GARDEN CI111.3.
NIANY persons must have been set thinking on more or less hopeful lines by the reports of the Con- ferences recently held (September 20th and 21st) at Birmingham and Bournville in connection with the Garden City Association. It is a fact of no slight signifi- cance that Lord Grey has found, as he avowed there, in a visit to Bournville the means of dispelling all the night- mares which had been oppressing his soul with regard to the economic and social future of England. For this, it should be noticed, was not a declaration made on the occasion of a first visit. to Mr. Cadbury's model village, when its singular charm might conceivably be supposed capable of deflecting temporarily even the best-balanced judgment as to practical probabilities. Lord Grey went to Bournville for the first time in the course of 1900, almost accidentally, by himself, and not as a member of a party of persons gathered together for the discussion of social reform: and it is after all these months that he gives expression to the high consolation which he drew from that visit, and which intervening consideration and continued observation of England as she is have not served to abate. In Bournville he has found a place where the social intercourse and other legitimate interests of to are present together with beautiful rural surroundines and combine to form a life so attractive that the public,: house is either dispensed with or felt to be lardly necessary. And seeing all this, and reflecting on the increasing facilities for transplanting their businesses te the open fields which are afforded to manufacturers by the application of electricity to locomotion and the transmission of power, Lord Grey discerns, as we gather, a happy cert. currence of economic motives with those philanthropic promptings to which English capitalists are not diminish- ingly open., in the direction of a deconoentration of manu- facturing industry and its diffusion over the land, under conditions favourable to good relations between capital and labour, to the health and happiness of the workers, and to the maintenance of a wholesome and vigorous industrial stock to future ages.
This, which we understand to be the faith which has entered into Lord Grey, affords a profoundly cheering outlook, an.d. there are not a few facts to support it. Some of the principal of them may be found set forth in the chapter by Mr. Whitwell Wilson, editor of the Railway Herald, on the "Distribution of Industry" in that interesting and suggestive book, "The Heart of the Empire" (reviewed in the Spectator of June 22nd). There can be no doubt whatever that a considerable number of .important industrial concerns have been removed from London and other centres of population to the open country, or started there, with commercial success, and are fully able, if not more than able, to hold their own in competition with rivals who have continued to carry on the same class of work amid ordinary urban surroundings. This is the case, for example, with printing-houses, and with factories for the production of soap, jam, cocoa, and other provisions. There is no obvious reason why a similar experience should not be secured—as, possibly, to some extent it has been—in the case of such industries as the manufac- ture of clothing, of boots, and of furniture. The great saving in the items of factory rent and wages—the latter due largely to the diminished cost of housing accommodation—must in many cases already much more than counterbalance the advantages of cheaper carriage for fuel and raw or partially worked material to the factory, and finished goods to market, which can be afforded by a situation in London, or at some other railway centre. The last-named consideration, moreover, will lose more and more of its force as time goes on, and rapid carriage independently of, or supplementary to, railways, is developed by the improvement and multiplication of motor-waggons, and as centres are multiplied, on the scale and in the numbers which may now be expected, for the production and distribution of electrical energy. Further, it is not irrational to suppose that while there may not be many Cadburys, possessed by so profound a desire for the welfare of those dependent on them as that to which Bournville bears witness, there will be found associated in many cases with the spirit of enterprise required to lift an industry bodily from East or South London into the country a practical recognition of the economic advantages to be secured by the establish- ment of a well-housed colony of healthy workpeople, happy in their surroundings and recreations, and looking on their employers as friends. For such reasons as these we are inclined to cherish, with Lord Grey, a good hope that the tide may be turning, and that England is not drifting without check towards a condition in which the typical life of the population would be that now lived by the great mass of Londoners of the working class. None the less, however, do we welcome every .well- considered effort both to mitigate the evils of existing urban problems and to reinforce the streams of tendency which are beginning to make "back to the land." And in this latter connection the Garden City Association deserves very cordial sympathy. It is the central conception of that movement—as set forth in. the very interesting and carefully-thought-out volume, "To-morrow," by Mr. Ebenezer Howard (Swan Sonnenschein and Co. is.)— that the attractions of the country can be reinforced and permanently united with the best of those furnished by n life, if "garden cities" are founded, planned, and tow laid out on broad and liberal lines, and if security is taken for the reservation and utilisation for the common good of all the increase in land values due to the development a the community. The suggestion is that it would be possible to form a limited liability company which would purchase a tract of some six thousand acres of agri- cultural land, and so lay Out its centre as to fit it, under proper building regulations, for an ideal city of thirty thousand inhabitants, in which every prospect should please, and every household should have a garden. There, owing to the fact that the land was bought at agricul- tural prices, the rent of sites for houses of all sizes, and for factories, would be very moderate, and yet—as is care- fully argued. in Mr. Howard's book—would cover the cost of maintaining public services, such as roads, sanitation, Fehools and other public buildings, and meet interest and sinking-fund charges. Later on, a body of trustees would. be appointed to purchase or redeem the shares and debentures of the company on behalf of the inhabitants, so that thenceforward the whole of the town land and all the public works created out of the capital raised by the company, and out of any profit rents which -might have been derived from the tenants, would become the property of the community of the" garden city."
The idea is unquestionably an attractive one, and we should be very glad. to see the experiment tried. No doubt there are difficulties about the scheme. That of securing the "unearned increment" in the value of the land, around and within the city, to the community, and. at the same time avoiding any limitation upon the motives of the occupier to exert himself in improving his holding, seems appreciable, but may be quite sur- mountable. At the outset, however, the difficulty which presents itself most forcibly is that of how and. where to begin operations with any certainty that the desired group of manufacturers would settle in the "garden city," and provide a reasonable assurance of employment for the desired, cottagers. This point evidently weighed with Lord Grey, who expressed a doubt as to "whether they could persuade different businesses to combine together and plant their enterprises at the same time on open spaces away from a city." Still, it is quite possible that this difficulty would prove much less serious than it looks. There seems reason to believe that there has been manifested. among manufacturers so much interest in the project of the Garden _ City Association, and so much belief in the practical temper, as well as the philanthropic aims, of its promoters, as to create a fair likelihood that a working understanding could be reached, and the first steps towards securing a site for the city be taken without undue risk. A paper read by Mr. Howard at the recent Conference afforded evidence of the serious consideration which had been given, and which would be given, to the requirements of manufacturers by those concerned in the" garden city" project, and. it seems easily conceivable that not a few men of business, who may have shrunk from the venture of establishing their concerns out in the open country, with every detail in the way of motive-power and of locomotion to be thought and worked out by themselves individually, would be much encouraged if they had the co-operation of a substantial and enlightened company on the lines sketched out by Mr. Howard. Of one thing we may be tolerably sure, that if a Single "garden city " could be prosperously estab- lished, the movement would rapidly extend, and. we hope that the co-operation of enough persons of enterprise and enlightened philanthropy may be obtained to secure that an experiment so full of interest and promise shall be fairly tried.
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