March 30, The housing conditions of the preponderatingly Chinese popula~ tion of the International Settlement fare concisely described in the ree port which the Shanghai Municipal Council has obtained from the Housing Committee appointed to. consider that problem in com~ pliance with the resolution passed at the last annual meeting of xate~ payers. In essence the haphazard development of Shanghai, affected by conditions over which' the Settlement itself has never had complete control, is largely responsible for the overetowding and congestion which the report reveals. So, comparatively restricted a¥ea ori finally intended for the residence foreign and business occupation of a small Saeniy anliges Chins oon community—(with por) has grown" into a. large Chinese city, no longer mainly concerned "with commerce and finance, but vigorously pulsating industrial activities of all standards of living been reproduced within the Settlement in the course of marshalling labour to build up industries ranging from those the large factory type to the domestic workshop of an exceedingly primitive design and arrangement, The limitations of space. and the uncertainties of jurisdiction have prevented anything more than the most rough-and-ready measures to cope with this urban develop~ ment. The root of the trouble seems to lie in the amazing conversion of domestic premises to industrial use, over 3,000 under= takings in converted dwelling houses—workshops, handcrafts, factorles—occupying a total of 10,000] houses, the majority being rented premises. Of the conditions thus created the detailed studies in the report are eloquent. Cognate is the practice of altering two-storey dwelling-houses so a8 to extract! from them the maximum of space for occupation. About ninety per cent, of the Chinese population ive in these two storey houses, the number of which is estimated at 82,000, each having about two! "unauthorized" additions—in other words—expansion without the benneflt of the Public Works' Department's applause, The result that, with 24 persons in one house, the floor space available to each is about 30 sq. ft. Swinging cats must be a luxury sport in Shanghai,.
Optimists—bless them—will here seek to comfort Brig.. Gen. E. B. Macnaghten and his colleagues by asserting that Chinese Shanghailanders "like this sort of accommodation; it keeps them comfortable, cosy and matey-like they get nothing better in the villages... they are used to. "fugging"...". and so on and so forth. 'The' optimists had better try again, for the General unkindly forestalls' that bland Podsnapery: cannot bourged as an excuse for neglect ofthe need for better housing that such need may not be appreciated by large sections of the population whose habit areas bad fas their homes. Cause and effect vare inextricably mixed and cassonable (o assume that a betterment of material surroundings conduces to Improved babite and to the cultivation of aesthetic predations.
No doubt the optimists—always a stout-hearted band—will_ wonder: whether aesthetics and Chinese: labour are compatible, on the same
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.