placed the new ones in the front spaces thus vacated. The result has been an even greater congestion on the portions of the block still occupied for residential purposes.

The block selected for the recanvass in this first district was the one bounded by Canal, Jefferson, Liberty, and Maxwell streets at the south end of the district in the Ninth Ward. In this block, which covers only 2.8 acres, 1,033 people were found -369 people to the acre. It is very significant that, in 1901, the report of the City Homes Association showed only 917 people in the same block, so that there has been an increase of 116 in the block population. This increase is more serious than the number indicates, for several houses have been moved to make room for a large factory which has been built on Canal Street, and either more houses have been moved on the already overcrowded lot areas, or the overcrowding within the houses has become worse. In the Bohemian neighborhood in the Tenth Ward, the block selected for recanvass was the one bounded by Nineteenth, Twentieth, Throop, and Loomis streets. In this block 1,239 people were found. It is unfortunately not possible to compare these figures with those for 1901 since there is no way of correctly determining the method of block numbering used in the report of the City Homes Association for this district.

Table III shows the composition of the block population of the two blocks recanvassed in these two districts.

In the Polish district on the Northwest Side, the recanvass included all of the ten blocks in the district investigated by the

City Homes Association committee in 1901. Table IV shows the block population as a result of the canvass last year and, for purposes of comparison, the population for the corresponding blocks as reported by the City Homes Association committee in 1901.

TABLE IV

BLOCK POPULATION IN THE POLISH DISTRICT

Members

family

groups..

Lodgers..

Total..

Total City

45

46

47

48

49

Block Block Block Block Block Block Block Block Block Block Total 54

50

51

52

53

of

1,131 1,219
53 45
1,184 1,264

717 1,225 1,644 2,146 1,481 1,155 896 1,043 12,657 ΙΟ 80 78 92 39 33 85' 59 574

727 1,305 1,722 2,238 1,520 1,188 981 1,102 13,231

Homes, 1901* 1,135 1,202 1,182 1,160 1,816 2,327 1,601 1,315 979 1,113 13,830

Increase or de

crease 1901

IO.

+49 +62-455 +145 -94 -89 -81-127 +2 -11 -599

• See Tenement House Conditions (City Homes Report), p. 195.

This table shows that the population of these ten blocks in the Sixteenth Ward was found to be 13,231 in the recent recanvass, an apparent decrease of 599 people since 1901. In Block 47, the clearing of a large area for the Kosciusko School was responsible for a real decrease of population in that block, and in nearly every block in this group some property has been taken over for industrial or commercial purposes which was used for residential purposes in 1901. There is reason, too, for believing that there is a much larger number of lodgers in this district than the recanvass showed. Very soon after the recanvass began, a report was circulated through the neighborhood which led the people to believe that the purpose of the investigation was to evict all the lodgers and there was, as a result, a frequent refusal to state that there were any lodgers taken or an attempt to understate the correct number. Investigators were instructed to run the risk of an understatement rather than an overstatement in all

cases of doubt, and there is no question but that, in this, as in other districts canvassed, the returns of the investigators invariably understate the overcrowding within the rooms.

this understatement, as later tables show, indicates a most serious condition.

The recanvass in each of the three districts showed that in ten years the predominant nationality in the neighborhood had remained unchanged. The Ninth Ward remained Jewish, the Tenth Ward, Bohemian, and the Sixteenth Ward, Polish. Table V shows how large a proportion of the inhabitants of each of these districts belonged to the same foreign colony.

It has already been pointed out that the density of population in the wards in which the recanvassed districts are located is relatively high. Overcrowding, however, is more correctly indicated by the number of people per acre taken in conjunction with the kind of houses in which they live. In the Jewish block, the great majority of the houses are old frame buildings not more than two stories high, and the problem of overcrowding there is quite obviously a problem of overcrowding within the house and within the room. This whole district is naturally more dilapidated than the Bohemian and Polish districts in which

4

the houses are newer and higher and more often substantially built brick buildings. Even here, however, the houses were for the most part old. No new-law houses were found in the Bohemian block and only 19 in the ten Polish blocks. All of them were "old-law," that is, built before 1902, and some were there before the great fire, which it will be remembered started on DeKoven Street near Halsted, near the center of the district investigated.

In all of these districts there is a very high percentage of the

The following table showing the conditions of the houses in the three districts as to repair is of further interest in this connection.

TABLE SHOWING NUMBER OF HOUSES OF SPECIFIED NUMBER OF STORIES IN

TABLE SHOWING NUMBER OF BRICK AND FRAME HOUSES IN EACH DISTRICT