Aug. 5. country has the combined dearth of houses and laziness of bricklayers had more advertisement than in England. It lies at the root of most labour unrest; and the only constructive scheme produced by the late Labour Government was Mr. Wheatley's vast project of housebuilding, which was fortunately smashed by the Government's going out office, inasmuch as it would have put up worse houses: at higher cost than private endeavour can produce and at a total cost to the State only inferior to the American war debt. Meanwhile despite the curmudgeonly behaviour.of the bricklayers who limit themselves to laying not many more bricks in a whole day than.a Belgian bricklayer will lay before breakfast, other people have been at work; and thus we read in a recent number of the "Spectator" of "the beginnings of one of the greatest social transformations in he lives of the people which haste ver taken place. The writer tells us that there is not a city' Jin England which has not some sort of civic housing scheme; and many places a good part of this scheme has been completed and the houses are already dwelt in Industrial England now presents curious spectacle. The great towns lie, as ever, like great dreary, hid—eous blocks' on the landscape.' The centre and main mass of them is still composed of those miles of inexpressible depressing slum and semi-lum streets, As congestion is worse than ever, the unmistakable stench of overcrowded human beings which greets one at the entrances of the courts and alleys is also worse than ever. But found the perimeter of almost all these towns there is now a narrow but extending belt of new Corporation houses. What peculiar is not the quantity but the quality of the new streets which are Weing put up. Tt is not an exaggera. tion to say that the new housing schemes represent something perfectly new, and immeasurably superior, in' English working-class housing.
The writer goes on to describe a set of Corporation houses in which he had recently been staying. They were of two kinds, a non-parlour house at 128. a week and a parlour-type which could only be obtained if the tenant would buy on the instalment plan and this would cost for the first few years 20s. a week, The houses are described as small, but sensible and well-planned,' though the writer did not consider them too well built.
But what appealed to him most was the method of lay-out, making for a world perfectly different from anything in the heart of the town.
Tt was much more the wide spacing of the houses, the well-planned layout of the whole estate, the fact that the Inrger trees had been left standing, that each house had its little garden, that the streets were wide and open. It is this element of care and forethought in, the planning of the new estates which is making them soniething new and different from anything else in England.
One of the most striking sights in the new estates is to be seen at about seven in the evening when the men are back from work. The estate is then a scene of startling activity. The gardens, which when the inhabitants arrived a few months ago were dreary little patches of uneven mud, begin to take shape and form. And in some cases a first faint sign of green has begun to show the results of the efforts of the man who has worked s0 hard. There is something almost feverish in the way these city workers, transported from their narrow streets into their new estates, are setting about creating their gardens. It is as if the instincts of a peasant origin were awakened by even this tiny plot of Tu a year these new estates will certainly be garden cities in fact if] not in name.
The only drawback in the story! is the tragic slowness with which the houses are being built. In the city described sixteen thousand families have applied for Corporation houses. "At the present rate of building they will have grandchildren before they get them.
Turn to another aspect of the housing questi While the} poor are having homes built for them, slowly it is true but surely, the rich, or the supposedly rich—for there are no wealthy people in England now except the American tourists and a few profiteers—are in danger of having to give up their houses for want of people to help run them, Writing in the "National Review" the- Earl of Arran says:—The servant class will continue to) diminish for many reasons, and the members of the employer class will have to learn to wait upon them-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.