CLEARING THE SLUMS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18236, 3 November 1933, Page 5

CLEARING THE SLUMS

AMBITIOUS -WORK 0T LONDON, Sept. 21. I The prince of v #i)og»ti, ‘ ‘ Clear the SltwnsP.? has beep tiWcfl up with Miidon, vyipra' the alfine will spend over a period'of 10 ypaps in rehousing a Quarter of a million people. This ambitious scheme will not only hplp to erase the bkJt °X rdumdom .bpt will provide dwelItngfi for 'those who t rota ‘sheer necessity must live inside London to bo ja£ar.-&£ir wsxk> Mb c.<wse, several facets to the slum problem, none of them at all pleasing. are, for elample, types of person's who create a slum out* of godd'ptctoertjl—who store their coal ln tfie spoil all that they touch, They an£ even uncomfortable ia a clean house or flat, and epapt feht'uptil it has been soiled to 'their taste.' -' To such unfor-tunates—-and there are many thousands of them—-an improvement in Jiving conditions means nothing. Their state of mind is, therefore, not the least of the difficulties confronting the London County Council. But the most important aspect, after all, is the terrible ovelerOWding of unsanitary and crumbling dwellings, piled storey above storey in mean lanes and suffocating courts. An entire family 'fin'd Often two' families have their beifig in a single room in which qnfi would had it hard to swing the proverbial cat. There are cases in which as many as a dozen adults and children eat' "and sleep in one sfich apartment, ,to the extreme detriment of their health and morals, and the scandal -of the nation. It is a side of the evil that can be dealt with by substituting nbw houses for old—a simple enough solution ’so long as sufficient money can bo found to cover the great cost involved. Nor is the Loudon County Council alone in its determination to respond 1 0 the appeal of the Prince of Wales. The majority of the London boroughs and municipalities of the provincial townfi and cities show every sign of falling into line for a “clean-up” ofi a national scale, knowing that thev will have,the .sympathy and active encouragement of the Ministry of Health. They have Reasonable hope of securing generous loads from the Government and of making an early start with the 1 actual work Of reconstruction Which will fiatUffillV. riijm the building trade find its allies to n relative state of prosperity throughout the country. “If tfiofifitiq.fifil schemes continue to roll in ,it Represent rato,” an authority said this tVeck; “we may have the entire cfiufiiry'engaged, after Septetnber 3.0, whj}fi .all l&ejrififts must be ih, ih h trcThefidous effrort to wipe, out the slum blot .to which*ihe Pritiec directed istieh tilbolj