Among the many causes of insanitation, and all its miserable accompaniments, one of the most hopeless and most difficult to deal with has always been intemperance or "drink." Statistics give no means of estimating its disastrous consequences, but these consequences always have been, and still are, of the most deplorable kind. The overcrowded dwellings and bad sanitary arrangements constantly tended to increase the habit of intemperance, and the moral degradation caused by drink made people indifferent to their housing, and lead to the poverty which increased overcrowding and insanitation. In London the facilities for obtaining drink are practically unlimited. In the evidence given before the Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing Laws, which was appointed in 1896, it was stated that:-- "In Soho District, in an area of a quarter of a square mile, there were 1950 inhabited houses and 116 public-houses. In another district, a little over half a square mile in extent, there were 259 public-houses (excluding restaurants and private hotels)." Down one mile of Whitechapel Road there were 45 public-houses. "The streets branching off, the hinterland, are also thickly supplied; some exactly opposite each other." "In one street in St. George-in-the-East so crowded are the public-houses that there are 27 licensed houses out of 215 houses." And these facilities are intensified by the great number of hours during the day in which licensed houses keep their doors open to all comers. Parliament has done but little to mitigate this terrible evil. Happily, however, other influences are at work. The Royal Commissioners in their Report in 1899 said:-- "Most persons who have studied the question are of opinion that actual drunkenness has materially diminished in all classes of society in the last twenty-five or thirty years. Many causes have contributed to this. The zealous labour of countless workers in the temperance cause counts for much. Education has opened avenues to innumerable studies which interest the rising generation. The taste for reading has multiplied manyfold within a comparatively brief period. The passion for games and athletics, which has been so remarkably stimulated during the past quarter of a century, has served as a powerful rival to 'boozing,' which was at one time almost the only excitement open to working men." And then followed this weighty statement: "Yet it is undeniable that a gigantic evil remains to be remedied, and hardly any sacrifice would be too great which would result in a marked diminution of this national degradation." And the Chairman of the Commission (Viscount Peel), the Archbishop of Canterbury, and seven Commissioners in a Minority Report stated that-- "The broad facts remain unchallenged of the prevalence of the evil arising from drink."