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48
satisfactory housing conditions will he productive of little improvement
in health, more especially if such improvement is at the
cost of more important factors, amongst which the foremost is
probably food. Living in a good dry house with plenty of fresh
air cannot greatly improve the lot of an underfed family. For
such a worker then, who is at the moment unsatisfactorily housed
what can be done ? He cannot come here, partly because of the
high rent, partly because of the transport charges. What chance
is there of eliminating the latter, that is, to rehouse in London
near the place of employment or near the original habitation of
the worker. In block dwellings up to 300 persons could be accommodated
to the acre. This figure in many instances would exceed
the density of occupation of an overcrowded insanitary area.
There are admitted objections to block dwellings, but many that
have been voiced are due not to the dwellings themselves, but to
the fact that they have been occupied by the poorer and in many
cases by the less healthy classes of the community, so that tor
example, a higher rate of tuberculosis which might be found to
occur is not necessarily the result of residence in the dwellings,
but occurs because, by reason of poverty, the tuberculous person
inhabits the premises or the undernourished inhabitants living
there contract the disease. Apart from the case of those persons
living in London who cannot afford to pay the rent here plus the
transport, there is that class of person whose occupation necessitates
his living locally. Amongst these are the dock labourers,
who in times of slackness of trade are sadly handicapped by living
some distance away—they cannot afford to pay the fare to the
docks when there is no certainty that they can get work and
wages as a result of the expenditure on the fares.