Page:May Walden - Socialism and the Home (1900).pdf/14

 14 from those of the laborers. The former are beautiful mansions on the boulevards, neatly and healthfully kept; the latter are rows of tiny cottages, or of apartment houses in the dirtiest and most disagreeable part of the city. Unthinking people say, "Well, they must love the dirt and filthy smell, or they wouldn't stay here—but they get used to it, I suppose, and wouldn't appreciate anything better if they had it." It never ours to the passer-by that people live in these wretched. unhealthful hovels because they MUST and not because they want to. It has been found that many families pay out nearly a third of what they earn for the one item of rent. Landlords find that the old tenements without any improvements bring in the most profits, so they rent these year after year until they become uninhabitable. The high rents which the working people pay must be raised in some way, so they take lodgers and boarders. The family and boarders are crowded together into two or three rooms in such a way that cleanliness and decency are impossible.

One can see at a glance the connection between this miserable housing and the public health. Plenty of sunshine, pure air and sanitary conditions are absolutely necessary to good health. We all know these are not to be found in rear tenements and unhealthy basements. Epidemics of typhoid and other fevers, diphtheria and other contagious diseases are bred in these places and the disease germs are carried by clothing and other products made in these sweaters' dens, from them to be sown broadcast over the country. When it is once understood that all such diseases are preventable and that we, the wives, mothers and daughters of the common people, have it in our power to put a stop to the wholesale murder of our dear ones by doing away with these conditions, I am sure we will band ourselves together at once to do it.