THE " WEN." T HESE pages will not come into our
readers' hands till most of those who are on the Register have finally decided which way to vote on the County Council election. No one is likely to wait till Satur- day morning to form an opinion on the issues before London ; and those who have formed an opinion are not likely to change it at the last moment. There are, however, one or two points which are worth careful con- sideration by the people and Council of London, whichever way the election goes. The most important of these is the question connected with the growth of London. Long ago, Cobbett called London " the wen," and looked for- ward with the gloomiest forebodings to the tendency of the capital to grow greater by leaps and bounds. The feeling that the growth of London is something essentially un- healthy, has not died out. There are public men of anything but reactionary tendencies—Lord Rosebery for one—who look upon the size of London as one of the greatest dangers ahead for England. Things cannot be well with a people, they argue, when the capital tends every year to absorb more and more of the population, and to use up more and more of the national strength and vitality. If London goes on growing, the time will come when England will be a city, not a country.
We are not pessimists, and are fully aware of the note of exaggeration in all this talk. Still, the growth of London is a very serious matter, and must be attended to by the people of the Metropolis. Strangely enough, those who are responsible for recommending a policy which will tend to swell London still further, are by all their theories opposed to the depletion of the country and the repletion of the towns. " Keep the people on the land," is in national politics a Progressist watchword. Yet, oddly enough, "Tempt the people to leave the land by offering every sort of artificial inducement to the labourer to come to town," is the net result of the Metropolitan Progressist programme,—Everything must be done both to keep the labourer on the land and to tempt him to London. Men often take a considerable time in realising that they are shouting for two mutually de- structive propositions. In the end, however, they are sure to discover that things cannot both be and not be at one and the same time. Our desire on the present occasion is to point out to the new Council, whether Progressist or Moderate, that they must be very careful not to increase the size of London—that is, not to draft in more country-people —by any act of their own. They cannot do anything directly to diminish the size of London, but they can abstain from adopting a policy that will tend to stimulate by artificial means the growth of the capital. If the Council adopts a policy of spending some ten or twenty millions on new public works, they are certain to increase the size of London and to stimulate its rate of growth. Speaking.gene- rally, the working population of London is sufficient, and no more than sufficient, to do the work of the Metropolis. If, then, the County Council decides on some vast improvement scheme, the men required to carry out the scheme must be brought in from outside. But it may be urged that this is not nearly as big a matter as it seems. Even if ten thousand new workmen are brought in, what is that in a population of five millions ? Those who argue thus forget, however, that if some ten thousand new workmen are drafted into London on various works, they do not come alone. They and their wives and children soon bring the total up to, say, fifty thousand. Nor is this all. The knowledge that there is work going for ten thousand men in London, does not bring only ten, or even only twenty thousand men into the labour market. It is far more likely to bring forty or fifty thousand. Ten thousand will get the work ; the rest and their families will help to swell the ranks of the labour class in London, and to depress wages. Great public improvements are the very expedients for repopulating a dwindling capital. They are only to be employed with very great caution in a city already " congested " beyond all human ex- perience. Nor are great public works the only means for artificially stimulating the growth of the London population which are to be condemned. Many of the schemes for improving the condition of the people through municipal action are equally objectionable. If the London County Council were, as certain dreamers desire, to use the rates to secure cheap tram-fares and cheap trains, to pro- vide cheaper dwellings, and to do a hundred other things to make life in London more easy and attractive for the workman, we should be certain to see a very large extra in- crease in the population of London. London is attractive enough already, owing to the cheapness of all forms of food and clothing, and the presence of amusements and facili- ties for getting on. Only rent and " getting about " are dear. If, then, rents and charges for locomotion were to be reduced out of the rates, we should still further increase the attractiveness of London, and relatively decrease the attractiveness of the country. Improvement in the con- ditions under which the labourer lives by means of municipal action is certain to lead to a further develop- ment of the unhealthy process by which London swells and the country districts grow lean. But, it may be said, do you intend to withhold these benefits from the London working man for fear of attracting fresh swarms of labourers from the country ? ' Assuredly not. The so- called benefits conferred by a Municipality are, however, very doubtful benefits. And for this reason. Unless you can keep a city a close corporation, the easier you make life in it by public means, the more wages will tend to fall. If you halved London rents, made all workmen's trains gratis, and had free trains and omnibuses, you would immediately summon a vast crowd of new-comers to share these blessings. But what would be the result of this influx of labour ? Nothing less than a fall in wages. Cheap rents and gratis locomotion would not increase the total amount of work obtainable in London. The new- comers would, therefore, be obliged to compete with the old resident workmen. But this competition must mean a fall in wages. The only effect, then, of easier and better• conditions of life supplied municipally would be a reduc- tion in the value of labour. Surely that is not what the advocates of the great public improvements want ! It must not be supposed, however, that we think that no improvement can take place in the condition of the labouring population of London through their own exertions, because we hold that none can take place through municipal action without bringing worse evils than those intended to be cured. If the labourer is enabled to hire a better house, to live better generally, and to earn more at his calling, by the exercise of greater temperance and thrift, and by improvements in trade, he will not be exposed to any exaggerated competition from outside. An improvement in his style of living, when self-achieved, will not bring upon him the same rush of new-corners. His rent will not be artificially low, and he will be obliged to pay for his trains and his trams, his gas and his water. These payments will be his protection. Under the system of municipally secured benefits, the man thinking of coming to London will say :—' Even if I don't get work at once, I shall get a cheap house, and shall be able to go about looking for work at very little expense. There won't be much out- goings, anyway. I'll risk it, and go.' But at present, and as long as the present state of things continues, the countryman is to some extent restrained from coming to London by the thought Rent is very dear, and in London there is a call to spend something every day on trains or omnibuses. While I am looking about for work, I shall perhaps find myself without a single penny. I had better stop where I am.' No doubt this feeling is not quite so strongly a deterrent as one could wish ; but that it does act to some extent in the direction of restraint, it is impossible to doubt. For these reasons, though we do not deny that a great deal can be said in favour of most of the improvements in the Progressist programme, we trust that the new Council will be extremely circumspect in its adoption of large schemes. These, if undertaken, are sure to in- crease the size of London, and the inflation of London is not a thing to be encouraged lightly. Such a multitude as now exists in London can only be safely brought together by the working of natural laws. If the swarming process is stimulated from outside, a situation fraught with the gravest social and economic dangers may be produced. Before we leave the subject of London, we must put on record our protest against the unwisdom of the Moderates in not expressing themselves in favour of merging the City in the County of London, and of bestowing on the capital a real Municipality. What is the sense of declaring that the conservative ele- ments are not strong enough in London, and then re- fusing to endow London with the intensely conservative traditions and instincts of the City ? Make the Chairman of the County Council Lord Mayor, let him live at the Mansion House, entertain at the Guildhall, use the state coach, draw the official salary, and surround himself with the traditional civic state,—and he is likely to prove any- thing rather than a dangerous revolutionary. It is little less than a scandal that such splendid municipal traditions as those of the capital should be confined to a single square mile of the administrative County of London.
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