method of improving and reconstructing bad houses, which, as
we have noted, is now being more generally recognized and
pursued; but that was only half her work. She improved bad
dwellings and made them decent, but she also managed them
on business lines, by a system of inspection and rent collection
which combined a judicious discipline with the stimulus of reward.
This was done by means of personal service, which is the secret
of all really effective work among the poor. Her words written
years ago remain true to-day: “The people’s homes are bad
partly because they are badly built and arranged; they are
tenfold worse because the tenants’ habits and lives are what
they are. Transplant them to-morrow to healthy and commodious
homes and they will pollute and destroy them.”
The following is a list of the principal associations formed for the promotion of housing reform: Mansion House Council on the Dwellings of the Poor, Rural Housing and Sanitation Association, Workmen’s National Housing Council, National Housing Reform Council, Co-partnership Tenants Housing Council. They are all of recent date, except the first. There are also local associations at Liverpool, Oldham, Rochdale, York, Plymouth, and elsewhere.
Other Countries
At the International Housing Congress organized by the National Housing Reform Council and held in London in 1907 representatives were present from a number of foreign countries and a good deal of information was collected and published in the report of the Congress. Further detailed data have been supplied by foreign correspondents to Mr W. Thompson and published in Housing up to Date. The more important facts relating to the principal industrial countries are here condensed from this and other sources of information.
Austria.—An act for encouraging the building of cheap working-class dwellings was passed in 1902; it provides for exemption from taxes for 24 years of working-class dwellings which fulfil certain conditions including sanitary requirements, a minimum area per room, minimum height, minimum door and window spaces, thickness of walls, a maximum number of inhabitants (one to 4 sq. metres in sleeping rooms), prohibition of lodgers, fixed rent and maximum profit. The municipalities are the authority for administering sanitary and housing laws; they have no power of compulsory purchase of land without a special law. There is excessive overcrowding in the large towns; in Vienna (1900) 43% of the population live in dwellings of 1 room or 1 room and a kitchen; in 60 provincial towns the proportion is 63%. Overcrowding is reckoned at more than 5 persons to a room and more than 9 to two rooms; the proportion of overcrowded on this basis is nearly one-fifth in Vienna and one-fourth in the provincial towns (Thompson).
Belgium.—An act was passed in 1889 instituting Comités de Patronage; since then other Acts relating to loan societies, and to inheritance and succession in the case of small properties. Comités de Patronage are semi-official bodies, but without legal power, whose function it is to study the subject of housing, to report to local authorities on existing conditions, to advise, to collect funds and promote the provision of good houses by any means in their power. They influence public opinion and stimulate the activity of local authorities which have the power to compel improvements and close dwellings unfit for habitation; they have led to the formation of numerous societies for erecting working-class dwellings. The latter are encouraged by the law in various ways; they are exempt from the payment of some government duties and partly exempt from others. Working men buying or building houses liable to registration fees up to from 72 to 171 francs are exempted from personal, provincial and communal taxes. The National Savings Bank of Belgium is empowered to lend money to working men for buying or building houses and to insure the lives of those doing so, to preserve the home for the family. In 1904 the number of workmen’s homes exempted from taxation was 164,387, and the amount of taxation remitted considerably exceeded 3 million francs; workmen had acquired lands and houses valued at nearly £4,000,000; there were 161 societies for building working-class dwellings; 30,000 workmen representing a population of 150,000 had become owners of property; and 70,000 representing a population of 350,000 had availed themselves of the law in obtaining exemptions and loans (O. Velghe). The foregoing results effected in 15 years are remarkable and indicate a great capacity for self-help on the part of Belgian workmen with suitable and well-considered assistance. But this movement, in common with those of a similar character in other countries, does not touch the problem of housing the very poor. No statistics of overcrowding are available, but the average number of persons to a dwelling is over 5 for the whole country and nearly 9 in Brussels. The communal administrations are the authorities for health and housing; they have power to abate nuisances but not to compel landowners to sell land for building, though they have the right to dispossession for “public purposes.” No town has constructed quarters devoted entirely to working-class dwellings and only one commune (St Giles) has built any. In towns the height of buildings is regulated by the width of streets; generally it is the width plus 6 metres. The height of rooms and thickness of walls are prescribed by local regulations but not the area of rooms. The housing difficulty has been lessened in a notable degree by cheap transport facilities, including railroads, light railroads and tramways; a large proportion of the workpeople travel long distances to and from work. One-quarter travel on the State railways alone; fares are 1s. 6d. a week for a daily double journey of 20 m., 2s. for 44 m. and 2s. 6d. for 66 m. The area of the labour market of Liége extends nearly to Ostend and out of 5830 workmen travelling over 1000 live more than 50 kilometres from Liége. Some journeys last 3 hours.
France.—The question of housing was publicly raised in France quite as early as in England on grounds of public health in connexion with the first visitation of cholera, and building societies were formed as early as 1851, but little was done until after 1889, when the Société Française des Habitations à Bon Marché was founded under the inspiration of M. Siegfried. This led to the formation of several societies, which increased rapidly after the passage of la loi Siegfried in 1894, for promoting the provision of working-class dwellings. In 1902 a Public Health Act and in 1906 a Housing of the Working Classes Act were passed, and these three enactments with regulations made in 1907 govern the procedure. The act of 1906 embodies the Belgian system of Comités de Patronage, of which at least one was to be established in each department with grants in aid, and exemptions from certain taxes of working-class dwellings fulfilling specified conditions as to sanitation and rent. The law promotes the formation of Housing Societies by granting various facilities for the investment of money in building by public bodies and benevolent institutions by taking shares or by loans. Down to the end of 1906 there had been lent for this purpose £233,000 by savings banks, £258,000 by the Caisse des Dépôts, and £14,000 by charitable institutions. The law does not authorize municipalities to build houses and none of the communes have acquired land for this purpose. Under the Public Health Act of 1902 towns can purchase land compulsorily in connexion with unhealthy areas. The Public Health and Housing Acts are administered by the local authority, which makes regulations for building and for laying out building land. A minimum height of 2.6 metres and a minimum cubical content of 25 cubic metres are prescribed for rooms; there are no regulations for thickness of walls. Housing societies are under the Ministry of Works and a Superior Housing Council, which is a central advisory body. These societies are now numerous; there are 46 in Paris alone, but their operations are not on a large scale. One of them deserves special notice on account of its special object. It is called the Société de logements pour familles nombreuses and it builds special flats called maisons des enfants which are let at low rents only to persons with large families. In 1907 it had housed 168 families, averaging 6.8 persons, in two blocks at Belleville and Montmartre. The great defect in France is the large quantity of old, bad, insanitary housing. Real slums exist in all the old towns and in some of them, such as Marseilles and Lyons, on an extensive scale. Very little has hitherto been done to grapple with this difficulty. The standard of sanitation is altogether lower in France than in England, as is shown by the death-rates, and this holds good of the housing. But conditions vary widely in different parts of the country. They are better, generally speaking, in the industrial towns of the north, which are largely Flemish and distinguished by the prevalence of small houses after the English fashion, than in the central or southern districts where tall old tenement houses of six and seven storeys abound. There are no statistics and no standard of overcrowding; but the careful inquiry carried out by the Board of Trade and published in 1909 shows the extraordinary prevalence of tenements consisting of 1, 2 or 3 rooms. In 16 towns for which information was obtained the average proportion of dwellings containing less than 4 rooms was 75% of the whole; in some it was as high as 89% and in none lower than 61%. In 8 towns, including Paris, the number of one-roomed dwellings was more than a quarter of the whole, and in two towns (Brest and Fougères) it was more than half. Some corresponding statistics for English and German towns are given below in the section on Germany. According to the same report, the general accuracy of which has been confirmed by personal inquiries, made in 1909 by the writer in a number of towns, rents are decidedly lower in France. If the London level be taken as 100 that of Paris is only 78 and the other French towns are considerably lower, 21 out of 29 being less than half the London standard. A general comparison between a number of English and French towns shows the average level of French rents to be less than three-fourths of English ones. A noticeable feature of housing in France is the large number of dwellings built by employers in recent years. The mining companies, particularly in the Pas de Calais, have built whole groups of villages; the railway companies and various manufacturers have also done a great deal, chiefly in rural areas. Among the manufacturers MM. Schneider at Le Creusot and the textile mill-owners in the Vosges are noticeable. The houses provided are of a charming type, white with red roofs; the rooms are of good size, the rents low, and a large garden is usually attached to every house.
Germany.—In no country is the problem of housing more acute
