overcrowding favours the spread of disease particularly phthisis, debility" and infectious diseases. Sir Shirley Murphy has also shown for London that the phthisis death rate for districts with under 10 per cent. of overcrowding (more than two in a room) is 1.07, whereas in districts with over 35 per cent. of overcrowding it is 2.46 per 1,000 persons. The same sort of return could be drawn up for wasting and infectious diseases. It should be remembered that such a disease as phthisis brings poverty and all sorts of social evils. in its train.

Το

4. Moral Evil of Overcrowding. In 1866 Sir John Simon, Medical Officer of the Privy Council, wrote, "Where overcrowding exists in a sanitary sense, almost always it exists even more perniciously in certain moral senses. be subject to these influences is a degradation which must become deeper and deeper, for those on whom it continues to work. To children who are born under its curse it must often be a very baptism into infamy."*

It is unnecessary to burden these pages with appalling particulars of what Mr. Sidney Webb calls "the soul-destroying conditions of the one-roomed home"; it is sufficient to understand that decent life is impossible in one small room for a family of half a dozen persons of both sexes, with only one bed. And it is but a shade better in practice in the homes of two rooms. Yet a million people in London are now living in such homes.

Nor is immorality all. Lord Shaftesbury, speaking in Parliament in 1861 said, "When you ask why so many of the working men betake themselves to the ale house or gin palace, the answer lies * Parliamentary Papers, 1866, Vol. xxxiii.

in the detestable state of their homes. I have had it from hundreds of both women and men that this cause, and this cause alone, has driven them to the use of ardent spirits. Nine-tenths of our poverty, misery and crime, are produced by habits of intoxication, and I trace these habits not altogether, but mainly to the pestilential and ruinous domiciliary condition of the great mass of the population of this metropolis, and the large towns of the country.*" Sir John Simon was of the same opinion.†

Causes and Practicable Remedies. Finally, we must mention briefly what are the causes and what the chief practicable remedies of the overcrowding which exists. The latter depends upon a right understanding of the former. The Royal Commission of 1884 classified the " unquestioned causes as follows:

I. Poverty, the relation borne by wages to rent. 2. Demolition of houses inhabited by the working classes.

3. Relation between owners and tenants. 4. Remissness of local authorities in the administration of the law.

And the Commission might well have added a fifth-supineness or absence of public opinion— for they report: "Your Majesty's Commissioners are clearly of opinion that there has been failure in administration rather than in legislation, although the latter is no doubt capable of improvement. What at the present time is specially required

*Hansard, 1861, Vol. clxi., p. 1,070.

† See also Temperance Problem and Social Reform. Rowntree and Sherwell. (Seventh Edition, 1900), pp. 555 and 738.

is some motive power, and probably there can be no stronger motive power than public opinion."* Twenty years later precisely the same conclusion was arrived at by the Physical Deterioration Committee. It would seem,' that Committee reports, that it is not so much the instrument that is in fault as the impulse behind it.” †

As a

First and foremost then among all the practicable remedies for the housing problem should be placed an awakened civic conscience, and a well informed and active public opinion. Where this exists overcrowding disappears. It is said not to be practicable or too general or too theoretical. matter of fact it is the most immediate, the most practical, and the most imperative requirement of all. For with an enlightened and vigorous public opinion three things happen: (a) the local authorities at once administer the considerable powers they possess in this matter; (b) house farmers and slum landlords are made promptly to realise that property has its duties as well as its rights; and (c) the people themselves are educated as to the terrible character of the results of overcrowding, and themselves make increased effort to avoid it. It cannot be too clearly understood that sanitary reform in England waits on public opinion, and that without an "impulse " from the people no substantial housing reform is possible.

p. 36.

Rep. of Roy. Com. Housing of Working Classes, Vol. I.,

↑ Report, Vol. I., p. 15-23.

Local authorities can increase house inspection, enforce bye-laws, register house owners and vacant property, clear slums, provide dwelling-house accommodation, assist in the advancement of means of transit, and in many other ways bring about reform, if they wish to do so.

Secondly, there is improved transit, and in this way the town worker can become a dweller in the country. It is hardly over-stating the case to say that improved transit is the chief contributor to the solution of the housing question in the centre of our great cities at the present time. Much remains to be done in making the means of transit cheap, rapid and rightly directed.

Thirdly, there is a great sphere for the landlord and house owner to improve their relations with their tenants. Nobody else can exercise this influence so effectually or so easily, and it is because it has been so grossly neglected in the past that difficulties have arisen. If owners would look upon their tenants as valuable clients rather than as persons from whom the last farthing has to be extracted and the least given in return, the advantage to both parties would be considerable. Not a little of the gross overcrowding which has occurred in the past has been due to absolutely inequitable, careless or irresponsible management on the part of the owner.

Fourthly, the law controlling the housing question needs simplifying and making more coherent and intelligible, and especially does this apply to building legislation and to bye-laws. Finally, it requires much stricter enforcement.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY OF THE PEOPLE.

"From improved and healthier homes would come to the people increased comfort and happiness, and more physical energy and greater strength to fulfil the duties of their lives, and to meet whatever demands the future may make upon them and upon our nation. The strength and even the existence of a nation depend upon the health of its masses. The stake at issue is a vital one to people and nation; and now more than ever is it necessary that the health and vigour of our race should be maintained at the highest possible attainable standard."-The Sanitary Evolution of London (1907), HENRY JEPHSON, late Chairman of Public Health Committee, London County Council.

"The people perish for lack of knowledge.”Report of the Committee on Physical Deterioration (1904), vol. i., p. 15.

WE

E now come, at last, to consider what are the general outstanding facts regarding the influences operating on the physical condition of the English people. Out of the immense complexity of such influences can it be said that there are any broad facts which will guide us as to the main sources of ill-health, of disease, and of