THE CITY OF THE FUTURE
After four years' experiment in Quest of the Simple Life I am in a
position to state certain conclusions, which are sufficiently
authoritative with me to suggest that they may have some weight with my
readers. These conclusions I will briefly recapitulate.
The chief discovery which I have made is that man may lead a perfectly
honourable, sufficing, and even joyous existence upon a very small
income. Money plays a part in human existence much less important than
we suppose. The best boon that money can bestow upon us is
independence. How much money do we need to secure independence? That
must depend on the nature of our wants. Becky Sharp thought that
virtue might be possible on 5000 pounds a year; and, apart from the
question of whether money has anything to do with virtue at all, it is
obvious that she put her figure absurdly high. Most of us put the
figure at which independence may be purchased too high. If our idea of
independence is the possession of an income that allows extravagance,
if life would be intolerable to us without the gratification of many
artificial wants, if our notion of a lodge in the wilderness is the
Cottage, with a double coach-house,
The pride that apes humility,
at which Coleridge sneered, then only a very few of us can ever hope
for our emancipation. The first step toward independence is the
limitation of our wants. We must be fed, clothed, and lodged in such a
way that a self-respecting life is possible to us; when we have
ascertained the figure at which this ideal can be realised, we have
ascertained the price of independence.
My experiment I regard as successful, but there are two features in it
which diminish its general application. One is that I took with me
into my solitude certain tastes and aptitudes, which I may claim
without the least egoism to be not altogether common. I had an intense
love of Nature, a delight in physical exertion, and a vital interest in
literature. I was thus provided with resources in myself. It would be
the height of folly for a person wholly destitute of these aptitudes to
venture upon such a life as mine. He would find the country
unutterably wearisome, its pursuits a detestable form of drudgery, and
the unoccupied hours of his life tedious beyond expression.
In reconsidering what I have written I perceive that unconsciously I
have chronicled only the pleasant episodes of my existence. There is
another picture that might be painted of mountains clothed in cloud,
roads deep in mire, work done under drenching rains, early darkness,
lack of neighbourship, isolation and monotony, a life separated by
continents of silence from all the eager movement of the world. There
are two pictures of the country, equally true; the country of Corot,
idyllic, lovely, full of soft light and graceful form; the country of
Millet, austere, harsh, bleak, impressive only by a certain gravity and
grand severity. We all imagine that we could live in, and we all
desire, the country of Corot. But could we live in the country of
Millet? I confess that I could not have done so without resources in
myself. It required a genuine pleasure in hard physical exercise to
get through the duties of the day, and a genuine interest in literature
to supply the place of those artificial forms of pleasure which relieve
the tedium of towns. I do not know what I should have done without
books in the long winter evenings. Nowhere is a 'city of the mind,'
into which one can retire, so necessary as in the country. There is
also needed an enduring and genuine delight in Nature and outdoor
occupations, which creates its own sunshine under dreary skies. The
mere sentiment of rusticity, created in the townsman's mind by pictures
and novels, soon dissolves before the realities of a genuine country
life. It is Millet, not Corot, who is the most frequent comrade of the
man who looks for months together on the same expanse of fields, and
moves upon the same unchanging round of labour. Therefore it is
necessary to insist that no error could be greater than for a man with
no real aptitude for a solitary life, and no resources of intellectual
pleasure in himself, to attempt such an experiment as mine. He would
weary of it in a month, and would flee, like a child afraid of the
darkness, back to gaslit streets again, with reviling on his lips and
bitter anger in his heart.
It must also be remembered that I did not go into the country with the
intention of deriving my livelihood from the soil. My sources of
income were separate from my mode of life; and although my income was
at the best very small, yet it was sufficient to secure me ease of
mind. I did indeed discover that the expenses of a simple life were
slight, and that these expenses might be kept low by a moderate degree
of industry in rural pursuits, but I never imagined that I could live
altogether by the soil. I may frankly confess that while I believe it
to be perfectly possible for a strong and handy man, accustomed to
agricultural pursuits, to earn a living from the soil, my example has
little to teach in this direction. The cry of 'Back to the Land' will
be meaningless until general ownership in the land is made possible.
It is the burden of rent, often a cruel and unjust rent, that has
driven men from the land. Not far from me at Thornthwaite there
resided a man and his wife who were among the most frugal and
industrious persons I have ever met, yet they found it absolutely
impossible to earn a living from the land simply because the conditions
of their tenure were unreasonable. For thirteen acres of land, with a
small farm-house and farm-buildings, they paid eighty pounds per annum,
with an additional charge of thirty shillings a year for the right of a
boat upon the lake. The most that they could do with this small
holding was to graze four cows, and in a good season they got nearly
enough hay to feed their cattle during the winter months; but with all
the pinching in the world they went steadily behind at the rate of
about forty pounds per annum. This is a concrete example of the
difficulties of the small farmer, and it is sufficient to show how vain
is the hope of any return to the land as long as rents are maintained
at their present level. Were it possible for an English government to
offer free grants of land as the Canadian government does, or even to
fix rents and provide for the purchase of land as is the case in
Ireland, multitudes of able-bodied men, wearied with the fierce
struggle for bread in cities, would avail themselves of the
opportunity; but under the present conditions of farm-tenure those who
know the country best, know that, except in a very few districts, it is
next to impossible to live by the land.
In these important respects, I admit that little can be deduced from my
example. All that I can pretend to teach is that any man possessed of
a small but secure income can live with ease and comfort in the
country, where he would be condemned to a bitter struggle in a city;
that a country life presents incomparable advantages of health and
happiness; that it is not dull or monotonous to the man who has a
genuine love of Nature, and some intellectual resources in himself; and
that what are called the privations of such a life are inconsiderable
compared with the real injuries endured by the man of small income, who
earns his difficult bread in the fierce struggle of a city or a
manufacturing town.
This leads me to a final question, viz. can nothing be done to
regenerate our cities? Is it quite impossible that the City of the
Future should be so contrived as to offer the best advantages of
corporate and communal existence without those intolerable
disadvantages which at present make the city a realm of 'dreadful
night' to the poor, the weak, and the sensitive?
I began by saying that I am not a hater of cities. I feel their
fascination, and four years of country life have not destroyed that
fascination. When I had occasion recently to return to London for a
week's visit, I was surprised to find with what eager joy I plunged
into the labyrinth of lighted streets, how the blood began to quicken
with the movement of the ceaseless crowd, how much of grandeur and
beauty assailed the eye in the wide perspective of domes and towers and
spires, how the very voice of London, sonorous and confused, like the
noise of a great battlefield, thrilled the spirit, and I felt again
that old and poignant charm of cities, that quickening of the
imagination which lies in mere multitude, that perpetual seduction of
the senses begotten by the revelation of so much effort and
magnificence. There was an indescribable vivacity in this moving
crowd, a contagious animation in the air; and, if truth be told, I
found the air fresher and the sky less grey than I had fancied, for a
south-west wind, soft as velvet and wet with sea-salt, blew through
street and square, and the sky was full of sunshine and of racing
clouds. I could not wonder at the love of cities; it seemed a passion
inherent in modern man, fed and brought to its maturity by centuries of
communal existence. And so the thought grew, that the temper of
enduring antagonism to cities was a temper more and more impossible to
modern man, who has long since left behind the realities of elemental
life, the rude simplicities of patriarchal modes of existence. The
City is with us, and it has come to stay. London grows vaster year by
year, and there is no sign of arrest in its prodigious life. Is it
then a dream quite impossible and vain, that cities may be so
administered as to develop the best life of men, and not to stint it?
I believe that it is possible, and, most of all, by the expansion of
the city area. There was a reason why men should be closely packed
together in mediaeval times, when cities had their defensive walls
against invaders, but those conditions have long since passed away.
Entire security of life makes for the dispersal of population, and in a
city like London, which has not been exposed to the perils of invasion
for more than two centuries, there is no reason why people should be
confined in narrow areas, From all that we can learn of the most
ancient cities of the world, such as Nineveh and Babylon, we know that
they covered enormous areas, although at no time were they secure from
the capricious tragedies of war. Nineveh appears to have been a group
of cities, united by a common government; cities of gardens and parks,
so that the country flowed into the streets; cities in which the great
temples, and palaces, and public buildings were not confined to any one
quarter, but were scattered through the entire area of the city, giving
an equal dignity to its every part. Let us apply the analogy to
London. Let us suppose a reconstructed London, devised upon the broad
principle of ample space and air according to population; of
congregated and contiguous cities under a common government; of public
buildings of utility and beauty equally distributed; and it is easy to
imagine a London that should combine all the charm of the country with
the advantages of the metropolis. The splendid streets, which are the
main arteries of traffic, would remain, but the squalid tenements and
alleys which are packed away behind them would disappear. A long chain
of parks and gardens would unite the West and East, taking the place of
a host of rotten rabbit-warrens, which are a disgrace to any civilised
community. There would be no quarter of the town relinquished to the
absolutely poor; Poplar would have its palaces of wealthy merchants as
well as Kensington, St. Albans on the north, Reigate on the south,
would mark the limits of the city, and all the intervening space would
be filled with thriving colonies of Londoners, living in well-built
houses with ample gardens. Manufactories would be distributed as well
as mansions. The various trades would not be huddled together in
narrow inconvenient corners of the metropolis; the factory, removed a
dozen miles from Charing Cross, would take its workers with it, and
become the nucleus of a new township. The artisan would thus work
within sight of his house, and that entire dislocation of home-life,
involved by present conditions of labour, would disappear. And each of
these townships would have its baths, libraries, and technical schools,
not dependent on local enterprise or generosity, but administered by a
central body, composed of men of wide views and experience, who should
deserve the great title of the City Fathers; and each would be saved
from the narrow spirit of suburbanism by the proud sense of its
corporate unity with London.
Such a London no doubt bears the aspect of a futile dream; yet it is
worth while pointing out that in a dim and feeble way this has been the
ideal after which London has been groping ever since the day when the
population first overflowed its normal boundaries. The mischief has
been that nothing has been done upon a grand scale and by organised
effort. A bit of open space has been bought for a park here and there,
while a much larger bit has passed into the builder's hands through
local indifference or apathy. New suburbs have arisen in a day, not
because any central power willed it, but simply by the combined greed,
energy, and enterprise of the speculative builder, who invariably
builds rotten houses, which he sells as fast as he can to guileless
people with a passion for owning house-property. The result has been
confusion, waste, and disappointment. The new township rises without
any adequate provision for roads or railway accommodation. It is
filled by a migratory population who do not realise these
inconveniences or ignore them, as long as the novelty of the thing
charms them; presently they move off again, a poorer population takes
their place, rents drop, and another suburb is left to a precarious
existence. I contend that this necessary expansion of the metropolis
should not be left to caprice; it should be designed upon broad lines
of development. The London County Council should buy up every acre of
land that comes into the market within a thirty-five mile radius of
Central London. It should be for the Council to decide whether such
land as they acquired should be retained for parks and gardens, or
utilised for building. It should be in their sole power to decide the
kind of buildings that should be erected, and to bind themselves to
erect buildings of public utility and convenience, such as libraries,
baths, and concert-halls in a settled proportion to the number of
dwelling-houses. At all costs the speculative builder should be
eliminated. He is the worst sort of parasite on the community. His
dishonesty is absolute, and the mischief which he works is little short
of crime. Since the County Council has established its right to build
houses, and has built them well, let it build all our houses, and give
to other classes beside the artisan the advantage of substantial
tenements. Let it borrow as many millions as it pleases; no one will
complain if its administration is efficient; and after all, we may as
well pay a fair rent to a central body, amenable to public opinion, as
to a private individual whose own gain is the chief matter involved, We
cannot do without the capitalist; but a Communal Capitalist is
infinitely preferable to a private capitalist. Municipal Socialism is
the watchword of the future; and instead of being jealous of the
existing powers of the County Council, I would increase those powers
tenfold; for without the widest kind of power, and even of despotic
power, invested in some central authority, the chaotic expansion of
London will go on to the enrichment of the few and the abiding injury
of the many.
One of the greatest difficulties in this expansion of the area is the
means of locomotion. It is at present in the power of a railway
company, which is after all only a private trading concern, to create
or ruin the prosperity of a suburb by the kind of provision which it
makes for it necessities. A good, rapid, cheap, and frequent service
of trains is a matter of the utmost importance to a suburb. But here
again, our method of expansion is left to chance and haphazard. The
speculative builder does not trouble himself about a train-service; he
knows by experience that he can attract a population to any given
locality, and he leaves the new residents to discover the
inconveniences of the locality for themselves. It might be supposed
that the railway company, in its own interest, would be quick to profit
by the new population on its line of route; sometimes it does so, but
in many instances it does not. One would suppose by the grudging way
in which extra trains are put on to meet the needs of an increased
population, that the railway company was a beneficent association,
granting favours, instead of a trading concern in search of new
business. The only real remedy for this kind of evil is that all the
means of locomotion within a twenty-five miles radius of Charing Cross
should be in the hands of one central authority. If a County Council
is capable of superintending a tramway system, it should also be
capable of superintending the suburban railway system for the public
good. And if it be thought much too vast an undertaking for the County
Council to become the proprietor of all the suburban lines, it should
at least be in the power of the Council to exercise effective control
over their working, and to compel the companies to make adequate
provision for the outlying populations.
But it is clear that if factories and businesses were removed into
suburban districts, carrying their armies of workers with them, a good
part of the difficulty of locomotion would soon settle itself. It is
the enormous daily flow of population toward the centre that chokes the
channels of locomotion, and the wisest method of checking this flow is
to make it unnecessary, by establishing manufacturing colonies, on the
pattern of Mr. Ellis Lever's and Mr. Cadbury's colonies at Port
Sunlight and Bourneville. There would still remain the difficulty of
locomotion in the central districts, but with proper enterprise,
organisation, and control, this difficulty is not insuperable. In a
few years we shall look back with wonder and pity to the days when the
infrequent 'bus, the slow and tedious horse-tram, and the exorbitant
cab were the means of locomotion in which a city of six million people
put its trust. The electric tram, clean, frequent, and rapid, will be
everywhere; the electric cab will run at a normal fare of threepence a
mile; perhaps also there will be electric overhead railways,
constructed upon a system which does not interfere with the perspective
of the main thoroughfares, for the overhead electric railway, whatever
may be its defects, is a means of locomotion vastly preferable to the
unventilated tubes on which we now pride ourselves. May we not also
hope that the general application of electric force will do much to
cleanse our atmosphere? With houses lit and warmed by electricity,
factories run by electric force, cooking done in electric ovens, the
vile smoke which darkens and destroys the city would disappear. The
skies of London would be as pure as the sky of the Orkneys, and a
hundred trees and plants, which now perish at the first touch of the
fog-fiend, would grow in our city parks and gardens as freely as they
grow in Epping Forest. With a fleet of electric boats upon the Thames,
running at one minute intervals, the Thames would once more become the
river of pleasure, and a highway of popular traffic. There is no
reason why these things should not be. All that is needed is that
London, through its chosen representatives, should assume the full
control of its own life; working out the scheme of its improvement by
deliberate methods and upon a settled plan; compelling the obedience of
all its citizens to a central authority, and intrusting to that
authority the complete management of its affairs, not as a means of
personal profit, but for the profit and the welfare of the whole
community.
In the meantime much may be done by personal enterprise. Is there any
real reason why groups of persons, whose employment is in the city, but
whose hearts are in the country, should not found small colonies for
themselves on the outskirts of London? Let a thousand householders
combine themselves into a company; let them choose their own site,
build their own houses; let them erect their own Church--one Church
upon the broad basis of charity instead of dogma would suffice--elect
their own managing committee, and set themselves to the creation of a
true community. Let them possess their own electric plant for heating
and lighting; let every house share the common convenience; and since
domestic labour forms one of the chief difficulties to-day, let common
dining-halls be erected for every hundred persons, where good and cheap
meals could be provided, or from which such meals could be supplied to
private houses, at the bare cost of their production. Let it be the
aim of these communities to collect persons of not one trade or
profession only, but persons of varied occupations to compose their
citizenship, so that as many forms of human energy as might be possible
should be represented, each contributing its own element to the common
life. Let all the trades permitted in the little township be conducted
on co-operative principles, and not for private gain. Let due
provision be made for efficient education, for the cultivation of the
arts, and for the proper means of pleasure. Would not such a
combination of men and women represent the best ideal of a human
community? And can we not see that in the mere economy of means and
money the gain by such a system would be immense? Suppose the
capitalised value of such a township, including the purchase of land,
the erection of houses, draining, lighting, and so forth, were put at a
million and a quarter sterling, which is a generous estimate, this
would impose upon the individual house-holders no more than 40 pounds
per annum, calculated at 4 per cent.; and besides this he would share
in the great economy of co-operative trading. If this estimate be
rejected as inadequate, it is easy to compute the cost by adding a
burden of 10 pounds per annum to each house-holder for each quarter of
a million expended; but even if the total charge reached 50 pounds or
60 pounds per annum for each householder, he would gain immensely in
what he could get for his expenditure, compared with what he could get
for the same money in crowded London. Such a scheme is simply the
application of the principle of co-operation to communal life. It is
not chimerical; if it seem so, it is simply because we are so
ill-trained in morals that we are unwilling to act together in
practical brotherhood. It is not impracticable; it might be achieved
to-morrow if we were in earnest over it. There are hundreds of
thoughtful men who have perceived its attractions, outlined its system,
vaguely desired its benefits; are there not a thousand bold adventurers
in London willing to bring their vague ideal to the test, and to make a
practical experiment which, once successful, would alter the whole
science of living, and go far to solve some of the most difficult
problems of our time?
It is for such a movement that I wait. Free and glad as my life among
the mountains has been, yet I am sensible that I am deprived of many
elements of human intercourse, which are efficacious in the growth of
thought and the widening of the mind. I count my deprivation light
compared with the higher gains that are mine in the composure of my
mind, the joy of animal vitality, the tranquil days that leave no
bitterness and bring no discord, each joined to each in 'natural
piety,' each inwoven into the calm rhythm of fulfilled desire and duty.
But my pleasure is too little shared to be entirely satisfactory. I
see that there are terms on which my happiness might be communicated;
that there is a mode of life that should combine all the delight of
human intercourse with the tranquillity of natural existence; that the
choice does not lie, and ought not to lie, between the city and the
desert; that it is only by the folly of man, only by his greed, and
haste, and carelessness, and contempt for the communal principle, that
such a choice is forced upon me. The Regenerated City will come in
time, too late perhaps for me to enjoy it; but the City Colony or
Commune may come at any time; and when it comes I will gladly be its
conscript, I will earnestly labour for its welfare, I will humbly seek
to promote its success, believing that in the degree that society
exchanges individualism for co-operation, personal gain for common
good, man will enter on the widening evolution of a real progress, and
find the path that leads him to a truly Golden Age.