time, failing which the Local Government Board should carry it out, charging the defaulting local authority with the cost. It is very important that the principal officers of a local authority, especially those dealing with health and housing, should have security of tenure of office. Officials of Accordingly it is imperative as to medical officers of health, sanitary inspectors, borough engineers, borough surveyors, clerk of works and town planning engineers, that their appointments and salaries should be subject to the approval of the Local Government Board, and they should not be removable from office except with the sanction of the Board. Sub-division of To meet the present emergency local authorities should have power to acquire and to enlarge, repair and improve unsatisfactory houses so as to make them suitable for occupation. Large numbers of houses could be dealt with in this way, especially the older type of houses which by a moderate outlay of money could be adapted for use as tenements or flats. In such cases great care would be necessary to see that the requirements of the local authority were duly complied with. Whatever the size of the house or the number of rooms in a tenement, any sub-division of whatever kind or degree should be subject to the approval and certification of the local authority. If the owner or other person responsible permits the occupation of such sub-divided house without a certificate of the local authority or their officers, this should be made a statutory offence punishable by fine. The evil is rampant; it is, moreover, of a very farreaching kind in its degrading influence, physical, moral and social, on the inhabitants of these dwellings; and the remedy must be correspondingly drastic. The local authority should, therefore, have power to make by-laws in reference to sub-divided houses. Each sub-divided house should have all the essentials of a healthy house. Wherever possible in existing houses and in all new or reconstructed houses there should be a w.c. for the exclusive use of occupants of each house. This means one w.c. to each "family" occupying such sub-divided house. Wherever there is a shortage of houses and rents are high, or wages are low, the number of houses (by whatever name known) in which more than one family resides, increases. The population per house tends to increase. In Liverpool there were in the autumn of 1918 over 16,600 sublet houses. This is equivalent to a population of at least 100,000. In view of shortage of houses this number is likely to increase. Unless means are taken to spread this population over a greater area the health of the city is bound to suffer; and such conditions are prevalent in all large towns. The mere building of houses does not solve this part of the problem, which can only be met by the above recommendations and most of those that follow. Of the latter the most important is improved methods of transit. CHAPTER XXXII TRANSIT THE housing problem is so intimately bound up with the problem of cheap and rapid transit that it is no exaggeration to say that, in our larger towns and cities, any adequate Transit. solution of the former must necessarily include a solution of the latter. Given adequate transit facilities it should be possible to provide garden suburbs around the city where land is sufficiently cheap to make the crowding together of houses quite unnecessary, and where everyone who wants a garden can have one. The provision of adequate transit facilities would be an advantage, not only to those who use them, but also to those who remain in the towns, for, the demand being less urgent, any excessive urban cottage rents would tend to drop. Cheap transit, if extensive enough, acts as a safety valve, and prevents the cost of land for residential purposes from rising above a certain point. But it brings with it other important advantages. If it is desirable for wealthy people to reside in the suburbs instead of in the town it is much more desirable for working people to do so. So far as health considerations are concerned, the contrast between the country and the town is more marked for the poor than for the rich, because their conditions in the town are so much less favourable. But there are also economic considerations of great importance. If a working man lived in the suburbs, with an ample garden in which he could grow vegetables sufficient for his family, and keep poultry and a pig, this would not only mean a substantial addition to his normal weekly income, but would constitute a valuable reserve in periods of unemployment.1 The provision of adequate transit facilities will not only make cheap land available, and thereby facilitate a limitation of the number of houses which may be built per acre it will not only tend to lower rents in the towns, but it will tend to mitigate to some extent the evils of unemployment and casual labour. It may be suggested that, where sites suitable for the erection. of working-class dwellings are not available at reasonable prices, The Land, vol. 2, p. 126. local authorities, besides having wider powers than they now possess for providing all manner of transit facilities within and without their area, should have laid on them a statutory obligation to promote such schemes with a view to rendering accessible a sufficient area of suitable building land. The new area attracts the best of the population nearest to it, and the areas relieved by the new area in their turn attract others. Thus a movement and a circulation takes place around the new centre. Additional transport and additional dwellings in distant suburbs will only relieve overcrowding in a particular area or zone by slow, distant, and indirect effect. Should the local authorities be relieved of the obligation to re-house the dispersed upon the site of the slum clearance, an improved system of transit becomes an immediate necessity. One of the chief causes of overcrowding and of high rents in the cities is simply the prejudice of the working classes and the nature of their amusements. In time, however, the better accommodation at the outskirts, and the lower rents, must have an effect on the rents of the centre. The middle classes have long since migrated to the suburbs and the working classes should be encouraged to follow suit. It is possible that in the near future there may be some fall in ground rents of old and fully peopled areas in the cities. The natural scarcity of the accessible land may be counteracted in two ways, first by raising the height of the buildings and providing modern lifts, etc., as referred to in the preceding pages, and secondly by improved means of transport. An important Act of Parliament was passed in 1883 (46 & 47 Vict. c. 34) intended to encourage the running of cheap trains by the railway companies and thus to relieve the congested districts of the Metropolis by allowing workmen to live in outlying suburbs. Cheap Trains. If the company does not provide the accommodation required, it may be deprived of the benefits of the Act, which. in section 2 removes the passenger duty upon fares not exceeding one penny per mile. It will thus be seen that a strong inducement was held out to the railway companies to provide cheap workmen's trains. Royal The Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the means of locomotion and transport in London, issued eight large volumes, some of them containing over a thousand pages. Commission of It has already been pointed out that the working London Traffic, classes cannot be housed in the central area at 1905. rents which they can afford to pay, and so the whole problem of London locomotion, and for the matter of that, the transit question of most large towns, needs to be dealt with on a comprehensive plan, and as speedily as possible. The points of the Royal Commission as they affect the housing of the working classes are as follows (a) That the overcrowding in the metropolitan district is, generally speaking, greatest in the central area, and tends to diminish towards the suburbs. (b) In this central area the average weekly rents for the workmen's dwellings are very high and tend to diminish towards the suburbs. (c) The price of land in the central districts of London is too high to allow it to be used for re-housing purposes. (d) That many workmen can, if transport be provided, live outside the central area. (e) That where facilities for locomotion have been provided the population does as a matter of fact take advantage of them, and live either in the suburbs or outside London proper. In a very large number of cases it is not necessary that persons should live near their work. There are, however, some trades and occupations, for example, those of dockers, stevedores, market porters and night. workers, in which any great distance between the worker's place of residence and the work itself would be an insuperable bar to employment. There are also many cases where small factories working long hours, especially in the cheap tailoring trade, render near residence necessary, but this is undesirable in itself, being a part of the sweating system which needs to be attacked. Generally speaking, we may say that providing the accommodation is cheap and adequate, and that the transit is speedy and cheap, the large majority of workers would be able to live away from the workshop or factory, in the suburbs. For such workers as must live near their work the early abolition of the remaining insanitary court houses, together with such local |