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.