Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/468

 450 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

body. We have long realized the necessity for inspecting the conditions under which food, clothing, and other necessaries are produced and prepared for the consumer and that, too, with- out compromising ourselves or our policy. So, also, a thorough study of the need for homes may present to the authorities the necessity for social regulation, and even at times for social activity in furnishing inexpensive, sanitary dwellings for people with small means. Private capital cannot undertake such opera- tions when an absolute loss is involved as in the case of destroying "building complexes," cutting new streets through, and erecting new buildings with proper lighting, ventilation, plumbing, etc. Sometimes such operations do pay, in the course of time ; but private capital, especially in Germany perhaps, is backward where the returns, small at best, are so distant. Con- sequently these activities fall to the lot of philanthropic indi- viduals or societies, or of the community as a whole.

The conditions are varied; and we find a variety of solu- tions.

The regulation of conditi9ns by the Board of Public Works has already been spoken of. The proper proportion of light and air in a room for the purposes to which the room is to be put, the proper drainage conditions, the proper proportion of the building lot to be built up these are some of the conditions prescribed by the Board of Public Works. This is an endeavor to prevent the formation of slums and of slum conditions.

Improvement is accomplished by the razing of certain quar- ters which are a menace to comfort, health, and peace quar- ters which breed disease, vice, and crime. Examples of such improvement exhibited are: Berlin the razing of the Scheunen- viertel ; Halle the breaking up of the Trodelviertel ; and Ham- burg the rearrangement of the harbor district. Hamburg buys a slum district inhabited by dock laborers, clears it of buildings, re-subdivides it, and sells it on condition of the buyer's following strict building regulations. Hamburg has already expended seven million marks for this work. Now the dock is lined with a three-bordered street of clean, respectable, sanitary houses, where formerly filth and squalor reigned. Doubtless