D, 1.-Powers under which local authorities may lease land acquired under Part III. of LIST OF Diagram showing Distribution of Population in England and. Wales at present Liverpool: Hornby Street Area.-A typical Court PAGE Hornby Street Area, 1902 26 Hornby Street Area, 1907 An Outside Staircase Sketch of a Living-room Fireplace Liverpool Hornby Street Area.--Labourers' Dwellings Liverpool: Hornby Street Area. One of the New Blocks Row of Houses before Repair Row of Houses after Repair A typical Birmingham Court, before enforcing Part II. of the 1890 Act Front Elevation, showing how Light and Air are let into Courts 36 37 facing 38 Ground Plan showing the Conversion of Three Courts into facing 38 Plan made in conformity with Birmingham Bye-laws facing 64 Bye-law Road 64 Back Yard in Merrow Street Tenements, May, 1906 106 122 123 Recreation Ground and Garden Houses, May, 1906 125 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION BY THE RT. HON. ALFRED LYTTELTON, M.P. MY DEAR NETtlefold, The phrase is often misused-nevertheless, I am going without fear to say that I think it an honour to comply with your invitation to write a brief preface to this book. Ever since those days when you showed me in Birmingham the evidences of the work of the committee of which you were the chairman I had looked forward to the publication of “Practical Housing," for I knew that if you could set forth the methods which you have there pursued, the feet of many willing and ardent reformers would be set upon an ordered and well defined track. I for one would gladly traverse many dusty miles to achieve the ends to which you aspire; but there is no dust in the pleasant paths of this volume, which I read at a single sitting with absorbed interest and with general and cordial agreement. In the problems of social reform presented by an old and complex civilisation such as ours we are often confronted by the pathetic spectacle of men so inflamed by the contemplation of evil and suffering that in their reforms they choose speed and violence in preference to patient persuasion. The strong hand is of course here and there necessary and must always be known to be in reserve. But good constructive workers in fields strewn with the débris of past mistakes must be cautious; must not enlist on the side of ancient abuses the sentiment of Justice which revolts against the sacrifice of the individual for those general errors for which the community is responsible, and must bear steadily in mind that impatience of financial burthen especially in the form of rates which, as we must all recognise, is a primary and powerful political motive among our people. The student of your book will find illustrations of your firm grasp of these truths in your preference of the slower and far cheaper methods of Part II. of the Housing Act of 1890 (recently confirmed by a valuable and weighty report of the Mansion House Council, 1908), and in the general attitude you advocate as becoming in a public authority towards property owners; by your suggestion of careful and patient explanation of the precise improvements which owners are compellable to make, their specification and cost; by your pleas for some reasonable elasticity in respect of bye-laws, and for time for making improvements so necessary in this sphere of business, and by your recognition of the value of conference and co-operation as distinguished from official decrees made without consultation and enforced without consideration. As one who has had a fruitful practical experience of town planning at the Garden Suburb at Hampstead, I have naturally looked at the part of the book dealing with that subject with peculiar interest. No branch of the Housing problem more imperatively demands the application of the principles above set forth, which I believe we hold in common. If compulsion is looked to rather than persuasion as the rule, not the exception, in the acquisition of land, if hard and fast schemes are driven through against dissenting owners, if local opinion ---even local prejudice-is not attended to, if conferences with local worthies accustomed to respectful audience in village gatherings are neglected or hurried, the machinery for bringing Town Planning Reform into prosperous operation will creak and groan from the first; the co-operative spirit will be damped, open spaces, recreation fields, public concert and reading rooms-the symbols of friendly association, good fellowship and civic sympathy--will lose their significance and will be started in a discordant environment, greatly impeding if not destroying their full opportunity of success. But I am drawing nigh the perilous regions of the didactic, and must hasten to a close. This popular edition should be read and digested by everyone who aspires to doing something for the greatest of all social causes. If my warrant can add anything to the just reputation of the book, here it is for what it may be worth under my hand and seal. The book is good reading, lucid, is stamped with the hallmark of ripe experience, penetrated throughout by sense, knowledge, sympathy and rational enthusiasm. You are to be envied for having written it; soon I shall pity those who have not read it. |