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HOMESTEAD: THE HOUSEHOLDS OF A MILL TOWN
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CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE
IO< EAST 22D SIKII.I, NliW YORK
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
HOMESTEAD
THE HOUSEHOLDS OF A MILL TOWN
By
MARGARET F. BYINGTON
FORMERLY DISTRICT AGENT, BOSTON ASSOCIATED CHARITIES; ASSISTANT
SECRETARY, CHARITY ORGANIZATION DEPARTMENT,
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY
FINDINGS IN SIX VOLUMES
Edited by PAUL UNDERWOOD KELLOGG
NEW YORK CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE MCMX
FROM LIBRARY OF
THE
DEPART OF PUBUO HEALTH TORONTO.
Copyright, 19 10, by The Russell Sage Foundation
IKI SS Of WM. I . II 11. 00. I IIII.ADI I.IHIA
EDITOR'S FOREWORD
THE family as a social unit takes us back into shadows be- yond where history begins; the town carries with it a thousand written memories of walled boroughs, county markets and communes, where self-government had its beginnings. But the mill with its acres of tracks and sheds, its continuous opera- tion, its intricate plan of discipline, of interlocking processes, of insistent demands upon human nature, is a newer institution. Factory production is less than two centuries old. The power transmission through which the modern plant with its thousands of workmen has expanded and developed, is scarcely as many generations old. Electrically charged wires have become the binding nervous cords of industrial mechanism well within the memory of living men.
Miss Byington's study is essentially a portrayal of these two older social institutions, the family and the town, as they are brought into contact with this new insurgent third. Has their development and equipment kept pace with mechanical invention? Have they held their own against the mill? Is the balance of life and work preserved? Or have we, in the industrial town of twen- tieth century America, not a "deserted village" such as Goldsmith lamented in eighteenth century England, but a more serious, anti- thetical problem in an overcrowded, overwrought aggregate of households. The query is, not shall "every rood of ground main- tain its man," but shall the day's work afford an adequate basis for American livelihood?
Such a description, however modest in scope and put forth in the homely imagery of domestic life, deals thus with the forces which are wrenching at the very structure of society. There are other, perhaps more obvious circumstances, which give this book a distinctive place in the general scheme of these volumes. The colleagues in the field work of the Pittsburgh Survey took up special
EDITOR S FOREWORD
factors affecting the welfare of the wage-earning population — such as sanitation, housing and public education; Miss Byington's com- mission was to analyze these factors as they enter jointly into the life of one of the small industrial communities which are character- istic of the Pittsburgh District, and especially to analyze them as they bear upon the well-being of family groups. Her book also complements Mr. Fitch's volume on wages and the general labor conditions in the steel industry.
In carrying out this commission, Miss Byington made an in- timate case study of 90 households, employing methods of budget taking which have been developed for standard of living inquiries. She brought to her work, as basis for comparisons, an acquaint- ance with tenement conditions in New York and Boston. The resulting data have some rather obvious statistical shortcomings, which are explained in the appendix; but as a transcript of everyday economic existence, they served at once to re-enforce and to check up the impressions which grew out of her personal contact with the people who earned the money, and ate the food, and lived in the houses, and worshipped in the churches of this town. If the book inevitably brings out sharply the odds of life with which many industrial communities have to reckon, we trust that the loyalty of Homestead residents will not take offense that theirs should have been the town thus singled out for study. "The rank and file of the people are with you," said an old mill man. To housekeepers and steel workers, to pro- fessional and business people, who gave freely of their time and information, we cannot offer thanks, for the book is partly theirs. Theirs, also, are the two irrepressible, grim interrogations which underlie both the statistical tables and the bits of neighborly gossip with which the author has enlivened her narrative. In their bearings upon contemporary economic and social conditions, these are questions for a nation as well as for this community.
I he first has to do with the town: how shall local self- government keep abreast of a nationalized industry?
The second has to do with the family: here is a town de- pendent upon one of tin- greal industries of America, which has profited by brill i.int invention, bv organizing genius, by a nation.il policy ol tariff protection. It was studied at the close of the
vi
EDITOR S FOREWORD
longest period of prosperity which has been known by our genera- tion. What has that prosperity brought to the rank and file of the people whose waking hours are put into the industry?
Miss Byington has summed up in a single phrase the nega- tive aspects of the situation so far as the men are concerned, who "turn daily from twelve hours in the din of the huge mills to home, supper, a smoke and bed." What steel production holds out to the families of these men she sets forth within the covers of this book.
Paul U. Kellogg
Director Pittsburgh Survey
Vll
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Editor's Foreword v
PART I
THE MILL AND THE TOWN
Chapter I Homestead and the Great Strike 3
Chapter II The Make-up of the Town 12
PART II THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING HOUSEHOLDS
Chapter III Work, Wages, and the Cost of Living 35
Chapter IV Rent in the Household Budget 46
Chapter V Table and Dinner Pail 63
Chapter VI Other Expenditures: The Budget as a Whole . . .81
Chapter VII Of Human Relationships 107
Chapter VIII The Children of Homestead 118
PART III
THE SLAV AS A HOMESTEADER
Chapter IX The Slavs 131
Chapter X
Life at 1 1. 65 a Day 138
ix
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter XI page
Family Life of the Slavs 145
Chapter XII The Slav Organized 158
PART IV
THE MILL AND THE HOUSEHOLD
Chapter XIII
The Mill and the Household 171
APPENDICES
APPENDIX
I. Methods of Budget Study 187
II. Tables giving general description and average weekly
expenditure of each of the 90 budget families . . 206
III. Employes in Homestead Plant of the United States
Steel Corporation classified according to skill, citizenship, conjugal condition, etc., Mar. 1, 1907 . 214
IV. Classification and Earnings of Employes in Three
Representative Steel Plants in the Pittsburgh
District 215
V. An Act to Enable Borough Councils to Establish
Boards of Health. State of Pennsylvania. 1893 218 VI. Report of the Board of Health of the Borough of
Homestead for the year ending December 31, 1908 222 VII. Record of Casualties on Unprotected Grade Cross- ings, Homestead, 1905- 1907 233
VIII. Seven-Day Labor 236
IX. Cost of Living in Pittsburgh 237
X. Ratings on Men Employed in Iron and Steel Industry,
by Prudential Insurance Company of America 243
XI. Carnegie Relief Fund 245
XII. Accident Relief Plan of the United States Steel poration
XIII. The Carnegie I- ibrary. Homestead .
By W. F. Stevens, Librarian
XIV. Slavic Organizations in Homestead XV. Population of Homestead anil Munhall. 1910
Cor
249 255
271 276
1 k ftdi
X
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Frontispiece i
9
12
16
The Homestead Plant: Carnegie Steel Company
Pittsburgh Survey Map
Homestead from the Pittsburgh Side of the Monongahela
Of the Old Time Irish Immigration (In color)
Head: Slavic Day Laborer (In color)
Detached Dwellings of the Better Type. Sixteenth Avenue
Munhall
"The Mansion"
The Street
Glen Alley, a Few Blocks from Frick Park, Homestead Double Grade Crossing Near the Heart of Homestead
An Unpaved Alley
Where the Mill Meets the Town
Slavic Laborers
Back Yard Possibilities in Homestead — I Back Yard Possibilities in Homestead — 1 1 A One-Room Household
A " Front Room"
Row of Detached Workingmen's Houses in Munhall; Mill
Stacks Showing above Housetops Frame Houses. Five rooms and bath Brick Houses. Four rooms and bath
Residence Street
"Buckets"
The Street Market .... Where Some of the Surplus Goes Eighth Avenue at Night, Homestead A Nickelodeon Audience in Homestead
On the Outskirts
In the Crowded Section
Spontaneous Recreation Center, Homestead, 1907 Saloon Corner, Saturday Night ....
xi
19 22
22
25
28
28
37 4' 48 48
53 56
56
60
60
60
65
73
85
88
88
102
102
107
1 1 1
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Lights of Kenny wood Park
Carnegie Library, Munhall .
Orchestra; Carnegie Library
Band Stand . .
In Carnegie's Footsteps
The Brook in Munhall Hollow
Draughting Room, Schwab Manual Training School
Carpenter Shop, Schwab Manual Training School .
Machine Room, Schwab Manual Training School .
Slav: Calling (In color)
Section of Ward Two, Homestead, 1908
Slavic Court
Summer Evening in a Court
Wash-Day in a Homestead Court
Into America Through the Second Ward of Homestead
When Meadows Have Grown Too Many Smokestacks
Out of Work (Homestead Court, Spring of 1908) .
A Contrast — I ....
A Contrast — 1 1
Gathered for a Bit of Gossip
Washing up After a Day in the Mill
Greek Catholic Church
Old Worlds in New (In color) .
Going Home from Work
Type of Steel Worker: Thirty-five Years from Germany
Type of Steel Worker: Slav
Type of Steel Worker: Pennsylvanian
Balcony and Entrance, Carnegie Library, Homestead
FACING PAGE
>3 16
17 '7 •9
[21
124
I24 I27 [29 [32
'33
'37 [41
[44
'45
.48
52
52
57
57 [61
.64
73 ,76
,78
180
258
XII
LIST OF TABLES
TABLE , PACE
i. Total population, and number and per cent of native and foreign born in
Homestead, 1900 . . 13
2. Total population, and per cent of native white and foreign born in four
boroughs of Allegheny County, 1900. ... ... 13
3. Total employes, and number and per cent of various racial groups in the
Homestead Plant, Carnegie Steel Co., July, 1907 13
4. Homestead and Munhall taxes, 1907 20
5. Analysis of 90 budget families. — By racial group and normal weekly
wage of man 38
6. Men employed in the Homestead Mill in July, 1907. Number and per-
centages. By racial groups and degree of skill 4°
7. 90 budget families. — By racial and expenditure group .... 44
8. Average weekly expenditures of 90 budget families in 1907: amounts
and percentages. — By chief items of expenditure and racial group. . 44
9. Average weekly expenditures of 90 budget families, amounts and per-
centages.— By chief items of expenditure and expenditure group . . 45
10. Average weekly expenditures of 77 house-renting families, amounts and
percentages. — By chief items of expenditure and expenditure group . 45
1 1 . Average amount of rent per week paid by the 77 house-renting families. —
By expenditure and racial group 50
12. Expenditure for rent of -jy house-renting families. Average amount and
percentage of total expenditure. — By racial group 52
13. Expenditure for rent of yy house-renting families. Average amount
and percent of total expenditure. — By expenditure group ... 52
14. Families having running water in the house and indoor closets. — By
weekly rent 54
15. 18 house purchasers among 90 budget families. — By normal weekly in-
come and by racial group 57
16. Average weekly expenditure for food of 90 budget families and per cent
of total expenditure. — By racial group 68
17. Same as Table 16. — By expenditure group 68
18. Average weekly expenditure for food of 90 budget families. — By racial
and expenditure group 68
19. Average expenditure for food per man per day of 90 budget families. — By
racial and expenditure group 69
20. Twenty-one families spending less than 22 cents per man per day for
food. — By expenditure and racial groups 72
21. Itemized account of food expenditures for one week by a thrifty house-
keeper 76
22. Itemized account of food expenditures for one week for a poor house-
keeper 76
23. Two weekly food budgets of a thrifty family 78
24. Average weekly expenditure of 90 budget families for various items. — By
expenditure group 84
25. Ratio of weekly expenditures for various items between different ex-
penditure groups 84
26. Number of persons insured in 90 budget families and per cent of families
carrying insurance. — By expenditure group 91
xiii
LIST OF TABLES
TABLE PAGE
27. Number of persons in 90 budget families insured in regular companies
and lodges. — By racial group 91
28. Expenditures of a family for one week in 1907 (Normal time) and in
1908 (Time of depression) 98
29. Budget families whose income included money drawn from the bank or
goods secured on credit. — By income and racial group .... 99
30. Food purchased on special order for boarders during month account was
kept 139
31. Food expenditures of a Slavic family for one week 141
32. Two hundred and thirty-nine Slavic families in 21 courts. — By numbers,
nationality and number of lodgers 143
33. Number of persons per room in the 21 courts in families which took
lodgers compared with the number in families which did not take lodgers, January, 1908 144
34. Number of births in each ward in Homestead for 1907. — By racial group . 146
35. Number of deaths of children under two years of age in each ward in
Homestead for 1907. — By racial group 146
36. Ratio of children born in each ward in Homestead in 1907 to deaths of
children under two in the same ward. — By racial group . . .146
37. Average weekly expenditure of 29 Slavic budget families . . . • '52
38. Average expenditure of Slavic families compared with those of other
races spending more than $15 per week 156
39. Average expenditures of two groups of 10 families each, those spending
$15 or more a week and those spending less than $12, with the ratio
of increase 1 56
40. Membership, dues and benefits of 9 Slavic societies in 1908 .... 162
APPENDIX I
1. Analysis of 90 budget families. — By racial group, occupation and normal
weekly wage of man 200
2. Average normal weekly income and income from specified sources, of 90
budget families. — By racial group 201
3. 90 budget families. — By number of families having income from given
sources in normal times and by racial group 201
4. Average size of families, and of families including lodgers. — By expendi-
ture and nationality groups 201
5. 90 budget families. — Number of persons per room by racial group 202 o. Number of house-owning and house-renting families having water in
house, and number having two or more persons per room. — By ex- penditure group 202
7. 90 budget families occupying tenements of specified number of rooms. —
By racial group 202
8. 90 budget families occupying specified number of rooms. — By expendi-
ture group 203
9. Cost of certain articles of food in nine cities and ratio of the cost of these
articles in other cities to the cost in Pittsburgh. — By cents per pound . 203
10. Total average weekly expenditures of house-renting families expending
less than $ 12 a week, and proportions spent for food and rent by racial group 204
11. Average expenditure for food per man per day, by size of family and
expenditure group 204
APPENDIX II Tables giving general description and average weekly expenditure of each of
tne 90 budget families 206
xiv
LIST OF TABLES
APPENDIX III PAGE
Employes in Homestead Plant of the United States Steel Corporation classified according to skill, citizenship, conjugal condition, etc., Mar. i, 1907 214
APPENDIX IV Classification and earnings of employes in three representative Steel Plants
of the Pittsburgh District. October 1, 1907 215
XV
3600 1250 <\7b0 M3G
-SCALE . 300 IT TO 1/lCM
PART I THE MILL AND THE TOWN
CHAPTER I HOMESTEAD AND THE GREAT STRIKE
HOMESTEAD gives at the first a sense of the stress of industry rather than of the old time household cheer which its name suggests. The banks of the brown Monon- gahela are preempted on one side by the railroad, on the other by unsightly stretches of mill yards. Gray plumes of smoke hang heavily from the stacks of the long, low mill buildings, and noise and effort dominate what once were quiet pasture lands.
On the slope which rises steeply behind the mill are the Carnegie Library and the "mansion" of the mill superintendent, with the larger and more attractive dwellings of the town grouped about two small parks. Here and there the towers of a church rise in relief. The green of the parks modifies the first impression of dreariness by one of prosperity such as is not infrequent in American industrial towns. Turn up a side street, however, and you pass uniform frame houses, closely built and dulled by the smoke; and below, on the flats behind the mill, are cluttered alleys, unsightly and unsanitary, the dwelling place of the Slavic laborers. The trees are dwarfed and the foliage withered by the fumes; the air is gray, and only from the top of the hill above the smoke is the sky clear blue.
There is more to tell, however, than can be gained by first impressions. The Homestead I would interpret in detail is neither the mill nor the town, but is made up of the households of working people, the sturdy Scotch and Welsh and German of the early immigration, the sons of Yankee "buckwheats," and the daughters of Pennsylvania Dutch farmers. Set off against the hill streets, lined with these English-speaking homes, are the courts where all Austria-Hungary seems gathered afresh. Here are lodging houses filled with single men, where the " boarding bosses" keep accounts in Russian, Slovak or Hungarian; alley
3
homestead: the households of a mill town
dwellings where immigrant families are venturing a permanent home in one or two rooms, near by the Slavic church where their children are christened and receive their first communion. It is the home life the mill town leads on the wages the mill pays that has been the subject of my study.
The glaring evils and startling injustices found on every hand in the congested sections of large cities supplied the first and strongest impetus toward social reform in this country. But many of the unwholesome living conditions which we associate with the poorer city neighborhoods are repeated in the average mill town with less excuse and with as bitter effects. Further- more, industrial conditions, such as low wages and long hours of labor, have as direct an influence upon home life as high rents and bad sanitation, and their influence can be studied in a com- munity which grows up about a single plant more easily than in one which presents the complications of a great city. With a knowledge of tenement districts in New York and Boston as a basis of comparison, I spent the greater part of a year in Home- stead, studying the family side of the labor problem as presented there.
Homestead* is a community of approximately 25,000 people, chiefly mill workers and their families. There is today no labor or- ganization among them. Trade unionism belonged to an earlier chapter in the history of the town. A generation of boys has now grown up and entered the mills without knowing by per- sonal experience what unionism is, or, except by hearsay, what the great strike of 1892 was about. Yet, as the history of the town has been largely the history of the mill, I must first sketch the development of both, and the labor struggle which fifteen years ago determined the relations between them.
As late as 1870, two farms, the old McClure and West home- steads, occupied the site of the present mill and town. Scattered along the river on smaller holdings were the simple homes of a farming population. To get to Pittsburgh, seven miles down stream, the people had either to travel the distance by road or cross the river and take the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at Brad-
* Politically, as will be noted later, Homestead is made up of three inde- pendent boroughs: in common speech the one term covers ilu-m ill,
HOMESTEAD AND THE GREAT STRIKE
dock, two miles away. In 1871, the Homestead Bank and Life Insurance Company, which had bought the farms, cut them up into building lots and put them on the market, intending that Home- stead should be a residential suburb. With the building of the Pittsburgh, Virginia and Charleston Railroad in 1872, it became possible for people doing business in the city to live in Homestead. In 1874 the first church, St. John's Lutheran, was erected, and the little village began to have a social life of its own. In 1878, when its population was about 600, Bryce and Highbie opened a glass factory and the town's industrial history began. Ten houses, the first to be built for rent, were erected on Fifth Avenue for the married workmen. The land above the works was still an open field where farmers from the nearby country drove their cows to graze.
In 1 88 1, when Klomans built a steel mill on the banks of the river, the step definitely determining the future of Home- stead was taken. The Klomans mill was absorbed by the Carnegie Steel Company in 1886, and became in turn one of the most im- portant plants of the United States Steel Corporation on its or- ganization in 1 90 1 . The site of Homestead made its part in this in- dustrial development almost inevitable. Situated on the Monon- gahela River, six miles below its confluence with the Youghiogheny and seven miles above the point where with the Allegheny it forms the Ohio, the town has unusual facilities for water carriage, as well as the supply of water necessary for the processes of steel manufacture. Railroad and lake routes bring iron ores from the mines of Michigan to meet here the fuel needed to reduce them. The river, which is navigable from Fairmont, West Virginia, — a distance of over one hundred miles, — runs through a region of bituminous mines. It has been this nearness to the coal beds which has made the Pittsburgh District a steel center, and the level space in the bend of the river at Homestead the floor of a great steel mill.
By 1892, 8000 people had gathered at Homestead, though the town still kept many of its village characteristics. The population was composed of a fairly homogeneous group, most of them speaking the same language and mingling freely in school, church and neighborhood life, as well as within the
5 J
homestead: the households of a mill town
mill. While it is impossible to secure any definite figures as to the make-up of the population in those days, certain facts give us a general picture of the earlier situation. Among the families visited for this study, half of the Americans and about half of the foreign born, who came from Great Britain and Western Europe, had been 15 years in Homestead; of 264 Slavs, however, only 31 were living here before the strike of 1892.
The churches founded before 1892 were Lutheran, Presby- terian, Methodist, Baptist, United Presbyterian, Episcopal, and German Evangelical. It was not until 1896 that a Slavic church was built. During the ten years following the starting of the mill, there was still much immigration to the United States from Great Britain and Germany, and the growing town was in a large measure recruited from these peoples. The good pay offered in the mills attracted also American boys. Apparently, the officials fostered this natural gravitation to the industry.
In a letter written in the early days, Captain Jones, of the Edgar Thomson Works, said, "My experience has shown that Ger- mans, Irish, Swedes and 'buckwheats' (young American country boys), judiciously mixed, make the most effective, tractable force you can find. Scotsmen do very well, are honest and faithful. Welsh can be used in limited quantities. But Englishmen have been the worst class of men — sticklers for high wages, small pro- duction and strikes."*
According to an old resident, the men of each nationality often grouped themselves in separate mills, and, when there were good openings, sent to the old country for their friends. The ties thus created had their share in making possible an early de- velopment of trade unionism, for along with uniform standards of living, existed the opportunity to organize in order to secure con- ditions which would make those standards possible. Almost immediately after the opening of the mill the men formed a lodge of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, and within a year there was a small, quickly settled strike.
The Homestead lodges grew steadily in power until they held an assured place. The wage scale was each year fixed by agree- ment between committees representing the Amalgamated Associa-
• Bridge, J. H.S Inside History of the Carnegie Steel Company, p. 81.
6
HOMESTEAD AND THE GREAT STRIKE
tion and the employers in the industry. Within the mill also the men had much influence, and in many minor points con- trolled the action even of the superintendents. There developed, however, a diversity of interest, not between the different races but between two main wage groups, — the less skilled men, many of whom are paid by the day, and the highly skilled workers upon whom the output of the mills depends, who are paid by the ton. The lodges of the Amalgamated Association, consisting almost entirely of the tonnage men, were charged with ignoring the interests of the day men. A man employed there at the time told me that some of the highly skilled workers, such as rollers, — who were really sub-bosses and were paid on the basis of the out- put of the gang under them, — made as much as I300 in two weeks. The rank and file felt with some bitterness that not only were the capitalists securing far more than their share of the proceeds of labor, but that these few among the workers were also unduly favored. False standards in some cases were developed by the abnormally high pay, and the tendency of the few to spend care- lessly what had been earned thus easily gave the town a reputation for extravagance. A woman said, " My father used to earn $300 in two weeks and yet he never saved anything, and never tried to buy a house; that was because he drank. Why, now we have paid for our house and have money in the bank and the 'mister' never makes more than $25 a week." The reckless expenditure of the exceptionally paid men, however, apparently no more than reflected the general spirit of the Pittsburgh District in days when new processes were doubling output and money was easily made. This, then, was the situation at the time of the great strike in 1892, which in so many ways influenced the future of Home- stead. Within the five years preceding, the Carnegie Steel Com- pany had doubled its capital and had increased the number of employes in Homestead alone to about 4000, 800 of whom were members of the Amalgamated Association. In 1889, a sliding scale had been introduced by which the rate of pay per ton varied with the market price of steel, under the proviso, however, that if the latter fell below $25 per ton no further reduction in wages was to be made. This agreement did not affect the wages of the day men. In the spring of 1892, the Association voted to renew
7
homestead: the households of a mill town
the contract on the old terms, but the company demanded that the base should be $22 instead of $25 and that the contract should expire in January instead of July. After a number of conferences, the company advanced its minimum to $23 and the men reduced theirs to I24, but no concessions at all were made in regard to the date of expiration of the contract. The men felt that in case of disagreement and strike they would be at a far greater disadvantage in the winter when lack of work would be more keenly felt. The company, on the other hand, claimed that as its commercial con- tracts were frequently made to date from January 1, it was necessary to know at that time what was to be the labor cost for the ensuing year.
Behind these ostensible points of disagreement, however, lay one fundamental issue which, though seldom mentioned, was the keynote of the strike, — trade unionism. The Amalgamated Association had been taking to itself more and more power. A small group secured the desirable positions; the permission of the Association had to be obtained before any of its members could be discharged. It stood in the way of lowering individual wage rates, and in general not only obstructed the free hand which the company wanted but interfered with many details of operation.
In 1889, H. C. Frick became chairman of Carnegie Brothers and Company. As he had aroused the antagonism of the labor world through his suppression of the strike in the coke region a few years before, the mill men feared that he would crush the Amalgamated Association. More keen, therefore, than their in- terest in the points at issue was the belief that if they failed in this strike, the power, if not the very existence of the union, would go. This fear accounts for the pertinacity with which the struggle was fought to the finish and for the deep-seated bitterness which followed the men's defeat.
The strike began June 30. The Association, which had been so recently indifferent to the condition of the day men, now realized, since many of the latter could be put into the skilled positions, that the strike could not be won without their assistance. A call was thereupon issued for them to strike, and the day men, with every- thing to lose and almost nothing to gain, went out too, and
8
HOMESTEAD AND THE GREAT STRIKE
remained faithful supporters to the end. A committee of fifty men, called the advisory board, conducted the strike.
Shortly after the trouble began, the company attempted to bring into the mill some 300 men in charge of Pinkerton detec- tives. The strikers had feared that the company would do this, since Mr. Frick had called in the Pinkertons at the Connellsville coke strike and bloodshed had followed. The detectives started up the river in boats in the early morning of July 6, and a scout who had been stationed by the strikers came on horseback to warn the town. The story of that morning, as it is retold among the people of Homestead, suggests vividly the ride of Paul Revere to rouse other insurgents more than a century earlier. Men and women hurried to the mill, weapons were hunted up and barricades erected. Which side fired the first shot is still a debated question, but a miniature battle followed in which seven persons were killed and others wounded. The Pinkertons finally surrendered, were brought into the town and later were returned to Pittsburgh. There are conflicting stories as to the incidents of the day, stories of bloodshed and cruelty. The one clear fact is that the mob fury latent in most men was wakened by that first shot. It is hard to believe that the sober, self-contained workmen who told me the story fifteen years afterward had been part of the frenzied crowd on the river bank.
As is so often the case, however, that July morning over- shadowed in the minds of the public the true character and sig- nificance of the determined struggle, which under conservative leadership lasted four or five months. For after the first clash the question became one of endurance, and though the state militia were called in no further disturbance of any magnitude arose. One woman, the owner of a number of small houses, told me that in the latter part of the strike she rented some of them to non-union men, but that contrary to her expectation she experienced no personal annoyance. Quietly, stubbornly, the men continued the fight. The contributions which poured in from fellow workmen and the public prevented physical suffering; sympathetic strikes kept up their courage, as did the difficulty of the company in finding men to take their places. In the mean- time the life of the town went on, changed but little by the in-
9
homestead: the households of a mill town
dustrial conflict. The local papers tell of weddings, of picnics, of church suppers and of the casual comings and goings of the towns- people, while in the mill below was being contested, though in a waiting game, the issue which was to determine in many respects the future of the village.
Since the whole town was in one way or another dependent on the mill, the interest even of small merchants and others not directly concerned was of course intense. While some of the people appreciated the weak points in the claims of the Amalga- mated Association, the general feeling was so strong that no one would express an opinion unfavorable to the union. The mild tone of the local papers leads one to believe that they did not reflect the state of the public mind, with its resentment at the presence of the soldiers and its alternations of hope and despair as to the outcome of the summer. About the middle of October the men realized that they had failed, and went back — those who could get their old jobs — at a wage determined by the company. A few were refused positions, and many others who found that their places in the mill had been taken by the strike breakers had either to take inferior positions or go elsewhere. The resulting bitterness made itself felt for years in the relation of the men to the Carnegie Company. When you talk with a skilled and intelligent man who is still refused work in any mill of the United States Steel Corporation because of the part he played in that strike, over fifteen years ago, you realize why the passions it aroused have not died out. For most of the town, life resumed its normal course. Newspapers in New Orleans and St. Paul and San Francisco ceased to discuss Homestead; it drop- ped back to its place among industrial towns, facing for good or ill the problems which this changed labor situation created.
Looking back from the vantage ground of the present, one is impressed by the vital character of the questions at issue. The particular change in the wage scale which was ostensibly the point under dispute, was, comparatively speaking, a small matter; the significant fact is that every cut since has been accepted by the men without hope and with no effective protest.
There was involved a question of social equity apart from
10
HOMESTEAD AND THE GREAT STRIKE
whether the union carried its interference in mill administration to unwarranted lengths, or whether the company had grounds for adopting its inflexible policy of suppressing any labor organiza- tions among the men. This question was whether the workmen in the industry were to profit in the long run by improved and cheapened processes of production; in other words, was mechani- cal progress to mean a real increase of prosperity to the com- munity as the years passed. If the Homestead strike had been won by the men, the company would have continued to recognize that settled employes have some claims with respect to the terms of their employment, and to grant them a voice in the wage adjustments which from time to time determine what share of the proceeds of production belongs to labor. It may well be questioned whether the standards of living for steel employes would have settled to their present levels.
The union ceased to exist, and since that date those common factors in employment which circumscribe a man's life, — his hours, his wages, and the conditions under which he works, — and which in turn vitally affect the well-being of his family; these he was to have less and less share in determining.
ii
CHAPTER II THEMAKE-UP OF THE TOWN
THE strike ended, mill and town continued their rapid growth until little is now left to suggest the village which in 1870 we saw developing on the farms beside the river. The changes of the intervening years, however, except for the influx of the Slavs, have been gradual and unnoticed. Their history is unwritten, and our real interest lies rather in the present develop- ment, in the type of town which the great plant and its 7000 employes have created at Homestead. The population is typical of the newer American industrial centers as distinguished from the New England village or the western county seat. It is a town primarily of workingmen — a town of many transients. It is, moreover, strikingly representative of the two waves of immigra- tion,— the first, of Teutons and Celts, the later, of Slavs — and of the great social cleavage between them.
While at the date of this study there were no detailed sta- tistics of nationalities making up the population, the census of 1900 reported for the borough of Homestead, 4528 native white of native parents, 3781 native white of foreign parents, 3594 foreign born white, 640 Negroes, and 11 Chinese; that is, about 36 per cent of the population was native white of native parents. This percentage is fairly typical of mill towns in the steel district, as shown by a comparison with nearby industrial boroughs (Table 2).
Facts obtained as to the birthplace of men employed in the mill in July, 1907, the greater number of whom live in Homestead, give with fair accuracy the racial groups represented in the present foreign born population. Of 6772 employes, 1925, or 28.4 per cent, were native white, 121 colored, 398 English, 259 Irish, 129 Scotch, 176 German, 3603 Slavs,* and 161 other European
* In this book "Slav" is used as a general term to include Magyars and Lithuanians, as well as those belonging to the Slavic race. For an exhaustive and thoroughly interesting account of the immigration to this country from Austro-Hungary see Balch, Emily Greene: Our Slavic Fellow Citizens. New York, Charities Publication Committee, 1910.
12
Drawn by Joseph Stella
Of the Old Time Irish Immigration
THE MAKE-UP OF THE TOWN
TABLE I. — TOTAL POPULATION, AND NUMBER AND PER CENT OF NATIVE AND FOREIGN BORN IN HOMESTEAD, I9OO
|
Total Popula- |
Native White of Native Pa- rents |
Native White of Foreign Pa- rents |
Foreign Born White |
Colored |
||||
|
tion |
Number |
Per cent |
Number |
Percent |
Number |
Per cent |
Number |
Per cent |
|
12,554 |
4528 |
36.0 |
378. |
30.1 |
3594 |
28.6 |
65, |
5-2 |
TABLE 2. — TOTAL POPULATION, AND PER CENT OF NATIVE WHITE AND FOREIGN BORN IN FOUR BOROUGHS OF ALLEGHENY COUNTY, I9OO*
|
Native |
Native |
||||||||
|
White of |
White of |
Foreign |
Colored |
||||||
|
Total Popu- lation |
Native |
Foreign |
Born White |
||||||
|
Borough |
Parents |
Parents |
|||||||
|
Num- |
Per |
Num- |
Per |
Num- |
Per |
Num- |
Per |
||
|
ber |
cent |
ber |
cent |
ber |
cent |
ber |
cent |
||
|
Braddock |
15654 |
4887 |
31.2 |
5098 |
32.6 |
5105 |
32.6 |
564 |
*6 |
|
Duquesne |
9036 |
2765 |
30.6 |
2628 |
29.1 |
3448 |
38.2 |
'95 |
2.2 |
|
Millvale |
6736 |
2088 |
31.0 |
3056 |
45-4 |
1581 |
22'5 |
1 1 |
0.2 |
|
Sharpsburg |
6842 |
2766 |
40.4 |
2539 |
37-' |
1279 |
18.7 |
258 |
3.8 |
TABLE 3. — TOTAL EMPLOYES, AND NUMBER AND PER CENT OF VARIOUS RACIAL GROUPS IN THE HOMESTEAD PLANT, CARNEGIE STEEL CO., JULY, I907
|
Total |
Number and Per cent of |
|||||||
|
Em- ployes |
Native IVbite |
English |
Irish |
Scotch |
German |
Other Euro- peans |
Slav |
Colored |
|
6772 |
1925 |
398 |
259 |
129 |
.76 |
161 |
3603 |
121 |
|
1 00.0 |
28.4 |
16.6 |
53-2 |
1.8 |
♦Twelfth U. S. Census, 1900.
•3
homestead: the households of a mill town
nationalities. These figures show the absence of Italians as a factor in the labor situation in the mills, and the predominance of Slavs, who form over 53 per cent of the total number employed.
As Germans and British tend to amalgamate with the native whites the community has fallen more or less naturally into two major groups, — the English-speaking and the Slavs.
The Negroes form a third group, much fewer in numbers, allied to the first group by a common speech, but resembling the second in the attitude toward them in the earlier days when they were looked down upon as intruders of alien blood. In Homestead, Negroes are not engaged in domestic service as in most northern cities, but are employed in the mill or in the building trades. Of those who are now in the mills, some came in the first instance as strike breakers and have advanced to well-paid positions. I call to mind especially a man who, starting as a laborer, is now a roller, the highest skilled of the steel workers. These men have in the main come to adopt the same standards as their white neighbors, and are usually treated with genuine respect by the latter, but there is still some sense of resentment roused by the success of the Negroes or their pretensions to gentility. An interesting instance of this attitude came to my attention. A white woman who had been for many years a resident of Homestead was especially vexed because a nearby house had been sold to a Negro. Some weeks later I visited the wife of this colored property owner, who had been ill, and she told me feelingly how good her white neighbors had been to her. She spoke especially of this older resident who had complained to me, and mentioned how she had brought dainties and finally helped persuade her to go to the hospital. Thus, though social distinctions still exist and the colored people have their own lodges and churches, the more prosperous among them are winning respect.*
The break between the Slavs and the rest of the community is on the whole more absolute than that between the whites and
♦There is a totally different class of colored people, who run houses of ill fame and gambling resorts on Sixth Avenue; a "sporty" element which is much in evidence and creates for the race an unpleasant notoriety. These people frequently appear in police courts and form a low element in the town's life.
14
THE MAKE-UP OF THE TOWN
the Negroes. Neither in lodge nor in church, nor, with a few exceptions, in school, do the two mingle. Even their living places are separated; the Second Ward, except for those who owned homes there in earlier years, has been largely abandoned to the newer immigrants. This sharp division, while partly due to the barrier which differences in language and custom create, is in- tensified by a feeling of scorn for the newcomers on the part of the older residents. They are "Hunkies," that is all, and many an American workman who earns but a few cents a day more looks upon them with an utter absence of kinship. The more intelligent Slavs, who desire better things for their people, feel this lack of understanding keenly, for they realize the handicap it means in their upward struggle.
The change from the early homogeneous group of workmen in Homestead is due in part to the fact that the general tide of immigrants now setting toward the United States comes from the Slavic countries, and in part to the increasing demand for manual laborers able to do the hard, unskilled work in the mills. This heavy labor the English-speaking group is now less willing to perform and here the Slav finds his opportunity.
The population of the town has also been affected by the fact that the steel industry calls for the work of men only. In the census for 1900, we find that of the 12,554 people in Homestead borough, 7,141, or 56.9 per cent, were males, while in Allegheny County as a whole the males formed 52 per cent, and in the entire United States but 51.2. The preponderance of males was even greater among the immigrant population in Homestead, constituting 63.4 per cent of the foreign born. Furthermore, of the men employed in the mill, 35.3 per cent are unmarried, though only 10.2 per cent are under twenty. The large transient body of single men, as we shall see in Chapter XI, constitutes a serious menace to home life among the Slavs. Other transients are also numerous, and their presence lessens the effective civic force of the community. Among them are many young college graduates employed in the mechanical departments of the mill, who do not consider themselves permanent residents. My acquaintance with those met in two boarding houses in Homestead showed me that their interest in the town was casual. Few take any active share
15
homestead: the households of a mill town
either in local politics or in movements to improve local condi- tions.
The families of the English-speaking workers, however, are bound together by common interests and common ties. They live near enough to see each other easily, their lives are molded by similar forces and as a result a more than usual degree of sym- pathy exists among them. This is shown perhaps most strikingly in the great kindnesses of neighbor to neighbor in times of distress. Such acts are not looked upon as charity. If a man is ill, the men in his mill take up a collection for his needs as friend for friend, knowing that when the need is theirs he will return the kindness. A man told me of his experience when he was laid up four months with rheumatism. He had begun to worry about bills, for when pay day came no pay was due him. But his "buddy" walked in with an envelope containing a sum of money. Later, when this was exhausted, the men made another gift. He accepted it very simply, almost as a matter of course, the thought of similar gifts he had made, and others he would make, keeping him from feeling any sense of obligation. This sense of community of interest I found helped greatly to strengthen the fraternal organ- izations.
In the main, then, this is a town of wage-earners. None of those extremes of wealth and social position that exist in cities are found here. There is a small social circle composed of business and professional men and the officials in the mill. As some of the most skilled workmen earn more than the minor officials over them, the line between workmen and superintendents is not a sharp one. In the days of small industries the mill owner lived in the mill town, maintaining there his social as well as economic leadership, stimulating its activities and playing his part in movements for its well-being. But the individual mill owner is a thing of the past. Stockholders have taken his place. They are scattered all over the country and know their property only as a source of dividends, giving in return neither interest nor stimulus to the workers; and managers and superintendents, however public spirited, shift and change.
16
Drawn by Joseph Stella
wk
v
JfrA-
Head: Slavic Day Laborer
THE MAKE-UP OF THE TOWN
These are some of the changes in the social make-up of the borough which have come with that business development which has made the Homestead mills part of a national industry, and with that labor policy which has opened the doors to all comers and has tolerated no control of the situation by the men on the ground. Under such conditions of growth it is well to ask how adequately the physical difficulties of building a town on the river bank have been mastered; what has been the development of civic and political institutions to meet the needs of the changing com- munity; and what the economic development of the borough, outside of the great industry itself .
My inquiry into these things has been limited intentionally to certain aspects of the situation as reflected in the household life.
We have seen that industrial factors — easy access to ores, water, transportation, etc. — made Homestead an ideal mill site. As a site for a town it is not ideal.* The river in hollowing its way through the hills sometimes left a narrow rim along its banks, but more often the descent to the water's edge is abrupt. The larger level space at a sharp bend was chosen as the site for the mill. As the plant was at first small the buildings did not monop- olize the entire river front, and the low ground then open to the river furnished ample room for the homes of the workers. The mill, however, grew rapidly and spread over more and more of the level, till now its buildings stretch for a mile along the water. In its growth it has encroached on some of the territory already occupied by houses. The last to go were the rows of little shanties inside the mill grounds erected to shelter the strike breakers of 1892, — a settlement called Potterville, after the superintendent in charge during the strike. These houses were demolished some four years ago and the tenants had to move to the already crowded districts just outside. This congestion, due to the desire of the employes for homes near their work, is increased by the steepness of the hill behind, a weary climb after the labor of the day. As the site of the mill was extended up the river, houses were built further along the hillside and also along the ravines where the slope was more gradual. In this way the town pushed
* See map, facing page 1 . I7
homestead: the households of a mill town
out beyond the narrow triangle with its base on the river, which formed the original borough. Instead, however, of extending the boundaries of Homestead to cover this new territory two additional boroughs were created, Munhall on the east and West Homestead on the west. Consequently we have the curious anomaly of a town that is a social and industrial unit parceled off into three politically independent boroughs.
Munhall, the eastern part of the hill, was originally sepa- rated from Homestead by a ravine, and was largely the property of John Munhall, one of the oldest residents of the town. Ad- joining was the site of the Pittsburgh City Poor Farm. It was here that the state militia were quartered in 1892. Soon after the strike, the property was bought up by the Carnegie Land Company, now a constituent part of the United States Steel Corporation. Before any lots were offered for sale, streets were laid out, sewers, running water and electricity put in, and houses planned and erected. The majority of the larger houses were sold to mill employes, and those that the company still owns can only be rented by them. In 1901, on application of the property owners, the borough was incorporated.* It included not only the land owned by the Carnegie Land Company, but three- quarters of the mill property itself. Munhall thus forms a geo- graphical triangle similar to Homestead, the mill occupying the base on the river and the residence portion lying on the hill above.
Beyond Munhall lies the "Hollow," a deep ravine with a meandering stream at the bottom and with irregular rows of houses, often hardly more than shanties, on either hand. Forty- four acres of land hang upon the sides of the two abrupt hills. The land is owned by the John Munhall Estate; and the 250 frame, box-like houses, many of them no larger than two rooms,
♦This action was taken under a provision of the state constitution that any section of a township may, with the approval of the county court, be formed into a borough on the vote of a majority of its electors. The site of the Carne- gie steel plant at Homestead was formerly part of Mifflin township and the town- ship collected all the tax. It was found that the tax rate on other parts of the township was being reduced to a minimum while the bulk of the tax receipts coming from the steel plant was being used in rural parts and very little spent in the neighborhood of the works. The new borough of Munhall was organized and the taxes paid by the works were thereafter expended within its boundaries.
18
THE MAKE-UP OF THE TOWN
are owned mostly by unskilled laborers in the mills. The Munhall Estate lets the land upon which the workers build their houses on ten-year leases. Like the Cabbage Patch in which the Wiggses lived, it is a "queer neighborhood where ramshackle cottages play hop-scotch" over the crooked ditch and up the hillsides. The property is not surveyed into streets, there being only one public thoroughfare, an unpaved dirt road running lengthwise of the hollow; and, along most of the road, the owner seems in building his house to have "faced it any way his fancy prompted." The borough has installed street lights along this road, and has placed perhaps half a dozen upon the private property of the estate; but there are no sewers nor other public improvements.
A branch line of street cars running through the Hollow connects with a rather promising suburb called Homeville, built on the hill slopes at the end of the ravine. Another branch line runs straight back from the river over the top of the hill to Home- stead Park and Lincoln Place, suburbs attractively situated on high ground. Whitaker, which adjoins Munhall to the east, has a population of about 2000, largely wage-earners. As these men work in the mill, and their families shop in Homestead, they might fairly be included in the Homestead census. Hays, toward Pittsburgh, is another borough that is at least in a meas- ure a part of the Homestead community.
Nearer by, formed by the extension of Homestead to the west, in much the same way that Munhall was created to the east, is West Homestead. Disregarding the outlying settlements, these three boroughs may be said to make up the fairly compact but politically divided community which has been gathered to- gether by the Homestead mill. Though West Homestead con- tains less wealth than Munhall, it includes the plant of the Mesta Machine Company, the only other considerable industry in the town. Each of these separate boroughs elects its own officials, makes its own ordinances, and provides through taxation for its own needs. Through this division the taxable properties of the great industries are separated from the central borough, which has by far the largest population and which, with the exception of Munhall Hollow, includes the sections where the poorest workers live. On this point, I can quote from Shelby M. Harrison, a
19
homestead: the households of a mill town
colleague in the work of the Pittsburgh Survey, who compares the fiscal situation in Homestead and Munhall as follows:
The mill-worker resident in Homestead is affected by the tax question from at least two directions. First, over three-fourths of the mill property is located in Munhall borough where, except in 1907, the tax rate has never been over half that in Homestead, the borough in which a majority of the mill workers live. In 1907, property in Munhall paid a total borough and school tax of 8\ mills on the dollar, while in the same year Homestead property paid 15 mills.* This artificial division into separate taxing districts of a community which is in practically all senses a
TABLE 4. — HOMESTEAD AND MUNHALL TAXES, I907
|
Assessed Valuation of Property |
MlLLAGE |
||||
|
Boroughs |
a |
0 to |
Total Tax |
||
|
Munhall .... Homestead |
$6,957,630 9, 1 20,765 |
|i |
4f 7 |
8} »5 |
? 57,400.4s 136,81 1.48 |
|
Total .... |
$ 1 6,078,395 |
$194,211.93 |
unit, however that division may have come about, relieves the Steel Corporation from much of its local responsibility as a property holder. Its relief means a heavier burden upon the residents of Homestead; some one must build and maintain schools and public works, protect person and property, and support local government. The burden is further accentuated by the tendency among assessors, com- mon in all industrial centers, to value small properties at much nearer their full market value than they do large properties — especially large manufacturing plants. Con- servative estimates by persons familiar with the situation
* In 1908, the rates were, Munhall, 8i mills, Homestead, 16 mills; in 1909, Munhall, 8J mills, Homestead, 18 mills. In 1910, with no statement or explana- tion to the taxpayers, the Homestead borough council jumped the borough millage from 10 to 13. The school tax for 1910 is 9 mills, the total local rate thus reaching 22 mills, or 2.2 per cent of the assessed value of property, a rate 2} times that in Munhall.
20
THE MAKE-UP OF THE TOWN
indicate that the mill property in both boroughs is not assessed upon more than 30 per cent of its actual value, whereas Homestead residence property will average an assessed valuation equal to 80 per cent of its market value. Thus, in reality, the tax rate upon much the greater part of the mill property must be more than cut in two for pur- poses of comparison.. A rate of 8\ mills on a 30 per cent valuation is equal to 2.5 mills on full valuation; and 15 mills on an 80 per cent valuation equals 12 mills on full value; so that the real tax rates closely approximate 2.5 mills for the corporation against 12 mills, practically five times as much, for the everyday Homestead taxpayer. The same percentages would hold with respect to county taxes.
On the other hand, if this social and industrial unit were made a municipal unit, then instead of Munhall paying a tax of 8£ mills on the dollar, as in 1907, and Homestead paying 15 mills on the dollar, the united boroughs could receive the same total revenues as before by paying 12 mills upon the same valuations. This would reduce the tax rate for the Homestead householder by three mills, or 20 per cent less than his present rates. It would raise the tax rate on a majority of the corporation property 3! mills, or 45 per cent. Raising the assessed valuation of the property of the steel company to the general level would reduce the householders' rates still further.
Second, the Homestead borough government aggra- vates this heavy burden of taxation instead of lightening it. In direct contrast to conditions in Munhall, where the influence of the Carnegie Steel Company practically domin- ates borough action and has made the local government efficient and without suspicion of graft, an appreciable part of Homestead's public funds has been squandered upon enterprises that have failed, the cost of improvements is excessive, and the city's finances are looked after in an utterly haphazard fashion. In 1907-8, $95,000 was out- standing as delinquent taxes — mucn over half the sum annually assessed in taxes for the borough. Although the borough bears a big debt burden, and although its bonds stipulate that a sinking fund must be established for their retirement, no sinking fund has existed for a number of years. Yet borrowing is resorted to with small concern. In 1907 the bonded debt amounted to $441,500, and the current debt to $16,933, — $458,000 in all.* The borough
* In March, 1910, the borough was $621,776.03 in debt, — certainly near, if not actually beyond, the limit of its borrowing privilege, — and was arranging to
21
homestead: the households of a mill town
has been selling bonds from time to time to pay current expenses — a broad, easy, spendthrift course, paved with engraved promises, which, if persisted in, must lead to ultimate loss of credit and bankruptcy."
The mill's escape, then, from the local government burden, and the town's aggravation of that burden, come down on the families of working people, either as house-owners or as payers of the high rents current in the borough.
HOMESTEAD AS A CIVIC UNIT It is with Homestead borough in 1907-8 that this household study is primarily concerned, and in judging its public activities we must consider the limitations of borough resources noted, and the state restrictions upon borough authority, coupled with the industrial conditions which, as we shall see, circumscribe the effective citizenship of the mill workers. These have had a part in the failures in self-government which have characterized this community, along with many others in America. For while the town has grown steadily both in population and territory, civic interest and the well-being resulting from sound political organiza- tion have not kept pace with this growth. The school board and the board of health have the respect of the town, and men of standing are willing to serve on them. But the borough legisla- ture, a council of fifteen members, has been controlled in Home- stead by the type of small politician to be found in office wherever wholesale liquor dealers dominate politics and where the local government is used merely as a feeder for a state political machine.* Townspeople with whom I talked had apparently ceased to expect intelligent action on their part. Serious charges of dishonesty in
float ^45,000 additional bonds. The borough clerk's published estimates of muni- cipal assets total only I50q.874.28 — over $ 100,000 less than its total indebtedness. In authorizing the new bonds a resolution was adopted providing for the main- tenance of a sinking fund in the future. Homestead borough's system of public accounting is neither a system nor accounting; the borough treasurer was not only without a personal bond for several months recently, but he allowed several thou- sand dollars of certificates to go to protest while the books of the clerk showed that the treasurer had money of the borough in his possession sufficient to pay them. Some years the borough auditors have not audited the accounts of the treasurer giving as a reason that the treasurer kept no books.
* John F. Cox, the Republican "boss" of the borough, was in 1908 speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, which has long since ceased to represent the people of Pennsylvania.
22
Photo by Iline
"The Mansion '"
The company-owned home of the Superintendent. The purpose in providing it is, of course, to make it practicable for the responsible executive to be within call of the works.
Photo by Tline
The Street
Homestead's only outdoor playground in 1907. These children, through no will of their own, live within sound of the mill. There was as yet no provision for their simplest recreational needs in the scheme of things laid out by their elders.
THE MAKE-UP OF THE TOWN
awarding bids for a garbage plant and of bribery in connection with other matters had been brought against members in 1904. While the testimony given at the investigation leaves no doubt in the mind of the reader that there had been crooked dealings, it was suppressed and led to no action.
Apart from these allegations of dishonesty, the council has acquired a reputation for general inefficiency. It has been slow to insist on sanitary regulations necessitated by the increasing density of population. The first forward step from the primitive sanitation of village days was taken the year after the strike, when the streets were paved, and sewers and town water put in. A large percentage of the houses, especially the cheaper ones, nevertheless had neither running water nor toilets in them in 1907-8.*
The water supply of the borough is drawn from the Monon- gahela River. This stream is contaminated by the sewage of many small towns, as well as of two cities, McKeesport and Con- nellsville, the former with a population of about 40,000 and the latter of 10,000. In addition the water, some of which drains from the mines, has been used over and over for the processes of steel and coke manufacture, and is impregnated with chemicals, especially sulphuric acid. One Homestead resident said, "No respectable microbe would live in it." In this probably lies the explanation of why the typhoid death rate in Homestead has been low (6 deaths in 1907) in contrast to Pittsburgh. While these chemicals may destroy the bacteria to a considerable extent, they are not in themselves ingredients of good drinking water. This water was formerly pumped directly from the river into the reservoir, but in 1904-5 a number of wells were driven at a short distance from the river, with the idea that the water draining into them would thus be gravel-filtered before it was pumped into the reservoir. I was told, however, by a physician and a town official that these wells do not supply enough water, and that when they give out the reservoir is again filled directly from the stream. After this plant was constructed the water was analyzed by the
* I am told that there has been a marked increase in these sanitary improve- ments since. (See Appendix VI. p. 222. Report, Homestead Board of Health For comment on the Pittsburgh Survey, see p. 224.)
23
homestead: the households of a mill town
state board of health and reported safe for drinking. When I first went to live in Homestead I attempted to use water that had been boiled but not filtered, and found it exceedingly distasteful. Local physicians forbid people to drink the borough water unless it has been boiled and filtered, and many refuse to use it at all for drinking purposes.
Most residents seemed to accept such a situation as a matter of course. Until recently conditions in Pittsburgh and McKees- port have been equally bad,* so that Homestead had no compelling nearby example to make its people realize that a satisfactory water system was possible. Instead of attempting to improve the town supply, many have drawn their drinking water from wells. No ordinances govern the location of these wells. In the courts of Slavic dwellings they are often near drains which carry waste water to the privy vaults, and when the pavements are broken this water must leak into the wells with but little filtration. Moreover, the board of health does not inspect the wells nor analyze the water from them, except at private expense. One outbreak of typhoid was traced directly to a well which had been used by a number of families because the water was supposed to be particularly good.
Not only is the quality of the water supplied by the borough
of Homestead poor, but there is no ordinance requiring running
water in tenements. The borough clerk does not know how many
houses are without it since he charges the water tax to each property
holder in a lump sum with no indication as to the number of
families supplied. The landlords, who seem to be influential with
the council, naturally oppose such a requirement, and because
of a shortage in dwelling houses have been under no pressure
to put in water taps in order to rent the older or cheaper buildings.
The men with larger wages and more influence move into houses
which at least have running water in the kitchens. Immigrant
laborers continue to carry water in and out from a common
hydrant in the court. In different sections, also, I found young
American families who had no running water in the house, and
* Munhall borough today purchases filtered water from the South Pitts- burgh Water Company. McKeesport treats and mechanically filters its water; Pittsburgh has built huge sand filtration beds. These plants have been put into operation within the last three years.
24
THE MAKE-UP OF THE TOWN
who complained that they could not afford to move to better quarters. But though the husbands had votes and had friends with votes, it apparently never occurred to them to attempt to secure what they wanted through public action.
More serious is the indifference of many of the residents, including the officials, to the evils resulting from unflushed privy vaults. Though a borough ordinance requires that vaults be connected with the sewer, it demands no adequate means of flushing them. Physicians felt that conditions in the Second Ward near the mill were so bad that the council should pass an ordinance requiring that all closets be placed within the house and properly flushed; yet no steps were taken to secure it. There are, furthermore, no building laws, except one which requires that buildings on the business streets shall be fireproof. In regulating overcrowding or other unsanitary conditions the board of health has authority to act in cases which can be classed as nuisances.* Under the authority thus granted it has insisted in many instances upon the cleansing of vaults, the destruction of particularly un- sanitary closets, and upon turning some of the boarders out of especially overcrowded tenements. Thus, in 1907 the sanitary officers reported that they had compelled the cleaning of 848 yards and 176 cellars, and the opening of 254 closets; forced owners to abandon 42 outside closets and place new ones in houses; had 201 stopped sewers cleaned and 48 new sewer connections made; removed 64 boarders from overcrowded houses and com- pelled the cleaning of 48 rooms found in unsanitary condition and the windows of 161 rooms in residences and of 12 in schools. There are, however, no municipal regulations as to overcrowding, ventilation or sanitation that would create specific standards which all property owners might be compelled to meet.
The death rate for 1907, 24 per 1000, indicated the need of
♦Borough Ordinance: — Whatever is dangerous to human life or health; whatever renders the air or food or water or other drinks unwholesome; and whatever building, erection or part or cellar thereof is overcrowded or not provided with adequate means of ingress and egress, or is not sufficiently supported, ventilated, sewered, drained, cleaned or lighted, are declared to be nuisances, and to be illegal, and every person having aided in creating or contributing to the same, or who may support, continue or retain any of them, shall be deemed guilty of a violation of this ordinance, and also be liable for the expense of the abatement and remedy thereof.
25
homestead: the households of a mill town
further sanitary precautions. Of the 416 deaths, 94, or 22.6 per cent, were from pneumonia and tuberculosis, and 65, or 15.6 per cent, were from marasmus, cholera infantum and convulsions. That is, 38.2 per cent of the total number of deaths were from diseases closely connected with lack of sufficient air, good food and intelligent care of children.
Altogether, the public seems to take little active interest in the situation. The burgess,* in 1908, reported that the results of an investigation of overcrowding in the lodging houses, which he himself had made, aroused no general interest.
Inefficient as the local government may be in dealing with sanitary problems, the general run of landlords give no evidence of a greater sense of responsibility for solving them. This is illustrated in the conditions permitted by the big private estate in the adjoin- ing borough of Munhall. The "run" in Munhall Hollow amounts to an open sewer bringing down filth and debris from other settle- ments farther up the valley through which its tributaries pass. In the hot summer months, the stench becomes almost unbearable, making it frequently necessary to haul lime in by the wagon load, to be dumped along the bed of the creek. When the rains are heavy in the spring, the valley is often so flooded that the water fills many of the cellars and even comes in much above the first floors of the houses at the lower end of the hollow.
It may be well to note how this peculiar form of landlordism affects the home life of a considerable group of mill employes. The system of leasing followed by the Munhall Estate makes it more or less easy to shift responsibility for the continuance of primitive con- ditions in the Hollow. By the terms of the short-time leases, the tenants agree to pay a stipulated land rent, and all taxes and water rates in addition. The local rule is that public improvements, such as paving, sewers, etc., shall be assessed one-third against the bor- ough and two-thirds against abutting property owners; and natur- ally improvements are not made unless there is a demand among property owners for them. Since the agreement of the tenants to pay taxes includes the two-thirds of the cost of public improvements, they do not urge the building of public works which will benefit the Munhall Estate and might only tend to raise rents every ten years.
* The burgess is the chief executive officer of the borough. 26
THE MAKE-UP OF THE TOWN
The agent, on the other hand, maintains" that the houses do not belong to the Estate, and that it is not responsible for bad conditions inside a tenant's lot and house; the land rents are low and the tenant should take enough interest in his home to improve it. Furthermore, the most serious sanitary problem, as the Estate sees it, and the one to be dealt with first, is the brook, both when it keeps within its banks and when it overflows them. The agent feels that this is not even a Munhall borough problem; for since the stream and its tributaries drain a wide area, the state of Pennsylvania is best fitted to act and the responsibility is laid at its door, and until it acts other things must wait.
Munhall Borough in turn clears its skirts of responsibility for the Hollow on the ground that the land is private property and that its condition is the concern of the Munhall Estate. The borough has not yet regarded the condition of the Hollow as a possible menace to the health of the whole community.
Meanwhile, a very appreciable proportion of the residents of Munhall, those with the scantiest resources of health and pocket- book, live in this damp, odorous gap between the hills, contending with disease, floods and an occasional fire.
To turn from questions of public health to those of good order, we find the situation if anything less promising. The borough police force has for years failed to enforce the liquor laws. The man who was chief in 1908 formerly ran a gambling place under the guise of a club,* and while he was held to be capable, it was commonly reported that he owed his position to the liquor interests. I was told that the numerous "speakeasies" were left undisturbed as long as they bought from the wholesalers in power. In Munhall there are no saloons; in Homestead, over 50, eight being in a single block on Eighth Avenue next the mill entrance. A Homesteader summed up the situation in this way: "We have at least 65 saloons, 10 wholesale liquor stores, a number of beer
* In 1908 this place, the Colonial Club, was closed, and a new chief of police was elected. There is also a new burgess, Thomas L. Davis, superintendent of a mill in the Jones and Laughlin Steel Co., the largest independent plant in Pitts- burgh. He is a Welshman, but has lived in Homestead for many years. A general toning up of the police situation has accompanied his administration. Moreover, the Taxpayers' League, which was organized to carry on a good government cam- paign, succeeded in electing one member of the Council, M. P. Schooley, a man of personal independence and civic spirit.
27
homestead: the households of a mill town
agents, innumerable 'speakeasies,' and a dozen or more drug stores," — and this in a community of 25,000.
In common with the whole industrial district, Homestead suffers from a system of aldermanic courts which prevails through- out Pennsylvania, and is ill devised to serve other than rural com- munities. The system is especially open to petty tyranny and corruption in dealing with an immigrant population. All misde- meanors are tried before local "squires" or justices of the peace, who can impose fines or short terms of imprisonment, and can also act in civil suits involving amounts of less than $300. These jus- tices and the constables who serve under them are elected by the voters of the borough and serve for a period of five years. They receive no salary but are paid certain fees; for example, the fee for issuing a warrant is fifty cents and the same sum for a hearing in a criminal case or for taking bail in such a case. The constable receives one dollar for executing a warrant or for conveying the defendant to jail. These men are often uneducated, with no training in the law, and dependent for income on the number of arrests made. Obviously, many fail to comprehend the impor- tance of dealing equitably with minor offenders. Of the cases of disorderly conduct reported in the newspapers from January 1 to March 31, 1908, there were 121 in which sentence was pro- nounced. Of these, 80 were either discharged, or fined costs or $1.00 and costs. Ten out of the 121 were sent to the jail or workhouse, and four of these were sent at their own request because they had no home to go to. Such treatment by magis- trates and constables of course has little deterrent effect.
On one point the borough government cannot act because of its legislative limitations. In dealing with disorderly houses, for example, the owners can be arraigned only on a charge of disorderly conduct, for which a small fine or a short period in the workhouse is the maximum penalty. No local action can be brought against them on a criminal charge. In 1907 the district attorney of Allegheny County raided a number of houses in Home- stead. Without his co-operation, however, the borough is unable to take thoroughgoing measures to eradicate them.
The limitations of borough autonomy are brought out in even sharper relief in its relation to an outside corporation, the
28
Douhi.k Gkaoe CROSSING Near thk Heart of Homestead
Photo by Hine
An Unpaved Alley
THE MAKE-UP OF THE TOWN
railroad. The ordinance, for example, which requires that the speed of trains inside borough limits shall be limited to six miles an hour, is almost totally disregarded. One fast train which goes through late in the evening, makes but little reduction in speed, merely sending out a prolonged shriek of warning to the passer-by. Two railroads run through Homestead parallel to the main street, one two blocks and one three blocks from it. Many children on their way to school must cross the tracks, and the same is true of all the traffic going from the main street to Pittsburgh. Yet until 1908 the crossings, all level with the street, were without gates, and flagmen stationed at them left at 6 p. m.* The Pennsylvania courts had declared that a borough has no power to enact ordi- nances affecting outside corporations, can neither enforce a speed limit, nor require a railroad to put safety gates at the crossings nearest its business centers.
HOMESTEAD'S ECONOMIC STATUS Enough has been said to indicate that politically the citizens of Homestead have not succeeded in creating an altogether wholesome sanitary or civic environment for their homes. Of equal influence upon household life is the economic development of a community of 25,000 people. Here we find the dominance of the one industry and the nearness of Homestead to Pittsburgh important factors.
Homestead is now the market for the three boroughs and also for the outlying districts. Since the branch car lines into the surrounding country have made it possible for women living back from Homestead to shop here, the demand for good local stores has increased. The main thoroughfare, Eighth Avenue, is a typical two- and three-story business street with banks, real estate offices, numerous butcher shops and bakeries, grocery and furnish- ing stores, the latter displaying modish garments on sale for cash or "credit." A low white building bears the imposing sign "Home-
*The Pittsburgh and Lake Erie tracks (New York Central System) have since been guarded with gates; the tracks of the Pittsburgh, Virginia and Charleston (Pennsylvania lines) are without gates. Gatemen and flagmen alike are as heretofore off duty at night. See Appendix VI I, p. 233, for list of casualties.
29
homestead: the households of a mill town
stead's Department Stores." At frequent intervals saloons and nickelodeons offer entertainment after their kind. The few shabby looking hotels, obviously making more money from their bars than from their rooms, are characteristic of any town so near a great city. The row of shops offers all the necessities of life and the housekeeper need not journey to the city unless she wishes. Pittsburgh, to be sure, is near. It takes only fifteen minutes on the railroad and forty-five on a street car, and as the fare in the latter case is only five cents, many women make their more im- portant purchases from the greater variety of goods and the bar- gains offered by the big stores. For the most part, however, they rely on the local dealers.
Business interests have not adequately met certain other needs of the town, notably the provisions for amusement. These are meagre and in winter monotonous and not inspiriting. In summer opportunities for relaxation are afforded by two parks owned by the street railway company, each situated within a five-cent fare of the town. On the line to the suburb Lincoln Place is Homestead Park. Here is a baseball ground which a league of business men utilize for games after business hours; swings, roller skating and a dancing pavilion offer their attractions to the young. Kennywood Park, on the hills beyond Homestead toward Duquesne, is the liveliest outdoor pleasure ground within reach of Pittsburgh. It is the popular place for large picnics. There is, too, a small park on the hill in Homestead which was given to the town by Mr. Henry C. Frick. It is attractively laid out in lawns and flower beds and offers a refreshing glimpse of green to the passer-by. With these parks and the numerous trolley lines into the country, the needs of summer recreation are fairly provided for, but, as has been said, when winter comes people must return to a limited range of amusements. The number and character of these are affected by the nearness of Pittsburgh. People with leisure or those who desire a better class of entertainment naturally prefer to attend lectures, concerts and theatres in the city, where they can have the best. Most towns of the size of Homestead have a local theatre where fairly good companies come for a one-night stand. In Homestead, public amusements, aside from the enter-
30
THE MAKE-UP OF THE TOWN
tainments offered by the Carnegie Library, have been limited largely to skating rinks and nickelodeons.
Of the business enterprises, those which doubtless most closely affect the lives of the residents are the real estate com- panies. Real estate, except in Munhall, is largely in the hands of local firms, who recognize that they have a definite part in building up the town and who take a genuine pride in it. By making it possible for those with small incomes to buy houses and by creating a sense of confidence through fair dealing (such as considerateness when purchasers strike hard times), the real estate men have helped to increase the number of house-owners. Even in this form of enterprise, in which the business life of Home- stead is at its best, the resources of the community have not been sufficient to meet the demands of its growth. Houses have not been built fast enough, and in 1907 rents were high and people found difficulty in securing suitable homes.
The town's lack of economic self-dependence is serious and fundamental. A large machine manufactory and the steel mill employ practically all the inhabitants except those who provide for the needs of the workers. Financially, therefore, Homestead is almost entirely dependent on the outsiders who own these indus- tries,— non-residents who for the most part lack any interest in the future development of the town as distinguished from the mill. Some few may make gifts, — even notable ones, as in the case of the park, the library and the manual training school, — and small building loans may be granted employes; but the profits of the industries are not in any large sense re-invested in the town.
The setting of the average Homestead household is now fairly complete before us. On the one hand is the inexorable mill, offering wages and work under such conditions as it pleases; on the other is a town politically failing to maintain a sound environment for its inhabitants and not possessed of independent business resources sufficient to serve them.
It may well be questioned whether, with labor organization among the working people, the civic conditions would today be any better than they are. Democracy has pretty much the same
3i
homestead: the households of a mill town
weaknesses in small cities as in large. Certain it is, however, that the employers in Homestead who have assumed entire authority within the mill gates, have not assumed positive responsibilities toward the well-being of the community which has grown up out- side them. And of the indirect and too often negative influences of the industry upon the normal life of the community, there are, as we shall see, many evidences.
In reviewing the relations of the mill to its employes in the first chapter, I pointed out that the strike, which shut the men off from any part in the terms of their work, left them still two vantage grounds from which they could control much that entered into everyday living, — the town and the home. We now see how and where the town fails to create those civic and sanitary con- ditions which should make for mental and physical efficiency. The problem then becomes largely one of the home. It is in the individual household, supported on the customary wages paid by the mill, that we must seek the meaning of life in Homestead.
32
PART II THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING HOUSEHOLDS
CHAPTER III
WORK, WAGES, AND THE COST OF LIVING
IF YOU are near the mill in the late afternoon you will see a procession, an almost steady stream of men, each carrying the inevitable bucket, hurrying towards the great buildings for the night's work. A little later the tide turns and back come the day men, walking slowly and wearily towards home and supper.
Thus the life of the town keeps time with the rhythm of the mill. This is brought out also by the way the town reckons dates from the year of the great strike; by the trend of its development, conditioned by dependence upon one industrial enterprise owned by outsiders; and most clearly of all by the part the mill work plays in the lives of the men themselves.
While I shall not attempt to go into the technique of steel making, the general process can be stated in a few words. The crude iron brought to Homestead in huge ladles from the "Carrie" blast furnaces across the river, is taken to the open-hearth de- partment where it is put into the furnaces, mixed with scrap iron, ore, and certain chemicals, and brought to a melting heat. The open-hearth furnaces are then tapped and the metal is poured into ingot molds to cool. As the steel is needed for use the ingots are reheated and go to the "rolls," ponderous and wonderful machines, which turn out steel rails, sheets of plate for war vessels, beams for constructing skyscrapers.
The conditions under which the work is carried on seem to an outsider fairly intolerable. The din in the great vaulted sheds makes speech hard. Men who have worked near the engines, though their organs of hearing remain in physically good condi- tion, sometimes become almost oblivious to ordinary sound. Some work where the heat is intense; and before the open doors
35
homestead: the households of a mill town
of furnaces full of white-hot metal they must wear smoked glasses to temper the glare. This heat, exhausting in summer, makes a man in winter doubly susceptible to the cold without. While for the men directing the processes the physical exertion is often not great, most of the laborers perform heavy manual toil. And everywhere is the danger of accident from constantly moving machinery, from bars of glowing steel, from engines moving along the tracks in the yard. The men, of course, grow used to these dangers, but a new peril lies in the carelessness that results from such familiarity, for human nature cannot be eternally on guard; men would be unable to do their work if they became too cautious. The nature of the work, with the heat and its inherent hazard, makes much of it exhausting. Yet these men for the most part keep it up twelve hours a day. It is uneconomical to have the plant shut down. In order that the mills may run practically continuously, the twenty-four hours is divided between two shifts. The greater number of men employed in making steel (as distinct from the clerical staff) work half of the time at night, the usual arrangement being for a man to work one week on the day and the next on the night shift. At the request of the men, the night turn is made longer, so that they can have the full evening to themselves the other week. Their hours on the day turn, there- fore, are from 7 a. m. to 5:30 p. m.; this leaves thirteen and one-half hours for the night shift. In certain departments the regular processes are continued straight through Sunday and the crews work the full seven days out of seven; this is the case, for instance, in the blast furnaces, such as the Carrie group which are practically a part of the Homestead plant. The officials claimed in 1908 that in the rolling mills only necessary labor, such as repairing, was done on Sunday. Yet my colleague, Mr. Fitch, estimated that for Allegheny County as a whole one steel worker out of five worked seven days in a week. Moreover, a majority of the men have to be on duty either Saturday night or Sunday night, thus breaking into the day of rest.*
* Mechanics, and day laborers in the yards work ten hours a day. For a full discussion of the extent of twelve-hour and Sunday work see Fitch, John A.: The Steel Workers, a companion volume in the series of The Pittsburgh Survey, p. 166 ff. For recent action of the United States Steel Corporation curtailing some kinds of Sunday work, see Appendix VIII, p. 236.
36
WORK, WAGES, AND THE COST OF LIVING
These are the demands which the mill makes on the Home- stead men. Even the details of family life depend on whether " the mister" is working day turn or night turn; and the long shifts determine the part the steel worker plays in his household and also in his community. Financially, all time is marked off by the fortnightly "pay Friday." On that night stores are open all the evening. The streets are filled with music, and the German bands go from saloon to saloon reaping a generous harvest when times are good. Beggars besiege the gates of the mill bearing pathetic signs, " I am injured and blind — my eyes were destroyed by hot steel," and the full pocketbook is opened. It is the night for settling scores, and the bills which have accumulated for two weeks are paid and a fresh household account opened.
The influence of mill work upon the home is most direct of all through the wages themselves, since wages, by limiting ex- penditures, set bounds to the attainment of a family's ideals.
As a means of interpreting the household life of Homestead, therefore, I studied the everyday life of families who represented different earning and racial groups in the town's population. Ninety of the families visited kept a detailed account of all pur- chases for four weeks or more. The inquiry was not, however, primarily statistical, but rather a study at first hand of family life. It was not easy to become acquainted with the mill employes since there were no agencies, such as settlements or trade unions, to put a stranger confidentially in touch with them. Introduc- tions, secured mainly from clergymen, made it possible, however, to approach people, and paved the way for more familiar relation- ships as the weeks went on. Suspicion was often aroused and some refused to assist in the investigation. Keeping personal accounts is arduous (many of us have abandoned the praiseworthy habit), and it was not surprising that busy women declined to add this task to their burdens, or else failed to keep up the daily entries once they had begun. My 90 families were thus the residue of a much larger number; some of them dropped out; the entries of others could not be depended upon. Repeated visits to "see how the book is getting on," gave an opportunity to secure that intimate knowledge of family life which most of all was desired. One of my assistants, an American, became a resident of the town,
37
homestead: the households of a mill town
living like other residents and sending her son to the Homestead schools. The young widow of a Slavic mill worker secured the budgets from the immigrants. As an interpreter in the Home- stead courts she held to a marked degree the confidence of her people, and from her I gained an insight into Slavic customs and points of view which was invaluable. The fairly complete picture of the households thus obtained made the budgets more significant and also threw light on the community life.
TABLE 5. — ANALYSIS OF 90 BUDGET FAMILIES. — BY RACIAL GROUP AND NORMAL WEEKLY WAGE OF MAN*
|
Racial Group |
Number of families |
Under $12.00 |
$12.00- $14.99 |
$15.00- $19.99 |
$20.00 and over |
Per cent earning under $12.00 |
|
Slav . . . Eng. sp. Eur.f . Nat. white . Colored |
29 •3 25 23 |
21 1 2 |
2 6 4 9 |
4 i 8 |
2 2 '5 4 |
72.4 7-7 0.0 8.7 |
|
Total . |
90 |
24 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
26.6 |
* For detailed analysis, see Appendix I, Table 1, p. 200.
t This group included English, Scotch, Irish and German families.
A few words of personal description from these individual studies will illustrate the make-up of the representative groupings of the table. The men earning less than $12 a week were largely Slavic day laborers, many of them newcomers, although three had been here fifteen years or more. Some were lately married, starting life in a single room, and some had families of four or five children to maintain.
The group of men earning $12 to $14.99 a week included more varied types; such as a middle-aged Englishman, semi- skilled, whose thrifty wife was managing on this wage to bring up their six children; two Americans with equally large families (one of six children, the other of seven), whose work also demanded little skill, and who also had wives who to some extent made up for the low wages by skilful housekeeping; a third American, unambitious, who held a poorly paid "pencil" job,* and who * Clerical or semi-clerical position. 38
WORK, WAGES, AND THE COST OF LIVING
already counted on his fourteen-year-old son to help provide for the household; a colored teamster, who with three children to support, called on his wife to earn a little, by cleaning for her neighbors; and, in contrast to these, a Slav who had worked seven years in the mill and was now an engineer. This group and the succeeding one were drawn from the better paid day men and the lower paid tonnage men.
Among the steel workers earning $15 to $19.99 were two Slavs and a Scotchman who were helpers at the open-hearth furnaces, an Irish machinist, one American with a good "pencil job" and another who did semi-skilled work at the rolls. The part which personal choice plays in spending when incomes are large enough to give some margin, was illustrated by the families of the men in this group. Here, an American on the clerical staff of the mill with a clever wife and two small children, saved little, for they had chosen instead to have an attractive five-room house; there, a Slav with the same income and the same sized family lived in two rooms which were shared by two lodgers, and already had a bank account of $400; another, an Irish machinist, drank up part of his wages, and his wife had not the gift of home-making.
The group of men earning $20 and over were good workmen and good providers as well. For instance, one Was a Slav who came to America over twenty years ago to begin life here as a miner, and who now is a citizen and has a comfortable four-room home; another, a Scotchman, intelligent and interesting, whose home is a model of thrift, and whose four children are to have the best that American public schools can give. Nine out of 15 of the steel workers in this group were tonnage men.
There are two main factors which determine the standards of living of such wage-earning families: one, external circum- stances which the family cannot control, such as money-wages, location, educational and social opportunities; the other, the ideals which it is continually struggling to reach. No account of individuals or families which fails to take both external cir- cumstances and personal ideals into consideration can be complete; both are necessary to reveal the latent power in the people of a community. The problem presents itself to the mind of the
39
homestead: the households of a mill town
wage-earner in simpler English: "How much can I make? What shall I spend it for?" As the second question is always that of a choice of wants, the decision as to which seem worth working and paying for is perhaps the clearest mark of a family's mental development. If we collect data as to family expenditures and compare the answers thus made to these two questions, we can estimate the character and self-dependence of a laboring com- munity; and, in turn, can measure what home life the wage- earner's pay makes possible. What in the first place then are the wages paid in Homestead ?
As a background to the study of the 90 budget families, we were fortunate in securing an authoritative statement regard- ing the men employed in the Homestead plant in March, 1907, classified by racial group, degree of skill, etc. Of the total 6,772 men, 1,266, or 18.7 per cent, were skilled; 1,556, or 23 per cent, semi-skilled; and 3,950, or 58.3 per cent, unskilled.
TABLE 6. — MEN EMPLOYED IN THE HOMESTEAD MILL IN MARCH, I907. NUMBER AND PERCENTAGES. — BY RACIAL GROUPS AND DEGREE OF SKILL
|
Racial Group |
Skilled |
Semi-skilled |
Unskilled |
Total |
Per cent Unskilled |
|
Slav . . Eng. sp. Eur. Nat. white . Colored |
80 767 21 |
459 358 707 33 |
3064 367 % |
3603 1 123 1925 121 |
8s. 0 3^7 23.4 56.2 |
|
Total . Per cent |
1266 .8.7 |
1556 23.0 |
395o 58.3 |
b772 |
A careful study of wages showed that unskilled laborers received $ .16J an hour for a ten- or twelve-hour day; the semi- skilled, including both day and tonnage workers, earn $2.00 or f3.oo a day, and the skilled, $2.50 to $5.00, a small percentage earning more than that.*
♦Beginning May 1, 1910, the prevailing rate for common labor was raised to 17$ cents an hour in Homestead. This was part of a general advance put into effect by the United States Steel Corporation, equal, ii was announced, to an average of somewhat over 6 per cent on the rates previously paid.
40
WORK, WAGES, AND THE COST OF LIVING
These figures represent earnings, moreover, at the height of a long period of prosperity. The first and most important fact revealed by them is that the pay of over half the men in the Homestead mills in 1907 was that of common laborers. Eighty- five per cent of the Slavs, 23.4 per cent of the native whites, 32.7 per cent of the English-speaking Europeans and 56.2 per cent of the colored were classed as unskilled, receiving less than $12 a week. This will reveal the situation as it actually is to those who have heard only that wages in the steel industry are high. Its reputation for big wages is based on the earnings, especially in the early years of the industry, of the rollers, heaters and other skilled men, a fraction of the total force. The new machine processes call for an increasing number of unskilled positions, and however much the personnel of these workers shifts, this group with a low maximum wage must be considered a constant factor in Homestead life.
Even among the English-speaking employes, unskilled work with its low wage is not always a merely temporary stage in mill work, a period of apprenticeship, to be endured until time and promotion bring a larger income. For instance, among the men over forty years of age in the families keeping budgets, 16 earned over $15 and 12 earned less than that sum. About a fourth of the total number of those earning less than $15 were over forty. Of the men earning $12 to $14,993 week, the six English-speaking Europeans were on an average forty-five years old; the four native whites, forty-five.
A second fact is scarcely less distinctive from an economic point of view. Family life in Homestead depends for its support almost entirely upon the men's earnings; women and chidren rarely work outside the home since the steel plant and machine works cannot use them and there are no other industries in the town. Of the 90 budget families there were only nine in which the income was supplemented by women's wages, and even in these, with the exception of three colored households where the women partly supported the family by days' work, the money thus gained formed only a small percentage of the income.* On the other hand, the mill offers work at good pay to young men,
*See Appendix I, Tables 2 and 3, p. 201. 41
homestead: the households of a mill town
and the husband's wage is frequently supplemented by that of the son. Among the native white families, the husband and son in normal times contributed 92.3 per cent of the total income; among the English-speaking Europeans 98.7 per cent.
Among the immigrant families, however, and among all those in which the man's earnings fell within the day labor rate, our budget studies disclosed that another and exceptional source of support was resorted to; namely, payment from lodgers. It is upon the women of the household that this burden falls. In families where the man's wage was normally less than $12 a week, more than half found it necessary to increase their slender income in this way. What this means in congestion and in lower standards of living we shall see in a discussion of the Slavic house- holds.
The third distinctive fact in the Homestead situation in regard to earnings has been the steadiness of employment. Regu- larity no less than rate of wages determines what a family's annual receipts amount to, and the family adjusts its grade of living more or less closely to this expected income. I was told that from the time of the depression of 1893 up to November 1, 1907, the mills had run almost without a break. Tonnage men who are paid by out- put of course feel temporary lulls, but if a given department in a mill is not working full time, the day men in that department receive a full day's pay as long as the mill runs at all.
How far income standards which are thus rendered stable by regular work in the Homestead mills have been jeopardized by rate cuts which may or may not be justified by changes in process, but against which the men have no check, and what intense efforts they put forward to increase their speed and keep their weekly earnings up to former levels, are issues of labor admin- istration which are gone into by my colleague, Mr. Fitch.* That most of the men will receive a full fortnight's pay regularly year in and year out, has given a sense of security even in the face of repeated reductions in the rates. It has created a basis for the development of common standards of living which would be impossible where employment was fluctuating.
* Fitch, John A.: The Steel Workers, Chap. XIV. 42
WORK, WAGES, AND THE COST OF LIVING
In Homestead, then, we have a community where half the workmen are day laborers, where families are almost solely dependent on the man's earnings, and where a man's earnings one month are fairly like those of the next. Therefore, if the period covered by the investigation had been a normal one, we could have put opposite each other a family's usual earnings, and what the money went for, as shown by account books, and have drawn direct and simple deductions as to the relation between wages and costs of living for each group. An industrial depression pre- vented this. The period covered extended from October I, 1907, to April 1, 1908. Within six weeks after the first budgets were started the trouble began, and by the middle of December the mills were running only about half time, a situation which lasted during the remainder of the investigation. Incidentally, this change brought us special data showing how people met hard times. But, as few families were receiving full wages, many household accounts dropped below what would have been normal for them.
Recognition of this situation called for a special treatment of the budget material as a whole. While the depression, as we have seen, prevented statistical deductions as to how families ordinarily spent their wages, it did not seriously conflict with a main purpose of the economic side of the study. This was to find out what ele- mentary standards of living are possible on an income say of $12 a week in Homestead. To ascertain this, in my major tables I aban- doned all reference to normal wages and divided the families ac- cording to the amounts they actually expended per week during the period studied, including what was purchased on credit. Rents and the prices of food stuffs did not change during this period, and, with these constant, $12 a week would, in general, buy the same whether the payments were made out of the lowered earnings of a family in slack times, or out of the total wages of a low paid man when the mills were running full. As all accounts were dis- carded in which there was a discrepancy of five per cent between income and expenditure during the five to eight weeks studied, the entries showed accurately what the families spent for this period, and afforded a basis of fact to correct and strengthen the impressions received in the more general survey of the situation.
43
homestead: the households of a mill town
The study of much larger groups of families carried over more representative periods would be essential for an adequate inter- pretation of the standards of living in such an industrial town.* But as a simple gauge of the influence of mill town employment upon home life, the items of our budgets, — rent, meals, clothing, help for the housekeeper, and amusements — served to indicate how far earnings will go either for the unskilled immigrant, who seeks a foothold in this country, or for the American, who looks to his work in the steel industry as a permanent basis for a liveli- hood.f
These budgets, moreover, reflect the character of the working people of Homestead. No less important than the question of how much people spend is the question of what they buy and more important than all, what they want. To learn these things we must catch something of the spirit of their homes, for no account of household expenditure, however detailed, can in itself reveal the struggle people make to attain their ideals. And without knowing these ideals we cannot judge how much the limitations which any system of wages imposes concern society.
TABLE 7. — 90 BUDGET FAMILIES. — BY RACIAL AND EXPENDITURE
GROUP
|
Racial Group |
Under 1 12.00 |
$ 12.00- 1 14.99 |
$15.00- ? 19-99 |
$20.00 and over |
Total |
|
Slav Eng. Sp. Eur. Native White Colored. |
'4 3 4 1 1 |
5 4 |
7 3 8 5 |
3 3 12 1 |
29 '3 25 23 |
|
Total . |
33 |
16 |
23 |
19 |
90 |
* The colored group form less than two per cent of the working force in the mill. They are included, therefore, not as numerically significant, but as affording interesting points for com pari son with the Slavs.
t For statement as to the methods of inquiry and statistical treatment em- ployed, see Appendix I, p. 187.
11
WORK, WAGES, AND THE COST OF LIVING
TABLE 8. — AVERAGE WEEKLY EXPENDITURES OF 90 BUDGET FAMILIES IN I907, AMOUNTS AND PERCENTAGES. — BY CHIEF ITEMS OF EXPENDITURE AND RACIAL GROUP
Racial Group
Colored . Slav .
Eng. Sp. Eur Nat. White
Num- ber of Fam- ilies
23 29
'3
25
Aver-
°&
pendi- ture
$12.39 13.09 16.97
Rent
$2.43 19.6 2.00 15.3
2.91 17. 1
20.47 3l6l5-4
Food
$4.84391 5.98457 7-5544-5 7.4436.3
Fuel
$.82 6.6 .382.9 •45 2.7 .844.1
Insurance
» .92
.88
1.03
1.21
Other
I4 6.1 5-9
$3.41 3.86 5.03 7.82
27-5 29.5 29.6 38.2
TABLE 9. — AVERAGE WEEKLY EXPENDITURES OF 90 BUDGET FAMILIES, AMOUNTS AND PERCENTAGES. — BY CHIEF ITEMS OF EXPENDITURE AND EXPENDITURE GROUP
Vxpenditure Group
Under $12.00 $12.00-$ 1 4.99 $15.00-$ 19.99 $20.00 and over
Num- ber of Fam- ilies
16 23 19
Aver- age Ex- pendi- ture
$9.17 13.32
'7-59 25.56
Rent
$1.8820.5 2.29 17.2 2-73 >5-5 3-73 '4-5
Food
$4.1645, 5.8644.0 7.1140.4 9.38 36.7
Fuel
$.38
90
Insurance
I .70
•5' 1.05 1.86
7i
I* 6.0
7-3
Other
i
$2.05 3.89 6.02 9.68
22.3 29.2
34-2 37-9
TABLE 10. — AVERAGE WEEKLY EXPENDITURES OF 77 HOUSE-RENT- ING FAMILIES,* AMOUNTS AND PERCENTAGES. — BY CHIEF ITEMS OF EXPENDITURE AND EXPENDITURE GROUP
Expenditure Group
Under $12.00 $12.00-$ 1 4.99 $ 1 5 .00-$ 1 9.99 $20.00 and over
Num- ber of Fam- ilies
28 '5 19 '5
Aver- age weekly
Ex- pendi- ture
$9.08 13.23 17.65 26.29
Rent
$2.15 2.45 3-3'
23-7 ^8
4.7218.0
Food
Fuel
$3.81 42.0 $.38 5.6442.6 .72 7.0439.9 .61 9.88J37.6 .92
Insurance
! .66
•55 1.07
••95
* Of the 90 families, 13 owned their
45
7-3 4.2 6.0 7-4
Other
$2.07 3.88
fct?
22.9 29.3 3'-9 33-5
dwellings.
CHAPTER IV RENT IN THE HOUSEHOLD BUDGET
THE type of house available at a given time in any com- munity, whether the tenement of the city or the frame cottage of the country, is largely determined by other fac- tors than individual preference. While in clothes, in food, and in amusements, personal likings play a large part, in housing a certain common standard is accepted to which most people con- form. Especially is this true in a growing mill town like Home- stead, where in prosperous years there has been a dearth of houses for rent. There is little choice in the kind of dwelling a working- man's family can secure, and yet the house itself is a determining circumstance in shaping the character of the home life.
As in most American towns of the last century's building, the original lay-out of Homestead had little to commend it. Never- theless, the plan made when the Homestead Bank and Life Insur- ance Company plotted its first lots has been carried out in the newer parts of Munhall and West Homestead, as well as in the cen- tral borough. It is the customary checker-board plan, ill adapted to the gullied hill slopes and triangular flats of a river bend. The streets run parallel from east to west, intersected almost at right angles by those running up and down the hill. The only variation from this general scheme is found in one or two streets in Munhall, which follow the beds of old water courses and have kept the curve of the stream. The lots in Homestead are usually narrow, not more than 20 or 25 feet in width. Originally, there was ample room be- tween the streets for each house to have a good garden in the rear, with plenty of air and freedom, and in the more open parts of the town these gardens are still a source of pleasure. But in other sec- tions they are being built upon and rear houses are multiplying along the alleys which were cut between parallel streets to give ac- cess to back doors. In the district nearest the mill, the alleys are
46
RENT IN THE HOUSEHOLD BUDGET
paved and are built up almost solid. The houses here, though still only two stories high, cover so large a proportion of the land as to limit the amount of air and light within doors, as well as the space left for the children to play outside. This region is occupied by the Slavs and will be described in a later section.
The hill section, which forms the upper part of all three boroughs, has not suffered to such an extent from the overcrowd- ing of the land, but most of the alleys, still unpaved, are littered with rubbish and lined with outhouses and sheds. Here and there are forlorn and often unsanitary dwellings, hardly more than shanties. Such hill-side conditions as yet tell more against the sightliness of the town than against its healthfulness.
There are in scattered sections attractive residences belong- ing to business and professional men ; but in those parts of Home- stead where the working people live, few evidences are to be found of attempts to make dwellings attractive architecturally. They are of that dreary type of small, closely-set frame structure so characteristic of a rapidly growing industrial community. The real estate companies, in their desire for economy, naturally plan their houses on an inexpensive and, as far as possible, uniform scale, and rising land values lead to the use of narrow lots. The common type of house has four rooms, two on a floor, the front door opening di- rectly on the street. The stairway to the second story occupies a narrow hall between the two lower rooms. Some of the houses contain five rooms. In a row of such houses the dining room, back of the "front room," is lighted only by a window on the narrow passageway between houses, and is never reached by direct sunlight. The monotony of street after street is broken only by the bits of lawn and flowers in front. Where there are yards in the rear, they serve as play places for the children, and offer rest and refreshment to the grownups. As the men are usually too tired to enjoy working in them, the women often assume the task of keeping the flowers and grass in order and find it a welcome change from the hot kitchen. One garden, hardly 20 feet square, had along one fence a thick row of violets that the daughter had brought from the woods; a pink "bleeding heart" and several flourishing rose bushes grew beside the house. The square in the center, where grass was being coaxed to grow, was reserved for
47
homestead: the households of a mill town
the drying of clothes. The house contained but five rooms, and with seven children the parents rejoiced in the freshness and quiet of the yard in the evening. The garden pictured on the opposite page, luxuriant with shrubs and flowers and vegetables, formed a fine playground for children, puppies, and Belgian hares.
On the hill the gardens have a substantial aspect. One family utilized an empty lot, and the beans, squashes, and other vegetables raised there so decreased the family's cost of living that they declined to keep an account since they said it would not fairly represent their table expenses. An item of sixty cents for garden seeds in the early spring in another family's bud- get gave promise of both pleasure and profit. Many of the families also save a good deal by keeping hens. On one visit, hearing a curious noise beneath my chair, I looked down to find a friendly chicken which had come for a feast of crumbs. One woman kept a few hens to provide fresh eggs for her husband's bucket. After his death she found that by selling them she could add a little to a slender income. The gardens too develop neigh- borliness of spirit, since the women often discuss over the fences their horticultural ambitions.
In view of the unenviable reputation of "company houses" everywhere, it is interesting to note that those owned and rented by the Carnegie Land Company in Munhall are the best houses for the money in the town. Though built in solid rows and wearisomely uniform they are immaculately neat, with squares of lawn and shade trees in front. These houses, which consist of five small rooms, neatly finished, with running water in the house, but with no bathroom, rent for $i i a month. Electric lights are furnished at a cost of $1.50 a month. Another company row contains four- room houses, without lights or running water, which rent for $8.50. Though some families feel a lack of privacy in these unbroken blocks there is always a waiting list. Throughout Munhall, the cottages vary more in design and the lawns are larger than in the other boroughs. Sixteenth Avenue, for instance, is an example of effective, inexpensive house-building.
Bearing these general conditions in mind, the facts in regard to the houses of a few of the budget families will give us a back- ground for the tables to follow. They will suggest how individual
48
Photo by Hine
Back Yakd Possibilities in Homestead — I
Photo by Hine
Back Yard Possibilities in Homestead — II
RENT IN THE HOUSEHOLD BUDGET
and racial preferences modify the general tendency to pay more rent as income increases.
Davis.* Colored. Man, wife and four children. Man a hod carrier with irregular work at $3.00 a day. They live in a small dilapidated house, built in the middle of a lot on an alley. Water in yard. Unsewered closets emptied by town on application. Three rooms. $7.50 a month.
Chismer. Slav. Man, wife, two small children. Man a laborer in mill, $1 .65 a day. House on alley, no yard, water from hydrant in court, unflushed toilet. Two rooms. $8.00 a month.
Chech. Slav. Man, wife, two children and two board- ers. Man earns $15 a week in the mill. Water and toilet in yard. Two rooms each about 1 5 feet square. $8.00 a month.
Jones. American. Man, wife, seven children. Man earns $17 a week in the mill. Small frame house on alley. Practically no yard. Water in house. Toilet in yard. Three rooms. $1 1 a month.
McCarthy. Irish. Man, wife, four children. Man earns $16 a week in mill. Half a double house, unattrac- tive. Small yard. Water and toilet in yard. Four rooms. $12 a month.
Brown. American. Man, wife, five children. Man earns $15 a week and son $5.00 a week in the mill. Small frame house, very close to mill. Small porch directly on street. Small yard. Running water in house, toilet in yard. Five rooms. $12.50 a month.
Schmidt. German-American. Young couple, one child. Man earns $50 a month. Small house in row. No hall. Water from hydrant on porch used by several families. No yard. Three rooms. $13 a month.
Kocis. Slav. Here twelve years. Man, wife, three children, five boarders. Man earns $10.80 a week. Fairly large yard. Water and closet in yard. Four rooms, one dark. $14 a month.
Evans. American. Man, wife, one child, lodger. Man earns $3^00 a day. Attractive house. Small porch. Good yard. Toilet and water in house. Four rooms .$i5amonth.
Lewis. Colored. Man, wife, three children, the oldest six. Man earns $2.10 a day in the mill. Rather shabby but comfortable frame house on outskirts of town. A large garden, which they cultivate. Water from pump in yard. Closet not connected with sewer. Five rooms. $16 a month.
* The names used throughout this book are fictitious.
4 49
homestead: the households of a mill town
Smith. American. No children. Man earns $18 a week in mill. Half of double house with only narrow path at side. Toilet and running water in house. Five rooms. $20 a month.
Burns. Scotch. Man, wife, two sons at work, three children in school. Total income about $30 a week. Frame house, only a narrow path on each side. Small porch directly on street. Good yard behind. Water in house, closet in yard. Six rooms. $24 a month.
Seventy-seven of the 90 budget keepers were tenant families Their expenditures for rent during the period studied are shown in Table 1 1 .
TABLE I I . — AVERAGE AMOUNT OF RENT PER WEEK PAID BY THE 77 HOUSE-RENTING FAMILIES. — BY EXPENDITURE AND RACIAL GROUP
|
Under |
1 12.00- |
$15.00- |
$20.00 |
Average |
||||||
|
$12.00 |
% 1 499 |
1 19-99 |
and Over |
of All |
||||||
|
t> |
>*-« 1 |
-^- |
H^ |
|||||||
|
Racial Group |
feJ |
Aver- |
SI |
Aver- |
0 2 fc y: Aver- |
kl |
Aver- |
Aver- |
||
|
age |
-0 5 |
age |
|8 age |
age |
11 |
age |
||||
|
a,"3 |
Rent |
Rent |
a£ Rent |
Rent |
S."3 ^ |
Rent |
||||
|
Colored |
1 1 |
$2.22 |
6 |
»2.37 |
S |
$2.96 |
, |
$2.50 |
23 |
$2.43 |
|
Slav. . . |
"3 |
1.64 |
5 |
2.41 |
6 |
2-77 |
3 |
2.62 |
27 |
2.14 |
|
Eng. Sp. Eur. . |
3 |
3.38 3-85 |
3 |
2.50 |
3 |
3-75 |
5-35 |
IO |
3.78 |
|
|
Nat. White |
2 |
1 |
3.00 |
6 |
3-99 |
* |
5.56 |
'7 |
4.65 |
|
|
Total families . |
28 |
IS |
19 |
is |
77 |
|||||
|
Average rent |
•• |
$2.15 |
I2.45 |
?3-3' |
$4.72 |
$3.00 |
With a few exceptions, there is of course in each racial group a general increase in rent according to the amount of income. But in each expenditure class the Slav spends less rent on the average than do the English-speaking Europeans and Americans. In the lowest and the highest groups the expenditure of the other whites is more than double that of the Slavs. The low expenditure for rent among a majority of the Slavic and colored families goes hand in hand with overcrowding and un- sanitary tenements, a fact borne out not only by the vivid im- pression of squalor received by the chance visitor to the courts
50
RENT IN THE HOUSEHOLD BUDGET
and alleys in which many of them live, but by a scrutiny of the accommodations which they secure for themselves.* Taking the room as the unit and stating the proposition roughly for all 90 families, in nearly three out of five of the older immigrant families there was but one person to a room. The same was true in four out of five of the native white families, but of only one out of five of the Slavic. Fourteen families out of 17 of those in which there were three persons to the room were Slavs.f
The fact that the Slavs and the colored people come nearest in their expenditures suggests that the housing standard first adopted by the former is very like that of the working Negro.
Turning to the size of the dwelling, 10 out of 13 of the older immigrant stock J lived in houses with four or more rooms, and 22 out of 25 of the native white; moreover, 10 of the latter had houses of six rooms. On the other hand, one-half of the Slavic and colored families lived in one- or two-room houses. It was among these groups in the budget families, and only among these, that such small homes were found. This was a level to which the mill workers who had lived here since before the strike did not go. It was a level still more desperately depressed by overcrowding in the lodging houses of the Slavic courts.
But while thus recognizing that racial standards modify rental expenditures, an economic analysis of these same budgets shows that the determining factor is wages. The two races spending the smallest per cent for rent are those with the lowest incomes. They give too small a margin for the family to consider how desirable a better home would be. As it is, these poorest families put a greater proportion of their expenditures into rent (Table 13) than do any of the others, the percentage being a third higher, 23.7 per cent as against 18.5 per cent, 18.8 per cent, 18 per cent.g
* Four out of five of the native white, and three out of five of other Euro- peans had running water in the house, as against less than two out of five for colored or Slavs. Only three houses out of 65 occupied by families other than native whites contained indoor toilets, while 12 out of 25 houses occupied by native whites were provided with them.
t Appendix I, Table 5, p. 202.
X Appendix I, Table 7, p. 202.
§ These percentages for rent are not widely different from those given by Mr. Chapin in his study of conditions among tenement families in New York City
51
homestead: the households of a mill town
TABLE 12. — EXPENDITURE FOR RENT OF 77 HOUSE-RENTING FAMI- LIES. AVERAGE AMOUNT AND PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL EX- PENDITURE.— BY RACIAL GROUP
|
Racial Group |
Number of Families |
Average Weekly Expenditure |
Average Expenditure for Rent |
Per cent for Rent |
|
Slavs . Eng. Sp. Eur. . Nat. White Colored |
27 10 '7 23 |
$12.93 17.90 21.72 12.39 |
$2.14 3.78 4.65 2.43 |
16.6 21.1 19.6 |
TABLE 13. — EXPENDITURE FOR RENT OF 77 HOUSE-RENTING FAMI- LIES. AVERAGE AMOUNT AND PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL EX- PENDITURE.— BY EXPENDITURE GROUP
|
Expenditure Group |
Number of ^ J Famihes | ExpendJure |
Average Expenditure for Rent |
Per cent for Rent |
|
|
Under $12.00 . $i2.oo-$i4.99 . $15.00-$ 19.99 . $20.00 and over |
28 3 '5 |
$ 9.08 .3.23 17.65 26.29 |
$2.15 2.45 3-3' 472 |
18.J 18.8 18.0 |
Rent in the 77 Homestead tenant families rises steadily (Table 13) from an average of $2.1 5 per week paid by the laborer who works for $ 1.65 per day to the $4.72 per week paid on an average by the skilled steel worker. How far overcrowding decreases in proportion to the extra expenditure can be summed up briefly :* Of the 48 families in the group spending under $ 1 5 (in- cluding the house owners), 26, or over one-half, were living with two or more persons to the room ; of the 42 families spending more than $15, only 14, or one-third, had two or more persons to the
where families with an income of $500 to $599 spend 25.9 per cent for rent, and those with an income of $1000 to $1009 spend 18.1 per cent. Chapin, Robert Coit: The Standard of Living among Workingmen's Families in New York City, p. 70. (New York, Charities Publication Committee, 1909. Russell Sage Founda- tion Publication.) The percentages are far in excess of the figures given for normal l.mulic. In the U. S. Bureau of Labor which reports 16 per cent for 170 families with an income of $800 to $900, and only 12 percent for families with an income of $750 to $1100. Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1903.
•Appendix I, Table 6, p. 202.
52
RENT IN THE HOUSEHOLD BUDGET
room; and of the 19 families spending over $20, only five, or one- fourth. Of the 21 budget families who lived in two rooms, over half had less than $12 per week to spend; of the five who lived in one room, none had over that sum.*
These figures do not sustain the oft repeated declaration that people would not live better if they could. With the lowest paid workers spending a larger per cent of their weekly fund for rent than the better-to-do, and with overcrowding nearly absent in the better paid groups, we have tangible indications that overcrowd- ing is ordinarily a result of financial necessity, rather than of either hoarding or spendthrift habits. I am speaking here of the families who rent small houses or let out their rooms, rather than of the lodgers who room with them. When income permits, most families secure room enough to make a genuine home life possible. How long people would maintain this standard in the face of pro- longed hard times it is difficult to say. Since the depression of 1908 was recognized as temporary, landlords were lenient and waited for their rents. Residents and real estate men, however, told of many families who moved to smaller tenements, and the unusual sight of "to let" signs among the better houses bore wit- ness to the change. A couple who had considered a $25 five- room house none too spacious, sublet two rooms for $8.00 to another couple who had formerly occupied a three-room $12 tene- ment. This process, which was going on throughout the town during the months of the depression, shows that rent is an item that is cut down when economy becomes necessary. As it hap- pened, none of the budget families moved during this period, and the expenditures for rent given are those of normal times.
To turn from overcrowding to sanitation, I often found that in a house which had abundance of light and air the water faucet was located on the back porch instead of in the kitchen, and that even when there was running water in the house the only toilet was a privy vault in the back yard. These defects, though due in part to the political inaction which has resulted in a bad water supply and to inadequate housing ordinances, constitute partly an individual problem, involved in the relation of landlord to tenant.
* Appendix I, Table 8, p. 203.
53
homestead: the households of a mill town
How far property owners were in a position to disregard the desires of tenants, is indicated by the fact that when I came to Homestead in the fall of 1907, there were few houses for rent in the whole town. My impression of the general situation was that the under-supply enabled landlords to let unimproved dwellings at profitable rentals without having to put them in good order; and that these sanitary deficiencies were submitted to by many people, not because they did not desire better conditions, but because they were unable to pay the higher rates demanded for improved homes. The average rent per month per room of the houses occupied by the 90 budget families was 13.93. The average rent per month of houses in the courts, where conditions were ex- ceedingly bad, was but $3.63 a room, and that of houses on the hill occupied by the native whites $4.14. The difference between these last two rents, then, for a house of four rooms, was over $2.00 a month.
TABLE 14. — FAMILIES HAVING RUNNING WATER IN THE HOUSE AND INDOOR CLOSETS. — BY WEEKLY RENT
|
Normal Weekly Rent |
Number of Families |
Running Water in House |
Indoor Closets |
|
|
Under$2.oo. f 2.00 to $2.99 J3.00 to $3.99 $4.00 to $4.99 $5.00 to $5.99 $6.00 to $0.99 I7.00 and over Owning homes |
16 34 10 6 7 3 '3 |
3 14 7 3 7 1 3 9 |
2 1 1 4 3 4 |
|
|
Total . |
• |
90 |
47 |
'5 |
Sanitary conveniences go (or do not go) with a house as a whole. Only three out of 16 of the families whose rent was less than $2.00 a week had running water in the building; one-third of those who paid less than $3.00 had running water inside; two- thirds of those who paid between $3.00 and $5.00; and all those paying over $5.00. Nine out of 13 of the house-owners, moreover, had running water in their homes. Seven out of 1 1 of the families
54
RENT IN THE HOUSEHOLD BUDGET
paying $5.00 or more had indoor closets, as against four out of 66 paying less than that sum.
Taken together, these facts express fairly the desire of American and English-speaking European families to have houses which in size, sanitation, and conveniences would make a normal and efficient life possible. With the existing prices in Homestead, the amount expended for rent by the households whose budgets ran over $20 a week ($4.72) was none too large for the average family which desired sanitary conveniences and a sufficient number of rooms to insure privacy and the development of the home. The sum paid for rent by those who had less than $12 a week to cover all expenditures ($2. 1 5) did not provide bare sanitary surroundings.
As I passed in and out of the homes 1 was impressed with the genuine strength of the family ideals manifested in simple and externally unattractive dwellings; for standards of home life depend upon more than rooms and running water. It has often been said that the first evidence of the growth of the social instinct in any family is the desire to have a parlor. In Homestead this ambition has in many cases been attained. Not every family, it is true, can afford one, yet among my English-speaking acquaint- ances even the six families each of whom lived in three rooms attempted to have at least the semblance of a room devoted to sociability. In one three-room house, where there were seven children, a room which had in it a folding bed, a wardrobe, the carriage where the baby slept in the daytime, and the sewing machine, was referred to with pride as the "front room," a phrase with a significance quite beyond its suggestion of locality.
Much money and interest go toward making this room the center of home life. Here in the evening the family gathers about the soft coal or gas grate, while the mother sews, and one of the older children plays to the father. Such "front rooms" are the scenes of those simple festivities which enliven existence in this town. One mother described happily the evenings with her chil- dren: "My boys are so musical and the other fellows come in and we all have such a good sing together, and then Mamie dances the Highland Fling. They offered to pay her to do it in the nickelodeon, but the boys won't let her do it away from home."
55
homestead: the households of a mill town
The furniture, though sometimes of the green plush variety, often displays simplicity and taste. A center table, a few chairs, a couch, and frequently either an organ or piano complete the furnishings. Usually there are pictures — the family portraits or some colored lithographs — and almost always that constant friend of the family, the brilliantly colored insurance calendar. Pic- tures of one or two such rooms will show how well the women have succeeded in making them homelike.
In the four-room houses, the family eat in the kitchen. In five-room houses we find an anomaly known as the "dining room." Though a full set of dining room furniture, sideboard, table and dining chairs, are usually in evidence, they are rarely used at meals. The family sewing is frequently done there, the machine standing in the corner by the window; and sometimes, too, the ironing, to escape the heat of the kitchen; but rarely is the room used for breakfast, dinner or supper. One woman said, "My daughter is in High School, and she thought we ought to eat there and said she would wait on the table, but in about a week I noticed she set the table in the kitchen again." Where there is no servant it is much easier to cook and serve in the same room ; so the dining room, though finding plenty of use, does not live up to its name.
The kitchen is the important room of the house. Here the mother spends the day, here the family meet for meals and the children come between times for the much sought for "piece." The furnishings usually include a good range, either coal or gas, which most Homestead housewives consider a necessity. As few houses have running water inside, set tubs are rare, but washing machines, which cost about $15, are more often found. The kitchen usually opens on the garden, and in the sections where rear houses have not been built this space provides also a place where the children can play under their mother's eye.
Throughout the part of the town occupied by the English- speaking workmen, we find these evidences of a very real interest in the home. More substantial proof of the instinct of homemak- ing is shown in the often heroic efforts to buy the house. In view of the number of families who could not pay sufficient rent to secure either rooms enough for comfortable living or sanitary conveniences, it is a striking fact that according to the census
56
Photo bv nine
A "Front Room"
Photo by nine
Row of Detached Workinc.mkn's Houses in Munhall; Mill Stacks Showing above Housetops
RENT IN THE HOUSEHOLD BUDGET
figures of 1900, 586 families in Homestead borough, 25.7 per cent of the total number, held title to their homes; and 47.4 per cent of these were free from encumbrance. Personal interviews have corroborated this evidence that mill-town workingmen wish to own their dwellings.
In the budget families, eight out of 25 Americans, three out of 13 of the English-speaking Europeans and two of the 29 Slavs owned their homes, and five others were buying them. While none of these earned normally under $12, not all belonged to the highest wage group. Five had an income of $12 to 1 14.99, two of 1 1 5 to $19.99, and 1 1 of $20 or over. For the five on the lower income it had been a slow process to buy a home, requiring much self-denial.
TABLE 15. — 18 HOUSE-PURCHASERS AMONG 90 BUDGET FAMILIES. — BY NORMAL WEEKLY INCOME AND BY RACIAL GROUP
|
Racial Group |
Number of Budget Families |
Number Purchas- ing Homes |
Families in Which Man Normally Earned |
|||
|
Under $12.00 |
$12.00- $14.99 |
$15.00- $19.99 |
$20.00 and over |
|||
|
Slav Eng. Sp. Eur. Nat. White . Colored .... |
29 >3 25 33 |
3 5 10 |
1 3 1 |
1 1 |
1 1 9 |
|
|
Total |
90 |
18* |
5 |
2 |
1 1 |
13 families owned their houses; 5 were paying instalments.
Ownership is made possible in many cases by the attitude of the real estate companies, which in Homestead prefer building for sale rather than for rent, and which safeguard their clients in such a way that workingmen dare to buy. They have made buying a very simple proposition. The purchaser pays down a small sum, sometimes as low as $150. The company assumes the obligation of paying interest on the mortgage, insurance, taxes,
57
homestead: the households of a mill town
etc., and the buyer pays a monthly instalment large enough to cover this and make a small reduction on the principal. For instance, a neat five-room frame cottage with running water in the kitchen but containing no bathroom, is worth about $2000.* Of this sum the purchaser pays $300 down., and his monthly instalment is $17. Smaller houses can be purchased with in- stalments correspondingly reduced.
About twenty years ago the Carnegie Steel Company started the plan of permitting their employes to deposit money with the company. At that time also the company commenced making loans to employes to assist them in purchasing homes. It was believed the deposits would be offset by the amount loaned for this purpose, but it did not work out that way, the loans not equalling the deposits. Accordingly, for a number of years the extension of deposits by employes has not been encouraged, although any employe who chooses to do so is permitted to open an account. At the present time only about 1 100 employes in the different plants of the company are depositors. Loans up to two-thirds of the value of the property are made to employes to aid them in buying homes. Interest is charged at the rate of 5 per cent per annum plus the state tax.f The principal is pay-
* The Homestead Realty Company will mortgage such a house for $1,000, and sell the property on monthly payments, taking a second mortgage for the balance less the money paid down by the purchaser. If the family pays $300 down, this second mortgage would be $700. The company sells on the plan of one dollar per month for each $100 of indebtedness. In this case, therefore, the monthly pay- ment would be 1 1 7, half of which would be applied against the indebtedness, and the other half would just cover the six per cent interest on the mortgages. Every six months the company gives credit on the indebtedness, thus reducing the in- terest charges; it deducts taxes, etc., on the other hand, from the payments made. By this system the second mortgage of $700 would probably be cleared by the monthly payments in six years; in other words, the family would be down to the first mortgage. From this point on, as this is only a 50 per cent mortgage, they are able to shift for themselves without the interference of the company. In view of the fact that good locations in Homestead are very scarce, the manager states that families who have paid in $500 or $600, and then desired to leave town, have always been able to turn their property over at as much, or even more, than they paid for it.
t A point of contrast between the house-building operations in such an American mill town, and those in certain of the European industrial centers, is the fact that on the loaned capital by which the American workman becomes a house- owner, he pays a rate not much if any less than that paid by any small individual borrower. Through the Industrial Insurance Funds of Germany, and grants by the governmental authorities in Great Britain, such building operations can be financed at a much lower rate.
58
RENT IN THE HOUSEHOLD BUDGET
able in monthly instalments. At the present time 165 employes have loans from the company.
Some of the other means adopted to secure a home are illus- trated in the story of a delightful Englishman, once a silk weaver but now an engineer in the mill, who lives in Munhall Hollow. The meaning of the word Homestead is all but forgotten by its people, but the story of this man's house building shows much of the spirit of the old settlers. When he wished to build, he had very little money. Mr. Munhall, who was then living, gave him a note to a lumber firm, who sold him $200 worth of lumber on credit. He paid down $24 for the lease of a lot.* Since he did part of the work, the labor cost on his three-room house was only about $40. As soon as these debts were paid, he incurred another for f 200 in order to enlarge the kitchen and build a second bedroom over it; then he added a front porch and later a shed in the rear for a storehouse, with a chicken coop beside it. All this was done while there were three children at home, and on the income of an engineer, not over $3.00 a day. Now he and his wife, despite the disadvantage of not having a freehold in the land, take in their comfortable though simple home the pride of the creator as well as of the owner — a feeling rare in these days of huge tenements and "company houses," when men accept whatever can be had for the renting and when long shifts make it difficult for them to put the work of their hands into their homes if they would.
When the house is paid for, the family often takes a genuine pleasure in its improvement. Sometimes it is the addition of a bathroom; sometimes the re-papering in the spring which the busy mother finds time to do; sometimes the building of a wash- house in the yard. To plan and carry out these improvements always means the development of a sense of family life and its common interests. One Italian family had been world wanderers, going from Sicily where the man was a stone mason, to France; from there to South America, to pick coffee on a Brazilian planta- tion; and at last they had come to America. In each of three places in this country in which they had lived they had secured a
* Criticism was made in an earlier chapter (p. 26) of the undesirable features of the leasing system of the John Munhall Estate, which affects between two and three hundred families in the community. In this instance the plan did not work out unhappily.
59
homestead: the households of a mill town
bit of property. Now, as the man was earning I2.50 a day and two relatives boarded with them, he could buy a four-room house on the outskirts of the town, worth $1500. During the summer, after work hours he built a fence, a hen house, and a cold frame for vegetables, and began to get his ground in shape for a good garden. When winter came he went to work on a basement kitchen so that the first floor could be kept for living rooms. He dug and plastered and ceiled it with matched wood, till it was snug and cozy.
To have a bathroom is a real ambition with the native white families, and some of those who live in the otherwise excellently equipped company houses mentioned the lack of one as a great drawback to their convenience. A number of families who owned their houses had themselves gone to the expense of putting in baths, while others proposed some day to do the same. The woman of the Italian family just referred to, who lives on one of the unsewered streets on the hill, told me eagerly that she expected to have a bath as soon as the town provided water, an indication, in passing, of how the town government often lags behind the ambitions of individual householders.
Much of the burden of buying the home falls on the house- wife. She must make the needed economies if the extra money is to be forthcoming; she must see that the sum is ready when the days for payments come. The final value of the effort is shown in the case of one family who bought a house when the sons were at home helping to swell the income. Now when the boys are married and gone, and the father, no longer strong, earns but $2.25 a day, the parents can still live in simple comfort. Another instance was that of a couple from the country who started to buy when they were first married. In the course of five years, on an income of about $2.75 a day, they had purchased a comfortable five-room house. One Friday the young husband made the last payment and on Monday he was killed in the mill, leaving his wife to provide for three children. By renting three rooms for $10 a month and by taking in washing, she hoped, with the money coming from the company and his insurance, to maintain herself.
Granted the obvious advantages in house ownership, why after all does not everybody buy ? Some families, it is true, can-
(K)
i. Frame Houses. Five rooms and bath.
2. Brick Houses. Four rooms and bath; cemented cellars; yard 40 x 400.
$2700 to $2800. Built by Homestead Realty Co.
3. Residenxe Street. Tenanted largely by business and professional men.
The first and third houses are owned by mill men not superintendents.
RENT IN THE HOUSEHOLD BUDGET
not save even $150, nor spare the small extra sums involved in the monthly payments. The study of the budgets of families living on $12 or under a week reveals too small a margin after the neces- sities of life have been provided for. Some, too, are indifferent; others decide against it after consideration. I was much interested in the different positions taken by two sisters in regard to the wis- dom of buying. One, with six children, whose husband makes something over $3.00 a day, said: " I didn't try to buy, because I wanted to give my children everything that was coming to them, and I wouldn't stint them." So, as far as she can, she gives them what the other children in school have; and I3.00 goes but a little way when there are eight to provide for. The other, wiser per- haps, began early to buy her home. She has been married only five years, to a man whose income is about the same as her brother-in- law's, and has two little ones to care for; but already she has made the initial payment on the five-room house which will cost them about I3000. By sub-letting two rooms for $8.00 a month their monthly payments take from their wages only about as much as the regular rent. It will be some years before they have the indebtedness paid off, but they plan to be well on their way toward accomplishing this by the time the children are large enough to need the other rooms.
Considering the number who buy on this plan, there are few foreclosures. Since work in Homestead is steady, loss of income due to lack of employment has not been so serious a menace to house buying as in many communities. The depression of 1907-8, of course, produced unusual conditions, but the real estate com- panies recognized the importance of keeping the confidence of the community and bore the brunt of the trouble themselves. I was told that of the three mortgages foreclosed in Homestead in 1907, none was on a workingman's home. If a man has shown any dis- position to honesty, — and in Homestead it is possible to know people intimately, — the real estate company will allow him, when in a hard place, to suspend all payments except interest on the mortgage. Trustworthy people are therefore fairly safe in starting to buy, so far as normally steady work and the co-operation of the realty company can give security.
The house-buyer, nevertheless, has his hazards, and they are
61
homestead: the household of a mill town
very real ones. The greatest difficulty arises from periodical cuts in wages. In 1908 for example, in mid-winter, I was told that the rate of wages of tonnage men was reduced in some cases 16$ per cent. A family which by careful economy out of the wages current in the fall, could make the extra expenditure toward buying a house, might after such a cut find itself in a serious predicament. To keep on with payments would mean cutting down everywhere margins that are already small. As these wage cuts can never be foreseen, they introduce so serious an element of uncertainty that many doubt the wisdom of embarking their entire capital, though small, in such a venture. One family had been saving for some time; then the man was slightly injured in the mill, and $80 of savings went before he was at work again. The family kept on saving, however, and with $300 in the bank was hoping to begin the purchase the following spring, when hard times came and the surplus was again diminished. The woman fearing other catastrophes now hesitated gravely. When a family has put all its savings into a house, death, discharge, or displacement of the man by a machine, may compel a forced sale; a strike or season of hard times, or the removal of a plant from a given town, may leave him in a worse predicament.
Home owning, moreover, lessens the mobility of labor, since when one is partly paid for a man will pull up stakes and seek work elsewhere only under extreme pressure. From the point of view of the company, this is an ever present advantage. For the employe it is a potential disadvantage, especially in a town like Homestead where, since the strike of 1892, the men have had no voice in the matter of wages and no security as to length of em- ployment. Hitherto the disadvantages to the employe house- owners have not been extreme because with the lack of sufficient houses in Homestead it has been easy to realize upon them. In the average mill town, however, house ownership may prove an encumbrance to the workingman who wants to sell his labor in the highest market.
(.2
CHAPTER V TABLE AND DINNER PAIL
DURING my sojournings in Homestead, I found it of little avail to stand knocking at front doors. 1 1 was wise to go straight to the back door, which opened into the warm and cheerful kitchen. Here I was sure to find the housekeeper busy preparing for the ever recurring meal, economically her most important task. Not only is food the largest item in the family account, but it is also one which, by thrift and ability, housewives can reduce without lessening the comfort of the family. The " cost of living" is a problem they themselves are studying practically, and many of them took a lively interest in the results of the budget investigation.
In general, the account books revealed a fairly intelligent choice of foods, including a large amount of fruit and green vege- tables, chosen apparently to meet the need of men who do very hot work. The following bill of fare for four days is fairly typical of the English-speaking households. The head of the family in this instance earned about I3.00 a day.
Monday
Breakfast: Oat-meal and milk, eggs and bacon, bread, butter,
jelly, coffee. Dinner: Soup, bread, fruit. Supper: Meat, beans, potatoes, fruit, red beets, pickles.
Tuesday
Breakfast: Chocolate, eggs, bread, butter, and jelly.
Dinner: Spinach, potatoes, pickles, warmed over meat, fruit,
bread, butter. Supper: Meat, sweet potatoes, carrots, beans, tomatoes, tea,
bread, butter and fruit.
63
homestead: the households of a mill town
Wednesday
Breakfast : Eggs, corncakes, potatoes, coffee, rhubarb, bread, butter. Dinner: Soup, bread, butter.
Supper: Lamb stew with dumplings, cucumber, eggplant, beans, corn, coffee, bread and butter, fruit.
Thursday
Breakfast: Eggs, fruit, eggplant, coffee, cakes. Dinner: Soup, bread and butter, cakes, fruit. Supper: Fish, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, pie, tea.
When the man does not come home for the noon meal, as in this instance, it is usually a light one for the rest of the household. In another family where they had eggs for breakfast and meat for supper, the children were fed at mid-day on mush and milk with bread and molasses.
In mill-town economics, the dinner pail must be reckoned with as part of the table, and a bill of fare must be read with that in mind. I was struck with the pains often taken with the "mister's" bucket. The women used to carry hot lunches to the mill, but they are not now allowed inside without a pass. Most of the men, as they are not given regular time for eating, snatch a bite between tasks, though some, whose work permits, stop for a leisurely meal. I even heard of men who took steaks to cook on the hot plates about the machines. But they usually rely on the cold meal, and the women take great pains to make it appetizing, especially by adding preserves in a little cup in a corner of the bucket. They try to give the man what he likes the most, apparently half from pity at the cold food and hard work that fall to his lot.
On the other hand, the women do not seem to realize that special care is needed in feeding the children, and generally give them much the same that their elders have. The mothers rarely attempt to check the natural tendency of childhood to be always running in for a bite between meals. The children suffer, too, from the fact that the time for meals is irregular because of the weekly change in the man's hours. One woman told me that the men get a bad habit of eating at odd times in the mill, and with this and meal hours changing every week, expect to eat whenever
64
TABLE AND DINNER PAIL
they feel like it. The household naturally picks up the habit with disastrous results both to digestion and housekeeping.
Sunday dinner is the one meal that serves as a time of fes- tivity. Almost every account showed that on Saturday an extra piece of meat, usually a roast, was bought. The men have some leisure on Sunday and sit down with pleasure to a more elaborate dinner. Sometimes the married sons and daughters come home for that meal, and altogether it plays a definite part in the week's pleasure. Unfortunately, however, as the men usually work either Saturday night or Sunday night, they rarely have the whole of Sunday to themselves, with that sense of free- dom and let-up which means so much at the end of the week.
Occasionally, especially on holidays, there are family re- unions. On Thanksgiving, when the mills run as usual, few prep- arations are made for the hurried dinner. Christmas, however, is a great day in Homestead. Twice a year, on that day and on July Fourth, the great mill stops. Everyone who can goes home, some to families in Homestead, others to neighboring towns, and there are Christmas trees in many homes. Some of the women who kept budget accounts took care to explain that their unusual expenses in December, both for food and extras, were for Christ- mas festivities.
Formal guests are infrequent. Where the housewife is also cook, there are difficulties in the way of hospitality, which are accentuated by the irregular meals and the hours of work. People who live simply and eat informally rarely utilize the meal time for guests as do more conventional households. But though rarely a time of festivity, the meal hour is always present in the housewife's mind. When asked for an account of what they spent on food the women usually responded cheerfully, "We spend all we can get." They realized, nevertheless, that econ- omies are possible and necessary if bills are to be met on pay day. For in spite of the reputed high wages among steel workers, the problem Homestead housewives face in trying to provide food and a good home on the man's earnings is no easy one. As we shall see from these budgets, excellent management is required to secure a really adequate food supply with the amount that can be set aside for this purpose. 5 65
homestead: the households of a mill town
Food stuffs are high in this region. At a hearing before the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce in 1906, this fact was partially ascribed to geographical situation and local conditions. Since the river valleys are given over to the production of steel rather than of vegetables, fresh foods must be brought from a distance. This, of course, means added cost, because of freight charges. Some dealers claimed, also, that railroad terminal facilities were totally inadequate, and that fruit and vegetables spoiled while waiting to be unloaded. Moreover, as other local dealers stated, the ease with which money has been made in Pittsburgh has invited high prices.
While comparative statistics as to food prices are usually open to question, those secured by the United States Bureau of Labor may be considered fairly dependable, since the same meth- ods were used in securing the data in different localities. Ac- cording to the figures in the Bulletin for 1907, the ordinary staple articles were more expensive in Pittsburgh than in any other city of similar size in the country. Pittsburgh slightly outranked even New York, not because its prices were in many cases the very highest, though among the selected articles that was true of lard, molasses, and rice, but because this Pennsyl- vania city ranked second in the prices paid for the great bulk of the commodities of ordinary consumption, — beans, chuck roast, salt beef, butter, mutton, fresh pork and bacon, — all of them articles entering largely into the workingman's bill of fare.*
All Allegheny County is closely connected with Pittsburgh by suburban trolley lines, and prices in the smaller markets throughout the district are to a great extent uniform. Such comparative data as I gathered, fortified by the experience of the housekeepers I knew, indicated that Homestead prices were practically on the same level with those of Pittsburgh.
Given then a fairly high cost of living, what proportion of the household income goes for food ? The answer to this first question to be drawn from the budget material was of necessity
* Bulletin U. S. Bureau of Labor, July, 1907, pp. 175-328. See Appendix I, Table 9, p. 203; also Appendix IX, p, 241. Pittsburgh's excess in the prices of food stuffs is, however, not so great as to render the figures as to cost of living in Homestead inapplicable to workingmen's budgets in many other American industrial district*.
66
TABLE AND DINNER PAIL
affected by half-time work in the case of many families. Yet with this reservation in mind, the figures which show the comparative expenditures of the different racial and economic groups are interesting; moreover, the expenditures of representative families during weeks when they were working as usual, together with those of families who experienced no slack time, lead me to think that they reflect with fair accuracy the normal proportions in Homestead.
The expenditure for food, though varying widely both in actual amount and in its relation to the total expenditure, is al- ways the largest single item. Among the native whites it con- stituted 36.3 per cent of the total, and among the Slavs 45.7, this variation, as in the case of rent, being the result of differences in income as well as of differences in racial standards. The percentage for food steadily grows smaller, as the total of all expenditures which a family is in position to make grows larger. Food constituted 45.3 per cent of the total among those who spent less than $12 per week and only 36.7 per cent among families spending $20 or over per week. The percentage in the two inter- mediate groups, considered jointly (that is, from $12 to $19.99) was 42 (Table 17). These percentages for food expenditure are about the same as those secured in other investigations of costs of living. Mr. Chapin gives the percentage in families with incomes ranging from $600 to $1000 (that is, from $12 to $20 per week) as varying between 44.3 and 45.6 per cent.* According to an investigation made by the Federal Bureau of Labor, 5920 families with incomes from $600 to $1,000 spent from 39.9 to 43.48 per cent.f
It is only proportionately, of course, as shown in percentages, that food expenditures grow smaller as families have more to spend. Actually, families with budgets over $20 per week spent twice as much money for food as families with budgets under $12, — $9.38 per week as against $4.16. The most meagre family ex- penditure of all was among the colored day laborers earning under
♦Chapin, Robert Coit: The Standard of Living among Workingmen's Families in New York City, p. 70. New York, Charities Publication Committee, 1909. Russell Sage Foundation Publication.
f United States Commissioner of Labor, 18th Annual Report, 1903, p. 101
67
homestead: the households of a mill town
table l6. — average weekly expenditure for food of 90 budget families and per cent of total expenditure. — by racial group
|
Racial Group |
Number of Families |
Average Weekly Expenditures All Purposes |
Average Weekly Expendi- ture for Food |
|
|
Amount |
Per cent |
|||
|
Slav. . . . Eng. Sp. Eur. . Nat. White Colored |
29 <3 25 23 |
$13.09 16.97 20.47 12.39 |
$5.98 7-55 7-44 4.84 |
45-7 n 39.1 |
TABLE 17. — SAME AS TABLE l6. — BY EXPENDITURE GROUP
|
Expenditure |
Number of Families |
Average Weekly Expenditure All Purposes |
Average Weekly Expendi- ture for Food |
|
|
Croup |
Amount |
Per cent |
||
|
Under 1 12.00 . $i2.oo-$i4.99 . i15.00-f19.99 . $20.00 and over |
16 23 19 |
$ 9.17 13.32 '7-59 25.56 |
$4 16 5.86 7.11 9.38 |
45-3 44.0 40.4 36.7 |
TABLE l8. — AVERAGE WEEKLY EXPENDITURE FOR FOOD OF 90 BUDGET FAMILIES. — BY RACIAL AND EXPENDITURE GROUP
|
Under $12.00 |
$12.00 TO $14-99 |
$15.00 TO l<999 |
$20.00 AND OVER |
All Families |
||||||
|
Racial Group |
g 11 |
1] |
2 11 |
11 |
8 |
11 a,53 |
1*8 |
1< |
||
|
Slavs Eng. Sp. Eur. . Nat. White Colored . |
14 3 4 11 |
»4-48 5-93* 4.29 3-33 |
5 4 1 6 |
$5-99 6.39* 5.93 5.40 |
7 1 5 |
$8.47 6.48 7.00 |
3 3 12 1 19 |
17-13 12.45* 9.26 8.45 |
29 13 25 23 |
§5-^ 7-55 7-44 4.84 |
|
Number of families Ave. expenditure |
33 |
l4-'i6 |
16 |
$5-86 |
33 |
•7.11 |
$9.38 |
90 |
16.33 |
♦The families in the English-speaking European group were much larger than in the other groups, averaging 7.1 persons per family as against 5.2 in the Slavs, 4.8 in the native white and 3.8 in the colored families. This influenced their total food expenditure in the lower income groups.
68
TABLE AND DINNER PAIL
$12, who averaged $3.22 per week. The amplest was among English-speaking Europeans who were earning the wages of skilled men and who in dollars and cents spent four times as much for food as the former (Table 18). The food expenditure of Slavs ranged from $4.48 a week for the families under $12 to as high as $7.00 and $8.00 a week; the native whites from $4.29 to over $9.00.*
But all such statements as to average food expenditures for entire households are inaccurate in so far as families differ in size. Professor Atwaterf overcomes this difficulty by reducing household expenditures to a per capita basis. In line with his calculations as to the comparative amount of food needed, we have assumed that the average woman eats .8 as much as a man, children over fourteen the same, and children under fourteen, .5 as much.
TABLE 19. — AVERAGE EXPENDITURE FOR FOOD PER MAN PER DAY OF 90 BUDGET FAMILIES. — BY RACIAL AND EXPENDITURE GROUP
|
Under $12.00 |
$I2.00- $14.99 |
$15.00- $19.99 |
$20.00 AND OVER |
All Families |
||||||
|
Racial Group |
If |
il |
^"5 IS |
<3 |
s 1 |
«1 |
E it |
|||
|
Slav Eng. Sp. Eur. Nat. White . Colored .... |
>4 3 4 11 |
1-25 .19 .21 .30 |
5 4 1 6 |
$ .29 • 19 .19 .24 |
7 1 5 |
$.36 3 •34 |
3 3 12 1 |
?-3> •35 .36 |
29 '3 25 23 |
$.29 •24 •32 .30 |
|
Total Families Average expenditure . |
32 |
$ .26 |
16 |
$ .24 |
23 |
• *• |
'9 |
li |
90 |
$.29 |
The per capita food expenditure among our 90 budget families is shown in Table 19 for both racial and expenditure
*The naive report of the Committee on Trade and Commerce to the Pitts- burgh Chamber of Commerce November 18, 1909, estimates that a liberal provision of food for a family of five would in Pittsburgh cost $1 1 .88 a week. See Appendix IX, p. 238.
t Bulletin 21, U. S. Department of Agriculture.
69
homestead: the households of a mill town
groups. Here, as in the case of other tables in which the 90 families have been cross-classified into racial and economic groups, the subgroups are obviously too small to do more than suggest general tendencies, which commended themselves to me as noteworthy in view of many conversations with housewives.
While the expenditure for food per man per day in each racial group usually increases as expenditures increase, we may note distinctions among them. The native whites and English- speaking Europeans spend in the three lower expenditure groups decidedly less than either Slavs or colored. A reference to Chapter IV will show that with rent this proportion is reversed, the native whites and English-speaking Europeans spending larger amounts for rent in these lower economic groups. That is, their families seem to have a higher standard of housing, which they maintain when the income is low by making sacrifices in other lines. With them, the desire for a good home may outweigh that for more varied and palatable food. The Slavs, on the other hand, who put up with poor housing, will not skimp to a great extent on food.*
My inquiry was concerned, however, less with relative ex- penditures for food than with the question of how well people could live on the amounts actually spent. The depression did not enter in here as a disturbing factor, as prices in Homestead were unaffected by the hard times. Accurate figures on this point were difficult to secure, but undoubtedly any change would have been immediately noted by the housewives. Many of them ex- pressed their belief that prices kept about as usual.
In a study of a number of household budgets in New York City in 1907, Professor Underhill of Yale estimated that 22 cents per day per man was in general the minimum for which an ade- quate supply of food could be procured. f This figure was based on a study of the nourishing quality of food measured in calories
* See Appendix I, Table 10, p, 204. My Slavic families, moreover, were for the most part smaller in size. They could spend as much as 25 cents per day per man, even in the lowest expenditure group, without making the average outlay for food per family noticeably large.
f "Comparisons between the amounts spent for food by well nourished and poorly nourished families indicate that in general when less than 22 cents per man per day is spent for food, the nourishment derived is insufficient." Report on Nutrition Investigation, Frank P. Underhill, Ph. D., in Chapin, The Standard of Living among Workingmen's Families in New York City, p. 319.
70
TABLE AND DINNER PAIL
and proteids; the former representing the heat-producing fats and sugars, and the latter the tissue builders — meat, bread, beans, etc. Careful experiments have been made to determine both the amount of each of these elements which given foods contain, and also the amount necessary to keep a man in a condition of physical efficiency. Having before him the actual costs to the housekeeper and the nourishing value of the articles eaten by certain house- holds, Professor Underhill was able to estimate for what sum the ordinary purchaser could secure a sufficient amount of food to maintain a male adult in physical well-being.
By the use of Professor Atwater's ratios as to the relative amount of nutrition needed by men, women and children, such a standard per man per day affords a test of how well the food purchased by a family meets its physical needs.
As we have seen that the Federal Bureau of Labor Report for 1907 rates food prices very nearly the same in New York and in the Pittsburgh district,* and as there were no indications of re- ductions in the local markets during the weeks of my inquiry, we may accept Professor Underbill's standard of 22 cents a day as fairly applicable to our Homestead budgets of the same year.
Recurring then, with this standard in mind, to a closer scrutiny of actual expenditures for food among English-speaking Europeans and native whites, we find (Table 19) that the average cost of the former was 24 cents per day per grown man, and that of the latter 32 cents. As was to have been anticipated, families with few children and comparatively large incomes spent gener- ously for food (from 28 to 39 cents per man in the higher expendi- ture groups). But the average for all English-speaking Europeans (24 cents) barely exceeds the amount necessary to supply sufficient nourishment even with wisdom in the choice of food. The average in both racial groups for those spending less than $1 5 per week fell below that amount.
* To apply proportions rigidly, the Pittsburgh district minimum would be 22.9 cents. No attempt was made by the writer to carry on independent experi- ments in food values as to Homestead dietaries. An analysis was made of the food expenditure of an exceptionally thrifty housekeeper, however. So far as esti- mates for proteids and calories can be drawn from account books, without weigh- ing the actual food stuffs used, this indicated that even with careful purchasing, less than 22 cents would not provide the standard of nourishment in Homestead.
71
homestead: the households of a mill town
Altogether, in 21 out of the 90 budget families (Table 20) less than 22 cents per man per day was being spent for food. Low wages, hard times, and large families, all were factors in depressing their consumption below this minimum. Of these families, 14 expended less than $12 a week for all purposes, seven a total of more than that.
TABLE 20. — TWENTY-ONE FAMILIES SPENDING LESS THAN 22 CENTS PER MAN PER DAY FOR FOOD. — BY EXPENDITURE AND RACIAL GROUPS
|
Expenditure Group |
Slavs |
English- speaking Europeans |
Native White |
Colored |
Total |
|
Under $12.00 $I2.00-$I4.9Q i15.oo-f19.99 . $20.00 and over . |
5 |
2 2 1 |
2 2 |
5 |
•4 4 3 |
|
Total . |
5 |
5 |
5 |
6 |
21 |
In the case of the seven families whose expenditures ranged above f 12 per week but whose per capita outlay fell below the minimum of sustenance, size was an important factor. English or American families with nine children (one instance), seven children (two instances), or six (three instances) obviously found it necessary to economize closely on food if the other stand- ards of American life were to be maintained. It may be worth while to note here that I found with all budget fam- ilies* expenditure for food per person decreasing steadily with the increase in the size of the family. This was true in each ex- penditure group. For example, among families whose total ex- penditures were less than $12 per week, those with two to four in the family spent an average of 24 cents per man per day for food while those with five or more in the family averaged but 19 cents. In the $12 to $14.99 grouP» tne Per capita sum fell from an average of 29 to 23 cents; in the $15 to $19.99 group, from 41 to 24 cents; and in the group spending $20 or over, from 48 to
♦Appendix I, Table 11, p. 204. 72
TABLE AND DINNER PAIL
32 cents. This general decrease is in part due to the fact that the housewife can buy more economically for a large family, and also that when the family is small and the sense of economic pressure less heavy she indulges in more costly articles. With respect to the lower expenditure groups, the controlling factor no doubt is that with only a certain fairly definite share of the earnings available for food, that food must be divided among a certain number of mouths.
This will be clearer if we look at the case of 14 families whose expenditures were below |i2 a week and who spent less than the minimum standard. On the basis of 22 cents a day per man, a normal family* must spend $5.08 per week on food alone, or 50 per cent of the earnings of a day laborer working the ordinary ten-hour day of the yard laborers in the mill. This is in excess of the percentage which any group studied allowed for food. Unless such a man works overtime or Sunday, or the family supplements the man's earnings by lodgers, lives in a court, or has few or no children (with the Slavs one or all of these factors are often present), t this allowance for food must be cut down if the other items of expenditure are to be met. Among these 14 families, there were some whose income was always at this low margin, as well as some whose weekly expenditures had been depressed by temporary lack of work. The necessity to cut down on food is the same in one case as in the other and as a matter of fact, omitting the Slavs, half of all budget families whose expenditures were below $12 a week, spent less than the sustenance standard for food. Where the family is above the normal in size, this pressure is accentuated.
It is conceivable that a desire to save might lead a family to be niggardly in its food expenditures; though the Slavs, among whom we would first look for such practices, due to their keen desire to lay by money, averaged 25 cents per man per day in the under |i2 group. A more extensive study would no doubt have elicited cases where drunkenness, shiftlessness, sickness or other
* Man, wife, three children under 14. See U. S. Bureau of Labor, 18th Annual Report, p. 20.
f Two other alternatives are for women or young children to go out to work — alternatives not present to any extent in Homestead.
73
homestead: the households of a mill town
immediate causes of small or squandered earnings reduced a family's food expenditures below this standard. A consideration of these tables, however, has shown us unmistakably how near to the line of under-nourishment must be the families of large size or low incomes. More important than that 21 families fell below 22 cents for food, is the fact that, including the Slavs, the average "expenditure for food of all our budget families spending from $12 to $14.99 Per week was but 24 cents per man a day. That gives a margin of but two cents a day which can only too quickly be lost through a housewife's failure to get the most for her money at market, to select nourishing food, or to secure the nutrient values out of what she puts on the stove. In view of the occurrence of the hard times, these figures should not be taken as an accurate expression of customary food expenditures in Homestead in pros- perous years. They do show what Homestead housewives felt it necessary to spend for food when they were economizing.
We must remember, also, that many unskilled housekeepers cannot provide enough nourishment on a minimum outlay requir- ing wisdom in the choice of food. The sufficiency of food pur- chased cannot be measured altogether by the amount spent. Perhaps in this expenditure more than in any other there is a chance for women to display their skill, an asset which must be included in the family resources. Two households, undoubtedly extreme types, will serve to illustrate this point.
The first was a Scotch family of seven who had been in this country for about fifteen years. Besides the three younger chil- dren in school there were two sons at work, whose wages brought the family income up to $32 a week. The six-room house was none too large to make them all comfortable and enable them to have a pleasant sitting room. As I stepped into the kitchen one frosty morning, I was greeted by the odor of preserves which the wife was making ready to vary the monotony of dinners to be eaten from a " bucket." We fell to discussing methods of economy and she told me many of her thrifty ways; about the pig they would buy as soon as cold weather came, to provide salt pork and ham for the winter; the pickles and preserves she was putting up; the I50 she was saving to buy the winter's supply of dry groceries from the wholesaler's. That this thrift did not amount to par-
74
TABLE AND DINNER PAIL
simony was shown by the good gas range and washing machine in view, and by evidences of ample provision of food. By planning ahead, by extra labor, by wise buying, even luxuries were secured on a food expenditure of only 24 cents per person a day.
The other extreme was shown in the home of a poor, unin- telligent woman who had gone to work at the age of eleven, and could neither read nor write. As enough to pay the rent was the only contribution to the family purse made by her husband, a ne'er-do-well, she herself was obliged, by washing and by taking a lodger, to provide money for food and clothes. This money, which averaged $4.50 a week, was very irregular, as the lodger was frequently out of work. With a wayward boy in school and a sickly baby at home, she had but little time and thought to give to housekeeping. Food was bought daily by the five and ten cents' worth, — pork chops, cheap preserves at ten cents a jar, two quarts of potatoes, a loaf of bread, etc. — a pitiable record viewed either from the standpoint of the children's health or of the pocket-book. The least nutritious food was bought in the most expensive way, because of ignorance and of a small and uncertain income. The items of her expenditures (at 25 cents per day) were deficient in the elements which provide heat and energy to the body, and lacking in the foods which replace worn- out cells. The sample week's account from each of these budgets on page 76 shows the contrast in their methods of buying.
Usually the housekeeper buys a large order of supplies on Saturday and supplements it during the week with additional purchases of meat, vegetables and other foods. Among Home- stead women no subject provokes discussion more readily than econ- omy in buying. Some claim that the chief evil of Homestead life is an extravagance fostered by the ease with which families buy on credit. As the accounts run for two weeks and are settled on " pay Friday," the family never catches up. A number of women expressed their conviction that when prices of articles like butter and eggs are not constant, the grocers are inclined to overcharge a little for goods on credit. Moreover, it is much easier to be extravagant when no cash is paid out and the price is simply jotted down in the "book." A woman who tried this method once, found it so expensive that at the end of two weeks she threw the book into the stove and would never use one again.
75
homestead: the households of a mill town
TABLE 21. — ITEMIZED ACCOUNT OF FOOD EXPENDITURES FOR ONE WEEK BY A THRIFTY HOUSEKEEPER
Saturday
Milk 08
49 lbs. flour 1.75
Bananas 15
Grapes 25
Cabbage 25
TABLE 22. — ITEMIZED ACCOUNT OF FOOD EXPENDITURES FOR ONE WEEK BY A POOR HOUSE-
Monday
Milk 08
2} lbs. beef 30
Steak 30
Pie 12
Tuesday
Milk 08
Tea 60
Cheese 36
2 doz. eggs 60
Coffee 25
Candy 10
Grapes 10
Wednesday Milk 08
Friday
16 lbs. ham f 2.00
Spices 10
Vanilla 10
Milk 08
|
KEEPER |
|||||
|
Saturday |
|||||
|
Bread $ .05 |
|||||
|
Jelly . . |
10 |
||||
|
Coal |
10 |
||||
|
Pork (3 lbs.) . |
so |
||||
|
$ pk. potatoes |
"5 |
||||
|
Cabbage |
\2 |
||||
|
2 lbs. sugar . |
I I |
||||
|
\ lb. prunes . |
OS |
||||
|
Can corn |
10 |
||||
|
2 loaves bread |
10 |
||||
|
\ doz. eggs . |
'4 |
||||
|
Cooking apples |
10 |
||||
|
i lb. butter . |
18 |
||||
|
1 lb. cheese . |
^0 |
||||
|
Monday |
|||||
76
Tuesday
2 lbs. boiling beef . . . .25
Can peas 10
Can syrup 10
$ doz. fig cakes 06
Baking powder 05
£ pk. potatoes 15
Bread 05
Pork chops 15
Wednesday
Boiling Beef 15
Barley 05
I doz. pickles 05
Bread 05
Thursday Can molasses 10
1 doz. rolls 10
Pudding 10
2 lbs. sugar 11
Turnips 10
Tea J lb 15
J doz. doughnuts . . . .05
Friday
Pie 10
Sausage 10
Can corn 10
Bread 05
Jelly 10
TABLE AND DINNER PAIL
Women expressed varied opinions upon the economy of buying in Pittsburgh. There were those who believed that even when prices were slightly lower in the city, the saving was more than counterbalanced by the time and carfare expended in the trip. Some housekeepers also claimed that low priced goods purchased from wholesale houses in town were of so poor a quality that it was not economy to buy them. Then, too, the women felt that loyalty to Homestead demanded that they purchase in their own town as far as possible. So, though on Saturday afternoon the cars are filled with women carrying baskets home from Pittsburgh markets, the larger part of the purchases are made in Homestead. Hucksters, who come out each morning with goods from the Pitts- burgh commission houses, sell fruit and vegetables. Though some of these men undoubtedly give poor quality and short measure, the older housekeepers usually find a trustworthy one and become regular patrons.
Many women show a genuine pride in their skill in buy- ing and in utilizing different cuts of meat. One woman as- sured me that it was no economy for her to buy pieces which contained bones, gristle and fat, since her family would not eat them. If instead of buying such cuts at 10 cents a pound she paid 15 for solid meat, her money really went further. I shall not soon forget the enthusiasm with which one young wife described a special potato meat pie, her husband's favorite dish, which she made from the ends of steak too tough to use in any other way. These women are anxious not only to practice economies, but to conceal them by good choosing and skilful cooking.
When sickness or lack of work reduces wages temporarily, the amount available for food is lessened. During the depression I was surprised to see how quickly certain housewives rose to the emergency in their determination that the family should feel this change as little as possible. Sometimes this meant a serious cutting down of the amount essential to physical well-being; at other times economies were accomplished by foregoing luxuries and by the purchase of simpler but more nutritious food. Here is an interesting budget, the two accounts having been kept by the same woman, one in December, when the man was working stead- ily; the other later in the winter when, having lost his regular
77
homestead: the households of a mill town
employment, he took laborers' work at little more than half his former pay. While the cost in the second account dropped noticeably, a rough calculation indicates that the nutrient value remained almost the same. This was accomplished, at least in part, by doing without meat and with less fruit, both expensive in proportion to nutrition.
|
TABLE 23. — TWO WEEKLY |
FOOD BUDGETS OF A THRIFTY FAMILY |
|||
|
(1) Account When Man Worked on |
(2) Account |
When Man |
||
|
Full Pay |
Worked on Half Pay |
|||
|
Article |
Cost |
Pounds |
Cost |
Pounds |
|
Meat . |
$1.81 |
1 2. 1 |
$0-75 |
5-7 |
|
Beans. |
.06 |
■5 |
.06 |
•7 |
|
Milk . . . |
.11 |
2-7 |
.30 |
1 0.0 |
|
Cheese |
.12 |
.6 |
.06 |
•3 |
|
Butter |
.21 |
1.2 |
21 |
'•3 |
|
Eggs . . . |
•>7 |
.8 |
2.6 |
|
|
Flour. |
.14 |
2-3 |
.42 |
10.3 |
|
Bread. |
•47 |
5-5 |
•3' |
3-3 |
|
Potatoes . |
.21 |
12.0 |
||
|
Turnips, etc. . |
.05 |
2.2 |
.10 |
3*6 |
|
Green veg. |
||||
|
Canned veg. |
•35 |
2-5 |
.1 1 |
i-3 |
|
Fruit . |
.62 |
20.3 |
.40 |
12.0 |
|
Sugar. |
•3" |
7i |
.28 |
9-3 |
|
Sundries . |
.58 |
•42 |
||
|
Total . . |
l5-n |
69.8 |
?3.84 |
60.4 |
Such economy is usually instinctive rather than the result of special knowledge or interest in food values. Both in good times and bad times this woman failed to give her family sufficient of the tissue builders. The housewives expressed some scorn of the theoretical aspects of the problem as taught in the cooking classes of the Schwab Manual Training School, feeling that prac- tical experience was of more value than any theory. As the girls who attended the cooking classes were many of them only in the grammar grades, they probably did not make clear at home the everyday applications of theories expressed in unfamiliar terms. Proteids and calories seem to bear so little relation to pork and beans.
78
TABLE AND DINNER PAIL
The four prize housekeepers I knew were daughters of Pennsylvania farmers. They had learned as country girls how to work, how to provide, and how to economize, and how at the same time to create a real home atmosphere. Girls, on the other hand, who had worked in factories or been clerks, lacked the practical training necessary to help them solve the problems awaiting the young wife of a wage-earner. To my surprise also I found that in some instances domestic service was a no more satisfactory preparation for housekeeping. I remember a kitchen where all was wretched, the children unwashed, the woman untidy, the room unswept. Though the man earned $3.20 a day, his wife, trained as a servant in a wealthy home, had learned extravagant ways and realized helplessly that she could not "get caught up" with her bills, manage her home efficiently, or train her children. "He doesn't see," she said, "why it is though he earns twice what he did when he married me, we are still behind, and he doesn't even carry any insurance."
The task of solving these problems demands, as already suggested, no mean degree of patience, of practical skill, of intelli- gence and interest. We demand that the worker save, and forget that this often can be accomplished only by constant, intelligent watchfulness on the part of the wife, or by doing without some of the essentials of a normal, healthful life.
The marvelous success of some women should not blind us to the fact that they are exceptional housekeepers. After watch- ing the busy lives and the problems of these women, I came to believe that the woman who can keep her home healthful and attractive on $15 or less a week has in her elements of genius. Many a woman who can keep house fairly well on an income that does not require close economy would find herself, I am sure, sadly at a loss to maintain a satisfying table on 25 cents a day per man — the level upon which, in a period of hard times, my "under $15" budget housekeepers managed their expenditures for table and dinner pail. If these per diem tests are indicative, this would allow little more than enough to maintain the physical effi- ciency of a workingman's household even with the most skilful ex- penditure; a margin of only 15 cents a day to make good any lack of skill, or to provide a leeway for the purchase of appetizing
79
homestead: the households of a mill town
trifles. A round of food chosen solely for its value in proteids and calories would be an undue tax on the housekeeper's brain. Only skilled housekeepers can set a table that is both nourishing and appetizing for such a sum.
Buying nourishing food at a small cost is not a task com- pleted once for all. These are three-times-a-day problems. Even the most skilful fail at times to buy wisely, and what is to be anticipated for those whose large families make such heavy demands on them that they are unable to find the time to plan and provide ahead of the need; those with an uncertain income; those especially who are just incapable and unintelligent? If vigilance is relaxed or if some disaster lessens income, the food supply is bound to fall below what is essential.
80
CHAPTER VI
OTHER EXPENDITURES: THE BUDGET AS A WHOLE
THE vital problem which in normal times confronts these homemakers is not provision against physical destitution. With the wages given in the steel mills, that may safely be assumed for the families of the English-speaking workers. The question is whether when they have met their rent and food bills there is money enough left to provide for the other vital needs of mind and body.
The answer to this question was partly revealed by a study of the detailed items of expenditure from which the accompanying tables were drawn. Once the food and rent account had been paid, the margin for other family expenditures, during the period studied, ranged from $3. 14 a week in the group spending under $12, to $12.45 among those spending over $20. This margin increases proportionately, as well as actually, with increased income; for while only a little over one-third of the expenditures of families spending under $12 goes for other needs than food and shelter, the proportion in the higher groups approaches one-half of the total outlay. At every level, this increasing margin must be distributed among three main spheres of expenditures: (1) for other home and personal needs, such as fuel, clothing, furniture, service and minor housekeeping items, through which, no less than through rent and food, the family expresses its household standards; (2) sundry outlays for social purposes such as edu- cation, recreation, religion and the like, through which the family shares in the community life; and (3) savings and insurance through which the family provides for old age or for such emer- gencies as sickness, accident and unemployment.
Since the margin is often not large enough to provide equally for all these ends, each family reveals something of its inherent 6 81
homestead: the households of a mill town
character by the choices it makes. One family chooses present pleasures as against the comfort of owning a house; one mother music lessons as against pretty clothes for the children. In each sphere some items are regarded as essentials, and others as non- essentials.
As between expenditures in these three directions then, not only the contents of pay envelopes, but the individual prefer- ences of families within the various expenditure groups, play an important part. I shall not attempt to discuss the relative expenditures for such purposes, complicated as they were by the occurrence of the hard times,* but rather to suggest to the reader some things which influence the decisions made by a family, and indicate how far incomes at the different levels may permit of ra- tional expenditures one week after another in all these directions.
The tables and general discussion will mean more if the facts concerning the expenditures of a few families are first noted, bringing out some of the distinctive items which fall into individual budgets:
Stone. A colored family of five, the man a teamster earning $12 a week, had an average weekly expenditure of $12.24 during the time the account was kept. Rent, $2.00; food, $6.23; coal, $1.45; washing materials, $ .09; insurance, $.39; church, $.10; tobacco, $. 08; medicine, $1.09; sun- dries, $ .86.
Stearns. An English family of five who own their house had an average weekly expenditure of $12.03. Food, $6.49; fuel, $ .80; clothing, $ .09; repairing house, $3.58: insurance, $.39; medicine, $ .19; sundries, $ .59.
Ahearn. An American family of five who own their house, had an average weekly expenditure of $14.68. Food, $9.27; clothing, $3.29; fuel, $1.50; washing material, $.06; kitchen utensils, $ .20; sundries, $ .26.
* For instance, furniture and clothing are not representative items in a four weeks' study of a family's spendings; still less are they so during hard times. The extent of savings represented by house-buying on the instalment plan is ex- tremely difficult to get at. The small expenditure for tobacco and liquor in these budgets is to be accounted for, at least in part, by the fact that men did not tell at home what they had purchased. It is to be remembered that in these tables the basis for classification is weekly expenditure, not normal or actual earnings. The women usually hesitated to ask the man about his spending money, and as in the days of slack work they did not know just what he earned it was difficult to learn of such personal items
82
other expenditures: the budget as a whole
Roth. Young American couple with one child, had an average weekly expenditure of $16.96. Rent, $3.33;, food, $6.19; clothing, $5.30; furniture, $.17; household expenses, $ .26; insurance, $1.00; sundries, $ .69.
Stillman. Man, wife and two children; Scotch; had an average weekly expenditure of $18.63. Payment on house, $5.00; food, $5.19; fuel, $.83; clothing, $1.00; furniture, $ .87; household expenses, $ .87; insurance, $2.65; tobacco, $ .53; medicine, $ ."52; sundries, $2.05.
Lester. Family of eight, nad an average weekly expenditure of $21.09. Rent, $2.21; food, $8.02; fuel, $.45; clothing, $5.37; furniture, $1.44; household expenses, $.60; insurance, $.34; tobacco, $.29; medicine, $.75; sundries, $1.56.
White. American family of five, the man dead but two sons support the family. They own their house. Their average weekly expenditure was $21. Food, $8.56; fuel, $1.00; clothing, $ .39; household expenses, $ .22; furniture, $2.75; insurance, $2.55; newspapers, music lessons, etc., $1.81; church, $.27; recreation, $.14; medicine, $.90; sundries, $1.15.
Byrnes. American couple living in an attractive house with bath. Their average weekly expenditure was $22.57. Rent, $5.00; food, $9.22; gas, $3.42; furniture, $.80; insurance, $1.02; medicine, $2.50; sundries, $ .59.
Howe. An Irish-American family of five owning their house. Their average weekly expenditure was $30. Food, $14.04; fuel, $2.47; clothing, $1.62; washing, $.31; furniture, $5.57; insurance, $ .66; education, $ .30; spend- ing money, $ .96; tobacco, $ .34; dentist, $1.25; bank, $2.50; sundries, $ .10.
The following paragraph gives the total expenditures for four weeks for everything but food and rent of a family of seven whose average weekly income was $16.38.
Oil, $ .40; coal, $5.20; interest instalments on furni- ture, $2.00; lamp wick, $.06; shovel, $.10; basin, $.15; brush, $.05; soap, $.30; stove and shoe blacking, $.10; paint, $ .50; broom, $ .35; stockings, $ .35; shoes mended, $1.55; gloves, $.10; hat, $.10; underwear, $.40; shoes, $1.40; thread, $ .06; ribbon, $ .28; candy, $.15; carfare, $.20; insurance, $1.10; medicine, $.10; church, $.08; "flowers for the dead," $ .60; spending money for children, $ .36; for boy at work, $1.00; for man, $4.50. Total for the
83
homestead: the households of a mill town
month, $21.54. This gives an average for everything above food and shelter of $5.38 a week.
|
TABLE 24. — AVERAGE |
WEEKLY |
EXPENDITURE OF OX> 1 |
3UDGET |
||||||||||
|
FAMILIES FOR VARIOUS ITEMS. — BY EXPENDITURE GROUP |
|||||||||||||
|
Expenditure |
%» v. |
1 |
1 |
*-* |
.jf |
.2 |
v |
0 9 |
k |
•5 |
8 1 CO |
||
|
Group |
£ |
1 |
£ |
s 1 |
Is |
8 8 |
-a |
.0- •3 |
1 |
||||
|
Under 1 12.00 |
32 |
$9.17 |
?i.88 |
$4.16 |
$.38 |
$.94 |
$.09 |
$.15 |
$70 |
$.07 |
$.20 |
$.10 |
$.50 |
|
$ 12.00-$ 14.99 |
!0 |
13.32 |
2.29 |
5.8b |
77 |
'•■57 |
.20 |
•23 |
•5' |
.05 |
.14 |
■47 '• |
|
|
1 15. 00-$ 19.99 |
2? |
'7-59 |
2-73 |
7-" |
.66 |
2.10 |
.36 |
.18 |
I.05 |
2 |
.63 |
.48 |
..83 |
|
$20.00 and over . |
19 |
25.56 |
373 |
9.38 |
.90 |
3.36 |
.80 |
.66 |
1.86 |
.11 |
.58 |
4.09 |
TABLE 25. — RATIO OF WEEKLY EXPENDITURES FOR VARIOUS ITEMS BETWEEN DIFFERENT EXPENDITURE GROUPS
|
Expenditure |
"8 |
1 |
"5 |
•51 |
j |
-C: M |
1 |
8 |
s |
•1 |
j |
|
|
Group |
as |
5 |
a |
s E 4 |
11 |
8 8 |
s |
,5* |
||||
|
^ |
||||||||||||
|
Under $1 2.00 . |
100 |
100 |
100 |
IOO |
100 |
100 |
100 |
IOO |
IOO |
100 |
IOO |
IOO |
|
$i2.oo-$!4.99 . |
'45 |
122 |
141 |
203 |
167 |
222 |
$ |
73 |
|