TENEMENT HOUSE REGULATION 201 



lighted, unless they wish to, and that they should not be re- 

 stricted m their liberty to rent rooms in such houses, it may be 

 at a lower rent, if they so desire. The reply may be, and in 

 some cities would properly l^e, that they would have no choice 

 unless the law intervened to protect them. Moreover, it 

 might be urged that in the provision for separate water closets 

 for each apartment, and in the lighting of pubhc halls, there 

 was an element of protection to pul^lic health and morals in 

 which the community had an interest, and which the com- 

 munity by regulation should insure. 



I have sought by these illustrations to point the closeness 

 of the dividing line between justifiable restriction of the in- 

 dividual liberty of the house builder and house owner, for the 

 protection of the liberty of others, and paternalism. It is 

 imdoubtedly true, as Mr. Lecky states in the concluding part 

 of the paragraph to which I have already referred, that ''the 

 marked tendency of these generations to extend the stringency 

 and area of coercive legislation in the fields of sanitary reform 

 is one that should be carefully watched. Its exaggerations 

 may, in more ways than one, greatly injure the very classes it 

 is intended to benefit." There is real danger lest in our eager- 

 ness and earnestness to improve the condition of others, we 

 legislate from the point of view of those fathers and mothers 

 who are always ready to regulate the affairs of every family 

 but their own, and break down the habit of self dependence 

 and the spirit of individual responsibihty upon which the vigor 

 of our American social fabric so largely depends. 



Perhaps the most important limitation to tenement house 

 reform, in the construction of new tenements, is the question 

 of cost. If tenements can not be rented at a profit, they will 

 not be built. There are many things which it would be desira- 

 ble to have in a tenement, each one of which adds to its cost ; 

 and if they be required by law to an extent which makes it 

 imremunerative, tenement building will cease. It is undoubt- 

 edly desirable that all tenements should be fireproof through- 

 out ; indeed, the same may be said of private houses. In 1892, 

 Boston so prescribed; but few, if any, were erected, and the 

 law was consequently modified in 1899. 



The amount of rent which the average American workuig- 



