Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1916 — Home Town Helps [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Home Town Helps

HOUSING QUESTION IS VITAL

Practically No More Important Things Can Be Given Attention by City Planners. It may be said that there is no plane of human existence in society which the housing question does not touch. There is no form of vice, crime, debility or shiftlessness which bad housing does not tend to nurture. Keeping up appearances is often decried, and deserves much of the reproach cast upon it when it simply mejns unwarranted extravagance to maintain a position which one’s income does not Justify, but among the poor it is an everpresent aid to the maintenance of selfrespect and is to be encouraged rather than decried. During his campaign for the presidency the late Benjamin Harrison uttered an epigram which made him the target of much criticism. He said: “A cheap coat makes a cheap man,” and this statement, which was intended to epitomize his views on the protective tariff, was twisted into meaning that people whose clothes were cheap were purchasable. This was not true, and it - would be no more true that bad housing made bad citizens under all circumstances. But, next to an inadequate and unwholesome food supply, poor housing does jtand as the most deleterious element in our civic life. Sanitary research shows how important is the reaction of adequate light and ventilation on the health, stamina and moral character of Individuals. Bad housing furnishes the fruitful nurseries of disease germs of all kinds, while at the same time creating conditions which prevent the building up of resistance to their inroads.