Business & Finance: Low Pay

When Fred L. Lavanburg, Manhattan color manufacturer, died last November he bequeathed $750,000 to the Lavanburg Foundation to provide comfortable homes for the families of low-paid workers. By low pay he meant a total family income of $25 or less a week. Speedily his executors set to work abuilding an apartment house to accommodate 120 such families. Suites were to contain steam heat, electric lights, private baths, gas ranges, ice boxes—"all modern conveniences." Last week the executors dedicated the building. But no 120 families with $25-a-week incomes occupied the rooms. The executors found barely enough of them to occupy a single floor. Consequently they were obliged to fill the suites with occupants whose incomes went as high as $40 a week.