Poplar. The population is nearly stationary, and everything goes to show that the surplus is year by year finding its way over the Lea to West Ham, where miles and miles of streets have been and are daily erected. The intelligent artisan is, of course, quicker to grasp the situation and move out than the greater part of the "rejected." But that even the lowest of these can take a hint when it is strong enough seems clear from one instance before me. In Shoreditch the vestry has recently cleared the "worst" area in the district, and put up blocks of the most approved kind with electric light. Of course they have not rehoused the dispossessed, but have attracted a new population. What has become of the outcasts? The pressure here was at its strongest. No respectable householder who knew the area in question, and had any regard for his own welfare, would accept a tenant from it; the remaining bad areas are already fuller than they will hold, and the districts which immediately surround Shoreditch (Bethnal Green, Clerkenwell, Islington, Whitechapel) have their full complement of this particular class. Hence we find it reported that they have mostly gone to Edmonton, Tottenham, and Walthamstow. It seems clear that if only the vestry had stayed its hand when the demolitions were complete, there would have been no extra hardship inflicted, and Shoreditch would have been the richer by an empty space. Does any one gain by the policy of encouraging an increasing population in London? Two classes clearly do: unscrupulous landlords and the employers of cheap labour. That the former exist cannot be denied; though it seems likely that they are far less common than they are said to be. The comparative smallness of the increase of rents in "better" districts is one proof of this; and those who hold that rents should never be raised should bear in mind that if the house-owner himself does not raise the rent, it often happens that the man who rents from him and sublets raises his rents and pockets the difference between what he pays and what he receives. Where this is the case, it is hard to condemn the owner as iniquitous who prefers to transfer the profit to himself. But for another proof that landlords have not availed themselves of the needs of the poor to raise rents as far as they will go, we may look to a remarkable phenomenon of which we have evidence from several districts. I refer to the buying up of house property by Jews, who forthwith raise the rents from 50 per cent. to 100 per cent. کر Bethnal Green (in parts of which the rents have doubled).—The Jewish area is spreading into Bethnal Green, and properties are being bought up by Jewish syndicates. Whitechapel.-Quotes a block of cottage property lately purchased by a Jewish firm, consisting of some fifty cottages of four, and the same number of five rooms, the rents of which have been raised from 78. 6d. and 10s. 6d. respectively to 158. and 178. 6d. In other streets of ordinary and superior cottage property acquired by a Jewish owner the rents have been raised 75 per cent. In both cases the Gentiles have left and have been replaced by Jews. Stepney. We hear on all sides of Jews having bought the property and rents going up. There are unmistakable signs that the Jews are coming East, and as they live closer than the Gentiles, shrewd landlords may get more rent. Mile End. In some of the poorest streets a very unscrupulous kind of Jew investor in this class of property is giving notice to the former tenants and re-letting at an increase of at least 50 per cent. upon the original rental of the house. Bermondsey. In another quarter I was told that the Jews were beginning to buy up house property in Bermondsey, and an instance was given in which quite lately the rent of these houses had been raised from 8s. 6d. to 10s. 6d. a week owing to this cause. It is also said that even where the landlord has not raised the rent, the tenants have sometimes done so, and so have more than cleared their rent. Perhaps the best way of thwarting this class of landlord is to let them have full play until their "victims" are driven to look about them and move away; a process which may be hastened by the strict application of the sanitary regulations against overcrowding. At any rate, it is only playing into their hands to attract new people into the district by building. The other person who benefits by the policy of encouraging an increasing population in London is the employer of cheap labour. Many unscrupulous employers are making fortunes by paying less than subsistence wages to the people for whom we are urged to provide cheap accommodation. To do so is simply to subsidise those manufacturers who choose to take advantage of the congested state of labour in large towns. It is a case of cause and effect, acting and reacting. The presence of a residuum of comparatively unskilled labour tempts this class of employer to start in the towns; the presence of the unskilled industries tempts parents to send their children into them, or even attracts them into town to take advantage of them. Then wife and daughters work, while the men of the family loaf. Even respectable parents, when the pressure of rent is telling heavily upon them, allow their children to drift into these underpaid industries for the sake of adding a little as soon as possible to the income; and the numbers of the unskilled are thus swelled unnaturally and for the benefit of the employer. In skilled industries where wages can be maintained, employers are finding it in many cases profitable to remove into the country where ground rents are low, even at the risk of having to provide house accommodation for their workers. If the responsibility for this provision is to be definitely placed somewhere, it would seem clearly better that it should be with the employers, who will then have an additional inducement to withdraw from crowded areas. That inducement might perhaps be increased by a special tax upon those employers whose work is not necessarily carried on in London, and who only come there because of the cheap labour which they find there ready-housed. Then, perhaps, the jam factories-to take one instance out of many-might withdraw to the neighbourhood of the orchards and fruit-fields; and we should be edified by the sight of Pink and Lipton vying. with each other in the production of model villages. If they preferred to remain in town notwithstanding the tax, then the proceeds might very righteously be applied to improving the dwellings of their workers. But for the complete solution of the difficulty a much wider survey is necessary than I have been able to take in this paper. The housing question in London is intimately connected with the housing question in the country. The attractions of London draw a constant stream of immigration from the whole country, and one of the attractions is undoubtedly the expectation of being able to get at least some accommodation. In many country villages the difficulty is quite as great as in London itself; and one remedy for overcrowding in the towns is better and more sufficient accommodation in the country. The people not only will but must go where there is house room provided for them; and the fact that public attention is concentrated upon the towns is, in itself, increasing the pressure upon them. A process of decentralisation could be best initiated by the improvement of rural housing. HELEN BOSANQUET 1 On the whole of this point, cf. a paper by Prof. Marshall in the Contemporary Review, February, 1884. REVIEWS The New Trades Combination Movement: its Principles, Methods, and Progress. By E. J. Smith. With an Introduction by the Rev. J. Carter. Rivingtons: 1899. No title is more unconsciously arrogant than "New," since it implies the expectation that there will never be something newer. That Mr. Smith's system is the last plan of trade combination is unlikely. We are likely to hear of many more, and some of them may be even stronger and more satisfactory to the producers, and more dangerous to the consumers of the article made by the trade. I shall not attempt to explain the details of the system. I would not if I could, because I have no desire to render Mr. Smith the smallest mite of assistance in his work of enabling a few small trades to improve the position of their members at the expense of the millions who consume their product. I could not if I would, because Mr. Smith, who is, I believe, powerful in oral exposition, does not make his written account of his system sufficiently clear. Suffice it to say that he bases his associations of manufacturers and workmen in a particular trade on two main principles, (1) no manufacturer is to sell an article at a price below what the association are pleased to consider the proper cost of production, plus what they are pleased to consider the proper profit, and (2) the workmen are to be guaranteed at least the existing wages, and to be given in addition a bonus varying with the percentage of profit, in return for which they are to support the association by striking against any manufacturer who sells below the proper price. There seems no reason to doubt that an association or ring, if any one prefers to call it by that name, founded on these principles might often, if it covered a wide area or was protected by customs duties, raise prices considerably above competitive rates, and keep them there for long periods of time. It would have all the advantages of an ordinary ring for fixing prices, and one or two more of its own. That the workmen would benefit equally is doubtful. The provision that wages should not be reduced is open to the objection that this minimum would probably become a maximum as well. Whether the bonus would be a sufficient compensation for this, would of course, depend on its magnitude, as to which Mr. Smith gives us no information. Mr. Smith tells us (and we could perhaps have found it out for ourselves) that he writes "primarily in the interests of the manufacturers and workmen rather than in the interests of what is called the public." In another place he speaks of " that other section of the public called the consumer." It is only in this grudging way that he will admit the existence of anything except the interest of the producers engaged in the few small trades to which his system might conceivably be applied. We are told by Mr. Addinsell, the accountant who contributes a chapter on the system of cost-taking, that Mr. Smith says to a manufacturer who complains that the association plan will cause him to produce less "You are not in business for the purpose of making this or that, you are in business for the purpose of making money-the only proof of success is your balance sheet." Nothing more cynical was ever said, even in "the cold calculations of the philosopher who sits at home and dreams, and sells his books at the highest prices he can get for them." And it is the author of this cynical remark that Mr. Carter, editor of the Economic Review, and secretary to the Christian Social Union, asks us to follow as the apostle of a new and nobler industrial system! Even in the chapter on the Interests of the Consumer, we look in vain for any sign of even an occasional recognition of the fact that, after all, trades do exist " for the purpose of making this or that," and not for the benefit of a small number of people who, by some extraordinary aberration of intellect, imagine they are entitled to be supported by the rest of the community as soon as they have described themselves as makers of this or that. Mr. Smith adopts the old plan of pointing out that most consumers are producers, and then asking triumphantly how what benefits producers can damage consumers? He cannot see that the question can be turned the other way about, and that he may be asked how what damages consumers can benefit producers? You can benefit the producers in one, two, or even a considerable number of trades, by altering the terms of the bargain between them and other producers to their advantage; but it ought to be obvious that you cannot do this with all trades. drive a better bargain with B, C, D, and the rest down to Z, and B may drive a better bargain with A, C, D, and the rest; but it is impossible that this can be carried right through the alphabet. This seems to have been put in a rough sort of way by the questioner who asked Mr. Smith "how the community generally can benefit by having to pay higher prices all round?" To this, his answer, which is by no means clear, seems to be in the first place, that, as a matter of fact, he does not want to raise prices all round, but only the prices of the things which he and his class sell : A may The inquiry," he says, "presupposes that combination in manufacturing circles must necessarily raise the prices of those articles without which the people could not live. I should draw a great dis |