of one-roomed huts, in which the whole family sleep together.

In the cities the overcrowding has become so excessive, and the
accomodation available for the poor is so inadequate, costly and
squalid, as to almost beggar description. Considerations of decency,
comfort and health are largely thrown to the winds. A single unfurnished
room, merely divided from the next one by a thin boarding, through which
everything can be heard, will command from five to thirty rupees a
month, and even more, according to its position, in Bombay.

The typical poor man's home in India consists as a rule of a
single-storeyed hut with walls of mud or wattle, and roof of grass,
palm-leaf, tiles, mud, or stones, according to the nature of the
country. One or two rooms, and a small verandah, are all that he
requires for himself and his family.

In the cities the high price of the land makes even this little
impossible. Take for instance Bombay. Here the representative of the
London lodging-house is to be found in the form of what are called
"chawls," large buildings, several storeys high, divided up into small
rooms, which are let off to families, at a rental of from three rupees a
month and upwards. Very commonly the same room serves for living,
sleeping, cooking, and eating. There being as a rule no cooking place,
the cheap earthen "choola" serves as a sufficient make-shift, and the
smoke finds its exit through the door or window best it can.

For hundreds, probably thousands, in every large city, even this poor
semblance of a home does not exist. Those who manage somehow or other to
live on nothing a month, cannot certainly afford to pay three rupees, or
even less, for a lodging. Whilst, no doubt, many of the submerged, tenth