30 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



The term slum is in the present instance applied to the homes 

 of two classes of the community, viz., those of the working class who 

 strive to live honestly, and those of the poor who find it difficult to 

 make a living or who do not intend to. The homes of the poor con- 

 sist mainly of the abandoned hovels to be found here and there 

 those houses which have seen better days, the property often of well- 

 to-do citizens or corporations, not the property of the poor occupant 

 who has to pay rent of an exorbitant amount, considering the ab- 

 sence, in most cases, of even necessary conveniences and comforts, 

 and that "necessary repairs" are a negligible quantity. Indeed, 

 all is dilapidation, decay and desolation. The environment reeks 

 with the odours of successive strata of dirt, household refuse, and 

 domestic slops, while the walls are cracked, and the stairways rickety 

 and unsafe, narrow and dark. The houses are often without cellars, 

 are low and damp, being sometimes built flat upon the ground; 

 while darkened rooms, inaccessible to sunlight, add a sombre hue 

 to a condition which can only be summed up as " damnable. " Such 

 in brief, is a description of what, in the aggregate, constitutes in the 

 popular mind in Canada the "slum." 



The slum house stands in a similar relationship to the commu- 

 nity as the physical degenerate does to society : both alike are to be 

 found in all grades of the community, both are found more fre- 

 quently amongst the poorer classes. No matter where the slum 

 house is found it is a danger and a menace to the community. Like 

 the bacteria of which we hear so much to-day and of which we will 

 know more in the days to come, the disease-producing organism 

 may be of a virulent or non- virulent type and yet be the same. The 

 slum, like the tentacles of the devil fish, receives its prey within its 

 walls, retains and engulfs him " by imperceptible, yet rapid degrees. 

 Its denizens sink into apathy and develop that strange malady of 

 the modern city, the slum disease. This is an infection productive 

 of infections, a contagion which, as it spreads through the slum, 

 creates new slum dwellers as it passes, leaving its victims stricken 

 with inertia, slothfulness, drunkenness, criminality. 



" Let them escape or not, one and all suffer equally in 



their lack of resistance to disease. Mai-nutrition, bad air, and over- 

 crowding swell the columns which tell of tuberculosis, pneumonia, 

 diphtheria, and every kindred disease. The slum is the great 

 culture medium of civilization, wherein huge cultures of disease are 

 growing, ready when ripe to rise and sweep the city streets."* 



Amongst the poorer classes, the slum home finds its pabulum, 

 and develops a virulence which is manifest by the great spread of 



* Hollis Godfrey, The Health of the City. 



