Page:The Ethics of Urban Leaseholds.djvu/32

26 state of life and morals may be traced to the outrageous disregard of human nature in the first formation of a young man's home. The lower animals, birds, beasts, and fishes, are superior to Londoners in household dignity. They don't take leases, and with them the speculating builders are unknown; they start in life with building operations of their own; their house is made in preparation for their family. In London, people are like hermit-crabs, content to shuffle into some ill-fitting, cumbrous, unconformable, rejested shell; and there they make their 'home,' ridiculous to every beholder.

The leasehold system is a chief material cause of the improvident and thriftless habits of our working classes. It prevents the natural formation of considerate and prudent plans for life; and men rush into matrimony, not perhaps too early, but before they have prepared themselves, by systematic self-control, and by the active self-respect induced by strictly economical expenditure, for the responsibilities of married life. True, there are Savings Banks; but a 'deposit' is to many a numerical abstraction. Working people do not see it, therefore do not love it, and in consequence too quickly sacrifice it for some visible absurdity which for a moment charms them. There should always be a worthy and immediate object for the workman's savings, something to be seen, and which can thus secure his interest and devotion. A young workman, when the term of his apprenticeship expires, or earlier, should everywhere have opportunity, by weekly payments, to secure a visible investment in an urban or suburban freehold of his own. The saving, prudent habit once begun and formed, is apt to grow, increasing with his age. Young women, too, should know that if they save, instead of spending all they have in finery, they also may contribute to the purchase of their future home. This would be possible if freeholds were at hand and easily procurable; but if the only method to secure a house is either to become a speculator in a bastard tenure, or to buy a rickety, dishonest place of misery,