It is a grave responsibility--this power to dispossess other human beings of their little home--to say nothing of the recurrent task of making them behave themselves in it. Perhaps, on some other and happier plane of being, all landlords will be just and all tenants reasonable of disposition and stable of income. Then, indeed, the landlord need have nothing in common with a well-known walrus, of whom it is told that, in dealing with certain oysters, "with sobs and tears he sorted out those of the largest size." But something might even now be done by compulsory psychopathic--I had nearly said psychopathetic--treatment; for thus the effort to solve the rent problem would go to the soil in which it is rooted, and no complicated laws would be needed. Landlords and tenants, in fact everybody, would have to take the treatment,--including, of course, the psychopathic practitioners, who would treat each other,--but it would be a fine thing for the world if it worked.
One sees in imagination the profiteering landlord, after looking long and intently at a bright object, say a five-dollar gold-piece, dropping peacefully asleep; one hears the voice of the scientist repeating, firmly and monotonously, "When you wake up you will never want anything more than a just rent--a just rent--a just rent--a just rent."
One sees this profiteering landlord, once more wide awake, busy at his desk with pencil and paper, scowling conscientiously as he endeavors to figure out exactly what a just rent will be. Investment, so much; taxes; insurance; repairs; laths and plaster here, wall-paper there; water, light, putty, paint, janitor, Policeman's Annual Ball, postman at Christmas, wear and tear on landlord's shoes, etc., etc., etc., etc.--now, if ever, there is a tired business man.
Or,--to take another aspect of this great reform,--there is the sad case of Mrs. Murphy, who can no longer endure the children of Mrs. Trolley, who lives in the flat above her. They run and play, run and play; they produce in Mrs. Murphy a conviction that presently the floor will give way, and the children, still running and playing, will come right through on her poor head. Yet it is the nature of children to run and play, run and play: the landlord cannot, try as he may, persuade Mrs. Trolley to chain her offspring. So away, away to the Public Psychopathic Ward with poor Mrs. Murphy. "Madam, when you awake, the sound of running feet over your poor head will suggest the joys of innocent childhood, and you will be very happy when they run and play, run and play--happy all day--run and play--run and play--happy all day--run and play."