The Cost of Shelter Part 5

The college-educated women of the country believe so fully that the twentieth century will develop a civilization in which brain-power and good taste will outrank mere lavish display, that they have sent out a call to their a.s.sociations to devise methods of sane and wholesome living which shall leave time and energy free for intellectual pleasure--some, at least, of that time now absorbed by the house and its demands as insignia of social rank.

Trained and thoughtful women are convinced that the first step in social redemption is adequate and adaptable shelter for the family. Just so long as tradition and thoughtlessness bind the wife and mother to that form of housekeeping which taxes all the forces of man to supply money and of women to spend it, so long will the most intelligent women decline to sacrifice themselves for so little return.

The constructive arts dealing with wood, stone, and metal have been conceded to be man's province. He has used new materials and labor-saving devices in railway stations and place of amus.e.m.e.nts, not selfishly, but because of the appreciation of the travelling public. It is the fashion to decry labor-saving devices in the house, because they do away with that sign of pecuniary ability, the capped and ap.r.o.ned maid. The obvious saving of steps by the speaking-tube and telephone-call is frowned upon for the same reason. It is this att.i.tude of society which stands in the way of the adoption of those mechanical helps which might do away with nearly all the drudgery and dirty heavy work of the house.

The new epoch[1] "is more and more replacing muscle-power fed on wheat at eighty cents a bushel, by machine-power fed on coal at five cents a bushel," thus liberating man from hard and deadening toil. As his mental activity increases his needs in the way of the comforts and decencies of refined living increase. More sanitary appliances are demanded, more expense for fundamental cleanliness is incurred, and for that tidiness and trimness of aspect inside and outside the house which adds both to the labor and to the cost of living, especially in old-style houses.

[Footnote 1: The New Epoch. Geo. S. Morison.]

While we can but applaud this desire, we must confess that the new building laws, the increased cost of land, and the higher wages of workmen have raised the cost of shelter for human efficiency to double or treble that of the so-called workman's cottage. A fair rule is that each room costs $1000 to $2000 to build.

This means that our lowest limit of income, $1000 a year with $200 for rent, can have only two or at most three rooms and bath, and those without elevators and janitor service. It is only when the income reaches $2000 to $3000 a year that the family may have the advantage of good building in a good locality, and even then it means some sacrifice in other directions.

It is clear that the common theory that a young man must have a salary of $3000 a year before he dares to marry has some foundation when $600 to $800 is demanded for rent.

The increased sanitary requirements have doubled the cost of a given enclosed s.p.a.ce, the finish and fittings now found in the best houses have doubled this again, so that it is quite within bounds to say that a house which might have been put up to meet the needs of the day in 1850 for, say, $5000 will now cost $20,000.

Much of the increase is for real comfort and advance in decent living, and so far it is to be commended. Such part of the increase as is for ostentation, for show and sham, is to be frowned upon, for this high cost of shelter is to-day the greatest menace to the social welfare of the community. When the average young man finds it impossible to support a family, when the professional man finds it necessary to supplement his chosen work by pot-boiling, by public lectures and any outside work which will bring in money, what wonder that scholarship is not thriving in America? Pitiful tales of such stifling of effort have come to my ears, and have in large part led me to make a plea for a scientific study of the living conditions of this cla.s.s, and for a readjustment of ideals to the absolute facts of the situation.

We may give sympathy to those Italians who pay only $2 a month for the shelter of the whole family, but we must give help to the harder case of a family with refined tastes and high ideals who can pay only $200 a year.

In the real country, at a distance from the railroad, air, water, and soil are cheap. Here a house may be put up with its own windmill or gas-engine to pump water, with its own drainage system, giving all the sanitary comforts of the city house, for about $5000. The same inside comforts in one quarter the s.p.a.ce, minus the isolation and garden, may be had in a suburban block for one half that sum. This is probably the least expensive shelter to-day for the family whose duties require one or more members of it to be in the city daily, for, as the centre of the city is approached, land rent increases, so that dwelling s.p.a.ce must be again curtailed one half or rent doubled. The majority take half a house or go into the city and put up with one quarter the s.p.a.ce.

The curtailment of s.p.a.ce in which families live is going on at an alarming rate, although not yet seriously taken into account by the sociologist for the group we are studying.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figs. 8 and 9.--House for "Mrs. L.," Anywhere in temperate America, to cost $5000, if it must not more (*remainder cut off).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figs. 10 and 11.--House for "Mrs. L.," Anywhere in temperate America, to cost only $3000, if possible. (Josselyn & Taylor Co., Cedar Rapids, Iowa).]

This crowding is causing the refinements of life to be disregarded, is depriving the children of their rights, and doing them almost more harm than comes to the tenement dwellers, for they have the parks to play in and are not kept within doors.

Mr. Michael Lane in his "Level of Social Motion" claims that present tendencies are leading to a level of $2000 a year and a family of two children as an average. Mr. Wells claims as a tendency in living conditions the practically automatic and servantless household. In connection with the Mary Lowell Stone Home Economics Exhibit a design of an approach to this kind of a dwelling was asked for in sketch. The accompanying plans were made by a firm who have had not only experience in this kind of domestic building, but who have sympathy with and personal knowledge of similar conditions in widely separated parts of the country.

These sketches are not of an _ideal_ house and not for a given plot of land, but only a hint of what Mrs. Michael Lane "must expect if she attempts to build in the country or suburbs."

Since these were drawn many changes have come about in costs and in materials available. The architects expressly disclaim the word "model" in relation to them. Mrs. Lane and her two children will do their own work, and therefore steps and stairs must be few, and yet they wish light and air and cleanliness.

The author hopes that her readers will make a study of house-plans, not the cheap ones, but those that will bear the test of time and living in.

The increased cost of shelter should mean both more comfort and greater beauty. If it does not, something is wrong with society.

It appears from all that has been gathered that single houses for a family of five will cost about $5000 to $10,000 for some years to come; that these houses should be so constructed and cared for as to rent for $300 to $400 if the occupant is to keep the grounds in order, to use the house with care, and furnish heat and light.

The question of return on capital invested and of care of exteriors and grounds must be studied most carefully in the light of the new conditions, and a new set of conventions devised by society to meet the various circ.u.mstances arising out of them.

This suburban living is the vital point to be attacked, because in cities the matter is already pretty well settled; there is in sight nothing that will greatly change the rule already given, a cost of $1000 per room of about 1200 cubic feet, with the finish and sanitary appliances demanded.

Our family of five must pay for rent $500 to $800 for the smallest quarters they can compress themselves into. Subtracting the cost of heat and light and the car-fares, this may be no more expensive than the suburban house at $300 or $400, _but_ the difference comes in light and air. The upper floors of an isolated skysc.r.a.per give more than a country house, but at the expense of other houses in the darkened street.

In the city the question is then not so much one of cost of construction as of a fair arrangement of streets and parks, so as to avoid the loss of light and air for living-places. The single individual may find shelter of a safe and refined sort in all respects except air for $200 to $300 a year in the newer apartment-houses, and two friends to share it may halve this sum. A great need is for as good rooms to be furnished in the suburbs where more light and air may be had.

The content of the country house costing $5000 to $10,000 will be approximately 50,000 to 70,000 cubic feet, or 10,000 for a person. The suburban block will furnish about 12,000 to 20,000 for the family, while the city apartment of six so-called rooms renting for from $400 to $500 a year shrinks to 6000 to 8000 cubic feet, giving only one tenth the air-s.p.a.ce the country house affords, as well as far less outside air and sunshine. The best city tenements cost $1 a week for 600 cubic feet air-s.p.a.ce. What wonder that the sanitarian is aghast at the prospect!

According to the President of the English Sanitary Inspectors' a.s.sociation it seems probable that if the nineteenth-century city continues to drain the country of its potentially intellectual cla.s.s and to squeeze them into smaller and smaller quarters, it will dry up the reservoirs of strength in the population (address, Aug. 18, 1905).

The houses of the Morris Building Co., ill.u.s.trated in Chapter II, show what may be done. These houses rent for $35 to $45 a month with constant heat and hot water, so that the heavy work is reduced to a minimum; but the exigencies of family life are ill.u.s.trated in the fact of the almost universal demand of the tenants for continuous heat and hot water night as well as day. The ordinary childless apartment house banks its fires at night. A supplementary apparatus would mean work by the tenants, however.

This is a good example of the balance which must be struck in all new plans until they are tested.

The change in what one gains under the name of shelter, what one pays rent for, must be kept clearly in mind. Two or three decades since it was a tight roof, thinly plastered walls, and a chimney with "thimble-holes for stoves," possibly a furnace with small tin flues, a well or cistern, or perhaps one faucet delivering a small stream of water. To-day even in the suburbs there is furnished light, heat, abundant water, care of halls and sidewalks. The elevator-boy takes the place of "b.u.t.tons," the engineer and janitor relieve the man of the house of care, so that it may not be so extravagant as it sounds to give one third the $3000 income for rent, since it stops that leaky sieve, that bottomless bag of "operating expenses." The income may be pretty definitely estimated in this case, especially if meals are taken in the cafe. If the family dine as it happens, the cost mounts up. Here are a few estimates for verification and criticism:

Rent of an apartment............$ 600.00 to $ 700.00 Meals........................... 1200.00 " 1000.00 Clothing........................ 400.00 " 600.00 Incidentals, amus.e.m.e.nts, etc.... 200.00 " 300.00 Savings, _nil_.

--------- -------- Total income................... $2400.00 to $2600.00

If the wife can manage the "kitchenette" and part of the clothing, about $600 may be saved, but in that case it represents her earnings, and should be at her disposal. If it should be possible for safe shelter to be had for $400, then with the wife's help $700 should be the sum in the "region of choice." I hold that, unless the income can be managed so as to secure _choice_, all the daily toil is embittered. Even if some is spent foolishly, it is safer than the burden "just not enough."

The more common cost of decent living in our Eastern cities is:

Rent...............................$1000 to $1500 Meals.............................. 1200 " 1400 Clothing........................... 500 " 700 Incidentals........................ 300 " 600 Savings, _nil_.

----- ----- Total..............................$3000 to $4000

This goes far toward justifying the saying that a young man cannot afford to marry on less than $3000 a year.

With these figures in mind, what can our $2000 family with two children do? The rent that they can pay will not cover service or heat. There must be a maid to fill the lamps, see to the furnace, help with the cooking, and the wife must stay by the house pretty closely and probably decline most invitations. For the five persons, ten dollars a week for raw-food materials and five for its preparation is the lowest limit likely to be cheerfully submitted to.

Rent, heat, light, etc..................... $400 Food....................................... 800 Clothing hardly less than.................. 400 Children's education, even with free schools, and their illnesses will use up. 100 Car-fares, church, etc..................... 100 Wages and sundries......................... 200 ------ Total..................................... $2000

In the bank nothing.

But what shelter can this refined, intelligent family find to-day for $400? Certainly nothing with modern conveniences. The lack of these is _made up by women's work_--hard, rough work. And that is the crux of the servant problem to-day. It is the reason why more families do not go into the country to live. The work required in an old house to bring living up to modern standards is too appalling to be undertaken lightly.

In England the Sunlight Park and other plans, in America the Dayton and Cincinnati schemes, are samples of what is being done for the $500 to $800 family, but where are the examples (outside the Morris houses) for the salaried cla.s.s for whom we are pleading? The great army of would-be home-makers are forced into a nomadic life by the exigencies resulting from the great combines--a shifting of offices, a closing of factories, a breaking up of hundreds of homes. I believe this to be the _chief factor_ in the decline of the American home--a hundred-fold more potent than the college education of women.

The unthinking comment on this rise in the cost of shelter is usually condemnation of greedy landlords and soulless capitalists; but is that the whole story?

In the present order of things it seems to be inevitable that the gain of one cla.s.s in the community is loss to another. Probably the law has always existed, and only the very rapid and sudden changes bring it into prominence, because of the swift readjustment needed, an operation which torpid human nature resents when consciously pressed.

For instance, the efforts of the philanthropist and working man together have succeeded in shortening hours of labor and increasing wages--without, alas! increasing the speed or quality of the work done, especially in the trades which have to do with materials of construction, so that house-building has about doubled in cost within twenty-five years, largely due to cost of labor. This increased cost has fallen heavily on the very group of people least able to bear it, the skilled artisan, the teacher, and the young salaried man. Again I call attention to the need of a philanthropist who shall raise his eyes to that group, the hope of our democracy, those whom he has held to be able to help themselves--and given time would do so; but time is the very thing denied them in this motor age. Help to make quick adjustment must come to the rescue of those to whom time more than equals money.

One used to wait patiently for seed-sown lawns to become velvety turf.

Money can bring sod from afar and in a season give the results of years.

So the housing of the $2000 family can be accomplished just as soon as it seems sufficiently desirable. It needs a research just as truly as the cancer problem or desert botany, and affects thousands more.

One other cause of increased cost in construction and operation which does, if wisely carried out, increase health and efficiency is the sanitary provision of our recent building laws.

The instalment of these sanitary appliances becomes increasingly costly because of the rise in wages of the workmen, plumbers, masons, etc. The careful statistics of the Bureau of Labor show conclusively that all building trades have decreased hours of labor and increased wages per hour, so that cost of construction has doubled, and the sanitary requirements have again doubled the cost, so that it is easy to see why the family with a stationary income has quartered its dwelling-s.p.a.ce.

The end is not yet: the new devices mentioned in previous chapters will at first increase cost of construction.

From lack of business training the public is at fault in estimating relative costs. A well-built "automatic house" costs too much, they say.

Yes, but what does it save? Cost looms large, saving seems small.