having an additional bedroom on the first floor and a parlour on the ground floor. All are fitted with pantries, bath, and modern sanitary conveniences, and an admirable feature of the designs is that the unsightly "back addition" is entirely dispensed with. Coal storage, etc., is provided for in commodious back yards. After much experience a scale of dimensions for the rooms has been hit upon, any increase or decrease of which is viewed by the occupants with disfavour as either too large or too small for their furniture. These are, for the all-important living-rooms, about 14 ft. each way, or 14 ft. by 16 ft. Originally the standard types of cottage cost £200 and £350 respectively to build; in 1902, owing partly to increased cost of material, and partly to diminished work for the same money, this cost had risen to £330 and £550. Taking the average value of the land at £240 an acre, the maximum number of houses being ten per acre, the cost of house and land together was then taken as £354. This, with a charge of 4 per cent. interest, and 1 per cent. depreciation, in addition to rates, taxes, repairs and maintenances, would necessitate a weekly rental of 10s. 6d. to make it pay, or, taking the rate of interest at 3 per cent. and depreciation at per cent. the rental would be 8s. 3d. It was not, therefore, then, and much less is it now, commercially possible to erect a village such as Port Sunlight for the class inhabiting it, save in pursuance of such a prosperity-sharing scheme as that which has rendered it possible here to eliminate capital cost from the basis of rental, though, if open to ordinary tenants, it could easily be made profitable. The capital outlay, according to the Village accounts for 1917, had reached a total of £677,940, and the interest at 5 per cent. on the outlay up to December, 1916, was written off on the books of Lever Brothers, Limited, at £32,812 whereas the rents charged for cottages, inn, shops, and allotment gardens amounted to only £13,722. The net rents range from 3s. 9d. to 4s. 3d. a week for kitchen cottages, and from 5s. 6d. to 8s. 6d. weekly for parlour houses. Rates and taxes bring up these rents by from 1s. 6d. to 1s. 9d. to 2s. per week. A similar experiment, modelled to some extent on that of Mr. Cadbury, has been made by Mr. Joseph Rowntree, Earswick. the Chairman of Rowntree & Co., Ltd. The Village Trust, established in 1904, to which he has transferred 120 acres of land at Earswick, West Huntingdon, two miles from York, has already constructed forty to fifty houses which would serve as a model to any municipality building workingclass cottages. In the deed of foundation, as at Bournville, onetenth of the land, exclusive of roads, is to be laid out and used as parks, recreation grounds and open spaces. The houses are not to occupy more than one-fourth of the sites upon which they are built, and most of the houses already constructed have gardens of not less than 350 square yards. There are strips of grass of about 5 ft. wide between the roadway and the footpath on each side, and on these strips trees have been planted. The houses were let at about 4s. 6d. per week, the tenants paying the rates, which amount to 8d. per week. It is hoped that the experiment will be a useful contribution to the housing problem, and, since the net rental of the houses amounts to about 3 per cent. on the capital expended, there seems good reason for supposing that any local authority, without inflicting a burden upon the rates, might advantageously follow the example set at Earswick. The plan of the estate and the design of many of the houses is the work of Mr. Raymond Unwin. Another interesting village has been established by the late Sir Arthur Markham and his colleagues of the Brodsworth Main Colliery Company, by the building of the Woodlands Colliery Village near to Doncaster, in accordance with the plan of Mr. Soutar and the designs of Mr. Percy Houfton. Woodlands On this estate have been built 1,000 model cottages, with an average of about five to the acre. These houses, which have each been given a 25 ft. frontage in order to obtain the maximum of light, air and sunshine, contain a large living-room (18 ft. by 13 ft.), scullery, and three bedrooms (or parlour, kitchen, scullery, three bedrooms), and bathroom fitted with hot and cold water. Each house has its own w.c., and each house has cross-ventilation from the front door to a window opening on the staircase. Cupboards, dressers and wardrobes are fitted into the rooms, and a steamflue copper is placed in the scullery. The rents vary from 5s. to 5s. 9d. per week, with rates additional. The main road is 120 ft. wide, with wide grass margins and a double avenue of trees; radiating from this are other roads 50 ft, wide, but as each house is set back from the road 25 ft. to 30 ft. there is at least 100 ft. space between, which, with large open spaces at the rear will secure a healthy environment for all. The large public baths, consisting of a central swimming bathround which are grouped a number of shower baths--which the late Sir Arthur Markham presented to the village, are one of the most pleasing features of the scheme. Here each miner is provided with a separate wardrobe and locker where he can leave his clean clothes when going to his work, resuming them before going home after a thorough cleansing with shower and plunge. His working clothes will be well aired and dried in a steam-heated corridor before again required. Those who understand how near cleanliness is to godliness will appreciate the moral effect of this provision on a mining population. On one portion of the estate stands a mansion which is converted into a workmen's club. This is surrounded by gardens, lawn, a park of twelve acres with fine large forest trees and a fishing lake of four acres and a half-all of which are to be preserved, with an additional ten acres of meadow, for the enjoyment and recreation of the inhabitants. The new model village which the Birmingham Corporation has established in the Elan valley in connection with its Welsh water Birmingham Water Committee's Welsh Model Village. supply was formally opened in March, 1909. The total outlay was about £20,000. When the constructive work in the valley was in progress provision had to be made for the housing of a large number of workmen, and a village of wooden huts developed on the banks of the river, two miles above Rhayader. These have now been removed, and in order to accommodate the necessary permanent staff a small village, on model lines, has been erected. In all there are, in addition to the offices, about twelve houses, a school, and a single shop. The school has been built to accommodate 120 children, and will also serve as an assembly hall. In the middle of the village is an open space with a fountain. Generally speaking, the houses are of the cottage type, and stand in pairs, at intervals extending over half a mile, connected by a properly made road. Each cottage has four bedrooms, and on the ground floor a bathroom. The houses for the superintendent and the schoolmaster are of a large type. 6-(1752) CHAPTER XII SOCIETIES OF PUBLIC UTILITY PRIVATE speculative enterprise suffers from a disadvantage which public enterprise does not share, namely, its inability to obtain the necessary capital at a low rate of interest. (8) Societies of Public enterprise, on the other hand, suffers from Public Utility. disadvantages which we shall presently consider, and which, to some extent, counterbalance its superior financial position. The question therefore arises whether the flexibility, astuteness, and energy of private enterprise cannot be combined with such guarantees for the safety of invested capital as a corporate body can offer. The answer is that they may be combined in one form or other of voluntary co-operative enterprise. A body of private citizens may not have the daring and resourcefulness of an individual speculator, and its corporate financial guarantee may not be worth as much as that of a municipal authority which can offer the rates as security; but it retains enough of the individual speculator's business talents, and of the public authority's financial soundness to constitute a most happily-blended instrument for meeting so great a national need as the housing of the workers. Moreover, although voluntary in origin and constitution, it is more easily subjected to State control, as a quid pro quo for State help, than is a private individual; and, while no practicable scheme has as yet been devised for the participation in State credit of private builders with the possible exception of advances to individual landowners for permanent improvements to estates, so as to enable them to provide houses more cheaply, there are several possible methods by which a voluntary organization, submitting to a certain amount of public regulation, may be thus assisted. The growth of societies of public utility was slow until the passing of the Housing and Town Planning, etc., Act of 1909, which included a clause enabling the Public Works Loan Commissioners to lend up to two-thirds of the money, needed to develop workingclass estates, to societies registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Acts. Clause 4 reads as follows. (1) Where a loan is made by the Public Works Loan Commissioners under section 67, sub-section (2) (d), of the principal Act, to a public utility society, the words " two-thirds" shall be substituted for the words one moiety.' (2) For the purposes of this section a public utility society means a society registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, 1893, or any amendment thereof, the rules whereof prohibit the payment of any interest or dividend at a rate exceeding 5 per cent. per annum. The garden city movement seeks to make us ashamed of our ugly, unhealthy cities, and to advance principles by which their worst evils may be altogether abolished, or at Garden Cities. least reduced to a minimum, in the planning of new cities. Our rural districts are perhaps the most beautiful in Europe, the gentle, undulating character of English landscape lending them a peculiar charm; but our cities and many of our larger towns are hopelessly unlovely, and hardly bear comparison with the towns of Germany, where every thirdrate, or even fourth-rate city has well-laid out gardens, open spaces, broad streets and fine municipal buildings. The main principles of the garden city movement may be classified as follows (1) Constructive: by the erection of new houses in undeveloped areas. (2) Provision for both industry and residence. (3) To procure the unearned increment for the community. Since most of our cities are growing in a haphazard way and becoming increasingly ugly, it is claimed that the only effective remedy is to start afresh-to build cities that shall not be allowed to expand except along stated lines, and these lines in the direction of the maximum of beauty obtainable. As the official handbook of The First Garden City Co., Ltd., puts it: The essence of the idea lies in the principle of beginning at the beginning. Instead of allowing houses to be run up here and there, one block or one street quite irrespective of the position of another, drainage and water systems being introduced piecemeal, as best they can . . . the whole city which is to be, should be planned out from the outset with an eye to the convenience of the community as a whole." The advocates of this principle point out how many of the blunders and disfigurements of our towns could have been avoided by a little forethought and previous arrangement. They give |