They are mere temporary
shelters, not loved homes.
The plumbing is usually of a cheap order, and the drains are not
infrequently broken, so that sanitarily these dwellings are often more
suspicious than the abandoned farmhouse.
(4) The influx from village and country made demand for city housing of
an inexpensive sort, and there came into being all over the land the type
of the family house squeezed by the price of land to four stories high, 16
to 20 feet wide, built in long rows and blocks. The "ugly sixties" bred
not only distressful village "villas," but unpleasant city houses of this
type, which are to-day a real menace to wholesome living. Many such blocks
may be found in any of our older cities, casting a depressing influence
upon all who come in sight of them, and deteriorating the manners and
morals of all who live in them. For these have gone the way of the other
classes mentioned and become perverted from the uses they were designed
for. In the seventies there were still motherly women who had come to town
to make a home for the children no longer content out of it. They were
willing and capable of mothering a few other children and lonely teachers
and clerks, so the boarding-house began as a real family home for the
homeless.
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