Page:The State and the Slums.djvu/13

9 land is now in a great measure taken out of the domain of free contract, and legislation is manifesting a tendency to abolish contract wholly where land is concerned. We are now threatened with an application of the same process to houses. It is openly asserted that houseowners make too much out of their property; and it is but a short step from this to asserting that their profits ought to be cut down by a tribunal. Nor is this all. So very tender are we becoming of what we suppose to be the comfort of the poor, that we seem to be on the point of depriving them of the greatest comfort of all—personal freedom. How many members of the middle class would endure for a week the inspection and "ordering about" which our philanthropic reformers are never tired of inflicting on their poorer neighbours? And is it not clear that even a greater amount of inspection and "ordering about" would have to be resorted to, if the homes of the people are to be kept in the condition in which the reformers would have them? Is it not true that the respectable, clean, well-to-do working-men and women (of whom there are hundreds of thousands in London, and millions throughout the kingdom) would have to be harassed day and night in order that the inspector and the philanthropist might get at the dirty, disreputable, idle, pauperised vagabond, three parts loafer and the rest thief? As to the real thieves, burglars, and their congeners—it is at least allowable to doubt whether the inspector and the philanthropist would ever sweep them into the net at all. Whether they did or not, certain it is that the capture could only be attempted—not to say accomplished—by placing the entire working community under a regime practically undistinguishable from slavery. The question is therefore a working-man's question in the very fullest sense of the words. It may be possible for the rich to offer the present generation of the poor the most munificent gifts in the way of new and improved dwellings. But will the poor be able to keep them? Will not the gift react upon wages, as Mr. Hyndman suggests? Will not something be given with one hand and taken with the other? Do people really like model dwellings?