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. (A. Sl.)
HOUSMAN, LAURENCE (1867– ), English writer and
artist, was born on the 18th of June 1867. Having studied
at South Kensington, he first made a reputation as a
book-illustrator. Some of his best pictorial work may be seen in the
editions of Meredith’s Jump to Glory Jane (1892), the Weird
Tales of Jonas Lie (1892), Jane Barlow’s Land of Elfintoun
(1894), Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market (1893), Werewolf
(1896), by his sister, Miss Clemence Housman, Shelley’s Sensitive
Plant (1898), and his own Farm in Fairyland (1894). His
designs were engraved on wood by Miss Housman. His volumes
of verse include Green Arras (1896), Rue (1899), Spikenard
(1898) and Mendicant Rhymes (1906); and the mysticism which
characterizes the devotional poems in Spikenard recurs in his
half-allegorical tales, All Fellows (1896), The Blue Moon (1904)
and The Cloak of Friendship (1906). His nativity play, Bethlehem,
was presented in the Great Hall of London University at South
Kensington for a week in December 1902. In 1900 he published
anonymously An Englishwoman’s Love Letters, which created
a temporary sensation; and he followed this essay in popular
fiction by the novels A Modern Antaeus (1901) and Sabrina
Warham (1904). On the 23rd of December 1904 his fantastic
play Prunella, written in collaboration with Mr Granville
Barker, was produced at the Court Theatre.
His brother, Alfred Edward Housman (b. 1859), an accomplished scholar, professor of Latin at University College, London, is known as a poet by his striking lyrical series, A Shropshire Lad (1896).
HOUSSAYE, ARSÈNE (1815–1896), French novelist, poet
and man of letters, was born at Bruyères (Aisne), near Laon, on
the 28th of March 1815. His real surname was Housset. In
1832 he found his way to Paris, and in 1836 he published two
novels, La Couronne de bluets and La Pécheresse. He had many
friends in Paris, among them Jules Janin and Théophile Gautier,
and he wrote in collaboration with Jules Sandeau. He produced
art criticism in L’Histoire de la peinture flamande et hollandaise
(1846); semi-historical sketches in Mlle de la Vallière et Mme
de Montespan (1860) and Galerie de portraits du XVII e siècle
(1844); literary criticism in Le Roi Voltaire (1858) and his
famous satirical Histoire du quarante et unième fauteuil de
l’académie française (1855); drama in his Comédiennes (1857);
poetry in his Symphonie des vingt ans (1867), Cent et un sonnets
