The Book of Life

by Upton Sinclair

Next, steam heat, which includes hot-water heating. This is one of the abominations of our civilization, and one of the methods by which our race is committing suicide. There is nothing wrong about steam heat in itself; the room is warmed in a harmless way; but the trouble is it stays warm only so long as the doors and windows are kept shut. You are in an air-tight box, and can be warm provided you do not mind being suffocated. The moment you open a door or window, you have a cold draft on your feet, and if you wish to change the air entirely you have to let out all the heat; so, of course, you never do change it entirely, but go on breathing the same air over and over, and every time you breathe it the condition of your body is a little more reduced.

The solution of this problem is not to heat the air in the room, but to use your steam coils to heat fresh air, and then drive this air, already warmed, into the room, at the same time providing a vent through which the old air can be pushed out. This is the hot air system of heating, and it requires some kind of engine or dynamo, and therefore is expensive. It has been installed in a few office buildings and theaters. One of the most perfect systems I ever inspected is in the building of the New York Stock Exchange, where the air is warmed in winter, and cooled in summer, and freed from dust, and exactly the right quantity is supplied. It is a humorous commentary upon our civilization that we take perfect care of the breathing apparatus of our stock-gamblers, but pay no attention to the breathing apparatus of our senators and congressmen, whose one business in life is to use their lungs. The stately old building with its white marble domes looks impressive in moving pictures and on illustrated postcards, but it has no system of ventilation whatever, and is a death-trap to the poor wretches who are compelled to spend their days, and sometimes their nights, within its walls. This contrast is one symptom of the rise of industrial capitalism and the collapse of political democracy.

We have reserved to the last a method of heating which is the worst, and can only be described as a crime against health: the use of gas and oil stoves set out in the middle of the room, without a vent, and discharging their fumes into the room. These stoves are simply instruments of slow death, and their manufacture should be prohibited by law. In the meantime, what you have to do is to refuse to live in a room or to work in an office where such stoves are used. I have heard dealers insist that this or the other kind of gas or oil stove was so contrived as to consume all the fumes. Do not let anybody fool you with such nonsense. There has never been any form of combustion devised which consumes all the fumes. No such thing can be, because the products of combustion are not combustible. The so-called "wickless blue flame" stoves do burn all the oil, and a properly regulated gas stove will burn all the gas, but that simply means that it turns the oil and gas into carbon dioxide, the very substance which your lungs are working day and night to get out of your body.

Moreover, there is no oil or gas stove which ever burns perfectly all the time, either because there is too much gas or insufficient air. Oil and gas stoves sometimes give a partly yellow flame. You can cause them to give a yellow flame at any time by blowing air against them, and that yellow flame means imperfect combustion, and a probability of the deadly carbon monoxide. These facts are known to every chemist and to every student of hygiene, and the fact that civilized people continue to burn such oil and gas stoves in their homes and offices is simply one more proof that our civilization values human welfare and health at nothing whatever in comparison with profits.

Not merely should you see that you have a continuous supply of fresh air in your home, but you should try to keep down dust in your home, and especially fine particles of lint. Once upon a time our ancestors were unable to make houses and floors tight, and so they put rugs on the floors and hung tapestries on the walls to keep out the wind. We civilized people are able to make both floors and walls absolutely tight, and yet we continue to use rugs and curtains, it being the first principle of our education that propriety requires us to continue to do the things which our ancestors did. I am unable to think of a more silly or stupid thing in the world than a rug or a curtain, but I have lived in the house with them all my life, because, alas, the ladies cannot be happy otherwise. They want their homes to be "pretty," and so they continue to set dust traps, and to set themselves futile jobs of house cleaning and shopping.

Not all of us are able to be out of doors as much as we ought to be, but all of us spend seven or eight hours out of every twenty-four in sleep, and this time at least we ought to spend out of doors. I understand that this is futile advice to give to the very poor. I was poor myself for many years, and had to put all my clothes on at night in order to keep warm, and even then I could not always do it. Nevertheless, from the time I first realized the importance of ventilation I never slept in a room with a closed window.

I say, sleep outdoors if you possibly can. You do not have to be afraid of exposure, for cold will not hurt you if you keep your body in proper condition. I have slept out in a rubber blanket, with the rain beating on my head and face; I have spread a rubber blanket on a hummock in the midst of a swamp, and waked up in the morning with my hair and face soaked in cold, white fog, but I never caught cold from such things; there is no harm whatever in dampness or in "night air," if you are in proper condition. Of course, you may get your ears frostbitten in the middle of winter, but you can have a sleeping hood to remove that danger.

The "nature cure" enthusiasts, who lay so much stress upon an outdoor life, also insist that the wearing of clothes is a harmful civilized custom. They urge us to take "sun baths" and to "ventilate the skin." Now, as a matter of fact, the skin does not breathe, it merely gives out moisture, and it does not give out any less because we have clothing on us, provided the clothing is dry and clean, and will absorb moisture. But bye and bye the clothing becomes loaded with the waste substances given out by the skin, and then it will absorb no more, and if you do not change your clothing, no doubt it may have some effect upon health.

But the principal evil of civilized clothing is that it binds the body and prevents the free play of the muscles, and, more important yet, stops the free circulation of the blood. I have already discussed hats, which are the principal cause of baldness. I will go to the other extremity of the body, and mention tight shoes, which, strange as it may seem, cause headaches and colds. You will be able to find a few civilized men with normal feet, but you will hardly ever find a woman whose toes are not crowded together and misshapen. I have said that the human body is one organism, and that it is fed and its health maintained by the blood-stream; I say now that the circulation of the blood is one thing, and if you block it at any one place, you block it everywhere. Of course, not all the blood-stream goes down into the feet, but some of it does, and if it is clogged in the feet, and the blood vessels cramped and crowded, there is a certain amount of poison kept in the system, which the system should have got rid of.

Why do women wear tight shoes? Because the leisure class members of their sex have been kept in harems and used as the playthings of men. To be fragile and delicate was the thing admired by the masters of wealth, and to have small hands and feet was a sign that women belonged to this parasite class. Therefore at all hazards women's feet must be kept small, even at the expense of their health and happiness; and so they put themselves up on several inches of heels, which cause them to toddle around like marionettes on a stage, with all their toes crowded down into a lump.