r '
THE BETRAYAL
OF THE SLUMS
BytheIlt.Hon.
CHRISTOPHER ADDISON
I
C-NRLF
^B ?T? 0M7
10 THE BETRAYAL QF THE SLUMS
Almost at once certain weaknesses and
neglects in the training, equipment, organisa-
tion and physical capacity of the people
became apparent, often with a tragical
revelation. It was realised with a poignant
acuteness that the drab, unsavoury and un-
healthy conditions under which so many
of our people have to spend their lives,
were not only a great drawback to our
working efficiency, but a real danger to the
State.
At that time men of all sections, realising
these conditions, declared that they would
engage themselves not only to secure emanci-
pation from the burdens and perils of war,
but to luiite in a sustained endeavour to
improve the conditions of life of those
millions of our fellow-countrymen who in-
habit dilapidated cottages or wretched tene-
ments in mean streets, and who are destined
to struggle continually against conditions
which produce gravely disabling effects and
constitute altogether a menacing weakness to
our whole society.
Responsible leaders of the Government
were forward and eloquent in promising that
the effort should be made and should be
THE BETRAYAL ii
persevered with. There can be no doubt
that many a young man who died for his
country derived some comfort from the
conviction that in the time to come there
was a brighter hope for those whom he loved
at home and that they had some prospect of
escape from squalor and of the attainment for
themselves and their children of a better
opportunity in life.
The pledges in question were of a very
definite character, and were often repeated.
They were embodied in a precise form in the
Housing and Town Planning Act of 1919,
and the records of the proceedings thereon
bear witness to the fact that one of the
difficulties of the Minister in charge of the
Bill was to resist proposals which would
have made the task exceed the limits of any
possible form of execution. The intention
of the Government to persevere in this
effort was very clearly stated to the people
in the manifesto of the Prime Minister and
Mr. Bonar Law when their support was
solicited at the General Election of 1918.
The Prime Minister at one time declared
that in this matter " the interests of public
health and humanity are at stake."
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THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT
One of the pledges given by the Govern-
ment to our fighting men was that they
should have habitations fit for human beings,
in other words, that those plague spots, the
slums, should be gradually wiped off our
map. That promise has not been redeemed.
Dr. Addison, the first Minister of Public
Health, reveals the actual conditions of the
homes to which heroes had to return, and
which produce C 3 men out of A i material.
He calls for a definite policy which,
without being extravagant in finance, will
exercise a great economy in human life.
THE BETRAYAL
OF THE SLUMS
BY
THE RT. HON.
CHRISTOPHER ADDISON, M.D.,M.P.
FIRST MINISTER OF HEALTH
HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED
3 YORK STREET ST. JAMES'S
LONDON S.W.x ffi ffi MCMXXII
/^ 27333
A3/^^^
rfMAN » SONS UTO.. PH INTERS. LONOOM. REAWNO ANO FAKENMAM.
CONTENTS
CB AFTER PAGE
I. THE BETRAYAL - - - g
II. ITS CIRCUMSTANCES - - 1 9
III. IMMEDIATE RESULTS - - 32
IV. WHAT THE PROPOSED GRANT
WILL DO - - - - 48
V. LIFE IN SLUM HOUSES — ITS
GENERAL CHARACTER - - 59
VI. LIFE IN SLUM HOUSES — SOME
OF ITS RESULTS - - - 72
VII. LIFE IN SLUM HOUSES — SOME
ITEMS OF ITS COST - - 85
VIII. SOME METHODS OF DEALING
WITH UNFIT HOUSES - " 93
IX. FUTURE POLICY AND A PRO-
POSAL .... 108
THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
THE BETRAYAL
OF THE SLUMS
CHAPTER I
THE BETRAYAL
IT seems but yesterday that the people
of this country with one accord came
forward to oppose aggression. Our
word had been pledged to defend another
nation against an unprovoked attack, and
our honour was at stake. From rich homes
and from poor, from mansions and from
tenements people came and freely offered
their labour or their lives. In that time
of trial it was seen more clearly than ever
before how dependent we are upon one
another, how, in its turn, this class or that
comes to fill a vital part in the defence
or maintenance of our organised national
life.
10 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
Almost at once certain weaknesses and
neglects in the training, equipment, organisa-
tion and physical capacity of the people
became apparent, often with a tragical
revelation. It was realised with a poignant
acuteness that the drab, unsavoury and un-
healthy conditions under which so many
of our people have to spend their lives,
were not only a great drawback to our
working efficiency, but a real danger to the
State.
At that time men of all sections, realising
these conditions, declared that they would
engage themselves not only to secure emanci-
pation from the burdens and perils of war,
but to unite in a sustained endeavour to
improve the conditions of life of those
millions of our fellow-countrymen who in-
habit dilapidated cottages or wretched tene-
ments in mean streets, and who are destined
to struggle continually against conditions
which produce gravely disabling effects and
constitute altogether a menacing weakness to
our whole society.
Responsible leaders of the Government
were forward and eloquent in promising that
the effort should be made and should be
THE BETRAYAL ii
persevered with. There can be no doubt
that many a young man who died for his
country derived some comfort from the
conviction that in the time to come there
was a brighter hope for those whom he loved
at home and that they had some prospect of
escape from squalor and of the attainment for
themselves and their children of a better
opportunity in life.
The pledges in question were of a very
definite character, and were often repeated.
They were embodied in a precise form in the
Housing and Town Planning Act of 1919,
and the records of the proceedings thereon
bear witness to the fact that one of the
difficulties of the Minister in charge of the
Bill was to resist proposals which would
have made the task exceed the limits of any
possible form of execution. The intention
of the Government to persevere in this
effort was very clearly stated to the people
in the manifesto of the Prime Minister and
Mr. Bonar Law when their support was
solicited at the General Election of 1918.
The Prime Minister at one time declared
that in this matter ** the interests of public
health and humanity are at stake."
12 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
The issues involved were clearly expressed
by Mr. Bonar Law, who said : '' If we did
not make every effort to improve the con-
dition of the people, we should have a sullen,
discontented, and perhaps angry nation, which
would be fatal in the last degree to trade,
industry and credit/' The national inten-
tion also was forcibly stated by Lord Long —
who knew, as well as any man could know,
that thereby we were committing ourselves
to a work of restoration that must occupy
many years of continuous effort — when he
said : " It would be a black crime, indeed,
if we were to sit still and do nothing by way
of preparation to ensure that when these
men came back they should be provided with
homes with as little delay as possible. To
let them come back from the horrible water-
logged trenches to something little better
than a pig-sty here would indeed be criminal
on the part of ourselves, and would be a
negation of all that had been said during the
war.''
Finally, His Majesty the King, on April
nth, 1919, evoked universal acclamation
when he expressed the policy of the Govern-
ment in these carefully considered words : —
THE BETRAYAL 13
'* I am informed that the immediate
need of working class houses for England
and Wales alone is estimated at approxi-
mately 500,000. To meet this need the
same untiring eftergy and enthusiasm will
be needed as that which enabled the
country to meet the demand for munitions
of war. It is not too much to say that
an adequate solution of the housing question
is the foundation of all social progress.
If this country is to be the country which
we desire to see it become, a great offensive
must be undertaken against disease and
crime, and the first point at which the
attack must be delivered is the unhealthy,
ugly, overcrowded house in the mean
street, which we all of us know too well."
Many people gave loyal and ungrudging
help to the Government in this matter
because they believed that no distraction
would turn them from a resolute endeavour
to fulfil the noble and solemn promises given
to those whose loyalty and sacrifice had been
abundantly revealed, and who had no place
worthy the name of a home for themselves
and their families.
14 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
It was therefore a matter for grave concern
when it was decided, in July, 1921, to set
aside these engagements and to restrict
assistance in the building of houses to a
number substantially identical with that
arranged for at the end of the month of
March and, worse still, to ignore the obli-
gations which the State had assumed under
the law passed in the year 1919, whereby
assistance would be afforded in the replace-
ment or improvement of insanitary dwellings
for some years to come, and to substitute a
grant in respect of all the unsatisfactory
houses in Great Britain which, as will
appear, is of so trifling a character that it
will not sufhce even to make good the
amount of deterioration that is progressively
occurring.
This decision involved not only an alteration
in the method of rendering assistance in the
improvement of housing conditions, but a
definite reversal of policy. This was denied
at the time, but it has become progressively
manifest during the past year. Assistance
from the State was required in this matter
because the insanitary and overcrowded con-
ditions of multitudes of the people's dwellings
THE BETRAYAL 15
had arisen whilst we were content that private
enterprise alone, or substantially alone, should
be expected to meet the necessities of the
case.
On March 9th, 1922, the Minister of
Health, in reply to a question in the House
of Commons, expressed the hope *' that
future State intervention in any form will not
be required, and that the building industry
will return to its pre-war economic basis/'
It would no doubt be an inestimable
advantage if private persons once more were
able to build houses for working people at
such a cost that the rent paid would be
sufficient to provide a proper and adequate
return upon the capital invested. But the
fact that this course alone had hitherto
failed either to mitigate the evils of slum
life or to prevent their increase, was the
primary cause of State assistance being
required.
That the present policy involves a com-
plete reversal of that previously declared
and embodied in legislative form was furthei
explained by the Minister of Health a short
time after the reply in Parliament just
referred to.
i6 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
In an interview with a representative of
the Daily News newspaper on March 27th,
the Minister stated expUcitly that *' we must
try to get the country back to the old economic
system/' and, in further reply to questions
relating to the difficulties of young married
people starting family Ufe under the present
overcrowded conditions, he is reported to
have suggested that *' the newly married
should be so happy that they can enjoy
living even in one room/' and further to have
said : '' But isn't the demand of the newly
married for a separate house a comparatively
modern development ? In China and the
East generally, I understand they continue
to live under the parental roof quite con-
tentedly/'
It has, I understand, been contended that
these remarks were intended to be humorous
in some way, but, in principle, they are
in complete accord with the statements made
in Parliament. The tragic condition under
which so many of our fellow country-
men have to hve is scarcely a subject for
humour, but in any case the pledges given
to the people were given seriously and
were so understood, and the standards
THE BETRAYAL 17
of hope that were set before them bore no
relation to those accepted by Eastern people.
An examination of this decision will show
that it bears no adequate relation to the
needs of the people.
In the last completed year of national
expenditure and in the third year after a
victory of unprecedented completeness, we
were confronted with the position that the
tax-payers of the United Kingdom were
called upon to contribute, if the sum were
distributed equally for every man, woman
and child of the population, a sum of 87/3
per head for the maintenance of war services,
whilst the burden it was proposed that they
should bear for the replacement or improve-
ment of poor homes w^as to be limited to a
charge of i^d. per head. These figures also
of the cost of war services for the year
1921-22, do not take account of all the
payments of that class. The additional ex-
penditure, for example, in Mesopotamia
and Palestine involved a further taxation of
ii/2i for each member of our population
at home.
There is in these things an inequality of
effort in the interests of our people at home
B
i8 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
which is dishonourable and gravely unwise.
If a small portion only of what might be saved
from this expenditure were devoted to the
redemption of slums it would provide a
contribution sufficient to pay for the work
that could practically be executed during
each year. Moreover, this disparity of sac-
rifice and this disregard of obligations
destroy the confidence of those who suffer,
and is inimical to ordered progress and to
peaceful development.
CHAPTER II
ITS CIRCUMSTANCES
A CLEAR understanding of the case
necessitates some review of its
attendant circumstances as well as
of those associated with the Government's
decision to abandon our national effort to
deal with it.
For years past thinking and patriotic
people of all parties have been seriously
disquieted by the fact that in England and
Wales alone there are nearly a million dwelling
places — so-called homes — which consist of not
more than two rooms. People are com-
pelled to live in them, because no other
habitations are available. In these places,
as well as in vast numbers of others which
contain more than two rooms, the processes
of deterioration are necessarily constant and
rapid. The great majority of them are
lacking in many of the simplest amenities,
and whilst great numbers by repair or
19
20 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
reconstruction could be made fit to live in,
it is not disputed that there are at least
200,000 of them which are so bereft of ordinary
conveniences, are of so poor a structure and
so insanitary, that they are beyond amends,
and ought to be demolished. These wretched
homes are to be found in every town and
village in the land.
In Scotland, the conditions, as revealed
in the unanimous findings of the Royal
Commission, are, if possible, worse. Nearly
half the people of that country have houses
that consist of not more than two rooms.
Many of them are no better than hovels,
and a great proportion are condemned as
altogether unfit for human habitation.
Homes of this kind are a perpetual hind-
rance throughout life to the people who have
to live in them. They allow no privacy,
afford little or no quiet or rest, even for the
child, they give no opportunity for the mind
and provide a continual poison for the body.
The physical consequences are disastrous to
the inhabitants and involve costly burdens
on the rest of the community.
From the year 191 1 onwards, the building
of new houses was less than it previously
ITS CIRCUMSTANCES 21
was. So much so, that for four years previous
to the year 1915, in the county of London
for example, more working-class rooms were
demolished than were provided by new
building. During the war there was almost
a complete cessation both of new building
and of repair, so that by the end of it the
conditions had become worse, because the
normal wear and tear had not been made
good for a number of years. The shortage
had become so acute that, coupled with
the demand which the war had brought
for a better standard of living, public
opinion was wholeheartedly in support of
a great national effort being made to meet
the deficiencies.
In the latter half of the year 1917, and again
in March, 1918, specific proposals, worked out
by those thoroughly acquainted with the
practical difiiculties involved, were submitted
by the Ministry of Reconstruction, who
earnestly advocated that definite preparatory
steps should be taken in preparing the
necessary organisation, in the acquisition of
sites, in the preparation and sanctioning of
plans and in kindred matters, and pointed
out that otherwise great and unavoidable
22 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
delays must be met with after the conclusion
of the war. The papers and memoranda,
available bear testimony to the fact that,
notwithstanding these repeated and urgent
representations, no practical action whatever
was taken, and consequently amid the stress
of demobilisation and resettlement we were
compelled to spend many months making
good these neglects.
At the same time, the Ministry presented
a scheme of finance, based upon the proposals
of Lord Salisbury's Committee, which it
recommended on the ground that, after a
term of years, the responsibility for any
excessive cost would fall upon those who
incurred it. This was set aside in favour
of the proposal that the State should bear
all the loss beyond the proceeds of a penny
rate. This latter, whilst simpler and possibly
more expeditious in its working, possessed
the serious defect of containing no substantial
incentive to economy on the part of the local
authorities concerned.
During the year 1918 also a number of
reliable and experienced people under the
Chairmanship of Sir James Carmichael
worked out with immense care a scheme for
ITS CIRCUMSTANCES 23
promoting the expeditious and economical
provision of building materials throughout
the country. Their proposals were based
upon an examination of the capacities of the
different districts to produce material and
of what would be required to stimulate out-
put as quickly and as economically as possible.
The general conception underlying their
scheme was that, in the absence of the steps
being taken that they had worked out in
association with the industries concerned,
any extensive plan of purchase would lead to
an unnecessary inflation of prices. These
proposals were somewhat brusquely set aside,
and the twelve months' patient labour of the
experienced people Sir James Carmichael
had called to his aid was wasted. On the
contrary it was directed that a large sum of
money should be provided wherewith the
Ministry of Munitions should make purchases
of building material. It cannot be doubted
that this decision in conjunction with the
competition prevailing during the years 1919
and 1920 contributed to serious and avoid-
able increases of cost.
In January, 1919, as President of the
Local Government Board, the present writer
24 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
circulated a memorandum, pointing out with
complete frankness how unfortunate the posi-
tion was and how disabling the absence of the
needful preparatory work might prove to be.
During the year 1919, although the neces-
sary personnel, both centrally and locally,
was not available for many months, the
pressure to make haste was very great indeed,
and continued substantially throughout the
year 1920. The clamour, indeed, even with
that section of the Press which has lately
vehemently condemned the whole endeavour,
was so great that it served to exaggerate the
increase of prices that the demand itself
otherwise made inevitable. There were many
occasions indeed on which the Prime Minister
brought great pressure to bear for more
rapid progress to be made, notwithstanding
that he was fully informed of the increas-
ing cost and of the grave difficulties that it
occasioned.
These difficulties arose partly from the
neglect of preparatory work, but much more
from the fact that an industry, greatly
depleted of men, found itself confronted
with an unprecedented accumulation of de-
layed repair work and with those vast
ITS CIRCUMSTANCES 25
demands for new building of all kinds which
characterised the apparently prosperous times
of the year 1919 and of the early months of
the year 1920. Whilst only a small per-
centage of the men in the building trade
were actually employed at that time upon
house-building, there was an altogether reck-
less competition both for men and for
materials in connection with contracts for
industrial and other building which had
been entered into without any definite price
having been fixed and which, added to the
pressure to make progress with housing,
resulted in very alarming increases of prices.
In the autumn of 1919 the draft of a Bill
designed to enable us to check the causes
of these unwarrantable increases in prices
was submitted to the Cabinet. These pro-
posals were not accepted in any effective
form, although they were founded on ex-
perience gained in kindred matters during
the war in respect of which substantial
success had been obtained. With the inci-
dence of bad trade, however, and the cessation
of much competitive building, prices began
to decline, and the reductions obtained
during the six months ending March 31st,
26 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
1921, were even greater than those secured
during the following six months, although
many ill-informed statements to the contrary
obtained a wide publicity.
Coincident with this decline of an artificial
prosperity and in the presence of serious
discords at home and abroad, there ensued
a sudden and violent reaction. Those who
before had been loudest in their protests
at the insufficient rapidity of our progress
now became the foremost champions in the
demand that the housing and slum reclama-
tion projects should be abandoned. It is
perhaps inevitable in agitations of this
character that the point of attack should
be some domestic concern and one with
which all the people are familiar. It was
so in this case, and services designed to
improve the health and housing conditions
of the people were at once sought out for
denunciation. The just proportion of things
is only slowly emerging, and the Report of
Sir Eric Geddes's Committee is a noteworthy
contribution to public enlightenment. It is,
however, a fact that there were branches
of national expenditure in which vast eco-
nomies could be made that came in for little
ITS CIRCUMSTANCES 27
mention and that in those, grouped as war
services, our expenditure amounted to as
many hundreds of millions as there were tens
devoted to all the purposes of health and
housing put together.
It will always be a reproach to the Govern-
ment that instead of informing the people of
the real proportions of these things they
sought to appease an uninstructed clamour
by a hasty capitulation in respect of those
services which were designed to improve the
lot of the poor and of the unfortunate.
It would be unfair to attribute to the
Prime Minister a special degree of responsi-
bility for this lamentable decision if the facts
of the case did not abundantly warrant it.
The recital of them unfortunately necessitates
personal references.
With a view to Umiting our commitments
to build houses at the high prices then pre-
vaiUng, whilst at the same time completely
honouring the obUgations we had entered
into with local authorities and keeping the
industry employed, it was agreed on March
nth, 1921, after considerable inter-depart-
mental discussion with Mr. Chamberlain,
then Chancellor of the Exchequer, that for
28 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
the present the matter should be left on the
basis prescribed by him in a letter to me of
March gth. The agreement in this letter
was that I should ration localities on the
basis of 250,000 houses, including public
utility society schemes, on the understanding
that before June, 1922, the matter should
be reviewed in the light of costs and of
the results up to date, seeing that up
to that time the local authorities would
have plenty of work to do in carrying out
the building thus allotted to them. There
was no alteration suggested in respect
of the programme for slum restoration
work.
Before this arrangement had been an-
nounced, at the commencement of the great
coal strike and under circumstances which
are not material to the present purpose, my
work as Minister of Health came to an end,
as, at the repeated request of the Prime
Minister, I accepted the ofhce of Minister
without Portfolio. For some reason with
which I was not made acquainted, the
arrangement with the Chancellor of the
Exchequer was never acted upon. The
agitation to which reference has been made
ITS CIRCUMSTANCES 29
was at that time being very actively con-
ducted, and it gained strength in consequence
of certain bye-elections adverse to the
Government. Towards the end of June, in
response to directions which were given with-
out discrimination to curtail expenditure, the
Minister of Health circulated a Memorandum
in which he pointed out that so far as
housing expenditure was concerned no further
limitation could be devised beyond stopping
the schemes at the point of existing contracts.
At the same time he pointed out that a
large sum was still required in connection
with slum clearances and restoration, and
that proposals which would have either
of these effects could not be defended
so far as the needs of the people were
concerned.
On Saturday, July 2nd, I received, marked
" for information,'* the findings of a Finance
Committee presided over by the Prime
Minister, which had decided to arrest the
scheme. I at once challenged the findings of
this body, and in the discussion that subse-
quently ensued received substantial and
influential support. So much so that the
subject was referred to a specially appointed
30 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
Committee. This body met on Tuesday,
July i2th, and on Wednesday, the 13th.
^At the latter meeting, notwithstanding that
an important part of the work before us was
the consideration of alternative proposals
which it had been agreed I should bring
forward, the Committee was informed by
certain of its members that they had been
instructed that morning by the Prime Minister
that the findings of the Finance Committee
must still be adhered to. In this way delibera-
tions on the merits of the case were brought
at an end. I declined to accept an autocratic
ruling of this kind on so grave an issue of
domestic policy, and resigned my office the
next day after the announcement of the
decision to the House of Commons.
It will be seen, therefore, that the decision
was peculiarly that of the Prime Minister.
It limited assistance to new building sub-
stantially to the number of houses for the
building of which arrangements had been
made at the beginning of the previous x\pril,
and replaced all our legislative and other
commitments in respect of the improvement
or replacement of insanitary houses by a grant
I of £200,000 for the whole of Great Britain.
ITS CIRCUMSTANCES 31
Before examining precisely the effect of
this grant upon the restoration of insanitary
areas, there are certain effects of the decision
taken as a whole that must be dealt with,
and an illustration or two should be given of
the immediate effect of its incidence.
CHAPTER III
IMMEDIATE RESULTS
IN the autumn of 1921 a special session
of Parliament was called to deal with
the subject of unemployment. The
numbers of the unemployed were not far
short of two million persons. For the greater
part of the year 1921 the figures generally
were near that appalling total, and even
during the month of June, 1922, when this
is written, the number still exceeds 1,200,000.
During the autumn session of 1921 pro-
posals were submitted to Parliament that
involved the expenditure of large sums of
public money in aid of the execution of
various public works and otherwise. The
Prime Minister had declared that it was the
intention of the Government that the building
trade should be employed up to the limit
of its capacity in the housing schemes of
Local Authorities. Many people therefore
hoped that at all events some of the public
32
IMMEDIATE RESULTS 33
money which was to be devoted to the rehef
of unemployment would be appHed to build-
ing a certain number of houses where they
were urgently wanted beyond the limit fixed
by the decision of the previous July.
It was manifest to every one who had con-
sidered the case on its merits at all that it
was not physically possible to make good the
undertaking with regard to the employment
of men in house -building unless the limit
were raised, because, as the contracts were
gradually completed, the men employed
thereon were likely to become unemployed.
The proposals of the Government, however,
provided for no addition to this work ; on
the contrary, by a sort of perversity that is
incomprehensible, the conditions of grant
were so drawn as specifically to exclude any
of the money being applied to house-building
or even to house-repair work, although a
large and increasing number of men in the
building trade were out of employment.
One would have thought, if additional
public money were to be expended in pro-
viding useful employment, that at least
some of it might have been spent by em-
ploying these men either in building or in
c
34 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
repairing a certain number of houses. One
cannot with advantage employ a carpenter
or a bricklayer or a plumber on ordinary
road-making, and the amount of employment
for men of their craft in most of the public
works which have been aided is very limited.
The only alternative method adopted was
to assist the unemployed men by a system of
doles, or through the poor-law, apart from
what they might obtain through their trade
unions or from other provident agencies.
Notwithstanding the Prime Minister's
undertaking, as indeed was inevitable, the
number of men employed on housing schemes
steadily declined. In replies to Mr. Trevelyn
Thomson in the House of Commons, the
Minister of Health stated that the number of
men employed on the housing schemes of
Local Authorities and of public utility societies
had declined as follows : —
Number
unemployed
October ist, 1921
•• 138,334
November ist, 192 1
.. 134,200
December ist, 1921
.. 125*344
January, 1922
• • 97*271
♦February, 1922 . .
• • 91.175
* A subsequent reply shows that by June, 1922, the
number had further decreased to 66,651.
IMMEDIATE RESULTS 35
In the course of five months, therefore,
47,000 men who had been engaged in house-
building lost their employment.
During the same period the number of
men registered as unemployed in the building
trade and eligible to receive monetary assist-
ance through the Labour Exchanges, accord-
ing to figures supplied by the Minister of
Labour, increased as follows : —
October, 1921 . . . . 130,831 were unemployeu
February ist, 1922 . . 176,119 „ „
It cannot, moreover, be contended that
weather conditions were responsible for this,
since from an analysis of the trades of the
men unemployed as supplied by the Minister
of Labour on January loth the figures were
as follows : —
Numbers unemployed in the building trade
by occupations :
January 10th, 1922. — Carpenters . . . . 12,860
Bricklayers . . . . 7,422
Masons . . . . 3,578
Slaters and Tilers . . 605
Plasterers . . . . 623
Painters .. .. 34»377
Plumbers . . . . 3,573
Other skilled trades 6,555
Unskilled . . . . 100,752
Total unemployed on January loth, 1922 168,745
36 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
It will be observed that the vast majority
of the skilled men unemployed were those
concerned with interior work, and it is
generally accepted that the employment of
two skilled men involves the employment
of three unskilled.
Since the month of March, 1922, the
numbers of houses being built has further
declined, and there has now been a full year
of the application of this policy. It is cer-
tainly a moderate estimate to say that for
fifty weeks up to the end of September, 1922,
the Government's decision has resulted in the
additional unemployment of 25,000 men per
week in the building trade alone. The num-
bers engaged on the preparation and manu-
facture of the different materials that enter
into a house who have correspondingly lost
"work would of course be additional. Let
us, however, confine ourselves to this very
low estimate of 25,000 men. What have
they cost the community in cash payments
from the insurance funds, the poor-law,
trade union and other funds ? It sufiices
again to take a low figure, and it is certainly
an underestimate to take the cost altogether
at 25s. per man per week. At this rate of
IMMEDIATE RESULTS 37
benefit there has been expended during the
fifty weeks a sum exceeding £1,500,000 in the
maintenance in idleness of men able and
willing to build or repair houses.
'At the same time the statements of the
Minister of Health indicate that the price of
building has so fallen that, including the cost
of land, drainage and fencing, a house may
now be provided for £500. On this basis the
annual loss on such a house at the moderate
rental of 8s. per week, with interest and
sinking fund charges at 5| per cent., would
be as follows :
i s. d.
Interest and Sinking Fund on £500 at 5 J
per cent. . . . . . . . . 27 10 o
Repairs, maintenance and empties, say 850
35 15 o
Less rent at 85. per week . . . . 20 16 o
Net annual loss . . . . . . 14 19 o
If the million and a half paid to the men
for doing nothing were treated as a capital
sum, even at the same rate of interest, and
putting the annual loss on the house at £15,
it represents, at the rent of 8s. per week, the
provision, without a penny of loss, of some
5,500 houses. It is difficult to understand
38 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
how any body of rational beings could
persevere in a policy of this kind at a time
of such serious unemployment.
The process, however, is still going on,
and the estimate given is certainly much
lower than the total actual cost.
This is one immediate result of the Govern-
ment's decision. Let us take another equally
serious.
The present Rent Restriction Act expires
in June, 1923. This Act and its predecessors
arose out of the great housing scarcity. It
was found that, owing to the supply of houses
being much less than the demand, it was no
longer possible to leave it to the free
play of the market. A great outcry arose
in many places because of attempts to exact
large increases of rent or to obtain possession
by means of the eviction of tenants unable
or unwilling to pay what was demanded.
Rent strikes and riots took place in conse-
quence, and in some places where attempts
were made to evict ex-service men they were
of a violent character.
The Government was compelled, if for no
more than for the maintenance of public
order and security, to adopt an expedient
IMMEDIATE RESULTS 39
of this kind. In some form or another,
whatever Government is in power, the re-
imposition of this Act is inevitable until the
housing scarcity is appreciably relieved. So
far, indeed, did the demand go when the
recent amending Act was before Parliament
that it was with the greatest possible difficulty
that Parliament was restrained from extend-
ing it much further still. It is true that, at
present, the Act does not apply to newly-
built houses, but there can be no possible
surety that this exemption will continue, for
people will object just as much to unreason-
able increases of rent or to eviction from a
new and convenient house as in other cases.
Economically unsound and damaging in some
directions as these Acts certainly are, they
must be continued until the shortage of
housing accommodation has been so over-
taken as not to occasion injustice and hard-
ship when freedom has been restored.
The fact is, however, that we are very far
from overtaking even half of that shortage.
Before the year 1910, even under the system
which accompanied the creation of our slums,
there were on the average some 75,000 new
houses of the working-class type provided
40 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
annually to compensate for wear and tear and
for new provision. From 1910 onwards until
the war there was a substantial reduction
in the average rate of new building. During
the four and a half years of war there were
not more than 50,000 such houses built in
the country altogether, so that by the
beginning of the year 1919 the arrears of
new building, altogether apart from the arrest
of slum replacement or restoration, had
mounted up to a prodigious figure. The
hardship and overcrowding that exist from
one end of the country to the other are
sufficient evidence of the truth of these
statements, apart from the estimation of any
gross totals.
In the face, then, of this scarcity, only a
small percentage of which has yet been pro-
vided for, with the Rent Restriction Act on
the Statute Book and its extension inevitable,
the special scheme of extra provision has
been brought to an end, and it is proposed to
look to private enterprise to make up the
deficiency.
But what does private enterprise require ?
A man who makes it his business to build
houses, just as much as another who manu-
IMMEDIATE RESULTS 41
factures pieces of cloth or who builds engines,
will continue to carry on his business only
so long as he finds it profitable to do so and
so long as he possesses a reasonable oppor-
tunity of making the best of the products
of his enterprise. Notwithstanding the grati-
fying fall in the costs of building, the cost
of building a house, providing the land, doing
the drainage, fencing and other necessary
work involves a capital expenditure far
greater than the average rents obtainable
will provide a sufficient return for, even in
industrial areas.
In country districts the discrepancy is much
greater owing to the standard of rent and of
wages having been reduced by the practice of
providing cottages at nominal and uneco-
nomical rents. If, however, by a further
substantial decline in building costs the
building of cottages by private enterprise
became a nearer possibility, the Rent Restric-
tion Acts would still be present to the mind
of the builder. At any time he might be
deprived of his freedom in dealing with the
property in which he had invested his money.
Human nature and the facts of the case being
what they are, it is certain that there will be
42 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
no sufficient revival of house-building by
private enterprise so long as the Rent
Restriction Acts continue.
Therefore, at one and the same time
the Government prevents the accumulated
shortage being made good by State or
municipal assistance and, by prolonging the
shortage, commits the community to the
continued operation of that statute which
effectively prevents its being met by private
enterprise.
We need refer only to one other general
consequence of the effect of this decision
before entering upon a closer examination of
the problem presented by insanitary and
dilapidated houses.
Its effect was immediately paralysing upon
all the work that had been undertaken in
response to the pledges that had been made.
For the first time the authorities, great and
small, throughout the country had made an
examination of the needs of the people in
their district in respect of overcrowding or of
dilapidated or insanitary houses, and had
set before themselves with remarkable unison
a thought-out scheme of improvement which
would gradually be carried into execution
IMMEDIATE RESULTS 43
during the years to come. Their labours
were brought to nought ; all their expenditure
of time and thought was made to end in
disappointment, and patriotic people of all
creeds and classes turned away with sorrow
from disinterested public service. Impulses
and forces of that kind cannot easily be
mobilised, and having once been brought
together with a worthy purpose before them
and having then been dissipated, they cannot
be gathered together again for a long time.
The loss to the nation of all this goodwill
must be well-nigh incalculable, and it is
appropriate in closing this chapter to give a
brief account of what I saw at that time
when taken round by a public authority,
to witness, as it were, the funeral of their
hopes.
With great courtesy the Mayor and Coi-
poration of the City of Wakefield invited me to
visit them. The number of new houses to
which they had been limited under the new
decision was 200. They required more than
four times that number for additional accom-
modation alone, whilst they were further
confronted in the city with no less than 1,100
inhabited houses which were condemned as
44 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
unfit. Many of the latter were in an area in
which the death rate was 27, whilst that for
the city as a whole was 15*6. In that same
area the death rate from tuberculosis, with all
its resulting charges to the ratepayers, was
three times as great as in the city as a whole.
Tenement after tenement, row after row
showed the same squalor and insufficiency of
decent accommodation. A soldier who had
looked for a home lamented the fact that he
was now shut out from the possibility of
obtaining one. His family occupied a single
room looking out on to the wall of a narrow
court. It served for kitchen, scullery, coal
cellar, wash-house, living-room and bedroom,
and was rented at 7s. per week.
It is to be noted also that there was only
one vehicle to be seen in that street, and it
was the carriage of the relieving officer.
In the afternoon a neighbouring authority,
similarly limited, invited me to inspect some
farm buildings at the end of which two
families had their abode, and for whom now
there was no chance of betterment. In
both families the husbands had seen long
war service. One tenement provided for a
family of four, and the other housed a young
IMMEDIATE RESULTS 45
couple who had one child. Both men were
of good character and with regular employ-
ment. The tenements of each were similar —
a room below served as living-room and
kitchen, and in both cases the diligent wife
had made the very best of it, both as to
comfort and cleanliness. Up a steep, narrow
and rickety stair we found their sleeping-
places. There was one room above the kit-
chen and another, scarcely larger than a good-
sized cupboard. The larger family had to
use both, but the young soldier at the back
had had to abandon the larger room, not
because of the falling plaster or the broken
and sinking floor-boards, but because there
were so many rats with runs in and out of
the skirting-boards that they disturbed their
sleep. The rats had even invaded the furni-
ture. The human inhabitants had surrendered
and taken to the small room because it was
somewhat freer from vermin. The little room
was freer from the rats, because beneath its
floor-boards there was no harbourage for
them as it formed a part of the roof of the
pig place. It is true that the grunting of the
pigs disturbed the family somewhat, but
that was less objectionable than the rats.
46 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
I thought of Lord Long's moving pledge
as to the places that are no better than
pigsties, and which he said, truly, that it
would be a ''black crime'' to continue to
tolerate.
The man whose family was thus housed
was a clean, fresh-faced young Englishman
who had served through the war. For four
years he had been a prisoner of war in
Germany, and after his emancipation this
was all he could secure for a home. But the
fresh colour in his face was deceptive, for on
coming down the stairs from seeing the bed-
room, I saw a familiar coloured form on the
table that he had received that morning. On
reference to it, it transpired that he had been
found to be suffering from tuberculosis, and
had been summoned to go for sanatorium
treatment. One does not wonder at his
having contracted tuberculosis. He will cost
the State about £2 15s. per week while he is a
patient in the sanatorium. The bed that he
will occupy has cost the State £180 to pro-
vide, apart from the contribution of the
local ratepayers. These charges will con-
tinue for many months, and if we add to
them the cost of the maintenance of the wife
IMMEDIATE RESULTS 47
and child during that time, and the loss of
his work and earnings, it is not difficult to
discover that the occupancy of that barn-
end will have been a costly business.
The tragedy and the sorrow of such cases
as these are not to be concealed from the
people. Disappointment may well give way
to bitterness, and the economies demanded
in these things by the apostles of " Anti-
Waste," which were so precipitately con-
ceded, may indeed prove to have been an
extravagance. Cases like these, existing as
they do in abundance throughout the land,
are seeds of bitterness ; the harvest of them
may be delayed, but it is continually ripening
in sorrow and in sullenness, in disputes and
in diminished production, and the garnering
of it will be very costly.
CHAPTER IV
WHAT THE PROPOSED GRANT WILL DO
AS a result of the Government's
decision. Local Authorities will not
receive the assistance to which the
Housing Act of 1919 entitled them. Under
that Act any losses they might have incurred
beyond the proceeds of a penny rate, upon
. all their housing expenditure, including
what they spend upon the replacement or
restoration of insanitary houses during five
years, would have been made good to them.
This is to be replaced by a grant not ex-
ceeding £200,000 a year for the whole of
Great Britain.
Before examining the application of this
proposal it is necessary to refer to certain
conditions and limitations that attach to all
schemes of restoration work of this kind,
whatever may be the form of assistance.
The magnitude of the task acts as a
barrier. Apart from the hundreds of
48
PROPOSED GRANT 49
thousands of new houses that are required
as new accommodation to compensate for
overcrowding, it exists sufficiently in the
insanitary houses which are to be found in all
our towns and villages. A low estimate, as
already stated, is that 200,000 of them in
England and Wales are so derelict and in-
sanitary that they can only be demolished
and an equivalent number of new dwellings
provided. Beside these there is a very
much greater number that require substantial
repair or reconstruction before they can be
said to comply with the most modest standard
of what a home for a family should contain.
In Scotland 539,000 homes, or more than
half the houses in that country, consist of
not more than two rooms in all. Apart from
overcrowding, the Royal Commission unani-
mously found that 57,000 of them were so
damp and abominable that they ought to be
cleared away.
These houses have gradually come to their
present state, and the private owner has
often had Uttle or no power over the events
which have led to these results. In a great
number of cases the houses, either indi-
vidually or in small groups, are in the hands
D
50 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
of people of relatively modest means, and
it is certain that in the great bulk of cases
the private owner has neither the money
nor the credit to carry out the necessary
reconstruction and repair work. If he had,
he would incur great loss by executing the
work at present or prospective prices and
rents.
For the most part, private enterprise can
only carry out a reconstruction scheme and
realise a profit when the greater part of
the ground or property is devoted to
commercial or industrial uses. When this
happens the result aggravates the existing
overcrowding.
A Local Authority in the first instance
does all it can to secure the execution of the
necessary repairs and sanitary improvements
by the private owner. When this has been
exhausted, it finds itself confronted with a
great number of bad houses which either
ought to be demolished and replaced by
new accommodation, or subjected to such
reconstruction or adaptation as the present
owner cannot afford and cannot fairly be
asked to carry out.
When an area consisting for the most
PROPOSED GRANT 51
part of this class of property has to be dealt
with, the best and most economical use can
be made of it only if the Local Authority
acquires it as a whole. This necessitates a
considerable commitment in respect of pur-
chase, and the preparation of a scheme or
plan of however provisional a kind, for
dealing with it as a whole for housing and
for other purposes. In other words, unless
the transaction is to be unnecessarily waste-
ful, the Authority must commit itself to an
undertaking which will require some years
to carry out, and of which the execution is
complicated by the fact that reconstruction
or replacement must be proceeded with
piecemeal if the area is at all considerable,
because of the hardship from dishousing
that would otherwise be occasioned.
Such property, under the provisions of the
Housing Act of 1919, can now be acquired
on terms which, it is hoped, will cease to
put a premium on slum property, and at
the same time be just both to the owners
and to the public. Nevertheless, under
the most favourable conditions any Local
Authority, in committing itself to an
improvement scheme, has to accept extensive
52 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
obligations, and the burdens it will cast
upon the ratepayers must be a governing
consideration.
It is accordingly recognised, both by
Statute and by common consent, that the
responsibility for the existence of extensive
bad housing in different places is not one
that can rest wholly upon the locality itself,
since the conditions have resulted both from
lack of national poUcy, and from social or
industrial circumstances over which those
inhabiting the particular district have had
little or no control. Indeed, housing improve-
ment has stood still in poor areas, and will
continue to stand still unless outside help is
afforded, because the poorer the district and
the more dilapidated its houses the less is
its credit and its ability therefore to deal
with them. In addition to this, the national
disabilities which result from bad housing
have led all sections of opinion to recognise
that national assistance in some form should
be afforded.
Unless, therefore, the share of the grant
which a Local Authority will receive bears a
reasonable relation to the amount of assist-
ance that the task before them requires that
PROPOSED GRANT 53
they should obtain if the burdens upon their
own ratepayers are not to be of a prohibitive
kind, no scheme will be undertaken that
will be sufficient to produce any sub-
stantial amelioration of the present evil
conditions. If this does not prove to be the
case, then the effect is to deter authorities
from preparing effective schemes of improve-
ment. The consequence in such cases in-
evitably is that matters will go on getting
worse, for the amount of deterioration that
the present overcrowding is causing, even in
property that is not yet classified either as
dilapidated or insanitary, is extensive and is
accumulating. No inducements that amount
to anything more than occasional coats of
whitewash are going to accomplish anything
in the reclamation of our slums or in the
prevention of their extension.
The effect of the grant may best be
tested by applying it to cases where the
Authority is strong financially and is well
equipped with able and experienced muni-
cipal executive officers. If it proves to be
insufficient in such cases, it will certainly be
quite inoperative where the Authority is
poor, possibly inexperienced, and saddled
54 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
with the burdens of an overcrowded and
badly-built district.
We will therefore examine it by applying
it to the cities of Leeds and Glasgow, relying
for a statement of the facts upon two Govern-
ment publications.
The first case will be found stated in the
Second and Final Report upon Unhealthy
Areas recently presented to Parliament by
the Committee presided over by the Rt.
Hon. Neville Chamberlain, M.P., and the
second is contained in the unanimous findings
of the recent Royal Commission on Housing
in Scotland.
In the City of Leeds Mr. Chamberlain's
Committee informs us that there are 72,000
houses built back-to-back in close parallel
rows, without through ventilation and without
any circulation of fresh air being possible.
An examination of these houses shows that
12,000 are fairly substantially built, and have
fifteen feet of space between the front of the
house and the road. They also have a
separate w.c. entered from this space. These
are the best houses of the 72,000.
The second group consists of 27,000 houses
built in blocks of eight. Between each pair
PROPOSED GRANT 55
of blocks there are sanitary conveniences for
the inhabitants of each of the two groups
of eight houses. In order to get to these
places the people have to go along the
street, as there is no garden or court of
any kind attached. These are the second
best houses.
The remainder consist of 33,000 houses
built back-to-back in long continuous rows,
opening directly on to the street, and crammed
together at the rate of seventy or eighty to
the acre. The sanitary conveniences and
the houses themselves are so atrocious that,
we are informed, it is difficult to suggest
any satisfactory method of dealing with them
short of complete clearance.
Now a small part of the grant may be
reserved for specially hard cases, but sub-
stantially it must be distributed, as all such
grants are, on a population basis. The
Secretary for Scotland has already told us
that the share of Scotland is to be ;f30,ooo.
On that basis the City of Leeds will receive
somewhat less than £4,000.
If we omit the 12,000 of the better houses
of the insanitary class, the grant for Leeds
in respect of the remaining 60,000 represents
56 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
a subsidy of one shilling and fourpence per
house per annum. If it were conlfined to
the second class, it would represent three
shillings per house per annum, and if it were
confined to the worst of all and to those only
that need demoHtion and replacement, it
would be equivalent to assistance to the
extent of half a crown annually for each
house. Is it to be expected that the munici-
pality of Leeds will enter upon the acquisition
and reconstruction of the 27,000 houses
that are worth reconstruction, or of any
substantial number of them, entirely apart
from the demolition and replacement of the
33,000 that are altogether condemned, with
the help derivable from a grant of these
dimensions ?
On a basis twice as favourable as that
existing at present their allowance may suffice
to meet the charges falling upon them for
the reconstruction of 250 of these houses at
the most, leaving not a penny over for any
other purpose.
It is a mockery to suggest that the City
of Leeds will be induced to undertake its
gigantic task or any sensible proportion of
it by an offer of that kind.
PROPOSED GRANT 57
How would the proposal affect Glasgow ?
In this city, in the year 191 1, there were
32,742 houses consisting of not more than
one room, and they accommodated 104,621
people, or more than three persons in each
room. At the same time there were 75,536
houses consisting of two rooms, which pro-
vided homes for 267,341 people. These two
classes of houses together therefore provided
dwellings for 470,000 people, or a little more
than 62 per cent, of the total population of
the city. That percentage was the same
ten years previously, and it has certainly
not improved since then. A large number
of these dwellings, besides being overcrowded,
are utterly insanitary and inadequate. It is
not a misuse of words to say that in these
dwellings the City of Glasgow is presented
with a problem of appalling dimensions. Its
share of the Scottish grant is estimated to
be about £6,000 !
Test it where we will, the grant affords
no material help and provides no scheme
of policy for any place that is handicapped by
bad housing conditions. It leaves the burden
still upon the inhabitants, and present con-
ditions testify to the evil results of that policy.
58 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
In view of the fact, however, that this
decision may be maintained it behoves us to
look closely into the conditions governing the
lives of people under these circumstances and
into the results which follow to themselves
and to the community.
CHAPTER V
LIFE IN SLUM HOUSES ! ITS GENERAL
CHARACTER
WHEN we examine the results of
living in overcrowded or insani-
tary houses, we are apt to turn
to the mass figures of census returns and of
Government Reports. Such figures, however,
may give no adequate indication of those
underlying realities from which alone we can
obtain either a true understanding of the
position or guidance for future action.
It will not be needful, therefore, to give
many figures.
The census of 191 1 revealed that in England
and Wales 3,139,472 people were living in
430,000 tenements at the rate of more than
two occupants to each room, and that there
were 915,182 houses in the country that
consisted of not more than two rooms. The
recent census has revealed an increase in the
population in England and Wales of 1,814,750
59
6o THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
people, but the corresponding figure of over-
crowding is not yet known. The diminished
rate of building since 191 1 and the absence
of repair work during the war make it certain
that the number of people living in over-
crowded conditions will be substantially in-
creased. In the City of London in 191 1
there were 758,786 people living under such
conditions.
According to the recent Report of the
Royal Commission, there were 399,876 people
in Scotland living in houses of one room only,
and 1,881,529 others living in houses of not
more than two rooms, so that in effect
2,281,405 people or nearly half the popula-
tion of Scotland lived in houses of one or
two rooms. So far as the condition of these
houses is concerned, the Royal Commission
says : —
'* To our amazement, we found that, if
we take overcrowding to mean more than
three persons per room, we should, to
secure even this moderate standard for
Scotland, have to displace some 284,000
of our population. But this is not all. We
conclude that at least 50 per cent, of the
SLUM HOUSES— CHARACTER 6i
one-room houses and 15 per cent, of the
two-room houses ought to be replaced by
new houses. . . . For such gigantic figures
our Report submits full justification. On
this point the Commission is unanimous."
The foregoing figures, however, are limited
by the definition adopted for the term
" overcrowded.'' In England and Wales the
standard adopted is that of more than two
persons for each room and in Scotland of
more than three persons for each room. Such
statistics, moreover, tell us nothing of the
vast number both of people and of houses
beyond those so overcrowded, in which the
conditions are insanitary and in which the
inhabitants are not supplied with bare
facilities for the ordinary and decent conduct
of family life. When these are taken into
account, as they must be, and as they were
in the returns made to the Ministry of Health
in 1919, the numbers of those who have to
live under unhealthy conditions is enormously
increased. Whatever may be the shocking
total, the figures in their very greatness reveal
one thing that cannot be challenged. They
show that any suggestion that the people
62 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
concerned are made up of thriftless persons
cannot be entertained at all. In the main
they are working people who live under these
conditions because there is no opportunity for
them to live under any other.
It is not the people's fault that their life is
spent in unsavoury tenements wherein they
and, often enough, two or three other families
have to share the same water tap in the yard
or on the next landing, as well as a dirty
closet which it is nobody's business in
particular to keep clean. It is no fault of
theirs that the mother of the family has only
an ordinary fire-grate in which to cook the
meals and that the same room has to serve
as wash-house, living-room and bedroom. It
is not their fault that there is no possibility
morning, noon or night, for any member
of the family to have any manner of privacy
whatever ; that the infant and the little
child have to sleep in the room which others
have to frequent when they come in for
supper and during the evening ; that it is
not possible for fresh air to get through the
tenement because it opens either on to a
stuffy landing or is backed by another house ;
that the boys and girls have to sleep in the
SLUM HOUSES— CHARACTER 63
same room together ; that even at the time
of birth, or in the hour of death, the same
unyielding conditions, save for the kindli-
ness of neighbours, similarly circumstanced,
govern the whole conduct of their family life.
There is no over-statement in any of this,
but it is better to take the facts as they emerge
from unchallenged and impartial inquiry.
We have seen that more than half the
population of the City of Glasgow live in
one or two-roomed houses and make up a
population of 471,982 persons — a greater
number than is contained altogether in many
of our important towns and cities. Dr. James
Burn Russell was for twenty-six years the
Medical Officer of Health for that City, and
later became the Medical Member of the Local
Government Board of Scotland. He spent
his life studying these conditions. His testi-
mony is beyond question and is worthy of
study.*
He wrote as follows :
" Figures are beyond the reach of
♦ " Public Health Administration in Glasgow."
Memorial Volume of the Writings of James Bum
RusseU, B.A., M.D., LL.D., edited by A. K. Chalmers,
M.D. Maclehouse &. Sons, Glasgow. 1905.
64 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
sentiment, and if they are sensational, it is
only because of their terrible, undisguised
truthfulness. You must not think of the
inmates of those small houses as families
in the ordinary sense of the term. No
less than 14 per cent, of the one-roomed
houses and 27 per cent, of the two-roomed
contain lodgers — strange men and women
mixed up with husbands and wives and
children, within the four walls of small
rooms. Nor must I permit you, in noting
down the average of fully three inmates
in each of these one apartment houses, to
remain ignorant of the fact that there are
thousands of these houses which contain
five, six and seven inmates, and hundreds
which are inhabited by from eight up even
to thirteen.
'* I might ask you to imagine yourselves,
with all your appetites and passions, your
bodily necessities and functions, your feel-
ings of modesty, your sense of propriety,
your births, your sicknesses, your deaths,
your children — in short, your lives in the
whole round of their relationships with the
seen and the unseen, suddenly shrivelled and
shrunk into such conditions of space. I
SLUM HOUSES— CHARACTER 65
might ask you, I do ask you, to consider and
honestly confess what would be the result to
you ? But I would fain do more. Gener-
alities are so feeble. Yet how can I speak
to you decently of details ? Where can I
find language in which to clothe the facts
of these poor people's lives and yet be
tolerable ? . . .
"It is obvious that no manner of occu-
pancy will make the one-room house a
home in the proper sense of the word.
Not that many an isolated man or woman
or aged couple may not find in it a whole-
some and suitable dwelling-place and enjoy
therein the privilege of independence. Even
the young couple who have ' married for
love ' while yet in the stages of * working
for siller ' may light their first fire on the
hearth of the one-room house. These are
the anomalies of life, and, under certain
conditions, I take no exception to the one-
room house in itself, because it undoubtedly
meets them ; but, I repeat, a home in
the proper sense of the word, a place for
the nurture of a family, it can never be . . .
'' But," he goes on to say, " let us ask
ourselves what life in one room can be,
E
66 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
taken at its best. Return to those whose
house is one apartment, and consider
whether, since the world began, man or
angel ever had such a task set before
them as this — the creation of the elements
of a home, or the conduct of family life
within four bare walls. You mistresses
of houses, with bedrooms and parlours^
dining-rooms and drawing-rooms, kitchens
and washing-houses, pantries and sculleries,
how could you put one room to the uses
of all ? You mothers with your cooks
and housemaids, your nurses and general
servants, how would you in your own
persons act all those parts in one room
where, too, you must eat and sleep and
find your lying-in-room and make your
sick-bed ? You fathers, with your billiard-
rooms, your libraries and parlours, your
dinner parties, your evening hours, un-
disturbed by washing-days, your children
brought to you when they can amuse you,
and far removed when they become trouble-
some, how long would you continue to be
that pattern husband which you are — in
one room ? You children, with your
nurseries and nurses, your toys and your
SLUM HOUSES— CHARACTER 67
picture books, your space to play in with-
out being trodden upon, your children's
parties and your daily airings, your prattle
which does not disturb your sick mamma,
your special table spread with a special
meal, your seclusion from contact with the
dead, and, still worse, familiarity with the
living, where would you find your innocence
and how would you preserve the dew and
freshness of your infancy — in one room ?
You grown-up sons, with all the resources
of your fathers for indoor amusement, with
your cricket fields and football club and
skating pond, with your own bedroom,
with space which makes self-restraint easy
and decency natural, how could you wash
and dress and sleep and eat, and spend
your leisure hours in a house of — one
room ? You grown-up daughters, with
your bedrooms and your bathrooms, your
piano and your drawing-room, your little
brothers and sisters to toy with when you
have a mind to and send out of the way
when you cannot be troubled, your every
want supplied without sharing in menial
household work, your society regulated
and no rude rabble of lodgers to sully the
68 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
purity of your surroundings, how could
you live and preserve ' the white flower
of a blameless life ' — in one room ? You
sick ones, in your hushed seclusion, how
would you deport yourselves in the racket
and thoughtless noise of your nursery, in
the heat and smells of your kitchen, in the
steam and disturbance of your washing-
house, for you would find all these com-
bined in a house of — one room ? Last of
all, when you die, you still have one room
to yourself, where in decency you may
be washed and dressed, and laid out for
burial. If that one room were your house,
what a ghastly intrusion you would be.
The bed on which you lie is wanted for
the accommodation of the living. The
table at which your children ought to sit
must bear your coffin, and they must keep
your unwelcome company. Day and night
you lie there until with difficulty those
who carry you out thread their tortuous
way along the dark lobby and down the
narrow stair through a crowd of women
and children. You are driven along the
busy and unsympathetic streets, lumbering
beneath the vehicle which conveys your
SLUM HOUSES— CHARACTER 69
scanty company to the distant and cheer-
less cemetery, where the acid and deadly
air of the city in which you lived will still
blow over you and prevent even a blade
of grass from growing upon your grave."
This is a terrible portrayal, but it is not
beyond the sober truth, and it would be
possible to multiply quotations from evidence
presented to Parliament in official Reports
which reveal the character of the family life
of people whose unfortunate lot it is to live
under these conditions. It will be useful,
however, to record an example from the results
of an inquiry which was conducted in North-
East London shortly before the war, and
which on more than one occasion was made
effective use of by the Prime Minister in
public speeches.
A complete report of domestic conditions
was obtained from a considerable number of
streets. Many of the houses were not in the
condemned class, but for the most part had
become inhabited in tenements. As a typical
case the records may be quoted of the first
ten houses on the same side of a street for
which the information was complete and in
70 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
which the houses, so far as their structure
went, were, in a sound condition, and which
are fairly representative of tens of thousands
of houses which exist throughout the country.
A recent examination of the street reveals no
substantial change. It is described as "3,
medium broad street of three-storied houses,
with basements. The basements are always
dark and unfit for habitation. The houses
have fairly large windows and fairly lofty
rooms. The yards at the back are of a good
size, but are shut in by houses at the end.''
The accompanying table speaks for itself.
Population.
N^iimVi#*T"
Number
Number
of W.C.s
of Water
House.
of
Total.
in the
Taps in
Lettings;
Under
i8.
Over
i8.
House.
the
House.
I
6
II
9
20
2
2
2
4
19
8
27
2
2
3
4
i8
6
24
2
2
4
6
5
8
13
I
I
5
8
—
10
10
I
2
6
8
21
13
34
2
I
7
5
19
10
29
2
I
8
7
i6
13
29
2
I
9
7
22
12
34
2
I
10
4
12
6
18
2
2
Totals
59
143
95
238
18
15
SLUM HOUSES— CHARACTER 71
The fact that one water-closet served on
the average rather more than three separate
lettings, and that the tenants of nearly four
separate lettings had to share one water tap
for all purposes, gives perhaps a better
indication of the way that family life is
carried on than any bare figures of over-
crowding can do.
It was ascertained beyond question that
the population in these streets consisted almost
wholly of average working people, regularly
employed, who were constant residents. Many
of them, indeed, had been born there. They
lived there because it was " handy for work,"
because they could not get other accommoda-
tion, because the father and the children
liked *' to come home for dinner," because
they *' could not afford railway fares from
the suburbs," and because they were near a
cheap market, and finally because they '* just
lived there."
There is no point in multiplying examples,
for there are many miles of such tenement
streets in London alone. It is better to
consider the effect of such surroundings on
the people concerned.
CHAPTER VI
LIFE IN SLUM HOUSES : SOME OF ITS RESULTS
OFFICIAL statistics in municipal and
other reports prove that Hfe under
the conditions described in the
previous chapter is accompanied by a high
death-rate, and is conducive to the spread of
tuberculosis and other diseases. Let us
endeavour to get behind these reports and
examine the effect on the general vitality
and efficiency of the people.
As to the statistics. Dr. Russell told us that
32 per cent, of the children who die in Glasgow
before completing their fifth year, come
from one-room houses, whilst only 2 per cent,
come from houses of five rooms or more. But
such figures may be submitted to various
corrections affecting the total numbers and
ages of those concerned, and Dr. Chalmers, the
present M^ical Officer of Health, as quoted
by the Royal Commission, made allowance
for all the different factors affecting age-rates
72
SLUM HOUSES—SOME RESULTS 73
and otherwise, and found that the mortaUty
statistics in the different classes of homes
was as follows : —
Death rate per house in
One-roomed houses .. .. ..2014
Two-roomed „ 16-83
Three-roomed ,, . . .. .. .. 12-63
Four and more „ . . . . . . .. 10-32
In Birmingham, Dr. Robertson, the Medi-
cal Officer of Health, took two comparable
industrial areas within that city, the one
with some 33,000 houses on a little less than
2,000 acres, and the other with 30,000 houses
on about 3,000 acres. The first area he
described as having bad living conditions,
and the second as providing fairly good
accommodation. The results were obtained
from the records of the years 1912 to 1916.
In the first area, the general death-rate was
21 ; in the second 12. In the first, the
infant death-rate was 171 ; in the second it
was 89.
With regard to tuberculosis, an inquiry
was made in some London boroijphs as to
the home conditions of those who came to
the dispensaries. In one borough only 86
out of 482 consumptive patients had a
74 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
bedroom to themselves, whilst nearly all
the remainder shared not only a room, but a
bed, with some one else. In another case,
only 134 cases out of 766 had a bedroom to
themselves, and 453 of the remainder shared
a bed with one or more members of the
family.
These things are impressive enough, but
it is only when we apply the conditions to
an ordinarily healthy physical life, that we
get some understanding of the disablements
by which people in overcrowded dwellings
are handicapped and are rendered more likely
to become a burden upon their friends and
fellow citizens.
Take first the case of sleep.
The growth of a child, and the health, both
of the child and of the adult, are much
dependent upon a sufficiency of sleep. For
a number of years, a child spends, or should
spend, at least half of its life in bed, and if
because of the noise outside or that caused
by other occupants of the same room it has
insufficient opportunities for quiet sleep, its
growth and health are injuriously affected.
We are all familiar with the fact that, if at
any time we have suffered from a lack of
SLUM HOUSES-SOME RESULTS 75
sleep, our ability to do our work, our good
temper and general bodily and mental health
begin to suffer. But in these narrow homes
it is not possible for the children to get
sufficient sleep if the ordinary conduct of
family life is to be possible for the mother and
father and for the older members of the
family. If they are within doors during
the evening, they cannot but disturb the
sleep of the younger ones or make them go to
bed later than they ought to do. This con-
sideration, as well as the character of the
home itself, often compels the seniors to find
their occupation in the streets or elsewhere.
How can they be blamed if they sometimes
go to the public-house more than is good for
them ? It provides free conversation, as well
as shelter and warmth when it is raining and
cold. In the presence of these obvious facts
it is a little difficult to understand why
so many well-meaning people have resisted
all attempts to make the public-house a
pleasanter place than it is. Apart from them,
too, society owes more than it sometimes sus-
pects to the numerous clubs and associations
that help to brighten the evenings of the
people in these crowded districts.
76 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
la homes of this character wherever there
is a family, and despite all the ingenuity and
expedients that parents may devise to abate
its drawbacks, there is an ever-present
obstacle from infancy onwards to the children
getting a sufficiency of quiet sleep. There
is not one of us, more fortunately circum-
stanced and with young children of our own,
who has not passed in the evening along such
streets and seen tiny children playing about
doorsteps and on the pavement at a time
when our own were already in bed. It needs
no expert to convince us that plenty of sleep
is essential for a child's growth and good
nutrition, but these children are handicapped
in that way from the beginning as the records
of the school medical service will presently
reveal.
The case is made worse because of the fact
that their chances are usually prejudiced in
two other matters almost equally vital to
good health : namely, in the quality of the
air they have to breathe and in the character
of the food they have to eat.
It is plain that the air in our home, of all
places, should be as pure as we can get it,
because we breathe it for a longer time than
SLUM HOUSES— SOME RESULTS 77
any other. The mother of a family spends
most of her time within doors. The children
spend at least two-thirds of theirs. Even
grown-up persons who go to daily work and
return in the evening, spend nearly half of
their lives at home, if we take the whole year
round. When people, for all these hours, are
breathing air largely used by others, too
crowded in their rooms, and very often in
rooms that cannot be ventilated, it is inevit-
able that they should be injured thereby and
become specially prone to the infection of
colds, tubercle and other complaints.
We have all experienced at different times
the lassitude and ill-effects which arise from
a long stay in a stuffy room ; but this is not
the occasional, it is the usual condition in
multitudes of these homes. Take those
72,000 houses built back-to-back in the city
of Leeds, and which, being shut in by a wall
at the back, cannot possibly have through
ventilation. The only opening in such cases,
beside the front window, is the door, which
opens, often enough, on to a landing that is
stuffy and that is shared by the inhabitants
of other tenements in which the air is similarly
stagnant. Under these circumstances, it is
78 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
unavoidable that medical inspection of
school children should show that hundreds
of thousands of them suffer from various
disordered throat conditions ; from chronic
catarrh, enlarged tonsils, adenoids and the
rest. Great numbers of the children, owing
to the spread of the affections from the
throat to the ear, become affected with
deafness, with all its attendant disadvan-
tages when they come to have to earn a
living.
The case of food is equally striking and is
equally traceable. A great proportion of the
houses now used in tenements in this country
were originally designed for single-family
occupation, and in most of them the room that
was originally the kitchen is the only room in
which there is a fire-place on which a woman
can cook meals with the usual facility. In
the other tenements of the house, the women
have to do the best they can with their pots
and pans perched on the bars of an ordinary
fire-place. Even when this is not the case,
there is usually no proper provision for
keeping the food fresh and clean, either before
it has been cooked or afterw^ards. Too few
of us realise under what continual disad-
SLUM HOUSES— SOME RESULTS 79
vantage the heroic mothers of milUons of our
people have to labour in the conduct of their
home life. These disabilities, of course, affect
the family diet every day. They limit very
much the kind of meals that can be cooked,
and impose sameness and lack of variety
upon their food. One consequence often is
that there is an excessive use of ready-cooked
foods, pickles, and of other tasty things
difficult to digest. Continued through a
series of years, diet of this kind is repre-
sented by widespread digestive disorders.
The proportion of the working classes that
suffer from them is very high indeed as the
records to which I shall shortly allude bear
testimony.
An interesting side-light on this aspect of
the question is afforded by the experience
gained during the special efforts which were
made during the years 1919 and 1920 to
combat the high infant mortality. Great en-
deavour was made to concentrate our efforts
both centrally and locally on the improved
milk feeding of infants. It is not material
here to detail all that was done, but the
simple diet of milk that the infant requires
afforded an opportunity to secure that in
8o THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
that section of the child's Ufe the natural
uncooked food should be available in suitable
form if the child's mother was herself unable
to provide it. The results were most gratify-
ing ; but what could be done at that stage of
life could be done afterwards if the con-
ditions allowed it. As soon, however, as
infancy is past the child begins to share the
family diet and the drawbacks that have
been pointed out begin to assert themselves
and are manifest in defective growth and
nutrition.
It is not, therefore, a matter of surprise
that of the 2,434,252 children in attendance
in our elementary schools, who were medically
inspected during the year 1920, no fewer than
1,166,784 were found to be suffering from
some physical defect or other. There were
500,000 children who were definitely described
as suffering from malnutrition. The wonder
is that there were not more. Their bodies
had been crippled by an early deficiency of
sleep, by improper feeding, and by a per-
petual lack of fresh air.
In later life the same causes were revealed
in the large number of undersized and unfit
recruits that presented themselves at the
SLUM HOUSES— SOME RESULTS 8i
recruiting stations during the war. People
were shocked. It is easy to forget it now in
peace time. But our forgetfulness does not
abate the constant and continuing operation
of these damaging influences. They continue
to produce malnourishment and many of the
physical disabilities that limit the person's
ability to do good and useful work, and to do
it regularly. The industrial loss involved
must be prodigious, and to it must be
added the increased liability to unemploy-
ment pay and to dependence upon public
support.
Familiar, however, as many of these things
are, it came as a surprise to many, two years
ago, to find that the insured population of
England and Wales lost fourteen million
weeks of work through sickness every year.
These were people, be it noted, who had work
to do, but who were unable to go to it because
they were sick. The loss was so gigantic that
no study of its causes could be too careful.
A detailed examination, therefore, was made
of the sicknesses of insured persons as far
as they could be ascertained. Three con-
clusions emerged from the Report with
clear and irresistible dominance, and they
F
82 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
deserve to be quoted. They were stated as
follows : —
" I. That the conditions which impair
the health and even lead to the disable-
ment of men, women and children are not
chiefly the conditions which kill them,
though they may, in many cases, predispose
to mortal disease.
"2. That relatively little of the sickness
is attributable directly to infectious disease,
and
''3. That a substantial proportion is
preventable.''
Apart altogether from grave diseases, what
were the two conditions that bulked largest
amongst those for which the people sought
medical aid ? They were respiratory dis-
orders, other than grave disease, and
indigestion. In representative cities it
appeared that out of every thousand disorders
for which insured persons sought advice, no
less than 324 were accounted for in these two
groups.
There are all sorts of risks and disad-
vantages to be encountered in adult and
working life, but such results are not to be
SLUM HOUSES— SOME RESULTS 83
wondered at if we consider the home con-
ditions that have prejudiced the air and the
food that has been taken by so many people
from childhood onwards. It is reports of this
kind that begin to reveal the waste that slum
life represents in loss of labour and produc-
tion, in the cost of medical attendance and of
sickness payments.
Parenthetically it may be observed that,
at the time this inquiry was being made, a
determined attempt was made by an
important newspaper to do away even with
the meagre records that we have of what the
people suffer from. It is strange that political
malignity should go so far as to seek to deprive
us of a knowledge of the causes that prevent
people being able to continue at their work
because of sickness.
It would be easy, but it is not necessary,
to extend this examination of the physical
disablements which are so conspicuously
present amongst that section of the people
which includes so many that are overcrowded
and badly housed. The material is ample,
and is plainly set out in the report of almost
every independent inquiry that has been
conducted on the subject.
84 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
It may, however, be profitable, seeing that
the national effort to deal with these con-
ditions has been arrested on the ground of
economy, to inquire a little more precisely
into the costs which are otherwise attendant
upon the present state of affairs.
In doing so, also, we must defer for the
present the consideration of those other
results of life under these circumstances
which are not ascertainable in terms of
bodily ailments, or in cash payments for the
sick. They will, no doubt, be present all
the time to the minds of thinking people,
but the data are not available whereby we
can assess the national loss arising out of the
misery and sorrow, the discontent and the
bad habits that assail with such advantage
the lives of those who have to spend their
days in these gloomy and imhealthy places.
CHAPTER VII
LIFE IN SLUM HOUSES : SOME ITEMS OF ITS
COST
WE have no means of calculating
precisely the loss occasioned by
the diminished production and
by the loss of earnings which accompany
preventable sickness. A substantial propor-
tion of the fourteen milUon weeks of work
lost through sickness annually is clearly
associated with sickness that is preventable,
and it is markedly prevalent amongst that
section of the people whose homes we are
considering.
We know what cash payments are made
through official agencies to those who are
sick, and what is spent in various directions
in remedial treatment. There are, however,
so many deficiencies in our knowledge of
the bill of costs, that at the time when I
was Minister of Health I directed Mr.
Vivian, the Registrar-General, to try and
85
86 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
work them out for a single disease. The
disease of tuberculosis was selected for that
inquiry, because so much of the cost incurred
in its treatment is separately accounted for,
the payments made to the sufferers are
more readily ascertainable, and the cases
are notified and are fairly carefully followed
up. It happens also to be a disease that
is to a great extent preventable and that
is very much connected with bad home
conditions.
Mr. Vivian had available the costs of
sanatorium and dispensary treatment and
other official infoimation. He was also
greatly aided by the largest of the Approved
Societies, who freely placed all their records
at his disposal in order to enable him to
ascertain the benefits that were paid to
members suffering from tuberculosis and the
number of weeks of work that they lost.
The results obtained may, quite fairly, be
taken to represent a general average for
tuberculous cases.
It appeared that tuberculosis represented
about one case out of every hundred that
came before the Society, and accounted for
one out of every fifty-five of the cases that
SLUM HOUSES— SOME COSTS 87
received weekly sickness payments on account
of loss of work. Owing to the fact, however,
that the duration of the disease is prolonged
and that tuberculosis patients received pay-
ments on an average for nearly fourteen
weeks each, against a general average of
live weeks, it emerged that out of every
£100 that the Society paid in sickness benefits,
those affected with tuberculosis received
£5 2s., or a little over one-twentieth part of
the whole.
It is not necessary to describe the elaborate
calculations which accompanied Mr. Vivian's
general application of these conclusions.
There were 46,318 deaths from tuberculosis
in England and Wales during the year 1919,
and allowances had to be made for the ages
of those affected, their occupations, earnings,
and for many other circumstances, before
any final estimate of the loss could be arrived
at. His conclusion, however, is represented in
the following table from which there is omitted
from lack of separate data any estimate of
the share of the cost that tuberculosis entails
upon our public health services.
88 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
TOTAL ANNUAL DIRECT COST OF TUBERCU-
LOSIS TO THE COMMUNITY (ENGLAND
AND WALES) :—
Loss by death of production and services £
calculated to afford a net annual addi-
tion to capital of . . . . . . 9,600,000
Loss by incapacity of production and
services estimated at, say . . . . 2,350,000
Cost of National Health Insurance cash
benefits, say . . . . . . . . 300,000
Cost to public funds of curative provisions,
say 2,000,000
Annual Cost — Total . . . . 14,250,000
It is to be observed that, although tuber-
culosis is a long continuing disease, the
payments for sickness benefit made in respect
of it were only about one pound out of every
twenty pounds that societies paid to their
members on account of sickness. The re-
maining nineteen pounds and the corres-
ponding losses and costs that attach to them
have to be accounted for. It is in them
that we are confronted by the fact already
stated that respiratory and digestive dis-
orders, apart from grave and defined maladies
of either of those two classes, account for no
less than 324 out of every 1,000 disorders
from which insured persons annually seek
advice. When we couple together the life
SLUM HOUSES— SOME COSTS 89
conditions which favour the occurrence of
these disorders with the conclusion that much
of the sickness is preventable, we begin to
have some glimmering of the extent of our
commercial and industrial losses arising from
avoidable sickness. All the evidence avail-
able goes to show that the sum, whatever
it is, is so large that it might well bear com-
parison with the greatest items in our national
expenditure.
From whatever direction indeed this prob-
lem is approached, and when all fair allow-
ances have been made for other causes, the
conclusion is irresistible that the cost in
physical disabiUty, the loss of work and of
working efficiency, the cost of payments
for sickness, for treatment, for unemployment,
for poor law and other charges arising out of
bad housing conditions form a prodigious total.
Some further light upon this is provided
by a table of our present annual expenditure
on medical services which was supplied by
the Ministry of Health. It includes expendi-
ture from rates, from the exchequer and from
assigned revenues, together with compulsory
individual contributions and the cost of
hospitals and of voluntary contributions.
90 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
It is as follows : —
Proportion of Poor Law charges spent on £
Health Services 11,000,000
Cost of Asylums and Mental Diseases . . 2,000,000
Cost of Tuberculosis . . . . . . 1,900,000
Cost of Maternity and Child Welfare . . 1,950,000
Cost of the School Medical Service . . 600,000
Cost of Treatment of Venereal Disease 117,000
Cost of Voluntary Hospitals . . . . 7,000,000
Cost of Sickness and Disablement Benefits
Payments . . , . . . . . 8,700,000
Cost of Medical Benefit and Drugs . . 9,100,000
Total . . 42,367,000
It should be noted that the expenditure
on tuberculosis treatment directly is one of
the smallest items. In comparison with
this charge alone, different municipalities
state that their expenditure on the treatment
of tuberculosis is more than ten times what
they will be entitled to receive from the grant
of £200,000 for the improvement of the bad
housing ; notwithstanding that bad home
conditions are admittedly one of the most
important predisposing causes of the origin
and spread of that disease.
The costs already referred to, however,
take no account of what we spend on the
unemployment which has its origin in physical
unfitness to obtain work or to retain it, nor
SLUM HOUSES— SOME COSTS 91
do they include any of the expenditure upon
sickness of benefit and friendly societies
and of trade unions, or of the numberless
clubs, fresh air funds, country holiday funds,
convalescent homes, and other expedients
which the charitable public through churches,
missions, and all manner of organisations
support for the amelioration of the conditions
of life in crowded industrial districts.
The tragic and disappointing feature of
the decision to limit the amount devoted to
the improvement or replacement of bad
houses to £200,000 is that, whilst itself
accomplishing next to nothing, it has the
effect of leading to the abandonment of a
policy of restoration and prevention, and
commits us to a continuance of a system
whereby millions are vainly poured out in
dealing with results.
It is not possible to separate out those
portions of the charges that are directly
attributable to bad housing conditions, but
the records from the schools, from the poor
law, from the trade unions, from the approved
societies, as well as from the public expendi-
ture incurred in these districts where bad
housing predominates, show clearty enough
92 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
that they are responsible for a large propor-
tion of the burden. It must be far within
the limit of fair statement to say that in as
many tens of millions annually they compare
with the hundreds of thousands that the
Government now propose to devote to their
removal.
CHAPTER VIII
SOME METHODS OF DEALING WITH UNFIT
HOUSES
IT would avail nothing if we were to
confine ourselves to a statement of
existing evils and fail to consider
constructive suggestions for dealing with
them.
The problem is not more difficult than
many others, and could certainly be dealt
with at less cost than is involved in some
branches of national expenditure which yield
little to show for what is spent. The task
in any case requires to be undertaken with
patience and with resolution, sensibly, and
with a willingness to learn as we go on.
The first necessity is to avoid highly
coloured and impracticable promises, to
recognise and to say frankly that any national
attempt, however made, to restore or replace
unhealthy houses must occupy a long series
of years. The British people is sufficiently
93
94 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
endowed with good sense and patience to
be satisfied if it sees that the poUcy is being
adhered to and that the work is being steadily
carried on throughout the country.
The second necessity is to do everything
possible to prevent the development of addi-
tional insanitary areas. This is particularly
necessary, because, so long as the present
acute shortage of accommodation remains,
there is a continuous tendency, with the
increase of the population and with the
demolition or disuse of the more dilapidated
of the existing inhabited houses, for people
to crowd more and more into houses which
at present are in good or fair condition, and
thereby accelerate their deterioration. It is
important, therefore, to continue unimpaired
the powers at present possessed by Local
Authorities for the maintenance of good
sanitary standards and for the execution of
repairs, and to secure their fair and vigilant
administration.
The few clearances that had been effected
before 1919 revealed that an essential factor
in the prevention of the spread of insanitary
areas is to secure that the basis for compen-
sation, when an area has become condemned
DEALING WITH UNFIT HOUSES 95
as insanitary, should be such as to make it
disadvantageous to the owner that property
should be allowed to decline to that condition.
The system of compensation on acquisition
prior to 1919 was such that sometimes it
actually paid to let property deteriorate and
thereby hasten the day when compulsory
acquisition became necessary in the interests
of the public health. This wrong was re-
moved by the Act of 1919. Mr. Neville
Chamberlain's Committee, however, recom-
mend certain changes in the system of
compensation provided in that Act that
may prove to be valuable and necessary, but
the principle recommended by that Com-
mittee, and embodied in the Act of 1919,
should not be departed from. It is thus
stated by Mr. Chamberlain's Committee : —
" Where a landlord has allowed his
property to fall into a condition which is
unfit for human habitation, it is not
equitable that he should receive anything
by way of compensation for the structure,
even though he continue to draw revenue
from it by reason of the exceptional short-
age of accommodation now prevailing."
96 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
Let us hope that no poHtical exigencies
will lead to such an alteration of the law
as will remove what is at present a real
inducement to an owner to prevent the
deterioration of his property and that enables
a Local Authority to acquire an insanitary
area without incurring unjust and excessive
burdens.
Another important aid in the prevention
of additional insanitary areas arises out of
the Town Planning powers, which become
obligatory upon the larger Urban Authorities
after 1923. It has already been proved that
where such work is done sensibly and with-
out too much technicality and detail, it
encourages good development.
Any scheme of planning-in-advance, how-
ever, is closely linked up with questions of
transport. People naturally prefer to live
reasonably near their work, and to avoid
the time and expense of long daily journeys,
so that the more transport is improved and
cheapened, the less irksome such journeys
become, and the tendency to live in more
open surroundings is encouraged. It is ac-
cordingly useful to afford every facility for
the establishment of factories with adequate
DEALING WITH UNFIT HOUSES 97
transport in open country, and for the
provision in the same district of well-
planned industrial settlements. In this con-
nection, the provision of better opportunities
for credit to well-managed garden city
associations, public utility societies and
similar bodies is important, for it has now
been established that where such bodies,
under good management, are free to make
the wisest use of a good area of land for
housing, industrial, or other purposes, it is
possible to develop settlements on these
lines without any material charge, if any,
falling upon public funds.
As a further aid in preventing a worsening
of slum conditions, Mr. Chamberlain's Com-
mittee make a valuable suggestion. They
say that :
" During the time of acute scarcity. Local
Authorities might have power to declare
an area congested, and to prevent any
further demolition therein, or new building
except under licence. This might prevent
matters getting worse in some places and
would be so much to the good."
The foregoing precautions, if diligently
G
98 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
adopted, would certainly assist in delaying
the spread of overcrowding and of insanitary
conditions, but unless much new^ accom-
modation is provided and the bad houses
themselves are restored or replaced, these
measures alone will in no way provide
additional room for the population or suffice
to compensate for the inevitable decay of
poor dwellings.
The decision to limit the provision of
additional new houses to the number sub-
stantially agreed upon in April, 1921, must
therefore have a desolating effect. Added to
the decision to limit the allowance for improv-
ing bad housing to £200,000, it bolts the door
against relief, for nothing can prevent the
spread of overcrowding and of insanitary
conditions unless there is a great amount of
additional accommodation made available.
This is not the place, however, to deal with
that aspect of the case, but rather to consider
what can be done with regard to the bad
houses themselves, on the assumption that
the safeguards and precautions already set
out have been adopted.
There is certainly no one specific. All
possible means must be used. Some may be
DEALING WITH [UNFIT HOUSES 99
more appropriate here, others there, and our
minds must be open all the time for better
and more economical suggestions.
The first question which arises is : Can
we leave the task to private enterprise ?
We cannot expect private enterprise to
undertake the improvement of insanitary
property, except at a fair profit. It has not
done so heretofore because it entails loss,
and it is the more difiicult for it to do
so now when the cost of building is
enhanced and when limitations have been
imposed on rents by the State itself because
of the housing scarcity.
There are properties to be found, even in
bad areas, where the houses are kept in a
good state of repair, and the best is made of
them. In these instances, it is usually a
well-to-do owner that is responsible, and one
whose property and interests are large enough
to make good estate management possible
and profitable. In the majority of cases
of poor-class houses, however, the houses,
through a series of leases and sub-leases, are
in the immediate charge of people of rela-
tively small means. Sometimes it is a house-. ^
farmer whose sole interest is to do as little as
100 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
possible to the property and to get as much
out of it as possible. If, however, we set
this last class aside, it is still true that, even
when the disposition is there — and it often
is — the cost of putting the houses into a really
tenantable condition, when structurally worth
it, is often beyond the means of those con-
cerned, and would be unremunerative in any
case.
Much minor repair work is done, it is true,
by owners of this class of property on their
own initiative, or at the request of the local
authority, but when all this has been allowed
for, there remain such a vast number of houses
which are really hopeless, and so many more
which can only be rendered fit by considerable
reconstruction, that the private owner has
neither the money nor the credit to deal with
them even if he were disposed. He can, as a
rule, only control a few houses out of a great
number, and he is thereby continually con-
fronted by the fact that, apart from losing
money by his work, he would find himself
possessed of houses still much depressed in
value by adjoining insanitary property. In
practically all cases, where considerable
insanitary property has been dealt with
DEALING WITH UNFIT HOUSES zoi'
privately, it has been for the purpose of
demohtion, and for the devotion of the
greater part of the site to commercial or
industrial uses.
The task, clearly, is not one that private
enterprise will undertake. Indeed, it does
not appear to be seriously questioned any-
where that the great bulk of the necessary
practicable improvements in insanitary areas
can only be effected by a public authority
after it has purchased the property for that
purpose, nor is this conclusion seriously
affected by making a full allowance for the
work of the different, more or less charitable,
housing trusts.
How then can a local authority proceed
in these matters ?
Whenever a local authority becomes
responsible for an improvement scheme in
any area, it must purchase the whole or a
considerable and appropriate part of it,
otherwise it would not be able to make the
best use of the ground on well-planned lines
either for rehousing or for the leasing of
suitable sites for commercial and industrial
purposes. In any other case it would have
used the ratepayers' money to enhance the
.los- THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
value of property which later on it would
need to acquire.
A local authority has the power of pur-
chase already where an improvement scheme
is contemplated, but Mr. Chamberlain's Com-
mittee makes the additional suggestion that,
— since reconstruction or demolition with
rehousing can only proceed on a few areas
at a time and on them piecemeal and by
stages — a local authority should be enabled
to purchase the property in an insanitary
district for the purpose of executing such
improvements as may be possible both in
management and in conveniences apart from
a scheme of general reconstruction.
This additional suggestion of Mr. Chamber-
lain's Committee appears to be valuable,
because it would bring some immediate help to
those districts which practical considerations
rule out from reconstruction or rebuilding
work for the time being.
Apart from the gradual demolition and
replacement of worthless houses, there is a
large number of unsatisfactory or insanitary
houses that could by various schemes of
reconstruction be turned into useful and
clean dwellings. Many ingenious schemes of
DEALING WITH UNFIT HOUSES 103
this kind, limited to a few houses, have been
carried out in different places, and it is
manifest that no cut-and-dried rules should
be made prescribing what should be done.
It is pre-eminently a matter on which local
initiative and enterprise, with full knowledge
of the character of the local population and
of its needs, should receive great freedom
and encouragement. But the houses that are
worth reconstruction and repair, as distin-
guished from those that need demolition and
replacement on the site or elsewhere, are not
usually separately situated. They exist in
adjoining streets in the same area or even in
the same street with others of a worse kind,
and involve considerable commitments with
regard to acquisition.
In every case also there is a displacement
of the population during reconstruction,
although the houses would be dealt with in
small groups. In any event the former
overcrowding would not be repeated. Never-
theless a very substantial contribution to
housing improvement can be obtained by
such reconstruction schemes when the state
of the property makes it worth while. At
the end of such a process, however, we are
104 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
still left with the great block of worthless
and insanitary property that must be
demolished and replaced as well as with the
overcrowding unprovided for. Any local
authority, therefore, in planning this kind
of work needs to have these other consider-
ations before them.
The work in any case involves considerable
preliminary expense. A scheme of a pro-
visional kind for the area has to be prepared,
negotiations have to be entered upon with a
large number of owners and other interested
parties, many detailed and technical questions
affecting compensation and other matters
require to be discussed, notices have to be
served, and a host of commitments of a diverse
kind have to be entered into.
A local authority in undertaking the work
also requires to be satisfied that they will be
able to carry it through however generous
may be the allowance of time that has to be
made for the purpose. It is the destruc-
tion of this confidence, necessary both for
initiation and for execution, that has led
authorities from one end of the country to
the other to abandon beneficent schemes of
house improvement.
DEALING WITH UNFIT HOUSES 105
No substantial progress will ever be made
unless reasonably sufficient national support
is absolutely assured throughout to the
authorities concerned. There may be some
who would question this statement and
inquire as to why the burden should be, in
part, a national one. It is rather late in the
day to ask such a question, but the answer
is not far to seek.
In most cases the overcrowding and accom-
panying conditions have come about through
industrial and other changes over which those
affected have had no control. There has
been no requirement anywhere of planning-
in-advance or of provision for transport or
for development. Districts have been built
up as trade or industry required, and society
has taken no intelligent or considered pre-
caution in advance with regard to the home
requirements of the people concerned. They
have had to make shift as best they could.
The responsibility for this lack of foresight
rests upon us all and not simply upon the
district concerned. A district ought certainly
to bear such a proportion of the charges as
will involve a real incentive to economical
work and management, but it is entitled to
io6 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
help from the community as a whole, for
those whose lot is cast in more pleasant
places are equally concerned in the causes
which have produced these results and in
the benefits that will result to society from
improvement. It cannot be denied also that
the poorer the district and the more burdened
it is by insanitary property, the less is its
financial ability to deal with it. The estimates
also show that to limit the burden in such
cases to the local ratepayers would end in
nothing being done because the burden was
so heavy.
Every consideration of justice is in support
of national help being afforded, apart from
the fact that in the absence of such national
help the enterprise will not be undertaken
at all.
Some one, however, may say, '' I admit
these contentions ; I admit the awful
conditions prevailing and their results ;
I admit that the grant of £200,000 for the
whole country will do little or nothing and
is not in accord with the existing law or with
our promises of support, but the financial
condition of the country compels me to say
that we cannot afford to do more."
DEALING WITH UNFIT HOUSES 107
The argument which has been followed in
preceding chapters has been designed to
show not only that ought we to do more,
but that it would be wasteful folly not to do
more. It remains to be shown that we can
do more. Before, however, making any sug-
gestions as to the form and extent of that
additional and necessary aid, it is proper to
examine those questions of national policy
which affect the decision to arrest housing
enterprises and that blot out the hopes of
betterment that our pledges aroused.
CHAPTER IX
FUTURE POLICY AND A PROPOSAL
THE short period of artificial pros-
perity that followed the conclusion
of the war came to an end nearly
two years ago, and no one will question now
that we are finding ourselves stricken and
impoverished through the losses of the war,
and that it is not possible by any devices to
escape the consequences of its prodigious
waste. The restoration of our financial
position, therefore, demands frugality both
in personal and in national expenditure, and
this applies as much to the costs incurred in
the work of restoration as to any other.
But the waste is not in treasure only. It is
even greater in the bereavements, in the
sufferings and in physical and social depriva-
tions of the people themselves, and it cannot
be good statesmanship to lose sight of it.
If we are to make up for the losses of the
war and to bear our added responsibilities,
io8
FUTURE POLICY 109
it is necessary to improve the physical,
intellectual and industrial capacity of the
people. One of the most poignant lessons of
the war, indeed, was that there was a great
need for increased efficiency. If this is so,
then it must be unwise to neglect one of
the chief causes of deterioration. Especially
must this be the case when it has been
proved that the physical disabilities which
follow from present conditions entail heavy
burdens of costs upon the rate and tax-
payers, and provide a constant cause of social
discontent.
With regard to the latter it is common
knowledge that multitudes of people are con-
tinually suffering disappointment in their
search for a home. The following letter may
be quoted as an example. It was sent by
the Town Clerk of a Metropolitan Borough
on July nth, 1922, to a workman resident
in the borough who was anxious to obtain
better accommodation for his family :
" I have to inform you that there are at
present no vacant houses on any of the
Council's estates. Your application has
been filed with the many others which.
no THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
have been received, and these will be
considered in the event of a vacancy
occurring on any of the estates or when
the houses now being erected are com-
pleted. There are at present about 6,000
applications on the file."
In order fully to appreciate the significance
of this letter and the hopelessness that it
entails for the applicants, we must remember
that the accumulated deficiency in new pro-
vision that has accompanied the years of
the war was preceded by four years in which,
according to a report issued by the London
County Council, there were 24,602 working-
class rooms demolished in the County of
London and only 20,851 built. Even before
the war, therefore, the pressure in the County
of London was becoming greater, and the
6,000 applicants on the waiting list of one
borough alone shows how it has become
intensified since then.
Every day brings to thousands of people
throughout the land the heart sickness that
arises from a fruitless search. The letter
quoted is only a fair example of those which
have to be sent to people all over the country.
FUTURE POLICY iii
The soreness which these things give rise to
in the minds of people who have every wish
to be quiet and law-abiding citizens is beyond
accounting. We are not faced in this matter
with the vapourings of reckless agitators, but
with the bitterness that arises with sober
people whose only desire is to do their
work quietly and to have a home for their
family.
It is not disputed that the perpetual unrest
amongst the mining population which has
lately inflicted such grievous losses upon us,
is continually being ministered to by the
disgraceful conditions under which the miners
in many districts have to live.
So long as these things continue any agitator,
however reckless and however destructive of
social order his doctrines may be, can find
material for his support. Discredited to-day,
he comes again to-morrow, for these condi-
tions soon furnish him with new disciples.
It is impossible to calculate what we lose
by all this or to say how much it has entered
into the ill-feelings and the losses that have
accompanied the wasteful strikes of the past
three years, but it is plainly incumbent upon
us, if we can, so to adjust our national policy
112 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
and expenditure that sufficient means may
be made available for dealing with these
things.
Nor is it possible to maintain that it cannot
be done.
Expenditure to a great extent is governed
by policy, and unless we are prepared to accept
the necessary modifications of policy nothing
can be done. On certain items of expenditure
there will be common agreement. Interest
on debt must be paid, and the services which
are necessary therefor must be maintained.
A steady and reliable system of repayment
must also be persevered with, although the
amount to be repaid each year may be
adjusted to the measure of national pros-
perity and of our ability to repay. Similarly,
provision must continue to be made for those
who are entitled to assistance from the State
by reason of their services during the war
and otherwise.
But there are other forms of expenditure
that are open to question. The maintenance
of them has already involved the sacrifice of
a national effort to improve the homes of the
people as well as the curtailment of many
beneficial social and educational services.
FUTURE POLICY 113
It may conceivably become the case that
in the desperate impoverishment that the
war has brought even restorative services
may have to be curtailed for a time ; and
in any event it is necessary always to be
seeking out for better and less costly methods
of carrying them on. If curtailment were
forced upon us, it would be lamentable,
because it would prejudice our recovery,
but such an unfortunate necessity can in no
wise be claimed to have arisen whilst pro-
digious expenditure is continued on less
essential services.
For the sake of greater clearness it may be
well to set out a short table showing the
contrast between our expenditure on war
services and what we devote to those that
are now being considered.
During the financial year ending April
ist, 1922, the moneys provided out of
the exchequer for these objects, and
reckoned per head of the population, were
as follows :*
* The population of Ireland is not known precisely,
but for this purpose the population of the United
Kingdom is taken as 47,150,000, that of Great Britain
being 4^,767,833.
H
£ s.
d.
418
5i
0 5
3i
0 I
0
0 0
li
114 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
Taxation per
head of
Expenditure. Population.
Expenditure on War Ser- £
vices, including Mesopo-
tamia and Palestine . . 233,153,000
* Housing {Great Britain),
including £5,750,ooo
subsidy to private
builders . . . . 11,336,724
Treatment of Tuberculosis
{Great Britain) . . . . 2,124,000
Proposed Grant to Redemp-
tion of Slums . . . . 200,000
It may be claimed that substantial
reductions have been effected in war ex-
penditure and that the foregoing comparison
does not now apply. It is, however, more
than a year ago that the decision was
* The subsidy to private builders will practically
terminate with the present financial year. It is
unlikely that the remaining obligations on the housing
schemes will equal £10,000,000, as estimated by Sir
Eric Geddes' Committee, because this estimate rests
on the money having cost 6J per cent, to provide
for interest and sinking fund. Whenever the local
authorities are able to borrow for repayment — as
indeed, they already are — at a lower rate of interest,
each reduction of i per cent, will reduce the
subsidy by £1,500,000. The report recently issued by
the Ministry of Health indicates already that the
estimate of £10,000,000 is excessive by at least a
million.
FUTURE POLICY 115
taken which is here challenged, and most
of the expenditure has been incurred since
that time.
Supplementary estimates have also to be
reckoned with. Last year they exceeded
£100,000,000, of which some £14,990,000 were
for the Army and "Navy alone. During the
short period of the present financial year
also Supplementary Estimates have already
been presented to the extent of £8,368,126,
of which a material part is for Miscellaneous
War Services. The Estimates, however, for
the present year for War Services including
Mesopotamia and Palestine amount to
£152,508,000. If we allow for the necessary
adjustments of the accounts in respect of
the Middle East, which are duplicated, and
make a moderate allowance for Supplementary
Estimates, we cannot expect that the total
charges will be less than £150,000,000 which
represents a taxation, excluding the Irish
Free State, of £3 8s. 2j^. per head of the
population.
What does this figure include ? Sir Eric
Geddes' Committee, in their review of naval
estimates, made no allowance for the economies
consequent on the Washington agreement.
ii6 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
If these are excluded from the present naval
estimates, it appears that the reductions
effected fall short by some £14,000,000 of
those recommended by that Committee, who,
all the time, made the most generous allowance
for the requirements of national and imperial
security.
The Army and Air Service Estimates also
contain important provisions which are very
significant of the present disposition of our
policy.
The charges for War and Air Services in
Mesopotamia and Arabia, excluding pension
charges to British troops, amount to
£8,633,000. Similar charges in Egypt are
responsible for a further £4,903,000, and in
Constantinople for £2,680,050. These three
items are therefore responsible for expenditure
totalling £16,216,000.
The Colonial Secretary deserves credit for
effecting reductions in the expenditure in
Mesopotamia and adjoining countries whilst
the present policy is maintained, but one
has yet to find a responsible soldier who
regards this policy as warranted by any
reason of military necessity.
It is to be observed also with regard to
FUTURE POLICY 117
Egypt that Sir Eric Geddes' Committee
makes this very appropriate comment :
" The only force which was maintained
in these areas before the war was one
cavalry regiment and five infantry bat-
talions in Egypt, the provision for which,
at present-day costs, would not, we are
advised^ have exceeded £1,450,000." *
The vast sums expended in these services
far exceed the requirements of national
safety, and are the outward and visible signs
of a body of policy. They contribute nothing
to restoration and add nothing to our wealth
or to our capacity to produce it. The
British Empire has been built up by care-
ful and just administration and by the
personal initiative and industry of its
people, and not by a prodigal expenditure
of this kind in distant places upon a hand-
ful of people.
These things, with many more like them
that could be cited, betoken a spirit of
adventure and of a system of rule that is
based on force and not on securing the consent
♦ First Report, p. 57.
ii8 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
of the governed that is altogether foreign to
the statecraft that has built up the British
Empire. No better example could be afforded
than that of the expenditure in Egypt for
which the estimates for the present year are
but little less than those of the one just
closed. The excess in these charges arises
out of ignoring the principles recommended
by Lord Milner and the substitution for them
of a policy of repression. This, again, appears
for the present to have been partially aban-
doned, but the distrust that it gave rise to
is represented in the expenditure now being
incurred.
In the same way, the disposition which
has characterised the substitution of the
Supreme Council and other conferences for
the discharge of many duties for which the
machinery of the League of Nations was set
up to deal, are manifestations of an autocratic
method altogether inimical to the abatement
of international rivalries. These conferences
have achieved very little, and at a great
cost, whilst, on the contrary, the League of
Nations, whenever they have had responsi-
bihties put upon them — as in the matters
of the Aaland Islands, Albania and the
FUTURE POLICY 119
Polish frontiers — have achieved much more
valuable results by less ostentatious methods.
The present policy appears to commit us
to a system of grouping of the Powers that
past experience has shown to be ineffective
for the maintenance of peace, and that leads
to War Service expenditures that are beyond
our present means, and that arrest the
processes of real restoration.
First things should come first. And the
first thing surely to make up for the losses
of the war is to devote our thoughts and
powers to improving the capacity and
efficiency of our own people.
If we compare the gigantic sums which
have just been criticised with the proposed
grant of ;f 200, 000 for the restoration or re-
placement of insanitary houses throughout
Great Britain, the latter appears to be a
very mean figure. But it relates to something
that as a cause of physical incapacity, of
moral evil and of social unrest, is of vastly
greater consequences to the British Empire
than the occupation, say, of the Mosul
district which costs far more, or even of the
whole of Mesopotamia. It would be possible
by the devotion of only a small fraction of
120 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
the savings that would follow a change in
the disposition of our policy to provide a
scheme of restoration and of replacement of
insanitary houses that would be adequate,
if sustained, and at the same time commen-
surate with the capacities of the industries
concerned.
No one has yet told us in any authoritative
and reliable way what the potential advan-
tages of Mesopotamia really are, and no
responsible soldier defends the expenditure
of £120,000,000 on that country during the
past three years on the grounds of imperial
strategic necessity. But the interest and
sinking fund charges on the debt incurred by
this costly occupation would almost suffice,
as an annual contribution in aid, to redeem
the slums of this country. The advantages
accruing to the people from the two forms
of expenditure are not to be compared with
one another.
In order, however, to justify that com-
parison it is necessary to provide the outline
of a possible scheme of national assistance of
slum restoration with an estimate of its cost.
We once had a Naval Defence Act covering
a period of construction for a series of years,
FUTURE POLICY 121
and a similar project, with sufficient margins
for annual adjustments, according to the
state of trade, is necessary and is feasible
for the replacement or reconstruction of
insanitary dwellings.
It would be necessary to limit the charges
falUng upon the State and to provide in-
centives to ingenuity and economy for those
entrusted with the work, and in that con-
nection we must learn what lessons we can
from the experiences of the past three years.
One of these lessons is that unless the
country is to be needlessly exploited there
must be a more effective check on the high
costs of building. It is true that the alterna-
tive demands on the building trade during
the years 1919 and 1920 were as unpre-
cedented as they were extravagant, and are
not likely to recur to the same extent, but
an intimate knowledge of what happened
during that time leads to the conclusion that
neither the associations of the master builders
nor the trade unions concerned, as they
exist to-day, can be relied upon to check
extravagant costs.
In any future scheme, covering a long
period of effort, the community should be
122 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
equipped with more effective powers. They
would perhaps rarely require to be exercised
because the fact that they existed would
often suffice, as has been the case in other
instances.
To this end at various times during the
recent housing effort proposals were sub-
mitted to the Cabinet that were based to
some extent upon what we had found to be
effective at the Ministry of Munitions in
securing a limitation of costs. The proposals
were not accepted.
Measures of that kind, however, will prob-
ably be required, and they could be adopted
without damage to industry.
Somewhat later on in the efforts to obtain
houses at less extravagant prices the building
guilds came into existence. They were at
first necessarily handicapped by a lack of
skilled technical advice and assistance, and
the occasion of their commencement presented
other difficulties. Nevertheless, progress
was made, and they afforded an illustra-
tion of co-operative effort that was of a most
promising kind.
Another desirable condition of State assist-
ance should be that its contribution should be
FUTURE POLICY 123
made on such a basis that it entailed within
itself an incentive to economical working.
It is not now possible to go back to the
scheme submitted in 1917 in pursuance of
the recommendations of Lord Salisbury's
committee, nor are those proposals specially
applicable to the question of slum improve-
ment. Nevertheless, the cost of the work
done, subject to a proper limitation, should
be a governing consideration, and the free
acceptance of all charges beyond the yield
of a penny rate clearly does not contain
either a sufficient incentive to economy, or
a reasonable limitation on the liabilities of
the State.
The houses that were acquired and re-
constructed in London during the times of
high prices prevailing in 1919 and 1920
provided family tenements at a cost of some
£720 apiece. At that time interest and
sinking fund charges were 6^ per cent, per
annum on the money borrowed. At present
the equivalent charges are not more than
5i per cent., and the cost of building has
greatly fallen.
Acquisitions and reconstructions on similar
lines at the present time would probably
124 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
not involve an expenditure of more than
£450 per dwelling provided. At present day
money rates, after deducting the rents obtain-
able and making a fair allowance for repairs
and other charges, the annual loss per annum
on such a house would probably not exceed
£10.
In any scheme of this kind, however,
allowance would have to be made for the
fact that a large number of the houses are
worthless, and would require to be demolished
and replaced by satisfactory dwellings either
on the site itself or elsewhere.
To set against this, many small houses
would be needed for elderly couples, un-
married persons and others who would not
wish to have so much accommodation as is
provided for a family. In so far also as a
sensible foresight would suggest, certain por-
tions of the sites acquired could, consistently
with a proper rehousing scheme, be made
use of for commercial or industrial purposes,
and the charges falling on the housing account
would be accordingly diminished.
Under the arrangements made during 1919
and 1920, Local Authorities are already in
possession of land sufficient to provide
FUTURE POLICY 125
sites for 400,000 houses, so that, so far as
rehousing was not undertaken on the sites
taken for improvement schemes, a great
deal of land is already available, and the
cost of it has been included in the cost of
the house-building schemes that have been
arrested. This land represents a very sub-
stantial contribution by the State to any
houses erected thereon, and so far as it was
used for new accommodation that was a
necessary ingredient of an improvement
scheme, the value of the State's contribution
in respect of it should be accounted for in
estimating the exchequer contribution. If
we bear all these considerations in mind,
even at the present costs of building, the
necessities of the case would appear to be
fully met if we allow that the annual loss
per dwelling acquired, and either re-
constructed or replaced, should not exceed
£15. The State's contribution to the loss
could take various forms, but it might fairly
be limited to a minimum of two-thirds, with
an allowance up to four-fifths in poor dis-
tricts. If the liability in respect of all
schemes represented the maximum loss
permitted — which, of course, would not be
126 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
the case — the contributions of the State per
dwelHng would vary from ten to twelve
pounds per annum, the latter figure being
the maximum. The proportion of the loss
left to fall upon the locality would provide
a real incentive to economy as well as a fair
share of the burden.
A programme on these lines, which pro-
vided for the reconstruction or replacement
in town and country of 500,000 insanitary
or insufficient homes, would occupy a number
of years, and would represent at the end of
that time an annual State contribution of
from five to six million pounds. A scheme
of that kind would not by any means meet all
the need, but it would provide a very sub-
stantial contribution thereto, and would be of
sufficient magnitude to occupy time enough
for different expedients to be tested and for the
development of a more efficient future policy.
It need not exclude the encouragement of
new building by private enterprise. Indeed,
a number of inducements could be offered
with that object in view. The methods of
rating and the basis of assessment of values
offer a number of opportunities for providing
such assistance and encouragement, but they
FUTURE POLICY 127
have purposely been omitted. If, however, we
are to assume that the present basis will re-
main for a considerable time, there do not
seem to be sufficient grounds for rejecting
the proposal that new houses, built within,
say, the next ten years, should pay only
half-rates for a period, say, of twenty years
after completion. It would stimulate build-
ing, and would not be unfair to other rate-
payers, since in any case the new or recon-
structed houses, even at half-rates, would
represent a substantial addition to the rate-
able value of a district.
It is not to be expected that, after having
spent some years in the Department of State
that is specially concerned with these matters,
one should be unaware of the objections which
may be raised against such proposals, but
they are not made without a careful exami-
nation of different alternatives, and it would
be cowardly and unpatriotic to avoid making
constructive suggestions.
What, by comparison, is the cost of neg-
lect ? It is that we should be committed to
a continuing, and even to an increasing,
expenditure upon combating the results of
these deplorable housing conditions ; for public
128 THE BETRAYAL OF THE SLUMS
opinion would demand and no Government
would refuse to spend money upon the treat-
ment of the sickness and ill-health, as well as
upon the unemployment that such conditions
produce. Beyond this there would remain a
source of moral damage, of social and indus-
trial unrest that would inflict incalculable
loss. Contented people are easy to govern
for they are prepared to govern and control
themselves. A wretehed home does not allow
of contentment. The costliness of popular
discontent even in a single year might well
exceed the total charge which such an under-
taking as has been proposed would involve.
There is no direction in which the thrift,
the contentment and the physical and in-
tellectual capacity of our people can be
more directly or plainly promoted than in
this. It may be drab and unattractive in
its detail, but in its nature and in its fulfil-
ment, it is heroic. It is worthy of sacrifice
and of all the powers of discipline and states-
manship that we possess. We should, more-
over, throughout the years of work be
conscious that the pledged word of the
British people to the living as well as to the
dead remained unbroken.
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