Americanization in the States: Immigrant Social Welfare Policy, Citizenship, and National Identity in the United States, 1908–1929

4. Americanizing the Home: Housing Reform and the California Home Teacher Act of 1915

4   • Americanizing the Home Housing Reform and the California Home Teacher Act of 1915 In California, Americanization initially centered on interventions in the labor market through the Commission of Immigration and Housing’s regulation of agricultural labor camps. However, the CCIH developed two other important programs, housing and education, that were like two sides of the same coin, reflecting progressive understandings of the home. This view of the home was both traditional—preserving the middle-class value of privacy—and progressive —asserting the state’s right to intervene in the home and regulate private property to protect the community against disease and disorder. While the commission’s housing program sought to clean up the exterior appearance of immigrants’ homes and neighborhoods, the education program tried to inculcate foreign-born women with new, Anglo-American values that would inspire immigrant families to transform their homes from within. Both programs were concerned with demonstrations of good citizenship through pride in and care for the home. However, the CCIH experienced far greater resistance to its efforts to change California’s housing laws than it did to its ideas about education for foreign-born adults. Believing that the social environment shaped individuals’ behavior and values , the commissioners defined clean and safe housing conditions as a crucial tool in assimilating the foreign-born into American society. Since immigrants frequently congregated (and were segregated) in poor neighborhoods, housing needed to be included in the commission’s Americanization work, both to improve immigrants’ standard of living and to better distribute foreign-born residents among the native-born population, where they would have more exposure to an “American” way of life. The commission’s housing division shared with the camp sanitation de66 Americanizing the Home 67 partment the problems of indifference on the part of local authorities and opposition from property owners, builders, and real estate interests. While the camp sanitation program was relatively successful in challenging employers’ right to an unregulated labor market, the commission’s housing policy was tentative because of the commissioners’ awareness of the strength of private housing interests and their reluctance to directly challenge the sanctity of private property ownership. Internal constraints also limited the housing program. CCIH commissioner James H. McBride’s distance from the main office in San Francisco (he lived in Pasadena) left the management of the division to the new executive officer, George L. Bell, who also had responsibilities running the commission ’s day-to-day operations.1 Unlike the camp sanitation division, which had a growing staff and a hands-on, San Francisco-based commissioner in Paul Scharrenberg, the housing division had one inspector, twenty-two-year-old Caroline Schleef.2 Despite these limitations, the commission initiated its policy of housing reform in the spring of 1914. Armed with the authority to enter “tenement houses, buildings and dwelling places” to ensure compliance with state and municipal building ordinances, Schleef regularly toured the state inspecting conditions in both urban and rural areas, although she visited cities more often than she did small towns. Schleef’s practice was to walk through neighborhoods , inspecting individual dwellings, talking to residents and sometimes property owners, and making lists of violations and what would be required for structures to come into compliance with state codes. These lists would be given to both the property owners and local health and/or building officials. Unlike labor camp inspectors, Schleef did not do cleanup work herself. Schleef’s initial surveys of working-class neighborhoods in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Fresno, Stockton, and several smaller cities in 1914 and 1915 revealed just how large a task the commission had set for itself in trying to improve housing conditions in California. Even the smallest towns had “shack districts,” and many small cities lacked sewer systems or garbage collection .3 Indoor plumbing was a luxury for many Californians living outside of urban areas. The state of California’s regulation of housing was minimal in 1914. The only state legislation covering structures was the Tenement House and the Hotel and Lodging House acts, and the state left enforcement to municipal health and building departments. Privately owned, single-family dwellings were not covered by any state legislation, but they were the responsibility of the municipalities in which the structures were located. The state was respon- 68 Americanization in the States sible for dwellings in unincorporated areas but lacked inspection and enforcement mechanisms. Public housing had not yet been...