As regards foreigners, among those who appear to be the most active buyers of real estate are the Germans, Italians, and Jews, but also the Poles in towns such as Detroit and Milwaukee, the Bohemians in Chicago, and the Scandinavians in Duluth and Minneapolis-St. Paul. The great effort made to become house-owners is frequently mentioned in the town reports, a special impulse to incur a present sacrifice being doubtless often found in the confidence with which a future rise in the value of land is anticipated. When a customary local type of building is for the accommodation of more than a single family, the dwelling is still often purchased by small owners and one or more tenements, as the case may be, are then sublet. This would be the usual and, indeed, under local conditions, the almost necessary practice in such towns as New York and even Boston, but subletting part of what is designed for the accommodation of a single family, or the introduction of a disproportionate number of lodgers and boarders, is also apt to follow on purchase, as among the Poles in Milwaukee. In general it may be observed that the practice of purchasing dwellings by wage-earners in the United States has assumed large proportions; that it is regarded as a satisfactory feature of the urban situation; and that, in spite of the large transient element of the population, it is apparently increasing.

[In the comments made on conditions found, some interesting problems of house rents are suggested, page xxi:]

The normal difficulties of standardizing dwelling accommodation in the United States are increased by the special importance that attaches there to what is understood by "location," a quality that every town both in the Old and the New World exhibits in some measure, but one which assumes a distinctive character when segregation is apt to follow not only the more usual broad distinctions of class and income but also minor subdivisions due to race and color. In general, however, the rental differences due to these forms of segregation are less marked than the differences due to the character and general advantageousness of the dwellings themselves.

The most conspicuous illustration of this is found in the housing conditions of the negroes who, although as a class they generally have to pay somewhat more than the white man for identical accommodation, are found frequently paying a lower range of rent, not because the individual houses occupied by them are more moderately rented and really cheaper, but rather because those which they are able to secure rank often amongst the older, and, more uniformly, among the less desirable properties. Such conditions are illustrated, for instance, in Baltimore or Savannah. When, as in New York City, much the same class of dwellings are in colored as in white occupation, a somewhat higher level of rent is generally paid by the former class of tenant, even in recognized colored districts and always in districts which are still predominantly white. . .

[Page xxiv] As regards housing accommodation in general, there is much evidence of an activity of competition among owners and builders and of a degree of material prosperity that are tending very widely to raise its standard. Thus, although the areas of deterioration and congestion frequently found and the occasional rapidity with which the character alike of the buildings and of districts is apt to change for the worse in the racial kaleidoscope of American towns, militate against improvement, the general standard is being distinctly raised. Powerful influences to this end are found in the increasing facilities for transit, including nearly everywhere electric tramway systems, and in some cases in the construction of bridges and tunnels by which physical barriers of the past are being still further overcome. Of the power of these influences New York is itself perhaps at once the most important and the most striking example. But a more fundamental explanation of this improvement is found in the higher standard of demand that follows from an increasing prosperity. The demand for improved housing itself is, indeed, a natural accompaniment of similar changes that are taking place as regards, for instance, amusements, clothing and food, in all of which a great variety appears to be resulting from a vast and an increasing effective demand. In other directions analogous changes are manifest, and just as mansions are becoming more splendid and middle-class homes more replete with comfort, so cottages and smaller homes are becoming more attractive and more convenient. Congested areas of crowded dwellings are, it is true, manifest and glaring exceptions to this rule, while the not infrequent practice of building more flimsily and the large number of dwellings still being erected for three or more families are opposed to it; but the general tendency, especially as regards the dwellings in the occupation of the more skilled workmen, is nevertheless towards a marked improvement.