The War on Slums
“ Iv uk; programmes should,. so far as practicable,- 1 be ,drawn on the basis of clearing all areas that require clearing not later than 1938." In such j)rosaie words in one of its official circulars does the Ministry of Health announce what is in effect a five ears' crusade for the abolition -of slums. Reformers *have demanded such a crusade fur long .enough, and for long enough the response from Whitehall has taken the ram of evasive circumlocution. Circular 1331, issued bv the Minister of Health last Friday, strikes .a different note. No longer is the leisurely process of clearing a few slum houses here and there, at the rate of about Leap a year, to he countenanced. Slums everywhere, all of them, are to go. Local authorities are to set to work forthwith on 'clearance schemes, based on a concrete programme complete with dates, which the Ministry desires to have in its hands by the end of September. If there are any difficulties the services of the Ministry are available. If there are any delays stimulus from the Ministry will be applied. If money is wanted the Ministry will be expansive in the matter of sanctioning loans. Money can be borrowed at rates abnormally low ; huildingmaterials are for the most part abnormally ',heap ; louses for that reason are abnormally inex- pensive ; and the subsidy of £15 a house per annum is, as a 'consequence, proportionately higher in relation to interest -and sinking-fund than at any time in the past. Given the same boldness and determination on the part of the local authorities as of the Ministry of health, and a harmonious co-operation between the two, the new war on the shuns will open with victory in sight.
That, of course, is on two assumptions—that the Ministry's brave words are honest words and will be loyally backed up in action ; and that the local authori- ties, with whom the initiative in forming actual schemes must rest, :act with the rapidity and resolution the II situation demands. The best guarantee in both cases is the pressure of public opinion. It is that, more than anything else, that has set the Ministry of Health in movement' and housing committees, -which are fax less unassailably entrenched than a Government department, should be proportionately more amenable to such legiti- mate pressure. This new tide in the affairs of 'slumdom must be taken at the flood, and the dominant motive 'behind the -crusade must be the resolve that the 'continued existence of hundreds of thousands of the population in the cellars And 'hovels in which they live to-day, tolerated already far too long, shall be tolerated no longer. As for the local authorities themselves, they may well be bewildered by the alternation of the Govern- ment's injunctions between economy and expenditure. But hereagain the deciding factor has been public opinion, coupled with the fact that even .sluin clearance can now in most -cases be faced without prospect of financial loss. If a house can be built for, say, £400, and a subsidy of £15 is available, it is clear that when all provision 'for compulsory acquisition, interest and sinking fund over a period of 40 years (the limit for the subsidy) is made the rent can be fixed At -a figure within the range even of the lowest-paid sections of the population. For that, of (lame, is the problem, or half of it. It is useless to put up good houses in plabe of bad ones at higher rents. The other half of 'the problem is the necessity for re-housing much of the existing population on the same site, for in many cases either the need of Proximity to work, or ineradicable prejudice which e;Innot he completely' •overriddon, - forbids Wholesale transplantation to an outer circle where all health conditions arc superior.
To suggest that the end of the scandal of the slum,' against which this and many other journals have crusaded ceaselessly, is at last in sight may seem over-sanguine. That will depend entirely on whether the public con- science of the eotuitry remains sensitive to conditions' which to-day disgrace it. There is every reason to believe it will. We arc learning gradually the lesson of the new patriotism—that the first thing that should concern every Englishman about his country is the bodies and souls of its citizens. The bodies are in some respects easier to care for than the souls. - If, in historic language, we recognize the inalienable right of every Englishman to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the first task is to see that his outward existence is such as to make that triple aim in some measure realizable. We owe ourselves the encouragement of recognizing what has already been accomplished in that direction. Even in these years of depression, with the unemployment figures what they still arc, it has been possible to guard the physique of the new generation to a surprising -degree from deterioration. Over a longer period indeed what has been :achieved is remarkable. In the lectures he delivered at Yale in 1928 Sir George Newman was able to make the arresting statement that in this country the average expectation of life at birth to-day is no less than fifteen years more than it was fifty years ago. Length of days, no doubt, is a small blessing in itself. But Unproved expectation of life argues improved conditions of life and a higher health stan- dard from birth to death. That the standard has in fact been raised, largely through the growing efficiency of the school medical services, is an incontestable fact.
But even over a much briefer period, the period of the last three or four years, when all the conditions were most adverse, the evidence is that the standard reached has been on the whole maintained. No one region is entirely typical of others, but the Tyneside district is as good an area to take as any, and the report of an investigation just conducted there by the Principal School Medical Officer in response to a request from the National Council of Social Service, is highly instructive. The main object was to compare the standards of 1927 with those of 1931, and show what deterioration, if any, in the -children's physique had resulted from the years of depression and unemployment. The first conclusions, based on the vital statistics, arc at first sight disappointing. In the four years the birth-rate has fallen slightly and the death-rate, particularly the infant mortality and the maternal mortality rates, risen slightly. But the per- centage of school-children whose physical condition is marked excellent or normal has increased, and of those marked below normal or bad has substantially decreased. The general statement is made by the Child Welfare Medical officer that the children (of course of prc-school age) attending the maternity and child welfare centres show no nutritional deterioration as compared with 1927. On the other hand it is significant, particularly in connexion with the new slum areas campaign, to find it recorded that removal from slum to new housing estates often means that a larger proportion of the family income goes in rent and less of it—often too little—in food, though the improvement in external surroundings does something to neutralize the effects of a restricted diet. Altogether, if Newcastle is any guide—and there is no reason to suppose the conditions there arc peculiar- we are at least holding our own as regards the school- children's physique at a time when some falling-back might seem inevitable. That is satisfactory, but it is very far from being enough. The fatal gap in the life of the youth of both sexes. after leaving school at 14, and before health or unemployment insurance begins at 16, has been emphasized in recent letters in TIft Too-much thought-Cannot be given to that vital subjc,,f. But meanwhile it is something to know that while w„ are, as it were, holding our gains on the schc,,,l-child front we are at last launched on a massed' assault on th, slum-dwelling front.
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