28 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



streets, which will look, in time, like mere lanes. Wings are 

 built precisely in the places where they will intercept the sun- 

 rays most directly. Some so-called improved dwellings are 

 constructed in which the half of the rooms are lighted from 

 closed yards, which consequently contain only stagnant air. 

 Moreover, some of these yards are only wells, styled light- 

 wells, but where the sun can never penetrate. Rooms are 

 made without any window whatever. And lastly, dwellings, 

 healthy until now, are transformed into absolutely unhealthy 

 dwellings, and tenants are always found for them 



" The public authorities should boldly undertake the fight 

 against the cupidity of the real estate owners. They should 

 not, indeed, hesitate. 'Let no one/ writes Chessyon, 'speak of 

 the violation of the right of ownership. If ownership has 

 rights, it also has duties, and the respect for the interests of 

 the proprietor cannot go so far as to deliver up to him, without 

 control and counter-weight, the lives of the families he lodges 

 in his property. If indeed, ownership is one of the founda- 

 tions of society, public health is another of them, and it has 

 also a right to consideration.' 



Referring to slum conditions in Ontario, J. J. Kelso, Superin- 

 tendent of the Department of Neglected Children, speaks as follows : 



"These slums are exceedingly dangerous to the health 

 and morals of a city because they are, to the great majority of 

 the people, unknown and unexplored retreats. If leading 

 citizens had to visit these places frequently, the dilapidation, 

 stench, and general misery of mothers and children would so 

 appeal to them as to bring about a quick reform. They are 

 not concerned because they do not comprehend the horrors of 



the situation If there could be a drastic measure 



passed requiring every house in which human beings dwell to 

 front on a forty or sixty foot street, or else be pulled down, 

 how long would drunkenness, vice and ignorance exist ! Not 

 very long, provided there was good municipal government 

 and active Christian effort for social betterment. The slums 

 should be attacked and abolished because they are the great 

 enemy to the home, which is the foundation stone of the State. 

 Bad housing conditions inevitably tend to drunkenness in par- 

 ents; to deliquency in children; to disorderly conduct; to wife 

 and family desertion by men who get tired of it all; to immor- 

 ality in the growing generation owing to the lack of privacy 

 and the consequent loss of modesty; to the spread of typhoid 

 fever, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and the ravages of the great 

 white plague." 



