Annie Marion MacLean’s 1908 study of Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal fields lays bare company-owned housing, four-room houses crammed with twenty to thirty boarders, beds shared by day and night shifts, vermin and filth, $1-per-room rents—and the gradual climb to 5 or 6 room homes, parlors, gardens, and disappearing boarders. Read the full story.
Housing conditions in Pennsylvania’s Coal Region | 1908