BRITISH HOUSING

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 74, 24 September 1936, Page 23

BRITISH HOUSING

NEW DOMESDAY BOOK

RESULTS OF INVESTIGATION

STATE'S TASK SEEN

More than once in history a census | has come near to shaking the foundations of a regime, writes the London correspondent of the Melbourne "Age." There is some instinct deeply implanted in the human mind against being counted, which rationalises itself at different times and in different places as religious sentiment or political mistrust or revolt, and which has proved dangerous to zealous Governments. Does it mean we are getting more docile or merely politically better educated that a census much more likely to ruffle that instinct than the. customary decimal census of population has just been taken without arousing any comment, much less any opposition? We have been interrogated about our sleeping arrangements; we have had our rooms measured; and we have taken it all like lambs. There are two explanations. The first is that the newspapers have had very little to say about it, and we have reached a state in which things in our own experience, which fail to obtain the corroboration of a headline or a paragraph in heavy type in our newspaper, only have a shadowy or secondary existence. What we read is actual; what we see for ourselves is less than actual until it is confirmed in print. The second reason is that the more comfortable and more vocal part of the community has not been much affected. For this was a census of overcrowding, and the enumerators assumed, no doubt rightly, that householders, for example, in j Park Lane and Belgrave Square, and at Blenheim and Chatsworth, need not be too closely questioned. The survey has been completed within a year of the passing of the Act which authorised it—a remarkable achievement of administrative efficiency. The Housing Act, 1935, laid down a standard by which overcrowding could'be judged. It fixed the number of persons who could live in a house, according to the rooms and floor areas, without overcrowding. The results of the investigation into the extent of overcrowding are now issued in a thick volume, packed with tables, and illustrated with maps. It is a remarkable document, to which students of social questions will have recourse for many years before the wealth of its contribution to knowledge is exhausted. Its immediate value, however, is as a measure of the task which j the Government has set itself in its housing programme. THE HOUSING CENSUS. The number of dwellings inspected during the survey war 8,924,523. Of these 341,554, or 3.8 per cent., were found to be overcrowded within the meaning of the 1935 Act. The general conclusion is that the working-class family of average size is housed well above the statutory minimum standard. It has, of course, to be remembered that, while the Bill was before Parliament, there were many progressive housing experts who argued that the standard was not sufficiently high; and, in that connection, it is interesting to observe that, if the Act had provided that an uncrowded dwelling was one in which it would normally be unnecessary to use the living accommodatio.i for sleeping purposes, the number of overcrowded dwellings would be about 853,000 instead of 341,554. Overcrowding is worst in the East End of London, and on the north-east coast. In the Tyneside urban district of Hebburn 25.2 per cent, of the dwellings are overcrowded. In the south, London apart, there is relatively little overcrowding. About 200,000 new houses will be required, it is thought, to relieve the pressure on housing accommodation revealed in the report. There has not been timj yet to examine the problem in all its aspects, but the view in official circles appears to be that this can be accomplished within a reasonable period by the great majority of local authorities without any danger of interference with the present slum clearance campaign. SOME SERIOUS INSTANCES. Inevitably, the survey has disclosed some serious instances of overcrowding. Two hundred and forty families, some of them quite large, are living each in a single room of less than 50 square feet, and another 1191 families are living each in.a room of less than 70 square feet. Overcrowding, moreover, is most severe among the largest families. Thi average overcrowded family is 74 per cent, larger than the average family, but it occupies accommodation on the average 37 per cent. less. These are extreme cases, which, fortunately, represent a small and manageable, although a most urgent, part of the, task which lies before the' 1500-odd housing authorities in this country. It would be a mistake to assume from the complacency with which the nation regarded the activities of the officials who did the overcrowding survey that we have become what one might call census-minded. There is a steady resistance to various other kinds of census. Economists and others have for long been urging Census of Distribution on the lines of the Census of Production; but only the other day the President of the Board of Trade refused again to undertake a .census of distribution. The objection often advanced is that there is no evidence that the results would be of sufficient value to justify the trouble and expense. That argument comes strangely from Ministers, among whom it is a fashion to take, as the theme of their after-dinner speeches to manufacturers, the need for research and the importance of general research, since it is from the latter that the most fruitful results frequently follow, rather than from limited research for specific and foreseeable objectives;' because statistical inquiries are the general research of economic science. CONTROVERSIAL FIELD. It is noteworthy, moreover, that it is around the organisation of distribution that controversy rages most vigorously in these days. . Any increase in our real knowledge of its problems, which a census might provide, should be welcome specially to the, distributor himself, who, in our relative ignorance of the facts is apt to be made the whipping boy both of the producer and the consumer. A census of distribution can be begun any time. What future generations may regret much more is the failure to take a special census of population this year. The reasons for such a special census were summarised magisterially by Sir Josiah Stamp in a letter to "The Times" about two years ago, when the results of the last ordinary decennial census in 1931 began to appear, but the Government has resisted all persuasion. The key point in the strong case, which was built up by advocates of the extra census was that sometime this year or next, according to estimates, our population will reach its peak, and before the next ordinary census in 1941 the decline will have already set in. The economic and sociological problems of a declining population, with the relative changes

in age groups, which will ensue, will tax all our available resources of knowledge, if they are to be anticipated and handled intelligently. Demographical statisticians have developed astonishing skill, but, for the .help they are going to give us in these difficult years, would it not have been wise to have given them the sure and firm base for their calculations, which a census this year would have provided? A PLAGUE OF FORMS. In resisting these demands the authorities are, of course, in a strong position by reason of the need for j economy. • But it is safe to assume j that at least as important a reason is the desire to avoid arousing the I spontaneous popular opposition, to j which unusually explicit expression was given in a recent debate in the House of Lords. Lord Mount Temple, a former Minister of Transport, modelling himself on the famous motion of Pyjli during the House of Commont. struggle with the Crown under Charles the First, moved:— "That . . . the crushing and complicated burden of compiling returns and making our forms . . . has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." He and other speakers described the number and variety of forms, j which the average business man and farmer and the ordinary householder is called upon to complete, and claimed that they were largely unnecessary and part of the baleful influence of a bureaucracy, which was gradually ceasing to be the servant and becoming the master of the public. In expatiating on the exasperation which these official demands for information provoked in the breast ot the citizen and the bewilderment their recondite phraseology produced, Lord Mount Temple was certain of the sympathy of all of us. But, as Lord Zetland argued, in his reply for the Government, in the last resort it is public opinion itself which is responsible. These forms issue from the legislation which Parliament has approved. Lord Zetland went' on:— These things are penalties we have to pay for living in a highly-organised state 'of society. There are still parts of the world—in the dim recesses of Central Asia, for example, of which I have myself had some experiencewhere the noble lord would find that primitive simplicity which apears to appeal so strongly to him. There he will find no returns to fill up, but he will find not organised sanitation, no organised fight disease, no organised education. I think that after the noble lord had lived there for a short time he would be quite willing to exchange the delights of primitive simplicity for the highly-organised complexity of this country, in spite of all the/disadvantages of bureaucrats and forms. Lord Snell, the leader of the Opposition and chairman of the London County Council, who to cheer Lord Mount Temple, volunteered'the information that the L.C.C. prints 50,000,000 forms every year, made a point which comes very near the crux of this question of forms. He referred to a letter which appeared in "The Times on the day before the publication of its 2000 th crossword puzzle from a retired officer who boasted that he had at least made the attempt to solve, if he had not succeeded in solving, every puzzle since "The Times" first made that startling and daring innovation in its pages in 1929. Lord Snell hazarded the guess that this gentleman, who without complaint, had filled up two thousand forms—and perplexing forms at thatl-for his own entertainment would grumble not a littij if called upon to complete six forms for the common welfare.