The Connecticut labor news., 1923-10-20
MINERS FORCED TO OCCUPY
 HOUSES UNFIT FOR HUMAN :" ARBITRATION, REPORT SHOWS
By International Labor News Service

By International Labor News Service
 Washington, D. C., Oct Io-In- vestigation by the Children's Bureau of the United States Department of Labor again directs attention to the uncomfortable and insanitary houses in which miners in many sections are forced to live
 Apparently the mine owners believe that any kind of a dwelling, even if 1t lacks every requirements of a decent house, IS good enough for a miner In- vestigators of the Children's Bureau who made a study of conditions af- fecting children in the soft coal dis tricts of Raleigh County, West Vir- ginia, found that usually the only houses to be had in mine towns be- long to the mining companies and the miners families must rent and live in them whether they like them or not Houses Little Better Than Shacks.
 More than nine-tenths of the fam flies interviewed by the bureaus agents lived in houses rented from the companies. The investigators, in their report on the houses, say:
 When not absolutely alike in every detail as whole lanes of them often were, the miners houses were built
 on the same general plan-detached or sem1-detached one or two-story
 structures, containing usually three
 or four rooms. They were invariably
 of wood, some being clapboarded,
 others of upright boards with or without weather-stripping; erected
 without cellars, they stood usually on
 piles, in many cases with an open
 space beneath.
 Most of them were generally lack ing in the essentials of a comfortable | d
 in number; they were inconvenient, Iinsanitary, il1-ventilated, and cold.
 "As the houses were built of the cheapest material, usually not wealth lerboarded, and in many cases not plastered or even ceiled, the freplaces
 which as rule were the only means
 of heating besides the coolastove could
 not keep them comfortably warm.
 Some were said to be like paper
 when the wind struck them. The oc- cupants of a number of the houses had tackled newspapers or old maga-
 zine covers over the rough, board wafls-one family had papered with samples of wall paper-in order to keep out tn cold. The flooring was often only single layer of boards, sometimes with cracks an inch or more wide, placed over open founda- tions through which the cold air cir culated freely. Knot holes and cracks in the wall were not uncommon. Mot infrequently the houses were damp as we'll as cold, as they were built close to the ground and the space beneath the house was not al ways kept dry; water from nearby 1 spring ran under one house. The open foundation also offered a refuge for animals, from which vermin and Ia, ,1a T &l. house. Many families found 1t, also, a convenient place for rubbish of every description-an old bedstead in which children and animals were seen playing at the time of the agents visit was stored under one house, in viting disease and fire.
 In Sad State of Repair.
 Many of the houses were in a bad state of repair, with leaking roofs, loose windows, and sagging doors. The roof of one house leaked in every room, and water and snow came in under the doors; in another it was necessary to put pans around to catch the water. The weather-stripping was falling off some of the houses. Where they had been papered the paper, old and discolored, was ire quently Imagining in ribbons 'In such houses as these the house wife has few conveniences-an inef- ficient heating system, no inside water supply or toilet, no bath. Elec- tric light, found in all except one or two of the camps, was practically the only modern convenience in most Of the miners houses.
 "The need of bath in the miners home IS very real one, especially ii there is no wash and change house at the mouth of the mine. Without Ia bathroom, the miners family bath is likely to be taken under uncomfort- able and inconvenient circumstances. Water-a small amount at best must be heated on the kitchen stove, and in the small, crowded houses strict privacy is difficult to secure In all the II camps only g of the fam lilies terviewed-usually those of the mine executives-had baths in their houses; so that only I36 of the 1928 children enjoyed what in these days Is considered necessity"
 the benefit of the working people of