In the foregoing quotations, frequent reference is made to the filthy condition in which the dwellings of the foreign-born are kept. It is the current idea among a large class of people that extreme uncleanliness characterizes the great majority of immigrant homes. Unfortunately there is all too large a basis of truth for this impression. Yet there is undoubtedly much exaggeration on this point in the popular mind. The Immigration Commission found that out of every 100 homes investigated in its study of city conditions, 45 were kept in good condition, and 84 in either good or fair condition, though the foreign-born were inferior in this respect to the native-born. In many cases the filthy appearance of the streets in the tenement districts is due to negligence on the part of city authorities, rather than to indifference on the part of the householders. “In frequent cases the streets are dirty, while the homes are clean.”[206] Not only is it an error to suppose that all immigrants are filthy, but it is also untrue that all immigrants who are filthy are so from choice. While the standards of decency and cleanliness of many of our immigrant races are undoubtedly much below those of the natives, there are many alien families who would gladly live in a different manner, did not the very conditions of their existence seem to thrust this one upon them, or the hardship and sordidness of their daily life quench whatever native ambition for better things they might originally have had. In the foregoing paragraphs mention has been made of the boarder as a characteristic feature of life in the tenements. He is, in fact, a characteristic feature of the family life of the newer immigrant wherever found. Since so large a proportion of the modern immigrants are single men, or men unaccompanied by their wives (see p. 191), there is an enormous demand for accommodations for male immigrants who have no homes of their own. This demand is met in two main ways. The most natural, and perhaps the least objectionable, of the two, where there are a certain number of immigrant families of the specified race already in this country, is for a family which has a small apartment to take in one or more boarders or lodgers of their own nationality. In this way they are able to add to their meager income, and thereby to increase the amount of their monthly savings, or perhaps to help pay off the mortgage on the house if they happen to be the owners. The motive is not always a financial one, however, but occasionally the desire to furnish a home for some newcomer from the native land, with whom they are acquainted, or in whom they are interested for some other reason.[207] The second way of solving the problem is for a number of men to band themselves together, hire an apartment of some sort, and carry on coöperative housekeeping in one way or another. A description of these households will be given later (p. 247).