Adding the expenses of operating the house, of repairs and additions and improvements if the house is owned, nearly half the money available must go for the mere housing of the family.
If it is true, as I believe it is, that for each fraction over one fifth spent for rent a saving must be made in some other direction--in the daily expense, less service, less costly food, or less expensive clothing, or, last to be cut down, less of the real pleasure of life,--it will be seen what a far-reaching question this is, how it touches the vital point, to have or not to have other good things in life.
A large part of the increase is due, as we have said, to increased demand for sanitary conveniences, but far more potent is the pressure resulting from the price of land.
This pressure has led to the building of smaller and smaller apartments, so that four and six rooms are made out of floor-space sufficient for two.
It sounds better to say we have a six-room flat, even though there is no more privacy than in two rooms, for the rooms are mere cells unless the doors are always open.

It is not uncommon in such suites renting for $50 to $60 per month for six rooms, to find three of them with only one window on one side, with no chance for cross-ventilation unless the doors of the whole suite are open.
This style of building prevails even in the suburbs where air and sunshine should be free.

The would-be renter looking at such suites with all the doors open and the rooms innocent of fried fish and bacon does not think of the place as it _will be_ under living conditions when privacy can be had only by smothering.
The model tenements in New York rent for one dollar per week per room; the better houses for double, or two dollars for 450 cubic feet.

Many of those I have examined renting for forty to sixty dollars per month give no more space for the money, only a little better finish--marble and tile in the bath-room, for instance.
The three-room tenement does, however, shelter as many persons as the six-room flat, hence there is more real overcrowding.

In all these grades of shelter it is fresh air that is wanting.