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Show j ' - I Making Tomorrow's World By WALTER WILLIAMS, LL.D. (Deal, tf the School c JoantoJhm cj the UnttcnUs MitMmrl) I I Jl I TOWN AND HOUSE PLANNING I H IT V, j Ghent, Belgium. T o w n - p 1 a n nlng is not a modern 1 n v e n-tion. n-tion. Only the purpose of the planning has changed. Towns were planned yesterday yes-terday for the glory of the great and the enjoyment enjoy-ment of the few, for show or for safety against invasion. in-vasion. The town planners of today to-day are working ou other and total to-tal 1 y different lines. Almost within the decade has developed the subordinated to the interest of the community. The crowded housing, which the greed of real estate promoters pro-moters so frequently brings about in small as well as large towns, is not permitted under the new town-plan-ning legislation. Society has rights which even the real estate agents must respect. Cities, which were formerly for-merly built for the power and the glory of the overlord, and, more latterly, lat-terly, for the pocket of the landlord, are to be constructed for common, ordinary folks, the class to which most of us belong. Life is to be preferred above mere property. Now all this can not be brought about in a day. Tke building of Rome took longer, whatever its planning plan-ning or lack of planning required. Progress, remarkable progress, has been made. The Ghent Congress showed that much has been accomplished accom-plished in less than a decade. The reconstruction- of Vienna, the working-men's working-men's houses in Germany, the making mak-ing over of certain poorer quarters in Paris and Brussels and Ghent, Garden Gar-den City, near London, and other city suburbs in Great Britain, are examples of the new but widespread movement for better housing for town and country. coun-try. Better Housing Progress in England. Great Britain, where conditions of life are more nearly similar to those in the United States, contributed the results of its recent experimental legislation. leg-islation. This legislation, In substance, was designed to simplify and cheapen the existing procedure for acquiring land for housing purposes and to. deal with insanitary areas and unhealthful dwellings, to require landlords to keep rented houses in proper repair, and to provide for town planning. Under this act 140 British towns have adopted schemes of town planning to guide their growth and development. Farm land to the amount of 160,000 acres has been purchased and upon it have been installed 13,000 smallholders. smallhold-ers. Ninety per cent of this state acquisition ac-quisition of land wa3 not by compulsion compul-sion but by voluntary agreement with landowners.. Ninety-eight per cent of the 13000 smallholders rent the land. Only two per cent bought it from the state, the others preferring to be tenants ten-ants of the county councils, to which is entrusted the local administration i Britain could employ, if necessary compulsory poweia to purchase land in considerable blocks, erecting cot tages, four to an acre, thereon and make the scheme profitable at 75 cents a week. This estimate included, in addition to $750 for the cost of, the cottage, $250 for the land. After due allowance was added for loan charges, repairs, insurance, and supervision, the total annual cost to be met was set down at $160 per group of four, which works out about 75 cents a. week for each. Model Cottage for 62 Cents Weekly. The model was shown of a cottage in Surrey, England, actually built and rented to three young women earning their living. This cottage has three-bedrooms, three-bedrooms, parlor, kitchen, pantry, bathroom, coal-cellar. A framework of block weather-boarding was used for the external walls. Between this and the plaster interior is an air space which is said to make the house warm and dry and perfectly weather-proof. It cost, land included, $600 and rents for 62 cents a week. Better housing on the farm may not, of course, check the movement of population pop-ulation to the city. Perhaps it 1b neither necessary nor desirable to retain re-tain upon the soil, under today's condition, con-dition, so large a proportion of the population as yesterday. The more rural conditions are improved, the better bet-ter the wages and the Lousing, the higher the education at the school, the less will the farm-laborer be satisfied satis-fied with the country as it is. So better farm conditions, through Housing Hous-ing Reform and in other ways, brings an increased betterment of all rural life conditions for those who remain, and, with better conditions, fewer hands are needed. It was not a far cry, therefore,, when the Town Planning Plan-ning Congress heard one speaker em-' phasize the need for a more comfortable comforta-ble rural life and for a more intensive agriculture. A Slum Life Story. Over against the progress of the new attack upon the old slum, as shown by the Ghent Congress, may be put a story told a few evenings before at a London club. Miss B., an old maid with much money and nothing to do, became interested in slum work. She rented rooms in a London slum district, gave tea and cake the British Brit-ish climax of afternoon hospitality to children who came and presented material for any garments they would make. One little girl worried Miss B. She looked so poor and ill and. miserable. mis-erable. Finally the Good Samaritan decided to invite the child to her country coun-try home for a week's holiday, an invitation in-vitation accepted with delight. The good woman made every provision for her comfort, a pretty bedroom, toys and playmates and books, food and flowers. The child of the slums could stand it only four days. She wanted to go back to London the second day, she cried all the third day and neither food nor fruit nor flowers could tempt her on the fourth. She invented ex- 1 cuses to induce her benefactor to take her back to her tenement dwelling she dreamt her mother was dead, she had sprained her foot, her father had written that her baby brother was ill. The truth was that her small Cockney soul fairly sickened for the sights and smells of the slums and that a ha'penny ha'pen-ny worth of chips eaten from a scrap-of scrap-of newspaper tasted to her sweeter than a well-cooked omelette served in a china plate. "They are all the same," said he who told the story as argument against the new crusade against the slum, town-planning for all the people, "they are all the same; you can do nothing with them dress them, feed them, pamper them, it is all the same, they will fall back into-the into-the gutter and regard you as an enemy for trying to lift them out." "It is not an effort to lift men from the slums," quietly replied the St. Andrew's An-drew's professor, "it is an effort tc abolish the slum, so that no one will be born therein. For if there is no hog-wallow, even the swine cannot return re-turn to it." Heaven, if the town plans of John the Beloved are realized, is to be a slumless city not a country-place a -ity in which there will be neither sor-r-ow nr crying nor pain, for the former for-mer things of yesterday will have passed away. And this city, near at hand on earth, the zealous, optimistic town-planners of Ghent "-all see, at least "in their mind's eye, Horatio!" (Copyright, 1914, by Joseph B. Bowles.) town planning which takes into account ac-count . the great majority of the people who dwell in the towns. The new town-planner is a practical prac-tical democrat. This was the central cen-tral and significant thought of the First International Town Planning Congress held in this quaint, historic city of Ghent, Belgium, in the Palace of Congresses of its beautiful exposition. exposi-tion. Town-planning involves house-pianning. house-pianning. Plans are futile' unless workable. The provision of funds and the direction and control of expenditure expendi-ture were discussed. And because town-planning takes into account in Its largest vision the city's suburbs and the country side, even far removed, re-moved, there was report of farm dwellings and farms, of the provision of hpuses in country as in town. The gathered experiences of a dozen nations, na-tions, through official representatives from their chief Cities, were presented. Conspicuous was the object lesson presented in an exhibit by a learned St. Andrew's professor, in picture, chart and model, of the changing plans of towns, from the glorification of the Caesar, the church or the state, Berlin or Rome or Washington, to the good of the men and women and even of the boys and girls, who were the residents. Takes Parks to the People. We aafe built our towns not to fit us but to fit our neighbors' eyes. Cathedral and castle and capitol, bou- Healthy and Happy Children. levard and avenue and park, contrast sharply with dwelling houses. Edinburgh Edin-burgh has Prince's Street, most beautiful, beau-tiful, but has or had also North Canongate. Paris has the Champ Elysees and the Avenue de 1' Opera, and all the sparkling boulevards, but also the sidestreets of Montmartre and Belleville. London has St. James' Park and Whitechapel. The same was true of every city yesterday and is true today. The town-planners hope for change tomorrow. Parks and broad avenues and plans with noble monuments may be beautiful and desirable, de-sirable, but if the space which makes them possible is taken from the living-rooms living-rooms of the people, they become, to him who sees beneath' the surface show of the city, undesirable and hideous. Parks are a city's lungs, the breathing places for its people, but one may not live at his best if he breathes only on Sunday afternoons. So the new town-plan, as the people, particularly the little people, can not come to the big park far removed, takes the park to them. Town-planning and building of towns and country coun-try houses are taking on a new and totally different aspect. Landlords Subordinated. In Great Britain the Conservative party, when in power some twelve years ago, passed through Parliament the Small Dwellings Acquisitions Act, The Liberals, by the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1909, added to the provisions of the earlier act the feature of town planning, for the first time in British legislation. France, Germany, Belgium and other substantial substan-tial countries have made large progress, prog-ress, though not always on the same lines. Speaking generally, the new legislation sanctions loans by states i and municipalities for the acquisition of land for the provision of parks, the erection of dwellings and other i purposes. The Interest of the land- Lord or the owner of real estate is of the scheme. Nor has this result, according to its advocates, depressed private enterprise. Landlords, imbued im-bued with a spirit of enlightened self-interest, self-interest, entered into healthy competition compe-tition with the state, and leased 40,000 other acres to 3,000 tenants. The scheme-has cost the state about $15,-000,000. $15,-000,000. In the towns, last year, 47,000 dilapidated houses were made fit for human habitation by the law's control of landlords, $4,000,000 was loaned for workingmen's dwellings and all on the basis of economic prices and rents. Private enterprise was here, too, apparently ap-parently stimulated for in two years the number of new houses of low valuation val-uation and rent, constructed by landlords land-lords and real estate owners, under state-approved plans, increased by 130,000. State to Build Laborers' Cottages. The British county council ,is often controlled by landlords and other owners own-ers of real estate, who, in a spirit of j shortsightedness, seek to keep rents high. Walter Runciman, the British Minister of Agriculture, plans to have the state at large build cottages for furm-Iaborers and town workingmen when necessary. The state, he estimates, esti-mates, could build cottages of adequate ade-quate size and character, at $750 each and rent them, without loss, at 75 cents a week. He thinks 100,000 such ! cottages are immediately needed. With each cottage would be provided land sufficient for small farming and gardening. Housing is regarded as a central evil in the present situation alike of the farm and town laborer. The insanitary and ill-provided cottage cot-tage which the laborer on the farm receives in part payment for his labor from the farmer or which the town workman rents at an exorbitant price, keeps the farm laborer in economic subjection or promotes congestion in the towns. The Runciman plan commits com-mits Great Britain to a further step toward solving this housing problem. The Ghent Congress heard that Great |