Part 21

This proposition rouses much wrath. Its advocates are charged with preaching spoliation and robbery, with setting class against class, and with destroying the basis on which national prosperity is settled. The taxation which compels the rich to reduce their expenditure on holidays and luxuries may seem hard, and the fear lest the tax which this year takes 5 per cent of their income will be further increased may induce panic among certain classes; but it is harder for the poor to go on suffering for want of the means of life, and there is more reason for panic in the thought that the mass of the people remain indifferent to the national greatness. The tax, it must be remembered, which reduces the expenditure of the rich on things which perish in their using--on out-of-season foods, on aimless locomotion, and the excitements of ostentation--and at the same time makes it possible for the poor to spend more on food and clothing, increases the work of working people. The millions of money, for example, taken from the rich to supply pensions for the poor have enabled the old people to spend money on food and clothing, which has been better for the nation’s trade than money spent on luxuries. It is a striking fact that if the people used what is held to be a bare sufficiency of woollen and cotton goods, the demand for these goods would be increased threefold to sixfold. The transference, therefore, of more of the national income from the few rich to the many poor need not alarm patriots.

The tax-collectors’ interference with the use of the accumulated wealth, now controlled by a comparatively small number of the people, is much less dangerous to the national prosperity than the discontent which arises from poverty. A proposition which offers security for the nation at the cost of some sacrifice by a class should, it might be expected, be met to-day by the more powerful members of society as willingly as in old days the nobles met the call to battle. But the powerful members of modern society hate the doctrine of taxation, and the hatred becomes a sort of instinct which draws them towards any alternative policy which may put off the evil day. If they give, their gifts are generous, frequently very generous, but often unconsciously they have regarded them as a sort of ransom which they threaten they will not pay if taxes are imposed, doing thereby injustice to their generosity. The rich do not realize the meaning of poverty, its wounds to human nature, or its dangers to the nation.

Poverty, I would submit is at the root of our present discontent, not the poverty which the Poor Law and charity are to relieve, but the poverty of the great mass of the workers. Out of this poverty rises the enemy which threatens our peace and our greatness, and this poverty is due not to want of trade or work or wealth, but to the want of thought as to the distribution of our enormous national income. When the meaning of poverty is realized, the courage and the sacrifice which in the past have so often dared loss to avert danger will hardly fail because the loss to be faced is represented by the demand-note of the tax-collector. Gifts cannot avert the danger, repression will increase the danger, and the preachers who believe in the coming of the Kingdom must for the old text, “God loveth a cheerful giver,” substitute as its equivalent, “God loveth a cheerful taxpayer”.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

SECTION V.

SOCIAL SERVICE.

Of Town Planning--The Mission of Music--The Real Social Reformer--Where Charity Fails--Landlordism Up-to-date--The Church and Town Planning.

OF TOWN PLANNING.[1]

BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.

January, 1911.

[1] From “The Cornhill Magazine”. By kind permission of the Editor.

Much has been said lately about town planning. Conferences have been held, speeches have been made, articles have been written, papers have been read, and columns of newspaper-notices have appeared, and yet I am daring to occupy eleven pages of the CORNHILL MAGAZINE to try and add a few more remarks to what has already been so well and so forcibly put forth.

But in apology for the presumption, it can be said that what I want to say does not entrench upon the province of the architect, the surveyor, or the artist. The questions of traffic-congestion, density of population, treatment of levels, arrangement of trams, water or gas, relation of railway termini or docks to thoroughfares, organization of periodic excess of street usage, relative positions of municipal buildings, harmony of material and design, standardization of streets and road grading, appreciation of scale; on these matters I will not write, for on them contributions, interesting, dull, suggestive, or learned, have been abundantly produced, and “are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles” of the great Conference held last month under the auspices of the Royal Institute of British Architects? And are not their potentialities visible beneath the legal phraseology of Mr. John Burns’ Town-planning Act of last Parliament?

It is so delightful to realize that some of the best brains of this and other countries are turning their thoughts to the solution of what Mr. T. S. Horsfall (who for many years was a voice crying in the wilderness) demanded as the elemental right of every human being, “the conditions of a healthy life”. It is comforting to know that others are doing the thinking, especially when one is old, and can recall one’s passionate, youthful indignation at the placid acceptance of stinking courts and alleys as the normal homes for the poor, when the memory is still vivid of the grand day when one portion of the network of such courts, in St. Jude’s parish, was swept away, and a grave, tall, carefully planned tenement building, erected by the public-spirited kindness of the late Mr. George M. Smith, arose in its stead, “built to please Barnett as an experiment”.

Some five-and-twenty years ago, when old Petticoat Lane was pulled down, my husband sent in to the Local Authority a suggestion of laying the area out so that Commercial Road should be continued right through to Bishopsgate; the letter and plans were merely acknowledged and the proposal ignored. Five years ago we filled one of the rooms in the Whitechapel Exhibition with plans of how East London might be improved, but it elicited only little interest, local or otherwise; and now last month, but a few years later, all the walls of Burlington House were covered with town-planning exhibits, drawings, plans, and designs, and its floor space amply supplied with models from all parts of the world.

And the thought given is so fresh, so unconventional, and so full of characteristics, that one came away from a careful study of that great Exhibition with a clear sense of the individualities of the various nations, as they had stated their ideals for their towns. Some in broad avenues, great piazzas, parallel streets, careful to adopt Christopher Wren’s ideal, that “gardens and unnecessary vacuities ... be placed out of the town”. Some in fairy cities, girt with green girdles of open space, tree-lined roads, parks designed for quiet as well as for play, waterways used for pleasure locomotion as well as for business traffic, contours considered as producers of beauty, the view as well as the shelter planned for. Some with scrupulous care for the history of the growth of the city, its natural features, the footmarks left by its wars, each utilized with due regard to modern requirements and the tendencies of the future. Some glorying in the preservation of every scrap which could record age or civic history, others blatantly determined to show that the old was folly, and that only of the brand-new can it be said “the best is yet to be”.

The imagination is stirred by the opportunities which the Colonies possess, and envy is mixed with gratitude that they will have the chance of creating glorious cities warned by the Old Country’s mistakes, and realizing by the progress of economic science that the flow of humanity is ever towards aggregation. The “Back-to-the-land” cry falls on ninety irresponsive ears to ten responsive ones, for the large majority of human beings desire to live in juxtaposition with mankind. It behoves thinkers all the more, therefore, to plan beautiful cities, places to live as well as to work in, and enough of them to prevent a few becoming so large as to absorb more than a healthy share of national life and wealth.

But if all of us may think imperially, it is given to most of us only to act locally, and, therefore, I will convey your minds and mine back from the visions of town planning amid the plains of Canada, the fiords and mountains of British Columbia, the high lands and broad velds of Africa, the varied beauties of wood, hill, and sea of Australia and New Zealand, back from the stimulating, almost intoxicating, vision of the work lying before our great Colonies, to the sobering atmosphere of a London or a Manchester suburb, with its miles of mean streets already built, or its open fields and new-made roads, laid out as if under the ruler of the office-boy.

Whoever undertakes the area to be laid out, whether it is the municipality or a public land company, should see that the planning is done on a large scale. The injury wrought to towns hitherto has been often due to the narrowness of personal interests and the limitation of the acres dealt with, both of which dim the far sight. The almost unconscious influence of dealing with a wide area is shown in existing schemes, which have been undertaken by owners of large estates, whether the area be planned for an industrial village, such as Mr. Lever’s at Port Sunlight, or for a housing-reform scheme like Mr. Cadbury’s at Bournville; or to accommodate the leisured, as the Duke of Devonshire’s at Eastbourne, or the artistic, as Mr. Comyns Carr’s at Bedford Park; or to create a fresh commercial city, as conceived by Mr. Ebenezer Howard at Letchworth; or to house all classes in attractive surroundings as at the Hampstead Garden Suburb. Whatever be the purpose, the fact of a large area has influenced them all. It has had, as it were, something of the same effect as the opportunity of the Sistine Chapel had on Michael Angelo. The population to be accommodated was large enough to require its own places of worship, public halls, or clubs, its schools, and recreation-grounds. So the lines were drawn with a generous hand, and human needs considered, with a view to their provision within the confines of the estate, instead of being treated as the organ-grinder, and advised to seek satisfaction in the next street--or accommodation on neighbouring land.

The idea of town or suburb planning has not yet found its way into the minds which dominate local Public Authorities, but a few examples will doubtless awaken them to the benefits of the Act, if not from the æsthetic, yet from the economic point of view, and then borough or ward boundaries will become as unnoticeable for town-planning purposes as ecclesiastical parish ones now are for educational administration.

Foremost among the problems will be the allotment of different positions of the area under consideration to different classes of society, or perhaps it would be better to say different standards of income.

No one can view with satisfaction any town, whether in England, America, or the Colonies, where the poor, the strenuous, and the untutored live as far as possible removed from the rich, the leisured, and the cultivated. The divorce is injurious to both. Too commonly is it supposed that the poor only suffer from the separation, but those who have the privilege of friendships among the working-people know that the wealthy lose more by not making their acquaintance than can possibly be computed.

“I often advise you to make friends,” said the late Dr. Jowett to a body of undergraduates assembled in Balliol Hall to hearken to my husband and Mr. C. S. Loch, as they spoke of the inhabitants of East or South London in the early ’seventies, but “now I will add further advice: Make some of your friends among the poor.”

Excellent as the advice is, it is hardly possible to follow when certain classes live at one end of the town, and other classes dwell in the extreme opposite district. It may be given to the few to create artificial methods of meeting, but to the large mass of people, so long as they live in separate neighbourhoods, they must remain ignorant of each other to a very real, if undefinable, loss--the loss of understanding, mutual respect, and that sense of peace which comes when one sits in the parlour and knows the servants are doing their best, or works in the kitchen and knows that those who govern are directed by a large-hearted sympathy. Again and again in 1905-6, when the idea of provision being made for all classes of society in the Hampstead Garden Suburb was being submitted to the public, I was told that the cultivated would never live voluntarily in the neighbourhood of the industrial classes, but I was immensely surprised when I laid the scheme before a leading workman and trade-unionist to be told:--

“It is all very nice as you say it, Mrs. Barnett, but I’m mistaken if you will find any self-respecting workman who cares to bring his family to live alongside of the rich. They’re a bad example with their pleasure-loving sons and idle, vain daughters, always thinking of dressing, and avoiding work and natural duties as if they were sins.”

The acceptance of society newspaper paragraphs and divorce reports as accurate and exhaustive accounts of the lives of the leisured, even by thinking workmen, serves as an additional evidence of the need of common neighbourhood to correct so dangerous and disintegrating a view.

There can be no doubt but that Part III of the Housing Act of 1890 is, in so far as it affects recent town development, responsible for much of this lamentable ignorance, for under its powers provision can only be made to house the industrial classes, and thus whole neighbourhoods have grown up, as large in themselves as a small provincial town occupied by one class, or those classes the range of whose difference is represented by requiring two or three bedrooms, a “kitchen,” or a “parlour cottage”.

That this segregation of classes into distinct areas is unnecessary as well as socially dangerous, is evidenced by many small English towns, such as Wareham, Godalming, Huntingdon, where the grouping together of all sorts of people has taken place under normal conditions of growth, as well as in the Garden Suburb at Hampstead, where the areas to house people of various degrees of income were clearly defined in the original plan, and have been steadfastly adhered to. In that estate the rents range from tenements of 3s. 3d. a week to houses standing in their own gardens of rentals to £250 a year, united by cottages, villas, and houses priced at every other figure within that gamut. The inhabitants can dwell there as owners, or by renting their dwellings, or through the welcoming system and elastic doors of the co-partners, or as weekly tenants in the usual way. No sort of difficulty has arisen, and the often-expressed fears have proved groundless. Indeed, the result of the admixture of all classes has been a kindlier feeling and a richer sympathy, as people of varied experience, different educational standards, and unequal incomes feel themselves drawn together in the enjoyment of good music, in the discussion of social problems, in the preparation by their children of such a summer’s day festival as the “Masque of Fairthorpe,” or to enjoy the unaffected pleasure of the public open spaces and wall-less gardens.

In England we have not yet reached the gorgeous, riotous generosity of the Americans, who plan parks by the mile, and cheerfully spend, as Boston did, £7,500,000 for a girdle of parks, woods, meadows, sea and lake embankments; or vote, as Chicago did, £3,600,000 for the creation of a connected system of twenty-two parks; but we in humbler England have some ground for congratulation, that, as a few years ago a flowerless open space was counted adequate, now a well-kept garden is desired; but on the definition of their uses and the difficulties of their upkeep something has yet to be said.

Every one has seen derelict open spaces, squares, crescents, three-angled pieces of ground deliberately planned to create beauty, but allowed to become the resting places of too many weary cats or disused household utensils, the grass neither mown, protected, nor re-sown. “The children like it kept so,” people say, but I doubt if they do. In Westminster there are two open spaces, one planted and cared for, the other just an unkept open space. Both face south, both overlook the river, both are open free, but the children flock into the garden, leaving the open space drearily empty. It is to be regretted, for their noise, even when it is happy shouting and not discordant wrangling, is disturbing to those whose strenuous lives necessitate that they take their exercise or rest without disturbance. But, on the other hand, the children are entitled to their share of the garden, and those “passionless reformers,” order, beauty, colour, may perhaps speak their messages more effectually into ears when they are young.

The solution of the difficulty has been found by the Germans in their thoughtful planning of parks, and few things were more delightful in the Town-planning Exhibition than the photographs of the children paddling in the shallow pools, making castles (I saw no sign of fortifications!) in the sand, playing rough running games on gravel slopes, or quieter make-believes in the spinneys, all specially provided in specially allocated children’s areas. Isolated instances of such provision are existent in our English parks, but the principle, that some people are entitled to public peace as well as others to public play, is not yet recognized, and that there should be zones in which noise is permitted, and zones in which silence must be maintained is as yet an inconceivable restriction. So the children usually shout, race, scream, or squabble amid the grown-ups, kept even in such order as they are by the fear of the park-keeper, whom their consciences encourage them to credit with supernatural powers of observation. He is usually a worthy, patient man, but an expensive adjunct, and one who could sometimes be dispensed with if the children’s “sphere of influence” were clearly defined. The promiscuous presence of children affects also both the standard of cost of the upkeep of open spaces, although the deterioration of their standard is more often due to the lapse of the authority who created them.

It is because the changes of circumstances so frequently affect disastrously the appearance of public spaces that I would offer for consideration the suggestion that they should be placed under the care of the municipality, under stringent covenants concerning their uses, purposes, maintenance, and reservation for the inhabitants of special dwellings. This step would not, of course, be necessary where the owner or company still holds the land, but in cases where the houses for which the square or joint garden was provided have each strayed into separate ownership, and their ground-rents treated only as investments, then everyone’s duty usually becomes no one’s duty, and the garden drops into a neglected home for “unconsidered trifles”. I could quote instances of this, not only in East London, but in Clifton, Reading, Ventnor, York, or give brighter examples of individual effort and enthusiasm which have awakened the interest of the neighbours to take pride in the appearance, and pay towards the upkeep, of their common pleasance.

The arguments in favour of the municipality having the care of these publicly enjoyed or semi-private open spaces would be the advantages of a higher gardening standard, the economy of interchange of roots, seeds, and tools, the benefit of a staff large enough to meet seasonal needs, the stimulating competition of one garden against another, and the additional gift of beauty to the passers-by, who could thus share without intrusion the fragrance of the flowers and the melody of symphonies in colour.

“But how can the public enjoy the gardens when they are usually behind walls?” I hear that delightful person, the deadly practical man, murmur; and this brings me to another question, “Are walls round open spaces necessary?”

English people seem to have adopted the idea that it is essential to surround their parks and gardens with visible barriers, perhaps because England is surrounded by the sea--a very visible line of demarcation; but, in the stead of a dancing joy, a witchful barrier, uniting while it separates, they have put up grim hard walls, ugly dividing fences, barriers which challenge trespass, and make even the law-abiding citizen desire to climb over and see what is on the other side.

It is extraordinary how firmly established is the acceptance of the necessity of walls and protection. Nearly thirty-five years ago, when the first effort was made to plant Mile End Road with trees, and to make its broad margins gracious with shrubs and plants, we were met by the argument that they would not be safe without high railings. I recall the croakings of those who combated the proposal to open Leicester Square to the public, and who of us has not listened to the regrets of the landowner on the expense entailed by his estate boundary fences?

If you say, “Why make them so high, or keep them up so expensively, as you do not preserve your game? Why not have low hedges or short open fences, over which people can see and enjoy your property?” he will look at you with a gentle pity, thinking of you as a deluded idealist, or perhaps his expression will change into something not so gentle as it dawns on him that, though one is the respectable wife of a respectable Canon, yet one may be holding “some of those--Socialist theories”.

Not long ago I went at the request of a gentleman who owned property, with his agent to see if suggestions could be made to improve the appearance of his estate and the happiness of his tenants. The gardens were small enough to be valueless, but between and around each were walls, many in bad repair.

“The first thing I should do would be to pull down those walls, and let the air in; things will then grow, self-respect as well as flowers,” I said.

“What!” exclaimed the agent, “pull down the walls? Why, what would the men have to lean against?” thus conjuring up the vision one has so often seen of men leaning listlessly against the public-house walls, a sight which the possession of a garden, large enough to be profitable as well as pleasurable, ought to do much to abolish.

It is difficult to find arguments for walls. In many towns of America the gardens are wall-less, the public scrupulously observing the rights of ownership. In the Hampstead Garden Suburb all the gardens are wall-less, both public and private. The flowers bloom with the voluptuous abundance produced by virgin soil, but they remain untouched, not only by the inhabitants, which, of course, is to be expected, but by the thousands of visitors who come to see the realization of the much-talked-of scheme, and respect the property as they share its pleasures.