Always the idea appears to be uppermost that this is a poor, a very poor, country, which cannot afford to do the things which it would wish to do. That teachers "properly trained in the various branches of hygiene," which certainly do not cover the diagnosis of disease, should be considered competent to decide which children should or should not undergo medical examination amounts to an expression of opinion that we cannot afford to provide the schools with their "greatest need."
I refer the timid to the fact that the gross assessments to Income Tax in 1908-9 were over £1,000,000,000. The practical point is this. Of the £1,000,000,000, can we spare a few millions for the purposes mentioned in this chapter?
[44] Cd. 2120.
[45] It is of interest to observe that Mr Robert Hunter estimates that 70,000 of the school children of New York arrive at school either breakfastless or underfed. This estimate accounts for 13 per cent. of the school children of the city.
CHAPTER XVI
THE HOME
IT is an amusing statistical fact that at the census of 1901 our "overcrowded" England had but 558 persons to the square mile, or one person to 1.15 acres, or one family to about 6 acres. If in 1901 the population of England and Wales had been distributed evenly over the area there would have been a distance of 240 feet between each person. In 1871 a similar distribution would have removed each person from his neighbour by 288 feet. Thus England is little more "crowded" to-day than it was a generation ago. It is useful to remind ourselves by these statistical exercises that the country is indeed nearly empty, and the towns very full. In the 75,000 acres of the administrative county of London were crowded, at the census of 1901, 4,536,541 people, a number as great as the entire population of Australia, almost as great as the entire population of the Dominion of Canada, and more than one-tenth of the entire population of the United Kingdom. In London and 75 other great towns in England and Wales are crowded about 15,000,000 persons or about one-half of the entire population of the country. As London and the great towns grow, the countryside is increasingly depopulated, and not the countryside alone. Many small towns are decreasing in size. Thus an increasing population is ever huddling closer together in a diminishing number of centres.
The greater number of our new births, then, are in crowded districts. The figures of Book I. tell us, also that the greater number are in urban houses of a rental under £20 per annum. The rental values of the houses of Great Britain in 1907-8 were as follows:
HOUSES OF GREAT BRITAIN, 1907-8
The figures do not include Ireland, but they include all residential shops, lodging-houses, hotels, farm-houses, etc., in Great Britain.