Page:The State and the Slums.djvu/10

6 occupy the space originally calculated for two. How is this state of things to be prevented or remedied? I showed in a former paper (Communism) that in order to equalise wages and keep them fixed, it would be necessary to invest the State-appointed captains of industry with some power of checking the increase of families. But this brings the thing still nearer home. It now appears that this kind of power—a power, the very mention of which seems to require an apology, so abhorrent is it to our feelings as Englishmen—this power, I say, would have to be exercised in order to keep the lodgings of the working-class in the condition wherein the philanthropist would have them. This one cause alone would in time baffle the most rigorous system of regulation, inspection, and supervision. But would any supervision be sufficient to check sub-letting? It would no doubt be possible to start a certain number of new tenement houses which should be under very stringent regulation. Already there are model lodging-houses, Peabody mansions. Miss Octavia Hill's improved courts. These things are a success, and all honour to those who have made them so. But the managers of these institutions would themselves readily admit that their success is at least partly due to the fact that the incorrigibles—the people who would be bound by no rules, and submit to no supervision—all went away and pigged in uninspected rookeries. The rookery is a very horrible thing, but it is a safety valve. There is no alternative. Either you must inspect and regulate every house where any poor people can by any possibility lodge, or you must tolerate the rookery in the long run. The evil may be, and ought to be, reduced to the very lowest expression; but it can no more be got rid of than the incorrigibles and ne'er-do-wells of any class of society can be got rid of in a general massacre. The late Mr. Thomas Carlyle talked a great deal of hysterical nonsense about the gallows and grapeshot for those whom he called "devil's regiments." Our socialistic philanthropists of to-day are always formulating projects whose ultimate sanction would need to be something of the Carlylese gallows or