=A World Apart.= The workers live in a world apart. Unconsciously they drift together. They talk each other’s language; they understand each other’s point of view. In every town and city we find groups of the workers living to themselves. The work which men do inevitably groups them together; and social life centers so completely about their work that it is really the factory and mill that mark out the lines and define the limits within which the classes must live. Consequently, in our American cities we find such designations as these: “Shanty Town,” “Down by the Gas Works,” “Across the Tracks,” “Murphy’s Hollow,” “Tin-Can Alley,” “Darktown,” “On the Hill,” “Out by the Slaughter-Pen,” “Over on the West Side,” and “Down in the Bottoms.” Just think of your own town, and you probably can add some new phrase that tells where your laboring group lives. In one Western town the community was divided by the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks. The boys in the school on the north side of the tracks were all known as “Sewer Rats.” On the opposite side of the town they were known as “Depot Buzzards.” Whenever one group met the other there was always a war. A friend tells of a similar condition in a Canadian village where the Scotch boys were banded against the Irish and the Irish against the Scotch. Whenever the Macks met the Micks, or the Sandys met the Paddys, there was a row. A large part of this classification is temporary and need not be considered very seriously. Underlying it, however, is the deeper fact that we have come to recognize that there is a world of the workers, and that it is a world apart. In this world of the workers the rewards and the profits of toil are barely adequate to take care of the needs of the families of the workers. It is assumed that in pre-war times it required from $800 to $900 a year to support a family in the average American community. Since 1914 the cost of living has increased approximately 60 per cent. It is estimated that even to-day with the advances that have been made in the wages by nearly all industries, 61 per cent. of the workers of America are receiving an average wage of less than $800 a year. “Shanty Town” and that section “Down by the Gas Works” have been built of poor material and allowed to become dilapidated not because the people living there like that sort of thing, but because the returns for the labor of these people are totally inadequate for their needs. The housing and living conditions of the people who live in the world of the workers is determined by the wages which they receive. [Illustration: McGraw-Hill Company. The work which men do inevitably groups them together.]