HOUSELEEK, Sempervivum, a genus of ornamental evergreen plants belonging to the natural order Crassulaceae. About 30 species are known in gardens, some of which are hardy perennial herbs, and grow well in dry or rocky situations; the others are evergreen shrubs or undershrubs, fit only for cultivation in the greenhouse or conservatory. The genus Sempervivum is distinguished from the nearly allied Sedum by having more than five (about 12) petals, and by the glands at the base of the ovary being laciniated if present. The common houseleek, S. tectorum (Ger. Hauswurzel, Fr. joubarbe), is often met with in Britain on roofs of outhouses and wall-tops, but is not a native. Originally it was indigenous in the Alps, but it is now widely dispersed in Europe, and has been introduced into America. The leaves are thick, fleshy and succulent, and are arranged in the form of a rosette lying close to the soil. The plant propagates itself by offsets on all sides, so that it forms after a time a dense cushion or aggregation of rosettes. The flowering stem, which is of rather rare occurrence, is about 1 ft. high, reddish, cylindrical and succulent, and ends in a level-topped cyme, reflexed at the circumference, of reddish flowers, which bloom from June to September. The houseleek has been known variously as the houselick, homewort or great houseleek. Sedum acre (stone-crop) is styled the little houseleek. In Germany it is sometimes called Donnerkraut, from being supposed to protect the house on which it grows from thunder. The leaves are said to contain malic acid in considerable quantity, and have been eaten as salad, like Portulaca. S. glutinosum and S. balsamiferum, natives respectively of Madeira and the Canary Islands, contain a very viscous substance in large quantity, and are used for the preparation of bird-lime; fishermen in Madeira, after dipping their nets in an alkaline solution, rub them with this substance, rendering them as tough as leather. S. montanum, indigenous in Central Europe, according to Gmelin, causes violent purging; S. arboreum, τὸ μἐγα ἀείζωον of Dioscorides, is employed in Cyprus, the East, and northern Africa as an external remedy for malignant ulcers, inflammations and burns, and internally for mucous discharges.
HOUSING. The housing of the poorer classes has become a pressing problem in all populous Western countries, and has engaged, in a varying but constantly increasing measure, the attention of legislative and administrative bodies and of philanthropic individuals and societies. The general interest was signalized by an International Congress held in London in 1907. The recognition of the problem is due in the first instance to the science of public health, the rise of which dates from the second quarter of the 19th century; and in the second instance to the growth of urban populations consequent on the development of manufacturing industries and of trading and transporting agencies, both of which tend to mass increasing numbers of people in convenient centres. To have a clear view of the subject it is necessary to distinguish these factors and their respective influence upon the problem. Urban congestion is quite secondary, and only important because and so far as it has a prejudicial effect upon health and strength. Further, the requirements on the scientific side, made on behalf of public health, are of very much wider application and more expansive than those which arise from the mere growth of urban population. That is obvious at once from the fact that they extend to rural housing, which has indeed become a prominent feature of the question in recent years. To ascribe the housing problem to the “factory system,” as some writers have done, is to put forward an inadequate and misleading view of it. It is, in fact, particularly acute in some places totally devoid of factories and least acute in some purely factory towns. If the factory system were abolished with all its effects the housing question would remain. But there is a more important distinction than extent of application. The requirements of public health are indeterminate and interminable; knowledge increases, or rather changes, and the standard constantly rises. It is the changing standard which gives most trouble; housing at one period thought good enough is presently condemned. Fifty years ago no house existed which would satisfy modern sanitary standards, and the mansions of the great were in some respects inferior to the worst quarters to-day. And to this process there is no end. It is quite conceivable that urban congestion might cease to be a difficulty at all. That actually happens in particular towns where the population is stationary or diminishing. One whole nation (France) has already reached that point, and others are moving towards it at varying rates. But even where the supply of houses exceeds the demand and many stand empty, the housing problem remains; condemnation of existing accommodation continues and the effort to provide superior houses goes on. In other words, there are two main aspects of the housing question, quality and quantity; they touch at various points and interact, but they are essentially distinct. The problem of quantity may be “solved,” that of quality has no finality.
The importance attached to housing is much enhanced by the general tendency to lay stress on the material conditions of life, which characterizes the present age. Among material conditions environment takes a leading place, largely under the influence of the theory of evolution in a popular and probably erroneous form; and among the factors of environment the home assumes a more and more prominent position. There is reason in this, for whatever other provision be made for work or recreation the home is after all the place where people spend most of their time. Life begins there and generally ends there. At the beginning of life the whole time is spent there and home conditions are of paramount importance to the young, whose physical welfare has become the object of increasing care. But the usual tendency to run to extremes has asserted itself. It may be admitted that it is extremely difficult to raise the character and condition of those who live in thoroughly bad home surroundings, and that an indispensable or preliminary step is to improve the dwelling. But if in pursuit of this object other considerations are lost sight of, the result is failure. Bad housing is intimately connected with poverty; it is, indeed, largely a question of poverty now that the difference between good and bad housing is understood and the effects of the latter are recognized. The poorest people live under the worst housing conditions because they are the cheapest; the economic factor governs the situation. Poverty again is associated with bad habits, with dirt, waste, idleness and vice, both as cause and as effect. These factors cannot be separated in real life; they act and react upon each other in such a way that it is impossible to disentangle their respective shares in producing physical and moral evils. To lay all responsibility upon the structural environment is an error constantly exposed by experience.
Defective quality embraces some or all of the following conditions—darkness, bad air, damp, dirt and dilapidation. Particular insanitary conditions independent of the structure are often associated; namely defects of water-supply, drainage, excrement and house refuse removal, back-yards and surrounding ground; they contribute to dirt, damp and bad air. Defective quantity produces high rents and overcrowding, both of which have a prejudicial effect upon health; the one by diminishing expenditure on other necessaries, the other by fouling the atmosphere and promoting the spread of infectious illness. The physical effects of these conditions have been demonstrated by comparative statistics of mortality general and special; among the latter particular stress is laid on the mortality of infants, that from consumption and from “zymotic” diseases. The statistical evidence has been especially directed to the effects of overcrowding, which can be stated with greater precision than other insanitary conditions. It generally takes the form of comparing the death-rates of different areas having widely contrasted densities of population or proportions of persons to a given space. It is not necessary to quote any of these figures, which have been produced in great abundance. They broadly establish a connexion between density and mortality; but the inference that the connexion can be reduced to a precise numerical statement and that the difference of mortality shown is all due to overcrowding or other housing conditions is highly fallacious. Many other factors ought to be taken into account, such as the age-distribution of the population, the birth-rate, the occupations, means, character and habits of the people, the geographical situation, the number of public institutions, hospitals, workhouses, asylums and so forth. The fallacious use of vital statistics for the purpose of proving some particular point has become so common that it is necessary to enter a warning against them; the subject of housing is a popular field for the exercise of that art, though there is no need of it.
The actual state of housing in different countries and localities, the efforts made to deal with it by various agencies, the subsidiary points which arise in connexion with it and the results attained—all these heads embrace such a vast mass of facts that any attempt to treat them fully in detail would run to inordinate length. It must suffice to review the more salient points; and the most convenient way of doing so is to deal first with Great Britain, which has led the way historically in extent of need, in its recognition and in efforts to meet it, adding some notes upon other countries, in which the question is of more recent date and for which less information is available.
The United Kingdom
The importance of housing and the need of improvement had by 1909 received public recognition in England for nearly 70 years, a period coinciding almost exactly with the systematic study of sanitation or public health. The active movement definitely began about 1841 with voluntary effort in which Lord Shaftesbury was the most prominent and active figure. The motive was philanthropic and the object was to improve the condition of the working classes. It took the form of societies; one was the “Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrial Classes,” incorporated in 1845 but founded in 1841; another was the “Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes,” originally the “Labourers’ Friend Society,” of which the Prince Consort became president. That fact and the statement of the Society concerning improved housing that “the moral were almost equal to the physical benefits,” sufficiently prove that public interest in the subject and a grasp of its significance already existed at that date. Legislation followed not long after and has continued at intervals ever since.
Legislation.—Twenty-eight Housing and Health Acts, passed between 1851 and 1903, are enumerated by Mr Dewsnup, whose monograph on The Housing Problem in England is the fullest account of the subject published. The first was the Shaftesbury Act of 1851 for the establishment of lodging-houses for the working classes; the last was the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1903. The Shaftesbury Act had in view the provision by local authorities of good lodging-houses for the better class of artisans, and particularly of single persons, male and female, though families were also contemplated. It was accompanied in the same year by another act, not included in the list of twenty-eight, for the regulation and control of common lodging-houses, from which Mr Dewsnup reasonably infers that the object of Lord Shaftesbury, who inspired both acts, was the separation of the casual and disorderly class frequenting common lodging-houses from the more regularly employed and respectable workers who were sometimes driven to use them for lack of other accommodation. At any rate this early legislation embodied the principle of differential treatment and showed a grasp of the problem not always visible in later procedure. The most important of the subsequent acts were those of 1855 and 1866, both intended to encourage private enterprise in the provision of working-class dwellings; the Torrens Act of 1868 (Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Act) for the improvement or demolition of existing buildings; the Cross Act of 1875 (Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Act), for extending that process to larger areas; the Public Health Act of 1875; the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1885 following the report of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, of which King Edward, then prince of Wales, was a member; the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890; the Public Health (London) Act of 1891. The acts of 1875 (Public Health), of 1890 and of 1891 are still in force. The story of this half-century of legislation (which also includes a number of Scotch and Irish acts, local private acts and others bearing on the question) is one of tentative efforts first in one direction then in another, of laws passed, amended, extended, consolidated, superseded. Many of the enactments, originally of limited application, were subsequently extended, and the principal laws now in force apply to the whole of the United Kingdom. Two main objects can be distinguished—(1) the treatment of existing dwellings by demolition or improvement; (2) the construction of new ones. The second head is further subdivided into (a) municipal action, (b) private action. These objects have been alternately promoted by legislative measures conceived and carried out on no systematic plan, but gradually and continuously developed into an effective body of law, particularly with regard to the means of dealing with existing insanitary dwellings. The advancing requirements of public health are clearly traceable in the series of enactments directed to that end. The Nuisances Removal Act of 1855 took cognizance of premises in such a state as to be “a nuisance or injurious to health,” and made provision for obtaining an order to prohibit the use of such premises for human habitation. In the same act overcrowding obtained statutory recognition as a condition dangerous or prejudicial to health, and provision was made for compelling its abatement. The campaign against bad housing conditions thus inaugurated by the legislature was extended by subsequent acts in 1860, 1866 and 1868, culminating in the Cross Act of 1875 for the demolition (and reconstruction) of large insanitary areas and the extremely important Public Health Act of the same year. The constructive policy, begun still earlier in 1851 by Lord Shaftesbury’s Act, was concurrently pursued, and for some years more actively than the destructive; but after 1866 the latter became more prominent, and though the other was not lost sight of it fell into the background until revived by the Royal Commission of 1885 and the housing legislation which followed, particularly the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890, amending and consolidating previous acts.