lot, entirely covered by a tenement containing four apartments and a butcher shop, had a building at the rear used as a combined stable and smoke-house which was in a very insanitary condition, the floor covered with all all sorts of garbage and rubbish. The owner of the premises, who kept the butcher shop, lived in the small apartment in the rear of the shop with three grown-up children and one lodger. A married son and his wife, both of whom worked in the shop, lived with one child and three lodgers in a very dirty three-room apartment above. The toilet facilities for all of the people in these two apartments were in the cellar, a dark, damp, and very dirty place where 24 ducks and 12 chickens were kept. In the earlier articles in this series, attention was called to the fact that the yard water-closet, although more sanitary than the old vault, is still a very unsatisfactory arrangement. Modern standards of decency and sanitation demand that each family shall have private toilet facilities within its own apartment. The tenément-house law requires that all apartments in "new-law” houses, except those with only one or two rooms, shall contain such provisions. The old public or semi-public closets in the yards, halls, or basements have been practically condemned by this provision of the code which prescribes that "in every new tenement house there shall be a separate water-closet, in a separate compartment within each apartment." It is recognized that the public closet is not only more frequently out of repair and less frequently clean, but that it is also a moral menace. When it is recalled that the table giving the block population showed that there were 896 children under twelve years of age in this district where less than one-fourth of the families have toilet facilities. within their apartment, it becomes apparent that the community is subjecting these children to grave moral dangers. Other articles in this series have called attention to the frequent violations of the provisions in the ordinance which govern 19 Tolman's Municipal Code, sec. 434. There is, of course, the exception for one- or tworoom apartments. This part of the code is as follows: "In every new tenement house there shall be a separate water-closet in a separate compartment within each apartment, without passing through any other apartment, provided that where there are apartments consisting of only one or two rooms there shall be at least one water-closet for every two apartments." light and air and minimum cubic air space. The ordinance requires, for example, that in every tenement house, whether erected under the old or the new law, every room shall have 400 cubic feet of air for each adult person "living or sleeping" in the room and 200 cubic feet of air for each child under twelve years. of age. This provision was carefully tested with regard to sleeping-rooms by an actual measurement of the rooms in every apartment visited. It proved, of course, to be impossible in many cases for the investigator to ascertain the number of persons who actually slept in the apartment. The lady of the house usually insisted that mattresses rolled under the bed or piled one on top of the other (the "sanitary couches" or cots) were not in use, although she might acknowledge that they had been used at some time before the investigator's visit. Frequently even the beds, when there was more than one bed in a room, were declared to be unused. In many other cases where there were both day and night lodgers-a frequent occurrence near the mills-the investigator was told that the beds were occupied only by those seen there in the day-time. Here, as in other districts, questions as to the number of lodgers stimulated a rumor that lodgers were to be prohibited and led to subterfuges and evasions of many kinds. Investigators were instructed in all cases of doubt to report the minimum number of occupants, and all tables relating to the number of persons sleeping in a room, therefore, are an under-estimate and present the situation in an unduly favorable light. Even this under-estimate has revealed a shocking state of overcrowding in every district visited. In the thirteen blocks back of the Yards, 1,981 sleeping-rooms (53 per cent of the entire number) had less than the minimum amount of cubic air space required by the ordinance; in the one block in the Jewish district there were 229 sleeping-rooms (51 per cent of the whole number) in which more people slept than the law regulating cubic air space allowed; in the Bohemian block 298 sleeping-rooms (54 per cent of the entire number) were illegally crowded; in the ten Polish blocks on the Northwest Side 3.328 rooms, or 69 per cent of the whole number, were crowded beyond the legal limit. Bad as are the conditions in these other districts, over crowding in South Chicago is even worse. In Table XVIII all of the numbers above the heavy line represent cases of overcrowding. The table therefore shows that in 72 per cent of all the sleeping-rooms visited the occupants had Jess than the minimum amount of cubic air space prescribed by the tenement-house TABLE XVIII NUMBER OF PERSONS SLEEPING IN ROOMS OF SPECIFIED CUBIC CONTENTS Total number of overcrowded rooms: 824 (72 per cent) 2 20 34 4 20 34 7 6 I 4 7 7 7 3 I I Total.... II 226 51 370 135 175 50 97 16 17 TOTAL 18 230 403 248 94 44 47 32 24 8 1,148† In this table one adult means one adult or two children under twelve; that is, the term one adult is used whenever 400 cubic feet of air are required. † Occupants of one room not reported. law; that is, 400 cubic feet for each adult, and 200 cubic feet for every child under twelve sleeping in the room; and it should, perhaps, be emphasized once more that this is a conservative report. Again, as in the other articles, it must be pointed out that this table, although it shows that a large proportion of the sleeping rooms are overcrowded, gives no adequate impression of what this overcrowding means. In one case the father, the mother, and five children were crowded in a room containing only 744 cubic feet, although the law required 1,800; in another case a lodger slept with the father, mother, and two children in a room containing Soo cubic feet, although 1,600 cubic feet were required; in another case a room containing only 841 cubic feet was occupied at night by a man and his wife, their one child, and three lodgers, while four other lodgers occupied the same room during the day. In a small rear house in which there were two bedrooms containing 764 and 772 cubic feet, a man and his wife, a child under 12, and a grown daughter occupied the one which contained 764 cubic feet, although the legal minimum was 1,400 cubic feet; two grown sons and two lodgers, who should have had 1,600 cubic feet of air, occupied the other bedroom, which contained only 772 cubic feet. In this case the man, who was a railroad laborer, was nominally the owner of the premises. He had, however, a large mortgage to pay; he therefore rented the front house and crowded with his family into the rear apartment of the rear house. At the time the house was visited, during a cold week in December, the family were keeping two pigs and fifteen chickens in the basement. In another small apartment in a rear basement, where all of the rooms were dark except the kitchen, a man, his wife, and child occupied a room containing 447 cubic feet, one lodger slept in the parlor and three lodgers in the other dark bedroom which contained only 611 cubic feet. The family had seven pigeons which at that time they were keeping in the house. It is of interest to note that six families lived in this house and together they had twelve lodgers and six children under twelve years of age, but the only toilet accommodations for the entire house were two filthy yard closets. The effect of such overcrowding cannot correctly be understood without some further statement regarding lack of light and ventilation and other violations of the standards of proper housing which have been set by the law. With regard to the size of the room, for example, it is prescribed that in new tenement houses (that is, houses built after 1902) all rooms used for living |