There were not enough of these women to go around, and soon boarding-houses began to be run for profit only.

Home privileges were fewer and fewer, the common parlor was rented, the one-family kitchen was made to do duty for twenty persons.

The house became pervaded with burned fat and tobacco-smoke--a most villainous combination, gossip flourished, and the limit of discomfort was reached.

What wonder that a good Samaritan built the first flat where the wearied nerves could find peace in the thicker walls, and could escape the eternal "fry" by going out to meals! It is a perfectly natural evolution from the impossible conditions which the eighties and nineties developed.
The early attempts, built on the old lines after the old ideas, before the new life was accepted, are not satisfactory and, being built of brick or stone, they are even more difficult to get rid of than the preceding.

So each type goes down in the scale of decent living.