1908] on the Modern Motor Gar and its Effects. 161 



"broughams, preferring to wait for the more up-to-date motor car. 

 Immediately an election is over, however, we are again told that the 

 motor car is a terror to the rural population, that it is frightening 

 them off the roads, poisoning their houses with dust, and that it is 

 •destroying the otherwise happy and arcadian life of the cottager. 



The motor car also enables a member for an agricultural con- 

 stituency to go to two or three, or even four meetings a night in 

 ■out of the way districts, and to speak at small hamlets, where, until 

 rapid locomotion was possible, there was always a difficulty in paying 

 a visit, except very occasionally during the stress of a general election. 

 There are few agricultural constituencies nowadays in Great Britain 

 which a member cannot thus cover in a day. In fact, the possession 

 ■of a motor car by a country member is now almost a necessity. It 

 is, perhaps, due to this fact more than to any other that one hears 

 but comparatively little abuse by M.P.'s of the motor car in the 

 House of Commons, except, perhaps, from representatives of far 

 away Celtic districts in which there are few roads and in which the 

 automobile is still looked upon as the special and latest invention of 

 :Satan. A few Socialist M.P.'s also occasionally endeavour to gain 

 cheap popularity by attacking motorists on the assumption that they 

 are always rich men, whereas the majority, as I have pointed out, 

 belong to w^hat are called the professional classes. 



The social effects of automobilism are becoming more marked 

 •every year. As I have already pointed out, it is decentralising the 

 towns and filling up the suburbs and the country. In Mayfair and 

 Belgravia there have never been so many houses to let, while in 

 the" suburbs, situated on high ground to the north or south of 

 London, houses are in great request. Residents at Wimbledon and 

 Hampstead are now only a matter of some twenty minutes away from 

 the central parts of London, and better air and absence of noise are 

 preferred to the rumble, dust, and smells of central London. High 

 rents in the West End, as in the East End, depend upon the number 

 of people wanting to live in a certain locality, close to their work or 

 their play. Now that people can live further afield and get to their 

 work without undue loss of time, the pressure upon these central 

 localities is not so great, and down therefore have come the rents. 

 In course of time rateable values must of course drop also, a con- 

 tingency which should make our L.C.C. pause before committing 

 London to more expensive schemes in the future. 



The motor bus is also a decentraliser, uncongesting — if I may use 

 «uch a word — many of the overcrowded working-class areas. In 

 consequence there is nothing like the same demand upon accommoda- 

 tion at the back of the Strand, in Soho, or in the regions north of 

 Oxford Street, and on both sides of Tottenham Court Road as there 

 used to be. In fact, the landlords of working-class houses are 

 already deploring the fact that greater transportation facilities are 

 depressing their rents. One may, I think, assert without fear of con- 



YOL. XIX. (No. 102) M 



