and
was prepared to pay the rent.'[1] If a family exceeds four the
position becomes acute. 'If a family consist of four or five
children,' declared the Assistant Housing Manager of the London County
Council, 'they would have a difficulty in obtaining accommodation.[3]
All this is quite natural. The property owner wants his rent, and he
wants it without his property suffering undue dilapidation. And the
rent is more certain when there are not more than two or three
children. He is not a philanthropist; he wants his money, the race
must look after itself. Profits and not children--that is the rule of
{88} his life. In every city it is the same. The owner of house
property will not have children in his houses, even as the London
County Council will not have married women as teachers--for they might
have children! This then is what we have done. We have deprived
four-fifths of our population of their birthright in the air and the
sunshine and the land, and we have decreed that they must live
unnatural lives--otherwise we will allow them no place wherein to live!
We have built up a civilisation in the midst of which childhood is
anathema.

III

When we look beneath the surface and ask the reasons why the poor
cannot find houses in which they can live with comfort, we discover
that it is a matter of finance. The extortionate prices of building
sites render it impossible to build on them any dwelling-houses except
tenements. Here is an example: {89} 'Unless the land were given you,
you could not possibly build cottages,' says the Secretary of the
Guinness Trust. 'Our new site, which was supposed to be sold to us on
cheap terms, cost L11,000 an acre, so that you can see the landrent per
tenement will work out at about 2s. 6d. a week, and as I say, the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners professed to sell to us at a low rate,
having regard to our objects. It is really not a stiff price for the
position.' In this bare statement we touch bedrock. The Guinness
Trust, founded with the philanthropic purpose of providing decent
housing for the poor, buys an acre for building purposes from the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who, from their very name, must be
interested in the poor, and they get it cheap at L11,000 an acre! What
does it mean this fabulous cost of land in great cities? A hundred
years ago that acre would be bought and sold at its agricultural value
of a few score pounds sterling. Whence, then, this inflat