Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/688

 664 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

order based on the report of the inspector, and a notice is sent to the owner of the tenement requiring him to remedy the con- ditions complained of. Thus the original "recommendations" of an inspector are not approved or disapproved verbatim, as is the practice in the Health Department, but the wording of the order is made out separately in each case by the complaint clerks.

For this method the Tenement House Department claims the following advantages: (i) The tenants are absolutely protected and able to complain of unsanitary conditions without fear of being dispossessed, simply because there is no handwriting for the housekeeper or agent to identify, even the inspector having no knowledge of the source of the complaint, since he never sees the original paper. (2) Much of the inspector's time is saved, because he .does noc have to decipher illiterate and indistinct handwriting, but is given a neat typewritten copy in a clear and compact form. (3) There is absolute uniformity in the wording of orders, because these are made out and served only by the department's complaint clerks, the inspector himself not being allowed, as in the Health Department, to make any original sug- gestions, which might after all be in conflict with the orders sent out by the department.

The writer frankly confesses that, after a careful comparative study of these two methods of investigating citizens' complaints, he feels that undue stress has been laid by Mr. Veiller upon the danger of the owner or agent of the house reading the name of the complainant on the original complaint. Of course, if this did happen in any large number of cases, the natural consequence would be to dispossess the complaining tenant and to discourage the making of all future complaints. But after all, in the majority of cases the complainant does not sign his or her name. And even where the name is known to the inspector, the latter, if he be an honest officer, would have no reason for showing the origi- nal complaint to the housekeeper or agent or owner, or anyone else. At least the writer never detected anything of this kind when going around with the inspectors.

Again, the very fact that the tenement-house inspectors are given little discretion, and not permitted to make original sug-