A Working-Model of Mansoul
"NATELwYN Garden City is a bright example, amid V much that is unsatisfying to-day, of the art of getting things done. It is also a striking tribute to the advantage of thinking out plans in advance, and of unified direction. It is a new experiment in the com- bination of private enterprise with public service and in some aspects it is a challenge to older theories of demo- cracy. Less than ten years ago this area of four square miles was purely agricultural. To-day we look around us on a flourishing and rapidly growing city, provided with all the services demanded by modern civilization ; one of the most important and virile communities in the Home Counties."
Sir Basil Blackett spoke these words a year ago. To- day Welwyn Garden City has 2,000 homes and 9,000 in- habitants. The death-rate and infant mortality is the lowest in England and Wales (5.66 and 20.19 per thousand compared with a national average of 12.46 and 69.33), the proportion of people who play games is larger than in other towns, practically every house has a wireless set, factories are springing up rapidly, and unemployment is practically nil, there being at the moment only twenty persons out of work. During the last year, as during the last decade, it has grown and flourished steadily.
The chief place of refreshment is the Cherry Tree,' a public house under disinterested management (like the other two on the estate). To my mind this inn is an example of what every inn in England should and might be—a place for Everyman and Everywoman. There are billiard tables, a cleverly designed ballroom, comfortable chairs in which to drink one's beer, a lawn with a fountain to look at, and an " atmosphere "- that the travelled reader will find resembles both a French cafe and an American country. club. Near by are the communal bakery and communal stores and communal theatre, the latter being a particularly pleasant building with very cheap seats.
The " marriage of town and country " of which the late Ebenezer Howard dreamed is an accomplished fact at Welwyn. Season ticket holders, employees of every grade from manager to workman in the twenty-seven factories already in being, the builders of the future, professional people, retired officials have been attracted to this part of rural Hertfordshire by good roads, electricity, gas, main drainage, pure and abundant water supply, theatres, cinemas, dances, schools and all kind of cultural activities. Employment is eagerly sought after in the Garden City itself, for the working conditions there are better than in London.
Progressive manufacturers such as Mr. Ford have dis- covered that it is an advantage to have their workpeople living close to their work in healthy and congenial sur- roundings, -and the workers on their side (I wrote about some of these two years ago in an article on Messrs.
Heinemann's Windmill Press in Surrey) have discovered that by saving time in getting to and from their em- ployment they have gained in " real wealth " and arc two hours a day to the good for games.
At Welwyn Garden City the Shredded Wheat Company have a factory employing four hundred men and women, with their own welfare centre, playing fields, rest and dining-rooms. The Norton Grinding Wheel Co. of Worcester, Mass., are putting up a big plant, to cost nearly a million dollars, the installation of which is being carried out by local firms. British Instructional Films have their new- studio here, with the best " Talkie " equipment in Europe ; they chose Welwyn largely because of its pure air, cheap electricity, and ease of access from London for the crowds they must sometimes import for the day.
As to the houses, I am no architect ; and I cannot write fairly of communal life, for my personal desire, if I can- not be in the depths of the country, is to be lost in the heart of a town. The average Utopia would be a hell for me. Yet I can see that for those people with children; those who love gardens, who shun noise, and who have not any unreasonable and unsocial objection to tieing observed in their comings and goings—ninety-nine people out of a hundred in short—Welwyn Carden City must be the ideal of sets in ?abr. To many families, I am sure, a completely new way of life—fuller, freer and more satisfying—would be opened out by migration from depressing suburbs to these lawns and flowered closes.
When writing of slums it has always seemed to me that the root of the problem lies in planning, and that without a national survey we are merely trilling and tinkering with a system that requires a radical overhaul. But sonic of the surveys now being carried out arc a waste of time. More, they are dangerous ; because they assume that over a given area there should be a given number of houses, so that eventually we might have no country left, and no better towns than we have at present.
The right solution of the Housing Problem is un- doubtedly to build Garden Cities after the type of Welwyn, each designed from the start to contain not more than a certain number of inhabitants (say, 50,000), and laid out in industrial, residential and business zones, with a surrounding agricultural belt. That is the ideal, and I sec no reason why it should not be realized in our generation.
Cobbett called London a wen ; it has grown and spread since his time, and saps our blood. In it we arc microbes gyrating amidst the fumes of petrol, and crushed to death (at the rate of twenty a week) when we fail to avoid the Nemesis we have evoked in our factories. London is a muddle—like my metaphors.
Pulling down slums is all very well, but where arc the dishoused to go ? No one knows, because no one has yet taken the great pains necessary to answer the question, involving as it does a survey of occupations, communica- tions, transport, health, and industrial, agricultural and residential problems. When that national survey which the Spectator has so long advocated is made at last, then we shall find that the solution of our difficulties (whatever its particular applications) will lie in the direction first suggested in a little book called .To-morrow', written by a poor Parliamentary shorthand writer thirty-four years ago—Ebenezer Howard. Here is what the,Spectator said of hint in 1926 :— " Ho had the courage to be great. Single-handed, penniless, at first poorly-educated, he set himself to build a new city, prototype of all the cities of the future. The helpers and the money Caine . . . Out of an • idea he has fashioned a working-model of Marimul. The plan is not perfect yet . . . but it is an earnast of what one man's courage and good intent can do."
F. YEATS-BROWN.
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