Note 33 — Chapter VII · THE THIRD SCHOOL1 AND THE SOCIALISTS.

The third part has to do with the housing conditions of the proletariat. “A lodging fit for a human being is the first requirement for the bodily and mental welfare of the family; it is the prerequisite for a well-regulated family life, and for the rearing of the children to be moral men and women. The improprieties resulting from the exigencies of insufficient lodgings are innumerable, and this condition is an inexhaustible source of crime, prostitution, and vice of every kind.” All the data prove that the proletariat, who, of all classes, pay the highest rent, are the most miserably housed. In Berlin, for example, the poorest classes have been shown to spend on an average a quarter of their income for rent. In Hamburg the part of the income that had to go for rent among the class whose income was from 600 to 1200 marks, in 1868 was 18.77%, in 1874 20.90%, in 1882 23.51%, and in 1892 24.71%, while the percentage remained the same or decreased for all other classes. In order to make up the resulting deficit, resort is often had to night-lodgings. “The disadvantages of subletting are obvious. ‘Children of both sexes have to sleep with their parents, and often with strangers, in the same room, often even in the same bed; the advantages of domesticity are lost; the tavern offers more pleasant entertainment than being crowded together with wife and children in one room that must be shared with strangers, and in which the opportunity for quarreling and fighting, in consequence of the narrow quarters, is constant. It is the bad housing conditions that are the cause of the increasing alcoholism, of the break-up of the family life, and of the lack of education for the youth.’ (Braun).”33