CLEARING THE SLUMS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—You had the happy and audacious thought of forwarding to Mr. George Bernard Shaw the outline of my plan for clearing away the worst of London's remaining slums. By doing so you encouraged England's severest critic to unburden himself. James Russell Lowell used to say that if sometimes he put on the cap and bells of the jester it was in order to achieve access to King Demos and whisper some salutary truths in his ear. Similarly through the spray of vitriol and vinegar in which Mr. Shaw delights to herald his approach I have always discerned the sturdy prow of common sense.
I am anxious, therefore, to thank Mr. Shaw for his admission (however ironical) that my project of roofing in the sunken railway tracks of London—just as New York has done in her own case—and of erecting on the new land thus brought into existence a number of tenement houses through which the expropriated dwellers in the slums could pass while their old homes were being pulled down and rebuilt—I am anxious, I say, to thank Mr. Shaw for recognising that this scheme is a little more practicable than the one he himself put forward for straightening the Thames and making a huge fortune for London out of the value of the reclaimed river-bed. Even if one may suppose Sir Hubert to have had his tongue in his cheek, praise from him is still praise indeed.
But Mr. Shaw went further than this. He admitted that the railways would require substantial payments for parting with the air rights above their tracks. But no one either asks or pays large sums for a valueless article. I must, therefore, claim Mr. Shaw as a convert to the view that the hundreds of acres of unused air spaces over our railway cuttings in London can be converted into properties that will give us streets, building sites and so on just where they are most needed.
An immense amount of slum clearance has been carried out since Mr. Shaw published his Common Sense of Municipal Trading. If he is familiar with the wonderful work in this sphere accomplished by the London County Council I am sure he takes off his hat to it. But my starting point in this whole matter is that practically all the available land has now been used and that some new method of approach to the problem and some new solution are needed if the last obstinate dregs are to be mopped up hi a reasonable time.—I am, Sir, &e., ALFRED C. Bossom. 5 Carlton Gardens, S.W. 1.
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