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Two years ago a committee of women representing a score of civic organizations—the Women’s Municipal League, the Women’s Department of the National Civic Federation, the Civitas Club of Brooklyn, the Women’s City Club, the League of Catholic Women, etc.—made a careful study of forty of the school buildings of New York City; they reported that twenty out of these forty were fire-traps, old wooden buildings with narrow stairways and no fire escapes. Sanitation was reported “bad” and “wretched” in twenty-one of these schools, and “fair” in eleven more. Twenty-one out of thirty-six were in need of repairs, twenty-seven had only dark basement playgrounds, and so on. I quote a few phrases, just to give you the flavor of these reports:

Boys’ toilets terrible; no basins and towels.... Toilets old and in bad condition; foul air unavoidable.... Plumbing too old to operate, inadequate and unsanitary; few basins and no towels.... Garbage dump nearby, inexcusable menace to health and comfort of the children.... Twelve toilets for twelve hundred boys, old, bad conditions, bad odor. No repairs in years, furniture and woodwork almost falling to pieces.... Fearfully dilapidated; paint and repairs needed on walls; stairs worn down to danger point.... Buildings so old as to be beyond repair, should be abandoned.... Insufficient lighting and ventilation; two rooms with only one window, eight rooms with only two windows.... Fire escapes incomplete and badly constructed.... Wooden buildings, no fire escapes reported.