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98
III.—MEANS OF TRANSIT.
We have already had under consideration two features of the
housing question which are intimately related to the further question
of transit.
The first is that central London has inevitably become a city
of business premises. In the time of the Middle Ages London
was contained within its walls. Round this mediaeval town there
was no lack of space, green fields oame up to the City boundary.
Warehouses and factories did not compete with dwelling houses
for the occupation of the land. But in course of time comparative
prosperity made it necessary to expand. The expansion has been
the same though different in degree ever since. The increasing
population lived outside the City and did business within its borders.
Eventually in the zone immediately surrounding the City, the same
changes began to occur, and at the present time are very rapidly
taking place—never more so (see pp. 57-65). The change is
inevitable, and it is probably as useless as it is undesirable to
attempt to stem it. All it needs is guidance and direction.
The second feature to which reference has been made, and which
is desirable to recall at this stage, is that in Finsbury the industrial
classes may be divided mainly into two divisions, those able to live
away from their work and those not able to do so. There is
evidence to show that the first group is a rapidly increasing one,
and that the needs of the poor to live near their work is a lessening
one. For this lessening group, however, who are immovable,
accommodation must be found within central districts. But for a
very large body of workmen one of the chief needs at the present
juncture is cheap and rapid transit to the outskirts.
Before 1883 there was no general statutory provision for workmen's
trains, but such trains were run voluntarily on some lines.
In 1883 the Cheap Trains Act was passed. The object of this Act
was to require railway companies to provide sufficient and suitable
workmen's trains at reasonable fares on all parts of their lines, the
companies so doing to receive entire remission of passenger duty on
all fares not exceeding the rate of 1d. a mile, and a reduction of the