the system whereby life is shortened." "In Liverpool, nearly one-fifth
of the squalid houses where the poor live in the closest quarters are
reported to be always infected, that is to say, the seat of infectious
diseases."

To apply the name of "home" to these dens is a sheer abuse of words.
What grateful memories of tender childhood, what healthy durable
associations, what sound habits of life can grow among these unwholesome
and insecure shelters?

The city poor are a wandering tribe. The lack of fixed local habitation
is an evil common to all classes of city dwellers. But among the lower
working-classes "flitting" is a chronic condition. The School Board
visitor's book showed that in a representative district of Bethnal
Green, out of 1204 families, no less than 530 had removed within a
twelvemonth, although such an account would not include the lowest and
most "shifty" class of all. Between November 1885 and July 1886 it was
found that 20 per cent. of the London electorate had changed residence.
To what extent the uncertain conditions of employment impose upon the
poor this changing habitation cannot be yet determined; but the absence
of the educative influence of a fixed abode is one of the most
demoralizing influences in the life of the poor. The reversion to a
nomad condition is a retrograde step in civilization the importance of
which can hardly be exaggerated. When we bear in mind that these houses
are also the workshop of large numbers of the poor, and know how the
work done in the crowded, tainted air of these dens brings as an
inevitable portion of its wage, physical feebleness, disease, and an
early death, we recognize the paramount importance of that aspect of the
problem of poverty which is termed "The Housing of the Poor."