e the life of a mother-wife, whose husband and children
have become dependent upon her earnings! I dare not! Who dare describe
the exact life and doings of four families living in a little house
intended for one family? Who can describe the life, speech, actions
and atmosphere of such places? I cannot, for the task would be too
disgusting!

For tens of thousands of people are allowed, or compelled, to live and
die under those conditions. How can vigorous manhood or pure womanhood
come out of them? Ought we to expect, have we any right to expect,
manhood and womanhood born and bred under such conditions to be other
than blighted?

Whether we expect it or not matters but little, for we have this mass
of blighted humanity with us, and, like an old man of the sea, it is a
burden upon our back, a burden that is not easily got rid of.

What are we doing with this burden in the present? How are we going
to prevent it in the future? are two serious questions that must be
answered, and quickly, too, or something worse will happen to us.

The authorities must see to it at once that children shall have as much
air and breathing space in their homes by night as they have in the
schools by day.

What sense can there be in demanding and compelling a certain amount
of air space in places where children are detained for five and a half
hours, and then allow those children to stew in apologies for rooms,
where the atmosphere is vile beyond description, and where they are
crowded indiscriminately for the remaining hours?

This is the question of the day and the hour. Drink, foreign invasion,
the House of Lords or the House of Commons, Tariff Reform or Free Trade,
none of these questions, no, nor the whole lot of them combined, compare
for one moment in importance with this one awful question.

Give the poor good airy housing at a reasonable rent, and half the
difficulties against which our nation runs its thick head would
disappear. Hospitals and prisons would disappear too as if by magic, for
it is to these places that the smitten manhood finds its way.

I know it is a big question! But it is a question that has got to be
solved, and in solving it some of our famous and cherished notions will
have to go. Every house, no matter to whom it belongs, or who holds the
lease, who lets or sub-lets, every inhabited house must be licensed by
the local authorities for a certain number of inmates, so many and no
more; a maximum, but no mi