366 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



for that state of things, viz., regulations directed against overcrowd- 

 ing ; the acquisition of special areas by the authorities for the obligatory 

 rehousing in the same neighborhood of those disturbed under parlia- 

 mentary powers; and the acquisition by municipalities of vacant land 

 for the construction of suitable dwellings. These are excellent as far 

 as they go, but seem to me to be palliatives rather than remedies. They 

 shift the load a little but do not really lighten it, and it has been, per- 

 haps, the perception of their futility that has been responsible for the 

 half-hearted manner in which they have been applied. Real relief is 

 only to be obtained by establishing an outflow from the center to the 

 circumference, and it is by affording increased facilities of locomotion 

 that this may be done. It is to the new motive power that is now 

 advancing with such giant strides that we must look for the removal 

 of some of our housing embarrassments. Railway extensions, tube 

 railways, surface and subsurface tramways, and motor omnibuses and 

 cycles will inevitably bring into existence a number of new suburbs 

 around our big cities, to which, if the cost of transit be kept low and 

 rents remain modest, many of the poorer classes who are not compelled 

 to live near the factory or shop will resort, all the more readily if a 

 shortening of the working day gives time for the journeys to and fro, 

 and if associations be formed to help them to become the owners of 

 their houses. And to these suburbs, should the cost of transit and the 

 time occupied by it or high rents prove prohibitive to the working 

 classes, the well-to-do will in numbers retreat, making room for their 

 humbler neighbors in the inner circles. It is probable, too, that these 

 new suburbs would in some degree intercept the streams of population 

 that are perpetually flowing into the towns from the country, for sta- 

 tistics show that as regards London, at any rate, immigrants settle 

 mainly in the most outlying parts. 



The new suburbs of towns will, of course, always spring up on lines 

 of communication and where facilities are offered for building specula- 

 tion, and spread out around, but it is to be hoped that they will be 

 taken in hand in time, and means devised to limit their indefinite ex- 

 pansion. Mr. Charles Booth has said that towns advancing, show a 

 noticeable tendency to shoot out tongues like the sun's corona, the in- 

 tervals between them being filled up later, and it is this filling up of 

 the intervals between them that should, if possible, be prevented. 

 Island-suburbs are well enough, but when they swell out, become con- 

 tinuous, and form a girdle round the parent town, they aggravate its 

 evils, and help to strangle it. It has been proposed that air should be 

 supplied to the center of great cities by mechanical means — by the 

 Shone vacuum system, for example, in connection with tube railways — 

 but infinitely preferable to any such artificial arrangement, necessarily 

 finical and liable to break down, is a liberal scheme of natural ventila- 



