perative.[1] In model lodgings movement is impossible, and there are only 'sitting' rooms. The sleeping rooms will just contain the bed, perhaps, but not by any means the necessary air. The lodging-house societies mean well, and have done partial good: their efforts so far are deserving of the public thanks. But first endeavours seldom perfectly succeed; and those most gratefully inclined would fail to thoroughly approve of a benevolent association of slopsellers who should offer cheap and well-made clothes invariably undersized, or, for our latitude, as limited in wholesome shelter as the earliest garments that we read of.
It is impossible that a few men, or even many, should assume the care of house supply for millions of the London working classes. 'During thirty years, up to 1875, private efforts, including those of Lady Burdett Coutts, Sir Sydney Waterlow, and the Peabody Trustees, had housed only 26,000 persons, not a great deal more than half the number which is yearly added to the population of London.' In the work that has been thus accomplished much habitual evil is avoided, and the buildings certainly are genuine and honest. But they are essentially commercial speculations, made, most properly as such, to pay a moderate percentage. This, in household practice and economy is, however, most distinctly inhumane. A house should never be a thing of commerce to its occupants. It should be made a generous sacrifice to their well being, physical and moral; and thus, sacred in its character and dedication, it would become an object of affection and respect and loving care.
’There is about the inner life of a humble home a something one may almost say of sanctity, which is not so apparent, at all events on the surface of things, in splendid mansions. Their splendour, somehow or other, seems a
- ↑ A plan of 'an American cheap cottage,' lately published, shows a 'living room' sixteen feet by eighteen, with a kitchen nearly half this size adjoining. All quite proper, natural, and freehold.
