THE WORLD WAR AGAINST SLUMS films
Comprised of four reels of self-directed film and featuring a diverse array of cities across Europe and parts of Mexico, The World War Against Slums was Charles Palmer’s choice deliverable with which to make his case for publicly-funded housing and slum clearance in US cities, beginning with the University and Techwood Homes projects in his home city of Atlanta, GA.
Palmer screened his short films for governmental officials in Washington, D.C. and at conferences and meetings across the country to share the results of his research into foreign public housing. Palmer often preceded these screenings with speeches that included “submissions of proof”—statistics from the U.S. Public Health Service—used to bolster his campaign for the revolution in urban American living proposed on-screen. At the close of each gathering, Palmer challenged the film’s viewers to “tear apart” his suggestions: to try and prove that proper housing wasn’t a fundamental human right within a modern nation. He argued that:
It is our duty to do so [provide public housing assistance]; our country must have leadership in this great movement by men and women such as those in this room today. We owe it to our country and to ourselves.*
The entirety of these motion pictures and the transcripts for them are made accessible above via links to an external hosting website and through embedded clips of each individual reel with the associated transcripts below. These are provided with great thanks to, and the permission of, Palmer’s descendants and Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archive and Rare Book Library.
*"The World War Against Slums" address by Charles F. Palmer at the Twenty-eighth Annual Convention of the National Association of Building Owners and Managers, Cincinnati, Ohio, June 10-13, 1935, Charles F. Palmer Papers, Box 154, Folder 4, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.
embedded links with full transcripts
Reel 1:
(0:08, scrolling) There can be little doubt that the desire to see the whole population housed within a generation from the present in dwellings large, sanitary, and pleasant enough to make decent living possible is more widely shared at the present moment than any other political ideal save only that of preserving peace.
(0:28) Let’s go and see for ourselves.
(0:32) Come with Us and Learn how Vital this Slum War is to You.
(0:36) Good bye America
(0:39) By Air and Sea the British Welcome the Queen Mary on Her First Return to Southhampton.
(1:14) Off Comes Our Trusty Ford to call on the Slumites of This Sea-Port.
(1:26) Where They Used to Exist.
(1:41) Where They Now Live – Having a Wide – Awake City Government plus John Bull’s Help (26,000 a month being Moved to New Houses From Slums).
(1:58) Two Story Houses on top of Each Other for Those Who Must Live Near the Docks.
(2:14) The New Fiver Year Slum Clearance Plan well along towards Rehousing 1,200,000 People, “The most remarkable success achieved by the National Government,” Says the London Times.
(2:25) The City of Leeds is a Leader, Housing 140,000 of Its 487,000 Population thanks to the Reverend Charles Jenkenson, M.A., L.L.B.
(2:34) Quarry Hill being Cleared to House 939 Families, Employing the Mopin System of Construction.
(3:04) One Apartment in Twenty Must be the “Sunshine” Home for Consumptives.
(3:17) Thirty Per Cent of the Housing is for the Aged.
(3:39) A spot of Tea and Peek at Robert Burns Home en route to Liverpool where the City Started its Housing in 1869.
(3:53) Liverpool’s Central Rehousing Area Replaces Fifty Acres of Slums with Modern Apartments for 6,000 Persons as it Eliminates Four Miles of Streets.
(4:14) The Two Story Plaque of a Hod-Carrier Commemorates Four Years Steady Employment to be given 500 Building Trades Workers on this single Project. [SO SOVIET]
(4:25) Does Slum Clearance Make Happy Children?
(4:59) Families Practice Cleanliness in New Surroundings.
(5:04) Throughout England “Over-crowding” Becomes Illegal Which Necessitates a Mini-mum of 350,000 more Houses.
(5:20) Liverpool, Where They Did Exist.
(5:34) Where They Now Live.
(6:03) No Through Traffic to En-danger the Play Area – 32,000 Houses now and being Increased to 50,000.
(6:16) Blessings for the Young in Their Playgrounds and Aged in Their Self-Made Gardens. These two are 72 and 75, Respectively and keep up Their Entire Place.
(6:40) Actions In Manchester, England, suit, the words of Her Former Lord Mayor Sir Ernest Simon, “During the Next Fifty Years the Chief Task of the Great Towns will be the Clearing of Their Slums and the Rebuilding of Their Old, Unhealthy, and Congested Districts”
(6:54) Wythenshawe Satellite Garden Town, Planned, Built and Owned by the City of Manchester to form a Complete Development for 100,000 of Its Citizens.
(7:05) Note Wide Parkways, Gardens, Shops, Hotels and Factories.
(8:06) The City Succeeds so well Private Builders Profit, Too.
(8:21) Marking the Twenty Thousandth House Built by the City.
(8:29) The Slums Retreat before the Poison Gas Attack on Vermin as Pyres of Infested Timbers await the Torch.
(8:50) Manchester, Where They Did Exist.
(9:02) Where They Now Live.
(9:13) Slum Bricks Crushed for Concrete to Construct Kingsley Wood House Dedicated by Mr. Arthur Greenwood, Former Minister of Health, to Honor His Political Opponent, Sir Kingsley Wood, His Successor.
(9:45) Sir Kingsley Wood Reciprocated by Dedicating Greenwood House, Saying, “There are No Political Barriers Where Housing is Concerned”.
(9:58) Even the Slum Merchant is Transplanted.
(10:08) Lousy Furniture Replaced by Easy Payments to the City.
(10:18) Most Developments Include Some Housing for the Aged and Laundries for All.
(10:41) Work in neighboring garden plots adds green vegetables to Former Slumites’ Tables.
Reel 2:
(0:00) London
(0:12) These slumites are being moved to the more than a million Government Subsidized Houses – the second million now under construct-ion.
(0:20) Just as the Pure Food Law of the U.S. Prohibits the Sale of Impure Milk or Rotten Meat, so does John Bull’s Ministry of Health Outlaw this Decayed Housing…’Ow About that, Uncle Sam?
(0:36) St. Pancras, typical of England’s best re-housing.
(1:22) WOW! Excuse Us! Those last Slums aren’t in London, They’re in Washington D.C.
(1:29) By the scope of the housing programs, political parties rise or fall.
(1:33) Altho the London County Council had built Tens of Thousands of houses- It was completely unseated because the voters considered its slum clearance program inadequate….
(1:48) On the edge of London, Becontree is Owned by the County. Its 26,000 Homes (40 Vacant and Bespoken) Houses 130,000 persons and form a Labor Supply to which Factories flock – Ford and 60 other manufacturing Plants.
(2:20) Prizes for the best Gardens and there are many Churches, Parks and Shops
(3:08) In Amsterdam One Whole Area for the Aged – Cost per Couple Less than One Hospital Bed per Year.
(3:40) Alleys Replaced by Avenues and Gardens.
(4:11) Less than One per Cent of Slumites Tend Toward Incorrigibility. These are Segregated in an “Unsocial” Project and Rigidly Taught How to Live – Gate Closes at 9:00 P.M.
(4:50) Push Cart Garages, Locks on the Laundry Driers and Broken Glass on Walls Help Discipline.
(5:44) Shipping Stagnates Awaiting World Trade but Nothing Affects the Omnipresent Bicycle.
(6:02) Now to The Hague to See More of the 658,000 Government Helped Homes Built Between 1918 and 1933.
(6:10) The Fifty per cent Increase of Holland’s Homes Keep Money and Men Employed Constructively Instead of Destructively in Preparation for War.
(6:19) As Early as 1853 The Hague Gave Attention to Housing.
(6:21) It too has it’s Unsocial Project but the Tenants are Becoming so Well-behaved There are Many Vacancies – Note the Outer and Inner Walls.
(6:48) Fisherfolk properly housed.
(7:06) Many Varities of Homes and Always Children First.
Reel 3:
(0:00) “Naples”
(0:01) One of the slums missed during the King’s Cholera clean-up, started in 1887
(0:18) The decayed area vanishes to be replaced by the new post office --- a straight slum clearance job.
(0:28) The old house and the new --- note chimney and railroad.
(0:36) Here is a good before and after example.
(0:53) A fever breeding area gives way to housing for the ex-slumite.
(1:03) Rome, The Eternal City.
(1:05) The balcony at the Palazzo di Venezia, from which Il Duce inspires his people.
(1:13) The eight windows on the second floor corner mark his private office.
(1:23) The State is rapidly eliminating these areas.
(1:43) Oh! Oh! Another Slip! We’re getting Our Cities Mixed. That last was New York City.
(1:50, scrolling) Because housing like the following lowers the T.B. rate to less than one-fifth of Rome’s average and deaths from all causes to less than half the National Insurance Institute finds it good business to furnish money for such projects.
(2:09) The spiral stairway for a seven story walkup.
(2:17) Note the arsenic leaves (a sure bug killer) hanging on the wall of this Community Kitchen.
(2:28) Modern Italy reclaiming the pontine marshes that balked Caesar.
(2:29) As It Was in Caesar’s Day.
(2:33) As It is With Mussolini.
(2:55) The Most Modern Machinery as well as the Most Primitive Methods.
(3:23) Complete cities being built.
(3:37) Over 200,000 Acres Reclaimed-More than 75,000 Tenants on the Farm and in the Cities- and even State Camps for the Children. . .
(3:56) And now Vienna during her greatest trial – Dollfuss death – troops mobilizing – dinerless trains.
(4:07) Paying their last tribute as the Little Chancellor lies in State at the Rathaus.
(4:17) Over $100,000,000 public housing done in Vienna from current taxes – no capital charge in the rent.
(4:21) The tenants of the 86 finest private apartments in Vienna paid as much rent tax ad 350,000 workmen.
(4:26) Carl Marx Hof – 1382 families, 6,000 people. Building over a mile long – with central laundries and creches.
(4:54) George Washington Hof 2,300 families, 10,000 people.
(5:16) Let’s take a peak at the “Nebenerwerbssiedlungen”
You’re right “subsistence homesteads”
(5:37) Even pauperized Poland helps house her citizens- 2-,000 living here in Warsaw.
(5:51) All aboard for Russia.
(5:56) They said the barbed wire fence at the border had been torn down.
(6:01) Secretary Henderson greets us at the Embassy.
(6:07) Ambassador Bullit builds good will by teaching the Soviets baseball in Moscow.
(6:25) United States gives Russia the baseball equipment.
(6:31) Soviet guards hold back the crowds as we photograph Lenin’s Tomb, permit us to take St. Basil’s, but didn’t know we got the Kremlin’s interior.
(7:07) No, this isn’t a bread line, just waiting for a street car.
(7:15) 3000 of the 210,000 co-operative apartment dwellers live here (1% interest 90 year amortization) Note boots drying on fence.
(7:47) Berlin and the newly named Hindendurg Square.
(7:59) Temporary Truck Gardening, Multiple Housing, and Permanent Subsistence Homes.
(8:38) When Obstructionists say “America cannot solve her Slum Problem by using the experience of Europe” – they are as wrong as they would be if they opposed the use of smallpox serum merely because an English-man discovered it.
(8:47) The Statendam pitches us back to New York.
Reel 4:
(0:00) Let’s leave the slums of our own cities to visit other cities.
(0:04) New York
(0:23) Do you know this side of Washington, D.C.?
(0:36, scrolling) Of the 99,000 dwellings I Atlanta here are some of 15,000 “home” without running water – 25,000 without water closets – 33,000 without bathing facilities (Department of Commerce Statistics, Washington, July 26, 1934) and Atlanta is quite typical of her Sister Cities!!
(1:02) From such “Homes” come our Cooks, Laundresses, and those who Nurse Our Babies, spreading epidemics and the most vicious diseases. The slum cancer menaces you and me - - it menaces every citizen.
(1:11) September 29, 1934 Secretary Ickes fires the first gun for Uncle Sam – down comes an “ill conceived, irregular, one eyed, limping house” as war starts on the slums of Atlanta, Georgia.
(1:25) Techwood -1935.
(1:36) President Roosevelt visits Techwood Homes, November 29th, 1935, preceded by Colonel Starling.
(1:45) Angelo Clas, Director of Housing for the United States, greets the President, Mrs. Roosevelt, Senator George, and Senator Russell.
(1:52, scrolling) Millions over the radio and Fifty Thousand in person listen to the President as he says “Within sight of you today stands a tribute to useful work under Government Supervision – the first Slum Clearance and Low Rent Housing Project – we have cleaned out nine square blocks of antiquated, squalid dwellings for years a detriment to this Community – and in their places we see the Bright Cheerful Buildings of Techwood – within a very short time, people who never before could get a decent roof over their heads will live here in reasonable comfort and healthful worth-while surroundings…”
(2:26) Time Marches On as Techwood nears completion.
(2:51) TECHWOOD: Before and After
(3:21) Techwood – 1936.
(4:06) Now to the sixteenth International Housing and Town Planning Congress in Mexico City, August 1938.
(4:15) The Coleans of Washington and Mr. George Pepler, Pres-dent of the Congress, with Miss Halton, both of London, pause en route.
(4:28) Close to Mexico City our train wrecks, killing nine people.
(4:47) Rivera’s famous murals, his house and the national cathedral.
(5:16) Special entertainment for delegates to the Congress.
(6:10) En route to the Pyramids, Architect Beltrean shows how Mexico is turning the salt sea at Texcoco into fertile farms.
(7:14) Typical Mexican Slums.
(7:31) Here’s where many slumites now live, thanks to Carlos Contreras.
(8:21) Citizens of America Awake, Study and Understand Housing, Then Help Achieve!!