HAPPIER LONDON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20762, 3 January 1931, Page 10

HAPPIER LONDON.

NOW AND 40 YEARS AGO.

HABITS " AND CHANGES

[FRO.M OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] lo:;dox, n ov . 25

London.is happier to-day than it was 40 years ago. Better health, better education, better pay for shorter- hours, fewer deeds of violence, are some of the improvements. As against this, fraud is increasing, there is a lower sex morality, less repugnance to draw from poor relief and a far higher risk of street accident deaths.

Ihe new London survey, at present incomplete, has bee i undertaken by the London School of Economics. It. is intended to afford material for comparing the London of to-day with that surveyed with such extraordinary assiduity 'by Ohaues Booth, shipowner philanthropist between 1839 and 1903. It has, been made under the direction of. Sir Hubert Llewellyn Smith, formerly- chief economic adviser to the British Government. The first of eight volumes embodying the results is published to-day, under the title of London Life and Labour."

One tendency of the 40 years has been a general level!ing-up process, removing class distinctions. It has been attended by the slow disappearance of the Cockney dialect and tho spread of the Cocknev twang to other classes. . Ihe visible signs of class distinction, says the survey, are disappearing. Chokers, Derby coats and ostrich feathers are rarely to be seen. The workman can actually buy one-third more goods with labour that is one hour a week less; this, notwithstanding that cost of living has risen from 30 to 90 per cent., clothing being over 100 per cent, dearer. Ho consumes only half the quantity of- alcohol, drinking six glasses of light beer against ten of heavier quality. Beer expenditure, however, is /still ov'cr 2s a head a year. He smokes twice as much, and spends four times the amount of money on tobacco; travels about four times as much, reads four times as many books, attends four times as many cinemas and theatres.

The Londoner, however, stands ten times as much chance of being killed in the street as he did in the more leisurely 'nineties. He is a little more honest, and less inclined toward crimes of violence. The war has definitely not made him readier to kill and wound or to rob. With men the pipo has given way to the cigarette.

" lhc extent," says the survey, "to which the cinema now fills a gap in the lives of tho poorer classes is shown by the statistics of six typical ' working-class' borouglu with a population of_ about a million. In 1891 this hugo area had within it only eighteen theatres and musichalls, or one such place of entertainment to 58,000 inhabitants. In 1929 the total number of cinemas was 59. together with fivo theatres and music-halls—i.e., ono place of entertainment for 14,000 inhabitants, more than nine-tenths of this provision consisting of picture palaces."