their pleasure, such as menial servants, grooms, stablemen, gardeners,
makers of expensive articles of food, clothing, furniture, etc., hotel
servants, many of the inhabitants of the rich quarters of towns and of
fashionable pleasure resorts, many tradespeople and their shop
assistants, and other workers. Again, there are certain well-defined
servants of the poor, such as petty tradespeople, general storekeepers,
the workmen and officials engaged in institutes, charities, free
libraries, municipal tramways and other services, public gardens, and so
forth. There is often, however, no clear distinction between those who
serve the few rich and those who serve the many poor. Every trade,
however useful nominally, has to give of its best to be poured into the
cup of luxury and spilt in wanton extravagance. Our 1,300,000 builders,
our 1,400,000 metal workers, engineers and shipwrights, our 1,300,000
textile workers, our 1,300,000 clothiers, and all the other persons
engaged in our "useful" industries, furnish their large quota of
products for the rich and their small quota of products for the poor.
The edict of the rich man goes forth and industry hastens to obey it.
Bricks from Berkshire which are sadly needed for the building of decent
cottages for agricultural labourers are taken into Surrey to form part
of one of the vulgar and pretentious red-brick villas which mock every
canon of architecture and make hideous the most beautiful portions of
that Garden of England. Good fir from Sweden, imported in exchange for
the toil of Lancashire or the sweat of Cleveland, roofs in the tenth,
fifteenth or twentieth bedroom of the man who has more rooms than
children, and more menial servants than guests, while the Census shows
us that in England and Wales there existed, in 1901, 3,286,526 tenements
of fewer than five rooms, of which 251,667 had but one room, 658,203 but
two rooms, 779,992 but three rooms and 1,596,664 but four rooms. The
mechanic, the electrical worker, the girl at the loom, all appear to be
usefully employed in contributing to the well-being of the nation. As a
matter of fact, the lion's share of the wealth they create goes to add
to the income of a few, while the remainder is distributed amongst a
number so great as to constitute nearly the whole of the population. If
we consider the case of the cotton industry alone, it appears, on the
surface, that 582,000 workers (172,000 men and 410,000 women and
children) are most usefully employed in the production of articles of
the first necessity. They do work, each year, upon some 16,000,000 cwts.
of raw cotton which they manufacture into about £120,000,000 worth of
cotton goods. But trace the history of these goods. Are they consumed by
the countrymen of the people who make them? Alas! no. Of the yearly
output of £120,000,000, as much as £100,000,000 is exported to foreign
countries and British Possessions, chiefly to foreign countries. Only
£20,000,000 worth of the magnificent output of our cotton workers is
retained by our 44,000,000 people. In addition there is a consumption of
a few million pounds worth of imported cotton goods. Can it be true that
our population need to renew their household and personal stock of
cotton fabrics to the extent of a value of but 10s. per head per annum?
Of course it is not true. From cotton is manufactured, for the person,
dresses or blouses of muslin, lawn, cambric, prints, mercerized stuff,
etc., shirts and underclothing in great variety for both sexes,
handkerchiefs, lace, hosiery, etc., and for the household, cotton sheets
and other bed furnishings, curtains of lace, cretonne and muslin,
towels, dusters, and a host of other things. Yet so poor are the mass of
our people that 10s. per head per annum furnishes them with all the
cotton goods which they can afford to buy for both their persons and
their households. Great is their need and small are the means available
for its satisfaction. If it were not so, our cotton trade would need
many thousands more bales of raw cotton per annum, first to supply a
quite ordinary home demand and second to export to the foreigner to
obtain in exchange the satisfaction of other ordinary needs.
In the following table I have estimated a demand for cotton goods by a
household of five persons. The prices are wholesale and relate to the
_materials_ only. It should be distinctly understood that nothing is
included for retail profit or for the manufacture of the materials into
garments. I have estimated for all the cotton goods used on the person
or in the household, not forgetting the cotton linings commonly used in
woollen clothing.
CALL (AT WHOLESALE PRICES) BY A HOUSEHOLD OF 5 PERSONS, FOR COTTON
MATERIALS
For the Person:
(1) The Man £0 16 0
(2) The Woman 1 9 0
(3) Three Children 1 2 1
For the Household 1 10 6
-------
£4 17 7
=======
In framing this estimate I have imagined an exceedingly modest standard
of comfort, one such as few readers of these lines would probably care
to adopt, and the prices, as I have said, refer to the wholesale cost of
the material only. Yet, modest as it is, the estimate works out at
nearly 20s. per head. Given such a modest demand, our cotton trade would
need to produce about £45,000,000 worth of cotton goods per annum for
home consumption alone. As we have seen, it finds a call for only
£20,000,000 worth, a great part of which, of course, is absorbed by the
"rich" and "comfortable" classes.
It is a deeply significant fact that a nation of 44,500,000 people,
producing by its manifold activities a total income of £40 per head per
annum, should be able to afford to retain of its total output of cotton
fabrics but 10s. per head per annum.
Let us turn to our woollen and worsted industries. Here we have in an
average year an output worth some £65,000,000 of which £23,000,000 is
exported, leaving £42,000,000 for home consumption. In addition there is
a considerable importation (£12,000,000) of woollen and worsted goods,
chiefly woollen goods, of a character which we do not ourselves produce,
from France. Thus we have a total home consumption worth £54,000,000 per
annum. This amounts to about 25s. per head per annum, a sum which, in
view of our climatic conditions, is, if anything, less satisfactory than
that for cotton consumption. Again let us picture our working-class
household of five persons and inquire what might be its most modest
imaginable expenditure upon articles made of wool:—
CALL (AT WHOLESALE PRICES) BY A HOUSEHOLD OF 5 PERSONS, FOR WOOLLEN AND
WORSTED GOODS. MATERIALS ONLY
For the Person:
(1) The Man £3 7 10
(2) The Woman 2 9 9
(3) Three Children 3 0 0
For the Household 3 0 0
----------
£11 17 7
===========
In working out this estimate in detail, I have again postulated a low
standard of comfort. Thus the man is assumed to have but one new woollen
suit and one new pair of trousers per annum, and an overcoat once in two
years. It is also assumed that the children are partly provided for by
adaptation of their parents' discarded garments. Even so, the estimate
works out at 47s. per head. At this rate there would be a call for about
£105,000,000 of woollen and worsted goods by the 44,500,000 people of
the United Kingdom. As a matter of fact, the call is for only
£54,000,000 worth, or about 25s. per head on the average. But who is the
Average Man? He is a creature of the statistician. The real truth is, of
course, that quite a small number of people consume a very great part of
our total present annual call for £54,000,000 worth of woollen and
worsted goods. The masses of the people spend a sum which is a small
fraction of the average expenditure of 25s. per head.
Again, let us consider the boot and shoe industry. Here I have no
reliable estimate as to the value of production, but we know that
employment in the trade is sometimes exceedingly bad, and that in
Leicester, Northampton and elsewhere the greatest distress exists from
time to time because the boot manufacturers have _overtaken demand_.
What does this mean? There are some 7,000,000 houses in England and
Wales not assessed to the Inhabited House Duty because they are under
£20 in annual value. It is safe to say that each of the inhabitants of
each of these 7,000,000 houses would gladly purchase three pairs of
boots and shoes if they had the means to do so, and would then not be
overburdened with footwear. That means that a need exists at this moment
for 7,000,000 × 5.2 (the average number of persons per house in this
country) × 3 = 109,000,000 pairs. That great demand, obviously, could be
renewed, did means allow, within 12 months.[35]
Yet, in November 1904, the Mayor of Leicester (Mr S. Hilton, of Messrs
S. Hilton & Sons, boot factors) dealing with the question of want of
employment in the boot industry said:
"I think the present great need of Leicester is a new industry. We
cannot expect, at any rate for some considerable time, that much more
employment will be derived from the boot and shoe trade, at least, not
sufficient for a growing population. The rapidity with which boots and
shoes are turned out, owing to the improved machinery and modern
methods, will supply all the demands for some time to come, and the man
who may be the means of introducing some additional industry in this
town, which will not only prove remunerative to the employer, but
provide work for the many men and youths who are in need of it, will be
a benefactor to the town."
With improving methods and machinery, there must, sooner or later,
arrive, in every industry, a time when output overtakes visible demand,
and when that time arrives, as it is alleged to have done in Leicester,
great suffering is caused to many hard-working people. Their trade slips
from them, and the matter of re-adjustment, the establishment of new
industries, the transition to other employments, entails severe
distress. But who can truly say that the boot trade has yet reached, in
this country, the maximum of possible output? Certain it is that there
are many who need new footwear and cannot afford it, even while
Leicester men look vainly for employment. The real truth would appear to
be that Leicester is suffering from the under-consumption of those who,
if they had the means, would buy boots. I have shown that 100,000,000
pairs at least could be readily absorbed in Great Britain. Yet men are
unemployed at Leicester and the Mayor calls for a new industry!
The fact is, of course, that while 7,000,000 or more poor householders
lack the means to buy boots, some tens of thousands of unduly rich
households are squandering those means and in effect commanding men to
leave the boot trade to take up industries which shall serve their
pleasures.
In relation to the trades which supply the materials of clothing the
census returns give evidence that our industries are not developing
healthily. It should be remembered, however, that it is impossible to
measure the growth of luxury by the census returns, although it makes a
certain impression in them. The labour of tens of thousands who follow
nominally useful occupations is actually devoted to waste. This may be
illustrated by two typical cases which recently were brought to the
notice of the public. On February 8th, 1905, in the King's Bench
Division, a millionaire, well-known in financial circles (his name
matters not, for I take the case not to reproach an individual but
because it is a typical one) sued a West-End firm of contractors and
caterers for damages. It appears that in July 1903 he gave a dinner
party with a concert and supper, and engaged the defendant firm to erect
behind his residence in Grosvenor Square a temporary supper-room for the
occasion. He gave instructions that "no expense was to be spared." The
electric light was installed in the temporary structure, and from this
or another cause, a fire occurred, and the temporary structure perished
a few hours before its time. Out of this arose the claim for damages,
which failed, the jury awarding the contractors their counter-claim for
the work done.
It is not the merits of the action to which I direct the reader's
attention. What would the mere statistics tell us of the men who were
engaged in erecting the temporary supper-room "regardless of expense"?
We should find them described as following quite useful occupations:
Building Contractors.
Electrical Engineers.
Plumbers.
Carpenters.
Painters.
Upholsterers.
Carmen.
Labourers, etc.
As a matter of fact the skill and labour of these honourable callings
were turned to sheer waste at the command of the millionaire financier.
With the same expenditure of time and effort, and with the same
consumption of material, those men might have decently housed one or two
families for life. Had they been free to choose between the housing of a
poor family and the carrying out of a rich man's caprice, can we doubt
which work they would have chosen? But they were not free to choose, and
inquiry would probably show that they are constantly employed to do
similar work in rich men's houses. Their lives are wasted to the nation
at large, and devoted to the fancies of a few. In return, they are
handed wage-money which is too often unearned by those who pay the
bills. Thus A the financier commands B to waste his precious skill, and
at the same time commands certain other persons, C and D, to devote part
of their labour to sustaining B while he wastes his time and does
nothing for them in return.
Let me give another pertinent illustration:
In July, 1904, a great deal of attention was aroused by a case in which
a West-End dressmaker was fined for working her girls at illegal hours.
Her excuse was that she was compelled to get finished at very short
notice a frock to be worn at Ascot by a certain rich lady. Considerable
comment was aroused by the case, especially in view of the fact that a
play with a purpose in which a similar incident was introduced was being
played at the time in a London theatre.[36] I was particularly struck
with the fact that the fashionable customer who caused the trouble was
chiefly censured for her dilatoriness and want of consideration in
ordering her frock at the last moment. But the gravamen of the offence
lay not in ordering the frock late but in ordering it at all. The chief
point is not one within the scope of the consolidated Factory and
Workshop Act of 1901, but a much greater one, which goes deep down into
the roots of the problem of want and poverty in the richest country in
the world. For the special Ascot frock, the garment costing anything
from 10 to 50 guineas, made to be worn once and then cast aside, is a
perfect illustration of the misdirection of life and waste of labour
which is caused by the error in the distribution of the national income.
For every special Ascot frock worn by one woman, whether that frock be
made in legal or illegal hours, a number of other women go
insufficiently clad.
Such illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely. At the great Albert
Hall Charity Bazaar held in 1904 a titled lady present wore a
magnificent dress which had been completed literally at the eleventh
hour of the previous evening by a number of young women whose economic
condition is such that only the best of health and the best of fortune
can save them from becoming the objects of "charity" in the time to
come. As in the case of the temporary supper-room, these girls, to judge
by the census of occupations, would appear as following useful
occupations. From the point of view of the national welfare, they had
better be paid wages for digging holes and filling them up again.
While the rich consume the means of living of the poor we need not be
surprised if useful trades languish. A rich person can but consume a
limited quantity of useful commodities. After that consumption, having
still a great superfluity, he seeks other diversions, and the orders go
forth which swell the ranks of the wrongfully employed.
At the other end of the scale, what is the possible expenditure upon
goods by the poor? The answer which has been given to this question by
the researches of Mr Charles Booth in London and of Mr Seebohm Rowntree
in York is seen to be one which can only be regarded as inevitable in
view of the figures we have examined. Mr Booth concluded that 30.7 per
cent., or nearly one-third of the population of London were probably
living in "poverty." Mr Rowntree found that in York, a typical
provincial city, in a year of good trade, 7,230 persons, representing
15½ per cent. of the working classes, or 10 per cent. of the entire
population of York, were living below a primary poverty line drawn at an
income of 21s. 8d. per week for a family of five persons paying only 4s.
per week for rent. Mr Rowntree also found 13,072 persons living in York
under conditions which were but little above the primary line, making a
total of 20,302 persons, or 28 per cent. of the population of York,
living in want.
Mr Rowntree's primary poverty line of 21s. 8d. per week was arrived at
thus.[37] He considered necessary expenditure under the three heads: (1)
Food, (2) Rent, (3) Clothes, fuel and other necessaries. To begin with
food, he framed a dietary which contained no butcher's meat or butter,
and allowed such a luxury as tea but once a week. The only meat was
bacon and very little of that. It was a dietary "more stringent than
would be given to any able-bodied pauper in any workhouse in England or
Wales." Taking the lowest co-operative store prices, he found that this
dietary would cost 3s. each for the adults and 2s. 3d. each for the
children per week. Thus the cost of food alone would be 12s. 9d. per
week. Allowing for rent and rates 4s., we arrive at 16s. 9d. per week.
To this Mr Rowntree added for clothing, fuel, and all other necessaries
4s. 11d. per week, making, in all, the 21s. 8d. referred to. Here is the
estimate in detail:-
MR ROWNTREE'S PRIMARY POVERTY LINE
_s._ _d._
Expenditure on Food 12 9
Rent and Rates 4 0
Clothing, including Boots 2 3
Fuel 1 10
Lighting, washing materials, furniture, crockery, etc. 0 10
-------
21 8
=======
It will be seen that nothing is allowed for drink, or tobacco, or
newspapers, or postage stamps, or any relaxation whatever. Yet 15 per
cent. of the working people of York were found to be living _below_ a
primary poverty line conceived on such a scale as this. For boots,
clothing, underclothing, hats, furniture, glass, crockery, utensils,
curtains, washing materials, and gas or oil, only 3s. 1d. per week or £8
per annum (32s. per head per annum). Need we wonder, then, if Lancashire
is only called upon by 44,000,000 British people for £20,000,000 worth
of cotton goods?
The Board of Trade recently gave us (Cd. 2337) some useful studies of
workmen's budgets which show that even Mr Rowntree's 3s. 1d. per week
for goods is a larger sum than is expended by most workmen's families
with about 21s. per week. The Board of Trade examined 1,944 workmen's
budgets with the following results:—
AVERAGE EXPENDITURE ON FOOD BY URBAN WORKMEN'S FAMILIES IN 1904
Average Average Balance of
Number no. of Average expenditure income
of children weekly on after
Families. living at income. food. expenditure
home. on food.
_s. d._ _s. d._ _s. d._
Under 25s. 261 3.1 21 4½ 14 4¾ 6 11¾
Between 25s. and 30s. 289 3.3 26 11¾ 17 10¼ 9 1½
Between 30s. and 35s. 416 3.2 31 11¼ 20 9¼ 11 2
Between 35s. and 40s. 382 3.4 36 6¼ 22 3½ 14 2¾
Above 40s. 596 4.4 52 0½ 29 8 22 4½
As the Board of Trade point out "It is not to be supposed that the
returns received represent in their exact proportions the different
grades of working-class incomes in the towns of the United Kingdom. The
higher range of family incomes is unduly represented in the returns,
partly owing to the fact that the more intelligent operatives have
supplied returns more readily and more accurately than those belonging
to the unskilled labouring classes."
It is of interest to note that the 261 budgets under 25s. per week
averaged 21s. 4½d. per week, which closely corresponds to Mr Rowntree's
primary poverty line. The expenditure on food is seen to be 14s. 4¾d. or
1s. 6¾d. more than was allowed by Mr Rowntree. Thus only 6s. 11¾d. per
week is left for all other expenditures, including rent, fuel, light,
clothes and furniture. If we take the class above, between 25s. and
30s., we see that only 9s. 1½d. is left after payment for food. Even in
the class earning from 30s. to 35s. the food bill leaves but 11s. 2d.
per week for rent and all other requirements.
If we pass from the town to the country and inquire into the condition
of the agricultural labourer we find an even smaller command of comfort.
At the census of 1901 the number of agricultural labourers, shepherds,
etc., was 956,000. What of cottons or woollens or boots or furniture can
these command? The late Mr Arthur Wilson Fox in the invaluable Report
(Cd. 2376) on the wages of agricultural labourers, which was such a
labour of love to him, shows that their total earnings including the
value of all "truck" vary from 14s. 6d. per week in Oxfordshire to 22s.
in Durham, the average being 18s. 3d. for the whole of England. In Wales
the average is 17s. 3d.; in Scotland 19s. 3d. and in Ireland only 10s.
11d. The expenditure on clothing in England varies between £6 and £10 by
a family of six persons; in Ireland, of course, it is much less.
The simple truth is that the total demand for clothes and underclothes,
hats, boots, furniture, china, glass, ironmongery, domestic utensils and
other comforts by about 20,000,000 of people out of our population of
44,500,000 is exceedingly small. The greater part of slender incomes is
absorbed by the cost of food and drink, and after provision is made for
rent, fuel and lighting, the balance amounts to a few odd shillings. We
need not wonder, then, that our textile industries have to meet such a
modest home demand, or that the Mayor of Leicester cries out for a new
industry to employ "surplus labour."
Let us consider the position of bootmakers as customers for the textile
trades. The Census figures of 1901 for the boot trade were as follows
(England and Wales; 22,000 dealers included):
PERSONS EMPLOYED IN BOOT AND SHOE TRADE, 1901, ENGLAND AND WALES
Men (over 20) 165,589
Women (over 20) 31,734
Boys and youths 32,715
Girls 21,105
-------
Total 251,143
=======
The average earnings of these workers are actually less than £1 per
week. The Board of Trade publish monthly the earnings of a
representative number of them, derived from particulars furnished by
employers. The "Labour Gazette" for August 1910 showed that in July
1910, 60,337 boot workers took £58,147 in a week, or about 19s. per
week. After paying for rent and food, how little is left to provide
custom for the makers of cottons or woollens. And equally, when textile
workers draw meagre wages, how little is left, after the gratification
of primal needs, to provide custom for the maker of boots.
Thus the error in the distribution of income connotes an error in the
distribution of our population amongst useful and useless, noble and
ignoble, industries. Too few of our population are engaged in the
manufacture of houses, boots, textiles, and furnishings. Too many of our
population are engaged either in the direct production of luxuries or in
the production of useful articles to be exchanged for foreign luxuries.
The great masses of our people are under-served; a small proportion of
our people are over-served. There is enough labour put forth to give
material happiness and comfort to all, but so much of the labour runs to
waste that only one-ninth of our population can be said fully to possess
the means of comfort.
Considerations such as these make us understand how futile it is to
boast of the aggregate trade, internal or external, of a nation, or to
term that wealth "national" which is the possession of a few.
[Footnote 35: Some notes of mine on this subject in the "Daily News"
brought me the following letter from the provinces:
"You very rightly, I think, referred on Monday and Tuesday to the
subject of boots. Here is my own experience. I am a railway man, in
constant work at 30s. per week. I am the happy, or otherwise, father of
six healthy children. Last year I bought twenty pairs of boots. This
year, up to date, I have bought ten pairs, costing £2, and yet at the
present time my wife and five of the children have only one pair each. I
have two pairs, both of which let in the water; but I see no prospect at
present of getting new ones. I ought to say, of course, that my wife is
a thoroughly domesticated woman, and I am one of the most temperate of
men. So much so, that if all I spend in luxuries was saved it would not
buy a pair of boots once a year. But this is the point I want to
mention. During 1903 my wages were 25s. 6d. per week, and I then had the
six children. My next-door neighbour was a bootmaker and repairer. He
fell out of work, and was out for months. During that time, of course,
my children's boots needed repairing as at other times. I had not the
money to pay for them being repaired, so had to do what repairing I
could myself. One day I found out that I was repairing boots on one side
of the wall, and my neighbour on the other side out of work, and longing
to do the work I was compelled to do myself. I shall never forget the
feelings that passed through my mind as I thought of the circumstances;
and so it came home to me again when I read your reference to the boot
trade, and I decided I would forward this to you. Most surely, as you
say, if the 30,000,000 could and would buy those 50,000,000 pairs of
boots you mention, there need not be any slackness in the boot trade;
but, as you say again, if your reference to the question is the means of
making people think seriously about it, much good will be done."
Thus between my correspondent who sorely needed boots, and his neighbour
the bootmaker there stood a wall—and our commercial system.]
[Footnote 36: "Warp and Woof," by Mrs Alfred Lyttelton.]
[Footnote 37: "Poverty," a Study of Town Life, by B. Seebohm Rowntree
(Macmillan).]
CHAPTER XII
THE WASTE OF CAPITAL
It has been observed by Professor Marshall that "perhaps £100,000,000
annually are spent even by the working classes, and £400,000,000 by the
rest of the population of England in ways that do little or nothing
towards making life nobler or truly happier."[38] In view of the fact
that the "working classes" are the bulk of the nation, and the "rest of
the population" a relative handful, this estimate points to a little
waste by the many, and much waste by the few. The fact is, of course,
that if the working classes, after prolonged study of dietetics and
hygiene, spent their incomes in the most economical way possible, and
refrained entirely from alcoholic liquor and tobacco, they would still
be unable, save in exceptional cases, to command the means of a noble
and truly happy life. As for the "rest of the population," if we
consider the 5,000,000 persons who enjoy an income of £909,000,000 per
annum, we see very clearly that their superfluity is so great that they
could easily add to the fixed capital of the nation at the rate of
£500,000,000 per annum, and still have left incomes sufficient, if
wisely expended, to command a very considerable degree of comfort. As
things are, an enormous amount of wealth is wasted every year upon
current expenditure of an ignoble character, even while every city and
every industry needs the application of more capital.
Nothing is more striking in the estimate of capital which we formed in
Chapter 5 than the small proportions of the total when considered in
relation to the extent of the national income. For the total, it should
be remembered, includes the value of the land of the United Kingdom.
Subtracting it, we see that the wealth which has been added to the land
is worth not more than about £8,000,000,000, whereas the national income
amounts to £1,840,000,000. Thus, in the United Kingdom we have
accumulated stock, apart from the market price of the land, only to the
extent of about four years' income.
The facts which correspond to these figures are that, in every county
and in every township, there are more ugly and uncomfortable houses than
beautiful and convenient ones, more inefficient plants than
well-equipped businesses, more badly clothed than well-clothed people,
more evidences of poverty than of wealth. On every hand we see the need
of capital, but while its application is so sorely needed, the few rich
who command so much of the national income pour it out in wanton
extravagance. The growth of luxury has been accompanied by an increasing
want of enterprise in industry and commerce. Even in London the most
fruitful opportunities lie neglected. The port is inefficient; the
Thames highway has been neglected; north and south Londoners remain
strangers because of lack of transit facilities; street traffic is
archaic; the important railway termini are dirty, inconvenient and
unconnected. All these and many less important things cry aloud for the
application of capital. In London and in every other town there is a
housing problem, and the housing problem is a problem of capital. If the
income of the last 20 years had been patriotically expended there would
be no housing problem to-day, and the fixed capital of the country would
be very much greater than it is.
Another significant fact is the very considerable investment of British
capital abroad, probably amounting, as we have seen, to about
£2,600,000,000. These investments are often spoken of as "our foreign
investments." There is a grim irony in the phrase. For what in essence
are these investments? They left our shores, originally, in the form of
exported manufactures, the product of British labour. We had no gold to
lend, but some amongst us could command and lend the fruit of our work.
These exported products were sent away from our shores by a mere handful
of rich persons who saw in foreign or Colonial loans or enterprises the
opportunity of gaining a higher rate of interest than at home. Year by
year there is returned to those who made the investments, or to their
successors in title, a tribute of foreign and Colonial commodities which
goes to swell our imports. In 1908 this yearly tribute of imports, for
which no present exports have to be exchanged, amounts to about
£130,000,000 or £140,000,000. Whether the nation as a whole gains by
this tribute depends entirely upon the wisdom and patriotism of those
who receive it. If we could ensure its wise use as capital for the
promotion of the general welfare, then the United Kingdom would gain
materially by the lien which a few of its people possess upon foreign
and Colonial activities. But we have no guarantee as to the manner of
its use, and too often it but serves to bring to this country
commodities which in no way make life "nobler or truly happier." I do
not mean that articles of luxury are necessarily imported in payment of
the interest on "our" oversea investments, but certain it is that the
limited class which owns them are the chief consumers of luxuries. It
should never be forgotten that, as has already been pointed out in these
pages, the most ordinary raw material may become a vehicle of luxury,
and the commonest forms of labour its servants. Certain imports, _e.g._
motor cars or Steinway grand pianos, can be ear-marked as luxuries, but
potatoes from Jersey wasted in a long dinner or Douglas pine from Canada
built into a racing pavilion are "luxuries" more to be deplored than the
importation of Valenciennes lace or Sèvres porcelain by persons of
refinement.
It may be well to remark, in passing, that to place a heavy customs duty
upon imported luxuries would in no way benefit the nation at large. It
would merely stimulate the production of luxuries in the United Kingdom,
and so increase the already considerable number of persons engaged in
the trades of luxury.
That we have incidentally gained by acting as a world money-lender is
indisputable. The case of Argentina is a familiar one. British exports
have been largely lent to that country for the construction of railways.
Those railways have cheapened Argentine transport, and so placed at our
disposal cheap bread and meat. But this benefit has been incidental and,
moreover, shared by the world at large. Against such incidental gains we
have to place the criminal neglect of our own country. While capital has
gone overseas in a never-ending stream, the people whose united
activities produced the commodities embodied in that capital have
remained poor for lack of the proper investment of capital at home.
Large sections of the British people have unconsciously worked for the
benefit of the foreigner and of the British Colonist, never realizing
that their own country sorely needed all the capital that their labour
could create.[39]
We cannot even lay the flattering unction to our souls that the British
capital which has been sent abroad has gone entirely to build foreign or
Colonial railways, or to develop other useful industries, nor, in so far
as it has been usefully employed, can we claim much credit for the fact.
The sole motive which has influenced the individuals who have thus
disposed of the products of British labour has been individual gain.
That gain they have sought without regard to any consideration of
patriotism. Foreign nations have had our capital indifferently for war
or for peace, for building railways or for constructing warships. A
generation ago we wickedly poured our capital into Turkey. A generation
ago were born hundreds of thousands of British children who, for lack of
the full employment of British capital on British soil, are to-day
creatures of the abyss.
The flow of capital to places abroad continues to this hour. If South
Africa is booming, the possessors of capital hasten to gather dividends
on soil thousands of miles away, and with the interest received in this
country, direct British labour to noble or ignoble ends, as may seem
good in their eyes. If a foreign war is proceeding, they hasten to lend
the belligerents as many millions as may be required at anything from
five to eight per cent., and with the interest they give righteous or
unrighteous "work" to other British sons of freedom. If a South African
mine or a Japanese war loan offers apparent opportunities of quicker
profits than putting fresh capital into British ironworks, or founding a
new British industry, it is the end of South Africa or Japan which is
served. Three per cent. gained at home, of course, is not so desirable
as ten per cent. gained abroad. If, therefore, a housing scheme at home
promises to yield but three per cent., while the employment of coolies
in South Africa promises ten per cent., South Africa and the coolies are
"developed"[40] and the housing scheme collapses. This is by no means a
rhetorical flourish; it is the statement of a case not more extreme than
hundreds which occur every year.
If I have dwelt upon our oversea investments (I use the possessive
pronoun for the sake of simplicity of expression) it is because they
illustrate in a very forcible way the misuse of British capital. But the
neglect of British interests which they illustrate is small indeed when
compared with the waste of income upon the pursuit of pleasure and the
foundation of worthless industries at home. If the whole of our oversea
investments had been made since 1860, the average amount so invested
would be not more than £50,000,000 per annum. That consideration enables
us to view the matter in its due perspective. The foreigner and the
Colonist have gained through the profit-hunting of the few possessors of
British wealth, but only to the extent indicated. The oversea
investments, with all the taint of national shame which attaches to many
of them, sink into insignificance when we consider the wanton waste of
labour which has occurred at home. Since 1860 probably as much as
£6,000,000,000 of income which should have passed into reproductive
capital has been thrown away in forms of expenditure which have been to
the degradation of the community. Had that £6,000,000,000 been employed
in the promotion of cheap transport, in the attachment of agricultural
workers to the soil, in the acquisition of land by municipalities, in
the provision of healthy homes for the people, the problems which
confront us to-day would be of a different order, and it would not be
possible for the dire poverty of one-third of our people to be basely
used as a weapon of political warfare.
And while so much of the labour which might have added to the nobility
and happiness of the British people has been wasted by direction of a
small fraction of their number, no small part of our employed capital is
but the tool of mischief. For just as individual capital goes abroad to
seek its usury without regard to principle or patriotism, so at home it
engages in the most profitable enterprise known to its limited
intelligence, without regard to morality or the national welfare. It is
often more profitable to appeal to what is worst in human nature than to
seek to supply it with things healthy and honourable. "Is there money in
it?" is the only touchstone which individual capital applies to
enterprise.
Obviously there must be reciprocation between the demand for luxurious
articles and the capital employed in their production. The misdirection
of labour which we examined in the last chapter connotes a considerable
misdirection of capital. Thus the effects of luxurious expenditure are
two-fold. There is dissipation of income in the payment for luxurious
immaterial commodities which call for no fixed capital, and again there
is the expenditure of income upon luxurious material commodities which
call capital to their creation. In either case the result is waste. The
menial servant is an illustration of the first process. He is divorced
from production and his work lost to the nation at large. The commodity
which he sells is obsequious hand-service, degrading alike to himself
and the person he serves. The purchase of a motor-car is a striking
example of the second process. To produce it a considerable plant is
required and capital flows to a business profitable because its
customers are rich persons who view low priced articles with suspicion.
A striking illustration of a combination of the two processes is
afforded by a fashionable hotel and restaurant. Here we have a large
amount of capital sunk in an enormous building which is sustained
entirely by the expenditure of the wealthy. A host of menial servants
are employed, whose lives are a denial of manhood and womanhood. In
addition there are nominally useful occupations associated with the
conduct of the business. It calls for the manufacture of food, of
utensils, and of furniture, and a large number of tradesmen and their
nominally useful assistants are regularly employed in connexion with its
supplies. A hotel of 700 bedrooms directs the services of an army of
people, most of whom would appear in the Census as following useful
occupations. The whole concern is for the most part an organization for
the waste of capital and labour, and its manifold activities are called
into existence by the orders of a very limited number of unduly rich
people who desire that hand-service shall be at their command at a
moment's notice wherever they may be.
Even more extraordinary is the organization of entire districts in the
service of wealth and luxury. Nothing can be more pitiable than the
spectacle which is presented by a neighbourhood the inhabitants of which
are economically dependent upon the patronage of a limited number of
well-to-do residents. The local tradesmen, the local builders, the local
carters, the local nurserymen, the local physician, the local
boat-builders, the entire local organization, with its little capital
and much labour, is under the economic over-lordship of a few persons
whose patronage sustains the entire machinery. Little that is useful is
produced in the district; but by a process which none of its inhabitants
could explain there are imported into it commodities from all parts of
the country. Parasites upon parasites, they scramble for the expenditure
of the well-to-do, and often contrive to make fat livings out of them.
Thus, through the initial evil, the underpayment of labour at one end of
the scale, there is created at the other end a class of luxury providers
who have no conception of their true position in our social system, or
of their uselessness to the community at large.
There remains to consider the tremendous waste of capital which arises
from (1) unnecessary competition and (2) weak or bogus company
promotion.
In the game of competition frequent attempts are made to establish
superfluous businesses in many branches of trade. While industry remains
unorganized such waste of capital must continue, for lacking an estimate
of the quantity of commodities required in any particular department,
the limits of consumption can only be found by fruitless attempts to
discover an unsatisfied demand. This blind application of capital, not
to service, but in the hope of gain, accounts for the waste of large
quantities of labour.
Turning to company promotion, it is certain that hundreds of millions of
capital have been wasted in the last twenty years through the dangling
of fancy baits before the possessors of unearned increment. The company
promoter obtains from Somerset House the names and addresses of
shareholders in such concerns as those referred to in Chapter 8, and so
is enabled to send to persons who have already tasted the joys of
"waiting" a prospectus promising them even larger slices of unearned
increment than they already receive. So other millions derived from
labour pass into channels of waste.
The waste and misdirection of capital is a far-reaching matter. Lacking
capital, which simply means lacking tools, labour cannot be economically
exerted, whether in agriculture, in manufacturing, or in distribution.
For the use of tools we leave the great mass of our population dependent
upon a comparative handful of rich persons. That dependence amounts to
an economic serfdom which places the direction of the lives and labours
of the people in the hands of the few. The unduly large share of the
national dividend possessed by the rich produces in them grave faults of
character and purpose which make them indifferent administrators of the
capital without which labour is powerless. The unduly small share of the
national dividend possessed by the poor is the source of a stream of
moral and physical evils which, mingling with the waters of death which
descend from the high levels of luxury, produces effects whose causation
is only obscure as long as we neglect the study of the Error of
Distribution.
[Footnote 38: "Principles of Economics," Vol. i., p. 786.]
[Footnote 39: The same is true of France. Our neighbours across the
Channel have fully £1,500,000,000 invested in places outside the
country.]
[Footnote 40: At Johannesburg on April 15th, 1905, Mr Lionel Phillips is
reported to have said: "The Chinese were housed, fed and looked after
better than the working population of England." It may well be.]
BOOK II
TOWARDS ORGANIZATION
CHAPTER XIII
THE GOLDEN KEY
The misdirection of labour and the waste of income can be checked if we
would have it so. It is in our power, as a nation, to employ the wealth
of the community for national ends and to increase abundantly the
fertility of labour. It is true that we want "more trade," and it is
also true that we need better use of the results of the trade that we
have. The problem of poverty is neither obscure nor insoluble; its cause
is clear from the extraordinary series of facts we have examined; its
solution becomes equally clear when we realize what ample means of
remedy we have at our command. We perceive that the chief ramifications
of the social problem are but varying effects springing from one cause,
the waste of labour. We realize that Poverty, in a nation of 44,000,000
persons possessing an aggregate exchange income of about £1,840,000,000,
need be with us only as long as we care to tolerate it. Each social or
political problem takes on a new aspect when we consider it, as we
should consider it, in relation to the income of the nation and its
distribution.
Unfortunately, the facts of the case have been studied by few people,
and, in so far as they have been published at all, it has been in pages
inaccessible to the public. Of our 44,000,000 people, it is doubtful if
as many as a hundred have studied the subject matter at first hand. Even
in relation to taxation, the question of distribution is rarely
discussed. It is but necessary to listen to a debate on the income tax
in the House of Commons to perceive that on the subject of "ability" the
vaguest conceptions exist. Our most ardent reformers discuss their plans
without reference to the economic framework of the society which they
propose to reform. As a result, we get a vast amount of misdirected
effort, a dreary outpouring of vague and empty rhetoric, a pitiful
misconception on the part of the public as to the true condition of
their finances, industries and commerce, and a succession of timorous
proposals for reform ludicrous in relation to the nature and magnitude
of the problems with which they seek to deal.
In the following pages an attempt is made to correlate the facts as to
the Error of Distribution with many of the problems of government. From
the standpoint that we are a people with a great income, with a clear
idea as to the ill-distribution of that income and the manner in which,
through the joint operations of luxury and poverty, a nation may be
devitalized even while its income is growing, let us consider the means
of amelioration.
CHAPTER XIV
THE NATION'S CHILDREN
Let us begin at the beginning with what should be the chief care of the
reformer—the child.
Every year in the United Kingdom there are some 700,000 deaths and some
1,200,000 births. The social structure which we seek to improve thus
offers us a double hope. However degraded, however enfeebled, however
criminal many of the units of the present generation may be, they must
pass away. Unit after unit is cancelled; unit after unit is replaced.
The child, save in a small percentage of cases, is given to us an
unsullied page, upon which we may write what we will.
If the reader would realize fully the truth which I have just expressed,
let him ponder the following utterance by Professor D. J. Cunningham
when under examination by the recent Inter-Departmental Committee on
Physical Deterioration. After referring to the manner in which changes
in the condition of life affect the growth of an individual class, and
more especially how poverty with its squalor, its bad feeding, and its
attendant ignorance as to the proper nurture of the child, lowers the
physical standard of the poor, he went on to say:
"In spite of the marked variations which are seen in the physique of the
different classes of people of Great Britain, anthropologists believe,
with good reason, that there is a mean physical standard which is the
inheritance of the people as a whole, and that no matter how far certain
sections of the people may deviate from this by deterioration (produced
by the causes referred to) the tendency of the race as a whole will
always be to maintain the inherited mean. In other words, those inferior
bodily characters which are the result of poverty (and not vice such as
syphilis and alcoholism) and which are therefore acquired during the
lifetime of the individual, are not transmissible from one generation to
another."
I break the quotation to accentuate the conclusion:
"Therefore, to restore the classes in which this inferiority exists to
the mean standard of national physique, all that is required is to
improve the standard of living, and in one or two generations the ground
that has been lost will be recovered."
According to Dr Alfred Eichholz, H.M. Inspector of Schools, fully 90 per
cent. of the children born in poor neighbourhoods are healthy. Dr Edward
Malins, President of the Obstetrical Society, gives it as his opinion
that 80 to 85 per cent. of children are born physically healthy,
whatever the condition of the mother antecedently.[41] The weight of
new-born children, he thinks, is, speaking generally, not below the
average—there is a constant reversion to the race standard.
It is probable that these statements of Dr Eichholz and Dr Malins
require some modification. Other evidence goes to show that it is far
from true that the majority of children born in poor neighbourhoods are
healthy. Thus Dr Henry Ashby, of Manchester, a leading authority on the
diseases of children, said in a letter to the "Lancet" on October 1st,
1904:—
"My own experience in the out-patient room entirely confirms the opinion
that the nutrition of the mother has a very important bearing on the
nutrition of the fœtus and that the statement that the percentage of
unhealthy births among the poor is small is not justified by facts. We
constantly see fully developed infants a day or two old brought by
midwives or neighbours exceedingly badly nourished, blue and feeble, and
who are clearly ill fitted, as the event indeed proves, to withstand the
conditions of an external existence. There must be numbers of such born
in this city that perish within a few weeks of their birth, and who fail
to thrive for even a day. There is no question of syphilis; they are the
children of poor mothers who have lived lives of hard wear and tear
during pregnancy, are themselves badly nourished and weakly, and have
felt the pinch of poverty, though often perhaps poverty of the secondary
sort. I have a strong conviction also that the infants of the poorer and
weaker mothers, even though they are born fairly well nourished, are
difficult to rear, and easily waste even when under fairly favourable
conditions in a home or hospital."
Evidence to the same effect was given to the Physical Deterioration
Committee, but unfortunately ignored in their report. It seems to a
layman a common-sense view that if, in the period when a woman has to
eat to "feed two," she is badly nourished, and exposed to undue fatigue,
the child must suffer. Nevertheless, the striking phrase of Dr Malins,
"Nature intends all to have a fair start," may be fully accepted, and
Professor Cunningham's words of hope require no modification. What we
have to remember is that pre-natal as well as post-natal conditions must
be improved if we wish to rehabilitate our stock. If we have not a
renewed opportunity with each birth, at least we have it, save in quite
exceptional cases, in the person of each pregnant woman. The weight of
evidence goes to show that the influence of heredity upon disease has in
the past been greatly exaggerated. The chief causes of deaths from
debility, atrophy and premature birth are to be found in the evil
environment and malnutrition of the mother during pregnancy. The unborn
child fights hard for its life, but in a number of cases, sufficiently
large seriously to affect the total population, it is born unfit. It
either succumbs rapidly or lingers on to be a curse to itself and its
kind.
These all-important facts once realized, an avenue of hope stretches out
before us. 1,200,000 new births every year; 1,200,000 new units added to
the national stock, and the possibility of ensuring that nearly the
whole of them shall be born healthy. Here is Nature ever endeavouring to
reform the race—ever offering us opportunity. Combine with knowledge of
this opportunity knowledge of the means to take advantage of it. Combine
with the determination to secure reform the application of national
wealth to truly national ends and all things become possible.
Under what circumstances are the children of the new generation now
born? It follows from our examination of incomes that a large proportion
of our new births are of mothers who exist in conditions of extreme
poverty. Fully one-fourth to one-third of the 1,200,000 are born to want
and squalor. In England and Wales, at the census of 1901, of a
population of 32,527,843, there were 12,983,109 persons belonging to
families living in four rooms or less. In one room each lived families
forming 507,763 people. In two rooms each lived families forming
2,158,644 people. In three rooms each lived families forming 3,186,640
people. In four rooms each lived families forming 7,130,062 people.
If the one-third of very poor could be gifted with all the virtues, if
drink were abolished and every penny spent upon scientific principles,
we have seen that they would still be unable to command a healthy
existence. One-third of our hope of the future is thus mortgaged.
One-third of the new-born go to feed the ranks of misery and to form,
such of them as do not perish in infancy, the raw material of the social
problems of those who are to follow us.
In England and Wales, in 1908, 940,000 children were born. In the same
year 113,000 infants died under one year of age, or 120 per 1000 births.
The conditions which exist in some of our towns can be gathered from the
following figures:—
INFANT MORTALITY
(Rates per 1000 births in 1908)
Towns with High Rates. | Towns with Low Rates.
Stalybridge 206 | Reigate 80
Farnworth 209 | Tunbridge Wells 83
Aberdare 198 | Hornsey 75
Rhondda 182 | Guildford 71
Burnley 194 | Winchester 88
Batley 186 | Watford 88
Longton 199 | Ilford 98
Tunstall 198 | Salisbury 95
The towns with low rates cannot be said to possess ideal conditions, but
merely to take them as a standard we see how considerable is the wastage
of life which goes on in Lancashire and Yorkshire and Staffordshire and
South Wales. In some of the poorer wards of our great towns one in three
of the children born perish within twelve months. That is the case in
some parts of Birmingham, where the Medical Officer of Health recently
stated that "a reduction of 50 per cent. in the rate of infant mortality
in Birmingham would mean the saving of 1500 lives per annum."
But death is only one of the symptoms we have to consider in this
connexion, and death itself were preferable to the survival of a large
proportion of the children of neighbourhoods where the rate of infantile
mortality reaches one in every three or four births. Death is the
extreme case. Those who do not die in infancy have physical degeneracy
as their portion, and, in a world where virility and energy were never
more needed by the labourer if he is to bargain successfully for a
decent livelihood, enter the fierce lists of modern industry with
enfeebled bodies. Docile units thus flood the casual labour market, or,
totally unfitted for labour, swell the ranks of the "residuum."
A woman ought not to work for the last three months of her pregnancy or
during the three months after her child is born. Further, if the child
is to be fed as Nature intended it should not be weaned until about the
seventh or eighth month of its life.
What cognizance does the law now take of these simple physiological
facts? The Factory Act is not aware that pregnancy precedes childbirth.
It recognizes, however, that children are born, and provides that the
occupier of a factory or laundry shall not allow a woman to be employed
"within four weeks after she has given birth to a child." Thus a feeble
attempt is made to protect the working mother for a month after
childbirth, but no law whatever protects the child. It is legal for the
mother to go back to the factory on the twenty-ninth day and leave the
child to take its pitiful chance.
The "four week" provision is largely a dead letter. How is an employer
to "know," when a woman applies to him for work, that she bore a child a
fortnight before her application? And who shall blame the woman for
seeking work, when she must work or starve? Miss A. M. Anderson,
Principal Lady Inspector of Factories, gives the following three cases
found in a single town in one week's inquiry:—[42]
A. B., aged 24, unmarried, jute worker, had to leave work, being unfit,
seven weeks before confinement. Became destitute, and found work with
new employer, saying nothing about the baby. Earns 9s. 8d. per week.
C. D., aged 34, married, jute spinner; the child illegitimate. Went back
to work three weeks after childbirth. The new employer knew nothing of
the confinement.
F. F., aged 32, married, jute spinner. Went back to work in 15 days—to a
new employer. Earns 11s. to 12s. per week. Father out of work and
disappeared one week after the birth. The woman's mother "takes care" of
the new baby and two other children, the eldest of whom earns 8s. a week
in a jute mill. Thus 19s. or so per week supports two adults and three
children. They all live in a single room which is very dirty.
In spite of an overwhelming mass of evidence as to the devastating
effect of the employment in factories and workshops of pregnant women
and mothers, the Physical Deterioration Committee's recommendations on
the subject were exceedingly timid. They appear to have been impressed
with the terrible consequences of the employment of women "from
girlhood, all through married life and through child-bearing"; they
realized that "the decreasing physical capacity of the child-bearing
woman brings her at last some relief at the hands of the manager of the
mill and she is sent away, often to take up the equally unsuitable
occupation of charwoman or house scrubber." But, after setting out pages
of good reason for action, the Committee, in effect, came to the
conclusion that little or nothing could be done, because they were
reminded of "the enormous practical difficulties that would accompany
any sort of legal prohibition." Even as to extension of the period after
confinement during which employment is forbidden, a point as to which,
as in many other matters, we are falling behind Western civilization as
a whole, the Committee did not advocate the enactment of a longer period
than four weeks. They pinned their faith to a medical certificate as to
fitness, and production of proof that reasonable care is made for the
child in a municipal crèche or otherwise. They also strongly urged the
application of "voluntary assistance" in the shape of maternity funds.
Thus lastly they came to the crux of the matter, the subject of "ways
and means." The cause of the Committee's timidity is only too plain. It
is impossible to make a recommendation of any value which does not
entail expense. What is the use of talking of "medical certificates,"
unless we can ensure that, when the medico has certified unfitness, the
poor mother shall have the means of refraining from work? Of what use to
talk of "reasonable care" of the infant, unless the means of reasonable
care be provided, and what form of care other than that of the mother is
"reasonable"?
The whole aspect of the question is changed when we consider the extent
of our national resources. Miss Anderson, in the invaluable memorandum
on the subject which she supplied to the Committee, said: "It ought not
to be impossible to link together in one great national provident and
protective association all the isolated, half-informed societies and
agencies at work in aid of maternity and for the saving of infant life.
More than that, I believe, with Miss Squire (Lady Factory Inspector),
that all over the country, but particularly in the great centres in the
Midlands and the North, it needs only an organizing mind and purpose to
bring such a national movement into being."
The Committee did not take up the idea of a "national movement." They
preferred to urge that "voluntary assistance" should devote itself to
the formation of maternity funds. But a problem of so much gravity
demands national effort, and the use of the national purse. Out of the
labour of the poor is drained the rents, profits and dividends which
make the gross assessment to income tax in 1908-9 as much as
£1,010,000,000. Of this sum, how much is needed to deal with the problem
of the poor mother?
We have to consider not alone the woman who works in the factory, but
also the woman who works in the home. A large proportion of the latter
are necessitous and ignorant, lacking both the means to feed themselves
and their children properly, and the training to apply the means if they
had them. The case is one in which education and supply must go hand in
hand, and both education and supply should be provided for nationally.
In the school the teaching of personal and domestic hygiene to scholars
of both sexes should begin at an early age. In the case of girls, infant
hygiene should be added in the higher standards. Girls should not leave
school or continuation classes until they have been seriously trained in
domestic duties. At present we herd them in classes of 60 or 80, and
leave a teacher, herself often ignorant of the chief duties of
womanhood, to impart to them a smattering of matters of secondary
importance. Able to write badly, to cipher inaccurately, and to read a
novelette, the girl goes forth from the school "educated," and more
ignorant of essential things than the untutored savage.
If we would have these children technically trained in domestic economy
and hygiene, acquainted with the dietetic value of simple foods, and
sent out into the world fit to take their places in the national
economy, we must make up our minds to increase our expenditure upon
education. We must have more teachers and better trained teachers.
But, if we put our hands earnestly to this work tomorrow, many years
would elapse before we could rear a new generation of mothers. What of
the mothers who now lack education—of the vast number of girls who are
now passing from school into the world they are so unfit to play a part
in? Work upon the right lines has already been commenced at Preston, St
Pancras, and other places. Let me outline the admirable scheme of Dr J.
F. J. Sykes, the Medical Officer of Health for St Pancras.
St Pancras is a poor and crowded London Borough in which, as in many
other such neighbourhoods, infants are dying at a younger and younger
age from increased immaturity at birth, from diminished capacity to
resist disease and from increased rearing "by hand." It is but necessary
to take one walk through its mean streets to see that St Pancras is
breeding a degenerate race. The Borough Council has awakened to the
terrible evil which increasingly threatens them. They have a most
capable medical officer and they have appointed women inspectors to act
under his authority. These women inspectors perform the important
function of following up the weekly official returns of births. There
are about 130 births a week in St Pancras, and all of them cannot be
visited by the present small staff, but an endeavour is made to visit
every necessitous case. To all the mothers, whether visited or not, a
card or leaflet of useful information is sent by post. Dr Sykes does not
teach the mothers how to wean or artificially feed their children, but
to suckle their babies and to avoid weaning them before their first
teeth appear. To the many indigent mothers the women inspectors give
advice as to regimen and diet and, where artificial feeding is
absolutely necessary, how best to proceed. Endeavour is also made to
reach and advise pregnant women. Throughout, the chief aim is to reduce
hand-feeding to the smallest possible proportions.
In cases of poverty requiring temporary assistance, the women inspectors
give cards of introduction to the Charity Organization Society, or to
the Poor Law Guardians. Where health is deranged or there is a desire or
necessity to wean, introduction to a doctor or a hospital is arranged
for. Where the husband is out of work the case is notified to the Labour
Bureau. In every case the hygienic, sanitary and domestic circumstances
of the mother and infant are carefully inquired into and reported upon.
This practical work, now in operation in St Pancras, and with variations
in some other places, is what is wanted everywhere if we are to rescue
the poor children of the new generation. The appointment of sufficient
Women Health Inspectors by local authorities must be made compulsory. In
"Riches and Poverty," edition 1905, I wrote: "The Health Inspectors must
of course be directed by a capable Medical Officer enjoying a permanent
appointment. It is most important that Medical Officers of Health
everywhere should have the same security of tenure which they have in
London. At present they hold office as a rule at the goodwill of the
local authority." Mr Burns's Housing Bill of 1909 has secured this
important reform. In future every county will have its independent
Medical Officer, unafraid of local influence.
Closely allied to the work of the Health Inspector is that of the
medical man, and here is raised a point of the utmost importance. Above
all, if we are in earnest about this matter of breed, the public medical
service should be greatly enlarged as part of the machinery of a
Ministry of Health, and the sale of soothing syrups and other "patent"
medicines absolutely prohibited.[43] The Medical Officers of Health
should be able to marshal a liberal service of trained medical skill in
defence of the national well-being. Also at their command should be an
ample supply of Health Visitors and trained and certificated nurses. The
creatures, nearly always ignorant and frequently unclean, who now
"assist" poor women in their time of trouble, are responsible for part
of the infant mortality which swells our death returns. I shall never
forget some of the "monthly nurses" I have met in the homes of the poor.
One ancient dame I found swilling stout. She leered at me out of a beery
eye and explained that she liked stout "because it made her feel as
though she could sing." Needless to say, she strongly recommended the
same joyful fluid to her patients.
The excellent Notification of Births Act of Lord Robert Cecil (1907)
should be adopted (or its adoption enforced—the Local Government Board
has power to enforce adoption) universally, in order that Health
Visitors may do their work effectually.
Given a properly organized public medical service we could begin at the
beginning, with the unborn child. The pregnant woman could obtain, free
of charge and as a matter of course, advice upon her diet and conduct.
Through such a service, it would be a simple matter to administer a
Public Maternity Fund. It is probable that, of the 1,200,000 births per
annum, as many as 300,000 are in necessitous families. We cannot afford
to allow 300,000 children to be starved before and after birth every
year.
The nation must set its face against the employment of married women in
factories or workshops, and gradually extend the period of legal
prohibition. There is only one proper sphere of work for the married
woman and that is her own home. In the case of factory workers the
employer must be made to furnish a maternity fund if he wishes to employ
married women. Thus penalized he will probably prefer not to employ
them—to the very great advantage of the labour market and the nation.
There are several model factories in the United Kingdom where the female
workers are dismissed upon marriage. This is found to prevent the girls
falling victims to loafers who desire to play three days a week. The
Jewish community amongst us, the very aliens who are despised by the
race they are supplanting in the East End of London, set us an example
which we should do well to imitate. The Jewish children are much
healthier and stronger than their Gentile neighbours because they are
better mothered. Jewish women find their true avocation at home. The
Jew, however poor, does not live on his wife's earnings, and it would be
counted shame for a Jewess to work during pregnancy or after childbirth.
But what of the poor woman in her home? We can safely confer upon our
medical officers and women inspectors power to report upon and advise
the assistance of necessitous cases, before and after childbirth. The
mother and child must be fed. Nature must be allowed to fulfil her
desire to give the new unit of population a fair start in life. The cost
would be surprisingly small. If 300,000 cases were assisted to the
extent of £10 each it would entail an expenditure of only £3,000,000 per
annum. With £10 per case a great deal could be done.
By assistance to the extent of £10 each I do not necessarily mean a
money payment. Often the assistance which is most wanted is personal
help. The poor Jewish women of East London have the aid of that
excellent institution the Sick Room Helps Society, which is practically
a charitable institution, the poor mothers contributing less than
one-third of the expenditure. The "Sick Room Helps" provided by this
Society are thus described by Miss Bella Löwy:
"They had to take the place of the house-mother when, through
confinement or sickness, she was laid low, and when, were it not for
their ministrations, the children and husband, and the home (sometimes
consisting of one room only) would be absolutely uncared for. The Helps
were only sent in where there was no woman or girl old enough and able
to do the work. The Sick Room Helps, for the time being, took the place
of the housemother, washed the baby, got the children ready and sent
them to school, cooked the food, tidied and cleaned up the home, saw
that any accumulation of washing was done. In fact, she attended to the
hundred and one little things which required to be seen to even in the
most modest home, and they could readily understand how much more
cleanliness and order became indispensable when the family had to live,
eat and sleep in one room only. The advent of the Sick Room Helps also
ensured for the mother peace of mind, as well as of body, at a time
when she sorely needed both, and if she knew that her husband and
children were well-cared for and well looked after she was assisted on
the road to health and strength, and was, thereby, enabled to take up
afresh the routine of her numerous daily duties. Formerly the poor
mothers used to grudge themselves even a few days of enforced idleness,
and, by premature activity in getting up and about, they but too often
sowed the seeds of illness and sickness, and brought untold troubles on
themselves and their families. Notwithstanding that these facts were
well-known and were perfectly obvious to every thinking person, the
opposition to what was erroneously termed a new form of pauperization
had been very great. But an institution which not only benefited the
recipients by nursing them when it was imperatively necessary, but, at
the same time, gave employment to deserving women, enabling them to
support themselves, and, perhaps, their family, could not be accused of
encouraging pauperism in any way."
Mrs Alice Model, the honorary secretary, tells me that the Jewish Board
of Guardians applies a sum annually for the relief of destitute women in
childbed, which is handed to this Society and applicants for relief are
referred to it. If a case is found suitable, a nurse is sent in twice
daily and milk and other suitable nourishment provided. Excellent
results are obtained and many lives saved. Work on such lines might
easily be carried on given a sufficient staff of Women Health Inspectors
and an expenditure such as I have mentioned to provide nurses and
nourishment.
In this connexion a municipal milk service, which will be discussed in
these pages hereafter, would be of the first importance, and it would be
found a simple matter to supply pregnant women and nursing mothers with
an ample quantity of pure milk. Such a supply might be made universal
and be specially supplemented in necessitous cases. In any case, the
mother has a special claim upon the community and that claim should be
recognized. The birth of a child is a special tax upon the family in
which it occurs, a tax which is deliberately avoided by many people. Yet
the unit not only belongs to its family; it is an integral part of the
nation, and entitled to the care of a country which desires strong and
healthy citizens.
Such provisions should be accompanied by drastic punishment of parents
who neglect their duties. Upon report of the Health Officer, the
prosecution and punishment of offenders against the nation's children
would swiftly follow. We must make the man who neglects his child, which
is also the nation's child, feel that he is the greatest criminal of
them all.
It is impossible to leave the subject of the birth of the new generation
without reference to the necessity for the segregation of the unfit. It
must be made no longer possible for the habitual drunkard, the vagrant,
the criminal, the mentally defective, to reproduce their terrible kind.
The subject is so rarely brought before the public that few people
realize the nature and extent of the danger. _Fully two per cent. of our
existing elementary school children will never be fit to direct their
own lives._ The State has but one duty in the matter and that is to
protect society from the breeding of the unfit, while protecting the
unfit from themselves. The child of the habitual drunkard is often
feeble-minded. The child of the feeble-minded is frequently an idiot.
Need we wonder, while the State has no control of the feeble-minded,
that our lunatic asylums are ever growing too small for their pitiable
populations. Our criminal and workhouse records are full of testimony as
to the terrible results of the unchecked propagation of the insane by
the mentally weak. A few years ago, at Daventry, a couple were charged
with neglecting their ten-year-old son. It was stated that the child was
in the habit of smoking a pipe and drinking beer, supplied by the
father. A doctor stated that the boy was a perfect savage. He was
undersized and threatened to be an idiot or a criminal. The boy was sent
to the workhouse while the mother and father, described as "mentally
weak," were sentenced to one day's imprisonment and are now free to
bring forth _sui generis_. Another recently reported case which I noted
was that of a partly paralyzed old man who applied for out-relief to the
Oulton Guardians. He has had thirty children and the youngest, a girl,
is described as "practically an imbecile." From her, doubtless, and from
others of the brood, the terrible strain will proceed. Mr Amos W.
Butler, speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, gave particulars of the descendants of a feeble-minded woman.
She was the mother of two daughters, who were free to marry because,
like their parent, they were not actually insane. One of them, Rachel,
has married twice, and borne eleven children, three of whom are dead.
One of the survivors is a criminal and the others are degenerates. The
other daughter, Kate, has four children, all feeble-minded, two of them
illegitimate. One of them became the wife of a feeble-minded paralytic
and has had five awful children. The direct descendants of the woman
first mentioned number twenty-nine, and in ten years twelve of them have
spent an aggregate of twenty-two years in asylums and orphans' homes.
These details may be nauseating, but of what use to shirk them? It is
only when we realize that such propagation is going on unchecked that we
see our duty clear in the matter. We then also see that segregation of
the unfit would not increase our burdens, but decrease them.
Segregation recognized as a painful duty, it would no longer be
necessary to make any reservation when speaking of the hope that lies in
the child. Our 1,200,000 new births per annum would soon regenerate the
race. _During the next twenty years about 25,000,000 children will be
born in the United Kingdom._
[Footnote 41: See evidence before the Physical Deterioration Committee.]
[Footnote 42: Cd. 2175, p. 117.]
[Footnote 43: In this connexion it should be observed that there are
28,000 surgeons, physicians and medical practitioners in the United
Kingdom. The number (one to about 300 families) is probably larger than
the nation needs, but even to organize the whole of them as public
servants, and to make the medical service entirely free, would cost only
about £10,000,000 per annum, allowing for salaries ranging from £250 to
£1,000.]
CHAPTER XV
THE SCHOOL
In a commonwealth a man would need a healthy mind in a healthy body to
be true to himself, and to every man. In an unorganized community, in
which each man must needs struggle with his fellow for the right to
live, and in which to be unselfish is to be weak, and to be weak is to
go to the wall, a man needs a healthy mind in a healthy body in order to
set up himself and those dear to him in a fortress impregnable, with
ramparts against competitors, secret stores against time of siege, and
insurance policies against the horrors that threaten weak women and
young children whose champion has departed.
As things are now, we have then, not merely to train the boy to be a man
for manhood's sake, but to fit him to fight what has been pleasantly
called "the battle of life." He must be not only strong but artful, not
only intelligent but cunning, not only brave but aggressive, not only
fit to work but fit to bargain, not only an artist but a shopkeeper.
Knowing what we do of the hardness of the competitive system, how unfair
we are to these children whom we affect to "educate." We dose them with
a little book-learning and pass them on to seek employers. Nothing has
been taught them by way of preparation for the real education upon which
they are about to enter. They are wholly ignorant of the nature of the
machine of which they are about to become an insignificant part. They
plunge into the hard work which henceforth is to be their portion and
little that has been taught them is of value in connexion with it. The
boy is compelled to play a game for wages without knowledge of the
rules. Business presents itself to him as an impenetrable mystery, the
secrets of which are known but to a few. He becomes a producer of things
which in some way, he knows not how, are sold and bought and come to
yield him a certain or uncertain wage. He does not see, nor, if he saw,
would he understand, the balance sheet which sums up the processes which
yield him a part only of his production. He is not competent to measure
the extent of the injustice which he suffers. It is a game played
between a few who know and many who do not know.
From the beginning of the child's life, the Error of Distribution plays
its part. The opportunity offered the child varies directly with the
income of its parent. The frontispiece of this volume measures not
income alone; it measures also the degree of opportunity which is
offered to the children respectively of the rich, the comfortable and
the poor. Since the bulk of the people are poor, the greater number of
the nation's children are handicapped at the start. Individually they
are deprived of their birthright. Collectively the community is deprived
of the proper value of their strength, their intelligence, their genius.
The last point is rarely discussed. Intellect and genius are the
possessions of no single class. Year by year we kill off units of our
population who might live to work good for their kind. Year by year we
brutalize men who, given opportunity, might enrich our literature or
ennoble our art. Year by year we waste the greater part of the gifts of
our people. Here and there some rare combination of muscle and brain
rises superior to circumstance and lives to command the class which
would have repressed him. These exceptional cases serve to remind us of
the ability which is lost. We know only of the soldiers who live to be
commanders. Probably greater generals than Napoleon have perished as
privates in their first battle. That is unavoidable, for in battle some
must die. But in the arts of peace the sacrifice of potential commanders
need not go on. Given equality of opportunity, the marshal's baton in
each private's knapsack, and the nation need not waste one of its great
men.
If we are in earnest in this matter of the problem of poverty, we must
hasten to equalize opportunity, and having begun with the unborn child,
continue our work in the school. We must seek to make the school a
preparation for life and endeavour to build up, out of the new
generation, citizens who understand, and who, understanding, will see to
it that they remain not poor.
In the first place, we have to attend to the child's body. Through the
school we can see that the child is properly clothed and properly fed.
Through the school we can teach the child to understand its physical
nature and to respect it. In a certain class of trumpery novel, the
"tubbing" Englishman is distinguished from the unclean foreigner. The
simple fact is that the Englishmen who "tub" are quite exceptional
specimens of their kind. Few of the 9,000,000 houses of the United
Kingdom are provided with tubbing apparatus, and even the London County
Council has lately built "model" cottages which contain no bath. We must
change all that. The Germans are setting us the example of introducing
shower baths into their public elementary schools, and all the children
are bathed once a week. They soon get to enjoy it, and it is rarely that
a child objects. Mr George Andrew, in his valuable report to the
Scottish Education Department on the schools of Berlin and
Charlottenburg,[44] says that in the poorer localities this weekly bath
system is found to have an educational effect upon the parents. The
mothers, influenced by the knowledge that their children's underclothing
will be scrutinized, supply them with clean things. Thus even that least
amenable of subjects, the parent, may be reached through the child.
In "Riches and Poverty" edition 1905, I wrote:—
"In the matter of school hygiene and the physical training of children,
the introduction of the medico into the school is all-important. At
present, proper hygienic inspection of our schools does not exist.
Medical officers should be appointed both to see that school buildings
are absolutely healthy and to care for the personal health of the
pupils. Upon entering the school, the child should undergo a preliminary
examination and from thence onward remain under the care of the school
doctor. The preliminary examination would decide the question of fitness
for normal instruction; defective children would be drafted into special
classes."
In 1907 the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act made it the "duty"
of local education authorities "to provide for the medical inspection of
children immediately before, or at the time of, or as soon as possible
after, their admission to a public elementary school" and the "power" of
such authorities to make arrangements "for attending to the health and
physical condition of the children." It is earnestly to be hoped that
this "power" will be exercised; at present many authorities are blind to
it. The reader may judge from a single example the importance of using
the schools as a means of physical control and training. Dr Ralph H.
Crowley, the Medical Superintendent of the Bradford Education Authority,
conducted an inquiry into the physical condition of the school children
of Bradford in 1907. The results make painful reading.
Let us begin with the "general condition" of the Bradford children. The
examination as to cleanliness was made by observations of the head,
ears, and neck, and by rolling up the sleeves of the children. The
following approximate figures were arrived at:
CONDITION AS TO CLEANLINESS
Number. Per Cent.
Clean 10,000 22.2
Somewhat dirty 22,000 49.0
Dirty 11,500 25.5
Very dirty 1,500 3.3
I think we must agree with Dr Crowley that these figures "show a
deplorable state of things." What is to be said of "home life" and
"education," which between them fail to teach a child to be clean?
Here are some saddening details as to the condition of the heads of
girls:
CONDITION OF GIRLS' HEADS
No. of Girls. Per Cent.
Clean 7,000 30
Nits present 8,500 35
Lice present 8,500 35
And these figures, we are told, exclude many children sent home because
their heads had "broken out" through the presence of lice.
As to clothing, here are the figures:
CONDITION OF CLOTHING
No. of Children. Per Cent.
Good 10,000 22
Average 19,000 42
Bad or very bad 16,000 36
As for boots, the results are worth the consideration of British
bootmakers. As many as 6,500 children had foot-gear so bad that in many
cases "it was difficult to see how what were meant for boots managed to
keep on the feet."
Condition as to nutrition was judged broadly, irrespective of cause. Dr
Crowley divided the schools into three classes—better class schools,
poor schools, poorest. I take the case of the poorest schools:
C. SCHOOLS—POOREST
Nutrition. Infants. Upper School.
No. Per Cent. No. Per Cent.
Good or sufficiently good 51 30.7 105 24.4
Below normal 58 34.9 183 42.6
Poor or very poor 57 34.4 142 33.0
Taking the three groups of schools together, we find that 1,019 children
out of nearly 2,000 were "below normal" in point of nutrition. More than
one-half, that is, were suffering from chronic semi-starvation. Of the
1,019, as many as 344 were described as "poor or very poor."
Very instructively Dr Crowley measured nutrition against mental
capacity, and showed clearly how often unhealthy minds are the product
of unhealthy bodies. Of children of exceptional intelligence, 62.7 per
cent. were of good nutrition. Of dull children only 24.9 per cent. were
of good nutrition.
Dr Crowley concluded his significant report with these words:
"No increased facilities for higher education or technical instruction
can in any way take the place of attention to the physical side of our
children. The future of our nation will depend, not on the ability of
the few, but on the fitness of the many, and this fitness must be
secured at all cost. It is for us as a nation a matter of life and
death."
To proceed, anthropometric statistics should be carefully compiled, and
a sickness register kept, so that the nation may judge of the progress
made in restoring its stature. The teeth would have special attention
and the school dentist would work hand in hand with the school doctor.
Children need few dosings, but in special cases cod liver oil or a
suitable tonic could be administered, as is done in Belgium.
In cases of defective nourishment the child must be fed, whatever the
character of the parent. No fears as to the loosening of parental
responsibility need stand in the way in this essential matter, for
drastic punishment of neglectful parents should go hand in hand with our
care of the child. Nothing, in my opinion, is so likely to encourage the
feeling of parental responsibility, and to shame careless mothers, as
the knowledge that at the school the child is regarded as a valuable
commodity. In this connexion it would be well for the Board of Education
to insist upon periodical reports, not less frequently than every three
months, to parents upon their children. A carefully written report upon
the progress of the scholar in all departments would be calculated to
stimulate the better feelings of the parent.
The greatest timidity was shown by the Physical Deterioration Committee
in dealing with the important subject of underfed children. The report
runs:
"By a differentiation of function on these terms—the School Authority to
supply and organize the machinery, the benevolent to furnish the
material—a working adjustment between the privileges of charity and the
obligations of the community might be reached. In some districts it
still may be the case that such an arrangement would prove inadequate,
the extent or the concentration of poverty might be too great for the
resources of local charity, and in these, subject to the consent of the
Board of Education, it might be expedient to permit the application of
municipal aid on a larger scale."
It is the State that must furnish the "material," not as a matter of
charity, but from motives of the purest common sense. The timidity of
the Committee is the more remarkable when the evidence presented to them
is examined. Dr Eichholz made a special investigation into the
conditions of the Johanna Street Board School, Lambeth, as a type of
school in a very bad district, and he considers that 90 per cent. of the
children are unable, by reason of their physical condition, to attend to
their lessons in a proper way. His estimate of the underfed children in
the elementary schools of London is 122,000, or 16 per cent. of the
whole.[45]
Those alone who have had to do with voluntary free breakfast schemes can
have any idea of the terrible hunger of the children who attend them.
The hugging of the mug of cocoa, the ravenous swallowing—it cannot be
called eating—of the slices of bread, make one shudder to think that,
but for such isolated voluntary effort, the poor children would in an
hour or so be entering a school at which their attendance is compulsory
to—study! And for one helped by voluntary effort how many go hungry to
their tasks, utterly unable, through physical weakness, to do their
work!
Those who have grasped the importance of the utterance of Dr D. J.
Cunningham, quoted in the last chapter, will heartily agree with Sir
Shirley Murphy, L.C.C. Medical Officer of Health, that "the child has
got to be fed." The chief deterrent to many is fear that parents will be
demoralized by free meals at the schools. It must be realized by those
who entertain this fear that the parents are often already thoroughly
demoralized, and that their demoralization in the great majority of
cases has resulted from the conditions imposed upon them from their
birth by our social system. They are what they are because of
circumstances over which their control was nominal. _The reader, or
myself, if transplanted to Lambeth at a few months old, and nurtured as
they were nurtured, would at this moment be what they are._ "There, but
for the Grace of God, goes myself," is the reflection which every man
should make when he contemplates the waste products of the civilization
of which he himself is a favoured part. That truth realized by any man,
it is never again possible for him, if he has more than the average
share of the nation's income, to grudge a part of the amount by which
his income exceeds the average to raise to a higher level the children
of those whose lives have been a crying injustice from their cradles—of
those who have, with all their faults, done more than their share of the
hard labour of the world.
In 1906 the Education (Provision of Meals) Act enacted that a local
education authority "may take such steps as they think fit for the
provision of meals for children in attendance at any public elementary
school in their area" to the extent of a halfpenny rate and no more. So,
with extreme timidity, the legislative machine advances.
Games, physical drill, gardening and swimming, should be taught to every
child, under proper medical control. I assume the existence of
playgrounds in some ample shape—each school having its indoor and
outdoor places of recreation and its school garden. A great object is to
keep the child from the street. For the same reason, the school grounds
should be open on summer evenings and during all vacations. It is a
simple matter to make the vacations a time of real holiday for every
child—filled with lively interest and healthful sport. With the physical
exercises and teaching of games and, indeed, with all other departments
of school life should be associated what Rousseau considered to be the
chief moral principle that a child should learn—to do harm to no one.
That carries with it the teaching of "manners" in their best sense. Nor
should graces of person be neglected. The boy should not be allowed to
slouch about with his hands in his pockets. If he does, he is only too
likely to slouch into casual labour hereafter.
Clean, neatly clad, healthy, well-nourished, upright, self-respecting
and therefore respectful of others, feeling its strength in every limb,
well-mannered, capable of lucid expression—is it beyond our powers to
make the average child all this? Not if these things are as well worth
consideration as the resistance of an armour-plate, the trajectory of a
rifle-bullet, or the virtues of a smokeless powder. Not if the proper
study of mankind is man.
Having made provision for the body, we may now turn to the mind. I have
referred to the child's power of expression, and I think that the
average elementary scholar's incapacity to think clearly or to express
its ideas with lucidity show how much we have missed the way in our
educational methods. We have forgotten that to "educate" is literally to
"lead out." The two guiding principles or characteristics of the German
school curriculum as described by Mr George Andrew are: (1) The
principle of "_Anschauung_" (observation, intuition, concrete), and (2)
The development of oral expression.
"Anschauung" literally means "looking at" and as an educational
principle it means observation of the concrete as paving the way to the
abstract. The child begins school with the supply of words and
conceptions which it has gained from infancy in its own house. These
have to be corrected and completed; the child's concepts are enriched by
fresh observations and by gradual steps it is advanced from the familiar
to the strange, from the known to the unknown. In the youngest classes
the instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, drawing, nature study,
is all in varying degrees based on "Anschauung," and later the same
principle of observation is to be traced in the teaching of such
subjects as geometry, geography, and history, where models, pictures,
maps, and plans are continually resorted to in order to deepen and
vivify the ideas gained from the printed page. Mr Andrew thus contrasts
infant teaching in Scotland with that in Berlin:
"In Scotland, infant classes generally begin with the alphabet and the
elementary reading-book, the object-lesson being something of an
"extra," in which much useful and stodgy information is often imparted
to the youthful mind—not always on subjects within its range of actual
experience—and then retracted under an incessant fire of jerky
interrogatories.
"The Berlin child begins in a different way. With him the "observation
lesson" is the starting-point. It is maintained that the child in his
natural intercourse at home with his parents, brothers and sisters, and
playmates, has equipped himself with a certain rudimentary supply of
words and ideas, which concern themselves mainly with objects that have
fallen within his own range of vision. He has learned to speak in a
language, the purity or corruptness of which will largely depend on his
environment. It is on these two lines, his rudimentary knowledge of
simple objects and his power of simple speech, that his first school
instruction proceeds, individual words and their constituent _sounds_
with (the corresponding letter names) being reached by a gradual
analytical process. In the "observation lesson" such objects as are in
the schoolroom, or again, the child's body and limbs, his food, his
clothes, his home, his street, etc., anything, in fact, which he can
see, or has seen, are made use of. But even in this early "observation
lesson" one cannot fail to note how the foundations are laid for
developing oral expression—for teaching the child _Sprachfertigkeit_.
Just as the child comes to school with his rudimentary ideas, and has
these gradually corrected and extended by "observation," so also in
this lesson the power of speech he brings with him is taken up and
developed from the beginning. He is asked to describe what is placed
before his eyes; he is made—and this is naturally the first
difficulty—to speak in a distinctly loud tone of voice; and he is made
to answer in a sentence or sentences. For example, the teacher's watch
was taken as the subject of an "observation lesson" in a class of
pupils newly come to school. One heard such little sentences as "This
is a watch"; "from the watch hangs a chain"; "on the face of the watch
are figures," etc. Every now and then some child is made to
recapitulate the whole account, e.g. to repeat the above three
sentences—a process to which great importance is attached."
Thus from the beginning the child is taught to observe and to express
lucidly what it has observed, and this excellent principle—this real
"education"—is followed throughout its school life. As a result the
children become self-reliant in utterance, able to think clearly and to
express their ideas orally or in writing in logical order and
appropriate language. Thus, whatever the influence of the home the child
gains a proper use of its mother-tongue. In our own country the
vocabulary of the home remains the vocabulary of the child, and I know
of nothing more painful than to listen to the talk of our "educated"
elementary school children in poor neighbourhoods.
There is no subject in the curriculum to which the principles of
observation and development of expression are not applied with success.
Thus, arithmetic is not taught by rule-of-thumb, as is too often the
case in our schools, but from the beginning the child is led to "count
with understanding." The child does not merely learn a series of
mechanical rules. He understands the process he employs and can give a
lucid account of his knowledge. It is perhaps hardly necessary to add
that he studies the metric system, and becomes familiar with the
arithmetic of business operations.
Our elementary school curriculum must be made to include the study of
the sciences as a matter of course and not as special subjects.
Unfortunately, public opinion is still lamentably absent on this point.
An ex-Prime Minister is not ashamed to state publicly that he is
ignorant of science, and the majority of those who have received what is
known as a "liberal" education could not intelligently explain the
ringing of an electric bell or the action of their own hearts. This
deplorable neglect of science is sadly handicapping us as a nation in
every department, and it is a notable fact that the majority of recent
scientific discoveries have been made in other lands. In "Riches and
Poverty," 1905, I mentioned the following as especially notable: X-Rays,
Germany; Radium, France; Synthetic indigo, Germany; Artificial Silk,
France and Germany; Incandescent gas light, Germany; Wireless
telegraphy, Italy. Since then the English Channel has been crossed by a
flying machine—from the French side. I notice that Mr Andrew, in the
report already referred to, while acknowledging that science was
generally treated excellently in the German schools, obtained a "vague
impression that rather much was attempted." Is that vague impression to
be wondered at, in view of the pitiable condition of science teaching in
the United Kingdom?
As a matter of fact, nothing is more fascinating to the average child
than the science-lesson. The child is instinctively a scientist; its
mind is ever searching for the reason of things, and the average British
parent is every day through his ignorance of science compelled to evade
the simple but very reasonable inquiries of his offspring. It should be
our object at the school to encourage the child's wonderings, and to do
what we can to cherish the wise habit of wondering. The savage at least
wonders when he sees a locomotive. The average "educated" citizen has
long ceased to wonder either about the science that moves his train or
the science that lights his house.
It is easy to understand how well the two guiding principles of German
teaching fit the study of science, or of nature-knowledge, to use the
terminology of the Charlottenburg curriculum. The material aim of the
course is to give the pupil knowledge of nature in a form suited to his
grasp, including, be it observed, the laws of health. Then there is the
formal aim—to train the pupil's powers of observation, and to develop
his powers of thinking, and to awaken his sympathy with plant and animal
life and admiration for the beauty of Nature. At Charlottenburg Natural
History is taught under the three sub-divisions A. Botany, B. Zoology,
and C. Anthropology. Under the third is taught animal physiology, the
laws of health, and first aid in cases of accident. In connexion with
Botany, school excursions for the study of plant life are organized. I
can imagine no more useful discipline for a town dweller. In the domain
of physical science, the pupils are led on to the knowledge of Nature's
laws and to the causes of common things. Particular attention is paid,
Mr Andrew tells us, to such phenomena or principles as are of importance
in domestic, industrial and commercial life—those of domestic life
applying to the girls, the latter two to the boys. Light, heat,
magnetism, electricity, mechanics, sound, chemistry and mineralogy are
taken. Experiment is largely employed, and the apparatus used is
adequate and admirable, in this respect being a striking contrast to the
mean outfit which is usually considered good enough in the United
Kingdom. The reflection is forced upon one that, in the region of
foreign competition, with which this work is not concerned, they will be
formidable antagonists, these scientific German children, in the time to
come.
In connexion with the teaching of hygiene in schools we can do much to
encourage abstinence from intoxicating liquors. If in the study of
physiology the harmful effects of alcohol upon the kidneys and other
organs is made clear to the children, a very wholesome fear of "drink"
will be bred in them.
The little we are doing in the way of teaching domestic economy and
cooking to girls needs much strengthening. These subjects should be
compulsory in the highest classes of all girls' schools. There is
perhaps no other country in which poor women are so ignorant of cooking
as in the United Kingdom. There is no simple national dish which every
one knows how to make, and it is rarely that poor Englishwomen can make
a decent soup or have any idea of the proper cooking of vegetables.
As a preliminary to the abolition of child labour under the age of 16,
the introduction of the principle of compulsion in connexion with
continuation classes is badly needed. The children are now set free at
the most dangerous period of their lives, and nothing but good could
arise from compelling their attendance at classes which, in the case of
girls, should deal with infant and domestic hygiene, cookery, and
dressmaking, and in the case of boys with science, technics and
languages.
In 1908 I introduced into the House of Commons a measure to establish
compulsory day continuation schools in England and Wales. The Bill was
prefaced with a memorandum which pointed out:
"According to the census of 1901 there were in England and Wales about
4,600,000 persons of both sexes between the ages of 14 and 21 years.
According to the reports of the Board of Education the number of pupils
aged 15 to 21 years attending day and evening continuation schools of
all sorts is only about 387,000."
The Bill itself was as follows:
1. This Act may be cited as the Continuation Schools Act, 1909.
2. The earliest age at which a child shall be entitled to any exemption
from obligatory school attendance shall be fourteen years, and the
Education Acts, 1870 to 1902, are hereby repealed in so far as they
permit the partial or total exemption from school attendance of
children under fourteen years of age.
3. Every child whose age exceeds fourteen but does not exceed seventeen
years shall be deemed to be a continuation scholar, and is hereinafter
so termed in this Act.
4. Every education authority shall establish classes (hereinafter
termed a continuation school) for the continued education and technical
training, without fees, of all continuation scholars in its district
who do not attend approved day secondary or day technical schools.
5. The continuation school shall be carried on at hours which do not
terminate later than six o'clock p.m., and every continuation scholar
shall attend the continuation school for a period of not less than six
hours per week.
6. Sufficient school places, and sufficient teachers, scientific and
technical apparatus, material, tools, or plant, et cetera, shall be
provided to enable every continuation scholar controlled by the
education authority to be instructed in industry or agriculture, or in
domestic economy, in the English language and literature, in the
principles of hygiene, and in the duties and obligations of
citizenship, and the scheme and curriculum of each continuation school
shall be subject to the approval of the Board of Education.
7. For the purposes of the administration of this Act, the education
authority may co-opt any number of local employers not exceeding six.
8. Every employer shall permit every continuation scholar in his employ
time in which to attend the continuation school, and, failing to permit
such attendance, shall be liable on summary conviction to a penalty not
exceeding _two pounds_ for every day upon which his employee therefore
fails to make his due attendance at the continuation school.
9. Every parent or responsible guardian of a continuation scholar who
fails to attend a continuation school shall be liable on summary
conviction to a penalty not exceeding _ten shillings_ for every day
upon which the continuation scholar fails to attend the continuation
school, unless the non-attendance is due to the fault of the scholar's
employer, or to illness, accident, or other unavoidable cause.
10. It shall be the duty of the education authority to prosecute the
parent or responsible guardian or the employer of any continuation
scholar who is absent from the continuation or other approved school
save through illness, accident, or other unavoidable cause:
Provided that no continuation scholar shall be required to attend a
continuation school held beyond two miles, measured along the nearest
road, from the residence of the continuation scholar.
11. _The cost of carrying out the provisions of this Act shall be paid
out of moneys provided by Parliament._
So much is said about the example of Germany that it may serve as a
stimulus to those who think the above provisions too drastic to observe
that my Bill was based upon the scheme which is in actual operation at
Munich and which may soon be in operation for all German children.
It is by the adoption of such rational methods in our schools that we
may give opportunity to the new generation. If they exhibit ability they
can advance to, and benefit by, a secondary education which shall fit
them to perform the highest service for the State. If their abilities
are of a meaner order, we shall at least send them out into the world
well-equipped mentally and physically for their life's work and keep a
guiding hand upon them after their school days are ended.
With such an education the individual unit of industry would have
strength and understanding to contend for a better wage and be fitted to
do better work. He would also take thought as to the constitution of the
society of which he forms a part, and employ intelligently the franchise
which in the past he has so frequently used to his own undoing. In an
individualistic society such a unit would be better fitted to hold his
own. In the wise collectivism towards which we are steering, he would be
fitted to do his whole duty to his fellows and himself.
The relevance of education to the main theme of this book demands little
comment. It is obvious that, if we are to provide a proper physical and
mental training for our people we must spend more money. Better schools,
better playgrounds, better apparatus, more and better trained teachers,
classes not exceeding 30 pupils per class, the introduction of the
school doctor and school dentist, the provision of meals, the compulsory
continuation schools—all these things are needed and all these things
are costly. It is only want of reflection upon the enormous resources at
the disposal of the State which makes so many people timid in
educational reform. Take the matter of school doctors, for instance. On
page 64 of the Report of the Physical Deterioration Committee will be
found:
"Dr Eichholz thought it (the medical inspection of school children) was
the greatest need in school organization."
Therefore, you would say, Dr Eichholz and the Committee would urge that
the "greatest need" be properly supplied. Alas! the report goes on:
"On the ground of expense he would confine a general examination to the
poorest schools, and considered that in London the work could be done by
ten young men at £250 each."
The Committee, speaking for themselves, say:
"The Committee believe that, with teachers properly trained in the
various branches of hygiene, the system could be so far based on their
observation and record, that no large and expensive medical staff would
be necessary...."
Always the idea appears to be uppermost that this is a poor, a very
poor, country, which cannot afford to do the things which it would wish
to do. That teachers "properly trained in the various branches of
hygiene," which certainly do not cover the diagnosis of disease, should
be considered competent to decide which children should or should not
undergo medical examination amounts to an expression of opinion that we
cannot afford to provide the schools with their "greatest need."
I refer the timid to the fact that the gross assessments to Income Tax
in 1908-9 were over £1,000,000,000. The practical point is this. Of the
£1,000,000,000, can we spare a few millions for the purposes mentioned
in this chapter?
[Footnote 44: Cd. 2120.]
[Footnote 45: It is of interest to observe that Mr Robert Hunter
estimates that 70,000 of the school children of New York arrive at
school either breakfastless or underfed. This estimate accounts for 13
per cent. of the school children of the city.]
CHAPTER XVI
THE HOME
It is an amusing statistical fact that at the census of 1901 our
"overcrowded" England had but 558 persons to the square mile, or one
person to 1.15 acres, or one family to about 6 acres. If in 1901 the
population of England and Wales had been distributed evenly over the
area there would have been a distance of 240 feet between each person.
In 1871 a similar distribution would have removed each person from his
neighbour by 288 feet. Thus England is little more "crowded" to-day than
it was a generation ago. It is useful to remind ourselves by these
statistical exercises that the country is indeed nearly empty, and the
towns very full. In the 75,000 acres of the administrative county of
London were crowded, at the census of 1901, 4,536,541 people, a number
as great as the entire population of Australia, almost as great as the
entire population of the Dominion of Canada, and more than one-tenth of
the entire population of the United Kingdom. In London and 75 other
great towns in England and Wales are crowded about 15,000,000 persons or
about one-half of the entire population of the country. As London and
the great towns grow, the countryside is increasingly depopulated, and
not the countryside alone. Many small towns are decreasing in size. Thus
an increasing population is ever huddling closer together in a
diminishing number of centres.
The greater number of our new births, then, are in crowded districts.
The figures of Book I. tell us, also that the greater number are in
urban houses of a rental under £20 per annum. The rental values of the
houses of Great Britain in 1907-8 were as follows:
HOUSES OF GREAT BRITAIN, 1907-8
The figures do not include Ireland, but they include all residential
shops, lodging-houses, hotels, farm-houses, etc., in Great Britain.
Under £20 (Exempt from House Duty), 6,875,000
£20 and over (Charged to House Duty). 1,912,000
---------
8,787,000
=========
Of the 8,787,000 houses fully 7,000,000 are obviously the homes of the
very poor, as we should expect if the statements made in the earlier
parts of this book are true. In various districts the accommodation
which can be bought for £20 a year varies greatly, as has been already
pointed out. £20 per annum may command a decent home in some parts of
the provinces or Scotland, or a filthy tenement in East London or
Manchester. Broadly speaking, the majority of the houses under £20 are
fit for demolition. They rank in our estimate of capital (Chapter 5) for
a great deal of money; they command an enormous amount of rent, but, I
repeat, they are chiefly fit for destruction. In a minority of cases
they are indecent or insanitary; in a majority of cases they are either
old or ugly or uncomfortable. Rarely are they fit habitations for a
self-respecting people. The same is true of many of the houses up to £40
and even £50 per annum in London and other crowded centres. Many £40
dwellings in London are crowded tenement houses, each of several reeking
floors.
What overcrowding means to the lives of those who suffer it may be
illustrated by the table prepared by Sir Shirley Murphy, which compares
the sanitary areas of Hampstead and Southwark in respect of expectation
of life. I have added the fourth column to give prominence to the
accusing fact that _the poor are robbed not of means alone but of life
itself_:
EXPECTATION OF LIFE IN HAMPSTEAD AND SOUTHWARK, MALES ONLY,
IN 1897-1900
Expectation of life in Southwark
less than that in
Age. Hampstead. Southwark. Hampstead by
--- --- --- ---
Years. Years. Years. Years.
At birth 50.8 36.5 14.3
5 57.4 48.7 8.7
10 53.3 45.0 8.3
15 48.7 40.6 8.1
20 44.2 36.4 7.8
25 39.8 32.4 7.4
30 35.5 28.6 6.9
35 31.3 25.0 6.3
40 27.5 21.9 5.6
45 23.8 18.9 4.9
50 20.3 16.2 4.1
55 17.0 13.6 3.4
60 14.1 11.3 2.8
65 11.5 9.1 2.4
70 9.2 7.0 2.2
75 7.1 5.2 1.9
In Hampstead only 6.3 per cent. of the population live more than two in
a room in tenements of less than five rooms, and only 11.1 per cent. of
the population live in tenements of one or two rooms. In Southwark, on
the other hand, 22.3 per cent. of the population are in the first
category, and 31.6 per cent. in the second category. The table enables
the reader to measure the years which are stolen from the lives of the
inhabitants of Southwark. The area of Hampstead is 2,248 acres and the
population 68,416. The area of Southwark is 544 acres and the population
89,800. We should never forget that there are two sorts of crowding, one
of which is measured by room or tenement, the other by area.
The Census definition of "overcrowding" by room or tenement is a very
modest one. It applies to tenements containing more than two occupants
per room, bedrooms and sitting-rooms included. Accepting this definition
there were 392,414 overcrowded tenements in England and Wales at the
Census of 1901, which were the homes of 2,667,506 people, or 8.2 per
cent. of the total population.
That is bad enough, but if we take a more reasonable definition of
"overcrowding" and apply the term to all tenements (by tenement is meant
a separate occupation, whether a house or part of a house) of three
rooms or less we find that in 1901, in England and Wales, as many as
5,853,047 or 18 per cent, of the entire population occupied tenements of
either one, two or three rooms. A further 7,130,062 persons or 21.9 per
cent. of the population of England and Wales were housed in 4-roomed
tenements. The complete tenement figures are as follows:
TENEMENTS (SEPARATE OCCUPATIONS, WHETHER HOUSES OR PARTS OF HOUSES)
IN ENGLAND AND WALES. 1901
-------------+-----------+-------------+-----------+----------
| | | Percentage|
| | | of Total |
Number of | Number of | Occupants of| Population| Average
Rooms | Tenements.| Tenements. | in each | Occupants
in Tenements.| | | group of | per Room.
| | | Tenements.|
-------------+-----------+-------------+-----------+----------
1 Room. | 251,667 | 507,763 | 1.6 | 2.02
2 Rooms. | 658,203 | 2,158,644 | 6.6 | 1.64
3 Rooms. | 779,992 | 3,186,640 | 9.8 | 1.36
4 Rooms. | 1,596,664 | 7,130,062 | 21.9 | 1.12
5 or more | | | |
Rooms. | 3,750,342 | 19,544,734 | 60.1 |
+-----------+-------------+-----------+----------
| 7,036,868 | 32,527,843 | 100.0 |
-------------+-----------+-------------+-----------+----------
It will be seen that, even in the 4-roomed tenements, there was an
average of 1.12 persons per room (room meaning every apartment in the
tenements, including sitting-rooms, attics, box-rooms, kitchens or
sculleries), and when we remember the small cubical content of many of
these "rooms" we see that as many as 12,983,109 persons, or 39.9 per
cent. of the population of England and Wales were certainly crowded, if
not "overcrowded."
In Scotland, at the Census of 1901, 969,318 families occupied 3,022,077
rooms, giving an average of only 3 rooms per family. Into the 3,022,077
rooms of all sorts were crowded 4,472,000 people.
While overcrowding, measured by room, slightly decreased between 1891
and 1901, overcrowding on area considerably increased. In the ten years
a considerable number of model dwellings—models, that is, of everything
that dwellings should not be—were erected, and much ground in London and
elsewhere which should have been left open, was covered with buildings
of every conceivable degree of ugliness.
As for existing houses, thirty years after the passing of the Public
Health Act of 1875, and fifteen years after the passing of the Housing
of the Working Classes Act of 1890, a considerable proportion are
actually insanitary, and only a minority conform to the most modest
standard of convenience and comfort. In the North of England and in the
Midlands there remain tens of thousands of houses built back-to-back, so
that there is no passage of air through them.
The Manchester Citizens' Association recently published, from the pen of
its secretary, Mr T. R. Marr, a little book,[46] which shows, by a
coloured map, that slum property, including many back-to-back and
"converted" back-to-back houses, form a great ring round the offices and
factories of Central Manchester. Its lessons are enforced by a series of
photographs of slum property. Here is a picture of a Salford court, upon
which face the living rooms of eleven houses. Standing out in the court,
as a public exhibition, are three rotten places of convenience, only one
of them usable. Here, again, is a photograph taken in St Michaels'
Ward—taken, let us hope, in the absence of St Michael. A group of four
closets open on the street, and beside them, surrounded by a group of
slum children curiously watching the photographer, is a tap which is the
sole water supply of 22 houses. A third picture, also taken in St
Michaels' Ward, shows a stone-paved court of eleven houses. There is one
tap, an open ash-box, and several closets the doors of which are torn
from their hinges.
In Liverpool, according to a paper read before the Royal Sanitary
Institute in April 1905 by Mr Fletcher T. Turton, the Liverpool Deputy
Surveyor, there were still 8,600 back-to-back houses standing, the
death-rate in their area being about 60 per 1,000! Further erection of
such houses is forbidden by Mr Burns's Housing Act of 1909, but there
are tens of thousands already in existence.
In Leeds there are many of these back-to-back houses, without
ventilation, or yard, or private sanitary arrangements, let at rentals
varying from 3s. 6d. to 7s. 6d. per week. As many as three and four
houses join at one closet. The closets are frequently in yards, forty
yards from the house. In wet weather, rather than carry the waste water
from the bedrooms the length of the street, women may often be seen
pouring it down the street gully. On Sundays, when the inhabitants are
all at home, the difficulty as to sanitary accommodation is intensely
aggravated.
In Sheffield, in the Potteries, and many other places, these abominable
back-to-back houses are to be found. Few workers' houses in the
Potteries have more than two bedrooms. The back-to-back houses in
Sheffield number 15,000, and sometimes as many as eight or ten persons
are to be found in their three little rooms. If we take only 7 persons
to the house there are 105,000 Sheffield people living in these dens.
If there are not back-to-back houses or cellar dwellings in London,
there are many squalid areas which contain greater aggregations of the
poorest of the poor than can be found in any other part of the country.
In Marylebone, Southwark, St Pancras, Holborn, Bethnal Green,
Shoreditch, Stepney, and Finsbury upwards of 30 per cent. of the
inhabitants live in tenements of one or two rooms. In Finsbury the
proportion reaches 45 per cent.; in Shoreditch and St Pancras 37 per
cent. In Lambeth, Westminster, Paddington, Chelsea, Kensington,
Islington and Bermondsey 20 per cent. and upwards of the population live
in tenements of one or two rooms. Only, indeed, in Lewisham, Wandsworth,
Stoke Newington, Hampstead, Woolwich, Greenwich, Deptford, Camberwell,
Hackney and Fulham, do less than 15 per cent. of the inhabitants occupy
tenements of one or two rooms. Not even the school children of Ancoats
or Deansgate, Manchester, exhibit the degree of physical deterioration
of those of Lambeth or West Ham.
It cannot be too strongly insisted that in connexion with the problem of
housing the people there is not merely the question of "overcrowding" or
of "crowding," whether in rooms or on area, to be considered. Not only
death and disease but ugliness and inconvenience have to be fought. The
speculative builder is covering suburban areas with mile after mile of
amorphous dwellings. Acre after acre of smiling meadow is disfigured.
Street after street of buildings of unredeemed ugliness reach out into
the beautiful country which lies so near to the 75,000 acres of London.
Trees are felled; every particle of verdure is scraped away. The town
advances, and before its grim threatenings Beauty flies. The lane
becomes the street; the hedge is replaced by cast-iron palings; beyond
the hedge there arises the row of "bay windows with venetian blinds"
which figure in the advertisements. Pass to the rear and you will find
the 16 or 18 feet frontage which the builder thought beautiful balanced
by a "back addition" which even the builder knew to be ugly. Facing the
back-additions, across two "gardens" together not so long as a cricket
pitch, another row of rear elevations, and so on, row after row. Such is
the vision with which we stimulate the fancy of the more fortunate of
the children of the people. We teach them drawing on the latest
principles—free-arm—in the school. We give them infinite ugliness as
their environment outside the school. We have still to learn that while
the dwellings and surroundings of the people are unlovely we cannot hope
for a gifted race. We have yet to understand that education begins when
the child opens its eyes and ears to the sights and sounds of the home
and its surroundings. It is not alone that the people lack monetary
income. To the ill-distribution of wealth is added the ill-distribution
of the means of a beautiful life. The majority of our people are denied
the vision of beauty, and even those who receive fair wages perish
morally for lack of that vision.
From the centre to the circumference there passes all the evil thinking
and evil doing which the unnatural conditions of the centre have created
in the minds of men. The workman who leaves the centre for the new
suburb of Walthamstow is not surprised to find there the ugliness which
he left behind him. He does not expect to find Beauty—that is a
commodity confined to pictures. He does not wonder that man could be so
blind as to create a sore on the borders of one of the most beautiful
spots which this earth has to show. He owns his cottage with a smile,
oblivious of the might-have-been, and rarely if ever wonders why in a
country containing nearly 80,000,000 acres his considerable rental can
command so small a share of the surface of his native land.
And surely it is for lack of vision that our efforts in connexion with
the housing problem are so misdirected. The rulers of our towns instead
of directing their attention to the outskirts have practically confined
themselves to tinkering at the centre. Blocks, palatial in size and
unholy in principle, have been erected and ironically dubbed "model
dwellings." It is true that in all big towns there are a certain number
of workmen who must live near their work, but there is usually a far
larger number who have no such tie. And the model dwellings referred to
usually succeed in housing not the class which must live near their work
but the class who could well go out beyond the suburbs. Thus the effect
of tinkering in the centre is often but to set free for the poorest of
the poor the tenements deserted by the better class who pass to the new
dwellings. That is good in its way, but how much better it would have
been to relieve the centre by emptying out its streets into the places
beyond. To buy up slums in the centre and create model dwellings is to
play into the hands of the landlords—to increase the value of the
unbought slums. To empty out the centre of its movable population is to
leave a better selection of homes for those who must remain, and to
leave the slum landlord to mourn a fall in the value of his "property."
A great deal is often said about unoccupied sites in towns and their
suburbs and it has even been suggested that efforts should be used to
force them into the market and compel building upon them. Here again is
exhibited a most lamentable lack of vision. In so far as town sites are
unbuilt upon let them remain so, and if their owners are waiting for a
rise in value let us take measures to make that waiting prolonged.
In a widely circulated leaflet on the land question I read: "If we pass
through the outskirts of any of our great centres of population, we see
pieces of land left practically derelict, with perhaps an old horse
grazing there disconsolately, or a few hens investigating a rubbish
heap. A little farther on we see houses being built and roads being laid
out. We know that still more houses are badly wanted, and we wonder why
the land between is not being utilized."
Here we have a reformer ardently desirous of filling up an open urban
space which, if he were wise, he would use his best endeavour to keep
open for ever. Seeing houses being built and roads being laid out "a
little farther on"—what kind of houses and what sort of roads, I
wonder?—he is anxious to turn out the disconsolate horse and pile up
more houses in the intervening space. It apparently does not occur to
him that yet "a little farther on" there is land enough for the housing
of an army, and that a horse, however disconsolate, is at the worst a
prettier object than a speculative builder's "villa."
Two things are necessary if the housing problem is to be grappled with
seriously and not resigned to private profit timorously modified by
municipal tinkering. The first is the control of land, and the second
ready access to capital. As has been truly said, the housing question is
a land question; as has been too rarely remembered, it is even more a
capital question.
There is only one effective way in which the community can control land
and that is to become its landlord. It is also true that there is only
one effective way in which the community can keep in its own hands the
"unearned increment" arising from the enhanced value of land created by
the presence and work of the community, and again that effective way is
for the community to own the land. There is no necessity, however, for
the town to play into the hands of suburban landlords by purchasing dear
land. It can evade attempts to corner land required by the community by
going out and beyond that land if it is held for a rise. Indeed it is
better to leave a zone between its present circumference and the site of
its new housing area. Even in London, it is a simple matter to reach
land cheap enough for successful housing operations. It is of the utmost
importance that all municipalities should without further delay secure
considerable areas of the agricultural lands which surround their
townships.[47] By doing this well in advance of their building
operations they can insure that, as they themselves raise the value of
the land by developing it and establishing means of transit, the whole
of that value will remain in their hands. Moreover, if the owners of the
intermediate land thus see their market failing they will gladly place a
reasonable price upon their holdings. In this connexion it is probable
that the taxation of land upon its selling value may prove to be of
assistance. The man who controls a part of the area of his country and
who will neither use it himself nor allow others to use it should in any
case be taxed. I attach more importance, however, to the simple and
effective policy of widening the radius of operations until cheap land
is reached.
It cannot be too clearly understood that simply to tax land on its
selling value is of itself no solution either of the land question or
the housing question. If land is priced by its owner at £1,000 per acre
and he is holding it to obtain that figure, we should not necessarily
bring it into the market by taxing it on its selling value. The price
asked obviously includes all the rise in value expected by the present
owner in the near future; that is why the price is held out for. If the
land be taxed upon the capital value the owner, unless very strong
financially, would probably have to sell. To do so, he would reduce the
price and the land would be taken up by a second owner. The expected
rise in value would thus be discounted, and the second owner having
obtained the land at a lower rate, would be able to hold the land for
the rise in spite of the tax payable. Thus the tax would not necessarily
bring the land into use. Nor, if it did, would it necessarily be devoted
to a desirable use. Owner B is not necessarily more moral or public
spirited than owner A. Owner A held up the land, but owner B, having
bought it, may put it to such base uses that we could wish it had been
held up a little longer. Above all, therefore, we must have public
control of area.
As the owner of its own sites, the township can be the arbiter of its
own developments. This has been clearly recognized in Germany, where,
under the encouragement and stimulation of the State governments,
municipalities are acquiring land beyond their existing borders.
Considerable areas are owned by many German towns. Stettin has 12,500
acres; Mannheim has 5,000 acres; Breslau has 12,000 acres; Frankfort has
11,000 acres.
Large as our population is, it is really remarkable to note how little
area would be required to rehouse the people of the towns. Taking the
number of families in the United Kingdom at 9,000,000, only 1,800,000
acres, or less than one-fortieth part of the area of the country, would
be required to house five families to the acre. This simple calculation
helps us to realize the point referred to in a former page—how tiny an
area now contains nearly the whole of our 44,500,000 people.
Having wisely purchased land upon its borders, the municipality must
take thought as to the distribution of the population upon its new
territory. Plans must be made of the new roads, streets, open spaces,
and transit facilities long before they are actually required, so that
each step in development may be taken deliberately and that no new
difficulties may be built up to be the despair of the future. The
well-governed city should study its present and future area as the
artist regards his prepared sheet of canvas. Within its borders what
varying effects may be produced! With the loving care that the old
Italians bestowed upon the preparation of their panels, the municipality
should plan the ground upon which the life of the city is to move. It is
a picture the arrangement of which means life or death to the citizens;
it may easily be made to glow with health and beauty.
Mr Burns's important Housing Act of 1909 has made it possible for local
authorities to plan out the future extensions of towns; it will be
interesting to see whether there is sufficient imagination in our local
rulers to make the provision fructify.
In one of the most valuable contributions to this subject which have
been published in recent years,[48] Mr T. C. Horsfall describes the
thought and trouble which is given to the planning of the extension of
municipalities by German Town Councils. Thus Stuttgart, in 1901, when
preparing for a large extension of the town borders (its present
population is about 182,000), obtained the advice of skilled architects,
engineers, medical authorities, and _artists_. The politico-economic
aspect of the matter was also carefully considered. The opinions, plans,
and suggestions were then published in a volume to enable all the people
of Stuttgart to study the proposals for extension.
Mannheim, again, which is chiefly a manufacturing town, prepared in 1901
building plans which provide for the requirements of industry and
housing, while always remembering the claims of Beauty. I quote the
following from Mr Horsfall: "The description of the building plan for
Mannheim, prepared by Professor Baumeister, which is published in
Numbers 69, 70, and 71 of the 'Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung,' shows
that the new part of the town will be provided with a remarkably
complete system of narrow railways for passenger traffic, and with an
equally complete system of railway lines of the ordinary width leading
from goods-stations in all directions, for goods traffic, which will
enable every manufactory to load goods on to trucks on its own premises.
Carriage, therefore, will be exceptionally cheap in the town. Yet the
Town Council, who are thinking so much of economical working, recognize
that even their poorest fellow-citizens are men and women, whose bodies
and minds need wholesome recreation and an abundant supply of fresh air,
of light, and of the influence of flowers and trees. The building plan,
therefore, provides for the creation of avenue streets of widths varying
from 24 to 43 yards; and Professor Baumeister adds: 'Of course care has
been taken to provide open spaces, decorative shrubberies, parks and
sites for public buildings.' The width of ordinary streets varies from
8⅓ to 21⅓ yards."
The German building plans provide in what districts factories may be
erected and determine (1) how much of building sites may be covered by
houses, and (2) the height of all buildings. Thus, even in cases where
the municipality does not own its own sites, it can in some measure
control the greed of the houselord. It cannot too strongly be insisted
upon, however, that absolute sovereignty of the manner of distribution
of the people upon area can only be obtained by acquisition of the land.
The practicability of going out and beyond the township and emptying
into the open country the crowded and enfeebled inhabitants of the
cities has been amply demonstrated in the United Kingdom. An
object-lesson of the most practical character is afforded by the
beautiful garden city of Bournville, which the beneficence and wisdom of
Mr George Cadbury have raised four miles from the gloomy city of
Birmingham.
Most people have heard of Bournville, but few are aware that it is not
merely a village erected for the accommodation of Mr Cadbury's
employees, but a working model of what may be done to solve the housing
problem of great cities. The village of Bournville now no longer belongs
to Mr Cadbury, for he has bestowed it upon the nation, the gift being
worth not less than £200,000. In December 1900, the estate was handed
over to the Bournville Village Trust, which is under the final control
of the Charity Commissioners. In the Deed by which the property was made
over to the Trustees the founder has thus set forth its objects: "The
founder is desirous of alleviating the evils which arise from the
insanitary and insufficient accommodation supplied to large numbers of
the working classes and of securing to workers in factories some of the
advantages of outdoor village life, with opportunities for the natural
and healthful occupation of cultivating the soil.... The object is
declared to be the amelioration of the condition of the working-class
and labouring population in and around Birmingham, and elsewhere in
Great Britain, by the provision of improved dwellings, with gardens and
open spaces to be enjoyed therewith."
The objects thus outlined have been carried out by the provision of
beautiful homes set in gardens which are at once a source of revenue and
of healthful recreation to their possessors.