344 
MANNHEIM. 
provide dormitories for single and for foreign workmen. At the other side of 
the town, in the Rheinau and Neckarau suburbs, houses have been built of late 
years in considerable numbers by the chemical and rubber works. Here even 
more than at Waldhof the paucity of private dwellings and the relatively high 
rents of those which existed induced, and in some cases compelled, the 
employers to incur large expenditure in this way. 
The rest of the Rheinau and Neckarau workpeople live in the villages out 
in the open country and to a smaller extent in the town. Even in the villages 
rents often run as high as 80s. a month (equal to 7 s. a week) for two or three 
rooms and a kitchen. One large Neckarau firm encourages its workpeople to 
acquire their own dwellings by advancing money without interest to the amount 
of £50 ; the rest they are expected to save. Of nearly 1,000 married men 
employed by this firm 16 per cent, own their own dwellings. These employers 
seldom look for a profitable return upon their building enterprises in the form 
of interest—one of the largest of them only receives If per cent, and is satisfied 
with that—but the collateral advantage of having near at hand a body of 
workpeople who are not so ready (perhaps, also, not so able) to change their 
employment as are the unattached workers resident in the town, is held to 
outweigh the monetary loss. The Administration of the Baden State Railways 
also provides a considerable number of its employees with dwellings ; the 
smaller officials as a rule live rent free, while workmen are expected to pay 
about 4&. a week. Altogether more than a thousand working-class households, 
representing five times that number of individuals, live in dwellings provided 
by private employers at a cost much less than ordinary tenancy would entail. 
Across the river at Ludwigshafen the Baden Aniline and Soda Company has 
likewise a considerable colony of working-men’s houses. 
For many years—indeed, ever since Mannheim began to rank with the 
great industrial towns—the lodger question has proved one of the most difficult 
factors in the housing problem, and has continuously engaged the attention of 
the authorities. Where a working-class household inhabits a tenement of two 
rooms and a kitchen, it is a very common practice to let one of the rooms having 
a separate entrance from the landing to either one or two lodgers. The amount 
paid varies according to the district and the character of the accommodation. 
From 3s. to 4g. a week for bed and morning coffee is a usual price where a room 
is let to two persons ; a lower figure denotes an inferior household, while as 
much as 6s. and 7s. 6d. is charged when the lodger has the sole use of a room. 
The usual price for lodging and full board, which is an exceptional arrange 
ment, is 10s. 6d. to 15s. per week. There is, however, a large class of poorly 
paid workpeople—outdoor labourers and others, many of them Italians—who 
are content with very simple and inexpensive housing. They congregate in tene 
ments which correspond somewhat to the “ model lodging-houses ” of English 
towns, and, like them, need to be duly registered ; they pay 2s. a week for a 
bed, sleep four or more in a room according to its dimensions, and cook their 
own food, which they bring home every day, on the common stove. 
Under the regulations of November 10, 1904, now in force, stringent control 
of lodging-houses is exercised by the Police Authority acting through the 
Bezirksamt. No person can let rooms for payment without first obtaining police 
sanction. On application for permission being made, the tenement is visited by 
“ controllers,” with a view to learning whether the rooms intended for lodgers 
comply with the regulations. The first requirement—and this is a peculiar merit 
of the Mannheim lodging regulations—is that the letting of a room to lodgers shall 
leave the members of the family themselves all the accommodation called for by 
considerations of health and morality, and where this condition is not complied 
with, sanction is at once refused. In particular, it is required that the number 
of rooms left over—the kitchen disregarded—shall allow of the separation of 
the sexes and of each member of the family above 12 years of age sleeping 
alone, though two children under 12 years may use one bed. The result of 
this regulation is that only in rare cases can more than one room be set apart 
for lodgers, and to that extent lodger-keeping as a systematic profession is dis 
couraged. As to the lodgers themselves, it is required that they shall sleep 
apart from the rest of the household, save in cases specially sanctioned by the 
police authority ; no room may be let to lodgers which can only be approached