166 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



located in London and other large cities, have been moved out in 

 that period, and industrial villages created to accommodate the 

 workers. The two best known cases of this kind are the develop- 

 ments which have taken place as a result of the building of the new 

 factories of Messrs. Cadbury at Bournville and Messrs. Lever at Port 

 Sunlight. Messrs. Cadbury moved out from the city of Birming- 

 ham and acquired a site large enough to build a new village as well 

 as their factory. The result has been one of the healthiest and most 

 efficient industrial developments in England. The village has been 

 established on a paying basis and there is freedom from undue pater- 

 nalism — hence its great success. The Port Sunlight scheme is 

 architecturally superior to Bournville, but is more paternalistic in 

 its management. The benefit of these schemes is not only the great 

 advantage conferred on the workers and their families by their im- 

 proved environment, but the financial gain they have been to the 

 manufacturers, by giving them more efficient and healthy employees, 

 and, by providing them with adequate space to erect healthy and 

 roomy factories and to permit of extension, as required, to meet the 

 growing needs of the industries. But these villages have been sur- 

 rounded by undesirable building development on the land not owned 

 by the manufacturers. Government authorities in both England 

 and Canada have so far failed to secure the same standard of public 

 health and amenity under public regulations that some private cor- 

 porations have obtained and have been prepared to pay for, as a 

 business proposition. 



As a result of the realization of the need for greater agricultural 

 production, and for lessening the cost of distribution in England 

 new advocates are now coming forward in favour of a greater stimu- 

 lus being provided to this movement, Those who, only a few years 

 ago, saw the rapid growth of this industrial tendency, and appre- 

 ciated the great opportunities it provided for improving health and 

 securing greater efficiency, had to encounter much indifference and 

 even considerable opposition from people having conservative or 

 ultra radical ideas in regard to land development. Among the ear- 

 liest and most active advocates of decentralization and co-operation 

 in industry in England was Earl Grey, before he became Governor- 

 General of Canada, and the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, both of whom 

 lent their support to the movement for industrial dispersal at the 

 Bournville conference in 1901. But there has been slow progress in 

 England in giving any government stimulus or leadership to the 

 movement which, if it had been more actively encouraged, would 

 have resulted in enormous benefit to the country at the present time. 



