Correspondence

THE YOUNGER POINT OF VIEW

[Under the above title we propose to publish occasionally the views of the rising generation on topics of the day.—En. Spectator.]

[THE SLUMS AND THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY.] Sia,—Housing is; par excellence, the major problem of our domestic politics, and, like all the major problems of the World, is tackled as faintheartedly as possible.

It is not only the slum dweller who suffers by living in his slum ; he imparts slummishness to everything he- touches, and almost everything he touches is used by us. I do not mean that the lady of fashion need look anxiously at the box _containing her latest purchase, lest that box harbour anything she has not ordered. Such things have happened, but they are rare. It is in some ways a pity they do not happen more often. We are all affected by work ill done by an ill-housed man, by the dole given to those rendered unemployable by their environment, and by the canker of jealous hatred and unrest of the despairing. These things are with us daily— and none of them need be.

Most slum dwellings in Somers Town, which is the slum of which I can best speak, from personal experience, and there are many Somers Towns in England, belong to smallish landlords who very seldom, if ever—which is not altogether surprising—put in a personal appearance. The ordinary family, consisting usually of the man, his wife, and some five surviving children (there are few families which have not buried at least a couple), have one or sometimes two moms in a tenement house which as a rule is in the last state of disrepair ; the collapse of a floor is by no means a rarity, and in some cases the house has to be evacuated because it is about to fall ; several have actually fallen. For this abode the rent would usually be about 10s. Each such house is usually of three storeys with a basement, two rooms to each 'storey, and thus not infrequently holds four families ; this number, of course, is often exceeded and thus we have as quite an ordinary thing an average of some thirty people living under one roof. Very often there is only one tap for them all and that in a yard outside. There would only be one communal lavatory, and it requires little imagination to perceive what one family can suffer from another where privacy of any sort is non'-existent.

Most of these houses are about eighty years old and the wall-papering of many years harbours many things. An unwary visitor once assisting a woman to hang up a picture in one of these rooms struck the nail boldly, like Uncle Podger, into the wall, and had to retire before a cascade of vermin that the nail had liberated from their age-old home. A priest in this parish was asked by a woman to assist her in finding another room because she was going to have another baby and her first child had been bitten by rats while she was out at work. Can we wonder she wanted to move ?

It is in places such as these that the disgruntled apostles of Bolshevism and violence find tools to their hands.

To pull down hovels and then build well-appointed flats, the rent of which the hovel dwellers cannot pay, is no solution of the problem. When this " improvement of a district " occurs the poorer inhabitants merely drift where such people do drift, overcrowding some other already replete quarter and bringing their slummishness with them to create a new slum, and all remains to do again. The improved district remains an improved district and better-class people come and live in the neighbourhood and much glory accrues to the borough council which has purged its borough. The borough is indeed purged, but the refuse has passed elsewhere and a new sore breaks out somewhere else in some other limb of the city. _

It is one of the curious features of the Anglo-Saxon mind that to it property is everything and the people concerned With the property are mere appendages. One is tempted to wonder

whether, were London one vast Fatehpur Sikri, the L.C.C. would purr with pride and say " we have no vice in our midst " —ignoring the fact that life as well as vice would be absent. But let me not be unfair to the L.C.C. Their difficulties are

many, and it is public apathy we ought to- blame. • - • .

It is to our fellow people, no matter how low we may have

allowed them to sink, and the lower-they have sunk the greater is our obligation, that we owe decent homes. It is, I do not hesitate to say, immaterial whether they can pay an economic rent for them or not. It is, even allowing that there is a .financial loss—which there need not be as I will show presently —no more breaking the economic law than any capital expen- diture for ultimate return is breaking the economic law. Almost every large business and trading concern took an adventurous course when building their fortunes, and a ven- ture is not of necessity gambling. The lives of such men as Sir Thomas Lipton and Lord Pirrie form romances of adventure and the world very properly admires their, but it is for their fortune or achievements that- they are admired and not fot their adventure which is the admirable part Of them, but as Solon said, 6 aiitos dadhppan, itITIP.

The world to-day—people like Lindbergh and Hinchcliffe notwithstanding—plays for safety and is therefore very unsafe. Victor Hugo when he was roused from his bed on the night of the Prince President's coup d'etat spoke the truth in shouting, " Tout !" to his friends' agitated " Que faire ? " and, like the average man, did nothing.

To abolish slums at any cost would be economy. The returns would in a very few years be colossal and immediately the good results would be seen. The running sores of disease and disunion would instantly begin to dry up. With the better environment—even apart from any schooling—the masses would begin to show signs of some dawn of culture and of that very much greater virtue, vision, which at the moment in their squalor they might, though untruthfully, be said to be better without. We all know the British workman at his best to be the best in' the world, and in this age of competition it is a crowning folly to keep him below his best. '

At present this very difficult part of the housing problem is tackled with any degree of thoroughness only by a- few House Improvement Societies registered' under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, 1893, who by their very nature can but touch-the fringe of the problem. They do, however, at least show the way. The way is no doubt capable of improvement, but it has- been sufficiently trodden by pioneers for the general public to follow their lead. It is one of the extraordinary features of history—even more astonishing than Hannibal's refusal to march on Rome—that the present Government have not used their vast majority—given them to fight Bolshevism—to sweep away the one thing that makes Bolshevism in this country possible.

There are many societies to combat Bolshevism in England, and they fulminate much against Mr. Cook and others, but they seldom if ever do anything to remove that which might justify Mr. Cook. Put it at its lowest. What a thing for the Conservative Party if they are able to say, " The Labour Party promoted strikes ; the Liberals debated on this question ; but we, the so-called hide-bound Tories, have solved it ! We have used the vast power given us by the nation for the nation. We have ignored vested interest where it ran con- trary to right, and have, the first among the Governments of the world, solved the housing problem for ever I " A delirious electorate would return them to power for a generation H