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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 oft 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 artisans able to command constant employment,
commonly occupy these healthy homes. Plenty others of
the like classes would doubtless be forthcoming, were the
accommodation greatly extended. These, however, are the
classes for whom it might be practicable to provide out of
London.
The Council having come, apparently, to the opinion that
migration does afford the most promising solution to a difficult
question, have had prepared a report, resulting from an exhaustive
enquiry into the number of working men's trains
running from and into London termini, showing what has
been done in this direction by the railway companies, and
what remains to be done to give full effect to this great
experiment. Among others, outside the Council, who have
taken a strong and practical interest in the question, Sir
J. Blundell Maple, M.P., is conspicuous. In the debate
on th& Manchester, Sheffield., and Lincoln Railway (Extension to
London) Bill, this gentleman stated that the Metropolitan
Railway Company had promised that, "on and after June 1st
of the present year (1892), they would run workmen's trains at
the following rates: For a distance of five miles, 2d.; from five
to ten miles, 4d.; from ten to fifteen miles, 6d. per journey