tained a bedstead
and lived there, though the rain dripped through his rotten roof. This
man was too old and weak for regular work, and supported himself by
removing manure with a hand-cart; the dung-heaps lay next door to his
palace!

Such are the various working-people's quarters of Manchester as I had
occasion to observe them personally during twenty months. If we briefly
formulate the result of our wanderings, we must admit that 350,000
working-people of Manchester and its environs live, almost all of them,
in wretched, damp, filthy cottages, that the streets which surround them
are usually in the most miserable and filthy condition, laid out without
the slightest reference to ventilation, with reference solely to the
profit secured by the contractor. In a word, we must confess that in the
working-men's dwellings of Manchester, no cleanliness, no convenience,
and consequently no comfortable family life is possible; that in such
dwellings only a physically degenerate race, robbed of all humanity,
degraded, reduced morally and physically to bestiality, could feel
comfortable and at home. And I am not alone in making this assertion. We
have seen that Dr. Kay gives precisely the same description; and, though
it is superfluous, I quote further the words of a Liberal, {63}
recognised and highly valued as an authority by the manufacturers, and a
fanatical opponent of all independent movements of the workers:

"As I passed through the dwellings of the mill hands in Irish Town,
Ancoats, and Little Ireland, I was only amazed that it is possible to
maintain a reasonable state of health in such homes. These towns, for in
extent and number of inhabitants they are towns, have been erected with
the utmost disregard of everything except the immediate advantage of the
speculating builder. A carpenter and builder unite to buy a series of
building sites (_i.e_., they lease them for a number of years), and cover
them with so-called houses. In one place we found a whole street
following the course of a ditch, because in this way deeper cellars could
be secured without the cost of digging, cellars not for storing wares or
rubbish, but for dwellings for human beings. _Not one house of this
street escaped the cholera_. In general, the streets of these suburbs
are unpaved, with a dung-heap or ditch in the middle; the houses are
built back to back, without ventilation or drainage, and whole families
are limited to a corner of a ce