whole Union was $35.30. The proportions of real and personal property in 1890 showed as follows: Texas.. Kentucky. Florida Other States.. The South.... ...... Dollars per inhabitant. Personal. Real. Total. 545 942 Real percentage. 58 .... 298 249 538 383 247 630 55 61 51 50 58 TTIT Real property constitutes only 53 per cent. of wealth, whereas in the Union at large it stands for 60 per cent. Insurance is not much in use, the amount of insured property being no more than 442 millions, or $23 per inhabitant, against $685 in New England. The sum of Southern insurance is only 4 per cent. of wealth, whereas in the whole Union the ratio is 30 per cent. Mortgages are very light, the total not exceeding 408 million dollars, or 8 per cent. of the value of real estate, viz.: Farms are mortgaged to 11 per cent., houses 5 per cent. of their value. The sum paid yearly for interest is 32 millions, or $1.80 per inhabitant, as compared with $6.20 in New England. The fewness of mortgages in the South is partly accounted for by the high rate of interest, which averages 8 per cent., whereas the general rate for the whole Union in 1890 was only 6 per cent. Meantime the rate varies greatly in the South, from 6 per cent. in Tennessee and Virginia to almost 10 per cent. in Texas and Florida. Finances.-The aggregate of State and local taxes in 1890 was $58,000,000, equal to $3.10 per inhabitant, against $9.70 in the Middle States. The returns in 1890 showed as follows: Local taxes are comparatively low, because the population is nine-tenths rural, and also because education is so neglected that the expenditure on schools (84 cents per inhabitant) is only onethird of what it ought to be. Education. There is a painful contrast between the state of public instruction in the South and in the rest of the Union, onethird of the Southern population being illiterate, according to the census of 1890, viz.: The above shows not merely that the education of negroes is neglected, but also that among whites the ratio of illiteracy is ten times as high as among the native population of New England. Nevertheless, some progress has been made since the War of Emancipation, for we find that the number of children attending school (1895) has risen to 14 per cent. of the population, as compared with 10 per cent. in 1860. The condition of the Southern States is unsatisfactory, not merely because in education, industry, and wealth they are much behind the rest of the Union, but because, owing to want of facilities, their resources are not properly developed. It is true that one-third of the population is colored, but even allowing for this fact, there is no reason why the South is not altogether on a par with one of its own States, Texas, which has 22 per cent. of its population colored. With regard to the number of its inhabitants, Texas has 45 per cent. more railways, 110 per cent. more banks than the other States of the South, and each of its hands employed in farming produces nearly three times as much, viz.: More schools, more railways, more banks, are needed in the Southern States, and if persevering efforts are made in this direction the results will certainly prove successful. MICHAEL G. MULHALL, F. S. S. THE HOUSING OF THE ENGLISH POOR. BY THE RIGHT HON. LORD MONKSWELL. WHEN Lord Shaftesbury had routed a strange coalition of out and out Radicals and high Tories, and persuaded the Legislature to make life tolerable in factories, he devoted himself heart and soul to another enterprise no less beneficent, and determined to impress upon Parliament the urgent necessity of so ordering the home life of the poor that for decent people the maintenance of common decency should be possible. Accordingly on the seventh of April, 1851, while still in the House of Commons, under the title of Lord Ashley, he introduced a bill to promote the erection of lodging-houses for the poor which is known by his name. In recommending this measure to the House he drew a picture of the state of affairs he sought to remedy which fairly startled his hearers, and aroused the country. He stated that in St. George's, Hanover Square, the richest parish in London, a return made in 1842 showed that there were 929 families occupying only one room each, and that in the poorer parts of London he had himself seen five families in one room numbering 25 persons or even more. He quoted a report of the London Fever Hospital in 1845, in which it was said that 100 men sometimes slept in a room 33 feet long by 20 broad, and 7 feet high in the middle, the total air space for the whole hundred being no greater than was considered necessary for three in the hospital. Again he quoted from the report of a city missionary as follows: "On my district is a house containing 8 rooms which are all let separately to individuals who furnish and re-let them. The parlor measures 18 by 10 feet. Beds are arranged on each side of the room, composed of straw, shavings, rags, etc. In this one room slept, on the night previous to my enquiry, 27 male and female adults, 31 children, and 2 or 3 dogs." There were, he asserted, in one district alone 270 such rooms. Houses to let out, he added, "are never cleaned or ventilated; they literally swarm with vermin. It is almost impossible to breathe. Missionaries are seized with vomiting or fainting upon entering them." Another missionary said: "I have felt the vermin dropping on my hat like peas. In some of the rooms I dare not sit, or I should be at once covered." In other towns besides London the same condition of things prevailed. The town clerk of Morpeth reported that some lodginghouses there have no beds, but their occupiers are packed upon the floor in rows, the head of one being close to the feet of another. Each body is placed so close to its neighbor as not to leave sufficient space on which to set a foot. The occupants are entirely naked, except rugs drawn up as far as the waist; and when to this is added that the doors and windows are carefully closed, and that there is not the least distinction of sex, but men, women, and children lie indiscriminately side by side, some faint idea may be drawn of the state of these places, and their effect upon health, morals, and decency." At Leeds, Lord Shaftesbury instanced a lodging-house with an average of more than ten persons to each bed, and had been told there were 222 such lodging-houses within a radius of a quarter of a mile, At Bradford the poor were accommodated to a large extent in cellar dwellings of about four yards square. There would be collected "sometimes 20 persons, some in beds, some on the floor; naked men and women together; children with the smallpox in the midst of them." It would seem, however, that at Bradford there were penalties for overcrowding, and that those penalties were occasionally enforced; for Lord Shaftesbury mentions the case of a lodging-house keeper, who, when fined for overcrowding, excused himself on the plea that he could not "let them lie in the street." That these revelations made a deep impression on the House may readily be credited, and probably an honorable member who "asked any man whether he could have believed that such things existed in this country" expressed the feeling of the great majority of his colleagues. It must not, however, be inferred that Lord Shaftesbury was by any means the only member of the House thoroughly conversant with the evils he denounced. An honorable member who had had the experience of service under the Board of Health-a government department-accentuated the remarks of Lord Shaftesbury, and asserted that he had been told at Wolverhampton, that within living memory all the inhabitants of a certain court had been transported twice over. This statement is somewhat obscure, but probably what the honorable member meant was that the number of persons sentenced to the old punishment of transportation during the period he referred to was equal to double the number accommodated at any one time in that court. But whatever may be the correct interpretation of his words, it is abundantly clear that the moral he intended to convey was that in his experience vice and overcrowding went hand in hand to a fearful extent. Moreover, the Board of Health itself was familiar with the state of things laid before Parliament; for Lord Shaftesbury mentioned that the Board had examined 161 populous places, containing altogether very nearly two million inhabitants, "and he might safely say that without exception one uniform statement was made with respect to the domiciliary condition of large masses of the workpeople, that it was of one and the same disgusting character." Under these circumstances it does seem astounding that it should have been left to a private member to deal on his own responsibility with evils so shocking, so dangerous to the moral and physical well-being of the nation, and so thoroughly well known to an important government department. Nor must it be supposed that opinion outside Parliament had been quiescent on this subject. There were brave men before Agamemnon, and enterprising philanthropists had turned their attention to the better housing of the poor before Lord Shaftesbury aroused the House of Commons. He himself instanced the case of a public company that had spent £23,000 in London on building new lodging-houses and adapting old ones-a company paying the respectable dividend of six per cent. Again, in Glasgow very drastic measures had been taken. On one day during the year 1846, no less than 30,000 persons were evicted from cellars, and yet we have it on the authority of the Duke of Ar |