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of the wages of the working classes, that a small increase
of wages will not meet their increased expenses; while
the large class of poor women who have to get their
living and often to support children also, have constantly
increasing difficulties to deal with, more especially
as regards the rent of lodgings. This appears to
me a point on which the poorer classes have a just
claim on the assistance of those families whose fortunes
have been made by success in manufactures and commerce.
The large demand for land in London and
other commercial towns, has absorbed so much, and so
raised its value, that it is difficult to find any on which
houses for the working classes can be built, and has
tended greatly to increase the rents they pay. Some
may live short distances from London, but multitudes
are obliged to reside near their work, and must consequently
pay large rents in proportion to their income,
so that they have a claim for assistance in this respect
on those who have been successful in their manufacturing
and commercial speculations.
While much unmerited poverty is the unquestionable
cause of a higher death-rate among the working part of
our community, yet there are other causes which tend
to increase that low condition of health which weakens
the constitution and renders health so feeble as to prepare
many victims for the first epidemic disease that
may prevail. The bad air of unventilated rooms is
increased by many habits which are very improper: and
I will here mention one which obstructs other improvements
in our sanitary arrangements. In almost all
houses let out in tenements, the water-closets are unfit
for use, and too often the family, and especially the
children, never use the closet at all, but a vessel in
their only room. This vessel is emptied, possibly once
a-day into the closet, and this so carelessly as to render
the seat unfit for use, and very often to obstruct the
closet altogether, from the various kinds of refuse, &c.,