The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-09-18
THE FIGHT FOR BETTER HOMES
Movement Now Includes 1ss Cities

Bureau.) E Years ago Jacob Riis startled the 1 country by his revelations of how the other half lived in New York. Due to these revelations and to the work of public spirited citizens year after year. the other half lives better in New York today. New York did not 1 like the revelations. It was inclined | at first to call Jacob Riis a bad citizen. Later it changed the adjective to "best"
 | The rest of the country contented 1 itself with exclaiming over New | York's badness and thanking Provi- 1 dence that it was different. But it wasn't different,J except superhc1al1y. It had reason to be grateful that it did l not have New York's tall tenements, solid rows of them mile after, mile. 1 But under different forms it had most | of the things that ade New York s i tenements so bad Philadelphia with it's rows of little houses, Boston with it's crowded North End, Chicago with it's stockyard and west side districts | only needed a. Riis to point the finger l of scorn at them. They did not have Rises but they. did have public spir- tied citizens who began to understand and grapple with these conditions.
 In Small Towns.
 Then came the turn of the small  zens who dare to look at their home conditions and say what they think.
 Five years ago there were scarcely half a dozen American cities which realized they. had a housing problem Today there are 188 cities and. towns which have awakened to the fact Sums have been discovered wherever there has been an investigation They are like, weeds which grow wherever he f3I 9r n farmers ever were more shiftless than wer eour city builders; who seemed to think that city building was a case of everybody's business and fconse- quently nobodys business. But that time is past in every section of the country the Rocky Mountain states. / Bad housing has been recognized under all it's disgufses. In New Eng land the wooden three decker-the weed peculiar to that 1ocality-is be- ing fought. When the fight began, soon after the great Chelsea fire: the writer met an aggrieved builder of three deckers. This talk about fire hazard is all rot,,' he declared. My family live on the third floor of a three decker and we are not afraid of fre.'' Why did you choose the third floor ?'' I asked. Because the light and air are good up there, he replied. And. not until he had said it did he realize what he admitted. New England is beginning to realize that though the. fire hazard is real and that though, fires. like those of Chelsea and Salem are spectacular, the constant, unrecorded. losses to health, effici ency, morals. which come through crowding families together in dark, afrless rooms are much greater in total. So twenty-three towns and one city have already forbidden the erection of more three deekers.
 The TranspIanted English SIunn. {. In the middle Atlantic states bad Housing takes the form of the English Sum, closely packed little houses which fill nearly every foot of space within the blocks. Back yards are filled with double rows of tiny dwell ings which can be reached only by means of archways under the street shouses. There is no room in these little dwellings for proper sanitary appliances, so an outdoor toilet at tn e cid of the passageway serves all fam flies and one outdoor hydranf supplies all their water. In some of the old CT and most crowded sections of these cities there are large areas without sewers.
 In the middle west and the south where land overcrowding has not yet developed to amy such degree as it has in the northe hern and eastern cities there is bad housing under another disguise. The American wilderness was conquered by the rifle, the axe, the frying pan and the one room cabin. The first two have gone out Of general use, but the last two re- main with us. The. frying pan still works it's will on digestions not forti- fled by a hardy life in the open The II, degenerate form of the board shaHty 5 in nearly all the states west of the leghanies-though even the Allan tic seaiboard, which has not known the pioneer since the United States became a nation, has some of these reminders of him.
 From Log Cabins to FIimsy Shanties. sN In these shanties, f1inasy boxes which lack everything that makes for decency and self-respect, live hum dreds of thousands of Americans. Their children cannot escape the low standards of their environment. We have been told of the forlorn lives of the southern mo1ntaineers who live in log cabins. In the southern cities and towns, and in those of In diana, Ohio and Illinois. is an even greater population living in one, two and three room board sshaties. Poor E ly protected against the weather-for heat and cold have small respect for thin boards, they are crowded to- gether on narrow, filthy streets and alleys and courts, instead of being scattered through the clean forests. Instead of pure spring water their supply comes frcm wells constantly liable to contaminatIon.l
 The southwest and the Pacific Coasts are not free from bad hous- ing The corrals of Texas, the house courts of southern California, have al- ready become we'll entrenched. And even the tenement or 'barrack dwell ing has appeared. But it is ip northern California, and further north that the tenement menace is the worst.
 San Francisco rose from its ashes a city of wooden tenement house. Its lth11s sts boast of it as the new