Part 25 (1/2)
The connection is close and intimate between physical and moral health, between domestic well-being and public happiness. The destructive influence of an unwholesome dwelling propagates a moral typhus worse than the plague itself. Where the body is enfeebled by the depressing influences of vitiated air and bodily defilement, the mind, almost of necessity, takes the same low, unhealthy tone. Self-respect is lost; a stupid, inert, languid feeling overpowers the system; the character becomes depraved; and too often--eager to s.n.a.t.c.h even a momentary enjoyment, to feel the blood bounding in the veins,--the miserable victim flies to the demon of strong drink for relief; hence misery, infamy, shame, crime, and wretchedness.
This neglect of the conditions of daily health is a frightfully costly thing. It costs the rich a great deal of money in the shape of poor-rates, for the support of widows made husbandless, and children made fatherless, by typhus. It costs them also a great deal in disease; for the fever often spreads from the dwellings of the poor into the homes of the rich, and carries away father, mother, or children. It costs a great deal in subscriptions to maintain dispensaries, infirmaries, houses of recovery, and asylums for the dest.i.tute. It costs the poor still more; it costs them their health, which is their only capital. In this is invested their all: if they lose it, their docket is struck, and they are bankrupt. How frightful is the neglect, whether it be on the part of society or of individuals, which robs the poor man of his health, and makes his life a daily death!
Why, then, is not sanitary science universally adopted and enforced? We fear it is mainly through indifference and laziness. The local authorities--munic.i.p.alities and boards of guardians--are so many Mrs.
Maclartys in their way. Like that dirty matron, they ”canna be fashed.”
To remove the materials of disease requires industry, constant attention, and--what is far more serious--increased rates. The foul interests hold their ground, and bid defiance to the attacks made upon them. Things did very well, they say, in ”the good old times,”--why should they not do so now? When typhus or cholera breaks out, they tell us that n.o.body is to blame.
That terrible n.o.body! How much he has to answer for. More mischief is done by n.o.body than by all the world besides. n.o.body adulterates our food. n.o.body poisons us with bad drink. n.o.body supplies us with foul water. n.o.body spreads fever in blind alleys and unswept lanes. n.o.body leaves towns undrained. n.o.body fills gaols, penitentiaries, and convict stations. n.o.body makes poachers, thieves, and drunkards.
n.o.body has a theory too--a dreadful theory. It is embodied in two words--_Laissez faire_--Let alone. When people are poisoned by plaster of Paris mixed with flour, ”Let alone” is the remedy. When _Cocculus indicus_ is used instead of hops, and men die prematurely, it is easy to say, ”n.o.body did it.” Let those who can, find out when they are cheated: _Caveat emptor_. When people live in foul dwellings, let them alone. Let wretchedness do its work; do not interfere with death.
”It matters nothing to me,” said a rich man who heard of a poor woman and her sick child being driven forth from a town for begging. The workhouse authorities would have nothing to do with her, and sent her away. But the poor woman went and sat down with her child at the rich man's door; the child died there; the contagion of typhus was wafted into the gilded saloon and the luxurious bed-chamber and the rich man's child fell a victim to the disease.
But n.o.body has considerably less power in society than he once had: and our hope is, that he may ultimately follow in the wake of Old Bogie, and disappear altogether. Wherever there is suffering and social depression, we may depend upon it that Somebody is to blame. The responsibility rests somewhere; and if we allow it to remain, it rests with us. We may not be able to cope with the evil as individuals, single-handed; but it becomes us to unite, and bring to bear upon the evil the joint moral power of society in the form of a law. A Law is but the expression of a combined will; and it does that for society, which society, in its individual and separate action, cannot so well or efficiently do for itself. Laws may do too much; they may meddle with things which ought to be ”let alone;” but the abuse of a thing is no proper argument against its use, in cases where its employment is urgently called for.
Mere improvement of towns, however,--as respects drainage, sewerage, paving, water supply, and abolition of cellar dwellings,--will effect comparatively little, unless we can succeed in carrying the improvement further,--namely, into the Homes of the people themselves. A well-devised system of sanitary measures may ensure external cleanliness,--may provide that the soil on which the streets of houses are built shall be relieved of all superfluous moisture, and that all animal and vegetable refuse shall be promptly removed,--so that the air circulating through the streets, and floating from them into the houses of the inhabitants, shall not be laden with poisonous miasmata, the source of disease, suffering, and untimely death. Cellar dwellings may be prohibited, and certain regulations as to the buildings hereafter to be erected may also be enforced. But here munic.i.p.al or parochial authority stops: it can go no further; it cannot penetrate into the Home, and it is not necessary that it should do so.
The individual efforts of the community themselves are therefore needed; and any legislative enactments which dispensed with these would probably be an evil. The Government does not build the houses in which the people dwell. These are provided by employers and by capitalists, small and large. It is necessary, therefore, to enlist these interests in the cause of sanitary improvement, in order to ensure success.
Individual capitalists have already done much to provide wholesome houses for their working people, and have found their account in so doing, by their increased health, as well as in their moral improvement in all ways. Capitalists imbued with a benevolent and philanthropic spirit can thus spread blessings far and wide. And were a few enterprising builders in every town to take up this question practically, and provide a cla.s.s of houses for workpeople, with suitable accommodation; provided with arrangements for ventilation, cleanliness, and separation of the s.e.xes, such as health and comfort require; they would really be conferring an amount of benefit on the community at large, and, at the same time, we believe, upon themselves, which it would not be easy to overestimate.
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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses; 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.
Homes are the manufactories of men, and as the Homes are, so will the men be. Mind will be degraded by the physical influences around it,--decency will be destroyed by constant contact with impurity and defilement,--and coa.r.s.eness of manners, habits, and tastes, will become inevitable. You cannot rear a kindly nature, sensitive against evil, careful of proprieties, and desirous of moral and intellectual improvement, amidst the darkness, dampness, disorder, and discomfort which unhappily characterize so large a portion of the dwellings of the poor in our large towns; and until we can, by some means or other, improve their domestic accommodation, their low moral and social condition must be regarded as inevitable.
We want not only a better cla.s.s of dwellings, but we require the people to be so educated as to appreciate them. An Irish landlord took his tenantry out of their mud huts, and removed them into comfortable dwellings which he had built for their accommodation. When he returned to his estate, he was greatly disappointed. The houses were as untidy and uncomfortable as before. The pig was still under the bed, and the hens over it. The concrete floor was as dirty as the mud one had been.
The panes of the windows were broken, and the garden was full of weeds.
The landlord wrote to a friend in despair. The friend replied, ”You have begun at the wrong end. You ought to have taught them the value of cleanliness, thriftiness, and comfort.” To begin at the beginning, therefore, we must teach the people the necessity of cleanliness, its virtues and its wholesomeness; for which purpose it is requisite that they should be intelligent, capable of understanding ideas conveyed in words, able to discern, able to read, able to think. In short, the people, as children, must first have been to school, and properly taught there; whereas we have allowed the majority of the working people to grow up untaught, nearly half of them unable to read and write; and then we expect them to display the virtues, prudence, judgment, and forethought of well-educated beings!
It is of the first importance to teach people cleanly habits. This can be done without teaching them either reading or writing. Cleanliness is more than wholesomeness. It furnishes an atmosphere of self-respect, and influences the moral condition of the entire household. It is the best exponent of the spirit of Thrift. It is to the economy of the household, what hygiene is to the human body. It should preside at every detail of domestic service. It indicates comfort and well-being. It is among the distinctive attributes of civilisation, and marks the progress of nations.
Dr. Paley was accustomed to direct the particular attention of travellers in foreign countries to the condition of the people as respects cleanliness, and the local provisions for the prevention of pollution. He was of opinion that a greater insight might thus be obtained into their habits of decency, self-respect, and industry, and into their moral and social condition generally, than from facts of any other description. People are cleanly in proportion as they are decent, industrious, and self-respecting. Unclean people are uncivilized. The dirty cla.s.ses of great towns are invariably the ”dangerous cla.s.ses” of those towns. And if we would civilize the cla.s.ses yet uncivilized, we must banish dirt from amongst them.
Yet dirt forms no part of our nature. It is a parasite, feeding upon human life, and destroying it. It is hideous and disgusting. There can be no beauty where it is. The prettiest woman is made repulsive by it.
Children are made fretful, impatient, and bad-tempered by it. Men are degraded and made reckless by it. There is little modesty where dirt is,--for dirty is indecency. There can be little purity of mind where the person is impure; for the body is the temple of the soul, and must be cleansed and purified to be worthy of the shrine within. Dirt has an affinity with self-indulgence and drunkenness. The sanitary inquirers have clearly made out that the dirty cla.s.ses are the drunken cla.s.ses; and that they are p.r.o.ne to seek, in the stupefaction of beer, gin, and opium, a refuge from the miserable depression caused by the foul conditions in which they live.
We need scarcely refer to the moral as well as the physical beauty of cleanliness--cleanliness which indicates self-respect, and is the root of many fine virtues--and especially of purity, delicacy, and decency.
We might even go farther, and say that purity of thought and feeling result from habitual purity of body. For the mind and heart of man are, to a very great extent, influenced by external conditions and circ.u.mstances; and habit and custom, as regards outward things, stamp themselves deeply on the whole character,--alike upon the moral feelings and the intellectual powers.
Moses was the most practical of sanitary reformers. Among the eastern nations generally, cleanliness is a part of religion. They esteem it not only as next to G.o.dliness, but as a part of G.o.dliness itself. They connect the idea of internal sanct.i.ty with that of external purification. They feel that it would be an insult to the Maker they wors.h.i.+p to come into His presence covered with impurity. Hence the Mahommedans devote almost as much care to the erection of baths, as to that of mosques; and alongside the place of wors.h.i.+p is usually found the place of cleansing, so that the faithful may have the ready means of purification previous to their act of wors.h.i.+p.
”What wors.h.i.+p,” says a great writer, ”is there not in mere was.h.i.+ng!
perhaps one of the most moral things a man, in common cases, has it in his power to do. Strip thyself, go into the bath, or were it into the limpid pool of a running brook, and there wash and be clean; thou wilt step out again a purer and a better man. This consciousness of perfect outer pureness--that to thy skin there now adheres no foreign speck of imperfection--how it radiates on thee, with cunning symbolic influences to thy very soul! thou hast an increased tendency towards all good things whatsoever. The oldest eastern sages, with joy and holy grat.i.tude, had felt it to be so, and that it was the Maker's gift and will.”
The common well-being of men, women, and children depends upon attention to what at first sight may appear comparatively trivial matters. And unless these small matters be attended to, comfort in person, mind, and feeling is absolutely impossible. The physical satisfaction of a child, for example, depends upon attention to its feeding, clothing, and was.h.i.+ng. These are the commonest of common things, and yet they are of the most essential importance. If the child is not properly fed and clothed, it will grow up feeble and ill-conditioned. And as the child is, so will the man be.
Grown people cannot be comfortable without regular attention to these common matters. Every one needs, and ought to have, comfort at home; and comfort is the united product of cleanliness, thrift, regularity, industry,--in short, a continuous performance of duties, each in itself apparently trivial. The cooking of a potato, the baking of a loaf, the mending of a s.h.i.+rt, the darning of a pair of stockings, the making of a bed, the scrubbing of a floor, the was.h.i.+ng and dressing of a baby, are all matters of no great moment; but a woman ought to know how to do these, before the management of a household, however poor, is entrusted to her.