MR. EBENEZER HOWARD
SOME men are born creators, with no streak of the slave in them, looking on life as an active adventure, ready to risk all for the faith that is in them. Mr. Ebenezer Howard, who has given a new idea to the world and seen that idea arise splendidly in brickS and mortar, is of this elect company. . Letchworth Garden City, lusty child of his imagination, is celebrating its coming-of-age on Monday next.
He is a kind 'old gentleman, enormously interested in social welfare work of every kind, alert, aggressive, yet a dreamer of dreams. But he notes his dreams down in shorthand, translates them into action and makes them come true so solidly and convincingly that history will remember him not as an idealist but as the man who built the first Garden City, There is a titanic power in faith and singleness of purpose spread over a long period of time. Mr. Howard is a channel of this strength.
He was born within sound of Bow Bells and started., life in humble circumstances. M Ipswich School he learned shorthand, and in 1868 became private secretary to the famous Dr. Parker, whose sermons were then attracting great congregations to Poultry Chapel. Although Dr. Parker did not actually believe in phrenology he, apparently thought that there might be something in it, for Mr. Howard remembers an occasion when the preacher's fingers roved over the hills and dales of his head until at last the following pronouncement was made in a rich and rolling voice : I think I may tell you, Mr. Howard, what many young men have wanted me to say to them, that in my opinion you should become a Preacher."
However, the young shorthand writer had other ideas in mind. He emigrated to America in his twenties, attracted, he tells me, by the idea of hunting buffaloes at Des Moines. Afterwards he went to Chicago, where he heard a remarkable woman speaker, Mrs. Richmond, who fired his imagination to help mankind, and confirmed what Dr. Parker had said, that he had a message to give the world. But the seeds of his_town-planning scheme had not germinated. On his return to England he became a parliamentary shorthand writer and acquired much valuable experience by reporting meetings in the com- mittee rooms between owners on 'the -One side and trade union leaders on the other. This, perhaps, was the most formative period, of his career. " On many occasions," he tells me, " I was the only impartial person present during some complicated industrial dispute and was able, therefore, to learn much, not only of practical politics but also how points may be best put and carried with a minimum of friction. It was then that I began to realise that the capitalist system must inevitably change and that the change must come not violently, but through a change in the spirit of the people, so that the form will adapt itself thereto. I may say that I am not a SoCialist as the term is understood' to-day. No municipality, for instance, could carry out such a bold scheme as the planning of modern industrial towns such as Bournville or -Port Sunlight, to say nothing of our Letchworth.'
"How did the idea of Letchworth Garden City first come to me ? It grew. I remember when I was only twenty- one I admired the planning of Moorgate Street and began to wonder why the whole city of London was not more carefully and adequately planned. By the time I had returned from America, I had a definite conception of an intelligently arranged town, a sort of marriage between- town and country, whereby the workers would be assured the advantages of fresh air and recreation and nearness to their work. By giving them these advantages, I would, ,I knew, be increasing their real wealth, as well as their happiness, if the two can be separated. However it was many long years before I could carry my scheme into effect. Remember, forty years ago the idea was quite new, and it takes time for new ideas to percolate. The first thing was to give my plan outward expression in print. In the time I could spare from reporting I wrote and—after many difficulties—published To-morrow : A Peaceful Path to Reform. The book attracted immediate and widespread attention. It is now known as Garden Cities of To-morrow.
" At last, after more than ten years of thought and labour, I was able to form the Garden City Association. The necessary financial aid was forthcoming—I need not go into that now—and in 1900 we purchased the site of Letchworth. Up to this time I had heard nothing of the plans of the late Mr. George Cadbury or the late Lord Leverhulme. But in 1901 Mr. Cadbury summoned a conference at Birmingham to discuss the Bournville project, and I remember on that occasion that Mr. Bernard Shaw said ' This movement has come to stay.' It has. I need not tell you anything of our early difficulties nor of the way the Spectator assisted us in 1905. Letchworth stands to-day as an outpost of the cities that are to be, where men and women shall work in sane surroundings, enjoying their birthright of health and creativeness, instead of swarming from dark tenements to congested factories."
Of his own share in this achievement, of the years of unremitting labour necessary to bring it to fruition, of the set-backs, disappointments and final triumph,' it is difficult to make Mr. Howard speak. Creators are inodest men. He creates': that is his game in life, almost his meat and drink. He rarely takes part in any form of sport, and has'only once in his life been on horseback, when he rode thirty miles. That is typical of him ; when he does a thing, he carries it through to the limit of human endurance.
Mr. Howard's life has evidently agreed with him very well : there can be few happier, healthier or more active men of seventy-six alive to-day. He was born with no particular advantages, but he had the courage to be great. Single handed, penniless, at first poorly educated, he set himself to build a new city, prototype of all the cities of the-future. The helpers and the money came. The story has often been told. No need to repeat it now. Letch- worth is celebrating its twenty-first anniversary, and a new Garden City, at Welwyn, has already arisen. More will follow.
If everyone of us would read Garden Cities of To-morrow, where this project of building Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land was first set forth, we would get a new conception of the wonderful power of ideas in this modem world. We can read of the idea, as it was formulated forty years ago, and see the reality, as it has been built at Letchworth and Welwyn. The age of miracles has not passed.
Mr. Howard does not believe in political labels. He is neither Socialist nor Individualist, but he has taken a leaf out of the books of each type of reformer and bound- them together by a thread of practicability. He has wrought while others wrote, and builded while others talked. Out of an idea he has fashioned a working model of Mansoul. This thing he did not achieve single-handed, but the power was in his every fibre and shone through him. Nor is the plan perfect yet, for his vision ranges beyond our lives, but it is an earnest of what one man's courage and good intent can do. May the same power speak through others, for it is there, limitless in strength, ready for the healing of our wounds, if we will use it.
F. Y.-B.
Previous page
