782 REPORT — 1886. 



Taking this fundamental idea, to which he was also guided by the form which 

 cheap lodging took in East London, the author could furnish a marvellously cheap 

 estimate of living, to include, besides sufficient food, a home that was comfortable, 

 cheerful, and respectable, and all well within the 6s. a week of wages. He would 

 rear a building for the purpose, with its great common hall in the centre, and its 

 successive floors of sleeping accommodations, accessible from the hall by stairs and 

 balconies, the latter wide and roomy, so as to increase and vary the sitting area. 

 He would institute a ' house diet,' the result of science and experience in cheap, 

 wholesome, and palatable food, but the tenants must be free as to their custom, nor 

 would they be bound in partnership arrangements. He would, however, make a 

 redemption fund by a small addition to rent, so that in twenty or forty years the 

 edifice would fall to the tenants. There was social difficulty and danger in 

 brino-ing, for instance, many young women under one roof. A matron was insuf- 

 ficient. He would seek the intervention of a committee of benevolent ladies, each of 

 whom might take charge, say, of twenty young women, and thus make an approach 

 to a family influence. He estimated the ' house diet,' or minimum cost of food- 

 finding, at 2d. per day, the sleeping berths at 9d. per week, the redemption at the 

 same, and all costs of hall and management, together with 6 per cent, on capital, at 

 2s. 6d. He would have a minimum of tidy and suitable furnishing as fixtures, 

 instead of tenants' furniture, and this would add Id. to 2d. to weekly rent. He 

 would have an entrance deposit of 5s. to 10s. to begin the redemption fund, which 

 the tenant might afford by help of the furnishing convenience. There must be 

 strict selection to ensure success to first experiments. He supposed a scale of 

 1.000 to 2,000 tenants, whose minimum of expenses, clothing excepted, would fall 

 within 5s. M. per week. But by larger numbers, say of 5,000, and consequent 

 economising in hall and management, the cost to each might be brought substan- 

 tially under 5s. So great a number, with their great edifice and large and lively 

 hall, might resemble a street, a well-ordered and pleasant street, we may hope, 

 with the occupants sitting out in the genial air, to pursue their work under cheer- 

 ful circumstances or to enjoy the sociabilities. The poor young needlewoman's 

 •dream, when she left her country home for golden London, might thus be even 

 more than realised. 



4. London Heconstruction and He-Housing. By William Westgarth, 



The author introduced his subject by alluding to the heritage of debt usually 

 left to the ratepayers, as the result hitherto of urban sanitation and reconstruction 

 undertaken by the municipality. He proposed to reconstruct ill-conditioned 

 areas of central London as a self-remunerative business ; and he explained how 

 the recoupment of cost was to be effected by what he called the ' natural in- 

 crement' of site value (using that tsrm in place of the invidiously so-called 'un- 

 earned increment ' of the economists), besides the increase of value due to the 

 improvement itself. He meant to do this by means of a joint stock company or 

 trust, and there were certain facilities and privileges which the trust would 

 reasonably ask of the Government, in return for the sanitation and reconstruction 

 the trust contemplated, all of it cost free to the ratepayers. 



He then explained natural increment as simply the result of the increase of 

 population, commerce, and wealth upon and around sites or areas which were 

 themselves inextensible. It was the feature in common of all progressive countries, 

 and especially of their larger towns, and had been markedly the feature of London, 

 and of central London particularly, whose natural increment during the last thirty 

 years might have availed for an entire systematic reconstruction. Such a con- 

 siderable term of years must be dealt with, because natural increment, like other 

 things commercial, is subject to sub-waves of excitement and depression, as illus- 

 trated by the excitement and site-value increase between 1870 and 1878, as com- 

 pared with the eight subsequent years of depression, or comparative depression. 

 He went on to allude to the great Paris reconstruction, where, by the immediate 

 re-sale in fee simple of the expropriations, after clearing, realignment, &c., all the 

 natural increment had been abandoned to the private investors and speculators, 



