Page:The State and the Slums.djvu/8

4 actual wages by sub-letting; with what consequences, in one way or another, we shall see presently. In the meantime it might be well to look at the matter from another point of view. On the very same day (29th October, 1883) on which the Pall Mall Gazette published Mr. Hyndman's paper, there appeared a letter in the St. James's Gazette purporting to be from a real working-man. This writer says, "the press and the very respectables seem to be making a particular row at present about that one of our troubles that happens to offend their eyes the most and perhaps affect their precious health." And he goes on to point out that from the point of view of the genuine working-man, overcrowding is not such a very great nuisance as it is alleged by the philanthropists to be. There is a good deal more in the letter which would well repay perusal, but its special merit is that it conveys a caution to those reformers who insist upon amending the poor man's lot without taking the poor man himself into council. Overcrowding, beyond any doubt, is a bad thing; it is the fertile source both of disease and of vice. But it is not always what the amateur philanthropist would call overcrowding which the poor themselves feel to be such. Overcrowding often simply means warmth. A thinly inhabited and highly ventilated room is apt to be a cold room, and underfed people are sensitive to cold. Those who are underfed are apt also to be ill-clad, and are pretty certain not to have the means of purchasing much fuel. Hence, independently of the low rents of crowded lodgings, the mere warmth of them is a temptation to the very poor. Thus we have two causes which make it a doubtful boon for the poor to be offered cheap, spacious, and well ventilated dwellings. The cheapness would probably react on their wages; the space and the ventilation would only be a change in their discomfort. Foul air and evil smells they are used to; cold, kept away by the very things that bring the foul air and the smells, they escape in their homes. They have enough and to spare of it out of doors, and naturally they do not care to be pursued by it farther than they must.