INDUSTRIAL HOUSING IN THE UNITED STATES. Industrial housing is usually understood to mean housing of workers by employers. The growth of the co-partner ship movement in England and the strong ad vocacy of its introduction into the United States .before the European War, and the federal gov ernment's own experiment in house building for wage-earners during the war compel a broader definition. Industrial housing to-day is housing which contributes to industry, no mat ter by whom erected or managed.
Using the term in its older sense, however, industrial housing has a history in the United States which begins with the establishment of industries outside the home. The first Ameri can cotton mill was erected at the falls of the Pawtucket in 1790. Its successors in Rhode Island and Massachusetts were scattered along the streams that furnished their motive power. Compelled to plant the mills at a distance from established seaboard and commercial towns, the pioneer manufacturers were also compelled to build houses to shelter their employes. So be gan the New England mill villages, some of the earliest of which still remain along the little rivers that empty into Narragansett and neighboring bays.
The houses in these villages were well built, and even to-day, when sanitary conveniences and a public water supply have been added, most of them meet modern requirements. More over, they are far from unattractive with their grassy open spaces, their gardens and their fine old trees. It was necessary in the days of pioneer industry to build good houses, for the only available labor was the Yankee farmer's boys and girls who had been prejudiced against factory work by the tales brought from Eng land of the horrors of industrial life. So the early industrial villages of America were de signed to prove that industrial life here need not duplicate that of the Old World. Nor were the employers satisfied with the erection of good dwellings, they gave even greater care to the management of those dwellings. Especially were the dormitories or boarding houses of the girls and unmarried women kept under most careful supervision, and rules were enforced that would satisfy strict Puritan parents. Even the family dwellings were kept under a close supervision which limited considerably the free dom of the tenants.
In the early days, however, this regulation, which went far into the details of life, was accepted not only because it assured a good moral tone for the new communities whose in habitants were in the main young people, but also because the employers or their chief repre sentatives were a part of the community and shared its life democratically. The factory girls of the day became the manager's guests in the evening. This combination of democratic pa ternalism did not last, however. Even before the advent of coal and of immigrants from Ireland and the continent of Europe the system had begun to break down. Employees became restive at having the same man both employer and landlord. The strict regulation which was necessary at the beginning became irksome as the villages developed into established com munities.
The use of coal as a source of power caused some of these villages to develop into cities, Lawrence, Lowell, Pawtucket; it caused others to disappear, the owners finding it advisable to move to a place where railroad or water trans portation was more accessible. When the vil lages grew into towns or the mills were moved to towns, the commercial builder appeared. To him the employees frequently turned with relief• even when his houses were not so well built or cost more than those of the mill.
The mill owner also frequently welcomed this opportunity to drop the landlord. For there had been gradually developing a gulf between employer and employed. Though in the early days an owner often lived in Boston or Providence, the common traditions of a New England ancestry served to bridge this distance. But with the coming of the Irish with their different traditions and their different standards of living, the bond was weakened. When to the Irish succeeded Poles and Italians and even peoples of the Levant, the old democratic fel lowship in the enterprise usually vanished en tirely. The Lawrences of the new era became spay envelope') cities, even the managers and heads of departments made their homes outside the mill communities. Then grew up the con ception that the employer's concern in his em ployees ceased at the mill gates; cottages owned by the mill stood vacant or were turned into storerooms.