42 
Cities are not only emporiums for goods, centres of commerce 
and trade. They are something* more than a mere cash nexus: they 
are places where utility, comfort, and beauty can be and ought to 
be combined, so that the passer by can, from wliat he sees, feel some- 
thing to which his sense* of beauty and of domestic comfort can res- 
pond all the better for having lived in and seen beautiful buildings 
every day of his life; places which by their beauty, their amenity, 
their grace, and, above all, their greenery, create a joy in life which 
we Britons sometimes lack, and give a spacious leisure in idle mom- 
ents, when study wants a respite, and honest labour requires a pleas- 
ant rest. 
The people of our poorer towns suffer not only from lack of 
means, they suffer from poverty of spirit. Their dismal temper is 
often caused by their squalid environment. Fverv day we see chil- 
dren’s characters spoiled, their natures stunted by the depressing 
circumstances in which they live. 
Spoiled lives in the soiled homes, in the slatternly streets, are 
often causes of dirt, drink, degradation, loading, and dependence in 
many of our big cities. When a slum vanishes, a brewery falls and 
public houses disappear. The mean street produces the mean men, 
the lean and tired woman, and the unclean children. 
So long as casual labour broods in squalid lairs, in sunless 
streets, and ugly dwellings are its only habitation, we shall continue 
to turn out nervous mannikins instead of enduring men. 
Motherhood, childhood, youth, society, and the race demand 
the demolition of the soul-destroying slum. They ask for the pleas- 
ant town, the comfortable yet dignified city. 
The artisan is now securing houses at rents and of a character 
and beauty that were not within the reach of the average artisan 
25 years ago. But, we have to think of those lower than the artisan ; 
we have to think of the great mass of mankind, the hewers of wood 
and the drawers of water, the skilled, the unskilled, and, above all, 
the casual labourer; and the responsibility rests upon us in house 
and town planning to see that the labourer is provided with infin- 
itely better housing and street accommodation than he now secures. 
The expanding village wants town planning, as much as does 
the large city; the growing town clamours for town planning; but, 
most of all, the straggling suburb round the ever-changing city 
gives a stimulus whose call we ought to have answered years ago. 
For all these reasons — industrial, social, commercial, and imperial — 
town planning must go hand in hand with better housing, higher 
wages, and increasing sobriety.” 
United States and Canada. 
Now, many people in Western Australia consider that town 
planning is a fad, not worth wasting time over, but the people of 
the United States and Canada are recognised even by our critics as 
