England. But on closer examination, it becomes evident that
the walls of these cottages are as thin as it is possible to make them.
The outer walls, those of the cellar, which bear the weight of the ground
floor and roof, are one whole brick thick at most, the bricks lying with
their long sides touching; but I have seen many a cottage of the same
height, some in process of building, whose outer walls were but one-half
brick thick, the bricks lying not sidewise but lengthwise, their narrow
ends touching. The object of this is to spare material, but there is
also another reason for it; namely, the fact that the contractors never
own the land but lease it, according to the English custom, for twenty,
thirty, forty, fifty, or ninety-nine years, at the expiration of which
time it falls, with everything upon it, back into the possession of the
original holder, who pays nothing in return for improvements upon it. The
improvements are therefore so calculated by the lessee as to be worth as
little as possible at the expiration of the stipulated term. And as such
cottages are often built but twenty or thirty years before the expiration
of the term, it may easily be imagined that the contractors make no
unnecessary expenditures upon them. Moreover, these contractors, usually
carpenters and builders, or manufacturers, spend little or nothing in
repairs, partly to avoid diminishing their rent receipts, and partly in
view of the approaching surrender of the improvement to the landowner;
while in consequence of commercial crises and the loss of work that
follows them, whole streets often stand empty, the cottages falling
rapidly into ruin and uninhabitableness. It is calculated in general
that working-men's cottages last only forty years on the average. This
sounds strangely enough when one sees the beautiful, massive walls of
newly-built ones, which seem to give promise of lasting a couple of
centuries; but the fact remains that the niggardliness of the original
expenditure, the neglect of all repairs, the frequent periods of
emptiness, the constant change of inhabitants, and the destruction
carried on by the dwellers during the final ten years, usually Irish
families, who do not hesitate to use the wooden portions for
fire-wood--all this, taken together, accomplishes the complete ruin of
the cottages by the end of forty years. Hence it comes that Ancoats,
built chiefly since the sudden growth of manufacture, chiefly indeed
wit