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Rooms. It may be a brilliant idea to educate every child, but
at least in doing so, do not let us increase its chances of not needing
that education as an adult. We'are not justified in running the risk of
spreading disease even in imparting knowledge. Our death rate is
big enough as it is. To spread knowledge is without doubt a
bounden duty, but it is not necessary to build enormous schools for
this purpose, and so to run the risk of allowing one child to scatter
the seeds of fever and disease to five hundred. To see one monster
school gradually displacing a score of little schools, is from a
sanitary point of view a retrograde step, for which before long we may
have to pay dearly.
It may be thought I am venturing out of my province to refer to
Working Men's Clubs and Institutes as a sanitary evil; but some
considerable experience convinces me that they are so, and a
dangerous evil, from the circumstance that at first sight the evil is
not apparent. Sound sanitary science can never suggest the continuous
and unnecessary congregation of men. It is said that the
Club keeps men away from the public house; that is open to doubt;
but granting it, it certainly takes the men away from their homes of
an evening, and as certainly it removes from the wife any inducement
she might otherwise have, to render her home clean and comfortable,
knowing very well that her husband will go to the club on his
return from work. Our good philanthropists by urging the oft told
tale, ' see what uncomfortable homes these men have,' and who so
warmly support these clubs, should ask themselves, whether they are
not aiding the cause of dirt and uncleanliness and discomfort, and even
worse things than these, by providing a comfortable room away and
apart from those who should be the attraction to the working man,
and whose presence at home would be of itself the strongest and
most powerful stimulus to promote cleanliness, order, and health.
Again I say, sound sanitary science should aim at the dispersion
and not at the congregation of men. Once more take those monster
blocks erected by men whose praise is rightly on all tongues, which
have been called " Model Lodging Houses." The system is a
most pernicious one, not merely destructive of that honest pride
every man should have in his home, but shattering entirely that
sacred privacy which should belong to it. This may be called sentimentalism,
but no matter. The dark winding staircases serve to