. Beauty for ashes. they arestill giving, the best support that housing reform has. Their reports showed that all the larger cities,most of the towns, and many of the villages containedslums. There were whole slum villages, where minerslived, or quarrymen, in company houses. Therewere little settlements and suburbs of shanties andshacks, where the poorest lived. The worst one wasa shack settlement for rag pickers, built on thedumps, where the people ate garbage, and degrada-tion was extreme. In certain parts of the state the immigrant prob-lem made desperate complications. Mill workers,coming
. Beauty for ashes. they arestill giving, the best support that housing reform has. Their reports showed that all the larger cities,most of the towns, and many of the villages containedslums. There were whole slum villages, where minerslived, or quarrymen, in company houses. Therewere little settlements and suburbs of shanties andshacks, where the poorest lived. The worst one wasa shack settlement for rag pickers, built on thedumps, where the people ate garbage, and degrada-tion was extreme. In certain parts of the state the immigrant prob-lem made desperate complications. Mill workers,coming in hordes, lived in herds. Day shifts andnight shifts used the same beds. Hunyaks werecrowded together, twelve to twenty in two rooms,kennelled like beasts, in dark, filthy rooms, stiflingwith foul air, without water or any of the decencies,— and paying three prices for sub-let rooms, thatwas the worst shame of it. Some towns had a startling number of dark Indianapolis survey showed 1,100 within a radius. LAYING FOUNDATIONS 175 of a mile. But little towns that were building hand-some flats and were even called model cities, haddark rooms in these flats. With few exceptions, the towns of the state gavetheir poor no water, drainage or sewer housed the poor in their worst old shacks, hovels,tenements, warehouses, stables or sheds. There wasthe same tale of unsanitary conditions everywhere,wet, mouldy cellars, damp floors and the rest. But why should I go into more detail ? These con-ditions are the common scandal of all our states, andif any one who reads this chapter will start in astraight line from his city building, in any direction,go a few blocks, and turn up the first stairway lead-ing from the street, in any solid row of buildings, heIs pretty apt to find some surprises in the way ofliving conditions. Or, let him go down some of thealleys in the business blocks, and further out, aboutthe ragged edges of the town. Our photographscould be passed a
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