significance the rent may be even lower, although it is often very high.
It depends on the demand, on competition rather than quality. In our older
and more settled communities it is most common for rent to use up one
fourth the salary of all town dwellers with incomes within our limits.
This was true in Boston fifty years ago, and it is true to-day in dozens
of cities and towns personally investigated. It is not unknown that a
teacher or business man should exceed this in the hope of a rise in
salary by the second year. Adding the expenses of operating the house, of
repairs and additions and improvements if the house is owned, nearly half
the money available must go for the mere housing of the family.

If it is true, as I believe it is, that for each fraction over one fifth
spent for rent a saving must be made in some other direction--in the daily
expense, less service, less costly food, or less expensive clothing, or,
last to be cut down, less of the real pleasure of life,--it will be seen
what a far-reaching question this is, how it touches the vital point, to
have or not to have other good things in life.

A large part of the increase is due, as we have said, to increased demand
for sanitary conveniences, but far more potent is the pressure resulting
from the price of land.

This pressure has led to the building of smaller and smaller apartments,
so that four and six rooms are made out of floor-space sufficient for two.
It sounds better to say we have a six-room flat, even though there is no
more privacy than in two rooms, for the rooms are mere cells unless the
doors are always open. It is not uncommon in such suites renting for $50
to $60 per month for six rooms, to find three of them with only one window
on one side, with no chance for cross-ventilation unless the doors of the
whole suite are open.