TO-MORROW; 
 
 Peaceful Path to Real Refarm. 
 By 
 
 E, Howard. 
 
THE 
 
 THREE MAGNETS. 
 
 , v oved. Lac* 
 A «KGt. Lack 
 
 /MPEQPVL 
 
 MIIIIIIIIIIINII WIIIHIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIll 
 
 Where will they Go? 
 
 „, Town-Country.^ 
 
 % fl n / 
 
 tes, Pie? 
 
 :es. 
 
TO-MORROW: 
 
 A PEACEFUL PATH TO REAL REFORM 
 
TO-MORROW: 
 
 & (peacefuf fp*% to (ge4f (gefotm 
 
 BY 
 
 E. HOWARD 
 
 "New occasions teach new duties ; 
 Time makes ancient good uncouth ; 
 They must upward still, and onward, 
 Who would keep abreast of Truth. 
 Lo, before us, gleam hercamp-fires ! 
 We ourselves must Pilgrims be, 
 Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly 
 Through the desperate winter sea, 
 Nor attempt the Future's portal 
 With the Past's blood-rusted key." 
 
 —"The Present Crisis."—/. 7?. Lrweli. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., Ltd, 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 1898 
 
Mama 
 uam\ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chap. Page 
 Introduction, . . . . 1 
 
 I. The Town-Country Magnet, . . .12 
 
 II. The Revenue of Garden City, and how it is obtained 
 
 —The Agricultural Estate, . . .20 
 
 III. The Revenue of Garden City— Town Estate, . 31 
 
 IV. The Revenue of Garden City — General Observations 
 
 on its Expenditure, . . . .36 
 
 V. Further Details of Expenditure on Garden City, . 51 
 
 VI. Administration, . . . . .63 
 
 VII. Semi-Municipal Enterprise — Local Option — Temper- 
 ance Reform, . . . . .72 
 
 VIII. Pro-Municipal Work, . . . .82 
 
 IX. Administration — A Bird's Eye View, . . 91 
 
 X. Some Difficulties Considered, . . .94 
 
 XI. A Unique Combination of Proposals, . . 102 
 
 XII. The Path followed up, . . . .116 
 
 XIII. Social Cities, . . . . .128 
 
 XIV. The Future of London, . . . .142 
 
 Appendix — Water-Supply, .... 153 
 
 Index, . , . . . , ,169 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE THREE MAGNETS ----- 8 
 
 GARDEN CITY ------ 12 
 
 WARD AND CENTRE GARDEN CITY - - - - 14 
 
 VANISHING POINT OF LANDLORD'S RENT - - 22 
 
 DIAGRAM OF ADMINISTRATION - - - 90 
 
 NEW SYSTEM OF WATER-SUPPLY - - - - 130 
 
 SOCIAL CITIES - 130 
 
TO-MORROW. 
 
 1 g 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 "New forces, new cravings, new aims, which had been silently 
 gathering beneath the crust of re-action, burst suddenly into view. 55 
 — Green's " Short History of the English People," Chap. x. 
 
 " Change is consummated in many cases after much argument and 
 agitation, and men do not observe that almost everything has been 
 silently effected by causes to which few people paid any heed. In 
 one generation an institution is unassailable, in the next bold men 
 may assail it, and in the third bold men defend it. At one time the 
 most conclusive arguments are advanced against it in vain, if indeed 
 they are allowed utterance at all. At another time the most childish 
 sophistry is enough to secure its condemnation. In the first place, 
 the institution, though probably indefensible by pure reason, was 
 congruous with the conscious habits and modes of thought of the 
 community. In the second these had changed from influences which 
 the acutest analysis would probably fail to explain, and a breath 
 sufficed to topple over the sapped structure." — The Times, 27th 
 November, 1891. 
 
 In these days of strong party feeling and of keenly-contested 
 social and religious issues, it might perhaps be thought 
 difficult to find a single question having a vital bearing 
 upon national life and well-being on which all persons, no 
 matter of what political party, or of what shade of sociologi- 
 cal opinion, would be found to be fully and entirely agreed. 
 
2 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 Discuss the temperance cause, and you will hear from Mr. 
 John Morley that it is " the greatest moral movement since 
 the movement for the abolition of slavery " ; but Lord Bruce 
 will remind you that " every year the trade contributes 
 £40,000,000 to the revenue of the country, so that 
 practically it maintains the Army and Navy, besides which 
 it affords employment to many thousands of persons " — that 
 " even the teetotalers owe much to the licensed victuallers, 
 for if it were not for them the refreshment bars at the 
 Crystal Palace would have been closed long ago." 
 Discuss the opium traffic, and, on the one hand, you will 
 hear that opium is rapidly destroying the morale of the 
 people of China, and on the other that this is quite a 
 delusion, and that the Chinese are capable, thanks to opium, 
 of doing work which to a European is quite impossible, and 
 that on food at which the least squeamish of English people 
 would turn up their noses in disgust. 
 
 Religious and political questions too often divide us into 
 hostile camps ; and so, in the very realms where calm, dis- 
 passionate thought and pure emotions are the very 
 essentials of all advance towards right beliefs and sound 
 principles of action, the din of battle and the struggles of 
 contending hosts are more forcibly suggested to the on- 
 looker than the really sincere love of truth and love of 
 country which, one may yet be sure, animate nearly all 
 breasts. 
 
 There is, however, one question in regard to which 
 one can scarcely find any difference of opinion. It is 
 well-nigh universally agreed by men of all parties, not only 
 in England, but all over Europe and America and our 
 colonies, that it is deeply to be deplored that the people 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 3 
 
 should continue to stream into the already over-crowded 
 cities, and should thus further deplete the country districts. 
 
 Lord Rosebery, speaking some years ago as Chairman of 
 the London County Council, dwelt with very special 
 emphasis on this point : — 
 
 " There is no thought of pride associated in my mind with the idea 
 of London. I am always haunted by the awfulness of London : by 
 the great appalling fact of these millions cast down, as it would 
 appear by hazard, on the banks of this noble stream, working each 
 in their own groove and their own cell, without regard or knowledge 
 of each other, without heeding each other, without having the 
 slightest idea how the other lives — the heedless casualty of un- 
 numbered thousands of men. Sixty years ago a great Englishman, 
 Cobbett, called it a wen. If it was a wen then, what is it now ? A 
 tumour, an elephantiasis sucking into its gorged system half the life 
 and the blood and the bone of the rural districts." — March, 1891. 
 
 Sir John Gorst points out the evil, and suggests the 
 remedy : 
 
 "If they wanted a permanent remedy of the evil they must 
 remove the cause ; they must back the tide, and stop the migration 
 of the people into the towns, and get the people back to the land. 
 The interest and the safety of the towns themselves were involved 
 in the solution of the problem." — Daily Chronicle^ 6th November, 
 1891. 
 
 Dean Farrar says : 
 
 " We are becoming a land of great cities. Villages are stationary 
 or receding ; cities are enormously increasing. And if it be true that 
 great cities tend more and more to become the graves of the physique 
 of our race, can we wonder at it when we see the houses so foul, so 
 squalid, so ill-drained, so vitiated by neglect and dirt ? " 
 
 Dr. Rhodes, at the Demographic Congress, called atten- 
 tion to 
 
4 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 " the migration which was going on from the English agri- 
 cultural districts. In Lancashire and other manufacturing districts 
 35 per cent, of the population were over 60 years of age, but in agri- 
 cultural districts they would have over 60 per cent. Many of the 
 cottages were so abominable that they could not call them houses, 
 and the people so deteriorated in physique that they were not able 
 to do the amount of work which able-bodied persons should do. 
 Unless something was done to make the lot of the agricultural 
 labourer better, the exodus would go on, with what results in the 
 future he dared not say." — Times, 15th August, 1891. 
 
 The Press, Liberal, Radical, and Conservative, views this 
 grave symptom of the time with the same alarm. The St. 
 James' Gazette, on June 6, 1892, remarks : 
 
 " How best to provide the proper antidote against the greatest 
 danger of modern existence is a question of no mean significance." 
 
 The Star, 9th October, 1891, says : 
 
 " How to stem the drift from the country is one of the main 
 problems of the day. The labourer may perhaps be restored to the 
 land, but how will the country industries be restored to rural 
 England ? " 
 
 The Daily News, a few years ago, published a series of 
 articles, "Life in our Villages," dealing with the same 
 problem. Trade Unionist leaders utter the same note of 
 warning. Mr. Ben Tillet says : 
 
 " Hands are hungry for toil, and lands are starving for labour." 
 
 Mr. Tom Mann observes : 
 
 "The congestion of labour in the metropolis is caused mainly by 
 the influx from the country districts of those who were needed there 
 to cultivate the land." 
 
 All then are agreed on the pressing nature of this 
 problem, all are bent on its solution, and though it would 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 5 
 
 doubtless be quite Utopian to expect a similar agreement 
 as to the value of any remedy that may be proposed, it is at 
 least of immense importance that, on a subject thus uni- 
 versally regarded as of supreme importance, we have such 
 a consensus of opinion at the outset. This will be the 
 more remarkable and the more hopeful sign when it is 
 shown, as I believe will be conclusively shown in this work, 
 that the answer to this, one of the most pressing questions 
 of the day, makes of comparatively easy solution many 
 other problems which have hitherto taxed the ingenuity of 
 the greatest thinkers and reformers of our time. Yes, the 
 key to the problem how to restore the people to the land — 
 that beautiful land of ours, with its canopy of sky, the air 
 that blows upon it, the sun that warms it, the rain and dew 
 that moisten it — the very embodiment of Divine love for 
 man — is indeed a Master-Key, for it is the key to a portal 
 through which, even when scarce ajar, will be seen to pour 
 a flood of light on the problems of intemperance, of excessive 
 toil, of restless anxiety, of grinding poverty — the true limits 
 of Governmental interference, ay, and even the relations of 
 man to the Supreme Power. 
 
 It may perhaps be thought that the first step to be taken 
 towards the solution of this question — how to restore the 
 people to the land — would involve a careful consideration 
 of the very numerous causes which have hitherto led to 
 their aggregation in large cities. Were this the case, a very 
 prolonged enquiry would be necessary at the outset. Fortu- 
 nately, alike for writer and for reader, such an analysis is 
 not, however, here requisite, and for a very simple reason, 
 which may be stated thus : — Whatever may have been the 
 causes which have operated in the past, and are operating 
 
6 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 now, to draw the people into the cities, those causes may all 
 be summed up as 61 attractions " ; and it is obvious, there- 
 fore, that no remedy can possibly be effective which will not 
 present to the people, or at least to considerable portions of 
 them, greater " attractions " than our cities now possess, so 
 that the force of the old " attractions " shall be overcome 
 by the force of new " attractions " which are to be created. 
 Each city may be regarded as a magnet, each person as a 
 needle ; and, so viewed, it is at once seen that nothing short 
 of the discovery of a method for constructing magnets of 
 yet greater power than our cities possess can be effective 
 for re-distributing the population in a spontaneous and 
 healthy manner. 
 
 So presented, the problem may appear at first sight to be 
 difficult, if not impossible, of solution. " What," some may 
 be disposed to ask, " can possibly be done to make the 
 country more attractive to a work-a-day people than the 
 town — to make wages, or at least the standard of physical 
 comfort, higher in the country than in the town ; to secure 
 in the country equal possibilities of social intercourse, and 
 to make the prospects of advancement for the average man 
 or woman equal, not to say superior, to those enjoyed in 
 our large cities ? " The issue one constantly finds presented 
 in a form very similar to that. The subject is treated con- 
 tinually in the public press, and in all forms of discussion, 
 as though men, or at least working-men, had not now, and 
 never could have, any choice or alternative, but either, on 
 the one hand, to stifle their love for human society — at 
 least in wider relations than can be found in a straggling 
 village — or, on the other hand, to forego almost entirely all 
 the keen and pure delights of the country. The question 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 7 
 
 is universally considered as though it were now, and forever 
 must remain, quite impossible for working people to live 
 in the country, and yet be engaged in pursuits other 
 than agricultural, as though crowded unhealthy cities were 
 the last word of economic science, and as if our present form 
 of industry, in which sharp lines divide agricultural from 
 industrial pursuits, were necessarily an enduring one. This 
 fallacy is the very common one of ignoring altogether the 
 possibility of alternatives other than those presented to the 
 mind. There are in reality not only, as is so constantly 
 assumed, two alternatives — town life and country life — but 
 a third alternative, in which all the advantages of the most 
 energetic and active town life, with all the beauty and 
 delight of the country, may be secured in perfect combina- 
 tion ; and the certainty of being able to live this life will be 
 the magnet which will produce the effect for which we are 
 all striving — the spontaneous movement of the people from 
 our crowded cities to the bosom of our kindly mother earth, 
 at once the source of life, of happiness, of wealth, and of 
 power. The town and the country may, therefore, be re- 
 garded as two magnets, each striving to draw the people to 
 itself — a rivalry which a new form of life, partaking of the 
 nature of both, comes to take part in. This may be illustrated 
 by a diagram of " The Three Magnets," in which the chief 
 advantages of the Town and of the Country are set forth 
 with their corresponding drawbacks, while the advantages 
 of the Town-Country are seen to be free from the disadvan- 
 tages of either. 
 
 The Town magnet, it will be seen, offers, as compared with 
 the Country magnet, the advantages of high wages, oppor- 
 tunities for employment, tempting prospects of advancement, 
 
8 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 but these are largely counterbalanced by high rents and 
 prices. Its social opportunities and its places of amuse- 
 ment are very alluring, but excessive hours of toil, distance 
 from work, and the " isolation of crowds " tend greatly to 
 reduce the value of these good things. The well-lit streets 
 are a great attraction, especially in the winter, but the 
 sunlight is being more and more shut out, while the air is 
 so vitiated that the fine public buildings, like the sparrows, 
 rapidly become covered with soot, and the very statues are 
 in despair. 1 Palatial edifices and fearful slums are the 
 strange, complementary features of modern cities. 
 
 The Country magnet declares herself to be the source of 
 all beauty and w T ealth; but the Town magnet mockingly 
 reminds her that she is very dull for lack of society, and 
 very sparing of her gifts for lack of capital. There are in 
 the country beautiful vistas, lordly parks, violet-scented 
 woods, fresh air, sounds of rippling water; but too often 
 one sees those threatening words, " Trespassers will be 
 prosecuted." Rents, if estimated by the acre, are certainly 
 low, but such low rents are the natural fruit of low wages 
 rather than a cause of substantial comfort; while long 
 hours and lack of amusements forbid the bright sunshine 
 and the pure air to gladden the hearts of the people. The 
 
 i " Last year the layer of platina upon the equestrian statue of 
 Lord Napier of Magdala was taking on a velvet coat, but a black, 
 greenish tint had formed, and there was none of that delicate, 
 velvety brown tint which ought to be there. Indeed the warrior 
 seemed by his very attitude to recognise the fact, for he was turning, 
 field-glass in hand, away from the Athenaeum Club as if perfectly 
 conscious that in the present state of the London atmosphere he 
 was beyond the aid of science, and would soon become sooty black 
 like the occupants of adjoining pedestals." — Professor Roberts 
 Austen, C.B.,F.R.S., Journal Society of Arts, 11th March, 1892. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 9 
 
 one industry, agriculture, suffers frequently from excessive 
 rainfalls ; but this wondrous harvest of the clouds is seldom 
 properly ingathered, so that in times of drought, there is 
 frequently, even for drinking purposes, a most insufficient 
 supply. 1 Even the natural healthfulness of the country is 
 largely lost for lack of proper drainage and other sanitary 
 conditions, while, in parts almost deserted by the people 
 the few who remain are yet frequently huddled together as 
 if in rivalry w T ith the slums of our cities. 
 
 But neither the Town magnet nor the Country magnet 
 represent the full plan and purpose of nature. Human 
 society and the beauty of nature are meant to be enjoyed 
 together. The two magnets must be made one. As man 
 and woman by their varied gifts and faculties supplement 
 each other, so should town and country. The town is the 
 symbol of society — of mutual help and friendly co-operation, 
 of fatherhood, motherhood, brotherhood, sisterhood, of wide 
 relations between man and man — of broad, expanding 
 sympathies — of science, art, culture, religion. And the 
 country ! The country is the symbol of God's love and 
 care for man. All that we are, and all that we have comes 
 from it. Our bodies are formed of it ; to it they return. 
 
 1 Dr. Barwise, Medical Officer of Health for the County Council of 
 Derbyshire, giving evidence before a Select Committee of the House 
 of Commons, on 25th April, 1894, on the Chesterfield Gas and Water 
 Bill, said, in answer to Question 1873 : "At Brimington Common 
 School I saw some basins full of soapsuds > and it was all the water 
 that the whole of the children had to wash in. They had to wash 
 one after another in the same water. Of course a child with ring- 
 worm or something of that kind might spread it through the whole 
 of the children. . . . The schoolmistress told me that the children 
 came in from the playground hot, and she had seen them actually 
 drink this dirty water. In fact when they were thirsty there was 
 no other water for them to have." 
 
10 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 We are fed by it, clothed by it, and by it are we warmed 
 and sheltered. On its bosom we rest. Its beauty is the 
 inspiration of art, of music, of poetry. Its forces propel all 
 the wheels of industry. It is the source of all health, all 
 wealth, all knowledge. But its fulness of joy and wisdom 
 has not revealed itself to man. Nor can it ever, so long as 
 this unholy, unnatural separation of society and nature 
 endures. Town and country must be married, and out of 
 this joyous union will spring a new hope, a new life, a new 
 civilisation. It is the purpose of this work to show how a 
 first step can be taken in this direction by the construction 
 of a Town-country magnet ; and I hope to convince the 
 reader that this is practicable, here and now, and that on 
 principles that are the very soundest, whether viewed from 
 the ethical or the economic standpoint. 
 
 I will undertake, then, to show how in " Town-country " 
 equal, nay better, opportunities of social intercourse may be 
 enjoyed than are enjoyed in any crowded city, while yet 
 the beauties of nature may encompass and enfold each 
 dweller therein ; how higher wages are compatible with 
 reduced rents and rates ; how abundant opportunities for 
 employment and bright prospects of advancement may be 
 secured for all ; how capital may be attracted and wealth 
 created ; how the most admirable sanitary conditions may be 
 ensured ; how excessive rainfall, the despair of the farmer, 
 may be used to generate electric light and to propel 
 machinery ; how the air may be kept clear of smoke ; how 
 beautiful homes and gardens may be seen, on every hand ; 
 how the bounds of freedom may be widened, and yet all the 
 best results of concert and co-operation gathered in by a 
 happy people. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 II 
 
 The construction of such a magnet, could it be effected, 
 followed, as it would be, by the construction of many more, 
 would certainly afford a solution of the burning question set 
 before us by Sir John Gorst, " how to back the tide of 
 migration of the people into the towns, and to get them 
 back upon the land." 
 
 A fuller description of such a magnet and its mode of 
 construction will form the theme of subsequent chapters. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE TOWN-COUNTRY MAGNET. 
 
 " I will not cease from mental strife, 
 
 Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, 
 Till we have built Jerusalem 
 In England's green and pleasant land." 
 
 — Blake. 
 
 c< No scene is continuously and untiringly loved but one rich by 
 joyful human labour, smooth in field, fair in garden, full in orchard, 
 trim, sweet, and frequent in homestead, ringing with voices of vivid 
 existence. No air is sweet that is silent ; it is only sweet when 
 full of low currents of undersound, triplets of birds, and murmur 
 and chirp of insects, and deep- toned words of men, and wayward 
 trebles of childhood. As the art of life is learned, it will be found 
 at last that all lovely things are also necessary — the wild flower by 
 the wayside as well as the tended corn, and the wild birds and 
 creatures of the forest as well as the tended cattle, because man 
 doth not live by bread only, but also by the desert manna, by every 
 wondrous word and unknowable work of God." — Mr. J. Ruskin, 
 * 4 Unto This Last." 
 
 The reader is asked to imagine an estate of some such 
 shape as that shown in Diagram 2, embracing an estate of 
 6,000 acres, which is at present purely agricultural, and has 
 been obtained by purchase in the open market at a cost 
 of .£40 an acre, or £240,000. The purchase money is 
 supposed to have been raised on mortgage debentures, 
 bearing interest at an average rate not exceeding <£4 per 
 cent. The estate is legally vested in the names of four 
 
THE TOWN-COUNTRY MAGNET. 
 
 13 
 
 gentlemen of responsible position and of undoubted probity 
 and honour, who hold it in trust, first, as a security for the 
 debenture-holders, and, secondly, in trust for the people of 
 Garden City, the Town-country magnet, which it is intended 
 to build thereon. One essential feature of the plan is that 
 all ground rents, which are to be determined by competition 
 among the tenants, shall be paid to the trustees, who, after 
 providing for interest and sinking fund, will hand the 
 balance to the Central Council of the new municipality, 1 to 
 be employed by such Council in the creation and main- 
 tenance of all necessary public works — roads, schools, 
 parks, etc. 
 
 The objects of this land purchase may be stated in 
 various ways, but it is sufficient here to say that some of 
 the chief objects are these : On the part of working-class 
 people the object is to find work at wages of higher pur- 
 chasing power, and to secure healthier surroundings and 
 more regular employment. To enterprising manufacturers, 
 architects, engineers, builders, and mechanicians of all kinds, 
 as well as to many engaged in various professions, it is 
 intended to offer a means of securing new and better em- 
 ployment for their capital and talents, while to the agri- 
 culturalist at present on the estate, as well as to those 
 who may migrate thither, it is designed to open a new 
 market for their produce close to their doors. Its object 
 is, in short, to raise the standard of health and comfort of 
 all true workers of whatever grade — the means by which 
 these objects are to be achieved being a healthy, natural, 
 and economic combination of town and country life, and 
 this on land owned by the municipality. 
 
 1 This word, " municipality," is not used in a technical sense. 
 
14 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 The town of Garden City, which is to be built near 
 the centre of the 6,000 acres, covers an area of 1,000 acres, 
 or a sixth part of the 6,000 acres, and is of circular form, 
 1,240 yards (or nearly three-quarters of a mile) from centre 
 to circumference. (Diagram 2 is a ground-plan of the 
 whole municipal area, showing the town in the centre ; 
 and Diagram 3, which represents one section or ward of the 
 town, will be useful in following the description of the town 
 itself.) 
 
 Six magnificent boulevards — each 120 feet wide — 
 traverse the city from centre to circumference, dividing it 
 into six equal parts or wards. In the centre is a circular 
 space of 185 yards in diameter, and containing about five 
 and a half acres, laid out as a beautiful and well-watered 
 garden ; and, surrounding this garden, each standing in its 
 own ample grounds, are the larger public buildings — town 
 hall, principal concert and lecture hall, theatre, library, 
 museum, picture-gallery, and hospital. 
 
 The rest of the large space encircled by the u Crystal 
 Palace " is a public park, containing 145 acres, which 
 includes ample recreation grounds within very easy access 
 of all the people. 
 
 Running all round the Central Park (except where it is 
 intersected by the boulevards) is a wide glass corridor 
 called " Crystal Palace." This building is in wet weather 
 one of the favourite resorts of the people, whilst the know- 
 ledge that its bright shelter is ever close at hand tempts 
 people into Central Park, even in the most doubtful of 
 weathers. Here manufactured goods are exposed for sale, 
 and here most of that class of shopping which requires 
 the joy of deliberation and selection is done. The space 
 
THE TOWN-COUNTRY MAGNET. 
 
 enclosed by the Crystal Palace is, however, a good deal 
 larger than is required for these purposes, and a consider- 
 able part of it is used as a Winter Garden — the whole 
 forming a permanent exhibition of a most attractive 
 character, whilst its circular form brings it near to every 
 dweller in the town — the furthest removed inhabitant 
 being within 600 yards. 
 
 Passing out of the Crystal Palace on our way to the 
 outer ring of the town we cross Fifth Avenue — lined, as are all 
 the roads of the town, with trees — fronting which, and 
 looking on to the Crystal Palace, we find a ring of very 
 excellently-built houses, each standing in its own ample 
 grounds ; and as we continue our walk, we observe that the 
 houses are for the most part built either in concentric 
 rings, facing the various Avenues (as the circular roads are 
 termed), or fronting the boulevards and roads, which all 
 converge to the centre of the town. Asking the friend who 
 accompanies us on our journey what the population of this 
 little city may be, we are told about 30,000, and that there 
 are in the town 5,500 building lots of an average size of 
 20 feet by 130 feet — the minimum space allotted for the 
 purpose being 16 by 125. Noticing the very varied 
 architecture and design which the houses and group of 
 houses display — some having common gardens and co- 
 operative kitchens — we learn that general observance of 
 street line or harmonious departure from it are the chief 
 points as to house-building over which the municipal 
 authorities exercise control, for, though proper sanitary 
 arrangements are strictly enforced, the fullest measure of 
 individual taste and preference is encouraged. 
 
 Walking still toward the outskirts of the town, we come 
 
i6 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 upon " Grand Avenue." This avenue is fully entitled to 
 the name it bears, for it is 420 feet wide, 1 and forming a 
 belt of green upwards of three miles long, divides that 
 part of the town which lies outside Central Park into two 
 belts. It really constitutes an additional park of 115 acres 
 — a park which is within 240 yards of the furthest removed 
 inhabitant. In this splendid avenue six sites, each of four 
 acres, are reserved for public schools and their surrounding 
 play-grounds and gardens, while other sites are reserved for 
 churches of any denominations which the religious feelings 
 of the people may select, and which they are prepared out 
 of their own funds to erect and maintain. We observe that 
 the houses fronting on Grand Avenue have departed (at 
 least in one of the wards — that of which Diagram 3 is a 
 representation) — from the general plan of concentric rings, 
 and, in order to ensure a longer line of frontage on Grand 
 Avenue, are arranged in crescents — thus also to the eye yet 
 farther enlarging the already splendid width of Grand 
 Avenue. 
 
 In the outer ring of the town are factories, warehouses, 
 dairies, markets, coal yards, timber yards, etc., all fronting 
 on the circle railway, which encompasses the whole town, 
 and which has sidings connecting it with a main line of 
 railway which passes through the estate. This arrangement 
 enables goods to be loaded direct into trucks from ware- 
 houses and workshops, and so sent by railway to distant 
 markets, or taken direct from the trucks into the ware- 
 houses or factories, thus not only effecting a very great 
 saving in regard to packing and cartage, and reducing to a 
 minimum loss from breakage, but also, by reducing the 
 1 Boulevard du Midi, Brussels, is only 225 feet wide. 
 
THE TOWN-COUNTRY MAGNET. I J 
 
 traffic on the roads of the town, lessening to a very marked 
 extent the cost of their maintenance. Each warehouse and 
 factory has practically a goods station at its door, while no 
 inhabitant of the city is more than 660 yards from the 
 railway, which is, of course, used for passengers as well as 
 for goods. The depth of these lots fronting on the railway 
 is 150 feet, and it will be seen that, besides their railway 
 frontage, they front on a road (First Avenue), which is 90 
 feet in width. 
 
 All the sewage and other refuse of the town is utilised on 
 the agricultural portions of the estate — (see Diagram 2) — 
 which is held by various individuals in large farms, small 
 holdings, allotments, cow pastures, etc. ; the natural competi- 
 tion of these various methods of agriculture, tested by the 
 willingness of occupiers to offer the highest rent to the 
 municipality, tending to bring about the best system of hus- 
 bandry, or, what is more probable, the best systems adapted 
 for various purposes. Thus it is easily conceivable that it 
 may prove advantageous to grow wheat in very large fields, 
 involving united action under a capitalist farmer, or by a 
 body of co-operators ; while the cultivation of vegetables, 
 fruits, and flowers, which requires closer and more personal 
 care, and more of the artistic and inventive faculty, may 
 possibly be best dealt with by individuals, or by small 
 groups of individuals having a common belief in the efficacy 
 and value of certain dressings, methods of culture, or arti- 
 ficial and natural surroundings. 
 
 This plan, or, if the reader be pleased to term it, this 
 absence of plan, avoids the dangers of stagnation or dead 
 level, and, though encouraging individual initiative, permits 
 of the fullest co-operation, while the increased rents which 
 
 B 
 
i8 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 follow from this form of competition are common or muni- 
 cipal property, and by far the larger part of them are 
 expended in permanent improvements, and in drainage and 
 other works, which involve considerable outlay, 
 
 "While the town proper, with its population engaged in 
 various trades, callings, and professions, and with a store or 
 depot in each ward, offers the most natural market to the 
 people engaged on the agricultural estate, inasmuch as to 
 the extent to which the townspeople demand their produce 
 they escape altogether any railway rates and charges ; yet 
 the farmers and others are not by any means limited to the 
 town as their only market, but have the fullest right to dis- 
 pose of their produce to whomsoever they please. Here, as 
 in every feature of the experiment, it will be seen that it is 
 not the area of rights which is contracted, but the area of 
 choice which is enlarged. 
 
 This principle of freedom holds good with regard to manu- 
 facturers and others who are invited to establish themselves 
 in the town. These manage their affairs in their own way, 
 subject, of course, to the general law of the land, and sub- 
 ject to the provision of sufficient space for workmen, and reason- 
 able sanitary conditions. Even in regard to such matters 
 as water, lighting, and telephonic communication, — which 
 the municipality would, if efficient and honest, be certainly 
 the best and most natural body to supply, — no rigid or abso- 
 lute monopoly is sought ; and if any private corporation or 
 any body of individuals proved itself capable of supplying 
 on more advantageous terms, either the whole town or a 
 section of it, with these or any commodities the supply of 
 which was taken up by the corporation, this would be 
 allowed. No really sound system of action is in more need 
 
THE TOWN-COUNTRY MAGNET. 19 
 
 of artificial support than is any sound system of thought. 
 The area of municipal and corporate action is probably 
 destined to become greatly enlarged ; but, if it is to be so, 
 it will be because the people possess faith in such action, 
 and that faith can be best shown by a wide extension of the 
 area of freedom. 
 
 Dotted about the estate are seen various charitable and 
 philanthropic institutions. These are not under the control 
 of the municipality, but are supported and managed by 
 various public-spirited people who have been invited by the 
 municipality to establish these institutions in an open, 
 healthy district, and on land let to them at a pepper-corn rent, 
 it occurring to the authorities that they can the better 
 afford to be thus generous, as the spending power of these 
 institutions greatly benefits the whole community. Besides, 
 as those persons who migrate to the estate are among the 
 most energetic and resourceful members of the community, 
 it is but just and right that their more helpless brethren 
 should be able to enjoy the benefits of an experiment which 
 is designed for humanity at large. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY, AND HOW IT IS OBTAINED — 
 THE AGRICULTURAL ESTATE. 
 
 "It is my object to put forward a theoretical outline of a com- 
 munity so circumstanced and so maintained by the exercise of its 
 own free will, guided by scientific knowledge, that the perfection of 
 sanitary results will be approached, if not actually realised, in the 
 co-existence of the lowest possible general mortality with the 
 highest possible individual longevity." — Dr. B. W. Richardson, 
 " Hygeia ; or, a City of Health." 
 
 "When drainage everywhere, with its double functions, restoring 
 what it takes away, is accomplished, then, this being combined with 
 the data of a new social economy, the products of the earth will be 
 increased ten-fold, and the problem of misery will be wonderfully 
 diminished. Add the suppression of parasitism and it will be 
 solved."— Victor Hugo, " Les Miserables," Book II., Chap. i. 
 
 Amongst the essential differences between Garden City and 
 
 other municipalities, one of the chief is its method of raising 
 
 its revenue. Its entire revenue is derived from rents ; and 
 
 one of the purposes of this work is to show that the rents 
 
 which may very reasonably be expected from the various 
 
 tenants on the estate will be amply sufficient, if paid into 
 
 the coffers of Garden City, (a) to pay the interest on the 
 
 money with which the estate is purchased, (6) to provide a 
 
 sinking-fund for the purpose of paying off the principal, 
 
 (c) to construct and maintain all such works as are usually 
 
 constructed and maintained by municipal and other local 
 
 20 
 
THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY. 
 
 21 
 
 authorities out of rates compulsorily levied, and (d) (after 
 redemption of debentures) to provide a large surplus for 
 other purposes, such as old-age pensions or insurance 
 against accident and sickness. 
 
 Perhaps no difference between town and country is more 
 noticeable than the difference in the rent charged for the use 
 of the soil. Thus, while in some parts of London the rent 
 is equal to «£30,000 an acre, £4 an acre is an extremely 
 high rent for agricultural land. This enormous difference 
 of rental value is of course almost entirely due to the 
 presence in the one case and the absence in the other of a 
 large population ; and, as it cannot be attributed to the 
 action of any particular individuals, it is frequently spoken 
 of as the " unearned increment," i.e., unearned by the 
 landlord, though a more correct term would be " collectively- 
 earned increment." 
 
 The presence of a considerable population thus giving a 
 greatly added value to the soil, it is obvious that a migra- 
 tion of population on any considerable scale to any particular 
 area will be certainly attended with a corresponding rise in 
 the value of the land so settled upon, and it is also obvious 
 that such increment of value may, with some foresight and 
 pre-arrangement, become the property of the migrating 
 people. 
 
 This foresight and pre-arrangement, never before exercised 
 in an effective manner, are displayed conspicuously in the 
 case of Garden City, where the land, as we have seen, is 
 vested in trustees, who hold it in trust, after payment of the 
 debenture holders, for the whole community, so that the 
 entire increment of value gradually created becomes the 
 property of the municipality, with the effect that though 
 
22 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 rents may rise, and even rise considerably, such rise in rent 
 will not become the property of private individuals, but will 
 be applied in relief of rates. It is this arrangement which 
 will be seen to give Garden City much of its magnetic 
 power. 
 
 The site of Garden City we have taken to be worth at the 
 time of its purchase £40 an acre, or £240,000. The 
 purchase money may be assumed to represent 30 years' 
 purchase, and on this basis the annual rent paid by the 
 former tenants was £8,000. If, therefore, there was a 
 population of 1,000 persons upon the estate at the time of 
 the purchase, then each man, woman, and child was con- 
 tributing towards this rent-roll an average sum of £8 per 
 annum. But the population of Garden City, including its 
 agricultural land, is, when completed, 32,000, and the 
 estate has cost them a sum on which they pay an annual 
 charge by way of interest of £9,600. Thus, while before 
 the experiment was initiated, 1,000 persons out of their 
 united earnings contributed £8,000 a year, or £8 a head, 
 on the completion of the tow T n 32,000 persons out of their 
 united earnings will contribute £9,600 a year, or an 
 average of 6s. a head. 
 
 This sum of 6s. per head per annum is all the rent, 
 strictly speaking, which the inhabitants of Garden City will 
 ever be called upon to pay ; for it is all the rent which they 
 pay away, any further sum they pay being a contribution 
 towards their rates. 
 
 Let us now suppose that each person, besides contributing 
 annually 6s. a head, contributes an average annual sum of 
 £1 14s., or £2 in all. In that case tw r o things may be 
 noticed. First, each person will be paying for ground-rent 
 
THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY. 
 
 23 
 
 and rates, only one-fourth of the sum which each person 
 before the purchase paid in ground-rent alone ; and, 
 secondly, the Board of Management, after the payment of 
 interest on the debentures, will receive an annual sum 
 of c£54,400, which, as will be presently shown, would, after 
 providing a sinking fund (of £4,400), defray all those costs, 
 charges, and expenses which are usually met by local taxa- 
 tion. 
 
 The average annual sum contributed by each man, 
 woman, and child in England and Wales for local purposes is 
 about £2 a head/ and the average sum contributed for ground 
 rent is, at a very low estimate, about £2 10s. 2 The average 
 yearly contribution for ground-rent and local rates is, there- 
 fore, about £4 10s. It might, therefore, be safely assumed 
 that the people of Garden City would willingly pay £2 per 
 head in complete discharge of ground-rent and local rates ; 
 but to make the case the clearer and stronger, we will test 
 the supposed willingness of the tenants of Garden City to 
 
 1 The aggregate receipts of the local authorities during the fin- 
 ancial year 1893-4, excluding loans, amounted to £58,377,680 (Local 
 Government Board Report for 1895-96, p. clxi.), and the population 
 in England and Wales in 1891 was 29,002,525. 
 
 2 It is very difficult to arrive at any satisfactory figure on this 
 point, but there is no doubt that ground-rents usually considerably 
 exceed rates, especially in the case of business premises. But in 
 addition to this, vast sums have been received by landlords for land 
 purchased by canal and railway companies, as well as by municipal 
 and other public bodies, and no small part of the interest paid on 
 stocks and debentures of these classes is really landlords' rent in a 
 disguised form. I may further observe that Mr. S. Smith, M.P. in 
 an article (in the Contemporary, Dec. 1883), written expressly to 
 counteract exaggerated ideas of the growth of rent, put the 
 growth of rent as from £49,000,000 in 1814 to £69,000,000 in 1883. 
 
24 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 pay such a sum as £2 a year for rates and rents in another 
 way. 
 
 For this purpose, let us deal first with the agricultural 
 estate, leaving the town estate to be dealt with separately. 
 Obviously the rent which can be secured will be consider- 
 ably greater than before the town was built. Every farmer 
 now has a market close to his doors. There are 30,000 
 townspeople to be fed. Those persons, of course, are per- 
 fectly free to get their food stuffs from any part of the 
 world, and in the case of many products will doubtless con- 
 tinue to be supplied from abroad. These farmers are hardly 
 likely to supply them with tea, with coffee, with spices, 
 with tropical fruits or with sugar, 1 and their struggle to com- 
 pete with America and Russia for the supply of wheat or 
 flour to the town may be as keen as ever. But surely the 
 straggle will not be so despairing. A ray — a beam of hope 
 will gladden the heart of the despairing home-producer of 
 wheat, for while the American has to pay railway charges 
 to the sea-board, charges for Atlantic transit and railway 
 charges to the consumer, the farmer of Garden City has a 
 market at his very doors, and this a market which the rent 
 he contributes will help to build up. 
 
 Or consider vegetables and fruits. Farmers, except near 
 towns, do not often grow them now. Why ? Chiefly be- 
 cause of the difficulty and uncertainty of a market, and the 
 high charges for freights and commission. To quote the 
 words of Dr Farquharson, M.P., when they "try to dispose 
 of these things they find themselves struggling so hopelessly 
 in a spider's web of rings, and middlemen, and speculators, 
 
 i The electric light, with cheap motive power for its generation, 
 with glass-houses, may make even some of these things possible. 
 
THE REVE.NUE OF GARDEN CITY. 25 
 
 that they are more than half-inclined to give up the attempt 
 in despair, and fall back on those things that stand up 
 straight and square to their prices in the open market." 
 A curious calculation may be interesting with regard to 
 milk. Assuming each person in the town consumed only 
 one-third of a pint a day, then 30,000 would consume 1,250 
 gallons a day, and might thus save, taking railway charges 
 at a penny per gallon/ 1 upwards of £1,900 per annum in 
 railway rates upon the one item of milk. Some of that 
 £1,900 would go to the consumers, some to the dairy 
 farmer, and some to the community generally in the form 
 of an increased rent ; and obviously that saving of £1,900 
 on railway rates for milk must be multiplied by a large 
 figure in order to realise the general saving to be effected 
 by placing consumer and producer in such close association. 
 In other words the combination of town and country is not 
 only healthful, but economic — a point which every step 
 taken will serve to make yet more clear. 
 
 But the rents which the agricultural tenants of Garden City 
 would be willing to pay would increase for another reason. 
 The waste products of the town could, and this without 
 heavy charges for railway transport or other expensive 
 agencies, be readily brought back to the soil, thus increas- 
 ing its fertility. The question of sew T age disposal is naturally 
 
 1 " The Great Western Railway, thanks to Sir Nigel Kingscote, 
 determined to help the farmers on its route by conveying milk to 
 London at the lowest rates. After March it will be possible to send 
 milk 100 miles for a penny a gallon. But, as Sir Nigel points out, 
 no reduction of railway rates can do much in this direction. If the 
 farmer is to have better prices, the middleman's profit must be cut. 
 At present the company gets Id. on each gallon, the farmer 6d., 
 while the retailer sells it for Is. 4d. or Is. 8d." — Echo, 31st January, 
 1896. 
 
26 
 
 TO-MORROW! 
 
 a difficult one to deal with, but its inherent difficulty is 
 often much increased by artificial and imperfect conditions 
 already in existence. Thus Sir Benjamin Baker, in his 
 joint report with Mr. (now Sir) Alexander Binnie to the 
 London County Council, says : " In approaching the con- 
 sideration of the vast question of the whole sewerage system 
 of the Metropolis, and the state of the Thames, as a practical 
 problem ... we had clearly at once to recognise the fact 
 that the general features of the main drainage system were 
 unalterably settled, and must be accepted in the same way 
 as the main lines of thoroughfares have to be accepted 
 whether quite as we could wish them to be or not." But 
 on Garden City site, given the skilful engineer, he would 
 have comparatively little difficulty. He would have, as it 
 were, a clean sheet on which to prepare his plans, and the 
 whole estate being equally the property of the municipality, 
 he would have a free course before him, and would doubtless 
 succeed in adding greatly to the productiveness of the agri- 
 cultural estate. 
 
 The great increase in the number of allotments, especially 
 such favourably situated allotments as are shown in Diagram 
 2 would also tend to raise the total sum offered in rent. 1 
 
 There are yet other reasons why the rent which a farmer 
 on the Garden City estate would be willing to pay for his 
 farm, or a labourer for his allotment, would tend to increase. 
 
 1 " In order to satisfy the legitimate claims of the agricultural 
 labour class alone, to the existing, say, half-million allotments, 
 another million should at once be added. A careful and prolonged 
 inquiry has convinced me that the worker on the land pays rent 
 which is, on the average, nearer to three times than twice the rent 
 paid by the tenant farmer for land of similar character."— Rev. 
 Frome Wilkinson, Daily Chronicle, 18th Sept., 1895. 
 
THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY. 
 
 27 
 
 The productiveness of the agricultural part of the estate, 
 besides being increased by a well-devised system of sewer- 
 age, and by a new and somewhat extensive market, with 
 unique conveniences for transit to more distant markets, 
 would also be increased because the tenure on which the 
 land is held encourages maximum cultivation. It is a just 
 tenure. The agricultural portion of the estate is let at fair 
 rents, with a right to continue in occupation as long as the 
 tenant is willing to pay a rent equal to that offered by any 
 would-be occupier, less, say, 10 per cent, in favour of the 
 occupying tenant — the incoming tenant having also to com- 
 pensate the outgoing tenant for all unexhausted improve- 
 ments. Under this system, while it would be impossible for 
 the tenant to secure to himself any undue share of that 
 natural increment of land-value which would be brought 
 about by the general growth in well-being of the town, he 
 would yet have, as all tenants in possession probably should 
 have, a preference over any new-comer, and would know 
 that he would not lose those fruits of his past industry 
 which were not yet ingathered but were still adding their 
 value to the soil. Surely no one can doubt that such a 
 tenure would, of itself, tend greatly to increase at once the 
 activity and industry of the tenant, the productivity of the 
 soil, and the rent which the tenant would be willing to pay. 
 
 That there would be this increased offer of rent will 
 become yet more obvious if we consider for a moment the 
 nature of the rent paid by a tenant of Garden City. Part 
 of what he pays would be in respect of interest on the 
 debentures on which the money to purchase the estate was 
 raised, or in the redemption of those debentures, and would 
 thus, except so far as the debentures were held by residents 
 
28 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 on the estate, pass away from the community altogether ; 
 but the whole of the remaining sum paid would be expended 
 locally, and the farmer would have a share equal to that of 
 every adult in the administration of such money. The 
 term "rent," therefore, has, in Garden City, acquired a new 
 meaning, and, for the sake of clearness, it will be necessary 
 in future to use terms which will not be ambiguous. That 
 part of the rent which represents interest on debentures will 
 be hereafter called " landlord's rent v ; that part which re- 
 presents repayment of purchase-money " sinking fund " ; that 
 part which is devoted to public purposes " rates " \ while the 
 total sum will be termed " rate-rent." 
 
 Diagram 4, which I have called u The Vanishing Point of 
 Landlord's Rent," will, I hope, serve to make this point 
 perfectly clear. It shows the nature and extent of the 
 financial burden at present borne by an average member of 
 the population (see p. 23), and how the character and extent 
 of that burden may be gradually changed. 
 
 From these considerations surely it is obvious that the 
 " rate-rent v which the farmer will be willing to pay into the 
 treasury of Garden City will be considerably higher than 
 the rent he would be willing to pay to a private landlord, 
 who, besides increasing his rent as the farmer makes his 
 land more valuable, will also leave him with the full burden 
 of local taxation resting upon him. In short, while the plan 
 proposed embraces a system of sewage-disposal which will 
 return to the soil in a transmuted and transmutable form, 
 many of those products, the growth of which, by exhausting 
 its natural fertility, demand elsew 7 here the application of 
 manures so expensive that the farmer becomes sometimes 
 blinded to their necessity, so does it embrace a system of 
 
THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY. 2Q 
 
 rate-rents by which many of the farmer's hard-earned 
 sovereigns, hitherto lost to him by being paid away to his 
 landlord, shall return to his exhausted exchequer, not indeed 
 in the form in which they left it, but in a variety of useful 
 forms, such as roads, schools, markets, which will assist him 
 most materially, though indirectly, in his work, but which, 
 under present conditions, entail so severe a burden as to 
 make him naturally slow to see their inherent necessity, 
 and even to look upon some of them with suspicion and 
 dislike. Who can doubt that if the farm and the farmer 
 can be placed under conditions so healthful and natural 
 alike in a physical and moral sense, the willing soil and the 
 hopeful farmer will alike respond to their new environment 
 — the soil becoming more fertile by every blade of grass it 
 yields, the farmer richer by every penny of rate-rent he 
 contributes ? 
 
 We are now in a position to see that the rate -rent which 
 will be readily paid by farmer, small occupier, and allotment 
 holder, would be considerably greater than tbe rent he paid 
 before — (1) because of the presence of a new town popula- 
 tion demanding new and more profitable farm products, in 
 respect of which railway charges can be largely saved ; (2) 
 by the due return to the soil of its natural elements ; (3) 
 by the just, equitable, and natural conditions on which the 
 land is held ; and (4) by reason of the fact that the rent 
 now paid is rate and rent, while the rent formerly paid 
 left the rates to be paid by the tenant. 
 
 But certain as it is that the " rate-rent " would represent 
 a very considerable increase over the bare rent formerly paid 
 by the tenants on the estate, it is still very much a matter 
 of conjecture what the "rate-rent" would be; and we shall, 
 
3o 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 therefore, be acting prudently if we greatly under-estimate 
 the " rate-rent " which would probably be offered. If, then, 
 in view of all the circumstances, we estimate that the farm- 
 ing population of Garden City will be prepared to pay for 
 rates and rent 50 per cent, more than they before paid for 
 rent alone, we shall reach the following result : — 
 
 Estimated Gross Revenue from Agricultural Estate, 
 
 Original rent paid by tenants of 5,000 acres, say £6,500 
 Add 50 per cent, for contributions to rates and 
 
 sinking fund, ... ... ... ... ... 3,250 
 
 Total "rate-rent" from agricultural 
 
 estate, £9,750 
 
 We shall in the next chapter estimate the amount which 
 may, on the most reasonable calculation, be expected from 
 the town estate, and then proceed to consider the suffici- 
 ency of the total rate-rents for the municipal needs of the 
 town. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY — TOWN ESTATE. 
 
 " Whatever reforms be introduced into the dwellings of the Lon- 
 don poor, it will still remain true that the whole area of London is 
 insufficient to supply its population with fresh air and the free 
 space that is wanted for wholesome recreation. A remedy for the 
 overcrowding of London will still be wanted. . . . There are large 
 classes of the population of London whose removal into the country 
 would be in the long run economically advantageous ; it would 
 benefit alike those who moved and those who remained behind. . . • 
 Of the 150,000 or more hired workers in the clothes-making trades, 
 by far the greater part are very poorly paid, and do work which 
 it is against all economic reason to have done where ground-rent is 
 high." — Professor Marshall, "The Housing of the London Poor," 
 Contemporary Revieiv, 1884. 
 
 Having in the last chapter estimated the gross revenue 
 which may be anticipated from the agricultural part of the 
 estate at £9,750, we will now turn to the town estate, 
 where, obviously, the conversion of an agricultural area into 
 a town will be attended with a very large rise in land 
 values, and endeavour roughly to estimate — again taking 
 care to keep well within the mark — the amount of " rate- 
 rent " which will be freely offered by the tenants of the 
 town estate. 
 
 The site of the town proper consists, it will be remem- 
 bered, of 1,000 acres, and is assumed to have cost £40,000, 
 the interest of which, at 4 per cent., is £1,600 per annum. 
 This sum of £1,600 is, therefore, all the landlord's rent 
 
 3i 
 
32 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 which the people of the town site will be called upon to pay, 
 any additional " rate-rent " they may contribute being 
 devoted either to the payment of the purchase-money as 
 " sinking-fund," or applied as " rates" to the construction 
 and maintenance of roads, schools, water-works, sewage- 
 works, and to other municipal purposes. It will be inter- 
 esting, therefore, to see what sort of a burden " landlord's 
 rent " will represent per head, and what the community 
 would secure by such contribution. Now, if the sum of 
 £1,600, being the annual interest or landlord's rent, be 
 divided by 30,000 (the supposed population of the town), it 
 will be found to equal an annual contribution by each man, 
 woman, and child of rather less than Is. Id. per head. This 
 is all the " landlord's rent " which will ever be levied, any 
 additional sum collected as " rate-rent " being applied to 
 sinking fund or to local purposes. 
 
 And now let us notice what this fortunately-placed com- 
 munity obtains for this insignificant sum. It obtains for 
 Is. Id. per head per annum, first, ample sites for homes, 
 these averaging, as we have seen, 20 feet by 130 feet, and 
 accommodating, on an average, 5^ persons to each lot. 
 It obtains ample space for roads, some of which are of truly 
 magnificent proportions, so wide and spacious that sunlight 
 and air may freely circulate, and in which trees, shrubs, and 
 grass give to the town a semi-rural appearance. It also 
 obtains ample sites for town-hall, public-library, museum 
 and picture-gallery, theatre, concert-hall, hospital, schools, 
 churches, swimming baths, public markets, etc. It also 
 secures a central park of 145 acres, and a magnificent 
 avenue 420 feet wide, extending in a circle of over three 
 miles, unbroken save by spacious boulevards and by schools 
 
THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY. 
 
 33 
 
 and churches, which, one may be sure, would not be the 
 less beautiful because so little money had been expended on 
 their sites. It secures also all the land required for a rail- 
 way i\ miles long, encompassing the town; 82 acres for 
 warehouses, factories, markets, and a splendid site for a 
 crystal palace devoted to shopping, and serving also as a 
 winter garden. The leases under which all building sites are 
 let do not, therefore, contain the usual covenant by the tenant 
 to pay all rates, taxes, and assessments levied in respect of 
 such property, but, on the contrary, contain a covenant by 
 the landlord to apply the whole sum received, first, in pay- 
 ment of debenture interest ; secondly, towards the redemp- 
 tion of the debentures ; and thirdly, as to the whole of the 
 balance, into a public fund, to be applied to public purposes, 
 among these being the rates levied by public authorities, 
 other than the municipal authority, of the city. 
 
 Let us now attempt to estimate the rate-rents which may 
 be anticipated in respect of our town-estate. 
 
 First we will deal with the home-building lots. All are 
 excellently situated, but those fronting Grand Avenue 
 (420 feet), and the magnificent boulevards (120 feet) would 
 probably call forth the highest tenders. We can here deal 
 only with averages, but we think anyone would admit that 
 an average rate-rent of 6s. a foot frontage for home lots 
 would be extremely moderate. This would make the rate- 
 rent of a building lot 20 feet wide in an average position £6 a 
 year, and on this basis the 5,500 building lots would yield a 
 gross revenue of £33,000. 
 
 The rate-rents from the sites of factories, warehouses, 
 markets, etc., cannot perhaps be so well estimated by 
 
 the foot frontage, but we may perhaps safely assume that 
 
 c 
 
34 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 an average employer would willingly pay £2 in respect of 
 each employee. It is of course not suggested that the rate- 
 rent levied should be a poll-tax ; it would, as has been said, 
 be raised by competition among the tenants ; but this way 
 of estimating the rate- rent to be paid will perhaps give a 
 ready means by which manufacturers or other employers, 
 co-operative societies, or individuals working on their own 
 account, would be able to judge whether they would be lightly 
 rated and rented as compared with their present position. 
 It must be, however, distinctly borne in mind that we are 
 dealing with averages ; and if the figure should seem high 
 to a large employer, it will seem ridiculously low to a 
 small shop-keeper. 
 
 Now in a town with a population of 30,000, there would 
 be about twenty thousand persons between the ages of 16 
 and 65 ; and if it is assumed that 10,625 of these would be 
 employed in factories, shops, warehouses, markets, etc., or 
 in any way which involved the use of a site, other than a 
 home-building site, to be leased from the municipality, there 
 would be a revenue from this source of £21,250. 
 
 The gross revenue of the entire estate would there- 
 fore be : — 
 
 Rate-rent from agricultural estate (see p. 30) ... £9,750 
 
 ,, 5500 home building lots at £6 per 
 
 lot 33,000 
 
 ,, from business premises 10,625 per- 
 sons employed at an average of 
 £2 a head 21,250 
 
 Or £2 per head of population for rates and rent. 
 
 £64,000 
 
THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY. 
 
 35 
 
 This sum would be available as follows :— 
 
 For landlord's rent or interest on purchase 
 
 money £240,000 at 4 per cent £9,600 
 
 For sinking fund (30 years) 4,400 
 
 For such purposes as are elsewhere defrayed 
 
 out of rates 50,000 
 
 £64,000 
 
 It is now important to inquire whether £50,000 will 
 suffice for the municipal needs of Garden City. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THfl REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY — GENERAL OBSERVATIONS 
 ON ITS EXPENDITURE. 
 
 " London has grownup in a chaotic manner, without any unity of 
 design, and at the chance discretion of any persons who were for- 
 tunate enough to own land as it came into demand at successive 
 periods for building operations. Sometimes a great landlord laid 
 out a quarter in a manner to tempt the better class of residents by 
 squares, gardens or retired streets, often cut off from through traffic 
 by gates and bars ; but even in these cases London as a whole has 
 not been thought of, and no main arteries have been provided for. 
 In other and more frequent cases of small landowners, the only 
 design of builders has been to crowd upon the land as many streets 
 and houses as possible, regardless of anything around them, and 
 without open spaces or wide approaches. A careful examination of 
 a map of London shows how absolutely wanting in any kind of plan 
 has been its growth, and how little the convenience and wants of the 
 whole population or the considerations of dignity and beauty have 
 been consulted." — Right Hon. G. J. Shaw-Lefevre, New Review, 
 1891, p. 435. 
 
 " It is a great pity that the old suggestion of attaching, wherever 
 possible, half-an-acre or so of land to each public elementary school 
 in the country has never been carried out. School gardens might be 
 made the means of giving the young an insight into horticulture, 
 the effect of which they would find pleasant and profitable in after 
 life. The physiology and relative value of food is a much more 
 useful branch of school instruction than many a branch upon which 
 the young have wasted years of their time, and the school garden 
 would be the most valuable of object-lessons." — The Echo, Nov. 1890. 
 
 Before entering upon the question which presented itself at 
 the conclusion of the last chapter — that of endeavouring to 
 
 36 
 
THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY. 37 
 
 ascertain whether the estimated net available income of 
 Garden City (£50,000 per annum) would be sufficient for its 
 municipal needs, I will very shortly state how it is proposed 
 to raise the money required for commencing operations. 
 The money would be borrowed on " B w debentures, and 
 would be secured by a charge upon the "rate-rent," subject 
 of course to the payment of interest and sinking-fund in 
 respect of the " A " debentures on which the purchase money 
 of the estate is raised. It is, perhaps, superfluous to remark 
 that, though in the case of the land purchase it might be 
 requisite to raise the whole, or at least some very consider- 
 able part of the purchase money before possession would 
 be given of the estate, or operations upon it commenced, 
 yet in regard to public works to be carried out upon the 
 estate, the case is quite different, and it would be by no means 
 necessary or advisable to defer the commencement of opera- 
 tions until the whole sum which might be ultimately 
 required should be raised. No town was probably ever built 
 on such onerous conditions as would be involved in the 
 raising at the outset of such a very considerable sum as 
 would defray the cost of all its public works ; and though 
 the circumstances under which Garden City is to be built 
 may be unique, there is, as will by and by be seen, not only 
 no need for making an exception of the town in respect of 
 initial capital, but quite exceptional reasons will become 
 more and more apparent which make the overlaying of the 
 enterprise with superabundant capital altogether unneces- 
 sary, and therefore inexpedient ; although, of course, there 
 must be a sufficient sum to enable all real economies to be 
 readily effected. 
 
 Perhaps it may be w r ell in this connection to draw a 
 
38 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 distinction as to the amount of capital required between 
 the case of the building of a town and the building, let us 
 say, of a large iron bridge across an estuary. In the case of 
 the bridge it is highly expedient to raise the entire sum 
 required before commencing operations, for the simple reason 
 that the bridge is not a bridge until the last rivet is driven 
 home, nor, until its entire completion and its connection 
 with the railways or roadways at either end, has it any 
 revenue-earning power. Except, therefore, on the assump- 
 tion that it is to be fully completed, it offers very little 
 security for the capital sunk upon it. Hence it would be 
 very natural for those who are asked to invest to say, " We 
 will not put any money into this enterprise until you show 
 us that you can get enough to complete it." But the 
 money which it is proposed to raise for the development of 
 Garden City site leads to speedy results. It is to be ex- 
 pended upon roads, schools, etc. These works will be 
 carried out, having ever due relation to the number of 
 lots which have been let to tenants, who undertake to build 
 as from a certain date, and, therefore, the money expended 
 will very soon begin to yield a return in the shape of a rate- 
 rent, representing, in reality, a greatly-improved ground-rent; 
 when those who have advanced money on the " B " deben- 
 tures will have a really first-class security, and further sums 
 should be easily obtainable, and at a reduced rate of interest. 
 Again, it is an important part of the project that each 
 ward, or one-sixth part of the circular site (see Diagram 3), 
 should be in some sense a complete town by itself, and thus 
 the school buildings might serve, in the earlier stages, not 
 only as schools, but as places for religious worship, for 
 concerts, for libraries, and for meetings of various kinds, 
 
THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY. 
 
 39 
 
 so that all outlay on expensive municipal and other build- 
 ings might be deferred until the later stages of the enter- 
 prise. Work, too, would be practically completed on one 
 ward before commencing on another, and the operations in 
 the various wards would be taken up in due and proper 
 sequence, so that those portions of the town site on which 
 building operations were not in progress would also be a 
 source of revenue, either as allotments, cow-pastures, or, 
 perhaps, as brickfields. 
 
 Let us now deal with the subject immediately before us. 
 Will the principles on which Garden City is to be built have 
 any bearing on the effectiveness of its municipal expendi- 
 ture 1 In other words, will a given revenue yield greater 
 results than under ordinary conditions 1 These questions 
 will be answered in the affirmative. It will be shown that 
 pound for pound money will be more effectively spent than 
 elsewhere, and that there will be many great and obvious 
 economies which cannot be expressed in figures with much 
 accuracy, but which would certainly represent in the aggre- 
 gate a very large sum. 
 
 The first great economy to be noticed is that the item of 
 11 landlord's rent," which, under ordinary conditions, largely 
 enters into municipal expenditure, will, in Garden City, 
 scarcely enter at all. Thus, all well-ordered towns require 
 administrative buildings, schools, swimming baths, libraries, 
 parks; and the sites which these and other corporate under- 
 takings occupy are usually purchased. In such cases the 
 money necessary for the purchase of the sites is generally 
 borrowed on the security of the rates ; and thus it is that 
 a very considerable part of the total rates levied by a 
 municipality are ordinarily applied, not to productive works, 
 
40 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 but either to what we have termed " landlord's rent," in the 
 shape of interest on money borrowed to effect the purchase, 
 or (which is only landlord's rent in a capitalised form) to 
 the provision of a sinking-fund in payment of the purchase 
 money of the land so acquired. 
 
 Now, in Garden City, all such expenditure, with such 
 exceptions as road sites on agricultural estate, has been 
 already provided for. Thus the 250 acres for public parks, 
 the sites for schools and other public buildings, will cost the 
 ratepayers nothing whatever, or, to put it more correctly, 
 their cost, which was really £40 per acre, has been covered, as 
 we have seen, by the annual average contribution of Is. Id 
 per head, which each person is supposed to make in dis- 
 charge of landlord's rent; and the revenue of the town, 
 £50,000, is the net revenue after all interest and sinking- 
 fund in respect of the whole site has been deducted. In 
 considering, therefore, the question whether £50,000 is a 
 sufficient revenue, it must be remembered that in no case 
 has any cost of municipal sites to be first deducted from 
 that amount. 
 
 Another item in which a great economy will be effected 
 will be found in a comparison between Garden City and any 
 old city like London. London wishes to breathe a fuller 
 municipal spirit, and so proceeds to construct schools, to 
 pull down slums, to erect libraries, swimming baths, etc. 
 In these cases, it has not only to purchase the freeholds of 
 the sites, but also has usually to pay for the buildings which 
 had been previously erected thereon, and which are pur- 
 chased solely, of course, with a view to their demolition and 
 to a clearing of the ground, and frequently it has also to 
 meet claims for business-disturbance, together with heavy 
 
THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY. 
 
 41 
 
 legal expenses in settling claims. In this connection it may- 
 be remarked that the inclusive cost of sites of schools pur- 
 chased by the London School Board since its constitution, 
 i.e., the cost, including old buildings, business-disturbance, 
 law charges, etc., has already reached the enormous sum of 
 c£3,516,072, 1 and the inclusive cost of the sites (370 acres 
 in extent) ready for building by the Board is equal, on the 
 average, to £9,500 per acre. 
 
 At this rate the cost of the 24 acres of school sites for 
 Garden City would be £228,000, so that another site for 
 a model city could be purchased out of what would be 
 saved in Garden City in respect of school sites alone. 
 "Oh, but," it may be said, "the school sites of Garden 
 City are extravagantly large, and would be out of the 
 question in London, and it is altogether unfair to compare 
 a small town like Garden City with London, the wealthy 
 capital of a mighty Empire." I would reply, "It is 
 quite true that the cost of land in London would make 
 such sites extravagant, not to say prohibitive — they would 
 cost about £40,000,000 sterling — but does not this of 
 itself suggest a most serious defect of system, and that at 
 a most vital part I Can children be better taught where 
 land costs £9,500 an acre than where it costs £40 1 
 Whatever may be the real economic value of the London 
 site, for other purposes — as to which we may have some- 
 thing to say at a later stage — for school purposes, wherein 
 lies the advantage that the sites on which its schools are 
 built are frequently surrounded by dingy factories or 
 crowded courts and alleys 1 If Lombard St. is an ideal 
 place for banks, is not a park like the Central Avenue of 
 1 See Report, London School Board, 6th May, 1897, p. 1480. 
 
42 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 Garden City an ideal place for schools ? — and is not the 
 welfare of our children the primary consideration with any 
 well-ordered community ? " 1 "But," it may be said, " the 
 children must be educated near their homes, and these 
 homes must be near the places where their parents work." 
 Precisely ; but does not the scheme provide for this in the 
 most effective manner, and in that respect also are not the 
 school sites of Garden City superior to those of London ? 
 The children will have to expend less than an average 
 amount of energy in going to school, a matter, as all 
 educationalists admit, of immense importance, especially 
 in the winter. But further, have we not heard from 
 Professor Marshall (see heading to Chapter III.) that 
 " 150,000 people, in London, engaged in the clothes-making 
 trades, are doing work which it is against all economic 
 reason to have done where ground-rent is high M — in other 
 words, that these 150,000 people should not be in London 
 at all; and does not the consideration that the education 
 of the children of such workers is carried on at once under 
 inferior conditions and at enormous cost add weight and 
 significance to the professor's words ? If these workers 
 ought not to be in London, then their homes, for which, 
 insanitary as they are, they pay heavy rents, ought not to 
 be in London ; a certain proportion of the shop-keepers 
 who supply their wants should not be in London ; and 
 
 i Mr. Richardson, the author of one of the many proposals for 
 solving the social problem, in a work entitled, " How it can be 
 done" (Swan Sonnenschein), maintains that the first step is "a 
 complete system of maintenance, education, and training for all the 
 children of our land." The writer of that little work will, I am 
 sure, welcome my proposals as bringing his suggestions within the 
 realm of practical politics. 
 
THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY. 
 
 43 
 
 various other people to whom the wages earned by these 
 persons in the clothes-making trade give employment 
 should not be in London. Hence, there is a sense — and a 
 very real one — in which it is fair to compare the cost of 
 school-sites in Garden City with the cost of school-sites in 
 London ; because obviously if these people do, as suggested 
 by Professor Marshall, migrate from London, they can at 
 once effect (if they make, as I have suggested, proper 
 provision beforehand) not only a great saving in respect 
 of ground-rent for their workshops, but also a vast saving 
 in respect of sites for homes, schools, and other purposes ; 
 and this saving is obviously the difference between what 
 is now paid and what would be paid under the new con- 
 ditions, minus the loss incurred (if any), and plus the 
 numerous gains secured as the result of such removal. 
 
 Let us for the sake of clearness make the comparison in 
 another way. The people of London have paid a capital 
 sum representing, when spread over the whole population of 
 London (this being taken at 6,000,000), upwards of 
 lis. 6d. per head of population for school sites held 
 by the London School Board, a sum which is, of course, 
 exclusive of the sites for voluntary schools. The population 
 of Garden City, 30,000 in number, have entirely saved that 
 lis. 6d. per head, making a total saving of £17,250, which 
 at 3 per cent, involves an annual saving of £517 in 
 perpetuity. And besides thus saving £517 a year as 
 interest on cost of sites for schools, Garden City has secured 
 sites for its schools incomparably better than those of 
 London schools — sites which afford ample accommodation for 
 all the children of the town, and not, as in the case of the 
 London School Board, accommodation for only half of the 
 
44 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 children of the municipality. (The sites of the London 
 School Board are 370 acres in extent, or about 1 acre to 
 every 16,000 of the population, while the people of Garden 
 City have obtained 24 acres or 1 acre for every 1,250.) In 
 other words, Garden City secures sites which are larger, 
 better placed, and in every way more suitable for educa- 
 tional purposes, at a mere fraction of the cost which in 
 London is incurred for sites vastly inferior in every respect. 
 
 The economies with which we have thus dealt, are, it 
 will be seen, effected by the two simple expedients w r e have 
 referred to. First, by buying the land before a new value 
 is given to it by migration, the migrating people obtain a 
 site at an extremely low figure, and secure the coming 
 increment for themselves and those who come after them ; 
 and secondly, because, coming to a new site, they do not 
 have to pay large sums for old buildings, for compensation 
 for disturbance, and for heavy legal charges. The practica- 
 bility of securing for the poor workers of London the first 
 of these great advantages appears to have been for the 
 moment overlooked by Professor Marshall in his article in 
 the Contemporary Review* for the professor remarks 
 " Ultimately all would gain by the migration, but most " 
 (the italics are my own) "the landowners and the railroads 
 connected with the colony." Let us then adopt the expedient 
 here advocated of securing that the landowners, "who . . . 
 will gain most" by a project specially designed to benefit a 
 class now low down in the social scale, shall be those very 
 people themselves, as members of a new municipality, and 
 
 1 No one is of course better aware of this possibility than 
 the professor himself. (See "Principles of Economics," (2nd ed.) 
 Book v., Chaps, x. and xiii.) 
 
THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY. 
 
 45 
 
 then a strong additional inducement will be held out to 
 them to make a change, which nothing but the lack of 
 combined effort has hitherto prevented. As to the benefit 
 to be derived by the railways, while no doubt the building 
 up of the town would specially benefit the main line of 
 railway which passed through the estate, it is also true that 
 the earnings of the people would not be diminished to the 
 usual extent by railway freights and charges. (See Chap, 
 ii., also Chap, v., page 55.) 
 
 We now come to deal with an element of economy which 
 will be simply incalculable. This is to be found in the fact 
 that the town is definitely planned, so that the whole ques- 
 tion of municipal administration may be dealt with by one 
 far-reaching scheme. It is not by any means necessary, and 
 it is not, humanly-speaking, possible, that the final scheme 
 should be the work of one mind. It will no doubt be the 
 work of many minds — the minds of engineers, of architects 
 and surveyors, of landscape gardeners and electricians. But 
 it is essential, as we have said, that there should be unity of 
 design and purpose — that the town should be planned as a 
 whole, and not left to grow up in a chaotic manner as has 
 been the case with all English towns, and more or less so 
 with the towns of all countries. A town, like a flower, or a 
 tree, or an animal, should, at each stage of its growth, 
 possess unity, symmetry, completeness : and the effect of 
 growth should never be to destroy that unity, but to give it 
 greater purpose ; nor to mar that symmetry, but to make it 
 more symmetrical; while the completeness of the early struc- 
 ture should be merged in the yet greater completeness of the 
 later development. 1 
 
 1 It is commonly thought that the cities of the United States are 
 
4 6 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 But Garden City is not only planned, but planned with a 
 view to the very latest of modern requirements ; and it is 
 obviously always easier, and usually far more economical and 
 completely satisfactory, to make out of fresh material a new 
 instrument, than to patch up and alter an old one. This 
 element of economy will be perhaps best dealt with by a 
 concrete illustration, and one of a very striking nature at 
 once presents itself. 
 
 In London the question of building a new street between 
 Holborn and the Strand has been for many years under 
 consideration, and at length the County Council have un- 
 animously adopted a scheme which will be presented to 
 Parliament in the forthcoming session — a scheme involving 
 an enormous cost on the people of London. " Every such 
 change in the street geography of London displaces thou- 
 sands of the poor," — I quote from the Daily Chronicle of 
 July 6, 1898 — "and for many years all public or quasi- 
 public schemes have been charged with the liability to re- 
 house as many of them as possible. This is as it should 
 be ; but the difficulty begins when the public is asked to 
 face the music and pay the bill. In the present case some 
 
 planned. This is only true in a most inadequate sense. American 
 towns certainly do not consist of intricate mazes of streets, the lines 
 of which would appear to have been sketched out by cows : and a 
 few days' residence in any American city, except a few of the oldest, 
 will ordinarily enable one to find his way about it ; but there is, 
 notwithstanding, little real design, and that of the crudest char- 
 acter. Certain streets are laid out, and as the city grows, these are 
 extended and repeated in rarely broken monotony. Washington is 
 a magnificent exception as to the laying out of its streets ; but even 
 this city is not designed with a view of securing to its people ready 
 access to nature, while its parks are not central, nor are its schools 
 and other buildings arranged in a scientific manner. 
 
THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY. 47 
 
 three thousand souls of the working population have to be 
 turned out. After some searching of heart, it is decided 
 that most of them are so closely tied to the spot by their 
 employment that it would be a hardship to send them more 
 than a mile away. The result, in cash, is that London must 
 spend in re-housing them about £100 a head — or £300,000 
 in all. As to those who cannot fairly be asked to go even a 
 mile away — hangers-on to the market, or others tethered to 
 the spot — the cost will be even higher. They will require 
 to have parcels of the precious land cleared by the great 
 scheme itself, and the result of that will be to house them 
 at the handsome figure of £260 a-piece, or some £1,400 for 
 every family of five or six. Financial statements convey 
 little to the ordinary mind. Let us make it a little more 
 intelligible. A sum of £1,400 means, in the house market, 
 a rental of nearly £100 a year. It would buy an excellent 
 in fact a sumptuous house and garden at Hampstead, such 
 as the better middle-class delight in. It would purchase 
 anywhere in the nearer suburbs such houses as men with 
 £1,000 a year inhabit. If one went further afield, to the 
 new neighbourhoods which the City clerk can easily reach 
 by rail, a £1,400 house represents actual magnificence." 
 But on what scale of comfort will the poor Covent Garden 
 labourer with a wife and four children live? The £1,400 
 will by no means represent a fair standard of comfort, to 
 say nothing of magnificence. u He will live in three rooms 
 sufficiently small in a block at least three stories high." 
 Contrast this with what might be done on a new area, care- 
 fully planning a bold scheme at the outset. Streets of 
 greater width than this new street would be laid out and 
 constructed at a mere fraction of the cost, while a sum of 
 
48 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 £1400, instead of providing 1 family with "three rooms 
 sufficiently small in blocks at least three stories high," 
 would provide 7 families in Garden City each with 
 comfortable six-roomed cottages, and with a nice little 
 garden; and, manufacturers being concurrently induced 
 to build on the sites set apart for them, each breadwinner 
 would be placed within easy walking - distance of his 
 work. 
 
 There is another modern need which all towns and cities 
 should be designed to meet — a need which has arisen with 
 the evolution of modern sanitation, and which has of recent 
 years been accentuated by the rapid growth of invention. 
 Subways for sewerage and surface drainage, for w r ater, gas, 
 telegraph and telephone wires, electric lighting wires, wires 
 for conveying motive power, pneumatic tubes for postal 
 purposes, have come to be regarded as economic if not 
 essential. But if they would be a source of economy in an 
 old city, how much more so in new ones ; for on a clean 
 sheet it will be possible and feasible to use the very best 
 appliances for their construction, and to avail ourselves to 
 the fullest extent of the ever-growing advantages which they 
 possess, as the number of services which they accommodate 
 increases. 1 Before the subways can be constructed, trenches 
 
 i " We bury and leave these until they come to resurrection in the 
 shape of leaking drains, burst pipes, electrical accidents, torn-up 
 roadways, and all manner of inconveniences, expenses, and dangers 
 to a long-suffering and much-rated public. Mr. Charles Mason, 
 C.E., Surveyor to the Vestry of St. Martins-in-the-Fields, tells us 
 that we are very stupid persons for our pains, and that if we are 
 to maintain our reputation for elementary civilisation, we must 
 promptly amend all this. His panacea is suhways. . . . Subways 
 are large underground chambers, so constructed as to be capable of 
 containing every conceivable variety of pipe, drain, or conductor 
 
THE REVENUE OF GARDEN CITY. 49 
 
 somewhat wide and deep must be excavated. In making 
 these the most approved excavating machinery could be em- 
 ployed. In old towns this might be very objectionable, if 
 not, indeed, quite impossible. But here, in Garden City 
 the steam navvy would not make its appearance in the parts 
 where people were living, but where they were coming to 
 live after its work in preparing the way had been completed. 
 What a grand thing it would be if the people of England 
 could, by an actual illustration under their very eyes, be 
 convinced that machinery can be so used as to confer not 
 only an ultimate national benefit, but a direct and immediate 
 advantage, and that not only upon those who actually own 
 it or use it, but on others who are given work by its magic 
 aid ; what a happy day it would be for the people of this 
 country, and of all countries, if they could learn, from practi- 
 cal experience, that machinery can be used on an extended 
 scale to give employment as well as to take it away — to 
 implace labour as well as to displace it — to free men as well 
 as to enslave them. There will be plenty of work to be done 
 in Garden City. That is obvious. It is also obvious that 
 until a large number of houses and factories are built, many 
 of these things cannot be done, and that the faster the 
 trenches are dug, the subways finished, the factories and the 
 houses built, and the light and the power turned on, the 
 sooner can this town, the home of an industrious and a happy 
 people, be built, and the sooner can others start the work of 
 building other towns, not like it, but gradually becoming as 
 
 which may require to be placed beneath streets or houses ; and so 
 large and lofty that they may be perambulated, inspected, and kept 
 sweet and sound all day long by a small army of permanent inspec- 
 tors."— Sun, 30th May, 1895. 
 
 D 
 
So 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 much superior to it as our present locomotives are to the 
 first crude attempts of the pioneers of artificial traction. 
 
 We have now shown four cogent reasons why a given 
 revenue should, in Garden City, yield vastly greater results 
 than under ordinary conditions. 
 
 (1) That no " landlord's rent " or interest in respect of 
 freeholds would be payable other than the small amount 
 which has been already provided for in estimating net 
 revenue. 
 
 (2) That the site being practically clear of buildings and 
 other works, but little expenditure would be incurred in the 
 purchase of such buildings, or compensation for business- 
 disturbance, or legal and other expenses in connection there- 
 with. 
 
 (3) The economy arising out of a definite plan, and one in 
 accordance with modern needs and requirements, thus saving 
 those items of expenditure which are incurred in old cities 
 as it is sought to bring them into harmony with modern 
 ideas. 
 
 (4) The possibility, as the whole site will be clear for 
 operations, of introducing machinery of the very best and 
 most modern type in road-making and other engineering 
 operations. 
 
 There are other economies which will become apparent to 
 the reader as he proceeds, but, having cleared the ground 
 by discussing general principles, we shall be better prepared 
 to discuss the question as to the sufficiency of our estimates 
 in another chapter. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 FURTHER DETAILS OF EXPENDITURE ON GARDEN CITY. 
 
 " Oh ! if those who rule the destinies of nations would but remem- 
 ber this — if they would but think how hard it is for the very poor to 
 have engendered in their hearts that love of home from which all 
 domestic virtues spring, when they live in dense and squalid masses, 
 where social decency is lost, or rather never found — if they would 
 but turn aside from the wide thoroughfares and great houses, and 
 strive to improve the wretched dwellings in bye- ways, where only 
 Poverty may walk, — many low roofs would point more truly to the 
 sky, than the loftiest steeple that now rears proudly up from the 
 midst of guilt, and crime, and horrible disease, to mock them by its 
 contrast. In hollow voices from Workhouse, Hospital, and Jail, this 
 truth is preached from day to day, and has been proclaimed for 
 years. It is no light matter — no outcry from the working vulgar — 
 no mere question of the people's health and comforts that may be 
 whistled down on Wednesday nights. In love of home, the love of 
 country has its rise ; and who are the truer patriots or the better in 
 time of need — those who venerate the land, owning its wood, and 
 stream, and earth, and all that they produce, or those who love 
 their country, boasting not a foot of ground in all its wide domain? " 
 — " The Old Curiosity Shop," Chap, xxxviii. 
 
 To make this chapter interesting to the general reader 
 would be difficult, perhaps impossible ; but if carefully 
 studied, it will, I think, be found to abundantly establish 
 one of the main propositions of this book — that the rate- 
 rent of a well-planned town, built on an agricultural estate, 
 will amply suffice for the creation and maintenance of such 
 municipal undertakings as are usually provided for out of 
 rates compulsorily levied. 
 
 The net available revenue of Garden City, after payment 
 of interest on debentures and providing a sinking fund for 
 
 5* 
 
52 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 the landed estate, has been already estimated at £50,000 
 per annum (see Chap, iii, page 35). Having, in the fourth 
 chapter, given special reasons why a given expenditure in 
 Garden City would be unusually productive, I will now 
 enter into fuller details, so that any criticism which this 
 book may elicit, having something quite tangible to deal 
 with, may be the more valuable in preparing the ground 
 for an experiment such as is here advocated. 
 
 
 Expenditure. 
 
 
 On Capital 
 Account. 
 
 On Mainten- 
 ance and 
 Working Ex- 
 penses. 
 
 (See Note A) 25 Miles road (city) at 
 £4,000 a mile, 
 
 ( ,, B) 6 Miles additional roads, 
 country estate at £1,200, 
 
 ( C) Circular railway and 
 bridges, 5J miles at 
 £3,000 
 
 ( „ D) Schools for 6,400 chil- 
 dren, or £ of the total 
 population, at £12 per 
 school place for capital 
 account, and £3 main- 
 tenance, etc. 
 
 ( „ E) Town Hall 
 
 ( „ F) Library 
 
 ( ,, G) Museum 
 
 ( H) Parks, 250 acres at £50 
 
 ( ,, I) Sewerage 
 
 £100,000 
 7,200 
 
 16,500 
 
 76,800 
 10,000 
 10,000 
 10,000 
 12,500 
 20,000 
 
 £2,500 
 350 
 
 1,500 
 (maintenance 
 only.) 
 
 19,200 
 2,000 
 600 
 600 
 1,250 
 1,000 
 
 £263,000 
 
 £29,000 
 11,835 
 4,480 
 
 4,685 
 
 ( „ K) Interest on £263,000 at 4} 
 
 ( , , L) Sinking Fund to provide for extinction 
 
 of debt in 30 years 
 ( ,, M) Balance available for rates levied by 
 
 local bodies within the area of which 
 
 the estate is situated ... 
 
 
 £50,000 
 
DETAILS OF EXPENDITURE ON GARDEN CITY. 53 
 
 Besides the above expenditure, a considerable outlay would 
 be incurred in respect of markets, water supply, lighting, 
 tramways, and other revenue-yielding undertakings. But 
 these items of expenditure are almost invariably attended 
 with considerable profits, which go in aid of rates. No 
 calculation, therefore, need be made in respect of these. 
 
 I will now deal separately with most of the items in the 
 above estimate. 
 
 A. Roads and Streets. 
 
 The first point to be observed under this head is that the 
 cost of making new streets to meet the growth of population 
 is generally not borne by the ground landlord nor defrayed 
 out of the rates. It is usually paid by the building-owner 
 before the local authorities will consent to take the road 
 over as a free gift. It is obvious, therefore, that the greater 
 part of the £100 ; 000 might be struck out. Experts will also 
 not forget that the cost of the road sites is elsewhere provided 
 for. In considering the question of the actual sufficiency 
 of the estimate they will also remember that of the boule- 
 vards one-half and of the streets and avenues one-third, may 
 be regarded as in the nature of park, and the cost of laying 
 out and maintenance of these portions of the roads is dealt 
 with under the head " Parks." They will also note that 
 road-making materials would probably be found near at 
 hand, and that the railway, relieving the streets of most of 
 the heavy traffic, the more expensive methods of paving need 
 not be resorted to. The cost £4,000 per mile would however 
 be doubtless inadequate if subways are constructed, as pro- 
 
54 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 bably they ought to be. The following consideration, however, 
 has led me not to estimate for these. Subways are, where 
 useful, a source of economy. The cost of maintaining roads is 
 lessened, as the continual breaking-up for laying and re- 
 pairing of water, gas, and electric mains is avoided, while any 
 waste from leaky pipes is quickly detected, and thus the 
 subways pay. Their cost should, therefore, be debited rather 
 to cost of water, gas, and electric supplies, and these services 
 are almost invariably a source of revenue to the Company 
 or Corporation which constructs them. 
 
 B. Country Roads. 
 
 These roads are only 40 feet wide, and .£1200 a mile is 
 ample. The cost of sites has in this case to be defrayed 
 out of estimate. 
 
 C. Circular Railway and Bridges. 
 
 The cost of site is elsewhere provided for (see p. 33). 
 The cost of maintenance does not of course include work- 
 ing expenses, locomotives, etc. To cover these a charge 
 based on cost might be made to traders using the line. It 
 should also be noticed that, as in the case of roads, by showing 
 that the expense of this undertaking could be defrayed out 
 of the rate-rent, I am proving more than I undertook to 
 prove. I am proving that the rate-rent is sufficient to 
 provide for landlords' rent, for such purposes as are usually 
 defrayed out of rent, and also for greatly extending the area 
 of municipal activity. 
 
DETAILS OF EXPENDITURE ON GARDEN CITY. 55 
 
 It may here be well to point out that this circle railway- 
 not only will save the trader the expense of carting to and from 
 his warehouse or factory, but will enable him to claim a rebate 
 from the railway company. Section 4 of the Railway and Canal 
 Traffic Act, 1894, enacts, "Whenever merchandise is received 
 or delivered by a railway company at any siding or branch rail- 
 way not belonging to the company, and a dispute arises between 
 the railway company and the consignor or consignee of such 
 merchandise, as to any allowance or rebate from the rates 
 charged to such consignor or consignee, in respect that the 
 railway company does not provide station accommodation or 
 perform terminal services, the Railway and Canal Commis- 
 sioners shall have jurisdiction to hear and determine, what, 
 if any, is a just and reasonable allowance or rebate." 
 
 D, Schools. 
 
 This estimate of XI 2 per school place may be fairly called 
 extravagant. It represents what was only a few years ago 
 (1892) the average cost per child of the London School Board 
 for building, architect, and clerk of the works, and for 
 furniture and fittings ; 1 and no one can doubt that build- 
 ings greatly superior to those in London could be obtained 
 for this sum. The saving in sites has been already dealt 
 with, but it may be remarked that in London the cost per 
 child for sites has been £6 lis. 10d. 2 
 
 As showing how ample this estimate is, it may be observed 
 
 1 This sum has now risen to £13 14s. 8d. (See London School Board 
 Report, 6th May, 1897, p. 1468.) 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
56 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 that the cost of schools which have been proposed to be built by 
 a private company at Eastbourne, 1 " with a view of keeping 
 out the School Board," is estimated at £2500 for 400 places, 
 or but little more than half the rate per school place provided 
 in the estimate for Garden City. 
 
 The cost of maintenance, £3 per head, is probably amply 
 sufficient, in view of the fact that the " expenditure per 
 scholar in actual average attendance" in England and 
 Wales, as given in the Eeport of Committee of Council on 
 
 1 M A new scheme, which may have far-reaching effects, is being 
 floated at Eastbourne. The Education Department requires the 
 provision of 400 additional school places. Mr. J. G. Langham, a 
 local solicitor, proposes the formation of a joint stock company to 
 raise the funds required for additional buildings, and to aid in 
 placing the schools on a sound financial footing for the future. The 
 promotors believe that the project, if speedily taken up, will keep 
 out a School Board, and yield a moderate return of interest to the 
 investors. 
 
 "The Duke of Devonshire, Lord President of the Council, has taken 
 shares to the amount of £500; Mr. Davies Gilbert, another local land- 
 owner, the Archdeacon of Lewes, the Mayor of Eastbourne, and 
 others, have also consented to take shares. The capital is £10,000 in 
 £1 shares. The proposal has been before the Education Department, 
 and no objection has been made to it ; indeed, the hire of premises 
 for school purposes, provided they are properly constructed to meet 
 the sanitary and other requirements of the Department, is recognised, 
 and the rent of such premises is allowed in the school accounts as a 
 legitimate part of the annual expenses of the school. The scheme 
 has also been laid before the Bishop of Chichester, who has given it 
 his sanction. The Duke of Devonshire has offered to convey to the 
 company the fee simple of a site in Bourne Street in consideration of 
 rent charge of £12 a year. The cost of a school containing 400 
 places is estimated at £2,500, and when built it will be let to a body 
 of managers at a rent of £125, equal to five per cent, on the capital. 
 Deducting £25 for management expenses, there will remain £100 a 
 year, or a clear four per cent, for dividend for the shareholders. The 
 directors desire to raise £10,000 in order to have a strong reserve to 
 fall back upon as further needs arise." — The Daily Chronicle, Sept. 
 24th, 1897. 
 
DETAILS OF EXPENDITURE ON GARDEN CITY. S7 
 
 Education, 1896-97, c. 8545, is £2 lis. ll|d. It must be 
 especially noticed, too, that the whole cost of education is, 
 in these estimates, assumed to be borne by Garden City, 
 though a considerable part would be, in the ordinary course, 
 borne by the Imperial Exchequer. The amount of income 
 per scholar in actual average attendance in England and 
 Wales, as given in the same report, is £1 Is. 2d. as against 
 a rate in Garden City of £3. So that I am again, in the 
 case of the schools/as in the case of roads and circle railway, 
 proving more than I set out to prove. 
 
 E. Town Hall and Expenses of Management. 
 
 It is to be noticed that the estimates of the various 
 undertakings are intended to cover professional direction and 
 supervision of architects, engineers, teachers, etc. The 
 £2000 for maintenance and working expenses under this 
 head is, therefore, intended to include only the salaries of 
 town clerk and of officials other than those comprised under 
 special heads, together with incidental expenses. 
 
 F. Library, and G. Museum. 
 
 The latter is usually and the former not infrequently 
 elsewhere provided for out of funds other than rates. So, 
 here again, I am more than proving my case. 
 
 H. Parks and Road Ornamentation. 
 
 This item of cost would not be incurred until the under- 
 taking was in a thoroughly sound financial condition, and 
 
58 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 the park space for a considerable period might be a source 
 of revenue as agricultural land. Further, much of the park 
 space would probably be left in a state of nature. Forty 
 acres of this park space is road ornament-ion, but the planting 
 of trees and shrubs would not entail great expense. Again, 
 a considerable part of the area would be reserved for cricket- 
 fields, lawn-tennis courts, and other playgrounds, and the 
 clubs using public grounds might perhaps be called upon 
 to contribute to the expense of keeping these in order, as 
 is customary elsewhere. 
 
 /. Sewerage. 
 
 All that need be said on this subject has been said in 
 Chap, i., page 17, and Chap, ii., page 25. 
 
 K. Interest. 
 
 The money to construct the public works with which we 
 have been dealing is supposed to be borrowed at 4| per 
 cent. The question here arises — a question partly dealt 
 with in Chap. iv. — what is the security for those who lend 
 money on the " B " debentures ? 
 
 My answer is three-fold. 
 
 (1) Those who advance money to effect any improvements 
 on land have a security, the safety of which is in reality 
 largely determined by the effectiveness with which the 
 money so advanced is spent ; and, applying this truism, I 
 venture to say that for effectiveness of expenditure, no money 
 which the investing public has been for many years asked 
 to subscribe for improvements of a like nature has an 
 
DETAILS OF EXPENDITURE ON GARDEN CITY. 59 
 
 equal security, whether it be measured by miles of road, 
 acres of park, or numbers of school children well provided 
 for. 
 
 (2) Those who advance money to effect improvements on 
 land have a security the safety of which is largely deter- 
 mined by the consideration, aye or no, are other and yet 
 more valuable works to be simultaneously carried out by 
 others at their ow r n expense, which other works are to 
 become a security in respect of the first-mentioned advance ; 
 and, applying this second truism, I say that as the money 
 for effecting the public improvements here described would 
 only be asked for as and when other improvements — 
 factories, houses, shops, etc. — (costing far more money than 
 the public works necessary at any given period) were in 
 process of building, the quality of the security would be a 
 very high one. 
 
 (3) It is difficult to name a better security than that 
 offered when money is to be expended in converting an 
 agricultural estate into an urban, and this of the very best 
 known type. 
 
 That the scheme is in reality a 3 per cent, or 2| per 
 cent, security, and would in its later stages become so, I 
 entertain no doubt, but I do not forget that, though its 
 points of novelty are the very elements which really make 
 it secure, they may not make it seem so, and that those who 
 are merely looking out for an investment may eye it with 
 some distrust because of its novelty. We shall have in the 
 first instance to look to those who will advance money with 
 somewhat mixed motives — public spirit, love of enterprise, 
 and possibly, as to some persons, with a lurking belief that they 
 will be able to dispose of their debentures at a premium, as 
 
6o 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 they certainly will. Therefore, I put down i~ per cent., 
 but if any one's conscience prick him he may tender at 2 or 
 2J, or may even advance money without interest. 
 
 Z. Sinking Fund, 
 
 This sinking fund, which provides for the extinction 
 of the debt in thirty years, compares most favourably with 
 that usually provided by local bodies for works of so 
 permanent a character. The Local Government Board 
 frequently allows loans to be created with a sinking 
 fund extending over much longer periods. It is to be 
 remembered also that an additional sinking fund for the 
 landed estate has been already provided (see Chapter iv., p. 
 35). 
 
 M. Balance available for Bates levied by Local Bodies 
 within whose jurisdiction the estate is situated. 
 
 It will be seen that the whole scheme of Garden City will 
 make extremely few demands upon the resources of outside 
 local authorities. Eoads, sewers, schools, parks, libraries, 
 etc., will be provided out of the funds of the new "munici- 
 pality," and in this way the whole scheme will come to the 
 agriculturalists at present on the estate very much like " a 
 rate in aid," for as rates are only raised for the purpose of 
 public expenditure, it follows that, there being little or no 
 fresh call upon the rates, while the number of ratepayers is 
 greatly increased, the rate per head must fall. I do not, 
 however, forget that there are some functions which such a 
 voluntary organisation as Garden City could not take over, 
 
DETAILS OF EXPENDITURE ON GARDEN CITY. 6 1 
 
 such as the police and the administration of the poor-law. 
 As to the latter, it is believed that the whole scheme will in 
 the long run make such rates unnecessary, as Garden City 
 will provide, at all events from the time when the estate 
 has been fully paid for, pensions for all its needy old citizens. 
 Meantime and from the very outset it is doing its full share 
 of charitable work. It has allotted sites of 30 acres for 
 various institutions, and at a later stage will doubtless be 
 prepared to assume the whole cost of maintaining them. 
 
 With regard to police rates, it is not believed that these 
 can be largely increased by the coming into the town of 
 30,000 citizens, who, for the most part, will be of the law- 
 abiding class j for there being but one landlord, and this the 
 community, it will not be difficult to prevent the creation 
 of those surroundings which make the intervention of the 
 police so frequently necessary. {See Chapter vii.) 
 
 We have, we think, now fully established our contention 
 that the rate-rent which would be willingly offered by the 
 tenants of Garden City, in respect of the advantages 
 afforded them, would be amply sufficient, (1) to pay land- 
 lord's rent in the form of interest on debentures \ (2) To 
 provide a sinking fund for the entire abolition of landlord's 
 rent ; and (3) To provide for the municipal needs of the 
 town without recourse to any Act of Parliament for the 
 enforcement of rates — the community depending solely on 
 the very large powers it possesses as a landlord. 
 
 N. Revenue-bearing Expenditure. 
 
 If the conclusion already arrived at — that the experiment 
 advocated affords an outlet for an extremely effective 
 
62 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 expenditure of labour and capital — is sound in regard to 
 objects, the cost of which is usually defrayed out of rates, 
 that conclusion must, I think, be equally sound in regard to 
 tramways, lighting, water - supply, and the like, which, 
 when carried on by municipalities, are usually made a 
 source of revenue, thus relieving the ratepayer by making 
 his rates lighter. 1 It will be observed that I have added 
 nothing to the proposed revenue for any prospective profits 
 on such undertakings, nor, with one exception, do I propose 
 to make any estimate of expenditure. But it so happens 
 that there is one item — namely, water-supply, which is 
 usually made revenue-bearing— in regard to which the 
 advantages to be derived from municipal ownership of the 
 entire area, and from a plan carefully prepared before a 
 population is invited to such municipal area, are, I believe, 
 so enormous that the reader's interest may lead him to 
 peruse the chapter on water-supply which I have placed in 
 the appendix, fully conscious that it is open to very severe 
 criticism as the attempt of an amateur on a subject which 
 demands special knowledge. 
 
 i " Birmingham rates are relieved to the extent of £50,000 a year 
 out of profits on gas. The Electrical Committee of Manchester has 
 promised to pay £10,000 this year to the city fund, in relief of rates 
 out of a net profit of over £16,000." — Daily Chroiiicle, 9th June, 
 1897. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ADMINISTRATION, 
 
 "The present evils of city life are temporary and remediable. The 
 abolition of the slums, and the destruction of their virus, are as 
 feasible as the drainage of a swamp, and the total dissipation of its 
 miasmas. The conditions and circumstances that surround the lives 
 of the masses of the people in modern cities can be so adjusted to 
 their needs as to result in the highest development of the race, in 
 body, in mind and in moral character. The so-called problems of the 
 modern city are but the various phases of the one main question, 
 How can the environment be most perfectly adapted to the welfare 
 of urban populations ? And science can meet and answer every one of 
 these problems. The science of the modern city — of the ordering 
 of the common concerns in dense population groups — draws upon 
 many branches of theoretical and practical knowledge. It includesad- 
 ministrative science, statistical science, engineering and technological 
 science, sanitary science, and educational, social and moral science. 
 If one uses the term City Government in the large sense that makes 
 it inclusive of this entire ordering of the general affairs and interests 
 of the community, and, further, if one grasps the idea that the 
 cheerful and rational acceptance of urban life as a great social fact 
 demands that the City Government should proceed to make such 
 urban life conduce positively to the welfare of all the people whose 
 lawful interests bring them together as denizens of great towns, he 
 will understand the point of view from which this book had been 
 written." — "Municipal Government in Great Britain," Albert 
 Shaw (T. Fisher Un win), Chap» i, p. 3. 
 
 I have in the 4th and 5th chapters dealt with the fund 
 
 at the disposal of the Board of Management, and have 
 
 endeavoured to show, and I believe with success, that the 
 
 rate-rents collected by the trustees in their capacity 
 
 63 
 
6 4 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 of landlords of the towns will suffice, (1) To provide 
 interest on the debentures with which the estate is pur- 
 chased, (2) To provide a sinking-fund which will at a 
 comparatively early date leave the community free from the 
 burden of interest on such debentures, and (3), To enable 
 the Board of Management to carry on such undertakings as 
 are elsewhere for the most part carried out by means of 
 rates compulsorily raised. 
 
 A most important question now arises regarding the 
 extent to which municipal enterprise is to be carried, and 
 how far it is to supersede private enterprise. We have 
 already by implication stated that the experiment advocated 
 does not involve, as has been the case in so many social 
 experiments — the complete municipalisation of industry and 
 the elimination of private enterprise. But what principle is 
 to guide us in determining the line which shall separate 
 municipal from private control and management'? Mr. 
 Joseph Chamberlain has said : " The true field for municipal 
 activity is limited to those things which the community can 
 do better than the individual." Precisely, but that is a 
 truism, and does not carry us one whit further, for the very 
 question at issue is as to what those things are which the 
 community can do better than the individual; and when 
 we seek for an answer to this question we find two directly 
 conflicting views — those of the socialist, who says : Every 
 phase of wealth-production and distribution can be best 
 performed by the community; and the individualist, who 
 contends these things are best left to the individual. But 
 probably the true answer is to be found at neither extreme, 
 is only to be gained by experiment, and will differ in 
 different communities and at different periods. With a 
 
ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 65 
 
 growing intelligence and honesty in municipal enterprise; 
 with greater freedom from the control of the Central Govern- 
 ment, it may be found — especially on municipally-owned 
 land — that the field of municipal activity may grow so as 
 to embrace a very large area, and yet the municipality claim 
 no rigid monopoly, and the fullest rights of combination exist. 
 
 Bearing this in mind, the municipality of Garden City 
 will, at the outset, exercise great caution, and not attempt 
 too much. The difficulty of raising the necessary funds 
 with which to carry on municipal undertakings would be 
 greatly increased if the Board of Management attempted to 
 do anything and everything ; and, in the prospectus to be 
 ultimately issued, a clear statement will be made of what 
 the Corporation undertakes to do with the moneys entrusted 
 to it, and this will embrace little more than those things 
 which experience has proved municipalities can perform 
 better than individuals. Tenants, too, will, it is obvious, 
 be far more ready to offer adequate " rate-rents, " if they are 
 given distinctly to understand to what purpose those " rate- 
 rents " are to be devoted, and after those things are done, 
 and done well, little difficulty will be placed in the way of 
 further appropriate extensions of the field of municipal 
 enterprise. 
 
 Our answer, then, to the question, what field is to be 
 covered by municipal enterprise, is this. Its extent will be 
 measured simply by the willingness of the tenants to pay 
 rate-rents, and will grow in proportion as municipal work is 
 done efficiently and honestly, and decline as it is done 
 dishonestly or inefficiently. If, for example, the tenants 
 find that a very small additional contribution, recently made 
 in the shape of " rate-rent," has enabled the authorities to 
 
 E 
 
66 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 provide an excellent supply of water for all purposes, and 
 they are convinced that so good a result at so small a cost 
 would not have been achieved through the agency of any 
 private undertaking working for a profit, they will naturally 
 be willing and even anxious that further hopeful-looking 
 experiments in municipal work should be undertaken. The 
 site of Garden City may, in this respect, be compared to 
 Mr. and Mrs. Boffin's famous apartment, which, the reader of 
 Dickens will remember, was furnished at one end to suit 
 the taste of Mrs. Boffin, who was " a dab at fashion," while 
 at the other end it was furnished to conform to the notions 
 of solid comfort which so gratified Mr. Boffin, but with the 
 mutual understanding between the parties that if Mr. B. 
 should get by degrees to be " a high-flyer" at fashion, then 
 Mrs. B. would gradually " come for'arder," whilst if Mrs. B. 
 should become " less of a dab at fashion," Mrs. B.'s carpet 
 would " go back'arder." So, in Garden City, if the inhabi- 
 tants become greater "dabs" at co-operation, the municipality 
 will " come for'arder " ; if they become less " dabs " at co- 
 operation, the municipality will " go back'arder " \ while the 
 relative number of positions occupied by municipal workers 
 and non-municipal workers at any period will very fairly 
 reflect the skill and integrity of the public administration 
 and the degree of value which is, therefore, associated with 
 corporate effort. 
 
 But the municipality of Garden City, besides setting its 
 face against any attempt to embark upon too large a field of 
 enterprise, will so frame its constitution that the responsi- 
 bility for each branch of the municipal service will be 
 thrown directly upon the officers of that branch, and not 
 practically lost sight of because loosely thrown upon the 
 
ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 6 7 
 
 larger central body — a plan which makes it difficult for the 
 public to perceive where any leakage or friction may be 
 taking place. The constitution is modelled upon that of a 
 large and well-appointed business, which is divided into 
 various departments, each department being expected to 
 justify its own continued existence — its officers being 
 selected, not so much for their knowledge of the business 
 generally as for their special fitness for the work of their 
 department. 
 
 THE BOARD OF MANAGEMENT 
 consists of — 
 
 (1) The Central Council. 
 
 (2) The Departments. 
 
 THE CENTRAL COUNCIL (see Diagram 5). 
 
 In this council (or its nominees) are vested the rights and 
 powers of the community as sole landlord of Garden City. 
 Into its treasury are paid (after provision has been made for 
 landlord's rent and sinking fund) all rate-rents received 
 from its tenants, as well as the profits derived from its 
 various municipal undertakings, and these, we have seen, are 
 amply sufficient to discharge all public burdens without any 
 resort to the expedient of compulsory rates. The powers 
 possessed by the Central Council are, it may be noticed 
 in passing, more ample than those possessed by other 
 municipal bodies, for whilst most of these enjoy only such 
 powers as are expressly conferred on them by Acts of 
 Parliament, the Central Council of Garden City exercises on 
 
68 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 behalf of the people those wider rights, powers and privileges 
 which are enjoyed by landlords under the common law. 
 The private owner of land can do with his land and with the 
 revenue he derives from it what he pleases, so long as he is 
 not a nuisance to his neighbour ; while, on the other hand, 
 public bodies which acquire land or obtain power to levy 
 rates by Acts of Parliament, can only use that land or spend 
 those rates for such purposes as are expressly prescribed 
 by those Acts. But Garden City is in a greatly superior 
 position, for, by stepping as a quasi public body into the 
 rights of a private landlord, it becomes at once clothed with 
 far larger powers for carrying out the will of the people than 
 are possessed by other local bodies, and thus solves to a large 
 extent the problem of local self-government. 
 
 But the Central Council, though possessing these large 
 powers, delegates many of them, for convenience of ad- 
 ministration, to its various departments, retaining, however, 
 responsibility for — 
 
 (1) The general plan on which the estate is laid out. 
 
 (2) The amount of money voted to each of the various 
 spending departments, as schools, roads, parks, etc.. 
 
 (3) Such measure of oversight and control of the de- 
 partments as is necessary to preserve a general unity and 
 harmony, but no more. 
 
 THE DEPARTMENTS. 
 These are divided into various groups — for example : — 
 
 (A) Public Control. 
 
 (B) Engineering. 
 
 (C) Social Purposes. 
 
ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 6 9 
 
 GROUP A, PUBLIC CONTROL. 
 
 This group may consist of the following sub-groups : — 
 
 Finance. Assessment. 
 Law. Inspection. 
 
 Finance. 
 
 Into this department are paid, after making provision for 
 landlord's rent and sinking-fund, all rate-rents ; and out of 
 it the necessary sums for the various departments are voted 
 by the Central Council. 
 
 Assessment. 
 
 This department receives all applications from would-be 
 tenants, and fixes the rate-rent to be paid — such rate-rents 
 not, however, being fixed arbitrarily by the department, 
 but upon the essential principle adopted by other Assessment 
 Committees — the really determining factor being the rate- 
 rent which an average tenant is found willing to pay. 1 
 
 Law. 
 
 This department settles the terms and conditions under 
 which leases shall be granted, and the nature of the coven- 
 ants to be entered into by and with the Central Council. 
 
 Inspection. 
 
 This department carries out such reasonable duties in 
 
 1 This individual is known to Assessment Committees under the 
 name of the "hypothetical tenant.' , 
 
70 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 relation to inspection as the municipality, in its capacity of 
 landlord, may with the tenants of the municipality, mutually 
 agree upon. 
 
 GROUP B, ENGINEERING. 
 
 This group may consist of the following departments — 
 some of which would be later creations. 
 
 Roads. 
 Subways. 
 Sewers. 
 Tramways. 
 Municipal Railway. 
 Public Buildings (other than 
 schools). 
 
 Parks and open spaces. 
 
 Drainage. 
 
 Canals. 
 
 Irrigation. 
 
 Water-supply. 
 
 Motive-power. 
 
 Lighting. 
 
 Messages. 
 
 GROUP C, SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL. 
 
 This group is also divided into various departments, 
 dealing with : — 
 
 Education. Libraries. 
 
 Baths and Wash-houses. 
 Music. Recreation. 
 
 Election of Members of Board of Management 
 
 Members (who may be men or women) are elected by the 
 rate-renters to serve on one or more departments, and the 
 Chairman and Vice-Chairman of each department constitute 
 the Central Council. 
 
ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 71 
 
 Under such a constitution it is believed that the com- 
 munity would have the readiest means of rightly estimating 
 the work of its servants, and, at election times, would have 
 clear and distinct issues brought before it. The candidates 
 would not be expected to specify their views upon a hundred 
 and one questions of municipal policy upon which they had 
 no definite opinions, and which would probably not give rise 
 within their term of office to the necessity for recording 
 their votes, but would simply state their views as to some 
 special question or group of questions, a sound opinion upon 
 which would be of urgent importance to the electors, because 
 immediately connected with the welfare of the town. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SEMI-MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE — LOCAL OPTION — TEMPERANCE 
 REFORM. 
 
 "It has been calculated by Mr. Neale" (" Economics of Co- 
 operation") "that there are 41,735 separate establishments for 22 
 of the principal retail trades in London. If for each of these trades 
 there were 648 shops — that is 9 to the square mile, no one would 
 have to go more than a quarter of a mile to the nearest shop. There 
 would be 14,256 shops in all. Assuming that this supply would be 
 sufficient, there are in London 251 shops for every hundred that 
 are really wanted. The general prosperity of the country will be 
 much increased when the capital and labour that are now waste- 
 fully employed in the retail trade are set free for other work." — 
 " Economics of Industry," A. and M. P. Marshall, Chap, ix., sec. 10. 
 
 In the last chapter we saw that no line could be sharply 
 drawn between municipal and individual enterprise, so that 
 one could definitely say of one or the other, " Hitherto 
 shalt thou come, but no further " ; and this ever-changing 
 character of the problem can be usefully illustrated in our 
 examination of the industrial life of Garden City by re- 
 ference to a form of enterprise there carried on which is 
 neither distinctly municipal nor distinctly individualistic, 
 but partaking, as it does, of the character of both, may be 
 termed " semi-municipal.'' (See Diagram 5.) 
 
 Among the most reliable sources of revenue possessed by 
 many of our existing municipalities are their so-called 
 
 " public markets." But it is important to notice that 
 
 72 
 
SEMI-MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE. 73 
 
 these markets are by no means public in the same full 
 sense as are our public parks, libraries, water undertakings, 
 or those numerous other branches of municipal work which 
 are carried on upon public property, by public officials, at 
 the public expense, and solely with a view to the public 
 advantage. On the contrary, our so-called " public mar- 
 kets " are, for the most part, carried on by private in- 
 dividuals, who pay tolls for the parts of the buildings which 
 they occupy, but who are not, except on a few points, con- 
 trolled by the municipality, and whose profits are personally 
 enjoyed by the various dealers. Markets may, therefore, be 
 fitly termed semi-municipal enterprises. 
 
 It would, however, have been scarcely necessary to touch 
 on this question, but that it naturally leads up to the con- 
 sideration of a form of semi-municipal enterprise which is 
 one of the characteristic features of Garden City. This is 
 to be found in the Crystal Palace, which, it will be remem- 
 bered, is a wide corridor, skirting the Central Park, in 
 which the most attractive wares on sale in Garden City are 
 exhibited, and, this being a winter garden as well as the 
 great shopping centre, is one of the most favourite resorts 
 of the towns-people. The business at the shops is carried 
 on, not by the municipality, but by various individuals and 
 societies, the number of traders being, however, limited by 
 the principle of local option. 
 
 The considerations which have led to this system arise 
 out of the distinction between the cases on the one hand 
 of the manufacturers, and on the other of the distributive 
 societies and shop-keepers who are invited to the town. 
 Thus, for example : — In the case of the manufacturer, say 
 of boots, though he may be glad of the custom of the people 
 
74 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 of the town, he is by no means dependent on it ; his pro- 
 ducts go all over the world; and he would scarcely wish 
 that the number of boot manufacturers within the area 
 should be specially limited. He would, in fact, lose more 
 than he would gain by restrictions of this kind. A manu- 
 facturer frequently prefers to have others carrying on the 
 same trade in his vicinity ; for this gives him a larger choice 
 of skilled workmen or workwomen, who themselves desire it 
 also, because it gives them a larger range of employers. 
 
 But in the case of shops and stores the case is entirely 
 different. An individual or a society proposing to open in 
 Garden City, say a drapery store, would be most anxious to 
 know what, if any, arrangements were to be made for limiting 
 the number of his competitors, for he w T ould depend almost 
 entirely on the trade of the town or neighbourhood. Indeed 
 it frequently happens that a private landlord, when laying 
 out a building estate, makes arrangements with his shop- 
 keeping tenants designed to prevent them from being 
 swamped by others in the same trade starting on his 
 estate. 
 
 The problem, therefore, seems to be how to make such 
 suitable arrangements as will at once — 
 
 (1) Induce tenants of the shop-keeping class to come and 
 start in business, offering to the community adequate 
 rate-rents. 
 
 (2) Prevent the absurd and wasteful multiplication of 
 
 shops referred to in the note at the head of this 
 chapter. 
 
 (3) Secure the advantages usually gained (or supposed to 
 
SEMI-MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE. 
 
 75 
 
 be) by competition — such as low prices, wide range of 
 choice, fair dealing, civility, etc. 
 
 (4) Avoid the evils attending monopoly. 
 
 All these results maybe secured by a simple expedient, which 
 will have the effect of converting competition from an active 
 into a latent force to be brought in to play or held in reserve. 
 It is, as we have said, an application of the principle of local 
 option. To explain: — Garden City is the sole landlord, and 
 it can grant to a proposed tenant — we will suppose a co- 
 operative society or an individual trader in drapery or fancy 
 goods — a long lease of a certain amount of space in the 
 Grand Arcade (Crystal Palace), at a certain annual rate- 
 rent ; and it can say, in effect, to its tenant, " That site is 
 the only space in that ward which we for the present intend 
 to let to any tenant engaged in your trade. The Arcade is, 
 however, designed to be not only the great shopping centre 
 of the town and district, and the permanent exhibition in 
 which the manufacturers of the town display their wares, but 
 a summer and winter garden. The space this Arcade covers 
 will, therefore, be considerably greater than is actually 
 required for the purposes of shops or stores, if these are kept 
 within reasonable limits. Now, so long as you give satis- 
 faction to the people of the town, none of the space devoted 
 to these recreative purposes will be let to anyone engaged 
 in your calling. It is necessary, however, to guard against 
 monopoly. If, therefore, the people become dissatisfied 
 with your methods of trading, and desire that the force of 
 competition shall be actively brought into play against you, 
 then, on the requisition of a certain number, the necessary 
 
76 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 space in the Arcade will be allotted by the municipality to 
 start an opposition store." 
 
 Under this arrangement it will be seen the trader will 
 depend upon the good-will of his customers. If he charges 
 prices which are too high ; if he misrepresents the quality 
 of his goods ; if he does not treat his employees with proper 
 consideration in regard to hours of labour, wages, or other 
 matters, he will run a great risk of losing their goodwill, and 
 the people of the town will have a method of expressing their 
 sentiments regarding him which will be extremely powerful : 
 they will simply invite a new competitor to enter the field. 
 But, on the other hand, so long as he performs his functions 
 wisely and well, his good-will resting on the solid basis of 
 the good- will of his customers, he will be protected. His 
 advantages are, therefore, enormous. In other towns a 
 competitor might enter the field against him at any moment 
 without warning, perhaps at the very time when he had 
 purchased some expensive goods which, unless sold during 
 the season, could only be realised at an enormous sacrifice. 
 In Garden City, on the other hand, he has full notice of 
 his danger — time to prepare for it and even to avert it. 
 Besides, the community, except for the purpose of bringing 
 a trader to reason, will not only have no interest in bringing 
 a competitor into the field, but their interest will be best 
 served by keeping competition in the back-ground as long 
 as possible. If the fire of competition is brought to bear 
 upon a trader they must suffer with him. They will lose space 
 they would far rather see devoted to some other purpose — 
 they will be bound to pay higher prices than those at which 
 the first trader could supply them if he would, and they 
 will have to render municipal services to two traders instead 
 
SEMI-MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE. 
 
 77 
 
 of to one, while the two competitors could not afford to pay 
 so large a sum in rate-rent as could the original trader. 
 For in many cases the effect of competition is to make a rise 
 in price absolutely necessary. Thus A. has a trade of 
 100 gallons of milk a day, and can, we will suppose, pay his 
 expenses, earn a bare living, and supply his customers with 
 milk, say at 4d. a quart. But if a competitor enters the 
 field, then A. can only sell milk and water at 4d. a quart if 
 he is to continue to pay his way. Thus the competition of 
 shop-keepers absolutely tends not only to ruin the competi- 
 tors, but to maintain and even to raise prices, and so to 
 lower real wages. 
 
 Under this system of local option it will be seen that the 
 tradesmen of the town — be they co-operative societies or 
 individuals — would become, if not strictly or technically so, 
 yet in a very real sense, municipal servants. But they 
 would not be bound up in the red-tape of officialism, and 
 would have the fullest rights and powers of initiative. It 
 would not be by any literal conformity to cast-iron and 
 inflexible rules, but by their skill and judgment in forecast- 
 ing the wishes and in anticipating the tastes of their 
 constituents, as well as by their integrity and courtesy as 
 business men and women, that they would win and main- 
 tain their good-will. They would run certain risks, as all 
 tradesmen must, and in return they would be paid, not of 
 course in the form of salary, but in profits. But the risks 
 they would run would be far less than they must be where 
 competition is unchecked and uncontrolled, while their 
 annual profits in proportion to capital invested might also 
 be greater. They might even sell considerably below the 
 ordinary rate prevailing elsewhere, but yet, having an 
 
78 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 assured trade and being able very accurately to gauge 
 demand, they might turn their money over with remarkable 
 frequency. Their working expenses, too, would be 
 absurdly small. They would not have to advertise for 
 customers, though they would doubtless make announce- 
 ments to them of any novelties ; but all that waste of 
 effort and of money which is so frequently expended by 
 tradesmen in order to secure customers or to prevent their 
 going elsewhere, would be quite unnecessary. 
 
 And not only would each trader be in a sense a muni- 
 cipal servant, but those in his employ would be also. It is 
 true such a trader w r ould have the fullest right to engage and 
 dismiss his servants ; but if he acted arbitrarily or harshly, 
 if he paid insufficient wages, or treated his employees 
 inconsiderately, he would certainly run the risk of losing the 
 good-will of the majority of his customers, even although in 
 other respects he might prove himself an admirable public 
 servant. On the other hand, if the example were set of 
 profit-sharing, this might grow into a custom, and the 
 distinction between master and servant would be gradu- 
 ally lost in the simple process of all becoming co- 
 operators. 1 
 
 i This principle of local option, which is chiefly applicable to 
 distributive callings, is perhaps applicable to production in some of 
 its branches. Thus bakeries and laundries, which would largely 
 depend upon the trade of the locality, seem to present instances 
 where it might with some caution be applied. Few businesses seem 
 to require more thorough supervision and control than these, and 
 few have a more direct relation to health. Indeed, a very strong 
 case might be made out for municipal bakeries and municipal 
 laundries, and it is evident that the control of an industry by the 
 community is a half-way house to its assumption of it, should this 
 prove desirable and practicable. 
 
SEMI-MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE. 
 
 79 
 
 This system of local option as applied to shop-keeping is 
 not only business-like, but it affords an opportunity for 
 the expression of that public conscience against the 
 sweater which is now being stirred, but which scarcely 
 knows how to effectually respond to the new impulse. 
 Thus we have the Consumer's League, the object of which 
 is not, as its name might lead one to suspect, to protect 
 the consuming public against the unscrupulous producer, 
 but to protect the sweated, over-driven producer against 
 a consuming public over-clamorous for cheapness. Its aim 
 is to assist such of the public as hate and detest the sweat- 
 ing system to avail themselves of the society's carefully 
 compiled information, so that they may be able to 
 studiously avoid the products which have passed through 
 sweaters' hands. But such a movement as the society 
 advocates can make but little headway without the support 
 of the shop-keeper. The consumer must be an uncommonly 
 earnest opponent of sweating who insists upon knowing the 
 source whence every article he purchases has come, nor would 
 the shop-keeper under ordinary circumstances be disposed 
 either to give him such information or to give a guarantee 
 that his goods were produced under " fair " conditions ; 
 while to establish shops, with the special object of putting 
 down sweating, and to do this in large cities which are 
 already over-crowded with distributive agencies, would be 
 but to court failure. Here in Garden City, however, is a 
 splendid opportunity for the public conscience to express 
 itself in this regard. 
 
 There is another question with which the term "local 
 option " is most closely associated which may be dealt with 
 here. I refer to the temperance question. Now it will be 
 
8o 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 noticed that the municipality, in its position of sole land- 
 lord, has the power of dealing in the most drastic manner 
 possible with the liquor traffic. There are, as is well known, 
 many landlords who will not permit a public-house to be 
 opened on their estate, and the landlord of Garden City — 
 the people themselves — could adopt this course. But would 
 this be wise ? I think not. First, such a restriction would 
 keep away the very ]arge and increasing class of moderate 
 drinkers, and would also keep away many of those who are 
 scarcely moderate in their use of alcohol, but whom re- 
 formers would be most anxious should be brought under 
 the healthful influences which would surround them in 
 Garden City. The public-house, or its equivalent, would, 
 in such a community, have many competitors for the favour 
 of the people ; while, in large cities, with few opportunities 
 of cheap and rational enjoyment, it has its own way. The 
 experiment, as one in the direction of temperance reform, 
 would, therefore, be more valuable if the traffic were per- 
 mitted under reasonable regulations than if it were stopped; 
 because, while, in the former case, the effects in the direction 
 of temperance would be clearly traceable to the more natural 
 and healthy form of life, if the latter course were adopted 
 it could only prove, what no one now denies, that it may be 
 possible, by restrictive measures, to entirely keep away the 
 traffic from one small area, while intensifying the evils 
 elsewhere. 
 
 But the community would certainly take care to prevent 
 the undue multiplication of licensed houses, and it would 
 be free to adopt any one of the various methods which the 
 more moderate of temperance reformers suggest. The 
 municipal authorities might conduct the liquor traffic 
 
SEMI-MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE. 
 
 81 
 
 themselves, and employ the profits in relief of rates. 
 There is, however, much force in the objection that it is 
 not desirable that the revenue of a community should be so 
 derived, and, therefore, it might be better that the profits 
 should be entirely applied to purposes which would compete 
 with the traffic, or in minimising its evil effects by establish- 
 ing asylums for those affected with alcoholism. On this 
 subject, as on all points involved, I earnestly invite corres- 
 pondence from those who have practical suggestions to offer; 
 and, although the town is but a small one, it would perhaps 
 not be impracticable to test various promising suggestions 
 in the different wards. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PRO-MUNICIPAL WORK. 
 
 " Only a proportion of each in one society can have nerve enough 
 to grasp the banner of a new truth, and endurance enough to bear it 
 along rugged and untrodden ways. ... To insist on a whole com- 
 munity being made at once to submit to the reign of new practices 
 and new ideas which have just begun to commend themselves to the 
 most advanced speculative intelligence of the time — this, even if it 
 were a possible process, would do much to make life impracticable 
 and to hurry on social dissolution. ... A new social state can 
 never establish its ideas unless the persons who hold them confess 
 them openly and give them an honest and effective adherence." — 
 Mr. John Morley, " On Compromise," Chap. v. 
 
 There will be found in every progressive community 
 societies and organisations which represent a far higher 
 level of public spirit and enterprise than that possessed or 
 displayed by such communities in their collective capacity. 
 It is probable that the government of a community can 
 never reach a higher tone or work on a higher plane than 
 the average sense of that community demands and enforces, 
 and it will greatly conduce to the w T ell-being of any society 
 if the efforts of its State or municipal organisations are 
 inspired and quickened by those of its members whose 
 ideals of social duty rise higher than the average. 
 
 And so it may bs in Garden City. There will be dis- 
 covered many opportunities for public service which neither 
 
 the community as a whole, nor even a majority of its 
 
 82 
 
PRO-MUNICIPAL WORK. 
 
 83 
 
 members, will at first recognise the importance of. or see 
 their way to embrace, and which public services it would 
 be useless, therefore, to expect the municipality to under- 
 take ; but those who have the welfare of society at heart 
 will, in the free air of the city, be always able to experiment 
 on their own responsibility, and thus quicken the public 
 conscience and enlarge the public understanding. 
 
 The whole of the experiment which this book describes 
 is indeed of this character. It represents pioneer work, 
 which will be carried out by those who have not a merely 
 pious opinion, but an effective belief in the economic, 
 sanitary, and social advantages of common ownership of 
 land, and who, therefore, are not satisfied merely to 
 advocate that those advantages should be secured on the 
 largest scale at the national expense, but are impelled 
 to give their views shape and form as soon as they can see 
 their way to join with a sufficient number of kindred spirits. 
 And what the whole experiment is to the nation, so may 
 what we term 6! pro-municipal " undertakings be to the 
 community of Garden City or to society generally. Just as 
 the larger experiment is designed to lead the nation into a 
 juster and better system of land tenure and a better and 
 more common-sense view of how towns should be built, so 
 are the various pro-municipal undertakings of Garden City 
 devised by those who are prepared to lead the way in 
 enterprises designed to further the well-being of the town, 
 but who have not as yet succeeded in getting their plans or 
 schemes adopted by the Central Council. 
 
 Philanthropic and charitable institutions, religious societies 
 and educational agencies of various kinds occupy a very 
 large part in this group of pro-municipal or pro-national 
 
8 4 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 agencies, and these have been already referred to, and their 
 nature and purposes are well known. But institutions 
 which aim at the more strictly material side of well-being, 
 such as banks and building societies, may be found there 
 too (see Diagram 5). Just as the founders of the Penny 
 Bank paved the way for the Post Office Savings Bank, so 
 may some of those who study carefully the experiment of 
 building up Garden City see how useful a bank might be, 
 which, like the Penny Bank, aims not so much at gain for 
 its founders as at the well-being of the community at large. 
 Such a bank might arrange to pay the whole of its net 
 profits, or all its profits over a certain fixed rate, into the 
 municipal exchequer, and give to the authorities of the 
 town the option of taking it over should they be convinced 
 of its utility and its general soundness. 
 
 There is another large field for pro-municipal activity in 
 the work of building homes for the people. The munici- 
 pality would be attempting too much if it essayed this task, 
 at least at the outset. To do so would be to depart too 
 widely from the path which experience has justified, however 
 much might be said in favour of such a course on the part 
 of a municipal body in command of ample funds. The 
 municipality has, however, done much to make the building 
 of bright and beautiful homes for the people possible. It 
 has effectually provided against any over-crowding within 
 its area, thus solving a problem found insoluble in existing 
 cities, and it offers sites of ample size at an average rate of 
 <£6 per annum for ground-rent and rates. Having done so 
 much, the municipality will pay heed to the warning of an 
 experienced municipal reformer, whose desire for the 
 extension of municipal enterprise cannot be doubted (Mr. 
 
PRO-MUNICIPAL WORK. 
 
 85 
 
 John Burns, M.P., L.C.C.), who has said : " A lot of work 
 has been thrown upon the Works Committee of the London 
 County Council by councillors who are so anxious for its 
 success that they would choke it by a burden of work." 
 
 There are, however, other sources to which the workers 
 may look for means to build their own homes. They may 
 form building societies or induce co-operative societies, 
 friendly societies, and trade unions to lend them the 
 necessary money, and to help them to organise the requisite 
 machinery. Granted the existence of the true social spirit, 
 and not its mere letter and name, and that spirit will 
 manifest itself in an infinite variety of ways. There are in 
 this country — who can doubt it % — many individuals and 
 societies who would be ready to raise funds and organise 
 associations for assisting bodies of workmen secure of good 
 wages to build their own homes on favourable terms. 
 
 A better security the lenders could scarcely have, especi- 
 ally having regard to the ridiculously small landlord's rent 
 paid by the borrowers. Certain it is that if the building of 
 the homes for these workmen is left to speculative builders 
 of a strongly-pronounced individualistic type, and these 
 reap golden harvests, it will be the fault, amongst others, 
 of those large organisations of working-men which now place 
 their capital in banks, whence it is withdrawn by those who 
 with it " exploit 99 the very men who have placed it there. 
 It is idle for working-men to complain of this self-imposed 
 exploitation, and to talk of nationalising the entire land and 
 capital of this country under an executive of their own class, 
 until they have first been through an apprenticeship at the 
 humbler task of organising men and women with their own 
 capital in constructive work of a less ambitious character — 
 
86 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 until they have assisted far more largely than they have yet 
 done in building-up capital not to be wasted in strikes, or 
 employed by capitalists in fighting strikers, but in securing 
 homes and employment for themselves and others on just 
 and honourable terms. The true remedy for capitalist 
 oppression where it exists, is not the strike of no work, but 
 the strike of true work, and against this last blow the oppres- 
 sor has no weapon. If labour leaders spent half the energy 
 in co-operative organisation that they now waste in co-opera- 
 tive disorganisation, the end of our present unjust system 
 would be at hand. In Garden City such leaders will have 
 a fair field for the exercise of pro-municipal functions — 
 functions which are exercised for the municipality, though 
 not by it — and the formation of building societies of this 
 type would be of the greatest possible utility. 
 
 But would not the amount of capital required for the 
 building of the dwelling-houses of a town of 30,000 be 
 enormous ? Some persons with whom I have discussed the 
 question look at the matter thus. So many houses in 
 Garden City at so many hundred of pounds a-piece, capital re- 
 quired so much. 1 This is, of course, quite a mistaken way 
 of regarding the problem. Let us test the matter thus. 
 How many houses have been built in London within the last 
 ten years 1 Shall we say at the very roughest of guesses 
 150,000, costing on an average £300 a-piece — to say noth- 
 ing of shops, factories and warehouses. Well, that is 
 £45,000,000. Was £45,000,000 raised for this purpose ? 
 Yes, certainly, or the houses would not have been built. But 
 the money was not raised all at once, and if one could 
 
 i The position was so stated by Mr. Buckingham in " National 
 Evils and Practical Remedies," see Chap. x. 
 
PRO-MUNICIPAL WORK. 
 
 87 
 
 examine the actual sovereigns that were raised for the build- 
 ing of these 150,000 houses, one would often find the very 
 same coins turning up again and again. So in Garden City. 
 Before it is completed, there will be 5,500 houses at say 
 £300 a-piece, making £1,165,000. But this capital will 
 not be raised all at once, and here, far more than in London, 
 the very same sovereigns would be employed in building 
 many houses. For observe, money is not lost or consumed 
 when it is spent. It merely changes hands. A workman 
 of Garden City borrows £200 from a pro-municipal building 
 society, and builds a house with it. That house costs him 
 £200, and the 200 sovereigns disappear so far as he is con- 
 cerned, but they become the property of the brickmakers, 
 builders, carpenters, plumbers, plasterers, etc., who have 
 built his house, whence those sovereigns find their way into 
 the pockets of the tradesmen and others with whom such 
 workmen deal, and thence would pass into the pro-municipal 
 bank of the town, when, presently, those 200 identical sover- 
 eigns might be drawn out and employed in building another 
 house, and thus there would be presented the apparent anom- 
 aly of two, and then three, and then four or more houses, 
 each costing £200, being built with 200 sovereigns. 1 But 
 there is no real anomaly about it. The coins, of course, did 
 not build the houses in any of the supposed cases. The 
 coins were but the measure of value, and like a pair of 
 scales and weights, may be used over and over again with- 
 out any perceptible lessening of their worth. What built the 
 houses was really labour, skill, enterprise, working up the 
 
 i A similar line of argument is very fully elaborated in a most 
 able work entitled "The Physiology of Industry," by Mummery 
 and Hobson (MacMillan & Co.). 
 
88 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 free gifts of nature ; and though each of the workers might 
 have his reward weighed out to him in coins, the cost of all 
 buildings and works in Garden City must be mainly deter- 
 mined by the skill and energy with which its labours are 
 directed. Still, so long as gold and silver are recognised as 
 the medium of exchange, it will be necessary to use them, 
 and of great importance to use them skilfully — for the skill 
 with which they are used, or their unnecessary use dispensed 
 with, as in a banker's clearing house, will have a most im- 
 portant bearing upon the cost of the town, and upon the 
 annual tax levied in the shape of interest on borrowed 
 capital. Skill must be therefore directed to the object of 
 so using coins that they may quickly effect their object of 
 measuring one value, and be set to work to measure another 
 — that they may be turned over as many times as possible 
 in the year, in order that the amount of labour measured 
 by each coin may be as large as possible, and thus the 
 amount represented by interest on the coins borrowed, 
 though paid at the normal or usual rate, shall bear as small 
 a proportion as possible to the amount paid to labour. If 
 this is done effectively, then a saving to the community in 
 respect of interest as great as the more easily demonstrated 
 saving in landlord's rent may probably be effected. 
 
 And now the reader is asked to observe how admirably, 
 and, as it were, automatically, a well-organised migratory 
 movement to land held in common lends itself to the econo- 
 mic use of money, and to the making of one coin serve 
 many purposes. Money, it is often said, is u a drug in the 
 market." Like labour itself it seems enchanted, and thus 
 one sees millions in gold and silver lying idle in banks 
 facing the very streets where men are wandering workless 
 
PRO-MUNICIPAL WORK. 
 
 8 9 
 
 and penniless. But here, on the site of Garden City, the 
 cry for employment on the part of those willing to work 
 will no more be heard in vain. Only yesterday it may 
 have been so, but to-day the enchanted land is awake, and 
 is loudly calling for its children. There is no difficulty in 
 finding work — profitable work — work that is really urgently, 
 imperatively needed — the building of a home-city. Mr. A. 
 J. Balfour said in the House of Commons on the 12th 
 December, 1893, that it was impossible to stop the migra- 
 tion to the towns, because in the country there was a strict 
 limit to the amount of work to be done, while in the towns 
 there was no such limit. 1 But here, on the site of Garden 
 City just roused from its long lethargy, there is abundance 
 of work of the most varied sorts, appealing to men to come 
 and do it. Yes, Mr. Balfour, the so-called " impossible " 
 will happen once again, and, as men hasten to build up this 
 and the other towns which must inevitably follow its con- 
 struction, the migration to the towns — the old, crowded, 
 chaotic slum-towns of the past — will be effectually checked, 
 and the current of population set in precisely the opposite 
 direction — to the new towns, bright and fair, wholesome and 
 beautiful. 
 
 1 Mr. Balfour, M.P., on migration into the towns: — " There 
 could be no doubt that when there was agricultural distress, migra- 
 tion into the towns must increase, but do not let any Member 
 suppose that if agriculture were as prosperous now as it was 
 twenty years ago, or as the dreams of the greatest dreamers 
 of dreams would make it, you could by any possibility stop 
 this immigration from the country. It depends upon causes 
 aud natural laws which no laws we can pass can permanently 
 modify. The plain fact is, that in a rura district there is and can 
 be only one investment for capital, and only one employment for 
 labour. When prosperity in agriculture increases, immigration into 
 
90 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 towns diminishes, no doubt ; but however prosperous agriculture 
 may be, a normal point must be reached when no more capital can 
 be applied to the land, and no more labour can be applied, and when 
 you have reached that point it does, of necessity, happen that if 
 marriages occur with the frequency with which they occur at the 
 present time, and if families are as large as they are at the present 
 time, there must be an immigration from the country to the town, 
 from the place where there is only one kind of employment of labour, 
 strictly limited by the natural capacity of the soil, to another place 
 where there is no limit whatever to the employment of labour, ex- 
 cept the limit set by the amount of capital seeking investment, and 
 the amount of labour capable of taking advantage of that capital. 
 If that were an abstruse doctrine of political economy, I should be 
 afraid to mention it in this House, where political economy has be- 
 come a bye-word and reproach. But it is really a plain statement 
 of a natural law which I most earnestly advise every man to take to 
 heart." — Parliamentary Debates, 12th December, 1893, Vol. xix., p. 
 1218. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ADMINISTRATION — A BIRD'S EYE VIEW. 
 
 " Watts was often consulted about supposed inventions and dis- 
 coveries, and his invariable reply was to recommend that a model 
 should be formed and tried. This he considered as the only true 
 test of the value of any novelty in mechanics." — " Book of Days," 
 Vol. L, p. 134. 
 
 " Selfish and contentious men will not cohere, and without coher- 
 ence nothing can be accomplished." — " Descent of Man," Chap. v. 
 
 I now present to the eye of the reader a diagram of ad- 
 ministration which conveniently summarises the last three 
 chapters so far as they deal with administrative work. 
 
 At the centre is the Central Council with its very ample 
 powers of co-ordination and financial control (see Chap, vi., 
 page 67), upon which body sit the chief officers of all the 
 public departments. 
 
 Closely associated with the Central Council is the group 
 of Public Control, which attends to questions of general 
 administration. (Chap, vi., page 69.) 
 
 Next in order comes the Engineering group, each depart- 
 ment of which, while attending specially to its own work, is 
 in close association with the whole group, so that questions 
 of this nature can be considered not only in detail but as 
 parts of a larger whole. 
 
 Next comes the Educational and Social Group, dealing 
 
 9i 
 
92 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 with those questions which require a knowledge of human 
 nature rather than skill in dealing with the material 
 forces around us — a group where the influence of woman 
 will probably make itself largely felt. 
 
 Each group is, however, purposely represented by the 
 incompleteness of the circle as incomplete, for the system 
 is quite elastic, and other departments may be added as 
 occasion serves. 
 
 The foregoing groups represent the purely municipal 
 industries of the city. 
 
 But in close association with the work of the municipality 
 is the group known as the semi-municipal group, as to 
 which there is no complete control of the work carried on, 
 but where the buildings either belong to the municipality 
 or are specially designed by its officers, and where the 
 control of the trade carried on by the various members of 
 the group is regulated on the principle of local option dealt 
 with at some length in Chapter vii. 
 
 Next comes the pro-municipal group. Here we see mani- 
 fested the very highest forms of public work. The 
 enterprises of this group are but little trammelled by con- 
 ditions laid down by the authorities of Garden City, but 
 represent a labour of love performed by a diligent band of 
 workers without fee or reward. (See Chapter viii.) 
 
 Outside these appears the individualistic and co-operative 
 group. In this group are various undertakings carried on 
 for private profit, or small organisations, such as clubs and 
 co-operative (productive) societies, which may not profess 
 the widest social aims, but are specially intended to benefit 
 their members. But though the distinction thus repre- 
 sented is convenient, it is hoped that the reader will not 
 
ADMINISTRATION — A BIRD'S EYE VIEW. 93 
 
 draw the line sharply between Individualism and Socialism. 
 Individualism and Socialism are but two different aspects 
 from which one problem may be regarded : no system of 
 society is healthy or progressive which attempts to repress 
 the idea of individual advancement, while no man can ever 
 secure his own best interests who does not regard his life as 
 part of the larger life of society. The authorities of Garden 
 City will therefore not aim at forcibly absorbing all indi- 
 vidual industry \ they will trust rather to the growth of 
 public spirit and of mutual confidence — the tendency of 
 which growth must inevita-bly be to bring men into closer 
 union — a union which will express itself in an infinite variety 
 of ways. With the growth of this spirit the time will come 
 when life will be seen stereoscopically — when the two 
 different points of view from which life is simultaneously 
 regarded — that of the individual personal well-being and 
 that of the well-being of society — will enable a truer because 
 a more complete view of life to be enjoyed by all its 
 members. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 SOME DIFFICULTIES CONSIDERED. 
 
 " The difficulty felt about Communism, or even about any fairly 
 complete Socialism, is that it interferes with man's freedom to make 
 demands for his many-sided nature, and to endeavour to satisfy 
 those demands. It secures bread to all, perhaps, but it ignores the 
 doctrine that man shall not live by bread alone. The future pro- 
 bably lies with those who, instead of pitting against one another, 
 Socialism and Individualism, will seek to realise a true, vital, or- 
 ganic conception of Society and of the State in which both Individu- 
 alism and Socialism will have their proper share. The bark which 
 carries civilised man with his fortunes will thus steer an even course 
 between the Scylla of anarchy and the Charybdis of despotism." — 
 Daily Chronicle, 2nd July, 1894. 
 
 Having now, in a concrete rather than an abstract form, 
 stated the objects and purposes of our scheme, it may be 
 well to deal, though somewhat briefly, with an objection 
 which may arise in the thought of the reader. " Your 
 scheme may be very attractive, but it is but one of a great 
 number, many of which have been tried and have met with 
 but little success. How do you distinguish it from those ? 
 How, in the face of such a record of failure, do you expect 
 to secure that large measure of public support which is 
 necessary ere such a scheme can be put into operation ? " 
 
 The question is a very natural one, and demands an 
 answer. My reply is, It is quite true that the pathway of 
 experiment towards a better state of society is strewn with 
 
 94 
 
SOME DIFFICULTIES CONSIDERED. 
 
 95 
 
 failures. But so is the pathway of experiment to any 
 result that is worth achieving. Success is, for the most 
 part, built on failure. As Mrs. Humphrey Ward remarks 
 in " Robert Elsemere" : " All great changes are preceded by 
 numbers of sporadic, and, as the bystander thinks, inter- 
 mittent efforts." A successful invention or discovery is 
 usually a slow growth, to which new elements are added, 
 and from which old elements are removed, first in the 
 thought of the inventor, and subsequently in an outward 
 form, until at last precisely the right elements and no 
 others are brought together. Indeed, it may be truly 
 said that if you find a series of experiments continued 
 through many years by various workers, there will eventually 
 be produced the result for which so many have been 
 industriously searching. Long-continued effort, in spite of 
 failure and defeat, is the forerunner of complete success. 
 He w T ho wishes to achieve success may turn past defeat 
 into future victory by observing one condition. He must 
 profit by past experiences, and aim at retaining all the 
 strong points of previous attempts without the weaknesses 
 which defeated former efforts. 
 
 To deal at all exhaustively here with the history of social 
 experiments would be beyond the scope of this book ; but a 
 few leading features may be noticed with a view of meeting 
 the objection with which this chapter opens. 
 
 Probably the chief cause of failure in former social ex- 
 periments has been a misconception of the principal element 
 in the problem — human nature itself. The degree of strain 
 which human nature will bear in an altruistic direction 
 has not been duly considered by those who have essayed 
 the task of suggesting new forms of social organisation. A 
 
96 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 kindred mistake has arisen from regarding one principle of 
 action to the exclusion of others. Take Communism, for 
 instance. Communism is a most excellent principle, and 
 all of us are Communists in some degree, even those who 
 would shudder at being told so. But though Communism 
 is an excellent principle, Individualism is no less excellent. 
 A great orchestra which enraptures us with its delightful 
 music is composed of men and women who are accustomed 
 not only to play together, but to practise separately, and 
 to delight themselves and their friends by their own, it may 
 be comparatively, feeble efforts. Nay, more : isolated and 
 individual thought and action are as essential, if the best 
 results of combination are to be secured, as combination 
 and co-operation are essential, if the best results of isolated 
 effort are to be gained. It is by isolated thought that new 
 combinations are worked out ; it is through the lessons 
 learned in associated effort that the best individual work is 
 accomplished ; and that society will prove the most healthy 
 and vigorous where the freest and fullest opportunities are 
 afforded alike for individual and for combined effort. 
 
 Now, do not the whole series of communistic experiments 
 owe their failure largely to this — that they have not re- 
 cognised this duality of principle, but have carried one 
 principle, excellent enough in itself, altogether too far ? 
 They have assumed that because common property is good, 
 all property should be common ; that because associated 
 effort can produce marvels, individual effort is to be re- 
 garded as dangerous, or at least futile, some extremists 
 even seeking to abolish altogether the idea of the family 
 or home. No reader will confuse the experiment here 
 advocated with any experiment in absolute Communism. 
 
SOME DIFFICULTIES CONSIDERED. 97 
 
 Nor is the scheme to be regarded as a socialistic experi- 
 ment. Socialists, who may be regarded as Communists of 
 a more moderate type, advocate common property in land 
 and in all the instruments of production, distribution, and 
 exchange — railways, machinery, factories, docks, banks, and 
 the like ; but they would preserve the principle of private 
 ownership in all such things as have passed in the form of 
 wages to the servants of the community, with the proviso, 
 however, that these wages shall not be employed in organised 
 creative effort, involving the employment of more than one 
 person ; for all forms of employment with a view to remu- 
 neration should, as the Socialists contend, be under the 
 direction of some recognised department of the Govern- 
 ment, which is to claim a rigid monopoly. But it is very 
 doubtful whether this principle of the Socialist, in which 
 there is a certain measure of recognition of the individual 
 side of man's nature as well as of his social side, represents 
 a basis on which an experiment can fairly proceed with the 
 hope of permanent success. Two chief difficulties appear 
 to present themselves. First, the self-seeking side of man — 
 his too frequent desire to produce, with a view to possess- 
 ing for his own personal use and enjoyment ; and, secondly, 
 his love of independence and of initiative, his personal 
 ambition, and his consequent unwillingness to put himself 
 under the guidance of others for the whole of his working 
 day, with little opportunity of striking out some independent 
 line of action, or taking a leading part in the creation of 
 new forms of enterprise. 
 
 Now even if we pass over the first difficulty — that of 
 human self-seeking — even if we assume that we have a body 
 
 of men and women who have realised the truth that con- 
 
 G 
 
93 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 certed social effort will achieve far better results in enjoy- 
 able commodities for each member of the community than 
 can possibly be achieved by ordinary competitive methods 
 — each struggling for himself — we have still the other diffi- 
 culty, arising out of the higher and not the lower nature of 
 the men and women who are to be organised — their love of 
 independence and of initiative. Men love combined effort, 
 but they love individual effort, too, and they will not be 
 content with such few opportunities for personal effort as 
 they w T ould be allowed to make in a rigid socialistic com- 
 munity. Men do not object to being organised under 
 competent leadership, but some also want to be leaders, and 
 to have a share in the work of organising ; they like to lead 
 as well as to be led. Besides, one can easily imagine men 
 filled with a desire to serve the community in some way 
 which the community as a whole did not at the moment 
 appreciate the advantage of, and who would be precluded 
 by the very constitution of the socialistic state from carry- 
 ing their proposals into effect. 
 
 Now it is at this very point that a most interesting 
 experiment at Topolobampo has broken down. The experi- 
 ment, which was initiated by Mr. A. K. Owen, an American 
 civil engineer, was started on a considerable tract of land 
 obtained under concession from the Mexican Government. 
 One principle adopted by Mr. Owen was that " all employ- 
 ment must be through the Department for the Diversity of 
 Home Industries. One member cannot directly employ 
 another member, and only members can be employed 
 through the settlement." 1 In other words, if A. and B. 
 
 1 " Integral Co-operation at Work," A. K. Owen (U.S. Book Co., 
 150 Worth St., N.Y.). 
 
SOME DIFFICULTIES CONSIDERED. 99 
 
 were dissatisfied with the management, whether owing to 
 doubts as to its competency or honesty, they could not 
 arrange to work with each other, even though their sole 
 desire might be the common good ; but they must leave the 
 settlement. And this is what they accordingly did in very 
 considerable numbers. 
 
 A similar experience seems to have been met with in the 
 more recent settlement of Australians in Paraguay. From 
 an article in the Daily Chronicle, 21st July, 1894, it appears 
 that the Rev. Mr. Hastings, who has visited the colony, 
 states that "About 110 people were at the Eveca and at 
 the estancia where the cattle were kept. The balance of 
 the first 200 settlers had already retired discontented with 
 Mr. Lane's management, as he was made President of the 
 Commune by the votes of the members who had not yet 
 started. He could, therefore, override any combination of 
 the pioneers, and the men complained of the autocracy 
 which was kept up." 
 
 It is at this point that a great distinction between the 
 Topolobampo experiment and the scheme advocated in 
 this work is evident. In Topolobampo the organisation 
 claimed a monopoly of all productive work, and each 
 member must work under the direction of those who 
 controlled that monopoly, or must leave the organisation. 
 In Garden City no such monopoly is claimed, and any dis- 
 satisfaction with the public administration of the affairs of 
 the town would no more necessarily lead to a widespread 
 split in Garden City than in any other municipality. At 
 the outset, at least, by far the larger part of the w T ork done 
 will be by individuals or combinations of individuals quite 
 other than municipal servants, just as in any other 
 
100 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 municipality, at present existing, the sphere of municipal 
 work is still very small as compared with the work performed 
 by other groups. 
 
 Other sources of failure in some social experiments are 
 the considerable expense incurred by migrants before they 
 reach the scene of their future labours, the great distance 
 from any large market, and the difficulty of previously 
 obtaining any real knowledge of the conditions of life and 
 labour there prevailing. The one advantage gained — cheap 
 land — seems to be altogether insufficient to compensate for 
 these and other disadvantages. 
 
 We now come to what is perhaps the chief difference 
 between the scheme advocated in this work and most other 
 schemes of a like nature which have been hitherto advocated 
 or put into actual practice. That difference is this : While 
 others have sought to weld into one large organisation 
 individuals who have not yet been combined into smaller 
 groups, or who must leave those smaller groups on their 
 joining the larger organisation, my proposal appeals not 
 only to individuals but to co-operators, manufacturers, phil- 
 anthropic societies, and others experienced in organisation, 
 and with organisations under their control, to come and place 
 themselves under conditions involving no new restraints but 
 rather securing wider freedom. And, further, a striking 
 feature of the present scheme is that the very considerable 
 number of persons already engaged on the estate will not 
 be displaced (except those on the town site, and these 
 gradually), but will themselves form a valuable nucleus, 
 paying in rents, from the very inception of the enterprise, 
 a sum which will go very far towards paying the interest on 
 the money with which the estate is purchased — rents which 
 
SOME DIFFICULTIES CONSIDERED. IOI 
 
 they will be the more willing to pay to a landlord who will 
 treat them with perfect equity, and bring consumers for their 
 produce to their doors. The work of organisation is, there- 
 fore, in a very large measure accomplished. The army is 
 now in existence \ it has but to be mobilised ; it is with no 
 undisciplined mob that we have to deal. Or the comparison 
 between this experiment and those which have preceded it 
 is like that between two machines — one of which has to be 
 created out of various ores which have first to be gathered 
 together and then cast into various shapes, while for the 
 other all the parts are ready to hand and have but to be 
 fitted together. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A UNIQUE COMBINATION OF PROPOSALS. 
 
 " Human beings, in their present condition, may be likened to bees 
 in the act of swarming, as we see them clinging in a mass to a single 
 bough. Their position is a temporary one, and must inevitably be 
 changed. They must rise and find themselves a new abode. Every 
 bee knows this, and is eager to shift its own position, as well as that 
 of the others, but not one of them will do so until the whole swarm 
 rises. The swarm cannot rise, because one bee clings to the other 
 and prevents it from separating itself from the swarm, and so they all 
 continue to hang. It might seem as if there were no deliverance 
 from this position, precisely as it seems to men of the world who 
 have become entangled in the social net. Indeed, there would be 
 no outlet for the bees if each one were not a living creature possessed 
 of a pair of wings. Neither would there be any issue for men if each 
 one were not a living individual being, gifted with a capacity for 
 assimilating the Christian life-conception. If among these bees who 
 are able to fly not one could be found willing to start, the swarm 
 would never change its position. And it is the same among men. 
 If the man who has assimilated the Christian life-conception waits 
 for others before he proceeds to live in accordance with it, mankind 
 will never change its attitude. And as all that is needed to change 
 a solid mass of bees into a flying swarm is for one bee to spread its 
 wings and fly away, when the second, the third, the tenth and the 
 hundredth will follow suit, so all that is needed to break through 
 the magic circle of social life, deliverance from which seems so hope- 
 less, is that one man should view life from a Christian standpoint 
 and begin to frame his own life accordingly, whereupon others will 
 follow in his footsteps." — "The Kingdom of God is within you,'* 
 Chapter ix., Count Leo Tolstoi (Walter Scott). 
 
 In the last chapter I pointed out the great differences of 
 
 principle between the project placed before the reader of 
 
 102 
 
A UNIQUE COMBINATION OF PROPOSALS. 103 
 
 this work and some of those schemes of social reform which, 
 having been put to the test of experience, have ended in 
 disaster, and urged that there were features of the proposed 
 experiment which so completely distinguished it from such 
 experiments that they could not be fairly regarded as any 
 indication as to the probable results which would follow 
 from the launching of the experiment now suggested. 
 
 It is my present purpose to show that though the scheme 
 taken as a whole is a new one, and is, perhaps, entitled to 
 some consideration on that account, its chief claim upon the 
 attention of the public lies in the fact that it combines the 
 important features of several schemes which have been 
 advocated at various times, and so combines them as to 
 secure the best results of each, without the dangers and 
 difficulties which sometimes, even in the minds of their 
 authors, were clearly and distinctly seen. 
 
 Shortly stated, my scheme is a combination of three 
 distinct projects which have, I think, never been united 
 before. These are, (1), the proposals for an organised 
 migratory movement of population of Wakefield and of 
 Professor Marshall ; (2), the system of land tenure first pro- 
 posed by Thos. Spence and afterwards (though with an im- 
 portant modification) by Mr. Herbert Spencer ; and, (3), the 
 model city (of somewhat different design, however,) of Jas. 
 S. Buckingham. 1 
 
 1 1 may, perhaps, state as showing how in the search for truth 
 men's minds run in the same channels, and as, possibly, some 
 additional argument for the soundness of the proposals thus com- 
 bined, that, till I had got far on with my project, I had not seen 
 either the proposals of Professor Marshall or of Wakefield (beyond 
 a very short reference to the latter in J. S. Mill's " Elements of 
 Political Economy"), nor had I seen the work of Buckingham, 
 
104 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 Let us take these proposals in the order named. Wake- 
 field in his " Art of Colonisation " (London, J. W. Parker, 
 1849) urged that colonies when formed — he was not think- 
 ing of Home Colonies — should be based on scientific 
 principles. He said (page 109) : " We send out colonies of 
 the limbs, without the belly and the head, of needy persons, 
 many of them mere paupers, or even criminals ; colonies 
 made up of a single class of persons in the community, and 
 that the most helpless and the most unfit to perpetuate our 
 national character, and to become the fathers of a race whose 
 habits of thinking and feeling shall correspond to those 
 which, in the meantime, we are cherishing at home. The 
 ancients, on the contrary, sent out a representation of the 
 parent State — colonists from all ranks. We stock the farm 
 with creeping and climbing plants, without any trees of 
 firmer growth for them to entwine round. A hop-ground 
 without poles, the plants matted confusedly together, and 
 scrambling on the ground in tangled heaps, with here and 
 there some clinging to rank thistles and hemlock, would be 
 an apt emblem of a modern colony. The ancients began 
 by nominating to the honourable office of captain or leader 
 of the colony one of the chief men, if not the chief man of 
 the State, like the queen bee leading the workers. Mon- 
 archies provided a prince'of the royal blood ; an aristocracy 
 its choicest nobleman ; a democracy its most influential 
 citizen. These naturally carried along with them some of 
 their own station in life — their companions and friends ; 
 some of their immediate dependents also — of those between 
 themselves and the lowest class ; and were encouraged in 
 
 which, published nearly fifty years ago, seems to have attracted but 
 little attention. 
 
A UNIQUE COMBINATION OF PROPOSALS. I OS 
 
 various ways to do so. The lowest class again followed 
 with alacrity, because they found themselves moving with 
 and not away from the state of society in which they had 
 been living. It was the same social and political union 
 under which they had been born and bred ; and to prevent 
 any contrary impression being made, the utmost solemnity 
 was observed in transferring the rites of pagan superstition. 
 They carried with them their gods, their festivals, their 
 games, all, in short, that held together, and kept entire the 
 fabric of society as it existed in the parent state. Nothing 
 was left behind that could be moved, of all that the heart 
 or eye of an exile misses. The new colony was made to 
 appear as if time or chance had reduced the whole com- 
 munity to smaller dimensions, leaving it still essentially 
 the same home and country to its surviving members. It 
 consisted of a general contribution of members from all 
 classes, and so became, on its first settlement, a mature state, 
 with all the component parts of that which sent it forth. 
 It was a transfer of population, therefore, which gave rise 
 to no sense of degradation, as if the colonist were thrust out 
 from a higher to a lower description of community." 
 
 J, S. Mill in his "Elements of Political Economy," Book 
 L, Chap, viii., § 3, says of this work: " Wakefield's theory of 
 colonisation has excited much attention, and is doubtless 
 destined to excite much more. . . . His system consists Of 
 arrangements for securing that each colony shall have from 
 the first a town population bearing due proportion to the 
 agricultural, and that the cultivators of the soil shall not 
 be so widely scattered as to be deprived by distance of the 
 benefit of that town population as a market for their 
 produce." 
 
io6 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 Professor Marshall's proposals for an organised migratory 
 movement of population from London have been already 
 noticed, but the following passage from the article already 
 referred to may be quoted : 
 
 " There might be great variety of method, but the general 
 plan would probably be for a committee, whether formed 
 specially for the purpose or not, to interest themselves in 
 the formation of a colony in some place well beyond the 
 range of London smoke. After seeing their way to building 
 or buying suitable cottages there, they would enter into 
 communication with some of the employers of low-waged 
 labour. They would select, at first, industries that used 
 very little fixed capital ; and, as we have seen, it fortunately 
 happens that most of the industries which it is important to 
 move are of this kind. They would find an employer — and 
 there must be many such — who really cares for the misery 
 of his employees. Acting with him and by his advice, they 
 would make themselves the friends of people employed or fit 
 to be employed in his trade ; they would show them the ad- 
 vantages of moving, and help them to move, both with counsel 
 and money. They would organise the sending of work back- 
 wards and forwards, the employer perhaps opening an 
 agency in the colony. But after being once started it ought 
 to be self-supporting, for the cost of carriage, even if the 
 employees went in sometimes to get instructions, would be 
 less than the saving made in rent — at all events, if allow- 
 ance be made for the value of the garden produce. And 
 more than as much gain would probably be saved by remov- 
 ing the temptation to drink which is caused by the sadness 
 of London. They would meet with much passive resistance 
 at first. The unknown has terrors to all, but especially to 
 
A UNIQUE COMBINATION OF PROPOSALS. 107 
 
 those who have lost their natural spring. Those who have 
 lived always in the obscurity of a London court might shrink 
 away from the free light ; poor as are their acquaintanceships 
 at home, they might fear to go where they knew no one. 
 But, with gentle insistence, the committee would urge their 
 way, trying to get those who knew one another to move 
 together, by warm, patient sympathy, taking off the chill of 
 the first change. It is only the first step that costs ; every 
 succeeding step would be easier. The work of several firms, 
 not always in the same business, might, in some cases, be 
 sent together. Gradually a prosperous industrial district 
 would grow up, and then, mere self-interest would induce 
 employers to bring down their main workshops, and even to 
 start factories in the colony. Ultimately all would gain, 
 but most the land-owners and the railroads connected with 
 the colony." 1 
 
 What could more strongly point than the last sentence of 
 that quotation from Professor Marshall's proposal to the 
 necessity of first buying the land, so that the most admirable 
 project of Thomas Spence can be put into practice, and thus 
 prevent the terrible rise in rent which Professor Marshall 
 foresees 1 Spence's proposal, put forward more than a 
 hundred years ago, at once suggests how to secure the 
 desired end. Here it is : — 
 
 " Then you may behold the rent which the people have 
 paid into the parish treasuries employed by each parish in 
 paying the Government its share of the sum which the 
 Parliament or National Congress at any time grants; in 
 
 1 The project of one large London manufacturer transferring his 
 works from the East End of London to the country is the chief 
 theme of a story, by Miss Marianne Farningham, entitled " 1900 ? " 
 (Jas. Clarke & Co.) 
 
io8 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 maintaining and relieving its own poor and people out of 
 work ; in paying the necessary officers their salaries ; in 
 building, repairing, and adorning its houses, bridges, and 
 other structures ; in making and maintaining convenient 
 and delightful streets, highways, and passages, both for 
 foot and carriages ; in making and maintaining canals and 
 other conveniences for trade and navigation; in planting and 
 taking in waste grounds; in premiums for the encouragement 
 of agriculture or anything else thought worthy of encourage- 
 ment ; and, in a word, in doing whatever the people think 
 proper, and not, as formerly, to support and spread luxury, 
 pride, and all manner of vice. . . . There are no tolls or 
 taxes of any kind paid among them by native or foreigner 
 but the aforesaid rent, which every person pays to the 
 parish, according to the quantity, quality, and conveniences 
 of the land ... he occupies in it. The government, 
 poor, roads, etc., . . . are all maintained with the rent, 
 on which account all wares, manufactures, allowable trade 
 employments or actions are entirely duty-free." — From a 
 lecture read at the Philosophical Society in Newcastle, on 
 November 8th, 1775, for printing which the Society did the 
 author the honour to expel him. (Now published by Wm, 
 Reeves, 185 Fleet Street, E.C.) 
 
 It will be observed that the only difference between this 
 proposal and the proposals as to land reform put forward in 
 this book, is not a difference of system, but a difference (and 
 a very important one) as to the method of its inauguration. 
 Spence appears to have thought that the people would, by a 
 fiat, dispossess the existing owners and establish the system 
 at once and universally throughout the country ; while, in 
 this work, it is proposed to purchase the necessary land with 
 
A UNIQUE COMBINATION OF PROPOSALS. 109 
 
 which to establish the system on a small scale, and to trust 
 to the inherent advantages of the system leading to its 
 gradual adoption. 
 
 Writing some seventy years after Spence had put forward 
 his proposal, Mr. Herbert Spencer (having first laid down 
 the grand principle that all men are equally entitled to the 
 use of the earth, as a corollary of the law of equal liberty 
 generally), in discussing this subject, observes, with his 
 usual force and clearness : — 
 
 "But to what does this doctrine that men are equally 
 entitled to the use of the earth, lead ? Must we return to 
 the times of unenclosed wilds, and subsist on roots, berries 
 and game ? Or are we to be left to the management of 
 Messrs. Fourrier, Owen, Louis Blanc & Co. ] Neither. Such 
 a doctrine is consistent with the highest civilisation, may be 
 carried out without involving a community of goods, and 
 need cause no very serious revolution in existing arrange- 
 ments. The change required would be simply a change of 
 landlords. Separate ownership would merge in the joint- 
 stock ownership of the public. Instead of being in the 
 possession of individuals, the country would be held by the 
 great corporate body — society. Instead of leasing his acres 
 from an isolated proprietor, the farmer would lease them 
 from the nation. Instead of paying his rent to the agent 
 of Sir John and His Grace, he would pay it to an agent or 
 deputy agent of the community. Stewards would be public 
 officials instead of private ones, and tenancy the only land 
 tenure. A state of things so ordered would be in perfect 
 harmony with the moral law. Under it all men would be 
 equally landlords ; all men would be alike free to become 
 tenants. A., B., C. and the rest might compete for a vacant 
 
no 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 farm as now, and one of them might take that farm without 
 in any way violating the principles of pure equity. All 
 would be equally free to bid ; all would be equally free to 
 refrain. And when the farm had been let to A., B., or C, all 
 parties would have done that which they willed, the one in 
 chosing to pay a given sum to his fellow-men for the use of 
 certain lands — the others in refusing to pay the sum. 
 Clearly, therefore, on such a system the earth might be en- 
 closed, occupied, and cultivated in entire subordination to 
 the law of equal freedom." — " Social Statics," Chap, ix., 
 sec. 8. 
 
 But having thus written, Mr. Herbert Spencer at a later 
 period, having discovered two grave difficulties in the way 
 of his own proposal, unreservedly withdrew it. The first of 
 these difficulties was the evils which he considered as in- 
 separable from State ownership (see " Justice," published in 
 1891, appendix B., p. 290); the second, the impossibility, as 
 Mr. Spencer regarded it, of acquiring the land on terms 
 which would be at once equitable to existing owners and 
 remunerative to the community. 
 
 But if the reader examines the scheme of Spence, which 
 preceded the now-withdrawn proposals of Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer, he will see that Spence's scheme was entirely 
 freed, as is the one put forward in this little book, from the 
 objections which might probably attend control by the 
 State. 1 The rents were, under Spence's proposals, as 
 in my own, not to be levied by a Central Government far 
 
 i Though Mr. Herbert Spencer, as if to rebuke his own theory 
 that State control is inherently bad, says, "Political speculation 
 which sets out with the assumption that the State has in all cases 
 the same nature must end in profoundly erroneous conclusions." 
 
A UNIQUE COMBINATION OF PROPOSALS. Ill 
 
 removed from contact with the people, but by the very- 
 parish (in my scheme the municipality) in which the people 
 reside. As to the other difficulty, which presented itself to 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer's mind — that of acquiring the land on 
 equitable terms, and of yet making it remunerative to the 
 purchasers — a difficulty which Mr. Herbert Spencer, seeing 
 no w T ay out of, rashly concluded to be insuperable — that 
 difficulty is entirely removed by my proposal of buying agri- 
 cultural or sparsely settled land, letting it in the manner 
 advocated by Spence, and then bringing about the scientific 
 migratory movement advocated by Wakefield, and, though 
 in a somewhat less daring fashion, by Professor Marshall. 
 
 Surely a project, which thus brings what Mr Herbert 
 Spencer still terms " the dictum of absolute ethics " — that 
 all men are equally entitled to the use of the earth — into 
 the field of practical life, and makes it a thing immedi- 
 ately realisable by those who believe in it, must be one of 
 the greatest public importance. When a great philosopher 
 in effect says, we cannot conform our life to the highest 
 moral principles because men have laid an immoral founda- 
 tion for us in the past, but " if, while possessing those ethi- 
 cal sentiments which social discipline has now produced, 
 men stood in possession of a territory not yet individually 
 portioned out, they would no more hesitate to assert equality 
 of their claims to the land than they would hesitate to assert 
 equality of their claims to light and air" 1 — one cannot help 
 wishing — so inharmonious does life seem — that the oppor- 
 tunity presented itself of migrating to a new planet where 
 the " ethical sentiments which social discipline has now pro- 
 duced " might be indulged in. But a new planet, or even 
 1 "Justice," Chap, xi., p. 85. 
 
112 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 "a territory not yet individually portioned out," is by no 
 means necessary if we are but in real earnest ; for it has 
 been shown that an organised, migratory movement from 
 over-developed, high-priced land to comparatively raw and 
 unoccupied land, will enable all who desire it to live this life 
 of equal freedom and opportunity ; and a sense of the possi- 
 bility of a life on earth at once orderly and free dawns upon 
 the heart and mind. 
 
 The third proposal which I have combined with those of 
 Spence and Mr. Herbert Spencer, of Wakefield and Professor 
 Marshall, embraces one essential feature of a scheme of 
 James S. Buckingham, 1 but at the same time one of the 
 essential features of that scheme I have purposely omitted. 
 Mr. Buckingham says (p. 25): "My thoughts were thus 
 directed to the great defects of all existing towns, and the 
 desirability of forming at least one model town which 
 should avoid the most prominent of these defects, and sub- 
 stitute advantages not yet possessed by any." In his work 
 he exhibits a ground plan and a sketch of a town of about 
 1,000 acres, containing a population of 25,000, and sur- 
 rounded by a large agricultural estate. Buckingham, like 
 Wakefield, saw the great advantages to be derived by com- 
 bining an agricultural community with an industrial, and 
 urged : " Wherever practicable, the labours of agriculture 
 and manufacture to be so mingled and the variety of fabrics 
 and materials to be wrought upon also so assorted as to make 
 short periods of labour on each alternately with others pro- 
 duce that satisfaction and freedom from tedium and weariness 
 
 i Buckingham's scheme is set forth in a work entitled " National 
 Evils and Practical Remedies," published by Peter Jackson, St. 
 Martins le Grand, about 1849. 
 
A UNIQUE COMBINATION OF PROPOSALS. 113 
 
 which an unbroken round of monotonous occupation so fre- 
 quently occasions, and because also variety of employment 
 develops the mental as well as physical faculties much 
 more perfectly than any single occupation." 
 
 But though on these points the scheme is strikingly like 
 my own, it is also a very different one. Buckingham hav- 
 ing traced, as he thought, the evils of society to their 
 source in competition, intemperance, and war, proposed to 
 annihilate competition by forming a system of complete or 
 integral co-operation ; to remove intemperance by the total 
 exclusion of intoxicants ; to put an end to war by the 
 absolute prohibition of gunpowder. He proposed to form a 
 large company, with a capital of £4,000,000 \ to buy a 
 large estate, and to erect churches, schools, factories, ware- 
 houses, dining-halls, dwelling-houses, at rents varying from 
 .£30 a year to £300 a year, and to carry on all productive 
 operations whether agricultural or industrial, as one large 
 undertaking covering the whole field and permitting no 
 rivals. 
 
 Now it will be seen that though in outward form 
 Buckingham's scheme and my own present the same feature 
 of a model town set in a large agricultural estate, so that 
 the industrial and farming pursuits might be carried on in 
 a healthy, natural way, yet the inner life of the two com- 
 munities would be entirely different — the members of one 
 enjoying the fullest rights of free association, and exhibiting 
 the most varied forms of individual and co-operative work 
 and endeavour, the members of the other held together by 
 the bonds of a rigid cast-iron organisation, from which 
 there could be no escape but by leaving the association, or 
 breaking it up into various sections. 
 
 H 
 
U4 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 To sum up this chapter. My proposal is that there 
 should be an earnest attempt made to organise a migratory 
 movement of population from our over-crowded centres to 
 sparsely-settled rural districts \ that the mind of the public 
 should not be confused, or the efforts of organisers wasted 
 in a premature attempt to accomplish this work on a 
 national scale, but that great thought and attention shall 
 be concentrated on a single experiment, yet one suffici- 
 ently large to be at once attractive and resourceful ; that 
 the migrants shall be guaranteed, by the making of suitable 
 arrangements before the movement commences, that the 
 whole increase in land-values due to their migration shall 
 be secured to them ; that this be done by creating an 
 organisation, which, while permitting its members to do 
 those things which are good in their eyes, provided they 
 infringe not upon the rights of others, shall receive all 
 " rate-rents," and expend them in those public works which 
 the migratory movement renders necessary or expedient — 
 thus eliminating rates, or, at least, greatly reducing the 
 necessity for any compulsory levy ; and that the golden 
 opportunity afforded by the fact that the land to be settled 
 upon has but few buildings or works upon it, shall be 
 availed of in the fullest manner, by so laying out a Garden 
 City that, as it grows, the free gifts of Nature — fresh air, 
 sunlight, breathing room and playing room — shall be still 
 retained in all needed abundance, and by so employing the 
 resources of modern science that Art may supplement 
 Nature, and life may become an abiding joy and delight. 
 And this proposal, so imperfectly put forward, is, it is most 
 important to notice, no scheme hatched in a restless night 
 in the fevered brain of an enthusiast, but is one having its 
 
A UNIQUE COMBINATION OF PROPOSALS. I IS 
 
 roots in the thoughtful study of many minds, and the 
 patient effort of many earnest souls, each bringing some 
 element of value, till, the time of fruition having come, the 
 smallest skill avails to gather a fruitful harvest. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE PATH FOLLOWED UP. 
 
 " How can a man learn to know himself ? By reflection never — 
 only by action. In the measure that thou seekest to do thy duty 
 shalt thou know what is in thee. But what is thy duty ? The 
 demand of the hour." — Goethe. 
 
 The reader is now asked to kindly assume, for the sake of 
 argument, that our Garden City experiment has been fairly 
 launched, and is a decided success, and to consider briefly 
 some of the more important effects which such an object- 
 lesson, by the light which it will throw upon the pathway 
 of reform, must inevitably produce upon society, and then 
 we will endeavour to trace some of the broader features of 
 the after-development. 
 
 Among the greatest needs of man and of society to-day, 
 as at all times, are these : A worthy aim and opportunity 
 to realise it ; work and ends worth working for. All that 
 a man is, and all that he may become, is summed up in his 
 aspirations, and this is no less true of society than of the 
 individual. The end I venture to now set before the people 
 of this country and of other countries is no less " noble and 
 adequate " than this, that they should forthwith gird them- 
 selves to the task of building up clusters of beautiful home- 
 towns, each zoned by gardens, for those who now dwell in 
 
 crowded, slum-infested cities. We have already seen how 
 
 116 
 
THE PATH FOLLOWED UP. 
 
 117 
 
 one such town may be built ; let us now see how, the true 
 path of reform, once discovered, will, if resolutely followed, 
 lead society on to a far higher destiny than it has ever yet 
 ventured to hope for, though such a future has often been 
 foretold by daring spirits. 
 
 There have in the past been inventions and discoveries 
 on the making of which society has suddenly leaped upward 
 to a new and higher plane of existence. The utilisation 
 of steam — a force long recognised, but which proved some- 
 what difficult to harness to the task it was fitted to 
 accomplish — effected mighty changes ; but the discovery of 
 a method for giving effect to a far greater force than the 
 force of steam — to the long pent-up desire for a better and 
 nobler social life here on earth — will work changes even 
 more remarkable. 
 
 What clearly marked economic truth is brought into 
 view by the successful issue of such an experiment as we 
 have been advocating ? This : — that there is a broad path 
 open, through a creation of new wealth forms, to a new 
 industrial system in which the productive forces of society 
 and of nature may be used with far greater effectiveness 
 than at present, and in which the distribution of the w r ealth 
 forms so created will take place on a far juster and more 
 equitable basis. Society may have more to divide among 
 its members, and at the same time the greater dividend 
 may be divided in a juster manner. 
 
 Speaking broadly, industrial reformers may be divided 
 into two camps. The first camp includes those who urge 
 the primary importance of paying close and constant 
 attention to the necessity of increased 'production : the 
 second includes those whose special aim is directed to more 
 
u8 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 just and equitable division. The former are constantly 
 saying, in effect, " Increase the national dividend, and all 
 will be well " ; the latter, " The national dividend is fairly 
 sufficient were it but divided equitably." The former are 
 for the most part of the individualistic, the latter of the 
 socialistic type. 
 
 As an instance of the former point of view, I may cite 
 the words of Mr. A. J. Balfour, who, at a Conference of the 
 National Union of Conservative Associations held at 
 Sunderland on 14th November, 1894, said : "Those who 
 represented society as if it consisted of two sections disput- 
 ing over their share of the general produce were utterly 
 mistaken as to the real bearing of the great social problem. 
 We had to consider that the produce of the country was not 
 a fixed quantity, of which, if the employers got more, the 
 employed would get less, or if the employed got more, the 
 employers would get less. The real question for the 
 working-classes of this country was not primarily or 
 fundamentally a question of division : it was a question of 
 production." As an instance of the second point of view, 
 take the following : " The absurdity of the notion of raising 
 the poor without, to a corresponding degree, depressing the 
 rich will be obvious." — " Principles of Socialism made plain," 
 by Frank Fairman (W. Reeves, 185 Fleet Street,) page 33. 
 
 I have already shown, and I hope to make this contention 
 yet more clear, that there is a path along which sooner or 
 later, both the Individualist and the Socialist must in- 
 evitably travel ; for I have made it abundantly clear that 
 on a small scale society may readily become more in- 
 dividualistic than now — if by Individualism is meant a state 
 in which there is fuller and freer opportunity for its 
 
THE PATH FOLLOWED UP. 
 
 119 
 
 members to do and to produce what they will, and to form 
 free associations, of the most varied kinds; while it may 
 also become more socialistic — if by Socialism is meant a 
 condition of life in which the well-being of the community 
 is safe-guarded, and in which the collective spirit is 
 manifested by a wide extension of the area of municipal 
 effort. To achieve these desirable ends, I have taken a 
 leaf out of the books of each type of reformer and bound 
 them together by a thread of practicability. Not content 
 with urging the necessity of increased production, I have 
 shown how it can be achieved ; while the other and equally 
 important end of more equitable distribution is, as 
 I have shown, easily possible, and in a manner which 
 need cause no ill-will, strife, or bitterness; is constitu- 
 tional ; requires no revolutionary legislation ; and involves 
 no direct attack upon vested interests. Thus may the 
 desires of the two sections of reformers to whom T have 
 referred be attained. I have, in short, followed out Lord 
 Eosebery's suggestion, and "borrowed from Socialism its 
 large conception of common effort, and its vigorous con- 
 ception of municipal life, and from Individualism the 
 preservation of self-respect and self-reliance," and, by a 
 concrete illustration, I have, I think, disproved the cardinal 
 contention of Mr. Benjamin Kidd in his famous book, 
 " Social Evolution," that " the interests of the social 
 organism and of the individuals comprising it at any 
 particular time are actually antagonistic; they can 
 never be reconciled; they are inherently and essentially 
 irreconcilable" (page 85). 
 
 Most socialistic writers appear to me to exhibit too keen 
 a desire to appropriate old forms of wealth, either by pur- 
 
120 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 chasing out or by taxing out the owners, and they seem to 
 have little conception that the truer method is to create 
 new forms and to create them under juster conditions. But 
 this latter conception should inevitably follow an adequate 
 realisation of the ephemeral nature of most forms of wealth ; 
 and there is no truth more fully recognised by economic 
 writers than that nearly all forms of material wealth, except, 
 indeed, the planet on which we live and the elements of 
 nature, are extremely fugitive and prone to decay. Thus 
 for instance, J. S, Mill, in " Elements of Political Economy," 
 Book 1, Chapter v., says : " The greater part in value of the 
 wealth now existing in England has been produced by 
 human hands within the last twelve months. A very small 
 proportion indeed of that large aggregate was in existence 
 ten years ago ; of the present productive capital of the 
 country, scarcely any part except farm-houses and manu- 
 factories and a few ships and machines, and even these 
 would not in most cases have survived so long if fresh 
 labour had not been employed within that period in putting 
 them into repair. The land subsists, and the land is almost 
 the only thing that subsists." The leaders of the great 
 socialistic movement, of course, know all this perfectly well ; 
 yet this quite elementary truth seems to fade from their 
 minds when they are discussing methods of reform, and they 
 appear to be as anxious to seize upon present forms of 
 wealth as if they regarded them as of a really lasting and 
 permanent nature. 
 
 But this inconsistency of socialistic writers is all the more 
 striking when one remembers that these writers are the 
 very ones who insist most strongly upon the view that a 
 very large part of the u wealth v forms now in existence are 
 
THE PATH FOLLOWED UP. 
 
 121 
 
 not really wealth at all — that they are "ilth," and that any 
 form of society which represents even a step towards their 
 ideal must involve the sweeping away of such forms and the 
 creation of new forms in their place. With a degree of 
 inconsistency that is positively startling, they exhibit an 
 insatiable desire to become possessed of these forms of 
 wealth which are not only rapidly decaying, but are in their 
 opinion absolutely useless or injurious. 
 
 Thus Mr. Hyndman, at a lecture delivered at the 
 Democratic Club, 29th March, 1893, said : " It was desir- 
 able that they should map out and formulate socialistic 
 ideas which they should desire to see brought about when 
 the so-called Individualism of the present day has broken 
 down, as it inevitably would do. One of the first things 
 that they as Socialists would have to do would be to 
 depopulate the vast centres of their over-crowded cities. 
 Their large towns had no longer any large agricultural 
 population from which to recruit their ranks, and through 
 bad and insufficient food, vitiated atmosphere, and other 
 insanitary conditions, the physique of the masses of the 
 cities was rapidly deteriorating, both materially and 
 physically." Precisely; but does not Mr. Hyndman see that 
 in striving to become possessed of present wealth forms, he 
 is laying siege to the wrong fortress % If the population 
 of London, or a large part of the population of London, is to 
 be transplanted elsewhere, when some future event has 
 happened, would it not be well to see if we cannot induce 
 large numbers of these people to transplant themselves 
 now, when the problem of London administration and of 
 London reform would, as we shall shortly discover, present 
 itself in a somewhat startling fashion 1 
 
122 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 A similar inconsistency is to be noticed in a little book 
 which has had an enormous and well-deserved sale, " Merrie 
 England" (Clarion Offices, Fleet St.). The author 
 u Nunquam," remarks at the outset : " The problem wo 
 have to consider is : — Given a country and a people, find 
 how the people may make the best of the country and 
 themselves." He then proceeds to vigorously condemn our 
 cities, with their houses ugly and mean, their narrow 
 streets, their want of gardens, and emphasises the advan- 
 tages of out-door occupations. He condemns the factory 
 system, and says : " I would set men to grow wheat and 
 fruit, and rear cattle and poultry for our own use. Then 
 I would develop the fisheries, and construct great fish- 
 breeding lakes and harbours. Then I would restrict our 
 mines, furnaces, chemical works, and factories to the number 
 actually needed for the supply of our own people. Then I 
 would stop the smoke nuisance by developing water-pow r er and 
 electricity. In order to achieve these ends, I would make all 
 the lands, mills, mines, factories, works, shops, ships, and rail- 
 ways the property of the people" That is (the italics are my 
 own), the people are to struggle hard to become posssessed of 
 factories, mills, works, and shops, at least half of which must 
 be closed if Nunquam's desires are attained ; of ships, which 
 will become useless if our foreign trade is to be abandoned, 
 (see " Merrie England," Chap, iv.) ; and of railways, which, 
 with an entire redistribution of population such as Nunquam 
 desires, must for the most part become derelict. And how 
 long is this useless struggle to last ? Would it not — I ask 
 Nunquam to consider this point carefully — be better to 
 study a smaller problem first, and, to paraphrase his words, 
 " Given, say, 6,000 acres of land, let us endeavour to make 
 
THE PATH FOLLOWED UP. 
 
 123 
 
 the best use of it " ? For then, having dealt with this, we 
 shall have educated ourselves to deal with a larger area. 
 
 Let me state again in other terms this fugitiveness of 
 wealth forms, and then suggest the conclusion to which 
 that consideration should lead us. So marked are the 
 changes which society exhibits — especially a society in a 
 progressive state — that the outward and visible forms w T hich 
 our civilisation presents to-day, its public and private 
 buildings, its means of communication, the appliances with 
 which it works, its machinery, its docks, its artificial har- 
 bours, its instruments of war and its instruments of peace, 
 have most of them undergone a complete change, and many 
 of them several complete changes, within the last sixty 
 years. I suppose not one person in twenty in this country 
 is living in a house which is sixty years old ; not one sailor in 
 a thousand is sailing a ship, not one artisan or labourer in a 
 hundred is engaged in a workshop or handling tools or driving 
 a cart which was in existence sixty years ago. It is now 
 sixty years since the first railway was constructed from 
 Birmingham to London, and our Railway Companies possess 
 one thousand millions of invested capital, while our systems 
 of water-supply, of gas, of electric lighting and of sewerage, 
 are for the most part of recent date. Those material relics 
 of the past which were created more than sixty years ago, 
 though some of them are of infinite value as momentoes, 
 examples and heirlooms, are, for the most part, certainly 
 not of a kind which we need wrangle over or fight about, 
 The best of them are our universities, schools, churches 
 and cathedrals, and these should certainly teach us a 
 different lesson. 
 
 But can any reasonable person, who reflects for a moment 
 
124 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 on the unexampled rate of progress and invention, doubt 
 that the next sixty years will reveal changes fully as re- 
 markable *? Can any person suppose that these mushroom 
 forms, which have sprung up as it were in a night, have any 
 real permanence 1 Even apart from the solution of the 
 labour problem, and the finding of work for the thousands 
 of idle hands which are eager for it — a solution, the correct- 
 ness of which I claim to have demonstrated — what possi- 
 bilities are opened up by the bare contemplation of the 
 discovery of new motive powers, new means of locomotion, 
 perhaps, through the air, new methods of water-suppty, or a 
 new distribution of population, which must of itself render 
 many material forms altogether useless and effete ! Why 
 then should we squabble and wrangle about what man has 
 produced ? Why not rather seek to learn what man can 
 produce ; when, aiming to do that, w T e may perhaps discover 
 a grand opportunity for producing not only better forms of 
 wealth, but how to produce them under far juster conditions 1 
 To quote the author of " Merrie England": "We should 
 first of all ascertain what things are desirable for our health 
 and happiness of body and mind, and then organise our 
 people with the object of producing those things in the best 
 and easiest way." 
 
 Wealth forms, then, in their very nature are fugitive, and 
 they are besides liable to constant displacement by the 
 better forms which in an advancing state of society are 
 constantly arising. There is, however, one form of material 
 wealth which is most permanent and abiding ; from the 
 value and utility of which our most wonderful inventions 
 can never detract one jot, but will serve only to make more 
 clear, and the use of which they must render more universal, 
 
THE PATH FOLLOWED UP. 
 
 125 
 
 The planet on which we live has lasted for millions of 
 years, and the race is just emerging from its savagery. 
 Those of us who believe that there is a grand purpose 
 behind nature cannot believe that the career of this planet 
 is likely to be speedily cut short now that better hopes are 
 rising in the hearts of men, and that, having learned a few 
 of its less obscure secrets, they are finding their way, 
 through much toil and pain, to a more noble use of its 
 infinite treasures. The earth for all practical purposes may 
 be regarded as abiding for ever. 
 
 Now, as every form of wealth must rest on the earth as 
 its foundation, and must be built up out of the constituents 
 found at or near its surface, it follows (because foundations 
 are ever of primary importance) that the reformer should 
 first consider how best the earth may be used in the service 
 of man. But here again our friends, the Socialists, miss 
 the essential point. Their professed ideal is to make 
 society the owner of land and of all instruments of pro- 
 duction ; but they have been so anxious to carry both 
 points of their programme that they have been a little too 
 slow to consider the special importance of the land question, 
 and have thus missed the true path of reform. 
 
 There is, however, a type of reformers who push the land 
 question very much to the front, though, as it appears to me, 
 in a manner little likely to commend their views to society. 
 Mr. Henry George, in his well-known work, " Progress and 
 Poverty," urges with much eloquence, if not with complete 
 accuracy of reasoning, that our land laws are responsible 
 for all the economic evils of society, and that as our land- 
 lords are little better than pirates and robbers, the sooner 
 the State forcibly appropriates their rents the better, for 
 
126 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 when this is accomplished the problem of poverty will, he 
 suggests, be entirely solved. But is not this attempt to 
 throw the whole blame of and punishment for the present 
 deplorable condition of society on to a single class of men a 
 very great mistake ? In what way are landlords as a class 
 less honest than the average citizen ? Give the average 
 citizen the opportunity of becoming a landlord and of 
 appropriating the property of his tenants, and he will 
 embrace it to-morrow. If, then, the average man is a 
 potential landlord, to attack landlords as individuals is very 
 like a nation drawing up an indictment against itself, and 
 of it then making a scape-goat of a particular class. 1 
 
 But to endeavour to change our land system is a very 
 different matter from attacking those individuals who 
 represent it. But how is this change to be effected? I 
 reply, By the force of example, that is, by setting up a 
 better system, and by a little skill in the grouping of forces 
 and manipulation of ideas. It is quite true that the 
 average man is a potential landlord, and as ready to 
 appropriate the unearned increment as to cry out against its 
 appropriation. But the average man has very little chance 
 of ever becoming a landlord and of appropriating rent- 
 values created by others ; and he is, therefore, the better 
 able to consider, quite dispassionately, whether such a 
 proceeding is really honest, and whether it may not be 
 possible to gradually establish a new and more equitable 
 system under which, without enjoying the privilege of 
 appropriating rent- values created by others, he may himself 
 be secured against expropriation of the rent-values which 
 
 1 1 hope it is not ungrateful in one who has derived much inspira- 
 tion from " Progress and Poverty " to write thus. 
 
THE PATH FOLLOWED UP. 
 
 127 
 
 he is now constantly creating or maintaining. We have 
 demonstrated how this may be done on a small scale; we have 
 next to consider how the experiment may be carried out on 
 a much wider scale, and this we can best do in another 
 chapter. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 SOCIAL CITIES. 
 
 4 1 Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be 
 planted and re-planted for too long a series of generations in the same 
 worn-out soil. My children have had other birth-places, and, so 
 far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their 
 roots into unaccustomed earth." — " The Scarlet Letter," Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne. 
 
 " The question which now interests people is, What are we going 
 to do with democracy now that we have got it? What kind of 
 society are we going to make by its aid ? Are we to see nothing but 
 an endless vista of Londons and Manchesters, New Yorks and 
 Chicagos, with their noise and ugliness, their money-getting, their 
 " corners " and " rings," their strikes, their contrasts of luxury and 
 squalor ? Or shall we be able to build up a society with art and 
 culture for all, and with some great spiritual aim dominating 
 men's lives." — Daily Chronicle, 4th March, 1891. 
 
 The problem with which we have now to deal, shortly stated, 
 is this : How to make our Garden City experiment the 
 stepping-stone to a higher and better form of industrial life 
 generally throughout the country. Granted the success of 
 the initial experiment, and there must inevitably arise a 
 widespread demand for an extension of methods so healthy 
 and so advantageous ; and it will be well, therefore, to con- 
 sider some of the chief problems which will have to be faced 
 in the progress of such extension. 
 
 It will, I think, be well in approaching this question to 
 consider the analogy presented by the early progress of 
 
 railway enterprise. This will help us to see more clearly 
 
 128 
 
SOCIAL CITIES. 
 
 129 
 
 some of the broader features of the new development which 
 is now so closely upon us if only we show ourselves energetic 
 and imaginative. Railways were first made without any 
 statutory pow r ers. They were constructed on a very small 
 scale, and, being of very short lengths, the consent of only 
 one or at the most a few land-owners was necessary ; and 
 what private agreement and arrangement could thus easily 
 compass was scarcely a fit subject for an appeal to the 
 Legislature of the country. But when the Rocket was 
 built and the supremacy of the locomotive was fully estab- 
 lished, it then became necessary, if railway enterprise was 
 to go forward, to obtain legislative powers. For it would 
 have been impossible, or at least very difficult, to make 
 equitable arrangements with all the land-owners whose 
 estates might lie betw T een points many miles distant ; because 
 one obstinate landlord might take advantage of his position 
 to demand an altogether exorbitant price for his land, and 
 thus practically stifle such an enterprise. It was necessary, 
 therefore, to obtain power to secure the land compulsorily 
 at its market value, or at a price not too extravagantly 
 removed from such value ; and, this being done, railway 
 enterprise went forward at so rapid a rate that in one 
 year no less than £132,600,000 was authorised by Parlia- 
 ment to be raised for the purpose of railway construction. 1 
 
 Now if Parliamentary powers were necessary for the ex- 
 tension of railway enterprise, such powers will probably 
 be also needed when the inherent practicability of building 
 new, well-planned towns, and of the population moving 
 into them from the old slum cities as naturally, and, in 
 
 1 Clifford's "History of Private Bill Legislation" (Butterworth 
 1885), Introduction, p. 88. 
 
 I 
 
130 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 proportion to the power to be exercised, almost as easily 
 as a family moves out of a rotten old tenement into a new 
 and comfortable dwelling, is once fairly recognised by the 
 people. To build such towns, large areas of land must be 
 obtained. Here and there a suitable site may be secured by 
 arrangement with one or more land-owners, but if the move- 
 ment is to be carried out in anything like a scientific 
 fashion, stretches of land far larger than that occupied by 
 our first experiment must be obtained. For, just as the first 
 short railway, which was the germ of railway enterprise, 
 would convey to few minds the conception of a net-work of 
 railways extending over the whole country, so, perhaps, the 
 idea of a well-planned town such as I have described will 
 not have prepared the reader for the later development 
 which must inevitably follow : — the planning and building 
 of town clusters — each town in the cluster being of perhaps 
 a somewhat different design from the others, and yet the 
 whole forming part of one larger plan — the whole series 
 being connected with a complete system of railways and 
 waterways specially designed, and being as carefully thought 
 out before the towns are built as are the staircases and 
 corridors of a well-appointed house. 
 
 Let me here present a diagram, No. 7, representing a series 
 or cluster of towns; 1 though the reader is asked not to sup- 
 pose that the design is put forward as one likely to be strictly 
 carried out in the form thus presented ; for any well-planned 
 town, and, still more, any well-planned cluster of towns, 
 
 1 This drawing is, in many respects, very like one to which (after 
 making it) my attention was directed, in a work entitled, "Palin- 
 genesia ; or, The Earth's New Birth" (Hay, Nisbet & Co., Glas- 
 gow, 1894). 
 
SOCIAL CITIES. 
 
 131 
 
 must be carefully designed in relation to the site it is to 
 occupy ; though, as the science and art of engineering ad- 
 vances, less and less account is taken of natural obstacles, 
 and more and more completely does mind become master of 
 matter, and bend it and its forces to the service of man. 
 With this understanding, however, such a diagram as I have 
 here sketched may be useful, as showing some of the broad 
 principles which should be followed. 
 
 It will be seen from the drawing that the idea of a care- 
 fully-planned town lends itself readily to the idea of a 
 carefully-planned cluster of towns, so designed that each 
 dweller in a town of comparatively small population is 
 afforded, by a well-devised system of railways, waterways, 
 and roads, the enjoyment of easy, rapid, and cheap com- 
 munication with a large aggregate of the population, so that 
 the advantages which a large city presents in the higher 
 forms of corporate life may be within the reach of all, and 
 yet each citizen of what is destined to be the most beautiful 
 city in the world may dwell in a region of pure air and be 
 within a very few minutes' walk of the country. 
 
 The total area covered by the social cities represented in 
 this diagram is supposed to be 66,000 acres (being a little 
 less than the area administered by the London County 
 Council), and the total population a quarter of a million — 
 each of the smaller municipalities having an area of 9,000 
 acres and a population of 32,000, while Central City has an 
 area of 12,000 acres and a population of 58,000. 
 
 The system of waterways, represented by blue lines, will 
 be understood by reference to Diagram 6 and the chapter on 
 water supply (see Appendix), and the reader will observe 
 how very naturally and readily the system there described 
 
132 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 can be adapted to a yet wider measure of collective effort. 
 The water, carefully collected and frequently raised to 
 high levels on the Garden City estate, must be, of course, 
 drained away several times in each year, and it will then 
 flow on to Gladstone, yielding, in its fall, considerable motive 
 power, while Eurisville will, in like manner, be benefited by 
 the water which flows from Philadelphia. 
 
 Kapid railway transit is a further distinct advantage 
 realised by those who dwell in this beautiful city or group 
 of cities. Reference to the diagram will show at a glance 
 the main features of its railway system. There is, first, an 
 inter-municipal railway connecting all the towns of the 
 outer ring — 20 miles in circumference — so that to get 
 from any town to its most distant neighbour requires one 
 to cover a distance of only 10 miles, which can be accom- 
 plished in, say, 12 minutes. These trains would not stop 
 between the towns — means of communication for this pur- 
 pose being afforded by electric tramways which traverse the 
 high-roads, of which, it will be seen, there are a number — 
 each town being connected with every other town in the 
 group by a direct route. 
 
 There is also a system of railways by which each town is 
 placed in direct communication with Central City. The 
 distance from any town to the heart of Central City is only 
 
 miles, and this could be readily covered in 5 minutes. 
 
 Those who have had experience of the difficulty of getting 
 from one suburb of London to another will see in a moment 
 what an enormous advantage those who dwell in such a 
 group of cities as here shown would enjoy, because they 
 would have a railway system and not a railway chaos to 
 serve their ends. The difficulty felt in London is, of 
 
SOCIAL CITIES. 
 
 133 
 
 course, due to want of forethought and pre-arrangement. 
 On this point I may quote with advantage a passage from 
 the Presidential address of Sir Benjamin Baker to the Insti- 
 tution of Civil Engineers, Nov. 12th, 1895 : " We Londoners 
 often complain of the want of system in the arrangement of 
 the railways and their terminal stations in and around the 
 Metropolis, which necessitates our performing long journeys 
 in cabs to get from one railway system to another. That 
 this difficulty exists, arises, I feel sure, chiefly from the want 
 of foresight of no less able a statesman than Sir Kobert 
 Peel, for in 1836 a motion was proposed in the House of 
 Commons that all the Railway Bills seeking powers for ter- 
 minals in London should be referred to a Special Committee, 
 so that a complete scheme might be evolved out of the 
 numerous projects before Parliament, and that property 
 might not be unnecessarily sacrificed for rival schemes. 
 Sir Robert Peel opposed the motion on the part of the 
 Government, on the grounds that £ no railway project could 
 come into operation till the majority of Parliament had 
 declared that its principles and arrangements appeared to 
 them satisfactory, and its investments profitable. It was a 
 recognised principle in these cases that the probable profits 
 of an undertaking should be shown to be sufficient to main- 
 tain it in a state of permanent utility before a Bill could be 
 obtained, and landlords were perfectly justified in expecting 
 and demanding such a warranty from Parliament. ' In this 
 instance incalculable injury was unintentionally inflicted 
 upon Londoners by not having a grand central station in 
 the Metropolis, and events have shown how false was the 
 assumption that the passing of an Act implied any warranty 
 as to the financial prospects of a railway." 
 
134 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 But are the people of England to suffer forever for the 
 want of foresight of those who little dreamed of the future 
 development of railways'? Surely not. It was in the 
 nature of things little likely that the first network of rail- 
 ways ever constructed should conform to true principles ; 
 but now, seeing the enormous progress which has been 
 made in the means of rapid communication, it is high time 
 that we availed ourselves more fully of those means, and 
 built our cities upon some such plan as that I have crudely 
 shown. We should then be, for all purposes of quick com- 
 munication, nearer to each other than we are in our 
 crowded cities, while, at the same time, we should be sur- 
 rounding ourselves with the most healthy and the most 
 advantageous conditions. 
 
 Some of my friends have suggested that such a scheme of 
 town clusters is well enough adapted to a new country, but 
 that in an old-settled country, with its towns built, and its 
 railway " system " and canal " system " for the most part 
 constructed, it is quite a different matter. But surely to 
 raise such a point is to contend, in other words, that the 
 existing wealth forms of the country are permanent, and 
 are forever to serve as hindrances to the introduction of 
 better forms ; that crowded, ill-ventilated, unplanned, un- 
 wieldy, unhealthy cities — ulcers on the very face of our 
 beautiful island — are to stand as barriers to the introduc- 
 tion of towns in which there may be ample space and 
 ventilation, and in which modern scientific methods and 
 the aims of social reformers may have the fullest scope in 
 which to express themselves. No, it cannot be ; at least, 
 it cannot be for long. What Is may hinder What Might 
 Be for a while, but cannot stay the tide of progress. These 
 
SOCIAL CITIES. 
 
 135 
 
 crowded cities have done their work ; they were the best 
 which a society largely based on selfishness and rapacity 
 could construct, but they are in the nature of things en- 
 tirely unadapted for a society in which the social side of 
 our nature is demanding a larger share of recognition — a 
 society where even the very love of self leads us to insist 
 upon a greater regard for the well-being of our fellows. 
 The large cities of to-day are scarcely better adapted for the 
 expression of the fraternal spirit than would a work on 
 astronomy which taught that the earth was the centre of 
 the universe be capable of adaptation for use in our schools. 
 Each generation should build to suit its own needs ; and it 
 is no more in the nature of things that men should continue 
 to live in old areas because their ancestors lived in them, 
 than it is that they should cherish the old superstitions 
 which a w T ider faith and a more enlarged understanding 
 have outgrown. The reader is, therefore, earnestly asked 
 not to take it for granted that the large cities in which he 
 may perhaps take a pardonable pride are necessarily any 
 more permanent than the stage-coach system which was the 
 subject of so much admiration just at the very moment 
 when it was about to be supplanted by the railways. 1 The 
 simple issue to be faced and faced resolutely is, Can better 
 results be obtained by starting on a bold plan on compara- 
 tively virgin soil than by attempting to adapt our old cities 
 to our newer and higher needs ? Thus fairly faced, the 
 question can only be answered in one way ; and when that 
 simple fact is well grasped, the social revolution will 
 speedily commence. 
 
 1 See, for instance, the opening chapter of u The Heart of Mid- 
 lothian " (Sir Walter Scott). 
 
136 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 That there is ample land in this country on which such a 
 cluster as I have here depicted could be constructed with 
 comparatively small disturbance of vested interests, and, 
 therefore, with but little need for compensation, will be 
 obvious to anyone ; and when our first experiment has been 
 brought to a successful issue there will be no great diffi- 
 culty in acquiring the necessary parliamentary powers to 
 purchase the land and carry out the necessary works step by 
 step. County Councils are now seeking larger powers, and 
 an over-burdened Parliament is becoming more and more 
 anxious to devolve some of its duties upon them. Let 
 such powers be given more and more freely. Let larger 
 and yet larger measures of local self-government be granted, 
 and then all that my diagram depicts — only on a far better 
 plan, because the result of well concerted and combined 
 thought will be easily attainable. 
 
 But it may be said, " Are you not, by thus frankly avow- 
 ing the very great danger to the vested interests of this 
 country which your scheme indirectly threatens, arming 
 vested interests against yourself, and so making any change 
 by legislation impossible ? " I think not. And for three 
 reasons. First, because those vested interests which are 
 said to be ranged like a solid phalanx against progress, will, 
 by the force of circumstances and the current of events, be 
 for once divided into opposing camps. Secondly, because 
 property owners, who are very reluctant to yield to 
 threats, such as are continually made against them by 
 Socialists of a certain type, will be far more ready to make 
 concessions to the logic of events as revealing itself in an 
 undoubted advance of society to a higher form ; and, thirdly, 
 because the largest and most important, and in the end the 
 
SOCIAL CITIES. 
 
 137 
 
 most influential of all vested interests — I mean the vested 
 interests of those who work for their living, whether by 
 hand or brain — will be naturally in favour of the change 
 when they understand its nature. 
 
 Let me deal with these points separately. First, I say 
 vested-property interests will be broken in twain, and will 
 range themselves in opposite camps. This sort of cleavage 
 has occurred before. Thus, in the early days of railway 
 legislation, the vested interests in canals and stage coaches 
 were alarmed, and did all in their power to thwart and 
 hamper what threatened them. But other great vested in- 
 terests brushed this opposition easily on one side. These 
 interests were chiefly two — capital seeking investment, and 
 land desiring to sell itself. (A third vested interest — namely, 
 labour seeking employment — had then scarcely begun to 
 assert its claims.) And notice now how such a successful 
 experiment as Garden City may easily become will drive 
 into the very bed-rock of vested interests a great wedge, 
 which will split them asunder with irresistible force, and 
 permit the current of legislation to set strongly in a new 
 direction. For what will such an experiment have proved up 
 to the very hilt ? Among other things too numerous to men- 
 tion, it will have proved that far more healthy and economic 
 conditions can be secured on raw uncultivated land (if only 
 that land be held on just conditions) than can be secured 
 on land which is at present of vastly higher market value ; 
 and in proving this it will open wide the doors of migration 
 from the old crowded cities with their inflated and artificial 
 rents, back to the land which can be now secured so cheaply. 
 Two tendencies will then display themselves. The first will 
 be a strong tendency for city ground values to fall, the 
 
138 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 other a less marked tendency for agricultural land to rise. 1 
 The holders of agricultural land, at least those who are 
 willing to sell — and many of them are even now most 
 anxious to do so — will welcome the extension of an experi- 
 ment which promises to place English agriculture once again 
 in a position of prosperity : the holders of city lands will, 
 so far as their merely selfish interests prevail, greatly fear 
 it. In this way, land-owners throughout the country will 
 be divided into two opposing factions, and the path of land 
 reform — the foundation on which all other reforms must be 
 built — will be made comparatively easy. 
 
 Capital in the same way will be divided into opposite 
 camps. Invested capital — that is, capital sunk in enter- 
 prises which society will recognise as belonging to the old 
 order — will take the alarm and fall in value enormously, 
 while on the other hand, capital seeking investment will 
 welcome an outlet which has long been its sorest need. In- 
 vested capital will in its opposition be further weakened by 
 another consideration. Holders of existing forms of capital 
 will strive — even though it be at a great sacrifice — to sell 
 part of their old time-honoured stocks, and invest them in 
 new enterprises, on municipally-owned land, for they will 
 not wish to " have all their eggs in one basket " ; and thus 
 will the opposing influences of vested property neutralise 
 each other. 
 
 But vested-property interests will be, as I believe, affected 
 yet more remarkably in another way. The man of wealth, 
 when he is personally attacked and denounced as an enemy 
 of society, is slow to believe in the perfect good faith of 
 
 1 The chief reason for this is that agricultural land as compared 
 with city land is of vastly larger quantity. 
 
SOCIAL CITIES. 
 
 139 
 
 those who denounce him, and, when efforts are made to tax 
 him out by the forcible hand of the State, he is apt to use 
 every endeavour, lawful or unlawful, to oppose such 
 schemes — and often with no small measure of success. But 
 the average wealthy man is no more an unmixed compound 
 of selfishness than the average poor man ; and if he sees his 
 houses or lands depreciated in value, not by force, but 
 because those who lived in or upon them have learned how 
 to erect far better homes of their own, and on land held on 
 conditions more advantageous to them, and to surround 
 their children with many advantages which cannot be 
 enjoyed on his estate, he will philosophically bow to the 
 inevitable, and in his better moments even welcome a 
 change which will involve him in far greater pecuniary loss 
 than any change in the incidence of taxation is likely to 
 inflict. In every man there is some measure of the reform- 
 ing instinct • in every man there is some regard for his 
 fellows ; and when these natural feelings run athwart his 
 pecuniary interests, then the result is that the spirit of 
 opposition is inevitably softened, in some degree, in all men, 
 while in others it is entirely replaced by a fervent desire for 
 the country's good, even at the sacrifice of many cherished 
 possessions. Thus it is that what will not be yielded to a 
 force from without may readily be granted as the result of 
 an impulse from within. 
 
 And now let me deal for a moment with the greatest, the 
 most valuable, and the most permanent of all vested 
 interests — the vested interests of skill, labour, energy, 
 talent, industry. How will these be affected ? My answer 
 is, The force which will divide in twain the vested interests 
 of land and capital will unite and consolidate the interests 
 
140 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 of those who live by work, and will lead them to unite their 
 forces with the holders of agricultural land and of capital 
 seeking investment, to urge upon the State the necessity 
 for the prompt opening up of facilities for the reconstruction 
 of society ; and, when the State is slow to act, then to 
 employ voluntary collective efforts similar to those adopted 
 in the Garden City experiment, with such modifications as 
 experience may show to be necessary. Such a task as the 
 construction of a cluster of cities like that represented in 
 our diagram may well inspire all workers with that enthusi- 
 asm which unites men, for it will call for the very highest 
 talents of engineers of all kinds, of architects, artists, 
 medical men, experts in sanitation, landscape gardeners, 
 agricultural experts, surveyors, builders, manufacturers, 
 merchants and financiers, organisers of trades unions, 
 friendly and co-operative societies, as well as the very 
 simplest forms of unskilled labour, together with all those 
 forms of lesser skill and talent which lie between. For the 
 vastness of the task which seems to frighten some of my 
 friends, represents, in fact, the very measure of its value to 
 the community, if that task be only undertaken in a worthy 
 spirit and with worthy aims. Work in abundance is, as has 
 been several times urged, one of the greatest needs of to-day, 
 and no such field of employment has been opened up since 
 civilisation began as would be represented by the task 
 which is before us of re-constructing anew the entire 
 external fabric of society, employing, as we build, all the 
 skill and knowledge which the experience of centuries has 
 taught us. It was " a large order " which was presented 
 in the early part of this century to construct iron highways 
 throughout the length and breadth of this island ; uniting 
 
SOCIAL CITIES. 
 
 141 
 
 in a vast network all its towns and cities. But railway 
 enterprise, vast as has been its influence, touched the life of 
 the people at but few points compared with the newer call 
 to build home-towns for slum cities ; to plant gardens for 
 crowded courts ; to construct beautiful water-ways in flooded 
 valleys; to establish a scientific system of distribution to 
 take the place of a chaos, a just system of land tenure for 
 one representing the selfishness which we hope is passing 
 away; to found pensions with liberty for our aged poor, now 
 imprisoned in workhouses ; to banish despair and awaken 
 hope in the breasts of those who have fallen ; to silence the 
 harsh voice of anger, and to awaken the soft notes of 
 brotherliness and goodwill ; to place in strong hands 
 implements of peace and construction, so that implements 
 of war and destruction may drop uselessly down. Here is 
 a task which may well unite a vast army of workers to 
 utilise that power, the present waste of which is the source 
 of half our poverty, disease, and suffering. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE FUTURE OF LONDON. 
 
 " From the point of view of making England a great military and 
 imperial power, the aristocracies of the past were grand; The 
 Liberals and Whigs have made it a great commercial empire, but 
 our contention is that this is not true greatness, not greatness in 
 the sense that it means the real happiness of the Commonwealth. 
 The greatness of the past has meant the division of spoils amongst 
 the few, and to give them all those positions of privilege that 
 empire means. Empire means war. crises, the burdens of which 
 fall upon the industrial Tommy Atkins. I want all the energy, not 
 to say the heroism, that the governing classes have shown in the 
 subjugation of foreign countries directed and utilised in administra- 
 tion, in industry, and in making happy our fellow-countrymen, 
 which is, after all, no mean ambition." — Mr. John Burns, The Idler, 
 January, 1893, page 678. 
 
 It will now be interesting to consider some of the more 
 striking effects which will be produced on our now over- 
 crowded cities by the opening-up in new districts of such a 
 vast field of employment as the reader's mind will, it is 
 hoped, be now able to realise with some degree of clearness. 
 New towns and groups of towns are springing up in parts 
 of our island hitherto well-nigh deserted ; new means of 
 communication, the most scientific the world has yet seen, 
 are being constructed ; new means of distribution are 
 bringing the producer and the consumer into closer rela- 
 tions, and thus (by reducing railway rates and charges, 
 and the number of profits,) are at once raising prices to the 
 
 producer and diminishing them to the consumer ; parks 
 
 142 
 
THE FUTURE OF LONDON. 
 
 H3 
 
 and gardens, orchards and woods, are being planted in the 
 midst of the busy life of the people, so that they may be 
 enjoyed in the fullest measure ; homes are being erected for 
 those who have long lived in slums ; work is found for the 
 workless, land for the landless, and opportunities for the 
 expenditure of long pent-up energy are presenting them- 
 selves at every turn. A new sense of freedom and joy is 
 prevading the hearts of the people as their individual 
 faculties are awakened, and they discover in a social life, 
 which permits alike of the completest concerted action and 
 of the fullest individual liberty, the long-sought-for means 
 of reconciliation between order and freedom, — between the 
 well-being of the individual and of society. 
 
 The effects produced on our over-crowded cities, whose 
 forms are at once, by the light of a new contrast, seen to 
 be old-fashioned and effete, will be so far-reaching in their 
 character that, in order to study them effectively, it will be 
 well to confine our attention to London, which, as the 
 largest and most unwieldy of our cities is likely to exhibit 
 those effects in the most marked degree. 
 
 At the outset of this work I referred to the well-nigh 
 universal current of opinion that a remedy for the depopu- 
 lation of our country districts and for the overcrowding of 
 our large cities was an object imperatively demanding a 
 most earnest search. I did not, however, refer to the 
 striking fact that, though every one recommended that a 
 remedy should be diligently sought for, nobody seemed to 
 believe that such remedy would ever be found, and that the 
 calculations of our statesmen and reformers proceeded upon 
 the assumption that not only would the tide of population 
 never actually turn from the large cities countryward, but 
 
144 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 that it would continue to flow in its present direction at a 
 scarcely diminished rate for a long time to come. 1 Now it 
 could hardly be supposed that any search made in the full 
 belief that the remedy sought for would not be discovered, 
 was likely to be carried on with great zeal or thoroughness ; 
 and, therefore, it is perhaps not surprising to find that 
 though the late chairman of the London County Council 
 (Lord Rosebery) declared that the growth of this huge city 
 was fitly comparable to the growth of a tumour (see p. 3) — 
 few venturing to deny the correctness of the analogy — yet 
 the various members of that body, instead of bending their 
 energies to reforming London by means of a reduction of its 
 population, are boldly advocating a policy which involves 
 the purchase of vast undertakings on behalf of the munici- 
 pality, at prices which must prove far higher than they will 
 be worth if only the long-sought-for remedy is found. 
 
 Let us now assume (simply as an hypothesis, if the 
 reader is still sceptical) that the remedy advocated in this 
 work is effective ; that new garden-cities are springing up all 
 over the country on sites owned by the municipalities — the 
 rate-rents of such corporate property forming a fund ample 
 for the carrying on of municipal undertakings representing 
 the highest skill of the modern engineer and the best aspira- 
 tions of the enlightened reformer ; and that in these cities, 
 healthier, wholesomer, cleaner and more just and economic 
 conditions prevail. What then must in the nature of things 
 be the more noticeable effects upon London and the popula- 
 
 1 It is scarcely necessary to give an instance of what is meant ; 
 but one that occurs to my mind is that this assumption of the 
 continued growth of London forms one of the fundamental premises 
 of the Report of the Royal Commission on Metropolitan Water 
 Supply, 1S93. 
 
THE FUTURE OF LONDON. 
 
 145 
 
 tion of London ; upon its land values ; upon its municipal 
 debt, and its municipal assets ; upon London as a labour 
 market ; upon the homes of its people ; upon its open spaces, 
 and upon the great undertakings which our socialistic and 
 municipal reformers are at the present moment so anxious 
 to secure ? 
 
 First, notice that ground values will fall enormously ! 
 Of course so long as 121 sq. miles out of the 58,000 sq. 
 miles of England exercise a magnetic attraction so great as 
 to draw to its octopus-like embrace one-fifth of the whole 
 population, who compete fiercely with each other for the 
 right to occupy the land within that small area, so long 
 will that land have a monopoly price. But de-magnetise 
 that people, convince them that they can better their con- 
 dition in every way by migrating elsewhere, and what 
 becomes of that monopoly value % Its spell is broken, and 
 the great bubble bursts. 
 
 But the life and earnings of Londoners are not only in 
 pawn to the owners of its soil, who kindly permit them to 
 live upon it at enormous rents — £16,000,000 per annum, 
 representing the present ground value of London, which is 
 yearly increasing ; but they are also in pawn to the extent 
 of about £40,000,000, representing London's municipal 
 debts. 
 
 But notice this. A municipal debtor is quite different 
 from an ordinary debtor in one most important respect. 
 He can escape payment by migration. He has but to 
 move away from a given municipal area, and he at once, 
 ipso facto, shakes off not only all his obligations to his 
 landlord, but also all his obligations to his municipal 
 creditors. It is true, when he migrates he must assume the 
 
 K 
 
146 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 burden of a new municipal rent, and, possibly of a new- 
 municipal debt j but these in our new cities will represent 
 an extremely small and diminishing fraction of the burden 
 now borne j and the temptation to migrate will for this and 
 many other reasons be extremely strong. 
 
 But now let us notice how each person in migrating from 
 London will, while making the burden of ground-rents less 
 heavy for those who remain, make the burden of rates on 
 the ratepayers of London yet heavier. For, though each 
 person in migrating will enable those who remain to make 
 better and yet better terms with their landlords; on the 
 other hand, the municipal debt remaining the same, the 
 interest on it will have to be borne by fewer and yet fewer 
 people, and thus the relief to the working population which 
 comes from reduced rent will be largely discounted by 
 increased rates, and in this way the temptation to migrate 
 will continue, and yet further population will remove, mak- 
 ing the debt ever a larger and larger burden, till at length, 
 though accompanied by a still further reduction of rent, it 
 will become intolerable. Of course this huge debt need 
 never have been incurred. Had London been built on 
 municipally-owned land, its rents would not only have easily 
 provided for all current expenditure, without any need for 
 a levy of rates or for incurring loans for long periods, but it 
 would have been enabled to own its own water-supply and 
 many other useful and profit-bearing undertakings, instead 
 of being in its present position with vast debts and small 
 assets. But a vicious and immoral system is bound 
 ultimately to snap, and when the breaking-point is reached, 
 the owners of London's bonds will, like the owners of 
 London's land, have to make terms with a people who can 
 
THE FUTURE OF LONDQN. 
 
 147 
 
 apply the simple remedy of migrating and building a 
 better and brighter civilisation elsewhere, if they are not 
 allowed to rebuild on a just and reasonable basis on the 
 site of their ancient city. 
 
 We may next notice, very briefly, the bearing of this 
 migration of population upon two great problems — the 
 problem of the housing of the people of London, and the 
 problem of finding employment for those w T ho remain. The 
 rents now paid by the working population of London for 
 accommodation most miserable and insufficient represents 
 each year a larger and larger proportion of income, while 
 the cost of moving to and from work, continually increasing, 
 often represents in time and money a very considerable tax. 
 But imagine the population of London falling, and falling 
 rapidly ; the migrating people establishing themselves where 
 rents are extremely low, and where their work is within 
 easy-walking distance of their homes ! Obviously house- 
 property in London will fall in rental value, and fall 
 enormously. Slum property will sink to zero, and the 
 whole working population will move into houses of a class 
 quite above those which they can now afford to occupy. 
 Families which are now compelled to huddle together in one 
 room will be able to rent five or six, and thus will the 
 housing problem temporarily solve itself by the simple 
 process of a diminution in the numbers of the tenants. 
 
 But what will become of this slum property? Its power 
 to extort a large proportion of the hard earnings of the 
 London poor gone for ever, will it yet remain an eye-sore 
 and a blot, though no longer a danger to health and an out- 
 rage on decency ? No. These wretched slums will be pulled 
 down, and their sites occupied by parks, recreation grounds, 
 
148 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 and allotment gardens. And this change, as well as many- 
 others, will be effected, not at the expense of the ratepayers, 
 but almost entirely at the expense of the landlord class : 
 in this sense, at least, that such ground rents as are still 
 paid by the people of London in respect of those classes of 
 property which retain some rental value will have to bear 
 the burden of improving the city. Nor will, I think, the 
 compulsion of any Act of Parliament be necessary to effect 
 this result : it will probably be achieved by the voluntary- 
 action of the land owners, compelled, by a Nemesis from 
 whom there is no escape, to make some restitution for the 
 great injustice which they have so long committed. 
 
 For observe what must inevitably happen. A vast field 
 of employment being opened outside London, unless a 
 corresponding field of employment is opened within it, 
 London must die, when the land-owners will be in a sorry 
 plight. Elsewhere new cities are being built : London then 
 must be transformed. Elsewhere the town is invading the 
 country : here the country must invade the town. Else- 
 where cities are being built on the terms of paying low 
 prices for land, and of then vesting such land in the new 
 municipalities : in London corresponding arrangements must 
 be made or no one will consent to build. Elsewhere, owing to 
 the fact that there are but few interests to buy out, im- 
 provements of all kinds can go forward rapidly and scientifi- 
 cally : in London similar improvements can only be carried 
 out if vested interests recognise the inevitable and accept 
 terms which may seem ridiculous, but are no more so than 
 those which a manufacturer often finds himself compelled to 
 submit to, who sells for a ridiculously low price the machine 
 which has cost a very large sum, for the simple reason that 
 
THE FUTURE OF LONDON. 
 
 149 
 
 there is a far better one in the market, and that it no 
 longer pays, in the face of keen competition, to work the 
 inferior machine. The displacement of capital will, no doubt, 
 be enormous, but the implacement of labour will be yet 
 greater. A few may be made comparatively poor, but the 
 many will be made comparatively rich — a very healthy 
 change, and the slight evils attending which society will be 
 well able to mitigate. 
 
 There are already visible symptoms of the coming change 
 — rumblings which precede the earthquake. London at 
 this very moment may be said to be on strike against 
 its land-owners. Long-desired London improvements are 
 awaiting such a change in the law as will throw some of 
 the cost of making them upon the land-owners of London. 
 Railways are projected, but in some cases are not built — 
 for instance, The Epping Forest Railway — because the 
 London County Council, most properly anxious to keep 
 down the fares by workmen's trains, press for and secure, 
 at the hands of a Parliamentary Committee, the im- 
 position of terms upon the promoters which seem to 
 them extremely onerous and unremunerative, but which 
 would pay the company extremely well were it not for 
 the prohibitive price asked for land and other property 
 along the line Of its projected route. These checks upon 
 enterprise must affect the growth of London even now, and 
 make it less rapid than it otherwise would be ; but when 
 the untold treasures of our land are unlocked, and when the 
 people now living in London discover how easily vested 
 interests, without being attacked, may be circumvented, then 
 the land-owners of London and those who represent other 
 vested interests had better quickly make terms, or London, 
 
ISO 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 besides being what Mr. Grant Allen terms "a squalid 
 village," will also become a deserted one. 
 
 But better counsels, let us hope, will prevail, and a new 
 city rise on the ashes of the old. The task will indeed be 
 difficult. Easy, comparatively, is it to lay out on virgin 
 soil the plan of a magnificent city, such as represented on 
 our Diagram 7, Of far greater difficulty is the problem — 
 even if all vested interests freely effaced themselves — of re- 
 building a new city on an old site, and that site occupied by 
 a huge population. But this, at least, is certain, that the 
 present area of the London County Council ought not (if 
 health and beauty, and that which is too frequently put in 
 the front rank — rapid production of wealth forms — are to 
 be considered) to contain more than, say, one-fifth of its 
 present population ; and that new systems of railways, 
 waterways, docks, water-supply, roads, subways, sewerage, 
 drainage, lighting, parks, etc., must be constructed if London 
 is to be saved, while the whole system of production and of 
 distribution must undergo changes as complete and as re- 
 markable as was the change from a system of barter to our 
 present complicated commercial system. 
 
 There have already been projected proposals for the re- 
 construction of London. In 1883 the late Mr. William 
 Westgarth offered the Society of Arts the sum of £1,200 
 to be awarded in prizes for essays on the best means of pro- 
 viding dwellings for the London poor, and on the re-con- 
 struction of Central London — an offer which brought 
 forward several schemes of some boldness. 1 More recently 
 a book by Mr. Arthur Cawston, entitled " A Comprehensive 
 
 1 See " Reconstruction of Central London" (George Bell & Sons). 
 
THE FUTURE OF LONDON. 
 
 Scheme for Street Improvements in London," was published 
 by Stanford, which contains in its introduction the following 
 striking passage: — "The literature relating to London, 
 extensive as it is, contains no work which aims at the 
 solution of one problem of vast interest to Londoners. 
 They are beginning to realise, partly by their more and 
 more extensive travels, and partly through their American 
 and foreign critics, that the gigantic growth of their capital, 
 without the controlling guidance of a municipality, has re- 
 sulted in not only the biggest, but in probably the most 
 irregular, inconvenient, and unmethodical collection of 
 houses in the world. A comprehensive plan for the trans- 
 formation of Paris has been gradually developed since 1848 ; 
 slums have disappeared from Berlin since 1870 ; eighty-eight 
 acres in the centre of Glasgow have been remodelled; 
 Birmingham has transformed ninety-three acres of squalid 
 slums into magnificent streets flanked by architectural 
 buildings ; Vienna, having completed her stately outer ring, 
 is about to remodel her inner city : and the aim of the 
 writer is to show, by example and illustration, in what way 
 the means successfully employed for improving these cities 
 can be best adapted to the needs of London. n 
 
 The time for the complete reconstruction of London — 
 which will eventually take place on a far more compre- 
 hensive scale than that now exhibited in Paris, Berlin, 
 Glasgow, Birmingham, or Vienna — has, however, not yet 
 come. A simpler problem must first be solved. One small 
 Garden City must be built as a working model, and then a 
 group of cities such as that dealt with in the last chapter. 
 These tasks done, and done well, and the reconstruction of 
 London must inevitably follow, and the power of vested 
 
152 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 interests to block the way will have been almost if not 
 entirely removed. 
 
 Let us, therefore, first bend all our energies to the smaller 
 of these tasks, thinking only of the larger tasks which lie 
 beyond as incentives to a determined line of immediate 
 action, and as a means of realising the great value of little 
 things if done in the right manner and in the right spirit. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 WATER SUPPLY. 
 
 " Beauty must come back to the useful arts, and the distinction 
 between the fine and the useful arts be forgotten. If history were 
 truly told, if life were nobly spent, it would be no longer easy or 
 possible to distinguish the one from the other. In nature, all is 
 useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, 
 moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical 
 and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will 
 it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will 
 come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of 
 brave and earnest men. It is in vain that we look for genius to 
 reiterate its miracles in the old arts ; it is its instinct to find beauty 
 and holiness in new and necessary facts, in the field and roadside, 
 in the shop and mill. 
 
 "Is not the selfish and even cruel aspect which belongs to our 
 great mechanical works — to mills, railways and machinery — the 
 effect of the mercenary impulses which these works obey ? 
 
 "When science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by 
 love, they will appear the supplements and continuations of the 
 material creation." — R. W. Emerson. "Essay on Art." 
 
 The bounty of Nature and the selfish improvidence of 
 man — so finely dealt with in the above essay — are perhaps 
 in no way more clearly seen than in the marvellous contrast 
 between the abundant water-supply presented as a free gift 
 for the service of man, aud the pitiful and paltry use he 
 makes of it. This state of things may be forcibly illustrated 
 by two paragraphs which, by a curious coincidence, appeared 
 in an evening paper of the same date : — 
 
 iS3 
 
154 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 "The floods in the Midlands are almost as bad as those in the 
 West. There is now a sheet of water about 100 miles long, and 
 averaging a mile in breadth, extending from Northampton to the 
 sea."— Star, 19th Nov. 1891. 
 
 " The people in Clare Market (London) unable to pay their water 
 rates have had their supply cut off."— Star, 19th Nov. 1891. 
 
 With famine in the midst of such plenty, who can doubt 
 that there must be some essential mistake at the very root 
 of our social life — a mistake that must be exposed and cor- 
 rected before man can take any u real step into harmony 
 with Nature " ] Of all man's physical needs there is none 
 more urgent and imperative than a plentiful water-supply ; 
 of all his spiritual needs there is none greater than that he 
 should learn to act, not in cruel conspiracy against but in 
 joyous concert with his fellows. And it may well be that 
 the full satisfaction of the first need, water, can only come 
 with a full and hearty recognition of his need for the water 
 of life — the renovating, cleansing influence of mutual 
 affection and regard. 
 
 " About 3 feet of water in the form of rain, snow, and hail, 
 fall upon the surface of Great Britain every year. Spread 
 over the present estimated population, the average daily 
 fall is more than 19 tons to every inhabitant." 1 Nineteen 
 tons or 4,456 gallons per head per day poured as a free gift 
 from the clouds, and yet the poor people in Clare Market, 
 within a stone's throw of the Royal Courts of Justice, must 
 have even their pitiful share of 25 gallons a day cut off! 
 
 One is tempted to parody the song of the Ancient 
 Mariner : — 
 
 i" Water, its Composition, Collection and Distribution."— John 
 Parry, Esq., C.E. 
 
WATER SUPPLY. 
 
 155 
 
 " Water, water everywhere, in every field and hollow, 
 Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to swallow : 
 Water, water everywhere, it sends the farmers raving, 
 Water, water everywhere, but not a drop for laving : 
 Water, water everywhere, on roadsides, meadows, mountains, 
 Water, water everywhere, but not a drop for fountains : 
 Water, water everywhere, a frightful slush and slosh, 
 Water, water everywhere, but none for Monday's wash." 
 
 But throughout this work, the author's object has been 
 not so much to condemn the present system of industry as 
 to show how a better system may be gradually set up to take 
 its place. He will, therefore, at once proceed to show how 
 in Garden City such waste of water may be prevented, and 
 how these vast stores of wealth may be utilised. He would, 
 however, wish to state at the outset that though he has a 
 belief that the system which he will presently describe is in 
 its essential features workable, and one which would add 
 greatly to the success of Garden City, yet such system is no 
 essential part of the main scheme presented in this work. It 
 is an adjunct, and may be a most useful adjunct, but the 
 main scheme of this work must not be supposed to stand or 
 fall with it. 
 
 First it is obvious that the water-supply of Garden City, 
 with no special invention on the part of the engineers who 
 devise it, might be not only uncommonly wholesome and 
 plentiful, but quite exceptionally economical. Being the 
 landlord of the whole site of 6,000 acres, the municipality, 
 instead of conveying water at a vast expense from distant 
 sources of supply, as some of our cities are at present doing, 
 would probably be able to obtain a most ample supply of 
 water within its own territory, and to ensure its absolute 
 purity. Obviously the municipal engineer of Garden City 
 
156 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 could select the most favourable spots for the sinking of 
 wells for drinking water, and could also readily construct 
 reservoirs at suitable elevations for providing every in- 
 habitant as well as laundries and factories with a very 
 considerable body of rain water. The reader is, therefore, 
 again urged, if he feels any uncertainty about the success of 
 the system of water-supply which is to be described, to 
 bear in mind that such a system would not be tried on a 
 comprehensive scale until its utility had been first demon- 
 strated on a scale so small as to involve little cost, and that, 
 in any event, the success of the main scheme would not be 
 jeopardised by any risky experiments. 
 
 Under the system now to be described — a system which 
 would, of course, require various modifications to adapt it 
 to the selected site, which selection would naturally be 
 made with a due regard to the stratification of the district 
 (though engineers less and less permit natural obstacles to 
 bar the way to any well-devised plan) — the municipality of 
 Garden City would be able, at a comparatively small cost, 
 not only to supply the whole of its members with water for 
 ordinary domestic and trade purposes, but also with water 
 power for driving machinery and generating electric light, 
 together with a large body of water for transport purposes 
 as well as for boating, bathing, skating, etc. It would do 
 all this, too, in such a way as to effectively drain and 
 irrigate the whole estate, and to beautify the town in the 
 most remarkable manner. 
 
 The essential plan of the water system is extremely simple. 
 It consists (see Diagram 6) of (a) a low level reservoir, of such 
 a form as to serve also the purposes of a canal ; (6) a storage 
 reservoir or reservoirs ; and (c) a high level reservoir or 
 
WATER SUPPLY. 
 
 157 
 
 reservoirs. Into the low level reservoir and storage 
 reservoirs the whole of the town and of the estate generally 
 w r ould be effectively drained, sewage being of course 
 excluded. Into the high level reservoirs water, besides 
 intermittently falling from the clouds, would be continu- 
 ously lifted from the low level reservoir and from the 
 storage reservoir, by windmills and pumps or other suitable 
 means, and would continuously fall from the high level 
 reservoirs, either into the storage reservoir or the low level 
 reservoir, the motive-power thus obtained being used for 
 driving machinery and for generating electric light. 
 
 The water in the canal and in the storage and upper 
 reservoirs is not intended for potable purposes, but would 
 be perfectly adapted for watering streets and gardens, for 
 flushing sewers and drains, as well as for fountains and 
 various other purposes. Indeed, the effect of this lifting of 
 the water from low levels to high levels, its fall from the 
 upper levels, and the currents which would naturally attend 
 such rise and fall, would thoroughly oxidise the water, 
 would subject it to the beneficent action of light, and would 
 in this climate probably prevent freezing, while if portions 
 of such water were stored and filtered, these would be 
 superior in quality to London water, which is for the most 
 part drainage water, and is, moreover, water from which 
 sewage has not been excluded. Not content, however, with 
 the London standard of purity, the supply of water for 
 potable purposes would in Garden City be obtained from 
 deep wells, sunk in suitable positions — perhaps in the 
 Central Park, so as to be far from any possible source of 
 contamination. 
 
 Several difficulties which may arise in the mind of the 
 
158 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 reader it may be well to deal with shortly. First, would 
 there be readily available a sufficient supply of water to 
 maintain the canals and reservoirs at suitable levels 1 Let 
 us see. Our lower reservoir or canal system would be, say, 
 3| miles long, 45 feet wide — equivalent to a water area of 
 about 19 acres — and would be about 6 feet deep. With a 
 depth of water of 4 feet, this would represent about 20f- 
 million gallons. 1 The circular ornamental water in Central 
 Park (see Diagram 6) would contain (being narrower and 
 shallower) about one and a quarter million gallons. The 
 upper reservoirs would hold, when full, say 80 million 
 gallons, and the storage reservoir about half of this amount, 
 or say 140 million gallons in all. Now what supply of 
 water may we anticipate ? The answer, without being by 
 any means definite, will be, I think, abundantly satisfactory. 
 The whole estate having an area of 6,000 acres, with a 
 rainfall of 2 feet per annum, there would each year fall 
 upon it 3,269 million gallons, or 23 times the amount of 
 water required to fill the reservoirs — a sufficient margin to 
 allow, having regard to, first, the bread fact that only a 
 small part of this water would drain into the canal, and 
 secondly, for evaporation and loss; while in the possible 
 event of difficulty, resort could be had to underground 
 waters. 
 
 A second difficulty which is certain to be suggested is, 
 will not the cost be prohibitive ? My answer is, the more 
 carefully the reader ponders this question in the light of 
 the project as a whole, the more surprised will he be at the 
 way this difficulty recedes. First, it is to be noticed that 
 the system I have so briefly described is at one and the 
 1 A cubic foot of water is equal to 6*23 gallons. 
 
WATER SUPPLY. 
 
 159 
 
 same time a system of drainage, of irrigation, of transport, 
 of motive power, of recreation, and of ornament ; and that 
 the system being designed as a whole is made to serve each 
 of these purposes in the most effective manner. Such 
 works, if constructed for the one purpose of collecting and 
 elevating water and of then using it as motive power, or for 
 the one purpose of draining the estate, or for the one 
 purpose of irrigating it, or for the one purpose of cheapening 
 transport across the estate, or for the one purpose of giving 
 the townspeople abundant opportunities of rowing, of bath- 
 ing, and of fishing, might be altogether too costly ; but 
 if for " or 99 we read " and," if for one purpose we sub- 
 stitute many purposes, then the cost, too great perhaps 
 if incurred for the supply of one want, becomes, in view 
 of the many wants it adequately meets, extremely low. 
 The achievement of many ends by one method is the truest 
 economy. 
 
 A few further points as to cost may be touched upon. 
 First the cost of sites w 7 ould be insignificant. 20 acres of 
 canal, 5 acres for canal banks, and say 10 acres for upper 
 reservoirs and 10 acres for storage reservoirs — 45 acres in 
 all, at £40 an acre, represents XI, 800. This, divided by the 
 total population of the town, represents a single payment, 
 not an annual levy, of Is. 3d. per inhabitant / This, it must 
 be admitted, is a sufficiently insignificant sum to pay for 
 the requisite sites. 
 
 Then as to the cost of the reservoirs. We will deal first 
 with the upper reservoirs. These would be placed in 
 convenient situations, and on the highest ground obtainable. 
 But unless, indeed, there were some parts of the estate at 
 very considerable elevations above the lowest, it would be 
 
i6o 
 
 TO-MORROW. 
 
 desirable to raise the reservoirs to a very considerable 
 height, so that they might be able to store up the greater 
 power. Now observe the economy which an organised and 
 scientific system of migration from old to new land permits 
 and suggests in the construction of the reservoirs. We 
 have already seen that the reservoirs are to be filled 
 with water, which is now flowing to waste, or which is 
 doing serious damage to crops. But not only are our 
 reservoirs to be filled with water which thus costs, as it were, 
 less than nothing, but these upper reservoirs are to be for 
 the most part constructed of waste material which might 
 entail some considerable expense to get rid of. They are 
 to be constructed of spoil obtained in excavating the canal 
 and storage reservoirs, in making foundations, cellars, 
 subways, etc. Thus, 
 
 6 feet deep of spoil out of 20 acres of lower 
 
 canal would represent say 1 
 Storage reservoirs, 10 acres, 21 feet deep 
 5,500 building lots, 40 yds. each 
 Shops, stores, factories, etc. 
 20 miles subway 
 
 193,000 c. yds. 
 338,000 „ 
 220,000 „ 
 110,000 „ 
 352,000 ,, 
 
 1,213,000 c. yds. 
 
 This mass of material, if piled up so as to form a reservoir 
 with a total area of 6 acres at the top, and with a suitable 
 slope towards the base, would rise to a height of about 100 
 feet. If, therefore, the highest sites on the estate con- 
 venient for the upper reservoirs were only 40 feet higher 
 than the level of the water in the lower reservoirs (which 
 
 i If the canal had to be cut through an undulating country, the 
 extra expense thus entailed would be partly compensated for by the 
 additional spoil secured. 
 
WATER SUPPLY. 
 
 161 
 
 would be, practically, the lowest level on the whole estate), 
 there would be, with the spoil so obtained and thrown upon 
 the reservoir sites, reservoirs giving a fall of 140 feet. The 
 reservoirs might easily and at little extra cost be made 
 extremely beautiful ; splendid views might be obtained 
 from their summits, and at nightfall they could be cheaply 
 illuminated with electricity generated by the falling water. 
 
 As to the lower reservoir or canal, its cost would probably 
 not exceed £5,000 a mile, the cost of the Coventry Canal, 1 
 while the storage reservoir would not entail very great 
 expense. 
 
 But not only may our canal and upper reservoirs be filled 
 with water which has cost the community less than nothing, 
 and not only may the upper reservoirs be constructed for 
 the most part of waste material obtained in constructing 
 lower reservoirs and generally in building the town ; but 
 the labour employed in constructing the upper and lower 
 reservoirs may be also regarded as the equivalent of labour 
 which is now going to waste, so that the labour cost may in 
 a very real sense be regarded as nil. Thus, if 5,000 men in 
 Garden City spend on an average three-quarters of an hour 
 less each day in going to and from their work than in the 
 London, or other huge monstrosity of a city they have left 
 behind, they will save one and a quarter million hours in 
 the course of the year, and this, if taken at only 4d. an 
 hour, will effect a saving to the community of over £20,000 
 a year, or more than twice the whole amount paid in 
 interest on the purchase money of the estate. If 2d. a day 
 saved in travel to and from work is added, a total saving of 
 £30,000 a year is effected; while each bread-winner being near 
 1 The Oxford Canal cost £4,400 a mile. 
 
 L 
 
TO-MORROW. 
 
 his home could enjoy his mid-day meal with his family — 
 representing a value in money by no means small, but in 
 comfort and happiness simply incalculable. 
 
 I do not think any engineer could estimate the cost of 
 the work I have set down, including the sinking of wells, 
 and laying pipes and mains, at more than £90,000. If this 
 be so, then, supposing each adult give the community in 
 time or in money for two years what he would save in time 
 and money now lost in travelling to and from work, he 
 would be able to enjoy for the rest of his life, without cost, 
 except for working expenses and maintenance, a splendid 
 system of water-supply, and the great satisfaction of 
 showing the community at large a way in which a very large 
 amount of "surplus labour" might be profitably employed. 
 
 £90,000 may seem a large sum, but the cost per head is 
 far less than that of large cities, while the supply is of a 
 vastly superior character, and serves many ends which are 
 probably unattainable in cities of the old type. One or two 
 comparisons may be useful. Birmingham has parliamentary 
 powers to expend £6,000,000 (or £10 per head of population 
 to be provided for) and to enclose 32,000 acres of common 
 land for a supplementary supply, in addition to millions 
 already spent ; while the London Water Companies years 
 ago asked a sum of £33,000,000, or £6 a head of population, 
 for a supply on which they have since spent several millions, 
 and which is now generally regarded as so inadequate that 
 the County Council are seriously contemplating an ex- 
 penditure of many millions on a scheme for bringing water 
 from Wales. 
 
 It may be well to ascertain what body of stored-up 
 power the upper reservoirs represent. If these contained 
 
WATER SUPPLY. 
 
 163 
 
 (when a calm, preventing pumping operations by means of 
 windmills, began) 80,000,000 gallons, they would be to 
 gether capable of discharging during such a very prolonged 
 period as six days of calm, 18,510 gallons or 185,000 lbs. per 
 minute during each day of 12 hours. If this figure 185,000 
 be multiplied, for example, by 140, the distance through 
 which the water might fall, and divided by 33,000, we obtain 
 the horse-power. 1 This comes out at 784. If we deduct 
 25 per cent, for friction, etc., we arrive at 588 horse-power, 
 as a continuous force to be depended upon during six days 
 of actual calm. But this is assuming that pumping opera 
 tions were entirely suspended during a calm. This would, 
 of course, not be the case, for steam engines would be held 
 in reserve for such occasions, and thus the capacity of our 
 reservoirs would only be limited by the power of our wind- 
 mills (or during a calm of our steam engines) to pump 
 water. 
 
 Here I will deal for a moment with another objection 
 which is sure to rise in the mind of the average reader. 
 " Windmills, why those are antiquated contrivances which 
 have long since given way to steam." This, of course, is 
 largely true ; but it is mainly due to this : windmills are 
 necessarily intermittent in their action, and it would never 
 do for the expensive plant of a modern factory and its 
 large number of work-people to be waiting for the wind. 
 But when windmills are used to pump water, and when 
 reservoirs are used as accumulators, the case is quite 
 different. The difficulty due to irregularity almost dis- 
 appears, for as we have seen, our reservoirs would store-up 
 
 1 A horse-power is the force required to raise 33,000 lbs. one foot 
 in one minute. 
 
TO-MORROW. 
 
 sufficient power for six whole days of absolute calm, 1 while 
 the rest of the difficulty as to irregularity is met by a 
 reserve of other motive power. But for the possible great 
 future of windmills, perhaps the reader will like an 
 authoritative voice. The Times, 9th August, 1892, said : — 
 " Some engineers are confident that for the despised wind- 
 mills there is a considerable future \ they may again, in the 
 words of Hood's young lady, 1 lend revolving animation to 
 the scene.' " But the wise reader will prefer facts to 
 opinions. These are abundant. The Daily Chronicle, 6th 
 January, 1893, observes: "In Kansas, Nebraska, and other 
 Western States, water is obtained by means of windmills and 
 pumps from a depth of 200 to 250 feet, and in some sections 
 100 windmills for pumping purposes may be counted from 
 one spot." 
 
 Windmills are sometimes used for storing electricity in 
 accumulators. Thus Lord Kelvin, in the address to which 
 the note on this page refers, says : " Even now it is not 
 utterly chimerical to think of wind superseding coal in some 
 places for a very important part of its present duty — that 
 of giving light. Indeed, now that we have dynamos and 
 Faure accumulators, the little want to let the thing be done 
 is cheap windmills." But what better accumulators could 
 be found than our reservoirs ? Their loss through evapora- 
 tion would probably be far less than the leakage of electrical 
 accumulators ; they besides, as we have already seen, serve 
 many other useful and ornamental purposes. 
 
 We have already noticed that the capital cost of our 
 
 i Calms do not often last longer than three or four days at a time. 
 Sir W. Thomson's (now Lord Kelvin) address to the British 
 Association, 1881. 
 
WATER SUPPLY. 
 
 water system is a cost borne by many and varied objects, 
 which together form, as it were, a divisor, bringing down the 
 cost of securing each object to a comparatively small figure. 
 The same is obviously true of the expense incurred in 
 maintaining the system. The windmills or steam engines, 
 while engaged in pumping operations, are rendering many 
 services to the community other than those represented by 
 the horse-power to be yielded by the falling water. It is 
 these pumping operations which make the canal system not 
 only a possible, but a delightful acquisition, a thing of 
 beauty and utility, a means of abundant recreation and en- 
 joyment. It is, of course, essential that a large body of 
 water should be locked in, and only allowed to flow off the 
 estate on its way to the sea as it can be spared, and it is 
 therefore most important that the water should be kept in 
 a constant state of circulation, and submitted as much as 
 possible to the action of air and light. Then readers will 
 not be slow to appreciate the enormous advantage to the 
 community which would be represented by the almost entire 
 absence of smoke which such a system would secure. The 
 result of this, represented in health, brightness, cleanliness, 
 and beauty, it would be, of course, impossible to state in 
 terms of money, even though in this respect also the gain 
 would be enormous. Unfortunately, under our present 
 immoral and selfish methods, the general weal is little re- 
 garded, and the manufacturer, in seeking for cheap motive- 
 power, is too apt to deem that cheapest which costs him 
 least, even though it cost society most, and so we hear of 
 waterfalls being desecrated, and as objects of beauty well- 
 nigh destroyed at the advent of some new industry, such as 
 the manufacture of aluminium. But there is no delusion 
 
TO-MORROW. 
 
 like the delusion of irrational egoism ; and if we will but 
 seek the welfare of society, waterfalls, far from being 
 destroyed by manufactures, will be created for them. 
 
 I will close this appendix by quoting a passage from 
 a paper by Mr. Herbert G. Coales, A.M.I.C.E., Engineer 
 and Surveyor to the Urban District Council of Market 
 Harborough — a town with a splendid system of water- 
 supply :— 
 
 " Wherever there is water there is power, and if we 
 remind ourselves that about 3,000 tons of water fall on 
 every acre of area in England per annum, we see that it is 
 no insignificant pow T er which it is our duty to impress into 
 the service of man. Evidently only a proportion of the 
 water can be profitably employed as a motor, as the falling 
 rain has to serve other purposes in nature. But, on the 
 other hand, water can be used over and over again, being 
 unlike steam in this respect, which, on leaving the cylinder, 
 is evaporated. Perpetual motion is a demonstrated im- 
 possibility ; but in a constant supply of flowing water, as in 
 some stream which is never dry, we approach very nearly to 
 the long-sought-for discovery. . . . 
 
 " In many directions there is undoubtedly a field for the 
 utilisation of water-power in conjunction with that of 
 electricity. A great deal of water runs away year after 
 year unused to the sea, which might be the motive power 
 for driving electro-motors and for producing electric light. 
 Particularly is this the case in small towns and villages, 
 which by the introduction of these facilities might find it 
 possible to carry on many industries with greater advantage 
 than at present. This would be a desideratum not to be 
 despised, as it is now the object of statesmen if possible to 
 
WATER SUPPLY. 
 
 prevent people from crowding into the larger towns^ seek- 
 ing that employment which to a considerable extent is 
 dependent upon efficient machinery. As a body of men 
 having at heart the physical welfare of the inhabitants of 
 our towns, we should welcome the results foreshadowed here 
 as most desirable." 
 
 THE END. 
 
INDEX 
 
 A 
 
 Act of Parliament for enforce- 
 ment of rates unnecessary, 
 61. (See Parliament.) 
 
 Administration, Chapters vi., 
 vii., viii., and ix. ; diagram 
 5 ; effects of dissatisfaction 
 with, not greater than in 
 any other municipality, 99 
 
 Agricultural Land, its low- 
 value compared with city 
 land, 21 ; its probable future 
 rise in value, 138 
 
 Allen's, Mr. Grant, Description 
 of London, 150 
 
 Allotments, theirfavourable situ- 
 ations, 26 ; high rents usu- 
 ally charged for, 26 
 
 Ancient Mariner, Parody on, 155 
 
 Appropriation of wealth-forms 
 advocated by Socialists, 119 ; 
 a new creation of urged as 
 a counter programme, 124 
 
 Austen, Professor Roberts, on 
 the despair of London Stat- 
 ues, 8 
 
 B 
 
 Baker, Sir Benj., Sewerage of 
 London, 26 ; London Rail- 
 ways, 133 
 
 Banks, Penny, precursors of 
 Post Office Banks, 84 ; Pro- 
 Municipal, 84 
 
 Barwise, Dr., Water famine in 
 Derbyshire, 9 
 
 Beauty and Utility, Emerson on, 
 153 
 
 Bees, Tolstoi on, 102 
 
 Binnie, Sir Alexander, Sewerage 
 
 of London, 26 
 Birmingham, profits on gas, 62 ; 
 
 cost of water, 162 
 Blake's resolve, 12 
 Boftin, Mr. and Mrs., 66 
 Bruce, Lord, Liquor Traffic, 2 
 Brussels, Boulevard du Midi com- 
 pared with Grand A ven ue, 1 6 
 Buckingham, J. S., his scheme 
 combined with others, 
 112 
 
 Building lots, number and size, 
 
 32 ; estimated rents, 33 
 — Societies, a field for, 85 
 Burns, Mr. J., M.P., L.C.C., 85, 
 142 
 
 Bakeries, 78 
 
 Balfour, Right Hon. A. J., on 
 migration to towns, 89 ; 
 real question for working 
 classes is one of production, 
 not of division, 118 
 
 o 
 
 Canals, 130, 131, Appendix, 
 
 diagrams, 6, 7 
 Capital, How raised, 13, 37; 
 
 security - for, 58-60. {See 
 
170 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Wealth Forms and Vested 
 
 Interests. ) 
 Cawston, Arthur, Scheme for 
 
 London improvement, 150 
 Central Council, Its rights, 
 
 powers, and duties, 67 ; 
 
 delegation of its powers, 68 ; 
 
 how constituted, 70 
 Chamberlain, Right Hon. Joseph, 
 
 Limits of municipal activity, 
 
 64 
 
 Charitable Institutions, 19, 61 
 Children and water famine, 9 ; 
 
 nearness to schools, 42 
 China, Effects of opium, 2 
 Churches, 16, 33 
 Circle Railway, ] 6 ; cost of, 52, 
 
 54 ; Railway and Canal 
 
 Traffic Act (1894), 55 
 Cities, Alarming growth of, 2 ; 
 
 true mode of growth, 45 
 Clifford, on growth of railways, 
 
 129 
 
 Coales, Mr. H. G., Water power, 
 166 
 
 Cobbett, on London, 3 
 Common ownership of land ; 
 
 how brought about, 12, 126 
 Communism, Difficulties of, 94-6 
 Compensation for improvements, 
 
 27 
 
 Competition, Rents fixed by, 13, 
 17, 69, as test of systems, 17 ; 
 effect on prices, 77 
 
 Consumers' League, 79 
 
 Co-operative farms, 17 
 
 — kitchens, 15 
 
 — organisation and disorganisa- 
 
 tion, 86 
 
 — stores, 78 
 
 — principle, ample scope for 
 
 growth of, 19, 66, 80 
 Country, depopulation of, 3 
 Country life and town life con- 
 trasted and combined, 7-11 
 County Councils, Larger powers 
 
 for, 136 
 Cow pastures, 17 
 Cricket fields, 58 
 Crystal Palace, 14, 73 
 
 D 
 
 Daily Chronicle. Cost of re- 
 housing, 46 ; Schools at 
 Eastbourne, 56 ; middle 
 course between Socialism 
 and Individualism, 94 ; Para- 
 guay experiment, 99 ; art 
 and culture for all, 128 ; on 
 windmills, 164 
 
 Daily News. Life in our villages, 4 
 
 Darwin, Chas., on necessity for 
 coherence, 91 
 
 Debentures A, Rate of interest 
 and how secured, 12, 13, 58 
 
 — B, Rate of interest and how 
 secured, 36, 37, 58 
 
 Departments, The, 68 
 
 Diagrams. The Three Magnets, 
 8 ; Garden City, 12 ; Ward 
 and Centre, 14 ; Vanishing 
 Point of Landlord'sRent, 22 ; 
 Administration, 90 ; Water 
 supply, 130; Social Cities, 130 
 
 Dickens, Chas., An appeal for 
 homes, 51 
 
 Distribution, A more just, of 
 wealth, combined with 
 greater production, 119 
 
 E 
 
 Eastbourne, School at, 56 
 
 Echo. On milk, 25 ; on children's 
 school playgrounds, 36 
 
 Electricity, profit on, in Man- 
 chester, 62 
 
 Electric light, 24 ; appendix, 166 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 153 
 
 Estimates, 52 
 
 Experimental method, James 
 Watts', 91 
 
 P 
 
 Factories, 16 ; diagram, 3 ; esti- 
 mated rents, 34 
 
INDEX. 
 
 171 
 
 Failures foundation of success, 
 95 ; causes of former con- 
 sidered, chap. x. 
 
 Fairman, Frank, Poor cannot be 
 raised without depressing 
 rich, 118 
 
 Farningham, Miss Marianne, 
 " 1900?" 107 
 
 Farquharson, Dr., on rings of 
 middlemen, 24 
 
 Farrar, Dean, Growth of cities, 3 
 
 Floods and water famine, 9, 154 
 
 Force without compared with 
 impulse within, 139 
 
 Freedom. (See Liberty.) 
 
 G 
 
 George, Henry, All blame on 
 
 landlords, 125 
 Goethe, Duty the demand of the 
 
 hour, 116 
 Gorst, Sir John, on growth of 
 
 cities, 3, 11 
 Grand Arcade. [See Crystal 
 
 Palace and Local Option. ) 
 — Avenue, 16, 32, 33 
 Green, J. R., on sudden changes, 
 
 1 
 
 Ground rents Is. Id. per head, 
 32 ; how applied, 33 
 
 H 
 
 Hastings, Rev. , on Paraguay ex- 
 periment, 99 
 
 Hawthorne. Human nature, 
 like a potato, requires trans- 
 planting, 128 
 
 Hobson. Physiology of indus- 
 try, 87 
 
 Hugo, Victor, on Parasitism, 20 
 Hyndman, Mr., Views of, 121 
 Hygeia, 20 
 
 I 
 
 " Impossibility," An, becomes a 
 reality, 89 
 
 Increment of land value secured 
 by migrants, 21 
 
 Individual taste encouraged, 15 
 
 Individualism and Socialism, 
 line between must not be 
 sharply drawn, 92-3 ; an ex- 
 cellent principle but should 
 be associated with co-opera- 
 tion, 96 ; thus carrying out 
 principle advocated by Lord 
 Rosebery, 119 ; society may 
 become more Individualistic 
 and more Socialistic, 118 
 
 Inspection, 15, 69 
 
 Insurance against accident or 
 sickness, 21 
 
 Interest, (See Debentures.) 
 
 Irrigation, 156, 159 
 
 Isolated efforts, necessity for, 96 
 
 Issues, distinct, raised at election 
 times, 71 
 
 J 
 
 Jerusalem, Blake's Resolution, 12 
 
 K 
 
 Kelvin, Lord, duration of calms, 
 164 ; on windmills, 164 
 
 Kidd, Mr. Benj., on antagonism 
 between interests of society 
 and of individual, 119 
 
 Li 
 
 Labour leaders, a programme 
 for, 86 
 
 — saving machinery, object 
 lesson in, 49 
 
172 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Land compared with other 
 wealth forms, 120, 124 
 
 Landlord, Average man a poten- 
 tial, 126 ; landlords will 
 become divided into two 
 camps, 137, 138 ; their 
 Nemesis, 148 
 
 Landlord's rent, meaningof term, 
 28 ; vanishing point of, 22 ; 
 insignificant amount in 
 Garden City, 32 
 
 Land system may be attacked 
 without attacking indivi- 
 duals, 20, 126, 137 
 
 Large farms, 17 
 
 Laundries, 78 
 
 Lawn tennis courts, 58 
 
 Leases contain favourable cove- 
 nants, 33 
 
 Liberty, Principles of, fully ob- 
 served, 18^83, 96, 113, 143 
 
 Library, Public, diagram 3 ; 
 cost, 52, 57 
 
 Lighting, 10, 18, 62, Appendix. 
 
 Local option and shopping, 74 ; 
 its effects on prices, quality, 
 and wages, 76 ; it diminishes 
 risks, 76 ; reduces work- 
 ing expenses, 77 ; checks 
 sweating, 79 ; application 
 to liquor traffic, 79 
 
 Local Self-government, Problem 
 of, solved, 68 
 
 London, Growth of, Lord Rose- 
 bery on, 3 ; high rents, 21, 
 145 ; their impending fall, 
 145 ; sewerage system "un- 
 alterably settled," 26 ; area 
 too small for its popula- 
 tion, 31 ; growth chaotic, 
 36 ; Garden City con- 
 trasted with, 45 ; cost of 
 its school sites and build- 
 ings compared with Gar- 
 den City, 41 ; cost of dwell- 
 ings contrasted, 46, 47 ; 
 cost of water supplies, 162 ; 
 excessive number of shops, 
 72 ; want of railroad system, 
 133 ; contrast with Garden 
 
 City's system, 131 ; its 
 future, chap. xiv. ; its con- 
 tinued growth generally an- 
 ticipated, 143 ; this leads to 
 mistaken policy of London 
 County Council, 144 ; its 
 large debt and small assets, 
 145, 146 ; simultaneous fall 
 of ground values and rise of 
 rates as the withdrawal of 
 population makes debt per 
 head larger, 146 ; cost of 
 moving to and from work 
 ever increasing, 147 ; com- 
 parison with Garden City 
 in this respect, 161 ; slum 
 property falls to zero, 147 ; 
 transformation of London, 
 148 ; London on strike 
 against its landlords, 149 ; 
 the ''squalid village," unless 
 entirely reconstructed, will 
 become deserted, 149 ; 
 existing proposals for re- 
 construction of, 150 
 
 M 
 
 Machinery, 49 
 Magnets, The Three, 8 
 Management expenses, 57 
 Manchester, profit on electricity, 
 62 
 
 Mann, Tom, on the depopulation 
 of the country, 4 
 
 Manufacturers, choice of work- 
 men, 74 
 
 Markets, 72 ; town forms a 
 natural market for farmers, 
 13, 18 
 
 Marshall, Professor, on London 
 overcrowding, 31 ; on or- 
 ganised migration, 106 
 
 Marshall, A. and M. P., on ex- 
 cessive number of shops in 
 London, 72 
 
 Mason, Mr. Chas., C.E., on sub- 
 ways, 48 
 
 Master-Key, 5 
 
INDEX, 
 
 173 
 
 "Merrie England," inconsist- 
 ency of its proposals, 122 
 
 Mexico experiment, 98 
 
 Middlemen, their number re- 
 duced, 24 
 
 Migration, organised, secures, 
 (a) combined advantages of 
 town and country, chapters 
 i. ii. iii. etc. ; {b) full incre- 
 ment of land values for 
 migrants, 21 ; (c) saving of 
 compensation in respect of 
 business disturbance, 41, 46; 
 (d) large reduction in rail- 
 way rates, 25, 45 ; (e) the 
 advantages and economies 
 of a well-planned city, 45 ; 
 (/) a splendid system of 
 water supply within its own 
 territory, (Appendix) ; (g) 
 proximity of workers to 
 work, 48, 161 ; [h) a greater 
 extent of local self-govern- 
 ment, 68 ; (i) plenty of space 
 and avoids over-crowding, 
 84; (j) opportunities for eco- 
 nomic use of money, 88 ; (k) 
 a way of escape from present 
 municipal obligations, 145 ; 
 (I) a field of work for un- 
 employed, 89 ; is advocated 
 by Wakefield, 104 ; by Pro- 
 fessor Marshall, 106 
 
 Milk, saving effected in the case 
 of, 25 
 
 Mill, J. S., his endorsement of 
 Wakefield, 105 ; on the 
 ephemeral nature of wealth, 
 120 
 
 Misgovernment, check upon, 67 
 
 Money not consumed by being 
 spent, 87 ; importance of 
 dispensing with its unneces- 
 sary use, 88 ; set free from 
 its enchantment, 88 
 
 Monopoly, no rigid, 18 ; evils of 
 may be avoided in the case 
 of shops, and advantages of 
 competition secured, 75 
 
 Morley, Right Hon. J., on 
 
 Temperance, 2 ; on the 
 gradual adoption of new 
 ideas, 82 
 Motive power, Appendix 
 Mummery and Hobson, "Phy- 
 siology of Industry," 87 
 Municipal enterprise, growth of, 
 how determined, 19 ; its 
 limits, 64 ; at present small 
 range compared with pri- 
 vate, 99 
 
 N 
 
 Nationalisation must be pre- 
 ceded by humbler tasks, 85 
 
 Neale, Mr. V., on excessive 
 number of shops in London, 
 72 
 
 Need, An urgent, 116 
 Nunquam. (See Merrie England. ) 
 
 o 
 
 Old age pensions. [See Pensions.) 
 Order and freedom, reconcilia- 
 tion of, 143 
 Ornamental waters, Appendix 
 Over-crowding prevented, 84 
 Owen, A. K., Experiment of, 98 
 
 ■D 
 
 JL 
 
 " Palingensia ; or The Earth's 
 New Birth," 130 
 
 Paraguay, Experiment in, 99 
 
 Parasitism, effect of suppression 
 of, Victor Hugo on, 20 
 
 Parks and gardens, 14, 16, 32 ; 
 cost of, 57 
 
 Parliamentary powers unneces- 
 sary in the early stages of 
 railway enterprise, but re- 
 quisite later ; so in rela- 
 tion to the reform initiated 
 by proposed experiment, 
 128-136 
 
174 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Parry, Mr. John., 19 tons of 
 water per head per day, 
 154 
 
 Pensions, 21, 61, and Diagram 
 Philanthropic Institutions, 19, 61 
 Plan, importance of in building 
 
 cities, 45 
 Playgrounds. (See Parks.) 
 Police, 61 
 
 Poor law adminstration, 61 
 Population, England and Wales, 
 23 
 
 Prices raised to producer, dimin- 
 ished to consumer, 25, 142 
 
 Private and public enterprise. 
 (See Municipal.) 
 
 Production, Eight Hon. A. J. 
 Balfour on necessity of 
 increased production, 118 ; 
 increased production se- 
 cured and distribution ren- 
 dered more just, 119 
 
 Pro- Municipal enterprise, chap, 
 viii. 
 
 Public-houses. (See Temperance. ) 
 
 these suffic e to do, chaps, iv 
 and v. 
 
 Rates levied by outside bodies, 
 provision for, 52, 60 
 
 — Receipts of Local Authori- 
 
 ties for 1893-4, 23 
 
 Recreation, boating, bathing, 
 skating, 156. (See Parks.) 
 
 Rents, computation of, in Eng- 
 land and Wales, 23 
 
 Revolution, Social, at hand, 135 
 
 Rhodes, Dr., on growth of cities, 
 3 
 
 Richardson, Sir B. W., on 
 Hygeia, 20 
 
 — Mr., How it can be done, 42 
 Risk of shopkeepers, 76 
 Roads, cost of maintenance small, 
 
 16, 17 ; estimated cost, 52-4 
 Rosebery,Lord, compares London 
 to a tumour, 3 ; on borrow- 
 ing from Individualism and 
 Socialism, 119 
 Ruskin, Mr. J., no air is sweet 
 that is silent, 12 
 
 R 
 
 Railways, their rapid growth, 
 129 ; a carefully planned 
 system of, 131 ; chaos in 
 London, 133 ; construction 
 of railway system was a 
 large order ; a larger one 
 remains to be executed, 140, 
 141 
 
 — Rates, reduction in, 25, 45, 
 55, 142 
 
 "Rate-rent," meaning of term, 
 28 ; revenue raised entirely 
 by rate-rents, which are fixed 
 by competition, 13, 17,20,69; 
 tenants in occupation have 
 some preference, 27 ; as- 
 sessed by a committee, 69 ; 
 estimate of, from agricul- 
 tural estate, chap. ii. ; from 
 town estate, chap. iii. ; what 
 
 S 
 
 Sanitation, 15; Sir B. W. 
 Richardson on, 20 
 
 St. James Gazette on dangerous 
 growth of cities, 4 
 
 Schools, sites for, 16; comparison 
 with London, 41 ; estimated 
 cost of buildings and main- 
 tenance, 52, 55 
 
 Semi-municipal industry, mean- 
 ing of term, 72, 73 
 
 Sewage, 17 ; Victor Hugo on, 
 20 ; cost of system, 52 ; 
 difficulties in London, 26 
 
 Shaw, Mr. Albert, on science 
 of city life, 63 
 
 Shaw-Lefevre, Right Hon. G. J., 
 on chaotic growth of Lon- 
 don, 36 
 
 Shops, factories, &c, estimated 
 rents from, 34 ; excess of 
 
INDEX. 
 
 175 
 
 in London, 72 ; multiplica- 
 tion of prevented, 74 ; risk 
 of shop-keepers reduced, 
 76. (See Local Option and 
 Crystal Palace.) 
 
 Sinking fund for land, 13, 20, 28, 
 35 5 for works, 52, 60 
 
 Slum property declines to zero, 
 147 ; is destroyed and sites 
 converted into parks, 147 
 
 Small holdings, 17 
 
 Smoke, absence of, 165 
 
 Social cities, diagram 7, chap, 
 xiii. 
 
 Socialism complete, difficulty of, 
 Daily Chronicle, 94 ; pro- 
 gramme of Socalists does 
 not represent a basis on 
 which an experiment can 
 safely proceed, 97 ; incon- 
 sistency of Socialistic writers, 
 120 ; their neglect of the 
 land question, 125 ; their 
 threats little heeded, 136 ; 
 and their efforts meet with 
 little success, 139 
 
 Spence, scheme of common land 
 administered by parish, 107 ; 
 the difference between this 
 and my own chiefly one of 
 method, 108 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, advocated 
 common land administered 
 by State, 109 ; his reasons 
 for withdrawing his pro- 
 posals, (a) evils attending 
 State control, 110; (but my 
 scheme, like Spence's, free 
 from these evils, 110) ; (b) 
 difficulty of acquiring land 
 on equitable terms, and of yet 
 making it remunerative to 
 purchasers, 110 ; (this diffi- 
 culty completely overcome 
 in my proposals, 111) ; the 
 " dictum of absolute ethics " 
 that all men are equally 
 entitled to the use of the 
 earth practically realised 
 under my scheme, 112 ; his 
 
 objection on principle to 
 State control rebuked out 
 of his own mouth, 110 
 Star, The, on depopulation of 
 
 country, 4 
 Stereoscopic view of life, 93 
 Strand to Holborn, new street 
 46 
 
 Strikes, the true and the false, 
 86 ; of London against land- 
 lordism, 149 
 
 Subways, growing need for, 48 ; 
 their economy, 54 ; spoil 
 used for raising reservoirs, 
 160 
 
 Sun, The, on subways, 48 
 Sweating, opportunity for public 
 
 conscience to express itself 
 
 against, 79 
 
 T 
 
 Temperance, Right Hon. John 
 Morley on, 2 ; Lord Bruce 
 on, 2 ; experiment may lead 
 to temperance reform, 79 
 
 The Times on sudden changes, 
 1 ; on windmills, 164 
 
 — Three Magnets, Diagram, 8 
 
 Tillett, Mr. Ben, on depopulation 
 of country, 4 
 
 Tolstoi, Count Leo, illustration 
 of swarm of bees, 102 
 
 Topolobampo experiment, 98 
 
 Town life and country life con- 
 trasted and combined, 7 
 
 Tramways, 62, 132 
 
 Trees, 15, 32, 58 
 
 u 
 
 " Unearned increment " a mis- 
 nomer, 21 
 United States, Cities of, 45, 46, 
 
176 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 V 
 
 Variety in architecture, 15 ; in 
 cultivation of soil, 17 ; in 
 employments, 112, 113 
 
 Vested Interests, indirectly 
 threatened, become divided, 
 136 ; the same thing has 
 occurred before, 137 ; vested 
 interests of skill, labour, 
 energy, talent, and industry, 
 the most important of all 
 vested interests consolidated 
 by the same force which 
 divides the vested interests 
 of land and capital in twain, 
 139 
 
 Villages, Depopulation of. (See 
 Country. ) 
 
 w 
 
 Wages, Effect of competition 
 
 upon, 77 
 Wakefield, Art of Colonization, 
 
 104; J. S. Mill's view of it, 
 
 105 
 
 War, implements of, drop down, 
 141 
 
 Ward, Mrs. Humphrey, all 
 changes preceded by spor- 
 adic efforts, 95 
 
 Wards, town divided into by 
 boulevards, 14 ; each ward 
 in a sense a complete town, 
 38 ; work on one practi- 
 
 cally complete before com- 
 mencing on another, 39 
 
 Washington, U.S.A., its magni- 
 ficent streets, 46 
 
 Waste products, utilisation of, 
 25 
 
 Water, scarcity of in country, 
 9 ; in London, 154 ; floods 
 and water famines, 154, 155 
 
 Water-supply usually a source 
 of revenue, 62 ; a new 
 system of, diagrams 6 and 
 7, Appendix ; this system 
 not an essential part of 
 work, 155 
 
 Water-falls : instead of degrad- 
 ing let us create, 166 
 
 Watt, Jas., on the importance of 
 constructing models, 91 
 
 Wealth-forms for the most part 
 extremely ephemeral, 120 ; 
 J. S. Mill on, 120 ; further 
 view on, 125 
 
 Westgarth, Mr. William, prizes 
 for essays on reconstruction 
 of London, 150 
 
 Wilkinson, Rev. Frome, on high 
 rents charged for allotments, 
 26 
 
 Windmills, 163, 164 
 Winter Garden. (See Crystal 
 Palace. ) 
 
 Women may fill all offices in 
 
 municipality, 70, 92 
 Work, plenty of, 49, 88, 124, 
 
 140, 149 
 Workmen's trains, 149 
 
 Printed by Cowan &> Co., Limited, Perth. 
 
1 1 
 
GETTY CENTER LIBRARY 
 
 ■iiiiiii|li 14 
 
 3 3125 00109 6714