UNSANITARY HOUSING 53 



Professor Emile Vanderwelder, in referring to the work, wrote 

 as follows : 



"Enter Hesbaye or Flanders from whatever side one 

 may, the country is everywhere thickly strewn with white 

 red-roofed houses, some of them standing alone, others lying 

 close together in populous villages. If, however, one spends 

 a day in one of the villages I mean one of those in which 

 there is no local industry one hardly sees a grown-up work- 

 man in the place, and almost believes that the population 

 consists almost entirely of old people and children. But in 

 the evening quite a different picture is seen. We find our- 

 selves for example, some twelve or thirteen miles from Brus- 

 sels at a small railway station in Brabant, say Bixensast, 

 Genval, or La Hulpe. A train of inordinate length, consist- 

 ing almost entirely of third-class carriages, runs in. From 

 the rapidly opened doors stream crowds of workmen in dusty, 

 dirty clothes, who cover all the platform as they rush to the 

 doors, apparently in feverish eagerness to be first to reach 

 home where supper awaits them. And every quarter of an 

 hour from the beginning of dusk till well into the night, trains 

 follow trains, discharge part of their human freight, and at 

 all the villages along the line set down troops of workmen 

 masons, plasterers, paviors, carpenters with their tool-bags on 

 their backs." 



When Canadian railways of all kinds shall have provided cheap 

 and rapid transit with seats for every passenger, as has been accom- 

 plished in Belgium, we shall have gone a long way towards solving 

 the slum problem and may look for rapid development of the plan 

 of suburban homes for the workingman instead of the present un- 

 sanitary conditions. 



United In the United States the work of city improvement 



States nas begun in Washington, Denver, Cincinnati, Cleve- 



land, and the recent ordinance of the Municipal Assembly of the 

 City of St. Louis may be of interest to Canadian municipal author- 

 ities. The Ordinance reads as follows: 



"AN ORDINANCE CREATING A CITY PLAN COMMISSION AND APPRO- 

 PRIATING TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR THE EXPENSES 



THEREOF 



" Be it ordained by the Municipal Assembly of the City 

 of St. Louis, as follows: 



" SECTION 1. There is hereby created a Commission to be 

 known as the City Plan Commission, which shall consist of 



