Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 | Page 3

owners of large factories, particularly in country districts, to furnish tenements for their operatives, and oftentimes it is quite indispensable that they should, because there would otherwise be no accommodation for their workmen. What is recent and exceptional is the spread of the belief that it pays to make the accommodations furnished healthful, convenient, and attractive. The sources of profit from this careful provision are these: the proprietors have control of the territory, and are able to prescribe regulations which keep out the saloon and disreputable characters, and at once there is a saving in police and court and poor taxes; for the same reason the workmen are more regular and steady in their labor, for there is no St. Monday holiday, nor confused head and uncertain hand; the tenants are better able to pay their rents, and when their landlord and employer are the same person, he collects his rent out of the wages; the superior accommodations and more settled employment act strongly against labor strikes. It will be seen that the larger and better product of labor is a great factor in the profitableness of such enterprises, and that it arises from the improved character of the laborer, on the same principle that a farmer's stock pays him best when it is of good breed, is warmly housed, and well fed. Against the operations of the London Peabody and Waterlow funds it has been alleged that they dispossess the poor shiftless tenant and bring in a new class, so that they do not improve the condition of their tenants, but afford opportunity for better ones to cheapen the price of their accommodations. The manufacturing landlord cannot wholly do this, because the first thing he has to consider is whether the applicant for a dwelling is a good workman, not whether he can be trusted for his rent. His labor he must have. His outlook is to make that labor worth more to him, by placing it in the best attainable surroundings. Can this be done? If so, the ends of humanity are answered as well as the purse filled, for both interests correspond.
Mr. Pullman, who founded the enterprise on Calumet Lake, has uttered sentiments like these, and has proved that in this instance it does pay to make his workmen's families comfortable, and secure from sickness and temptation. As a financial operation Pullman is profitable. There are now 1,700 dwellings, either separate or in apartment houses, in this town, where five years ago the prairie stretched on every side unbroken. Every tenement is connected with common sewerage, water, and gas systems, in which the most scientific principles and expert skill have been applied. The price of tenements ranges from $5 per month for two rooms in an apartment house to $16 for a separate dwelling of five rooms; but there is a different class of houses for clerks, superintendents, and overseers. The average price per room is $3.30 a month, or nearly twelve per cent. higher than in Massachusetts manufacturing towns, where it is $2.86. Taking each tenement at an average of three rooms, this rate will pay six per cent. on an investment of $3,140,000, without taking into account taxes and repairs, or say six per cent. on $3,000,000. But one source of profit of great moment must not be overlooked, and it is the appreciation of real estate by the increase of population. This is a small factor in a great city, at least so far as concerns the humbler grade of dwellings, but in the country it is enormous. A tract of land which has been a farm becomes a village of from 1,000 to 10,000 inhabitants. Its value advances by leaps and bounds.
At Pullman, in addition to the shops and dwellings, there are trees and turf-bordered malls and squares, a church, a theater, a free library with reading rooms, a public hall, a market house, provided at the expense of the company. Liquor can only be sold at the hotel to its guests, and then under restrictions. There is a system of public schools under a board of education, which is about the only civic organization, strictly speaking, in the community. One man suffices for police duty, and he made but fifteen arrests in the last two years. It is reported that the death rate so far, including the mortality from accidents, has been under seven in 1,000 per annum. In Great Britain the rate is a small fraction over 22 in 1,000. The vital statistics of the United States show a smaller mortality than this, but they are rendered abnormal by the heavy immigration which pours into the country. Emigrants are, in the language of insurance men, a selected class. They are usually at the most vigorous time of life and of hardiest