The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-03-21

NoDiluilnIl 10 VI II Is 4ulbN
evident from the fact that it has ut.
terly failed to house its workers.
Prior to 1914 the situation was pretty
bad but has since been aggravated by
the lack of building and the terrible
over-crowding that has followed.
Our mining villages and industrial
towns are a standing disgrace to our
so-called civilization. A report of an
enquiry into the state of the coal
industry says:
"No one can read the grim story
of the squaIor, over-crowdine, and
insanitary conditions in which
great part of our mining population
live today, without sense of shame.
Long rows Of one-roomed houses,
built of the stone of the locality, to
which sometimes Iarder was after
ards added. There was generally no
window or door at the back, the
only door being that which led into
a cinder-strewn yard-a quaemire in
winter. An open eulIey carried away
all the sops Of the tenants. At in
tervals, in the middle of the yard,
huts would be erected, divided into
privies, ash-pits, and maybe coal
houses, and these might be, but Of
ten were not kept in repair. Water
could be drawn from a stand-pipe
in the yard, one or two for each
row of houses"
MOST of the villages consist of
IVI houses of one, or at the most
two rooms, and in these, very often,
large families have to live. The fol
lowing cases are quite common.
In Consett County Durham) in a
house of two rooms, (the upper one
being reached by a ladder thru hole
in the floor of the upper room,) there
live man, wife and children, in
Guiding two girls of II and % and a
boy of IS.
The average room space for the
whole county is OFT per person, (1921
census retUns) ) and i in the mining
and industrial district it is very much
less than that ~ 7Ta1
THE county of Lanark tells 81
milar story. In the northeast
corner lives 1,539,O00 people, (about
one-third of Scotland's population)
and the district is a mass of Stag
heaps, chimney stacks, blast furnaces,
and insanitary houses. There are 921,-
All houses in the country, 81 200 single
roomed, 1885, S5 two-roomed, /. e., two
third of the houses contain at the
most two rooms.
The mining villages are clustered
round the pit-shafts, and the dust and
CRIME penetrates to every nook and
makes the task of the women hope
less. 4t
Their burden is increased by the
fact that practically none Of the pits
have baths attached to them and the
miner, returning home from work,
covered from head to foot with CRIME,
and often wet to the skin, has to strip
and wash in the room that has to
serve for living, dining, often sleep
ing. and sometimes as the only store
house for the Goals. The women are
necessarily waging war against dirt,
working from early morn to late at
night, and the position is often ag-
gravated by the fact that two or more
miners live in the same house, and
are employed on different shifts, and
this means double work for the wo
men.
NNE of the great evils of most OF
~ the mining villages and also
many Of the agricultural distrist is
that the houses are owned by the en-
'ployers, and so the tenant is COM
PEELED to leave the house when his
work for that employer is finished,
whether he has been stopped or
left of his own accord.
In the early days of capitalism,
when labor was needed for the mach
ines, small houses were rapidly
thrown up without any thot of santa