Part 3

White illegitimates 1899 66,855 White illegitimates 1910 76,695 Colored illegitimates 1899 81,750 Colored illegitimates 1910 78,554

Thus we see that there was an actual increase of nearly 10,000 white illegitimate children from the year 1899 to 1910, or an increase of 14.7 per cent; but during the same time the white population had increased 24.7 per cent, so that there was an actual decrease in the percentage, according to population, of nearly 10 per cent. During the same period the colored population had increased 5.9 per cent, but the number of colored illegitimate children had decreased 3.9 per cent, there being actually a less number of colored illegitimate children in 1910 than in 1899, although the population had increased. It seems very probable that this is due to the fact that the great majority of the colored population in Porto Rico is to be found in the towns, where the school system is more efficient than in the country districts and where customs change more easily, due to wider associations and to more frequent and continued intercourse with people of other points of view.

In the country the custom has remained, with little change, due to the fact that the isolation of the country people and the comparatively small number of children in the rural schools has given little opportunity to work against the existing situation. Of the children from the ages of one to ten years there was only an increase of 1,397 white illegitimate children between 1899 and 1910, which was not anywhere near the rate of increase of the white population as a whole. During the same period there was an actual decrease in the number of colored illegitimate children between the ages of one and ten years, amounting to 7,717, or a total decrease of illegitimate children under 10 years of age of 6,320, which would lead us to believe that within the last ten years the births of consensual marriage and the number of illegitimate children have decreased much more rapidly than the total census figures would indicate.

In addition to the question of consensual marriages, we find that under the Spanish administration, when ecclesiastical marriage was the only form recognized, there were no divorces registered in the Island of Porto Rico. With the introduction of the civil marriage after the American occupation, and the institution of divorce laws and the recognition of divorce by the civil authorities, the question of divorce began to demand attention, and in 1910 we find a total of 1,246 divorces among the people in the Island of Porto Rico. About two thirds of these were women,[2] and the divorce question will undoubtedly in time bring as many problems in Porto Rico as it has in the United States.

[2] This would indicate that many of the divorced men had remarried and were listed in the census as married instead of divorced.

According to the last report of the Insular Chief of Police, it is estimated that there are in the Island of Porto Rico at the present time about 10,000 homeless children under 12 years of age who live by whatever means they are able, many of them begging or stealing, and most of them having no permanent lodging place, sleeping at night in boxes or on doorsteps, or wherever they happen to find a lodging place secure from the rain. These children are, for the most part, deserted and abandoned children of illegitimate parentage, or orphan children whose parents have left no provision for their care and education, and they constitute a fertile soil for the implanting of criminal tendencies and are ready material for older people of criminal habits. They constitute a danger to the security of the community, and if it were not for the relatively high death rate that is found among people of this class, the Island would soon be overrun by citizens brought up under these criminal-forming conditions. The Insular Government should take measures to reduce this danger by means of the compulsory industrial education of this class of boys and girls. There is enough Government land available to colonize them in different parts of the Island under the care of people trained in reformatory and industrial methods, and this should be done in order that they may become self-supporting individuals who will contribute to the comfort of the community, rather than parasites who live on the charity of others. There are any number of small industries in which they might be trained, as well as along agricultural lines, and the trades which lack skilled workmen in Porto Rico would be much benefited by adding to their number graduates of industrial trade schools, taken from children of this class; these schools should be operated by the Government, at Government expense, but could be made largely self-supporting by means of the sale of the services of the boys, or through the sale of the products turned out.

The living accommodations of the average rural family are very unsatisfactory, consisting, as they do, of a dwelling house of one room, or at the most, two. This reduced house space makes it necessary to eat and live and sleep in the same room, rendering impossible any degree of privacy on the part of any of the family. This condition in the case of growing boys and girls is very undesirable, particularly since it is a custom to take in as members of the family relatives, sometimes of a rather remote degree of relationship, in case they are left unprotected. Another feature of family life which tends toward degeneration and which is found to a great extent in Porto Rico, is the intermarriage between relatives within comparatively close degrees of consanguinity. The civil laws of Porto Rico prohibit the marriage of persons of closer degrees of relationship than first cousins, and the ecclesiastical laws of the Roman Church prohibit marriage within eight degrees of consanguinity. In the record of one family which produced 25 cases of insanity in two generations, it was found that there had been a considerable amount of intermarriage between relatives, one of the grandparents marrying a person who was prohibited by the ecclesiastical law on four different grounds on account of consanguinity. Ecclesiastical permission had been obtained to overcome these difficulties and the marriage took place. There is no doubt that close intermarriage and the failure to introduce new stock into the family tends to both mental and physical degeneration. And where families intermarry for generations, as we find to be the custom in a great many instances in Porto Rico, there can be no doubt of the ultimate disastrous outcome from this custom.

The average Porto Rican family lives very happily and contentedly, the parents displaying great affection for the children and for relatives even of a remote degree of relationship. In the case of the death of parents, relatives usually adopt or take charge of the children which may be left and bring them up as carefully as they would children of their own. The family group is naturally closer among Latin peoples than among Anglo-Saxon races, and this has tended to do away with some of the vices of family life which are found among Anglo-Saxon peoples, while the same circumstances have tended to increase other unsatisfactory conditions of family life peculiar to Latin races.

One of the features which, from the standpoint of society, may have an unfortunate result is the mixture of races in the family life. While this has not taken place to such an extent in the country districts as it has in the towns, nevertheless, a great many families in Porto Rico are composed of mixed races. The biological tendency in cases of mixed races, according to most authorities, is a decrease in the number of children in the family as generation succeeds generation, unless there is an addition of new blood to a considerable extent. This may possibly be one of the means which Nature has provided for solving the problem of overpopulation in Porto Rico, but there is the added fact that usually as the succeeding generations become fewer in regard to numbers, they also become less capable mentally and physically. The race question in Porto Rico will undoubtedly come to be one of the problems that has to be solved, and it will be more difficult of solution than the race problem in the United States, where the races are becoming more widely separated every year and where it is very infrequent to find persons of the two races in the same family. In Porto Rico the problem will be intensified because it is not merely a problem between races, but a race problem which involves the family organization in many cases. The government of Brazil has predicted that in a hundred years there will be no black inhabitants in the Brazilian republic, that they will be entirely assimilated by the white race or carried off by disease. The census report for Porto Rico shows a falling off in the black race of about 9,000 in the last ten years, and an increase of about 30,000 in the mixed or mulatto population. Thus the assimilation of the black population is gradually taking place, and whether this will in time lead to a complete assimilation, or whether the mixed race will become weakened through this racial intermarriage to such an extent that it will eventually refuse to propagate, is a question which only time can answer. There is no doubt, however, that this is one of the problems that must be confronted in Porto Rico.

RURAL HOUSING CONDITIONS

THE housing of a people is always a matter of prime importance in their social life and development. There is little progress until the housing conditions are comfortable and hygienic, and the development of the home and the family life depends to a great extent on the conditions under which a people lives. The housing conditions in Porto Rico, especially for the poorer classes, are far from satisfactory. The dwellings of the country people are described as follows, in the Report on the Housing Conditions in Porto Rico, published by the Insular Bureau of Labor in 1914:

"There are five general problems which the laborer or employer in tropical countries, who is anxious to build cheap but proper houses, has to meet. The first is to provide adequate protection against the heat. As in northern countries it is necessary to shut out the cold winds and generate and conserve artificial heat within the house, so in tropical countries it is equally important to let in the breezes and to clear out any artificial heat that may arise.

"The second problem is to provide protection against the frequent tropical rains. This is especially important in tropical countries that have a protracted rainy season, as it is often difficult to shut out the rain without also shutting out the fresh air.

"The third problem is the provision of adequate sanitary facilities. Due to the heat in southern countries and to the humidity that prevails during certain seasons of the year, this problem is more difficult of solution and likewise more important than in countries farther north.

"The fourth problem is that of securing cheap and durable building materials. In a land like Porto Rico where tropical shrubs and the palm are practically the only woods that the laborers are able to obtain, we must not expect the same solid, commodious habitations which are found in northern countries where the pine and hemlock abound.

"The fifth problem, perhaps as important as any of the preceding and certainly as difficult to remedy, arises partly from the generosity of nature herself. People can live in tropical countries in almost any form of habitation. Cold winters have not obliged the poorer classes to be adepts in house construction. Poverty has forced them to live as cheaply as possible. Naturally, the laboring classes engaged in tilling the soil still make their homes in the cheapest forms of huts. This problem has, therefore, three aspects--an over-indulgent climate, poverty, and a lack of opportunity by the poorer classes to learn better methods of house construction.

"In Porto Rico we have, in addition to the problems mentioned above, two special conditions which have influenced the form and quality of our laborers' houses. The first is that the seasonal character of many of our agricultural industries forces the laborers to migrate from one section to another in order to find work and, naturally, they are not inclined to go to the expense and exertion of building substantial homes. The second, and more important, arises from the fact that the greater part of our laborers do not own the land their houses are placed upon and, being subject to ejection at the will of their landlords, they have no incentive to beautify or improve their homes.

"According to the census of 1910, the urban territory of Porto Rico--that is, the places of 2,500 inhabitants or more--contained 224,620 inhabitants, or 20.1 per cent of the total population, while 893,392 inhabitants, or 79.9 per cent, lived in places of less than 2,500 inhabitants, and of these, 837,725 lived in strictly rural territory. Needless to state, the greater part of the rural inhabitants belong to the laboring classes and live in the types of rural homes described in this section.

"We have divided the habitations of rural laborers, according to their construction, into the following types: (1) Single houses of thatch, (2) single houses of wood and zinc, (3) tenements of wood and zinc.

"Most of the thatched huts in the rural sections have been built by the laborers who live in them. The land upon which these houses are built is, however, usually the property of some plantation or landowner. Only in the more inaccessible sections inland do the laborers who have built these thatched houses also own the land they are placed upon. It is the custom among the landowners to allow laborers who work for them to take the necessary materials--grass, sticks, palm-bark, etc.--from the land and build their huts. This is done, of course, with the consent of the landowner, and the huts so built are legally attached to the land and become the property of the landowner. As a matter of fact, the laborers who have built these huts claim them as their property and are allowed to live in them without charge or molestation so long as they work for the landowner when their services are needed. When a laborer who has built a hut leaves it and moves to another's land, the hut is claimed by the landowner and some other laborer is allowed to move into it. There are also some of these huts that have been built by the landowners at their own expense, but the plantation owners and other landowners who have gone into the business of building houses for their workmen usually construct a better type of house. The thatched hut, therefore, while it is legally a plantation house, is not usually so considered, either by the landowner or the laborer.

"If we judge the importance of a type of house from the number of people who live in it, this thatched hut is far more important than any other rural or urban type. The great mass of the rural laborers live in houses of this type and, as has been shown, fully three-fourths of the total laborers of the Island live in rural sections.

"The homes of the wealthy in all parts of the world are constructed to conform to the standards of the age and place in which they are erected, and to the personal desires of the occupants, regard being taken only of the absolutely necessary conditions of environment. The houses of the poor, on the other hand, are the direct product of local environment. The hut of the inland laborer of Porto Rico, the _jíbaro_, is a striking illustration of the effect of environment upon the type of house in which the poor live.

"The problem of obtaining cheap and durable building materials is a very difficult one for the poor laborers of Porto Rico. Hard woods are extremely scarce, and the poor inland laborer cannot afford to buy imported lumber, and, therefore, he has been obliged to utilize the coarse grasses and the products of the palm trees that are accessible at little or no expense except the labor necessary in their preparation. Furthermore, many of these people have not the skill nor the necessary tools to use materials such as stone and clay which they might be able to obtain. Also, the migratory character of many of these inland laborers, and the fact that they do not own the land their houses are built upon, have been fundamental influences in preventing the development of better house types. The principal agricultural industries, _i.e._, coffee, sugar, and tobacco, have a busy and a dull season, and many of the inland laborers are obliged to migrate from one section to another in order to find work. For this reason hundreds of laborers pass annually from the inland hills where coffee is grown down to the sugar plantations on the coast, and then back again to the hills, the busy seasons of sugar and coffee being at different times of the year. Of course, these laborers cannot move their houses with them about the Island, and they naturally tend to build the cheapest kind of temporary structures. Also very few of them own the land their houses are placed upon. They are mere squatters, or tenants at will, and the land owner may eject them at any time for little or no cause, so that there is no incentive to build substantial structures, and there is no chance of developing that pride in the home which is so essential to the building of good houses.

"The inland laborers who live in these huts have been their own architects and builders, and they model their homes after the old type that has prevailed among the hills for centuries. The framework of these huts is of poles and small sticks cut from shrub trees and nailed or tied together at the corners with native fiber ropes. The roofs are generally thatched with a long, tough grass, and the walls are constructed by binding leaves of the royal palm (_yaguas_) with sticks and fiber. The floor is of boards or slabs and is raised from one to two feet above the ground. In some sections _yaguas_ are also used for the roofs, and in the inland there are many huts with walls of slabs from the trunk of the palm trees. These huts are usually divided into two rooms by a flimsy partition of _yaguas_, one room being used as a bedroom and the other as a combined living and dining room. The kitchen is a separate room or shed at the rear, and, probably because of the danger of fire, is usually without floor. The furniture consists of hammocks, boxes for chairs, a rough table, and a few dishes, all made from gourds, except the iron pot used in cooking. The value of such furniture is usually from $4 to $6, and the value of such a house from $10 to $20.

"This hut of the inland laborer with its thatched roof and open construction is, in many respects, a much better house than the casual observer is likely to believe. A well-constructed thatch roof, when it is new, offers sufficient protection against rain and excellent protection from the heat of the tropic sun. New palm bark walls are also adequate to keep out the rains. Furthermore, almost without exception, the floors are raised above the ground, so that the surface waters after a shower run freely under the hut and wash away any refuse that may have accumulated, and then the sunlight and winds quickly dry the remaining dampness. In other words, a new well-built hut of this type is a properly ventilated, cool, and reasonably sanitary habitation, and represents the best effort of the laborers to adapt themselves, in their poverty-stricken condition, to the circumstances of their environment. On the other hand, these huts deteriorate very rapidly. Within six months or a year, a dozen varieties of insects have made their nests in the thatched roof, the palm-leaves have cracked, and the floor sags.

"One who stands on some projecting point high up on a mountain side in the interior of the Island and carefully scans the hillsides about and the valley beneath, will be amazed at the number of small huts of this type that lie within his view. There are hundreds of them. Every knoll is crowned by its hut; every hillside is dotted by them. No two are ever placed together; each family seeks its own free life. It is practically true that one cannot shout in any part of our Island and not be heard by the occupants of one or more of these huts.

"To say that these people are contented and prefer to live as they do, is not true. Customs clinch themselves upon a people so that they appear contented, and these inland laborers have lived under the same conditions for three centuries. Their standards of living are modest, and their desires are few. In this sense they are contented. Yet there is a deep and powerful change coming over them. They are going to the cities in greater number than ever before; their children are attending the little schools in the hills. New ambitions are awakening. When the dull season comes, they cannot find work. There are times when many of them are hungry. They are not contented.

"That the Porto Rican laborer is of cheerful disposition is especially true of the so-called _jíbaro_. He has been obliged to find his joy in simple things. He greets you with a smile; he welcomes you to his house and cheerfully divides his cup of coffee with you; he dances with a show of gayety on a Sunday afternoon. He is ever cheerful, but not happy. There may be some customs and prejudices of minor importance that he is loath to change, but in the main he prefers to live as he does because he is obliged so to live. Those who adhere to the _laissez faire_ policy and believe that conditions are good enough as they are, do not know the real heart of these people. They need and deserve and must ultimately receive the opportunity to improve their living and working conditions.

"There are two important causes for the erection of plantation houses: (1) For the employer, the practical advantage of having a resident supply of labor on his land; (2) for the laborer, the necessity of living near his work. Laborers who live in plantation houses are more largely dependent upon the plantation than are laborers who live in their own homes. One of the conditions of occupying a plantation house is that the occupants will work for the plantation whenever their services are required. Laborers living in plantation houses, can, therefore, be depended upon by their employers, and this is a great advantage to the plantation owner. Furthermore, such houses are usually much better than the laborers who live in them could afford to build for themselves. Frequently, also, the holdings of the plantation are so extensive that it would not be possible for the laborers, even if they had the money, to buy land upon which to build their houses within walking distance of their work.

"There are great differences between the single houses of wood and zinc erected by the various plantations. The better types have been built by employers who wished to provide healthful and comfortable quarters--increase the efficiency of their laborers as well as to hold their labor supply. Unfortunately, at present, such houses are not being erected by the plantations in all parts of the Island. The majority of these houses have been built with the sole purpose of holding as large a labor supply as possible at the least expense.