The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1932-02-05


Magazine.
Housing conditions in New York
were discussed Thursday. There
can be little doubt as to the verdict
on the slums of New York. But do
these conditions exist in other cities
in the cities which are used to
diherentiate themselves from New
York on the ground that New York
Is really not an American city with
American living standards?
The answer is: They do.
In Cincinnati, for example, a
larger percentage of the population
lived in tenements ten years ago
than in any other city in America,
and a survey of 1898 flats in the
towns malodorous basin district
showed that 10 per cent had out
side toilets used by as many as nine
families.
There were eighty bathtubs in
the area. Half the flats had two
rooms only, and were occupied by
one to seventeen people. Dark and
WindoWless rooms existed, and
third CT the buildings (three and
four stories in height or more) had
only one egress.
A zoning law passed in 1924, a
city plan adopted in 1925, and re-
form administration since 1926 have
bettered the basin" area.
lao Tubs for 1,5OO Homes
But the emigration of the old
German population from the down
town districts and their replace
ment largely by Negroes and mi
grants from the primitive Kentucky
mountain districts has presented a
new slum problem and left the
death rate high.
Chicago's Hull house and stock
yard districts need no introduction
to world already weary of read
ing the sordid story of the gener-
ton they have produced In 1925,
$500 homes in these districts had
140 tubs among them, a third had
yard toilets, and 85 per cent of them
had no heat but stove heat. Phila-
delphia's famous streets go by such
names as Noble and Christian and
Beth Eden.
In 1929, yard toilets in these dis
tricts ran to 90 per cent and over
and stoye-heated homes to 95 per
nntAf tnr1fh ~, 80
Beth Eden district had no water
whatever.
Pittsburgh had, in 1929, it's Rus
sian families of eleven in two rooms,
its Ukrainian families of ten in
single basement chamber, it's Negro
families of five with one room and
no window, its sewers backing into
basement baths, it's kitchen taking
light and air from market for live
poultry.
Slums soft Pedalled"
Public officials are persuaded it is
unwise to refer to the existence of
slums; the inhabitants of the dis
tricts may take the term as a re-
Election upon themselves; the facts
do not always harmonic with the
melody to which the local boosters
sing their lays.
The result has been that munic-
ipal authorities all too frequently
have proceeded upon the theory
that what they don't know won't
hurt them.
1t was for that reason that the
National Housing Association called
its 1914 survey what Our Cities Do
Not Know" Some of the things
our cities did know, however, were
that st. Louis still had 10000 of its
10000 privy vaulty, that Phil
adelphia still had 10000 of its Co.
900, that Minneapolis had 1900,
Pittsburgh 5000, Detroit $500,
Grand Rapids 4,400, Cleveland 1885,
plus 1000 privy sinks, Columbus
1900 New York 1874.
Baltimore'S record total of 10000
largely has been swept away. BY
1928, Philadelphia was down to TO-
600 and st. Louis has today 10000.
But all this has to do with great
city slums-the slum is the obvious
and extreme case. Well-to-do
citizens in their ordinary travels
rarely see a Slum.
Brownstones Crowded
Instead, they pass or skirt the
block after block of crowded and
unattractive but respectable looking
and apparently serviceable brown
stone houses, the three decker
wooden houses and w-windowed,
half-shingled, two-family houses,
the red brick, four stored, 'front.'
step. flats which, in one style OF
architecture or another, circle our
larger cities and our more urban
towns like the rim of deadened ash
around burning fire.
And they find it hard to believe
that the homes in these buildings
fall below a minimum standard of
decency.
Unfortunately, the fact is other
wise. A large proportion of these
apparently ll-but-decent houses
lacks the prime requisite of a sani-
tary toilet for each family within
the house; many lack running wa
ter in each fat; more are so con-
structed as to have dark, unventi-
lated inside rooms.
In others there is such con-
gestion of tenants that privacy is
impossible; and in others the height
of nearby buildings, the narrowneSS
of alleys, and the extent to which
the ground is built up have cut of
light and air.
Let the skeptical citizen turn
aside into the back streets which
intersect his well-paved, through
traffic thoroughfare and see for
himself.
Tomorrow-Mr. Rabbits home
town.