It was very natural, therefore, that my first efforts should have been directed to rough courts and the inhabitants as I found them there. Steady and gradual improvement of the people of the houses, without selection of the former or sudden reconstruction of the latter, was our first duty, and my little book on _Homes of the London Poor_ tells the history of that early work. But if there is one duty more incumbent on us than another in such efforts, it is to be quick to see where advance is possible, how higher standards can be realized, and how much old forms may be rightly superseded. With certain exceptions in regard to small old houses, our work of late years has been increasingly in new houses and with chosen tenants. The principles, however, are the same, and there is one great fact which the changing form has only brought out more and more clearly, and that is that the conduct of houses or blocks, old or new, so as to secure health and comfort and homelike feeling, depends on management. One can see any day excellent buildings execrably managed, and one may see tumble-down old places of wretched construction both healthier and far more homelike because well managed. And I may confidently say that the distinctive feature of our work has been that of devoting our full strength to management. It will be realized at once how much more this implies than “rent collecting.” An ordinary clerk will go from door to door for rents; that is a very different matter from managing houses. We have tried, so far as possible, to enlist ladies, who would have an idea of how—by diligent attention to all business which devolves on a landlord, by wise rule with regard to all duties which a tenant should fulfil, by sympathetic and just decisions with a view to the common good—a high standard of management could be attained: repairs promptly and efficiently attended to, references carefully taken up, cleaning sedulously supervised, overcrowding put an end to, the blessing of ready-money payments enforced, accounts strictly kept, and, above all, tenants so sorted as to be helpful to one another. II COTTAGE PROPERTY IN LONDON (1866)