Page:The Ethics of Urban Leaseholds.djvu/49

Rh cheap arrangement of small cells, with nine-inch outer walls to let in cold and damp, and a thin roof of slates and lath and plaster; just above an inch of rapid heat and cold conductors intervening between shivering sleepers and the frosty air. The essential element of these designs is 'moderate cost,' then prettiness of elevation. Comfort and space, security from heat and cold, the very object of a house, are quite secondary matters, and in most cases seem to have escaped attention. There has, however, been of late much care for family morality, and so the moderate-sized bedroom is divided by two thin partitions, and becomes three closets, or there is an attic made of slate and plaster in the roof. The sitting room is but a cupboard, and the place is altogether fitter for a kennel than a home. The cottagers are not allowed to take care of themselves, and, in true artistic rivalry, to build on their own freehold land according to the general progress of intelligence, for comfort and with due regard for health, their plans and work improving year by year as they gain practical experience; but the proprietor becomes a special providence, and plans these little chambers so that they may bring the calculated interest. His cottages are then by others, and himself perhaps, esteemed to be a boon to working people. What the labourers who occupy them say and feel is quite another matter; their opinions are not asked, and seldom are their wishes and desires consulted.

To those who have immediate observation of the present system it is clear that leasehold tenure is the cause of the increasing badness of all building work. The greater showiness of modern houses is but a screen or cover-misery. Each year there is more architectural display, and yet more meanness. The idea that workmen undirected should reform our system of house-building does perhaps to people of the present day appear absurd; but probably they do not recollect or understand that the old houses which were built so ’large and free' as to become 'a sort of poetic cultivation' were