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10
Environmental conditions are they which call most clamantly for
reform, whilst the care of the individual is maintained, intensified and
consolidated.
At the moment of writing, there are upon the register of those who
seek houses on the Council's Estate no fewer than 2,800 families.
Very many of these families are living under most distressing
conditions, and it is manifest that Tottenham has not the land available
upon which to build houses for them all—unless, indeed, they are of the
large tenement type, and I do not advise that system of housing.
What appears to be wanted is cheap, clean and rapid transit from
the Metropolis to an ever-widening circumference according to the needs
of London's immense industrial and commercial population.
Adequate means of transit are not available for Tottenham to and
from the Metropolis. Trams and buses, morning and night, have been
crammed to suffocation until police intervention caused the numbers
carried to be limited, with the result of diminishing travelling
accommodation.
The Great Eastern Railway's passenger traffic is enormous, and the
number said to be crowded at the "rush" hours into a compartment
intended to seat 12 is incredible. The carriages themselves are not
intended to appeal to the aesthetic sense of the traveller—and they do
not. Only necessity would oblige the third-class traveller to seek this
means of reaching his destination.
At the busy morning and evening hours, the Underground Railways
from Finsbury Park are likewise congested, and the multitude of people
awaiting tram and bus service from Finsbury Park to the Northern Suburbs
in the evening is an invitation to serious accident.
Your Council have been active in presenting the urgency of the
situation to the proper Authorities, and, while on every hand its seriousness
is admitted, nothing is done or suggested on a scale commensurate
with the need.
The facilities for travelling to and from the City by omnibuses in
ever-incieasing number are at the cost of greater peril to foot passengers;
and the heavy vehicular road traffic is no doubt responsible for the repairs
that the thoroughfares are constantly undergoing.
The solution of the housing difficulty appears to lie in the extension
and enlargement of the Underground system.