquiesced Instantly Mrs. Bacon became busy. She darted here and there, looking into cistern and cesspool, into the damp, filthy cellar. the unkept alley and surround ings; at the puny children, and the nale. tired mother. She remembered her own healthy twins and the com- fort in which she lived and she hur ried to a carpenter and ordered gen. eral fixing-up and a purging of the premises. Every house they owned was put in order and made habitable Then she began to hunt up the own CTS of adjacent property, and took them down there that they might see from what misery and want were coming the dollars that paid for their grape. fruit, new dresses and summer vacations. Mrs. Bacon made the food fairly choke them until she got those landlords to clean up and give their tenants a decent place to live in. Then she got after the Chamber of Com merce and got it's members to go be- fore the city council and insist upon better housing conditions for the poor. She took members of the Council herself to see the condition in which some of the people of Evansville were living She drew pictures of the homes of the poor and showed their relation to the homes of the rich. She showed flies coming from there and pictured on the wings of the wind foul contagion entering at the bed room windows of the rich, and carry ing off tffeii' loved ones, just as it had done into her very own home. It was this that walked up the Evansville City Council, the fear that the slums would touch them! Evansville clean ed up.
 It was not done in day, or a month. It took years. But while 1t was in the doing, Mrs. Bacon, with that mother-heart that takes in the rWLO1C WOlAO, IlOu6AC OA IAAuAcAAN' INA state, and she began working for that She sent for Jacob Riis, and together they went over the state, everywhere gathering the right kind of people to- gether The horror of the discover ies almost siekened her. In Indian apolis alone she found 1,500 rooms in wh fo, in which fhnrG were no windows. She found people sleeping in bedroom closets, With the door locked She found women wash ing their babies ill the bluing water after doing the family washing, water was so scarce and had to be carried so far. She found whole families living in single room, with walls so grey and grimy that it was no wonder that their lives were grey, that they were mentally, morally and physically dis eased
 After one of these heart-rendering tours she came home physically eX- hausted. At night she would dream of the misery. Finding one night that she could not sleep she ran down into the library, and there, in her night robe and kimono, draughted her famous tenement housing bill which has been pronounced the best that has ever been framed.
 For months she had studied plumb ing, building laws and sanitation un- til she knew what to ask for.
 Then, tucking her housing bill un- der her arm, she hied herself backed to the Indiana Assembly which was then in session. She simply camped at the Capitol Building. and she was so frail looking, and such a gentle woman withal, that those sturdy legis- lators had a hard time not to capltu- late on the first round. Then came