60 
ASCHAFFENBURG. 
of interest. Several firms conduct pension funds independently of the 
insurance law for the benefit of old workpeople. After 25 years of service 
employees become entitled to pensions of 25s. a month, and after 30 years 
of service to 30s., while widows also receive grants, and allowances are made 
to orphans under certain conditions. The workpeople pay contributions from 
an early age, and the employers add a third or a half on their own account. 
One firm has a savings and loan bank which all workpeople are required to join. 
The weekly deposit is 30 pfennige (3¿c?.), which is deducted from the wages, 
and the firm adds two-thirds of this amount in every case. Loans may be con 
tracted to the extent of the deposit, to a maximum of £5, and they are repay 
able at from Is. to 4s. per week, interest of 3 per cent, being charged. At some 
factories, canteens are kept, at which wholesome food may be bought at cost price, 
or where food brought from home may be warmed for dinner. 
Housing and Rents. 
In Aschaffenburg proper, disregarding the suburb of Damm, there is no 
distinctively industrial quarter. There are districts in which professional and 
commercial families specially live, but the working classes are found wherever 
rents are within their means, and not in any one quarter. Only the district 
known as Damm, which is now incorporated in the municipality of 
Aschaffenburg, is exclusively industrial in character. 
The great majority of working-class households live in tenements or one- 
family houses of three rooms and a kitchen. The Aschaffenburg kitchen is 
almost invariably very small and incapable of use either as a living or a bed 
room. One-room tenements are so rare as to be of no account, while tenements 
of four rooms are entirely beyond the means of most working people. Ho 
classification of the dwellings of the tow» exists, but of the 1,002 tenements 
contained in the 257 houses built during the years 1901 to 1905, 13'6 per cent, 
were of two rooms and kitchen, and 59'0 per cent, were of three rooms and 
kitchen. The division was as follows :— 
Year. 
No of 
houses 
built. 
No. of Tenements. 
Two rooms 
and 
kitchen. 
1901 
1902 
1903 
1904 
1905 
24 
39 
65 
44 
85 
Total 1901-5 
257 
14 
17 
31 
19 
56 
Three rooms 
and 
kitchen. 
54 
83 
135 
117 
202 
137 
591 
728 =.72*7 per cent. 
Four rooms 
and 
kitchen. 
Five to seven 
rooms and 
kitchen. 
12 
20 
54 
30 
60 
176 
6 
15 
34 
19 
24 
98 
274=27*3 per cent. 
Total. 
86 
135 
254 
185 
342 
1,002 
These figures, of course, cover dwellings of every class. More definite 
testimony is borne to the predominant size of working-class dwellings by the 
enumeration of the rents of 340 separate tenements made for the purpose of this 
report and determined chiefly by visitation. Only one of these tenements* con 
sisted of a single room ; 44, or 12 9 per cent., consisted of two rooms with 
kitchen ; 275, or 80‘9 per cent., of three rooms with kitchen, and 20, or 6"0 per 
cent., of four rooms with kitchen. There are no basement dwellings, but attic 
dwellings are very common. 
An ancient town, Aschaffenburg has its full portion of neglected, dilapi 
dated and otherwise out-of-date property. There are narrow Gassen or alleys 
m which the sun is rarely seen, and the houses are rickety without and 
decayed within ; below, two contiguous blocks may be two feet apart, 
and above, at the eaves, they may touch, apparently depending upon each 
other for support. In such old streets the houses are often built round 
small courtyards not more than 12 feet square. They make picturesque