as those revealed to us in the two recent reports of the Royal Commission on the housing of the working classes in Scotland, and the more recent inquiry into the mining industry?

When we think, too, of the enormous expenditure of the people of Great Britain annually, for alcoholic beverages, at least four-fifths of which is spent in a way that is positively injurious, going to the destruction of moral, intellectual and physical power, we get some idea of the force which a wiser consumption of wealth might introduce into the economic life of the country, and we realize how important is the necessity for an improved standard of life.

There is need of a generous and persistent cultivation of betterment of the mind and the heart of the individual citizen in every rank and walk of life and society. It is useless to promote social reforms by giving high wages, or permitting immense profits to the unregenerate of any class of society. They only squander them in animal gratifications. It is useless to sweep away slums, if the defects of character-whether in landlord, builder or inhabitantwhich originally created them, remain. There are thousands of people in this country who, if transferred from their present slums to the West End, would convert it into a slum within a month.

The improvement in the standard of life, with the better environment, would result in an awakening to a higher sense of citizenship. We could look to the trade unions and the numerous industrial and provident institutions to exercise a restraining influence by disciplinary action in the case of members who might not recognize their responsibility for the custody of other people's property which for the time they might be occupying.

A Higher Sense of Citizenship.

This better environment would affect not only the feelings of the worker but also his efficiency and his capacity for increased production, which would help towards the abolition of the problem.

In all trades and industries there is a considerable diminution in output, and especially is this true of the building trade, as has already been illustrated in an earlier section. This diminution of output has been considerably intensified as the war has progressed. The workers have considered the continued revelations of profiteering by employers, which have been brought to public notice during the war, as an excuse for further diminution of output. This has been intensified by the vicious system which the Government

introduced, of payment for their work on a percentage basis, resulting in an almost complete absence of control over output.

It has been shown that a large proportion of the cost of erecting houses is incurred in the payment of wages, and that the present output is much below that of, say, thirty years ago. One of the principal trades concerned is that of bricklaying and the restrictive output in this industry has been referred to. For hundreds of years there has been little or no improvement made in the implements and materials used in this trade, nor in the method of laying bricks. In recent years, however, attempts have been made in America to apply the principles of scientific management. The result has been that, in one instance, with union bricklayers, in laying a factory wall, 12 in. thick, with two kinds of brick, faced and ruled joints on both sides of the wall, an average of 350 bricks per man per hour was attained. When this figure is compared with the English standard, before quoted, of about 450 bricks per man per day, it will be seen how a new standard of production would enable the cost of housing to be reduced, with the consequent reduction in economic rent. In brick-walling, the cost of labour and material had doubled since the war, but the actual work had increased in price from 4s. 6d. a yard to 17s. 6d. and 18s. per yard. The difference was due to decreased output. In 1914 estimates were obtained for the erection of a school in the Liverpool area, the lowest estimate being £11,000. In September, 1919, the same firms were asked to quote to the same bills of quantities. The lowest estimate received was £44,000. Here again much of the difference between the two estimates was due to reduced output in all the grades of labour concerned.

A new standard of production is, therefore, necessary in all trades and industries. The employers must recognize their responsibilities in this connection. It is of no benefit to restrict the landlord's action in increasing the rent of houses when the landlord is the victim of the trusts and combines in the building trades. The worker must be educated to realize that the present ineffectual output is detrimental to his own interests. He must be taught to appreciate the fact that the present cycle of increased cost of commodities followed by bonuses on wages, which further increase the cost of living, is of no real benefit to him. It is incumbent upon all to re-double their activities and increase the productivity

of field, factory, workshop and office. Above all must be cultivated the true standard of citizenship.

So long as there is a deficiency in excess of what we were accustomed to, so long must some of us, and especially the poorer members of the community, feel the pinch occasioned by the late devastating

war.

For nearly five years we have been consumers, and, not merely consumers, but destroyers. The fields of many lands have been soaked with the blood of the bravest and best of our youth. Is it too much to hope that, in the days to come, there shall be given "beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourning," and that all citizens shall so rise to the sense of their responsibilities that we may indeed "build Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land" ?

The answer to the economic aspect of the problem is, it is true, another problem, and probably a much more complex one, involving almost the whole range of economics, viz., increased wages, reduced prices, and increased production. To solve this further problem, which can scarcely be beyond the wit of man, would indeed be to herald the dawn of a new age.

SECTION VIII

TOWN PLANNING

I think that you ought to take care that the great suburbs growing up round London at the present time shall not be mere blocks of brick and mortar as they are at present. You ought to take care that powers are given to local bodies, and you should combine to see that they use them to prevent this being done and to secure open spaces."-Address by ARNOLD TOYNBEE in 1883.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

PROVISIONS UNDER THE 1909 ACT

THAT the control of town development in the public interest is essential to protect new housing areas from the evils characteristic of the old is a truth taught by long and painful experience, and universally recognized by housing reformers. Part II of the Housing and Town Planning, etc., Act of 1909 was framed to enable local authorities to exercise this control.

Introduction.

The objects to be attained by the preparation of a town planning scheme are defined as "proper sanitary conditions, amenity and convenience," and provisions relating to these objects may be inserted in a town planning scheme.

Thus, the Act provides, not only for the proper design of streets, but also for the limitation of the number of houses, and the provision of adequate light and air, and forbids the overcrowding of large masses of population. This part of the Act opens up to all progressive authorities limitless opportunities for housing reform.

It is estimated that the local authorities controlling the great towns of Great Britain have had to pay an aggregate sum of £25,000,000 in the last fifty years as a result of the lack of foresight and want of powers in regard to the proper laying out of districts. The earliest form of town planning was found in the rectangular streets of Greece and Rome; it was essentially an engineer's design,

in History.

and the Romans introduced it with their roads

Town Planning and aqueducts to Britain and Gaul. With the triumphs of the barbarians Roman art and culture were swept away, including the newest art of all, and it was not

until A.D. 1000 that culture began again to assert itself. It was left to the Renaissance period to find something better than the rectangular design, for Michael Angelo in his designing of St. Peter's at Rome, showed that the town planners of this time were architects first and town planners afterwards. They were led to undertake the task of planning by the recognition of the necessity of giving adequate space to the produce of their genius. After the Thirty Years' War the ruling powers encouraged the idea as is evidenced in Berlin, Mannheim, Karlsruhe, and Dusseldorf, Peter the Great planned St. Petersburg in 1703. After the Great Fire in 1666, both Sir Christopher Wren and John Evelyn prepared complete schemes for rebuilding the City of London, but the City Fathers considered it too late. Lincoln's Inn Fields were planned by Inigo Jones, and during the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries many of the London Squares were privately planned. Edinburgh is universally regarded as the best town planning example which Great Britain shows, and was developed by James Craig in 1767. Napoleon III and Haussmann, influenced by the example of London, began the planning of Paris in 1853. This was completed at a cost of nearly fifty million pounds.

The development of the modern urban area is vividly described by H. G. Wells in The New Machiavelli, wherein he gives the picture of the rapid rise, under modern industrial conditions, of the district of London which he calls Bromstead.

The Development of the Urban Area.

The Ravensbrook of my earlier memories was a beautiful stream. It came into my world out of a mysterious Beyond, out of a garden, splashing brightly down a weir which had once been the weir of a mill. (Above the weir and inaccessible there were bulrushes growing in splendid clumps, and beyond that, pampas grass, yellow and crimson spikes of hollyhock, and blue suggestions of wonderland.) From the pool at the foot of this initial cascade it flowed in a leisurely fashion beside a footpath-there were two pretty thatched cottages on the left, and here were ducks, and there were willows on the right-and so came to where great trees grew on high banks on either hand and bowed closer, and at last met overhead. This part was difficult to reach because of an old fence, but a little boy might glimpse that long cavern of greenery by wading. Either I have actually seen kingfishers there, or my father has described them so accurately to me that he inserted them into my memory. I remember them there anyhow. Most of that overhung part I never penetrated at all, but followed the field path with my mother and met the stream again, where beyond there were flat meadows, Roper's meadows. The Ravensbrook went meandering across the middle of these, now between steep banks, and now with wide shallows at the bends where the cattle waded and drank. Yellow and purple loosestrife and、 ordinary rushes grew in clumps along the bank, and now and then a willow,