350 
MÜLHAUSEN. 
are in the centre of the town, in quiet yards in which one occasionally comes 
across clusters of trees and stretches of green sward, but the larger and newer 
ones are on the outskirts or outside the octroi boundaries. 
The general impression which Mülhausen makes municipally, as dis 
tinguished from its industrial position, is that of a town of arrested develop 
ment. The town is unequally governed—in part well, in part indifferently 
—and there is evidently much leeway to be made up. The paving of the 
streets hos hardly been taken in hand seriously as yet, and away from the main 
thoroughfares the conditions of locomotion in bad weather are faulty, and 
good footways are rare. The drainage arrangements are inadequate, for a 
proper system of sewering has not been fully carried out, and only the newer 
houses are supplied with water-closets. 
The waterworks and electric light and power works which supply the 
town are in municipal hands, but the gas works and tramways are private 
undertakings. The town also owns the abattoir, baths and washhouses, a 
theatre, and a zoological garden, and it conducts a savings bank, an information 
agency, a house bureau, and a labour registry. 
Probably it is lack of resources that retards Mülhausen’s municipal develop 
ment, though another reason is its comparative poverty in communal lands. 
When the town was incorporated with France in 1798 the citizens disposed of 
their public lands, fearing that they might be appropriated, and Mülhausen passed 
naked into French hands. This absence of real estate has been a great evil, for 
Mülhausen has had to buy dearly as each new need has arisen. The mistake is 
being rectified, however, for the Town Council has of late years purchased a 
good deal of land both to use and to hold, £163,000 having been spent in this 
way since 1902, apart from the cost of land immediately needed for street 
purposes. The municipal expenditure per head increased between 1894 and 
1904 from 18a. 4c/. to £l 18a. 8d. 
The wages of municipal labourers in every department have been increased,* 
public works have been systematically taken in hand for the occupation of the 
unemployed ; while an “old men’s gang” has been formed, into which are 
drafted outdoor labourers who are unfit for the heaviest work. Further relief in 
taxation has also been afforded to persons in receipt of small incomes. By the 
law of Alsace-Lorraine every person receiving 700 marks (£35) yearly in wages, 
salary, or emoluments is liable to State income tax, and according to the amount 
of the State tax is the subsidiary income tax levied by the communes for local 
purposes. Towns which levy octroi are, however, allowed to exempt incomes up 
to 1,300 marks (£65) from the payment of State income tax and to make the 
deficit claimable by the Treasury a charge on the octroi dues. Strassburg carries 
the exemption to 1,000 marks, Mülhausen began with 1,000 marks, but now 
goes to the maximum figure, and pays the State £3,500 a year in lieu of some 
9,500 persons, nearly all working people, who would otherwise have been liable 
for income tax. One of the most important reforms in municipal administra 
tion has been the introduction of a professional paid Mayor, a change which 
brought Mülhausen into line with German usage. 
The general level of wages in Mülhausen is not high (though in 
the smaller industrial towns of Alsace still lower rates are paid) and the 
machinery of the poor law and the many agencies of philanthropy are, even 
in normal times, charged with a great and pressing work of relief. The 
public expenditure on indoor and outdoor relief reported by the Poor Law 
Administration for the year 1904-5 was £20,414, representing 4s. 4^d. 
per head of the population, as compared with 3s. Q^d. expended on the same 
oehalf in Elberfeld, the home of reformed Poor Law Administration, while 
the number of individual cases of outdoor relief was equal to 11*4 per l,00u of 
the population, against 7*4 at Elberfeld. In addition to the ordinary forms of 
relief, soup is distributed every winter to 600 or 700 poor children in the 
elementary schools, a “ forest school ” is maintained during the summer for the 
benefit of sickly children, who learn, eat, and sleep in the open air ; and the 
See infra, “ Kates of Wages.”