THE HOUSLNG PROBLEM THE problem of rent takes precedence in the minds of those who live in the tenement-houses of great cities over the problems of food and clothing. It is a striking coinci dence that it is also with reference to shelter that the conception of a normal standard of living has been most clearly attained. Among the three primary essentials to life, it is in the character of the dwelling to be occupied that the importance of maintaining a minimum standard has been most clearly recognized, and in fact has already become a function of government. The principle may be said to have been established that it is a duty of society to make it impossible for any of its members to live in houses below a minimum standard prescribed by law. It is not alone the vital importance of insuring normal hous ing conditions that has brought about this recognition, for it may be that a normal supply of normally nutritious food is equally important. The possibility of securing necessary food and clothing depends chiefly on the efforts of the individual consumer, while housing conditions are only in a very limited degree under his control. For this reason the maintenance of a standard of shelter is more readily accepted as a duty of government. Another cir cumstance which has favored the early establishment of this principle is that the factors which make up a nor mal standard for dwellings are susceptible of enumeration, of exact definition, and of quantitative measurement. In regard to food, legislation can hardly do more than pro tect the consumer against adulteration and fraud. It cannot prescribe the amount or the quality of the daily rations of the community. To determine a legal minimum standard of clothing would be still more difficult. Sump 62 tuary laws have not attempted to do more than to prevent excess in the direction of individual It is comparatively simple, on the other hand, to regulate the construction of dwellings so as to secure an irreducible minimum of light and air, a certain degree of decency in the provision for sanitary requirements, and safeguards against fire and other dangers. It is easy, also, to make
laws in regard to overcrowding, although the practical problem of enforcing such laws has yet, in the main, to be solved. This idea, now so widely accepted, of maintain ing a normal standard in housing conditions, has not been evolved by a process of abstract reasoning. It has been forced upon us by the intensity of the evils which result from the unchecked operation of the laissezfaire principle. Those evils are found in their most acute development in cities in which there is a rapidly increasing population within a naturally limited territory. The most conspicu ous example is the borough of Manhattan in New York City ; but similar conditions have produced similar effects in other cities, of which Edinburgh, Scotland, and San Juan, Porto Rico, may be cited as examples. Referring to the conditions in New York City, at the time of its report, the Tenement-House Commission of 1900 says : " The most serious evils may be grouped as follows : — " 1. Insufficiency of light and air, due to narrow courts or air-shafts, undue height, and to the occupation by this building or by adjacent buildings of too great a proportion of lot area.
"2. Danger from fire.
" 3. Lack of separate water-closets and washing facili ties.
" 4. Overcrowding.
" 5. Foul cellars and courts, and other like evils, which may be classed as bad housekeeping. . . .
" The tenement districts of New York are places in which thousands of people are living in the smallest space In the seventeenth century, the Massachusetts General Court forbade the use of tobacco publicly or privately before strangers, and the purchase of " any appell, either wollen, silke, or lynnen, with any lace on it, silver, golde, silke, or thread." " Economic and Social History of New England," Weeden, Vol. I, p. 226. Other colonies had similar statutes.