The thrifty French rule is one fifth for rent.  In towns where land is cheap and wood abundant, or in college communities exempt from taxes, comfortable housing is found in this country for as little as fifteen or eighteen per cent of the total income.  In some mining towns where all prospects are uncertain and the house has no particular social significance the rent may be even lower, although it is often very high.  It depends on the demand, on competition rather than quality.  In our older and more settled communities it is most common for rent to use up one fourth the salary of all town dwellers with incomes within our limits.  This was true in Boston fifty years ago, and it is true to-day in dozens of cities and towns personally investigated.  It is not unknown that a teacher or business man should exceed this in the hope of a rise in salary by the second year.  Adding the expenses of operating the house, of repairs and additions and improvements if the house is owned, nearly half the money available must go for the mere housing of the family.

If it is true, as I believe it is, that for each fraction over one fifth spent for rent a saving must be made in some other direction—­in the daily expense, less service, less costly food, or less expensive clothing, or, last to be cut down, less of the real pleasure of life,—­it will be seen what a far-reaching question this is, how it touches the vital point, to have or not to have other good things in life.

A large part of the increase is due, as we have said, to increased demand for sanitary conveniences, but far more potent is the pressure resulting from the price of land.

This pressure has led to the building of smaller and smaller apartments, so that four and six rooms are made out of floor-space sufficient for two.  It sounds better to say we have a six-room flat, even though there is no more privacy than in two rooms, for the rooms are mere cells unless the doors are always open.  It is not uncommon in such suites renting for $50 to $60 per month for six rooms, to find three of them with only one window on one side, with no chance for cross-ventilation unless the doors of the whole suite are open.

This style of building prevails even in the suburbs where air and sunshine should be free.  The would-be renter looking at such suites with all the doors open and the rooms innocent of fried fish and bacon does not think of the place as it will be under living conditions when privacy can be had only by smothering.

The model tenements in New York rent for one dollar per week per room; the better houses for double, or two dollars for 450 cubic feet.  Many of those I have examined renting for forty to sixty dollars per month give no more space for the money, only a little better finish—­marble and tile in the bath-room, for instance.

The three-room tenement does, however, shelter as many persons as the six-room flat, hence there is more real overcrowding.  In all these grades of shelter it is fresh air that is wanting.  What wonder the white plague is always with us?  What remedy so long as millions sleep in closets with no air-currents passing through?