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passing away. The beliefs, selfish and ignorant, that human beings
could be crowded into humble houses destitute of light and air,
reeking with filth and swarming like vermin, to die like vermin; that
men and women working hard must come home to such conditions;
that children should be dwarfed and maimed by their cruel surroundings;
that the distressed and destitute must be left to protect themselves
not only against want, but against the fatal diseases caused by
man's ignorance, greed, and inhumanity; these beliefs are passing away.
In new situations, vigour and enthusiasm construct higher ethics,
the practice of which elevate the plane of living, and now the drift of
scientific opinion, and to a very appreciable degree also popular opinion,
mean but one thing. They mean that sanitary science has in its process
of development become a practical science, and is now recognised as
such. We have learned that if we allow our neighbour to wallow in
filth we must expect to suffer some of the consequences.
When the Town Planning Act came into force the day of the bad
landlord ended, but it was hoped that the Act would work another way
and cripple the evil ways of the slum-makers. When a member of
this department visits a home a note is made of many things including
the habits of the tenants. A bad tenant may soon transform a good
house into a slum. We have houses not many years old, and others
that have been decorated and repaired quite recently, and yet dirt and
destruction are revealed at a mere glance. Paper is torn off the walls,
banisters are broken, hand rail is gone, and there is a general appearance
of dilapidation. We cannot unfortunately deal with people who
treat property in this fashion, and yet indolent, dirty, thriftless and
destructive tenants should not go unpunished in their criminal treatment
of property. Notices to put into a sanitary condition are served on
owners, but one has to be lenient because they are powerless to act
whilst the tenants remain. Where we can take action against the
true delinquents they are either compelled to alter their habits or their
habitation, and they generally do the latter. But the evil is not cured,
because these slum-makers remove to other districts there to renew
their work of depreciation and destruction in a new area. Unfortunately
there are well meaning people who denounce the authorities and the
landlords as cruel for turning the poor into the streets or harrowing
their lives. It is not because they are poor that they receive such
treatment, but because they are dirty and dangerous to others.
In every house there is a good water supply, but they refuse to keep
their children clean, whilst their own persons and rooms are neglected,
and become centres of attraction for vermin and disease. Soap and