It was a jerry-
built house, and the result was that she brought the whole lot down about
her head, together with a quarter of a hundred-weight of plaster.

"Yes, I thought you'd do some mischief," had commented the landlady,
wearily.

It seemed typical. A jerry-built world, apparently. With the best
intentions it seemed impossible to move in it without doing more harm
than good to it, bringing things down about one that one had not
intended.

She wanted to abolish steel rabbit-traps. She had heard the little
beggars cry. It had struck her as such a harmless reform. But they told
her there were worthy people in the neighbourhood of Wolverhampton--quite
a number of them--who made their living by the manufacture of steel
rabbit-traps. If, thinking only of the rabbits, you prohibited steel
rabbit-traps, then you condemned all these worthy people to slow
starvation. The local Mayor himself wrote in answer to her article. He
drew a moving picture of the sad results that might follow such an ill-
considered agitation: hundreds of grey-haired men, too old to learn new
jobs, begging from door to door; shoals of little children, white-faced
and pinched; sobbing women. Her editor was sorry for the rabbits. Had
often spent a pleasant day with them himself. But, after all, the Human
Race claimed our first sympathies.

She wanted to abolish sweating. She had climbed the rotting stairways,
seen the famished creatures in their holes. But it seemed that if you
interfered with the complicated system based on sweating then you
dislocated the entire structure of the British export clothing trade. Not
only would these poor creatures lose their admittedly wretched living--but
still a living--but thousands of other innocent victims would also be
involved in the common ruin. All very sad, but half a loaf--or even let
us frankly say a thin slice--is better than no bread at all.

She wanted board school children's heads examined. She had examined one
or two herself. It seemed to her wrong that healthy children should be
compelled to sit for hours within jumping distance of the diseased. She
thought it better that the dirty should be made fit company for the clean
than the clean should be brought down to the level of the dirty. It
seemed that in doing this you were destroying the independence of the
poor. Opposition reformers, in letters scintillating with paradox,
bristling with classical allusion, denounced her attempt