PER CENT OF FOREIGN-BORN PERSONS ENGAGED IN GAINFUL OCCUPATIONS, BY SPECIAL GROUPS AND CLASSES, 1870, 1880, AND 1890.

Briefly analyzed, these tables show that for native-born workers there has been a steady increase since 1870 in the proportion found in each of the first three groups and a corresponding decrease in the proportion found in Group D. For the foreign-born workers, however, the proportions found in each group at each census period have fluctuated greatly, due partly, no doubt, to the influences of immigration, especially during the decade from 1880 to 1890. From 1870 to 1880 there was a considerable increase in the proportion of foreign-born workers in Group A, a corresponding decrease in Group D, and slight increases only in Groups B and C. The results for 1890 as compared with 1880 show, on the other hand, a loss in the proportion of foreign-born workers in Group A, a very small loss in the proportion in Group D, and an increase in Groups B and C.

Comparing the proportions shown for each subgroup in 1890 with those given for 1870, it is seen for Group A that there has been a slight increase in the proportion in each subgroup, with the exception of that

of farmers, planters, etc., in which there has been a small decrease in the proportion of both native and foreign born workers. The increase from 15.82 per cent in 1870 to 18.24 per cent in 1880 in the proportion of foreign-born farmers, planters, etc., and the more than offsetting decrease from 18.24 in 1880 to 15.48 per cent in 1890, may be legitimate as showing the influence of the increased immigration during the latter decade, but is probably due, in part at least, to the differences in classification of occupations at the various censuses. In Group B there has been an increase of native and foreign born workers in each subgroup, while in Group C this is also true, with the exception of leather workers and wood workers, in which there is a slightly smaller proportion of both native and foreign born, and of textile workers, in which there has been a very slight loss in the proportion of the native born only. In Group D the proportion of native-born agricultural laborers, etc., in 1890 is 16.54 per cent as compared with 27.91 per cent in 1870, while there is a decrease during the same period from 7.32 per cent to 5.99 per cent in the proportion of foreign born who were so occupied. Among laborers (not specified) there has been a slight increase in the proportion of native-born workers and a considerable loss in that for foreign-born workers, while for the subgroup of servants, etc., the native born show a small loss and the foreign born a slight increase in the proportion.

It must be conceded, therefore, that, viewed from whatever standpoint, there has been a perceptible increase in the proportion of persons engaged in the higher grades of work in 1890 as compared with conditions 20 years earlier.

PUBLIC BATHS IN EUROPE.

BY EDWARD MUSSEY HARTWELL, PH. D., M. D.

Until within a few years neither American cities nor American philanthropists have considered it necessary to maintain public bathing establishments. In some instances, it is true, floating baths have been maintained during the summer months. The study of the necessitous condition of congested districts in New York, Chicago, Boston, and other large cities has led to a discussion, by sanitarians and others interested in municipal housekeeping, as to the feasibility of providing bathing facilities which should be available the year round in tenementhouse and other crowded sections. Within two years appropriations have been made by New York, Chicago, Boston, Buffalo, and the town of Brookline, Mass., for the erection and maintenance of public bath houses. Those in Buffalo and Brookline have been finished and are already in use. It is probable that the policy thus inaugurated will become general and popular wherever in this country large numbers of people are crowded together under conditions unfavorable to cleanliness, comfort, and health.

Inasmuch as the policy of maintaining public bath houses at municipal expense has commended itself to the authorities and taxpayers in most European countries and has become firmly established during the last forty years, and inasmuch as the best planned and most successful of our private undertakings in this field bear witness to the influence of European example, the teachings of European experience in respect to people's, workmen's, and school baths can hardly fail to prove helpful and instructive to those who are endeavoring to ameliorate the conditions due to urban crowding in the United States.

The purpose of the following pages is to give some account of the origin and history of the public bath house movement in certain of the leading industrial countries of western Europe, and to show what the experience of cities like Glasgow, Manchester, London, Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest teaches as to the best methods of locating, planning, and maintaining baths for the people. It would be impossible in the space available to describe or to give a complete list of the public bathing establishments in Europe or even in England alone, where the movement had its beginnings. It must suffice, therefore, to outline the general features of European policy in regard to municipal baths; to compare the leading types of bath and wash houses in Great Britain

and on the Continent in respect to their structural peculiarities, the variety and extent of the facilities afforded by them, and the amount. of the pecuniary burden assumed by public authorities for their erection and maintenance, and to indicate in some measure the extent to which employers of labor, profiting by municipal example, have undertaken to provide their workmen with facilities for bathing.

The city of Liverpool is usually credited, and rightly it would seem, with being the first considerable European city to establish a bath house for the benefit of the people at public expense. In the year

1794 the Corporation of Liverpool purchased a private swimming bath establishment at the end of the New Quay, at a cost of about £4,000 ($19,466), and expended £1,000 ($4,867) additional in embellishments and in making large alterations from the original plan. These baths were removed in 1820 to make way for the Prince's Dock. In 1828 St. George's Baths, so called, were erected by the Corporation at a cost of nearly £25,000 ($121,663). This establishment is still in use and is known as the Pier-Head Bath House. It is a river-side bath. At various times the enlargement and improvement of the establishment have been proposed, but thus far the plans for remodeling it have not been carried into effect. It is probable that this establishment will be demolished or remodeled in the near future.

By reason of its being a pioneer establishment the following facts concerning the Pier-Head Bath in Liverpool are given in this connection: The total cost of the building and of keeping it in repair, up to 1895, according to official reports, amounted to £43,660 ($212,471). The establishment includes two swimming baths, one 46 feet 6 inches by 27 feet in area, and the other 40 by 27 feet; also two small private plunge baths, eleven private tub baths, two vapor baths, and one douche bath. Filtered salt water from the Mersey is used in all these baths, except one private bath tub in which fresh water is employed. From the beginning of May until the end of September the swimming baths are open on week days from 6 a. m. until 9 p. m., and on Sundays from 6 to 9 a. m. During the months of April and October they are open on week days only; on Saturdays from 8 a. m. until 9 p. m.; on other days they are closed at 7 p. m. From November until the end of March these baths are open from 8 a. m. until 7 p. m. from Mondays to Fridays, and on Saturdays from 8 a. m. until 9 p. m. They are not open on Sundays. The private hot and cold baths and vapor and shower baths of this establishment are open during the same days and hours as are specified above for the swimming baths. The scale of charges for sea-water baths is as follows:

Tickets for the public plunge or swimming bath from October to the end of March, and from 6 to 8 a. m. from April to the end of September, are sold for 4 shillings (974 cents) per dozen. A private warm bath of fresh water costs 1 shilling (243 cents). The women's plunge baths, two tub baths, and the douche bath are now closed, being out of repair.

In 1892 the plunge baths were used by 44,291 bathers, 38,183 being men and 6,108 women. In the same year the number of vapor baths was 604 for men and only 8 for women; of warm baths, 2,598 for men and 280 for women; of cold baths at 1 shilling, 885 for men and 55 for women. But it should be said that the total number of bathers was smaller in 1892 than in any other year from 1890 to 1895, with the exception of 1894. During the six years in question the total receipts. of the establishment exceeded the expenditures by £914 ($4,448).

The Pier-Head Bath House is the most costly of the Liverpool bathing establishments. Next to it comes the Cornwallis Street Bath, which cost for site, building, and furnishing the sum of £27,945 ($135,994). It was opened in 1851.

On the 25th of May, 1842, the Corporation of Liverpool opened the Frederick Street Baths and Washhouse, which cost £2,648 ($12,886) to build and furnish. It was the first public bath having a washhouse in connection with it in Great Britain. It comprised private tub baths, a vapor bath, washhouse for infected clothing, washhouse for ordinary clothing, drying rooms, administrative portion, reading room, and superintendent's house. In 1854 the establishment was reconstructed, and the baths, reading room, and the superintendent's house were done away with, since which time it has been maintained as a washhouse only. It stands in the books as having cost £4,451 ($21,661). At present it contains washing and drying accommodations for 60 washers. In the period 1890-1895 the average annual number of washers using it was 16,268, and its maintenance involved an average annual loss of £171 (8832).

The Frederick Street Washhouse owed its erection to the example of a benevolent woman, who during a cholera epidemic established a small washhouse at her own cost for the benefit of poor people in an infected district.

In 1849 the Corporation of Liverpool erected two new establishments. It is said that the example of Liverpool was followed by the erection of a bath and wash house in London in 1844. London was credited with the possession of 13 establishments in 1854.

In 1846 the first baths and washhouses act was passed by Parliament. This act authorized municipal corporations and parochial governing boards to raise loans for the purpose of erecting and maintaining baths and washhouses for the benefit of the poorer classes, provided that such establishments should be built and managed by a local board of commissioners. At present the Corporation of Liverpool, through its baths committee, maintains nine establishments under the provisions of the act of 1846 and its amendments.