One has only to listen to the housewife's complaints of inefficiency, lack of strength among the housemaids, to realize that the world's work is not being well done in so far as it depends upon human hands.
This loss of efficiency is usually attributed to insufficient food and long hours, but it is at least an open question if housing conditions are not the more potent factor not only in the case of the very poor, but even in the case of the family having an income of $2000 a year.

Life in a boarding-house adapted from the use by one family to that of five or six without increase of bathing and ventilating conveniences, with old-style plumbing, cannot be mentally or bodily invigorating.
The house cannot be said to be a place of safety so long as the "great white plague" lurks in every dark corner--tuberculosis, colds, influenza, etc., fasten themselves upon its occupants.

Explorers exposed to extremes of weather do not thus suffer.

The dark, damp house incubates the germs.
But homes there must be: places of safety for children, of refuge for elders.

Men will marry and women may keep house.