rows of houses great and small, along main thoroughfares on either side
of which crowded side-streets extended like fish-bones, over less crowded
districts where the cottages were generally detached or semi-detached and
where pleasant homely houses were thickly sprinkled, oven here he
wondered how near those who lived in happier state were to the life of
the slum, wondered what struggling and pinching and scraping was going on
behind the half-drawn blinds that made homes look so cosy.

What started him on this idea particularly was that, in one train, a
grey-bearded propertied-looking man who sat beside him was grumbling to a
spruce little man opposite about the increasing number of empty houses.

"You can't wonder at it," answered the spruce little man. "When the
working classes aren't prospering everybody feels it but the exporters.
Wages are going down and people are living two families in a house where
they used to live one in a house, or living in smaller houses."

"Oh! Wages are just as high. There's been too much building. You building
society men have overdone the thing."

"My dear sir!" declared the spruce little man. "I'm talking from facts.
My society and every other building society is finding it out. When men
can't get as regular work it's the same thing to them as if wages were
coming down. The number of surrenders we have now is something appalling.
Working men have built expecting to be able to pay from 6s. to 10s. and
12s. a week to the building societies, and every year more and more are
finding out they can't do it. As many as can are renting rooms, letting
part of their house and so struggling along. As many more are giving up
and renting these rooms or smaller houses. And apparently well-to-do
people are often in as bad a fix. It's against my interest to have things