MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND AND IN GERMANY.
[To THE EDITOR OP TUN ".SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Although very unwilling to appear in conflict with Mr. T. C. Horsfall, knowing his great practical interest in social reform, his letter in your issue of December 12th calls
for several remarks. Mr. Horsfall thinks that in my book, Municipal Life and Government in Germany, I have given
"much too favourable an account of the results of German municipal government." Of course it will not be expected that I should endorse this view. I am, however, justified in pointing out that it is precisely in regard to housing policy— the subject of Mr. Horsfall's letter—that I have been most emphatic in calling attention to and criticizing the short- comings of German municipal authorities. Perhaps Mr. Horsfall will be good enough to read again the chapter on "Housing Policies." I have similarly pointed to the high mortality rate in Germany, but I do not accept Mr. Horsfall's view that its chief cause is bad housing. That view is irreconcilable with the statistics. For example, Berlin is one of the most overcrowded of German towns (" overcrowded" in the German sense), and Bremen is essentially a single-family- house town, and in my opinion one of the most English- looking of German towns ; yet the general mortality and infant mortality rates of Berlin in 1911 were only slightly higher than those of Bremen--16.3 per thousand and 17'3 per cent. respectively, against 15.3 per thousand and 14.1 per cent. In my opinion, bad sanitation has had much to do with the past high mortality of German towns.
In accounting for the high rates of illegitimacy in German towns Mr. Hors fall overlooks the deplorable influence of the so-called "free love" idea and of the wholesale employment of girls in drinking-houses and restaurants. To the latter, and, I fear it must be said, want of moral restraint amongst the rising youth, academic and other, is due the unenviable notoriety of Munich in the statistics of illegitimacy.
Upon the subject of municipal Income Tax I would only remark that the reason for the passing of the Prussian Municipal Taxation Law of 1893 was the need of protecting income against undue local taxation in view of its importance as a source of State taxation. In all my intercourse with German Mayors and municipal workers I have never heard a word said in favour of the English rating system—almost the last Prussian " rent-taxes," the nearest equivalent to our rates, were abolished as iniquitous long ago—nor have I come across any endorsement of Dr. Miquel's contention that municipal Income Taxes raise rents and the cost of real property, while English rates have the opposite effect. Per- sonally, I do not accept that view, though recognizing the complexity of the vexed question of the ultimate incidence of local burdens.—I am, Sir, &c., W. H. DAWSON. [We cannot publish any more correspondence on this subject.—En. Spectator.]
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