Page:Distinguished Churchmen.djvu/362

 3M DISTINGUISHED CHURCHMEN

People have often been turned adrift because of the raising of the rents. The need of houses is bad enough in all truth ; but the story one so often hears about five families living in one room, and one of the said families keeping a lodger, is an invention. Things have never been quite so bad as that. You may, however, take it that a large number of families, consisting of man, wife, and as many as three children, have to be content with one room for their home. The reasons are not far to seek. In the first place, mind, the rents are high. We will take the case of a man earning say 253. per week as carman. He marries, and very likely he and his wife take two rooms for something like 73. 6d. per week. They can do that all right until two or three children come along, when the expenses they entail render them unable to afford the two rooms. The whole family then lives in the one room. There you have the larger family but reduced accommodation. That may be taken as a typical case. Then there is extreme difficulty in getting any place at all. It often happens that a man and wife with two or three children can afford to live in two rooms but cannot find them, and they have to dwell in but the one room. When we get the trams electrically equipped some of the people may be induced to go farther out to the less thickly-populated parts. There we have a pressing need. What is wanted

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