This object is available for free download. According to good scholarly practice, when reproducing or using the images, please cite the source and name the Vienna Library in City Hall as the owning institution.
For no class of workers is the question of housing
of such vital importance
than for the home workers. For home workers, their
home is also their place of labor. If it is cramped,
they must live, sleep, eat and
carry out their professional work in the same room.
The long working hours typical of home-based labor
carry out his professional work. The long working hours associated with
home workers, the large number of children in home-
working families, the involvement of family members, and the
installation of machines exacerbate this problem.
Our survey shows that the typical home
of a home worker is a Viennese proletarian dwelling, consisting
only of a room and a kitchen. Even if it is already
thought of as to small by
the married factory worker who goes out to work outside the home,
it is even more so for the home worker,
who not only spends his private life here,
but also his professional life. The
differences within the individual branches of home-based labor are
very small here. In all cases, the living room-kitchen-apartment arrangement prevails.
In addition, there are often dwellings that consist only
of a cabinet and a kitchen, so that 43.9 per cent of
home workers’ dwellings consist of only one room other than the kitchen,
which then serves as a bedroom, living room and
workroom. Only pieceworkers have apartments
consisting of a room, a cabinet and a kitchen.
However, this occupation, which requires
own workshop equipment, frequent employment of
auxiliary staff and, to a greater extent, that of
women and children, requires more space. The
fact that a separate room is used as a workshop in addition to the
actual living quarters, is only found among piece masters.
And even then only to a very limited extent.
and thus already belongs to the better dwellings, is found
at the pieceworkers, but also frequently in the laundry industry,
as well as in clothing manufacture, embroidery
and paper manufacture. It is also particularly
to the large number of children of female home workers, and are still
proletarian dwellings.
Larger flats, which could be considered somewhat more comfortable
can be found to a greater extent only in embroidery,
where it can be explained by the influx of people from
middle class. But even there they are
a minority. Cases of three or four rooms next to the
kitchen, where a practical separation of work and
living spaces would be possible, remain absolutely isolated,
as are cases of a detached house inhabited by home workers.
All the more frequent are the cases of the most extreme
housing deficiencies.
Families of home workers who only have one room,
a kitchen, whose refuge is a cellar or
the poorhouse, female home workers who pursue their profession as
subtenants or lodgers. For example,
in embroidery, where it is often the case that the only living space
– a room, a cabinet or a kitchen – can be explained by the larger
number of single younger female home workers,
and in the knitting and hosiery industry, the appalling housing state
in rural areas that make it so frequent that entire families of home workers
live in only one
room. The number of female home workers who are
subtenants is particularly high in the embroidery industry,
where they work during the day on rented beds, are more common among
tailors, embroiderers and felt shoe stitchers.
More than a tenth of all female home workers are forced
their me.ager earnings to further reduce their living space by taking in
subtenants. This is most common in the chemical industry,
where wages are somewhat higher, but the irregularity of the wage
forces workers to look for a permanent
source of income. The same applies to the clothing industry.
In embroidery, it is precisely the somewhat
slightly larger apartments that make it possible to take
in
lodgers. In paper garment manufacturing,
low wages are a compelling factor, even though it is precisely here that
there are found families with the most children. In general,
the better apartments that are located next to the worst apartments
are most frequently found, corresponding to the social differences, in the
the embroidery industry, then also among pieceworkers, while
in most other branches of home labor,
the standard of living is more even, evenly low.
by the Labor Statistics Office from 1901, the living conditions
of home workers were more favorable than they are today—at that time,
three-room apartments were the norm for home workers.
In contrast, according to the survey from that time, 16 percent of home
workers took in lodgers,
compared to only 11 percent according to our survey.
The housing conditions in the individual
branches of home labor are further exacerbated by the
circumstances of production. In the clothing and linen manufacture
and knitwear production, the noise of the
sewing or knitting machines, dust and wool fibers, in
felt shoe production, felt dust, in paper manufacture and
chemical industry, the smell of rubber and adhesives,
in leather goods manufacturing, the smell of hides and leather
fill the air. In all cases, there is material that takes up a lot of space
in rubber coat production, there is a constant fire hazard due to
handling petrol – all this in
apartments that often consist of only one room and a kitchen,
where two rooms and a kitchen are considered the better
apartments, which are also restricted by the presence of
subtenants. In these dwellings,
women have the hopeless task of keeping the household in order, alongside
their professional work – usually more
difficult than if they were to work outside the home
– to provide the children with a place to play or study,
and ensure they get a good night’s sleep. This is precisely what many
women hope to gain from working at home: to combine
household and
motherly duties with their professional work, which is
being made impossible through the narrowness of the
flats as well as the combination of work, sleeping and
living spaces for adults and children.
Only by considering the housing conditions
the picture of the social conditions
under which home workers live and work is completed.