Toward the end of January, the pressure for work tickets having constantly increased, a new, and as it proved, very useful branch of work was undertaken, viz., the white washing of tenement-houses. The president of the board of health on February 12 addressed a letter to the sani tation bureau of the committee strongly commending the plan, and suggesting the application of a coat of lime to the surface of rooms, halls, courts, alleys, and halls of tenement-houses, and especially to the walls and ceilings of cellars and light shafts. In the first tenement-house which was thus renovated, the work was done by six men and a foreman, and half the cost of the material used was contributed by the owner. Later, from the cellar of this same house, fifty barrels of refuse were removed, and carted away at the owner's expense. The largest number employed at any one time in this work was 491. The method of work, as described by Mrs. Lowell, was as follows :— To canvass a street, every tenement-house in it was visited, and the name of the landlord secured. When the landlord lived in the house, as in many instances, his per mission was secured, if possible, to whitewash the rooms that had been kalsomined. Permission was also obtained to remove refuse from the cellars, and to scrub paint where it was necessary, the board of health having stated that the cleaning of the paint is as healthful as whitewash ing the rooms. Having canvassed the street, a clerk was sent to the landlords living out of the district to secure their permission. A few of them paid for the material.
After securing the consent of the landlord, a foreman was sent with a force of cellar cleaners to all the cellars where work was to be done, to prepare them for the white washing. The street-cleaning commissioner carted away most of the cellar refuse, and gave permission to dump all in the public scows. The scrubbers followed the white washers, and after them a woman, employed to talk to the tenants whose rooms had been renovated, to see if the improvements could not be made permanent by care on their part. This proved to be a very satisfactory fea ture of the work. In addition to the sub-committee, an advisory board of visitors inspected the work, made sug gestions to the board, and assumed in part the responsi bility for the men and their work, besides auditing the books regularly.
Permission to renovate property was at first hard to get, but after the quality of the work could be inspected and the beneficial effect observed owners were, as a rule, glad to have the work done. Seven hundred houses, com prising 3000 rooms, 800 halls, 500 cellars, 250 shops, stables, lofts, yards, alleys, etc., were whitewashed, and in addition to this work 3485 barrels of refuse, largely dirt, but including 39 of iron, and 154 of rags and bones, besides dead dogs, cats, and rats, were taken out of 550 cellars. Besides this, 2500 halls and 2200 rooms were cleaned and scrubbed.
In the period for which statistics were prepared by the committee 1153 individuals were employed in this work, representing more than 70 different trades and 27 nation alities. They had 461 other persons dependent upon
them.
The committee prepared and sent to clergymen and charitable organizations a special circular inviting their cooperation in paying the wages of men engaged in sani tation work, and from those who responded to this circular, paying for work tickets to be distributed by themselves, $2644 was received. Expenditures in the three kinds of work undertaken by the committee were as follows : The following tables will show the details of these expenditures : — 2 E allowing work to be in any way advertised, and by the giving of employment only to men and women who pre sented tickets. The pay for work was in money, the amounts received in wages going directly into the natural currents of trade in the neighborhood, and thus relieving, at least to a slight extent, the distress of retail dealers. The demoralizing physical and moral results of long-con tinued idleness were obviated in the case of five thousand men and women, to whom work was given. The work undertaken was all of a useful character, and was so man aged as to interfere in the slightest possible degree with normal employment. At the close of this work the com mittee adopted the following declaration :— " The East Side Relief Work Committee desires to place on record its conviction that the methods by which it has been able to alleviate the distress prevailing on the East Side during the past winter, however necessary and useful in an emergency, should be adopted only under abnormal conditions, such as have existed in New York for nine months.
"When industry and trade are natural, the only safe course for the working people is to accommodate them selves to their circumstances, or to change them by their own action. The efforts of philanthropists to compensate, by artificial means, for irregularity of work or low wages can only result in mischief.
"The Committee makes this declaration lest its efforts, undertaken at a time when for thousands there was no work either in this city or elsewhere, and the people were consequently powerless to help themselves, should be used as an argument in favor of the same methods of relief in normal times, when there is work to be done, and what is needed is individual effort to find it, or concerted effort to make it worth doing; but the Committee does not wish to be understood except as approving labor tests and edu cational work, which are entirely distinct in their nature and effects from relief work." In the report of the Commercial Club Relief Committee of Indianapolis to the directors of the club,. regret is expressed that there had not been available a knowledge •of the experience of others in dealing with like conditions. The committee's own work was reviewed somewhat mi nutely in the hope that the record might have value in the future for those upon whom similar tasks should fall, and because the work done by the committee had been espe cially commended by those who had had an opportunity to compare the measures adopted in various cities.