It was a happy and novel experience to observe the pleasure which Mr. Burns took in pointing out the improvement in the people, in the dwellings, and in the life of the people generally, and to note, in turn, the familiar and cheerful way with which all sorts of people we met on the streets greeted him as we passed.
"Hello! Johnny Burns," a group of schoolboys would call as we went by. Once we passed by a group of some fifteen or twenty workingwomen sitting in one of the refreshment booths, drinking their afternoon tea and, apparently, holding a neighbourhood meeting of some kind or other. As they recognized the man who, as member of the London County Council, had been responsible for most of the improvements that had been made in the homes and surroundings in which they lived, they stood up and waved their handkerchiefs, and even attempted a faint and feminine "hurrah for Johnny Burns," the member from Battersea.
There are 150,000 people in Battersea, but Mr. Burns seemed to be acquainted with every one of them, and when he wanted to show me the inside of some of the new "County Council houses," as they are called, did not hesitate to knock at the nearest door, where we were gladly welcomed. The people seamed to be just as proud of their new houses, and of Mr. Burns, as he was of them.
The houses which we visited were, some of them, no more than three or four rooms, but each one of them was as neat and wholesome as if it had been a palace. They were very compactly built, but provided with every sort of modern convenience, including electric lights and baths.
There were houses of five and six rooms intended for clerks and small business men, which rented for a pound a week, and there were cheaper houses, for ordinary labouring people, which rented for two dollars per week. These houses are built directly under the direction of the London County Council, and are expected to pay 3 per cent. upon the investment, after completion.
The London County Council was not the first to make the experiment of building decent and substantial houses for the labouring classes. Some thirty years before, on what is known as the Shaftbury Park Estate, 1,200 houses, which provide homes for eleven thousand people, were erected and the investment had been made to pay.
I looked down the long lanes of little vine-covered buildings which make up this estate. It seemed as if some great army had settled on the land and built permanent quarters.
These labour colonies were interesting, not merely for the improvement they had made in the lives of a large section of the people living in this part of the city, but as the forerunner of those garden cities which private enterprise has erected at places like Port Sunlight, near Liverpool; Bourneville, in the outskirts of Birmingham, and at Letchworth, thirty-four miles from London.
Not far from Battersea Park, and in a part of the city which was formerly inhabited almost wholly by the very poor, we visited the public baths and a public washhouse where, during the course of a year, 42,000 women come to wash their clothes, paying at the rate of three cents an hour for the use of the municipal tubs and hot water. Children pay a penny or two cents for the use of the public baths. The building is also provided with a gymnasium for the use of the children in winter, and contains a hall which is rented to workingmen's clubs at a nominal price.
What pleased me most was to see the orderly way in which the children had learned to conduct themselves in these places, which, as was evident, had become not merely places for recreation, but at the same time schools of good manners.