[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Sta,-The article in your
issue of January 13th on "The Scandal of the Slums " is opportune, for there is a real danger that our representatives in Parliament may fail to see that the Government Bill, assuming the best about it, can go but a short way to solve that part of the housing problem which is recognized as most urgent by those who have first-hand knowledge of the facts.
This Department of the University of Liverpool has been engaged for three years in making a survey of social conditions on Merseyside. We are, therefore, in a position to give fairly precise figures as to certain broad aspects of overcrowding and poverty, based on data relating to nearly 7,000 families obtained by visiting one in thirty of all working-class houses.
It was discovered that one out of every four families • sampled shared houses with one or more other families. In one ward of Liverpool five houses were found each containing six or more families. Also, on the standard of overcrowding adopted—which took age and sex into account, as well as the number of persons in each household—one family out of every nine 'was living in overcrowded conditions.
• Some families who could afford to pay a higher rent remain
overcrowded because they cannot find suitable accommodation near to their work. It is unlikely that their case will be met by the speculative builder who builds where land is cheap. Slum clearance and the provision of tenements in central areas are essential. But in many cases poverty is, if not the cause, the companion of overcrowding. Such association is most frequent when the chief earner is unemployed or only casually employed, as was the experience in over 20 per cent. of the families visited—and this before the acute depression began. Here are two examples out of many which might be quoted : A coal carter, with wife and five children living in two rooms ; he had not worked for five years and the wife kept the home together by selling vegetables. A marine fireman, with wife and two sons (twenty and thirteen), living in one room ; the elder son was earning a small wage as a bill-poster, but the father was unemployed and had run out of benefit.
Sixteen per cent. of all the families sampled on Merseyside were, at the time of the investigation, below the poverty line. It is clear that even an inclusive rent of 10s. a week is too high for a class that is chronically poor. We have to face the fact that such families are often dependent on the Social Services. A man with a wife and three children, for instance, would get 29s. 3d. as unemployment pay, or 30s. as public assistance (in this area) assuming the head were long out of work. If rent were to take 10s. out of this sum, the balance would not suffice to feed the family on the Mersey. side poverty scale, and there would be nothing at all left for clothing, cleaning, light, fuel or other necessaries.—I am, - (The Liverpool School of Social Science 19 Abercromby Square. and Administration). •
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