ialization has become important to the steel plant managers and this has made them seek semi-skilled labor which makes it hard for many immigrants to find work “Pittsburgh is a center for all manner of plants which turn iron and steel into manufactured forms—foundries, fabricating plants, electrical works, car shops, locomotive works. In them there is a greater call for mechanics than in the master industry; yet the tendency is towards specialization, speed, and semi-skilled labor” (The Pittsburgh 3).
The Moorhead Iron Mill is the largest one in the area, and it is at this junction where the main thoroughfare and railroad lines meet. I am luckier than many other immigrants because I live with my family in Basin Alley in a flat only we occupy. Many of my immigrant co-workers, especially the unmarried ones, live in Lodging Houses that are owned by the steel mills. In these houses the men sleep two and three to a bed, of which there are usually four or more in a room. Usually, the men who work during the day sleep in the lodging house at night while the nightshift workers use the same beds during the day. The men share a common kitchen. Though we live in Basin Alley, there are many problems from the urban living and congestion there. Our flats have no running water and no through ventilation, and there is no sewer connection. The open drains are built in front of the houses in the street and this causes the drains to overflow sometimes into our cellar and basement kitchen because people throw all kinds of debris, from old shoes to tin cans in the sewer. When we go to the toilet, we use the dry vaults that are located outside, but they are very near the residences. Often, people get very ill because of the lack of sanitation “A Hillside Battery of Disease: Thirteen dry unsewered vaults are lined in a row. Waste water drains down over the embankment, alongside the tracks where the through Baltimore an
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