Well, the two garden cities are easy targets for ridicule.
Neither is all it should be, could be or would be. In making the admirable surveys and censuses of the area—its plants; its animals and its geology—the fluent notes of that native and naturalized mammal, the crank, have doubtless caught the attention of the surveyors. But the idea offers a concrete solution of a problem greatly perturbing our civilization ; and one cannot point to any rival solutions. A question put by Sir Ebenezer Howard the other day should exercise the brains of all our reformers. Which would do the more lasting good : to spend, as we are going to spend, £25,000,000 on improving, if possible, the mobility of Londoners ? or to spend even half that sum in transferring factories and labourers from overcrowded towns to freehold sites in a too empty country ? It is scarcely credible, but it is true, that you can buy admirable land, with gravel and sand of mining value below it, for a price as low as £15 to £20 an acre, within a few miles of London.
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