The Cost of Shelter by Ellen H. Richards
page 35 of 105 (33%)
page 35 of 105 (33%)
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believes the flat will rent for a few dollars more, where he will not do
it for the sake of cleanliness. The supply of hot water, together with the gas stove, has done much to reconcile the housewife who does her own work to the cramped quarters of the flat, and also has done more than anything else to render the maids discontented with that legacy from the nineteenth century which requires the building of a coal fire before hot water can be had. The coal fire makes necessary rising an hour earlier and this, after the late hours the seven-o'clock dinner enforces, causes friction all along the line. The acceptance by young women without a study of cause and effect of whatever presents itself makes them bad housekeepers, in the sense of ignorant ones unable to cope with present conditions, because lack of experience is not supplemented by a spirit of investigation and a resolution to work out the problem. They seem to think that housekeeping is to go on in the same old way no matter whatever else may change, whereas it is most sensitive to the general direction of progress if they but knew it. The wage-earner is more fully aware of the currents of the irresistible river modern life has become (the slow-moving car of Juggernaut is no longer an adequate symbol) than is the money spender. Indeed is any part of the house, as we now most frequently find it, adapted to the uses of the twentieth century? The careless capitalist who makes possible the "cockroach landlord," he who sublets and crowds and skimps the tenants for his own gain, is greatly to blame for the distressing conditions of the lower income limit of the wage-earner, but I fear he is not altogether blameless for the sort of house the $1500 man has to look for in the city. Decent living with light and air within half an hour of work is growing so rare that society must |
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