In Continental Europe construction of tene ments by the city is less common than in Eng land, but general sanitary reform has been very marked. In Berlin, where over 99 per cent. of the population live in apartments or tenements, the chief activity centres in efficient sanitary measures and the removal of congestion through rapid transit and supervision of the suburbs. 1n many German towns, and in Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia, and France, municipal effort has gone along similar lines, while many model tenements have been built by private societies. In Paris sanitary conditions are carefully super vised, and questionable tenements are in the hands of a special commission.
Conditions differ widely in the large cities of the United States. Most have slum districts; not many, as yet, have developed a serious tene ment house problem. Chicago's rapid and ill regulated growth has given her several deplor able areas, with a great number of old, neglected and unsanitary houses. Jersey City has some of the worst tenement districts in the country. In Boston conditions are similar to those of New York, where the tenement problem has long been pressing, and, owing to the confined land space of Manhattan Island, is unique in diffi culty. The Board of Health was roused to criticise housing conditions as early as 1834, and after 1843, when the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor was founded, the mat ter was frequently brought to public notice. A legislative inquiry in 1856 and an investiga tion by the Council of Hygiene in 1884 led to the first tenement-house ordinance in 1867. New York has long had a model sanitary code, but provision for enforcement has been wholly insuf ficient for this, as with its tenement laws. Up to 1879, the date of the next revival of public interest, tenement dwellings in New York were modified private houses or rear tenements built behind such, or buildings put up solely for tene ment purposes, covering 75 to 90 per cent, of the lot's area. In 1879 appeared the typical New York tenement, the 'double-decker or 'dumb bell.' Built five stories high on a lot 25 feet wide, it covers from 86 to 90 per cent. of the lot's depth, and 75 per cent, of its area, with 14 rooms, for four families, on each floor. Its typical fea ture is the laterally indented air shaft, usually 2S inches wide in the widest part, or 56 inches when two similar houses are together. All rooms except the four outside ones open upon this shaft, which gives little daylight and no ventila tion below the fourth story, is the source of greatest danger during fires, and has been de scribed, hygienically, as a 'culture tube on a large scale.' Under such conditions perhaps a million New Yorkers live.
The commissions of 1884 and 1894 improved the tenement laws in various points, but little progress was made in enforcement. Model tene ments, beginning with the 'Riverside' dwellings in Brooklyn, erected by Alfred T. White in 1876, have been built in many places in New York City, notably by the City and Suburban Homes Com pany (founded 1896). These undertakings have been commercially successful, paying dividends of 4 to 7 per cent. No American city has followed the English policy of building tenements on its own account, but the plan of condemning prop erty for small parks has found favor. New York spends at least $1,000,000 yearly in this way. It thus abolished its worst slum, at Mul berry Bend, and—one example among several in 1903 it opened 21/2 acres between Hester and Division streets, with playgrounds and public conveniences in the heart of one of the most crowded areas in the world. The results of the work done by the Tenement House Commission of 1900 have been substantial. Under the new law, new tenements may not cover more than 70 per cent. of the lot's area, and discretionary power to mitigate this restriction has been taken from the Building Department. The old form of air shaft is no longer legal in new tenements, open courts being required instead. Encourage ment is given to tenement building on wider units than the 25 foot lot ; provisions for sanita tion and for protection against fire are improved, and, above all, a special Tenement House Depart ment has been created to enforce the law concern ing old houses as well as new. New York's tran sit question is yet far from solved, but progress is making. Tremendous as the city's tenement prob lem is, the outlook for the near future is en couraging.
limmottArnv. United States Commissioner of Labor, Eighth Special Report ("The Housing of the Working People") (1S95) ; Seventh Spe cial Report ("The Slums of Great Cities") d1894); Shaw, Municipal Government in Great Britain (New York, 1895) ; id., Municipal Gov ernment in Continental Europe (ih.. 1895) ; Raf falovieh. Lc inqeinent l'ourrier (Paris, 1887) ; Reynolds, "Housing of the Poor in American Cities." American Economic Association (1893) ; Riis. lion, the Other Half Lires (New York, 1890) ; id., A Ten Years' War (ib., 1899) ; Re ports of New York's Tenement Commissions of 1884, 1894, and 1900; Veiller, Tenement Reform in New York (New York, 1900) ; Hunter. Tene ment Conditions in Chicago (Chicago, 1901) ; Masterman and others, The Heart of the Empire (London, 1902) ; De Forest and others, Housing Problems, American Academy of Political and Social Science Publications (Philadelphia. 1902).