RURAL PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 167 



Nevertheless it has to be acknowledged, that the achievements of 

 England in regard to the healthy distribution of its industries, and 

 the regulation of their surroundings in town and country, have 

 probably been greater than in any other country in Europe or America. 



Among the latest advocates of the industrial penetration of 

 rural districts in England is Mr. Theodore G. Chambers, F.S.I., who 

 read a paper before the Surveyors' Institution, England, in January 

 1917, advocating the movement as a means of solving the problem of 

 rural depopulation. He argued that the tendency to purchase sup- 

 plies of food in foreign markets could be considerably reduced by 

 dispersing the industrial population over wider areas and taking the 

 market to the producer. The significance of this contribution to 

 the subject is that it is apparently put forward by one who has not 

 been in touch with the organized movement for industrial decentraliza- 

 tion which has been a more or less active force in England since 1901, 

 and has succeeded to a greater extent than Mr. Chambers appears 

 to realize. What he calls "the industrial penetration of rural dis- 

 tricts" can only be successfully attained by the creation of what are 

 known in England as "garden cities." The garden city movement 

 in England is an organized attempt initiated by Mr. Ebenezer How- 

 ard, in 1898, to establish new industries in rural territory and to 

 move industries from crowded centres to rural and semi-rural 

 districts. That movement has achieved a great measure of success 

 in spite of the fact that it has been hampered by want of capital and 

 of the government aid which it should have commanded. 



The creation of single industry towns or suburbs has serious 

 defects and, as a rule, either leads to paternalistic control in order to 

 secure health and efficiency or, alternatively, to the kind of disorder 

 and haphazard development which follows from unhampered specu- 

 lation. Many new towns with adequate capital behind them have 

 been a complete or partial failure because of one of these weaknesses. 

 In some cases, like that of Pullman, failure has been caused by ex- 

 cessive zeal of the promoters in attempting to control the social wel- 

 fare of the workers and, in other cases, the failure has been due to 

 the tendency to go to the opposite extreme and leave the workers 

 at the mercy of their own ignorance and of speculators in real estate. 



THE GARDEN CITY FORM OF DEVELOPMENT 



The garden city form of development has the advantage of 

 avoiding the evils incidental to single-industry towns and of provid- 

 ing for the intermingling of both urban and rural life. Most of the 

 other model villages and garden suburbs are purely urban develop- 



14 



