Working Classes Association for the Improvement of Public Health.

I look forward--I say it openly--to some period of higher
civilisation, when the Acts of Parliament for the ventilation of
factories and workshops shall be largely extended, and made far
more stringent; when officers of public health shall be empowered
to enforce the ventilation of every room in which persons are
employed for hire: and empowered also to demand a proper system
of ventilation for every new house, whether in country or in town.
To that, I believe, we must come: but I had sooner far see these
improvements carried out, as befits the citizens of a free
country, in the spirit of the Gospel rather than in that of the
Law; carried out, not compulsorily and from fear of fines, but
voluntarily, from a sense of duty, honour, and humanity. I
appeal, therefore, to the good feeling of all whom it may concern,
whether the health of those whom they employ, and therefore the
supply of fresh air which they absolutely need, are not matters
for which they are not, more or less, responsible to their country
and their God.

And if any excellent person of the old school should answer me:
"Why make all this fuss about ventilation? Our forefathers got on
very well without it"--I must answer that, begging their pardons,
our ancestors did nothing of the kind. Our ancestors got on
usually very ill in these matters: and when they got on well, it
was because they had good ventilation in spite of themselves.

First. They got on very ill. To quote a few remarkable instances
of longevity, or to tell me that men were larger and stronger on
the average in old times, is to yield to the old fallacy of