As home-life vanishes, the public-house appears. Not only do men and
women abnormally crave drink, who are overworked, exhausted, suffering
from deranged stomachs and bad sanitation, and deadened by the ugliness
and monotony of existence, but the gregarious men and women who have no
home-life flee to the bright and clattering public-house in a vain
attempt to express their gregariousness. And when a family is housed in
one small room, home-life is impossible.
A brief examination of such a dwelling will serve to bring to light one
important cause of drunkenness. Here the family arises in the morning,
dresses, and makes its toilet, father, mother, sons, and daughters, and
in the same room, shoulder to shoulder (for the room is small), the wife
and mother cooks the breakfast. And in the same room, heavy and
sickening with the exhalations of their packed bodies throughout the
night, that breakfast is eaten. The father goes to work, the elder
children go to school or into the street, and the mother remains with her
crawling, toddling youngsters to do her housework--still in the same
room. Here she washes the clothes, filling the pent space with soapsuds
and the smell of dirty clothes, and overhead she hangs the wet linen to
dry.
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