The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-04-30
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
INFORMATION BUREAU
FREDERIC J. HASKIN, Director
Washington. D. C
UNCLE SAM TO BE LANDLORD.

ls Washington, D. C 3
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UNCLE SAM TO BE LANDLORD.
Washington, d. c.. April 27-The
! government is about to appropriate
another s60,0OO,000 for housing IA
cilities for industrial workers. A bill
authorizing the secretary of labor, un-
der the direction of the president. to
spend such an amount in furnishing
living quarters for employees engaged
| in war work. including government
clerks in the District of Columbia, IS
now before the senate.
Only a month ago. the Emergency
Fleet CORPORATION received an appro-
priation of $4,000, 600 with which to
provide houses for shipyard workers.
The housing question is now one of
the most important factors in the
American war program. 1t is the
chief obstacle in the way of speeding
up our war work. The whole diff
| Guilty arises from the lack of suffi-
cient houses in towns where munition
plants are located. American work
men are refusing to stay where they
can not obtain decent living condi-
lions.
| The situation has grown up during
the past three years. When the war
first broke out in Europe. the bellig-
erents turned to this country for mu-
/
great demand. munition plants sprung
up. mushroom-like. all along the east
ern coast and in the middle west.
| There was no time to lay out model
towns and villages: to install elaborate
sewage systems and filtration plants,
and to build schools, churches and
moving picture theaters. Besides. this
| was at the time of the great labor de-
| preston, in the first year of the war,
and the munition-makers were conf
be glad to accept the towns as they
| found them.
They were right. Men who had
families left them where they were
and obtained jobs in the new plants,
living wherever they could find room.
| For the men without families it was
not SO hard They were used to
! changing their habits at a moments
notice. But conditions in these NUM-
ton towns were such as to make even
| single inen discontinued.
| In one town in Connecticut during
| the first yea of the war workmen
were compelled to sleep in railway
other kind of shelter Lodging houses
were so overcrowded as to menace
| the health of the workers. An in
vestigation disclosed one room about
| twelve feet square in which six double
| beds had been damned as close to-
y
for the occupants of the beds at the
! far end of the room to climb over
| those nearest the door.
During the height of the boom in
this town three shifts of men slept in
| these beds. Each was allotted eight
hours, at the end of which time an
other men cam and crawled in be-
| tween the same sheets.
This situation was not peculiar to
| this town in Connecticut. The same
n 1r1Cr vi
n'unition town in the country. In
vestigdtions made by the department
of labor, covering many different sec
| ticns of the country, showed a. dis
| tressing similarity of conditions. Thou
sands CT workmen have been discoy-
cred sleeping il rooms without any
means of ventilation; thousands have
| been found living in collars and base
ments, and thousands have been
found living in overcrowded tene-
ments' where the water supply was
confined to a pump in the backyard.
or, in the more up to date houses a
sink in the hall. Even in cities hay
ing supposedly excellent sewer sys-
TENS it has been discovered that
houses are frequently not connected
with them, in which cases cesspools
are usually in close proximity to the
| backyard pump.
Rural sites for munition plants have
not proved much better than those in
the cities. The housing facilities have
been just as inadequate, the sanitation
equally poor.
i Recently. however, American work
men have begun to rebel against such
living conditions. In the first year of
the war such a rebellion would have
been futile. If a workman disiiked- his
job, there was always another work.
man to I'll his place. But now there
is labor shortage. If a workman
leaves his job, it is sometimes, i'm
possible to set another man to fit it
As a result, many factory-owners
who never bothered their heads about
the housing of their employees before
the war, are now adding the cost of
newly built houses to their overhead
expenses. Others who have not been
quite so far-sighted are losing money.
A manufacturer, who failed to heed
the warning of a business expert a few
months ago with regard to providing
houses for his employees. now has
} twenty per cent of his machines stand
ing idle. The money lost by this idle
machinery, according to the business
expert, would have paid for the neces-
sary houses and still afforded a hand
some profit.
Many concerns in sections where
housing conditions are bad are hav-
ing to sublet a great deal of their work
because they can not induce men to
/ come where there are not sufficient
, houses. A middle western concern a
few.weeks ago employed $50 workmen
for its plant. only to have 100 of them
leave the next week on account of the
lack of living accommodations. The
same thing happened to a steel con-
Germ not long ago. Agents of this con-
Germ succeeded in bringing over hun
dred men to the plant on the evening
train. but the first train the next
morning carried the majority of them
> off again. They had not been able to
, obtain lodgings.
Now that the United States is also
at war, such a constant shifting of la