MR. CADBURY'S EXPERIMENT.
WE have often argued that the housing of the poor, using the term in its largest sense, is a problem that ought to be approached by many roads. It is not merely that there is no certainty which is the best road, and that where certainty is wanting experiment is the best substitute. Of itself this would be an excellent reason for leaving no road untravelled, since if experiments are sometimes costly, the adoption of a particular proposal without experiment is more costly still. But over and above this there is the fact that it is too complex a problem to be solved in any one way. The circumstances in which it has its rise are infinitely various. Diversities of character, diversities of employment, diversities of local and trade conditions, make it really many problems rather than one. Here large blocks of buildings seem to be wanted, there separate cottages. Here economy of apace has to be con- sidered, there the better provision of light and air. Here the workmen mnst live in the close neighbourhood of their work, there they may be able to go further afield. Here wages are high and work constant, consequently a high rent is not necessarily an objection; there the out- lay of every penny has to be watched, and a high rent is prohibitive. Here the workmen are usually married, there the majority of them are.single men. It is this diversity that makes the housing of the poor an enterprise which municipal bodies bad better leave unattempted, except on a small scale, or as one builder among many. They are not likely to.consult all these many wants equally, or to build all at once for each of the classes we have enumerated. They will probably pick out some of them and set about housing them on a grand scale and with a proportionate expenditure. By doing this they will effectually preclude both themselves and others from putting an alternative scheme in operation. Their own money will all have been spent, and spent in too lavish a way to make private corn petition profitable.
For these reasons, as well as for a certain attractive- ness belonging to the particular plan, we welcome Mr. Cadbury's effort to create a, workman's village in Worcestershire. Mr. Cadbury dislikes, as many of us do, the surroundings of life in a large town. He has con- vinced himself that if the English race is to maintain its position in the world it must be by paying more attention to the conditions of. physical health, and among these conditions he attaches particular importance to the laic* and character of a man's recreation.. In the case of an artisan the conditions of his labour are seldom wholesome. He is shut up for many hours in the day within the walls of a factory or a workshop. So far he has no voice in the matter. But Mr. Cadbury sees no reason why he should be equally without a voice in the decision where he spends his time after work is over. In towns, however, he is quite voiceless even in this matter. Unless he belongs to the small class which plays cricket or football, he has only, when the evening comes round, to choose whether he shall go to the public-house, or to the club-room, or to the free library. There are large differences, of course, between these modes of disposing of his leisure, but they all have this in common, that they keep a man under a roof instead of in the open air. Mr. Cadbury thinks that if he plants his workman in the country, gives him a. detached cottage and a garden or an allotment, and encourages him to spend all his spare time in cultivating it, he will have healthful occupation for his leisure, and be able to raise vegetables and fruit which, will be worth at least half-a-crown a week to him. In ibis way Mr. Cadbury contemplates the health of the working classes growing steadily better under the combined influences of good air and wholesome exercise.
The mode by which Mr. Cadbury proposes to further this object is by the gift to trustees of an estate of 330 acres, upon which 370 cottages have already been built.
The particulars published in the newspapers are not quite so full as we should have liked. Of the 370 cottages 143 have been sold at cost price on leases for 999 years, part of the purchase-money apparently remaining unpaid, and carrying interest at either 3 or 2i per cent. It is not stated to what class of purchaser these sales have been made, and we are left in doubt whether the lessees belong to a class somewhat above the artisan, or are work- men like the tenants of the cottages which have not been sold. In the latter case it must be supposed that Mr. Cadbury has satisfied himself that employment in the district is of an unusually permanent character. Other- wise it has always seemed to us that a house which he cannot leave at short notice is an exceedingly doubtful blessing to a working man. Labour gets more and more movable, and the labourer has to move with it. The remaining 227 cottages, including some shops, are let to weekly tenants, the rents of which are paid". into the Trust. It is to be presumed that these cottages have gardens of their own, though the fact is not stated.
Otherwise it is not olear were the tenants would find their outdoor recreation, since the 200 allotments which are provided on the estate are said to be in much demand among the inhabitants of the adjacent manufacturing villages. The rent-roll of the estate, which at present is £5,245 a year, goes in the first instance to the building- of more cottages, which are not, however, to cover more than one-fourth of the land. When the required number.
have been built the income of the estate, after deducting- the cost of management, is to be devoted to the purchase and development of other similar estates. On this scheme Mr. Cadbury has spent between £170,000 and .480,000, which is a pretty fair test of the strength of his own belief in it.
It is an experiment which deserves to be watched with great interest. It may be taken for granted that the estate lies sufficiently near the works in which those who live on it are employed, since there are two manufacturing villages close by and one side of the land is bounded by a railway going direct to Birmingham. In the future, however, Mr. Cadbury hopes to bring work as well as workers into the country. Each of the estates hereafter to be bought out of the income of this one is to have one- fifteenth of its area devoted to manufactories, round which the workmen's dwellings will be grouped. It remains to be seen whether the prospect of a garden will be strong enough to overcome the attraction of the town with its greater brightness and more opportunities of amusement. We know that in the country villages the possession of a' garden has not had this effect. The drift towards the towns goes on without much variation. There is a real difference, however, between the two cases. The field labourer is tempted into the towns in great part at least by the higher wages he can earn there. The dwellers on Mr. Cadbury's estate will be under no similar temptation. Though their home will be in the country, they will be in receipt of an artisan's wages, and so will be under,. no temptation to go in search of better-paid work. And then they will have what the agricultural labourer has not,—the advantage of a well-walked contrast between their work and their play. The agricul. tural labourer has not this advantage. What he does in the evening on his own plot of ground he has been doing, all day on somebody else's ground. Hoeing or digging may be more attractive when it is done for yourself. than when it is done for an employer, but it is still - hoeing or digging, and as such has not the charm of recreation for the professional hoer or digger. But to a man whose daily work lies in a town factory these occupations appeal in quite a different way: The townsman finds attractions in a garden which. are hidden from the eyes of the countryman, and in some parts of England he has been curiously successful in the growth of flowers. If we are not mistaken, the Notting- ham weavers were long famous as auricula growers. Whether the results that have elsewhere been gained from spade culture will be realised at Bournville is not quite so clear. The artisan may not .prove an intense or .pas- sionate agriculturist, and he must be all this, we fancy, if he is to make his bit of garden yield at the rate of more than £50 of food to the acre. But this is a matter of secondary moment. ,The point which is of real: moment is whether a provision of cottages and gardens within an easy distance of the factories in which the tenants are employed will tempt the town workman to go out there when his day's work is over. It is a point which cannot be decided by argument, however plausible; there is nothing to be done except to bring it to the test of experiment. Mr. Cadbury is doing a public service, over and above the service done to the actual inmates of his cottages, in arranging that this experiment shall be tried.
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