6 APRIL 1934, Page 23

The London Survey

The New Survey of London Life and Labour. Vol. VI: Survey of Social Conditions ; (2) The Western Area. Vol. VII : Western Area Maps. (P. S. King. 17s. 6d. each..) THE great enterprise, which is proceeding under the direction of Sir H. Llewellyn Smith, will be completed in nine volumes. Here are the sixth and seventh ; the end, though not yet reached, comes in sight. Vols. III and IV gave us a survey and maps for the Eastern area of the London which has been investigated ; the present volumes give a similar survey and corresponding maps for the Western area. But they also contain a summary of comparative results for the two areas, and a number of additional chapters—on housing, on migration, on London's Jews, on household economy, and on mental deficiency—which are related to London as a whole.

Those who have studied the previous volumes will remember that two methods of inquiry are followed—a house sample analysis, for which Professor A. L. Bowley is responsible, and a street survey and poverty maps worked over by Sir Llewellyn Smith. The two methods being independent, it is significant that they yield practically the same results. Moreover these results appear much the same for the West as they were for the East. Some local differences there, of course, are ; but the governing factor of wages is prac- tically uniform. This implies, not merely that for any given trade there is normally one wage-rate in East and West alike, but that trades which pay low wages are not massed together disproportionately in either half. In each area more than half the workmen received wages exceeding 61s. a week, and more than a tenth received over £4 a week. Rents are higher in the West, and the proportion of the wage which is absorbed by them is somewhat higher there at all ranges of working-class income.

To compare the results of the survey with Charles Booth's (I.e., to compare, roughly, 1929 with 1889) it is necessary to apply Booth's poverty standard just as he framed it. If this be done, it appears by the Street Survey method that the reduction of poverty has been 69 per cent. and by the House Sample method that it has been 71 per cent. So close a coincidence in independent estimates is certainly remarkable. Thus in forty years something between two- thirds and three-quarters of what Booth defined as poverty has been wiped out. Had the conditions which Booth found continued, there would have been in the survey area in 1929 over 1,500,000 persons living in poverty. Instead there were in fact about 490,000. It is still a big aggregate, but only about 8.7 per cent. of the population. Booth's percentage was 30.7. Moreover poverty is less localized and congested than it was. A blue street on the maps means a street in which the majority of inhabitants are below the poverty line ; and these blue streets have faded out much more quickly than poverty itself. Another difference is that whereas formerly it was low wages, as a rule, which plunged a family below the poverty line, now it is usually unemployment. Of course this is a natural result from the raising of wage-rates ; but in several respects it is a disquieting one.

The chapters on special subjects are all interesting, but contain no striking surprises. Jewish life and labour, which were a factor in causing East London poverty forty years ago, are no longor so today in any serious degree. The number of Jews in the county of London has indeed increased ; estimated between 60,000 and 70,000 in 1889, they now num- ber 183,000. But they are much more widely dispersed and better assimilated ; and the trades, in which their labour formerly helped to depress wages, have now been for a long time under Trade Boards. Immigration from the provinces has also assumed a new shape. Formerly it was the stalwart village labourer who aggravated unemployment and casual labour at the docks and goods yards. Now the immigrants arc town-dwellers ; they come from slump-smitten areas in the North of England or South Wales. But the numbers of pro- vincial-born Londoners show a decline, especially in the poor boroughs of the inner ring. This is due to a very marked migration out of the county into adjoining or satellite areas.

The chapter on housing exhibits a great many facts without Coming to many very clear conclusions. Some modifications

of the views of 1889 are indeed recorded. Miss Octavia Hill's condemnation of block dwellings in Charles Booth's third volume is shown to be quite out of date ; improved types and better management have removed all the worst of her objections ; and on the other hand, it has become out of the question to provide cottages in central areas, so that for those who cannot move out the alternative to a flat in a block is not a cottage but rooms in a tenement house. As between slum clearance schemes and " reconditioning," many of the pros and cons are fairly stated ; but the reason why " Nettle- folding "—i.e., de-slumming the slum at the expense of the slum-owner—has been so much less practised in London than in the provinces, is nowhere plainly set out. It is that, in the peculiar London division of housing responsibilities, this part of the Housing Acts fell to the borough councils, while slum clearance fell to the L.C.C. ; and there has been a persistent inducement to the borough councils to refrain from action on their part, so as to force the L.C.C.'s hand and compel a slum clearance, and thus bring into the borough " London money." Probably nothing has tended so much to preserve in London small slums, which Birmingham and Manchester would have Nettlefolded into decency 25 years ago. Connected with housing is Miss Livingstone's chapter on Household Economy and Cookery ; for, as she shows, the housing arrangements as to fires, taps, sinks, larders, &c., have a great influence on the possibilities of cookery and food management. She notes that owing to the long interval between school-leaving and marriage the L.C.C.'s school in- struction in cookery bears little or no fruit, and wisely pleads for developing adult cookery instruction. But in the dis- cussion of why working-class mothers do not get their daughters to do cooking, she, again, seems to miss the point. It is that daughters who go out to work and earn money have to be humoured, lest they betake themselves and their money somewhere else. Consequently, most mothers would no more dare to suggest cooking to them than to exercise any moral restraints over their wage-earning boys.

B. C. K. Esrson.