BREMEN.
101
An interesting light was thrown upon the earnings of manual workers
in Bremen by the Municipal Commission which investigated the housing conditions
of the poorer classes in 1904. The incomes of 939 families were
tabulated, and it was found that in 55*5 per cent, of the cases the earnings of
the head of the family were not supplemented by earnings of wife or children,
in 14 7 per cent, of the cases the wife earned, in 26*5 per cent, the children
earned, and in 3*2 per cent, both wife and children earned.
The total family income, including profits from lodgers, fell into the
following groups :—
Yearly Income.
£30 and under
From £30 to £40
„ £40 „ £50
„ £50 „ £60
» £60 „ £75
„ £75 „ £100
Over £100
Number of
Families.
106
95
230
206
159
90
53
939
Percentage of the
whole.
113
10-1
246
219
16-9
9-6
5*6
100-0
Housing and Rents.
The fact has already been noted that the historical type of dwelling-house
in Bremen is the single-family house, and this holds good, within limits, for
rich and poor alike. Fewer working-class families, it is true, live in houses of
this class than formerly, yet Bremen still continues to be essentially a town of
small buildings ; though the four or five-story house has made its appearance it
is an alien introduction, and is stamped as such by its isolated and incongruous
position amongst the mass of lowlier structures.
How slight is the progress made in Bremen by the modern large house,
dominant elsewhere in Germany, will be seen from the following table showing
the number of households per building and the number of persons per building
at various periods from 1871 onward :—
Year.
Number of
Households per
Inhabited Building.
1871
1875
1880
1885
1890
1895
1900
1905
137
1-44
145
153
1-59
164
1-68
1-78
Number of Persons
per
Inhabited Building.
66
6-8
6- 9
7- 2
7-5
7-6
7-6
7-9
While the number of inhabitants per building has increased during the last
30 years, the increase is much less than that which has occuired in towns
in which the barrack-house predominates. There are fewei inhabitants per
bouse in Bremen than in any “ large town towns with a population
of 100 000) in Germany ; in 1900 Crefeld came nearest to Bremen’s average
of 7*6 persons per house with 13*96, and the next lowest figures were 15*82 in
Cologne, 16*97 in Strassburg, and 17*44 in Aachen.
It is noticeable that where the State of Bremen is susceptible to Prussian
influence, viz., at Bremerhaven, the one-family house is the exception. In
this town the number of households per building was 4*16 in 1905, and the
number of inhabitants per building 20*1, against 2*79 and 14*7 respectively in
1871. At Lehe, across the Prussian frontier, the large house is supreme.
The fact cannot be overlooked, however, that it becomes increasingly
difficult to preserve the single-family house except on such a scale as to size and
cost as only people of means can afford, and that houses for tne accommodation
of two and three families are nowadays built more and more. Nevertheless, in
