might be of considerable benefit to
the community. But having got habituated to the liberty of common
lodging-houses, and to the excitement of getting day by day just enough
for each day's need, though sometimes fasting and sometimes feasting,
the desire for settled home life and for the duties of citizenship has
vanished. For with the money to pay night by night for their lodgings,
responsibility to rent and tax collector ends.

I must allow some exceptions, for once every year there comes upon
thousands of them the burden of finding five shillings to pay for the
hawker's licence that provides them with the semblance of a living, or
an excuse for begging. After much experience of this class, including
many visits to common lodging-houses, and some friendships with the
inmates, I am sure that the desire to be untrammelled with social and
municipal obligation leads a great percentage of the occupants to prefer
the life to any other. They represent to some extent in this modern and
industrial age the descendants of Jonadab, the son of Rechab, with this
exception, they are by no means averse to the wine-cup. It is to be
feared that there is a growth in this portion of our community, for
every scheme for providing decent lodgings for casually homeless men
is eagerly taken advantage of by men who might and who ought to live in
homes of their own, and so fulfil the duties of decent citizenship. In
this respect even Lord Rowton's estimable lodging-houses, and those,
too, of our municipal authorities prove no exception, for they attract
numbers of men who ought not to be there, but who might, with just a
little more self-reliance and self-respect, live comfortably outside.

But I pass on to the common lodging-houses that accommodate a lower
class than is found in municipal or Rowton houses. Probably none, or
at any rate very few, of my readers have had a practical experience of
common lodging-houses. I have, so therefore I ask them to accompany me
to one of them.

In a dingy slum stand a number of grimy houses that have been converted
into one big house. The various doorways have been blocked and one
enlarged entrance serves.

As we enter, the money-taker in his office demands our business. We tell
him that we are anxious to have a look round, and he tells us that he
will send for the deputy. The deputy is the autocrat that governs with
undisputable sway in this domain of semi-darkness and dirt. We stand
aside in the half-