Seven miles from Pittsburgh, up the valley of the Monongahela River, lie the town of Homestead and the largest steel plant in the world. Seventeen years ago, Homestead was, for a time, the center of national interest, while the men and the Carnegie Steel Company fought to the finish one of the most dramatic battles in the history of the labor movement. The men failed,—public interest died out,—but the mill has gone on growing steadily and the town has kept pace, until now it numbers about 25,000. Throughout this time, the corporation, through its practically unquestioned decisions as to wages and hours of labor, has in large measure determined the conditions under which the men shall live. There is only one other industry in the town, the Mesta Machine Company, and little other work except in providing for the needs of the mill workers. We may consider then that the conditions resulting when a great organized industry creates about it, without a definite plan, a town dependent solely upon it for development, are fairly represented in Homestead. For, after all, the town is to be considered in part as a product of the steel industry, as well as the rails and armor plate shipped in the great freight trains that puff away down the river, and the success of the corporation must be estimated, in part, by its share in creating the homes and moulding the lives of the workers.

Thirty years ago, two farms occupied the land now covered by the vast plant and the homes of hundreds of workers. In 1881, when Klomans built the mill, now a part of the United States Steel Corporation, the change began. The very aspect of Homestead shows how during the twenty-seven years that have passed, the plant has been the unifying and dominating force in the town. The mill has now stretched itself for over a mile along the river and the level space between the river and a hill rising steeply behind, which was the original site of both mill and town, has been entirely shut off from the water front. The smoke from the many furnaces and from the two railroads which cross the town settles heavily, making the section gloomy even on the brightest days. Wash day for some must wait for a west wind, if the clothes are not to come in blacker than when they went into the tub, and mothers find it a problem to keep children even reasonably clean in a place where the grass itself is covered with oily dust.

This level space was originally large enough to accommodate the houses as well as the mill, but with the growth of the town, the homes have spread up the hill, and even out into the region beyond. For the English speaking people who were earlier comers, have been glad to leave the level, smoke-hidden section to the more recent immigrants. Here, in houses huddled together, where the totally inadequate sanitary provisions and overcrowding are comparable to the worst sections of a great city, we find now the homes of the Slavs. Courts where seventy-five, or even in a few instances more than a hundred people, are dependent for water supply on one hydrant, and houses with an average of four or five persons to each room are frequent. These facts will be considered more in detail in another article, exemplifying as they do conditions existing in many small industrial centers.

Though there are no definite figures available as to the composition of the population of Homestead, the nationality of the men employed in the mill in July, 1907, will serve as a clue to the make up of the town as a whole. Of 6,772 employes, 3,601 or more than half were Slavs, 1,925 were native whites, 121 colored, 397 English, 259 Irish, 129 Scotch, 176 German, and 164 were of other Europeans.

Aside from the Slavs, there is almost no tendency among the different nationalities to live in separate sections. The more desirable part of the town, which includes aside from the upper part of Homestead proper the politically independent boroughs of West Homestead and Munhall, is occupied by the whole English speaking group and it is with their life that this paper deals.

Parallel to the main thoroughfare, along the side of the hill, runs street after street lined with simple frame houses. These stand detached from one another, though often with only a passageway between. There is usually a porch in front and a small yard where growing flowers or shrubs give a cheerful homelike air. The streets are full of merry children, coasting in winter down the steep hillsides, or in summer playing marbles and jumping rope. The hill lifts this section out of some of the smoke, but even here the sky is seldom really bright, and the outlook is over the stacks of the mills with their plumes of smoke. In general arrangement, the town shows an absence of interest in future development on the part of its original planners. The avenues, which run parallel from east to west with alleys between, are crossed at right angles by the main streets, cutting the town into rectangular blocks. Here and there are beds of old water courses down the hillside, on whose banks small houses, hardly more than shanties, have been built. The narrow lots of the original plan have had, moreover, a bad effect on the houses built on them. These houses are small, usually consisting of four or five rooms, but the middle room in the latter case opens only on the passage between the buildings, which is of necessity very narrow, and is never reached by sunshine. Moreover, the narrow lot which limits decidedly the choice in plans has resulted in a uniformity of design and a lack of artistic quality in the houses. This, especially in winter when there are no flowers to relieve it, gives to the streets an air of monotony.

As Homestead grew, houses were built to the east of it on property outside the borough limits, owned by the Carnegie Land Company, a constituent part of the United States Steel Corporation. This district and a section including most of the mill property were formed into the separate borough of Munhall, said to be the richest one in Pennsylvania. From the beginning the mill officials have taken a marked interest in its development, and the general effect of Munhall shows the results. In the center stand side by side, the imposing library with its little park, the gift of Mr. Carnegie, and the handsome residence of the superintendent of the mill. Behind are the houses of the minor officials, whose wide lawns are kept in beautiful condition by men in the employ of the company. On the streets farther back, where the employes live, are many attractive houses, and on Sixteenth avenue cottages of varying design set back from the street, show the possibility of securing effective yet inexpensive plans.

But neither the presence of the mill nor the dull sameness of the streets can hamper the sense of home-likeness which the workmen feel as they step across their own doorsteps. The burden of creating this falls on the shoulders of the housewife. Usually in these homes there is that proof of an upward social trend, a "front room," which with its comfortable furniture and piano or other musical instrument is the real center of the life and amusement of the family. As one woman said, "The children don't realize how much it costs to keep up the parlor, but they want it to look nice so they can bring their friends in, and as long as it keeps them home I'll manage it somehow." And no outsider can understand the sacrifices involved, the ceaseless economies if parlor curtains and pianos are to be evolved from a wage of fifteen dollars a week.

Of course extremes of thrift and inefficiency are met. In one home, where the man earns but $1.65 a day and there are six to feed, they had not only managed to buy an organ and give one of the girls lessons, but had saved enough to tide them through the hard winter of 1908. But the wife, the daughter of a Pennsylvania farmer, had learned the thrifty ways of such a household. For this is skill amounting to genius and cannot be expected of all. I remember, in contrast, a kitchen where all is wretched, the children unwashed, the woman untidy, the room unswept. In such a scene, it is not surprising to have the woman complain that the man always goes to Pittsburgh with a crowd to spend the evening. Though he earns nearly twice what the other man does, his wife, who had been trained as a servant in a wealthy home and had learned extravagant ways, realized in a helpless sort of way her inability to "get caught up" financially, or to display any efficiency in managing her home and training her children. Between these two types is that of the average family, where the effort to make life wholesome meets with mingled successes and failures.

The recognition among the people of the value of home life, finds perhaps no more striking proof than the zeal shown by many of them in purchasing their houses. According to the census figures of 1900, 567 families owned homes in the borough, 27.3 per cent of the entire number of houses, and 268 of these were free from encumbrance. Such business organizations as the Homestead Realty Company have met the needs of those wishing to buy on a slender income by a system of selling on the instalment plan, which in large measure takes the place of building and loan associations. The initial payment is small, sometimes as low as $150 for a house of four rooms, the real estate company assumes the obligations for insurance, taxes, and interest on the mortgage, and the buyer pays a monthly instalment large enough to cover all this and make a small reduction on the principal. For example, one family I know bought a four-room house worth about $1,750. Of this, they paid down $150, and thereafter a monthly instalment of sixteen dollars, which was little more than they would have had to pay for rent. Though it has taken fifteen years to buy the house, they now have a home of their own; and without unreasonable sacrifice.

No phase of this attitude towards saving was to me more interesting than the reasons given for and against buying. Two sisters were typical of these different opinions. One with six children, whose husband made something over three dollars a day, said: "I didn't try to buy, because I wanted to give my children everything that was coming to them, and I wouldn't stint them." So, as far as she could, she had given them what the other children in school had, and truly three dollars goes but a little way in a town where the rent is four dollars a room and food-stuffs are said to be the highest in the country. The other, wiser perhaps, had begun early to buy her home. Though she has been married only five years, to a man whose income is about the same as the brother-in-law, and there are two little ones to care for, they have already made the initial payment on their home. It is a neat five-room house on one of the good streets, with running water in the kitchen and a bath-room, and is worth about $3,000. Of this they paid $300 down, and their monthly instalment is twenty-five dollars. Since their family is small, by subletting two rooms for eight dollars a month, they reduce the monthly expenditure to about an ordinary rent. While it will take some years to pay off the indebtedness, by the time that the children are large enough to need the other rooms, they plan to be well on their way toward accomplishing this.

With many, however, the initial purchase is only the beginning of their home making, and, as soon as the house is paid for, the family take the most genuine pleasure in its improvement. Sometimes it is the addition of a bath-room; sometimes it is the repapering which the busy mother finds time to do in the spring; sometimes the building of a wash-house in the yard. But wherever such improvements are made it means always the development of the sense of family life and its common interests.

In home buying there lurks, of course, an undeniable danger to the workman: the danger of putting all his savings into a house, when death, discharge, or a season of hard times may mean the necessity of a forced sale with its inevitable loss. That the owning of a home tends to lessen the mobility of labor is a factor to be considered in upholding it as a desirable form of thrift. In Homestead, however, this danger has been minimized by what has otherwise been a disadvantage to the town, the lack of a sufficient number of houses.[12] Buildings have not been erected fast enough to keep pace with the town's growth, and consequently rents have risen and desirable houses are hard to secure. This situation, while it stimulates people to buy their own homes, also makes it possible to sell at almost any time.

There are many, however, to whom these real homes are not possible. There rises to my mind, in contrast, a two-room tenement down in the grimy corner where the mill joins the town. Here a woman was trying to support four little children by sewing and washing. Her husband had died after eight years of semi-invalidism resulting from an accident in the mill. With his small wages they had not been able to save, and as the injury had occurred so long ago, she was not eligible for a benefit from the Carnegie Relief Fund. The kitchen was small and hot and the younger children noisy, and the not unnatural consequence was that the oldest girl drifted to the streets, mixed with a gay crowd, and eventually became a charge of the Juvenile Court. The girl was not bad at heart, and had there been a cheerful home where her friends could come, the end might have been different.

This instance illustrates the fact, more or less true of the whole town, that local conditions are such as to lay too large a responsibility for providing enjoyment on the skill of the wife and mother. Where she succeeds, the home becomes the center of the family's happiness, yet even so, we should look to the town itself for those wider opportunities for mental and physical relaxation which help maintain a normal life. But to the stranger approaching Homestead, the town speaks more eloquently of toil than of pleasure. The river, elsewhere so often a source of endless enjoyment, is muddy and swift. Moreover, one bank is preempted by the railroad, the other by the long and unsightly stretches of mill yard. In the second ward, near the river, which is almost solidly built up, the only place for the children to play is the street or the alley. That the boys do not find these a wholly satisfactory playground is shown by the following clipping from the local newspaper:

Boys Claim Their Rights Are Being Interfered With.

The boys of Homestead want to know why they cannot play basketball on the street, and they want to know what they can do. Burgess please answer in Monday's Messenger.

On the top of the hill there are open places where the bigger boys find room for recreation, but it is a long climb, too long for the small children in the section where a place for play is most needed.

The two recreation parks within a five-cent fare of the town, owned by the street railway, are the scenes of many school and church picnics and lodge gatherings. Here the young people find the skating rinks and dancing pavilions and the shrill music of the merry-go-rounds, while tired mothers seek quiet grass plots where they may sit and watch the children play, and where they may have the rare chance to gossip with their neighbors.

In Homestead itself the two popular forms of amusement are the skating rink and the nickelodeon. The former fills the papers with advertisements for moonlight skating parties, a "marriage on rollers," and other devices for attracting patronage. The gaiety and swing of this pastime, which appeal to the young and vigorous, have made it in general very popular. It offers, however, those dangers common to the indiscriminate meeting of young people, which make some mothers hesitate to let their girls go unless with "our own crowd."

The nickelodeon, whose small cost brings it within the financial reach of most families, is perhaps the most popular entertainment. You are admitted to a room the size of a small store, with rows of chairs, a small stage, and an atmosphere that is soon unbearably close. Here you witness for five cents a show lasting about fifteen minutes. On the Saturday afternoon when I attended, there was a series of moving pictures illustrating a story on the same theme as Camille, and two sentimental songs illustrated by colored slides. While none of them was of a high grade of amusement they evidently really entertained the audience, at least half of whom were workingmen. To them the nickelodeon seems to make a special appeal since it offers the variety they crave after long days in the mill. This limited range of amusement offered is almost the only entertainment which is available for older people, or which can be enjoyed in common by them and by the young and active members of the community. While this lack is met, in a degree, by the entertainments which lodges and churches give, the latter are rather sedate. The festivities which appeal to young people are all money-making enterprises, with the abuses likely to result under such conditions. Many of the clergymen expressed their belief that there was need of a better kind of amusement, a need which might be met by such institutions as the public recreation centers of Chicago.

Among the causes contributing to this lack of amusement is the possibility for those with more money and leisure of securing the better class of entertainment in Pittsburgh. Still as it is a forty-five minutes' ride to the city, mothers tied down by the care of children, and men wearied by the day's work seldom avail themselves of what Pittsburgh offers. Another cause is found in the fact that the owners of the mill are non-residents, and give neither money nor influence to help the everyday normal development of the town. There is a marked contrast in this between Homestead's situation and that of independent towns of similar size. In the latter, where there is a larger proportion of the well-to-do who are dependent for entertainment on what the town offers, it is possible to secure fairly good theatrical performances, as well as concerts and lectures.

Two additions to the opportunities for relaxation have, however, been made by prominent officials of the steel corporation. At the Carnegie Library there is a club providing classes for musical training which give occasional concerts, as well as a gymnasium with a swimming pool, bowling alleys, etc. This club, which is open to all on payment of two dollars a year, is popular with the young men, especially those on the clerical force. A series of entertainments, however, given during the winter of 1907-8 under the management of a lecture bureau was not successful.

The second, the gift from Mr. Frick of a small formal park transformed from an ugly hole at the end of one of the ravines, is the source of much pride to the town. A need which it does not supply, however, was shown by a visit there one hot afternoon. Three or four men were sitting in the sun on the benches set along the cement paths. The grass had recently been cut and in a pile which lay on the edge of the street, half a dozen little chaps were turning somersaults and revelling in the coolness. For them, the park with its set flower beds and well-kept lawn offered few inducements. They would prefer a real playground.

The chief obstacle to the development of amusements is, doubtless, the hours and nature of mill work. Every other week the men work on night turn. Then they get home early in the morning and are ready, right after breakfast, for the much needed sleep; at four o'clock in the afternoon they must be called, and after an early supper they are off to the mill for the long night. That week there is no chance for outside festivities, nor chance even for the family to have quiet evenings together. Sometimes when sons who are also in the mill are on the opposite shift, the family is not able to meet even for meals. This irregularity not only tends to break into the family life, but also by making regular engagements impossible, lessens the interest in outside things. Even when the men are on day turn and are through work at half-past five, the ten hours of heavy labor in the mill leave them little ambition to seek out amusements. The exhausting nature of the work, coupled with the lack of sleep due to this constant change of habits, makes them weary enough, as they show by the slow steps and bent shoulders of the homeward procession. Change of thought and genuine relaxation are nevertheless a necessity, if the men are to maintain even mere physical efficiency.

The spirit of the mill is the spirit of work. We have found that the town itself provides for the men little opportunity for genuine relaxation after the strain of the day's work; and when we turn to the town again, seeking whether it offers any stimulus to mental activity, we find in it the same failure to help in the development of a normal life. There is the Carnegie Library to be sure, which has classes in metallurgy, and provides expensive periodicals dealing with the steel trade as well as general reading matter. But as many a man said to me, "Oh what's the use of a library when a man works twelve hours a day?"

Although efforts towards a reorganization of the union are practically at an end, because of the opposition of the mill officials, there is earnest thinking going on among some of the men about the great corporation which controls wages and hours, and so much of the rest of life as is dependent upon them. One man, who during the recent hard times was not earning enough to pay his rent, said, "I don't blame the superintendent here for our being out of work, but the men in New York could help it, only they don't know or don't care what a cut in wages means to us."

That the changes in wage scale or the decisions to work but half time last winter, which came to them without explanation, were related to an industrial depression which affected a whole continent, was but dimly understood. They knew of dividends, and they knew of wage-cuts. With the feeling that they are impotent to change conditions, some of the more thoughtful men are turning to socialism for the larger solution it seems to offer. I was surprised to hear socialism advocated by the wife of a mill clerk making two dollars a day. She and her husband were thrifty people who had just succeeded in buying a piece of property,—not at all the typical socialists of a conservative man's fears. But in their twenty years of married life, the clerk's wages had been cut fifteen per cent. With a growing family, needs had increased, and only stringent economies, the cutting out even of five cents for the nickelodeon, had made their home what it was. And now with mills idle and their little savings rapidly going, a sense of social injustice was making itself felt.

GOING HOME FROM WORK.

This picture grimly sums up Homestead—the mill at the left, the Carnegie library on the hill in the center, and the mean houses of the second ward to the right.