Meanwhile, in other parts of the country private enterprise and private philanthropy had gone in advance of the London County Council. Outside of Birmingham and Liverpool garden cities had been erected in which every family was provided with an acre of land, on some of which men employed in the factories, when they were not at work, increased their earnings in some instances as much as £50, or $250, a year.
Then the County Council began to acquire tramways radiating out in every direction into the suburbs. At the present time the city owns something over a hundred miles of tramway within the city, and of the 300 miles or more in Greater London the majority is either owned by London or the suburban boroughs.
At the ends of these lines the London County Council, and more frequently private individuals, have erected model dwellings on a large scale and are thus gradually moving the city population into the country.
In the meantime much has been done in recent years to increase the number of playgrounds and breathing spaces, to supply bathrooms, wash houses and other conveniences which make it possible to keep the city and people in a healthful and sanitary condition. In many of the principal streets in London I noticed signs directing the people to public baths which were located somewhere underneath the street. The different boroughs contributed in 1907 $738,545 in taxes to support these public baths and bath houses, and at the same time the people of London paid over $400,000 for bath tickets and $85,000 for laundry tickets in order to make use of these public conveniences.
Inner London, not including suburbs, has now an area of 6,588 acres in parks large and small, upon which the city has expended a capital of $9,125,910 and upon which it expends annually the sum of $548,065 or thereabout.
Now, the thing that strikes me about all this is that these vast sums of money which London has spent in clearing up its slums, in providing decent houses, wider streets, breathing spaces, bath houses, swimming pools, and washrooms have been spent mainly on sunshine, air, and water, things which any one may have without cost in the country.
I visited some of these wash houses and saw hundreds of women who had come in from the surrounding neighbourhood to do their week's washing. They were paying by the hour for the use of the municipal washtubs and water, but I am sure they were not any better provided for in this respect than the coloured women of the South who go down on sunshiny days to the brook to do their washing, boiling their clothes in a big iron kettle. I saw the boys in some of the swimming pools, but I did not see any of them that seemed happier than the boy who goes off to the brook with his hook and line and by the way takes a plunge in an old-fashioned swimming hole.
Thus it is that London seems to have found that the best if not the only way to solve the city problem is by transporting its population to the country, settling them in colonies in the suburbs, where they may obtain, at an enormous expense, what four fifths of the Negro population in this country already have and what they can be taught to value and keep if some of the money that is now expended or which will be expended on the city slums were spent in giving the people on the farm some of the advantages which the city offers, the principal one of which is a chance for an education.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The annual income of twenty Negro colleges in the United States was, in 1908, $804,663.