Garden Cities of To-Morrow
by Sir Ebenezer Howard · English · Gutenberg #46134 · 285,072 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Garden Cities of To-Morrow
Author: Sir Ebenezer Howard
Release date: June 29, 2014 [eBook #46134]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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Transcriber's Note
Italics are indicated by _underscores_, and bold text by =equals signs=.
[Illustration:
Yours very truly
E. Howard.
]
GARDEN CITIES
OF
TO-MORROW
(BEING THE SECOND EDITION OF “TO-MORROW: A PEACEFUL PATH TO REAL REFORM”)
BY
EBENEZER HOWARD
“New occasions teach new duties;
Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still, and onward,
Who would keep abreast of Truth.
Lo, before us, gleam her camp-fires!
We ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our ‘Mayflower,’ and steer boldly
Through the desperate winter sea,
Nor attempt the Future’s portal
With the Past’s blood-rusted key.”
--“The Present Crisis.”--_J. R. Lowell._
[Illustration]
LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LTD.
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1902
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Introduction, 9
I. The Town-Country Magnet, 20
II. The Revenue of Garden City, and how it is obtained--The
Agricultural Estate, 28
III. The Revenue of Garden City--Town Estate, 38
IV. The Revenue of Garden City--General Observations on its
Expenditure, 43
V. Further Details of Expenditure on Garden City, 57
VI. Administration, 68
VII. Semi-Municipal Enterprise--Local Option--Temperance Reform, 76
VIII. Pro-Municipal Work, 86
IX. Some Difficulties Considered, 94
X. A Unique Combination of Proposals, 101
XI. The Path followed up, 114
XII. Social Cities, 126
XIII. The Future of London, 141
Index, 153
Postscript, 161
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THE THREE MAGNETS 16
GARDEN CITY 22
WARD AND CENTRE GARDEN CITY 22
ADELAIDE 128
DIAGRAM REPRESENTING TRUE MODE OF A CITY’S GROWTH 128
GARDEN CITIES OF TO-MORROW.
INTRODUCTION.
“New forces, new cravings, new aims, which had been silently gathering
beneath the crust of re-action, burst suddenly into view.”--Green’s
“Short History of the English People,” Chap. x.
“Change is consummated in many cases after much argument and
agitation, and men do not observe that almost everything has been
silently effected by causes to which few people paid any heed. In
one generation an institution is unassailable, in the next bold men
may assail it, and in the third bold men defend it. At one time the
most conclusive arguments are advanced against it in vain, if indeed
they are allowed utterance at all. At another time the most childish
sophistry is enough to secure its condemnation. In the first place,
the institution, though probably indefensible by pure reason, was
congruous with the conscious habits and modes of thought of the
community. In the second, these had changed from influences which the
acutest analysis would probably fail to explain, and a breath sufficed
to topple over the sapped structure.”--_The Times_, 27th November,
1891.
In these days of strong party feeling and of keenly-contested social
and religious issues, it might perhaps be thought difficult to find
a single question having a vital bearing upon national life and
well-being on which all persons, no matter of what political party,
or of what shade of sociological opinion, would be found to be fully
and entirely agreed. Discuss the temperance cause, and you will hear
from Mr. John Morley that it is “the greatest moral movement since the
movement for the abolition of slavery”; but Lord Bruce will remind
you that “every year the trade contributes £40,000,000 to the revenue
of the country, so that practically it maintains the Army and Navy,
besides which it affords employment to many thousands of persons”--that
“even the teetotalers owe much to the licensed victuallers, for if it
were not for them the refreshment bars at the Crystal Palace would
have been closed long ago.” Discuss the opium traffic, and, on the one
hand, you will hear that opium is rapidly destroying the _morale_ of
the people of China, and, on the other, that this is quite a delusion,
and that the Chinese are capable, thanks to opium, of doing work which
to a European is quite impossible, and that on food at which the least
squeamish of English people would turn up their noses in disgust.
Religious and political questions too often divide us into hostile
camps; and so, in the very realms where calm, dispassionate thought and
pure emotions are the essentials of all advance towards right beliefs
and sound principles of action, the din of battle and the struggles of
contending hosts are more forcibly suggested to the on-looker than the
really sincere love of truth and love of country which, one may yet be
sure, animate nearly all breasts.
There is, however, a question in regard to which one can scarcely find
any difference of opinion. It is well-nigh universally agreed by men of
all parties, not only in England, but all over Europe and America and
our colonies, that it is deeply to be deplored that the people should
continue to stream into the already over-crowded cities, and should
thus further deplete the country districts.
Lord Rosebery, speaking some years ago as Chairman of the London County
Council, dwelt with very special emphasis on this point:--
“There is no thought of pride associated in my mind with the idea of
London. I am always haunted by the awfulness of London: by the great
appalling fact of these millions cast down, as it would appear by
hazard, on the banks of this noble stream, working each in their own
groove and their own cell, without regard or knowledge of each other,
without heeding each other, without having the slightest idea how the
other lives--the heedless casualty of unnumbered thousands of men.
Sixty years ago a great Englishman, Cobbett, called it a wen. If it
was a wen then, what is it now? A tumour, an elephantiasis sucking
into its gorged system half the life and the blood and the bone of the
rural districts.”--March, 1891.
Sir John Gorst points out the evil, and suggests the remedy:
“If they wanted a permanent remedy of the evil they must remove the
cause; they must back the tide, and stop the migration of the people
into the towns, and get the people back to the land. The interest and
the safety of the towns themselves were involved in the solution of
the problem.”--_Daily Chronicle_, 6th November, 1891.
Dean Farrar says:
“We are becoming a land of great cities. Villages are stationary or
receding; cities are enormously increasing. And if it be true that
great cities tend more and more to become the graves of the physique
of our race, can we wonder at it when we see the houses so foul, so
squalid, so ill-drained, so vitiated by neglect and dirt?”
Dr. Rhodes, at the Demographic Congress, called attention to
“the migration which was going on from the English agricultural
districts. In Lancashire and other manufacturing districts 35 per
cent. of the population were over 60 years of age, but in agricultural
districts they would have over 60 per cent. Many of the cottages were
so abominable that they could not call them houses, and the people so
deteriorated in physique that they were not able to do the amount of
work which able-bodied persons should do. Unless something was done to
make the lot of the agricultural labourer better, the exodus would go
on, with what results in the future he dared not say.”--_Times_, 15th
August, 1891.
The Press, Liberal, Radical, and Conservative, views this grave symptom
of the time with the same alarm. The _St. James’s Gazette_, on June 6,
1892, remarks:
“How best to provide the proper antidote against the greatest danger
of modern existence is a question of no mean significance.”
_The Star_, 9th October, 1891, says:
“How to stem the drift from the country is one of the main problems
of the day. The labourer may perhaps be restored to the land, but how
will the country industries be restored to rural England?”
_The Daily News_, a few years ago, published a series of articles,
“Life in our Villages,” dealing with the same problem.
Trade Unionist leaders utter the same note of warning. Mr. Ben Tillett
says:
“Hands are hungry for toil, and lands are starving for labour.”
Mr. Tom Mann observes:
“The congestion of labour in the metropolis is caused mainly by the
influx from the country districts of those who were needed there to
cultivate the land.”
All, then, are agreed on the pressing nature of this problem, all are
bent on its solution, and though it would doubtless be quite Utopian to
expect a similar agreement as to the value of any remedy that may be
proposed, it is at least of immense importance that, on a subject thus
universally regarded as of supreme importance, we have such a consensus
of opinion at the outset. This will be the more remarkable and the
more hopeful sign when it is shown, as I believe will be conclusively
shown in this work, that the answer to this, one of the most pressing
questions of the day, makes of comparatively easy solution many other
problems which have hitherto taxed the ingenuity of the greatest
thinkers and reformers of our time. Yes, the key to the problem how to
restore the people to the land--that beautiful land of ours, with its
canopy of sky, the air that blows upon it, the sun that warms it, the
rain and dew that moisten it--the very embodiment of Divine love for
man--is indeed a _Master-Key_, for it is the key to a portal through
which, even when scarce ajar, will be seen to pour a flood of light on
the problems of intemperance, of excessive toil, of restless anxiety,
of grinding poverty--the true limits of Governmental interference, ay,
and even the relations of man to the Supreme Power.
It may perhaps be thought that the first step to be taken towards the
solution of this question--how to restore the people to the land--would
involve a careful consideration of the very numerous causes which
have hitherto led to their aggregation in large cities. Were this
the case, a very prolonged enquiry would be necessary at the outset.
Fortunately, alike for writer and for reader, such an analysis is
not, however, here requisite, and for a very simple reason, which
may be stated thus:--Whatever may have been the causes which have
operated in the past, and are operating now, to draw the people into
the cities, those causes may all be summed up as “attractions”; and it
is obvious, therefore, that no remedy can possibly be effective which
will not present to the people, or at least to considerable portions
of them, greater “attractions” than our cities now possess, so that
the force of the old “attractions” shall be overcome by the force of
new “attractions” which are to be created. Each city may be regarded
as a magnet, each person as a needle; and, so viewed, it is at once
seen that nothing short of the discovery of a method for constructing
magnets of yet greater power than our cities possess can be effective
for re-distributing the population in a spontaneous and healthy manner.
So presented, the problem may appear at first sight to be difficult,
if not impossible, of solution. “What,” some may be disposed to
ask, “can possibly be done to make the country more attractive to
a work-a-day people than the town--to make wages, or at least the
standard of physical comfort, higher in the country than in the town;
to secure in the country equal possibilities of social intercourse,
and to make the prospects of advancement for the average man or woman
equal, not to say superior, to those enjoyed in our large cities?”
The issue one constantly finds presented in a form very similar to
that. The subject is treated continually in the public press, and in
all forms of discussion, as though men, or at least working-men, had
not now, and never could have, any choice or alternative, but either,
on the one hand, to stifle their love for human society--at least in
wider relations than can be found in a straggling village--or, on the
other hand, to forego almost entirely all the keen and pure delights
of the country. The question is universally considered as though it
were now, and for ever must remain, quite impossible for working
people to live in the country and yet be engaged in pursuits other
than agricultural; as though crowded, unhealthy cities were the last
word of economic science; and as if our present form of industry,
in which sharp lines divide agricultural from industrial pursuits,
were necessarily an enduring one. This fallacy is the very common one
of ignoring altogether the possibility of alternatives other than
those presented to the mind. There are in reality not only, as is so
constantly assumed, two alternatives--town life and country life--but
a third alternative, in which all the advantages of the most energetic
and active town life, with all the beauty and delight of the country,
may be secured in perfect combination; and the certainty of being able
to live this life will be the magnet which will produce the effect
for which we are all striving--the spontaneous movement of the people
from our crowded cities to the bosom of our kindly mother earth, at
once the source of life, of happiness, of wealth, and of power. The
town and the country may, therefore, be regarded as two magnets, each
striving to draw the people to itself--a rivalry which a new form of
life, partaking of the nature of both, comes to take part in. This may
be illustrated by a diagram of “The Three Magnets,” in which the chief
advantages of the Town and of the Country are set forth with their
corresponding drawbacks, while the advantages of the Town-Country are
seen to be free from the disadvantages of either.
[Illustration: THE THREE MAGNETS.
N^o. 1
]
The Town magnet, it will be seen, offers, as compared with the
Country magnet, the advantages of high wages, opportunities for
employment, tempting prospects of advancement, but these are largely
counterbalanced by high rents and prices. Its social opportunities
and its places of amusement are very alluring, but excessive hours of
toil, distance from work, and the “isolation of crowds” tend greatly
to reduce the value of these good things. The well-lit streets are a
great attraction, especially in winter, but the sunlight is being more
and more shut out, while the air is so vitiated that the fine public
buildings, like the sparrows, rapidly become covered with soot, and the
very statues are in despair. Palatial edifices and fearful slums are
the strange, complementary features of modern cities.
The Country magnet declares herself to be the source of all beauty and
wealth; but the Town magnet mockingly reminds her that she is very dull
for lack of society, and very sparing of her gifts for lack of capital.
There are in the country beautiful vistas, lordly parks, violet-scented
woods, fresh air, sounds of rippling water; but too often one sees
those threatening words, “Trespassers will be prosecuted.” Rents, if
estimated by the acre, are certainly low, but such low rents are the
natural fruit of low wages rather than a cause of substantial comfort;
while long hours and lack of amusements forbid the bright sunshine and
the pure air to gladden the hearts of the people. The one industry,
agriculture, suffers frequently from excessive rainfalls; but this
wondrous harvest of the clouds is seldom properly ingathered, so that,
in times of drought, there is frequently, even for drinking purposes,
a most insufficient supply.[1] Even the natural healthfulness of the
country is largely lost for lack of proper drainage and other sanitary
conditions, while, in parts almost deserted by the people, the few who
remain are yet frequently huddled together as if in rivalry with the
slums of our cities.
But neither the Town magnet nor the Country magnet represents the full
plan and purpose of nature. Human society and the beauty of nature are
meant to be enjoyed together. The two magnets must be made one. As man
and woman by their varied gifts and faculties supplement each other, so
should town and country. The town is the symbol of society--of mutual
help and friendly co-operation, of fatherhood, motherhood, brotherhood,
sisterhood, of wide relations between man and man--of broad, expanding
sympathies--of science, art, culture, religion. And the country! The
country is the symbol of God’s love and care for man. All that we are
and all that we have comes from it. Our bodies are formed of it; to it
they return. We are fed by it, clothed by it, and by it are we warmed
and sheltered. On its bosom we rest. Its beauty is the inspiration of
art, of music, of poetry. Its forces propel all the wheels of industry.
It is the source of all health, all wealth, all knowledge. But its
fulness of joy and wisdom has not revealed itself to man. Nor can it
ever, so long as this unholy, unnatural separation of society and
nature endures. Town and country _must be married_, and out of this
joyous union will spring a new hope, a new life, a new civilisation.
It is the purpose of this work to show how a first step can be taken
in this direction by the construction of a Town-country magnet; and I
hope to convince the reader that this is practicable, here and now, and
that on principles which are the very soundest, whether viewed from the
ethical or the economic standpoint.
I will undertake, then, to show how in “Town-country” equal, nay
better, opportunities of social intercourse may be enjoyed than are
enjoyed in any crowded city, while yet the beauties of nature may
encompass and enfold each dweller therein; how higher wages are
compatible with reduced rents and rates; how abundant opportunities for
employment and bright prospects of advancement may be secured for all;
how capital may be attracted and wealth created; how the most admirable
sanitary conditions may be ensured; how beautiful homes and gardens may
be seen on every hand; how the bounds of freedom may be widened, and
yet all the best results of concert and co-operation gathered in by a
happy people.
The construction of such a magnet, could it be effected, followed, as
it would be, by the construction of many more, would certainly afford a
solution of the burning question set before us by Sir John Gorst, “how
to back the tide of migration of the people into the towns, and to get
them back upon the land.”
A fuller description of such a magnet and its mode of construction will
form the theme of subsequent chapters.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Dr. Barwise, Medical Officer of Health for the County Council of
Derbyshire, giving evidence before a Select Committee of the House of
Commons, on 25th April, 1894, on the Chesterfield Gas and Water Bill,
said, in answer to Question 1873: “At Brimington Common School I saw
some basins full of soapsuds, and it was all the water that the whole
of the children had to wash in. They had to wash one after another
in the same water. Of course, a child with ringworm or something of
that kind might spread it through the whole of the children.... The
schoolmistress told me that the children came in from the playground
hot, and she had seen them actually drink this dirty water. In fact,
when they were thirsty there was no other water for them to have.”
CHAPTER I.
THE TOWN-COUNTRY MAGNET.
“I will not cease from mental strife,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.”
--_Blake._
“Thorough sanitary and remedial action in the houses that we have; and
then the building of more, strongly, beautifully, and in groups of
limited extent, kept in proportion to their streams and walled round,
so that there may be no festering and wretched suburb anywhere, but
clean and busy street within and the open country without, with a belt
of beautiful garden and orchard round the walls, so that from any part
of the city perfectly fresh air and grass and sight of far horizon
might be reachable in a few minutes’ walk. This the final aim.”--John
Ruskin, “Sesame and Lilies.”
The reader is asked to imagine an estate embracing an area of
6,000 acres, which is at present purely agricultural, and has been
obtained by purchase in the open market at a cost of £40[2] an acre,
or £240,000. The purchase money is supposed to have been raised on
mortgage debentures, bearing interest at an average rate not exceeding
£4 per cent.[3] The estate is legally vested in the names of four
gentlemen of responsible position and of undoubted probity and honour,
who hold it in trust, first, as a security for the debenture-holders,
and, secondly, in trust for the people of Garden City, the Town-country
magnet, which it is intended to build thereon. One essential feature
of the plan is that all ground rents, which are to be based upon the
annual value of the land, shall be paid to the trustees, who, after
providing for interest and sinking fund, will hand the balance to
the Central Council of the new municipality,[4] to be employed by
such Council in the creation and maintenance of all necessary public
works--roads, schools, parks, etc.
The objects of this land purchase may be stated in various ways, but it
is sufficient here to say that some of the chief objects are these: To
find for our industrial population work at wages of _higher purchasing
power_, and to secure healthier surroundings and more regular
employment. To enterprising manufacturers, co-operative societies,
architects, engineers, builders, and mechanicians of all kinds, as
well as to many engaged in various professions, it is intended to
offer a means of securing new and better employment for their capital
and talents, while to the agriculturists at present on the estate, as
well as to those who may migrate thither, it is designed to open a
new market for their produce close to their doors. Its object is, in
short, to raise the standard of health and comfort of all true workers
of whatever grade--the means by which these objects are to be achieved
being a healthy, natural, and economic combination of town and country
life, and this on land owned by the municipality.
[Illustration: N^o. 2
Garden City]
Garden City, which is to be built near the centre of the 6,000 acres,
covers an area of 1,000 acres, or a sixth part of the 6,000 acres, and
might be of circular form, 1,240 yards (or nearly three-quarters of a
mile) from centre to circumference. (Diagram 2 is a ground-plan of the
whole municipal area, showing the town in the centre; and Diagram 3,
which represents one section or ward of the town, will be useful in
following the description of the town itself--=a description which is,
however, merely suggestive, and will probably be much departed from=.)
Six magnificent boulevards--each 120 feet wide--traverse the city from
centre to circumference, dividing it into six equal parts or wards. In
the centre is a circular space containing about five and a half acres,
laid out as a beautiful and well-watered garden; and, surrounding this
garden, each standing in its own ample grounds, are the larger public
buildings--town hall, principal concert and lecture hall, theatre,
library, museum, picture-gallery, and hospital.
[Illustration: N^o. 3.
WARD AND CENTRE Garden City]
The rest of the large space encircled by the “Crystal Palace” is a
public park, containing 145 acres, which includes ample recreation
grounds within very easy access of all the people.
Running all round the Central Park (except where it is intersected
by the boulevards) is a wide glass arcade called the “Crystal Palace,”
opening on to the park. This building is in wet weather one of the
favourite resorts of the people, whilst the knowledge that its bright
shelter is ever close at hand tempts people into Central Park, even
in the most doubtful of weathers. Here manufactured goods are exposed
for sale, and here most of that class of shopping which requires the
joy of deliberation and selection is done. The space enclosed by the
Crystal Palace is, however, a good deal larger than is required for
these purposes, and a considerable part of it is used as a Winter
Garden--the whole forming a permanent exhibition of a most attractive
character, whilst its circular form brings it near to every dweller in
the town--the furthest removed inhabitant being within 600 yards.
Passing out of the Crystal Palace on our way to the outer ring of the
town, we cross Fifth Avenue--lined, as are all the roads of the town,
with trees--fronting which, and looking on to the Crystal Palace, we
find a ring of very excellently-built houses, each standing in its
own ample grounds; and, as we continue our walk, we observe that the
houses are for the most part built either in concentric rings, facing
the various avenues (as the circular roads are termed), or fronting
the boulevards and roads, which all converge to the centre of the
town. Asking the friend who accompanies us on our journey what the
population of this little city may be, we are told about 30,000 in the
city itself, and about 2,000 in the agricultural estate, and that there
are in the town 5,500 building lots of an _average_ size of 20 feet ×
130 feet--the minimum space allotted for the purpose being 20 × 100.
Noticing the very varied architecture and design which the houses and
groups of houses display--some having common gardens and co-operative
kitchens--we learn that general observance of street line or harmonious
departure from it are the chief points as to house-building over which
the municipal authorities exercise control, for, though proper sanitary
arrangements are strictly enforced, the fullest measure of individual
taste and preference is encouraged.
Walking still toward the outskirts of the town, we come upon “Grand
Avenue.” This avenue is fully entitled to the name it bears, for it
is 420 feet wide,[5] and, forming a belt of green upwards of three
miles long, divides that part of the town which lies outside Central
Park into two belts. It really constitutes an additional park of
115 acres--a park which is within 240 yards of the furthest removed
inhabitant. In this splendid avenue six sites, each of four acres,
are occupied by public schools and their surrounding play-grounds
and gardens, while other sites are reserved for churches, of such
denominations as the religious beliefs of the people may determine,
to be erected and maintained out of the funds of the worshippers and
their friends. We observe that the houses fronting on Grand Avenue have
departed (at least in one of the wards--that of which Diagram 3 is a
representation)--from the general plan of concentric rings, and, in
order to ensure a longer line of frontage on Grand Avenue, are arranged
in crescents--thus also to the eye yet further enlarging the already
splendid width of Grand Avenue.
On the outer ring of the town are factories, warehouses, dairies,
markets, coal yards, timber yards, etc., all fronting on the circle
railway, which encompasses the whole town, and which has sidings
connecting it with a main line of railway which passes through the
estate. This arrangement enables goods to be loaded direct into trucks
from the warehouses and workshops, and so sent by railway to distant
markets, or to be taken direct from the trucks into the warehouses or
factories; thus not only effecting a very great saving in regard to
packing and cartage, and reducing to a minimum loss from breakage, but
also, by reducing the traffic on the roads of the town, lessening to a
very marked extent the cost of their maintenance. The smoke fiend is
kept well within bounds in Garden City; for all machinery is driven
by electric energy, with the result that the cost of electricity for
lighting and other purposes is greatly reduced.
The refuse of the town is utilised on the agricultural portions of the
estate, which are held by various individuals in large farms, small
holdings, allotments, cow pastures, etc.; the natural competition of
these various methods of agriculture, tested by the willingness of
occupiers to offer the highest rent to the municipality, tending to
bring about the best system of husbandry, or, what is more probable,
the best _systems_ adapted for various purposes. Thus it is easily
conceivable that it may prove advantageous to grow wheat in very large
fields, involving united action under a capitalist farmer, or by a
body of co-operators; while the cultivation of vegetables, fruits, and
flowers, which requires closer and more personal care, and more of the
artistic and inventive faculty, may possibly be best dealt with by
individuals, or by small groups of individuals having a common belief
in the efficacy and value of certain dressings, methods of culture, or
artificial and natural surroundings.
This plan, or, if the reader be pleased to so term it, this absence
of plan, avoids the dangers of stagnation or dead level, and, though
encouraging individual initiative, permits of the fullest co-operation,
while the increased rents which follow from this form of competition
are common or municipal property, and by far the larger part of them
are expended in permanent improvements.
While the town proper, with its population engaged in various
trades, callings, and professions, and with a store or depôt in each
ward, offers the most natural market to the people engaged on the
agricultural estate, inasmuch as to the extent to which the townspeople
demand their produce they escape altogether any railway rates and
charges; yet the farmers and others are not by any means limited to the
town as their only market, but have the fullest right to dispose of
their produce to whomsoever they please. Here, as in every feature of
the experiment, it will be seen that it is not the area of rights which
is contracted, but the area of choice which is enlarged.
This principle of freedom holds good with regard to manufacturers and
others who have established themselves in the town. These manage their
affairs in their own way, subject, of course, to the general law of
the land, and subject to the provision of sufficient space for workmen
and reasonable sanitary conditions. Even in regard to such matters as
water, lighting, and telephonic communication--which a municipality,
if efficient and honest, is certainly the best and most natural body
to supply--no rigid or absolute monopoly is sought; and if any
private corporation or any body of individuals proved itself capable
of supplying on more advantageous terms, either the whole town or a
section of it, with these or any commodities the supply of which was
taken up by the corporation, this would be allowed. No really sound
system of _action_ is in more need of artificial support than is any
sound system of _thought_. The area of municipal and corporate action
is probably destined to become greatly enlarged; but, if it is to be
so, it will be because the people possess faith in such action, and
that faith can be best shown by a wide extension of the area of freedom.
Dotted about the estate are seen various charitable and philanthropic
institutions. These are not under the control of the municipality, but
are supported and managed by various public-spirited people who have
been invited by the municipality to establish these institutions in an
open healthy district, and on land let to them at a pepper-corn rent,
it occurring to the authorities that they can the better afford to be
thus generous, as the spending power of these institutions greatly
benefits the whole community. Besides, as those persons who migrate to
the town are among its most energetic and resourceful members, it is
but just and right that their more helpless brethren should be able to
enjoy the benefits of an experiment which is designed for humanity at
large.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] This was the average price paid for agricultural land in 1898: and,
though this estimate may prove far more than sufficient, it is hardly
likely to be much exceeded.
[3] The financial arrangements described in this book are likely to
be departed from in form, but not in essential principle. And until
a definite scheme has been agreed upon, I think it better to repeat
them precisely as they appeared in “To-Morrow,” the original title
of this book--the book which led to the formation of the Garden City
Association. See Appendix.
[4] This word, “municipality,” is not used in a technical sense.
[5] Portland Place, London, is only 100 feet wide.
CHAPTER II.
THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY, AND HOW IT IS OBTAINED--THE AGRICULTURAL
ESTATE.
Amongst the essential differences between Garden City and other
municipalities, one of the chief is its method of raising its revenue.
Its entire revenue is derived from rents; and one of the purposes
of this work is to show that the rents which may very reasonably
be expected from the various tenants on the estate will be amply
sufficient, if paid into the coffers of Garden City, (_a_) to pay the
interest on the money with which the estate is purchased, (_b_) to
provide a sinking-fund for the purpose of paying off the principal,
(_c_) to construct and maintain all such works as are usually
constructed and maintained by municipal and other local authorities
out of rates compulsorily levied, and (_d_) (after redemption of
debentures) to provide a large surplus for other purposes, such as
old-age pensions or insurance against accident and sickness.
Perhaps no difference between town and country is more noticeable than
the difference in the rent charged for the use of the soil. Thus, while
in some parts of London the rent is equal to £30,000 an acre, £4 an
acre is an extremely high rent for agricultural land. This enormous
difference of rental value is, of course, almost entirely due to the
presence in the one case and the absence in the other of a large
population; and, as it cannot be attributed to the action of any
particular individuals, it is frequently spoken of as the “unearned
increment,” _i.e._, unearned by the landlord, though a more correct
term would be “collectively-earned increment.”
The presence of a considerable population thus giving a greatly
additional value to the soil, it is obvious that a migration of
population on any considerable scale to any particular area will be
certainly attended with a corresponding rise in the value of the land
so settled upon, and it is also obvious that such increment of value
may, with some foresight and pre-arrangement, become the property of
the migrating people.
Such foresight and pre-arrangement, never before exercised in an
effective manner, are displayed conspicuously in the case of Garden
City, where the land, as we have seen, is vested in trustees, who hold
it in trust (after payment of the debentures) for the whole community,
so that the entire increment of value gradually created becomes the
property of the municipality, with the effect that though rents may
rise, and even rise considerably, such rise in rent will not become
the property of private individuals, but will be applied in relief of
rates. It is this arrangement which will be seen to give Garden City
much of its magnetic power.
The site of Garden City we have taken to be worth at the time of its
purchase £40 an acre, or £240,000. The purchase money may be assumed to
represent 30 years’ purchase, and on this basis the annual rent paid by
the former tenants was £8,000. If, therefore, there was a population
of 1,000 persons upon the estate at the time of the purchase, then
each man, woman, and child was contributing towards this rent-roll
an average sum of £8 per annum. But the population of Garden City,
including its agricultural land, is, when completed, 32,000, and the
estate has cost them a sum on which they pay an annual charge by way of
interest of £9,600. Thus, while before the experiment was initiated,
1,000 persons out of their united earnings contributed £8,000 a year,
or _£8 a head_, on the completion of the town 32,000 persons out of
their united earnings will contribute £9,600 a year, or an average of
_6s. a head_.
This sum of 6s. per head per annum is all the rent, strictly speaking,
which the inhabitants of Garden City will ever be called upon to pay;
for it is all the rent which they _pay away_, any further sum they pay
being a contribution towards their rates.
Let us now suppose that each person, besides contributing annually 6s.
a head, contributes an average annual sum of £1 14s., or £2 in all. In
that case two things may be noticed. First, each person will be paying
for ground rent and rates only one-fourth of the sum which each person
before the purchase paid in ground-rent alone; and, secondly, the Board
of Management, after the payment of interest on the debentures, will
receive an annual sum of £54,400, which, as will be presently shown,
would, after providing a sinking fund (of £4,400), defray all those
costs, charges, and expenses which are usually met by local taxation.
The average annual sum contributed by each man, woman, and child in
England and Wales for local purposes is about £2 a head, and the
average sum contributed for ground rent is, at a very low estimate,
about £2 10s. The average yearly contribution for ground-rent and local
rates is, therefore, about £4 10s. It might, therefore, be safely
assumed that the people of Garden City would willingly pay £2 per head
in complete discharge of ground-rent and local rates; but to make the
case the clearer and stronger, we will test the supposed willingness of
the tenants of Garden City to pay such a sum as £2 a year for rates and
rents in another way.
For this purpose, let us deal first with the agricultural estate,
leaving the town estate to be dealt with separately. Obviously the rent
which can be secured will be considerably greater than before the town
was built. Every farmer now has a market close to his doors. There are
30,000 townspeople to be fed. Those persons, of course, are perfectly
free to get their food stuffs from any part of the world, and in the
case of many products will doubtless continue to be supplied from
abroad. These farmers are hardly likely to supply them with tea, with
coffee, with spices, with tropical fruits or with sugar,[6] and their
struggle to compete with America and Russia for the supply of wheat or
flour to the town may be as keen as ever. But surely the struggle will
not be so despairing. A ray--a beam of hope will gladden the heart of
the despairing home-producer of wheat, for while the American has to
pay railway charges to the sea-board, charges for Atlantic transit and
railway charges to the consumer, the farmer of Garden City has a market
at his very doors, and this a market which the rent he contributes will
help to build up.[7]
Or, consider vegetables and fruits. Farmers, except near towns,
do not often grow them now. Why? Chiefly because of the difficulty
and uncertainty of a market, and the high charges for freights and
commission. To quote the words of Dr. Farquharson, M.P., when they
“try to dispose of these things they find themselves struggling so
hopelessly in a spider’s web of rings, and middlemen, and speculators,
that they are more than half-inclined to give up the attempt in
despair, and fall back on those things that stand up straight and
square to their prices in the open market.” A curious calculation may
be interesting with regard to milk. Assuming each person in the town
consumed only one-third of a pint a day, then 30,000 would consume
1,250 gallons a day, and might thus save, taking railway charges at a
penny per gallon, upwards of £1,900 per annum in railway rates upon
the one item of milk, a saving which must be multiplied by a large
figure in order to realise the general saving to be effected by placing
consumer and producer in such close association. In other words, the
combination of town and country is not only healthful, but economic--a
point which every step taken will serve to make yet more clear.
But the rents which the agricultural tenants of Garden City would be
willing to pay would increase for another reason. The waste products of
the town could, and this without heavy charges for railway transport
or other expensive agencies, be readily brought back to the soil,
thus increasing its fertility. The question of sewage disposal is
naturally a difficult one to deal with, but its inherent difficulty is
often much increased by artificial and imperfect conditions already
in existence. Thus, Sir Benjamin Baker, in his joint report with
Mr. (now Sir) Alexander Binnie to the London County Council, says:
“In approaching the consideration of the vast question of the whole
sewerage system of the Metropolis, and the state of the Thames, as a
practical problem ... we had clearly at once to recognise the fact
that the general features of the main drainage system were unalterably
settled, and must be accepted in the same way as the main lines of
thoroughfares have to be accepted whether quite as we could wish them
to be or not.” But on Garden City site, given the skilful engineer,
he would have comparatively little difficulty. He would have, as it
were, a clean sheet on which to prepare his plans, and the whole estate
being equally the property of the municipality, he would have a free
course before him, and would doubtless succeed in adding greatly to the
productiveness of the agricultural estate.
The great increase in the number of allotments, especially such
favourably situated allotments as are shown in Diagram 2, would also
tend to raise the total sum offered in rent.
There are yet other reasons why the rent which a farmer on the Garden
City estate would be willing to pay for his farm, or a labourer
for his allotment, would tend to increase. The productiveness of
the agricultural part of the estate, besides being increased by a
well-devised system of sewage disposal, and by a new and somewhat
extensive market, with unique conveniences for transit to more distant
markets, would also be increased because the tenure on which the
land is held encourages maximum cultivation. It is a just tenure.
The agricultural portion of the estate is let at fair rents, with a
right to continue in occupation as long as the tenant is willing to
pay a rent equal to that offered by any would-be occupier, less, say,
10 per cent. in favour of the occupying tenant--the incoming tenant
having also to compensate the outgoing tenant for all unexhausted
improvements. Under this system, while it would be impossible for the
tenant to secure to himself any undue share of that natural increment
of land-value which would be brought about by the general growth in
well-being of the town, he would yet have, as all tenants in possession
probably should have, a preference over any new-comer, and would know
that he would not lose those fruits of his past industry which were
not yet ingathered but were still adding their value to the soil.
Surely no one can doubt that such a tenure would, of itself, tend
greatly to increase at once the activity and industry of the tenant,
the productivity of the soil, and the rent which the tenant would be
willing to pay.
That there would be this increased offer of rent will become yet more
obvious if we consider for a moment the _nature_ of the rent paid by
a tenant of Garden City. Part of what he pays would be in respect of
interest on the debentures on which the money to purchase the estate
was raised, or in the redemption of those debentures, and would thus,
except so far as the debentures were held by residents on the estate,
pass away from the community altogether; but the whole of the remaining
sum paid would be expended locally, and the farmer would have a share
equal to that of every adult in the administration of such money. The
term “rent,” therefore, has, in Garden City, acquired a new meaning,
and, for the sake of clearness, it will be necessary in future to
use terms which will not be ambiguous. That part of the rent which
represents interest on debentures will be hereafter called “landlord’s
rent”; that part which represents repayment of purchase-money “sinking
fund”; that part which is devoted to public purposes “rates”; while the
total sum will be termed “rate-rent.”
From these considerations, surely it is obvious that the “_rate-rent_”
which the farmer will be willing to pay into the treasury of Garden
City will be considerably higher than the _rent_ he would be willing
to pay to a private landlord, who, besides increasing his rent as the
farmer makes his land more valuable, will also leave him with the full
burden of local taxation resting upon him. In short the plan proposed
embraces a system of sewage-disposal which will return to the soil
in a transmuted form many of those products the growth of which, by
exhausting its natural fertility, demand elsewhere the application of
manures so expensive that the farmer becomes sometimes blinded to their
necessity, and it also embraces a system of rate-rents by which many
of the farmer’s hard-earned sovereigns, hitherto lost to him by being
paid away to his landlord, shall return to his exhausted exchequer, not
indeed in the form in which they left it, but in a variety of useful
forms, such as roads, schools, markets, which will assist him most
materially, though indirectly, in his work, but which, under present
conditions, entail so severe a burden as to make him naturally slow to
see their inherent necessity, and even to look upon some of them with
suspicion and dislike. Who can doubt that if the farm and the farmer
can be placed under conditions so healthful and natural alike in a
physical and moral sense, the willing soil and the hopeful farmer will
alike respond to their new environment--the soil becoming more fertile
by every blade of grass it yields, the farmer richer by every penny of
rate-rent he contributes?
We are now in a position to see that the rate-rent which will be
readily paid by farmer, small occupier, and allotment holder, would be
considerably greater than the rent he paid before (1) because of the
presence of a new town population demanding new and more profitable
farm products, in respect of which railway charges can be largely
saved; (2) by the due return to the soil of its natural elements; (3)
by the just, equitable, and natural conditions on which the land is
held; and (4) by reason of the fact that the rent now paid is _rate and
rent_, while the rent formerly paid left the rates to be paid by the
tenant.
But certain as it is that the “_rate-rent_” would represent a very
considerable increase over the bare _rent_ formerly paid by the tenants
on the estate, it is still very much a matter of conjecture what the
“rate-rent” would be; and we shall, therefore, be acting prudently
if we greatly under-estimate the “rate-rent” which would probably
be offered. If, then, in view of all the circumstances, we estimate
that the _farming population_ of Garden City will be prepared to pay
for rates and rent 50 per cent. more than they before paid for _rent
alone_, we shall reach the following result:--
_Estimated Gross Revenue from Agricultural Estate._
Original rent paid by tenants of 5,000 acres, say £6,500
Add 50 per cent. for contributions to rates and
sinking fund, 3,250
------
Total “rate-rent” from agricultural estate, £9,750
We shall in the next chapter estimate the amount which may, on the most
reasonable calculation, be expected from the town estate, and then
proceed to consider the sufficiency of the total rate-rents for the
municipal needs of the town.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The electric light, with cheap motive power for its generation,
with glass-houses, may make even some of these things possible.
[7] _See_ “Fields, Farms, and Workshops,” by Prince Krapotkin, 1/-, and
“The Coming Revolution,” by Capt. Petavel, 1/-, both published by Swan
Sonnenschein & Co.
CHAPTER III.
THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY--TOWN ESTATE.
“Whatever reforms be introduced into the dwellings of the London
poor, it will still remain true that the whole area of London is
insufficient to supply its population with fresh air and the free
space that is wanted for wholesome recreation. A remedy for the
overcrowding of London will still be wanted.... There are large
classes of the population of London whose removal into the country
would be in the long run economically advantageous; it would benefit
alike those who moved and those who remained behind.... Of the 150,000
or more hired workers in the clothes-making trades, by far the greater
part are very poorly paid, and do work which it is against all
economic reason to have done where ground-rent is high.”--Professor
Marshall, “The Housing of the London Poor,” _Contemporary Review_,
1884.
Having in the last chapter estimated the gross revenue which may be
anticipated from the agricultural part of the estate at £9,750, we will
now turn to the town estate (where, obviously, the conversion of an
agricultural area into a town will be attended with a very large rise
in land values), and endeavour roughly to estimate--again taking care
to keep well within the mark--the amount of “rate-rent” which will be
freely offered by the tenants of the town estate.
The site of the town proper consists, it will be remembered, of 1,000
acres, and is assumed to have cost £40,000, the interest of which, at 4
per cent., is £1,600 per annum. This sum of £1,600 is, therefore, all
the landlord’s rent which the people of the town site will be called
upon to pay, any additional “rate-rent” they may contribute being
devoted either to the payment of the purchase-money as “sinking-fund,”
or applied as “rates” to the construction and maintenance of roads,
schools, waterworks, and to other municipal purposes. It will be
interesting, therefore, to see what sort of a burden “landlord’s rent”
will represent per head, and what the community would secure by such
contribution. Now, if the sum of £1,600, being the annual interest or
“landlord’s rent,” be divided by 30,000 (the supposed population of
the town), it will be found to equal an annual contribution by each
man, woman, and child of _rather less than 1s. 1d. per head_. This is
all the “landlord’s rent” which will ever be levied, any additional
sum collected as “rate-rent” being applied to sinking-fund or to local
purposes.
And now let us notice what this fortunately-placed community obtains
for this insignificant sum. It obtains for 1s. 1d. per head per annum,
first, ample sites for homes, these averaging, as we have seen, 20
feet by 130 feet, and accommodating, on an average, 5-1/2 persons
to each lot. It obtains ample space for roads, some of which are of
truly magnificent proportions, so wide and spacious that sunlight
and air may freely circulate, and in which trees, shrubs, and grass
give to the town a semi-rural appearance. It also obtains ample sites
for town-hall, public library, museum and picture-gallery, theatre,
concert-hall, hospital, schools, churches, swimming baths, public
markets, etc. It also secures a central park of 145 acres, and a
magnificent avenue 420 feet wide, extending in a circle of over
three miles, unbroken save by spacious boulevards and by schools and
churches, which, one may be sure, will not be the less beautiful
because so little money has been expended on their sites. It secures
also all the land required for a railway 4-1/4 miles long, encompassing
the town; 82 acres for warehouses, factories, markets, and a splendid
site for a crystal palace devoted to shopping, and serving also as a
winter garden.
The leases under which all building sites are let do not, therefore,
contain the usual covenant by the tenant to pay all rates, taxes,
and assessments levied in respect of such property, but, on the
contrary, contain a covenant by the landlord to apply the whole sum
received, first, in payment of debenture interest; secondly, towards
the redemption of the debentures; and thirdly, as to the whole of the
balance, into a public fund, to be applied to public purposes, among
these being the rates levied by public authorities, other than the
municipal authority, of the city.[8]
Let us now attempt to estimate the rate-rents which may be anticipated
in respect of our town-estate.
First, we will deal with the home-building lots. All are excellently
situated, but those fronting Grand Avenue (420 feet) and the
magnificent boulevards (120 feet) would probably call forth the highest
tenders. We can here deal only with averages, but we think anyone
would admit that an average rate-rent of 6s. a foot frontage for home
lots would be extremely moderate. _This would make the rate-rent of a
building lot 20 feet wide in an average position £6 a year, and on this
basis the 5,500 building lots would yield a gross revenue of £33,000._
The rate-rents from the sites of factories, warehouses, markets,
etc., cannot perhaps be so well estimated by the foot frontage, but
we may perhaps safely assume that an average employer would willingly
pay £2 in respect of each employee. It is, of course, not suggested
that the rate-rent levied should be a poll-tax; it would, as has
been said, be raised by competition among the tenants; but this way
of estimating rate-rent to be paid will perhaps give a ready means
by which manufacturers or other employers, co-operative societies,
or individuals working on their own account, would be able to judge
whether they would be lightly rated and rented as compared with their
present position. It must be, however, distinctly borne in mind that we
are dealing with _averages_; and if the figure should seem high to a
large employer, it will seem ridiculously low to a small shopkeeper.
Now, in a town with a population of 30,000, there would be about twenty
thousand persons between the ages of 16 and 65; and if it is assumed
that 10,625 of these would be employed in factories, shops, warehouses,
markets, etc., or in any way which involved the use of a site, other
than a home-building site, to be leased from the municipality, there
would be a revenue from this source of £21,250.
The gross revenue of the entire estate would therefore be:--
Rate-rent from agricultural estate (_see_ p. 36), £9,750
„ 5,500 home building lots at £6 per
lot, 33,000
„ from business premises 10,625 persons
employed at an average of £2 a head, 21,250
-------
£64,000
Or £2 per head of population for rates and rent.
This sum would be available as follows:--
For landlord’s rent or interest on purchase
money £240,000 at 4 per cent., £9,600
For sinking fund (30 years), 4,400
For such purposes as are elsewhere defrayed
out of rates, 50,000
-------
£64,000
It is now important to inquire whether £50,000 will suffice for the
municipal needs of Garden City.
FOOTNOTE:
[8] The question of the form of Leases to be granted is one which is
being carefully considered by the Land Tenure Section of the Garden
City Association.
CHAPTER IV.
THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY--GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON ITS EXPENDITURE.
Before entering upon the question which presented itself at the
conclusion of the last chapter--that of endeavouring to ascertain
whether the estimated net available income of Garden City (£50,000 per
annum) would be sufficient for its municipal needs, I will very shortly
state how it is proposed to raise the money required for commencing
operations. The money would be borrowed on “B” debentures,[9] and
would be secured by a charge upon the “rate-rent,” subject, of course,
to the payment of interest and sinking fund in respect of the “A”
debentures on which the purchase money of the estate is raised. It is,
perhaps, superfluous to remark that, though in the case of the land
purchase it might be requisite to raise the whole, or at least some
very considerable part of the purchase money before possession would
be given of the estate, or operations upon it commenced, yet in regard
to public works to be carried out upon the estate, the case is quite
different, and it would be by no means necessary or advisable to defer
the commencement of operations until the whole sum which might be
ultimately required should be raised. Probably no town was ever built
on such onerous conditions as would be involved in the raising at the
outset of such a very considerable sum as would defray the cost of all
its public works; and though the circumstances under which Garden City
is to be built may be unique, there is, as will by and by be seen, not
only no need for making an exception of the town in respect of initial
capital, but quite exceptional reasons will become more and more
apparent which make the overlaying of the enterprise with superabundant
capital altogether unnecessary, and therefore inexpedient; although, of
course, there must be a sufficient sum to enable all real economies to
be readily effected.
Perhaps it may be well in this connection to draw a distinction as to
the amount of capital required between the case of the building of a
town and the building, let us say, of a large iron bridge across an
estuary. In the case of the bridge it is highly expedient to raise
the entire sum required before commencing operations, for the simple
reason that the bridge is not a bridge until the last rivet is driven
home, nor, until its entire completion and its connection with the
railways or roadways at either end, has it any revenue-earning power.
Except, therefore, on the assumption that it is to be fully completed,
it offers very little security for the capital sunk upon it. Hence
it would be very natural for those who are asked to invest to say,
“We will not put any money into this enterprise until you show us
that you can get enough to complete it.” But the money which it is
proposed to raise for the development of Garden City site leads to
speedy results. It is to be expended upon roads, schools, etc. These
works will be carried out with due regard to the number of lots which
have been let to tenants, who undertake to build as from a certain
date; and, therefore, the money expended will very soon begin to
yield a return in the shape of a rate-rent, representing, in reality,
a greatly-improved ground-rent; when those who have advanced money
on the “B” debentures will have a really first-class security, and
further sums should be easily obtainable, and at a reduced rate of
interest. Again, it is an important part of the project that each ward,
or one-sixth part of the city, should be in some sense a complete town
by itself, and thus the school buildings might serve, in the earlier
stages, not only as schools, but as places for religious worship,
for concerts, for libraries, and for meetings of various kinds, so
that all outlay on expensive municipal and other buildings might be
deferred until the later stages of the enterprise. Work, too, would be
practically completed in one ward before commencing on another, and the
operations in the various wards would be taken up in due and proper
sequence, so that those portions of the town site on which building
operations were not in progress would also be a source of revenue,
either as allotments, cow-pastures, or, perhaps, as brickfields.
Let us now deal with the subject immediately before us. Will the
principles on which Garden City is to be built have any bearing on
the effectiveness of its municipal expenditure? In other words, will
a given revenue yield greater results than under ordinary conditions?
These questions will be answered in the affirmative. It will be shown
that, pound for pound, money will be more effectively spent than
elsewhere, and that there will be many great and obvious economies
which cannot be expressed in figures with much accuracy, but which
would certainly represent in the aggregate a very large sum.
The first great economy to be noticed is that the item of “landlord’s
rent,” which, under ordinary conditions, largely enters into municipal
expenditure, will, in Garden City, scarcely enter at all. Thus, all
well-ordered towns require administrative buildings, schools, swimming
baths, libraries, parks; and the sites which these and other corporate
undertakings occupy are usually purchased. In such cases the money
necessary for the purchase of the sites is generally borrowed on the
security of the rates; and thus it is that a very considerable part of
the total rates levied by a municipality are ordinarily applied, not to
productive works, but either to what we have termed “landlord’s rent,”
in the shape of interest on money borrowed to effect the purchase, or
to the provision of a sinking fund in payment of the purchase money of
the land so acquired, which is landlord’s rent in a capitalised form.
Now, in Garden City, all such expenditure, with such exceptions as
road sites on the agricultural estate, has been already provided for.
Thus, the 250 acres for public parks, the sites for schools and other
public buildings, will cost the ratepayers nothing whatever, or, to
put it more correctly, their cost, which was really £40 per acre, has
been covered, as we have seen, by the annual average contribution of
1s. 1d. per head, which each person is supposed to make in discharge
of landlord’s rent; and the revenue of the town, £50,000, is the _net_
revenue after all interest and sinking fund in respect of the whole
site has been deducted. In considering, therefore, the question whether
£50,000 is a sufficient revenue, it must be remembered that in no case
has any cost of municipal sites to be first deducted from that amount.
Another item in which a great economy will be effected will be found
in a comparison between Garden City and any old city like London.
London wishes to breathe a fuller municipal spirit, and so proceeds
to construct schools, to pull down slums, to erect libraries,
swimming baths, etc. In these cases, it has not only to purchase
the freeholds of the sites, but also has usually to pay for the
buildings which had been previously erected thereon, and which are
purchased solely, of course, with a view to their demolition and to a
clearing of the ground, and frequently it has also to meet claims for
business-disturbance, together with heavy legal expenses in settling
claims. In this connection it may be remarked that the inclusive
cost of _sites_ of schools purchased by the London School Board
since its constitution, _i.e._, the cost, including old buildings,
business-disturbance, law charges, etc., has already reached the
enormous sum of £3,516,072,[10] and the exclusive cost of the sites
(370 acres in extent) ready for building by the Board is equal, on the
average, to £9,500 per acre.
At this rate the cost of the 24 acres of school sites for Garden
City would be £228,000, so that another site for a model city could
be purchased out of what would be saved in Garden City in respect of
school sites alone. “Oh, but,” it may be said, “the school sites of
Garden City are extravagantly large, and would be out of the question
in London, and it is altogether unfair to compare a small town like
Garden City with London, the wealthy capital of a mighty Empire.” I
would reply, “It is quite true that the cost of land in London would
make such sites extravagant, not to say prohibitive--they would cost
about £40,000,000 sterling--but does not this of itself suggest a most
serious defect of system, and that at a most vital part? Can children
be better taught where land costs £9,500 an acre than where it costs
£40? Whatever may be the real economic value of the London site, for
other purposes--as to which we may have something to say at a later
stage--for school purposes, wherein lies the advantage that the sites
on which its schools are built are frequently surrounded by dingy
factories or crowded courts and alleys? If Lombard Street is an ideal
place for banks, is not a park like the Central Avenue of Garden City
an ideal place for schools?--and is not the welfare of our children the
primary consideration with any well-ordered community?” “But,” it may
be said, “the children must be educated near their homes, and these
homes must be near the places where their parents work.” Precisely;
but does not the scheme provide for this in the most effective manner,
and in that respect also are not the school sites of Garden City
superior to those of London? The children will have to expend less
than an average amount of energy in going to school, a matter, as all
educationists admit, of immense importance, especially in the winter.
But further, have we not heard from Professor Marshall (see heading
to Chapter III.) that “150,000 people, in London, engaged in the
clothes-making trades, are doing work which it is against all economic
reason to have done where ground-rent is high”--in other words, that
these 150,000 people _should not be in London at all_; and does not
the consideration that the education of the children of such workers
is carried on at once under inferior conditions and at enormous cost
add weight and significance to the Professor’s words? If these workers
ought not to be in London, then their homes, for which, insanitary as
they are, they pay heavy rents, ought not to be in London; a certain
proportion of the shopkeepers who supply their wants should not be in
London; and various other people to whom the wages earned by these
persons in the clothes-making trade give employment should not be in
London. Hence, there is a sense--and a very real one--in which it is
fair to compare the cost of school sites in Garden City with the cost
of school sites in London; because obviously if these people do, as
suggested by Professor Marshall, migrate from London, they can at once
effect (if they make, as I have suggested, proper provision beforehand)
not only a great saving in respect of ground-rent for their workshops,
but also a vast saving in respect of sites for homes, schools, and
other purposes; and this saving is obviously the difference between
what is now paid and what would be paid under the new conditions, minus
the loss incurred (if any), and plus the numerous gains secured as the
result of such removal.
Let us for the sake of clearness make the comparison in another way.
The people of London have paid a capital sum representing, when spread
over the whole population of London (this being taken at 6,000,000),
upwards of 11s. 6d. per head of population for school sites held by the
London School Board, a sum which is, of course, exclusive of the sites
for voluntary schools. The population of Garden City, 30,000 in number,
have entirely saved that 11s. 6d. per head, making a total saving of
£17,250, which at 3 per cent. involves an annual saving of £517 in
perpetuity. And besides thus saving £517 a year as interest on cost
of sites for schools, Garden City has secured sites for its schools
incomparably better than those of London schools--sites which afford
ample accommodation for all the children of the town, and not, as in
the case of the London School Board, accommodation for only half of the
children of the municipality. (The sites of the London School Board are
370 acres in extent, or about 1 acre to every 16,000 of the population,
while the people of Garden City have obtained 24 acres or 1 acre for
every 1,250.) In other words, Garden City secures sites which are
larger, better placed, and in every way more suitable for educational
purposes, at a mere fraction of the cost which in London is incurred
for sites vastly inferior in every respect.
The economies with which we have thus dealt are, it will be seen,
effected by the two simple expedients we have referred to. First, by
buying the land _before_ a new value is given to it by migration,
the migrating people obtain a site at an extremely low figure, and
secure the coming increment for themselves and those who come after
them; and secondly, by coming to a new site, they do not have to pay
large sums for old buildings, for compensation for disturbance, and
for heavy legal charges. The practicability of securing for the poor
workers of London the first of these great advantages appears to have
been for the moment overlooked by Professor Marshall in his article in
the _Contemporary Review_,[11] for the Professor remarks “Ultimately
all would gain by the migration, _but most_” (the italics are my
own) “_the landowners and the railroads connected with the colony_.”
Let us then adopt the expedient here advocated of securing that the
_landowners_, “_who ... will gain most_” by a project specially
designed to benefit a class now low down in the social scale, _shall be
those very people themselves_, as members of a new municipality, and
then a strong additional inducement will be held out to them to make
a change, which nothing but the lack of combined effort has hitherto
prevented. As to the benefit to be derived by the railways, while no
doubt the building up of the town would specially benefit the main line
of railway which passed through the estate, it is also true that the
earnings of the people would not be diminished to the usual extent by
railway freights and charges. (_See_ Chap. ii., also Chap. v., page 60.)
We now come to deal with an element of economy which will be
simply incalculable. This is to be found in the fact that the town
is definitely planned, so that the whole question of municipal
administration may be dealt with by one far-reaching scheme. It is not
by any means necessary, and it is not, humanly speaking, possible,
that the final scheme should be the work of one mind. It will no doubt
be the work of many minds--the minds of engineers, of architects
and surveyors, of landscape gardeners and electricians. But it is
essential, as we have said, that there should be unity of design and
purpose--that the town should be planned as a whole, and not left to
grow up in a chaotic manner as has been the case with all English
towns, and more or less so with the towns of all countries. A town,
like a flower, or a tree, or an animal, should, at each stage of its
growth, possess unity, symmetry, completeness, and the effect of
growth should never be to destroy that unity, but to give it greater
purpose, nor to mar that symmetry, but to make it more symmetrical;
while the completeness of the early structure should be merged in the
yet greater completeness of the later development.
Garden City is not only planned, but it is planned with a view to the
very latest of modern requirements;[12] and it is obviously always
easier, and usually far more economical and completely satisfactory, to
make out of fresh material a new instrument than to patch up and alter
an old one. This element of economy will be perhaps best dealt with
by a concrete illustration, and one of a very striking nature at once
presents itself.
In London the question of building a new street between Holborn and
the Strand has been for many years under consideration, and at length
a scheme is being carried out, imposing an enormous cost on the
people of London. “Every such change in the street geography of London
displaces thousands of the poor”--I quote from the _Daily Chronicle_ of
July 6, 1898--“and for many years all public or quasi-public schemes
have been charged with the liability to re-house as many of them as
possible. This is as it should be; but the difficulty begins when the
public is asked to face the music and pay the bill. In the present
case some three thousand souls of the working population have to be
turned out. After some searching of heart, it is decided that most
of them are so closely tied to the spot by their employment that it
would be a hardship to send them more than a mile away. The result,
in cash, is that London must spend in re-housing them about £100 a
head--or £300,000 in all. As to those who cannot fairly be asked to go
even a mile away--hangers-on to the market, or others tethered to the
spot--the cost will be even higher. They will require to have parcels
of the precious land cleared by the great scheme itself, and the result
of that will be to house them at the handsome figure of £260 a-piece,
or some £1,400 for every family of five or six. Financial statements
convey little to the ordinary mind. Let us make it a little more
intelligible. A sum of £1,400 means, in the house market, a rental of
nearly £100 a year. It would buy an excellent, in fact a sumptuous,
house and garden at Hampstead, such as the better middle-class delight
in. It would purchase anywhere in the nearer suburbs such houses as
men with £1,000 a year inhabit. If one went further afield, to the
new neighbourhoods which the City clerk can easily reach by rail, a
£1,400 house represents actual magnificence.” But on what scale of
comfort will the poor Covent Garden labourer with a wife and four
children live? The £1,400 will by no means represent a fair standard
of comfort, to say nothing of magnificence. “He will live in three
rooms sufficiently small in a block at least three storeys high.”
Contrast this with what might be done on a new area, by carefully
planning a bold scheme at the outset. Streets of greater width than
this new street would be laid out and constructed at a mere fraction
of the cost, while a sum of £1,400, instead of providing 1 family with
“three rooms sufficiently small in blocks at least three storeys high,”
would provide 7 families in Garden City with a comfortable six-roomed
cottage each, and with a nice little garden; and, manufacturers being
concurrently induced to build on the sites set apart for them, each
breadwinner would be placed within easy walking distance of his work.
There is another modern need which all towns and cities should be
designed to meet--a need which has arisen with the evolution of modern
sanitation, and which has of recent years been accentuated by the
rapid growth of invention. Subways for sewerage and surface drainage,
for water, gas, telegraph and telephone wires, electric lighting
wires, wires for conveying motive power, pneumatic tubes for postal
purposes, have come to be regarded as economic if not essential. But
if they would be a source of economy in an old city, how much more
so in new ones; for on a clean sheet it will be easy to use the very
best appliances for their construction, and to avail ourselves to the
fullest extent of the ever-growing advantages which they possess as
the number of services which they accommodate increases. Before the
subways can be constructed, trenches somewhat wide and deep must be
excavated. In making these the most approved excavating machinery could
be employed. In old towns this might be very objectionable, if not,
indeed, quite impossible. But here, in Garden City, the steam navvy
would not make its appearance in the parts where people were living,
but where they were coming to live after its work in preparing the
way had been completed. What a grand thing it would be if the people
of England could, by an actual illustration under their very eyes,
be convinced that machinery can be so used as to confer not only an
ultimate national benefit, but a direct and immediate advantage, and
that not only upon those who actually own it or use it, but on others
who are given work by its magic aid. What a happy day it would be for
the people of this country, and of all countries, if they could learn,
from practical experience, that machinery can be used on an extended
scale to _give_ employment as well as _to take it away_--to _implace_
labour as well as to _displace_ it--to free men as well as to _enslave_
them. There will be plenty of work to be done in Garden City. That is
obvious. It is also obvious that, until a large number of houses and
factories are built, many of these things cannot be done, and that the
faster the trenches are dug, the subways finished, the factories and
the houses built, and the light and the power turned on, the sooner can
this town, the home of an industrious and a happy people, be built,
and the sooner can others start the work of building other towns,
not like it, but gradually becoming as much superior to it as our
present locomotives are to the first crude attempts of the pioneers of
mechanical traction.
We have now shown four cogent reasons why a given revenue should,
in Garden City, yield vastly greater results than under ordinary
conditions.
(1) That no “landlord’s rent” or interest in respect of freeholds would
be payable other than the small amount which has been already provided
for in estimating net revenue.
(2) That the site being practically clear of buildings and other works,
but little expenditure would be incurred in the purchase of such
buildings, or compensation for business-disturbance, or legal and other
expenses in connection therewith.
(3) The economy arising out of a definite plan, and one in accordance
with modern needs and requirements, thus saving those items of
expenditure which are incurred in old cities as it is sought to bring
them into harmony with modern ideas.
(4) The possibility, as the whole site will be clear for operations,
of introducing machinery of the very best and most modern type in
road-making and other engineering operations.
There are other economies which will become apparent to the reader
as he proceeds, but, having cleared the ground by discussing general
principles, we shall be better prepared to discuss the question as to
the sufficiency of our estimates in another chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] _See_ note on page 21.
[10] See Report, London School Board, 6th May, 1897, p. 1480.
[11] No one is, of course, better aware of this possibility than the
Professor himself. (_See_ “Principles of Economics,” (2nd ed.) Book v.,
Chap. x. and xiii.)
[12] “London has grown up in a chaotic manner, without any unity of
design, and at the chance discretion of any persons who were fortunate
enough to own land as it came into demand at successive periods for
building operations. Sometimes a great landlord laid out a quarter in a
manner to tempt the better class of residents by squares, gardens, or
retired streets, often cut off from through traffic by gates and bars;
but even in these cases London as a whole has not been thought of, and
no main arteries have been provided for. In other and more frequent
cases of small landowners, the only design of builders has been to
crowd upon the land as many streets and houses as possible, regardless
of anything around them, and without open spaces or wide approaches. A
careful examination of a map of London shows how absolutely wanting in
any kind of plan has been its growth, and how little the convenience
and wants of the whole population or the considerations of dignity
and beauty have been consulted.”--Right Hon. G. J. Shaw-Lefevre, _New
Review_, 1891, p. 435.
CHAPTER V.
FURTHER DETAILS OF EXPENDITURE ON GARDEN CITY.
To make this chapter interesting to the general reader would be
difficult, perhaps impossible; but if carefully studied, it will, I
think, be found to abundantly establish one of the main propositions
of this book--that the rate-rent of a well-planned town, built on
an agricultural estate, will amply suffice for the creation and
maintenance of such municipal undertakings as are usually provided for
out of rates compulsorily levied.
The net available revenue of Garden City, after payment of interest
on debentures and providing a sinking fund for the landed estate, has
been already estimated at £50,000 per annum (see Chap. iii., page
42). Having, in the fourth chapter, given special reasons why a given
expenditure in Garden City would be unusually productive, I will now
enter into fuller details, so that any criticism which this book
may elicit, having something tangible to deal with, may be the more
valuable in preparing the ground for an experiment such as is here
advocated.
---------------------------------------+-------------------------------
| EXPENDITURE.
---------------------------------------+---------------+---------------
| | On Maintenance
| | and
| On Capital | Working
| Account. | Expenses.
---------------------------------------+---------------+---------------
| |
(See Note A) 25 Miles road (city) at | |
£4,000 a mile | £100,000 | £2,500
( „ B) 6 miles additional roads, | |
country estate at £1,200 | 7,200 | 350
( „ C) Circular railway and | |
bridges, 5-1/2 miles at | |
£3,000 | 16,500 | 1,500
( „ D) Schools for 6,400 | | (maintenance
children, or 1/5 of the | | only)
total population, at £12 | |
per school place for | |
capital account, and £3 | |
maintenance, etc. | 76,800 | 19,200
( „ E) Town Hall | 10,000 | 2,000
( „ F) Library | 10,000 | 600
( „ G) Museum | 10,000 | 600
( „ H) Parks, 250 acres at £50 | 12,500 | 1,250
( „ I) Sewage disposal | 20,000 | 1,000
+---------------+---------------
| £263,000 | £29,000
+---------------+---------------
( „ K) Interest on £263,000 at |
4-1/2 per cent. | 11,835
( „ L) Sinking Fund to provide for |
extinction of debt in 30 years | 4,480
( „ M) Balance available for rates |
levied by local bodies within the |
area of which the estate is situated | 4,685
+---------------
£50,000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Besides the above expenditure, a considerable outlay would be incurred
in respect of markets, water supply, lighting, tramways, and other
revenue-yielding undertakings. But these items of expenditure are
almost invariably attended with considerable profits, which go in aid
of rates. No calculation, therefore, need be made in respect of these.
I will now deal separately with most of the items in the above estimate.
_A. Roads and Streets._
The first point to be observed under this head is that the cost of
making new streets to meet the growth of population is generally not
borne by the ground landlord nor defrayed out of the rates. It is
usually paid by the building-owner before the local authorities will
consent to take the road over as a free gift. It is obvious, therefore,
that the greater part of the £100,000 _might_ be struck out. Experts
will also not forget that the cost of the road sites is elsewhere
provided for. In considering the question of the actual sufficiency of
the estimate, they will also remember that of the boulevards one-half
and of the streets and avenues one-third may be regarded as in the
nature of park, and the cost of laying out and maintenance of these
portions of the roads is dealt with under the head “Parks.” They will
also note that road-making materials would probably be found near at
hand, and that, the railway relieving the streets of most of the heavy
traffic, the more expensive methods of paving need not be resorted to.
The cost, £4,000 per mile, would, however, be doubtless inadequate if
subways are constructed, as probably they ought to be. The following
consideration, however, has led me not to estimate for these. Subways
are, where useful, a source of economy. The cost of maintaining roads
is lessened, as the continual breaking-up for laying and repairing
of water, gas, and electric mains is avoided, while any waste from
leaky pipes is quickly detected, and thus the subways _pay_. Their
cost should, therefore, be debited rather to cost of water, gas, and
electric supplies, and these services are almost invariably a source of
revenue to the Company or Corporation which constructs them.
_B. Country Roads._
These roads are only 40 feet wide, and £1,200 a mile is ample. The cost
of sites has in this case to be defrayed out of estimate.
_C. Circular Railway and Bridges._
The cost of site is elsewhere provided for (_see_ p. 40). The cost of
maintenance does not, of course, include working expenses, locomotives,
etc. To cover these a charge based on cost might be made to traders
using the line. It should also be noticed that, as in the case of
roads, by showing that the expense of this undertaking could be
defrayed out of the rate-rent, I am proving more than I undertook to
prove. I am proving that the rate-rent is sufficient to provide for
landlords’ rent, for such purposes as are usually defrayed out of rent,
_and also for greatly extending the area of municipal activity_.
It may here be well to point out that this circle railway not only
will save the trader the expense of carting to and from his warehouse
or factory, but will enable him to claim a rebate from the railway
company. Section 4 of the Railway and Canal Tariff Act, 1894, enacts:
“Whenever merchandise is received or delivered by a railway company
at any siding or branch railway not belonging to the company, and
a dispute arises between the railway company and the consignor
or consignee of such merchandise, as to any allowance or rebate
from the rates charged to such consignor or consignee, in respect
that the railway company does not provide station accommodation or
perform terminal services, the Railway and Canal Commissioners shall
have jurisdiction to hear and determine what, if any, is a just and
reasonable allowance or rebate.”
_D. Schools._
This estimate of £12 per school place represents what was only a few
years ago (1892) the average cost per child of the London School Board
for building, architect, and clerk of the works, and for furniture and
fittings; and no one can doubt that buildings greatly superior to those
in London could be obtained for this sum. The saving in sites has been
already dealt with, but it may be remarked that in London the cost per
child for sites has been £6 11s 10d.
As showing how ample this estimate is, it may be observed that the cost
of schools which have been proposed to be built by a private company at
Eastbourne, “with a view of keeping out the School Board,” is estimated
at £2,500 for 400 places, or but little more than half the sum per
school place provided in the estimate for Garden City.
The cost of maintenance, £3 per head, is probably sufficient, in
view of the fact that the “expenditure per scholar in actual average
attendance” in England and Wales, as given in the Report of the
Committee of Council on Education, 1896-97, c. 8545, is £2 11s.
11-1/2d. It must be especially noticed, too, that the whole cost of
education is, in these estimates, assumed to be borne by Garden City,
though a considerable part would be, in the ordinary course, borne by
the National Exchequer. The amount of income per scholar in actual
average attendance in England and Wales, as given in the same report,
is £1 1s. 2d. as against a rate in Garden City of £3. So that I am
again, in the case of the schools, as in the case of roads and circle
railway, proving more than I set out to prove.
_E. Town Hall and Expenses of Management._
It is to be noticed that the estimates of the various undertakings are
intended to cover professional direction and supervision of architects,
engineers, teachers, etc. The £2,000 for maintenance and working
expenses under this head is, therefore, intended to include only the
salaries of town clerk and of officials other than those comprised
under special heads, together with incidental expenses.
_F. Library, and G. Museum._
The latter is usually and the former not infrequently elsewhere
provided for out of funds other than rates. So, here again, I am more
than proving my case.
_H. Parks and Road Ornamentation._
This item of cost would not be incurred until the undertaking was
in a thoroughly sound financial condition, and the park space for a
considerable period might be a source of revenue as agricultural land.
Further, much of the park space would probably be left in a state of
nature. Forty acres of this park space is road ornamentation, but the
planting of trees and shrubs would not entail great expense. Again, a
considerable part of the area would be reserved for cricket-fields,
lawn-tennis courts, and other playgrounds, and the clubs using public
grounds might perhaps be called upon to contribute to the expense of
keeping these in order, as is customary elsewhere.
_I. Sewage._
All that need be said on this subject has been said in Chap. i., page
25, and Chap. ii., page 32.
_K. Interest._
The money to construct the public works with which we have been dealing
is supposed to be borrowed at 4-1/2 per cent. The question here
arises--a question partly dealt with in Chap. iv.--what is the security
for those who lend money on the “B” debentures?
My answer is three-fold.
(1) Those who advance money to effect any improvements on land have a
security the safety of which is in reality largely determined by the
effectiveness with which the money so advanced is spent; and, applying
this truism, I venture to say that, for effectiveness of expenditure,
no money which the investing public has been for many years asked to
subscribe for improvements of a like nature has an equal security,
whether it be measured by miles of road, acres of park, or numbers of
school children well provided for.
(2) Those who advance money to effect improvements on land have
a security the safety of which is largely determined by the
consideration, aye or no, are other and yet more valuable works to
be simultaneously carried out by others at their own expense, which
other works are to become a security in respect of the first-mentioned
advance; and, applying this second truism, I say that, as the money for
effecting the public improvements here described would only be asked
for as and when other improvements--factories, houses, shops, etc.
(costing far more money than the public works necessary at any given
period)--were about to be built or were in process of building, the
quality of the security would be a very high one.
(3) It is difficult to name a better security than that offered when
money is to be expended in converting an agricultural estate into an
urban, and this of the very best known type.
That the scheme is in reality a 3 per cent. security, and would in its
later stages become so, I entertain little doubt; but I do not forget
that, though its points of novelty are the very elements which really
_make_ it secure, they may not make it _seem_ so, and that those who
are merely looking out for an investment may eye it with some distrust
because of its novelty. We shall have in the first instance to look
to those who will advance money with somewhat mixed motives--public
spirit, love of enterprise, and possibly, as to some persons, with a
lurking belief that they will be able to dispose of their debentures
at a premium, as they probably will. Therefore, I put down 4-1/2 per
cent., but if anyone’s conscience prick him he may tender at 2 or
2-1/2, or may even advance money without interest.
_L. Sinking Fund._
This sinking fund, which provides for the extinction of the debt in
thirty years, compares most favourably with that usually provided
by local bodies for works of so permanent a character. The Local
Government Board frequently allows loans to be created with a sinking
fund extending over much longer periods. It is to be remembered also
that an additional sinking fund for the landed estate has been already
provided (_see_ Chapter iv., p. 42).
_M. Balance available for Rates levied by Local Bodies within whose
jurisdiction the estate is situated._
It will be seen that the whole scheme of Garden City will make
extremely few demands upon the resources of outside local authorities.
Roads, sewers, schools, parks, libraries, etc., will be provided out
of the funds of the new “municipality,” and in this way the whole
scheme will come to the agriculturists at present on the estate very
much like “a rate in aid”; for, as rates are only raised for the
purpose of public expenditure, it follows that, there being little or
no fresh call upon the rates while the number of ratepayers is greatly
increased, the rate per head must fall. I do not, however, forget that
there are some functions which such a voluntary organisation as Garden
City could not take over, such as the police and the administration of
the poor-law. As to the latter, it is believed that the whole scheme
will in the long run make such rates unnecessary, as Garden City will
provide, at all events from the time when the estate has been fully
paid for, pensions for all its needy old citizens. Meantime and from
the very outset it is doing its full share of charitable work. It
has allotted sites of 30 acres for various institutions, and at a
later stage will doubtless be prepared to assume the whole cost of
maintaining them.
With regard to police rates, it is not believed that these can be
largely increased by the coming into the town of 30,000 citizens, who,
for the most part, will be of the law-abiding class; for, there being
but one landlord, and this the community, it will not be difficult to
prevent the creation of those surroundings which make the intervention
of the police so frequently necessary. (_See_ Chapter vii.)
* * * * *
I have, I think, now fully established my contention that the rate-rent
which would be willingly offered by the tenants of Garden City, in
respect of the advantages afforded them, would be amply sufficient,
(1) to pay landlord’s rent in the form of interest on debentures; (2)
to provide a sinking fund for the entire abolition of landlord’s rent;
and (3) to provide for the municipal needs of the town without recourse
to any Act of Parliament for the enforcement of rates--the community
depending solely on the very large powers it possesses as a landlord.
_N. Revenue-bearing Expenditure._
If the conclusion already arrived at--that the experiment advocated
affords an outlet for an extremely effective expenditure of labour and
capital--is sound in regard to objects the cost of which is usually
defrayed out of rates, that conclusion must, I think, be equally sound
in regard to tramways, lighting, water-supply, and the like, which,
when carried on by municipalities, are usually made a source of
revenue, thus relieving the rate-payer by making his rates lighter.[13]
And as I have added nothing to the proposed revenue for any prospective
profits on such undertakings, I do not propose to make any estimate of
expenditure.
FOOTNOTE:
[13] “Birmingham rates are relieved to the extent of £50,000 a year out
of profits on gas. The Electrical Committee of Manchester has promised
to pay £10,000 this year to the city fund, in relief of rates out of a
net profit of over £16,000.”--_Daily Chronicle_, 9th June, 1897.
CHAPTER VI.
ADMINISTRATION.
I have in the 4th and 5th chapters dealt with the fund at the disposal
of the Board of Management, and have endeavoured to show, and I
believe with success, that the rate-rents collected by the trustees in
their capacity of landlords of the towns will suffice, (1) to provide
interest on the debentures with which the estate is purchased, (2) to
provide a sinking fund which will at a comparatively early date leave
the community free from the burden of interest on such debentures, and
(3) to enable the Board of Management to carry on such undertakings
as are elsewhere, for the most part, carried out by means of rates
compulsorily levied.
A most important question now arises regarding the extent to which
municipal enterprise is to be carried, and how far it is to supersede
private enterprise. We have already by implication stated that the
experiment advocated does not involve, as has been the case in so
many social experiments--the complete municipalisation of industry
and the elimination of private enterprise. But what principle is to
guide us in determining the line which shall separate municipal from
private control and management? Mr. Joseph Chamberlain has said:
“The true field for municipal activity is limited to those things
which the community can do better than the individual.” Precisely,
but that is a truism, and does not carry us one whit further, for the
very question at issue is as to _what those things are_ which the
community can do better than the individual; and when we seek for an
answer to this question we find two directly conflicting views--the
view of the socialist, who says: Every phase of wealth-production
and distribution can be best performed by the community; and the
view of the individualist, who contends these things are best left
to the individual. But probably the true answer is to be found at
neither extreme, is only to be gained by experiment, and will differ
in different communities and at different periods. With a growing
intelligence and honesty in municipal enterprise, with greater freedom
from the control of the Central Government, it may be found--especially
on municipally-owned land--that the field of municipal activity may
grow so as to embrace a very large area, and yet the municipality claim
no rigid monopoly and the fullest rights of combination exist.
Bearing this in mind, the municipality of Garden City will, at
the outset, exercise great caution, and not attempt too much. The
difficulty of raising the necessary funds with which to carry on
municipal undertakings would be greatly increased if the Board of
Management attempted to do everything; and, in the prospectus to
be ultimately issued, a clear statement will be made of what the
Corporation undertakes to do with the moneys entrusted to it, and this
will at first embrace little more than those things which experience
has proved municipalities can perform better than individuals.
Tenants, too, will, it is obvious, be far more ready to offer adequate
“rate-rents” if they are given distinctly to understand to what
purpose those “rate-rents” are to be devoted, and after those things
are done, and done well, little difficulty will be placed in the way of
further appropriate extensions of the field of municipal enterprise.
Our answer, then, to the question, what field is to be covered by
municipal enterprise, is this. Its extent will be measured simply by
the willingness of the tenants to pay rate-rents, and will grow in
proportion as municipal work is done efficiently and honestly, or
decline as it is done dishonestly or inefficiently. If, for example,
the tenants find that a very small additional contribution, recently
made in the shape of “rate-rent,” has enabled the authorities to
provide an excellent supply of water for all purposes, and they are
convinced that so good a result at so small a cost would not have been
achieved through the agency of any private undertaking working for a
profit, they will naturally be willing and even anxious that further
hopeful-looking experiments in municipal work should be undertaken. The
site of Garden City may, in this respect, be compared with Mr. and Mrs.
Boffin’s famous apartment, which, the reader of Dickens will remember,
was furnished at one end to suit the taste of Mrs. Boffin, who was “a
dab at fashion,” while at the other end it was furnished to conform to
the notions of solid comfort which so gratified Mr. Boffin, but with
the mutual understanding between the parties that if Mr. B. should
get by degrees to be “a high-flyer” at fashion, then Mrs. B.’s carpet
would gradually “come for’arder,” whilst if Mrs. B. should become “less
of a dab at fashion,” Mrs. B.’s carpet would “go back’arder.” So, in
Garden City, if the inhabitants become greater “dabs” at co-operation,
the municipality will “come for’arder”; if they become less “dabs” at
co-operation, the municipality will “go back’arder”; while the relative
number of positions occupied by municipal workers and non-municipal
workers at any period will very fairly reflect the skill and integrity
of the public administration and the degree of value which is therefore
associated with municipal effort.
But the municipality of Garden City, besides setting its face against
any attempt to embark upon too large a field of enterprise, will so
frame its constitution that the responsibility for each branch of the
municipal service will be thrown directly upon the officers of that
branch and not be practically lost sight of because loosely thrown
upon the larger central body--a plan which makes it difficult for the
public to perceive where any leakage or friction may be taking place.
The constitution is modelled upon that of a large and well-appointed
business, which is divided into various departments, each department
being expected to justify its own continued existence--its officers
being selected, not so much for their knowledge of the business
generally as for their special fitness for the work of their department.
THE BOARD OF MANAGEMENT
consists of--
(1) The Central Council.
(2) The Departments.
THE CENTRAL COUNCIL (_see_ Diagram 5).
In this council (or its nominees) are vested the rights and powers of
the community as sole landlord of Garden City. Into its treasury are
paid (after provision has been made for landlord’s rent and sinking
fund) all rate-rents received from its tenants, as well as the profits
derived from its various municipal undertakings, and these, we have
seen, are amply sufficient to discharge all public burdens without any
resort to the expedient of compulsory rates. The powers possessed by
the Central Council are, it may be noticed in passing, more ample than
those possessed by other municipal bodies, for whilst most of these
enjoy only such powers as are expressly conferred on them by Acts of
Parliament, the Central Council of Garden City exercises on behalf of
the people those wider rights, powers and privileges which are enjoyed
by landlords under the common law. The private owner of land can do
with his land and with the revenue he derives from it what he pleases
so long as he is not a nuisance to his neighbour; while, on the other
hand, public bodies which acquire land or obtain power to levy rates
by Acts of Parliament, can only use that land or spend those rates for
such purposes as are expressly prescribed by those Acts. But Garden
City is in a greatly superior position, for, by stepping as a _quasi_
public body into the rights of a private landlord, it becomes at once
clothed with far larger powers for carrying out the will of the people
than are possessed by other local bodies, and thus solves to a large
extent the problem of local self-government.
But the Central Council, though possessing these large powers,
delegates many of them, for convenience of administration, to its
various departments, retaining, however, responsibility for--
(1) The general plan on which the estate is laid out.
(2) The amount of money voted to each of the various spending
departments, as schools, roads, parks, etc.
(3) Such measure of oversight and control of the departments as is
necessary to preserve a general unity and harmony, but no more.
THE DEPARTMENTS.
These are divided into various groups--for example:
(A) Public Control.
(B) Engineering.
(C) Social Purposes.
GROUP A, PUBLIC CONTROL.
This group may consist of the following sub-groups:
Finance.
Assessment.
Law.
Inspection.
_Finance._
Into this department are paid, after making provision for landlord’s
rent and sinking fund, all rate-rents; and out of it the necessary sums
for the various departments are voted by the Central Council.
_Assessment._
This department receives all applications from would-be tenants, and
fixes the rate-rent to be paid--such rate-rents not, however, being
fixed arbitrarily by the department, but upon the essential principle
adopted by other Assessment Committees--the really determining factor
being the rate-rent which an average tenant is found willing to pay.[14]
_Law._
This department settles the terms and conditions under which leases
shall be granted, and the nature of the covenants to be entered into by
and with the Central Council.
_Inspection._
This department carries out such reasonable duties in relation to
inspection as the municipality, in its capacity of landlord, may with
the tenants of the municipality mutually agree upon.
GROUP B, ENGINEERING.
This group may consist of the following departments--some of which
would be later creations.
Roads.
Subways.
Sewers.
Tramways.
Municipal Railway.
Public Buildings (other than schools).
Park and open spaces.
Drainage.
Canals.
Irrigation.
Water-supply.
Motive-power & Lighting.
Messages.
GROUP C, SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL.
This group is also divided into various departments, dealing with:--
Education.
Libraries.
Baths and Wash-houses.
Music.
Recreation.
_Election of Members of Board of Management._
Members (who may be men or women) are elected by the rate-renters to
serve on one or more departments, and the Chairmen and Vice-Chairmen of
the departments constitute the Central Council.
Under such a constitution it is believed that the community would have
the readiest means of rightly estimating the work of its servants, and,
at election times, would have clear and distinct issues brought before
it. The candidates would not be expected to specify their views upon
a hundred and one questions of municipal policy upon which they had
no definite opinions, and which would probably not give rise within
their term of office to the necessity for recording their votes, but
would simply state their views as to some special question or group of
questions, a sound opinion upon which would be of urgent importance to
the electors, because immediately connected with the welfare of the
town.
FOOTNOTE:
[14] This individual is known to Assessment Committees under the name
of the “hypothetical tenant.”
CHAPTER VII.
SEMI-MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE--LOCAL OPTION--TEMPERANCE REFORM.
In the last chapter we saw that no line could be sharply drawn between
municipal and individual enterprise, so that one could definitely say
of one or the other, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further”; and
this ever-changing character of the problem can be usefully illustrated
in our examination of the industrial life of Garden City by reference
to a form of enterprise there carried on which is neither distinctly
municipal nor distinctly individualistic, but partaking, as it does, of
the character of both, may be termed “semi-municipal.”
Among the most reliable sources of revenue possessed by many of our
existing municipalities are their so-called “public markets.” But
it is important to notice that these markets are by no means public
in the same full sense as are our public parks, libraries, water
undertakings, or those numerous other branches of municipal work which
are carried on upon public property, by public officials, at the
public expense, and solely with a view to the public advantage. On
the contrary, our so-called “public markets” are, for the most part,
carried on by private individuals, who pay tolls for the parts of the
buildings which they occupy, but who are not, except on a few points,
controlled by the municipality, and whose profits are personally
enjoyed by the various dealers. Markets may, therefore, be fitly termed
_semi-municipal_ enterprises.
It would, however, have been scarcely necessary to touch on this
question, but that it naturally leads up to the consideration of a
form of semi-municipal enterprise which is one of the characteristic
features of Garden City. This is to be found in the Crystal Palace,
which, it will be remembered, is a wide arcade, skirting the
Central Park, in which the most attractive wares on sale in Garden
City are exhibited, and, this being a winter garden as well as the
great shopping centre, is one of the most favourite resorts of the
townspeople. The business at the shops is carried on, not by the
municipality, but by various individuals and societies, the number of
traders being, however, limited by the principle of local option.
The considerations which have led to this system arise out of the
distinction between the cases on the one hand of the manufacturers,
and on the other of the distributive societies and shopkeepers who
are invited to the town. Thus, for example:--In the case of the
manufacturer, say, of boots, though he may be glad of the custom of the
people of the town, he is by no means dependent on it; his products go
all over the world; and he would scarcely wish that the number of boot
manufacturers within the area should be specially limited. He would,
in fact, lose more than he would gain by restrictions of this kind. A
manufacturer frequently prefers to have others carrying on the same
trade in his vicinity; for this gives him a larger choice of skilled
workmen or workwomen, who themselves desire it also, because it gives
them a larger range of employers.
But in the case of shops and stores the case is entirely different. An
individual or a society proposing to open in Garden City, say a drapery
store, would be most anxious to know what, if any, arrangements were to
be made for limiting the number of his competitors, for he would depend
almost entirely on the trade of the town or neighbourhood. Indeed it
frequently happens that a private landlord, when laying out a building
estate, makes arrangements with his shopkeeping tenants designed to
prevent them from being swamped by others in the same trade starting on
his estate.
The problem, therefore, seems to be how to make such suitable
arrangements as will at once--
(1) Induce tenants of the shopkeeping class to come and start in
business, offering to the community adequate rate-rents.
(2) Prevent the absurd and wasteful multiplication of shops referred
to in the note at the foot of page 81.
(3) Secure the advantages usually gained (or supposed to be) by
competition--such as low prices, wide range of choice, fair dealing,
civility, etc.
(4) Avoid the evils attending monopoly.
All these results may be secured by a simple expedient, which will have
the effect of converting competition from an active into a latent force
to be brought into play or held in reserve. It is, as we have said,
an application of the principle of local option. To explain:--Garden
City is the sole landlord, and it can grant to a proposed tenant--we
will suppose a co-operative society or an individual trader in drapery
or fancy goods--a long lease of a certain amount of space in the Grand
Arcade (Crystal Palace), at a certain annual rate-rent; and it can
say, in effect, to its tenant, “That site is the only space in that
ward which we for the present intend to let to any tenant engaged in
your trade. The Arcade is, however, designed to be not only the great
shopping centre of the town and district, and the permanent exhibition
in which the manufacturers of the town display their wares, but a
summer and winter garden. The space this Arcade covers will, therefore,
be considerably greater than is actually required for the purposes
of shops or stores, if these are kept within reasonable limits. Now,
so long as you give satisfaction to the people of the town, none of
the space devoted to these recreative purposes will be let to anyone
engaged in your calling. It is necessary, however, to guard against
monopoly. If, therefore, the people become dissatisfied with your
methods of trading, and desire that the force of competition shall be
actively brought into play against you, then, on the requisition of a
certain number, the necessary space in the Arcade will be allotted by
the municipality to some one desirous of starting an opposition store.”
Under this arrangement it will be seen the trader will depend upon
the good-will of his customers. If he charges prices which are too
high; if he misrepresents the quality of his goods; if he does not
treat his employees with proper consideration in regard to hours of
labour, wages, or other matters, he will run a great risk of losing
the good-will of his customers, and the people of the town will have
a method of expressing their sentiments regarding him which will
be extremely powerful; they will simply invite a new competitor to
enter the field. But, on the other hand, as long as he perform his
functions wisely and well, his good-will resting on the solid basis of
the good-will of his customers, he will be protected. His advantages
are, therefore, enormous. In other towns a competitor might enter the
field against him at any moment without warning, perhaps at the very
time when he had purchased some expensive goods, which, unless sold
during the season, could only be realised at an enormous sacrifice. In
Garden City, on the other hand, he has full notice of his danger--time
to prepare for it and even to avert it. Besides, the members of the
community, except for the purpose of bringing a trader to reason, will
not only have no interest in bringing a competitor into the field,
but their interests will be best served by keeping competition in the
background as long as possible. If the fire of competition is brought
to bear upon a trader, they must suffer with him. They will lose space
they would far rather see devoted to some other purpose--they will
be bound to pay higher prices than those at which the first trader
could supply them if he would, and they will have to render municipal
services to two traders instead of to one, while the two competitors
could not afford to pay so large a sum in rate-rent as could the
original trader. For in many cases the effect of competition is to
make a rise in price absolutely necessary. Thus, A. has a trade of 100
gallons of milk a day, and can, we will suppose, pay his expenses, earn
a bare living, and supply his customers with milk, say, at 4d. a quart.
But if a competitor enters the field, then A. can only sell _milk
and water_ at 4d. a quart if he is to continue to pay his way. Thus
the competition of shopkeepers absolutely tends not only to ruin the
competitors, but to maintain and even to raise prices, and so to lower
real wages.[15]
Under this system of local option it will be seen that the tradesmen
of the town--be they co-operative societies or individuals--would
become, if not strictly or technically so, yet in a very real sense,
municipal servants. But they would not be bound up in the red-tape
of officialism, and would have the fullest rights and powers of
initiation. It would not be by any literal conformity to cast-iron and
inflexible rules, but by their skill and judgment in forecasting the
wishes and in anticipating the tastes of their constituents, as well
as by their integrity and courtesy as business men and women, that
they would win and maintain their good-will. They would run certain
risks, as all tradesmen must, and in return they would be paid, not of
course in the form of salary, but in profits. But the risks they would
run would be far less than they must be where competition is unchecked
and uncontrolled, while their annual profits in proportion to capital
invested might also be greater. They might even sell considerably below
the ordinary rate prevailing elsewhere, but yet, having an assured
trade and being able very accurately to gauge demand, they might turn
their money over with remarkable frequency. Their working expenses,
too, would be absurdly small. They would not have to advertise for
customers, though they would doubtless make announcements to them of
any novelties; but all that waste of effort and of money which is so
frequently expended by tradesmen in order to secure customers or to
prevent their going elsewhere, would be quite unnecessary.
And not only would each trader be in a sense a municipal servant, but
those in his employ would be also. It is true such a trader would have
the fullest right to engage and dismiss his servants; but if he acted
arbitrarily or harshly, if he paid insufficient wages, or treated his
employees inconsiderately, he would certainly run the risk of losing
the good-will of the majority of his customers, even although in other
respects he might prove himself an admirable public servant. On the
other hand, if the example were set of profit-sharing, this might grow
into a custom, and the distinction between master and servant would be
gradually lost in the simple process of all becoming co-operators.[16]
This system of local option as applied to shopkeeping is not only
business-like, but it affords an opportunity for the expression of
that public conscience against the sweater which is now being stirred,
but which scarcely knows how to effectually respond to the new impulse.
Thus there was established in London some years ago the Consumers’
League, the object of which was not, as its name might lead one to
suspect, to protect the consuming public against the unscrupulous
producer, but it was to protect the sweated, over-driven producer
against a consuming public over-clamorous for cheapness. Its aim was
to assist such of the public as hate and detest the sweating system
to avail themselves of the League’s carefully compiled information,
so that they might be able to studiously avoid the products which had
passed through sweaters’ hands. But such a movement as the Consumers’
League advocated could make but little headway without the support of
the shopkeeper. That consumer must be an uncommonly earnest opponent of
sweating who insists upon knowing the source whence every article he
purchases has come, and a shopkeeper under ordinary circumstances would
scarcely be disposed either to give such information or to guarantee
that the goods he sold were produced under “fair” conditions; while
to establish shops in large cities, which are already overcrowded
with distributive agencies, and to do this with the special object
of putting down sweating, is to court failure. Here in Garden City,
however, there will be a splendid opportunity for the public conscience
to express itself in this regard, and no shopkeeper will, I hope,
venture to sell “sweated goods.”
There is another question with which the term “local option” is most
closely associated which may be dealt with here. I refer to the
temperance question. Now it will be noticed that the municipality,
in its position of sole landlord, has the _power_ of dealing in the
most drastic manner possible with the liquor traffic. There are, as is
well known, many landlords who will not permit a public-house to be
opened on their estate, and the landlord of Garden City--the people
themselves--_could_ adopt this course. But would this be wise? I think
not. First, such a restriction would keep away the very large and
increasing class of moderate drinkers, and would also keep away many
of those who are scarcely moderate in their use of alcohol, but as to
whom reformers would be most anxious that they should be brought under
the healthful influences which would surround them in Garden City.
The public-house, or its equivalent, would, in such a community, have
many competitors for the favour of the people; while, in large cities,
with few opportunities of cheap and rational enjoyment, it has its own
way. The experiment, as one in the direction of temperance reform,
would, therefore, be more valuable if the traffic were permitted under
reasonable regulations than if it were stopped; because, while, in
the former case, the effects in the direction of temperance would be
clearly traceable to the more natural and healthy form of life, if the
latter course were adopted it could only prove, what no one now denies,
that it may be possible, by restrictive measures, to entirely keep away
the traffic from one small area while intensifying the evils elsewhere.
But the community would certainly take care to prevent the undue
multiplication of licensed houses, and it would be free to adopt any
one of the various methods which the more moderate of temperance
reformers suggest. The municipal authorities might conduct the liquor
traffic themselves, and employ the profits in relief of rates. There
is, however, much force in the objection that it is not desirable that
the revenue of a community should be so derived, and, therefore, it
might be better that the profits should be entirely applied to purposes
which would compete with the traffic, or in minimising its evil effects
by establishing asylums for those affected with alcoholism.[17] On this
subject, as on all points involved, I earnestly invite correspondence
from those who have practical suggestions to offer; and, although the
town is but a small one, it would perhaps not be impracticable to test
various promising suggestions in the different wards.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] “It has been calculated by Mr. Neale” (“Economics of
Co-operation”) “that there are 41,735 separate establishments for 22
of the principal retail trades in London. If for each of these trades
there were 648 shops--that is 9 to the square mile, no one would have
to go more than a quarter of a mile to the nearest shop. There would
be 14,256 shops in all. Assuming that this supply would be sufficient,
there are in London 251 shops for every hundred that are really wanted.
The general prosperity of the country will be much increased when the
capital and labour that are now wastefully employed in the retail trade
are set free for other work.”--“Economics of Industry,” A. and M. P.
Marshall, Chap. ix., sec. 10.
[16] This principle of local option, which is chiefly applicable to
distributive callings, is perhaps applicable to production in some of
its branches. Thus bakeries and laundries, which would largely depend
upon the trade of the locality, seem to present instances where it
might with some caution be applied. Few businesses seem to require
more thorough supervision and control than these, and few have a more
direct relation to health. Indeed, a very strong case might be made out
for municipal bakeries and municipal laundries, and it is evident that
the control of an industry by the community is a half-way house to its
assumption of it, should this prove desirable and practicable.
[17] Since “To-Morrow” was published, various Companies have been
formed by the Public House Trust Association, 116 Victoria Street,
Westminster, S.W., with the object of carrying on the trade on
principles advocated by the Bishop of Chester. A limited dividend of 5
per cent. is fixed; all profits beyond are expended in useful public
enterprises, and the Managers have no interest whatever in pushing the
trade in intoxicating liquors. It may be interesting also to observe
that Mr. George Cadbury, in the Deed of Foundation of the Bourneville
Trust, provides for the complete restriction of the traffic at the
outset. But as a practical man, he sees that as the Trust grows (and
its power of growth is among its most admirable features) it may be
necessary to remove such complete restrictions. And he provides that in
that event “all the net profits arising from the sale and co-operative
distribution of intoxicating liquors shall be devoted to securing
recreation and counter attractions to the liquor trade as ordinarily
conducted.”
CHAPTER VIII.
PRO-MUNICIPAL WORK.
There will be found in every progressive community societies and
organisations which represent a far higher level of public spirit
and enterprise than that possessed or displayed by such communities
in their collective capacity. It is probable that the government of
a community can never reach a higher tone or work on a higher plane
than the average sense of that community demands and enforces; and it
will greatly conduce to the well-being of any society if the efforts
of its State or municipal organisations are inspired and quickened by
those of its members whose ideals of society duty rise higher than the
average.[18]
And so it may be in Garden City. There will be discovered many
opportunities for public service which neither the community as a
whole, nor even a majority of its members, will at first recognise
the importance of, or see their way to embrace, and which public
services it would be useless, therefore, to expect the municipality to
undertake; but those who have the welfare of society at heart will, in
the free air of the city, be always able to experiment on their own
responsibility, and thus quicken the public conscience and enlarge the
public understanding.
The whole of the experiment which this book describes is indeed of
this character. It represents pioneer work, which will be carried out
by those who have not a merely pious opinion, but an effective belief
in the economic, sanitary, and social advantages of common ownership
of land, and who, therefore, are not satisfied merely to advocate that
those advantages should be secured on the largest scale at the national
expense, but are impelled to give their views shape and form as soon
as they can see their way to join with a sufficient number of kindred
spirits. And what the whole experiment is to the nation, so may what we
term “pro-municipal” undertakings be to the community of Garden City
or to society generally. Just as the larger experiment is designed to
lead the nation into a juster and better system of land tenure and a
better and more common-sense view of how towns should be built, so are
the various pro-municipal undertakings of Garden City devised by those
who are prepared to lead the way in enterprises designed to further the
well-being of the town, but who have not as yet succeeded in getting
their plans or schemes adopted by the Central Council.
Philanthropic and charitable institutions, religious societies, and
educational agencies of various kinds occupy a very large part in this
group of pro-municipal or pro-national agencies, and these have been
already referred to, and their nature and purposes are well known.
But institutions which aim at the more strictly material side of
well-being, such as banks and building societies, may be found here
too. Just as the founders of the Penny Bank paved the way for the Post
Office Savings Bank, so may some of those who study carefully the
experiment of building up Garden City see how useful a bank might be,
which, like the Penny Bank, aims not so much at gain for its founders
as at the well-being of the community at large. Such a bank might
arrange to pay the whole of its net profits or all its profits over
a certain fixed rate, into the municipal exchequer, and give to the
authorities of the town the option of taking it over should they be
convinced of its utility and its general soundness.
There is another large field for pro-municipal activity in the work of
building homes for the people. The municipality would be attempting too
much if it essayed this task, at least at the outset. To do so would
be perhaps to depart too widely from the path which experience has
justified, however much might be said in favour of such a course on the
part of a municipal body in command of ample funds. The municipality
has, however, done much to make the building of bright and beautiful
homes for the people possible. It has effectually provided against any
over-crowding within its area, thus solving a problem found insoluble
in existing cities, and it offers sites of ample size at an average
rate of £6 per annum for ground-rent and rates. Having done so much,
the municipality will pay heed to the warning of an experienced
municipal reformer, whose desire for the extension of municipal
enterprise cannot be doubted (Mr. John Burns, M.P., L.C.C.), who has
said: “A lot of work has been thrown upon the Works Committee of the
London County Council by councillors who are so anxious for its success
that they would choke it by a burden of work.”
There are, however, other sources to which the workers may look for
means to build their own homes. They may form building societies or
induce co-operative societies, friendly societies, and trade unions
to lend them the necessary money, and to help them to organise the
requisite machinery. Granted the existence of the true social spirit,
and not its mere letter and name, and that spirit will manifest itself
in an infinite variety of ways. There are in this country--who can
doubt it?--many individuals and societies who would be ready to raise
funds and organise associations for assisting bodies of workmen secure
of good wages to build their own homes on favourable terms.
A better security the lenders could scarcely have, especially having
regard to the ridiculously small landlord’s rent paid by the borrowers.
Certain it is that if the building of the homes for these workmen is
left to speculative builders of a strongly-pronounced individualistic
type, and these reap golden harvests, it will be the fault, amongst
others, of those large organisations of working-men which now place
their capital in banks, whence it is withdrawn by those who with
it “exploit” the very men who have placed it there. It is idle for
working-men to complain of this self-imposed exploitation, and to
talk of nationalising the entire land and capital of this country
under an executive of their own class, until they have first been
through an apprenticeship at the humbler task of organising men and
women with their own capital in constructive work of a less ambitious
character--until they have assisted far more largely than they have
yet done in building up capital, not to be wasted in strikes, or
employed by capitalists in fighting strikers, but in securing homes
and employment for themselves and others on just and honourable terms.
The true remedy for capitalist oppression where it exists, is not the
strike of _no work_, but the strike of _true work_, and against this
last blow the oppressor has no weapon. If labour leaders spent half the
energy in co-operative organisation that they now waste in co-operative
disorganisation, the end of our present unjust system would be at hand.
In Garden City such leaders will have a fair field for the exercise
of pro-municipal functions--functions which are exercised for the
municipality, though not by it--and the formation of building societies
of this type would be of the greatest possible utility.
But would not the amount of capital required for the building of the
dwelling-houses of a town of 30,000 be enormous? Some persons with whom
I have discussed the question look at the matter thus. So many houses
in Garden City at so many hundred of pounds a-piece, capital required
so much.[19] This is, of course, quite a mistaken way of regarding the
problem. Let us test the matter thus. How many houses have been built
in London within the last ten years? Shall we say, at the very roughest
of guesses 150,000, costing on an average £300 a-piece--to say nothing
of shops, factories, and warehouses. Well, that is £45,000,000. Was
£45,000,000 raised for this purpose? Yes, certainly, or the houses
would not have been built. But the money was not raised all at once,
and if one could recognise the actual sovereigns that were raised for
the building of these 150,000 houses, one would often find the very
same coins turning up again and again. So in Garden City. Before it is
completed, there will be 5,500 houses at, say, £300 a-piece, making
£1,650,000. But this capital will not be raised all at once, and here,
far more than in London, the very same sovereigns would be employed in
building many houses. For observe, money is not lost or consumed when
it is spent. It merely changes hands. A workman of Garden City borrows
£200 from a pro-municipal building society, and builds a house with
it. That house costs him £200, and the 200 sovereigns disappear so far
as he is concerned, but they become the property of the brickmakers,
builders, carpenters, plumbers, plasterers, etc., who have built his
house, whence those sovereigns would find their way into the pockets
of the tradesmen and others with whom such workmen deal, and thence
would pass into the pro-municipal bank of the town, when presently,
those 200 identical sovereigns might be drawn out and employed in
building another house. Thus there would be presented the apparent
anomaly of two, and then three, and then four or more houses, each
costing £200, being built with 200 sovereigns.[20] But there is no real
anomaly about it. The coins, of course, did not build the houses in
any of the supposed cases. The coins were but the measure of value,
and like a pair of scales and weights, may be used over and over again
without any perceptible lessening of their worth. What built the houses
was really labour, skill, enterprise, working up the free gifts of
nature; and though each of the workers might have his reward weighed
out to him in coins, the cost of all buildings and works in Garden
City must be mainly determined by the skill and energy with which its
labours are directed. Still, so long as gold and silver are recognised
as the medium of exchange, it will be necessary to use them, and of
great importance to use them skilfully--for the skill with which they
are used, or their unnecessary use dispensed with, as in a banker’s
clearing house, will have a most important bearing upon the cost of
the town, and upon the annual tax levied in the shape of interest on
borrowed capital. Skill must be therefore directed to the object of so
using coins that they may quickly effect their object of measuring one
value, and be set to work to measure another--that they may be turned
over as many times as possible in the year, in order that the amount of
labour measured by each coin may be as large as possible, and thus the
amount represented by interest on the coins borrowed, though paid at
the normal or usual rate, shall bear as small a proportion as possible
to the amount paid to labour. If this is done effectively, then a
saving to the community in respect of interest as great as the more
easily demonstrated saving in landlord’s rent may probably be effected.
And now the reader is asked to observe how admirably, and, as it were,
automatically, a well-organised migratory movement to land held in
common lends itself to the economic use of money, and to the making of
one coin serve many purposes. Money, it is often said, is “a drug in
the market.” Like labour itself, it seems enchanted, and thus one sees
millions in gold and silver lying idle in banks facing the very streets
where men are wandering workless and penniless. But here, on the site
of Garden City, the cry for employment on the part of those willing to
work will no more be heard in vain. Only yesterday it may have been
so, but to-day the enchanted land is awake, and is loudly calling
for its children. There is no difficulty in finding work--profitable
work--work that is really urgently, imperatively needed--the building
of a home-city, and, as men hasten to build up this and the other
towns which must inevitably follow its construction, the migration to
the towns--the old, crowded, chaotic slum-towns of the past--will be
effectually checked, and the current of population set in precisely the
opposite direction--to the new towns, bright and fair, wholesome and
beautiful.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] “Only a proportion of each in one society can have nerve enough to
grasp the banner of a new truth, and endurance enough to bear it along
rugged and untrodden ways.... To insist on a whole community being made
at once to submit to the reign of new practices and new ideas which
have just begun to commend themselves to the most advanced speculative
intelligence of the time--this, even if it were a possible process,
would do much to make life impracticable and to hurry on social
dissolution.... A new social state can never establish its ideas unless
the persons who hold them confess them openly and give them an honest
and effective adherence.”--Mr. John Morley, “On Compromise,” Chap. v.
[19] The position was so stated by Mr. Buckingham in “National Evils
and Practical Remedies,” see Chap. x.
[20] A similar line of argument to this is very fully elaborated in a
most able work entitled “The Physiology of Industry,” by Mummery and
Hobson (MacMillan & Co.).
CHAPTER IX.
SOME DIFFICULTIES CONSIDERED.
Having now, in a concrete rather than an abstract form, stated the
objects and purposes of our scheme, it may be well to deal, though
somewhat briefly, with an objection which may arise in the thought of
the reader: “Your scheme may be very attractive, but it is but one of
a great number, many of which have been tried and have met with but
little success. How do you distinguish it from those? How, in the face
of such a record of failure, do you expect to secure that large measure
of public support which is necessary ere such a scheme can be put into
operation?”
The question is a very natural one, and demands an answer. My reply
is: It is quite true that the pathway of experiment towards a better
state of society is strewn with failures. But so is the pathway of
experiment to any result that is worth achieving. Success is, for the
most part, built on failure. As Mrs. Humphrey Ward remarks in “Robert
Elsmere”: “All great changes are preceded by numbers of sporadic, and,
as the bystander thinks, intermittent efforts.” A successful invention
or discovery is usually a slow growth, to which new elements are
added, and from which old elements are removed, first in the thought
of the inventor, and subsequently in an outward form, until at last
precisely the right elements and no others are brought together.
Indeed, it may be truly said that if you find a series of experiments
continued through many years by various workers, there will eventually
be produced the result for which so many have been industriously
searching. Long-continued effort, in spite of failure and defeat, is
the fore-runner of complete success. He who wishes to achieve success
may turn past defeat into future victory by observing one condition. He
must profit by past experiences, and aim at retaining all the strong
points without the weaknesses of former efforts.
To deal at all exhaustively here with the history of social experiments
would be beyond the scope of this book; but a few leading features may
be noticed with a view of meeting the objection with which this chapter
opens.
Probably the chief cause of failure in former social experiments has
been a misconception of the principal element in the problem--human
nature itself. The degree of strain which average human nature will
bear in an altruistic direction has not been duly considered by
those who have essayed the task of suggesting new forms of social
organisation. A kindred mistake has arisen from regarding one
principle of action to the exclusion of others. Take Communism, for
instance. Communism is a most excellent principle, and all of us are
Communists in some degree, even those who would shudder at being told
so. For we all believe in communistic roads, communistic parks, and
communistic libraries. But though Communism is an excellent principle,
Individualism is no less excellent. A great orchestra which enraptures
us with its delightful music is composed of men and women who are
accustomed not only to play together, but to practise separately,
and to delight themselves and their friends by their own, it may be
comparatively feeble, efforts. Nay, more: isolated and individual
thought and action are as essential, if the best results of combination
are to be secured, as combination and co-operation are essential, if
the best results of isolated effort are to be gained. It is by isolated
thought that new combinations are worked out; it is through the
lessons learned in associated effort that the best individual work is
accomplished; and that society will prove the most healthy and vigorous
where the freest and fullest opportunities are afforded alike for
individual and for combined effort.
Now, do not the whole series of communistic experiments owe their
failure largely to this--that they have not recognised this duality of
principle, but have carried one principle, excellent enough in itself,
altogether too far? They have assumed that because common property is
good, all property should be common; that because associated effort can
produce marvels, individual effort is to be regarded as dangerous, or
at least futile, some extremists even seeking to abolish altogether the
idea of the family or home. No reader will confuse the experiment here
advocated with any experiment in absolute Communism.
Nor is the scheme to be regarded as a socialistic experiment.
Socialists, who may be regarded as Communists of a more moderate
type, advocate common property in land and in all the instruments of
production, distribution, and exchange--railways, machinery, factories,
docks, banks, and the like; but they would preserve the principle of
private ownership in all such things as have passed in the form of
wages to the servants of the community, with the proviso, however,
that these wages shall not be employed in organised creative effort,
involving the employment of more than one person; for all forms of
employment with a view to remuneration should, as the Socialists
contend, be under the direction of some recognised department of the
Government, which is to claim a rigid monopoly. But it is very doubtful
whether this principle of the Socialist, in which there is a certain
measure of recognition of the individual side of man’s nature as well
as of his social side, represents a basis on which an experiment
can fairly proceed with the hope of permanent success. Two chief
difficulties appear to present themselves. First, the self-seeking
side of man--his too frequent desire to produce, with a view to
possessing for his own personal use and enjoyment; and, secondly, his
love of independence and of initiative, his personal ambition, and his
consequent unwillingness to put himself under the guidance of others
for the whole of his working day, with little opportunity of striking
out some independent line of action, or of taking a leading part in the
creation of new forms of enterprise.
Now, even if we pass over the first difficulty--that of human
self-seeking--even if we assume that we have a body of men and women
who have realised the truth that concerted social effort will achieve
far better results in enjoyable commodities for each member of the
community than can possibly be achieved by ordinary competitive
methods--each struggling for himself--we have still the other
difficulty, arising out of the higher and not the lower nature of
the men and women who are to be organised--their love of independence
and of initiative. Men love combined effort, but they love individual
effort, too, and they will not be content with such few opportunities
for personal effort as they would be allowed to make in a rigid
socialistic community. Men do not object to being organised under
competent leadership, but some also want to be leaders, and to have a
share in the work of organising; they like to lead as well as to be
led. Besides, one can easily imagine men filled with a desire to serve
the community in some way which the community as a whole did not at
the moment appreciate the advantage of, and who would be precluded by
the very constitution of the socialistic state from carrying their
proposals into effect.
Now, it is at this very point that a most interesting experiment at
Topolobampo has broken down. The experiment, which was initiated by Mr.
A. K. Owen, an American civil engineer, was started on a considerable
tract of land obtained under concession from the Mexican Government.
One principle adopted by Mr. Owen was that “all employment must be
through the Department for the Diversity of Home Industries. One
member cannot directly employ another member, and only members can be
employed through the settlement.”[21] In other words, if A. and B. were
dissatisfied with the management, whether owing to doubts as to its
competency or honesty, they could not arrange to work with each other,
even though their sole desire might be the common good; but they must
leave the settlement. And this is what they accordingly did in very
considerable numbers.
It is at this point that a great distinction between the Topolobampo
experiment and the scheme advocated in this work is evident. In
Topolobampo the organisation claimed a monopoly of all productive
work, and each member must work under the direction of those who
controlled that monopoly, or must leave the organisation. In Garden
City no such monopoly is claimed, and any dissatisfaction with the
public administration of the affairs of the town would no more
necessarily lead to a widespread split in Garden City than in any other
municipality. At the outset, at least, by far the larger part of the
work done will be by individuals or combinations of individuals quite
other than municipal servants, just as in any other municipality, at
present existing, the sphere of municipal work is still very small as
compared with the work performed by other groups.
Other sources of failure in some social experiments are the
considerable expense incurred by migrants before they reach the scene
of their future labours, the great distance from any large market,
and the difficulty of previously obtaining any real knowledge of the
conditions of life and labour there prevailing. The one advantage
gained--cheap land--seems to be altogether insufficient to compensate
for these and other disadvantages.
We now come to what is perhaps the chief difference between the
scheme advocated in this work and most other schemes of a like nature
which have been hitherto advocated or put into actual practice. That
difference is this: While others have sought to weld into one large
organisation individuals who have not yet been combined into smaller
groups, or who must leave those smaller groups on their joining the
larger organisation, my proposal appeals not only to individuals but
to co-operators, manufacturers, philanthropic societies, and others
experienced in organisation, and with organisations under their
control, to come and place themselves under conditions involving no
new restraints but rather securing wider freedom. And, further, a
striking feature of the present scheme is that the very considerable
number of persons already engaged on the estate will not be displaced
(except those on the town site, and these gradually), but these will
themselves form a valuable nucleus, paying in rents, from the very
inception of the enterprise, a sum which will go very far towards the
interest on the money with which the estate is purchased--rents which
they will be more willing to pay to a landlord who will treat them
with perfect equity, and who will bring to their doors consumers for
their produce. The work of organisation is, therefore, in a very large
measure accomplished. The army is now in existence; it has but to be
mobilised; it is with no undisciplined mob that we have to deal. Or the
comparison between this experiment and those which have preceded it is
like that between two machines--one of which has to be created out of
various ores which have first to be gathered together and then cast
into various shapes, while for the other all the parts are ready to
hand and have but to be fitted together.
FOOTNOTE:
[21] “Integral Co-operation at Work,” A. K. Owen (U.S. Book Co., 150
Worth St., N.Y.).
CHAPTER X.
A UNIQUE COMBINATION OF PROPOSALS.
In the last chapter, I pointed out the great differences of principle
between the project placed before the reader of this work and some
of those schemes of social reform which, having been put to the test
of experience, have ended in disaster, and I urged that there were
features of the proposed experiment which so completely distinguished
it from those unsuccessful schemes that they could not be fairly
regarded as any indication of the results which would probably follow
from launching this experiment.
It is my present purpose to show that though the scheme taken as a
whole is a new one, and is, perhaps, entitled to some consideration on
that account, its chief claim upon the attention of the public lies in
the fact that it combines the important features of several schemes
which have been advocated at various times, and so combines them as to
secure the best results of each, without the dangers and difficulties
which sometimes, even in the minds of their authors, were clearly and
distinctly seen.
Shortly stated, my scheme is a combination of three distinct projects
which have, I think, never been united before. These are--(1) The
proposals for an organised migratory movement of population of
Wakefield and of Professor Marshall; (2) the system of land tenure
first proposed by Thos. Spence and afterwards (though with an important
modification) by Mr. Herbert Spencer; and (3) the model city of Jas. S.
Buckingham.[22]
Let us take these proposals in the order named. Wakefield, in his “Art
of Colonisation” (London: J. W. Parker, 1849), urged that colonies
when formed--he was not thinking of home colonies--should be based on
scientific principles. He said (page 109): “We send out colonies of
the limbs, without the belly and the head, of needy persons, many of
them mere paupers, or even criminals; colonies made up of _a single
class of persons_ in the community, and that the most helpless and
the most unfit to perpetuate our national character, and to become
the fathers of a race whose habits of thinking and feeling shall
correspond to those which, in the meantime, we are cherishing at
home. The ancients, on the contrary, sent out _a representation of
the parent State--colonists from all ranks_. We stock the farm with
creeping and climbing plants, without any trees of firmer growth for
them to entwine round. A hop-ground without poles, the plants matted
confusedly together, and scrambling on the ground in tangled heaps,
with here and there some clinging to rank thistles and hemlock, would
be an apt emblem of a modern colony. The ancients began by nominating
to the honourable office of captain or leader of the colony one of
the chief men, if not the chief man of the State, like the queen bee
leading the workers. Monarchies provided a prince of the royal blood;
an aristocracy its choicest nobleman; a democracy its most influential
citizen. These naturally carried along with them some of their own
station in life--their companions and friends; some of their immediate
dependents also--of those between themselves and the lowest class;
and were encouraged in various ways to do so. The lowest class again
followed with alacrity, because they found themselves moving _with_ and
not _away from_ the state of society in which they had been living. It
was the same social and political union under which they had been born
and bred; and to prevent any contrary impression being made, the utmost
solemnity was observed in transferring the rites of pagan superstition.
They carried with them their gods, their festivals, their games--all,
in short, that held together and kept entire the fabric of society as
it existed in the parent state. Nothing was left behind that could
be moved of all that the heart or eye of an exile misses. The new
colony was made to appear as if time or chance had reduced the whole
community to smaller dimensions, leaving it still essentially the same
home and country to its surviving members. It consisted of a general
contribution of members from all classes, and so became, on its first
settlement, a mature state, with all the component parts of that which
sent it forth. It was a transfer of population, therefore, which gave
rise to no sense of degradation, as if the colonist were thrust out
from a higher to a lower description of community.”
J. S. Mill, in his “Elements of Political Economy,” Book I., Chap.
viii., § 3, says of this work: “Wakefield’s theory of colonisation
has excited much attention, and is doubtless destined to excite
much more.... His system consists of arrangements for securing that
each colony shall have from the first a town population bearing due
proportion to the agricultural, and that the cultivators of the soil
shall not be so widely scattered as to be deprived by distance of the
benefit of that town population as a market for their produce.”
Professor Marshall’s proposals for an organised migratory movement of
population from London have been already noticed, but the following
passage from the article already referred to may be quoted:--
“There might be great variety of method, but the general plan would
probably be for a committee, whether formed specially for the purpose
or not, to interest themselves in the formation of a colony in some
place well beyond the range of London smoke. After seeing their way
to building or buying suitable cottages there, they would enter
into communication with some of the employers of low-waged labour.
They would select, at first, industries that used very little fixed
capital; and, as we have seen, it fortunately happens that most of the
industries which it is important to move are of this kind. They would
find an employer--and there must be many such--who really cares for the
misery of his employees. Acting with him and by his advice, they would
make themselves the friends of people employed or fit to be employed
in his trade; they would show them the advantages of moving, and help
them to move, both with counsel and money. They would organise the
sending of work backwards and forwards, the employer perhaps opening
an agency in the colony. But after being once started it ought to be
self-supporting, for the cost of carriage, even if the employees went
in sometimes to get instructions, would be less than the saving made
in rent--at all events, if allowance be made for the value of the
garden produce. And more than as much gain would probably be saved by
removing the temptation to drink which is caused by the sadness of
London. They would meet with much passive resistance at first. The
unknown has terrors to all, but especially to those who have lost their
natural spring. Those who have lived always in the obscurity of a
London court might shrink away from the free light; poor as are their
acquaintanceships at home, they might fear to go where they knew no
one. But, with gentle insistence, the committee would urge their way,
trying to get those who knew one another to move together, by warm,
patient sympathy, taking off the chill of the first change. It is only
the first step that costs; every succeeding step would be easier. The
work of several firms, not always in the same business, might, in some
cases, be sent together. Gradually a prosperous industrial district
would grow up, and then, mere self-interest would induce employers to
bring down their main workshops, and even to start factories in the
colony. Ultimately all would gain, but most the landowners and the
railroads connected with the colony.”
What could more strongly point than the last sentence of that quotation
from Professor Marshall’s proposal to the necessity of first _buying_
the land, so that the most admirable project of Thomas Spence can be
put into practice, and thus prevent the terrible rise in rent which
Professor Marshall forsees? Spence’s proposal, put forward more than a
hundred years ago, at once suggests how to secure the desired end. Here
it is:--
“Then you may behold the rent which the people have paid into the
parish treasuries employed by each parish in paying the Government its
share of the sum which the Parliament or National Congress at any time
grants; in maintaining and relieving its own poor and people out of
work; in paying the necessary officers their salaries; in building,
repairing, and adorning its houses, bridges, and other structures; in
making and maintaining convenient and delightful streets, highways, and
passages, both for foot and carriages; in making and maintaining canals
and other conveniences for trade and navigation; in planting and taking
in waste grounds; in premiums for the encouragement of agriculture or
anything else thought worthy of encouragement; and, in a word, in doing
whatever the people think proper, and not, as formerly, to support and
spread luxury, pride, and all manner of vice.... There are no tolls
or taxes of any kind paid among them by native or foreigner but the
aforesaid rent, which every person pays to the parish, according to
the quantity, quality, and conveniences of the land ... he occupies
in it. The government, poor, roads, etc., ... are all maintained with
the rent, on which account all wares, manufactures, allowable trade
employments or actions are entirely duty-free.”--From a lecture read
at the Philosophical Society in Newcastle, on November 8th, 1775, for
printing which the Society did the author the honour to expel him.
It will be observed that the only difference between this proposal and
the proposals as to land reform put forward in this book, is not a
difference of system, but a difference (and a very important one) as
to the _method_ of its inauguration. Spence appears to have thought
that the people would, by a fiat, dispossess the existing owners and
establish the system at once and universally throughout the country;
while, in this work, it is proposed to purchase the necessary land with
which to establish the system on a small scale, and to trust to the
inherent advantages of the system leading to its gradual adoption.
Writing some seventy years after Spence had put forward his proposal,
Mr. Herbert Spencer (having first laid down the grand principle that
all men are equally entitled to the use of the earth, as a corollary
of the law of equal liberty generally), in discussing this subject,
observes, with his usual force and clearness:--
“But to what does this doctrine that men are equally entitled to the
use of the earth, lead? Must we return to the times of unenclosed
wilds, and subsist on roots, berries, and game? Or are we to be left to
the management of Messrs. Fourrier, Owen, Louis Blanc & Co.? Neither.
Such a doctrine is consistent with the highest civilisation, may be
carried out without involving a community of goods, and need cause no
very serious revolution in existing arrangements. The change required
would be simply a change of landlords. Separate ownership would merge
in the joint-stock ownership of the public. Instead of being in the
possession of individuals, the country would be held by the great
corporate body--society. Instead of leasing his acres from an isolated
proprietor, the farmer would lease them from the nation. Instead of
paying his rent to the agent of Sir John and His Grace, he would pay it
to an agent or deputy agent of the community. Stewards would be public
officials instead of private ones, and tenancy the only land tenure. A
state of things so ordered would be in perfect harmony with the moral
law. Under it all men would be equally landlords; all men would be
alike free to become tenants. A., B., C. and the rest might compete for
a vacant farm as now, and one of them might take that farm without in
any way violating the principles of pure equity. All would be equally
free to bid; all would be equally free to refrain. And when the farm
had been let to A., B., or C., all parties would have done that which
they willed, the one in choosing to pay a given sum to his fellow-men
for the use of certain lands--the others in refusing to pay the sum.
Clearly, therefore, on such a system the earth might be enclosed,
occupied, and cultivated in entire subordination to the law of equal
freedom.”--“Social Statics,” Chap. ix., sec. 8.
But having thus written, Mr. Herbert Spencer at a later period, having
discovered two grave difficulties in the way of his own proposal,
unreservedly withdrew it. The first of these difficulties was the evils
which he considered as inseparable from State ownership (see “Justice,”
published in 1891, appendix B., p. 290); the second, the impossibility,
as Mr. Spencer regarded it, of acquiring the land on terms which
would be at once equitable to existing owners and remunerative to the
community.
But if the reader examines the scheme of Spence, which preceded the
now-withdrawn proposals of Mr. Herbert Spencer, he will see that
Spence’s scheme was entirely freed (as is the one put forward in this
little book), from the objections which might probably attend control
by the State.[23] The rents were, under Spence’s proposals, as in
my own, not to be levied by a _Central Government_ far removed from
contact with the people, but by the very parish (in my scheme the
municipality) in which the people reside. As to the other difficulty
which presented itself to Mr. Herbert Spencer’s mind--that of acquiring
the land on equitable terms, and of yet making it remunerative to the
purchasers--a difficulty which Mr. Herbert Spencer, seeing no way out
of, rashly concluded to be insuperable--that difficulty is entirely
removed by my proposal of buying agricultural or sparsely-settled land,
letting it in the manner advocated by Spence, and then bringing about
the scientific migratory movement advocated by Wakefield and (though in
a somewhat less daring fashion) by Professor Marshall.
Surely a project, which thus brings what Mr. Herbert Spencer still
terms “the dictum of absolute ethics”--that all men are equally
entitled to the use of the earth--into the field of practical life, and
makes it a thing immediately realisable by those who believe in it,
must be one of the greatest public importance. When a great philosopher
in effect says, we cannot conform our life to the highest moral
principles because men have laid an immoral foundation for us in the
past, but “if, while possessing those ethical sentiments which social
discipline has now produced, men stood in possession of a territory
not yet individually portioned out, they would no more hesitate to
assert equality of their claims to the land than they would hesitate to
assert equality of their claims to light and air”[24]--one cannot help
wishing--so inharmonious does life seem--that the opportunity presented
itself of migrating to a new planet where the “ethical sentiments which
social discipline has now produced” might be indulged in. But a new
planet, or even “a territory not yet individually portioned out,” is by
no means necessary if we are but in real earnest; for it has been shown
that an organised, migratory movement from over-developed, high-priced
land to comparatively raw and unoccupied land, will enable all who
desire it to live this life of equal freedom and opportunity; and a
sense of the possibility of a life on earth at once orderly and free
dawns upon the heart and mind.
The third proposal which I have combined with those of Spence and Mr.
Herbert Spencer, of Wakefield and Professor Marshall, embraces one
essential feature of a scheme of James S. Buckingham,[25] though I
have purposely omitted some of the essential features of that scheme.
Mr. Buckingham says (p. 25): “My thoughts were thus directed to the
great defects of all existing towns, and the desirability of forming
at least one model town which should avoid the most prominent of
these defects, and substitute advantages not yet possessed by any.”
In his work he exhibits a ground plan and a sketch of a town of about
1,000 acres, containing a population of 25,000, and surrounded by a
large agricultural estate. Buckingham, like Wakefield, saw the great
advantages to be derived by combining an agricultural community
with an industrial, and urged: “Wherever practicable, the labours
of agriculture and manufacture to be so mingled and the variety of
fabrics and materials to be wrought upon also so assorted as to make
short periods of labour on each alternately with others produce that
satisfaction and freedom from tedium and weariness which an unbroken
round of monotonous occupation so frequently occasions, and because
also variety of employment develops the mental as well as physical
faculties much more perfectly than any single occupation.”
But though on these points the scheme is strikingly like my own, it is
also a very different one. Buckingham having traced, as he thought,
the evils of society to their source in competition, intemperance,
and war, proposed to annihilate competition by forming a system of
complete or integral co-operation; to remove intemperance by the
total exclusion of intoxicants; to put an end to war by the absolute
prohibition of gunpowder. He proposed to form a large company, with a
capital of £4,000,000; to buy a large estate, and to erect churches,
schools, factories, warehouses, dining-halls, dwelling-houses, at
rents varying from £30 a year to £300 a year; and to carry on all
productive operations, whether agricultural or industrial, as one large
undertaking covering the whole field and permitting no rivals.
Now it will be seen that though in outward form Buckingham’s scheme
and my own present the same feature of a model town set in a large
agricultural estate, so that industrial and farming pursuits might be
carried on in a healthy, natural way, yet the inner life of the two
communities would be entirely different--the inhabitants of Garden City
enjoying the fullest rights of free association, and exhibiting the
most varied forms of individual and co-operative work and endeavour,
the members of Buckingham’s city being held together by the bonds of a
rigid cast-iron organisation, from which there could be no escape but
by leaving the association, or breaking it up into various sections.
To sum up this chapter. My proposal is that there should be an earnest
attempt made to organise a migratory movement of population from
our overcrowded centres to sparsely-settled rural districts; that
the mind of the public should not be confused, or the efforts of
organisers wasted in a premature attempt to accomplish this work on a
national scale, but that great thought and attention shall be first
concentrated on a single movement yet one sufficiently large to be at
once attractive and resourceful; that the migrants shall be guaranteed
(by the making of suitable arrangements before the movement commences)
that the whole increase in land-values due to their migration shall
be secured to them; that this be done by creating an organisation,
which, while permitting its members to do those things which are good
in their own eyes (provided they infringe not the rights of others)
shall receive all “rate-rents” and expend them in those public works
which the migratory movement renders necessary or expedient--thus
eliminating rates, or, at least, greatly reducing the necessity for
any compulsory levy; and that the golden opportunity afforded by the
fact that the land to be settled upon has but few buildings or works
upon it, shall be availed of in the fullest manner, by so laying out
a Garden City that, as it grows, the free gifts of Nature--fresh air,
sunlight, breathing room and playing room--shall be still retained
in all needed abundance, and by so employing the resources of modern
science that Art may supplement Nature, and life may become an abiding
joy and delight. And it is important to notice that this proposal, so
imperfectly put forward, is no scheme hatched in a restless night in
the fevered brain of an enthusiast, but is one having its origin in
the thoughtful study of many minds, and the patient effort of many
earnest souls, each bringing some element of value, till, the time and
the opportunity having come, the smallest skill avails to weld those
elements into an effective combination.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] I may, perhaps, state as showing how in the search for truth men’s
minds run in the same channels, and as, possibly, some additional
argument for the soundness of the proposals thus combined, that, till
I had got far on with my project, I had not seen either the proposals
of Professor Marshall or of Wakefield (beyond a very short reference to
the latter in J. S. Mill’s “Elements of Political Economy”), nor had I
seen the work of Buckingham, which, published nearly fifty years ago,
seems to have attracted but little attention.
[23] Though Mr. Herbert Spencer, as if to rebuke his own theory that
State control is inherently bad, says, “Political speculation which
sets out with the assumption that the State has in all cases the same
nature must end in profoundly erroneous conclusions.”
[24] “Justice,” Chap. xi., p. 85.
[25] Buckingham’s scheme is set forth in a work entitled “National
Evils and Practical Remedies,” published by Peter Jackson, St. Martins
le Grand, about 1849.
CHAPTER XI.
THE PATH FOLLOWED UP.
“How can a man learn to know himself? By reflection never--only
by action. In the measure that thou seekest to do thy duty shalt
thou know what is in thee. But what is thy duty? The demand of the
hour.”--_Goethe._
The reader is now asked to kindly assume, for the sake of argument,
that our Garden City experiment has been fairly launched, and is a
decided success, and to consider briefly some of the more important
effects which such an object-lesson, by the light which it will throw
upon the pathway of reform, must inevitably produce upon society, and
then we will endeavour to trace some of the broader features of the
after-development.
Among the greatest needs of man and of society to-day, as at all times,
are these: A worthy aim and opportunity to realise it; work and ends
worth working for. All that a man is, and all that he may become, is
summed up in his aspirations, and this is no less true of society than
of the individual. The end I venture to now set before the people of
this country and of other countries is no less “noble and adequate”
than this, that they should forthwith gird themselves to the task of
building up clusters of beautiful home-towns, each zoned by gardens,
for those who now dwell in crowded, slum-infested cities. We have
already seen how _one_ such town may be built; let us now see how the
true path of reform, once discovered, will, if resolutely followed,
lead society on to a far higher destiny than it has ever yet ventured
to hope for, though such a future has often been foretold by daring
spirits.
There have in the past been inventions and discoveries on the making
of which society has suddenly leaped upward to a new and higher plane
of existence. The utilisation of steam--a force long recognised, but
which proved somewhat difficult to harness to the task it was fitted
to accomplish--effected mighty changes; but the discovery of a method
for giving effect to a far greater force than the force of steam--to
the long pent-up desire for a better and nobler social life here on
earth--will work changes even more remarkable.
What clearly marked economic truth is brought into view by the
successful issue of such an experiment as we have been advocating?
This:--That there is a broad path open, through a creation of new
wealth forms, to a new industrial system in which the productive forces
of society and of nature may be used with far greater effectiveness
than at present, and in which the distribution of the wealth forms
so created will take place on a far juster and more equitable basis.
Society may have more to divide among its members, and at the same time
the greater dividend may be divided in a juster manner.
Speaking broadly, industrial reformers may be divided into two camps.
The first camp includes those who urge the primary importance of
paying close and constant attention to the necessity of _increased
production_: the second includes those whose special aim is directed to
_more just and equitable division_. The former are constantly saying,
in effect, “Increase the national dividend, and all will be well”; the
latter, “The national dividend is fairly sufficient were it but divided
equitably.” The former are for the most part of the individualistic,
the latter of the socialistic type.
As an instance of the former point of view, I may cite the words of
Mr. A. J. Balfour, who, at a Conference of the National Union of
Conservative Associations held at Sunderland on 14th November, 1894,
said: “Those who represented society as if it consisted of two sections
disputing over their share of the general produce were utterly mistaken
as to the real bearing of the great social problem. We had to consider
that the produce of the country was not a fixed quantity, of which, if
the employers got more, the employed would get less, or if the employed
got more, the employers would get less. The real question for the
working-classes of this country was not primarily or fundamentally a
question of division: it was a question of production.” As an instance
of the second point of view, take the following: “The absurdity of
the notion of raising the poor without, to a corresponding degree,
depressing the rich will be obvious.”--“Principles of Socialism made
plain,” by Frank Fairman (William Reeves, 83 Charing Cross Road, W.C.),
page 33.
I have already shown, and I hope to make this contention yet more
clear, that there is a path along which sooner or later, both the
Individualist and the Socialist must inevitably travel; for I have made
it abundantly clear that on a small scale society may readily become
more individualistic than now--if by Individualism is meant a society
in which there is fuller and freer opportunity for its members to do
and to produce what they will, and to form free associations, of
the most varied kinds; while it may also become more socialistic--if
by Socialism is meant a condition of life in which the well-being of
the community is safe-guarded, and in which the collective spirit is
manifested by a wide extension of the area of municipal effort. To
achieve these desirable ends, I have taken a leaf out of the books
of each type of reformer and bound them together by a thread of
practicability. Not content with _urging_ the necessity of increased
production, I have shown _how it can be achieved_; while the other and
equally important end of more equitable distribution is, as I have
shown, easily possible, and in a manner which need cause no ill-will,
strife, or bitterness; is constitutional; requires no revolutionary
legislation; and involves no direct attack upon vested interests.
Thus may the desires of the two sections of reformers to whom I have
referred be attained. I have, in short, followed out Lord Rosebery’s
suggestion, and “borrowed from Socialism its large conception of
common effort, and its vigorous conception of municipal life, and from
Individualism the preservation of self-respect and self-reliance,” and,
by a concrete illustration, I have, I think, disproved the cardinal
contention of Mr. Benjamin Kidd in his famous book, “Social Evolution,”
that “the interests of the social organism and of the individuals
comprising it at any particular time are actually antagonistic;
they can never be reconciled; they are inherently and essentially
irreconcilable” (page 85).
Most socialistic writers appear to me to exhibit too keen a desire
to appropriate old forms of wealth, either by purchasing out or by
taxing out the owners, and they seem to have little conception that the
truer method is to create new forms and to create them under juster
conditions. But this latter conception should inevitably follow an
adequate realisation of the ephemeral nature of most forms of wealth;
and there is no truth more fully recognised by economic writers than
that nearly all forms of material wealth, except, indeed, the planet
on which we live and the elements of nature, are extremely fugitive
and prone to decay. Thus for instance, J. S. Mill, in “Elements of
Political Economy,” Book 1, Chapter v., says: “The greater part in
value of the wealth now existing in England has been produced by human
hands within the last twelve months. A very small proportion indeed of
that large aggregate was in existence ten years ago;--of the present
productive capital of the country, scarcely any part except farm-houses
and manufactories and a few ships and machines; and even these would
not in most cases have survived so long if fresh labour had not been
employed within that period in putting them into repair. The land
subsists, and the land is almost the only thing that subsists.” The
leaders of the great socialistic movement, of course, know all this
perfectly well; yet this quite elementary truth seems to fade from
their minds when they are discussing methods of reform, and they appear
to be as anxious to seize upon present forms of wealth as if they
regarded them as of a really lasting and permanent nature.
But this inconsistency of socialistic writers is all the more striking
when one remembers that these writers are the very ones who insist most
strongly upon the view that a very large part of the wealth-forms now
in existence are not really _wealth_ at all--that they are “filth,” and
that any form of society which represents even a step towards their
ideal must involve the sweeping away of such forms and the creation
of new forms in their place. With a degree of inconsistency that is
positively startling, they exhibit an insatiable desire to become
possessed of these forms of wealth which are not only rapidly decaying,
but are in their opinion absolutely useless or injurious.
Thus Mr Hyndman, at a lecture delivered at the Democratic Club, 29th
March, 1893, said:--“It was desirable that they should map out and
formulate socialistic ideas which they should desire to see brought
about when the so-called Individualism of the present day has broken
down, as it inevitably would do. One of the first things that they as
Socialists would have to do would be to depopulate the vast centres of
their over-crowded cities. Their large towns had no longer any large
agricultural population from which to recruit their ranks, and through
bad and insufficient food, vitiated atmosphere, and other insanitary
conditions, the physique of the masses of the cities was rapidly
deteriorating, both materially and physically.” Precisely; but does not
Mr. Hyndman see that in striving to become possessed of present wealth
forms, he is laying siege to the wrong fortress? If the population
of London, or a large part of the population of London, is to be
transplanted elsewhere, when some future event has happened, would it
not be well to see if we cannot induce large numbers of these people to
transplant themselves _now_, when the problem of London administration
and of London reform would, as we shall shortly discover, present
itself in a somewhat startling fashion?
A similar inconsistency is to be noticed in a little book which has
had an enormous and well-deserved sale, “Merrie England” (Clarion
Offices, Fleet Street). The author, “Nunquam,” remarks at the outset:
“The problem we have to consider is:--Given a country and a people,
find how the people may make the best of the country and themselves.”
He then proceeds to vigorously condemn our cities, with their houses
ugly and mean, their narrow streets, their want of gardens, and
emphasises the advantages of out-door occupations. He condemns the
factory system, and says: “I would set men to grow wheat and fruit,
and rear cattle and poultry for our own use. Then I would develop the
fisheries, and construct great fish-breeding lakes and harbours. Then
I would restrict our mines, furnaces, chemical works, and factories
to the number actually needed for the supply of our own people.
Then I would stop the smoke nuisance by developing water-power and
electricity. _In order to achieve these ends, I would make all the
lands, mills, mines, factories, works, shops, ships, and railways
the property of the people._” That is (the italics are my own), the
people are to struggle hard to become possessed of factories, mills,
works, and shops, at least half of which must be closed if Nunquam’s
desires are attained; of ships which will become useless if our foreign
trade is to be abandoned, (_see_ “Merrie England,” Chap. iv.); and
of railways, which, with an entire redistribution of population such
as Nunquam desires, must for the most part become derelict. And how
long is this useless struggle to last? Would it not--I ask Nunquam to
consider this point carefully--be better to study a smaller problem
first, and, to paraphrase his words, “Given, say, 6,000 acres of land,
let us endeavour to make the best use of it”? For then, having dealt
with this, we shall have educated ourselves to deal with a larger area.
Let me state again in other terms this fugitiveness of wealth forms,
and then suggest the conclusion to which that consideration should
lead us. So marked are the changes which society exhibits--especially
a society in a progressive state--that the outward and visible forms
which our civilisation presents to-day, its public and private
buildings, its means of communication, the appliances with which
it works, its machinery, its docks, its artificial harbours, its
instruments of war and its instruments of peace, have most of them
undergone a complete change, and many of them several complete changes,
within the last sixty years. I suppose not one person in twenty in
this country is living in a house which is sixty years old; not one
sailor in a thousand is sailing a ship, not one artisan or labourer in
a hundred is engaged in a workshop or handling tools or driving a cart
which was in existence sixty years ago. It is now sixty years since
the first railway was constructed from Birmingham to London, and our
Railway Companies possess one thousand millions of invested capital,
while our systems of water supply, of gas, of electric lighting, and of
sewerage are, for the most part, of recent date. Those material relics
of the past which were created more than sixty years ago, though some
of them are of infinite value as mementos, examples, and heirlooms,
are, for the most part, certainly not of a kind which we need wrangle
over or fight about. The best of them are our universities, schools,
churches, and cathedrals, and these should certainly teach us a
different lesson.
But can any reasonable person, who reflects for a moment on the
recent unexampled rate of progress and invention, doubt that the next
sixty years will reveal changes fully as remarkable? Can any person
suppose that these mushroom forms, which have sprung up as it were
in a night, have any real permanence? Even apart from the solution
of the labour problem, and the finding of work for the thousands of
idle hands which are eager for it--a solution, the correctness of
which I claim to have demonstrated--what possibilities are opened up
by the bare contemplation of the discovery of new motive powers, new
means of locomotion, perhaps, through the air, new methods of water
supply, or a new distribution of population, which must of itself
render many material forms altogether useless and effete! Why, then,
should we squabble and wrangle about what man _has_ produced? Why
not rather seek to learn what man _can_ produce; when, aiming to do
that, we may perhaps discover a grand opportunity for producing not
only better forms of wealth, but how to produce them under far juster
conditions? To quote the author of “Merrie England”: “We should first
of all ascertain what things are desirable for our health and happiness
of body and mind, and then organise our people with the object of
producing those things in the best and easiest way.”
Wealth forms, then, in their very nature are _fugitive_, and they are
besides liable to constant displacement by the better forms which in an
advancing state of society are constantly arising. There is, however,
one form of material wealth which is most permanent and abiding; from
the value and utility of which our most wonderful inventions can never
detract one jot, but will serve only to make more clear, and to render
more universal. The planet on which we live has lasted for millions of
years, and the race is just emerging from its savagery. Those of us who
believe that there is a grand purpose behind nature cannot believe that
the career of this planet is likely to be speedily cut short now that
better hopes are rising in the hearts of men, and that, having learned
a few of its less obscure secrets, they are finding their way, through
much toil and pain, to a more noble use of its infinite treasures. The
earth for all practical purposes may be regarded as abiding for ever.
Now, as every form of wealth must rest on the earth as its foundation,
and must be built up out of the constituents found at or near
its surface, it follows (because foundations are ever of primary
importance) that the reformer should first consider how best the earth
may be used in the service of man. But here again our friends, the
Socialists, miss the essential point. Their professed ideal is to make
society the owner of land _and of all instruments of production_; but
they have been so anxious to carry both points of their programme that
they have been a little too slow to consider the special importance of
the land question, and have thus missed the true path of reform.
There is, however, a type of reformers who push the land question very
much to the front, though, as it appears to me, in a manner little
likely to commend their views to society. Mr. Henry George, in his
well-known work, “Progress and Poverty,” urges with much eloquence,
if not with complete accuracy of reasoning, that our land laws are
responsible for all the economic evils of society, and that as our
landlords are little better than pirates and robbers, the sooner the
State forcibly appropriates their rents the better, for when this is
accomplished the problem of poverty will, he suggests, be entirely
solved. But is not this attempt to throw the whole blame of and
punishment for the present deplorable condition of society on to a
single class of men a very great mistake? In what way are landlords as
a class less honest than the average citizen? Give the average citizen
the opportunity of becoming a landlord and of appropriating the land
values created by his tenants, and he will embrace it to-morrow. If
then, the average man is a potential landlord, to attack landlords as
individuals is very like a nation drawing up an indictment against
itself, and then making a scape-goat of a particular class.[26]
But to endeavour to change our land system is a very different matter
from attacking those individuals who represent it. But how is this
change to be effected? I reply--By the force of example, that is, by
setting up a better system, and by a little skill in the grouping of
forces and manipulation of ideas. It is quite true that the average
man is a potential landlord, and as ready to appropriate the unearned
increment as to cry out against its appropriation. But the average man
has very little chance of ever becoming a landlord and of appropriating
rent-values created by others; and he is, therefore, the better able to
consider, quite dispassionately, whether such a proceeding is really
honest, and whether it may not be possible to gradually establish a new
and more equitable system under which, without enjoying the privilege
of appropriating rent-values created by others, he may himself be
secured against expropriation of the rent-values which he is now
constantly creating or maintaining. We have demonstrated how this may
be done on a small scale; we have next to consider how the experiment
may be carried out on a much wider scale, and this we can best do in
another chapter.
FOOTNOTE:
[26] I hope it is not ungrateful in one who has derived much
inspiration from “Progress and Poverty” to write thus.
CHAPTER XII.
SOCIAL CITIES.
“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be
planted and re-planted for too long a series of generations in the
same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so
far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their
roots into unaccustomed earth.”--“The Scarlet Letter,” Nathaniel
Hawthorne.
The problem with which we have now to deal, shortly stated, is this:
How to make our Garden City experiment the stepping-stone to a
higher and better form of industrial life generally throughout the
country. Granted the success of the initial experiment, and there
must inevitably arise a widespread demand for an extension of methods
so healthy and so advantageous; and it will be well, therefore, to
consider some of the chief problems which will have to be faced in the
progress of such extension.
It will, I think, be well, in approaching this question, to consider
the analogy presented by the early progress of railway enterprise.
This will help us to see more clearly some of the broader features of
the new development which is now so closely upon us if only we show
ourselves energetic and imaginative. Railways were first made without
any statutory powers. They were constructed on a very small scale,
and, being of very short lengths, the consent of only one or at the
most a few landowners was necessary; and what private agreement and
arrangement could thus easily compass was scarcely a fit subject for
an appeal to the Legislature of the country. But when the “Rocket”
was built, and the supremacy of the locomotive was fully established,
it then became necessary, if railway enterprise was to go forward,
to obtain legislative powers. For it would have been impossible, or
at least very difficult, to make equitable arrangements with all the
landowners whose estates might lie between points many miles distant;
because one obstinate landlord might take advantage of his position
to demand an altogether exorbitant price for his land, and thus
practically stifle such an enterprise. It was necessary, therefore, to
obtain power to secure the land compulsorily at its market value, or
at a price not too extravagantly removed from such value; and, this
being done, railway enterprise went forward at so rapid a rate that in
one year no less than £132,600,000 was authorised by Parliament to be
raised for the purpose of railway construction.[27]
Now, if Parliamentary powers were necessary for the extension of
railway enterprise, such powers will certainly be also needed when the
inherent practicability of building new, well-planned towns, and of
the population moving into them from the old slum cities as naturally,
and, in proportion to the power to be exercised, almost as easily as a
family moves out of a rotten old tenement into a new and comfortable
dwelling, is once fairly recognised by the people. To build such
towns, large areas of land must be obtained. Here and there a suitable
site may be secured by arrangement with one or more landowners, but if
the movement is to be carried on in anything like a scientific fashion,
stretches of land far larger than that occupied by our first experiment
must be obtained. For, just as the first short railway, which was the
germ of railway enterprise, would convey to few minds the conception of
a net-work of railways extending over the whole country, so, perhaps,
the idea of a well-planned town such as I have described will not have
prepared the reader for the later development which must inevitably
follow--the planning and building of town clusters--each town in the
cluster being of different design from the others, and yet the whole
forming part of one large and well-thought-out plan.
Let me here introduce a very rough diagram, representing, as I
conceive, the true principle on which all towns should grow. Garden
City has, we will suppose, grown until it has reached a population
of 32,000. How shall it grow--How shall it provide for the needs of
others who will be attracted by its numerous advantages? Shall it
build on the zone of agricultural land which is around it, and thus
for ever destroy its right to be called a “Garden City”? Surely not.
This disastrous result would indeed take place if the land around
the town were, as is the land around our present cities, owned by
private individuals anxious to make a profit out of it. For then, as
the town filled up, the agricultural land would become “ripe” for
building purposes, and the beauty and healthfulness of the town would
be quickly destroyed. But the land around Garden City is, fortunately,
not in the hands of private individuals: it is in the hands of the
people: and is to be administered, not in the supposed interests of
the few, but in the real interests of the whole community. Now, there
are few objects which the people so jealously guard as their parks
and open spaces; and we may, I think, feel confident that the people
of Garden City will not for a moment permit the beauty of their city
to be destroyed by the process of growth. But it may be urged--If
this be true, will not the inhabitants of Garden City in this way be
selfishly preventing the growth of their city, and thus preclude many
from enjoying its advantages? Certainly not. There is a bright, but
overlooked, alternative. The town _will_ grow; but it will grow in
accordance with a principle which will result in this--that such growth
shall not lessen or destroy, but ever add to its social opportunities,
to its beauty, to its convenience. Consider for a moment the case of
a city in Australia which in some measure illustrates the principle
for which I am contending. The city of Adelaide, as the accompanying
sketch map shows, is surrounded by its “Park Lands.” The city is built
up. How does it grow? It grows by leaping over the “Park Lands” and
establishing North Adelaide. And this is the principle which it is
intended to follow, but improve upon, in Garden City.
[Illustration: N^o. 4.
ADELAIDE
SHOWING PARK LANDS ALL ROUND CITY, AND ITS MODE OF GROWTH.]
Our diagram may now be understood. Garden City is built up. Its
population has reached 32,000. How will it grow? It will grow by
establishing--under Parliamentary powers probably--another city some
little distance beyond its own zone of “country,” so that the new town
may have a zone of country of its own. I have said “by establishing
another city,” and, for administrative purposes there would be _two_
cities; but the inhabitants of the one could reach the other in a
very few minutes; for rapid transit would be specially provided for,
and thus the people of the two towns would in reality represent one
community.
[Illustration: N^o. 5.
DIAGRAM
ILLUSTRATING CORRECT PRINCIPLE OF A CITY’S GROWTH--OPEN COUNTRY EVER
NEAR AT HAND, AND RAPID COMMUNICATION BETWEEN OFF-SHOOTS.]
And this principle of growth--this principle of always preserving a
belt of country round our cities would be ever kept in mind till, in
course of time, we should have a cluster of cities, not of course
arranged in the precise geometrical form of my diagram, but so grouped
around a Central City that each inhabitant of the whole group, though
in one sense living in a town of small size, would be in reality living
in, and would enjoy all the advantages of, a great and most beautiful
city; and yet all the fresh delights of the country--field, hedgerow,
and wood-land--not prim parks and gardens merely--would be within
a very few minutes walk or ride. And _because the people in their
collective capacity own the land_ on which this beautiful group of
cities is built, the public buildings, the churches, the schools and
universities, the libraries, picture galleries, theatres, would be on a
scale of magnificence which no city in the world whose land is in pawn
to private individuals can afford.
I have said that rapid railway transit would be realised by those who
dwell in this beautiful city or group of cities. Reference to the
diagram will show at a glance the main features of its railway system.
There is, first, an inter-municipal railway connecting all the towns
of the outer ring--20 miles in circumference--so that to get from any
town to its most distant neighbour requires one to cover a distance of
only 10 miles, which could be accomplished in, say, 12 minutes. These
trains would not stop between the towns--means of communication for
this purpose being afforded by electric tramways which traverse the
high-roads, of which, it will be seen, there are a number--each town
being connected with every other town in the group by a direct route.
There is also a system of railways by which each town is placed in
direct communication with Central City. The distance from any town
to the heart of Central City is only 3-1/4 miles, and this could be
readily covered in 5 minutes.
Those who have had experience of the difficulty of getting from one
suburb of London to another will see in a moment what an enormous
advantage those who dwell in such a group of cities as here shown
would enjoy, because they would have a railway _system_ and not a
railway _chaos_ to serve their ends. The difficulty felt in London
is of course due to want of forethought and pre-arrangement. On this
point, I
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