We speak not merely of the poorest labourers, but of the best-paid workmen in the large manufacturing towns.  Men earning from two to three pounds a week,—­or more than the average pay of curates and bankers’ clerks,—­though spending considerable amounts on beer, will often grudge so small a part of their income as half-a-crown a week to provide decent homes for themselves and their children.  What is the consequence?  They degrade themselves and their families.  They crowd together, in foul neighbourhoods, into dwellings possessing no element of health or decency; where even the small rental which they pay is in excess of the accommodation they receive.  The results are inevitable,—­loss of self-respect, degradation of intelligence, failure of physical health, and premature death.  Even the highest-minded philosopher, placed in such a situation, would gradually gravitate towards brutality.

But the amount thus saved, or rather not expended on house-rent, is not economy; it is reckless waste.  The sickness caused by the bad dwelling involves frequent interruptions of work, and drains upon the Savings Bank or the Benefit Society; and a final and rapid descent to the poor-rates.  Though the loss to the middle and upper classes is great, the loss is not for a moment to be compared with that which falls upon the working classes themselves, through their neglect in providing wholesome and comfortable dwellings for their families.  It is, perhaps, not saying too much to aver, that one-half the money expended by benefit societies in large towns, may be set down as pecuniary loss arising from bad and unhealthy homes.

But there is a worse consequence still.  The low tone of physical health thereby produced is one of the chief causes of drunkenness.  Mr. Chadwick once remonstrated with an apparently sensible workman on the expenditure of half his income on whisky.  His reply was, “Do you, sir, come and live here, and you will drink whisky too.”  Mr. Leigh says, “I would not be understood that habits of intoxication are wholly due to a defective sanitary condition; but no person can have the experience I have had without coming to the conclusion that unhealthy and unhappy homes,—­loss of vital and consequently of industrial energy, and a consciousness of inability to control external circumstances,—­induce thousands to escape from miserable depression in the temporary excitement of noxious drugs and intoxicating liquors.  They are like the seamen who struggle for awhile against the evils by which they are surrounded, but at last, seeing no hope, stupefy themselves with drink, and perish.”