This style of building prevails even in the suburbs where air and
sunshine should be free. The would-be renter looking at such suites with
all the doors open and the rooms innocent of fried fish and bacon does not
think of the place as it _will be_ under living conditions when privacy
can be had only by smothering.

The model tenements in New York rent for one dollar per week per room; the
better houses for double, or two dollars for 450 cubic feet. Many of those
I have examined renting for forty to sixty dollars per month give no more
space for the money, only a little better finish--marble and tile in the
bath-room, for instance.

The three-room tenement does, however, shelter as many persons as the
six-room flat, hence there is more real overcrowding. In all these grades
of shelter it is fresh air that is wanting. What wonder the white plague
is always with us? What remedy so long as millions sleep in closets with
no air-currents passing through?

Accepting the French rule, the artisan who rents the model tenement at
$3.50 per week should earn $3 a day wage for six days. If he earn only $2,
then more than one quarter must go for housing. There are hundreds of
Italian families in New York who pay only $2 _per month_ for such shelter
as they have, but it is only providing for the primitive idea of mere
shelter, not for the comforts of a true home life. After the fashion of
early man, these people spend their lives in the open air, eat wherever
they may be, and use this makeshift shelter as protection from the weather
and as a place of deposit for such articles as they do not carry about
with them and for such weaklings as cannot travel.