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35
the Editor of the "Globe" referred to the rehousing scheme of the
London County Council in a leading article, which so exactly
expresses my own feelings that I take the liberty of reproducing it
here:—
"The Prince and the Poor.
With everything which the Prince of Wales said at
Bethnal Green on the terribly pressing problem of the
housing of the poor, all men who have the good of their
fellow-creatures at heart must entirely agree. It is not
right that a working man should be obliged by the neglect
of the Legislature to live in filthy slums, and, to go one
step farther, it is not right that such slums should exist at
all. It is a subject at which Parliament has most ineffectually
tinkered from time to time, but we are afraid it must
be confessed that such improvements in the law as have
actually been made have been almost entirely nullified in
London by the foolishness of the County Council. We
only wish that the whole matter could be handed over with
plenary powers to the strong practical sense and business
capacity of the Prince of Wales himself, who certainly
would not have dealt with the Boundary Street Area in
the absurd fashion of our "Municipal Statesmen." We
say nothing against the price which they gave for the land,
though it was a long one, because the slum which existed
there was a positive plague spot, and it was worth a good
deal to London to get it made sanitary. Our complaint is
entirely directed against the unpractical extravagance
which characterised their dealings with it when it was
obtained. Instead of erecting workmen's dwellings they
proceeded to put residential flats of a sort totally unfitted
for the people who were displaced by the improvement,
and these were naturally so expensive to build that they
can only be let at a rent quite outside the means of the
ordinary working man. The Guinness Trustees, who
have had a practical aim before them, are able to let sets
of four rooms in their buildings in Bermondsey at rents of
5s. 9d. a week. The County Council, however, is obliged
to charge from 7s. 6d. to 10s. for a set of three, and this
simply and solely because they would not, when they were
building, remember who they were building for, but rioted