THE HOUSING OF THE POOR.
The Housing Question in London. (London County Conned.) —Cities and Citizens. By the Author of "A Coleny of Mercy." (H. Marshall and Son. 6s.)—In the sincere and touching appeal to public charity which has been made by the author of Cities and Citizens she tells us with truth and force that the great need of the submerged tenth is their homelessness—not in a merely material sense. "What moral fibre do you look for," she asks, "you home-loving Britons, in a man, a woman, coming of a stock which for generations never knew the meaning of Home ? What is a home if not a place bound up with the traditions of family life ? That little word 'own' must be seen smiling from its threshold. It is but a little word, but it makes a race ! They never knew it. They are born in a miserable tenement, crowded with wretched beings, surrounded by crime and filth—what moral backbone do you look for ia them ? Science has taught us the meaning of 'environment' as a race-producing factor. What, then, can we expect from the environment we have somehow allowed to be the seed-bed of the people ?" Mrs. Sutter writes with an eager enthusiasm which blinds the reader to any lack of practical suggestions in some of her pages. Zeal is a motive force that should never be dis- couraged, and we hope that this book will be read by all who are concerned about the problem of the masses. The example which it holds up for imitation is that of the Elberfeld and Leipzig systems of Poor Administration, which the author describes with a contagious fervour that makes one forget for the moment that it is almost impossible to introduce such systems in this country. We rather look for immediate results to such a work as is described, with all the exactitude of the architect and the auditor, in the excellent book published by the London County Council under the direction of its clerk, Mr. C. J. Stewart, "Being an Account of the Housing Work done by the Metropolitan Board of Works and the London County Council between the years 1855 and 1900, with a Summary of the Acts of Parliament under which they have Worked." To provide every family in the land with a true home is no doubt, as Mrs. Sutter maintains, the most perfect solution of "the problem of the poor." But it is not very easy to see how that is to be done off. hand ; the German system does not do it, on the whole, in the most satisfactory way, and rather tends to diminish self-reliance. It is a considerable step in advance to provide the people with houses in which it is at least physically possible to build up a home. It is at that less ambitious but more attainable end that the efforts chronicled with all details in this useful compilation have been aimed. Without entering on the discussion whether the County Council are doing work that might be better left to private enterprise in the later extensions of their building schemes, we may simply say that this book is indispensable to all who wish to study the municipal treatment of housing questions, and that such a scheme as that which disposed of the Jago is likely to fill a practical man with even more gratification than Mrs. Sutter's glowing description of the Elberfeld Colony.
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