File:Beauty for ashes (1914) (14781688834).jpg

Identifier: beautyforashes01baco (find matches)
Title: Beauty for ashes
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Bacon, Albion Fellows, 1865-1933
Subjects: Working class Tenement houses Poor
Publisher: New York, Dodd, Mead and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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when they begin to disappear. Later,Beauty will be called in, and set in the place ofhonour, among practical people; no morecrowded out, no more apologised for, no more evenkept for solitary festival. I am glad that those years are past in which Idared not publish a verse, and spent my time inhunting up dollar-and-cents arguments (and thereare many) to show that bad housing is bad business,and that slums do not pay. And this was becauseof having to fight men who assumed that it was not practical to give decency and sanitation to everyone. It is only necessary, now, to refer sceptics to themore than forty commercial organisations that havetaken up housing reform by housing laws. It isenough to point to the practical men who haveactually built model houses to rent, that are durableand well built, comfortable, homelike, private, andthat have veritable cupboards and sinks, and actualbathtubs. They are on pleasant streets, with a goodview, have trees, grass and flowers, rent for less than
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o o a 0? o S > oo g fl ^O .—1 *-ij c3 c3 CJ -M 5 W2 §i. A ^ ?s >. ^ >> -M -Si ^ ^2 c3 o C/2 >* •N 4-> ^ ^ 3 1^ c3 o ;3 ^ **^ c3 oJ a C3 c» A fl c» ^O •N ^ *C*2 > c3 bC LOOKING FORWARD 349 some of our most miserable and squalid slums, andpay a fair profit. Leaving the sceptics gazing at this pleasant sight,it is a relief to slip away to a quiet place where thevista opens upon a view that rests my soul — a viewof things whose practical nature no one will ask me,at least, to defend — Planned Towns! GardenCities! Ever above the quivering heat of noon in thedesert they have hung like a dim, fair mirage. Doesany one ever look upon them more wistfully than ahousing reformer? We draw near to them, as thechildren of the tenements come and press their facesagainst the tall palings of the forbidden garden,standing without in the dust, peering in at the ranksof lilies, the winding walks, and the fountain-splashedbowers. And we have a place inside, too, for evenas

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