Page:Lectures on Housing.djvu/61

 essence of the matter. A landlady stands in a relation to her poor tenants in which there is possible immense influence upon character, and, through character, upon the condition of the home. Unfortunately, however, it often happens that the landladies of poor houses are degraded women whose influence is wholly bad. The moral is pointed by Miss Hill in her Homes of the London Poor. "It appears to me," she writes, "to be proved by practical experience, that, when we can induce the rich to undertake the duties of landlord in poor neighbourhoods, and ensure a sufficient amount of the wise, personal supervision of educated and sympathetic people acting as their representatives, we achieve results which are not attainable in any other way … I would call upon those who may possess cottage property in large towns to consider the immense power they thus hold in their hands, and the large influence for good they may exercise by the wise use of that power. When they have to delegate it to others, let them take care to whom they commit it, and