This report comes from a study conducted in Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal fields in 1908 by pioneering sociologist Annie Marion MacLean.

It describes the housing in the Coal Region, with a particular focus on the housing for newly arrived immigrant workers.

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Housing Conditions –

Probably 75 percent of the houses in some sections are still owned by the companies, although one frequently hears it said that the company house is fast becoming a thing of the past.

The newly arrived immigrant is likely to come without his family, so he boards with someone of his own race, as many as twenty or thirty men crowding into a four-room house with a man and his wife and family. In such cases three rooms, or perhaps four, are used as bedrooms, leaving only a lean-to to serve as kitchen and living-room.

The family sleeps in one room and the boarders in the rest, one set occupying the beds at night and another during the day if they happen to have a night shift at the mine.

Sometimes, however, boarders sleep in the room with the family. The woman does all the housework and cooking for the men, each man usually buying his own food and paying her a certain sum for cooking it. The houses in which this class of immigrants live are usually four-roomed with a lean-to.

They are poorly built and are cold in winter, and the rent averages $1 per month per room.

It is said on good authority that all the houses in which the newly arrived immigrants live are swarming with vermin. All are very dirty and the yards and alleys are frequently filthy.

After the immigrant has been here a year or two he brings over his family, if he is a married man. They set up housekeeping in one of these old houses, taking boarders as just described. But they soon begin to save money to buy a house and lot.

They accomplish this in the course of five or six years and they usually have a house in a better locality, with five or six rooms, not very well built but a great improvement over the old one. They have a parlor with lace curtains, rocking-chairs, and a gorgeous lamp, and in the kitchen they put a big cook-stove costing $30 or $40.

They may not have a lawn in front of the house but usually there is a vegetable garden at the back. They are not yet clean according to American ideas, especially in the care of the streets and alleys, but they are no longer filthy. The boarder is apt to vanish when this stage is reached.

The third class of homes consists of those occupied by the skilled miners of all classes. They are usually six or seven roomed houses, comfortably built and furnished like any simple American home. In any case, they are Americans to all intents and purposes and have no especial need of help.

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You can read the full study here.

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