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159
the Public Health and Housing Committee), but they are
now realizing what Sanitary Authorities of older date and
their officials know but too well—the colossal difficulties in
the way of providing decent homes for the poor, at any
reasonable or remunerative rate. The subject (2) of "further
and better accommodation for the working classes," was
fully treated in the report under the several headings (a)
re-housing of persons displaced by clearances and improvements;
(b) provision to meet the increase of the population,—
which involves the question of increased railway travelling
facilities; and (c) the better housing of the poorest classes,
including those who use common lodging-houses—matters
with which the local Sanitary Authorities have no power to
deal, but in regard to which the Committee made recommendations.
The sub-section (c) was referred to under the
headings: (i.) unfurnished tenements of an inferior description,
and small cottage dwellings; (ii.) furnished tenements or
lodgings; and (iii.) common lodging-houses. Suggestions
were made indicating, inter alia, approval of the "ticketing"
system, in relation to the lowest class of lodging-houses, in
vogue at Glasgow; but the only practical recommendation
made was that already referred to, for the erection of a
model common lodging-house in St. Giles's district. The
information with respect to the municipal common lodginghouses
at Glasgow, obtained by the Committee during their
visit, is at once full, interesting, and encouraging to the
experiment now about to be tried, and which in my Annual
Report for 1889 (page 132), I ventured to advocate. The
Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890, which comprehends
Shaftesbury's and Cross's Acts, will enable the
Council to give a fair trial to the system, which seems to me
to afford the best prospect of bringing about a practical
solution of one of the difficult questions dealt with in the
able report of the Committee,