It is necessary, therefore, to enlist these interests in the
cause of sanitary improvement, in order to ensure success.
Individual capitalists have already done much to provide wholesome
houses for their working people, and have found their account in so
doing, by their increased health, as well as in their moral improvement
in all ways. Capitalists imbued with a benevolent and philanthropic
spirit can thus spread blessings far and wide. And were a few
enterprising builders in every town to take up this question
practically, and provide a class of houses for workpeople, with suitable
accommodation; provided with arrangements for ventilation, cleanliness,
and separation of the sexes, such as health and comfort require; they
would really be conferring an amount of benefit on the community at
large, and, at the same time, we believe, upon themselves, which it
would not be easy to overestimate.
But there also needs the active co-operation of the dwellers in poor
men's homes themselves. They, too, must join cordially in the sanitary
movement; otherwise comparatively little good can be effected. You may
provide an efficient water supply, yet, if the housewife will not use
the water as it ought to be used,--if she be lazy and dirty,--the house
will be foul and comfortless still. You may provide for ventilation,
yet, if offensive matters be not removed, and doors and windows are kept
closed, the pure outer air will be excluded, and the house will still
smell fusty and unwholesome.
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