Читать книгу Industrial Housing - Andrew J. Thomas - Страница 8

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But the cornerstone of housing policy is the social and civic responsibility. The home is more than an ordinary article of trade, to be bought and sold like a cake of soap or a box of cigars; on the contrary, it is a personal thing, in fact the most fundamental institution of civilization. The sponsors of the Bayonne undertaking felt that the most fundamental defect in wage-earners' housing was, that it was produced with too little regard for the social and civic welfare, which, after all, should be the basis of housing policy, and they sought to cooperate with officials, with other public-spirited organizations and citizens, and with labor in setting the standards of housing as high as possible.

The charter of the Bayonne Housing Corporation guarantees the social policy in housing. The Company is in the nature of a public enterprise having the support of the Bayonne Chamber of Commerce, and it solicits the active co-operation of labor, officials, and of public-spirited organizations and citizens in bettering housing standards in their city. It may be termed a capitalist enterprise only to the extent that a large-scale housing corporation involves important business responsibilities which necessarily must be assumed by capital interests. Because of its civic character, the Bayonne Housing Corporation may be said to be an unofficial public service corporation, without possessing the usual franchise privileges or being subject to regulation of its acts by the State in the same way that a public utility is controlled.

This conception of a public-spirited housing corporation which represents all civic interests marks an important advance

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Children's playground in New York's "East Side"

on the old idea of "company housing," which, though often inspired by good motives, nevertheless had certain fundamental defects. The chief fault of company housing was, that it superposed the landlord-tenant strife on the capital-labor antagonism, and thus created a combination which has been responsible for some of the most unsavory episodes in American industrial history.