Housing

Legislation.—Twenty-eight Housing and Health Acts, passed between 1851 and 1903, are enumerated by Mr Dewsnup, whose monograph on The Housing Problem in England is the fullest account of the subject published. The first was the Shaftesbury Act of 1851 for the establishment of lodging-houses for the working classes; the last was the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1903. The Shaftesbury Act had in view the provision by local authorities of good lodging-houses for the better class of artisans, and particularly of single persons, male and female, though families were also contemplated. It was accompanied in the same year by another act, not included in the list of twenty-eight, for the regulation and control of common lodging-houses, from which Mr Dewsnup reasonably infers that the object of Lord Shaftesbury, who inspired both acts, was the separation of the casual and disorderly class frequenting common lodging-houses from the more regularly employed and respectable workers who were sometimes driven to use them for lack of other accommodation. At any rate this early legislation embodied the principle of differential treatment and showed a grasp of the problem not always visible in later procedure. The most important of the subsequent acts were those of 1855 and 1866, both intended to encourage private enterprise in the provision of working-class dwellings; the Torrens Act of 1868 (Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Act) for the improvement or demolition of existing buildings; the Cross Act of 1875 (Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Act), for extending that process to larger areas; the Public Health Act of 1875; the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1885 following the report of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, of which King Edward, then prince of Wales, was a member; the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890; the Public Health (London) Act of 1891. The acts of 1875 (Public Health), of 1890 and of 1891 are still in force. The story of this half-century of legislation (which also includes a number of Scotch and Irish acts, local private acts and others bearing on the question) is one of tentative efforts first in one direction then in another, of laws passed, amended, extended, consolidated, superseded. Many of the enactments, originally of limited application, were subsequently extended, and the principal laws now in force apply to the whole of the United Kingdom. Two main objects can be distinguished—(1) the treatment of existing dwellings by demolition or improvement; (2) the construction of new ones. The second head is further subdivided into (a) municipal action, (b) private action. These objects have been alternately promoted by legislative measures conceived and carried out on no systematic plan, but gradually and continuously developed into an effective body of law, particularly with regard to the means of dealing with existing insanitary dwellings. The advancing requirements of public health are clearly traceable in the series of enactments directed to that end. The Nuisances Removal Act of 1855 took cognizance of premises in such a state as to be “a nuisance or injurious to health,” and made provision for obtaining an order to prohibit the use of such premises for human habitation. In the same act overcrowding obtained statutory recognition as a condition dangerous or prejudicial to health, and provision was made for compelling its abatement. The campaign against bad housing conditions thus inaugurated by the legislature was extended by subsequent acts in 1860, 1866 and 1868, culminating in the Cross Act of 1875 for the demolition (and reconstruction) of large insanitary areas and the extremely important Public Health Act of the same year. The constructive policy, begun still earlier in 1851 by Lord Shaftesbury’s Act, was concurrently pursued, and for some years more actively than the destructive; but after 1866 the latter became more prominent, and though the other was not lost sight of it fell into the background until revived by the Royal Commission of 1885 and the housing legislation which followed, particularly the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890, amending and consolidating previous acts.

Insanitary Areas.—The operation of the Housing Acts is more susceptible of being stated in figures, though no fully comprehensive information is available. The original Shaftesbury Act of 1851 for erecting municipal lodging-houses appears to have been practically inoperative and little or nothing was done for a good many years. In 1864, however, Liverpool obtained a private act and entered on the policy of improvement by the demolition of insanitary dwellings on a considerable scale, following it up in 1869 by re-housing. In 1866 Glasgow, also under a private act, created an Improvement Trust, administered by the city council, and embarked on a large scheme of improvement. These seem to have been the earliest examples. The Torrens Act of 1868, which embodied the improvement policy, did not produce much effect. According to a parliamentary return, during the years 1883-1888, proceedings were only taken under this act in respect of about 2000 houses in London and four provincial towns. More advantage was taken of the Cross Act of 1875, which was intended to promote large improvement schemes. Between 1875 and 1885 23 schemes involving a total area of 51 acres and a population of about 30,000 were undertaken, in London; and 11 schemes in provincial towns. By far the most important of these, and the largest single scheme ever undertaken, was one carried out in Birmingham. It affected an area of 93 acres and involved a net cost of £550,000. Altogether between £4,000,000 and £5,000,000 were raised for improvement schemes under those acts. After the Housing Act of 1890 the clearance policy was continued in London and extended in the provinces. During the period 1891-1905 loans to the amount of about £2,300,000 were raised for improvement schemes by 28 provincial towns in England and Wales. The largest of these were Leeds (£923,000), Manchester (£285,000), Liverpool (£178,000), Sheffield (£131,000), Brighton (£112,000). The Leeds scheme affected an area of 75 acres, which was cleared at a cost of £500,000. In London the area cleared was raised to a total of 104 acres; the gross cost, down to March 31, 1908, was £3,417,337, the net cost £2,434,096, and the number of persons displaced 48,525. Glasgow has under its Improvement Trust cleared an area of 88 acres with a population of 51,000. At the same time the policy of dealing with houses unfit for habitation singly or in small groups by compelling owners to improve them has been pursued by a certain number of local authorities. In the six years 1899-1904 action was taken each year on the average in respect of about 5000 houses by some 400 local authorities large and small outside London. Representations were made against 33,746 houses, 17,210 were rendered fit for habitation, closing orders were obtained against 4220 and demolition orders against 748. These figures do not include cases in which action was taken under local acts and Public Health Acts. In Manchester, between 1885 and 1905, nearly 10,000 “back-to-back” houses were closed and about half of them reopened after reconstruction. Hull, an old seaport town with a great deal of extremely bad housing, has made very effective use of the method of gradual improvement and has transformed its worst areas without appearing in any list of improvement schemes. In recent years this procedure has been systematically taken up in Birmingham and other places, and has been strongly advocated by Mr J. S. Nettlefold (Practical Housing) in preference to large improvement schemes on account of the excessive expense involved by the latter in buying up insanitary areas. In the six years 1902-1907 Birmingham dealt with 4111 houses represented as unfit for habitation; 1780 were thoroughly repaired, 1005 were demolished; the rest were under notice or in course of repair at the end of the period. Among other towns which have adopted this policy are Liverpool, Cardiff, York, Warrington and two London boroughs.

Building.—On the constructive side the operation of the Housing Acts has been less extensive and much less general. In London alone has the erection of working-class dwellings by municipal action and organized private enterprise assumed large proportions. Philanthropic societies were first in the field and date from a period anterior to legislation, which however, stimulated their activity for many years by affording facilities. Fourteen organizations were in operation in London prior to 1890 and some of them on a large scale; others have since been formed. The earliest was the Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrial Classes, whose operations date from 1847; it has built 1441 tenements containing 5105 rooms. The largest of these enterprises are the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company (1864), which has built 5421 tenements containing 19,945 rooms; the Peabody Fund (1864) with 5469 tenements containing 12,328 rooms; the Artisans’, Labourers’ and General Dwellings Company (1867), with 1467 tenements containing 3495 rooms, and 6195 cottage dwellings; the East-End Dwellings Company (1885) with 2096 tenements containing 4276 rooms; the Guinness Trust (1889) with 2574 tenements containing 5338 rooms. The Artisans’ Dwellings Company alone has housed upwards of 50,000 persons. In addition to these there are the Rowton Houses (1892), which are hotels for working men, six in number, accommodating 5162 persons. So far as can be estimated, private enterprise has housed some 150,000 persons in improved dwellings in London on a commercial basis. The early activity of the building companies was largely due to the policy of the Metropolitan Board of Works, which adopted extensive improvement schemes and sold the cleared sites to the companies, who carried out the re-housing obligations imposed by the law. Since the London County Council, which replaced the Board of Works in 1889, adopted the policy of undertaking its own re-housing, their activity has greatly diminished. The buildings erected by them are nearly all in the form of blocks of tenements; the Artisans’ Dwellings Company, which has built small houses and shops in outlying parts of London, is an exception. The tenement blocks are scattered about London in many quarters. For instance the Peabody Fund has 18 sets of dwellings in different situations, the Metropolitan Association has 14; the Artisans’ Dwellings Company has 10; the Guinness Trust has 8. In 1909 an important addition to the list of philanthropic enterprises in London was put in hand under the will of Mr W. R. Sutton, who left nearly £2,000,000 for the purpose of providing improved working-class dwellings. The erection of tenement blocks containing accommodation for 300 families was begun on a site in the City Road. In only a few provincial towns has private enterprise contributed to improved housing in a similar manner and that not upon a large scale; among them are Newcastle, Leeds, Hull, Salford and Dublin.

Municipal Building has been more generally adopted. The following details are taken from Mr W. Thompson’s Housing up to Date, which gives comprehensive information down to the end of 1906. The number of local authorities which had then availed themselves of part iii. of the Housing Act of 1890, which provides for the erection of working-class dwellings, was 142. They were the London County Council, 12 Metropolitan Boroughs, 69 County Boroughs and Town Councils, 49 Urban District Councils and 12 Rural District Councils. The dwellings erected are classified as lodging-houses, block dwellings, tenement houses, cottage flats and cottages. Lodging-houses have been built by 12 towns, of which 8 are in England, 3 in Scotland (Glasgow, Aberdeen and Leith) and 1 in Ireland (Belfast). The total number of beds provided was 6218, of which Glasgow accounts for 2414, London for 1846, Manchester and Salford together for 648. Four other towns have built or are building municipal lodging-houses for which no details are available. The other municipal dwellings erected are summarized as follows:—

It appears from these figures that municipal building has provided for a smaller number of persons in the whole of the United Kingdom than private enterprise in London alone. The principal towns which have erected dwellings in blocks are London (7786), Glasgow (2300), Edinburgh (596), Liverpool (501), Dublin (460) and Manchester (420). The great majority of such dwellings contain either two or three rooms. Tenement houses have been built in Liverpool (1424), Manchester (308), Sheffield (192), Aberdeen (128), and in seven other towns on a small scale. Such tenements are generally somewhat larger than those built in blocks; the proportion of three- and four-roomed dwellings is higher and only a small number consist of a single room. Cottage flats have been built in Dublin (528), West Ham (401), Battersea (320), Plymouth (238), East Ham (212), and on a small scale in Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle and seven other places. The majority of the cottage flats contain three or more rooms, a considerable proportion have four rooms. Cottages have been built in 67 places, chiefly small towns and suburban districts. Of the large towns which have adopted this class of dwellings Salford stands first with 633 cottages; three London boroughs, all on the south side of the Thames, have built 234; Manchester has 228, Sheffield 173, Huddersfield 157, Birmingham 103. The number of rooms in municipal cottages ranges from three to eight, but the great majority of these dwellings have four or five rooms.

Some further details of municipal housing in particular towns are of interest. In London, the work of the London County Council down to March 31, 1908, not including three lodging-homes containing 1845 cubicles, is given in the official volume of London Statistics, published by the Council, as follows:—

Buildings Erected and in Course of Erection.

With regard to the cost, it is to be noted that the actual cost of the land purchased for improvement schemes was very much greater than that stated, having been written down to an arbitrary figure called “housing valuation.” The financial accounts of L.C.C. dwellings for the year ending March 31, 1908, are thus summarized:—

London County Council Dwellings, Accounts 1907-1908.

It appears from this that if the actual commercial cost of the land were taken the housing of the Council would be run at a considerable annual loss. The occupations of the tenants are stated in the following proportions: labourers 789, clerks 312, policemen 251, shop assistants 202, warehousemen 183, printers 182, charwomen 182, tailors 155, cabinetmakers 146, canvassers 122, cigarette makers 118, widows 116, tram drivers 110, postmen 107, packers 97, engineers 87, dressmakers 41, coachmen 31, motormen 26, milliners 19. These proportional figures show that though a considerable number of labourers have been housed, the great majority of the occupants of London municipal dwellings are of a superior class. The mean weekly rent in London County Council dwellings is 2s. 10½d. per room against 2s. 4d. in dwellings erected by other agencies. The most important feature of the County Council’s policy in recent years has been the acquisition of suburban sites for the erection of cottages. There are four such sites, two on the south, one on the north and one on the west side of London; the total area is 349 acres, and the total accommodation contemplated is for 66,000 persons at an estimated cost of £3,105,840; the present accommodation is for about 8000. In addition to the housing provided by the County Council, fourteen London Borough Councils and the City Corporation had at the beginning of 1909 erected or adapted 3136 dwellings containing 7999 rooms.

In Liverpool, down to 1907, about £920,000 had been spent in clearing insanitary areas and building new dwellings; the demolition of about 8000 houses and purchase of land cost about £500,000; and the erection of 2046 dwellings, containing 4961 rooms, cost about £350,000. The size of the dwellings and the number of each class are: 1 room, 193; 2 rooms, 965; 3 rooms, 719; 4 rooms, 167. The great majority are in tenement houses of three storeys. The mean weekly rent is 1s. 6½d. per room, but a large number are let at less. The net return on the total outlay is just over 1%, on the building outlay it is 22⁄3%. The principal classes of persons occupying the dwellings are labourers 675, carters 120, charwomen 103, firemen 93, porters 80, hawkers 64, sailors 45, scavengers 40. These all belong to the poorest classes, living by casual or irregular work. Liverpool has, in fact, succeeded more than any other town in providing municipal dwellings in which the really poor can afford to live.

In Manchester 956 dwellings have been built at a total cost for building and improvement of £451,932; of the whole number 420 are in blocks, 308 in tenement houses and 228 in cottages. The rents are much higher than in Liverpool; in the tenement houses the mean weekly rent is about 6d. per room more than in Liverpool. The gross profit on the block dwellings is 11⁄3% on the capital outlay, on the tenement houses 3%, on the cottages 22⁄3%. “The total loss during the last seven to ten years, including loan charges, has amounted to about £54,240” (Thompson).

In Glasgow the corporation has built under improvement schemes 2280 new dwellings containing 4013 rooms and 241 shops. The dwellings, which are all in blocks and centrally situated, are occupied chiefly by artisans; only 28% have been reserved for the poorest class of tenants. The total amount taken from the rates on this account in 30 years is £600,000. Dwellings valued at £400,000 for building and £300,000 for land give a net return of 3.06% on outlay; dwellings valued at £280,000 for land and building return 3.03% on outlay; leaving the sinking fund charges to be defrayed out of rates.

In Edinburgh insanitary areas have been bought for £107,023 and new dwellings containing 1032 rooms have been built for £87,970. Nearly all the dwellings are of one or two rooms only. The rents charged average about 2s. a week per room; actual rents received average 1s. 4d. per room and they have to be subsidized out of the rates to the extent of 2s. 3d. per room to meet the cost of site.

In Dublin provision has been or was in 1909 shortly to be made for housing 5394 families or 19,000 persons; of which 1041 families, or about one-fifth, are housed by the Corporation, the rest by companies and private persons. Altogether it was estimated that £500,000 would be spent under the act of 1890. Fifteen streets, containing 1665 houses, have been declared unhealthy areas by the medical officer, and between 1879 and 1909 more than 3000 houses were closed as unfit for habitation.

Co-operative Building.—Municipal and philanthropic housing by no means exhaust the efforts that have been made to provide working-class dwellings outside the ordinary building market. Their special function has been to substitute better dwellings for pre-existing bad ones, which is the most costly and difficult, as well as the most urgent, part of the problem in old towns. But in the provision of new dwellings alone they have been far surpassed by organized self-help in different forms. Down to 1906 there had been built 46,707 houses by 413 co-operative societies at a cost of nearly £10,000,000. They are most numerous in the manufacturing towns and particularly in the north-western district of England. Of the whole number 8530 were owned by the societies which built them; 5577 had been sold to members, and 32,600 had been built by members on money lent by the societies. These figures do not include the particular form of co-operative building known as co-partnership housing, which will be mentioned later on, or the operations of the so-called building societies, which are really companies lending money to persons on mortgage for the purpose of building. The difference between them and the co-operative societies which do the same thing is that the latter retain the element of co-operation by lending only to their own members, whereas the building societies deal in the open market. Their operations are on an immense scale; at the end of 1908 the invested funds of the registered building societies exceeded £72,000,000. An agency working on this scale, which far exceeds the operations of all the others put together, is obviously an important factor in housing. The number of houses built must help to relieve congestion, and since they are built to suit the owners or tenants they cannot be of the worst class. They also represent a form of thrift, and deserve notice on that account.

The Small Dwellings Acquisition Act of 1899, which has not previously been mentioned, was intended to facilitate the building or purchase of small houses by their tenants by means of loans advanced by local authorities. Down to 1906 about £82,000 had been so advanced by 5 county boroughs, 17 urban councils and 1 rural district council.

Housing by Employers.—No comprehensive information is available on this head, but it has not been an important factor in towns, being chiefly confined to agricultural, mining and suburban manufacturing districts. The former two belong to the subject of Rural Housing, which is separately discussed below; the third has an interest of its own on account of its connexion with “model settlements.” The building of houses for their workpeople by industrial employers has never been widely adopted in this country, but it has attracted considerable attention at two different periods. Sir Titus Salt was a pioneer in this direction, when he built his woollen mills at Saltaire, on the outskirts of Bradford, and housed his workpeople on the spot. That plan was maintained by his successors, who still own some 900 excellent and cheap cottages, and was adopted by a few other manufacturers in the same neighbourhood. Saltaire was a model settlement with many institutions for the benefit of the mill-hands, and as such it attracted much attention; but the example was not generally followed, and the interest lapsed. Recently it has been revived by the model settlements at Port Sunlight, near Liverpool, started about 1888, Bournville near Birmingham (1895), and Earswick, near York (1904), which are of a much more elaborate character. Elsewhere, employers setting down works in some new locality where no provision existed, have had to build houses for their workmen; but they have done so in a plain way, and this sort of housing has not assumed large proportions.

The foregoing facts apply only to England and Wales. In Scotland the state of things is much less satisfactory. No statistics of overcrowding are available, but the following comparative table shows how different the housing conditions are in the two countries:—

Size of Dwellings, England and Scotland, 1901.

Over 50% of the population of Scotland live in tenements of one or two rooms; only 8.2% in England. A comparison of the largest towns in the two countries gives the following result:—

Percentage of Population.

The conditions in Scottish towns where very tall tenement houses are common, resemble those in other countries, in which overcrowding is far greater than in England. All these matters are comparative, and the superiority of conditions in England ought to be recognized. Yet, in Scotland, too, great improvements have been effected. In 1861 there were 25,959 houses without windows; in 1901 only 130. These facts throw light on the long standing of the housing question, the change of standard and the improvement effected.

In Ireland there is more overcrowding than in England, though probably less than in Scotland, with the possible exception of Dublin, which has a larger proportion of one-roomed dwellings than any Scottish town, namely, 24.7%. The percentage of population living in overcrowded conditions in the principal towns is—Dublin 40.6, Limerick 31.7, Cork 23.4, Waterford 20.6, Londonderry 16.7, Belfast 8.2.

Rents.—Rent is a matter of great importance from every point of view, and that is now being realized. A quantity of official information on the subject has been collected and made available by an elaborate inquiry ordered by the Board of Trade in 1905 and published in 1908 (Cd. 3864). It relates to working class dwellings in the principal industrial towns in the United Kingdom, 94 in all: namely, 77 in England and Wales, 11 in Scotland and 6 in Ireland. The following tables give in a condensed form the chief statistical results obtained in October 1905:—

Predominant Range of Weekly Rents.

Rents are lowest in Ireland and next lowest in English provincial towns, considerably higher in Scotland and highest of all in London, for which further special details are given. It is divided into three zones (1) central, (2) middle, (3) outer, which have the following mean weekly rents:—

London Mean Weekly Rents.

In central London—which extends to Stepney in the East, Lambeth m the South, Islington in the North, and includes Westminster, Holborn, Finsbury, Marylebone, Shoreditch, most of Bethnal Green, Southwark and Bermondsey—the rent of a single room may be as high as 6s. or even 6s. 6d. (Holborn) a week. It is here that overcrowding is greatest, and block-tenements, philanthropic and municipal, most numerous. The rentals of the block dwellings have not been taken into account in the foregoing official statistics; they range as follows: 1 room, 2s. 6d. to 5s.; 2 rooms, 5s. to 8s.; three rooms, 6s. 6d. to 11s. The lowest rent for which a single room can be obtained in this area is 2s. 6d. a week. In no English town are rents nearly so high as in London. If 100 is taken as the index number for rent in London the nearest towns to it (Croydon and Plymouth) only reach 81, and one town on the list (Macclesfield) is as low as 32. The index number of twenty-one towns out of the whole is 50 or under, and these include a number of important industrial centres—Hull, Leicester, Blackburn, Northampton, Warrington, Coventry, Crewe and others. The index numbers of the great towns are: Liverpool 65, Manchester and Salford 62, Birmingham 59, Leeds 56, Sheffield 55, Bristol 53, Bradford 59, Hull 48; that is to say the level of rents in these towns is little more than half that in London. This is one more proof of the untypical character of London, and of the fallacy of generalizing from it to the rest of the country. Even in the overcrowded towns on Tyneside rents do not run to three-fourths of the London level. When the towns are divided into geographical groups the index numbers run thus: London 100, Northern Counties 62, Yorkshire 56, Lancashire and Cheshire 54, Midlands 51, Eastern Counties 50, Southern Counties 61, Wales and Monmouth 60. Rents are always highest in capitals, and Edinburgh complies with the rule; but it is very slightly in advance of Glasgow, and in Scotland generally the range is much smaller than in England. Dublin, on the other hand, is differentiated from the other Irish towns as widely as London from English ones.

A general and progressive rise in rents has been taking place for many years. The following index numbers for the great towns are given in the second series of memoranda published by the Board of Trade in 1904 (Cd. 1761):—

Relative Working-Class Rents.

The tendency to rise is attributable to increased cost of labour, due to higher wages and less work, increased cost of materials and higher rates. Weekly working-class rents generally include rates which are paid by the landlord. Housing reform has contributed to the rise, both directly and through the rates, on which it has thrown a heavy burden in various ways. When slums are cleared away and replaced by superior dwellings the new rents are generally higher than the old and this fact has proved a great difficulty. Most of the improved housing is beyond the means of those who need it most, and they seek other quarters resembling the old ones as nearly as possible. The example of Liverpool, which has the largest proportion of casual and ill-paid labour of all the great towns, and has been the most successful in providing new dwellings of a fair quality, centrally situated and not in blocks, at really low rates, shows that the problem is not insoluble; but as a rule too little attention is paid to the question of rent in housing reform, especially in building undertaken by municipalities. It is not ignored, but the importance attached to it by the poor is not realized. To them it is the first consideration after four walls, a roof and a fire-place; and 6d. a week makes a vast difference in their calculations. Reform which aims at raising the lowest classes of tenants by improving their dwellings defeats itself when it drives them away.

The following is a list of the principal associations formed for the promotion of housing reform: Mansion House Council on the Dwellings of the Poor, Rural Housing and Sanitation Association, Workmen’s National Housing Council, National Housing Reform Council, Co-partnership Tenants Housing Council. They are all of recent date, except the first. There are also local associations at Liverpool, Oldham, Rochdale, York, Plymouth, and elsewhere.

Austria.—An act for encouraging the building of cheap working-class dwellings was passed in 1902; it provides for exemption from taxes for 24 years of working-class dwellings which fulfil certain conditions including sanitary requirements, a minimum area per room, minimum height, minimum door and window spaces, thickness of walls, a maximum number of inhabitants (one to 4 sq. metres in sleeping rooms), prohibition of lodgers, fixed rent and maximum profit. The municipalities are the authority for administering sanitary and housing laws; they have no power of compulsory purchase of land without a special law. There is excessive overcrowding in the large towns; in Vienna (1900) 43% of the population live in dwellings of 1 room or 1 room and a kitchen; in 60 provincial towns the proportion is 63%. Overcrowding is reckoned at more than 5 persons to a room and more than 9 to two rooms; the proportion of overcrowded on this basis is nearly one-fifth in Vienna and one-fourth in the provincial towns (Thompson).

Belgium.—An act was passed in 1889 instituting Comités de Patronage; since then other Acts relating to loan societies, and to inheritance and succession in the case of small properties. Comités de Patronage are semi-official bodies, but without legal power, whose function it is to study the subject of housing, to report to local authorities on existing conditions, to advise, to collect funds and promote the provision of good houses by any means in their power. They influence public opinion and stimulate the activity of local authorities which have the power to compel improvements and close dwellings unfit for habitation; they have led to the formation of numerous societies for erecting working-class dwellings. The latter are encouraged by the law in various ways; they are exempt from the payment of some government duties and partly exempt from others. Working men buying or building houses liable to registration fees up to from 72 to 171 francs are exempted from personal, provincial and communal taxes. The National Savings Bank of Belgium is empowered to lend money to working men for buying or building houses and to insure the lives of those doing so, to preserve the home for the family. In 1904 the number of workmen’s homes exempted from taxation was 164,387, and the amount of taxation remitted considerably exceeded 3 million francs; workmen had acquired lands and houses valued at nearly £4,000,000; there were 161 societies for building working-class dwellings; 30,000 workmen representing a population of 150,000 had become owners of property; and 70,000 representing a population of 350,000 had availed themselves of the law in obtaining exemptions and loans (O. Velghe). The foregoing results effected in 15 years are remarkable and indicate a great capacity for self-help on the part of Belgian workmen with suitable and well-considered assistance. But this movement, in common with those of a similar character in other countries, does not touch the problem of housing the very poor. No statistics of overcrowding are available, but the average number of persons to a dwelling is over 5 for the whole country and nearly 9 in Brussels. The communal administrations are the authorities for health and housing; they have power to abate nuisances but not to compel landowners to sell land for building, though they have the right to dispossession for “public purposes.” No town has constructed quarters devoted entirely to working-class dwellings and only one commune (St Giles) has built any. In towns the height of buildings is regulated by the width of streets; generally it is the width plus 6 metres. The height of rooms and thickness of walls are prescribed by local regulations but not the area of rooms. The housing difficulty has been lessened in a notable degree by cheap transport facilities, including railroads, light railroads and tramways; a large proportion of the workpeople travel long distances to and from work. One-quarter travel on the State railways alone; fares are 1s. 6d. a week for a daily double journey of 20 m., 2s. for 44 m. and 2s. 6d. for 66 m. The area of the labour market of Liége extends nearly to Ostend and out of 5830 workmen travelling over 1000 live more than 50 kilometres from Liége. Some journeys last 3 hours.

France.—The question of housing was publicly raised in France quite as early as in England on grounds of public health in connexion with the first visitation of cholera, and building societies were formed as early as 1851, but little was done until after 1889, when the Société Française des Habitations à Bon Marché was founded under the inspiration of M. Siegfried. This led to the formation of several societies, which increased rapidly after the passage of la loi Siegfried in 1894, for promoting the provision of working-class dwellings. In 1902 a Public Health Act and in 1906 a Housing of the Working Classes Act were passed, and these three enactments with regulations made in 1907 govern the procedure. The act of 1906 embodies the Belgian system of Comités de Patronage, of which at least one was to be established in each department with grants in aid, and exemptions from certain taxes of working-class dwellings fulfilling specified conditions as to sanitation and rent. The law promotes the formation of Housing Societies by granting various facilities for the investment of money in building by public bodies and benevolent institutions by taking shares or by loans. Down to the end of 1906 there had been lent for this purpose £233,000 by savings banks, £258,000 by the Caisse des Dépôts, and £14,000 by charitable institutions. The law does not authorize municipalities to build houses and none of the communes have acquired land for this purpose. Under the Public Health Act of 1902 towns can purchase land compulsorily in connexion with unhealthy areas. The Public Health and Housing Acts are administered by the local authority, which makes regulations for building and for laying out building land. A minimum height of 2.6 metres and a minimum cubical content of 25 cubic metres are prescribed for rooms; there are no regulations for thickness of walls. Housing societies are under the Ministry of Works and a Superior Housing Council, which is a central advisory body. These societies are now numerous; there are 46 in Paris alone, but their operations are not on a large scale. One of them deserves special notice on account of its special object. It is called the Société de logements pour familles nombreuses and it builds special flats called maisons des enfants which are let at low rents only to persons with large families. In 1907 it had housed 168 families, averaging 6.8 persons, in two blocks at Belleville and Montmartre. The great defect in France is the large quantity of old, bad, insanitary housing. Real slums exist in all the old towns and in some of them, such as Marseilles and Lyons, on an extensive scale. Very little has hitherto been done to grapple with this difficulty. The standard of sanitation is altogether lower in France than in England, as is shown by the death-rates, and this holds good of the housing. But conditions vary widely in different parts of the country. They are better, generally speaking, in the industrial towns of the north, which are largely Flemish and distinguished by the prevalence of small houses after the English fashion, than in the central or southern districts where tall old tenement houses of six and seven storeys abound. There are no statistics and no standard of overcrowding; but the careful inquiry carried out by the Board of Trade and published in 1909 shows the extraordinary prevalence of tenements consisting of 1, 2 or 3 rooms. In 16 towns for which information was obtained the average proportion of dwellings containing less than 4 rooms was 75% of the whole; in some it was as high as 89% and in none lower than 61%. In 8 towns, including Paris, the number of one-roomed dwellings was more than a quarter of the whole, and in two towns (Brest and Fougères) it was more than half. Some corresponding statistics for English and German towns are given below in the section on Germany. According to the same report, the general accuracy of which has been confirmed by personal inquiries, made in 1909 by the writer in a number of towns, rents are decidedly lower in France. If the London level be taken as 100 that of Paris is only 78 and the other French towns are considerably lower, 21 out of 29 being less than half the London standard. A general comparison between a number of English and French towns shows the average level of French rents to be less than three-fourths of English ones. A noticeable feature of housing in France is the large number of dwellings built by employers in recent years. The mining companies, particularly in the Pas de Calais, have built whole groups of villages; the railway companies and various manufacturers have also done a great deal, chiefly in rural areas. Among the manufacturers MM. Schneider at Le Creusot and the textile mill-owners in the Vosges are noticeable. The houses provided are of a charming type, white with red roofs; the rooms are of good size, the rents low, and a large garden is usually attached to every house.

Germany.—In no country is the problem of housing more acute than in Germany, where the increase of population, the growth of manufacturing industry and the urbanization of the people have proceeded at an exceptionally rapid pace in recent years and have combined with increasing wealth and a rising standard of living to force the question into prominence. Up to 1909 no uniform legislation for the empire had been framed and no central authority existed for dealing with housing; but the several states have their own public health and housing laws, and great activity has been developed in various directions. The most general difficulty is deficiency of quantity consequent on the rapid change in the distribution of the population. The proportion of the whole population living in the great towns increased from 7.2% to 16.2%, or more than doubled between 1890 and 1900; in England it only increased by about one-tenth. Slums are a much less conspicuous feature than in England because of the comparatively recent development of German towns, but where old quarters exist on a large scale, as in Hamburg, the conditions are quite as bad as anything in English towns, and call for similar measures. Public sanitation in Germany is still as a whole less advanced than in England; but in some cases it is superior and in general it is coming up rapidly; the administration of sanitary laws, as of others, is more effective and uniform, and less subject to evasion. This also contributes to the comparative absence of slums. And there is a third factor which has perhaps the greatest influence of all, and that is the superior manner in which German homes are kept. But the pressure of inadequate quantity is urgent; it has caused high rents, overcrowding, and the development of large barrack or block dwellings which are becoming the prevailing type. At the same time it has led to many and varied efforts to meet the difficulty. Isolated attempts go back to an early date. For instance a building society was formed in Berlin in 1849, Alfred Krupp began to build his “colonies” at Essen in 1863, Barmen started a society in 1871 and there were other cases; but general attention seems first to have been drawn to the subject by the reforming efforts of Pastor Bodelschwingh at Bielefeld about 1884 in connexion with his Arbeiterheim. In short housing reform in Germany is really a matter of the last 20 years. The first efficient by-laws for regulating building in Berlin were not adopted till 1887; the previous regulations dating from 1853 permitted many abuses and under them a great deal of bad housing was constructed, especially after the establishment of the empire and the beginning of the great development of the capital.

The worst feature is the general prevalence of dwellings containing a very small number of rooms—from 1 to 3—and consequent overcrowding. The following figures are extracted from the Report to the Board of Trade on Rents, Housing, &c., in Germany (1908, Cd. 4032). They indicate the proportion of dwellings containing 1, 2 or 3 rooms, or (in a few cases) the proportion of the population living in such dwellings. The towns are those for which the information is given. They are not selected as particularly bad specimens but as representative, and they include most of the capitals and chief industrial centres. The figures relate to the year 1900, except in a few cases, in which they are taken from a municipal house census in 1905.

Percentage of Dwellings or Population living in Dwellings containing

The figures must be read with a certain amount of caution, as they are not in every case compiled on a precisely uniform method with regard to inclusion of kitchens and attics. For this reason the position of Bremen and Elberfeld is probably more unfavourable than it ought to be. But broadly the table shows that in most of the large towns in Germany more than half, and in some cases more than three-quarters of the dwellings have less than 4 rooms. Leipzig is the most striking exception. If working-class quarters alone are taken it is found that dwellings of more than 3 rooms are so few as to be negligible. In Stuttgart, where housing is very dear, the percentages for working-class quarters are—1 room 21.0, 2 rooms 51.8, 3 rooms 26.9; total under 4 rooms 98.7. Königshütte, the chief coal and iron centre in Silesia and a purely working-class town, shows the same state of things; 60% of the whole population live in dwellings of 2 rooms and 87% in less than four. It is interesting to compare English towns. The proportion of dwellings containing less than 4 rooms in London was (1901) 52.2%, in Berlin 75.8%; the proportion of the population living in such dwellings was—London 38.7%, Berlin 71.5%. Not only is the proportion of small dwellings very much higher in Berlin but the proportion of the population living in them shows a far greater discrepancy. This indicates a much higher degree of overcrowding. The only point in which Berlin has the advantage is the smaller number of single-room dwellings. The proportions are London 14.7%, Berlin 8.0%. But it is to be observed that overcrowding is not so common in 1-room dwellings, which are often occupied by a single person, as in those with 2 or 3 rooms, which are occupied by families, though probably the most extreme cases of overcrowding occur in particular 1-room dwellings. In the English county boroughs the proportion of dwellings with less than 4 rooms was 24.0%, in other urban districts 17.4, and in all urban areas including London 26.4%. When all allowance is made for minor errors and discrepancies it may be broadly concluded that the proportion of small dwellings containing less than 4 rooms is at least twice as great in German as in English towns, and that the conditions as to accommodation which in England prevail only in London are general in urban Germany. As a set-off German rooms are generally larger than English ones and in block dwellings there is often a little ante-room or landing which does not count but really increases the space.

The German census does not take cognisance of overcrowding and there is no general official standard; but some towns have adopted a standard of their own, namely, six or more persons to 1 room and ten or more to 2 rooms. In Breslau, which is one of the worst towns, 17.5% of the population (53,000) of the “city” or inner ring were overcrowded on this basis in 1900. In Barmen, which is not one of the worst, 20% of the 2-roomed and 17% of the 3-roomed dwellings (together housing more than half the population) were overcrowded according to the English standard. Overcrowding and other bad conditions are worst in the basement or cellar dwellings, of which some towns have a very large number. In Breslau 15,000 persons were living in 3853 such dwellings in 1900; in Berlin 91,426 persons were living in 24,088 basements. Some of these are free from objection, but 11,147, housing 38,663 persons, were situated in back buildings and unfit for habitation on account of darkness, damp, dilapidation and the like. “Back” houses are a feature of old towns; they are houses which do not give on the street but lie behind and are approached by a passage; they are what we call courts and quite as insanitary as anything of the kind in English towns.

With regard to rents the Board of Trade (London) Report gives the following figures for Berlin and a number of other towns:—

Rents are higher in Berlin than in any other town, though Stuttgart comes very near it. The following table of index numbers shows the relations of 32 towns to Berlin:—

Comparing rents in Germany and England, the Board of Trade Report gives the following table, to which the corresponding ratio of French towns has been added.

If the mean of the English and German figures be taken it shows a very slight difference in favour of Germany; the mean weekly rent per room being 1s. 5d. in England and 1s. 4¾d. in Germany. But in England rent usually includes local taxation (rates) whereas in Germany it does not; if this be added German rents are to English as 123 to 100, or nearly one-fourth more.

The statistics given above indicate a wide range of variation in the conditions prevailing in different towns in Germany; and that holds good with regard to improvements. The administration of the laws relating to public health and housing is in the hands of the local authorities. The public health service is generally efficient and sometimes very good. Increasing attention has been paid in recent years to the sanitary inspection of houses and in some towns it is now thorough and systematic, but active efforts to deal with old and insanitary quarters en masse are isolated and exceptional. Hamburg is an instance; scared by the visitation of cholera in 1892 the authorities put in hand an extensive improvement scheme on the English plan at a cost of half a million sterling. But demolition is exceptional; slums are usually subjected to supervision and are not allowed to be in a state of dilapidation, and sometimes, as at Mannheim, notices are served to abate overcrowding. In Munich a policy of gradually buying up insanitary houses has been adopted. But improvement has principally been promoted by new building and the reduction of the population in old insanitary quarters, to which cheap locomotive facilities have greatly contributed. The great bulk of urban Germany is new, and the most valuable contribution made by it to the housing question is the more effective control of new building and particularly the principle of town-planning, coupled with the purchase of neighbouring ground with a view to future extension. This policy is comparatively recent and still very partially applied, but it is now rapidly extending. A general act providing for the planning of streets was passed in Prussia in 1875 and still forms the basis of building legislation; but as noted above no effective by-laws were adopted even in Berlin until after 1887, and consequently a very faulty style of building was adopted, especially in large blocks which conceal grave defects behind an imposing exterior. The Saxon towns have been conspicuously successful in regard to housing. Leipzig stands alone among German towns in having 83.4% of its population living in dwellings of 4 rooms and upwards. Yet it is a great commercial city, the fifth in the empire, with a population of upwards of half a million. It also comes low on the rent table, having an index number little more than half that of Berlin. All the Saxon towns are low, Chemnitz and Zwickau particularly so, and the position of Dresden, being a capital, is remarkable. More than two-thirds of the population live in dwellings of 4 rooms or more, and the rent index number is only 54. In Saxony a general Building Act, especially providing for town planning, was passed in 1900; and the Grand Duchy of Hesse, which alone among the German states has a government Housing Department, adopted a Housing of the Working Classes Act in 1902. Other states have followed or are following and the air is full of movement. The distinctive features of urban housing reform in Germany are (1) the systematic planning of extensions, (2) purchase of ground by municipalities, (3) letting or sale of municipal land for building under prescribed conditions. Many of the great towns, including Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Leipzig, Cologne, Frankfort and Düsseldorf, are owners of land to a variable but sometimes large extent. This policy seems to have been originally adopted on economic grounds and those municipalities which bought or otherwise came into possession of town land at an early date derive a substantial revenue from it now, besides being in a position to promote housing improvement. There is comparatively little municipal building, and that as a rule only or principally for municipal servants, as at Düsseldorf, Mannheim and Nuremberg; but there seems to be a tendency to venture further in this direction and some towns have built houses for letting. The municipalities generally sell or let their land, and the building agencies which enjoy most official favour are the societies “of public utility”; they are encouraged in every way and have greatly developed, particularly in the Rhine province. Some are co-operative, others semi-philanthropic in that they aim at building good houses and limit their profits. In 1901 the Prussian Government issued an order urging municipalities to support these societies by remitting the cost of constructing streets and sewers, placing the assistance of building officials at their disposal, taking their shares, lending them money and becoming security for them. A great deal of public money has been advanced to building societies, and one very important source of supply has been developed, since the Old Age and Infirmity Insurance Act of 1889, in the National Insurance Funds which invest their surplus capital in this way. Down to 1906 the Boards of insurance had lent £8,650,000 to societies for building; the Imperial Government had lent £1,250,000, the Prussian Government £1,825,000, and the other states further large sums in addition to the municipalities. Money lent by the state is usually limited to building houses for state employees and Insurance Boards lend on condition that the houses are let to persons who come under the insurance laws. The development of building societies has been promoted by the formation of general building associations of which the earliest was established in Düsseldorf in 1897 for the Rhine provinces; under its influence one-fifth of the new housing provided in 1901 was erected by the societies. The example was followed at Frankfort, Münster and Wiesbaden. Housing by employers has also been carried out on a large scale in Germany. States and municipalities have to some extent built houses as employers, the former chiefly for railwaymen, besides lending money to societies for the purpose; but most housing of this kind has been done by private employers. Krupps, who had built 4274 dwellings housing nearly 27,000 persons down to 1901, are the most famous example; but they are only one among many. In Rhineland and Westphalia employers had in 1902 provided 22,269 houses containing 62,539 dwellings at a cost of £10,500,000; more than half the families so housed belonged to the mining industry, the rest to various manufactures. These two provinces, in which industrial development has been extremely rapid, are exceptional; but housing by employers is not confined to them. At Mannheim for instance over 1000 working-class households have been so provided. At Nuremberg the Siemens Schuckert Company have encouraged an interesting system of collective building among their employees, by which 722 dwellings have been provided.

Holland.—In 1901 a Public Health and a Housing Act were passed, and these two embody most of the features of housing reform adopted in other countries. The first provides for a general sanitary service under the Ministry of the Interior. The second ordains that local authorities shall frame by-laws for building and for the maintenance and proper use of dwellings; that they shall inspect existing dwellings, order improvements or repairs or demolition; empowers them to take land compulsorily for the purposes of the act, to prohibit building or rebuilding on sites reserved for public purposes and to make grants or loans to societies or companies operating exclusively for the improvement of working-class dwellings. If they fail to make by-laws the provincial authorities may take action. Land buying with a view to extensions has been adopted by a number of municipalities including Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and other important towns, and the practice is increasing. Amsterdam has also begun the systematic planning of extensions. There has been a little municipal building in some small places, but it is on an insignificant scale; the tendency is rather to favour societies of public utility as in France, Germany and Belgium. The new laws are too recent to have had much effect and housing reform is as yet in an early stage. Rents are high in the large towns, namely, 1 room 1s. 8d. to 3s.; 2 rooms 2s. 6d. to 5s.; 3 rooms 3s. 6d. to 6s; 4 rooms 4s. 2d. to 7s.

Italy.—A Housing of the Working Classes Act was passed in 1903, to promote the improvement and provision of workmen’s dwellings. Municipalities have the power to purchase land compulsorily for housing purposes and also to build workmen’s dwellings. A few towns, of which Milan is one, have done so. There are building regulations relating to the area and height of rooms and the thickness of walls. The antiquity of the Italian towns and the great quantity of old and insanitary building make housing improvement a very difficult matter. La Società Umanitaria, a benevolent trust founded by Prosper Loria of Milan in 1902, has taken up this subject among others and has built two model tenements, housing 2000 persons.

United States.—Interest in the housing question in the United States is confined to a few of the largest cities and can only be said to be acute in New York, though there have been investigations by commissions elsewhere and Miss Octavia Hill’s work in London has found admirers and imitators in Philadelphia and Boston as well as in New York. The evils of housing in New York have been the subject of much sensational writing which has elevated them to the position of a world-wide scandal. It is not necessary to accept all the allegations made in order to see that several circumstances have combined to produce an exceptional state of things in this great city. The limited space—the island or peninsula of Manhattan—in which central New York is built has compelled the erection of large tenement blocks, otherwise rare in American towns; the incessant inrush of immigrants from the poorest parts of Europe has filled these tenements with immense numbers of persons of many nationalities accustomed to a low standard of living; the generally backward state of public sanitation in America, and the absence or evasion of regulations and supervision, have permitted the erection of bad dwellings, their deterioration into worse, and their misuse by excessive overcrowding. Other large cities in which bad housing conditions are known to exist are Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Pittsburg, Jersey City. There are doubtless many others, but bad housing conditions are not so general in the United States as in Europe. Outside the very large cities there is more space, more light and air, less crowding together, less darkness, dirt and dilapidation. Large houses, occupied by two or perhaps three families, are common, but they have more room space than is usual in Europe. The 18th annual report (1903) of the Commissioner of Labour gives the result of a special inquiry embracing 23,447 families distributed in 33 states. The average number of rooms was 4.95 per family and 1.04 per individual. It is a fair inference that overcrowding is confined to a comparatively small number of exceptional places. A large number of the schedules were furnished by the eminently urbanized and manufacturing states of New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Ohio and Illinois; and in all these the average number of rooms to a family exceeded 4, ranging from 4.2 in Ohio to 5.5 in Massachusetts. The condition of homes as to sanitation and cleanliness was statistically stated thus: Sanitary condition—good 61.46%, fair 32,59%, bad 5.95%; Cleanliness—good 79.63%, fair 14.66 bad 5.71%. Other special inquiries have been carried out in particular towns. In 1891-1892 the tenements in Boston were investigated for the Massachusetts Labour Bureau, which found 3657 sleeping rooms without outside windows and about 8% of the population living in conditions objectionable from one cause or another. In 1892 Congress authorized a special inquiry into the slum population of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore, the results of which were published in the seventh special report (1894) of the United States Commissioner of Labour. It was estimated that the total “slum population” (presumably those living in unhealthy conditions) was—New York 360,000, Chicago 162,000, Philadelphia 35,000, Baltimore 25,000. In Baltimore 530 families, consisting of 1648 persons, were living in single rooms with an average of 3.15 persons to a room; in Philadelphia 401 families were so living with an average of 3.11 persons to a room. The proportion of 1-room dwellings was less in New York and Chicago. In New York 44.55% or nearly half the families investigated were found living in 2-roomed dwellings, in Baltimore 27.88%, in Philadelphia 19.41% and in Chicago 19.14%. These figures conclusively prove that European conditions reproduce themselves in American cities. Poverty was not the cause, as the average earnings per family ranged from £3, 4s. a week in Baltimore to £4, 6s. a week in Chicago. Another official investigation in New York was carried out in 1895 by the Tenement House Commission appointed by the State of New York. It reported “many houses in the city in an insanitary condition which absolutely unfits them for habitation.” Further details have been compiled from the census by the New York Federation of Churches, chiefly relating to density of population in the city. In 1900, out of a total of nearly 250,000 dwellings, 95,433 (38.2%) contained from 2 to 6 persons, 60,672 (24.2%) from 7 to 10 persons and 89,654 (35.9%) 11 persons or more. The density of population for the whole city as now constituted was 19 persons to the acre, in Manhattan 149; in the south-eastern district of Manhattan 382 and in one ward 735. Between 1900 and 1905 the density increased in every district, and in the latter year there were 12 blocks with from 1000 to 1400 persons to the acre. The number of persons to the acre in London (1901) is 60.6; in the most densely populated borough 182, and in the most densely populated district (a very small one) 396. This will give a measure of comparison. The large tenement blocks in New York have been constructed with far less regard to health than those in Berlin, and reproduce in an aggravated form the same evil of insufficient light and air. In place of the inadequate courts round which many are built in Berlin, the New York tenements have merely narrow air shafts. In 1904 there were reported to be 362,000 dark interior rooms, that is with no outside windows.

If American cities have nothing to learn from other countries in regard to bad housing, they have nothing to teach in the way of reform. They are following Europe slowly and a long distance behind. There is no serious attempt to deal with insanitary areas as they have been dealt with in England, or to prevent the creation of new ones by regulation and planning of extensions as in Germany, or to promote the provision of superior houses by organized public effort as in several countries. A little has been done in New York to improve the worst housing. A Tenement House Act was passed after the report of the Commission of 1895 and a Department formed to give effect to it. Some cleansing and repairing and insertion of windows is carried out every year, but more attention seems to be paid to fire escapes. Societies for providing improved dwellings exist in New York, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia. The oldest is one formed in Boston in 1871, called the Co-operative Building Company; it was followed in 1876 by an Improved Dwellings Company in Brooklyn, and in 1879 by a similar society in Manhattan, and in 1885 by another in Boston. The largest concern of the kind is the City and Suburban Houses Company in New York, formed in 1896 under the guidance of Dr E. R. L. Gould; it has built four groups of tenements housing 1238 families in the city and 112 houses on a suburban estate at Brooklyn; in all it has housed some 6000 persons. More recently Mr Henry Phipps has given £200,000 for the provision of model dwellings in New York, and a building has been erected on the plan of the Maison des Enfants in Paris. In Chicago the City Houses Association works at housing reforms in various ways. There are some other institutions of a like kind, but the aggregate results are inconsiderable. Two other building agencies have done far more in the United States than philanthropic societies; these are the building and loan associations and private employers. The former are co-operative provident societies; they are widely diffused throughout the United States and their operations are on a very large scale. They date from 1831, when the Oxford Provident Building Association was formed at Frankfort, near Philadelphia. Pennsylvania has still the largest number of associations, but from 1843 onwards the movement spread rapidly and continuously in other states. The high-water mark appears to have been reached in 1897, when the total assets of the associations amounted to about £133,000,000. In 1905 there were 5326 associations with an aggregate membership of 1,686,611 and assets of about £130,000,000. The states of Pennsylvania and Ohio head the list, but the movement is very strong in many others. It accounts for the comparatively large number of houses owned by working-class families in the United States. With regard to housing by employers, no comprehensive information is available, but the total amount is certainly considerable though probably not so large as in Germany or in France. Some of the better-known instances are the Pelzer Manufacturing Company at Pelzer in South Carolina, which has built about 1000 dwellings; the Maryland Steel Company at Sparrows Point, Maryland, 800 dwellings; Ludlow Manufacturing Associates at Ludlow, Mass., 500 dwellings; Whitin Machine Works at Whitinsville, Mass., 600 dwellings; Westinghouse Air Brake Co. at Wilmerding, Penn., 360 dwellings; Draper Co., Hopedale, Mass., 250 dwellings. These are all more or less “model” settlements, not in cities, but in outlying or country places, where works have been established, and that is generally true of housing by employers in the United States, whereas in Germany much has been provided by them in the large towns. Rents are very much higher in American cities than in European towns of comparable size and character.

Authorities.—Board of Trade Reports—“Cost of Living of the Working Classes (England)” (1908); “Cost of Living in German Towns” (1908); “Cost of Living in French Towns” (1909). Proceedings of International Housing Congress (London, 1907); The New Encyclopaedia of Social Reform; E. R. Dewsnup, The Housing Problem in England; T. C. Horsfall, The Example of Germany; J. S. Nettlefold, Practical Housing Reform; A. Shadwell, Industrial Efficiency, ch. xi. on “Housing”; W. Thompson, The Housing Handbook, Housing up to Date.