Page:Hermione and her little group of serious thinkers (1923, c1916).djvu/165

Taking Up the Liquor Problem But, as Fothergil Finch says, very often one wouldn't know it. And who could expect a waiter to be influenced one way or another by anything? And it's the home life of the working classes that counts, anyhow.

When we took up Sociology—we gave several evenings to Sociological Discussion, you know, besides doing a lot of practical Welfare Work—it was impressed upon me very strongly that if one is to do anything at all for the Masses one must first sweeten their Home Life.

Though Papa made me stop poking around into the horrid places where they live for fear I might catch some dreadful disease.

And the people we visited weren't at all grateful. So very often the Masses are not.

One dreadful woman, you know, claimed that she couldn't keep her rooms—she had two rooms, and she cooked and washed and slept and sewed in them and there were five in the family—claimed that she couldn't keep her rooms in any better shape because they were so out of repair and the plumbing was bad and the windows leaked and all that sort of thing, you know, and one of the rooms was entirely dark.

I preached the doctrine of fresh air and sunshine and cleanliness to her, you know, and the impudent thing told me Papa owned the building and [151]