Viewing page 10 of 17

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

and the building trade workers who are called away from home on a job is growing, led in many places by tenant organizations which are already in existence.

In Detroit, public indignation at rent profiteering resulted in the formation of a committee by the City Council to investigate.

In Connecticut the fifth annual session of the Connecticut Conference on Social and Labor Legislation demanded enactment of legislation to prevent rent profiteering and overcrowding in the cities where many plants are busy on war material contracts.

The Tenants' Leagues of New York, and Philadelphia and the Council for Slum Clearance in New Haven have demanded an amendment to the conscription law to prevent eviction of draftees' families.

Tenants Must Organize

"If tenants do not organize rapidly, there will soon be no more housing projects but instead rising rents and all the sorrow that accompanies illness and death because of unhealthful, unsafe and unsanitary living conditions," said Chairman Helen Appel of the East Side (N.Y.) Tenants' League at a recent membership meeting.

The same meeting passed a strong resolution opposing the program of the National Assn. of Real Estate Boards which met in Philadelphia Nov. 13, 1940 and demanded the wiping out of all federal low-cost projects, and the ending of all government activity in housing in any form whatsoever.

The City-Wide Tenants' Council of New York condemned the complete abandonment of slum clearance by the federal government and said: "Housing for workers in defense industries and enlisted personnel is a very necessary step, but a program for housing of these workers is no substitute for the continuation of the USHA civilian housing program. Funds for defense workers' housing should not be taken from the limited and nearly exhausted USHA funds, but from regular defense appropriations."

18

[[end page]]
[[start page]]

U.S. Health Program
On The Shelf

THE flu epidemic on the West Coast and in parts of the South during the winter of 1940-1941, the fact that 25% of the conscripted men could not pass army physical exams and the increase in the number of industrial accidents have all served to put a national spotlight on the people's health and the facilities available for taking care of it.

The removal of whole families to industrial centers where plants making war materials are expanding and taking on new workers has caused tremendous overcrowding and a consequent increase in the amount and spreading of disease.

This does not only affect the men on the job, many of whom are forced to sleep in cars, on warehouse floors or out in the open because no rooms are available. It affects the health of children in schools where already overcrowded schoolrooms make it necessary in some cases for the pupils to stand in the aisles for lack of desk space.

Where housing is insufficient and where much of what there is is slums, where overcrowding increases the chance of spreading disease, where rising costs force the housewife to cut down on her expenditures for necessary foods such as milk, meat and fresh fruits, where speedup and crowded factory rooms cause needless industrial accidents--where all these things are taking place, there will be increased sickness and poor health.

And all of these things are taking place today, in a country which, even before the armament program was started, had a health record that was nothing to boast about.

19