Page:Lectures on Housing.djvu/16

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SATISFACTORY HOUSES FOR WORKING CLASSES

we have no accurate statistics, such information as we have points to the fact that probably as many as two or three million people live in houses belonging to this class.

In the next division are houses which are probably occupied by about 65 to 80 per cent. of the working people of this country. These houses, which we may speak of as Class 2, usually open directly upon the street, and have a living room, with a small scullery behind, two or three bedrooms—much more frequently two than three—and a small backyard. We do not, as a nation, realise that one-fourth of the dwellings of this country have less than four rooms; these houses have not more than two bedrooms, and of course, no bathroom. We do not realise that one person in ten is living under what are technically known as "overcrowded conditions"—that is, with more than two persons to every room in the house. And these houses are crowded thirty, forty, and even fifty to the acre. We know the long dreary streets of them. In any long railway journey we pass