“How do you do, Mr. Ditmar?” he said.  “I’ve been hoping to have this pleasure.”

“My secretary, Miss Bumpus,” said Ditmar.

Mr. Siddons quivered and bowed.  Ditmar, sinking ponderously into his chair, seemed suddenly, ironically amused, grinning at Janet as he opened a drawer of his desk and offered the visitor a cigar.

“Thanks, I don’t smoke,” said Mr. Siddons.

Ditmar lit one for himself.

“Now, what can I do for you?” he asked.

“Well, as I wrote you in my letter, I was engaged to make as thorough an examination as possible of the living conditions and housing of the operatives in the city of Hampton.  I’m sure you’d be interested in hearing something of the situation we found.”

“I suppose you’ve been through our mills,” said Ditmar.

“No, the fact is—­”

“You ought to go through.  I think it might interest you,” Ditmar put a slight emphasis on the pronoun.  “We rather pride ourselves on making things comfortable and healthy for our people.”

“I’ve no doubt of it—­in fact, I’ve been so informed.  It’s because of your concern for the welfare of your workers in the mills that I ventured to come and talk to you of how most of them live when they’re at home,” replied Siddons, as Janet thought, rather neatly.  “Perhaps, though living in Hampton, you don’t quite realize what the conditions are.  I know a man who has lived in Boston ten years and who hasn’t ever seen the Bunker Hill monument.”

“The Bunker Hill monument’s a public affair,” retorted Ditmar, “anybody can go there who has enough curiosity and interest.  But I don’t see how you can expect me to follow these people home and make them clean up their garbage and wash their babies.  I shouldn’t want anybody to interfere with my private affairs.”

“But when you get to a point where private affairs become a public menace?” Siddons objected.  “Mr. Ditmar, I’ve seen block after block of tenements ready to crumble.  There are no provisions for foundations, thickness of walls, size of timbers and columns, and if these houses had been deliberately erected to make a bonfire they couldn’t have answered the purpose better.  If it were not for the danger to life and the pity of making thousands of families homeless, a conflagration would be a blessing, although I believe the entire north or south side of the city would go under certain conditions.  The best thing you could do would be to burn whole rows of these tenements, they are ideal breeding grounds for disease.  In the older sections of the city you’ve got hundreds of rear houses here, houses moved back on the lots, in some extreme cases with only four-foot courts littered with refuse,—­houses without light, without ventilation, and many of the rooms where these people are cooking and eating and sleeping are so damp and foul they’re not fit to put dogs in.  You’ve got some blocks with a density of over five hundred to the acre, and your average density is considerably over a hundred.”