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APPENDIX IV.
BLOCK DWELLINGS.
Now that deep-level tube railways have added so largely to
the facilities for transport between suburban and central London,
the erection of more block dwellings is to be deprecated.
To build block dwellings in such a district as St. James's
would, while the necessary land is being cleared and the new
buildings are being constructed, intensify the pressure which now
exists.
The value of land in St. James's is so large that such dwellings
could not be let at rents available for the working classes
—unless the sites were paid for out of the rates.
Block dwellings in central London are a miserable expedient
for the families of working men. The children have no playground
except the London streets, or a paved courtyard; they
rarely see a green thing or the beauties of nature. The health,
the faculties, and the physical stamina of the growing children
always deteriorate. Under the obscuration of the London
atmosphere growing children develop an imperfect eye both for
colour and for form. As a matter of experience, people living
under such conditions as are seen in the block dwellings of
central London degenerate rapidly at each successive generation.
These Block dwellings do not provide the conditions for
rearing a healthy national stock.
If any charge upon the metropolis were made for this purpose,
it would be better to subsidise "cheap trains and trams" than to
encumber the central parts of London with block dwellings. A
metropolitan guarantee of 3 per cent,, for, say 10 years—under
proper conditions, upon capital invested in the construction of
approved tube railways at low fares, would induce an ample
flow of capital without the loss incurred by payments to underwriters
and company promoters.