In the modern plastic condition of both
ideals and materials this is all changed. In any city well known to my
readers how many streets bear the same aspect as five years ago? In any
suburban village made familiar by the trolley how many houses are the same
as five years ago? Even if their outward aspect is not changed, that worst
of all havocs, new plumbing, has been put in. The installation of neither
furnace nor plumbing is accomplished once for all; at the end of ten years
at most repairs or replacement must be made on penalty of loss of health.
As the community grows in wisdom and in knowledge it makes sanitary
regulations more stringent notwithstanding the fact that the increase in
expense bears most heavily on the small householder with a family whose
need is out of proportion to the income. Many a parent who grieves the
loss of his child would gladly have paid a reasonable sum for repairs, but
would have been in the poor debtors' court if he had allowed the plumbers
to enter his house. The new laws made since he bought his house require
diametrically opposite things, and the old fittings must all be torn out
as well as four times as costly put in.
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