Page:Lectures on Housing.djvu/73

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SOME ASPECTS OF THE HOUSING PROBLEM
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terms which involved, in effect, the payment of a heavy subsidy from the ratepayers to their tenants. No corresponding subsidy was given in respect of houses situated in the outlying districts. The result was the same as if food had been offered on special terms to those poor persons who agreed to live in the central parts of London. Working people were, in effect, paid money upon condition that they would occupy sites which, as their market value showed, it was to the national interest to turn to quite other uses. The antisocial congestion of the centre was thus made worse than it would naturally have been. It needs little reflection to perceive that a bounty differentiating in favour of such congestion is the worst possible form of bounty. If differentiation is introduced at all, it should favour dispersion, whether directly by way of grants towards the building of cottages in the outer ring, or indirectly by the subsidizing of cheap workmen's trains and trams. This point of view was embodied in the Cheap Trains Act of 1884, which compelled the provision of