cover, and
when they do, why, then their thin blood is drained, for they have to
pay exorbitantly.

It is apparently easy to transmute wretched humanity into gold. But who
is going to call order out of this horrid chaos? No one, I am thinking,
for no one seems to dare attempt in any thorough way to solve the
question of housing the very poor, and that question lies at the root of
this matter.

Let any one attempt it, and a thousand formidable vested interests rise
up and confront him, against which he will dash himself in vain. As to
housing the inhabitants of the underworld at a reasonable rental, no one
seems to have entertained the idea.

Lease holders and sub-lease holders, landlords and ground landlords,
corporations and churches, philanthropists and clergymen have all got
vested interests in house property where wretchedness and dirt are
conspicuous. "But," said a notable clergyman in regard to some horrid
slum, "I cannot help it, I have only a life-interest in it," as if,
forsooth, he could have more; did he wish to carry his interests beyond
the grave? I would give life-interest in rotten house property short
shrift by burning the festering places. But such places are not burned,
though sometimes they are closed by the order of the local authorities.
But oftener still they are purchased by local authorities at great
public cost, or by philanthropic trusts. Then the human rabbits are
driven from their warrens to burrow elsewhere and so leave room for
respectability.

Better-looking and brighter buildings are erected where suites of rooms
are to let at very high prices. Then a tax is placed upon children, and
a premium is offered to sterility. Glowing accounts appear in the Press,
and royalty goes to inspect the new gold mine! We rub our hands with
complacent satisfaction and say, "Ah! at last something is being done
for housing the very poor!" But what of the rabbits! have they ascended
to the seventh heaven of the new paradise? Not a bit; they cannot offer
the required credentials, or pay the exorbitant rent! not for them seven
flights of stone stairs night and morning; it is so much easier for
rabbits to burrow underground, or live in the open. So away they
scuttle! Some to dustheaps, some back to Adullam Street, some to nomadic
life. But most of them to other warrens, to share quarters with other
rabbits till those warrens in their turn are converted into "dwellings,"
when again they must needs scuttle an