But this sharp cleavage of interests also proved impractical. With no community of in terest there could be little or no mutual under standing, and labor troubles increased. Coin cidently housing standards declined. The specu lative builder, having no motive other than to secure the greatest amount possible for his property, developed the wooden three-deckers in place of the cottages and crowded them so close together that in some of the mill cities not only did gardens and yards disappear, but the windows of one house were practically boarded up by the walls of its neighbors, and what were once alleys became the thorough fares giving access to solid lines of rear dwell ings. The mill owners and their chief lieu tenants, living far away from these conditions, persuaded that the matter was no concern of theirs, left the community without its natural leaders.
Then again the pendulum began to swing back toward its starting point. Compared with the suffocating, swarming, ill-regulated indus trial towns and cities, the remaining old spacious mill villages had a new attraction. In some of them were the descendants of the original op eratives. So new industrial villages were founded, some by employers who thought that in this way they would prevent labor troubles, some by men inspired by the more altruistic mo tive of rescuing their workers from intolerable living conditions. The spirit of the founders varied from the extreme paternalism of Pull man, which led to disillusion and failure, to the liberality of H. O. Nelson at Leclaire, which is still bearing fruit. This new group of indus trial villages contains several which are notable for their beauty.
At the time the World War began not only was the number of industrial villages increasing rapidly, but discussion as to methods of financing and management were producing re sults that promised to do away with most of the dissatisfaction under the old regime. The old method of individual home ownership was falling into disuse and organized labor had definitely pronounced against it. Direct owner ship of the employee's home by his employer had satisfied neither party. A first step away from this was taken by the incorporation of sub sidiary companies so that the dwellings were no longer managed from the factory office. A further step had been taken in two or three instances by an adaptation of the English co partnership plan by which the tenants were gradually to become stockholders in the com pany that owns the houses. Then came America's entrance into the war.
During the years 1917-18 the United States government embarked upon a great experiment, the erection and management of wage-earners' dwellings. The signing of the armistice in No vember of the latter year left the experiment far from complete. One of the Federal agencies. the Emergency Fleet Corporation, had carried some of its developments to a point approximat ing physical completion, a small proportion of its dwellings were actually occupied. The other Federal agency, the United States Housing Cor poration, handicapped by a later start, had not yet housed a single workingman's family. Neither agency had worked out a plan of man agement, though they had agreed for the time being not to sell any of their holdings. The
Emergency Fleet Corporation controlled its properties through subsidiary corporations of the various shipbuilding companies through which it operated. The Housing Corporation owned its properties itself. The signing of the armistice led to some curtailment of the Fleet Corporation's housing developments, though in the main these were carried through, as ship building did not cease with the war and the new dwellings were needed to hold the work ers. The Housing Corporation, however, not only curtailed its projects, but wherever possi ble without too great loss, cancelled them en tirely.
In spite of the failure to carry this great experiment to completion it exercised a consid erable influence in various ways. First and most important it gave a notable impetus to the movement for government aid which before the war had been making only a slow and uncer tain progress, Massachusetts being the only State in the Union which had committed itself. and it had done so only to the extent of $50,000 with which a small group of houses were built at Lowell. The war, however, demonstrated clearly both the vital importance of ing to productive industry and the inability of private builders to meet the need. Second, it brought into the service of the wage-earner some of the leading architects, engineers and landscape designers of the country, who both because of lack of private work and the call of patriotism, for the first time turned their thoughts to the needs of men of small means.
The reverse side of the shield was financial. The need for the houses was urgent. Good planning, good designing, took little more time than no plan or design, perhaps rather less as they practically compelled an orderly procedure which prevented confusion and false starts. But speed forced into the background all thoughts of economy. The houses, with the ex ception of those in a few of the earlier devel opments, were good, but when completed their cost was high. This left a financial problem which cooled the ardor of many who otherwise would have been tempted to imitate the govern ment's villages.
Yet the effect was notable, not alone in that these government-built villages have set a high standard by which to measure other industrial housing developments, but by breaking the taboo which had prevented government aid to hous ing in America, almost universal, though this long had been in other parts of the world.
In this article nothing has been said of the mining villages, which form a group by them selves. As with the pioneer industrial villages, the mining towns were of necessity built by the companies because they must be located with reference only to the mine. With them, how ever, there was the additional reason that their life was uncertain, depending upon the time it might take to exhaust the mine. This second reason also led to a policy of making these towns as cheap as possible, so they became a by-word for their squalor and ugliness. Yet before 1914 the new interest in industrial towns had affected them and great improvement had begun. See also CITY PLANNING; GARDEN