LORD ROSEBERY AND LONDON.
ORDINARY Englishmen cannot think in millions. That is the root of the problem about which Lord Rosebery discoursed so pleasantly and so vainly on Monday in Shoreditch. Nothing effectual will be done, or an be done, towards the better housing of the poorer Londoners until it is understood that the work is gigantic, that it will tax the energies of a whole generation, and that it will cost first and last as much as a protracted war. For thirty years we have been wearied with hurrahs over proposals and acts which, like the new Shoreditch build- ings, are admirable in themselves—more admirable even than the public believes, for " displacement " is a temporary evil, and most of the chatter about it springs from an illusion that new tenants come out of the sky instead of out of rooms which they vacate for the displaced—but their utility as contributions towards the solution of the problem is almost nil. Accommo- dation is provided, we are told by the Shoreditch Vestry, for three hundred families, and the statement is doubtless within the mark, but better housing is wanted for six hundred times as many. Taking Mr. Charles Booth's statistics as our basis of thought, about a fifth of the population of London requires more and better accommodation, and has not the money to pay for it at a rate profitable to builders. That is to say, the housing of two hundred thousand families ought to be im- proved, so that at all events no family should be without two rooms, less than that being fatal to civilisation and morality. The mass of the world, it is true, is still housed everywhere outside the dominion of the white race in the proportion of one family to one room, be it cottage, hut, or tent; but Western Europeans have become conscious, and have to struggle with difficulties of climate from which Southern and Eastern peoples are exempt. With European ideas of decency as to lavatories, and modern ideas as to the value of ensuring health—which involve ventilation—the new accommodation cannot be provided for less than £100 a family,—that is, an outlay of twenty millions sterling is needed to begin with. This money must be provided, even if we had the Dictator Lord Rosebery "dreamed of " ; and when it has been procured, nothing, or next to nothing, will have been done. For London increases at the rate of twelve thousand families a year, and each of these families requires new accommodation, which at present prices he will not obtain under an out- lay of £200 a family, or a total expenditure of £2,400,000 a year, representing a capital sum of nearly a hundred millions sterling. No doubt that outlay will not be un- productive, but it is on that scale, in millions and not in tens of thousands, that people must think if any serious improvement is to be effected, as they are always hoping, within the lifetime of a generation. This is the point which is always missed, and this is the first reason why, though there is improvement, the problem reappears apparently worse than ever with every ten years. Horace Mayhew said all that the Daily News is saying with equal want of result.
Is there, then, no hope until an impossible improvement in the range of men's thoughts has been effected ? Some- times we wish there were none, for we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that London settles a problem quite as severe as housing, and settles it much more successfully, without anybody's interference. This province covered with houses, which holds five millions of people, and grows nothing, still feeds itself sufficiently every day with so little friction or apparent effort that no one notices the magnitude of the organisation which must be perpetually at work. The Government issues no decrees, Parliament listens to no speeches, the philanthropists raise no funds and form no associations, and still every day the stream, of food flows in, and in London bread rioting is unknown. That is one of the biggest facts in the daily history of the world, and we never feel quite sure, if Parliament would pass a local Act making houses in London as transferable as watches or skeps of onions, that private enterprise would not meet the need, and by some silent change in ownership, or in the method of building, provide for the decent and healthy housing even of the poor. We still have the air to build in, and the conditions of sanitary life are enforced in barracks without either breaking men's hearts by tyranny, or incurring unendurable liabilities in money. The fairly-well-to-do have settled the question for themselves by streaming out in long, unlovely streets to all quarters of the compass, and we are not certain that the ill-to-do, if once convinced that they ought to do it, would not devise methods of which their well-wishers do not so much as think. An idea is often the strongest of weapons, and the sanitary laws of Moses and Munoo are obeyed amidst all the close packing of the Ghettos and of Bengal.
This policy will not, however, be the one adopted. This generation upon all subjects is feverish with the desire for action, and when morality and. philanthropy are inter- mingled it craves to act with speed. Is there, then, any means of gratifying that desire? As we believe, there is, if only the desire is sincere, and if politicians, philanthro- pists, and priests will concentrate their energies upon twc or three definite ends instead of wasting them on the ends proposed by a hundred conflicting voices. The first end is to disburden London of the almost immovable obstacles produced by traditionary law. Let the owner of every house or piece of ground in London be registered as Lord Rosebery proposes, and let the registree possess for all purposes of conveyance a Parliamentary title. It is simply impossible for reformers to rebuild London or its slums while the ground is cumbered with settlements, leases, sub- leases, and rights of usance. The ground should be cleared. of all this legal stuff, and then the capitalist, the philan- thropist, and the vote-seeker can all go to work with a will to produce buildings which can be inhabited. with some reasonable degree, if not of comfort, at least of decency and safety. Believing as we do in private enter- prise, especially when results are wanted over a vast area, we have more confidence in this recommendation than in any other ; but still there are two others of importance. The second is that the County Council, which can raise money at less than 3 per cent., should be allowed within fixed but wide limits to facilitate the dispersion of the people by loans and guarantees to subterranean railways, and to large improvements in communication, especially the widening of the roads within five miles of London. Most of them either are bottle-necks or have bottle-necks in them fatal to the use of motor omnibuses or any new kind of traction not dependent upon rails. Side trains, for example, are almost out of the question. That obstacle should be removed at once, next year, and then the Local Government Board should be invested with real power of compelling owners to do their duty to the community. We are always in favour of rights of pro- perty, but a house-owner has no more moral right to sell a poisonous house than a poisonous medicine or a poisonous piece of fish. It is simply ridiculous to punish poor butchers for selling unsound carcases, and allow a house-owner to sell a house the walls of which were so satu- rated with scarlet fever that it had, though a valuable pro- perty, to be pulled down,----an incident of which the writer has personal knowledge. Every owner should be warned that such a house or block of houses was insanitary, should be given six months to make it healthy, and fail- ing to do his duty should lose his ownership, which should pass to a Commissioner who would "put the house straight," sell it, and hand back the surplus over expenses, if any, to the owner. That law, rigidly carried out by a Commissioner with a real belief in its value, would clean London and keep it clean, for the work once done, the expense of keeping it done would be comparatively moderate. But this would be confiscation ? Precisely ; that is, conditional confiscation, and conditional confisca- tion is at this moment the exact legal weapon by which we keep dairymen, butchers, and fishmongers from infect- ing us all with typhoid. Carcases are property as much as houses, and why should it be immoral to "seize and condemn" the one and not the other ? The only differ- ' ence is that in the case of the meat the penalty is traditional, and in the case of the house it would be new.
With these three reforms energetically used, we believe that London might be made through all its vast extent a sanatorium, and continue a sanatorium until the rush of population once more overpowered capitalists, philan- thropists, and politicians. Unfortunately for London, that rush is very nearly inevitable. The drawing power of the Metropolis, already fearfully potent, would, if it were healthy, be indefinitely increased, and our children might have to deal with ten millions where we are now nearly crushed by five. Prophecy, however, is not the business of statesmen. They must cope with the evils of their own day, trusting that when those of to-morrow arrive the next generation, who have to meet them, will find their task made easier by the fact that their prede- cessors have done their duty. Locomotion to-day is not made more difficult by the Roman roads of A.D. 250.
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