CHAPTER XXIX CONDITIONS AND INFLUENCES IN THE CITY I N the United States the early settlers lived almost Rapid entirely upon farms. So long as there was an growth of cities abundance of rich soil to be had almost free, there was a strong force at work to keep country population growing rapidly. But the Industrial Revolution which has made such a great change in business and industry has changed our home life also. Railroads and factories have made the modern city. There were, of course, cities before the railroad and the factory but the proportion of people living in cities has steadily increased, and today in many parts of the United States all the growth is in the cities; the country population remains nearly stationary. In England, it was estimated in 1770 that half the population was urban. The figures for recent years show that now far more than half live in cities. For the German Empire the figures since 1871 show similar growth of cities. The following table gives the percentage living in cities: 1871 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 * Figures for 1901 and 1911 are for England and Wales taken together. In Ger many In the United States the change has not gone so far as in Europe, but during the past thirty years there has been a far greater growth in the cities than in the country population. The figures given by the Census Ancient city as a place for defense, trade, religion Modern city as market and factory 1800 The modern city has not been planned as a place to live in, to say nothing of being a place in which to bring up children. It has, so far as it has been planned at all, been primarily a market place and a manufactory. Ancient cities were not only places of trade and industry but places for defense against hostile attack. Tyre was built on a rocky island. Jerusalem, Rome, Athens, in the old world, Edinburgh, Nuremberg, Heidelberg, and many another medieval city had each a hill or rocky height on which stood a castle that served at once to defend the city and to overawe the trading people and workmen who dwelt around its base. In the center of the city, surrounded perhaps by the open market place, rose the other great building of the mediæval city, the cathedral. Defense and religion, along with trade, were the great factors in the life and growth of the older cities. When we visit a modern city the great buildings which catch the eye are office buildings, banks, retail and wholesale stores. These buildings, rising twenty stories and sometimes carrying towers of forty stories, often contain each enough workers to make a small city. These occupy the center of the city. They are substantially, and often luxuriously, built, whereas the factories located a little farther from the center are usually inexpensive, with no pretense to beauty, and often are indescribably bad. The reason for the difference is plain. It is not because people maliciously set out to make one set of buildings grim, forbidding, and even hideous, and the other set attractive or even palatial. The reason is chiefly one of economics. The cloth for our clothing may be woven in very ugly factories; it may be made up into garments in ill-ventilated and wretched tenements or cellars. Millinery may be manufactured in unsafe, old buildings which are nothing but fire-traps. Steel and iron may be made in mills which, by their smoke and gases, are a blight upon all the neighborhood. The buyers do not need to go to these places, hence there is no compulsion to make the factories attractive. When we buy our clothing or our millinery, when we go to a bank to do business, or when we take a train to make a journey, we like costly and elegant surroundings: hence it pays to build shops that are fine and attractive; it pays to build offices and banks which make an impression of great solidity and wealth; it pays to build railway stations which give the traveler an impression of luxury and safety. The people who buy and sell and work must, of course, live somewhere, and moreover the city is a great market not only for the goods made in the factories or brought in by railways, but also for brains and muscle. The laborer who wants work, the country boy, anxious for a career, the country girl, for whom there is little opportunity for employment at home, all crowd to the city, and all must find shelter, if not homes. The homes of the city are at first placed near the shops and factories, but as land near the center is needed for business, those who can afford it build homes Social classes in the city farther and farther away. Nearly ever city has large districts just on the border of the business area where homes are gradually being crowded out. It is frequently uncertain for a time whether it will be more profitable to build stores or factories in these border regions. This uncertainty makes owners unwilling to expend any money in repairs. The whole district is apt to degenerate in appearance. Sometimes it is given up to vice. Frequently houses built for single residences are remodeled into tenements for several families. In other cases where the early houses were cottages, these are moved into the backyards and apartment buildings are erected on the street, thus covering the whole of the lot. Farther out toward the city limits or still farther into the suburbs go those who can afford the added expense and time to ride to and from their work. Figures gathered in New York recently show that those who work long hours, as do most of the workers in factories, live near their places of work. Their wages are usually small and they wish to save carfare. Clerks, employers, and professional people, on the other hand, have shorter hours and better remuneration, and can live farther from their business. A large proportion of these classes in Boston live in suburbs. Multitudes of New York business men live in Connecticut and New Jersey or far out on Long Island. We can see at once that the city is always classifying its people into groups in their homes as well as in their places of business. The poor live near the center in old buildings, or near factories located a little farther out. The more comfortably situated and the well-to-do may live in certain districts within the city, but tend continually to move out as far as steam rail ways or automobiles will take them in perhaps an hour's ride. Since men spend about half their time in their homes and since women and children usually spend much more than this proportion, it would seem that homes ought to be well planned. In every great city there are certain districts in which homes are attractive, but there are also other great districts in which homes are neither healthful nor decent, to say nothing of being attractive. The words, " a factory town," call up anything but a pleasant picture. If any one wishes to see the most depressing sights he does not need to go to any "heathen" country. He can take a walk in the factory district of almost any large city. Some of the chief types of bad housing are: (1) Overcrowding of buildings upon the land with insufficient room for light, ventilation, and play spaces. (2) Overcrowding of rooms with people, dangerous not only to health but to privacy, to family life, and to morals. (3) Unsafe dwellings, liable to burn easily. (4) Dilapidated dwellings, depressing in influence upon the ambition, habits, and morals of children growing up in them. (5) Ugly, monotonous, and ill-arranged dwellings, which have no individuality and nothing about them to suggest a home rather than a square box in a row of other boxes, no provision for gardens or flowers. (6) Underground and attic rooms. New York is by far the most crowded of our cities. Mr. Veiller says in his Housing Reform: Types of bad housing "The conditions in New York are without parallel in Overthe civilized world. In no city of Europe, not in Naples crowding |