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APPENDIX I.
UNFAVOURABLE CONDITIONS IN ST. JAMES'S.
The unfavourable conditions which grow up in the central
parts of old and progressive cities are strikingly exemplified in St.
James's. Changes such as those which have practically completed
themselves in the City of London are still progressing in St.
James's. In the City of London the pressure of wholesale trade
has already extruded the residential population, and the value of
sites for business purposes adjusts itself from day to day by the
action of the market. No one will ever be crazy enough now to
suggest that land in the City of London should be diverted
from its natural uses—that of an area for a great centre of
trade offices —in order to construct block dwellings for the
clerks and warehousemen who serve the city trade. But in
St. James's a vast and growing retail trade for fine goods has
encroached upon the hinterland of Bond Street, Piccadilly,
and Regent Street, while the workers ancillary to such retail
trade have never been provided with facilities for access
to the suburbs in which they ought to live. Imprisoned, under
these circumstances, by the exigencies of their work in St. James's,
and by the want of cheap, rapid, timely, and comfortable transport
to the suburbs, the cost of lodgings has become insupportable.
This condition is not one peculiar to St. James's, except in so far
as St James's has become peculiarly a great centre— the west-end
retail City for fine goods. The problem is a Metropolitan one, and
in St. James's it cannot be solved by erecting workmen's dwellings
at the cost of the rates, unless, indeed, St. James's is to be made
a reservoir into which to drain the dishoused population of the
surrounding districts, and an El Dorado for a flood of immigrants
from the country and abroad. Fashionable tailors, court dressmakers,
and other retail trades, which have centred themselves in St.
James's, employ a vast army of specialized and highly-skilled
workers. If these workers are not to crowd into the hinterland
of St. James's, they must be provided with morning and evening
transport between their work-places and their homes—at such
hours as will suit their business purposes, so rapid as not
to waste time, so cheap as not to encroach too largely upon their
wages, and so comfortable as not to fatigue them unduly. And
for their mid-day meals, adequate model restaurants must be