The Northwest worker. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1915-1917, 1916-01-13
ALMS-HOUSE PROSPERITY

sends industrious workers 10 the aims
house? That Is what the rush of
war orders has done to many work
ers at Bridgeport, Conn, and prob
ably has done the same to workers
elsewhere. And II, instead of war
orders, the prosperity had been due
to any other kind Of orders, the re-
suit would have been the same.
An investigator of the Russell Sage
Foundation, writing in the New York
Survey of December dth, tells the
following story:
Andrew Tarcai is a laborer at the
plant of the American Graphaphone
Company in Bridgeport, Conn. He
earns $12 week which, with careful
planning and without emergency de-
mands, has just been sufficient to
meet the needs of himself, his wife
and three small children. The fam
lily has occupied modest quarters for
rental of $3.50 month.
zone day recently a calamity hap
pened to Tarcali. His landlord noti-
fled him his rent would be raised to
s12. Two and half dollars seems a
modest sum, but to one on the slip
perry edge of poverty two dollars and
a half is as big as mountain. 1t
looked so to Andrew Tarcali, for it
was not to be had.
"The next day Mrs. Tarcali set out
to look for new lodgings. She looked
and looked. The town was filled up.
No quarters the Tarcalis could afford
to occupy were to be found. The
landlord ordered them to move, and
finally the sheriff turned Mrs. Tar
cali, the three small children and all
their goods and chattels into the
street.
THE Tarcal's are not paupers. Mr..
Tarcali is at work earning the pre-
i vailing rate of wages for unskilled
labor. Moreover, he is able and will
ing to pay a rent which a few weeks
before would readily have secured
, him a modest home. Yet such a home
is not available.
"TarcaIi's calamity was brought to
the attention of the department of
charities, and its agents set out to
find the family a home. The search
was in vain. No home they could
afford to rent was to be had, and the
wife and three children are now at
= the city alashouse, the father paying
toward their support and hoping in
the near future to find a home in
which to reunite his family"
This is not an isolated case. con
! November 10th, nine families were
in the almshouse," continues the writ
/, er, having been elected from their
homes because of increased rents"
And the rent problem is getting so
threatening that it is proposed to
use election booths and portable
school houses for the increasing num-
Der of evicted.
"The Tarcalis and their neighbors
are victims of the war" says the Sur
yey writer. But there he is wrong
The war has enough to answer for.
It should not be made the scapegoat
for evils inherent in the capitalism sys
tenn The wages of the TarcaIis are
hollow tho n arm al oOg+ Of li,,i,,o eor
the very simple reason that a num-
Der of unsklled laborers are to be
found in Bridgeport who are unable
to find employment even at $12
week. Andrew Tarcali dares not de-
mand more wages than the unem-
ployed man is willing to accept, since
the Graphaphone company VIII nat
urally buy its labor-power where it
can be purchased at the lowest rate.
SO long as commodities are produced
by privately-owned factories for Pro
fit, instead of by collectiveIy-owno
factories for Use, the unemployed
problem viii remain, and the iobless
man will continue to lower the stand
ard of living of his brother wage
slave.
When the papers tell the public of
Bridgeport's prosperity" they mean,
of course, prosperity for the owners
of the means whereby the workers
must live, even though this means the
almshouse for those whose labors ere.
ate this prosperity"
Under Socialism, useful labor will
bring prosperity to the industrious,
and the almshouse only to those who