Notes from London
By Selwyn Brinton, Special Correspondent to The American Architect.
A
SUBJECT which has profoundly absorbed public attention in England during the last
few weeks, quite as much as the proceedings of the Paris Conference, has been the inquiry and report of the Coal Commission.
That inquiry revealed conditions of life in certain colliery areas which were to most of us an appalling revelation.
Mr. John Robertson, chairman of the Scottish Union of Mine Workers, in his evidence before the commission stated that in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, out of 88,000 inhabitants 27,000 were living in one- and two-roomed houses, and that in Wishaw 28.5 per cent were in houses of one room. Numerous houses, he added, had one apartment for husband and wife and several children, while the statistics of tuberculosis showed 78 per cent of cases in one- and two-apartment houses.
“Private enterprise,” he continued, “has failed. . . . It must be done by the State. There is a legacy of bad housing, the result of many years of greed, selfishness and ignorance.” This witness went on to quote an eloquent appeal from Dr. Russell, a former medical officer of the Local Government Board: “You mothers, with your cooks and housemaids and nurses, 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 sickbed? . . . 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 above states very feelingly the darkest side of the picture, for in many cases the miners have been earning very good money, and I have heard of as much, probably in a better position, as £7 a week being earned, with half the rent free and coal supplied. But even so, what has come to light has profoundly roused public feeling, and the Daily Telegraph interprets this in saying: “What the Government must realize is that housing has now become a matter of national conscience. Public opinion has been horrified at recent revelations, has been roused to an indignation which is justified, to an impatience which will only be allayed by vigorous action.”
That action, promised at the opening of Parliament weeks ago, seems now being taken, and the
Housing Bill, published in recent papers, gives very wide powers both to the Local Government Board and to the local authorities to meet the widespread shortage of houses.
Briefly stated, this measure places local bodies under a stringent obligation to carry out housing schemes, failing which the County Council or Local Government Board may act over their heads. Local liability is to be covered by a penny rate, any excess to be borne by the State. There are special provisions for dealing with what are known as “slum areas,” and for the purchase of housing sites; and it is satisfactory to hear that the “need for the provision of houses for the middle classes has not been lost sight of.” Possibly this last assurance is due to the fact that the middle class, that long-suffering and much-taxed portion of the community, is at last beginning to “kick.” A Middle Class Union has been recently initiated and received with enthusiasm, with a strong and active support within the House of Commons, for the express purpose of securing some adequate protection for the interests of a part of the community orf whom the bulk of this heavy national expenditure, when the bill comes to be presented, will inevitably recoil.
The report of the Coal Commission, under Mr. Justice Sankey, which takes a middle course between the claims for hours and wages of the mineowners and the miners themselves, was issued on March 21, but lies a little outside of my subject here.
I wish, however, to draw attention to a matter of the greatest importance in connection with this housing question, in a protest which has been sent to the Local Government Board, the Treasury and War Cabinet by the Industrial Council of the Building Industry. The terms of this communication could scarcely be stronger. “This Building Trades Industrial Council expresses profound dissatisfaction at the avoidable delay in pressing forward the resumption of building operations, so urgently needed to prevent unemployment, owing to the lack of adequate arrangements to enable the brickyards, stone and slate quarries through the country to restart, and believing that the delay is due to gross incompetence in handling the supply of materials, and further being of opinion that we could expedite the manufacture of such materials, we hereby demand that the experience of the
By Selwyn Brinton, Special Correspondent to The American Architect.
A
SUBJECT which has profoundly absorbed public attention in England during the last
few weeks, quite as much as the proceedings of the Paris Conference, has been the inquiry and report of the Coal Commission.
That inquiry revealed conditions of life in certain colliery areas which were to most of us an appalling revelation.
Mr. John Robertson, chairman of the Scottish Union of Mine Workers, in his evidence before the commission stated that in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, out of 88,000 inhabitants 27,000 were living in one- and two-roomed houses, and that in Wishaw 28.5 per cent were in houses of one room. Numerous houses, he added, had one apartment for husband and wife and several children, while the statistics of tuberculosis showed 78 per cent of cases in one- and two-apartment houses.
“Private enterprise,” he continued, “has failed. . . . It must be done by the State. There is a legacy of bad housing, the result of many years of greed, selfishness and ignorance.” This witness went on to quote an eloquent appeal from Dr. Russell, a former medical officer of the Local Government Board: “You mothers, with your cooks and housemaids and nurses, 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 sickbed? . . . 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 above states very feelingly the darkest side of the picture, for in many cases the miners have been earning very good money, and I have heard of as much, probably in a better position, as £7 a week being earned, with half the rent free and coal supplied. But even so, what has come to light has profoundly roused public feeling, and the Daily Telegraph interprets this in saying: “What the Government must realize is that housing has now become a matter of national conscience. Public opinion has been horrified at recent revelations, has been roused to an indignation which is justified, to an impatience which will only be allayed by vigorous action.”
That action, promised at the opening of Parliament weeks ago, seems now being taken, and the
Housing Bill, published in recent papers, gives very wide powers both to the Local Government Board and to the local authorities to meet the widespread shortage of houses.
Briefly stated, this measure places local bodies under a stringent obligation to carry out housing schemes, failing which the County Council or Local Government Board may act over their heads. Local liability is to be covered by a penny rate, any excess to be borne by the State. There are special provisions for dealing with what are known as “slum areas,” and for the purchase of housing sites; and it is satisfactory to hear that the “need for the provision of houses for the middle classes has not been lost sight of.” Possibly this last assurance is due to the fact that the middle class, that long-suffering and much-taxed portion of the community, is at last beginning to “kick.” A Middle Class Union has been recently initiated and received with enthusiasm, with a strong and active support within the House of Commons, for the express purpose of securing some adequate protection for the interests of a part of the community orf whom the bulk of this heavy national expenditure, when the bill comes to be presented, will inevitably recoil.
The report of the Coal Commission, under Mr. Justice Sankey, which takes a middle course between the claims for hours and wages of the mineowners and the miners themselves, was issued on March 21, but lies a little outside of my subject here.
I wish, however, to draw attention to a matter of the greatest importance in connection with this housing question, in a protest which has been sent to the Local Government Board, the Treasury and War Cabinet by the Industrial Council of the Building Industry. The terms of this communication could scarcely be stronger. “This Building Trades Industrial Council expresses profound dissatisfaction at the avoidable delay in pressing forward the resumption of building operations, so urgently needed to prevent unemployment, owing to the lack of adequate arrangements to enable the brickyards, stone and slate quarries through the country to restart, and believing that the delay is due to gross incompetence in handling the supply of materials, and further being of opinion that we could expedite the manufacture of such materials, we hereby demand that the experience of the