At the foundation of what seem exorbitant rents is this demand for modern improvements in old houses, and the atrocious carelessness of tenants of property.  It is not their own, and they do not obey the golden rule in the use of it.

Every five years or so plumbing laws are changed, and if an old house is touched the fixtures and pipes must be all renewed.  Tenants have learned to fear the sanitation of old houses, and yet abuse the appliances they should care for.

Public ownership or corporate ownership or an increased lawlessness are accountable for a disregard of others’ rights and of property which is unnecessarily increasing the cost of living.

I have said elsewhere that it is not because the landlord does not want children in the house but because he does not want such ill-bred children, vandals, who have no respect for anything.  He charges high rent because his investment is good for only ten years.

The shibboleth of duty to own a home has so strong a hold on the moral sense of the people that it is made use of by the promoter who may in some cases think himself the philanthropist he intends others to call him.  I mean that the duty of owning and the heinousness of paying rent are so ingrained that buying on the instalment plan has seemed a righteous thing, even with the examples of broken lives in plain sight.  As an incentive to save, if there were anything to save, it might have been justified in the days of feudalism.  But for an independent American to confess that he cannot put money in the bank, and that he must bind himself and his family to slavery, for the sake of owning a bit of property which they will probably wish to sell before they have it paid for, is disgraceful.  Intelligent men should see that here is the profit in the transaction; that enough go to the wall to pay for the trouble of the rest, just as in life insurance enough die before the expected time to put money in the pockets of the riskers.

A drunken father may need to be held, but the young professor, the lawyer, the engineer, should have sufficient self-respect and firmness to save that which in his judgment is necessary, without being tied by “the instalment plan.”  This method is a very viper in the finances of to-day.  The wise business man never ventures more than he can afford to lose in a risk, but the man who takes bread and milk from his children to invest in “a sure thing” takes a risk with what is not his to give.

To buy land for investment is another supposed virtue, an inheritance from the time when slow growth, once started in a given direction, kept on, so that great acumen was not needed to buy; but that is all changed to-day.  Only those “in the ring” can tell where the “boom” will go next.

In these days of unparalelled rapidity of change in industrial and social conditions it is most undesirable for a man to be hampered by a shell which is too large to carry about with him and too valuable to be left behind.  To each reader will occur instances of the refusal of an advantageous offer because the family home could not be realized upon at once, the location once so favorable had become undesirable, and the values put into it could not be recovered because of social conditions following industrial changes.