Edward Stanley Robertson

“ So very tender are we becoming of what we suppose to be the comfort of the poor, that we seem to be on the point of depriving them of the greatest comfort of all—personal freedom. How many members of the middle class would endure for a week the inspection and "ordering about" which our philanthropic reformers are never tired of inflicting on their poorer neighbours? ”

“ Now it is the Duke of ... who is being denounced as a harsh and cruel head landlord, because his agent takes somewhat abrupt measures for pulling down a tenement house whose middleman lessee has absconded, and which is becoming a nuisance through the neglect or misconduct of the lodgers. Anon it is all the fault of the middleman lessee, who is painted in the blackest of colours as a bloated, grasping, selfish capitalist, wringing sixty or seventy per cent out of the sweat and tears of the poor. ”

“ Whatever may be the truth as to the present position of the labourer [i.e., agricultural] , it is certain that the improvement, if there is any in his lot, is due to that destruction of dwellings and depopulation of the country which has been carried out on so many estates, and which has been constantly increasing the competition and overcrowding in the towns. This migration from the land is a constant phenomenon. It aggravates all the evils of town life, reduces wages, increases the pressure for accommodation, and accounts in part for the acuteness of the distress which prevails. ”

“ Overcrowding, beyond any doubt, is a bad thing; it is the fertile source both of disease and of vice. But it is not always what the amateur philanthropist would call overcrowding which the poor themselves feel to be such. ”

“ There is still plenty of room for State activity, in the prevention and punishment of crime, for instance, without trenching upon the personal freedom of citizens who are not criminals. Nay, even in this very matter of the sanitation of poor people's dwellings (for it is mainly a question of sanitation in the long run) there is plenty of room for State activity in providing cheaper and more accessible procedure for the abatement of nuisances, to be put in motion by the people whom the nuisances annoy, and not by a staff of paid officials. ”

“ A landlord leases his sites in the first instance to builders, for periods of great length. When the building leases fall in, and the houses become the landlord's direct property, it is almost invariably an object with him to lease them for periods, shorter indeed than the original building lease, but always of considerable length. As long as houses are in the hands of a building lessee, or his representatives, the ground landlord can derive no profit from them beyond the rent reserved in the lease, and can exercise no control over them outside the covenants contained in that document. ”

“ The law should make it an offence, punishable by heavy fine, to own property in a state unfit for human habitation. The law already punishes the retail tradesman who exposes diseased meat for sale, and it is a much more serious offence to make a profit out of conditions which are absolutely incompatible with health and morality. ”

“ But it will not be very long before people begin to find out that a dozen persons in a room twelve feet square are much more "snug" than three or four, and that the kind of coarse comfort which comes from mere heat is not inconsistent with almost any amount of what fine ladies and gentlemen call "stuffiness." How are people to be hindered from working their will in this way? ”

“ Our socialistic philanthropists of to-day are always formulating projects whose ultimate sanction would need to be something of the Carlylese gallows or grape—a sanction they would never dream of applying in hard fact. Once more, then, we find ourselves face to face with the old dilemma. So long as the shiftless and flabby-minded folk are there, socialism, piecemeal or wholesale, is impracticable. ”

“ Overcrowding often simply means warmth. A thinly inhabited and highly ventilated room is apt to be a cold room, and underfed people are sensitive to cold. Those who are underfed are apt also to be ill-clad, and are pretty certain not to have the means of purchasing much fuel. Hence, independently of the low rents of crowded lodgings, the mere warmth of them is a temptation to the very poor. Thus we have two causes which make it a doubtful boon for the poor to be offered cheap, spacious, and well ventilated dwellings. The cheapness would probably react on their wages ”

“ Once they are got rid of it is no longer wanted. If piecemeal Socialism is to be put in practice, it will not be long before it becomes wholesale Socialism. But as a matter of fact it will never be put in practice. We shall probably see the building of a good many new model lodgings, some by private beneficence and some, perhaps, with public money. A certain number of "slums" and "rookeries" will be pulled down, and their inhabitants will again herd where they can, so that not impossibly their last state will be worse than their first. ”

“ The family resources would not begin to increase until the children in their turn began to earn wages, and that time is now almost fixed by law at a minimum age of thirteen years. In fourteen years an average couple would almost certainly have five children, and might have seven or more. Before the eldest child, therefore, could contribute anything to the family resources, there would probably be seven human beings, and might easily be nine, ten or even twelve, to occupy the space originally calculated for two. How is this state of things to be prevented or remedied? ”

“ It remains to be seen whether practical effect can at present be given to the only measures which afford hope of permanent relief, or whether we shall be condemned to witness yet another tinkering of the machinery which has entirely broken down. In this case it will be our duty to point out to the people at large that what they want done they must secure for themselves. ”

“ If they succeed in aggravating the nuisance till it is intolerable, their fortunes are made. The ratepayers at large must bear the cost of putting an end to this detestable business, and are expected at the same time to reward munificently all who have been engaged in it." ↑ "What can be more unpractical than the demand that the State shall provide house-room for all its servants? Consider the difficulties raised by such a scheme. Is the accommodation to be provided free, and in addition to present salaries and wages, or is it to be charged at a fair market fate? ”

“ A house which for honest occupation is worth £50 a year will bring in double or treble to an owner who winks at the traffic which it is permitted to shelter. When this house is required by the local authority, the demand for compensation is based, and often allowed, on an income which represents not a fair return for an investment but the profit on complicity with vice. ”

“ As a matter of fact the lessee is quite often enough one of the poor himself—or herself, for tenement houses in a very appreciable number of instances belong to women. As regards the sixty or seventy per cent, some part must certainly be set down to repairs and maintenance of the fabric of the house. A good deal may be fairly written off against the risk and trouble of collection. When all allowances are made, one may be permitted to doubt whether much more is really to be accounted profit than would be held to deserve that name in the case of other trades. ”

“ Political power is only the means to an end—the extension of the suffrage and redistribution of seats would indeed be as worthless as the vacation essays of great landowners if they did not lead directly to the practical solution of some of those social questions which intimately concern the welfare of the masses of the people, and in the settlement of which they have a just right to make their voices heard."
In these words the politician speaks, and not the social reformer. Mr. Chamberlain affects to want a particular improvement in social arrangements. ”

“ Local authorities should be further empowered to acquire any lands and buildings for the purpose of a scheme under the Artisans' Dwellings Acts, at the fair market value of the same, to be settled by an arbitrator appointed for the purpose, and instructed to give in every case the value which a willing seller would obtain in the open market from a private purchaser, with no allowance for prospective value or compulsory sale. ”

“ Enough has not been done in this direction; when all has been done that can be done, then, and not till then, it will be time to think of starting an official agency. And lastly be it said that all which has been written above applies to State philanthropy. For private effort we have no criticism but praise, and no sentiment but good-will. ”

“ As to 3s. 4d. a foot "sold with the obligation to build workmen's dwellings," if the land is worth 10s. for commercial purposes, it would be sheer robbery to force a sale for 3s. 4d. because it happened to be wanted for workmen's lodgings. Land, like any other commodity, is worth as much as it will fetch in open market; and if philanthropists or social Utopia-mongers want land in the heart of a great city, they must pay the market price for it, and not fix a low fancy price, any more than they would allow the owner to fix a high fancy price. ”

“ Chamberlain fails to perceive that the very same human tendencies and characteristics to which he appeals in the case of State officials would operate in the case of independent workmen; but let that pass.
Finally, be it said that to discern and state difficulties is not to create them. Any one who will think this subject out will see that a scheme which purports to cure poverty, and the moral and material evils growing out of poverty, by State regulation, is Socialism more or less diluted ”

“ First, ground landlords are not, and cannot be as a rule, directly responsible for the use made of house property. Secondly, they are indirectly responsible only in so far as the use made of such property contravenes covenants in the leases on which it is held. Thirdly, the compensation value in cases where demolition has to take place includes the cost of demolition, and compensation for all interests, primary, derivative, and ultimate. The first of these principles negatives Mr. Chamberlain's dogma that the cost of improvement must fall on the land exclusively. ”

“ The grant of house accommodation must be proportioned to the size of the family—otherwise the State would become particeps criminis in overcrowding—and the postman with a large family of eight or ten children will receive benefits double or treble the value of what will fall to his comrades who have remained single. ”

“ The letting and hiring of agricultural land is now in a great measure taken out of the domain of free contract, and legislation is manifesting a tendency to abolish contract wholly where land is concerned. We are now threatened with an application of the same process to houses. It is openly asserted that houseowners make too much out of their property ”

“ Even when the buildings come into the landlord's own hands, he almost invariably proceeds to make fresh arrangements whereby the control passes from himself to some one who is more or less of a middleman between the head landlord and the occupant who lets lodgings or tenements. ”

“ The income derived is proportionately increased, and compensation follows as a premium on evil practices. Accordingly men are found to speculate on the probability of interference, and they buy up in anticipation property which is likely to provoke the action of the local authority. ”

“ The rookery is a very horrible thing, but it is a safety valve. There is no alternative. Either you must inspect and regulate every house where any poor people can by any possibility lodge, or you must tolerate the rookery in the long run. The evil may be, and ought to be, reduced to the very lowest expression ”

“ In many cases the mere increase of families will overcrowd the lodging, without any intrusion from outside. A man and his wife can do well enough in one decent room, and are actually comfortable in two; but when there are five children what is to be done? Be it remembered that in the rank of life we are dealing with, wages do not increase to any great extent after marriage, and certainly not in the same ratio as families increase. Indeed, it might be said, without much inaccuracy, that a working-man would be in receipt of his highest wages about the time of his marriage, or very soon after it. ”

“ The most carefully constructed lodging may become a rookery in the course of time, by the mere multiplication of the family inhabiting it. This is an evil which no inspection or manipulation will cure. But unless every house were placed under inspection where any working people might under any circumstances lodge, the process of creating rookeries would be a much more rapid one. Every one who disliked inspection—and their name is legion—would abandon the inspected houses. The evil in short lies deeper than can be reached either by Mr. ”

“ Chamberlain's article in the Fortnightly Review, I leave it to the daily papers, and to those who deal with the matter from the point of view of party politics, to comment upon this attempt of the Radical Codlin to outbid the Conservative Short, But it is worth while pointing out to those interested in the defence of liberty and property, that Mr. Chamberlain writes quite as much in the capacity of a party man, as in that of a social reformer. ”