The one thing in the finding of the Vagrancy Committee with which the author does not agree is the stricture on Shelters. The Shelter reveals the magnitude of the problem that is upon us. It is the provision that has arisen over against this grave national danger. It is insufficient, it is not always well managed. But _it is seldom less sanitary and well managed than the common lodging-house_. The dangers it replaces are largely out of sight, but they are none the less real. It is true that the lowest class gravitate to the Shelter. Let us be thankful that it is so. "Out of sight is out of mind," but not out of existence. How real and keen the competition for bed and board is, is demonstrated by the pressure on prisons. It has come to something serious in our national history when the last social deterrent to crime has been removed and _men seek prison as their only home_. Even girls "do not mind being pinched," it "gives them a rest."[156]
It is absolutely necessary that good and sufficient Workmen's Homes, municipal or State, should supersede the common lodging-house. Glasgow has been able to make its seven lodging-houses, accommodating 2,166 men and 248 women, pay a reasonable interest on capital. London has only one, and accommodates but 324.[157] The cost per head of 68_l_. per bed, as against 39_l_. per bed in Glasgow, militates against financial success, though the charge is 6_d_. per night as against 3-1/2_d_. and 4-1/2_d_. Nevertheless receipts appear to more than cover expenditure (2,942_l_. against 2,844_l_.), and the benefit to the community must be reckoned an asset. London has 611 common lodging-houses, Manchester 268. In Glasgow the provision of municipal lodging-houses has reduced the total to 81; most of the old insanitary ones have disappeared, and those newly built are superior even to the municipal ones. Thus Glasgow has demonstrated the way out. The Glasgow Women's Lodging-house pays 5 per cent., is orderly, closes at a decent hour, and is well managed and sanitary. The pressure on its accommodation shows that another is required, as women are turned away for want of room. Where do they sleep?
It is not enough to receive destitute women into the workhouse. In every town there is needed _some safe place for a working woman to sleep_, and some provision of employment that will just earn bed and board to stand between a struggling woman and vice. In every town there should be some co-ordinating charitable institution, like the Citizens' Guild of Help, or the Charity Organisation Society at its best, to link together the benevolence of the district, to pass persons on to employment or to the Poor-law authorities. _It is necessary to sound the depths of our poverty problems, or our charity is unavailing._ It is necessary to have compulsion at the bottom of our social system and apply it to the wastrel.