s. The place was absolutely without conveniences. Summer and
winter the family huddled together in the single room of the hut,
faring forth to work in the morning, sleeping at night on bundles of
straw, each person in the single garment that he wore through the day,
and at convenient intervals breaking fast on black bread, salt meat,
and home-brewed beer. There was no inducement for a landless serf to
spend care or labor upon houses or surroundings; pigs and babies were
permitted to tumble about both indiscriminately.

Peasant homes in the Orient are little if any better now than European
homes in the Middle Ages. The houses are rude structures and ill-kept.
In the villages of India it is not unusual to occupy one house until
it becomes so unsanitary as to be uninhabitable, and then to move
elsewhere. Even royal courts in mediaeval Europe moved from palace to
palace for the same reason. It is a mistake to suppose that the
squalid conditions found in the slums are peculiar to them; they are
survivals of a lower stage of human existence found in all parts of
the world, due to psychical, social, and economic conditions that are
not easily changed, but conspicuous in the midst of modern progress.

43. =The Ancestral Type.=--In ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome only the
higher classes enjoyed any degree of comfort. Accustomed to
inconveniences, few even among them knew such luxuries as are common
to middle-class Americans. The castle and manor-house of the mediaeval
lord were still more comfortless. In America the colonial log cabin
and the sod house of the prairie pioneer were primitively incomplete.
The struggle for existence and the difficulty of manufacture and
transportation allowed few comforts. American homes, even a hundred
years ago, knew nothing of furnaces and safety-matches, refrigerators
and electric fans, bathtubs and sanitary accommodations,
carpet-sweepers and vacuum cleaners, screen doors and double windows,
hammocks and verandas. Neither law nor social custom required a good
water or drainage system. A healthful or attractive location for the
house received little thought; outbuildings were in close proximity to
the house, if not attached to it. The furnishings of the house lacked
comfort and beauty. Interior decorations of harmonious design were
absent. Instruments of music were rare; statuary and paintings were
beyond the reach of any but the richest purse.

44. =Social Values.=--On the other hand, there