Criminality and economic conditionsBonger, Willem Adriaan
General
Criminality and economic conditions
Bonger, Willem Adriaan
Crime -- Economic aspects
The third part has to do with the housing conditions of the
proletariat. “A lodging fit for a human being is the first requirement
for the bodily and mental welfare of the family; it is the prerequisite
for a well-regulated family life, and for the rearing of the children
to be moral men and women. The improprieties resulting from the
exigencies of insufficient lodgings are innumerable, and this condition
is an inexhaustible source of crime, prostitution, and vice of every
kind.” All the data prove that the proletariat, who, of all classes,
pay the highest rent, are the most miserably housed. In Berlin, for
example, the poorest classes have been shown to spend on an average a
quarter of their income for rent. In Hamburg the part of the income
that had to go for rent among the class whose income was from 600 to
1200 marks, in 1868 was 18.77%, in 1874 20.90%, in 1882 23.51%, and in
1892 24.71%, while the percentage remained the same or decreased for
all other classes. In order to make up the resulting deficit, resort is
often had to night-lodgings. “The disadvantages of subletting are
obvious. ‘Children of both sexes have to sleep with their parents, and
often with strangers, in the same room, often even in the same bed; the
advantages of domesticity are lost; the tavern offers more pleasant
entertainment than being crowded together with wife and children in one
room that must be shared with strangers, and in which the opportunity
for quarreling and fighting, in consequence of the narrow quarters, is
constant. It is the bad housing conditions that are the cause of the
increasing alcoholism, of the break-up of the family life, and of the
lack of education for the youth.’ (Braun).” [261]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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