The First Lady of Radio (15 page)

ER: Like everything else, working conditions change. What would you say is the most significant change going on before our eyes today?

RS: That's a large question. But there is one stage of evolution we're going through right this minute. When immigration was unrestricted,
the American girl went into “business.” That is, she worked in an office. We depended on the immigrants for the factory work and domestic employment. Now an increasing number of American-born girls are needed and are going into these fields.

ER: Many women consider housework demeaning, which it is not, of course. But I don't believe that American girls are going to be willing to go into domestic service unless better working conditions prevail.

RS: I think household workers have a right to expect a room of their own, some chance for that privacy which we all must have. Hours are excessive, especially when a girl is on call from six in the morning until the last member of the family goes to bed at night.

ER: And there's another point in that connection. All women who are going to employ labor in the home, or in any other way, should know what it means to work themselves. If not, they can never be good employers.

RS: Here's something I'd like to ask you. What about the girl who stays at home who doesn't go to work?

ER: I sometimes think that the
wife
who stays at home, and carries on all the work in the household, should be paid a definite salary. She earns it, without any question. Any girl who is needed at home has a job just as surely as the girl who operates a machine in a factory. If she is not needed at home, I think she loses out by not working. I think she limits her contacts with other human beings and her whole personality suffers. Now, Rose, how would you answer this question? Do you think men really resent women in industry?

RS: Emotionally, I think they do sometimes. But they need them just the same. But, Mrs. Roosevelt, can you imagine what would happen if close to 11 million working women in the United States suddenly quit their jobs and just waited for the men to support them?

ER: Well, then the men
would
resent them! In solving all the problems of the world, men and women must work together. When they
have worked side by side in the factory, for example, they understand each other better. I am convinced that often the girl who has worked is a more capable wife. She is more valuable to herself than the girl who has never known the give-and-take of the working world. (PAUSE)

Now Miss Schneiderman and I must leave—she to go to a meeting of the North American Housing Exposition, and I am going to the theater again. Two plays in one week—an orgy which I haven't indulged in for a long time. Next Wednesday I am going to talk to you from Washington, and I'm going to tell you a little about the White House, some of the interesting and amazing things connected with it that I have learned only through living there. Good night.

16.

“Life in a Tenement”

The Pond's Program

Wednesday, June 23, 1937

ER: Good evening. In the studio with me this time is Mrs. Ida Harris, who was born and brought up on the Lower East Side in New York. Mrs. Harris knows firsthand just what living in a tenement means. She's brought up her family there. And in recent years she has added to her family duties the job of being an active member of the League of Mothers Clubs. Now she is president of that organization of tenement mothers, all of whom are determined to achieve better homes for their families. When I was living more in New York and doing social-service work there, I knew well indeed the districts which Mrs. Harris knows. Many is the time I have visited people there. And this evening we are going to tell you something about living in slums. We hope you will see why we are working so hard to make life in them better. I remember, Mrs. Harris, it was just about a year ago that you came to the White House with a petition for the president.

IH: Yes, Mrs. Roosevelt. A committee of three members from the League of Mothers Clubs went to Washington to bring a very unique document to the president. It was a book of pictures that our mothers had taken in New York for the president to look at. It showed you the conditions of how the people live, the hallways, the public toilets, the sinks, and some of the people. You could see in the women's faces what they are enduring in those houses.

ER: The president spoke of that document. It was an extremely forceful way of presenting your case.

I shall never forget my first visit, as a young girl, to a tenement. I was going to see a woman who had worked for my mother. She had married, had five or six children, and was very ill. I climbed to the third floor. The hallways were dark, the stairs rickety, and the building so badly built that every sound from all the apartments could be heard clearly throughout the house. There was a drunken brawl in one apartment, I remember, and I was terrified. Finally, I got to the right door and at my knock a child opened a kitchen door. Inside, in a tiny hot room off the kitchen, was that mother lying in her bed almost wasted away to skin and bones. She told me that her sixteen-year-old boy had some work through the church and that was all the income the entire family of seven had. And I know of many other similar cases. In your life and work, Mrs. Harris, what have you found family life in a tenement means?

IH: It means misery to the entire family. You know, when the children go to school they are taught everything that's fine in life. And once a child starts to realize the good from the bad, and then has to go home to the bad, that child is ashamed of her own home and her surroundings.

ER: I know that, for I have heard the same thing from many others. But in the evenings, for instance, what do you do?

IH: There isn't anything at all to do. In the wintertime we all live in one room. There's no central heating and you have to heat up the house by making a coal stove. There isn't any privacy at all. If you want to take
a bath in privacy, either you don't take it or you put the children out in the hall. If you are sick, you cannot be by yourself or keep warm and comfortable. The only toilets are the public ones in the halls and you catch more cold in going to one of them. My first child died because of those conditions. It got pneumonia and I had to take it outside and it caught cold on top of it. That's true.

ER: You have other children though, don't you, Mrs. Harris?

IH: Yes, two. My boy is twenty-one going on twenty-two. And my girl is nineteen.

ER: What do the young people do in these homes?

IH: They're only in it as little as they have to be, that's all. They try to go away where they can get a little comfort, something nice. Most of the boys go to the poolrooms. And some of the girls go places where they shouldn't go.

ER: I remember one of the most pathetic stories I ever heard was told by a man who came down to Washington. He had lived in an inside tenement, and one day, when he was at school with one of his children, his building caught fire. And when he got back his wife and four other children were burned to death.

IH: I know that man. One of those children went to school with my girl. We have her picture at home. I had the same experience myself, only thank God my children weren't burned to death.

ER: It seems to me that a city and its citizens who allow buildings of this kind to exist in it are partially responsible for deaths of this sort. As you doubtless know, Mrs. Harris, more than fifty low-rent housing projects have been built by the government in New York and in other cities during the Depression. First Houses on lower Broadway, the Williamsburg Project, another in the Bronx. Have you seen any of these new housing developments in New York?

IH: Yes, I went down to the First Houses when they were open. Once in a while I take a walk over to the Williamsburg Project and
no matter when you come around, you find groups of people standing around, admiring, and you can see everyone is wishing they could get into them.

ER: I visited First Houses while they were being built and after families had moved into them. Each apartment there has a kitchen, a living room, and bathroom, and one, two, or three bedrooms according to the size of the place. And there are so many things to make life easier. I remember in the basements there are rooms for baby carriages so the mothers don't have to lug them upstairs.

IH: We have to lug them upstairs in our house or leave them downstairs to be broken or stolen.

ER: And then there are playrooms where children can play on rainy days, as well as playgrounds with trees and flowers and benches where mothers can sit and watch their children.

IH: Oh, that must be lovely. Our children can just play in the streets and they get hurt so often.

ER: The rooms are light and have air. There are windows in all the sleeping rooms.

IH: And closets. In our places you have to hang your clothes on the door or on the walls.

ER: And they are trying to keep the rent on those places within the range of the people who are now living in the tenements. I understand that the applications for the Williamsburg Project went out yesterday to 15,000 families. The rent on those apartments will range from around $4.50 to $7 per room per month.

IH: I hope I can get in the Williamsburg Houses. I know some people who are living in places like it now. They can't stop talking about how lovely the rooms are and the comfort they have. But Mrs. Roosevelt, I know you are very much interested in housing and you travel around the country a great deal seeing the conditions of other places outside New York. How do you find them?

ER: Well now, Mrs. Harris, before we talk about the places outside New York, Virginia Barr has a word to say.

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ER: In traveling throughout the country, I have visited families and homes of all kinds.

IH: Are some of those places as bad as what we people in New York have?

ER: People in other cities, both large and small, are up against exactly the same conditions you are. Not always as bad, but sometimes worse. Even in the country there are rural slums. I know of a place which might be called a shantytown right outside the city of Washington, where conditions are appalling. No sewage disposal, no running water, no streets. It's a wilderness right at the edge of a city, yet with none of the space available in a real wilderness. But on the other hand, some of the government homesteads show what suburban life may be. Greenbelt [Maryland], which is not yet open, about a half hour out of Washington, is designed as a low-rent housing project. There, anyone can live in all the comforts and decency any American family should have. Then at Reedsville [West Virginia], the Arthurdale Project is one where people have single houses and land to farm. I know where the people came from who live there now, and I know what it means to them.

IH: I guess we women are more interested in housing than the men are. Perhaps a man doesn't notice all the bad things. But we are in the house all day. We see everything that is wrong. What can we do to get better homes?

ER: The way we are going to do it is by awakening the public conscience to a realization of what bad housing means, not only to those who live in tenements but to the community as a whole. I think slums are a liability and no city should countenance them. It costs too much to have them. It would be much cheaper to have places where people could live in safety. Fires would not be such a menace. The city would not have
to pay such big doctors' and hospital bills for people who contract serious illnesses in the slums. The police department would not have such a list of criminals. Children could be brought up to know other diversions than playing gangster in the streets. Once everyone understands this, there will not be the trouble in finding a way by which governments can help eliminate these conditions.

IH: I hope we don't have to wait very long, because we've been waiting for quite a long time.

ER: Do you think the kind of a home a man has can have an effect on his work?

IH: Of course. If he can walk into a pleasant home he feels as though he really wants to go on living and working for his family. But when he walks into a dirty, smelly hovel, it seems hopeless, that's all.

ER: I think that is another important point that should be taken into consideration by everyone who thinks about housing. Those who plan cities should plan industries and housing together. A worker's occupation and his home should not be too far apart. And his home should be healthful, so that illness does not take him off the job. It should be clean and neat, so he can reflect that cleanliness and be efficient and smart on the job. It should be a place where he can enjoy life, so that he can go out from it each day feeling that he wants to work to keep it, and his family happy. I think many men would find their way to better jobs and better pay, and the country as a whole would have better workers, if the homes in which the workers live encourage their ambitions and hope instead of killing them. Mrs. Harris, if you could have a nice little home, would you like it in the country?

IH: Oh, no. I don't want to leave the East Side. It's home. I don't think people should be made to move away from what they know. I like East Broadway. I would just like to have better houses down there.

ER: I can understand that perfectly. You told me that you would like to take all people who are against better housing to go on an inspection
tour so that they could see what life in a tenement is like. I think you have shown us all a good deal tonight, and I hope that the few new developments we have talked about will help people realize what improvements are needed, and how necessary they are. (PAUSE)