But there also needs the active co-operation of the dwellers in poor men’s homes themselves.  They, too, must join cordially in the sanitary movement; otherwise comparatively little good can be effected.  You may provide an efficient water supply, yet, if the housewife will not use the water as it ought to be used,—­if she be lazy and dirty,—­the house will be foul and comfortless still.  You may provide for ventilation, yet, if offensive matters be not removed, and doors and windows are kept closed, the pure outer air will be excluded, and the house will still smell fusty and unwholesome.  In any case, there must be a cleanly woman to superintend the affairs of the house; and she cannot be made so by Act of Parliament!  The Sanitary Commissioners cannot, by any “Notification,” convert the slatternly shrew into a tidy housewife, nor the disorderly drunkard into an industrious, home-loving husband.  There must, therefore, be individual effort on the part of the housewife in every working man’s Home.  As a recent writer on Home Reform observes,—­

“We must begin by insisting that, however much of the physical and moral evils of the working classes may be justly attributable to their dwellings, it is too often the case that more ought, in truth, to be attributed to themselves.  For, surely, the inmate depends less on the house, than the house on the inmate; as mind has more power over matter than matter over mind.  Let a dwelling be ever so poor and incommodious, yet a family with decent and cleanly habits will contrive to make the best of it, and will take care that there shall be nothing offensive in it which they have power to remove.  Whereas a model house, fitted up with every convenience and comfort which modern science can supply, will, if occupied by persons of intemperate and uncleanly habits, speedily become a disgrace and a nuisance.  A sober, industrious, and cleanly couple will impart an air of decency and respectability to the poorest dwelling; while the spendthrift, the drunkard, or the gambler will convert a palace into a scene of discomfort and disgust.  Since, therefore, so much depends on the character and conduct of the parties themselves, it is right that they should feel their responsibility in this matter, and that they should know and attend to the various points connected with the improvement of their own Homes.”

While this important truth should be kept steadily in view, every possible exertion ought, at the same time, to be made to provide a greater abundance of comfortable, decent, and comely dwellings for the working classes; for it is to be lamented that, in many districts, they are, as it were, forced by the necessities of their condition to gravitate into localities, and to inhabit dwellings where decency is rendered almost impossible, where life becomes a slow dying, and where the influences operating on the entire human energies, physical and moral, are of the most deleterious character.