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STETTIN. . 455 
According to an estimate of the local Trades Council there are about 5,600 
workpeople employed in the tailoring trade in Stettin. The great bulk of these 
work for small employers, of whom there are two classes. The one includes 
Heimarbeiter (home workers), men who, after serving their apprenticeship 
and becoming journeymen tailors, have set up their own workshop, where they 
execute orders for the “ bespoke ” trade, with or without the assistance of a 
journeyman, to whom they pay a time-wage of 15s. to 18s. per week. These 
men are also spoken of as Selbstständige Arbeiter, or workmen on their own 
account, an expression which conveys a truer notion of their economic position 
than does the term Heimarbeiter, which does not mean quite the same thing as 
“ homeworker ” in the English sense. 
The second class of small employers are middlemen pure and simple, who 
may or may not have learnt the tailoring trade themselves, but employ women 
and girls as well as journeymen in executing orders for large firms of ready 
made clothiers, of whom there are several in Stettin. The men of this class are 
known as Massenschneider, and some of them employ from 30 to 50 workpeople in 
a workshop besides giving out work to be done at home. Journeymen tailors in 
workshops of this kind are paid the same rate of time wages as those employed 
by the class previously described, viz., 15s. to 18s. per week. Their hours of 
labour, according to statistics compiled by the local Trades Council, are from 
14 to 16 per day. 
Housing and Rents. 
On anyone more or less familiar with urban housing conditions in Germany 
some days spent in visiting the working-class dwellings of Stettin are calculated 
to produce the impression that few large cities in Germany have been more 
successful in housing the bulk of their population on so limited a proportion 
(less than one-tenth) of the available space, while yet maintaining the appear 
ance of being entirely—or almost entirely—free from congested areas. It seems 
doubtful whether this could have been so well achieved under any other system 
than that which makes it possible to erect working-class tenements in any part 
of a town—however fashionable—without apparent detriment to the local 
amenities, by the simple expedient of concealing those tenements behind solid 
rows of better class houses. 
It will have been gathered from the reports on other towns that this system 
of utilising back lands for the erection of what are called Hinterhäuser or back 
houses, is a more or less familiar feature in urban housing conditions all over 
Germany. In Stettin it may be said to be the outstanding feature, for in few, if 
any, other towns does it appear to have been so freely applied. The result is 
that more than the usual sprinkling of working-class families is to be found 
living in back-house tenements in almost any part of the town. There are, 
nevertheless, three districts which are predominantly working-class, in the sense 
that in most of their streets, not only the back-houses, but also the front houses, 
are largely occupied by working-class families. These districts are Grabow and 
Bredow, in the North, where the great shipyards are situated, and the low- 
lying pile-built district of Lastadie, on the eastern side of the river, largely 
inhabited by dock and riverside labourers, and practically the only part of 
Stettin where the appearance of the houses as well as of their occupiers suggests 
poverty and neglect. 
The character of the typical working-class tenement in Stettin calls for no 
particular comment. As in most German cities, it consists of three rooms—a 
general living room with a stove, a stoveless bedroom, and a kitchen, together 
with the usual Zubehör or appurtenances, consisting of a cellar compartment, 
the use of the common loft for drying laundry, a closet (usually shared with one 
or two other families on the same floor and situated on the stair landing) and, 
in the more modern houses, a separate vestibule. 
Returns as to the housing accommodation of 1,276 typical working-class 
families in Stettin, secured with the co-operation of the local Trades Council, 
show that 1,126 of these families occupy three-roomed tenements, while only 60 
■occupy two rooms and 90 four rooms. As a rule a three-roomed tenement in a