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160
MIGRATION AS A REMEDY FOR OVERCROWDING.
By the Housing of the Working Classes Act the Council,
with the sanction of the Home Secretary, already accorded, are
enabled to erect, purchase, or hire houses, &c., without as well
as within 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 procedure 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 lodginghouse
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
* "The Metropolitan Board of Works carried through 22 schemes, whereby
59 acres of land were acquired and cleared, on which accommodation has been
provided for 38,231 persons. The amount thus expended by the Hoard in giving
effect to Cross's Acts, exceeded a million and a half sterling (or about £40 per head);
this being irrespective of the outlay on Model Dwellings erected on the cleared
sjtes by such bodies as the Peabody Trustees" (Annual Report for 1888-89).