CURSE OF THE SLUMS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 6, 7 December 1931, Page 4

CURSE OF THE SLUMS.

NEW ATTACK IN ENGLAND. John Galsworthy, the noted author, contributes a poignant foreword, attacking Britain’s slum conditions, to a book entitled “Housing,” compiled by Kathleen England. “Nearly 1,000,000 people in Greater London are living in over-crowded conditions, which are the direct cause of injustice, vice, misery, discontent, and other evils,” he says. “They are a canker at the core of the world’s greatest Empire. It is but luck that we others are not dwellers in the slums. Our stars burned brighter birth. For them no star burned. I nblessed they live and unblessed they die.” The Bishop of Southwark. Dr. Cyril Garbet, supporting Mr Galsworthy, draws attention to the evils of overcrowding. Thousands of families, he says, are packed in one or two rooms. Usually growing children share one of the rooms. There are at least 100,000 dwelling in dark, damp basements in the noisiest, neglected parts of the city. Tenement houses are often little better, being verminous and with the accommodation inadequate. , Normal home life is impossible. and great dangers to health and ordinary decencyare "involved. The problem remains a gigantic one to solve.