Part 16 (1/2)

Gilman, Charlotte P., The Home (Doubleday, Page and Co.).

Talbot and Breckenridge, ”The Modern Household” (Whitcomb and Barrows, Boston).

Addams, Jane, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (Macmillan).

Ellwood, Charles A., ”Sociology and Modern Social Problems,”

chapters on the family (American Book Co.).

Scott, Rhea, ”Home Labor-Saving Devices” (Lippincott).

Foght, H. W., ”The Rural Teacher and his Work,” Part I, chap. iii.

U. S. Department of Agriculture, Office of the Secretary, Reports 103, 104, 105, 106:

”Social and Labor Needs of Farm Women.”

”Domestic Needs of Farm Women.”

”Educational Needs of Farm Women.”

”Economic Needs of Farm Women.”

These reports can be obtained only from the Superintendent of Doc.u.ments, Government Printing Office, 15 cents each.

”The American Farm Woman as She Sees Herself,” U. S. Department of Agriculture Year Book, 1914, pp. 311-318.

”Selection of Household Equipment,” Department of Agriculture Year Book 1914, pp. 330-362.

Dunn, Arthur W., ”The Community and the Citizen,” chaps, v, vi.

CHAPTER X

WHY GOVERNMENT HELPS IN HOME MAKING

Our nation requires healthy citizens, intelligent citizens, prosperous and happy citizens. The home can do more to produce them than any other community agency. Therefore the nation is wise to look after its homes.

RELATION OF HOME CONDITIONS TO INDUSTRY

People cannot do their work well if they live in unwholesome or unpleasant homes. This was made clear during the recent war. The lack of suitable living places for workmen and their families was one of the chief obstacles to s.h.i.+pbuilding and munitions manufacture during the early part of the war. England found this out as well as the United States, and one of the first things both countries had to do was to take measures to provide proper home conditions for those who were engaged in supplying the nation's needs. During the first year of the war our Congress appropriated $200,000,000 to build houses for industrial workers.

The problem of securing good physical conditions of home life has naturally been greatest in crowded industrial centers, but it is by no means absent in small communities, or even in the open country. One writer describes a certain farmhouse where five people were accustomed to sleep in one not very large bedroom, which had only one small window, and even that was nailed shut, one of these five had incipient tuberculosis. These people were well-to-do farmers, living in a large twelve-room, stone house and simply crowded into one room for the sake of mistaken economy-- presumably to save coal and wood.

Many such cases could be described, not only in the more remote and backward regions, but even in prosperous farming communities.

What is the result of this overcrowding and lack of proper housing in the country? Just exactly the same as in the great cities--lack of efficiency, disease, and premature death to many ... While the great majority of people subjected to overcrowding and bad housing conditions do not prematurely die, yet they have a lessened physical and mental vigor, are less able to do properly their daily work, and not only become a loss to themselves and their families, but to the state ... [Footnote: Bash.o.r.e, ”Overcrowding and defective housing in the rural districts,” quoted in Nourse, AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, pp. 118, 119, 121.]

STRENGTH OF THE NATION DEPENDS ON THE HOME

Some of our states and many of our cities have laws to regulate housing conditions, but such laws seldom apply to small communities. In cities where people live crowded together in closely built city blocks, unsanitary conditions in one home endanger the health of the entire community. There is also danger from fire, and vice and crime may breed and spread quickly and unseen. The community is driven, therefore, in its own defense, to regulate the people's housing. In small communities, and especially in rural communities, where homes are more widely separated and in some cases quite isolated, it has seemed of little concern to others how one citizen builds his home and what he does in it. Thoughtful consideration of such cases as that described above, however, must convince us that it IS a matter of national concern what happens even in remote homes. Both the physical and the economic strength of the nation are undermined by unwholesome conditions in the separate homes of the land.

COMMUNITY PLANNING