It is not only the poet who moves from one boarding-house to another; the young clerk and struggling business man go into smaller and smaller quarters until the traditional limit of room to swing a cat is reached.
The constantly diminishing space occupied by a family seems to prove that the 40% increase in the cost of living within a few years is not caused by an advance in the necessary cost of food; it is certainly not due to the increased cost of necessary clothes.

It is more than probable that the increasing cost of shelter and all that it implies--increased water-supply, service, repairs, etc .-- is the main factor in the undoubtedly increased expense.

This will be considered in some detail in Chapter VIII.
While the socialist may take the ground that salaries must be raised to keep pace with the rise in living expenses, the student of social ethics--Euthenics, or the science of _better_ living--may well ask a consideration of the topic from another standpoint.

Is this increased cost resulting in higher efficiency?
Are the people growing more healthy, well-favored, well-proportioned, stronger, happier?
If not, then is there not a fallacy in the common idea that more money spent means a fuller life?
Recent examination of school children in various cities in England and America has revealed a state of physical ill-being most deplorable in the present, and horrifying to contemplate for its future results.

One has only to keep one's eyes open in passing the streets to become aware of the physical deterioration of thousands of the wage-earners.