Industrial Housing. Andrew J. Thomas

could not afford a suitable home. He would accordingly be obliged to accept a reduction in his standard of living.

      It was felt that capital, no less than labor, would deplore any reduction in the standard of living of the workers in industry, and the individuals interested in the Bayonne experiment were ready to lend a hand in placing the production of wage-earners' houses on a sounder business basis.

      That the particular section of the real estate market which produces wage-earners' housing is careless of the social interest, and that it operates inefficiently, with heavy economic waste in many industrial centres of the country—this is a truth well known to housing experts. The fact is that housing suffers from a somewhat obsolete and primitive business system in which ​small-scale methods of operation, heavy overhead, inefficient production, and excessive speculation are the chief causes of failure. From an economic viewpoint, the great need in wage-earners' housing is efficient large-scale production.

      The American worker enjoys his present high standard of living because modern business methods have been introduced into the manufacture of his food, his clothes, his household goods, his education, his recreation, even of his luxuries, and there is every reason why the same efficiency should apply in housing, which, next to food, is the largest item in the wage-earner's budget.

The social responsibility

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      But the cornerstone of housing policy is the social and civic responsibility. The home is more than an ordinary article of trade, to be bought and sold like a cake of soap or a box of cigars; on the contrary, it is a personal thing, in fact the most fundamental institution of civilization. The sponsors of the Bayonne undertaking felt that the most fundamental defect in wage-earners' housing was, that it was produced with too little regard for the social and civic welfare, which, after all, should be the basis of housing policy, and they sought to cooperate with officials, with other public-spirited organizations and citizens, and with labor in setting the standards of housing as high as possible.

      The charter of the Bayonne Housing Corporation guarantees the social policy in housing. The Company is in the nature of a public enterprise having the support of the Bayonne Chamber of Commerce, and it solicits the active co-operation of labor, officials, and of public-spirited organizations and citizens in bettering housing standards in their city. It may be termed a capitalist enterprise only to the extent that a large-scale housing corporation involves important business responsibilities which necessarily must be assumed by capital interests. Because of its civic character, the Bayonne Housing Corporation may be said to be an unofficial public service corporation, without possessing the usual franchise privileges or being subject to regulation of its acts by the State in the same way that a public utility is controlled.

      This conception of a public-spirited housing corporation which represents all civic interests marks an important advance

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       Children's playground in New York's "East Side"

       on the old idea of "company housing," which, though often inspired by good motives, nevertheless had certain fundamental defects. The chief fault of company housing was, that it superposed the landlord-tenant strife on the capital-labor antagonism, and thus created a combination which has been responsible for some of the most unsavory episodes in American industrial history.

The first group of homes

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      The principles on which the Bayonne Housing Corporation operates are successfully illustrated in this first group of houses, designed by Andrew J. Thomas, architect, of New York City. In these garden apartments the wage-earner enjoys a home of a much higher standard than the local real estate market offers, and he pays a rental of from two dollars or three to four dollars a room a month less. Specifically, this means the standard home mentioned, a home of four, five or six rooms—including ​a bathroom and other modern conveniences, steam heat and hot water supplied by the landlord—in a house which is well planned, soundly constructed, good architecturally, and set in the midst of gardens. This achievement brings within the reach of the higher-paid wage-earner an ideal home of the American standard of living. By thus demonstrating that the better-paid wage-earner can be ideally housed, the ultimate goal in housing, namely, the lower-paid ranks of the population—is brought nearer realization.

      The methods which produced this success are treated at length in the following chapters, which explain the economics of industrial housing, the architecture of the garden apartment, and the history of the Bayonne Housing Corporation.