The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-08-27
Officials Cannot Clean Up "Lit-
tie Mexico Now.
No Ordinance To Permit Them
To Do a Thing.
ADMIT CONDITIONS ARE BAD
New Ordinance Is Favored by
Mayor House.
Story in the State Journal
ArOuses Officials.

The city of Topeka is powerless un-
der its present ordinances to remedy
housing conditions in the Mexican
camp near the viaduct Such was
the announcement made today by Or;
H. L. Clark, city physician, following
an expose of the conditions in the
camp made by the State Journal Sat
urday.
Until the city of Topeka passes a
housing, or tenement ordinance SINH
lar to those in existence in other cities,
we are powerless to administer the
only real remedy" said Doctor Clark.
I'VE have no authority, under the
present ordinances, to dictate the
amount of air space that each indi-
vidual should enjoy in home"
The city can enforce stringent sani-
tary regulations in the homes. But
such regulations enforced in box
car occupied by fourteen or sixteen
people are a mighty poor remedy, city
health officials admit.
"A housing ordinance would not
only remedy conditions at the Next
can camp" said Doctor Clark. There
are hundreds of families living in To-
peka, negroes, whites and MexicanS
who live in homes not fit for a re-
spectacle animal.
Can't Do Thing.
yet, we are unable to move a fin
ger, we can't dictate to the landlords
Our public health nurses can preach
fresh air, open windows and other
sanitary precautions until doom's day.
While they are preaching it, their
audience is sitting in a 2x4 room used
for cooking. eating and sleeping and
inhabited, maybe, by dozen people.
Topeka hasn't in past years suffer-
ed to any great extent in this respect
as have mining settlements and ten
ements in large cities. Since the ad
vent of the MeXicans and high rents
for poor whites and negroes, the need
of a stringent housing ordinance has
become manifest to city officials.
Mayor House became interested in
the proposed new housing ordinance
today. He promised to look more
carefully into living conditions exist
ing in many places in Topeka.
II would like to see the housing
ordinances of other cities and ascer-
tain whether a similar ordinance in
Topeka would remedy the conditions
said to exist said the mayor.
w. l.. Porter, commissioner of
parks and Fairgrounds. the depart
ment directly responsible for the sup
preston of infectious and contagious
return in few days
Investigation by Miss Louisa Dun
can Shaffer, superintendent of the
Public Health Nursing association.
and Dr. Thomas O'Connor, county
physician, in the Mexican camp last
| week revealed conditions that should
not exist, they declare. The officials
found Mexicans, sixteen and eighteen
strong, living in one box car.
The mother is afflicted with tuber-
culosis and in that one car the entire
family, ate, slept and lived until Miss
Shaffer convinced them that there was
| nothing criminal about sleeping out of
doors. Nearly every child in the camp
has enlarged glands or is organically
wrong in some way, the county ply
stefan charges.
City officials point out that under
a housing ordinance, the Santa Fe or
| the owners of the box cars and novels
where the Mexicans live could be
forced to supply them with quarters
| containing a sufficient amount of
| fresh air. Not only would that be true
| with the owners of the Mexican camp
| but with many other Topeka property
| owners with property rented to poor
people entirely unfit for habitation
| from a sanitary standpoint