that at night the windows were "always shut tight." The babies subjected to differences of ventilation show corresponding variations in infant mortality rates.

TABLE 7.-DISTRIBUTION OF BIRTHS AND OF DEATHS DURING FIRST YEAR, AND INFANT MORTALITY RATE AMONG BABIES SURVIVING AT LEAST 1 MONTH, ACCORDING TO VENTILATION OF BABY'S ROOM.

1 Total number of babies less than 50; base therefore considered too small to use in computing rate.

A high death rate in badly ventilated homes can not be charged wholly to bad air. The mother who did not, or could not, provide proper ventilation was generally the mother without the means or the knowledge necessary to enable her to care for her baby properly in other respects, and yet the marked differences suggest that ventilation is itself a very important ally of the baby in its first year of struggle for existence.

In many rooms that were poorly ventilated, windows were not opened for the reason that the room was not properly heated and the houses themselves were flimsy and drafty. The problem in such houses is to keep warm. If the windows were frequently or constantly opened, the houses would be too cold to live in. In some localities the outside air is so laden with soot, ashes, dirt. and smoke that every effort is made to keep it out of the house.

The foreigners, who generally have the most miserable homes, are not dirty people who select bad living conditions through innate poor judgment, low standards, and lack of taste. The squalid homes which housed the natives and later the Germans and the Irish until the present type of immigrants came to do the more poorly paid work were the only homes available within the purchasing power of their low wages. The new immigrants demanded practically nothing and the owners did practically nothing in the matter of improving these homes, which naturally became more and more squalid as time went on. An excessive infant mortality rate and insanitary homes in unhealthful sections were found to be coexistent.

NATIONALITY.

GENERAL NATIVITY.

The investigation embraced 860 babies of native mothers (of whom 6 were negroes) and 691 babies of foreign mothers, making a total of 1,551. The infant mortality rate for the entire group was 134 per 1,000 live births; for the babies of native mothers 104.3, and for those of foreign mothers 171.3. The stillbirth rate for native mothers having children in 1911 was less than that for foreign mothers, being 52.3, as compared with 62.2 per 1,000 total births.

The line between the natives and foreigners is very sharply drawn in Johnstown. The native population as a rule knows scarcely anything about the foreigners, except what appears in the newspapers about misdemeanors committed in foreign sections. The report of the Immigration Commission' comments "on the attitude of the police department toward foreigners * * * with regard to Sunday desecration," and states that "the Croatians are accustomed to spend Sunday in singing, drinking, and noisy demonstrations. The police have been instructed to show no leniency on account of ignorance of the municipal regulations, and, without any attempt at explaining the laws, they arrest the offenders in large numbers." Again, it states: "They are arrested more often for crimes that make them a nuisance to the native population than for mere infractions of the law * * *. Few arrests are made for immorality among foreigners." "Sabbath desecration" is the crime foreigners are most frequently charged with.

Foreigners are employed largely in the less skilled occupations of the steel mills, which operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. At the time the investigation was made some of the men in the steel mills worked for a period of two weeks on a night shift of 14 hours, then two weeks on a day shift of 10 hours, and back again to the night shift of 14 hours for another two weeks, and so on. When shifts were changed, one group of men was required to work throughout a period of 24 hours instead of for the usual 10 or 14 hour period and another group had 24 hours off duty. Some departments of the steel mills, however, shut down on Sundays, and in some departments for certain occupations an eight-hour day prevails, but these more favorable conditions do not prevail among the majority of the unskilled foreign workers whose homes were visited.

The foreigners who work on a 24-hour shift in a mill on one Sunday frequently "desecrate" their alternate free Sabbath by "singing, drinking, and noisy demonstrations," in spite of the known danger

1 United States Immigration Commission Reports, Volume VIII, "Immigrants in Industries: Part 2, Iron and Steel Manufacturing in the East," p. 387. Reference is to Johnstown and is a very true picture of various immigrant institutions and of the comparative progress and assimilation of different races there. Although the immigration report was made five years before our investigation, conditions remain practically the same.

of arrest for "crimes that make them a nuisance to the native population" or for "Sabbath desecration," laws concerning which are strictly enforced in Johnstown; for example, children are not permitted to play in public playgrounds on Sunday and mercantile establishments are required to be closed on that day. Also, it is "unlawful for any person or persons to deliver ice cream, or to sell or deliver milk from wagon or by person carrying same, within the city on the Sabbath day, commonly called Sunday, after 12 o'clock m." The ordinance from which the foregoing sentence was quoted became a law on January 25, 1914.

SERBO-CROATIAN.

The foreign group having the highest infant mortality rate is the Serbo-Croatian1 where, as shown in the next table, infant deaths numbered 263.9 per 1,000 live births.

TABLE 8.-DISTRIBUTION OF BIRTHS, LIVE BIRTHS, AND DEATHS DURING FIRST YEAR, AND INFANT MORTALITY RATE, ACCORDING TO NATIONALITY OF Mother.

1 Total live births less than 50; base therefore considered too small to use in computing an infant mortality rate.

The men of the Serbo-Croatian group are fine looking and powerful and are employed in the heavy unskilled work of the steel mills and the mines. They greatly outnumber the women of their race in Johnstown, and a man with a wife frequently becomes a "boarding boss"; that is, he fills his rooms with beds and rents out sleeping space to his fellow countrymen at from $2.50 to $3 a month each.

1 A distinct and homogenous race, from a linguistic point of view, among Slavic peoples. They are divided into the groups "Croatian" and "Servian," on political and religious grounds, the former being Roman Catholics and the latter Greek Orthodox. Their spoken language is the same, but they can not read each other's publications, for the Croatians use the Roman alphabet, or sometimes the strange old Slavic letters, while the Servians use the Russian characters fostered by the Greek Church.

Three Krainers have also, for convenience, been included in this group. Krainers are Slovenians from the Austro-Hungarian Province of Carniola and are designated "close cousins of the Croatians but with a different though nearly related language" by Emily Greene Balch in her book entitled "Our Slavic Fellow Citizens."

The same bed and bedding is sometimes in service both night and day to accommodate men on the night and the day shifts of the steel mills.

The wife, without extra charge, makes up the beds, does the washing and ironing, and buys and prepares the food for all the lodgers. Usually she gets everything on credit and the lodgers pay their respective shares biweekly. These conditions exist to some extent among other foreigners, but are not as prevalent among other nationalities in Johnstown as among the Serbo-Croatians.

In a workingman's family, it is sometimes said, the woman's workday is two hours longer than the man's. But if this statement is correct in general, the augmentation stated is insufficient in these abnormal homes where the women are required to have many meals and dinner buckets ready at irregular hours to accommodate men working on different shifts.

The Serbo-Croatian women who, more than any of the others, do all this work are big, handsome, and graceful, proud and reckless of their strength. During the progress of the investigation, in the winter months, they were frequently seen walking about the yards and courts, in bare feet, on the snow and ice-covered ground, hanging up clothes or carrying water into the house from a yard hydrant.

Whether it harmed them to expend their force and vigor as they did could not be determined in individual cases, but their babies are the ones who died off with the greatest rapidity, their infant mortality rate being 263.9, as compared with the rates of 171.3 for all the foreign; 104.3 for the natives; and 134 for the entire group as shown in Table 8. Excluding babies of Serbo-Croatian mothers, the infant mortality rate for babies of foreign mothers is but 159.7.

ITALIAN.

The Italian mothers visited in Johnstown bore 75 children in 1911, 4 being stillborn. The infant mortality rate among the live born was 183.1, the highest of any racial group excepting the Serbo-Croatian, where it was 263.9.

The Italians have been in Johnstown somewhat longer than the Serbo-Croatians and they seem to have a little firmer grip on the community life there. Their homes are a shade better, a trifle cleaner, and somewhat less crowded than those of the Serbo-Croatians, although their hygienic standards seem little if any higher and they rank no better in literacy. The women do not perform the arduous duties that are the lot of so many of the Serbo-Croatian women; they have not the robust physique of the latter and the men are not found in those branches of the steel industry which require the extraordinary strength possessed by the Serbo-Croatians. The occupations of the Italian fathers were found to be more diversified than those of the Serbo-Croatians, some being fruit, grocery, or cheese merchants;

steamship agents; bricklayers, carpenters, or workers at other skilled and semiskilled trades.

SLOVAK, POLISH, ETC.

The infant mortality rate in the group designated "Slovak, Polish, etc.," is 177.1. In this group are included all the Slavic races represented in the investigation excepting the Serbo-Croatian. The babies of Slovak 1 mothers were found to be most numerous, there being 276 of them. There were 108 babies of Polish,2 2 of Bohemian, and 7 of Ruthenian mothers. In addition, one baby of a Scandinavian (Danish) mother was included, not because Scandinavians bear the least racial resemblance to the Slavic races, but because the few Scandinavians in Johnstown happened to be on about the same economic footing as the "Slovak, Polish, etc."

3

The rate for this group is lower than that for either the SerboCroatians or the Italians, but it is nevertheless very high and one exceeded by only a few European countries, as shown by the table on page 12.

Some of the "Slovaks, Poles, etc.," live in the same squalid sections as the Serbo-Croatians, and in the same type of inferior houses, but on the whole they have been in Johnstown longer, are more prosperous, and are therefore beginning to move from Cambria City and Woodvale, where formerly practically all lived, into more desirable sections. Those who have been in this country longest and intend to stay here are buying homes with large yards in the less crowded sections and are raising vegetables and flowers. Others, however, still remain in poor neighborhoods and sometimes buy houses there for from $300 to $600 each, built close together on rented ground.

Lodgers are by no means uncommon among the people in this group, but usually their homes are cleaner, less crowded, and possessed of more comforts than those of the Serbo-Croatians and Italians.

5

OTHER NATIONALITIES.

The British infant mortality rate in Johnstown is 129 and the German 127.7. The British and Germans in Johnstown are more prosperous than the Slavic, Magyar, Jewish, Italian, Syrian, and Greek peoples, and regard the others as "foreigners." It was strange

1 Slovaks occupy practically all except the Ruthenian territory of northern Hungary; also found in great numbers in southeast Moravia. They are the Moravians conquered by Hungary. In physical type no dividing line can be drawn between Slovaks and Moravians. It is often claimed that Slovak is a Bohemian dialect.

2 The west Slavic race native to the former Kingdom of Poland. For the most part they adhere to the Roman rather than the Greek Orthodox Catholic Church.

The westernmost division or dialect of the Czech and the principal people or language of Bohemia. Czech is the westernmost race or linguistic division of the Slavic (except Wendish, in Germany), the race or people residing mainly in Bohemia and Moravia.

Also known as Little Russians; live principally in southern Russia; also share Galicia with the Poles but greatly surpassed by Poles in number. In language and physical type resemble Slovaks. Generally Greek Orthodox, but a few are Greek Catholics of the Roman Catholic Church, whose priests marry, and are separated from other Roman Catholics by marked religious differences.

• English, Irish, Scotch, and Welsh included in the term British.