In Hampstead only 6.3 per cent. of the population live more than two in a room in tenements of less than five rooms, and only 11.1 per cent. of the population live in tenements of one or two rooms. In Southwark, on the other hand, 22.3 per cent. of the population are in the first category, and 31.6 per cent. in the second category. The table enables the reader to measure the years which are stolen from the lives of the inhabitants of Southwark. The area of Hampstead is 2,248 acres and the population 68,416. The area of Southwark is 544 acres and the population 89,800. We should never forget that there are two sorts of crowding, one of which is measured by room or tenement, the other by area.

The Census definition of "overcrowding" by room or tenement is a very modest one. It applies to tenements containing more than two occupants per room, bedrooms and sitting-rooms included. Accepting this definition there were 392,414 overcrowded tenements in England and Wales at the Census of 1901, which were the homes of 2,667,506 people, or 8.2 per cent. of the total population.

That is bad enough, but if we take a more reasonable definition of "overcrowding" and apply the term to all tenements (by tenement is meant a separate occupation, whether a house or part of a house) of three rooms or less we find that in 1901, in England and Wales, as many as 5,853,047 or 18 per cent, of the entire population occupied tenements of either one, two or three rooms. A further 7,130,062 persons or 21.9 per cent. of the population of England and Wales were housed in 4-roomed tenements. The complete tenement figures are as follows:

TENEMENTS (SEPARATE OCCUPATIONS,
WHETHER HOUSES OR PARTS OF HOUSES)
IN ENGLAND AND WALES. 1901

It will be seen that, even in the 4-roomed tenements, there was an average of 1.12 persons per room (room meaning every apartment in the tenements, including sitting-rooms, attics, box-rooms, kitchens or sculleries), and when we remember the small cubical content of many of these "rooms" we see that as many as 12,983,109 persons, or 39.9 per cent. of the population of England and Wales were certainly crowded, if not "overcrowded."

In Scotland, at the Census of 1901, 969,318 families occupied 3,022,077 rooms, giving an average of only 3 rooms per family. Into the 3,022,077 rooms of all sorts were crowded 4,472,000 people.

While overcrowding, measured by room, slightly decreased between 1891 and 1901, overcrowding on area considerably increased. In the ten years a considerable number of model dwellings—models, that is, of everything that dwellings should not be—were erected, and much ground in London and elsewhere which should have been left open, was covered with buildings of every conceivable degree of ugliness.

As for existing houses, thirty years after the passing of the Public Health Act of 1875, and fifteen years after the passing of the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890, a considerable proportion are actually insanitary, and only a minority conform to the most modest standard of convenience and comfort. In the North of England and in the Midlands there remain tens of thousands of houses built back-to-back, so that there is no passage of air through them.

The Manchester Citizens' Association recently published, from the pen of its secretary, Mr T. R. Marr, a little book,[46] which shows, by a coloured map, that slum property, including many back-to-back and "converted" back-to-back houses, form a great ring round the offices and factories of Central Manchester. Its lessons are enforced by a series of photographs of slum property. Here is a picture of a Salford court, upon which face the living rooms of eleven houses. Standing out in the court, as a public exhibition, are three rotten places of convenience, only one of them usable. Here, again, is a photograph taken in St Michaels' Ward—taken, let us hope, in the absence of St Michael. A group of four closets open on the street, and beside them, surrounded by a group of slum children curiously watching the photographer, is a tap which is the sole water supply of 22 houses. A third picture, also taken in St Michaels' Ward, shows a stone-paved court of eleven houses. There is one tap, an open ash-box, and several closets the doors of which are torn from their hinges.

In Liverpool, according to a paper read before the Royal Sanitary Institute in April 1905 by Mr Fletcher T. Turton, the Liverpool Deputy Surveyor, there were still 8,600 back-to-back houses standing, the death-rate in their area being about 60 per 1,000! Further erection of such houses is forbidden by Mr Burns's Housing Act of 1909, but there are tens of thousands already in existence.

In Leeds there are many of these back-to-back houses, without ventilation, or yard, or private sanitary arrangements, let at rentals varying from 3s. 6d. to 7s. 6d. per week. As many as three and four houses join at one closet. The closets are frequently in yards, forty yards from the house. In wet weather, rather than carry the waste water from the bedrooms the length of the street, women may often be seen pouring it down the street gully. On Sundays, when the inhabitants are all at home, the difficulty as to sanitary accommodation is intensely aggravated.

In Sheffield, in the Potteries, and many other places, these abominable back-to-back houses are to be found. Few workers' houses in the Potteries have more than two bedrooms. The back-to-back houses in Sheffield number 15,000, and sometimes as many as eight or ten persons are to be found in their three little rooms. If we take only 7 persons to the house there are 105,000 Sheffield people living in these dens.

If there are not back-to-back houses or cellar dwellings in London, there are many squalid areas which contain greater aggregations of the poorest of the poor than can be found in any other part of the country. In Marylebone, Southwark, St Pancras, Holborn, Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, Stepney, and Finsbury upwards of 30 per cent. of the inhabitants live in tenements of one or two rooms. In Finsbury the proportion reaches 45 per cent.; in Shoreditch and St Pancras 37 per cent. In Lambeth, Westminster, Paddington, Chelsea, Kensington, Islington and Bermondsey 20 per cent. and upwards of the population live in tenements of one or two rooms. Only, indeed, in Lewisham, Wandsworth, Stoke Newington, Hampstead, Woolwich, Greenwich, Deptford, Camberwell, Hackney and Fulham, do less than 15 per cent. of the inhabitants occupy tenements of one or two rooms. Not even the school children of Ancoats or Deansgate, Manchester, exhibit the degree of physical deterioration of those of Lambeth or West Ham.

It cannot be too strongly insisted that in connexion with the problem of housing the people there is not merely the question of "overcrowding" or of "crowding," whether in rooms or on area, to be considered. Not only death and disease but ugliness and inconvenience have to be fought. The speculative builder is covering suburban areas with mile after mile of amorphous dwellings. Acre after acre of smiling meadow is disfigured. Street after street of buildings of unredeemed ugliness reach out into the beautiful country which lies so near to the 75,000 acres of London. Trees are felled; every particle of verdure is scraped away. The town advances, and before its grim threatenings Beauty flies. The lane becomes the street; the hedge is replaced by cast-iron palings; beyond the hedge there arises the row of "bay windows with venetian blinds" which figure in the advertisements. Pass to the rear and you will find the 16 or 18 feet frontage which the builder thought beautiful balanced by a "back addition" which even the builder knew to be ugly. Facing the back-additions, across two "gardens" together not so long as a cricket pitch, another row of rear elevations, and so on, row after row. Such is the vision with which we stimulate the fancy of the more fortunate of the children of the people. We teach them drawing on the latest principles—free-arm—in the school. We give them infinite ugliness as their environment outside the school. We have still to learn that while the dwellings and surroundings of the people are unlovely we cannot hope for a gifted race. We have yet to understand that education begins when the child opens its eyes and ears to the sights and sounds of the home and its surroundings. It is not alone that the people lack monetary income. To the ill-distribution of wealth is added the ill-distribution of the means of a beautiful life. The majority of our people are denied the vision of beauty, and even those who receive fair wages perish morally for lack of that vision.

From the centre to the circumference there passes all the evil thinking and evil doing which the unnatural conditions of the centre have created in the minds of men. The workman who leaves the centre for the new suburb of Walthamstow is not surprised to find there the ugliness which he left behind him. He does not expect to find Beauty—that is a commodity confined to pictures. He does not wonder that man could be so blind as to create a sore on the borders of one of the most beautiful spots which this earth has to show. He owns his cottage with a smile, oblivious of the might-have-been, and rarely if ever wonders why in a country containing nearly 80,000,000 acres his considerable rental can command so small a share of the surface of his native land.

And surely it is for lack of vision that our efforts in connexion with the housing problem are so misdirected. The rulers of our towns instead of directing their attention to the outskirts have practically confined themselves to tinkering at the centre. Blocks, palatial in size and unholy in principle, have been erected and ironically dubbed "model dwellings." It is true that in all big towns there are a certain number of workmen who must live near their work, but there is usually a far larger number who have no such tie. And the model dwellings referred to usually succeed in housing not the class which must live near their work but the class who could well go out beyond the suburbs. Thus the effect of tinkering in the centre is often but to set free for the poorest of the poor the tenements deserted by the better class who pass to the new dwellings. That is good in its way, but how much better it would have been to relieve the centre by emptying out its streets into the places beyond. To buy up slums in the centre and create model dwellings is to play into the hands of the landlords—to increase the value of the unbought slums. To empty out the centre of its movable population is to leave a better selection of homes for those who must remain, and to leave the slum landlord to mourn a fall in the value of his "property."

A great deal is often said about unoccupied sites in towns and their suburbs and it has even been suggested that efforts should be used to force them into the market and compel building upon them. Here again is exhibited a most lamentable lack of vision. In so far as town sites are unbuilt upon let them remain so, and if their owners are waiting for a rise in value let us take measures to make that waiting prolonged.

In a widely circulated leaflet on the land question I read: "If we pass through the outskirts of any of our great centres of population, we see pieces of land left practically derelict, with perhaps an old horse grazing there disconsolately, or a few hens investigating a rubbish heap. A little farther on we see houses being built and roads being laid out. We know that still more houses are badly wanted, and we wonder why the land between is not being utilized."

Here we have a reformer ardently desirous of filling up an open urban space which, if he were wise, he would use his best endeavour to keep open for ever. Seeing houses being built and roads being laid out "a little farther on"—what kind of houses and what sort of roads, I wonder?—he is anxious to turn out the disconsolate horse and pile up more houses in the intervening space. It apparently does not occur to him that yet "a little farther on" there is land enough for the housing of an army, and that a horse, however disconsolate, is at the worst a prettier object than a speculative builder's "villa."

Two things are necessary if the housing problem is to be grappled with seriously and not resigned to private profit timorously modified by municipal tinkering. The first is the control of land, and the second ready access to capital. As has been truly said, the housing question is a land question; as has been too rarely remembered, it is even more a capital question.

There is only one effective way in which the community can control land and that is to become its landlord. It is also true that there is only one effective way in which the community can keep in its own hands the "unearned increment" arising from the enhanced value of land created by the presence and work of the community, and again that effective way is for the community to own the land. There is no necessity, however, for the town to play into the hands of suburban landlords by purchasing dear land. It can evade attempts to corner land required by the community by going out and beyond that land if it is held for a rise. Indeed it is better to leave a zone between its present circumference and the site of its new housing area. Even in London, it is a simple matter to reach land cheap enough for successful housing operations. It is of the utmost importance that all municipalities should without further delay secure considerable areas of the agricultural lands which surround their townships.[47] By doing this well in advance of their building operations they can insure that, as they themselves raise the value of the land by developing it and establishing means of transit, the whole of that value will remain in their hands. Moreover, if the owners of the intermediate land thus see their market failing they will gladly place a reasonable price upon their holdings. In this connexion it is probable that the taxation of land upon its selling value may prove to be of assistance. The man who controls a part of the area of his country and who will neither use it himself nor allow others to use it should in any case be taxed. I attach more importance, however, to the simple and effective policy of widening the radius of operations until cheap land is reached.

It cannot be too clearly understood that simply to tax land on its selling value is of itself no solution either of the land question or the housing question. If land is priced by its owner at £1,000 per acre and he is holding it to obtain that figure, we should not necessarily bring it into the market by taxing it on its selling value. The price asked obviously includes all the rise in value expected by the present owner in the near future; that is why the price is held out for. If the land be taxed upon the capital value the owner, unless very strong financially, would probably have to sell. To do so, he would reduce the price and the land would be taken up by a second owner. The expected rise in value would thus be discounted, and the second owner having obtained the land at a lower rate, would be able to hold the land for the rise in spite of the tax payable. Thus the tax would not necessarily bring the land into use. Nor, if it did, would it necessarily be devoted to a desirable use. Owner B is not necessarily more moral or public spirited than owner A. Owner A held up the land, but owner B, having bought it, may put it to such base uses that we could wish it had been held up a little longer. Above all, therefore, we must have public control of area.

As the owner of its own sites, the township can be the arbiter of its own developments. This has been clearly recognized in Germany, where, under the encouragement and stimulation of the State governments, municipalities are acquiring land beyond their existing borders. Considerable areas are owned by many German towns. Stettin has 12,500 acres; Mannheim has 5,000 acres; Breslau has 12,000 acres; Frankfort has 11,000 acres.

Large as our population is, it is really remarkable to note how little area would be required to rehouse the people of the towns. Taking the number of families in the United Kingdom at 9,000,000, only 1,800,000 acres, or less than one-fortieth part of the area of the country, would be required to house five families to the acre. This simple calculation helps us to realize the point referred to in a former page—how tiny an area now contains nearly the whole of our 44,500,000 people.

Having wisely purchased land upon its borders, the municipality must take thought as to the distribution of the population upon its new territory. Plans must be made of the new roads, streets, open spaces, and transit facilities long before they are actually required, so that each step in development may be taken deliberately and that no new difficulties may be built up to be the despair of the future. The well-governed city should study its present and future area as the artist regards his prepared sheet of canvas. Within its borders what varying effects may be produced! With the loving care that the old Italians bestowed upon the preparation of their panels, the municipality should plan the ground upon which the life of the city is to move. It is a picture the arrangement of which means life or death to the citizens; it may easily be made to glow with health and beauty.

Mr Burns's important Housing Act of 1909 has made it possible for local authorities to plan out the future extensions of towns; it will be interesting to see whether there is sufficient imagination in our local rulers to make the provision fructify.

In one of the most valuable contributions to this subject which have been published in recent years,[48] Mr T. C. Horsfall describes the thought and trouble which is given to the planning of the extension of municipalities by German Town Councils. Thus Stuttgart, in 1901, when preparing for a large extension of the town borders (its present population is about 182,000), obtained the advice of skilled architects, engineers, medical authorities, and artists. The politico-economic aspect of the matter was also carefully considered. The opinions, plans, and suggestions were then published in a volume to enable all the people of Stuttgart to study the proposals for extension.

Mannheim, again, which is chiefly a manufacturing town, prepared in 1901 building plans which provide for the requirements of industry and housing, while always remembering the claims of Beauty. I quote the following from Mr Horsfall: "The description of the building plan for Mannheim, prepared by Professor Baumeister, which is published in Numbers 69, 70, and 71 of the 'Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung,' shows that the new part of the town will be provided with a remarkably complete system of narrow railways for passenger traffic, and with an equally complete system of railway lines of the ordinary width leading from goods-stations in all directions, for goods traffic, which will enable every manufactory to load goods on to trucks on its own premises. Carriage, therefore, will be exceptionally cheap in the town. Yet the Town Council, who are thinking so much of economical working, recognize that even their poorest fellow-citizens are men and women, whose bodies and minds need wholesome recreation and an abundant supply of fresh air, of light, and of the influence of flowers and trees. The building plan, therefore, provides for the creation of avenue streets of widths varying from 24 to 43 yards; and Professor Baumeister adds: 'Of course care has been taken to provide open spaces, decorative shrubberies, parks and sites for public buildings.' The width of ordinary streets varies from 8⅓ to 21⅓ yards."

The German building plans provide in what districts factories may be erected and determine (1) how much of building sites may be covered by houses, and (2) the height of all buildings. Thus, even in cases where the municipality does not own its own sites, it can in some measure control the greed of the houselord. It cannot too strongly be insisted upon, however, that absolute sovereignty of the manner of distribution of the people upon area can only be obtained by acquisition of the land.

The practicability of going out and beyond the township and emptying into the open country the crowded and enfeebled inhabitants of the cities has been amply demonstrated in the United Kingdom. An object-lesson of the most practical character is afforded by the beautiful garden city of Bournville, which the beneficence and wisdom of Mr George Cadbury have raised four miles from the gloomy city of Birmingham.

Most people have heard of Bournville, but few are aware that it is not merely a village erected for the accommodation of Mr Cadbury's employees, but a working model of what may be done to solve the housing problem of great cities. The village of Bournville now no longer belongs to Mr Cadbury, for he has bestowed it upon the nation, the gift being worth not less than £200,000. In December 1900, the estate was handed over to the Bournville Village Trust, which is under the final control of the Charity Commissioners. In the Deed by which the property was made over to the Trustees the founder has thus set forth its objects: "The founder is desirous of alleviating the evils which arise from the insanitary and insufficient accommodation supplied to large numbers of the working classes and of securing to workers in factories some of the advantages of outdoor village life, with opportunities for the natural and healthful occupation of cultivating the soil.... The object is declared to be the amelioration of the condition of the working-class and labouring population in and around Birmingham, and elsewhere in Great Britain, by the provision of improved dwellings, with gardens and open spaces to be enjoyed therewith."

The objects thus outlined have been carried out by the provision of beautiful homes set in gardens which are at once a source of revenue and of healthful recreation to their possessors.

Less than one-half of the breadwinners of Bournville are employed by Mr Cadbury himself. The village is not a private preserve, as is so often imagined, in which patronized cottagers live a bounty-fed existence, but a free independent and public-spirited community which rules itself in matters of detail through a Tenants' Committee or Council. A census of the inhabitants made in December 1901 gave the following results:—

Proportion of Bournville Householders working in

Occupations of Bournville Householders

Having this working population of people paying rentals between 5s. 6d. including rates and 12s. 6d. excluding rates, the rate of infantile mortality in Bournville in 1903 was only 65 per 1,000 against 331 in the district of Birmingham known as St Mary's.

The architectural beauty of Bournville has not been secured by extravagant expenditure, but by tastefully treating good and simple materials with due regard to utility. Mr W. A. Harvey, the architect, says: "The idea of a cottage home that I have always endeavoured to keep in view is one in which beauty is based on utility." There is nothing tortured, nothing deliberately and queerly "quaint," no plastering of ornament. The houses look comfortable because they are comfortable. The windows are pretty because they are simple casements, the best possible sort of window.

A type of house which particularly pleased me had the following accommodation:

The total cost, including fencing, laying out garden, etc., was £280. The house, it will be seen, has no "parlour," but one large living room measuring 17 feet by 16 feet without the ingle-nook and large square bay window. It is an exceedingly attractive and comfortable room, and the sensible idea is appreciated by many of the tenants. The tastes of others are met by the ordinary arrangement of a separate kitchen and parlour.

The picturesque and comfortable houses have a charming setting. They are set back from the road and grouped in such manner as to give each house the best use of the sun—an important matter often neglected in the planning of even expensive houses, and absolutely ignored by the speculative builder. It follows that there are no monotonous roads in Bournville; natural grouping arises from attention to aspect. Each cottage has one-eighth to one tenth of an acre of garden. The gardens are laid out when the houses are built, so that the tenant has not to begin by breaking up uncultivated land. Lines of fruit trees are planted, and these, besides yielding a good supply of fruit, form a pleasant screen between the gardens. As a rule, the tenants take a keen interest in their gardens, and cultivate them with great success. In addition to the cottage gardens there are about 100 allotments, which are eagerly sought after by the inhabitants of the neighbouring manufacturing villages. There are two gardening classes for young men. Two professional gardeners with a staff are in charge of the gardening department, and are always ready to give whatever information and advice may be required, but each tenant is responsible for the cultivation of his own garden. It is a notable fact that the gardens are found to yield, on the average, 1s. 11d. each per week. Gardening is lovingly fostered by the Village Council already referred to. The members of this Council, whose services are rendered voluntarily, are elected by ballot, and the annual elections and by-elections evoke considerable interest. Through this body arrangements are made for the co-operative purchase of plants, shrubs, and bulbs in great numbers; gardening tools such as mowers, rollers or shears, bought for the purpose, are let on hire; a loan library of gardening books has been formed; also a gardening association with periodical inspections of gardens; while lectures are arranged for the winter, and excursions for the summer. Further, the Council has established and managed with conspicuous success flower shows and an annual fête for the children. The bath-house and children's playground are also under its control.

The roads are 42 feet wide, and are all planted with trees. Out of the 100 acres laid out for building 14 acres have been reserved as open spaces, including parks, green, and children's playgrounds. It is part of the plan that in no part of the little community should children be far removed from a proper playground.

I have already referred to the rate of infantile mortality in Bournville. It may be added that the death-rate for 1904, as certified by the local Medical Officer of Health, was 6.9 per 1,000. The rate for Birmingham for the same year was 19.3. In his report for 1900 the Medical Officer of Health referred to Bournville as follows:—"I have in my previous reports made mention of the model buildings on the estate which has been laid out by Mr George Cadbury. I cannot refrain from again mentioning how much I admire the system he has adopted. The object of the dwellings has been to give plenty of light and air with a good deal of air space to each house with sufficient land adjoining, and so insure a 'breathing lung' for the inhabitants of these houses. The houses are moreover built on modern principles, and no pains have been spared to make them as dry and free from insanitary conditions as possible. In addition, open spaces have been laid out so that at all times there can never be any danger of increasing the density of the population over the area on which the buildings have been erected. I cannot speak too highly of these dwellings, and I can only hope that we may be able to keep all dwellings as far as possible up to this standard."

To pass to the all-important financial side of the matter, the balance sheet for 1909 gives the following results: