(1) As to the measures which they deem most effectual for the improvement of the same (the street traffic) by the development and interconnection of railways and tramways on or below the surface, by increasing the facilities for other forms of mechanical locomotion, by better provision for the organisation and regulation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic or otherwise; and
(2) As to the desirability of establishing some authority or tribunal to which all schemes of railway or tramway construction of a local character should be referred, and the powers which it would be advisable to confer upon such a body.
THE L.C.C. AND REHOUSING
The tramway policy of the L.C.C. is so connected with the housing, or, rather, with the rehousing question, that although this book is purely on the subject of electrical traction, I cannot avoid making some reference to it.
For fifteen years, since, under the Local Government Act of 1888, the Council was constituted, it has slowly been winning the confidence of Londoners. Aggressive at first, it has relinquished the altruistic theories of youth, and it now realises the fact that it is a body of trustees acting not for one class only, but that it must administer its heritage in the interests of the community at large. Jealousy of its powers is dying out, and by comprehensive and energetic action it justifies itself as the one central privileged body able to deal with the highway, and with the housing problem of Modern Babylon.
One of its provinces, in fact its statutory obligation, is to provide new accommodation—not necessarily in the same locality—in place of all houses destroyed as unfit for human habitation. It also takes upon itself voluntarily (where no such legal obligation exists) in certain instances to provide for rehousing, and, wherever possible, this is effected in the same districts. But this cannot as a rule be done when rehousing is compulsory, and to meet the difficulty, estates have been acquired, and blocks of houses and cottages erected at Croydon, Wood Green, Brixton Hill, Holloway, Hammersmith, and other more or less suburban spots. The Model Dwellings built on the site of Millbank Prison, and inspected by the King and Queen on February 18th last, accommodate 4,500 men, women, and children. At Tooting, the L.C.C. scheme provides for 8,600 people; at Norbury, for 5,800; while at Tottenham there will be quite a new town of 40,000 artisan inhabitants.
Encouragement is given by the Council to the idea that working-men and women—since they cannot, in so many cases, live chock-a-block with their employment—should be provided with homes upon, or a little beyond, the Council’s boundaries, and be brought backwards and forwards by train, for the popular 1d. Being practical men, the Councillors know that any transference on a large scale of London factories to the country, however desirable, cannot be effected yet awhile. And even if they could acquire sites in the centres of industry, and erect gigantic lodging-houses, the cost would be prohibitive. They have to deal with the present necessity. Their ideal is probably the workshop as it exists in London, with the heads of firms at Belsize Park, Bayswater, and Dulwich, the clerks at Wandsworth, Chelsea, and Fulham, and the workmen at Tottenham, Wood Green, and Hammersmith.
On the other hand, figures quoted by Mr. Troupe, of the Home Office,[5] show to what a large extent it might be possible to relieve congestion by the removal of factories to the country. He said that there were 748 factories in London classified, in the following proportions, viz. 50 for machine-making, 30 for bread and biscuit-baking, 14 for cabinet-making, 11 for turning out fruit preserves, 16 breweries, 47 book-binding establishments, 72 printing houses (not including newspapers), and 19 saw-mills. In these 748 factories close upon 200,000 people were employed, representing with their families some 600,000 human beings, and if, following the recent example of the largest cabinet-makers in London, the bulk of these removed into the country, which they might do if suitable railway arrangements could be made, a considerable number of the 600,000 men, women, and children would be rehoused amidst “fresh woods and pastures new,” greatly to their benefit.
This is a dream at present, as factories cannot without great loss be summarily transferred from suitable urban quarters where water-frontages and locomotive facilities exist. They have grown up with, and in many cases created the district in which they are situated. Bermondsey has for years been the home of the leather trade, Lambeth of the pottery industry, and although Mr. Justice Grantham instances Doulton’s as an awful example of an uneconomical delinquent London manufactory—their clay in Dorsetshire, their coal in the Midlands, their salt in Cheshire, and their works on the banks of the Thames—it is no light matter to break with long business ties and take up with fresh ones, not so easy to leave the old love and take up with the new.
It will be granted, however, that Mr. William L. Magden was right when he maintained that “no manufacturer about to commence business at the present day would fix upon London as a suitable position. He would choose rather a district in which land was cheap, and in which he could obtain cheap power for his machinery and transport for his goods. He should not in future be limited to the colliery districts or to the main lines of railway. Light railways serving as feeders to the main lines, and the supply of electrical energy over large areas from main power stations, could provide for both these requirements, giving the manufacturer ample assurance that his works could be run cheaply, and that the raw material and manufactured products could be efficiently handled. By such means electrical science is capable of opening up thousands of square miles in England for manufacturing purposes, the native population of which has been languishing under the chronic complaint of agricultural depression.”