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152
By this Act, the Council, with the sanction of the Home Secretary
already accorded, are able to erect, purchase, or hire houses, &c.,
either within or without the Metropolis. The question will naturally
arise, therefore, as I observed in my Report for 1889, whether
something might not be done to remedy the evils of overcrowding,
by schemes providing for the migration of numbers of the people
to workmen's towns a little way out of London, where land is less
costly—a plan which, with a service of cheap trains, should
be practicable. The carrying out of the provisions of what were
formerly known as Cross's Acts in London must needs be
a costly precedure at all times, and probably much more so
than schemes for migration; which, by lessening the present
excessive demand for lodgings, might lead to reduction in rents,
and thus enable the poorer classes, who need to live near their
work, to obtain better and cheaper accommodation. A rent equal
to that paid for two or three rooms in a model lodging-house in
London, would certainly provide a remunerative return for the outlay
on a cottage and garden within a moderate train distance of
the centre of the Metropolis. By a large scheme for migration,
overcrowding would be diminished, and with it preventible disease
resulting from this, the most perilous of insanitary conditions.
The model dwellings erected on the sites cleared under Cross's
Acts are not tenanted to any large extent by the poorest grades
of the labouring classes, those who have been displaced by the
clearings. Clerks, and superior artizans able to command constant
employment, commonly occupy these healthy homes. Plenty others
of the like class would doubtless be forthcoming were the accommodation
greatly extended. These, however, are the classes for
whom it might be practicable to provide for out of London.
EMIGRATION.
Emigration would seem, at first sight, to be an obvious
means of reducing overcrowding, and, the Government did well
in appointing a Committee to inquire into various schemes which
had been proposed, of State-aided emigration from congested